aunt, Mrs Barnes, as she appeared on the threshold. Mrs Barnes’ late
husband had been brother to the very Isaac Barnes, once poacher, now
gamekeeper on Farmer Murray’s estate, and there were scandal-mongers in
Corston ill-natured enough to assert that the taint was in the blood,
and that young Laurence Barnes was very much inclined to go the same way
as his uncle had done before him. But at present he was a helper in the
stables of Mavis Farm.
‘I’ve been along the marshes,’ said Lizzie, ‘gathering cockles, and they
gave me sixpence for them up at the farm; and oh, aunt! I met Miss Rosa
on my way back, and she says Larry must take me up to the big barn this
evening to their harvest-home supper.’
Laurence Barnes was seated at his mother’s table already occupied in the
discussion of a huge lump of bread and bacon, but as the name of his
master’s daughter left Lizzie’s lips it would have been very evident to
any one on the look-out for it that he started and seemed uneasy.
‘And what will you be doing at a dance and a supper, my poor girl?’ said
her aunt, but not unkindly. ‘Come, Lizzie, sit down and take your dinner;
that’s of much more account to you than a harvest merry-making.’
‘Not till Larry has promised to take me up with him this evening,’
replied the girl gaily, and without the least fear of a rebuff. ‘You’ll
do it, Larry, won’t you? for Miss Rosa said they’d all be there, and if
she didn’t see me she’d send round to the cottage after me. She said,
“Tell Larry I _insist_ upon it; she did, indeed!”’
‘Well, then, I’m not going up myself, and so you can’t go,’ he answered
roughly.
‘_Not going yourself!_’
The exclamation left the lips of both women at once. They could not
understand it, and it equally surprised them. Larry—the best singer
and dancer for twenty miles round, to refuse to go up to his master’s
harvest-home! Why, what would the supper and the dance be without him? At
least, so thought Mrs Barnes and Lizzie.
‘Aren’t you well, Larry?’ demanded the blind girl, timidly.
‘I’m well enough; but I don’t choose to go. I don’t care for such
rubbish. Let ’em bide! They’ll do well enough without us.’
Lizzie dropt into her seat in silence, and began in a mechanical way to
eat her dinner. She was terribly disappointed, but she did not dream of
disputing her cousin’s decision. He was master in that house; and she
would not have cared to go to the barn without Larry. Half the pleasure
would be gone with his absence. He did not seem to see that.
‘Mother can take you up, Liz, if she has a mind to,’ he said, presently.
‘_I_ take her along of me!’ cried Mrs Barnes, ‘when I haven’t so much
as a clean kerchief to pin across my shoulders. You’re daft, Larry. I
haven’t been to such a thing as a dance since I laid your father in the
churchyard, and if our Liz can’t go without me she must stop at home.’
‘I don’t want to go, indeed I don’t, not without Larry,’ replied the
blind girl, earnestly.
‘And what more did Miss Rosa say to you?’ demanded her aunt,
inquisitively.
‘We talked about the sands, aunt. She’d been galloping all over them this
morning, and I told her how dangerous they were beyond Corston Point, and
we was getting on so nice together, when some one came and interrupted
us.’
‘_Some one!_ Who’s some one?’ said Laurence Barnes, quickly.
‘I can’t tell you; I never met him before.’
‘’Twas a man, then?’
‘Oh yes! ’twas a man—a gentleman! I knew that, because there were no
nails in his boots, and he didn’t give at the knees as he walked.’
‘What more?’ demanded Larry, with lowered brows.
‘Miss Rosa knew him well, because they never named each other, but only
wished “good morning.” She said, “What are you doing here?” and he said,
“Looking after you.” He carried a rose in his hand or his coat, I think,
for I smelt it, and a cane, too, for it struck the saddle flap.’
‘Well, that’s enough,’ interrupted Laurence, fiercely.
‘I thought you wanted to hear all about it, Larry?’
‘Is there any more to tell, then?’
‘Only that as they walked away together, Miss Rosa said she was so glad
he was coming up to the harvest-home to-night.’
‘So _he’s_ a-going, the cur!’ muttered the young man between his teeth.
‘_I_ know him, with his cane, and his swagger, and his stinking roses;
and I’ll be even with him yet, or my name’s not Larry Barnes.’
It was evident that Mr Frederick Darley was no greater favourite in the
cottage than the farm.
‘Whoever are you talking of?’ said Larry’s mother. ‘Do you know the
gentleman Lizzie met with Miss Rosa?’
‘_Gentleman!_ He’s no gentleman. He’s nothing but a common gamekeeper,
same as uncle. But don’t let us talk of him any more. It takes the
flavour of the bacon clean out of my mouth.’
The rest of the simple meal was performed in silence, and then Mrs Barnes
gathered up the crockery and carried it into an outer room to wash.
Larry and Lizzie were left alone. The girl seemed to understand that in
some mysterious way she had offended her cousin, and wished to restore
peace between them, so she crept up to where he was smoking his midday
pipe on the old settle by the fire, and laid her head gently against his
knees. They had been brought up from babes together, and were used to
observe such innocent little familiarities towards each other.
‘Never mind about the outing, Larry. I’m not a bit disappointed, and I’m
sorry I said anything about it.’
‘That’s not true, Liz. You _are_ disappointed, and it’s my doing; but I
couldn’t help it. I didn’t feel somehow as if I had the heart to go. But
I’ve changed my mind since dinner, and we’ll go up to the harvest-home
together, my girl. Will that content you?’
‘Oh, Larry! you _are_ good!’ she said, raising herself, her cheeks
crimsoned with renewed expectation; ‘but I’d rather stop at home a
thousand times over than you should put yourself out of the way for me.’
A sudden thought seemed to strike the young man as he looked at Lizzie’s
fair, sightless face. He had lived with her so long, in a sisterly way,
that it had never struck him to regard her in any other light. But
something in the inflection of her voice as she addressed him, made
him wonder if he were capable of making her happier than she had ever
been yet. He cherished no other hopes capable of realisation. What if
he could make his own troubles lighter by lightening those of poor Liz?
Something of this sort, but in much rougher clothing, passed through his
half-tutored mind. As it grasped the idea he turned hurriedly towards the
girl kneeling at his knee.
‘Do you really care about me, lass?’ he said. ‘Do you care if I’m vexed
or not? Whether I come in or go out? If I like my dinner or I don’t like
it? Does all this nonsense worry you? Answer me, for I want to know.’
‘Oh! Larry, what do you mean? Of course I care. I can’t do much for
you—more’s the pity—without my poor eyes, but I can think of you and love
you, Larry, and surely you know that I do both.’
‘But would you like to love me more, Liz?’
‘How could I love you more?’
‘Would you like to have the _right_ to care for me—the _right_ to creep
after me in your quiet way wherever I might happen to go—the _right_ to
walk alongside of me, with your hand in mine, up to the harvesting home
to-night; eh, Liz?’
The girl half understood her cousin’s meaning, but she was too modest
not to fear she might be mistaken. Larry could never wish to take _her_,
blind and helpless, for his _wife_.
‘Larry, speak to me more plainly; I don’t catch your meaning quite.’
‘Will you marry me then, Liz, and live along of mother and me to the end
of your life?’
‘_Marry you!_—Be your _wife_!—_Me!_ _Oh_, Larry, you can’t mean it!
never.’
‘I do mean it,’ replied her cousin with an oath; ‘and I’ll take you as
soon as ever you’ll take me if you will but say the word.’
‘But I am _blind_, Larry.’
‘Do you suppose I don’t know that? Perhaps I likes you blind best.’
‘But I am so useless. I get about so slowly. If anything was to happen to
aunt, how could I keep the house clean and cook the dinners, Larry? You
must think a bit more before you decide for good.’
But the poor child’s face was burning with excitement the while, and her
sightless eyes were thrown upwards to her cousin’s face as though she
would strain through the darkness to see it.
‘If anything happened to mother, do you suppose I’d turn you out of
doors, Liz? And in any case, then, I must have a wife or a servant to do
the work—it will make no difference that way. The only question is, do
you want me for a husband?’
‘Oh! I have loved you ever so!’ replied the girl, throwing herself into
his arms. ‘I couldn’t love another man, Larry. I know your face as well
as if I had seen it, and your step, and your voice. I can tell them long
before another body knows there’s sound a-coming.’
‘Then you’ll have me?’
‘If you’ll have _me_,’ she murmured in a tone of delight as she nestled
against his rough clothes.
‘That’s settled, then, and the sooner the banns are up the better! Here,
mother! Come along and hear the news. Lizzie has promised to marry me,
and I shall take her to church as soon as we’ve been cried.’
‘Well! I _am_ pleased,’ said Mrs Barnes. ‘You couldn’t have got a neater
wife, Larry, though her eyesight’s terribly against her, poor thing! But
I’m sure of one thing, Liz, if you can’t do all for him that another
woman might, you’ll love my lad with the best among them, and that
thought will make me lie quiet in my grave.’
The poor cannot afford the time to be as sentimental over such things as
the rich. Larry kissed his cousin two or three times on the forehead in
signification of the compact they had just entered into, and then he got
up and shook himself, and prepared to go back to his afternoon work.
‘That’s a good job settled,’ he thought as he did so; ‘it will make
Lizzie happy, and drive a deal of nonsense may be out of my head. But if
ever I can pay out that scoundrel Darley I’ll do it, if it costs me the
last drop of my blood.’
The blind girl regarded what had passed between her cousin and herself
with very different feelings. Condemned, by reason of her infirmity, to
pass much of her young life in solitude, the privation had repaid itself
by giving her the time and opportunity for an amount of self-culture
which, if subjected to the rough toil and rougher pleasures of her class,
she never could have attained. Her ideas regarding the sanctity of love
and marriage were very different from those of other Corston girls. She
could never have ‘kept company,’ as they termed it, with one man this
month and another the next. Her pure mind, which dwelt so much within
itself, shrank from the levity and coarseness with which she had heard
such subjects treated, and believing, as she had done, that she should
never be married, she had pleased herself by building up an ideal of what
a husband should be, and how his wife would love and reverence him. And
this ideal had always had for its framework a fancied portrait of her
cousin Laurence. In reality, this young fellow was an average specimen of
a fresh-faced country youth, with plenty of colour and flesh and muscle.
But to the blind girl’s fancy he was perfection. Her little hands from
babyhood had traced each feature of his face until she knew every line
by heart, and though she had never acknowledged it even to herself, she
had been in love with him ever since she was capable of understanding the
meaning of the term. So that although his proposal to marry her had come
as a great surprise, it had also come as a great glory, and set her heart
throbbing with the pleasant consciousness of returned affection.
She was in a flutter of triumph and delight all the afternoon, whilst
Larry was attending to his horses, and hardly knew how to believe in her
own happiness. Her aunt brushed and plaited her long hair for her till
it was as glossy and neat as possible, and tied her new cherry-coloured
ribbon round the girl’s throat that she might not disgrace her son’s
choice at the merry-making. And then Lizzie sat down to wait for her
affianced lover’s return, the proudest maid in Corston. Larry came in
punctually for his tea, and the first thing he did was to notice the
improvement in his little cousin’s appearance; and indeed joy had so
beautified her countenance that she was a different creature from what
she had been on the sands that morning. The apathy and indifference to
life had disappeared, and a bright colour bloomed in her soft cheeks. As
she tucked her hand through her cousin’s arm, and they set off to walk
together to Farmer Murray’s harvest-home, Mrs Barnes looked after them
with pride, and declared that if poor Liz had only got her sight they
would have made the handsomest couple in the parish.
Larry was rather silent as they went up to the barn together, but Liz was
not _exigeante_, and trotted by his side with an air of perfect content.
When they arrived they found the place already full, but the ‘quality’
had not yet arrived, and until they did so, no one ventured to do more
than converse quietly with his neighbour, although the fiddlers from
Wells were all ready and only waiting a signal to strike up. But in those
days the working men did not consider their festival complete without
the presence of the master, and it would have been a sore affront if the
members and guests of the household had not also joined them in order to
open the ball and set the liquor flowing. In these days of Radicalism
perhaps they find they can get on just as well without them. Larry still
kept Lizzie’s arm snugly tucked within his own as he described to her how
beautiful the walls of the barn looked hung with flags and decorated with
flowers and evergreens, and what a number of lamps there were, and what a
lot of liquor and eatables were stowed away at the further end. He was
still talking to her rapidly, and, as she imagined, somewhat uneasily,
when a cheer rose up from a group of rustics outside, and Larry gave a
start that almost disengaged her from his clasp.
‘What’s the matter?’ she demanded. ‘Is it the gentry coming, Larry?’
‘Yes! ’tis they, sure enough. Keep close to me, Liz—I don’t want to part
from you, not for one moment.’
‘Oh, Larry! that do make me feel so happy,’ she whispered. As she spoke,
the party from Mavis Farm entered the barn and were received with a
shout of welcome. Mr Murray, a fine, hale old gentleman, and his sons
came first; then Miss Rosa, looking rather conscious, tripping after her
brothers in a white muslin dress. The farmer advanced to the beer barrel,
and having filled his glass, drank success to all present, and asked them
to give three cheers for a bountiful harvest. When that ceremony was
completed the fiddlers struck up a merry country dance, and every one was
at liberty to drink and caper about. The young people from Mavis Farm all
took part in the first dance, and Rosa Murray came up and asked Larry if
he would be her partner on the occasion. She ought in fairness to have
opened the ball with her father’s bailiff or one of the upper servants,
but she preferred the young groom, with whom she held daily intercourse,
and she was accustomed to go her own way without reference to anybody’s
feelings. As she approached the cousins she gave Lizzie a kindly welcome.
‘I am so glad you have come up, Lizzie; and now your cousin must get you
a nice seat until this dance is ended, for I intend him to open the ball
with me.’
This was considered a great honour on the part of the villagers, and the
blind girl coloured with pleasure to think that her _fiancé_ had been
selected for the ceremony.
‘Oh, Miss Rosa, you _are_ good! Larry, why don’t you thank the young
lady, and say how proud you shall be to dance alongside of her?’
But Larry said nothing. He reddened, it is true, but more from confusion
than pleasure, and he was so long a time settling Lizzie to his
satisfaction, that Rosa was disposed to be angry at his dilatoriness,
and called out to him sharply that if he were not ready she should open
the ball with some one else. Then he ran and took his place by her side,
and went through the evolutions of ‘down the middle’ and ‘setting at
the corners’ with a burning face and a fast-beating heart. Poor Laurence
Barnes! His young mistress’s constant presence in the stables and
familiarity with himself had been too much for his susceptible nature.
She was to him, in the pride of her youthful loveliness and the passport
it afforded her for smiling upon all classes of men, as an angel, rather
than a woman, something set too high above for him ever to reach, but yet
with the power to thrill his veins and make his hot blood run faster. The
touch of her ungloved hand in the figures of the dance made him tremble,
and the glance of her eyes sickened him, so that as soon as the terrible
ordeal was concluded he made her an awkward salute, and rushed from her
side to that of the beer barrel, to drown his excitement in drink. And it
was just there that he had left Lizzie Locke.
‘That was beautiful, Larry,’ she exclaimed, with glowing cheeks. ‘I could
hear the sound of your feet and Miss Rosa’s above all the others, even
when you went to the further end of the barn. It must be lovely to be
able to dance like that. But it has made you thirsty, Larry. That’s the
third glass, isn’t it?’
‘Yes, lass, it’s made me thirsty. But don’t you keep counting my glasses
all the evening, or I shall move your chair a bit further off.’
She laughed quietly, and he flung himself upon the ground and rested
his arm upon her knee. He seemed to feel safer and more at peace when
by Lizzie’s side, and she was quite happy in the knowledge that he was
there. The Mavis Farm party did not dance again after the ball had
been opened, at least Miss Rosa did not. But she moved about the barn
restlessly. Sometimes she was in, and sometimes she was out. She did not
seem to know her own mind for two minutes together.
‘Why is that fellow Darley skulking about here, Larry?’ demanded Isaac
Barnes of his nephew. ‘I’ve seen his ugly face peeping into the barn a
dozen times. Why don’t he come in or stay out? I hate such half-and-half
sneaking ways.’
Larry muttered an oath, and was about to make some reply, when George
Murray came up to them.
‘Is that Mr Darley I see hanging about the barn door, Isaac?’ he inquired
of their own keeper.
‘That it be, Master George; and as I was just saying to Larry here, why
not in or out? What need of dodging? He don’t want to catch no one here,
I suppose?’
‘He’d better try. I’d soon teach him who the barn belongs to.’
‘And I’d back you, Master George,’ cried Larry resolutely. The
strong-brewed Norfolk ale was giving him a dash of Dutch courage.
‘Would you, Larry? That’s right! Well, I can’t be in all parts of the
barn at once, and father wants me to take the bottom of the supper-table,
so you keep your eye on Mr Darley for me, will you? and if he looks up to
anything, let me know.’
‘I’m your man, Master George,’ replied Larry heartily.
Rosa was near enough to them to overhear what had passed. Her brother
had intended she should do so. But when he set his wit against that of
a woman he reckoned without his host. Rosa had been on the look-out for
Frederick Darley from the beginning of the evening, and during the first
greeting, had managed to slip a little note into his hand, warning him
of her brother’s animosity, and begging him to keep as much as possible
out of their sight until an opportunity occurred for her joining him in
the apple copse. Now, she felt afraid of what might happen if there
were an encounter between the two young men, and decided at once that
her best plan would be, as soon as she saw George safely disposed of at
the supper-table, to tamper with his spy. And unfortunately Rosa Murray
knew but too well how to accomplish this. Young Barnes’ infatuation had
not been unnoticed by her. She would have been aware of it if a cat had
admired her. She knew his hand trembled when he took her foot to place
her in the saddle, and that he became so nervous and agitated when she
entered the stable as often to have to be recalled to a sense of his
duty by a sharp rebuke from the head groom. She had known it all for
months past, and it had pleased her. She was so vain and heartless that
she thought nothing of what pain the poor fellow might be undergoing.
She laughed at his presumption, and only considered it another feather
in her cap. But now she saw her way to make use of it. The dancing had
recommenced, and was proceeding with vigour, and the huge rounds of beef
and legs of mutton on the supper-table were beginning to be served out.
George was in full action, leading the onslaught with his carving-knife,
when Rosa Murray approached Laurence Barnes.
‘Won’t you dance again, nor go and have your supper, Larry dear?’ Lizzie
was asking, with a soft caress of her hand upon the head laid on her knee.
‘I don’t want to dance no more,’ said Larry, ‘and I sha’n’t sup till the
table’s clearer and you can sup with me, Liz.’
‘That’s very good of you, Barnes,’ said Rosa, who had caught the words;
‘but if you’ll take Lizzie to the table now, I’m sure George will find
room for you both.’
‘No thank you, miss,’ he answered; ‘I promised Master George to bide here
till he came back, and I mustn’t break my word.’
‘Then I shall sit here with you, and we’ll all have supper together
by-and-by,’ replied Rosa. ‘Have you been gathering cockles again this
afternoon, Lizzie?’
‘Oh no, miss!’ said Lizzie, blushing at the recollection of how her
afternoon had been employed; ‘it’s high tide at four o’clock now, and I
haven’t been out of the house again to-day.’
‘Did your cousin tell you how she scolded me for riding in the salt
marshes, Barnes?’
‘Well! it _is_ dangerous, miss, for such as don’t know the place. I mind
me when Whisker’s grandfather strayed out there by himself—’
‘Oh, Larry!’ cried Lizzie, ‘don’t go to tell that terrible tale. It
always turns me sick!’
‘Is that what they call the Marsh Ghost, Barnes? Oh! I must know all
about it. I love ghost stories, and I have never been able to hear the
whole of this one. Where does it appear, and when?’
‘Lizzie here can tell you better than me, miss—she knows the story right
through.’
‘It’s a horrible tale, Miss Rosa. You’ll never forget it, once heard.’
‘That’s just why I want to hear it; so, Lizzie, you must tell it me
directly. Don’t move, Barnes, you don’t inconvenience me. I can sit up in
this corner quite well.’
‘Well, miss, if you _must_ hear it,’ began the blind girl, ‘it happened
now nigh upon twenty years ago. Whisker’s grandfather, that used to
keep the lodge at Rooklands, had grown so old and feeble the late lord
pensioned him off and sent him home to his own people. He hadn’t no son
in Corston then, miss, because they was both working in the south, but
his daughter-in-law, his first son’s widdy, that had married Skewton the
baker, she offered to take the old man in and do for him. Lord Worcester
allowed him fifty pounds a-year for life, and Mrs Skewton wanted to take
it all for his keep, but the old man was too sharp for that, and he only
gave her ten shillings a-week and put by the rest, no one knew where nor
for what. Well, miss, this went on for three or four years may be, and
then poor Whisker had grown very feeble and was a deal of trouble, and
his sons didn’t seem to be coming back, and the Skewtons had grown tired
of him, so they neglected him shamefully. I shouldn’t like to tell you,
miss, all that’s said of their beating the poor old man and starving him,
and never giving him no comforts. At last he got quite silly and took to
wandering about alone, and he used to go out on the marshes, high or low
tide, without any sense of the danger, and everybody said he’d come to
harm some day. And so he did, for one day they carried his body in from
Corston Point quite dead, and all bruised with the rocks and stones. The
Skewtons pretended as they knew nothing about how he’d come to his death,
but they set up a cart just afterwards, and nothing has ever been heard
of the old man’s store of money, though his sons came back and inquired
and searched far and near for it. But about six months after—Larry!
’tisn’t a fit tale for Miss Rosa to listen to!’
‘Nonsense, Lizzie! I wouldn’t have the ghost left out for anything. It’s
just that I want to hear of.’
‘Well, miss, as I said, six months after old Whisker’s death he began to
walk again, and he’s walked ever since.’
‘Where does he walk?’
‘Round and round Corston Point every full moon, wringing his hands and
asking for his money. They say it’s terrible to see him.’
‘Have you ever seen him, Barnes?’
Larry coloured deeply and shook his head. The peasantry all over England
are very susceptible to superstition, and the Corston folk were not
behindhand in their fear of ghosts, hobgoblins, and apparitions of all
sorts. This young fellow would have stood up in a fight with the best man
there, but the idea of seeing a ghost made his blood curdle.