BESSIE’S LETTER.
The summer days ran on. They flowed by smooth and pleasant—so Bessie
Ormson said in one of her sentimental moods—like a swift river among
lovely green fields.
“Look at that stream,” she remarked to Alick, as they stood, on the
Sunday following Heather’s return, side by side, leaning over the
parapet of a little bridge which spanned the Kemm; “do you know what it
puts me in mind of?”
“No,” answered the boy, to whom sometimes the talk of his companion was
as the talk of a creature from another world; “I cannot know what
anything puts you in mind of, for you are like no other person I ever
met in all my life before.”
“So much the better for you,” she replied. “Do I not often inform you I
am one of the daughters of Cain, come on a short visit to Adam and Eve
in the garden of Eden? and that brings me back to the river: it runs
by—like existence at Berrie Down—with scarcely a ripple on its surface.
I should like to be the Kemm,” she added in a lower tone, “murmuring on
over the pebbles, never singing a more passionate strain than that—never
fretting or fuming—never forcing my way through rocks and stones—never
brawling—never uncertain as to my future course—but stealing quietly and
peacefully to the great sea;” and as she spoke, Bessie dropped her arms
over the parapet of the little bridge, and looked into the stream sadly
and dreamily.
Let me sketch her for you—Herbert Ormson’s only daughter, Gilbert
Harcourt’s affianced wife—or rather let me make the attempt, for it is
not easy to give in pen and ink an idea of the personal appearance of a
girl like Bessie Ormson, whose mood was shifting as the sunbeams, whose
beauty was changeful as the shadows flitting over the grass in the
golden summer-time:
Scarcely of the middle height, figure slight and delicately rounded, she
was not destitute of dignity, though lithe and lissom as a child: she
had a small head, which she could rear, on occasions, almost defiantly;
a mass of dark brown hair, smoothly braided on her cheeks, and then
rolled up at the back of her neck in coil after coil; eyes of the
darkest, deepest, divinest blue, shaded by long black lashes, that gave
to her face, when in repose, an almost pathetic expression; a complexion
which neither sun nor wind seemed able to spoil; she had lips like
coral, and teeth like pearls; and a short, provoking, piquant, saucy
upper lip. Was it any wonder, think you, that Alick Dudley should
consider her the perfection of beauty?—that almost unconsciously the
fancies and loves of his future life were shaped and moulded by this his
earliest ideal of feminine loveliness?
And yet it was no mere beauty of feature that caused Bessie Ormson to
seem so irresistibly charming: it was that ever-varying expression of
which I have spoken—that shifting look, now sad, now gay, now earnest,
now provoking, now coquettish, now soft and womanly, and again almost
sarcastic in its keen perception of human folly and human weakness—which
gave variety to her face.
Always changing—never for two minutes the same—always filling the
beholder with a vague wonder as to what strangely-varied mental book
such a face could be the index.
It was wistful, it was saucy, it was sorrowful, it was joyous. There was
a shadow lying across her eyes one moment; they were sparkling with
mirth the next. She would look at Heather as though she were gazing into
the depths of a clear stream, with a strange dreamy glance, and before
you could fix that expression on your mind it was gone.
See her with Lally, and her face was the face of a child; leave her to
herself for an instant, and there came an anxious, troubled look on her
countenance. She was all things—mischievous, tender, high-spirited,
quiet, loving, cross, full of bitter repartee, of premature worldly
knowledge.
She had eaten of the tree too soon; and, if that fruit set her mental
teeth on edge, who may say the fault lay with Bessie?
She was clever, as Arthur Dudley had truly observed; that is, she was
not clever in accomplishments, nor as regarded solid learning, but
rather socially and conversationally.
She was no linguist, not much of a musician, nothing of an artist; she
had not read much, but she could guess what people were thinking of; she
could piece this and that together, and tell what motives influenced
them, what were their purposes, by what considerations they were swayed.
For this reason, many persons had an objection to very intimate
association with the girl; she never rested content with words—she went
straight back to the thoughts words concealed.
The young folks at Berrie Down Hollow, however, who had no secrets and
no plans, found her capital company. Even Lally was not more tireless
than she. Ever ready to go out to walk, to inspect the poultry-yard, to
try her hand at butter-making, to gather flowers and group them into
bouquets, to shake the cherry-trees, to carry Lally into the Hollow and
hide her among the blackberry bushes, to smother the child in armfuls of
freshly-mown grass, to lead the way, fleet of foot, to the meadows,
where the haymakers were at work, to don with demurest air a snowy
apron, and help Mrs. Piggott whisk eggs, or prepare her fruit for
preserving!
Even Mrs. Piggott, who entertained a most cordial dislike for Bessie’s
maternal parent, brightened up when she saw that pretty roguish face
peeping in at the door of kitchen, larder, and dairy.
Of severe, not to say despotic, principles, inclined to resent
intrusions into her domains as acts of revolt against a
legally-constituted authority, Mrs. Piggott, nevertheless, not merely
tolerated Bessie’s visits, but rejoiced in them, and few things
delighted the beauty more than a forenoon with “that delightfully
respectable old wonder,” as she called the housekeeper.
It was a sight to see Mrs. Piggott and Bessie employed in making
red-currant jelly—Mrs. Piggott arrayed in a clean cotton gown, and a cap
with many borders, looking sharply after her assistant to see that she
religiously removed every stem, while Lally, perched on the table,
superintended the work, and ate whole handsful of the fruit, in gleeful
defiance of Bessie’s threats of executing condign punishment upon her.
“Dear, dear Miss,” observed Mrs. Piggott on one occasion, surveying
Bessie over her spectacles, “who would ever think you were your mamma’s
daughter?”
“No one, Mrs. Piggott,” was the young lady’s prompt reply. “Don’t you
think it a pity mothers so seldom take after their children?” which
inversion of the usual proposition so utterly astonished Mrs. Piggott’s
understanding, that she was glad to direct Bessie’s attention to “that
blessed child who has eaten a quart of picked fruit, Miss, if she has
eaten a currant;” whereupon Bessie placed Lally on the dresser, where,
in the midst of plates and dishes, the little girl sat as if on a
throne, exchanging saucy speeches with Miss Ormson, till it pleased that
young lady to lift her down from her perch and take her away to the
hay-field, or out into the croft, to see Alick breaking-in Nellie.
It was wonderful to observe the way in which Bessie and the child
agreed; more wonderful still, perhaps, to notice the manner in which the
former wound all the household round her finger.
It was Bessie this, and Bessie that. She retrimmed the girls’ bonnets;
she taught them the latest mode of dressing hair; she could change old
garments into new by some dexterous sleight-of-hand. Ribbons and laces,
deemed useless before her arrival, and cast aside, as tossed and torn,
reappeared after her advent in forms that delighted the hearts of Arthur
Dudley’s sisters.
She was “good for everything,” the boys declared. Pretty and coquettish
herself, she liked to see other girls pretty and coquettish too; and
during her visit the Misses Dudley went about with wild flowers in their
hair, with dainty bouquets in their belts, with dresses guiltless of a
crease, “making much of themselves,” as Bessie phrased it.
How she revelled in that house! How she, so constantly a prisoner among
bricks and mortar, loved the freedom and the liberty of that country
life! How she stood drinking in the pure, undefiled air, that came
floating over the fields and the hedgerows to her! Much as the young
Dudleys loved their home, they had not that appreciation of every flower
and leaf, of every effect of light and shade, which astonished them in
their guest.
Her love of the country was keen and sharp, like the relish of a
half-starved man for food.
Here, at last, was a life to be desired—a life idly busy, sinlessly
sensuous;—here was a lotus land of indolent industry, bright with
sunshine, where the air was full of all delicious perfumes—where the
days were happy and the nights calm—where the morning dawned upon a
peaceful household—where the moon looked down, not upon a turbulent sea
of human woes, sorrows, sins, passions, disappointments, but on the
pleasant fields where the grass was springing, and the sheep lay dotted
about on the soft green slopes.
The birds in the hedges, the ferns in the dells, the soft cushions of
moss, which she would caress with her little hand and touch with her
lips, as though such delicious greenery must be conscious of her
caresses; the branches waving in the breeze, the whirling of the pigeons
in the air, the hundred sounds of the country,—all these things had
charms for Bessie which made the Dudleys find her a most appreciative
and delightful companion.
Never was there such a girl for a walk, Alick Dudley thought, as Bessie
Ormson. If she went out in the early morning, before the sun had risen
high enough to have much power, Bessie would stop to look at the cobwebs
glittering with dew-drops, at the drooping blades of wet grass, at the
tears on the leaves of the dog-roses. Were it later in the day, she
revelled in the luxurious warmth; in the far-away tiled roofs peeping
red from amongst sheltering trees; in the quiet cattle; in the hush of
the noon-tide; and when the afternoon stole on, and the evening shadows
began to fall, she delighted in the solemn darkness of the distant
woods, in the flow of beck and stream, in the figures of the labourers
hieing them, home across the field-paths, in the children grouped about
the cottage doors.
“It is peace,” she was wont to say—“perfect peace. I wonder if heaven
will be like this!”
There are poets who cannot write a line of verse; there are artists who
yet lack the power to reproduce that which fills their souls with
pleasure almost amounting to pain. The understanding mind and the
skilful hand are not necessarily sent into the world together. The power
of appreciating things lovely and beautiful is often divorced from the
capacity to create or portray the lovely and the beautiful, or, rather,
is not always mated with such capacity; and, although Bessie Ormson
possessed no creative or imitative genius, she was yet endowed with that
diviner genius—the ability to luxuriate in the thousand works of the
great Creator.
And it was this faculty of perception and appreciativeness which, added
to her quickness and vivacity, made Bessie such good company that no one
in the length of a summer’s day could weary of her. Nothing escaped
her—not a flower growing by the wayside, not a cloud fleeting across the
sky, not a change of expression on a man’s face, not an unusual cadence
in a familiar voice.
With all her sarcasm and frivolity, the girl’s human sympathy was
intense; and, perhaps, when the secret of most popularity is exhausted,
it will be found only to exist in the fact that the man or the woman
popular can enter into and understand the moods and feelings of other
men and women.
It was so with Bessie, at all events. She loved Berrie Down Hollow with
a love almost amounting to passion. To her, that place was the
realization of peace, happiness, home, beauty, contentment; and yet she
could comprehend the natural desire of the lad who stood beside her to
leave Hertfordshire and go forth to push his way in the world.
It was of that desire they had been talking as they sauntered across the
fields towards North Kemms.
The hush of the first day in the week was around them and above; but
still their discourse had been of the world, its prizes, its blanks, its
successes, its disappointments, and the boy’s cheek flushed as he spoke
of how he should like to win a name and a position for himself in the
great city, where the greatest part of Bessie Ormson’s life had been
spent.
“Of course I shall be sorry to go away from the old place,” he went on,
“to leave it and Heather; but I should feel proud to make a fortune, and
bring it back to her. I should not stay away from Berrie Down for ever.”
“Yes, you would,” Bessie answered. Then, seeing him look surprised, she
went on: “You, that is, the Alick Dudley who is talking to me now, would
go away, and never return. I know it is well for you to go; but still,
do not think you could ever return. You will leave here a boy with a
face as smooth as my own, and you will come back a man, never to hear
the song of the birds with quite the same ears—never to look out over
the fields and the woods with quite the same eyes—never to listen to the
trees and the winds whispering quite the same words. You will go
out”—from the height of her twenty-three years she looked down and told
him this—“and you may come back, but the noise of the world will mingle
with the old familiar sounds, and never let those sounds fall in perfect
harmony on your soul more.”
And it was then they came to the Kemm, where Bessie paused to look into
the stream.
“I wonder, Bessie, where you have learned all you know,” said Alick,
after a pause.
“Not out of books,” she replied, laughing; “the truth is I know very
little, except that I am very happy at Berrie Down, and shall be very
sorry to leave it.”
“Do you not expect to be happy when you leave Berrie Down?” he asked.
“That is not a question to be rashly answered,” she said. “I may be—I
may not be. Don’t you remember that game Lally plays at—blowing
dandelion-down away to tell the hour? Whatever number she has arrived
at, when the last feather floats off, is the time. My future depends on
much such a chance; but whether it turn out happy or unhappy, be certain
I shall not sit down and bemoan myself.”
“But surely you hope to be happy in your marriage?” the lad suggested,
hesitatingly, and yet with a degree of restrained eagerness which made
Bessie smile.
“I hope to be so, Alick,” she answered, however, gravely; “but hopes are
poor houses to live in. Fact is,” she added, in a gayer tone, “I know as
little about my future life as you know about yours. When we are old man
and old woman, we will sit down by the fireside together, and compare
notes; we will tell one another about the roads we have travelled, and
the countries they led to.”
And Bessie lifted her eyes as she spoke, and looked away to the woods
surrounding Mr. Raidsford’s house, which mingled with those of Kemms
Park.
In the after-days, the pair stood in the same spot again on just such
another afternoon, and thought of that talk on their way to Kemms
church.
“We shall be very late,” Bessie said at length; and then they turned and
pursued their way in the delicious stillness across the fields to North
Kemms. It had been a freak of Bessie’s, this Sunday ramble alone with
Alick to a far-away church; but then Bessie was given to freaks, and no
one paid any particular attention to them.
Mrs. Ormson declared such a walk in the heat of the day “was absurd;”
even Heather looked surprised when she and Alick announced their
intention of starting directly after dinner. Lally had implored “me
too,” for once vainly, and an offer of companionship from the remainder
of the Dudleys had met with no better success.
“I want to go alone with you, Alick,” she declared. “I want to talk to
you quietly;” and of course Alick was delighted.
Like most girls, Bessie conceived all the wisdom of Solomon had come
down to her. In the ways of this world the young lady believed she was a
thorough adept; but she had not that reticence in talking about the ways
of the world and the wickedness of the people in it, which is, perhaps,
the first sign of thorough knowledge.
The wise man is modest. The man who thinks himself wise lacks sense to
hold his tongue; the saint is eloquent about sin; the sinner is not
given to speak of the flavour of that strange meat whereof he has
partaken; for all of which reasons Bessie, who was but a very novice in
that lore wherein she aspired to instruct others, was assiduous in her
endeavours to teach Alick that the world where he had been placed was a
mistake, the hope of happiness in it a delusion and a snare.
This young woman, who delighted in every country sight and sound, who
loved Lally and adored Heather Dudley, who luxuriated in pleasant sights
and in all sweet sounds, who had her life all before her, who could take
fun out of most things, and was not above confessing to a weakness for
strawberries and cream, would nevertheless talk on a fine summer
afternoon as I have taken the liberty of transcribing her conversation.
She thought she was original, perhaps, in her remarks; she thought also
possibly—and this thought chanced to be perfectly true—that Alick Dudley
delighted in her observations; and yet her talk was but as the talk of
other girls of her own age and temperament throughout the length and
breadth of England.
It was the nought is everything and everything is nought creed of our
own girls at the present hour; of those who, whether they take refuge
from their own luxuriously sad thoughts in earnestness or frivolity, in
balls or soup-kitchens, in fashionable follies or house-to-house
visitings, are yet agreed on one point, viz., their conviction that the
round world and all that therein is cannot be considered otherwise than
hollow and unsatisfactory.
They believe fully, not only that it is all a fleeting show, but that it
was “for man’s illusion given,” and they smile compassionately on the
poor souls who are deluded with such a transparent mockery, and go about
raving in a fine melancholy about the sins and sorrows, the snares and
the pitfalls, of our very imperfect earth.
Did the girls who read Evelina and Cecilia share this doctrine, or were
they, less sceptical, gulled, sweet simpletons, into believing the
Almighty intended them for happiness instead of misery?
It would have been a clever person who could have persuaded Bessie
Ormson into such a faith, at all events; and as, for most young people,
talk of the kind to which I have referred—melancholy, dreamy, romantic,
unsatisfying talk—has a singular charm, she might, with her
conversation, have done Alick Dudley a considerable amount of mischief,
had it not been for a little circumstance that occurred on the very same
Sunday afternoon of which I am speaking, and set the lad thinking about
a much more possible calamity than had been contained in any of Bessie’s
imaginative sentences.
On, over the fields they walked; they left the Kemm and Mr. Raidsford’s
property far behind; they strolled leisurely through the pleasant
Hertfordshire meadows, and stood here and there to watch the sheep
scuttling away from them, or to notice the placid contentment of the
cattle lying on the smooth grass whence the hay had just been carried.
On, past cottage and homestead; on, to where more woods met their sight;
on, through the little hamlet of North Kemms, and then by a short lane
to the church surrounded by a graveyard, where the mounds were many, and
the headstones few.
The service was half over by the time they stood within the porch, but
the sexton experienced no difficulty in providing the new comers with
seats. There were more empty than full in that church, so he ushered the
pair into a great family pew near the pulpit, and shut the door
carefully after them.
Only to open it, however, again next instant, and give admittance to a
tall handsome man, who might have belonged to the same party, so quickly
did he follow on their heels.
A very handsome man—when the stranger took his face out of his hat,
where he held it for the orthodox period; Alick Dudley was quite
satisfied on this point, and glanced curiously round to ascertain
whether Bessie chanced to be of the same opinion; but Bessie’s eyes were
fastened on her prayer-book, and so Alick turned again to the new comer
to discover what effect Bessie had produced on him.
Apparently, none whatever; he looked at the girl carelessly, looked her
over from head to foot; then examined Alick in the same supercilious and
critical style, after which he surveyed the congregation at large, the
clergyman, and the clerk. Then, having apparently exhausted North Kemms
as Bessie had exhausted the world, he caressed his moustache, and
retired into his own contemplations.
All of which proceedings piqued, not to say angered, Alick Dudley; and
this anger was the more unreasonable, because, if the stranger had
seemed struck by Bessie’s beauty, the lad would have been out of temper
still.
But that any one should remain indifferent to Miss Ormson’s perfections
appeared to Alick little less than a miracle. Even the rector, an old,
white-haired man, was to be detected stealing furtive looks at the
demure young lady who had come so late to church; and what right had
this “great swell,” so Alick mentally styled the stranger, to give
himself airs, and never bestow a second glance on a girl who was
undeniably beautiful?
“He may meet hundreds of fine ladies before he sees anything like her,”
decided Master Alick; but the offending gentleman evidently did not
share in this opinion. Wherever his thoughts might be, clearly they were
not wandering in the direction of Bessie Ormson, who, on her side, never
lifted her eyes to look at him, but kept them fixed resolutely on her
little prayer-book, the rector, or the east window; a piece of propriety
which, considering the girl’s proclivities for lords and grandees of all
kinds, was somewhat astonishing.
But then, if Bessie were a trifle coquettish, she was not bold; a maiden
less likely to take the initiative in a love affair could not have been
found in the length and breadth of Hertfordshire.
Which fact made it, perhaps, all the more extraordinary that the
stranger took no heed of so strange a mixture of modesty and vivacity
and beauty.
A handsome man, and yet not altogether of prepossessing appearance.
Sitting opposite to, and staring at him with all his eyes, Alick felt he
did not much like him. What had he come to church for? He sat there
absorbed in his own thoughts, whatever they might be, hearing the sermon
possibly, but unheeding it certainly. Vaguely, as in a dreamy kind of
way, Alick conjectured the world, of which Bessie had been talking as
they crossed the fields, might have some share in their companion’s
reverie.
The lad was gifted with sufficient sense to understand that a man like
this was much more likely to know all the ins and outs of a wicked world
than Miss Bessie Ormson; and, while the rector droned through his
sermon, an impression, undefined and intangible, it is true, came into
Alick’s mind, that, all through her wise conversation with him, Bessie
had been arguing out some mental question with herself; forecasting what
the years might bring to her, wondering with what ears she should listen
to the sweet home sounds again, with what eyes she should look over the
green Hertfordshire fields in the future which was uncertainly
stretching forth before them both.
The thoughts of youth are generally as unformed as the features of
childhood; and thus, though Alick was conscious of some curious enigma
perplexing him, he yet would have been surprised had any one placed the
puzzle he was considering before his mental vision, perfect in form and
clothed with words.
At length it was all over—the sermon, the service, the reverie—and, with
a sense of relief, the lad opened the pew door, and stood in the aisle
while his companion passed out. In order to allow her to take precedence
of him, the stranger had stepped a little back into the pew, and this
slight courtesy Bessie acknowledged by the merest inclination of her
pretty head. Then Alick saw the gentleman look at her, for an instant
only—next moment his dark eyes were roaming over the church, scanning
the monuments, glancing up at the organ-loft.
When they were half way down the aisle, Alick turned to see what the
stranger was doing, and found him, not following Bessie with his eyes,
but still scrutinising the church as though he were a member of the
Archæological Society. There he stood in the pew just as they had left
him, indolently surveying roof and walls, tombs and windows. As they
passed through the porch, Alick looked back once more, but the object of
his curiosity had not moved.
“Waiting for the rector, perhaps,” thought the lad; and he hurried after
Bessie, who by this time was half way across the graveyard.
“What a dear old church!” she said, as they reached the gate. “I like it
much better than Fifield.”
“Excuse me, but I believe this is your prayer-book,” said a voice close
beside her at this juncture, and the interruption was so sudden that
both Alick and his companion started to find the stranger close beside
them.
“Thank you, I am sorry to have given you so much trouble; yes, it is
mine,” Bessie stammered, her face covered with blushes as she received
the book, which she put in her pocket; while the stranger raised his hat
and turned back across the churchyard in the direction of the Rectory.
“Now, was not that stupid of me?” asked Bessie. In his heart, perhaps
Alick thought it was, but he did not express this opinion, he only
offered to carry the book for her.
“No, thank you, it is so small, I always keep it in my pocket,” she
answered. “If there be one thing more than another I dislike, it is to
see people parading church-services and Bibles about on a Sunday as
though they want to let all the world know they have been praying;” and
thus Bessie rattled on while they retraced their way across the fields,
and over the Kemm, and past the woods, and so to Berrie Down, which
place they reached about the time when Mrs. Ormson, awaking from her
afternoon siesta like a giant refreshed, proposed that society generally
should take a turn on the lawn.
To this proposal society, nothing loth, agreed; and thus it chanced that
Bessie and Alick were descried entering the croft and rounding the
Hollow, and ascending the hill leading to the house.
Once amongst the family group, it was needful to pause and give full
particulars of their walk, of North Kemms church, of the congregation,
of the music, of the sermon, and of various other matters which the
younger Dudleys were pleased to regard in the light of news.
By a singular coincidence, however, neither Alick nor Bessie made any
mention of the strange gentleman who had turned aside towards the
Rectory. The young lady, indeed, talked so much and so fast that it
would have been difficult for her companion to have edged in much
information on the subject, even had he felt inclined to do so.
But he did not feel inclined; he could do little except watch Bessie,
and wonder what had come to put her in such astonishing spirits, and to
make her so much gayer than when they started—so utterly absorbed in
giving a full and detailed account of the appearance of the rector, the
prosiness of his sermon, the beauty of the walk, and the horrible
discord of the choir, that she had not a moment’s attention to spare for
Lally, who revenged herself by coolly thrusting her little hand into the
depths of Bessie’s pocket, in search of those sweetmeats which her
friend usually kept there for the child’s special delectation and
benefit.
“Not a sing,” exclaimed Lally at length, prayer-book in hand, and sorrow
written on every feature in her face.
Then Bessie, breaking off in the middle of a sentence, turned and
snatched the book from Lally, with a look of such blank terror, that for
a second it seemed to Alick Dudley almost as though the sun had gone
behind a cloud.
“Nossing for me,” remarked Lally reproachfully, and in a tone of mild
expostulation against a state of society in which such things as pockets
destitute of sweetmeats could be—“nossing for me?”
“You naughty child,” began Miss Ormson, sharply; but next moment she
relented, and, catching Lally up in her arms, told her she would see
whether “Bessie had anything in her drawers for her bold little girl.”
After which, exit Bessie with Lally, the latter contemplating the family
group, as she departed, over Bessie’s shoulder, and staying her appetite
by thrusting three of her fingers as far down her throat as was
compatible with personal safety.
Once in her own room, Bessie, after finding the sweetmeats, turned them
and Lally out of the apartment, locked her door, and then eagerly opened
her prayer-book.
Had Heather Dudley been on the threshold, she might well have marvelled
what calamity had happened to the girl. She shook the book, she
fluttered over the leaves; she turned her pocket inside out, she lifted
her handkerchief, she inspected the carpet, she examined the prayer-book
again, then she walked to the door, unlocked and opened it, to meet
Alick Dudley on the threshold.
“Is this yours?” he asked, giving her a sealed note. “It dropped from
the prayer-book when Lally pulled it out of your pocket. I picked it up,
but I did not like to give it to you on the lawn.”
“You dear, good boy,” she said; but Alick never smiled at this praise.
His face was as pale as Bessie’s was red, his tone as quiet as hers was
hurried.
For a moment the pair looked at each other, then she said:
“Alick, may I trust that you will not tell Heather?”
“I will tell nothing,” he answered. She put her hand into his, but he
never clasped the little soft fingers. Involuntarily almost she put her
lips to his and kissed him, but still the lad made no sign.
Then she broke out passionately, “Don’t judge me hardly, Alick; don’t
judge me till you know all.”
“I do not judge you, Bessie;” he replied, “but I am very sorry;” and
there came a mist before his eyes, through which he could not see her
distinctly, and he turned and walked away along the corridor, feeling he
had that day got his first real lesson in deceit and hypocrisy.
He had believed in Bessie; he had listened to her talk; with delight and
wonder she had seemed to him walking in the golden sunlight like
something too good for the every-day, common, work-a-day world, and,
behold! she was but a hypocrite playing in Heather’s house a double
game.
Yes, he knew now the world she had come from must be a wicked place,
when such things as this were possible in it. He had been deceived, and
straight away he thought of Delilah and Sampson, putting up his hand to
his mouth the while to feel if those were really the lips Bessie had
kissed.
In her fear and humiliation she had offered him this bribe; when he
thought of that, his anger melted away into a great flood of shame and
pity, and then the lad whom this girl, his senior by nearly five years,
was teaching so rapidly to be a man, turned into his own room, where,
covering his face with his hands, he cried like a child.
After all, he was very young and very inexperienced, and he found it
hard to see the dream-castle he had built on so frail a foundation as a
woman’s truth and purity levelled to the ground.
There comes a time when such knowledge, as had been vouchsafed to Alick
Dudley that day, provokes smiles rather than tears.
When a man has arrived at the conclusion that all women are weak, that
all women are frail, it is rather gratifying to his penetration than
otherwise when beauty confirms this view of the question; but Alick
Dudley had not commenced travelling along the road which leads to this
pleasant opinion, and it was very grievous to him to find his idol had
feet of clay, that she had been making a cat’s-paw of him, that the
stranger and she knew more of each other than was well for either, that
she had fallen in a moment so low as not to be above bribing him with a
kiss.
And at that point the lad grew dizzy and confused. There was a great
mystery being developed in his heart at the moment. He could not have
put that mystery into words; but I may for him. The ideal he had
idolized lay at his feet, broken and shattered, marred, ruined, and
defaced; but the reality which occupied its place—a weak, deceitful,
unhappy girl—he loved.