NELLIE.
It was after dinner in Mr. Compton Raidsford’s house. Host and guest had
finished their wine, and sat with coffee before them, silent.
Lord Kemms was thinking about Mr. Black and that gentleman’s proposals;
Mr. Compton Raidsford was thinking, not merely about Mr. Black, but also
about Lord Kemms, and wondering how that nobleman would decide.
If there were one thing the owner of Moorlands conceived ought to be put
down with a strong hand and a stretched-out arm, that thing was bubble
companies.
Even legitimate companies he disliked and distrusted.
A self-made man, he naturally regarded with suspicion the growth of any
commercial system likely to render success dependent more upon capital
than individual ability and exertion.
A business man, who had for his order much the same _esprit de corps_ as
an artist or a poet may be supposed to possess, he noted jealously the
increasing tendency of the age to keep small capitalists or
non-capitalists in the position of clerks and managers, to concentrate
all manufactures in a few hands, and sweep modest master tradesmen off
the face of the earth; to do away, in fact, with a business middle class
at all, and to reduce the whole system to that of millionnaire and
servant.
A thoughtful man, he foresaw that if the great incentive to labour, the
prospect of independence, were withdrawn, the employed classes would
soon become mere eye-servants, that it would be difficult to procure
thoroughly trustworthy clerks and efficient managers.
Right well he knew that the best servant is he who hopes some day to
become a master, that the man who obeys orders most implicitly is he who
expects at a future period to have to give orders.
High wages and large salaries might be all very well; but Mr. Raidsford
declared no salary which a company was justified in giving could
compensate a man for the prospect of being some day on his “own
account.”
“These companies will ruin our legitimate commerce, lead to jobbery of
all sorts, and utterly ruin our working men. I consider limited
liability, which is, after all, only the climax of concentration of
capital, the greatest curse that ever fell upon England. It is all very
well to talk of the rate of discount acting as a beneficial check. The
rate of discount which only winds up a few companies, simply means ruin
to hundreds and thousands of small traders. In fact, in these days, I do
not see how, unless a man have a large capital or be a swindler, he is
to get on at all.”
Holding these cheerful views, even concerning legitimate companies, it
may readily be imagined how sternly Mr. Raidsford set his face against
all ventures which would not, to use his own word, “wash;” how
thoroughly he detested the whole system of “getting up” a board; with
what rancour he would have pursued “promoters,” even through the
purgatory of Basinghall Street.
As for lords and honourables, for generals and colonels, for baronets
and “swells” of all kinds, Mr. Raidsford would have had them keep to
their own rank and their own pursuits exclusively. That, individually
and collectively, they despised business—honest work, he called it—the
self-made man believed, and for this belief he had perhaps sufficient
grounds.
If they despised it, why did they meddle with it? Could not they keep to
their end of the town, and cease troubling the City, which they scoffed
at with their presence? Not so did their forefathers. This was a good
peg for Mr. Raidsford to hang a host of disparaging remarks upon! The
men who were first of their name, who left titles to be borne by their
descendants, and money to support those titles, worked in the City,
lived in it, would have thought shame to sell their honest names in
order to lead honest men and women into trouble. If the aristocracy
wanted some of the City gold, let them come and help coin it first.
Such and much more was the burden of Mr. Raidsford’s song, and it was
pleasant to hear him going through that recitative with bold sonorous
voice to lord or lady, to capitalist or adventurer, whenever chance
offered. Pleasant to hear him, a successful man, speak thus in the home
his industry and his abilities had won for him, while he was still, not
young, it is true, but yet sufficiently far removed from old age to hope
for many years in which to enjoy his good fortune.
His ideas might not be correct. How far they were so, only another
generation can tell; but they were his own earnest convictions, and he
did not hesitate to express them openly.
“If I had to begin my life again now,” he said, “I could never hope to
accomplish what I have done.” And seeing what he had done, caused his
opinions to carry much weight to the men and women he frequently
addressed.
Success has a wonderfully convincing power of argument, and it would
have been hard for any one to look at Moorlands, and not believe
(knowing his history) that its owner had a right to speak with
authority.
Mr. Raidsford perhaps might be aware of this fact, for he was never so
eloquent on the subject of private enterprise as in his own London
office, which commanded a view of his extensive premises filled with
busy workmen, or down in Hertfordshire, where everybody was well aware
how he had earned enough to buy it all “his-self.”
To the poorest labourer, Compton Raidsford was a standing miracle; from
Lord Kemms downward every person in the community marvelled at his
success.
The brand new palace to which Arthur Dudley took such grievous
exception, was a matter of necessity rather than choice. If Mr.
Raidsford could have purchased Berrie Down Hollow, Moorlands House would
never have been erected. As it was, the rich man had found it
impossible, with all his wealth, to purchase an old residence in the
situation he desired. As a rule, people who have desirable properties
like to keep them. Once in a dozen years or so, there is “just the
place” a man wants put up for sale; but so surely as this happens, that
man has not the means to make it his own.
What you like in every respect is difficult to meet with, residentially
as well as matrimonially, for which sufficient reason Mr. Raidsford
bought Moorlands without a house, and built the edifice that affronted
Arthur Dudley, on it.
Before the great building (like a factory, the Squire said) was thought
of, Moorlands had been a picturesque stretch of poor ground, pleasant
for strolling in the summer’s evenings, pleasant for picnics, pleasant
to ride across, without leave asked or granted.
It was bare, meagre land, which had not been turned up for years and
years, the grass of which was nibbled close down by the sheep that could
scarcely get a scanty living off it. There the daisies grew in the
summer-time, there the children could gather enough to make chains for a
whole village, there in the low parts the rushes sprang likewise in
sufficient quantities to provide butterfly cages, swords, helmets, and
umbrellas for the juvenile population of North Kemms and its vicinity.
There was a wood where nuts grew abundantly, a little coppice wood on
the side of a sloping hill, at the base of which the Kemm flowed on its
way rejoicingly. In the Kemm were silver-backed trout and tench and
perch. Many a time Arthur had angled in it, and there was a pleasant old
lane, wide and grassy, almost like a forest glade, bordered by fine old
timber, and entered by a gate swinging on one hinge, which led away not
merely to the coppice, but to a little piece of rising ground where
tradition said there had once been a mansion belonging to a certain
wicked Sir Giles, whose heirs were now in foreign parts, and whose bones
had been mouldering for a hundred years or more in the vaults underneath
North Kemms church.
Certainly the lane led straight up to the hillock, on which some remains
of walls, some traces of a former building, were to be found; but there
was nothing much to confirm the idea of a mansion ever having occupied
the site, though the gossips affirmed Sir Giles’ had once been a great
house, which was razed to the ground on account of the wickedness
enacted within it. Rather hard on the house, certainly, considering Sir
Giles, the perpetrator of so much wickedness, lay in consecrated ground,
snugly incased in lead and oak; but none the less likely to be true on
that account, perhaps.
A few rose-trees grew in what tradition said had once been Sir Giles’
pleasure garden; and there was a goodly bush of sweet briar, to say
nothing of a few evergreens and flowers, such as London pride,
Canterbury bells, Solomon’s seal, double daisies, and such like,
scattered about in beds that had apparently been laid out in the Dutch
style. But still there was no trace of winding walks, or sweeping drive,
of yew hedges, courtyard or pleasaunce; nothing left to tell of a great
man’s residence ever having occupied the site where Mr. Raidsford’s
palace was afterwards erected.
Lord Kemms’ idea of the matter was, perhaps, more correct than the
popular one. He thought it most probable Sir Giles’ house had been
elsewhere, and this smaller abode but a mere country cottage, in which
the baronet might have drunk, and gambled, and sinned, and fought, as
was averred. It was known that this same wicked Sir Giles, the last
baronet, had a fine mansion in Lincoln’s Inn Fields, and there was a
report of his having been possessed of some broad manors in the North;
but the awful stories which were told of his wild life always had for
their scene Moorlands, where there was scarcely one stone left upon
another, where the daisies sprang and the rushes grew, where the nuts
ripened on the hazel bushes, and the birds built in the hedgerows and
laurels, spring after spring.
This place Mr. Raidsford saw, liked, purchased cheap, and spoiled—so
Arthur Dudley said. Perhaps the Squire was right. No doubt the grassy
lane, with its gate hanging on one hinge, with the branches of its
overhanging trees almost touching any pedestrian who passed beneath
them, was more picturesque than Mr. Raidsford’s gravelled drive and wide
sweeping entrance, than the lodges, than all the new-cut stone and fresh
mortar.
Doubtless, the daisies were more lovely to the eyes than fields of corn
and mangold-wurzel. Without question, the spot where the rushes and the
yellow lilies grew, did not gain anything in artistic effect when
drain-tiles and labourers had done their work, and the place, “dry as a
bone,” produced crops of barley better than any Squire Dudley could
show. It was not to be disputed that the scattered stones, the desolate
flowers, the neglected garden, the tangled little corner of wilderness,
were more suggestive than Mr. Raidsford’s bran new mansion; nor that the
wood had been more enjoyable in its former neglected condition than it
seemed when paths were made through it, and a summer-house perched above
the Kemm; but still, people must live somewhere, and the tents they
dwell in must be new at some time. Even Berrie Down Hollow had been
built once; it did not come into existence with the Creation—brambles
had been cleared away for it, the turf had been turned up in the fields
which were now Arthur’s, the picturesque common had been divided into
meadows and corn-fields, into pastures and arable land.
For all of which reasons, Squire Dudley should not have complained when
the lane at Moorlands was metamorphosed into a drive; when the ground
which barely yielded pasturage for a few sheep, was ploughed and
ploughed again, and finally laid down in grass for a deer park; when
wheat sprang up where the daisies had grown; when a new house showed its
face amongst the trees; when gardens were laid out, and conservatories
erected, and stables built, and employment given; and a new neighbour,
not such an one as the old wicked Sir Giles, who, it was stated, cared
neither for God nor devil, came to dwell at Moorlands, which he had
sense enough not to re-christen.
A different man from Mr. Dudley would have held out the right hand of
fellowship to the stranger, walked over and called upon him, and been
cordially welcomed in return; for if Arthur were poor, he was of gentle
blood, and if Mr. Raidsford had risen, he was none the less, indeed
perhaps all the more, friendly disposed towards one better born than
himself; but the Squire did nothing of the kind. Rather he stood on the
lawn at Berrie Down and cursed his day, lamenting that Compton
Raidsford—a mushroom, an upstart, a snob—should be so much, while he,
Arthur Dudley, was nothing.
Had Arthur been possessed of ten thousand a year, he would never have
said a word against Compton Raidsford, or the alterations at Moorlands;
he would have proffered him the hospitalities of Berrie Down, and shed
the light of his countenance on the new comer; but then, Arthur had not
ten thousand a year, which made all the difference.
There are many children in the world, grown as well as little boys and
girls, who, though willing enough to share a toy if it chance to belong
to them, will yet refuse to play with a companion who owns the toy
instead of them. They can be generous and patronizing; but when the
tables are reversed, they go into a corner and sulk.
That was precisely Arthur Dudley’s case; the world’s toys were in other
hands, and he would neither look at nor use them. If he could not have
them of his own, he would have none of them; if he could not have silver
dishes on his own table, he would not eat out of them at another man’s.
A nice, amiable trait to have to record; and yet many a very agreeable
fellow, owner of all the pleasant things Fortune reserves for her
especial favourites, might not be one whit more agreeable, or contented,
or genial than Arthur Dudley, if luck took a notion some fine morning of
leaving him out at elbows. Only people cannot exactly comprehend this
truth; and, as a consequence, Arthur’s neighbours had long been sick of
his airs and tempers, as they styled his resolution to keep himself to
himself. Lord Kemms, for instance, would once have been glad enough to
see him at the Park; but Arthur rejected all that nobleman’s
well-intended civilities; and thus, as the years went by, the Squire was
reduced to that most uncomfortable of all positions, viz., having a mere
speaking acquaintance with his neighbours, whom he could not avoid
meeting occasionally, and who really came in time to feel, as Compton
Raidsford said, “out of patience with the fellow.”
And yet, looking at Berrie Down, which stood on its sunny hill,
smilingly nestling amid trees and plantations with rich green pastures
intervening between it and Moorlands, both Lord Kemms and Mr. Raidsford
were thinking pityingly of the owner, and wishing Arthur had been like
anybody else.
It was impossible for them to have talked about Mr. Black, and Mr.
Black’s scheme, without bringing Squire Dudley’s name into the
discussion also; indeed, Mr. Raidsford had instanced him as one of the
men most likely to be led into trouble on the strength of Lord Kemms’
name; “for, although he may be too proud to visit at Kemms Park, my
lord,” finished the owner of Moorlands, “he will not be too proud to
follow your lead, if he believe you are taking the road to fortune.”
After which followed a pause, a thoughtful pause, that lasted long
enough to give Lord Kemms ample leisure to frame his ideas into some
sort of definite shape, if they ever were to be got into shape at all.
And yet when he broke silence, it was not directly of Mr. Black’s scheme
he spoke.
“I cannot help thinking,” he said, “about Dudley’s manner when he sold
that mare to me to-day. I never saw him resemble a human being so much
before. The way in which he put down Black was splendid; I could like
the fellow, if he would get down off his stilts, and be a little
natural.”
“There is good in him, I believe,” was Mr. Raidsford’s reply; “and as
for his wife, she is charming; I hope he won’t bring her and the little
ones to grief. Have you ever seen his eldest child—the girl, I mean?”
“Yes;—will make a pretty woman, like her mother. A strange child; not in
the least shy,” added his lordship, with a smile.
He was thinking of one day in the early summer, when he had overtaken
Heather and Lally in Berrie Down Lane, and dismounting, lifted the
little girl and placed her on the Black Knight’s back, while he walked
beside, talking to Mrs. Dudley. Which proceeding had so much endeared
him to Lally, that she was in the habit of talking about him as “her
friend,” and declaring he had “lovely hair, like Lally’s own;” an
observation which might not have proved flattering to Lord Kemms’ vanity
had he heard it.
“I wish to Heaven I saw my way clear:” it was the owner of Kemms Park
who uttered this by no means uncommon desire. “What shall I do,
Raidsford, toss up which it is to be, or take your advice?”
“Your lordship must use your own judgment in the matter,” was the reply.
“Now, that is what provokes me about people,” remarked Lord Kemms,
pettishly. “They say all manner of things to set one against a pet
project, and then at the last moment declare a man must exercise his own
judgment, as if he could do so under the circumstances. Don’t you know,
a man cannot judge his own case? Since you have been counsel and
adviser, why should you object to decide the question? Here is the way
it stands,—you say the project cannot succeed; my respectable kinsman,
Allan Stewart, says it not only can but shall. You have convinced me Mr.
Black is no more honest than he can afford to be, or rather, you have
confirmed a suspicion I previously entertained to that effect; but then
here is a good thing, about which it may pay him to be honest at last;
and—and—to finish the matter, I had a fancy to go into this venture,
since I have sworn never again to ‘make a book.’ I think I’ll toss up,
Raidsford, or draw lots; you shall hold them.”
“No, my lord, I will not; you ought not to let chance decide this
question for you. It is one you ought to think out seriously, and——”
“Good heavens! I have been thinking about it for a week past,”
interrupted Lord Kemms, pettishly.
“Then think of it for a week more; and think at the same time betting on
horses is an honest and respectable way of amusing yourself, in
comparison with selling your name to companies. In the one case you only
ruin yourself, in the latter——”
“Hold, my Mentor,” once again interposed Lord Kemms, “we have gone over
all that ground before;” and he balanced his spoon on the top of his
coffee cup, and thoughtfully contemplated this feat of skill as he
spoke.
“So, though you have taken the responsibility of advising, you decline
that of deciding,” he went on. “Decide, and your words shall be to me as
the laws of the Medes and Persians.”
“If your lordship really wish me to do so,” began Mr. Raidsford;—but at
this juncture Lord Kemms pushed back his chair from the table, and
walked over towards one of the windows.
“No, no,” he said; “I won’t ask you to do that; it would not be fair;
besides, I am old enough to make up my own mind, and bear the
consequence of my own acts. I will not be one of Mr. Black’s decoy
ducks, as you are kind enough to style his directors. I will write to
him on Monday, and——”
“Mr. Alexander Dudley wishes to speak to your lordship,” said a servant,
entering the room at this juncture.
“Wishes to speak to me?” repeated Lord Kemms; “where is he?”
“In the library, my lord;” and forthwith “my lord” walked across the
hall into the room where Alick stood waiting for him.
The lad had not sat down. He stood beside the library table with his hat
in his hand; and even when Lord Kemms motioned him to a chair, he
declined the proffered courtesy.
“My brother was to have sent you Nellie this evening, my lord,” he
began. “I have been to the Park, but finding you were here, came on. I
hope you will excuse my doing so. I thought it was better for me to see
you.”
“Does your brother want to be off his bargain?” asked his lordship,
sharply. “If that be what you have to say, of course I shall not hold
him to it.”
“That is not what I have to say,” answered Alick, boldly. He had felt
nervous and fluttered at first, but Lord Kemms’ manner braced up his
courage in an instant. He had felt a discrepancy between himself, his
prospects, his dress, his position, and the grand house into which he
had been permitted to enter, almost under protest (so it seemed to him),
of a servant who evidently thought he had no business at Moorlands; but
that was all now forgotten.
Lord Kemms had made a great mistake, and having made it, Alick could
strike him under the fifth rib. His irritation had thrown him off his
guard, and now Alick could deliver his message with effect.
“My brother sold Nellie to you, believing her to be sound. We are not
quite certain that she is sound; and, not being certain, my lord, we
would not send her to you.”
For a moment Lord Kemms’ face flushed scarlet; then he said,—
“I beg your pardon, Mr. Dudley, for my hasty speech. The fact is—I—I—had
set my heart on having her; and—really this is most provoking—I wanted
her so particularly.”
“And my brother wanted the money particularly, my lord,” answered the
lad; “at least, so he said,” added Alick, with a terrible remembrance of
Arthur’s wrath when he first heard there was anything amiss with Nellie.
“What the devil is wrong with her?” asked Lord Kemms, irritably. “Sit
down, can’t you, and tell me all about it.”
“I am afraid she has got something the matter with her sight,” was the
reply. “When you first spoke to me on the subject, that day in the
paddock, my lord,” added the lad, “I thought there was not a blemish
about her, but this last week I have felt uneasy. Of course it is not
easy to tell whether it is so or not; only, having been with her all her
life, I notice what another person might not. I did not want to vex my
brother unless I felt certain, so he knew nothing about the matter till
he told me she was to be sent over to the Park.”
“And then?” inquired Lord Kemms.
“Then I mentioned my fear to him, and he said you ought to be informed
of it. We knew, my lord, or, at least, we thought, you would not have
her examined by a veterinary surgeon, coming from us; indeed, I doubt if
any stranger could detect a thing wrong about her _now_.”
“But you think there is?”
For a moment Alick remained silent; he felt the hundred pounds Arthur
wanted so badly might be had, if he only appeared doubtful; and Arthur,
he knew, was fuming and fretting at home over his disappointment. The
youth loved his brother, and was grateful to him; further, he was afraid
of his temper; but still, right was right, and honour honour.
“My lord, I know there is, though my brother does not believe it.”
“Still you might have passed her off as sound upon me, even subject to a
veterinary opinion?”
“No, my lord; a jobber might, but _we_ could not,” amended Alick,
looking every inch a Dudley as he spoke.
“I stand corrected,” said Lord Kemms, with a laugh. “I quite see; the
thing might be possible, but not to you. Now, what does your brother
propose?”
“To consider the bargain off,” was the prompt reply.
“Nothing else?” inquired his lordship.
“Or otherwise,” answered Alick, “to let you have her, giving an
undertaking that if within six months my idea prove to have been
correct, he will take her back and return your money.”
“Evidently he is not of your opinion?”
“No, my lord.”
“Do you think you know more about horses than he?”
“I think I know more about Nellie.”
For a moment Lord Kemms looked hard in Alick Dudley’s face, which was
frank, and young, and pleasant. He had not Arthur’s delicately-cut
features,—he was cast altogether in a larger and a rougher mould; but he
was the making of a finer man, the owner of Kemms Park decided. Looking
at Alick’s face, he saw reflected as in a mirror the scene which had
taken place at Berrie Down, and, perhaps, it was this which made him
say, suddenly,—
“Your brother was not very well pleased when you expressed your opinion
to him, I suppose—blamed you, probably?”
“When people are vexed, they usually blame the person nearest them at
the time,” was Alick’s philosophic reply.
“You suspected nothing of this when I spoke to you in the paddock. If I
had bought her then, that is, if your brother had taken my offer then,
you could have sent her to me with a clear conscience.”
“Yes, my lord. There was certainly nothing wrong with her then; at
least, nothing that I could see,” Alick answered.
“And there is nothing your brother can see the matter now?”
“Nothing.”
“Then I will take her,” said his lordship; and Alick breathed a sigh of
intense relief.
“You shall have her the first thing on Monday morning,” he said, rising,
“and the letter, too.”
“What letter?”
“My brother’s undertaking to return you the money, in case she prove
unsound.”
“No, I won’t have it,” was the reply. “I’ll run the chance of her.”
“No, my lord, pray do not do that!” Alick entreated. “I am as sure as I
can be of anything her sight is affected. If you will take her for the
six months, and pay my brother for her now, as he really wants the
money, I shall be very grateful; but I would rather repay you myself
than think hereafter you had bought a useless animal from us.”
“And pray, how the deuce should you propose to repay me yourself?”
inquired Lord Kemms. But the words had scarcely passed his lips before
he repented having uttered them.
“I hope not to remain a burden on my brother _all_ my life,” answered
the lad in a low tone, with his cheeks aflame, but with eyes boldly
looking his questioner in the face.
“My boy,” said the nobleman, kindly laying his hand on Alick’s shoulder,
“that is three times in one interview you have rebuked me. I am sorry to
have pained you, and I beg your pardon for my thoughtlessness. Tell your
brother he could not have chosen a better messenger. I will take Nellie,
and, when you have made your fortune, we can talk about repayment, if
she turn out badly.”
“Thank you, my lord.” The boy’s heart was very full, and he could not
say another word.
Silently he moved towards the door, Lord Kemms following him.
“What are you going to be?” inquired the nobleman, as they stood
together on the threshold.
“A merchant, if I am fortunate enough ever to rise higher than a clerk.”
“Do you think you will like business better than farming?”
“I mean to try and like anything which offers me a chance of getting on
in the world,” was the reply.
“Then I hope you may get on, and that I shall some day see you rich and
prosperous, a millionnaire. It is possible; in this house, it is
scarcely needful for me to tell you, all things are, humanly speaking,
possible.” And with that Lord Kemms held out his hand, which Alick could
have kissed for very gratitude.
“I will call at Berrie Down on Monday,” said his lordship, when Alick
had passed through the open hall door. Having announced which intention,
he returned to the dining-room, where he reported the gist of the
conversation to Mr. Raidsford.
“The greatest kindness you could have done Squire Dudley would have been
to take him at his word,” was Mr. Raidsford’s practical comment on the
affair.
“Perhaps so; but I could not afford to be less honest and honourable
than they,” Lord Kemms answered.
“Ay, that is the misery of it,” said his host. “Honest and honourable
falling among thieves!”
Some similar thought to this it had been, perhaps, which suggested to
Lord Kemms the idea of calling at Berrie Down. Some vague fancy of
saving Arthur—of rescuing him from the Philistines! But when once he
found himself seated in Squire Dudley’s drawing-room, he felt how futile
was any such hope, how utterly vain it would be for him to proffer
advice, or counsel caution to his neighbour.
Already the poison had begun to work; already he had dreamed his dreams,
and beheld his visions; already he had made his thousands, and spent
them in imagination; already the glory of the future flung a brightness
across his path, and made him look on life more cheerfully, on his
fellow-men more kindly.
Let success bring what it would, it could not bring more than Arthur
already saw advancing towards him. Prophetically, out of the great City
he beheld riches, and honours, and glories, travelling northward to
Berrie Down. The dust of the approaching caravan was clear to his mental
vision as the turf stretching down to the Hollow.
If for a moment he was taken aback, it was when Lord Kemms told Mr.
Black, in his presence, he had decided to decline his obliging offer.
But Mr. Black so coolly pooh-poohed what he called his lordship’s hasty
rejection,—so resolutely refused to take “no” for an answer,—so
determinedly, and yet pleasantly, said they “could talk the matter over
at some future time, there was no hurry about it,”—so utterly ignored
the fact of Lord Kemms having assured him his mind was made up, he would
have nothing whatever to do with the company,—that Arthur was reassured,
and believed Mr. Black, when that gentleman subsequently informed him
Lord Kemms had only been a little set against the affair by “that
meddling upstart, Raidsford.”
“He’ll be all right enough by the time we want him,” finished the
promoter, confidently; while his lordship was walking down the drive,
feeling he had made nothing by his move, rather, on the contrary, given
the advantage to a much cleverer and more ready man than himself.
“Hang the fellow!” he thought, “and his confounded self-sufficiency. Ah!
my little friend,” he added out loud, as Lally parted the boughs of an
evergreen oak, and looked out at him from among the greenery, “won’t you
come and speak to me; won’t you tell me how you have been this long
time?”
Not from any shyness, but from precisely the same feeling as that which
makes a kitten bound off when a hand is stretched out coaxingly towards
it, Lally allowed the branches to spring back and the foliage hide her.
“Don’t be rude, Lally; go and speak to Lord Kemms when he asks you,”
said a voice from behind the shrubs, while two very white hands parted
the branches above Lally’s head, while a very pretty face, half
concealed by leaves, met the nobleman’s delighted eyes.
In a moment a sweet jingle of verse seemed ringing through the air.
That pleasant and goodly thing, a woman’s beauty—ever old, yet ever
new—old as the world, yet new as the dawning day—chased all disagreeable
thoughts out of Lord Kemms’ mind, while Dr. Mackay’s lines took their
place:—
“And now and then I’ll see thy face,
Mid boughs and branches peeping.”
He had never known how beautiful a woman’s face could look till he
beheld Bessie’s through that tracery of leaf, and twig, and stem.
More than ever now he desired to renew his acquaintance with Lally, who
came forth from her hiding-place, and, in reply to his tender inquiries,
informed him she was quite well,—that mamma was quite well; after which
conversational effort, Lally—a surprised mass of muslin, hair, and
freckles—stood, her lap full of flowers, looking at Lord Kemms.
“What lovely flowers!” he said.
“Bessie’s!” explained Lally, nodding in the direction of the pretty
face, the owner of which now, with the assistance of Lord Kemms, emerged
from amid the hedge of evergreens, and stood before his lordship,
laughing and blushing, a vision of loveliness worth contemplating.
“We were gathering flowers,” she said, in elucidation of Lally’s
statement.
“A very appropriate occupation,” remarked his lordship, gallantly.
He would have liked nothing better than ten minutes’ conversation with
this young lady, who had appeared so unexpectedly before him; but Miss
Ormson was not inclined to gratify this innocent desire, and made her
disinclination so prettily apparent, that his lordship had no resource
left but to bid Lally farewell, which he did most affectionately.
“Good-bye, dear.”
“Dood-bye!” and Lally confided to him one of her little brown hands.
“Will you give me a kiss?”
“Iss;” and Lally made up her mouth, and went through the ceremony with
laudable readiness and composure.
“Remember, you promised to marry me. I’m to wait for you, you know.”
“Iss.” Lally was perfectly agreeable.
“You will not promise so readily fifteen years hence, little one,” he
said; but this being a step beyond Lally’s understanding, she kept
silence with a wisdom which might not have belonged to her fifteen years
hence, either.
And, indeed, no answer was required from her, Bessie and Lord Kemms
having settled the matter with a mutual smile, after which, as the
leave-taking had been already unduly prolonged, the visitor lifted his
hat in adieu to Bessie, and departed.
“Why didn’t he tiss ’oo?” Lally inquired, quite loud enough for Lord
Kemms to hear.
“You naughty child!” exclaimed Bessie; “hush! hush! hush!” and then the
pair broke their way through the evergreen hedge again, and returned,
ostensibly, to their former employment of gathering flowers.
But, in reality, both Lally and her companion were looking after Lord
Kemms’ retreating figure. From the grass-plot where they stood, a
glimpse was to be obtained at intervals of the road, and at last Bessie
relinquished her sham occupation, and stood gazing, with a sad, sad look
in her face, after the owner of Kemms Park.
All at once the object of so much attention turned round, and caught her
in the very act.
Bessie never professed to be more than human, and accordingly she said
to Lally, angrily—
“How can you be so bold, child, as to stare after gentlemen like that?”
“’Oo ’taring too!” retorted Lally, indignantly; and, as she could not
deny the truth of this statement, Bessie covered her confusion by a
vigorous onslaught among the flowers.
After a few seconds, however, she lifted her head again, and looked
along the road once more, and as she looked she sighed; but that sigh
was not breathed for the nobleman whose hair was like “Lally’s own!”