occasion of her visit to Langford, when she had found her father with
Langford. What she had dreaded had come to pass. Her father had
consented to sell her so as to extricate himself from a petty debt, but,
above all, that he might be given means of prosecuting his imaginary
claims. Coombe Park was a curse to them. It had blighted Charles, it
had spoiled her father's energies, it was doomed to make a breach
between her and her father. She had never herself thought of Coombe
Park; she had treated its acquisition as an impossible dream, only not
to be put aside as absurd because harboured by her father. She was
conscious now of a slight stirring of reproach in her heart against him,
but she battled it and beat it down. Strong in her sense of filial
respect, she would not allow herself to entertain a thought that her
father was unjust. She apologised to herself for his conduct. She
explained his motives. He had supposed that the prospect of being
mistress of a large house, over wide acres, would fill her ambition. He
meant well, but men do not understand the cravings of the hearts of
women. But, explain away his conduct as she would, she was unable to
dissipate the sense of wrong inflicted, to salve the wound caused by his
apparent eagerness to get rid of her out of the house. The back door
was opened softly.
'Honor! still awake?'
'Yes, Larry.'
'Will you give me a drop of hot cider? I am chilled. Have you a potato
sack I can cast over my shoulders? The dew falls heavily.'
'No sign of the dog yet?'
'None at all. The sheep are browsing at ease. It is dull work standing
at a gate watching them. I wish the dog would come.'
'Let us change places, Larry. You come by the fire and I will watch at
the gate. The moment that I see him I will give warning.'
'And scare him away! No, Honor, I want the prize-money.'
'Then I will come out and keep you company. Here are two potato sacks,
one for your shoulders, the other for mine. If we talk in a low tone we
shall not warn off the dog.'
'That is well, Honor. So we shall make the hours spin. The moon is
shining brightly. There have been clouds, and then the dew did not fall
as cold and chill. I have been hearkening to the owls, what a
screeching and a hooting they make, and there is one in the apple-tree
snoring like my father.'
'Have you been standing all the while, Larry?'
'Yes, Honor, leaning against the gate. If there had been anything to
sit on I should have seated myself. My fingers are numb. I must thaw
them at your coals.'
He went to the fire and held his hands in the glow. 'Honor!' he said,
'you have been crying. I see the glitter of the tears on your cheeks.'
'Yes, I have been crying--not much.'
'What made you cry?'
'Girl's troubles,' she answered.
'Girl's troubles! What are they?'
'Little matters to those they do not concern. Here is a low stool on
which the children sit by the heart. I will take it out and set it
under the hedge. We can sit on it and talk together awaiting the dog.'
'What is the time, Honor? Is the clock right? Eleven! I will wait
till after midnight and then go. He will not come to-night if he does
not come before that. He will have gone hunting elsewhere. Perhaps he
remembers that you scared him last night.' Honor carried out a low
bench, and placed it near the gate under the hedge where a thorn tree
overhung.
'We shall do well here,' said Hillary. 'The dog will not see us, and we
shall know he is in the field by the fright of the sheep.'
He seated himself on the bench and Honor did the same, at a distance
from him--as far away as the bench permitted. She had thrown the potato
sack over her head, and wore it as a hood; it covered her shoulders as
well, and shaded her face. The dew was falling heavily, the meadow in
the moon was white with it, as though frosted, and through the white
sprinkled grass went dark tracks, as furrows, where the sheep had
trodden and dispersed the sparkling drops.
'Do you hear the owls?' asked Larry. 'I've heard there are three which
are seen every night fleeting over Wellon's Cairn, and that they are the
souls of the three women Wellon killed. I've never been there at night,
have you, Honor?'
'No, I do not go about at night.'
'I should not like to be on Broadbury after dark, not near the old
gibbet hill, anyhow. Listen to the old fellow snoring in the
apple-tree. I thought owls slept by day and waked by night, but this
fellow is dead asleep, judging by the noise he makes.'
After silence of a few moments, during which they listened to the owls,
'I wonder, Honor,' said the young man, 'that you liked to sit on the
mound where Wellon was hung. It's a queer, whisht (uncanny) place.'
'I only sit there by day, and that only now and then when I can get out
a bit. I have not been there for some time.'
Then ensued another pause.
'I wish you would tell me one thing,' said the girl, 'yet it is what I
have no right to ask. Do you owe Mr. Langford a great deal of money?'
'Oh yes,' answered Hillary carelessly, 'a great deal. He has called it
in, and we shall have to pay in a month or two.'
'Can you do so out of your savings?'
'We have no savings. We shall go to Mr. Physick--father and I--and get
a mortgage made on the property. It is easily done. I am of age.
Father couldn't have done it by himself, but I can join and let him.'
He held up his head. He was proud of the consequence gained by
consenting to a mortgage.
'The first thing you have to do with the property is to burden it,' said
Honor.
Hillary screwed up his mouth.
'You may put it so if you like.' Instead of looking round at him
admiring his consequence, she reproached him.
'That is something to be ashamed of, I think,' she said.
'Not at all. If I did not, Uncle Taverner could come down on us and
have a sale of our cattle and waggons and what not. But, maybe, that
would suit your ideas better?'
'No,' said Honor gravely, 'not at all. No doubt you are right; but you
are old enough not to have let it come to this. Your service on the
farm ought to have been worth fifty pounds a year for the last four
years. I doubt if it has been worth as many shillings.'
He clicked his tongue in the side of his mouth, and threw out his right
leg impatiently.
'Mr. Langford has saved thousands of pounds. He puts by several
hundreds every year, and his land is no better than yours.'
'Uncle Taverner is a screw.' Then, jauntily, 'we Nanspians are
open-handed, we can't screw.'
'But you can save, Larry.'
'If Uncle Taverner puts away hundreds, I wonder where he puts them
away?'
'That, of course, I cannot say.'
'I wonder if Mrs. Veale knows?' Then he chuckled, and said, 'Honor,
some of the chaps be talking of giving him a hare-hunt. We think he
ought to be shamed out of letting that woman tongue-lash him as she
does?'
'Larry!' exclaimed Honor, turning sharply on him and clutching his arm,
'for God's sake do not be mixed up in such an affair. He is your uncle,
and you may be very unjust.' He shrugged his shoulders.
'I'm not over sweet on Uncle Taverner,' he said. 'It is mean of him
calling in that money, and he deserves to be touched up on the raw.'
'Larry, you warned me against Mrs. Veale. Now I warn you to have no hand
in this save to hold it back. It must not be; and for you to share in
it will be scandalous.'
'How the owls are hooting! To-whoo! Whoo! Whoo! I wonder what sort of
voice the old white owl has. He goes about noiseless, like a bit of
cotton grass blown by the wind.'
Then Honor went back to what she was speaking of before. 'It goes to my
heart to see good land neglected. Your nettle-seeds sow our land, and
thistle-heads blow over our hedge. Now that your father is not what he
was, you should grasp the plough-handle firmly. Larry, you know the
knack of the plough. Throw your weight on the handles. If you do not,
what happens?'
'The plough throws you.'
'Yes, flings you up and falls over. It is so with the farm. Throw your
whole weight on it, through your arms, or it will throw you.'
'That old snorer is waking,' said Hillary.
'You love pleasure, and do not care for work,' pursued Honor. 'You are
good-natured, and are everyone's friend and your own enemy. You shut
your eyes to your proper interest and open your purse to the parish.
The bee and the wasp both build combs, both fly over the same flowers
and enjoy the same summer, but one gathers honey and the other
emptiness. Larry, do not be offended with me if I speak the truth. The
girls flirt with you and flatter you, and the elder folk call you a
Merry Andrew, and say you have no mischief in you, and it is a pity you
have not brains. That is not true. You have brains, but you do not use
them. Larry, you have no sister and no mother to speak openly to you.
Let me speak to you as if I were your sister, and take it well, as it is
meant.'
So she talked to him. Her voice was soft and low, her tone tremulous.
She was afraid to hurt him, and yet desirous to let him know his duty.
She was stirred to the depth of her heart by the events of the day.
Larry was unaccustomed to rebuke. He knew that she spoke the truth, but
it wounded his vanity, as well as flattered it, to be taken to task by
her. It wounded him, because it showed him he was no hero in her eyes;
it flattered him, because he saw that she took a strong interest in his
welfare. He tried to vindicate himself. She listened patiently; his
excuses were lame. She beat them aside with a few direct words. 'Do
not be offended with me,' she pleaded, turning her face to him, and then
the moonlight fell over her noble features; the potato sack had slipped
back. 'I think of you, dear Larry, as a brother, as a kind brother who
has done many a good turn to us, and I feel for you as an elder sister.'
'But, Honor, you are younger than I am by eighteen months.'
'I am older in experience, Larry; in that I am very, very old. You are
not angry with me?'
'No, Honor, but I am not as bad as you make out.'
'Bad! Oh Larry, I never, never thought, I never said you were bad. Far
otherwise. I know that your heart is rich and deep and good. It is like
the soil of your best meadows. But then, Larry, the best soil will grow
the strongest weeds. Sometimes when I look through the gates of
Chimsworthy I long to be within, with a hook reaping down and rooting
up. And now I am peering through the gates of your honest eyes, and the
same longing comes over me.'
He could see by the earnest expression of her face, by the twinkle of
tears on her lashes, that she spoke out of the fulness of her heart. She
was not praising him, she was rebuking him, yet he was not angry. He
looked intently at her pure, beautiful face. She could not bear his
gaze, he saw her weakness. He put his finger to her eyelashes. 'The
dew is falling heavily, and has dropped some diamonds here,' he said.
She stood up.
'Hark!' she said, and turned her head. 'The cuckoo clock in the kitchen
is calling midnight. We need remain here no longer.'
'I should like to remain till day,' said Larry.
'What, to be scolded?'
'To be told the truth, dear Honor.'
'Do not forget what I have said. I spoke because I care for you. The
sheep will not be disturbed to-night. Will you have some posset and go
home?'
'Your father will keep guard to-morrow night, but the night after that I
will be here again. Oh Honor, you will sit up with me, will you not?'
He took her hand. 'How much better I had been, how the Chimsworthy
coomb would have flowed with honey, had God given me such a sister as
you.'
'Well, begin to weed yourself and Chimsworthy,' she said with a smile.
'Will you not give me a word of praise as well as of blame?'
'When you deserve it.'
She pressed his hand, then withdrew it, entered the cottage, and
fastened, the door.
Hillary walked away with his gun over his shoulder, musing as he had not
mused before.
*CHAPTER XVII.*
*MRS. VEALE.*
Charles Luxmore had left the Revel shortly after the departure of his
sisters. He returned to Langford covered with shame and full of anger.
He was not ashamed of his rascality. He thought himself justified in
playing a trick on tricksters. But he was ashamed at being conquered by
his sister, and he was unable to disguise to himself that he cut an
ignoble figure beside her. At the circus there had been a general
recognition of her worth, and as general a disparagement of himself.
Why had she interfered? He had courted a 'row' in which he might have
held his own against the equestrians, sure of support from the young
Brattonians. That would have been sport, better than tumbling in the
sawdust and skipping through hoops. If he could only have excited a
fight, the occasion would have been forgotten in the results; he would
have come out in flaming colours as a gallant fellow. Now, because
Honor had interfered and put him in the wrong, he had been dismissed as
a rogue.
He knew well enough the red cloak Honor had given away. He knew that it
had belonged to her mother, and that Honor prized it highly, and that it
was very necessary to her.
Let him excuse himself as he would, a sense of degradation oppressed him
which he was unable to shake off.
The behaviour of his comrades had changed towards him, and this galled
him. After leaving the circus he had essayed swagger, but it had not
availed. His companions withdrew from him as if ashamed to be seen in
his society. The popular feeling was roused in behalf of Honor, who was
universally esteemed, rather than offended at the fraud played on the
equestrians. It was well known that he, Charles, had not behaved
towards her with consideration, that he had increased the burden she
bore so bravely. This last act was the climax of his wrong-doing.
Charles's inordinate vanity had been hurt, and he was angry with
everyone but himself.
He returned to the farmhouse, where he had been taken in, cursing the
stupidity of the villagers, the meddlesomeness of his sisters, the
cowardice of his companions, and his own generosity.
He was without money now, and with no prospect of getting any till his
wage was paid.
He turned out his pockets; there was nothing in them, not even the brass
token. He too proud to borrow of his boon companions; he questioned
whether, if he asked, they would lend him any. He doubted if the
innkeeper would let him drink upon trust. How intolerable for him to be
without money! To have to lounge his evenings away in the settle before
the fire at Langford, or loafing about the lanes! 'I know well enough,'
he muttered, 'why the louts keep away from me. 'Tis because they know
I'm cleaned out. It's not along of that cursed token, not a bit. If I'd
my pockets full they'd be round me again as thick as flies on a cow's
nose.'
He had only been a few days in the service of Taverner Langford. He had
entered the service rather surlily, only because forced to do so, as
Honor refused to allow him to sleep and have meals at home. 'It'll keep
me in meat for a bit, and I'll look about me,' he said; 'but it is not
the sort o' place for a gentleman--a Luxmore.'
He had not asked leave to take a holiday on the occasion of the Revel.
He had taken it as a matter of course. The Revel was a holiday, of
course; so is Sunday. 'I don't ask old Langford whether I'm to keep the
Sabbath by doing nothing: I do nothing. I don't ask him if I'm to enjoy
myself Revel day: I enjoy myself. These are understood things.' He
curled his lip contemptuously. 'What a shabby wage I get, or am to
get!' he muttered. 'No pay, no work; short pay, short work. That
stands to reason--like buttering parsnips.'
He sauntered into the Langford kitchen and threw himself into the
settle, with his hat on, and his legs outstretched, and his hands in his
pockets. Disappointment, humiliation, impecuniosity combined to chafe
his temper, and give him a dejected, hang-dog appearance.
Mrs. Veale passed and repassed without speaking. She observed him
without allowing him to perceive that she observed him. Indeed, he
hardly noticed her, and he was startled by her voice when she said, as
he bent over the fire, 'Charles Luxmore, what do y' think of the Revel
now? I've a-been there, and to my reckoning it were grand, but, Lord!
you've been over the world, and seen so many fine things that our poor
Revel is nought in your eyes, I reckon.'
'Bah! poor stuff, indeed. You should see Bombay, or the bazaar at
Candahar! Bratton Clovelly! Bah! Punjab, Cawbul, Delhi, Peshawur!
Ghuznee! Hyderabad!' The utterance of these names, which he knew would
convey no idea whatever to the mind of Mrs. Veale, afforded him relief.
It morally elevated him. It showed him that he knew more of the world
than Mrs. Veale. 'You don't happen to know Dost Mahommed?'
'Oh, dear, no!'
'Nor ever heard tell of him?'
'No, Mr. Luxmore.'
'He's an Ameer.'
'Is he now?'
'I've fought him. Leastways his son, Akbar Khan.'
'You wasn't hard on him, I hope?'
'No, I wasn't that. I merely carried off the doors of his mosque.'
'Did that hurt him much?'
'His feelings, Mrs. Veale, awful.'
'Lord bless me!' exclaimed the woman, looking at him over her shoulder
as she stirred a pot on the fire, with her queer blinking eyes studying
his expression but expressing nothing themselves.
'I do wonder you be home from the Revel so early. A soldier like you,
and a fine young chap, ought to have stayed and enjoyed yourself. The
best of the fun, I've heard tell, is in the evening.'
'How can I stay at the Revel when I haven't a copper to spend there?'
asked Charles surlily.
'I don't like to see a grand young fellow like you sitting at home, like
an old man with the rheumatics. We will be friends, Charles. I will
give you a crown to buy your good-will.' She took the money from her
pocket and handed it him.
'I thank you,' he said grandly--she had called him a grand young
man--'but I can't go to the Revel now.' Nevertheless he pocketed the
crown. 'I've seen enough of it, and got sick of it. Wretched stalls
where nothing is for sale worth buying, wretched shows where nothing is
seen worth seeing. I came away because the Revel wearied me.'
'You'll find it dull here,' said the housekeeper. 'We poor ignorant
creatures think the Revel and all in it mighty fine things, because we
know no better and haven't seen the world. It seems to me, Mr. Luxmore,
you're in the wrong place, as the elephant said to the stickleback that
had got into the ark.'
'I should just about think I was,' said Charles, kicking out with both
his heels. Mrs. Veale was a plain, not to say unpleasant-looking woman,
much older than himself; he would not have given her a thought had she
not called him 'Mr. Luxmore,' and so recognised that he was a superior
being to the Dicks and Toms on the farm.
'Peshawur! Jelalabad! Cawbul! that's how they come,' said Charles.
Mrs. Veale stood with hand on the handle of the pan, an iron spoon
uplifted in the other, waiting to drink in further information.
'Through the Khyber Pass,' he added, drawing his brows together and
screwing up his mouth.
'No doubt about it,' said Mrs. Veale. 'It must be so, if you sez it.
And Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these.' She
stirred the pot; then, thinking she had not made herself intelligible,
she explained, 'I mean that Solomon, though the wisest of men, didn't
know that, I reckon.'
'How could he,' asked Charles, 'never having been there?'
'I do wonder, now, if you'll excuse the remark,' said the housekeeper,
'that you didn't bring the silver belt here and hang it up over the
mantel-shelf.'
'Silver belt? What silver belt?'
'Oh! you know. The champion wrestler's belt that is to be tried for
this afternoon. I suppose you didn't go in for it because you thought
it wouldn't be fair on the young chaps here to take from them
everything.'
'I did not consider it worth my while trying for it,' said Charles, with
a kick at the hearth with his toes--not an irritated kick, but a
flattered, self-satisfied, pleased kick. 'Of course I could have had it
if I had tried.'
'Of course you might, you who've been a soldier in the wars, and fought
them blood-thirsty Afghans, Lord! I reckon they was like Goliaths of
Gath, the weight of whose spear was as a weaver's beam.'
Charles jerked his head knowingly.
'Afghanistan was a hard nut to crack.'
'Ah!' acquiesced Mrs. Veale. 'So said old Goodie as she mumbled
pebbles.' Then she stood up and looked at him. 'I know a fine man when
I see him,' she said, 'able to hold himself like the best gentleman, and
walking with his head in the air as if the country belonged to him.'
'Ah!' said Charles, taking off his hat and sitting erect, 'if all men
had their rights Coombe Park would be ours.'
'Don't I know that?' asked the housekeeper. 'Everyone knows that.
Nobody can look at you without seeing you're a gentleman born. And I
say it is a shame and a sin that you should be kicked out of your proper
nest, and it the habitation of strangers, cuckoos who never built it,
but have turned out the rightful owners. I reckon it made me turn
scarlet as your sister's cloak to see her come crawling here t'other day
on bended knees to ask the master to take you in. She's no lady, not
got a drop of blue blood in her veins, or she'd not ha' done that. I'll
tell you what it is, Mr. Charles. All the gentle blood has run one way
and all the vulgar blood the other, as in our barton field the sweet
water comes out at the well, and the riddam (ferruginous red water) at
the alders.' She spoke with such acrimony, and with a look so spiteful,
that Charles asked, 'What has Honor done to offend you?'
'Oh nothing, nothing at all! I don't stoop to take offence at her.'
Then, observing that the young man resented this disparagement of his
sister, she added hastily, 'There, enough of her. She's good enough to
wash and comb the little uns and patch their clothes. We will talk
about yourself, as the fox said to the goose, when she axed him if duck
weren't more tasty. Why have you come from the Revel? There be some
better reason than an empty pocket.'
'I have been insulted.'
'Of course you have,' said Mrs. Veale, 'and I know the reason. The
young men here can't abide you. For why? Because you're too much of a
gentleman, you're too high for 'em. As the churchyard cross said to the
cross on the spire, "Us can't talk wi'out shouting." Do you know what
the poacher as was convicted said to the justice o' peace? "I'm not in a
position, your worship, to punch your head, but I can spit on your
shadow."'
'Without any boasting, I may admit that I and these young clodhopping
louts ain't of the same sort,' said Charles proudly.
'That's just what the urchin (hedgehog) said to the little rabbits when
he curled up in their nest.'
'Ah!' laughed Charles, 'but the urchin had quills and could turn the
rabbits out, and I have not.'
'You've been in the army, and that gives a man bearing, and you've been
half over the world, and that gives knowledge; and nature have favoured
you with good looks. The lads are jealous of you.'
'They do not appreciate me, certainly,' said Charles, swelling with
self-importance.
'This is a wicked world,' said Mrs. Veale. Then she produced a bottle of
gin and a glass, and put them at Charles's elbow. 'Take a drop of
comfort,' she said persuasively, 'though for such as you it should be
old crusted port and not the Plymouth liquor, as folks say is distilled
from turnips.'
Young Luxmore needed no pressing; he helped himself.
'I reckon,' pursued Mrs. Veale, 'you were done out of Coombe Park by
those who didn't scruple to swear it away. Money and law together will
turn the best rights topsy-turvy.'
'No doubt about that, ma'am,' said Charles. 'I've heard my father say,
many a time, that with a hundred pounds he could win Coombe Park back.'
'Then why do you not lay out the hundred pounds?'
'Because I haven't got 'em,' answered Charles.
'Oh! they're to be got,' said the housekeeper, 'as the gipsy said to his
wife when she told 'n she were partial to chickens.'
'It seems to me,' said the young man, 'that it is a hard world for them
that is straight. The crooked ones have the best of it.'
'Not at all,' answered the housekeeper. 'The crooked ones can't go
through a straight hole. It is they who can bend about like the ferret
as gets on best, straight or crooked as suits the occasion.'
Charles stood up, drank off his glass, and paced the room. The
housekeeper filled his glass again. The young man observed her actions
and returned to his seat. As he flung himself into the settle again he
said, 'I don't know what the devil makes you take such an interest in my
affairs.'
Mrs. Veale looked hard at him, and answered, 'A woman can't be
indifferent to a goodlooking man.' Charles tossed off his glass to hide
his confusion. So this bleached creature had fallen in love with
him!--a woman his senior by some fifteen years. He was flattered, but
felt that the situation was unpleasant.
'This is a bad world,' he said, 'and I wish I had the re-making of it.
The good luck goes to the undeserving.'
'That is only true because those who have wits want readiness. A screw
will go in and hold where a nail would split. Coombe Park is yours by
right; it has been taken from you by wrong. I should get it back again
were I you, and not be too nice about the means.' Charles sighed and
shook his head.