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THE SQUIRE'S DAUGHTER
BY SILAS K. HOCKING
AUTHOR OF "PIONEERS" "THE FLAMING SWORD" "THE WIZARD'S LIGHT" "THE
SCARLET CLUE" ETC.
_WITH ORIGINAL ILLUSTRATIONS_
BY ARTHUR TWIDLE
Fourth Edition
LONDON
FREDERICK WARNE & CO.
AND NEW YORK
1906
(_All Rights Reserved_)
[Illustration: "IF YOU CAN ONLY BRING YOURSELF TO SAY YES, I WILL DO MY
BEST TO MAKE YOU THE HAPPIEST WOMAN IN THE WORLD."]
CONTENTS
I. AN IMPERIOUS MAIDEN
II. APPREHENSIONS
III. A NEW SENSATION
IV. A BITTER INTERVIEW
V. THE CHANCES OF LIFE
VI. WAITING FOR THE BLOW TO FALL
VII. DAVID SPEAKS HIS MIND
VIII. CONFLICTING EMOTIONS
IX. PREPARING TO GO
X. RALPH SPEAKS HIS MIND
XI. UNCONSCIOUS SPEECH
XII. DOROTHY SPEAKS HER MIND
XIII. GATHERING CLOUDS
XIV. THE STORM BURSTS
XV. SIR JOHN GETS ANGRY
XVI. THE BIG HOUSE
XVII. DEVELOPMENTS
XVIII. A CONFESSION
XIX. A SILENT WELCOME
XX. WILLIAM MENIRE'S RED-LETTER DAY
XXI. A GOOD NAME
XXII. A FRESH START
XXIII. THE ROAD TO FORTUNE
XXIV. LAW AND LIFE
XXV. IN LONDON TOWN
XXVI. TRUTH WILL OUT
XXVII. HOME AGAIN
XXVIII. A TRYING POSITION
XXIX. A QUESTION OF MOTIVES
XXX. SELF AND ANOTHER
XXXI. A PARTNERSHIP
XXXII. FOOD FOR REFLECTION
XXXIII. A PROPOSAL
XXXIV. A FRESH PAGE
XXXV. FAILURE OR FORTUNE
XXXVI. THE PENALTY OF PROSPERITY
XXXVII. LIGHT AND SHADOW
XXXVIII. LOVE AND LIFE
XXXIX. PERPLEXING QUESTIONS
XL. LOVE OR FAREWELL
XLI. THE TABLES TURNED
XLII. COALS OF FIRE
XLIII. SIR JOHN ATONES
List of Illustrations
"IF YOU CAN ONLY BRING YOURSELF TO SAY YES, I WILL DO MY BEST TO MAKE
YOU THE HAPPIEST WOMAN IN THE WORLD."
"SIR JOHN RAISED HIS HUNTING-CROP, AND STRUCK AT RALPH WITH ALL HIS
MIGHT."
"RUTH THREW HER ARMS ABOUT HER MOTHER'S NECK AND BURST INTO A PASSION OF
TEARS."
"WILLIAM, BREATHLESS AND EXCITED, BURST IN UPON HIM."
THE SQUIRE'S DAUGHTER
CHAPTER I
AN IMPERIOUS MAIDEN
The voice was soft and musical, but the tone was imperative.
"I say, young man, open that gate."
The young man addressed turned slowly from the stile on which he had
been leaning, and regarded the speaker attentively. She was seated on a
high-stepping horse with that easy grace born of long familiarity with
the saddle, and yet she seemed a mere girl, with soft round cheeks and
laughing blue eyes.
"Come, wake up," she said, in tones more imperious than before, "and
open the gate at once."
He resented the tone, though he was charmed with the picture, and
instead of going toward the gate to do her bidding he turned and began
to climb slowly over the stile.
She trotted her horse up to him in a moment, her eyes flashing, her
cheeks aflame. She had been so used to command and to prompt obedience
that this insubordination on the part of a country yokel seemed nothing
less than an insult.
"You dare disobey me?" she said, her voice thrilling with anger.
"Of course I dare," he answered, without turning his head. "I am not
your servant."
The reply seemed to strike her dumb for a moment, and she reined back
her horse several paces.
He turned again to look at her, then deliberately seated himself on one
of the posts of the stile.
There was no denying that she made a pretty picture. With one foot on
the top rung of the stile he was almost on a level with her, and he was
near enough to see her bosom heave and the colour come and go upon her
rounded cheeks.
His heart began to beat uncomfortably fast. He feared that he had played
a churlish part. She looked so regal, and yet so sweet, that it seemed
almost as if Nature had given her the right to command. And who was he
that he should resent her imperious manner and refuse to do her bidding?
He had gone too far, however, to retreat. Moreover, his dignity had been
touched. She had flung her command at him as though he were a serf. Had
she asked him to open the gate, he would have done so gladly. It was the
imperious tone that he resented.
"I did not expect such rudeness and incivility here of all places," she
said at length in milder tones.
His cheeks flamed at that, and an angry feeling stole into his heart.
Judged by ordinary standards, he had no doubt been rude, and her words
stung him all the more on that account. He would have played a more
dignified part if he had pocketed the affront and opened the gate; but
he was in no mood to go back on what he had done.
"If I have been rude and uncivil, you are to blame as much as I--and
more," he retorted angrily.
"Indeed?" she said, in a tone of lofty disdain, and an amused smile
played round the corners of her mouth. She was interested in the young
man in spite of his incivility. Now that she had an opportunity of
looking more closely at him, she could not deny that he had no common
face, while his speech was quite correct, and not lacking in dignity.
"I hope I am not so churlish as not to be willing to do a kindness to
anybody," he went on rapidly, "but I resent being treated as dirt by
such as you."
"Indeed? I was not aware----" she began, but he interrupted her.
"If you had asked me to open the gate I would have done so gladly, and
been proud to do it," he went on; "but because I belong to what you are
pleased to call the lower orders, you cannot ask; you command, and you
expect to be obeyed."
"Of course I expect to be obeyed," she said, arching her eyebrows and
smiling brightly, "and I am surprised that you----"
"No doubt you are," he interrupted angrily. "But if we are lacking in
good manners, so are you," and he turned and leaped off the stile into
the field.
"Come back, you foolish young man."
But if he heard, he did not heed; with his eyes fixed on a distant
farmhouse, he stalked steadily on, never turning his head either to the
right or the left.
For a moment or two she looked after him, an amused smile dimpling her
cheeks; then she turned her attention to the gate.
"I wonder what I am to do now?" she mused. "I cannot unfasten it, and if
I get off, I shall never be able to mount again; on the other hand, I
hate going back through the village the way I came. I wonder if Jess
will take it?" and she rode the mare up to the gate and let her smell at
the rungs.
It was an ordinary five-barred gate, and the ground was soft and
springy. The road was scarcely more than a track across a heathery
common. Beyond the gate the road was strictly private, and led through a
wide sweep of plantation, and terminated at length, after a circuit of a
mile or two, somewhere near Hamblyn Manor.
Jess seemed to understand what was passing through her mistress's mind,
and shook her head emphatically.
"You can do it, Jess," she said, wheeling the mare about, and trotting
back a considerable distance. "I know you can," and she struck her
across the flank with her riding crop.
Jess pricked up her ears and began to gallop toward the gate; but she
halted suddenly when within a few feet of it, almost dislodging her
rider.
The young lady, however, was not to be defeated. A second time she rode
back, and then faced the gate once more.
Jess pricked up her ears, and shook her head as if demanding a loose
rein, and then sprang forward with the swiftness of a panther. But she
took the gate a moment too soon; there was a sharp crash of splintered
wood, a half-smothered cry of pain, and horse and rider were rolling on
the turf beyond.
Ralph Penlogan caught his breath and turned his head suddenly. The sound
of breaking wood fell distinctly on his ear, and called him back from
his not over-pleasant musings. He was angry with himself, angry with the
cause of his anger. He had stood up for what he believed to be his
rights, had asserted his opinions with courage and pertinacity; and yet,
for some reason, he was anything but satisfied. The victory he had
won--if it was a victory at all--was a barren one. He was afraid that he
had asserted himself at the wrong time, in the wrong place, and before
the wrong person.
The girl to whom he had spoken, and whose command he had defied, was not
responsible for the social order against which he chafed, and which
pressed so hardly on the class to which he belonged. She was where
Providence had placed her just as much as he was, and the tone of
command she had assumed was perhaps more a matter of habit than any
assumption of superiority.
So within three minutes of leaving the stile he found himself excusing
the fair creature to whom he had spoken so roughly. That she had a sweet
and winning face there was no denying, while the way she sat her horse
seemed to him the embodiment of grace.
Who she was he had not the remotest idea. To the best of his
recollection he had never seen her before. That she belonged to what was
locally termed the gentry there could be no doubt--a visitor most likely
at one or other of the big houses in the neighbourhood.
Once the thought flashed across his mind that she might be the daughter
of Sir John Hamblyn, but he dismissed it at once. In the first place,
Sir John's daughter was old enough to be married--in fact, the wedding
day had already been fixed--while this young lady was a mere girl. She
did not look more than seventeen if she looked a day. And in the second
place, it was inconceivable that such a mean, grasping, tyrannical
curmudgeon as Sir John could be the father of so fair a child.
He had seen Dorothy Hamblyn when she was a little girl in short frocks,
and his recollection of her was that she was a disagreeable child. If he
remembered aright, she was about his own age--a trifle younger.
"Why, I have turned twenty," he mused. "I am a man. She's only a girl."
So he dismissed the idea that she was Sir John's daughter who returned
from school only about six months ago, and who was going to marry Lord
Probus forthwith.
Suddenly he was recalled from his musings by the crash of the breaking
gate. Was that a cry also he heard? He was not quite sure. A dozen vague
fears shot through his mind in a moment. For a second only he hesitated,
then he turned swiftly on his heel and ran back the way he had come.
The field was a wide one, wider than he had ever realised before. He was
out of breath by the time he reached the stile, while his fears had
increased with every step he took.
He leaped over the stile at a bound, and then stood still. Before him
was the broken gate, and beyond it----
For a moment a mist swam before his eyes, and the ground seemed to be
slipping away from beneath his feet. Vague questions respecting his
responsibility crowded in upon his brain; the harvest of his
churlishness had ripened with incredible swiftness. The word "guilty"
seemed to stare at him from every point of the compass.
With a strong effort he pulled himself together, and advanced toward the
prostrate figure. The horse stood a few paces away, trembling and
bleeding from the knees.
He was almost afraid to look at the girl's face, and when he did so he
gave a loud groan. There was no movement, nor any sign of life. The eyes
were closed, the cheeks ghastly pale, while from underneath the soft
brown hair there ran a little stream of blood.