“WHY DOES SHE TAKE HIM FROM ME?”
“Why—why—why?” Ellice asked herself. Why should this woman who did not
love him wish to take him away from her, who worshipped the ground he
trod on, who looked up to him as the best, the finest of all God’s
created creatures?
That Joan Meredyth did not love John Everard no one understood more
clearly than Ellice Brand. She had watched them when they were
together, she had watched the girl apart; and the watcher’s body might
be that of a child, but her eyes were the eyes of a woman, as was her
heart too.
“Why should she take him from me?” she asked herself, and all her being
rose in passionate revolt and resentment.
“Perhaps she does not know that I love him. Perhaps she looks on me
only as a child—a silly, foolish, infatuated child. But I am not! I am
not!” Ellice cried. “I am not! I love him. I loved him when I was a
baby, when I came here eight years ago, and now I am eighteen and a
woman, and I have never changed and never shall!”
During the days that followed the announcement of Joan Meredyth’s
engagement to John Everard, Connie watched the girl. She felt troubled,
anxious, and yet scarcely could say why. She knew the girl’s passionate
nature. Connie almost dreaded something reckless even tragic. She was
more worried than she could say and of course she could not consult
Johnny. There was no one to consult but Helen, and Helen did not
understand Ellice in the least. Helen was inclined to look down on
Ellice from her superior height as a wayward, wilful, foolish
child—nothing more.
“Send her away. I suppose she is really too old to go to school now,
Connie. How old is she, sixteen?”
“Eighteen.”
“She has the heart and the body of a child.”
“And the soul of a woman!”
“Sometimes, Connie dear,” said Helen sweetly, “you make me almost
angry. You actually seem to be siding with this foolish little thing!”
Connie sighed. “In—in some ways I do. She loves him so, and I know it.
I can’t be hard-hearted, I can’t blind myself to the truth. Of course,
I know that Johnny’s marriage with Joan is the best thing in the world
for both of them, but—”
“But just because a stupid, self-willed girl of eighteen believes
herself deeply in love with Johnny—Oh, Connie, do be your own
reasonable self.”
Johnny Everard, blind as most men are, did not notice how quiet and
reserved Ellice had grown of late, how seldom she spoke to him, how
when he spoke to her she only answered him in brief monosyllables, and
how never came a smile now to her red lips, and certainly never a smile
into her great dark eyes.
He did not see what Connie saw—the heaviness about those eyes, the
suggestion of tears during the night, when she came down silently to
her breakfast. She had changed, and yet he did not see it, and if he
had seen it might never guess at the cause.
And Connie too, always kindly and gentle, always sweet and unselfish;
during these days the girl’s unselfishness was something to wonder at.
She had always loved Ellice; she had understood the child as none other
had. And now there seemed to be a bond between them that drew them
closer.
Three years ago Johnny had bought a bicycle for Ellice. She had been
going daily then to Miss Richmond’s school at Great Langbourne, three
miles away, and he had bought the bicycle that she might ride to school
and back again. Since she had left school the bicycle had remained
untouched and rusted in one of the outhouses, but now Ellice had got
the machine out and cleaned it and put new tyres on it.
Deep down in her mind was a plan, as yet not wholly formed, a desperate
venture that one day she might embark on, and the old bicycle was part
of that plan, for she would need it to carry out the plan. She had not
decided yet, not even if she would ever carry it out, but she might.
Day after day saw her on the road; more often than not her way lay
towards Starden village. She would ride the six and a half miles to
Starden, wait there for a time, and then ride back. She never called at
Starden Hall. Helen knew nothing of these trips.
Connie watched the girl with misgivings and doubts, and Ellice knew
that the elder girl was watching her.
“Connie, I want to speak to you,” she said quietly one morning.
“Yes, darling?”
Ellice slipped her small brown hand into Connie’s.
“I—I know that you are worrying, dear, that you are anxious—and for
me.”
Connie nodded, tears came into her eyes.
“I want you to understand, Connie, that I—I promise you I will do
nothing—nothing, I will never do anything unless I come to you first
and tell you. I promise you that I will do nothing—nothing that I
should not do, nothing mad and foolish and wrong, unless I come to you
first and tell you just what I am going to do.”
“Thank you, dear, for telling me this. It lifts a great weight and a
great anxiety from my heart. Thank you, dear—oh, Ellice darling, I
thought once that it would be a fine thing for him, but now—now I could
wish it otherwise!”
Another moment and the girl was in her arms, clasping her passionately,
and kissing her passionately and gratefully.
Then suddenly Ellice broke away, and a few minutes later was riding
hard down the road to Starden.
It was always to Starden that she rode. Always she passed the great
gates of Starden Hall, yet never even glanced at them. She rode into
the little village, propped her bicycle against the railings that
surrounded the old stocks that stood on the village green, and there
sat on a seat and watched the ducks in the green village pond and the
children playing cricket. Then, after waiting perhaps an hour, she
would mount and ride slowly back to Buddesby again.
It was the programme that she carried out this morning. It was twelve
o’clock when she came in sight of Buddesby village, a mile distant as
yet.
“Missy! Missy!” Someone was calling. Ellice slowed down and looked
about her. On the bank beside the road a man sat, and he was nursing an
ugly yellow lurcher dog in his arms.
“Missy!” the man called, and his voice was broken and harsh with
suffering.
It was Rundle, the poacher, and his dog, and there was blood on
Rundle’s hand, blood trickling down from a wound in the dog’s side. The
man was holding the dog as he might have held a child. The big ugly
yellow head was against the man’s breast, and in its agony the dog was
licking the man’s rough hand.
And watching, there came back to Ellice’s memory what she had said of
this man and his dog.
“You’ll do something for me, missy, something as I—I can’t do myself!”
He shuddered. “Will you ride on to Taylor’s and ask him to come here
and bring—his gun?”
“Why?”
“I—I can’t do it myself!”
“He might be cured.”
“There’s only Mister Vinston, the Vet, and he wouldn’t look at this
poor tyke of mine. He hates him too bad for that, because Snatcher
killed one of them fancy poodle dogs of his two years ago; and Mr.
Vinston ain’t never forgot it—and never will. He wouldn’t do nothing to
save Snatcher, miss. Ask Taylor to come and bring his gun.”
Ellice nodded. She stretched out her hand and touched the shaggy yellow
head, and in her eyes was infinite pity. Then she mounted the bicycle,
and rode like the wind to Buddesby. What she said to Mr. Ralph Vinston,
the smart young veterinary surgeon, only she and Mr. Ralph Vinston
knew.
He had refused definitely and decidedly. “It’ll be a blessing to the
place if the beast dies,” he said. “You’d better take his message to
Taylor. The gun’s the best remedy for Rundle’s accursed dog, Miss
Ellice.”
And then the girl had talked to him, had talked with flashing eyes and
heaving breast, and the end of it was that Ralph Vinston made a
collection of surgical instruments, bandages, and other necessaries,
bundled them into his little car, and was away down the road with
Ellice in company within ten minutes.