Once or twice, while the noble expanses of Salisbury Plain or the New Forest thrilled him with a pure dilation of soul, as he swept along in the clear air, he was on the verge of turning his car straight to the harbour of Southampton and taking the first boat that offered itself, bound East, West, North or South—it mattered nothing the direction!—so that an impassable gulf of free sea-water should separate him forever from the hot fields and woods of Nevilton.
Once, when reaching a cross-road point, where the name of the famous harbour stared at him from a sign-post, he had even gone so far as to deviate to the extent of several miles from his normal road. But that intolerable craving for the girl’s soft-clinging arms and supple body, with which she had at last succeeded in poisoning the freedom of his mind, drew him back with the force of a magnet.
The day at length approached, when, on the festival of his favorite saint, Mr. Clavering was to perform the ceremony, to which he had looked forward so long and with such varied feelings. It was Saturday, and on the following morning, in a service especially arranged to take place privately, between early celebration and ordinary matins, Gladys was to be baptized.
Dangelis had suddenly declared his intention of making his escape from a proceeding which to his American mind seemed entirely uncalled for, and to his pagan humour seemed not a little grotesque. He had decided to start, immediately after breakfast, and motor to London, this time by way of Trowbridge and Westbury.
The confirmation ceremony, for reasons connected with the convenience of the Lord Bishop, had been finally fixed for the ensuing Wednesday, so that only two days were destined to elapse between the girl’s reception into the Church, and her admission to its most sacred rites. Dangelis was sufficiently a heathen to desire to be absent from this event also, though he had promised Mr. Clavering to support his betrothed on the occasion of her first Communion on the following Sunday, which would be their last Sunday together as unwedded lovers.
On this occasion, Gladys persuaded him to let her ride by his side a few miles along the Yeoborough road. They had just reached the bridge across the railway-line, about a mile and a half from the village, when they caught sight of Mr. John Goring, returning from an early visit to the local market.
Gladys made the artist stop the car, and she got out to speak to her uncle. After a minute or two’s conversation, she informed Dangelis that she would return with Mr. Goring by the field-path, which left the road at that point and followed the track of the railway. The American, obedient to her wish,. set his car in motion, and waving her a gay good-bye, disappeared swiftly round an adjacent corner.
Gladys and her uncle proceeded to walk slowly homeward, across the meadows; neither of them, however, paying much attention to the charm of the way. In vain from the marshy hollows between their path and the metal track, certain brilliant clumps of ragged robin and red rattle signalled to them to pause and admire. Gladys and Mr. Goring strolled forward, past these allurements, with a superb absorption in their own interests.
“I can’t think, uncle,” Gladys was saying, “how it is that you can go on in the way you’re doing; you, a properly engaged person, and not seeing anything of your young lady?”
The farmer laughed. “Ah! my dear, but what matter? I shall see her soon enough; all I want to, maybe.”
“But most engaged people like to see a little of one another before they’re married, don’t they, uncle? I know Ralph would be quite mad if he couldn’t see me.”
“But, my pretty, this is quite a different case. When Bert and I”—he spoke of the idiot as if they had been comrades, instead of master and servant—“have bought a new load of lop-ears, we never tease ’em or fret ’em before we get ’em home.”
“But Lacrima isn’t a rabbit!” cried Gladys impatiently; “she’s a girl like me, and wants what all girls want, to be petted and spoilt a little before she’s plunged into marriage.”
“She didn’t strike me as wanting anything of that kind, when I made up to her in our parlour,” replied Mr. Goring.
“Oh you dear old stupid!” cried his niece, “can’t you understand that’s what we’re all like? We all put on airs, and have fancies, and look cross; but we want to be petted all the same. We want it all the more!”
“I reckon I’d better leave well alone all the same, just at present,” observed the farmer. “If I was to go stroking her and making up to her, while she’s on the road, maybe when we got her into the hutch she’d bite like a weasel.”
“She’d never really bite!” retorted his companion. “You don’t know her as well as I do. I tell you, uncle, she’s got no more spirit than a tame pigeon.”
“I’m not so sure of that,” said the farmer.
Gladys flicked the grass impatiently with the end of her parasol.
“You may take my word for it, uncle,” she continued. “The whole thing’s put on. It’s all affectation and nonsense. Do you think she’d have agreed to marry you if she wasn’t ready for a little fun? Of course she’s ready! She’s only waiting for you to begin. It makes it more exciting for her, when she cries out and looks injured. That’s the only reason why she does it. Lots of girls are like that, you know!”
“Are they, my pretty, are they?’ Tis difficult to tell that kind, maybe, from the other kind. But I’m not a man for too much of these fancy ways.”
“You’re not drawing back, uncle, are you?” cried Gladys, in considerable alarm.
“God darn me, no!” replied the farmer. “I’m going to carry this business through. Don’t you fuss yourself. Only I like doing these things in my own way—dost understand me, my dear?—in my own way; and then, if so be they go wrong, I can’t put the blame on no one else.”
“I wonder you aren’t more keen, uncle,” began Gladys insinuatingly, following another track, “to see more of a pretty girl you’re just going to marry. I don’t believe you half know how pretty she is! I wish you could see her doing her hair in the morning.”
“I shall see her, soon enough, my lass; don’t worry,” replied the farmer.
“I should so love to see you give her one kiss,” murmured Gladys. “Of course, she’d struggle and make a fuss, but she’d really be enjoying it all the time.”
“Maybe she would, my pretty, and maybe she wouldn’t. I’m not one that likes hearing either rabbits or maidens start the squealing game. It fair gives me the shivers. Bert, he can stand it, but I never could. It’s nature, I suppose. A man can’t change his nature no more than a cow nor a horse.”
“I can’t understand you, uncle,” observed Gladys. “If I were in your place, I’m sure I shouldn’t be satisfied without at least kissing the girl I was going to marry. I’d find some way of getting round her, however sulky she was. Oh, I’m sure you don’t half know how nice Lacrima is to kiss!”
“I suppose she isn’t so mighty different, come to that,” replied the farmer, “than any other maid. I don’t mind if I give you a kiss, my beauty!” he added, encircling his niece with an affectionate embrace and kissing her flushed cheek. “There—there! Best let well alone, sweetheart, and leave your old uncle to manage his own little affairs according to his own fashion!”
But Gladys was not so easily put off. She had recourse to her fertile imagination.
“You should have heard what she said to me the other night, uncle. You know the way girls talk—or you ought to, anyhow! She said she hoped you’d go on being the same simple fool, after you were married. She said she’d find it mighty easy to twist you round her finger. ‘Why,’ she said, ‘I can do what I like with him now. He treats me as if I were a high-born lady and he were a mere common man. I believe he’s downright afraid of me!’ That’s the sort of things she says about you, uncle. She thinks in her heart that you’re just a fool, a simple frightened fool!”
“Darn her! she does, does she?” cried Mr. Goring, touched at last by the serpent’s tongue. “She thinks I’m a fool, does she? Well! Let her have her laugh. Them laughs best as laughs last, in my t
hinking!”
“Yes, she thinks you’re a great big silly fool, uncle. Of course its all pretence, her talk about wanting you to be like that; but that’s what she thinks you are. What she’d really like—only she doesn’t say so, even to me—would be for you to catch her suddenly round the waist and kiss her on the mouth, and laugh at her pretendings. I expect she’s waiting to give you a chance to do something of that sort; only you don’t come near her. Oh, she must think you’re a monstrous fool! She must chuckle to herself to think what a fool you are.”
“I’ll teach her what kind of a fool I am,” muttered Mr. Goring, “when I’ve got her to myself, up at the farm. This business of dangling after a maid’s apron strings, this kissing and cuddling, don’t suit somehow with my nature. I’m not one of your fancy-courting ones and never was!”
“Listen, uncle!” said Gladys eagerly, laying her hand on his arm. “Suppose I was to take her up to Cæsar’s Quarry this afternoon? That would be a lovely chance! You could come strolling round about four o’clock. I’d be on the watch; and before she knew you were there, I’d scramble out, and you could climb down. She couldn’t get away from you, and you’d have quite a nice little bit of love-making.”
Mr. Goring paused, and prodded the ground with the end of his stick.
“What a little devil you are!” he exclaimed. “Darn me if this here job isn’t a queer business! Here are you, putting yourself out and fussing around, only for a fellow to have what’s due to him. You leave us alone, sweetheart, my young lady and me! I reckon we know what’s best for ourselves, without you thrusting your hand in.”
“But you might just walk up that way, uncle; it isn’t far over the hill. I’d give—oh, I don’t know what!—to see you two together. She wants to be teased a little, you know! She’s getting too proud and self-satisfied for anything. It would do her ever so much good to be taught a lesson. It isn’t much to do, is it? Just to give the girl you’re going to marry one little kiss?”
“But how do I know you two wenches aren’t fooling me, even now?” protested the cautious farmer. “’Tis just the sort of maids’ trick ye might set out to play upon a man. How do I know ye haven’t put your two darned little heads together over this job?”
Gladys looked round. They were approaching the Mill Copse.
“Please, uncle,” she cried, “don’t say such things to me. You know I wouldn’t join with anyone against you. Least of all with her! Just do as I tell you, and stroll up to Cæsar’s Quarry about four o’clock. I promise you faithfully I haven’t said a word to her about it. Please, uncle, be nice and kind over this.”
She threw her arms round Mr. Goring’s neck. “You haven’t done anything for me for a long time,” she murmured in her most persuasive tone. “Do you remember how I used to give you butterfly-kisses when I was a little girl, and you kept apples for me in the big loft?
Mr. Goring’s nature may, or may not have been, as he described it; it is certain that the caresses and cajoleries of his lovely niece had an instantaneous effect upon him. His slow-witted suspicions melted completely under the spell of her touch.
“Well, my pretty,” he said, as they moved on, under the shadowy trees of the park, “maybe, if I’ve nothing else to do and things seem quiet, I’ll take a bit of a walk this afternoon. But you mustn’t count on it. If I do catch sight of ’ee, ’round Cæsar’s way, I’ll let ’ee know. But ’tisn’t a downright promise, mind!”
Gladys clapped her hands. “You’re a perfect love, uncle!” she cried jubilantly. “I wish I were Lacrima; I’d be ever, ever so nice to you!”
“Ye can be nice to me, as ’tis, sweetheart,” replied the farmer. “You and me have always been kind of fond of each other, haven’t us? But I reckon ye’d best be slipping off now, up to your house. I never care greatly for meeting your father by accident-like. He’s one of these sly ones that always makes a fellow feel squeamy and leery.”
That afternoon it happened that the adventurous Luke had planned a trip down to Weymouth, with a new flame of his, a certain Polly Shadow, whose parents kept a tobacco-shop in Yeoborough.
He had endeavoured to persuade his brother to accompany them on this little excursion, in the hope that a breath of sea-air might distract and refresh him; but James had expressed his intention of paying a visit to his gentle restorer, up at Wild Pine, who was now sufficiently recovered to enable her to sit out in the shade of the great trees.
The church clock had just struck three, when James Andersen approached the entrance to Nevil’s Gully.
He had not advanced far into the shadow of the beeches, when he heard the sound of voices. He paused, and listened. The clear tones of Ninsy Lintot were unmistakeable, and he thought he detected—though of this he was not sure—the nervous high-pitched voice of Philip Wone. From the direction of the sounds, he gathered that the two young people were seated somewhere on the bracken-covered slope above the barton, where, as he well knew, there were several shady terraces overlooking the valley.
Unwilling to plunge suddenly into a conversation that appeared, as far as he could catch its purport, to be of considerable emotional tension, Andersen cautiously ascended the moss-grown bank on his left, and continued his climb, until he had reached the crest of the hill. He then followed, as silently as he could, the little grassy path between the stubble-field and the thickets, until he came to the open space immediately above these fern-covered terraces.
Yes, his conjecture had been right. Seated side by side beneath the tall-waving bracken, the auburn-haired Ninsy and her anarchist friend were engaged in an absorbing and passionate discussion. Both of them were bare-headed, and the young man’s hand rested upon the motionless fingers of his companion, which were clasped demurely upon her lap. Philip’s voice was raised in intense and pitiful supplication.
“I’d care for you day and night,” Andersen heard him cry. “I’d nurse you when you were ill, and keep you from every kind of annoyance.”
“But, Philip dear,” the girl’s voice answered, “you know what the doctor said. He said I mustn’t marry on any account. So even if I had nothing against it, it wouldn’t be possible for us to do this.”
“Ninsy, Ninsy!” cried the youth pathetically, “don’t you understand what I mean? I can’t bear having to say these things, but you force me to, when you talk like that. The doctor meant that it would be wrong for you to have children, and he took if for granted that you’d never find anyone ready to live with you as I’d live with you. It would only be a marriage in name. I mean it would only be a marriage in name in regard to children. It would be a real marriage to me, it would be heaven to me, to live side by side with you, and no one able any more to come between us! I can’t realize such happiness. It makes me feel dizzy even to think of it!”
Ninsy unclasped her hands, and gently repulsing him, remained buried in deep thought. Standing erect above them, like a sentry upon a palisade, James Andersen stared gloomily down upon this little drama. In some strange way,—perhaps because of some sudden recurrence of his mental trouble,—he seemed quite unconscious of anything dishonourable or base in thus withholding from these two people the knowledge that he was overhearing them.
“I’ll take care of you to the end of my life!” the young man repeated. “I’m doing quite well now with my work. You’ll be able to have all you want. You’ll be better off than you are here, and you know perfectly well that as soon as your father’s free he’ll marry that friend of his in Yeoborough. I saw him with her last Sunday. I’m sure its only for your sake that he stays single. She’s got three children, and that’s what holds him back—that, and the thought that you two mightn’t get on together. You’d be doing your father a kindness if you said yes to me, Ninsy. Please, please, my darling, say it, and make me grateful to you forever!”
“I can’t say it,—Philip, dear, I can’t, I can’t”; murmured the girl, in a voice so low that the sentinel above them could only just catch her words. “I do care for you, and I do value
your goodness to me, but I can’t say the words, Philip. Something seems to stop me, something in my throat.”
It was not to her throat however, that the agitated Ninsy raised her thin hands. As she pressed them against her breast a look of tragic sorrow came into her face. Philip regarded her wistfully.
“You’re thinking you don’t love me, dear,—and never can love me. I know that, well enough! I know you don’t love me as I love you. But what does that matter? I’ve known that, all the time. The thing is, you won’t find anyone who loves you as I do,—ready to live with you as I’ve said I will, ready to nurse you and look after you. Other people’s love will be always asking and demanding from you. Mine—oh, it’s true, my darling, it’s true!—mine only wants to give up everything to make you happy.”
Ninsy was evidently more than a little moved by the boy’s appeal. There was a ring of passionate sincerity in his tone which went straight to her heart. She bent down and covered her face with her hands. When at length she lifted up her head and answered him, there were tears on her cheeks, and the watchful listener above them did not miss the quiver in her tone.
“I’m sorry, Philip boy, more sorry than I can say, that I can’t be nicer to you, that I can’t show my gratitude to you, in the way you wish. But though I do care for you, and—and value your dear love—something stops me, something makes it impossible that this should happen.”
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