by Ellen Wood
Hyde soon got acquainted with Church Dykely, and would drop into people’s houses of an evening, laughing over his occupation, and saying he should be able to make bricks himself in time. His chief work seemed to be in standing about the brick-yard watching the men, and in writing and book-keeping at home. Old Massock made his appearance once a month, when accounts and such-like items were gone over between them.
When it was that Hyde first got on speaking terms with Kettie, or where, or how, I cannot tell. So far as I know, nobody could tell. It was late in the autumn when Ketira and her daughter came back to their hut; and by the following early spring some of us had grown accustomed to seeing Hyde and Kettie together in an evening, snatching a short whisper or a five-minutes’ walk. In March, I think it was, she and Ketira went away again, and returned in May.
The twenty-ninth of May was at that time kept as a holiday in Worcestershire, though it has dropped out of use as such in late years. In Worcester itself there was a grand procession, which country people went in to see, and a special service in the cathedral. We had service also at Church Dykely, and the villagers adorned their front-doors with immense oak boughs, sprays of which we young ones wore in our jackets, the oak-balls and leaves gilded. I remember one year that the big bough (almost a tree) which Henry Rimmer had hoisted over his sign, the “Silver Bear,” came to grief. Whether Rimmer had not secured it as firmly as usual, or that the cords were rotten, down came the huge bough with a crash on old Mr. Stirling’s head, who chanced to be coming out of the inn. He went on at Rimmer finely, vowing his neck was broken, and that Rimmer ought to be hung up there himself.
On this twenty-ninth of May I met Kettie. It was on the common, near Abel Carew’s. Kettie had caught up the fashion of the place, and wore a little spray of oak peeping out from between the folds of her red cloak. And I may as well say that neither she nor her mother ever went out without the cloak. In cold and heat, in rain and sunshine, the red cloak was worn out-of-doors.
“Are you making holiday to-day, Kettie?”
“Not more than usual; all days are the same to us,” she answered, in her sweet, soft voice, and with the slightly foreign accent that attended the speech of both. But Kettie had it more strongly than her mother.
“You have not gilded your oak-ball.”
Kettie glanced down at the one ball, nestling amid its green leaves. “I had no gilding to put on it, Mr. Johnny.”
“No! I have some in my pocket. Let me gild it for you.”
Her teeth shone like pearls as she smiled and held out the spray. How beautiful she was! with those delicate features and the large dark eyes! — eyes that were softer than Ketira’s. Taking the little paper book from my pocket, and some of the gilt leaf from between its tissue leaves, I wetted the oak-ball and gilded it. Kettie watched intently.
“Where did you get it all from?” she asked, meaning the gilt leaf.
“I bought it at Hewitt’s. Don’t you know the shop? A stationer’s; next door to Pettipher the druggist’s. Hewitt does no end of a trade in these leaves on the twenty-ninth of May.”
“Did you buy it to gild oak-balls for yourself, sir?”
“For the young ones at home: Hugh and Lena. There it is, Kettie.”
Had it been a ball of solid gold that I put into her hand, instead of a gilded oak-ball, Kettie could not have shown more intense delight. Her cheeks flushed; the wonderful brilliancy that joy brought to her eyes caused my own eyes to turn away. For her eighteen years she was childish in some things; very much so, considering the experience that her wandering life must (as one would suppose) have brought her. In replacing the spray within her cloak, Kettie dropped something out of her hand — apparently a small box folded in paper. I picked it up.
“Is it a fairing, Kettie? But this is not fair time.”
“It is — I forget the name,” she replied, looking at me and hesitating. “My mother is ill; the pains are in her shoulder again; and my uncle Abel has given me this to rub upon it, the same that did her good before. I cannot just call the name to mind in the English tongue.”
“Say it in your own.”
She spoke a very outlandish word, laughed, and turned red again. Certainly there never lived a more modest girl than Kettie.
“Is it liniment? — ointment?”
“Yes, it is that, the last,” she said: “Abel calls it so. I thank you for what you have done for me, sir. Good-day.”
To show so much gratitude for that foolish bit of gilt leaf on her oak-ball! It illumined every line of her face. I liked Kettie: liked her for her innocent simplicity. Had she not been a gipsy, many a gentleman might have been proud to make her his wife.
Close upon that, it was known that Ketira was laid up with rheumatism. The weather came in hot, and the days went on: and Kettie and Hyde were now and then seen together.
One evening, on leaving Mrs. Scott’s, where we had been to arrange with Sam to go fishing with us on the morrow, Tod said he would invite Hyde Stockhausen to be of the party; so we took Virginia Cottage on our road home, and asked for Hyde.
“Not at home!” retorted Tod, resenting the old woman’s answer, as though it had been a personal affront. “Where is he?”
“Master Hyde has only just stepped out, sir; twenty minutes ago, or so,” said she, pleadingly excusing the fact. Which was but natural: she had been Hyde’s nurse when he was a child; and had now come here to do for him. “I dare say, sir, he be only walking about a bit, to get the fresh air.”
Tod whistled some bars of a tune thoughtfully. He did not like to be crossed.
“Well, look here, Mrs. Preen,” said he. “Some of us are going to fish in the long pond on Mr. Jacobson’s grounds to-morrow: tell Mr. Hyde that if he would like to join us, I shall be happy to see him. Breakfast, half-past eight o’clock; sharp.”
In turning out beyond the garden, I could not help noticing how pretty and romantic was the scene. A good many trees grew about that part, thick enough almost for a wood in places; and the light and shade, cast by the moon on the grass amidst them, had quite a weird appearance. It was a bright night; the moon high in the sky.
“Is that Hyde?” cried Tod.
Halting for a moment in doubt, he peered out over the field to the distance. Some one was leisurely pacing under the opposite trees. Two people, I thought: but they were completely in the shade.
“I think it is Hyde, Tod. Somebody is with him.”
“Just wait another instant, lad, and they’ll be in that patch of moonlight by the turning.”
But they did not go into that patch of moonlight. Just before they reached it (and the two figures were plain enough now) they turned back again and took the narrow inlet that led to Oxlip Dell. Whoever it was with Hyde had a hooded cloak on. Was it a red one? Tod laughed.
“Oh, by George, here’s fun! He has got Kettie out for a moonlight stroll. Let’s go and ask them how they enjoy it.”
“Hyde might not like us to.”
“There you are again, Johnny, with your queer scruples! Stuff and nonsense! Stockhausen can’t have anything to say to Kettie that all the world may not hear. I want to tell him about to-morrow.”
Tod made off across the grass for the inlet, I after him. Yes, there they were, promenading Oxlip Dell in the flickering light, now in the shade, now in the brightest of the moonbeams; Hyde’s arm hugging her red cloak.
Tod gave a grunt of displeasure. “Stockhausen must be doing it for pastime,” he said; “but he ought not to be so thoughtless. Ketira the gipsy would give the girl a shaking if she knew: she — —”
The words came to an abrupt ending. There stood Ketira herself.
She was at the extreme end of the inlet amid the trees, holding on by the trunk of one, round which her head was cautiously pushed to view the promenaders. Comparatively speaking, it was dark just here; but I could see the strangely-wild look in the gipsy’s eyes: the woe-begone expression of her remarkable face.
“It is coming,” she said, appar
ently in answer to Tod’s remarks, which she could not have failed to hear. “It is coming quickly.”
“What is coming?” I asked.
“The fate in store for her. And it’s worse than death.”
“If you don’t like her to walk out by moonlight, why not keep her in? — not that there can be any harm in it,” interposed Tod. “If you don’t approve of her being friendly with Hyde Stockhausen,” he went on after a pause, for Ketira made no answer, “why don’t you put a stop to it?”
“Because she has her mother’s spirit and her mother’s will” cried Ketira. “And she likes to have her own way: and I fear, woe’s me! that if I forced her to mine, things might become worse than they are even now: that she might take some fatal step.”
“I am going home,” said Tod at this juncture, perhaps fancying the matter was getting complicated: and, of all things, he hated complications. “Good-night, old lady. We heard you were in bed with rheumatism.”
He set off back, up the narrow inlet. I said I’d catch him up: and stayed behind for a last word with Ketira.
“What did you mean by a fatal step?”
“That she might leave me and seek the protection of the Tribe. We have had words about this. Kettie says little, but I see the signs of determination in her silent face. ‘I will not have you meet or speak to that man,’ I said to her this morning — for she was out with him last evening also. She made me no reply: but — you see — how she has obeyed! Her heart’s life has been awakened, and by him. There’s only one object to whom she clings now in all the whole earth; and that is to him. I am nothing.”
“He will not bring any great harm upon her: you need not fear that of Hyde Stockhausen.”
“Did I say he would?” she answered fiercely, her black eyes glaring and gleaming. “But he will bring sorrow on her and rend her heart-strings. A man’s fancies are light as the summer wind, fickle as the ocean waves: but when a woman loves it is for life; sometimes for death.”
Hyde and Kettie had disappeared at the upper end of the dell, taking the way that in a minute or two would bring them out in the open fields. Ketira turned back along the narrow path, and I with her.
“I knew he would bring some ill upon me, that first moment when I saw him on Worcester race-ground,” resumed Ketira in a low tone of pain. “Instinct warned me that he was an enemy. And what ill can be like that of stealing my young child’s heart! Once a girl’s heart is taken — and taken but to be toyed with, to be flung back at will — her day-dreams in this life are over.”
Emerging into the open ground, the first thing we saw was the pair of lovers about to part. They were standing face to face: Hyde held both her hands while speaking his last words, and then bent suddenly down, as if to whisper them. Ketira gave a sharp cry at that, perhaps she fancied he was stealing a kiss, and lifted her right hand menacingly. The girl ran swiftly in the direction of her home — which was not far off — and Hyde strode, not much less quickly, towards his. Ketira stood as still as a stone image, watching him till he disappeared within his gate.
“There’s no harm in it,” I persuasively said, sorry to see her so full of trouble. But she was as one who heard not.
“No harm at all, Ketira. I dare answer for it that a score of lads and lasses are out. Why should we not walk in the moonlight as well as the sunlight? For my part, I should call it a shame to stay indoors on this glorious night.”
“An enemy, an enemy! A grand gentleman, who will leave her to pine her heart away! What kind of man is he, that Hyde Stockhausen?” she continued, turning to me fiercely.
“Kind of man? A pleasant one. I have not heard any ill of him.”
“Rich?”
“No. Perhaps he will be rich some time. He makes bricks, you know, now. That is, he superintends the men.”
“Yes, I know,” she answered: and I don’t suppose there was much connected with Hyde she did not know. Looking this way, looking that, she at length began to walk, slowly and painfully, towards Hyde’s gate. The thought had crossed me — why did she not take Kettie away on one of their long expeditions, if she dreaded him so much. But the rheumatism lay upon her still too heavily.
Flinging open the gate, she went across the garden, not making for the proper entrance, but for a lighted room, whose French-window stood open to the ground. Hyde was there, just sitting down to supper.
“Come in with me,” she said, turning her head round to beckon me on.
But I did not choose to go in. It was no affair of mine that I should beard Hyde in his den. Very astonished indeed must he have been, when she glided in at the window, and stood before him. I saw him rise from his chair; I saw the astounded look of old Deborah Preen when she came in with his supper ale in a jug.
What they said to one another, I know not. I did not wish to listen: though it was only natural I should stay to see the play out. Just as natural as it was for Preen to come stealing round through the kidney beans to the front-garden, an anxious look on her face.
“What does that old gipsy woman want with the young master, Mr. Ludlow? Is he having his fortune told?”
“I shouldn’t wonder. Wish some good genius would tell mine!”
The interview seemed to have been short and sharp. Ketira was coming out again. Hyde followed her to the window. Both were talking at once, and the tail of the dispute reached our ears.
“I repeat to you that you are totally mistaken,” Hyde was saying. “I have no ‘designs,’ as you put it, on your daughter, good or bad; no design whatever. She is perfectly free to go her own way, for me. My good woman, you have no cause to adjure me in that solemn manner. Sacred? ‘Under Heaven’s protection?’ Well, so she may be. I hope she is. Why should I wish to hinder it? I don’t wish to, I don’t intend to. You need not glare so.”
Ketira, outside the window now, turned and faced him, her great eyes fixed on him, her hand raised in menace.
“Do not forget that. I have warned you, Hyde Stockhausen. By the Great Power that regulates all things, human and divine, I affirm that I speak the truth. If harm in any shape or of any kind comes to my child, my dear one, my only one, through you, it will cost you more than you would now care to have foretold.”
“Bless my heart!” faintly ejaculated old Preen. And she drew away, and backed for shelter into the bean rows.
Ketira brushed against me as she passed, taking no notice whatever; left the garden, and limped away. Hyde saw me swinging through the gate.
“Are you there, Johnny?” he said, coming forward. “Did you hear that old gipsy woman?” And in a few words I told him all about it.
“Such a fuss for nothing!” he exclaimed. “I’m sure I wish no ill to the girl. Kettie’s very nice; bright as the day: and I thought no more harm of strolling a bit with her in the moonlight than I should think it if she were my sister.”
“But she is not your sister, you see, Hyde. And old Ketira does not like it.”
“I’ll take precious good care to keep Kettie at arm’s-length for the future; make you very sure of that,” he said, in a short, fractious tone. “I don’t care to be blamed for nothing. Tell Todhetley I can’t spare the time to go fishing to-morrow — wish I could. Good-night.”
A fine commotion. Church Dykely up in arms. Kettie had disappeared.
About a fortnight had gone on since the above night, during which period Ketira’s rheumatism took so obstinate a turn that she had the felicity of keeping her bed. And one morning, upon Duffham’s chancing to pay his visit to her before breakfast, for he was passing the hut on his way home from an early patient, he found the gipsy up and dressed, and just as wild as a lioness rampant. Kettie had gone away in the night.
“Where’s she gone to?” naturally asked Duffham, leaning on his cane, and watching the poor woman; who was whirling about like one demented, her rheumatism forgotten.
“Ah, where’s she gone to? — where?” raved old Ketira. “When I lay down last night, leaving her to put the plates away and to follow
me up when she had done it, I dropped asleep at once. All night long I never woke; the pain was easier, all but gone, and I had been well-nigh worn out with it. ‘Why, what’s the time, Kettie?’ I said to her in our own tongue, when I opened my eyes and saw the sun was high. She did not answer, and I supposed she had gone down to get the breakfast. I called, and called; in vain. I began to put my clothes on; and then I found that she had not lain down that night; and — woe’s me! she’s gone.”
Duffham could not make anything of it; it was less in his line than rheumatism and broken legs. Being sharp-set for his breakfast, he came away, telling Ketira he would see her again by-and-by.
And, shortly afterwards, he chanced to meet her. Coming out on his round of visits, he encountered Ketira near Virginia Cottage. She had been making a call on Hyde Stockhausen.
“He baffles me,” she said to the doctor: and Duffham thought if ever a woman’s face had the expression “baffled” plainly written on it, Ketira’s had then. “I don’t know what to make of him. His speech is fair: but — there’s the instinct lying in my heart.”
“Why, you don’t suppose, do you, that Mr. Stockhausen has stolen the child?” questioned Duffham, after a good pause of thought.
“And by whom do you suppose the child has been stolen, if not by him?” retorted the gipsy.
“Nay,” said Duffham, “I should say she has not been stolen at all. It is difficult to steal girls of her age, remember. Last night was fine; the stars were bright as silver: perhaps, tempted by it, she went out a-roaming, and you will see her back in the course of the day.”