“It’s in my desk,” Budgen said, speaking politely for him; and he went and fetched the glove from the corner. “It’s well we are honest, Missie, for it’s the second time you’ve dropped it here.”
“Shiftless folk women are, aren’t they?” she answered, rewarding him with a bewitching smile. “Thank you for saving it, Budgen.”
“It came off your namesake, I guess,” he said, handling the glove with knowledge. It was a dainty French thing.
“I’ve no doubt it did. When will she be in, Budgen?”
But Budgen shook his head. “What you don’t know you can’t tell,” he said pithily. “There’s things as easy dropped as your glove, Miss Peggy, and no picking of them up again.”
The girl pouted. “I should have thought that I might be trusted!” she said. “My own boat, Budgen!”
“Ay, ay, Missie, in a manner o’ speaking, your boat. But other men’s lives. Little tongues carry far, and least said is soonest mended. What with the smugglers and others news passes too easy — it’s across in a night, and you none the wiser. But never you fret, I’ll send you word when she’s sighted, Miss. And failing all you’ll hear the bells soon enough if so be as she brings in a prize, as I hope.”
“She’s not been lucky lately, has she?”
Budgen’s face fell. “No, Miss, you never said a truer word,” he replied. “All going out and nothing coming in, that’s what it’s been. But no fault o’ Copestake’s, I will say that. He shivers and shakes does Ozias, worse than the luff o’ the sail going about.
But he’s good stuff, is Ozias-wonderful good stuff.
Staunch as the best bit of oak in my yard, though he do complain amazing. Amazing, he complain’s, does Ozias.”
CHAPTER III
THE crown of the headland that drops down on one side to the scrambling street of Beremouth, and on the other falls by a steep and gorse-clad slope to Budgen’s Cove, is divided into two halves. On the eastern sits, like a couchant lion, the old Norman church with its squat tower and its spacious graveyard, the latter bounded seawards by a low wall, and within the wall by a walk that owing to its open outlook is a favourite lounge of the Beremouth folk. They climb up to it and walk on it on summer evenings. The western half is occupied by the Rectory, its gardens and outbuildings. These are jealously walled-in, and are accessible only through a frowning portal almost as old as the church.
Between the rectory and the graveyard, and so bisecting the summit of the hill, a cobbled lane runs past the Rectory entrance. It ends abruptly in an arch of graceful, fretted stonework said by tradition to be the window of an old chapel, of which some fragments of the side-walls survive. Ivy has grown over the lower part, and at some period a stone bench has been set there, so placed that a man may sit at his ease and with his elbow on the sill of the window look down on the shifting sea. The arch is in a line with the low churchyard wall, but the seat though open to the lane is shielded from observation on the churchyard side by the ivied side-wall. The place is public, but it abuts on the Rectory, the Rectory gardener clips the ivy and from time to time sweeps out the floor, and in Dr. Portnal’s day at any rate few were venturesome enough to encroach on it, or to sit there in the daylight.
For proudly as the Rectory looks down on the little seaport huddled beneath its windows, it does not look down upon it with one-half of the aloofness or the stately dignity with which the Rector of that day regarded his flock. The Reverend Augustus Portnal, D.D., Rector of Beremouth with Chiddingfold, Vicar of Ipe and Downton, and Rural Dean of Ipe — and on his lay side Chairman of the Beremouth Justices and of the Quorum — was in his own estimation, and indeed in the estimation of others, no common person. He was a power not only in Beremouth but beyond it. Accustomed through a long series of years to have his own way and to see that he had it, he had learned how to secure it at the least cost and with the least exertion. He was not a violent man; he plumed himself on obtaining his ends by a gentle force never relaxed, as of a soft and irresistible pillow that, as some had learned to their cost, drove an opponent to the edge before he awoke to his danger. Suave and bland, he preached this gospel to others, and among his fellows he had a name for it. If a son was inclined to be wild, or a brother magistrate had tripped, it was to the Rector that men turned for advice, and he gave it ex cathedra — and it was good advice. Hence, gifted with a strong will, he had come to feel no doubt of himself and some little contempt for others. Nor had it ever occurred to him that tried in his own case the policy for which he was famed might fail him and the methods which he preached to others prove to be beyond his strength — or his patience.
He was not a bad man, but success had somewhat corroded his nature. In the imposition, the daily imposition of a will that had not for many a year been seriously challenged he had come to believe in himself to a high and perhaps a dangerous degree, and in that belief his neighbours’ appreciation had encouraged him. Handsome, clever, and worldly, he was as much esteemed by the equals who shared his opinions and valued his advice as he was respected by those below him, who by turns admired and hated him.
His bland address blinded many to his arbitrary quality, but it could not blind those who shared his home and his daily life. Augusta, his favourite child — Augusta of the gracious smile, as she was dubbed by more than one jealous mother — understood him, and, perhaps because she had received a double portion of his spirit, her sister’s as well as her own, played up to him both finely and sincerely. She partook of his prejudices and found in his suave force something akin to herself. But with his younger daughter it was otherwise. From whatever source Peggy had derived her recalcitrance, she had not only failed to accept her father’s measures of value, but she had come to feel, as she grew older, a waxing temptation to rebel against the authority that enforced them. To do so was difficult, for that against which she was moved to revolt was not a tyranny harshly and unpleasantly displayed It was rather, as has been said, a slow pressure which her wilful temperament and generous instincts inspired her to resist, even while she felt it to be a force with which it was almost impossible to cope.
There had been times, and many times, when the girl had blamed herself for the feeling; when she had set down her lack of sympathy with her father and sister to the absence of some amiable quality in herself. But as there are bodies that instinctively reject certain drugs, and as a slow compression begets a steady but increasing reaction, so had Peggy’s discontent and the temptation to rebel grown with time; until, reinforced of late by a more powerful instinct, they had brought the girl to a point at which in her wisdom or folly she was ready to go all lengths.
For whatever she had not inherited from her father she had derived from him a strong will; so that, with a motive sufficiently potent, and the knowledge that what she desired was forbidden, an explosion had come to be but a matter of time.
Love, pity, and a generous indignation, these, choked down and smouldering, had a little before this supplied the motive; circumstances had applied the match, and the flame was ready to burst forth.
It was in such a temper that a few days after Sir Albery’s visit Peggy left the house before eight one morning — a fair April morning, fresh and sunny. She had only to go some thirty yards to reach the arch that on that spring day framed so fair a view of the sea; and surely, it might be argued, to visit it at that innocent hour could import no harm. But seated on the stone bench below the arch, and sombrely brooding on the bright shimmering surface and the play of light and shadow below him, was a young man.
He did not turn at the girl’s approach nor look at her. Nor did he move. Yet he must have heard her coming, for he spoke. “Why did you summon me?” he asked, and his tone could hardly have been less gracious. “Why have you come? It is madness, madness, Peggy!” he continued, his voice harsh with pain. “You might as well cast yourself over this cliff as come to meet such an outcast as I am! It is folly! ““I do not think so,” she said. She laid her hand on his shoulder as she spoke.
/> He did not shake off the hand, but he moved impatiently under its pressure. “You are disgracing yourself!” he cried vehemently and almost savagely. “I say it again, you might as well throw yourself down from this window as come to meet such as I!”
“I do not think so,” she repeated in the same steadfast tone, though there were tears in her eyes.
“You come only out of pity.” He seemed to be minded to say everything that might hurt her.
But that she would not bear. “No!” she said. “No! You know — you know, Charles, that that is not true!”
“A one-armed cripple!” he continued bitterly. “A disgraced, drunken, broken man! A penniless wreck dependent on his father for the bread he eats and the roof that covers him! You know, you know that you should not have summoned me! You should not have come. You should not have seen me again. It was bad enough and mad enough before, hopeless and impossible. But now there is not a serving wench in Beremouth who would be seen with me in the street, who would not be ashamed to walk with me where she could be seen, who would not shun me like the plague! And you—”
“I will be seen with you,” she cried, lifting her head proudly. “And I will walk with you. I will go with you whenever you say the word, Charles.”
“And be ruined!”
“Then I will be ruined with you.”
He broke down at last. “Poor, poor girl!” he said. He did not turn, but he put his hand behind him and found her hand.
“No, I am rich,” she said. “Rich in your love.”
“And I?” His tone grew hard again. “What am I? Have you thought of that? If I suffer this, what shall I be? What shall I seem to be when we are discovered, as one of these days we must be discovered? What? The meanest, the most selfish, the most despicable of wretches! My own father will cry shame on me, ay, even my poor, patient father, who has never uttered one word of reproach or of anger, who has stood by my side and shared my disgrace, though I have robbed him of the last hope of an unhappy life! But you — if I let you do this, if I drag you down with me, even he will call me scoundrel, and cast me off!”
“He shall not cast me off!” she cried, tears in her voice.
That penetrated at last the hard crust that had formed about his heart, and “Oh, Peggy, Peggy!” he sobbed, and he broke down, hiding his face on the shoulder that rested on the ledge of the window, while his whole frame heaved. “You are high as heaven above me, and shall I drag you down to hell? Shall I disgrace and beggar you? Never, never, my dear! It is done, but it can still be undone! We must part to-day, and you must never, never come here again. It was all madness — sheer, utter madness before. Your father would never have consented — never have permitted it. And now to love me is to lower yourself to the very dust, to tie yourself to a banned, broken, hopeless man!”
“But my man,” the girl said, the tears running down her cheeks. “My man, now and always!”
“To a drunkard!” he repeated with passion.
“No!” she protested, her voice rising. “No, Charles, not that! For that will not happen again. You will promise me that much, I know? You will do that for me, and I ask no more. You will promise me that?”
“Promise?” he said bitterly. “What is the worth of my promise?”
“It was but once,” she said. “And you have paid for it, oh, so sorely you have paid for it! And it is done and done with. Whatever we decide to do, you will promise me that? I sent for you, I came to you for that; and to tell you that my love is unaltered and unalterable, Charles. I will not leave you until you give me your word, though I stay here until they find me with you! I have no care, no anxiety, no fear but that.”
He did not answer her. He sat where she had found him, looking over the sea, in the same hopeless attitude in which she had discovered him. He had not once turned to look at her, and she had stood through all with her patient hand on his shoulder. At last, “You know what my father is?” he muttered.
“I know, dear,” she said, and her voice betrayed her distress. “I know.”
“It is in the blood.”
“If you give way to it. But you are young, Charles, while he is old.”
“And you — my God, you would take my word?”
“If you love me.”
“But if I cannot? Oh, Peggy,” he cried, “if I cannot trust myself!”
“I have more faith in you,” she said firmly.
And still he tried to evade her. “But it is all madness!” he said. “Madness! It is all useless, hopeless, futile! We can never be anything to one another.”
“I will come to you when you call me.”
“But if I — oh, my dear!” It was the cry of one in anguish. “How can I! How can I call you? How can I be so wicked, so selfish?”
“Then I will wait,” she replied, “if it be ten years. I look to wait. And see, dear,” she continued, “I ask but this one thing. You cannot refuse to give it me. You cannot if you love me.”
He groaned. “If I promise and do not keep it?” he muttered.
“I trust you.”
“But if I do not?”
“Then — then, I am of all women the most unhappy! But you will keep it.”
He had no confidence in himself, and he still hesitated. “Nothing can come of it,” he said.
“Everything can come of it,” she persisted. “Everything, if you give me your word and keep it.” He was silent, wrestling with himself. But at last and reluctantly he promised her.
“Now,” she said, and her face as she stood over him was radiant, “I care not what comes. Now nothing matters — nothing! I am as iron that the needle turns from. They may prick and prick, but I shall feel nothing. I can bear all now, Charles. We may have to suffer and to wait, but—”
“But Wyke may not wait,” he suggested. He had been sorely tried, and he would not hope. Though he loved — and never had he loved her as he loved her at this moment — he could not refrain from tormenting her — and himself.
“You need have no fear of that!” She answered for it hardily. “I will see to that!” For she was his opposite, she feared nothing. “No Sir Albery, and no twenty Sir Alberys, shall rob me of my love, or come between thee and me.”
He was melted — who could resist her? And presently in faltering accents, for there was one thing which she did fear — that he might have made up his mind to leave Beremouth — she questioned him about his plans, and what he was going to do. When he told her of the work that he had found at Budgen’s, poor and humble as it was and as she knew it to be, she laughed and clapped her hands. “Oh, I am glad!” she said. “I feared that you would go away. I would have borne even that, and waited and hoped. But this — oh, I am thankful. It is noble of you!”
“I could not leave my father,” he said, “I owe him too much. You do not know him. You have heard only ill of him. But he is the best, the most loving, the most patient of men. I should be a poor creature if I left him to save myself shame, to escape that which I read in every man’s face and every woman’s eye.”
“But never in mine!” she declared, her face alight. “Never! Never! I honour you for it!”
“It is well” — he could not even now expel the bitterness from his tone—” that there is anything you can honour me for!”
“Is there not this?” She pressed his empty sleeve. “And some day you will be righted, you will be reinstated! I know it, I feel sure of it. And I shall live to see it and be proud — proud of you.”
“If you are looking forward to that—”
“It is nothing to me! Nothing. But for the world’s sake! And it will come, be sure.”
“In the next world,” he said sadly. He was without hope, and he could not spare her. “Anyway, dear, we must not meet after this.”
“Until there is a change,” she agreed. And she sighed. “If there is, if anything happens, and I must see you, I will loop the window-curtain. Yesterday I was afraid that you might not see it.”
“An honest man would
not have. But, God forgive me, I have only you and my father, and I had to see you once if it was but to say good-bye and — and God bless you, dear!”
“I knew you would come. I saw your flag when I went to the Cove. And now I must go. But I go happy, for I have your word, Charles.”
He turned at that, and at last and for a long moment, while she held his hand in both of hers, they looked into one another’s eyes, anguish in his, courage and a loving assurance in hers. He pressed her hand, and with a sob that she could not restrain she tore herself away. She sped to the Rectory archway, she turned an instant and flung him a passionate look, a last gesture, and she was gone.
Two minutes later — for young as she was Peggy had all a woman’s power of masking her thoughts under a fair show — she was again a part of the life of the house. When the bell for prayers rang and she glided into the dining-room by one door as the servants filed in through the other, her lowered eyes and composed air would have deceived the closest observer. They seemed a fitting tribute, and no more, to the rite that called the household together.
CHAPTER IV
BUT if Peggy could mask her feelings at need she was not the only one at the Rectory who had feelings, and could hide them. When, some six months before this, Sir Albery Wyke’s curricle had begun to be noticed, waiting in the Rectory Lane, it had been to Augusta’s charms that his visits were attributed. She was the elder sister and the beauty, no assembly in the county was perfect without her, and excellent match as Sir Albery was, the turn of Augusta’s swanlike neck, her regular features and the sweetness of her smile were held to deserve no less. The thing had gone so far that more than one — Charlotte Bicester among others — had offered their sly congratulations. When Sir Albery, therefore, had first hung in the wind, and then had gone on the other tack, in obvious pursuit of Peggy, Augusta had felt the unfairness of the shift. Her pride had smarted; and though, so far, Wyke had not spoken, though the handkerchief remained in his hand, the elder sister doubted not that it would be cast, and that, restive and wayward as Peggy was, it would be taken up. Her father, she knew, would see to that.
Complete Works of Stanley J Weyman Page 745