Princess Puck

The four roads which met at Sales Cross were the four which went everywhere in the district. “You can’t go anywhere without going by Sales Cross,” said Bella, basing her opinion on the number of people who had passed while she was waiting for Bill and Polly on that April afternoon. None of these travellers were mentioned by name except Mr. Jack Dawson, who could hardly be said to have passed since he was still there when the pony-chaise came in sight. He looked, too, as if he had meant to stay some time, seeing that he had dismounted from his horse and was standing, with the bridle over his arm, so deeply absorbed in conversation that he did not notice the approaching carriage. Bella explained later that he got down to help her free herself from the long bramble she had twisted round her ankles while gathering primroses a few minutes earlier. From the conversation which ensued between the two elder cousins Bill gathered that Jack Dawson had had something to do with Bella’s second Sunday afternoon at Ashelton being less dull than the first.

But she did not listen very attentively; Polly’s eloquence had not much interest for her, especially since, during the drive from Gurnett, she had settled her own differences with her cousin, telling exactly what she pleased of the doings at Wood Hall. There had been a battle royal during that drive conducted with a good many words, and, it is to be feared, some vigour of expression on both sides. But it had its advantages, it was the first time that Bill and Polly had crossed swords as equals, and each understood the other the better for doing so; also it gave Polly a further indication that Bill was growing up,—“Though not in the way we should wish,” as she said to Bella with melancholy dignity. “No, Bella,” she went on as her listener showed no signs of distress at the news, “Bill is not a lady, and nothing will ever make her one.”

To which Bill agreed, adding: “I don’t believe I have got all the instincts and so on, and I’m sure I don’t feel things the way I ought. I suppose I have got a little bad blood somewhere.”

“Somewhere!” Polly’s sniff was impressive. “With your father—well! we need say no more.”

“Considering what you have already said,” replied Bill, “I think you need not.”

Bella wondered what had been said, but she did not hear, for soon afterwards they reached Haylands, where Theresa declared herself delighted to receive the two visitors instead of one. Later on, she heard of Bill’s other doings, and with them she was not so well pleased. She was distressed as well as angry when she was told about the visit to Wood Hall.

Polly had been much opposed to telling her anything about it. “Leave it alone,” she counselled; “it can’t be altered now. There will only be a great fuss, and how shall I look for letting you go?”

But Bill disagreed. It would not be honest, she said.

“None of it was honest,” retorted Polly; and certainly the part she took upon herself was open to question, although, no doubt, it was the one best fitting the situation. “I thought it better to let her go to-day,”—so she concluded a most able explanation of affairs to Theresa. “You see, to-day I was with her; another day she might have been alone. She was certain to go, sooner or later, with or without me,—she is so dreadfully obstinate—and so I was determined that she should go under the most favourable circumstances.”

Theresa agreed, and blamed Bill severely; but Bella remarked: “You stayed outside for her good, I suppose, Polly?”

“I stayed outside,” Polly replied with dignity, “because she would not let me come in without a scene.”

The truth of this statement was obvious and effective. Indeed Polly’s manner while at Haylands was altogether effective; more especially when, on their first arrival, they found Mrs. Dawson talking to Theresa on business connected with the Church Missionary Society. Mrs. Dawson had the cause of missions very much at heart; she attended many meetings and paid many visits in connection with it, with what exact result to the cause no one knew, but doubtless it was beneficial. The principal results of the call on Theresa was entirely unconnected with missions, being the postponement of Bill’s confession for half an hour and the social opportunity afforded Polly.

Polly made such good use of the occasion that Mrs. Dawson, a rather imposing personage, unbent to quite a rare extent. She even hoped that Miss Hains would be able to come to her tea-party next day with her cousin, Miss Alardy. Polly regretted she could not do so, since she was unfortunately obliged to return to Wrugglesby in the morning.

“And I really did regret it too,” she informed the others when they were discussing Mrs. Dawson late that evening; “I wish I had been staying on here.”

“We could not both have gone,” said Bill, for whom the invitation had already been accepted; “there’s only the one skirt, you know.”

“It is my skirt.”

“But you have lent it to Bill,” Bella said; “besides she is the youngest, and has never been to anything yet.”

Polly did not consider this a very valid argument, though, as she said, it really did not matter since she could not stay any longer at Ashelton.

It was at bedtime that this discussion took place. Bella was to sleep with Bill, and Polly had come into their room to brush her hair and edify them with her views on several subjects. The fact that she did so in Bill’s presence showed plainly that she recognised her as something like an equal.

“I will tell you all about the tea-party,” Bill said, feeling rather greedy in that the festivity had fallen to her share.

“Yes, but you will not be able to do as I should,” Polly answered regretfully. “I made an impression on Mrs. Dawson this afternoon; I should go on making one if I were to see her again, a good impression.”

Bill laughed irreverently.

“Don’t be rude, Bill.” Polly’s manner was momentarily that of an elder and teacher, but almost immediately she dropped it and returned to the terms of familiar intercourse. She at least possessed the merit of adapting herself quickly to altered circumstances and relationships.

“My dear girls,” she said, sitting down in the one easy-chair the room boasted, “one has to make good impressions, one never knows when they may be useful.”

“You have no use for Mrs. Dawson,” Bella said quickly.

“No, she does it to keep her hand in, for pure pleasure and practice, and because she can’t help it. She would try to make a good impression on us if there were no one else.”

This was Bill’s opinion, but Polly only said, “You are a silly child,” and began to put her hair into curl-papers, and at the same time giving the cousins her views on many things, notably on matrimony. On this subject she had very decided opinions which she did not at all mind expressing with a degree of frankness which shocked Bella.

“You are horrid, Polly!” she exclaimed at last.

“I have the courage of my opinions,” Polly retorted; “I say what others think.”

“They do not think such things.”

Bill, who had hitherto paid small attention to the conversation, debated this point in her mind as she sat perched on the bed in her favourite position. “I don’t believe people think much at all,” was her conclusion.

Polly told her that she knew nothing about it, but, nothing daunted, she went on to explain herself, “They don’t think; they do things because the things come along, do them by instinct, or impulse, or something; they don’t half know what will happen. I am nearly sure they don’t think about the before and after. Nobody can see the real beginnings and ends, and some people don’t seem able to see even a little bit to right and left,—I wonder why.”

Neither of the elder cousins was prepared to go into the question, Bella possibly because she herself belonged to the class who cannot look before and after, Polly, certainly because she wished to discuss more practical matters. By way of putting an end to Bill’s speculations she introduced the topic, suggested by her previous remarks, of their own future.

“Say that you, Bella,” she said, “marry money,—”

“I sha’n’t do any such thing!”

“Oh, well—” and then followed another exposition of Polly’s views which Bill lost little by not heeding. She had picked up the fairy-book which she had taken to bed with her a few nights ago, and had become too absorbed in its pages to hear what Polly said until the mention of her own name arrested her attention.

“And what is to become of Bill?” said Polly, who had by this time settled the future for the rest of them.

“There is the school she could help—”

“The school!” said Polly disdainfully. “What good would Bill be, what can she do?”

“Nothing,” the culprit answered, before Bella could speak in her defence. “It is quite true, I should be of no use. I don’t know what I could do, unless, perhaps, be a general servant; they are scarce now, and I can work like a steam-engine. I never get tired and I can get up ever so early—you should just see how I can scrub and iron, and I can cook a little too.”

“You ridiculous child!” laughed Bella. “Do you suppose we should ever let you do that?”

“She might do worse,” was Polly’s opinion.

“She could not do that,” Bella replied emphatically; “neither Theresa nor I would allow it. And Polly, you might as well say good-night now; we want to go to sleep.”

Polly took her candle, casting a grotesque shadow of herself and her curl-papers on the low ceiling. “Good-night,” she said with severity. “I am glad you can sleep; I don’t find it so easy when I look forward to what must happen.”

“Don’t look,” Bill called after her, “except at your candle; look at that, and mind you don’t spill the grease.”

None the less Bill lay awake a long time, thinking not only of the future but also of the post which might almost have been hers that day were it not for the aunts and cousins. Also she thought of Bella and her future, and from that she mentally went to Jack Dawson, who appeared a very pleasant sort of person, and to Mrs. Dawson, who did not, though in Bill’s opinion she was an entertaining one. At least she had thought so when she sat meekly silent during the lady’s call that afternoon.

On the next day she had another opportunity of studying Mrs. Dawson, for that was the day of the state tea-party which Polly had so deeply regretted missing. Polly and Bella had gone back to Wrugglesby, and Bill was left in undisputed possession of the skirt. It was not new, neither was it in the latest fashion, but Bill thought it very beautiful, as she contemplated herself in her little mirror on Tuesday evening. Of course one needed the best clothes the family could muster for such an occasion as the present; the tea-party at Grays, Mrs. Dawson’s house, was really quite an important social function besides being the first which Bill had ever attended. She was somewhat impressed and tremendously interested by everything, the solemn mahogany grandeur of the bedroom where she and Theresa took off their wraps, the spotless whiteness of the linen covers of the stair-carpets, the giant hat-stand by which Robert waited for them in the hall.

The drawing-room was large; the main part of the furniture dated from the Sixties, the wonderful blue of the upholstery being unmistakably of that era. But the sundry tides of fashion that have swept through the land since then had left a few deposits even in this conservative house: some peacock-feathers and a silk-covered palm-leaf, a present possibly in the decorative days; a small black table, a relic of æstheticism; a rococo photograph-screen of later date,—a few such things could be seen here and there. “They were given to her,” thought Bill gazing earnestly at the immovable black-silk dignity of Mrs. Dawson; “they were given by her.” This was Bill’s decision when her eye lighted on a girl standing near the hostess. The girl was tall and muscular, turned four and twenty, athletically built, and dressed in the fashion of the day, the fashion which obtains in Ealing and similar exclusive suburbs. Her face, it is true, did not express much, but then other people’s faces do not as a rule express much, and she naturally did not wish to do anything but what everyone else did. She was doubtless an expert at lawn-tennis and hockey, and an authority on the technique of golf. Probably she thought her aunt at Ashelton much behind the times, though, as she informed her friends, she liked staying with her: “It was such a deliciously unsophisticated place still.”

Bill looked at her with interest and at first with some admiration, for to her inexperienced eyes Miss Gladys Dawson was a new and fine specimen of humanity. Miss Gladys Dawson looked at Bill only with a careless curiosity, she found her a little odd, and wondered why she had never seen her at Ashelton before. She also (and here came in the insult) looked at the skirt. A light blazed up in Bill’s eyes, a light that was almost like a red flame, and there rose in her heart a great wrath and a feminine desire to pay back the offence, to criticise in some way the offender and bring ridicule on her. Bill had never felt the sentiment before, being in the main indifferent to opinions of all sorts. Miss Dawson’s glance on herself would have passed unnoticed; she cared nothing for criticism and had a very poor opinion of herself,—but the skirt was another matter, Polly’s cherished skirt which she had made with so much labour out of two old silk dresses of Miss Brownlow’s! Bill felt that the look, half amused, half supercilious, wholly, indescribably feminine in its critical survey, was an insult to the absent Polly and cried aloud for vengeance. “I wish I could do something,” she thought vindictively. “I wonder what she would mind most.”

It was now six o’clock, and there was a general move to the dining-room for tea. Mrs. Dawson had always dined at two and taken tea at six, and she always would do so as long as she was able to dine and take tea at all. She made no difference for visitors, except in the quantity of food prepared, and in that respect she certainly planned lavishly. The table that night was loaded with the dainties which have gone out of fashion with six o’clock teas. Bill noticed everything carefully, trying to remember all she could for the sake of her absent cousins. There was a wonderful table-cloth, she observed, of fine unbleached linen whereon drab dogs hunted drab stags over a greyish ground much interspersed with drab trees whose leafy branches met in the centre of the table and were hidden under the pot of a pink azalea. Arranged everywhere, almost crowding each other off, were cakes both hot and cold, so many of them that Bill could not taste them all. There were also several preserves, notably one of pineapple, very sticky, very difficult of manipulation, inspiring one (if that one were Bill) with a desire to take the pot and a spoon to the store-room and eat in comfort unobserved. “It wants practice,” Bill decided as she watched the ease with which Mr. Johnson, who might reasonably be expected to have had practice, managed the pineapple. “I expect he has been here heaps of times before,” she thought, and no doubt she was right for he seemed much at his ease. Mr. Perry, on the other hand, was never quite able to forget the grocer’s shop when he sat down with Mrs. Dawson; he talked nervously and rapidly all through the meal, forgetting his tea in his anxiety to be polite, and remembering that he wanted a third cup when everyone had finished and the tea-pot was dry. Bill felt sorry for Mrs. Dawson when she saw her pouring tepid water through the tea-pot so as to supply the late comer, sorrier still for Mr. Perry when he received his large shallow cup and made manful efforts to drink its contents while the guests waited for him.

Bill sat next to Mrs. Johnson, a placid matron, not much given to general conversation; and as she returned becoming answers to the few remarks made to her, she was voted by her neighbour to be “a nicely brought-up girl.” Gladys Dawson, of course, was different; being older, and “from London,” she was expected to talk, and she did do so; in fact she took the lion’s share of the entertainment upon herself. Mrs. Dawson was not averse to this, but, as Bill noticed, neither was Gladys. “She likes it,” thought the silent watcher; and there came into Bill’s mind, by reason of the insult offered to Polly’s skirt, a desire which is a natural instinct in most of her more developed sisters,—the desire to outshine the other woman.

“It would not be easy,” Bill thought, feeling that she did not know much about the subjects of greatest interest to the ladies present; but then, as she soon found, Miss Dawson did not either, and so wisely confined herself to entertaining the men. Bill did not feel very hopeful of her own powers in that direction, and before she could make any definite plans her thoughts were interrupted by Mr. Dane’s entrance into the drawing-room to which everyone had now returned. Mr. Dane never joined these parties till after tea, on the excuse of parish-work. After the little disturbance created by his entrance had subsided, and he had shaken hands with everybody, Bill found that he had taken the chair next to her. She knew that he wanted to hear if she had been to Wood Hall, and she was quite ready to tell him. It was easy enough to do this unnoticed in the buzz of general conversation; and accordingly she told him how she and Polly had driven to Wood Hall, how Polly had waited outside, and how Mr. Harborough had laid no fresh conditions upon her. This was all very well, but it was not so well when she went on to talk of Mr. Harborough’s loneliness, and so, incidentally, of her suggestion of a paid companion, and his offer of the post to herself. “Of course he did not mean it really,” she concluded; “it was only in fun, but for a moment I thought he meant it.”

“What made you think he did not mean it?”

“What he said afterwards;” and she related all that followed. “He meant he would have to marry me before they would let me come,” she said, laughing a little.

But Mr. Dane did not laugh. “Yes, marry him,” he said, “marry him for Wood Hall, for his name and position,—would you do that?”

“I did not have the chance; he did not ask me really; it was all fun.”

“Have you told your cousins of the fun?”

The old man was looking earnestly at her, waiting for her answer, and she hesitated before she gave it. She plainly heard Mrs. Perry saying, “I never had a sitting of eggs from the Possets turn out badly,” before she said, “No, I have not told them.” And she wondered why she had not, and why she never would, for she knew then that she never would.

“If he had meant it, would you have taken him and Wood Hall and the name, and the little you know, and the infinitely more which you do not know?”

“No,” she answered frankly. “I would like Wood Hall immensely; I would do a good deal for a place like that—I don’t believe I would be too particular what; but I could not marry him. I could not marry anyone; I could not possibly be cooped up with one person. I believe I would like more than anything else to be a gipsy and wander from place to place, mending chairs and stealing fowls.”

Mr. Dane did not reprove the lax morality of this speech; all he said was: “Then I suppose you are never going to see Mr. Harborough again?”

“No,” answered Bill, and as she did so Mr. Johnson, who had caught the name, tried to draw his rector into a discussion of Sunday’s enormities. But Mr. Dane would not be drawn; he was polite, but firm and most uncommunicative. The only opinion he would give was that he believed Mr. Harborough’s proceedings were not actionable, since he himself had given consent for the mass to be finished.

“But I am sure we could prosecute,” Mr. Johnson persisted. “I was speaking to Stevens,—Stevens of Wrugglesby you know—about it; he says it is quite possible to prosecute for brawling and creating a disturbance in church during divine service, if for nothing else.”

“No doubt he is right, but I do not think the churchwardens will wish to prosecute. The case would offer several nice points to a lawyer, for, though the mass was begun without our permission, and so was technically a disturbance, the offence was partly condoned by the permission to continue which was afterwards given. Moreover, though our church is of course a church of England as by law established, the Harborough chapel is held on a very old tenure which it would be necessary to understand clearly before any move could be made in the matter. I don’t mean to say we could not prosecute: I dare say we could; but I hardly think it is necessary. What do you think?”

Mr. Johnson almost thought it was, on account of the precedent: “Solely on account of the precedent; it might occur again.”

“I do not think it will,” Mr. Dane answered, just in time to prevent Bill declaring the same thing warmly. Then someone began to sing and they all listened, placidly or otherwise according to their natures. When the song was over, Bill, finding Mr. Johnson’s attention diverted elsewhere, turned to her neighbour for information on a subject which had puzzled her since her first visit to Wood Hall.

“You know all about this part of the country,” she said. “Perhaps you can tell me if it is true that a good many years ago a body was carried by night from Corbycroft to the little church in Wood Hall park.”

“Yes, certainly it is true; but what makes you ask? Who has told you of it?”

“Mr. Harborough, but he did not say much; is it a secret?”

“No, oh no; some of the old folks at Gurnett still tell the tale, though there are not many now who can tell much except from hearsay. It was not much talked about at the time, and is pretty well forgotten now.”

He spoke as if the subject had long lost its interest for him, but to Bill it was all fresh; she felt that her romance was becoming exciting again. “Who was it?” she asked. “Who were they going to bury?”

“Roger Corby, the old Squire he was called, though he was not squire of Gurnett. He died at Corbycroft, and he died very much in debt. His servants and—and some other people believed that his body would, according to a barbarous old practice, be arrested for debt, so they removed it by night to the church in Wood Hall park.”

“And was it arrested?”

“No, and I do not believe there was any likelihood that it would have been. Long ago bodies were sometimes arrested, legally or illegally,—I do not know which—but so late as that—it was in 1833—it was more than improbable.”

“But they must have believed it,” Bill objected; “they must have thought it would happen.”

“Yes, but the servants were ignorant, and the girl, the Squire’s granddaughter, was a child of thirteen, headstrong, daring, imaginative; she heard the servants’ chatter and believed it. The thing was practically her doing. She was fond of her grandfather, and there was no one to take charge at his death; her father was abroad and she and the old butler managed everything. She always did as she liked, and grew up as she pleased, with no one to thwart her.”

Bill wondered if Mr. Dane had known the granddaughter, or if this too was only part of the local tale; she would have liked to ask him but thought that perhaps she ought not, as the last words scarcely seemed addressed to her. She contented herself with inquiring, “Did you live here then?”

“No,” he roused himself with an effort. “No; I was not born in this part of the country and at that time I was a lad at school; a little lad I must have been, for I am younger than Harborough.”

“And he? Did he know at the time? How old was he then?”

“Yes, he knew; he must have known, for he was at home when the thing happened.”

There were more questions Bill wanted to ask, but she was not able to do so for at that moment Miss Dawson’s well-trained soprano informed the company that she was “a monkey on a stick.”

By the time she had reached the end of her song Mr. Perry had claimed the rector’s attention, and Bill was left to meditate on the half-told story until Mrs. Dawson asked her with awful politeness for a little music. Theresa had warned her that this would occur, telling her to bring her music in anticipation. Bill had obediently brought it, making up her mind to play one of her pieces if required, but now when the time came she did no such thing. She cast a quick glance at Miss Dawson, who was now talking to Gilchrist Harborough, and thinking of the covert sneer at Polly’s skirt, went to the piano in no very Christian frame of mind. “I can sing as well as you,” was the defiance she mentally hurled at the young lady as she sat down to the piano and began to play from memory, or, more correctly speaking, by ear from some half forgotten melody. It was curious music, at first compelling attention by its strangeness, afterwards holding it by a charm of its own,—a love-song of long ago, low, yet with an almost harsh refrain in it, vibrating with a passion at first suppressed, but afterwards breaking forth into a tumult of emotion likely to tingle strangely in the nerves of those who listened.

Silently Mr. Dane rose and went out of the room, closing the door noiselessly after him. At the time Bill’s astonished audience hardly noticed it; afterwards it was said by some of the more severe that he went out to mark his disapproval of the tone and tenor of the song, which was certainly most unbecoming in a young girl. This may have been the case; it obviously was not because his Christian forbearance and courtesy were tried beyond endurance, as sometimes happened, by false notes, for to a musician the rendering of this song left little to be desired. Whatever the reason, Mr. Dane left the drawing-room, and passing through the hall went out by the open garden-door, out into the sweet spring night where the song could not reach him. His lips moved once as he went:

And the strange thing was that these words did not occur in the first part of the song which he had heard, but in the second part which he did not hear, and of which Bill was now singing the last verses.

And between the box-edged borders, where drooping daffodils glimmered in the moonlight, an old man stood and murmured in the ghostly, tearless upheaval of some dead passion: