Princess Puck

Polly always declared she foresaw the end from the very beginning of the affair, and certainly at the outset of Miss Brownlow’s illness she prophesied fatal results; but then she always did foretell the worst, and Bella said she did not believe her, though she sobbed as she said it. But it seemed so impossible: Miss Brownlow only slipped down the last four or five of the cellar-stairs; Jane was getting coals at the time, and declared she saw her and could swear it was not more than five steps. She must have struck her head on the corner at the bottom, for it was so long before she recovered consciousness, and she seemed to so wander in her mind when she did recover. This was before she became very ill; after that took place Polly did not prophesy anything; the cousins only looked at one another in silence.

But before that time Theresa had come. Bella was so intensely relieved by her coming, that she did not for a moment dispute with Polly for the right of bringing her. She sat by Miss Brownlow’s side alone while Polly was away; the room was so dark, for the blinds were pulled down and the day was overcast, that she could barely see to correct the pile of exercise-books before her. As yet the school had not been broken up; but the noise of the children did not seem to disturb Miss Brownlow, hardly even to reach her as she lay in semi-stupor. Neither of the cousins felt it wise to dismiss their pupils lightly, and, notwithstanding Polly’s prophetic warnings, neither really anticipated the worst, or fully realised the serious nature of the accident.

On account of the school Polly was not able to leave Wrugglesby till after four o’clock; but, seeing the grave nature of her errand, she ordered a fly from the Red Lion in spite of Bella’s demur at the extravagance, and drove away in becoming state and solemnity. Bill was working in the garden at the time of the arrival at Haylands; when she went to the pump for water to wash her hands before tea she saw the fly standing in the yard.

“Whose is that?” she asked as she pumped water into a wooden bowl.

Sam, with the milk-pails on his way to the dairy, stood contemplating the object.

“Don’t roightly know,” he said.

Bill carried her bowl to a wooden bench outside the dairy door, brought a large piece of yellow soap from the wash-house, rolled up her sleeves and proceeded to wash; the refinements of life did not at that time greatly trouble her. The man with the pails followed her to the dairy, went in and began pouring the milk into the pans.

“Oi shouldn’t be s’proised if that b’longed to Wazzel,” he said glancing down the yard; “looks loike ’is shay, that do.”

“Wazzel of the Red Lion? Who has come from Wrugglesby?”

“Come fr’ Wrugglesby? Oh, it’s one o’ the Misses’s sisters as come, but I’m not sartin that is Wazzel’s—”

“Which one? Bella, the pretty one?”

“No, the old ’un. Wazzel—”

But Bill had gone with still wet hands to see what had brought Polly to Ashelton. She knew, directly she looked into the room, that there was something wrong, or that Polly was persuading herself there was. There was an air of momentous gravity about Polly, of depressing, dignified solemnity which pervaded the whole room and infected all present. Even the frivolous young maid, who was setting out the tea-things, looked awed and spread the best cloth out of respect for the gravity of the visitor. Robert, who was also there, seemed glum and silent, and Polly was not attempting to entertain him according to her usual manner; she was acting up to the situation and enjoying it proportionately.

“What’s the matter?” Bill asked.

Theresa turned, and Bill knew when she saw her face that there was real trouble.

“Aunt is very ill,” Polly answered, “and I have come for Theresa.”

“Ill?”

“Yes, but not dangerously,” Theresa hastily explained; “at least we hope not,—we are sure it cannot be,—she was quite well a day or two ago. She has had a tumble down-stairs which has shaken her a good deal. It is so difficult for Polly and Bella to nurse her and look after the school too, that they want me to go and help.”

“I see.” Bill was greatly relieved.

“How long has she been ill? How bad is she?”

They told her, Polly characteristically painting the case black, Theresa white. Bill was left to draw her own conclusions, based on the one fact that Polly usually served the truth in the sauce she considered most fitting, and on the other that Theresa really knew very little of the state of the case. In the end she did not know what to think; her fears were half aroused, yet she could not believe matters really were serious; nothing serious had happened within her memory, and it did not seem possible that it could now. That which needed the most consideration, however, was not so much what had happened as the more immediate question of Theresa’s leaving home. This proved difficult to arrange; she hardly knew what to do.

“The dairy needs a lot of management just now,” she said, “and Jessie really is very inexperienced; she has been with us such a little time too.”

“Do you think I could do anything?” Bill asked.

Theresa looked at her doubtfully, but Robert, who was tired of the discussion, said shortly: “Of course she could; there is not such a lot to do. You had better get your things together and go back at once; there’s no need for any more talk about it.”

It was nice of Robert to give permission so readily, even if he did not give it graciously. No doubt Polly thought so, as she cast a quick, comprehending glance at him from the corner of her small dark eyes. “Thank you,” she said; “I’m sure it is very nice of you to spare her; we are so much obliged, so very much. Now, Theresa, you can come with a light heart,—as soon as we have had tea; we may as well wait for that. We must have tea somewhere, and it takes no longer in one place than another.”

So Theresa drove away with Polly, leaving Bill for a day or two only, she said, though in her heart she thought it likely to be longer. Bill also thought it possible, and took over the charge of the house and dairy rather in anticipation of such an event. Taking over the charge was a serious matter in Bill’s opinion; Jessie also found it a serious matter, for with the cheerful and friendly Bill she found herself working as she had never worked before. Bill loved work in all its branches, and somehow those with her usually had to work too, either because they were infected by her energy, or because they could not avoid it; but for some reason they usually worked. Jessie worked now as she never did before or afterwards, until she got a house of her own and a husband to keep.

It must be admitted Bill did a great deal more than there was any necessity to do, a great deal more than Theresa did or expected to be done; the only thing which prevented her from doing yet more was a desire to go on with her gardening. It was one morning when she was hurrying over the last of the butter-making so as to get out to her plants that Mr. Dane came and hindered her awhile. He came to ask if some of the skimmed milk could be sent to Mrs. Hutton, an old woman at Ashelton End. He was going to the front door in the orthodox manner but, hearing Bill singing gaily in the dairy, he went round the end of the house and came to seek her at her work. He knew Theresa had gone to Wrugglesby; all Ashelton knew that, for Miss Minchin, from the vantage-point of her corner window, had seen the fly from the Red Lion drive past. She had kept a careful watch on the road till the same vehicle drove back, even sitting at tea with one eye on the window and the other on the tea-pot, so as to have a really good look at it on its return journey and to see Mrs. Morton and another lady inside.

On account of this sight, doubting that Mrs. Morton could have left her cousin alone at Haylands, thinking that, had she done so, the young creature might be lonely, or want a little help, Miss Minchin set off to see her the very next afternoon. Bill was in the garden at the time, fortunately out of sight of the drawing-room window, when Jessie came to tell her of the visitor.

“What does she want?” Bill asked.

“To see you, Miss. I expect she wants to find out about the Missis, if the truth were known.” Jessie knew Miss Minchin by reputation.

“Well, you could have told her that,” said Bill, loth to leave her gardening.

“But she didn’t ask me. Lor’, miss, she pretends she’s come to see you.”

“To call?” Bill asked, and Jessie nodded.

“Oh!” said Bill delighted, and ran to the pump. She made a back-door toilette and presented herself in the drawing-room quite unconscious of the quantity of loam on her short skirts. Miss Minchin found out all Bill could tell her, offered (and really meant it) any assistance she could give, and had, as she said, “a very nice little chat,” Bill playing hostess most successfully. She went away quite satisfied, told Miss Gruet all she had heard and all she surmised, and at the end of three days everyone in Ashelton and Ashelton End and Brook Ashelton, even including Mr. Dane, knew something of Mrs. Morton’s summons to Wrugglesby. Consequently, when on that sunny April morning the rector heard the vigorous young voice singing in the dairy, he knew that the lady of the house was to be found there.

Bill was singing a perfectly irreproachable hymn, occasionally, when her work became very engrossing, leaving off or perhaps humming a bar or two; but just as Mr. Dane drew near she broke out at the top of her voice so that she did not hear his approach, nor did she know that he was there until he stopped in the doorway.

“Good-morning,” he said.

“Good-morning,” she replied, giving him a large smile of welcome. “Do you want me?”

“Yes, but please don’t let me interrupt you; you look very busy.”

Bill was making butter-pats, and apparently had been churning earlier, for the butter-milk still dripped from her bare elbows. She was standing on a small inverted wash-tub, for the shelves were high and she liked to be well above her work. “I am rather busy,” she said; “come in and sit down, won’t you? That pickle-tub is quite safe; the lid won’t give way.”

The rector came in and sat down, making his request for milk at the same time.

“She shall have some,” Bill said after a moment’s thought. “I will take her some by-and-bye, if that will do; or do you want her to have it earlier?”

Mr. Dane said that would do, though on second thoughts he suggested that, if convenient, he would take the milk himself as he was going to Mrs. Hutton.

Bill mentally rearranged the milk at her disposal and said he could have it now. Had she been Theresa, she would have insisted that the boy should carry the can to the cottage; being Bill she did no such thing, for she had set the boy some weeding which would take all his time. She volunteered to carry it herself as soon as the butter should be done, and would have been pleased to do so. It never occurred to her that the carrying of a milk-can could appear to Mr. Dane in a different light from that in which it did to her; and fortunately she was right.

She went off to find a can, and it took her some few minutes to do so. As she searched, the old man heard her softly complete the interrupted verse of the hymn she had been singing, and the varied richness of her voice struck him forcibly.

“You have a very remarkable voice, my child,” he said when she came back.

Bill coloured a little with pleasure. “I believe I can imitate other sounds better than I can do anything else,” she said; and to illustrate her words she mimicked with rare perfection the liquid recurrent whistle of a thrush in the apple-tree outside the window. “Perhaps it is because I have got a correct ear,” she added, as if apologising for her own skill.

“I think you must have,” he answered, “and a good memory too. You remember what you have once heard perhaps? Yes? Tell me, then, where did you hear the song you sang at Mrs. Dawson’s?”

The old man was looking at her very keenly, almost eagerly. She gave the butter an unnecessary thump as she answered, “I don’t know,” and then added somewhat defiantly, “I never thought they would mind it.”

“Mind it? Who minded it? How did you learn it? Think,—tell me whom you have heard sing it.”

Bill saw that Mr. Dane had found no offence in the song, and being reassured she set herself to answer his question. “I cannot tell you how I came to know it,” she said; “I have never seen the music in print that I can remember. The greater part of the words I found with some letters and things which are kept in an old box at home. When I read them I seemed to recognise them, and remembered the part that was missing,—you know the way I mean, the way you grope things out of your mind. At first I thought I would take the paper away: then I thought I ought not to, so I just learned them by heart. As for the music, it seems to belong to the words—don’t you think so? I can only suppose my father used to sing the song, perhaps very often, and I have remembered it, though in that case it may not be quite right.”

“There was one mistake; you did not repeat the refrain with sufficient accuracy in the latter part of the song.”

“You have heard it before!” Bill exclaimed in astonishment. “You know it too!”

“Yes, I have heard it—many years ago, very many; that is why I wondered how you came to know it; I did not think it had been sung lately.”

He rose as he spoke, and held out his hand for the can. He looked old and weary, yet withal a very fine and courteous gentleman though standing among milk-pans talking to a little dairy-maid. Bill wondered if he had heard the song when he was young, and if it were very long ago. She gave him the milk-can saying, “I will send the same quantity to-morrow.”

“Thank you, thank you, little Mistress Bill. Bill,—it’s a name to fit you.”

She laughed. “Better than Wilhelmina,” she said. “That is ever so much too long; I was called Wilhelmina after my grandmother.”

He stopped on the threshold. For a moment he leaned against the door-post; the lined face looked gray in the shaded light, though perhaps only by reason of it, for he merely said, “Yes, yes, of course, Wilhelmina Alardy,—good-bye,” and so went away with his milk-can.

Wilhelmina Alardy! Of course she was Wilhelmina Alardy; he knew that before. And the other Wilhelmina was her grandmother; of course he had known that too, or at least he almost felt as if he had. Not that she was like, not like at all, not even in face; he could trace no resemblance to the first Wilhelmina, tall and slim and queenly, with her beautiful black hair. Bill’s hair was dark, it is true, but with a glowing, coppery darkness, brown shot with red, a colour of which a man was never sure even when he thought he saw it in her eyes. Wilhelmina’s eyes were different, dark, proud, passionate. Bill’s were not proud, nor were they passionate; but they took possession of a man’s mind; they held an indescribable charm not to be forgotten, they were,—they were other eyes, another face—

Mr. Dane turned abruptly from the painting he was contemplating; he was at home now, his visit to Mrs. Hutton having been an unusually brief one. When he reached home he locked himself in his study so that he should not be disturbed. His housekeeper thought he was busy over his sermon; but if he was, his text was an old portrait taken from a locked drawer, and his subject a beautiful woman, young and proud, to whom the painter had given a milk-white skin and curling black hair. Her gown sloped away on the shoulders in the fashion of forty years ago, and her brow curved softly in that fashion too; but the painter, in spite of a laudable desire to bring the face within the then prevailing standard of beauty, had not been able to flatter the chin out of its imperious waywardness nor the eyes out of their proud unrest.

There was no likeness to Bill in this face of the other Wilhelmina; and yet—this was but one of the looks she had worn—who should say there was not some of her sleeping undeveloped in the girl of to-day? Men know so little of the working of such things. Who could say how many of Wilhelmina’s reckless ancestors had gone to the making of Bill, had revived in Bill, gipsy Bill? Of course she was gipsy; Anthony Alardy was half a gipsy, dark-faced, lawless, part sinner, part saint, knight and churl in one; a child of nature alive with a glowing vitality, impregnated with a magnetism, a charm, a quality without a name, hard to define yet harder still to defy. To this day the man who sat with the old portrait in his hand could recall, ay, and acknowledge, the charm, even though he owed to it so much of sorrow and dishonour in the long ago. And the voice! He remembered the voice too; the musician in him could never forget it, for he would never hear such another. He might hate it,—he did hate it, all the man in him hated it—but the musician could not, and could never forget.

Red is the rose thou hast bound in thy hair.

That night there were red roses in her hair, he remembered,—how he remembered! And the song—what music, what passion of melody! It was not art, it was nature, man’s nature, woman’s nature crying out, passion which swelled up and spoke, to be answered, to be satisfied.

Mr. Dane put the portrait of his young wife away, put it away and, by degrees put away too the scenes and memories which had returned to him. Strange that after so many years the past should return thus, stranger still, since it did return, that pain should outweigh all other feelings now. Where had gone the sense of injury, the shame, the agony, the unforgiving hate? They were gone, all was only a pain now; thank God for it, and for the mercy of the years, the pity and the merciful wisdom learned of the long, patient years.

He locked the drawer and put away the key. She was dead, dead long ago. And her grandchild was here, singing the old passionate song; looking out on the world with eager, unknowing eyes; containing in herself funded possibilities handed down from a dead past, acquired from circumstance, environment, a hundred things of which a man cannot judge, on which he cannot reason. Her grandchild! A little brown creature full of untold possibilities! Her grandchild? Almost she might have been his own—for a moment he fancied he hated her for it. Might have been? Had she been she would not have been such as she now was; and after all, that was the thing which concerned him, the thing which he had, if need be, to help.