Princess Puck

Bella was not proud, neither was she exacting in any particular; but there are times when even the least proud is tried by his family. Bella was so tried on the day that she went with Polly and Bill to Bymouth.

Bymouth was the place selected by the three for the change which Polly said they needed after all their trouble. They could not afford a change, it is true; but as Polly also said: “It is no good waiting till you can afford a thing; by that time you will probably not want it.” Bella agreed with Polly; Bill’s cautious vote on the opposite side was overruled, and to Bymouth they went. Bymouth, being four miles from a railway-station, had the merit of being a cheap place; a railway-line was indeed on its way there, but had not yet got very far. Visitors who wished to go to Bymouth drove from Bybridge, or walked, sending their luggage by the carrier’s cart. The cousins walked, and as the carrier charged threepence for each package Polly said, “We must not take too much.”

Bella agreed: it was easy to agree, for they had not much to take, and they were only going for a week; but Polly’s notion of luggage and Bella’s were not identical. This was the first of Bella’s trials; the matter of provisions was another question which needed settlement. Polly said they had better take all they could with them, for Bymouth (she had never been there) was a very out-of-the-way place where everything would be difficult to get: also (she added as an afterthought) what they took with them they would have free, while what they bought there they would have to pay for. Bella did not see the necessity of provisioning themselves as if they were going to a desert-island; however, she gave way to a certain extent, and Polly put a cold fowl in her hat-box (Bella would not have it in hers), three large lettuces rolled up in Bill’s bathing-dress, and a neat packet of fat ham in slices securely wedged among the same obliging cousin’s underwear.

“You can take the tea,” Polly said, handing Bella a large paper bag.

Bella took it in so pleasant a manner that Polly was induced to try her with some plum turnovers which she was anxious not to leave behind, because she said, “they would be so nice to eat in the train.”

“You can’t eat things in the train,” Bella exclaimed scandalised, “least of all plum turnovers. Besides, do you think I am going to open my luggage in the train to get them out? Why, it will be in the van!”

“So it will,” Polly agreed; “I forgot that. Still, they will be nice to eat when we get there; we shall be hungry then, for we must dine very early to leave in time.”

But Bella was obdurate; she would not take the turnovers, which she was sure would not be wanted.

“Oh, well, please yourself,” Polly said good-humouredly, and packed them in the crown of Bill’s hat. “She will have to wear her best one,” she said; “this is much easier to pack.” And she crammed in hat and turnovers together.

Bella, not seeing what she was doing, raised no objections, but on the subject of apples she was firm. There were a certain number of windfall apples Polly wanted to bring, because, she said, fruit was always dear at the seaside; but she could not get them in among her things or Bill’s, and Bella absolutely declined to have them. Polly was annoyed, but at last gave it up, leaving the apples scattered over the dressing-table, while she turned her attention to strapping up waterproofs. Bill had begun to do this, putting in with them an extra petticoat; Polly added the subscription of a dressing-jacket, but she was called down-stairs just then and Bella took the straps from Bill and persuaded her to give up the idea of taking the additions. “You don’t want them,” she said, “and we can’t go about looking as if we were bringing home the family washing in a mackintosh.”

“Why does Bella want to look so respectable?” Bill asked Polly, when they were alone later on.

“Because,” Polly answered severely, “she is a lady.”

Bill, not at all impressed, smiled her derision, and enquired: “Why was she so cross when she found out too late that my best boots were packed?”

“Because Jack Dawson will be at the station. Just as if”—Polly was contemptuous—“he would look at your boots! It is market-day, so he is going to Wrugglesby; he is going to drive Bella—you and I and the luggage will go in the chaise with Sam.”

“I see,” Bill said, and began to make various odds and ends, refused accommodation elsewhere, into a parcel. She had no idea of annoying Bella, but she had two different pieces of brown paper, both too small, and no genius for making parcels.

Polly glanced round to see if there was anything forgotten; her eye fell on the apples. “It does seem a pity to leave them,” she sighed. Then an idea occurred to her and her face brightened. “I know what I will do,” she said.

She turned to an open drawer and stirred it over till she found a small calico bag. She had many such,—Bill called them nosebags—which she used to hold all manner of odds and ends collected from various people. The one she brought out now contained scraps of ribbon, the accumulation of many years. She emptied it, finding a home for most of its contents in a smaller bag already used to hold some fifteen pieces of pencil. Then she put the best of the apples into the empty bag and forced it some way up the centre of Bella’s neat roll of waterproofs. “It is a pity to unfasten them,” she said; “they are so nicely done up. I am sure the bag won’t fall out, and it hardly shows at all.”

That may have been, but the first thing Bella saw when she came on the platform at Wrugglesby was the bag, mouth-end foremost, sticking out of the roll which Bill held under her arm.

“Are they here?” Jack asked as he came out of the booking-office with her ticket. They were here, very much here; poor Bella almost wished they were not.

“I don’t see them,” Jack went on, looking down the crowded platform: the train stopped everywhere and was always full. “Oh yes,” he said at last, “there’s Miss Hains, but I don’t see the luggage.”

Bella could hardly see anything else, she was so painfully conscious of it—Polly’s round tin hat-box, packed to bursting, with the white string of some garment shut in the hinge; the little hair-trunk with a broken handle (the property of the late Mr. Hains), Bill’s paper parcel resting on the top; Bill herself, with her old boots very much in evidence, standing beside.

Polly caught sight of Bella and smiled pleasantly as they approached; Jack took charge of the luggage and the train came in.

“Jump in, and I’ll hand the things to you,” he said. “Are you going to have this in the carriage?” and he lifted the tin hat-box which would neither go under a seat nor in a rack.

“Yes, yes, please!” Polly cried, and took it from him.

He picked up Bill’s parcel; the two ends drooped in a dangerous manner, but he handed it to its owner without mishap, while Polly tried to force the unwieldy hat-box under a seat. It would not go, and after disturbing efforts Polly left it among the legs of the other passengers, straightening herself just in time to see Bill drop her parcel in Bella’s lap and take the roll which Jack handed to her, the bag of apples falling out with a thud as he did so.

“Hullo!” said Jack; “what have I dropped?”

Bella grew scarlet, and prayed that the bag might have fallen down on the line. No such thing,—it lay on the platform, one of the apples shaken out by the fall beside it. Jack picked it up and gave it to Bill. “Here you are, Miss Bill,” he said; “wait a moment, here’s another one,—you nearly lost your refreshment that time.”

Fortunately the train started almost immediately and so prevented Bill from explaining that the apples were Polly’s and not hers. Bella leaned back in the carriage overcome with shame, while Bill serenely restored the apple to the bag, and then tried in vain to get it back into its original hiding-place. “It won’t go,” she said at last; “we shall either have to undo the straps or carry it separately: which would you rather, Bella?”

“I don’t care; it does not matter.” Bella felt that to be asked which she preferred now was adding insult to injury.

“Let us undo the straps,” Polly said; “then we can put your parcel in too; it does not look very strong.”

Bill unfastened the straps, and finding the parcel too broad to go inside comfortably, she unfastened that too and rearranged its miscellaneous contents. Then she packed it and the apples into a waterproof; one of the apples rolled on to the floor and was pounced upon by a small fellow-traveller.

“Mustn’t, mustn’t,” the mother said; “it belongs to the ladies; give it to the ladies.”

But the ladies, as represented by Polly, were benign and made a present of the apple, afterwards entering into conversation with the mother on the subject of the age and habits of the child. Bella took no part, and Bill applied herself to the refastening of the straps. When that was done she listened to what was being said, for the talk by this time had worked round to Bymouth, which, it seemed, the mother knew well.

Now Bymouth had been Bill’s own choice; she did not know much about it, nor did the others, except that the journey there was a cheap one and that, after all, was an important piece of knowledge. The thing, however, which attracted Bill was the fact that the recognised heir to Wood Hall had been spoken of in her presence as Harborough of Bybridge. She did not exactly expect to come across him while passing through the small town on her way to Bymouth, but she had a vague idea that she might see him, and she was anxious to know what he was like. Yet another reason for her interest in the place was that her history of the county had told her that it was the home of the Corby family, they who had also owned the small manor of Corbycroft whence the old Squire’s body had been carried to the Chapel at Wood Hall. Somewhere between Bybridge and Sandover, a place somewhat higher up the coast than Bymouth, had been their ancestral home. It had been pulled down long ago, and the family had died out, probably in great poverty from the story of the old squire’s body being in danger of arrest for debt. But in their day the Corbys had been rich: all the ground on which the now fashionable watering-place of Sandover stood had been theirs; and though as agricultural land it had not been worth much, its annual rental now was more than enough to reinstate the family fortunes twice over.

Bill asked many questions of their talkative travelling-companion when she found that, besides being born at Bymouth, she had lived since her marriage at Sandover. However, she could tell little of what Bill wanted to know; she could speak of the extravagant price of lodgings at Sandover, the beauty of the pier, the number of the grocers’ shops,—her husband owned one, the very best in the town. There were tombs, she said, lots of old tombs in St. Clement’s churchyard; people often came to see them. “Old gentlemen come with spades and things,” she went on, becoming somewhat mixed in her ideas, “and poke about and read inscriptions and find no end—why, the cliffs are full of queer things, fossils as big as your hand and little tiny shells. Sandover is a very interesting place.”

“I dare say,” Polly said with vacant affability; “we must try to go there one day.”

She had not the least intention of going, but Bill, who did not say so, had, and she brought their loquacious informant back to St. Clement’s and the tombs. After some time she learned that the interesting churchyard was situated on the outskirts of Sandover, on the landward side. The particular attraction of the tombs she could not learn, her informant having only been there once: “When my Joey was nine months old, and it was a hot day too, I carried him all the way; my sister, she did offer to help me but—”

Here she addressed herself to Polly, who sympathised on the subject of heat and the weight of nine months old babies until the tombs seemed forgotten. But Bill, patient and persistent, was at last rewarded by hearing that the charm of one lay in the fact that it commemorated a man who shot himself nearly a hundred years ago.

“They say,” continued Joey’s mother, taking the core of the apple from the disappointed Joey, to the great relief of a maiden lady in a light gown, “they do say he didn’t ought to’ve been buried there at all, for they were very particular in those days about burying suicides at the cross-roads. However, some thought he hadn’t really shot himself, but that his friend, who he’d been gambling with, murdered him or something. They didn’t rightly know, so they put him in the churchyard on the chance, as the nearest cross-roads had already been took up for a farmer who cut his throat with a sickle.”

Bill, who had handled one, wondered how he did it, but contented herself with asking the name of the other suicide.

“I can’t call to my mind,” was the answer she received, “but he was one of the gentlefolks. I’ve heard my good man say he was squire, but of course it was long before his time; there’s none of the name about now; but my husband, he’s a great one for finding out things, he’s—”

And there followed a detailed account of his peculiarities and accomplishments, at the conclusion of which Bill suggested that the forgotten name might be Corby.

“That’s it!” the voluble lady exclaimed with delight. “Fancy you remembering it and me not! I have got a head! Corby, that’s it—or is it Harborough? There are both there, but I think it’s Corby; they were the great people hereabouts; my man says they used to own all the land, but they are dead and gone now, every one of them.”

“Who owns the land now?” asked Bill.

“A Mr. Briant, a rich man living in London; he comes to Bymouth for shooting, but he don’t trouble Sandover much. He’s made a good thing of it, a fine man of business he’s called, though I should call him precious close myself.”

A list of Mr. Briant’s delinquencies followed, with an account of the way in which he was bringing other seaside places into fashion, a form of speculation to which he seemed addicted. Bill did not listen very much, she was thinking of the long dead Corbys and Harboroughs. She thought of them a good deal both then and later, determining to pay their graves a visit at the first opportunity. But she did not put this determination into practice at once, for she forgot all about it during the first two days at Bymouth. The cousins arrived there on a Thursday evening; Friday and Saturday were two golden, never-to-be-forgotten days to Bill, in which she cannot be said to have thought of anyone or anything. She did precisely what she pleased, and, according to Polly, undid all the little good she had gained during the past months. “She is five years younger, and ten times worse than she ever was,” said that remorseless critic, and debated how best she could speak to the offender about Gilchrist and her behaviour to him. Bill did not trouble herself much about Gilchrist at this time; Polly told her that she ought to write to him every day as Bella did to Jack, but this she entirely declined to do, and only under great pressure could she be induced to write every other day, considering even that a great waste of time and stamps as she had nothing to say to him.

While Polly was still pondering on the subject of Gilchrist Harborough, Bill’s thoughts returned to the other and older members of the family. On Sunday she recalled her intention of visiting their graves, and went to St. Clement’s, Sandover, for the afternoon service. She walked in the heat of the day (thereby losing her dinner), reached the church in time for the Magnificat, and heard the dreariest music and the most unedifying sermon in the world. But it did not matter; she was seventeen, sound in wind and limb, body and soul, and consequently quite unconscious of herself mentally, morally and physically. The womanhood, which had timidly tried to assert itself during the early summer, had slipped away; the thoughts and cares, the hopes and fancies which had begun to grow in the past months were lulled to sleep now by the sea and the sunshine, playmates which had called her irresistibly during these last days. She was a child still though she was not conscious of it; afterwards, in looking back, she knew those three perfect days were the last of her childhood.

When the service was over she went out into the churchyard to examine the gravestones, which did not prove so numerous or so interesting as she had expected. A fair proportion of the older ones were in memory of the Corbys, who also, as she had seen during the service, had two tablets within the church inscribed to them. One she could not read; the other was to the honour and glory of a lady named Jane, wife of one Richard Corby, and evidently the pattern and model of what a wife should be; she possessed so many virtues that Bill felt, when she saw how young she had died, that, though sad, it was but natural.

“She must have been the mother of the granddaughter who managed the old Squire’s burial,” she thought as she craned her neck to see the date. “I expect Jane would have objected to that business. I wonder what became of the granddaughter; perhaps she is buried outside.”

But she was not; there were no more recent tombs to the family outside. Jane’s husband had died and been buried abroad some years after his wife, the event being announced briefly at the foot of the encomium of that lady’s virtues. The old Squire, who must have died later still, was not buried in this part of the country; the few graves in St. Clement’s churchyard which bore the Corby name were all of older date, the inscriptions of some half effaced, none in their briefness telling a story, romantic or tragic, of that forgotten past. The stone slab in memory of the suicide was hardly an exception to this rule, and the man whose brief record it bore was not a Corby at all. Peter Harborough, died at Corby Dean in this parish. March 12th, 1799. Shot. That was all; of the history of his life and the tragedy of his death there had been found nothing to say but the one word, shot. To Bill it seemed almost terrible in its uncompromising briefness. As she stood looking at the stone, a brown-winged butterfly rested for a moment on the moss-grown lettering. “Who did it?” She asked herself. “Who and why?” But there was no answer; she did not know who, nor yet why some unknown hand had left this single record of the tragedy.

She turned away at last, and unfolding the cheap little map of the district she had borrowed to help her on the way to St. Clement’s, she spread it on a flat tombstone and searched for Corby Dean. It used to be the seat of the Corby family, she knew; now that the house was pulled down the name seemed to have passed to a small farm and a handful of cottages built, apparently, on the spot where the house once stood.

“Corby Dean meant the house where Peter Harborough was shot,” Bill said with her finger on the map. “He was with the Corbys then. What happened? What were they doing?”

She clasped her hands round her knee and gave herself up to dreams. All round her was the peace of earliest September, rich in its haze of tender warmth, summer still except for the opalescence of its lights, the coolness of its lengthening shadows. But Bill did not see it; she was building in her mind a history of the past, reconstructing the life which had been, groping in her memory, feeling that there, if she could but find it, was a picture of this old tragedy; a tale, nay, more than a tale, an actual experience if she could but recall it. A robin chirped shrilly in the churchyard yew; she started at the sound and the half-awakened memory was gone from her, the ghosts crept back to their graves, the past was merged in shadows again. Here was nothing but the stillness of Sunday afternoon, the peace of the earth’s sabbaths of September. Such golden restful days had been before these men lived, and still were though they were gone.

She rose, and folding her map, went out of the churchyard shutting the gate behind her. Dead; that generation was dead, gone, forgotten, that generation—and the next? That too was lost in mist—and the next? The Corbys were ended, exhausted, but the Harboroughs? This brought her to the present day and to Harborough of Bybridge. She remembered that as yet she had heard nothing of him, and so remembering, she determined if possible to find out what manner of man he was—a determination she need hardly have troubled to make, for the next day, without effort on her own part, she knew.

Monday did not seem a propitious day for discoveries; the weather was unsettled in the morning and the afternoon was one of ceaseless rain. Polly, seeing the state of affairs, prepared to spend three pleasant hours over her wardrobe; she pulled the table to the window, brought out her Sunday hat, took off the trimming, and proceeded to rearrange it with the bows behind instead of before. Bella retired to the bedroom (they only had one between the three) to write a letter, and Bill found a delightful occupation down-stairs. Their rooms were over the village shop which was also the post-office for a wide district. The rain seemed to make very little difference to the business done there; in fact it appeared to rather increase the number of customers, those who were not obliged to come finding some excuse to spend ten minutes or so in this cheerful little centre of gossip.

Mrs. Rose, the landlady and post-mistress, was short-handed just at present, her assistant having gone home to nurse a sick mother. The girl who helped with the housework came in to lend a hand, but she was not clever, and the drawing-room lodgers had an elaborate tea at five o’clock which seemed to require much preparation in the afternoon. Thus it was without much trouble that Bill persuaded Mrs. Rose to let her help in the shop that day. The permission once given she set to work with great satisfaction, and soon found out something of the whereabouts of the articles most in demand. The stock was a very miscellaneous one, ranging from boots and twine through strange specimens of crockery and many-coloured cottons to Gregory’s Powder and treacle. Occasionally it took some little while to find the thing required, but the customers were in no hurry; indeed, most of them seemed more inclined to talk than to buy, Mrs. Rose seconding them when she was not despatching a telegram or otherwise conducting State-affairs through the medium of her post-office. Bill talked a good deal and listened even more; her parcels, it is to be feared, were not of the neatest, but her conversation was admirable and the customers seemed satisfied.

These customers were a representative lot. Some were visitors who found the afternoon tedious and came to while away the time by buying sweetmeats or papers or strange little penny dolls, according to their age and tastes; some were neighbours from near by come for a pound of marmalade and a gossip; others were from the next village, genuine customers really anxious to transact business. The landlady from the house next door came once, being in trouble because her lodgers would have curry that night, and “she without a mite of curry-powder in the house.” A man from the coastguard station came asking for a species of tobacco that Bill took ten minutes to find, during which time he gave limitless information about the prospects of the weather. One of the customers was an anxious mother who wanted to buy castor-oil, but Bill, discovering that there was none, induced her to have Gregory’s Powder instead. “It will do just as well if he is five years old,” she said putting up a small dose. “Now, my dear, what for you?” This was said to a little girl with eyes just level with the top of the high counter.

“Treacle, half cup,” was the answer, and the cup, with the coppers wrapped in paper reposing inside it, was handed up.

Bill turned to the green barrel-shaped tin canister with the label golden syrup and the spigot-tap she had been itching to turn all the afternoon. As the purchaser of Gregory’s Powder left the shop, another customer came in, a young fellow in splashed gaiters and streaming mackintosh. Bill did not notice him much, being engaged in a struggle with the tap grown stiff by reason of age and treacle. He held a paper in his hand, perhaps a telegram, but he waited patiently enough while an animated conversation went on between Mrs. Rose and an elderly lady whom she had just served. The tap moved a little, and the treacle began to run, slowly, it must be admitted, but still it ran, in the course of time doubtless the cup would be half filled. Bill glanced at the last comer; “a member of the surrounding aristocracy” she thought, noticing an indefinable something about his clothes and bearing and clear-cut profile. When he turned the accuracy of the profile was lost, but the eyes, very grave young eyes, met hers and—

Her heart began to beat very fast, though she could not in the least tell why. She ought to have lowered her eyes, but she did not; they were fixed; she could not look away, and he did not look away either. She could hear the beating of her heart plainly, almost as if some giant hand were clutching it. She was afraid, she knew not of what, afraid to look, afraid to look away, most terribly afraid of herself, ashamed, yet foolishly, triumphantly glad. Her hands grew very cold and moist, her breath came short, she lost consciousness of what was going on around her; the little dim shop vanished, the pile of boots and pans and seaside pails, the child who peered at her over the counter, the women who talked by the desk. They two were alone, he and she, alone in all the world.

“Cup’s runnin’ ower.”

Bill started like one waking from a deep sleep; the dark, greenish fluid was slowly running over the sides of the cup. She forced the tap back; her hands seemed so weak it was difficult to move it, and they trembled till she could hardly hold the cup. She gave it to the child,—one cannot put surplus treacle back into a tightly closed canister—she gave it, full as it was, and the child took it, carefully licking the edges to prevent any running to waste, and walked sedately out of the shop. Bill sat down on a little high stool behind the counter; her face was very pale and she was shaking all over. Mrs. Rose, who had disposed of her last customer, saw her. “Why Missie,” she said, “you’re tired out. I oughtn’t of kep’ you here all this blessed afternoon.”

“I am not tired, thank you,” Bill protested mechanically.

But Mrs. Rose was unconvinced. “That I’m sure you are; I never saw such a lot of folks as we had this afternoon, a gossipin’ lot too. As for that Mrs. Randal, I thought she’d never go, taking up the room like that! I’m sure that gentleman was going to send a telegram and he never did; he walked out of the shop without sayin’ a word, a loss of sixpence to the Government.”

“Who is he, do you know?” Bill’s voice sounded curiously stifled in her own ears; she looked down as she spoke, but she could feel the colour rising to her forehead.

“Who? Why, young Mr. Harborough of Bybridge.”