Princess Puck

Kit Harborough paced the lane restlessly. The rain had ceased but he still wore his long mackintosh, and in one pocket the unsent telegram was crushed forgotten. For a moment he stood, then walked his five yard beat of wet road again. A church-bell sounded on the moist air,—curfew, they still tolled curfew at Bymouth; it was eight o’clock and nearly dark in the deep lane. On either hand rose high banks luxuriant with unclipped nuts and dogwood and sharp-thorned sloes, the late rain still dripping from every spray; the pleasant scent of wet ferns filled the air, the pungent flavour of the fungus on some tree-stump in the hedge mingling with the smell of the drenched grass growing tall and rank beside the road. The fragrance of the refreshed earth reached Kit but he hardly knew it, hardly heard the creak of the hidden grasshoppers in the moist darkness of the banks, hardly saw the wild flowers glimmering in the roadside grass.

He leaned against a gate and looked across the darkening land, across the stubble-field whence the corn had been carried, over the slope of the hill to the village in the hollow, a huddle of roofs in the gathering gloom, the chimneys sharp against the sky and the smoke-wreaths hanging low in the wet air. Lights were beginning to twinkle here and there, one in the house at the corner, the little shop where he had seen her.

He settled himself against the gate-post and watched. He was two-and-twenty and had never looked consciously at a woman before. Two and twenty, and now he had found, among the mouse-traps and string-balls and miscellaneous gear of a village shop, a little brown witch with the spell of a dead man’s charm in her eyes, the passion of a dead woman’s love in her blood!

A partridge rose suddenly on the further side of the stubble-field; there was a whirr of wings, and then silence again and the soft drip of the wet trees. Then he heard a swift, light footfall, and saw a little figure speeding up the lane, perhaps to reach the high ground near the gate whence to look at the surrounding country in the beauty of this tearful twilight.

Kit Harborough stepped out of the shadow by the gate to the centre of the road: the girl stopped abruptly with a little cry.

“I knew you would come,” he said.

He did not know how he knew, or if he really knew; he did not stop to consider and she did not ask him. “You!” was all she said, “You!”

“Yes,” he answered.

“Oh,” and it seemed almost as if she were distressed. “I—I wanted to speak to you; I have something I must tell you.”

“Me? I am very glad.”

He was astonished at himself, being a curiously diffident boy in some respects; so inexperienced, too, that had he stopped to think he would never have known what to say. But he did not think, he spoke on impulse, and the words came naturally enough; his only fear was lest she should escape and he should lose her in the gloom, but even that was not a real fear; he felt as if he could prevent her.

She was standing in the middle of the road now. “You are glad?” she said. “That is because you do not know.”

She looked up at him as she spoke and he, because he could not help it, or because he willed it, or for some other reason, or the want of one, looked down at her.

Ah the smell of the rain-washed earth and the wood-smoke from the cottage below the hill, the chirp of hidden grasshoppers, the drip, drip, drip from the nut-boughs near the gate! Ah youth and ignorance and the first sweet taste of love and life!

The partridge, disturbed by the girl’s coming, returned to rest chuckling softly. Kit looked round but did not move; he was not very close to her; it seemed almost as if he thought the place whereon she stood was holy ground.

“Bill!”—Polly’s voice rang shrilly—“Bill! Are you up the lane? Come in at once!” For an instant even the grasshoppers ceased, then—“Bill! Bill!” came again, but no nearer, Polly did not wish to brave the mud of the lane needlessly.

“I must go,” Bill said; “and oh,”—with sudden remorse for the lost moments—“I have not told you!”

“Tell me to-morrow.” He was surprised at his own boldness. “I am staying here, at the River House, and you—”

“We are staying at the shop—you know.” Bill grew rosy in the darkness.

“Yes, I know,” he answered very softly.

“We go away on Thursday, and I must tell you.”

“Thursday!”

“Bill!” Polly could not make up her mind whether Bill was in the lane or not.

But the culprit, who was thinking solely of the news she had to tell Kit Harborough, did not heed Polly. “I must tell you,” she said, “you must hear, it is so unfair! But when? How?—oh, it is hard!”

“Hard?”

“Bi-ill!”

“I must go!”

“Yes, but first, when shall I see you? When will you tell me?”

“To-morrow early.” Bill instinctively fixed her clandestine affairs for the time when the less energetic cousins were not awake to their responsibilities or her proceedings. “Early,—I’ll bathe before breakfast.”

“So will I; I often go for a swim first thing, and afterwards—”

“I will meet you,”—she finished for him—“about seven; I will tell you then.”

“Bill! I can hear you talking! You are in the lane!”

“Yes, Polly, and I am going back across the field so I shall be home before you.” And she was over the gate and down the field almost before Kit realised she was gone.

Polly turned round and went home; she had never ventured further than the mouth of the lane, neither was she certain that she heard Bill’s voice in conversation, but she was exceedingly annoyed with Bill for having kept her standing there so long in the damp. She was also slightly annoyed with herself for being kept. “As if it mattered what Bill did!” Only, as she was out (Bella had a romantic idea that she wanted to look at the sea by night) she thought she might as well see what Bill was doing. She had an instinctive feeling, based on her general distrust of humanity, that Bill was sure to be doing something wrong.

For the sake of her own satisfaction—Polly not possessing the disposition which “rejoiceth not in iniquity”—it is a pity she did not penetrate a little way up the lane, for she certainly would have seen Kit Harborough had she done so. He stood where he was for a full minute after Bill had left him, absolutely still in the middle of the road. It did not matter; he was already so hopelessly late for dinner at the River House that a minute either way could make no difference. If he changed very quickly there was a chance that he would be in time for the cheese; earlier than that he could not expect to appear. Dinner and such mundane matters did not occur to him till after Bill had gone, and when they did he wondered what excuse he was to give to his host. On this subject he need not have troubled himself, for his elaborate explanations were thrown away, Mr. Briant not being deceived by them for a moment.

“Petticoat,” he observed briefly in answer to all Kit had to say. He was a man of some experience, and there was something in the boy’s manner, in his very indifference to dinner, which betrayed him to his elders.

He flushed hotly; it was desecration even to think of Bill and the meeting in the lane here.

“Hullo! It seems a serious case,” some one observed, and a man at Kit’s elbow inquired: “First, isn’t it, Harborough? Lucky young dog, he’s never met a divinity before; he has got it all to come.”

Kit’s eyes flashed. “You are entirely mistaken,” he said coldly.

“All right,” his host said with great good-humour. “Did you send my telegram?”

Until that moment he had not thought of it; “I—I forgot it,” he was obliged to answer confusedly.

“What a deuce of a time she kept you!”

“She did not! She did no such thing.”

There was a roar of laughter, and Kit, realising his blunder, had the good sense to leave it and apologise for the neglect of the telegram. This being of but slight importance was forgotten by the party far more quickly than his unfortunate admission.

In the meantime Bill was also taking the consequences of her wanderings in the lane. Polly was severely reprimanding her for going out after dark, for keeping other people waiting about in the damp, and for gossiping with farm-labourers and other persons. To all of which Bill listened with the tolerant indifference with which she often treated Polly’s harangues. “Let’s have supper,” she said at last. “I have told you I went out because I felt as if—as if I should burst if I stopped in any longer. I had to go out, to get away; it was a pure accident that I met any one.”

Polly said, “Oh, I dare say,” and repeated several of her previous remarks with variations. Then they had supper, Polly still a little difficult in temper; the drawing-room lodgers had had steak and onions for tea, and she being one who dearly loved what she called “a relish with her tea,” had not yet got over the appetising odour which had not served as a relish to her own bread and jam.

Never before in her life had Bill so longed to be alone—to be absolutely by herself, if it were only for half an hour. But it was out of the question; even when they went to bed the only solitude possible was the compromise of companionship offered when the cousins were asleep. She thought once of stealing softly down to the darkened sitting-room to spend an hour there in the starlight, but the bedroom door rattled so terribly that she was certain in opening it to awaken Bella if not Polly. She was afraid of facing their curious inquiries, she who so seldom had been afraid before, who never knew when her conduct was strange or worthy to invite inquiry until the fact was plainly shown her; there was some subtle change in her.

She lay still on the outer edge of the wide low bed she shared with Polly, and tried to think. The room was very dark and quiet, yet she could not think. There was neither Kit nor Gilchrist in her mind, neither past, present, nor future; it was all a whirl, with for paramount feeling the thought of that unmade claim to the Harborough estates.

“It is not fair,” she thought. “He shall know; they shall fight fairly; I will tell, whether it makes a difference or not.” Then the picture of Wood Hall came into her mind, the stately house in the autumn of its days, the great hall, the solemn rooms, “Theo’s, all Theo’s! Theo there, Theo and the boarders!” She laughed softly, half hysterically, at the idea. “He thought I meant it,” she said.

Polly muttered indistinctly in her sleep. Wood Hall and the gardens, the tangled rose-walk and the lawns, how green the grass would be now! The wood on the slope of the hill—there would be yellow leaves here and there, and the bracken would be golden—how very beautiful it all would be! September suited the place, but October would suit it even better, the long west front in the afternoon glow, the great arched doorway, all of it. And so on and on, a hundred vague ideas, a tangle of emotions, but never Kit; she never once faced the thought of him. At last she slept and dreamed—our dreams are our own; we are not accountable for them. In the morning things looked clearer and emotions fainter. Sleep blots out some of the fancies and brings facts into a better working perspective. When in the morning Bill rose early to keep her appointment she had a distinct notion of what she was going to do. She got up and dressed quietly: for the first time in her life she was troubled because her gown was shabby; but she did not know why, for she had not consciously considered the question of Kit Harborough at all. She was going to meet him, it is true, but that was solely to warn him of the danger which threatened him. Still she was sorry her frock was shabby, and her old straw hat a little the worse for the plum turnovers and a good deal the worse for wear.

But she did not trouble herself much. By the time she had finished her bath she had forgotten about appearances; also to a certain extent she had forgotten her troubles, washed them away in the kindly sea or evaporated them in the sunny air: there was not, up to the present, anything so very much amiss in her world that still September morning. She was whistling softly when Kit found her, wringing her wet bathing-dress the while.

“Let me do that for you,” he said.

She held the dress a moment. “You had better not,” she said, “it will make your hands blue; the dye comes out like anything. The first time it got wet I was like an ancient Briton; it is not so bad now, but it still makes one a bit stripy.”

Kit protested that he did not mind the dye and took the dress while she gathered up her towels and hung them in festoons about the tent, whistling when she was on the far side.

“Is that you?” he asked.

“Yes,” she admitted, wondering if he thought it unladylike.

He did not; he seemed to think it clever. “What a mimic you are!” he said. “It was just like a chaffinch.”

“I can imitate some things,—birds.” Bill forgot her mockery of her fellow-men; she forgot all those things, for there was a curious holy feeling about her just then.

Kit had finished wringing the dress and was carrying it now as they walked slowly along the shore. “Not all birds?” he was saying; “not a lark!”

“No, not a lark, I have never tried to do that; I don’t think I could. I don’t think there is anything quite like a lark’s song; it is so completely, absolutely happy; I don’t believe anyone could imitate that.”

He agreed with her and then asked if she knew Shelley’s Ode to the Skylark. They were not approaching the business of their interview very rapidly.

Bill shook her head. “I don’t know any of his poetry,” she said, “except a piece about the moon which we had to analyse in our grammar-class last Christmas. It was beautiful poetry, though I never could find the principal sentence.”

“What a shame to give you Shelley for that!”

Bill thought it was too, and then Kit told her he believed she would like the Ode to the Skylark.

“Tell me some,” she said.

He obeyed and repeated the greater part. Business was receding even further into the distance.

His was somewhat of a studious nature, and he had, moreover, the musician’s ear for harmonious sound and the unspoiled heart to delight in beautiful thought. She was a greedy listener, her mind an empty well in its ignorance, in its insatiable desire to be filled; she, too, had the love of melody, though never till that moment had she felt the need of the universe and of her own soul to be expressed in rhythm. But now the whole world somehow became one pulsing harmony, and they two wandered along the lonely shore in that dream which comes twice to no man. The air around them was delicate and crisp, fresh yet tenderly soft, the sunlight chastened and mild, threading with sloping bars the mist on the land, gleaming bright and pale on the wet sand and the incoming tide and the great white gulls that played in the creeping waves.

Business and the purpose of their meeting receded further and further; indeed, it might almost have been forgotten entirely had it not been reached by a most circuitous route through Byron and Heine. They had been speaking of the sea’s place in poetry and concluded with the opinion that none of the poets had quite expressed their sentiments on the subject.

“They don’t seem to get at the sort of mother-feeling,” Bill said at last; “at least none of those we know do. I mean the kind of feeling of going home that you get when you come near the sea—you know what I mean? It seems sometimes as if it stretched out its arms to you and called you,—don’t you hear?”

She listened and he listened too, for of course he understood what she was trying to say for both. He had felt it as she had, and neither had said it before, and both were certain of an understanding now, wherein lay the delight and the danger.

“Once,” Bill said, “I saw four lines which were a little about the feeling I mean; do you know them?

Kit said he did not know the lines and asked whose they were; but she could only tell him that she had found them quoted in a book of Mr. Dane’s. “I’ll ask him,” she said; “I dare say he will know, and he is sure to tell me. He is my great friend, you know, the rector of Ashelton.”

“Ashelton!” Kit exclaimed. “Do you know Ashelton?”

“Yes,” and then Bill remembered, and the mutual acquaintance with Ashelton and the surrounding district, which seemed so very delightful to her companion, wore quite another aspect to her. “I had almost forgotten,” she went on; “I mean, forgotten what I had come to say; but I must tell you, I will tell you about it.”

And forgetting the poets and the seductive calling of the sea she told him all,—of the Australian and his claim, of its strength, and of his decision to be silent until after old Mr. Harborough’s death; she told him exactly how it stood, and how she thought it unfair he should not know what threatened him. He listened quietly as she talked, coldly, unconsciously demonstrating to her one good gift that an old family bestows upon its children, the power to receive a blow unmoved, to hear with the silence of pride and to speak with the indifference of studied self-control. Kit Harborough had not much for which to thank his ancestors; the dead hand of the past was heavy upon him and the weight of tradition but little in his favour; nevertheless his birth and breeding helped him to receive Bill’s blow with a proud composure, almost an indifference which roused her deepest admiration, though at the same time it touched her curiously.

She talked on fast to hide her own feelings. “They seem to think,” she said, though she had said it before and the whole case was painfully clear now, “they seem to think that if Mr. Harborough is left to himself he will not make a will; I don’t know why.”

“Because he does not like me,” Kit told her.

“He wishes me to have the property simply on account of the name. I am called Harborough because of the property, and I am,—was to have had it because of the name; but he wishes it so little that since he is sure I should have it, he would not set it down.”

“But if he knew of Theo—of the other one?”

“He still would not make a will, or if he did it would not be in my favour; the other man is a Harborough and so fulfils his only condition. I have told you he dislikes me.”

“He would dislike Theo a good deal more if he knew him,” Bill said warmly; “he is going to cut down the wood if he gets the estate, and plough the land, and grow turnips in the park.”

“I don’t think you could make my uncle believe that.” Kit’s composure belied his feelings. “And if one could, if one could induce him to make a will, I don’t believe I should care to do it, and, besides, you know, it might not make much difference after all. Thank you, thank you very much for telling me,”—the composure was not nearly so marked; stoicism is not perfect at two-and-twenty; “it was very good of you to do it. I’m glad to know; it’s much easier when one knows what’s coming, but I can’t exactly take advantage of it; you didn’t really mean me to, you know.”

“But the house,” Bill pleaded, “the beautiful, beautiful house! Think of it, the long west front with the sunset on it,—the great hall with the dragons on the mantelpiece—the rooms where all your people were born and died!”

“I know.”

They were sitting on a pebbly ridge now; Kit ground his stick into the shingles and answered in a muffled voice, not looking at her. “But the thing is not settled yet,” he went on after a pause. “He will have to fight for it whether there is a will or not; he may not win, and,—and if he does, they are his people too; he is more really Harborough than I am.”

“He does not care for them,” Bill said; “he despises old families and he does not care for tradition; he would like the position but he does not really care for anything else; he would not love nor understand the place a little bit. He would save money, I dare say, perhaps make it, and in time build up a new family on the old foundation. He is just fitted to found a new family; he would do it splendidly, he has the right kind of brains and opinions; but he is not in the least fitted to carry on an old name,—he has not been bred up to it or educated for it. You don’t know him or else you would understand.”

“I understand very well indeed. But what is the use? Why do you talk about it?”

“Because,” Bill answered vehemently, “the place is what it is; because of the house and the wood—think of cutting down the wood! Because it seems so likely he will get it, and if it were mine I would never let it go. If it had belonged to my people, as it has to yours, I would do anything—I should not care what—to get it and keep it.”

The shingles rattled sharply against one another as Kit moved. “Do you think I don’t care?” he asked almost savagely. “But if it is that business of the will you mean, I can’t do it. I don’t suppose it would make a difference, and anyhow I can’t do it; you know I can’t.”

“Then I will,” Bill said. “I will see Mr. Harborough and explain. I will get him to make a will; I believe I could.”

“No,” Kit exclaimed, “no, you must not do that. It would be no better than if I did; it would be taking an unfair advantage of the other man,—promise me you will not do it.”

Bill hesitated. “I have taken an advantage of him already in telling you,” she said.

“That is different; it was only warning, preparing me for what is to come; you were not using your knowledge against the other man; you would not do that.”

Bill was not so sure; though, true to her reflective nature, she felt at the moment that perhaps he was right. “Then you will give it up,” she said at last, “you will let a man who does not understand have the house and everything?”

“Not unless I am compelled.”

“And will you be compelled? What do you think?”

“I don’t know; it sounds pretty bad as you have told it, of course. It may not be; I can’t tell.”

Bill looked hopelessly out to sea. “It is my fault,” she said, more to herself than to him, “all my fault.”

“Your fault?” he asked. “How? What have you to do with it?”

“It was through me that Theo knew of his claim, through the mass in the Harborough chapel, and it was I who got the mass to be read. Yes, you have heard about it, of course, but you did not know it was my doing; nobody does except one person, but it was, all the same. Mr. Harborough had it said to please me, or at least because I suggested it; it was my idea, and it was all through that service that Theo heard of his claim to Wood Hall. A man, an antiquary, one of those interfering people who are always digging in ancestral dust-heaps and finding things which had much better not be found, heard about the service and came to enquire into it. He came and he inquired, and poked about, and found out a lot about the chapel and the Harboroughs; then he met Theo, and talked to him, and found out all about him too. Before that nobody knew anything of Theo, and he did not know anything of the claim; he never troubled about his relationship to you other Harboroughs; but between them he and Mr. Wagnall pieced it all out, and there you are; that is how he found out he had a claim. If it had not been for that mass bringing Mr. Wagnall to Wrugglesby it would never have been discovered; it is all my fault.”

Kit did not share this opinion. “It is not your fault,” he said decidedly; “not a bit in the world; you never knew what would come of it.”

“I did it, all the same.”

“But you are not to blame; you are not responsible because the truth, if it is the truth, has been found out, and no one would blame you for it if you were. I don’t think you to blame, and I am the person most concerned, after this Theo.”

“Oh, he doesn’t think I have had anything to do with it,” Bill said, smiling a little at the idea.

“Very well then, that is settled,” Kit said more lightly; “you are not to blame; nobody thinks so, neither you, nor I, nor Theo. By the way, you seem to be very intimate with Theo,—great friends or great enemies, which is it?”

“Both,” said Bill smiling; “I am going to marry him.”

Then suddenly the smile died out of her eyes, out of her heart, out of sea and sky and world, and for the first time in her life she was afraid to think.

Kit turned and looked at her full, his well-bred, stoical face expressing nothing, only his grave eyes very grave as he said slowly: “You are going to marry him?”

She nodded, meeting his eyes for a minute; and then she looked out to sea, driving her palms deep among the small pebbles as she sat, one hand on either side, staring rigidly before her.

The gulls dipped down to the breaking waves and circled above in the pale-toned sky; sea and sky alike were as tinted silver, the whole day delicate, tender-hued, like the colours found in a pearl. A great peace, a great silence everywhere; no sound but the ripple of the waves that crept up the sand, crept till they reached the shingle where the girl sat, and broke with tiny spray almost at her feet.

“We had better move; the tide is coming up.”

The voice of the man beside her aroused her. He suddenly seemed a man to her, a boy no longer: it seemed too as though there was a great gulf between them. She rose automatically and they walked along the shore in the direction of the village. He was very kind and polite; there was an indefinable difference between his manners and those of the people she usually met, but it only made her the more conscious of the difference between herself and him. He talked as they went, easily and well, on indifferent topics, the cliffs, the shore, the places of interest about, the peculiarity of the stones on the beach. Once he picked one up, dark grey and heavy, a flint sea-urchin, he told her it was, rather an uncommon fossil, he said, as he gave it to her. She took it, and talked about it and a dozen other things, in spite of her consciousness of the gulf, as easy and as self-possessed as he. Why not? Was she not Bill, the mimic, the player’s child? She was sure just then that he had been a player, a strolling mummer, a singer ever on tour, perhaps even the circus-clown Polly called him. And she,—she was a clown too, a buffoon, a fool, for all that she wore no motley, to make old men laugh with her songs and quips, to charm young men for a moment with her hundred changes,—“all things by turn and nothing long”—nothing except the little gipsy creature that was under all and that was miles and miles away from Kit Harborough of Bybridge, from him and the women of his class. She knew those women, tall, fair, white-skinned, serenely unconscious. She was a long way from them, from everyone in the universe, farthest of all from this boy with his considerate courtesy, his polite speech, his accurate clothes. She was painfully conscious of his clothes and even more so of her own, of her work-stained hands, her too rapid movements. She was conscious of it all, but more than all of a passionate desire to run away and hide with the wild things which were her kin, to run away not from him alone but from all her world, to run right away into the woods and hide even from herself, if it could be.

But she did not run away, as she would have done some months earlier; pride held her back and crushed the wild nature down, helping her to politeness and teaching her to give her little brown hand at parting much as Kit Harborough did. So with some formality they said good-bye, and parted at the top of the cliff-path, he to the left to the River House, she to the right to the little shop where Bella was waiting breakfast and Polly finishing a belated toilet.