Princess Puck

Polly had no doubt done wisely in sending Bill to Ashelton while she herself was settling affairs at Wrugglesby. Not only was she thus freed from Bill’s interference, but also Bill had an opportunity for putting into practice her good resolutions regarding Gilchrist Harborough. Polly was sure she would make use of the opportunity, for Bill could always be relied on to keep her word. In the main she fulfilled Polly’s expectations; she certainly tried to do so. Theresa found her curiously subdued on her return to Ashelton, and found also that she herself was watched and sometimes imitated with an embarrassing closeness. Bill was trying to be a lady.

She obeyed to the letter Polly’s instructions concerning Gilchrist, always putting on her best dress for his coming, never calling him Theo now, never baffling him by tantalising moods and goblin mockery and playful defiance. Indeed so circumspect was her behaviour that Gilchrist not unnaturally concluded that the lecture he had given her after the affair of the plums had taken effect. Of course he was humanly gratified to find that his words had not been wasted, but it is to be feared that he found Bill in her new character of lady, as copied from Theresa, something of a disappointment; she did not always compare favourably with her model.

Bill did not know how her efforts impressed Gilchrist, neither did she greatly care, for his opinion was not her highest standard. But she was herself by no means satisfied, and one day, soon after her return to Ashelton, she took her difficulties to her friend the rector. He, by right of his office and reason of his experience, had been consulted on many points in his time, some rather peculiar ones since his acquaintance with Bill; but even she had never faced him with anything quite so unexpected as on the day when she brought him the problem of her own behaviour. She was examining the high shelves of his book-case at the time, standing on the back of an arm-chair to do so, having first weighted the seat with encyclopaedias.

“The Diary of a Lady,” she read the title of one of the books, then stood a moment looking at it thoughtfully. “Monseigneur,” she said, “you know I told you I was trying to behave better? Well, I am not getting on a bit.”

Mr. Dane was busy with his parish accounts; as a rule the girl’s presence did not disturb him at all, but now he looked up, arrested by her tone.

“What is it?” he asked, putting down his pen. “What have you been doing?”

“Nothing; I haven’t done anything wrong and I do all the right things I can find to do. Theresa thinks I am much improved, but I’m not really.” As she reached up to replace the book, the chair tilted a little. “Would you mind kneeling on the seat?” she said. “The chair tips when I reach up. Thank you.”

She jumped to the ground and drawing a chair to the writing-table faced the rector. “What is your notion of a lady?” she asked abruptly.

Mr. Dane considered a moment, before hazarding an opinion, knowing that his answer would be taken literally and perhaps translated into action. “One,” he said at length, “who considers others, who never by word or deed causes unnecessary pain, who listens sympathetically, talks pleasantly, never says a great deal even when she feels much or knows more. One who does her mental and moral washing in private, but is not afraid to do her duty in public; who respects the secrets of others, the honour of her family, and her own self more than all. One who speaks with tact, acts with discretion, and places God before fashion without needlessly advertising the fact to the annoyance of the rest of the world.”

“Thank you,” said Bill, and a long silence followed; perhaps she was learning the definition for her own benefit. At last she spoke again. “You think I could be a lady if I learned to control myself and,—and did not run away when I wanted to, and all those sorts of things?”

Mr. Dane did think so; possibly he did not regard her as so hopeless a case as did Polly. Then there was another silence during which there came the sound of wheels on the drive at the other side of the house. Neither noticed it, and Bill, thinking of Polly’s lectures on her disreputable appearance, asked a second question. “I suppose a lady always wants to look right? It matters very much how she looks, how she is dressed?”

“It matters very much for some,” the rector answered; “but others—” he was only a man after all, and though old not altogether wise—“with others,” he said, “you are so busy wondering what colour their eyes are that you never notice their gowns; so much perplexed as to what they are, Princess Puck, that you never know what they wear—”

He broke off smiling as the housekeeper opened the door: “A gentleman to see Miss Alardy,” she announced.

“Me?” Bill exclaimed.

“Yes, miss; he has been to Haylands, he says, and they told him you were here; he’s waiting in the hall now,—young Mr. Harborough.”

“Mr. Harborough?” Bill repeated rising. “Whatever can he want?”

“Not Mr. Harborough from Crows’ Farm,” the housekeeper explained; “young Mr. Harborough from Wood Hall.”

“Oh!—I’ll come and speak to him.”

Ladies controlled themselves; they said nothing even when they felt much; they respected themselves, the honour of their family, the secrets of their friends. Bill was going to be a lady, and she would not even allow herself to feel surprised.

Mr. Dane took up his pen again. Old Mr. Harborough was worse no doubt; he had been ill all the week, and that it was a mere question of days everyone knew. Probably it was a question of hours now, and for that reason they had summoned the heir. And for what reason had the heir come for Bill? If old Mr. Harborough had a fancy for seeing her again before he died Mr. Dane was not the man to gainsay him. Bill knew that, the instant he came into the hall where she stood with Kit Harborough.

“Go, by all means,” was his advice, “go at once; I will explain to Mrs. Morton.”

So Bill fetched her hat from the study where it lay on the encyclopaedias, and without another word drove away with Kit to Wood Hall. And Mr. Dane had time to finish his accounts and then explain matters to Theresa before lunch.

Theresa was very much surprised to hear of Bill’s going, but since the rector approved she was quite willing to do the same. As the afternoon wore on and Bill did not return, she began to wonder a little what the girl was doing; and when in the evening Gilchrist called and Bill was still absent, she found the situation rather awkward. Gilchrist showed such an unreasonable displeasure at her absence that Theresa wished Mr. Dane could have explained to the impatient lover the propriety and justice of Bill’s going. To tell the truth, Gilchrist was both displeased and anxious, for he did not feel at all sure what Bill might be saying with regard to the Wood Hall estate. She had told him how she had met and warned Kit Harborough at Bymouth; and though it is true that she had listened with commendable humility to his natural explosion of anger, and at the end had assured him (with the shadow of contempt in her voice) that the heir had declined to take advantage of the warning, what guarantee was there that she might not, for some reason of her own, think fit to warn the old man in time to create unnecessary complications? Gilchrist was very uneasy indeed, not at all sure what Bill would do.

But Kit had no doubts at all. He was perfectly sure she would say nothing; and, as certain of her as he was of himself, he never once during the drive to Gurnett reopened the question of the claim. He never even mentioned it when he helped her to alight at the great door, never spoke of it or referred to it as he led her across the echoing hall to the wide stairs and the rooms above.

Old Harborough was dying, but dying elegantly, almost as if with a subtle and unconscious recollection of what was due to the traditions of his family. He was powerless in body but terribly alert in mind, keenly conscious of the situation and accepting the inevitable with the cynicism he had shown to so many of the happenings of his life, neither curious nor afraid, politely indifferent, almost politely sceptical. Bill, the many-sided, the sympathetic, felt something like a touch of admiration for this survival of a passing type. He, on his part, feeble as he was, still received her with something of his former mocking courtesy, thanked her for troubling to come to him, apologised for the manner of her reception, and prayed her to be seated.

There was a nurse present when Bill entered the room, a tall, quiet woman who looked curiously at the girl. The man who had met Mr. Harborough with the chair that April day in the woods was also present; but he did not look curiously at Bill, either because he thought it bad manners, or else because he understood her claim to his master’s interest. Both of them, however, withdrew to a more distant part of the large room. Kit remained standing near the bed, but Mr. Harborough took no notice of him, only once indirectly acknowledging his presence and then in no pleasant manner; it was when he himself apologised to Bill for not handing her to a chair.

“You must take the will for the deed,” he said, “since I cannot do it; it is clear such trifling attentions will not survive the old generation.”

He did not look at Kit, nevertheless the lad coloured hotly. Bill sat down, wondering a little how the old manners would suit the new generation; but she did not say so and in a minute she dropped the thought out of her mind, turning her entire attention on Mr. Harborough. She did not find it difficult to talk to him, though Kit was a listener, even when the old man referred to her last visit and the offer then made she felt little embarrassment.

“Are you not sorry you did not take it?” he asked her. “I’d have left you Wood Hall for as long as you remained a Harborough. Pity it was not done! It might have saved the old place; an heiress isn’t always the only thing or the best thing to mend a broken family.” He seemed almost to be speaking to himself, but he addressed her directly when he asked abruptly: “Are you not sorry you did not take it? By this time to-morrow it would all have been yours.”

“I don’t want it,” she answered him vehemently. “I don’t want it; I would hate to have it!”

“Hate to have it? Why, I thought you liked it?”

“I do, so much that I would hate to have it.”

A priest had come quietly into the room, but, seeing Mr. Harborough engaged in conversation, he went to a distant window and opened a book he carried. Bill recognised him at once for the same man who had read the mass at Ashelton Church. Mr. Harborough followed her eyes but, not being aware that she recognised him, thought she was only wondering as to the reason of his presence.

“The last relic of the Catholic faith here,” he explained in his weak harsh voice. “I have to be dressed for the next world, the last of us who ever will be. Kit is not a Catholic; he is a Purist or a Deist or something sincere and modern. He troubles about his soul and his Creator like any other mental dyspeptic, and believes something on his own account. When I was young it was thought ill-bred to interfere with the concerns of the Almighty, and the minding of souls was left to those who were paid to do it. We were not tied down by a Sunday-school morality in those days, and we had the courage of our convictions.”

Bill nodded. “I know,” she said.

“How do you know?” he asked sharply.

“By you,” she answered.

“By me? What have I said to you? What do you know?”

“I can’t exactly explain,” she said doubtfully; “only the world was different then. One can’t measure you by the people of to-day, nor the people of to-day by you.”

He fixed her with eyes which were still keen. “How do you know that?” he persisted.

“I don’t know; I suppose I feel it.”

“You are a lenient judge,” he said almost softly, “about the most lenient judge I have ever had, you odd child. What an odd child! I did not know how odd the day I found you in the wood, the day you found God in the wood; you did find Him, did you not?”

“Yes,” she answered simply. “He seemed very close; but then I think the devil was too.”

“God and the devil at your right elbow and your left. A survival of Puritan days,—to find God in the woods now!”

The tone was not wholly mocking; there was a touch of wistfulness in it, and Bill hearing it answered it from the depth of her own convictions. “Everywhere it is beautiful one feels God,” she said softly, “in forest and sea and sky.” She raised her eyes and met Kit’s. He may have been guilty of a Sunday-school morality; he certainly was guilty of a belief, and he betrayed its existence then to one who shared it.

But Mr. Harborough did not know it; he was not thinking of Kit at all as he lay looking curiously at the girl. His lips moved once: “Shall see God,” he said as if to himself, then raising his voice slightly he asked: “Who is it that shall see God, Father Clement?”

The priest turned. “‘Blessed are the pure in heart for they shall see God,’” he answered drawing nearer.

“The pure in heart,” Mr. Harborough repeated, “that is it; I had forgotten. Well, little witch, you have seen something that I, for all my years and experience, have not; something that I—I suppose because of those years and experience—cannot see. But now I must ask you to go; there is a heavenly toilet to be made. Go down and get some lunch, but come back by-and-bye. Kit must take you; I apologise for him beforehand.”

Bill rose. “Kit does not need anyone’s apology,” she said hotly; then she followed the young man out of the room feeling ashamed. Kit that day was like the Kit of Bymouth, the Kit she had met in the lane; there did not seem such a gulf between them as when they parted, nor yet such terrible courtesy. They were boy and girl in the great house together, boy and girl watching together, by an odd chain of circumstances, for the coming of the great shadow. They went to the solemn old dining-room and lunched in state as Bill had once lunched with Mr. Harborough. During the meal Kit did not mention to his guest the subject which had never really been absent from his mind since she herself first put it there that morning on the sands at Bymouth. A little while back he had had some talk with a solicitor of his acquaintance, and without betraying a personal interest in the test-case he described, had learned the very serious position of the man placed as he was. But he did not speak of it to Bill then, although, in spite of the still intangible nature of it all, he felt the shadow of this man from the new country spread over the stately old house, filling its most secret corners, taking possession of its most sacred spots. And Bill, though he did not speak of it, knew the thought that was in her companion’s mind, and felt with him this haunting presence.

After lunch the doctor and nurse agreed in forbidding either Kit or his guest to see the patient before four o’clock, saying that they should be summoned then unless some unexpected change made their presence necessary earlier. There were nearly two hours before them, two hours for Kit to play host in the house which might soon pass to another. With an effort he tried to banish the thought from his mind as he asked Bill to come to the library.

“This is the room I like best,” he said when they stood in the great low room where some past Harborough had gathered a store of books. Mercifully the later comers, not thinking them of sufficient value to sell, had left them intact, even, indeed, adding a volume now and then, each man according to his taste, for there was no lack of intellect even among the wildest of them. The September sunlight slanted through the broad low windows where weedy sunflowers and uncut trails of late-blooming roses looked in on a big room, irregular in shape, full of angles, with bookshelves jutting out in unexpected places, and a silence in it which was a luxury of the brain. The light was a warm brown gloom cast back from book-lined shelves; the smell was the wonderful, indescribable smell of an old library, Russia leather, and oak shelves, and book-dust blended into one, a perfume never to be forgotten. For, as the rose on his mistress’s bosom to a lover, or the breath of the clover which filled the air when he pledged his vows, so is the smell of such a library to the man of books, and above all, to the man who has been reared to it, the man who has learned by common use and childish association to love the outside of the volumes before ever he could read them within.

Bill felt her breast heave suddenly, and a great lump came in her throat. She had never been in such a library before, never to her knowledge smelt its sweet familiar smell, yet her breast heaved and she could not speak. It was absurd, of course; it was nothing to her, the books were not her friends, and as an alien she could claim no kinship with them; yet she felt for them, felt so that she could not speak. As for Kit, he had followed her into the room and stretched out a hand to set straight a book on a lower shelf, but he did not touch it; his hand dropped and he turned abruptly to a window, and for a long minute both stood silent, not regarding one another. Then Bill mastered herself with an effort.

“What is this?” she asked, taking a book at random.

It was Sir Thomas Brown’s Vulgar Errors, an old folio edition with wonderful woodcuts. Kit looked at it for a moment, though he knew it well enough, and then recovering himself he told her. They took the book to the broad window-sill and together turned its pages, looking at the curious pictures. After that he took down another book and then another; Bill was sitting on the window-sill now, the books piled beside her, while Kit drew a great wooden chair in front. In this way he showed her a Chaucer massively bound and clamped with brass, a Pope of 1717, a Pilgrim’s Progress grotesquely illustrated,—the books he loved, wonderful old German prints, poets of a later date, and stout old sermon-writers with whose solid works he had built houses in childish days.

So the afternoon passed with strange pleasure to both, though neither quite forgot the shadow that hung over the house, nor the even deeper shadow not only of death, that brooded over the library and in some unexplained way touched every book they looked at and every passage they read. Once Kit took down a Milton, old and shabby and unopened, except by himself, for many years, and began to read a passage from Il Penseroso.

He stopped abruptly; each heard the curfew as on that night, each smelt the scent of the wet grass in the lane. There was a pause when neither looked at the other; then he went on hurriedly, a little lower down the page:

Kit shut the book sharply and gave it up. All round him lay the heaped up volumes as they used to lie on the winter afternoons when he had built towers with the works of the divines in that same glowing gloom. He glanced at the wide fireplace; Bill had glanced at it before him, because she too had thought of it, though she had never seen it when the fire burned low at twilight. So they each looked, and then each looked at the other and neither, for all their resolutions, hid the thought nor pretended to hide it. Bill’s throat began to swell again. A volume of Hooker, balanced on the window-sill, fell with a thud to the floor. Kit took a long time in picking it up, and when at last he put it in a place of safety with Marcus Aurelius on the top, he said: “He would love the books.”

It was perfectly unnecessary to explain who he was; Bill knew and thought of Gilchrist’s tastes and bookshelf before she answered: “Yes, I think he would.” She picked up the Meditations. “He has got this,” she said; “his is in English, though, bound in green cloth, and cost one and sixpence. I believe he would like his own edition better; it is cheaper and clearer.”

Kit silently took the imperial philosopher from the girl’s hand, as she got down from the window-seat and helped him to put the books back in their places. Neither spoke of Gilchrist again; and a little later someone came to fetch them to Mr. Harborough.

They went up-stairs together and quietly into the old man’s room. Bill noticed a difference directly she entered; she needed no one to tell her that she had been called to say good-bye to the eccentric old man she had so little known.

“Come here,” he said hoarsely when he saw her hesitate near the door.

She came and stood close to him, Kit standing on the other side of the bed.

“Here’s a keepsake for you,” he whispered, trying to raise his nerveless hand. “I give it you in the presence of witnesses,” he glanced at the nurse as he spoke, “so there will be no dispute afterwards. It is not an heirloom, and I can do with it as I like. Put your hand on mine, take it, here.”

Bill put her hand in his as requested and the cold powerless fingers beneath her warm touch fumbled feebly before the two glittering buckles fell into her hand.

“There,” he said triumphantly, “they are for you; that is, if you will do me the favour of accepting them.”

“For me?” she said gazing half bewildered, half fascinated by the brilliancy of the stones.

“Yes, for you,” Mr. Harborough told her. “They are yours now, the gift is witnessed,” he went on, for she hardly seemed to realise the fact. Then she stooped and kissed the hand that gave them.

“They were Peter Harborough’s shoe-buckles,” he whispered, “about the only thing he did not lose at cards; he lost everything else even including—” there was a little cough for breath—“including his life. My father left them to me; they are my own; I can do with them as I like, and I like to give them to you. They are all the diamonds we have now and,” addressing Kit with a sudden access of spite, “no wife of yours can have them now.”

Bill dropped the buckles as if they had burnt her; they fell with a clink on the counterpane and lay there, a sparkle of light. “I can’t take them,” she said. “I won’t have them; you—you don’t understand.”

Kit leaned across and, picking them up, gently gave the buckles back to her. He did not speak, but there was something in his manner she could not resist.

“That’s right,” the old man muttered as if he had not fully understood. “They are yours, little witch; he can’t take them; I have given them to you.”

Bill grasped them in silence, pressing the sharp stones into her flesh.

“Now good-bye,” Harborough said more clearly, “good-bye, or shall we say au revoir?” His breath failed him for a moment but he recovered himself and went on cynically, “I have to go through with this business, and being new to it I may bungle. In case I do not die decently I would rather not disgrace myself in the presence of a lady.”

So Bill said good-bye and went out. Kit opened the door for her, and shutting it after her, left her standing alone outside. So she stood a moment, like one in a dream, the diamonds still pressed into her flesh; then she turned and went with slow steps down the stairs, with quickening steps across the hall to the open door, and so out into the garden where the afternoon shadows were long and the tender warmth of September lay over everything. She followed the terraced path awhile, and then, her steps still quickening, crossed the lawn where the grass was emerald green and the elm leaves lay scattered here and there. She was almost running now, quite running when she came to the shrubbery, running at full speed, running blindly, wildly, faster and faster until she reached the wood and flung herself down in the waist-deep bracken and sobbed as if her heart would break.

It was much later when Kit found her, knowing perhaps where to look for her. She had told him of her first ramble in the wood; at any rate when all was over, he found her under the yellowing beeches half hidden among the ferns. She started when she heard his step beside her, and at first was minded to pretend she had not been crying and practise a belated self-control. But she did not, chiefly because he did not pretend; he made no pretence of anything, nor yet behaved in the manner expected of him and worthy of his breeding. He sat down beside her without speaking, whereupon she obstinately buried her face in the bracken and would not so much as look up though the stiff fern-stalks pricked her neck. She moved her head uneasily and he gently broke a stalk away; in doing so his hand came in contact with her hair, a little curl of which, having become loosened, had contrived to get wet with tears. The contact with it, and the recognition that it was wet with tears, were things Kit did not soon forget; but he drew his hand away and only said stupidly: “Don’t cry, please don’t cry; I didn’t know you cared about him like that.”

“He was good to me”—Bill’s voice was muffled by the ferns—“but it isn’t exactly that.”

He had not been good to Kit, yet Kit felt vaguely grieved and shocked by his death; he looked in some perplexity at the girl beside him. “What is it then?” he asked, but she did not answer, so he fell back on his first remark and entreated her not to cry any more.

“I shall,” she answered without looking up. “I have not cried half enough yet,—there are so many things.—I haven’t nearly done.”

Kit glanced rather hopelessly at the half-buried figure. “Are you going to cry for them in order?” he asked attempting to smile.

“Yes.”

Nevertheless Bill, with the sunny lights coming back to her eyes, sat up, rustling the dead leaves as she did so. “I wonder if the wood will be cut down,” she said wistfully, as she glanced up at the interwoven branches above her.

“No,” Kit told her, “for neither you nor I would allow it.”

“I?”

“Yes; if it is not mine it will be yours, or as good as yours.”

“Mine?”

“Yes; if it is Theo’s—you said you were going to marry him—it will be yours too, and I am glad.”

“Glad! I am not.”

Her voice was passionate, almost vindictive, and Kit went on quickly: “I am glad, and you ought to be too. You said once that, were you in my place, you would do anything to get Wood Hall; surely you ought not to mind if you have it.”

“I’m not in your place,” Bill said, “and I don’t want it a bit. Do anything to get it! A woman can’t do anything but be married. I don’t want Theo to have it, and I don’t want to come here.”

She buried her face in the ferns again, but now she did not cry. Kit broke the stiff fern-stalk into little pieces, and as he threw them away caught sight of the buckles shining among the ferns near the girl’s arm. Bill heard them clink as he picked them up, and sat up again, facing him now with a calm determination. “I am not going to have them,” she said quietly.

“You must; you can’t help yourself. They were given to you, and you must have them,” and he dropped them into her lap.

“I am not going to have them,” she repeated; “had he known, he would not have given them to me.”

“No, because very probably they would have come to you in any case; I don’t know how such things go, but it is likely they would have come to you. At all events they are yours beyond dispute now.”

“Mine, not my husband’s?”

“Certainly, yours absolutely.”

“Mine to do with as I like?” The sense of ownership seemed to please the girl. Kit wondered why a little, but he did not ask and her next words explained. “Then I can give them to whom I please? I shall give them to your wife on her wedding-day.”

Bill put the rejected buckles in her pocket, but Kit said quietly: “That you will never do, for I shall never marry.”