Princess Puck

In the opinion of certain members of the Chancery bar the conclusion of the Harborough case was disappointing, for from a legal point of view, there was no conclusion. In spite of all that had been said on both sides, all the facts and traditions and curious crooks that had come to light, the case was in the end as far from a legal decision as ever; it was merely withdrawn. This was the best thing possible for the litigants and certainly the wisest; still, it was to be deplored, for a decision would have been interesting. Apart from the legal aspect the conclusion could not be regretted; the buying of the claimant was undeniably wise, and at the same time almost romantic, for there was something of mystery about it. Nobody, not even the Harboroughs, knew who paid for it. Someone, whose name was not mentioned and who apparently had no personal interest in the case, found the money, which Gilchrist accepted in lieu of his chance of the Gurnett estates, and for the consideration of which he duly undertook that neither he nor his should ever raise the claim again.

Thus it happened, when the case was well on in its second year, that all ended and came to nothing, and Kit Harborough found himself very much where he used to expect he would be; but with an addition he did not expect in those days,—a certain price to pay for having defended his right to be there. Gilchrist had something to pay too, but it did not so much matter to him, for he had thought of the costs when he bargained for the price of his withdrawal. On the whole he was satisfied with the terms; they were not so high as he had tried to get, but they were all his chance was worth to him, and all, apparently, that the benevolent person unknown was willing to pay.

There was one man, in no way connected with the case, who took a keen interest in that benevolent person unknown; not so much at the time, but a little later. In the light of subsequent events Mr. Stevens chose to find that individual most interesting. “Unless I am much mistaken,” he once said, though wisely in no one’s hearing but his own, “there is stuff for a good Chancery suit in that buying off of Gilchrist Harborough. Certain persons have been juggling with the law, or I’m a Dutchman; persons, too, who should have been above suspicion. Mistress Wilhelmina has a deal to answer for, bless her wicked little heart! I wonder how it was done? I’d give something to know.” But he never did know; only, in later years, he used sometimes to doubt if there had been much juggling with the law after all; if rather a certain childless old man, who was so much richer than most people knew, had not chosen secretly to serve a girl in his life instead of benefiting her after his death. But of this fancy Mr. Stevens never spoke, for he knew, if it were true, that it was a secret hidden even from the girl herself, and he, though only a country lawyer, was a man possessed of that best wisdom, the knowledge when to keep silent.

But all this was long after; at the time when the Harboroughs’ suit was concluded no one even suspected who their benefactor might be. The Harboroughs themselves puzzled over it for some time and then, as is the nature of man, turned to the consideration of their own affairs. Those affairs were identical for both of them in one particular at least,—the question of Gilchrist’s return to Australia. It was generally understood among those whom it concerned that Gilchrist was going back to Australia; he had said he should go so soon as the case was settled, but now when it came to the point he did not seem so sure about it. Kit took a most surprising interest in his rival’s departure, and he noticed his hesitation directly the subject was introduced. There was only one occasion when the two Harboroughs spoke of the matter, the only occasion on which they met on purely social terms, the day they lunched together at Wood Hall. Kit had invited Gilchrist there as it were to shake hands after the fight, possibly feeling it his duty to do so. Gilchrist accepted the invitation, partly for similar reasons, and partly because he had never been inside Wood Hall and thought he would rather like to see the old house for which he had been fighting; coming with this motive, there is no doubt he also came prepared to observe critically and to put a market-value on all he saw.

“I think I have the best of the bargain,” he told Theresa afterwards; “the place is in bad repair and at the best of times would take a lot of keeping up. Still, I admit it has a charm of its own, a charm which cannot be bought or exchanged, and would not, I believe, stand a change of ownership. If the house were mine, I should do it up, and, I suppose, change its nature; since it is his, he will let things remain as they are; he can’t afford to do anything else, poor beggar! But he will keep the charm and a few absurd, inimitable, medieval prejudices which even an enlightened education cannot make us altogether despise.”

It is to be feared that Gilchrist was not far from the truth in his estimate of the poverty likely to reign at Wood Hall. The estate, crippled before, could ill afford the money spent in defence of its owner’s claim to it. Kit knew this, and knew that the Australian was quick to mark signs of prosperity or decay.

The two Harboroughs did not lunch in the big dining-room where Kit had sat with Bill on the day that old Mr. Harborough died, but in a smaller, more modern room where neither length of possession nor shortness of means stood out so plainly. There was little here to suggest that evil days had fallen upon the old place, excepting only the view from the windows. Gilchrist glanced out once; the pale February sunlight was wan on the crack in the stone-work of the terrace, on the unswept leaves of the autumn and the untouched borders by the wall. Unconsciously he looked towards his host and observed him curiously—the well-bred, stoical face, the grave eyes, the well-finished hands—the whole man which told so little.

“Are you going to live here?” he asked suddenly.

“Probably not.”

There was a moment’s silence. Kit was evidently not communicative on that subject, and Gilchrist looked out of the window again before giving expression to the thoughts in his mind. “Pity the old place should go to pieces!” he said at last. “I could have saved it—spoiled it, perhaps you would have said—still, saved its life after a fashion, but you—”

“I shall probably go abroad for the next twenty years; after which, if I am not an inveterate wanderer by that time, I shall come home and think about getting some bricks and mortar to mend the hole in the terrace which we can see so well from here.”

Gilchrist laughed, although he was a little annoyed; he had felt vaguely sorry for Kit and the decline of the house of Harborough. But Kit kept him well at arm’s length, and the house of Harborough was plainly not his concern, so he withdrew his sympathy from the end he had himself hastened, and the subject was pursued no further.

It was then that Kit enquired concerning the return to Australia, and learned that there was a good deal of uncertainty connected with the date of Gilchrist’s departure; indeed, it seemed almost possible that he would not leave England at all that year. Kit did not ask why; he knew that it was a woman’s will and a woman’s preparations that ruled the time of the Australian’s going. Herein he was quite right, though he was not right in thinking that woman Bill Alardy. Bill’s preparations, like her will, were never long in making; but the woman for whom Gilchrist waited was different; who is to hurry a nine months’ widow, and who make love to the wife of a man whose grave has not long been green?

But of this difficulty Kit knew nothing, and since he was very well aware that Bill’s betrothal was of a private nature, he could not make any remark upon it even had he wished. So he was still unenlightened as to the name of the woman whose pleasure Gilchrist waited when a little later the Australian took his leave.

Kit went to the door with him, stood on the step looking after him even when he was out of sight, stood there until the sound of his horse’s feet had died away in the distance. The sun was gone now; ashy clouds had crept over the sky, and all the world was still and grey with the soft, tired look of endless afternoon. Kit went down the steps and walked slowly past the west front of the house; once he glanced up at the crooked windows and the sloping, many-peaked roof, but he looked away again quickly as if the sight hurt him. He reached the end of the terrace but he did not go back; instead he wandered aimlessly across the lawn, down the rose-walk, past the box-edged beds and the yew trees once trimly clipped into quaint devices. The devices were lost now, the clipping had not been done for many years. Bill had once said that, were the trees hers, she would learn to clip them herself rather than that they should be left. So she would, too; she would clip the trees and weed the paths and save the house from its approaching decay! Gilchrist had said that day he would have saved it; how could he fail to save it with her for wife? Old Harborough himself had testified that she, and such as she, penniless though they might be, alone could save an exhausted family, a proud, poor, played-out race.

Kit had come to the outskirts of the wood now; he stopped for a moment, not from indecision as to which path to follow, but because he wished to call a halt in his mind and force himself to face the truth. Why should he pretend to look upon Bill as the saviour of his family, the prop of his house? It is true she could have been all that, but it was also true that she was something else to him; not prop nor saviour, but the only woman the world held. He had been but a boy eighteen months ago when he first looked into her eyes; he had grown to manhood in those eighteen months, but it did not matter, the look thrilled him still. He had not seen her since that October day when they pledged each other to duty, but he had not forgotten; he would never forget; there are some it is not easy to forget.

He had been following the footpath that led from the gardens to the little church, but he turned away before he reached the low boundary wall and wandered on through the waste of dead bracken till he struck the public footpath which gave upon the lane by a swing-gate. There was someone standing by the gate, someone with arms resting upon the topmost bar, and eyes fixed, not upon the path with its approaching figure, but upon the leafless tree-tops of the wood.

For half a second Kit paused, a sensation almost of fear at his heart—how could she be here in the flesh? Then, at a bound he had reached the gate; flesh or phantom, he must see her, must touch her hand once again.

“Bill!”

He had put his hand on the hands on the gate. They were warm, living hands; he held them fast and there was no effort made to draw them away. She did not start nor cry out; she did not move at all; she only looked up at him, silent yet with throbbing breast. So they stood, the gate between them, for the space of a full minute, and the world seemed to hold but them alone.

From the main road there came the sound of horse’s feet, steady, slow-going, some farm-horse on its way to the blacksmith’s in the village. The sound of hoofs recalled to Kit the last time he had heard it and recalled also the thought of the man who rode away from his house not an hour ago. He dropped the hands he held almost as if they burnt him.

“He cannot—shall not have you!” The words were hardly spoken; they seemed wrung from him against his will.

The discarded hands pulled a splinter off the gate. “He,—he doesn’t want me”—their owner seemed much interested in the splinter.

“Not want you? You—”

The gate was between them no longer.

A while later the farm-horse, having been to the blacksmith’s, was led home by way of the lane; the man who led him saw no one about the lonely spot; there was no one by the swing-gate or on the footpath going to the church, no one visible at all. In the shelter of the leafless wood, however, there were two who explained many things. There were many things which needed explanation they found,—the mystery of Bill’s freedom, for one, and Kit’s ignorance of it, for another. The first was easy to recount; the second Bill found harder to explain.

“I could not tell you,” she said at last; “of course I could not tell you. Do you know the feeling, the consciousness almost, that you can have and get whatever you make up your mind to have? That has been my feeling so long; but I was afraid to seek for this; I wanted it to be the free gift of God to me; I wanted it an unsought gift, or not at all. Do you understand what I mean?” And in case he did not, she went on to give another reason. “I have been getting so much lately,” she said, flashing a shy smile at him, “getting and willing and taking that I think I wanted someone to take me.”

And it is to be presumed that Kit understood the art of taking her, for the next explanation did not follow immediately. When it did come it had reference to Bill’s unexpected appearance at the gate that afternoon.

“There is no mystery about that,” Bill said. “I came to look at a house at Sales Green. We are thinking of moving in the spring or early summer, and we are looking out for a house with a large garden somewhere in this part—the garden is for me, the house for Polly, the part for Theresa who wants to be near Bella. However, the Sales Green house is no good at all; we shall have to look out for another.”

“Did you come from town to-day?”

“Yes; Bella met me at Wrugglesby and drove me to look at the house and then home with her to lunch. Afterwards I started to walk to the rectory, having promised to go to tea with Mr. Dane; he is going to drive me to the station this evening.”

“You do not seem to have chosen a very direct route to the rectory.”

“No,” Bill was obliged to admit; “but I thought I would like to go down the lane once more and,—and I did not know you were at home.”

Kit showed the utmost satisfaction in having been at home on this occasion, and they passed on to the next explanation which was of a different nature and was given by Kit. It had to do with his prospects and the narrow means he had to offer; the thought of them made him remember now it was too late that he had but small right to ask her to share his lot.

“Don’t you know?” Bill exclaimed eagerly almost before she had heard him out. “Haven’t you heard? I have got money now,—oh, I am so glad! I thought perhaps Mr. Briant would have told you, but I suppose he thought you had worries enough of your own.”

Perhaps this was the case; at all events, as Mr. Briant had not told the tale in full, Bill told it now, and with it the name of the unknown benefactor who had put an end to the Harborough suit. Possibly she did not tell it well, certainly Kit was astonished almost beyond comprehension.

“You?” he said and he stood to look at her. “You did it?”

“Yes,” and she stood still too, twisting a dry twig she held. She snapped the brown thing nervously. “I’m sorry, Kit,” she said humbly. She knew that it is not always easy to receive a favour. “I’m sorry, but there did not seem anyone else to settle it, and it had to be done. I know it is hard to take things from a woman but,—do you mind so very much from me?”

Kit’s throat swelled painfully. After all, he was very much a boy still; but he took the favour and the giver of the favour all in one.

Later, as they went up the forest path together, he asked her what she would have done had he not met her at the gate that day. “It is all very well,” he said, “to say that you have saved Wood Hall for yourself as well as for me, but supposing I had not met you to-day, supposing I had never learned you were free?”

“Then I should have gone to live in a house with a big garden and grown tons of cabbages.”

Kit laughed. “But tell me,” he persisted, “would you have never let me know?”

She shook her head. “I made up my mind to tell no one,” she said, “only Polly assured me that if ever I married I would have to tell my husband; for one reason because he might find out if I did not, for another because it would be wrong to hide things from him. For the first reason I do not care, I would have risked that; but for the second it is different. I am not afraid that you will misunderstand and it seems a pity to begin with secrets.”

“Yes;”—Kit had possessed himself of the small strong hand,—“a great pity since we are to have all things in common.”

And so they passed through the silent wood where the shadows lay, brown and purple and deepest blue; they followed the wet path still studded with the autumn’s funguses, crossed the deep hollows where last year’s leaves glowed in the even light, under the old trees, twisted pollards and stately beeches, and so on, up the hill. Once a startled jay flashed from the covert of a thorn-bush low down across their path; once a rabbit looked out from among the beech-roots; nothing else moved, and in the stillness of a holy world they came to the gardens and to the house.

Together they went by the western front to the great door still open as Kit had left it; together they entered the wide, dim hall. Kit turned as he stood on the threshold and looked up at the old house. “Not yours nor mine,” he said, “but ours, sweetheart.”

But the diamond buckles came to Kit Harborough’s wife after all, for they were given to her on her wedding-day by one who still called her “Princess Puck, child of the Lord’s consolation.”

The End.

GLASGOW: PRINTED AT THE UNIVERSITY PRESS BY ROBERT MACLEHOSE AND CO.