Princess Puck

It was an axiom of Polly’s that if you can’t be clever, you had better be a fool. This, needless to state, was first said in reference to Bill who, Polly considered, fell into the last category and fell there comfortably. “Providence, or something else, helps fools,” was Polly’s opinion, “while it leaves moderately sensible people to shift for themselves. Things always turn out right for fools. Whatever muddle Bill blundered into, I believe she would blunder out of it again not one bit the worse.” The day that Bill went in search of the right of way at Wood Hall was possibly an illustration of this faculty; for on that occasion, though she had the ill-luck to blunder on the owner of the property, she was not ignominiously turned out of the place, threatened with prosecution and other penalties; on the contrary, she was—“Well, treated in a way in which I should not have been treated,” Polly said with an indignant sniff. Wherein she certainly spoke the truth, but then, as Bella pointed out, Bill was not Polly; though what Bill was that she should please the master of Wood Hall, neither could quite say. They did not know him.

After all, there was not much to know, only a lonely old man who had outlived friends and health and amusements. He had come to Wood Hall to die, he said, for it was well fitting that he, the last of the family in a direct line, should die in the neglected home. Certainly he had never used it much as a home; perhaps he had not cared to do so in reduced state, perhaps, more likely, he had little interest in a country life. One autumn, a long time ago, he had spent a month or two at the old hall, which was only some five miles from the house where the high sheriff for the year was living. People said that this proximity had something to do with Mr. Harborough’s visit; and certainly there was some scandal about the sheriff’s wife which had the effect of closing the doors of the neighbouring gentry upon him for a time, at least of those who still cherished certain provincial notions of morality. But that was all a very old tale, a tale almost forgotten now. Miss Minchin and her compeers might recall it, but to the younger generation Mr. Harborough and his doings were little more than a name, for since that time Wood Hall had seen but very little of him. Indeed, he affected a cynical indifference for the old house, which was possibly genuine enough, though it had not prevented his coming to pass his last lonely days there. Lonely they were, and tedious he often found them; tedious when he was ill, more tedious still when he was well. It was to this tedium, and to the fact that he was moderately well that day, that Bill owed the interest she had for him; that and, perhaps, some little charm her youth had for the old rake.

Whatever may have been the cause, certainly she did interest him, for when he led her through the wood and out on to the path he showed no inclination to let her go. The path was a weed-grown gravel sweep, dividing the wood on the one side from a shrubbery on the other. Here a man with a wheeled chair was waiting the arrival of his master.

“Oh,” Bill exclaimed as she saw the path between the trees, “I have come out at the wrong place! I had better go back.”

“And lose your way, and trespass still further on my property?”

“I will be very careful.”

“I dare say.” The old man seated himself in the chair as he spoke. “Don’t you think you have trespassed enough for one day?”

Bill did not consider that she had exactly trespassed, but she was not sure that she could make anyone else, say a magistrate, take the same view; neither was she sure what the penalty for trespass might be, so she only said: “I am very sorry; I thought the map was right, though I certainly did not see a path.”

“On the strength of the thought you went to look? Yes? Well, supposing I let you off this time—”

“I will never do it again.”

“—Let you off, I say, on a condition.”

“What condition?” Bill asked cautiously.

“That as a penance for coming here, you finish that song you began in the wood.”

“Is that all? I’ll certainly do that. It is not a real song, only a verse of poetry and I don’t sing it quite right. The last line should be ‘In winter rest is sweet,’ only I like it best the other way. Shall I sing it now?” And receiving an answer in the affirmative, she sang without more ado:

she sang till all the wood around her seemed full of laughing voices—

“The devil’s bill, the devil’s bill, the devil’s bill to meet!”

Seeing that the condition laid upon her was a light one she felt bound to fulfil it to the uttermost and to do her best, using all the tricks of voice and tone that she knew. In this laudable endeavour her success was such that even the stoical attendant with the chair, who, it might have been presumed, had outlived astonishment in his master’s service, looked at her in surprise, while Mr. Harborough himself was delighted.

“Bravo!” he exclaimed. “What a voice it is! They ought to put you on the stage, the variety-stage.”

Bill was gratified, but not unduly moved. She had a tolerably clear idea that her vocal tricks had not much real value, and, as she wanted to get home, she did not care to stay for more compliments.

“You see, I have got to get back to Ashelton,” so she concluded her explanation.

“Ashelton?” Mr. Harborough exclaimed; “you cannot get there till after three o’clock. You surely do not mean to go fasting? You must not do that. You will perhaps give me the pleasure of your company at lunch? Yes? You had better; they will have eaten up everything by the time you get home. Come, you must not say no; that song deserves something more than a wander in the wood. Little Miss Tucker sang for her supper,—no, for her lunch. I promise that you shall not be late in getting home, the carriage can take you as far as you like on your return journey.”

Bill was not troubled with many even rudimentary ideas of propriety. The sandwiches were little more than a memory, and, besides,—a reason which influenced her most of all—if she accepted the invitation she would see Wood Hall. Consequently she did accept and, walking beside the chair, accompanied Mr. Harborough to the house.

What was it like? Bill sometimes tried to describe it, but she never succeeded, and always ended by saying: “If it were mine, I would never, never give it up; I would fight for every brick of it, every timber, every stone. I would sell everything to keep it; it would break my heart to let it go after it had belonged to my people for so many generations. It is a house that is just weighed down with years; I think it must be almost awful to have all those years behind you.”

It was with a hushed sense of the awe belonging to a great house which had reached its declining days that Bill entered the wide arched doorway. She had said, as they came from the wood, how much she wanted to see the big hall of local fame, so, by Mr. Harborough’s orders, they went by the long west front of the house. It was a great pile, built of bricks which were neither purple nor red, the tint which only the centuries can mix, with rows of mullioned windows, set not too straight by the hands of Tudor builders, and pressed yet more aslant by the weight of time upon them. Above, was a roof high-gabled, many-peaked, running this way and that; below, stretching to right and left, a terraced walk led to gardens where yew hedges and pleached alleys recalled the days of hooped petticoats and powdered heads, or even of older times when the men of trunk-hose and mighty hand cast bowls on the smooth turfed green. But everywhere was decay; even the spring sunshine and the glad singing birds could not destroy the sense of death and decay,—blistered paint and lichened stone, sagging roof and darkened windows, grass on the terrace, weeds between the stones, unclipped hedges, and rose-walks a tangle of thorns; and the great, sad, grand old house looking down on it all.

To this place Bill came, out of the spring sunshine and the living air into the great hall. It was not quite so great as tradition said, but still of size enough to tempt some mad Harborough of bygone days to try to turn his coach in its width. Vast it was, with its dark walls hung with tapestry rotten past repair, its polished floor, and its fireplace where a man might well share the hearth with the logs and not then be overnear the blaze. Above the mantelpiece were the arms of the house, the house that had seen its best days; the dragons’ heads, deep cut in polished wood, grinned down malignantly on the little intruder whom the Harborough of to-day had brought from his woods. She paused a moment, awed by the sense of past greatness, by the weight of the years that lay behind, by the thought of the stately women who had passed that way before her. Then she went on, and as she went her light step gained a stateliness, her figure a dignity which well became the place and made old Harborough ask himself if the child had not some good blood in her after all.

He found himself pondering over the same question again later on, for Bill, like most born mimics, often unconsciously imitated those she was with, frequently, without being aware of it, catching her manner from theirs, sometimes shaping even her speech and accent according to those of the person to whom she spoke. Thus, as Mr. Harborough treated her with an almost exaggerated courtesy, she returned him the same, and, since she was keenly conscious of the dignity belonging to the old house, she shaped her behaviour in accordance with it. As for her host, he was half surprised, half amused, the amusement growing, however, as he led her to talk. Nobody had found her conversation amusing before; Carrie and Alice, though they sometimes laughed, more often professed a contempt for her and all her sayings, even while they half feared her many mocking voices. Certainly no one had laughed at her thoughts and replies; she could not herself always see a reason for her host’s laughter, but it was plain that he did. He was old, she thought, and therefore easily pleased, lonely and therefore not very critical; but his appreciation encouraged her, the wine (the first she had ever tasted) excited her, and she talked as she had never talked before, he leading her on till she had bewitched herself:

“I tried to amuse him a little while, poor old man,” she told Polly meekly afterwards. “I really owed him something for the good food he gave me. Still, I think I did it more because I liked it than for anything else.”

To which Polly, having but small opinion of Bill’s powers of amusing, only made reply, “I dare say.”

Mr. Harborough, however, who had lived in seclusion so long now that a small thing entertained him, vowed, far on in the afternoon, that Bill was the best of good company. In acknowledgment of which compliment Bill swept him a curtsey, with three fingers on her lips in the fashion of the china ladies on Miss Minchin’s mantelpiece. Then she said she must go home, and in so saying, it is to be feared that the imp in her got the upper hand, prompting her to the character she loved, for the tone and manner of her words suggested Mr. Johnson.

Carrie and Alice did not like Bill’s mimicry, but Mr. Harborough was otherwise, and he recognised the original almost before Bill was aware of it herself.

“I must come and hear that parson of yours,” he laughed.

“Why don’t you?” Bill suddenly became serious. “There is the Harborough chapel in Ashelton church; what is the good of having a chapel all to yourself if you never use it?”

“I do not belong to the Church of England.”

Bill remembered Miss Minchin’s words. “Oh,” she began apologetically, but then a magnificent idea occurred to her or to some spirit of mischief that possessed her. She cast a quick glance at Harborough, her eyes ablaze with light.

“What is it now?” he asked.

“Nothing; at least, you would not do it—I don’t believe you could.”

“Try me,” he answered; “lay your commands upon me and they are obeyed.”

“It is not a command; but it would be,—I should like to see what would happen.”

“In what case?”

“If you had a service in your chapel. I don’t know if you could, but I should almost think so; it is your own; you could have a Roman Catholic service there as well as we could have a Protestant one in our part, couldn’t you? I should like to see what would happen if you did!”

“I should probably be prosecuted,” Harborough said; “that is what would most likely happen.”

Bill sighed. “I never thought of that,” she said.

“Did you not?” he answered. “Neither should I if I wanted the service, or rather, wanted to see what would happen.”

“You would risk it?”

“What will you give me if I do?”

Harborough had little respect for either religion, less still for his neighbours’ feelings. As for Bill, neither thought occurred to her; the thing appealed to her as many an act, incomprehensible to a man for its folly or its wanton mischief, appeals to the superabundant energy of boyhood. It was simply a desire to see what would happen, a sporting appreciation of an explosion with no realisation of consequences painful to other people.

“What would you give me?”

“What do you want?”

He hesitated a moment, and then said: “Come and see me again, and we will talk it over.”

She agreed readily: “Yes, if Theresa will let me.”

“Theresa must let you.”

Bill thought it was probable that she would and said so, but Mr. Harborough, possibly judging from a wider experience, was not so sure and did not seem content with the arrangement.

“Why ask?” he said.

“Because I must; she won’t mind.”

“But supposing she does?”

“She won’t; I shall be able to come.”

“You think so? Then let us make this bargain: if I do as you suggest, you will come once more to talk over the terms.”

“Very well; I will come once, she is sure to let me; but when I come, supposing I don’t like your terms, supposing they don’t seem fair to me, what am I to do? Must I fulfil them?”

He told her that she need not, laughing at her caution, as a servant announced that the carriage was waiting.

So Bill took her leave and drove away in state, though she did not think it necessary to complete her journey in the Harborough carriage; in fact she dismissed it at the entrance of one of the lanes and went the rest of the way home on foot.

“Did you have a nice walk?” Theresa asked her young cousin when she met her at the door.

“Oh, yes, glorious! I have had such a good time. I went into Wood Hall, not the grounds only, but the house too. You never saw such a place; it is,—I can’t describe it.”

“Into Wood Hall!” Theresa exclaimed in astonishment.

“Yes, and I saw Mr. Harborough; he was ever so kind, not the least like what you would expect—”

And then out came the story of Bill’s adventures, a brief and rather incoherent story with some things left out and some told twice, and, naturally, no mention of the surprise in store for the people of Ashelton. That was the only thing she intentionally suppressed, but unintentionally she suppressed many details and most of the conversation, though enough was told to puzzle and disturb Theresa.

“Bill, I don’t know what to say. I am sure you ought not to have gone. I wish I had never let you go that walk.”

Theresa, completely astonished by Bill’s tale, now for the first time realised the responsibility of her charge. The charge herself had no idea of the nature of her offence. “Ought not to have gone?” she said. “Why not?”

“Because—because you ought not. I wonder you did not know; you should have known by instinct.”

Theresa’s sense of the enormity of Bill’s conduct was increasing, but with it there was also increasing a recognition of the difficulty of making it clear to the offender; certainly if she depended on Bill’s instinct she was not likely to be successful, for, as Polly had rightly said, Bill possessed little of that in connection with matters of social behaviour.

“Well, for a moment I did wonder if I ought, because, of course, I had on my old dress and the place is so splendid.”

“That is not the reason at all. You ought not to have gone,—I mean, he should not have asked you. He would not have done so if he had been a nice man; he could not have done so properly.”

“Oh, yes he did—”

“I mean, he could not have asked you with propriety. You know he cannot think you—did not ask you as an equal; besides, you must have heard about him, the sort of man he is.”

“About his being bad? Miss Minchin did say that, and certainly he did say himself that he had the devil’s bill to meet.”

Bill did not think it wise to explain, in answer to Theresa’s exclamation, that she herself had supplied the expression. She let that pass and Theresa began: “If you thought him all that—”

“But I am not sure he is bad exactly; and if he were, I don’t see what harm it would do. Besides, is he bad? Of course I shouldn’t say he was good in our sense of the word, but then there are so many senses. He gave me the idea of being like a person who had lost his taste for all except one kind of thing. You can’t blame a person for not liking strawberry jam when he can only properly taste peppers; I should think, in a way, he could only taste peppers; and I should not be surprised if he had tried them very hot.”

“Don’t talk nonsense, Bill,” Theresa said severely; and Bill, acting on the suggestion, did not talk at all, except when she explained to her cousin that she had promised to go to Wood Hall once again. This Theresa naturally forbade, absolutely refusing to permit it on any condition whatever. Bill did not press the point, nor go into too many details, for, as she said to herself, “Perhaps he won’t do it, and then I sha’n’t have to go after all.” If he did, it would be then time enough to settle with Theresa, and arrange some satisfactory compromise between breaking her own word on the one hand and her cousin’s command on the other.

But would he do it? Bill wondered about it once or twice during the week. Would he be able to get a priest to read the service for him? She had a very vague idea as to how he would set about it. He had said something about knowing a man, and had smiled when he said it, not a very nice smile, but it looked rather as if he thought the man would do as he was asked. So Bill wondered, and the week passed quietly.

Sunday came, a still, peaceful spring day. April was fairly in now, every bush and tree was waking to the fact even in the grey weather. Sunday was grey, quiet and calm, but a Sunday long remembered in Ashelton. The congregation assembled in church at the usual time, wearing the usual clothes, for it was not yet Easter. There was nothing much to look at, but from force of habit the congregation looked at each other. Bill, from her corner seat, looked across the old pews to the Harborough chapel. Was he coming? The clock began to strike eleven. No, he was not coming after all, he—was he?—she watched. The small side door of the chapel was opened from without and into the fretted twilight an old man stepped—he had come!

A great smile of satisfaction spread over Bill’s face; a pleasant sensation of excitement and expectancy took possession of her. To tell the truth, something like a thrill of excitement ran through the whole congregation, though they expected nothing, at least nothing definite. Miss Minchin said afterwards that she wondered what was going to happen when she saw him come in, but then the saying came after the event. At the time she certainly looked earnestly enough to have seen anything there was to see, though that did not amount to a great deal. Mr. Harborough, attended by his manservant, entered; the verger, who hastened forward for the purpose, disposed of the servant in a side seat and shut the master in the great front pew. The congregation stared intently; Mr. Harborough stared in return with the vacant stare of a superior being,—they had always said he was very haughty; his eye met Bill’s for a moment, and a faint smile of recognition passed over his face, but the general public did not notice it.

The clock had ceased striking, and the first notes of the organ filled the church with a soft vibrating sound. Forth from the new vestry on the right came the choir and clergy; forth from the old vestry on the left, built originally for the sole use of the Harborough chapel, came a priest with shaven face set in a mask of stolid endurance. Bill, with the wanton cruelty of youth, saw the enduring face, but, not recognising its pain, felt no compunction, no pity for the man forced by some threat he feared to a task hateful to him. She felt nothing at all except a thrilling excitement. For a moment the event was all she had expected. All around her she could feel the mute horror and astonishment of the congregation; she could see it uncontrolled on their faces, so comical, she thought, in their blank, speechless amazement at this unparalleled conduct of the lord of the manor. At the end of the aisle was the verger, motionless, dumb; in their pews, the churchwardens, alike dumb, incapable of action, watching, fascinated, the rival clergy who, owing to the situation of the altar in the Harborough chapel, were hidden from each other’s sight by the wooden screen. No one in the chancel knew of those in the chapel; no one in the chapel showed any sign of knowledge of those in the chancel; all knelt in silence. But as the last choir-boy on the right rose from his knees, he leaned a little forward and saw the priest beyond the screen. His eyes grew round with astonishment; he almost fell forward on his head in his eagerness to be quite sure; then the situation struck him as it struck Bill, and doubled him up in spasms of suppressed laughter.

“When the wicked man turneth away from his wickedness,”—Mr. Johnson began, at the same time becoming aware of an unusual rustle and movement among the hitherto spell-bound people.

The priest should, no doubt, have begun to read at the same time, but he did not. Mr. Harborough apologised to Bill afterwards for the way in which he failed in his part, for he hesitated and waited a moment. In that moment the verger, a shrewd old brickmaker, hastened up the aisle, and, without waiting for orders from the churchwardens, delivered some whispered information to Mr. Dane.

There was a breathless pause; then low but distinct came the voice of the priest,—“Introibo ad altare Dei—”

Miss Minchin started violently and looked about her in an awed fashion. She had seen all that had passed, but she hardly thought, as she said afterwards, that he would really venture to hold a service in the parish church. Mr. Dane passed quietly between the slender pillars of the side screen and approached the priest. A second whispered conversation, a glance, possibly an appealing glance, at Mr. Harborough, and Mr. Dane went on to him. Mr. Johnson, in the absence of the rector, went on with the service, but when Mr. Dane returned to his place he silenced his curate with a glance, and the priest, either more courteous or more sure of a hearing, did not attempt to begin his reading anew.

Mr. Dane turned to the congregation. “My brethren,” he said, “our neighbour, Mr. Harborough, has expressed a wish to hear the mass read in his chapel of St. Mary Magdalen. As the hour he has chosen for the reading coincides with that of our morning-service, and as both cannot be conducted simultaneously in a seemly manner, I ask you to wait with me while the reverend Father reads the mass, which may God bless both to him and his hearers.”

No one left the church; to a man they stood by their rector, though there were those among them who had strong feelings and would have much liked to enter a protest. The priest turned back to his mass-book; his hands shook a little, for the rector’s words had distressed him curiously; but Mr. Dane composed himself to listen with quiet dignity.

And deep hidden in the shadow of a high old pew was one whose grief and self-abasement knew no bounds. The event had not been what she had anticipated; things looked quite different now.