About an hour after, old Dulcibella came to the door and knocked. Charles Fairfield had slept a little, and was again awake. Into that still darkened room she came to whisper her message.
“Mr. Harry’s come, and he’s downstairs, and he’d like to see you, and he wanted to know whether he could see the master.”
“I’ll go down and see him; say I’ll see him with pleasure,” said Alice. “Harry is here, darling,” she said gently, drawing near to the patient, “but you can’t see him, of course.”
“I must,” whispered the invalid peremptorily.
“Darling, are you well enough? I’m sure you ought not. If the doctor were here he would not allow it. Don’t think of it, darling Ry, and he’ll come again in a few days, when you are stronger.”
“It will do me good,” whispered Charles. “Bring him—you tire me; wait, she can tell him. I’ll see him alone; go, go, Ally, go.”
She would have remonstrated, but she saw that in his flushed and irritated looks, which warned her against opposing him further.
“You are to go down, Dulcibella, and bring Mr. Harry to the room to see your master; and, Dulcibella, like a dear good creature, won’t you tell him how weak Master Charles is?” she urged, following her to the lobby, “and beg of him not to stay long.”
In a minute or two more the clank of Harry Fairfield’s boot was heard on the stair. He pushed open the door, and stepped in.
“Hullo! Charlie—dark enough to blind a horse here—all right, now. I hear you’ll be on your legs again—I can’t see you, upon my soul, not a stim a’most—before you see three Sundays—you mustn’t be tiring yourself. I’m not talking too loud, eh? Would you mind an inch or two more of the shutter open?”
“No,” said Charles, faintly. “A little.”
“There, that isn’t much. I’m beginning to see a bit now. You’ve had a stiff bout this time, Charlie, ’twasn’t typhus, nothing infectious, chiefly the upper story; but you had a squeak for it, my lad. I’d ’a came over to look after you but my hands was too full.”
“No good, Harry; could not have spoken, or seen you. Better now.”
“A bit shaky still,” said Harry, lowering his voice. “You’ll get o’er that, though, fast enough. Keeping your spirits up, I see,” and Harry winked at the decanters. “Summat better than that rot-gut claret, too. This is the stuff to put life in you. Port, yes.” He filled his brother’s glass, smelled to it, and drank it off. “So it is, and right good port. I’ll drink your health, Charlie,” he added, playfully filling his glass again.
“I’m glad you came, Harry, I feel better,” said the invalid, and he extended his thin hand upon the bed to his brother.
“Hoot! of course you do,” said Harry, looking hard at him, for he was growing accustomed to the imperfect light. “You’ll do very well, and Alice, I hear, is quite well also. And so you’ve had a visit from the old soldier, and a bit of a row, eh?”
“Very bad, Harry. Oh! God help me,” moaned Charles.
“She ain’t pretty, and she ain’t pleasant—bad without and worse within, like a collier’s sack,” said Harry, with a disgusted grimace, lifting his eyebrows and shaking his head.
“She’s headlong and headstrong, and so there has been bad work. I don’t know what’s to be done.”
“The best thing to be done’s to let her alone,” said Harry. “They’ve put her up at Hatherton, I hear.”
“That’s one thing,” murmured Charles, with a great sigh. “I’m a heart-broken man, Harry.”
“That’s easy mended. Don’t prosecute, that’s all. Get out o’ the country when you’re well enough, and they must let her go, and maybe the lesson won’t do her no great harm.”
“I’m glad I have you to talk to,” murmured Charles, with another great sigh. “I can’t get it out of my head. You’ll help me, Harry?”
“All I can—’taint much.”
“And, Harry, there’s a thing that troubles me.” He paused, it seemed, exhausted.
“Don’t mind it now, you’re tirin’ yourself. Drink a glass o’ this.”
And he filled the glass from which he had been drinking his port.
“No, I hate wine,” he answered. “No, no, by-and-by, perhaps.”
“You know best,” he acquiesced. “I suppose I must drink it myself,” which necessity he complied with accordingly. “I heard the news, you know, and I’d a come sooner but I’m taking an action next ’sizes on a warranty about the grey filly against that d——d rogue, Farmer Lundy, and had to be off t’other side o’ Wyvern wi’ the lawyer. ’Taint easy to hold your own wi’ the cheatin’ chaps that’s going now, I can tell ye.”
“I’m no good to talk now, Harry. You’ll find me better next time, only, Harry, mind, remember, I mayn’t be long for this world, and—I give you my honour—I swear, in the presence of God, who’ll judge me, I never was married to Bertha. It’s a lie. I knew she’d give me trouble some day; but it’s a lie. Alice is my wife. I never had a wife but Alice, by G— Almighty! That other’s a lie. Don’t you know it’s a lie, Harry?”
“Don’t be botherin’ yourself about that now,” said Harry, coldly, with rather a sullen countenance, looking askance through the open space in the window shutter to the distant horizon. “Long heads, my lad, and lawyers lear for the quips and cranks o’ law. What should I know?”
“Harry, I know you love me; you won’t let wrong be believed,” said Charles Fairfield, in a voice suddenly stronger than he had spoken in before.
“I won’t let wrong be believed,” he answered coolly, perhaps sulkily; and he looked at him steadily for a little with his mouth sullenly open.
“You know, Harry,” he pleaded, “there’s a little child coming: it would not do to wrong it. Oh! Harry, don’t you love your poor, only brother?”
Harry looked as if he was going to say something saucy, but instead of that, he broke into a short laugh.
“Upon my soul, Charlie, a fellow’d think you took me for an affidavit-man. When did I ever tell now’t but the truth? Sich rot! A chap like me, that’s faulted always for bein’ too blunt and plain-spoken, and as for likin’, I’d like to know what else brings me here. Of course I don’t say I love any one, all out, as well as Harry Fairfield. You’re my brother, and I stand by you according; but as I said before, I love my shirt very well, but I like my skin better. Hey! And that’s all fair.”
“All fair, Harry—I’ll—I’ll talk no more now, Harry. I’ll lie down for a little, and we’ll meet again.”
Harry was again looking through the space of the open shutter, and he yawned. He was thinking of taking his leave.
In this “brown study” he was interrupted by a sound. It was like the beginning of a little laugh. He looked at Charlie, who had uttered it; his thin hand was extended toward the little table at the bed-side, and his long arm in its shirt-sleeve. His eyes were open, but his face was changed. Harry had seen death often enough to recognise it. With a dreadful start, he was on his feet, and had seized his brother by the shoulder.
“Charlie, man—Charlie! look at me—my God!” and he seized the brandy bottle and poured ever so much into the open lips. It flowed over from the corners of the mouth, over cheek and chin; the throat swallowed not; the eyes stared their earnest stare, unchanging into immeasurable distance. Charles Fairfield was among the Fairfields of other times; hope and fear, the troubles and the dream, ended.
When a sick man dies he leaves his bed and his physic. His best friend asks him not to stay, and sweetheart and kindred concur in putting him out of doors, to lie in a bed of clay, under the sky, come frost, or storm, or rain; a dumb outcast from fireside, tankard, and even the talk of others.
Tall Charles Fairfield, of the blue eyes, was, in due course, robed in his strange white suit, boxed up and screwed down, with a plated inscription over his cold breast, recounting his Christian and surnames, and the tale of his years.
If from that serene slumber he could have been called again, the loud and exceeding bitter cry, the wild farewell of his poor little Ally would have wakened him; but her loving Ry, her hero, slept on, with the unearthly light on his face till the coffin-lid hid it, and in the morning the athlete passed downstairs on men’s shoulders, and was slid reverently into a hearse, and went away to old Wyvern churchyard.
At ten o’clock in the morning, Charlie Fairfield was on the ground. Was old Squire Harry there to meet his son, and follow his coffin to the aisle of the ancient little church, and thence to his place in the churchyard?
Not he.
“Serve him right,” said the Squire, when he heard it. “I’m d——d if he’ll lie in our vault; let him go to Parson Maybell, yonder, under the trees; I’ll not have him.”
So Charles Fairfield is buried there under the drip of those melancholy old trees, close by the gentle vicar and his good and pretty wife, over whom the grass has grown long, and the leaves of twenty summers have bloomed and fallen, and whose forlorn and beautiful little child was to be his bride, and is now his widow.
Harry Fairfield was there, with the undertaker’s black cloak over his well-knit Fairfield shoulders. He nodded to this friend and that in the crowd, gruffly. His face was lowering with thought, his eyes cast down, and sometimes raised in an abstracted glare to the face of some unobserved bystander for a few moments. Conspicuous above other uncovered heads was his. The tall stature, and statuesque proportions of his race would have marked him without the black mantle for the kinsman of the dead Fairfield.
Up to Wyvern House, after the funeral was over, went Harry. The old man, his hat in his hand, was bareheaded, on the steps; as he approached he nodded to his last remaining son. Three were gone now. A faint sunlight glinted on his old features; a chill northern air stirred his white locks. A gloomy, but noble image of winter the gaunt old man presented.
“Well, that’s over; where’s the lad buried?”
“Just where you wished, sir, near Vicar Maybell’s grave, under the trees.”
The old Squire grunted an assent.
“The neighbours was there, I dare say?”
“Yes, sir, all—I think.”
“I shouldn’t wonder—they liked Charlie—they did. He’s buried up there alone—well, he deserved it. Was Dobbs there, from Craybourne? He was good to Dobbs. He gave that fellow twenty pun’ once, like a big fool, when Dobbs was druv to the wall, the time he lost his cattle; he was there?”
“Yes, I saw Dobbs there, sir, he was crying.”
“More fool Dobbs—more fool he,” said the Squire, and then came a short pause; “cryin’ was he?”
“Yes, sir.”
“He’s a big fool—Dobbs is a fool.”
“A man cryin’ always looks a fool, the rum faces they makes when they’re blubbin’,” observed Harry. “Some o’ the Wykeford folk was there—Rodney was at his funeral.”
“Rodney? He didn’t like a bone in his skin. Rodney’s a bad dog. What brought Rodney to my son’s funeral?”
“He’s took up wi’ them preachin’ folk at Wykeford, I’m told, and he came down, I s’pose, to show the swaddlers what a forgivin’, charitable chap he is. Before he put on his hat, he come over and put out his hand to me.”
“And ye took it! ye know ye took it.”
“Well, the folk was lookin’ on, and he took me so short,” said Harry.
“Charlie wouldn’t ’a done that; he wouldn’t ’a took his hand over your grave; but you’re not like us—never was; you were cut out for a lawyer, I think.”
“Well, the folk would ’a talked, ye know, sir.”
“Talked, sir, would they?” retorted the Squire, with an angry leer, “I never cared the crack o’ a cart-whip what the folk talked—let ’em talk, d—— ’em. And ye had no gloves, Dickon says, nor nothin’, buried like a dog ’a most, up in a corner there.”
“Ye told me not to lay out a shillin’, sir,” said Harry.
“If I did I did, but angry folk don’t always mean all they says; no matter, we’re done wi’ it now—it’s over. He was worth ye all,” broke out the Squire passionately; “I could ’a liked him, if he had ’a liked me—if he had ’a let me, but he didn’t, and—there it is.”
So the Squire walked on a little hastily, which was his way when he chose to be alone, down the steps with gaunt, stumbling gait, and slowly away into the tall woods close by, and in that ancestral shadow disappeared.
Future—present—past. The future—mist, a tint, and shadow. The cloud on which fear and hope project their airy phantoms, living in imagination, and peopled by romance—a dream of dreams. The present only we possess man’s momentary dominion, plastic under his hand as the clay under the potter’s—always a moment of the present in our absolute power—always that fleeting, plastic moment speeding into the past—immutable, eternal. The metal flows molten by, and then chills and fixes for ever. So with the life of man—so with the spirit of man. Work while it is called day. The moment fixes the retrospect, and death the character, for ever. The heart knoweth its own bitterness. The proud man looks on the past he has made. The hammer of Thor can’t break it; the fire that is not quenched can’t melt it. His thoughtless handiwork will be the same for ever.
Old Squire Harry did not talk any more about Charlie. About a month after this he sent to Craybourne to say that Dobbs must come up to Wyvern. Dobbs’ heart failed him when he heard it. Every one was afraid of old Squire Harry, for in his anger he regarded neither his own interest nor other men’s safety.
“Ho, Dobbs! you’re not fit for Craybourne, the farm’s too much for you, and I’ve nothing else to gi’e ye.” Dobbs’ heart quailed at these words. “You’re a fool, Dobbs—you’re a fool—you’re not equal to it, man. I wonder you didn’t complain o’ your rent. It’s too much—too high by half. I told Cresswell to let you off every rent day a good penn’orth, for future, and don’t you talk about it to no one, ’twould stop that.” He laid his hand on Dobbs’ shoulder, and looked not unkindly in his face.
And then he turned and walked away, and Dobbs knew that his audience was over.
And the old Squire was growing older, and grass and weeds were growing apace over handsome Charlie Fairfield’s grave in Wyvern. But the old man never sent to Carwell Grange, nor asked questions about Alice. That wound was not healed, as death heals some.
Harry came, but Alice was ill, and could not see him. Lady Wyndale came, and her she saw, and that good-natured kinswoman made her promise that she would come and live with her so soon as she was well enough to leave the Grange.
And Alice lay still in her bed, as the doctor commanded, and her heart seemed breaking. The summer would return, but Ry would never come again. The years would come and pass—how were they to be got over? And, oh! the poor little thing that was coming!—what a sad welcome! It would break her heart to look at it. “Oh, Ry, Ry, Ry, my darling!”
So the morning broke and evening closed, and her great eyes were wet with tears—“the rain it raineth every day.”
In the evening Tom had looked in at his usual hour, and was recruiting himself with his big mug of beer and lump of bread and cheese at the kitchen table, and now the keen edge of appetite removed, he was talking agreeably. This was what he called his supper. The flush of sunset on the sky was fading into twilight, and Tom was chatting with old Mildred Tarnley.
“Who’d think it was only three weeks since the funeral?” said Tom—“three weeks to-morrow.”
“Ay, to-morrow. ’Twas a Thursday, I mind, by the little boy comin’ from Gryce’s mill, for the laundress’s money, by noon. Two months ago, to look at him, you’d ’a said there was forty years’ life in him; but death keeps no calendar, they say. I wonder Harry Fairfield isn’t here oftener. Though she might not talk wi’ him nor see him, the sound o’ his voice in the house would do her good—his own brother, you know.”
“Dead men, ’tis an old sayin’, is kin to none,” said Tom. “They goes their own gate, and so does the livin’.”
“There’s that woman in jail. What’s to be done wi’ her, and who’s to talk wi’ the lawyer folk?” said Mildred.
“Ill luck came wi’ her to Carwell,” said Tom. “Pity he ever set eyes on her; but chances will be, and how can cat help it if maid be a fool? I don’t know nothin’ o’ that business, but in this world nout for nout is the most of our wages, and I take it folks knows what they are about, more or less.”
Mildred Tarnley sniffed at this oracular speech, and turned up her nose, and went over to the dresser and arranged some matters there.
“The days is shortening apace. My old eyes can scarce see over here without a candle,” she said, returning. “But there’s a many a thing to be settled in this house, I’m thinkin’.”
Tom nodded an acquiescence, and stood up and stretched himself, and looked up to the darkening sky.
“The crows is home in Carwell Wood; ’twill be time to be turning keys and drawing of bolts,” said Tom. “Ay, many a thing ’ll want settlin’, I doubt, down here, and who’s to do it?”
“Ay, who’s to do it?” repeated Mildred. “I tell ye, Tom, there’s many a thing—too many a thing—more than ye wot of—enough to bring him out o’ his grave, Tom—as I’ve heered stories, many a one, wi’ less reason.”
As she ceased, a clink of a horseshoe was heard in the little yard without, and a tall figure leading a horse, as Charles Fairfield used often to do, on his late returns to his home, looked in at the window—in that uncertain twilight, in stature, attitude, and, as well as she could see, in face, so much resembling the deceased master of Carwell Grange, that Mrs. Tarnley gasped—
“My good Lord! Who’s that?”
Something of the same momentary alarm puzzled Tom, who frowned wildly at it, with his fists clenched beside him.
It was Harry Fairfield, who exhibited, as sometimes happens in certain lights and moments, a family resemblance, which had never struck those most familiar with his appearance.
“Lawk, it’s Mr. Harry; run out, Tom, and take his nag, will ye?”
Out went Tom, and in came Harry Fairfield. He looked about him. He did not smile facetiously and nod, and take old Mildred’s dubious hand, as he was wont, and crack a joke, not always very welcome or very pleasant, to the tune of—
“Nobody coming to marry me—
Nobody coming to woo.”
On the contrary, he looked as if he saw nothing there but walls and twilight, and as heavy laden with gloomy thoughts as the troubled ghost she had imagined.
“How is Miss Ally? how is your mistress?” at last he inquired abruptly. “Only middling?”
“Ailing, sir,” answered Mildred, dryly.
“Tell her I’m here, will ye? and has something to tell her and talk over, and will make it as short as I can. Tell her I’d a come earlier, but couldn’t, for the sessions at Wykeford, and dined wi’ a neighbour in the town; and say I mayn’t be able to come for a good while again. Is she up?”
“No, sir, the doctor keeps her still to her bed.”
“Well, old Dulcey Crane’s there; ain’t she?”
“Ay, sir, and Lilly Dogger, too. Little good the slut’s to me these days.”
Harry was trying to read his watch at the darkened window.
“Tell her all that—quick, for time flies,” said Harry.
Harry Fairfield remained in the kitchen while old Mildred did his message, and she speedily returned to say that Alice was sitting up by the fire, and would see him.
Up the dim stairs went Harry. He had not been up there since the day he saw the undertakers at Charlie’s coffin, and had his last peep at his darkening face. Up he strode with his hand on the banister, and old Mildred gliding before him like a shadow. She knocked at the door. It was not that of the room which they had occupied, where poor Charles Fairfield had died, but the adjoining one, hurriedly arranged, with such extemporized comforts as the primitive people of the household could manage—homely enough, but not desolate, it looked.
Opening the door, she said—“Here’s Master Harry, ma’am, a-comin’ to see you.”
Harry was already in the room. There were candles lighted on a little table near the bed, although the shutters were still open, and the faint twilight mingling with the light of the candles made a sort of purple halo. Alice was sitting in a great chair by the fire in her dressing-gown, pale, and looking very ill. She did not speak; she extended her hand.
“Came to see you, Ally. Troublesome world; but you must look up a bit, you know. Troubles are but trials, they say, and can’t last for ever; so don’t you be frettin’ yourself out o’ the world, lass, and makin’ more food for worms.”
And with this consolation he shook her hand.
“I would have seen you, Harry, when you called before—it was very kind of you—but I could not. I am better now, thank God. I can’t believe it still, sometimes,” and her eyes filled with tears—
“Well, well, well,” said Harry, “where’s the good o’ cryin’; cryin’ won’t bring him back, you know. There, there. And I want to say a word to you about that woman that’s in jail, you know. ’Tis right you should know everything. He should a told you more about that, don’t you see, else ye might put your foot in it.”
Paler still turned Alice at these words.
“Tell them to go in there,” said he in a lower tone, indicating with his thumb over his shoulder, a sort of recess at the far end of the room, in which stood a table with some work on it.
At a word from Alice old Dulcibella called Lilly Dogger into that distant “alcove,” as Mildred termed it.
“It’s about that woman,” he continued, in a very low tone, “about that one—Bertha. That woman, you know, that’s in Hatherton Jail, you remember. There’s no good prosecuting that one. Poor Charles wouldn’t have allowed it at no price.”
“He said so. I wouldn’t for the world,” she answered very faintly.
“No, of course; he wished it, and we’d like to see his wishes complied with, poor fellow, now he’s gone,” acquiesced Harry with alacrity. “And you know about her?” he added, in a very low tone.
“Oh no, no, Harry; no, please,” she answered imploringly.
“Well, it wouldn’t do for you, you know, to be gettin’ up in the witness-box at the ’sizes to hang her, ye know.”
“Oh dear, Harry; no, I never could have thought of it.”
“Well, you are not bound, luckily; nor no one. I saw Rodney to-day about it; there’s no recognizances—he only took the informations—and I said you wouldn’t prosecute; nor I won’t, I’m sure; and the crown won’t take it up, and so it will fall through, and end quietly—the best way for you; for, as I told him, you’re not in health to go down there to be battlin’ wi’ lawyers, and all sorts; ’twould never answer you, ye know. So here’s a slip o’ paper I wrote, and I told him I knew you’d sign it—only sayin’ you have no notion of prosecutin’ that woman, nor moving more in the matter.”
He placed it in her hand.
“I’m sure it’s quite right; it’s just what I mean. Thank you, Harry; you’re very good.”
“Get the ink and pen,” said Harry aloud to Dulcibella.
“’Tis downstairs,” answered she. “I’ll fetch it.”
And Dulcibella withdrew. Harry was poking about the shelves and the chimney-piece.
“This is ink,” said he, “ain’t it?” So it was, and a pen. “I think it will write—try it, Ally.”
So it was signed; and he had fairly described its tenor and effect to his widowed sister-in-law.
“I’ll see Rodney this evening and show him this, to prevent his bothering you here about it. And,” he almost whispered, “you know about that woman? or you don’t—do you?”
Her lips moved, but he could hear no words.
“She was once a fine woman—ye wouldn’t think—a devilish fine woman, I can tell you; and she says—ye know ’twas more than likin’—she says she has the whip hand o’ ye—first come, first served. She’s talkin’ o’ law, and all that. She says—but it won’t make no odds now, you know, what she says—well, she says she was his wife.”
“Oh, God!—it’s a lie,” whispered the poor lady, with white lips, and staring at him with darkening eyes.
“Well, maybe it is, and maybe it ain’t,” he answered. “But it don’t much matter now; and I daresay we’ll hear nothing about it, and dead men’s past fooling, ye know. Good-night, Ally, and God bless you; and take care o’ yourself, and don’t be crying your eyes out like that. And I’ll come again as soon as I can; and any business, you know, or anything, I’ll be always ready to do for you—and good-night, Ally, and mind all I said.”
Since those terrible words of his were spoken she had not heard a syllable. He took her icy hand. He looked for a puzzled moment in her clouded eyes, and nodded, and he called to the little girl in the adjoining room.
“I’m going now, child, and do you look after your mistress.”
By a coincidence or association—something suggested by Harry Fairfield’s looks, was it?—old Mildred Tarnley’s head was full of the Dutchwoman when Dulcibella came into the kitchen.
“You took out the ink, Tom, when you was weighin’ them oats to-day,” said she, and out went Tom in search of that always errant and mitching article.
“I was sayin’ to Tom as ye came in, Mrs. Crane, how I hoped to see that one in her place. I think I’d walk to Hatherton and back to see her hanged, the false jade, wi’ her knife, and her puce pelisse, and her divilry. Old witch!”
“Lawk, Mrs. Tarnley, how can ye?”
“Well, now Master Charles is under the mould, I wouldn’t spare her. What for shouldn’t Mrs. Fairfield make her pay for the pipe she danced to. It’s her turn now—
‘When you are anvil, hold you still,
When you are hammer, strike your fill.’
And if I was Mrs. Fairfield, maybe I wouldn’t make her smoke for all.”
“I think my lady will do just what poor Master Charles wished, and I know nothing about the woman,” said Dulcibella, “only they all say she’s not right in her head, Mrs. Tarnley, and I don’t think she’ll slight his last word, and punish the woman; ’twould be the same as sacrilege a’most; and what of her? Much matter about a wooden platter! and its ill burning the house to frighten the mice.”
Harry Fairfield here sauntered into the kitchen, rolling unspoken thoughts in his mind. The conversation subsided at his approach; Dulcibella made her courtesy and withdrew, and said he to Tom, who was entering with the ink-bottle—
“Tom, run out, will ye, and get my nag ready for the road; I’ll be off this minute.”
Tom departed promptly.
“Well, Mildred,” said he, eyeing her darkly from the corners of his eyes, “sorrow comes unsent for.”
“Ay, sure, she’s breakin’ her heart, poor thing.”
“’Twon’t break, I warrant, for all that,” he answered; “sorrow for a husband they say is a pain in the elbow, sharp and short.”
“All along o’ that ugly Dutch beast. ’Twas an ill wind carried her to Carwell,” said Mildred.
He shut his eyes and shook his head.
“That couldn’t do nowhere,” said he,—
“‘Two cats and one mouse,
Two wives in one house.’”
“Master Charles was no such fool. What for should he ever a’ married such as that? I couldn’t believe no such thing,” said Mrs. Tarnley, sharply.
“‘Two dogs at one bone,
Can never agree in one,’”
repeated Harry, oracularly. “There’s no need, mind, to set folks’ tongues a ringin’, nor much good in tryin’ to hide the matter, for her people won’t never let it rest, I lay ye what ye please—never. ’Twill be strange news up at Wyvern, but I’m afeard she’ll prove it only too ready; ’twill shame us finely.”
“Well, let them talk—‘As the bell clinks, so the fool thinks’—and who the worse. I don’t believe it nohow. He never would ha’ brought down the Fairfields to that, and if he had, he could not ha’ brought the poor young creature upstairs into such trouble and shame. I won’t believe it of him till it’s proved.”
“I hope they may never prove it. But what can we do? You and I know how they lived here, and I have heard her call him husband as often as I have fingers and toes, but, bless ye, we’ll hold our tongues—you will, eh? won’t ye, Mildred? ye mustn’t be talkin’.”
“Talkin’! I ha’ nout to talk about. Fudge! man, I don’t believe it—’tis a d——d lie, from top to bottom.”
“I hope so,” said he.
“A shameless liar she was, the blackest I ever heard talk.”
“Best let sleepin’ dogs be,” said he.
There was some silver loose in his trousers’ pocket, and he was fumbling with it, and looking hard at Mildred as he spoke to her. Sometimes, between his finger and thumb, he held the shilling—sometimes the half-crown. He was mentally deciding which to part with, and it ended by his presenting Mildred with the shilling, and recommending her to apply this splendid “tip” to the purchase of tea.
Some people experience a glow after they have done a great benevolence; as he walked into the stable-yard, Harry experienced a sensation, but it wasn’t a glow, a chill rather. Remembering the oblique look with which she eyed the silver coin in her dark palm, and her scant thanks, he was thinking what a beast he was to part with his money so lightly.
Mildred Tarnley cynically muttered to herself in the kitchen—
“‘Farewell frost,
Nothing got nor nothing lost.’
Here’s a gift! Bless him! I mind the time a Fairfield would a’ been ashamed to give an old servant such a vails. Hoot! what’s the world a comin’ to? ’Tis time we was a goin’. But Master Harry was ever the same—a thrifty lad he was, that looked after his pennies sharply,” said old Mildred Tarnley, scornfully; and she dropped the coin disdainfully into a little tin porringer that stood on the dresser.
And Tom came in, and the doors were made sure, and Mildred Tarnley made her modest cup of tea, and all was subsiding for the night.
But Harry’s words had stricken Alice Fairfield. Perhaps those viewless arrows oftener kill than people think of. Up in her homely room Alice now lay very ill indeed.
At dead of night Alice was very ill, and Tom was called up to ride across Cressley Common for the Wykeford doctor. Worse and worse she grew. In this unknown danger—without the support of a husband’s love or consolation—“the pains of hell gat hold of her,” the fear of death was upon her. Glad was she in her lonely terrors to hear the friendly voice of Doctor Willett as he came up the stairs, with a heavy, booted step, in hurried conversation with old Dulcibella Crane, who had gone down to meet him on hearing the sound of his arrival.
In lower tones the doctor put his questions when he had arrived in his patient’s room, and his manner became stern, and his measures prompt, and it was plain that he was very much alarmed.
Alice Fairfield was in danger—in so great danger that he would have called in the Hatherton doctor, or any other, to share his responsibility, if the horse which Tom drove had not had as much as he could do that night in the long trot—and partly canter—to Wykeford and back again to the Grange.
Alice’s danger increased, and her state became so alarming that the doctor was afraid to leave his patient, and stayed that night at the Grange.
In the morning he sent Tom to Hatherton with a summons for his brother physician, and now this quaint household grew thoroughly alarmed.
The lady was past the effort of speaking, almost of thinking, and lay like a white image in her bed. Old Dulcibella happily had charge of the money, not much, which Alice had for present use; so the doctors had their fees, and were gone, and Doctor Willett, of Wykeford, was to come again in the evening, leaving his patient, as he said, quieter, but still in a very precarious state.
When the Wykeford doctor returned he found her again too ill to think of leaving her. At midnight Tom was obliged to mount, and ride away to Hatherton for the other doctor.
Before the Hatherton doctor had reached the Grange, however, a tiny voice was crying there—a little spirit had come, a scion of the Fairfield race.
Mrs. Tarnley wrote to Harry Fairfield to Wyvern to announce the event, which she did thus:—
“Sir,
“Master Harey, it has came a sirprise. Missis is this mornin’ gev burth to a boy and air; babe is well, but Missis Fairfield low and dangerous.
“Your servant,
“Mildred Tarnley.”
Dulcibella, without consulting Mildred, any more than Mildred did her, wrote also a letter, gentler and more gracious, but certainly no better spelled. When these reached Wyvern, Harry was from home.
It was not till four days had passed that Harry Fairfield arrived in the afternoon.
He had thrown his horse’s bridle to Tom in the stable yard, and appeared suddenly before Mildred Tarnley in the kitchen door.
“Well, how’s the lady in the straw?” inquired Harry, looking uncomfortable, but smiling his best. “How is Miss Alice?”
“Mrs. Fairfield’s very bad, and the doctor han’t much hopes of her. She lies at God’s mercy, sir.”
“She’ll be better, you’ll find. She’ll be all right soon. And when was it—you put no date to your note?”
“On Friday, I think. We’re so put about here I scarce know one day from t’other.”
“She’ll be better. Is any one here with her?”
“A nurse from Hatherton.”
“No one else? I thought Lady Wyndale might a’ come.”
“I was goin’ to send over there, but Doctor Willett said no.”
“Did he? Why?”
“Not yet a bit; he says she’d be in his way and no use, and maybe worrit her into a fever.”
“Very like,” said Harry; “and how’s the boy—isn’t it a boy?”
“Boy—yes, sir, a fine thumpin’ baby—and like to do well, and will prove, belike, a true, open-handed Fairfield, and a brave Squire o’ Wyvern.”
“Well, that’s as it may be. I’ll not trouble him. I have more than enough to my share as it is—and there’s some things that’s better never than late, and I’ll live and die a bachelor. I’ve more years than my teeth shows.”
And Harry smiled and showed his fine teeth.
“There’s Fairfields has took a wife later than you,” said she, eyeing him darkly.
“Too wise, old girl. You’ll not catch me at that work. Wives is like Flanders’ mares, as the Squire says, fairest afar off.”
“Hey?” snarled old Mildred, with a prolonged note.
“No, lass, I don’t want, nohow, to be Squire o’ Wyvern—there’s more pains than gains in it; always one thing or t’other wrong—one begs and t’other robs, and ten cusses to one blessin’. I don’t want folks to say o’ me as they does of some—Harry’s a hog, and does no good till he dies.”
“Folk do like an estate, though,” said Mildred, with another shrewd look.
“Ay, if all’s straight and clear, but I don’t like debts and bother, and I a’ seen how the old boy’s worried that way till he’s fit to drown himself in the pond. I can do something, buyin’ or sellin’; and little and often, you know, fills the purse.”
Mildred was silent.
“They do say—I mean, I knows it for certain, there is a screw loose—and you know where, I think—but how can I help that? The Dutchwoman, I know, can prove her marriage to poor Charlie, but never you blab—no more will I. There was no child o’ that marriage—neither chick nor child, so, bein’ as she is, ’tis little to her how that sow’s handled. ’Twould be a pity poor Charlie’s son should lose his own; and ye may tell Alice I’m glad there’s a boy, and that she’ll ha’ no trouble from me, but all the help I can, and that’s a fact, and that’s God’s truth.”
“Well, well, that is queer!—I never heard man speak as you speak.”
There was a cynical incredulity in Mildred Tarnley’s tone.
“Listen, now—here we be alone, eh?” said he, looking round.
“Ye may say so,” she said, with a discontented emphasis.
“I’d tell you a thing in a minute, old Tarnley, only they say old vessels must leak. Will you be staunch? Will ye hold your tongue on’t if I tell you a thing?”
“Ay,” said Mildred.
“Because one barking dog sets all the street a-barking, ye know,” he added.
“Ye know me well, Master Harry. I could hold my tongue always when there was need.”
“And that’s the reason I’m going to talk to you,” said Harry, “and no one knows it, mind, but yourself, and if it gets out I’ll know who to blame.”
“’Twon’t get out for me,” said Mildred, looking hard at him.
“One devil drubs another, they say, and if the young Squire upstairs has a foot in the mud I’ve one in the mire,” said Harry. “If his hat has a hole, my shoe has another. And ’tis a bad bargain where both are losers.”
“Well, I can’t see it nohow. I don’t know what you’re drivin’ at; but I think you’re no fool, Master Harry; ye never was that, and it’s a cunning part, I’ve heered, to play the fool well.”
And Harry did look very cunning as she cited this saw, and for a moment also a little put out. But he quickly resumed, and staring in her face surlily, said he—
“Well, I am cunnin’; I hope I am; and you’re a little bit that way yourself, old Mildred; no fool, anyhow, that ever I could see.”
“Crafty I may be, I ha’ lived years and seen folk enough to make me, but my heart weren’t set never on pelf.
‘A thousand pounds and a bottle of hay
Is all one at doom’s-day.’”
“So it is,” said he, “but there’s a good many days ’twixt this and doom’s-day yet, and money ’ll do more than my lord’s letter, any place, and I’ll not deny I’d like Wyvern well enough if my hand was free to lay on it. But I a’ thought it well over, and it wouldn’t fit me nohow. I can’t.”
“Ye’re the first Fairfield I ever heered say that Wyvern wouldn’t fit him,” said she.
“Is that beer in the jug?” he asked, nodding toward a brown jug that stood on the dresser.
“Yes, sir. Would ye like a drink?”
“Ay, if it baint stale.”
“Fresh drew, just as you was coming in, sir,” said she, setting it down on the table. “I’ll fetch ye a glass.”
“Never mind a glass, a rantin’ dog like me can drink out of a well-bucket, much less a brown jug,” and clutching it carelessly by the handle he quaffed as long and deep a draught as his ancestor and namesake might after his exhausting flight from Worcester a couple of hundred years before.
“You are puzzled, old girl, and don’t know whether I be in jest or earnest. But, good or bad, wives must be had—you know, and you never heard of a Fairfield yet that was lucky in a wife, or hadn’t a screw loose sometime about they sort o’ cattle; and ye’re an old servant, Mildred, and though you be a bit testy, you’re true, and I may tell ye things I wouldn’t tell no one, not the Governor, not my little finger; I’d burn my shirt if it knew; and ye won’t tell no one, upon your soul, and as ye hope to be saved?”
“I can keep counsel, I’m good at that,” said Mildred.
“Well, I need not say no more than this: there’s them that’s quiet enough now, and will be, that if they thought I was Squire o’ Wyvern I’d make the world too hot to hold me. I’d rather be Harry Fairfield at fair and market than archbishop of hell, I can tell ye, havin’ no likin’ for fine titles and honour, and glory, wi’ a tethered leg and a sore heart; better to go your own gait, and eat your mouthful where ye find it, than go in gold wi’ a broken back, that’s all, and that’s truth. If ’twas otherwise I’d be down in the mouth, I can tell you, about the young genman upstairs, and I’d a’ liked his birthday no better than a shepherd loves a bright Candlemas; but as it is—no matter, ’tis better to me than a pot o’ gold, and I drink the little chap’s health, and I wish she had a sieve full o’ them, and that’s God’s truth, as I stand here,” and Harry backed the declaration with an oath.
“Well, I believe you, Harry,” said Mildred.
“And I’m glad o’t,” she added after a pause.
“I’m very glad—there has been ill blood o’er much in the family,” she resumed; “it’s time there should be peace and brotherhood, God knows—and—I’m glad to hear you speak like that, sir.”
And, so saying, she extended her dark, hard palm to him, and he took it, and laughed.
“Every man knows where his own shoe pinches,” said he; “’tis a shrewish world, old girl, and there’s warts and chilblains where no one guesses, but things won’t be for ever; ’tis a long lane, ye know, that has no turning, and the burr won’t stick always.”
“Ay, ay, Master Harry, as I’ve heard the old folks say, ‘Be the day never so long, at last cometh even-song.’”
“And how is the lady herself?” said he.
“As bad as can be, a’most,” answered Mildred.
“Who says so?” he asked.
“The doctor; he has no opinion of her, I’m afeared, poor little thing.”
“The doctor—does he?—but is he any good?”
“It’s Doctor Willett, of Wykeford. He’s thought a deal of by most folk down here. I don’t know, I’m sure, but he seems very nice about her, I think, and kind, and looks after the baby too.”
“That’s right; I’m glad o’ that. I’d pay something myself rather than it should be neglected; and what does he say o’ the boy?”
“Doin’ very well—nothin’ against him; but, you know, ’tis only a few days, and o’er soon to judge yet a bit.”
“I wonder could she see me for a minute?”
“Hoot, man! How came that in your head? Why, the room’s dark, and she never speaks above a whisper, and not five words then, and only, maybe, thrice in a day. Ye don’t know what way she is; ’tis just the turn o’ a halfpenny whether she’ll live till mornin’.”
“That’s bad. I didn’t think she could be that bad,” said he.
“She is, then.”
“’Twould do her no harm to know that there’s some rent—about thirty pounds—due from Riddleswake. I’ll give Tom a bit of a note to Farmer Wycraft, and he’ll pay it. It’s settled to her for her life—I know that—and she’ll be wantin’ money; and see you that the child wants nothing. I have lots o’ reasons why that child should do well. This ain’t bad beer, I can tell you. Another mug of it wouldn’t hurt me, and if you can make me out a mouthful of anything; I’m beastly hungry.”
A bit of cold corned beef, some cheese, and a loaf Mildred Tarnley produced, and Harry made a hearty meal in the kitchen, not disturbing that engrossing business by conversation, while old Mildred went to and fro, into the scullery and back again, and busied herself about her saucepans and dishes.
“Now get me a pen and ink and a bit o’ paper. There’s no one in the house will be the worse of a little money, and I’ll write that note.” And so he did, and handed it to Mildred with the air of a prince who was bestowing a gift.
“There! That will make the mare go for a while longer; and, look ye, where’s old Dulcibella Crane? I’d like to shake hands wi’ her before I go.”
“Upstairs, wi’ her mistress.”
“Tell her to come down and see me for a minute; and mind, old Tarnley, ye must write to me often—to-morrow and next day—and—where’s my hat?—on my head, by Jove—and so on; for if anything should happen—if little Alice should founder, you know—there should be some one, when she’s off the hooks, to look after things a bit; and the Governor won’t do nothing—put that out o’ yer head—and ’twill all fall on my shoulders; and send her down to me—old Dulcibella Crane, I mean—for I’m going, and unless I’m wanted I mayn’t see ye here for many a day.”
Thus charged, Mildred Tarnley went away, and in a few minutes old Dulcibella appeared.
From her, after he had examined her as to the state of the lady upstairs, and of her baby, he exacted the same promise as that which Mildred had made him—a promise to write often to Wyvern.
He did not mind making her the same odd confidence which he had made to Mildred. There was no need, he thought, for Dulcibella was soft-hearted, and somewhat soft-headed, too, and by no means given to suspicion; and as she had not the evil that attends shrewdness, neither had she the reliability, and she was too much given to talking, and his secret would then become more public than he cared to make it.
“And tell the mistress I wish her joy, do you mind, and I’d like to stand godfather to the boy whenever the christenin’ is, and to put me to any work she thinks I’m fit for; and tell her I wrote about a handful o’ rent that’s coming to her; and good-bye, and take care o’ yourself; and who’s nursin’ the baby?”
“We feeds it wi’ goat’s milk and sich like, by direction of the doctor. Wouldn’t ye like to see it?”
“Not this time—I’m off—but—who’s taking charge of him?”
“Among us the poor little darling is, but mostly me.”
“Well, that’s right, and look after it well, and I’ll give ye a bit o’ money—when—when it’s on a little, and don’t forget to write; and ye needn’t say nout to old Mildred, for she’s goin’ to write too, and might take huff if she knew that you was writin’ also, do you see?”
“Yes, Master Harry, surely none shall know, and I’m thinkin’ ye would like to see it, and it won’t be nothin’ the worse, ye’ll find, and it is such a darlin’.”
“And so like its poor papa that’s gone, eh? But I haven’t no time, dear, this bout, and you may give his worship my kind regards, and tell him the more he thrives the better I’m pleased, and old chimnies won’t stand for ever, and he won’t be long kept out of his own, and I’ll keep them aloof that would make or meddle or mar, and good-by, old Dulcie Crane, and mind what I said.”
And clapping her on the shoulder with his strong hand, he smiled after his fashion, and wagged his head and strode into the yard, mounted his horse, and was soon far away on the road from Carwell Grange.
Harry Fairfield, when, crossing Cressley Common, he reached the road that diverges eastward, took that turn, and rode towards Hatherton.
Surely enough he looked when he slackened his pace to a walk at the foot of the long low hill that interposes between the common and that town.
He had a short pipe in his pocket, with a big bowl, and a metal cover to it, into which he stuffed some pinches of tobacco—a shilling went a good way in that sort of smoking, and Harry was economical—and soon his pipe was in full play.
This narcotic helped his cogitative powers, and he had a good deal to think about. He was going to see his old friend Bertha Velderkaust, in her new situation, and he was considering how best to approach her.
From such ruminations—too vague and irregular to be reduced to logical sequence and arrangement—there arise, nevertheless, conclusions by no means unimportant, and quite distinct enough. By this time he had smoked his pipe out, and looked down from the summit of this rising ground upon the pretty town spreading among the trees, with its old tower and steeple, its court-house, its parsonage, and that high-walled stronghold on the right, in which the object of his visit was at present secluded.
When, having complied with all formalities, he obtained an entrance, and obtained permission to visit that person, it was her pleasure to keep him waiting for some time for his audience. Harry grew cross and impatient, the more so as he heard that she had a friend with her, drinking tea, and reading the newspaper to her.
As Harry Fairfield was one of those persons who are averse to sacrificing themselves without a good consideration, the reader will conclude that his object was not altogether to serve the “old soldier.” If it had been only that, I think he would have left the town of Hatherton re infectâ. As it was, he waited, and at last was admitted.
This lady, Bertha Velderkaust, chose to be known among her neighbours in misfortune as Madame Bertha Fairfield of Wyvern, which style and title she preferred to that by which she had been committed to the safe keeping of the gaoler.
When Harry Fairfield stepped into her small apartment he found her dressed and bedizened in a way that a little surprised him.
She had on a sky-blue satin dress, caught up at one side with a bunch of artificial flowers. She had a lace scarf and a lace coiffure lying flat across her head, with a miniature coronet of Roman pearl in the centre, and lappets depending at each side. She had a double necklace of enormous Roman pearls about her throat, and a pair of pink velvet slippers, embroidered with beads and bugles, and this tawdry figure sat on the side of her truckle-bed to receive him, with the air of a princess in a pantomime. She accumulated her finery in this way, I think, for the purpose of impressing the people about the prison with a due sense of her position and importance. It may not have been quite without its effect.
“Hullo! madame, I came to tell you some news,” said he, as soon as the door was closed. “But, by the makins! you ’most took my breath away at first sight o’ ye.”
“Pity to have so nice a man breathless—deplorable pity!”—or biddy, as she pronounced it. “Suppose you go away. I did not ask you to come and get your breath again in the air of my place.”
“What place may that be—not Hoxton Old Town, hey?”
“Not at all—Wyvern, dear child?” she said, with a quiet sneer.
“Oh, thank ye—yes—well I will, I think, take a mouthful there as you are so good.”
As he concluded this speech Master Harry put out his tongue at the blind lady with a grimace that was outrageous.
“I’ll hide my name no longer,” she said, “I’m Mrs. Fairfield of Wyvern.”
“That’s as it may be,” he answered, serenely.
“I say, I’m Mrs. Fairfield of Wyvern,” repeated she.
“Boo!” answered Harry.
“Beast! By that noise what do you mean?”
“I’ll tell ye, by-and-by. Come, you mustn’t be cross, it wastes time.”
“More time than we know what to do with in this house,” she sneered.
“Well, that’s true for some, I’ll not deny; but there’s some as is pretty well worked I hear—eh?—and so long as we baint, we may endure the leisure, for as bad as that is, business here, I’m told, is a deal worse,” and Harry laughed.
“Pleasant was my Harry always,” again sneered the lady.
“And ye heard of poor Charlie, of course?” he asked.
“Yes, of course. Every one is not like you. I did hear. I don’t thank you,” she answered, tartly, and turned her pale, malignant face toward him.
“But, dear girl, I could not. There was difficulties, eyes a-watchin’ on all hands, and ears cocked, and I knew you could not be long without knowing. So you heard; but mayhap you haven’t heard this—there’s a child born o’ that marriage.”
“Marriage!” and with an oath the big Dutchwoman burst into a discordant laugh.
For a moment Harry was alarmed, but the laugh was not hysterical—purely emotional, and an escape for pent-up scorn and fury.
“Well, anyhow there’s a child—a boy—and a fine hale little chap, wi’ a big bald head and a bawlin’ mouth as ever a mother hugged—the darlin’.”
“Well, let the brat lie on the dung heap, you’ll not lift him,” said the lady.
“I’ll not meddle or make. I’m not over-hot about Wyvern. I’d rather have a pocket full o’ money than a house full o’ debts any day; and anyhow there he is, and four bones that’s to walk off with my share o’t.”
“I should have got mourning,” said Bertha Velderkaust, speaking from some hidden train of thought.
“Bah! No one to see you here,” said Harry.
“If I had money or credit, I’d have got it,” she said.
“That’s very affectionate of you,” said Harry; “but why do you dress like that—why do you dress like the lady wi’ the glass slipper, Cinderella, at the king’s ball, in the story book?”
“I should dress, you think, like Cinderella over the coal-scuttle?”
“Well, I wouldn’t set the folk a-laughing when I was in no laughing humour myself—not that it makes much odds, and I do suppose it don’t matter—not it.”
“It does matter something, perhaps, and perhaps nothing; but I know who I am, and I won’t let myself down,” said she. “I don’t want to lose myself among these people; I’ll keep myself distinct. I’m too high to put my foot in the mud.”
“Too high to put your foot in the mud—too high to put your foot on the pavement,” said Harry, mischievously, with his eyes on this impulsive lady, and hitching his chair off a little to secure a fair start. “You’ll be too high, I’m thinkin’, to get your foot to ground at all, one o’ these days, if you don’t look sharp. It’s too high a flight, I’m told, to touch terra firma wi’ the top o’ your toe—the gallows, I mean—and that’s what you’re coming to quick, I’m afeard.”
As Harry concluded, he stood up, intending to get out, if possible, without the indignity of coming to hand-grips with a woman.
The Herculean lady, in sky-blue satin and Roman pearls, leaned forward with sharpened features, but neither extended her arm nor attempted to rise. Then she sighed deeply, and leaned with her shoulders to the wall.
“Off in a coach for this bout,” thought Harry.
“Thank you, kind lad, always the same,” she sneered, quietly. “You wish it, no doubt, but, no, you don’t think it. I know better.”
“Why the devil should I wish you hanged, Bertha? Don’t be a fool; you’re not in my way, and never can be. There’s that boy, and, for reasons of my own, I’m glad he is—I’m glad he’s where he is—and Wyvern will be for him and not for me—never!”
“Harry, dear, you know quite well,” she drawled, softly, with a titter, “you’ll poison that boy if you can.”
“You lie!” said Harry, turning scarlet, and then as suddenly pale. “You lie!—and so that’s answered.”
Here followed a silence. The woman was not angry, but she tittered again and nodded her head.
“Wyvern’s out o’ my head. I never cared about it. I had my own reasons. I never did,” he swore, furiously, striking his hand on the table. “And I won’t see that boy ruined—my flesh and blood—my own nephew. No, no, Bertha, that would never do; the boy must have his own. I’ll see you made comfortable, but that lay won’t do—you’ll find it won’t pay nohow.”
“Speak out, man—what do you mean?” said Bertha.
“Come, come, come, Bertha, you’re no fool,” wheedled he, “there isn’t a sounder head from this to London; and though you be a bit hot-headed, you’re not as bad as you’d have us believe—’taint the worst, always, that has an o’er-hasty hand. Why, bless ye, girl, I’d be sorry ye were hurt, and I’ll help to get ye out o’ this, without scathe or scorn, if you’ll let me.”
“Well, come; what’s in your mind, Harry Vairfield?” she asked.
“I tell ye what it is, it can do you no good, nohow, bein’ hard on that boy, and I know, and you know, you never were married to poor Charlie.”
“You lie!” cried the lady, bitterly. So they were quits on the point of honour.
“Now, Bertha, lass, come now—reason, reason; don’t you be in a hurry, and just listen to reason, and I’ll make it better to you than fifty marriages.”
“Don’t you think I have no advice—I’ve engaged Mr. Wynell, the best attorney in Hatherton; I know what I’m about.”
“The better you know it, the better I’m pleased; but the lawyerfolk likes always a bit of a row—they seldom cries kiss and be friends until their hands be well greased, and their clients has a bellyful o’ law; therefore it’s better that friends should put their heads together and agree before it comes to that sort o’ milling, and I tell ye, ye shall be cared for; I’ll see to it, if you don’t be kickin’ up no rows about nothing.”
She laughed a quiet, scornful laugh.
“Oh ho! Master Harry, poor little fellow! he’s frightened, is he?”
“You’re damnably mistaken,” said he. “Frightened, indeed! I’ll see whose frightened: I know there was no marriage—I know it, and it won’t do tryin’ it on me, you’ll just get yourself into the wrong box; where’s the use of runnin’ your head into a cotton bag?”
“Cotton bag your own head. Who’s to do it?”
“They’ll be clumsy fingers that can’t tie that knot, lass. Come, you’re a clever girl, you’re not to be talking—not like a fool. I know everything about it. If you try that on, it will turn out bad. ’Taint easy to green Harry Fairfield; I don’t think he was ever yet fooled by a lass but where he chose to be fooled, and it’s pretty well allowed there’s no use trying to bully him.”
“I ought to like you, if all that be so,” said she, “for you are very like my own self.”
“I’m not tryin’ to bully you, girl, nor to sell ye, neither; ye were always a bit rash, and too ready wi’ your hand; but them’s not the worst folk goin’. We Fairfields has a touch o’ it, and we shouldn’t be o’er hard on quick-tempered folk like that. There was no lass that ever I met, gentle or simple, that could match ye for good looks and pleasant talk, and ye dress so beautiful, and if ye had but your eyes this minute, you’d have who ye liked at your feet.”
And Harry Fairfield repeated this view of her charms with an oath.
“If ifs and ans were pots and pans,” repeated the lady with a sigh of gratification, and with that foreign accent and peculiar drawl which made the homely proverb sound particularly odd; “I forget the end—there would be no use in tinkers, I think.”
“Well said, Bertha! but there’s none like ye, not one, this minute, so handsome,” exclaims he.
“Not that chit down at Carwell Grange, I dare say—eh?”
“Alice! Not fit to stand behind your chair. If ye could but see her, and just look in the glass, ye’d answer that question yourself,” he replied.
“There it is again—if I could look in the glass—it is fourteen years since I did that—if I could see that fool of a girl—if—if—if!” she said, with an irrepressible simper—“the old proverb again—ifs and ans were pots and pans—’twas old Mistress Tarnley used to say that—a d——d old witch she always was,” she broke out, parenthetically, “and should be broke alive on the wheel.”
“Bang away wi’ the devil’s broomstick, and break her to smash for me,” said Harry. “But I’d sooner talk o’ yourself. Hang me, if you ever looked better—there’s no such figure; and, by the law, it’s looking up—it is—better and better every day. I like a tall lass, but ye beat them all, by the law, and ye shows off a dress so grandly.”
“Now don’t think, foolish thing, I like compliments—in at one ear and out of the other,” she said, with the same smirk, shaking her great head.
“Hoot, lass! Compliments, indeed! Why should I? Only this, that knowing you so long I just blurts out everything that comes uppermost, and it’s a pity ye shouldn’t have money to dress as ye should.”
“I never had that,” said the lady.
“Never—I know that well—and if ye won’t be said by me, ye’ll have less,” said Harry.
“I don’t think you know much about it,” said Bertha, serenely.
“Now, Bertha, child, you mustn’t keep contradictin’ me. I do know a deal about it—everything. There was no marriage, never.”
“As long as Charlie lived, ye never said that—you always backed me.”
“I’m not going to tell lies for no one,” said he, sulkily.
“Not going! Why you have been lying all your life—you’d lie for a shilling any day—all lies, you mean, miserly liar.”
“Come, Bertha, draw it mild, won’t ye? Did you never hear say o’ the Fairfields that they were a quick-tempered folk? and it’s an old saying, don’t knock a mad horse over the head.”
“It’s true all I said,” she laughed; “and that’s why it stings.”
“And did ye never hear that true jests breed bad blood?” he laughed. “But no matter, I’m not a bit riled, and I won’t. I like ye better for speaking out; I hate that mealy-mouthed talk that fine-spoken folk goes on wi’. I likes a bit of a rub now and then; if ye were too civil I couldn’t speak my own mind neither, and that would never do.”
“Get along with ye. Have you any more to say?”
“Shall I say it out, plain and short, and will ye hear it through?” he asked.
“Ay.”
“Well, here it is; if ye don’t sign that, I think ye’ll be hanged.”
“No, you don’t,” she said, more quietly.
“I do, by ——,” he swore.
“No, you don’t,” she repeated, in the same tone, “who is to do it? Charlie’s gone, and vilely as he used me, he never would have done that; and Alice won’t, she told you so. I’m better informed, I believe, than you fancied. So don’t you suppose I am at all anxious.”
“I wanted to take you off in a coach, and you won’t let me,” said he.
“Thanks, simple Harry,” she sneered.
“And I’m coming this day week, and then it will be within ten days o’ the ’sizes.”
“And I’ll be discharged; and I’ll bring separate actions against every soul that had a hand in putting me here. Ask my attorney,” said the lady, with a pale angry simper.
“And Judge Risk is coming down, and you’d better ask your attorney, as you talk of him, whether he’s a hangin’ judge or no.”
“Cunning beast! all won’t do,” she said, sarcastically.
“Well, Bertha, this day week I’ll be here, and this day week will be your last chance, for things will begin that day, and no one can stop them.”
“Lord have mercy upon us!” she whined, with an ugly mockery and an upturning of her sightless eyes.
“You may be saying something like that in the press-room yet, if you won’t take the trouble to think in earnest before it’s too late. Now, listen, once for all, for it’s the last words I’ll say. That’s all true you say: Charlie’s gone, and if he was here, instead of in kingdom come, ’twould ’a been all one, for he wouldn’t never ’a moved a hand in the matter, nor ’a suffered it; and as for Alice, she won’t neither. But if you don’t sign that paper by this day week, and make no bones about it”—here he swore a hard oath—“blind as you be, I’ll open your eyes—and I’ll prosecute the indictment myself. Good-by, ma’am, and think between this and then.”
Harry Fairfield strode from the room, and was still full of the grim emotion which had animated the close of his interview, when he reached the little inn at which but a few weeks before his brother Charles had stabled his horse, when making his last visit to Hatherton.