"We will talk for a little time about my dear mistress," said Rachel, "and then I will ask you to take me away." She leaned forward in her chair, looking up at her companion and laying both hands upon his arm.

"I cannot stay here," she went on, in a whisper. "There are reasons.

There is a person here I have not seen for more than a quarter of a century. You have observed that I am sometimes a little flighty." She withdrew one of her hands and tapped her forehead.

"My dear Rachel!" said Ferdinand, in smiling protestation.

"Yes, yes," she insisted, in a mincing whisper, as if she were laying claim to a distinction. "A little flighty. You do no credit to your own penetration, dear Mr. Ferdinand, if you deny it. That person is the cause. I suffered a great wrong at that person's hands. Let us say no more. Tell me about my dear mistress."

The varnish of unconscious affectation was transparent enough for Ferdinand to see through. The little old woman minced and bridled, and took quaintly sentimental airs, but she was moved a great deal, though in what way he could not guess. He sat and talked to her with a magnificent unbending, and she took his airs as no more than his right, and was well contented with them.

"And now, Reuben," cried Fuller, who, like everybody else, had noticed Miss Blythe's curious behavior to Ezra and was disturbed by it--"and now, Reuben, if thee hast got the old lady into fettle, let's have a taste of her quality. It's maney an' maney a year now since I had a chance of listenin' to her. Let's have a solo, lad. Gi'e us summat old and flavorsome. Let's have 'The Last Rose o' Summer.'"

Reuben sat down, threw one leg over the other, and began to play. The evening was wonderfully still and quiet, but from far off, the mere ghost of a sound, came the voice of church-bells. Their tone was so faint and far away that at the first stroke of the bow they seemed to die, and the lovely strain rose upon the air pure and unmingled with another sound. Rachel ceased her emphatic noddings and her mincing whisper, and sat with her hands folded in her lap to listen. Ezra, with his gaunt hands folded behind him, stood with his habitual stoop more marked than common, and stared at the gra.s.s at his feet. Ruth, from her old station by the apple-tree, looked from one to the other. She had heard Sennacherib's story from her father, and her heart was predisposed to read a romance here, little as either of the actors in that obscure drama of so many years ago looked like the figures of a romance now.

They had been lovers before she was born, and had quarrelled somehow, and had each lived single. And now, when they had met after this great lapse of years, the gray old man trembled, and the wrinkled old woman turned her back upon him. The music was not without its share in the girl's emotion. And there was Reuben, with manly head and great shoulders, with strength and masculine grace in every line of him, to her fancy, drawing the loveliest music from the long-silent violin, and staring up at the evening sky as he played. Ah! if Reuben and she should quarrel and part!

But Reuben had never spoken a word, and the girl, catching herself at this romantic exercise, blushed for shame, and for one swift second hid her face in her hands. Then with a sudden pretence of perfect self-possession, such as only a woman could achieve on such short notice, she glanced with an admirably casual air about her to see that the gesture had not been observed. n.o.body looked at her. Her father and the two brothers were watching Reuben, Ezra preserved his old att.i.tude, Ferdinand was fiddling with his eye-gla.s.s, and moving his hand and one foot in time to the music, and Rachel's strangely youthful eyes were bright with tears. As the girl looked at her a shining drop brimmed over from each eye and dropped upon the neat mantle of black silk she wore.

The little old maid did not discover that she had been crying until Reuben's solo was over, and then she wiped her eyes composedly and turned to renew her conversation with Ferdinand.

"Ah!" said Fuller, expelling a great sigh when Reuben laid down his bow upon the table, "theer's a tone! That's a n.o.ble instrument, Mr. Gold."

"She'll be the better for being played upon a little," said Ezra, mildly.

"Well, thee seest," said Isaiah, with a look of contemplation, "her's been a leadin' what you might call a hideal sort o' life this five-and-twenty 'ear for a fiddle. Niver a chance of ketchin' cold or gettin' squawky. Allays wrapped up nice and warm and dry. Theer ain't, I dare venture to say it, a atom o' sap in the whole of her body. Her's as dry as--"

"As I be," interposed Sennacherib. "It 'ud be hard for anything to be drier. Let's have a drop o' beer, Fuller, and then we'll get to work."

Ruth ran into the house laughing, and the four musicians gathered round the table. Ferdinand arose, strolled towards them, and took up a position behind Sennacherib's chair. Ezra made an uncertain movement or two, and finally, with grave resolve, crossed the gra.s.s-plot and took the chair the young gentleman had vacated.

"I am informed, Miss Blythe," he said, with a slow, polite formality, "as you have come once more to reside among us." She inclined her head, but vouchsafed no other answer. The movement was prim to the verge of comedy, but it was plain that she meant to be chilly with him. He coughed behind his shaky white hand, and hesitated. "I do not know, Miss Blythe," he began again, with a new resolve, "in what manner I chanced to 'arn your grave displeasure. That is a thing I never knew." She turned upon him with a swift and vivid scorn. "A thing I never knew," he repeated. "If it is your desire to visit it upon me at this late hour, I have borne it for so many 'ears that I can bear it still. But I should like to ask, if I might be allowed to put the question, how it come to pa.s.s. I have allays felt as there was a misunderstandin' i' the case.

It is a wise bidding in Holy Writ as says, 'Let not the sun go down upon thy wrath.' And when the sun is the sun of life the thing is the more important."

"My good sir," said Rachel, rising from her seat and a.s.serting every inch of her small stature, "I desire to hold no communication with you now or henceforth."

"That should be enough for a man, Miss Blythe," said Ezra, mildly. "But why? if I may make so bold."

"I thought," said the little old lady, more starched and prim than ever, "I believed myself to have intimated that our conversation was at an end."

"You was not wont to be cruel nor unjust in your earlier days," Ezra answered. "But it shall be as you wish."

He left the seat, gave her a quaint old-fashioned bow, and returned to his former standing-place. Ruth was back again by this time, and Rachel crossed over to where she stood.

"Niece Ruth," she said, speaking after a fashion which was frequent with her, with an exaggerated motion of the lips, "I shall be obliged to you if you will accompany me to the house."

"Certainly, aunt," the girl answered, and placing an arm around her shoulders, walked away with her. "There is something the matter, dear.

What is it?"

"There is nothing the matter," said the old lady, coldly.

"There is something serious the matter," said Ruth. They were in the house by this time, and sheltered from observation. "You are trembling and your hands are cold. Let me get you a gla.s.s of wine."

Aunt Rachel stood erect before her, and answered with frozen rebuke,

"In my young days girls were not encouraged to contradict their seniors.

I have said there is nothing the matter."

Ruth bent forward and took the two cold, dry little hands in her own warm grasp, and looked into her aunt's eyes with tender solicitude. The hands were suddenly s.n.a.t.c.hed away, and Aunt Rachel dropped into a seat, and without preface began to cry. Ruth knelt beside her, twining a firm arm and supple hand about her waist, and drawing down her head softly until its gray curls were pressed against her own ripe cheek. Not a word was spoken, and in five minutes the old maid's tears were over.

"Say nothing of this, my dear," she said, as she kissed Ruth, and began to smooth her ruffled ribbons and curls. Her manner was less artificial than common, but the veneer of affectation was too firmly fixed to be peeled off at a moment's notice. "We are all foolish at times. You will find that out for yourself, child, as you grow older. I have been greatly disturbed, my dear, but I shall not again permit my equilibrium to be shaken by the same causes. Tell me, child, is Mr. Ezra Gold often to be found here?"

"Not often," said Ruth; "he seems scarcely ever to move from home."

"I am glad to know it," said Aunt Rachel. "I cannot permit myself to move in the same society with Mr. Ezra Gold."

"We all like him very much," Ruth answered, tentatively.

"Ah!" said Aunt Rachel, pinching her lips and nodding. "You do not know him. _I_ know him. A most despicable person. They will tell you that I am a little flighty."

"My dear aunt! What nonsense!"

"It is not nonsense, and you know it. I _am_ a little flighty--at times.

And I owe that to Mr. Ezra Gold. I owe a great deal to Mr. Ezra Gold, and that among it. Now, dear, not a word of this to anybody. Will you tell dear Mr. Ferdinand that I shall be honored if he will grace my humble cottage with his presence? Thank you. Good-night, child. And remember, not a word to anybody."

She dropped her veil and walked to the front door with her usual crisp and bird-like carriage. At the door she turned.

"Shun Mr. Ezra Gold, my dear. Shun all people who bear his name. I know them. I have cause to know them. They are cheats! deceivers! villains!"

She closed her lips tightly after this, and nodded many times. Then turning abruptly she hopped down the steps which led towards the garden gate, and disappeared. Ruth stood looking into the quiet street a moment, then closed the door and returned to the garden.

"Not all," she said to herself, as she paused in sight and hearing of the quartette party, who were by this time deep in an andante of Haydn's--"not all."

CHAPTER VII.

When Aunt Rachel had spent a fortnight or thereabouts in Heydon Hay, and had got her own small dwelling-place into precise order, she began to make a round of visits among the people she had known in her youth. She had met most of the survivors of that earlier day at the parish church on Sundays, and had had no occasion to find fault with the manner of her reception at their hands. If there was not precisely that warmth of greeting which she felt in her own heart, she found at least a kindly interest in her return and a friendly curiosity as to her past. To her, her return to her birthplace was naturally an event of absorbing interest. To the other inhabitants of the village it was no more than an episode, but n.o.body being distinctly cold or careless, Rachel was not allowed to see the difference between their stand-point and her own.

In her round of calls she left the house of Sennacherib Eld till the last, though she and Mrs. Sennacherib had been school-fellows and close friends. Perhaps she had not found Sennacherib's manner inviting, or perhaps the fact that Ezra Gold's house lay between her own and his had held her back a little. Everybody had supposed that she and Ezra Gold were going to be married six-and-twenty years ago, Rachel herself being among the believers, and having, it must be confessed, admirable ground for the belief. n.o.body knew how the match had come to be broken off. It was so Old-world a bit of history that even in Heydon Hay, where history dies hard, it had died and been buried long ago. Even Rachel's return could not resuscitate it for more than one or two. But the story that was dead for other people was still alive to her, and as fresh and young--now that it was back in its native air again--as if it had been an affair of yesterday. It was something of a task to her to pa.s.s the house in which the faithless lover lived. It would be the first achievement of that feat since Ezra had treated her so shamelessly, and it was almost as difficult after six-and-twenty years as it might have been after as many days.

She clinched her lips tightly as she came in sight of the tall poplars which stood beyond the spire of the church, and rose to an equal height with it, and at the lich-gate of the church she paused a little, feigning to take interest in one or two tombstones which recorded the death of people she had known. Her troubled eyes took no note of the inscriptions, but in a while she found resolution Jo go on again. With her little figure drawn uncompromisingly to its fullest height, she rounded the corner of the church-yard and saw the familiar walls. Ezra, contrary to his habit, was standing at the side door and looking out upon the street. She was aware of his presence, but walked stiffly past, disregarding him, and he coughed behind his wasted hand. She thought the cough had a sound of embarra.s.sed appeal or deprecation, as perhaps it had, but she refused to take notice of it, except by an added rigidity of demeanor.

Sennacherib's house stood back from the highway a hundred yards or so beyond Ezra's. It was fenced all round by an ill-trimmed hedge of hawthorn, and the only break in the hedge was made by the un-painted wooden gate which led by a brick-paved walk to the three brick steps before the door. The door stood open when Rachel reached it, and the knocker being set high up and out of reach, she tapped upon the wood-work with the handle of her sunshade. This summons eliciting no response, she repeated it; but by-and-by the opening of a door within the house let out upon her the sound of Sennacherib's voice, hitherto audible only as an undefined and surly buzz.

"Who's master i' this house?" Sennacherib was asking--"thee or me?"

"If brag and swagger could ha' made a man the master," said a feminine voice, in tones of feeble resignation, "theer's no doubt it's you, Sennacherib."

"Brag and swagger?" said Sennacherib.