'You don't need me to tell you that I respect you very highly, Mr.

Thistlewood. But you oughtn't to need me to answer your question any more. I shall be obliged if you will be so good as not to ask it again.'

'I shall ask it,' said the dogged John, 'till it comes to be answered one way or another.'

'It has been answered almost often enough to my way of thinking,' said Bertha.

She had never been tart with Thistlewood until that moment, but he manifested no surprise or emotion of any kind.

'It never has been answered, an' never will be till I see thee married, whether to me or another. When that day come to pa.s.s you've heard the last of my question.'

Thus the dogged John; and he being disposed of for a while, came Lane.

To him the persecuted maid was a little less severe than she had been, but she was inexorable.

'If you like to come here as a friend, Mr. Protheroe, in a few months'

time, I daresay we shall all be very glad to see you.'

'Well,' said Lane, with fine irrelevance, 'as an enemy this is a house I shall never make a call at. But look at the matter for a minute, my darling----'

'You must not talk to me like that, Mr. Protheroe,' Bertha said, with great coldness.

'Like what, my dear?' asked the ingenious Lane.

'Like that, Mr. Protheroe,' replied Bertha.

'I think it so often, that I'm afraid I'm bound to say it sometimes; but, if it offends, I hope you'll forgive me. You know you _are_ my darling, don't you? You know there isn't a queen in the world I'd even with you if every hair of her head was hung with Koh-i-noors. "Out of the fulness of the heart the mouth speaketh," the Wise Man says. So, if I do let slip "my dear" or "my darling" now and then, you'll know it's accident, and you won't take offence at it--will you?'

This was agile but unsatisfactory.

'Please understand me, Mr. Protheroe,' said Bertha, with rural dignity; 'you must not come here again until you can come merely as a friend.'

'Bertha! You can't mean it! What have I done? What has changed you?'

'Mr Protheroe!'--the rural dignity made an insulted G.o.ddess of her to Lane's fancy--'what right have you to say that I have changed?'

'Why, Bertha,' he said, meekly and strickenly, 'wasn't I to come in six months' time and get an answer?'

'Will you oblige me by coming for your answer in six months' time,'

answered Bertha. 'Good-afternoon, Mr. Protheroe.'

Bertha thought herself more cruel to herself than to him. She knew how infinitely more cruel she was to Thistlewood, but that was not a thing to be avoided. She and he alike must suffer--she in giving pain and he in bearing it. Bertha's heart ached over Lane, and the bitterness of it was to know that in a week or two the b.u.t.terfly nature would have ceased to care. He was hotly in love to-day, no doubt, but he would be out of love to-morrow, may be, and in a month or two hotly in love again elsewhere.

On the Sunday following these interviews dogged John was at church, and the b.u.t.terfly Protheroe also. Thistlewood looked as he always looked, rudely healthy, and a masterpiece of masterfulness and sullen perseverance and resolve. Lane was pallid and miserable, and Bertha remarking him was compelled to fall back on the bitter consolation of her former thoughts. He would take it heavily for a day or two, and would then forget all about it. He cast a glance or two in Bertha's direction, and his eyes were full of melancholy appeal. But for her certainty he would have moved her, for she was predisposed to be moved, and she had hardly expected to have had so much effect upon him.

He walked dejectedly out of church at the close of the service, and Thistlewood half by accident shouldered him. He took it meekly, and made no sign.

Two or three days later came a piece of news of the sort Bertha had expected. Mr. Protheroe was heard of as having made one of a picnic party in the neighbourhood of Heydon Hey, and of this party he was said to have been the life and soul. He was reported to have paid marked attentions to Miss Badger, daughter of a wealthy cheesemonger in Castle Barfield High Street. The young lady was rumoured to be possessed of great personal attractions, and a pretty penny, present and prospective.

Foreseen as it was, the news stung a little when it came. Even the most b.u.t.terfly-like of lovers might have waited a little longer!

And yet next Sunday, when Bertha went to church, quite resolved not to waste so much as a glance upon him, he looked paler and more dejected than he had done a week ago. She looked in spite of herself--she must needs look at him,--and it was evident that as yet the cheesemonger's daughter had found no way to cheer him. Thistlewood never altered. Those strong self-contained natures have a power upon themselves as they have on other people. He could last for years in solid and complete devotion--he could apparently wait for ever--and could yet hide from the eyes of the outer world the steady fires which burned within him.

That b.u.t.terfly nature of poor Lane's forced Thistlewood's virtues into prominence by contrast, and the girl had them almost constantly in her thoughts. There was nothing--she told herself remorsefully--that this typical piece of solidity and devotion would not do for her. Her faith in his attachment transcended bounds, and she felt it to be a thousand pities that she could not love him.

It does not happen in every life-history that this sort of profound feeling finds an opportunity of proof, but in the story of the lives of John Thistlewood and Lane Protheroe this thing came to pa.s.s in such wise that he who ran might read the natures of the men, and know them once for all.

Bulldog John had gone on doggedly courting, and b.u.t.terfly Lane had taken to seeing too much convivial company in Heydon Hey and Castle Barfield, and there was a fear in Bertha's mind that if her influence had not been permanent, it had at least started the young man on a track likely to prove disastrous. These emotional people, quick to feel and quick to forget, are hardly to be dealt with without danger.

Lane's dissipations must have been graver than even rumour gave them discredit for being. His midnight junketings had made a ghost of him, and to see him at any moment when he thought himself un.o.bserved was to wonder how long such a mournful and broken young gentleman could possibly rouse himself to fill the part of King even in a rustic Bohemia.

Autumn was on the land. The corn-shocks were standing in the stubbled fields, and the night air was full of gossamer, which twined itself about the faces of all wayfarers. Rural work had gone on merrily all day, and when the sun set silence fell, and darkness like a warm shroud.

Lights flickered a while in the village and the farmhouse, and then went out one by one. The moon stole over the Beacon Hill, and looked mildly across the valley.

There was not a breath of air stirring, and not a sound upon the night except for the placid and continual gurgle of the stream which had no voice at all by day. Yes. One other sound there was, a sound as of some one moving uneasily in a creaking chair. Creak, creak, creak It grew momently. Crackle, crackle, crackle. Still it grew. A tongue like the tongue of a snake--so light and fine and swift was it--flashed out of a crevice, and flew back again, flashed out again, and again withdrew.

Then the snake's body flashed out after it, and melted on the moonlit air. Another, and another, and another. Then a low roaring noise, and all the windows of the bas.e.m.e.nt shone out ruby-coloured, and the moon looked bleared by contrast.

A distant voice from the village called out 'Fire!' There was a crash of opening windows, a tumult of clapping doors, a storm of barking dogs, excited voices, hurrying feet.

Old and young, male and female, robed anyhow, ran hard towards the farmhouse, and poured in a thunderous stream across the echoing wooden bridge which spanned the river. The farmhouse was a tower of flame, fantastic turrets springing here and there. The dry timbers, centuries old, made the best of food for fire, and the place flamed like a tar-barrel. The screams of doomed horses came with hideous uproar from the stables in the rear.

The farmer and his wife, the men servants and the maid servants, were in the garden, all pale with fear and helpless; but the mother tore the night with calling on her daughter's name.

Bulldog John and his rival came last of all, though they ran like hounds, and they crossed the bridge and dashed through the crowd together.

'Oh, John,' cried the agonised mother, clutching at him as though he were an ark of safety. 'You'll save her--won't you? G.o.d help her! You'll save her--won't you, John?'

One figure, black as night against the fierce glow of the flame, dashed across the s.p.a.ce between the crowd and the farmhouse. It was hardly seen, and scarce believed in by those who thought they saw.

'John,' cried the wretched mother, 'you'll save her! You as loved her so! You'll save her!'

There is no manhood in the world that needs to be ashamed to hang back from an enterprise so hopeless and so terrible. The woman shrieked and prayed--the man stood motionless with white face and staring eyes.

Then came one wild cry from half a dozen throats at once, and next upleapt a roar that struck the noise of the fire out of being for an instant. For the figure, black against the fiery glow, was back again, by some such stupendous chance, or heaven-wrought miracle, as only desperate valour ever wins. A figure huddled in a blanket lay in his arms, and as he came racing towards the crowd they fell together.

They were lifted and borne out of the circle of fierce heat and flying sparks.

The house was left to burn, and every thought was centred on the rescuer and the rescued. The fresh air roused Bertha from her swoon, and at the first opening of her eyes and the first words she spoke the mother went as mad with joy as she had been with terror.

'Alive!--alive! Safe!--safe! And oh, my G.o.d! my Christian friends, it was the b.u.t.terfly as did it!'

But it was a full month later when Lane Protheroe asked his first question,

'Where's Bertha?'

'Hush! my dear, dear darlin',' said Mrs. Fellowes, her eyes brimful of tears. 'Lie quiet, there's a dear.'

'Where's Bertha?'

'Safe and well, love; safe and well.'

'I'm thirsty,' said the b.u.t.terfly.