VI.

The Professor would undoubtedly have felt confirmed in the harsh judgment which he had pa.s.sed upon Bob Annesley's wife if he could have seen her at the meet on the following morning. Mrs. Harrington was a finished horsewoman, and never looked to so great advantage as in the saddle. Upon the present occasion she rode a fidgety chestnut mare, the property of Captain White, and the ease with which she managed her rather troublesome mount won her a great deal of admiration from the local members of the hunt. As for the officers of the 27th, they were too well accustomed to Polly Harrington's dexterity to pay her any compliments on that score; but they cl.u.s.tered round her as usual, and smiled amiably at her smart sayings, and told her that she was in rare form that morning. Bob hovered in the background, looking woebegone.

The neighborhood of Lichbury does not bear a very high character among hunting men, blank days being of by no means rare occurrence thereabouts, but there is always a fox at Lingham Gorse, and it was at Lingham Gorse that a fox was found on the particular morning with which we are concerned. The whole crowd got away together, and kept together for the first five minutes, going at racing speed across the short turf of the downs at the foot of which Lichbury stands. On this the northern side, the gradual slopes of these hills form as good and safe galloping ground as any one could wish for; but their southern face is very different, falling away in precipitous chalk quarries and sharp declivities unwelcome to timid riders, and it was after crossing the backbone of the ridge that the field began to scatter right and left, only a few adventurous spirits riding straight ahead and trusting in Providence.

Among these was Mrs. Harrington. She was followed by Annesley and Captain White, the latter of whom was watching her headlong progress a little anxiously, and wishing, perhaps, that his chestnut mare were safe in her stable. It was not, however, any fear on the mare's account that caused him to rein in suddenly and e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.e "Good G.o.d!"

About a furlong ahead, a row of posts and rails had come into view, immediately beyond which--as every one who knew the country was well aware--was a chalk cliff some two hundred feet in depth. It seemed incredible that any human being, whether familiar with the country or not, should ride at such a fence, for there was nothing but sky visible upon the other side of it; but Mrs. Harrington was making straight for it now, and it was the discovery that she was doing so that called forth Captain White's exclamation. He raised his hand to his mouth and sent a warning shout after her, and Bob, who saw the danger at the same moment, shouted too; but Mrs. Harrington did not appear to hear either of them, and, indeed, it was already too late for warnings to be of any avail. For an instant horse and rider rose dark against the gray sky, then vanished; and to those who waited there, helpless and horror-struck, it seemed as if some minutes elapsed before the dull crash came which told them that poor Polly Harrington had taken her last leap.

"Awful thing!--most shocking sight I ever saw in my life!" Captain White said, describing the catastrophe, some months afterwards, to an old brother officer. "But she must have been killed like a flash of lightning--there's some comfort in that. And, though I wouldn't say so to any one else, I can't help thinking that the poor woman's death was about the best thing that could have happened. Fancy her having got Bob Annesley to marry her on the sly! Only shows what fools fellows are, eh? You've heard that he's engaged to that pretty Miss Cecil now, haven't you? It isn't given out yet, of course, and I suppose they'll have to let a year go by before they announce it formally; but everybody knows about it down in these parts."

Probably many less plain-spoken persons than Captain White agreed with him in thinking the unfortunate harpy's death the best thing that could have happened; but it may be hoped that Bob Annesley was not consciously among the number. The suddenness and the ghastly nature of the calamity gave him a shock from which his elastic spirits took a long time to recover; but he began to be more cheerful again after meeting Canon Stanwick, and putting into words a dread which he had not liked to mention to other friends.

"I say," he asked hesitatingly, and keeping his eyes upon the ground, "do you believe--do you believe that--_she did it on purpose?_"

The Professor evaded the question so cleverly that his interrogator quite imagined that he had answered it.

"I do not think," he said gravely, "that we have any right whatever to cast such an aspersion as that upon her memory."

ARCHDEACON HOLDEN'S TRIBULATION.

She was so frail and small that the country squires who came in at the one stopping-place and left the train at the next, and talked of petty sessions and highway-boards in a strong slow way, like men with a tight grasp of a slippery subject, felt fatherly towards her; and so fair that their sons found out new and painful ways of sitting which hid dirty boots, and strange modes of propping their guns which employed hands suddenly gifted with a sense of over-abundance; and so dainty, yet withal bright of eye and lip, that a gentleman who got in one stage from Stirhampton, and knew her, was tormented by his fancy; which pictured her as a sparkling gem in its nest of jeweller's satin.

Altogether so frail and fair and dainty was this pa.s.senger; and yet in the flush of her young beauty and fearless nature, there was about her so imperious a charm that they all, though they might travel with her but three miles--it was a dreadful train--and exchange with her not three words, became her slaves. And the gentleman who knew her grovelled before her in spirit to an extent unbecoming in a man, much more in a clergyman and a curate.

She was popular, too. For though she parted from him at the door of the carriage, she fell in almost at once with another who knew her.

His business, as far as any save chatting with her was apparent, seemed to be about the book-stall. And after she had gone laughing from him, and the servant who met her--and was equally her slave with all the others, though he was more like a bishop and a father of the Church than they promised ever to be--had taken her luggage in charge, she met yet another, who blushed, and bowed, and smiled, and stammered before her after his kind. With him she was very merry until their roads diverged--if he had any road which was not of the nature of the last one's business. And then she tripped on just as gayly with a very tall acquaintance--they were all of one s.e.x--and after him with another, who took up the walking where his predecessor left off, just for all the world as if she were a royal letter, and they were those old Persian post-runners, who made so little of "parasangs," and whose roads seemed always to be through "Paradises." But this last one brought her to the rectory gates, and--much lamenting--left her.

There was only Granny in the drawing-room when Dorothy ran upstairs.

Granny, who was eighty-seven, and with a screen at her back and a wood-fire toasting her old toes, could tell wonderful tales of the great war. Who had heard "Clarissa" read aloud _coram puellis_, and at times shocked a mealy-mouthed generation by pure plain-speaking. She was the Archdeacon's grandmother; but to Dorothy what relation she was, or whether she was any relation, not all Stirhampton could tell--though it spent itself in guessing, and dallied to some extent with a suggestion that she was Dorothy's great-great aunt; not, however, committing itself to this, nor altogether breaking with a rival theory, that they were first cousins three times removed.

Whatever she was, Dorothy hugged her a score of times, and the tiny old lady said, "G.o.d bless you, my dear," half as many, and was going on to her full number, when the Archdeacon himself came in. He, too, smiled upon seeing the girl, and smoothed his ruffled brow, and tried to be as if the drawing-room--when he was in it--were all his world.

For this was a part of the Archdeacon's system, and he was of note through four dioceses as a man of system. So he patted the girl's hair, and said kindly:

"Well, my dear, I trust you have had a pleasant visit?"

"Oh, charming! and yet I am so glad to be at home again! But, guardian, what is the matter?"

The Archdeacon was vexed and pleased. Vexed that his attempt had not succeeded, and pleased that he could now tell his trouble. "The matter, my dear?" he said, taking a turn up and down the room; "why, I am greatly annoyed and put out. I never knew such a thing happen before."

Granny clasped her hands upon the arms of her chair in sudden excitement. "It isn't overdrawn, George, is it?" she said, nervously.

"Overdrawn!" he replied, cheerfully, "not at all." There had been a time when he was not an archdeacon, or a rector, or even in orders, but only a hard-reading undergraduate, when Granny's banking account had been with great difficulty kept above zero. Then it was her bugbear; now the family fortunes were as solidly substantial as the comfortable red brick rectory itself; but Granny found some difficulty in laying her bogey. "Not at all. Not so bad as that," he said, cheerfully; "but very annoying, nevertheless. I was writing my Sunday evening sermon this afternoon--as I always do, you know, on Friday--when Whiteman came running in to me at five minutes after four, and said there was no one at the church to take the four o'clock service. Of course I had to break off and go. The congregation had to wait fully ten minutes. It is not so much the inroad upon my time, though that is not unimportant, as the lack of system, that I deplore.

Maddy and Moser"--they were the married curates, and took charge of the two chapels of ease--"are, of course, engaged elsewhere; but surely one of the other five might have been here. It is a piece of gross carelessness on the part of some one."

Dorothy nodded and looked gravely into the teapot. "And I saw Mr. Gray on my way from the station!" she said.

"Ah, just so. You did not meet any of the others?"

"Yes, I think I did," she replied, with a great show of candor. "Of course I saw Mr. Bigham by the Church Club and Mr. Brune in Wych Street."

"Brune is the culprit, I expect. I do not think it would be Charles Emerson's fault, because he is unwell."

"Unwell!" cried the girl, impulsively. "Indeed, he is quite ill; I never saw any one look so bad."

"Oh! and where may you have seen _him?_" asked the Archdeacon, stopping suddenly in his promenade of the room, and facing her.

Dorothy bit her tongue to punish it. There is nothing so dangerous as a half-confidence. It so often leads, will-he-nill-he, to a whole one.

"He got into the train at Bromfield. He had walked out there," she said, meekly. Surprisingly meekly for her.

"Quite so. And may I ask whereabouts you met his brother?"

"Met his brother?"

"Yes, my dear," said the Archdeacon, suavely. "Met his brother, Mr.

Philip Emerson?"

"Let me see," murmured Dolly, with a vast pretence of considering, though her little ears were scarlet by this time. "Where did I meet Mr. Philip? Of course, I met him at the station. But however did you know?" she asked, with the utmost effrontery.

"When one sheep, Dorothy, jumps over a gap, all the flock follow. Four of my curates being so busily engaged meeting my ward, I had little doubt but that the fifth was as well occupied."

Unseen by him, she made a face at Granny, who was understood to say that boys would be boys.

"And sheep, sheep!" retorted the Archdeacon, with sharpness.

"They did not tell me that they had come to meet me," said Dolly, rebelliously. She did not like that proverb--or whatever it was--about sheep.

The Archdeacon frowned. "No," he said, severely, "but I do not doubt that you would have been better pleased with them if they had. Let me speak to you seriously, Dorothy. I cannot--I really cannot--have you distracting these young men in this way. I observed before you left several little matters of this kind--little laxities, and a want of energy and punctuality, on their part that were due, I fear, to your influence."

"Little laxities!" murmured she, "I never heard of such things." But he put her aside with a grand wave of his hand.

"I am not inclined to say it is altogether your fault. You cannot help your looks or your youth, but you can avoid being a hindrance instead of an a.s.sistance in the parish. I must not suffer,"--he was working himself into a well-regulated pa.s.sion--"my arrangements to be disorganized even by you. I will not and I cannot say, were this to go on, what steps it might not be my duty, however painful, to take."

After uttering this tremendous threat the Archdeacon walked hastily across the room, and, turning, looked to see what effect it had had upon his ward. She was playing with her tea-spoon, tapping petulantly with her foot, reddening, and pouting, and glancing for sympathy at Granny; behaving altogether like a naughty school-girl under reproof.

He took another turn, feeling that he did well--thoroughly well, to be angry; and looked again. She had risen, and was leaving the room. He could only see her back. I don't know what it was--perhaps he could not tell himself--in the pose of her little head and her shoulders, or whether it was something quite outside her--which made him step after her, and touch her shoulder gently.

"There, there!" he said, staying her kindly. "My scolding has not been very dreadful, Dorothy. We must be good friends again. Will you please to give me my second cup, and then I will go back and finish--my other sermon."

Granny looked surprised, and Dorothy laughed as brightly as if there were not and never had been in the world such a thing as a tear. For the Archdeacon rarely made a joke, even a little one. Jokes cannot be made upon system, and Archdeacon Holden had found system so good a thing that any pursuit which did not admit of it was apt to be out of favor with him. He was gifted with great powers of organization, and these he had used well, and found sufficient, so that by their means, without being a great preacher or a small controversialist, without inventing a new doctrine, or reviving an old argument, he had risen to preferment. He was little more than thirty when he was presented to the living of Stirhampton; and though the parish was overpopulated and under-churched, he reduced it in ten years to such a condition that it ranked as a model and its rector as a great man, often consulted by the heads of the Church upon parochial matters. Moreover, men talked of him as of one likely to rise higher.

In person he was a tall, well-favored man, in the prime of life, with hair just beginning to be flecked with gray. He had nothing of the ascetic in his appearance, though his manners were cold and reserved; but he was liberal, and had good nature and good temper, as well as good parts. These qualities, however, the strict formality of his habits, and his rigid adherence to rule, hid in a great measure from all who were not well acquainted with the man.

To Dorothy he had been almost a father; and would perhaps have come to be looked upon entirely in that light, but that he was betrayed from time to time by little things. For instance, what do fathers--ordinary allowance-making, bill-paying fathers--know of their girl's dresses?

The smallest chit in the nursery will tell you, nothing. And Carrie and Edie are so persuaded of this that they will flaunt their new seal-skins--which have not been paid for, and are absurdly inconsistent with papa's allowance--under his very nose, without the slightest tremor; and Flo will wear three new dresses in a quarter with as little chance of being prematurely found out in her extravagance, as if they were three new pairs of mittens. But in this respect the Archdeacon was not Dorothy's father. For not only did he observe during the few days which followed his scolding that she had not forgotten it; that she went sadly--or seemed to go sadly--about the house, and shunned his visitors with a pensive air, leaving Mr.

Maddy, who was over fifty, and had seven children, to pour out his own tea. Not only did he note this, but when Dorothy appeared at breakfast upon the fourth morning with a demure face and downcast eyes, he marked the novelty of her quaker-like gray dress, with its plain collar and cuffs, as quickly as did Granny.