CHAPTER X

PRISCILLA BAXTER

'How many people are busy in this world in gathering together a handful of thorns to sit upon!'--JEREMY TAYLOR.

Audrey never forgot the day when she first heard this sad story. It was on a winter's afternoon, and she and Mr. O'Brien were alone in the cottage. She remembered how the setting sun threw ruddy streaks across the snow, and how the light of the fire beside which they sat later on in the twilight illumined the low room and flashed out on the privet hedge, now a ma.s.s of sparkling icicles. She and Geraldine had driven into Brail, and by and by the carriage was coming back to fetch her.

They had been talking of Mat, and Mr. O'Brien had shown her some of his letters; and then, all at once, his face had grown very white and troubled, and in a few husky sentences he had told her the rest of the story; and as Audrey listened there was a gleam of a teardrop on her long lashes.

'But you went to see him--surely you went to see him?' she asked tremulously, as he came to a sudden pause; but he shook his gray head very sorrowfully.

'I would have gone, ay, willingly, when my anger had burnt out a bit. I just hungered to see the poor lad--he was still a lad to me--and to shake him by the hand; for all he had done, he was still Mat, you see; but he would not let me: he begged and prayed of me not to come.'

'Ah, that was cruel!'

'Nay, he meant no unkindness; but he was pretty nearly crazed, poor chap! I have the letter now that he wrote to me; the chaplain sent it, but no eye but mine must ever see it. I have written it down in my will that it is to be buried with me: "Don't come unless you wish me to do something desperate, Tom; I think if I saw your honest face in my cell I should just make away with myself. No, no, dear old chap; let me dree my weird, as Susan used to say. I have shamed you all, and my heart is broken; try to forget that you ever had a brother Mat." Eh, they were desperate words for a man to write; but I do not doubt that he meant them.'

'Did he mention his wife and children?'

'No, never a word of them. I wrote to him more than once, but he never answered me. He was such a long way off, you see; they send them to Dartmoor now. As far as I know, Mat may be dead and buried. Well, it is hard lines, and I have known a peck of troubles in my time. There, you know it all, Miss Ross; it beats me why I've told you, for no one in the world knows it but Prissy--you have drawn it out of me somehow; you've got a hearty way with you that reminds me of my Susan, and I never had but that one secret from her--when I sent Mat the two five-pound notes.'

'Your story is safe with me, my dear old friend,' returned Audrey, laying her hand on his arm; 'you must never regret telling me. I have heard so many sad histories--people always tell me their troubles; they know they can trust me. I am fond of talking,' went on Audrey, in her earnest way, 'but I have never betrayed a person's confidence; I have never once repeated anything that my friends have told me--their troubles are as sacred to me as my own would be.'

'I am bound to believe you,' returned Mr. O'Brien, looking thoughtfully at the girlish face and steadfast eyes; 'Prissy says it always gives her a comfortable feeling to talk out her troubles to you. It is a gift, I am thinking; but you are young to have it. Did I ever tell you, Miss Ross, what Susan said to me when she was dying?'

'No, I am sure you never told me that.'

'Well, Prissy had gone to lie down, and I was alone with Susan. It was the room above us where she died. I was sitting by the fire, thinking she was having a fine sleep, and would surely be better for it, when she suddenly spoke my name: "Tom," she said, "I know just what you are thinking about: you have got Mat in your mind." Well, I could not deny that, and Susan was always so sharp in finding me out; and then she begged me to sit by her a bit: "For you are very low about everything, dear Tom," she went on; "you've got to lose me, and there's Prissy, poor girl! with her bad husband; and when you have nothing better to do you think about Mat. Sometimes I wish you were back in the shop, when I see you looking at the fire in that way."

"I was only wondering whether I should ever see the poor lad again," I returned, with a sigh; "that was all my thought, Susan."

"I am sure you will see him again," she replied very earnestly, with a kind of solemnity in her voice; "I don't know why I think so, Tom, but they say the dying are very clear-sighted, and it is strong upon me that Mat will one day seek you out." Now, wasn't that strange, Miss Ross?'

'No,' replied Audrey, 'she may have spoken the truth; while there is life there is hope. Do not be disheartened, my dear friend; you have had great troubles, but G.o.d has helped you to bear them, and you are not without your blessings.'

'That's true,' he returned, looking round him; 'I would sooner live in this cottage than in a palace. I don't believe, as the Captain says, there is a prettier place anywhere. I like to think Susan lies so near me, in Brail Churchyard, and that by and by I'll lie beside her; and if I could only see my girl more cheerful----'

'Oh, you must give her time to live down her worries. There! I hear the carriage;' and Audrey went in search of her fur-lined cloak.

This conversation had taken place about eighteen months ago, and though Audrey had never alluded to it of her own accord, it touched her greatly to notice how, when he was alone with her, Mr. O'Brien would drop a few words which showed how clearly he remembered it.

'There is no one else to whom I can speak of Mat,' he said one day; 'Prissy never cared much about him--I think she dislikes the subject; as sure as ever I mention Mat she cries and begins to talk of Joe.'

Audrey was not at all surprised when Mr. O'Brien made that allusion as she was stroking the tortoise-sh.e.l.l cat in the sunshine. She could hear Mrs. Baxter laying the tea-things in the other parlour, where they generally sat, and the smell of the hot cakes and fragrant new bread reached them. The cuckoo's note was distinctly audible in the distance; a brown bee had buried himself in the calyx of one of the lilies; and some white b.u.t.terflies were skimming over the flower-beds. The sweet stillness of the summer afternoon seemed to lull her into a reverie; how impossible it was to realise sin and sorrow and broken hearts and the great hungry needs of humanity, when the sky was so blue and cloudless, and the insects were humming in the fulness of their tiny joy! 'Will sorrow ever come to me?' thought the girl dreamily; 'of course, I know it must some day; but it seems so strange to think of a time when I shall be no longer young and strong and full of joy.' And then a wave of pity swept over her soft heart as she noticed the wrinkles in her old friend's face. 'I wish Mrs. Baxter were more cheerful,' she said inwardly; 'she has depressed him, and he has been missing me all these weeks.'

Audrey tried to be very good to him as they sat together for the next half-hour. She told him the Rutherford news, and then asked him all manner of questions. Audrey was a hypocrite in her innocent fashion; she could not really have been so anxious to know how the strawberries and peas were doing in the little kitchen garden behind the cottage, and if the speckled hen were sitting, or if Hannah, the new girl, were likely to satisfy Mrs. Baxter. And yet all these questions were put, as though everything depended on the answers. 'For you know, Mr. O'Brien,' she went on very seriously, 'Ralph declares that we shall have very little fruit this season--those tiresome winds have stripped the apple-trees--and for some reason or other we have never had such a poor show of gooseberries.'

'The potatoes are doing finely, though,' returned Mr. O'Brien, who had risen to the bait; 'after tea I hope you will walk round the garden with me, ma'am, and you will be surprised to see the way some of the things have improved.'

'Tea is ready, father,' observed Mrs. Baxter at this point. 'Miss Ross, will you take that chair by the window? you will feel the air there. I am going to ask a blessing, father: "For what we are going to receive the Lord make us truly thankful." Yes, Miss Ross, those are your favourite scones, and Hannah is baking some more; there's plum preserve and lemon marmalade and home-made seed-cake.' And Mrs. Baxter pressed one viand after another upon her guest, before she could turn her attention to the teapot, which was at present enveloped in a huge braided cosy.

'Dear me! I shall never be able to eat my dinner, Mrs. Baxter, and then mother will be miserable; you have no idea the fuss she makes if I ever say I am not hungry.'

'She is perfectly right, Miss Ross,' was the mournful answer; 'there is no blessing to equal good health, and health mainly depends on appet.i.te.

Where would father and I have been if we had not kept our health? It is a wonderful blessing, is it not, father, that I have been so strong? or I should have sunk long ago. But, as poor dear mother used to say, there is no blessing like a good const.i.tution.'

Everyone has his or her style of conversation, just as all authors have their own peculiar style of writing. Mrs. Baxter, for example, delighted in iteration; she had a habit of taking a particular word and working it to death. Michael was the first person to notice this little peculiarity. After his first visit to Vineyard Cottage, as he was driving Audrey home in the dog-cart, he said to her:

'Did you notice how often Mrs. Baxter used the same word? I am sure she said "trouble" fifty times, if she said it once. She is not a bad-looking young woman, but she is a painfully monotonous talker. I should say she is totally devoid of originality.'

'I know nothing about health, Mrs. Baxter,' returned Audrey with aggressive cheerfulness. 'I am always so well, you see. I never had the doctor in my life, except when I had the measles.'

'And the whooping-cough, Miss Ross. Don't say you have not had the whooping-cough!'

'Oh yes; when I was a baby. But I hope you do not expect me to remember that.'

'I am glad to hear it, I am sure, for you gave me quite a turn. There is nothing worse than having the whooping-cough late in life--it is quite ruinous to the const.i.tution. You know that, don't you, father?--for great-aunt Saunders never got rid of it winter and summer. She had a good const.i.tution, too; never ailed much, and brought up a large family--though most of them died before her: they had not her const.i.tution, had they, father? Great-aunt Saunders was a stout-built sort of woman; but with all her good const.i.tution and regular living she never got rid of the whooping-cough.'

'Shall I give you a slice of this excellent cake?' asked Audrey politely, and with a laudable desire to hear no more of great-aunt Saunders' good const.i.tution, and, to change the subject, she begged for a recipe of the seed-cake for her mother.

Mrs. Baxter looked almost happy as she gave it. She was an excellent cook, and her light hand for cakes and pastry, her delicious scones and crisp short-cake, must have been remembered with regret by the recusant Joe, and may have had something to do with his anxious claims. Mrs.

Baxter forgot her beloved iteration; her monotonous voice roused into positive animation as she verbally weighed out quant.i.ties.

'A great deal depends on the oven, Miss Ross, as I tell Hannah. Many and many a well-mixed cake has been spoiled by the baking; you may use the best of materials, but if the oven is over-hot----' and so on, to all of which Audrey listened with that pleased air of intelligent interest which once made Michael call her 'the most consummate little hypocrite on the face of the earth.'

'For you were not a bit interested in listening to old Dr. Sullivan's account of those beetles,' he said on that occasion. 'You know nothing about beetles, Audrey. I saw you once yawning behind your hand--which was positively rude--and yet there you were making big eyes at the dear old man, and hanging on his words as though they were diamonds and pearls.'

'You are too hard on me, Michael,' returned Audrey, who was a little hurt at this accusation. She rarely quarrelled with Michael, but now and then his keen man's wit was too much for her. 'I was very much interested in what Dr. Sullivan was saying, although I certainly do not understand the habits of beetles, any more than I understand the Greek literature about which you are pleased to talk to me,' in a pointed tone. 'And if I yawned'--speaking still in an injured voice--'it was because I had been up half the night with poor little Patience Atkinson--and I don't like you to call me a hypocrite, when I only meant to be kind,' finished Audrey, defending herself bravely in spite of an inward qualm that told her that perhaps Michael was right.

Michael looked at her with one of his rare smiles; he saw the girl was a little sore.

'My dear,' he said, taking her hand, 'don't be vexed with me. You know we always speak the truth to each other. You must not mind my little joke. After all, your friends love you the better for your innocent hypocrisy. We all pretend a little; conventionality demands it. Which of us would have the courage to say to any man, "My good friend, do hold your tongue--you are simply boring me with these everlasting stories"?'

'But, Michael,' persisted Audrey, for she wanted to make this thing very clear to herself as well as to him, 'I think you are wrong in one thing: I am really very seldom bored, as you call it. Even if I do not understand things--if they are not particularly interesting--it pleases me to listen to people. Old Dr. Sullivan did look so happy with that row of nasty little beetles before him, that I was quite pleased to watch him. You know people always talk so well on a subject that interests them.'

'I know one thing--that there are very few people in the world so amiable as a certain young lady of my acquaintance. The world would be a better place to live in if there were more like her----' But here he checked himself, for he had long ago learnt the useful lesson that speech is silvern and silence is golden, and that over-much praise seldom benefited anyone.

When tea was over, Audrey accompanied Mr. O'Brien round his small domain, while he proudly commented on the flourishing state of his fruit and vegetables. Before she left the cottage she contrived to exchange a few words with Mrs. Baxter, who had remained in the house, and whom she found in the tiny kitchen washing up the best cups and saucers.

'Girls are mostly careless, Miss Ross,' she explained in an apologetic manner; 'and Hannah is no better than the rest, so I always wash up mother's china myself. It would worry me more than I am already if a cup were to be broken.'

'I am so sorry to hear your husband has been troubling you again, Mrs.

Baxter.'