"No, father. The old Squire rode round, and he wanted to see so many things about the stackyard, aunt couldn't get away. Bob was in for a minute."

"What for didn't Bob see you home?"

"Oh, I cannot be fashed with him. When he's dressed to come out, he looks just like as if he'd got mixed suits of other folks' clothes on."

"You'll not have to be proud, my woman. He's just as good, and better, than the most of the lads round here. I never knew no good come of pride."

"I never knew what pride meant; but if I walk with a lad I like him to be bonny, and I want to see him not look like a countryman altogether.

Bob isn't bonny."

"Ay, well, hinny, if you want fine clothes, I doubt you'll get n.o.body but the young squire." This Mr. Casely said with a slow smile, and Mary thought suddenly, "Next Thursday afternoon."

The reader will see that these rustics had not attained that quaint sententious wisdom proper to the rustics of fiction. In their ungrammatical way they talked much like human beings.

II.

When Mr. Ellington turned once more to the sea, after Mary Casely had pa.s.sed out of sight, the look of things had somehow altered in his eyes.

He went to the edge of the rocks, and looked down on the short ripples that broke into whiteness below him. He was taken with the beauty of the clear green water that moved over the shallows, and he found himself watching the swift changes of shade caused by the pa.s.sage of the light breeze with something like active interest. The ragworts and the wild geraniums made a yellow and purple fretwork all around him, and the colour gave him a sense of keen gladness. He faced round and entered the quivering gloom of the woods again, but his step on the gravel was sharp and firm. Every faculty of him seemed to have waked. A blackbird bugled cheerily in the underwood, and Ellington felt a strange thrill. He reached the Hall, and sat down to wait for the dressing-bell, but the hour before dinner, usually so heavy to him, went by briskly. During dinner he made no attempt at sustained conversation, yet he answered his grandfather's few short questions with a ready cheerfulness and fluency which made the old man regard him with narrowed eyes.

When the night came fairly on, he sat looking out of his window into the scented darkness. Had you asked him what he was thinking of, he could not have told you, yet I suppose something unusual must have been pa.s.sing through his mind, for, when he had finally risen with a sigh of content to close the window, he stepped up to the looking-gla.s.s and regarded himself with curiosity. Once he smiled, as if by way of practice, and then a sudden sense of shame seemed to come over him, for he reddened and turned away. Most people will be able to guess what ailed him, but he himself did not know at the time.

The week went away but slowly. On the Wednesday evening the old Squire said: "You'll go over to Branspath to-morrow morning early. Richards will drive you in, and you must call on Chernside and tell him I wish to see him in the afternoon about Gibson's lease. He'll know what you mean." The young man shifted uneasily. "Couldn't you send a note by Richards?" He felt his face hot as he asked the question.

"Well, yes, I could, if I chose, but I want Richards to order a few things in the High Street. He'll pick you up when you've done with Chernside." At two o'clock next day young Mr. Ellington was back again at the Hall. As he stepped down from the dog-cart, Richards pointed to the horse. "I doubt we've done him some harm, Sir. Forty-five minutes from the High Moor--the black mare couldn't do it no quicker. Matchem here hasn't been driven for three weeks now." The horse was drooping his head, the lather slid down his flanks,--so I fancy there had been hard going.

The young Squire gave an indifferent look and hurried indoors. Within an hour he was walking rather quickly toward the sea, without one sign of the dreaminess that overweighed him when last he took the same road.

Presently (he knew it would come) a firm step came over the gravel, and his heart went fast. Before he had got rid of his momentary dimness of sight, he found himself obliged to stammer out something: "You managed the wicket by yourself this time." The girl laughed brightly. Ellington felt bound to go on speaking--

"You are going over to the Dene?"

"Yes; I think I'll take the short cut through the Ride."

"I think, if you don't mind, we may as well go by the Three Plantations." He said "we" with the utmost ease, and, noticing no sign of dissent, he walked on by the side of the girl, and a new chapter of his life began.

Neither of them could tell exactly how they came to be walking together, yet each of them would have been disappointed had it not fallen out so.

Neither of them had made a definite resolve to meet the other, but the girl had made most calculations on the event. Within a month from that day the pair were strolling under the gloom of the firs in the Three Plantations. This time young Mr. Ellington had his arm round his companion's waist; her tall figure was leaned towards him.

They were talking low, and the rustling sound of their whispers echoed a little beneath the sombre arch of the trees.

They came to the little bridge which crossed the head of the Dean, and then he took both her hands and said, "Now, good-bye; to-morrow at the high end of the New Plantation." They had got to daily meetings within that short month.

"I'll be there. You won't mind if I'm a bit behind time? Sometimes they want me, and I don't care for my father to ask where I'm going."

"I've promised to wait for you, darling, half a lifetime, if need be.

Why should I grudge an hour?"

This question was not articulately answered, but the reply was satisfactory. Then the couple parted.

So it happened that in a few brief weeks this quiet young man had drifted into a disgraceful intrigue. He did not think it disgraceful, because he had not reflected at all. The future was barred to him, and he lived from one day to another content with the joy that the day brought. He had made promises with rash profusion, and his promises had been believed. Further and further he had been drawn, till the fire of his blood made him fancy that he was proceeding voluntarily.

To Mary Casely the whole affair seemed quite natural. She knew nothing about the pitiful stories of village maidens which make so much of the stock of fiction. She had never read a story, so she fancied that her secret meetings were part of the fixed order of life. She happened to have a sweetheart who dressed well and spoke beautifully, and that was all the difference between her and other girls. Besides this, she was a singularly determined young woman. She had made up her mind to marry the young Squire; he in his folly had given no single hint of the vast, the insuperable difficulties that lay in the way; and so the bitter business went on.

The summer pa.s.sed into autumn, and late November came. Such an affair as that of Mary Casely and the young Squire could not be long kept out of the reach of acrid village gossip. Once or twice, as young Ellington walked out of church from the pew by the chancel, he fancied he saw the gardeners and farm-people looking at him with intelligence, and he felt something catching at his throat.

When December came in, his misery had grown to acuteness. His old pa.s.sive wretchedness had given way to a settled nervous dread which wore the brightness from his comely face.

One grey afternoon he took the old road to the sea again. The wind was crying drearily, and the trees creaked as they swayed to each swift gust. He shivered when he came in sight of the sea, for the low sky was leaden. The very foam looked dull. Every few seconds came a m.u.f.fled boom, as a roller shattered itself against the rocks, and a tower of spray shot up and fell on the sodden gra.s.s.

The wild flowers were gone, and the bents bowed themselves cheerlessly.

How many things else were gone! How many things else were cheerless!

He turned round when he could bear waiting no longer, and prepared to carry his miseries home. Something ill must have happened. At the bluff of the shrubbery where he had first seen Mary pa.s.s out of sight he heard a step, but it was not that sharp, steady step he had learnt to know so well. He was face to face with Mr. Casely. It had come at last. For weeks he had foreshadowed this meeting in his dreams, and the fear had so worked on him that he had learned a trick of glancing suddenly over his shoulder. Casely looked steadily down at the young Squire for a time that seemed long, and then, unclenching his tense jaw, said quietly--

"It wasn't me you were expecting to meet."

"I didn't expect to meet you. No; how do you come to be pa.s.sing this way?"

"I've been up to the Hall seeing your grandfather. You know what I've been for very near as well as I do. And now I have to talk to you. Speak straight, or I'll break you in two across my knee."

Ellington was not more of a coward than other men. But he didn't heed the threat. His grandfather know. Nothing else was in his stunned mind.

He stood staring--unable to get a word past his lips. Casely spoke, louder--

"What ails you? Have I to hit you?"

Then the young fellow found his voice.

"I wish you would. I wish you would kill me where I stand. I'm all in the wrong, and I have no right to answer you. It began well--I mean, I meant no harm. Never any man dared offer one of us a blow before, but it has come to that now. I wouldn't lift a hand to stop you. I haven't an excuse to give you."

"A nice thing it is for your father's son to be standing slavering there and cowering to me like a whelp. I don't despise you for it, for I know what you mean; but isn't it bonny? You haven't an excuse! Have you nothing else--not a promise like them you've made to the la.s.s?"

"I'd marry her now, but I know it would be a hundred thousand times worse for her than if she married a common sailor man. I'm past wretchedness. It couldn't be."

"And what about her? And, what about me? How is it for us? Now, look you, my fine young man! I'll not stop a minute longer, or else there'll be murder. But I'll tell you this much. I know as well as you there can be nothing more. I'm not mad. She can't marry you, and you knew that before you started lying to her. It's all over, and we must face the folk in the place the best way we can. You're sorry, I see you are; but understand this--sorry or not, if it wasn't that me and my forebears has had nothing but good from them that went before you, and was better than you, I'd kill you now, and reckon you no more than a herring. You'd better get away out of my sight."

Then Mr. Casely tramped towards the wicket, and went home. He sat long into the night, and when he went to bed he flung himself on the coverlid with his clothes on. Towards morning he said aloud--"I'm glad he didn't think to offer me money. If he had, I would have pulled his windpipe out."

The young gentleman thus alluded to by Mr. Casely had gone home in a state of stupefaction. He did not attempt to frame a thought. His limbs took him along mechanically. He pa.s.sed one of his aunts as he went to his room, but he did not make any sign. When he had settled down, a tap came at his door.

"Mr. Ellington'll have dinner laid for him in his study. He wants to see you, Sir, in the study as soon after dinner as possible."

Young Ellington heard this without any fresh shock. The worst had pa.s.sed, and nothing henceforth could hurt him.

He could eat nothing. He found himself adding up the number of gla.s.ses; dividing it into couples; counting the squares on the wall-pattern; going through all the forlorn trivialities that employ the mind when suffering has pa.s.sed out of the conscious stage. When his time came for meeting the terrible old man, he stepped straight into the study without knocking, and stood stupidly waiting for the voice that he knew would come. A thought of dignity never occurred to him. Had he been a mere libertine he would have brazened it out, and would have tried at flippancy. But he was not a libertine; he was simply an inexperienced young man who was suffering remorse at its deadliest.

"You had better sit down."