"But there's what I may call the material side of the matter to be considered. My son's bride should be suitable from the business point of view."

"I've been considering that point, Master Dobson. It is undoubtedly important. Jack's a careless young dog, and I'm sure our Kate is just the woman he wants from a business point of view. She'll keep an eye on every meg in his pockets."

"Tut, tut!" said he, stirred to action, as I knew he would be. "You mistake me completely. My son will not be wanting in this world's gear and he must have a wife to match."

"I see," said I. "One with something substantial in her pocket."

"Precisely," said he.

"Well, Master Dobson, if our Kate is willing to marry your Jack, a point on which I can offer only a conjecture, she will marry him with five thousand pound in her pocket."

He sat bolt upright and stared at me with his mouth wide open.

We fetched them in, mother coming with them, and the old man there and then gave them his blessing. Kate ran into mother's arms, while Jack wrung my hand and danced for joy. Afterwards he ate the most astonishing dinner imaginable, loudly a.s.severating that he was as right as nine-pence and sick of slops.

My coming back made a great noise all over our countryside. Of what I had actually done there was no knowledge whatsoever. The tale went that I had been to America and found a goldmine, and come home and bought back the lost Hanyards. Acute sceptics in barbers' shops and market ordinaries advanced the opinion that it must have been a very little goldmine, but they were unable to subst.i.tute any other explanation and so fell into contempt. The tale suited me and I never contradicted it. In a world where a man who has travelled to London is a person of consideration and renown, I, who had been to America, was as a G.o.d. My first visit to Stafford put the sleepy old town into commotion.

Every night around the fire in the house-place I told them of my adventures. Jack, the sly fox, sat among his cushions, which he had not been fool enough to discard along with his slops, with Kate on a low stool at his knees. The vicar sat by mother's side on the settle. I drew a chair close to her, so that her hand could clasp mine as I talked, and very helpful I found it, for she understood in silence and in silence comforted me. Jane laid supper, taking a long time over it, for between journeys to and from the kitchen she would stand behind the settle and listen wide-eyed to a spell of my talk. Every night the vicar said grace, adding, in his simple, apostolic way, a special thanksgiving to the good G.o.d who had brought the young lad safe home again, through perils by sea and perils by land, and out of the very hands of evil men who had compa.s.sed him about to destroy him. Then, after supper, I escorted the good man home and came back through the moonlit lanes; and every night, without fail, I went and stood on the very spot where the gaff had slipped out of my collar, and I had turned round to see Margaret.

The only discontented person in our little circle was Joe Braggs, who had caught the dace that caught the jack, and so started me out of my jog-trot yeoman's round into the great world of life and adventure. Joe had done well while I had been away; our fields had yielded fruitfully under his care as bailiff; and, having had a favourable harvest, we were much money in hand on the year's working. I had thanked him heartily, confirmed him as my bailiff now that I was back, and given him fifty guineas, a sum which to him was wealth untold. Still the rascal was not satisfied, and went about with a bear on his back, as Jane had it, so that I was greatly tempted to clip his ear for him.

The day before Christmas, he was busy all morning under Jane's garrulous command, getting in bunches of holly and other evergreens from the hedgerows. His last journey had been to one of the farms on the Upper Hanyards in quest of mistletoe, which grew abundantly there in an ancient orchard. On getting back he had held a sprig over Jane's head for a certain familiar and laudable purpose, and had been rewarded with a smack that sounded like the dropping of an empty milk-pail. A little later I found him glowering in a cowhouse, and had it out with him.

"Look here, Joe, my lad," said I, "tell me straight what's the matter with you or I'll break your head."

"What d'ye want to come back 'ere for, upsettin' Jin like this'n?" he blurted.

"What the blazes have I done to upset Jin?" I asked.

"Why didna y' bring 'er back wi' ye, then?"

"Who's her, you jolt-head?" I demanded angrily.

"That leddy o' yourn. Jin's that upset 'er wunna luk at me, an' we wor gettin' on fine."

It was no use talking to Joe. I explained that she was a great lady and was to marry a marquess, that is a much more important person than an earl. He knew what an earl was, for of course he had heard of the 'Yurl,'

meaning that old rascal Ridgeley. A marquess, however, was outside his ken, and the information was wasted.

"Why didna y' marry 'er y'rsel', Master Noll, and bring 'er back 'ere, then Jin wud 'a' bin all rate?"

"I couldn't," said I.

"Did y' ask 'er?"

"No."

"More fule yow," said he bitterly. "She'd 'a' 'ad y', rate enough. Jin says so, an' 'er knows."

What could be done with such a silly fellow? I left off discussing and took him indoors with me. In front of Jane I pledged him in a mug of ale and told him he was one of the best lads breathing, and I was greatly beholden to him. In front of him I kissed Jane under the mistletoe and told her that, bonny la.s.s as she was, she was lucky to have the best lad in Staffordshire. I left them in the kitchen, and heard no more crashes.

Later on, Joe whistled his three tunes with admirable skill and intolerable persistency while, under Jane's orders, he took in charge the boiling of the Christmas puddings in a vast iron pot hung over the kitchen fire.

It was growing dark. Everybody was happy. Mother was out and round the village with her Christmas gifts, attended by one of our men and a cart packed with good things. Nothing could have made her happier. Jack and Kate were in the house-place busy with all sorts of housewiferies, in which he was as interested as she. Joe and Jane were in the kitchen, as merry as grigs. I went into my own room, across the pa.s.sage from the parlour, sacrosanct to me, my books and my belongings.

There, too, was the great jack, set up to the very life by the skilful hand of Master Whatcot. He appeared to be cleaving a bunch of reeds to pounce on a dace, just as he had done once too often on that memorable day. Brothers of the angle had made pilgrimages to see him from thirty miles round, and it was an added charm to fancy that the monster had been caught in a spot where Izaak Walton had fished as a boy, he having been born and bred in these parts. My jack is a famous jack, for the curious reader will find an account of him, with his dimensions and catching weight exactly given, in Master Joshua Spindler's folio volume ent.i.tled "Rudimenta Piscatoria, or the Whole Art of Angling set forth in a Series of Letters from a n.o.bleman to his Son," London, 1751. No one who has yet seen him has seen a bigger, though most of them have heard of one.

I lit my candles, got my pipe going, and drew my chair near the fire to read and smoke. It was, however, early days yet for me to read for long.

Moreover, by habit I had picked up my Virgil, and it was as yet impossible for me to feel the tips of my fingers in the teeth-marks without thinking of the poor wretch who had made them. I could see in exactest detail his dead body lying in the road and Swift Nicks beside it, pitching the bag of guineas up and down in the air, and smiling gleefully and yet wistfully at me. From that grim event, whether my mind travelled backwards or forwards, it traversed scenes such as few men are privileged, or fated, to pa.s.s through.

It was, again, too soon for me to realize the full effect of my experiences on myself. I was not moody, as in the days aforetime. I neither loathed my lot nor cursed my destiny. I had seen warfare and bloodshed, I had had my heart wrung and my nerves racked, and now the peaceful meadows winding along the river and stretching up to the purple hills were dear to eyes from which the scales had fallen. This was the life and labour on which the world was based, and it was worthy of any man. I had seen Death the Harvester at work, and he was a less alluring figure than Joe Braggs with a flashing sickle in his hand and a swathe of golden grain under his arm.

I should never be really alone again. I had company of which I should never tire as I sat here with my memories. Margaret was rarely absent from my mind, and every memory of her was a blessing and an inspiration. I did not regret my love, foolish and vain as it had been. The thing that really mattered was that Jack was alive. I could now look back on everything without bitterness. If Margaret came for me now, to call me forth to another hard round of struggle and adventure, I should be off with her like a shot. She had made a splendid companion. She would make a splendid marchioness. Some day, when the pain would not be unendurable, I would go to London and steal another peep at those matchless eyes and that tower of golden, gleaming hair.

I did not hear the door open, but I heard mother's calm voice, gently reproving Jane for an unseemly giggle. A pair of arms crept round my neck, and slim white fingers cupped my chin. Kate did not know that it was I who had so nearly sent her sweetheart to an untimely grave, for Jack had sternly forbidden me to mention the subject to anyone, and, as I have said, it might never have happened so far as he was concerned. Therefore Kate, always a loving and attentive sister, was now more loving and attentive than ever because she knew in her heart that, though I had gained much in my wanderings, I had lost the one thing she had found in the quiet sickroom where, during long weary months, she had lured Jack back to life. It was always her task to fetch me from my books and my thoughts to the beloved circle in the house-place, when, as now, she had prepared a dish of tea for us.

The soft resolute hands raised my chin, and I gasped as I looked into Margaret's eyes.

She lightly held me down, and, as if we had only parted five minutes before in the house-place, began to speak, quietly but rapidly.

"Oliver, do you remember waking me in the barn?"

I nodded. I was too amazed to speak, and there was that in her eyes which made me tremble.

"I was dreaming," she said, and I nodded again and remembered how she had flushed like the dawn.

"Because you are the greatest goose of a man that ever lived, I am going to tell you my dream. I dreamed that you were carrying me across the Pearl Brook, and as you carried me the brook got wider and wider--you had made it as wide as you could, you know--until it seemed as if we should never get across it. And you would not put me down, though I begged you to do so, but carried me on and on. You grew tired and weary, and your face went white and drawn, as I find it now, but you would not let me go. Was it not a curious dream, Oliver?"

Again I nodded.

"Why can't you speak, Oliver? Anything would make it less hard. Then, because you were so weary, and so good to me, and so faithful, and long-enduring, I did in my dream ... in my dream, you mark ... something very un-maidenly ... and immediately we were both on the other side; and I awoke as you put me down at last and found you by my side, having, in your knightly unselfishness, ruined your hat to give me a drink of milk. And because you are the best man on earth, and also a blind silly goose, Oliver, and I must take some risk or lose my all, I am going ... to do the unmaidenly thing I did in my dream ... and ... you ... must not misjudge me, Oliver."

She stopped, smiled as only Margaret can, and bent her head until a loose coil of amber hair fell on my face Then she brushed it aside and, after a little gasping cry, kissed me on the lips.

EPILOGUE

THE LITTLE JACK

AT THE HANYARDS STAFFORDSHIRE _August 9th, 1757_

Margaret and I had a hot dispute this morning. True she went away, singing happily, to rebuild the ma.s.ses of yellow hair that had fallen all over her shoulders and mine, for the dreadful stuff seems to tumble down if I look at it, but still we had disputed, and vigorously, too. The plain fact is she had sniffed at Aristotle.

The trouble arose out of this story of mine which I have been busy writing for the last twenty months. It has been hard work, for I was new to the business, and had to learn how to do it, but it has been a pleasant task and a labour of love. Now we disputed about it. I said it was finished. She said it wasn't. I said I ought to know. She replied not necessarily, since I was such a great goose. Then I loaded my big gun and thought to blow her clean out of the water.

"My dear Margaret," said I, "Aristotle lays it down that every work of art has a beginning, a middle, and an end. The beginning of our story was the catching of the great jack, the middle of it was the fight at the 'Red Bull,' and the end of it was the kiss you gave me. You see, dear, how exactly I have done what Aristotle says I ought to do."

"Bother Aristotle! What does he know about us?" It was here that she sniffed, not figuratively but actually. That is to say she held up her nose, on pretence of looking at me, and audibly ... well, sniffed. There's no other word for it. Then she cried triumphantly, "What is the use, Noll, of telling our story and not saying a single word about the most important people in it?"