Part 6

The painter, who was worming his huge feet into the butler’s shoes, grimaced at Jeffray, and ran the professional eye over the black-coated figure.

“You have not grown fatter, Richard,” he said. “I could still make an Apollo of you in the nude, as I did that day when you bathed at Baiæ. What a graceful trunk, sir!—what a hand and foot! Don’t blush, lad, your lines are splendid, so far as they go, though, on my honor, you are reading too much, to judge by your shoulders. I’ll wager you have set the country nymphs a-simpering, the dear Phœbes. Deuce take these shoes! Is my wig on straight?”

“Perfectly,” said Jeffray, with a smile.

Wilson expanded his chest, turned out his right foot and knee, put his hand over his heart, and bowed.

“How’s that, Richard?” he asked, gravely.

“Worthy of St. James’s.”

“My professional bow, Richard. I detest it, sir—detest it! The money-getting tricks are not part of my art. I leave them to Mr. Joshua, who could flatter the moon into a trance, as his namesake did in Canaan, and talk the sun into believing that his complexion was not fiery. Now, sir, lead on.”

Meanwhile, the Lady Letitia had heard strange and distorted accounts of the person and profession of her nephew’s visitor. Peter Gladden had unpacked Mr. Wilson’s knapsack and red bundle, and had discovered besides canvas, brushes, and paints, a tooth-brush, a few handkerchiefs, a razor, a soiled shirt, two night-caps, a piece of flannel, and a prayer-book. It was all over the house and into Aunt Letitia’s ears in half an hour that this eccentric person had borrowed Mr. Jeffray’s waistcoat and a pair of Peter Gladden’s shoes. The dowager’s pride bristled, despite the saintly emotions of the morning. A common painter fellow, a mere vulgar artist, whose name she did not even know, received as a guest at Rodenham Priory! What could Richard be thinking of, by associating with such a low and uncultured creature! Why, he would be for entertaining next that awful author fellow, Mr. Johnson, a man who spilled soup down his waistcoat, sneezed over the table, and was so bold as to contradict a lady flatly.

Hence, the Lady Letitia’s reception of Mr. Richard Wilson in the parlor that afternoon, was not calculated to put that gentleman at his ease. The dowager was polite, portentously and oppressively polite, “to please poor Richard,” as she would have phrased it. Her eyes searched Mr. Wilson from wig to buckles, started at his wrinkled and complaining waistcoat, and recognized Peter Gladden’s shoes. She deigned to listen to the painter’s stumbling platitudes about the weather, and then discovered suddenly that she was afflicted with deafness and a sick headache, and declared that she would go and rest in her bedroom until dinner.

When the Lady Letitia had sailed out of the room, Wilson stood and stared pathetically at Jeffray.

“There, sir,” he exclaimed, with tragic emphasis, “you see, my poor face always frightens them away, and I fall over my own tongue as well as over my feet. Nature did not breed me for a courtier, Jeffray. Damn it, I can’t flatter the fools in the gallant style. Beg pardon, Richard, I was not referring to your august and noble relative.”

“Come and see the garden, Dick.”

“Do you keep peacocks there, sir?”

“Peacocks, Dick! Why, peacocks?”

“A mere whim, sir—a mere whim,” quoth the painter, with a queer twist of the mouth.

A mysterious change had fallen upon the Lady Letitia’s temper by dinner-time, a change that betrayed itself in her attitude towards Richard Wilson. She was peculiarly gracious and urbane, and no one could be more gracious than the Lady Letitia when she so chose. The painter, astonished at his sudden acceptance into favor, found himself talking to the dowager with an ease and a fervor that made him fancy for the moment that Jeffray’s wine had got into his noddle. Aunt Letitia beamed and sparkled, crowed and chuckled at Dick’s jokes, and seemed wholly to have abandoned the air of hauteur that had repulsed Wilson in the afternoon. Jeffray himself was thoroughly mystified as to the miracle. He could only conclude that the dear old lady had spoken the truth when she had complained of a headache, and that it was not the painter’s shabby clothes or his rough and unfashionable face that had shocked her aristocratic susceptibilities.

Aunt Letitia had been spending the afternoon gossiping with her maid, and that trusted servant had let fall Mr. Richard Wilson’s name into her mistress’s pensive ear. The four syllables had suddenly struck some rusty note of by-gone scandal in the dowager’s brain. “Wilson! Wilson! Yes, to be sure, there used to be a painter fellow in town of that name. She had not heard him spoken of lately, though some of the gentry had sat to him for their portraits years ago. Wait! Could this be the Mr. Richard Wilson concerning whom a merry tale had been spun one season in the fashionable seats? Sir Peter Hardacre had had a house in town seven years or so ago, before economy had been forced like a bolus down the poor baronet’s throat.” The Lady Letitia had knitted her brows over these curious and interesting reminiscences. She had determined to discover more about Mr. Richard Wilson and his past that evening. Hence her amazing and gracious affability to that honest but slovenly individual, an affability that made Mr. Wilson expand his chest, set his shabby wig straight, and imagine that there was yet hope for him in the world of Mammon.

“You have been long abroad, sir, I believe?” said the dowager, sweetly, after drawing the painter into a discussion on Italian art.

“Years, madam, years.”

“You painted many clever portraits in town some seasons ago.”

Mr. Wilson bowed in his chair, and was flattered to hear my lady had so kindly a memory.

“I was honored at one time, madam,” he said, stroking his broad chin, “by the presence of certain of the beauties of the fashionable world in my studio. Yes, madam, I painted Sir Toby Gilhooly and his lovely daughters; Mr. Walsh, the poet; Admiral Timberbuck, and many others, madam.”

The Lady Letitia twinkled, and exhaled perfumes. Her nephew was engaged at the other end of the table in a scholarly debate on Roman architecture with Dr. Sugg. The lad had desisted from fathering Richard Wilson, and was delighted to see that his aunt showed the poor fellow so much favor.

“Did you ever paint Sir Peter Hardacre, Mr. Wilson?” asked the old lady, innocent as a paschal lamb.

The painter darted a look at her, flushed, and began to fidget in his chair.

“Sir Peter Hardacre, madam?”

“Yes, sir. I thought I remembered seeing the picture—”

Richard Wilson adjusted his wig, and drank down a glass of wine.

“I believe I did, madam—I believe I did,” he said.

“Dear Sir Peter; he must have made such an aristocratic study! I think I must really ask you to honor me with a sitting, Mr. Wilson.”

The painter blinked, and then bowed low across the table. He appeared glad in measure to escape the subject, nor was his discomfort lost upon the Lady Letitia.

“I shall be proud, madam, proud,” he said; “the honor is on my side, madam. I shall be proud to paint Richard Jeffray’s grandmother—pardon me, madam—aunt, I mean. Upon my word, madam, you look extraordinarily young to have so old a nephew.”

Aunt Letitia, not in the least disturbed by the painter’s slip, received his clumsy apologies and awkward apings of flattery with infinite good humor.

“La, Mr. Wilson,” she said, frankly, “I am an old woman, and, thank God, I know it. I think it is a pitiful sight, sir, to see an old woman frittering away the solemn and awful years of age in folly, when she should be preparing herself to meet her Maker.”

“Upon my soul, madam,” said the painter, much relieved, “your wisdom is as admirable as—ahem—as—as your distinguished and aristocratic person. Ahem. I shall be proud, madam, to put my poor powers at your service.”

“What a blundering and honest fool it is,” thought the Lady Letitia. “Yes, it is the very fellow who painted old Sir Peter, and made love to the daughter. Or was it Miss Jilian who made love to him? Egad, dear nephew, there is no need for your old aunt to play the scandal-monger, if this good ass can be got to bray. Mr. Wilson must be made welcome here, and the secret coaxed out of his ugly mouth.” And thus the Lady Letitia continued to beam upon the painter with all the waning sunshine of her November years. She made him draw droll sketches for her in the parlor after dinner, laughed at his whimsies, promised to send her dear friends Lady Boodle and Miss FitzNoodle to be painted by Wilson when he returned to town. When Peter Gladden set the card-table in order, the dowager insisted that Richard Wilson should be her partner, and that Richard should challenge them with Dr. Sugg. And though poor Dick managed his cards disgracefully, trumped the Lady Letitia’s tricks, bungled the returns and lost her money, she continued to beam on him with undiminished brightness, and to encourage the good oaf with all the sweetness she could compel.

“Yes, Richard, mon cher,” she said to her nephew, as she bade him good-night, “my headache has left me; I felt quite vaporish this afternoon. Your friend is a dear creature, so droll and refreshing; not polished, of course, but quite charming. I have fallen in love with the dear bear, Richard. It is so delightful to talk to a man of sense and humor, even though he may smell—faintly, of the soil.”

* * * * *

Bess had wandered back from Beacon Rock through her well-loved woods that morning, thinking more of Richard Jeffray than was good for a woman’s heart. There was a charm about Bess that no mortal could gainsay. She looked fit for carrying a milking-pail over meadows golden with cowslips, for playing the Miss Prue gathering rosemary and thyme in some red-walled garden, or walking in brocade and lace amid the close-clipped yews, statues, and terrace ways of some stately manor. Despite her strength and her brilliant vitality she was no hoyden, and even in her wild beauty seemed to suggest the subtle delicacy of high birth. Richard himself had been puzzled by her quaint stateliness, such stateliness as a child might have inherited from a noble mother and treasured unconsciously as she grew to womanhood.

The thoughts uppermost in Bess’s mind that morning dealt with the worldly gulf between Jeffray and herself. The girl had been content hitherto with the forest life, content to accept old Ursula as her foster-mother and the rest of them as her kinsfolk. She had grown up with Dan and David, and the forest children, ignorant as they were of the great world beyond the shadows of Pevensel. Yet beyond the forest life a dim and forgotten past seemed to rise up in the blue distance of the mind. A few strange incidents, which she had never been able to explain, still lived on like relics of a vanished age. She had prattled of them to old Ursula as a child, and had been laughed at and chided for her pains. The old woman had always told her that Rachel, her mother, Ursula’s younger sister, had run away from the hamlet before Bess was born, and that when her mother had died—“down in the west”—a peddler man had brought Bess back to the Grimshaws of Pevensel. Ursula had always shed a species of reticent mystery over the past, and had waxed dour if Bess had pressed her questions too boldly or too far.

The girl had been content these years to let these vague memories glide away into oblivion. Now and again they would rise up to haunt her with strange vividness, frail ghostly images of other days. How was it that she often saw a negro man with black, woolly hair in her dreams, she who had never seen such a man in Pevensel? Then there was that memory of her falling and cutting her bare knee upon a stone, and of a tall lady with bright eyes and a brooch with green stones at her throat running to catch her in her arms. Vaguely, too, she believed that she had once been in a great ship at sea. There were incidents that lived more vividly than the rest in her mind; one, the memory of her standing at night on the deck of a ship with the dark sails flapping above and rough men swearing and quarrelling about her; she had seen blows given, heard a wild cry and the plash of a body thrown over the bulwarks into the sea. Then again she remembered being taken in a boat by night to land; the same rough men were with her; she could still recall one who wore a great pig-tail and had a black patch over one eye and a cloven lip. They had come with her to the shore and taken her into the woods, carrying bales that had seemed wondrous heavy. Thence they had disappeared, and the life in Pevensel had begun, its very beginnings dim as the mysterious past.

These memories came back with strange vividness to her mind that morning after her parting with Jeffray on the heath. For the first time in her life she found herself wondering whether old Ursula had told her the truth. Could she have dreamed these mind pictures that still clung to her? Were these memories but the dim and fantastic fancies of childhood, mere myths begotten of a child’s brain. She puzzled over them earnestly as she walked through the woods that morning, and promised herself that she would tell them to Richard Jeffray when they should meet again.

Old Ursula sat up after Bess had gone to bed that night, huddled snugly in the ingle-nook with her black cat at her side. The pewter glistened on the shelves as the handful of sticks that the dame had thrown on the sulky fire kindled and broke into busy flame. Bess had been in bed half an hour or more, and was lying with her black hair loose upon the pillow, thinking of Richard Jeffray and her adventure with him. She had primed the pistols from the powder-horn kept in the kitchen-press, and had hidden them away in the cupboard in her bedroom, meaning to carry one whenever she went abroad in the woods. Bess had fallen asleep, when old Ursula, dozing in the ingle-nook, was awakened by a knocking at the cottage door. She started up, hobbled across the kitchen, and let Isaac Grimshaw in.

The old man sat himself down on the settle before the fire, drew out a short pipe and a tobacco-box, and began to smoke. He looked at Ursula with his shrewd, calculating eyes, jerked his thumb over his shoulder, and smiled.

“The wench is above, eh?”

“This hour or more.”

“Dame, I have much to gossip over with ye about our Bess. She is a dangerous wench and needs a master. There’ll be no peace with us, dame, till the girl is stalled.”

Isaac, kindling to his subject, began to talk to the old woman, significantly, about betrothing the girl to Dan without delay. He had much to put forward in justification of the measure. Bess’s beauty had become an apple of discord in the hamlet; all the young men wanted her, and Black Dan would put up with no rival. Isaac spoke mysteriously of the need for good-fellowship among the forest-folk; there must be no mating of Bess to a bachelor outside the hamlet; she was one of them and with them she must remain. Old Ursula looked surly and displeased during the patriarch’s harangue. The match was little to her liking, and she distrusted Dan’s ability to make marriage bearable to such a woman as Bess.

“I may as well tell ye, Isaac,” she said, sourly, “that the wench does not care a brass button for your Dan.”

“Who does she fancy then, dame, eh?”

“I thought once she was for liking young David. She is a powerful-tempered wench is Bess, and she don’t like being driven.”

Isaac puffed at his pipe and frowned.

“Odd’s my life,” he said, “the wench must be taught her place. My Dan’s the first man in the forest, eh? What better lad does the wench look for? I’ll wager that we will soon persuade her.”

“You be careful of Bess,” quoth the old woman, solemnly.

“Careful, dame! That’s the very text I’m preaching on. How much does the wench remember, eh? Deuce take me, sister, we have reared her here, and here she must remain. And Dan will be breaking all the youths’ heads unless he has her, and have her he shall.”

Isaac laid down his pipe and, leaning forward with his hands spread to the fire, began to speak further to the old woman in his grim and didactic way. There was an expression of almost ferocious earnestness on his thin and clever face, and it was difficult to believe that an old man could be possessed of so much fire and vigor. Isaac had ruled the hamlet these forty years; his will had been law unto them all. Old Ursula’s one feeling was known to the patriarch well enough. He played upon it that night as she sat in the ingle-nook and listened. The dame kept a stockingful of guineas hid under the floor in one of the upper rooms. She would often go up secretly and play with the pretty golden pieces, counting and recounting them, letting them fall and jingle in her lap.

“A hundred gold guineas, dame,” said Isaac at the end of his persuading. “I’ll bring them to you on the betrothal day. Why, look you, the wench will be spry and gay enough when she is mated. Unbroken fillies are always wild.”

Ursula nodded over the fire, stroked the black cat reflectively, and watched Isaac’s face with her greedy eyes.

“You take your oath on it?” she asked.

The patriarch grinned, and drew a leather pouch from the tail-pocket of his coat. He jingled it and tossed it into his sister’s lap.

“There are twenty,” he said, curtly; “keep them, dame, as a proof of the bargain. I’ll give you the rest when the gold piece is broken.”

X

Richard Jeffray could not break from the thoughts of Bess that had followed him from out the green glooms of Pevensel. Why, because she had a comely body and a comely face, should he be forever recalling the flash of her red-stockinged ankles under her short gown of green, the fine lifting of her handsome head, the way she had of putting her right hand up to her throat and of letting her eyes dwell with strange intentness upon his face? Jeffray was honestly troubled by these haunting thoughts, these visions of passion that flashed on him out of his own heart. Despite his romanticism he did not lack for character and discretion, and pedagogic reason told him that such dreams were neither obedient to philosophy nor to his loyalty to Miss Hardacre.

The news of Jeffray’s misadventure in the woods had been duly carried to Hardacre house; nor was it long before Mr. Lancelot and Miss Jilian rode over to inquire after their dear cousin. Richard was idling in the garden, planning color schemes for the summer, when he heard the clatter of hoofs coming down the road through the park. Richard recognized Mr. Lot in scarlet mounted on a great, rawboned roan, and Miss Jilian beside him in a green riding-habit, a black beaver on her auburn hair. Richard crossed the terrace and went down the steps to meet them. His head was still bandaged, a fact that Mr. Lancelot remarked upon with his usual blunt brevity.

“Egad, cousin,” he said, with a laugh, “so the forester broke your pate for you, deuce take his insolence! Ha, Jill, how do you like our Richard in bandages? You should wear a mob-cap, cousin. How’s the dowager? Got over the mumps yet?”

Mr. Lot roared over his own facetiousness, while Richard stood beside Miss Jilian’s gray mare and pressed the young lady’s hand.

“I should have been at Hardacre before this,” he said, blushing, “but Surgeon Stott ordered me to bide quiet.”

There was a look of delicious anxiety in Miss Hardacre’s eyes.

“Are you sure you ought to be up and about, Richard?” she asked.

“There is nothing much amiss with me,” he answered, looking up at her shyly. “Won’t you dismount and come into the house? I will call Gladden and have your horses taken.”

Mr. Lot winked and inclined his head knowingly in the direction of the house.

“Has she got her war-paint on, Richard?”

“Who?”

“Your revered relative. I am ready to make peace though she did send me down to supper with the ugliest girl this side of Lewes. It’s uncommon hot to-day. What do you say, Jill? Shall we tumble in and have a glass of wine and a chat with the old lady?”

Miss Hardacre simpered, blushed prettily, and glanced at Richard. The lad read her inclination on the instant, and helped her to dismount. She pressed his hand kindly, her gray eyes holding his a moment with a look that did not lack for eloquence.

“Hold there; what a deuced ass I am,” quoth Mr. Lot, who had rolled out of the saddle and was thumping his manly chest. “Here’s a certain precious document buttoned up in my breast-pocket. We are giving a masked ball next week at Hardacre. Quite a gorgeous affair, and Sir Peter thought he’d send the dowager a state summons, just to show there is no ill-feeling. Of course you’ll come, cousin.”

Mr. Lot drew a sealed letter from his pocket, and handed it to Richard with a mock bow.

“Let old Gladden give it to her in state,” he said, with a wink; “it will make a better show on a silver salver.”

Richard was looking at Miss Jilian’s pink face and at her pretty figure sheathed in green.

“It is very magnanimous of Sir Peter,” he said, warmly, “to let by-gones be by-gones. I am sure Aunt Letitia is sorry for what happened that evening. She asked me, Jilian, to try and persuade you to forgive her.”

Lancelot Hardacre chuckled.

“Dear old Mohawk,” he said.

“Of course I will forgive her,” quoth Miss Hardacre, sweetly.

“That’s the game, Jill. These women, Richard, are moral prodigies. Deuce take me, Jill, you have the temper of an angel. Don’t I know it.”

Miss Hardacre’s gray eyes flashed a curious look at her brother.

“Heavens, Lot,” she said, “how you do chatter.”

Jeffray had rung the stable-bell, and Peter Gladden and a groom came out to take the horses. Richard ordered the butler to bring cake and wine into the dining-room, and to send the Lady Letitia’s maid to inform her mistress, who was taking her afternoon nap, that Miss Hardacre was in the house. They went into the porch together and through the hall into the wainscoted dining-room, Miss Jilian holding her riding-skirt daintily in either hand, Mr. Lot swinging his velvet cap and whip and grinning affectionately at Richard.

The Lady Letitia appeared in due course, as gracious as could be, decked out in a handsome sack, her hair freshly powdered, her mittens on, and her fan swinging at her wrist. She kissed Miss Hardacre on either cheek, squeezed the young lady’s hand, beamed at her nephew, and was very affable to Mr. Lancelot. She had received the invitation to Sir Peter’s ball from Mr. Gladden’s salver, and expressed herself charmed at Sir Peter’s courtesy. After wine had been drunk and cake crumbled, Richard proposed that they should walk out into the garden. The dowager rang for her black mantilla, requested Mr. Lancelot to honor her with his arm, and led the way through the opening upon the terrace. Jilian and Richard lingered behind the Lady Letitia, Miss Hardacre very coy and ready to blush, Richard feeling with some shame that pretty speeches came less glibly from his tongue than they had done of yore.

The sky was a rare blue above the green lawns, the old red walls, and the silvery grass-land of the park. As they walked the box-edged paths betwixt the stately yews and hollies Miss Jilian began to rally Richard on his adventure in the woods. “How gallant and romantic it was, to be sure! Do you think, Richard, that you would have rescued me from some wicked ruffian had your poor cousin been at his mercy?”

Jeffray was convincing in his chivalrous protestations.

“Why, Jilian, can you doubt it?”

“And you would have fought for me, Richard?” queried the young lady, with charming wonder.

“Fight for you, Jilian? Why I would defend you with my life.”

“La, Richard,” she exclaimed, blushing, “how brave you are! Tell me, was the girl pretty?”

“Pretty, Jilian?”

“Now, Richard, I am sure she was pretty.”