Chapter 3

Half a minute later they were standing foot to foot and eye to eye, the music already silenced. It would have been difficult from the mere aspect of the men to say on which side the advantage lay. In height and reach they were nearly equal, and, if Thistlewood’s weight and muscle were in his favour, Protheroe was as active as a cat.

And here might have been recorded a bit of history to warm the blood of such as love and remember the old-fashioned manhood of England. We are grown too refined and civilised nowadays for the old rude arbitrament, and so fair play has ceased to be the Englishman’s motto in fighting, and the English rustic shoots and stabs like the rustic of other lands. All fighting is foolish, more or less, but we had the manliest, friendliest, most honourable, and least harmful way of doing it amongst all the sons of men, and so our Legislature killed out the ‘noble art’ from amongst us, and brought us to the general ugly level.

It was in the reign of the Tipton Slasher--which, as people learned in the history of manners will remember, was a longish time ago--when these two Britons stood up to arrange their differences after the fashion then in vogue. There was nobody to see fair play, and so they saw it for themselves, as all fighting Englishmen did when there was a code of honour to go by. It was not a mere affair of hammer and tongs, but very fair scientific fighting, the science vivified by enjoyment, and full of energy, but never forgotten for a second. The pleasure was keen on both sides, for from the beginning of their knowledge of each other these two had been in antagonism, and at the last it was a real treat to let all go and have at it.

‘I was always a bit frivolous, as you said just now, Mr. Thistlewood,’ Lane remarked in the first enforced pause of the combat, ‘but I’d like you to bear me witness that I stick to what I’m at while I’m at it.’

This address was delivered pantingly, whilst the speaker lay flat upon his back on the grass, with his arms thrown out crosswise. Thistlewood disdained response, and sat with one great shoulder propped against a dwarf oak, breathing fast and hard. When this sign of distress had a little abated, he arose, and said ‘Time’ as if he had been a mere cornerman in the affair, and rather bored by it than otherwise. Lane rolled over on to his face, rose to his hands and knees, smiled at his adversary for a little while, as if to give him an appetite for the business in hand, and then got to his feet and made ready.

Now for a man to hold his own at this particular form of fighting against an equal adversary for a bare five minutes argues five grand things for him, and these are chastity, temperance, hardihood, strength, and courage. It speaks well for these admirable qualities in both of them that Messrs. Thistlewood and Protheroe made a good hour of it. The advantages and disadvantages had been so equally distributed that by this time they were pretty nearly harmless to each other, but each was sustained by the hope of victory, and each would have died, and, for the matter of that, would have gone on dying, rather than yield the precious palm to the other.

Now the clergyman who ministered to the spiritual wants of Beacon Hargate was never disposed to gorge his flock with too much doctrine at a time, and on this Sabbath had an invitation to luncheon at a great house some four or five miles away, and so treated his parishioners--to the scandal of some and the joy of others--to the shortest discourse they had ever heard from the pulpit. By this mischance it happened that the combatants were discovered by a silent male advance-guard of the home-returning congregation, who ran back--his footsteps soundless on the grass--to spread the splendid news. Sunday or week-day there was no more welcome break in the monotony of life in Beacon Hargate than that afforded by a fight. The time being church-time, and the combatants men of respectable position, lent piquancy to the event, of course, as who shall say me nay? The churchgoers, two or three farmers, Mr. Drake, the manager of Lord Barfield’s estates at Heydon Hey, and a handful of labourers came up, at first stealthily, and then more boldly, and looked on at the finish.

It was plain that the fight had been severe, but it was equally plain that the best of it was over; and when Farmer Fellowes interposed as _amicus curio_, nobody but the two most concerned had any especial resentment against him.

Even for them Farmer Fellowes had a crumb of comfort.

‘Finish it another time, lads,’ he said. ‘Where’s the good o’ goin’ on wi’ it i’ this manner? Why a child might homber the pair on you. Get fresh an’ have another turn to-morrow, if the ‘casion’s worth it.’

So the fight was left undecided after all, and the adversaries were led off to the neighbouring brook, where they made themselves as respectable to look at as they could before they took their several ways. They were unsightly for a week or two, and were close watched by their women folk lest they should renew the strife.

Beacon Hargate knew perfectly well the reason of the battle, and Bertha was mightily disdainful and indignant over both her lovers, who, to her fancy, had disgraced themselves and her. Six days after the fight John Thistlewood’s business for once in a way, as well as his inclination, took him to Fellowes’s farm, and there Bertha (who for very shame had not quitted the house since Sunday) first saw the result of the fray. The stalwart farmer’s face was discoloured, and, in places, still swollen. She saw the wicked handiwork of Lane Protheroe, and vowed within herself that she would see that dreadful young man no more. She could have cried for pity of poor Mr. Thistlewood, who had been thus shamefully treated for the crime of being faithful in love.

If John had known it, he had at this instant the best chance of being taken as Bertha’s husband he had ever had, or was like to find. But he was shamefaced about the matter, as heroes not uncommonly are with regard to their achievements, and was disposed to think himself at an even unusual disadvantage.

Bertha stifled in her heart whatever tender sentiments Protheroe had inspired, and was prepared to pass him whenever she might meet him with such a manner as should indicate her new opinion of him beyond chance of mistake. Thistlewood had appeared on the Saturday, and on the Monday the fates threw her younger lover in her way. She discerned him from a distance, herself unseen. His figure dipped down into the hollow, and she could not see him again until they met at some turning or other of the tortuous lane. If pride had not forbidden it she could have turned to fly homewards, but she hardened her heart and went on until his footsteps sounded clearly on the stony road.

Then he turned the corner, and she lifted one glance of superb disdain which melted suddenly under a terror-stricken pity. For this hero was worse battered than Number One had been, and one of those eyes, which had used to be so expressive and eloquent, was decorated by a shade.

‘Oh, Lane!’ cried the girl, clasping her hands, and turning white with pity.

‘Did I frighten you, my dear?’ said Lane. ‘It’s nothing. It’ll all be right in a day or two.’

‘I hope so,’ she answered, recovering herself, and seizing on principle before it made away for ever. ‘I wish you to know that I think you have behaved very disgracefully, and I hope you will never speak to me again.’

‘Why,’ said Lane, ‘that’s hard measure, Bertha; and as for behaving disgracefully--if a man threatens to punch your head you must give him the chance to punch it. That’s man’s law, anyhow, whether it’s woman’s or not.’

‘I am sure Mr. Thistlewood is no quarreller,’ said Bertha, with great dignity and severity of demeanour. ‘It takes no great penetration to guess who began it.’

‘There’s one thing I will say for him,’ returned Lane; ‘he’s a truth-telling fellow, to the best of my belief. Ask him who began it. He’ll tell you. Not that I should take any particular blame or shame for having begun it myself, but since that’s how you look at it, dear--why, I should like you to be satisfied.’

‘Do you think, Mr. Protheroe,’ demanded Bertha, ‘that it’s the way to win a girl’s esteem to brawl about her in public on a Sunday?’

‘That’s what Thistlewood said,’ Lane answered, with cunning simplicity. ‘“It’s unbecoming,” said he, “in a man to brawl over the maid he wants to marry.”’

‘I was certain he would say so, and think so,’ returned Bertha, with a sinking of the heart. She wanted grounds for pardoning Lane.

‘Well,’ said Lane, with a retrospective air, ‘we talked for a while, and he was good enough to promise me a hiding if I didn’t keep out of his way--meaning, of course, at your father’s house. I didn’t seem to take it quite so meekly as he thought I ought to, and by and by says he, “You seem to be in a hurry for that hiding.” So I just made answer that hurry was no word for it, and then, the pair of us being keen set, we got to it. The day was an accident, and I daresay a piece of forgetfulness on both our sides. But you see, my dear, a man’s just as bound to guard his self-respect on a Sunday as on a week-day.’

‘I have been very deeply wounded,’ said Bertha. ‘I wished to respect you both, and now I can respect neither of you. Good-morning, Mr. Protheroe.’

Mr. Protheroe stood discomfited, and looked mournfully after her as she walked away. When she had disappeared round the bend of the road he sat down upon the bank and plucked grasses with mechanical fingers, turning the thing up and down in his mind for an hour or thereabouts. Suddenly he jumped to his feet and resumed his walk, smiling with head erect, and that mellow whistle of his rose on the air with jollity in every note of it, for it had broken upon his mind like sunshine to remember her first exclamation on seeing him. He was a young man who was in the habit of making sure of things, and he had never in his life been surer of anything than he felt about this. The name, the tone, the look, meant more than a common interest in him. She had called him ‘Lane’ for the first time in his life. She had clasped her hands, and turned pale at the sight of him. All this meant victory for his dearest hopes, and so he leapt to his feet, and marched off whistling like the throstle.

III

Bertha pursued her way along the tortuous bridlepath with thoughts which resembled the way she travelled. Like the road, her fancy seemed to turn back upon itself pretty often and yet in the main it held in the same direction. Of course, fighting was a brutal business to a girl’s way of thinking, but then, when she came really to think of it; men were strange creatures altogether, half terribly glorious and half contemptible. Lane had endured all these injuries simply and merely because he loved her! She could have no conception of the possibilities of masculine joy in a fight for its own sake, or of the masculine sense of honour which compelled the meeting of a challenge half-way. Of course it was mightily unpleasant to be talked about, as the heroine of such a business. The village tongues had been busy, and would never altogether stop wagging for the remainder of her lifetime.

The influence of long years of respect for Thistle-wood seemed to turn her mental steps backward now and then. That so quiet and retired a man, and so little given to proclaiming himself should have made the most sacred wishes of his heart a matter of common gossip was understandable only on one hypothesis. His love and his despair carried him out of himself. That, of course, was a daring thing for any girl to think, but then Bertha was bound to find reasons.

Mainly, her mind was occupied in the reconstruction of her previous belief about Lane Protheroe. He also, it would seem, had manly qualities in him--could stand up to be beaten in the cause of the woman he loved. The blows hurt her so, in the mere fancy of them, that she more than once put up her hands to her face to guard it. By the time she had accomplished her errand, and was on the way back to her father’s farmhouse, she was all tenderness and forgiveness and admiration for the newly-revealed Lane, but then, as the fates would have it, just as she began to think of her cruelty to him, and of the terribly low spirits into which she must have thrown him, the familiar jocund whistle broke upon her ears, and when she stood still in a dreary amaze at this, she could hear the steps of the lover, who ought to have been altogether love-lorn, marching along in something very like a dance in time to his own music. What was one to think of such a man? She was back in a moment to her old opinion of him. No rooted feeling in him--no solidity--nothing to be sure of!

She made haste home, and there shut herself in her own room and cried. Her mother walked upstairs, and finding the girl thus mournfully engaged, sat down tranquilly beside her and produced her knitting. The click of the needles had an effect of commonplace which helped to restore Bertha to her self-possession, and in a little time her tears ceased, and moving to the window she stood there looking out upon the landscape. The monotonous click of the needles ceased, and she knew that her mother had laid down her work in her lap and was regarding her. She turned, with a ghost of a smile.

‘You’re thinkin’, no doubt, as you’re full o’ trouble, my wench,’ began the mother, ‘and it’s no manner o’ use in talkin’ to young folks to try an’ mek out as a thing as pains don’t hurt. But if you can only bring ‘em t’ understand as it won’t hurt much by and by, you’ve done summat for ‘em, may be. What’s the trouble, wench? Come an’ tell thy mother.’

‘It’s all over now, mother,’ said Bertha

‘Not it,’ returned Mrs. Fellowes, ‘nor won’t be yet a while. Beesn’t one as cries for nothing, like most gells. I was niver o’ that kind myself.’

Bertha would not, perhaps could not, make a confidante even of her mother in this matter, but Mrs. Fellowes had a remarkable faculty for striking human averages, and she got near the truth in her guesses.

‘There’s one thing fixed and sure, my dear,’ she said, ‘and that is as follows: ayther you must find a mind to wed one of ‘em, or you must pluck up a spirit and tell ‘em you’ll wed nayther.’

‘I have told Mr. Thistlewood that I can never marry him,’ said Bertha.

‘And what about Lane?’ her mother asked her.

‘I can never marry him either,’ the girl answered steadily. She had her voice under perfect control, but her averted face and the very lines of her figure enlightened the shrewd old mother.

‘Hast told him so?’ she asked.

‘I have told him,’ Bertha answered, ‘never to speak to me again.’

‘Hoity, toity, deary me!’ cried the old woman. ‘And what says he to that?’

‘He didn’t greatly seem to care,’ said Bertha, with a beautifully assumed air of indifference.

‘Maybe he didn’t set such store by what you told him as to tek it in earnest?’

‘Oh,’ said the girl, languidly and indifferently, ‘he knew I meant it.’

‘And didn’t seem to care? My dear, you’re talkin’ of Lane Protheroe!’

‘He cared for a minute, perhaps,’ Bertha said, her assumed indifference and languor tinctured with bitterness by this time. ‘He cared for a minute, perhaps; just as he does about everything. I heard him whistling an hour afterwards.’

The disguise was excellent, and might have deceived a woman who had known her less intimately and watched her less closely, but it was transparent to the mother.

‘That’s the trouble, is it?’ said Mrs. Fellowes, gravely betaking herself once more to her knitting. Bertha had been crying already, and had hard work to restrain herself. ‘Look here, my darlin’,’ the mother said, with unwonted tenderness of tone and manner, ‘if you can’t read your own mind, you must let a old experienced woman read it for you. The lad’s as the Lord made him. What we see in any o’ the men to mek a fuss about, the Lord in His mercy only knows; but, to my mind, Lane’s ‘the pick o’ ten thousand. He’s alive, and that’s more than _can_ be said of many on ‘em. He’s a clever lad, he’s well to look at, and he’s well-to-do.’

‘Mother,’ cried the girl, almost passionately, her own pain wrung her so, ‘he has no heart. He cares for a thing one minute, and doesn’t care for it the next. He pretends--no, he doesn’t pretend--but he thinks he cares, and while he thinks it I suppose he does care. But out of sight is out of mind with him.’

‘Makest most o’ thine own troubles, like the rest on us,’ said Mrs. Fellowes philosophically. But, in a moment, philosophy made way for motherly kindness, and, rising from her seat, she bestowed her knitting in a roomy pocket and put her arms about her daughter’s waist. ‘Art fond of the lad all the same,’ she said. ‘Ah, my dear, there’s nothin’ likely to be sorer than the natur as picks flies in the things it’s fond on. There’s a deal o’ laughin’ at them as thinks all their geese is swans, but they’re better off in the long run than them as teks all their swans to be geese.’

Bertha said nothing, but she trembled a little under the caress, and her mother, observing this, released her, went back to her chair, and once more drew forth her knitting.

‘I reckon,’ she said, after a pause, ‘as John Thistlewood’s had the spoiling of thee. Thee’st got to think so much o’ them bulldog ways of his’n, that nothin’ less ‘ll be of use to any man as comes a-courtin’.’

‘Don’t talk about it any more, mother,’ said Bertha, with an air of weary want of interest. ‘I have said good-bye to both of them.’

And there the interview ended.

IV

It became evident that Bertha was likely to have a troublesome time before her. First of all came John Thistlewood, dogged and resolute as ever, propping himself against the chimney-piece, flogging his gaitered legs with the switch he carried, and demanding Ay or No before his time. Bertha determined to treat him with some spirit.

‘You don’t need me to tell you that I respect you very highly, Mr. Thistlewood. But you oughtn’t to need me to answer your question any more. I shall be obliged if you will be so good as not to ask it again.’

‘I shall ask it,’ said the dogged John, ‘till it comes to be answered one way or another.’

‘It has been answered almost often enough to my way of thinking,’ said Bertha.

She had never been tart with Thistlewood until that moment, but he manifested no surprise or emotion of any kind.

‘It never has been answered, an’ never will be till I see thee married, whether to me or another. When that day come to pass you’ve heard the last of my question.’

Thus the dogged John; and he being disposed of for a while, came Lane. To him the persecuted maid was a little less severe than she had been, but she was inexorable.

‘If you like to come here as a friend, Mr. Protheroe, in a few months’ time, I daresay we shall all be very glad to see you.’

‘Well,’ said Lane, with fine irrelevance, ‘as an enemy this is a house I shall never make a call at. But look at the matter for a minute, my darling----’

‘You must not talk to me like that, Mr. Protheroe,’ Bertha said, with great coldness.

‘Like what, my dear?’ asked the ingenious Lane.

‘Like that, Mr. Protheroe,’ replied Bertha.

‘I think it so often, that I’m afraid I’m bound to say it sometimes; but, if it offends, I hope you’ll forgive me. You know you _are_ my darling, don’t you? You know there isn’t a queen in the world I’d even with you if every hair of her head was hung with Koh-i-noors. “Out of the fulness of the heart the mouth speaketh,” the Wise Man says. So, if I do let slip “my dear” or “my darling” now and then, you’ll know it’s accident, and you won’t take offence at it--will you?’

This was agile but unsatisfactory.

‘Please understand me, Mr. Protheroe,’ said Bertha, with rural dignity; ‘you must not come here again until you can come merely as a friend.’

‘Bertha! You can’t mean it! What have I done? What has changed you?’

‘Mr Protheroe!’--the rural dignity made an insulted goddess of her to Lane’s fancy--‘what right have you to say that I have changed?’

‘Why, Bertha,’ he said, meekly and strickenly, ‘wasn’t I to come in six months’ time and get an answer?’

‘Will you oblige me by coming for your answer in six months’ time,’ answered Bertha. ‘Good-afternoon, Mr. Protheroe.’

Bertha thought herself more cruel to herself than to him. She knew how infinitely more cruel she was to Thistlewood, but that was not a thing to be avoided. She and he alike must suffer--she in giving pain and he in bearing it. Bertha’s heart ached over Lane, and the bitterness of it was to know that in a week or two the butterfly nature would have ceased to care. He was hotly in love to-day, no doubt, but he would be out of love to-morrow, may be, and in a month or two hotly in love again elsewhere.

On the Sunday following these interviews dogged John was at church, and the butterfly Protheroe also. Thistlewood looked as he always looked, rudely healthy, and a masterpiece of masterfulness and sullen perseverance and resolve. Lane was pallid and miserable, and Bertha remarking him was compelled to fall back on the bitter consolation of her former thoughts. He would take it heavily for a day or two, and would then forget all about it. He cast a glance or two in Bertha’s direction, and his eyes were full of melancholy appeal. But for her certainty he would have moved her, for she was predisposed to be moved, and she had hardly expected to have had so much effect upon him. He walked dejectedly out of church at the close of the service, and Thistlewood half by accident shouldered him. He took it meekly, and made no sign.

Two or three days later came a piece of news of the sort Bertha had expected. Mr. Protheroe was heard of as having made one of a picnic party in the neighbourhood of Heydon Hey, and of this party he was said to have been the life and soul. He was reported to have paid marked attentions to Miss Badger, daughter of a wealthy cheesemonger in Castle Barfield High Street. The young lady was rumoured to be possessed of great personal attractions, and a pretty penny, present and prospective.

Foreseen as it was, the news stung a little when it came. Even the most butterfly-like of lovers might have waited a little longer!

And yet next Sunday, when Bertha went to church, quite resolved not to waste so much as a glance upon him, he looked paler and more dejected than he had done a week ago. She looked in spite of herself--she must needs look at him,--and it was evident that as yet the cheesemonger’s daughter had found no way to cheer him. Thistlewood never altered. Those strong self-contained natures have a power upon themselves as they have on other people. He could last for years in solid and complete devotion--he could apparently wait for ever--and could yet hide from the eyes of the outer world the steady fires which burned within him. That butterfly nature of poor Lane’s forced Thistlewood’s virtues into prominence by contrast, and the girl had them almost constantly in her thoughts. There was nothing--she told herself remorsefully--that this typical piece of solidity and devotion would not do for her. Her faith in his attachment transcended bounds, and she felt it to be a thousand pities that she could not love him.

It does not happen in every life-history that this sort of profound feeling finds an opportunity of proof, but in the story of the lives of John Thistlewood and Lane Protheroe this thing came to pass in such wise that he who ran might read the natures of the men, and know them once for all.