Chapter 12

CONFESSION.

The lad lay dreaming in the warm meadows by the side of a small and rapid brook, the clear waters of which plashed and bubbled in the sunlight as they hurried past the brown stones. His fishing-rod lay beside him, hidden in the long grass and the daisies. The sun was hot in the valley--shining on a wall of gray rock behind him, and throwing purple shadows over the clefts; shining on the dark bushes beside the stream and on the lush green of the meadows; shining on the trees beyond, in the shadow of which some dark red cattle were standing. Then away on the other side of the valley rose gently-sloping woods, gray and green in the haze of the heat, and over these again was the pale blue sky with scarcely a cloud in it. It was a hot day to be found in spring-time, but the waters of the brook seemed cool and pleasant as they gurgled by, and occasionally a breath of wind blew over from the woods. For the rest, he lay so still on this fine, indolent, dreamy morning that the birds around seemed to take no note of his presence, and one of the large woodpeckers, with his scarlet head and green body brilliant in the sun, flew close by him and disappeared into the bushes opposite like a sudden gleam of color shot by a diamond.

"Next month," he was thinking to himself as he lay with his hands behind his head, not caring to shade his handsome and well-tanned face from the warm sun--"next month I shall be twenty-one, and most folks will consider me a man. Anyhow, I don't know the man whom I wouldn't fight or run or ride or shoot against for any wager he liked. But of all the people who know anything about me, just that one whose opinion I care for will not consider me a man at all, but only a boy. And that without saying anything. You can tell, somehow, by a mere look, what her feelings are; and you know that what she thinks is true. Of course it's true--I am only a boy. What's the good of me to anybody? I could look after a farm--that is, I could look after other people doing their work--but I couldn't do any work myself. And that seems to me what she is always looking at: 'What's the good of you, what are you doing, what are you busy about?' It's all very well for her to be busy, for she can do a hundred thousand things, and she is always at them. What can I do?"

Then his wandering day-dreamings took another turn: "It was an odd thing for Mabyn to say--'_That is when you are in love with some one_.' But those girls take everything for love. They don't know how you can admire, almost to worshiping, the goodness of a woman, and how you are anxious that she should be well and happy, and how you would do anything in the world to please her, without fancying straight away that you are in love with her, and want to marry her and drive about in the same carriage with her. I shall be quite as fond of Wenna Rosewarne when she is married, although I shall hate that little brute with his rum and his treacle. The cheek of him, in asking her to marry him, is astonishing. He is the most hideous little beast that could have been picked out to marry any woman, but I suppose he has appealed to her compassion, and then she'll do anything. But if there was anybody else in love with her, if she cared the least bit about anybody else, wouldn't I go straight to her and insist on her shunting that fellow aside? What claim has he on any other feeling of hers but her compassion? Why, if that fellow were to come and try to frighten her, and if I were in the affair, and if she appealed to me even by a look, then there would be short work with something or somebody."

He got up hastily, with something of a gloomy and angry look on his face. He did not notice that he had startled all the birds around from out of the bushes. He picked up his rod and line in a morose fashion, not seeming to care about adding to the half dozen small and red-speckled trout he had in his basket.

While he was thus irresolutely standing he caught sight of a girl's figure coming rapidly along the valley under the shadow of some ash trees growing by the stream. It was Wenna Rosewarne herself, and she seemed to be hurrying toward him. She was carrying some black object in her arms.

"Oh, Mr. Trelyon," she said, "what am I to do with this little dog? I saw him kicking in the road and foaming at the mouth; and then he got up and ran, and I caught him--"

Before she had time to say anything more the young man made a sudden dive at the dog, caught hold of him and turned and heaved him into the stream. He fell into a little pool of clear brown water: he spluttered and paddled there for a second, then he got his footing and scrambled across the stones up to the opposite bank, where he began shaking the water from his coat among the long grass.

"Oh, how could you be so disgracefully cruel?" she said, with her face full of indignation.

"And how could you be so imprudent?"' he said quite as vehemently. "Why, whose is the dog?"

"I don't know."

"And you catch up some mongrel little cur in the middle of the highway--He might have been mad."

"I knew he wasn't mad," she said: "it was only a fit; and how could you be so cruel as to throw him into the river?"

"Oh," said the young man, coolly, "a clash of cold water is the best thing for a dog that has a fit. Besides, I don't care what he had or what I did with him, so long as you are safe. Your little finger is of more consequence than the necks of all the curs in the country."

"Oh, it is mean of you to say that," she retorted warmly. "You have no pity for those wretched little things that are at every one's mercy. If it were a handsome and beautiful dog, now, you would care for that, or if it were a dog that was skilled in getting game for you, you would care for that."

"Yes, certainly," he said: "these are dogs that have something to recommend them."

"Yes, and every one is good to them: they are not in need of your favor. But you don't think of the wretched little brutes that have nothing to recommend them, that only live on sufferance, that every one kicks and despises and starves."

"Well," said he with some compunction, "look there! That new friend of yours--he's no great beauty, you must confess--is all right now. The bath has cured him. As soon as he's done licking his paws he'll be off home, wherever that may be. But I've always noticed that about you, Wenna: you're always on the side of things that are ugly and helpless and useless in the world; and you're not very just to those who don't agree with you. For after all, you know, one wants time to acquire that notion of yours--that it is only weak and ill-favored creatures that are worthy of the least consideration."

"Yes," she said rather sadly, "you want time to learn that."

He looked at her. Did she mean that her sympathy with those who were weak and ill-favored arose from some strange consciousness that she herself was both? His cheeks began to burn red. He had often heard her hint something like that, and yet he had never dared to reason with her or show her what he thought of her. Should he do so now?

"Wenna," he said, blushing hotly, "I can't make you out sometimes. You speak as if no one cared for you. Now, if I were to tell you--"

"Oh, I am not so ungrateful," she said hastily. "I know that two or three do; and--and, Mr. Trelyon, do you think you could coax that little dog over the stream again? You see he has come back again--he can't find his way home."

Mr. Trelyon called to the dog: it came down to the river's side, and whined and shivered on the brink.

"Do you care a brass farthing about the little beast?" he said to Wenna.

"I must put him on his way home," she answered.

Thereupon the young man went straight through the stream to the other side, jumping the deeper portions of the channel: he caught up the dog and brought it back to her; and when she was very angry with him for this mad performance, he merely kicked some of the water out of his trousers and laughed.

Then a smile broke over her face also. "Is that an example of what people would do for me?" she said shyly. "Mr. Trelyon, you must keep walking through the warm grass till your feet are dry; or will you come along to the inn, and I shall get you some shoes and stockings? Pray do, and at once. I am rather in a hurry."

"I'll go along with you, anyway," he said, "and put this little brute into the highway. But why are you in a hurry?"

"Because," said Wenna, as they set out to walk down the valley--"because my mother and I are going to Penzance the day after to-morrow, and I have a lot of things to get ready."

"To Penzance?" said he with a sudden falling of the face.

"Yes. She has been dreadfully out of sorts lately, and she has sunk into a kind of despondent state. The doctor says she must have a change--a holiday, really--to take her away from the cares of the house--"

"Why, Wenna, it's you who want the holiday--it's you who have the cares of the house," Trelyon said warmly.

"And so I have persuaded her to go to Penzance for a week or two, and I go with her to look after her. Mr. Trelyon, would you be kind enough to keep Rock for me until we come back? I am afraid of the servants neglecting him."

"You needn't be afraid of that: he's not one of the ill-favored--every one will attend to him," said Trelyon; and then he added, after a minute or two of silence, "The fact is, I think I shall be at Penzance also while you are there. My cousin Juliott is coming here in about a fortnight to celebrate the important event of my coming of age, and I promised to go for her. I might as well go now."

She said nothing.

"I might as well go any time," he said rather impatiently. "I haven't got anything to do. Do you know, before you came along just now, I was thinking what a very useful person you were in the world, and what a very useless person I was--about as useless as this little cur. I think somebody should take me up and heave me into a river. And I was wondering, too"--here he became a little more embarrassed and slow of speech--"I was wondering what you would say if I spoke to you, and gave you a hint that sometimes--that sometimes one might wish to cut this lazy life if one only knew how, and whether so very busy a person as yourself mightn't--don't you see?--give one some notion--some sort of hint, in fact--"

"Oh, but then, Mr. Trelyon," she said quite cheerfully, "you would think it very strange if I asked you to take any interest in the things that keep me busy. That is not a man's work. I wouldn't accept you as a pupil."

He burst out laughing. "Why," said he, "do you think I offered to mend stockings and set sums on slates and coddle babies?"

"As for setting sums on slates," she remarked with a quiet impertinence, "the working of them out might be of use to you."

"Yes, and a serious trouble too," he said candidly. "No, no--that cottage business ain't in my line. I like to have a joke with the old folks or a romp with the kids, but I can't go in for cutting out pinafores. I shall leave my mother to do my share of that for me; and hasn't she come out strong lately, eh? It's quite a new amusement for her, and it's driven a deal of that organ-grinding and stuff out of her head; and I've a notion some o' those parsons--"

He stopped short, remembering who his companion was; and at this moment they came to a gate which opened out on the highway, through which the small cur was passed to find his way home.

"Now, Miss Wenna," said the young man--"By the way, you see how I remember to address you respectfully ever since you got sulky with me about it the other day?"

"I am sure I did not get sulky with you, and especially about that," she remarked with much composure. "I suppose you are not aware that you have dropped the 'Miss' several times this morning already?"

"Did I, really? Well, then, I'm awfully sorry; but then you are so good-natured you tempt one to forget; and my mother she always calls you Wenna Rosewarne now in speaking to me, as if you were a little school-girl, instead of being the chief support and pillar of all the public affairs of Eglosilyan. And now, Miss Wenna, I sha'n't go down the road with you, because my damp boots and garments would gather the dust; but perhaps you wouldn't mind stopping two seconds here, and I'm going to go a cracker and ask you a question: What should a fellow in my position try to do? You see, I haven't had the least training for any one of the professions, even if I had any sort of capacity--"

"But why should you wish to have a profession?" she said simply. "You have more money than is good for you already."

"Then you don't think it ignominious," he said, with his face lighting up considerably, "to fish in summer and shoot in autumn and hunt in winter, and make that the only business of one's life?"

"I should if it were the only business, but it needn't be, and you don't make it so. My father speaks very highly of the way you look after your property; and he knows what attending to an estate is. And then you have so many opportunities of being kind and useful to the people about you that you might do more good that way than by working night and day at a profession. Then you owe much to yourself, because if every one began with himself, and educated himself, and became satisfied and happy with doing his best, there would be no bad conduct and wretchedness to call for interference. I don't see why you should be ashamed of shooting and hunting and all that, and doing them as well as anybody else, or far better, as I hear people say. I don't think a man is bound to have ambition and try to become famous: you might be of much greater use in the world, even in such a little place as Eglosilyan, than if you were in Parliament. I did say to Mrs. Trelyon that I should like to see you in Parliament, because one has a natural pride in any person one admires and likes very much, and one wishes--"

He saw the quick look of fear that sprang to her eyes--not a sudden appearance of shy embarrassment, but of absolute fear--and he was almost as startled by her blunder as she herself was. He hastily came to her rescue. He thanked her in a few rapid and formal words for her patience and advice; and, as he saw she was trying to turn away and hide the mortification visible on her face, he shook hands with her and let her go.

Then he turned. He had been startled, it is true, and grieved to see the pain her chance words had caused her. But now a great glow of delight rose up within him, and he could have called aloud to the blue skies and the silent woods because of the joy that filled his heart. They were but chance words, of course. They were uttered with no deliberate intention: on the contrary, her quick look of pain showed how bitterly she regretted the blunder. Moreover, he congratulated himself on his rapid piece of acting, and assured himself that she would believe that he had not noticed that admission of hers. They were idle words: she would forget them. The incident, so far as she was concerned, was gone.

But not so far as he was concerned. For now he knew that the person whom, above all other persons in the world, he was most desirous to please, whose respect and esteem he was most anxious to obtain, had not only condoned much of his idleness out of the abundant charity of her heart, but had further, and by chance, revealed to him that she gave him some little share of that affection which she seemed to shed generously and indiscriminately on so many folks and things around her. He, too, was now in the charmed circle. He walked with a new pride through the warm, green meadows, his rod over his shoulder: he whistled as he went, or he sang snatches of "The Rose of Allandale." He met two small boys out bird's-nesting: he gave them a shilling apiece, and then inconsistently informed them that if he caught them then or at any other time with a bird's nest in their hands he would cuff their ears. Then he walked hastily home, put by his fishing-rod, and shut himself up in his study with half a dozen of those learned volumes which he had brought back unsoiled from school.