Chapter 8

AN OUTSTRETCHED HAND.

It was many weeks before Paul and May Webster met after the night of the fire. The Court was crammed with company, and although Paul and his sister were invited to dinner more than once, such invitations were politely declined.

"It's quite impossible, Sally," Paul had said, in answer to the rather wistful look in her dark eyes. "To dine there quietly by ourselves, is one thing; to go and meet a heap of smart people, who are my special abomination, is another; and I should not have thought you would have wished it either."

"It would be so much experience; I could be in it but not of it. But I expect I should not be smart enough, either in my dress or my talk; so we must decline, I suppose. What shall I say?"

"Anything you like within the limits of truth."

"Paul won't come, and I can't because I have not a proper frock," said Sally, merrily. "I am sorry, and he is not."

"Don't talk nonsense, Sally," said Paul, with an answering laugh. "Any woman can write a decent note of refusal if she chooses."

So the decent note was written and despatched, to be followed by another, rather differently worded, when the second invitation came about a week later, after which they were asked no more. Sally watched the smart carriages drive to and from the station, with their varying loads of visitors, with a passing pang of regret. It was like gazing into a shop-window when you are possessed of no money to buy the tempting wares displayed there.

Paul scarcely gave his gay neighbours a thought; his head was full of plans for the improvement of the place, and it fretted him a little that on every hand he found himself unable to carry out his wishes for the want of the necessary means.

He was not altogether popular: the poor people rather resented the extreme simplicity of his manner of living when they discovered that it was not accompanied by the open-handed liberality which Allison had half led them to expect; the tenant-farmers opposed any change that would touch their pockets; and people of his own class, few and far between in that thinly populated neighbourhood, called once, but found little to interest them in a man of such avowedly eccentric views on things social and religious, and tacitly let the acquaintance drop.

The one exception to this was May Webster, who, half-piqued, half-amused, at the barrier which Paul had chosen to erect between them, determined to break it down. She was coming out of the rectory one afternoon when she met him at the gate.

He lifted his hat, and would have opened the gate to let her pass, but she held it fast looking at him over the top.

"How are you? It is long since we met; never, I think, since the night of the meeting with its exciting close. I've not thanked you properly, by the way, for the rapid extinction of the flames."

"Oh, any one could have done it; only I happened to be the one nearest you," said Paul, carelessly. "It needs no special thanks."

"Which is a civil way of saying that you could not let me burn, but that you would rather some one else had put me out," said May, mockingly. "Even so, I'm grateful; I've been calling on your friend Kitty, who informed me with great triumph that daddy was out, but 'Mr. Paul' was coming to tea with her. Questioned further, she informed me that he often came when she was by herself, and he said he liked it."

"So I do," Paul said.

"So tea fetches you if dinner does not; or perhaps it is not the meal, but the company. Frankly speaking, why do you accord your friendship to Kitty and not to mother and me? We may be neighbours for years and years; we may just as well be friends."

"I'm not a man of many friends," Paul answered, fairly brought to bay. "As for Kitty, she carried me by storm; she is the only child who has taken to me of her own free will."

"How very odd," said May, thoughtfully.

"Oh yes; I admit the oddity."

"But, if you are going to live here, are you content to be isolated from your fellows--to have no friends?" continued May, wonderingly.

"To have many acquaintances seems to me a dreary waste of life; and the word friendship, in the mouth of a man, implies many things."

"Notably what?" asked May, a little scornfully.

"Similarity of tastes and thought."

"And, I suppose, no one down here is clever enough for you?"

"I hope I'm not such an intolerable prig as to have implied that. But, frankly, I expect that you and I, for instance, would not take the same view on any subject; and, very likely, the things that interest me would bore you to extinction."

"It would bore me pretty considerably if you persisted in urging that the whole world should be reduced to one level of ugly uniformity, which is what you are credited with believing."

"A free interpretation of a hope, on my part, to lessen the cruel gulf between the very rich and the very poor," replied Paul, quietly. "I confess, the frightful extravagance of the wealthier classes makes me sick at heart; for one section of society nothing but amusement and pleasure, and the lavish spending of money; and for the larger half the weary effort to make both ends meet--and for many quiet, hopeless starvation."

"You are talking something like the rector; only he enlists my sympathy more by speaking less severely--and he is more just too. He does not talk as if it were wicked to be better off than your neighbour; he only makes you feel the responsibility of it."

Paul gave rather a hard little laugh.

"To speak plainly, he dresses it up a little--gives it the clerical dash of sentiment. Besides, what is the good of stirring one here and there to give out of his abundance something of which he will never feel the loss, with the comfortable sense left behind that he or she has done something very big indeed. What one would strive for, rather, is to stir up the nation to its duties, to rouse Government to redress some of these glaring social grievances."

"Oh, pray keep yourself in hand! level your intellect down to mine!" cried May, with a burst of laughter. "As far as I follow you, you wish to lower my dress allowance by act of parliament. I sincerely trust you will fail. By the way you may set your mind at rest about my dressmaker; her bill is paid, and all my other outstanding accounts too. With your rather eccentric views about property, it will annoy you considerably to hear that I have had a fortune left me; so that I may not be in debt again for some considerable time."

"To her that hath," said Paul, with a glance at the elegantly clad figure. "It really seems to me as if you could not want it, and I need it so much."

"You!" echoed May. "For real inconsistency commend me to yourself!"

"I scarcely require it for my personal wants, but money is sorely needed to carry out my wishes for this village. As landlord, I feel myself responsible for many things that cannot be set right without it."

"But--but--mother always told me that Major Lessing was rich; and you are his heir."

"I can only assure you that I am poor," said Paul, simply. "Now, I hope, I have proved satisfactorily to you that circumstances, tastes, and opinions differing so greatly between us, make anything like friendship impossible. Whenever we come across each other we quarrel; we can't help it."

May flushed to the roots of her hair. "Thank you," she said haughtily. "It is kind of you to put it so clearly. I simply tried to put things on a kinder footing, as we are your tenants and your neighbours, but I see I have made a mistake. It surprises me to find you so painfully prejudiced. Good-bye. I've kept you too long from your one friend."

She opened the gate and passed on her way with never a look behind; but Paul followed with long, rapid strides.

"Miss Webster! stay one moment, please! I believe I've been behaving like a perfect brute," he said hurriedly. "At first I thought you were simply playing a game with me; but, without knowing it, we drifted into earnestness. If any word of mine has seriously vexed you, I apologize and retract."

"You could even believe it possible that I might feel a ray of interest in some of the big subjects which absorb your life," said May.

"To have made a man acknowledge himself a prig once in an afternoon is enough," retorted Paul. "I will not do it again. You know the worst of me: that I have an uncertain temper, which betrays me occasionally into blurting out unpleasant truths: that I have absolutely no small talk. I shall be at best but a rough-and-ready friend; but if in your kindness you still care to cultivate Sally and me, we will gratefully accept the cultivation, and be the better for it. There's my hand on it," and Paul stretched out his hand. And May gave him her small gloved one for an instant with a very sunny smile.

"And you will come to dinner soon and not feel you need talk down to us."

"When all the smart people have gone," Paul said smiling.

"Smart people are your pet aversion, apparently. Is that why you would not come lately?"

"Yes; if you wish to hear the truth," Paul admitted as he turned back to the rectory.

"And I have made a pretty big fool of myself this afternoon," was his mental comment as he let the gate clang behind him. "I first lost my temper, and then let a woman twist me round her finger simply because she is beautiful."

Needless to relate he made no confession of his folly to Sally when he got home that night. He resolved simply to change his tactics about the people at the Court, and preserve safe silence about his altered mind.

The following afternoon he stopped at the forge to speak to the blacksmith about some repairs that were to be set on foot on his premises. Allison stood at the open door of the smithy with his head turned in the opposite direction from the squire, looking after the rector, who had just left him, with something of the sullen satisfaction with which a bulldog might regard a vanquished foe. Indignation still simmered when Paul accosted him. One glance at the purple face showed the squire that, for some reason as yet unknown, the blacksmith was in a towering passion.

"Confound his impudence!" he said, throwing a dark look after the rector. "I've let him know once for all that I'll have no more of it! I'm not answerable to him, nor any man, for what I says and does. His business, indeed, to come and tell me, if I choose to have a bit of fun with a young fellow in a public-house. What does it hurt him to be drunk for once in his life? A lesson I call it! just a bit of a lesson as will teach him that his head ain't so strong as mine, nor likely to be till he gets seasoned a bit. I give it him straight enough, and no humbug about it. 'Look here, sir,' I says, 'you go your way, and leave me to go mine. I don't deny as you've been kind to my old mother, and she'd fret sore if she didn't see you. Psalm-singing and such comes natural-like to most women; but for my part I want nothing better than to be letted alone.'"

Allison came to a stop; breath rather than words had failed him. Paul, who had been an unwilling listener to this tirade against the rector, took advantage of the pause to turn the subject.

"Afraid I can't attend to you this afternoon sir," said Allison, when Paul stated the object of his call. "Reason why, my mates are out for a holiday, and this mare here is just brought in to be shod. I said at first I would not do her to-day; she's a savage brute to tackle alone. I don't let any one touch her but myself when the men are here. It's wonderful now what a difference there is in the tempers of horses; but I ain't come across the one I couldn't master in the forge. They feel I ain't afeared on 'em."

Boasting of his prowess in his art was fast restoring Allison's temper, which, though violent, was not enduring.

"Very well; I'll come again to-morrow," said Paul.

"And you'll thank missy for lookin' up my mother as she does," said Allison, referring to Sally's visits to the old lady, his mother. "She's one as it does you good to see, so pleasant and free-spoken. Now some on 'em," with a glance in the direction of the Court, "don't look as if they thought you good enough to black their shoes, and that don't do for me."

"She does not do herself justice," thought Paul, as he walked away, unconsciously taking up the cudgels in May Webster's defence; "she can be gracious enough when she chooses. She has insisted on our being friends, and I'll make use of the privilege to tell her the impression she conveys, before many weeks are passed. Allison is a shrewd fellow, and in his blundering fashion knocks many a right nail on the head."

* * * * * *

The October afternoon was fading into night before Paul returned to the cottage. The curtains of the sitting-room were still undrawn, and from within he caught the cheerful glow of the fire, and Sally seated on the rug before it reading by the fitful light. She sprang to her feet as she heard his footstep, and ran to open the door; and then her merry greeting checked itself in the utterance, for her brother's face was grey with suppressed feeling, and his teeth chattered slightly.

"What is it, Paul?" she asked, in a half-frightened whisper.

"It's that poor fellow, Allison; he's dying. And I happened to pass when the accident occurred, and gave a hand in carrying him upstairs. It's ghastly to see a man in mortal agony."

"What happened?"

"A troublesome mare took to kicking as he shod her, and somehow Allison was knocked down; and, before any one could get to the rescue, he was so injured that the doctor does not think he can last through the night."

"How awful! And were you there to see it all?" Sally asked with a shiver.

"I had not left the forge very long. I had been talking to Allison, and he told me the mare was a skittish one to manage; and, as I returned, I found a group of men gathered around him, not one of whom had even had the sense of thinking of fetching the doctor. So I first helped them to get poor Allison to his room, and then I rushed to the inn, got a trap, and went and brought a doctor back with me. There is absolutely nothing to be done; but it is a satisfaction to feel that a doctor has seen him. Taken right way, he's not half a bad sort, Sally. He's bearing his pain like a man, and shook me by the hand to bid me good-bye, and even sent a message to you. 'Say good-bye to missy. I'd like to have said it myself,'" he said.

"He shall! I'll go and see him," Sally said, with a set white face. "If the sight of me can give him the smallest pleasure, I'll go."

"It's rather awful, Sally; you've not had to face death yet. I would not go if I were you."

"We all must face it some time or other. I'll go, Paul; I shan't be long. No! don't come with me, please; I'd rather go alone."

"Put on a waterproof, then, and take an umbrella; it's a wild night, and it has just come on to rain," said Paul, and, moved by an unwonted impulse, he stooped and kissed her.

The door of the blacksmith's house was open when Sally reached it, and, entering softly, she removed her wet cloak and stood in the dimly lighted parlour wondering how she should make her presence known. From overhead came the sound of voices talking in suppressed whispers, and once Sally shivered, for a long-drawn moan fell upon her ear.

"I'll go and see the old mother. Perhaps I can stay with her, and set Mrs. Allison free when I have just said good-bye to her husband," thought Sally, as she went up the stairs.

A near neighbour met her at the top.

"We're just at our wits' end, miss," she said in answer to Sally's inquiry. "The old lady's not to be told anything about it, and Mrs. Allison, poor soul! falls out of one faint into another, and can't stay in the room along with him who's dying."

"May I go to him for a minute. He wanted to see me," said Sally, with a sob.

But, ushered into the chamber of death, Sally stood for a moment overpowered by an awful terror: a chill which seemed as if it would stop the beating of her heart, a terror she could not have explained. Face to face with death! The words were familiar enough, but they had conveyed little meaning to her. This man, who lay there, unable from time to time to keep back a groan of agony, with the grey shadow deepening on his face, and the drops of perspiration standing on his forehead, would soon lie there silent and still, capable of neither speech, nor feeling, nor hearing. He would be simply an empty shell. It was awful!--inexpressibly awful. It all flashed through Sally's mind in one shuddering instant; the next, she had pulled herself together and crossed to the bedside on tip-toe, and stood looking down at the poor, prostrate form with ineffable pity in her dark eyes.

"Oh, Lord! I can't bear it!" broke in a sort of wail from the blue lips. "It can't last long; an hour or so will settle it."

The words Sally recognized as an exclamation rather than a prayer, but they brought the rector to her remembrance. If any man could help another in his last agony surely it would be he.

"Mr. Allison," she said, laying her soft hand on the grimy one that moved up and down so restlessly upon the counterpane, "I heard you wanted to see me. Let me do something. Is there no one else you would like to see? Shall I fetch Mr. Curzon?"

Allison's eyes unclosed, dimmed already by the gathering haze of death.

"Bless you, missy; this ain't no place for you, though it's good of you to come. Good-bye. God bless you! You get home again; it will hurt you to see me suffer."

Once more that half-blind appeal to the Higher Power of which Mr. Curzon had spoken, and he spoke with no uncertain sound. He seemed to know about it.

"Won't the rector come?" asked Sally again.

But Allison shook his head.

"No, no; we'd words to-day. I can't mind what about; but it don't matter much. I told 'un not to come."

But as he spoke a step fell on the stair, and the next moment Mr. Curzon pushed open the door with an expression on his face so pitiful, so strong, that in the tension of her feeling, Sally could only sob, and, withdrawing her hand, slip quietly away to the window.

The rector knelt down, bringing his face to a level with the dying man's.

"Allison, dear fellow, I only heard this minute what had happened; and I came. Will you let me stay?"

"You can please yourself," said Allison; "but you can't want to be here. We quarrelled, you and I."

"Not I," said the rector, gently.

"I'm mortal bad! I'm dying!" gasped the blacksmith. "It can't do no good to watch me."

"You'll let me say a psalm or read a prayer."

"No. Where's the use? I wouldn't say 'em living and I can't listen now I'm dying. I ain't no worse than others, and I'm better than some; and what's to see on the other side, I'll learn soon enough for myself. I'm nearly there."

"But God is here! close to you, Allison," pleaded the rector; "asking you even now to turn to Him, to look Him in the Face!"

Sally's breath came in fitful gasps; she looked round the room half expecting the visible shining of that Presence. Instead, the wind sobbed in the chimney and the rain dashed against the window-pane. Death was here, and darkness; but no God, thought Sally.

The rector's hands covered his face, and through his fingers Sally saw that great tears forced themselves in the agony of his wrestling for that soul with God.

"You can please yourself," said Allison, opening his eyes again. "It will do no good, but it won't do harm." And the rector, catching at the feeble flicker of a dawning faith, said the twenty-third Psalm slowly on his knees: "'Though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I fear no evil, for Thou art with me----'"

A movement from the dying man made him pause and look up.

"I can't see nothing; give me a grip of your hand. Hold tight; I'm mortal cold."

He did not speak again. Neighbours came and went, moistening the dying lips with brandy; but the eyes had no gleam of recognition in them. For an hour or more the rector sat with the great hand clasped tightly between his own, repeating gently prayer or hymn, no word of which, he feared, could reach the numbed brain, but certain that the Great God in Heaven was looking down upon the sheep that had wandered so far from Him, but whom He still claimed as His own. And Sally waited, too, until the rector rising, bent and softly closed the eyes. Then she knew that Allison was dead, and, slipping from the room, made her way swiftly home, unconscious of the rain that beat upon her head, filled only with the remembrance of the scene she had just witnessed.

"He's dead," she said, when Paul let her in; "he's dead--whatever that may mean. It does not mean going out like a candle--I'm certain it does not mean that,--it means going somewhere else; and, if any one can teach me, I must find out where. I could not die like that, Paul; it's despairing, it's quite hopeless! I'm thankful that I'm young; that I have time to learn. If there's no hope, no light, the mere thought of dying would be enough to drive one mad."

"My poor child! I did wrong to let you see anything so painful," Paul said, gathering her into his arms. "I am afraid there is no one who can tell you about these things. Nobody knows; that is the sad part of it."

"Mr. Curzon can," said Sally, lifting her head from Paul's shoulder. "He has got hold of something that you and I have missed. There is positive conviction written on his face of the living God whom Allison in dying was vaguely feeling after."

"Oh, he's a fine fellow in his way, I don't deny it, and has the courage of his opinions; but he can't know. Nobody does," said Paul, doggedly. "And now, dear, we'll have supper. You will take a less hysterical view of life and death in the morning."