Chapter 32

AN EVENTFUL DRIVE.

Ill blows the wind that profits nobody.

Shakespeare, "Henry IV."

I imagine that the most fretting and wearing of all the pains and penalties which it is the lot of humanity to undergo in this troublesome and naughty world are those which, by our own folly, our own shortsightedness, and our own imprudence, we have brought upon ourselves.

There is a degree of irritation in such troubles which adds a whole armoury of small knife-cuts to intensify the agony of the evil from which we suffer. It is more dreadful to be moaning over our own mistakes than over the inscrutable perversity of an unpropitious fate.

Somebody once has said that most men grieve over the smallest mistake more bitterly than over the greatest sin. This is decidedly a perversion of the moral nature; nevertheless, there is a good deal of truth in it.

"If only I had not been such a fool! If I could only have foreseen such and such results?"

These are more generally the burden of our bitterest self-reproaches.

And this was what Miss Miller was perpetually repeating to herself during the months of August and September. Beatrice, in these days, was a thoroughly miserable young woman. She was more utterly separated than ever from her lover, and that entirely by her own fault. That foolish escapade of hers to the Temple had been fatal to her; her father, who had been inclined to become her lover's friend, had now peremptorily forbidden her ever to mention his name again, and her own lips were sealed as to the unlucky incident in which she had played so prominent a part.

Beatrice knew that, in going alone and on the sly to her lover's chambers, she had undoubtedly compromised her own good name. To confess to her own folly and imprudence was almost beyond her power, and to clear her lover's name at the expense of her own was what she felt he himself would scarcely thank her for.

Mr. Miller had, of course, said something of what he had discovered at Mr. Pryme's chambers to the wife of his bosom.

"The young man is not fit for her," he had said; "his private life will not bear investigation. You must tell Beatrice to put him out of her head."

Mrs. Miller had, of course, been virtuously indignant over Mr. Pryme's offences, but she had also been triumphantly elated over her own sagacity.

"Did I not tell you he was not a proper husband for her? Another time, Andrew, you will, I hope, allow that I am the best judge in these matters."

"My dear, you are always right," was the meekly conjugal reply, and then Mrs. Miller went her way and talked to Beatrice for half-an-hour over the sinful lives which are frequently led by young men of no family residing in the Temple, and the shame and disgrace which must necessarily accrue to any well-brought-up young woman who, in an ill-advised moment, shall allow her affections to rove towards such unsanctified Pariahs of society.

And Beatrice, listening to her blushingly, knew what she meant, and yet had no words wherewith to clear her lover's character from the defamatory evidence furnished against him by her own sunshade and gloves.

"Your father has seen with his own eyes, my dear, that which makes it impossible for us ever to consent to your marrying that young man."

How was Beatrice to say to her mother, "It was I--your daughter--who was there, shut up in Mr. Pryme's bedroom." She could not speak the words.

The sunshine twinkled in Shadonake's many windows, and flooded its velvet lawns. Below, the Bath slumbered darkly in the shadow of its ancient steps and its encircling belt of fir-trees; and beyond the flower-gardens, half-an-acre of pineries, and vineries, and orchard-houses glittered in a dazzling parterre of glass-roofs and white paint. Something new--it was an orchard-house--was being built. There was always something new, and Mr. Miller was superintending the building of it. He stood over the workmen who were laying the foundation, watching every brick that was laid down with delighted and absorbed interest. He held a trowel himself, and had tucked up his shirt cuffs in order to lend a helping hand in the operations. There was nothing that Andrew Miller loved so well. Fate and his Caroline had made him a member of Parliament, and had placed him in the position of a gentleman, but nature had undoubtedly intended him for a bricklayer.

Beatrice came out of the drawing-room windows across the lawn to him. She was in her habit, and stood tapping her little boot with her riding whip for some minutes by her father's side.

"I am going to see uncle Tom, papa," she said; "have you any message?"

"Going to Lutterton? Ah, that's right; the ride will do you good, my dear. No; I have no message."

Beatrice went back into the house; her little bay mare stood at the door. She met her mother in the hall.

"I am going to see uncle Tom," she said, to her also.

Mrs. Miller always encouraged her children in their attentions to her brother. He was rich, and he was a bachelor; he must have saved a good deal one way or another. Who could tell how it would be left? And then Beatrice was undoubtedly his favourite. She nodded pleasantly to her daughter.

"Tell uncle Tom to come over to lunch on Sunday, and, of course, he must come here early for Guy's birthday next week," for there were to be great doings on Guy's birthday. "Ride slowly, Beatrice, or you will get so hot."

Lutterton Castle was a good six miles off. The house stood well, and even imposingly, on a high wooded knoll that overlooked the undulating park, and the open valley at its feet. It was a great rambling building with a central tower and four smaller ones at each corner. When Mr. Esterworth was at home, which was almost always, it was his vanity to keep a red flag flying from the centre tower as though he had been royalty. All the reception-rooms and more than half the bedrooms were permanently shuttered up, and there was a portly and very dignified housekeeper, who rattled her keys at her châtelaine, and went through all the unused apartments daily, followed by a meek phalanx of housemaids, to see that all the rooms were well-aired and well kept in order, so that at any minute they might be fit for occupation. Five or six times during the hunting season the large rooms were all thrown open, and there was a hunt breakfast held in the principal dining-hall; but, with that exception, Mr. Esterworth rarely entertained at all.

He occupied three rooms opening out of each other in the small western tower. They consisted of a bedroom, a dressing-room, and a small and rather inconvenient study, where the huntsman, whips, and other official personages connected with the hunt were received at all hours of the day and night. The room was consequently pervaded by a faint odour of stables and tobacco; there were usually three or four dogs upon the hearthrug, and it was a rare thing to find Mr. Esterworth in it unaccompanied by some personage in breeches and gaiters, wearing a blue spotted neckcloth and a horseshoe pin.

Such an individual was receiving an audience at the moment of Miss Miller's arrival, and shuffled awkwardly and hurriedly out of the room by one door as she entered it by another.

"All right, William," calls the M.F.H. after his departing satellite. "Look in again to-night. I shall have her fired, I think, and throw her up till December. Hallo! Pussy, how are you?"

All the four dogs rose from the hearthrug and wagged their tails solemnly in respectful greeting to her. Beatrice had a pat and a word for each, and a kiss for her uncle, before she sat down on the chair he pulled forward for her.

"What brings you, Pussy? What are you riding?"

"Kitty; they have taken her round to the stable. I thought I'd have lunch with you, uncle Tom."

"Very well; you won't get anything but a mutton-chop."

"I don't ask for anything better."

Beatrice felt that her heart was beating. She had taken a desperate resolution during her six miles' solitary ride; she had determined to take her uncle into her confidence. He had always been indulgent and kind to her; perhaps he would not view her sin in so heinous a light as her mother would; and who knows? perhaps he would help her.

"Uncle Tom, I'm in dreadful trouble, and I want to tell you about it," she began, trembling.

"I'm very sorry, Pussy; what is it?"

"I did a shocking, dreadful thing when I was in London. I went to a young man's rooms, and got shut up in his bedroom."

"The deuce you did!" says Tom Esterworth, opening his eyes.

"Yes," continues Beatrice, desperately, and crimson with shame and confusion; "and the worse of it is, that I left my sunshade in the sitting-room; and papa came in, and, of course, he did not know it was mine, and--and--he thinks--he thinks----"

"That's the best joke I ever heard in my life!" cries Mr. Esterworth, laying his head back in the chair and laughing aloud.

"Uncle Tom!" Beatrice could hardly believe her ears.

"Good lord, what a situation for a comedy!" cries her uncle, between the outbursts of his mirth. "Upon my word, Pussy, you are a good plucked one; there isn't much Miller blood in your veins. You are an Esterworth all over."

"But, uncle, indeed, it's no laughing matter."

"Well, I don't see much to cry at if your father did not find you out; the young man is never likely to talk."

"Oh, but uncle Tom; papa and mamma think so badly of him, and I can't tell them that I was there; and they will never let me marry him."

"Oh! so you are in love, Pussy?"

"Yes, uncle."

Tom Esterworth smote his hand against his corduroy thigh.

"What a mistake!" he exclaimed; "a girl who can go across country as you do--what on earth do you want to be married for? Is it Mr. Pryme, Pussy?"

Beatrice nodded.

"And he can't go a yard," said her uncle, sorrowfully and reproachfully.

"Oh, I think he goes very well, uncle; his seat is capital; it is only his hands that are a bit heavy; but then he has had very little practice."

"Tut--tut, don't talk to me, child; he is no horseman. He may be a good young man in his way, but what can have made you take a fancy to a fellow who can't ride is a mystery to me! Now tell me the whole story, Pussy."

And then Beatrice made a clean breast of it.

"I will see if I can help you," said her uncle, seriously, when she had finished her story; "but I can't think how you can have set your heart upon a fellow who can't ride!"

This was evidently a far more fatal error in Tom Esterworth's eyes than the other matter of her being shut up in Mr. Pryme's rooms. Beatrice began to think she had not done anything so very terrible after all.

"I must turn it over in my mind. Now come and eat your mutton-chop, Pussy, and when we have finished our lunch, you shall come out with me in the dog-cart. I am going to put Clochette into harness for the first time."

"Will she go quietly?"

"Like a lamb, I should say. You won't be nervous?"

"Dear, no! I am never nervous; I shall enjoy the fun."

The mutton-chop over, Clochette and the dog-cart came round to the door. She was a raking, bright chestnut mare, with a coat like satin. Even as she stood at the door she chafed somewhat at her new position between the shafts. This, however, was no more than might have been expected. Mr. Esterworth declining the company of the groom, helped his niece up and took the reins.

"We will go round by Tripton and back by the common," he said, "and talk this matter well over, Pussy; we shall enjoy ourselves much better with nobody in the back seat. A man sits there with his arms crossed and his face like a blank sheet of paper, but one never knows how much they hear, and their ears are always cocked, like a terrier's on the scent of a rat."

Clochette went off from the door with a bound, but soon settled down into a good swinging trot. She kept turning her head nervously from side to side, and there was evidently a little uncertainty in her mind as to whether she should keep to the drive, or deviate on to the grass by the side of it; but, upon the whole, she behaved fairly well, and turned out of the lodge gates into the high road with perfect docility and good breeding.

There was a whole avalanche of dogs in attendance. A collie, rushing on tumultuously in front; a "plum-pudding" dog between the wheels; a couple of fox-terriers snapping joyfully at each other in the rear; and there was also an ill-conditioned animal--half lurcher, half terrier--who killed cats, and murdered fowls, and worried sheep, and flew at the heels of unwary strangers; and was given, in short, to every sort of canine iniquity, and who possessed but one redeeming feature in his character--that of blind adoration to his master.

This animal, who followed uncle Tom whithersoever he went, came skurrying out of the stables as the dog-cart drove off, and joined in the general scamper.

Perhaps the dogs may have been too much for Clochette's nerves, or perhaps the effort of behaving well as far as the park gates with those horrible wheels rattling behind her was as much as any hunter born and bred could be expected to do, or perhaps uncle Tom was too free with that whip with which he caressed her shining flanks; but be that as it may, no sooner was Clochette's head well turned along the straight high-road with its high-tangled hedge-rows on either side than she began to show symptoms of behaving very badly indeed. She bucked and pranced, and stood on her hind legs; she whipped suddenly round, pirouetted upon her own axis with the dexterity of a circus performer, and demonstrated very plainly that, if she only dared, she would like to take to her heels in the reverse direction to that which her driver desired her to go.

All this was, however, equally delightful and exciting both to Tom Esterworth and his niece. There was no apprehension in Beatrice's mind, for her uncle drove as well as he rode, and she felt perfectly secure in the strong, supple hands that guided Clochette's erratic movements.

"There is not a kick in her," uncle Tom had said, as they started, and he repeated the observation now; and kicking being out of the category of Clochette's iniquities, there was nothing else to fear.

No sooner, however, had the words left his lips than a turn of the road brought them within sight of a great volume of black smoke rushing slowly but surely towards them; whilst a horrible roaring and howling, as of an antediluvian monster in its wrath, filled the silence of the summer afternoon with a hideous and unholy confusion.

Talk about there being no wild animals in our peaceful land! What could have been the Megatherium and the Ichthyosaurus, and all the fire-spitting dragons of antiquity compared to the traction engines of the nineteenth century?

"It's a steam plough!" ejaculated Beatrice, below her breath.

"D----n!" cried her uncle, not at all below _his_ breath.

As to Clochette, she stood for an instant stock still, with her ears pricked and her head well up, facing the horrors of her situation; next she gave an angry snort as though to say, "No! _this_ is too much!" Then she turned short round and began a series of peculiar bounds and plunges, accompanied by an ominous uplifting of her hind quarters, which had plainly but one object in view--the correct conjugation of the verb active "to kick."

There was a crunching of woodwork, a cracking as of iron hoofs against the splash-board. Beatrice instinctively put up her hands before her face, but she did not utter a sound.

"Do you think you could get down, Pussy, and go to her head?"

"Shall I hold the reins, uncle?"

"No, you couldn't hold her; she'll be over the hedge if I let go of her. Get down if you can."

It was not easy. Beatrice was in her habit, and to jump from the vacillating height of a dog-cart to the earth is no easy matter even to a man unencumbered with petticoats.

"Try and get over the back," said her uncle, who was in momentary terror lest the mare's heels should be dashed into her face. And Beatrice, with that finest trait of a woman's courage in danger, which consists in doing exactly what she is told, began to scramble over the back of her seat.

The situation was critical in the extreme; the traction engine came on apace, the man with the red flag having paused at a public-house round the corner, was only now running back into his place. Uncle Tom shouted vainly to him; his voice was drowned in the deafening roar of the advancing monster.

But already help was at hand, unheard and unperceived by either uncle or niece; a horseman had come rapidly trotting up the road behind them. To spring from his horse, who was apparently accustomed to traction engines, and stood quietly by, to rush to the plunging, struggling mare, and to seize her by the head was the work of a moment.

"All right, Mr. Esterworth," shouted the new comer. "I can hold her if you can get down; we can lead her into the field; there is a gate ten yards back."

Uncle Tom threw the reins to his niece and slipped to the ground; between them the two men contrived to quiet the terrified Clochette, and to lead her towards the gate.

In another three minutes they were all safely within the shelter of the hedge. The traction engine passed, snorting forth fire and smoke, on its devastating way; and Clochette stood by, panting, trembling, and covered with foam. Beatrice, safely on the ground, was examining ruefully the amount of damage done to the dog-cart, and Mr. Esterworth was shaking hands with his deliverer.

It was Herbert Pryme.

"That's the last time I ever take a lady out, driving without a man-servant behind me," quoth the M.F.H. "What we should have done without your timely assistance, sir, I really cannot say; in another minute she would have kicked the trap into a thousand bits. You have saved my niece's life, Mr. Pryme."

"Indeed, I did very little," said Herbert, modestly, glancing at Beatrice who was trembling and rather pale; but, perhaps, that was only from her recent fright. She had not spoken to him, only she had given him one bewildered glance, and then had looked hastily away.

"You have saved her life," repeated Mr. Esterworth, with decision. "I hope you do not mean to contradict my words, sir? You have saved Beatrice's life, sir, and it's the most providential thing in this world for you, as Clochette very nearly kicked her to pieces under your nose. I shall tell Mr. and Mrs. Miller that they are indebted to you for their daughter's life. Young people, I am going to lead this brute of a mare home, and, if you like to walk on together to Lutterton in front of me, why you may."

That was how Herbert Pryme came to be once more re-instated in the good graces of his lady love's father and mother.

Mr. Esterworth contrived to give them so terrifying an account of the danger in which Beatrice had been placed, and so graphic and highly-coloured a description of Herbert Pryme's pluck and sagacity in rushing to her rescue, that Mr. and Mrs. Miller had no other course left than to shake hands gratefully with the man to whom, as uncle Tom said, they literally owed her life.

"I could not have saved her without him," said uncle Tom, drawing slightly upon his imagination; "in another minute she must have been kicked to pieces, or dashed violently to the earth among the broken fragments of the cart, and"--with a happy after-thought--"the steam plough would have crushed its way over her mangled body."

Mrs. Miller shuddered.

"Oh, Tom, I never can trust her to you again!"

"No, my dear; but I think you must trust her to Mr. Pryme; that young man deserves to be rewarded."

"But, my dear Tom, there are things against his character. I assure you, Andrew himself saw----"

"Pooh! pooh!" interrupted Mr. Esterworth. "Young men who sow their wild oats early are all the better husbands for it afterwards. I will give him a talking to if you like, but you and your husband must let Pussy have her own way; it is the least you can do after his conduct; and don't worry about his being poor, Caroline; I have nothing better to do with my money, and I shall take care that Pussy is none the worse off for my death. She is worth all the rest of your children put together--an Esterworth, every inch of her!"

That, it is to be imagined, was the clenching argument in Mrs. Miller's mind. Uncle Tom's money was not to be despised, and, by reason of his money, uncle Tom's wishes were bound to carry some weight with them.

Mr. Pryme, who had been staying for a few days at Kynaston, where, however, the cordial welcome given to him by its master was, in a great measure, neutralised by the coldness and incivility of its mistress, removed himself and his portmanteau, by uncle Tom's invitation, to Lutterton, and his engagement to Miss Miller became a recognised fact.

"All the same, it is a very bad match for her," said Mrs. Miller, in confidence, to her husband.

"And I should very much like to know who that sunshade belonged to," added the M.P. for Meadowshire, severely.

"I think, my dear, we shall have to overlook that part of the business, for, as Tom will leave them his money, why----"

"Yes, yes, I quite understand; we must hope the young man has had a good lesson. Let bygones be bygones, certainly," and Mr. Miller took a pinch of snuff reflectively, and wondered what Tom Esterworth would "cut up for."

"But I am _determined_," said Mrs. Miller, ere she closed the discussion, "I am determined that I will do better for Geraldine."

After all, the mother had a second string to her bow, so the edict went forth that Beatrice was to be allowed to be happy in her own way, and the shadow of that fatal sunshade was no longer to be suffered to blacken the moral horizon of her father's soul.