CHAPTER XXV

THE STUDY OF A FACE

'I suppose you have not been asked to Bindon?' said Olver, as Jack entered the ferryman's cottage.

'No; for what?'

'Only Mrs. Jose is going to have a Christmas party for her servants and farm labourers, and she always on these occasions invites the young folk of Axmouth, and has the church musicians. I thought it not likely she would have asked you.'

'No, for she knew I could not attend so soon after my father's death.'

'Exactly; I thought as much. She is a motherly body, and always thinks and does the right thing. But for that you would have been invited. I only wish I had been. I have tasted her pickled hams; there are none like them. And she does not stint the liquor. What is the matter with you?'

'I have had some knocks-down. These take the curl out of one's spirits, but I shall be all right again to-morrow.'

'Excuse me, Jack, if I give you my opinion. I think you are going to work in the wrong way. A man's success in life depends on his seeing where to put his foot, and then and there putting it down. If you want to cross the Axe mud you must step on the stones, otherwise you go up to your waist. Now, Jack, there's a fine field open to you as the son of Captain Job. But you will not enter it. I've seen an ox――just the same; the farmer wanted to drive him into a pasture rich with buttercups, but, bless your soul! he would bounce into a milliner's shop instead.'

Jack took up his hat again, and went forth. He was weary of Olver Dench and his persistence in urging him to pursue his father's business.

Full of discouragement that made his heart sad, he wandered about till the day closed in, and then, for lack of anything else to do, he resolved to go to Bindon, not to take any part in the festivities, but from a distance to observe them. The weather was favourable, the air mild, although the season was mid-winter. Bindon, as already intimated, had a front court closed by a wall. With this wall the house formed a quadrangle. The porch and hall windows faced the entrance, looking into a turfed enclosure, whilst a chapel occupied one wing, and the other was given up to barns. The chapel, never consecrated, had been erected for divine service in 1425, when the mansion was the residence of a squire with retainers; but when Bindon declined to be a farmhouse, the building ceased to be associated with worship and was given over to secular purposes.

As the lonely lad approached, he saw the twinkle of lights, and heard the hum of happy voices.

He would not draw near, lest he should be recognised, and this led to an awkward situation. He hung about within hearing of the music and voices. Bindon has never been surrounded by a park, but it has pleasant, sloping grounds, well studded with trees and broken with rock. It was something to Jack to be near his fellows, and to know that if he was sad others were happy.

As the darkness deepened, the risk of being recognised became less, and he drew nearer.

The barn had been cleared, lanterns had been suspended from the rafters, and as these shed but a feeble light, they had been supplemented by hoops stuck with candles, pendent from the tie beams. On a barrel at one end sat a fiddler, the clerk in Axmouth church, and near him a solemn man, the tailor, who worked the bass viol. Another, Hopkins, the shoemaker, warbled on the clarionet.

In the days gone by, at the beginning of the century, every country church had its village orchestra. At that time the detestable harmonium and the strident American organ, the phylloxera of sacred music, had not invaded and exterminated village concerted music.

The floor was occupied by dancers. Mrs. Jose, her broad, rosy face all smiles, looked on. But the number of those who figured was inconsiderable. The girls were shy, shyer still were the lads; and only a few of the bolder spirits and the most confident in their legs began to dance.

But by degrees, under the influence of the music, of the persuasion of the hostess, of the desire to make the most of so rare an opportunity, shyness yielded, and the number of footers on the floor increased.

The light, according to our modern notions, was not brilliant, but the twilight of tallow candles and horn lanterns sufficed, where hearts were light and blood was aflame.

The barn had a large door under a pent-house roof for the reception of sheaves to be tossed in from a laden wagon, to be piled at one end and thrashed on the floor in the middle. It was lime-ashed at the extremities, but the floor, on which the flails played, was of oak boards, beaten hard and smooth.

But the barn was provided as well with slits unglazed, through which light and air by day entered the barn when the great doors were shut, and through which now flowed the light and the sounds from within.

To one of these Jack drew near. He could look through and observe the fun without himself being noticed. This was the more certain as the loophole he selected was behind the barn door, thrown back to allow those who were hot to issue forth and cool themselves, and to enable the dust tossed up from the floor to be carried out by the draught and dissipated. Lest an excess of chill winter air should enter, only one of the valves was opened. At any moment, if necessary, it might be shut. But the air, if humid, was not frosty, and none complained of cold.

Concealed behind the door, Jack peered into the interior, leaning his elbows on the ledge that projected from the slit.

He felt no desire to be within. It would not have been seemly for him to have taken a part in the merrymaking so soon after losing his father, and the tone of his spirits was not in keeping with a festival.

He knew by sight most of the girls present, but none of them interested him particularly, though several had pleasant and even pretty faces. The soft light from above toned down any slight roughnesses or irregularities there might be in complexion and feature; and where the faces were kindled with pleasure, the eyes sparkled, and the colour mounted, none could be plain, and a taste must be fastidious that does not see beauty in the fresh and well-formed faces of the West.

As to the young men, they were cheery, perhaps a little noisy in their mirth, and only such were clumsy as had laboured at the plough in deep, tenacious clay.

Jack wondered whether happiness abounded alongside with ignorance, and was more sparse with knowledge; whether education did not spoil a man for the enjoyment of simple pleasures. He would have found no satisfaction had he been within, dancing with the rest. He would have felt himself out of accord with those present. He was separated from these young people mentally, and was no longer capable of sharing in their pleasures as he was debarred from taking part in their pursuits.

But he was not the only person who was solitary, isolated, that evening. Over against him sat Winefred on a bench against the barn wall. A flaming ring of candles threw a comparatively strong light upon her face. No lad had spoken to her, none had invited her to dance; although, as Jack could not fail to discover, she was far handsomer than any other girl present.

Nor did those of her own sex associate with her. They held aloof, and if they noticed her it was in a captious spirit: they whispered and pointed at her gown or her trinkets, and tittered.

It was unfortunate; it was provocative. Her mother had insisted in dressing Winefred for the occasion in a manner wholly unbecoming the sort of entertainment to which she had been asked. A handsome dress, bracelets, and brooches were resented by the girls present as an attempt to outshine them in their humbler stuffs and cheap ornaments.

To do her justice, Winefred had entreated her mother not to oblige her to appear overdressed, but Jane Marley could not understand her shrinking. She regarded this as an opportunity for the assertion of superiority over the other girls of Axmouth, an opportunity to be seized on and enjoyed.

Winefred was keenly alive to the awkwardness of her situation, but was too proud to show how wounded she was by the slights put on her.

She could not, she would not stoop to solicit the friendship of girls who regarded her mother as a thief. It would be solely on condition that they acknowledged her mother's integrity that she would relax towards them. So long as they held her mother in suspicion, so long would she hold aloof from them. Consequently she did nothing to disarm the ill-feeling that existed against her. None ventured to attack her openly, being afraid of her sharp tongue. She was well aware that around her was the flicker of animosity, like summer lightning, of which one cannot say where it will strike.

The girls to whom she and her mother had sold ribbons, laces, papers of pins, and reels of cotton, resented her sudden elevation to a position――as far as money went――far above them.

The boys followed suit. They took their tone from their partners. She made no attempt to attract them by graciousness of manner. Those few who had approached her were repulsed.

But although the girls were jealous of her, they were as well in awe of her, and did not dare to carry their hostility too far. They were alive to the fact that she was very good-looking, and that a little display of amiability on her part was alone required to bring the young men about her in a swarm.

Peering through the opening, Jack watched Winefred's face as he had never before been able to observe it. He wondered why she was there, so manifest was it that the entertainment afforded her no pleasure.

Others wondered as well as he. A couple was standing outside, leaning against the door, in the shadow of which he was concealed.

'Do y' mark her, Joe?' asked the girl.

'Yes, I do, Bessie. She is tart as a green gooseberry, and will curdle Mrs. Jose's milk.'

'Why has she come, Joe? I can tell you. To outflounce us girls, and to make mock at you lads. She thinks herself in her finery as high as the clouds above us.'

'She is vastly pretty,' said Joe.

'Oh! if you think so, go and ask her to dance.'

Jack did not remove his eyes from her.

She certainly was pretty. She was more than pretty――most of the girls present were that――but she was above them in beauty as she transcended them in dress. The brow, broad and intelligent, was lighted by the candles above, and set off by her profuse dark hair. Her eyes were lowered, and the long lashes swept her cheek. The face was long, but formed an oval, and the chin, if pointed, was not too sharp. The delicate, sinuous lips would have made the mouth delicious but for the expression of bitterness that compressed them.

There was no brightness, not the suspicion of a smile, in her face, more than in that of a corpse.

Winefred was certainly unhappy. Jack was convinced of that. She sat there, in the midst of gaiety, without partaking of it, suffering internally, yet afraid to let this be seen, lest it should be made an occasion of jest. She kept herself under control. The tension of the muscles showed how great the exertion was.

Was it her fault, asked Jack of himself, that Winefred was left so completely alone; that no one, except at intervals Mrs. Jose, spoke to her; that she dared not lift her eyes lest she should encounter looks of animosity? Was it so very certain that her mother had done that wherewith she was charged by the general voice? Was not that charge formulated to express the envy and spite of those who saw the woman who had been under their feet lifted above their heads? And even if Mrs. Marley had done him this wrong, was her daughter a partaker in it? Consciously, certainly she was not.

Asking these questions, and thus musing, Jack continued to watch the face.

He was sure that the hardness in the countenance, the twitching of the set mouth, and the convulsive knitting of the hands on the lap were due to effort to suppress tears that were welling up in her heart.

A sense of softness come over Jack. This girl, like himself, was alone. And the feeling that she, as he, was friendless, made him wish he could creep in unseen and sit by her side. He would say nothing, he had nothing that he could say, save this, 'Winefred――I believe in you.'

Every now and then her head sank, and the light no longer fell over it, but bathed her glossy dark hair, and then for a moment her chin rested on her heaving bosom.

By an effort she reared herself, looked quickly round at the dancers, fearful lest weakness should have been detected, and with defiance in her glance.

All at once, as though consciousness came over her that she was observed, she moved uneasily on the bench and looked straight before her at the slot through which Jack was looking. No dancers at the moment intervened, and she saw him.

Her eyes fell at once. Jack could not be sure whether she had recognised him, but that she had seen that some one was watching her was obvious from her movements.

He drew back, and again was the unseen hearer of a conversation relative to Winefred.

'Bill,' said a girl, 'I have caught you sidling towards that stuck-up minx of a Marley, or, as she is pleased to call herself, Holwood. I know you want to make up to _Miss_ Holwood because of her hundreds of pounds, and to be off with Susie Finch.'

'It is not so. I swear to you it is not so. You attack me because you are disappointed that Jack Rattenbury is not here.'

'It is an untruth, a wicked untruth. What care I for Jack Rattenbury? He is too saucy to speak to such as I――with all his learning he had of the curate.'

Then they passed away to patch up their lover's quarrel elsewhere.

Jack pressed to the window slit again.

And again he looked across the barn at Winefred, and once more their eyes met.

Her lips contracted, her brows knit, she started from the bench, and strode across the floor to the barn door.

He turned, thrust back the valve, and dashed away into the darkness.