"Last night,"--she answered, fixing her frank gaze fully upon him and noting with a sharp little pang of compunction that he looked far from well--"I felt I MUST be here for the first meet of the season! I"ve been staying in an old convent on the Breton coast,-- such a dear quaint place! And I think,"--here she nodded her pretty head wisely--"I THINK I"ve brought you enough stained gla.s.s to quite finish your rose-window! I"ve been busy collecting it ever since I left here. Gently, Cleo!--gently, my beauty!"--this, as her mare pawed the ground restlessly and sprang forward--"Come and see me to- morrow, Mr. Walden! I shall expect you!"
Waving her gloved hand she cantered off and rejoined the rest of the hunters going on ahead. Once she turned in her saddle and looked back,--and again waved her hand. The sun came out fully then, and sweeping aside the grey mists, ehed all its brightness on the graceful figure in the saddle, striking a reflex of rose from the soft violet riding-dress, and sparkling against the rippling twists of gold-brown, hair,--then,--as she disappeared between two rows of leafless trees,--withdrew itself again frowningly and shone no more that day.
Walden re-entered his house, hardly able to sustain the sudden joy that filled him. He felt himself trembling nervously, and was angry at his own weakness.
"I am more foolish than any love-sick boy!" he said to himself with inward remonstrance--"And G.o.d knows I am old enough to know better!
But I cannot help being glad she has come home!--I cannot help it!
For with her presence it seems to me that "the winter is past, the rain is over and gone, the flowers appear on the earth, and the time of the singing of birds is come"! She is so full of life and brightness!-we shall know nothing of dull days or gloomy skies in St. Rest if she stays with us,--though perhaps for me it might be wiser and safer to choose the dull days and gloomy skies rather than tempt my soul with the magical light of an embodied spring in winter-time! But I shall be careful,--careful of myself and of her,- -I shall guard her name in every way, on my side--and if--if I love her, she shall never know it!"
He resumed his former seat by the study fire, and again took up his volume of Tennyson. And opening the book at hazard, his glance fell on that exquisite "Fragment" which perhaps excels in its own way all the "Idylls of the King"--
"As she fled fast thro" sun and shade, The happy winds upon her play"d, Blowing the ringlet from the braid: She look"d so lovely as she sway"d The rein with dainty finger-tips.
A man had given all other bliss, And all his worldly worth for this, To waste his whole heart in one kiss Upon her perfect lips."
"Quite true!" he said, as he read the lines half aloud, a tender smile lighting up the gravity of his deep thoughtful eyes--"True to the life, so far as the Guinevere of to-day is concerned! But let the simile stop there, John, my boy! Don"t carry it any further!
Don"t deceive yourself as to your own demerits! You are nothing but an old-fashioned country parson--a regular humdrum, middle-aged fogey!--that"s what you are!--so, even though you HAVE fallen in love (which at your time of life is a folly you ought to be ashamed of), don"t for Heaven"s sake imagine yourself a Lancelot, John!--it won"t do!"
XXIX
Over the moist ground, and under the bare branches that dripped slow tears of past rain, the brilliant hunting train swept onward, Maryllia riding in the midst, till they came out on a bare stretch of moorland covered with spa.r.s.e patches of gorse and fir. Here they all paused, listening to the cry of the huntsman in the bottoms, and watching the hounds as they drew up wind.
The eyes of every man present wandered now and again to Maryllia in admiration,--none of them had ever seen her look so lovely, so bright, so entirely bewitching. She was always at her best in the saddle. When she had paid her first visit to America with her uncle and aunt as a girl of sixteen, she had been sent for the benefit of her health to stay with some people who owned a huge Californian "ranch," and there she learned to ride on horses that were scarcely broken in, and to gallop across miles and miles of prairie, bareheaded to the burning sun, and had, in such pastime, felt the glorious sense of that savage and splendid freedom which is the true heritage of every child of nature,--a heritage too often lost in the tangled ways of over-civilisation, and seldom or never regained. The dauntless spirit of joyous liberty was in her blood,--she loved the fresh air and vigorous exercise, and was a graceful, daring rider, never knowing what it was to feel a single pulse of fear. Just now she was radiantly happy. She was glad to be at home again,--and still more glad that her plans for eluding the pursuit of Lord Roxmouth had completely succeeded. He had been left absolutely in the dark as to her whereabouts. His letters to her had been returned unanswered, through her solicitors, who declined to make any statement with regard to her movements, and, growing weary at last of fruitless enquiry, he bad left England to winter in Egypt with a party of wealthy friends, her aunt, Mrs. Fred Vancourt, being among the number. She owed this pleasing news to Louis Gigue, who had a.s.sisted her in her flight from the persecution of her detested wooer. Gigue had, through his influence, managed to introduce her under an a.s.sumed name, as a friend of his own to certain poor nuns In a Brittany convent, who were only too willing to receive her as a paying guest for a couple of months, and to ask no questions concerning her. There she had stayed with exemplary patience and resignation,--lonely indeed, yet satisfied to have made good her escape for the time being, and, as she imagined, to have saved John Walden from any possibility of annoyance chancing to him through her, or by her means. She would not consent to have even Cicely with her, lest any accidental clue to her hiding-place might be found and followed.
As soon, however, as she heard that Roxmouth had actually left England, she made haste to return at once to the home she had now learned to love with a deep and clinging affection, and she had timed her reappearance purposely for the first meet of the hunting season. She would show herself, so she resolved, as a free and independent woman to all the county,--and if people had gossiped about her, or were p.r.o.ne to gossip, they would soon find out the error of their ways. Hence the "creation" of the becoming violet velvet riding-dress, copied from the picture of her ancestress in Abbot"s Manor gallery. She had determined to make an "effective"
entrance on the field,--to look as pretty and picturesque as she possibly could, and to show that she was herself and n.o.body else, bound to no authority save her own.
In this purely feminine ambition she certainly accomplished her end.
She was the centre of attraction,--all the members of the Riversford Hunt dispersed round and about her in Hear or distant groups, discussed her in low tones, even while watching the working of the pack, and scanning every yard of open ground for the first sign of a fox. Gradually the crowd of horses and riders increased,--men from the county-town itself, farmers from the more outlying parts of the neighbourhood, and some of the Badsworth Hall tenantry, having arrived too late at Ittlethwaite Park for the actual meet, now came hurriedly galloping up, and among these last was Oliver Leach. It was the first time Maryllia had seen her dismissed agent since her rescue of the Five Sister beeches, and she had thought of him so little that she would not have recognised him now had not his horse, a vicious-looking restive creature, started plunging close to her own hunter "Cleopatra," and caused that spirited animal to rear almost upright on her haunches. In the act of reining the mare out of his way she looked at him, while he, in his turn stared full at her in evident astonishment. As he appeared gradually to recognise her ident.i.ty, his face, always livid, grew more deeply sallow of hue, and an ugly grin made a gargoyle of his mouth and eyes. She, as soon as she recollected him, remembered at the same time the curse he had flung at her--"a May curse," she thought to herself with a superst.i.tious little shudder--"and a May curse always begins to work in November, so the gossips say!"
Moved by an instinctive distrust and dislike of the man, she turned her back upon, him, and patting Cleopatra"s neck, cantered quickly ahead to join the rest of the field which was now moving towards another cover, while the hounds ran through some low thickets of brushwood and tangled bracken.
She was in a curious frame of mind, and found her own emotions difficult to a.n.a.lyse. The momentary glimpse she had just had of John Walden had filled her with a strangely tender compa.s.sion. Why did he look so worn and worried? Had he missed her? Had her two months and more of absence seemed as long to him as they had to her? She wondered! Anon, she asked herself why she wondered! What did it matter to her what he thought, or how he pa.s.sed his days? Then a sudden rush of colour warmed her cheeks, and a light came into her eyes. It DID matter!--there was no getting away from it,--it did matter very much what he thought, and it had become of paramount importance to her to know how he pa.s.sed his days!
Deep in her heart a secret sweet consciousness lay nestled,--a consciousness, subtly feminine, which told her that she was held in precious estimation by at least one man,--and that she had advanced towards her most cherished desire of love so far as to have become "dear to someone else." And that "someone else"--who was he? Oh, well!--n.o.body in particular!--only a country clergyman,--a poor creature, so the world might say, to build romances upon! Yet she was building them fast. One after the other they shaped themselves like cloud-castles in the airy firmament of her dreams, and she permitted herself to dwell on the possible joys they suggested. Very simple joys too!--such as the completion of the rose-window in the church of St. Rest,--he would be pleased if that were done--yes!-- she was sure he would be pleased!--and she had managed, during her sojourn in Brittany, to secure some of the loveliest old stained gla.s.s, dating from the twelfth century, which she meant to give him to-morrow when he came to see her. To-morrow! What a long time it seemed till then! And suppose he did not come? Well, then she would go and see him herself, and would tell him just why she had gone away from home, and why she had not written, to him or to anybody else in the neighbourhood,--and then--and then---
Here she started at the sound of a sudden "tally-ho!"--the hounds had rallied--a fox was "drawn,"--the whole field was astir, and with a musical blast of the horn, the hunt swept on in a flash of scarlet and white, black, brown and grey, across the moor. Maryllia gave herself up to the excitement of the hour, and galloped along, her magnificent mare "Cleopatra, Queen of Egypt" scenting sport in the wind and enjoying the wild freedom allowed her by a loose rein and the light weight she bore. On, on!--with the wet chill perfume of fallen leaves rising from the earth on which the eager hoofs of the horses trampled,--on, always on, in the track of stealthy Reynard, over dips and hollows in the ground and shallow pools fringed with gaunt sedges and twisted brambles,--on, still on, crossing and re- crossing lines of scent where the hounds appeared for the moment at a loss, till they dashed off again towards the farther woods.
Putting her mare to a fence and clearing it easily, Maryllia crossed a meadow, which she knew to be the shortest way to the spot where she could just see the pack racing silently ahead,--and, coming out on one of the high-roads between St. Rest and Riversford, she drew rein for a moment. Several of the hunters had chosen the same short- cut, and came out of the meadow with her, calling a cheery word or two as they pa.s.sed her and pressed on in the ardour of the chase.
Quickly resuming her gallop, and yielding to the exhilaration of the air and the pleasure of movement, she urged her mare to a pace which would have been deemed reckless by all save the most skilled and daring riders, unaware of the unpleasant fact that she was being closely followed by Oliver Leach. He rode about twenty paces behind her, every now and then gaining on her, and anon pulling back his horse in an apparent desire not to outstrip her. The rest of the hunting party were well ahead, and they had the road to themselves, with the exception of a fat man on a bicycle, who was careering along in front of them, looking something like a ton on wheels.
Maryllia soon flew past this moving rotundity, and even if she had had time to look at it, she would not have known that it was the Reverend Putwood Leveson, as she had never seen that gentleman.
Catching a glimpse of the hounds, now racing round the edge of a sloping hill, she galloped faster and faster,--while Oliver Leach, with an odd set expression in his face and eyes, and his hat well pulled down on his brows, followed her at an almost equally flying speed. A ploughed field lay between them, and the smooth dark slope of land edged with broken furze, where the pack could be plainly seen racing for blood. A moderately low, straggling hedge intervened. Such an obstacle was a mere trifle for "Cleopatra, Queen of Egypt" to clear, and Maryllia put her to it with her usual ease and buoyancy. But now up came Oliver Leach on his ill-formed but powerful beast;--and just as the spirited mare, with her lightly poised rider on her back, leaped the hedge, he set his own animal at precisely the same place in deliberate defiance of all hunting rules, and springing at her like a treacherous enemy from behind, closed on her haunches, and pounded straight over her! Maryllia reeled in her saddle,--for one half second, her blue eyes wide with terror, turned themselves full upon her pursuer--she raised her hand appealingly--warningly--in vain! With a crash of breaking brushwood the mare went down under the plunging hoofs that came thudding so heavily upon her,--there was a quick shriek--a blur of violet and gold hurled to the ground--and then,--then Leach galloped on--alone!
He dared not look back! His nerves throbbed--his heart beat high,-- and his evil soul rejoiced in its wickedness as only the soul of a devil can.
"Verdict--accidental death!" he muttered, with a fierce laugh--"No doubt it will be thought singular that the daughter should have met the same end as her father! And nothing more will be said. But suppose she is not killed, since every cat has nine lives? No matter, she will be disfigured for life! That will suit me just as well!"
He laughed again, and pa.s.sed on in the wake of the hunt which had now swept far ahead round the bend of the hill.
Meanwhile, "Cleopatra, Queen of Egypt," rendered stunned and dizzy by her fall, began to recover her equine senses. Sniffing the air and opening her wild bright eyes, she soon perceived her loved mistress lying flung about three yards distant from where she herself had rolled over and over on the thick wet clod of the field.
With a supreme effort the gallant beast attempted to rise,--and presently, with much plunging and kicking, in which struggles however, she with an almost human intelligence pushed herself farther away from that p.r.o.ne figure on the ground, so that she might not injure it, she managed to stand upright, quivering in every strained, sore limb. Lifting her head, she whinnied with a melancholy long-drawn plaintiveness, and then with a slow, stiff hobble, moved cautiously closer to Maryllia"s fallen body. There she paused and whinnied again, while the grey skies lowered and rain began to ooze from the spreading leaden weight of cloud.
And now a.s.sistance seemed near, for the Reverend Putwood Leveson, having had to lead his bicycle up a hill, and being overcome with a melting tallow of perspiration in the effort, hove in sight like an unwieldy porpoise bobbing up on dry land. Approaching the broken gap in the hedge, he quickly spied the mare, and realised the whole situation. Now was the chance for a minister of Christ to show his brave and gentle ministry! He had a flask of brandy in his pocket,-- he never went anywhere without it. He felt it, where it was concealed, comfortably pressed against his heart,--then he peered blandly over the hedge at the helpless human creature lying there unconscious. He knew who it was,--who it must be,--for, as he had cycled through the village after the hunt had started, he had heard everyone talking of Miss Vancourt"s unexpected return, and how she had been the "queen" of the meet that morning. Besides, she had pa.s.sed him on the road, riding at full gallop. He wiped his forehead now and smiled pleasantly.
"Queens are very soon discrowned!"--he said to himself--"And, fortunately, vacant thrones are soon filled! Now if that sneak Walden were here---"
He paused considering. The remembrance of the indignity he had suffered at the hands of Julian Adderley was ever fresh with him,-- an indignity brought about all through the very woman who was now perhaps dying before his eyes, if she was not already dead.
Suddenly, pushing his way through the broken hedge, he approached "Cleopatra" cautiously. The malignant idea entered his brain that if he could make the animal start and plunge, her hoofs would crush the body of her mistress more surely and completely. Detestable as the impulse was, it came quite naturally to him. He had helped to kill b.u.t.terflies often--why not a woman? The murderous instinct was the same in both cases. He tried to s.n.a.t.c.h the mare"s bridle-rein, but she jerked her head away from him, and stood like a rock. He could not move her an inch. Only her great soft eyes kindled with a warning fire as he hovered about her,--and a decided movement of one of her hind hoofs suggested that possibly he might have the worst of any attempt to play pranks with her. He paused a moment, considering.
"Oliver Leach came this way,"--he mused--"He pa.s.sed me almost immediately after she did. Is this his work, I wonder?" Here he drew out his always greasy pocket-handkerchief and wiped his face with as much tender care as though it were a handsome one--"I shouldn"t be surprised,"--he continued, in a mild sotto-voce--"I shouldn"t be at all surprised if he had arranged this little business! Clever--very!
Fatal accidents in the hunting-field are quite common. He knows that. So do I. But I shall find out,--yes!--I shall find out---"
Here he almost jumped with an access of "nerves"--for "Cleopatra, Queen of Egypt" suddenly stretched out her long arched neck and whinnied with piteous, beseeching loudness. A pause of intense stillness followed the mare"s weird cry,--a stillness broken only by the slow pattering of rain. Then from the near distance came the baying of hounds and a far echo of the hunting horn.
Seized by panic, the Reverend "Putty" scrambled quickly out of the ploughed field, through the broken hedge and on to the high-road again, where taking himself to his bicycle again, he scurried away like a rat from falling timber. He had been on his way to Riversford when he had stopped to look at the little fallen heap of violet and gold,--guarded so faithfully by a four-footed beast twenty times more "Christian" in natural feeling than his "ordained" clerical self,--and he now resumed that journey. And though, as he neared the town, he met many persons of the neighbourhood on foot, in carts, and light-wheeled traps, he never once paused to give news of the accident, or so much as thought of sending means of a.s.sistance.
"I am not supposed to have seen anything,"--he said, with a fat smile--"and I am not supposed to know! I shall certainly not be asked to a.s.sist at the funeral service. Walden will attend to that!"
He cycled on rapidly, and arriving at Riversford went to tea with the brewer"s wife, Mrs. Mordaunt Appleby, at Appleby Hall, and was quite fatherly and benevolent to her son, a lumpy child of ten, the future heir to all the malt, hops, barrels, vats, and poisonous chemicals comprising the Appleby estates in this world.
The afternoon closed in coldly and mournfully. A steady weeping drizzle of rain set in. Some of the hunters returned through St.
Rest by twos and threes, looking in a woeful condition, bespattered up to their saddles with mud, and feeling, no doubt, more or less out of temper, as notwithstanding a troublesome and fatiguing run, the fox had escaped them after all. It was about five o"clock, when Walden, having pa.s.sed a quiet day among his books, and having felt the sense of a greater peace and happiness at his heart than he had been conscious of since the May-day morning of the year, pushed aside his papers, rose from his chair, and, looking out at the dreary weather, wondered if the "Guinevere" of the hunt had got safely home from her gallop across country.
"She will be wet through,"--he thought,--the tender smile that made his face so lovable playing softly round his lips--"But she will not mind that! She will laugh, and brush out her pretty hair all ruffled and wet with the rain,--her cheeks will be glowing with colour, and her lips will be as red as the cherries when they first begin to ripen,--her eyes will be bright with health and vitality,--and life- -young life--life full of joy and hope and brightness will radiate from her as the light radiates from the sun. And I shall bask in the luminance of her smile--I, cold and grey, like a burnt-out ember of perished possibilities,--I shall warm my chill soul at the sweet fire of her presence--I shall see her to-morrow!"
He went to the hearth and stirred the smouldering logs into a bright blaze. He was just about to ring for fresh fuel, when there came a sudden, alarmed knocking at the street door. Somewhat startled, he listened, his hand on the bell. He heard the light step of Hester the housemaid tripping along the pa.s.sage quickly to answer the imperative summons,--there was a confused murmur of voices--and then a sudden cry of horror,--and a loud burst of sobbing.
"Whist--whist!--be quiet, be quiet!" said a hoa.r.s.e trembling voice which it was difficult to recognise as Bainton"s; "For the Lord"s sake, don"t make that noise, gel! Think o" Pa.s.son!--do"ee think o"
Pa.s.son! We must break it to "im gently like---" But the hysterical sobbing broke out again and drowned all utterance.
And still Walden stood, listening. A curious rigidity affected his nerves. Something had happened--but what? His dry lips refused to frame the question. All at once, he roused himself. With a couple of strides across his little study he threw open the door and went out into the pa.s.sage. There stood Hester with her ap.r.o.n thrown over her head, weeping convulsively--while Bainton, leaning against the ivied porch entrance to ths house, was trembling like a woman in an ague fit.
"What"s the matter?" said Walden, in a voice of almost peremptory loudness,--a voice that sounded harsh and wild on his own ears-- "What has happened?"
"Oh-oh--Oh-oh!" wailed Hester--"Oh, Mr. Walden, oh, sir, I can"t tell you! I can"t indeed!--it"s about Miss Vancourt--oh--poor dear little lady!--oh-oh! I can"t--I can"t say it! I can"t!"
"Don"t ye try, my gel!"--said Bainton, gently--"You ain"t fit for"t,--don"t ye try! Which I might a"known a woman"s "art couldn"t abear it,--nor a man"s neither!" Here he turned his pale face upon his master, and the slow tears began to trickle down his furrowed cheeks.
"Pa.s.son Walden,"--he began, in shaking accents--"Pa.s.son Walden, sir, I"m fair beside myself "ow to tell ye--but you"re a brave man wot knows the ways o" G.o.d an" "ow mortal "ard they seems to us all sometimes, poor an" rich alike, an" "ow it do "appen that the purttiest flowers is the quickest gone, an" the brightest wimin too, for that matter,--an"--an"---" Here his rough halting voice broke into a hoa.r.s.e sob--"Oh, Pa.s.son, it"s a blow!--it"s a mortal "ard blow!--she was a dear, sweet lady an" a good one, say what they will, an" "ow they will--an" she"s gone, Pa.s.son!--we won"t never see her no more!--she"s gone!"
A swirling blackness came over Walden"s eyes for a moment. He tried to realise what was being said, but could not grasp its meaning.
Making a strong effort to control his nerves he spoke, slowly and with difficulty.
"Gone? I don"t understand you,--I---"
Here, as he stood at the open doorway, he saw in the gathering dusk of evening a small crowd of villagers moving slowly along the road.