At the gate they parted, taking their farewell hand-shake, their last kiss. "G.o.d help you, my dear!" breathed Valentine. "And if--if we never meet again, believe that no other will ever love you as I have loved."
He turned back on the road he had come, and Jane went in to her desolate home.
II
"Aunt Mary Ann, I"ve come back, and brought a visitor with me!"
Mrs. Mary Ann Cramp, superintending the preserving of a pan of morella cherries over the fire in her s.p.a.cious kitchen, turned round in surprise. I was perched on the arm of the old oak chair, watching the process. I had gone to the farm with a message from Crabb Cot, and Mrs.
Cramp, ignoring ceremony, called me into the kitchen.
Standing at the door, with the above announcement, was Julietta Chandler. She had been away on a fortnight"s visit.
"Now where on earth did you spring from, Juliet?" asked Mrs. Cramp.
"I did not expect you to-day. A visitor? Who is it?"
"Cherry Dawson, Aunt Mary Ann; and I didn"t think it mattered about letting you know," returned Juliet. They had given up the longer name, Julietta. "You can see her if you look through the window; she is getting out of the fly at the gate. Cherry Dawson is the nicest and jolliest girl in the world, and you"ll all be in love with her--including you, Johnny Ludlow."
Sure enough, there she was, springing from the fly which had brought them from Crabb station. A light, airy figure in a fresh brown-holland dress and flapping Leghorn hat. The kitchen window was open, and we could hear her voice all that way off, laughing loudly at something and chattering to the driver. She was very fair, with pretty white teeth, and a pink colour on her saucy face.
Mrs. Cramp left Sally to the cherries, went to the hall door and opened it herself, calling the other maid, Joan, to come down. The visitor flew in with a run and a sparkling laugh, and at once kissed Mrs. Cramp on both cheeks, without saying with your leave or by your leave. I think she would not have minded kissing me, for she came dancing up and shook my hand.
"It"s Johnny Ludlow, Cherry," said Juliet.
"Oh, how delightful!" cried Miss Cherry.
She was really very unsophisticated; or--very much the other way. One cannot quite tell at a first moment. But, let her be which she might, there was one thing about her that took the eyes by storm. It was her hair.
Whether her rapid movements had unfastened it, or whether she wore it so, I knew not, but it fell on her shoulders like a shower of gold. Her small face seemed to be set in an amber aureole. I had never before seen hair so absolutely resembling the colour of pure gold. As she ran back to Mrs. Cramp from me, it glittered in the sunlight. The shower of gold in which Jupiter went courting Danae could hardly have been more seductive than this.
"I know you don"t mind my coming uninvited, you dear Mrs. Cramp!" she exclaimed joyously. "I did so want to make your acquaintance. And Clementina was growing such a cross-patch. It"s not Tim"s fault if he can"t come back yet. Is it now?"
"I do not know anything about it," answered Mrs. Cramp, apparently not quite sure what to make of her.
With this additional company I thought it well to come away, and wished them good morning. At the gate stood the fly still, the horse resting.
"Like to take a lift, Mr. Johnny, as far as your place?" asked the man civilly. "I am just starting back."
"No, thank you, Lease," I answered. "I am going across to Duck Brook."
"Curious young party that, ain"t it, sir?" said Lease, pointing the whip over his shoulder towards the house. "She went and asked me if Mrs.
Cramp warn"t an old Image, born in the year One, and didn"t she get her gowns out of Noah"s Ark? And while I was staring at her saying that, she went off into shouts of laughter enough to frighten the horse. Did you see her hair, sir?"
I nodded.
"For my part, I don"t favour that bright yaller for hair, Mr. Johnny. I never knew but one woman have such, and she was more deceitful than a she-fox."
Lease touched his hat and drove off. He was cousin in a remote degree to poor Maria Lease, and to Lease the pointsman who had caused the accident to the train at Crabb junction and died of the trouble. At that moment, Fred Scott came up; a short, dark young fellow, with fierce black whiskers, good-natured and rather soft. He was fond of playing billiards at the Bell at Islip; had been doing it for some years now.
"I say, Ludlow, has that fly come with Juliet Chandler? Is she back again?"
"Just come. She has brought some one with her: a girl with golden hair."
"Oh, bother _her_!" returned Fred. "But it has been as dull as ditchwater without Juliet."
He dashed in at Mrs. Cramp"s gate and up the winding path. I turned into the Islip Road, and crossed it to take Brook Lane. The leaves were beginning to put on the tints of autumn; the grain was nearly all gathered.
Time the healer! As Mrs. Todhetley says, it may well be called so.
Heaven in mercy sends it to the sick and heavy-laden with healing on its wings. Nearly three years had slipped by since the departure for Canada of Valentine Chandler; four years since the tragic death of Oliver Preen.
There are few changes to record. Things and people were for the most part going on as they had done. It was reported that Valentine had turned over a new leaf from the hour he landed over yonder, becoming thoroughly staid and steady. Early in the summer of this year his mother had shut up her cottage at North Crabb to go to Guernsey, on the invitation of a sister from whom she had expectations. Upon this, Julietta, who lived with her mother, went on a long visit to Mrs. Cramp.
Clementina had married. Her husband was a Mr. Timothy Dawson, junior partner in a wholesale firm of general merchants in Birmingham; they had also a house in New York. Mr. and Mrs. Timothy Dawson lived in a white villa at Edgbaston, and went in for style and fashion. At least she did, which might go without telling. The family in which her sister Georgiana was governess occupied another white villa hard by.
Close upon Juliet"s thus taking up her residence with her aunt, finding perhaps the farm rather dull, she struck up a flirtation with Fred Scott, or he with her. They were everlastingly together, mooning about Mrs. Cramp"s grounds, or sauntering up and down the Islip Road. Juliet gave out that they were engaged. No one believed it. At present Fred had nothing to marry upon: his mother, just about as soft as himself, supplied him with as much pocket-money as he asked for, and there his funds ended.
Juliet had now returned from a week or two"s visit she had been paying Clementina, bringing with her, uninvited, the young lady with the golden hair. That hair seemed to be before my eyes as a picture as I walked along. She was Timothy Dawson"s young half-sister. Both the girls had grown tired of staying with Clementina, who worried herself and everyone about her just now because her husband was detained longer than he had antic.i.p.ated in New York, whither he had gone on business.
Mr. Frederick Scott had said "Bother" in contempt when he first heard of the visitor with the golden hair. He did not say it long. Miss Cherry Dawson cast a spell upon him. He had never met such a rattling, laughing girl in all his born days, which was how he phrased it; had never seen such bewildering hair. Cherry fascinated him. Forgetting his allegiance to Juliet, faithless swain that he was, he went right over to the enemy.
Miss Cherry, nothing loth, accepted his homage openly, and enjoyed the raging jealousy of Juliet.
In the midst of this, Juliet received a telegram from Edgbaston. Her sister Clementina was taken suddenly ill and wanted her. She must take the first train.
"Of course you are coming with me, Cherry!" said Juliet.
"Of course I am not," laughed Cherry. "I"m very happy here--if dear Mrs.
Cramp will let me stay with her. You"ll be back again in a day or two."
Not seeing any polite way of sending her away in the face of this, Mrs.
Cramp let her stay on. Juliet was away a week--and a nice time the other one and Fred had of it, improving the shining hours with soft speeches and love-making. When Juliet got back again, she felt ready to turn herself into a female Bluebeard, and cut off Cherry"s golden head.
Close upon that Mrs. Cramp held her harvest-home. "You may as well come early, and we"ll have tea on the lawn," she said, when inviting us.
It was a fine afternoon, warm as summer, though September was drawing to its close. Many of the old friends you have heard of were there. Mary MacEveril and her cousin d.i.c.k, who seemed to be carrying on a little with one another, as Tod called it; the Letsoms, boys and girls; Emma Chandler, who looked younger than ever, though she could boast of two babies: and others. Jane Preen was there, the weary look which her mild and pretty face had gained latterly very plainly to be seen. We roamed at will about the grounds, and had tea under the large weeping elm tree.
Altogether the gathering brought forcibly to mind that other gathering; that of the picnic, four summers ago, when we had sung songs in light-hearted glee, and poor Oliver Preen must have been ready to die of mortal pain.
The element of interest to-day lay in Miss Cherry Dawson. In her undisguised a.s.sumption of ownership in Fred Scott, and in Juliet Chandler"s rampant jealousy of the pair. You should have seen the girl flitting about like a fairy, in her white muslin frock, the golden shower of curls falling around her like nothing but threads of transparent amber. Fred was evidently very far gone. Juliet wore white also.
Whether things would have come that evening to the startling pa.s.s they did but for an unfortunate remark made in thoughtless fun, not in malice, I cannot tell. It gave a sting to Juliet that she could not bear. A ridiculous pastime was going on. Some of them were holding hands in a circle and dancing round to the "House that Jack Built," each one reciting a sentence in turn. If you forgot your sentence, you paid a forfeit. The one falling to Juliet Chandler was "This the maiden all forlorn." "Why, that"s exactly what you are, Juliet!" cried Tom Coney, impulsively, and a laugh went round. Juliet said nothing, but I saw her face change to the hue of death. The golden hair of the other damsel was gleaming just then within view amidst the trees, accompanied by the black head and black whiskers of Mr. Fred Scott.
"That young man must have a rare time of it between the two," whispered Tod to me. "As good as the a.s.s between the bundles of hay."
At dusk began the fun of the harvest-home. Mrs. Cramp"s labourers and their wives sat in the large kitchen at an abundant board. Hot beef, mutton and hams crowded it, with vegetables; and of fruit pies and tarts there was a goodly show. Some of us helped to wait on them, and that was the best fun of all.
They had all taken as much as they could possibly eat, and were in the full flow of cider and beer and delight; a young man in a clean white smock-frock was sheepishly indulging the table with a song: "Young Roger of the Valley," and I was laughing till I had to hold my sides; when Mrs. Cramp touched me on the back. She sat with the Miss Dennets in the little parlour off the kitchen, in full view of the company. I sat on the door-sill between them.
"Johnny," she whispered, "I don"t see Juliet and Cherry Dawson. Have they been in at all?"