"At that Llewellyn found his tongue, and the others chimed in finely.
Only there was something in the old man"s manner that they did not like; and presently, when they had all told him how glad they were to see him again--just for all the world as if he had been ill for a few days--Robert Evans turned again to Llewellyn.
""You had fixed what you would do for my girl here, I"m thinking?" he said, patting her shoulder gently, at which the family winced. "It was a hundred a year you promised to settle, you know. You will have arranged, whatever."
"Llewellyn looked stealthily at Mr. Hughes, who was standing at Robert Evans" elbow, and muttered that they had not reached that stage.
""What!" the old man cried sharply. "How was that?"
""I was intending," Llewellyn began lamely, "to settle----"
""You were intending!" Robert Evans burst forth in a voice so changed that they all started back. "You are a liar! You were intending to settle nothing! I know it well! I knew it long ago! Nothing, I say! As for you," he went on, wheeling furiously round upon the Evanses of Nant, "you knew my wishes. What were you going to do for her? What, I say? Speak, you hobbledehoys!"
"But they were backing from him in absolute fear of his pa.s.sion, looking at one another or at the sullen face of Llewellyn Evans, or anywhere save at him. At length the eldest blurted out, "Whatever Llewellyn meant to do, we were going to do, sir."
""You speak the truth there," cried old Robert, bitterly; "for that was nothing. Very well! I promise you that what Llewellyn Evans gets of my property you shall get too--and it will be nothing! You, Bevan,"
and he turned himself towards the Evan Bevans who were shaking in their shoes, "I am told, did offer to do something for my girl."
""Yes, dear Robert," cried Mrs. Bevan, eagerly, "we did indeed."
""So I hear. Well, when I make my next will, I will set you down for just so much as you proposed to give her! Peggy, _bach_," he continued, turning from the lady, who was looking very queer, and putting into the girl"s hands the will which the lawyer had given him, "tear up this rubbish! Tear it up! Now let us have something to eat in the other room. What, Llewellyn Evans, no appet.i.te!"
"But the family did not stay even to partake of the home-brewed. They were out of the house, I am told, before the coffin and the undertaker"s men. There was big talking amongst them, as they went, of a conspiracy and a lunatic asylum. But though, to be sure, it was a wonderful recovery, and the doctor and Mr. Hughes as they drove away after dinner were very merry together--which may have been only the home-brewed--at any rate all that came of Llewellyn"s talking and inquiries was that every one laughed very much, and Robert Evans" name for a clever man was known beyond Carnarvon.
"Of course it would be open house at Court that day, with plenty of eating and drinking and coming and going. But towards five o"clock the place grew quiet. The visitors had gone home, and Gwen Madoc was upstairs. The old man was sleeping in his chair opposite the settle, and Miss Peggy was sitting on the window-seat watching him, her hands in her lap, and her thoughts far away. Maybe she was trying to be really glad that the home, about which the cows lowed and the gulls screamed in the afternoon stillness that made it seem home each minute, was hers still; that she was not quite alone, nor friendless, nor poor. Maybe she was striving not to think of the thing which had been taken from her and could not be given back. Whatever her thoughts, she was roused by some sound to find her eyes full of hot tears, through which she could see that the old man was awake and looking at her with a strange expression which disappeared as she became aware of it.
"He began to speak. "Providence has been very good to us, Peggy," he said with grim meaning. "It is well for you, my girl, that your eyes are open to see our kind friends as they are. There is one besides those who were here this morning that will wish he had not been so hasty."
"She rose quickly and looked out of the window. "Please don"t speak of him," she pleaded in a low tone. "Let us forget him."
"But Robert Evans seemed to take a delight in the--well, the goodness of Providence. "If he had come to see you only once, when you were in trouble," he said, as if he were summing up the case in his own mind, and she were but a stick or a stone, "we could have forgiven him, and I would have said you were right. Or even if he had written."
""Oh, yes, yes!" the girl sobbed, her tears raining down her averted face. "Don"t torture me! You were right and I was wrong--all wrong!"
""Yes, indeed! Just so. But come here, my girl," said the old man.
"Come!" he repeated, as, surprised in the midst of her grief, she wavered and hesitated, "sit here;" and he pointed to the settle opposite to him. "Now, suppose I were to tell you he had written, and that the letter had been--mislaid, shall we say? and come somehow to my hands? Now don"t get excited, girl!"
""Oh!" Peggy cried, her lips parted, her eyes wide and frightened, her whole form stiff with a question.
""Just suppose that, my dear," continued Robert, "and that the letter were now before us--would you stand by it? Remember, he must have much to explain. Would you be guided by me, my girl?"
"She was trembling with expectation, hope. But she tried to think of the matter, to remember her lover"s flight, the lack of word or message for her, and her misery. She nodded, and held out her hand, for she could not speak.
"He drew a letter from his pocket. "You will let me see it?" he said suspiciously.
""Oh yes!" she cried, and fled with it to the window. He watched her while she tore it open and read first one page and then another--there were but two, it was very short. He watched her while she thrust it from her and looked at it as a whole, then drew it to her and kissed it again and again.
""Wait a bit! wait a bit!" cried he, testily. "Now let me see it."
"She turned upon him, holding it away behind her, as if it were some living thing he might hurt. "He thought he would meet me at the junction," she stammered between laughing and crying. "He was going to London to see his sister--that she might take me in. And he will be here to fetch me this evening. There! Take it!" and suddenly remembering herself she stretched out her hand and gave him the letter.
""You said you would be led by me, you know," said the old man gravely.
""I will not!" she cried impetuously. "Never!"
""You promised," he said.
""I don"t care! I don"t care!" she replied, clasping her hands. "No one shall come between us."
""Very well," said Robert Evans, "then I will not be speaking for nothing! But you had better tell Owen to take the trap to the station to meet your man.""
THE VICAR"S SECRET
THE VICAR"S SECRET
The windows at the rear of Acton Chase, an old house in Worcestershire, look on a quaint bowling-green flanked by yew hedges, and backed by a stream of good size, on the farther side of which a spa.r.s.ely timbered slope leads up to the home farm. It leads also to half a dozen smaller farms, which once formed the Chase. Zigzag up this slope runs a track--probably it has so run for centuries, for at the foot of it is a ford--which in spring is almost invisible, but in autumn is brown and rutty. The Chase has long been a Roman Catholic house, and up this track dead-and-gone squires, debarred from converse with their neighbours, have ridden a-hunting, mornings innumerable; so that to-day people sitting in the garden towards evening are apt to see them come trailing home, their horses jaded, and themselves calling for the black-jack.
Our story is not of these, but of two men who strolled down this path on an evening no farther back than last August. They seemed, outwardly at least, ill-matched. The one, a young fellow under thirty, fair-haired, pink-cheeked, prim-looking, was of middle size. He was dressed as a clergyman, but more neatly and trimly than the average country clergyman dresses. The other was one of the tallest and thinnest men ever seen outside a show--a man whose very clothes, his worn jacket and shrunken knickerbockers, had the air of sharing his attenuation. He looked like a gamekeeper, and was, in fact, the squire"s son-in-law, Jim Foley.
"I really cannot make you out," he said, as the two sighted the house; and, shifting his gun to the other shoulder, he took occasion to glance at his companion. "What do you do, old boy? You never kill anything, unless it is a trout now and then. Now I could not live without killing. Must kill something every day!"
"And do you?"
"Seldom miss," the long man rejoined cheerfully, "except on a hunting day when we draw blank. Rats, rabbits, otters, pike, sometimes a hawk, sometimes, as to-day, a brace of wood-pigeons. And game and foxes in their season. Must kill something, my boy."
His companion glanced at him, looked away again, and sighed.
"Well, what is that for?" Foley asked, in the tone of an aggrieved man.
"I was only thinking," the other replied drily, "what a lucky fellow you were to have nothing to do but kill."
The tall man whistled. "I say," he said, "for a man who is to be married in a week or so, you are in roaring spirits, ain"t you? I tell you what it is, my boy; you do not take very kindly to your bliss. I can see Patty flitting about in the garden like a big white moth, waiting, I have no doubt, for a word with her lord; and your step lags, and your face is grave, and you try to be cynical! What is up?"
The younger man laughed, but not merrily; and there was a tinge of sullenness in his tone as he answered, "Nothing! A man cannot always be grinning."
"No; but _pati de foie gras_ is not a man"s ordinary meat," Jim retorted imperturbably. "Jones!"
"Well?" the other said snappishly.
"You are in a mess, my boy--that is my opinion! Now, don"t take it amiss," Jim continued drily. "I am within my rights. I am one of the family, and if the squire is blind and Patty is young, I am neither.
And I am not going to let this go on until I know more, my boy. You have something on your mind of which they are ignorant."