"I"ll tell you what it is," he said, bravely, while his heart was thrilling with desire to speak well; "we will set to at once, and have a jolly good spread. I told my man to put up something very good, because I was certain that you would be very hungry."
"Surely you were not so foolish as to speak of me?"
"No, no, no; I know a trick worth two of that. I was not such a fool as to speak of you, of course. But--"
"But I would never condescend to touch one bit. You were ashamed to say a word about me, then, were you?"
"Insie, now, Insie, too bad of you it is. You can have no idea what those butlers and footmen are, if ever you tell them anything. They are worse than the maids; they go down stairs, and they get all the tidbits out of the cook, and sit by the girl they like best, on the strength of having a secret about their master."
"Well, you are cunning!" cried the maiden, with a sigh. "I thought that your nature was loftier than that. No, I do not know anything of butlers and footmen; and I think that the less I know of you the better."
"Oh, Insie, darling Insie, if you run away like that--I have got both your hands, and you shall not run away. Do you want to kill me, Insie?
They have had the doctor for me."
"Oh, how very dreadful! that does sound dreadful. I am not at all crying, and you need not look. But what did he say? Please to tell me what he said."
"He said, "Salts and senna." But I got up a high tree. Let us think of nicer things. It is enough to spoil one"s dinner. Oh, Insie, what is anything to eat or drink, compared with looking at you, when you are good? If I could only tell you the things that I have felt, all day and all night, since this day fortnight, how sorry you would be for having evil thoughts of me!"
"I have no evil thoughts; I have no thoughts at all. But it puzzles me to think what on earth you have been thinking. There, I will sit down, and listen for a moment."
"And I may hold one of your hands? I must, or you would never understand me. Why, your hands are much smaller than mine, I declare! And mine are very small; because of thinking about you. Now you need not laugh--it does spoil everything to laugh so. It is more than a fortnight since I laughed at all. You make me feel so miserable. But would you like to know how I felt? Mind, I would rather cut my head off than tell it to any one in the world but you."
"Now I call that very kind of you. If you please, I should like to know how you have been feeling." With these words Insie came quite close up to his side, and looked at him so that he could hardly speak. "You may say it in a whisper, if you like," she said; "there is n.o.body coming for at least three hours, and so you may say it in a whisper."
"Then I will tell you; it was just like this. You know that I began to think how beautiful you were at the very first time I looked at you. But you could not expect me so to love you all at once as I love you now, dear Insie."
"I can not understand any meaning in such things." But she took a little distance, quite as if she did.
"Well, I went away without thinking very much, because I had a bad place in my knee--a blue place bigger than the new half crown, where you saw that the pony kicked me. I had him up, and thrashed him, when I got home; but that has got nothing to do with it--only that I made him know who was his master. And then I tried to go on with a lot of things as usual; but somehow I did not care at all. There was a great rat hunt that I had been thinking of more than three weeks, when they got the straddles down, to be ready for the new ricks to come instead. But I could not go near it; and it made them think that the whole of my inside was out of order. And it must have been. I can see by looking back; it must have been so, without my knowing it. I hit several people with my holly on their shins, because they knew more than I did. But that was no good; nor was anything else. I only got more and more out of sorts, and could not stay quiet anywhere; and yet it was no good to me to try to make a noise. All day I went about as if I did not care whether people contradicted me or not, or where I was, or what time I should get back, or whether there would be any dinner. And I tucked up my feet in my nightgown every night; but instead of stopping there, as they always used to do, they were down in cold places immediately; and instead of any sleep, I bit holes by the hundred in the sheets, with thinking. I hated to be spoken to, and I hated everybody; and so I do now, whenever I come to think about them!"
"Including even poor me, I suppose?" Insie had wonderfully pretty eyebrows, and a pretty way of raising them, and letting more light into her bright hazel eyes.
"No, I never seemed to hate you; though I often was put out, because I could never make your face come well. I was thinking of you always, but I could not see you. Now tell me whether you have been like that."
"Not at all; but I have thought of you once or twice, and wondered what could make you want to come and see me. If I were a boy, perhaps I could understand it."
"I hate boys; I am a man all over now. I am old enough to have a wife; and I mean to have you. How much do you suppose my waistcoat cost? Well, never mind, because you are not rich. But I have got money enough for both of us to live well, and n.o.body can keep me out of it. You know what a road is, I suppose--a good road leading to a town? Have you ever seen one? A brown place, with hedges on each side, made hard and smooth for horses to go upon, and wheels that make a rumble. Well, if you will have me, and behave well to me, you shall sit up by yourself in a velvet dress, with a man before you and a man behind, and believe that you are flying."
"But what would become of my father, and my mother, and my brother Maunder?"
"Oh, they must stop here, of course. We shouldn"t want them. But I would give them all their house rent-free, and a fat pig every Christmas. Now you sit there and spread your lap, that I may help you properly. I want to see you eat; you must learn to eat like a lady of the highest quality; for that you are going to be, I can tell you."
The beautiful maid of the gill smiled sweetly, sitting on the low bank with the grace of simple nature and the playfulness of girlhood. She looked up at Lancelot, the self-appointed man, with a bright glance of curious contemplation; and contemplation (of any other subject than self) is dangerously near contempt. She thought very little of his large, free brag, of his patronizing manner, and fine self-content, reference of everything to his own standard, beauty too feminine, and instead of female gentleness, highly cultivated waywardness. But in spite of all that, she could not help liking, and sometimes admiring him, when he looked away. And now he was very busy with the high feast he had brought.
"To begin with," he said, when his good things were displayed, "you must remember that nothing is more vulgar than to be hungry. A gentleman may have a tremendous appet.i.te, but a lady never."
"But why? but why? That does seem foolish. I have read that the ladies are always helped first. That must be because of their appet.i.tes."
"Insie, I tell you things, not the reasons of them. Things are learned by seeing other people, and not by arguing about them."
"Then you had better eat your dinner first, and let me sit and watch you. And then I can eat mine by imitation; that is to say, if there is any left."
"You are one of the oddest people I have ever seen. You go round the corner of all that I say, instead of following properly. When we are married, you will always make me laugh. At one time they kept a boy to make me laugh; but I got tired of him. Now I help you first, although I am myself so hungry. I do it from a lofty feeling, which my aunt Philippa calls "chivalry." Ladies talk about it when they want to get the best of us. I have given you all the best part, you see; and I only keep the worst of it for myself."
If Pet had any hope that his self-denial would promptly be denied to him, he made a great mistake; for the damsel of the gill had a healthy moorland appet.i.te, and did justice to all that was put before her; and presently he began, for the first time in his life, to find pleasure in seeing another person pleased. But the wine she would not even taste, in spite of persuasion and example; the water from the brook was all she drank, and she drank as prettily as a pigeon. Whatever she did was done gracefully and well.
"I am very particular," he said at last; "but you are fit to dine with anybody. How have you managed to learn it all? You take the best of everything, without a word about it, as gently as great ladies do. I thought that you would want me to eat the nicest pieces; but instead of that, you have left me bones and drumsticks."
He gave such a melancholy look at these that Insie laughed quite merrily. "I wanted to see you practice chivalry," she said.
"Well, never mind; I shall know another time. Instead of two birds, I shall order four, and other things in proportion. But now I want to know about your father and your mother. They must be respectable people, to judge by you. What is their proper name, and how much have they got to live upon?"
"More than you--a great deal more than you," she answered, with such a roguish smile that he forgot his grievances, or began to lose them in the mist of beauty.
"More than me! And they live in such a hole, where only the crows come near them?"
"Yes, more than you, Sir. They have their wits to live upon, and industry, and honesty."
Pet was not old enough yet in the world to say, "What is the use of all those? All their income is starvation." He was young enough to think that those who owned them had advantage of him, for he knew that he was very lazy. Moreover, he had heard of such people getting on--through the striking power of exception, so much more brilliant than the rule--when all the blind virtues found luck to lead them. Industry, honesty, and ability always get on in story-books, and nothing is nicer than to hear a pretty story. But in some ways Pet was sharp enough.
"Then they never will want that house rent-free, nor the fat pig, nor any other presents. Oh, Insie, how very much better that will be! I find it so much nicer always to get thing"s than to give them. And people are so good-natured, when they have done it, and can talk of it. Insie, they shall give me something when I marry you, and as often as they like afterward."
"They will give you something you will not like," she answered, with a laugh, and a look along the moor, "if you stay here too long chattering with me. Do you know what o"clock it is? I know always, whether the sun is out or in. You need show no gold watch to me."
"Oh, that comes of living in a draught all day. The out-door people grow too wise. What do you see about ten miles off? It must be ten miles to that hill."
"That hill is scarcely five miles off, and what I see is not half of that. I brought you up here to be quite safe. Maunder"s eyes are better than mine. But he will not see us, for another mile, if you cover your grand waistcoat, because we are in the shadows. Slip down into the gill again, and keep below the edge of it, and go home as fast as possible."
Lancelot felt inclined to do as he was told, and keep to safe obscurity.
The long uncomfortable loneliness of prospect, and dim airy distance of the sinking sun, and deeply silent emptiness of hollows, where great shadows began to crawl--in the waning of the day, and so far away from home--all these united to impress upon the boy a spiritual influence, whose bodily expression would be the appearance of a clean pair of heels. But, to meet this sensible impulse, there arose the stubborn nature of his race, which hated to be told to do anything, and the dignity of his new-born love--such as it was--and the thought of looking small.
"Why should I go?" he said. "I will meet them, and tell them that I am their landlord, and have a right to know all about them. My grandfather never ran away from anybody. And they have got a donkey with them."
"They will have two, if you stop," cried Insie, although she admired his spirit. "My father is a very quiet man. But Maunder would take you by the throat and cast you down into the beck."
"I should like to see him try to do it. I am not so very strong, but I am active as a cat. I have no idea of being threatened."
"Then will you be coaxed? I do implore you, for my sake, to go, or it will be too late. Never, never, will you see me again, unless you do what I beseech of you."
"I will not stir one peg, unless you put your arms round my neck and kiss me, and say that you will never have anybody else."
Insie blushed deeply, and her bright eyes flashed with pa.s.sion not of loving kind. But it went to her heart that he was brave, and that he loved her truly. She flung her comely arms round his neck, and touched her rosy lips with his; and before he could clasp her she was gone, with no more comfort than these words:
"Now if you are a gentleman, you must go, and never come near this place again."
Not a moment too soon he plunged into the gill, and hurried up its winding course; but turning back at the corner, saw a sweet smile in the distance, and a wave of the hand, that warmed his heart.