Ruth did not help her. She knew too well the universal desire for knowledge of good and evil peculiar to her s.e.x to doubt for a moment that Mrs. Eccles had begged her to "step in" only to obtain some piece of information, about which her curiosity had been aroused.
"I wonder, now, if Cotton at the lodge has heard anything of the poachers again this year, round Arleigh way?"
"Not that I know of," said Ruth, surprised at the simplicity of the question.
"Dear sakes! and to think of "em at Vandon last night, and Mr. Dare and the keepers out all night after "em."
Ruth was interested in spite of herself.
"And the doctor sent for in the middle of the night," continued Mrs.
Eccles, covertly eying Ruth. "Poor young gentleman! For all his forrin ways, there"s a many in Vandon as sets store by him."
"I don"t think you need be uneasy about Mr. Dare," said Ruth, coldly, conscious that Mrs. Eccles was dying to see her change color. "If anything had happened to him Mr. Alwynn would have heard of it. And now," rising, "I must be going; and if I were you, Mrs. Eccles, I should not listen to all the gossip of the village."
"Me listen!" said Mrs. Eccles, much offended. "Me, as is too poorly so much as to put my foot out of the door! But, dear heart!" with her usual quickness of vision, "if there isn"t Mr. Alwynn and Dr. Brown riding up the street now in Dr. Brown"s gig! Well, I never! and Mr. Alwynn a-getting out, and a-talking as grave as can be to Dr. Brown. Poor Mr.
Dare! Poor dear young gentleman!"
Ruth was conscious that she beat rather a hurried retreat from Mrs.
Eccles"s cottage, and that her voice was not quite so steady as usual when she asked the doctor if it were true that Mr. Dare had been hurt.
"All the village will have it that he is killed; but he is all right, I a.s.sure you, Miss Deyncourt," said the kind old doctor, so soothingly and rea.s.suringly that Ruth grew pink with annoyance at the tone. "Not a scratch. He was out with his keepers last night, and they had a brush with poachers; and Martin, the head keeper was shot in the leg. Bled a good deal, so they sent for me; but no danger. I picked up your uncle here on his way to see him, and so I gave him a lift there and back.
That is all, I a.s.sure you."
And Dr. Brown and Mrs. Eccles, straining over her geraniums, both came to the same conclusion, namely, that, as Mrs. Eccles elegantly expressed it, "Miss Ruth wanted Mr. Dare."
"And he"ll have her, too, I"m thinking, one of these days," Mrs. Eccles would remark to the circle of her acquaintance.
Indeed, the match was discussed on numerous ladders, with almost as much interest as the unfailing theme of the damsons themselves.
And Dare rode over to the rectory as often as he used to do before a certain day in August, when he had found Ruth under the chestnut-tree--the very day before Mrs. Alwynn started on her screen, now the completed glory of the drawing-room.
And was Ruth beginning to like him?
As it had not occurred to her to ask herself that question, I suppose she was _not_.
Dare had grown very quiet and silent of late, and showed a growing tendency to dark hats. His refusal had been so unexpected that the blow, when it came, fell with all the more crushing force. His self-love and self-esteem had been wounded; but so had something else. Under the velvet corduroy waistcoat, which he wore in imitation of Ralph, he had a heart. Whether it was one of the very best of its kind or warranted to wear well is not for us to judge; but, at any rate, it was large enough to take in a very real affection, and to feel a very sharp pang. Dare"s manner to Ruth was now as diffident as it had formerly been a.s.sured. To some minds there is nothing more touching than a sudden access of humility on the part of a vain man.
Whether Ruth"s mind was one of this cla.s.s or not we do not pretend to know.
CHAPTER XIV.
It was Sunday morning at Atherstone. In the dining-room, breakfasting alone, for he had come down late, was Sir Charles Danvers. His sudden arrival on the previous Sat.u.r.day was easily accounted for. When he had casually walked into the drawing-room late in the evening, he had immediately and thoroughly explained the reasons of his unexpected arrival. It seemed odd that he should have come to Atherstone, in the midland counties, "on his way" between two shooting visits in the north, but so it was. It might have been thought that one of his friends would have been willing to keep him two days longer, or receive him two days earlier; but no doubt every one knows his own affairs best, and Charles might certainly, "at his age," as he was so fond of saying, be expected to know his.
Anyhow, there he was, leaning against the open window, coffee-cup in hand, lazily watching the dwindling figures of Ralph and Evelyn, with Molly between them, disappearing in the direction of Greenacre church, hard by.
The morning mist still lingered on the land, and veiled the distance with a tender blue. And up across the silver fields, and across the standing armies of the yellowing corn, the sound of church bells came from Slumberleigh, beyond the river; bringing back to Charles, as to us all, old memories, old hopes, old visions of early youth, long cherished, long forgotten.
The single bell of Greenacre was giving forth a slow, persistent, cracked invitation to true believers, as an appropriate prelude to Mr.
Smith"s eloquence; but Charles did not hear its testimony.
He was listening to the Slumberleigh bells. Was that the first chime or the second?
Suddenly a thought crossed his mind. Should he go to church?
He smiled at the idea. It was a little late to think of that. Besides he had let the others start, and he disliked that refuge of mildew and dust, Greenacre.
There was Slumberleigh!
There went the bells again!
Slumberleigh! Absurd! Why, he should positively have to run to get there before the First Lesson; and that mist meant heat, or he was much mistaken.
Charles contemplated the mist for a few seconds.
Tang, teng, ting, tong, tung!
He certainly always made a point of going to church at his own home. A good example is, after all, just as important in one place as another.
Tang, tong, teng, tung, _ting_! went the bells.
"Why not run?" suggested an inner voice. "Put down your cup. There! Now!
Your hat"s in the hall, with your gloves beside it. Never mind about your prayer-book. Dear me! Don"t waste time looking for your own stick.
Take any. Quick! out through the garden-gate! No one can see you. The servants have all gone to church except the cook, and the kitchen looks out on the yew hedge."
"Over the first stile," said Charles to himself. "I am out of sight of the house now. Let us be thankful for small mercies. I shall do it yet.
Oh, what a fool I am! I"m worse than Raca, as Molly said. I shall be rushing precipitately down a steep place into the sea next. Confound this gate! Why can"t people leave them open? At any rate, it will remain open now. I am not going to have my devotions curtailed by a gate. I fancied it would be hot, but never anything half as hot as this. I hope I sha"n"t meet Brown taking a morning stroll. I value Brown; but I should have to dismiss him if he saw me now. I could never meet his eye again. What on earth shall I say to Ralph and Evelyn when I get back?
What a merciful Providence it is that Aunt Mary is at this moment intoning a response in the highest church in Scarborough!"
_Ting, ting, ting!_
"Mr. Alwynn is getting on his surplice, is he? Well, and if he is, I can make a final rush through the corn, can"t I? There"s not a creature in sight. The bell"s down! What of that? There is the voluntary. Easy over the last fields. There are houses in sight, and there may be wicked Sabbath-breakers looking out of windows. Brown"s foal has grown since July. Here we are! I am not the only Christian hurrying among the tombs.
I shall get in with "the wicked man" after all."
Some people do not look round in church; others do. Mrs. Alwynn always did, partly because she wished to see what was going on behind her, and partly because, in turning back again, she could take a stealthy survey of Mrs. Thursby"s bonnet, in which she always felt a burning interest, which she would not for worlds have allowed that lady to suspect.
If the turning round had been all, it would have mattered little; but Mrs. Alwynn suffered so intensely from keeping silence that she was obliged to relieve herself at intervals by short whispered comments to Ruth.
On this particular morning it seemed as if the comments would never end.
"I am so glad we asked Mr. Dare into our pew, Ruth. The Thursbys are full. That"s Mrs. Thursby"s sister in the red bonnet."
Ruth made no reply. She was following the responses in the psalms with a marked attention, purposely marked to check conversation, and sufficient to have daunted anybody but her aunt.
Mrs. Alwynn took a spasmodic interest in the psalm, but it did not last.