CHAPTER XXIV

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THE COURTSHIP OF HARBOROUGH OF BYBRIDGE.

Polly said it was quite unnecessary for Bill to go to old Mr. Harborough’s funeral, though the wish to do so showed a nice feeling on her part; and since she did wish it (and had a black dress) there really was no reason why she should not go, more especially as she was leaving for London the next day and would thus escape Miss Minchin’s cross-questioning. But Gilchrist had other opinions; he strongly disapproved of Bill’s going, seeing no reason for it and a great many against it. He himself had never claimed any connection with the Harboroughs during the old man’s life and did not intend to do so at his death, except through the medium of the law. He said he should consider it an impertinence on his own part to go to the funeral. Bill agreed with him as to the propriety of his staying away, but persisted in going herself. Gilchrist became really angry, and told her it was absurd to go simply because Mr. Harborough had given her the diamond shoe-buckles; people who did not know the circumstances might put another construction on her actions. Bill said she did not mind that, and also that the shoe-buckles were only part of her reason for going.

“What other reason is there?” he asked.

“I want to speak--” she began and then broke off. “Oh, I can’t tell you,” she said impatiently. “I don’t mind your knowing if only I had not the bother of explaining; as it is, I really can’t go into it. You say so much about things, ask so many questions, see so many motives, and foresee so many consequences, that I really shall be obliged to give up telling you. I don’t mind your knowing, and up till now I have told you things; but I am afraid I shall have to begin taking you in to save trouble.”

“Do you know what you are saying?” was the beginning of Gilchrist’s not unnaturally severe answer: the end was less pacific. However, there was no quarrel between them, but he was exceedingly angry with her sayings then, and even more so with her doings later on, for she went to the funeral in spite of him. It was not easy to quarrel with Bill, as she did not retaliate and did not mind; but also, as Polly knew, she could not be moved, quietly taking her own course unless you could convince her it was wrong; “and Gilchrist can’t convince her,” Polly said after the affair of the funeral. She herself advised Bill not to go when she found how strong was Gilchrist’s opposition; but it did not make the slightest difference. Bill had promised Kit she would go, and she went.

It was soon after five on the afternoon when old Mr. Harborough died that Kit found the girl in the wood; yet it was nearly nine when she reached Haylands. The intervening time was not entirely occupied in the drive home, nor yet in the conversation concerning the reason for Bill’s tears. Most of that conversation was carried on while she was half buried in the ferns; but there was another and a longer one when she faced the facts of the case in the old library. Indeed, after a while her position and Kit’s were to a certain extent reversed; it was she who comforted and planned, arraying the future in its best colours, he who at first declined to see hope anywhere, even though he faced that future with much apparent indifference.

Truly, as Bill was forced to admit, the future did not look promising. Both from what she had learned from Gilchrist--and she had made many inquiries of late--and from what Kit had heard from the solicitor and confided to her now, she could not help seeing that the case looked bad against him. Even if a will existed--and Kit seemed to think that by no means likely--it would do little more than complicate the case without giving him a title to the estates, unless he could make good his uncle’s title first. He told her all he knew about it, and she returned the compliment; but they cannot be said to have advanced matters very much or come to any resolution. Of course, Kit was going to win the lawsuit,--that was a foregone conclusion--but Bill, whose universe was always constructed with a convenient back door for use when foregone conclusions failed, strongly recommended him to consider how he would stand if the impossible were to happen. And it must be admitted that, if the catastrophe really took place, he would not stand very well, for with Wood Hall and all it entailed gone there was not a great deal left; briefly, a hundred a year inherited from his mother, a liberal education and studious tastes which together had enabled him to take a good classical degree at Oxford in the previous summer, and had further allowed him to study modern languages and literature with rather more than usual thoroughness. These, besides youth and health, were the only passably serviceable possessions he could claim. There was a taste for writing poetry and an aptitude for translating Greek verse, but neither was any use; there were several other tastes which were no use, and yet others which were positively detrimental.

“I am afraid you would find it awfully hard,” Bill said once. She felt a compassion which was almost motherly for him in his ignorance of the shifts and turns of the genteel poverty in which she had been reared.

“No harder than other people,” he answered rather curtly.

Bill knew better. A hundred a year would have been wealth to her and Polly; sixty between Bella and Theresa seemed almost a fortune; however, she did not say so, but talked of small privations instead.

“You would not be able to have a clean shirt every day,” she said, and Kit winced at the mention of such sordid trifles. “Washing costs such a lot,” the girl went on; “besides it wears things out. You would not be able to have an evening paper if you had a morning one, and you certainly would not be able to have many new books; you would have to have your boots mended over and over again, and think what tips you would give the porters. Saving in big things is not so hard; it is the little things you would hate, filing the edges,--you have to file the edges when you are making money or saving it either--it would set your teeth on edge horribly, I’m afraid.”

“Not more than it does yours,” Kit retorted.

But Bill did not agree with him. “It does not hurt me,” she said; “I’m used to it and my people have been used to it; we have been poor long enough not to mind about these things. Besides, I love work; I don’t care much what it is; I like to do things, and I don’t care what I do. I am afraid, too, I am not so very refined; things that would hurt you don’t hurt me; I don’t believe I have got very ladylike tastes.”

But Kit turned on her here: in his opinion she was the most perfect lady living, not even she herself should question it in his hearing; and for a time the conversation became personal, but eventually it returned to the original subject. Bill learned a good deal of Kit’s history that day,--of his mother, dead rather more than a year, but beloved and tenderly revered, as indeed she deserved to be seeing that he owed to her all the better part of himself,--of the quiet life at Bybridge, the red Queen Anne house, with the walled garden, the pleasant homecomings there to the widowed mother,--the student’s days at Oxford, the travels in continental cities, tales of times and sights which fired Bill’s ready imagination and set her gipsy blood aflame to be free to wander and to see and learn. In their interest in these tales both listener and narrator almost forgot the graver matters before them. But there were other things, memories of still earlier days which brought them back, the recollection of boyish days spent at Wood Hall, holidays when the parents were abroad and silently and unconsciously there grew in the young mind that love of the old place which is as an entail binding one generation to the next.

Bill listened greedily, forgetting all about home and Gilchrist who was waiting for her there. At last, however, she did remember and somewhat hastily departed, feeling that in this talk of the past they had rather neglected considerations of the future. Before she went she promised she would come to the funeral, partly to remedy the omission of that evening and partly to do honour to the old man who would not have many real mourners.

In one respect, however, Bill made something of a mistake, for she had that day without knowing it helped Kit Harborough for the future. Unconsciously she had preached to him the gospel which was so completely incorporated into her own nature that she did not even know she believed it,--the gospel of work;--the delight and satisfaction in work for its own sake irrespective of kind or place, just doing for the sake of doing, and doing now, not waiting the time and opportunity for a great work, but setting to at once on the nearest thing that offered. Not lamenting because the beautiful edifice of faith or hope has tottered and fallen, but taking, instead, stones from the ruin to build a shelter while the plans for some greater work are maturing.

Bill did not think these things; she did not even know she believed them; only she unconsciously translated them into action, and as unconsciously, by her words and by her attitude of mind, preached them to Kit.

She went to the funeral and stood respectfully on the outskirts of the group which gathered in the little churchyard in Wood Hall park. She did not attach herself to the party, feeling herself an alien, but Kit, who as recognised heir was chief mourner, saw her though he could not come to her till a good deal later in the afternoon. She had said she would wait for him among the beeches, and she did wait, for a time almost forgetting him in the exquisite perfection of the silent October wood. When at last he came they finished the conversation begun the other day, and they did not hurry over it unduly. Bill knew that Gilchrist and the cousins would be angry with her late return, but so angry that half an hour one way or the other would make no difference.

Before the interrupted conversation was resumed Kit told her a piece of news which at first seemed of great importance to her, though afterwards she was obliged to agree with him in not attaching too much value to it. It appeared that old Mr. Harborough had made a will after all, and by the terms of it Kit would, were it not for the Australian, succeed to the property exactly as he used to anticipate.

Bill clasped her hands with excitement. “Oh, I am so glad,” she said.

“So am I, although I don’t think it will make much difference to the case.”

“You don’t?”

He shook his head but repeated that he was glad, and there was a few moments’ silence before Bill said softly: “I am so glad you did not speak about the will; it has happened without your speaking; you were right and I was wrong.”

Kit did not agree with her there, thinking they had been of one mind on the subject of the will: but they did not discuss the point at length, turning instead to the consideration of Kit’s future, should the case be decided against him.

Doubtless if this really occurred his friends and relations would find or do something for him but he and Bill planned, curiously though practically, without considering the relations at all. Bill’s plans seldom depended on outside help, and usually, however absurd, had the merit of being such that they could start working at once. She was rather anxious that Kit should start at once, for, as she said, if he could earn anything the money would be no disadvantage should the case go in his favour, and a decided advantage should it go against him. The only difficulty was, to find anything he could do in his present circumstances and with his modest talents.

“You could teach,” Bill said doubtfully, having but a poor opinion of that refuge of the destitute; “with your degree you could get a mastership, but then I suppose your people would not like it; besides it would be rather awkward for other reasons. You might get some translating to do, as you know languages pretty well. I believe it is awfully hard to get, and not well paid; still it would be better than nothing, and if it is really so difficult to get, it would be just as well to see after it before the need comes; you would be ready then if it did come. You said it might take as long as two years to settle about Wood Hall? In two years you ought to be able to get a little translating, I should think.”

Kit thought so too, and they talked over ways and means, he telling her sundry youthful dreams, she listening with admiring sympathy not untouched with practical common-sense. Eventually he did make a start as she suggested, and finding, as they feared, that such work as he could do was almost impossible to obtain, he turned, till it came, to one of the youthful dreams and translated some of the lesser known dialogues of Lucian into scholarly English. And though even his inexperience could not but tell him that the work, when done, would not be a marketable commodity, the doing of it was a great satisfaction to him. Later, through the good offices of a college friend, he got a German book on botany to translate, and very uninteresting work he found it. Nevertheless, because it was the first work he had ever been paid for, he was pleased with it, and so pleased with the small sum he received for it that he invested the whole in a large crystal of rough amethyst, remembering how rapturous Bill had been in her admiration of the small crystal he had shown her in the collection of such specimens at Wood Hall. When, however, it came to the point of sending his crystal to the girl his courage failed; afraid of displeasing her he put the amethyst away, and no one knew of its existence for a long time.

But all this happened later and had no part in the conversation on that October afternoon. It must be admitted, however, that if the conversation had entirely confined itself to plans for the future, Bill would have reached home earlier than she did. Some chance reference to the shoe-buckles and the value Polly put upon them brought Peter Harborough to her mind, and with him the recollection of the gravestone at Sandover and its record of his tragic death. Who Peter Harborough was, and how he died, were questions which perplexed her on the Sunday afternoon when she saw his grave; they returned to her with redoubled interest now that his buckles had come into her possession; and she sought information of Kit.

He could tell her little more than that the man was the younger brother of old Mr. Harborough’s grandfather, and as such should have succeeded to the property if death had not intervened. “He was great friends with the Corbys; it was at Corby Dean he was shot,” Kit concluded.

“I know, but who shot him? Was it one of the Corbys, or did he do it himself?”

“No one knows, but his brother apparently was satisfied that it was all right; he asked no questions, took the property, and said nothing.”

Bill pondered the matter for a minute. “Which Corby was it?” she asked. “I mean with which one was he friendly and played cards? What relation was he to Roger Corby, the old Squire?”

“It was Roger Corby himself,” Kit told her; “Roger, the last of them.”

“Roger Corby, himself,” Bill repeated. It was curious how she seemed to stumble upon fragments of this man’s history. She tried vainly to piece out his life, but she had so little to go on. At length she said: “But he was not the last of them; he had a granddaughter who outlived him.”

“She can hardly be counted.”

“But why? I suppose she could have taken the property if there was any, even if she did marry and change her name.”

“There was nothing to take; in fact the old squire was so much in debt at his death that, although they sold all that was left of the property, it was little more than enough to pay everything off. Of course there was not much to sell then; there was little about here; Corby Dean, the house near Bybridge, was heavily mortgaged and nearly tumbling down, and most of the land near Sandover and Bybridge had already been disposed of.”

“You mean where Sandover now stands? It belongs to Mr. Briant now, doesn’t it? By the way, you must have been staying with him at Bymouth, for you were staying at the River House and that is where he lives. Polly found out; she always asks about the people who live in the big houses.”

Kit said he had been staying with Mr. Briant and added: “It was the grandfather of that man who first had the land from Roger Corby. It was not worth much then, the present owner being the one who has developed it so tremendously; still even at that time it was a good lot for a man with the old squire’s income to give to his steward.”

“His steward? Was Mr. Briant’s grandfather Roger Corby’s steward?”

“Yes; steward or bailiff or something of the sort; at least he was at one time, but he left his service and went abroad, I think soon after Peter Harborough was shot.”

Bill considered the matter a moment. “And Roger gave him the land?” she asked at length.

“Something very like it; he granted it to him absolutely, subject only to some nominal rental payable if demanded, and that practically amounts to a gift, at least to the first owner if not to his children.”

“Roger Corby must have had some reason,” Bill said with conviction.

Kit agreed with her, though he could not say for certain what it may have been. “Briant was steward at Corby Dean when Peter Harborough was shot,” he said; “that may have had something to do with it. But whether he knew something about it and threatened to speak, or whether he did not know and only threatened to make a charge which Roger Corby could not disprove because of the secrecy of the affair I could never find out. Of course it is all very long ago now, and people do not seem to take much interest in such things as a rule.”

This was said almost apologetically, as if the speaker were ashamed of his own interest; but he need not have apologised to Bill, who was herself more fascinated by these tales of the past than he was.

“It was an awful lot to give,” she said at last, “but I suppose he had no choice. I wonder why he put in the nominal rental; has it ever been demanded, do you know?”

“I should not think so; there has been no one to demand it. I expect that it was put in so that it might be possible for the Corbys eventually to recover the land at the end of the time for which it was granted. But it does not matter much now, for there are no more Corbys.”

“But the granddaughter,” Bill asked, “what became of her? Did she not marry and have children?”

“She married but had no children; I don’t think anybody knows what became of her.”

“Did she run away?” Bill thought it just possible, considering what was told of her childhood, that this last of the Corbys might have run away if her fate demanded that solution of a difficulty.

“Yes, that is it,” Kit said; “she ran away from her husband. I don’t know the name of the man she went with, but they say she was never very fond of her husband, and I should think she must have been rather difficult to deal with; my uncle knew her, and he always spoke as if she were. The man she married was younger than she, a clergyman--but you know him, I expect you know all this; at least you must have heard something of Mr. Dane’s wife?”

“Mr. Dane!” Bill exclaimed, her eyes growing wide. “Was she his wife? His wife--and he would have loved her so! Oh, Monseigneur, poor Monseigneur,” and her voice took the almost tender wail of a primitive woman who mourns her loved ones.

“Did you not know?” Kit asked, trying to remember if she had expressed pity for his troubles in that tone.

She shook her head. “I knew he had been married,” she said, “though people at Ashelton usually speak as if he had not; perhaps they don’t know. He never speaks about his wife, so I thought she must have died very long ago.”

“She did, or rather she left him long ago, forty years or more. I am surprised you did not know, though now I come to think of it, people about here hardly would; it did not happen here, and Mr. Dane did not come to Ashelton till some time afterwards. Wilhelmina Corby had not lived here since she was quite a young girl, and there was nothing to connect Mr. Dane with her in people’s minds.”

“Was her name Wilhelmina? Then I wonder he puts up with me! I am Wilhelmina; he ought to hate me. He ought to do that for several things; I asked him something yesterday I would never have asked had I known this.”

“What was it? Will you tell me?”

Bill hesitated a moment before she said: “Yes, if you like. I asked him what he did when things went utterly wrong with his life, when”--the girl’s tone had taken a passionate ring as if the occasion were not entirely impersonal--“when he felt like Job’s wife and wanted to curse God and die because things were so hopelessly, incurably wrong.”

“Why did you ask?”

The words were uttered almost before Kit knew what he said. When they were once spoken, he would sooner have bitten his tongue through than that they should have been said.

She sat silent for a long moment pulling the fern to pieces in her hands; when at last she did speak it was to repeat to him, with a curious quietness, Mr. Dane’s words to herself.

“He said,” so she told him, “on such a day as you speak of I shut a door in my mind and went away without speaking or looking back; afterwards I played cricket at the school-treat, and I think I played as well as usual.”

That was all she said; after she had spoken there was a great silence in the yellow wood, except when the beech-nuts fell pattering on the dead leaves, and the robins, the year’s grandchildren, sang shrill and sweet in the branches.

At last she spoke again, scarcely above a whisper now: “I think I am going to try to do that.”

Kit turned and faced her; there was a faint flush on his cheek, but his eyes met hers unflinchingly--“And I too,” he said; and then they walked on in silence.

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