CHAPTER VIII

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THE COURTSHIP OF HARBOROUGH OF GURNETT.

There can be no doubt that few things are so well concealed as the perfectly obvious, no course of conduct so little observed as that which is open to all observation. If Bill had wished to conceal her doings on Sunday afternoon she would probably have been found out; since she was perfectly indifferent as to who knew what she did, no one discovered it. If she had been anxious for concealment she would have gone to the rectory by way of the field-path, and would inevitably have been seen by Miss Minchin and catechised by her in due season. But, since she was far too absorbed in other matters to care what any one thought, she went by the public way and no one knew it; no one, till Mr. Dane’s old housekeeper admitted her and took her to the study where Mr. Dane, but lately returned from a children’s service at Ashelton End, sat before his beloved piano.

The rector of Ashelton knew every one in his parish and, to a certain extent, all about every one; consequently he knew of Mrs. Morton’s aunt and sister and cousins in Wrugglesby. To be sure, he knew about them before Theresa was Mrs. Morton, for Miss Brownlow was an institution of such long standing that he, being also an institution of long standing, could hardly fail to know of her. Still, this knowledge did not give him much information about Bill, of whom he only knew that she was a niece of Miss Brownlow and a cousin of Mrs. Morton. At one time he had tried to find out more about her, though not from any personal interest, for he did not know her even by sight then. It was on account of her name that he had made the enquiries, having good reason to remember the name of Alardy. However, he could discover nothing to couple her with the other Alardy, nor indeed had he been very hopeful of discovering anything. It was the familiarity of the name that had tempted him; and it was this familiarity which caused him an almost painful start when she was announced on that Sunday afternoon. He did not know her, nor her business, nor could he guess what it might be.

Bill did not leave him long in doubt; her very face betrayed her; there was about her whole manner a contrition and self-abasement almost suggestive of a dog in disgrace. “I have come to tell you I did it,” she said, standing in the centre of the room; and the old rector at once perceived that he was to hear a confession, the enormity of which seemed terrible to the offender.

“Sit down,” he said kindly. “There is something you want to tell me, something which seems very bad? Let us hear what is the matter, and we will see what can be done.”

“Nothing can be done or undone.” She spoke with absolute conviction. “I want to tell you in case you should blame anyone else, and because I owe it to you,--that is the reason. The thing can’t be altered now.” And then she plunged straight into her confession. “It is about this morning’s service. It was all my fault; I got Mr. Harborough to have it.”

Mr. Dane had known the owner of Wood Hall more years than he had known Ashelton. He was considerably surprised by Bill’s confession, considerably more surprised than he had been by the affair of the morning.

“You induced Mr. Harborough to have the mass read?” he asked. “You? But why?--how?”

“I thought of it,” she answered, “and,--he did it. This is how it happened. I was in the wood, and he found me and took me to the house to amuse him a little while, and I amused him as well as I could. It was rather like the daughter of Herodias dancing before Herod, though I did not dance, he did not ask me; but I sang and talked and pleased him. It is true he did not ask me at the end what I would like, but when I thought of this he half promised to do it; and now,--he has done it.”

“Then it was your idea? He did it to please you, or rather because you asked him?”

“Yes; it was my fault; he would not have done it if it had not been for me. I suppose,” she added doubtfully, “he hardly knew what it would be.”

Mr. Dane had other opinions, but he only said: “Perhaps we had better not consider his action in the matter. I have known him long enough to be tempted to judge him as one man is sometimes tempted to judge another; but we will not do it. Let us talk about you; you persuaded him, or at least suggested the idea?”

“Yes; I suggested,--I did not persuade, I only suggested; but I had pleased him first so that he was ready to do as I wished; it was almost as good as persuading.”

Her eyes were honest, but the rector was perplexed. He could not quite understand the case; the nature of the offence and the manner of the committal were clear enough; but the nature of the offender puzzled him. “Tell me,” he said, “what made you suggest such a thing; why did you do it?”

“I thought it would be--” Bill hesitated for a word,--“not exactly fun, though still funny,--it was, too, at first”; and in spite of her genuine penitence a smile stole over her face at the recollection. “I believe I wanted to see what would happen more than anything else,” she concluded after a pause.

“Were you satisfied with what did happen?”

“No; oh, no, no! If I had thought of that I would never have suggested it; I never thought about hurting you or the poor priest. When I saw how you took it, and how he hated what he had got to do, I felt as if I should like to get up and tell Mr. Harborough to stop. But it would have been no use, I am sure,--I had done it and I could not undo it.”

“No,” he answered her very gravely, “no, you could not.”

There was a moment’s silence, and Bill for the first time in her life faced the irrevocable. At last the old man spoke again. “And it never occurred to you,” he said, “that it would be painful to other people? Tell me, did another and a higher consideration never occur to you either?”

“That it was irreverent? I did not think of it at the time; now, of course, I know it was; but I really did not mean to be, and I think God must know. That is the best of it; you need never pretend or explain to Him. He knows, but other people,--I am very, very sorry.”

Mr. Dane pressed that point no further; perhaps the offender was beginning to explain herself to him a little, and so he judged it unwise. He led her to talk of the events which preceded her suggestion; she told him all readily, the walk to Gurnett, the ramble in the wood, even her own rapture when alone there.

“And to think,” she concluded, “that I should have felt like that,--as if the whole world were holy--and then, a little later think of such a thing!”

“I know,” he said, “I know. The human mind is a very strange thing, and evil thoughts, in spite of what some people say to the contrary, are perhaps the very strangest things which ever come there.”

“Yes,”--and she drew a deep breath. “I was so glad to be alive that morning,” she went on; “I was glad about everything; I was fairly crazy with,--with life I think. I can’t explain, and I am afraid you don’t understand.”

Did he not? It was a great many years ago, but he too knew what it meant--life and the joy of living, the wanton madness of youth. He understood so well that he said little more about the act she deplored but could not undo. Instead, he tried to prepare for the future, and he prepared by asking some few questions about the past, about life at Ashelton, life at Wrugglesby with Miss Brownlow, poor dear Miss Brownlow. And again she told him readily, but her answers only deepened the wrinkles in his forehead. She thought they were for her wrong doings, but she confessed them all bravely, including her enjoyment of the prayer-meeting.

“I liked it,” she admitted, “because Mr. Johnson was so fine when he talked about faith, the evidence of the spirit, and the things which are not as they are, and all the rest of it. I suppose it is wrong? I have not imitated him very much yet; I will try not. That is the chief reason why I liked the prayer-meeting and why I went to the second one. There was another reason,--I liked driving there. It was such a splendid evening, one of those that make you feel as if you would like to live for ever.”

He ruffled his hair thoughtfully, and looked at her with a still troubled brow.

“You don’t understand?” she said, mistaking him. “I don’t mean eternal life that we--that Mr. Johnson talks about; but never to leave the world. It is so beautiful, so,--so dear! I can’t”--and there was almost a sob in her voice--“I can’t bear to think I shall have to die and lose sight of it all; that the thrushes will sing and I shall not hear them, the leaves come and go, the suns rise and set, and I never see them. It is sad to think how much I have lost already, though inside myself I always feel as if I had not really lost it, as if I had been there all the time from the beginning and seen all the changes. You know what I mean; you can learn lots about the past but nothing about the future; nothing helps you about that, and by-and-bye there will be, must be, more earth-history--it does not seem possible that I shall not know; I do not feel as if I could die!”

She looked up, appealing almost passionately for mercy on this first time that her soul had been betrayed into words. Perhaps the old rector was a lenient judge; his eyes were almost wistful as he said half to himself: “And you are never ill, and never tired.”

“I never have been.”

“And you have not nearly enough to do--” he was speaking solely to himself now--“God help you!”

It is possible Mr. Dane thought this was a case for man’s help also; at all events he did not dismiss it with some brief fatherly advice and a blessing. He talked to Bill as he had not talked before to anyone in Ashelton; he, who, as it were, kept all on the outskirts of his life, spoke of those things which were the innermost shrine of his faith, the things which, like the priests of old, he believed should be kept for the initiated. And Bill was not initiated. Possibly she did not quite understand him; but it did not matter, she would do so some day. Possibly he did not quite understand her; how should he with all the gap of years between them? Nevertheless he treated the girlish fancies delicately, almost as holy things.

In the end he set her a penance, for, though a believer in spiritual repentance, he also held that work was very good for the soul; so for her wrong-doing he set her a task, at least he said it was for that.

“What shall I do?” she asked eagerly.

“You know that long bed at the bottom of Mrs. Morton’s garden? Dig it up. First pull up all the weeds and burn them, then dig it up, dig deep, put in manure and plant potatoes. I do not think Mrs. Morton will object; I fancy she would let you do what you like in her garden.”

“Yes, oh yes, she won’t mind. I will begin to-morrow morning; is there nothing else? I shall like doing that.”

“Do that first,” he said, and she promised, not questioning his right to set her a task nor the fitness of the one he set. In fact, so satisfied did she seem with his wisdom that, just as she was leaving, she told him of the promise to go to Wood Hall again and of the difficulties attending it.

“I promised,” she said, “thinking Theresa would let me go, and now she won’t; but I must still go.”

“You should not have promised;” and he looked very grave.

“But I have; I thought Theresa would not mind.”

“She is quite right; nevertheless one must keep a promise.”

It is to be feared that here spoke the man dowered with family tradition, and not the clergyman and spiritual adviser. The sentiment, however, was one which Bill understood. “Yes,” she said, “I must go.”

“But not alone,” he answered; “she must go with you.”

This Bill did not understand; she was also very certain that Theresa would not agree, and proceeded to explain the difficulty.

“She would take you, surely she would drive with you?” Mr. Dane persisted.

But Bill shook her head. “She would say the promise was wrong and could not be kept, and she would think she was encouraging wrong by going; that is her way of looking at it.”

Mr. Dane felt he was brought face to face with a difficulty, but he only repeated firmly, “You must not go alone.” Perhaps he could think of nothing else to say.

Fortunately just then Bill thought of a possible way out of the trouble. “Do you think it would do if Polly were to drive with me?” she asked. “Polly is my eldest cousin. I should have to leave her outside the house, but I would not be many minutes gone.”

Mr. Dane did not know Polly, but he thought she would do. He strongly recommended also that she should, if possible, accompany Bill into the house. Bill was not at all sure that Polly would do this, and she was very sure indeed that she did not want her to do it; however, she could not explain all this to Mr. Dane in the time now at her disposal, so she prepared to say good-bye.

“There is one thing I should like to ask you before you go,” said Mr. Dane, looking at her thoughtfully as she stood by his chair. “It is about yourself.”

“I will tell you if I can,” she answered, “but I think I have already told you all there is to tell.” Indeed, she had told him a great deal, far more than she was aware of, but it was not quite what he meant.

“Your mother was Miss Brownlow’s sister?” he asked.

“Yes, the youngest, Kate; but I do not remember her at all; she died when I was very little.”

Mr. Dane looked at her thoughtfully. “I should doubt if you were like your mother,” he said; “you are not at all like your cousins, or Miss Brownlow either.”

“No, I am not like them; sometimes Polly says I am like my father; but she did not know him, and she only says it when she is angry. I don’t think I can be like him really, except that I am dark. He was dark, but then he was very clever and fascinating; Auntie says he bewitched my mother, so that she would marry him in spite of what they all said. I believe they did not think him good enough for her. I don’t quite know what he was; he used to come sometimes to sing at the town where she lived, but he was not a grand professional singer. Some people said he was half a gipsy; he loved wandering about.”

“Do you remember him?”

“Not clearly; he did not live long after my mother; still I remember him better than I do her. I can just remember going about with him, or at least I think I can; it is difficult to tell which is memory and which fancy, it is all so long ago. I came to Auntie when I was very small.”

“And remained there ever since?”

“Yes, remained there ever since,” and she held out her hand to him.

He took it. “Good-bye,” he said, “good-bye, little maiden. Do they call you Katie, too?”

“No; Bill,--Wilhelmina.”

“Wilhelmina!”

Perhaps the other Alardy had been called Wilhelmina; the old man’s face almost looked as if it were so, or as if some ghost had sprung to life at the name. But Bill did not see his face; for a moment he stood in the shadow of the door, then turned and went stooping into the dimness of the passage; and she went onward down the road, thinking only how she could compass to-morrow’s visit.

Polly was shrewd enough after her fashion, and if she saw Mr. Harborough would, Bill felt certain, find out more than was desirable concerning her cousin’s share in the reading of the mass. Therefore Polly must not set foot inside Wood Hall. Bill had some respect for her shrewdness, though she was depending on being able to outwit it when she said she would get her chaperonage for the intended call. “But I’ll get her,” Bill assured herself as she walked home that Sunday afternoon; and the chances were that she would, for she was a tenacious little person, and also, while much lacking in perception on some points, she had an instinctive comprehension of character which gave her a truer conception of the turns and twists of Polly’s nature than either of the other cousins possessed.

On Monday morning Bill set to work to carry out her plan. Her newly acquired mastery over the reins was the first thing pressed into her service. She would drive the old pony over to Wrugglesby, pack some clothes she wanted, and bring Polly (Bella would be giving music-lessons) home to Haylands with her for the night. At first Theresa demurred, but Robert only laughed at her fears; and finally Bill was allowed to go, with Henry, the boot-boy, in attendance in case of accidents. Bill accepted Henry’s escort to Wrugglesby, but said he would have to walk back as she intended to take Polly for a drive by herself. Theresa demurred again, but Robert was on Bill’s side; and finally, as might have been foreseen, Henry walked back alone, while Bill and Polly went for their drive.

Not, however, before Bill had encountered another obstacle, which presented itself in the attractive form of Bella. Bella wanted to make one of the party; she pointed out that there was room for her in the pony-carriage, and that Theresa was sure not to mind an extra guest for one night. Of course, in the ordinary way it would have been impossible for her to get out in the afternoon, but to-day it happened that nearly the whole school was going to a birthday party and there were only two music-lessons to give. These two lessons were Bill’s salvation: she and Polly would take their drive while Bella gave them; as soon as she had done she was to walk to Sales Cross Roads, where they would meet her with the pony-chaise at a quarter to four.

The plan met with Polly’s entire approval; she did not at all wish to waste the early part of the afternoon waiting for Bella, and she was not troubled with many unselfish scruples. When Bella inconveniently said, “I think I could be at Sales Cross before that,” Polly answered decidedly, “But we cannot.” Whereupon the good-natured Bella gave way, and, with matters at last satisfactorily arranged, the other two drove away.

Polly leaned back with great satisfaction; Bill had borrowed a cushion from Theresa for her and she appreciated it. “Really, Bill,” she said benignly, “I should never have thought you would learn to drive so well; you are quite getting on.”

“Do you think I have grown up any more?” Bill asked.

Polly looked at her thoughtfully. “I don’t think you have developed much,” she said, after consideration. Before she reached the end of her journey that day she changed her opinion and came to the conclusion that Bill had developed surprisingly, in one direction at least.

“We are going to Gurnett,” Bill announced, and Polly, to whom one place was as good as another, acquiesced.

“We can easily get from there to Sales Cross to meet Bella,” Bill went on to explain when they were nearing the village. “I want to see some one at Gurnett, or rather, just this side of it; we don’t go through the village.”

“Whom are you going to see? I will hold the reins while you go in; I don’t care about going with messages to strange farms; there are always geese and cows about.”

Bill entirely agreed with this suggestion. “Yes,” she said, “you must wait outside while I go in; I won’t be long, not more than ten minutes I expect. It is not to a farm we are going, though; it is to Wood Hall.”

“Wood Hall? Whatever does Theresa want from there?”

“Theresa does not want anything; I am going on my own business. She does not know I am going, and she would be very angry if she did.”

“Well, Bill!”

“But I have got to go all the same,” Bill continued, ignoring the exclamation.

“What about me? Pray, why should I allow it if Theresa does not? I insist on hearing all about it at once.”

Curiosity as well as indignation prompted this speech, which Bill proceeded to gratify to a certain extent. “I will tell you as much as there is time for,” she said, and there was not time for a great deal. Polly’s explosions of righteous wrath, not so judicial and certainly not so genuine as Theresa’s, helped to shorten the narrative.

“Well, Bill, I could not have believed it of you! No, I could not, even if anyone had told me! I know a good deal about you, it is true, but I should never have expected--well--” Words failed, and Polly took refuge in a superlatively expressive sniff; she had brought the language of sniffs to a rare perfection.

But Bill was not at all impressed, and when Polly asked with stern dignity, “Do you think I, any more than Theresa, will allow you to go to Wood Hall?” she answered, “You can’t help yourself.”

“Can’t help myself, indeed!”

“No, we are just there.” That was undeniably true; they were in the drive and must soon reach the house. “If you did not mean to come,” Bill went on composedly, “why did you not say so before we turned in?”

“I did not notice.”

Bill was politely doubtful. “Look here, Polly,” she said, “what is the good of pretending? It is not what things are that matters to you, it is how they look. I am sure that this is quite right; you are not; but that does not count, as you only want it to look right--”

“Bill! You are a wicked girl. How dare you say such things?”

“I dare say them, and you dare think them,” Bill retorted, vaguely aware that she must have outraged the sense of decency again. At that moment a sharp turn in the drive showed them the house just in front, the chaise swayed to one side, for the ground dipped suddenly down before it rose again for the last little ascent.

“I shall come in with you,” Polly said heroically, as she gripped the sides of the chaise with a firm, though nervous, grasp. “I shall not leave you--Bill, do be careful how you drive!--not leave you in spite of your conduct to me.”

“Yes, you will. You will wait outside, and think how it can be made to look best.”

“I shall do nothing of the kind!”

“Then I shall frighten the pony and make him run away. He won’t run far, but by the time you get back here I shall have gone inside. Good-bye for the present; I sha’n’t be long.”

Bill jumped out as she spoke, and the indignant, though discreet, Polly took the reins and patiently waited in the pony-carriage. Bill certainly had developed, and developed, among other things, a painful plainness of speech. This hurt Polly more than anything else, for she believed in observing all the decencies of life, in saying and seeming all that was suitable to the occasion, even to a certain extent persuading herself to feel it too. She always acted, for herself if there was no other audience; she could not help it, and the fact that there was not the least chance of anyone being deceived did not deter her from taking a part. More often than not people were a little deceived; they believed in her more or less, as she believed in herself. Bill did not, which was her misfortune; but she said so baldly, and that was her fault, a fault Polly found it hard to forgive just then. “Yet,” Polly thought when she sat in the chaise waiting and meditating on Bill’s development, “she is proving to be rather as I expected; she has twenty times the go of the other two, if only one could make her sensible.” From which it may be seen that Polly had a keen eye to the main chance, and even in matters of personal affront sought first a possible advantage; afterwards, if expedient, she resented the annoyance. During the ten minutes that she waited for Bill she had serious thoughts of making common cause with that offender.

Bill was as good as her word. Mindful of a limit to Polly’s patience, she came to the point as soon as possible, and asked what Mr. Harborough demanded in return for fulfilling her wish. But he, not aware of any urgent reason for haste, set the question aside and asked instead if she had been satisfied with Sunday’s comedy.

She did not think it a comedy; indeed, to tell the truth, she was not quite sure what a comedy was; certainly she had not been satisfied, but, as she hastened to explain, that was not his fault. “It was my own,” she said.

“Your own, daughter of Eve? Dissatisfied as soon as gratified? It’s the way with ’em all. Still I own this affair did not turn out as well as it might.”

“You did not expect it to be like that? Neither did I; if I had thought--”

“You would have chosen a day when the curate was in sole command? It certainly would have been better from a sporting point of view.”

For a moment the vision of what might have occurred in those circumstances flitted through Bill’s mind, but she banished it and said gravely: “It would have been funnier, I dare say, but no better; worse, I think, for I should not then have found out that it was wrong.”

Mr. Harborough laughed, seeming to find a good deal of amusement in the idea of Bill’s tardy conscientious scruples; but on account, he said, of her disappointment he asked nothing further of her, saying that they would now cry quits to the bargain. Bill was relieved, having been afraid he would lay some fresh difficulty upon her; as it was, she felt she had escaped easily, and prepared to make her adieux with a light heart, explaining at the same time that, as Polly was waiting outside, she must go at once. The idea of Polly waiting outside also seemed to amuse Mr. Harborough.

“Dear me, how they have been talking to you!” he said. “Bringing home the enormity of your conduct to you with a vengeance! They won’t leave me my unsophisticated little maiden long; good women are great teachers of the ways of this wicked world.”

Bill scarcely understood him; still, she fancied he was insinuating something against her cousin whose words really had had no weight at all in determining her action. “It was not exactly Theresa’s doing,” she said.

“Not Theresa?” He laughed. “Yet you have brought a dragon, a chaperone to watch over you. You need scarcely have taken the trouble; I should have done you no harm.”

“They would not let me come alone.”

“I wonder they let you come at all.”

“Theresa would not; Polly could not help herself.” Bill did not explain Mr. Dane’s share in the matter, and Harborough did not ask it. “When are you coming again?” was all he said.

“Never.”

“Never? Are you going to leave me all alone in my desolate old age?”

“They won’t let me come.”

The old man’s tone had been but half serious, yet as he spoke the extreme silence of the house suddenly impressed Bill, the loneliness of the great room where they two made an oasis of humanity in a desert of shadowy memories. The polished floor stretched around her, only quivering into life when she moved and sent distorted reflections of herself along the boards; the mirrors on the wall never waking till she turned for them to cast back her brown face and ruddy hair. Away at the far end of the room there were chairs and cabinets, but they were too distant to reflect her on their polished wood, too far off to have any connection with this life. They belonged to the folks who looked down from the walls. It was a wondrous house, a wondrous lonely house for an old man who did not care for memories, whose taste, vitiated by the hot peppers of his manhood, could not appreciate the _pot-pourri_ of the centuries that were gone.

“Could you not get someone else to come,” Bill said at last, “someone belonging to you? You haven’t got anyone?”--he had shaken his head and she felt the case was a bad one till a happy idea occurred to her. “Why not pay a girl?” she said. “You could, you know; you could get one that way.”

“For what would you undertake the post?”

The question was asked with all gravity, but she was not quite sure that he was in earnest. It would be a good thing if he were, for this was work she could do, and, since she had to earn her living, it seemed much better that she should do it in this way which fitted her small abilities. She glanced quickly at him, uncertain what to answer. “Twenty-five pounds a year,” she said at last, at a venture, naming a sum which seemed to her exorbitant considering his straitened circumstances.

He smiled a little and shook his head. “Can’t be done,” he said, and she prepared to reduce her terms cautiously, but he explained the obstacles.

“It is the aunts and cousins who are in the way, my dear; if you were alone in the world we would not quarrel as to terms.”

“Oh, but I could easily explain to them.”

Bill was confident, but Mr. Harborough reminded her of her confidence with regard to Theresa’s permission to repeat her visit. She was forced to admit his superior knowledge there, and to allow of its possibility again, although it seemed foolish to carry social objections into a purely commercial transaction.

“Believe me,” he said, “there are no terms on which they would allow you to enter my service, except the cover of my name.” She did not understand. “If the salary were a marriage settlement,” he explained, “they would permit you to take it, and, under the name of Mrs. Harborough, they would raise no objection to your accepting the post of companion.”

In spite of her disappointment at finding the offer not a genuine one after all, Bill burst out laughing; laughing principally at her own stupidity in taking him seriously. Then she said: “I must go; Polly will be tired of waiting.”

“Laugh and go,” he said. “Do you laugh at Wood Hall? I could--by Heaven, it is almost worth doing!” he exclaimed with a sudden access of energy. “There are some who would not laugh then, my little brown elf.”

He laughed himself at the idea, laughed softly with a bitter spite in his eyes. Afterwards it occurred to Bill vaguely that perhaps he really had been in earnest, and that she was to have played a part in some scheme of vengeance. But she never seriously thought so, and at the time it did not appear to her as anything but a jest. As such she laughed again so that her merriment rang in the great room; and she was still smiling when a minute later she came out to Polly waiting in the chaise.

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