CHAPTER I.

"QUEEN RUTH."

May-day! None of your raw, drizzling, windy, nineteenth-century May-days, when folks, chilled to their marrow-bones, draw their old cloaks and coats about them and beg for a cozy blaze in place of the smart new "ornament for the fire-stove." No; a right-down, unmistakable, fine old English first of May, with a fine old English sun, gradually assuming roseate hues, and setting the heavens in a glow as he slopes westward behind the trees of Epping Forest, casting long shadows athwart the smooth-shaven grass-plot which carpets the forecourt of a fine old many-gabled Hertfordshire farm-house; while his dying brilliancy gilds the broken summits of the ruined gate-house overshadowing it, and illumines the fresh tints of the cowslips, and earliest summer flower-garlands, festooned with many a gay ribbon-knot about a May-pole towering to the cloudless sky. Around this a group of young folks are merrily footing it to the tune of "Phillida flouts me," which the fifers and fiddlers, mounted on a table beneath the big spreading yew-tree, are braying out with a will.

[Sidenote: Spring-tide.]

And the Queen of the May? Well, there she is; that--. But no; what differs more than taste on these points? and you must decide for yourself concerning the value of her claims on beauty. To you it may seem that many of those bright eyes, and laughing lips, and all the rest of it, rival the charms of Queen Ruth, Young Mistress Ruth Rumbold, the only child of Master Richard Rumbold of the Rye House, whose embattled gate-tower roof just shows yonder through the trees, with its gilded vane gleaming in the setting sun-rays. But then you do not know Ruth as all these good people have known her for fifteen years turned last Martlemas-tide, when she was left a motherless three months old babe to the care of Nurse Maudlin--Maudlin Sweetapple. Therefore it is hardly possible for you to conceive how entirely she has won the affection, even of creatures commonly reported to be destitute of it; such as Gammer Grip, the miserly old hunks who lives in the tumble-down hut over against the crossways, and of Growler and Grab, the Nether Hall watch-dogs and terrors of the neighbourhood.

[Sidenote: The maltster's daughter.]

So possibly it has come to pass, that love has clothed little Mistress Ruth about with a beauty strangers might not be able to see. For you, the gray eyes so frankly meeting yours from beneath their long dark lashes and the well-defined brows might be too grave and thoughtful, though indeed, quite to decide, you should wait till she speaks. The tip of that little nose, to please your classical notions, ought not possibly to assert its right of way as it does, in just the slightest of upward directions. Neither is her mouth of the "button-hole" or "two-cherries-on-one-stalk" order; though it is a handsome, sweet-tempered mouth enough, with its resolute yet mobile curves when the red lips part to speak or to smile. Then again, her hair is neither sunny nor raven-black, as it behoves heroines' hair to be; but then she did not look to be a heroine, this Hertfordshire maltster's daughter. Nor was it of the tawny red the fine ladies of those Merry Monarch days delighted to dye their locks; but just of an ordinary middling shade of brown, with the faint ripple of a natural curl on her white forehead, and something of the sort which defied the silken snood, and saucily insisted on straying at pleasure about the nape of her slender neck. As to her hands, they were as well moulded and serviceable a little pair as you might wish to see; and if they were a trifle browner than modish maidens might have considered altogether the thing, the sun, and the churn, and the delicious home-made bread, and such like things, were possibly responsible; but an ocean of milk of roses itself, could not have been so soft and sweet as their touch, if you needed help from them in any pain or trouble befalling you.

Doubtless as pretty a pair of feet as hers were to be found in the shire; but if Cinderella's own were smaller--IF they were--they could not have been prettier; and let her wear what she might, those partial people who knew her, declared that Ruth Rumbold's clothes always became her. Be that as it may, very certain it is that that kirtle of flowered chintz looped above the pink-and-white striped tiffany petticoat marvellously becomes her trim figure, and matches bravely with the red and snow white hawthorn wreath crowning her shapely head; and never, declare her loving lieges, was fairer Queen of May than this Queen Ruth.

[Sidenote: The master of Nether Hall.]

Her Majesty's partner in the dance now being so spiritedly carried on, is the lord of those May-day revels, Lawrence Lee, the young master of the Nether Hall farm. The natural order of the festivities would assign him the distinction; but in this particular instance it is no empty one. Left to his choosing, he would in every probability have invited Ruth, queen or no queen, to dance with him, for the two were fast friends; and such they had been since first Madam Lee, Lawrence's mother, had gone with her own five-year-old boy toddling beside her, across the fields to the Rye House; and there, taking the motherless baby Ruth in her kind arms, she had tenderly kissed the winsome face; and the little boy saw with wondering awe how some tears were left shining, bright as dewdrops on daisy flowers, upon the placid sleeping eyelids as she laid the little creature down again in its cradle. "We must love her dearly, for she has no mother," murmured Madam Lee; and so faithfully had Lawrence backed up her proposition from that day forward, that his affection had gone on growing with his own inches; and if he loved Ruth when he paddled, a barefooted urchin, along with the ducks about the reedy shallows of the moat, inveigling her to the like unlawful courses, she was every whit as dear to him now that he stood a good five feet eleven in his buff boots.

As handsome a young fellow as you were likely to meet on a long summer day's journey, with his lithe figure, dark eyes, and crisp locks, was this young master, now in fact and in right, of the Nether Hall farm and its broad acres, since he became turned of twenty-one last Shrovetide, as for quite two years before he had been to all intents and purposes; for his farming genius was inborn, and he was never happier than when he was busy among his barns and his hayfields.

[Sidenote: A secret.]

Possibly Lawrence Lee carries his liking for hard work so far, that holiday-making bores him. At all events, let him succeed as he may in cheating his guests generally into admiration of his high spirits, his efforts at gaiety are so exaggerated and fitful that Ruth is not for an instant to be imposed upon by them. And when at last the dance is done, and the syllabub is being handed round, and the two stroll away into the hornbeam maze, which brings you, if you are acquainted with its mysteries, to the field-path leading straight to the river's brink, the good folks would stare to see--or can it be the leafy shadows which so heavily darken those two young faces? Nay; the shadows are from within, as if black care were busy at their hearts. Yet with a difference; for while Lawrence's brow is brooding and abstracted, Ruth's eyes are full of wistful anxiety; and with her little hand tight in his clasp the two silently thread the maze, until suddenly the fiddles and fifes strike up afresh; and this time their tune is "Begone Dull Care."

"Let us go back," said Lawrence, breaking from his moody silence into a laugh of forced merriment, "and enjoy ourselves while we can. Come, Ruth, one more dance," and he seized her by both hands.

"No," she answered. "I must go, Lawrence; and at once. It will be almost dark now before I am home, and father will be angry."

[Sidenote: On the River Lea.]

Lee's brow fell again; but he only said, "As you will;" and they walked on till they reached the river's brink, where a small boat, newly painted, and decked with ribbon-tied cowslip and daisy posies, lay moored to a stout stake.

Lawrence's customary mode of transplanting Ruth from dry land to his little craft, was to catch her light figure in his stalwart arms and seat her in the stern "before she knew where she was," as she would say with terrific frowns. To-night, however, he soberly--did she fancy it was even a trifle absently?--assisted her in with his right hand. That this new order of things had not escaped her notice, some look in her face made him uncomfortably conscious.

"Is your majesty well placed?" he asked, affecting to laugh as he took the sculls and paddled out into mid-stream.

"We should be so," she replied with mock gravity, drawing up the rudder cords. "Thanks to your lordship's ceremony in seating us."

"That," returned he, breaking into a smile of unfeigned amusement at her lofty air, "is no more than what is due to your majesty's supreme rank from your majesty's most loyal subject."

"We find that good hearing," said Queen Ruth, "since we are convinced that my Lord Lawrence Lee always feels in his heart what his speech professes."

[Sidenote: A troubled heart.]

Her words were jestingly uttered; but the young man bit his lip hard; and his cheek grew white, as if some sharp sudden pain had stung him.

"Lawrence!" cried Ruth, starting and bending forward, "what is the matter? You are ill."

"Not I, dear heart," replied he, sweeping one hand hurriedly across his face.

"You are so pale," she insisted.

"Tired," laconically said he, vigorously plying his oars. "With that last measure, you know," he added in explanatory tones, as she opened her eyes rather contemptuously.

"For my part," she said, "I am not so delicate, and could have danced on till daylight again. Though in that case, 'tis clear, I should have had to be beholden to another partner," she added, with saucy composure.

"Not while I had a leg to stand on," briskly returned he. "But the fact is--well, I must be getting old, eh Ruth?"

"A whole quarter of a century. In four years more," interrupted she, with a ringing laugh.

"And that is ever so far on towards the half of a lifetime," he murmured thoughtfully to himself, "even supposing one is let live it through in peace. Well," he added, in a louder key, "'tis certain age brings a peck of cares, Ruth."

"Tell me some of yours," said she coaxingly, "so that I may share the burden of them. Shall I not?" she pleaded on in gentle earnest tones.

"Heaven forbid!" fervently ejaculated the young man. "Heaven forbid you should ever do that, child! There must come never a cloud to darken little Ruth's days."

[Sidenote: Cross-purposes.]

"And yet I think mine can scarce be all sunshine if yours are--mind! mind! There you go! Running right into the mudbank!"

"Then must my steerswoman be to blame," laughed he. "Pull to the right, Ruth."

"I hate secrets," she pouted, doing as he directed.

"There are some things," rejoined the superior creature, "girls can't understand."

"Then, to be sure, I think they cannot be good for boys--we crave your lordship's pardon--MEN we should have said;" and Ruth hemmed a little correcting cough--"to meddle with; And-- There you are again. All in the osier tangle now!"

"Confound it! and whose fault but yours?" he cried petulantly. "Didn't I bid you keep to the right?"

"And how am I to see what I'm doing, pray, if you will bob your head about in that fashion?" retorted she, irately knitting her brows. "Lawrence, dear, what's your mighty secret?" she added, in honey-sweet tones.

"Who said I had one?" flashed he. "How stupid and disagreeable you are to-night, Ruth! What is it you want?"

"Only for you to be nice again. Dear, nice, happy, old Lawrence."

[Sidenote: Stillness but not peace.]

"Nice! happy! psha! bah! hang it! A fellow's nowhere with you girls if he isn't always up in the seventh heaven!" grunted Lawrence, and then he rowed on in sulky silence between the low-lying meadow banks, where the quiet oxen stood plunged knee-deep in the fresh young buttercup-studded grass, lazily sniffing in the fragrant evening air, all translucent with the greenish golden tints of mingled young moon-beams, and the last rays of the setting sun. Save the low chirp, chirp, twee of the birds settling to their nests among the pollard willows, and the ripple of the water about the boat's prow, not a sound broke the stillness, till a somewhat sharp bend of the river brought them in sight of a wooden bridge, overshadowed to its right by a thicket of tall beeches and brushwood; while leftwards, a narrow road threaded on across it to a second bridge, spanning another stream that gleamed gray and still as glass between straight high-lying banks scarcely twenty yards beyond; and so winding on, over a waste of level common land, till it was lost in distance.

Dimly discernible through the copse to the right of the first bridge were the walls of a quaintly-timbered, many-gabled, two-storied house, whose latticed casements and trellised porch gleamed in the night's soft radiance; whilst a huge sign, bearing the royal arms, swung in its carved oaken framework, which projected from between the windows of the upper storey, right across the narrow road above the lofty wall of red brick which ran facing the inn for some distance.

[Sidenote: Master Rumbold on the watch]

Close down on a tiny landing-stage, by the nearer bridge's foot, a man stood watching the approach of the boat with his one available eye. The other, blurred and blemished apparently past all service, aggravated the naturally stern and sinister expression of features passable and even handsome, to which his puritanical pot-hat, leathern-belted, black, close-fitting doublet and plain white linen collar lent no relief. Neither did the knitting of his sombre brows relax, but rather gathered more heavily, as Lee made fast the boat and Ruth sprang lightly to the bank.