John Halifax, Gentleman by Dinah Maria Mulock (Mrs. Craik) (page 3)

“Ay, she be. Mr. Halifax pays her a good rent; and she sees ‘un made comfortable. Not that he wants much, being out pretty much all day.”

“What is he busy about of nights?”

“Larning,” said Jem, with an awed look. “He’s terrible wise. But for all that, sometimes he’ll teach Charley and me a bit o’ the Readamadeasy.” (Reading-made-easy, I suppose, John’s hopeful pupil meant.) “He’s very kind to we, and to mother too. Her says, that her do, Mr. Halifax–“

“Send the fellow away, Phineas,” muttered my father, turning his face to the wall.

I obeyed. But first I asked, in a whisper, if Jem had any idea when “Mr. Halifax” would be back?

“He said, maybe not till morning. Them’s bad folk about. He was going to stop all night, either at your house or at the tan-yard, for fear of a BLAZE.”

The word made my father start; for in these times well we knew what poor folk meant by “a blaze.”

“My house–my tan-yard–I must get up this instant–help me. He ought to come back–that lad Halifax. There’s a score of my men at hand–Wilkes, and Johnson, and Jacob Baines–I say, Phineas–but thee know’st nothing.”

He tried to dress, and to drag on his heavy shoes; but fell back, sick with exhaustion and pain. I made him lie down again on the bed.

“Phineas, lad,” said he, brokenly, “thy old father is getting as helpless as thee.”

So we kept watch together, all the night through; sometimes dozing, sometimes waking up at some slight noise below, or at the flicker of the long-wicked candle, which fear converted into the glare of some incendiary fire–doubtless our own home. Now and then I heard my father mutter something about “the lad being safe.” I said nothing. I only prayed.

Thus the night wore away.

CHAPTER VIII

After Midnight–I know not how long, for I lost count of the hours by the Abbey chimes, and our light had gone out–after midnight I heard by my father’s breathing that he was asleep. I was thankful to see it for his sake, and also for another reason.

I could not sleep–all my faculties were preternaturally alive; my weak body and timid mind became strong and active, able to compass anything. For that one night, at least, I felt myself a man.

My father was a very sound sleeper. I knew nothing would disturb him till daylight; therefore my divided duty was at an end. I left him, and crept down-stairs into Sally Watkins’ kitchen. It was silent, only the faithful warder, Jem, dozed over the dull fire. I touched him on the shoulder–at which he collared me and nearly knocked me down.

“Beg pardon, Mr. Phineas–hope I didn’t hurt ‘ee, sir?” cried he, all but whimpering; for Jem, a big lad of fifteen, was the most tender-hearted fellow imaginable. “I thought it were some of them folk that Mr. Halifax ha’ gone among.”

“Where is Mr. Halifax?”

“Doan’t know, sir–wish I did! wouldn’t be long a finding out, though–on’y he says: ‘Jem, you stop ‘ere wi’ they'” (pointing his thumb up the staircase). “So, Master Phineas, I stop.”

And Jem settled himself with a doggedly obedient, but most dissatisfied air down by the fire-place. It was evident nothing would move him thence: so he was as safe a guard over my poor old father’s slumber as the mastiff in the tan-yard, who was as brave as a lion and as docile as a child. My last lingering hesitation ended.

“Jem, lend me your coat and hat–I’m going out into the town.”

Jem was so astonished, that he stood with open mouth while I took the said garments from him, and unbolted the door. At last it seemed to occur to him that he ought to intercept me.

“But, sir, Mr. Halifax said–“

“I am going to look for Mr. Halifax.”

And I escaped outside. Anything beyond his literal duty did not strike the faithful Jem. He stood on the door-sill, and gazed after me with a hopeless expression.

“I s’pose you mun have your way, sir; but Mr. Halifax said, ‘Jem, you stop y’ere,’–and y’ere I stop.”

He went in, and I heard him bolting the door, with a sullen determination, as if he would have kept guard against it–waiting for John–until doomsday.

I stole along the dark alley into the street. It was very silent–I need not have borrowed Jem’s exterior, in order to creep through a throng of maddened rioters. There was no sign of any such, except that under one of the three oil-lamps that lit the night-darkness at Norton Bury lay a few smouldering hanks of hemp, well resined. They, then, had thought of that dreadful engine of destruction–fire. Had my terrors been true? Our house–and perhaps John within it!

On I ran, speeded by a dull murmur, which I fancied I heard; but still there was no one in the street–no one except the Abbey-watchman lounging in his box. I roused him, and asked if all was safe?–where were the rioters?

“What rioters?”

“At Abel Fletcher’s mill; they may be at his house now–“

“Ay, I think they be.”

“And will not one man in the town help him; no constables–no law?”

“Oh! he’s a Quaker; the law don’t help Quakers.”

That was the truth–the hard, grinding truth–in those days. Liberty, justice, were idle names to Nonconformists of every kind; and all they knew of the glorious constitution of English law was when its iron hand was turned against them.

I had forgotten this; bitterly I remembered it now. So wasting no more words, I flew along the church-yard, until I saw, shining against the boles of the chestnut-trees, a red light. It was one of the hempen torches. Now, at last, I had got in the midst of that small body of men, “the rioters.”

They were a mere handful–not above two score–apparently the relics of the band which had attacked the mill, joined with a few plough- lads from the country around. But they were desperate; they had come up the Coltham road so quietly, that, except this faint murmur, neither I nor any one in the town could have told they were near. Wherever they had been ransacking, as yet they had not attacked my father’s house; it stood up on the other side the road–barred, black, silent.

I heard a muttering–“Th’ old man bean’t there.”–“Nobody knows where he be.” No, thank God!

“Be us all y’ere?” said the man with the torch, holding it up so as to see round him. It was well then that I appeared as Jem Watkins. But no one noticed me, except one man, who skulked behind a tree, and of whom I was rather afraid, as he was apparently intent on watching.

“Ready, lads? Now for the rosin! Blaze ‘un out.”

But, in the eager scuffle, the torch, the only one alight, was knocked down and trodden out. A volley of oaths arose, though whose fault it was no one seemed to know; but I missed my man from behind the tree–nor found him till after the angry throng had rushed on to the nearest lamp. One of them was left behind, standing close to our own railings. He looked round to see if none were by, and then sprang over the gate. Dark as it was I thought I recognized him.

“John?”

“Phineas?” He was beside me in a bound. “How could you do–“

“I could do anything to-night. But you are safe; no one has harmed you. Oh, thank God, you are not hurt!”

And I clung to his arm–my friend, whom I had missed so long, so sorely.

He held me tight–his heart felt as mine, only more silently.

“Now, Phineas, we have a minute’s time. I must have you safe–we must get into the house.”

“Who is there?”

“Jael; she is as good as a host of constables; she has braved the fellows once to-night, but they’re back again, or will be directly.”

“And the mill?”

“Safe, as yet; I have had three of the tan-yard men there since yesterday morning, though your father did not know. I have been going to and fro all night, between there and here, waiting till the rioters should come back from the Severn mills. Hist!–here they are–I say, Jael?”

He tapped at the window. In a few seconds Jael had unbarred the door, let us in, and closed it again securely, mounting guard behind it with something that looked very like my father’s pistols, though I would not discredit her among our peaceful society by positively stating the fact.

“Bravo!” said John, when we stood all together in the barricaded house, and heard the threatening murmur of voices and feet outside. “Bravo, Jael! The wife of Heber the Kenite was no braver woman than you.”

She looked gratified, and followed John obediently from room to room.

“I have done all as thee bade me–thee art a sensible lad, John Halifax. We are secure, I think.”

Secure? bolts and bars secure against fire? For that was threatening us now.

“They can’t mean it–surely they can’t mean it,” repeated John, as the cry of “Burn ‘un out!” rose louder and louder.

But they did mean it. From the attic window we watched them light torch after torch, sometimes throwing one at the house,–but it fell harmless against the staunch oaken door, and blazed itself out on our stone steps. All it did was to show more plainly than even daylight had shown, the gaunt, ragged forms and pinched faces, furious with famine.

John, as well as I, recoiled at that miserable sight.

“I’ll speak to them,” he said. “Unbar the window, Jael;” and before I could hinder, he was leaning right out. “Holloa, there!”

At his loud and commanding voice a wave of up-turned faces surged forward, expectant.

“My men, do you know what you are about? To burn down a gentleman’s house is–hanging.”

There was a hush, and then a shout of derision.

“Not a Quaker’s! nobody’ll get hanged for burning out a Quaker!”

“That be true enough,” muttered Jael between her teeth. “We must e’en fight, as Mordecai’s people fought, hand to hand, until they slew their enemies.”

“Fight!” repeated John, half to himself, as he stood at the now- closed window, against which more than one blazing torch began to rattle. “Fight–with these?–What are you doing, Jael?”

For she had taken down a large Book–the last Book in the house she would have taken under less critical circumstances, and with it was trying to stop up a broken pane.

“No, my good Jael, not this;” and he carefully replaced the volume; that volume, in which he might have read, as day after day, and year after year, we Christians generally do read, such plain words as these–“Love your enemies;” “bless them that curse you;” “pray for them that despitefully use you and persecute you.”

A minute or two John stood with his hand on the Book, thinking. Then he touched me on the shoulder.

“Phineas, I’m going to try a new plan–at least, one so old, that it’s almost new. Whether it succeeds or no, you’ll bear me witness to your father that I did it for the best, and did it because I thought it right. Now for it.”

To my horror, he threw up the window wide, and leant out.

“My men, I want to speak to you.”

He might as well have spoken to the roaring sea. The only answer was a shower of missiles, which missed their aim. The rioters were too far off–our spiked iron railings, eight feet high or more, being a barrier which none had yet ventured to climb. But at length one random stone hit John on the chest.

I pulled him in, but he declared he was not hurt. Terrified, I implored him not to risk his life.

“Life is not always the first thing to be thought of,” said he, gently. “Don’t be afraid–I shall come to no harm. But I MUST do what I think right, if it is to be done.”

While he spoke, I could hardly hear him for the bellowings outside. More savage still grew the cry–

“Burn ’em out! burn ’em out! They be only Quakers!”

“There’s not a minute to lose–stop–let me think–Jael, is that a pistol?”

“Loaded,” she said, handing it over to him with a kind of stern delight. Certainly, Jael was not meant to be a Friend.

John ran down-stairs, and before I guessed his purpose, had unbolted the hall-door, and stood on the flight of steps, in full view of the mob.

There was no bringing him back, so of course I followed. A pillar sheltered me–I do not think he saw me, though I stood close behind him.

So sudden had been his act, that even the rioters did not seem to have noticed, or clearly understood it, till the next lighted torch showed them the young man standing there, with his back to the door– OUTSIDE the door.

The sight fairly confounded them. Even I felt that for the moment he was safe. They were awed–nay, paralyzed, by his daring.

But the storm raged too fiercely to be lulled, except for one brief minute. A confusion of voices burst out afresh–

“Who be thee?”–“It’s one o’ the Quakers.”–“No, he bean’t.”–“Burn ‘un, anyhow.”–“Touch ‘un, if ye dare.”

There was evidently a division arising. One big man, who had made himself very prominent all along, seemed trying to calm the tumult.

John stood his ground. Once a torch was flung at him–he stooped and picked it up. I thought he was going to hurl it back again, but he did not; he only threw it down, and stamped it out safely with his foot. This simple action had a wonderful effect on the crowd.

The big fellow advanced to the gate and called John by his name.

“Is that you, Jacob Baines? I am sorry to see you here.”

“Be ye, sir.”

“What do you want?”

“Nought wi’ thee. We wants Abel Fletcher. Where is ‘um?”

“I shall certainly not tell you.”

As John said this again the noise arose, and again Jacob Baines seemed to have power to quiet the rest.

John Halifax never stirred. Evidently he was pretty well known. I caught many a stray sentence, such as “Don’t hurt the lad.”–“He were kind to my lad, he were.”–“No, he be a real gentleman.”–“No, he comed here as poor as us,” and the like. At length one voice, sharp and shrill, was heard above the rest.

“I zay, young man, didst ever know what it was to be pretty nigh vamished?”

“Ay, many a time.”

The answer, so brief, so unexpected, struck a great hush into the throng. Then the same voice cried–

“Speak up, man! we won’t hurt ‘ee! You be one o’ we!”

“No, I am not one of you. I’d be ashamed to come in the night and burn my master’s house down.”

I expected an outbreak, but none came. They listened, as it were by compulsion, to the clear, manly voice that had not in it one shade of fear.

“What do you do it for?” John continued. “All because he would not sell you, or give you, his wheat. Even so–it was HIS wheat, not yours. May not a man do what he likes with his own?”

The argument seemed to strike home. There is always a lurking sense of rude justice in a mob–at least a British mob.

“Don’t you see how foolish you were?–You tried threats, too. Now you all know Mr. Fletcher; you are his men–some of you. He is not a man to be threatened.”

This seemed to be taken rather angrily; but John went on speaking, as if he did not observe the fact.

“Nor am I one to be threatened, neither. Look here–the first one of you who attempted to break into Mr. Fletcher’s house I should most certainly have shot. But I’d rather not shoot you, poor, starving fellows! I know what it is to be hungry. I’m sorry for you–sorry from the bottom of my heart.”

There was no mistaking that compassionate accent, nor the murmur which followed it.

“But what must us do, Mr. Halifax?” cried Jacob Baines: “us be starved a’most. What’s the good o’ talking to we?”

John’s countenance relaxed. I saw him lift his head and shake his hair back, with that pleased gesture I remember so well of old. He went down to the locked gate.

“Suppose I gave you something to eat, would you listen to me afterwards?”

There arose up a frenzied shout of assent. Poor wretches! they were fighting for no principle, true or false, only for bare life. They would have bartered their very souls for a mouthful of bread.

“You must promise to be peaceable,” said John again, very resolutely, as soon as he could obtain a hearing. “You are Norton Bury folk, I know you. I could get every one of you hanged, even though Abel Fletcher is a Quaker. Mind, you’ll be peaceable?”

“Ay–ay! Some’at to eat; give us some’at to eat.”

John Halifax called out to Jael; bade her bring all the food of every kind that there was in the house, and give it to him out of the parlour-window. She obeyed–I marvel now to think of it–but she implicitly obeyed. Only I heard her fix the bar to the closed front door, and go back, with a strange, sharp sob, to her station at the hall-window.

“Now, my lads, come in!” and he unlocked the gate.

They came thronging up the steps, not more than two score, I imagined, in spite of the noise they had made. But two score of such famished, desperate men, God grant I may never again see!

John divided the food as well as he could among them; they fell to it like wild beasts. Meat, cooked or raw, loaves, vegetables, meal; all came alike, and were clutched, gnawed, and scrambled for, in the fierce selfishness of hunger. Afterwards there was a call for drink.

“Water, Jael; bring them water.”

“Beer!” shouted some.

“Water,” repeated John. “Nothing but water. I’ll have no drunkards rioting at my master’s door.”

And, either by chance or design, he let them hear the click of his pistol. But it was hardly needed. They were all cowed by a mightier weapon still–the best weapon a man can use–his own firm indomitable will.

At length all the food we had in the house was consumed. John told them so; and they believed him. Little enough, indeed, was sufficient for some of them; wasted with long famine, they turned sick and faint, and dropped down even with bread in their mouths, unable to swallow it. Others gorged themselves to the full, and then lay along the steps, supine as satisfied brutes. Only a few sat and ate like rational human beings; and there was but one, the little, shrill-voiced man, who asked me if he might “tak a bit o’ bread to the old wench at home?”

John, hearing, turned, and for the first time noticed me.

“Phineas, it was very wrong of you; but there is no danger now.”

No, there was none–not even for Abel Fletcher’s son. I stood safe by John’s side, very happy, very proud.

“Well, my men,” he said, looking round with a smile, “have you had enough to eat?”

“Oh, ay!” they all cried.

And one man added–“Thank the Lord!”

“That’s right, Jacob Baines: and, another time, trust the Lord. You wouldn’t then have been abroad this summer morning”–and he pointed to the dawn just reddening in the sky–“this quiet, blessed summer morning, burning and rioting, bringing yourselves to the gallows, and your children to starvation.”

“They be nigh that a’ready,” said Jacob, sullenly. “Us men ha’ gotten a meal, thankee for it; but what’ll become o’ the little ‘uns at home? I say, Mr. Halifax,” and he seemed waxing desperate again, “we must get some food somehow.”

John turned away, his countenance very sad. Another of the men plucked at him from behind.

“Sir, when thee was a poor lad I lent thee a rug to sleep on; I doan’t grudge’ee getting on; you was born for a gentleman, sure-ly. But Master Fletcher be a hard man.”

“And a just one,” persisted John. “You that work for him, did he ever stint you of a halfpenny? If you had come to him and said, ‘Master, times are hard, we can’t live upon our wages,’ he might–I don’t say that he would–but he MIGHT even have given you the food you tried to steal.”

“D’ye think he’d give it us now?” And Jacob Baines, the big, gaunt, savage fellow, who had been the ringleader–the same, too, who had spoken of his “little ‘uns”–came and looked steadily in John’s face.

“I knew thee as a lad; thee’rt a young man now, as will be a father some o’ these days. Oh! Mr. Halifax, may’ee ne’er want a meal o’ good meat for the missus and the babbies at home, if ee’ll get a bit o’ bread for our’n this day.”

“My man, I’ll try.”

He called me aside, explained to me, and asked my advice and consent, as Abel Fletcher’s son, to a plan that had come into his mind. It was to write orders, which each man presenting at our mill, should receive a certain amount of flour.

“Do you think your father would agree?”

“I think he would.”

“Yes,” John added, pondering–“I am sure he would. And besides, if he does not give some, he may lose all. But he would not do it for fear of that. No, he is a just man–I am not afraid. Give me some paper, Jael.”

He sat down as composedly as if he had been alone in the counting-house, and wrote. I looked over his shoulder, admiring his clear, firm hand-writing; the precision, concentrativeness, and quickness, with which he first seemed to arrange and then execute his ideas. He possessed to the full that “business” faculty, so frequently despised, but which, out of very ordinary material, often makes a clever man; and without which the cleverest man alive can never be altogether a great man.

When about to sign the orders, John suddenly stopped. “No; I had better not.”

“Why so?”

“I have no right; your father might think it presumption.”

“Presumption? after to-night!”

“Oh, that’s nothing! Take the pen. It is your part to sign them, Phineas.”

I obeyed.

“Isn’t this better than hanging?” said John to the men, when he had distributed the little bits of paper–precious as pound-notes–and made them all fully understand the same. “Why, there isn’t another gentleman in Norton Bury, who, if you had come to burn HIS house down, would not have had the constables or the soldiers, have shot down one-half of you like mad dogs, and sent the other half to the county gaol. Now, for all your misdoings, we let you go quietly home, well fed, and with food for children, too. WHY, think you?”

“I don’t know,” said Jacob Baines, humbly.

“I’ll tell you. Because Abel Fletcher is a Quaker and a Christian.”

“Hurrah for Abel Fletcher! hurrah for the Quakers!” shouted they, waking up the echoes down Norton Bury streets; which, of a surety, had never echoed to THAT shout before. And so the riot was over.

John Halifax closed the hall-door and came in–unsteadily– staggering. Jael placed a chair for him–worthy soul! she was wiping her old eyes. He sat down, shivering, speechless. I put my hand on his shoulder; he took it and pressed it hard.

“Oh! Phineas, lad, I’m glad; glad it’s safe over.”

“Yes, thank God!”

“Ay, indeed; thank God!”

He covered his eyes for a minute or two, then rose up pale, but quite himself again.

“Now let us go and fetch your father home.”

We found him on John’s bed, still asleep. But as we entered he woke. The daylight shone on his face–it looked ten years older since yesterday–he stared, bewildered and angry, at John Halifax.

“Eh, young man–oh! I remember. Where is my son–where’s my Phineas?”

I fell on his neck as if I had been a child. And almost as if it had been a child’s feeble head, mechanically he smoothed and patted mine.

“Thee art not hurt? Nor any one?”

“No,” John answered; “nor is either the house or the tan-yard injured.”

He looked amazed. “How has that been?”

“Phineas will tell you. Or, stay–better wait till you are at home.”

But my father insisted on hearing. I told the whole, without any comments on John’s behaviour; he would not have liked it; and, besides, the facts spoke for themselves. I told the simple, plain story–nothing more.

Abel Fletcher listened at first in silence. As I proceeded he felt about for his hat, put it on, and drew its broad brim close down over his eyes. Not even when I told him of the flour we had promised in his name, the giving of which would, as we had calculated, cost him considerable loss, did he utter a word or move a muscle.

John at length asked him if he were satisfied.

“Quite satisfied “

But, having said this, he sat so long, his hands locked together on his knees, and his hat drawn down, hiding all the face except the rigid mouth and chin–sat so long, so motionless, that we became uneasy.

John spoke to him gently, almost as a son would have spoken.

“Are you very lame still? Could I help you to walk home?”

My father looked up, and slowly held out his hand.

“Thee hast been a good lad, and a kind lad to us; I thank thee.”

There was no answer, none. But all the words in the world could not match that happy silence.

By degrees we got my father home. It was just such another summer morning as the one, two years back, when we two had stood, exhausted and trembling, before that sternly-bolted door. We both thought of that day: I knew not if my father did also.

He entered, leaning heavily on John. He sat down in the very seat, in the very room, where he had so harshly judged us–judged him.

Something, perhaps, of that bitterness rankled in the young man’s spirit now, for he stopped on the threshold.

“Come in,” said my father, looking up.

“If I am welcome; not otherwise.”

“Thee art welcome.”

He came in–I drew him in–and sat down with us. But his manner was irresolute, his fingers closed and unclosed nervously. My father, too, sat leaning his head on his two hands, not unmoved. I stole up to him, and thanked him softly for the welcome he had given.

“There is nothing to thank me for,” said he, with something of his old hardness. “What I once did, was only justice–or I then believed so. What I have done, and am about to do, is still mere justice. John, how old art thee now?”

“Twenty.”

“Then, for one year from this time I will take thee as my ‘prentice, though thee knowest already nearly as much of the business as I do. At twenty-one thee wilt be able to set up for thyself, or I may take thee into partnership–we’ll see. But”–and he looked at me, then sternly, nay, fiercely, into John’s steadfast eyes–“remember, thee hast in some measure taken that lad’s place. May God deal with thee as thou dealest with my son Phineas–my only son!”

“Amen!” was the solemn answer.

And God, who sees us both now–ay, NOW! and, perhaps, not so far apart as some may deem–He knows whether or no John Halifax kept that vow.

CHAPTER IX

“Well done, Phineas–to walk round the garden without once resting! now I call that grand, after an individual has been ill a month. However, you must calm your superabundant energies, and be quiet.”

I was not unwilling, for I still felt very weak. But sickness did not now take that heavy, overpowering grip of me, mind and body, that it once used to do. It never did when John was by. He gave me strength, mentally and physically. He was life and health to me, with his brave cheerfulness–his way of turning all minor troubles into pleasantries, till they seemed to break and vanish away, sparkling, like the foam on the top of the wave. Yet, all the while one knew well that he could meet any great evil as gallantly as a good ship meets a heavy sea–breasting it, plunging through it, or riding over it, as only a good ship can.

When I recovered–just a month after the bread-riot, and that month was a great triumph to John’s kind care–I felt that if I always had him beside me I should never be ill any more; I said as much, in a laughing sort of way.

“Very well; I shall keep you to that bargain. Now, sit down; listen to the newspaper, and improve your mind as to what the world is doing. It ought to be doing something, with the new century it began this year. Did it not seem very odd at first to have to write ‘1800’?”

“John, what a capital hand you write now!”

“Do I! That’s somebody’s credit. Do you remember my first lesson on the top of the Mythe?”

“I wonder what has become of those two gentlemen?”

“Oh! did you never hear? Young Mr. Brithwood is the ‘squire now. He married, last month, Lady Somebody Something, a fine lady from abroad.”

“And Mr. March–what of him?”

“I haven’t the least idea. Come now, shall I read the paper?”

He read well, and I liked to listen to him. It was, I remember, something about “the spacious new quadrangles, to be called Russell and Tavistock Squares, with elegantly laid out nursery-grounds adjoining.”

“It must be a fine place, London.”

“Ay; I should like to see it. Your father says, perhaps he shall have to send me, this winter, on business–won’t that be fine? If only you would go too.”

I shook my head. I had the strongest disinclination to stir from my quiet home, which now held within it, or about it, all I wished for and all I loved. It seemed as if any change must be to something worse.

“Nevertheless, you must have a change. Doctor Jessop insists upon it. Here have I been beating up and down the country for a week past–‘Adventures in Search of a Country Residence’–and, do you know, I think I’ve found one at last. Shouldn’t you like to hear about it?”

I assented, to please him.

“Such a nice, nice place, on the slope of Enderley Hill. A cottage– Rose Cottage–for it’s all in a bush of cluster-roses, up to the very roof.”

“Where is Enderley?”

“Did you never hear of Enderley Flat, the highest tableland in England? Such a fresh, free, breezy spot–how the wind sweeps over it! I can feel it in my face still.”

And even the description was refreshing, this heavy, sultry day, with not a breath of air moving across the level valley.

“Shouldn’t you like to live on a hill-side, to be at the top of everything, overlooking everything? Well, that’s Enderley: the village lies just under the brow of the Flat.”

“Is there a village?”

“A dozen cottages or so, at each door of which half-a-dozen white little heads and a dozen round eyes appeared staring at me. But oh, the blessed quiet and solitude of the place! No fights in filthy alleys! no tan-yards–I mean”–he added, correcting himself–“it’s a thorough country spot; and I like the country better than the town.”

“Do you, still? Would you really like to take to the ‘shepherd’s life and state,’ upon which my namesake here is so eloquent? Let us see what he says.”

And from the handful of books that usually lay strewn about wherever we two sat, I took up one he had lately got, with no small pains I was sure, and had had bound in its own proper colour, and presented it to me–“The Purple Island,” and “Sicelides,” of Phineas Fletcher. People seldom read this wise, tender, and sweet-voiced old fellow now; so I will even copy the verses I found for John to read.

“Here is the place. Thyrsis is just ending his ‘broken lay.’

‘Lest that the stealing night his later song might stay–‘”

“Stop a minute,” interrupted John. “Apropos of ‘stealing night,’ the sun is already down below the yew-hedge. Are you cold?”

“Not a bit of it.”

“Then we’ll begin:–

‘Thrice, oh, thrice happy, shepherd’s life and state: When courts are happiness, unhappy pawns!’

That’s not clear,” said John, laying down the book. “Now I do like poetry to be intelligible. A poet ought to see things more widely, and express them more vividly, than ordinary folk.”

“Don’t you perceive–he means the pawns on the chess-board–the common people.”

“Phineas, don’t say the common people–I’m a common person myself. But to continue:–

‘His cottage low, and safely humble gate, Shuts out proud Fortune, with her scorns and fawns: No feared treason breaks his quiet sleep. Singing all day, his flocks he learns to keep, Himself as innocent as are his quiet sheep.’

(Not many sheep at Enderley, I fancy; the Flat chiefly abounds in donkeys. Well–)

‘No Serian worms he knows, that with their thread, Drew out their silken lives–nor silken pride–‘

Which reminds me that–“

“David, how can you make me laugh at our reverend ancestor in this way? I’m ashamed of you.”

“Only let me tell you this one fact–very interesting, you’ll allow– that I saw a silken gown hanging up in the kitchen at Rose Cottage. Now, though Mrs. Tod is a decent, comely woman, I don’t think it belonged to her.”

“She may have lodgers.”

“I think she said she had–an old gentleman–but HE wouldn’t wear a silken gown.”

“His wife might. Now, do go on reading.”

“Certainly; I only wish to draw a parallel between Thyrsis and ourselves in our future summer life at Enderley. So the old gentleman’s wife may appropriate the ‘silken pride,’ while we emulate the shepherd.

‘His lambs’ warm fleece well fits his little need–‘

I wear a tolerably good coat now, don’t I, Phineas?”

“You are incorrigible.”

Yet, through all his fun, I detected a certain under-tone of seriousness, observable in him ever since my father’s declaration of his intentions concerning him, had, so to speak, settled John’s future career. He seemed aware of some crisis in his life, arrived or impending, which disturbed the generally even balance of his temperament.

“Nay, I’ll be serious;” and passing over the unfinished verse, with another or two following, he began afresh, in a new place, and in an altogether changed tone.

“‘His certain life, that never can deceive him, Is full of thousand sweets and rich content; The smooth-leaved beeches in the field receive him With coolest shades till noon-tide’s rage is spent; His life is neither tost on boisterous seas Of troublous worlds, nor lost in slothful ease. Pleased and full blest he lives, when he his God can please.

‘His bed of wool yields safe and quiet sleeps, While by his side his faithful spouse hath place; His little son into his bosom creeps, The lively image of his father’s face; Never his humble house or state torment him, Less he could like, if less his God had sent him; And when he dies, green turfs with grassy tomb content him.'”

John ceased. He was a good reader–but I had never heard him read like this before. Ending, one missed it like the breaking of music, or like the inner voice of one’s own heart talking when nobody is by.

“David,” I said, after a pause, “what are you thinking about?”

He started, with his old quick blush–“Oh, nothing–No, that’s not quite true. I was thinking that, so far as happiness goes, this ‘shepherd’s’ is my ideal of a happy life–ay, down to the ‘grassy tomb.'”

“Your fancy leaps at once to the grassy tomb; but the shepherd enjoyed a few intermediate stages of felicity before that.”

“I was thinking of those likewise.”

“Then you do intend some day to have a ‘faithful spouse and a little son’?”

“I hope so–God willing.”

It may seem strange, but this was the first time our conversation had ever wandered in a similar direction. Though he was twenty and I twenty-two–to us both–and I thank Heaven that we could both look up in the face of Heaven and say so!–to us both, the follies and wickednesses of youth were, if not equally unknown, equally and alike hateful. Many may doubt, or smile at the fact; but I state it now, in my old age, with honour and pride, that we two young men that day trembled on the subject of love as shyly, as reverently, as delicately, as any two young maidens of innocent sixteen.

After John’s serious “God willing,” there was a good long silence. Afterwards, I said–

“Then you propose to marry?”

“Certainly! as soon as I can.”

“Have you ever–” and, while speaking, I watched him narrowly, for a sudden possibility flashed across my mind–“Have you ever seen any one whom you would like for your wife?”

“No.”

I was satisfied. John’s single “No” was as conclusive as a score of asseverations.

We said no more; but after one of those pauses of conversation which were habitual to us–John used to say, that the true test of friendship was to be able to sit or walk together for a whole hour in perfect silence, without wearying of one another’s company–we again began talking about Enderley.

I soon found, that in this plan, my part was simply acquiescence; my father and John had already arranged it all. I was to be in charge of the latter; nothing could induce Abel Fletcher to leave, even for a day, his house, his garden, and his tan-yard. We two young men were to set up for a month or two our bachelor establishment at Mrs. Tod’s: John riding thrice a-week over to Norton Bury to bring news of me, and to fulfil his duties at the tan-yard. One could see plain enough–and very grateful to me was the sight–that whether or no Abel Fletcher acknowledged it, his right hand in all his business affairs was the lad John Halifax.

On a lovely August day we started for Enderley. It was about eight miles off, on a hilly, cross-country road. We lumbered slowly along in our post-chaise; I leaning back, enjoying the fresh air, the changing views, and chiefly to see how intensely John enjoyed them too.

He looked extremely well to-day–handsome, I was about to write; but John was never, even in his youth, “handsome.” Nay, I have heard people call him “plain”; but that was not true. His face had that charm, perhaps the greatest, certainly the most lasting, either in women or men–of infinite variety. You were always finding out something–an expression strange as tender, or the track of a swift, brilliant thought, or an indication of feeling different from, perhaps deeper than, anything which appeared before. When you believed you had learnt it line by line it would startle you by a phase quite new, and beautiful as new. For it was not one of your impassive faces, whose owners count it pride to harden into a mass of stone those lineaments which nature made as the flesh and blood representation of the man’s soul. True, it had its reticences, its sacred disguises, its noble powers of silence and self-control. It was a fair-written, open book; only, to read it clearly, you must come from its own country, and understand the same language.

For the rest, John was decidedly like the “David” whose name I still gave him now and then–“a goodly person;” tall, well-built, and strong. “The glory of a young man is his strength;” and so I used often to think, when I looked at him. He always dressed with extreme simplicity; generally in grey, he was fond of grey; and in something of our Quaker fashion. On this day, I remember, I noticed an especial carefulness of attire, at his age neither unnatural nor unbecoming. His well-fitting coat and long-flapped vest, garnished with the snowiest of lawn frills and ruffles; his knee-breeches, black silk hose, and shoes adorned with the largest and brightest of steel buckles, made up a costume, which, quaint as it would now appear, still is, to my mind, the most suitable and graceful that a young man can wear. I never see any young men now who come at all near the picture which still remains in my mind’s eye of John Halifax as he looked that day.

Once, with the natural sensitiveness of youth, especially of youth that has struggled up through so many opposing circumstances as his had done, he noticed my glance.

“Anything amiss about me, Phineas? You see I am not much used to holidays and holiday clothes.”

“I have nothing to say against either you or your clothes,” replied I, smiling.

“That’s all right; I beg to state, it is entirely in honour of you and of Enderley that I have slipped off my tan-yard husk, and put on the gentleman.”

“You couldn’t do that, John. You couldn’t put on what you were born with.”

He laughed–but I think he was pleased.

We had now come into a hilly region. John leaped out and gained the top of the steep road long before the post-chaise did. I watched him standing, balancing in his hands the riding-whip which had replaced the everlasting rose-switch, or willow-wand, of his boyhood. His figure was outlined sharply against the sky, his head thrown backward a little, as he gazed, evidently with the keenest zest, on the breezy flat before him. His hair–a little darker than it used to be, but of the true Saxon colour still, and curly as ever–was blown about by the wind, under his broad hat. His whole appearance was full of life, health, energy, and enjoyment.

I thought any father might have been proud of such a son, any sister of such a brother, any young girl of such a lover. Ay, that last tie, the only one of the three that was possible to him–I wondered how long it would be before times changed, and I ceased to be the only one who was proud of him.

We drove on a little further, and came to the chief landmark of the high moorland–a quaint hostelry, called the “Bear.” Bruin swung aloft pole in hand, brown and fierce, on an old-fashioned sign, as he and his progenitors had probably swung for two centuries or more.

“Is this Enderley?” I asked.

“Not quite, but near it. You never saw the sea? Well, from this point I can show you something very like it. Do you see that gleaming bit in the landscape far away? That’s water–that’s our very own Severn, swelled to an estuary. But you must imagine the estuary–you can only get that tiny peep of water, glittering like a great diamond that some young Titaness has flung out of her necklace down among the hills.”

“David, you are actually growing poetical.”

“Am I? Well, I do feel rather strange to-day–crazy like; a high wind always sends me half crazy with delight. Did you ever feel such a breeze? And there’s something so gloriously free in this high level common–as flat as if my Titaness had found a little Mont Blanc, and amused herself with patting it down like a dough-cake.”

“A very culinary goddess.”

“Yes! but a goddess after all. And her dough-cake, her mushroom, her flattened Mont Blanc, is very fine. What a broad green sweep– nothing but sky and common, common and sky. This is Enderley Flat. We shall come to its edge soon, where it drops abruptly into such a pretty valley. There, look down–that’s the church. We are on a level with the top of its tower. Take care, my lad,”–to the post-boy, who was crossing with difficulty the literally “pathless waste.”–“Don’t lurch us into the quarry-pits, or topple us at once down the slope, where we shall roll over and over–facilis descensus Averni–and lodge in Mrs. Tod’s garden hedge.”

“Mrs. Tod would feel flattered if she knew Latin. You don’t look upon our future habitation as a sort of Avernus?”

John laughed merrily. “No, as I told you before, I like Enderley Hill. I can’t tell why, but I like it. It seems as if I had known the place before. I feel as if we were going to have great happiness here.”

And as he spoke, his unwonted buoyancy softened into a quietness of manner more befitting that word “happiness.” Strange word! hardly in my vocabulary. Yet, when he uttered it, I seemed to understand it and to be content.

We wound a little way down the slope, and came in front of Rose Cottage. It was well named. I never in my life had seen such a bush of bloom. They hung in clusters–those roses–a dozen in a group; pressing their pinky cheeks together in a mass of family fragrance, pushing in at the parlour window, climbing up even to the very attic. There was a yellow jasmine over the porch at one front door, and a woodbine at the other; the cottage had two entrances, each distinct. But the general impression it gave, both as to sight and scent, was of roses–nothing but roses.

“How are you, Mrs. Tod?” as a comely, middle-aged body appeared at the right-hand doorway, dressed sprucely in one of those things Jael called a “coat and jacket,” likewise a red calamanco petticoat tucked up at the pocket-holes.

“I be pretty fair, sir–be you the same? The children ha’ not forgotten you–you see, Mr. Halifax.”

“So much the better!” and he patted two or three little white heads, and tossed the youngest high up in the air. It looked very strange to see John with a child in his arms.

“Don’t ‘ee make more noise than ‘ee can help, my lad,” the good woman said to our post-boy, “because, sir, the sick gentleman bean’t so well again to-day.”

“I am sorry for it. We would not have driven up to the door had we known. Which is his room?”

Mrs. Tod pointed to a window–not on our side of the house, but the other. A hand was just closing the casement and pulling down the blind–a hand which, in the momentary glimpse we had of it, seemed less like a man’s than a woman’s.

When we were settled in the parlour John noticed this fact.

“It was the wife, most likely. Poor thing! how hard to be shut up in-doors on such a summer evening as this!”

It did seem a sad sight–that closed window, outside which was the fresh, balmy air, the sunset, and the roses.

“And how do you like Enderley?” asked John, when, tea being over, I lay and rested, while he sat leaning his elbow on the window-sill, and his cheek against a bunch of those ever-intruding, inquisitive roses.

“It is very, very pretty, and so comfortable–almost like home.”

“I feel as if it were home,” John said, half to himself. “Do you know, I can hardly believe that I have only seen this place once before; it is so familiar. I seem to know quite well that slope of common before the door, with its black dots of furze-bushes. And that wood below; what a clear line its top makes against the yellow sky! There, that high ground to the right; it’s all dusky now, but it is such a view by daylight. And between it and Enderley is the prettiest valley, where the road slopes down just under those chestnut-trees.”

“How well you seem to know the place already.”

“As I tell you, I like it. I hardly ever felt so content before. We will have a happy time, Phineas.”

“Oh, yes!” How–even if I had felt differently–could I say anything but “yes” to him then?

I lay until it grew quite dark, and I could only see a dim shape sitting at the window, instead of John’s known face; then I bade him good-night, and retired. Directly afterwards, I heard him, as I knew he would, dash out of the house, and away up the Flat. In the deep quiet of this lonely spot I could distinguish, for several minutes, the diminishing sound of his footsteps along the loose, stony road; and the notes, clear and shrill, of his whistling. I think it was “Sally in our Alley,” or some such pleasant old tune. At last it faded far off, and I fell into sleep and dreams.

CHAPTER X

“That Mrs. Tod is an extraordinary woman. I repeat it–a most extraordinary woman.”

And leaning his elbows on the table, from which the said extraordinary woman had just removed breakfast, John looked over to me with his own merry brown eyes.

“Wherefore, David?”

“She has a house full of children, yet manages to keep it quiet and her own temper likewise. Astonishing patience! However people attain it who have to do with brats, _I_ can’t imagine.”

“John! that’s mean hypocrisy. I saw you myself half-an-hour ago holding the eldest Tod boy on a refractory donkey, and laughing till you could hardly stand.”

“Did I?” said he, half-ashamed. “Well, it was only to keep the little scamp from making a noise under the windows. And that reminds me of another remarkable virtue in Mrs. Tod–she can hold her tongue.”

“How so?”

“In two whole days she has not communicated to us a single fact concerning our neighbours on the other half of Rose Cottage.”

“Did you want to know?”

John laughingly denied; then allowed that he always had a certain pleasure in eliciting information on men and things.

“The wife being indicated, I suppose, by that very complimentary word ‘thing.’ But what possible interest can you have in either the old gentleman or the old lady?”

“Stop, Phineas: you have a bad habit of jumping at conclusions. And in our great dearth of occupation here, I think it might be all the better for you to take a little interest in your neighbours. So I’ve a great mind to indulge you with an important idea, suggestion, discovery. Harkee, friend!”–and he put on an air of sentimental mystery, not a bad copy of our old acquaintance, Mr. Charles–“what if the–the individual should not be an old lady at all?”

“What! The old gentleman’s wife?”

“Wife? Ahem! more jumping at conclusions. No; let us keep on the safe side, and call her the–individual. In short; the owner of that grey silk gown I saw hanging up in the kitchen. I’ve seen it again.”

“The grey gown! when and where?”

“This morning, early. I walked after it across the Flat, a good way behind, though; for I thought that it–well, let me say SHE–might not like to be watched or followed. She was trotting along very fast, and she carried a little basket–I fancy a basket of eggs.”

“Capital housekeeper! excellent wife!”

“Once more–I have my doubts on that latter fact. She walked a great deal quicker and merrier than any wife ought to walk when her husband is ill!”

I could not help laughing at John’s original notions of conjugal duty.

“Besides, Mrs. Tod always calls her invalid ‘the old gentleman!’ and I don’t believe this was an elderly lady.”

“Nay, old men do sometimes marry young women.”

“Yes, but it is always a pity; and sometimes not quite right. No,”– and I was amused to see how gravely and doggedly John kept to his point–“though this lady did not look like a sylph or a wood-nymph– being neither very small nor very slight, and having a comfortable woollen cloak and hood over the grey silk gown–still, I don’t believe she’s an old woman, or married either.”

“How can you possibly tell? Did you see her face?”

“Of course not,” he answered, rather indignantly. “I should not think it manly to chase a lady as a schoolboy does a butterfly, for the mere gratification of staring at her. I stayed on the top of the Flat till she had gone indoors.”

“Into Rose Cottage?”

“Why–yes.”

“She had, doubtless, gone to fetch new-laid eggs for her–I mean for the sick gentleman’s breakfast. Kind soul!”

“You may jest, Phineas, but I think she is a kind soul. On her way home I saw her stop twice; once to speak to an old woman who was gathering sticks; and again, to scold a lad for thrashing a donkey.”

“Did you hear her?”

“No; but I judge from the lad’s penitent face as I passed him. I am sure she had been scolding him.”

“Then she’s not young, depend upon it. Your beautiful young creatures never scold.”

“I’m not so sure of that,” said John, meditatively. “For my part, I should rather not cheat myself, or be cheated after that manner. Perfection is impossible. Better see the young woman as she really is, bad and good together.”

“The young woman! The fair divinity, you mean!”

“No;” shutting his mouth over the negative in his firm way–“I strongly object to divinities. How unpleasant it would be to woo an angel of perfection, and find her out at last to be only–only Mrs.– “

“Halifax,” suggested I; at which he laughed, slightly colouring.

“But how woeful must be our dearth of subjects, when we talk such nonsense as this! What suggested it?”

“Your friend in the grey gown, I suppose.”

“Requiescat in Pace! May she enjoy her eggs! And now I must go saddle the brown mare, and be off to Norton Bury. A lovely day for a ride. How I shall dash along!”

He rose up cheerily. It was like morning sunshine only to see his face. No morbid follies had ever tainted his healthy nature, whatsoever romance was there–and never was there a thoroughly noble nature without some romance in it. But it lay deep down, calm and unawakened. His heart was as light and free as air.

Stooping over my easy chair, he wheeled it to the window, in sight of the pleasant view.

“Now, Phineas, what more books do you want? You’ll take a walk before dinner? You’ll not be moping?”

No; why should I, who knew I had always, whether absent or present, the blessing, the infinite blessing, of being first in his thoughts and cares? Who, whether he expressed it or not–the best things never are expressed or expressible–knew by a thousand little daily acts like these, the depth and tenderness of his friendship, his brotherly love for me. As yet, I had it all. And God, who knows how little else I had, will pardon, if in my unspeakable thankfulness lurked a taint of selfish joy in my sole possession of such a priceless boon.

He lingered about, making me “all right,” as he called it, and planning out my solitary day. With much merriment, too, for we were the gayest couple of young bachelors, when, as John said, “the duties of our responsible position” would allow.

“Responsible position! It’s our good landlady who ought to talk about that. With two sets of lodgers, a husband, and an indefinite number of children. There’s one of them got into mischief at last. Hark!”

“It’s Jack, my namesake. Bless my life! I knew he would come to grief with that donkey. Hey, lad! never mind. Get up again.”

But soon he perceived that the accident was more serious; and disappeared like a shot, leaping out through the open window. The next minute I saw him carrying in the unlucky Jack, who was bleeding from a cut in the forehead, and screaming vociferously.

“Don’t be frightened, Mrs. Tod; it is very slight–I saw it done. Jack, my lad!–be a man, and never mind it. Don’t scream so; you alarm your mother.”

But as soon as the good woman was satisfied that there was no real cause for terror, hers changed into hearty wrath against Jack for his carelessness, and for giving so much trouble to the gentleman.

“But he be always getting into mischief, sir–that boy. Three months back, the very day Mr. March came, he got playing with the carriage-horse, and it kicked him and broke his arm. A deal he cares: he be just as sprack as ever. As I say to Tod–it bean’t no use fretting over that boy.”

“Have patience,” answered John, who had again carried the unfortunate young scapegrace from our parlour into Mrs. Tod’s kitchen–the centre room of the cottage; and was trying to divert the torrent of maternal indignation, while he helped her to plaster up the still ugly looking wound. “Come, forgive the lad. He will be more sorry afterwards than if you had punished him.”

“Do’ee think so?” said the woman, as, struck either by the words, the manner, or the tone, she looked up straight at him. “Do’ee really think so, Mr. Halifax?”

“I am sure of it. Nothing makes one so good as being forgiven when one has been naughty. Isn’t it so, Jack, my namesake?”

“Jack ought to be proud o’ that, sir,” said the mother, respectfully; “and there’s some sense in what you say, too. You talk like my man does, o’ Sundays. Tod be a Scotchman, Mr. Halifax; and they’re good folks, the Scotch, and read their Bibles hard. There’s a deal about forgiving in the Bible; isn’t there, sir?”

“Exactly,” John answered, smiling. “And so, Jack, you’re safe this time; only you must not disobey your mother again, for the sake of donkeys or anything else.”

“No, sir–thank’ee, sir,” sobbed Jack, humbly. “You be a gentleman– Mr. March bean’t–he said it served me right for getting under his horses.”

“Hold thy tongue!” said Jack’s mother, sharply; for the latch of the opposite door was just then lifted, and a lady stood there.

“Mrs. Tod; my father says–“

Seeing strangers, the lady paused. At the sound of her voice–a pleasant voice, though somewhat quick and decided in tone–John and I both involuntarily turned. We felt awkward! doubtful whether to stay or retire abruptly. She saved us the choice.

“Mrs. Tod, my father will take his soup at eleven. You will remember?”

“Yes, Miss March.”

Upon which, Miss March shut the door at once, and vanished.

She wore a grey silken gown. I glanced at John, but he did not see me, his eyes were fixed on the door, which had disclosed and concealed the momentary picture. Its momentariness impressed it the more vividly on my memory–I have it there still.

A girl, in early but not precocious maturity, rather tall, of a figure built more for activity and energy than the mere fragility of sylph-like grace: dark-complexioned, dark-eyed, dark-haired–the whole colouring being of that soft darkness of tone which gives a sense of something at once warm and tender, strong and womanly. Thorough woman she seemed–not a bit of the angel about her. Scarcely beautiful; and “pretty” would have been the very last word to have applied to her; but there was around her an atmosphere of freshness, health, and youth, pleasant as a breeze in spring.

For her attire, it was that notable grey silk gown–very simply made, with no fripperies or fandangos of any sort–reaching up to her throat and down to her wrists, where it had some kind of trimming of white fur, which made the skin beneath show exquisitely delicate.

“That is Miss March,” said our landlady, when she had disappeared.

“Is it?” said John, removing his eyes from the shut door.

“She be very sensible-like, for a young body of seventeen; more sensible and pleasanter than her father, who is always ailing, and always grumbling. Poor gentleman!–most like he can’t help it. But it be terrible hard for the daughter–bean’t it, sir?”

“Very,” said John. His laconism was extraordinary.

Still he kept standing by the kitchen-table, waiting till the last bandage had been sewn on Jack’s cut forehead, and even some minutes after his protege had begun playing about as usual. It was I who had to suggest that we should not intrude in Mrs. Tod’s kitchen any longer.

“No–certainly not. Come, Phineas. Mrs. Tod, I hope our presence did not inconvenience–the young lady?”

“Bless your heart, sir! nothing ever inconveniences she. There bean’t a pleasanter young body alive. She’ll often come into this kitchen–just as you did, gentlemen, and very happy to see you always,” added Mrs. Tod, curtseying. “When Mr. March is asleep she’ll come and sit for half an hour, talking to Tod and me; and playing with the baby–“

Here, probably at sound of its name, the individual alluded to set up, from its cradle in the corner, such a terrific squall, that we young men beat a precipitate retreat.

“So, John, your grey gown is discovered at last. She’s young, certainly–but not exactly a beauty.”

“I never said she was.”

“A pleasant person, though; hearty, cheerful-looking, and strong. I can easily imagine her trotting over the common with her basket of eggs–chatting to the old woman, and scolding the naughty boy.”

“Don’t make fun of her. She must have a hard life with her old father.”

Of course, seeing him take it up so seriously, I jested no more.

“By-the-by, did not the father’s name strike you? MARCH–suppose it should turn out to be the very Mr. March you pulled out of Severn five years ago. What a romantic conjuncture of circumstances?”

“Nonsense,” said John, quickly–more quickly than he usually spoke to me; then came back to wish me a kind goodbye. “Take care of yourself, old fellow. It will be nightfall before I am back from Norton Bury.”

I watched him mount, and ride slowly down the bit of common–turning once to look back at Rose Cottage, ere he finally disappeared between the chestnut trees: a goodly sight–for he was an admirable horseman.

When he was gone, I, glancing lazily up at Mr. March’s window, saw a hand, and I fancied a white-furred wrist, pulling down the blind. It amused me to think Miss March might possibly have been watching him likewise.

I spent the whole long day alone in the cottage parlour, chiefly meditating; though more than once friendly Mrs. Tod broke in upon my solitude. She treated me in a motherly, free-and-easy way: not half so deferentially as she treated John Halifax.

The sun had gone down over Nunnely Hill, behind the four tall Italian poplars, which stood on the border of our bit of wilderness–three together and one apart. They were our landmarks–and skymarks too– for the first sunbeam coming across the common struck their tops of a morning, and the broad western glimmer showed their forms distinctly until far in the night. They were just near enough for me to hear their faint rustling in windy weather; on calm days they stood up straight against the sky, like memorial columns. They were friends of mine–those four poplars; sometimes they almost seemed alive. We made acquaintance on this first night, when I sat watching for John; and we kept up the friendship ever afterwards.

It was nine o’clock before I heard the old mare’s hoofs clattering up the road: joyfully I ran out.

David was not quite his youthful, gay self that night; not quite, as he expressed it, “the David of the sheep-folds.” He was very tired, and had what he called “the tan-yard feeling,” the oppression of business cares.

“Times are hard,” said he, when we had finally shut out the starlight, and Mrs. Tod had lit candles, bade us good-night in her free, independent way, and “hoped Mr. Halifax had everything he wanted.” She always seemed to consider him the head of our little menage.

“The times are very hard,” repeated John, thoughtfully. “I don’t see how your father can rightly be left with so many anxieties on his shoulders. I must manage to get to Norton Bury at least five days a week. You will have enough of solitude, I fear.”

“And you will have little enough of the pleasant country life you planned, and which you seem so to delight in.”

“Never mind–perhaps it’s good for me. I have a life of hard work before me, and can’t afford to get used to too much pleasure. But we’ll make the most of every bit of time we have. How have you felt to-day? Strong?”

“Very strong. Now what would you like us to do tomorrow?”

“I want to show you the common in early morning–the view there is so lovely.”

“Of Nature, or human nature?”

He half smiled, though only at my mischievousness. I could see it did not affect him in the least. “Nay, I know what you mean; but I had forgotten her, or, if not absolutely forgotten, she was not in my mind just then. We will go another way, as indeed I had intended: it might annoy the young lady, our meeting her again.”

His grave, easy manner of treating and dismissing the subject was a tacit reproach to me. I let the matter drop; we had much more serious topics afloat than gossip about our neighbours.

At seven next morning we were out on the Flat.

“I’m not going to let you stand here in the dews, Phineas. Come a little farther on, to my terrace, as I call it. There’s a panorama!”

It was indeed. All around the high flat a valley lay, like a moat, or as if some broad river had been dried up in its course, and, century after century, gradually converted into meadow, woodland, and town. For a little white town sat demurely at the bottom of the hollow, and a score or two of white cottages scattered themselves from this small nucleus of civilisation over the opposite bank of this imaginary river, which was now a lovely hill-side. Gorges, purple with shadow, yellow corn-fields, and dark clumps of woodland dressed this broad hill-side in many colours; its highest point, Nunnely Hill, forming the horizon where last night I had seen the sun go down, and which now was tinted with the tenderest western morning grey.

“Do you like this, Phineas? I do, very much. A dear, smiling, English valley, holding many a little nest of an English home. Fancy being patriarch over such a region, having the whole valley in one’s hand, to do good to, or ill. You can’t think what primitive people they are hereabouts–descendants from an old colony of Flemish cloth-weavers: they keep to the trade. Down in the valley–if one could see through the beech wood–is the grand support of the neighbourhood, a large cloth mill!”

“That’s quite in your line, John;” and I saw his face brighten up as it had done when, as a boy, he had talked to me about his machinery. “What has become of that wonderful little loom you made?”

“Oh! I have it still. But this is such a fine cloth-mill!–I have been all over it. If the owner would put aside his old Flemish stolidity! I do believe he and his ancestors have gone on in the same way, and with almost the same machinery, ever since Queen Elizabeth’s time. Now, just one or two of our modern improvements, such as–but I forget, you never could understand mechanics.”

“You can, though. Explain clearly, and I’ll try my best.”

He did so, and so did I. I think he even managed to knock something of the matter into my stupid head, where it remained–for ten minutes! Much longer remained the impression of his energetic talk– his clear-headed way of putting before another what he understood so well himself. I marvelled how he had gained all his information.

“Oh! it’s easy enough, when one has a natural propensity for catching hold of facts; and then, you know, I always had a weakness for machinery; I could stand for an hour watching a mill at work, especially if it’s worked by a great water-wheel.”

“Would you like to be a mill-owner?”

“Shouldn’t I!”–with a sunshiny flash, which soon clouded over. “However, ’tis idle talking; one cannot choose one’s calling–at least, very few can. After all, it isn’t the trade that signifies– it’s the man. I’m a tanner, and a capital tanner I intend to be. By-the-by, I wonder if Mrs. Tod, who talks so much about ‘gentlefolk,’ knows that latter fact about you and me?”

“I think not; I hope not. Oh, David! this one month at least let us get rid of the tan-yard.”

For I hated it more than ever now, in our quiet, free, Arcadian life; the very thought of it was insupportable, not only for myself, but for John.

He gently blamed me, yet, I think, he involuntarily felt much as I did, if he would have allowed himself so to feel.

“Who would guess now that I who stand here, delighting myself in this fresh air and pleasant view, this dewy common, all thick with flowers–what a pretty blue cluster that is at your foot, Phineas!– who would guess that all yesterday I had been stirring up tan-pits, handling raw hides? Faugh! I wonder the little harebells don’t sicken in these, my hands–such ugly hands, too!”

“Nonsense, John! they’re not so bad, indeed; and if they were, what does it matter?”

“You are right; lad; it does not matter. They have done me good service, and will yet, though they were not made for carrying nosegays.”

“There is somebody besides yourself plucking posies on the Flat. See, how large the figure looks against the sky. It might be your Titaness, John–

‘Like Proserpina gathering flowers, Herself the fairest–‘

— no, not fairest; for I declare she looks very like your friend Grey-gown–I beg her pardon–Miss March.”

“It is she,” said John, so indifferently that I suspect that fact had presented itself to him for at least two minutes before I found it out.

“There’s certainly a fatality about your meeting her.”

“Not the least. She has this morning taken her walk in a different direction, as I did; and we both chanced again to hit upon the same,” answered John, gravely and explanatorily. “Come away down the slope. We must not intrude upon a lady’s enjoyments.”

He carried me off, much against my will, for I had a great wish to see again that fresh young face, so earnest, cheerful, and good. Also, as I laboured in vain to convince my companion, the said face indicated an independent dignity which would doubtless make its owner perfectly indifferent whether her solitary walk were crossed by two gentlemen or two hundred.

John agreed to this; nevertheless, he was inexorable. And, since he was “a man of the world”–having, in his journeys up and down the country for my father, occasionally fallen into “polite” society–I yielded the point to him and submitted to his larger experience of good breeding.

However, Fate, kinder than he, took the knot of etiquette into her own hands, and broke it.

Close to the cottage door, our two paths converging, and probably our breakfast-hours likewise, brought us suddenly face to face with Miss March.

She saw us, and we had a distinct sight of her.

I was right: we and our contiguity were not of the smallest importance to Miss March. Her fresh morning roses did not deepen, nor her eyes droop, as she looked for a moment at us both–a quiet, maidenly look of mere observation. Of course no recognition passed; but there was a merry dimple beside her mouth, as if she quite well knew who we were, and owned to a little harmless feminine curiosity in observing us.

She had to pass our door, where stood Mrs. Tod and the baby. It stretched out its little arms to come to her, with that pretty, babyish gesture which I suppose no woman can resist. Miss March could not. She stopped, and began tossing up the child.

Truly, they made a pleasant picture, the two–she with her hooded cloak dropping off, showing her graceful shape, and her dark-brown hair, all gathered up in a mass of curls at the top of her head, as the fashion then was. As she stood, with her eyes sparkling, and the young blood flushing through her clear brunette cheeks, I was not sure whether I had not judged too hastily in calling her “no beauty.”

Probably, by his look, John thought the same.

She stood right before our wicket-gate; but she had evidently quite forgotten us, so happy was she with Mrs. Tod’s bonny boy, until the landlady made some remark about “letting the gentlemen by.” Then, with a slight start, drawing her hood back over her head, the young lady stepped aside.

In passing her, John raised his eyes, as was natural enough. For me, I could hardly take mine from her, such a pleasant creature was she to behold. She half smiled–he bowed, which she returned, courteously, and we both went in-doors. I told him this was a good beginning of acquaintance with our neighbour.

“Not at all, no acqaintance; a mere civility between two people living under the same roof. It will never be more.”

“Probably not.”

I am afraid John was disappointed at my “probably.” I am afraid that when he stood at our window, contemplating the little group which filled up our wicket-gate, he missed some one out of the three– which, I suspect, was neither Mrs. Tod nor yet the baby.

“I like her face very much better now, David. Do you?”

It was a very curious fact, which I never noticed till afterwards, that though there had been some lapse of time before I hazarded this remark, we both intuitively supplied the noun to that indefinite personal pronoun.

“A good–nay, a noble face; though still, with those irregular features, I can’t–really I can’t–call her beautiful.”

“Nor I.”

“She bowed with remarkable grace, too. I think, John, for the first time in our lives, we may say we have seen a LADY.”

“Most certainly a lady.”

“Nay, I only meant that, girl as she is, she is evidently accustomed to what is called ‘society.’ Which makes it the more likely that her father is the Mr. March who was cousin to the Brithwoods. An odd coincidence.”

“A very odd coincidence.”

After which brief reply John relapsed into taciturnity.

More than once that morning we recurred to the subject of our neighbours–that is, I did–but John was rather saturnine and uncommunicative. Nay, when, as Mrs. Tod was removing the breakfast, I ventured to ask her a harmless question or two–who Mr. March was, and where he came from?–I was abruptly reproved, the very minute our good landlady had shut the door, for my tendency to “gossip.”

At which I only laughed, and reminded him that he had ingeniously scolded me after, not before, I had gained the desired information– namely, that Mr. March was a gentleman of independent property–that he had no friends hereabouts, and that he usually lived in Wales.

“He cannot be our Mr. March, then.”

“No,” said John, with an air of great relief.

I was amused to see how seriously he took such a trifle; ay, many a time that day I laughed at him for evincing such great sympathy over our neighbours, and especially–which was plain enough to see, though he doubtless believed he entirely disguised it–for that interest which a young man of twenty would naturally take in a very charming and personable young woman. Ay, naturally, as I said to myself, for I admired her too, extremely.

It seems strange now to call to mind that morning, and our light-hearted jests about Miss March. Strange that Destiny should often come thus, creeping like a child to our very doors; we hardly notice it, or send it away with a laugh; it comes so naturally, so simply, so accidentally, as it were, that we recognise it not. We cannot believe that the baby intruder is in reality the king of our fortunes; the ruler of our lives. But so it is continually; and since IT IS, it must be right.

We finished the morning by reading Shakspeare–Romeo and Juliet–at which the old folio seemed naturally to open. There is a time–a sweet time, too, though it does not last–when to every young mind the play of plays, the poem of poems, is Romeo and Juliet. We were at that phase now.

John read it all through to me–not for the first time either; and then, thinking I had fallen asleep, he sat with the book on his knee, gazing out of the open window.

It was a warm summer day–breathless, soundless–a day for quietness and dreams. Sometimes a bee came buzzing among the roses, in and away again, like a happy thought. Nothing else was stirring; not a single bird was to be seen or heard, except that now and then came a coo of the wood-pigeons among the beech-trees–a low, tender voice– reminding one of a mother’s crooning over a cradled child; or of two true lovers standing clasped heart to heart, in the first embrace, which finds not, and needs not, a single word.

John sat listening. What was he thinking about? Why that strange quiver about his mouth?–why that wonderful new glow, that infinite depth of softness in his eyes?

I closed mine. He never knew I saw him. He thought I slept placidly through that half-hour; which seemed to him as brief as a minute. To me it was long–ah, so long! as I lay pondering with an intensity that was actual pain, on what must come some time, and, for all I knew, might even now be coming.

CHAPTER XI

A week slipped by. We had grown familiar with Enderley Hill–at least I had. As for John, he had little enough enjoyment of the pretty spot he had taken such a fancy to, being absent five days out of the seven; riding away when the morning sun had slid down to the boles of my four poplars, and never coming home till Venus peeped out over their heads at night. It was hard for him; but he bore the disappointment well.

With me one day went by just like another. In the mornings I crept out, climbed the hill behind Rose Cottage garden, and there lay a little under the verge of the Flat, in a sunny shelter, watching the ants running in and out of the numerous ant-hills there; or else I turned my observation to the short velvet herbage that grew everywhere hereabouts; for the common, so far from being barren, was a perfect sheet of greenest, softest turf, sowed with minute and rare flowers. Often a square foot of ground presented me with enough of beauty and variety in colour and form to criticise and contemplate for a full hour.

My human interests were not extensive. Sometimes the Enderley villagers, or the Tod children, who were a grade above these, and decidedly “respectable,” would appear and have a game of play at the foot of the slope, their laughter rising up to where I lay. Or some old woman would come with her pails to the spring below, a curious and very old stone well, to which the cattle from the common often rushed down past me in bevies, and stood knee-deep, their mouths making glancing circles in the water as they drank.

Being out of doors almost all day, I saw very little of the inhabitants of our cottage. Once or twice a lady and gentleman passed, creeping at the foot of the slope so slowly, that I felt sure it must be Mr. March and his daughter. He was tall, with grey hair; I was not near enough to distinguish his features. She walked on the further side, supporting him with her arm. Her comfortable morning hood was put off, and she had on her head that ugly, stiff thing which ladies had lately taken to wearing, and which, Jael said, was called a “bonnet.”

Except on these two occasions, I had no opportunity of making any observations on the manners and customs of our neighbours. Occasionally Mrs. Tod mentioned them in her social chatter, while laying the cloth; but it was always in the most cursory and trivial way, such as “Miss March having begged that the children might be kept quiet–Mrs. Tod hoped their noise didn’t disturb ME? but Mr. March was such a very fidgety gentleman–so particular in his dress, too–Why, Miss March had to iron his cravats with her own hands. Besides, if there was a pin awry in her dress he did make such a fuss–and, really, such an active, busy young lady couldn’t look always as if she came trim out of a band-box. Mr. March wanted so much waiting on, he seemed to fancy he still had his big house in Wales, and his seven servants.”

Mrs. Tod conversed as if she took it for granted I was fully acquainted with all the prior history of her inmates, or any others that she mentioned–a habit peculiar to Enderley folk with strangers. It was generally rather convenient, and it saved much listening; but in this case, I would rather have had it broken through. Sometimes I felt strongly inclined to question her; but on consulting John, he gave his veto so decidedly against seeking out people’s private affairs in such an illicit manner that I felt quite guilty, and began to doubt whether my sickly, useless, dreaming life, was not inclining me to curiosity, gossip, and other small vices which we are accustomed–I know not why–to insult the other sex by describing as “womanish.”

As I have said, the two cottages were built distinct, so that we could have neither sound nor sight of our neighbours, save upon the neutral ground of Mrs. Tod’s kitchen; where, however I might have felt inclined to venture, John’s prohibition stopped me entirely.

Thus–save the two days when he was at home, when he put me on his mare’s back, and led me far away, over common, and valley, and hill, for miles, only coming back at twilight–save those two blithe days, I spent the week in dignified solitude, and was very thankful for Sunday.

We determined to make it a long, lovely, country Sunday; so we began it at six a.m. John took me a new walk across the common, where–he said, in answer to my question–we were quite certain NOT to meet Miss March.

“Do you experimentalize on the subject, that you calculate her paths with such nicety? Pray, have you ever met her again, for I know you have been out most mornings?”

“Morning is the only time I have for walking, you know, Phineas.”

“Ah, true! You have little pleasure at Enderley. I almost wish we could go home.”

“Don’t think of such a thing. It is doing you a world of good. Indeed, we must not, on any account, go home.”

I know, and knew then, that his anxiety was in earnest; that whatever other thoughts might lie underneath, the sincere thought of me was the one uppermost in his mind.

“Well, we’ll stay–that is, if you are happy, John.”

“Thoroughly happy; I like the dashing rides to Norton Bury. Above all, I like coming back. The minute I begin to climb Enderley Hill, the tan-yard, and all belonging to it, drops off like an incubus, and I wake into free, beautiful life. Now, Phineas, confess; is not this common a lovely place, especially of a morning?”

“Ay,” said I, smiling at his energy. “But you did not tell me whether you had met Miss March again.”

“She has never once seen me.”

“But you have seen her? Answer honestly.”

“Why should I not?–Yes, I have seen her–once or twice or so–but never in any way that could annoy her.”

“That explains why you have become so well acquainted with the direction of her walks?”

He coloured deeply. “I hope, Phineas, you do not think that–that in any way I should intrude on or offend a lady?”

“Nay, don’t take it so seriously–indeed, I meant nothing of the kind. It would be quite natural if a young man like you did use some pains to look at such a ‘cunning piece of Nature’s handiwork’ as that apple-cheeked girl of seventeen.”

“Russet apple. She is brown, you know–a real ‘nut-brown mayde,'” said John, recovering his gay humour. “Certainly, I like to look at her. I have seen many a face that was more good-looking–never one that looked half so good.”

“Sententious that;” yet I could not smile–he spoke with such earnestness. Besides, it was the truth. I myself would have walked half-way across the common any day for a glance at Miss March. Why not he?

“But, John, you never told me that you had seen her again!”

“Because you never asked me.”

We were silent. Silent until we had walked along the whole length of a Roman encampment, the most perfect of the various fosses that seamed the flat–tokens of many a battle fought on such capital battleground, and which John had this morning especially brought me to look at.

“Yes,” I said at last, putting the ending affirmative to a long train of thought, which was certainly not about Roman encampments; “yes, it is quite natural that you should admire her. It would even be quite natural, and not unlikely either, if she–“

“Pshaw!” interrupted he. “What nonsense you are talking! Impossible!” and setting his foot sharply upon a loose stone, he kicked it down into the ditch, where probably many a dead Roman had fallen before it in ages gone by.

The impetuous gesture–the energetic “impossible,” struck me less than the quickness with which his mind had worked out my unexpressed thought–carrying it to a greater length than I myself had ever contemplated.

“Truly, no possibilities or impossibilities of THAT sort ever entered my head. I only thought you might admire her, and be unsettled thereby as young men are when they take fancies. That would grieve me very much, John.”

“Don’t let it then? Why, I have only seen her five times; I never spoke to her in my life, and most probably never shall do. Could any one be in a safer position? Besides,” and his tone changed to extreme gravity, “I have too many worldly cares to think of; I can’t afford the harmless little amusement of falling in love–so be easy, Phineas.”

I smiled; and we began a discussion on camps and fosses, vallum and praetorium; the Danes, Saxons, and Normans; which, doubtless, we carried on to a most learned length: but at this distance of time, and indeed the very day after, I plead guilty to having forgotten all about it.

That long, quiet Sunday, when, I remember, the sun never came out all day, but the whole earth and sky melted together in a soft, grey haze; when we lay on the common and heard church-bells ringing, some distant, some near; and, after all was quiet, talked our own old sabbath talks, of this world and the world to come; when, towards twilight, we went down into the beech-wood below the house, and sat idly there among the pleasant-smelling ferns; when, from the morning to the evening, he devoted himself altogether to my comfort and amusement–to perfect which required of him no harder duty than to be near me always;–that Sunday was the last I ever had David altogether for my own–my very own.

It was natural, it was just, it was right. God forbid that in any way I should have murmured.

About ten o’clock–just as he was luring me out to see how grand the common looked under the black night, and we were wondering whether or no the household were in bed–Mrs. Tod came mysteriously into the parlour and shut the door after her. Her round, fresh face looked somewhat troubled.

“Mr. Halifax, might I speak a word to ‘ee, sir?”

“With pleasure. Sit down, Mrs. Tod. There’s nothing wrong with your children?”

“No, I thank’ee. You are very kind, sir. No, it be about that poor Miss March.”

I could see John’s fingers twitch over the chair he was leaning on. “I hope–” he began, and stopped.

“Her father is dreadful bad to-night, and it’s a good seven-mile walk to the doctor’s at S—-; and Miss March says–that is, she don’t, for I bean’t going to tell her a word about it–but I think, Mr. Halifax, if I might make so bold, it would be a great kindness in a young gentleman like you to lend Tod your mare to ride over and fetch the doctor.”

“I will, gladly. At once?”

“Tod bean’t come in yet.”

“He shall have the mare with pleasure. Tell Miss March so–I mean, do not tell her, of course. It was very right of you to come to us in this way, Mrs. Tod. Really, it would be almost a treat to be ill in your house–you are so kind.”

“Thank’ee, Mr. Halifax,” said the honest landlady, greatly delighted. “But a body couldn’t help doing anything for Miss March. You would think so yourself, if you only knew her.”

“No doubt,” returned John, more politely than warmly, I fancied, as he closed the door after the retreating figure of Mrs. Tod. But when he came and sat down again I saw he was rather thoughtful. He turned the books restlessly, one after the other, and could not settle to anything. To all my speculations about our sick neighbour, and our pearl of kind-hearted landladies, he only replied in monosyllables; at last he started up and said,–

“Phineas, I think I’ll go myself.”

“Where?”

“To fetch Doctor Brown. If Tod is not come in it would be but a common charity. And I know the way.”

“But the dark night?”