Antony Gray-Gardener Part 10

And then, suddenly, a memory sprang to life within his soul. He saw again a courtyard set with small round tables and orange trees in green tubs.

He heard his own voice putting a question.

"What is the foundation of friendship?" it asked.

"Trust," came the reply, in the d.u.c.h.essa's voice.

Yet, was her friendship strong enough to trust him in such a matter?

Strong enough not to misunderstand his silence, his--his oddness in the whole business? And yet, was it not something like a confession of weakness of friendship on his own part, to question the endurance of hers? She had said they were friends. Perhaps the very test of the strength of his own friendship was to lie in his trust of the strength of hers. And, at all events, he could write her some kind of a letter, something that would tell her of his utter inability to see her, even though he might not give the smallest hint of what that inability was. At least he could let her perceive it was by no wish of his own that he stayed away.

Hope revived within his heart. On the one hand there would be temporary banishment, truly. But it would be infinitely preferable to life-long exile. A year, after all, was only a year. To him the moments might, nay would, drag on leaden feet; but to her it would be but as other years, and, ordinarily speaking, they speed by at an astonishing rate. He must look to that a.s.surance for comfort. A little odd smile twisted his lips.

What, after all, did a grey year signify to him, as long as its greyness did not touch her. And why should it? The fact of his absence could not possibly bring the same blank to her as it would to him. She might wonder a little, she might even question. But had not she herself spoken of trust?

With the memory of that one word for his encouragement, he took his resolution in both hands and made his decision.

Perhaps, if Antony had attempted to pen his letter to the d.u.c.h.essa before making his decision, he might have hesitated regarding making it. It was, however, not till the evening before he left town to take up his new life, that he attempted to write to her. Then he discovered the extraordinary difficulty of putting into anything like coherent and convincing words the statement he had to make. He drafted at least a dozen attempts, each, to his mind, more unsatisfactory than the last.

Finally he wrote as follows:

"Dear d.u.c.h.essa:

"Since I said good-bye to you at Plymouth, my affairs have undergone unexpected and quite unforeseen changes. As matters stand at present, I shall be remaining in England for some time. I had hoped to see you when you returned from Scotland, but find, deeply to my regret, that I will be unable to do so, for a considerable time at all events. Need I tell you that this is a great disappointment to me? I had been looking forward to seeing you again, and now fate has taken matters out of my hands. When the time comes that I am able to see you, I will write and let you know; and perhaps, if by then you have not forgotten me, you will allow me to do so.

"I would like to thank you for your kindness and comradeship to me during the voyage. Those days will ever remain as a golden memory to me.

"Having in mind your words when we lunched together in the garden of that little hotel at Teneriffe, I dare to inscribe myself,

"Always your friend, "Antony Gray."

It was not the letter he longed to write, yet he dared not write more explicitly. Honour forbade the smallest hint at the strange position in which he found himself; diffidence held him back from writing the words his heart was crying to her. Bald and flat as he felt the letter to be, he could do no better. It must go as it stood. He headed it with the address of his present rooms, giving his landlady instructions to forward all letters to the post office at Byestry.

One letter, bearing a Scottish postmark, alone came for him after his departure. It remained for close on two months on the table of the dingy little hall. Then, fearing lest Antony's receipt of it should betray her own carelessness, Mrs. Dobbin consigned it unopened to the kitchen fire.

CHAPTER X

AN ENGLISH COTTAGE

Kingsleigh is the station for Byestry, which is eight miles from it. It is a small town, not much larger than a mere village, lying, as its name designates, on the sh.o.r.es of the estuary, which runs from the sea up to Kingsleigh. Chorley Old Hall stands on high wooded land, about a mile from the coast, having a view across the estuary, and out to the sea itself.

It was a grey day, with a fine mist of a rain descending, when Antony, with Josephus at his heels, stepped on to Kingsleigh platform. In the road beyond the station, a number of carts and carriages, and a couple of closed buses, were collected. The drivers of the said vehicles stood by the gate through which the pa.s.sengers must pa.s.s, ready to accost those by whom they had been already ordered, or pounce upon likely fares.

"Be yu Michael Field?" demanded a short wiry man, as Antony, carrying an old portmanteau, and followed by Josephus, emerged through the gate.

For a moment Antony stared, amazed. Then he remembered.

"I am," he replied.

"That's gud," responded the man cheerfully. "'It the first nail, so to speak. T'Doctor sent I wi' t'trap. Coom along. Got any more baggage?"

Antony replied in the negative. Three minutes later he was seated in the trap, Josephus at his feet. He turned up the collar of his mackintosh, and pulled down his tweed cap over his eyes.

"Bit moist-like," said the man cheerfully, whipping up his horse.

Antony a.s.sented. He was feeling an amazing sense of amus.e.m.e.nt. The adventurous side of the affair had sprung again to the fore, after a week of business-like detail,--writing letters of instruction to Riffle to carry on with the farm till further notice, an office he was fully qualified to fulfil; making certain arrangements with Lloyd's bank regarding monies to be sent out to him; buying garments suitable for the part he himself was about to play; and having one or two further interviews with Messrs. Parsons and Glieve, in which the absolute necessity of his playing up to his role in every way was further impressed upon him.

The one difficulty that had presented itself to his mind, was his speech.

He spent several half hours conversing with himself in broadest Devonshire, but finally decided that, it being the speech of the natives, he might sooner or later betray himself by some inadvertent lapse. Next he attempted a Colonial accent. James Glieve, however, being consulted on the subject, it was firmly negatived as likely to prove unpopular. In the end he fell back on a strong Irish accent. It came to him readily enough, the nurse of his childhood having hailed from the Emerald Isle. Possibly his actual phraseology would not prove all it might be, but the Devonians were not likely to be much the wiser. Anyhow Antony admired his own prowess in the tongue quite immensely.

"Sure, 'tis the foine country ye have here," quoth he presently, as, mounting a hill, they came out upon a road crossing an expanse of moorland. Gorse bushes bloomed golden against a background of grey sky and atmosphere, seen through a fine veil of rain.

"'Tis gud enuff," said the man laconically. And Antony perceived that the beauties of nature held no particular interest for him.

He looked out at the wide expanses around him. Mist covered the farther distances, but through it, afar off, he fancied he could descry the grey line of the sea. To the right the moorland gave place to a distant stone wall, beyond which was a wheat field; to the left it stretched away into the mist, through which he saw the dim shapes of trees.

The man jerked his head to the left.

"'Tis over yonder is t'old Hall. Yu'm to be under-gardener there I heerd t'Doctor say. What they'll want wi' keeping up t'gardens now I doant knoaw, and t'old Squire gone. Carried off mighty suddint 'e was. Us said as t'journey tu Lunnon ud be the death o' he. Never outside t'doors these fifteen year and more, and then one fine day Doctor takes he oop to Lunnon to see one o' they chaps un calls a speshulist. Why t'speshulist didn't come to he us can't tell. Carried on a stretcher he was from t'carriage to t'train, for all the world like a covered corpse. Next thing Doctor coom home alone, and us hears as t'old Squire be dead. I doant rightly knoaw as who 'twas was the first to tell we, for Doctor, 'e doant like talking o' the business. But there 'tis, and t'Lord only knows who'll have t'old place now, seeing as 'ow 'e never 'ad no wife to bear un a son. Us _heerd_ as 'twould be a chap from foreign parts. 'Twas Jane Ellen from Doctor's as put that around, but us thinks her got the notion in a way her shouldn't, for her's backed out o' the sayin' o't now. Says her never said nowt o' the kind. But her did. 'Twas Jim Morris's wife her told. S'pose Mr. Curtis'll run t'show till t'heir turns oop. 'Twont make much difference to we. He's run it the last ten year and more, and run it _hard_, I tell 'ee that. Doant yu go for to get the wrong side o' Spencer Curtis, I warns 'ee. George Standing afore 'e worn't much to boast on, but Spencer Curtis be a fair flint."

"Will he be the agent?" demanded Antony, as the man paused.

"'Tis what 'e's _called_. 'Tis master he _is_. T'old Squire oughtn't never to have got a chap like 'e to do 'is jobs. 'Tis cast iron 'e is.

And 'twasn't never no use going to Squire for to stand between him and we. 'E'd never set eyes on n.o.body, 'e wouldn't. If I'd my way I'd give every gentry what owns property a taste o' livin' on it same's we. 'E'd know a bit more aboot the fair runnin' o' it then."

Antony started. An idea, quick-born, presented itself before him. Was it possible, was it conceivable, that this very thought had been in the old Squire's mind when he drew up those extraordinary conditions? Antony nearly laughed aloud. Verily it was an absurdity, though one that Nicholas Danver most a.s.suredly could not have guessed. Yet that he--Antony--should require a further year's enlightenment as to the shifts to which the poor were put to make both ends meet, as to the iron hand of agents and over-seers! Truly it was laughable!

He'd had experience enough and to spare,--he smiled grimly to himself,--experience such as an English farm-labourer earning a pound a week, even with a wife and children to keep, and all odds against him, could never in the remotest degree aided by the wildest flights of imagination, conceive. In England water at least is always obtainable.

Antony had visions of the jealous husbanding of a few drops of hot moisture in a sunbaked leather bottle. In England the law at least protects you from bodily ill-treatment at the hands of agent or overseer.

Antony had visions--But he dismissed them. There was a chapter or two in his life which it was not good to recall.

They were descending now, driving between the high banks and hedges of a true Devonshire lane. Primroses starred the banks, though in less profusion than they had been a fortnight earlier; bluebells and pink campion grew among them, and the feathery blossom of the cow-parsley.

Turning to the left at the foot of the lane, the hedge on the right was lower. Over it, and across an expanse of sloping fields dotted here and there with snow-white hawthorn bushes, Antony saw the roofs of houses and cottages, and, beyond them, the sea. It lay grey and tranquil under an equally grey sky. A solitary fishing smack, red-sailed, made a note of colour in the neutral atmosphere of sea and sky. To the right was a gorse-crowned cliff; to the left, and across the estuary, a headland ran far out into the water.

"Byestry," said the man, nodding in the direction of the roofs. "Us doant go down into t'place. Yu'm to have Widow Jenkins's cottage, her as died back tu Christmas. 'Tis a quarter o'mile or so from t'town, and 'twill be that mooch nearer t'old Hall. Yu see yon chimbleys by they three elms yonder? 'Tis Doctor's house. Yu'm tu go there this evenin' aboot seven o'clock 'e bid me tell 'ee. Where was yu working tu last?"

The question came abruptly. For one brief second Antony was non-plussed.

Then he recovered himself.

"'Tis London I've just come from," he replied airily enough. "I've been doing a bit on my own account lately."

"Hmm," replied the man. "I reckon if I'd been workin' my own jobs, I'd not take an under post in a hurry. But yu knoaws your own business best.

T'last chap as was underest gardener oop tu t'Hall got took on by folks living over Exeter way. He boarded wi' t'blacksmith and his wife. Maybe yu'm a married man?"