By Birth A Lady Part 28

"I tell you what it is," said Edward viciously; "if I'm to tell this here, I tells it, but I ain't going to be driven wild with vexatious interruptions. Do you both want to know it, or don't you?"

"O yes, please, Mr Eddard, we do indeed," exclaimed the two domestics; "so please go on!"

Thus adjured, and apparently mollified by the respect paid to him, as much as by the stewpan essence, "Mr Eddard" continued: "Well, I shows him into the breakfast-room, and then goes in to missus, who had just come down from Miss Bedford's room; and looking all white and troubled, she goes across the hall, and I opens the door for her, and up comes my gentleman with a rush, catches her hand in his, and kisses it.

"'That's making yourself at home anyhow, young man,' I says to myself, backing-out of the room; and I can't say how it happened, but the corner of the carpet got rucked up, so that I was ever so long before I could get the door shut, and they would keep talking, so that I couldn't help hearing what they said."

"And what did they say?" said cook.

"Ain't I a-coming to it as fast as I can?" said Edward angrily. "What an outrageous hurry you always are in with everything, except getting the dinner ready in time!"

"Now don't be cruel, Mr Eddard," said the housemaid, t.i.ttering, when "Mr Eddard" himself condescended to laugh at what our Scotch brethren would call his own "wut," to the great discomfiture of cook, who wanted to fire-up and give them a bit of her mind, but did not dare, for fear of losing the end of the coveted history. The consequence of her reticence, though, was that "Mr Eddard" grew exceedingly amiable, and went on with his account.

"That door being shut," he said, with a grim smile, which was meant to be pleasant, but was the very reverse, "I didn't want to go; for I put it to you now, under the circ.u.mstances, was it likely as he'd stay long?"

"Of course not!" said cook.

"Not likely!" said the housemaid.

"Well, then," continued Edward, "where was the use of me going back to my pantry only to be called directly? So I took his hat and brushed it, and when I'd brushed it and set it down, I set to and brushed it again, and so on half a dozen times, while--it was very foolish of them if they didn't want other people to hear--they kept on talking louder and louder.

"'Mr Vining,' says missus, 'I must ask you as a gentleman to come no more.'

"'But, in 'evin's name,' he says, 'what have I done that you should turn upon me like this?'

"'Nothing,' says missus; 'nothing at all. I pity you from the bottom of my heart, as much as I pity that sweet girl; but it cannot be. You must come here no more.'

"'Are you a woman?' he says. 'Have you feeling? Can you form any idea of the pain your words are giving me?'

"'Yes, yes, yes,' says missus. 'Mr Vining, why do you force me to speak? I do not wish to cause trouble, but you drive me to do so.'

"'Speak, then,' he says, quite in another voice, 'unless you wish to drive me mad, or to something worse--' There, I'm blessed," continued Edward, breaking short off in his narrative, and pointing to the cook, "did you ever see such a woman? Why, what are you snivelling about?"

"I--I--I c-c-c-can't help it, Eddard, when I think of what those poor things must be suffering," sobbed cook, with a liberal application of her ap.r.o.n to her eyes.

"Suffer, indeed--such stuff!" said Edward.

"Ah, Eddard," said cook, turning upon him a languishing look, "if I have saved up forty-seven pound ten in the savings bank, I've a heart still, and know what it is for it to bleed when some one says a hard word to me."

The housemaid sniffed.

"I'm a going on," said Edward, who was evidently moved by the culinary lady's remarks.

"'Drive you,' says Mr Vining, 'to speak! Why, stay!' he says excitedly, as if a thought had struck him. 'Why, yes; I'm sure of it.

My father has been here to-day.'

"'He has,' says missus solemnly.

"'It was cowardly and cruel!' cries Mr Vining, quite shouting now, for his monkey was evidently up. 'And pray, madam, what is the result of his visit? There, I can answer it myself: Miss Bedford refuses to see me; you decline to receive me into your house.'

"'Mr Vining,' says missus softly, and I could fancy that she took his hand, 'I grieve for you, as I do for that suffering girl.'

"'What!' cries Mr Vining, 'is she ill? Let me--let me see her--only once--for a minute, dear Mrs Brandon! Pray--on my knees I beg it of you! You cannot be so cruel, so hardhearted, as to refuse!' And then I heard a loud sobbing wail as of a woman crying, and--There, I'm blest if I go on, if you will keep on snivelling. Why, blame the women, you're both on you at it!"

"We--we--we--we--we're--only a-blowin' our noses," sobbed the housemaid.

"Never see such noses!" growled Edward, who then continued:

"Well, directly after, as if in a pa.s.sion, Mr Vining says:

"'Mrs Brandon, this is cruel and harsh. I left you last week with my hopes raised; to-day you dash them to the ground.'

"'Mr Vining--Mr Vining!' she says softly.

"'I tell you this,' he says, shouting again; and hearing his words, you could almost see him stamping up and down the breakfast-room--'I tell you this. Mrs Brandon: the ties of duty are strong, but the ties formed by the heart of a man newly-awakened to love are stronger. To win Ella Bedford, my own love, I will give all--time, hope, everything; I will leave no stone unturned--I will stop at nothing! I see that she has been coerced--that she has been, as it were, cruelly stolen from me by external pressure; and it shall be my task to win her back. I had hoped to have had you on my side; as it is, I must begin my battle by myself. I thank you for your patient hearing of my words; but before I go I tell you this--that _till I learn that, by her own act, she gives herself to another_, I will never cease from my pursuit.'

"The next minute he was in the hall, and I handed him his hat, brushed as he never had it brushed before; when, even then, upset as he was, he puts his hand in his pocket, and pushed something into my fist.

"'Sixpence,' I says to myself, as I shut the door after him, and him a-walking away like mad."

"Sixpence!" echoed the cook.

"Sixpence!" squeaked the housemaid.

"Well, it did feel like it, sutternly," said Edward; "but it was arf a suffrin'."

"But what did he mean by never ceasing from the pursuit till she gave herself to another? Would she give herself to another?" said cook, who was very moist of eye.

"No, I should say not--never!" said the housemaid.

And so said, mentally, Charley Vining as, disappointed and half maddened, he galloped homeward that afternoon; but the day came when, bitterly laughing to himself, he said otherwise, and hummed with aching heart the words of the old song:

"Shall I, wasting in despair, Die because a woman's fair?"

And then he turned over and over in his hand--what?

A wedding-ring!

Volume 2, Chapter XII.

MORE Pa.s.sION AND LITTLE PROGRESS.

"Bai Jove! she's about the most skittish little filly I ever met with in the whole course of my experience," muttered Max Bray; and then he went over mentally the many rebuffs he had encountered. Forbidden Mrs Brandon's house, he had all the same gone over day after day to Laneton, for the purpose of impressing Ella with a sense of the value of his attentions; but still, though he displayed as much effrontery as a London rough, all went against him, and he found that, so far from meeting with a kindly greeting, his appearance was ever the signal for an immediate retreat.

"But you won't tire me--bai Jove, you won't!" said Max. "I've set my mind, and it will keep set."

And still day after day he rode over to Laneton, till not a walk could Ella take without catching sight of his mincing step and gracefully-attired figure; while, in spite of every effort, there were times when she could not avoid his addresses, as he stubbornly persisted in walking by her side.

"Bai Jove! it's of no use for you to harry and worry me," drawled Max to Laura. "I'm getting on as fast as I can."