Catharine Furze Part 4

It was of no use to resist, and she did not scream. She sat down, and his arm relaxed its hold to pick up his pipe which had fallen on the other side. Instantly, without a second's hesitation she leaped up, and, before his heavy bulk could lift itself, she had turned and rushed along the bank. Had she made for the bridge, he would have overtaken her in the lane, but she went the other way. About fifty yards down the stream, and in the direction of Chapel Farm, was a deep hole in the river bed, about five feet wide. On the other side of it there were not more than eighteen inches of water at any point. Catharine knew that hole well, as the haunt of the jack and the perch. She reached it, cleared it at a bound, and alighted on the bit of shingle just beyond it. Her pursuer came up and stared at her silently, with his mouth half open. Just at that moment the instant sound of wheels was heard, and he slowly sauntered back to his barge. Catharine boldly waded over the intervening shallows, and was across just as the cart reached the top of the bridge, but her shoes remained behind her in the mud. It proved to be her father's cart, and to contain Tom, who had been over to Thingleby that morning to see what chance there was of getting any money out of a blacksmith who was largely in Mr. Furze's debt. He saw there was something wrong, and dismounted.

"Why, Miss Catharine, you are all wet! What is the matter?"

"I slipped down."

She could not tell the truth, although usually so straightforward. Tom looked at her inquiringly as if he was not quite sure, but there was something in her face which forbade further investigation.

"You've lost your shoes; you cannot walk home; will you let me give you a lift to Chapel Farm?"

"They do not matter a straw: it is gra.s.s nearly the whole way."

"I'll fish them out, if you will show me where they are."

"Carried down by this time ever so far."

"But you will hurt your feet; it isn't all gra.s.s; you had better get in."

She thought suddenly of the bargee again, and reflected that the barge might still be moored where it was an hour ago.

"Very well, then, I will go."

She essayed to put her foot upon the step, but the mud on her stocking was greasy, and she fell backwards. Tom caught her in his arms, and a strange thrill pa.s.sed through him when he felt that the whole weight of her body rested on him. Many a man there is who can call to mind, across forty years, a silly pa.s.sage like this in his life. His hair has whitened; all pa.s.sion ought long ago to have died out of him; thousands of events of infinitely greater consequence have happened; he has read much in philosophy and religion, and has forgotten it all, and a slip on the ice when skating together, or a stumble on the stair, or the pressure of a hand prolonged just for a second in parting, is felt with its original intensity, and the thought of it drives warm blood once more through the arteries.

"Let me get in first," said Tom, putting some straw on the step.

He got into the cart, and he gently pulled her up, relinquishing her very carefully, and, in fact, not until after his a.s.sistance was no longer needed.

"How _did_ you manage it?"

"You know how these things happen: it was all-over in a minute: how are father and mother?"

"They are very well."

There was a pause for a minute or two.

"Well, how are things going on at Eastthorpe?"

"Oh, pretty well; the building is three parts done. I don't think, Miss Catharine, you'll ever go back to the old spot again."

"What do you mean?"

"I don't think your father and mother will leave the Terrace."

"Very likely," she replied, decisively. "It will be better, perhaps, that they should not. I am sure that whatever they do will be quite right."

"Of course, Miss Catharine, but _I_ shall be sorry. I wish my bedroom could have been built up again between the old walls. In that bedroom you saved my life."

"Rubbish! Even suppose _I_ had done it, as you say, I should have done just the same for my silkworms, and then, somehow when I do a thing on a sudden like that, I always feel as if _I_ had not done it. I am sure I didn't do it."

The last few words were spoken in a strangely different tone, much softer and sweeter.

"I don't quite understand."

"I mean," said Catharine, speaking slowly, as if half surprised at what had occurred to her, and half lost in looking at it--"I mean that I do not a bit reflect at such times upon what I do. It is as if something or somebody took hold of me, and, before I know where I am, the thing is done, and yet there is no something nor somebody--at least, so far as I can see. It is wonderful, for after all it is I who do it."

Tom looked intently at her. She seemed to be taking no notice of him and to be talking to herself. He had never seen her in that mood before, although he had often seen her abstracted and heedless of what was pa.s.sing. In a few moments she recovered herself, and the usual everyday accent returned with an added hardness.

"Here we are at Chapel Farm. Mind you say nothing to father or mother; it will only frighten them."

Mrs. Bellamy came to the gate.

"Lor' bless the child! wherever have you been!"

"Slipped into the water and left my shoes behind me, that's all"; and she ran indoors, jumping from mat to mat, and without even so much as bidding Tom goodbye, who rode home, not thinking much about his business, but lost in a muddle of most contradictory presentations, a constant glimmer of Catharine's ankles, wonderment at her accident--was it all true?--the strange look when she disclaimed the honour of his rescue and expounded her philosophy, and the fall between his shoulders. When he slept, his sleep was usually dreamless, but that night he dreamed as he hardly ever dreamed before. He perpetually saw the foot on the step, and she was slipping into his arms continually, until he awoke with the sun.

CHAPTER V

Catharine went home, or rather to the Terrace, soon afterwards, and found that there was no intention of removing to the High Street, although, notwithstanding their three months' probation in the realms of respectability, Mrs. Colston had not called, and Mrs. Furze was beginning to despair. The separation from the chapel was nearly complete. It had been done by degrees. On wet days Mrs. Furze went to church because it was a little nearer, and Mr. Furze went to chapel; then Mrs. Furze went on fine days, and, after a little interval, Mr. Furze went on a fine day.

A fund had been set going to "restore" the church: the heavy roof was to be removed, and a much lighter and handsomer roof covered with slate was to be subst.i.tuted; the stonework of many of the windows, which the rector declared had begun to show "signs of incipient decay," was to be cut out and replaced with new, so as to make, to use the builder's words, "a good job of it," and a memorial window was to be put in near the great west window with its stained gla.s.s, the Honourable Mr. Eaton having determined upon this mode of commemorating the services of his nephew, Lieutenant Eaton, who had died of dysentery in India, brought on by inattention to tropical rules of eating and drinking, particularly the latter. Oliver Cromwell, it was said, had stabled his horses in the church. This, however, is doubtful, for the quant.i.ty of stable accommodation he must have required throughout the country, to judge from vergers and guidebooks, must have been much larger than his armies would have needed, if they had been entirely composed of cavalry; and the evidence is not strong that his horses were so ubiquitous. It was further affirmed that, during the Cromwellian occupation, the west window was mutilated; but there was also a tradition that, in the days of George the Third, there were complaints of dinginess and want of light, and that part of the stained gla.s.s was removed and sold. Anyhow, there was stained gla.s.s in the Honourable Mr. Eaton's mansion wonderfully like that at Eastthorpe.

It was now proposed to put new stained gla.s.s in the defective lights.

Some of the more advanced of the parishioners, including the parson and the builder, thought the old gla.s.s had better all come out, "the only way to make a good job of it"; but at an archidiaconal visitation the archdeacon protested, and he was allowed to have his own way. Then there was the warming, and this was a great difficulty, because no natural exit for the pipe could be found. At last it was settled to have three stoves, one at the west end of the nave, and one in each transept. With regard to the one in the nave there was no help for it but to bore a hole through the wall. The builder undertook "to give the pipe outside a touch of the Gothic, so that it wouldn't look bad," and as for the other stoves, there were two windows just handy. By cutting out the head of Matthew in one and that of Mark in another, the thing was done, and, as Mrs. Colston observed, "the general confused effect remained the same."

There were one or two other improvements, such as pointing all over outside, also strongly recommended by the builder, and the shifting some of the tombs, and repairing the tracery, so that altogether the sum to be raised was considerable. Mrs. Colston was one of the collectors, and Mrs. Furze called on her after two months' residence in the Terrace, and intimated her wish to subscribe. Mrs. Colston took the money very affably, but still she did not return the visit.

Meanwhile Mrs. Furze was doing everything she could to make herself genteel. The Terrace contained about a dozen houses; the two in the centre were higher than the rest, and above them, flanked by a large scroll at either end, were the words "THE TERRACE," moulded out of the stucco; up to each door was a flight of stone steps; before each front window on the dining-room floor and the floor above was a balcony protected by cast-iron filigree work, and between each house and the road was a little piece of garden surrounded by dwarf wall and arrow-head railings. Mrs. Furze's old furniture had, nearly all, been discarded or sold, and two new carpets had been bought. The one in the dining-room was yellow and chocolate, and the one upstairs in the drawing-room was a lovely rose-pattern, with large full-blown roses nine inches in diameter in blue vases. The heavy chairs had disappeared, and nice light elegant chairs were bought, insufficient, however, for heavy weights, for one of Mr. Furze's affluent customers being brought to the Terrace as a special mark of respect, and sitting down with a flop, as was his wont, smashed the work of art like card-board and went down on the door with a curse, vowing inwardly never again to set foot in Furze's Folly, as he called it. The pictures, too, were all renewed. The "Virgin Mary" and "George the Fourth" went upstairs to the spare bedroom, and some new oleographs, "a rising art," Mrs. Furze was a.s.sured, took their places. They had very large margins, gilt frames, and professed to represent sunsets, sunrises, and full moons, at Tintern, Como, and other places not named, which Mrs.

Furze, in answer to inquiries, always called "the Continent."

Mr. Furze had had a longish walk one morning, and was rather tired. When he came home to dinner he found the house upset by one of its periodical cleanings, and consequently dinner was served upstairs, and not in the half-underground breakfast-room, as it was called, which was the real living-room of the family. Mr. Furze, being late and weary, prolonged his stay at home till nearly four o'clock, and, notwithstanding a rebuke from Mrs. Furze, insisted on smoking his pipe in the dining-room.

Presently he took off his coat and put his feet on a chair, Sunday fashion.

"My dear," said his wife. "I don't want to interfere with your comfort, but don't you think you might give up that practice of sitting in your shirt-sleeves now we have moved?"

"Why because we've moved?" interposed Catharine.

"Catharine, I did not address you; you have no tact, you do not understand."

"Coat doesn't smell so much of smoke," replied Mr. Furze, giving, of course, any reason but the true reason.

"My dear if that is the reason, put on another coat, or, better still, buy a proper coat and a smoking-cap. Nothing could be more appropriate than some of those caps we saw at the restoration bazaar."

"Really, mother, would you like to see father in a velvet jacket and one of those red-ta.s.selled things on his head? I prefer the shirt-sleeves."

"No doubt you do; you are a Furze, every inch of you."

There is no saying to what a height the quarrel would have risen if a double knock had not been heard. A charwoman was in the pa.s.sage with a pail of water and answered the door at once, before she could be cautioned. In an instant she appeared, ap.r.o.n tucked up.