Heriot's Choice Part 60

But will you promise not to shun me again, not as though you hated me, I mean?'

'Hated you! For shame, Richard.'

'Well, then, as though you were afraid of me. You disdained my a.s.sistance just now, you would not let me lift you from your horse. How often have I done so before, and you never repulsed me!'

'You ought not to have noticed it, you ought to have understood,'

returned Ethel, with quivering lips. It was very sweet to be talking to him again if only he would not encroach on his privilege.

'Then let things be between us as they always have been,' he pleaded. 'I have done nothing to forfeit your friendship, have I? I have humbled myself, not you,' with a flavour of bitterness which she could not find it in her heart to resent. 'Let me see you sitting here sometimes in my father's house; such a sight will go far to soothe me. Shall it be so, Ethel?'

'Yes, if you wish it,' she returned, almost humbly.

Her only thought was how she should comfort him. Her womanly eyes read signs of conflict and suffering in the pale, wan face; when she had a.s.sented, he relinquished her hand with a mute clasp of thanks. He looked almost himself when Mildred came back, apologising for her long delay. Had she really been gone half-an-hour--neither of them knew it.

Ethel looked soothed, tranquillised, almost happy, and Richard not graver than his wont.

Mildred was relieved to find things on this agreeable footing, but she was not a little surprised when two days afterwards Richard announced his intention of going up to Kirkleatham, and begged her to accompany him.

'I will promise not to make a fool of myself again; you shall see how well I shall behave,' he said, antic.i.p.ating her remonstrance. 'Don't raise any objection, please, Aunt Milly. I have thought it all over, and I believe I am acting for the best,' and of course Richard had his way.

Ethel's varying colour when she met them testified to her surprise, and for a little while her manner was painfully constrained, but it could not long remain so. Richard seemed determined that she should be at her ease with him. He talked well and freely, only avoiding with the nicest tact any subject that might recall the conversation in the kitchen garden.

Mildred sat by in secret admiration and wonder; the simple woman could make nothing of the young diplomatist. That Richard could talk well on grave subjects was no novelty to her; but never had he proved himself so eloquent; rather terse than fluent, addicted more to correctness than wit, he now ranged lightly over a breadth of subjects, touching gracefully on points on which he knew them to be both interested, with an admirable choice of words that pleased even Ethel's fastidiousness.

Mildred saw that her attention was first attracted, and then that she was insensibly drawn to answer him. She seemed less embarra.s.sed, the old enthusiasm woke. She contradicted him once in her old way, he maintained his opinion with warm persistence;--they disagreed. They were still in the height of the argument when Mildred looked at her watch and said they must be going.

It was Ethel's turn now to proffer hospitality, but to her surprise Richard quietly refused it. He would come again and bid her good-bye, he said gravely, holding her hand; he hoped then that Mr. Trelawny would be at home.

His manner seemed to trouble Ethel. She had stretched out her hand for her garden-hat. It had always been a custom with her to walk down the croft with Mildred, but now she apparently changed her mind, for she replaced it on the peg.

'You are right,' said Richard, quietly, as he watched this little by-play, 'it is far too hot in the crofts, and to-day Aunt Milly has my escort. Old customs are sometimes a bore even to a thorough conservative such as you, Miss Trelawny.'

'I will show you that you are wrong,' returned Ethel, with unusual warmth, as the broad-brimmed hat was in her hand again. There was a pin-point of sarcasm under Richard's smooth speech that grazed her susceptibility.

Perhaps Richard had gained his end, for an odd smile played round his mouth as he walked beside her. He did not seem to notice that she did not address him again, but confined her attention to Mildred. Her cheeks were very pink, possibly from the heat, when she parted from them at the gate, and Richard got only a very fleeting pressure of the hand.

'Richard, I do not know whether to admire or to be afraid of you,' said Mildred, half in jest, as they crossed the road.

A flash of intelligence answered her.

'Did I behave well? It is weary work. Aunt Milly; it will make an old man of me before my time, but she shall reverence me yet,' and his mouth closed with the old determined look she knew so well.

Dr. Heriot had planned a picnic to Hillbeck in honour of Polly's eighteenth birthday, the vicarage party and Mr. Marsden being the only guests.

Hillbeck Wood was a very favourite place of resort on hot summer days.

To-day dinner was to be spread in the deep little glen lying behind an old disused cotton-mill, a large dilapidated building that Polly always declared must be haunted, and to please this fancy of hers Dr. Heriot had once fabricated a weird plot of a story which was so charmingly terrible, as Chriss phrased it, that the girls declared nothing would induce them to remain in the glen after sundown.

There was certainly something weird and awesome in the very silence and neglect of the place, but the glen behind it was a lovely spot. The hillsides were thickly wooded; through the bottom of the glen ran a sparkling little beck; the rich colours of the foliage, wearing now the golden and red livery of autumn, were warm and harmonious; while a cloudless sky and a soft September air brightened the scene of enjoyment.

Mildred, who, as usual on such occasions, was doomed to rest and inaction, amused herself with collecting a specimen of ruta muraria for her fernery, while Polly and Chriss washed salad in the running stream, and Richard and Hugh Marsden unpacked the hampers, and Olive spread the tempting contents on dishes tastefully adorned with leaves and flowers under Dr. Heriot's supervision, while Mr. Lambert sat by, an amused spectator of the whole.

There was plenty of innocent gaiety over the little feast. Hugh Marsden's blunders and large-handed awkwardness were always provocative of mirth, and he took all in such good part. Polly and Chriss waited on everybody, and even washed the plates in the beck, Polly tucking up her fresh blue cambric and showing her little high-heeled shoes as she tripped over the gra.s.s.

When the meal was over the gentlemen seemed inclined to linger in the pleasant shade; Chriss was coaxing Dr. Heriot for a story, but he was too lazy to comply, and only roused himself to listen to Richard and Hugh Marsden, who had got on the subject of clerical work and the difficulty of contesting northern prejudice.

'Their ignorance and hard-headedness are lamentable,' groaned Hugh; 'dissent has a terrible hold over their mind; but to judge from a few of the stories Mr. Delaware tells us, things are better than they were.'

'My father met with a curious instance of this cra.s.s ignorance on the part of one of his parishioners about fifteen years ago,' returned Richard. 'I have heard him relate it so often. You remember old W----, father?'

'I am not likely to forget him,' replied Mr. Lambert, smiling. 'It was a very pitiful case to my mind, though one cannot forbear a smile at the quaintness of his notion. Heriot has often heard me refer to it.'

'We must have it for Marsden's benefit then.'

'I think Richard was right in saying that it was about fifteen years ago that I was called to minister to an old man in his eighty-sixth year, who had been blind from his birth, I believe, and was then on his deathbed. I read to him, prayed for him, and talked to him; but though his lips moved I did not seem to gain his attention. At last, in despair, I said good-afternoon, and rose to go, but he suddenly caught hold of me.

'"Stop ye, parson," he said; "stop ye a bit, an' just hear me say my prayers, will ye?" I thought it a singular request, but I remained, and he began repeating the Lord's Prayer, the Creed, the collect "Lighten our darkness," and finished up with the quaint old couplet beginning--

"Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, Bless the bed that I lie on,"

and after he had finished he said triumphantly, "Hoo d'ye think I've deean?" I said, "em gay weel. D'ye think I'll pa.s.s?"

'Of course I said something appropriate in reply; but his attention seemed wholly fixed on the fact that he could say his prayers correctly, as he had been probably taught in his early childhood, and when I had noticed his lips moving he had been conning the prayers over to himself before repeating them for my judgment.'[3]

[Footnote 3: Taken from fact.]

A lugubrious shake of the head was Hugh's only answer.

'I grant you such a state of things seems almost incredible in our enlightened nineteenth century,' continued Mr. Lambert, 'but many of my older brethren have curious stories to tell of their parishioners, all of them rather amusing than otherwise. Your predecessor, Heriot--Dr.

Bailey--had a rare stock of racy anecdotes, with which he used to entertain us on winter evenings over a gla.s.s of hot whisky toddy.'

'To which he was slightly too much addicted,' observed Dr. Heriot.

'Well, well, we all have our faults,' replied the vicar, charitably. 'We will not speak against poor Bailey, who was in the main a downright honest fellow, though he was not without his weakness. Betha used to remonstrate with him sometimes, but it was no use; he said he was too old to break off a habit. I don't think, Heriot, he ever went to great lengths.'

'Possibly not,' was the somewhat dry reply, 'but we are willing to be amused by the old doctor's reminiscences.'

'You know the old Westmorland custom for giving names; well, some forty years ago George Bailey, then a young doctor new to practice, was sent for to visit a man named John Atkinson, who lived in a house at the head of Swale-dale.

'Having reached the place, he knocked at the door, and asked if John Atkinson lived there.

'"Nay," says the woman, "we've naebody ev that nyam hereaboots."

'"What?" says Bailey, "n.o.body of the name in the dale?"

'"Nyah," was the reply, made with the usual phlegm and curtness of the genuine Daleswoman. "There's naebody ev that nyam."

'"Well, it is very odd," returned Bailey, in great perplexity. "This looks like the house to which I was directed. Is there any one ill in the dale?"

'"Bless me, bairn," exclaimed the woman, "ye'll mean lile Geordie John.

He's my man; en's liggen en theyar," pointing to an inner room, "varra badly. Ye'll be t'doctor, I warn't. c.u.m, c.u.m yer ways in en see him. Noo I think on't, his reet nyam is John Atkinson, byt he allus gas by lile Geordie John. His fad'r was Geordie, ye kna, an' n.o.bbut a varra lile chap."'