Heriot's Choice Part 61

'Capital!' observed Dr. Heriot, as he chuckled and rubbed his hands over this story. 'Bailey told it with spirit, I'll be bound. How well you have mastered the dialect, Mr. Lambert.'

'I made it my study when I first came here. Betha and I found a fund of amus.e.m.e.nt in it. Have you ever noticed, Heriot, there is a dry, heavy sort of wit--a certain richness and appropriateness of language--employed by some of these Dalesmen, if one severs the grain from the rough husk?'

'They are not wanting in character or originality certainly, though they are often as rugged as their own hills. I fancy Bailey had lived among them till he had grown to regard them as the finest people and the best society in the world.'

'I should not wonder. I remember he told me once that he was called to a place in Orton to see an elderly man who was sick. "Well, Betty," he said to the wife, "how's w.i.l.l.y?"

'"Why," says Betty, "I nau'nt; he's been grumbling for a few days back, and yesterday he tyak his bed. I thout I'd send for ye. He mebbe git'nt en oot heat or summat; byt gang ye in and see him." The doctor having made the necessary examination came out of the sickroom, and Betty followed him.

'"Noo, doctor, hoo div ye find him?"

'"Well, Betty, he's very bad."

'"Ye dunnot say he's gangen t'dee?"

'"Well," returned Bailey, reluctantly, "I think it is not unlikely; to my thinking he cannot pull through."

'"Oh, dear me," sighed Betty, "poor auld man. He's ben a varra good man t'me, en I'll be wa to looes him, byt we mun aw gang when oor time c.u.ms.

Ye'll c.u.m agen, doctor, en deeah what ye can for hym. We been lang t'gither, w.i.l.l.y an me, that ha' we."

'Well, Bailey continued his visits every alternate day, giving no hope, and on one Monday apprising her that he thought w.i.l.l.y could not last long.

'Tuesday was market-day at Penrith, and Betty, who thought she would have everything ready, sent to buy meat for the funeral dinner.

'On Wednesday Bailey p.r.o.nounced w.i.l.l.y rather fresher, but noticed that Betty seemed by no means glad; and this went on for two or three visits, until Betty's patience was quite exhausted, and in answer to the doctor's opinion that he was fresher than he expected to have seen him and might live a few days longer, she exclaimed--

'"Hang leet on him! He allus was maist purvurse man I ivver knew, an wad n.o.bb't du as he wod! Meat'll aw be spoilt this het weather."

'"Never mind," said Bailey, soothingly, "you can buy some more."

'"Buy mair, say ye?" she returned indignantly. "I'll du nowt o't mack; he mud ha deet when he shapt on't, that mud he, en hed a dinner like other fok, but noo I'll just put him by wi' a bit breead an cheese."

'As a matter of fact, the meat was spoilt, and had to be buried a day or two before the old man died.'

Hugh Marsden's look of horror at the conclusion of the vicar's anecdote was so comical that Dr. Heriot could not conceal his amus.e.m.e.nt; but at this moment a singular incident put a check to the conversation.

For the last few minutes Polly had seemed unusually restless, and directly Mr. Lambert had finished, she communicated in an awe-stricken whisper that she had distinctly seen the tall shadow of a man lurking behind the wall of the old cotton-mill, as though watching their party.

'I am sure he is after no good,' continued Polly. 'He looks almost as tall and shadowy as Leonard in Dr. Heriot's story; and he was crouching just as Leonard did when the phantom of the headless maiden came up the glen.'

Of course this little sally was received with shouts of laughter, but as Polly still persisted in her incredible story, the young men declared their intention of searching for the mysterious stranger, and as the girls wished to accompany them, the little party dispersed across the glen.

Mildred, who was busy with one of the maids in clearing the remnants of the feast and choosing a place where they should boil their gipsy kettle, heard every now and then ringing peals of laughter mixed with odd braying sounds.

Chriss was the first to reappear.

'Oh, Aunt Milly,' she exclaimed breathlessly, 'what do you think Polly's mysterious Leonard has turned out to be? Nothing more or less than an old donkey browsing at the head of the glen. Polly will never hear the last of it.'

'Leonard-du-Bray "In a bed of thistles,"' observed Richard, mischievously. 'Oh, Polly, what a mare's nest you have made of it.'

Polly looked hot and discomposed; the laugh was against her, and to put a stop to their teasing, Mildred proposed that they should all go up to the Fox Tower as they had planned, while she stayed behind with her brother.

'We will bring you back some of the shield and bladder fern,' was Chriss's parting promise. Mildred watched them climbing up the wooded side of the glen, Dr. Heriot and Polly first, hand-in-hand, and Olive following more slowly with Richard and Hugh Marsden; and then she went and sat by her brother, and they had one of their long quiet talks, till he proposed strolling in the direction of the Fox Tower, and left her to enjoy a solitary half-hour.

The little fire was burning now. Etta, in her picturesque red petticoat and blue serge dress, was gathering sticks in the thicket; the beck flowed like a silver thread over the smooth gray stones; the sunset clouds streaked the sky with amber and violet; the old cotton-mill stood out gray and silent.

Mildred, who felt strangely restless, had strolled to the mill, and was trying to detach a delicate spray of ivy frond that was strongly rooted in the wall, when a footstep behind her made her start, and in another moment a shadow drew from a projecting angle of the mill itself.

Mildred rose to her feet with a smothered exclamation half of terror and surprise, and then turned pale with a vague presentiment of trouble. The figure behind her had a velvet coat and fair moustache, but could the white haggard face and bloodshot eyes belong to Roy?

'Rex, my dear Roy, were you hiding from us?'

'Hush, Aunt Milly, I don't want them to see me. I only want you.'

CHAPTER XXV

ROYAL

'This would plant sore trouble In that breast now clear, And with meaning shadows Mar that sun-bright face.

See that no earth-poison To thy soul come near!

Watch! for like a serpent Glides that heart-disgrace.'

Philip Stanhope Worsley.

'My dear boy, were you hiding from us?'

Mildred had recovered from her brief shock of surprise; her heart was heavy with all manner of foreboding as she noted Royal's haggard and careworn looks, but she disguised her anxiety under a pretence of playfulness.

'Have you been masquerading under the t.i.tle of Leonard-du-Bray, my dear?' she continued, with a little forced laugh, holding his hot hands between her own, for Rex was still Aunt Milly's darling; but he drew them irritably, almost sullenly, away. There was a lowering look on the bright face, an expression of restless misery in the blue eyes, that went to Mildred's heart.

'I am in no mood for jests,' he returned, bitterly; 'do I look as though I were, Aunt Milly? Come a little farther with me behind this wall where no one will spy upon us.'

'They have all gone to the Fox Tower, they will not be back for an hour yet. Look, the glen is quite empty, even Etta has disappeared; come and let me make you some tea; you look worn out--ill, and your hands are burning. Come, my dear, come,' but Roy resisted.

'Let me alone,' he returned, freeing himself angrily from her soft grasp, 'I am not going to make one of the birthday party, not even to please the queen of the feast. Are you coming, Aunt Milly, or shall I go back the same way I came?'

Roy spoke rudely, almost savagely, and there was a sneer on the handsome face.

'Yes, I will follow you, Rex,' returned Mildred, quietly.

What had happened to their boy--to their Benjamin? She walked by his side without a word, till he had found a place that suited him, a rough hillock behind a dark angle of the wall; the cotton-mill was between them and the glen.

'This will do,' he said, throwing himself down on the gra.s.s, while Mildred sat down beside him. 'I had to make a run for it before. d.i.c.k nearly found me out though. I meant to have gone away without speaking to one of you, but I thought you saw me.'