Mark Hurdlestone Part 16

Further remarks on either side were stopped by the announcement of Colonel Hurdlestone, and his son and nephew. Juliet seized the portfolio from her father, and, with one bound, cleared the opposite doorway, and disappeared.

"We have frightened your daughter away, Captain Whitmore," said the Colonel, glancing after the retreating figure of Juliet. "What made my young friend run from us?"

"Oh, I have just found out the saucy jade is scribbling verses all over my paper; and she is afraid that I should tell you about it; and that aunt Dorothy would quiz her before these gentlemen."

"I should like much to see a specimen of her poetry," said the Colonel.

"Here are a few lines addressed to myself," said the proud father, handing them to his friend. "I was going to scold Julee for her folly; but, by Jove, Colonel, I could not bring my heart to do it after reading that!"

The paper went round. It lingered longest in the hand of Anthony Hurdlestone. The lines possessed no particular merit. They were tender and affectionate, true to nature and nature's simplicity, and as he read and re-read them, it seemed as if the spirit of the author was in unison with his own. "Happy girl!" he thought, "who can thus feel towards and write of a father. How I envy you this blessed, holy affection!" He raised his eyes, and rose up in confusion, to be presented to Miss Whitmore.

Juliet could scarcely be termed beautiful; but her person was very attractive. Her features were small, but belonged to none of the favored orders of female beauty; and her complexion was pallid, rendered more conspicuously so by the raven hair, that fell in long silken ringlets down her slender white throat, and spread like a dark veil round her elegant bust and shoulders. Her lofty brow was pure as marble, and marked by that high look of moral and intellectual power, before which mere physical beauty shrinks into insignificance. Soft pencilled eyebrows gave additional depth and l.u.s.tre to a pair of the most lovely deep blue eyes that ever flashed from beneath a fringe of jet. There was an expression of tenderness almost amounting to sadness, in those sweet eyes; and when they were timidly raised to meet those of the young Anthony, a light broke upon his heart, which the storms and clouds of after-life could never again extinguish.

"Miss Juliet, your father has been giving us a treat," said the Colonel.

Poor Juliet turned first very red, and then very pale, and glanced reproachfully at the old man.

"Nay, Miss Whitmore, you need not be ashamed of that which does you so much credit," said the Colonel, pitying her confusion.

"Dear papa, it was cruel to betray me," said Juliet, the tears of mortified sensibility filling her fine eyes. "Colonel Hurdlestone, you will do me a great favor by never alluding to this subject again."

"You are a great admirer of nature, Miss Whitmore, or you could never write poetry," said G.o.dfrey, heedless of the distress of the poor girl.

But he was tired of sitting silent, and longed for an opportunity of addressing her.

"Poetry is the language in which nature speaks to the heart of the young," said Juliet. "Do you think that there ever was a young person indifferent to the beauties of poetry?"

"All young people have not your taste and fine feeling," said G.o.dfrey.

"There are some persons who can walk into a garden without distinguishing the flowers from the weeds. You have of course read Shakspeare?"

"It formed the first epoch in my life," returned Juliet with animation.

"I never shall forget the happy day when I first revelled through the fairy isle with Ariel and his dainty spirits. My father was from home, and had left the key in the library door. It was forbidden ground. My aunt was engaged with an old friend in the parlor, so I ventured in, and s.n.a.t.c.hed at the first book which came to hand. It was a volume of Shakspeare, and contained, among other plays, the Tempest and Midsummer Night's Dream. Afraid of detection I stole away into the park, and beneath the shadow of the greenwood tree, I devoured with rapture the inspired pages of the great magician. What a world of wonders it opened to my view! Since that eventful hour poetry has become to me the language of nature--the voice in which creation lifts up its myriad anthems to the throne of G.o.d."

An enthusiastic country girl could alone have addressed this rhapsody to a stranger. A woman of the world with half her talent and moral worth, would have blushed at her imprudence in betraying the romance of her nature. Juliet was a novice in the world, and she spoke with the simplicity and earnestness of truth. G.o.dfrey smiled in his heart at her want of tact; yet there was one near him, in whose breast Juliet Whitmore would have found an echo to her own words.

The gentlemen rose to depart, and promised to dine at the Lodge the next day.

"Two fine young men," said the Captain, turning to his daughter, as the door closed upon his guests. "Which of them took your fancy most, Julee?"

"They are so much alike--I should scarcely know them apart. I liked him the best who most resembled the dear old Colonel."

"Old! Miss Juliet. I hope you don't mean to call Colonel Hurdlestone an old man! You will be calling me old next."

"And not far from the truth if she did," muttered the old sailor. "That was the Colonel's nephew, Julee, Mr. Anthony Hurdlestone."

"The son of that horrible old miser? I saw him once and took him for a beggar. Is it possible that that elegant young man can be his son?"

"I think the case somewhat doubtful," observed Miss Dorothy. "I wonder that Colonel Hurdlestone has the effrontery to introduce that young man as his nephew. Nature herself contradicts the a.s.sertion."

"Dolly, don't be censorious. I thought the Colonel was a great friend of yours."

"He was; but I am not blind," said Miss Dorothy, with dignity. "I have altered my mind with regard to that gentleman, and would not become his wife if he were to ask me on his bended knees."

"I wish he would pop the question," said the Captain. "I'd bet my life on't that he would not have to ask twice!"

"Sir," replied the lady, casting upon her brother a withering glance, "I never mean to marry a widower--an uncle--who brings with him nephews so like himself." Miss Dorothy swept from the room, leaving her brother convulsed with laughter.

"Miss Whitmore is not so handsome as I expected to find her, after the fuss that George Braconberry made about her the other night at Wymar's,"

said G.o.dfrey, suddenly pulling up his horse, as they rode home, and addressing his cousin. "Her figure is delightful, symmetry itself; but her face, she has scarcely one good feature in it. There is nothing gay or joyous in her expression. There is an indescribable sadness about those blue eyes which makes one feel grave in a moment. I wanted to pay her a few compliments by way of ingratiating myself into her good graces; but, by Jove! I could not look her in the face and do it. A man must have more confidence than I possess to attempt to deceive her. I never felt afraid of a woman before."

"I am glad to hear you say so," returned Anthony. "To me she is beautiful, exceedingly beautiful. I would not exchange that n.o.ble expression of hers for the most faultless features and blooming complexion in the world. The dignity of her countenance is the mirror in which I see reflected the beauty of the soul; as the stars picture on the face of the placid stream the heaven in which they dwell."

"Are you turned poet too, Master Anthony? Mary Mathews, down at the farm, has a prettier face, or I am no judge of female beauty."

"We all know your _penchant_ for Mary Mathews. But seriously, G.o.dfrey, if you do not mean to marry the poor girl, it is very cruel to pay her such lover-like attentions."

"One must do something, Tony, to pa.s.s away the time in this dull place.

As to marrying the girl, you surely do not take me for a fool?"

"I should be sorry to take you for something worse. Last night you went too far, when you took the sweet-briar rose from her bosom and placed it in your own; and said that you preferred it to all the flowers in the garden; that your highest ambition was to win and wear the wild rose.

The poor girl believed you. Did you not see how she looked down and blushed, and then up in your face with the tears in her eyes, and a sweet smile on her severed lips. Surely, my dear cousin, it is wrong to give birth to hopes which you never mean to realize."

A crimson flush pa.s.sed over G.o.dfrey's brow as he answered haughtily.

"Nonsense, Anthony! you take up this matter too seriously. Women love flattery, and if we are bound in honor to marry all the women we compliment, the law must be abolished that forbids polygamy."

"I know one who would not fail to take advantage of such an act," said Anthony. "But really, matters that concern the happiness and misery of our fellow creatures are too serious for a joke. I hope poor Mary's light heart will never be rendered heavy by your gallantry."

Again the color flushed the cheek of G.o.dfrey. He looked down, slashed his well-polished boot with his riding-whip, and endeavored to hum a tune, and appear indifferent to his cousin's lecture, but it would not do; and telling Anthony that he was in no need of a Mentor, he whistled to a favorite spaniel, and dashing his spurs into his horse, was soon out of sight.

Mary Mathews, the young girl who formed the subject of this conversation, was a strange eccentric creature, more remarkable for the beauty of her person, and her masculine habits, than for any good qualities she possessed. Her father rented a small farm, the property of Colonel Hurdlestone; her mother died while she was yet a child, and her only brother ran away from following the plough and went to sea.

Mathews was a rude, clownish, matter-of-fact man; he wanted some person to a.s.sist him in looking after the farm, and taking care of the stock; and he brought up Mary to fill the place of the son he had lost, early inuring her to take an active part, in those manual labors which were peculiar to his vocation. Mary was a man in everything but her face and figure, which were exceedingly soft and feminine; and if her complexion had not been a little injured by constant exposure to the atmosphere, she would have been a perfect beauty; and in spite of these disadvantages she was considered the _belle_ of the village.

Alas! for Mary. Her masculine employments, and constantly a.s.sociating with her father's work-people, had destroyed the woman in her heart. She thought like a man--spoke like a man--acted like a man. The loud clear voice, and clearer louder laugh, the coa.r.s.e jest and rude song, grated painfully on the ear, and appeared unnatural in the highest degree, when issuing from coral lips, whose perfect contour might have formed a model for the Venus.

Mary knew that she was handsome, and never attempted to conceal from others her consciousness of the fact; and, as long as her exterior elicited applause and admiration from the rude clowns who surrounded her, she cared not for those minor graces of voice and manner which render beauty so captivating to the refined and well-educated of the other s.e.x.

In the harvest-field she was always the foremost in the band of reapers; dressed in her tight green-cloth boddice, clean white ap.r.o.n, red stuff petticoat, and neatly blacked shoes; her beautiful features shaded by her large, coa.r.s.e, flat, straw hat, put knowingly to one side, more fully to display the luxuriant auburn tresses, of the sunniest hue, that waved profusely in rich natural curls round her face and neck. In the hay-field you pa.s.sed her, with the rake across her shoulder, and turned in surprise to look at the fair creature, who whistled to her dog, sang s.n.a.t.c.hes of profane songs, and hallooed to the men in the same breath.

In the evening you met her bringing home her cows from the marshes, mounted upon her father's grey riding horse; keeping her seat with as much ease and spirit, although dest.i.tute of a side-saddle, as the most accomplished female equestrian in St. James's Park; and when his services were no longer required by our young Amazon, she rubbed down her horse, and turned him adrift with her own hands into the paddock.

To see Mary Mathews to advantage, when the better nature of her womanhood triumphed over the coa.r.s.e rude habits to which her peculiar education had given birth, was when surrounded by her weanling calves and cosset lambs, or working in her pretty garden that skirted the road.

There, among her flowers, with her splendid locks waving round her sunny brow, and singing as blithe as any bird, some rural ditty or ballad of the days gone by, she looked the simple, unaffected, lovely country girl. The traveller paused at the gate to listen to her song, to watch her at her work, and to beg a flower from her hand. Even the proud aristocratic country gentleman, as he rode past, doffed his hat, and saluted courteously the young Flora whose smiling face floated before him during his homeward ride.

Uncontrolled by the usages of the world, and heedless of its good or bad opinion, Mary became a law to herself--a headstrong, wayward, pa.s.sionate creature; shunned by her own s.e.x, who regarded her as their common enemy, and constantly thrown into contact with the worst and most ignorant of the other, it was not to be wondered at that she became an object of suspicion to all.

With a mind capable of much good, but constantly exposed to much evil, Mary felt with bitterness that she had no friend among her village a.s.sociates who could share her feelings, or enjoy her unfeminine pursuits. With energy of purpose to form and execute the most daring projects, her mental powers were confined to the servile drudgery of the kitchen and the field until the sudden return of her long-lost brother gave a new coloring to her life, and influenced all her future actions.

The bold audacious William Mathews, of whom she felt so proud, and whom she loved so fiercely, carried on the double profession of a poacher on sh.o.r.e and a smuggler at sea. Twice Mary had exposed her life to imminent danger to save him from detection; and so strongly was she attached to him, that there was no peril that she would not have dared for his sake. Fear was a stranger to her breast. Often had she been known to ride at the dead hour of night, through lonely cross-roads, to a distant parish, to bring home her father from some low hedge-alehouse, in which she suspected him to be wasting his substance with a set of worthless profligates.