Only One Love, or Who Was the Heir Part 18

"Aha!" he breathed. "Hem--yes. Time will prove--time will prove, Jobson."

Jobson, the landlord, looked round and winked with impressive admiration, as much as to say, "Deep fellow, Skettle; knows all about it, mind you, but not a word!"

"Well," said the parish clerk, with a shake of the head, "if wishing would make the mare to go, I know who'd be the Squire o' Hurst," and he pointed with his pipe to the ceiling, above which the Savage was thoughtfully pacing to and fro.

"We've had enough o' Davenants," began the miller; but Jobson stopped him with a warning gesture.

"No names, South--no names; this air a public house, and I'm a man as minds my own business."

"So was the last squire," retorted the miller, who was not to be put down--"leastways, he didn't meddle or help his neighbors. Not one shilling have I took from the Hurst since I was that high. Is there a man in this room as can say he'll be a penny the worse for Squire Ralph's death?

"And from what I see it seems to me that if things go on as they appear to be going, we shan't be much better for the new squire, if the name's to be the same."

"A nice spoken gentleman, Mr. Stephen," muttered the tailor, from behind the table.

The miller smiled and shook his head.

"There's some grain as grinds so soft that you can't keep it on the ground from the wind; but it don't make good bread, neighbor. No! Now the youngster up above," and he jerked his head toward the ceiling, "he comes of a different branch--same tree, mind yer, but a healthier branch. It will be good news for Hurst Leigh if it's found that Master Jack is to be our head."

"Nothing soft about Mr. Jack. If all we hear be true, it's a pretty wild branch of the tree he comes from."

"They say he's wild. No doubt; he always was. I can remember him a boy home for the holidays. He used to come down to the mill and poach my trout--a bit of a boy no higher than that"--and he put his hand against the table--"as fine a boy as ever I see. One day I caught him, and told him I'd either give him a thrashing or tell his uncle; for, do yer see, we allus called the old squire his uncle.

"'All right,' said he, 'wait till I've landed this fish and we'll settle it between us like gentlemen.' Another time I found him in the orchard.

'Well, Master Jack,' says I, 'bean't you got enough apples at the Hurst, but you must come and plague me?' He thought a moment, then he looks up with that audacious flash in his eyes, and says, quiet enough: 'Stolen fruit is the sweetest, South. If you feel put upon, take it out of the Hurst Orchard. I give you leave.' What was to be done with a boy like that? Fear! He didn't know what fear was. Do any o' you remember that roan mare as the old parson had? Well, Master Jack hears us talking o'

the spiteful beast one day, and nothing 'ud do but he must go off and ask the parson to let him ride 'un. Of course the old fellow said no.

Two nights after that the young varmint breaks open the stables, takes out the mare, saddles her, and rides her out to the common. I was late at the mill that night, and I hears her come clattering down the yard like a fire-engine, with Master Jack on her back, his eyes flashing and his hair a-flying, and him a-laughing as if it was the rarest bit o' fun in the world. I'd just time to cut across the meadow to the five-barred fence, and here he come past me, making straight for the fence, waving his hand and shouting someut about d.i.c.k Turpin. Ah, and he took the fence, too, and when that vicious beast threw him, and we came up to him, lying all o' a heap, with his arm broke, and the blood streaming from his face--what's he do but laugh at us, and swear as we'd startled her! And as for fighting! There warn't a week but what he'd come to the mill, all cut and mauled, for the missis to wash him and put him to rights. He'd never go home to the Hurst those times. Even then the old squire and him didn't agree. The old man called him a Savage, and I hear as that's what they call him up in London, and yet there warn't a house in Leigh as he warn't welcome in. Many and many a time he's slept up in the mill loft after one of his harum-scarum tricks, and many's the time I've faced the old squire when he's come after him with a horsewhip."

"They say that he run through all the money, as was his by rights, up in London in fast living," said the parish clerk, gravely.

"May be," said the miller, curtly. "If fast living means open-handed living, it's like enough; he never could keep a shilling when he was a boy, the first tramp as pa.s.sed had it, safe as a gun. What's bred in the bone must come out in the flesh. Here's to the new squire--if it be Master Jack," and the st.u.r.dy old man raised his gla.s.s and emptied its contents at one vigorous but steady pull.

Meanwhile the subject of the discussion paced to and fro, pulling at his brier, and indulging in a study of the brownest description.

Never perhaps in his life had Jack been so upset, so serious and so sobered.

In the first place the sudden--or rather sudden to Jack--death of the old man with whom he had lived and quarreled as a boy, affected him more deeply than even he was aware. There in the silent room in the inn, he recalled all the old man's good qualities, all the little kindnesses he had done him, Jack, and more than all, the few last solemn and quite unexpectedly affectionate words which had dropped from his dying lips.

Jack, puffing at his pipe and rubbing his short hair with a puzzled frown, went over the scene again and again, and with no mercenary thoughts of the old man's declaration that he had remembered Jack in his will, but with reference to the mysterious allusions in the disposal of the large part of the property; then Jack's mind would fly off to the fearful scene at the actual death.

The wild cry, the white and horrified face of Stephen, the puzzled and sternly questioning one of the old lawyer. What did it mean?

And still more mysterious, what was the meaning of Stephen's conduct on the lawn? What was he hunting for with such intense eagerness as to make him fly at Jack like a madman?

Jack--as no doubt the reader will have surmised--was not clever.

He could not piece this and that together, and from disjointed incidents form an intelligent whole, as a child does with a box of puzzles.

The whole thing was a mystery to him, and grew more confusing and bewildering the more he thought of it.

It takes a villain thoroughly to appreciate a villain, a thief to understand and catch a thief; and Jack, being neither one nor the other, utterly failed to understand Stephen.

That he disliked him, with a feeling more like contempt than hatred, was a matter of course, but if any one had told Jack straight out that Stephen had abstracted the will, Jack would in all probability have refused to credit it. Will stealing and all such meanness was so thoroughly out of his line that he would not have understood how Stephen, led on step by step, could have possibly been guilty of it.

Then again, something else came forcing itself on these thoughts concerning the strange events at the Hurst. For the life of him he could not forget the Forest of Warden and all that had happened to him within its leafy shades.

At one moment it seemed as if years must have elapsed since he lost his way and forced an entrance at the woodman's hut, at another he was half inclined to believe that he had dined rather heavily at the club and dreamed it all. Like Una, he could not realize that they had met, touched hands and exchanged speech.

Jack could not get the beautiful face out of his mental vision; it mingled with the wan face of the dying man, with Stephen's pale, distorted countenance; it seemed to beam and shine upon him from the dark corners of the room with the same frank, pure, innocent smile with which it had shone down upon him as he lay at her feet in the woods.

And then the girl's surroundings! The extraordinary father, with his laborer's dress and his refined speech and bearing. What mystery enveloped the little group of persons buried in the depths of a wood, living apart from the world?

Jack rumpled his hair and drew a long breath eloquent of confusion and bewilderment.

It was certainly extraordinary! Three days ago he had left London, prosaic London, and was now plunged to the neck in a sea of romance and secrecy.

On one thing he was, however, resolved. He would keep his threat or promise. He would go to Warden Forest and see that beautiful face again, though he had to brave the anger of twenty mysterious woodmen. He thought at first that he would start on the morrow, but some feeling--perhaps some reverence and respect for the dead man--made him change his mind.

"No," he said to himself, as he knocked the ashes out of his pipe and prepared for bed; "I'll stay here over the funeral, and then----"

But, though he felt tired and worn out, it was hours before he could sleep, and when he did, his spirit fled back to Warden Forest, and the face that had haunted him waking hovered about him in dreams.

Was it love; love at first sight? Jack would have been first to laugh at the idea; but it is worthy of note that all the loves which had occurred in his wild, reckless life had never, in their warmest epochs, moved him as the remembrance of Una had done; not one had had the power to disturb his sleep or to bring him dreams.

Jack kept to his resolution. Five days pa.s.sed, and he stuck to the "Bush" manfully. They were, perhaps, the dreariest days he ever spent in his life, and he never thought of them afterward without a shudder.

Every day he was tempted to take flight and go to London until the day of the funeral; but his promise to Hudsley kept him at his post. He would not even leave the "Bush."

On the first day, a note, written on the deepest of mourning paper, had come from Stephen, begging him to come to the Hurst; but he had written a firm and what was for him a polite refusal. Of Stephen himself he saw nothing. Mr. Hudsley had also sent, and asked him to stay at his house; and this, too, Jack had declined.

The fact was he wanted to be left alone, to think over the strange adventures in the forest, to dwell with unceasing wistfulness on the beautiful face and sweet, musical voice.

So he clung to the inn; taking a morning dip in the river; strolling about, with his brier pipe in his mouth and his hands in his pockets, exchanging a word with this man and the other, and bestowing his odd change on any children he happened to meet. Sometimes he would drop in at one of the cottages, where he was so welcome when a boy, and smoke and chat; but usually he kept to his room.

But wherever he went he was the observed of all observers. Every night the little club that met in the "Bush" parlor talked about him, and wondered why he didn't go to the Hurst, and whether he would be the new squire.

The day of the funeral arrived at last--a cold, wet day, that foreshadowed the approaching autumn; and Jack put on his black suit--made by the village tailor who had described Stephen as a nice-spoken gentleman--and went up to the Hurst.

It was the first time he had been near it since the night he had the scuffle with Stephen on the lawn; and, to Jack's eyes, it looked gloomier than ever.

As he entered the hall, a shrunken figure in shabby black came to meet him; it was old Skettle, Hudsley's clerk.

The old man peered at him curiously, and made him a respectful bow in response to Jack's blunt greeting, and opened the library door.

Mr. Hudsley was standing at the table, and looked up with his wrinkled face and keen eyes--not a trace of expression beyond keenness in them.

Jack shook hands with him and looked around.

"Where is Stephen?" he said.