The Village by the River Part 15

cried May, with a burst of laughter. "As far as I follow you, you wish to lower my dress allowance by act of parliament. I sincerely trust you will fail. By the way you may set your mind at rest about my dressmaker; her bill is paid, and all my other outstanding accounts too. With your rather eccentric views about property, it will annoy you considerably to hear that I have had a fortune left me; so that I may not be in debt again for some considerable time."

"To her that hath," said Paul, with a glance at the elegantly clad figure. "It really seems to me as if you could not want it, and I need it so much."

"You!" echoed May. "For real inconsistency commend me to yourself!"

"I scarcely require it for my personal wants, but money is sorely needed to carry out my wishes for this village. As landlord, I feel myself responsible for many things that cannot be set right without it."

"But--but--mother always told me that Major Lessing was rich; and you are his heir."

"I can only a.s.sure you that I am poor," said Paul, simply. "Now, I hope, I have proved satisfactorily to you that circ.u.mstances, tastes, and opinions differing so greatly between us, make anything like friendship impossible. Whenever we come across each other we quarrel; we can't help it."

May flushed to the roots of her hair. "Thank you," she said haughtily.

"It is kind of you to put it so clearly. I simply tried to put things on a kinder footing, as we are your tenants and your neighbours, but I see I have made a mistake. It surprises me to find you so painfully prejudiced. Good-bye. I've kept you too long from your one friend."

She opened the gate and pa.s.sed on her way with never a look behind; but Paul followed with long, rapid strides.

"Miss Webster! stay one moment, please! I believe I've been behaving like a perfect brute," he said hurriedly. "At first I thought you were simply playing a game with me; but, without knowing it, we drifted into earnestness. If any word of mine has seriously vexed you, I apologize and retract."

"You could even believe it possible that I might feel a ray of interest in some of the big subjects which absorb your life," said May.

"To have made a man acknowledge himself a prig once in an afternoon is enough," retorted Paul. "I will not do it again. You know the worst of me: that I have an uncertain temper, which betrays me occasionally into blurting out unpleasant truths: that I have absolutely no small talk. I shall be at best but a rough-and-ready friend; but if in your kindness you still care to cultivate Sally and me, we will gratefully accept the cultivation, and be the better for it. There's my hand on it," and Paul stretched out his hand. And May gave him her small gloved one for an instant with a very sunny smile.

"And you will come to dinner soon and not feel you need talk down to us."

"When all the smart people have gone," Paul said smiling.

"Smart people are your pet aversion, apparently. Is that why you would not come lately?"

"Yes; if you wish to hear the truth," Paul admitted as he turned back to the rectory.

"And I have made a pretty big fool of myself this afternoon," was his mental comment as he let the gate clang behind him. "I first lost my temper, and then let a woman twist me round her finger simply because she is beautiful."

Needless to relate he made no confession of his folly to Sally when he got home that night. He resolved simply to change his tactics about the people at the Court, and preserve safe silence about his altered mind.

The following afternoon he stopped at the forge to speak to the blacksmith about some repairs that were to be set on foot on his premises. Allison stood at the open door of the smithy with his head turned in the opposite direction from the squire, looking after the rector, who had just left him, with something of the sullen satisfaction with which a bulldog might regard a vanquished foe.

Indignation still simmered when Paul accosted him. One glance at the purple face showed the squire that, for some reason as yet unknown, the blacksmith was in a towering pa.s.sion.

"Confound his impudence!" he said, throwing a dark look after the rector. "I've let him know once for all that I'll have no more of it!

I'm not answerable to him, nor any man, for what I says and does. His business, indeed, to come and tell me, if I choose to have a bit of fun with a young fellow in a public-house. What does it hurt him to be drunk for once in his life? A lesson I call it! just a bit of a lesson as will teach him that his head ain't so strong as mine, nor likely to be till he gets seasoned a bit. I give it him straight enough, and no humbug about it. 'Look here, sir,' I says, 'you go your way, and leave me to go mine. I don't deny as you've been kind to my old mother, and she'd fret sore if she didn't see you. Psalm-singing and such comes natural-like to most women; but for my part I want nothing better than to be letted alone.'"

Allison came to a stop; breath rather than words had failed him. Paul, who had been an unwilling listener to this tirade against the rector, took advantage of the pause to turn the subject.

"Afraid I can't attend to you this afternoon sir," said Allison, when Paul stated the object of his call. "Reason why, my mates are out for a holiday, and this mare here is just brought in to be shod. I said at first I would not do her to-day; she's a savage brute to tackle alone.

I don't let any one touch her but myself when the men are here. It's wonderful now what a difference there is in the tempers of horses; but I ain't come across the one I couldn't master in the forge. They feel I ain't afeared on 'em."

Boasting of his prowess in his art was fast restoring Allison's temper, which, though violent, was not enduring.

"Very well; I'll come again to-morrow," said Paul.

"And you'll thank missy for lookin' up my mother as she does," said Allison, referring to Sally's visits to the old lady, his mother.

"She's one as it does you good to see, so pleasant and free-spoken.

Now some on 'em," with a glance in the direction of the Court, "don't look as if they thought you good enough to black their shoes, and that don't do for me."

"She does not do herself justice," thought Paul, as he walked away, unconsciously taking up the cudgels in May Webster's defence; "she can be gracious enough when she chooses. She has insisted on our being friends, and I'll make use of the privilege to tell her the impression she conveys, before many weeks are pa.s.sed. Allison is a shrewd fellow, and in his blundering fashion knocks many a right nail on the head."

The October afternoon was fading into night before Paul returned to the cottage. The curtains of the sitting-room were still undrawn, and from within he caught the cheerful glow of the fire, and Sally seated on the rug before it reading by the fitful light. She sprang to her feet as she heard his footstep, and ran to open the door; and then her merry greeting checked itself in the utterance, for her brother's face was grey with suppressed feeling, and his teeth chattered slightly.

"What is it, Paul?" she asked, in a half-frightened whisper.

"It's that poor fellow, Allison; he's dying. And I happened to pa.s.s when the accident occurred, and gave a hand in carrying him upstairs.

It's ghastly to see a man in mortal agony."

"What happened?"

"A troublesome mare took to kicking as he shod her, and somehow Allison was knocked down; and, before any one could get to the rescue, he was so injured that the doctor does not think he can last through the night."

"How awful! And were you there to see it all?" Sally asked with a shiver.

"I had not left the forge very long. I had been talking to Allison, and he told me the mare was a skittish one to manage; and, as I returned, I found a group of men gathered around him, not one of whom had even had the sense of thinking of fetching the doctor. So I first helped them to get poor Allison to his room, and then I rushed to the inn, got a trap, and went and brought a doctor back with me. There is absolutely nothing to be done; but it is a satisfaction to feel that a doctor has seen him. Taken right way, he's not half a bad sort, Sally.

He's bearing his pain like a man, and shook me by the hand to bid me good-bye, and even sent a message to you. 'Say good-bye to missy. I'd like to have said it myself,'" he said.

"He shall! I'll go and see him," Sally said, with a set white face.

"If the sight of me can give him the smallest pleasure, I'll go."

"It's rather awful, Sally; you've not had to face death yet. I would not go if I were you."

"We all must face it some time or other. I'll go, Paul; I shan't be long. No! don't come with me, please; I'd rather go alone."

"Put on a waterproof, then, and take an umbrella; it's a wild night, and it has just come on to rain," said Paul, and, moved by an unwonted impulse, he stooped and kissed her.

The door of the blacksmith's house was open when Sally reached it, and, entering softly, she removed her wet cloak and stood in the dimly lighted parlour wondering how she should make her presence known. From overhead came the sound of voices talking in suppressed whispers, and once Sally shivered, for a long-drawn moan fell upon her ear.

"I'll go and see the old mother. Perhaps I can stay with her, and set Mrs. Allison free when I have just said good-bye to her husband,"

thought Sally, as she went up the stairs.

A near neighbour met her at the top.

"We're just at our wits' end, miss," she said in answer to Sally's inquiry. "The old lady's not to be told anything about it, and Mrs.

Allison, poor soul! falls out of one faint into another, and can't stay in the room along with him who's dying."

"May I go to him for a minute. He wanted to see me," said Sally, with a sob.

But, ushered into the chamber of death, Sally stood for a moment overpowered by an awful terror: a chill which seemed as if it would stop the beating of her heart, a terror she could not have explained.

Face to face with death! The words were familiar enough, but they had conveyed little meaning to her. This man, who lay there, unable from time to time to keep back a groan of agony, with the grey shadow deepening on his face, and the drops of perspiration standing on his forehead, would soon lie there silent and still, capable of neither speech, nor feeling, nor hearing. He would be simply an empty sh.e.l.l.

It was awful!--inexpressibly awful. It all flashed through Sally's mind in one shuddering instant; the next, she had pulled herself together and crossed to the bedside on tip-toe, and stood looking down at the poor, prostrate form with ineffable pity in her dark eyes.

"Oh, Lord! I can't bear it!" broke in a sort of wail from the blue lips. "It can't last long; an hour or so will settle it."