Chapter III: A Good Broad Hint

‘Is it you, Mr Gribble?’ she said, peering out into the darkness, for it was now nearly nine o’clock. ‘What is it that you want?’

‘I wish to speak to you Miss Stafford, upon a subject of importance.’

‘Not to-night, surely. It is too late. Besides’--with a slight hesitation--‘I am engaged.’

Mr Gribble was not slow to note the hesitation.

‘_Engaged!_’ he echoed sharply. ‘_How_ engaged? With whom?’

‘That is _my_ affair, surely,’ replied the teacher; ‘but if you particularly wish to know, with a friend--’

‘A friend!’ exclaimed Mr Gribble; ‘what friends have you in Deepdale whose presence prevents my speaking to you? Is it a lady friend? I presume you would not be sitting alone with a _gentleman_ at this time of night. It’s past nine.’

‘I am not bound to tell you anything about the matter, Mr Gribble, and I consider your questions border on impertinence. Be good enough to come and see me to-morrow morning,’ replied Miss Stafford with some asperity, for her spirit was roused by the pertinacity of her visitor.

She attempted to close the door as she spoke, but Mr Gribble pressed his whole weight against it and entered the room. Beside the table sat Seth Brunt, the identical ‘sailor sort of man’ with the black beard of whom his little girls had spoken to him, whilst the presence of the tea tray and his empty cup and saucer proved that he had been taking a meal with the school teacher.

‘So!’ ejaculated Mr Gribble, as he glared at the intruder, ‘_this_ was your engagement, Miss Stafford, was it? _This_ was the reason you tried to thrust me from your door. The parson shall hear of this, miss--the churchwardens shall hear of it--the _parish_ shall hear of it--and then you shall hear what they say.’

Miss Stafford could have shaken the little wretch in her indignation, and put him out of the room again. But she only stood proud and pale, and looked him full in the face, whilst she kept one hand pressed upon the table.

‘And the parish shall hear, Mr Gribble, that you forced yourself into my private room against my wishes, and decide whether that is conduct that comes within the radius of your authority. Be good enough to leave me, sir. I don’t wish to ask my friend, who is just going, to take you with him.’

Mr Gribble glanced at big, burly Seth Brunt, and thought it best to make no further disturbance for the time being. Clapping his hat upon his head, he turned away, muttering,--

‘You’ll repent this, Miss Stafford. I shall lay the whole case before Mr Measures to-morrow morning, and you will find that you’ll repent it.’

‘I am not afraid of Mr Measures,’ she said quietly as she closed the door after him. As he floundered through the dark porch, he ran up against another body.

‘Who are _you_?’ he asked roughly.

‘I am Hal Rushton,’ replied that young man’s voice. ‘Are you Mr Gribble?’

‘Yes, sir, I am Mr Gribble. And may I ask what business _you_ have at the schoolhouse?’

‘You can ask, certainly, but it lies in my option to answer you. However, I am not ashamed of my errand. I came here to speak to Miss Stafford.’

‘At nine o’clock at night, sir?’

‘Exactly! Is there anything wrong with nine o’clock at night? If so--why are _you_ here?’

‘_I_ came to see Miss Stafford on business.’

‘So did I--’ replied the imperturbable young man.

‘Well, you will _not_ see her, then, Mr Rushton. She is engaged with a friend--a gentleman friend--and no one else can be admitted. But the parson shall hear of it, sir--and the _parish_ shall hear of it into the bargain.’

‘That Miss Stafford has a friend, is that any marvel? I should have thought she might number them by the hundred.’

At that moment the door reopened, and Miss Stafford and Seth Brunt appeared upon the threshold.

‘Good-night,’ she was saying, ‘I wish you had not such a long walk back to Haltham, but there is no alternative.’

Mr Gribble hurried off into the darkness, but Hal Rushton held his ground.

‘Is it a friend of yours, Miss Stafford?’ he asked. ‘Can I be of any assistance? Shall I take him to Highbridge Farm for the night?’

‘Is it _you_, Mr Rushton?’ she said quickly. ‘Oh, no! I would not trouble you for the world. This--this--gentleman is used to walking, and will not mind the distance. Good-night,’ she said once more to Brunt, who shambled away on his road to Haltham. And then, with a slight inclination of the head, she was about to retreat again within her own little fortress.

‘Mayn’t I speak to you?’ asked Hal Rushton.

‘Of course,’ she replied in a trembling voice, and he followed her into the room, though they did not close the door.

‘You are troubled to-night, I am sure. What has annoyed you?’ he said gently.

She did not answer him. The tears began to course down her cheek. He felt inexpressibly drawn to her.

‘Is it that man Gribble? Has he presumed to find fault with you? You must try and not mind it. Everyone knows what an interfering, snappish, overbearing little cad he is.’

‘It is not only that,’ she answered. ‘I have been worried and upset to-night by talking over old times. You must not be surprised at that. You have guessed, I am sure, that I was not brought up to this sort of thing--that my life has been, in fact, altogether different.’

‘I was sure, from the first moment I saw you, Miss Stafford, that force of circumstances had compelled you to stoop very low from your original position, and I have honoured you for the courage with which you have accepted the change.’

‘Oh, no. I am not courageous--far from it. If I were, I should not be so low spirited now. But it is just as you say, and I only wish I could now entirely forget the past.’

‘If that is impossible, can you not lessen the pain by trying to believe in a happier future. You are young, Miss Stafford. You are calculated to adorn any position (a far higher one than could be found in Deepdale), and you have (please God) a long life before you. Why not be hopeful of what may still be in store?’

He was sitting on the table, and she was standing beside him, and as he spoke Hal Rushton ventured to take her listless hand and hold it in his own.

‘I do not think,’ she answered, ‘that I was born under a lucky star. Some people are not, they say. I could be contented enough here if they would let me do my work in my own way. But they exercise so much control over me. I must alter this and alter that, and even my leisure hours (as you have seen) may not be kept sacred to myself. Mr Gribble must spy and interfere and find fault. Even this visit of yours may be turned into a crime. It is hard, when a woman is doing her best, to be so coerced and sat upon.’

‘It is infamous--abominable,’ coincided young Rushton warmly; ‘but Mr Measures will set it all right, I am sure. I can so well sympathise with you, Miss Stafford, for I, too, am not my own master.’

‘Not _you_!’ she said, glancing up at his muscular, well-knit frame as though surprised to think that anyone could master him.

‘No, indeed. Legally, of course, I am the same as yourself, but morally I catch it if I say my soul’s my own. You have seen my stepmother and her son?’

Miss Stafford nodded.

‘How my poor father ever came to marry her, I cannot think. To me she is repulsive. But he was very ill for years before he died, and I was a lanky lad of no good to anybody, and I suppose she got on the right side of him by professing to be a good sick-nurse. Anyway, he married her, and brought her and her son, Ted Snaley, home to Highbridge. And they have spoiled my life between them since.’

‘And yet you keep them there. Isn’t that stretching your benevolence to too fine a point, Mr Rushton?’

‘I wish you wouldn’t call me “Mr Rushton,”’ he replied, taking no notice of her question. ‘It is what Mrs Snaley always calls me. We have known each other now for quite a year. Don’t you think it is time to say “Hal.”’ She hesitated, with her eyes fixed upon the ground. ‘Don’t you feel friendly enough with me to say it?’ he persisted.

‘Oh, yes, I feel very friendly with you.’

‘Then prove it by treating me with greater intimacy. And _your_ name, Miss Stafford? I have never heard it. May I not know that?’

‘I have never told my Christian name to a soul in Deepdale,’ she said.

‘Tell it to me now. I will never repeat it excepting to yourself,’ urged Hal Rushton.

‘It is Paula.’

‘Paula! What a sweet, uncommon name. I never heard it before. Are you English?’

‘Oh, yes.’

‘And you have a mother living?’

‘Yes, far away from here.’

‘Happy girl! I wish I had one too. Someone to go to in trouble, or perplexity, or pain. I never loved a woman, Paula, since my dear mother died, until--until--’

He paused nervously, and she rushed into the breach.

‘You were going to tell me why you keep your stepmother and her son at Highbridge Farm.’

‘Well, this is the reason. At one time she persuaded my father to leave her everything, but before he died he changed his mind and made me his heir, which was only fair, because the farm came to him with my mother. He left his wife a hundred a year for her lifetime, which was all he could rightfully call his own, but it would have so reduced her comforts that I had not the heart to turn her and Ted out of Highbridge, so they’ve lived there ever since.’

‘Using your substance just as if it was their own,’ said Miss Stafford.

‘Yes, they do so pretty well. But it can’t go on for ever, and so I tell Mrs Rushton. If I should marry--’

‘Oh, you’re _sure_ to marry,’ she interposed.

He gazed at her wistfully.

‘_I_ am not sure, Paula. It will all depend. I am not the sort of man who could marry _anybody_, just for the sake of marrying.’

‘Oh, I think not.’

‘I have seen so much, of late years, of the horrors of an unsuitable marriage that I shall be doubly careful in making my choice. My wife will have to be very nice indeed.’

‘Why should you doubt it? Are nice women so rare?’

‘I think they are, though I do not despair of finding her some day. But the question is, when found, will she condescend to notice me?’

‘Ah, that is one of the good things of the future in which you tell me to have so much faith, Mr Rushton.’

‘Mr Rushton again.’

‘Hal, then. But what would become of me if Mr Gribble were to overhear such a piece of impropriety? He was cautioning me only this afternoon, on our way back from Haltham, against being too intimate with you.’

‘Confound his impudence! What will he interfere with next? One would think he was king of Deepdale. But you won’t let him influence your actions, will you?’

‘I think not. I never let anyone influence my actions while they approve themselves to my conscience,’ she answered proudly.

‘That is right. I love a high-spirited and high-minded woman, and I wish--I _wish_ you were out of all this.’

Miss Stafford assumed a look of comical dismay.

‘Oh, pray don’t wish _that_. That is, to wish me without a roof over my head, or bread to eat. You don’t know the absolute necessity there is for my working.’

‘No, I don’t, or for your starving either,’ he answered bluntly. ‘However, I suppose I had better be making tracks for home. Good-night, Paula. Say “Good-night, Hal!”’

‘Good-night, Hal.’

‘Thank you,’ pressing her hand firmly. ‘I shall sleep all the better for that, and dream perhaps of a possible future.’

And with a long, significant look into her eyes, he released her hand and walked away.

Miss Stafford closed and locked the door after him, and sat for some time at the open casement, which was wreathed with roses and clematis, looking out upon the quiet summer night, and thinking over the events of the day. She was not sure if she was any the happier for the interview which had just passed with Hal Rushton. She could not mistake his meaning. He made it plain enough. He wished to be her friend, perhaps something more than a friend, and she had seen the declaration trembling on his lips many a time, and kept him from uttering it by sheer stratagem. To-night she knew he would have spoken if she had given him the least encouragement, and to-night she would have felt more unequal to giving him an answer than ever before. For Seth Brunt’s visit had quite unnerved her. He was like a ghost raised from the buried past. He had spoken of things and people she had hoped never to have heard named again. He had made her feel that she had _not_ commenced to live a new life, and that she never could whilst the old life existed and people walked and talked who remembered and had taken part in it. And then the hint, slight as it was, that she had been somewhat in the wrong, had hurt her terribly. How had she been in the wrong to save Paul and herself from a life of misery--a slow, lingering death of torture? She paced her little room impatiently as she recalled it. All she wanted was to live at peace, and interfere with no one, and yet even so small a boon was denied her. If old acquaintances cropped up to annoy her in Deepdale, where on all God’s earth would she be safe? And then this quarrel with Mr Gribble. It was very silly and insignificant, no doubt, but there was no telling where it might lead, nor what revelations might not be made before it had run its course. Altogether, Miss Stafford went to bed at last in a very unsettled frame of mind, and did not feel much better when she rose in the morning. She was listless and headachy, and her mind wandered, and she fancied that her scholars observed her distraction and passed comments upon it. One fact was significant. When the roll was called over, the two Miss Gribbles were conspicuous only by their absence, kept at home, doubtless, by their offended papa. Miss Stafford could have smiled at so dubious a piece of a policy had she not known that the little churchwarden was really a power in the parish, and not to be angered with impunity. But she did not regret the position she had assumed all the same. She could not brook being called to task for an innocent action, like one of her own school-children, but she felt a little anxious for the result, and was not at all taken by surprise at receiving a note from the clergyman, Mr Measures, during the course of the day, asking her to step over to the parsonage as soon as school was concluded. So at five o’clock in the afternoon, when she had seen the last little toddler safely on its way home, she put on her shawl and bonnet and walked across the churchyard and into the presence of Mr and Mrs Measures.