Chapter XIV: Alexis Comes to Grief

That interview at Redcastle has embittered Alexis Secretan’s feelings towards his mercenary wife. Love has given place to contempt. A woman who could set the hope of wealth against her fidelity to him is unworthy of another thought of his.

He goes back to Cheswold reckless, angry, wounded to the core of his heart, and he tells himself that he is indifferent to his wife’s fate, that he cares not if he never see her false face again.

The blow that has hit him hardest, he thinks, is the knowledge of his boy’s death. That son whose fair young face he has pictured in many a day-dream--seen vividly in many a vision of his sleep,--the son who was to inherit Cheswold in the days to come--the son for whose sake it would have been go proud and pleasant a labour to add field to field, and extend the boundaries of that modest manor--this unknown but fondly loved son is lost to him, nay, has never lived save as the infant of a day old. The chubby yearling, the bonny boy of two summers, whose image, limned by fancy, has been almost a living thing for him, has had no existence.

The loss of this shadow hangs upon him heavily. He is no longer the gay young squire who enjoyed the novel pleasures of wealth and social status. He is gloomy and absent-minded, and avoids all intercourse with his neighbours, save in the hunting-field, where he rides like a man who holds his neck as a trifle not worth his care.

In this desolation of his mind he turns to two sources for comfort--the first, his faithful friend, Richard Plowden, whom he detains at Cheswold for an unlimited period, to the peril of the Brompton fernery; the second, his stable, to which he devotes himself a good deal at this time.

His two hunters are considered the handsomest animals and the straightest goers in this part of the country, and his reputation is advanced among the rustic population by his reckless riding.

‘I know you’ll come to grief some of these days, Alexis,’ says the faithful Dick, who looks on his friend’s proceedings with much dread. ‘Blokus, the gardener, told me yesterday that you ride with what he calls a “plaguey loose rein,” and that you don’t know the country well enough to run such risks. I don’t like that tall brute of yours a bit.’

‘Not Bayard?’ exclaims Alexis, who resents this abuse of his last acquisition, a fine bay horse, sixteen two and a half, and described at Tattersall’s as the cleverest thing in hunters. ‘Why, he’s the best horse I ever rode. Such a mouth! You might ride him with a skein of silk.’

‘But you see you haven’t ridden many horses,’ responds the prudent Richard. ‘You’re half a foreigner. You haven’t been brought up like these country squires, who have spent half their lives in the pigskin. It is pigskin, isn’t it?’

‘Yes, Dick. And do you suppose I didn’t ride when I was in the army, and hunt into the bargain? and do you suppose I didn’t ride in the colonies, where a man thinks nothing of forty miles in the saddle?’

‘I don’t know anything about the colonies, Alex, but you weren’t brought up to following the hounds, like these Hampshire gentlemen, and I feel wretched every day you ride that new horse of yours, expecting to see you brought home on a shutter.’

‘And if I were, Dick, would it matter to any one except you?’

‘Alex!’ cries Dick, reproachfully.

‘Yes, old fellow, I know you’d be sorry, but not so sorry as the heir-at-law would be glad. Who is my heir-at-law, by the way? I must make a will, Dick. Some part of all these good things of ours must go to the only being I care for.’

‘His wife,’ thinks the simple-minded Dick.

Alexis rides over to Winchester that very afternoon, and is closeted for an hour with Mr. Scrodgers, the lawyer, to whom he gives instructions for a concise and simple will.

He leaves his real estate to his next of kin on his father’s side who shall bear the name of Secretan, or, in the absence of any such Secretan, to his next of kin on his mother’s side, exclusive of Mrs. Gorsuch and her children, who shall assume the name of Secretan.

‘I feel myself bound to do this much out of reverence for the good old name,’ he says, ‘out of gratitude to my cousin Matilda, who honoured the name in my unworthy person. But my personal property I shall leave to the one friend whose sincerity I am assured of, and who stood by me when I was at the bottom of the ladder. I owe it perhaps to him that Miss Secretan’s bequest found me an honest man, and not a blackguard or a swindler.’

‘Very right, very proper,’ murmurs Mr. Scrodgers, wondering whether he is to be put down for a mourning ring, or a legacy of a hundred guineas or so. He is old, and Alexis is young, it is true, whereby the chances of his inheriting any such legacy seem slender. But then Mr. Scrodgers is careful of himself, and these young men hunt, and drink more brandy and soda than is good for them, and shoot with new-fangled guns, and drive tandem with untried horses after dark. There might be a chance of his getting the legacy, should so proper an idea occur to his client. But Alexis furnishes his instructions without remembering the claims of Mr. Scrodgers. He leaves Richard Plowden all his personal property, furniture, books, horses, and pictures.

‘They ought to realize enough to make that honest fellow independent for the rest of his days,’ thinks Alexis, ‘and now if Bayard makes an end of me some fine morning, I shall at least have done one good thing in my life.’

Mr. Scrodgers drives over to the Grange next morning in his highly respectable four-wheeled chaise, and the will is executed, but Mr. Secretan tells his friend nothing about its contents, nor is Richard Plowden curious. There breathes not on this earth a less mercenary creature. He is grateful beyond measure for his friend’s affection, proud and happy that his presence at the Grange can give pleasure to Alexis. He plods on at his school books every morning in the snug quietude of the study, and in the afternoon takes long and solitary walks, while Alexis spends his days in the hunting-field.

The neighbourhood is full of rustic beauty, even in winter, and Richard, who has spent almost all the days of his life amidst a wilderness of brick and mortar, is delighted with these country lanes, these noble old trees, beautiful in their leafless majesty, these grassy hills crowned with dark pine trees, the blue river that winds through the green valleys, these peaceful English homesteads nestling in sheltered spots, and here and there a picturesque old water-mill, with a big brown wheel that never seems to go round.

Like many lame people Dick can get over a good deal of ground, and get along as fast as those who have the full use of their legs. He grows strong in this pure air, and gets young again. His complexion loses its sickly tint. Those transparent hands of his lose much of their delicacy.

‘If you go on in this way, Dick, I shall find my refined and intellectual friend of the Brompton Road developing into a Hampshire chawbacon,’ says Alexis, jocosely, as they breakfast together luxuriously, in front of a blazing wood fire, one hunting morning,--the master of the Grange arrayed in pink and tops ready for the day’s sport, Dick in a comfortable suit of gray homespun.

‘I do so enjoy your lovely scenery,’ replies Dick. ‘There’s only one thing makes me uneasy.’

‘Your mother----’

‘No, it’s not about mother herself. She has some extra good lodgers in the drawing-room floor, and is as happy as the day is long. What I’m afraid of is that she’ll give the ferns too much water. Mother has such an idea of watering plants. She thinks the more you drench them the better they grow, and she’s rather self-opinionated in those matters, dear soul. I tremble for my polypodium.’

‘I’m glad it isn’t any other kind of Polly you tremble for, Dick,’ replies Alexis. ‘What a close old fellow you are, by the way! you’ve never told me anything about your experience in that tender passion which makes fools of the wisest of us sooner or later.’

‘Simply because I have had nothing to tell.’

‘Nonsense! Were you never in love?’

‘Never. I have admired feminine loveliness and goodness in the abstract, but it never came near enough to me to tempt me to fall in love with it.’

‘Happy man!’ exclaims Alexis. ‘To escape love is to shun man’s worst peril;--

‘For soon or late Love is his own avenger.’

It is the middle of February, one of those days on which the mists of morning linger on the face of the land, as if they loved it. Gleams of sun pierce that silvery veil, and the westerly breeze seems rather autumnal than wintry. The two friends part in excellent spirits, Alexis riding off gaily on his covert hack, Titmouse, a pretty little gray mare. Bayard has been sent on before.

‘How’s the bay this morning, Joe?’ asks Mr. Secretan as he mounts.

‘Fresh as paint, sir, but I thinks as you did ought to have ’ad him hexercised a bit yesterday.’

‘Nonsense, Joe! I don’t care a straw for a horse when all the spirit has been taken out of him. That boy of yours gallops like the deuce when he gets the chance, I know. I don’t care about having Bayard spoiled that way.’

‘I hopes Bay-hard won’t spoil you,’ mutters the groom, as Titmouse carries his master down the drive.

‘I hope you’re not afraid of that bay horse, Marshall,’ says Richard, when Titmouse and her rider are out of sight.

‘No, sir, I ain’t afraid of no ’oss going, and I don’t say there’s any ’arm in Bay-hard. But the ’oss is young and silly, and my master--well, I ain’t going to be disrespectuous to so good a master as him, or I should say he’s young and silly too.’

‘But he’s a good rider, isn’t he?’

‘He’s a good ’and at sittin’ on a ’oss, Mr. Plowden, but there’s summot more nor that wanted to make a good rider.’

This conversation, superadded to honest Dick’s own fears, makes him feel rather uncomfortable; but when he has started on his rustic ramble the sun shines out of the mist, the west wind is so balmy and caressing, earth is altogether so lovely in her wintry garb, that Dick’s spirits rise, and he tells himself that a bold brave fellow like Alexis is not the kind of man to come to harm in the hunting-field. It is your timid rider rather who is liable to misfortune.

So Dick goes his way, and his way of late has generally been the same way.

There is a tiny village about three miles from Cheswold--a village so small that compared with it Cheswold is quite an important settlement. This other village consists of a cluster of labourers’ cottages, with whitewashed walls, thatched roofs steeply sloping, and long strips of garden which would be quite an acquisition to many a suburban villa. There is a queer little old church at which there is service every alternate Sunday afternoon, and there are a water-mill and a homestead with a farm of about thirty acres appertaining thereto. This mill is the chief feature of the scene, and it is to the mill that Dick has come. It is a picturesque old place, big water-wheel, gurgling mill-race, and placid pool. The willows that lean across the water look centuries old. The low white dwelling-house, with its steeply sloping thatch, its white plastered walls crossed and recrossed by timbers painted black, must have been here in the days of Elizabeth. The snowdrops peeping over the tall box border yonder are half a century old, and have spread and multiplied in the shelter of the southern wall. There is a roomy old porch with wooden benches, and it is in this porch that Dick takes his rest after his three miles walk.

It is about a month since he came here one biting January afternoon--the roads white with snow, the hedges loaded with a fine crop of icicles, the ditches ice-bound, and black as ink. On so cold a day it surprised him a little to see a girl of delicate and refined appearance at work with garden scissors and basket in the little bit of ground in front of the homestead by the mill. She was plainly dressed in a gray stuff gown and black apron, and wore a little scarlet shawl tied across her chest, but her head was bare--a very pretty head, Dick thought, with dark brown hair, that made a rippling line across the forehead, and was gathered in a loose knot at the back. He was not quite clear in his mind as to whether the fair gardener was pretty or not. Her features belonged to no regular type; her nose was neither severely Grecian nor commandingly Roman, but rather inclined to the _retroussé_, but it was an inoffensive nose at worst. Her complexion, heightened to a rich bloom by the nipping air, was a thing for poets to rave about--for painters to vainly imitate. Her eyes were dark gray, with thick black lashes; her eyebrows dark and strongly marked; her mouth beautiful, though Dick was not wise enough to know it. He only saw that her smile was sweet, and his chief impression was of a look of goodness which pervaded the face--or so he thought. She looked so amiable that he, the shyest of men, ventured to address her.

‘Rather a cold day for gardening,’ he said.

‘I don’t find it so,’ she answered, smiling. ‘If my poor arbutus can stand the cold, I don’t think it will hurt me;’ and she went on snipping off dead leaves, and smartening the garden by those little touches which maintain order and beauty even at a flowerless season.

‘We shall soon have the snowdrops,’ she said, cheerfully.

‘Ah,’ said Dick, ‘they bloom about this time of year, do they?’

He had made himself acquainted with the habits of ferns, but had very vague notions about flowers. The girl looked at him wonderingly, and then, as he walked a little way further, contemplating the picture of mill-wheel and water, she perceived that slight lameness from which he suffered.

‘Would you like to rest after your walk?’ she asked, timidly. ‘You have come some distance, perhaps?’

‘From Cheswold.’

‘That’s a good three miles. Our porch is quite at your service if you would like to sit down.’

She opened the gate as she spoke, and Dick walked in. He felt as if he could not for worlds have resisted the invitation, so he went in, very shyly, and seated himself on the bench in the porch. The door was open, and opened straight into the neatest, prettiest sitting-room Dick had ever seen--or, at any rate, ever remembered having seen--in his life. Everything was so bright and fresh, the brass fender, the cheerful fire, the old cups and saucers on the mantelpiece, the white ceiling, the painted walls, the chintz-covered sofa and chairs, the small round table with neatly arranged piles of books--not show books, but looking rather like volumes in the daily use of a student--and a drawing-board--actually a drawing-board, the old engravings, the little cabinet of shells in the corner yonder. All the furniture in the room might hardly have realized five-and-twenty pounds at an auction, but the general effect was delightful to Richard Plowden’s eye and mind.

The young lady--he felt sure now that she was a young lady, in spite of her homely dress and that lazy old water-wheel--went on with her gardening, nailed up stray shoots here and there against the plaster wall, and took no more notice of Dick than if he had been a hundred miles away. Dick was much too shy to make conversation, so he sat in silence, lazily watching the girl’s graceful figure as it moved about the garden, in a pleasant reverie.

Presently there came a sound from within--a small shrill voice calling ‘mammie.’ An inner door opened, and a little toddling thing, just emerged from babyhood, came running out to the porch.

At sight of Dick it screamed as if it had seen lions, and stood stock still, paralyzed with terror--a significant evidence that a stranger was a rare bird at Dorley Mill.

The girl ran to him, took him up in her arms, and smothered him with kisses.

‘Mammie!’ said Dick to himself. ‘Then this charming girl is a married woman! I didn’t observe the wedding ring.’

He glanced at the hands which were clasped round the child. No, there was no ring there.

‘What a dear little--thing!’ he said, doubtful about the sex.

‘Yes, he is a darling little fellow.’

‘Your nephew, I suppose?’

‘No,’ and the girl’s cheek crimsoned, ‘he’s an adopted child.’

This was all Dick ever heard about the boy. He might have known more perhaps had he been curious enough or audacious enough to inquire, but he was neither. Yet he wondered a little, adopted children being rarities, to have stumbled upon one in the tiny village of Dorley.

He came to Dorley several times, finding this particular walk the most picturesque of all his wanderings, and he rested for half an hour, or even longer, in the porch, while Linda Challice, he had found out her name in due course, sat at work in the pretty parlour and chatted with him pleasantly, quite at her ease. There was something about Richard Plowden which made people friendly with him at once.

They talked about the country, which Linda knew by heart, and about London, which was a strange and wonderful city she had never beheld. They talked of books and flowers and ferns, and by this time they had become as familiar as friends of long standing.

Linda had never invited Mr. Plowden to come beyond the porch, however. She was not quite sure whether her grandfather, a funny little old man, who was always in a floury condition on week days, would approve of such a step on her part.

And now, on this fine February morning, Dick makes his appearance, rosy with his brisk walk, and takes his accustomed seat in the porch.

‘If you come to Dorley some Sunday afternoon,’ says Linda, after a little while, ‘you can make grandfather’s acquaintance. He’s always in the mill on week days.’

‘He seems a kind old gentleman,’ says Dick, who had received a friendly nod from the little miller.

‘He is kindness itself. There never was such an indulgent grandfather.’

‘And you have lived with him----’

‘All my life. My mother was his only daughter. She married an artist who came to Dorley to fish and sketch one summer. She was very pretty, they say.’

‘I can easily believe it,’ murmured Dick.

‘Oh, much prettier than I!’ says Linda, blushing, ‘if you are trying to pay me a compliment. I have a portrait of her in my room, painted by my father. It was quite a love match, and I dare say people said my father had degraded himself by marrying a country miller’s daughter, for he was what people call a fashionable artist, and might have made a very different marriage. But they were very happy, and I believe my father was almost broken-hearted when my mother died a few months after my birth. I suppose he didn’t quite know what to do with me, poor fellow, so when my grandfather and grandmother offered to take care of me he consented to my being brought up by them until I was old enough to go to school. I was a sickly baby, they say, and that decided him. Well, my good grandmother brought me down here within a month of my mother’s death, and it has always seemed as if I was born here, for I can remember no other place. My first memories are of the garden and the mill--the big black wheel and the foaming race--and those snowdrops growing within the box border.’

‘And you were sent to school----’

‘Never. Before the school time came my poor father had died in Italy. He had earned a great deal of money at one time, but his reputation had not lasted as long as his life, and he left very little behind him. I never went to any school except the little village day school, where I learned to read and write; and if it had not been for the last Vicar of Cheswold--a dear old man--I must have grown up in ignorance. But one day when he came over to see my grandfather he heard my father’s name mentioned, and was interested in me directly. He was a great admirer of my father’s pictures. He asked how I was being educated, and when he found that I was not being educated at all, he offered to give me a couple of hours’ instruction twice a week if I would go as far as Cheswold Vicarage. I was only too glad--for I was fifteen years old at this time, and felt the burden of my ignorance,--and for four years I was that dear old man’s pupil. He taught me Latin, French, and Italian, and gave me the best books in his library to read. I owe it to him that I never wasted an hour upon a worthless book. He was indeed a friend. His memory is dearer to me than words can tell.’

Dick listens with profoundest interest, and is about to express his admiration of the good vicar, when a noise in the distance startles Linda and him. It is the sound of several voices talking in excited tones. Linda throws down her work and follows Dick to the garden gate. A labourer in a smock-frock comes running round the corner, by the brief row of cottages which the inhabitants dignify with the name of street.

‘What’s the matter, John?’ asks Linda; ‘anything wrong with your children?’

‘No, miss, they be right enough, but there’s a accident yonder with some gentlemen hunting, a young gent chucked over an ’edge, among the rushes in that there ditch just beyond your grandfeyther’s field.’

‘Is he much hurt?’

‘His arm’s broke, and there’s somethink wrong inside of ’im, miss, some of his internal bones scrunched, I’m afeard, for he’s been a-spittin’ blood like one o’clock.’

‘What are they going to do with him, poor fellow?’

‘The other gents is a-bringin’ him ’ere, miss, and I ran on afore to tell ’ee.’

Dick is pale as death. Those terrible presentiments of his! have they been cruelly verified? He can scarcely find voice to ask the question,--

‘Do you know who the gentleman is?’

‘One on ’em said it were the young squire of Ches’old.’