Chapter XVIII: Village Slander

The days glide by at Dorley Mill. Oh how gently, oh how sweetly, in what innocent rustic delights, in simple, childlike pleasures, shared and sanctified by the perpetual presence of a child! The willows have unfolded their tender young leaves. The white blossoms of the orchards have come and gone like all earth’s fairest things, too brief, too transitory. The lazy cattle revel in golden pastures; the pine trees on the hill-tops put forth pale green shoots at the ends of their dark old boughs. It is the time of buttercups and young lambs, trout-fishing, and all delights of early summer, and it has brought along with it fair nights and days, healing and strength, to Alexis Secretan.

Yet, strange to say, now that he is so much better, and nearly well enough to bear the journey to the Grange, he is no longer impatient to return thither.

‘My life will be so dull without Trot,’ he says. ‘I’m afraid I have fallen in love with Trot.’

And then he sighs deeply, and lapses into one of those despondent moods which come upon him sometimes.

Linda bends very low over her work, and she too sighs, but so softly that the sigh reaches no ear but Richard Plowden’s, who sits close beside her worktable.

Alexis is well enough to go out of doors and walk a little way, assisted by his cane on one side, and on the other by Linda or Richard. They take it in turns to accompany him in these brief walks; and Linda shows him all the beauties of nature to be seen within a few hundred yards of the mill. They all sit out of doors a good deal in the balmy June weather, and Linda takes her work and books to the rustic bench under the willows, and Alexis has many an afternoon nap, lulled by the babble of the mill-stream.

But the day comes at last when Mr. Skalpel, who, if he has erred at all, has erred on the side of caution, pronounces that his patient is quite well enough to bear the journey home.

‘And I do not say you could not have borne it a fortnight ago,’ adds the surgeon, ‘but I knew you to be particularly well off here, and one cannot be too careful.’

‘Yes, I am very well off here,’ says Alexis, with a smothered sigh.

‘However, since you are well enough to walk the length of the village you are certainly well enough to bear a three-mile drive, and we have no excuse for keeping you here any longer.’

‘No, I have no excuse for remaining,’ says Alexis, thoughtfully.

‘Six weeks ago you were in a great hurry to go home. I could hardly persuade you to be patient.’

‘Six weeks ago I was ill and fretful. Since then I have domesticated myself here, and now I feel as if Dorley Mill were home. Mr. Benfield and his granddaughter are so good to me; and this little fellow,’ adds Alexis, laying his hand on the golden head of Trot, who lies at his feet with an open picture-book spread out before him, ‘this little one and I have grown such friends that I don’t know what I shall do without him.’

‘Ah,’ says Mr. Skalpel, waxing grave, ‘poor little boy.’

‘You speak as if he were no favourite of yours.’

‘He is not,’ replies the surgeon. ‘He has caused too much scandal to be a favourite of mine.’

‘What do you mean by scandal?’

‘Well, Mr. Secretan, country people are censorious. It’s a very unworthy feeling on their part, but you’ll find that country people _are_ censorious.’

‘I have discovered the same failing in London people occasionally,’ remarks Alexis.

‘And if anything happens which is not quite open and on the surface, country people are apt to take a narrow view of it. Now Mr. Benfield’s adoption of this boy has given rise to some very unpleasant reports.’

‘Why should it do so? Is it not an act of charity, a most praiseworthy act?’

‘Possibly, possibly, my dear Mr. Secretan. That is the way in which I have always endeavoured to see it, but one can’t get other people to look at the thing with the same largeness of view. There is my wife now, an admirable woman; Miss Challice was a great favourite of hers before the appearance of this child; she would have done anything for her; but since this baby came on the scene my wife has quite turned against the poor girl, will hardly allow her name to be mentioned in her presence.’

‘That seems rather hard.’

‘It is hard, but it is human nature. There are some sharp angles in human nature. It isn’t all Hogarth’s line of beauty. You see this child made his appearance in a most mysterious way. If he had dropped from the moon it couldn’t have been more sudden, and we know no more about his origin than we do of a moonstone.’

‘Then people have talked unpleasantly about Miss Challice, I infer.’

‘They have, Mr. Secretan. There have been hard things said in the village with reference to that child. The village mind is coarse, and the village vocabulary is limited. Spades are called spades.’

‘And your villagers can hatch a lie out of their foul imaginations,’ says Alexis, in a tone that quite startles the placable doctor.

‘I have always stood up for Miss Challice,’ he says, ‘I have always defended her.’

‘I am sorry there should be any need for defence,’ replies Alexis, sternly. ‘I am sorry the people of Dorley and its neighbourhood should be such savages and idiots as not to recognise purity when they see it. I have lived nearly six months under the roof that shelters Miss Challice, and if she is not pure and perfect among women I have no power to recognise womanly purity and goodness.’

‘I am entirely with you there, Mr. Secretan, yet I cannot help regretting that this child should have ever been brought here to occasion a scandal. There is a secret of some kind about his origin, and wherever there is a secret there is always food for slander. I am sorry because I know Miss Challice has suffered.’

‘What, the slanders have reached her ears?’

‘Yes, on some occasions, and they have made her very unhappy.’

‘Poor girl! Yet when I offered to adopt Trot, she would not hear of such a thing.’

‘I dare say not. The little fellow has wound himself about her heart, no doubt. They were always a soft-hearted race, these Benfields. The old man has been an encourager of tramps and beggars, too easy by half. It doesn’t do, Mr. Secretan.’

‘Benevolence? No, it seems a failure in this life.’

This conversation with the surgeon makes a strong impression upon Alexis. Instead of going downstairs to the sitting-room where Richard and Linda are expecting him, he remains in his own room all the afternoon, keeping the child for his companion. The little fellow will amuse himself for an hour together, playing about the room in his quiet little way, and perfectly happy.

Alexis looks at him with infinite compassion.

‘Poor little waif, what is to be your fate in the years to come?’ he asks himself. ‘You cannot always have the calm shelter of Dorley Mill. The day will come when you will have to go out into the world to fight the battle of life--nameless, perhaps friendless, unless I am living to befriend you. Poor child, I would give much to know your history, and yet there are questions I dare not ask. There is always the horrible doubt, the lurking fear that this village scandal may contain some grain of truth.’

He is disinclined for Linda’s society that evening, and goes out at sunset for a solitary stroll, with no support but his cane. It is the first time he has walked without the help of Linda or Richard.

He goes down to the willow-shaded path, contemplates the simple pastoral landscape in a thoughtful mood, scarcely seeing the objects he gazes at, and then strolls past that brief row of old-fashioned cottages which constitutes the village of Dorley.

Some men are standing before the little public-house, and one of them seems considerably amused in a quiet way at the appearance of Alexis, pale and wan still, and leaning heavily on his cane.

‘He don’t look up to much yet, do he?’ says one of these village worthies when Alexis has passed, but before he is out of hearing.

‘No,’ says the man who grinned. ‘He looks a rare sight. Yon’s the rich gentleman at the mill. Miss Challice’s new lovyer.’

‘Who says he’s her sweetheart?’ asks the other.

‘Well, folks don’t say it, may be, but they knows it pretty well, I should think.’

‘That’s the young woman that’s got the ’dopted child,’ says the facetious man’s friend.

The humorist is a drunkard and ne’er-do-well, who has been refused employment at the mill, and is bitter against Mr. Benfield and his household.

‘’Dopted child!’ he says, with his coarse laugh, raising his voice on purpose that Alexis may hear him. ‘There’s many sech ’dopted children in these parts, but we calls ’em by another name. We calls ’em----’

He has just time to utter a blasphemous adjective, but not the substantive that is to follow it, for the adjective is thrust back between his teeth, as it were, by a blow which strikes him on the mouth and seems to loosen every tooth in his head. It is astonishing how hard a weak man can hit when his arm is impelled by such passion as moves Alexis to-night. He staggers from the recoil of his own blow, and might fall were it not for a bystander’s friendly arm stretched out to support him.

‘Sarve him right,’ says one of the sufferer’s companions, as he stands before them, a piteous object, pouring his blood upon the dusty ground, as in a libation to the great mother. ‘He didn’t ought to have gone and said anything agen Miss Challice. She be a good friend to the poor folks.’

The injured man growls out some threat about ‘summonsing’ and ‘the beak.’

‘Summon me before whom you please,’ replies Alexis. ‘I shall think this evening’s work cheap at five pounds.’

Alexis goes back to the mill curiously moved by what has happened.

‘Why do I feel insult to her so keenly?’ he asks himself. ‘Is it that she is more to me than I dare avow even to my own heart? Is there peril for my future peace in this quiet home that has sheltered my sickness and pain? Your fault, Sibyl, your fault. You have left your place to be occupied by another. Whatever evil befalls me is your work. Let it be my care that I bring no evil upon the good Samaritans who have succoured me in my weakness. Mr. Skalpel is right, I have no excuse for remaining at Dorley another day. But before I go I would give much to learn the secret of that child’s adoption.’

He is not a little enfeebled by his act of violence and the passion that accompanied it. His heart beats violently, and he is barely strong enough to get back to the mill, where he arrives in a state of extreme exhaustion, and so pale as to frighten Linda and Richard almost as much as if his ghost had returned instead of himself.

‘How ill you are looking, Mr. Secretan!’ says Linda anxiously, when she has arranged the pillows on his sofa and brought him a tumbler of claret and water. ‘You have been walking too fast, and alone.’

‘I am sorry I look so ill,’ replies Alexis, ‘for Mr. Skalpel tells me I am quite well, and I am to go home to-morrow.’

‘To-morrow?’

‘Yes; there is no excuse for my being a burden to you any longer.’

‘You have never been a burden,’ answers Linda, in a very low voice. Her face is hidden from Alexis, but not from Richard Plowden, who in their daily companionship has learned the meaning of that thoughtful countenance all too well. He reads her secret there to-night, and the knowledge pierces him to the heart.

END OF VOL. II.

J. and W. Rider, Printers, 14, Bartholomew Close, London.

Transcriber’s Notes

Obvious typographical errors and punctuation errors have been silently corrected after careful comparison with other occurrences within the three volumes of this work and consultation of external sources. Some hyphens in words have been silently removed and some silently added when a predominant preference was found in the original work. Except for those changes noted below, original spellings in the text and inconsistent or archaic usage have been retained.

Page 25: “musn’t we” replaced with “mustn’t we”.

Page 41: “be a n’ypocrite” replaced with “be an ’ypocrite”.

Page 69: “at St. Heliers” replaced with “at St. Helier”.

Page 95: “old office elate” replaced with “old office elated”.

Page 153: “McTower and Belinda” replaced with “MacTower and
Belinda”.

Page 153: “we ooght to” replaced with “we ought to”.

Page 154: “and her portmanteaux” replaced with “and her
portmanteaus”.

Page 236: “Mrs. Parker” replaced with “Mrs. Perker”.

Page 237: “the servants feed” replaced with “the servants fed”.

Italicized text is surrounded by underscores: _italics_.

New original cover art included with this eBook is granted to the public domain.