Читать книгу The Greatest Historical Novels - Charles Reade Edition - Charles Reade Reade - Страница 108

Table of Contents

Miss Peyton was shocked, and grieved at bottom, but she was also affronted and wounded. Now anger seems to have some fine buoyant quality, which makes it rise and come uppermost in an agitated mind. She rode proudly into the courtyard of her father's house, and would not look once behind to see the last of her perverse lover.

The old groom, Joe, who had taught her to ride when she was six years old, saw her coming, and hobbled out to hold her horse, while she alighted. "Mistress Kate," said he, "have you seen Master Griffith Gaunt anywheres?"

The young lady colored at this question.

"Why?" said she.

"Why?" repeated old Joe, a little contemptuously. "Why, where have you been not to know the country is out after un? First comed Jock Dennet, with his horse all in a lather, to say old Mr. Charlton was took ill, and had asked for Master Griffith. I told him to go to Dogmore Copse: 'our Kate is a hunting, to-day,' says I, and your Griffith he is sure not to be far from her gelding's tail;' a stick in his spurs and away a goes: what, han't you seen Jock neither?"

"No, no," replied Miss Peyton, impatiently: "what, is there anything the matter?"

"The matter, quo she! Why Jock hadn't been gone an hour when in rides the new footman all in a lather, and brings a letter for Master Griffith from the old gentleman's housekeeper: ‘you leave the letter with me, in case,' says I, and I sends him a field after t'other. Here be the letter."

He took off his cap and produced the letter.

Catherine started at the sight of it. "Alas!" said she, "this is a heavy day. Look, Joe; sealed with black; poor cousin Charlton! I doubt he is no more."

Joe shook his head expressively, and told her the butcher had come from that part not ten minutes ago, with word that the blinds were all down at Bolton Hall.

Poor human nature! a gleam of joy shot through Catherine's heart; this sad news would compel Griffith to stay at home and bury his benefactor; and that delay would give him time to reflect; and somehow or other she felt sure it would end in his not going at all.

But these thoughts had no sooner passed through her than she was ashamed of them and of herself. What, welcome that poor old man's death because it would keep her cross-grained lover at home? Her cheeks burned with shame, and with a superfluous exercise of self-defense she retired from Old Joe, lest he should divine what was passing in her mind.

But she was so rapt in thought that she carried the letter away with her unconsciously.

As she passed through the hall she heard George Neville and her father in animated conversation. She mounted the stairs softly, and went into a little boudoir of her own on the first floor, and sat down. The house stood high, and there was a very expansive and beautiful view of the country from this window. She sat down by it and drooped, and looked wistfully through the window, and thought of the past, and fell into a sad reverie. Pity began to soften her pride and anger, and presently two gentle tears dimmed her glorious eyes a moment, and then stole down her delicate cheeks.

While she sat thus lost in the past, jovial voices and creaking boots broke suddenly upon her ear, and came up the stairs: they jarred upon her; so she cast one last glance out of the window, and rose to get out of their way if possible: but it was too late; a heavy step came to the door, and a ruddy port-drinking face peeped in. It was her father. "See-ho!" roared the jovial Squire. "I've found the hare on her form: bide thou outside a moment." And he entered the room; but he had no sooner closed the door than his whole manner changed from loud and jovial to agitated and subdued. "Kate, my girl," said he, piteously, "I have been a bad father to thee. I have spent all the money that should have been thine; thy poor father can scarce look thee in the face. So now I bring thee a good husband: be a good child now, and a dutiful. Neville's Court is his, and Neville's Cross will be, by the entail; and so will the baronetcy. I shall see my girl Lady Neville."

"Never, papa, never," cried Kate.

"Hush! hush!" said the Squire, and put up his hand to her in great agitation and alarm: "hush! or he will hear ye. Kate," he whispered, "are you mad? Little I thought, when he asked to see me, it was to offer marriage. Be a good girl now: don't you quarrel with good luck. You are not fit to be poor, and you have made enemies. Do but think how they will flout you when I die, and Bill's jade of a wife puts you to the door, as she will: and now you can triumph over them all; my Lady Neville; and make your poor father happy; my Lady Neville. Enough said, for I have promised you; so don't go and make a fool of me and yourself into the bargain. And—and—a word in your ear; he has lent me a hundred pounds."

At this climax the father hung his head; the daughter winced and moaned out, "Papa! how could you?"

Mr. Peyton had gradually descended to that intermediate stage of degradation, when the substance of dignity is all gone, but its shadow, shame, remains. He stamped impatiently on the ground, and cut his humiliation short by rushing out of the room. "Here, try your own luck, youngster," he cried at the door. "She knows my mind." He trampled down the stairs, and young George Neville knocked respectfully at the door, though it was half open; and came in with youth's light foot, and a handsome face flushed into beauty by love and hope.

Miss Peyton's eye just swept him, as he entered, and with the same movement she turned away her fair head and blushing cheek towards the window; yet, must I own it, she quietly moulded the letter that lay in her lap, so that the address was no longer visible to the new-comer.

Small secrecy, verging on deceit, you are bred in women's bones.

This blushing and averted cheek is one of those equivocal receptions that have puzzled many a sensible man. It is a sign of coy love; it is a sign of gentle aversion; our mode of interpreting it is simple and judicious; whichever it happens to be we go and take it for the other.

The brisk bold wooer that now engaged Kate Peyton was not the man to be dashed by a woman's coyness. Handsome, daring, good-humored, and vain, he had everything in his favor but his novelty.

Look at Kate! her eye lingers wistfully on that disconsolate horseman whose every step takes him farther from her; but George has her ear, and draws closer and closer to it, and pours love's mellow murmurs into it.

He told her he had made the grand tour, and seen the beauties of every land, but none like her; other ladies had certainly pleased his eye for a moment, but she alone had conquered his heart. He said many charming things to her, such as Griffith Gaunt had never said. Amongst the rest, he assured her the beauty of her person would not alone have fascinated him so deeply; but he had seen the beauty of her mind in those eyes of hers that seemed not eyes, but souls; and, begging her pardon for his presumption, he aspired to wed her mind.

Such ideas had often risen in Kate's own mind; but to hear them from a man was new. She looked askant through the window at the lessening Griffith, and thought "how the grand tour improves a man!" and said as coldly as she could, "I esteem you, sir, and cannot but be flattered by sentiments so superior to those I am used to hear; but let this go no further. I shall never marry now."

Instead of being angry at this, or telling her she wanted to marry somebody else, as the injudicious Griffith had done, young Neville had the address to treat it as an excellent jest, and drew such comical pictures of all the old maids in the neighborhood, that she could not help smiling.

But the moment she smiled, the inflammable George made hot love to her again. Then she besought him to leave her, piteously. Then he said cheerfully he would leave her as soon as ever she had promised to be his. At that she turned sullen and haughty, and looked through the window and took no notice of him whatever. Then, instead of being discouraged or mortified, he showed imperturbable confidence and good humour, and begged archly to know what interesting object was in sight from that window. On this she blushed and withdrew her eyes from the window, and so they met his. On that he threw himself on his knees (custom of the day), and wooed her with such a burst of passionate and tearful eloquence that she began to pity him, and said she, lifting her lovely eyes, "Alas! I was born to make all those I esteem, unhappy;" and she sighed deeply.

"Not a bit of it," said he; "you were born, like the sun, to bless all you shine upon. Sweet Mistress Kate, I love you as these country boors can never be taught to love. I lay my heart, my name, my substance, at your feet; you shall not be loved—you shall be worshipped. Ah! turn those eyes, brimful of soul, on me again, and let me try and read in them that one day, no matter how distant, the delight of my eyes, the joy of all my senses, the pride of Cumberland, the pearl of England, the flower of womankind, the rival of the angels, the darling of George Neville's heart, will be George Neville's wife."

Fire and water were in his eyes, passion in every tone; his manly hand grasped hers and trembled, and drew her gently towards him.

Her bosom heaved; his passionate male voice and manner electrified her, and made her flutter. "Spare me this pain," she faltered; and she looked through the window and thought, "Poor Griffith was right after all, and I was wrong. He had cause for jealousy, and CAUSE FOR FEAR."

And then she pitied him who panted at her side, and then was sorry for him who rode away disconsolate, still lessening to her eye; and what with this conflict, and the emotion her quarrel with Griffith had already caused her, she leaned her head back against the shutter, and began to sob low, but almost hysterically.

Now, Mr. George Neville was neither a fool nor a novice. If he had never been downright in love before (which I crave permission to doubt), he had gone far enough on that road to make one Italian lady, two French, one Austrian, and one Creole in love with him; and each of these love affairs had given him fresh insight into the ways of women. Enlightened by so many bitter-sweet experiences, he saw at once that there was something more going on inside Kate's heaving bosom than he could have caused by offering her his hand. He rose from his knees, and leaned against the opposite shutter, and fixed his eyes a little sadly, but very observantly, on her, as she leaned back against the shutter, sobbing low, but hysterically, and quivering all over.

"There's some other man at the bottom of this," thought George Neville.

"Mistress Kate," said he, gently, "I do not come here to make you weep. I love you like a gentleman; if you love another, take courage, tell me so, and don't let your father constrain your inclinations. Dearly as I love you, I would not wed your person and your heart another's; that would be too cruel to you, and (drawing himself up with sudden majesty) too unjust to myself."

Kate looked up at him through her tears, and admired this man, who could love ardently, yet be proud and just. And if his appeal to her candor had been made yesterday, she would have said frankly, "There is one I—esteem." But, since the quarrel, she would not own to herself, far less to another, that she loved a man who had turned his back upon her. So she parried.

"There is no one I love enough to wed," said she. "I am a cold-hearted girl, born to give pain to my betters. But I shall do something desperate to end all this."

"All what?" said he, keenly.

"The whole thing; my unprofitable life."

"Mistress Kate," said Neville, "I asked you was there another man. If you had answered me 'In truth there is, but he is poor and my father is averse,' or the like; then I would have stood his friend, for your sake. But you say there is no man you love. Then I say you shall be Dame Neville."

"What, whether I will or no?"

"Yes; whether you think you will or no."

Catherine turned her dreamy eyes on him.

"You have had a good master. Why did you not come to me sooner?"

She was thinking more of him than of herself, and in fact paying too little heed to her words. But she had no sooner uttered this inadvertent speech than she felt she had said too much; she blushed a rosy red, and hid her face in her hands in the most charming confusion.

"Sweetest, it is not an hour too late, as you do not love another," was stout George Neville's reply.

But nevertheless the cunning rogue thought it safest to temporize, and put his coy mistress off her guard. So he ceased to alarm her by pressing the question of marriage, but seduced her into a charming talk, where the topics were not so personal, and only the tones of his voice and the glances of his expressive eyes were caressing. He was on his mettle to please her by hook or by crook, and was delightful, irresistible. He set her at ease, and she began to listen more, and even to smile faintly, and to look through the window a little less perseveringly.

Suddenly the spell was broken for a while.

And by whom?

By the other.

Ay you may well stare. It sounds strange, but it is true, that the poor forlorn horseman, hanging like a broken man, as he was, over his tired horse, and wending his solitary way from her he loved, and resigning the field, like a goose, to the very rival he feared, did yet (like the retiring Parthian) shoot an arrow right into that pretty boudoir, and hit both his sweetheart and his rival; hit them hard enough to spoil their sport, and make a little mischief between them—for that afternoon, at all events.

The arrow came into the room after this fashion.

Kate was sitting in a very feminine attitude. When a man wants to look in any direction, he turns his body and his eye the same way and does it; but women love to cast oblique regards, and this their instinct is a fruitful source of their graceful and characteristic postures.

Kate Peyton was at this moment a statue of her sex. Her fair head leaned gently back against the corner of the window shutter, her pretty feet and fair person in general were opposite George Neville, who sat facing the window but in the middle of the room; her arms, half pendent, half extended, went listlessly aslant her and somewhat to the right of her knees, yet by an exquisite turn of the neck her grey eyes contrived to be looking dreamily out of the window to her left. Still, in this figure, that pointed one way and looked another, there was no distortion; all was easy, and full of that subtle grace we artists call Repose.

But suddenly she dissolved this feminine attitude, rose to her feet, and interrupted her wooer civilly. "Excuse me," said she, "but can you tell me which way that road on the hill leads to?"

Her companion stared a little at so sudden a turn in the conversation, but replied by asking her with perfect good humour what road she meant.

"The one that gentleman on horseback has just taken. Surely," she continued, "that road does not take to Bolton Hall."

"Certainly not," said George, following the direction of her finger, "Bolton lies to the right. That road takes to the sea-coast by Otterbury and Stanhope."

"I thought so," said Kate. "How unfortunate! He cannot know. But indeed how should he?"

"Who cannot know? and what? you speak in riddles, mistress; and how pale you are; are you ill?"

"No, not ill, sir," faltered Kate; "but you see me much discomposed. My cousin Charlton died this day; and the news met me at the very door." She could say no more.

Mr. Neville, on hearing this news, began to make many excuses for having inadvertently intruded himself upon her on such a day; but in the midst of his apologies she suddenly looked him full in the face, and said, with nervous abruptness, "You talk like a preux chevalier; I wonder whether you would ride five or six miles to do me a service?"

"Ay; a thousand;" said the young man, glowing with pleasure. "What is to do?"

Kate pointed through the window. "You see that gentleman on horseback. Well, I happen to know he is leaving the country: he thinks that he—that I—that Mr. Charlton has many years to live. He must be told Mr. Charlton is dead, and his presence is required at Bolton Hall. I should like somebody to gallop after him, and give him this letter: but my own horse is tired, and I am tired—and, to be frank, there is a little coolness between the gentleman himself and me; oh, I wish him no ill, but really I am not upon terms—I do not feel complaisant enough to carry a letter after him; yet I do feel that he must have it: do not you think it would be malicious and unworthy in me to keep the news from him, when I know it is so?"

Young Neville smiled. "Nay, mistress, why so many words? Give me your letter, and I will soon overtake the gentleman: he seems in no great hurry."

Kate thanked him, and made a polite apology for giving him so much trouble, and handed him the letter: when it came to that, she held it out to him rather irresolutely; but he took it promptly and bowed low after the fashion of the day; she curtsied; he marched off with alacrity; she sat down again and put her head in her hand to think it all over, and a chill thought ran through her; was her conduct wise? What would Griffith think at her employing his rival? Would he not infer Neville had entered her service in more senses than one? Perhaps he would throw the letter down in a rage and never read it.

Steps came rapidly, the door opened, and there was George Neville again, but not the same George Neville that went out but thirty seconds before. He stood at the door looking very black, and with a sardonic smile on his lips. "An excellent jest, mistress," said he, ironically.

"Why what is the matter?" said the lady, stoutly: but her red cheeks belied her assumption of innocence.

"Oh not much," said George, with a bitter sneer. "It is an old story; only I thought you were nobler than the rest of your sex. This letter is to Mr. Griffith Gaunt."

"Well, sir," said Kate, with a face of serene and candid innocence.

"And Mr. Griffith Gaunt is a suitor of yours."

"Say, was. He is so no longer. He and I are out. But for that, think you I had even listened to—what you have been saying to me this ever so long?"

"Oh, that alters the case," said George. "But stay!" and he knitted his brows and reflected. Up to a moment ago the loftiness of Catherine Peyton's demeanor, and the celestial something in her soul-like dreamy eyes, had convinced him she was a creature free from the small dishonesty and duplicity he had noted in so many women otherwise amiable and good.

But this business of the letter had shaken the illusion.

"Stay," said he stiffly. "You say Mr. Gaunt and you are out."

Catherine assented by a movement of her fair head.

"And he is leaving the country. Perhaps this letter is to keep him from leaving the country?"

"Only until he has buried his benefactor," murmured Kate, in deprecating accents.

George wore a bitter sneer at this. "Mistress Kate," said he, after a significant pause, "do you read Molière?"

She bridled a little, and would not reply; she knew Molière quite well enough not to want his wit leveled at her head.

"Do you admire the character of Célimène?"

No reply.

"You do not. How can you? She was too much your inferior. She never sent one of her lovers with a letter to the other to stop his flight. Well, you may eclipse Célimène; but permit me to remind you that I am George Neville, and not Georges Dandin."

Miss Peyton rose from her seat with eyes that literally flashed fire, and, the horrible truth must be told, her first wild impulse was to reply to all this Molière with one cut of her little riding-whip: but she had a swift mind, and two reflections entered it together: first that this would be unlike a gentlewoman; secondly, that if she whipped Mr. Neville, however slightly, he would not lend her his piebald horse: so she took stronger measures; she just sank down again and faltered, "I do not understand these bitter words: I have no lover at all: I never will have one again. But it is hard to think I cannot make a friend, nor keep a friend." And so lifted up her hands and began to cry piteously.

Then the stout George was taken aback, and made to think himself a ruffian.

"Nay, do not weep so, Mistress Kate," said he hurriedly. "Come, take courage. I am not jealous of Mr. Gaunt; a man that hath been two years dangling after you, and could not win you. I look but to my own self-respect in the matter. I know your sex better than you know yourselves: were I to carry that letter you would thank me now, but by and by despise me; now as I mean you to be my wife, I will not risk your contempt. 'Why not take my horse, put who you like on him, and so convey the letter to Mr. Gaunt?"

Now this was all the fair mourner wanted; so she said, "No, no, she would not be beholden to him for anything; he had spoken harshly to her, and misjudged her cruelly, cruelly: oh! oh! oh!"

Then he implored her to grant him this small favor: then she cleared up and said, well, sooner than bear malice, she would. He thanked her for granting him that favor. She went off with the letter, saying, "I will be back anon." But, once she got clear, she opened the door again, and peeped in at him gaily, and said she, "Why not ask me who wrote the letter before you compared me to that French coquette?" And with this made him an arch curtsy, and tripped away.

Mr. George Neville opened his eyes with astonishment. This arch question, and Kate's manner of putting it, convinced him the obnoxious missive was not a love-letter at all. He was sorry now, and vexed with himself for having called her a coquette, and made her cry. After all, what was the mighty favor she had asked of him? to carry a sealed letter from somebody or other to a person who, to be sure, had been her lover, but was so no longer. A simple act of charity and civility, and he had refused it in injurious terms.

He was glad he had lent his horse, and almost sorry he had not taken the letter himself.

To these chivalrous self-reproaches succeeded an uneasy feeling that perhaps the lady might retaliate somehow. It struck him, on reflection, that the arch query she had let fly at him was accompanied with a certain sparkle of the laughing eye, such as ere now had, in his experience, preceded a stroke of the feminine claw.

As he walked up and down, uneasy, awaiting the fair one's return, her father came up, and asked him to dine and sleep. What made the invitation more welcome was that it in reality came from Kate. "She tells me she has borrowed your horse," said the Squire, "so says she, I am bound to take care of you till daylight, and indeed our ways are perilous at night."

"She is an angel!" cried the lover, all his ardor revived by this unexpected trait; "my horse, my house, my hand, and my heart, are all at her service by night and day."

Mr. Peyton, to wile away the time before dinner, invited him to walk out and see—a hog: deadly fat, as times went. But Neville denied himself that satisfaction on the plea that he had his orders to await Miss Peyton's return where he was. The Squire was amused at his excessive docility, and winked, as much as to say, "I have been once upon a time in your plight;" and so went and gloried in his hog alone.

The lover fell into a delicious reverie. He enjoyed by anticipation the novel pleasure of an evening passed all alone with this charming girl. The father, being friendly to his suit, would go to sleep after dinner; and then by the subdued light of a wood-fire he would murmur his love into that sweet ear for hours, until the averted head should come round by degrees, and the delicious lips yield a coy assent. He resolved the night should not close till he had surprised, overpowered, and secured his lovely bride.

These soft meditations reconciled him for awhile to the prolonged absence of their object.

In the midst of them he happened to glance through the window; and he saw a sight that took his very breath away, and rooted him in amazement to the spot. About a mile from the house a lady in a scarlet habit was galloping across country as the crow flies. Hedge, ditch, or brook, nothing stopped her an instant; and as for the pace,

She seemed in running to devour the way.

It was Kate Peyton on his piebald horse.