Читать книгу The Star-Gazers - Fenn George Manville - Страница 10

“Oh, father, I’m so glad you’ve come.”

This was Ben Hayle’s greeting as he reached the keeper’s lodge.

“Eh? Are you?” he said, with an assumed look of ignorance; but the corners of his eyes were twitching, and he was asking himself how he was to tell his child matters that would nearly break her heart, as he yielded his hand to hers, and let her press him back into his windsor arm-chair. “Nothing the matter, is there?”

She knelt at his feet, and told him all that had passed, and the strong man’s muscles jerked, and his grasp of her arm grew at times painful. As she went on, he interjected a savage word from time to time.

“Good girl, good girl. It has hurt you, my darling, but it was right to tell me all, and keep nothing back.”

Then he laid his hand softly on her glossy hair, and sat staring straight before him at the window, the moments being steadily marked off by the tick-tack of the old eight-day clock in the corner, and no other sound was heard in the room.

Outside, the silence of the fir wood was broken by the cheery lay of a robin in one of the apple-trees of the garden, and once there came the low, soft cooing of a dove, which the soft, sunny autumn day had deluded into the belief that it was spring.

Then all was again silent for a time, and it seemed to Judith, as she looked up into the stern, thoughtful face, with its dark, fierce eyes, that the heavy throbbing of her heart drowned the beat of the clock; at other times the regular tick-tack grew louder, and she could hear nothing else.

“You’re not cross with me, father?” she said at last.

“No, it was no fault of yours. Ah, Judy, my girl, I was so proud of your bonny face, but it seems as if it is like to be a curse to you – to us both.”

“Father!”

“Yes, my lass; and I don’t know which of they two we ought to be most scared of – Caleb Kent or the captain.”

“Oh! father!” cried Judith; and she let her head fall upon his knee, as she sobbed wildly.

“I need hardly ask you, then, my girl,” he said, as with tender, loving hands, he took her head and bent over it, with his dark, fierce eyes softening. “You like him, then?”

She looked up proudly.

“He loves me, father.”

“Ay, and you, my lassie?”

“Yes, father. I have tried very hard not to think about him, but – Yes, I do love him very dearly, and I’m going to be his wife. He said he would speak to you.”

“Yes, my dear, and he has spoken to me.”

“Oh!” she cried, as she reached up to lay her hands upon the keeper’s shoulders, and gaze inquiringly in his eyes.

“It was all one big blunder, my dear,” he said; “you ought never to have gone up to the house, and learned things to make you above your station. I used to think so, as I sat here o’ night’s and smoked my pipe, and say to myself, ‘She’ll never care for the poor old cottage again.’”

Judith looked up quickly, and her arm stole round her father’s neck.

“And then,” she whispered, “you said to yourself, ‘It is not true, for she’ll never forget the old home.’”

“You’re a witch, Judy,” he cried, drawing her to him, with his face brightening a little. “I did. And if it could have been that you’d wed the captain, and gone up to the house among the grand folk, you would have had me there; you would not have been ashamed of the old man – would you?”

“Why do you ask me that, dear?” said Judith, with her lips quivering. “You know – you know.”

“Yes,” he said, “I know. But we shall have to go away from the old place, Judy, for it can’t never be.”

“Oh, father!”

“No, my dear, it won’t do. It’s all been a muddle, and I ought to have known better, instead of being a proud old fool, pleased as could be to see my lassie growing into a lady. There, I may as well tell you the truth, lass, at once.”

“The truth, father?” she said sharply.

“Yes, my dear, though it goes again me to hurt your poor little soft heart.”

“What do you mean, father?” she cried, startled now by the keeper’s looks.

“It must come, Judy; but I wish you’d found it out for yourself. Young Robert isn’t the man his dead father was. He’s a liar and a scoundrel, girl, and – ”

She sprang from him with her eyes flashing, and a look of angry indignation convulsing her features.

“It’s true, my girl. He never meant to marry you, only to make you his plaything because he liked your pretty face.”

“It isn’t true,” said the girl harshly; and the indignation in her breast against her father made her wonderfully like him now.

“It is true, Judy, my pretty. I wouldn’t lie to you, and half break your heart. You’ve got to face it along with me. We’re sent away because the captain is going to marry.”

“It isn’t true, father; he wouldn’t marry Madge Emlin, with her cruel, deceitful heart.”

“No, my lass; he’s chucked her over too. He’s going to marry Sir John Day’s gal, over at Brackley Hall – her who came here and painted your face in the sun bonnet, when you were home those few days the time I had rheumatiz.”

“Is this true, father?”

“As true as gospel, lass.”

She gave him a long, searching look, as if reading his very soul, and then crept back to a low chair, sank down, and buried her face in her hands.

“Hah!” he said to himself, “she takes it better than I thought for. Thank God, it wasn’t too late.”

He stood thinking for a few minutes.

“Where am I to get a cottage, Judy, my lass?” he said at last. “One of those at Lindham might do for the present, out there by your grandmother’s, if there’s one empty. Mother Wattley would know. I’ll go and see her. Let’s get out of this. Poor old place, though,” he said, as he looked round. “It seems rather hard.”

Judith had raised her head, and sat gazing straight before her, right into the future, but she did not speak.