Читать книгу Elster's Folly - Henry Wood - Страница 3

Jabez Gum came out of his house in the bright summer morning, missing Mr. Elster by one minute only. He went round to a small shed at the back of the house and brought forth sundry garden-tools. The whole garden was kept in order by himself, and no one had finer fruit and vegetables than Clerk Gum. Hartledon might have been proud of them, and Dr. Ashton sometimes accepted a dish with pleasure.

In his present attire: dark trousers, and a short close jacket buttoned up round him and generally worn when gardening, the worthy man might decidedly have been taken for an animated lamp-post by any stranger who happened to come that way. He was applying himself this morning, first to the nailing of sundry choice fruit-trees against the wall that ran down one side of his garden—a wall that had been built by the clerk himself in happier days; and next, to plucking some green walnuts for his wife to pickle. As he stood on tip-toe, his long thin body and long thin arms stretched up to the walnut-tree, he might have made the fortune of any travelling caravan that could have hired him. The few people who passed him greeted him with a "Good morning," but he rarely turned his head in answering them. Clerk Gum had grown somewhat taciturn of late years.

The time went on. The clock struck a quarter-past seven, and Jabez Gum, as he heard it, left the walnut-tree, walked to the gate, and leaned over it; his face turned in the direction of the village. It was not the wooden gate generally attached to smaller houses in rustic localities, but a very pretty iron one; everything about the clerk's house being of a superior order. Apparently, he was looking out for some one in displeasure; and, indeed, he had not stood there a minute, when a girl came flying down the road, and pushed the gate and the clerk back together.

Mr. Gum directed her attention to the church clock. "Do you see the time, Rebecca Jones?"

Had the pages of the church-register been visible as well as the clock, Miss Rebecca Jones's age might have been seen to be fifteen; but, in knowledge of the world and in impudence, she was considerably older.

"Just gone seven and a quarter," answered she, making a feint of shading her eyes with her hands, though the sun was behind her.

"And what business have you to come at seven and a quarter? Half-past six is your time; and, if you can't keep it, your missis shall get those that can."

"Why can't my missis let me stop at night and clear up the work?" returned the girl. "She sends me away at six o'clock, as soon as I've washed the tea-things, and oftentimes earlier than that. It stands to reason I can't get through the work of a morning."

"You could do so quite well if you came to time," said the clerk, turning away to his walnut-tree. "Why don't you?"

"I overslept myself this morning. Father never called me afore he went out. No doubt he had a drop too much last night."

She went flying up the gravel-path as she spoke. Her father was the man Jones whom you saw at the railway station; her step-mother (for her own mother was dead) was Mrs. Gum's cousin.

She was a sort of stray sheep, this girl, in the eyes of Calne, not belonging very much to any one; her father habitually neglected her, her step-mother had twice turned her out of doors. Some three or four months ago, when Mrs. Gum was changing her servant, she had consented to try this girl. Jabez Gum knew nothing of the arrangement until it was concluded, and disapproved of it. Altogether, it did not work satisfactorily: Miss Jones was careless, idle, and impudent; her step-mother was dissatisfied because she was not taken into the house; and Clerk Gum threatened every day, and his wife very often, to dismiss her.

It was only within a year or two that they had not kept an indoor servant; and the fact of their not doing so now puzzled the gossips of Calne. The clerk's emoluments were the same as ever; there was no Willy to encroach on them now; and the work of the house required a good servant. However, it pleased Mrs. Gum to have one in only by day; and who was to interfere with her if the clerk did not?

Jabez Gum worked on for some little time after eight o'clock, the breakfast-hour. He rather wondered he was not called to it, and registered a mental vow to discharge Miss Becky. Presently he went indoors, put his head into a small sitting-room on the left, and found the room empty, but the breakfast laid. The kitchen was behind it, and Jabez Gum stalked on down the passage, and went into it. On the other side of the passage was the best sitting-room, and a very small room at the back of it, which Jabez used as an office, and where he kept sundry account-books.

"Where's your missis?" asked he of the maid, who was on her knees toasting bread.

"Not down yet," was the short response.

"Not down yet!" repeated Jabez in surprise, for Mrs. Gum was generally down by seven. "You've got that door open again, Rebecca. How many more times am I to tell you I won't have it?"

"It's the smoke," said Rebecca. "This chimbley always smokes when it's first lighted."

"The chimney doesn't smoke, and you know that you are telling a falsehood. What do you want with it open? You'll have that wild man darting in upon you some morning. How will you like that?"

"I'm not afeard of him," was the answer, as Rebecca got up from her knees. "He couldn't eat me."

"But you know how timid your mistress is," returned the clerk, in a voice of extreme anger. "How dare you, girl, be insolent?"

He shut the door as he spoke—one that opened from the kitchen to the back garden—and bolted it. Washing his hands, and drying them with a round towel, he went upstairs, and found Mrs. Gum—as he had now and then found her of late—in a fit of prostration. She was a little woman, with a light complexion, and insipid, unmeaning face—some such a face as Willy's had been—and her hair, worn in neat bands under her cap, was the colour of tow.

"I couldn't help it, Gum," she began, as she stood before the glass, her trembling fingers trying to fasten her black alpaca gown—for she had never left off mourning for their son. "It's past eight, I know; but I've had such an upset this morning as never was, and I couldn't dress myself. I've had a shocking dream."

"Drat your dreams!" cried Mr. Gum, very much wanting his breakfast.

"Ah, Gum, don't! Those morning dreams, when they're vivid as this was, are not sent for ridicule. Pike was in it; and you know I can't bear him to be in my dreams. They are always bad when he is in them."

"If you wanted your breakfast as much as I want mine, you'd let Pike alone," retorted the clerk.

"I thought he was mixed up in some business with Lord Hartledon. I don't know what it was, but the dream was full of horror. It seemed that Lord Hartledon was dead or dying; whether he'd been killed or not, I can't say; but an awful dread was upon me of seeing him dead. A voice called out, 'Don't let him come to Calne!' and in the fright I awoke. I can't remember what part Pike played in the dream," she continued, "only the impression remained that he was in it."

"Perhaps he killed Lord Hartledon?" cried Gum, mockingly.

"No; not in the dream. Pike did not seem to be mixed up in it for ill. The ill was all on Lord Hartledon; but it was not Pike brought it upon him. Who it was, I couldn't see; but it was not Pike."

Clerk Gum looked down at his wife in scornful pity. He wondered sometimes, in his phlegmatic reasoning, why women were created such fools.

"Look here, Mrs. G. I thought those dreams of yours were pretty nearly dreamed out—there have been enough of 'em. How any woman, short of a born idiot, can stand there and confess herself so frightened by a dream as to be unable to get up and go about her duties, is beyond me."

"But, Gum, you don't let me finish. I woke up with the horror, I tell you—"

"What horror?" interrupted the clerk, angrily. "What did it consist of? I can't see the horror."

"Nor can I, very clearly," acknowledged Mrs. Gum; "but I know it was there. I woke up with the very words in my ears, 'Don't let him come to Calne!' and I started out of bed in terror for Lord Hartledon, lest he should come. We are only half awake, you know, at these moments. I pulled the curtain aside and looked out. Gum, if ever I thought to drop in my life, I thought it then. There was but one person to be seen in the road—and it was Lord Hartledon."

"Oh!" said Mr. Gum, cynically, after a moment of natural surprise. "Come out of his vault for a morning walk past your window, Mrs. G.!"

"Vault! I mean young Lord Hartledon, Gum."

Mr. Gum was a little taken back. They had been so much in the habit of calling the new Lord Hartledon, Lord Elster—who had not lived at Calne since he came into the title—that he had thought of the old lord when his wife was speaking.

"He was up there, just by the turning of the road, going on to Hartledon. Gum, I nearly dropped, I say. The next minute he was out of sight; then I rubbed my eyes and pinched my arms to make sure I was awake."

"And whether you saw a ghost, or whether you didn't," came the mocking retort.

"It was no ghost, Gum; it was Lord Hartledon himself."

"Nonsense! It was just as much one as the other. The fact is, you hadn't quite woke up out of that fine dream of yours, and you saw double. It was just as much young Hartledon as it was me."

"I never saw a ghost yet, and I don't fear I ever shall, Gum. I tell you it was Lord Hartledon. And if harm doesn't befall him at Calne, as shadowed forth in my dream, never believe me again."

"There, that's enough," peremptorily cried the clerk; knowing, if once Mrs. Gum took up any idea with a dream for its basis, how impossible it was to turn her. "Is the key of that kitchen door found yet?"

"No: it never will be, Gum. I've told you so before. My belief is, and always has been, that Rebecca let it drop by accident into the waste bucket."

"My belief is, that Rebecca made away with it for her own purposes," said the clerk. "I caught her just now with the door wide open. She's trying to make acquaintance with the man Pike; that's what she's at."

"Oh, Gum!"

"Yes; it's all very well to say 'Oh, Gum!' but if you were below-stairs looking after her, instead of dreaming up here, it might be better for everyone. Let me once be certain about it, and off she goes the next hour. A fine thing 'twould be some day for us to find her head smothered in the kitchen purgatory, and the silver spoons gone; as will be the case if any loose characters get in."

He was descending the stairs as he spoke the last sentence, delivered in loud tones, probably for the benefit of Miss Rebecca Jones. And lest the intelligent Protestant reader should fear he is being introduced to unorthodox regions, it may be as well to mention that the "purgatory" in Mr. Jabez Gum's kitchen consisted of an excavation, two feet square, under the hearth, covered with a grating through which the ashes and the small cinders fell; thereby enabling the economical housewife to throw the larger ones on the fire again. Such wells or "purgatories," as they are called, are common enough in the old-fashioned kitchens of certain English districts.

Mrs. Gum, ready now, had been about to follow her husband; but his suggestion—that the girl was watching an opportunity to make acquaintance with their undesirable neighbour, Pike—struck her motionless.

It seemed that she could never see this man without a shiver, or overcome the fright experienced when she first met him. It was on a dark autumn night. She was coming through the garden when she discerned, or thought she discerned, a light in the abandoned shed. Thinking of fire, she hastily crossed the stile that divided their garden from the waste land, and ran to it. There she was confronted by what she took to be a bear—but a bear that could talk; for he gruffly asked her who she was and what she wanted. A black-haired, black-browed man, with a pipe between his teeth, and one sinewy arm bared to the elbow.

How Mrs. Gum tore away and tumbled over the stile in her terror, and got home again, she never knew. She supposed it to be a tramp, who had taken shelter there for the night; but finding to her dismay that the tramp stayed on, she had never overcome her fright from that hour to this.

Neither did her husband like the proximity of such a gentleman. They caused securer bolts to be put on their doors—for fastenings in small country places are not much thought about, people around being proverbially honest. They also had their shutters altered. The shutters to the windows, back and front, had holes in them in the form of a heart, such as you may have sometimes noticed. Before the wild-looking man—whose name came to be known as Pike—had been in possession of the shed a fortnight, Jabez Gum had the holes in his shutters filled-in and painted over. An additional security, said the neighbours: but poor timid Mrs. Gum could not overcome that first fright, and the very mention of the man set her trembling and quaking.

Nothing more was said of the dream or the apparition, real or fancied, of Lord Hartledon: Clerk Gum did not encourage the familiar handling of such topics in everyday life. He breakfasted, devoted an hour to his own business in the little office, and then put on his coat to go out. It was Friday morning. On that day and on Wednesdays the church was open for baptisms, and it was the clerk's custom to go over at ten o'clock and apprize the Rector of any notices he might have had.

Passing in at the iron gates, the large white house rose before him, beyond the wide lawn. It had been built by Dr. Ashton at his own expense. The old Rectory was a tumbledown, inconvenient place, always in dilapidation, for as soon as one part of it was repaired another fell through; and the Rector opened his heart and his purse, both large and generous, and built a new one. Mr. Gum was making his way unannounced to the Rector's study, according to custom, when a door on the opposite side of the hall opened, and Dr. Ashton came out. He was a pleasant-looking man, with dark hair and eyes, his countenance one of keen intellect; and though only of middle height, there was something stately, grand, imposing in his whole appearance.

"Is that you, Jabez?"

Connected with each other for so many years—a connection which had begun when both were young—the Rector and Mrs. Ashton had never called him anything but Jabez. With other people he was Gum, or Mr. Gum, or Clerk Gum: Jabez with them. He, Jabez, was the older man of the two by six or seven years, for the Rector was not more than forty-five. The clerk crossed the hall, its tessellated flags gleaming under the colours thrown in by the stained windows, and entered the drawing-room, a noble apartment looking on to the lawn in front. Mrs. Ashton, a tall, delicate-looking woman, with a gentle face, was standing before a painting just come home and hung up; to look at which the Rector and his wife had gone into the room.

It was the portrait of a sweet-looking girl with a sunny countenance. The features were of the delicate contour of Mrs. Ashton's; the rich brown hair, the soft brown eyes, and the intellectual expression of the face resembled the doctor's. Altogether, face and portrait were positively charming; one of those faces you must love at first sight, without waiting to question whether or not they are beautiful.

"Is it a good likeness, Jabez?" asked the Rector, whilst Mrs. Ashton made room for him with a smile of greeting.

"As like as two peas, sir," responded Jabez, when he had taken a long look. "What a face it is! Oftentimes it comes across my mind when I am not thinking of anything but business; and I'm always the better for it."

"Why, Jabez, this is the first time you have seen it."

"Ah, ma'am, you know I mean the original. There's two baptisms to-day, sir," he added, turning away; "two, and one churching. Mrs. Luttrell and her child, and the poor little baby whose mother died."

"Mrs. Luttrell!" repeated the Rector. "It's soon for her, is it not?"

"They want to go away to the seaside," replied the clerk. "What about that notice, sir?"

"I'll see to it before Sunday, Jabez. Any news?"

"No, sir; not that I've heard of. My wife wanted to persuade me she saw—"

At this moment a white-haired old serving-man entered the room with a note, claiming the Rector's attention. "The man's to take back the answer, sir, if you please."

"Wait then, Simon."

Old Simon stood aside, and the clerk, turning to Mrs. Ashton, continued his unfinished sentence.

"She wanted to persuade me she saw young Lord Hartledon pass at six o'clock this morning. A very likely tale that, ma'am."

"Perhaps she dreamt it, Jabez," said Mrs. Ashton, quietly.

Jabez chuckled; but what he would have answered was interrupted by the old servant.

"It's Mr. Elster that's come; not Lord Hartledon."

"Mr. Elster! How do you know, Simon?" asked Mrs. Ashton.

"The gardener mentioned it, ma'am, when he came in just now," was the servant's reply. "He said he saw Mr. Elster walk past this morning, as if he had just come by the luggage-train. I'm not sure but he spoke to him."

"The answer is 'No,' Simon," interposed the Rector, alluding to the note he had been reading. "But you can send word that I'll come in some time to-day."

"Charles, did you hear what Simon said—that Mr. Elster has come down?" asked Mrs. Ashton.

"Yes, I heard it," replied the doctor; and there was a hard dry tone in his voice, as if the news were not altogether palatable to him. "It must have been Percival Elster your wife saw, Jabez; not Lord Hartledon."

Jabez had been arriving at the same conclusion. "They used to be much alike in height and figure," he observed; "it was easy to mistake the one for the other. Then that's all this morning, sir?"

"There is nothing more, Jabez."

In a room whose large French window opened to flowerbeds on the side of the house, bending over a table on which sundry maps were spread, her face very close to them, sat at this moment a young lady. It was the same face you have just seen in the portrait—that of Dr. and Mrs. Ashton's only daughter. The wondrously sunny expression of countenance, blended with strange sweetness, was even more conspicuous than in the portrait. But what perhaps struck a beholder most, when looking at Miss Ashton for the first time, was a nameless grace and refinement that distinguished her whole appearance. She was of middle height, not more; slender; her head well set upon her shoulders. This was her own room; the schoolroom of her girlhood, the sitting-room she had been allowed to call her own since then. Books, work, music, a drawing-easel, and various other items, presenting a rather untidy collection, met the eye. This morning it was particularly untidy. The charts covered the table; one of them lay on the carpet; and a pot of mignonette had been overturned inside the open window scattering some of the mould. She was very busy; the open sleeves of her lilac-muslin dress were thrown back, and her delicate hands were putting the finishing touches in pencil to a plan she had been copying, from one of the maps. A few minutes more, and the pencil was thrown down in relief.

"I won't colour it this morning; it must be quite an hour and a half since I began; but the worst is done, and that's worth a king's ransom." In the escape from work, the innocent gaiety of her heart, she broke into a song, and began waltzing round the room. Barely had she passed the open window, her back turned to it, when a gentleman came up, looked in, stepped softly over the threshold, and imprisoned her by the waist.

"Be quiet, Arthur. Pick up that mignonette-pot you threw down, sir."

"My darling!" came in a low, heartfelt whisper. And Miss Ashton, with a faint cry, turned to see her engaged lover, Val Elster.

She stood before him, literally unable to speak in her great astonishment, the red roses going and coming in her delicate cheeks, the rich brown eyes, that might have been too brilliant but for their exceeding sweetness, raised questioningly to his. Mr. Elster folded her in his arms as if he would never release her again, and kissed the shrinking face repeatedly.

"Oh, Percival, Percival! Don't! Let me go."

He did so at last, and held her before him, her eyelids drooping now, to gaze at the face he loved so well—yes, loved fervently and well, in spite of his follies and sins. Her heart was beating wildly with its own rapture: for her the world had suddenly grown brighter.

"But when did you arrive?" she whispered, scarcely knowing how to utter the words in her excessive happiness.

He took her upon his arm and began to pace the room with her while he explained. There was an attempt at excuse for his prolonged absence—for Val Elster had returned from his duties in Vienna in May, and it was now August, and he had lingered through the intervening time in London, enjoying himself—but that was soon glossed over; and he told her how his brother was coming down on the morrow with a houseful of guests, and he, Val, had offered to go before them with the necessary instructions. He did not say why he had offered to do this; that his debts had become so pressing he was afraid to show himself longer in London. Such facts were not for the ear of that fair girl, who trusted him as the truest man she knew under heaven.

"What have you been doing, Anne?"

He pointed to the maps, and Miss Ashton laughed.

"Mrs. Graves was here yesterday; she is very clever, you know; and when something was being said about the course of ships out of England, I made some dreadful mistakes. She took me up sharply, and papa looked at me sharply—and the result is, I have to do a heap of maps. Please tell me if it's right, Percival?"

She held up her pencilled work of the morning. He was laughing.

"What mistakes did you make, Anne?"

"I am not sure but I said something about an Indiaman, leaving the London Docks, having to pass Scarborough," she returned demurely. "It was quite as bad."

"Do you remember, Anne, being punished for persisting, in spite of the slate on the wall and your nursery-governess, that the Mediterranean lay between Scotland and Ireland? Miss Jevons wanted to give you bread and water for three days. How's that prig Graves?" he added rather abruptly.

Anne Ashton laughed, blushing slightly. "He is just as you left him; very painstaking and efficient in the parish, and all that, but, oh, so stupid in some things! Is the map right?"

"Yes, it's right. I'll help you with the rest. If Dr. Ashton—"

"Why, Val! Is it you? I heard Lord Hartledon had come down."

Percival Elster turned. A lad of seventeen had come bounding in at the window. It was Dr. Ashton's eldest living son, Arthur. Anne was twenty-one. A son, who would have been nineteen now, had died; and there was another, John, two years younger than Arthur.

"How are you, Arthur, boy?" cried Val. "Edward hasn't come. Who told you he had?"

"Mother Gum. I have just met her."

"She told you wrong. He will be down to-morrow. Is that Dr. Ashton?"

Attracted perhaps by the voices, Dr. and Mrs. Ashton, who were then out on the lawn, came round to the window. Percival Elster grasped a hand of each, and after a minute or two's studied coldness, the doctor thawed. It was next to impossible to resist the genial manner, the winning attractions of the young man to his face. But Dr. Ashton could not approve of his line of conduct; and had sore doubts whether he had done right in allowing him to become the betrothed of his dearly-loved daughter.