"But, my dear Luke, I have not the least notion of any plan of any sort."
"Never mind, Miranda; make him promise. I will tell you all about it afterwards. It is better not to let him know too much. Knowledge should come in small doses always, otherwise it puffs up young people. Alas! now I feel that I am not as I was! Twenty years ago I could have sat up all night talking, and not shown a sign of it next day. I have not had any sleep for the last twelve nights. Do you see any rays in my eyes, dear wife? They are sure indications of heart disease. When I am tired they always come."
"Oh, Luke, Luke, you will break my heart! You shall not say another word. Have some more negus – I insist upon it! It is no good to put your hand over the glass – and then come to bed immediately. You are working too hard for your family, my pet."
CHAPTER XLVI.
IN THE MESHES
Now being newly inspired by that warm theologian – as Miss Patch really believed him to be – Luke Sharp, the lady felt capable of a bold stroke, which her conscience had seemed to cry out against, till loftier thoughts enlarged it. She delivered to her dear niece a letter, written in pale ink and upon strange paper, which she drew from a thicker one addressed to herself, and received "through their butcher" from a post-office. Wondering who their butcher was, but delighted to get her dear father's letter, Grace ran away to devour it.
It was dated from George-town, English Guayana, and though full of affection, showed touching traces of delicate health and despondency. The poor girl wiped her eyes at her father's tender longing to see her once more, and his earnest prayers for every blessing upon their invaluable friend, Miss Patch. Then he spoke of himself in a manner which made it impossible for her to keep her eyes wiped, so deep was his sadness, and yet so heroically did he attempt to conceal it from her; and then came a few lines, which surprised her greatly. He said that a little bird had told him that during her strict retirement from the world in accordance with his wishes, she had learned to esteem a most worthy young man, for whom he had always felt warm regard, and, he might even say, affection. He doubted whether, at his own time of life, and with this strange languor creeping over him, he could ever bear the voyage to England, unless his little darling would come over to fetch him, or at least to behold him once more alive; and if she would do so, she must indeed be quick. He need not say that to dream of her travelling so far all alone was impossible; but if, for the sake of her father, she could dispense with some old formalities, and speedily carry out their mutual choice, he might with his whole heart appeal to her husband to bring her out by the next packet.
He said little more, except that he had learned by the bitter teaching of adversity who were his true friends, and who were false. No one had shown any truth and reality except Mr. Sharp of Oxford; but he never could have dreamed, till it came to the test, that even the lowest of the low would treat him as young Mr. Overshute had done. That subject was too painful, so he ended with another adjuration to his daughter.
"Aunty, I have had the most extraordinary letter," cried Grace, coming in with her eyes quite dreadful; "it astonishes me beyond everything. May I see the postmark of yours which it came in? I shall think I am dreaming till I see the postmark."
"The stamp of the office, do you mean, my dear? Oh yes, you are welcome to see, Grace. Here it is, 'George-town, Demerara.' The date is not quite clear without my spectacles. Those foreign dies are always cut so badly."
"Never mind the date, aunt. I have the date inside, in my dear father's writing. But I am quite astonished how my father can have heard – "
"Something about you, sly little puss! You need not blush so, for I long have guessed it."
"But indeed it is not true – indeed it is not. I may have been amused, but I never, never – and oh, what he says then of somebody else – such a thing I should have thought impossible! How can one have any faith in any one?"
"My dear child, what you mean is this: How can one have any faith in worldly and ungodly people? With their mouths they speak deceit; the poison of asps is under their lips – "
"Oh no, he never was ungodly; to see him walk would show you that; and if being good to the poor sick people, and dashing into the middle of the whooping-cough – "
"How am I to know of whom you speak? You appear to have acted in a very forward way with some one your father disapproves of."
"I assure you, I never did anything of the kind. It is not at all my manner. I thought you considered it wrong to make unfounded accusations."
"Grace, what a most un-Christian temper you still continue to display at times! Your cheeks are quite red, and your eyes excited, in a way very sad to witness. The trouble I have taken is beyond all knowledge. If you do not value it, your father does."
"Aunty Patch, may I see exactly what my daddy says to you? I will show you mine if you will show me yours."
"My dear, you seem to forget continually. You treat me as if I were of your own age, and had never been through the very first alarm which comes for our salvation. It has not come to you, or you could not be so frivolous and worldly as you are. When first it rang, even for myself – "
"How many times does it ring, Aunt? I mean for every individual sinner, as you always call us."
"My dear, it rings three times, as has been proved by the most inspired of all modern preachers, the Rev. Wm. Romaine, while amplifying the blessed words of the pious Joseph Alleine. He begins his discourse upon it thus – "
"Aunty, you have told me that so many times that I could go up into his desk and do it. It is all so very good and superior; but there are times when it will not come. You, or at any rate I, for certain, may go down on our knees and pray, and nothing ever comes of it. I have been at it every night and morning, really quite letting go whatever I was thinking of – and what is there to come of it, except this letter? And it doesn't sound as if my father ever wrote a word of it."
"Grace, what do you mean, if you please?"
"I mean what I do not please. I mean that I have been here at least five months, as long as any fifty, and have put up with the miserablest things – now, never mind about my English, if you please, it is quite good enough for such a place as this – and have done my very best to put up with you, who are enough to take fifty people's lives away, with perpetual propriety – and have hoped and hoped, and prayed and prayed, till my knees are not fit to be looked at – and now, after all, what has come of it? That I am to marry a boy with a red cord down his legs, and a crystal in his whip, and a pretty face that seems to come from his mamma's watch-pocket, and a very nice and gentle way of looking at a lady, as if he were quite capable, if he had the opportunity, of saying 'bo' to any goose on the other side of the river!"
"My dear, do you prefer bold ruffians, then, like the vagabond you were rescued from?"
"I don't know at all what I do prefer, Aunt Patch, unless it is just to be left to myself, and have nothing to say to any one."
"Why, Grace, that is the very thing you complained of in your sinful and ungrateful speech, just now! But do not disturb me with any more temper. I must take the opportunity, before the mail goes out, to tell your poor sick father how you have received his letter."
"Oh no, if you please not. You are quite mistaken, if you think that I thought of myself first. My dear father knows that I never would do that; and it would be quite vain to tell him so. Oh, my darling, darling father! – where are you now, and whatever are you doing?"
"Grace, you are becoming outrageous quite. You know quite well where your father is; and as to what he is doing, you know from his own letter that he is lying ill, and longing for you to attend upon him. And this is the way that you qualify yourself!"
"Somehow or other now – I do not mean to be wicked, aunt – but I don't think my father ever wrote that letter – I mean, at any rate, of his own free will. Somebody must have stood over him – I feel as if I really saw them – and made him say this, and that, and things that he never used to think of saying. Why, he never would have dreamed, when he was well, of telling me I was to marry anybody. He was so jealous of me, he could hardly bear any gentleman to dare to smile; and he used to make me promise to begin to let him know, five years before I thought of any one. And now for him to tell me to marry in a week – just as if he was putting down a silver-side to salt – and to marry a boy that he scarcely ever heard of, and never even introduced to me – he must have been, he cannot but have been, either wonderfully affected by the climate, or shackled down in a slave-driver's dungeon, until he had no idea what he was about."
"Have you finished, Grace, now? Is your violence over?"
"No; I have no violence; and it is not half over. But still, if you wish to say anything, I will do all I can to listen to it."
"You are most obliging. One would really think that I were seventeen, and you nearly seventy."
"Aunt Patch, you know that I am as good as nineteen; and instead of being seventy you are scarcely fifty-five."
"Grace, your memory is better about ages than about what you do not wish to hear of. And you do not wish to hear, with the common selfishness of the period, of the duty which is the most sacred of all, and at the same time the noblest privilege – the duty of self-sacrifice. What are your own little inclinations, petty conceits, and miserable jokes – jokes that are ever at deadly enmity with all deep religion – ah, what are they – you selfish and frivolous girl! – when set in the balance with a parent's life – and a parent whose life would have been in no danger but for his perfect devotion to you?"
"Aunt Patch, I never heard you speak of my father at all in that sort of way before. You generally talk of him as if he were careless, and worldly, and heterodox, most frivolous, and quite unregenerate. And now quite suddenly you find out all his value. What do you want me to do so much, Aunt Patch?"
"Don't look at me like that, child; you quite insult me. As if it could matter to me what you do – except for your own eternal welfare. If you think it the right thing to let your father die in a savage land, calling vainly for you, and buried among land-crabs without a drop of water – that is a matter for you hereafter to render your own account of. You have tired me, Grace. I am not so young as you are; and I have more feeling. I must lie down a little; you have so upset me. When you have recovered your proper frame of mind, perhaps you will kindly see that Margery has washed out the little brown teapot."
"To be sure, aunty, I am up to all her tricks. And I will just toast you a water-biscuit, and put a morsel of salt butter on it, scarcely so large as a little French bean. Go to sleep, aunty, for about an hour. I am getting into a very proper frame of mind; I can never stay very long out of it. May I go into the wood, just to think a little of my darling father's letter?"
"Yes, Grace; but not for more than half an hour, on condition that you speak to no one. You have made my head ache sadly. Leave your father's letter here."
"Oh no, if you please, let me take it with me. How can I think without it?"
Miss Patch was so sleepy that she said, "Very well; let me see it again when you have made the tea." Whereupon Grace, having beaten up the cushion of the good lady's only luxury, and laid her down softly, and kissed her forehead (for fear of having made it ache), stole her own chance for a little quiet thought, in a shelter of the woods more soft than thought. For the summer was coming with a stride of light; and bashful corners, full of lateness, tried to ease it off with moss.
In a nook of this kind, far from any path, and tenderly withdrawn into its own green rest, the lonely and bewildered girl stopped suddenly, and began to think. She drew forth the letter which had grieved her so; and she wondered that it had not grieved her more. It was not yet clear to her young frank mind that suspicion, like a mole, was at work in it. To get her thoughts better, and to feel some goodness, she sat upon a peaceful turret of new spear-grass, and spread her letter open, and began to cry. She knew that this was not at all the proper way to take things; and yet if any one had come, and preached to her, and proved it all, she could have made no other answer than to cry the more for it.
The beautiful light of the glancing day turned corners, and came round to her; the lovable joy of the many, many things which there is no time to notice, spread itself silently upon the air, or told itself only in fragrance; and the glossy young blades of grass stood up, and complacently measured their shadows.
Here lay Grace for a long sad hour, taking no heed of the things around her, however much they heeded her. The white windflower with its drooping bells, and the bluebell, and the harebell, and the pasque-flower – softest of all soft tints – likewise the delicate stitchwort, and the breath of the lingering primrose, and the white violet that outvies its sister (that sweet usurper of the coloured name) in fragrance and in purity; and hiding for its life, without any one to seek, the sensitive wood-sorrel; and, in and out, and behind them all, the cups, and the sceptres, and the balls of moss, and the shells and the combs of lichen – in the middle of the whole, this foolish maid had not one thought to throw to them. She ought to have sighed at their power of coming one after another for ever, whereas her own life was but a morning dew; but she failed to make any such reflection.
What she was thinking of she never could have told; except that she had a long letter on her lap, and could not bring her mind to it. And here in the hollow, when the warmth came round, of the evening fringed with cloudlets, she was fairer than any of the buds or flowers, and ever so much larger. But she could not be allowed to bloom like them.
"Oh, I beg pardon," cried an unseen stranger in a very clear, keen voice; "I fear I am intruding in some private grounds. I was making a short cut, which generally is a long one. If you will just show me how to get out again, I will get out with all speed, and thank you."
Grace looked around with surprise but no fear. She knew that the voice was a gentleman's; but until she got up, and looked up the little hollow, she could not see any one. "Please not to be frightened," said the gentleman again; "I deserve to be punished, perhaps, but not to that extent. I fancied that I knew every copse in the county. I have proved, and must suffer for, my ignorance."
As he spoke he came forward on a little turfy ledge, about thirty feet above her; and she saw that he looked at her with great surprise. She felt that she had been crying very sadly, and this might have made her eyes look strange. Quite as if by accident, she let her hair drop forward, for she could not bear to be so observed; and at that very moment there flowed a gleam of sunshine through it. She was the very painting of the picture in her father's room.
"Saints in heaven!" cried Hardenow, who never went further than this in amazement, "I have found Grace Oglander! Stop, if you please – I beseech you, stop!"
But Grace was so frightened, and so pledge-bound, that no adjuration stopped her. If Hardenow had only been less eager, there and then he might have made his bow, and introduced himself. But Gracie thought of the rabbit-man, and her promise, and her loneliness, and without looking back, she was round the corner, and not a ribbon left to trace her by. And now again if Hardenow had only been less eager, he might have caught the fair fugitive by following in her footsteps. But for such a simple course as that he was much too clever. Instead of running down at once to the spot where she had vanished, and thence giving chase, he must needs try a cross cut to intercept her. There were trees and bushes in the way, it was true, but he would very soon get through them; and to meet her face to face would be more dignified than to run after her.
So he made a beautifully correct cast as to the line she must have taken, and aiming well ahead of her, leaped the crest of the hollow and set off down the hill apace. But here he was suddenly checked by meeting a dense row of hollies, which he had not seen by reason of the brushwood. In a dauntless manner he dashed in among them, scratching his face and hands, and losing a fine large piece of black kerseymere from the skirt of his coat, and suffering many other lesser damages. But what was far worse, he lost Grace also; for out of that holly grove he could not get for a long, long time; and even then he found himself on the wrong side – the one where he had entered.
If good Anglo-Catholics ever did swear, the Rev. Thomas Hardenow must now have sworn, for his plight was of that kind which engenders wrath in the patient, and pleasantry on the part of the spectator. His face suggested recent duello with a cat, his white tie was tattered and hanging down his back, his typical coat was a mere postilion's jacket, and the condition of his gaiters afforded to the sceptic the clearest proof of the sad effects of perpetual self-denial. His hat, with the instinct of self-preservation, had rolled out from the thicket when he first rushed in; and now he picked up this wiser portion of his head, and was thankful to have something left.
Chances were against him; but what is chance? He had an exceedingly strong will of his own, and having had the worst of this matter so far, he was doubly resolved to go through with it. Without a second thought about his present guise or aspect, he ran back to the spot which he had left so unadvisedly. There he did what he ought to have done ten minutes or a quarter of an hour ago, he ran down the slope to the nest in the nook which had been occupied by Grace. Then he took to the track which she had taken; but she had been much too quick for him; she had even snatched up her letter, so that he was none the wiser. He came to a spot where the narrow and thickly woven trackway broke into two; and whether of the two to choose was more than a moment's doubt to him. Then he seemed to see some glint of footsteps, and sweep of soft sprays by a dress towards the right; and making a dash through a dark hole towards it, was straightway enveloped in a doubled rabbit-net, cast over his surviving hat.
"Hold un tight, Jarge, now thou'st got un!" cried out somebody whom he could not see, "poachin' son of a gun, us'll poach un!"
"Poaching – my good friends," cried Hardenow, trying to lift his arms and turn his head round, all vainly; "you can scarcely know the meaning of that word, or you never would think of applying it to me. Let me see you, that I may explain. I have been trespassing, I am afraid; but by the purest accident – allow me to turn round, and reason quietly; I have the greatest objection to violence; I never use, nor allow it to be used. If you are honest gamekeepers, exceeding your duty through earnest zeal, I would be the last to find fault with you; want of earnestness is the great fault of this age. But you must not allow yourselves to be misled by some little recen