The Case of Richard Meynell Part 42

"By what authority, I should like to know?" said Philip sneeringly.

"Hester is not a child--nor am I."

"All that we will discuss when we meet," said the Rector. "I propose to call upon you to-morrow."

"This time you may really find me fled," laughed Philip, insolently. But he had turned white.

Meynell made no reply. He went to Hester, and lifting the girl's silk cape, which had fallen off, he put it round her shoulders. He felt them trembling. But she looked at him fiercely, put him aside, and ran to Meryon.

"Good-bye, Philip, good-bye!--it won't be for long!" And she held out her two hands--pleadingly. Meryon took them, and they stared at each other--while the Rector was conscious of a flash of dismay.

What if there was now more in the business than mere mischief and wantonness? Hester was surprisingly lovely, with this touching, tremulous look, so new, and, to the Rector, so intolerable!

"I must ask you to come at once," he said, walking up to her, and the girl, with compressed lips, dropped Meryon's hands and obeyed.

Meryon walked beside them to the garden door, very pale, and breathing quick.

"You can't separate us"--he said to Meynell--"though of course you'll try. Hester, don't believe anything he tells you--till I confirm it."

"Not I!" she said proudly.

Meynell led her through the door, and then turning peremptorily desired Meryon not to follow them. Philip hesitated, and yielded. He stood in the doorway, his hands in his pockets, watching them, a splendid figure, with his melodramatic good looks and vivid colour.

CHAPTER XIV

Hester and Meynell walked down the avenue, side by side. Behind them, the lunette window under the roof opened again, and a woman's face, framed in black, touzled hair, looked out, grinned and disappeared.

Hester carried her head high, a scornful defiance breathing from the flushed cheeks and tightened lips. Meynell made no attempt at conversation, till just as they were nearing the lodge he said--"We shall find Stephen a little farther on. He was riding, and thought you might like his horse to give you a lift home."

"Oh, a _plot_!"--cried Hester, raising her chin still higher--"and Stephen in it too! Well, really I shouldn't have thought it was worth anybody's while to spy upon my very insignificant proceedings like this.

What does it matter to him, or you, or any one else what I do?"

She turned her beautiful eyes--tragically wide and haughty--upon her companion. There was absurdity in her pose, and yet, as Meynell uncomfortably recognized, a new touch of something pa.s.sionate and real.

The Rector made no reply, for they were at the turn of the road and behind it Stephen and his horse were to be seen waiting.

Stephen came to meet them, the bridle over his arm.

"Hester, wouldn't you like my horse? It is a long way home. I can send for it later."

She looked proudly from one to the other. Her colour had suddenly faded, and from the pallor, the firm, yet delicate, lines of the features emerged with unusual emphasis.

"I think you had better accept," said Meynell gently. As he looked at her, he wondered whether she might not faint on their hands with anger and excitement. But she controlled herself, and as Stephen brought the brown mare alongside, and held out his hand, she put her foot in it, and he swung her to the saddle.

"I don't want both of you," she said, pa.s.sionately. "One warder is enough!"

"Hester!" cried Stephen, reproachfully. Then he added, trying to smile, "I am going into Markborough. Any commission?"

Hester disdained to answer. She gathered up the reins and set the horse in motion. Stephen's way lay with them for a hundred yards. He tried to make a little indifferent conversation, but neither Meynell nor Hester replied. Where the lane they had been following joined the Markborough road, he paused to take his leave of them, and as he did so he saw his two companions brought together, as it were, into one picture by the overcircling shade of the autumnal trees which hung over the road; and he suddenly perceived as he had never yet done the strange likeness between them. Perplexity, love--despairing and jealous love--a pa.s.sionate champions.h.i.+p of the beauty that was being outraged and insulted by the common talk and speculation of indifferent and unfriendly mouths; an earnest desire to know the truth, and the whole truth, that he might the better prove his love, and protect his friend; and a dismal certainty through it all that Hester had been finally s.n.a.t.c.hed from him--these conflicting feelings very nearly overpowered him. It was all he could do to take a calm farewell of them. Hester's eyes under their fierce brows followed him along the road.

Meanwhile she and Meynell turned into a bridle-path through the woods.

Hester sat erect, her slender body adjusting itself with unconscious grace to the quiet movements of the horse, which Meynell was leading.

Overhead the October day was beginning to darken, and the yellow leaves shaken by occasional gusts were drifting mistily down on Hester's hair and dress, and on the glossy flanks of the mare.

At last Meynell looked up. There was intense feeling in his face--a deep and troubled tenderness.

"Hester!--is there no way in which I can convince you that if you go on as you have been doing--deceiving your best friends--and letting this man persuade you into secret meetings--you will bring disgrace on yourself, and sorrow on us? A few more escapades like to-day, and we might not be able to save you from disgrace."

He looked at her searchingly.

"I am going to choose for myself!" said Hester after a moment, in a low, resolute voice; "I am not going to sacrifice my life to anybody."

"You _will_ sacrifice it if you go on flirting with this man--if you will not believe me--who am his kinsman and have no interest whatever in blackening his character--when I tell you that he is a bad man, corrupted by low living and self-indulgence, with whom no girl should trust herself. The action you have taken to-day, your deliberate defiance of us all, make it necessary that I should speak in even plainer terms to you than I have done yet; that I should warn you as strongly as I can that by allowing this man to make love to you--perhaps to propose a runaway match to you--how do I know what villainy he may have been equal to?--you are running risks of utter disaster and disgrace."

"Perhaps. That is my affair."

The girl's voice shook with excitement.

"No!--it is not your affair only. No man liveth to himself, and no man dieth to himself! It is the affair of all those who love you--of your family--of your poor Aunt Alice, who cannot sleep for grieving--"

Hester raised her free hand, and angrily pushed back the ma.s.ses of fair hair that were falling about her face.

"What is the good of talking about 'love,' Uncle Richard?" She spoke with a pa.s.sionate impatience--"You know very well that _n.o.body_ at home loves me. Why should we all be hypocrites? I have got, I tell you, to look after _myself_, to plan my life for myself! My mother can't help it if she doesn't love me. I don't complain; but I do think it a shame you should say she does, when you know--know--_know_--she doesn't! My sisters and brothers just dislike me--that's all there is in that! All my life I've known it--I've felt it. Why, when I was a baby they never played with me--they never made a pet of me--they wouldn't have me in their games. My father positively disliked me. Whenever the nurse brought me downstairs--he used to call to her to take me up again. Oh, how tired I got of the nursery!--I hated it--I hated nurse--I hated all the old toys--for I never had any new ones. Do you remember"--she turned on him--"that day when I set fire to all the clean clothes--that were airing before the fire?"

"Perfectly!" said the Rector, with an involuntary smile that relaxed the pale gravity of his face.

"I did it because I hadn't been downstairs for three nights. I might have been dead for all anybody cared. Then I was determined they should care--and I got hold of the matches. I thought the clothes would burn first--and then my starched frock would catch fire--and then--everybody would be sorry for me at last. But unfortunately I got frightened, and ran up the pa.s.sage screaming--silly little fool! That might have made an end of it--once for all--"

Meynell interrupted--

"And after it," he said, looking her in the eyes--"when the fuss was over--I remember seeing you in Aunt Alsie's arms. Have you forgotten how she cried over you, and defended you--and begged you off? You were ill with terror and excitement; she took you off to the cottage, and nursed you till you were well again, and it had all blown over; as she did again and again afterward. Have you forgotten _that_--when you say that no one loved you?"

He turned upon her with that bright penetrating look, with its touch of accusing sarcasm, which had so often given him the mastery over erring souls. For Meynell had the pastoral gift almost in perfection; the courage, the ethical self-confidence and the instinctive tenderness which belong to it. The cert.i.tudes of his mind were all ethical; and in this region he might have said with Newman that "a thousand difficulties cannot make one doubt."

Hester had often yielded, to this power of his in the past, and it was evident that she trembled under it now. To hide it she turned upon him with fresh anger.

"No, I haven't forgotten it!--and I'm _not_ an ungrateful fiend--though of course you think it. But Aunt Alsie's like all the others now.

She--she's turned against me!" There was a break in the girl's voice that she tried in vain to hide.

"It isn't true, Hester! I think you know it isn't true."

"It _is_ true! She has secrets from me, and when I ask her to trust me--then she treats me like a child--and shakes me off as if I were just a stranger. If she holds me at arm's-length, I am not going to tell her all _my_ affairs!"

The rounded bosom under the little black mantle rose and fell tumultuously, and angry tears shone in the brown eyes. Meynell had raised his head with a sudden movement, and regarded her intently.