The Ordeal of Richard Feverel Part 31

"White as a sheet."

Richard paused to discover whether his instinct had caught a new view from these facts. He was in a cage, always knocking against the same bars, fly as he might. Her tears were the stars in his black night. He clung to them as golden orbs. Inexplicable as they were, they were at least pledges of love.

The hues of sunset had left the West. No light was there but the steadfast pale eye of twilight. Thither he was drawn. He mounted Ca.s.sandra, saying: "Tell them something, Tom. I shan't be home to dinner," and rode off toward the forsaken home of light over Belthorpe, wherein he saw the wan hand of his Lucy, waving farewell, receding as he advanced. His jewel was stolen,--he must gaze upon the empty box.

CHAPTER XXIII

CRISIS IN THE APPLE-DISEASE

Night had come on as Richard entered the old elm-shaded, gra.s.s-bordered lane leading down from Raynham to Belthorpe. The pale eye of twilight was shut. The wind had tossed up the bank of Western cloud, which was now flying broad and unlighted across the sky, broad and balmy--the charioted South-west at full charge behind his panting coursers. As he neared the farm his heart fluttered and leapt up. He was sure she must be there. She must have returned. Why should she have left for good without writing? He caught suspicion by the throat, making it voiceless, if it lived: he silenced reason.

Her not writing was now a proof that she had returned. He listened to nothing but his imperious pa.s.sion, and murmured sweet words for her, as if she were by: tender cheris.h.i.+ng epithets of love in the nest. She was there--she moved somewhere about like a silver flame in the dear old house, doing her sweet household duties. His blood began to sing: O happy those within, to see her, and be about her!

By some extraordinary process he contrived to cast a sort of glory round the burly person of Farmer Blaize himself. And oh! to have companions.h.i.+p with a seraph one must know a seraph's bliss, and was not young Tom to be envied? The smell of late clematis brought on the wind enwrapped him, and went to his brain, and threw a light over the old red-brick house, for he remembered where it grew, and the winter rose-tree, and the jessamine, and the pa.s.sion-flower: the garden in front with the standard roses tended by her hands; the long wall to the left striped by the branches of the cherry, the peep of a further green garden through the wall, and then the orchard, and the fields beyond--the happy circle of her dwelling! it flashed before his eyes while he looked on the darkness. And yet it was the reverse of hope which kindled this light and inspired the momentary calm he experienced: it was despair exaggerating delusion, wilfully building up on a groundless basis. "For the tenacity of true pa.s.sion is terrible," says THE PILGRIM'S SCRIP: "it will stand against the hosts of heaven, G.o.d's great array of Facts, rather than surrender its aim, and must be crushed before it will succ.u.mb--sent to the lowest pit!" He knew she was not there; she was gone. But the power of a will strained to madness fought at it, kept it down, conjured forth her ghost, and would have it as he dictated. Poor youth! the great array of facts was in due order of march.

He had breathed her name many times, and once overloud; almost a cry for her escaped him. He had not noticed the opening of a door and the noise of a foot along the gravel walk. He was leaning over Ca.s.sandra's uneasy neck watching the one window intently, when a voice addressed him out of the darkness.

"Be that you, young gentleman?--Mr. Fev'rel?"

Richard's trance was broken. "Mr. Blaize!" he said, recognizing the farmer's voice.

"Good even'n t'you, sir," returned the farmer. "I knew the mare though I didn't know you. Rather bluff to-night it be. Will ye step in, Mr. Fev'rel? it's beginnin' to spit--going to be a wildish night, I reckon."

Richard dismounted. The farmer called one of his men to hold the mare, and ushered the young man in. Once there, Richard's conjurations ceased. There was a deadness about the rooms and pa.s.sages that told of her absence. The walls he touched--these were the vacant sh.e.l.ls of her. He had never been in the house since he knew her, and now what strange sweetness, and what pangs!

Young Tom Blaize was in the parlour, squared over the table in open-mouthed examination of an ancient book of the fas.h.i.+ons for a summer month which had elapsed during his mother's minority. Young Tom was respectfully studying the aspects of the radiant beauties of the polite work. He also was a thrall of woman, newly enrolled, and full of wonder.

"What, Tom!" the farmer sang out as soon as he had opened the door; "there ye be! at yer Folly agin, are ye? What good'll them fashens do to you, I'd like t'know? Come, shut up, and go and see to Mr.

Fev'rel's mare. He's al'ays at that ther' Folly now. I say there never were a better name for a book than that ther' Folly! Talk about att.i.tudes!"

The farmer laughed his fat sides into a chair, and motioned his visitor to do likewise.

"It's a comfort they're most on 'em females," he pursued, sounding a thwack on his knee as he settled himself agreeably in his seat. "It don't matter much what they does, except pinchin' in--waspin' it--at the waist. Give me nature, I say--woman as she's made! eh, young gentleman?"

"You seem very lonely here," said Richard, glancing round, and at the ceiling.

"Lonely?" quoth the farmer. "Well, for the matter o' that, we be!--jest now, so't happens; I've got my pipe, and Tom've got his Folly. He's on one side the table, and I'm on t'other. He gaapes, and I gazes. We are a bit lonesome. But there--it's _for_ the best!"

Richard resumed, "I hardly expected to see you to-night, Mr.

Blaize."

"Y'acted like a man in coming, young gentleman, and I does ye honour for it!" said Farmer Blaize with sudden energy and directness.

The thing implied by the farmer's words caused Richard to take a quick breath. They looked at each other, and looked away, the farmer thrumming on the arm of his chair.

Above the mantel-piece, surrounded by tarnished indifferent miniatures of high-collared, well-to-do yeomen of the anterior generation, trying their best not to grin, and high-waisted old ladies smiling an encouraging smile through plentiful cap-puckers, there hung a pa.s.sably executed half-figure of a naval officer in uniform, grasping a telescope under his left arm, who stood forth clearly as not of their kith and kin. His eyes were blue, his hair light, his bearing that of a man who knows how to carry his head and shoulders. The artist, while giving him an epaulette to indicate his rank, had also recorded the juvenility which a lieutenant in the naval service can retain after arriving at that position, by painting him with smooth cheeks and fresh ruddy lips. To this portrait Richard's eyes were directed. Farmer Blaize observed it, and said--

"Her father, sir!"

Richard moderated his voice to praise the likeness.

"Yes," said the farmer, "pretty well. Next best to havin' _her_, though it's a long way off that!"

"An old family, Mr. Blaize--is it not?" Richard asked in as careless a tone as he could a.s.sume.

"Gentlefolks--what's left of 'em," replied the farmer with an equally affected indifference.

"And that's her father?" said Richard, growing bolder to speak of her.

"That's her father, young gentleman!"

"Mr. Blaize," Richard turned to face him, and burst out, "where is she?"

"Gone, sir! packed off!--Can't have her here now." The farmer thrummed a step brisker, and eyed the young man's wild face resolutely.

"Mr. Blaize," Richard leaned forward to get closer to him. He was stunned, and hardly aware of what he was saying or doing: "Where has she gone? Why did she leave?"

"You needn't to ask, sir--ye know," said the farmer, with a side shot of his head.

"But _she_ did not--it was not her wish to go?"

"No! I think she likes the place. Mayhap she likes't too well!"

"Why did you send her away to make her unhappy, Mr. Blaize?"

The farmer bluntly denied it was he was the party who made her unhappy. "n.o.body can't accuse _me_. Tell ye what, sir. I wunt have the busybodies set to work about her, and there's all the matter. So let you and I come to an understandin'."

A blind inclination to take offence made Richard sit upright. He forgot it the next minute, and said humbly: "Am I the cause of her going?"

"Well!" returned the farmer, "to speak straight--ye be!"

"What can I do, Mr. Blaize, that she may come back again?" the young hypocrite asked.

"Now," said the farmer, "you're coming to business. Glad to hear ye talk in that sensible way, Mr. Fev'rel. You may guess I wants her bad enough. The house ain't itself now she's away, and I ain't myself. Well, sir! This ye can do. If you gives me your promise not to meddle with her at all--I can't mak' out how you come to be acquainted; not to try to get her to be meetin' you--and if you'd a seen her when she left, you would--when did ye meet?--last gra.s.s, wasn't it?--your word as a gentleman not to be writing letters, and spyin' after her--I'll have her back at once. Back she shall come!"

"Give her up!" cried Richard.

"Ay, that's it!" said the farmer. "Give her up."

The young man checked the annihilation of time that was on his mouth.

"You sent her away to protect her from me, then?" he said savagely.

"That's not quite it, but that'll do," rejoined the farmer.

"Do you think I shall harm her, sir?"