Trevlyn Hold Part 19

An appropriate name, for the place was black enough, and stony enough, and dreary enough for anything. A low, barren, level country, its flatness alone broken by signs of the pits, its uncompromising gloom enlivened only by ascending fires which blazed up at night, and illumined the country for miles round. The pits were not all coal: iron mines and other mines were scattered with them. On Chattaway's property, however, there was coal alone. Long rows of houses, as dreary as the barren country, were built near: occupied by the workers in the mines.

The overseer or manager for Mr. Chattaway was named Pinder, a brother to John Pinder, who was on Mrs. Ryle's farm: but Chattaway chose to interfere very much with the executive himself, and may almost have been called his own overseer. He had an office near the pits, in which accounts were kept, the men paid, and other business items transacted: a low building, of one storey only, consisting of three or four rooms. In this office he kept one regular clerk, a young man named Ford, and into this same office he put Rupert Trevlyn.

But many and many and many a day was Rupert ailing; weak, sick, feverish, coughing, and unable to go to it. But for Diana Trevlyn, Chattaway might have driven him there ill or well. Not that Miss Diana possessed any extraordinary affection for Rupert: she did not keep him at home out of love, or from motives of indulgence. But hard, cold, and imperious though she was, Miss Diana owned somewhat of the large open-handedness of the Trevlyns: she could not be guilty of trivial spite, or petty meanness. She ruled the servants with an iron hand; but in case of their falling into sickness or trouble, she had them generously cared for. So with respect to Rupert. It may be that she regarded him as an interloper; that she would have been better pleased were he removed elsewhere. She had helped to deprive him of his birthright, but she did not treat him with personal unkindness; and she would have been the last to say he must go out to his daily occupation, if he felt ill or incapable of it. She deplored his ill-health; but, ill health upon him, Miss Diana was not one to ignore it, to reproach him with it, or put hindrances in the way of his being nursed.

It was a tolerably long walk for Rupert in a morning to Blackstone. Cris Chattaway, when he chose to go over, rode on horseback; and Mr. Cris did not infrequently choose to go over, for he had the same propensity as his father--that of throwing himself into every petty detail, and interfering unwarrantably. In disposition, father and son were alike--mean, stingy, grasping. To save a sixpence, Chattaway would almost have sacrificed a miner's life. Improvements which other mine owners had introduced into their pits, into the working of them, Chattaway held aloof from. In his own person, however, Cris was not disposed to be saving. He had his horse, and he had his servant, and he favoured an extensive wardrobe, and was given altogether to various little odds and ends of self-indulgence.

Yes, Cris Chattaway rode to Blackstone; with his groom behind him sometimes, when he chose to make a dash; and Rupert Trevlyn walked.

Better that the order of travelling had been reversed, for that walk, morning and evening, was not too good for Rupert in his weakly state. He would feel it particularly in an evening. It was a gradual ascent nearly all the way from Blackstone to Trevlyn Hold, almost imperceptible to a strong man, but sufficiently apparent to Rupert Trevlyn, who would be fatigued with the day's work.

Not that he had hard work to do. But even sitting on the office stool tired him. Another thing that tired him--and which, no doubt, was excessively bad for him--was the loss of his regular meals. Excepting on Sundays, or on days when he was not well enough to leave Trevlyn Hold, he had no dinner: what he had at Blackstone was only an apology for one.

The clerk, Ford, who lived at nearly as great a distance from the place as Rupert, used to cook himself a chop or steak at the office grate. But that the coals were lying about in heaps and cost nothing, Chattaway might have objected to the fire being used for such a purpose. Rupert occasionally cooked himself some meat; but he more frequently dined upon bread and cheese, or sc.r.a.ps brought from Trevlyn Hold. It was not often that Rupert had the money to buy meat or anything else, his supply of that indispensable commodity, the current coin of the realm, being very limited. Deprived of his dinner, deprived of his tea--tea being generally over when he got back to the Hold--that, of itself, was almost sufficient to bring on the disease feared for Rupert Trevlyn. One sound in const.i.tution, revelling in health and strength, might not have been much the worse in the long-run; but Rupert did not come under the head of that favoured cla.s.s of humanity.

It was a bright day in that mellow season when summer is merging into autumn. A few fields of the later grain were lying out yet, but most of the golden store had been gathered into barns. The sunlight glistened on the leaves of the trees, lighting up their rich tints of brown and red--tints which never come until the season of pa.s.sing away.

Halting at a stile which led to a field white with stubble, were two children and a young lady. Not very young children, either, for the younger of the two must have been thirteen. Pale girls both, with light hair, and just now a disagreeable expression of countenance. They were insisting upon crossing that stile to pa.s.s through the field: one of them, in fact, had already mounted, and they did not like to be thwarted in their wish.

"You cross old thing!" cried she on the stile. "You always object to our going where we want to go. What dislike have you to the field, pray, that we may not cross it?"

"I have no dislike to it, Emily. I am only obeying your father's injunctions. You know he has forbidden you to go on Mrs. Ryle's lands."

She spoke in calm tones; a sweet, persuasive voice. She had a sweet and gentle face, too, with delicate features, and large blue eyes. It is Maude Trevlyn. Eight years have pa.s.sed since you last saw her, and she is twenty-one. In spite of her girlish, graceful figure, which scarcely reaches middle height, she bears a look of the Trevlyns. Her head is well set upon her shoulders, thrown somewhat back, as you may see in Miss Diana Trevlyn. She wears a grey flowing cloak, and pretty blue bonnet.

"The lands are not Mrs. Ryle's," retorted the girl on the stile. "They are papa's."

"They are Mrs. Ryle's as long as she rents them. It is all the same. Mr.

Chattaway has forbidden you to cross them. Come down from the stile, Emily."

"No. I shall jump over it."

It was ever thus. Except in the presence of Miss Diana Trevlyn, the girls were openly rude and disobedient to Maude. Expected to teach them, she was denied the ordinary authority vested in a governess. And Maude could not emanc.i.p.ate herself: she must suffer and submit.

Emily Chattaway put her foot over the top bar of the stile, preparatory to jumping over it, when the sound of a horse was heard, and she turned her head. Riding along the lane at a quick pace was a gentleman of some three or four-and-twenty years: a tall man, as far as could be seen, who sat his horse well. He reined in when he saw them, and bent down a pleasant face, with a pleasant smile upon it. The sun shone into his fine dark eyes, as he stooped to shake hands with Maude.

Maude's cheeks had turned crimson. "Quite well," she stammered, in answer to his greeting, somewhat losing her self-possession. "When did you return home?"

"Last night. I was away two days only, instead of the four antic.i.p.ated.

Emily, you'll fall backwards if you don't mind."

"No, I sha'n't," said Emily. "Why did you not stay longer?"

"I found Treve away when I reached Oxford, so I came back again, and got home last night--to Nora's discomfiture."

Maude looked into his face with a questioning glance. She had quite recovered her self-possession. "Why?" she asked.

George Ryle laughed. "Nora had turned my bedroom inside out, and accused me, in her vexation, of coming back on purpose."

"Where did you sleep?" asked Emily.

"In Treve's room. Take care, Edith!"

Maude hastily drew back Edith Chattaway, who had gone too near the horse. "How is Mrs. Ryle?" asked Maude. "We heard yesterday she was not well."

"She is suffering from a cold. I have scarcely seen her. Maude," leaning down and whispering, "are things any brighter than they were?"

Again the soft colour came into her face, and she threw him a glance from her dark blue eyes. If ever glance spoke of indignation, hers did.

"What change can there be?" she breathed. "Rupert is ill again," she added in louder tones.

"Rupert!"

"At least, he is not well, and is at home to-day. But he is better than he was yesterday----"

"Here comes Octave," interrupted Emily.

George Ryle gathered up his reins. Shaking hands with Maude, he said a hasty good-bye to the other two, and cantered down the lane, lifting his hat to Miss Chattaway, who was coming up from a distance.

She was advancing quickly across the common, behind the fence on the other side of the lane. A tall, thin young woman, looking her full age of four or five-and-twenty, with the same leaden complexion as of yore, and the disagreeably sly grey eyes. She wore a puce silk paletot, and a brown hat trimmed with black lace; an unbecoming costume for one so tall.

"That was George Ryle!" she exclaimed, as she came up. "What brings him back already?"

"He found his brother away when he reached Oxford," was Maude's reply.

"I think he was very rude not to stop and speak to you, Octave,"

observed Emily Chattaway. "He saw you coming."

Octave made no reply. She mounted the stile and gazed after the horseman, apparently to see what direction he would take on reaching the end of the lane. Patiently watching, she saw him turn into another lane, which branched off to the left. Octave Chattaway jumped over the stile, and went swiftly across the field.

"She's gone to meet him," was Emily's comment.

It was precisely what Miss Chattaway _had_ gone to do. Pa.s.sing through a copse after quitting the field, she emerged from it just as George was riding quietly past. He halted and stopped to shake hands, as he had done with Maude.

"You are out of breath, Octave. Have you been hastening to catch me?"

"I need not have done so but for your gallantry in riding off the moment you saw me," she answered, resentfully.

"I beg your pardon. I did not know you wanted me. And I am in a hurry."

"It seems so--stopping to speak so long to the children and Maude," she returned, with irony. And George Ryle's laugh was a conscious one.

Latent antagonism was seated in the minds of both, and a latent consciousness of it running through their hearts. When George Ryle saw Octave hastening across the common, he knew she was speeding to reach him ere he should be gone; when Octave saw him ride away, a voice whispered that he did so to avoid meeting her; and each felt that their secret thoughts and motives were known to the other. Yes, there was constant antagonism between them; if the word may be applied to Octave Chattaway, who had learnt to value the society of George Ryle more highly than was good for her. Did he so value hers? Octave wore out her heart, hoping for it. But in the midst of her unwise love for him, her never-ceasing efforts to be in his presence, near to him, there constantly arose the bitter conviction that he did not care for her.

"I wished to ask you about the book you promised to get me," she said.

"Have you procured it?"

"No; and I am sorry to say that I cannot meet with it," replied George.

"I thought of it at Oxford, and went into nearly every bookseller's shop in the place, unsuccessfully. I told you it was difficult to find. I must get them to write to London for it from Barmester."

"Will you come to the Hold this evening?" she asked, as he was riding away.

"Thank you. I am not sure that I can. My day or two's absence has made me busy."