The Hillman Part 4

Louise looked approvingly at the breakfast tray, with the home-made bread and deep-yellow b.u.t.ter, the brown eggs and clear honey. The smell of the coffee was aromatic. She breathed a little sigh of content.

"How delicious everything looks!" she exclaimed.

"The home-made things are well enough in their way, _madame_," Aline agreed, "but I have never known a household so strange and disagreeable.

That M. Jennings, who calls himself the butler--he is a person unspeakable, a savage!"

Louise's eyes twinkled.

"I don't think they are fond of women in this household, Aline," she remarked. "Tell me, have you seen Charles?"

"Charles has gone to the nearest blacksmith's forge to get something made for the car, _madame_," Aline replied. "He asked me to say that he was afraid he would not be ready to start before midday."

"That does not matter," Louise declared, as she settled down to her breakfast. "I do not care how long it is before he is ready. I should love to spend a month here!"

Aline held up her hands. She was speechless. Her mistress laughed at her consternation.

"Well," she continued, "there is no fear of their asking us for a month, or for an hour longer than they can help. The elder Mr. Strangewey, it seems, has the strongest objection to our s.e.x. There is not a woman servant in the house, is there?"

"Not one, _madame_," Aline replied. "I have never been in a household conducted in such a manner. It is like the kitchen of a monastery. The terrible Jennings is speechless. If one addresses him, he only mumbles.

The sound of my skirts, or my footstep on the stone floor, makes him s.h.i.+ver. He is worse, one would imagine, than his master."

Louise ate and drank reflectively.

"It is the queerest household one could possibly stumble upon," she remarked. "The young Mr. Strangewey--he seems different, but he falls in with his brother's ways."

Aline glanced at herself in the mirror. She was just out of her mistress's range of vision, and she made a little grimace at her reflection.

"I met him twice this morning in the hall," she remarked. "He wished me good morning the first time. The second time he did not speak. He did not seem to see me."

Louise finished her breakfast and strolled presently to the window. She gave a little sigh of pleasure as she looked out.

"But, Aline," she exclaimed, "how exquisite!"

The maid glanced over her shoulder and went on preparing her mistress's clothes.

"It is as _madame_ finds it," she replied. "For myself, I like the country for fete days and holidays only, and even then I like to find plenty of people there."

Louise heard nothing. She was gazing eagerly out of the cas.e.m.e.nt-window.

Immediately below was a gra.s.s-grown orchard which stretched upward, at a precipitous angle, toward a belt of freshly plowed field; beyond, a little chain of rocky hills, sheer overhead. The trees were pink and white with blossom; the petals lay about upon the ground like drifted snowflakes. Here and there yellow jonquils were growing among the long gra.s.s. A waft of perfume stole into the room through the window which she had opened.

"Fill my bath quickly, Aline," Louise ordered. "I must go out. I want to see whether it is really as beautiful as it looks."

Aline dressed her mistress in silence. It was not until she had finished lacing her shoes that she spoke another word. Then, suddenly, she stopped short in the act of crossing the room. Her eyes had happened to fall upon the emblazoned genealogical record. A little exclamation escaped her. She swung round toward her mistress, and for once there was animation in her face.

"But, _madame_," she exclaimed, "I have remembered! The name Strangewey--you see it there--it was in our minds all the time that we had seen or heard of it quite lately. Don't you remember--"

"Yes, yes!" Louise interrupted. "I know it reminds me of something, but of what?"

"Yesterday morning," Aline continued, "it was you _madame_, who read it out while you took your coffee. You spoke of the good fortune of some farmer in the north of England to whom a relative in Australia had left a great fortune--hundreds and thousands of pounds. The name was Strangewey, the same as that. I remember it now."

She pointed once more to the family tree. Louise sat for a moment with parted lips.

"You are quite right, Aline. I remember it all perfectly now. I wonder whether it could possibly be either of these two men!"

Aline shook her head doubtfully.

"It would be unbelievable, _madame_," she decided. "Could any sane human creatures live here, with no company but the sheep and the cows, if they had money--money to live in the cities, to buy pleasures, to be happy?

Unbelievable, _madame_!"

Louise remained standing before the window. She was watching the blossom-laden boughs of one of the apple trees bending and swaying in the fresh morning breeze--watching the restless shadows which came and went upon the gra.s.s beneath.

"That is just your point of view, Aline," she murmured; "but happiness--well, you would not understand. They are strange men, these two. The young one is different now, but as he grows older he will be like his brother. He will live a very simple and honorable life. He will be--what is it they call it?--a county magistrate, chairman of many things, a judge at agricultural shows. When he dies, he will be buried up in that windy little churchyard, and people will come from a long way off to say how good he was. My hat, quickly, Aline! If I am not in that orchard in five minutes I shall be miserable!"

Louise found her way without difficulty across a cobbled yard, through a postern gate set in a red-brick wall, into the orchard. Very slowly, and with her head turned upward toward the trees, she made her way toward the boundary wall. Once, with a little exclamation of pleasure, she drew down a bough of the soft, cool blossom and pressed it against her cheek.

She stopped for a moment or two to examine the contents of a row of chicken-coops, and at every few steps she turned around to face the breeze which came sweeping across the moorland from the other side of the house.

Arrived at the farther end of the orchard, she came to a gate, against which she rested for a moment, leaning her arms upon the topmost bar.

Before her was the little belt of plowed earth, the fresh, pungent odor of which was a new thing to her; a little way to the right, the rolling moorland, starred with clumps of gorse; in front, across the field on the other side of the gray stone wall, the rock-strewn hills. The sky--unusually blue it seemed to her, and dotted all over with little ma.s.ses of fleecy, white clouds--seemed somehow lower and nearer; or was she, perhaps higher up?

She lingered there, absolutely bewildered by the rapid growth in her brain and senses of what surely must be some newly kindled faculty of appreciation. There was a beauty in the world which she had not felt before.

She turned her head almost lazily at the sound of a man's voice. A team of horses, straining at a plow, were coming round the bend of the field, and by their side, talking to the laborer who guided them, was John Strangewey. She watched him as he came into sight up the steep rise. Against the empty background, he seemed to lose nothing of the size and strength that had impressed her on the previous night. He was bareheaded, and she noticed for the first time that his closely cropped fair hair was inclined to curl a little near the ears.

He walked in step with the plowman by his side, but without any of the laborer's mechanical plod--with a spring in his footsteps, indeed, as if his life and thoughts were full of joyous things. He was wearing black-and-white tweed clothes, a little shabby but well-fitting; breeches and gaiters; thick boots, plentifully caked now with mud. He was pointing with his stick along the furrow, so absorbed in the instructions he was giving that he was almost opposite the gate before he was aware of her presence. He promptly abandoned his task and approached her.

"Good morning!" he called out.

She waved her hand.

"Good morning!"

"You have slept well?" he asked.

"Better, I think, than ever before in my life," she answered.

"Differently, at any rate. And such an awakening!"

He looked at her, a little puzzled. The glow upon her face and the sunlight upon her brown hair kept him silent. He was content to look at her and wonder.

"Tell me," she demanded impetuously, "is this a little corner of fairy-land that you have found? Does the sun always s.h.i.+ne like this?

Does the earth always smell as sweetly, and are your trees always in blossom? Does your wind always taste as if G.o.d had breathed the elixir of life into it?"

He turned around to follow the sweep of her eyes. Something of the same glow seemed to rest for a moment upon his face.

"It is good," he said, "to find what you love so much appreciated by some one else."

They stood together in a silence almost curiously protracted. Then the plowman pa.s.sed again with his team of horses, and John called out some instructions to him. She followed him down to earth.

"Tell me, Mr. Strangewey," she inquired, "where are your farm-buildings?"