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Thorpe Regis

by Frances Mary Peard · English · Gutenberg #43155 · 548,371 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: Thorpe Regis

Author: Frances Mary Peard


        
Release date: July 8, 2013 [eBook #43155]
                Most recently updated: October 23, 2024

Language: English

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Credits: Produced by Nick Hodson of London, England


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THORPE REGIS ***

Thorpe Regis
By Frances Peard
Published by Roberts Brothers, Boston.
This edition dated 1874.

Thorpe Regis, by Frances Peard.

________________________________________________________________________

________________________________________________________________________
THORPE REGIS, BY FRANCES PEARD.

CHAPTER ONE.

Nowadays the word "change," when applied to a place, seems so naturally
to carry in itself the ideas of growth, enlargement, and progress, that
we find a certain difficulty in adopting the word in its retrograde
sense, or of recognising other steps than those which we are in the
habit of looking upon as advancement.  And yet, if it be true that,
under the pressure of an ever-increasing population, hamlets have become
towns and fishing-villages seaports, it is no less certain that the
great march leaves behind it, or pushes out of its way, many stragglers
too sick, too feeble, or too weary for its ranks.  Thorpe Regis was such
a straggler.  Not to speak of those ancient days, the glories of which
only its name now kept in faint remembrance, there had been a time when
the great high road to London ran through its length.  Twice a week the
London coach lumbered up to the door of the Red Lion, changed horses,
let out its stiff and cramped passengers to stretch their limbs in the
paved space before the door, or refresh themselves with a tankard of
foaming ale in the stuffy little bar; and then lumbered off again out of
the midst of a gaping knot of ostlers and stable-men.  Twice a week came
the London coach back, bringing with it a stir of life and importance,
the latest messenger from the great world unknown to Thorpe except
through its medium,--more peremptory, more consequential, and more
exacting.  There was not a boy or man about the place but felt a sense
of interested proprietorship in the Defiance and the Highflyer, and a
pride in their respective performances.  From the tiny hamlets round,
lying in their green seclusions of elm-trees and apple orchards, the
rustics used to make muddy pilgrimages to Thorpe, to carry an occasional
letter to its post-office, and to watch the coach with steaming leaders
swinging down the hill.  That was the moment of triumph.  A few little
half-fledged boys, who were sure to be on the lookout, would hurrah
feebly and set off running as fast as their legs could carry them, and a
woman or two was generally at hand to cast up her eyes and exclaim at
the pace; but the majority preserved a stolid, satisfied silence.  That
Thorpe Regis was theirs and the London coach must stop there were facts
as undeniable as the Church, the Squire's house, and the Red lion
itself, and needed no comment.

Even facts, however, come to an end sometimes.  There arrived a day when
the railway, which had gradually been drawing nearer and nearer, reached
Underham, a little out-of-the-world village about five miles west of
Thorpe, which had hitherto looked humbly up to its more important
neighbour, and without a murmur had carried its little tribute of weekly
budgets to deposit at the door of the Red Lion.  So readily does human
nature accommodate itself to added greatness, that Underham was the
first to claim from Thorpe the homage which all these years it had
yielded ungrudgingly, and beyond a doubt it gave additional sharpness to
the stings of humiliation endured by the fallen village, to know that
its sudden depression had been caused by the prosperity of its rival.

For a short time the two coaches continued to run.  The Highflyer was
the first to succumb, while the Defiance, acting in accordance with its
name, struggled on for another six months as best it could.  But--
although there might be something heroic in so unequal a warfare, and a
certain dogged obstinacy in the refusal to accept defeat, which appeals
forcibly to our English sympathies--the result could not possibly be
averted.  The old people who held railway travelling to be a tempting of
Providence, and would fain have clung to the old ways to the end of
their days, were too few in number, and too seldom travellers at the
best, to support any means of conveyance whatever.  Their journeys were
rare events, and the last journey of all was not far off.  So gradually
the struggle came to an end.  Underham built, paved, started a High
Street, and gathered into itself all the traffic of the district.  A
company was formed to cut a canal and unite the railway with the river;
and there were timber-yards, black coal-wharves, and all the busy tokens
of prosperity, where, in former times, thatched cottages stood in the
midst of their gardens, and bees sucked the wild blossoms of the
honeysuckle.

Thorpe had long ago given up competing with its neighbouring rival.  The
old generation which resented the passing of its glories had passed away
itself; only here and there an old man, leaning against his gate, would
point with trembling finger up the hill, and in a cracked and feeble
voice would tell his grandchildren how the London coach once brought the
news that Nelson had beaten Bony at Trafalgar, and he, as a little lad,
had clipped his hands and cheered with the rest.  "They doan't get news
like that thyur down to Under'm, not they," he would end, shaking his
head scornfully.  But, as a rule, it was only the old people whose
memories pertinaciously resented the fallen fortunes of Thorpe.  To
others it was, as it had always been, a pretty old-fashioned village,
set in the midst of green pastures at the foot of a tolerably steep
hill, with a tangled network of lanes about it, and glimpses above the
high hedges of a distant purple moorland.  The cottages--broken by great
outer chimneys running up like buttresses--were whitewashed, with many
stages of descent between the first dazzling glaze of cleanliness and
the last tumble-down exposure of the red-brown cob; while the thatch,
beautiful in one season of its existence, presented as many gradations
as the plaster, from its crude freshness to the time when withies were
bound on it to prevent the wind from ripping it off, or the rain from
dropping, as it often dropped, into the low bedroom of the family.
Other houses there were of a more ambitious class.  A few shops kept up
a struggling existence, for although, except Weeks the butcher, no
Thorpe person was rash enough to depend upon a single trade, there were
combinations which developed a by no means contemptible ingenuity.
Draperies and groceries were disposed from the same counter, with only
an occasional inconvenience resulting from homely odours of tea or
candles clinging to the materials with which they had long rested in
closest neighbourhood.  And a triple establishment at the corner,
opposite the Red Lion, where the shoemaker kept the post-office and his
wife instructed the Thorpe children in a back kitchen, was sometimes
treated as the centre round which the village revolved.

Looking towards the hill which had been both the glory and the ruin of
Thorpe Regis, since the flatter ground about Underham had led the
surveyors for the railway to report more favourably upon its situation,
the church with its red stone tower lay to the right, a little way up a
lane, which in the hottest weather was hardly ever known to be dry; and
the Vicarage might be entered either through the churchyard, or more
directly from the village by an iron gate and drive.  At the time of
which I am writing, the vicar was the Rev William Miles, whose family
consisted of his wife, his son, and his daughter; and the squire of the
place was old Mr Chester of Hardlands.

Returning through the village and walking straight forward, instead of
taking the road to Underham, a tall, ugly brick house, with a gravel
sweep before it and a delightful old garden at the back, would soon be
reached.  It was inhabited by two brothers called Mannering, who had
once been well-known London lawyers.  Entering the house by three steps,
a low and old-fashioned hall presented itself in singular contrast to
the tastes of the day; a staircase with oak banisters fronted the door,
to the left was the dining-room, and a door beyond led you into the
study, where, about the hour of noon, it was very probable that the two
brothers would be found together.  At any rate it was so on the morning
on which my story opens.

The room was one of those comfortable dens which man, without the aid of
feminine taste and adornments, is occasionally so fortunate as to
construct for himself.  It was low and square, and had neither chintz
nor flowers to relieve the dark furniture; but the Turkey carpet,
although somewhat faded, had lost little of the richness of its finely
blended colours; the books which lined the walls were bound with a care
and finish which hinted at something approaching to bibliomania on the
part of their owners; the pictures, though few, were choice, and the
chairs were deep and inviting.  Moreover, a summer noonday brightened
whatever sombreness remained: sunshine came broadly in through a deep
oriel-window, and the scent of flowers and newly mown grass mingled
pleasantly with that of Russia leather and old morocco.  The room was a
cheerful room, although the cheerfulness might be of a subdued and
old-world character; and the writing-table, while conveying certain
suspicions of business transactions in the form of sundry bundles of
papers docketed and tied with red tape, bore also a proof of more
voluntary studies in a magnificently bound edition of Homer lying open
upon the blotting-pad.

Mr Mannering, who had but just pushed his chair away from the table,
was standing upon some low steps in the act of drawing another volume
from his amply filled book-shelves, and turning round as he did so to
answer a remark of his brother Robert's.  His slim figure was dressed
with scrupulous neatness; he had slender hands,--one of which now rested
on the top step, straight from the wrist, and, if one might draw an
illustration from another member, as it were on tiptoe; his shoulders
were a little stooping, his head bent and turned inquiringly; and his
quiet voice and smile contained something of quaint humour, and were
noticeable at once.

"My dear Robert," he was saying, "can there be any use in my giving an
opinion?  So far as I understand the matter, you are blaming Stokes for
not understanding the different natures of Gesnera elliptica and Gesnera
elongata.  How can I, who until this moment was ignorant of the
existence in the world of any Gesnera at all, be an equitable arbiter?"

"Wrong, Charles, wrong.  That is not the question; in fact, that has
nothing whatever to do with the question," said Mr Robert, resuming his
hasty march up and down the room.  "Stokes is a fool, and, as he never
was anything else, I suppose he can't help himself.  I don't complain of
that.  What I complain of is, that he should attempt to be more than a
fool.  Haven't I told you fifty times," he continued, stopping suddenly
before the delinquent, "that your business is to mind my orders, and not
to think that or think this, as if you were setting up for having a head
on your shoulders?  Haven't I told you that, eh?--answer me, sir."

"'Tain't no fault of mine," rejoined the gardener, slowly and doggedly.
"If this here Gehesnear had had a quiet time and no worriting of
charcoal and korkynit and such itemy nonsense, you wouldn't ha' seen a
mossel of dry-rot in the bulb.  That's what I says, and what Mr Anthony
says, too."

"Confound your impudence, and Mr Anthony's with it.  So you have been
taking him into consultation?  No wonder my Gesnera has come to a bad
end between your two wise heads.  Charles, do you hear?"

"Mr Anthony has mastered horticulture, has he?" said Mr Mannering,
turning his back upon the combatants, whose wrath was rapidly subsiding.
"If the boy goes on in this fashion there must be a new science created
for his benefit ere long.  Well, Robert, science has always had its
martyrs, and you should submit with a good grace to your Gesnera being
among them.  When did Mr Anthony come back?"

"Tuesday night, sir.  He comed up here yesterday, but you was to
Under'am."

"I forbid his going within ten yards of the stove plants," cried Mr
Robert, hastily.  "If I find him trying experiments in my hot-houses,
you shall be packed off, Stokes, as surely as I have put up with your
inconceivable ignorance for seven years.  I've not forgotten what
Anthony Miles's experiments are like.  Didn't he nearly blow up Underham
with the chemicals he got hold of when that idiot Salter's back was
turned?  Didn't he bribe the doctor's assistant, and half poison poor
old Miss Philippa with learning how to mix medicines, forsooth?  Didn't
he upset his mother, and frighten her out of the few wits she possesses,
by trying a new fashion of harnessing?  And now, as if all this were not
enough, my poor plants are to be the victims.  I forbid his coming
within the great gate,--I forbid your speaking to him while he is
possessed with this mania,--I forbid his looking at my Farleyense--"

"He've a seen that, sir," said Stokes, with his stolid features relaxing
into a grin.

"O, he has seen that, has he?" said Mr Robert, struggling between
indignation and gratified pride.  "Do you hear that, Charles?  Actually,
before I've had time to give my orders.  And, pray, what had Mr Anthony
to say of my Farleyense?"

"He said," replied the gardener, doling out the sentences to his
impatient master with irritating slowness, "as how he had comed through
Lunnon, and been to one o' they big flower-shows they talk so much
about.  And he said as there were a Farlyensy there--"

"Well, well?"

"As belonged to a dook--"

"Yes,--well, what did he say?  Can't you speak?"

"As warn't fit to hold a candle to owers," burst out Stokes
triumphantly, slapping his leg with an emphasis which made Mr
Mannering, who had returned to his seat at the writing-table, start and
look round in, mild expostulation.  His brother was rubbing his hands,
and beaming in every feature of his round face.

"To be sure, to be sure," he said in a tone of supreme satisfaction.
"Just what one would have expected.  But I am glad Anthony happened to
be up there just at this time, and I will say for the lad that he makes
better use of his eyes than three parts of the young fellows one meets
with.  So it was an inferior sort of article, was it?--with fronds half
the size, I'll lay a wager.  You hear, Charles, don't you?  Well,
Stokes, you have been exceedingly careful to treat that Farleyense in
the manner I showed you,--I knew it would answer,--here, man, here's
half a sovereign for you, and mind the earth doesn't get too dry."

"Thank ye, sir, thank ye," said Stokes, prudently abstaining from the
contradiction in which at another time he might have indulged.

"And, Stokes--"

"Yes, Mr Robert."

"If Mr Anthony comes up again, just let me know.  I should wish him to
see one or two of the other things in the house, but I prefer showing
them to him myself."

"It's most likely he'll be up again to-day, sir.  He wants Miss Winifred
to have a look at the plant."

"Certainly, certainly.  You can send in word when they come.  And,
Stokes--"

Stokes, who by this time had his hand upon the door, having tucked the
luckless Gesnera out of sight, turned obediently.

"No experiments, mind, no experiments."

"No, Mr Robert 'Specially korkynit," added the gardener in an audible
whisper, as he went out.  Whether or not Mr Robert heard him, it is
impossible to say.  Something like a red flush rose in his face, and he
looked hurriedly at his brother; but Mr Mannering was sitting back in
his deep chair, his elbows on its arms, his fingers joined at the tips,
his eyes fixed upon the volume before him, and if the shadow of a smile
just hovered about his lips, it might have been excited by some touch of
subtile humour in the pages which apparently absorbed his attention.
The younger brother fidgeted, went to the window, altered a slight
crookedness about the blind, stood there in his favourite attitude, with
his hands behind his back, and at length returned to the writing-table,
and took up one of the bundles of papers which were lying upon it.

"You have written to Thompson about the mortgage, I suppose?" he said in
a business-like tone which contrasted oddly with his previous bustling
excitement.

"Really, Robert," said Mr Mannering, looking up, and speaking
apologetically, "I believe I have done nothing of the kind.  Upon my
word, I do not know where my memory is going.  I had the pen in my hand
to begin the letter, and something must have put the matter out of my
head."

"Never mind.  If you can make room I'll sit down at once, and give the
fellow a summary of what he has to do."

But Mr Mannering was evidently annoyed with himself.

"I am growing old, that is the truth," he said despondingly.

"Old?--pooh!  Go and look in the glass, Charles, before you talk of
getting old to a man that is but three years your junior.  Old?--why,
there isn't a Mannering that comes to his prime before seventy.  I
expect to grow younger every day, and to have a game of leap-frog with
you before many years are past;--do you recollect the leap-frog in the
play-ground of the Grammar school?--why, it seems but yesterday that
great lout of a fellow, Hunt, went flying over my head, and struck out
with his hob-nailed shoes, and caught me just across the knuckles.  I
can feel the sting yet.  There, glance over this, and see if it will do
for Thompson.  I wonder where old Hunt is now."

"I met him in the city the other day with a grandson on either side."

"I dare say.  He was always too much of a blundering blockhead to
understand that the way to grow old is to have a tribe of children
treading on your heels.  You and I know better.  Here we live, as snug a
pair of cronies as is to be met with for twenty miles round, without any
such sharp contrasts disturbing our equanimity."

In answer to his brother's cheery words, and the hand which grasped his
as they were spoken, Mr Mannering shook his head a little sadly.

"Things might have been different--for you, Robert, especially.  Do you
think I have forgotten Margaret Hare?"

"Why should you forget, or I either?  Things might have been different,
as you say, but it does not follow they would have been better.  Look
here, Charles; we have not spoken much of Margaret Hare of late years.
I don't forget her, though I am an old blustering fellow, I don't forget
her, but I can look back and say God bless her, and thank him, too, that
things are as they are.  I don't want any change, and I have never
repented."

"It does my heart good to hear you say that, Robert."

"Well, there, it's said and done with.  Are you going to Underham
to-day?"

"I promised Bennett to look in.  He wants me to dine with him
to-morrow."

"That's very well for young fellows like you, but don't accept for me.
If I go off the premises we shall be having Anthony Miles up here with
an infallible compound for destroying caterpillars and all the plants
into the bargain.  I shall administer a lecture to-day, when he brings
Miss Winifred."

"Get her to do it."

"I'm half afraid she does it too much already.  It seems to me that
love-making is more altered than leap-frog since our day, Charles,--
Well, well, some things don't change, and luckily luncheon is a
permanent institution.  Come, and spare Mrs Jones's feelings."

"I am losing my appetite," said Mr Mannering, sighing.

"Come in, at all events."  And, with a little show of reluctance on the
part of the elder, the brothers walked off to the long dining-room lying
on one side of the library, and looking out upon the cheerful and sunny
garden which had somehow caught the spirit of Robert Mannering's
kindliness.

CHAPTER TWO.

  "So many worlds, so much to do,
  So little done, such things to be."

  _In Memoriam_.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

The path from Thorpe Regis to Hardlands lay across two or three of those
green fields which ran in and out of the village and gave it the air of
deep retirement remarked by the few visitors who jogged in a fly from
the nearest town to see the thatched cottages, the red church, the apple
orchards, and the great myrtles which grew boldly up to the very eaves
of the houses.  You might reach Hardlands in a more dignified and
deliberate fashion by driving along the old London road, and turning
into a short lane, when the iron gate would soon appear in sight; but
the most sociable and habitual means of approach was that which led
through the fields to a narrow shrubbery path, emerging from which the
long white house, with a green veranda stretching half-way across its
front, became pleasantly visible at once.

Between Hardlands and the Vicarage a very brisk communication was kept
up.  The Squire and the Vicar had not indeed been friends beyond the
term of Mr Miles's residence at Thorpe, but that had now reached a
period of fifteen years; and although fifteen years at their time of
life will not balance an earlier friendship of but five, and although
there was neither similarity nor natural sympathy between the two men,
yet neighbourhood and a certain amount of isolation had formed a bond
which either of the two would have found it painful to break.  Mr
Chester, moreover, had lost his wife while the Mileses were yet fresh
comers, and with two motherless girls left upon his hands it became a
natural thing to apply in his perplexity to Mrs Miles, a woman in whom,
whatever else might lack strength, it was not the sweet tenderness of
motherly instincts.  Winifred and little Bessie were at least as much in
the Vicarage nursery as their own, sharing all things with Marion and
Anthony; and if, as they grew older, a half-unconscious change took
place in their relationships, it had not been the means of loosening the
intimacy, or diminishing the number of mutual visits.  Bessie and her
father had that morning looked in at the Vicarage, and in the late
afternoon Marion and Anthony walked across the fields by the familiar
path along which they could have gone blindfold, towards Hardlands.

The day was one of those exhilarating days of early summer, before any
languor of great beat has stolen into its heart, and while the freshness
of spring still leaps up in breezy flutterings of leaf and bough.
Hay-making was going on vigorously, and the air was laden with the
grateful scent.  There were fields yet green with cool depths of waving
grass, and others where keen shadows fell upon the smoothly shaven turf.
Here and there a foxglove reared itself upwards in the hedges, here and
there dog-roses unfolded innocent little pink and white buds.  Without
any striking beauty in the landscape about Thorpe, a certain pastoral
and homely charm in the thatched cottages, the fields, the blossoming
orchards, and even in such unromantic details as the shallow duck-pond
under Widow Andrews's wall, made a more exacting demand upon the
affections of those who lived among them than could altogether be
understood by such as only looked upon them from the outside.  Anthony
Miles, as he walked along with his head a little thrown back, switching
the grass with a laurel rod confiscated from Widow Andrews's little
grandson, who had been caught by the brother and sister, as they passed,
using it as an instrument of torture upon a smaller and weaker
companion, was not thinking of the familiar objects with any conscious
sense of admiration, and yet they were affecting him pleasantly; so
that, although he might have said many other places were filling his
heart at this time,--for there is an age with both men and women when
place has even more power than people,--it is likely that, had he known
the truth about himself, he would, after all, have found Thorpe in the
warmest corner; old sleepy stupid Thorpe with its hay-ricks, its bad
farming, and its broad hedges cumbering the land, against which he was
at this moment inveighing to Marion.

"Did you ever see anything cut up like these half-dozen acres?  There's
one slice taken out, and here's another; a hedge six foot across at the
bottom if it's an inch, and a row of useless elms sucking all the
goodness out of the ground.  I don't believe there's a richer bit of
soil in all England, and they can do no more than get a three-cornered
mouthful of pasture out of it for one old cow."

"O Anthony, why can't you let things alone, when they don't concern you?
My father has allowed you to have your own way about the paddock, and
you surely need not tease Mr Chester to death over his hedges."

"That is so like a woman, who can never see anything beyond her own
shadow.  Can't you understand that it would be for the good of Thorpe if
the ground that feeds people's mouths were better drained and if there
were more of it?"

"So this is to be the next hobby, is it?"

"Farming?  Hum, I don't know.  If I could induce old Chester to go in
for a few experiments, it might be worth while, perhaps, to get up the
subject.  But everything is on such an absurdly small scale here, that
it would be hardly possible to do anything satisfactory."

"And you really mean that you would be willing for all your schemes to
resolve themselves into the miserable mediocrity of settling down at
Thorpe and improving the hedges of the district!" said Marion
indignantly.

"One might do a good deal in that way," Anthony answered, with a
mischievous twinkle in his eyes as he looked at his sister.  Any one who
had seen him at that moment must have been struck with the extreme
boyishness of his appearance.  It might have been the curly light brown
hair, or, more likely, the slight figure and sloping shoulders, but
something there was which had changed but little for the last ten years,
and kept him a boy still.  Marion looked years older.  He was always
irritating her by his quick changes, his enthusiasm, his projects for
the good of other people.  So long as he might have his own way in the
doing, there was nothing that he would not have done.

Marion had small sympathy for such notions; she clung to what was her
own with a passion and a wilfulness which made her blind to what she
would not see, but she did not care to go out of that circle.  Yet
people said that the brother and sister were alike, and to a certain
extent the world's judgments were correct, as the world's judgments
often are, only that a hundred little things too subtile for so large a
beholder made a gulf between the two.  He provoked her constantly as he
was provoking her now.

"I sometimes think you will end in doing nothing," she said, walking on
quickly.

"So do I, a dozen times a day.  Who's this coming?--isn't it that fellow
Stephens?  I've a bone to pick with him, I can tell him.  What do you
suppose he's after now?  He wants Maddox to let him have that bit of
ground close by the school to build a chapel upon.  I think I see it!
Stokes gave me a hint of it, and I've been bullying Maddox all the
morning, and pretty well got his word for it at last.  The canting
methodistical rascal!  I wish I could see him kicked out of the place."

Anthony was speaking with great energy.  He and Marion were walking
through the cool meadows, beyond which lay the softly swelling hills.
To the left, a little in front of them, the Hardlands shrubbery gate led
into a thin belt of fir-trees, but the path continued through the
meadows, until it crossed a small stream, and reached a lane branching
from the high road.  People liked to turn away from the hard dust and
get into these pretty fields, where soft shadows fell gently and the
delicate cuckoo flowers grew; and Mr Chester had tacitly suffered a
right of way to be established, though he inveighed against it on every
occasion.  It was a grievance with which he would not have parted for
the world, even if his own natural kind-heartedness had not been
entirely on the side of the tired wayfarers, and nobody took any notice
of it.  So that even Anthony's indignation did not extend itself to the
fact that David Stephens was coming towards them along the narrow track.

"I shall go on: Winifred will be wondering what has become of us," said
Marion, who had not sufficiently forgiven her brother to be ready to
take his side in the contest.  He stood still with his hand on the gate,
waiting for Stephens to pass, so determinedly, that the man as he
reached the spot stopped at once.

He was much shorter than Anthony, as short, indeed, as an ordinary-sized
boy of fourteen, and there was an actual though not very prominent
deformity of figure.  Yet this warp of nature seldom struck those who
fronted him, for the head and face were so powerful and remarkable that
they irresistibly seized the attention.  Even Anthony, who was as
enthusiastic in his prejudices as in his other feelings, was conscious
of something in the eyes which checked his first flow of resentment.  He
would have preferred beginning with a more trenchant opening than--

"Hallo, Stephens, you're the person I wanted to see."

"Did you, sir?  Well, this is the second time I've been to Thorpe
to-day."

"Yes, I know that," said Anthony, recovering himself, and feeling the
words come to him.  "I've seen Maddox, he's just been at our house, and
what you're after won't do at all.  Do you suppose my father would stand
one of your ranting places stuck up just under his nose?  You'd better
take yourself off a few miles, for, let me tell you, Thorpe doesn't want
to see you, and you may find it a little hotter residence than you have
any fancy for."

"I am not afraid of threats, sir," said Stephens quietly.

Anthony had been speaking in an authoritative tone, as if his decision
quite set the matter at rest, and opposition irritated him as usual.

"I simply tell you what will happen if you come where you're not
wanted," he said, raising his voice.  "And as to the chapel, we'll take
care that is never built.  You may call it a threat if you please, but
it's one that will find itself a fact."

"Mr Miles, the word of God has borne down fiercer things than you are
like to hold over me, and it will do so yet again.  I am sorry to go
against you, but I must either do that or against the inward
conviction."

"Cant," muttered Anthony wrathfully.  "And so you suppose you're to have
that field?"

"Mr Maddox has as good as promised it, sir."

"You'll find him in a different mind now."

"He'll not go against his word!"

For the first time during the interview Stephens's quietness was broken
by a touch of passion.  His eyes, lit up by a sudden fire, fastened
themselves anxiously upon Anthony.  Anthony, who had hitherto been the
angry one of the two, felt a contemptuous satisfaction at having raised
this wrath.

"His word!  Things are not done quite so easily as all that.  You had
better turn and go back again, for all the good you'll get by going on."

"I should be glad of a direct answer, sir," said David, restraining
himself with an effort.  "Has Mr Maddox told you downright that he will
not let us have the field?"

"Yes, he has."

Stephens's face had lost its red flush, but his eyes still held their
deep fire.

"Then God forgive you!" he said in a low passionate voice, opening out
his hands slightly, and walking away with quick steps.  Anthony did not
look after him; he turned into the little path, and began to whistle
with a certain sense of pleasure in his victory which was not checked by
any pitiful misgivings.

CHAPTER THREE.

  "God Almighty first planted a garden; and indeed it is the purest of
  human pleasures."

  Bacon's _Essays_.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

As Anthony emerged from the little path under the fir-trees, he saw that
Winifred and Marion were in the garden, and that Winifred was gardening,
her gown drawn up, gauntleted gloves on her hands, and a trowel held
with which she was at work.

"We shall be ready in a minute," she called out, nodding to him.  "I am
so glad you are come, for I thought you might have forgotten our walk."

"It was too hot before," said Anthony, strolling towards them, and
stretching himself lazily upon the grass.

"And I have done no end of work.  You see those bare places in the beds,
over which you were so unmerciful, are quite filled.  Luckily Thomas had
a great many surplus plants this year."

As she stood up, a great clump of flowering shrubs--guelder roses, pink
thorn, azaleas--made a pretty and variegated background.  She had drawn
off her big gloves, and was beating the earth from them as she spoke,
and smiling down upon him with bright pleasantness.  Anthony looked at
her, and a satisfied expression deepened in his eyes.  He had hold of
one of the ribbons of her dress, and was fingering it.

"Why don't you always wear lilac?" was his somewhat irrelevant answer.

"You don't attend to what I am saying," said Winifred, a little
impatiently.  "I want to know what you think of the flowers, and not of
my dress."

"Why should I not talk about that as well?  You have at least as much to
do with the one as the other."

"It is not what I have to do with it, but how it looks when it is done.
Marion, can't you prevent Anthony from being frivolous?"

"Don't ask Marion," said Anthony, biting a bit of grass.  "She has been
falling foul of me all the way here, though neither of us can exactly
say what it has been about.  My ruffled feathers want smoothing down, if
you please, Winifred."

"You don't look ruffled a bit."

"That is my extraordinary amiability."

"Marion did very well to scold you, I am sure."

"And that is the way women jump at conclusions."

"I shall jump at the conclusion presently that you mean to go to sleep
on the grass, and leave us to walk to the Red House alone."

"I?  I am ready to start this moment, and the time you have supposed to
be wasted I have spent in making up my mind that a mass of amaranthus
ought to replace the verbenas in that bed."

"Amaranthus!  O Anthony, they would be so gloomy."

"Just the effect you want, when everything is too flaming."

"No, no," said Winifred, resolutely holding her ground.  "You must find
your relief at the back, for the flowers themselves can't be too
bright."

"Now, Winifred, there are certain principles," began Anthony, sitting
upright and speaking energetically, "principles of contrast, by means of
which you get a great deal more out of your brilliancy than when you run
one colour into the other.  I wish you would let me explain them to
you."

"Understanding the principles would never make me doubt my eyes.  No,
indeed, I am very sorry, but I could not sacrifice those splendid
verbenas after watering them for so many evenings."

"You should not water at all."

Winifred looked at him, laughed, and shook her head.

"I don't mean to give way to these horrible new theories.  To begin
with, they would break Thomas's heart."

"O, very well," said Anthony, getting up, affronted.  "Did you say you
were ready to start?  Marion!  We are waiting."

He marched before them in evident displeasure; Winifred, who knew that
his discontent would not last long, looking at him with a little
amusement.  They skirted the field where the haymakers had been at work
all day, and the sweet dry grass lay tossed about in fragrant swathes as
the forks had dropped it.  Across, between the elm-trees, the sun shone
upon the canal and the Underham houses, while, beyond again, lay meadows
and wooded hills, and the soft western moorland.  On the other side of
the nearest field was a figure on an old bay cob, with a dog standing by
his side, and a man pointing.  This was the Squire, too deep in
consultation over some boundary annoyances to notice the little party
scrambling over their stiles, and waving every now and then to attract
his attention.

"Which of you are going to dine at the Bennetts' to-morrow?"

"Papa, Anthony, and I."

"And is Marmaduke to be there?"

"I suppose so.  It depends on the trains."

"And Mr Mannering, of course.  Marion, did you ever hear that there is
a romantic story about those brothers?"

"What's that?" said Anthony, stopping and looking round.

"It was Miss Philippa who told me," Winifred explained, "and she was not
at all clear about it; but it seems that one of them was engaged to a
lady, when his brother fell into a bad state of health, requiring great
care for a long while, and the other gave up everything, devoted
himself, nursed, prevented people from finding out how incapable he had
become, and was really the means of saving his life, or his reason, or
whatever was in danger.  But then comes the sad part.  The lady grew
tired of waiting, and married some one else."

"It is rather a complicated story.  And which is the hero?"

"Mr Mannering," Marion said, promptly.

"I believe it to have been Mr Robert," said Anthony, in a tone of
decision.

"So do I," said Winifred, looking brightly at him, happy in fulfilling a
longing against which she not infrequently fought more steadily, from
thinking that it was not well for him to carry matters altogether as he
liked.

Anthony smiled, and fell back a little with his good-humour restored.
After all, it was a pleasant thing to be walking through the Thorpe
fields with Winifred, who had a certain charm about her, harmonising
with what surrounded them.  In a crowded room she might have passed with
little notice; but here, in the open air, with an evening breeze
sweeping up from the sea, six miles distant, and fresh cool scents just
touching it, the buoyancy of her step, the clearness of her voice, and
the frank honesty of her eyes, were all in agreement with the country
life in which she had grown to womanhood, and the outer influences of
which work in proportion as we admit them.  That day, also, had been
full of light-hearted happiness.  Anthony had returned from an absence
of some months, which he had spent in travelling.  He and she were in
excellent accord in spite of their little passage at arms, and they were
just in an easy social position towards each other, which made it seem
scarcely possible that they should not always go on as smoothly.  It was
when they were together in what is called society that little storms
arose, that Winifred's eyes would suddenly flash, and some quick speech
descend upon Anthony, in abrupt contrast to the sugared politeness which
had been flowing in pleasant streams.  It was natural that he should
resent it.  With an older experience she might have treated him
differently; but her very eager longing that he should rise above what
she herself despised made her impatient that he did not rise at once.
It is no untrue assertion that too close knowledge is an obstacle to
love.  When a boy and girl grow up together, the light beats too
strongly for those delicate and shadowy enchantments, those delicious
surprises, those tender awakenings, by which others are led on all
unconsciously.  It may, now and then, lose no particle of strength
because of this, but such cases are at least rare.  Winifred had a
hundred misgivings for Anthony, who had none for himself.  It seemed to
him as if nothing were out of his reach, as if neither time, nor
opportunity, nor success could fail.  Was he not twenty-four, with a
lifetime before him?  Had he not gained the Chancellor's gold medal?  He
had, moreover, that sense of fellowship, which more than any other gift
heartens a man for work among his kind; he was full of enthusiasm for
doing good, for upholding right, for beating down wrong,--he would be an
author, a reformer, a politician,--he would raise Thorpe by penny
readings,--he would improve the Hardlands property by inducing the
Squire to sweep away his hedges,--the church singing should be converted
into harmony, ignorance into intelligence, wrong into right,--are there
any limits or misgivings which trouble these young champions who leap
into the arena, and believe a hundred eyes are upon them?  It was
Winifred who looked at him and trembled.

Mr Robert Mannering met them inside the gates.

"I saw you coming," he said.  "Well, Anthony, and so you are back from
your travels, and your father says you have not yet made up your mind
what new worlds you shall conquer.  I congratulate you.  Only, my dear
boy, don't make Stokes your prime minister.  Leave pottering about
amongst leaf-mould and bell-glasses to superannuated old fellows like
me.  Miss Winifred, I am proud to hear that you are come to see my
Farleyense."

"Anthony says it is such a fine plant."

"It is a fine plant.  It might be almost anything," said Anthony.  "I
told Stokes that if I were he I should treat it differently.  I wish he
would let me have a turn at it for a fortnight."  Mr Mannering gave a
quick gasp, and stood still to look at the speaker.

"I shall keep the key in my pocket until he is out of the place.  Miss
Winifred, Miss Marion,--we are old friends,--detain him at the Vicarage,
at Hardlands, find some innocent occupation for him which shall not
harrow old gentlemen's pet hobbies.  Set him to cure Miss Philippa's
rheumatism,--I don't wish to be uncharitable, but by her own account it
can't be worse than it is, whereas my Farleyense--Good Heavens, I shall
not sleep for a week for thinking of the peril it is in."

"Of course, there must be a certain amount of risk," said Anthony
coolly; "but, after all, the experience gained for others is worth more
than the thing itself.  That always seems to me the only object in
gardening.  However, if you don't care about it, sir,--that's enough.
I'm going to hunt up the tortoise."

"Do, do, by all means.  The fellow's shell is thick enough to protect
him.  This way, Miss Winifred.  I hope you don't mind a few steps.  You
are judicious in your time, for I always think this soft late light is
more becoming than any other to the plants.  There,--a picture, isn't
it?  I almost wish Anthony had come down after all."

"He is too full of projects to be a safe visitor just at present," said
Winifred, shaking her head, but secretly proud in her heart.

"I'll defy him to find a finer Farleyense anywhere, at any rate," said
Mr Mannering valiantly.  He was looking at Winifred as he spoke, and
thinking that Thorpe had other pretty things to show Anthony.  There was
a soft gloom in the house, out of which seemed to spring the delicate
green feathery ferns full of still strange life, and Winifred, standing
among them, had a sweet light in her eyes and a half-smile on her lips.
It was not very often that people agreed she was pretty, and then they
were probably thinking of the fresh colouring, the bright hair, and that
indescribable fairness of youth which, even without other claim to
beauty, carries with it so great a charm; but the true attraction in her
face consisted in a certain nobility of expression, of which the delight
would but deepen as the more fleeting fairness departed.

"Here is an exquisite little Cystopteris, Miss Marion," said Mr Robert,
beginning to bustle about, "and that is the finest hare's-foot in the
county.  I want to have a look at your oak fern, but I must go into
Underham to-morrow.  Miss Philippa has a quarterly paper which requires
signing at least five times every year."

"Marmaduke comes to-morrow," said Marion, who had been silent.  "Can't
he sign his aunt's papers?"

"No, I am sorry to tell you that the law makes a distinction between a
man and a magistrate.  So Marmaduke comes to-morrow?  And he and
Anthony, I have no doubt, will chalk out a fresh career for every day in
the week when they get together."

"There is not much room for what you call a career in poor Marmaduke's
case," said Marion, drawing her gloves tightly through her hands, and
keeping her head turned away, so that only a sharply cut profile could
be seen.  "A clerk in a merchant's office does not look forward to
anything very brilliant."

"Unless he wins the heart of the daughter of the principal partner, and
you have been so hardhearted as to cut that chance of promotion from
under his feet.  Well, these are the contrarieties of life, but they
tumble into shape somehow at the end, so keep a good heart, my dear."

He said it with an odd quaver in the cheery voice, although neither of
the two noticed it.  They were thinking of themselves with the
unconscious egotism of youth.  There were all sorts of tender visions
flitting about among the soft shadowy ferns, and some not less tender
than the rest that they were dim with age and years.  Marion went on
after a momentary pause:--

"I suppose his best chance lies with Mr Tregennas."

"Yes and no, and no more than yes, I take it.  If Marmaduke will stick
to his business and not allow imaginary prospects to unsettle him, they
may do him no harm.  But it's ill waiting for dead men's shoes,
especially if you do not step into them at the last.  There is nothing
so likely to sour a man's life."

"There cannot be doubt when he has promised," Marion said, turning
towards him with a movement which was abrupt enough to betray a little
anxiety in the words.

"He has, has he?"

"Yes, indeed.  Marmaduke has often told me how much Mr Tregennas said,
and no one, no one could be so cruel as not to keep to his word in such
a matter!"

"Not intentionally,--at least, not many men.  But, my dear Miss Marion,
you never will be an old lawyer, and so I don't promise that you will
ever find out how much of what we hear depends upon what we think, or
how much of what we say depends upon what we believe we ought to have
said.  Now, you have not gone into such ecstasies as I expected over my
Farleyense, but by to-morrow my imagination will have supplied all your
deficiencies, and yours will make you ready to swear that you were as
prettily enthusiastic as the occasion demanded."

"I beg your pardon," said Marion, smiling.

"Don't do that.  Have I not just explained to you the recipe for
harmonising the minor discords of one's life?  There is some happy stuff
in our composition--vanity, if you will--which fills up what is
wanting."

"Are you there?  Shall I come down?" said Anthony's voice from the top
of the steps.

"No, no, wait a moment; we are coming, we are coming this instant," said
Mr Mannering, hurriedly.  "Take care of the wet, Miss Winifred,--here
we are; thank you, yes, I prefer to lock the house for the night.  And
how did you find the tortoise, and what did you do to him, Anthony?"

"Do to him?  I did nothing,--at least, I only moved him to the sunny
side of the wall, where he will be a good deal better off."

They were strolling towards the road, Mr Mannering with his hands
locked behind his back, and a twinkle of amusement about eyes and mouth.

"Thank you, my dear boy, thank you," he said, gravely.  "But I should be
a good fourteen stone to carry, and, to tell the truth, I would rather
stay where I am."

"What do you mean?" said Anthony, puzzled.  "Was I talking to myself?  I
beg your pardon,--it was the oddest idea,--do you know, just for a
moment I had a feeling at the back of my neck as if I were the
tortoise."

CHAPTER FOUR.

  "I did but chide in jest: the best loves use it
  Sometimes; it sets an edge upon affection:
  When we invite our best friends to a feast,
  'Tis not all sweetmeat that we set before 'em;
  There's something sharp and salt, both to whet appetite
  And make 'em taste their wine well."

  Middleton.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

From what has been said of the resources of Thorpe Regis, it will be
easily understood that it did not possess any public vehicle capable of
conveying its inhabitants to dinner-parties or other solemnities.  When
such a conveyance became an absolute necessity, there was sent from
Underham a fly which had a remarkable capacity for adapting itself to
different occasions.  A pair of white gloves for the driver and a grey
horse presented at once the festive appearance considered desirable for
a wedding, while the lugubrious respectability demanded by an English
funeral was attained by the substitution of black for white, and by a
flowing hat-band which almost enveloped the little driver.  Its natural
appearance, divested of any special grandeur, was that of a roomy,
heavily built, and some what battered vehicle, which upon pressure would
hold one or two beyond the conventional four, and carry the Thorpe world
to the evening gayeties of the neighbourhood with no greater amount of
shaking and bumping than habit had led them to consider an almost
indispensable preparation to a dinner with their friends.

On the evening of Mr Bennett's party, the Underham fly might have been
seen drawn up in front of the Vicarage porch, a snug little excrescence
on the south side of the house, and scarcely a dozen yards from the
church.  The dinner-hour was half past six, and it was a three quarters
of an hour's drive to Underham, so that the sun was still slanting
brightly upon the old house, green with creepers of long years' growth;
upon the narrow border of sweet, old-fashioned flowers that ran along
the front, edged with box, and separated from the grass-plot by a little
gravel walk; upon the fine young cedar half-way between the house and
the road, the tall tritonias, and the cluster rose that had clambered
until it festooned two ilex-trees with its pure white blossoms.  Some
charm of summer made the homeliness beautiful,--the repose of the last
daylight hours, the cheerfulness of children's laughter in the village,
the midges dancing in the quiet air, the shadows on the grass where
pink-tipped daisies folded themselves serenely.  Even the wrinkled face
of Job White, the one-eyed driver, had caught something of glow from the
sunshine, as he sat and conversed affably from his box with Faith, the
parlour-maid at the Vicarage, a rosy-faced girl, not disposed, as Job
expressed it, "to turn agin her mate because it warn't pudden."  Job
himself was one of the characters of the neighbourhood, a good-humoured
patron of such of the gentry round as he considered respectable, and
intensely conservative in his opinions.  He had begun life as a Thorpe
baby, and, although professional exigencies afterwards led to his
settling at Underham, he did not attempt to disguise his contempt for
the new-fangled notions prevalent in that place.  One of his
peculiarities led him to decline accepting as correct all time which
could not be proved to agree with the church clock at Thorpe.  The
country alteration to what was called railway time which took place some
twenty or five-and-twenty years ago he could not speak of except in
terms of contemptuous bitterness; and, had it been practicable, he would
have insisted upon remaining twenty minutes behind the rest of the world
to the end of his days; but as his calling rendered this an
impossibility, he contented himself with utterly ignoring the station
clock, and obliging all those he drove to accommodate their hours to
those of Thorpe.  "He've been up thaes foorty years, and he ain't likely
to be wrong now," was his invariable answer to remonstrances; and
perhaps there could be no stronger testimony to the old west-world
prejudices that, in spite of changes, yet clung about Underham, than the
fact that with these opinions for his guide Job White still drove the
Milman Arms fly.

At the moment when Faith, shading her eyes from the sun, was looking
brightly up with instinctive coquetry, Job was settling in his waistcoat
fob the globular silver watch which he had duly compared with his oracle
in the tower.  It was so bulky that it required a peculiar twist of his
body to get it into the pocket at all, and wheft that difficulty was
surmounted it formed an odd sort of protuberance, apt to impress
beholders with a sympathetic sense of discomfort Faith, however,
regarded it with due respect.

"True to a minit," Job said in a tone of contented self-satisfaction.
"Now, Faith, my dear, suppose you wos just to step in and tell Miss
Marion that, without she's pretty sharp, we sha'n't get to Under'm by
half past six, nor nothing like it."

"She's on the stairs now," said Faith, reconnoitring, "and if there
isn't Sarah come out of the kitchen to see her drest!  I'm sure it is a
wonder if she can stand there for a minute and not say something sharp.
It wants the patience of a saint to live with Sarah."

"And that doesn't come to everybody as it do to me,--with their name,"
said Job.  "She's a woman who isn't tried with a hitch in her tongue,
but she's a neat figure for a cook."

"Well, I'm sure!" said Faith, pouting a little.  "I never could see
nothing in Sarah's figure,--but you'd better get down and open the door,
Mr White."

With so great a scarcity of conveyances, combinations were matters of
necessity in Thorpe, and the fly had already driven to the Red House in
order to pick up Mr Mannering.  The delay in starting had been caused
at least as much by the Vicar's desire to hear his opinion upon a
certain pamphlet which, when sought for, turned out to be missing, as by
Marion's lingering doubts between the respective merits of two white
muslins; but the truth was that punctuality did not exist at the
Vicarage, and the church bell on Sundays stretched itself indefinitely,
until the Vicar himself looked out from the vestry door and nodded for
it to stop.  Mr Mannering, having, on the contrary, a lawyer's respect
for time, had for the last ten minutes been sitting upon thorns, taking
out his watch, and regarding the door with as much uneasiness as a
courteous attention to Mrs Miles's household difficulties would permit.
Anthony had walked into Underham to meet Marmaduke Lee, and Mr
Mannering fell uninterruptedly to Mrs Miles's care, until the Vicar
opened the door and informed him that they were ready, with the really
serious conviction common to unpunctual people that his visitor was the
person for whom they had all been waiting.

They were in the hall and out in the little porch at last: the Vicar
with his broad shoulders and plain face, Mrs Miles coming softly down
to see them off, and pulling out Marion's skirts with a little motherly
anxiety.  They were all talking and laughing, and the sun still shone
bravely on Marion's pretty gown and the roses she had twisted into her
dark hair, and the jessamine which clambered to the topmost windows.
Sniff, the Skye terrier, was dancing round the old grey horse, and
barking wildly.  Outside, in the little wet lane, brown sweet-breathed
cows were plodding slowly back to their farm, and stopping now and then
to contemplate the green lawn of the Vicarage, until Sniff, catching
sight of an intruding head, became frantic with a new excitement, and,
scrambling to the top of the hedge, was last seen as the fly turned out
of the gate, a ball of flying hair in pursuit of a retreating enemy.

It was through a curious tangle of lanes that Job jolted his load, a
little more unmercifully than usual, lest the time which had been lost
should be laid to the account of the Thorpe clock by unbelievers at
Underham.  The hedge-rows were so high that the sun at this hour of the
day shone only upon the tops of the blackthorn and nut bushes which
crowned them, shone with a keen yellow light contrasting strongly with
the dim shadows falling underneath upon the long grass and moss.  But
every now and then a break in the hedge, or a gate leading into the
fields, revealed a sweet homelike view,--with no bold glory of form or
colour, but tender with subtle harmonies of tints melting one into the
other, a haze of blue, white smoke curling upwards, straw-thatched
barns, with quiet apple orchards lying round them, where the grass grew
long and cool about the stalks of the old trees, and the young fruit
mellowed through the kindly summer nights.  By and by the lanes widened,
they passed an old mill, half hidden by ash-trees, drove between flat
meadows, crossed a bridge, and reached the outskirts of Underham.  Mr
Mannering and the Vicar had fallen into a discussion upon a new edition
of Sophocles, and Marion looked out of the window with a happy glow upon
her face, not understanding how the two men should bury themselves in
those old-world interests, when life was rushing on, full of charm, of
pain, of wonderment.  After all, it is but a world of new editions.
Sophocles was no further removed from them than the hundred hopes and
fears with which she and Marmaduke beguiled the time until they should
meet again, touch each other's hands, look into each other's eyes.  But
Marion had not learnt this yet.

The Bennetts' house stood directly against the road, and the wall along
which for some distance the footpath ran was the wall of their garden;
the Underham boys holding fabulous views of the fruit that ripened on
its innermost side, where green geometrical lines were marked out upon
the warm brick.  Mr Bennett was a lawyer, and having no children, he
and his wife had adopted the daughter of a sister of Mrs Bennett's,
treating her in every respect as though she were their own child.  Miss
Lovell was smiling up at Anthony when the Vicarage party arrived, and
Mr Chester, who was always a little loud and peremptory in his voice,
was holding forth to Mr Bennett upon a local election.

"I should be the last person in the world to wish to influence anybody,"
he was saying, "but you'll not deny, I suppose, that the other men are a
pair of fools."

"Still, one doesn't altogether like to go against North,--he as good as
belongs to Underham."

"Don't see the value of that," said the Squire, with a little roughness;
and then dinner was announced, and they all trooped down.  Anthony sat
between an elderly lady and Miss Lovell, the Bennetts' niece, Marmaduke
had Marion, and Winifred's neighbour was the son of Sir James Milman,
the member.  Anthony was always popular in society, so that to secure
him was almost a pledge to the host and hostess that things would go
brightly; moreover, he had but just returned from his travels, and an
added charm of novelty hung about him.  Even Mrs Featherly, next to
whom he was sitting, the wife of the rector of Underham, and one of
those excellent women whom people all blamed themselves for disliking,
began to look as if the fault-finding on which she rested as the moral
backbone of her character was yielding to Anthony's pleasantness.

"You have seen a great deal since you left home, Mr Anthony, of one
kind and another, and I hope you will make good use of it," she said
graciously.

"He earned his holiday," said Mr Bennett, nodding his head.  "After
such great things at Cambridge, a man can't do better than take a run
and let his brain have a little rest.  I'm never for overwork."

"Only I do hope you have written some more beautiful poetry," Miss
Lovell put in on the other side.  She was a pretty girl, fair, with a
long soft curl falling on her shoulder, and a voice which had a little
imploring emphasis in it.  "And not in Latin this time, or you really
must send us a translation."

There was a good deal said in the same strain, to which Anthony made
laughing disclaimers, liking the incense all the while.  He was
conscious of exaggerations, but it is not difficult to forgive
exaggerations which lead along so pleasant a path, and his was a nature
to grow warmly responsive under kindly treatment, so that his
conversation became brighter and more entertaining, until even Mrs
Bennett, who was contentedly eating strawberries, made the effort of
inquiring at what they were laughing.

"Mr Miles is telling us such amusing things," said Miss Lovell, with
unmistakable admiration in her tone.

"Amusing things!" repeated the Squire; "I never hear anything worth
listening to of any sort.  Bless you, they talk nineteen to the dozen in
these days, but there's no making head nor tail of it when all's said.
It's speechifying and argufying, and nothing done.  That's what made
half the mischief in the Crimea.  We sha'n't get anything again like the
old times, when there were no railways, nor confounded telegraphs
pulling up the generals for every step they took, or making them believe
there'd be a pack of men at their heels to pull them out of any holes
they were fools enough to blunder into."

In his youth the Squire had been in the Dragoons, and no one at Underham
was bold enough to question his authority as a military man.  Mrs
Bennett only said placidly,--

"Dear me, was it not a little inconvenient?"

"It's a good deal more inconvenient, ma'am, to have a heap of lies
talked by people who don't know what they're talking about.  Letters
were letters in those days, and you didn't get pestered by every
tradesman who wants to puff off his twopenny halfpenny foolery.  When
they came they had something in them.  My mother, now.  I've heard my
father say that when news from Spain came in, and the old Highflyer was
so hung about and set at, all the way down from London, that it was
twelve o'clock at night before she got into Thorpe, as soon as my mother
heard the wheels far off on the road, no matter what the weather was,
rain or shine, moon or no moon, she would go out into the hall and put
on her hood and cloak, and away she would trudge across the fields to
the Red Lion to see if there might be a letter from poor Jack.  My
father was crippled at the time, and there wasn't one she'd let go in
her stead.  Poor old mother!" said the Squire, with an involuntary
softening.

"I remember your mother, Squire," said old Mr Featherly.

"Then you remember as good a woman as ever breathed," said Mr Chester,
strongly again.

"Well, she was, she was.  People called her a little high, but no one
found her so when they were in trouble.  And a fine woman, too, as
upright as a dart, going straight to her point, whatever it was, with as
pretty an ankle and as clean a heel as any one in the country.  Miss
Winifred reminds me of her in many ways."

The Squire had pushed his chair a little back, and was looking at the
glass of port he was fingering on the table with a pleased smile.  But
he shook his head at the old clergyman's last remark.

"Winifred's not so tall by half an inch or more as my mother was when
she died."

"She carries her head in the same fashion, though," persisted Mr
Featherly.  "And there's something that reminds me."

It was certainly true that Winifred was at this moment holding her head
with a little touch of stateliness.  She had heard a good many of the
flattering words which had been poured upon Anthony, and perhaps valued
them at even less than they were worth, and it vexed her to see their
effect upon him.  Something in his nature courted the pleasant
popularity and the spoiling.  Is it women only who care for such pretty
things?  He might have told you that he despised them, but the truth was
that they made a sunshine in which he liked to bask, a delight which was
not without its influence.  Winifred, who saw the weakness, was not
merciful: she was a woman, with, perhaps, a grain of jealousy sharpening
her perceptions, and rendering them sufficiently keen to probe the
feminine flatteries which fell so sweetly upon him, and it is probable
that, although a woman who loves--even unconsciously--sets herself,
often unconsciously too, to study the character of the man she loves
with a closeness of purpose, and an almost unerring instinct, swift to
unravel its inmost workings, Winifred did not at this time rightly
understand him.  What she condemned as vanity was rather an almost
womanish sensitiveness, to which the sunshine of applause might be said
to have been needful.  If it was withdrawn, he might either shrink or
become bitter and morose.  Perhaps there are two sides even to faults,
and the people who love us best are sometimes our most severe judges: no
one there thought hardly of Anthony, except Winifred, who would have had
none of these little flaws, and sat, carrying her shapely head a little
scornfully, as Mr Featherly had noticed.  Anthony, on his part, was not
long in discovering her displeasure, although unconscious of the cause.
It provoked him, and he would not look in her face when the ladies went
out of the dining-room.

Marion had drawn her into the balcony to pour out some of her hopes and
fears about Marmaduke, and the two were talking eagerly when Ada Lovell
came out, followed by such of the gentlemen as had come up stairs.

"I have been envying your good fortune to Mr Miles," she said, with an
innocent air of admiration.  "Of course you can see all his poetry
whenever you like.  It must be so delightful."

"Only I never do," said Winifred, standing upright.  "I don't care for
poetry unless it is the very best."

Woman like, she felt a pang in her own heart the instant she had sent
forth her shaft.  She glanced quickly and almost imploringly at Anthony,
to see how sharply he was hit.  If he had looked at her he might have
known that she had flung down her weapons, and was waiting to make
amends.  But he would not look.  He saw nothing of the involuntary grace
of her attitude, as she stood in the glow of the sweet evening light, a
little shamefaced and sorry, with a tender rosy softness in her face.
He only felt that she had tried to wound him, and was angry with her for
the second time that evening.  Ada Lovell, looking up at him with
admiring awe, had no such pricks with which to make him wince, and,
perhaps, it was to be expected that he should devote himself to her for
the remainder of the time.  Winifred made no more advances.  She stood
leaning against the railing, looking gravely down upon the tall white
lilies that by degrees grew and glimmered out of the dusk, until Mr
Milman joined her.  Marion and Marmaduke talked in a low voice at one
end.  People came out now and then, declared the dew was falling, and
made a little compromise by sitting round the window, past which the
bats flitted softly.  Mr Mannering was telling clever stories, and
making every one laugh.  The Squire called his daughter at last.  He
disliked being kept waiting, and she went hurriedly, but as she passed
Anthony she made a little pause to say gently,--

"Good-night, Anthony."

"Good-night."

There are some things which rest in our minds with quite a
disproportionate sense of heaviness.  Winifred knew that she should see
Anthony the next day, by which time he would have forgotten her offence,
but she seemed to have lost some of the confidence which ordinarily grew
out of such a knowledge, for she could neither forgive herself nor
forget the sound of his cold good-night.

CHAPTER FIVE.

  "`Yet what is love, good shepherd, sayn?'
  `It is a sunshine mixt with rain.'"

  Sir Walter Raleigh.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

Places like Underham offer peculiar attractions to maiden ladies, who
find in them equal protection from the solitude of the country and
relief from the somewhat dreary desolateness of a great town.  It might
have been an old friendship for Mrs Miles which first brought Miss
Philippa Lee into the neighbourhood, but she firmly resisted all
attempts to decoy her nearer to Thorpe.  She took a small house not far
from the Featherlys, and there devoted herself to the care of her orphan
nephew with that pathetic self-renunciation which we see in not a few
women's lives.  She pinched herself to send him to a public school, and
would gladly have supported him at college, but even had this been
practicable for such straitened means, there were circumstances which
prevented more than a secret sighing on her part.  Marmaduke had, on his
mother's side, a great-uncle who was the one rich man in a poor family,
and who if not actually childless was so by his own assertion to all
intents and purposes, his daughter having mortally offended him by a
marriage against his will.  She was the Margaret Hare of whom we have
heard Mr Mannering speak, for it was not until after her marriage that
her father, upon an access of fortune, changed his name to "Tregennas,"
and a little later, perhaps in a fit of desolation, took for his second
wife and made miserable until her death an aunt of Mr Miles, the Vicar
of Thorpe.  The connection, although scarcely deserving of the name, was
sufficient to form an additional link between the families, and
Marmaduke read with the Vicar, and won Marion's love while they were
little more than girl or boy.

To Mr Tregennas--who, it must be allowed, took a certain interest in
his great-nephew, if interest is proved by occasional gifts of
sovereigns and somewhat arbitrary advice on the subject of his
education--Marmaduke meanwhile looked as the maker of his fortunes.  He
was careful from the first to withhold Miss Philippa from contradicting
him, as, to tell the truth, she was not disinclined to do.  Odd little
shoots of jealousy crop up even in the most loving.  Add to this that
Mr Tregennas strongly opposed her favourite college scheme, and it will
not be surprising that more than once Miss Philippa would very
willingly, as she expressed it, have put her foot to the ground, if only
Marmaduke had not knocked that very ground from under her, by adopting
his uncle's views.  And he was possessed of a certain languid self-will
with which he invariably carried his point, even at the time when he
appeared to yield, so that people were sometimes puzzled to reconcile
cause and effect.  Nevertheless, it was no doubt a severe disappointment
when Mr Tregennas, instead of assisting him to enter a profession,
advised his seeking employment in one of the great manufacturing firms
of the north, and indeed actually applied to the heads before he had
received an answer to his suggestion.  Whether his will was the
strongest, or his nephew's philosophy overcame dislike, his plan was
carried out, and Marmaduke had been for two years engaged in the most
distasteful occupation that could have been provided for him.  It was,
perhaps, this very sense of ill-usage which rooted the more firmly his
belief that he was to be his uncle's heir.  A grievance quickly excites
the idea of compensation, and Marmaduke welded the two together so
persistently that the one stood on nearly the same level as the other.
The force, however, which prevented his throwing up his work had never
proved sufficient to conquer his repugnance towards it, and the fact of
feeling himself a victim, while it seemed to give him a right to feed
upon future hopes, made it also a duty to seek alleviations in the
present; so that a trifling vexation, or other change of mood, not
infrequently brought about a flying visit to Thorpe and a drain upon
Miss Lee's slender resources.

He had told Marion at the dinner-party that he must see her alone the
next day, and, accordingly, when he walked to the Vicarage, at a time
when Mr Miles and John were likely to be absent, Marion was waiting
eagerly for him.  Mrs Miles, who was in the room, was made more uneasy
by his increasing thinness than by her daughter's determination to go
out with him, for although no open engagement existed between the two,
it was one of those events which might be expected to fell into shape at
some future time, and which, if it were connected with Marion's will, it
was hopeless for her mother to resist, even had she been disinclined
towards it.  But Marmaduke had a gentle ease of manner pleasant to those
with whom he was thrown into contact, and Mrs Miles really loved and
pitied him, and was grieved at his looks.

"Does your Aunt Philippa give you porter jelly, Marmaduke?" she asked
anxiously.  "I wish she would.  I am sure it is the very best thing.
Sarah shall heat some beef-tea for you in a moment, if you will only
take it."

"Nothing will do me good while I have to work in that hole," said
Marmaduke, with a dreary intonation in his voice.  "Life is simply
existence.  And to think that I have had two years of it already!"

Marion, who had looked at him as he spoke, did not say a word until they
were out of the house, and in the deep lane, fresh with a cool beauty of
water and shining cresses.  Then, as they walked on, Sniff paddling
beside them, she asked quietly,--"Is anything the matter?"

There was noticeable in her manner to him--at all times--a difference
from her usual fashion of speaking.  The abruptness, something even of
the brightness, was gone, and in its place seemed to have grown a soft
care, a tenderness almost like protection.  And at this moment their
natures might have been transposed, for Marmaduke turned upon her with
an impetuosity unlike himself.

"Anything!  I tell you, Marion, that what I go through is unendurable.
You might know better than to ask such a question as that."

"But why--what is it?" she persisted, with a vague trouble lest
something more than she had heard was to be unfolded to her.  Her
loyalty to Marmaduke made her always ready to feed his self-pity, but
she was afraid that he had taken some rash step.

"What good can a man do with work that he loathes?"

"You must remember to what the work will lead," she said, relieved.

"When?--how?  It is absolute folly to dream that matters going on as
they are going now can ever lead to anything satisfactory.  How much do
you suppose that I can squeeze out of a paltry hundred and fifty a year?
Even Anthony acknowledges it to be absurd, and Anthony is Utopian
enough to believe that everything grows out of nothing.  That may do
very well for him, who will never need to prove it," added Marmaduke,
bitterly.

They were both leaning against a stile, and looking towards the cloudy
distance of the moors.  Marion slipped her hand softly into his.

"Surely we all heard when you went there that it would bring better
things in a few years?"

"You talk of years as if they were days," he said in the same tone.
"Nobody denies it.  When I have drudged at that disgustingly low
business for half a dozen years, I shall probably be fifty pounds a year
better off than I am now, and by the time we are both too old to take
pleasure in life we shall be able to marry, and this seems to content
you perfectly."

Marion caught away her hand with a sudden movement.  It made him turn to
look at her, and the hurt anger in her eyes brought back his usual
gentleness of manner at once.  He was desirous to bind all her feelings
on his side, and he knew her well enough to be aware that his shortest
means of doing this was to revert to the wretchedness of his position.

"Forgive me, dearest," he said; "you don't know what a poor wretch a man
becomes when he grinds along in one eternal round of small miseries.  It
is such a horrible separation from you all.  And what is the good of
being old Tregennas's heir, if he can't put his hand into his pocket and
let me live like a gentleman?"

"He promised that, did he not, Marmaduke?"

"It depends upon what you call promising.  He is not the man to say out
honestly, `Marmaduke Lee, you're my heir, and I'll give you a fit
allowance till you come into the property.'  If he had, I should not be
as I am.  But he said quite enough.  Of course I am his heir.  There
isn't a Jew in the country but would lend me a few thousands on the
chance.  Of course I am his heir.  I wish you would make your father
understand, and then he might allow us to consider ourselves engaged; at
present it's like dropping a poor wretch into a pit, and blocking up his
one glimpse of blue sky.  I tell you, Marion, again, I cannot endure
this state of things any longer.  I've not got it in me to toil on in
that dirty hole without so much as an atom of hope to cheer one."

They were both silent for an instant, and then Marion cried out
passionately, "Toil!  I would toil day and night for the joy of earning
a sixpence which I could lay aside and say, `This is ours.'"  There was
such a swift leaping out of the love of her heart in word and eyes, that
it seemed fire which must needs kindle whatever it touched, if only for
a moment.  But no answering glow passed across his pale face.  He looked
away again as if what she said had not any relation to his thoughts, and
she presently continued more timidly.  "Surely it would be the height of
imprudence to give up your work?  And you know that if you did so my
father would be less than ever likely to consent to our engagement, than
now when you are at least on the road to independence."

"I can't go on as I am," he said, a little doggedly.  "Mr Miles must
give me something to hold by, or I shall throw up the whole concern.  I
have nearly done so a dozen times already."

"Is there no way of influencing Mr Tregennas?" asked Marion, after a
minute's troubled thought.

"That's what I wanted to speak to you about.  As I said before, it isn't
fair that he should leave me in such a position.  It's not as if I
should have to work for my bread all the days of my life, like some poor
devils.  By and by I shall step into as pretty a place as you'll find
anywhere, and why I should have to do compensation now by sitting on a
high stool and addling my brain over ledgers is more than I can see.  If
he'd only say something definite one would know what one had to go upon.
But--"

"But what?"

"O, you must understand, Marion, that I can't very well go to him and
say this sort of thing!"

"Why not?"

"Why not?  Well, women are queer about such matters, but I should think
you might guess it's not the way to make yourself agreeable to an old
fellow who has you in his power."

"It is only justice," said Marion, whose cheek had flushed under the
presence of an absorbing pity for Marmaduke which swept her away like a
flood.  "I wish I could tell him what I think."

"You can do something better," said Marmaduke, seeing she had reached
the point to which he had been leading.

"What?  Only tell me."

"Get your father to interfere."

She shook her head, moving her hands nervously.  "You know he will not.
He is so scrupulous about such matters.  Over and over again I have
heard him say he would never ask a favour of his uncle."

"A favour!  But I am not demanding an allowance of a thousand a year.
All I want to know is how I stand.  And if Mr Miles sees in black and
white that I am his heir, he will no longer object to an engagement.  I
tell you plainly, I can't work unless I see some end before me.
Besides, one must go step by step, and if he would acknowledge my
position straightforwardly, by and by other things would follow.  No one
is so well entitled to ask as your father.  Marion, you don't want to
keep me in this misery?"

She was at no time insensible to these appeals, and perhaps less than
ever on such a morning as this, when things about her were shining,
dancing, singing in a burst of happy life, could she endure any weight
of gloom for the man she loved best in the world.  To some of us every
echo of a happiness which does not at the same time fill our own souls
with its music seems only discord.  We cry out against it with voices
that clash and jar and sadden themselves with the dissonance, when if we
would be but content to listen in patience, some tender vibrations of an
eternal harmony should reach us from afar, and satisfy us with their
beauty.  To Marion it was a positive wrong that the skylark high in the
air was singing joyously; that the fresh breeze stirred into brightness
the little stream which ran along the meadows; that the sound of the
scythe and the chatter of the hay-making folk rose now and then with
cheerful distinctness above lesser summer sounds; that Sniff was yelping
with delight after the birds he was vainly chasing.  Marion told him
sharply to be quiet, but he only stopped for a moment, and looked at her
with his head on one side at an angle of consideration, before he was
off again, his little red tongue hanging out, his brown eyes on fire
with excitement.  Marmaduke, who was leaning moodily against the gate,
waiting for Marion to speak, said at last,--

"Anthony is a lucky dog, with the world before him, and no one to please
but himself.  But I don't know that such sharp contrasts are the most
encouraging reflections in the world."

The languor and depression of his voice pierced the girl's heart like a
thorn.  She exclaimed impetuously,--

"Something must be done,--my father shall write,--nothing can be so bad
as that you should suffer in this way."

She put out her hand again, and he took it in his, and began to thank
her in the gently caressing tones which fell easily from his lips.  Her
resolution, indeed, carried a greater relief to him than seemed to be
contained in it.  It was not only that he wanted to escape from the
irksomeness of his duly toil, and believed the acknowledgment of his
position the first step towards it, but he was also fretted by a wearing
anxiety lest the position might never be his, and the very assumption of
a certain claim on his part by Mr Miles might have a good effect, and
remove a vague uneasiness, for which he could not account, of Anthony as
a possible rival.  Poor Marion thought it to be love for her which urged
him; but although he did love her after a fashion, she was only one of
the pleasant things he wanted to sweep into his net.  He was full of
satisfaction at the promise she had given.

"Who are these--by the watercourse?" he said.  "One of them looks like
Anthony."

"And the other is Mr Chester," said Marion, abstractedly.  "Come."

"Yes, it is the Squire.  I can see his red face, and that little
flourish of his stick which he gives when he is angry.  They see us by
this time, and we may as well hear the battle-royal, if there is one.
Listen."

Mr Chester's loud voice came up well before him.

"I tell you, sir, I tell you your father will live to see you a carping
radical yet.  When a young fellow gets this sort of notions into his
head, we all know what'll be the end of it.  Everything respectable goes
out by the heels, and he makes a fool of himself over balloting and
universal suffrage, and a heap of rascally French republicanisms.  How
d'ye do, Marion, how d'ye do?  Glad to see you, Marmaduke.  Hope you're
not infected with any of this modern rubbish?"

"No, sir, I'm a Conservative.  A Liberal-Conservative," added the young
man under his breath, not expecting to be heard.  But the Squire's quick
ears caught the word.

"Don't be half anything.  There's nothing I think so poorly of as a man
that can't make up his mind.  He says this on one side and that on
another, till he knows no more than a teetotum where his spinning will
lead him.  I should have twice the opinion of Anthony if he could say
straight out what he means, instead of calling himself one thing and
talking himself into another."  There was a good deal of truth in the
Squire's accusation, and the clash was not one for which he had any
sympathy.  Anthony himself was too young not to be sore upon the charge
of inconsistency.  He said hotly,--

"Really, sir, I don't know what hedges and draining have to do with the
ballot.  I have not been the one to say anything about it."

"I'm only showing what these ideas lead to," said Mr Chester, enjoying
his adversary's irritation.  "I'm content to take my land as it came to
me.  That's good theology, ain't it, Marion?  By the way, I forgot to
tell you that young Frank Orde comes to-morrow.  Come up to dinner, all
of you, will you?  I dare say he's as bad as the rest, but you'll not
make me believe my father hadn't as good common-sense as the young
fellows that find fault with his farming."

Sometimes, by talking loudly enough, a man becomes impressed with so
confident a sense of triumph, that the sound of his own voice is like
the salvo of guns over a victory.  It was so now with the Squire, who
remained in high good-humour during the rest of the walk, and gave
Anthony to understand that he looked upon him as crushed and annihilated
by an overwhelming weight of argument.

CHAPTER SIX.

Marion was not the person to delay the doing of anything which she had
made up her mind should be done, nor had she the faculty instinctive in
many women, of approaching a critical subject with that deliberate and
delicate touch of preparation which smooths the way for a more open
attack.  Whatever was uppermost in her mind was apt to take possession
of her with so great an intensity that she had no longer the mastery of
herself required for this method of handling.  She did not trouble
herself to join in the family conversation at luncheon, and when her
father went into his study,--a small room choked with a heterogeneous
collection of books and pamphlets, heaped here and thrown there in utter
carelessness to dust and disorder,--Marion followed him and said
abruptly,--

"Papa, something must be done to improve Marmaduke's position.  Will you
write to Mr Tregennas, and point this out?"

"Write to Mr Tregennas!" said Mr Miles sharply, turning round from the
papers on his table.

"What do you mean?  Is Marmaduke dismissed?  No?  Then there cannot be
anything much amiss."  He said this with a relieved air, going back to
his papers.  "Marion, I wish you'd just see whether that last hospital
report is up stairs.  Mannering tells me I've been down on the committee
for a twelvemonth, but I cannot credit it."

"Marmaduke has been at that hateful place for two years," said Marion,
unheeding.  "It is quite unfit for him, and some one ought to point it
out to his uncle."

"What is the matter with the place?"  Mr Miles asked, still searching.
"Really, your mother must speak to the maids; I cannot allow them to
disturb everything under pretence of tidying.  I am confident I left
that report on this table."

Marion was trembling with impatience.  "Papa," she said, "you might
think a little more about poor Marmaduke's happiness."

"Happiness?  Humph!  He is too young to be talking about happiness.  Let
him take what comes to him, and be thankful for it--" The Vicar turned
suddenly round with a quick, clumsy movement, "He has not been talking
nonsense to you, has he?"

The girl was standing with her back to the door, so that a clear light
fell upon her.  As her father spoke, a soft beautiful change came over
her face, tender brightness shone in the dark eyes, the curve of the
mouth was touched with tremulous joy, a faint glow on her cheek gave an
indescribable look of youth, and her head bent gently with the
perfection of womanly grace.

Mr Miles, who had spoken sharply, could not but be moved by this
strange magic,--this mute answer,--so unlike Marion that it affected him
the more.  He did not know what to say; he wished he had not ceased
speaking, had not looked at her, and so become aware of what--in its
contrast to her usual expression--was almost a revelation.  Hitherto,
although he had vaguely listened to what they told him, it had been but
a feeble attention he paid, considering that the children must
necessarily pass through certain stages of existence, the boys going to
school, running wild over cricket, coming home to snowballing, having
the whooping-cough, every now and then requiring a thrashing, teasing
Marion, quarrelling with her, and at last by the same law, as he
imagined, falling in love with her.  When Miss Philippa solemnly told
him that Marmaduke had confided to her his affection, and Mrs Miles
complained that Marion had lost her appetite, the Vicar half laughed at
himself for so far treating it seriously as to tell Marmaduke that he
was in no position to talk to his daughter of love, and, contenting
himself with this prudent command, dismissed the matter from his
thoughts.  He had, indeed, a mind which did not occupy itself freely
with many subjects at once.  Those which ceased to interest him he would
lay on the shelf, and forget altogether, until they would sometimes
start from their unwatched seclusion in a form so grown, so changed, so
great with life, that the shock gave him a sudden blow.  Such a blow
came now.  For, looking at her so standing, with the sweet flush of
girlish triumph vanquishing for the moment all care and fret, and
softening the harsher lines in her face with its happy touch, the
father's awakening brought sharp remorse for his former blindness.  It
was not possible for him to reproach her when he felt as though reproach
might so justly fall upon himself, and if she had been thinking of him
at that moment she might have noticed a wistfulness in his eyes, a
faltering change in his voice, as strange perhaps as that other
revelation.

"How long has this been?" he said at last, not that he would have chosen
the words, but that they seemed to force themselves out.

"How long have we cared for each other, do you mean?" she answered
directly.  "I think--always."

He shook his head at this.  That which was so new to himself in his own
child must, he believed, be new-born.

"Children like you do not know your own minds," he said, but faintly,
and with a want of confidence which Marion was shrewd enough to note.

"Papa," she said, going closer to him, "we are not children.  We are not
asking for anything foolish.  I would give up all in the world for
Marmaduke.  I would bear anything for him.  I should feel it my richest
joy to be with him, at his side, however poor and struggling he was.
But of course I understand that could not be.  It would not do for him
to be hampered with a wife while he can scarcely make his miserable
means support himself."  As she spoke with a growing impetuosity, her
father, who had been holding her hand in his, and looking into her face,
turned slightly away, still holding her hand, and leaned a little
backwards against the writing-table.

"We know all that," she went on.  "I have not said a word against it.
But now that I have seen him, and understand how miserable he is,
chained to work utterly distasteful to him, and without even the most
meagre of hopes, I cannot bear it any longer, I cannot, indeed.  Why
should we not be engaged?"

Hearing that she paused for a reply, Mr Miles, after pausing also for a
moment, said,--

"You are thinking only of him."

"And of whom should I think?" she asked, vehemently.

"Perhaps I have been in error: I think I have been in error," said Mr
Miles, speaking with a strange humility.  "One has no right to live with
one's eyes shut.  But, Marion, if this be so, I cannot make wrong more
wrong.  Marmaduke has no prospect of being able to marry for a
considerable number of years, unless, indeed, this shadowy hope to which
he clings of Mr Tregennas--"

"It ought not to be shadowy.  It is disgraceful that he should not say
more.  Papa, you must write and press this upon him."

"I!"

"Yes, indeed!  There is no one else."

"This is simply absurd, Marion," said Mr Miles with some anger.

But he had given her an advantage, which she was resolved to use even to
ungenerosity.

"You said you had been unjust to Marmaduke--"

"Not to him, Marion."

"He and I are one in such a matter, papa."

Ah, there was the strangeness of it!  His child's life had seemed to him
no more than an undeveloped bud, some day to expand, but as yet folded
securely within its sheath, and suddenly it had shot apart from, was
almost opposed to them all.  It was a thing so strange that the father,
looking at the woman, thought only of the child, and took to his own
blindness greater blame than it deserved.

"Well," he said, sighing, "it is possible, as you say, that I have not
acted in the best way for Marmaduke, or indeed for any one."

"And you will write?"

"To tell the man he is to make Marmaduke his heir!"

"O, he has said it already.  Tell him that he must be kinder to him,
poor fellow!--that he is thrown away in his present position--"

"I cannot say that," said the Vicar, with a wavering smile at the
childishness of the proposition.  And as the idea struck him, he looked
keenly at her again.  "Child, is this really what you suppose it?  Do
you care so much for Marmaduke that you are prepared to be his wife?
You have been thrown together, you have no experience to guide you, you
have seen nothing of the world.  I ought to take you about and show you
other places," he added in grave bewilderment.

Marion, who had been going to the door, turned round and laughed.

"It is too late now, papa."

Too late!  And he had been thinking of her life as a smooth, untrodden
meadow!

Outside, in a spot of cool shade under the cedar, Mrs Miles was sitting
and working placidly at some little white squares, which never seemed to
grow nearer their completion.  The Vicar, after looking at her for a
moment from his window, went out into the hall, through the porch, and
across the grass-plot to her side.  It was very rarely that he carried
any problems to his wife; but it now appeared to him that there were
certain complications, such as the white intricacies lying upon her lap,
which it might be given only to a feminine understanding to disentangle.
He sat down gravely by her side, looking with abstraction at the
sunshine falling pleasantly on the house and the fine old tower beyond,
and listening, perhaps, to the hum of the bees, or the rough rhythm
which came from a saw-pit in the lane.  Mrs Miles only looked up and
smiled, and went on with her knitting, believing the Vicar to be
absorbed in the Sunday sermons which she held to be the great events of
Thorpe life.  These, although never weak, ran a risk of being considered
by a critic as rather dry and lengthy, but loyal wifehood excited a most
earnest admiration in Mrs Miles.  She knitted softly, therefore, lest
the click of her needles should interfere with the roll of his ideas,
and in the hush of the sweet summer afternoon a pleasant drowsiness was
creeping over her, when her husband startled her by asking abruptly,--

"Wife, how old is Marion?"

"Marion, my dear?" said Mrs Miles, with a perplexed conviction that the
Vicar must have meant some other person more nearly connected with his
sermon,--"Marion was twenty last month.  Don't you remember we had a
junket on her birthday, and it was the first time Sarah quite succeeded
in it?"

"Twenty!" repeated Mr Miles with a little groan.  "I believed her to
have been sixteen."

"My dear!  And dining out as she does, and so admired."

"Well, well," said the Vicar in a moment or two, "it is no fault of
yours or hers.  But tell me whether you understood that Marmaduke was
serious in his attachment to her?"

"Why not?" asked Mrs Miles, a little motherly indignation making itself
heard in her voice.

"Why not?" repeated her husband, standing up and looking down on her,
impatiently.  "They are both children."

"I never could think of Marion as a child at all," said the mother, with
a little sigh.  "She has always been so much older than her years.  And
as for Marmaduke, poor fellow, I am sure he can't have proper food at
his lodgings.  I have told Sarah to make some jelly for him to take away
with him.  Of course it is natural that the separation should be a trial
to him, but I dare say it will all come right by and by."

"But--good heavens, what a marriage for Marion!" cried the Vicar,
beginning to walk hastily up and down under, the cedar, and crushing the
daisies that peeped up through the not too carefully trimmed grass.

"My dear," said Mrs Miles, knitting calmly, "Marion is a girl who would
be miserable unless she had her own way.  With all his strong will,
Anthony would be more likely to listen to reason."

"Anthony!" exclaimed her husband, stopping before her.  "There is
nothing of the sort going on with Anthony?"

"It has not come to the same point, of course, but it is easy to see
that he has a fancy for Winifred.  I am sure I should be very glad if
you could persuade him to make up his mind as to what he will be, and
get him out of the place."

"I don't see why," said the Vicar, amazed at his wife's penetration.  "I
have never thought of what you have just put before me, but it appears
to me that Anthony would be fortunate to secure so good a girl as
Winifred Chester."

"Fortunate, Mr Miles!" said his wife, laying down her work, and
speaking with unusual irritation.  "Why, Anthony, with his good looks,
his cleverness, and his fortune, might marry any girl in the county.  I
have never seen any one good enough for him, that is the worst of it;
and as for Winifred, what you can see in her that you should call him
fortunate, I am sure I cannot conceive.  She will be a very lucky girl
that gets our Anthony."

The Vicar said, "Pooh, pooh!" but he had a humiliating sense of being
baffled by his women.  He went away, without further words, across the
lawn and past the mignonettes and sweet-peas into his study.  There he
pulled down the blind to shut out the sun, in a fit of absence tore up a
carefully arranged table of parish accounts which he had just prepared
for Mr Mannering to audit, flung it into the waste-paper basket, and
sat down to write a letter to old Mr Tregennas.

CHAPTER SEVEN.

Sunday was rather a gay day at the Vicarage.  The Hardlands party were
in the habit of spending a good deal of time there, Winifred, indeed,
remaining for the early dinner, so as to be in her place in the school
before the afternoon service; and there were further elements of
friendliness in the two Mr Mannerings, who would drop in for a chat
with the Vicar when his work was over.

On this particular Sunday, the people of Thorpe had undergone one of
those disturbances of routine which they were uncertain whether to
resent as an injury or to hail as a welcome variety.  One of the
neighbouring clergy had been taken ill suddenly the day before, and Mr
Miles had ridden over to supply his place, while Mr and Mrs Featherly
were jolted from Underham by Job White to undertake the services at
Thorpe.  Lest it should be supposed that the plural number has been used
unadvisedly, it must be explained that many persons who had fair means
of forming an opinion held it to be no less than a moral impossibility
that the rector of Underham should accomplish any act in his ministerial
or private life without his wife's support, and believed that if her
head, crowned with marabouts, were withdrawn from the seat immediately
below the pulpit, the sermon would collapse in some fatal and
irretrievable manner.  The influence, whatever it was, was in no way
connected with criticism, since Mrs Featherly, as the rector's wife,
considered herself released from the necessity of seeking benefit from
any preaching whatever, and it probably depended upon that subtile link
of habit by which all persons are in some degree bound, and which, in
her own case, led her almost mechanically to count the heads of the
congregation, and to store in her memory, with unerring acuteness, the
names of those offenders who should have been and were not present.

So powerful in her, indeed, was this almost instinct, that as they drove
painfully between the high hedges of the lanes, Mrs Featherly, with her
head out of the window, reckoned the members of the different families
they passed, and kept up a running commentary upon their numbers.

"I am convinced I have seen that woman in the red shawl at Underham.  I
believe her to be the farmer's wife who supplies Langford's dairy, and
if so, I should like to know where her husband is?  And there are the
Crockers, and the daughter who is home from service not with them.
Really, Mr Featherly, you ought to make a point of giving Mr Miles a
hint.  When people once take to neglecting their parish church I have
the worst possible opinion of them."

The consciousness of so much wrong-doing imparted quite a judicial
severity to Mrs Featherly's countenance, as she descended heavily at
the Vicarage porch, just as the bells were chiming merrily and the
people clustering in knots outside the church.  There had been rain in
the early morning, and large clouds were still coming up, but the sun
was shining after the shower, and the wet on grass and roof only gave a
touch of additional brightness.  The boys who were too big to go to
school lounged up in little companies, too shamefaced to venture alone,
and putting on an appearance of great boldness and explosive mirth, to
cover their actual bashfulness.  The girls generally tossed their heads,
walking on demurely without taking any notice of their contemporaries,
but a ruddy-cheeked young farmer or two, who had come from the outskirts
of the village, received such smiling glances from the same damsels as
to bring down an occasional sharp remark from one of the elder women.

"You'll a lost yere eyes as well as yere bonnet before iver you gets
into choorch, Emma," said one of these matrons, with a satirical look at
the red rose that crowned its wearer's last effort at millinery.

Emma, who was blue-eyed and literal-minded, gave an anxious pull to
assure herself of the safety of the structure, before she answered
good-humouredly,--

"You see, Mrs Anders, Susan gits a new shape for me into Under'm now
and then, and I'm sure, if Polly wanted wan--"

"My Polly!" began Mrs Andrews, in so high a staccato of indignation
that her husband, who was standing nearer the porch, looked round and
said, in a deprecating tone,--

"Stiddy, missus, stiddy.  Hyur's the new parson coming oop to t'
choorch."

"Ees, fay, so it be," said another man.  "Hers so smarl us can sceerce
see un."

"I can find him a tex for his sermond," retorted Mrs Andrews, lowering
her voice a little, but looking at Emma with wrathful contempt, "`The
pompses and vanities of this wicked wordel.'  That's a tex as might
agree with some as is not so far off at this minit, and doan't know how
to be'ave themselves afor their betters."

"That bain't no tex, though," said old Araunah Stokes, slowly shaking
his head.  "That's noa moor than watt godfaythers and godmoothers have
got to doo in t' catechiz.  Noa, noa, thicky thyur bain't noan of the
Scripter texes."

"And I'd be glad to know, Mr Stokes," replied the irate Mrs Andrews,
unfolding her prayer-book from its pocket-handkerchief as if with the
intention of appealing to written authority, "I'd be glad to know
whether Scripter and the catechiz bain't wan?  P'raps you'll be holding
next as the Ten Commandmints bain't in the Bible, becos they'm put down
in the catechiz?--nor the Blief, nor my dooty towaeds my nayber as I was
bound to say wann I wor a little maaed, till it slipped aff my tongue so
faest as pays owt of a barrel, nayther?  If any wan have a right to
spake abeowt the catechiz, it's me, though you doo caest it up to me,
Mr Stokes, as I doan't know texes when I see 'em."

"Cloack's strook, fayther," said Jeremiah Stokes, interposing feebly in
the character of peacemaker.  Old Araunah, however, only hobbled off to
where two or three other old men were standing, looking apathetically
into a little newly dug child's grave.

"Cloack's strook, as you say, lad, but a woman's tongue 'ull diffen
cloacks and bells, and arl t' rest o' um.  Ees, yer moother gived me a
bet o' 'sperience that way.  An' so that's fur little Rose Tucker's
little un?  Whay, I minds her moother wann her warn't noa begger, and us
wor--"

But here an unexpected interruption occurred.  Mr Featherly,
unconscious of the ordinary arrangements by which the Vicar caused the
ringers to accommodate themselves to his own erratic time, had,
punctually as the clock struck, appeared in the reading-desk.  The
ringers, unprepared for such a movement, did not even cast a look in
that direction, and, engaged in cheerful conversation, only became aware
when the exhortation had been with some difficulty concluded, that the
service had actually begun.  The consequence was a sudden stoppage of
the bells, instead of the ordinary change for three minutes to a single
toll, which gave time for the loiterers in the churchyard to present
themselves; and it was not until one of the ringers had come out and
related what had happened, that the men were able to persuade themselves
that the single bell was not yet to be rung.  Mrs Featherly was
terribly scandalised by the unseemly stamping and scuffling that
followed, and the male part of the congregation, naturally incensed at
being placed so unexpectedly in the wrong, looked a little hot and sulky
throughout the remainder of the service.

A larger number than usual turned into the Vicarage garden afterwards.
Frank Orde, the Squire's nephew, had arrived the day before, and old Mr
Wood, of the Grange, had walked over to the Red House, not, certainly,
with the expectation of finding Mrs Featherly installed at Thorpe, nor
with any satisfaction at the fact.

"Why on earth didn't you get rid of the woman?" he growled sharply,
under his breath.  "She says as many disagreeable things as if she were
a relation."

"Charles manages her admirably," said Mr Robert, laughing.  "His
excessive politeness is just what she cannot meet with her usual
weapons.  Not that I believe there's harm in her, except when compassion
for Featherly is too strong for one's justice."

"Compassion!  If a man cuts his throat it's his own doing," said Mr
Wood.  "There! the very dogs have more sense."

Sniff, indeed, showed a rooted dislike to Mrs Featherly, a feeling
which was fully returned; on this occasion, however, she so far unbent
as to call him in a gracious tone, "Dog, dog," an indignity which Sniff
as naturally resented, as we should resent being addressed in the
abstract as "man," and marked his displeasure by turning a deaf ear to
her endearments.

"And there, the Squire is falling foul of Anthony again," said Mr
Robert, hurrying on with a good-humoured design to act as peacemaker.

"Red's red, I suppose," Mr Chester was loudly asserting, "without a
chimney-sweep standing up beside it.  Give me a good old-fashioned
garden, with rose de Meaux and gilliflowers, and that sort.  I hate that
talk about contrasts and backgrounds and rubbish."

"Never mind these young fellows, Squire," said Mr Robert, interposing
before Anthony had time to answer.  "There are a certain set of theories
they are bound to run through before they settle into good sound stuff
like you and me."

The Squire, who was easily propitiated, but unwilling to allow it,
walked away with a grunt.

Since this last home-coming of Anthony's, it seemed as if there were
always some little contest springing up between the Squire and him; the
things were almost too trivial to deserve notice, but there was a
pervading spirit of antagonism Anthony probably enjoyed it, for he
provoked it at least as much as Mr Chester, though there were times, as
on this occasion, when his opponent's bristles rubbed a sore spot, and
when the sense of restraint was galling.  He drew Winifred on one side,
and she went willingly, for there had been a little shadow between them
ever since the dinner at the Bennetts', and she accused herself of
having been in fault, and longed to hold out her little olive-branch.
There was a sweet hush and serenity in the day itself.  The homely
garden, which vexed Mr Robert by its disorder, was fresh and fragrant,
daisies held open their rosy-tipped cups, soft little wafts of air just
rustled the lighter branches, and made tremulous shadows on the grass:
she was glad to move away from the others, and to stroll along a broad
path bordered with stiff hollyhocks, which led towards a mulberry-tree
standing in its own square of turf.

It is one of the privileges of old friendship--at least to us taciturn
island folk--that there may be silence between two people without any
feeling of awkwardness marring its pleasantness.  Under its influence
Anthony's wrath subsided quickly, but there was still a touch of
irritation in the voice in which he said at last,--

"Your father finds fault with everything I do."

"He doesn't mean it,--or he doesn't mean it seriously," said Winifred,
correcting herself.  "He has been accustomed so long to us girls, that
he can't understand anything that seems like contradiction."

"I never contradict him."

"O no, you only disagree.  Only the two things are so dreadfully alike,
Anthony, that no wonder he is puzzled," said Winifred, with a quick look
of fun.

"Living with you ought to have broken him in to difference of opinion."

"O, I can't afford to waste my contradictions on papa.  I keep them for
my friends."

They glanced at each other and laughed, and walked on again silently
side by side.  Both were too easy in their companionship to be thinking
about love, but they were very happy and contented to be together.  Her
influence tightened its hold upon his heart all imperceptibly, like so
many threads which did not let themselves be known for fetters.  There
is a peril in those little threads, woven by habit, by proximity, by
opportunities,--not a peril of their breaking, but of their untried
strength being all unguessed, of some blast of passion, some storm of
resentment, even some petty gust of pique, seeming for the moment to
sweep them off, and free the heart of them forever,--until, as the rush
dies away and the calm comes back, too late, perhaps, we learn that not
a thread has snapt, that the work has been a work of desolation, that
the small cords bind us still, like unyielding links of iron, and that
the freedom we fancied we had gained is no more than a double bondage.
Winifred said presently, in a questioning tone,--

"Anthony, I cannot make out what is the matter with Marion."

"She is uneasy about Marmaduke.  She has persuaded my father to write to
old Tregennas.  It's the last thing I would have done myself; however,
it's his business, not mine."

"I should long so much more for everything to go smoothly with them, if
I felt more sure about Marmaduke.  I wish you would tell me if you
really like him," said Winifred eagerly, "or whether it is the having
been old playfellows that prejudices you towards him."

"Of course I like him," said Anthony, a little indignantly.  "He's the
best fellow in the world.  Talk of prejudices, you women keep fresh
relays which come in every week, and last about as long.  Here's a poor
fellow eating his heart out over work which he detests, and just because
he's down in the world, you must all set your faces against him.  I wish
there were a better chance of things coming right than I see at
present."

The speech ended more mildly than it began, for Anthony was suddenly
struck with the golden threads which the sunshine brought out in
Winifred's hair.  They were standing at this moment close to the
mulberry-tree.  And then he rushed off to point out to her the spot
which David Stephens had intended to appropriate for the chapel.  But he
returned presently to the subject.

"I wonder you do not feel more for him.  It must be horribly hard to
know so much is against one.  I'm not sure that I could stand it
myself."

"I don't know that you could," said Winifred, composedly.

"What makes you say so?  Aren't you ashamed of yourself, Winifred, just
come from church, and going to teach those wretched little victims, with
uncharitableness written on every hair of your head.  Poor Marmaduke!
Well, he gets on with your father better than I do."

"I don't know that, really.  Only you and papa have each your own
hobby-horses, and instead of trotting comfortably along, you must go
full tilt at each other.  I am sure he was very proud when he heard you
had won the Chancellor's medal.  How nice it was of you, Anthony!"

"You could not have cared much about it."

"Why not?" asked Winifred, who knew what was coming.

"You do not care for any poetry but the very best, you know."

"That need not stand in the way," said Winifred, smiling, and holding
out her olive-branch magnanimously, "and besides--"

"Well?"

"I was rather cross that night, Anthony."

"At what?"

"O, I don't know!  How can one know what makes one cross?  I think Mr
Milman bored me.  Were you bored, too?"

"I don't believe I was.  That Miss Lovell is pleasant enough."

"Do you think so?  She worries me by drawling the last word of every
sentence, and it is all so very commonplace."

"Well, perhaps it is commonplace, but one doesn't expect to find
anything else."

"If you like it, there is nothing to be said against it," said Winifred
carelessly, still playing with the mulberry leaves.  "Shall we go back?
There is something I want to tell Bessie."

"Wait a moment," said Anthony, not thinking much of what had been said.
"Tell me, why did you say just now that you did not think I could stand
being down in the world?"

Winifred was silent.

"Tell me," he urged, trying to look in her face.  "I don't mean to go
down.  My belief is that circumstances are much more under our own
control than we allow.  Still, I should like to know why you made the
assertion."

"I suppose it is owing to that very belief you have just stated, and to
your having such terrible faith in your own powers," said Winifred,
speaking with a kind of sweet strength.  "You think you are sure to get
what you aim at because it is good and great.  I have an idea that, the
higher one aims, the less one will be satisfied with what is reached,
and then it is called failure, and that seems to discourage some people
utterly."

"And you think I should be discouraged?" said Anthony.  "It is better
not to dream about failures.  They generally belong to half-heartedness,
so far as I can see."

"Not all," said Winifred softly.

They did not speak again, and she walked along the grass that bordered
the path, smelling a dewy cabbage rose which he had given her, and
humming under her breath one of the old version psalms.  Sometimes, in
the midst of all our familiar knowledge of another, there is a sudden
impression cut deep into our memory.  We can give no definite reason for
it, but it is there, and there forever.  Anthony and Winifred had walked
a hundred times as they were walking then: no change had come over the
old Vicarage, which stood up to their left with fluttering shadows on
the grey stones, and house-martins flashing in and out under the eaves;
no new charm belonged, to the bright freshness of the garden, the quiet
of the day, nor indeed was he conscious of any peculiar force about the
little picture which should so impress it on his mind, and yet--he never
afterwards forgot it, it never faded into dull outline, or lost its
delicacy of colour; there always, not to be cast out, grew into life the
quaint trim hollyhocks, the busy martins, the daisies in the grass, and
brown-haired Winifred walking along with a quiet grace, singing the old
psalm tune, and laying the cool rose against her cheek.

CHAPTER EIGHT.

  "O Life and Love!  O happy throng
  Of thoughts, whose only speech is song!
  O heart of man! canst thou not be
  Blithe as the air is, and as free?"

  Longfellow.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

Mr Tregennas's answer to the Vicar's letter was a little unsatisfactory
and perplexing.  Answer, indeed, it could hardly be called, since it
touched upon no subject which Mr Miles had introduced, but it contained
an unexpected invitation for himself and Anthony to start at once, and
pass a few days at Trenance.

Probably at no other time within the last ten years would such an
invitation have been treated by the Vicar with more consideration than a
hasty reply in the negative, and a speedy forgetfulness that it had been
given.  A man who has all his life hated change, and that uprooting of
habit which even the absence of a day will effect, becomes at last a
positive slave to the feeling.  Nothing could be more distasteful to Mr
Miles than the prospect of leaving behind him his familiar every-day
life, of having the trouble of accommodating himself to new forms, and
of moving, in feet, out of a world in which instinct had grown to serve
him almost as well as the deliberate exercise of will.  When, added to
this, arose a consideration of Mr Tregennas and his uncongenial
society, it was perhaps natural that on ordinary occasions he should
have thrown aside the letter without so much as giving its contents a
second thought.

But now there was a change.  Ever since Marion's appeal in the study, a
close observer might have traced an almost wistful uneasiness in her
father, would have noticed that his eyes followed her, that his voice
was modulated into unusual gentleness in addressing her, and that once
or twice in a discussion with Anthony he had sided with her, taking her
part, indeed, with a sharpness which seemed uncalled for.  His heart
smote him for the blindness which, after all, had caused little or no
mischief.  But we are all inclined to suppose that we might have averted
evil had we only seen it coming.  It seemed to him as if his girl's
determination were something against which he should have watched and
prayed.  Not that he had any cause of complaint to make him object to
Marmaduke personally as her husband, but that his poverty and present
position held out no prospect of marriage, and he keenly felt what the
bitterness of a long waiting would be to her.  It made him long to do
something that should atone for his failure of care.  He called Marion
into the study, put the letter into her hand, and waited silently.

"Of course you will accept, papa," Marion said, looking up.  "To-morrow
will be a very good day."

"He says nothing of Marmaduke," Mr Miles observed slowly.

"But it means that he will listen to you."

"I suppose I must," said the Vicar, looking round his room with a sigh.
"But I don't know about to-morrow.  Anthony may not be able to start so
soon."

"Anthony!  Why should he go?" said Marion, in a tone of dissatisfaction.

"We are asked together; I could not go without him."

No more was said, and it may have been that the greatness of the
sacrifice he was about to make in some measure appeared to the Vicar to
compensate for his mistakes, for he did not attempt to disguise his
misery at the prospect before him, and Marion breathed more freely when
she saw him seated with Anthony in the little pony-carriage, of which
James and a portmanteau shared the back seat.  Even when they had
started, her anxiety was not ended, for twice, to Sniffs extreme
disgust, the fat pony came tugging round the corner again, once to leave
a message for a farmer, and once to say that Tom Lear must wait to be
married until the Vicar's return.  At last they were fairly off.  The
children ran out to courtesy; the women speculated as to the meaning of
the portmanteau.

"Mr Anthony's gwoin' agaen," said old Araunah, shaking his head.
"Thyur's a dale of comin' and gwoin' nowadays.  Us used to think twice
afore us car'd ower legs dree or fowter miles out o' t' pleace, us did,
and 'twarn't wi'out there wor a good rason for't, a peg to sell, or a
bet o' sense like that.  But thyur's a dale of comin' and gwoin'
nowadays."

"I shall never believe they are gone until they are back again, I am
sure," said Mrs Miles, coming into the porch with tearful eyes.  "It is
three years since the Vicar slept out of the house, and that was to
preach, and it does seem so unnatural he should have left his sermon
book behind him.  But there is really one good thing about it, and that
is that we can have the kitchen chimney swept quite comfortably.  Marion
my dear, you'll not mind cold--"

But Marion had escaped.  She wanted some vent for the excitement which
was apt to rise even to the verge of pain in its passionate impetuosity.
The little shrubbery path was as oppressive to her as the four walls of
the house, and almost mechanically she opened the gate and crossed the
road towards the Hardlands meadows.

The Squire and Bessie were just starting for a ride when Marion reached
the house, and Winifred was with them at the door, indulging the pony
and the roan cob with lumps of sugar.  Bessie was a pretty bright-eyed
girl of sixteen, a good deal spoilt by her father, whose special pride
it was that she displayed a keener talent for housekeeping than Winifred
had ever developed, and who, in consequence, aided and abetted her
attempts to gain the upper hand in that department.  The Squire was in
high good-humour over the result of his hay-making, and it was not
lessened by the triumph with which he compared his own success with the
less favourable crop secured on the Vicar's glebe.

"Good morning, Marion, good morning," he began in his loud hearty voice,
"what does your father say now to my waiting a good fortnight after my
neighbours?  Tell him to come up and have a look at the ricks, if he's
not convinced yet.  I suppose he was wanting to jump with Master
Anthony's theories, eh?  He'll lead you all a pretty dance yet, if you
don't look out."

"That's a shame, papa," said Bessie, promptly, "for Anthony was not at
home when they cut their hay at the Vicarage."

"I don't know, I don't know, I'm sure.  Anthony has a finger in every
pie that I can see.  Where's he off now?  Who's this old Tregennas?
Well, Bessie, you and I had better be jogging, or Winifred's fine cook
will be spoiling the luncheon, and swearing it's our fault."

With Marion's feverish longing for the open air, she would not allow
Winifred to go into the house, but insisted upon her walking to the end
of the garden and crossing one of the newly mown fields, which led up to
a crowning circle of firs commanding the widest view in the
neighbourhood.  There she poured out a torrent of hopes and fears, all
Marmaduke's wrongs, and all she had determined Mr Tregennas should do.
It struck Winifred at times as a little strange that Marion could speak
so readily of things which her own instinct, more delicate and more
proud, would have guarded like a treasure in a casket, but she put the
thought aside.  Marion was lying on the grass, rolling the short blades
into balls, while Winifred sat up and looked straight before her over
the gently sloping fields, the apple orchards, Underham with its white
houses and black wharves, the river winding and broadening between red
wooded banks, until it lost itself in a distant dimly glimmering sea.
All the colours blended into each other with a sweet fair freshness.
There was just that subtile charm of warmth which brings life, not
languor.  Sounds reached them, softened, but vigorous.  Vessels were
discernible in the river, coming up with spread sails before the breeze,
and timber or coal on board for those same black wharves.  It might have
been a blank to Marion, whose mind was too self-absorbed to be affected
by the outer world, but Winifred was at all times open to these external
influences, and they contrasted strangely with Marion's impetuous
complaints of misery.

"If I could be only at Trenance!" she ended.

"Dear Marion, Anthony will be there,--he will do his best.  Old Mr
Tregennas is sure to like him."

"Anthony!" said Marion, with a hard little laugh.  "Anthony will fell
into one of his fevers.  He will find the estate at sixes and sevens,
and imagine it to be his mission to set it to rights.  Besides, it is
Marmaduke, not Anthony, whom it is of consequence that Mr Tregennas
should like."

Winifred hardly knew what to say.  Her sympathies were so active that a
strongly expressed idea such as Marion's was apt to carry her away, even
in spite of her better judgment, and yet her mind was healthfully
constituted, and repelled by what was morbid or strained.  Surely there
was no such absence of hope in Marmaduke's lot that it should be
bewailed as unbearable.  Surely Mr Miles had painfully uprooted
himself, and Anthony agreed to a distasteful journey for his sake.  And
meanwhile the sun was shining, and the larks singing, and a sea-breeze
sweeping along the water up to the fir-crowned height.  She must have
sung, too, if it had not been for the risk of hurting Marion's feelings.
As it was, her foot was beating on the short grass, and her eyes danced
in spite of all her efforts to feel concerned.

"What are you thinking about?" asked Marion discontentedly.

"Of what we shall wear as your bridesmaids.  If you don't let me choose
for myself, I will never forgive you."

"How silly you are!  If things go on as they are going now, I shall be
too old to have any bridesmaids at all, by the time we are married."

"Well, I don't know how things could go much faster, but I believe you
would like to be married in a whirlwind.  Now, it seems to me it would
have been quite dreadful if you had not had these little hitches and
impediments.  Why should you be different from other people?"

"I hope you will have them yourself, and then you will know they are not
so agreeable."

"But I did not say they were agreeable," said Winifred, her voice taking
a changed tone.  "Only that they are such small things in comparison--"

"In comparison with what?  I don't understand,--I don't think you
understand yourself," Marion exclaimed impatiently.

"O yes, I do," Winifred said confidently, but without further
explanation.  Marion was not the person to whom she could have breathed
a word of the little visions that trooped up softly as she spoke,--
innocent womanly visions, coming and going with a tender grace.  She
only looked out towards the shining streak of sea and smiled.

Somebody opened the gate at the bottom of the field, waved his hat, and
began to clamber lazily towards the two girls,--a big man, with long
limbs and high shoulders.  Winifred jumped up with a little relief when
she saw him, and nodded and beckoned at once as if he needed to be shown
where they were.

"How did you find us, Frank?" she called out.

"Parker told me you were somewhere about.  Women always give themselves
so much trouble before they can do anything comfortable, that I knew I
should find you at the highest point of the place."

He came straggling up, and stretched himself on the grass with an air of
contentment.  The lark had finished its song, and dropped silently into
the grass; the wind was freshening, blowing back Winifred's hair, and
stirring her face into colour;--everything was full of delicious, strong
beauty.  Winifred looked down at her cousin and smiled, perhaps at the
sight of his brown, good-tempered eyes.

"Now that you are come, you shall tell us what you have been doing," she
said, not sorry to lead Marion's thoughts away from the road of
unavailing regrets.

"Doing?  I have been walking through the mud.  That is what you all do
here always, isn't it?  I met an old woman who told me a great deal more
about cider than I ever knew before, and a man--O, by the way, Winifred,
that is what I wanted to ask you--who is a short man, rather deformed,
with a powerful face, and strong religious opinions?"

"It must have been David Stephens, Anthony's bugbear," said Winifred.

Other people's bugbears often strike one curiously in an opposite light.
Frank repeated the word a little wonderingly.

"He is a dissenter," said Marion, beginning to listen.  "He actually
wanted to build a chapel in Thorpe, and had almost got that stupid old
Maddox to let him have the field by the church.  Luckily Anthony found
it out, and stopped it.  I dare say he hates him for it."

"Poor fellow!" said Frank kindly, while Marion stared at him.  "One can
soon see he is a dissenter.  There is nothing very original in his
opinions, either, so far as they go: he has got hold of the usual
distortion of facts.  But it was the intensity of the man's convictions
which impressed me.  In these days it is something even to be a
fanatic."

"Every one says he is a most mischievous agitator," persisted Marion,
eagerly.  "We are quite unhappy because our maid--Faith Stokes--has
allowed herself to be engaged to him.  Her father is gardener at the Red
House.  All her family dislike it."

"She will stick to him," asserted Captain Orde.  "He is the very man to
get a hold over a woman.  Unless he himself gives her up.  If I don't
mistake him, he would neither let his own happiness nor another person's
stand in the way of what he imagined to be his work,--perhaps not even
his own conscience."

"How could you talk to him?"  Marion said reproachfully.  "He must be
very unsafe."

"Unsafe?  Unsafe as a powder-train.  But I don't know that it is
altogether his fault.  He has been cramped and goaded and sat upon, and
no one has taken the trouble to do anything but run counter to his
opinions."

"Because they are so wrong."

"Not altogether wrong.  They may get mixed up with no end of mistakes,
but there are some which seem to me a little beyond our improving.  He
believes he may help some poor men and women up towards God," said
Captain Orde, speaking with tender reverence.  "There is that, at all
events."

Winifred, who had been listening silently, turned round quickly and
clasped her hands.

"O yes, we cannot judge him," she said earnestly, "when we have never
tried to do anything for him!  I am so glad you have told us, Frank."

All her feelings had been stirred and touched somehow that morning.  We
cannot explain how it is that very often this is so when there seems no
particular reason for it, it may be a chance word that awakens a chain
of ideas, or reaches springs which are sealed at other times when we
take more trouble to get at them.  The happy sunshine about her, the
thoughts which had grown into life, quickened Winifreds sympathies into
generous glow.  Frank was looking at her, at the flush on her cheek, the
eager kindness of her eyes, with a strange thrill in his heart that his
words should have so moved her.  He could have very easily forgotten
David Stephens, if Marion had not said coldly,--

"Anthony will not be much obliged to you, Winifred."

"O, Anthony will understand!" said Winifred, speaking with quick
conviction.  "It was natural that he should be annoyed about the chapel.
That is another thing.  But if Frank convinces him that the poor fellow
is in earnest, Anthony will respect him, however much they may differ.
I am sure he will try to help him."

Frank Orde did not say any more.  His eyes had an odd, wistful look in
them, as if some discord had suddenly jarred; but Winifred was quite
blind to the look.  Perhaps this very want of self-consciousness, which
dulled the perception of things that touched herself, was one secret of
her power of influence.  People who forget themselves seldom fail to
impress others.

CHAPTER NINE.

The Vicar's departure caused a few lively gleams of astonishment among
the Thorpe people, especially as it was not a call to preach that had
taken him away; but no one would have dreamed of finding fault with him
if he had locked up the church, carried the keys with him, and condemned
the village to virtual excommunication until his return.  Tom Lear and
his young woman meekly submitted to the postponement of their bridal.
George Tucker, who had wanted a certificate signed, said the parson was
away, and there was an end of it.  There is often something pathetically
touching in this mute acceptance by the poor of the little hardships for
which we should impatiently seek remedies; but in this case it was Mr
Miles's true kindness of heart and courtesy of manner that made his
people treat with a forbearance at least as refined the inconveniences
to which his absent-mindedness and forgetfulness exposed them.

Then, as events strangely multiply themselves, the village awakened to
another agitation, for an old woman declared that an attempt to rob her
had been made in the night, and Mr Robert Mannering, summoned to the
cottage in his magisterial character, was seen by attentive watchers to
turn towards the Vicarage, and walk briskly up the drive towards the
door.  There also he was observed to knock, two little urchins having
been sent to run down the Church Lane, and report whether or not he
entered the house.

The knock outside was answered by Sniff within by a series of short
sharp barks, which only increased in energy until the door being opened
by Faith disclosed a friend.  A dog of weaker character would at once
have acknowledged his mistake by a sudden change of attitude, and a
hospitable greeting to the new-comer.  Sniff knew better.  With infinite
presence of mind, and without a moment's hesitation, he rushed past Mr
Mannering as if he had nothing in the world to do with the matter, and,
planting himself in the middle of the drive, barked long and loudly at
an imaginary enemy, after which he subsided into an amiable calm,
returned leisurely to the house, went up stairs, scratched open the
drawing-room, door, and advanced to Mr Mannering with the most friendly
of brown eyes.

"Then there was nothing really amiss?"  Mrs Miles was saying.

"Nothing whatever.  When does the Vicar return to put an end to these
panics?" said Mr Robert, patting Sniff.

"I'm sure I don't know," said Mrs Miles, shaking her head.  "I do hope
he will write and tell us how he gets on with old Mr Tregennas.  It
makes me quite uncomfortable to think of their being there, when I
remember how miserable William's poor aunt was."

Mr Mannering looked up quickly, checked himself, and said
hesitatingly,--

"He once lived in Yorkshire, I believe?"

"Yes, indeed," said Mrs Miles, "Yorkshire was just where he did live.
That was before he changed his name.  Do you know about him?  Do tell us
what you know."

"He had daughters, I think."

"One daughter,--Margaret.  But there is quite a sad story about her, for
Mr Tregennas disapproved of her marriage, and never forgave her.  He
must be so terribly unforgiving," concluded Mrs Miles, with a sigh.

"I heard," said Mr Mannering, still slowly, "that her father objected
to her choice, and that she and her husband went to Australia.  But I
heard also,--I hope it is so,"--he went on with a little agitation,
"that Mrs Harford was a happy woman?"

"I don't know, I'm sure.  Poor thing, she is dead now, and as for the
child, of course it is for Marmaduke's interests that Mr Tregennas
should hold out, but still--it does seem hard, doesn't it, Marion?"

"Mamma, what is the use of reviving that old story!" said Marion,
impatiently.  "Mr Tregennas is not likely to change his mind."

"No, my dear, no, to be sure not; indeed, one could not wish it.  Only
it does seem a little hard, for there was nothing against him that we
could ever hear, and it was only that she was too fond of him to give
him up.  Don't you feel sorry for her, Mr Mannering?"

"Sorry!  Good heavens, madam!" he said, jumping up with a sudden
impetuosity which startled Mrs Miles, and made him beg her pardon
hastily.  "I knew Miss Hare in old days," he explained, "and, as you
say, it strikes one as something horrible that her father should never
have softened towards her.  There is a child, isn't there?"

"Yes, a little girl; and how she may be brought up since the poor
mother's death, I am sure nobody knows.  William's poor aunt did all in
her power to make Mr Tregennas think more kindly; but, dear me, she
used to say one might as well talk to a stone-wall, and then Mr Harford
was nearly as bad, so there was really no bringing them together."

"Things can't be forced," Marion put in again.  "I dare say Mr Harford
is a great deal better off staying out there and keeping his daughter to
himself.  His position is not half so trying as Marmaduke's, who is the
last person considered."

"My dear, don't say so.  I am sure I have been quite uncomfortable about
him, poor boy, ever since he was here, and I do wish he had taken a
hamper of vegetables with him.  Still, one may be sorry for two people
as well as one."

"Sixteen--seventeen--the child must be seventeen by this time," said Mr
Robert meditatively.

"Only think of your remembering so well!"

"Yes, only think!" repeated Mr Mannering, with his old cheery voice
returning as he rose to go.  "Miss Marion, I give you warning that I
shall not be able to come to the Vicarage much more if you allow my poor
roses to fall into such a miserable condition.  There's a Devoniensis at
the porch, which it goes to my heart to see.  Good by, Mrs Miles; you
need not trouble your head about the robber, but if you or Marion will
go and sit with her for an hour, I can't conceive any greater enjoyment
to the poor old soul than to tell you the history from beginning to
end."

"I am glad he is gone," said Marion, feverishly, as the door shut him
out.

There were other little strings pulling to the same tune, and setting
hearts throbbing at the Vicarage just then, while the sweet summer days
blossomed and faded.  David Stephens met Faith that very evening, as she
came back from her father's cottage.  Perhaps there could not have been
a more favourable moment for him, for old Araunah, who was the most
inveterate of the family against the preacher, had been inveighing
loudly and angrily upon his granddaughter's infatuation, and her mother
had joined in a weak, irritating sort of way, which had raised Faith's
indignation on behalf of her lover.

"A poor crooked feller like that there David!  It do vex me so to think
o't, Faith, that I can't give my mind to my meat, an' if I doan't kep
abowt an' do my niffles, I doan't know watt iver'll come to the house
nor fayther.  If he wor a fine, hearty young man, now, there'd be
somethin' to say for 'ee."

"Handsome is as handsome does," said Faith, flushing.  She was not very
much in love with David, but this disparagement created a natural desire
to set him a little higher than she might otherwise have done.  "There
was crowds to hear him last Sunday, and the people so taken up with him,
they're ready to cut off their hands if he told them to."

"Likely enough," said old Araunah, with vast acorn.  "You'll find more
fules than wise, my gal, wheriver you goes.  For my peart, I doan't see
as this hyur ground grows much beside."

Faith had come away in the very thick of the battle, and as she suddenly
turned a corner upon David, the feeling of championship excited on his
behalf had not had time to cool.  She showed him more plainly than usual
that she was glad to see him, and the perception of this brought an
immediate change in his pale face.

"You're looking tired, David," she said tenderly.  "You've been tramping
about too much, as you're always doing.  Why can't you take a little
rest?  Nobody works so hard as you, I do believe; there's father at it
all day, but when he comes home, there he sits comfortable, and you're
only off to something else."

"Your father works for time, and I have to work against it, that's the
difference.  If you saw those poor souls looking up at you with hungry
eyes you wouldn't know where to stop.  Not but what the Devil is very
keen in his temptations.  He sets it before me again and again that
there's more thrust on my hands by the Lord than one man can do, and
he's not content with that, without raising up difficulties and
hindrances on either side so as to make the work seem pretty nigh
impossible at times.  But in spite of all, there's a great stirring of
hearts in those that hear."

"John Moore told me you'd more than ever last Sunday."

"Yes, there were plenty that had never been before, and perhaps they
were more moved than those that have had the Gospel put before them
longer.  And many told me they should bring more the next time.  It's
the truth at work."

"And your preaching, David," said Faith, a little jealously.  "They say
they like to listen to you, because you never want for words, and that
you are the finest preacher the Wesleyans have ever had here."

"It isn't that," said David, with a grave earnestness in his voice.  "It
never can be the instruments that do the work.  I couldn't say ten words
if I believed they were my own words that I was speaking.  There's
nothing in it, but that I tell them what the Gospel says to them,
without letting man's devices come in between us."

"I don't know," said Faith, shaking her head incredulously; "I think
it's the way you put it mostly that pleases them.  There's old Mary
Potter wanting to hear you, but she can never get in all the way to
Underham.  And grandfather's that angry when he hears them talk of a
chapel in Thorpe!"

David sighed, but it was at the first part of the girls speech rather
than the latter, which only acted upon him as a challenge to battle acts
upon a brave man.  He loved Faith with an intensity which often pained
him, conscious as he was of a want of agreement between her nature and
his own, conscious also that her theological views were rather adopted
from an interest in himself, than from any firm persuasion on one side
or the other.  The truth lay before him in one narrow groove, out of
which there was no turning a hair's-breadth to the left hand or right.
It followed necessarily that a conviction would force itself upon him,--
when he had the courage to face it,--that Faith had as yet no part or
share in the salvation which he preached as altogether a matter of
faith, and the further conviction which lurked behind the other, but
which he never yet had ventured boldly to drag into the light, would
have forced him to cast away his love, as the eye or hand which needed
to be destroyed.  It does not require the same conclusions to be aware
that what to David Stephens was actually a matter of conscience there
was danger in temporising with.  He told himself that the sin was at
least all his own, and suffered expediency to suggest the hope that
Faith would by and by become other than she was.  The unacknowledged
scourge of anxiety which he felt made him the more zealous for the
building of a chapel in Thorpe: he had then the promise of becoming its
minister, and he was aware that the position held out charms to Faith,
who had some sort of idea that it would raise her almost to a level with
Mrs Miles herself.  David told himself fiercely that once he had Faith
for his own, he should have removed her from the teaching which he held
to be utterly antagonistic to the truth, and that his prayers and his
love must win her to his side for eternity.  He had fully believed
himself to have succeeded with old Maddox,--who, having lived a life of
indifference, was beginning to find it less easy now that death was in
view, and caught at any teaching which held out a promise of security,--
when Anthony Miles had overthrown his hopes.  He did not, however, yet
despair, nor must it be imagined that it was the thought of Faith which
even chiefly incited him in his efforts.  Had she been lost to him that
very day, his convictions were so earnest, his yearning to save souls so
strong, that he would have toiled as perseveringly as ever: but she was
the human spur which, almost unconsciously, gave a feverish anxiety to
his endeavours, and excited at all events a strong personal persuasion
that Anthony, in opposing him, was siding with the great enemy of all
good, against whom David daily wrestled and prayed.

"Your grandfather may think different one day, Faith, but if he doesn't,
we mustn't let the words of those that are dearest to us keep us back
from the plough."  David said this with a throb of anguish in his own
heart, but he contrived to steady his voice, and it only gave it one of
those singular thrills which added not a little to the influence it had
upon his hearers.  Faith was impressed with it just as her own thoughts
had strayed off to picturing herself as minister's wife, sitting in the
chapel arrayed in a silk gown, and she looked hurriedly in his face with
a sensation partly pride and partly discomfort.  The plough was not in
her thoughts, but she acknowledged it to be David's duty to talk about
it, and her little head had an idea that by becoming his wife she might
both be good by proxy, and also share in the admiration which she heard
largely expressed of his talents as a preacher.  On the whole, she had
seldom felt more kindly towards David than at this moment; while he,
poor fellow, took it as a hopeful sign of grace, that she did not urge
any of those arguments against his doctrines which she brought forward
when she fancied they interfered with his advancement.  He held her hand
in his with a strong grasp as they parted, and the colour which rose in
her cheek under his gaze gave him a glad thrill of exultation.  It
seemed to him as if he were borne on the top of an irresistible wave,
which was sweeping triumphant spoil from the very grasp of the enemy.
And now the soul dearer to him than his own was being drawn slowly but
surely towards him, while to come to him must, as he believed, lead it
onwards towards his God.

CHAPTER TEN.

These few days of waiting were intolerable to Marion, who hated all
delays, and from her earliest childhood objected to hear reason, as the
old nurse used to say.  Whatever was hanging over her head, good, bad,
or indifferent, she would have come down at once, and let the crash be
over.  Poor Mrs Miles had too little in common with her daughter to
know what to say or do.  Every morning she was sure that a letter would
come by that post, and as sure when the hour had passed that it was more
natural that it should not arrive until the next day.  Such little
securities win their triumphs at last.  On Saturday morning a few lines
from Anthony announced their intended return in the afternoon.

It struck Marion at once that her father was depressed, although there
was evident gladness at getting back to his home.  After he had kissed
her, and before turning to his letters, he looked for a moment into her
face with a touch of the wistfulness which his talk with her in the
study seemed to have brought into his eyes.  She determined to find
Anthony, who had gone off to the stables to see the pony nibbed down,
and whose whereabouts were easily discoverable through Sniffs bark of
delight.  Hearing his sister's call, he crossed the yard.

"Hallo, Marion, what have you been doing with yourself?  You look as if
you wanted fresh air badly.  Put on your hat, and come up to Hardlands
with me."

"Hardlands!  Anthony, you and papa are as cruel as can be to keep me in
this horrible suspense.  O Anthony, dear, do tell me,--what did he
say?--what is Marmaduke to do?"

"I think it's pretty nearly right, or on the way to be right," said
Anthony, digging his hands into his pockets, "though I don't exactly
know what Marmaduke expects."

"To be his heir," said Marion quickly.  "It was a promise."

"I think Marmaduke must have made a mistake there," began Anthony, but
she interrupted him at once.

"He did not, indeed."

Anthony was silenced, and began to whistle, not knowing in the least
what to say.  His father had begged him to tell Marion no more than was
absolutely necessary, and there was an uncomfortable and unacknowledged
impression upon the two that she would not be satisfied with their
tidings.  Mr Tregennas would not admit anything definite.  "Sha'n't
forget the lad, I tell you.  If you want to know for your daughter's
sake, he'll have enough to live upon, and she, too, unless you've
brought her up in these new-fangled fashions."  This was what he had
said, and of course it was something, Mr Miles would have said it was a
good deal, if there had not been that uneasy consciousness of
Marmaduke's expectations, and it was quite certain that it did not
satisfy Marion.  It was sufficient, however, to give her a further
ground on which to urge her father to admit of their engagement.  If the
Vicar had felt himself as free as usual to follow his own judgment, he
would, probably, for some time yet, have refused his consent; but he was
in the position of a man who, having failed to see what all the time lay
close at hand, feels a nervous distrust of himself, and, moreover, his
life had fallen too completely into a matter of routine for him to meet
an unexpected call for decision as firmly as he would have met it years
ago.  He would have willingly let the matter drift to the shore as the
tide of circumstances carried it.  But Marion was too well aware of the
advantage she had gained not to push it farther; Mr Tregennas had
rather encouraged than opposed the engagement, and Mrs Miles shook her
head over Marion's loss of colour and brightness.  The Vicar was
inclined to believe implicitly in his wife at this moment, Marion had
one of those temperaments which in their many changes act rapidly upon
people's looks, and her father could not meet her heavy eyes and live
his own life any more in peace.

So she had her way; the engagement was allowed, Marmaduke was to spend
his approaching leave at Thorpe, and Anthony and he were to go for a
week to Trenance.

Here again the poor Vicar was aware of perplexity.  Mr Tregennas had
shown an inconveniently strong liking for Anthony, whom nobody wanted
him to like.  His energy and brightness seemed to have such an
attraction for him, that the old man, now with little more left of his
old nigged self-will than a certain feeble captiousness, would sit and
watch him by the hour from under his big eyebrows.  The Vicar, who had
become aware of this, was almost provoked at his son's unconsciousness.
Anthony was at all times disposed to take it for granted that things
would be as he thought best, and it seemed to him that Marmaduke was
really as sure of his inheritance as if it had all been plainly set down
in black and white.  Even if the idea of his becoming his friend's rival
had ever entered his head, the prospect of heirship would have had
little fascination for him.  He had some money of his own, which made
him independent of his father.  Trenance was but a dull country place,
and he was too young and too sanguine to care much for money and
possessions.  He wanted power, but not of that sort, and how to gain it
he had not yet resolved, but there was a swing of energy about the young
fellow which made all things seem possible.  If his self-confidence were
too buoyant, too ready to rush blindfold, it was a danger which he would
be the last to discover for himself; if, later in life, his character
were likely to develop just a touch of arrogance, it was for the present
concealed by his brightness and boyish gaiety of heart.  At any rate he
could never be covetous.  Trenance was nothing to him, and thinking of
Marmaduke it was with a little real compassion for a life which was to
be bounded by so many acres, a mine or two, and the little church town.
His own dreams reached far beyond those limits.

Already he had taken a step in one of the paths which lay before him,
and seemed to invite him into smiling depths.  He had written a pamphlet
upon certain branches of reform, and it had been noticed with some
commendation by an influential paper, to Mrs Miles's great delight.
The notice was a good deal more dear to her than the pamphlet, and she
would go up to her son's room and read out little bits, although with a
sharp criticism of its shortcomings.

"There are only two quotations, and so much that people would have liked
to read!  And why should they say you are a young author?  I am sure
there is nothing your father might not have written so far as age is
concerned."

"They must criticise, you know."

"Well," said Mrs Miles, doubtfully, "if they did not find a little
fault, I suppose others would be jealous.  But they could not deny that
it is excellent."

She got up as she spoke, and went softly about the room, putting some
tidying touches which Faith had neglected.  The summer sun was shining
in and discovering dust in little out-of-the-way corners where things
were heaped.  There was a faded sketch of Hardlands by Winifred stuck
over the chimney-piece.

"It is a pity those people don't know who you are," Mrs Miles
continued.  "I wish you would write and tell them, Anthony; I am sure
they would be pleased.  My dear, you would find a better picture than
this in the portfolio down stairs."

"It does very well," said Anthony sleepily.

Mrs Miles went on with her work, but presently began again.

"My dear, it is a long time since you called at Deanscourt, and Sir
James Milman has always been so civil that it does not seem quite right.
Suppose you were to ride over there this afternoon."

"I don't believe they've come down yet."

"Lady and Miss Milman are at home, I know," asserted Mrs Miles gravely,
"for she wrote the other day to ask for Ellen Harding's character.  Miss
Milman seems a very sweet girl."

"Oh!"

"And very pretty, I'm sure."

"She's not my style," said Anthony, with an air of having disposed of
her.

"My dear, I think you would find her so, if only you knew her better,"
interposed Mrs Miles earnestly, "and Mrs Featherly tells me--"

"What?"

"That all those girls have money."

"Well, mother, I'm too shy to venture there by myself, but, if you like,
I'll drive you over in the pony-carriage."

"Thank you, I'm sure, my dear, it would be very nice," said Mrs Miles,
whose pleasure in driving with her son was mixed with several pet
perturbations of her own; "but are you sure the pony is not too fresh?"

"Fresh?  He wants a little work, of course, but it's nothing on earth
but play that makes him caper.  I'll see he does no harm."

"My dear, I can't help wishing he would play in the stables, where he
really has nothing else to do, but if you think he's quite safe--"

"As safe as any old cart-horse.  Come, mother, if he should upset us,
I'll give you leave to call me all the bad names you can think of."

"O dear, but that will not make it any better," said Mrs Miles, shaking
her head.  "I don't see how you can help it if he takes it into his head
to play, as you call it.  However, my dear, you really ought to go to
Deanscourt, so I will be quite ready by four o'clock, and now I must go
and speak to Faith about the dust in this room."

"You don't mean to say, mother, that you've let Faith engage herself to
that dissenting fellow, Stephens," said Anthony, beginning to speak
energetically.

"I could not prevent it," said Mrs Miles, giving her head a mournful
shake by way of protest.  "I don't know what the world is coming to, but
servants are not at all what they were."

"We ought to have stopped it, though.  How was he ever allowed to hang
about the house?  Faith is too good a little thing for a humbugging
rascal like that.  You wouldn't believe how he has worked upon that old
idiot Maddox; if I hadn't gone into it, my father would have had a
meeting-house stuck under his very nose, ay, and he'll have it still,
unless I keep a sharp lookout.  But, upon my word, it is a great deal
too bad that he should get hold of Faith."

Anthony was handling a tool as he spoke, and punching a hole in a bit of
wood with as much force as if it had been Stephens's head.  Mrs Miles
never liked to see her son "put out;" his face was quick to reflect his
feelings, and he certainly did not look pleasantly upon what galled him.
It was quite true that David was his present bugbear, and that he gave
him credit for no motives except the lowest: his feelings had so much
heat in them, that they deprived him in a great measure of the power of
sympathy with that with which he had no agreement, and were always
easily excited into prejudice.

CHAPTER ELEVEN.

  "Like, but unlike, the sun that shone,
  The waves that beat the shore,
  The words we said, the songs we sung,
  Like, unlike, evermore."

  A.F.C.K.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

The summer was passing at Thorpe very much as other summers had passed,
and yet with the difference that dogs our footsteps whether we will or
no.  The grass waves, the forget-me-nots look up from the brink of cool
brown streams, the roses are as sweet as ever,--we wonder as we touch
them how there can be a change and what it is, but we know in our hearts
that it has come, and that things can never more be what they once have
been.

As for Anthony, all things considered, he seemed to be leading a
pleasant life enough.  There was bright, settled weather, and the
neighbourhood had taken one of those sudden freaks of gaiety with which
such neighbourhoods are occasionally seized; dinners and picnics and
cricket-matches succeeded one another rapidly, people came to stay with
each other, glad to escape from the heat of London to these pretty
country-places, where they could lie under the shadow of great elms, and
pick dewy fruit in old-fashioned gardens.  It was an easy, charming
existence, with a busy idleness about it, which had an indescribable
delight so long as the sun would shine.  Anthony was wanted for all the
little festivities, he was asked to stay here, to dine there; the
Milmans, the Hunters, the Bennetts, the Davieses, had each some
attraction to offer, and young ladies who were ready to encourage Mr
Miles's attentions.  By and by little echoes of rumours began to be
heard.  At one picnic he had talked to no one but Miss Lovell, at
another dinner-party he had devoted himself for the whole evening to
Miss Milman.  Winifred had been there, and had seen it for herself, and,
indeed, Anthony, when he indulged in these flirtations, generally
contrived to be near Winifred.  Not that a spirit of mischief prompted
him on such occasions, or anything beyond a light-hearted enjoyment of
the present moment.  He liked the pretty flatteries of manner, the
little attentions, which the young girls were not unwilling to lavish
upon him,--liked to feel himself courted and appealed to,--liked also,
or something more than liked, that Winifred should be near him, that he
might look at her, listen to her at the very moment he was turning away,
touch something she had touched, unconsciously compare her with her
companions.  Unconsciously, I repeat, for, although many problems were
puzzling him at this moment, he was thinking least of all about his own
heart.  He did very much what he liked, and if it pleased him to talk to
Miss Milman and to sit near Winifred, he talked and he sat.  That was
all.

That was all, and no one could have said a word against it if it had
been always so.  He had no intention of neglecting Winifred; but to a
girl who loves, unintentional neglect is more cruelly wounding than any
other.  Each day worked with a sort of slow torture upon her, the more
so that her cheeks burnt with shame, when she even acknowledged it to
herself.  She was in high spirits,--or so it seemed.  She fancied
herself that all sweetness and gentleness had died out of her heart,
leaving bitter ashes behind.  When she spoke to Anthony it was
laughingly and lightly, only every now and then there would descend a
sharp cut, or one that she thought sharp, poor child, and would repeat
over to herself with a dreary satisfaction, while she invented other
sayings more terrible, which the time never came for uttering.  After
all, they were not so severe as she intended, for such weapons did not
belong to her by nature, and she used them as tremblingly as a woman
will fire off a gun that she expects to explode in her hands.  As often
as not, Anthony did not notice these little attacks; he noticed more
what she did not say, the pleasant things which fell so trippingly from
others' lips, to Winifred's disdain.  Feeling as if Anthony were
slipping away altogether from the pleasant, familiar intercourse which
had been enough to satisfy her while it lasted, and which, therefore,
she fancied would have satisfied her forever, these sweet summer days,
in which all the world was making holiday, were to her full of restless
misery, to which she dared neither give a name nor a cause, and over
which she shed the bitterest tears that her life as yet had known.

No one saw the struggle.  It would have added tenfold to her suffering
if they had done so, for she had too much of her grandmothers undaunted
spirit not to be at times fierce and impatient with herself, and her
very prayers were not so often that she might be loved again, as that
she might cease to love, and so have done with the pain.  She had no
mother.  The Squire, when he was in his most jovial moods, would strike
Anthony on the back and ask who was the last flame, but his own
daughter's name had never occurred to him.  Mrs Miles was distracted
between hopes and fears, represented by Miss Milman and Miss Davies.
Marion was taken up with Marmaduke, who was at Thorpe, and who for his
part was absorbed in thoughts of Mr Tregennas and Trenance.  After this
one step had been gained, he was greedy for a clearer declaration of the
old man's intentions, and waited restlessly for a repetition of the
invitation to himself and Anthony.  Yet when it arrived, he said
jealously to Marion,--

"Why should Anthony go?  What has he to do with it?  Is he trying to
come over the old man?"

Even she flamed a little.  "You should know him better.  There was never
any one in the world who cared less for money," she said angrily.

One wonders sometimes how many misjudgments will rise up and face us one
day.  Anthony was so far from thinking the thoughts that Marmaduke put
into his head, that he was a good deal vexed at the summons which took
him away from the pleasant little round into which he had fallen.  But
he consoled himself with grumbling, and the Milmans insisted upon
putting off their picnic until his return.

"They'll turn the boy's head between them," said Mr Robert Mannering
wrathfully to himself.  He was in his garden, alternately attending to
some newly budded roses, and doing his utmost to discomfit the
imperturbable Stokes.  The little ugly red-faced man guessed better than
other people what was going on, and perhaps saw more clearly.  "Confound
those women!" he said ungallantly.  "They do their best to spoil any man
they take a fancy to!  Stokes, I presume you suppose these unhappy buds
are to undo their own bandages?  I should like to tie you up for a week,
and see how you'd feel at the end of it.  And those seedling carnations
are in a disgraceful condition."

"There bain't wan o' them worth the soil he grows in," asserted Stokes
with round emphasis.

"Not worth!  Pray do you know where the seed came from, and how much I
gave for it?"

"I shouldn't be surprised but what you might ha' given anything they
asked of you.  I can't help that, Mr Robert.  There's a lot of
impostors in gardining like as there is in anything else, unless you
looks pretty sharp.  And they thyur caernations is rubbish."

"That's your ignorance.  I should like to know how much you knew about
gardening until I taught you."

"I knowed rubbish--always," said Stokes, with an air of decision which
fairly drove Mr Robert off the field.  He walked towards the house
across the short fine turf, all unlike the Vicarage lawn with its
intruding daisies and dandelions, smiling a little to himself over his
own discomfiture.

"They are worthless, I believe," he said, "only I didn't think the
fellow would have the wit to find it out.  Who are these coming in at
the gate?  The Chesters, if I'm not mistaken."  And away hurried Mr
Robert to receive his visitors.

"The girls got hold of me, and would make me walk over with them," said
the Squire, pulling Bessie's hair, and talking loudly.  "What are you
doing in the garden, eh?  Your hobby, ain't it, Mannering?  I'll lay
sixpence, though, you don't show me a finer dish of peas than we had for
dinner yesterday.  What were they called, Bessie?  Bessie's the one for
remembering all the fine names."

"Come and dine with us one day, and I'll see what we can do.  Will you
say Thursday?--unless Miss Winifred has some engagement."

"No," said Winifred, with a little weariness in her voice, which Mr
Mannering detected at once.  "The Milmans were to have had a picnic on
that day, but it is to wait."

"Because Anthony is going away," put in Bessie in an aggrieved tone.

"They want young Miles to marry the girl Milman, and so they can't make
enough of him," said the Squire.  "That's the long and short of it."

"Ah, I don't believe he has any such notion in his head," replied Mr
Robert, manfully.  "He'll not be marrying just yet, though other people
will marry him a dozen times over."

"Perhaps not, perhaps not; I don't know that I should expect to see him
do anything so sensible.  Old Milman isn't over-troubled with brains,
but they carry him along very fairly, and he's as sound a Tory as any
man in the county.  It might be the making of the young fellow to marry
into a good steady holdfast family like that, and get some of his
harebrained notions knocked out of him," said the Squire, who was
becoming very sore with Anthony's arguments.

"O, his notions will come all right by and by!" said Mr Robert
pacifically.  "People can't all think and live in just the same
grooves."

"More's the pity.  I don't see that the new grooves are any the better."

"Well, perhaps sometimes they're not so much worse as we think them.
And how does Bessie get on without Miss Palmer?"

"Why, she plagues us all," said the Squire, with great satisfaction.
"She's always running out into the fields after me, when she ought to be
at her lessons, or her sampler, I tell her.  Winifred's got no end of
trouble with her.  And now she's bothering my life out to go into
Aunecester twice a week, to the School of Art I suppose she must go, but
who's to take her, I should like to know?"

"You, papa, of course," said Bessie decidedly.  "You are always as glad
as you can be to go to Aunecester."

"There, you hear.  That's how she serves her father," said Mr Chester,
chuckling, and pulling her hair again.  "No, thank you, we'll not come
in, Henderson's waiting to speak to me about his farm.  Where's
Mannering?"

"He's driven over to dine at the Hunters'."

"What a man he is for society."

"Yes, he likes it, and it does him good," said Mr Robert quietly.

"That's what people always say about things that please them.  I tried
it for a good bit upon salmon, but it didn't do.  Had to give it up.
Well, girls, now you've had your say, I hope you're satisfied, and will
let me go home in peace.  You're a lucky man, Mannering, to have your
own way without being plagued for it.  Here's Bessie, now: a fellow will
have a pretty handful that gets her,--bless you, she'll not let him say
his soul's his own," added the Squire, in high good-humour, making signs
behind his youngest daughter's back.

"How is the Farleyense, Mr Mannering?" asked Winifred, lingering.

"I really think that, if possible, it is in more perfect condition than
when you did it the honour to come to look at it."

"And Stokes has not tried any experiments?"

"He knows that if he did it would cost him his place.  No, Miss
Winifred, there is a point behind which even the easiest master must
intrench himself."

The girl sighed a little.  Her father and sister were strolling along
the lane outside the gates, and the Squire's loud laugh came to them
scarcely softened by the short distance.  The rich fulness of August
seemed to weigh somewhat heavily in the air; the hedge-row elms stood in
thick unenlightened masses against the sky; the garden was a little
parched and exhausted by its very profusion of flowers, the scent of the
jessamine was almost oppressive in its richness; it was one of those
days in which, without any perceptible change, the knowledge forces
itself upon us that the change is there, and that something is gone from
us.

"And do you still carry the key in your pocket?" said Winifred, with a
faint smile.

"No, no, the house is open.  Will you come and see it again?"

"Winifred!" called the Squire from the other side of the wall.

"Not now, thank you.  I mustn't keep my father."

She spoke hurriedly, but walked lingeringly towards the gate, and Mr
Mannering remained stationary for some moments after she had
disappeared.  "I wonder what is making her take such an interest in the
Farleyense," he said to himself.  "The plant is a picture, to be sure,
but still--when I think of it--and why should I keep the key in my
pocket?--Why--what an old fool I am!--I had forgotten all about Anthony,
and no doubt the poor girl wanted to hear a word or two more about him.
He's off somewhere to-day, I dare say, and going into Cornwall
to-morrow,--the best place for him, too, if he doesn't know what's good
for him; and there she is fretting over all these confounded reports,
and thinking I could have said a word or two to comfort her.  I've a
great mind not to look at the Farleyense for a week.  However, perhaps
I'd better just go and give it a glance, to make sure that Stokes hasn't
been meddling."

CHAPTER TWELVE.

  "Brave spirits are a balsam to themselves:
  There is a nobleness of mind, that heals
  Wounds beyond salves."

  Cartwright.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

The two young men found time hang on their hands at Trenance somewhat
heavily.  The old shadowy house stood at the foot of a hill, by the
river's side; the river was there, making silvery gleams between the
trees; it was all cool, green, and dull for these energetic lives, but
Marmaduke looked forward to the sweets of ownership, and found it more
endurable than his companion.  And yet Anthony was the most kind to the
old man.

"Poor old fellow!" he said one day, as they locked the door of the
boat-house, where the water was lapping drearily among the piles, and
climbed the bank towards the house.  "There must be a queer sort of
feeling in looking at the man who is waiting to step into one's shoes.
I am not sure we should stand it so well as he does."

"He has had his day."

"Well, I don't know that having had dinner one day makes one wish to go
without it the next, if that's what you mean."

"You wouldn't care for dinner if you had lost your appetite," said
Marmaduke.

"You mightn't care, though, much to see other people eat."

"Pray do you suggest my starving myself for company?"

"I wasn't thinking of you, I was thinking of him," said Anthony,
stopping to cut down an ungainly bramble.  "Everybody knows it's the
course of nature, and all that.  Still, I say it can't be altogether
easy to be pleasant under those circumstances,--particularly when it's
not your own son that's to follow."

"That's not my fault," said Marmaduke, who seemed to put himself upon
the defensive.

"No, it's your luck, old fellow," said Anthony kindly.  "Don't be
crusty.  Do you suppose I'm not glad from the bottom of my heart there
don't happen to be a Mrs Tregennas and half a dozen young Tregennases
to keep you out of Trenance?  Though, by all the much-abused laws of
justice and equity, I don't know that you ought to be here now."

"Why not?" said Marmaduke, turning hastily.

"Because there's nearer blood."

"Mrs Harford is dead."

"Of course she is.  But her daughter isn't, so far as we know," said
Anthony, finishing his bramble.

"She's well out of the way in Australia, at any rate."

"O, she's far enough off.  And her grandfather seems to care little
enough what becomes of her.  If I were you, Marmaduke, I'd say a good
word for her.  My father tried, but he wouldn't listen."

"Thank you," said Marmaduke, curtly.  They were near the house, and he
turned abruptly into one of the side paths and walked off by himself.
Anthony, whose temper was none of the sweetest, felt a little indignant
at his manner.  Marmaduke was not like the boy he remembered, a change
seemed to have come over him; Anthony, perhaps, had not yet learned how
many-sided we all may be, how as one front and then another comes
forward, it needs a golden cord to draw us into the beauty of harmony,
or a false mask to make pretence of it.  Marmaduke had not either at
this time.  There were things surging up in him which were all at war;
he was torn and distracted between them.  He knew Anthony well, and yet
he had lost faith in his own knowledge.  The idea that had once taken
root grew hatefully into form and haunting prominence, and there was not
a look of old Mr Tregennas, or a word from the young man, but he caught
at greedily, and with it fed the lurking fear.  He was forever watching,
and, as he called it to himself, countermining.  Anthony's natural ease
and brightness of manner became, in his sight, deliberate pitfalls
spread to entrap the old man; so that although he did contrive to
disguise his feelings with a facility which was becoming dangerous, he
was restless and uneasy when Anthony was out of his sight, especially
when he suspected him of being by Mr Tregennas's side.  His disquiet
was the more unaccountable that Mr Tregennas rather fell foul of the
world in a peevishly discontented fashion, which had taken the place of
his former ungracious doggedness, than showed any especial marks of
favour on that side or on this.  He snubbed Anthony quite as much as he
snubbed Marmaduke, on the whole perhaps rather more, Anthony being less
careful not to disagree with him, and having taken up a crusade about
some labourers' cottages on the estate, a suggestion to improve which
was popularly considered to have the same effect upon the master as the
shaking of a red rag has upon a bull.  Anthony used to talk to the men,
and invite them to complain to the steward, and then come back and tell
Mr Tregennas what he had done.

"What d'ye mean by that, sir?" the old man would growl in a rage.  "What
d'ye mean by stirring these rascals up?"

"They're in the right, sir, indeed they are.  You can't get down to see
the place, and White doesn't choose to tell you what the people say, but
it's a shame that any one should have to live in such holes."

"You'll live in them yourself one of these days, if you go on in this
confounded fashion of yours."

"Then I hope you'll have them set in order at once, sir," said Anthony,
with a promptitude over which old Tregennas chuckled.

In about a fortnight he let them go.  Anthony was so conscious of the
sacrifice he had made upon the altar of friendship, that he was the more
irritated at the change which had become perceptible in Marmaduke.  It
seemed at times as if he scarcely cared to conceal his repulsion, and at
other moments as though he were studiously forcing himself to wear the
old dress of pleasant companionship.  Anthony's nature was one which
very quickly took the tone which others exhibited towards him; he was
apt to fall aloof at the first symptom of drawing back, and to feel more
anger than sorrow at the loss of good-will.  In this case, however, the
thought of Marion prevented the alteration in their relations to one
another becoming so marked as it might otherwise have been, and, indeed,
Marmaduke was kept closely at his distasteful duties during the
following autumn and winter months.

Anthony himself was not uninterruptedly at the Vicarage.  He had a
feeling as if this choice of a profession which lay before him were a
crisis in his life; perhaps a little pleasant sense of self-importance
gave it even undue gravity in his eyes.  It was possible to debate upon
it without that goad of necessity behind him by which men are often
driven into the decisions of life, and his mind travelled after many
projects in the paths which stretched to this and that summit in the
horizon of the future.  At one time he would be a barrister,--until he
went to London and was talked out of it by one of the profession; at
another he would travel with a pupil, an idea unconsciously crushed by
Sir James Milman's energy in offering him the charge of a shock-headed
lad whose irreproachable heaviness would have driven Anthony out of his
senses by the end of a week; finally, his longest and favourite dream
was that of literature, the gates of which were to fly open as all gates
are to open before these young knights.  Meanwhile his life was much
what it had been in the summer, energetic in everything, whether
shooting or flirting or dancing or writing, splendidly young, as Mr
Robert once said.  As to his relations with Winifred Chester, the
barrier between them, doubtless, still existed, and caused a fret on
either side, he telling himself that Winifred was changeable and
unsympathetic, and she accusing him of giving up old friendships for
new, yet neither the one nor the other so entirely believing in their
own reproaches as to have lost the idea that some day things would go
back to what once had been.  Meanwhile, if the old familiar life did not
flow on with the pleasant smoothness of former days,--and, indeed, the
Squire's manner with Anthony must be allowed in some measure to have
prevented this,--Winifred was less tired in the winter than in the gay
brightness of the summer days, and it was less sharp to dream of his
sitting by Miss Milman's side than to be actually there to feel herself
neglected.  Moreover, she was struggling with all her might to prove
herself--even to herself--indifferent.  It was balm to her sore heart,
ashamed of its own weakness and attempting to ignore it, to keep away
from the Vicarage when Anthony was there, to avoid the roads in which
she was likely to meet him, to turn the conversation when it drew near
the subject which was dearest, to remain in her own room when he came to
Hardlands.  Every such act was a triumph, but what a triumph!  For
Anthony was not likely to bear his treatment with good-humoured
indifference.  It galled him.  He was inclined to retaliate, and he laid
all the blame of their altered relations at Winifred's door.  Now and
then there came a faint return of what once had been, but there was no
doubt that the last few months had developed a certain easiness to take
offence, which had never before seemed to belong to the girl's nature,
so that often even after a momentary relaxation she pulled herself up
with a sharp and uncomfortable check.  It is indeed a little difficult
for a woman in her position to strike the just balance between
self-respect and pride.

If she could not altogether deceive herself, she unconsciously contrived
to mystify others: the men said she had refused young Miles, the women
that she had tried in vain to marry him, even shrewd Mr Robert was
puzzled.  There was no one so loving, so tender, so observant, that they
weighed the trifles which might have betrayed her, no swiftness of
motherhood to read what was passing.  So far as human sympathy was
concerned, she bore her burden, without a finger being stretched to help
her; but there is a Hand from whose loving touch the sorest heart never
shrinks, and from out of the very depths it draws us gently.

Her self-containing puzzled even herself.  There comes a time in most
strong lives when the mysterious power of repression becomes an
experience to them and grows into a wonder.  It fills the world with a
keener interest than when all things seemed open in the page of the
great book.  Face, heart, nature,--what is hidden beyond our sight?--
what does the mask cover?--of what tremendous powers are we unconscious
that lie beside us and round our very hearth?  Now and then the crust
heaves, and we see a flash, but the very working of our own hearts is
often hidden from us, and it is only by slow degrees that we learn those
forces in ourselves which teach us to reverence our brother's soul.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN.

  "He that wrongs his friend
  Wrongs himself more, and ever bears about
  A silent court of justice in his breast."

  Tennyson.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

Marmaduke came down in April, and it was evident enough to any one that
he wanted change, or rest, or some other means of renewing health.  His
face was thin, his eyes unquiet; there was a sort of suspicious
watchfulness in his manner unlike his old languor, which nobody could
make out, but which they all noticed, except the Vicar and Marion.  It
made Winifred so uncomfortable that she could not help asking Marion
whether anything were the matter.

"Everything is the matter," said the girl in her eager way.  She could
not get out of her head that each day that passed was defrauding them of
that perfect bliss for which she waited impatiently.  She looked with a
little contempt at Winifred, who seemed not to understand this impetuous
demand for happiness.  Poor Winifred!  It was impossible for her not to
contrast Marion's position with her own, and to wonder that it should
bring so little contentment.  Once when Marion was pouring forth her
complaints and longings, she said gravely,--"You don't know what worse
than nonsense you are talking;" and yet, as she said it, her eyes were
full of tender depth.  Her moods were not very settled at this time,
sometimes she was resentful, abrupt; but she said these words so
strangely that they startled Marion, who was accustomed on the strength
of her engagement to look down upon her friend as from a height of
experience.  She did not know that there were other springs of
experience of which she could not fathom the depths, nay, that there is
something far more divine and profound than experience itself, out of
the strength of which came Winifred's quiet words.  Yet something in
them made her wonder.  It was a spring afternoon, one of those days in
which sudden surprises of shade and brightness alternate with each
other.  Now and then an intensity of light flashed out from a break in
the grey hurrying clouds, and the young green of the larches and the
tender pink blossoms of the elms grew vivid and sparkling under its
touch; now and then it all faded into sober tints.  A line of heavy blue
marked the distant moorland; between a thinly clothed network of
branches might be traced a crowd of small fields, patches of red soil
crossed by sombre lines of hedges, brown nests in the rookery swaying in
the wind, a pear-tree standing up in ghostly whiteness before the rent
clouds.  Winifred was leaning against a window of the Vicarage
drawing-room, and looking out, her steadfast eyes grave with a sweet
seriousness.  Marion, who was watching her, said suddenly,--

"Winifred, you have grown older!"

She smiled, but gave no answer.

"But it is you who do not know.  Wait until you are engaged yourself,"
continued Marion, falling back upon her old point of superiority, and
yet anxious to induce Winifred to agree.

"It is possible to see, although one is outside,--besides, it has
nothing to do with feelings."

This was said slowly, and Marion cried out at once,--

"Nothing to do with feelings!"

"The right or the wrong can't be affected by them, I mean," Winifred
went on, still slowly, turning her face towards the grey clouds broken
with white depths that were driven from the west.  "There is something
more secure for us to rest upon than even the love you hold to be so
strong, Marion, or else--"

"Else what?" said Marion impatiently.  But Winifred would not answer.
She came from the window, and took up her hat which was lying on the
sofa.

"I must go, or I shall be caught in the rain.  Take care of your cold."

"O, I am taking care!" said Marion discontentedly.  "Marmaduke was
obliged to go into Underham on some stupid business of Miss Philippa's.
Old people are so selfish.  Anthony comes back to-morrow.  Ask Bessie to
bring the last magazines.  But you don't know what you were talking
about, Winifred, really."

Winifred laughed and went away.

Marmaduke had gone to Underham, as she said, doing what he had done a
hundred times before, walking in through the narrow lanes, white with
the blossom of the blackthorn, and past the farm orchards to the little
ugly improving town, with its bustle, its grimy coal-wharves, and its
rows of stiff houses run up quickly by the sides of the street.
Marmaduke transacted Miss Philippa's business, and stood talking for a
while to Mr Featherly.  He particularly disliked meeting Mr Featherly,
because the old clergyman had a fashion of inquiring whether he were
still at work in the north, with an expression which Marmaduke chose to
interpret as astonishment, although his questioner only intended to
prove his interest in the little lad whom he remembered running about
with the Miles children in the days when he was a younger man, and rode
out to Thorpe now and then when ordered forth by Mrs Featherly to take
a constitutional Marmaduke, however, imagined that his words implied
that wonder from which we are inclined to wince when it professes to be
excited in our behalf, a wonder that Mr Tregennas had not done more for
the nephew who was popularly looked upon as his heir, and he was careful
to avoid the old clergyman whenever it was practicable.  On this day his
efforts had been in vain, and Mr Featherly kept him for an unusual
length of time to tell him the story of some local event, which his wife
permitted no one but herself to relate in her presence, and which Mr
Featherly therefore hailed the opportunity of producing.  Afterwards,
Marmaduke, who had not Anthony's many-sided interests, and found time a
wearisome weight, sauntered round by the canal, watched a coal-barge
dragged up to her moorings, and then strolled towards the post-office,
it being the custom at Thorpe for any responsible inhabitant who
happened to be at Underham after the arrival of the mail train, to call
for the letters due by the second delivery to the Vicarage, the Red
House, and Hardlands.  He was not, however, sure whether the train had
come in, and stopped David Stephens, who was passing him, to ask the
question.

His own feelings towards David were rather favourable than otherwise;
not that his nature was sufficiently large to have a more just view of
the real intensity of the man's longings, or, indeed, that he could have
sympathised with any desires which were merely spiritual, and therefore
to his mind unreal, but that he knew that Anthony was opposing David
with all his might, and something within him inclined him to rank
himself in every matter on the side against Anthony.  He had not a very
clear idea of what position David held amongst the dissenters, or of the
points at variance between him and Anthony, and he was not sorry for the
opportunity of putting one or two leading questions, which should at all
events let David see that he was not offending all the family by his
open warfare.  He said in a conciliatory tone,--

"I heard something of your trying to get into the post-office, Stephens.
Have you succeeded?"

"I hardly know as yet, sir.  I have not many friends among those who
have the disposal of the place; a dissenter seems necessarily to bring a
large amount of ill-will about his head."

"Not necessarily, I should suppose.  It is hard to believe that any man
could be persecuted in these days for holding his own religious
opinions."

"There are many hard things that are true," said David bitterly.  "One
would say that it is hard that so much as standing room should be denied
to those who would worship God as they believe right, and yet you know,
Mr Lee, whether that is true or not, and who has done it."

"Mr Anthony does not think much of the feelings of those who oppose
him," said Marmaduke, slowly lighting a cigar.  "I am afraid it is of no
use for me to say anything, Stephens.  You had better give it up, unless
you really see a chance of succeeding in spite of him."

"Until to-day I had hopes, sir, but I find he has been more inveterate
than I could have supposed.  Mr Maddox has gone back from his word
altogether; the fear of man has been too strong for him to battle
against, even with the fear of another world before him.  I thank you,
sir, however, for your kindness."

He went on quickly, as if he were afraid of adding more, and Marmaduke
strolled leisurely after him to the post-office, where the clerk handed
him three letters for Mr Mannering, one for Hardlands, and none for the
Vicarage.  Setting off to walk homewards, however, he heard steps
behind, and Stephens, overtaking him, said,--

"Mr Tucker overlooked one letter, sir."

"Thank you, Stephens.  Are you going this way?"

"I am making haste to a cottage where they want me, and I have to be
back at the office by an hour's time.  Good day, sir."

For the second time they parted, and Marmaduke looked at the letter.  He
saw at a glance that it was for the Vicarage, and for Anthony, but he
saw at the same moment something which brought a red flush into his
face.  The letter was for Anthony, and it came from Mr Tregennas.

To ordinary persons it might have seemed a not unnatural thing for Mr
Tregennas to have written to Anthony, who had once or twice been his
guest; but to Marmaduke the sight of the handwriting broke down the
barriers which had hitherto stemmed in his slowly accumulating
suspicions, and let loose a very torrent.  The thoughts could not have
leapt to life in that moment, but they leapt from their hiding-places.
In those few feebly written words he saw revealed a very network of
treachery, and walked on mechanically, looking at the letter as he
walked with a kind of dumb rage.  What did it conceal from him?  What
plot was weaving round him its web of ruin?  How had Anthony toiled and
dug, and how much had he gained?  Gained away from him,--his own as he
had thought it, and called it, and counted upon it!  How had he been so
blind?  Jealousies that hitherto had been vague and unacknowledged took
shape and rose up in fierce array.  He said to himself that Anthony had
seemed abstracted of late, and called himself a fool as he recollected
that just before he went to London a week ago he had noticed a letter in
his hand, the address upon which stirred him with a half-memory.  As he
walked quickly on, shut in by green lanes, he lashed himself by a
hundred evidences into the conviction that Anthony was a traitor, and
that in his hand he carried the letter which held the key to this
treachery.

In his hand.

It was a strange power.  To his excited imagination the thought dawned
like the beginning of retribution.  How many chances were there not
against its thus coming into his possession!  Had justice so guided it
that he, of all others, should be the one to whose care it was
delivered?  Had Anthony's absence and Miss Philippa's fancies all worked
for this end?  He looked at the letter as if there, hidden only by a
slender cover, lay the means of confounding his enemies, at first with a
kind of angry triumph that so much at least had been gained.  The letter
was in his hands, and that was the first step.

After all, however, he became soon aware that it was only a step.  To
himself it might be conclusive proof, but that was not sufficient, and
he felt irritated and baffled.  In what shape did the danger threaten,
and would it be yet impossible for him to turn its tide?  He had thought
of giving Anthony Miles the letter, and so openly accusing him as to
force from him a confession of his shamelessness; but, with a passionate
impotence, he acknowledged this to be a vain manner of confronting the
blow.  He was not in the position to make good his claim.  He must meet
his enemy with all the subtlety of self-defence.  But what had he to
meet?  How should he know what lay before him, from which side the
thrusts should be parried, in what shape grew the threat?  The questions
beat in his brain with recurrent strokes, as if a hammer were smiting
dull iron.  All the keenness of suspicion could do no more than bring a
shadowy uncertainty before him; nothing could solve the problem except
the letter, with its poor feeble failing writing, which he held in his
hand.

For there, to be sure, lay the certainty; there was hid the proof or the
acquittal, as the case might be.  He began to look at it as though
Anthony were the prisoner on trial before him, while he himself was the
person who possessed the clew, and could determine the guilt.  To his
distorted reasoning it became almost a sin against Anthony not at once
to decide the question, when, after all, he might be innocent, and
surely it would be better that this innocence should be placed beyond
the power of doubt, than that so cruel a suspicion should divide two
friends.  For Anthony's own sake it seemed to Marmaduke a duty to
determine the truth forever.  The letter had been given to him for some
purpose, he argued, as a man will argue, himself clothing the temptation
in the strong armour with which it comes to meet him at last, mighty and
irresistible.  It needed only one look to convince himself, a look which
could not harm Anthony Miles in any way, only put Marmaduke on his
guard, and show him how to defend his rights.  One look--nothing more--
at the letter which was in his hands.

He opened it.  And as he did so, out of some background of old
associations, there rushed upon him such an intolerable loathing for his
own action that for a few moments his eyes refused to see its contents.
The false pleading with which he had covered it was no longer to be
called up, could never any more be called up.  It was with a sense of
desperate degradation that he forced himself to master the writing,
pathetic in its feebleness, confused and indistinct.  "I think it is all
coming to an end at last," it said, with a forlornness which might have
touched him at another time, "and that my successor will soon be free of
my shoes, such as they are.  I don't talk about repenting, but somehow
my girl's face comes before me night and day,--I might have been more
patient with her, though I did no more than I told her to look for.
Your father seems a just man; people call me a hard old fellow, but I
have still a feeble belief in human nature, and I believe in him.  If
you choose you may place a decision in his hands, and if he tells me the
thing should be done, I will make an alteration in my will, half the
money shall go as it is now settled, and half to Ellen Harford,
Margaret's child.  But should he think the change unnecessary, I do not
wish to be pestered by replies or arguments.  Silence will answer me
fully.  I shall understand that he thinks my proposal unadvisable, and I
shall never break it by an allusion."

And this was the letter which Marmaduke must deliver.

For a quarter of an hour he stood motionless with it in his hand.  Over
his head was the sweet changeable April sky, and on either side of the
road a little green copse in which the birds were chirping and
twittering.  He looked up at last, with a fierce gesture of impatience
at their glad piping, at the tender sunshine; a sudden storm, a wild
rending of all these pretty gentle things, would have been more
congenial to him just then than the burden of their joy.  Two men jogged
by him in a cart, and looked at him curiously as he stood by the
roadside.  It raised a quick fear that they might discover his secret,
and he began to walk slowly on again, reading and rereading the letter
in obedience to some mechanical impulse, for the first sight had burned
the words into his brain.  It was remarkable that he had no longer any
fear of Anthony as a rival, probably from his own frame of mind being
such that it was impossible for him to realise a sane man putting such a
choice into the hands of his heir, and conceiving the idea of his
exercising it in any way but one.  It was only a robbery of himself
which was revealed to him; an iniquitous deprival of half of his
inheritance.  For he needed no assurance of what Mr Miles's decision
would be.  He had a half-uncomfortable, half-slighting contempt for the
Vicar's notions, which he classed with other antiquated forms of thought
belonging to the old world.  Anthony's words came back to him with a
sting which they had not at the time they were spoken, when he believed
them to be powerless, and he knew that half of those good things on
which he had so long counted would go out of his grasp forever as soon
as this letter was delivered.  As soon as it was delivered,--but the
question immediately forced itself on his thought of why such a letter
should exist at all to harrow them with its sentence of deprivation.
Was not the Vicar himself concerned, Marion's interests being equally
involved with his own?  And it was for the sake of a girl who knew
nothing, hoped nothing, and whose father was as equally averse to a
reconciliation as Mr Tregennas had been.  Then he thought angrily that
the decision, if there were one, should have been offered to himself.
Indeed, fate said the same thing, and, resenting the injustice, gave him
the needed opportunity.  If he did not embrace it, he was yielding his
own property, and sealing a gross injustice.  The thought grew, it rang
in his brain as he walked along,--alas, no song of birds could drown it!

He tore the letter across and across without a renewal of those accusing
feelings which had rushed upon him when first he opened it, having
wrought himself into a condition in which right and wrong became mere
accidents dependent on his own will.  He set his teeth and tore it into
a hundred fragments, dropping them, as he walked, upon the grass by the
side of the lane, and almost taking a pleasure, as it seemed, in their
symmetrical destruction.  No sense of pity touched him for the failing
life that had there made its last vain effort, and the notion that he
was baffling an act of injustice he was able by a strong and
concentrated pressure of conscience to keep uppermost in the place it
had usurped.

A little farther along the lane he once more met David Stephens, letting
him pass this time without comment, and congratulating himself that the
man had not timed his return earlier.  It was, however, noticeable that,
having delivered himself from his previous haunting suspicions of
Anthony's rivalship, he should, nevertheless, immediately decide that he
would in some hidden manner assist Stephens, thinking that the fortune
which was to come into his hands would enable him to do this, and siding
more strongly than even an hour ago with any attempt to oppose Anthony's
influence.

David himself, accustomed to observe keenly, was aware of some
disturbance in Marmaduke's face as he passed him, wondering, too, at his
having gone so short a distance since they parted.  It is possible that
the surprise made him quick to notice trifles, for the tiny atoms which
had fluttered on the grass would naturally have escaped his observation.
As it was, he stooped and gathered some of them into his hand.  They
were torn so closely as to make it almost a matter of impossibility to
fit one piece with another, unless he had bestowed long attention upon
the work, and no impulse moved him to do this.  But a scrap of the
envelope, which Marmaduke had destroyed with less care, showed enough of
the postmark for Polmear to be distinguishable, and Polmear had been
stamped on the letter which Stephens had handed to Mr Lee.  One or two
other half-words there were, which, his curiosity being a little
excited, he tried to put together as he went along, but for the most
part they were illegible.  Something, however, gave him an uneasy
feeling as he hurried on to the post-office to hear whether his
application had been successful.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN.

  "Our life is but a chain of many deaths."

  Young.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

For a few days things went on to all outward intents as if the letter
which Marmaduke destroyed had never existed.  Once or twice he had a
feeling as if it were indeed nothing more than a dream through which he
had passed, for the act struck himself as so unlike his usual languid
easy-going nature, that even to him there was an unreality mingled with
it, and he was inclined at all events to compassionate himself for the
crisis which had forced anything so repugnant upon him.  On the sixth
day there arrived a telegram announcing Mr Tregennas's death.

Mr Miles, Anthony, and Marmaduke started at once.  A sort of restraint
had grown up between the two young men, which was, perhaps, although it
began only by reflection, more perceptible in Anthony's manner than in
that of Marmaduke, for the former was at all times qui

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