Aunt Rachel Part 13

"Ah-h-h!" he cried, shaking his head as if to banish the sound from his ears, "take her, Reuben, take her. Give her a sweet note or two to take the taste o' that out of her mouth. Poor thing! Strike up, lad--anything. Strike up!"

Reuben dashed into "The Wind that Shakes the Barley!" and Ezra, with his gaunt hands folded behind him, walked twice or thrice the length of the gra.s.s-plot.

"Theer's no fool like an old fool," he said, when he paused at his nephew's side. "Theer's nothing as is longed for like that as can niver be got at. Good-day, lad. Tek her away and niver let anybody maul her i'

that fas.h.i.+on again, poor thing. I'll rest a while. Good-day, Reuben."

Reuben thus dismissed shook hands and went his way, bearing his uncle's gift with him. His way took him to Fuller's house, and finding Ruth alone there he displayed his treasure and spent an hour in talk. If he had said then and there what he wanted to say, the historic Muse must needs have rested with him. But since, in spite of the promptings of his own desire, the favorableness of the time, and the delightful confusions of silence which overcame both Ruth and himself in the course of his visit, he said no more than any enthusiast in music might have said to any pretty girl who was disposed to listen to him, the historic Muse is free to follow Joseph Beaker, with whom she has present business.

In the ordinary course of things Joseph would have taken the shortest cut to his patron's house, but to-day neither the weight of the barrow-load, which was considerable, nor Joseph's objection to labor, which was strongly rooted, could prevent him from taking the lengthier route, which lay along the village main street, and therefore took him where he had most chance of being observed. He made but slow progress, being constantly stopped by his admirers, and making a practice of sitting down outside any house the doors of which happened to be closed, and there waiting to be observed. Despite the lingering character of his journey he had already pa.s.sed the last house but one--Miss Blythe's cottage--and was forecasting in the dim twilight of his mind the impression he would make upon its inmate, when the little old maid herself went by without a glance.

"Arternoon, mum," said Joseph, setting down the wheelbarrow, and spitting upon his hands to show how little he was conscious of the glory of his own appearance.

"Good-afternoon," said the old maid. "Ah! Joseph Beaker?" To Joseph's great disappointment she took no notice of his attire, but her eye happening to alight upon the books, she approached and turned one of them over. Poor Joseph was not accustomed to read the signs of emotion, or he might have noticed that the hand that turned the leaves trembled curiously. "What are these?" she asked. "Where are you taking them?"

"These be Mr. Ezra Gold's music-books," he answered. "He's gi'en 'em to his nevew, and I'm a-wheelin' of 'em home for him. Look here--see what his lords.h.i.+p's gi'en to me."

But Miss Blythe was busily taking book after book, and was turning over the leaves as if she sought for something. Her hands were trembling more and more, and even Joseph thought it odd that so precise and neat a personage should have let her parasol tumble and lie unregarded in the dust.

"Wheel them to my house, Joseph Beaker," she said at last, with a covert eagerness. "I want to look at them; I should like to look at them."

"My orders was to wheel 'em straight home," returned Joseph. "I worn't told to let n.o.body handle 'em, but it stands to rayson as they hadn't ought to be handled."

"Wheel them to my door," said the little old maid, stooping for her fallen sunshade. "I will give you sixpence."

"That's another matter," said Joseph, sagely. "If a lady wants to look at 'em theer can't be nothin' again that, I _should_ think."

The barrow was wheeled to Miss Blythe's door, and Miss Blythe in the open air, without waiting to remove bonnet, gloves, or mantle, began to turn over the leaves of the books, taking one systematically after the other, and racing through them as if her life depended on the task.

Rapidly as she went to work at this singular task, it occupied an hour, and when it was all over the prim, starched old lady actually sat down upon her own door-step with lax hands, and crushed her best new bonnet against the door-post in a very abandonment of la.s.situde and fatigue.

"Done?" said Joseph, who had been sitting on the handle of the wheelbarrow, occasionally nodding and dozing in the pleasant sunlight.

Miss Blythe arose languidly and gave him the promised sixpence. "You'm a wonner to read, you be, mum," he said, as he pocketed the coin. "I niver seed none on 'em goo at sich a pace as that. Sometimes my lord 'll look at one side of a noospaper for a hour together. I've sin him do it."

Receiving no reply, he spat upon his hands again, and started on the final course of his journey. Rachel closed the gate behind him, and walked automatically into her own sitting-room.

"There is no fool like an old fool," she said, mournfully. Then, with sudden fire, "I have known the man to be a villain these six-and-twenty years. Why should I doubt it now?"

And then, her starched dignity and her anger alike deserting her, she fell into a chair and cried so long and so heartily that at last, worn out with her grief, she fell asleep.

CHAPTER IX.

The church-bells made a pleasant music in Hey-don Hay on Sunday mornings, and were naturally at their best upon a summer Sunday, when the suns.h.i.+ne had thrown itself broadly down to sleep about the tranquil fields. Heydon Hay was undisturbed by the presence of a single conventicle in opposition to the parish church, and the leisurely figures in the fields and lanes and in the village street were all bent one way. In fine weather the wors.h.i.+ppers were for the most part a little in advance of time, and thereby found opportunity to gather in knots about the lich-gate, or between it and the porch, where they exchanged observations on secular affairs with a tone and manner dimly tempered by the presence of the church.

Half a dozen people in voluminous broadcloth were already gathered about the lich-gate when Fuller appeared, carrying his portly waistcoat with a waddle of good-humored dignity, and mopping at his forehead. He was followed by a small boy, who with some difficulty carried the 'cello in a big green baize bag. One or two of the loungers at the gate carried smaller green bags, and while they and Fuller exchanged greetings, Sennacherib and Isaiah appeared in different directions, each with a baize-clothed fiddle tucked beneath his arm. The church of Heydon Hay boasted a string band of such excellence that on special occasions people flocked from all the surrounding parishes to listen to its performances. The members of the band and choir held themselves rather apart from other church-goers, like men who had special dignities and special interests. They had their fringe of lay admirers, who listened to their discussions on "that theer hef sharp," which ought to have sounded, or ought not to have sounded, in last Sunday's anthem.

Whether his lords.h.i.+p made a point of it or not, the Barfield carriage was always a little late, and Ferdinand certainly approved of the habit; but on this particular morning the young gentleman was earlier than common and arrived on foot. The male villagers took off their hats as he walked leisurely along, the female villagers bobbed courtesies at him, and the children raced before him to do him a sort of processional reverence. This simple incense was pleasant enough, for he had spent most of his time in larger places than Heydon Hay, and had experienced but little of the sweets of the territorial sentiment. He walked along in high good-humor, and enjoyed his triumphal progress, though he made himself believe that it was only the quaint, rural, and Old-world smack of it which pleased him.

Here and there he paused, and was affable with a county elector, but when he reached the lich-gate he was altogether friendly with Fuller and Sennacherib, and shook hands with Isaiah with actual warmth.

"Mr. Hales was dining at the Hall last night," he said. "He told us that some of the local people were in favor of an organ for the church, and had talked about getting up a subscription, but he wouldn't listen to the idea."

"Should think not," said Sennacherib. "Parson knows when he's well off."

"Indeed he does," returned Ferdinand; "he looks on the band as being quite a part of the church, and says that he would hardly know the place without it."

"A horgin!" grunted Sennacherib, scornfully. "An' when they'd got it, theer's some on 'em as 'ud niver be content till they'd got a monkey in a scarlit coat to sit atop on it."

"I hardly think they want _that_ kind of organ, Mr. Eld," said Ferdinand, smoothly.

"I do' know why they shouldn't," returned Sennacherib. "It's nothin' but their Christian humbleness as could mek 'em want it at all. The Lord's made 'em a bit better off than their neighbors, an' they feel it undeserved. It's castin' pearls afore swine to play for half on 'em about here."

Fuller, with both hands posed on the baize-clad head of the 'cello, which the small boy had surrendered to him some moments before, shook his fat ribs at this so heartily that Sennacherib himself re laxed into a surly grin, and then Ferdinand felt him self at liberty to laugh also.

"You are rather severe upon your audience, Mr. Eld," he said.

"A tongue like a file, our Sennacherib's got," said the mild Isaiah.

"Touches nothin' but what he rasps clean through it."

Ferdinand raised his hat at this moment and made a forward step, with his delicately gloved right hand extended.

"Good-morning, Miss Fuller."

Mr. De Blacquaire prided himself, and not without reason, on his own _aplomb_ and self-possession, but he felt now a curious fluttering sensation to which he had hitherto been an entire stranger.

Ruth accepted his proffered hand and responded to his salute, and then shook hands with the two brethren. Ferdinand, with a jealousy at which he shortly found time to be surprised, noticed that her manner in shaking hands with these two stout and spectacled old vulgarians differed in no way from her manner in shaking hands with him. This in itself was a renewal of that calm, inexplicable disdain with which the girl had treated him from the first. If rustic beauty had been fluttered at his magnificent pressure, he could have gone his way and thought no more about it; but when rustic beauty was just as cool and unmoved by his appearance as if their social positions had been reversed, the thing became naturally moving, and had in it a lasting astonishment for leisure moments.

And there was no denying that the girl was surprisingly pretty. Prettier than ever this Sunday morning, in a remarkably neat dress of dove color, a demurely coquettish hat, and a bit of cherry-colored ribbon. Rustic beauty was not altogether disdainful of town-grown aids, it would seem, for Ferdinand's eye, trained to be critical in such matters, noted that the girl was finely gloved and booted.

Her dress was like a part of her, but that, though the young gentleman could not be supposed to know it, was a charm she owed to her own good taste and her own supple fingers. The young gentleman might have been supposed to know, perhaps, that her greatest charm of all was her unconsciousness of charming, and it was certainly this which touched him more than anything else about her.

There was no outer sign of the young Ferdinand's inward disturbance.

"I am afraid," he said, resolute to draw her into talk with himself if he could, though it were only for a moment, "I am afraid that I have made Mr. Eld very angry."

Ruth's brown eyes took a half-smiling charge of Sennacherib's surly figure.

"Seems," said Sennacherib, "the young gentleman was a-dinin' last night along with the vicar, and it appears as some o' the fools he knows want to rob the parish church o' the band, and build a horgin."

"The vicar won't listen to the idea," said Ferdinand. "There was only one opinion about it."

"It would be a great shame to break up the band," Ruth answered, speaking with vivacity, and addressing Ferdinand. "Everybody would miss it so. We would rather have the band than the finest organ in the world."

It happened, as such things will happen for the disturbance of lovers, that just as Ruth turned to address Ferdinand, Reuben Gold marched under the lich-gate and caught sight of the group. The girl, her father, the two Elds, and the young gentleman were standing by this time opposite the church porch, but as far away from it as the width of the pathway would allow. Various knots of villagers, observing that his lords.h.i.+p's guest had stayed to talk, stood respectfully apart to look on, and, if it might be, to listen. Now Reuben, for reasons already hinted at, disliked Mr. De Blacquaire. He was not, perhaps, quite so conscious as Mr. De Blacquaire himself that all the advantage of the differences between them rested on the young gentleman's side. Reuben was not the sort of youngster who says to himself, "I am a handsome fellow," or "I am a clever fellow," or "I am a fellow of a good heart," but in face of Ferdinand's obvious admiration of Ruth and his evident desire to stand well in her graces he had sprung up at once to self-measurement, and had set himself shoulder to shoulder with the intruder for purposes of comparison. With all the good the love for a good woman does us, with all the wheat and oil and wine it brings for the nourishment of the loftier half of us, it must needs bring a foolish bitter weed or two, which being eaten disturb the stomach and summon singular apparitions.

And when Reuben saw the girl of his heart in vivacious public talk with a young man of another social sphere he was quite naturally a great deal more perturbed than he need have been. The gentleman admired her, and it was not outside the nature of things that she might admire the gentleman. He came up, therefore, mighty serious, and shook hands with Fuller and the brethren, and then with Ruth, with an air of severity which was by no means usual with him. He carried his violin case tucked beneath his arm--a fact which of itself gave him an unworthy aspect in Ferdinand's eyes--and he had shaken hands with Ruth without raising his hat. A denizen of Heydon Hay who had taken off his hat in the open air to a woman would have been scoffed by his neighbors, and would probably have startled the woman herself as much as his own sense of propriety.

But all the same Reuben's salute seemed mutilated and boorish to the man of more finished breeding, and helped to mark him as unworthy to be the suitor of so charming a creature as the rustic beauty.

"Mr. De Blacquaire's a-tellin' us, Reuben," said old Fuller, "as theer's been some talk o' breaking up the church band and starting a horgin i'