Perlycross: A Tale of the Western Hills

"Frank, you do say the very cleverest things. And I feel in myself that it never comes from me. Thank God that I have such a dutiful son, though his mind is so superior."

The young man exerted his superior mind upon a very solid breakfast, topped up with honey, gushing limpid from the comb, sweeter than the softest beeswing of the meed of love. Then he sauntered in the mow-yard with his ginger terrier Jack; whom no wedded love could equal, in aptitude to smell a rat. But hay was sweet, and clover sweeter, and the rich deep ricks of wheat – golden piles on silver straddles – showed the glossy stalk, and savoured of the glowing grain within. A man might thrust his arm into the yellow thicket here and there, and fetch the chined and plump ear out, and taste the concrete milkiness.

"Rose told me that I should just see her eat," Frank Gilham meditated; "what a greedy thing to say! Was it because eggs are now so scarce, and Rose wanted all of them for herself? But if she likes good things, I could have this rick of brown wheat threshed to-morrow. The bread is ten times as sweet and toothsome – oh by the by, what teeth she has, like wind-flower buds among roses. Two or three times, her lips just showed them, while she was lying upon that hay. But what are her teeth to compare with her lips? And did anybody ever see such cheeks, even with the pink flown out of them? There's nothing that you could find a flaw in; forehead, hair, and eyes, and nose – though I can't pretend quite that I have seen her eyes yet – merely a sort of a flash in the air, while she was flying over the backrail of the trap. Only there is no denying that they must be like heaven itself, full of Angels. Mother says the sky, but that sounds so common. So far as that goes, everybody is allowed to look at the sky; but who would care ever to see it again, after a glimpse – Jack, what are you about there? Got into a gin? Well, serves you right for mooning."

"Frank! Frank! Frank!" A loud call rang among the ricks. "Got away smoking again, I'll be bound. I never can understand how it is, he doesn't set every blessed rick on fire."

"Not smoking at all, as it happens. But how frightfully shrill your voice is, Rosie!"

"What a swell we are, to be sure, to-day! And getting quite nervous. Wants cotton wool in his ears, poor dear! But the precious young lady is just coming out. And mother says you should be somewhere handy, in case of her being taken faint. About as likely to faint as I am, I should say. Now mind your P's and Q's, in spite of all your Greek and Latin. You may make your bow, about ten miles off; but not to speak, until spoken to. That's right, flourish your hair up. But you needn't run twenty miles an hour."

On the gravel walk bordered by hollyhocks – now a row of gaunt sceptres without any crowns – the kind Mrs. Gilham was leading her guest, who did not require to be led at all, but was too well-bred to reject the friendly hand. Christie was looking a little delicate, and not quite up to the mark of her usual high spirits; but the man must have been very hard to please, who could find much fault on that score.

"Oh what a beautiful view you have!" she exclaimed, as the sun broke through the mist, spreading Perle valley with a veil of purest pearl. "I had no idea it was such a lovely place. And the house, and the garden, and the glen that slopes away. Why that must be Perlycross tower in the distance, and that tall white house the rectory. Why, there's the bridge with seven lofty arches, and the light shining through them! More light than water, I should say. What on earth induced them to put such a mighty bridge across such a petty river? I dare say they knew best – but just look at the meadows, almost as green as they would be in May! No wonder you get such lovely butter. And the trees down the valley, just in the right places to make the most of themselves, and their neighbourhood. Why half of them have got their leaves on still, here nearly at the end of November – and such leaves too, gold, red, and amber, straw-colour, cinnamon, and russet!"

"And if you come up to that bench, my dear," replied Mrs. Gilham, as proud as Punch, at the praises of her native vale, "that bench at the top of our little orchard – my poor dear husband had such taste, he could find the proper place for everything – gravel-walk all the way, and nothing but a little spring to cross; why, there you can hear the key-bugle of the Defiance! Punctual every day at half-past ten. We always set our kitchen clock by it. The Guard, as soon as he sees our middle chimney, strikes up as loud as ever he can blow, 'Oh the roast-beef of Old England,' or 'To glory we steer,' for the horses to be ready. So some people say; but I happen to know, that it is done entirely to please us. Because we sent cider out every day, when that hot week was, last summer."

"What a grateful man! Oh I must go and hear him. I do think there's nothing like gratitude. By the by, I am not acting up to that. I have never even seen your son, to thank him."

"Oh Miss Fox, it is not fair to him, for any young lady to try to do that. He has no opinion of anything he does; and the last time he saved a young lady's life, he ran away, because – because it wouldn't do to stay. You see, she had been at the very point of drowning, and the people on the bank declared that she came up three times. My son Frank never pulled his coat off – he would have despised himself, if he had stopped to do it – he jumped in, they said it was forty feet high, but there is no bank on the river (except the cliff the church stands on) much over five and twenty. However, in he went, and saved her; and everybody said that she was worth £10,000, but carried away by the current. And from that day to this, we heard nothing more about it; and my son, who has a very beautiful complexion, blushes – oh he blushes so, if he only hears of it!"

"Oh, he is too good, Mrs. Gilham! It is a very great mistake, with the world becoming all so selfish. But I am not the young lady that went with the current. I go against the current, whenever I find any. And your son has had the courage to do the same, in the question of my dear brother. I say what I mean, you must understand, Mrs. Gilham. I am not at all fond of shilly-shally."

"Neither is my son, Miss Fox. Only he thinks so very little of himself. Why there he is! Hard at work as usual. Don't say a syllable of thanks, my dear; if he comes up to pull his hat off. He can stand a cannon-ball; but not to be made much of."

"Won't I though say 'thank you' to him? I am bound to consider myself, and not only his peculiar tendencies. Mr. Frank Gilham, do please to come here, if – I mean supposing you can spare just half-a-minute."

Frank had a fair supply of hard, as well as soft, in his composition. He was five and twenty years old, or close upon it, and able to get a dog out of a trap, in the deepest of his own condition. He quitted his spade – which he had found, by the by, left out all night, though the same is high treason – as if he could scarcely get away from it, and could see nothing so fine as a fat spit of sod. And he kept his eyes full upon Christie's, as if he had seen her before, but was wondering where.

This was the proper thing to do. Though he knew himself to be in no small fright, throughout all this bravery. But there is no monopoly of humbug; though we all do our utmost to establish one.

"Miss Fox, I believe you have seen my son before." The old lady took to the spirit of the moment, with the quickness, in which ladies always take the front. "And my son Frank has had the honour of seeing you."

"And feeling me too – pretty sharp against his chest" – Christie thought within herself, but she only said – "Yes; and it was a happy thing for me."

"Not at all, Miss Fox – a mere casual accident, as the people about here express it. I explained to you, that Frank cannot help himself. Be kind enough not to speak of it."

"That won't do," replied Christie, looking stedfast. "It may do for him, but not for me. Allow me one moment, Mrs. Gilham."

Without more ado, she ran up to Frank Gilham, who was turning away again towards his work, and gave him both hands, and looked full at him, with the glitter of tears in her deep blue eyes.

"My senses have not quite forsaken me," she said: "and I know whom I have to thank for that: and in all probability for my life as well. It is useless to talk about thanking you, because it is impossible to do it. And even before that I was deeply in your debt, for the very noble way in which you took my brother's part, when everybody else was against him. It was so brave and generous of you."

It was more than she could do, with all her spirit, to prevent two large and liberal tears from obeying the laws of nature; in fact they were not far from obtaining the downright encouragement of a sob, when she thought of her poor brother.

"Well, you are a sweet simple dear!" exclaimed the fine old lady, following suit in the feminine line, and feeling for her pocket-handkerchief. "Frankie should be proud to his dying day, of doing any trifle for such a precious dear. Why don't you say so, Frankie, my son?"

"Simply because my mother has said it so much better for me." He turned away his eyes, in fear of looking thus at Christie, lest they should tell her there was no one else in the world henceforth for them to see.

"Here comes the Defiance! Hurrah, hurrah!" shouted Rose, rushing in, for once just at the right moment. "I can hear the horses' hoofs springing up the rise. If you want to know anything about roast beef, you must put on a spurt up the periwinkle walk. Here goes number one. Slow coaches come behind."

"I am not a slow coach. At least I never used to be," cried Christie, setting off in chase.

"Miss Fox, Miss Fox, don't attempt to cross the brook, without my son's hand," Mrs. Gilham called after them; for she could not live the pace. "Oh Rose is wrong as usual – it's 'To glory we steer,' this time."

The obliging guard gave it three times over, as if he had this team also in full view; then he gave the "Roast beef," as the substance of the glory; and really it was finer than a locomotive screech.

Presently Rose heard the cackle of a pullet which had laid, and off she ran to make sure of the result, because there was an old cock sadly addicted to the part that is least golden in the policy of Saturn. So the three who remained sat upon the bench and talked, with the cider apples piled in pink and yellow cones before them, and the mossy branches sparkling (like a weeping smile) above, and the sun glancing shyly, under eaves and along hedgerows, like the man denied the privilege of looking at the horse. By this light however Frank Gilham contrived to get many a peep round his mother's bonnet – which being of the latest fashion was bigger than a well-kept hedgerow – at a very lovely object on the other side thereof, which had no fear as yet of being stolen.

Miss Fox had fully made up her mind, that (happen what might) she would not say a single word, to sadden her good hostess with the trouble her brother had fallen into, or the difficulties now surrounding him. But ladies are allowed to unmake their minds, especially if it enlarges them; and finding in the recesses of that long bonnet a most sympathetic pair of ears, all the softer for being "rather hard of hearing," and enriched with wise echoes of threescore years, she also discovered how wrong and unkind it would be, to withhold any heart-matter from them.

"And one of the most dreadful things of all," Christie concluded with a long-drawn sigh, "is that my dear father, who has only this son Jemmy, is now in such a very sad state of health, that if he heard of this it would most likely take him from us. Or if he got over it, one thing is certain, he would never even look at my brother again. Not that he would believe such a wicked thing of him; but because he would declare that he brought it on himself, by going (against his father's wishes) into this medical business. My father detests it; I scarcely know why, but have heard that he has good reason. We must keep this from him, whatever it costs us; even if it keeps poor Jemmy under this cloud for months to come. Luckily father cannot read now very well, and his doctor has ordered him not to read at all; and mother never looks at a newspaper: and the place being five and thirty miles away, and in another county, there is no great risk, unless some spiteful friend should rush in, to condole with him. That is what I dread to hear of sometimes; though good Dr. Freeborn, who attends him, will prevent any chance of it, if possible. But you see, Mrs. Gilham, how it cripples us. We cannot move boldly and freely, as we ought, and make the thing the topic of the county; as we should by an action of libel for instance, or any strong mode of vindication. I assure you, sometimes I am ready to go wild, and fly out, and do anything. And then I recollect poor father."

"It is a cruel cruel thing, my dear. I never heard of anything resembling it before. That's the very thing that Frank says. From the very first he saw what a shameful thing it was to speak so of Dr. Fox. I believe he has knocked down a big man or two; though I am sure I should be the last to encourage him in that."

"Come, mother, come! Miss Fox, you must not listen to a quarter of what mother says about me. I dare say, you have found that out, long ago."

"If so, it is only natural, and you deserve it;" this Hibernian verdict was delivered with a smile too bright to be eclipsed by a score of hedgerow bonnets; "but there is one thing I should like to ask Mr. Frank Gilham, with his mother's leave; and it is this – how was it that you Mr. Frank, almost alone of all the parish of Perlycross, and without knowing much of my brother at the time, were so certain of his innocence?"

"Because I had looked in his face;" replied Frank, looking likewise into the sister's face, with a gaze of equal certainty.

"That is very noble," Christie said, with a little toss meaning something. "But most people want more to go upon than that."

CHAPTER XX.

DISCUSSION

Now Mrs. Fox, Doctor Jemmy's mother, was an enthusiastic woman. She was twenty years younger than her husband, and felt herself fifty years his senior (when genuine wisdom was needed) and yet in enterprise fifty years junior. The velocity of her brain had been too much for the roots of her hair, as she herself maintained, and her best friends could not deny it. Except that the top of her head was snow-white, and she utterly scorned to disguise it, she looked little older than her daughter Christie, in some ways; though happily tougher. She was not too fat, and she was not too thin; which is more than most people can tell themselves, at the age of eight and forty. Into this ancient County race, which had strengthened its roots by banking, she had brought a fine vein of Devonian blood, very clearing for their complexions. She had shown some disdain for mercantile views; until she began to know better, when her father, and others of her landed lineage slipped down the hilltop into bankruptcy, without any Free-trade, or even tenants' superior rights, to excuse them. Then she perceived that mercantile views are the only ones left to ensure a quiet man a fair prospect from his own front windows. She encouraged her husband to cherish the Bank, which at one time she had derided; and she quite agreed with him, that no advances could save her own relations in their march downhill.

The elder James Fox, who like his father had refused a title – for although they were not Quakers now, they held to their old simplicity – Mr. James Fox of Foxden was a fine sample of the unmixed Englishman. He had never owed a penny of his large fortune to any unworthy trick of trade, or even to lucky gambling in stocks, or bitter mortgages. Many people called him stubborn, and they were welcome to take that view of it. In business that opinion served him well, and saved a lot of useless trouble. But he himself knew well, and his wife knew even better, that though he would never budge an inch, for claim, or threat, or lawsuit, there was no man who gave a longer ell, when drawn out by mercy, or even gentle equity.

But in the full vigour of his faculties, mental if not bodily – and the latter had not yet failed him much – that mysterious blow descended, which no human science can avert, relieve, or even to its own content explain. One moment he was robust and active, quick with the pulse of busy life, strong with the powers of insight, foresight, discrimination, promptitude – another moment, and all was gone. Only a numb lump remained, livid, pallid, deaf and dumb, sightless, breathless (beyond a wheezy snore) incapable even of a dream or moan. And knowing all these things, men are proud!

His strong heart, and firm brain, bore him through; or rather they gradually shored him up; a fabric still upon the sands of time, but waiting only for the next tidal wave.

Now the greatest physician, or metaphysician, that ever came into the world, can tell us no more than an embryo could, what the relics of the mind will be in such a case, or how far in keeping with its former self. Thoroughly pious men have turned blasphemers; very hard swearers have taken to sweet hymns; tempers have been changed from diabolical to angelic; but the change more often has been the other way. Happily for himself, and all about him, this fine old man was weakened only, and not perverted from his former healthful self. His memory was deranged, in veins and fibres, like an ostrich-plume draggled in a gale of wind and rain; but he knew his old friends, and the favoured of his heart, and before and above all, his faithful wife. He had fallen from his pride, with the lapse of other powers; and to those who had known him in his stronger days, his present gentleness was touching, and his gratitude for trifles affecting; but notwithstanding that, he was sometimes more obstinate than ever.

"I wonder why Chris stays away so long;" he said as he sat one fine day upon the terrace, for he was ordered to stay out of doors as much as possible, and his wife as usual sat beside him. "She is gone to nurse Jemmy through a very heavy cold, as I understood you to say, my dear. But my memory is not always quite clear now. But it must be some days since I heard that; and I miss little Chrissy with her cheerful face. You are enough of course, my dear Mary, and I very seldom think much of anybody else. Still I long sometimes to see my little Chrissy."

"To be sure; and so do I. The house seems very sad without her;" replied Mrs. Fox, as if it could be merry now. "We won't give her more than another day or two. But we must remember, dear, how differently poor Jemmy is placed from what we are in this comfortable house. Only one old rough Devonshire servant; and everybody knows what they are – a woman who would warm his bed, as likely as not, with a frying-pan, and make his tea out of the rain water boiler."

"He has no one to thank for it but himself."

After this delivery, the father of the family shut his mouth, which he still could do as well as ever, though one of his arms hung helpless.

"And I did hear that there was some disturbance there, something I think about the clergyman, who is a great friend of Jemmy's;" Mrs. Fox spoke this in all good faith, for Dr. Freeborn had put this turn upon a story, which had found its way into the house; "and you know what our Chris is, when she thinks any one attacks the Church – you may trust her for flying to the rescue. At any rate so far as money goes."

"And money goes a long way, in matters eccles – you know what I mean – I can't pronounce those long words now. Christie is too generous with her good aunt's money. The trustees let her have it much too freely. I should not be much surprised if they get a hundred pounds out of Chris, at – let me see, what is the place called – something like a brooch or trinket. Ah there, it's gone again!"