Perlycross: A Tale of the Western Hills

"Well, I wish you'd make half as much fuss about me;" said Fox, with all the self-command that could well be expected. "You haven't even asked me how I am!"

"Oh, I beg your pardon then;" she answered, looking up at him, with the little dog's nose cuddled into her neck, and his short sobs puffing up the golden undergrowth of her darkly-clustering hair. "Yes, to be sure, I should have asked that. It was very forgetful of me. But his poor tail seems to be a little easier now; and the vigour of your step shows how well you have come back to us."

"Well, more than welcome, I am afraid. I can always make allowance for the humours of young ladies; and I know how good and sweet you are. But I think you might have been glad to see me."

"Not when you tread upon my dear dog's tail, and laugh in my face afterwards, instead of being very sorry. I should have begged pardon, if I had been so clumsy as to tread upon a dog of yours."

"Dogs are all very well, in their way; but they have no right to get into our way. This poor little puggie's tail is all right now. Shake hands, Puggie. Why, look! He has forgiven me."

"That shows how wonderfully kind he is, and how little he deserves to be trodden on. But I will not say another word about that; only you might have been sorrier. Their consciences are so much better than ours. He is licking your hand, as if he had done the wrong. Your sister agreed with me about their nobility. How is darling Christie?"

"Everybody is a darling, except me to-day! Christie is well enough. She always is; except when she goes a cropper out of a trap, and knocks young men's waistcoat-buttons off."

"How coarsely you put it, when you ought to be most thankful to the gentleman who rescued her, when you left her at the mercy of a half-wild horse!"

"I don't know what to make of you to-day, Miss Waldron. Have I done anything to offend you? You are too just and sensible, and – gentle, I should like to say – not to know that you have put an entirely wrong construction upon that little accident with Farrant's old screw. It was Christie's own fault, every bit of it. She thought herself a grand whip, and she came to grief; as girls generally do, when they are bumptious."

"You seem to have a great contempt for girls, Dr. Fox. What have the poor things done to offend you so?"

"Somebody must have been speaking against me. I'd give a trifle to know who it is. I have always been accustomed to reasonable treatment."

"There now, his dear little tail is better! Little Pixie loves me so. Little Pixie never tells somebody that she is an unreasonable creature. Little Pixie is too polite for that."

"Well, I think I had better be off for the day. I have heard of people getting out of bed the wrong side; and you can't make it right all the day, when that has happened. Miss Waldron, I must not go away without saying that my sister sends you her very best love. I was to be sure to remember that."

"Oh, thank you, Dr. Fox! Your sister is always so very sweet and considerate. And I hope she has also been allowed to send it where it is due, a thousand times as much as here."

"Where can that be? At the rectory, I suppose. Yes, she has not forgotten Mr. Penniloe. She is not at all fickle in her likings."

"Now that is a very fine quality indeed, as well as a very rare one. And another she has, and will not be driven from it; and I own that I quite agree with her. She does not look down upon other people, and think that they belong to another world, because they are not so well off in this one as she is. A gentleman is a gentleman, in her judgment, and is not to be cast by, after many kind acts, merely because he is not made of money."

"Ah, now I see what all this comes to!" exclaimed Fox, smiling pleasantly. "Well, I am quite open to a little reasoning there, because the whole thing is so ridiculous. Now put it to yourself; how would you like to be a sort of son-in-law to good Mother Gilham's green coal-scuttle? A coal-scuttle should make one grateful, you will say. Hear, hear! not at all a bad pun that; though quite involuntary."

"The bonnet may be behind the age, or in front of it, I know not which;" said Nicie, very resolute to show no smile; "but a better and sweeter old face never looked – "

"A better horse never looked out of a bridle. It is bridle, and blinkers, and saddle, all in one."

"It is quite useless trying to make me laugh." Her voice however belied her; and Pixie watching her face began to wag the wounded tail again. "Your sister, who knows what bonnets are, to which you can have no pretension, is well acquainted with the sterling value – "

"Oh come, I am sure it would not fetch much now, though it may have cost two guineas, or more, in the days before 'my son Frank' was born."

"Really, Jemmy, you are too bad, when I want to talk seriously."

"So long as I am 'Jemmy' once more, I don't care how bad I am."

"That was a slip. But you must listen to me. I will not be laughed off from saying what I think. Do you suppose that it is a joking matter for poor Frank Gilham?"

"I don't care a copper for his state of mind, if Chris is not fool enough to share it. The stupid fellow came to me this morning, and instead of trying to smoothe me down, what does he do but blow me up sky-high! You should have heard him. He never swore at all, but gave utterance to the noblest sentiments – just because they were in his favour."

"Then I admire him for it. It was very manly of him. Why were all large ideas in his favour? Just because the small ones are on your side. I suppose, you pretend to care for me?"

"No pretence about it. All too true. And this is what I get done to me?"

"But how would you like my brother to come and say – 'I disapprove of Dr. Fox. I forbid you to say another word to him'? Would you recognize his fraternal right in the matter, and go away quietly?"

"Hardly that. I should leave it to you. And if you held by me, I should snap my fingers at him."

"Of course you would. And so would anybody else; Frank Gilham among the number. And your sister – is she to have no voice, because you are a roaring lion? Surely her parents, and not her brother, should bar the way, if it must be barred. Just think of yourself, and ask yourself how your own law would fit you."

"The cases are very different, and you know it as well as I do. Frank Gilham is quite a poor man; and, although he is not a bad kind of fellow, his position in the world is not the same as ours."

"That may be so. But if Christie loves him, and is quite content with his position in the world, and puts up with the coal-scuttle – as you call it – and he is a good man and true, and a gentleman, are they both to be miserable, to please you? And more than that – you don't know Christie. If Frank Gilham shows proper courage, and is not afraid of mean imputations, no one will ask your leave, I think."

"Well, I shall have done my best; and if I cannot stop it, let them rue the day. Her father and mother would never allow it; and as I am responsible for the whole affair, and cannot consult them, as things are now, I am bound to act in their place, I think. But never mind that. One may argue for ever, and a girl in a moment can turn the tables on the cleverest man alive. Let us come back to our own affairs. I have some news which ought to please you. By rare good luck I have hit upon the very two men who were employed upon that awful business. I shall have them soon, and then we shall know all about this most mysterious case. By George, it shall go hard indeed with the miscreant who plotted it."

"Oh don't – oh don't! What good can it be?" cried Nicie, trembling, and stammering. "It will kill my mother; I am sure it will. I implore you not to go on with it."

"What!" exclaimed Fox with amazement. "You to ask me, you his only daughter, to let it be so – to hush up the matter – to submit to this atrocious wrong! And your father – it is the last thing I ever should have thought to hear."

In shame and terror she could not speak, but quailed before his indignant gaze, and turned away from him with a deep low sob.

"My darling, my innocent dear," he cried in alarm at her bitter anguish; "give me your hand; let me look at your face. I know that no power on earth would make you do a thing that you saw to be shameful. I beg your pardon humbly, if I spoke too harshly. You know that I would not vex you, Inez, and beyond any doubt you can explain this strange – this inconceivable thing. You are sure to have some good reason for it."

"Yes, you would say so if you knew all. But not now – I dare not; it is too dreadful. It is not for myself. If I had my own way – but what use? I dare not even tell you that. For the present, at least for the present, do nothing. If you care about me at all, I beg you not to do what would never be forgiven. And my mother is in such a miserable state, so delicate, so frail, and helpless! Do for my sake, do show this once, that you have some affection for me."

Nicie put her soft hand on his shoulder, and pleaded her cause with no more words, but a gaze of such tenderness and sweet faith, that he could not resist it. Especially as he saw his way to reassure her, without departing from the plan he had resolved upon.

"I will do anything, my pretty dove," he said with a noble surrender; "to relieve your precious and trustful heart. I will even do this, if it satisfies you – I will take no steps for another month, an entire month from this present time. I cannot promise more than that, now can I, for any bewitchment? And in return, you must pledge yourself to give your mother not even a hint of what I have just told you. It would only make her anxious, which would be very bad for her health, poor thing; and she has not the faith in me, that you have. She must not even dream that I have heard of those two villains."

This was a bright afterthought of his; for if Lady Waldron should know of his discovery, she might contrive to inform them, that he had his eye upon them.

"Oh, how good you are!" cried Nicie. "I can never thank you enough, dear Jemmy; and it must appear so cruel of me, to ask you to forego so long the chance of shaming those low people, who have dared to belie you so."

"What is a month, compared to you?" Jemmy asked, with real greatness. "But if you feel any obligation, you know how to reward me, dear."

Nicie looked at him, with critical eyes; and then as if reckless of anything small, flung both arms round his neck, and kissed him.

"Oh it is so kind, so kind of him!" she declared to herself, to excuse herself; while he thought it was very kind of her. And she, being timid of her own affection, loved him all the more for not encroaching on it.

Jemmy rode away in a happy frame of mind. He loved that beautiful maiden, and he was assured of her love for him. He knew that she was far above him, in the gifts of nature, and the bloom that beautifies them – the bloom that is not of the cheeks alone, but of the gentle dew of kindness, and the pearl of innocence. Fox felt a little ashamed of himself, for a trifle of sharp practice; but his reason soon persuaded him, that his conscience was too ticklish. And that is a thing to be stopped at once.

While jogging along in this condition, on the road towards Pumpington, he fell in with another horseman less inclined to cheerfulness. This was Farmer Stephen Horner, a younger brother of Farmer John, a less substantial, and therefore perhaps more captious agriculturist. He was riding a very clever cob, and looked both clever and smart himself, in his bottle-green cutaway coat, red waistcoat, white cord breeches and hard brown hat. Striking into the turnpike road from a grass-track skirting the Beacon Hill, he hailed the Doctor, and rode beside him.

"Heard the news, have 'e?" asked Farmer Steve, as his fat calves creaked against the saddle-flaps within a few inches of Jemmy's, and their horses kept step, like a dealer's pair. "But there – come to think of it, I be a fool for asking, and you always along of Passon so?"

"Only came home yesterday. Haven't seen him yet," the Doctor answered briskly. "Haven't heard anything particular. Nothing the matter with him, I hope?"

"Not him, sir, so much as what he've taken up. Hath made up his mind, so people say, to abolish our old Fair to Perlycross." Farmer Steve watched the Doctor's face. He held his own opinion, but he liked to know the other's first. Moreover he owed him a little bill.