Mohawks: A Novel. Volume 2 of 3

"No, sir, I don't say that it would have broken us – "

"Then it must go hard with you to remember how cruelly you dealt with an unfortunate gentleman. But I am not here to reproach you, madam. I came for information, and I thank you for having given it me so freely."

He tried to learn more of Chumleigh's character and circumstances, but here Mrs. Wagstaff's information was of the most limited order. The broken-down gentleman had been singularly silent about his past life. Mrs. Wagstaff only knew that he was a gentleman, and this knowledge she had by intuition, not being versed in the ways of gentlefolks, but finding in this one something that was not in the commonality.

Herrick went back to London feeling very well satisfied with his morning's work, though it would not seem that he had learnt much from nurse Wagstaff.

"There is at any rate the means of settling one doubt," he told himself, as he walked back by the Five Fields, a place of unhappy notoriety as a favourite duelling-ground; and duelling was still a prevailing fashion, though Steele and Addison had done their best to write it down in the Tatler, and though the mutual murder of the Duke of Hamilton and Lord Mohun in Hyde Park had not long ago given a shock to polite society.

CHAPTER IV

"YOU STOP MY TONGUE, AND TEACH MY HEART TO SPEAK."

The tamest lover would hardly endure prolonged severance from his mistress without making some efforts to see her, were it but for the briefest space; and although Herrick did not intend to steal the heiress from her father's custody, he was, on the other hand, determined not to languish in perpetual absence. By fair means or foul he must contrive a meeting; and he had by this time placed himself on such a friendly footing with the gardener's wife, Mrs. Chitterley, that he was sure of allegiance and help from all her family. So, one fair May morning, there came a pedlar, with his pack of books on his shoulders and a stout oak sapling in his hand, thick shoes whitened by dust, a shabby suit of linsey woolsey, and brown worsted stockings – a pedlar of swarthy complexion, and eyes obscured by green spectacles in heavy copper rims. The pedlar turned into the lodge at Fairmile before approaching the house, and conversed for some minutes with Mrs. Chitterley, who was very much at her ease with him; for scarcely had he spoken three words before she discovered that this dusty hawker was the London gentleman, Lord Lavendale's friend, who had been so liberal in his bounties to her and her children.

"You knew my voice, Mrs. Chitterley; but do you think the good people up at the house yonder will recognise me?"

"Not unless they hear you talk, sir; I took you for a stranger when you came in at the door just now. I never dreamt 'twas you."

"And now if I were to change my voice, and speak so?"

He had excelled as a mimic in days gone by, and now he adopted the manner of an old college chum, whose peculiar utterance he had been wont to imitate.

"Lord, sir, nobody will ever know you if you talk like that!"

"Then I'll venture it. But I hope to find Mrs. Bosworth in the garden with her gouvernante, and then I need not go to the house at all."

"She almost lives in the garden, sir, this fine weather."

"Then I'll try my luck," said Herrick, shouldering his pack, which he had brought from no further than Lavendale Manor, where he had put on his pedlar's clothes and stained his complexion. He tramped along the avenue, struck off to the right hand before he reached the house, and made his way by a by-path to a little gate in a holly hedge, by which he entered the garden. All Squire Bosworth's old family plate was laid up in safe keeping at his goldsmith's, and the approaches to Fairmile Court were not over-jealously guarded. Herrick knew his way about the gardens. He had walked there last summer in the sweet sunset leisure of after dinner, when he and Lavendale were the Squire's honoured guests, Mr. Bosworth never suspecting that his lordship's companion could be his rival. He knew all Irene's favourite nooks and corners, and where to look for her.

He found her sitting under a cedar which Evelyn of Wootton had planted with his own hands, an enduring evidence of that accomplished gentleman's friendship for Squire Bosworth's grandfather. She was not alone, but, instead of her usual companion and governess, she had Mrs. Bridget, the nurse, who was sitting on a little wooden stool, knitting a stocking, while Irene sat on the grass close by, with an open book in her lap.

Now it happened that, next to Irene herself, Bridget, the nurse, was the person whom Herrick most ardently desired to see.

"Can I sell you a book, ladies?" he began in his feigned voice, standing a little way off, and opening his pack. "Here is Gulliver's Travels, the most wonderful book that was ever written, the book all the great folks in London were mad about last winter; and here is Robinson Crusoe, and The History of the Plague, and – "

But Irene had started, to her feet. Disguise his complexion, hide his eyes, alter his voice as he might, she knew him. She would have known him anywhere, and under even stranger conditions. The electricity of true love flashed from his soul to hers.

"Herrick!" she cried, "it is you!"

Mrs. Bridget also rose with a troubled air; but Irene laid a restraining hand upon her nurse's arm.

"You won't tell anybody, you'll let us talk to each other a little while?" she pleaded; and then in her most caressing manner, "you can hear all we say. I have no secrets from you, dear old Bridget."

"I'll warrant Mrs. Bridget would hardly swear so much on her side," said Herrick, with a lurking significance in his tone. "When people come to your nurse's age, Irene, they are apt to have a secret or two, be they ever so honest."

"Nay, I'll vouch for it, my Bridget has no secrets from me," protested the girl, hanging on her nurse's ample shoulder.

The nurse turned and kissed her darling, but answered not a word.

"And so you knew me at once, Irene; what an eagle eye you have!"

"If you had come as a blackamoor, I should have known you just as easily," she answered gaily; "and to change your voice too, and speak in those queer gruff tones, and think to cheat me! What a foolish person you must be!"

They seated themselves side by side on a rustic bench, while Bridget resumed her stool and her knitting at a discreet distance.

"What has become of your governess?" asked Herrick.

"She had letters to write to her relations in France – a married sister, and half a dozen nephews and nieces, who live in the south and whom she dearly loves, though she has not seen them for ages. So I made her stay indoors to write her letters, and brought Bridget for my companion. My father has given strict orders that I am to be looked after, lest you should find your way to me. But of all people, Bridget is the one I can trust most confidently. She would cut off her head if she could make me happy by losing it. And now, tell me everything about yourself, more even than your dearest letters can tell. Remember how long it is since we last met."

"Do I ever forget, love? ever cease to count the days and hours that we are doomed to live apart?"

And then he told her his successes, his dreams and hopes, the ever-strengthening hope of independence, Sir Robert's favour and friendship, the world's growing esteem.

"In two years, at most, Irene, I count upon being able to offer you a home; but it will be a very poor home compared with this, and you will sacrifice a great fortune if you become my wife."

"I have told you before that I do not value fortune."

"Yes; but shall not I be ungenerous to accept so vast a sacrifice?"

"It will be no sacrifice. I tasted all that wealth can give last winter in London, and I found no pleasure in fine clothes or fine company, dances and dinners, except when you were near. I know what the great world is like, and can renounce it without a sigh. But I should like to wander with you in that wide beautiful world of mountains, and lakes, and strange foreign cities, which so few people seem to care about. All the people I met last winter used to talk as if there were no world beyond Leicester Fields and St. James's Park – nothing worth living for but cards and fine company."

"Foolish people, Irene, in whom all natural impulses are stifled by the close atmosphere of a Court. Yes, we will travel, dearest, when you are my wife. I will show you some of the loveliest spots on this earth; yet we will not be mere vagabonds, love; we will not spend our lives in exile. This little island of ours is worth living in, and worth working for. We will have our cottage at Chelsea, or our lodgings in London, as you shall decide; and it shall be your task to fan the flame of ambition and stimulate your husband to perseverance and earnestness. For the man who is ambitious and persevering there can be no such thing as failure."

"Let us live in London," said Irene, delighted with a discussion which seemed to bring their future union nearer. "For in London we need be seldom parted. I shall hate even the House of Commons if it takes you from me too often or too long at a time."

"Then we will have a lodging in Spring Gardens, where I can run backwards and forwards, and spend my life between the senate and my home."

Childish talk, when union was still so far off; but it was a kind of talk which made Herrick intensely happy, for it gave him the assurance of winning his sweetheart for a wife, even though Parson Keith had to wed them. She who was so willing to fling away fortune for his sake would not let him languish for ever under her father's ban. The day must come when she would be ready to forsake that stern father for her lover's sake. It was for him to make their union easy, by the assurance of a modest competence.

When they had fully discussed their future dwelling, even to the style of the furniture and the prospect from the windows, Herrick began to question Irene about the companion of her infancy, the waif from whom death had parted her so early.

"I can remember very little," she said. "It is mostly dim, like a dream. Yet there are hours that I can recall. I have but to close my eyes, and her face comes back to me, smiling lovingly, so gentle, so sweet. She must have been fairer than I – I remember a face like alabaster, with rosebud lips, and hair like pale gold. I have seen just such a face in pictures of angels. I remember playing with her under yonder cedar. It was one of our favourite spots. And I remember hide-and-seek in the old stables the day we both caught the fever. How happy we were that day! and it is the last I can remember of our play or our happiness. Perhaps I should remember much more if I had not had that terrible fever; for my cousins have told me how vividly they can recall their childhood. Mine seems like a picture half rubbed out, with distinct patches left here and there upon the canvas."

"Mrs. Bridget must remember your little companion," said Herrick, glancing at the nurse. "Will you call her here, Rena? I should like to ask her a few questions."

Irene beckoned, and Bridget came over to the bench.

"I have been talking of the little girl who died, Mrs. Bridget," began Herrick, with a friendly air. "It has happened to me very curiously within the last few days to come upon traces of that infant's father, and of the first year of her life. Now, I know you were very fond of her, and that you must be interested in anything that relates to her."

Without a moment's warning nurse Bridget began to cry. Rena made her sit down between them, and dried her tears, and soothed her with sweetest caresses.

"Why should you be so broken-hearted about her, you poor old dear soul?" she said; "you were never unkind to her, I am sure."

"No, I was never unkind to her – I have not that upon my conscience," sobbed Bridget; "but I have never forgotten her pretty face and her sweet little ways, and how loving she was to me, dear soul. And to hear of her suddenly – O sir, what did you discover about the poor man who was found dead on Flamestead Common?" she asked, recovering herself with an effort.

"I heard that he was a man of good birth, by name Chumleigh. I heard some particulars of his youth and his marriage, and I mean to find out more. Having got so far upon the traces of his history it will hardly be difficult to learn the rest."