The King's Stratagem, and Other Stories

"'You were intending!' Robert Evans burst forth in a voice so changed that they all started back. 'You are a liar! You were intending to settle nothing! I know it well! I knew it long ago! Nothing, I say! As for you,' he went on, wheeling furiously round upon the Evanses of Nant, 'you knew my wishes. What were you going to do for her? What, I say? Speak, you hobbledehoys!'

"For they were backing from him in absolute fear of his passion, looking at one another or at the sullen face of Llewellyn Evans, or anywhere save at him. At length the eldest blurted out, 'Whatever Llewellyn meant to do we were going to do, sir.'

"'You speak the truth there,' cried old Robert bitterly; 'for that was nothing, you know. Very well! I promise you that what Llewellyn gets of my property you shall get too-and it will be nothing! You, Bevan,' and he turned himself toward the Evan Bevans, who were shaking in their shoes, 'I am told, did offer to do something for my girl.'

"'Yes, dear Robert,' cried Mrs. Bevan, radiant and eager, 'we did indeed.'

"'So I hear. Well, when I make my next will, I will take care to set you down for just so much as you proposed to give her! Peggy, bach,' he continued, turning from the chapfallen lady, and putting into the girl's hands the will which the lawyer had given him, 'tear up this rubbish! Tear it up! Now let us have something to eat in the other room. What, Llewellyn, no appetite?'

"But the family did not stay even to partake of the home-brewed. They were out of the house, I am told, before the coffin and the undertaker's men. There was big talking among them, as they went, of a conspiracy and a lunatic asylum. But though, to be sure, it was a wonderful recovery, and the doctor and Mr. Hughes, as they drove away after dinner, were very friendly together-which may have been only the home-brewed-at any rate the sole outcome of Llewellyn's talking and inquiries was that everyone laughed very much, and Robert Evans' name for a clever man was known beyond Carnarvon.

"Of course it would be open house at Court that day, with plenty of eating and drinking and coming and going. But toward five o'clock the place grew quiet again. The visitors had gone home, and Gwen Madoc was upstairs. The old man was sleeping in his chair opposite the settle, and Miss Peggy was sitting on the window-seat watching him, her hands in her lap, her thoughts far away. Maybe she was trying to be really glad that the home, about which the cows lowed and the gulls screamed in the afternoon stillness and made it seem home each minute, was hers still; that she was not quite alone, nor friendless, nor poor. Maybe she was striving not to think of the thing which had been taken from her and could not be given back. Whatever her thoughts, she was aroused by some sound to find her eyes full of hot tears, through which she could dimly see that the old man was awake and looking at her with a strange expression, which disappeared as she became aware of it.

"He began to speak. 'Providence has been very good to us, Peggy,' he said, with grim meaning. 'It is well for you, my girl, that our eyes are open to see our kind friends as they are. There is one besides those who were here this morning that will wish he had not been so hasty.'

"She rose quickly and looked out of the window. 'Don't speak of him. Let us forget him,' she pleaded, in a low tone.

"But Robert Evans seemed to take a delight in the-well, the goodness of Providence. 'If he had come to see you only once, when you were in trouble,' he went on, as if he were summing up the case in his own mind, and she were but a stick or a stone, 'we could have forgiven him, and I would have said you were right. Or even if he had written, eh?'

"'Oh, yes, yes!' sobbed the girl, her tears raining down her averted face. 'Don't torture me! You were right and I was wrong-all wrong!'

"'Well, yes, yes! Just so. But come here, my girl,' said the old man. 'Come!' he repeated imperiously, as, surprised in the midst of her grief, she wavered and hesitated, 'sit here,' and he pointed to the settle opposite to him. 'Now, suppose I were to tell you he had written, and that the letter had been-mislaid, shall we say? and come somehow to my hands? Now, don't get excited, girl!'

"'Oh!' cried Peggy, her hands fallen, her lips parted, her eyes wide and frightened, her whole form rigid with questioning.

"'Just suppose that, my dear,' continued Robert, 'and that the letter were now before us-would you abide by its contents? Remember, he must have much to explain. Would you let me decide whether his explanation were satisfactory or not?"

"She was trembling with expectation, hope. But she tried to think of the matter calmly, to remember her lover's hurried flight, the lack of word or message for her, her own misery. She nodded silently, and held out her hand.

"He drew a letter from his pocket. 'You will let me see it?' he said suspiciously.

"'Oh, yes!' she cried, and fled with it to the window. He watched her while she tore it open and read first one page and then another-there were but two, it was very short-watched her while she thrust it from her and looked at it as a whole, then drew it to her and kissed it again and again.

"'Wait a bit! wait a bit!' cried he testily. 'Now, let me see it.'

"She turned upon him almost fiercely, holding it away behind her, as if it were some living thing he might hurt. 'He thought he would meet me at the junction,' she stammered between laughing and crying. 'He was going to London to see his sister-that she might take me in. And he will be here to fetch me this evening. There! Take it!' and suddenly remembering herself she stretched out her hand and gave him the letter.

"'You promised to abide by my decision, you know,' said the old man gravely.

"'I will not!' she cried impetuously. 'Never!'

"'You promised,' he said.

"'I don't care! I don't care!' she replied, clasping her hands nervously. 'No one shall come between us.'

"'Very well,' said Robert Evans, 'then I need not decide. But you had better tell Owen to take the trap to the station to meet your man.'"

IN CUPID'S TOILS

I

HER STORY

"Clare," I said, "I wish that we had brought some better clothes, if it were only one frock. You look the oddest figure."

And she did. She was lying head to head with me on the thick moss that clothed one part of the river bank above Breistolen near the Sogn Fiord. We were staying at Breistolen, but there was no moss thereabouts, nor in all the Sogn district, I often thought, so deep and soft, and so dazzling orange and white and crimson as that particular patch. It lay quite high upon the hills, and there were great gray bowlders peeping through the moss here and there, very fit to break your legs, if you were careless. Little more than a mile higher up was the watershed, where our river, putting away with reluctance a first thought of going down the farther slope toward Bysberg, parted from its twin brother, who was thither bound with scores upon scores of puny, green-backed fishlets; and instead, came down our side gliding and swishing and swirling faster and faster, and deeper and wider every hundred yards to Breistolen, full of red-speckled yellow trout, all half a pound apiece, and very good to eat.

But they were not so sweet or toothsome to our girlish tastes as the tawny-orange cloud-berries which Clare and I were eating as we lay. So busy was she with the luscious pile we had gathered that I had to wait for an answer. And then, "Speak for yourself," she said. "I'm sure you look like a short-coated baby. He is somewhere up the river, too." Munch, munch, munch!

"Who is, you impertinent, greedy little chit?"

"Oh, you know!" she answered. "Don't you wish you had your gray plush here, Bab?"

I flung a look of calm disdain at her; but whether it was the berry juice which stained our faces that took from its effect, or the free mountain air which papa says saps the foundations of despotism, that made her callous, at any rate she only laughed scornfully and got up and went off down the stream with her rod, leaving me to finish the cloud-berries, and stare lazily up at the snow-patches on the hillside-which somehow put me in mind of the gray plush-and follow or not, as I liked.

Clare has a wicked story of how I gave in to papa, and came to start without anything but those rough clothes. She says he said-and Jack Buchanan has told me that lawyers put no faith in anything that he says she says, or she says he says, which proves how much truth there is in this-that if Bab took none but her oldest clothes, and fished all day, and had no one to run upon her errands-he meant Jack and the others, I suppose-she might possibly grow an inch in Norway. Just as if I wanted to grow an inch? An inch indeed! I am five feet one and a half high, and papa, who puts me an inch shorter, is the worst measurer in the world. As for Miss Clare, she would give all her inches for my eyes. So there!

After Clare left it began to be dull and chilly. When I had pictured to myself how nice it would be to dress for dinner again, and chosen the frock I would wear upon the first evening, I grew tired of the snow-patches, and started up stream, stumbling and falling into holes, and clambering over rocks, and only careful to save my rod and my face. It was no occasion for the gray plush, but I had made up my mind to reach a pool which lay, I knew, a little above me; having filched a yellow-bodied fly from Clare's hat, with a view to that particular place.

Our river did the oddest things hereabouts-pleased to be so young, I suppose. It was not a great churning stream of snow-water, foaming and milky, such as we had seen in some parts-streams that affected to be always in flood, and had the look of forcing the rocks asunder and clearing their path, even while you watched them with your fingers in your ears. Our river was none of these: still it was swifter than English rivers are wont to be, and in parts deeper, and transparent as glass. In one place it would sweep over a ledge and fall wreathed in spray into a spreading lake of black, rock-bound water. Then it would narrow again until, where you could almost jump across, it darted smooth and unbroken down a polished shoot with a swoop like a swallow's. Out of this it would hurry afresh to brawl along a gravelly bed, skipping jauntily over first one and then another ridge of stones that had silted up weir-wise and made as if they would bar the channel. Under the lee of these there were lovely pools.

To be able to throw into mine, I had to walk out along the ridge, on which the water was shallow, yet sufficiently deep to cover my boots. But I was well rewarded. The "forellin" – the Norse name for trout, and as pretty as their girls' wavy fair hair-were rising so merrily that I hooked and landed one in five minutes, the fly falling from its mouth as it touched the stones. I hate taking out hooks. I used at one time to leave the fly in the fish's mouth to be removed by papa at the weighing house; until Clare pricked her tongue at dinner with an almost new, red hackle, and was so mean as to keep it, though I remembered then what I had done with it, and was certain it was mine-which was nothing less than dishonest of her.

I had just got back to my place and made a fine cast, when there came-not the leap, and splash, and tug which announced the half-pounder-but a deep, rich gurgle as the fly was gently sucked under, and then a quiet, growing strain upon the line, which began to move away down the pool in a way that made the winch spin again and filled me with mysterious pleasure. I was not conscious of striking or of anything but that I had hooked a really good fish, and I clutched the rod with both hands and set my feet as tightly as I could upon the slippery gravel. The line moved up and down, and this way and that, now steadily and as with a purpose, and then again with an eccentric rush that made the top of the rod spring and bend so that I looked for it to snap each moment. My hands began to grow numb, and the landing-net, hitherto an ornament, fell out of my waist-belt and went I knew not whither. I suppose I must have stepped unwittingly into deeper water, for I felt that my skirts were afloat, and altogether things were going dreadfully against me, when the presence of an ally close at hand was announced by a cheery shout from the far side of the river.

"Keep up your point! Keep up your point!" someone cried briskly. "That is better!"

The unexpected sound-it was a man's voice-did something to keep my heart up. But for answer I could only shriek, "I can't! It will break!" watching the top of my rod as it jigged up and down, very much in the fashion of Clare performing what she calls a waltz. She dances as badly as a man.

"No, it will not," he cried back bluntly. "Keep it up, and let out a little line with your fingers when he pulls hardest."

We were forced to shout and scream. The wind had risen and was adding to the noise of the water. Soon I heard him wading behind me. "Where's your landing-net?" he asked, with the most provoking coolness.

"Oh, in the pool! Somewhere about. I am sure I don't know," I answered wildly.

What he said to this I could not catch, but it sounded rude. And then he waded off to fetch, as I guessed, his own net. By the time he reached me again I was in a sad plight, feet like ice, and hands benumbed, while the wind, and rain, and hail, which had come down upon us with a sudden violence, unknown, it is to be hoped, anywhere else, were mottling my face all sorts of unbecoming colors. But the line was taut. And wet and cold went for nothing five minutes later, when the fish lay upon the bank, its prismatic sides slowly turning pale and dull, and I knelt over it half in pity and half in triumph, but wholly forgetful of the wind and rain.

"You did that very pluckily, little one," said the on-looker; "but I am afraid you will suffer for it by and by. You must be chilled through."

Quickly as I looked up at him, I only met a good-humored smile. He did not mean to be rude. And after all, when I was in such a mess, it was not possible that he could see what I was like. He was wet enough himself. The rain was streaming from the brim of the soft hat which he had turned down to shelter his face, and trickling from his chin, and turning his shabby Norfolk jacket a darker shade. As for his hands, they looked red and knuckly enough, and he had been wading almost to his waist. But he looked, I don't know why, all the stronger and manlier and nicer for these things, because, perhaps, he cared for them not one whit. What I looked like myself I dared not think. My skirts were as short as short could be, and they were soaked; most of my hair was unplaited, my gloves were split, and my sodden boots were out of shape. I was forced, too, to shiver and shake from cold, which was provoking, for I knew it made me seem half as small again.

"Thank you, I am a little cold, Mr. – Mr. – " I said gravely, only my teeth would chatter so that he laughed outright as he took me up with-

"Herapath. And to whom have I the honor of speaking?"

"I am Miss Guest," I said miserably. It was too cold to be frigid to advantage.

"Commonly called Bab, I think," the wretch answered. "The walls of our hut are not sound-proof, you see. But come, the sooner you get back to dry clothes and the stove, the better, Bab. You can cross the river just below, and cut off half a mile that way."