The Last Galley, Arthur Conan Doyle [read along books txt] 📗

quick, nervous manner.

“Good evening, Miss Foster. I thought that I would walk over as the weather was so beautiful, but I did not expect to have the good fortune to meet you in the fields.”

“I am sure that father will be very glad to see you, Mr. Mason. You must come in and have a glass of milk.”

“No, thank you, Miss Foster, I should very much prefer to stay out here with you. But I am afraid that I have interrupted you in a chat. Was not that Mr. Adam Wilson who left you this moment?” His manner was subdued, but his questioning eyes and compressed lips told of a deeper and more furious jealousy than that of his rival.

“Yes. It was Mr. Adam Wilson.” There was something about Mason, a certain concentration of manner, which made it impossible for the girl to treat him lightly as she had done the other.

“I have noticed him here several times lately.”

“Yes. He is head foreman, you know, at the big quarry.”

“Oh, indeed. He is fond of your society, Miss Foster. I can’t blame him for that, can I, since I am equally so myself. But I should like to come to some understanding with you. You cannot have misunderstood what my feelings are to you? I am in a position to offer you a comfortable home. Will you be my wife, Miss Foster?”

Dolly would have liked to make some jesting reply, but it was hard to be funny with those two eager, fiery eyes fixed so intently upon her own. She began to walk slowly towards the house, while he paced along beside her, still waiting for his answer.

“You must give me a little time, Mr. Mason,” she said at last. “‘Marry in haste,’ they say, ‘and repent at leisure.’”

“But you shall never have cause to repent.”

“I don’t know. One hears such things.”

“You shall be the happiest woman in England.”

“That sounds very nice. You are a poet, Mr. Mason, are you not?”

“I am a lover of poetry.”

“And poets are fond of flowers?”

“I am very fond of flowers.”

“Then perhaps you know something of these?” She took out the humble little sprig, and held it out to him with an arch questioning glance. He took it and pressed it to his lips.

“I know that it has been near you, where I should wish to be,” said he.

“Good evening, Mr. Mason!” It was Mrs. Foster who had come out to meet them. “Where’s Mr.–-? Oh—ah! Yes, of course. The teapot’s on the table, and you’d best come in afore it’s over-drawn.”

When Elias Mason left the farmhouse that evening, he drew Dolly aside at the door.

“I won’t be able to come before Saturday,” said he.

“We shall be glad to see you, Mr. Mason.”

“I shall want my answer then.”

“Oh, I cannot give any promise, you know.”

“But I shall live in hope.”

“Well, no one can prevent you from doing that.” As she came to realize her power over him she had lost something of her fear, and could answer him now nearly as freely as if he were simple Adam Wilson.

She stood at the door, leaning against the wooden porch, with the long trailers of the honeysuckle framing her tall, slight figure. The great red sun was low in the west, its upper rim peeping over the low hills, shooting long, dark shadows from the beech-tree in the field, from the little group of tawny cows, and from the man who walked away from her. She smiled to see how immense the legs were, and how tiny the body in the great flat giant which kept pace beside him. In front of her in the little garden the bees droned, a belated butterfly or an early moth fluttered slowly over the flower-beds, a thousand little creatures buzzed and hummed, all busy working out their tiny destinies, as she, too, was working out hers, and each doubtless looking upon their own as the central point of the universe. A few months for the gnat, a few years for the girl, but each was happy now in the heavy summer air. A beetle scuttled out upon the gravel path and bored onwards, its six legs all working hard, butting up against stones, upsetting itself on ridges, but still gathering itself up and rushing onwards to some all-important appointment somewhere in the grass plot. A bat fluttered up from behind the beech-tree. A breath of night air sighed softly over the hillside with a little tinge of the chill sea spray in its coolness. Dolly Foster shivered, and had turned to go in when her mother came out from the passage.

“Whatever is that Bill doing there?” she cried.

Dolly looked, and saw for the first time that the nameless farm-labourer was crouching under the beech, his browns and yellows blending with the bark behind him.

“You go out o’ that, Bill!” screamed the farmer’s wife.

“What be I to do?” he asked humbly, slouching forward.

“Go, cut chaff in the barn.” He nodded and strolled away, a comical figure in his mud-crusted boots, his strap-tied corduroys and his almond-coloured skin.

“Well, then, you’ve taken Elias,” said the mother, passing her hand round her daughter’s waist. “I seed him a-kissing your flower. Well, I’m sorry for Adam, for he is a well-grown young man, a proper young man, blue ribbon, with money in the Post Office. Still some one must suffer, else how could we be purified. If the milk’s left alone it won’t ever turn into butter. It wants troubling and stirring and churning. That’s what we want, too, before we can turn angels. It’s just the same as butter.”

Dolly laughed. “I have not taken Elias yet,” said she.

“No? What about Adam then?”

“Nor him either.”

“Oh, Dolly girl, can you not take advice from them that is older. I tell you again that you’ll lose them both.”

“No, no, mother. Don’t you fret yourself. It’s all right. But you can see how hard it is. I like Elias, for he can speak so well, and is so sure and masterful. And I like Adam because—well, because I know very well that Adam loves me.”

“Well, bless my heart, you can’t marry them both. You’d like all the pears in the basket.”

“No, mother, but I know how to choose. You see this bit of a flower, dear.”

“It’s a common dog-rose.”

“Well, where d’you think I found it?”

“In the hedge likely.”

“No, but on my window-ledge.”

“Oh, but when?”

“This morning. It was six when I got up, and there it lay fresh and sweet, and new-plucked. ‘Twas the same yesterday and the day before. Every morning there it lies. It’s a common flower, as you say, mother, but it is not so common to find a man who’ll break short his sleep day after day just to show a girl that the thought of her is in his heart.”

“And which was it?”

“Ah, if I knew! I think it’s Elias. He’s a poet, you know, and poets do nice things like that.”

“And how will you be sure?”

“I’ll know before morning. He will come again, whichever it is. And whichever it is he’s the man for me. Did father ever do that for you before you married?”

“I can’t say he did, dear. But father was always a powerful heavy sleeper.”

“Well then, mother, you needn’t fret any more about me, for as sure as I stand here, I’ll tell you tomorrow which of them it is to be.”

That evening the farmer’s daughter set herself to clearing off all those odd jobs which accumulate in a large household. She polished the dark, old-fashioned furniture in the sitting-room. She cleared out the cellar, re-arranged the bins, counted up the cider, made a great cauldron full of raspberry jam, potted, papered, and labelled it. Long after the whole household was in bed she pushed on with her self-imposed tasks until the night was far gone and she very spent and weary. Then she stirred up the smouldering kitchen fire and made herself a cup of tea, and, carrying it up to her own room, she sat sipping it and glancing over an old bound volume of the Leisure Hour. Her seat was behind the little dimity window curtains, whence she could see without being seen.

The morning had broken, and a brisk wind had sprung up with the dawn. The sky was of the lightest, palest blue, with a scud of flying white clouds shredded out over the face of it, dividing, coalescing, overtaking one another, but sweeping ever from the pink of the east to the still shadowy west. The high, eager voice of the wind whistled and sang outside, rising from moan to shriek, and then sinking again to a dull mutter and grumble. Dolly rose to wrap her shawl around her, and as she sat down again in an instant her doubts were resolved, and she had seen that for which she had waited.

Her window faced the inner yard, and was some eight feet from the ground. A man standing beneath it could not be seen from above. But she saw enough to tell her all that she wished to know. Silently, suddenly, a hand had appeared from below, had laid a sprig of flower upon her ledge, and had disappeared. It did not take two seconds; she saw no face, she heard no sound, but she had seen the hand and she wanted nothing more. With a smile she threw herself upon the bed, drew a rug over her, and dropped into a heavy slumber.

She was awakened by her mother plucking at her shoulder.

“It’s breakfast time, Dolly, but I thought you would be weary, so I brought you lip some bread and coffee. Sit up, like a dearie, and take it.”

“All right, mother. Thank you. I’m all dressed, so I’ll be ready to come down soon.”

“Bless the gal, she’s never had her things off! And, dearie me, here’s the flower outside the window, sure enough! Well, and did you see who put it there?”

“Yes, I did.”

“Who was it then?”

“It was Adam.”

“Was it now? Well, I shouldn’t have thought that he had it in him. Then Adam it’s to be. Well, he’s steady, and that’s better than being clever, yea, seven-and-seventy fold. Did he come across the yard?”

“No, along by the wall.”

“How did you see him then?”

“I didn’t see him.”

“Then how can you tell?”

“I saw his hand.”

“But d’you tell me you know Adam’s hand?”

“It would be a blind man that couldn’t tell it from Elias’ hand. Why, the one is as brown as that coffee, and the other as white as the cup, with great blue veins all over it.”

“Well, now I shouldn’t have thought of it, but so it is. Well, it’ll be a busy day, Dolly. Just hark to the wind!”

It had, indeed, increased during the few hours since dawn to a very violent tempest. The panes of the window rattled and shook. Glancing out, Dolly saw cabbage leaves and straw whirling up past the casement.

“The great hayrick is giving. They’re all out trying to prop it up. My, but it do blow!”

It did indeed! When Dolly came downstairs it was all that she could do to push her way through the porch. All along the horizon the sky was brassy-yellow, but above the wind screamed and stormed, and the torn, hurrying clouds were now huddled together, and now frayed off into countless tattered streamers. In the field near the house her father and three or four labourers were working with poles and ropes, hatless, their hair and beards flying, staving up a great bulging hayrick. Dolly watched them for a