Stories in Light and Shadow, Bret Harte [urban books to read .txt] 📗

retired poacher somewhere in a hut in Crawley Woods, whom it’s death to approach, except with a large party. There’s malignant diphtheria over at the South Farm, eight down with measles at the keeper’s, and an old woman who has been bedridden for years.”

But Miss Desborough was adamant, though sparkling. She thanked him, but said she had just seen an old woman “who had been lying in bed for twenty years, and hadn’t spoken the truth once!” She proposed “going outside of Lord Beverdale’s own preserves of grain-fed poor,” and starting up her own game. She would return in time for luncheon—if she could; if not, she “should annex the gruel of the first kind incapable she met.”

Yet, actually, she was far from displeased at being accidentally discovered by these people while following out her capricious whim of the morning. One or two elder ladies, who had fought shy of her frocks and her frankness the evening before, were quite touched now by this butterfly who was willing to forego the sunlight of society, and soil her pretty wings on the haunts of the impoverished, with only a single companion,—of her own sex!—and smiled approvingly. And in her present state of mind, remembering her companion’s timid attitude towards Lord Beverdale’s opinions, she was not above administering this slight snub to him in her presence.

When they had driven away, with many regrets, Miss Amelyn was deeply concerned. “I am afraid,” she said, with timid conscientiousness, “I have kept you from going with them. And you must be bored with what you have seen, I know. I don’t believe you really care one bit for it—and you are only doing it to please me.”

“Trot out the rest of your show,” said Sadie promptly, “and we’ll wind up by lunching with the rector.”

“He’d be too delighted,” said Miss Amelyn, with disaster written all over her girlish, truthful face, “but—but—you know—it really wouldn’t be quite right to Lord Beverdale. You’re his principal guest—you know, and—they’d think I had taken you off.”

“Well,” said Miss Desborough impetuously, “what’s the matter with that inn—the Red Lion? We can get a sandwich there, I guess. I’m not VERY hungry.”

Miss Amelyn looked horrified for a moment, and then laughed; but immediately became concerned again. “No! listen to me, REALLY now! Let me finish my round alone! You’ll have ample time if you go NOW to reach the Priory for luncheon. Do, please! It would be ever so much better for everybody. I feel quite guilty as it is, and I suppose I am already in Lord Beverdale’s black books.”

The trouble in the young girl’s face was unmistakable, and as it suited Miss Desborough’s purpose just as well to show her independence by returning, as she had set out, alone, she consented to go. Miss Amelyn showed her a short cut across the park, and they separated—to meet at dinner. In this brief fellowship, the American girl had kept a certain supremacy and half-fascination over the English girl, even while she was conscious of an invincible character in Miss Amelyn entirely different from and superior to her own. Certainly there was a difference in the two peoples. Why else this inherited conscientious reverence for Lord Beverdale’s position, shown by Miss Amelyn, which she, an American alive to its practical benefits, could not understand? Would Miss Amelyn and Lord Algernon have made a better match? The thought irritated her, even while she knew that she herself possessed the young man’s affections, the power to marry him, and, as she believed, kept her own independence in the matter.

As she entered the iron gates at the lower end of the park, and glanced at the interwoven cipher and crest of the Amelyns still above, she was conscious that the wind was blowing more chill, and that a few clouds had gathered. As she walked on down the long winding avenue, the sky became overcast, and, in one of those strange contrasts of the English climate, the glory of the whole day went out with the sunshine. The woods suddenly became wrinkled and gray, the distant hills sombre, the very English turf beneath her feet grew brown; a mile and a half away, through the opening of the trees, the west part of the Priory looked a crumbling, ivy-eaten ruin. A few drops of rain fell. She hurried on. Suddenly she remembered that the avenue made a long circuit before approaching the house, and that its lower end, where she was walking, was but a fringe of the park. Consequently there must be a short cut across some fields and farm buildings to the back of the park and the Priory. She at once diverged to the right, presently found a low fence, which she clambered over, and again found a footpath which led to a stile. Crossing that, she could see the footpath now led directly to the Priory,—now a grim and austere looking pile in the suddenly dejected landscape,—and that it was probably used only by the servants and farmers. A gust of wind brought some swift needles of rain to her cheek; she could see the sad hills beyond the Priory already veiling their faces; she gathered her skirts and ran. The next field was a long one, but beside the further stile was a small clump of trees, the only ones between her and the park. Hurrying on to that shelter, she saw that the stile was already occupied by a tall but bent figure, holding a long stick in his hand, which gave him the appearance, against the horizon, of the figure of Time leaning on his scythe. As she came nearer she saw it was, indeed, an old man, half resting on his rake. He was very rugged and weather-beaten, and although near the shelter of the trees, apparently unmindful of the rain that was falling on his bald head, and the limp cap he was holding uselessly in one hand. He was staring at her, yet apparently unconscious of her presence. A sudden instinct came upon her—it was “Debs”!

She went directly up to him, and with that frank common sense which ordinarily distinguished her, took his cap from his hand and put it on his head, grasped his arm firmly, and led him to the shelter of the tree. Then she wiped the raindrops from his face with her handkerchief, shook out her own dress and her wet parasol, and, propping her companion against the tree, said:—

“There, Mr. Debs! I’ve heard of people who didn’t know enough to come in when it rained, but I never met one before.”

The old man started, lifted his hairy, sinewy arm, bared to the elbow, and wiped his bare throat with the dry side of it. Then a look of intelligence—albeit half aggressive—came into his face. “Wheer beest tha going?” he asked.

Something in his voice struck Sadie like a vague echo. Perhaps it was only the queer dialect—or some resemblance to his granddaughter’s voice. She looked at him a little more closely as she said:—

“To the Priory.”

“Whaat?”

She pointed with her parasol to the gray pile in the distance. It was possible that this demented peasant didn’t even UNDERSTAND English.

“The hall. Oh, ay!” Suddenly his brows knit ominously as he faced her. “An’ wassist tha doin’ drest oop in this foinery? Wheer gettist thee that goawn? Thissen, or thy maester? Nowt even a napron, fit for thy wark as maaid at serviss; an’ parson a gettin’ tha plaace at Hall! So thou’lt be high and moity will tha! thou’lt not walk wi’ maaids, but traipse by thissen like a slut in the toon—dang tha!”

Although it was plain to Sadie that the old man, in his wandering perception, had mistaken her for his granddaughter in service at the Priory, there was still enough rudeness in his speech for her to have resented it. But, strange to say, there was a kind of authority in it that touched her with an uneasiness and repulsion that was stronger than any other feeling. “I think you have mistaken me for some one else,” she said hurriedly, yet wondering why she had admitted it, and even irritated at the admission. “I am a stranger here, a visitor at the Priory. I called with Miss Amelyn at your cottage, and saw your other granddaughter; that’s how I knew your name.”

The old man’s face changed. A sad, senile smile of hopeless bewilderment crept into his hard mouth; he plucked his limp cap from his head and let it hang submissively in his fingers, as if it were his sole apology. Then he tried to straighten himself, and said, “Naw offins, miss, naw offins! If tha knaws mea tha’ll knaw I’m grandfeyther to two galls as moight be tha owern age; tha’ll tell ‘ee that old Debs at haaty years ‘as warked and niver lost a day as man or boy; has niver coome oopen ‘em for n’aporth. An’ ‘e’ll keep out o’ warkus till he doy. An’ ‘ee’s put by enow to by wi’ his own feythers in Lanksheer, an’ not liggen aloane in parson’s choorchyard.”

It was part of her uneasiness that, scarcely understanding or, indeed, feeling any interest in these maundering details, she still seemed to have an odd comprehension of his character and some reminiscent knowledge of him, as if she were going through the repetition of some unpleasant dream. Even his wrinkled face was becoming familiar to her. Some weird attraction was holding her; she wanted to get away from it as much as she wanted to analyze it. She glanced ostentatiously at the sky, prepared to open her parasol, and began to edge cautiously away.

“Then tha beant from these pearts?” he said suddenly.

“No, no,” she said quickly and emphatically,—“no, I’m an American.”

The old man started and moved towards her, eagerly, his keen eyes breaking through the film that at times obscured them. “‘Merrikan! tha baist ‘Merrikan? Then tha knaws ma son John, ‘ee war nowt but a bairn when brether Dick took un to ‘Merriky! Naw! Now! that wor fifty years sen!—niver wroate to his old feyther—niver coomed back, ‘Ee wor tall-loike, an’ thea said ‘e feavored mea.” He stopped, threw up his head, and with his skinny fingers drew back his long, straggling locks from his sunken cheeks, and stared in her face. The quick transition of fascination, repulsion, shock, and indefinable apprehension made her laugh hysterically. To her terror he joined in it, and eagerly clasped her wrists. “Eh, lass! tha knaws John—tha coomes from un to ole grandfeyther. Who-rr-u! Eay! but tha tho’t to fool mea, did tha, lass? Whoy, I knoawed tha voice, for a’ tha foine peacock feathers. So tha be John’s gell coom from Ameriky. Dear! a dear! Coom neaur, lass! let’s see what tha’s loike. Eh, but thou’lt kiss tha grandfather, sewerly?”

A wild terror and undefined consternation had completely overpowered her! But she made a desperate effort to free her wrists, and burst out madly:—

“Let me go! How dare you! I don’t know you or yours! I’m nothing to you or your kin! My name is Desborough—do you understand—do you hear me, Mr. Debs?—DESBOROUGH!”

At the word the old man’s fingers stiffened like steel around her wrists, as he turned upon her a hard, invincible face.

“So thou’lt call thissen Desborough, wilt tha? Let me tell tha, then, that ‘Debs,’ ‘Debban,’ ‘Debbrook,’ and ‘Desborough’ are all a seame! Ay! thy feyther and thy feyther’s feyther! Thou’lt be a Desborough, will tha? Dang tha! and look doon on tha kin, and dress thissen in silks o’ shame! Tell ‘ee thou’rt an ass, gell! Don’t tha hear? An ass! for all tha bean John’s bairn! An ass! that’s what tha beast!”

With flashing eyes and burning cheeks she made one more supreme effort, lifting her arms, freeing her wrists, and throwing the old man staggering