They had driven fourteen miles or upward through a lonely and somewhat melancholy country. It was, I suppose, little better than moor, but detached groups of trees, possibly the broken and disappearing fragments of what had once been a forest, gave it a sad sort of picturesqueness.
Mildred Tarnley was not a garrulous person, and had not spent her life at Carwell Grange without learning the accomplishment of taciturnity, but she remarked and resented the gloomy silence of Master Harry, who had never once addressed a word to her since they started.
Toward the close of their journey she observed that Harry Fairfield looked frequently at his watch, and hurried the pace of the mare, and altogether seemed to grow more and more anxious. They had been obliged to pull up twice to enable her to feed the baby, who was now fast asleep.
“ ’Tis right,” she thought, “he should look ahead and mind his driving, while we’re getting on, though a word now and then would not have troubled him much. But when we stopped to feed the child there was no excuse. He got down and settled the buckle at the horse’s head. He got up again, and drew the rug over his knees, and he leaned on his elbow back upon the cushion, and he never so much as asked was me or the baby alive!”
They now reached a gentle hollow, in which a shallow brook crossed the road, and some four or five habitations of an humble sort stood at either side; one under the shade of two gigantic ash trees, had a sign depending in front, being a wayside inn of the humblest dimensions.
A village this could hardly be termed; and at the near end Harry pulled up before a building a little above the rank of a cottage, old and quaint, with a large-leafed plant that, in the moonlight, looked like a vine, growing over the prop of a sort of porch that opened under the gable.
If the mare was quiet at the Grange, you may be sure that her run to Twyford had not made her less so.
Harry helped old Tarnley down, with her little charge in her arms, and led her silently into the neat little room, with tiers of delf ornaments, in brilliant colours, on the cupboard, and a Dutch clock ticking in the nook by the fire where some faggots crackled, and a candle was burning on the table in a bright brass candlestick.
Mrs. Tarnley’s experienced eye surveyed the room and its belongings. She descried, moreover, a ladder stair which mounted to a loft, from whose dormant window, as she looked from her seat in the tax-cart, she had observed the light of a candle.
Very humble it undoubtedly was, but nothing could be more scrupulously clean. It had an air of decency, too, that was reassuring. There was a woman there in a cloak and bonnet, who rose as they entered and courtesied.
Harry set a lumbering armchair by the fire, and beckoned Tarnley to occupy it. Then he asked:
“How soon is the Warhampton bus expected?”
“Twenty-five minutes, please, sir,” answered the woman, with another courtesy and a glance at the clock.
“That woman from Willett’s is coming by the bus,” he said gruffly, to Mildred. “ ’Tis a snug little place this, and as clean as a bone after a hungry dog. Would you mind,” he continued, addressing the stranger or hostess, whichsoever she might be, “tellin’ Archdale, if he’s here, I want a word wi’ him at the door?”
“He’s over the way, I think, sir, with the horse. I’ll call him, please, sir.”
So off she went.
“This is where poor Charles said he’d like to have his child nursed—Twyford; ’tis sweet air about here, considered. He was expectin’ a babby, poor fellow, and he talked a deal wi’ me about it the day he was took. Wouldn’t ye like a bit to eat and a glass of beer, or somethin’? They have lots over the way, for as poor as it looks; and here’s the pound I promised ye, lass, for luck, ye know, when we was leaving the Grange.”
He drew forth the hand with which he had been fumbling in his pocket and placed the piece of gold in hers.
“Thank you, Master Harry,” she said, making a little instinctive effort to rise for the purpose of executing a courtesy. But Harry, with his hand on her shoulder, repressed it.
“Sit ye quiet, and rest yourself, after joggin’ all this way; and what’s that bundle?”
“The baby’s things, sir.”
“All right. Well, and what will ye have?”
“I feel a bit queerish, Master Harry, I thank ye. I’d rather not eat nothin’ till I gets home, and I’ll get my cup o’ tea then.”
“Not eat!”
“Nothin’, sir, I thank ye, Master Harry.”
“Well,” said Harry, so far forth relieved, but resolved, cost what it might, to make Mildred happy on this particular occasion, “if ye won’t eat, I’m hanged but ye shall drink some. I tell ye what it shall be, a jug of sherry negus. Come, ye must.”
“Well, Master Harry, as so ye will have it, I’ll not say ye nay,” consented Mildred, graciously.
Harry went himself to the little pothouse over the way, and saw this nectar brewed, and brought it over in his own hand—the tankard in one hand and the glass in the other.
“Devilish good stuff it is, Mildred, and I’m glad, old lass, I thought of it. I remember you liked that brew long ago, and much good may it do you, girl.”
He was trying to be kind.
He had set it down on the table, and now, as he spoke, he laid his hand on her shoulder, and she thought she might have wronged Master Harry with his rough jests, and shrewd ways, and that he had more of the Fairfield in his nature than she had always given him credit for.
Out
