IT would seem something a matter for a wonder that a lady of Miss Royston’s refinement and varied capacity for ideals should be content to lead so long an annual series of her days to a pastoral retirement. A month in London about the chill opening of the year, and another, later, at Epsom, Tunbridge Wells, or, perhaps, Newmarket, would comprise the wonted period of her absence from “Chatters.” This may have been so according to choice or necessity; but it was probably dictated by the first in greatest degree. It is true her brother’s smug, good-humoured little face misexpressed a character very fairly endowed with determination. He was, and desired to be, a country squire; and, though he subscribed with infinite complacency to the extremest fashions of the town, it was only that he might thereby hold his neighbours to the right quantity of respect in alluding to his position amongst them. He would figure in their eyes, no Will Levett with a cudgel for Assembly Rooms, and still less a London fribble sporting with squirearchy; but a courteous lord of acres who should exemplify the best characteristics of both and the exaggerations of neither.
But his heart was with the country, and therefore it might be supposed that Miss Angela, in her rustic retirement, made a cloisteral virtue of necessity. It might be, and wrongfully, I believe. For this young lady’s tastes held much in common with those of her brother, enjoying different interests, but adapted to similar conditions. Perhaps she found a world of trees and flowers most fitting to her many excursions in romance. Perhaps she preferred conducting her own chorus of praise at “Chatters” to playing upon heart-strings in the crowded orchestras of fashion. Certainly she never had a mind to fiddle second, and, possibly, shrunk on that account from the necessity of ever assuming herself out-rivalled in that claim for leadership so passionately advanced by successive strings of town élégantes.
However that may be, her capacity for situations was extreme; her sensitiveness to any least appeal of the emotions a perpetual excuse for what, in a less gifted creature, would have passed for a most engaging inconstancy. Indeed, to thwart her in some pursuit of an ideal, was to feel the full force of the passion that impelled her to the chase.
So, for some nine months of the year, she held at her brother’s house her little feudatory court, and found, in the faithful homage of her squireens, a spring of content so untinged by jealousy, or the necessity of it, as that it seemed the very rejuvenating water of life. There, did she tire of poetry, she smiled upon music in a way to make it almost in tune with itself; did she fall out of touch with Handel, she sickened, as it were, of art, and painted her name with an elegant flourish on the bright margin of the sky; did she weary of Tom, she handed him over for decent burial in a homelier heart, and coquetted with Dick during the whole of a St. Martin’s summer. And for all she did there was the appropriate background of woods and freshets and frisking lambs, that seemed to justify her most erratic courses. For the trees changed month by month, and the freshets swelled to torrents, and the lambs frisked into mutton with fat wool and were shorn.
Now, about the period of Mr. Tuke’s invasion of her fields of romance, she was in her state aurelian; and, bursting its shell, her butterfly fancy lighted on him. Never before had she happened upon so dear a flower for the engagement of her sensibilities. She tested him with her delicate antennæ, and found him full of a rough honey that charmed her palate exceedingly. He had thorns; but with her little nippers she could pinch the tips off these and make them harmless. She fell into a really parlous state, and seemed to learn her womanliness—though she was rising twenty-seven—in a single sweet hour.
His image had dwelt with her ever since. It was with her now, as she stepped over the threshold of “Chatters” in her riding-habit. For she was for a canter with her brother; and secretly she hoped to come across him in the course of it.
Sir David was already in the saddle, and a groom held her horse.
At the very moment she came forth, she heard her brother utter an exclamation, and saw a light bounding figure fling itself towards him and, catching at his saddle-bow, make some appeal to him with a frenzy of gesture. It was the girl Darda, as she saw—hoodless, flushed and dishevelled; and the lady looked on a little amazed, and with a fine attitude of scorn towards a creature who could so forego the ethics of her sex under the stimulus of excitement.
“What is it, Davy?” she said, descending the steps, and coldly ignoring the wild-eyed young woman, who as indifferently returned her contempt with utter disregard of her presence.
Sir David looked perplexed and troubled.
“Hush!” he said to the girl, who still pleaded with him in a low clamour of words.
Darda fell silent; but she looked round on Miss Royston with lowered brows and her white teeth set doggedly.
“Rabbit it!” cried the little baronet in perturbation. “I’m foundered, Angel. What shall I do?”
“We are going for a ride, are we not?”
“Yes. But lookee here. The girl says Tuke accuses her brother of some villainy, and hath shut him up in the ‘Priest’s Hole.’”
“He can do as he likes with his own, I presume.”
Darda broke into a mad outcry.
“Shame on you!” she screamed—“that can lock your woman’s breast from pity with a key of gold! He’s poor and friendless, or such as you would never dare to speak so!”
“Silence, girl!” said Sir David sternly; but his sister had flushed up a very stormy red.
“The fellow hath no more than his deserts, I’ll warrant,” she said loudly. “It must be ill managing a craven and an idiot.”
Sir David vaulted from his saddle. Miss Angel’s fingers were nervous with her little riding-whip, and her pale eyes glinted like broken flints.
“Have reason, Angel,” he said quickly. “What if I have small ground to interfere? Dennis is my old friend; and, by cock, I can’t believe him guilty of aught but weakness at the worst. There must be some mistake. At least I can do no harm by seein’ the master.”
Darda caught his hand and kissed it passionately.
“You will let him free!” she cried. “Come, come, come! Every minute maddens him that he lies among the shadows. You don’t know what that is. Put my fine lady there and cure her of the vapours.”
Her fingers crooked with desire to mangle the fair face near her.
“Come!” she shrieked again—“or that devil will have his own. I tried to stab him, but he saw and struck the knife out of my hand.”
Sir David started back.
“Oh!” he cried, with a fallen face. “What’s that? I must ride over in good truth. Follow, you, Darda; and keep those wicked fingers out of the fire.”
Miss Royston stepped forward haughtily. The groom, a passive but greatly interested spectator of this pretty scene, touched his cap and held down his hand for stirrup.
“If you really intend it,” said the lady, making, on a sudden thought, a virtue of inclination, “I will come with you. There may be bad blood fired, where one interferes unwarrantably with the actions of another.”
“I think not,” said Sir David quietly; “if Mr. Tuke is the man I take him to be. But, come, Angel. You may serve as an argument where none of mine would carry.”
She gave a light laugh as she was lifted into her saddle.
“You flatter me, brother,” she said. “I will persuade in the language of flowers, and you by club-law. We will see which hath the better wit.”
She flicked up her horse, and, whether by accident or design, drove it brushing against Darda as she stood near.
The girl sprang back, almost with an oath on her lips.
“Some day, perhaps,” she muttered in her teeth—“some day, perhaps, you shall set your wit against bright steel, mistress, and see which is the sharper.”
She caught sight of Sir David turning in his saddle and beckoning her to follow, and waved to him and cried wildly, “I am coming!”
“To ’a view hulloa!” said the attentive groom, with a grin. “Run un to earth, gal, in the ‘Priest’s Hoal.’”
“Oh, my!” he cried jeeringly, as she struck at him aimlessly in passing and sped on her way.