IT is a keen experience of wayfarers that a north-easterly, unlike a south-easterly wind, seldom drops at evenfall; and therefore should it be a leading principle in the ethics of all wise innkeepers to leave a blind or two up when the rasping demon is abroad at sundown. For what an acute accent on numbness is that flash from a ruddy window! What an invitation in it and a suggestion of the purple bead on a glass of mulled wine! A moment before, life had blown chill and astringent—a hateful, brassy, and unprofitable affair, whose every vile sensation seemed concentrated in the tips of the ears. Now its interests have gleefully enlarged. There grows and blooms an image of a richly-bought experience of a sanded tap-room; of schools of sleek glasses on shelves, their glossy depths, in the red stillness of the fire-glow, slumberous with ruby, as if a memory of the good warm stuff they had known yet coloured all their dreams; of sturdy kegs, each with an amber drop tremulous on the nozzle of its tap, and its sides pregnant with jollity; of bowls of sugar; of pimpled lemons; of the comfortable purr of a kettle on the hob; of the essence of all of these rising in a fragrant steam that shall moisten the very drought of the heart and send it singing on its way.
Betty Pollack, the daughter and granddaughter of innkeepers, had the right comfortable instinct in this respect; and when the cry of the wind came under the door-sill like a wolf’s howl, she knew the demon flew from the north-east, and would order her plans accordingly.
Then, at fall of dark, from the unblinded tap-window of the “First Inn,” the zealous lamp-glow would flood the road and wash the trunks of the trees on the opposite side; till any one passing into that lighthouse radiance—wherein the whipped leaves were whirled like flakes of umber foam—would be as morally certain to gravitate towards the tavern-door as if he were come within the charmed circle about a witch’s lair.
And a very alluring witch was Betty—wholesome as white bread, and tempered with fragrance like the warm stroking bouquet of delectable claret. In winter she was still like the garden scabious, which of all flowers smells most of honey, and whose blossoms are little beds of love for troubadour bees.
It was ten o’clock of a wintry night, and Betty sang in her bar. She lifted up her sweet voice because she was alone; for the icy wind wailed without, and Hodge had filled up betimes and stumped off to his trundle-bed, and custom was scant. Grandfather was snoring in his blankets this half-hour; Jim hard by nodded against his lanthorn in the kitchen, and Betty thought of shutting up and seeking slumber of her own warm pillow.
She moved to and fro, putting little sprigs of Christmas in glasses, bottles, and up in odd places of the bar. For Yule was but a week to come, and Betty was staunch to tradition.
She sang as she moved (adapting them to an air of her own contriving) some words by a Mr. Wordsworth, who was then nothing popular in men’s mouths. But a travelling tinker (perhaps Peter Bell) had left the book with her as a tribute to her prettiness, and Betty knowing nothing of schools appreciated the gift.
“Sometimes he’ll hide in the cave of a rock,
Then whistle as shrill as the buzzard cock,”
she warbled of the wind; and a blade of it flashed in cuttingly on the note, for just then somebody pushed open the tap-door and entered.
Her song died in her throat. It went up like the requiem of the phœnix, in a flame of fire that reddened her cheeks, and then left them white as the ashes of rose leaves.
“Mr. Tuke,” she whispered.
He came in with a dark look on his face, that seemed stiff, moreover, with the onset of furious blasts; but the teeth showed in a smile as he walked up to the counter and held out his hand to the girl.
“Are you alone, Betty?”
“Yes,” she murmured, almost inaudibly.
He clasped the soft palm in his, and would not let it go.
“And you are decorating,” he said. “How snug and warm it looks, and I am chilled to the bone.”
Her face was gathering its pinks again.
“Won’t your honour come and toast at the parlour-fire?” she said timidly. “’Tis raw and cold where you stand.”
“I know it, my dear. The wind was a file in my teeth as I walked from ‘Delsrop.’”
“Walked! Your honour has walked?”
“And why not, Betty? That is a rare febrifuge—a night-tramp in a north-easter.”
She looked up at him strangely, as she undid the hasp of the half-door of the bar and held the panel open. He paused on the threshold.
“You are alone, you say?”
“All but for Jim, who nods in the kitchen. I was moving to lock up when your honour came.”
“Do so now, and send the lad to bed. I want you to myself, Betty.”
He did not wait for an answer; but walked past the girl and into the little warm room beyond her. And here he stood looking down upon the red glow of the fire.
He was conscious of a considerable pause, and then of an uncertain step moving away from the counter. A fierce and reckless devil was riding him, and all his senses were acute to answer to the bit.
Presently he heard a shutter going gently into place, and then the step again, and a soft voice—almost with an entreating anguish in it, as if it would fain have its order discarded.
“Jim, you can go to bed.”
There followed a dragging sound and a heavy shuffling tread, that receded and died out.
He waited once more—interminably it seemed.
At length he made up his mind and strode out into the tap.
The girl was leaning silently against the counter, her breath coming fast, her cheeks the colour of ladysmocks.
Without a word he led her into the little room and swung to the door. He put her before him and, taking her face between his hands, looked into her frightened eyes.
“Do I terrify you, you little brown starling? I am overcome myself, half-silly with anger and contempt, and most of all, I think, with injured vanity.”
She gazed up at him from the depths of entreating eyes, and he saw the slow tears gathering in them.
“Betty, Betty!” he murmured.
“You are a gentleman, and I am alone,” was all she answered.
He was silent a minute. He held her still, softly caressing the hair on her forehead.
“Why, I should be angered if any one called me otherwise,” he said. “And that, maybe, would end in a bullet; and so to prove my claim to the title before the court of final appeal up there. And what could I say?—that Betty trusted me, and that I abused her trust.”
“You will not—no, never.”
“But I am in a very cruel and selfish mood, sweetheart; and I know that you love me—I know it, Betty.”
She forced his hands apart, and stepped back.
“Yes,” she said bravely, “I do; I can’t help it. I would follow you across the world if you called me. But you will not.”
“Not across the world; but this room. Come!”
She went up to him at once; allowed herself to be taken into his arms—to have her lips passionately kissed. Then she drew back once more with bowed head.
“Now,” she said low, “I am yours; and I love you purely, and I am sweet and good. Yes, I am; for how else could I school the love in my heart, and it near breaking? And you love me because I am. But what should I be afterwards—oh, what, what?”
“Betty, I am unhappy.”
She threw herself into grandfather’s old elbow-chair, and buried her face in her hands.
“No, no!” she cried piteously. “You won’t be so cruel!”
He went and seated himself by her on the arm of the chair.
“Shall I tell you what hath driven me to you, Betty?”
“You have quarrelled with her,” came the answer in a muffled voice, out of woman’s intuition.
“No, my dear. I am not justified in assuming the right to quarrel. She hath given me none. But she maddens me with her whimsies till the man in me rises up and refuses to be any longer the slave of her caprices.”
“What is she doing?”
“She trifles with my suit. ’Twas an honourable one that would seek to found a union on esteem and confidence. What can she know of these when she plays off my own servant against me in the regard of both?”
“She will make none the worse wife for standing off and on a little before.”
“That is not like you, Betty.”
“Is it not? But I wear my shameful heart on my sleeve. And what of the servant?”
“A decent, low-born fellow. I hold him nothing to blame. He walks like a cat on the ice till ’tis comical to see him.”
He laughed slightly. The little warmth of merriment awoke new tenderness in him. He put his arm about the girl’s shoulders as she lay huddled close by.
“I take you into my confidence, dear; and you will not abuse me that I speak slightingly, out of my soreness, of a rival. Yet she is little that. She is a beautiful and refined lady, of whom I desired a favour that ’twere presumption for such as I to ask. So I withdraw my plan to wed delicately and live highly, and bow my admiration and retire. And then my heart gives a free leap, and I fly for love to the nest of my pretty brown bird.”
The girl sat up, and put the hair from her wet eyes.
“The bird would die on the morrow,” she said. “Oh! you must go back and try once more.”
“What! you would bid me to another’s arms?”
“I would bid you do the part of the brave and honourable gentleman my silly fancy went out to.”
“And, if I succeeded?”
“I should know what was mine. I could be happy and blithe and contented looking forward.”
“And would you die a maid for my sake?”
She clasped her hands and put them up so against his breast. The tears were running down her cheeks.
“Yes,” she murmured, half-choking, “I will promise that—my love—my love that is so far above and beyond me.”
He jumped to his feet.
“Get you gone!” he cried, almost roughly. “Go! while my heart is running over with pity. I will sit out the night by the fire here, and fight down my devil alone! Not another word, or kiss, or look! and—and, Betty, turn the key as you go and lock me in.”