Doncastle seemed inclined to make no remark during the dressing, and at last Menlove could repress herself no longer.

‘I should like to name something to you, m’m.’

‘Yes.’

‘I shall be wishing to leave soon, if it is convenient.’

‘Very well, Menlove,’ answered Mrs. Doncastle, as she serenely surveyed her right eyebrow in the glass.  ‘Am I to take this as a formal notice?’

‘If you please; but I could stay a week or two beyond the month if suitable.  I am going to be married—that’s what it is, m’m.’

‘O!  I am glad to hear it, though I am sorry to lose you.’

‘It is Lord Mountclere’s valet—Mr. Tipman—m’m.’

‘Indeed.’

Menlove went on building up Mrs. Doncastle’s hair awhile in silence.

‘I suppose you heard the other news that arrived in town to-day, m’m?’ she said again.  ‘Lord Mountclere is going to be married to-morrow.’

‘To-morrow?  Are you quite sure?’

‘O yes, m’m.  Mr. Tipman has just told me so in his letter.  He is going to be married to Mrs. Petherwin.  It is to be quite a private wedding.’

Mrs. Doncastle made no remark, and she remained in the same still position as before; but a countenance expressing transcendent surprise was reflected to Menlove by the glass.

At this sight Menlove’s tongue so burned to go further, and unfold the lady’s relations with the butler downstairs, that she would have lost a month’s wages to be at liberty to do it.  The disclosure was almost too magnificent to be repressed.  To deny herself so exquisite an indulgence required an effort which nothing on earth could have sustained save the one thing that did sustain it—the knowledge that upon her silence hung the most enormous desideratum in the world, her own marriage.  She said no more, and Mrs. Doncastle went away.

It was an ordinary family dinner that day, but their nephew Neigh happened to be present.  Just as they were sitting down Mrs. Doncastle said to her husband: ‘Why have you not told me of the wedding to-morrow?—or don’t you know anything about it?’

‘Wedding?’ said Mr. Doncastle.

‘Lord Mountclere is to be married to Mrs. Petherwin quite privately.’

‘Good God!’ said some person.

Mr. Doncastle did not speak the words; they were not spoken by Neigh: they seemed to float over the room and round the walls, as if originating in some spiritualistic source.  Yet Mrs. Doncastle, remembering the symptoms of attachment between Ethelberta and her nephew which had appeared during the summer, looked towards Neigh instantly, as if she thought the words must have come from him after all; but Neigh’s face was perfectly calm; he, together with her husband, was sitting with his eyes fixed in the direction of the sideboard; and turning to the same spot she beheld Chickerel standing pale as death, his lips being parted as if he did not know where he was.

‘Did you speak?’ said Mrs. Doncastle, looking with astonishment at the butler.

‘Chickerel, what’s the matter—are you ill?’ said Mr. Doncastle simultaneously.  ‘Was it you who said that?’

‘I did, sir,’ said Chickerel in a husky voice, scarcely above a whisper.  ‘I could not help it.’

‘Why?’

‘She is my daughter, and it shall be known at once!’

‘Who is your daughter?’

He paused a few moments nervously.  ‘Mrs. Petherwin,’ he said.

Upon this announcement Neigh looked at poor Chickerel as if he saw through him into the wall.  Mrs. Doncastle uttered a faint exclamation and leant back in her chair: the bare possibility of the truth of Chickerel’s claims to such paternity shook her to pieces when she viewed her intimacies with Ethelberta during the past season—the court she had paid her, the arrangements she had entered into to please her; above all, the dinner-party which she had contrived and carried out solely to gratify Lord Mountclere and bring him into personal communication with the general favourite; thus making herself probably the chief though unconscious instrument in promoting a match by which her butler was to become father-in-law to a peer she delighted to honour.  The crowd of perceptions almost took away her life; she closed her eyes in a white shiver.

‘Do you mean to say that the lady who sat here at dinner at the same time that Lord Mountclere was present, is your daughter?’ asked Doncastle.

‘Yes, sir,’ said Chickerel respectfully.

‘How did she come to be your daughter?’

‘I—  Well, she is my daughter, sir.’

‘Did you educate her?’

‘Not altogether, sir.  She was a very clever child.  Lady Petherwin took a deal of trouble about her education.  They were both left widows about the same time: the son died, then the father.  My daughter was only seventeen then.  But though she’s older now, her marriage with Lord Mountclere means misery.  He ought to marry another woman.’

‘It is very extraordinary,’ Mr. Doncastle murmured.  ‘If you are ill you had better go and rest yourself, Chickerel.  Send in Thomas.’

Chickerel, who seemed to be much disturbed, then very gladly left the room, and dinner proceeded.  But such was the peculiarity of the case, that, though there was in it neither murder, robbery, illness, accident, fire, or any other of the tragic and legitimate shakers of human nerves, two of the three who were gathered there sat through the meal without the least consciousness of what viands had composed it.  Impressiveness depends as much upon propinquity as upon magnitude; and to have honoured unawares the daughter of the vilest Antipodean miscreant and murderer would have been less discomfiting to Mrs. Doncastle than it was to make the same blunder with the daughter of a respectable servant who happened to live in her own house.  To Neigh the announcement was as the catastrophe of a story already begun, rather than as an isolated wonder.  Ethelberta’s words had prepared him for something, though the nature of that thing was unknown.

‘Chickerel ought not to have kept us in ignorance of this—of course he ought not!’ said Mrs. Doncastle, as soon as they were left alone.

‘I don’t see why not,’ replied Mr. Doncastle, who took the matter very coolly, as was his custom.

‘Then she herself should have let it be known.’

‘Nor does that follow.  You didn’t tell Mrs. Petherwin that your grandfather narrowly escaped hanging for shooting his rival in a duel.’

‘Of course not.  There was no reason why I should give extraneous information.’

‘Nor was there any reason why she should.  As for Chickerel, he doubtless felt how unbecoming it would be to make personal remarks upon one of your guests—Ha-ha-ha!  Well, well—Ha-ha-ha-ha!’

‘I know this,’ said Mrs. Doncastle, in great anger, ‘that if my father had been in the room, I should not have let the fact pass unnoticed, and treated him like a stranger!’

‘Would you have had her introduce Chickerel to us all round?  My dear Margaret, it was a complicated position for a woman.’

‘Then she ought not to have come!’

‘There may be something in that, though she was dining out at other houses as good as ours.  Well, I should have done just as she did, for the joke of the thing.  Ha-ha-ha!—it is very good—very.  It was a case in which the appetite for a jest would overpower the sting of conscience in any well-constituted being—that, my dear, I must maintain.’

‘I say she should not have come!’ answered Mrs. Doncastle firmly.  ‘Of course I shall dismiss Chickerel.’

‘Of course you will do no such thing.  I have never had a butler in the house before who suited me so well.  It is a great credit to the man to have such a daughter, and I am not sure that we do not derive some lustre of a humble kind from his presence in the house.  But, seriously, I wonder at your short-sightedness, when you know the troubles we have had through getting new men from nobody knows where.’

Neigh, perceiving that the breeze in the atmosphere might ultimately intensify to a palpable black squall, seemed to think it would be well to take leave of his uncle and aunt as soon as he conveniently could; nevertheless, he was much less discomposed by the situation than by the active cause which had led to it.  When Mrs. Doncastle arose, her husband said he was going to speak to Chickerel for a minute or two, and Neigh followed his aunt upstairs.

Presently Doncastle joined them.  ‘I have been talking to Chickerel,’ he said.  ‘It is a very curious affair—this marriage of his daughter and Lord Mountclere.  The whole situation is the most astounding I have ever met with.  The man is quite ill about the news.  He has shown me a letter which has just reached him from his son on the same subject.  Lord Mountclere’s brother and this young man have actually gone off together to try to prevent the wedding, and Chickerel has asked to be allowed to go himself, if he can get soon enough to the station to catch the night mail.  Of course he may go if he wishes.’

‘What a funny thing!’ said the lady, with a wretchedly factitious smile.  ‘The times have taken a strange turn when the angry parent of the comedy, who goes post-haste to prevent the undutiful daughter’s rash marriage, is a gentleman from below stairs, and the unworthy lover a peer of the realm!’

Neigh spoke for almost the first time.  ‘I don’t blame Chickerel in objecting to Lord Mountclere.  I should object to him myself if I had a daughter.  I never liked him.’

‘Why?’ said Mrs. Doncastle, lifting her eyelids as if the act were a heavy task.

‘For reasons which don’t generally appear.’

‘Yes,’ said Mr. Doncastle, in a low tone.  ‘Still, we must not believe all we hear.’

‘Is Chickerel going?’ said Neigh.

‘He leaves in five or ten minutes,’ said Doncastle.

After a few further words Neigh mentioned that he was unable to stay longer that evening, and left them.  When he had reached the outside of the door he walked a little way up the pavement and back again, as if reluctant to lose sight of the street, finally standing under a lamp-post whence he could command a view of Mr. Doncastle’s front.  Presently a man came out in a great-coat and with a small bag in his hand; Neigh at once recognizing the person as Chickerel, went up to him.

‘Mr. Doncastle tells me you are going on a sudden journey.  At what time does your train leave?’ Neigh asked.

‘I go by the ten o’clock, sir: I hope it is a third-class,’ said Chickerel; ‘though I am afraid it may not be.’

‘It is as much as you will do to get to the station,’ said Neigh, turning the face of his watch to the light.  ‘Here, come into my cab—I am driving that way.’

‘Thank you, sir,’ said Chickerel.

Neigh called a cab at the first opportunity, and they entered and drove along together.  Neither spoke during the journey.  When they were driving up to the station entrance Neigh looked again to see the hour.

‘You have not a minute to lose,’ he said, in repressed anxiety.  ‘And your journey will be expensive: instead of walking from Anglebury to Knollsea, you had better drive—above all, don’t lose time.  Never mind what class the train is.  Take this from me, since the emergency is great.’  He handed something to Chickerel folded up small.

The butler took it without inquiry, and stepped out hastily.

‘I sincerely hope she—  Well, good-night, Chickerel,’ continued Neigh, ending his words abruptly.  The cab containing him drove again towards the station-gates, leaving Chickerel standing on the kerb.

He passed through the booking-office, and looked at the paper Neigh had put into his hand.  It was a five-pound note.

Chickerel mused on the circumstance as he took his ticket and got into the train.

43. THE RAILWAY—THE SEA—THE SHORE BEYOND

By this time Sol and the Honourable Edgar Mountclere had gone far on their journey into Wessex.  Enckworth Court, Mountclere’s destination, though several miles from Knollsea, was most easily accessible by the same route as that to the village, the latter being the place for which Sol was bound.

From the few words that passed between them on the way, Mountclere became more stubborn than ever in a belief that this was a carefully laid trap of the fair Ethelberta’s to ensnare his brother without revealing to him her family ties, which it therefore behoved him to make clear, with the utmost force of representation, before the fatal union had been contracted.  Being himself the viscount’s only remaining brother and near relative, the disinterestedness of his motives may be left to imagination; that there was much real excuse for his conduct must, however, be borne in mind.  Whether his attempt would prevent the union was another question: he believed that, conjoined with his personal influence over the viscount, and the importation of Sol as a firebrand to throw between the betrothed pair, it might do so.

About half-an-hour before sunset the two individuals, linked by their differences, reached the point of railway at which the branch to Sandbourne left the main line.  They had taken tickets for Sandbourne, intending to go thence to Knollsea by the steamer that plied between the two places during the summer months—making this a short and direct route.  But it occurred to Mountclere on the way that, summer being over, the steamer might possibly have left off running, the wind might be too high for a small boat, and no large one might be at hand for hire: therefore it would be safer to go by train to Anglebury, and the remaining sixteen miles by driving over the hills, even at a great loss of time.

Accident, however, determined otherwise.  They were in the station at the junction, inquiring of an official if the Speedwell had ceased to sail, when a countryman who had just come up from Sandbourne stated that, though the Speedwell had left off for the year, there was that day another steamer at Sandbourne.  This steamer would of necessity return to Knollsea that evening, partly because several people from that place had been on board, and also because the Knollsea folk were waiting for groceries and draperies from London: there was not an ounce of tea or a hundredweight of coal in the village, owing to the recent winds, which had detained the provision parcels at Sandbourne, and kept the colliers up-channel until the change of weather this day.  To introduce necessaries by a roundabout land journey was not easy when they had been ordered by the other and habitual route.  The boat returned at six o’clock.

So on they went to Sandbourne, driving off to the pier directly they reached that place, for it was getting towards night.  The steamer was there, as the man had told them, much to the relief of Sol, who, being extremely anxious to enter Knollsea before a late hour, had known that this was the only way in which it could be done.

Some unforeseen incident delayed the boat, and they walked up and down the pier to wait.  The prospect was gloomy enough.  The wind was north-east; the sea along shore was a chalky-green, though comparatively calm, this part of the coast forming a shelter from wind in its present quarter.  The clouds had different velocities, and some of them shone with a coppery glare, produced by rays from the west which did not enter the inferior atmosphere at all.  It was reflected on the distant waves in patches, with an effect as if the waters were at those particular spots stained with blood.  This departed, and what daylight was left to the earth came from strange and unusual quarters of the heavens.  The zenith would be bright, as if that were the place of the sun; then all overhead would close, and a whiteness in the east would give the appearance of morning; while a bank as thick as a wall barricaded the west, which looked as if it had no acquaintance with sunsets, and would blush red no more.

‘Any other passengers?’ shouted the master of the steamboat.  ‘We must be off: it may be a dirty night.’

Sol and Mountclere went on board, and the pier receded in the dusk.

‘Shall we have any difficulty in getting into Knollsea Bay?’ said Mountclere.

‘Not if the wind keeps where it is for another hour or two.’

‘I fancy it is shifting to the east’ard,’ said Sol.

The captain looked as if he had thought the same thing.

‘I hope I shall be able to get home to-night,’ said a Knollsea woman.  ‘My little children be left alone.  Your mis’ess is in a bad way, too—isn’t she, skipper?’

‘Yes.’

‘And you’ve got the doctor from Sandbourne aboard, to tend her?’

‘Yes.’

‘Then you’ll be sure to put into Knollsea, if you can?’

‘Yes.  Don’t be alarmed, ma’am.  We’ll do what we can.  But no one must boast.’

The skipper’s remark was the result of an observation that the wind had at last flown to the east, the single point of the compass whence it could affect Knollsea Bay.  The result of this change was soon perceptible.  About midway in their transit the land elbowed out to a bold chalk promontory; beyond this stretched a vertical wall of the same cliff, in a line parallel with their course.  In fair weather it was possible and customary to steer close along under this hoary facade for the distance of a mile, there being six fathoms of water within a few boats’ lengths of the precipice.  But it was an ugly spot at the best of times, landward no less than seaward, the cliff rounding off at the top in vegetation, like a forehead with low-grown hair, no defined edge being provided as a warning to unwary pedestrians on the downs above.

As the wind sprung up stronger, white clots could be discerned at the water level of the cliff, rising and falling against the black band of shaggy weed that formed a sort of skirting to the base of the wall.  They were the first-fruits of the new east blast, which shaved the face of the cliff like a razor—gatherings of foam in the shape of heads, shoulders, and arms of snowy whiteness, apparently struggling to rise from the deeps, and ever sinking back to their old levels again.  They reminded an observer of a drowning scene in a picture of the Deluge.  At some points the face of rock was hollowed into gaping caverns, and the water began to thunder into these with a leap that was only topped by the rebound seaward again.  The vessel’s head was kept a little further to sea, but beyond that everything went on as usual.

The precipice was still in view, and before it several huge columns of rock appeared, detached from the mass behind.  Two of these were particularly noticeable in the grey air—one vertical, stout and square; the other slender and tapering.  They were individualized as husband and wife by the coast men.  The waves leapt up their sides like a pack of hounds; this, however, though fearful in its boisterousness, was nothing to the terrible games that sometimes went on round the knees of those giants in stone.  Yet it was sufficient to cause the course of the frail steamboat to be altered yet a little more—from south-west-by-south to south-by-west—to give the breakers a still wider berth.

‘I wish we had gone by land, sir; ’twould have been surer play,’ said Sol to Mountclere, a cat-and-dog friendship having arisen between them.

‘Yes,’ said Mountclere.  ‘Knollsea is an abominable place to get into with an east wind blowing, they say.’

Another circumstance conspired to make their landing more difficult, which Mountclere knew nothing of.  With the wind easterly, the highest sea prevailed in Knollsea Bay from the slackening of flood-tide to the first hour of ebb.  At that time the water outside stood without a current, and ridges and hollows chased each other towards the beach unchecked.  When the tide was setting strong up or down Channel its flow across the mouth of the bay thrust aside, to some extent, the landward plunge of the waves.

We glance for a moment at the state of affairs on the land they were nearing.

This was the time of year to know the truth about the inner nature and character of Knollsea; for to see Knollsea smiling to the summer sun was to see a courtier before a king; Knollsea was not to be known by such simple means.  The half-dozen detached villas used as lodging-houses in the summer, standing aloof from the cots of the permanent race, rose in the dusk of this gusty evening, empty, silent, damp, and dark as tombs.  The gravel walks leading to them were invaded by leaves and tufts of grass.  As the darkness thickened the wind increased, and each blast raked the iron railings before the houses till they hummed as if in a song of derision.  Certainly it seemed absurd at this time of year that human beings should expect comfort in a spot capable of such moods as these.

However, one of the houses looked cheerful, and that was the dwelling to which Ethelberta had gone.  Its gay external colours might as well have been black for anything that could be seen of them now, but an unblinded window revealed inside it a room bright and warm.  It was illuminated by firelight only.  Within, Ethelberta appeared against the curtains, close to the glass.  She was watching through a binocular a faint light which had become visible in the direction of the bluff far away over the bay.

‘Here is the Spruce at last, I think,’ she said to her sister, who was by the fire.  ‘I hope they will be able to land the things I have ordered.  They are on board I know.’

The wind continued to rise till at length something from the lungs of the gale alighted like a feather upon the pane, and remained there sticking.  Seeing the substance, Ethelberta opened the window to secure it.  The fire roared and the pictures kicked the walls; she closed the sash, and brought to the light a crisp fragment of foam.

‘How suddenly the sea must have risen,’ said Picotee.

The servant entered the room.  ‘Please, mis’ess says she is afraid you won’t have your things to-night, ’m.  They say the steamer can’t land, and mis’ess wants to know if she can do anything?’

‘It is of no consequence,’ said Ethelberta.  ‘They will come some time, unless they go to the bottom.’

The girl left the room.  ‘Shall we go down to the shore and see what the night is like?’ said Ethelberta.  ‘This is the last opportunity I shall have.’

‘Is it right for us to go, considering you are to be married to-morrow?’ said Picotee, who had small affection for nature in this mood.

Her sister laughed.  ‘Let us put on our cloaks—nobody will know us.  I am sorry to leave this grim and primitive place, even for Enckworth Court.’

They wrapped themselves up, and descended the hill.

On drawing near the battling line of breakers which marked the meeting of sea and land they could perceive within the nearly invisible horizon an equilateral triangle of lights.  It was formed of three stars, a red on the one side, a green on the other, and a white on the summit.  This, composed of mast-head and side lamps, was all that was visible of the Spruce, which now faced end-on about half-a-mile distant, and was still nearing the pier.  The girls went further, and stood on the foreshore, listening to the din.  Seaward appeared nothing distinct save a black horizontal band embodying itself out of the grey water, strengthening its blackness, and enlarging till it looked like a nearing wall.  It was the concave face of a coming wave.  On its summit a white edging arose with the aspect of a lace frill; it broadened, and fell over the front with a terrible concussion.  Then all before them was a sheet of whiteness, which spread with amazing rapidity, till they found themselves standing in the midst of it, as in a field of snow.  Both felt an insidious chill encircling their ankles, and they rapidly ran up the beach.

‘You girls, come away there, or you’ll be washed off: what need have ye for going so near?’

Ethelberta recognized the stentorian voice as that of Captain Flower, who, with a party of boatmen, was discovered to be standing near, under the shelter of a wall.  He did not know them in the gloom, and they took care that he should not.  They retreated further up the beach, when the hissing fleece of froth slid again down the shingle, dragging the pebbles under it with a rattle as of a beast gnawing bones.

The spot whereon the men stood was called ‘Down-under-wall;’ it was a nook commanding a full view of the bay, and hither the nautical portion of the village unconsciously gravitated on windy afternoons and nights, to discuss past disasters in the reticent spirit induced by a sense that they might at any moment be repeated.  The stranger who should walk the shore on roaring and sobbing November eves when there was not light sufficient to guide his footsteps, and muse on the absoluteness of the solitude, would be surprised by a smart ‘Good-night’ being returned from this corner in company with the echo of his tread.  In summer the six or eight perennial figures stood on the breezy side of the wall—in winter and in rain to leeward; but no weather was known to dislodge them.

‘I had no sooner come ashore than the wind began to fly round,’ said the previous speaker; ‘and it must have been about the time they were off Old-Harry Point.  “She’ll put back for certain,” I said; and I had no more thought o’ seeing her than John’s set-net that was carried round the point o’ Monday.’

‘Poor feller: his wife being in such a state makes him anxious to land if ’a can: that’s what ’tis, plain enough.’

‘Why that?’ said Flower.

‘The doctor’s aboard, ’a believe: “I’ll have the most understanding man in Sandbourne, cost me little or much,” he said.’

‘’Tis all over and she’s better,’ said the other.  ‘I called half-an-hour afore dark.’

Flower, being an experienced man, knew how the judgment of a ship’s master was liable to be warped by family anxieties, many instances of the same having occurred in the history of navigation.  He felt uneasy, for he knew the deceit and guile of this bay far better than did the master of the Spruce, who, till within a few recent months, had been a stranger to the place.  Indeed, it was the bay which had made Flower what he was, instead of a man in thriving retirement.  The two great ventures of his life had been blown ashore and broken up within that very semicircle.  The sturdy sailor now stood with his eyes fixed on the triangle of lights which showed that the steamer had not relinquished her intention of bringing up inside the pier if possible; his right hand was in his pocket, where it played with a large key which lay there.  It was the key of the lifeboat shed, and Flower was coxswain.  His musing was on the possibility of a use for it this night.

It appeared that the captain of the Spruce was aiming to pass in under the lee of the pier; but a strong current of four or five knots was running between the piles, drifting the steamer away at every attempt as soon as she slowed.  To come in on the other side was dangerous, the hull of the vessel being likely to crash against and overthrow the fragile erection, with damage to herself also.  Flower, who had disappeared for a few minutes, now came back.

‘It is just possible I can make ’em hear with the trumpet, now they be to leeward,’ he said, and proceeded with two or three others to grope his way out upon the pier, which consisted simply of a row of rotten piles covered with rotten planking, no balustrade of any kind existing to keep the unwary from tumbling off.  At the water level the piles were eaten away by the action of the sea to about the size of a man’s wrist, and at every fresh influx the whole structure trembled like a spider’s web.  In this lay the danger of making fast, for a strong pull from a headfast rope might drag the erection completely over.  Flower arrived at the end, where a lantern hung.

‘Spruce ahoy!’ he blared through the speaking trumpet two or three times.

There seemed to be a reply of some sort from the steamer.

‘Tuesday’s gale hev loosened the pier, Cap’n Ounce; the bollards be too weak to make fast to: must land in boats if ye will land, but dangerous; yer wife is out of danger, and ’tis a boy-y-y-y!’

Ethelberta and Picotee were at this time standing on the beach a hundred and fifty yards off.  Whether or not the master of the steamer received the information volunteered by Flower, the two girls saw the triangle of lamps get narrow at its base, reduce themselves to two in a vertical line, then to one, then to darkness.  The Spruce had turned her head from Knollsea.

‘They have gone back, and I shall not have my wedding things after all!’ said Ethelberta.  ‘Well, I must do without them.’

‘You see, ’twas best to play sure,’ said Flower to his comrades, in a tone of complacency.  ‘They might have been able to do it, but ’twas risky.  The shop-folk be out of stock, I hear, and the visiting lady up the hill is terribly in want of clothes, so ’tis said.  But what’s that?  Ounce ought to have put back afore.’

Then the lantern which hung at the end of the jetty was taken down, and the darkness enfolded all around from view.  The bay became nothing but a voice, the foam an occasional touch upon the face, the Spruce an imagination, the pier a memory.  Everything lessened upon the senses but one; that was the wind.  It mauled their persons like a hand, and caused every scrap of their raiment to tug westward.  To stand with the face to sea brought semi-suffocation, from the intense pressure of air.

The boatmen retired to their position under the wall, to lounge again in silence.  Conversation was not considered necessary: their sense of each other’s presence formed a kind of conversation.  Meanwhile Picotee and Ethelberta went up the hill.

‘If your wedding were going to be a public one, what a misfortune this delay of the packages would be,’ said Picotee.

‘Yes,’ replied the elder.

‘I think the bracelet the prettiest of all the presents he brought to-day—do you?’

‘It is the most valuable.’

‘Lord Mountclere is very kind, is he not?  I like him a great deal better than I did—do you, Berta?’

‘Yes, very much better,’ said Ethelberta, warming a little.  ‘If he were not so suspicious at odd moments I should like him exceedingly.  But I must cure him of that by a regular course of treatment, and then he’ll be very nice.’

‘For an old man.  He likes you better than any young man would take the trouble to do.  I wish somebody else were old too.’

‘He will be some day.’

‘Yes, but—’

‘Never mind: time will straighten many crooked things.’

‘Do you think Lord Mountclere has reached home by this time?’

‘I should think so: though I believe he had to call at the parsonage before leaving Knollsea.’

‘Had he?  What for?’

‘Why, of course somebody must—’

‘O yes.  Do you think anybody in Knollsea knows it is going to be except us and the parson?’

‘I suppose the clerk knows.’

‘I wonder if a lord has ever been married so privately before.’

‘Frequently: when he marries far beneath him, as in this case.  But even if I could have had it, I should not have liked a showy wedding.  I have had no experience as a bride except in the private form of the ceremony.’

‘Berta, I am sometimes uneasy about you even now and I want to ask you one thing, if I may.  Are you doing this for my sake?  Would you have married Mr. Julian if it had not been for me?’

‘It is difficult to say exactly.  It is possible that if I had had no relations at all, I might have married him.  And I might not.’

‘I don’t intend to marry.’

‘In that case you will live with me at Enckworth.  However, we will leave such details till the ground-work is confirmed.  When we get indoors will you see if the boxes have been properly corded, and are quite ready to be sent for?  Then come in and sit by the fire, and I’ll sing some songs to you.’

‘Sad ones, you mean.’

‘No, they shall not be sad.’

‘Perhaps they may be the last you will ever sing to me.’

‘They may be.  Such a thing has occurred.’

‘But we will not think so.  We’ll suppose you are to sing many to me yet.’

‘Yes.  There’s good sense in that, Picotee.  In a world where the blind only are cheerful we should all do well to put out our eyes.  There, I did not mean to get into this state: forgive me, Picotee.  It is because I have had a thought—why I cannot tell—that as much as this man brings to me in rank and gifts he may take out of me in tears.’

‘Berta!’

‘But there’s no reason in it—not any; for not in a single matter does what has been supply us with any certain ground for knowing what will be in the world.  I have seen marriages where happiness might have been said to be ensured, and they have been all sadness afterwards; and I have seen those in which the prospect was black as night, and they have led on to a time of sweetness and comfort.  And I have seen marriages neither joyful nor sorry, that have become either as accident forced them to become, the persons having no voice in it at all.  Well, then, why should I be afraid to make a plunge when chance is as trustworthy as calculation?’

‘If you don’t like him well enough, don’t have him, Berta.  There’s time enough to put it off even now.’

‘O no.  I would not upset a well-considered course on the haste of an impulse.  Our will should withstand our misgivings.  Now let us see if all has been packed, and then we’ll sing.’

That evening, while the wind was wheeling round and round the dwelling, and the calm eye of the lighthouse afar was the single speck perceptible of the outside world from the door of Ethelberta’s temporary home, the music of songs mingled with the stroke of the wind across the iron railings, and was swept on in the general tide of the gale, and the noise of the rolling sea, till not the echo of a tone remained.

An hour before this singing, an old gentleman might have been seen to alight from a little one-horse brougham, and enter the door of Knollsea parsonage.  He was bent upon obtaining an entrance to the vicar’s study without giving his name.

But it happened that the vicar’s wife was sitting in the front room, making a pillow-case for the children’s bed out of an old surplice which had been excommunicated the previous Easter; she heard the newcomer’s voice through the partition, started, and went quickly to her husband, who was where he ought to have been, in his study.  At her entry he looked up with an abstracted gaze, having been lost in meditation over a little schooner which he was attempting to rig for their youngest boy.  At a word from his wife on the suspected name of the visitor, he resumed his earlier occupation of inserting a few strong sentences, full of the observation of maturer life, between the lines of a sermon written during his first years of ordination, in order to make it available for the coming Sunday.  His wife then vanished with the little ship in her hand, and the visitor appeared.  A talk went on in low tones.

After a ten minutes’ stay he departed as secretly as he had come.  His errand was the cause of much whispered discussion between the vicar and his wife during the evening, but nothing was said concerning it to the outside world.

44. SANDBOURNE—A LONELY HEATH—THE ‘RED LION’—THE HIGHWAY

It was half-past eleven before the Spruce, with Mountclere and Sol Chickerel on board, had steamed back again to Sandbourne.  The direction and increase of the wind had made it necessary to keep the vessel still further to sea on their return than in going, that they might clear without risk the windy, sousing, thwacking, basting, scourging Jack Ketch of a corner called Old-Harry Point, which lay about halfway along their track, and stood, with its detached posts and stumps of white rock, like a skeleton’s lower jaw, grinning at British navigation.  Here strong currents and cross currents were beginning to interweave their scrolls and meshes, the water rising behind them in tumultuous heaps, and slamming against the fronts and angles of cliff, whence it flew into the air like clouds of flour.  Who could now believe that this roaring abode of chaos smiled in the sun as gently as an infant during the summer days not long gone by, every pinnacle, crag, and cave returning a doubled image across the glassy sea?

They were now again at Sandbourne, a point in their journey reached more than four hours ago.  It became necessary to consider anew how to accomplish the difficult remainder.  The wind was not blowing much beyond what seamen call half a gale, but there had been enough unpleasantness afloat to make landsmen glad to get ashore, and this dissipated in a slight measure their vexation at having failed in their purpose.  Still, Mountclere loudly cursed their confidence in that treacherously short route, and Sol abused the unknown Sandbourne man who had brought the news of the steamer’s arrival to them at the junction.  The only course left open to them now, short of giving up the undertaking, was to go by the road along the shore, which, curving round the various little creeks and inland seas between their present position and Knollsea, was of no less length than thirty miles.  There was no train back to the junction till the next morning, and Sol’s proposition that they should drive thither in hope of meeting the mail-train, was overruled by Mountclere.

‘We will have nothing more to do with chance,’ he said.  ‘We may miss the train, and then we shall have gone out of the way for nothing.  More than that, the down mail does not stop till it gets several miles beyond the nearest station for Knollsea; so it is hopeless.’

‘If there had only been a telegraph to the confounded place!’

‘Telegraph—we might as well telegraph to the devil as to an old booby and a damned scheming young widow.  I very much question if we shall do anything in the matter, even if we get there.  But I suppose we had better go on now?’

‘You can do as you like.  I shall go on, if I have to walk every step o’t.’

‘That’s not necessary.  I think the best posting-house at this end of the town is Tempett’s—we must knock them up at once.  Which will you do—attempt supper here, or break the back of our journey first, and get on to Anglebury?  We may rest an hour or two there, unless you feel really in want of a meal.’

‘No.  I’ll leave eating to merrier men, who have no sister in the hands of a cursed old Vandal.’

‘Very well,’ said Mountclere.  ‘We’ll go on at once.’

An additional half-hour elapsed before they were fairly started, the lateness and abruptness of their arrival causing delay in getting a conveyance ready: the tempestuous night had apparently driven the whole town, gentle and simple, early to their beds.  And when at length the travellers were on their way the aspect of the weather grew yet more forbidding.  The rain came down unmercifully, the booming wind caught it, bore it across the plain, whizzed it against the carriage like a sower sowing his seed.  It was precisely such weather, and almost at the same season, as when Picotee traversed the same moor, stricken with her great disappointment at not meeting Christopher Julian.

Further on for several miles the drive lay through an open heath, dotted occasionally with fir plantations, the trees of which told the tale of their species without help from outline or colour; they spoke in those melancholy moans and sobs which give to their sound a solemn sadness surpassing even that of the sea.  From each carriage-lamp the long rays stretched like feelers into the air, and somewhat cheered the way, until the insidious damp that pervaded all things above, around, and underneath, overpowered one of them, and rendered every attempt to rekindle it ineffectual.  Even had the two men’s dislike to each other’s society been less, the general din of the night would have prevented much talking; as it was, they sat in a rigid reticence that was almost a third personality.  The roads were laid hereabouts with a light sandy gravel, which, though not clogging, was soft and friable.  It speedily became saturated, and the wheels ground heavily and deeply into its substance.

At length, after crossing from ten to twelve miles of these eternal heaths under the eternally drumming storm, they could discern eyelets of light winking to them in the distance from under a nebulous brow of pale haze.  They were looking on the little town of Havenpool.  Soon after this cross-roads were reached, one of which, at right angles to their present direction, led down on the left to that place.  Here the man stopped, and informed them that the horses would be able to go but a mile or two further.

‘Very well, we must have others that can,’ said Mountclere.  ‘Does our way lie through the town?’

‘No, sir—unless we go there to change horses, which I thought to do.  The direct road is straight on.  Havenpool lies about three miles down there on the left.  But the water is over the road, and we had better go round.  We shall come to no place for two or three miles, and then only to Flychett.’

‘What’s Flychett like?’

‘A trumpery small bit of a village.’

‘Still, I think we had better push on,’ said Sol.  ‘I am against running the risk of finding the way flooded about Havenpool.’

‘So am I,’ returned Mountclere.

‘I know a wheelwright in Flychett,’ continued Sol, ‘and he keeps a beer-house, and owns two horses.  We could hire them, and have a bit of sommat in the shape of victuals, and then get on to Anglebury.  Perhaps the rain may hold up by that time.  Anything’s better than going out of our way.’

‘Yes.  And the horses can last out to that place,’ said Mountclere.  ‘Up and on again, my man.’

On they went towards Flychett.  Still the everlasting heath, the black hills bulging against the sky, the barrows upon their round summits like warts on a swarthy skin.  The storm blew huskily over bushes of heather and furze that it was unable materially to disturb, and the travellers proceeded as before.  But the horses were now far from fresh, and the time spent in reaching the next village was quite half as long as that taken up by the previous heavy portion of the drive.  When they entered Flychett it was about three.

‘Now, where’s the inn?’ said Mountclere, yawning.

‘Just on the knap,’ Sol answered.  ‘’Tis a little small place, and we must do as well as we can.’

They pulled up before a cottage, upon the whitewashed front of which could be seen a square board representing the sign.  After an infinite labour of rapping and shouting, a casement opened overhead, and a woman’s voice inquired what was the matter.  Sol explained, when she told them that the horses were away from home.

‘Now we must wait till these are rested,’ growled Mountclere.  ‘A pretty muddle!’

‘It cannot be helped,’ answered Sol; and he asked the woman to open the door.  She replied that her husband was away with the horses and van, and that they could not come in.

Sol was known to her, and he mentioned his name; but the woman only began to abuse him.

‘Come, publican, you’d better let us in, or we’ll have the law for’t,’ rejoined Sol, with more spirit.  ‘You don’t dare to keep nobility waiting like this.’

‘Nobility!’

‘My mate hev the title of Honourable, whether or no; so let’s have none of your slack,’ said Sol.

‘Don’t be a fool, young chopstick,’ exclaimed Mountclere.  ‘Get the door opened.’

‘I will—in my own way,’ said Sol testily.  ‘You mustn’t mind my trading upon your quality, as ’tis a case of necessity.  This is a woman nothing will bring to reason but an appeal to the higher powers.  If every man of title was as useful as you are to-night, sir, I’d never call them lumber again as long as I live.’

‘How singular!’

‘There’s never a bit of rubbish that won’t come in use if you keep it seven years.’

‘If my utility depends upon keeping you company, may I go to h--- for lacking every atom of the virtue.’

‘Hear, hear!  But it hardly is becoming in me to answer up to a man so much older than I, or I could say more.  Suppose we draw a line here for the present, sir, and get indoors?’

‘Do what you will, in Heaven’s name.’

A few more words to the woman resulted in her agreeing to admit them if they would attend to themselves afterwards.  This Sol promised, and the key of the door was let down to them from the bedroom window by a string.  When they had entered, Sol, who knew the house well, busied himself in lighting a fire, the driver going off with a lantern to the stable, where he found standing-room for the two horses.  Mountclere walked up and down the kitchen, mumbling words of disgust at the situation, the few of this kind that he let out being just enough to show what a fearfully large number he kept in.

‘A-calling up people at this time of morning!’ the woman occasionally exclaimed down the stairs.  ‘But folks show no mercy upon their flesh and blood—not one bit or mite.’

‘Now never be stomachy, my good soul,’ cried Sol from the fireplace, where he stood blowing the fire with his breath.  ‘Only tell me where the victuals bide, and I’ll do all the cooking.  We’ll pay like princes—especially my mate.’

‘There’s but little in house,’ said the sleepy woman from her bedroom.  ‘There’s pig’s fry, a side of bacon, a conger eel, and pickled onions.’

‘Conger eel?’ said Sol to Mountclere.

‘No, thank you.’

‘Pig’s fry?’

‘No, thank you.’

‘Well, then, tell me where the bacon is,’ shouted Sol to the woman.

‘You must find it,’ came again down the stairs.  ‘’Tis somewhere up in chimley, but in which part I can’t mind.  Really I don’t know whether I be upon my head or my heels, and my brain is all in a spin, wi’ being rafted up in such a larry!’

‘Bide where you be, there’s a dear,’ said Sol.  ‘We’ll do it all.  Just tell us where the tea-caddy is, and the gridiron, and then you can go to sleep again.’

The woman appeared to take his advice, for she gave the information, and silence soon reigned upstairs.

When one piece of bacon had been with difficulty cooked over the newly-lit fire, Sol said to Mountclere, with the rasher on his fork: ‘Now look here, sir, I think while I am making the tea, you ought to go on griddling some more of these, as you haven’t done nothing at all?’

‘I do the paying.