"Miss Marsh, where are you going?"
"Home," replied Hilda, swiftly glancing at the speaker and the governess. "How are you, Miss Crane? Dicky, don't wink, it's vulgar. I didn't know you were here, Mr. Arkel."
"Arrived yesterday," responded that young gentleman. "Uncle Barton asked me down for a week. Why, I don't know! but I was glad to come." He fixed his bright eyes on Hilda, and a colour came into his cheeks. "I was very glad to come," he repeated.
"Of course, I know how fond you are of Mr. Barton."
"If you will excuse me," said Miriam, unwilling to be an inconvenient third, "I will go—come, Dicky."
"I must go too. I will leave you with Mr. Arkel," and before either Arkel or Miriam could parry so very pointed a thrust, Hilda tripped away with a smiling face and—it must be confessed—an angry heart. Although, of course, she knew nothing of the episode which had been the means of bringing them together, her instinct told her that Gerald and Miss Crane were in strong sympathy one with the other.
Like an ass between two bundles of hay—the simile, though, uncomplimentary, will serve—Gerald looked after Hilda, and then glanced at the governess. She had already moved away, and was walking on rather fast with Dicky dancing beside her. Courtesy demanded that he should follow her, but a tugging at his heart-strings drew him in Hilda's direction. With characteristic self-indulgence, Mr. Arkel obeyed his own inclination rather than the other thing, and tried to catch up with Hilda. But a side-glance informing her of this pursuit, Miss Marsh thereupon resolved to punish this young man for his all too-patent admiration of the governess—"that red-haired minx," as she called her.
Just as Gerald came up with her, and was on the point of speaking, Hilda, in pretended ignorance of his presence, shot into a broken-down gate, through a desolate garden, and into a dilapidated house. From behind a torn curtain which partially veiled a dirty window, she had the satisfaction of seeing him retreat with a somewhat sulky expression on his usually bright face.
"Serve you right," she said to herself. "You'll find I am not the one to take you from that carroty horror;" which remark was vulgar, unjust, and spiteful—so spiteful that it could only be prompted by one feeling.
Hilda's home was a tumble-down old house set in a neglected garden. Mr. Marsh was a physician—that is to say he was allowed by the laws of his country to prescribe drugs and generally to administer in a medical way to a small practice. Things were so with him that he had long since given up any idea of a peaceful existence; and it was always a matter of supreme amazement to him that his patients sought to prolong their lives at the cost of swallowing the doses he prescribed for them. For himself, he paid an infinitesimal sum yearly by way of rent for Poverty Hall, as his residence was dubbed in the village; earned enough to feed and clothe those dependent upon him in the most penurious way, and managed, as he phrased it, "to drag them up somehow." Two of the boys were doing for themselves in London, and had dropped out of ken, since they neither sent money not wrote to their father; three were at school, where Dr. Marsh found it hard work to keep them, and since someone must pay, the four sisters remained at home, and were furnished by Hilda with a scratch education, she being the only one of the girls who had received a good one. Hilda detested teaching her sisters, and gave them as little of her time as she well could without falling foul of her father. For the rest she was like a lily of the fields, and neither toiled nor spun. Mrs. Marsh—she was of ample habit—did the toiling and the spinning, with the assistance of the exhausted menial aforesaid. When not scrubbing, or baking, or mending, she indulged in the most mawkish class of fiction, and complained querulously of her lot the while. Yet even the Marsh family had their idea of a millennium—when Hilda would marry a rich man, and the rich man would rain gold on Poverty Hall. That was why Hilda was pampered and much was pardoned to her. She was the Circassian beauty destined for the seraglio of some millionaire sultan; and the proceeds of her sale was to set up the family for life.
"Where have you been, Hilda?" asked her mother, looking up from a novel. The room was a chaos of dirt and dust, and in the midst of it all sat Mrs. Marsh, a very she-Marius amongst the ruins of Carthage, placidly but thoroughly enjoying the sentimentality of her hero and heroine. The carpet was ragged, the blind was askew; the table was littered with plates dirty from the mid-day meal, and the furniture was more or less dilapidated. Thus did Mrs. Marsh, in an old dressing-gown, with hair unkempt, delight to read of the erratic course of true love and Belgravian luxury, oblivious utterly to her surroundings.
"I'm sure, Hilda, I wish you hadn't gone out," she lamented. "Who is to clear the table if you're not here?"
"Oh, bother!" cried Hilda all graciously, "where are the girls?"
"They took some bread and jam and went out with the boys," said Mrs. Marsh vaguely. "I don't know exactly where—they were going to have a picnic, I think. You really must help, Hilda. Gwendoline" (Mary Jane was not to be tolerated) "has too much to do as it is. Your father will soon be home, and will want something; and I'm that tired! Oh dear me, how tired I am!"
"Well, I can't help it, mother. You will have to manage with Gwendoline as best you can. I must get my blue dress cleaned and altered. Mrs. Darrow has asked me to dinner to-morrow night."
"Who is to be there?" asked Mrs. Marsh with a ray of interest in her tired blue eyes.
"Mr. Barton, Mr. Arkel, and Major Dundas. I suppose that horrid governess will be there too. She was with Mr. Arkel just now."
"How did she come to know him?"
"Oh, she's a sly creature. She has managed to make his acquaintance somehow, and I can see the fool is quite taken already with her airs and graces."
"Hilda!" said her mother apprehensively, for Mr. Arkel was the second string to Hilda's bow, and it was supposed would inherit the Manor House. "That must not be."
"Oh, so far as I am concerned, they can please themselves. If Mr. Arkel prefers red hair and freckles, he can do so. Major Dundas may have better taste."
"But he is not rich, dear—he will never be."
"How do you know that?" retorted Hilda, who made a rule of contradicting her mother on principle. "Mr. Barton may make him his heir instead of Gerald Arkel. Or for that matter, I shouldn't be surprised if the horrid old thing left his money to an asylum."
"Be sure of that before you marry either of them," said the anxious mother. "Unless," with a touch of romance, "you are in love with——"
"Love!" Hilda echoed the word with fine contempt. "I want money, not love. Either Major Dundas or Gerald would make a good enough husband. I like Gerald the best—he is better looking and not so dull as the Major. But I'd marry anyone—even old Barton, much as I hate him, to get out of this pig-sty."
"It is your only home," said Mrs. Marsh with dignity.
"That's exactly why I want to get out of it, mother. If that red-haired governess tries any of her pranks, trust me, I won't spare her."
"Whatever do you mean, Hilda?"
"Never you mind, mother," Miss Marsh nodded mysteriously. "I've been talking with Mrs. Darrow, and she says—well, don't bother about it just now. But Miss Crane—if that is what her name is—is no saint, believe me. I'm not altogether sure that she's respectable."
"Hilda!" Mrs. Marsh's middle-class virtue was up in arms. "If that is so, you must not associate with her. Our house is lowly (she might have added dirty), lowly, but genteel."
"Now don't you bother, ma. Leave the governess to me. If you talk you'll spoil all."
"All what?" cried Mrs. Marsh, frantic with curiosity.
"H'm, h'm," Hilda nodded again. "Come upstairs, ma, and look over my dresses. I must look particularly well to-morrow night."
"But the clearing and washing-up, Hilda?"
"Oh, the girls can do that when they come in; pigs! It's little enough they do!"
"Your father will want something hot," suggested Mrs. Marsh with compunction.
"Will he! Well, there's cold corned beef and pickles; he can warm them if he lik
es."
So Mrs. Marsh went upstairs, novel, dressing-gown and all, and spent a happy hour with Hilda over chiffons. Dr. Marsh came home to a cold dinner, and was truly pathetic in the restraint of his language. The picnic-party arrived back hungry and boisterous, to find that as the baker had not called, there was no bread in the house. They lamented, Mrs. Marsh nagged, her husband's patience gave way, and the whole house was as pleasant as Bedlam. Hilda, the cause of the trouble, kept out of it in her room—the only clean room in the house—and stitched away at her costume. She thought of Miriam and smiled. It was not a sweet smile.
"So you're going to spoil my chance, are you, you horrid creature!" she thought. "I'll push you back into the mud you came from—or I'll know the reason why."
If Miriam could have seen her then, she might have felt still more uneasy. What could Miss Marsh know of her past? Perhaps Mrs. Darrow, always poking and prying, could have explained.
* * *
CHAPTER IV.
MR. BARTON'S VISITOR.
As a rule Mrs. Darrow was not very hospitable—unless there was something to be gained from the exercise of such hospitality. She revelled in the afternoon tea, because it cost little—a few spoonfuls of "Lipton" and some slices of thin bread and butter—and afforded ample opportunity for that small talk, which was the essence of her life, since it enabled her to keep au fait with her neighbours' delinquencies. She had been known to go so far as a hot luncheon for certain high and mighty people whom it suited her book to conciliate; but never by any chance had she been known to give a dinner. Now—for some weighty reason, known only to herself—she had actually requested no less than five people to rally round her in the stuffy little dining-room of Pine Cottage—Major Dundas, Mr. Arkel, and Uncle Barton, to pair with Miriam, Hilda, and herself. When Mr. Barton was informed of this festivity, he not only point-blank refused to go himself, but he positively forbade his nephews, who were staying at the Manor House, to represent him.
"So you can have a hen-party, Julia," he croaked, "and abuse better people than yourself."
Mrs. Darrow sought refuge in her handkerchief, and shed a few careful tears—I say careful, because she was made up for the day, an operation which entailed the labour of an hour or more.
"Oh, Uncle Barton," she sobbed, "why won't you come?"
"Now why, I should like to know, are you so thunderingly generous all of a sudden. There must be something very much amiss, surely, or going to be!"
The widow raised her eyes to the blue sky—this conversation took place in the open air—to call Heaven to witness how she was misjudged.
"As if I was a miser," she complained, "instead of one whose whole thought is for my fellow creatures."
"At other people's expense—quite so," said Barton. He really was a disagreeable old creature. "Come, Julia, tell me the truth. Why are you giving this dinner?"
"I'm afraid Miss Crane is dull, and I thought it would liven her up a little."
"Oh, that's it, is it?" said Barton, not believing her in the least. "Then you and she and Miss Marsh had better come to dinner at the Manor House. There is nothing for Miss Crane or anyone else to enjoy in being poisoned by your cook."
Mrs. Darrow calculated that she could gain her end—whatever it was—just as well at Uncle Barton's expense as at her own. But although she accepted with avidity, she wept still as a tribute to her dignity.
"Of course, if you insist upon it, I will come," she said; "but my poor little dinner would have been quite a treat for you all. I intended to assist cook."
"Did you? worse and worse! Well, will you come to-morrow evening at seven?"
Mrs. Darrow bowed her head.
"And I hope you won't mind giving me a cheque, Uncle Barton. Miss Crane eats a great deal; she comes expensive."
Barton chuckled.
"What, at your Barmecidian banquets? I tell you what, Julia, my dear, if you will tell me the truth to-morrow night I will give you something." And he walked off.
As Mrs. Darrow knew, and as Uncle Barton knew she knew, it was impossible for her to tell the truth without offending him. He guessed that her purpose was spiteful, and one in some way connected with Miriam; and he was right. The widow had discovered—as she thought—something to Miriam's disadvantage, and wanted to explode her bombshell in as public a manner as possible. Up to the present she had told only Hilda about her discovery, and Hilda, being no less spiteful against the unfortunate governess, was hoping to witness her discomfiture before Major Dundas and Gerald. This being so, Mrs. Darrow knew that if she told the truth Barton would refuse to pay for the confession of so mean a purpose. Therefore she saw the promised cheque eluding her, and calculating—in her own logical way—that up to the present Miriam had cost her a possible ten pounds, allowed her feelings full vent for the time being. She glared after Uncle Barton's retreating figure; and would have shaken her fist at it had she not known from previous experience that he had eyes at the back of his head.
"Horrid old man," she murmured. "I'll make you and your red-haired creature pay for this!"
That evening and all the next day she was particularly sweet to Miriam; so much so that Miss Crane, used to her by this time, began to think there was something in the wind. She wondered if Mrs. Darrow could have made any discovery likely to cause trouble, and recalled all her words and actions for the past week. But she could think of nothing injudicious that she had said or done. Nevertheless, she was on her guard against Mrs. Darrow. She readily accepted the invitation to the Manor House, because she wanted a private conversation with Mr. Barton. Hilda also was informed that the little dinner would take place at the Manor House, and was pleased by the change. She intended that a day should come when the Manor should be hers by marriage, and in the meantime she was in nowise averse to seeing as much as possible of her future home. When she married Major Dundas, or Mr. Arkel—whichever of them might inherit the Nabob's vineyard—she intended to make many and great changes in the gloomy old mansion. Hilda's aerial castles invariably took the architectural form of Lesser Thorpe Manor House.
The next evening after the primitive fashion of this Arcadia, the three ladies, with lace scarves over their heads, and cloaks over their evening dress, walked up the avenue and arrived at the great porch precisely at seven. In the warm light of the July evening Miriam admired the noble oaks, the trim gardens, the velvet swards; and most of all, she admired the great house, with its windows aglow from the beams of the setting sun. It was elevated on a rise, surrounded by stone terraces, and stood out majestically against a background of pine-trees, with its many gables, high roofs, and stacks of twisted chimneys. In the Tudor style of architecture, built in Tudor days, mellowed by centuries, and overgrown with ivy, it might well have been the palace of some Sleeping Beauty buried in the midst of its sombre woods. The evening was still and warm; there was no wind, and a quiet melancholy seemed to brood over the great pile. It was a haven of rest to the weary, and irresistibly attractive to Miriam, who had been buffetted so long on stormy seas. Hilda caught her expression at that moment, and did not fail to interpret it in her own fashion, looking an angel the while.
"You want to marry Gerald and have all this, do you?" she thought. "Well then, you shall not, if I can help it. When he knows who you are, and what you are, there won't be much chance for you, my lady!"
In the drawing-room Mr. Barton received his guests, and Miriam, in spite of her self-control, could not help wincing. Since that never-to-be-forgotten night on Waterloo Bridge, or rather at the Pitt Hotel, she had not seen him in evening dress; and the sight of him now recalled those past horrors with horrible distinctness. The shrivelled little figure, the cruel clean-shaven face, the bald head and rat-like eyes, made up an object of utter detestation to Miriam. With her recovered health had come a resolve to throw off the mesmeric influence he had exercised over her when she had been weak and starving. In some degree she had succeeded, but although fear had gone, repulsion remained, and Miriam regretted bitterly t
hat she had been beguiled into the clutches of this modern ogre. That night she resolved to seek her freedom.
"Good evening, ladies," said the Squire in his grating voice. "You know these two gentlemen, so there is no need for a formal introduction."
"I know Mr. Arkel," said Miriam composedly, since Barton's eyes were upon her, "but not Major Dundas."
"John!" gushed Mrs. Darrow—"not know Cousin John? This is he, Miss Crane, my cousin in the army. John, my dear friend, Miss Crane."
Barton lifted his brows on hearing this very warm allusion to Miriam; but Major Dundas, not knowing Mrs. Darrow's little ways, accepted it in good faith, and bowed gravely, being a man of but few words. He was tall and stalwart, with a countenance which, though anything but handsome, was wholly pleasant, and was so well groomed and generally smart and trim in his appearance, that altogether he bore an air of supreme distinction. With formal courtesy Miriam acknowledged his bow, but in spite of herself she found her eyes wandering towards Gerald's bright face and charming smile. He shook her by the hand, made some commonplace remark, and almost immediately turned to speak with Hilda, whom he greeted with unmistakable eagerness. It was easy to see in what direction Mr. Gerald Arkel's affections lay for the time being. The object of them looked this evening more than ever like a Dresden china shepherdess, and sparkled all over her pretty face as Gerald came up to her. Barton evidently did not approve of the state of things existing between the two young people, for he frowned and bit his lip. On her part Miriam felt an unaccountable pang at the way in which Gerald ignored her for Hilda. Since meeting him she had thought more of his gallant rescue of her, and more of his charming manner than was quite good for her. Although she was as yet unaware of it even then Gerald was gaining possession of her heart. She watched him furtively all the evening, and could be seen to brighten up distinctly when he spoke to her, a circumstance which seemed to cause the observant Squire the greatest satisfaction.
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