Bloodstock and Other Stories

by Margaret Irwin

Suddenly she did so and nuzzled her mop of dark curls into his arm. “Tom you dear beast of a man, you filthy toad, to whistle me down when I’m all in a mess like this —as if I were your goshawk.”

  “Not my falcon gentle?” he coaxed. “Come, you’ve kissed me. Say you’ve missed me.”

  “In a deep dump of dullness! I’ve worked, walked, teased, talked, romped, flumped, fidgeted myself into a fret, and all for lack of my dear beast. Now what have you to tell me?”

  “You are a gipsy, a jilt. Your bright eyes are your only beauty. I’ll kiss them for that—but it’s your impudent nose I love best of all, I must kiss that too. If George had come, would you have let him kiss you?”

  “Oh, monstrous! You know I can’t abide George—nor you either, now I think on’t. A “gipsy” and my Only beauty” indeed! Is that all you have to tell me? Well, I vow I could never love a fellow with a chin like a shoehorn.”

  “It’s not all. You are quick and gay as a bird in the air or a poppy in the corn; you tingle with life to your fingertips, which are at the moment somewhat black.”

  “Well, but I’ve been combing the dogs and you whistled me down just as I had begun to change my dress and wash, and left the water to cool in the bowl—there’s devotion on my part and ingratitude on yours!”

  And she slapped his face and then kissed it and twirled round in alarm at the sound of a door slamming and ran back to him laughing, and he caught her to him and swore he would wait for her just one more day, for they would run away during this coming night and be married on the morrow. And he bent his head, his mouth against her curls, his fierce whisper telling her his plan.

  He had brought another horse with him and left it at the gamekeeper’s cottage near by—an old crony of his, he would help them get away.

  Nell shivered in delicious excitement which she tried to turn into anger. “A fine thing to force my hand like this. Pray, sir, are you the Grand Turk?”

  “Did you not say you’d do it?” he demanded, looking deep into her eyes.

  “Why, yes, I did. ’Tis true we planned an elopement, but half in fun.” Her lips pouted. “And I haven’t more than half a mind to it.”

  “If I’ve half your mind, I’ll soon win the rest.”

  “No.” She turned her head capriciously. “For the other half is now on my father’s new guest, the famous son of the famous Lady Mary Wortley Montagu—”

  “So you did heed the name?” he challenged.

  “Why not?” Her bright eyes slid round defiantly. “I am not deaf. Mr. Montagu has been everywhere, done everything, talks a dozen strange languages, and he can teach you all about running away, for he did it himself from school, three times in all, I believe, and once was lost for a whole year.”

  “A pity he was ever found. Nell, my sweet wild bird, won’t you fly with me across the sea—to the New World, to America?”

  Oh, but America, she declared, while he pulled her down beside him on the window-seat, was a wilderness of black savages—or were they red? She could never abide to live among hundreds of slaves like a Roman empress, she would never learn how to treat them properly since her best friends were the stable boys.

  Patiently, for he had told her before, Tom said he meant to go north, to New England, where people were free, and education and politics were marching ahead and making a grand new country. “When any town increases to a hundred families, they set up a grammar school. Shall we help to increase it?” His arm pulled her closer.

  “And shall you be the schoolmaster?”

  “Why not, for a time? I’d see to it that the boys were neither starved nor bullied as they are here, and I’d have soldiers to train ’em, so as to drive off the French colonists from poaching on us. We got the Dutch out of New Amsterdam and called it New York instead. We’ll shove off the French as well.”

  “And then, I suppose, you’ll shove off the English king, too?”

  “Very likely,” said Tom coolly. “I don’t think much of our Georges and they don’t think much of the Yankees —they’re too free-and-equal for the Hanoverians.”

  “Yes, my Dad says they’re all rebels, and so are you.”

  “And who more so than yourself?”

  “Hang you, wretch? There’s my aunt calling and I not yet in my powder or paduasoy!”

  They tore themselves apart, away from their burning drama in the icy library. He was twenty-two, she not quite eighteen, and nobody in the world was living as deliciously, dangerously, and fully as they were while they preened themselves at their respective mirrors and whispered inside their hearts what they had said to each other, and would say in the future.…

  Thunder rolled, lightning flashed, rain poured down as the family and Tom Fanshawe and a few extraneous guests, a couple of meek cousins, a “led captain” with a wooden leg and bottle nose, and as many servants as could be hoped to impress the visitor, gathered in the hall at the news that Mr. Montagu’s coach had been seen entering the gates of the mile-long drive.

  Once again the doors were dragged open; a foreign servant entered, shaking the drops from his outlandish livery, and stood back in silent introduction of his master.

  A gorgeous bubble of a creature floated eagerly towards them, his hands fluttered, his rings flashed, his modish wig towered to heaven; he talked to everybody as though he had begun to do so in his coach and was continuing the conversation.

  Mr. Montagu was still quite young and very good-looking, but when one had recovered from the effect of his clothes, one could see that he was rather fat. His eyes were very brilliant, even wild, as they darted from one to another of the company.

  In no time he was telling old Miss Pettigrew that his shoe-buckles were of real diamonds; and Squire Pettigrew that his wig was of real iron, spun into the finest wire. “It caused a furore in Paris. I was mobbed at the opera. I assure you, sir, this will mean revolution in France.”

  But to Nell Pettigrew he talked only of herself.

  He kissed her hand, then stood back amazed at her appearance. He was horrified, he said low to her, that anyone so young, exquisite and espiègle should be mudlogged in this barbarous countryside instead of spreading her dragonfly wings in the sunshine of the courts of Europe.

  Nell stood suddenly shy and gauche. She did not believe she was a dragonfly; she was a gipsy, a hoyden, a tomboy, a romp, and her father looked like a bumpkin farmer; and Tom, yes even Tom, so tall and lean and quiet, seemed homespun and austere beside this glittering stranger.

  She wished Tom were not so plainly dressed, so silent in company. Why could he not tell Mr. Montagu, as he had told her, about the Yankees and their country, more wild and remote than any that Mr. Montagu had visited, on the other side of the world.

  But, for an instant, Mr. Montagu was waiting for a reply. She must not just giggle and go dumb like any country wench.

  She said simply, “Lord, sir, I cannot think any foreign court would welcome a natural.”

  “But nature,” cried Mr. Montagu, “has begun to be the rage in France. It is even modish at the moment to forgo—or at least not to display—the use of rouge in the daytime. Imagine the disaster to any face less fresh and fair than your own! Lapdogs and monkeys are out of favour and every fine lady aspires to be a shepherdess. King Louis himself would tie blue ribbons round the necks of your lambs. In a hat à la bergère you would cause La Pompadour to commit suicide. When you sat in a swing the whole court would lie in the grass at your feet to watch your flying grace. And I …” again his voice dropped to a murmur, saying things that only she could properly hear, but was too dazed to take in.

  Could he really mean that he had fallen in love at first sight of her, or was it only modish to talk like that?

  He talked—how he talked! She sat bewildered, excited, staring into a new enchanted world. They ate, they drank, the meek cousins gaped, the led captain glared bulbously; the storm died down as if even the elements wished to listen in silence to Mr. Montagu.

  Yet a chorus of faint whispers
began to grow round the full-throated solo.

  “This young man is a fop,” old Miss Pettigrew rustled to her brother like a dead leaf; and he replied, “What odds? He must walk at least £2,500 in the clothes he’s wearing at present.”

  It was clear that the present Mr. Montagu was ousting the absent George, future Lord Fanshawe, as a prospective son-in-law.

  And as a bridegroom? Nell found an opportunity to tell Tom that it would be pleasanter to visit the courts of foreign kings than to run away to the savages of America and a few white settlers who were all equal and wearing their own hair instead of an iron wig.

  Tom replied sardonically that her father’s money might be attracting Mr. Montagu at least as much as her youthful charms; Mr. M. had dropped more than one unwise hint of his parents” niggardliness and even a casual boast that he had often been “down to his last shirt and guinea.”

  Nell’s reply to Tom was a vicious kick and furious concentration on the mince pies, whereupon Tom chanted softly:

  “Oh the cherry lips of Nelly

  They are ripe and soft as jelly

  But too well she loves her belly

  Therefore I’II have none of Nelly.’ and the squire joined vociferously in the well-known chorus:

  “Oh no no, no no no,

  I’II have none of Nelly, oh no no’

  By which it may be seen that the dinner was happily advancing towards its convivial close; so happily, in fact, that Mr. Pettigrew was eager to show off his stables to his new guest by the light of the stable lanterns; why not? since the storm had died down and it was now not even raining.

  His guest said he would prefer to see the picture gallery; he was certain it had turned much colder since the storm, the stables would be icy, and he had lost all interest in quadrupeds ever since he had had to hold asses” heads as a boy in Arabia.

  “Was that when you ran away from school, sir?” breathed Nell on the unmistakable hushed note of heroworship.

  “Why, yes, my pretty miss, it was the talk of the whole nation for a year, my parents scouring the country for me, dragging the rivers, questions asked in Parliament and of foreign ambassadors, while I cried fish in Blackwall, worked my passage out to Oporto, deserted, went up country, worked in the vineyards, and then had charge of the asses.”

  “Lord, what hardship you must have suffered!”

  “Not as bad as at Westminster School,” replied Mr. Montagu.

  They were all proceeding down the long gallery, past solemn staring ancestors as wooden as their frames, which were each decorated with a Christmas sprig of holly or mistletoe. Nobody was interested in the pictures, but it gave Mr. Montagu opportunity to talk with Nell and dazzle her with his compliments and his extraordinary adventures.

  They came to a bare space between the portraits where the unfaded wallpaper showed that one had lately been removed. The squire explained, with loud snorts at such folly, that the missing portrait, that of a young girl, was always removed at this season to an empty unused room, because the servants believed that the picture “came alive” at Christmas time, and so would not dare enter the gallery.

  ““Alas, poor ghost’!” exclaimed Mr. Montagu, “shut out of all the festivities!—and is she not even crowned with a Christmas garland like the rest?”

  Nell assured him that she always put a sprig of mistletoe on the frame before it was carried away. “Of all people she must have it, for it was at Christmas that she died, of love.”

  “Of a decline, of green-sickness!” exploded the squire. “The girl was my great-great-aunt, and her father refused to let her marry a pauper—no romance in that! No, Mr. Montagu, there’s no story, and the picture no better than the rest. Well, if you will see it, Nell can lead you to it, but you’ll find the room all dark and colder than the stables, and I’ll not drag up the stairs with this cursed gout.”

  “Then pray, my sweet charmer-—”

  “I’d be a’feared,” stammered Nell.

  “But not with me?“said Mr. Montagu ingratiatingly.

  “And with me,’ said Tom stubbornly.

  She gave him a glance; of relief or annoyance? He did not know. They each took a candle—“Three candles for a corpse!” Mr. Montagu reminded them brightly—and trooped up the echoing backstairs where only a rushlight in its pan glimmered at each corner.

  “To die of love!” said Mr. Montagu on a plump sigh (the stairs were somewhat steep). “She had a rare sensibility.”

  “If she’d had spunk,” said Tom, “she’d ha” run away with her lover.”

  Mr. Montagu stopped to grin slyly at him and Nell. “Ah! but elopements always end miserably. Look at my parents! They quarrelled for two years before they jumped into a coach to run away—and went on quarrelling ever after. The happiest thing is to marry the life you love, not the person. They’ve learned that now after years of wrangling, and my mother lives abroad, with a handsome young cicisbeo now and then, to show off her wrinkles; and my father alone in England, with his two hobbies, to save money and to swill Tokay.”

  “This is the door,” said Nell in a small voice that shook a little, not only from fear. Had he spoken true?

  She and Tom were always quarrelling, often half in fun like a romping game, but if she married him would the quarrels deepen and sour, especially out in the wilds where life was hard and uncertain?

  “Marry the life you love’—for her, which would that be? Life in a foreign court as described by Mr. Montagu, where nature was an artificial game, but gay and glittering as a masked ball? Or among the hardships and dangers of real adventure?

  She had liked Mr. Montagu best when he spoke of his real adventures, but had he kept that spirit, could he keep it, in the life he now led?

  Her mind did not put the questions so clearly; it was spinning like a top as they went into the dark room and placed a candle on a low stool. Before them a picture stood on the floor, leaning against the wall.

  A girl’s dark eyes looked out at them in the flickering light. A strange smile shone in them as though they held a secret.

  Nell caught at Tom’s hand, and Mr. Montagu promptly seized her other.

  “Now you are safe between us, and can tell her story,” he said.

  “Her name was Helen, like mine,” Nell began softly. “She did not seem to grieve, and she had great sympathy with lovers. She was found lying dead, as though asleep, her lips parted in a happy smile—as you see her there.”

  Nell gave a little gasp; she would burst into tears if she did not go on speaking. “A sprig of mistletoe was lying between her hands, though none knew how it came there. They say that if—that sometimes—that at Christmas she has given a sign to those lovers who will be happy.”

  “I observe that she is smiling at me’ said Mr. Montagu.

  “And at me,” said Tom.

  “That is only a trick of the painting,” said Nell. “The sign has always been something to do with mistletoe.”

  “Then here it is!” cried Mr. Montagu, and snatching the sprig of mistletoe from the top of the picture frame, he swung it over Nell’s head and kissed her.

  Tom knocked it out of his hand and in doing so knocked off the famous iron wig. Mr. Montagu, swearing in several languages, half-drew his sword, then remembered his shaved head and clapped on his wig again, somewhat awry.

  Tom bowed, apologizing politely for the mishap he had caused. “But if Mr. Montagu is dissatisfied, I shall be delighted to give him satisfaction.”

  Nell gave a cry of terror, which she forced instantly into a laugh, and knocked off Tom’s wig in its turn. “That is your best reparation, to show that you, too, have a cropped head—though you don’t use it.”

  Mr. Montagu spun round into good humour again as quickly as a teetotum. “Hark! I hear the waits below, and after how many years! Come, let us join the rustic swains!”

  They picked up the candles and hurried out, but Nell suddenly turned and ran back alone into the room.

  She curtseyed to the picture and
whispered, “You are kind and true. I will not be afraid of you. Tell me which of them to choose.”

  The eyes in the picture looked deep into hers, full of their secret happiness. But they did not move, the smiling lips did not speak.

  Tom was waiting for her at the top of the stairs. Below him, the wavering gleam of a candle flickered round the bend, grew smaller and disappeared as Mr. Montagu’s high heels clattered away.

  “I’ll give you all the signs you want,” Tom said in a choking voice. He flung his arms round her, their candles fell to the ground, guttered and went out.

  “Come away!” cried Nell in a panic at the sudden darkness, and fled on down the stairs.

  “Nell, my sweet fool, wait one instant, my heart, my life. Nell, wait …”

  How young Tom’s urgent voice sounded, how different from the ambling urbane tones of Mr. Montagu! Tom’s was the voice of all their childhood’s years together, calling to her down this well of darkness. But she would not wait to listen to it, she would not answer it. She ran until she reached the hall where the waits had just finished their carols and stood shyly in a huddle round the hall doors. The servants handed round mugs of mulled ale, the squire pressed silver coins into every palm, and there by the crackling logs stood Mr. Montagu thankfully warming his coat-tails after the chilly and possibly anxious moments upstairs.

  Now the doors were pulled open again, the rustics were going out into the night with “Thank ’ee, zurr,” and “God bless t” squire,” buzzing and burring up from every side. Nell ran out after them on to the steps, and the night air, so suddenly still and cold after the storm, took her by the throat.

  “Thank you all kindly,” she cried, her clear voice shrilling into the dark, and an echo fell back as if from the spear-bright stars.

  “’Thank Love, that list you to his mercy call!” ”

  “Who spoke?” She stood aghast, straining to listen, but nothing more was heard.

  Tom came out and stood beside her in silence. The storm of irate excitement died down in her heart as it had done in the outer air.

  The quiet night held its breath, waiting, with Nell, for something to happen. “Snow be coming afore dawn,” bumbled the voices of the waits, trudging away through the crisping mud.