The Ladies on Gylingden Heath.
Just at this moment they became aware of a timid little tapping which had been going on at the window during the latter part of this conference, and looking up, the attorney and the vicar saw ‘little Fairy’s’ violet eyes peering under his light hair, with its mild, golden shadow, and the odd, sensitive smile, at once shy and arch; his cheeks were wet with tears, and his pretty little nose red, though he was smiling; and he drew his face aside among the jessamine, when he saw the gaunt attorney directing his patronising smile upon him.
‘I beg pardon,’ said the vicar, rising with a sudden smile, and going to the window. ‘It is my little man. Fairy! Fairy! What has brought you here; my little man?’
Fairy glanced, still smiling, but very shamefacedly at the grand attorney, and in his little fist he held a pair of rather seedy gloves to the window pane.
‘So I did. I protest I forgot my gloves. Thank you, little man. Who is with you? Oh! I see. That is right.’
The maid ducked a short courtesy.
‘Indeed, Sir, please, Master Fairy was raising the roof (a nursery phrase, which implied indescribable bellowing), and as naughty as could be, until missis allowed him to come after you.’
‘Oh! my little man, you must not do that. Ask nicely, you know; always quietly, like a little gentleman.’
‘But, oh! Wapsie, your hands would be cold;’ and he held the gloves to him against the glass.
‘Well, darling, thank you; you are a kind little man, and I’ll be with you in a moment,’ said the vicar, smiling very lovingly on his naughty little man.
‘Mr. Larkin,’ said he, turning very gratefully to the attorney ‘you can lay this Christian comfort to your kind heart, that you have made mine a hundredfold lighter since I entered this blessed room; indeed, you have lifted a mountain from it by the timely proffer of your invaluable assistance.’
Again the attorney waved off, with a benignant and humble smile, rather oppressive to see, all idea of obligation, and accompanied his grateful client to the glass door of his little porch, where Fairy was already awaiting him with the gloves in his hand.
‘I do believe,’ said the good vicar, as he walked down what Mr. Larkin called ‘the approach,’ and looking up with irrepressible gratitude to the blue sky and the white clouds sailing over his head, ‘if it be not presumption, I must believe that I have been directed hither — yes, darling, yes, my hands are warm’ (this was addressed to little Fairy, who was clamouring for information on the point, and clinging to his arm as he capered by his side). ‘What immense relief;’ and he murmured another thanksgiving, and then quite hilariously —
‘If little man would like to come with his Wapsie, we’ll take such a nice little walk together, and we’ll go and see poor Widow Maddock; and we’ll buy three muffins on our way home, for a feast this evening; and we’ll look at the pictures in the old French “Josephus;” and Mamma and I will tell stories; and I have a halfpenny to buy apples for little Fairy.’
The attorney stood at his window with a shadow on his face, and his small eyes a little contracted and snakelike, following the slim figure of the threadbare vicar and his golden-haired, dancing little comrade; and then he mounted a chair, and took down successively four of his japanned boxes; two of them, in yellow letters, bore respectively the label ‘Brandon, No. 1,’ and ‘No. 2;’ the other ‘Wylder, No. 1,’ and ‘No. 2.’
He opened the ‘Wylder’ box first, and glanced through a neat little ‘statement of title,’ prepared for counsel when draughting the deed of settlement for the marriage which was never to take place.
‘The limitations, let me see, is not there something that one might be safe in advancing a trifle upon — eh? — h’m — yes.’
And, with his lip in his finger and thumb, he conned over those remainders and reversions with a skilled and rapid eye.
Rachel Lake was glad to see the slender and slightly-stooped figure of the vicar standing that morning — his bright little boy by the hand — in the wicket of the tiny flower-garden of Redman’s Farm. She went out quickly to greet him. The sick man likes the sound of his kind doctor’s step on the stairs; and, be his skill much or little, trusts in him, and will even joke a little asthmatic joke, and smile a feeble hectic smile about his ailments, when he is present.
So they fell into discourse among the autumnal flowers and withered leaves; and, as the day was still and genial, they remained standing in the garden; and away went busy little ‘Fairy,’ smiling and chatting with Margery, to see the hens and chickens in the yard.
The physician, after a while, finds the leading features of most cases pretty much alike. He knows when inflammation may be expected and fever will supervene; he is not surprised if the patient’s mind wanders a little at times; expects the period of prostration and the return of appetite; and has his measures and his palliatives ready for each successive phase of sickness and recovery. In like manner, too, the good and skilful parson comes by experience to know the signs and stages of the moral ailments and recoveries which some of them know how so tenderly and so wisely to care for. They, too, have ready — having often proved their consolatory efficacy — their febrifuges and their tonics, culled from that tree of life whose ‘leaves are for the healing of the nations.’
Poor Rachel’s hours were dark, and life had grown in some sort terrible, and death seemed now so real and near — aye, quite a fact — and, somehow, not unfriendly. But, oh! the immense futurity beyond, that could not be shirked, to which she was certainly going.
Death, and sleep so welcome! But, oh! that stupendous LIFE EVERLASTING, now first unveiled. She could only close her eyes and wring her hands. Oh! for some friendly voice and hand to stay her through the Valley of the Shadow of Death!
They talked a long while — Rachel chiefly a listener, and often quietly weeping; and, at last, a very kindly parting, and a promise from the simple and gentle vicar that he would often look in at Redman’s Farm.
She watched his retreating figure as he and little Fairy walked down the tenebrose road to Gylingden, following them with a dismal gaze, as a benighted and wounded wayfarer in that ‘Valley’ would the pale lamp’s disappearing that had for a few minutes, in a friendly hand, shone over his dreadful darkness.
And when, in fitful reveries, fancy turned for a moment to an earthly past and future, all there was a blank — the past saddened, the future bleak. She did not know, or even suspect, that she had been living in an aerial castle, and worshipping an unreal image, until, on a sudden, all was revealed in that chance gleam of cruel lightning, the line in that letter, which she read so often, spelled over, and puzzled over so industriously, though it was clear enough. How noble, how good, how bright and true, was that hero of her unconscious romance.
Well, no one else suspected that incipient madness — that was something; and brave Rachel would quite master it. Happy she had discovered it so soon. Besides, it was, even if Chelford were at her feet, a wild impossibility now; and it was well, though despair were in the pang, that she had, at last, quite explained this to herself.
As Rachel stood in her little garden, on the spot where she had bidden farewell to the vicar, she was roused from her vague and dismal reverie by the sound of a carriage close at hand. She had just time to see that it was a brougham, and to recognise the Brandon liveries, when it drew up at the garden wicket, and Dorcas called to her from the open window.
‘I’m come, Rachel, expressly to take............