of eatables but the half of a stale loaf, and an uninviting-looking lump of evidently salt butter, on a cracked plate. Captain Beverley eyed it all rather disconsolately. Then he went to the door – he had to stoop to avoid knocking his head on the lintel – and called down the narrow, red-tiled passage leading to the kitchen.
“Mrs Bowker, I say. Aren’t you going to give me any breakfast this morning?”
No Mrs Bowker appeared in answer to his summons, but out of the depths of the kitchen a voice replied:
“I’m a-bringin’ it, sir.”
“And what is it? Bacon?”
“No, sir – heggs,” was the reply.
“Heggs,” he repeated, as he turned back again into the parlour, “of course. I might have known, by this time, if it wasn’t bacon it would be ‘heggs.’ I declare, if I were that Mrs Western, and she I, I wouldn’t be so inhospitable. She might have asked me to go to breakfast, or luncheon, or something. I am sure those nice girls would if they could. Ah! well, here comes the heggs, and letters, too! – What’s going to happen, Mrs Bowker? The postman’s not above half an hour late this morning!”
“May be he walks fast to get out of the wet,” Mrs Bowker suggested, composedly, as she left the room.
There were three letters, two manifestly uninteresting, and Captain Beverley tossed them aside. The third had the postmark “Paris.” It was from Mr Cheviott, and his cousin opened and read it eagerly. It was rather a long letter, once or twice he smiled, and once, when he came to a passage close to the end, a slight frown contracted his good-humoured face.
“Laurence takes up such unreasonable prejudices,” he said to himself, with some irritation. “What can he know about it?”
This was the passage that annoyed him: “I hardly think the man you mention would be experienced enough for your situation – in any case I would not, if I were you, consult the Hathercourt clergyman about him, for by all accounts he is far from a practical person as to such matters, and I rather fancy there is nothing superior about the Rectory family. They are desperately poor for one thing, but, of course, you will not need to make friends with them; it is not as if Hathercourt were to be your head-quarters.”
Captain Beverley ate his breakfast and pondered over his letter. Then he got up and went to the window, and looked out at the rain.
“It is very annoying of Cheviott to have taken up this prejudice against Owen,” he thought. “I believe he is the very man for me, and, at any rate, it is necessary to hear all I can about him. And as for what Cheviott says about the Westerns I think nothing of it whatever, and he himself would be the first to own he had been mistaken if he saw the sort of people they really are. I can understand their not being popular well enough; they are proud and won’t stand being patronised.”
His meditations ended in his deciding to walk over again to Hathercourt that very afternoon – it would not do to put off hearing about Owen and settling the matter, and this he could easily explain to Mr Western, as an excuse for troubling him about it. And, having arrived at this decision, things in general began to look considerably less gloomy – he got out the plans for the new farmhouse, and examined them critically, rolling them neatly up again, when the idea struck him that it would be well to take them with him to the Rectory, in the afternoon.
“Mr Western may like to see them,” he thought, “and, as he is the clergyman of the parish, it will gratify him to be consulted.”
Then he answered Mr Cheviott’s letter, saying nothing about his visit to Hathercourt, and merely mentioning that he was making further inquiries about the man Owen, ending with a description of Mrs Bowker for Alys’s benefit, and a hearty wish that they were all back at Romary.
This important task accomplished, he looked at his watch and saw that it was eleven o’clock, so he sauntered out for a stroll round the farm and a talk with his head man. The rain was ceasing, and there was no sort of reason why he should not walk over to the Rectory in the afternoon; besides, to-morrow would be Saturday, a day on which clergymen, proverbially, dislike to be interrupted. So, having dispatched a couple of rather tough mutton chops, which was all Mrs Bowker condescended to allow him in the way of luncheon, by half-past two o’clock Captain Beverley found himself more than ready for his second expedition to Hathercourt. It was really too early to call, however, but the day had grown pleasant out of doors, and inside the old farm-house he felt it impossible to kill any more time. A “happy thought” occurred to him – why not go round by the Balner woods? It was a long walk and he might probably lose his way, but if he did he could but try to find it again – anything was better than hanging about Hathercourt Edge doing nothing.
It was November now, but who that has really lived in the country – lived in it “all the year round,” and learned every change in the seasons, every look of the sky, all the subtle combinations of air, and light, and colour, and scent, which give to outdoor life its indescribable variety and unflagging interest, who of such initiated ones does not know how marvellously delicious November can sometimes be? How tender the clear, thin, yellow tone of the struggling sunbeams, the half frosty streaks of red on the pale blue-green sky, the haze of approaching winter over all! How soft, and subdued, and tired the world seems – all the bustle over, ready to fall asleep, but first to whisper gently good night! And to feel November to perfection, for, after all, this shy autumnal charm is not so much a matter of sight, as of every sense combined, sound and scent and sight together, lapsing into one vague consciousness of harmony and repose – the place of places is a wood. A wood where the light, faint at the best, comes quivering and brokenly through the not yet altogether unclothed branches, where the fragrance of the rich leafy soil mingles with that of the breezes from the not far distant sea, where the dear rabbits scud about in the most unexpected places, and the squirrels are up aloft making arrangements for the winter – oh! a wood in late autumn has a strange glamour of its own, that comes over me, in spirit, even as I write of it, far, far away from country sights and sounds, further away still from the long-ago days of youth and leisure, and friends to wander with, in the Novembers that then were never gloomy.
Arthur Beverley was by no means sentimental – he whistled cheerily as he went along, and thought more of the probable amount of shooting in the Balner woods than of the beauty around him, yet he was not insensible to it.
“How jolly it seems after the rain,” he said to himself. “After all, there’s nowhere like England, fogs and all – it’s fresh, and wholesome, and invigorating, even in murky weather, like what we’ve had lately,” and he stood still and looked round him approvingly.
Suddenly a sound, a faint sound only, caught his ear. He listened. It came again. This time he distinguished it to be that of cheerful voices approaching him, then a merry laugh, a little exclamation, and the laugh again. Arthur Beverley’s face lighted up with interest; he felt sure he knew that laugh. He hastened on and, after a few moments’ quick walking, a little turn in the path brought him in sight of a group of figures just in front of him; they were the Western girls, the Western girls in great force, for, besides the two he knew already, there were the younger ones, Alexa and Josephine, and little Francie. And the laugh had been Lilias’s – he was not mistaken.
She was standing with her back towards him, and so was Mary, but the tiny girl beside them drew their attention to his approach.
“A gentleman, sister,” she exclaimed, pulling Miss Western’s skirt. And Lilias, turning round, met his hearty look of pleasure.
“I thought it was you,” he said, as he shook hands, “I heard you laugh.”
“How do you know it was my laugh?” said Lilias, smiling.
“I
