Part 3, Chapter V.
T’ Owd Gen’leman.
Guy went to Waynflete. The sweet, clear atmosphere, fresh from the moors, delighted him, and he felt daily stronger and better, while his inborn love for the home of his fathers withstood all painful associations. On his little rough pony, with Rawdie beside him he appeared suddenly in the fields and lanes, like “t’ owd Guy hissel,” as Jem Outhwaite’s old mother declared.
“Eh! but we’ve got a master!” one old man said, quite unimpressed by Guy’s careful quoting of his brother’s name, as he gave orders about repairs and improvements, and made himself acquainted with every dilapidation. He bearded old Cowperthwaite, the publican of the Dragon, in his den, resisted the telling plea that Cowperthwaites had kept the Dragon before Waynfletes lost the Hall, and refused him the renewal of his lease at Michaelmas on the ground of disorder and disreputableness, and of various poaching scandals, which he hunted up as diligently as if old Margaret had bought back Waynflete for the single purpose of preserving its game. It was a proceeding calculated to bring a hornet’s nest about Godfrey’s ears; but Guy was as determined as if no other spot in the valley would have served for a village club. His aims were so visionary, and his methods of carrying them out so practical, that the vicar felt as if two men were working beside him. Guy knew nothing of the parochial side of a country squire’s life; but he hunted down the old Dragon, as if turning a public-house into a coffee-tavern was his life work.
One glorious morning of spring and promise, as he was riding in and out of the lanes in the valley, his pony cast a shoe. He took him into the forge, which was close to the Dragon, to have him re-shod, and, while he waited, strolled on by the side of the dancing, laughing beck towards the old footbridge. In this blue and sunny air, when the once weird and desolate wood was beginning to swell with living green, when the birds were singing, and the earth was full of life, he felt able to look again on the scene of his trial.
He saw the rocky field down which he had stumbled in weary haste, now fresh and green, with a dozen or so of little black-faced lambs skipping about on it. The sunlight shot through and through the opposite wood, now bright and delicate with primroses and anemones; the sky was of cold, but radiant blue. Rawdie pricked his long black ears, and watched the lambs with deep interest, but with admirable self-restraint.
Guy sat down on a bit of broken wall at the foot of the field, and looked across the river. The haunted hollow was lovely with all the rough charm of the north; for Guy it had the charm of home.
“New heavens and a new earth!” he thought.
“Good day t’ ye, Mr Waynflete!”
He turned with a start, and saw a tall old woman, with a red shawl over her head and a handsome, weather-beaten face.
“Good day,” he said. “Mrs Outhwaite, isn’t it?”
“Ay, sir. Margaret Outhwaite’s my name. My old man and I were cousins—I’m as good as the last of ’em. Ye’ll ha’ heard, sir, maybe, that the Outhwaites ha’ the reet to see t’ owd Guy—him as walks—as John Outhwaite, my husband, could have told ye.”
“Ay!” said Guy. “So I’ve heard. Won’t you sit down, and tell me about it?”
“Nay, I’ll stand. But sit ye down, sir; ye look but poorly. Ay? Ye’ll maybe have had a warstle wi’ him yersell. Eh—ay? John saw him, here on t’ brig. He held to it—at his death, and said ’twas a warning. Eh dear—he never took it!”
“Did you ever see him yourself?” asked Guy.
“Nay—I never saw un; the Lord’s left un no room. Eh, sir, have ye got religion?”
“Not quite,” said Guy.
“Eh, sir, ye mun get it; ye’re the sort to need it.”
“I do,” said Guy; “that’s so.”
“Sithee,” said the old woman, resting the basket she carried on the wall, and dropping the tone of honest pride with which she had spoken of her family’s share in the Waynflete ghost, for a coaxing whisper, “sithee, Mr Waynflete. There’s my lad; he’s a bit soft is Jemmy; but he can do a job of work; he can use a besom wi’ the best, and he’ve fettled up t’ kirk for t’ oud sexton, and pu’d t’ bell and fetched t’ watter for t’ christenings, these twenty year. But this ’ere vicar he’s a stranger. Now, Mr Waynflete, canna’ ye speak a word for my lad, t’ last Outhwaite as Waynflete’ll ever see. T’ vicar, he knows nought o’ Waynflete, and ’twas from the Glory Hallelujah men I got salvation. But ’tis all the same, sithee, t’ kirk’s never opened without my Jem, and I doubt na the Lord speaks to his saul. Eh, here a be; I’ve been a looking for him. He’s feared to cross t’ brig by ’issell. There’s no telling, there’s no telling, sir, what t’ ow’d Guy may have done to him.”
Jem, still with the weird boyishness that often clings to those of imperfect intellect, came shambling down the path from the Dragon.
“T’ pony’s shod,” he said, in a high, cracked voice, as he came in sight.
“Thanks,” said Guy, moving. “Good day to you, Mrs Outhwaite; I’ll see the vicar.”
The sunny valley had lost its smile, and for the moment Guy yielded to his sudden sense of shrinking distaste, and hurried on without a backward glance. This burlesque of his most inward and individual experience gave him a new sensation. He took his pony, and rode on up the hill to the church, where the vicar was watching the placing of the new grey slabs of stone, in place of the broken ones on the high-pitched roof. Guy tied up his pony, and sitting down on a flat tombstone, looked on also.
“Peter cast a shoe,” he said; “and Mrs Outhwaite has been pleading for Jem’s place as second grave-digger.”
“Oh, of course, one must let him literally ‘fool around’ as long as he can. His mother is pretty much of a Ranter; but so is every one here with any religion. How else would they have got it? She watches over poor Jemmy. Now and then he gets drunk at the Dragon. It’ll be a good day for him when we close it. He’s a nervous, timid creature; I’ve seen him shiver and shake sometimes in a way that was pitiful.”
“The mother says t’ owd Guy scared him.”
“Oh, well,” said the vicar, “I believe that tradition would have died out long ago but for old Peggy Outhwaite. She takes a pride in it. ‘T’ owd Guy’ is used as a sort of bogie to frighten the children; I’ve heard a mother say, ‘T’ owd Guy’ll get ye.’ It’s a sort of proverb.”
Guy made no answer; but he reflected that Mr Clifton was a South-country stranger, to whom the natives did not confide their inmost beliefs, and, being himself a North-country man, and no stranger, he enjoyed this opinion in silence. He started a little when he turned and saw the subject of the conversation standing close by him, touching his cap, and smiling at him, a slow, foolish smile.
“So you’re come to look after the church?” said Guy.
“When t’ church is fettled oop, me and sexton’ll have new clothes,” he said, in a cracked but confidential whisper.
“That’ll be fine,” said Guy, good-naturedly.
Jem grinned, nodded, and shambled off again; but, from that day forward, he attached himself to Guy with curious persistency, watching for his coming, starting up unexpectedly to hold the pony, made happy by a word or smile. He followed Guy as closely, and more humbly than Rawdie.
So it came to pass that, on the morning after her arrival with her aunt at the Hall, Florella, having found her way into part of the wood that covered Flete Edge, heard a sharp bark, and beheld Rawdie come scurrying over last year’s leaves and this year’s primroses, till a shrill whistle stopped him short.
Florella stood still also, as, coming across a clearing in the underwood, she saw Guy riding his little rough pony, and behind him, like a shadow, the grotesque figure of Jem Outhwaite. They were a strange and unusual pair, with the grotesque little dog for a herald.
Guy sprang off the pony, and came forward with an eager greeting.
“We knew you were coming yesterday,” he said. “Clifton and I meant to call this afternoon. I am so glad I am still here. Oh yes,” as she murmured an inquiry and a greeting, “I am quite strong now.”
After a few more sentences, he paused and said, with a smile, and a little shyness, “I want to show you something.”
He led her a few steps aside, along a little foot-track towards a bank, covered all over with the long trails and open flowers of the smaller periwinkle.
“There!” he said. “I have been watching these every day, to see if they would be ready for you. The spring blue-bells won’t be here for a long time; but these—they are blue—they are like stars—won’t they make a picture?”
“They are just what I wanted to see,” she said. “I have hardly ever been in the country in spring.”
“Let me get you some to take home and learn them. When I look at flowers, I almost think of how you will see them, and then I know how pretty they are.”
He put the long sprays into her hand, and they looked into one another’s eyes, and felt nothing but the spring, the flowers, and each other’s presence.
At first Guy wished for no more. He did not try to draw Florella more closely into his inner life, she made the outer one so fair. It was delightful to see her cut cake and pour out tea, to hear her chat to her aunt, or play with Rawdie, and when, at Mr Clifton’s suggestion, she undertook some little kindnesses to a few old women, a little notice of some rough girls, when she put her hand to the help of Waynflete, it seemed to Guy in truth like the descent of an angel.
A sweet and natural magic drowned the dark hues of his soul in rainbow tints. From the moment when he knew himself to love her, his inward appeal to her paused. So far as he knew, he had been to her but a soul in distress, and now he had a foolish, pathetic impulse to come to her in sunshine and flowers, to please her fancy, not to move her pity. So surely, he might touch her heart, just touch it—one day he might perhaps win it outright.
And she? She never “saw” his thoughts now; how could she, when the sight of his face blotted them out? She did not even get on very fast with painting his periwinkles. One little word about his trouble would have been sweeter to her than the bluest of blue flowers; the very word he was so careful not to speak.
For his blissful content did not last very long. Surface intercourse, however sweet, could not long be sufficient for him. He could not come to her as any other wooer might have done, and, if he could, he would not. He never swerved from his conviction, that until he was free from every trace of his strange bondage, he must never seek to take her to himself. “Why, Godfrey had not been able to stand the knowledge of his secret, should he inflict it upon her?” So he was distant and reserved, and gave her pain far worse than any that his confidence could have cost her.
But he himself was full of eager hope; and hope, doubtful of fulfilment, though a very good thing in its way, is something of a foe to patience.