LOST IN THE MARSHES.
On the east coast of the county of Norfolk, there lay a village which shall be distinguished by the name of Corston. It was bounded on the one side by the sea, on the other by the open country, and beside the two or three gentleman farmers whose possessions comprised all the agricultural land within a radius of five miles, it could boast of a church and resident parson—a coastguard with its attendant officer, and above all, close contiguity with Rooklands, the estate of the Earl of Worcester. And those who are acquainted with the moral and social aspect, as it existed forty or fifty years ago, of the more insignificant villages of Norfolk, will acknowledge that Corston was favoured above its fellows. The sea coast in its vicinity brought many a gay riding party over from Rooklands, either to enjoy the fresh breezes, or to bathe in the sparkling waves from some sequestered nook, whilst the congregation of the church was made up of drafts from some four or five outlying hamlets which had not the advantage of a place of worship of their own. Conceive then what a much larger audience the Corston parson could depend upon, when the women had a prospect of seeing the bonnets from ten miles round (to say nothing of a chance of the Rookland aristocrats taking it into their heads to drive out), in addition to listening to his somewhat uninteresting sermons. The coastguard, too, was a cause of constant excitement, on account of the Admiralty having been in the habit of bestowing the appointment on old, worn-out, half-pay lieutenants who chose to expire almost as soon as they obtained it, and really, notwithstanding the church and the parson and Rooklands, there was not much in Corston worth living for. But at the time this story opens, the charge of the coast had not long been put in the hands of (comparatively speaking) a young and hale man who bid fair to keep anybody else out of it for a long while to come. His office was no sinecure though, for, notwithstanding the difficulty of landing, the coast was a celebrated one for smugglers, and as soon as the dark months of winter set in there was no lack of work for the preventive officers. For the village of Corston did not, of itself, run down to the sea. Between it and the ocean there lay the salt marshes, a bleak, desolate tract of land, which no skill or perseverance could reclaim from apparent uselessness. Except to the samphire and cockle-gatherers, the salt marshes of Corston were an arid wilderness which could yield no fruit. Many a farmer had looked longingly across the wide waste which terminated only with the shingled beach, and wondered if it were possible to utilise it. But as it had been from the beginning, so it remained until that day; its stinted vegetation affording shelter for sea-fowl and smugglers’ booty only, and its brackish waters that flowed and ebbed with the tides, tainting the best springs on the level ground of Corston. It was the existence of these marshes that rendered the coastguard necessary to the village, which would otherwise have become a perfect nest of smugglers. As it was, notwithstanding all the vigilance of Mr John Burton and his men, many a keg of spirits and roll of tobacco were landed on the coast of Corston, and many a man in the place was marked by them as guilty, though never discovered. For they who had lived by the salt marshes all their lives were cunning as to their properties, and knew just where they might bury their illegal possessions with impunity when the tide was low, and find them safe when it had flowed and ebbed again. Everyone was not so fortunate. Lives had been lost in the marshes before now—ay, and of Corston men too, and several dark tales were told by the gossips of the village of the quagmires and quicksands that existed in various parts of them, which looked, although they never were, both firm and dry, but had the power to draw man and horse with the temerity to step upon them, into their unfathomable depths. But if the smugglers kept Mr Burton and his men fully occupied on the sea shore, the poachers did no less for Lord Worcester’s band of gamekeepers at Rooklands; and Farmer Murray, who had a drop of Scotch blood running in his veins, and was never so much alive as when his own interests were concerned, had only saved his game for the last three years by having been fortunate enough to take the biggest poacher in Corston, red-handed, and let him off on condition that he became his keeper and preserved his covers from future violence. ‘Set a thief to catch a thief’ is a time-honoured saying, and Farmer Murray found it answer. Isaac Barnes, the unscrupulous poacher, became a model gamekeeper, and the midnight rest of the inhabitants of Mavis Farm had never been disturbed by a stray shot since; though the eldest son, George Murray, had been heard to affirm that half the fun of his life was gone now that there was no chance of a tussle with the poachers. Such was the state of Corston some forty years ago. The villagers were rough, uneducated, and lawless, and the general condition of the residents, vapid and uninteresting enough to have provoked any amount of wickedness, if only for the sake of change or excitement.
It was the end of September, and the close of a glorious summer. The harvest had been abundant and the Norfolk soil, which knows so well how to yield her fruits in due season, was like an exhausted mother which had just been delivered of her abundance. The last sheaves of golden corn were standing in the fields ready to be carried to the threshing-barn, the trees in the orchards were weighed down with their wealth of pears and apples, and in every lane clusters of bare-headed children with their hands full of nuts and their faces stained with blackberry juice, proved how nature had showered her bounties on rich and poor alike. Lizzie Locke, who was making her way slowly in the direction of the village, with a huge basket on her arm, stopped more than once to wipe her hot face, and pull the sun bonnet she wore further over her eyes, although in another couple of days the October moon would have risen upon the land. She was a young girl of not more than eighteen or twenty years, and, as her dress denoted, bred from the labouring classes. Not pretty—unless soft brown hair, a fair skin and delicate features, can make a woman so—but much more refined in appearance than the generality of her kind. The hands that grasped the handle of her heavy basket had evidently never done much hard work, nor were her feet broadened or her back bent with early toiling in the turnip and the harvest fields. The reason of this was apparent as soon as she turned her eyes toward you. Quiet blue eyes shaded by long lashes, that seldom unveiled them—eyes that, under more fortuitous circumstances, might have flashed and sparkled with roguish mirth, but that seemed to bear now a settled melancholy in them, even when her mouth smiled: eyes, in fact, that had been blinded from their birth.
Poor Lizzie Locke! There was a true and great soul burning in her breast, but the windows were darkened and it had no power to look out upon the world. As she stood still for a few moments’ rest for the third or fourth time between the salt marshes and Corston, her quick ear caught the sound of approaching horses’ feet, and she drew on one side of the open road to let the rider pass. But instead of that, the animal was drawn up suddenly upon its haunches, and a pleasant young voice rang out in greeting to her.
‘Why, Lizzie, is that you? What a careless girl you are—I might have ridden over you.’
‘Miss Rosa,’ exclaimed the blind girl, as she recognised the voice and smiled brightly in return.
‘Of course it’s Miss Rosa, and Polly is as fresh as a two-year-old this morning. She always is, when she gets upon the marshes. It’s lucky I pulled up in time.’
The new comer, a handsome girl of about the same age as Lizzie, was the only daughter of Farmer Murray, of Mavis Farm. Spoilt, as one girl amongst half-a-dozen boys is sure to be, it is not to be wondered at that Rosa Murray was impetuous, saucy, and self-willed. For, added to her being her father’s darling, and not knowing what it was to be denied anything in his power to give her, Miss Rosa was extremely pretty, with grey eyes and dark hair, and a complexion like a crimson rose. A rich brunette beauty that had gained for her the title of the Damask Rose of Corston, and of which no one was better aware than herself. Many a gentleman visitor at Rooklands had heard of the fame of the farmer’s pretty daughter, and ridden over to Corston on purpose to catch a glimpse of her, and it was beginning to be whispered about the village that no one in those parts would be considered good enough for a husband for Miss Rosa, and that Mr Murray was set upon her marrying a gentleman from London, any gentleman from ‘London’ being considered by the simple rustics to be unavoidably ‘the glass of fashion and the mould of form.’ Mr Murray was termed a ‘gentleman farmer’ in that part of the county, because he lived in a substantially-built and well-furnished house, and could afford to keep riding-horses in his stable and sit down to a dinner spread on a tablecloth every day. But, in reality, his father had commenced life as a ploughman in that very village of Corston, and it was only necessary to bring Farmer Murray into the presence of Lord Worcester and his fashionable friends to see how much of a ‘gentleman’ he was. He had made the great mistake, however, of sending his children to be educated at schools above their station in life, the consequence of which was that, whilst their tastes and proclivities remained plebeian as his own, they had acquired a self-sufficiency and idea of their merits that accorded ill with their surroundings and threatened to mar their future happiness. The Damask Rose of Corston was the worst example amongst them of the evil alluded to. She had unfortunately lost her mother many years before, so was almost completely her own mistress, and the admiration her beauty excited was fast turning her from a thoughtless flirt into a heartless coquette, the most odious character any woman can assume.
But with her own sex, and when it suited her, Rosa Murray could be agreeable and ingenuous enough, and there was nothing but cordiality in the tone in which she continued her conversation with Lizzie Locke.
‘What are you doing out here by yourself, child? You really ought not to go about alone. It can’t be safe.’
‘Oh, it’s safe enough, Miss Rosa. I’ve been used to find my way about ever since I could walk. I’ve just come up from the marshes, and I was going to take these cockles to Mavis Farm to see if the master would like them for his breakfast to-morrow.’
‘I daresay they will be very glad of them. George and Bob are awfully fond of cockles. What a lot you’ve gathered, Lizzie. How do you manage to find them, when you can’t see?’
‘I know all the likeliest places they stick to, Miss Rosa, as well as I do the chimney corner at home. The tide comes up and leaves them on the bits of rocks, and among the boulders, and some spots are regular beds of them. I’ve been at it half my life, you see, miss, and I just feel for them with my fingers and pick them off. I can tell a piece of samphire, too, by the sound it makes as I tread over it.’
‘It’s wonderful,’ said Rosa; ‘I have often been surprised to see you go about just as though you had the use of your eyes. It seems to make no difference to you.’
Poor Lizzie sighed.
‘Oh, miss! it makes a vast difference—such a difference as you could never understand. But I try to make the best of it, and not be more of a burden upon aunt and Larry than I need to be.’
‘I’m sure they don’t think you a burden,’ said the other girl, warmly. ‘But I wonder I didn’t meet you on the marshes just now. I’ve been galloping all over them.’
‘Not past Corston Point, I hope, miss,’ exclaimed Lizzie, hurriedly.
‘Yes, I have! Why not?’
‘Oh, don’t go there again, Miss Rosa. It isn’t safe, particularly on horseback. There’s no end of quagmires beyond the Point, and you can never tell when you’ll come on one and be swallowed up, horse and all.’
Rosa Murray laughed.
‘Why aren’t you swallowed up then, Lizzie?’
‘I know my way, miss, and I know the tread of it too. I can tell when the soil yields more than it should at low tide that I’m nearing a quicksand. When the Almighty takes away one sense He sharpens the others to make up for it. But the sands are full of danger; some of them are shifting too, and you can never tell if they’re firm to-day whether they won’t be loose to-morrow. Do take heed, Miss Rosa, and never you ride beyond Corston Point without one of the young gentlemen to take care of you.’
‘Well, I’ll remember your advice, Lizzie, for I don’t want to be swallowed up alive. Good-bye.’
She put her horse in motion and cantered on some little way in advance—then suddenly checked him again and turned back. All Rosa Murray’s actions, like her disposition, were quick and impulsive.
‘By the way, Lizzie, it’s our harvest-home supper to-night. You must be sure and make Larry bring you up to the big barn with him.’
The blind girl crimsoned with pleasure.
‘Oh, Miss Rosa! but what should I be doing at your supper? I can’t dance, you know. I shall only be in the way.’
‘Nonsense! You can hear the singing and the music; we have made papa get a couple of fiddlers over from Wells; and you can eat some supper. You will enjoy yourself, won’t you, Lizzie?’
‘Yes, miss, I think so—that is, if Larry and aunt are willing that I should go; but it’s very good of you to ask me.’
‘You must be sure and come. Tell Larry I insist upon it. We shall all be there, you know, and I shall look out for you, Lizzie, and if I don’t see you I shall send some one round to your cottage to fetch you.’
Lizzie Locke smiled and curtsied.
‘I’ll be sure and tell Larry of your goodness, miss’ she said, ‘and he’ll be able to thank you better than I can. Here comes a gentleman,’ she added, as she withdrew herself modestly from the side of the young lady’s horse.
The gentleman, whom Lizzie Locke could have distinguished only as such from the different sound produced by his boots in walking, was Lord Worcester’s head gamekeeper, Frederick Darley. He was a young fellow to hold the responsible position he did, being only about thirty years of age, and he had not held it long; but he was the son of the gamekeeper on one of Lord Worcester’s estates in the south of England, and his lordship had brought him to Rooklands as soon as ever a vacancy occurred. He was a favourite with his master and his master’s guests, being a man of rather superior breeding and education, but on that very account he was much disliked by all the poor people around. Gamekeepers are not usually popular in a poaching district, but it was not Frederick Darley’s position alone that made him a subject for criticism. His crying sin, to use their own term, was that he ‘held his head too high.’ The velveteen coat he usually wore, with a rose in the button-hole, his curly black hair and waxed moustache, no less than the cigars he smoked and the air with which he affected the society of the gentry, showed the tenants of Rooklands that he considered himself vastly above themselves in position, and they hated him accordingly. The animus had spread to Corston, but Mr Darley was not well enough known there yet to have become a subject for general comment. Lizzie Locke had never even encountered him before.
He was walking from the village on the present occasion swinging a light cane in his hand, and as Rosa Murray looked up at the blind girl’s exclamation, she perceived him close to her horse’s head.
‘Good morning, Miss Murray,’ he said, lifting his hat.
‘Good morning,’ she replied, without mentioning any name, but Lizzie Locke could detect from the slight tremor in her voice that she was confused at the sudden encounter. ‘Were you going down to the beach?’
‘I was going nowhere but in search of you.’
‘Shall we walk towards home then?’ said Rosa, suiting the action to the word. She evidently did not wish the blind girl to be a party to their conversation. She called out ‘Good-bye, Lizzie,’ once more as she walked her horse away, but before she was out of hearing, the little cockle-gatherer could distinguish her say to the stranger in a fluttered voice,—
‘I am so glad you are coming over to our harvest-home to-night.’
‘One of the grand gentlemen over from Rooklands come to court Miss Rosa,’ she thought in the innocence of her heart, as she turned off the road to take a short cut across the country to Mavis Farm. Meanwhile the couple she alluded to were making their way slowly towards Corston; she, reining in her horse to the pace of a tortoise, whilst he walked by the side with his hand upon the crutch of her saddle.
‘Could you doubt for a moment whether I should come?’ said Frederick Darley in answer to Rosa’s question. ‘Wouldn’t I go twenty—fifty miles, for the pleasure of a dance with you?’
‘You’re such an awful flatterer,’ she replied, bridling under the compliment; ‘but don’t make too sure of a dance with me, for papa and my brothers will be there, and they are so horribly particular about me.’
‘And not particularly fond of me—I know it, Miss Murray—but I care nothing at all about it so long as—as—’
‘As what?’
‘As you are.’
‘Oh, Mr Darley! how can you talk such nonsense?’
‘It’s not nonsense! it’s sober sense—come, Rosa, tell me the truth. Are you playing with me, or not?’
‘What do you mean by “playing”?’
‘You know. Are you in earnest or in jest? In fact—do you love me better than you love your father and your brothers?’
‘Mr Darley! You know I do!’
‘Prove it then, by meeting me to-night.’
‘Meeting you? Are you not coming to the harvest-home?’
‘I may look in, but I shall not remain long; I shall only use it as an excuse to come over to Corston. Mr Murray is suspicious of me—I can see that—and your brothers dislike me. I don’t care to sit at the table of men who are not my friends, Rosa. But if you will take an opportunity to slip out of the barn and join me in the apple copse, I will wait there for you at ten o’clock.’
‘Oh! Frederick—if papa should catch me!’
‘I will take care of that! Only say you’ll come.’
‘I should like to come—it will be so lovely and romantic. Just like a scene in a novel. But I am afraid it is very wrong.’
‘What is there wrong in a moonlight stroll? “The summer nights were made for love,” Rosa, and we shall have a glorious moon by nine o’clock to-night. You won’t disappoint me, will you?’
‘No, indeed I won’t; but if anything should be discovered you will promise me—’
‘What? I will promise you anything in the world.’
‘Only that you will shield me from papa’s anger—that you will say it was all your fault. For papa is dreadful when he gets in a temper.’
‘If you should be discovered—which is not at all likely—I promise you that, rather than give you back into papa’s clutches, I will carry you straight off to Rooklands and marry you with a special licence. Will that satisfy you? Would you consent to be my wife, Rosa?’
‘Yes!’ she replied, and earnestly, for she had been captivated by the manner and appearance of Frederick Darley for some weeks past, and this was not the first meeting by many that they had held without the knowledge of her father.
‘That’s my own Damask Rose,’ he exclaimed triumphantly; ‘give me a kiss, dear, just one to seal the contract; there’s no one looking!’ He held up his face towards her as he spoke—his handsome insouciant face with its bright eyes and smile, and she stooped hers to meet it, and give the embrace he petitioned for.
But someone was looking. Almost as Rosa’s lips met Darley’s a frightened look came into her eyes, and she uttered a note of alarm.
‘What is it, darling?’
‘It’s my brother George! He’s coming this way. Oh! go, Mr Darley—pray go across the field and let me canter on to meet him.’ He would have stayed to remonstrate, but the girl pushed him from her, and thinking discretion the better part of valour, he jumped over a neighbouring stile and walked away in the direction she had indicated, whilst she, with a considerable degree of agitation, rode on to make what excuses she best could for the encounter to her brother. George Murray was sauntering along the hedge-row switching the leaves off the hazel bushes as he went, and apparently quite unsuspicious of anything being wrong. But the first question he addressed to his sister went straight to the point.
‘Who was that fellow that was talking to you just now, Rosa?’
She knew it would be of no use trying to deceive him, so she spoke the truth.
‘It was Mr Darley!’
‘What’s he doing over here?’
‘How should I know? You’d better ask him yourself! Am I accountable for Mr Darley’s actions?’
‘Don’t talk nonsense. You know what I mean perfectly well. Did he come over to Rooklands to see you?’
‘To see me—what will you get into your head next?’
‘Well, you seemed to be hitting it off pretty well together. What were you whispering to him about just now?’
‘I didn’t whisper to him.’
‘You did! I saw you stoop your head to his ear. Now look here, Rosa! Don’t you try any of your flirtation games on with Darley, or I’ll go straight to the governor and tell him.’
‘And what business is it of yours, pray?’
‘It would be the business of every one of us. You don’t suppose we’re going to let you marry a gamekeeper, do you?’
‘Really, George, you’re too absurd. Cannot a girl stop to speak to a man in the road without being accused of wanting to marry him? You will say I want to marry every clodhopper I may dance with at the harvest-home to-night next.’
‘That is a very different thing. The ploughboys are altogether beneath you, but this Darley is a kind of half-and-half fellow that might presume to imagine himself good enough to be a match for you.’
‘Half-and-half indeed!’ exclaimed Rosa, nettled at the reflection on her lover; ‘and pray, what are we when all’s said and done? Mr Darley’s connections are as good as our own, and better, any day.’
‘Halloa! what are you making a row about? I’ll tell you what, Rosa. It strikes me very forcibly you want to “carry on” with Lord Worcester’s keeper, and you ought to be ashamed of yourself for thinking of it. You—who have been educated and brought up in every respect like a lady—to condescend to flirt with an upstart like that, a mere servant! Why, he’s no better than Isaac Barnes, or old Whisker, or any of the rest of them, only he’s prig enough to oil his hair, and wear a button-hole, in order to catch the eye of such silly noodles like yourself.’
‘You’ve no right to speak to me in this way, George. You know nothing at all about the matter.’
‘I know that I found Darley and you in the lane with your heads very close together, and that directly he caught sight of me he made off. That doesn’t look as if his intentions were honourable, does it? Now, look you here, Rosa. Is he coming to the barn to-night?’
‘I believe so!’
‘And who asked him?’
‘I don’t know,’ she replied, evasively; ‘papa, perhaps—or very likely Mr Darley thought he required no invitation to join a ploughman’s dance and supper.’
‘Well, you’re not to dance with him if he does come.’
‘I don’t know what right you have to forbid it.’
‘None at all! but if you won’t give me the promise I shall go straight to the governor, and let him know what I saw to-day. He’s seen something of it himself, I can tell you, and he told me to put you on your guard, so you can take your choice of having his anger or not.’
This statement was not altogether true, for if Farmer Murray had heard anything of his daughter’s flirtation with the handsome gamekeeper, it had been only what his sons had suggested to him, and he did not believe their reports. But the boys, George and Robert, now young men of three or four-and-twenty, had had more than one consultation together on the subject, and quite made up their minds that their sister must not be allowed to marry Frederick Darley. For they were quite alive to the advantages that a good connection for her might afford to themselves, and wanted to see her raise the family instead of lowering it.
Rosa, however, believed her brother’s word. Dread of her father’s anger actuated in a great measure this belief, and she began to fear lest all communication between Darley and herself might be broken off if she did not give the required promise. And the very existence of the fear opened her eyes to the truth, that her lover was become a necessary part of life’s enjoyment to her. So, like a true woman and a hunted hare, she temporised and ‘doubled.’
‘Does papa really think I am too intimate with Mr Darley, George?’ she inquired, trembling.
‘Of course he does, like all the rest of us.’
‘But it’s a mistake. I don’t care a pin about him.’
‘Then it will be no privation for you to give up dancing with him to-night.’
‘I never intended to dance with him.’
‘Honour bright, Rosa?’
‘Well, I can’t say more than I have. However, you will see. I shall not dance with him. If he asks me, I shall say I am engaged to you.’
‘You can say what you like, so long as you snub the brute. I wonder at his impudence coming up to our “Home” at all. But these snobs are never wanting in “cheek.” However, if Bob and I don’t give him a pretty broad hint to-night that his room is preferable to his company, I’m a duffer! Are you going in, Rosa?’
For the young people had continued to walk towards their own home, and had now arrived at the farm gates.
‘Yes. I’ve been in the saddle since ten o’clock this morning, and have had enough of it.’
‘Let me take Polly round to the stables before the governor sees the state you’ve brought her home in, then,’ said George, as his sister dismounted and threw him the reins. He could be good-natured enough when he had his own way, and he thought he had got it now with Rosa. But she went up to her chamber bent but on one idea—how best to let Mr Darley know of what had passed between her brother and herself, that he might not be surprised at the caution of her behaviour when they met in the big barn.
Meanwhile Lizzie Locke having left her basket of cockles at Mavis Farm, had reached her cottage home. Her thoughts had been very pleasant as she journeyed there and pondered on the coming pleasure of the evening. It was not often the poor child took any part in the few enjoyments to be met in Corston. People were apt to leave her out of their invitations, thinking that as she was blind she could not possibly derive any amusement from hearing, and she was of too shrinking and modest a nature to obtrude herself where she was not specially required. She had never been to one of the harvest-home suppers given by Farmer Murray (in whose employ her cousin Laurence worked), though she had heard much of their delights. But now that Miss Rosa had particularly desired her to come, she thought Larry would be pleased to take her. And she had a print dress nice and clean for the occasion, and her aunt would plait her hair neatly for her, and she should hear the sound of Larry’s voice as he talked to his companions, and of his feet whilst he was dancing, and, perhaps, after supper one of his famous old English songs—songs which they had heard so seldom of late, and the music of which her aunt and she had missed so much.
It was past twelve o’clock as she entered the cottage, but she was so full of her grand news that she scarcely remembered that she must have kept both her relations waiting for their dinner of bacon and beans.
‘Why, Lizzie, my girl, where on earth have you been to?’ exclaimed her aunt, Mrs Barnes, as she appeared on the threshold. Mrs Barnes’ late husband had been brother to the very Isaac Barnes, once poacher, now gamekeeper on Farmer Murray’s estate, and there were scandal-mongers in Corston ill-natured enough to assert that the taint was in the blood, and that young Laurence Barnes was very much inclined to go the same way as his uncle had done before him. But at present he was a helper in the stables of Mavis Farm.
‘I’ve been along the marshes,’ said Lizzie, ‘gathering cockles, and they gave me sixpence for them up at the farm; and oh, aunt! I met Miss Rosa on my way back, and she says Larry must take me up to the big barn this evening to their harvest-home supper.’
Laurence Barnes was seated at his mother’s table already occupied in the discussion of a huge lump of bread and bacon, but as the name of his master’s daughter left Lizzie’s lips it would have been very evident to any one on the look-out for it that he started and seemed uneasy.
‘And what will you be doing at a dance and a supper, my poor girl?’ said her aunt, but not unkindly. ‘Come, Lizzie, sit down and take your dinner; that’s of much more account to you than a harvest merry-making.’
‘Not till Larry has promised to take me up with him this evening,’ replied the girl gaily, and without the least fear of a rebuff. ‘You’ll do it, Larry, won’t you? for Miss Rosa said they’d all be there, and if she didn’t see me she’d send round to the cottage after me. She said, “Tell Larry I insist upon it; she did, indeed!”’
‘Well, then, I’m not going up myself, and so you can’t go,’ he answered roughly.
‘Not going yourself!’
The exclamation left the lips of both women at once. They could not understand it, and it equally surprised them. Larry—the best singer and dancer for twenty miles round, to refuse to go up to his master’s harvest-home! Why, what would the supper and the dance be without him? At least, so thought Mrs Barnes and Lizzie.
‘Aren’t you well, Larry?’ demanded the blind girl, timidly.
‘I’m well enough; but I don’t choose to go. I don’t care for such rubbish. Let ’em bide! They’ll do well enough without us.’
Lizzie dropt into her seat in silence, and began in a mechanical way to eat her dinner. She was terribly disappointed, but she did not dream of disputing her cousin’s decision. He was master in that house; and she would not have cared to go to the barn without Larry. Half the pleasure would be gone with his absence. He did not seem to see that.
‘Mother can take you up, Liz, if she has a mind to,’ he said, presently.
‘I take her along of me!’ cried Mrs Barnes, ‘when I haven’t so much as a clean kerchief to pin across my shoulders. You’re daft, Larry. I haven’t been to such a thing as a dance since I laid your father in the churchyard, and if our Liz can’t go without me she must stop at home.’
‘I don’t want to go, indeed I don’t, not without Larry,’ replied the blind girl, earnestly.
‘And what more did Miss Rosa say to you?’ demanded her aunt, inquisitively.
‘We talked about the sands, aunt. She’d been galloping all over them this morning, and I told her how dangerous they were beyond Corston Point, and we was getting on so nice together, when some one came and interrupted us.’
‘Some one! Who’s some one?’ said Laurence Barnes, quickly.
‘I can’t tell you; I never met him before.’
‘’Twas a man, then?’
‘Oh yes! ’twas a man—a gentleman! I knew that, because there were no nails in his boots, and he didn’t give at the knees as he walked.’
‘What more?’ demanded Larry, with lowered brows.
‘Miss Rosa knew him well, because they never named each other, but only wished “good morning.” She said, “What are you doing here?” and he said, “Looking after you.” He carried a rose in his hand or his coat, I think, for I smelt it, and a cane, too, for it struck the saddle flap.’
‘Well, that’s enough,’ interrupted Laurence, fiercely.
‘I thought you wanted to hear all about it, Larry?’
‘Is there any more to tell, then?’
‘Only that as they walked away together, Miss Rosa said she was so glad he was coming up to the harvest-home to-night.’
‘So he’s a-going, the cur!’ muttered the young man between his teeth. ‘I know him, with his cane, and his swagger, and his stinking roses; and I’ll be even with him yet, or my name’s not Larry Barnes.’
It was evident that Mr Frederick Darley was no greater favourite in the cottage than the farm.
‘Whoever are you talking of?’ said Larry’s mother. ‘Do you know the gentleman Lizzie met with Miss Rosa?’
‘Gentleman! He’s no gentleman. He’s nothing but a common gamekeeper, same as uncle. But don’t let us talk of him any more. It takes the flavour of the bacon clean out of my mouth.’
The rest of the simple meal was performed in silence, and then Mrs Barnes gathered up the crockery and carried it into an outer room to wash.
Larry and Lizzie were left alone. The girl seemed to understand that in some mysterious way she had offended her cousin, and wished to restore peace between them, so she crept up to where he was smoking his midday pipe on the old settle by the fire, and laid her head gently against his knees. They had been brought up from babes together, and were used to observe such innocent little familiarities towards each other.
‘Never mind about the outing, Larry. I’m not a bit disappointed, and I’m sorry I said anything about it.’
‘That’s not true, Liz. You are disappointed, and it’s my doing; but I couldn’t help it. I didn’t feel somehow as if I had the heart to go. But I’ve changed my mind since dinner, and we’ll go up to the harvest-home together, my girl. Will that content you?’
‘Oh, Larry! you are good!’ she said, raising herself, her cheeks crimsoned with renewed expectation; ‘but I’d rather stop at home a thousand times over than you should put yourself out of the way for me.’
A sudden thought seemed to strike the young man as he looked at Lizzie’s fair, sightless face. He had lived with her so long, in a sisterly way, that it had never struck him to regard her in any other light. But something in the inflection of her voice as she addressed him, made him wonder if he were capable of making her happier than she had ever been yet. He cherished no other hopes capable of realisation. What if he could make his own troubles lighter by lightening those of poor Liz? Something of this sort, but in much rougher clothing, passed through his half-tutored mind. As it grasped the idea he turned hurriedly towards the girl kneeling at his knee.
‘Do you really care about me, lass?’ he said. ‘Do you care if I’m vexed or not? Whether I come in or go out? If I like my dinner or I don’t like it? Does all this nonsense worry you? Answer me, for I want to know.’
‘Oh! Larry, what do you mean? Of course I care. I can’t do much for you—more’s the pity—without my poor eyes, but I can think of you and love you, Larry, and surely you know that I do both.’
‘But would you like to love me more, Liz?’
‘How could I love you more?’
‘Would you like to have the right to care for me—the right to creep after me in your quiet way wherever I might happen to go—the right to walk alongside of me, with your hand in mine, up to the harvesting home to-night; eh, Liz?’
The girl half understood her cousin’s meaning, but she was too modest not to fear she might be mistaken. Larry could never wish to take her, blind and helpless, for his wife.
‘Larry, speak to me more plainly; I don’t catch your meaning quite.’
‘Will you marry me then, Liz, and live along of mother and me to the end of your life?’
‘Marry you!—Be your wife!—Me! Oh, Larry, you can’t mean it! never.’
‘I do mean it,’ replied her cousin with an oath; ‘and I’ll take you as soon as ever you’ll take me if you will but say the word.’
‘But I am blind, Larry.’
‘Do you suppose I don’t know that? Perhaps I likes you blind best.’
‘But I am so useless. I get about so slowly. If anything was to happen to aunt, how could I keep the house clean and cook the dinners, Larry? You must think a bit more before you decide for good.’
But the poor child’s face was burning with excitement the while, and her sightless eyes were thrown upwards to her cousin’s face as though she would strain through the darkness to see it.
‘If anything happened to mother, do you suppose I’d turn you out of doors, Liz? And in any case, then, I must have a wife or a servant to do the work—it will make no difference that way. The only question is, do you want me for a husband?’
‘Oh! I have loved you ever so!’ replied the girl, throwing herself into his arms. ‘I couldn’t love another man, Larry. I know your face as well as if I had seen it, and your step, and your voice. I can tell them long before another body knows there’s sound a-coming.’
‘Then you’ll have me?’
‘If you’ll have me,’ she murmured in a tone of delight as she nestled against his rough clothes.
‘That’s settled, then, and the sooner the banns are up the better! Here, mother! Come along and hear the news. Lizzie has promised to marry me, and I shall take her to church as soon as we’ve been cried.’
‘Well! I am pleased,’ said Mrs Barnes. ‘You couldn’t have got a neater wife, Larry, though her eyesight’s terribly against her, poor thing! But I’m sure of one thing, Liz, if you can’t do all for him that another woman might, you’ll love my lad with the best among them, and that thought will make me lie quiet in my grave.’
The poor cannot afford the time to be as sentimental over such things as the rich. Larry kissed his cousin two or three times on the forehead in signification of the compact they had just entered into, and then he got up and shook himself, and prepared to go back to his afternoon work.
‘That’s a good job settled,’ he thought as he did so; ‘it will make Lizzie happy, and drive a deal of nonsense may be out of my head. But if ever I can pay out that scoundrel Darley I’ll do it, if it costs me the last drop of my blood.’
The blind girl regarded what had passed between her cousin and herself with very different feelings. Condemned, by reason of her infirmity, to pass much of her young life in solitude, the privation had repaid itself by giving her the time and opportunity for an amount of self-culture which, if subjected to the rough toil and rougher pleasures of her class, she never could have attained. Her ideas regarding the sanctity of love and marriage were very different from those of other Corston girls. She could never have ‘kept company,’ as they termed it, with one man this month and another the next. Her pure mind, which dwelt so much within itself, shrank from the levity and coarseness with which she had heard such subjects treated, and believing, as she had done, that she should never be married, she had pleased herself by building up an ideal of what a husband should be, and how his wife would love and reverence him. And this ideal had always had for its framework a fancied portrait of her cousin Laurence. In reality, this young fellow was an average specimen of a fresh-faced country youth, with plenty of colour and flesh and muscle. But to the blind girl’s fancy he was perfection. Her little hands from babyhood had traced each feature of his face until she knew every line by heart, and though she had never acknowledged it even to herself, she had been in love with him ever since she was capable of understanding the meaning of the term. So that although his proposal to marry her had come as a great surprise, it had also come as a great glory, and set her heart throbbing with the pleasant consciousness of returned affection.
She was in a flutter of triumph and delight all the afternoon, whilst Larry was attending to his horses, and hardly knew how to believe in her own happiness. Her aunt brushed and plaited her long hair for her till it was as glossy and neat as possible, and tied her new cherry-coloured ribbon round the girl’s throat that she might not disgrace her son’s choice at the merry-making. And then Lizzie sat down to wait for her affianced lover’s return, the proudest maid in Corston. Larry came in punctually for his tea, and the first thing he did was to notice the improvement in his little cousin’s appearance; and indeed joy had so beautified her countenance that she was a different creature from what she had been on the sands that morning. The apathy and indifference to life had disappeared, and a bright colour bloomed in her soft cheeks. As she tucked her hand through her cousin’s arm, and they set off to walk together to Farmer Murray’s harvest-home, Mrs Barnes looked after them with pride, and declared that if poor Liz had only got her sight they would have made the handsomest couple in the parish.
Larry was rather silent as they went up to the barn together, but Liz was not exigeante, and trotted by his side with an air of perfect content. When they arrived they found the place already full, but the ‘quality’ had not yet arrived, and until they did so, no one ventured to do more than converse quietly with his neighbour, although the fiddlers from Wells were all ready and only waiting a signal to strike up. But in those days the working men did not consider their festival complete without the presence of the master, and it would have been a sore affront if the members and guests of the household had not also joined them in order to open the ball and set the liquor flowing. In these days of Radicalism perhaps they find they can get on just as well without them. Larry still kept Lizzie’s arm snugly tucked within his own as he described to her how beautiful the walls of the barn looked hung with flags and decorated with flowers and evergreens, and what a number of lamps there were, and what a lot of liquor and eatables were stowed away at the further end. He was still talking to her rapidly, and, as she imagined, somewhat uneasily, when a cheer rose up from a group of rustics outside, and Larry gave a start that almost disengaged her from his clasp.
‘What’s the matter?’ she demanded. ‘Is it the gentry coming, Larry?’
‘Yes! ’tis they, sure enough. Keep close to me, Liz—I don’t want to part from you, not for one moment.’
‘Oh, Larry! that do make me feel so happy,’ she whispered. As she spoke, the party from Mavis Farm entered the barn and were received with a shout of welcome. Mr Murray, a fine, hale old gentleman, and his sons came first; then Miss Rosa, looking rather conscious, tripping after her brothers in a white muslin dress. The farmer advanced to the beer barrel, and having filled his glass, drank success to all present, and asked them to give three cheers for a bountiful harvest. When that ceremony was completed the fiddlers struck up a merry country dance, and every one was at liberty to drink and caper about. The young people from Mavis Farm all took part in the first dance, and Rosa Murray came up and asked Larry if he would be her partner on the occasion. She ought in fairness to have opened the ball with her father’s bailiff or one of the upper servants, but she preferred the young groom, with whom she held daily intercourse, and she was accustomed to go her own way without reference to anybody’s feelings. As she approached the cousins she gave Lizzie a kindly welcome.
‘I am so glad you have come up, Lizzie; and now your cousin must get you a nice seat until this dance is ended, for I intend him to open the ball with me.’
This was considered a great honour on the part of the villagers, and the blind girl coloured with pleasure to think that her fiancé had been selected for the ceremony.
‘Oh, Miss Rosa, you are good! Larry, why don’t you thank the young lady, and say how proud you shall be to dance alongside of her?’
But Larry said nothing. He reddened, it is true, but more from confusion than pleasure, and he was so long a time settling Lizzie to his satisfaction, that Rosa was disposed to be angry at his dilatoriness, and called out to him sharply that if he were not ready she should open the ball with some one else. Then he ran and took his place by her side, and went through the evolutions of ‘down the middle’ and ‘setting at the corners’ with a burning face and a fast-beating heart. Poor Laurence Barnes! His young mistress’s constant presence in the stables and familiarity with himself had been too much for his susceptible nature. She was to him, in the pride of her youthful loveliness and the passport it afforded her for smiling upon all classes of men, as an angel, rather than a woman, something set too high above for him ever to reach, but yet with the power to thrill his veins and make his hot blood run faster. The touch of her ungloved hand in the figures of the dance made him tremble, and the glance of her eyes sickened him, so that as soon as the terrible ordeal was concluded he made her an awkward salute, and rushed from her side to that of the beer barrel, to drown his excitement in drink. And it was just there that he had left Lizzie Locke.
‘That was beautiful, Larry,’ she exclaimed, with glowing cheeks. ‘I could hear the sound of your feet and Miss Rosa’s above all the others, even when you went to the further end of the barn. It must be lovely to be able to dance like that. But it has made you thirsty, Larry. That’s the third glass, isn’t it?’
‘Yes, lass, it’s made me thirsty. But don’t you keep counting my glasses all the evening, or I shall move your chair a bit further off.’
She laughed quietly, and he flung himself upon the ground and rested his arm upon her knee. He seemed to feel safer and more at peace when by Lizzie’s side, and she was quite happy in the knowledge that he was there. The Mavis Farm party did not dance again after the ball had been opened, at least Miss Rosa did not. But she moved about the barn restlessly. Sometimes she was in, and sometimes she was out. She did not seem to know her own mind for two minutes together.
‘Why is that fellow Darley skulking about here, Larry?’ demanded Isaac Barnes of his nephew. ‘I’ve seen his ugly face peeping into the barn a dozen times. Why don’t he come in or stay out? I hate such half-and-half sneaking ways.’
Larry muttered an oath, and was about to make some reply, when George Murray came up to them.
‘Is that Mr Darley I see hanging about the barn door, Isaac?’ he inquired of their own keeper.
‘That it be, Master George; and as I was just saying to Larry here, why not in or out? What need of dodging? He don’t want to catch no one here, I suppose?’
‘He’d better try. I’d soon teach him who the barn belongs to.’
‘And I’d back you, Master George,’ cried Larry resolutely. The strong-brewed Norfolk ale was giving him a dash of Dutch courage.
‘Would you, Larry? That’s right! Well, I can’t be in all parts of the barn at once, and father wants me to take the bottom of the supper-table, so you keep your eye on Mr Darley for me, will you? and if he looks up to anything, let me know.’
‘I’m your man, Master George,’ replied Larry heartily.
Rosa was near enough to them to overhear what had passed. Her brother had intended she should do so. But when he set his wit against that of a woman he reckoned without his host. Rosa had been on the look-out for Frederick Darley from the beginning of the evening, and during the first greeting, had managed to slip a little note into his hand, warning him of her brother’s animosity, and begging him to keep as much as possible out of their sight until an opportunity occurred for her joining him in the apple copse. Now, she felt afraid of what might happen if there were an encounter between the two young men, and decided at once that her best plan would be, as soon as she saw George safely disposed of at the supper-table, to tamper with his spy. And unfortunately Rosa Murray knew but too well how to accomplish this. Young Barnes’ infatuation had not been unnoticed by her. She would have been aware of it if a cat had admired her. She knew his hand trembled when he took her foot to place her in the saddle, and that he became so nervous and agitated when she entered the stable as often to have to be recalled to a sense of his duty by a sharp rebuke from the head groom. She had known it all for months past, and it had pleased her. She was so vain and heartless that she thought nothing of what pain the poor fellow might be undergoing. She laughed at his presumption, and only considered it another feather in her cap. But now she saw her way to make use of it. The dancing had recommenced, and was proceeding with vigour, and the huge rounds of beef and legs of mutton on the supper-table were beginning to be served out. George was in full action, leading the onslaught with his carving-knife, when Rosa Murray approached Laurence Barnes.
‘Won’t you dance again, nor go and have your supper, Larry dear?’ Lizzie was asking, with a soft caress of her hand upon the head laid on her knee.
‘I don’t want to dance no more,’ said Larry, ‘and I sha’n’t sup till the table’s clearer and you can sup with me, Liz.’
‘That’s very good of you, Barnes,’ said Rosa, who had caught the words; ‘but if you’ll take Lizzie to the table now, I’m sure George will find room for you both.’
‘No thank you, miss,’ he answered; ‘I promised Master George to bide here till he came back, and I mustn’t break my word.’
‘Then I shall sit here with you, and we’ll all have supper together by-and-by,’ replied Rosa. ‘Have you been gathering cockles again this afternoon, Lizzie?’
‘Oh no, miss!’ said Lizzie, blushing at the recollection of how her afternoon had been employed; ‘it’s high tide at four o’clock now, and I haven’t been out of the house again to-day.’
‘Did your cousin tell you how she scolded me for riding in the salt marshes, Barnes?’
‘Well! it is dangerous, miss, for such as don’t know the place. I mind me when Whisker’s grandfather strayed out there by himself—’
‘Oh, Larry!’ cried Lizzie, ‘don’t go to tell that terrible tale. It always turns me sick!’
‘Is that what they call the Marsh Ghost, Barnes? Oh! I must know all about it. I love ghost stories, and I have never been able to hear the whole of this one. Where does it appear, and when?’
‘Lizzie here can tell you better than me, miss—she knows the story right through.’
‘It’s a horrible tale, Miss Rosa. You’ll never forget it, once heard.’
‘That’s just why I want to hear it; so, Lizzie, you must tell it me directly. Don’t move, Barnes, you don’t inconvenience me. I can sit up in this corner quite well.’
‘Well, miss, if you must hear it,’ began the blind girl, ‘it happened now nigh upon twenty years ago. Whisker’s grandfather, that used to keep the lodge at Rooklands, had grown so old and feeble the late lord pensioned him off and sent him home to his own people. He hadn’t no son in Corston then, miss, because they was both working in the south, but his daughter-in-law, his first son’s widdy, that had married Skewton the baker, she offered to take the old man in and do for him. Lord Worcester allowed him fifty pounds a-year for life, and Mrs Skewton wanted to take it all for his keep, but the old man was too sharp for that, and he only gave her ten shillings a-week and put by the rest, no one knew where nor for what. Well, miss, this went on for three or four years may be, and then poor Whisker had grown very feeble and was a deal of trouble, and his sons didn’t seem to be coming back, and the Skewtons had grown tired of him, so they neglected him shamefully. I shouldn’t like to tell you, miss, all that’s said of their beating the poor old man and starving him, and never giving him no comforts. At last he got quite silly and took to wandering about alone, and he used to go out on the marshes, high or low tide, without any sense of the danger, and everybody said he’d come to harm some day. And so he did, for one day they carried his body in from Corston Point quite dead, and all bruised with the rocks and stones. The Skewtons pretended as they knew nothing about how he’d come to his death, but they set up a cart just afterwards, and nothing has ever been heard of the old man’s store of money, though his sons came back and inquired and searched far and near for it. But about six months after—Larry! ’tisn’t a fit tale for Miss Rosa to listen to!’
‘Nonsense, Lizzie! I wouldn’t have the ghost left out for anything. It’s just that I want to hear of.’
‘Well, miss, as I said, six months after old Whisker’s death he began to walk again, and he’s walked ever since.’
‘Where does he walk?’
‘Round and round Corston Point every full moon, wringing his hands and asking for his money. They say it’s terrible to see him.’
‘Have you ever seen him, Barnes?’
Larry coloured deeply and shook his head. The peasantry all over England are very susceptible to superstition, and the Corston folk were not behindhand in their fear of ghosts, hobgoblins, and apparitions of all sorts. This young fellow would have stood up in a fight with the best man there, but the idea of seeing a ghost made his blood curdle.
‘Dear me, miss, no,’ said Lizzie, answering for him, ‘and I hope he never may. Why, it would kill him.’
‘Nonsense, Lizzie. Barnes is not such a coward, I hope.’
Something in Miss Murray’s tone made the blood leap to her retainer’s face.
‘I’m not a coward, miss,’ he answered quickly.
‘Of course not; I said so. But any man would be so who refused to go to Corston Point by night for fear of seeing old Whisker’s ghost. He walks at full moon, you say! Why, he must be at it to-night, then! There never was a lovelier moon.’
‘Don’t, miss,’ urged Lizzie, shivering.
‘You silly goose! I don’t want you to go. But, I must say, I should like to try the mettle of our friend here.’
‘I beg your pardon, miss; did you mean that for me?’ said Larry quickly.
‘Yes, I did, Barnes. What harm? I should like to see some one who had really seen this ghost, and I’ll give my gold watch chain to the man who will go to Corston Point to-night and bring me a bunch of the samphire that grows upon the top of it.’
Larry’s mind was in a tumult. Some wild idea of rendering himself admirable in Rosa Murray’s eyes may have influenced his decision—or the delight of possessing her watch chain may have urged him on to it. Anyway, he rose up from the floor, and with chattering teeth, but a resolute heart, exclaimed,—
‘I’ll take you at your word, miss. I’ll go to Corston Point and bring you the samphire, and prove to you that Larry Barnes is not a coward.’
‘Larry, Larry, you’ll never do it!’ cried Lizzie.
‘Let me alone, my girl. I’ve made up my mind, and you won’t turn it.’
‘You are a brave fellow, Barnes,’ said Rosa. ‘I believe you’re the only man in Corston that would have taken my wager. And, mind, it’s a bargain. My gold watch chain for your bunch of samphire and news of old Whisker’s ghost.’ She was delighted at the idea of getting him out of the way.
‘But, Larry! Miss Rosa! Think of the danger,’ implored poor Lizzie. ‘Oh, he’ll never come back; I know he’ll never come back.’
‘What are you afraid of, Lizzie? Doesn’t Barnes know the sands as well as you do? And the moonlight is as bright as day. It’s silly to try and stop him.’
‘But he’s going to be my husband, miss,’ whispered Lizzie, weeping, into Miss Murray’s ear.
‘Oh! if that’s the case, perhaps he’d better follow your wishes,’ rejoined Rosa coldly. ‘Mine are of no consequence, of course, though I’d have liked Barnes to wear my chain—we’ve been such good company together, haven’t we, Larry?’
Her smile, and the way in which she spoke his name, determined him. He had heard the whispered conversation between her and Lizzie, and he felt vexed—he didn’t know why—that it should have occurred.
‘Be quiet, Liz,’ he said, authoritatively. ‘What’s to be has nothing to do with this. I’m only too glad to oblige Miss Rosa, even with a bit of samphire. Good-bye, my girl, and good-bye, miss; it’s close upon the stroke of ten, so you mayn’t see me again till to-morrow morning; but when you do, it’ll be with the bunch of samphire in my hand!’
He darted away from them as he spoke, and left the barn; whilst Lizzie Locke, disappointed at his departure, and frightened for his safety, wept bitterly. But the noise around them was so great, and everyone was so much occupied with his or her own pleasure, that little notice was taken of the girl’s emotion.
‘Come, Lizzie, don’t be foolish,’ urged Miss Murray, in a whisper, afraid lest the errand on which she had sent Larry should become public property. ‘Your lover will be back in an hour, at the latest.’
‘He’ll never come back, miss! You’ve sent him to his death; I feel sure of it,’ replied Lizzie, sobbing.
‘This is too ridiculous,’ said Rosa. ‘If you intend to make such a fool of yourself as this, Lizzie, I think you had much better go home to your aunt. Shall I send Jane Williams back with you? You know her; she’s a kind girl, and she’ll lead you as safely as Larry would.’
‘No; thank you, miss; Larry said he would return to the barn with your samphire, and I must wait here till he comes—if ever he comes,’ she added mournfully.
‘Well, you’ve quite upset me with all this nonsense, and I must have a breath of fresh air. If Master George, or papa, should ask for me, Lizzie, say I’ve got a headache, and gone home for a little while. I’ll be round again before Larry’s back; but if anything should keep me, tell him he shall have the chain to-morrow morning. For he’s a brave fellow, Lizzie, and whether he sees the ghost or not, he shall keep my watch chain as a wedding present.’
She patted the blind girl’s hand before she tripped away; but no amount of encouragement could have driven the conviction from Lizzie Locke’s breast that her lover was a doomed man; and added to this, she had an uncomfortable feeling in her heart (though too undefined to be called jealousy), that his alacrity in complying with his young mistress’s request arose from something more than a desire to maintain his character for courage in her eyes. So the poor child sat by the beer barrel, sad and silent, with her face buried in her hands; and so she remained till midnight had sounded from the church clock, and the lights were put out, and the festivities concluded, and some kind neighbour led her back to her aunt’s house. But neither Miss Rosa nor Larry had returned.
Miss Rosa’s ‘breath of fresh air’ meant, of course, her appointment with Frederick Darley in the apple copse. She had got Larry nicely out of the way (notwithstanding the fears of his betrothed), and there was no obstacle in her path as she left the barn and approached the place of meeting. She had taken the precaution to wrap a large dark shawl round her white dress, and, thus concealed, crept softly down the lane and through the lower meadow unobservant or unheeding that her father’s terrier, Trim, had followed her footsteps. Mr Darley was in waiting for her, and a lover-like colloquy ensued. He did not again mention the subject of marriage, at which Rosa was somewhat disappointed; for she believed that, notwithstanding her brother’s assertions to the contrary, Mr Murray might not refuse his consent to her becoming Frederick Darley’s wife; and he certainly was the handsomest man round about, Lord Worcester himself not excepted. But in the midst of their tender conversation, as Darley was telling Rosa he loved her better than ever man had loved woman in this world before, Trim commenced wagging his tail and snuffing the grass.
‘What is the matter?’ cried Rosa in alarm. ‘Down, Trim, down—be quiet, sir! Oh, Frederick! surely no one can be coming this way.’
‘Don’t be afraid,’ said her companion; ‘throw your shawl over your head and trust to me. I will answer for it that no one shall molest you whilst under my protection.’
But he had not calculated upon having to make his words good in the presence of her father and brother.
Trim would not lie down, nor be quiet, but kept on with his little signals of warning, until two dark figures could be discerned making their way towards them over the grass, when he bounded away to meet them. Rosa guessed who the newcomers must be, and her heart died within her for fear. She would have screamed, but Darley placed his hand before her mouth. There was no escape for the lovers, even if an attempt to escape would not have increased suspicion, for the apple copse was a three-cornered field that had but the one entrance through which they had come. In another moment the four had met, and Rosa recognised her father and her brother George. How they had guessed they would find her there she did not stay to ask or even think. All her thought was how to shield herself from the farmer’s anger. The fact was that George had wished to seat his sister at the supper-table, when, finding that she and Darley and Larry had all three mysteriously disappeared, he had communicated his suspicions and the events of the morning to his father, and they had sallied forth together in search of the missing daughter, and were on their way to the farm, where they had been told she had gone, when Trim’s unwarrantable interference led them to the very spot.
Mr Murray’s rage was unbounded. He did not wait for any explanations, but walked up straight to Rosa and demanded,—
‘Is this my daughter?’
The girl was too frightened to speak as she clung to her lover’s arm, but Darley, perceiving that an amicable settlement was out of the question, replied in the same tone,—
‘What right have you to ask, sir?’
‘The right of a father, Mr Darley, who has no intention to let disgrace be brought into his family by such as you.’
He pulled Rosa by the arm roughly as he spoke, and dragged the shawl from her face.
‘So it is you, you jade; and you would try and deceive your father, who has never refused you a thing in his life. That’s the gratitude of women. However, you’ll pay for it. You’ve had your first clandestine meeting and your last. No more gamekeeper’s courtships for you if I know it.’
‘By what right, Mr Murray, do you insult me, or this young lady, in my presence? If I have persuaded her to do a foolish thing, I am sorry for it, but you cannot give a harsher name to a lover’s moonlight walk.’
‘I do give it a harsher name, sir, and you know it deserves it. A lover’s moonlight walk indeed! You mean a scoundrel’s endeavour to get an innocent girl into his clutches.’
‘Papa! papa! you are quite mistaken. Mr Darley has asked me to marry him. He will marry me to-morrow by special licence if you will only give your consent.’
‘Marry you to-morrow! you poor fool! You’ve been swallowing every lie he chose to tell you. He can’t marry you to-morrow nor any day, and for a good reason. He’s a married man already.’
Rosa screamed, George uttered an oath, and Darley darted forward.
‘Who told you so, Mr Murray?’
‘Never mind who told me; you know it is true. Can you deny that you left a wife down south when you came to Rooklands? Lord Worcester does not know it, perhaps, but there are those who do.’
‘Who is your informant?’ repeated Darley.
‘I shall not tell you; but if you don’t clear out of my meadow and Corston within half-an-hour, and promise never to show your face here again, I’ll lay the whole story before his lordship.’
‘Are you going, or shall I kick you out?’ inquired George.
Frederick Darley thought upon the whole he’d better go. He turned on his heel with an oath, and slunk out of the apple copse like a beaten cur.
‘Come, my girl,’ said Farmer Murray, not unkindly, as he commenced to walk homeward, with his hand still on Rosa’s arm; ‘you’ve been a fool, but I hope you’ve been nothing worse. Never see nor speak to the man again, and I’ll forgive you.’
‘Oh, papa! is it really true?’ she answered, sobbing.
‘It’s as true as Heaven, Rosa! It was Larry Barnes told it me a week ago, and he had it from one of the Whiskers, who worked near Lord Worcester’s estate in Devon, and knew Mrs Frederick Darley by sight. You’ve had a narrow escape, my girl, and you may thank Larry for it.’
‘Poor Larry!’ sighed Rosa; and if she could have known what was happening to poor Larry at that moment, she would have sighed still deeper. He had accepted her wager, and rushed off at her bidding to get the bunch of samphire that grew at the top of Corston Point. His brain was rather staggered at the idea of what he had undertaken, but he had been plentifully plied with Farmer Murray’s “Old October,” and it was a bright, moonlight night, so that he did not find the expedition after all so terrible as he had imagined. The salt marshes were very lonely, it is true, and more than once Larry turned his head fearfully over his shoulder, to find that nothing worse followed him than his own shadow; but he reached the Point in safety, and secured the samphire, without having encountered old Whisker’s ghost. Then his spirits rose again, and he whistled as he commenced to retrace his steps to the village. He knew he had been longer over the transaction than he had expected, and that he should be unable to see Miss Rosa that night; but he intended to be up at the farm the very first thing in the morning, and give the bunch of samphire into her own hands. He did not expect to receive the watch chain; he had not seen the ghost, and had not earned it; but Larry’s heart was all the lighter for that. He would not have exchanged a view of the dreaded spectre even for the coveted gold chain that had hung so long round the fair neck of his divinity. But as he turned Corston Point again, he started back to see a figure before him. The first moment he thought it must be old Whisker’s ghost, but the next convinced him of his error. It was only Mr Darley—Lord Worcester’s gamekeeper! He had been so absorbed in angry and remorseful thought since he left the apple copse that he had unwittingly taken the wrong turning, and now found himself upon the wide, desolate waste of the salt marshes, and rather uncertain on which side to find the beaten track again which led to the road to Rooklands. The two men were equally surprised and disgusted at encountering one another.
‘What are you doing here?’ demanded Darley, insolently.
‘What business is that of yours?’ replied the other. ‘The salt marshes belong to me, I suppose, as much as they do to you.’
‘You’re not likely to have business here at this time of night. You’ve been dogging my footsteps,’ said Darley, without the least consideration for probability.
‘Follow you!’ exclaimed Larry, with a big oath; ‘it would be a long time before I’d take the trouble to care what happened to you. And since you ask my business here, pray what may yours be? You didn’t think to find Farmer Murray’s daughter in the marshes at twelve o’clock at night, did you?’
‘You insolent hound! how dare you take that young lady’s name upon your lips in my presence?’
‘I’ve as good a right to name her as you have—perhaps better. It was at her bidding I came here to-night. Did she send you here, too?’
‘I shall not condescend to answer your question nor to link our names together. Do you know what you are?’
‘I know what you are, Mr Darley, and that’s a villain!’
Poor Larry had said he would have it out with him, and he thought his time had come. A sudden thought flashed through Darley’s brain that here was the informer who had stopped his little game with the farmer’s pretty daughter.
‘Are you the man,’ he demanded fiercely, ‘who has thought fit to inform Mr Murray of my antecedents?’
‘Antecedents’ was a long word for Larry’s comprehension, but he grasped the meaning somehow.
‘If you’d say, am I the man who told the master that you have got a wife and children down in Devonshire, I answer “Yes;” and I hope he’s told you of it, and kicked you out of the barn to-night for a scoundrel, as you are, to try and make love to his daughter.’
‘You brute!’ cried Darley, throwing off his coat; ‘I’ll be revenged on you for this if there’s any strength left in my arm.’
‘All right,’ replied the young country-man; ‘I’ve longed to punch your head many and many a day. I’m glad it’s come at last. There’s plenty of room for us to have it out here, and the devil take the hindmost.’
He flew at his adversary as he spoke, and fastened his hands on to his coat-collar. Larry was the younger and the stronger built man of the two; but Frederick Darley had had the advantage of a politer education, in which the use of his fists was included, so that after a very little while it would have been evident to any bystander that Barnes was getting the worst of it. He had energy and muscle and right on his side, but his antagonist, unfortunately, possessed the skill, and after he had stood on the defensive four or five times, he seized his opportunity, and with a dexterous twist threw Larry heavily from him on the ground. The young man fell backward, crashing his skull against a projecting fragment of rock, and then lay there, bleeding and unconscious. Darley glanced around him—not a creature was in sight. The broad harvest moon looked down placidly upon the deed of blood he had just committed, but human eyes to see it there were none. Finding that Barnes neither stirred nor groaned, he stooped down after a while, and laid his hand upon his heart. It had stopped beating. The body was getting cold. The man was dead!
Darley had not intended this, and it alarmed him terribly. His first idea was what he should do to secure his own safety. If he left the body there, would it be discovered, and the guilt traced home to him, or would the in-coming tide carry it out to sea, and wash it up again, weeks hence perhaps, as a drowned corpse upon the shore? He thought it might. He hoped it would. He remembered Larry’s words, that Miss Rosa had sent him there that night. It was known, then, that he had gone to the marshes, and the fact was favourable.
He dragged the corpse a little way upon the sands that it might the sooner be covered by the water; but finding it left deep traces of its progress, he lifted it with some difficulty upon his shoulders, and after carrying it perhaps a couple of dozen yards towards the sea, flung it with all his force before him. What was his amazement at seeing the body immediately sink in what appeared to be the solid ground, and disappear from view? Was it magic, or did his senses deceive him? Darley rubbed his eyes once or twice, but the miracle remained the same. The sand, with its smooth, shining surface, was before him, but the corpse of Larry Barnes had vanished. With a feeling of the keenest relief—such relief as the cowardly murderer who has cheated the gallows must experience—the gamekeeper settled his clothes, glanced once or twice fearfully around him, and then, retracing his steps, ran until he had gained the high road to Rooklands. But retribution dogged his murderous feet, and he was destined never to reach his master’s home. When the morning dawned upon Corston, a fearful tale was going the round of its cottages. The dead body of Lord Worcester’s gamekeeper had been found on the borders of the estate, shot through the heart, as it was supposed, in an encounter with poachers, as traces of a fierce struggle were plainly visible around him.
And Laurence Barnes was missing!
The two circumstances put together seemed to provide a solution of the mystery. Everyone in Corston knew that poor Larry had not been entirely free from the suspicion of poaching, and most people had heard him abuse Frederick Darley, and vow to have vengeance upon him. What more likely, then, that Larry, having been taken at his old tricks, had discharged his rusty gun at the gamekeeper, and sent him out of the world to answer for all his errors. This was the light by which Corston folk read the undiscovered tragedy. All, that is to say, but two, and those two were the dead man’s mother and his betrothed, who knew of his visit to the Point, and fully believed that old Whisker had carried him off.
The murder of Frederick Darley made quite a sensation in Corston. Lord Worcester gave his late gamekeeper a handsome funeral, and monument in the churchyard; and Rosa Murray lost her spirits and her looks, and wore a black ribbon on her bonnet for three months, although she dared not let her father know the reason why. But Darley had been so generally disliked that, when the first horror at his death had subsided, people began to think he was a very good riddance, and though Rosa still looked grave if anyone mentioned his name, there was a certain young farmer who rode over from Wells to see her every Sunday, on whom the gossips said she seemed to look with considerable favour. And so, in due course of time, the name of Darley appeared likely to become altogether forgotten.
But not so Larry Barnes. Larry was a native of Corston, and had been a general favourite there, and his mother still lived amongst them to keep his memory green. No one in the village thought Larry was dead, except Lizzie and Mrs Barnes. The rustics believed that, finding he had shot Darley, he had become alarmed and ran away—left the country, perhaps, in one of the numerous fishing smacks that infest the coast, and gone to make his fortune in the ‘Amerikys.’ Larry would come back some day—they were assured of that—when the present lord was dead and gone, perhaps, and the whole affair was forgotten; but they were certain he was alive, simply because they were. But Lizzie Locke knew otherwise—Lizzie Locke, to whom a glimpse of heaven had been opened the day of his death, and to whom the outer life must be as dark as the inner henceforward. She mourned for Larry far more than his mother did. Mrs Barnes had lived the best part of her life, and her joys and her sorrows were well-nigh over, but the poor blind girl had only waked up to a consciousness of what life might hold for her on the awful day on which hope seemed blotted out for ever. From the moment her cousin left the barn at Rosa’s bidding, Lizzie drooped like a faded flower. That he never returned from that fatal quest was no surprise to her. She had known that he would never return. She had waited where he had left her till all the merry-making was over, and then she had gone home to her aunt, meek, unrepining, but certain of her doom. She had never been much of a talker, but she seldom opened her mouth, except it was absolutely necessary, after that day. But she would take her basket whenever the tide was low, and walk down to Corston Point and sit there—sometimes gathering cockles, but oftener talking to the dead, and telling him how much she had loved him. The few who had occasionally overheard her soliloquies said they were uncanny, and that Lizzie Locke was losing her wits as well as her eyes. But the blind girl never altered her course. Corston Point became her home, and whenever it was uncovered by the tide, she might be seen sitting there beside her cockle basket, waiting for—she knew not what, talking to—she knew not whom.
The autumn had passed, and the winter tides had set in. Rosa Murray never rode upon the Corston marshes now—she was more pleasantly engaged traversing the leafless lanes with the young farmer from Wells. Most people would have thought the fireside a better place to mourn one’s dead by than out on the bleak marsh; yet Lizzie Locke, despite her cotton clothing and bare head, still took her way there every morning, her patient, sightless eyes refusing to reveal the depths of sorrow that lay beneath them. One day, however, Mrs Barnes felt disposed to be impatient with the girl. She had left the house at eight o’clock in the morning and had not returned home since, and now it was dark, and the neighbours began to say it was not safe that Lizzie should remain out alone on such a bitter night, and that her aunt should enforce her authority to prevent such lengthy rambles. Two or three of the men went out with lanterns to try and find her, but returned unsuccessful, and they supposed she must have taken shelter at some friend’s house for the night. Lizzie Locke knew the marshes well, they said (no one in Corston better), and would never be so foolish as to tempt Providence by traversing them in the dark, for the currents were at their worst now, and the quicksands were shifting daily. The logs and spars of a ruined wreck of a year before had all come to the surface again within a few days, and with them a keg of pork, preserved by the saline properties of the ground in which it had been treasured, so that its contents were as fresh as though they had been found yesterday. Inquiries were made for the blind girl throughout the village, but no one had seen anything of her, and all that her friends could do was to search for her the first thing in the morning, when a large party set out for Corston Point, Mrs Barnes amongst them. Their faces were sad, for they had little hope that the cruel tide had not crawled over the watching girl before she was aware of it, and carried her out to sea. But as they neared the Point they discovered something still crouched upon the sand.
‘It can’t be Lizzie,’ said the men, drawing closer to each other, though a bright, cold sun was shining over the February morning. ‘It can’t be nothing mortal, sitting there in the frost, with the icy waves lapping over its feet.’
But Mrs Barnes, who had rushed forward, waved her arms wildly, and called to them,—
‘It’s him! It’s my Larry, washed up again by the sands; and poor Lizzie has found him out by the touch of her finger.’
The men ran up to the spot, and looked upon the sight before them. The corpse of Larry Barnes, with not so much as a feature changed by the hand of Time—with all his clothes intact and whole, and a bunch of samphire in his breast—lay out upon the shining sands, stiff as marble, but without any trace of decomposition upon his fresh young features and stalwart limbs.[1] And beside him, with her cheek bowed down upon his own, knelt Lizzie Locke. Lizzie, who had braved the winter’s frost, and withstood the cold of a February night, in order to watch beside the recovered body of her lover.
‘Lizzie!’ exclaimed Mrs Barnes. ‘Look up now; I’ve come to comfort thee! Let us thank Heaven that he’s found again, and the evil words they spoke of him must be took back.’
But the blind girl neither spoke nor stirred.
‘Can’t thee answer, my lass?’ said Isaac the poacher, as he shook her by the arm.
The answer that she made was by falling backwards and disclosing her fair, gentle face—white and rigid as her lover’s.
‘Merciful God! she is dead!’ they cried.
Yes, they were right. She was dead—she was at rest. What she had waited for she had found. What she had striven for she had gained. How many of us can say the same? Larry had been restored to her. The shifting quicksand had thrown him upon earth again, and had she not been there, his body might have been washed out to sea, and no further knowledge gained of his fate. But she had saved his dust for consecrated ground—more, she had saved his character for the healing of his mother’s heart. For in his breast there still reposed the bunch of samphire he had perilled his life to gather for the farmer’s daughter, and, grasped tight in his hand, they found the neckcloth of Lord Worcester’s gamekeeper—a crimson, silk neckcloth, recognised by all three—and which Larry had seized and held in the last deadly struggle. And the men of Corston looked on it and knew the truth—that their comrade was no murderer, but had fallen where he was found in a quarrel (probably pre-arranged) with Frederick Darley; and they cursed the gamekeeper in their hearts.
But Lizzie was at rest—happy Lizzie Locke! sleeping in the quiet churchyard at Corston, with her cheek pillowed on her Larry’s breast.
THE END.
[1] This is a fact, the corpse of a fisherman having been preserved in like manner for some nine months when buried in the salt marshes of Norfolk.
