Several of the cottages showed broken windows, and in one or two places even the cherished gates and rails had been damaged or destroyed. A broken birdcage lay on the ground in the far corner of the yard beside the dog’s kennel. All the doors of the houses were closed, except the Irishman’s, through which shrill screams were issuing. Lastly, the poor lame gardener was standing in his little plot disconsolately regarding the wreck of his cherished flowers, which looked as though they had been trampled over by a regiment.
“Mike Finigan done it,” he explained, in answer to the Duchess’s sympathetic exclamation. “’E got outer prison yisterday, and ’e come in drunk lorst night with ’is crew, and played old ’Arry all over the place.”
As if the presence of the Duchess had instantly become known, by what is called mental telepathy, to every resident in the Cooperage, all the other doors were thrown open, and the women crowded about her, recounting the tale of the Irishman’s misdeeds, and denouncing their author. The owner of the broken birdcage pointed to it, not without a certain melancholy pride in her pre-eminence of wrong.
“’E broke it ’isself, and ’is mates killed my bird; and there I’m going to let it lie till I ’aves the law of ’im, the roughing.”
Whether the woman believed that the continuance of the broken cage on its present spot would be a strong confirmation of her story, like the bricks in Jack Cade’s chimney, or whether she had some obscure feeling like that which causes a Brahmin creditor to starve himself to death, in a spirit of revenge, on his debtor’s doorstep, and considered the wrecked cage as a talisman which would work harm to the wrongdoer, she failed to explain. But the threat of legal proceedings was not taken seriously by her neighbours, the inhabitants of Beers Cooperage regarding an appeal to the constituted authorities with much the same feeling as schoolboys do a complaint to a master. The poor have an instinct which teaches them that the State is their enemy; they are a subject population within the borders of the Raj.
While the group round the Duchess were still shrilly vociferating, evidently with the object of making their reflections reach the ears of the Irishman in his retreat, they were interrupted by the appearance of two figures in the mouth of the archway.
One of these new-comers was a man, the other a girl of nineteen or twenty. At the sight of the first the Duchess of Trent frowned slightly, but her face brightened again as she caught sight of his companion, whom she had come out this morning in the secret hope of meeting.
There is a type of womanhood known all over the world as English, and in that bright and gracious type Hero Vanbrugh was completely moulded. It is not a type of classical perfection, like that associated with the Roman virgin; it does not cast that intoxicating spell over the passions of men which Southern poets mean by love. The Southern language has no word for this type; it is only the dear old Northern names of maid and sweetheart and wife which express its tender charm.
Hero Vanbrugh, as she stood framed in the archway, was a picture to gladden the eyes. It was not only that her features were delicately chiselled, and her body a harmony of slenderness and strength; there were men who declared that at some moments she seemed to them to be actually plain; but the freshness of the rain was in her face, and the laughter of the wind in her hair, and the blue breath of the sea in her eyes, and there were other men to whom at many moments she seemed the fairest sight that they had ever looked upon.
The dress which she wore was of that unpretending serviceable pattern which would have been deemed almost masculine a few years before. In the eyes of a man the simple coat with its white collar, and the plain skirt, might have appeared homely, but the eye of another woman would have been quick to note the marks of an artist’s hand in the cut of each garment, and would have credited the wearer with perfect taste, coupled with the means to gratify it.