It appeared that in the stress of circumstance both Jim and his mother had forgotten the Yorkshire marquis and the fair Priscilla.
“And it means a cool five hundred, too,” said Jim, with a little pardonable exultation. “The terms are already arranged, thanks to that old sportsman who is the oddest mixture of a human being I have ever met.”
And then Jim gave a groan, for he remembered that it was upon the strength of this important commission he had made up his mind to take the plunge with the Goose Girl. The next moment he was cursing himself because his upper lip was so flabby.
“You will never be the least use in this world, James Lascelles, my son,” was the burden of his reflections, “if you can’t learn to take a facer or two. Every time they knock you down you have got to come up smiling, or you will certainly never be a Velasquez.”
Mrs. Lascelles was overjoyed by the providential letter from Yorkshire. She blessed the marquis and all his acres. She insisted that Jim should write by the next post to announce his intention of coming to Barne Moor on the following Monday. And, in order that there should be no possible doubt about the matter, she put on her hat, although it was raining hard, and sallied forth to the stationer’s shop at the corner of Chestnut Road and invested one of her few remaining sixpences in Bradshaw’s Guide.
CHAPTER XXXII
BARNE MOOR
ABOUT tea-time on the following Monday Jim Lascelles found himself at Barne Moor. The house was a bleak upstanding place in the north of Yorkshire. It was in a fold of the moors, and, although its size was impressive, it was architecturally hideous.
Jim had been very unhappy all the way up from London. The change of locale, however, raised his spirits a little. The contemplation of the five hundred pounds and a period of definite employment did something to help him also. And hardly had he set foot in the house than a great surprise was in store for him.
Almost the first person he saw was the Goose Girl. She had been out with the guns, and was now consuming tea and hot buttered cakes. It was nearly six weeks since they had parted in Wales. In that period each had changed. With his artist’s eye Jim could not help noticing that she was still the elemental creature of the Devonshire lanes. Her candor and simplicity were not less than they were, but somewhere in her was a kind of reserved inclosure, an expanse of deep feeling hidden away, which only those who held her secret would ever be able to discover.
Perhaps Jim Lascelles was glad to notice it. It did honor to the slow-witted immobile creature, and it did honor to him. Yes, she was true blue. There was nothing in her words and very little in the manner of her greeting to suggest that a creature so primitive as herself had this reserved space in her. She was just as she always was, and yet at her first words of greeting Jim knew that she was much more.