But I did not answer her that. I only thanked her, or tried to thank her, I dare say in such surly fashion that it was more like a rebuff; then I was off, but I felt her standing there close to the white-blooming hedge, staring after me with that inscrutable look of an immature girl who questions doubly all she sees, beginning with herself.
III
Although I was heir to a large estate, I had not much gold and silver nor many treasures in my possession. I never knew rightly why; but my mother, having control until I was come of age, and having, indeed, the whole property at her disposal, doubtless considered it best that the wealth should accumulate rather than be frittered away in trifles which could be of but passing moment to a boy. But I was well equipped enough as regarded comforts, and, as I said before, my education was well looked after. Through never having much regard for such small matters, it used to gall me not at all that my half-brother, who was younger and such a fair lad that he became them like a girl, should go clad in silks and velvets and laces, with a ready jingle of money in his purse and plenty of sweets and trinkets to command. But after I saw that little maid it went somewhat hard with me that I had no bravery of apparel to catch her sweet eyes and cause her to laugh and point with delight, as I have often seen her do, at the glitter of a loop of gold or a jewelled button or a flash of crimson sheen from a fold of velvet, for she always dearly loved such pretty things. And it went hard with me that I had not the wherewithal to sometimes purchase a comfit to thrust into her little hand, reaching of her nature for sweets like the hands of all young things. Often I saw my brother John win her notice in such wise, for he, though he cared in general but little for small folk, was ravished by her, as indeed was every one who saw her. And once my brother John gave her a ribbon stiff with threads of gold which pleased her mightily at the time, though, the day after, I saw it gleaming from the wet of the park grass, whither she had flung it, for the caprices of a baby are beyond those of the wind, being indeed human inclination without rudder nor compass. Then I did an ungallant and ungenerous thing, for which I have always held myself in light esteem: I gathered up that ribbon and carried it to my brother and told him where I had found it, but all to small purpose as regarded my jealousy, as he scarce gave it a thought, and the next day gave the little maid a silver button, which she treasured longer. As for me, I having no ribbons nor sweets nor silver buttons to give her, was fain to search the woods and fields and the seashore for those small treasures, without money and without price, with which nature is lavish toward the poor who love her and attend her carefully, such as the first flowers of the season, nuts and seed-vessels, and sometimes an empty bird's nest and a stray bright feather and bits of bright stones, which might, for her baby fancy, be as good as my brother's gold and silver, and shells, and red and russet moss. All these I offered her from time to time as reverently and shyly as any true lover; though she was but a baby tugging with a sweet angle of opposition at her black nurse's hand and I near a man grown, and though I had naught to hope for save a fleeting grasp of her rosy fingers and a wavering smile from her sweet lips and eyes, ere she flung the offering away with innocent inconstancy.
Her father, Capt. Geoffry Cavendish, seemed to regard my devotion to his daughter with a certain amusement and good-will; indeed, I used to fancy that he had a liking for me, and would go out of his way to say a pleasant word, but once it happened that I took his kindness in ill part, and still consider that I was justified in so doing.
A gentleman should not have pity thrust upon him unless he himself, by his complaints, seems to sue for it, and that was ever far from me, and I was already, although so young, as sensitive to all slights upon my dignity as any full-grown man. So when, one day, lying at full length upon the grass under a reddening oak with a book under my eyes and my pocket full of nuts if, perchance, my little sweetheart should come that way with her black nurse, I heard suddenly Captain Cavendish's voice ring out loud and clear, as it always did, from his practice on the quarter-deck, with something like an oath as of righteous indignation to the effect that it was a damned shame for the heir and the eldest son, and a lad with a head of a scholar and the arm of a soldier, to be thrust aside so and made so little of. Then another voice, smoothly sliding, as if to make no friction with the other's opinions, asked of whom he spoke, and that smoothly sliding voice I recognised as Mr. Abbot's, the attorney's, and Captain Cavendish replied in a fashion which astonished me, for I had no idea to whom he had referred—"Harry Maria Wingfield, the eldest son and heir of as fine and gallant a gentleman as ever trod English soil, who is treated like the son of a scullion by those who owe him most, and 'tis a damned shame and I care not who hears me."
Then, before I had as yet fairly my wits about me, Mr. Abbot spoke again in that voice of his which I so hated in my boyish downrightness and scorn of all policy that it may have led me to an unjust estimate of all men of his profession. "But Col. John Chelmsford hath no meaning to deal otherwise than fairly by the boy, and neither, unless I greatly mistake, hath his wife." And this he said as if both Colonel Chelmsford and my mother were at his elbow, and for that manner of speaking I have ever had contempt, preferring downright scurrility, and Captain Cavendish replied with his quick agility of wrath, as precipitate toward judgment as a sailor to the masthead in a storm:
"And what if she be? The more shame to them that they have not enough wit to see what they do! I tell thee this poor Harry hath a harder time of it than any slave on my plantation in Virginia, I—"
But then I was on my feet, and, facing them both with my head flung back and my face, I dare say, red and white with wrath, and demanding hotly what that might be to them, and if my treatment at the hands of my stepfather and my own mother was not between them and me, and none else, and, boy as I was, I felt as tall as Captain Cavendish as I stood there. Captain Cavendish stared a moment and reddened and frowned, and then his gaunt face widened with his ever ready laugh which made it passing sweet for a man.
"Tush, lad," he cried out, "and had I known how fit thou were to fight thy own battles I had not taken up the cudgels for thee, and I crave thy pardon. I had not perceived that thy sword-arm was grown, and henceforth thou shall cross with thy adversaries for all me." Then he laughed again, and I stared at him still grimly but softened, and he and Mr. Abbot moved on, but the attorney, in passing, laid his great white hand on my black mane of hair as if he would bless me, and I shrank away from under it, and when he said in that voice of his, "'Tis a gallant lad and one to do good service for his king and country," I would that he had struck me that I might have justly hit back.
When they had passed back on the turf I lay with my boyish heart in a rage with the insults, both of pity and of praise, which had been offered me; for why should pity be offered unless there be the weakness of betrayal of suffering to warrant it, and why should there be praise unless there be craving for it, through the weakness of wronged conceit? Be that as it may, my book no longer interested me, and finally I rose up and went away after having deposited all my nuts on the grass in the hope that the little maid might chance that way and espy them.