Ande Trembath: A Tale of Old Cornwall England

by Matthew Stanley Kemp

Ande did try Tom's advice, and was gratified to see that, with the exception of Bully Bob Sloan, all the village lads improved in their conduct toward him. The rescue of Mistress Alice was soon noised abroad, and he was considered almost in the light of a hero by the juvenile element.

One evening, as the lad was returning from the furze croft, he noticed a chaise and pony at his mother's door. It was the chaise of Mistress Alice, who had, since the affair with Queeny, betaken herself to the pony and chaise when desiring an airing. His mother had received her with a certain amount of cold dignity which her feelings would scarcely allow her to conceal.

There was a variety of emotions in the lad's breast as he approached. There was anger at Squire Vivian's indignity to him, a feeling of shame at the report of his depredations, and an emotion that had lived in his soul for quite a time, but which he had never fully analysed. From early childhood he had remembered the squire's daughter. He remembered, with all a youth's tenacity, how he was led to church by the tall, soldierly man, his father, and how rapidly he had to move his infantile feet to keep up with the soldier's tread. In the family pew he would sometimes turn his head to a nice dark-haired little miss of a few summers' age, seated in Squire Vivian's pew. Once she had shyly and demurely returned his look, then quickly turned away, as if displeased. He had asked his father afterward whether he didn't think the squire's girl a "pretty little maid," and he remembered the hearty roar of laughter with which his father responded. Since he had been attending the parish school, he had not seen her much. Indeed, he had never become acquainted with her before the affair of the runaway. He had always admired those dark elfin locks, and in church he had thought if he had one of them how he would cherish it, and then he had flushed crimson at what he thought almost a profanation. He had always admired her, but the feeling he had had for quite a time past could neither be admiration nor friendship. He had not analysed it. It was this strange sentiment that had led him frequently into the vicinity of the Manor, before the regrettable affair of the stocks. His appearance there on the evening of the killing of the mastiff was an incident of that kind. He had conceived a passion for flowers, and especially for the flow ers of a garden plot, watered and attended by the hand of Mistress Alice. Could he secure one of those blossoms? Now, Ande was the perfect soul of honour, but he had had a hard fight with himself to keep from appropriating what was not his own. The slightness of the offence, the intensity of his feelings, the heritage of his ancestors, all urged the harmlessness of the deed. He might have secured one by request, but he would have died before exposing his feelings to ridicule.

Ande stood near the threshold with a tumult of feelings within him, that made him look more like an awkward, country lout than the grandson of a squire.

"Master Trembath, I have come to beg your pardon for the hasty act of father."

Ande could not help noticing the slight colouring of her features, enhanced by the wealth of dark locks overhead. There was a sincerity and earnestness in her tone that made her a hundred times more attractive than he had ever seen her before. He mastered himself with a great effort.

"The apology comes from the wrong person, Mistress Vivian, and the deed being done, cannot be undone."

"It was a cruel injustice," said Mrs. Trembath, with some little warmth in her tone, "and I wondered how the squire could have done it, seeing how bravely my laddie acted in the runaway."

The young girl flushed at the charge of injustice.

"Indeed, father was not aware of Master Trembath's brave conduct; he was away all afternoon, and I was not aware of the judgment on Master Trembath until the following day. I was very much vexed over the whole affair, and when I told father, he, too, was chagrined, yet he said the circumstances were so much against Master Trembath that he didn't see how he could amend matters. I want you to accept these flowers, Master Trembath, as a token of my high esteem, and I trust that you will neither consider my father nor myself in any hard light."