When a man has arrived at the conclusion that all women are weak, that all women are frail, it is rather gratifying to his penetration than otherwise when beauty confirms this view of the question; but Alick Dudley had not commenced travelling along the road which leads to this pleasant opinion, and it was very grievous to him to find his idol had feet of clay, that she had been making a cat’s-paw of him, that the stranger and she knew more of each other than was well for either, that she had fallen in a moment so low as not to be above bribing him with a kiss.
And at that point the lad grew dizzy and confused. There was a great mystery being developed in his heart at the moment. He could not have put that mystery into words; but I may for him. The ideal he had idolized lay at his feet, broken and shattered, marred, ruined, and defaced; but the reality which occupied its place—a weak, deceitful, unhappy girl—he loved.
CHAPTER VII.
MORE VISITORS.
And still the summer days ran on. They rippled by, scarcely murmuring as they passed; and life at Berrie Down flowed smoothly along, leaving no mark or trace behind.
The flowers faded, and fresh flowers bloomed; the cherries were all shaken down; the haymaking was over; the blackberries in the Hollow were forming so rapidly that Lally’s little fingers had to be forbidden plucking the unripe fruit; the noontides were hot and sultry; every blossom was gone from the chestnuts; the shade in Berrie Down Lane was sweet and pleasant, and both pedestrians and equestrians loved to linger there under the trees, on the soft grass by the roadside. There was the purple haze on the distant woods, and in the nearer valleys; the leaves had lost their fresh greenness, and looked in want of rain; the Kemm was reduced to a mere thread of a stream; and the rivulet which meandered through the fields beyond the Hollow was utterly dried up.
Arthur Dudley was beginning to complain loudly of the drought. He spoke of impending loss of cattle; of the probability of the after-grass being all scorched up; of failure in the turnips; but no one paid much attention to his forebodings excepting Heather and Mrs. Ormson.
There was this difference, however, between the two women, that, while the latter condoled with him, the former endeavoured to make him believe matters would not turn out so badly as he feared.
Comforters are not generally so much liked as sympathizers, and it was therefore with Mrs. Ormson Arthur walked around the fields, bemoaning his usual ill-luck as they paced along.
“It was like my fortune to have so many cattle in such a season,” he grumbled. “Any other year it would not have mattered; but this”—and so the Squire wandered on, while Mrs. Ormson said it was “dreadful,” and gently hinted that the arrangement of the weather, like the arrangement of many other things, was not so perfect as it might be.
“Now, what do we want with rain in London?” she inquired; “and yet you know it is always pouring there. How much better it would be if you could have the rain instead! I dare say, if the truth were known, it is coming down there in torrents at this very moment.”