Mary Anerley: A Yorkshire Tale

by R. D. Blackmore

“You could commit no greater error. We pay the price of his black silk stockings three times over, every time we see him. The true objects of pity are—you, I, and the estates.”

“Well, let us drop it for a while. If you begin upon that nauseous subject, not a particle of food will pass my lips; and I did look forward to a little nourishment.”

“Dinner, my ladies!” cried the well-appointed Welldrum, throwing open the door as only such a man can do, while cleverly accomplishing the necessary bow, which he clinched on such occasions with a fine smack of his lips.

“Go and tell Mr. Lancelot, if you please, that we are waiting for him.” A great point was made, but not always effected, of having Master Pet, in very gorgeous attire, to lead his aunt into the dining-room. It was fondly believed that this impressed him with the elegance and nice humanities required by his lofty position and high walk in life. Pet hated this performance, and generally spoiled it by making a face over his shoulder at old Welldrum, while he strode along in real or mock awe of Aunt Philippa.

“If you please, my ladies,” said the butler now, choosing Mrs. Carnaby for his eyes to rest on, “Mr. Lancelot beg to be excoosed of dinner. His head is that bad that he have gone for open air.”

“Snow-headache is much in our family; Eliza, you remember how our dear father used to feel it.” With these words Mistress Yordas led her sister to the dining-room; and they took good care to say nothing more about it before the officious Welldrum.

Pet meanwhile was beginning to repent of his cold and lonely venture. For a mile or two the warmth of his mind and the glow of exercise sustained him; and he kept on admiring his own courage till his feet began to tingle. “Insie will be bound to kiss me now; and she never will be able to laugh at me again,” he said to himself some fifty times. “I am like the great poet who describes the snow; and I have got some cherry-brandy.” He trudged on very bravely; but his poor dear toes at every step grew colder. Out upon the moor, where he was now, no shelter of any kind encouraged him; no mantlet of bank, or ridge, or brush-wood, set up a furry shiver betwixt him and the tatterdemalion wind. Not even a naked rock stood up to comfort a man by looking colder than himself.

But in truth there was no severe cold yet; no depth of snow, no intensity of frost, no splintery needles of sparkling drift; but only the beginning of the wintry time, such as makes a strong man pick his feet up, and a healthy boy start an imaginary slide. The wind, however, was shrewd and searching, and Lancelot was accustomed to a warming-pan. Inside his waistcoat he wore a hare-skin, and his heart began to give rapid thumps against it. He knew that he was going into bodily peril worse than any frost or snow.

For a long month he had not even seen his Insie, and his hot young heart had never before been treated so contemptuously. He had been allowed to show himself in the gill at his regular interval, a fortnight ago. But no one had ventured forth to meet him, or even wave signal of welcome or farewell. But that he could endure, because he had been warned not to hope for much that Friday; now, however, it was not his meaning to put up with any more such nonsense. That he, who had been told by the servants continually that all the land for miles and miles around was his, should be shut out like a beggar, and compelled to play bo-peep, by people who lived in a hole in the ground, was a little more than in the whole entire course of his life he could ever have imagined. His mind was now made up to let them know who he was and what he was; and unless they were very quick in coming to their senses, Jordas should have orders to turn them out, and take Insie altogether away from them.

But in spite of all brave thoughts and words, Master Pet began to spy about very warily, ere ever he descended from the moor into the gill. He seemed to have it borne in upon his mind that territorial rights—however large and goodly—may lead only to a taste of earth, when earth alone is witness to the treatment of her claimant. Therefore it behooved him to look sharp; and possessing the family gift of keen sight, he began to spy about, almost as shrewdly as if he had been educated in free trade. But first he had wit enough to step below the break, and get behind a gorse bush, lest haply he should illustrate only the passive voice of seeing.