The Shelleys’ change had been so sudden; in a few hours it was all settled, and Jack gone to America, who, earlier in the day, had been shearing sheep, as though that was to be the only anxiety in his shepherd’s life. After he was gone they were at first so occupied with nursing Charlie they had scarcely time to realise all that had happened on that June morning; but in a few weeks Charlie was quite well again, and then they resumed their former lives. But it was all different now; Charlie took Jack’s place as under-shepherd, and went with his father to the downs every day instead of Jack. Fairy spent a great deal of her time at the rectory, for now Jack was gone she felt her anomalous position, for, fond as she was of the shepherd and his wife and of Charlie, she could not help feeling there was a gulf between them and her, which, in Jack’s case, did not exist, for intellectually he was her superior.
As she grew older, Fairy began to realise that there was another difference between her and her foster parents, besides the difference of education, for she was a lady in thought and feeling as well as by birth, and, thanks to Mr. Leslie, by education. Not that there was anything to jar upon her feelings in John Shelley or his wife; for simple, honest folk as they were, there was nothing vulgar about them; and it is vulgarity which jars against a refined mind; but all the same there was a difference between them and her, a difference she had not felt as a child, but which, now she was growing into a woman, pressed upon her.
She felt this difference more with Charlie than the others, for John Shelley’s piety made her look up to him with reverence; and Mrs. Shelley’s sound common sense and true motherly kindness had won her respect and affection; but Charlie, fond as she was of him, was rather a trial to Fairy. His thick hobnailed shoes which he persisted in wearing in the house, his smock-frock, to which, on the shepherd, Fairy had no objection, for, as she often said, he looked like one of the old patriarchs in it, but Charlie’s smock was by no means becoming; he looked what he was—a clodhopping youth in it; his dirty stained hands, which no amount of washing could ever make clean, his broad, Sussex brogue, and his habit of chucking at his forelock if he met Mr. Leslie, were thorns in the flesh to Fairy, as they had been to Jack; and certainly there was no danger of her ever feeling or evincing more than a sisterly affection for the bucolic Charlie. No wonder if Fairy, feeling lonely when Jack was gone, took to remaining oftener at the rectory, after her lesson hours were over, than she had done when he was at home, particularly as she was a great favourite there, not only with the young people, who could do nothing without Fairy, but with Mr. and Mrs. Leslie also, both of whom had come to be very fond of her. They pitied her, too, knowing well the difficulties of her position, though Fairy was much too loyal to the Shelleys to speak of them; and they were anxious to help her as far as lay in their power. At present all they were able to do was to give her the same advantages of education as they bestowed on their own four plain daughters. Unluckily, Fairy did not show any great fondness for study, though she readily learnt French and music, and any accomplishments, for she was very clever with her fingers, and both painted and played very well, for those days.
What was to become of Fairy in the future was a problem which often exercised Mr. and Mrs. Leslie’s brains, and the only solution they could arrive at was that Jack must make his fortune in America, and come back and marry her, since it was quite clear she could not live for ever with the shepherd; neither was she fitted to be a governess; and there was no other way of well-educated women earning their living in those days, and there would be some insurmountable obstacles to marrying her to any one else. A gentleman would hesitate at marrying a girl brought up in a peasant’s cottage, and it was quite certain Fairy would not marry anyone but a gentleman, unless, indeed, she took Jack; so, after due consideration, Mr. and Mrs. Leslie settled there was no other future open to her.
Meanwhile there was plenty of time before Fairy need want to fly away from the shepherd’s sheltering roof, for if Jack came back at the end of two years she would only then be eighteen. And as time went on the accounts of Jack were very satisfactory. Not only did his own letters lead his friends to gather that he was making his way, but Mr. Leslie occasionally received glowing accounts from his friend the banker of the very promising young man he had sent out to him, and there seemed very little doubt that Jack would do uncommonly well for himself.
He wrote every mail, either to his mother or Fairy; indeed, his letters were the chief incidents in their lives, and were eagerly looked for, for little occurred to vary the monotony of the daily routine, except, in due course, the sheep-fairs, lambing-time, the sheep-washing and shearing, and the White Ram, until, in the spring of the second year after Jack went away, a disease broke out among the flocks, which gave John Shelley a great deal of anxiety, although hitherto his sheep had escaped. Indeed, he had been very fortunate since Jack left, and at the time of his third White Ram his flock was in a most prosperous condition. Charlie had developed into an excellent shepherd; his heart was as much in his work now as his father’s; he knew and loved all his sheep, and he was by no means above going to the fairs with them; on the contrary, he was very proud of his position of under-shepherd, and then he had no scruples, like Jack, about snareing wheatears. He made quite a little fortune in this way during the summer months, and in winter he trapped moles and sold them for so much a dozen; in the autumn he gathered mushrooms and sold them—indeed, all was fish that came to Charlie’s net; and in one way he was as observant as Jack, though while Jack pursued his observations from a pure love of natural history, Charlie always had an eye on the main chance.
He cared nothing for the beauty of the scenery—probably he saw none, although Ray, the naturalist, thought the South Downs equal to any scenery in Europe. All Charlie saw was an expanse of short crisp turf, excellent pasturage for his sheep. He never brought Fairy home a bunch of flowers, as Jack had been wont to do every day except in the depth of winter, and when she asked him to get her some bee orchises from Mount Caburn, Charlie either did not know where they grew or else had not time to gather them; and then Fairy would go to John Shelley, and beg him to get her some orchids before they were all over, and, busy as he might be, John never refused.
One hot July day when John Shelley’s White Ram was already a thing of the past, he came home unexpectedly about ten in the morning, looking so very grave that Fairy, who was painting on the kitchen table, asked what was the matter. John often looked grave now; indeed, he had never been quite the same since Jack had struck that unlucky blow; the suspense and anxiety he endured then, and the narrow escape he felt they had had of a terrible tragedy being enacted in the midst of their happy home circle, and then the loss of his eldest son, which he felt exceedingly, for he was very proud of clever, handsome Jack; all had saddened him. Perhaps, too, the knowledge that he had attained the goal of his earthly ambition, to be captain of the Lewes shearing company, and had nothing more to hope for in this world, made him grave; at any rate, though he had always lived for the future—for the life beyond the grave, he did so more than ever now; and though he was too good a man and too busy to indulge in any morbid thoughts, yet he set very little store on this life, and often longed for the time to come when he should lay his burden down and cross the dark river which leads to those fields of light where the wicked cease from troubling and the weary are at rest.
For Fairy the shepherd had ever a smile; she was the light of his home, the poetry of his life; one glance at her delicate, bright little face, crowned with its wealth of golden hair, was sufficient to chase all gloom from his brow; and now, though he looked unusually grave, he smiled at her.
“Where is mother, little one?”