Chapter II

A strange and melancholy life it was for a lad of Ronald’s temperament; a strange and incongruous fellowship:

“For East is East, and West is West, and never the twain shall meet”

Yet it had in it one redeeming feature. Only a mile from Broadwater, in the white house that nestles in the heart of the valley, just visible to us over a depression in the lulls, lived a young widow of twenty-eight—Ronald’s dearest friend, and his comforter and consoler whenever the monotony of existence seemed almost intolerable to the lad just entering on manhood.

The coalition between Ronald and Mrs. Thorpe was regarded with extreme disfavour by the uncle. “Making a milksop of the lad,” he called it sneeringly. But the villagers, one and all of them, were emphatic in their praise. “A nice couple they’d make,” said old widow Denvers. “I only hope it may come off, and that I may be alive to see it. And love each other they do already, unless my old eyes deceive me. See how he follers her about and well nigh wusshups the ground she treads on. Why he’d be at Thorpe Hill all day, if only that old aunt of his didn’t watch him like a cat. Drat her!”

A feeling of companionship had steadily grown up between them. The almost daily meetings and constant interchange of ideas had produced their natural result, and the companionship that had at first been a pleasure had long become a necessity. Yet, strange to say, neither had recognised the fact. Ronald himself would have scouted the idea. Possessed of not a penny in his own rights, and dependent only on what his uncle allowed him, he would have ridiculed the notion of asking the richest woman in the county to become his wife. Indeed it was the deterrent influence of their relative positions that had excluded the possibility from finding a place among the contingencies of his life. Yet she it was, however unwittingly, who was the cause of Ronald’s last escapade.

The idea had frequently occurred to him that she had inspired his uncle with the nearest approximation to love of which his nature was capable. Not according to the accepted traditions of lovemaking, nor exhibited in a manner that would be patent to the world at large. But he showed her attentions that he withheld from all other women. He would enquire solicitously after her health, and the health of her dogs, in huge Grandisonian phrases; above all, he would vacate for her his favourite armchair, and waive her into it with a bow of old-world politeness. (To his sister, who ruled his household, the chair in question was rigorously debarred). Then again, she was a Liberal in politics. Not that this counted for much, because he maintained that women should be allowed no politics at all, beyond presenting a feeble reflex of the man who was nearest or dearest to them. Much as he hated Conservatism, he would sooner have seen the wife of his friend Jacobs pose as the rankest of Tories, than at variance with her husband in a way so subversive of the relation of the sexes.

“What a blessing it is to get across here for a change of air,” said Ronald, flinging himself down on a chair in Mrs. Thorpe’s drawing-room, where she was arranging her flowers for the day.

“Well, what’s the matter now? Is it the aunt or the uncle who has ruffled you this morning?”

“Not so much the people as the atmosphere. The air seems laden with small trivialities. I feel like the man in ‘Pilgrim’s Progress,’ who lived in a cloud of dust that he was constantly raising. Whereas life ought to be lived on a breezy upland, with your face to the sea.”

“I think I understand what you mean, though your reminiscences of Bunyan are a trifle mixed. And perhaps the dust is better for you.”

“Not a bit of it, when it’s of one’s own making. Now _you_ haven’t a scrap of dust in your house.”

“I’m not so sure. Look at that piano. Anyhow, you didn’t come all this way so early in the morning to treat me to a revised version of Bunyan’s allegory. What’s the matter, Ronald?”

“I believe the old man’s jealous of me. He says I’m over here too often—that people are beginning to talk, and all manner of rot. I’m almost sure he wants to marry you himself.”

“My dear boy, you’re dreaming. Do you think that I would abandon my independence, and all my advanced theories on women, to adopt your uncle’s musty, antediluvian ideas? Not a bit of it. Why I’d sooner marry _you_, if the worst came to the worst, though even that wouldn’t suit me either.”

“It would suit _me_,” muttered Ronald, “just down to the ground.”

The uncle’s sight had of late been failing him, owing to some weakness or lesion of the nerve that no spectacles could remedy. Under these circumstances, his favourite amanuensis was Ronald; for, though I regret to say it, his sister’s spelling was occasionally defective, and his uncle was particular above all things that his correspondence should be strictly orthographic. Not that this characteristic could be imputed to Miss Heyward as a fault, especially in these days, when even Peeresses (I am told) have adopted phonetic spelling, and orthography has been relegated to our village schools as the symbol of a lower and less intellectual class. But the uncle was conservative in everything but politics, and regarded the innovation as a forecast of the nation’s decadence.

One morning he called Ronald into his study, with a thoughtful, pre-occupied air that betokened business of more than average importance.

“Ronald, I’m thinking of marrying—and who do you suppose is my choice? A great friend of yours by the way, Mrs. Thorpe. I like her amazingly; a most well-bred woman, who will look famously at the head of my table. Then again, she’s got money, though it’s true I don’t want it. And her property marches with mine; and we’ll enclose it all in a ring fence, and have the finest estate in the county. She’s got a few crotchets, I know, but they’ll soon be ousted when she’s found a sensible man to advise her. I grant I’m a trifle old for her, but people think nothing of that in these days when the fault is on the right side. What do you say to it? a good idea, isn’t it?”

“Very good indeed, sir,” said Ronald—demurely, but doubtingly.

“You ain’t very hearty about it, Ronald. I expected you to jump at the suggestion. Indeed, I thought you were a little gone on her yourself, and would have welcomed her warmly for your aunt. You’re across at her house pretty well every day.”

“Yes, sir, I am; and I do like her very much. Indeed, I wouldn’t have minded marrying her myself.”

“Good Lord! if that doesn’t beat everything! A mere boy like you, without a penny in the world except what you get from me—and I’m not dead yet by a long way, Ronald—_you_ to be in love with the richest woman in the county! God bless me! What are the boys coming to? But there—it’s nonsense. Put it out of your head, my lad, and sit down and write what I tell you.”

The letter, when it was forwarded, ran thus:

“DEAR MRS. THORPE,

“I write on a subject that touches very nearly the happiness of my
future life (‘it touches mine, R.’) You must have seen, I imagine,
how much I have admired and loved you (‘my sentiments exactly R.’);
nor can you be blind to the fact that no other woman occupies the
place in my esteem which has been wholly given to you (‘couldn’t have
expressed myself better, R.’) I now offer you my hand and heart
(‘savours of the complete letter writer, but true notwithstanding,
R.’), together with all my worldly possessions (‘£50, all included,
R.’) You know, I fancy, my ways and habits as no other woman can
know them (‘too well by half, R.’) My temper is equable, and I am, I
think, companionable (‘query? R.’) My nephew Ronald will continue to
live with us; you know him well (‘I should just think so, R.’) He is
a really good-hearted, well-meaning lad (‘thanks, old man, R.’), but
a little uppish at times, and thinks he knows everything, like all
the boys of the present day (‘I retract my thanks, R.’) But I fancy
that you and he will get on together (‘admirably, R.’)

“I shall await your answer with impatience, and anxiously hope it may
be favourable (‘to me, R.’)

“I remain,

“Your sincere admirer,

“A. HEYWARD.”
(‘Your loving friend, R.’)

The answer came next day, and was a crushing blow to my uncle’s hopes. She thanked him gratefully for the offer, and regretted the disappointment her answer would cause him. But her affections, she said, had long been bestowed on his nephew, and she had lately had _reason to believe_ (italics at Ronald’s request) that the feeling was reciprocated. She was in a position, she added, to disregard monetary considerations in the choice of a husband.

* * * *

There was strife within the gates of Broadwater on the announcement of Ronald’s engagement. The uncle was furious at being supplanted this second time, and, to make matters worse, the offender in this case was the nephew of his choice. So wroth was he that he nearly made me his heir out of spite, and, for two or three days, my price rose considerably on the matrimonial market. But, on giving tongue to his wrath, he found himself without a supporter. “A servile war had broken out” (to quote from ‘Cometh up,’—sweetest of all love stories, but, Great _Dionysius_! what Greek!) and his sister was in a state of open rebellion. It was she who headed the rising, and with her went all the servants, which left our uncle in a minority of one. She was, naturally enough, well pleased at the progress of events, and anticipated with satisfaction the continuance of her reign.

Ronald, so soon as his month’s probation was ended, was thankful to be received out of the fray into the sanctuary of Thorpe. Not that he was at peace, even there. His conscience gave him twinges, and I had a word to say to him on the subject, and his wife had a word or two more. But it was all for his good, and he had brought it upon himself by treating matrimony (of all estates in the world) in a spirit of graceless levity.

* * * * *

And what of myself? Well, reader, I had lost my chance, or, perhaps, willingly foregone it. All Ronald’s pet schemes had been safe in my hands, and I was little likely to oppose the present one, when, almost from the first, I had pictured its realisation, and seen how necessary it was to the happiness and stability of his life. My unselfishness—call it passivity if you will—carried with it its own reward, for neither of the two was happy without me, and Thorpe Hill practically became my home.

Judy, or Retrieved

RONALD became her ‘fidus Achates’ and Lord High Almoner in all her acts of charity. Occasionally, it is true, he misunderstood or exceeded his instructions, as, for instance, when he went round with a parcel of physic to a sick cottager.

“How be I to take ’m? did she tell ’e?”

“No: she didn’t, but she meant all, I suppose, unless it’s written inside.”

This was a large order, as the parcel contained castor oil, a black draught, and six blue pills.

“And which be I to take fust? She must ha’ told ’e that.”

Again Ronald was at fault.

“Much, I allow, as the gentry do their vittles—solids fust, and drinks atterwards.”

The prescriptions, whatever the order observed in their administration, answered to perfection, and Ronald’s fame was greatly magnified by the result. His drugs were in high request everywhere, and were reported to be “powerfully fine.”

One day his wife said to him, “Ronald, would you like to hear a project I have in hand for reclaiming a pet drunkard?”

“Very much: what is it?”

“I shall give him a dog.”

“Good Lord! how will that help him? It reminds one of a story in the ‘Arabian Nights,’ where somebody with a crack-jaw name gives to somebody else—a porter, I think it was—a lump of lead, promising it will make his fortune. But he wisely declined to specify by what particular method the charm would work. I think the man weighted a fish-line with it, and caught a salmon with a diamond in its mouth. But you can hardly expect your scheme to work like that.”

“Wait and see, Ronald. I read in a German story book the other day how a dog had turned a man into an early riser (I shall give you one, Ronald), and made him charitable, and religious, and all the rest of it. Surely I can trust my dog to reclaim a man from one single failing.”

“I should like to see how he’s going to do it,” said Ronald incredulously. “The chances are your _protégé_ will take his dog the first day to the nearest public-house. And, if he gets biscuits there, as a nice dog is sure to do, he’ll want no coaxing to take his master there every day. And the last state of that man will be worse than the first.”

“I am afraid there is no worse possible in this case. At any rate I have faith in my dog.”

The next day a ragged little hound, called “Judy,” was selected from the kennels at Thorpe Hill, and despatched to the _protégé_ in question. Pure white she was, and so small, that, at a shift, you could hold her in the hollow of your hand. A veritable little mongrel, of course, if ever there was one. Indeed, nothing but a mongrel would have had the capacity for so delicate a mission. For, as we all know, it is to the mongrel that we look for intelligence and originality. The consciousness of inherited merit is fatal to intellectual progress in an animal of pedigree. Partiality—but only the most prejudiced—might have called Judy a rough Irish terrier. Only her ears didn’t lop, but were carried erect like a donkey’s, and her legs were too long, and her tail had an ugly “kinck” in it.

Having abused her sufficiently for her personal appearance, let me add that she had the sweetest and most winning of faces—chiefly composed of eyes, which were so large in comparison with the rest of her features that they seemed to swallow them up, giving to the face, as a whole, the thin, troubled look of premature age, which is so pathetic in any sick animal. But Judy was far from being delicate, and enjoyed to the full the zest and sparkle of life. With her head on one side, and her ears pricked up, and attention bestowed on the curl of her tail, a matter in which she was often negligent, she would have matched the best of them as a study of arrested life.

The two—the dog and the young reprobate she was expected to reform—took to each other with all their hearts, and soon became inseparable. But at first Ronald’s pessimistic prophecy seemed likely to be realised. True to his natural instinct, her master took Judy at once to the nearest public-house, and, as the biscuits due to an intelligent dog were always forthcoming, Judy fell in entirely with her master’s view as to the direction their daily walk should take. Ronald triumphed maliciously but prematurely. For Judy was to be recalled to her duty by a stern dispensation.

It happened one day, that, as she and her master were starting, a troop of bicyclists came scorching down the hill, and Judy, caught off her guard and losing her head, was run over, and taken up for dead. After long days of anxious nursing she was called slowly back to life, at least to a measure of life. But the little dog’s nerve was gone. From that day forward no persuasion could tempt her to follow her master along the public road. Warned by experience, she dreaded bicyclists at every turning. Just so far as the garden gate, and no further, she would follow him, and, with a thin little feeble whine, plead almost in words for a change of route. But the master’s heart was steeled. It was to be a conflict of will between them. And which was to conquer? the dog or the man? For days and weeks the result trembled in the scale. But the walk grew dreary apart from his companion, and, going and returning, he was haunted by the piteous whine. Then at last he succumbed. The day’s walk along the high road was exchanged for a run in the nearest field or common, and Judy’s heart rejoiced, and her spirit came again to her, and she became—almost, but never quite—her natural self again.

Thenceforth the sympathy between these two was complete. When Judy was ill again, almost to death, she was restful nowhere but in her master’s presence. When he left the room, her eyes would languidly follow him; when he came back, they kindled to life again, breathed into by a new spirit; and when he took her in his arms, all pain and disquiet ceased, and she lay neither shivering nor moaning—lost to all feeling but the satisfied assurance of his love.

“Well, Ronald, and how about my experiment?”

“You’ve beaten me,” was the reply. “What a wonderful woman you are!”