Collected works of j s f.., p.91
Collected Works of J S Fletcher, page 91
Elisabeth had been busied within the house for the greater part of the day, concluding her preparations for her wedding. Towards evening she felt that a breath of fresh air would do her good, and she accordingly took her hat and went out, intending to be home again within the hour. She knew that Hepworth would come to see her that night, but she did not expect him before eight or nine o’clock. Once out of doors she went further than she had intended. The evening air was cool and delicious to breathe; birds were singing in every hedgerow and coppice, and the laughter of the village children rang in subdued cadences up the low hillsides. She walked on and on, and ere long came to the grove of trees where Hepworth and Verrell had parted.
Verrell, after watching Hepworth drive away, went into the grove and looked for the hut. He found it in the centre of a clearing — a rude, decaying structure of pine-logs, with a thatched roof, gradually falling into ruin and wreck. He went in, and finding it cold and comfortless left it and sat outside on a fallen tree. The place was quiet — there seemed to be no life near it other than that of the birds and insects that sang and hummed in the undergrowth. He brought out a pipe and tobacco and began to smoke. When one pipe was finished he filled another. For two hours he sat there, smoking and thinking, and listening for the sound of a footstep on the dry brushwood.
At last a sound, the cracking of a broken twig pressed by a human foot, reached him. With the instinct of quick fear he left the fallen tree and made for the hut, hiding himself in its darkest corner. Through a window destitute of glass, he peered into the trees without. The sound came nearer; suddenly the thick-leaved branches were pushed aside, and a woman stepped into the clearing. Verrell found himself gazing at his wife.
Verrell found himself gazing at his wife.
.
Elisabeth had often visited this spot. In spring she went there to seek primroses; in summer she sought its privacy in order to think quietly over the new departure in her life. Finding herself near the grove of trees that night she had turned in there for half-an-hour’s quiet thought. When Verrell saw her he concluded that Hepworth had sent her to find him, but he almost immediately perceived that in this supposition he was mistaken. Elisabeth sat down on the fallen tree, almost on the spot he had just left, and he saw that she believed herself to be quite alone and unobserved.
Verrell remained at the window watching his wife. Elisabeth sat, thoughtful and quiet, her hands folded idly in her lap, her eyes fixed on the ground. She was evidently deep in thought. He noticed that she was graver than he remembered her, and that a certain womanly dignity had replaced the girlish light-hearted air that he had never forgotten. A curious feeling of wonder came over him as he looked at her. It seemed to him that she was the same, yet not the same.
Presently Elisabeth drew something from her pocket and looked at it long and thoughtfully. A turn of her hand showed Verrell that it was his own photograph. “She is thinking of me,” he said to himself, and at the thought his eyes filled with tears and a new wave of life welled up within him. Then he saw that Elisabeth was softly crying to herself. She raised the photograph to her lips and kissed it. Verrell waited no longer. He stepped to the open door of the hut.
“Elisabeth!” he said. “Elisabeth!”
Elisabeth looked up. She saw her husband standing before her. At the sight she felt herself swooning — it was a dream, she thought, a dream that must suddenly change, and yet it was burning itself into her heart and brain with a reality which no dream can possess. She rose to her feet, and stood gazing and trembling. Verrell moved swiftly towards her. “Elisabeth!” he said again.
“Walter!”
Her voice came faint and low. She held out her hands as if she were suddenly going blind and needed guidance.
“Oh,” she cried, as he took her in his arms. “It is you — it is you! I thought you were dead. My dear — my dear — my dear!”
It was half-an-hour after this that Hepworth came into the grove of trees. He had looked for Elisabeth along the lanes and fields and had failed to find her. Thinking that she had returned to the village he had come to the grove to take Verrell away. But as he advanced through the undergrowth he suddenly heard people talking. He went forward cautiously and recognised the voices as those of Elisabeth and Verrell. Advancing quietly towards the clearing he came close behind them. They sat on the fallen tree, talking earnestly. Verrell’s arm was about his wife’s neck: she leaned against him confidently, and there was a look on her face that Hepworth had never seen there before.
Verrell had told Elisabeth all that had taken place between him and Hepworth. But he had resolved while he waited for the latter to tell her something more, and he was beginning this difficult task when Hepworth came up behind them. Hepworth caught the first words. “Elisabeth,” said Verrell, “there is something that I must tell you. My dear, we have to begin our life again, and it will be hard—”
“Oh,” she said, “as if I cared, now that I have got you back, Walter! We will go somewhere, far away, and we will be happy — happy, my dear, as we used to be.”
“Yes,” he said, “but I must tell you, dear, before we go—”
Hepworth seized the situation at a glance. Verrell was going to tell his wife that he had deceived her as to his innocence. The thought flashed rapidly through his mind — why should that confession be made? What good would it do? The expression on Elisabeth’s face told him that she would forgive anything. Why should she not continue to believe in the man she loved? He suddenly stepped into the clearing. Elisabeth and Verrell started to their feet.
“So you have found each other?” said Hepworth.
The three stood looking into each other’s faces. A moment that seemed a lifetime passed. Then Elisabeth, womanly-quick to see the pain in Hepworth’s face, came to his side and laid her hand on his arm.
“Oh,” she said, her face full of divine compassion. “I am sorry, I am so sorry. You have been so good, so kind to me. But,” — she turned to Verrell with a wonderful look of love and pride— “he is my husband.”
Hepworth gave her hand a quick, strong grip.
“Yes,” he said. “I know. Say no more, Elisabeth. Let your husband come with me for a minute — I must speak to him.”
The two men went into the hut. Once inside Hepworth turned to Verrell.
“You were going to tell your wife that you were not innocent?” he said.
“Yes,” said Verrell.
“Don’t tell her,” said Hepworth. “She believes in you — let her continue to believe. No one will ever be able to persuade her to the contrary. Only,” here he laid his hand on the young man’s shoulder, “promise me to live worthy of her!”
“I will — God help me!” said Verrell.
“Now listen,” continued Hepworth. “I have thought things over for you. Here is money in this pocket-book; take it, man, take it! — there is a train leaves Sicaster in an hour for Liverpool, and you must catch it. Go by the first ship to America — do what you can there — if you ever want help, write to me.”
“God bless you!” said Verrell.
“Now come outside,” said Hepworth.
He went back to Elisabeth, Verrell following close behind him. Hepworth held out his hand to the woman he loved.
“Good-bye, Elisabeth,” he said. “Go with your husband — he will tell you what you are to do. Good-bye — good-bye!”
She took his hand and held it. Their eyes met.
“Good-bye!” she said.
Still they held each other’s hands. Verrell turned away. Hepworth felt the bitterness of death upon him as he gazed into Elisabeth’s eyes.
“Good-bye!” he said again. “Good-bye, Elisabeth!”
Without another word the three went slowly through the wood and into the lane. Hepworth pointed out the road towards Sicaster and silently motioned them to take it. Elisabeth was weeping as she turned away from him. Verrell paused and held out his hand and wrung Hepworth’s within it. Then he hurried on and took his wife’s hand and they went along the lane in the fast-gathering twilight. Hepworth stood watching them. At the bend of the road Elisabeth turned and waved her hand to him. He lifted his own in response. The next moment they were gone, and he stood there, alone.
In this way Hepworth said farewell to the love of his life.
THE END
Mistress Spitfire (1896)
A PLAIN ACCOUNT OF CERTAIN EPISODES IN THE HISTORY OF RICHARD COOPE, GENT., AND OF HIS COUSIN, MISTRESS ALISON FRENCH, AT THE TIME OF THE REVOLUTION, 1642-1644
CONTENTS
CHAPTER I
CHAPTER II
CHAPTER III
CHAPTER IV
CHAPTER V
CHAPTER VI
CHAPTER VII
CHAPTER VIII
The original frontispiece
To
MY FRIEND LIZZIE
CHAPTER I
Of certain Events which happened at East Hardwick Manor House, August 27-28, 1642.
I.
At seven of the clock I turned away from the window, where, for a full hour, I had stood flattening my nose against the pane in a vain attempt to see something of interest in the dripping garden or the dank meadows outside. Sir Nicholas moved in his deep chair by the fire and then groaned, his old enemy catching him afresh and tweaking his great toe. Seeing that his pain had awakened him I went over and stood at his side. I saw the firelight glint on his frosted hair, and it woke in me some sleeping memory of a by gone winter. Yet then it was August, and had been a bright one, but that day we had suffered from a heavy rain which came with the dawn and kept pouring itself upon us without ceasing, so that no man putting his nose out o’ doors could have said with certainty whether he sniffed April or November in the air. As for me, I was heartily sick of it and everything, and when my uncle’s silvery hair reminded me of winter I thought regretfully of the previous Christmas and of Mistress Catherine and the mistletoe that then hung over the very spot where I now stood watching Sir Nicholas making wry faces at his foot.
“Plague!” says he, “Plague on this toe of mine! Let me counsel thee, nephew — but what o’clock is it? God’s body! I must ha’ slept, gout or no gout, why, I must ha’ slept an hour.”
“An hour and a half, sir, by the clock,” says I. “But, by the time that I have watched at the window, a year, at the least.”
“Ha! Dull, eh? Why, nephew, I make little doubt that thou hast employed thyself in some fashion that was not altogether — the devil fly away with my toe! — not altogether without amusement. Thy thoughts, now — what, when I was thy age I could ha’ mused by the day together on something pleasant. Ha! I mind me of a day that I passed under a beech tree — I was then in love — I cut her name and mine — they were enclosed in a heart, and through the thicker part of it I carved an arrow. Cupid, eh, nephew? — and — and — —”
“But I, sir,” says I, “have no maiden to think of, seeing that none thinks of me.”
“Why,” says he, with an arch look in his eyes, “that’s but a poor reason, Dick, for God’s faith, there are many men think of maidens that never think of them! Is there — plague take it, nephew! sit thee down like a Christian rather than stand lolling there on one leg like a dancing Frenchman. Is there, I say, no little pastry-cook’s wench in all Oxford that thou hast not set eyes on since Easter, and thought softly of? Ha, Dick, I mind me — —”
But in the midst of his memories the pain in his toe seized him so violently that he screamed to me to fetch Barbara, who came leisurely from the housekeeper’s room, and bade me go forth and leave her with him, which I was not loth to do. And being heartily wearied and sick of the rain, and my poor uncle’s gout, and the house, which I had kept all day, I threw my cloak about me and lounged into the porch, and stood there, one shoulder against the wall, staring at the raindrops which pattered in the courtyard, and made a musical tinkle in every pool.
But there was naught in the courtyard or in the land beyond it likely to rouse me out of that dullness of spirit into which I was fast falling. The walls were dripping wet, there were rivulets of shiny water in the road outside, and across that lay the fields, as befogged and gray with the long day’s weeping as ever I saw them in autumn. ’Twas still early in the evening — the previous night I had seen the top of Pomfret church as I leaned against that door at the same hour — but already there was in the air a misty darkness accompanied by a chilling cold that searched its way through my thick cloak. I half regretted that I had not set out that morning for Doncaster, where I had promised to spend a day or two with my college friend, Matthew Richardson. ’Twould have been a wet ride thither, certainly, but what matter when I should have had good company and profitable conversation at the end of it? When Sir Nicholas had a touch of the gout he was neither company nor conversation for any man save in the way of quarrelling, and therefore I had kept away from him most of that day, striving to amuse myself with such books as he possessed in his justice room, or with the old guns and muskets that stood in racks on his walls. I never could abide a wet day in a country house — in a town house it makes little difference, I think, for there are diversions and amusements of one sort and another, let alone a man’s occupation, but in the country I am minded to be abroad, on foot or on horseback, and to be kept inside by a day’s rain is exceeding irksome to me. So I stood in the porch feeling in no very good humour that August evening, and still the rain continued to fall.
There were, perhaps, more matters than one to trouble me that night. Here was I, Richard Coope, a young man of one-and-twenty years, at that time a scholar of Pembroke College in the University of Oxford, destined by my uncle, Sir Nicholas, to be one thing, while I myself mightily desired to be another. Because my father, John Coope, died young, leaving me no fortune, Sir Nicholas had taken me in hand, kindly enough, and had charged himself with my up-bringing and education. He was minded to send me to the bar, for something had persuaded him that I should at least become Lord High Chancellor, and add new glory to the family name. And that had been well enow, had I myself possessed the least liking for the quips and quiddities of the law, which, as a matter of fact, I hated like poison. My taste was for other matters — wholly and first of all for the finer things in literature, such as a rare book or tract, a copy of elegant rhymes, or a page or so of prose that was worth the third reading. I had made verses myself in hours which should have been devoted to what the folk called serious business; and though there were often great law-books propped before me, my eyes took in little of their contents, so long as a broadsheet of ballads or such-like intercepted their gaze. After that — and ’twas a taste that no man need be ashamed of, I take it — I cared for naught so much as the sights and sounds of country life, and the peaceful occupations that are their accompaniment. What I desired for myself was that Sir Nicholas should let me live my own life in his old house, and leave me his estate when he died, so that I, like him, might be a country gentleman, and want for naught. I never could see any objection to that notion — it was not as if I cared for great riches, or had any desire to rise to perilous heights in the world. My uncle, ’tis true, was not a rich man, as some would count riches; but there was his Manor House, with its comfortable surroundings and a thousand pounds a year wherewith to maintain it in quiet dignity; and there was none to whom he could leave it but me and my cousin, Mistress Alison French, who was already provided for, seeing that her own father was alive and a well-to-do man. To my thinking, the life of a country gentleman would suit me well — I should breed cattle and sheep, and occasionally compose a set of well-turned verses after the fashion of Sidney, whom I admired greatly, and more than all, I should have the scent of hawthorn blossoms and of the brown soil, instead of the stink of those musty parchments which I never could abide.
Now, Sir Nicholas and I had talked these matters over that morning, and we had differed, as we always did — at least, upon this particular question. He was all for what he called my advancement — I was for a quiet life after my own fashion.
“‘Slife!” said he, after hearing my notions for the twentieth time; “to hear thee talk, boy, one would think that all the life and energy had gone out of us Coopes. And, beshrew me, so it has, for thou and I are the last of the lot, and I am too old to lift finger again.”
“I am willing enough to lift finger, sir,” I answered. “You would not find me wanting if occasion arose to fasten up the doors and stand a siege — —”
“Why, faith,” said he, “and that may come ere long, in these times.”
“But in the law, to which you destined me, there is precious little lifting of fingers save with a goose’s quill in them,” said I. “Every man to his taste, sir; ’tis a saying that I learnt from yourself.”
He looked at me meditatively.
“First and last,” said he, “I have laid out as much as a thousand pound upon thee, Dick.”
“Sir,” I said, “you have never doubted my gratitude.”
“Thou art a good lad,” he answered. “I have not. But a thousand pound— ’tis a great sum to be thrown away. I think, Dick, the law must occupy thee. What man, a Coope can achieve aught that he sets his mind to! Thy father, now, was Registrar to the Archbishop — I make no doubt he would have been Vicar-General and Chancellor of the Diocese if death had not removed him. As for thee, with all the advantages I have given thee, thou should’st at least become Lord Chief-Justice. ‘Lord Chief-Justice Coope’— ’tis a high-sounding title, though I see no reason why not Lord Chancellor Coope. However, when that comes I shall be dead and gone. In the days of thy greatness, Dick, forget not to come here at times. The old place will make a country house for thee — thou canst turn aside to it in journeying ‘twixt London and York— ‘twill be but poor lodging for a Lord Chancellor, but — —”
