Bladys of the Stewponey - Sabine Baring-Gould (top 100 novels txt) 📗

I do—and I bless you for it. I bet you a spade guinea we shall take the money up in shovels.”

“I do not wish it, father.”

“I don’t care a hanged highwayman whether you wish or not. It is as I choose. Who is the proper person to care and provide for his child but the father? I’m not going to be put off for any foolish girl’s whimsies. All the take—every stiver—shall go to you as your portion. I have none other to make.”

“I do not desire at all to be married.”

“Here you cannot stay. You understand well that you and she as is to be your stepmother can’t agree. As soon as you have cleared out, then in comes she; and as I powerfully want her in the house, the sooner you go the better. If you’d taken to her in a friendly and daughterly way, that would have been another matter; but as you have fixed your mind so dead against her there’s no help for it. Go you must, and that tonight. And what is more, as a virtuous and respectable man, and a man with a conscience in my stomach, you shall go out respectably, and not be cut off with a shilling. None shall say that of me. I’m a man as does his duty in that station of life and situation as I finds myself in.”

“I don’t consider it respectable to be bowled for.”

“Then I do. I am nigh on forty years older than you, and know the world. Which is most like to be right, you or I? If you leave my house, you leave it respectable.”

“If you would suffer me to be alone, I would do nothing that is not respectable.”

“Whither would you go? Who would take charge of you? In good sooth, until I put you into the arms of a husband I have no freedom, and unless I do that I am responsible.”

Bladys set the lamp on the floor, sank on an empty barrel-horse, covered her face with her hands, and sobbed. The host uttered an oath.

“This angers me. Folly always doth that,” said he. “I leave you to yourself whilst I go fetch another spigot, and if you’re not in a proper frame of mind when I come back I’ll wash your face with stale beer.”

The taverner staggered away.

His daughter looked after him as he stumbled up the stair. Then she was left alone in the cellar. The lamp on the floor flickered uneasily in the descending current of air, and the folds of cobwebs waved, catching the light, then disappearing again. The air was impregnated with a savour of mildew and wine and ale. The floor was moist. Spilt liquor had been trodden over the tiles and left them wet and slimy.

Bladys had not been long an orphan. Her mother had died but a few months ago, after a lengthy and painful illness. She had been a shrewd, firm woman, an excellent manageress, who had kept order in the house and controlled her husband. Cornelius was a weak, vain man, and he allowed himself to be swayed by his customers, especially by those of the best class.

During the protracted illness of his wife he had shown attention to a woman of indifferent character, showy in dress, whom he had introduced into the inn to relieve his wife of her duties. This had caused painful scenes, much recrimination, and the sick woman had with difficulty persuaded her husband to send the woman away. Her last hours had been embittered by the thought that her child might have this worthless creature as her stepmother, and by the vexation of knowing that the fruits of her care, saving, and labour would go to enrich this person, whom she despised, yet hated.

Hardly was his wife dead before Cornelius showed plainly what were his intentions. It became a matter of jest at his table, of scandal in the village.

In talking with some of the gentle bucks and topers who frequented his house, Cornelius had had the indiscretion to comment on the difficulty he felt in disposing of his daughter before introducing his new wife to Stewponey; and the suggestion had been made in jest that he should have her bowled for, and give as her dower the money made on the occasion. He accepted the suggestion gravely, and then several chimed in to press him to carry it into execution.

Associating as Cornelius did with men coarse-minded and, whatever their social position, of no natural refinement, casting aside, when at his table, or about his fire, whatever polish they had, Rea was in no way superior to his companions. He was incapable of understanding what belonged to his duty as a father, and of treating with the delicacy due to her sex and situation the solitary girl who was dependent on him.

Bladys loved her father, without respecting him.

He would not allow his guests to address her in an unseemly manner, but his protection extended no further.

The girl was fully aware that she could not remain in the Stewponey after her father was married again. To do so, she must forfeit her self-respect and do a wrong to the memory of her mother.

The girl’s pale and stately beauty of foreign cast had brought many admirers about her. Amongst others she had been subjected to the addresses of a certain Captain George Stracey, who occupied a small house in the parish, was in good society, and seemed possessed of means. But both she and her father were well aware that his addresses were not honourable. She had repelled him with icy frigidity, that was but an intensification of her ordinary demeanour to the guests.

Another who had been forward in his endeavours to win her regard was a man then lodging at the inn, who had been there a fortnight, and gave Luke Francis as his name. His home, he intimated, was at Shrewsbury, his profession something connected with the law. He was a fine man, with broad shoulders, a firm mouth, and high cheek-bones.

There was a third admirer, Crispin Ravenhill, a bargeman, owning his own boat on the canal. But although his admiration might be gathered from his deep earnest eyes, he never addressed a word to the girl to intimate it. He was a reserved man of nearly thirty, who associated with few of his fellows. It was held that the influence of his uncle, Holy Austin, who had reared him from boyhood, still surrounded him and restrained him from those vices which were lightly esteemed in that age and by the class of men to which he pertained.

There was yet another, Lewis Falcon, a young man of private means sufficient to free him from the obligation of working for his livelihood, and who spent his substance in drink, gambling, and dog-fighting.

Bladys looked at the cobwebs. Never had she seen a fly in the cellar, yet here they hung, dense, long, ghostly. And she—was not she enveloped in cobwebs? Whither could she escape? In what direction look? Where see light? She remained with her head between her hands till hope, expectation of release, died in her heart; her tears dried up; her agitation ceased. She had become as stone in her despair.

Chapter 3.

CRISPIN

“Bla! run, take a jug of ale to Ravenhill,” called the host down the cellar stairs. “He’s come for his luncheon.”

Bladys hastily wiped her eyes and mounted the steps, fetched what was required, and went into the guest-room, where Crispin, the bargeman, was pacing.

“I will not have it here. Outside,” said he, “under the elm.” And then went forth.

The girl followed.

Crispin Ravenhill was a tall man, with fair hair, yet were his eyes dark; they were large, velvety; and a gentle, iridescent light played, passing in waves through them. Unlike the men of his time, he was completely unshaven, and wore a long light beard and moustache.

He seated himself on a bench beneath one of those “Worcester weeds,” as the small-leaf elm is termed; and as Bladys placed his bread and cheese on a table there, he looked attentively at her.

“You have been weeping,” said he.

“I have cause, when about to be thrust from my home,” she answered, in a muffled voice. She resented his remark, yet was unable to restrain an expression of the bitterness that worked within.

“And with whom will you leave home?” he asked.

“That the bowls decide, not I.”

Then she turned to leave; but he caught her wrist. “You shall not go. Much depends on what now passes between us,” said he.

“What passes between us is bread and cheese from me to thee, and seven-pence in return.”

“If that be all, go your way,” said he. “Yet no; you have tears in your heart as well as in your eyes. Sit down and let us speak familiarly together.”

“I cannot sit down,” answered she—for indeed it would have been indecorous for her to seat herself along with a customer. She might converse with him standing for half-an-hour with impunity, but to sit for one minute would compromise her character. Such was tavern etiquette.

“I pity you, my poor child, from the deep of my heart; in very deed I am full of pity.”

There was a vibration in his rich, deep voice, a flutter of kindly light in his brown eyes that sent a thrill through the heart of Bladys. In a moment her eyes brimmed, and he was conscious of a quiver in the muscles of the wrist he grasped.

“They make sport of you. ‘Give not that which is holy unto dogs, neither cast ye your pearls before swine,’ was not spoken of lifeless objects, but of living jewels, of consecrated beings. They make sport of you to your shame, and to that of the entire place. But the place can take of itself—not so thou, poor child.”

She did not speak.

“God help you,” he continued. “A frail, white lily planted, springing out of a good soil,—and to be plucked up by the roots and transplanted, none can say whither.”

Never hitherto had any one spoken to Bladys in this manner. There was something pedantic in his mode of speech, formed by contact with his uncle; but there was genuine sincerity in the tone of voice, real sympathy breaking out in flashes from his opalescent eyes.

The mother of Bladys had been a good but a hard woman, practical not imaginative, kind but unsympathetic; engrossed in her own grievances, she had been incapable of entering into the soul of her child, and showing motherly feeling for its inarticulate yearnings and vague shrinkings.

“This is none of your doing,” proceeded Crispin. “To this you gave no consent.”

Her lips moved. She could not speak.

“Nay,” said he, “I need no words.”

There was a mellowness, a gentleness in his tone and mode of speech that won the confidence of the girl. Hitherto he had not spoken to her except on ordinary matters, and she had seen nothing of his heart. In Nature, all is harmonious—the flower and its leaf are in one key. In a landscape are no jarring contrasts. It is so in human beings; look and voice and manner correspond with the inner nature; they are, in fact, its true expression. The stern and unsympathetic heart has its outward manifestations,—the harsh voice and the hard eye, and severity of line in figure and feature. The gross soul has an unctuous look, a sensual mouth, and a greasy voice. But the pitiful and sweet soul floods every channel of utterance with its waters of love. The kindly thought softens and lights up the eye, and gives to the vocal chords a wondrous vibration. However lacking in beauty and regularity the features may be, however shapeless the form,