Mary Anerley by Richard Doddridge Blackmore (new ebook reader .TXT) 📕

own land! This place must be bewitched, I think. There is a witch upon the moors, I know, who can take almost any shape; but--but they say she is three hundred years of age, or more."

"Perhaps, then, I am bewitched," said Insie; "or why should I stop to talk with you, who are only a rude boy, after all, even according to your own account?"

"Well, you can go if you like. I suppose you live in that queer little place down there?"

"The house is quite good enough for me and my father and mother and brother Maunder. Good-by; and please never to come here again."

"You don't understand me. I have made you cry. Oh, Insie, let me have hold of your hand. I would rather make anybody cry than you. I never liked anybody so before."

"Cry, indeed! Who ever heard me cry? It is the way you splashed the water up. I am not in the habit of crying for a stranger. Good-by, now; and go to your great people. You say that you are bad; and I fear it is too true."

"I am not bad at all. It is only what everybody says, because I never want to please them. But I want to please you. I would give anything to do it; if you would only tell me how."

The girl having cleverly dried her eyes, poured all their bright beauty upon him, and the heart of the youth was enlarged with a new, very sweet, and most timorous feeling. Then his dark eyes dropped, and he touched her gently, and only said, "Don't go away."

"But I must go away," Insie answered, with a blush, and a look as of more tears lurking in her eyes. "I have stopped too long; I must go away at once."

"But when may I come again? I will hold you, and fight for you with everybody in the world, unless you tell me when to come again."

"Hush! I am quite ashamed to hear you talk so. I am a poor girl, and you a great young gentleman."

"Never mind that. That has nothing to do with it. Would you like to make me miserable, and a great deal more wicked than I ever was before? Do you hate me so much as all that, Insie?"

"No. You have been very kind to me. Only my father would be angry, I am sure; and my brother Maunder is dreadful. They all go away every other Friday, and that is the only free time I have."

"Every other Friday! What a long time, to be sure! Won't you come again for water this day fortnight?"

"Yes; I come for water three or four times every day. But if they were to see you, they would kill you first, and then lock me up forever. The only wise plan is for you to come no more."

"You can not be thinking for a moment what you say. I will tell you what; if you don't come, I will march up to the house, and beat the door in. The landlord can do that, according to law."

"If you care at all for me," said Insie, looking as if she had known him for ten years, "you will do exactly what I tell you. You will think no more about me for a fortnight; and then if you fancy that I can do you good by advice about your bad temper, or by teaching you how to plait reeds for a bat, and how to fill a pitcher--perhaps I might be able to come down the gill again."

"I wish it was to-morrow. I shall count the days. But be sure to come early, if they go away all day. I shall bring my dinner with me; and you shall have the first help, and I will carve. But I should like one thing before I go; and it is the first time I ever asked anybody, though they ask me often enough, I can tell you."

"What would you like? You seem to me to be always wanting something."

"I should like very much--very much indeed--just to give you one kiss, Insie."

"It can not be thought of for a moment," she replied; "and the first time of my ever seeing you, Sir!"

Before he could reason in favor of a privilege which goes proverbially by favor, the young maid was gone upon the winding path, with the pitcher truly balanced on her well-tressed head. Then Pet sat down and watched her; and she turned round in the distance, and waved him a kiss at decorous interval.

Not more than three days after this, Mrs. Carnaby came into the drawing-room with a hasty step, and a web of wrinkles upon her generally smooth, white forehead.

"Eliza," asked her sister, "what has put you out so? That chair is not very strong, and you are rather heavy. Do you call that gracefully sinking on a seat, as we used to learn the way to do at school?"

"No, I do not call it anything of the kind. And if I am heavy, I only keep my heart in countenance, Philippa. You know not the anxieties of a mother."

"I am thankful to say that I do not. I have plenty of larger cares to attend to, as well as the anxieties of an aunt and sister. But what is this new maternal care?"

"Poor Pet's illness--his serious illness. I am surprised that you have not noticed it, Philippa; it seems so unkind of you."

"There can not be anything much amiss with him. I never saw any one eat a better breakfast. What makes you fancy that the boy must be unwell?"

"It is no fancy. He must be very ill. Poor dear! I can not bear to think of it. He has done no mischief for quite three days."

"Then he must indeed be at the point of death. Oh, if we could only keep him always so, Eliza!"

"My dear sister, you will never understand him. He must have his little playful ways. Would you like him to be a milksop?"

"Certainly not. But I should like him first to be a manly boy, and then a boyish man. The Yordases always have been manly boys; instead of puling, and puking, and picking this, that, and the other."

"The poor child can not help his health, Philippa. He never had the Yordas constitution. He inherits his delicate system from his poor dear gallant father."

Mrs. Carnaby wiped away a tear; and her sister (who never was hard to her) spoke gently, and said there were many worse boys than he, and she liked him for many good and brave points of character, and especially for hating medicine.

"Philippa, you are right; he does hate medicine," the good mother answered, with a soft, sad sigh; "and he kicked the last apothecary in the stomach, when he made certain of its going down. But such things are trifles, dear, in comparison with now. If he would only kick Jordas, or Welldrum, or almost any one who would take it nicely, I should have some hope that he was coming to himself. But to see him sit quiet is so truly sad. He gets up a tree with his vast activity, and there he sits moping by the hour, and gazing in one fixed direction. I am almost sure that he has knocked his leg; but he flew into a fury when I wanted to examine it; and when I made a poultice, there was Saracen devouring it; and the nasty dog swallowed one of my lace handkerchiefs."

"Then surely you are unjust, Eliza, in lamenting all lack of mischief. But I have noticed things as well as you. And yesterday I saw something more portentous than anything you have told me. I came upon Lancelot suddenly, in the last place where I should have looked for him. He was positively in the library, and reading--reading a real book."

"A book, Phillppa! Oh, that settles everything. He must have gone altogether out of his sane mind."

"Not only was it a book, but even a book of what people call poetry. You have heard of that bold young man over the mountains, who is trying to turn poetry upside down, by making it out of every single thing he sees; and who despises all the pieces that we used to learn at school. I can not remember his name; but never mind. I thought that we ought to encourage him, because he might know some people in this neighborhood; and so I ordered a book of his. Perhaps I told you; and that is the very book your learned boy was reading."

"Philippa, it seems to me impossible almost. He must have been looking at the pictures. I do hope he was only looking at the pictures."

"There is not a picture in the hook of any sort. He was reading it, and saying it quite softly to himself; and I felt that if you saw him, you would send for Dr. Spraggs."

"Ring the bell at once, dear, if you will be kind enough. I hope there is a fresh horse in the stable. Or the best way would be to send the jumping-car; then he would be certain to come back at once."

"Do as you like. I begin to think that we ought to take proper precautions. But when that is done, I will tell you what I think he may be up the tree for."

A man with the jumping-car was soon dispatched, by urgency of Jordas, for Dr. Spraggs, who lived several miles away, in a hamlet to the westward, inaccessible to anything that could not jump right nimbly. But the ladies made a slight mistake: they caught the doctor, but no patient.

For Pet being well up in his favorite tree--poring with great wonder over Lyrical Ballads, which took his fancy somehow--thence descried the hateful form of Dr. Spraggs, too surely approaching in the seat of honor of the jumping-car. Was ever any poesy of such power as to elevate the soul above the smell of physic? The lofty poet of the lakes and fells fell into Pet's pocket anyhow, and down the off side of the tree came he, with even his bad leg ready to be foremost in giving leg-bail to the medical man. The driver of the jumping-car espied this action; but knowing that he would have done the like, grinned softly, and said nothing. And long after Dr. Spraggs was gone, leaving behind him sage advice, and a vast benevolence of bottles, Pet returned, very dirty and hungry, and cross, and most unpoetical.


CHAPTER XXII


YOUNG GILLY FLOWERS

"Drum," said Pet, in his free and easy style, about ten days after that escape, to a highly respected individual, Mr. Welldrum, the butler--"Drum, you have heard perhaps about my being poorly."

"Ay, that I have, and too much of it," replied the portly butler, busy in his office with inferior work, which he never should have had to do, if rightly estimated. "What you wants, Master Lancelot, is a little more of this here sort of thing--sleeves up--elbow grease--scrub away at hold ancient plate, and be blowed up if you puts a scratch on it; and the more you sweats, the less thanks you gets."

"Drum, when you come to be my butler, you shall have all the keys allowed you, and walk about with them on a great gold ring, with a gold chain down to your