Duchess

“ Here in the Cottage garden, surrounded by its ivied walls, the heat is excessive, and there is a certain languor in the lithe figure of the girl as she comes forward, the dog beside her, to greet Wyndham, that meets his eye. Perhaps nervousness has conduced to the pallor that is whitening her lips and brow, and is making even more striking the darkness of her appealing eyes. ”

“ Susan, seeing that silent, wistful glance, feels her heart sink within her.
Must she—must she deny him, her poor little delicate boy, her best beloved of all the many that she loves? Oh, she must! she will be firm. These cherries really are not hers. Even for Bonnie she——
The child stirs in her arms and sighs, the faintest, gentlest little sigh—only one who loved him could have heard it; but with that little sigh went out all Susan’s stern resolutions. Almost unconsciously her hand goes towards the basket that holds the cherries. ”

“ After all, he is a poor creature whom even a girl can frighten, so small is the courage of the unrighteous! ‘Do you know what you are doing? You’—with accumulated scorn—‘are stealing!’
This terrible charge brings the culprit round. He sinks upon the topmost rung of the ladder, as if overcome, and pulls his cap over his eyes, evidently to avoid recognition. Says Susan to herself: ‘He is ashamed, poor creature!’ and seeing the abject attitude of the wretch, she grows bolder, and presses the wondering Jacky to her side, and tells him to take courage. This poor man will not kill them. ”

“ It is not until they have reached the railings that run round Trinity College, where the glorious light of the moon is lighting up the old and splendid pile, that Wyndham speaks.
‘I’ve had the deuce of a time,’ says he.
‘Well, I could see that,’ says Crosby, turning his cigar in his fingers. ‘I’m rather disappointed in you, do you know, Paul. How you are to make a fortune out of your profession is to me a mystery. Throw it up. You are certainly not a liar born.’
‘I’m in a tight place,’ says Wyndham disgustedly, ‘but I dare say I’ll get out of it. ”

“ He turned gladly from the sad contemplation of it to address Denis, who had entered the room, his small twinkling eyes as bright as ever; but, then, he had slept tranquilly the whole night through by a kitchen fire that would have been hard to rival in heat and brilliancy. Amongst all Denis’s many virtues, one stood out: he could always be depended on to look after himself. And really that is a great thing in a faithful servant; so many of them like to pose as martyrs in the cause.
Wyndham led his servant a little aside. ”

“ She—she will look again, if only to assure herself of her own folly. Slowly, slowly she lifts her eyes—the eyes that now are standing in a very white face—and looks with a desperate courage at the Crosby pew. Her eyes meet full the eyes of its one occupant, and then Susan tells herself that it is all over, and death alone is to be looked for. ”

“ A thief! She had called him a thief! He—Mr. Crosby—the distinguished traveller! Oh! what is to become of her? Not even now, at this last gasp, does she try to persuade herself that the man in the Crosby pew was a fraud—that he wasn’t Mr. Crosby. She knows as positively as though she had been introduced to him that he is Mr. Crosby.
Introduced to him! As if——She covers her face with her hands. No, no; there need be no fear of that. He will go away soon—at once. People say he cannot bear civilized life; that he always hankers after savages, and lions, and things. He will go away, of course. ”

“ Susan, having unlocked it, carefully removes the key, locks it on the other side, and goes down the broad, beautiful, scented path with Jacky beside her. Some of the houses are near, but not so worthy of notice as those that come after, and through these they hurry to the great glass ones beyond—where the roses are all a-growing, all a-blowing, in magnificent profusion—that are always kept up in a very perfect state, though the master of them be in the Soudan or North America, or among the highest peaks of the Andes. ”

“ They all please him; they all seem in unison with him—frank, happy, rollicking youngsters, without a scrap of real harm amongst them. Perhaps the secret of their success with Crosby lies in the fact that, in spite of his being well in the thirties, he is still a boy himself at heart, with a spice of mischief in him not to be controlled. The cigarette, however, proves very tolerable, and Susan having seated herself where he can distinctly see her, he feels that he is going to spend an uncommonly pleasant afternoon.
‘It’s a shame to say Betty’s got a temper,’ says Susan. ”

“ Susan, alone flushed and unnerved, in spite of her determination not to do it, looks quickly at the Crosby pew, to find the thief looking at her with a singular intensity of regard. It is at this moment that Susan, for the first time in her young, happy life, wakes to sympathy with those unfortunate people who sometimes wish that they were dead. ”

“ Speak, boy, whilst yet there is time!’
‘I’ve nothing to say,’ says Jacky sulkily; he is naturally of a somewhat morose disposition, and now feels positively ill at not being able to divulge the delightful story of which these glowing cherries are the result.
‘Susan, I do believe you have at last got an admirer,’ says Carew, in the complimentary tone of the orthodox brother, who never can understand why on earth any fellow can admire his sister. ‘Come! out with it; he seems a sensible fellow, any way. ”

“ It isn’t the not being found out, Jacky, that is of importance, as Susan is most erroneously bent on impressing upon you; it is the fact of peeping in itself that makes you the’—shaking her finger at him—‘miserable sinner that you are!’
‘Sinner yourself!’ says Jacky, now driven to desperation and the most unreserved impertinence. ‘I often saw you look through the hole in the wall yourself.’
At this, instead of being annoyed, both Susan and Betty give way to inextinguishable mirth; whereupon Jacky, who had, perhaps, hoped that his shot would take effect, prepares once more to march away. ”

“ To have to think of the daily needs is hateful to Mr. Barry, who ought to have been a bachelor, with nothing but his notes 230to worry him, living in a world in which he could sit loosely. Even now he sometimes forgets how time flies, and to tell him that Susan is almost a woman grown would have roused him to quite an extraordinary wonder. The world goes on whilst he stands still, and to-day the dragging of him out of his shell, even to the ordinary business of a drawing-room conversation, has bewildered him. ”

“ Miss Susan’—leaning towards the girl, and speaking with the suppressed emotion of the born gossip—‘was that Misther Wyndham as wint up the street just now?’
‘Yes,’ says Susan. ‘I was talking to him just before I came in here.’
‘No! Blessed Vargin!’ says Miss Ricketty, recoiling; she had, of course, been the first to hear of the mysterious stranger at the Cottage, and had, indeed, told the news to her brother, under promise of secrecy, that she knew he would not keep. Nor did she want him to keep it. How can you gossip unless you have someone to gossip with? That is why people spread scandals. ”

“ Denis, routed, but by no means vanquished, disappears hastily round one corner of the pretty cottage, someone else comes round the other. A young girl, singing sweetly, merrily, though in a subdued voice. Just as she reaches her corner she looks behind her; her singing ceases, and an amused look brightens her face—a face that has known much sadness. Again she looks behind her, as if expecting something, this time turning her back on Wyndham ”

“ This old orchard is the happy hunting-ground of the Barry children old and young—the place which they rush to in their joyous 69moments, the place which they crawl to with their griefs and woes. To-day neither joys nor griefs are near them, and it is out of sheer love alone for its mossy old apple-trees and its sunlit corners that Susan had tripped in here a while ago with a dilapidated old novel tucked into her apron pocket, and the eternal sock with the heel half turned between her pretty fingers. After her had straggled Betty, a slender creature of sixteen, and Tom, the baby. ”

“ Wyndham could stand it no longer; he went quickly forward, and, standing between the Professor and the girl, took the former by the shoulders and pushed him gently backwards and out of hearing.
‘If this drug of yours possesses the lifegiving properties you speak of,’ said he sternly, ‘why speak to her of death? Do you honestly believe in this experiment? Or 30do you fear it—when you suggest this sort of suicide to her?’
‘I fear nothing,’ said the old man. ‘But we are all mortal. We can all err, even in our surest judgments. The very cleverest of us can be deceived. ”

“ His sermons, his visits to the sick, the poor (he never visits the rich unless they specially send for him) —all these things concern him. But when he knows himself happiest is when his study-door is shut for the night to all intruders, and he can read, read, read, until the little hours begin to chime.
As Crosby entered the drawing-room, Susan felt her heart stand still. ”

“ He looks at Susan.
‘We’ll all be here!’ cries Betty ecstatically. To have a new element thrown into their daily games seems too enchanting for anything. ‘You will come?’
‘May I?’ says Crosby. Susan has not answered, and now he purposely addresses her.
‘Oh, I hope you will!’ says she cordially. She had been thinking hurriedly if it would be possible to ask him to luncheon—to their early dinner. But with the children and Jane’s attendance! Oh no—a thousand times no! Yet it seems so inhospitable. ”

“ It is almost a dance, so agile is the girl, so bent is the dog on entering into the spirit of the fun with all his heart.
Wyndham, watching, feels no sense of amusement. Indignation is still full upon him, and now it grows more intense as he sees the dog—his dog—a brute hitherto devoted to himself, lavishing its affection upon an utter stranger. ”

“ A man who has been five years a barrister is seldom mistaken for anything else. Paul Wyndham was a barrister, and a rising one—a man who loved his profession for its own sake, and strove and fought to make a name in it, though no such struggle 3was needful for his existence, as from his cradle his lines had fallen to him in pleasant places. He was master of a good fortune, and heir to a title and ten thousand a year whenever it should please Providence to take his uncle, old Lord Shangarry, to an even more comfortable home than that which he enjoyed at present. ”

“ No doubt he had climbed the outside wall—thieves can do anything—and had found the ladder inside with which to rob poor Mr. Crosby, who is now goodness knows how many miles away.
Susan stands rooted to the ground, not knowing whether to stay or fly. Old stories of heroines return to her, and it seems to her that it would be base to steal away now and say nothing; even if she happened to gain the walk outside, it is doubtful whether she should meet any servant, this being a saint’s day; and if she did, would he be willing to tackle a real live thief single-handed? ”

“ The sweet voice rings up the ladder. The start that the thief on the top of it gives, when he hears her, condemns him to all eternity in Susan’s eyes. ‘No one,’ argues Susan to herself, ‘ever starts unless he is guilty.’ Susan is very young.
The man casts a sidelong glance at her. It is so one-sided that Susan hardly sees him, but evidently he is trembling, conscience-stricken, because he makes no reply. ”

“ Crosby at once plunges into the interrupted anecdote, bringing it, however, to a somewhat sharp close.
‘You know what life is!’ says Wyndham a little moodily when it is over. ‘I envy you; I often think I too should like to break off the threads of society that bind one in, and start on a career that would leave civilization and—its worries behind.’
‘Its worries?’
‘Well, gossip for one thing, and that delicate espionage that so often leads to the damning of a man.’
‘Poor old boy! Got into deep water,’ thinks Crosby whilst toying with his champagne. ”

“ Susan starts, and Jacky comes to a dead set, the last fig between his finger and thumb. Jacky must be far gone indeed when, having anything edible between his fingers, he delays about putting it between his lips.
‘Ye have, I see,’ says Miss Ricketty. ‘I’m tould, me dear,’ looking behind her, and beside her, and to the door, and now, for even better security, putting up her opened palm to one side of her mouth, ‘that there’s a young—a’—she hesitates as if to choose a word, then comes to a safe conclusion—‘a faymale there,’ she says.
‘There’s a girl there, I think,’ says Susan nervously. ”

“ Jacky’s recovery is swift; his sobs cease, and he graciously allows himself to be kissed. To go to Crosby Park is always a joy—the big, huge, handsome place, with its long gardens and glass houses, and, best of all, its absentee landlord. ”