LITMIR.BIZ

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in her eyes, looking and looking, and yet not seeing him.

      But at last those five long days and nights were at an end, the funeral was over, and the carriages were returning through the park. When they had set out, a heavy rain was falling; but now the clouds were breaking up, and a gleam of sunshine was sparkling among the dripping boughs under which they were passing. This gleam fell upon a man on horseback who was jogging slowly along, and whom Mr. Gilfil recognized, in spite of diminished rotundity, as Daniel Knott, the coachman who had married the rosy-cheeked Dorcas ten years before.

      Every new incident suggested the same thought to Mr. Gilfil; and his eye no sooner fell on Knott than he said to himself ‘Can he be come to tell us anything about Caterina?’ Then he remembered that Caterina had been very fond of Dorcas, and that she always had some present ready to send her when Knott paid an occasional visit to the Manor. Could Tina have gone to Dorcas? But his heart sank again as he thought, very likely Knott had only come because he had heard of Captain Wybrow’s death, and wanted to know how his old master had borne the blow.

      As soon as the carriage reached the house, he went up to his study and walked about nervously, longing, but afraid, to go down and speak to Knott, lest his faint hope should be dissipated. Any one looking at that face, usually so full of calm goodwill, would have seen that the last week’s suffering had left deep traces. By day he had been riding or wandering incessantly, either searching for Caterina himself, or directing inquiries to be made by others. By night he had not known sleep—only intermittent dozing, in which he seemed to be finding Caterina dead, and woke up with a start from this unreal agony to the real anguish of believing that he should see her no more. The clear grey eyes looked sunken and restless, the full careless lips had a strange tension about them, and the brow, formerly so smooth and open, was contracted as if with pain. He had not lost the object of a few months’ passion; he had lost the being who was bound up with his power of loving, as the brook we played by or the flowers we gathered in childhood are bound up with our sense of beauty. Love meant nothing for him but to love Caterina. For years, the thought of her had been present in everything, like the air and the light; and now she was gone, it seemed as if all pleasure had lost its vehicle: the sky, the earth, the daily ride, the daily talk might be there, but the loveliness and the joy that were in them had gone for ever.

      Presently, as he still paced backwards and forwards, he heard steps along the corridor, and there was a knock at his door. His voice trembled as he said ‘Come in’, and the rush of renewed hope was hardly distinguishable from pain when he saw Warren enter with Daniel Knott behind him.

      ‘Knott is come, sir, with news of Miss Sarti. I thought it best to bring him to you first.’

      Mr. Gilfil could not help going up to the old coachman and wringing his hand; but he was unable to speak, and only motioned to him to take a chair, while Warren left the room. He hung upon Daniel’s moon-face, and listened to his small piping voice, with the same solemn yearning expectation with which he would have given ear to the most awful messenger from the land of shades.

      ‘It war Dorkis, sir, would hev me come; but we knowed nothin’ o’ what’s happened at the Manor. She’s frightened out on her wits about Miss Sarti, an’ she would hev me saddle Blackbird this mornin’, an’ leave the ploughin’, to come an’ let Sir Christifer an’ my lady know. P’raps you’ve heared, sir, we don’t keep the Cross Keys at Sloppeter now; a uncle o’ mine died three ’ear ago, an’ left me a leggicy. He was bailiff to Squire Ramble, as hed them there big farms on his hans; an’ so we took a little farm o’ forty acres or thereabouts, becos Dorkis didn’t like the public when she got moithered wi’ children. As pritty a place as iver you see, sir, wi’ water at the back convenent for the cattle.’

      ‘For God’s sake,’ said Maynard, ‘tell me what it is about Miss Sarti. Don’t stay to tell me anything else now.’

      ‘Well, sir,’ said Knott, rather frightened by the parson’s vehemence, ‘she come t’ our house i’ the carrier’s cart o’ Wednesday, when it was welly nine o’clock at night; and Dorkis run out, for she heared the cart stop, an’ Miss Sarti throwed her arms roun’ Dorkis’s neck an’ says, “Tek me in, Dorkis, tek me in,” an’ went off into a swoond, like. An’ Dorkis calls out to me,—“Dannel,” she calls—an’ I run out and carried the young miss in, an’ she come roun’ arter a hit, an’ opened her eyes, and Dorkis got her to drink a spoonful o’ rum-an’-water—we’ve got some capital rum as we brought from the Cross Keys, and Dorkis won’t let nobody drink it. She says she keeps it for sickness; but for my part, I think it’s a pity to drink good rum when your mouth’s out o’ taste; you may just as well hev doctor’s stuff. However, Dorkis got her to bed, an’ there she’s lay iver sin’, stoopid like, an’ niver speaks, an’ on’y teks little bits an’ sups when Dorkis coaxes her. An’ we begun to be frightened, and couldn’t think what had made her come away from the Manor, and Dorkis was afeared there was summat wrong. So this mornin’ she could hold no longer, an’ would hev no nay but I must come an’ see; an’ so I’ve rode twenty mile upo’ Blackbird, as thinks all the while he’s a-ploughin’, an’ turns sharp roun’, every thirty yards, as if he was at the end of a furrow. I’ve hed a sore time wi’ him, I can tell you, sir.’

      ‘God bless you, Knott, for coming!’ said Mr. Gilfil, wringing the old coachman’s hand again. ‘Now go down and have something and rest yourself. You will stay here to-night, and by-and-by I shall come to you to learn the nearest way to your house. I shall get ready to ride there immediately, when I have spoken to Sir Christopher.’

      In an hour from that time Mr. Gilfil was galloping on a stout mare towards the little muddy village of Callam, five miles beyond Sloppeter. Once more he saw some gladness in the afternoon sunlight; once more it was a pleasure to see the hedgerow trees flying past him, and to be conscious of a ‘good seat’ while his black Kitty bounded beneath him, and the air whistled to the rhythm of her pace. Caterina was not dead; he had found her; his love and tenderness and long-suffering seemed so strong, they must recall her to life and happiness.

      After that week of despair, the rebound was so violent that it carried his hopes at once as far as the utmost mark they had ever reached. Caterina would come to love him at last; she would be his. They had been carried through all that dark and weary way that she might know the depth of his love. How he would cherish her—his little bird with the timid bright eye, and the sweet throat that trembled with love and music! She would nestle against him, and the poor little breast which had been so ruffled and bruised should be safe for evermore. In the love of a brave and faithful man there is always a strain of maternal tenderness; he gives out again those beams of protecting fondness which were shed on him as he lay on his mother’s knee. It was twilight as he entered the village of Callam, and, asking a homeward-bound labourer the way to Daniel Knott’s, learned that it was by the church, which showed its stumpy ivy-clad spire on a slight elevation of ground; a useful addition to the means of identifying that desirable homestead afforded by Daniel’s description—‘the prittiest place iver you see’—though a small cow-yard full of excellent manure, and leading right up to the door, without any frivolous interruption from garden or railing, might perhaps have been enough to make that description unmistakably specific.

      Mr. Gilfil had no sooner reached the gate leading into the cow-yard, than he was descried by a flaxen-haired lad of nine, prematurely invested with the toga virilis, or smock-frock, who ran forward to let in the unusual visitor. In a moment Dorcas was at the door, the roses on her cheeks apparently all the redder for the three pair of cheeks which formed a group round her, and for the very fat baby who stared in her arms, and sucked a long crust with calm relish.

      ‘Is it Mr. Gilfil, sir?’ said Dorcas, curtsying low as he made his way through the damp straw, after tying up his horse.

      ‘Yes, Dorcas; I’m grown out of your knowledge. How is Miss Sarti?’

      ‘Just for all the world the same, sir, as I suppose Dannel’s told you; for I reckon you’ve come from the Manor, though you’re come uncommon quick, to be sure.’

      ‘Yes, he got to the Manor about one o’clock, and I set off as soon as I could. She’s not worse, is she?’

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