The Way they Loved at Grimpat. Village idylls

Front matter

VILLAGE IDYLLS. BY E. RENTOUL ESLER, AUTHOR OF "THE WAY OF TRANSGRESSORS." LONDON : SAMPSON LOW, MARSTON & COMPANY, Limited, St. JPunatan'o fjouae, Fetter Lane, E.C. 1894. THE WAY OF TRANSGRESSORS. By E. RENTOUL ESLER. Three Vols. Sampson Low, Marston & Co. OPINIONS OF THE PRESS. " A very good novel, full of quiet power and grace." — Athenæum. "Unquestionably a good novel, well written, interesting and clever." Life. " Viney Grace's experiences and feelings alone would set The Way of Transgressors apart from the ordinary novel. The character sketches are excellent." — Morning Post. " Filled with interesting and well-drawn characters." — Guardian. " Genial and sympathetic. "—Illustrated London News. " Exceptionally interesting. . . . From first to last the story is realistic, vigorous, shrewd.

A well-balanced and very admirable piece of work." — Vanity Fair. "An exceedingly wholesome and well-written story." — Graphic. " In all this we have just the sympathetic touch that is needed to make a picture of provincial manners life-like and attractive." — Saturday Review. "We trust the writer will soon give us another story as clever and interesting as this. . . . Malvina Grace is simply charming. The story is exceptionally clever and interesting. If it has a fault it is just a little too long ; although there is no suspicion of padding from the first chapter to the last." — Court Journal. 4 ' The writer of this novel is to be congratulated on having produced a work eminently readable and well constructed There is scarcely a prominent character that is not drawn with distinctness, and with freshness of language that is always effective The dialogue is always crisp and spirited " — Scotsman.

"The heroine is quite charming." — Spectator. 4 ' The Grocer is a figure most pathetic. Perhaps Mrs. Esler hardly realises what an impression he leaves upon the reader. . . . Further work will be looked for from this writer with lively interest." — /. M. Barrie. " I have to thank Mrs. Esler for much pleasure — and pain. The death of Estelle was a real grief to me. Never was anything more truly and touchingly done." — W. P. Frith, R.A. CONTENTS. PAGE I. Kitty 7 II. Eunice 36 III. Linnet's Lover 49 IV. Naomi 88 V. Good for Nothing 129 VI. Betty's Luck 151 VII. Alice 174 VIII. Daisy Wynn 185 IX. Bessie LONDON : COOPER AND BUDD, PRINTERS, PECKHAM, S.E. KITTY. CFIAPTER I. It was a fine morning, unusually hot for the time of year. The dew had been like a rain of diamonds on the grass, before it resolved itself into that gauzy mist that retreated further and further into the shadow of the woods.

Chapter II

It will be conceded that there was a sensation in Grimpat when Kitty, laden with presents, and carrying her triumph as dignifiedly as a queen, returned home an engaged woman. Mrs. Ford put on the old grey shawl that hung from her shoulders like a pair of nerveless wings, and rushed about from house to house, asking the neighbours to come and see Kitty's new gowns and ribbons and fallals, and to hear about the man that was as rich as a Jew, and thought nothing too good for his sweetheart. Kitty had done her best to restrain these mani festations. "They'll only laugh at us, mother," she said, with her smiling, unimpassioned air. " Let them laugh," the little woman answered, with a flush of hot colour in her cheeks. "Don't they wish they had such a joke of their own ! But I always said you were too good for the trash of Grimpat."

" Maybe they won't think it is such a great thing as you do." " Oh, won't they ? I should like to know who wouldn't think well of it. But I always said my girl was out of the common run, and would have more than common luck." In her deepest consciousness, Mrs. Ford felt that if Grimpat people had ever spoken lightly of Kitty, KITTY, 19 circumstances triumphantly refuted all humiliating rumours. Everyone seemed glad of Kitty's luck. Every woman in the village, whether maid or matron, ran in to talk it over, and feel the cashmere gowns, and try on the cloth cloak that was in the very tip of the fashion ; and ask jocularly were there any more men at Portford, and would Mrs. Fowler be disposed to receive another visitor. Kitty satisfied all curiosity civilly. The man was nice, not very young or very handsome, but more than kind, and one could not have everything.

There were two children who lived with him. No, the children were no drawback ; she had liked them first, before she ever thought of him. She would not be without them for anything. Yes, she had seen the house. Mrs. Fowler and she had gone over together one day. Oh, it was very different from their houses at Grimpat surely; more like the minister's house. " Three storeys high, and with a fanlight over the door," Mrs. Ford interjected triumphantly; "and such plenishings as she, for her part, had never seen, and a real silver teapot, for Mrs. Fowler had looked at the mark on it when Mr. Bell was out of the room." The neighbours went home with their heads whirling a little. A silver teapot ! Why, there was not a silver teapot in the whole of Grimpat, not even at the Rectory, they were certain sure.

This was a palpable fact, round which all vague suggestions crystallised. A silver teapot for Kitty Ford ! That was a nice piece of luck to befall Stephen Yardley's leavings! They wished Kitty Ford well; they knew she was a good girl, and had been badly used, and they thought it only Heaven's justice that things should be made up to her. But a silver teapot and a three-storey house ! Well, they liked reason, even in compensation. There was httle else talked of in the village for a week subsequently, and one and another wondered if this strange man knew about Stephen Yardley, and several had it before them privately to drop in at Mrs. Ford's soon after his arrival (for he was expected in a few days) and to say in his presence that it was good for Kitty she had missed Stephen, and see what would come of that.

Now, Andrew Bell did not know about Stephen, nor had Kitty ever had it before her to tell him. It did not concern him, it was a thing that was over and ended before she ever heard his name. It had made her suffer. Ah, yes ! She could not think of the suffering yet without a shudder, but she would be no worse wife to him for having believed in a traitor. She was grateful to him, was even growing fond of him, would make him a loyal wife, Heaven helping her. The future was hers and his, the past was past. As to him, he was as much new-fangled with her beauty and simplicity as if he had been a boy of twenty. He knew she was innocent and ignorant, but he thought her ignorance had something royal about it, like the simplicity of Rebekah when she tended the flocks by the wells of Aram-Naharaim. He knew that, as the world reckons, he was making a very poor match, marrying a girl just for her beauty and her goodness ; but there was something in this that charmed him with the flavour of his own generosity.

He could afford to follow his fancy now, and he thought KITTY, 21 it would surely count for something in Kitty's regard that he might, in material things, have done so much better. That his prosperity would buy Kitty, or decide her choice, never occurred to him, and as a matter of fact it had not weighed with her at all. It was an October day when Andrew Bell came to Grimpat. The fields were in stubble, the grain stacked near the farm-houses or piled high in the granaries. The trees had hues of yellow and brown and faded green, the sunshine was golden, and the grass by the wayside took from it a tawny undertone. The world seemed rich, glowing, tenderly warm. Mrs. Hook lived at the lower end of the village. She was one of the Ford's oldest neighbours. She had been one of the first to congratulate Kitty, and try on the cloth cloak, and make sure that there was not a thread of cotton in the cashmere gowns.

She was older than Mrs. Ford, but bore herself differently, was plump and comely. She had three daughters, who, if they were not beauties like Kitty Ford, had a certain reputation for good looks, and dressed up to it. The husband was a fruit-dealer, who made a fair living from the surrounding orchards. The house was a long, low one, with an enclosure in front, shut in by a stone wall. The wooden gate had two stone and lime pillars. The enclosure was filled with hollyhocks, dahlias, and other showy flowers. On this particular afternoon Mrs. Hook sat outside the gate, having taken her chair and knitting with her. Had she been spoken to on the subject, she would have freely confessed that she was desirous of obtaining the first look of Kitty Ford's new sweetheart. He was expected that day, and, coming on foot from where the mail-coach stopped, would necessarily pass Mrs. Hook's door.

The mail would arrive at its destination at four o'clock ; at 4.30, or less, the stranger would reach the village. Accordingly Mrs. Hook was knitting her hardest when a middle-aged man, looking quite a gentleman, as she judged, and carrying a valise in one hand and an overcoat over the other arm, came briskly up the street. Mrs. Hook took admiring note of his frock-coat, his kid gloves, and shining boots. "Well, well!" she said to herself, not having a stronger expression of surprise available. Evidently it might be quite true about the silver teapot. As he came within earshot, Mrs. Hook volunteered a conciliatory " Good-day, sir." The man started. It is only in rural districts that salutation of strangers prevails ; but he answered civilly, " Good-day," then paused. " Perhaps you can tell me in which house Mrs. Ford lives.

I am a stranger here." Mrs. Hook told her eldest daughter afterwards, she being the only person to whom she made confession, that she thought it nothing short of providential that he stopped to ask that question. She rose, tucking the ball of wool under her arm and looking at him with her bland, rabbit-like expression. " Surely, sir, surely, I can tell you. Haven't me an' Mrs. Ford been neighbours an' good friends this thirty years? I suppose you're the gentleman that's to marry Kitty." " I have the honour of being engaged to Miss Ford," Andrew Bell answered stiffly. KITTY, 23 " No offence, sir, that I call her Kitty. She has been a friend of my children, an' just like a child of my own since she was that high. I am sure I was very glad to hear that she is to marry so well, for of course she told us all about your means when she came home, down to the fanlight above the door, an' the silver teapot with the real mark on it ; an' the neighbours were all just that glad that I couldn't tell it to you.

You see what made us that special glad was because of Stephen Yardley." " Indeed ! " The man's frame seemed to stiffen, as if his frock coat were of sheet iron. " Of course you know about Stephen ? " Mrs. Hook no longer looked like a rabbit, unless a rabbit has malevolent moments. "No, I do not know anything." His first impulse was to add, " and I do not want to know," his second to let her tell ; what all the village knew he had a right to learn. " Well, he used her shameful — oh, I don't mean any harm, nobody ever said any harm ; but he ran after her till she was fair daft about him, and then he left her for another girl. He is that light sort, everybody knew the kind of him, but she would take no advice." In spite of his kid gloves and his valise and his frock coat Andrew Bell felt the most savage desire to strike this rotund, smiling woman, to bruise her bland face and trample her in the dust.

He felt she was his enemy and Kitty's, and yet he could not answer, could not even go away and leave her, felt constrained to stand there helplessly and listen to her. " Still you could not blame her for liking him," Mrs. Hook conceded magnanimously, "he was that big an' fair an' young." It seemed to Andrew Bell that she flung these adjectives at him with a sort of intention. " But he fancied another girl after two or three years — he's that sort. It was a shame, because it just broke Kitty's heart. She's never been the same since. You've never heard her sing, have you ? No, nor any one else all this year, and she once had a voice like a lark. Well, sir, you'll do your part to cheer her up. But won't you come in and rest ? Excuse me that I did not ask you sooner." " No, thank you ; no, no." He turned and went away hurriedly, not hearing or answering the "good bye " she cried to him.

She stood a moment and looked after him, laughing in a husky, restrained way. " I've a kind of notion that Kitty will have to do with Britannia metal after all," she said. Half-way up the village stood the house known in Grimpat as John Morton's "public." It was a long, low, rambling house, redolent of beer in all its apart ments, and bearing over the door the legend, "Refresh ments for man and beast." The best parlour had a brick floor, broken in places ; and its whitewashed walls were starred over with a geometrical pattern furnished by the landlady's blue-bag. The room was empty, and Andrew Bell seated himself, having first given an order that was only an excuse. He felt quite faint and sick. The fact is too little recognised, even in homely narrative, that the first feeling produced by any shock to the sensibilities, is one of sickness.

KITTY 25 To think that Kitty ! He could not put it into words even to himself. He had thought her as innocent and good as she was beautiful ; and the fact was that she had been just a country's talk. No doubt her engagement to him had been discussed and laughed over scores of times in this very bar-parlour, as well as her connection with that other man. Everybody was glad she had got a man after all, that was what the rabbit-faced woman had said. He was not young, or fair, or tall like the other, but he was rich, he would do as a makeshift. The reference to the silver teapot and the hall-mark on it hurt him perhaps more than any other part of Mrs. Hook's narrative, because that Kitty must have told, that at least was absolutely true. And he had thought her as artless as she was beautiful !

His first impulse was to see Kitty and to ask her version of the story ; his next to write and tell her what he had heard ; his last to go away and say nothing, neither ask an explanation nor accord it. What was the use of talk ! It only gave one more cause to remember a regret. He did not blame Kitty much that she had kept her own counsel about the man she had loved. It is not in human nature to confess voluntarily that you have been badly used in that way. But the bloom was off the peach now ; he did not want her if she had been a country's talk. And then, she had only accepted him as a makeshift ! c

Chapter III

Mrs. Ford's cottage wore an air of festivity that afternoon, for preparations for Mr. Bell's advent had been going on since the morning. There were fresh curtains on the high windows and a snowy cloth with an elaborate tea spread on the kitchen table, and Mrs. Ford wore a new shoulder shawl, and had a bright ribbon in her cap. Kitty was dressed in one of the frocks her intended had given her — she thought that a delicate attention — and, with her rich colour and smiling face, made such a picture that the only pity was that Andrew Bell did not see it. At the same time the mail was due, the sweet-milk scones were mixed and put on to bake ; at the moment when Mrs. Hook said, " Good-day, sir," the kettle had begun to sing as if for a wager. The scones were brown and done, and kept warm in a napkin, the kettle bubbled and boiled till Kitty said the water would spoil the tea if it stood any longer, and emptied it out and replaced it by cold, which in its turn boiled and overboiled itself, and then Kitty said, with laboured cheerfulness, "He's not coming to-day."

" What can have kept him ? " Mrs. Ford asked helplessly. " You know just as much about it as I do," Kitty said flippantly. KITTY, 27 " If he missed the coach you'll have a letter soon." " Maybe I will, and maybe I won't," Kitty answered, making the tea with a flourish. That something serious detained him she felt in the laboured pulsations of her heart. What could it be ? That was the question Kitty had to ask herself during many subsequent days and weeks and months, for Andrew Bell did not come to Grimpat, did not send a message, did not excuse himself. If anyone suffered agonies in the weeks that followed, it was apparently not Kitty, but her mother. True, the girl lost flesh a little, and her face sometimes wore a chill pallor, and had a new sternness ; but no one could say that that might not be due to other causes than disappointed affections.

In the first few days Mrs. Ford was patient enough, because she expected an explanation to be forthcoming; but when weeks passed in silence, and Kitty hardened herself like iron against the suggestion that she should write and make enquiries, and when the neighbours came daily with questions, sometimes kindly, sometimes malicious, then Mrs. Ford's martyrdom began. For a time she satisfied curiosity with the brief statement that Mr. Bell was expected ; later she made laboured and wild excuses. He was ill, he and Kitty had had a misunderstanding, he had had to leave home on urgent business. If she could have only said truthfully that he was dead, it would have been the next greatest solace to fixing the date of his advent. To Mrs. Ford this was a very different thing from Stephen Yardley's defection ; he was a man just like another — good enough, but nothing to be proud of; but this man, who could have made Kitty a lady, and taken her away from the envious people who wished her ill !

What sleepless nights she spent over her trouble, inventing new excuses, new reasons why he remained away, new explanations that would hold the curious at bay ! "As if it mattered ! " Kitty would say with her calm disdain. " No man is worth troubling about, nothing is worth taking to heart." For a week or two Kitty continued to wear the ring he had given her, but after a time she made a parcel of all his presents and locked them away in a chest in her bed-room. She would have liked to return them, but she felt as if that would seem to invite communication with him. Often at night, when the moonlight shone through the gable window, and touched the old box lid, she would lie awake, gazing at it, and seeing many mysterious things through and beyond it. That Andrew Bell had come to Grimpat she was morally certain.

There something had been told him ; but what, or by whom, and whether truth or falsehood, she could not conjecture. Perhaps he had heard about Stephen, and thought that an offence so dire that he could not forgive her. " It would not have done him any harm," she said rebelliously. The injustice of being crushed a second time because she had been crushed before drove her to revolt. A new bitterness crept into her heart. Was she never to have a chance of being either happy or good ? For her reticence regarding Stephen she did not blame herself. There was nothing to tell ; it was KITTY, 29 nobody's business. If the whole circumstances were again repeated, again she would decline to tell. She grew almost fierce at the thought that any man should desire for her such needless humiliation. He had loved a woman and married her ; she had loved a man and lost him.

Was there, then, such a great difference between a happy love and an unhappy one, if both were equally dead ? But it was not worth thinking about ; men were all alike, valuing nothing but their own pleasure and their own pride. It seemed, at times, as if Kitty's figure had acquired a new erectness, her eyes a new fire. When she met Stephen Yardley she looked him full in the face, then looked indifferently away. The curious thing was that the shock of Andrew Bell's inexplicable conduct had taken the sting out of the old anguish. She could bear to live at Grimpat now. But Mrs. Ford could not. The destruction of her hopes wore into her heart, broke her health, and finally took her life. " Maybe he'll come yet," she said, but with waning hope as the weeks passed. " Maybe he will," Kitty answered patiently.

The evening before she died the mother would not let Kitty out of her sight, and now and then she would take her hand, and look at her with haggard, beseeching eyes. " You'll not fret," she said a dozen times. " No, mother," Kitty answered. " I suppose it was too good, that thing we hoped ; I suppose we had no right to expect it." Then Kitty drew herself up. " It was not too good, mother ; it was not good enough. I am not sorry about it, because it was not good enough," she said. " Then you have something better in view ? My blessed, blessed child ! " Her thin face took on such an irradiation that Kitty choked down the heartsick laugh that rose to her lips. "Something better" with Mrs. Ford meant a third lover. " You'll get the better of them after all. I knew you would. Oh, you have enemies, but you'll make them envy you yet."

When Mrs. Ford lay in her coffin the old neighbours came in solemn groups to take leave of her, to say how good she was, how hard-working, how honest, to speak kindly of her now that she neither heard nor cared. Mrs. Hook alone did not come ; she had taken the house in horror, for she knew what had killed Mrs. Ford, and she felt that Mrs. Ford knew now also. It is very difficult at first to realise the barrier that death erects between a passionate heart and its every-day desires. Mrs. Hook could only think of Mrs. Ford as a desperate little woman, who never minded what she said or did, and who now knew who it was that had injured her fatally. Mrs. Hook felt a moral certainty that the deceased was trembling in her coffin with the desire to wreak vengeance on her (Mrs. Hook's) comfortable person, and that she might not get up and do it, if too sorely tempted, was a point on which the fruiterer's wife had her doubts.

It is some small satisfaction to think that the excellent creature had a few very bad half-hours before her old crony was put under the sod. KITTY, 31 In after years it was told and re-told in Grimpat that Stephen Yardley actually did come back to Kitty when her mother died ; but if he did it made no difference. Kitty had come to care so little that she did not even taunt him with this fresh perfidy. She remained at Grimpat in the self-same cottage, and took in sewing in addition to all the earlier occu pations, and one of Ellen's children lived with her and kept her in company. She worked hard, finding a kind of disdainful pleasure in the fact that people praised her industry and forgot that she had once been called beautiful. To be respected for solid virtues was surely to progress. She sat one evening by the open door, sewing.

It was September weather, and five years, almost, since Andrew Bell had talked with Mrs. Hook, but Kitty no longer thought of that portion of the past ; she had made up her mind long ago that there was nothing to be gained by brooding. She had been working busily, but as the dusk crept down she dropped her work on her knee, and sat staring at the red west, where the sun had set. The air was very still, and distant sounds, the rumbling of a tardy farm cart, the yap-yap ! of a cottager's dog, a peal of loud-voiced laughter, a snatch of song, came mellowed to the ear. Pedestrians were rare, except those who walked with the cadenced motion of the rustic lounger. When a step came hurriedly up the street and stopped at Kitty's gate, the girl rose instinctively. The stranger did not speak at the first ; he entered at the door, and stood quite half a minute staring at her, before she recognised him.

Then she said, with a curious sense of dull surprise, "Mr. Bell!" "I come with a message," he said, huskily, "from little Jean — who is dead." "Jean dead! " she echoed, stupidly. "Yes, and Daisy too. You see it is five years, and they were never strong." " Then you have nobody ? " The sense of pity, which renders forgiveness easy to a woman, was uppermost ; the memory of her own injuries was quite remote at that moment. "Jean died six months ago : she was fourteen, nearly grown, and so companionable ! " " I am sorry," Kitty said, gently. " And she made me promise," he went on mechan ically, " that I would come and ask you why she never saw or heard of you after those happy days at Port ford." " I suppose you could have told her," Kitty said, stiffly. " It was just what I could not tell," he answered, quickly, " the thing seemed so small and trivial then.

A malicious woman's tongue, and a man's pride, and several lives shadowed for years." " I suppose you heard something ? " Curiosity at the moment was dominant over both resentment and regret. " I heard that you had loved another before we met, and I thought it was true." " It was quite true." " And I was angry that you never told me. " Perhaps you did well to be angry, but it is not KITTY 33 worth speaking about now, after all these years. I am sorry if any pain came to the children through me ; it is the only thing I am sorry for." He inclined his head slightly. " If you could forgive and let things be as they were," he said. " I have never ceased to care. I tried, but I could not forget you." She gave a jarring kind of laugh. " I forgive you," she said, " because I have altogether ceased to care."

" It is natural enough," he answered, half to himself. " I loved him — not unsought, rest assured of that, and he — forgot ; I trusted you, and you forsook me. I have lost my faith in men. I tell you that now as I told him long ago. You are not worth thinking about. You take advantage of your strength to be false and cruel. Why were you afraid to come and tell me what you had heard ? " she went on, her chest heaving, her eyes bright and moist. " Did you think I should lie to you ? And why did you expect that I should tell you of a thing that was over and ended, of a thing that it was all pain to remember? Is it such a shame to have loved a man who had every right to mean honestly ? What was it to you that I had been trifled with ? It is false sentiment that deems a woman disgraced because she has been injured.

To have loved a base man is not to be base, it is only to be very miserable. I had suffered enough before I saw you ; was that any reason why you should come and shame me afresh ? Oh, I am weary of the very thought that my happiness was ever in your hands." " Mine is in yours still," he said in a low voice She flung her arm suddenly across the table, and, bowing her face on it, burst into tempestuous tears. He came close to her, leaning both his hands on the table beside her. " If regret matters, if an apology matters, if the devotion of my whole life will atone in anywise — Kitty " He paused a moment and then went on : " I have been very miserable, more miserable than you, but if you will forgive me, because I love you, because I am the loneliest, saddest man in all the world " She raised her face and pushed the hair back from her flushed forehead.