Moonlight

Front matter

MOONLIGHT NOVELS AT SIX SHILLINGS EACH. Uniform with this Volume. Evelyn Innes. By George Moore. The Mutineer. By Louis Becke and Walter Jeffeky. The Silver Christ, and other Stories. By Ouida. The White-headed Eoy. By George Bartram. Tales Of Unrest. By Joseph Conrad. The School for Saints. By John Oliver Hobbes. Outlaws Of the Marches. By Lord Ernest Hamilton. Hugh Wynne. By Dr Weir Mitchell. The Tormentor. By Benjamin Swift. The People of Clopton. By George Bartram. Pacific Tales. By Louis Becke. Prisoners of Conscience. By Amelia K. Bark. The Grey Man. By S. R. Crockett. An Outcast of the Islands. By Joseph Conrad. Almayer's Folly. By Joseph Conrad. The First Fleet Family. By Louis Becke and W. Jeffery The Ebbing of the Tide. By Louis Becke. Tales of John Oliver Hofcbes. The Stickit Minister.

By S. R. Crockett. The Raiders. By S. R. Crockett. Nancy Noon. By Benjamin Swift. The Lilac Sunbonnet. By S. R. Crockett. A Daughter of the Fen. By j. T. Bealbv. The Herb Moon. Ey John Oliver Hobbes. Mrs Keith's Crime. Ey Mrs W. K. Clifford. LONDON: T. FISHER UNWIN. MOONLIGHT BY MARY E. MANN AUTHOR OF SUSANNAH,' 'THE CEDAR STAR,' ETC. LONDON T. FISHER UNWIN Paternoster Square ' He who does not lose his head over certain things has no head to lose. ' Thackeray. [all rights reserved.] CONTENTS

Chapter I

'FORWARD, MISS!' ' Forward, miss ! ' At the sharp tone of authority the ' new young lady on the drapery side ' turned from the window through which she had been dully gazing, and advanced to an empty space at the counter. It was market day, and its busiest hour. Parker's Emporium was full to its limited capacity. Full on both grocery and drapery sides; in the showroom above, where hats and mantles were being fitted ; in the cellar beneath, where glass and earthenware were displayed. In all the establishment were no idle hands but those of the girl who, indifferent to, or oblivious of the surround ing bustle, had stood gazing with heavy eyes through the hats and flowers in the window at the tombstones rising above the low churchyard wall across the street, and the grand pile of the Norman church beyond.

She moved reluctantly at the peremptory call, and looked up with a lowering brow and a sullen lip at the customer towards A whom the master of the shop, Mr Onesimus Parker, motioned her. ' Look sharp, miss ! ' said Mr Parker with an admonishing air. ' This lady wants a hat for the little girl. Show her upstairs, and let her see our latest, miss.' So ' miss,' without any lightening of her sullen air, came from behind the counter and led the way to the showroom above. 'You're new at it, ain't you, miss?' the customer said indulgently, as she followed her leader. ' I'm new,' said miss. She led the way into the showroom and looked with eyes of open distaste upon the millinery displayed there. ' Here are the hats,' she said. Another of ' Parker's young ladies,' struggling to pull the swelled red hands of a customer through the tight sleeve of a jacket she was fitting, turned an alarmed eye in the direction of the new assistant. ' I shall be disengaged in a few minutes, Mrs Dodd,' she whispered. ' Perhaps you would like to wait for me ? ' 'Thank you kindly, I shall do,' said Mrs Dodd. ' Gladys and me '11 look round.

I think the sailor's the most becomin',' she said hesitatingly to the young lady of the sullen eyes. ' I've got a sailor, mother,' the child objected ; ' and Val wanted me to have a real nice one, he said.' ' Her brother's goin' to stand treat,' the hand some lady with the large white face, the blue eyes, the smoothly-waving black hair explained to the young attendant. ' You may know my son by name and sight, miss — young Mr Valentine Dodd, the vet'inary.' The gloomy face of the new hand lit with a gleam of interest. ' He comes to our place often ; he doctored my dog,' she said, with a light in her eyes. ' I hope your dog recovered, miss ? ' the vet'inary 's mother asked. ' He died,' said the girl curtly, and turned away. ' He had to be killed.' ' These sailor hats aren't the right shape,' she presently volunteered. ' The brims are far too narrow ; they would be hideous for your little girl.

You had better — ' But here the young lady who had finished with the mantle customer hastily interposed. ' Be so good as to hang up these jackets, miss, and to fold that lot of dress material,' she said to the novice. ' Now, Mrs Dodd, I'm ready to wait on you.' The young ladies at Parker's dealt in a large amount of gossip as well as their more legitimate wares, and Onesimus did not discourage the traffic. Time might be wasted so, but it was made up for in other ways, the shopkeeper knew. As Miss Bobby fitted now this, now that hat on the dark curling hair of the child, she discoursed to the child's mother on the subject of the new hand. 'You know 'tis one of the Mayes from Ash thorpe ? ' she whispered confidentially. ' Yes, 'tis a come down, sure enough ; but they held their selves so high !

Mrs Parker was sayin' last night they wouldn't as much as looked at her and the gov'ner, except in the way of business, time gone by, and now broke in their debt and everyone's debt! I hear Mr Valentine's in for it too, Mrs Dodd ? ' ' Only a small matter of twenty pound or so,' admitted Mrs Dodd, reluctantly. ' He's down right sorry for the Mayes— Val is. Ain't them white bows just a little too high for a sailor, Miss Bobby? I don't know as Val 'ont think them a trifle noticeable. He's wonderful set on havin' the girl neat-lookin'. He tell me as poor Mr Mayes is a broken man. Those were the very words he expressed it in. " He's a broken man, mother," said Val to me.' ' I know there's a deal of sympathy,' said Miss Bobby, bending the wire within the ribbon bows. ' The gov'ner, he have behaved very well.

He've taken the eldest girl to learn the business for nothing. They'd been customers for years, he said, in his father's time as well as his — for there have been Mayes at Ashthorpe for generations, as you know, Mrs Dodd — and he went forward and offered to take one of the girls off their hands ; which was handsome of him, I say. I don't know if we can make a business woman of her, but we're all willin' to try.' ' She's young enough to learn,' the customer said, with a sigh. ' She looks only like a child, poor young thing.' Miss Bobby fixed the hat whose bows she had manipulated upon Gladys's head. ' There, Mrs Dodd,' she said ; ' I wouldn't have another loop ZZMoonlight 5 altered if I was you. They're all the rage, tell Mr Valentine, standing off from each other in that way. He mustn't go to make the child old fashioned.' As Mrs Dodd passed the dress counter on her way out, she stopped a minute to watch the new hand awkwardly refolding a quantity of material which had been unrolled for an exacting customer.

The girl was doing her work indifferently, and the new merino was wound askew upon its board. ' My dear, you'll never get it to go like that ; let me help you,' said Mrs Dodd, kindly. And she showed Miss Mayes how to lay the roll at the edge of the counter, and to get the material level before folding. ' You're young, miss,' said the good woman, with tears in her eyes, and a motherly hand upon the girl's hand ; ' you mustn't lose heart, my dear.' Miss Mayes lifted her head and looked doubt fully in the handsome, simple face before her, as if undecided whether to resent the unasked-for sympathy ; then her eyes, which were long-shaped and black-lashed, and which looked very dark in her colourless face, filled with sudden tears, and the lips which had been tightly held trembled. Only for an instant were these signs visible, then the thick, brown locks which hung in childish fashion to her shoulders fell forward and hid the face, as Miss Mayes's head was bent once again over the roll of merino.

Mrs Dodd laid a large hand in a brown silk glove upon the bowed head, and softly patted the pretty falling hair. ' I should fasten all this up like the other young ladies if I was you, my dear,' she said. ' It would make you look older, and give you a better chance. You don't mind my saying that friendly word to you, do you, miss? ' The short, thick hair flew in response to the quick shake of Miss Mayes's head, and Mrs Dodd, with Gladys proudly bearing the paper bag which contained her hat, passed on her way. But several times during that day and the days to come, a vision rose before the good woman's mental gaze of the bent head and the falling hair and the hidden dark eyes, wet with tears, of the new hand at Parker's. ' Sold that hat, miss ? ' inquired the owner of the Emporium, springing with his brisk step up stairs. ' You don't know !

The customer didn't decide, then ? That won't do, miss. Help her to decide, my good girl ; if she don't know what she wants — tell her. That's the way to make a good saleswoman, you know. Keep your eyes open. Observe the other young ladies. Push where you can. Meantime, never stand idle — it don't look well. Keep on the bustle, miss. Miss Bobby, find a job for the new young lady, please.' All the boots which were kept in the lockers under the counter wanted dusting, Miss Bobby said. So Angela Mayes went on her knees behind the counter, and pulling the stock of boots, shoes and goloshes about her on the floor, knelt among them, duster in hand. She looked long and vaguely at the boot she was polishing, sometimes, not seeing ZMoonlight 7 it at all, truth to say — seeing the dear home that was hers no longer, the adored father with the stricken expression of face wandering listlessly across the fields he was leaving for ever, the harassed mother, the surprise with which she had just realised the extent of her misfortune still on her face, the happy younger sister — happy in that she formed part of the ruined home still, and was allowed to share the fortunes of the parents — to starve with them, in all proba bility—not to be banished to Parker's Emporium, not to be taught a business like her miserable sister Angela. ' Our Mr Dann,' with his heavy moustache so much admired by the ladies, lending itself to any treatment, curling up to the watery eyes of its owner, fiercely pointed a la militaire, or hanging as now in a heavy bush above a feeble mouth and a receding chin, stood at Angela's side showing a new selection of autumn dresses to a customer quite incapable of making a choice. ' Brown is always genteel,' said Mr Dann.

He had a very weary face ; it was only mechanic ally he went through the prescribed formulary of advising Mrs Postle on the choice of her autumn frock. He gathered the material in his hand, and turned a sigh into a cough. Outside, the chestnuts that bordered the churchyard were waving their fan-like leaves in the autumn breeze, the rooks were cawing, the swallows were flying low, wheel ing about the heads of the people driving through the High Street. There came a wild whooping and shouting, the tramping of many feet. A herd SMoonlight 8 of bullocks which had just changed owners on the Market Hill was being driven by. Mr Dann turned his face towards the showroom window, but saw only the bending tops of the trees, the hurrying of heavy, slate-coloured clouds across a cold, grey sky. ' A fancy gimp would set it off, Mrs Postle,' he suggested, and left his mouth hanging open after the remark for lack of the energy to shut it. ' Show me, over agin, the first as I looked at, young man,' said Mrs Postle. ' My mind run on a green ; 'tis more of a change, like.' ' A wonderful becomin' colour,' said Mr Dann, having diligently removed layers of dress material to the other side of the counter in order to lay bare the first exhibit. ' Done in white braid 'twould turn out a stylish costume, Mrs Postle.' But Mrs Postle was still undetermined ; and the irritating thing was she did not say so, but through a length of time, during which the shopman held widths of the green and the brown gathered in his hands for her inspection, gazed and gazed upon their contrasted charms in silence. ' It lay between these two, Mrs Postle,' Mr Dann said, after a silence made heavy by reason of the immensity of the issues at stake.

He turned at the sound of a suppressed chuckle beneath him, and looking down, became conscious of the new hand, who, hidden by the counter from the customer's sight, squatted on the floor among the boots and shoes at his feet. It was a child's face framed in its falling brown hair that looked up at him, a child's ill-suppressed, half-hysteric •ZMoonlight 9 giggle which sounded in his ears. As far as it is possible to watery eyes to gaze stonily, the eyes of Mr Dann stonily gazed. That irrepressible sob of laughter he resented as a presumption. When Mrs Postle at last left him at liberty (she accepted patterns of the brown and the green to show her sister, who was expected to visit her next week, also of the fancy gimp and the white braid), he took his revenge by driving out from the locker with one sweep of one foot the boots which Angela had returned to it.

He then fetched from their hiding-place a saucer containing some inky com pound, in which lay a sponge attached to the end of a stick, and requested Angela to smear those boots and shoes which showed signs of being old stock. ' Her place is under the counter,' said Mr Dann confidentially to Miss Bobby. ' She don't redound credit on the establishment' ' She've got no style about her, certainly,' acquiesced Miss Bobby, with good-natured reluctance. Miss Bobby was an old hand at Parker's; she was thirty-eight years of age, and looked it every bit, and ' our Mr Dann,' to whom she was engaged, was twenty-six. ' I shall show her how to do her hair up to morrow — it's short, but there's ways of doing it — and she'll smarten up, perhaps. She looks neither one thing nor the other now,' she said. The tresses employed in the elaborate coiffure of Miss Bobby had never grown on Miss Bobby's head, and, alack the day!

Mr Dann was aware of the fact, as who could help being who looked at the wide parting above the brow, the thin, dry locks through which the crown of the head showed plainly, and contrasted them with the noble structure at the back? He quickly averted his eyes now from the unwelcome spectacle, and they fell on Miss Ball, showing fancy buttons at the opposite counter. The plentiful supply of Miss Ball's hair was rendered apparently bounteous by means of curl ings, twistings, crimpings. It stood out in coil upon coil from the back of her large head, and she had a trick of introducing a cedar pencil amid its luxuriance, playing with a wave here, a loose lock there, in an artless manner found exasperating by her admirers. With her waxen complexion, her black eyes and hair, and her now sprightly, now languid air, she was a contrast indeed to poor jaded Miss Bobby, with her skin of universal muddy pink, her straight, thin locks, and the devotion to business and to Mr Dann which made her such a heavy companion.

It was only about a couple of weeks after the long-standing affection of Mr Dann had been crowned by the promise of Miss Bobby's hand and heart that Miss Ball had come to Parker's. She came, was seen, and conquered. It seemed to Mr Dann that it was as his eyes first fell on the lovely, black-eyed creature he loved her. And this love was the tragedy of his life. They had their teas when they could at Parker's on market days, and all meals but breakfast and supper were served in relays, so that the shop might not be left. On that evening the lady who presided over the double row of thick white cups, and who watched the passing round of the stacks of thick bread and butter, found only her own son Vincent and Angela Mayes, the new hand, seated at the long table to enjoy the privilege of her first brew. ' You have had your start, miss, how have you liked it ? ' Mrs Parker inquired in her sharp, com plaining tones of the new-comer. ' The day has been very long,' said Angela. ' The longer the better if you've been useful in it,' Mrs Parker declared. ' I blacked some boots,' said Angela, scowling upon the wife of her employer.

How she hated the peaked, irritable face of Mrs Parker beneath the cap of cheap white lace and blue ribbon, and how she longed to be able to show her hatred ! ' The youngest must begin at the bottom,' Mrs Parker reminded her sharply. ' Nothing comes amiss in the country trade ; and it's useful to be able to turn your hands to anything.' ' All the same, the boots are under the charge of Mr Dann,' Vincent said, making the observation not so much out of friendship to Miss Mayes as from enmity to Dann — an enmity for which Miss Ball and her coveted charms was answerable. ' Next time Mr Dann tells you to do his work you come to me,' said Vincent, and helped himself to marmalade — his own private supply — with an eye upon his mother. A lion of wrath in the path of every other member of the Emporium, she was a lamb for meekness in the presence of her son, and she hastened to change the subject. ' You'll look far more as one of our young ladies should look when you've learnt to turn up your hair, miss,' she went on to Angela. ' We shouldn't fancy the style you done your hair in here — nor yet the customers wouldn't. What age might you be?' ' I'm seventeen,' said Angela, shortly. ' My hair's only been let to grow two years, and it isn't long enough to turn up.' ' I've wore my hair in a knot here at the back of my head since fifteen,' Mrs Parker averred.

She felt the small, tight-looking knob beneath the little lace cap as she spoke. ' There's never any knowing what a customer '11 take offence at, and you've got to be careful. There's Miss Bobby, for instance ; we learnt quite by chance she'd lost a lady who'd come after ribbon velvet through her habit of eating peppermint lozenges after dinner. One day a matter of a few peppermints, and another a head of hair that don't suit, perhaps ! There's never any telling, and you can't be too particular.' Then Miss Ball came in, dropped languidly into a seat beside Vincent Parker, looked at the dish of thick bread and butter he passed her as if it were a transparency, and she saw something that arrested her gaze on the other side of it, selected a slice mechanically, and dropped it on her plate, to eat it being apparently the last intention she enter tained towards it. ' If you've quite done, miss, you might be gettino* back to the shop,' said Mrs Parker to Angela. eZMoonlight 13 The rush of the market day was over.

Nothing was doing in the shop when Angela returned to it. A few stragglers would come in from time to time for an hour, and then the shutters would be put up and the day's work would be done. Two of the hands were busy on the grocery side ' getting up ' orders ; the drapery counter was in sole possession of Miss Mayes, and she stood behind it with idle hands. It was six o'clock, and the light had grown uncertain on that early October evening. The tombstones opposite no longer showed in sharp outline between the low stone wall and the grey background of the church. The mist rising from the graves enwrapped them ; the churchyard was fast becoming an indistinct blur, while the hand some old church loomed nearer and larger in the misleading light. Angela felt herself almost suffocating under a sensation of awe and oppression as she looked out upon it.

The stillness of the High Street was broken now and again by the rattle of wheels — some farmer or cattle-dealer sought the delights of home and a cosy fireside after the excitements of market and the chill bleakness of the evening. A couple of servant-girls in caps and aprons escaped from their respective kitchens on either side of the Emporium giggled happily upon the pavement, inspecting the imposing display in Parker's window and reading aloud the inscription the son of the house had cunningly attached to an article here and there to catch the attention of the passers-by. ' Here's a cheap line ! Only one and six.' ' Look this way for a bargain ! Two and nine.' ZZMoonlight 14 ' The latest ! one and elevenpence ha'penny ! ' Such legends the little servants spelt out with much satisfaction, peering in at the dim window upon piles of flannel, upon hats and bonnets, upon ready-made coats and waistcoats, their arms round each other's shoulders.

Years afterwards a chance tone, a chance odour would bring back to Angela Mayes's memory an impression of that first evening at Parker's — the sharp rattle of the scales mounting ceiling-ward : the scent of the cinnamon one of the young men was making into a packet at the opposite counter ; the husky voices of a couple of passers-by talking of the bad prices of the market ; the melancholy, mist-enshrouded churchyard encroaching on the scene ; and herself, Angela Mayes, with shame and rage and mortification written on her sullen face, with home-hunger and love-hunger in her sad heart, standing alone at the drapery counter. A quick, light step sounded on the pavement — the memory of that scene ahvays remained with Angela long enough for that footstep to echo through her brain — striking a melancholy music from the uneven flags of the High Street, and a young man turned hurriedly into the shop.

He was a young man of horsy appearance as far as the fashion of his clothes went, and he had the gait of one accustomed to ride and drive rather than to walk, but his face was one of quite remark able beauty. Angela's own face lit up as her eyes fell upon it— not because of the regularity of the clear-cut features, the blueness of the black-lashed eyes, the pale darkness of the skin, but because it <ZMoonlight 15 was a familiar face, and familiar in scenes other than this. ' Good evening, miss.' ' Good evening, Mr Dodd.' ' I looked in for some boot laces, miss.' ' Boot laces ? ' ' They aren't of the least consequence, miss. I just was passing by, and thought I'd drop in to say I was sorry to hear as your dog died after all. I feared he was past us, but I didn't know the end had come till mother was mentioning of it at tea time.' ' Father had him killed,' said Angela, turning away her eyes. ' Best thing for him, miss.

I wouldn't fret over him — he hadn't a chance, believe me.' ' I am glad. He wouldn't have liked strangers, and he couldn't come here — ' Her eyes glanced at her surroundings beneath a lowering brow, and a short silence fell. ' I wondered if I could be of any use to you, miss,' the young man went on hesitatingly. ' If there was any parcel or message you wished to send ? I've got to drive over to Ashthorpe to morrow, and I'm going by the Grange — ' ' The Grange ! ' Angela repeated, and in such a tone that the man looked at her, startled, as if she had cried the word aloud in a tone of anguish. She looked back at him with miserable eyes that showed almost black in her grief-paled face, and with parted lips, ' Oh ! ' breathed Angela in a sigh like a moan. Then she met his pitying eyes, and turned away from him quickly.

ZZMoonlight 16 • Boot laces ? ' she said. ' I think you said you wanted boot laces ? ' On the wall behind her she remembered a bunch of the required articles haneine — all her life she had seen them there when she had been brought shopping with her mother. ' I don't want them at all, miss,' the young man breathed eagerly to the back of her head. ' Not at all, I do assure you.' But Angela continued to search the wall with wide eyes blind with tears. ' They're there on the wall to your right, miss,' said young Mr Dodd, deprecatingly, and Angela groped for the boot laces, and flung them on the counter, and began with trembling hands to dis engage a pair from the collection ; and lo ! a great tear fell — splash ! — upon the senseless bits of leather. The young man looked on with curved lips drooped to grieving, and intensest pity in his eyes. ' Let me help you, miss,' he said, and set to work to pull out a couple of the laces.

But Angela would bungle at the task too — with a certain consequence. When the laces were at length disentangled, she passed them to him without the formality of put ting them in paper. It was all the same to him ; he did not know he took them, he forgot that it was incumbent on him to pay for that which he had purchased, he scarcely knew himself — who he was or where he was — his consciousness drowned in the rush of emotion, the passion of pity, the overmastering longing to help and protect ! But Angela, having made a desperate effort for self-mastery, regained it. By the time she had hung again the laces on their nail at her back and had turned round to the counter, she was able to confront Mr Dodd with a fairly steady lip, and with eyes that did not overflow. ' You can give them all my love,' she said.

He had forgotten his offer to take a message to her parents. It was so long ago — before that splashing tear, that tremble of a childish lip and heave of a rounded bosom, before the sudden con tact of trembling, warm fingers. He remembered, and was himself again, curiously strung-up and alert, filled suddenly with a sense of power and a new confidence in himself. ' To-morrow is early closing day,' he said ; ' Parker's closes at two, you can get out at three. Will you come along with me to Ashthorpe? I shall be busy there for an hour, perhaps two. I can leave you at the Grange and call again as I come by. Will you come, miss ? ' ' Oh ! ' breathed Angela once more. She had only left them all yesterday, but the joy at the possibility of seeing her people again nearly took away her power of utterance. ' How beautiful that would be ! ' she sighed at length. ' You will come, then ?

Shall I drive here for you, or shall I pick you up on the road ? ' He had some dim notion that Angela — one of the Mayes of Ashthorpe — might not care to be seen with him, old Tommy Dodd's son, in the streets of Hazelborough. ' It wouldn't save time — get me there any B nZMoonlight quicker if I walked on part of the way, would it ? ' Angela reflected. ' Then come here, if you will be so kind. I won't keep you waiting a minute, Mr Dodd.'

Chapter II

'THERE WAS RUIN WRITTEN ON HIS FACE' She did not. Her face was pressed close to the window of the young people's sitting-room, watching for him, as he drove up. His bony-looking, roan horse turned a vicious eye to regard her the next instant as she appeared at the green-painted door. The horse would not stand, but she was light as a feather in springing to his side ; he had not to get down. They were already flying down the High Street when Valentine, holding rein and whip in his right hand, bent to tuck the rugs about her. The pace was exhilarating. Her back was turned on the Emporium, her face set for Ash thorpe. Angela laughed with happiness. 'I don't believe I ever felt so happy in all my life,' she said. He had thought at first it could not be little Miss Mayes, that from Parker's front door a strange young lady had emerged to sit beside him, so great a difference had been made in the girl, hovering on that delicate borderland between childhood and womanhood, by the massing into an orderly knot at the back of her head of those hanging locks of hair.