The freaks of Lady Fortune

Front matter

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Chapter I

OAKS — oaks ! Only a forest of oaks in their freshest spring foliage to be seen for miles, while between the trees long grassy rides ended hazily in soft blue vistas Here, an open glade where the emerald bracken fronds were still uncurling, there a deep woodland valley which a sapphire shower seemed to have sprinkled, because it was scattered thickly with wild hyacinths that grew taller and thicker yet in the shade of the woods behind.

Between two English rivers lies this sylvan scene. The one river is the broad Severn, rolling its silver flood to meet the salt tide from up-channel, while low, verdant pastures spread wide on either bank as it glides past old Gloucester town. The latter, with its beautiful Norman cathedral and quaint streets, is full of old-world memories. There stands the New Inn, with its wooden galleries, a hostel first built to lodge pilgrims flocking to worship at murdered King Edward’s shrine ; and yonder, close to the hallowed precincts of his own minster, brave Bishop Hooper was tied to an elm-tree and burnt with green faggots in the name of religion.

The other and smaller stream, bounding the forest of oaks on the western side, is the winding Wye, that most beautiful border-river of Wales, flowing gaily Severnwards between precipitous gorges, while the

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high cliffs, rising like ivy-covered ramparts of ancient castles on either side, are crowned with thick woods revelling in tints of every shade of verdure, from that of the light, feathery ash to the stout oaks and beech, and, lowest and sturdiest of all, the almost black-green lines of ancient yews, some nigh a thousand years old, and marking in their growth, say the miners, the vein of iron hid in the soil beneath.

For this is the royal forest of Dean, covering the high and hilly ground between these two rivers, a noble forest existing in the days of the Confessor — and who knows how long before? — prized by the stem Conqueror who hunted here the tall red- deer he loved ; while its oaks have been the pride of royal foresters ever since the days of the Virgin Queen to those of our present Empress-Mother, carefully kept to build the floating walls of our island, the great men-of-war whose crews too have ever had leal hearts of oak.

The long, sweet, May afternoon was growing late, as a young girl, holding a little lad by the hand, wandered down one of the forest roads leading into a pleasant valley, wherein the evening sunlight cast a golden haze.

She was tall of stature and wonderfully erect and graceful in figure, with an elastic step and good carriage rarely to be seen in one so poorly dressed— for her black gown was coarse, faded to a rusty brown, much mended and darned ; but the small head the . girl carried proudly on her slender neck, was verily a golden dowry.

Her face was exquisitely fair, with a skin as soft and milky-white as the may-flower, just deepening to a wild -rose tint on her cheeks. Her delicately-marked eyebrows were drawn with such a dark but peculiarly slight curve, just redeeming them from absolute straightness, that the greatest painter might in vain have sought to render that perfect limning. Below these brows eyes of such a glorious rich brown looked

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out in liquid light at the glad spring world around, that the colour of this fair wood-nymph’s hair was a strange contrast.

For, instead of owning locks of any shade of brown, from darkest hue to hazel, chestnut, or Titianesque auburn, as might have been expected, this maiden was crowned with gold ; her tresses were yellow, like ripe corn. It was wonderful hair, because so unusual in tint. It was neither lint-white nor flaxen, nor ever so faintly tinged with red. But it was of that pure, shining gold one may see on the breast of a golden Chinese pheasant, and was indeed not unlike the plumage of a bird in its glossiness and thickness and a certain changeableness of hue in different lights, as the iris deepens and brightens from grey to burnished blue on the wood-dove’s neck.

An English girl certainly, despite her glowing brown orbs ; fair as one of those young Anglian angels blessed by the good pope in days of old.

But the little lad who held her hand closely, and often gazed up in his elder sister’s face, was olivecomplexioned and dark of hair and eyes as any child of the sunny south. And, while the tall maiden looked as though she could have hunted in Diana’s train all day through the woods with untiring fleetness, the boy was frail and puny, with a face pinched and pale and unnaturally old in expression for his tender years.

Presently the girl stopped short.

“ It is growing late, dear ; we will not go any farther down there,” she said persuasively, in a rich, full voice. “ See, Bino, we have such a quantity of flowers already ! ”

A large and heavy basket indeed, almost overladen with fragrant wild hyacinths, hung on her arm. Her old battered straw hat, round and untrimmed as those of the peasant-women of the forest, had fallen down on her shoulders, held by a faded blue ribbon round her neck.

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« No, no, Guelda ; you promised me a long walk for a treat on my birthday— and you always say you keep your word ! ” urged the child, reluctant to turn back from a delightful ramble.

“ We must be going home soon indeed,” the sister caressingly rejoined, with a slightly anxious air.

“ Come, dear— I have brought you miles* farther than you ever were before — farther into the forest than I have ever been myself, and we may lose our way going home.”

“We can meet Eli Rastrick and his cart at the cross-roads. Only just a little farther — I want to get to that great bank of blue-bells, nearly a mile of them, that we saw across the valley ! ” pleaded the little fellow, tightening his grasp of his sister’s hand so lovingly it was not in her heart to refuse him ; and yet she knew he would then want to gather more and more of the fragile lovely blossoms, and her arms ached with the load of those she already carried, besides the remains of their mid-day meal that she must carefully take back to eke out a scanty supper.

“Come, then,” she said, suppressing a little sigh as she granted the boy his wish.

The grassy glade wherein they stood was all nibbled close as any lawn by the troops of branded sheep which wander, unwatched and unchecked by fence, through most portions of the forest. Round the edge of this glade trees had been felled, leaving stumps about which young shoots had sprung up thickly. But these were now browsed by the greedy sheep likewise into symmetrical rounded bushes, giving here, as often elsewhere in the forest, an odd, shrubbery-like effect to the borders of the roads.

Two of these large leafy clumps grew close to the spot where Guelda and her brother had halted. As the girl and little boy moved past them, they suddenly perceived two men lying on the grass, stretched fulllength and apparently resting.

Now the sight of human beings was so rare qd that

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lonely road, where one might walk for miles without seeing any soul save a stray miner, or perhaps a carrier bound for one of the forest villages, that the child started nervously and pressed closer to his sister. But next instant, as his large black eyes stared with curiosity full at the strangers, he announced in a loud and audible whisper :

“ Don’t be frightened ; they are only tourists ! ”

Guelda had herself given a shy swift glance at the strangers. She saw two young and handsome men gazing with some amusement and surprised admiration— though that she was too much a novice to recognise as yet — at the young girl who passed quickly by with her head held so high, and a fearless but grave air, looking straight ahead now. For the free foresters from time immemorial have been a lawless set ; and the miners’ villages, scattered over hill-sides or valleys among the trees, like squatters’ dwellings in some new country, had been too often the scene of quarrels, riotous ways, and evil doings. She had never yet been insulted on their own side of the forest ; but here she and her little brother were unknown. With a thankful tremor in her voice, this daughter of the woods said, when out of earshot :

“ I think, Bertrand, they were gentlemen.”

Both reached the blue-bell bank soon, where the valley dipped into shadow. What a sight was there ! For some hundred yards stretched a gorgeous bank of delicately up-poised sapphire flower-bells. A million million chimes might have rung there o’ nights, when spring zephyrs blew, to listening fairylike ears. And what a glorious celestial gladness of colour — darkly, beautifully blue, shading to violet under the tree-depths ? The contrast of that refreshing tint, as of heaven’s divinest depths, with the new green earth around, gave a sense of rare enjoyment.

Soon both the little fellow and his tall sister were busy gathering armfuls of hyacinths, piling them ever higher in the great basket. Guelda was working*

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thrd, yet somehow she was aware of a lurking haought all the while that she should be glad to be at home that night, when her small brother would be in bed and asleep and she herself free. Then she mightbe able to sit still a little while and recall that stranger’s face. Her hasty passing glimpse had taken in two men’s faces, but memory only now recalled the one.

“ He is like the picture of Guido Reni’s St. Michael in my little book of devotions — such a noble, beautiful face ! ” thought the girl. The picture in question was but a poor wood-cut in a little Italian book that had belonged to her dead mother.

After Guelda and little Bertrand had gone by, one of the two resting wayfarers, a pleasant-looking young man enough, gave a low whistle, then exclaimed :

“ What a nymph, Ronald ! Is not that the prettiest face ever you saw in your life ? What poaching free forester, or what miner stained like a red Indian with iron grime, can own that stately young beauty for his daughter ? ”

“None,” replied the other, whom Guelda had designated as St. Michael in her heart. “ She is a dream,” he added dreamily himself, while his lips formed a lazy smile, as he lay back once more on the grass with one arm thrown under his handsome head. “ I feel as if we were in the Forest of Ardennes, and seeing visions of fair Rosalind masquerading in the greenwood.”

“ Tut, man — she is live flesh and blood enough ! But who can she be ? ” impatiently retorted his more practical companion. “ Did you see her dress ? A darn, the whole of it. And her clod-hopper boots ; though, if her feet are like her hands, I’ll swear they are as small as those of Lady Ermyntrude herself.”

. “ Enough, dear old fellow ! I have settled irre-

vocably in my own mind she is not of common clay.

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‘ This is the prettiest low-born lass that ever ran upon the greensward.’ Whatever strange history hers may be, I cannot guess as yet ; but I trust to find out, for she is surely of no vulgar birth.”

“ As how, may one enquire ? ”

“ By following them presently, and asking our way, which we must have lost, besides some few questions concerning the forest. Curiosity is allowable in ‘only tourists.’ ”

“ And yet you are lying there as composedly as if you meant to stay for ever ; or as if she would stay for us.”

“ Calm yourself, my dear Islay. She is staying down there, gathering more wild hyacinths — they said so. When I have finished this very good cigar of yours they will not be so alarmed by our appearance as she might be if we were to start off in immediate pursuit.”

“ Most subtle diplomatist ! But you will not have long to make hay while the sun shines. I desired the grooms to meet us with the dog-cart at the cross-roads. Are you grateful now that your laziness was tempted for once into walking a few miles to admire the beauties of the forest? You have seen one more than you expected,” said the less handsome of the two friends in a cheery voice, but with a meaningly quizzical smile — the other being famous indeed for the sudden conquests he made, often unwittingly, still more often carelessly, of the hearts of fair dames. Roland smiled rather scornfully beneath his fair moustache.

“One would think to hear you that I am the principal person interested. As if to a young woman of any wisdom it would matter a straw that I adored her while there is a chance of my cousin Islay giving her an approving glance ! ”

“ You cut me out always, dear old chap, in everything that comes by nature,” said his cousin, with an affectionate side-look— “ in gifts, good looks, luck— in

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everything that is not to be had by mere money or rank. Hallo!”

Even as the exclamation was uttered, a horse and rider, having trotted up gently on the road-side turf, passed the bushes. Seeing the recumbent figures lying there so unexpectedly, the animal, a thoroughbred chestnut, started violently and shied. The rider, a stern-looking old man, who was thin and snowyhaired, but wonderfully erect of carriage, angrily tried to make the startled horse pass on, and punished it with his whip. The high-spirited thoroughbred instantly rebelled, and a struggle took place.

In a few seconds the chestnut became utterly unmanageable, and dashed at full speed down the road in the direction taken by the young peasant wayfarers.

Both the wayfarers, who had been lying on the grass so carelessly, had already started to their feet, and now hastened after horse and rider to witness the upshot, and render help if necessary. But they only saw them disappearing round a wooded corner, where the furious horse had swerved madly among the oak-trees.

They did not see that presently, after shying afresh, the animal unseated its rider, and that, falling heavily from his saddle, the old man was dragged by one foot that had caught in the stirrup, while his white head trailed along the uneven ground.

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Chapter II

Meanwhile Guelda and her little brother heard the sound of galloping hoofs.

As she sprang up startled from among the bluebells, the girl soon saw a terrible sight. She beheld the spectacle of the old man falling from his saddle, and the terrified horse rushing towards her, while at every bound it seemed as if its late rider’s brains must be dashed out.

A thrill ran through Guelda from head to foot, but it was that of quick high courage, an inheritance perhaps from dead forefathers, not the tremulous palsied feeling of craven fear. In a second her nerves seemed strained to highest tension, her eyes lighted with a brave steadfast glow, her heart beat fast.

“ Run, Bino ; ” she cried, pointing towards a thick clump of trees ; and the child ran like a scared rabbit. But as she spoke she herself started forward, and meeting the hot -breathing animal, that just then slightly slackened his speed, barely escaped being trampled under his hoofs, but caught the bridle close by the creature’s head.

The chestnut horse reared and plunged wildly. Twice it seemed as if the girl’s Idelicately rounded arms would be torn from their sockets, but those small hands closed like steel vices ; although her muscles were strained to agony, her will would not let them yield, for the struggle was for life. Guelda was striving, with her white te’eth clenched, as hard for this stranger, whom she had never seen before, whom she only saw now as an unrecognisable heap of humanity, as ever she could have struggled for her own existence.

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Alas — her senses seemed growing obscured ! Despite firm resolution, those slender fingers were slowly relaxing ; the girl was half blinded with foam shaken from the bit of the plunging horse. But, even as her heart began to fail, a voice rang clear and strong in her dizzy ears, uttering two words that were as trumpet notes, sounding blessed deliverance to the nearly vanquished in the strife.

“ Brave girl ! ”

A man’s powerful grasp took the place of Guelda’s failing hold, and, though a mist somewhat blinded her sight, through it she saw as it were the face of St. Michael looking into hers with a glorious smile of approval.

She reeled slightly, feeling faint, as she stepped backward, and was fain to lean against an oak-tree close by, trembling a good deal and checking a strong inclination to cry. However, not many moments later, seeing a woman’s help might be needed, she forced herself to come forward again.

Both the strangers who had been resting by the forest road had now come up. The one whom the girl had hardly noticed took in charge the frightened horse, that stared wildly, and now stood trembling with heaving flanks. The other — the St. Michael — was kneeling by the old man, who seemed stunned, and was anxiously loosening his collar.

“May I help you ? You may trust me ; I am used to nursing in illness,” said Guelda.

Her voice thrilled in Ronald Airlie’s ears — for that was the wayfarer’s full name — as perhaps the sweetest and most harmonious he had ever heard. It seemed to him that she was speaking music, and that is rare among the unmelodious sounds made by so many human millions ; it ravished him with perhaps a more subtle pleasure than that given by her beautiful face or form, for the soft tonps came from her heart, he thought.

Airlie gave a quick look in the speaker’s tremulous face. He noted that her lips, like red rose-leaves, were quivering with excitement, while the tears brimming in those glorious eyes were being bravely struggled with and forced back ; and withal that a true dignity and self-reliance made themselves felt in the girl’s whole bearing. A gleam of warm admiration lit up his own sea-blue eyes.

“ Trust you ! I would trust you to do anything well you undertook,” he replied, with more fervour in his tone than in the moment’s excitement he could pause to weigh or repress.

So Guelda knelt down beside the old man with flushing face, but her fingers did not hesitate as she quickly used all available means to revive him. Her voice recovered full self-possession as she gave directions as to where a little spring of water would be found. She had noticed it as they came down the glade.

“ Bino, you can show where it is.”

The little boy, who had emerged from hiding behind the trees in terror, was now close at his sister’s side again, his black eyes wide with surprise and late alarm. He started obediently at once, but it was Islay who accompanied the little fellow. Ronald stayed behind, and busied himself trying to force some brandy from his pocket-flask down the .throat of the unconscious man. In this he might have blundered but for Guelda’s quick aid. She plainly knew what to do and how to do it. So, bending together over the suffering stranger, golden head and chestnut locks almost touched. Once indeed they did so by chance, and an indefinable thrill passed through these two, both young, both so handsome; but the one a poor forest-girl of lowly station, the other the heir, if not of wealth, yet of an old and noble race and name, endowed by fortune with every blessing and fair gift, as his cousin Islay had said, save that of riches. The sea-blue eyes met the beautiful brown ones in speaking

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glances that perhaps said more, however rapidly, than the few words which were exchanged concerning the old man who was now beginning to show signs of recovery.

A groom in well-appointed livery, who had been following his master at some distance, now rode up in alarm and brought his services also to the group. Ronald in his heart wished him a mile away.

“ That will do, my good fellow,” he said, haughtily, preventing the servant from placing himself somewhat too close to Guelda’s side in his zeal. “ Who is your master ? ”

“ Lord Lyndon, sir, of Sheen Abbey,” said the man respectfully, instantly recognising that his questioner was accustomed to deference as his due.

Airlie rose to his feet, stifling what sounded like a muttered exclamation. His face suddenly changed from its late expression of pity and fellow-feeling, as he stood, rigid and tall, looking darkly down on the prostrate aged figure on the grass at his feet. Guelda saw that look and wondered. In later days she remembered it but too well, and understood.

“ He is coming round. I am going to walk on, and you can overtake m'e,” Ronald Airlie said to his companion, who just then returned, carrying some water in his hat, while the child trotted at his heels. Islay was just beginning an answering query when Airlie added a hasty whisper that brought a look of grave surprise on his cousin’s face, who nodded comprehension. But before he strode away, Ronald paused, and, laying his hand gently on the boy’s wild dark head, asked, “ Which way do you and your sister go home, my little man ? ”

“ Up that hill to the cross-roads,” said Bertrand, promptly. And Ronald took the direction to which the child’s short fore-finger pointed.

Presently the old man recovered himself, and tried to raise his head that the girl had been supporting in her lap.

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“ What happened ? Merlin — eh — threw me ? I remember,” he muttered. His words came in a curt, quick tone, as of one used to command, and who sought no sympathy from others ; then his gaze, seeming still confused, wandered over the faces bending towards him in a ring.

Suddenly, as he saw Guelda fully, a change as of horror and great surprise came over his face ; a hasty cry, strangely impressing all hearers, burst from his ashy lips.

“You — you ! Great heavens, girl — who are you ? ”

As he spoke, Lord Lyndon struggled to rise and confront the young girl, but would have failed, in his weakness, had not Islay and the groom supported him on either side. Once on his feet, he still stared at his late deliverer as if he saw a ghost, and his face worked despite himself, having no strength left after his fall, as he watched her.

“ Can’t you speak ? ” he demanded, with harsh querulousness. “ Tell me your name — do you hear ? I desire to know it”

The blood flamed up in Guelda’s cheeks at the overbearing tone of command in the last words ; she struggled a moment or two against anger at the ingratitude she thought dealt her. Then she threw up her head unconsciously with pride equal to his own, making a beautiful picture.

“ My name cannot matter to you, sir. As I have done all that is needed here, I will wish you good evening and a safe journey home. Come, Bino ! ”

The great basket of flowers stood disregarded on the blue -bell bank. Guelda hurriedly caught it up like a feather-weight in her flush of hurt feeling, and, helping herself by resting it on a tree-trunk, got the burden on her head before the groom, who came forward, could help her. As she did so, Islay was eagerly explaining the late situation to Lord Lyndon.

“ You owe your life to that girl, sir. She risked

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her own in stopping your horse. It was a sight 1 shall never forget while I live — the most splendidly plucky act a woman could do.”

His bewildered hearer asked a question or two, still briefly, but now with high-bred urbanity, having recovered partly from his emotion, and recognising his equal by Islay’s manner, although surprised at meeting a gentleman in the forest loneliness, so far out of the beaten track of tourists or rare straying artists. Then Lord Lyndon made a few steps towards Guelda with evident difficulty.

“ Pray stay — don’t go for a minute yet, I beg of you ! ” he said, arresting the girl’s progress, who was just moving away, holding her little brother’s hand. “ Will you not come back here ? I am an old man and shaken, as you see, or I would go to you ! ”

So saying, he raised his hat with old-fashioned courtesy. Then he sat down heavily on a tree-stump near.

At the changed tone of courtesy the peasant-girl hesitated, then came slowly and stood before the old lord. She was like one of Gainsborough’s most perfect masterpieces suddenly made alive, as she stood there, upright as a dart, so slim and graceful, carrying the great, blue flower-load on her sunny head with ease, while her brown eyes and face, with its milk-white and rosy complexion — that, though sunburnt a little, was still so marvellously lovely — looked straightforward in simple frankness.

“ What do you want with me, sir ? ’’she quietly asked.

“To offer you an old man’s thanks,” said Lord Lyndon, holding out his hand to the half-unwilling girl ; “ and to ask your acceptance of a mere trifle besides, for a new frock — eh ? ”

Seeing the gleam of gold pieces, the rustic goddess proudly retreated a step or two backward, while her face crimsoned.

“ I cannot take money. I thank you very much but I could not accept any.”

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“ Would you risk your life then without reward for a stranger ? ” asked the old man, watching her keenly.

The girl’s short upper lip curled in pride ; she held up her head with as stately an air as though the great market-basket of blue-bells it bore was the coronet of a duchess.

“Yes — for any living being who was in distress that I could help. I would do it as much for old Eli, the Mitcheldean carrier, as for you, sir. What money could be worth a life?”

“ What indeed ? ” murmured the old lord, his pale, aquiline face still intent on studying hers.

“ But, Guelda,” whispered little Bino, audibly, looking up at his sister in innocent, pleading remonstrance, “ why don’t you take the money — ten pieces I am sure I saw nearly — for you know it would pay the rent, and then you need not cry next time that ”

She hushed the child by hastily laying her hand on his lips ; but Lord Lyndon had half started forward, his w'hite brows meeting in a frown as he demanded, in curiously tremulous accents :

“ Guelda — Guelda ? What is your other name, girl?”

“ My name is Guelda Seaton,” answered the girl, with frank calmness, surprised at the sudden pallor on her questioner’s face, who seemed almost beside himself with some violent, secret emotion, whether of anger or amazement she could not tell.

“ And your father — who is — who was he, do you say? Tell me the truth.”

“ My father was a sailor, Lieutenant Bertrand Seaton ; but he was drowned in a shipwreck eight years ago. What need that matter to you, sir ?. ” came in sorrowful answ r er.

“ I thought as much,” hoarsely muttered Lord Lyndon. “ And your mother — she is an Italian, I can guess by that little brother of yours, who looks

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as if he ought to be dragging about a monkey with an organ-grinder. How did she come here —to the Forest of Dean — eh ? ”

“ She was an Italian, as you say ; and she came to this country to learn something of my father’s family, if possible — or so I believe,” was this English Perdita’s slowly-dignified reply; “but it is long ago, just when my little brother was born, and she died herself and left us alone.”

It was a simply pathetic explanation, followed by a few moments of silence. Islay, though he could not understand the matter, guessed that here was some mystery much deeper than mere curiosity, as was revealed by the old man’s looks. The groom, whose well-trained manners and whose mouth, close as those of stablemen are generally, yet betrayed now a glimmering of astonished intelligence ; and Guelda herself, who did not see why, after risking her life, she should now be thus peremptorily delayed and ordered to “ tell the truth ” — a command that some what rankled in her candid mind — both stared.