Waynflete. Coleridge Christabel Rose

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СКАЧАТЬ their self-respect. Guy said no more, and withdrew, and he never spoke a word to Godfrey of what had passed between his aunt and himself.

      The next day, just before luncheon, Jeanie was gathering flowers on the lawn, when a door in the wall that led to the mills opened, and Guy dashed in, with so white and wild a look, and a step at once so hurried and so faltering, that she ran up to him, exclaiming —

      “Guy! Are you ill? What is the matter?” Guy looked at her, as she said afterwards, as if he did not see her, and hurried in and upstairs without a word, and as she followed, scared and puzzled, she heard him shut and lock his bedroom door behind him. Turning away in distress and alarm, she met Godfrey strolling along in the sunshine, with Rawdie at his heels, and a book under his arm, a picture of idle holiday enjoyment.

      “Oh,” he said, in answer to her appeal, “Guy is like that if he has a headache. He likes to be let alone; he never wants anything.”

      Jeanie still looked doubtful.

      “People don’t generally look so with a headache,” she said. “Does he often have such bad ones?”

      “No,” said Godfrey; “only once in a way. He’ll be all right in an hour or two. Let him alone.”

      Jeanie thought it a very odd headache; but no more was said, though, from Mrs Waynflete’s face when Guy did not appear at luncheon, it might have been argued that his sudden illness told against his plans.

      She put on her bonnet, and took her way down to the mill with a step that was still firm, though slower than of old, and asked for John Cooper. She was no unusual visitor, and had never let her hold of the business drop; and as she sat down in the little office, and cast her still keen blue eyes round her, it was more than ever difficult to believe, more than ever distasteful to feel, that her day was almost done. The two old men who had long managed the business, though some years younger than herself, now seemed like contemporaries. She had worked under their fathers in her girlhood, she had seen them rise in office under her husband, she had now worked with them for many years, and with them she felt at one.

      Partly from this, and partly, perhaps, from the incautiousness of old age, before many minutes had passed, she had made John Cooper aware, both of Guy’s plans and of his strictures. It was so natural to discuss the crude ideas of the youth with her experienced old friend.

      John Cooper was very much taken by surprise. The reticent and cautious Guy had never betrayed how carefully he had been “takin’ notes.” Had this lad really put his finger on the weak places? John Cooper was much too careful to commit himself to a direct contradiction.

      “Well, Mrs Waynflete,” he said; “Mr Guy is young, and young folks like to have something to show for their opinions. But, there’s been many new fashions since you and I began to work the business. The old master never held with following the fashion.”

      “You can be making changes every year if you do.”

      “So you can do, Mrs Waynflete; so you can. Eh, but I’ve seen changes.”

      “Mr Guy has a notion of business, too,” said the old lady.

      “Did ye see Mr Guy when he came home, ma’am?” said John Cooper, suddenly.

      “No; he had a bit of headache, and went to his room. Young men aren’t as tough as they used to be.”

      There was a silence. The old man watched the lady over the writing-table between them. He, too, was a vigorous old grey-head, with a hard mouth and keen eyes wrinkled up close. The little room was full of bills and letters and safes. A stray ray of afternoon sun shot through the small-paned window, and showed the dusty air and the dusty floor, and the well-arranged contents of the dusty shelves.

      John Cooper crossed the little room, and stood in the streak of sunshine. It shone upon his well-known grey hair, on his shrewd, weather-beaten face, and glittered on a small key left in a little oak cupboard in the wall. John Cooper opened the cupboard, and the sun shot in and sparkled with sudden brilliant reflections on something inside.

      “Eh, what have you there?” said Mrs Waynflete.

      John Cooper took out a tall brandy-bottle, nearly empty, and a glass still containing some drops of spirit, and set them on the table.

      “Mr Guy left the key by mistake,” he said.

      “John Cooper! What do you mean?”

      No asseveration could have added to the abrupt force of the intonation, as Mrs Waynflete sat upright, grasping the arms of her wooden chair, and looking straight at the manager.

      “Mr Guy keeps that cupboard close locked. But to-day he left it swinging open, when he went home – with a headache.”

      “Did ye see him go?”

      “I came in at the door here, Mrs Waynflete, and Mr Guy staggered past me, and never saw me. He went stumbling out and up the lane. Hurrying and reeling as he went – as once and again I’ve seen him before.”

      Mrs Waynflete’s brown old face grew a shade paler, she still held by the arms of the chair, as she rapidly weighed what had been said.

      It seemed to her that the fact of the young man’s possessing a bottle of spirits was as nothing compared with the secrecy with which he had concealed it. Nor would he be the first in the house of Waynflete to fall a victim to such a temptation.

      On the one hand, Mrs Waynflete had seen it in her father, and feared it for her brother; on the other, there was nothing in Guy’s look or ways to suggest it, save the occasional attacks of illness, as to which he was always mysterious and secretive.

      “Lock up the cupboard,” she said, “and give me the key. And ye’ll not say a word of this matter.”

      “Nay, not to Joshua Howarth, nor to young Jos, nor to my own John Henry. It’s no matter for talking of.”

      Mrs Waynflete put the key in her pocket, rose, and standing at her full height, said – “Good day to you,” and walked away with firm, unfaltering step, across the paved entrance, up the bit of lane that led to the garden wall. She went in through the gate and across the garden, and upstairs to Guy’s room, at which she knocked sharply.

      “Guy, I wish to come in.”

      The door was unfastened, and Guy stood there in great surprise.

      “Aunt Margaret!” he said. “What is it? I am much better. I am coming down for some tea.”

      Mrs Waynflete put him aside with her hand, entered the room, and shut the door.

      It was a large, comfortable room, with a bookcase and a good supply of books, a writing-table, a sofa and an armchair, besides the little iron bed in the corner, and it was brilliantly light, for there was not a curtain or a hanging of any sort in the room. Such was Guy’s taste. He looked pale still, but quite himself, and there was nothing peculiar in his manner, as he repeated —

      “What is it, Aunt Margaret?”

      “This,” said his aunt, as she sat down in the armchair, and held out the key.

      “What is it that you mean?” said Guy, with a sudden look of being on his guard, and much in the tone of her own question to John Cooper.

      “You left your cupboard open, Guy, and John Cooper, very properly, locked it СКАЧАТЬ