Ships in the Bay!. D. K. Broster

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СКАЧАТЬ riper years had inevitably come reflections—nay, more, conclusions—on the transitory nature of human affections, both male and female. For certainly last winter she had believed herself deeply in love with a gentleman, a stranger to the neighbourhood, whom she had met at a ball in Haverfordwest, and had even begun to picture herself going into a decline upon his account. There had not, however, been time for this process to take effect, since this infatuation, nourished on air, had lasted but a month, its demise, too, being materially assisted by the fact that young Mr. Perrot of Camrose had then begun to pay her somewhat marked attentions, continually finding, for instance, that business required him to ride eleven miles or so into St. David’s instead of four into Haverfordwest. These attentions Nest enjoyed without in the least making up her mind about their author; then, suddenly, they ceased. So she had good reason, she told herself, to feel that she knew something of life and its impermanence. In her less cheerful moods she sometimes felt also that one so disillusioned should prepare for old age and spinsterhood by learning Latin, or following some intellectual pursuit equally sustaining to the mind. The cultured Aunt Pennefather, although she had married, knew Greek as well.

      Reflecting on the advent of Jane and her infant, Nest, before she had gone very far, paused to look over the gate of a hayfield and, tempted by the thought of a short rest upon her homeward way, opened it and went in. The swathes of dried grass and daisies had been roughly piled into haycocks, but these were too high to sit upon without partial demolition, while the grass stubble, as she knew from experience, was apt to prove a prickly seat. However, as she penetrated further, her gaze lit upon a haycock on the further side of the field which seemed to have overbalanced in some way, and towards this pile she bent her steps. “I can leave the field by that further gate,” she told herself, “so that I am not going much out of my way. How sweet the hay smells!”

      She reached the haycock in question about the same time as Bran, who had loitered behind for some purpose of his own, and now rushed up panting.

      “Lie down, good dog!” adjured his mistress. “It makes me hot to look at you!”

      But the good dog did not lie down; far from it. Pricking his ears, he took a good sniff at Nest’s chosen seat and began to bark at it.

      Nest involuntarily took a step backwards and clutched her muslin skirts to her. Undoubtedly there was a mouse in the pile of hay. But she was brave; she did not flee, since it could only be a fieldmouse after all, which she did not dread nearly as much as the domestic variety; moreover, there was no other haycock so convenient. But how tiresome of the creature to have chosen this haycock, of all others! “Oh, Bran, pray stop!” she cried, for the animal’s barking was now of an unmitigated frenzy and he was in addition beginning to dance about and to scratch at the pile. “See, I’ll drive the mouse out for you!” And, with great daring, but with due precaution also, still holding her skirts very tightly and keeping as far away as possible, she stretched out her arm and poked the point of her new parasol into the yielding hay.

      Yet even as one eating cherry jam from which the stones are thought to have been removed and are not, Miss Meredith received a jarring surprise. The interior of the hay possessed quite different qualities from its exterior; it was by no means yielding; yet whatever lay within had not the stark solidity of stone or wood. She had poked something living . . . something, too, from the feeling of it, much larger than a rabbit or hare—creatures which would moreover have leapt out at a touch, if not before. . . . This, whatever it was, gave no sign, uttered no sound. But the whole neighbourhood resounded with Bran’s passionate barking. And at his mistress’s exclamation and backward movement he, doubtless from an instinct of protection, was stirred to something bolder than mere vociferation, and, making a spring at one end of the pile, he seized a bunch of hay in his mouth and shook it as if it were alive. Then, dropping it, he made a second fierce dash at the same spot as though he had found something better worth attack.

      And, in a sense, he had, for, to Nest’s equal amazement and terror, a human hand and wrist darted forth from the hay and, catching Bran by the collar, succeeded in holding him off, while at the same instant a violent earthquake movement convulsed the whole heap. Next moment the hay was falling back on all sides from about the figure of a disreputable young man who, wrestling with the infuriated dog, was endeavouring to get from his semi-supine position to his feet.

      “Bran! Bran!” cried his distracted mistress. “Bran, come a way! Oh dear, oh dear, what shall I do?” For whether the individual emerging from the hay after the manner of Venus Anadyomene from another element were a haymaker of retiring tastes, or a bad character of some kind, she did not desire the growling and writhing Bran to rouse him to complete wrath by taking a piece out of his person.

      “Bran!” Desperate, Nest advanced, and with difficulty seizing the dog by his collar, tugged hard. Thus, her effort coinciding by luck with a vigorous thrust on the man’s part, she did succeed in pulling Bran away; and, more from fright than from any other motive, began to belabour him with the treasured sunshade, while the man, leaping to his feet the moment he was free of his assailant, disappeared like a flash round the nearest haycock.

      “You naughty dog!” exclaimed Nest, trembling all over. She beat him again, her tepid blows awakening no protest. “How dare you—when I was calling you off!” Bran, panting, rolled over on to his back and gave an exhibition of the most abject and foolish contrition. With shaking fingers Nest fastened to his collar the leash which she had fortunately brought with her, stood a moment to recover some of her composure, and then started to walk quickly over the stubble towards the gate which she had already observed and which she knew must give on to a little lane leading back to the road. All thoughts of sitting awhile in the hayfield had now left her; her one desire was to get out of an enclosure where every haycock might, for aught she knew, be instinct with—what? Of what sort was the apparition with hay in his hair who had struggled with Bran and vanished so quickly? She could not imagine; all that she had had time to receive was an impression of youth, dark-haired, dark-chinned, of odd, shabby clothes with hay adhering to them, and of hurry. But the man could not merely have gone to sleep there and the haycock then have collapsed on top of him; he had been too thoroughly concealed for that. And people did not conceal themselves, especially in such an unusual way, unless there was a reason for it . . . and the reason was always a disgraceful one. Besides, he had been alarmed at discovery . . . or perhaps alarmed at Bran . . . or both. Thank Heaven, indeed, that he had run off as he had! But what an adventure! What would Papa say? And Aunt Pennefather, who alternated very inconsistently between disapproving of her niece’s freedom of movement and denouncing in her mild, poetical way, the shackles imposed through immemorial ages upon the female sex?

      Nest came through the little gate, from the scent of the hayfield to that of the lady’s bedstraw and honeysuckle of the narrow lane, and she had closed the gate behind her before she became aware of a masculine figure. It was he, the man from the haycock, standing a little to her left on the opposite side of the lane, against the high bank of flowers, looking at her!

      The young lady’s heart thumped sickeningly; she backed by instinct against the gate behind her. Bran growled and tugged at the leash; but its loop was round his mistress’s wrist. Afterwards Nest wondered exceedingly why she had neither screamed nor run down the lane, which, since this alarming figure was on the further side of her, she could at least have tried to do.

      The man, however, seemed to realise that she was frightened, for he remained motionless, save that he pulled his forelock as a gesture of respect, while Nest stared with alarmed eyes at him and his attire—at his coarse check shirt, open at the throat, his white flannel waistcoat bound with black tape—he appeared to have no coat—his wide, short trousers of faded blue fustian, with six inches or so of bare ankle between them and his shabby brass-buckled shoes; and most of all she noticed the menacing-looking sheath knife which hung from his worn leather belt.

      “I . . . I won’t touch you miss!” he said rather hoarsely. “I only wanted to thank you for calling your dog off me.”

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