She dipped the pen in the inkpot to make sure, and shook it, that there might be no danger of a blot. Again she wrote her name.
"Capital!" he said. His voice betrayed relief. "That's done, and well done! Couldn't be better. Now it's my turn."
"But"--Jos looked up in doubt, the pen still in her hand--"but I've signed three, Arthur! I thought there were but two."
"Three!" exclaimed the Squire, turning his head, his attention caught.
"Damme!"--peevishly--"what mess has the girl made now?" It was part of his creed that in matters of business no woman was to be trusted to do the smallest thing as it should be done.
But Arthur only laughed. "No mess, sir," he said. "Only a goose of herself! She has witnessed your trial signature as well as the others.
That's all. I thought I could make her do it, and she did it as solemnly as you like!" He laughed a little loudly. "I shall keep that Jos."
The Squire, pleased with himself, and glad that the business was over, was in a good humor, and he joined in the laugh. "It will teach you not to be too free with your signature, my girl," he said. "When you come some day to have a cheque book, you'll find that that won't do!
Won't do, at all! Well, thank God, that's done."
Arthur, who was stooping over the table, adding his own name, completed his task. He stood up. "Yes, sir, that's done. Done!" he repeated in an odd, rising tone. "And now--the lease goes back to Welsh's. Shall I lock up the counterpart--downstairs, sir?"
"No, lad," the Squire announced. "I'll do that myself o' Monday."
"But it's no trouble, sir." He held out his hand for the keys. "And perhaps the sooner it's locked up--the tenant's signed it, and it is complete now--the safer."
But, "No, no, time enough!" the Squire persisted. "I'll put it back on Monday. I am not so helpless now I can't manage that, and I shall be downstairs o' Monday."
For a moment Arthur hesitated. He looked as if something troubled him.
But in the end, "Very good, sir. Then that's all?" he said.
"Ay; put the counterpart in the old bureau there. 'Twill be safe there till Monday. How's the wine? Fill my glass and fill your own, lad. You can go, Jos. Tell Calamy to come to me at half-past nine."
CHAPTER XXVIII
The next day, Sunday, was raw and wet. Mist blotted out the hills, and beneath it the vale mourned. The trees dripped sadly, pools gathered about the roots of the beeches, the down-spouts of the eaves gurgled softly in the ears of those who sat near the windows. Miss Peacock alone ventured to church in the afternoon, Arthur walking with her as far as the door, and then going on to the Cottage to have tea with his mother. Josina stayed at home in attendance on her father, but ten minutes after the others had left the house, he dismissed her with a fractious word.
She went down to the dining-room, where she could hear his summons if he tapped the floor. She poked up the smouldering logs, and looked through the windows at the dreary scene--the day was already drawing in--then, settling herself before the fire, she opened a book. But she did not read, indeed she hardly pretended to read, for across the page of the Sunday volume, in black capitals, blotting out the type, forcing itself on her brain, insistent, inexorable, unavoidable, the word "When?" imprinted itself.
Ay, when? When was she going to summon Clement, and give him leave to speak? When was she going to keep her word, to make a clean breast of it to her father and confront the storm, the violence of which her worst fears could not picture or exaggerate?
"When?"
With every day of the past fortnight the question had confronted her with growing insistence. Now, in this idle hour, with the house silent about her, with nothing to distract her thoughts, it rose before her, grim as the outlook. It would not be denied, it came between her and the page, it forced itself upon her, it called for, nay, it insisted upon, an answer. When?
There was no longer any hope that the Squire would regain his sight, no longer any fear for his general health. He was as well as he ever would be, as well able to bear the disclosure. Delay on that ground was a plea which could no longer avail her or deceive her. Then, when?
Or rather, why not now? Her conscience told her, as it had told her often of late, that she was playing the coward, proving false to her word, betraying Clement--Clement whom she loved, and whom, craven as she was, she feared to acknowledge.
Then, when? Surely now, or not at all.
Alas, the longer she dwelt on the avowal she must make, the more appalling the ordeal appeared. Her father, indeed, had been more gentle of late; that walk on the hill had brought them closer together, and since then he had shown himself more human. Glimpses of sympathy, even of affection, had peeped through the chinks of his harshness. But how difficult was the position! She must own to stolen meetings, to underhand practices, to things disreputable; she must proclaim, maid as she was, her love. And her love for whom? A stranger, and worse than a stranger--a nobody. Then apart from her father's contempt for the class to which Clement belonged, and with which he was less in sympathy than with the peasants on his lands, his prejudice against the Ovingtons was itself a thing to frighten her!
Hardly a day passed that he did not utter some jibe at their expense, or some word that betrayed how sorely Arthur's defection rankled. And then his blindness--that added the last touch of deceit to her conduct, that made worse and more clandestine what had been bad before. As she thought of it, and imagined the avowal and the way in which he would take it, the color left her cheeks and she shivered with fright. She did not know how she could do it, or how she could live through it. He would lose all faith in her. He would pluck from his heart even that affection for her which she had begun to discern under the mask of his sternness--to discern and to cherish.
Yet time pressed, she could no longer palter with her love, she must be true to Clement now or false, she must suffer for him now or play the coward. She had given him her word. Was she to go back on it?
Oh, never! never! she thought, and pressed her hands together. Those spring days when she had walked with him beside the brook, when his coming had been sunshine and her pulses had leapt at the sound of his footsteps, when his eyes had lured the heart from her and the touch of his lips had awakened the woman in her, when she had passed whole days and nights in sweet musings on him--oh, never!
No, he had urged her to be brave, to be true, to be worthy of him; and she must be. She must face all for him. And it would be but for a time. He had said that her father might separate them, and would separate them: but if they were true to one another----
"Miss! Miss Josina!"
She turned, her dream cut short, and saw Molly, the kitchen-maid, standing in the doorway. She was surprised, for the stillness of a Sunday afternoon held the house--it was the servants' hour, and one at which they were seldom to be found, even when wanted. "What is it?"
she asked, and stood up, alarmed. "Has my father called?" He might have rapped, and deep in thought she might not have heard him.
"No, miss," Molly answered--and heaven knows if Molly had an inkling of the secret, but certainly her face was bright with mischief. "There is a gentleman asking for you, if you please, miss. He bid me give you this." She held out a three-cornered note.
Josina's face burned. "A gentleman?" she faltered.
"Yes, miss, a young gentleman," Molly answered demurely.
Josina took the note--what else could she do?--and opened it with shaking fingers. For a moment, such was her confusion, she failed to read the few words it contained. Then she collected herself--the words became plain: "Very urgent--forgive me and see me for ten minutes.--C."
Very urgent? It must be urgent indeed, or, after all she had said, he would not come to her unbidden. She hesitated, looking doubtfully and shamefacedly at Molly. But the eyes of young kitchen-maids are sharp, and probably this was not the first glimpse Molly had had of the young mistress's love story, or of the young gentleman. "You can slip out easy, miss," she said, "and not a soul the wiser. They are all off about their business."
"Where is he?"
"He's under the garden wall, miss--down the lane."
Jos took her courage in her hands. She snatched up a shawl from the hall-table, and with hot cheeks she went out through the back regions, Molly accompanying her as far as the yard. "I'll be about the place, miss," the girl said--if no one else was enjoying herself, she was.
"I'll rattle the milk-pail if--if you're wanted."
Josina drew the shawl about her head, and went down the yard, passing on her right the old stable, which bore over its door the same date as the table in the hall--1691. A moment, and she saw Clement waiting for her under the eaves of the Dutch summer-house, of which the sustaining wall overhung the lane, and, with the last of the opposing outhouses, formed a sort of entrance to the yard.
She had been red enough under Molly's gaze, resenting the confederacy which she could not avoid. But the color left her face as her eyes met her lover's, and she saw how sad and downcast he looked, and how changed from the Clement of her meetings. He was shabby, too--he who had always been so neat--so that even before he spoke she divined that there was something amiss, and knew at last, too, that there was nothing that she would not do, no risk that she would not run, no anger or storm that she would not face for this man before her. The mother in her awoke, and longed to comfort him and shield him, to give all for him. "Clement!" she cried, and, trembling, she held out her hands to him. "Dear Clement! What is it?"
He took her hands and held them; and if he had taken her in his arms she would have forgiven him and clung to him. But he did not. He seemed even to hold her from him. "Forgive me, dear, for sending for you," he said. "I thought to catch you going into church, but you were not there, and there was nothing for it but this. Jos, I have bad news."
"Bad news?" she exclaimed. "What? Don't keep me waiting, Clement! What bad news?"
"The worst for me," he said. "For we must part. I have come to say good-bye."
"Good-bye?" Oh, it was impossible! It was not, it could not be that!
"What do you mean?" she cried, and her eyes pleaded with him to take it back. "Tell me! You cannot mean that we must part."
"I do," he said soberly. "Something has happened, dear--something that must divide us. Be brave, and I will tell you."
"You must," she said.
He told his story--rapidly, in clear short phrases which he had rehearsed many times as he covered the seven miles from Aldersbury on this dreary errand. He told her all, that which no one else must know, that which she must not reveal. They expected a run on the bank. They were sure, indeed, that a run must come, and though the issue was not yet quite certain, though his father still had hope, he had, himself, no hope. Within a week he would be a poor man, little better than a beggar, dependent on his own exertions; with no single claim, no possible pretensions to her hand, no ground on which he could appeal to her father. It must be at an end between them, and he preferred to let her know now rather than to wait until the blow had fallen. He thought himself bound in honor to release her while he still had some footing, some show of equality with her.
She smiled when she had heard him out. She smiled in his face. "But if I will not be released?" she said. And then, before he could answer her, she bade him tell her more. What was this run? What did it mean?