Not a few young servant-girls, selected by Mr. Goring rather for their appearance than their disposition, had been dismissed from his service, after violent and wrathful scenes, for being caught teasing this unfortunate; and even the cook, a female of the most taciturn and sombre temper, was compelled to treat him with comparative consideration. The gossips of Nevilton swore, as one may believe, that the farmer, in being kind to this boy, was only obeying the mandate of nature; but no one who had ever beheld Bert’s mother, gave the least credence to such a story.
Another of Mr. Goring’s softer aspects was his mania for tame rabbits. These he kept in commodious and spacious hutches at the back of his house, and every year wonderful and interesting additions were added to their number.
On this particular morning both the farmer and his idiot were absorbed and rapt in contemplation before the gambols of two large new pets — great silky lop-eared things — who had arrived the night before. Mr. Goring was feeding them with fresh lettuces, carefully handed to him by his assistant, who divested these plants of their rough outer leaves and dried them on the palms of his hands.
“The little ’un do lap ’em up fastest, master,” remarked the boy. “I mind how those others, with them girt ears, did love a fresh lettuce.”
Mr. Goring watched with mute satisfaction the quivering nostrils and nibbling mouth of the dainty voracious creature.
“Mustn’t let them have more than three at a time, Bert,” he remarked. “But they do love them, as you say.”
“What be going to call this little ’un, master?” asked the boy.
Mr. Goring straightened his back and drew a deep breath.
“What do you think, Bert, my boy?” he cried, in a husky excited tone, prodding his assistant jocosely with the handle of his riding-whip; “what do you think? What would you call her?”
“Ah! I knew she were a she, master!” chuckled the idiot. “I knew that, afore she were out of the packer-case! Call ’er?” and the boy leered an indescribable leer. “By gum! I can tell ’ee that fast enough. Call ’er Missy Lacrima, pretty little Missy Lacrima, wot lives up at the House, and wot is going to be missus ’ere afore long.”
Mr. Goring surveyed his protégé for a moment with sublime contentment, and then humorously flicked at his ears with his whip.
“Right! my imp of Satan. Right! my spawn of Belial. That is just what I was thinking.”
“She be silky and soft to handle,” went on the idiot, “and her, up at the House, be no contrary, or I’m darned mistaken.”
Mr. Goring expressed his satisfaction at his friend’s intelligence by giving him a push that nearly threw him backwards.
“And I’ll tell you this, my boy,” he remarked confidentially, surveying the long line of well-filled hutches, “we’ve never yet bought such a rabbit, as this foreign one will turn out, or you and I be damned fools.”
“The young lady’ll get mighty fond of these ’ere long-ears, looks so to me,” observed the youth. “Hope she won’t be a feeding ’em with wet cabbage, same as maids most often do.”
The farmer grew even more confidential, drawing close to his assistant and addressing him in the tone customary with him on market-days, when feeling the ribs of fatted cattle.
“That same young lady is coming up here this morning, Bert,” he remarked significantly. “The squire’s giving her a note to bring along.”
“And you be going to bring matters to a head, master,” rejoined the boy. “That’s wise and thoughtful of ’ee, choosing time, like, and season, as the Book says. Maids be wonderful sly when the sun’s down, while of mornings they be meek as guinea-fowls.”
The appearance of the Priory servant — no very demure figure — put a sudden stop to these touching confidences.
“Miss Lacrima, with a note, in the front parlour!” the damsel shouted.
“You needn’t call so loud, girl,” grumbled the farmer. “And how often must I tell you to say ‘Miss Traffio,’ not ‘Miss Lacrima’?”
The girl tossed her head and pouted her lips.
“A person isn’t used to waiting on foreigners,” she muttered.
Mr. Goring’s only reply to this remark was to pinch her arm unmercifully. He then pushed her aside, and entering the kitchen, walked rapidly through to the front of the house. The front parlour in the Priory was nothing more nor less than the old entrance-gate of the Cistercian Monastery, preserved through four centuries, with hardly a change.
The roof was high and vaulted. In the centre of the vault a great many-petalled rose, carved in Leonian stone, seemed to gather all the curves and lines of the masonry together, and hold them in religious concentration.
The fire-place — a thing of more recent, but still sufficiently ancient date — displayed the delicate and gracious fantasy of some local Jacobean artist, who had lavished upon its ornate mouldings a more personal feeling than one is usually aware of in these things. In place of a fire the wide grate was, at this moment, full of new-grown bracken fronds, evidently recently picked, for they were still fresh and green.
In front of the fire-place stood Lacrima with the letter in her hand. Had Mr. Goring been a little less persuaded of the “meekness” of this young person, he would have recognized something not altogether friendly to himself and his plans in the strained white face she raised to him and the stiff gloved hand she extended.
He begged her to be seated. She waved aside the chair he offered, and handed him the letter. He tore this open and glanced carelessly at its contents.
The letter was indeed brief enough, containing nothing but the following gnomic words: “Refusal or no refusal,” signed with an imperial flourish.
He flung it down on the table, and came to business at once.
“You mustn’t let that little mistake of Auber Great Meadow mean anything, missie,” he said. “You were too hasty with a fellow that time — too hasty and coy-like. Those be queer maids’ tricks, that crying and running! But, bless my heart! I don’t bear you any grudge for it. You needn’t think it.”
He advanced a step — while she retreated, very pale and very calm, her little fingers clasped nervously together. She managed to keep the table between them, so that, barring a grotesque and obvious pursuit of her, she was well out of his reach.
“I have a plain and simple offer to make to you, my dear,” he continued, “and it is one that can do you no hurt or shame. I am not one of those who waste words in courting a girl, least of all a young lady of education like yourself. The fact is, I am a lonely man — without wife or child — and as far as I know no relations on earth, except brother Mortimer. And I have a pretty tidy sum laid up in Yeoborough Bank, and the farm is a good farm. I do not say that the house is all that could be wished; but ’tis a pretty house, too, and one that could stand improvement. In plain words, dearie, what I want you to say now is ‘yes,’ and no nonsense, — for what I am doing,” his voice became quite husky at this point, as if her propinquity really did cause him some emotion,” is asking you, point-blank, and no beating about the bush, whether you will marry me!”
Lacrima’s face during this long harangue would have formed a strange picture for any old Cistercian monk shadowing that ancient room. At first she had kept unmoved her strained and tensely-strung impassivity. But by degrees, as the astounding character of the man’s communication began to dawn upon her, her look changed into one of sheer blind terror. When the final fatal word crossed the farmer’s lips, she put her hand to her throat as though to suppress an actual cry. She had never looked for this;—not in her wildest dreams of what destiny, in this curst place, could inflict upon her. This surpassed the worst of possible imagination! It was a deep below the deep. She found herself at first completely unable to utter a word. She could only make a vague helpless gesture with her hand as though dumbly waving the whole world away.