A Rose of a Hundred Leaves Part 4

"I am sure."

"Thank you. Now I will go." She put out her hands before her, as if she was blind and had to feel her way; and in answer to all Lady Redware's entreaties to remain, to rest, to eat something, she only shook her head, and stumbled forward. Brune saw her coming. He was standing by the horses, but he left them, and went to meet his sister.

Her misery was so visible that he put her in the saddle with fear. But she gathered the reins silently, and motioned him to proceed; and Aspatria's last sad smile haunted Lady Redware for many a day. Long afterward she recalled it with a sharp gasp of pity and annoyance. It was such a proud, sorrowful farewell.

She reached home, but it took the last remnant of her strength. She was carried to her bed, and she remained there many weeks. The hills were white with snow, and the winter winds were sounding among them like the chant of a high ma.s.s, when she came down once more to the parlor. Even then Will carried her like a baby in his arms. He had carried her mother in the same way, when she began to die; and his heart trembled and smote him. He was very tender with his little sister, but tempests of rage tossed him to and fro when he thought of Ulfar Fenwick.

And he was compelled lately to think of him very often. All over the fell-side, all through Allerdale, it had begun to be whispered, "Aspatria Anneys has been deserted by her lover." How the fact had become known it was difficult to discover: it was as if it had flown from roof to roof with the sparrows. Will could see it in the faces of his neighbours, could hear it in the tones of their speech, could feel it in the clasp of their hands. And he thought of these things, until he could not eat a meal or sleep an hour in peace. His heart was on fire with suppressed rage. He told Brune that all he wanted was to lay Fenwick across his knees and break his neck. And then he spread out his mighty hands, and clasped and unclasped them with a silent force that had terrible antic.i.p.ation in it. And he noticed that after her illness his sister no longer wore the circlet of diamonds which had been her betrothal-ring. She had evidently lost all hope. Then it was time for him to interfere.

Aspatria feared it when he came to her room one morning and kissed her and bade her good-by. He said he was going a bit off, and might be a week away,--happen more. But she did not dare to question him. Will at times had masterful ways, which no one dared to question.

Brune knew where his brother was going. The night before he had taken Brune to the little room which was called the Squire's room. In it there was a large oak chest, black with age and heavy with iron bars.

It contained the t.i.tle-deeds, and many other valuable papers. Will explained these and the other business of the farm to Brune; and Brune did not need to ask him why. He was well aware what business William Anneys was bent on, before Will said,--"I am going to Fenwick Castle, Brune. I am going to make that measureless villain marry Aspatria."

"Is it worth while, Will?"

"It is worth while. He shall keep his promise. If he does not, I will kill him, or he must kill me."

"If he kills you, Will, he must then fight me." And Brune's face grew red and hot, and his eyes flashed angry fire.

"That is as it should be; only keep your anger at interest until you have lads to take your place. We mustn't leave Ambar-Side without an Anneys to heir it. I fancy your wrath won't get cold while it is waiting."

"It will get hotter and hotter."

"And whatever happens, don't you be saving of kind words to Aspatria.

The little la.s.s has suffered more than a bit; and she is that like mother! I couldn't bide, even if I was in my grave, to think of her wanting kindness."

The next morning Will went away. Brune would not talk to Aspatria about the journey. This course was a mistake; it would have done her good to talk continually of it. As it was, she was left to chew over and over the cud of her mournful antic.i.p.ations. She had no womanly friend near her. Mrs. Frostham had drawn back a little when people began to talk of "poor Miss Anneys." She had daughters, and she did not feel that her friends.h.i.+p for the dead included the living, when the living were unfortunate and had questionable things said about them.

And the last bitter drop in Aspatria's cup full of sorrow was the hardness of her heart toward Heaven. She could not care about G.o.d; she thought G.o.d did not care for her. She had tried to make herself pray, even by going to her mother's grave, but she felt no spark of that hidden fire which is the only acceptable prayer. There was a Christ cut out of ivory, nailed to a large ebony cross, in her room. It had been taken from the grave of an old abbot in Aspatria Church, and had been in her mother's family three hundred years. It was a Christ that had been in the grave and had come back to earth. Her mother's eyes had closed forever while fixed upon it, and to Aspatria it had always been an object of supreme reverence and love. She was shocked to find herself unmoved by its white pathos. Even at her best hours she could only stand with clasped hands and streaming eyes before it, and with sad imploration cry,--

"I cannot pray! I cannot pray! Forgive me, Christ!"

CHAPTER III.

ONLY BROTHER WILL.

It was a dull raw day in late autumn, especially dull and raw near the sea, where there was an evil-looking sky to the eastward. Ulfar Fenwick stood at a window in Castle Fenwick which commanded the black, white-frilled surges. He was watching anxiously the point at which the pale gray wall of fog was thickest, a wall of inconceivable height, resting on the sea, reaching to the clouds, when suddenly there emerged from it a beautifully built schooner-yacht. She cut her way through the mysterious barrier as if she had been a knife, and came forward with short, stubborn plunges.

All over the North Sea there are desolate places full of the cries of parting souls, but nowhere more desolate s.p.a.ces than around Fenwick Castle; and as the winter was approaching, Ulfar was anxious to escape its loneliness. His yacht had been taking in supplies; she was making for the pier at the foot of Fenwick Cliff, and he was dressed for the voyage and about to start upon it. He was going to the Mediterranean, to Civita Vecchia, and his purpose was the filial one of bringing home the remains of the late baronet. He had promised faithfully to see them laid with those of his fore-elders on the windy Northumberland coast; and he felt that this duty must be done, ere he could comfortably travel the westward route he had so long desired.

He was slowly b.u.t.toning his pilot-coat, when he heard a heavy step upon the flagged pa.s.sage. Many such steps had been up and down it that hour, but none with the same fateful sound. He turned his face anxiously to the door, and as he did so, it was flung open, as if by an angry man, and William Anneys walked in, frowning and handling his big walking-stick with a subdued pa.s.sion that filled the room as if it had been suddenly charged with electricity. The two men looked steadily at each other, neither of them flinching, neither of them betraying by the movement of an eyelash the emotion that sent the blood to their faces and the wrath to their eyes.

"William Anneys! What do you want?"

"I want you to set your wedding-day. It must not be later than the fifteenth of this month."

"Suppose I refuse to do so? I am going to Italy for my father's body."

"You shall not leave England until you marry my sister."

"Suppose I refuse to do so?"

"Then you will have to take your chances of life or death. You will give me satisfaction first; and if you escape the fate you well deserve, Brune may have better fortune."

"Duelling is now murder, sir, unless we pa.s.s over to France."

"I will not go to France. Wrestling is not murder, and we both know there is a 'throw' to kill; and I will 'throw' until I do kill,--or am killed. There's Brune after me."

"I have ceased to love your sister. I dare say she has forgotten me.

Why do you insist on our marriage? Is it that she may be Lady Fenwick?"

"Look you, sir! I care nothing for lords.h.i.+ps or ladys.h.i.+ps; such things are matterless to me. But your desertion has set wicked suspicions loose about Miss Anneys; and the woman they dare to think her, you shall make your wife. By G.o.d in heaven, I swear it!"

"They have said wrong of Miss Anneys! Impossible!"

"No, sir! they have not said wrong. If any man in Allerdale had dared to say wrong, I had torn his tongue from his mouth before I came here; and as for the women, they know well I would hold their husbands or brothers or sons responsible for every ill word they spoke. But they think wrong, and they make me feel it everywhere. They look it, they shy off from Aspatria,--oh, you know well enough the kind of thing going on."

"A wrong thought of Miss Anneys is atrocious. The angels are not more pure." He said the words softly, as if to himself; and William Anneys stood watching him with an impatience that in a moment or two found vent in an emphatic stamp with his foot.

"I have no time to waste, sir. Are you afraid to sup the ill broth you have brewed?"

"Afraid!"

"I see you have no mind to marry. Well, then, we will fight! I like that better."

"I will fight both you and your brother, make any engagement you wish; but if the fair name of Miss Anneys is in danger, I have a prior engagement to marry her. I will keep it first. Afterward I am at your service, Squire, yours and your brother's; for I tell you plainly that I shall leave my wife at the church door and never see her again."

"I care not how soon you leave her; the sooner the better. Will the eleventh of this month suit you?"

"Make it the fifteenth. To what church will you bring my fair bride?"

"Keep your scoffing for a fitter time. If you look in that way again, I will strike the smile off your lips with a hand that will leave you little smiling in the future." And he pa.s.sed his walking-stick to his left, and doubled his large right hand with an ominous readiness.

"We may even quarrel like gentlemen, Mr. Anneys."

"Then don't you laugh like a blackguard, that's all."

"Answer me civilly. At what church shall I meet Miss Anneys, and at what hour on the fifteenth?"

"At Aspatria Church, at eleven o'clock."

"Aspatria?"

"Ay, to be sure! There will be witnesses there, I can tell you,--generations of them, centuries of generations. They will see that you do the right thing, or they will dog your steps till you have paid the uttermost farthing of the wrong. Mind what you do, then!"