Chapter 1

TRBoofng an& Winning*

" "W^W then, mother, jump up! Look out, lads, — how you do manage to get in the way ! Considering your size, it's wonderful !"

Before the door of a little gray farm-house stood a very high market-cart, in which un- couth vehicle, the farmer, John Coverdale, with his wife and eldest son, were about to drive their weekly twelve miles downhill to the pleasant town of Dedborough. The florid broad-shouldered Yorkshireman had

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already taken up a firm position in the cart, while his excellent Scottish wife was being assisted to mount by Dick, a dark -haired young fellow, whose knee-breeches, brown coat and felt hat set off to full advantage his good looks and fine carriage.

The admonition to his two red-haired young brothers was given good-naturedly, and without the strong Yorkshire accent of his father, or his mother's unmistakable Scottish intonation. According to a frequent custom among this class in her more lettered country, the young man had been sent to the University of St. Andrew's, whence he returned — according to his father — with a store of useless learning and ridiculous manners only fit for idle folk who could afford to sit at home and attend to their airs and graces.

John Coverdale regarded these superficial acquirements as the regrettable representa-

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tives of good money thrown away, not recognizing that the young man, from his very childhood, had been remarkable for a peculiar distinction of manner, which the University might have fostered, but could certainly not supply.

In appearance Dick did not "favor his parents," as the country people said, though he possessed the strong, well-set-up frame of the Coverdales, who had lived a simple out- door life upon these breezy heights above Niddesdale for five or six generations. Some of the older folks in the dale, who remem- bered Dick's great-grandfather, used to say that " the laad " was the " living image" of the old man.

The two younger boys, Johnny and Tommy, went to the school in Winterbridge, a village at the foot of the hill, while Dick shared with his father and a couple of men the work of the farm.

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He had shown himself a stout laborer and a cheery one ; yet there was something about the young fellow that seemed to separate him from his comrades. He had wandering instincts, fits of idleness alternat- ing with spurts of fierce energy ; and often he would sink into low spirits, for which his mother prescribed "Cockle's Pills," as she was wont to do for all the ailments of body and soul — especially of soul.

" Johnny, just hand me up yon basket of fresh butter," said Mrs. Coverdale, after she had safely mounted. "A'm just taking some to Jean ; they canna get any fit to eat in Dedborough, to my thinking."

Jean was Mrs. Coverdale's sister, who had married from Braisted Farm, while on a visit there, Thomas Wellbeloved, the principal grocer in Dedborough.

"And a'm taking a few airly goose- berries," added the kind-hearted farmer's

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wife, in her soft accent; "the lassie '11 maybe like them for a pie. She's been accustomed to plenty of fruit and garden- stuff when her mither was alive before she came to live at Dedborough."

" And plenty of care and affection, which I fear she doesn't get under Aunt Jean's roof/' Dick added, as he sprang into the cart.

The old mare was startled out of a pro- found revery, and the cart rattled away down the farm-road, leaving Johnny and Tommy and a large flock of geese intelli- gently watching its departure. When it was out of sight, the bleak little gray house with its opposite farm-buildings and the wild dike-divided fields stretching to the foot of the moors, sank into profound and melancholy repose.

"Gee oop, Nancy; gee up, my laas!" cried the farmer, encouraging his mare.

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"Take care she doesna stumble goin doon the hill,'1 advised his wife nervously. Mrs. Coverdale's bright-red hair, high cheek- bones, upturned nose and long upper-lip, were powerless to render her face a disagree- able one. The good heart and simple spirit redeemed its homeliness triumphantly.

"Take care o* they big stones," Mrs. Coverdale warned. " Nancy nearly came to her knees on them last Saturday when Dick was driving."

" Oh, Dick drives like a madman !" said his father, jerking up the mare's head as she stalked down the hill.

Nancy was a mare of bony structure and unfurnished tail, who seemed from the box- seat of the cart to slope steeply towards her head. The descent appeared truly break- neck work, as the lumbering old cart rattled down the narrow road ; but Nancy knew its every turn and roughness, for had she not

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passed along it weekly for the last twelve years of her useful life?

Arrived at Dedborough, Nancy was put up at the Crown, while her master trans- acted his business in the market Regularly every Saturday, Mrs. Coverdale, after she had given her advice on important matters, used to trudge up the High Street to call on her sister, Mrs. Wellbeloved, in the back parlor of the little shop, and here the farmer and his son would join them at tea-time.

Dick, if possible, took care to escape from his family and wander off, in his desultory way, to have a chat with an acquaintance, to bid good-afternoon to some village beauty, or, more often, to linger by the banks of the Nid and watch the fish, the swaying of the water-reeds and the wild life of the river-side.

At the top of the steep little High Street was a certain shop patronized by Dick,

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where miscellaneous odds and ends, books and other treasures, were to be found. On this memorable Saturday afternoon he wended his way to his favorite haunt, and there, where the lime-trees were spreading their earliest leaves over the opposite wall of the rectory garden, he came upon a tat- tered copy of Poems by Percy Bysshe Shelley.

" How much is this ?" he asked.

" Oh, you can have that 'un cheap : folks don't run on poetry hereabouts. Two shil- lings— will that do yer?"

Dick hauled out a long purse that his mother had knitted for him and walked off with the book under his arm. Then he was not mad or unusually stupid after all ! — or at least he was not alone in his madness ! An electric current seemed to cut off his body from the earth, so that he felt emancipated from its thraldom.

The quiet little village street, with its old

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inns and small shops, with the river at its foot, and beyond the valley, the great hills leading up to the moors, had taken on a new splendor. Dedborough was fuller than usual, this being market-day. Dick's eyes rested with a far-off beaming benevolence on the farmers as they trudged down the street, on the fair-haired young Doctor as he drove up in his phaeton to the door of his red- brick cottage, nodding to Dick as he alighted.

" Good afternoon, Coverdale ! All well at the farm, I hope? Your mother got over her rheumatism ?"

" She's better, thank you," said Dick, pausing in his swinging walk.

A maid-servant going up the street with a parcel from the grocer's, glanced admiringly at the stalwart young farmer. The Doctor caught the glance and smiled, though not without a faint pang of envy far away down

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in his soul. The young fellow was aggres- sively handsome. Dr. Hislop was fair, irregular of feature and put together in- accurately.

" How does your father like this weather for his crops?" continued the Doctor, who was fresh to the district and not conversant with the somewhat severe demands of the agriculturist upon the elements.

" Very bad for the hay," Dick returned ; " it's running up to bloom already. It'll make no growth worth speakin' of, if we don't have rain soon."

'•'Give me the farmer who is not dis- satisfied with the weather, and I will wear him in my heart of hearts!" laughed the Doctor, leading his horse round to the little stable, and nodding his good-bye.

Vaguely listening to the sound of the retreating hoofs over the paving-stones of the stable-yard, Dick went on down the

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street with strides that seemed to swallow the ground in great gulps, and to bring him to the little bow-windowed, low-pitched shop, smelling deliriously of coffee and spices, as if he had on seven-league boots.

THOMAS WELLBELOVED,

GROCER.

Absently Dick's wandering eyes perused the superscription. He rang the bell of the private entrance at the side of the shop, and was ushered by a little maid of fourteen into the presence of the family party.

Thomas Wellbeloved and his wife sat at opposite ends of the table, in whose centre was a bunch of lilacs in a gaudily-painted vase; the Coverdales were at the sides, drinking tear out of the best tea set, and disposed among them sat John Coverdale's two sisters, Jane and Sarah (a neighbor had driven them in from Winterbridge, the vil-

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lage at the foot of the Braisted hill), and Bessie Saunders, the grocer's niece, whom he had adopted on her mother's death, about two years ago.

Bessie's pretty face among the sombre company, with her bright fair hair, pink cheeks, and gray pathetic eyes, was like a ray of sunshine in the dull little parlor, with its dispiriting portraits of Mr. and Mrs. Well- beloved, and of Mr. Wellbeloved's father and mother, which shared the space on the walls with an oleograph of a romantic gorge in Switzerland, and an oil painting representing a Vandyke-brown neighbor- hood suffering from an impending thunder- storm.

A painter might have thought these faces gathered round the table, in the strong light and shade, a subject for a study after the manner of the Dutch masters ; but to the ordinary human being the scene was de-

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pressing. The sisters Coverdale perhaps contributed most to this effect, for they had none of the picturesqueness and character of old age, while they sadly lacked the charm and sweetness of youth.

They lived together in a small house in Winterbridge, on a minute income left them by their father, with the help of occasional presents of farm produce from their brother John. Nobody knew to what straits they were often reduced, for on their small pit- tance they managed to sustain a surprising amount of gentility. It would not be easy to say whether their God or their gentility were in truth nearer and dearer to their souls. So long had they served the two idols in close association, that the incense that they offered to the one object of wor- ship entered at the same time the nostrils of the other.

Jane Coverdale was plump, and not

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graceful, with a short0 nose, light-brown hair very smoothly brushed, small dark-brown eyes, and full cheeks. She wore a mantle of brocaded silk trimmed with jet, and a black bonnet. Her sister Sarah was of more strik- ing appearance. Dick used, to compare her to Nancy, not without some color of truth ; for Sarah Coverdale was as bony and angu- lar as the old mare, and her long face with the hair scratched fiercely off the harsh fore- head, had some ridiculous but undeniable resemblance to Nancy's lengthy and un- classic countenance. Indeed, Johnny and Tommy Coverdale used audaciously to liken Aunt Sarah's hair to poor Nancy's unfor- tunate tail, though .their mother frequently forbade them to harbor the unholy joke. To make matters worse, Miss Coverdale's nose had a very high alpine-looking ridge, suggesting the primeval granite, over which the skin was tightly stretched. The harsh

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accents of Mrs. Wellbeloved, a thin-lipped person, were interrupted by the entrance of her nephew. Bessie blushed hotly, turning away from the light, as she felt the blood rushing to her cheeks. But everybody was too much engaged with Dick to notice her.

Mr. Wellbeloved gave him a hearty welcome ; the aunt held out a bony hand. " Better late than never, Dick/' she said ; " sit ye doon beside yer Aunt Jane — there's a chair kept for ye. Bessie, hand him a scone. What's the matter, child? Can't you hold the dish straight ? They'll all be on the floor in a minute !" Jane rescued the plate in her brisk, practical way, and began to talk to Dick, while Bessie sat silently on his other side, wondering with beating heart when he would address a word to her.

She longed for and yet dreaded the moment. Her pulses were beating so loudly

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that she half feared they must be heard by her neighbors.

Fortunately her aunt and Jane Coverdale were both talking continuously, and her uncle was nobly trying to engage Sarah Coverdale in conversation, Sarah being deaf. Disagreement had set in about the new doctor's age : Mrs. Wellbeloved fighting with much heat for seven-and-twenty, while Jane was equally firm about twenty-five.

The grocer, out of sheer relief at finding his wife for once vigorously opposed, es- poused the cause against her, swearing that Dr. Hislop could not be a day older than five-and-twenty, in which opinion he was supported by the farmer. Sarah surprised everyone in the midst of the discussion by calling out " Fourteen last September !"

" Fourteen ! My dear Sarah, what are you thinking of ?" shouted Jane in her ear.

But Sarah persisted.

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She remembered as well as possible; it was just fourteen years come Michaelmas — and Jane ought to remember it too, for John had taken them to the manger and shown them the mare and foal — and a pretty little creature she was then !

" Why, the lass is talking about old Nancy !" exclaimed John, and everyone laughed except Mrs. Wellbeloved.

Meanwhile Dick and Bessie were left out of the conversation, neither showing any perspicacity or strong feeling on the subject of Dr. Hislop's years.

Yet Dick scarcely addressed a word to his trembling neighbor, and she found it hard work to keep back the tears at this sudden indifference, which he certainly had not led her to expect. He handed her butter three times running, but left her without bread, while her cup remained forlornly empty for a quarter of an hour under his very nose.

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Worse than all, in Bessie's eyes, Dick seemed to confuse her inextricably with his Aunt Jane, addressing them both in exactly the same polite meaningless tones, as if he were not quite sure which was which, or exactly where he was.

Bessie had been looking forward to this meeting with intense yet timid joy. She had put on her best frock, curled her hair, and bought a new tucker out of the pocket- money that her uncle gave her, hoping to look her best for Dick's sake. His kindness to her on previous Saturdays, his handsome face and ringing manly voice, that could become so tender at times — all this had touched the heart of the lonely girl, accus- tomed during her last two years to the shrill scolding of her aunt, whom nothing could please.

Only last Saturday had not Dick in his most charming manner asked her during tea

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to come for a walk by the river with him ? and had he not spoken words that thrilled her and haunted her day and night for the rest of the week? Had they not floated into her dreams and made the riverside hallowed to her? Ah! it was no dream, — his arm had been round her for a bewil- dering second, and if they had not heard voices — ! And she had opened her heart to him, told him how dearly she had loved her mother, and how terrible it had been to come from a happy home to this place, where even her uncle, who was anxious to be good to her, had to show his kindness by stealth for fear of his wife.

All these troubles had been poured, into the ears of the too fascinating listener, whose good looks and charming manner had dis- turbed so cruelly Bessie's peace of mind.

But, alas! where were now those engag- ing manners ?

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Dick sat at his aunt's tea-table, looking as much like a skeleton at the feast as his robust and blooming appearance would per- mit. If from habit he did fall into his old charming ways, it was generally the undesir- able Aunt Jane whom he chose for his min- istrations— a singular selection indeed, for Aunt Jane never had been affable to her nephew since she unluckily chanced to hear of his having toasted herself and Sarah in a bumper of Dedborough ale at the public- house in Winterbridge. Long after the meal was over, Dick suddenly roused him- self and tried to persuade his aunt to take another cup of tea.

"I have already refused three times!" said Miss Coverdale, sternly.

Bessie's eyes filled with tears. The sense of disappointment was so keen and strong, that it seemed to affect her physically: she wondered whether she would have strength

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to rise from the table. What was to become of her now ? Life would be unbearable !

Her uncle took John Coverdale to see his little garden, which occupied a very im- portant post in the old man's life ; Jane and Sarah went off to meet the farmer who was to drive them back to Winterbridge, Mrs. Coverdale and Mrs. Wellbeloved remained in the parlor for a gossip, while Bessie, sum- moning all her resolution, rushed out of the room. Dick, having been commissioned by his father to have Nancy put into the cart, walked down to the Crown, harnessed the animal and led her to the bridge, there to await the others. Tethering Nancy to the post of the hand-rail, he flung himself on the river-bank and opened his book. He trembled with something between delight and awe. It was like meeting his own soul. Yes, yes, he had felt all this, all this — though language was denied him. Ah !

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heaven, what rapture to feel so, and to have the gift of speech !

Dick plunged into his book and read on and on, with throbbing pulses, and wild up- bursts of longing and hope and slumbering power. He felt as one who has been awak- ened from sleep ; conscious for the first time of what was within him.

It was as if he had been in a well-filled world that was in perpetual twilight, and now the sun had risen, and he saw as well as touched everything therein, and knew that he touched and saw. His own wild little home among the moors, he perceived as some cultivated stranger might have per- ceived it ; it sank to its place in the great outer world which now seemed to take a permanent place in his consciousness, forming a majestic background to the motley images of human life.

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The marvel of the self-discovery over- whelmed him.

Yes, this same Witches' Sabbath had gone on within him when he wandered over the moors and the wild country round his home ; but then it was buried far down in his heart, untouched by the spell of speech. He realized now the gigantic rdle that lan- guage plays in the history of the soul.

Dick enjoyed a reputation in Winterbridge for deep learning, a reputation which made him smile sadly and bitterly. His longing for greater knowledge was to him as a gnaw- ing hunger which he had no hope of ap- peasing. To be praised for his learning! How hideous an irony it seemed ! Yet in a superficial manner he was at times inclined to be vain of his scholarship and to enjoy to the full the advantages it gave him.

At the public-house in Winterbridge whither a certain convivial instinct some-

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times led him (and a certain instinct for mis- chief made him toast his supernaturally re- spectable aunts), he had often constituted himself leader of the revels in virtue of his acquirements ; and although some of the old men were disposed to shake their heads at this new-fangled youngster who had been educated at a university, yet the very vigor and social talents of the young fellow won him a position among the frequenters of the Wheatsheaf which he held against all comers. Dick at last laid down his book with a huge sigh, and looked round at the river and the high hills on the opposite side of the valley. At a little distance at the foot of a tree he noticed a figure which seemed to him familiar. Presently he saw the head bend down, and in the still afternoon he could catch the sound of sobbing. It was the spot on which, only a week ago, he had stood by the riverside with Bessie and thrown his arm

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round her impulsively, regretting what he had done the moment after.

He felt certain now that this was Bessie, and that she was sobbing because of his neg- lect. Full of remorse, he sprang to his feet, slipped her rival into his pocket, and stood by her side. The girl started, coloring and trembling and trying in vain to hide her tears.

"What is the matter, Bessie?" inquired Dick in that fatally tender voice of his. "You must not cry like this: tell me what it is: has the aunt been unkind to you?"

Bessie, thrilling with the softness of his accents, instinctively prolonged the tender catechism by evasion and shyness — both be- ing genuine, yet both exaggerated. If tears could evoke this delightful mood, Bessie was in no hurry to banish them. Yet, like waves after the wind has sunk, the sobs still shook her convulsively, but now they were only

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painless relics of former perturbations. Dick, in the flood-tide of his own emotions, was ready to be carried off his feet at the sight of strong feeling in another.

As he looked at the girl at his feet, weep- ing, as he knew or believed, because of him, he flung himself on the grass, threw his arms round her, and drew her face towards his, imprisoning both her hands, so that she had to lie helpless with her head on his breast.

She could see the lime-tree above her and the blue sky shining through, and she wondered in that rapturous interval whether heaven could ever come near to a moment such as this. Her girlish sense of propriety disturbed even that short experience of bliss, and made her give a little struggle to rise.

"Not till you tell me what you were crying for," said Dick. *

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" Let me up, let me up — I ought not to — suppose somebody were to come ?"

^Then somebody would wish himself in my place."

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" Or mine," Bessie thought, but propriety again intervened and she did not say it.

Between the bliss of her position (ah ! surely it was impossible !) and the uneasiness caused by her sense of the fitting, Bessie's feelings were overwhelming. Dick looked down admiringly at the fair hair lying in reprehensible disorder over his brown coat, at the white brow which it shaded, and the red lips parted in a tremulous smile. Not for the first time in his life, Dick fancied himself in love. The emotion that had been stirred in such copious streams by the words of the poet overflowed into a fresh channel. Again Bessie struggled to move, but he gathered her closer to him, bent his lips to her ear And whispered :

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" Was it about me that you were crying, Bessie?"

She gave a faint "Yes," blushing over cheek and brow ; and then she felt his kisses on her lips, and heard his words of muttered self-reproach and murmured tenderness in her ear. With a sigh she surrendered herself to her happiness. To love and be loved was Bessie's one idea in life. She had no ambitions, no thoughts beyond the doings and sayings of those who were dear to her. Her affections were strong and faithful, eager to pour forth after the cruel two years of uninterrupted repression which she had suffered under her uncle's roof. The feverishness of her emotions, and the swiftness of her response to Dick's first debonnair advances, arose from the same cause.

Dick was an ardent wooer, and Bessie felt

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bewildered and almost disturbed at her own intense happiness.

Her first uneasy little impulses of reserve were overwhelmed now in the far stronger instincts of her nature.

The spell was broken by the striking of the clock from the gray church tower, among the lime-trees.

An hour had passed since they met here by the river, an hour of bliss never in one of these lives to be surpassed.

Dick heard his father's voice calling to him. Bessie instinctively remained behind the tree-trunk.

Dick took her in his arms once more, pressed a strong farewell kiss on her lips, and left her.

" Till this day week, darling !"

Bessie lay on the grassy bank alone, while the shadows lengthened round her and the hills changed in tint. The clock of the

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gray tow.er struck its mellow warning again before she dragged herself from the spot, and returned to receive her aunt's scolding.

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