The Golden Apple

by Agnes Castle and Egerton Castle

THE GOLDEN APPLE

 

By AGNES and EGERTON CASTLE

 

THE orchard was on a hill, the farmhouse lay at the foot. There was a long field, in spring a palace of cowslips, between the orchard and the house.

This September dawn Pomona came through it and left a dark track of green along the dew-bepearled grass. Little swathes of mist hung over the cowslip field, but up in the orchard the air was already clear. It was sweet with the scent of the ripe fruit, and the tart, clean autumn puugency left by the light frost.

Pomona shifted the empty basket that she had borne on her head to the ground and began to fill it with rosy-cheeked apples. Some she shook from the laden boughs, some she picked up from the sward where they had fallen from the tree; but she chose only the best and ripest.

A shaft of sunlight broke over the purple hills. It shone on her ruddy hair and on her smooth cheek. She straightened herself to look out across the valley at the eastern sky: all sights of Nature were beautiful to her and gave her a joy that, yet, she had never learnt to put into words, hardly into thoughts. Now as she stood gazing, someone came along the road that skirted the orchard, and catching sight of her, halted and became lost in contemplation of her, even as she of the sunrise pageant.

As evidently as Pomona in her homespun skirt and bodice belonged to the farmhouse, so did he to the great castle near by. The gentleman had made as careful a toilet for his early walk as if he had been bound for St. James's. His riding-coat was of delicate hue, and laces fluttered at his wrists and throat. His black lovelocks hung carefully combed on either shoulder from under his beplumed hat. A rapier swung at his side, and as he stood he flicked at it with the glove in his bare hand. He had a long, pale face and long eyes with drooping lids and haughty eyebrows; a small, upturned moustache gave a tilt of mockery to the grave lips. He looked very young, and yet so sedate and self-possessed and scornful that he might have known the emptiness of the world a hundred years.

Pomona turned with a start, feeling herself watched. She gazed for a moment in surprise, and a deep blush rose in her cheeks; then, still staring, she made a slow country curtsy. Off went the befeathered hat: the gentleman returned her salutation by a profound bow. Then he leaped the little ditch into the orchard and threaded his way through the trees towards her. She watched him come; her great eyes were like the eyes of a deer, as shy, as innocent.

"Good morrow, sir," said she, with another curtsy, and then corrected herself quickly, "good morrow, my lord." For, if he came from the Castle, he was surely a lord.

"Good morrow, madam," returned he pleasantly. His glance appraised her with open admiration.

What a glorious creature! What proportions; what amber and red on those smooth cheeks; what ruddy radiance in that sun-illumined hair! What a column of a throat, and how white the skin where the coarse kerchief parted above the laced bodice! What lines of bust and hip, of arm and wrist; generous but perfect! A goddess! He glanced at the strong, sun-burnt hands; they were ringless. Unowned then, as yet, this superb nymph.

His long eyes moved at their pleasure; and she stood waiting in repose, though the colour came and went richly on her rich cheek. Then he bowed again, the hat clasped to his bosom.

"Thank you," said he, and replaced his beaver with a turn of the wrist that set all the grey and white plumes rippling round the crown.

"Sir?" she queried, startled, and on her second thought, "my lord?"

At this he broke into a smile. When he smiled, his haughty face gained a rare sweetness.

"Thank you for rising thus early and coming into the orchard and standing in the sun-rays and being, my maid, so beautiful. I little thought to find so fair a vision. 'Twill be a sweet one to carry forth with me … if it be the last on earth."

Her wits were never quick to work. She went her country way as a rule as straight and sweetly and unthinkingly as the lilies grow. To question why a noble visitor at the Castle—and a visitor it must be, since his countenance was unfamiliar—should walk forth at the dawn and speak as if this morning saunter were to death, never entered her head.

She stammered: "Oh, sir!" to his compliment, and paused, her lip quivering over the inarticulate sense of her own awkwardness.

"Have you been gathering apples?" quoth he, still smiling on her.

"Aye, sir," she said, "to make preserve withal"; and faltered yet again, "my lord!"

"Aye," approved he. "It has a fair sound in your mouth. Would I were your lord! What is your name?"

She told him: "Pomona." Whereat he laughed and repeated it, as if he liked the sound. Then he looked at the east, and behold! the sun had risen, a full ball of crimson in a swimming sea of rose. The light glimmered upon his pale cheek and on the fine laces of his shirt, redly as if with stains of new blood.

"I must hence," he said, and his voice had a stern, far-away sound. "Farewell, Pomona! Wilt thou not wish me well?"

"My lord?"

"Wilt thou not?"

"Oh, indeed, my lord, I do." And she was moved on a sudden, she knew not why, and the tears gathered like a mist in her eyes. "With all my heart," she said.

He made her a final bow, bending till his curls fell over his face.

"I thank you."

8he watched him walk away from her in and out the apple trees with his careless stride, and leap the little ditch again; and so on down the road.

And when he was lost to her sight, she still stood looking at the point where the way dipped and vanished and she had seen the last flutter of the grey feathers.

After a while she drew a long sigh and passed her hands over her eyes, as if she were awakening from a dream. Then she began mechanically to fill her basket once more. All the ruddiness faded from the sky. The sun swam up into the blue, and a white brilliance laid hold of the dewy valley. Delicate gossamer threads floated high above the apple trees, against the vault of ever deeper blue. Somewhere from the hidden folds of the land a church bell began to chime. Then all at once Pomona dropped her basket, and while the apples rolled, yellow, green and red, in all directions, she set off running in the direction the gentleman had taken.

Why she ran, she knew not, but something drove her with a mighty urgency. Her heart beat thickly, and her breath came short, though as a rule there was no maid in the countryside that could run as she did. When she came to the foot of the hill, she paused, and there, by the bramble brake, where the firwood began, she saw, lying on the lip of the baby stream, a gauntleted grey glove. She turned into the wood.

The pine needles were soft under her feet. The pine stems grew like the pillars of a church aisle, and the air was sweeter with their fragrance than any incense that was ever burned.

And after, but a little way, where the forest aisle widened into a glade, she came on the grand riding-coat tossed in a heap; across it was flung an empty scabbard. And beyond, outstretched at the foot of a tree——! Pomona stopped short. Now she knew why she had had to run so fast!

He lay as if asleep, his head pillowed upon a branching root; but it was no slumber that held him. His features, whiter than ivory, were strangely sharpened and aged, blue shadows were about nostrils and mouth, the parted lips under the mocking moustache were set in a terrible gravity; they were purple, like dead red roses. Between the long, half-open lids the eyeballs shone silver. It was not now God's lovely sunrise that stained the white cambric of his shirt. From where it had escaped from his relaxed hand, a long, keen-bladed sword gleamed among the pine needles.

Pomona knelt down. She parted the ruffled shirt with a steady hand; his heart still beat; but below it was a wound that might well cause death. She sat back on her heels and thought. She could not leave him to call for help, for he might die alone; neither could she sit useless beside him and watch him go. She took her resolution quickly. She rose, then bending, she braced herself and gathered him into her arms as if he had been a child. He was no taller than she, and slight and lean of build. She was used to burdens. But she had not thought to find him so heavy. She staggered and shifted him for an easier grip; and then, as his pallid head lay loose and languid against her shoulder, the half-open eyelids fluttered, the upturned eyes rolled and fixed them- selves. He looked at her; dark, dark as eternity was his gaze. She bent her head—his lips were moving.

"Pomona!"

It was the merest breath, but she knew it was her name, as surely as if it had been shouted to her. Nearer she bent to him; a flicker as of a smile came upon those purple-tinted lips.

"Kiss me, Pomona!"

She kissed him, and thought she drew from his cold mouth the last sigh. But now she was strong. She could have gone to the end of the earth with this burden in her arms.

His black hair, dank and all uncurled, fell over her bare arm. With the movement his wound opened afresh, and as she pressed him against her she felt his blood soak through her bodice to the skin. Then her soul yearned over him with an indescribable, inarticulate passion of desire—to help him, to heal him! If she could have given her blood to him, she would have given it with the joy with which a mother gives life to the babe at her breast.

Pomona was mistress of herself and of her farm, and lived alone with her servants. Though she was a firm ruler, these latter considered her soft on certain points. They had known her, before this, carry home a calf that had staked itself, a mongrel cur half drowned. But a murdered gentleman, that was beyond everything!

"Heavens ha' mercy, mistress!" cried Sue, rising to the occasion, while the others gaped and clapped their hands and whispered together. "Shall I fetch old Mall to help you lay him out?"

"Fool!" panted Pomona, "Bring me the Nantes brandy!"

*****

Earl Blantyre woke from a succession of dreams, in which he had most varied and curious experiences; known strange horrors and strange sweetnesses, flown to more aërial heights than any bird, and sunk to deeper depth than the sea could hold; fought mending combats, and lain in peace in tender arms.

He woke. His eyelids were heavy. His hand had grown so weighty that it was as much as he could do to lift it. And yet as he held it up, he hardly knew it for his own; 'twas a skeleton thing. There was a sound in his ears which, dimly he recognised, had woven in to most of his dreams these days, a whirring, soothing sound like the ceaseless beating of moth's wings. As he breathed deeply and with delicious ease, there was fragrance of herbs in his nostrils. A tag of poetry floated into his mind—

I know a bank where the wild thyme blows.

He turned his head and went to sleep again, and dreamt not at all.

Pomona lighted the lamp and, shading it with her hand, came with soft tread into the guest-chamber. He was still asleep. She set down the light, mended the fire with another log, peeped into the pan of broth simmering on the hob, and then sat to her spinning-wheel once more. Suddenly the wool snapped; she started to find that he was holding back the curtain with a finger and thumb, and had turned his head on the pillow to watch her; his eyes gleamed in the firelight. She rose and came to him quickly.

"So you were spinning," he said. His voice was very weak, but how different from those tones of dreadful clearness, of hoarse muttering with which she had been so sadly familiar!

Pomona knelt beside him and put her hand on his forehead, on his wrist.

"Thank God!" she said.

"By all means," he answered, peering at her amusedly. "Natheless, why?"

"Nay, you must not speak," she bade him, and rose to pour the soup into a bowl.

He watched her while she stirred and tasted and added salt. He was smiling. When she lifted him, pillows and all, propped against her strong arm, and held the bowl to his lips at a compelling angle, he laughed outright. It was rather a feeble thing in the way of laughs, but to Pomona it was as wonderful and beautiful an achievement as a child's first word iu the mother's ear.

"Drink," she said firmly, while her heart throbbed in joy.

"Now you must sleep," she added, as she settled him with extraordinary art. But sleep was far away from those curious, wandering eyes.

"Bring the light closer and come to the bed again."

His voice had gained strength from Pomona's fine broth, and it rang in command. Without another word she obeyed him. As she sat down on the little oaken stool, where he could see her, the light fell on her face, and from behind her the fire shone ruddily in her crown of hair.

"I remember you now," said he, lifting himself on his elbow. "You stood in the snnrise gathering apples for preserve; you are the nymph of the orchard."

He fell back with a sigh of satisfaction. "And your name is Pomona," said he.

The girl, her capable work-marked hands lying folded on her knee, sat in absolute stillness; but her heart was beating stormily under the folds of her kerchief.

The sick man's beard had grown close and fine round chin and cheeks during these long dreams of his. His hair lay in a mass on one shoulder; it had been carefully tied back with a riband, and in all that black setting the pallor of his countenance seemed deathlike. Yet she knew that he was saved. He lay awhile, gazing at the beflowered ceiling of the great four-post bed, and by and by his voice came sighing—

"And after that what hap befell me? Help me to remember."

"I found you in the wood," said she slowly. "You were lying wounded."

He interrupted her with a sharp cry.

"Enough! I mind me now. Was I alone?"

"Quite alone, my lord."

"And my sword?"

There was a current of evil eagerness running through the feeble voice.

"Your sword, my lord?"

"Pshaw! was it clean, child? Bore it no sign upon the blade?"

"There was blood on it," said Pomona gravely, "to a third of the length."

The duellist gave a sigh.

"That is well," said he, and fell once more into silence, striving to knit present and past in his mind.

After a while he shifted himself on his pillows so that he again looked on her.

Then his eyes wandered round the dark panelling, on the polished surface of which the firelight gleamed like rosy flowers. He touched the coarse sheet, the patchwork quilt, then lifted the sleeve of the homespun shirt that covered his thin arm, and gazed inquiringly from it to the quiet woman.

"How do I come here? Where am I?" queried he imperiously.

"I brought you; you are in my house," she answered him.

"You brought me?"

"Aye, my lord."

"You found me wounded," he puzzled, drawing his haughty brows together, "and you brought me here to your house? How?"

"I carried you," said Pomona.

"You carried me!"

The statement was so amazing, and Lord Blantyre's wits were still so weakened, that he turned giddy and was fain to close his eyes and allow the old vagueness to cradle him again for a few minutes.

Pomona prayed that he might be sleeping; but as she was stealthily rising from his bed-side, he opened his eyes and held her with them.

"You carried me, you brought me to your own house? Why?"

"I wanted to nurse you," said poor Pomona.

She knew no artifice whereby she could answer, yet conceal the truth. But it was as if her heart were being torn from her bit by bit.

His eyes, hard and curious, softened; so did the imperious voice.

"How did you keep them out?"

"Keep them out?"

She was beautiful, but she was dull.

"My kinsfolk, from the Castle."

Pomona stood like a child caught in grave fault.

"They do not know," she answered at last.

It was his turn to ejaculate in amazement: "Not know!"

"I did not want them," said she then, doggedly. "I did not want any fine ladies about, nor physicians with their lancets. When my father was cut with the scythe, they sent a leech from the Castle, who blooded him, and he died. I did not want you to die."

She spoke the last words almost in a whisper, then she waited breathlessly. There came a low sound from the pillows. His laugh, that had been music to her a minute ago, now stabbed her to the heart. She turned, the blood flashing into her cheeks; yet his face grew quickly grave; he spoke, his voice was kind.

"Stay. I want to understand. You carried me, all by yourself, from the wood; is it so?"

"Aye."

"And no one knows where I am, or that you found me?"

"No. I went down to the wood again and brought back your coat and your sword and scabbard and your glove. I forbade my people to speak. None of the great folk know you are here."

"And you nursed me?"

"Aye."

"Was I long ill?"

"Fourteen days."

"I have been near death, have I not?"

"You have indeed!"

"And you nursed me?" he repeated again. "How did you learn such science?"

"My lord, I have loved and cared for the dumb things all my life. There was the calf that was staked——" She stopped; that laugh was torture.

"Go on, Pomona!"

"I bathed your wound in cold water over and over till the bleeding stopped, and then, when the fever came, I knew what brew of herbs would help you. One night I thought that you would die——"

"Go on, Pomona."

"You could not breathe, no matter how high I laid you on the pillows ——"

"Aye! Why dost thou halt again? What didst thou then?"

"I held you in my arms," she said. "You seemed to get your breath better that way, and then you slept at last."

"While you held me?" he proceeded. "How long did you hold me in your arms, Pomona?"

"My lord," she said, "the whole night."

Upon this he kept silence quite a long time, and she sat down on her stool again and waited. She had nursed him and saved him, and now he would soon be well; she ought surely to rejoice, but she knew not why, her heart was like lead. Presently he called her; he would be lifted, shifted, his pillows were hot, his bed-clothes pressed on him. As she bent over him, the fretful expression suddenly was smoothed from his features.

"I remember now," he said, with a singular gleam in his eyes. "I remember, Pomona; you kissed me."

*****

My Lord Blantyre began now to have more consecutive recollections of that time of dreams; and when the night came, he felt mightily injured, mightily affronted to find that the shadow of the watcher in the rush-light against the wall belonged to a bent and aged figure, was a grotesque profile, instead of the mild grey angel that had soothed him hitherto. So deep seemed the injury, so cruel the neglect, that the ill-used patient could not find it in him to consent to sleep, but tossed till his bed grew unbearable, pettishly refused to drink from Mall's withered hand, was quite positive that the pain in his side was very bad again, and that his angry heart-beats were due to fever.

It drew towards midnight. Again Mall brought the cooling drink and offered it patiently. Like an old owl she stood and blinked. Her toothless jaws worked.

He made an angry gesture of refusal; the cup was dashed from her hand and fell clattering on the boards. She cried out in dismay, and he in fury—

"Out of my sight, you Hecate!"

Then suddenly Pomona stood beside them. So soft her tread that neither had heard her come.

"Lord, be good to us! the poor gentleman's mad again!" whimpered Mall, as she went down on her knees to mop.

Pomona was in a white wrapper, well starched; the wide sleeves spread out like wings. Her hair hung in one loose plait to her knees.

"You look like a monstrous beautiful great angel!" cried he. Her hand was on his pulse. He was as pleased and soothed as a naughty infant when it is lifted from its cradle and nursed.

She stood, and seemed encircled by the fragrance of the sacrificed cup, lavender and thyme and other sweet and wholesome herbs.

She thought he wandered, yet his pulse was steadying down under her finger into a very reasonable pace for a convalescent. She looked down at him with puzzled eyes.

"What is it, my lord?"

"Prithee," said he. "Though you live so quiet here, my maid, and keep your secrets so well, you would have known, would you not, had there been a death at the Castle?"

"Surely, my lord," she said, and bent closer to comfort him. "Nay, it must be that you have the fever again, I fear. Nay, all is well with your kinsfolk. Mall, haste thee with another cup of the drink. Is the wound painful, my good lord, and how goes it with the breathing?"

As she bent, he caught her great plait in both his hands and held it so that she could not straighten herself.

"It would go vastly better," cried he, "I should breathe with infinite more ease, my sweet nurse, and forget that I had ever had a gaping hole to burn the side of me, could you but tell me that there had been even a trifle of sickness at the house beyond. Come, my sword was red, you know! It was not red for nothing! Was not Master Leech sent for in haste to draw more blood?—the excellent physician thou mindest, who helped thy worthy father so pleasantly from this world? "

She would have drawn from him in soft sorrow and shame, for she understood now, but that his weak fingers plucked her back. Truly there seemed to be a devil in his eyes. Yet she was too tender of him not to humour him, as the mother her spoilt child.

"Hast heard, Mall, of aught amiss at the Castle?" quoth she, turning her head to address the old woman at the fire.

"There was a gentleman out hunting with the Lady Julia o' Thursday," answered the crone, "as carried his arm in a sling, I heard tell; though he rode with the best of them."

"Faugh!"

Lord Blantyre loosed Pomona's tress and lay back sullenly. He drank the cup when she held it to his lips in the same sullen silence; but when she shook his pillows and smoothed his sheet and cooed to him in the dear voice of his dream: "Now sleep!" he murmured complainingly: "Not if you leave me."

Pomona's heart gave, a great leap, and a rose-flush grew on her face, lovelier than ever sunrise or fireglow had called there.

"I will not leave you, my lord," she replied. Her voice filled the whole room with deep harmony.

He woke in the grey dawn, and there sat Pomona, her eyes dreaming, her hands clasped, her face a little stern in its serene, patient weariness. He cried to her sharply, because of the sharpness with which his heart smote him.

"Hast sat thus the whole night long?"

"Surely!" said she.

"Well, to bed with you, then," he bade her impatiently. "Nay, I want naught. Send one of your wenches to my bell—some Sue or Pattie, so it be a young one. And you—to bed, to bed!"

But she would not leave him till she had tested how it stood with him, according to her simple skill. As her hand rested on his brow, "Why Pomona?" queried he.

"My lord?"

"Pomona. 'Tis a marvellous fine name, and marvellous fitting to a nymph of the orchard. Pomona!"

"Indeed," she answered him in her grave way, "Sue or Pattie would better become me. But my mother was book-learned, sir, and town-bred, and had her fancies. She sat much in the orchard the spring that I was born."

"Aye," he mused. "So thy mother was book-learned and fanciful!" Then briskly he asked her: "Wouldst thou not like to know my name, Pomona? Unless, indeed, you know it already?"

She shook her head.

"Why, what a woman are you! In spite of apples, no daughter of Eve at all?"

She still shoot her head, and smiling faintly: "To me it could make no difference," she said.

"Well, now you shall know," he said, "and take it to your maiden dreams. I am Rupert, Earl of Blantyre."

"What!" she cried quickly, "the——" she broke off and hesitated. "The great Earl of Blantyre," she pursued then, dropping her eyes: "the King's friend!"

His laugh rang out somewhat harsh.

"What! so solitary a nymph, so country-hidden, and yet so learned of the gossip of the great world?"

"People talk," she murmured, crimsoning as in the deepest shame.

"And you know what they call me. No! not the Great Earl, hypocrite, the Wicked Earl! You knew it?"

She bent her head.

He laughed again. "Why, now, what a nightmare for you! Here he lies, and oh, Pomona, you have prolonged his infamous career!"

*****

The Wicked Earl was an angelic patient for two days. On the third he was promoted to the oak settle, wrapped in a garment of the late farmer's, of which be made much kindly mirth. It was a golden day of joy in the lonely farmhouse.

On the fourth morning, however, he wakened to a mood of seriousness, not to say ill-temper. His first words were to request writing-paper and a quill, ink, and the great seal that hung on his watch-chain.

Pomona stood by while he wrote; helped him with paper and wax. She saw into how deep a frown his brows were contracted, and her heart seemed altogether to fail her. She expected the end; it was coming swiftly, and not as she expected it.

"May I trespass on your kindness so far as to send a horseman with this letter to the Castle?" said he very formally.

She took it from him with her country curtsy.

"You will be leaving us, my lord?"

He glanced at her through his drooping lids.

"Can I trespass for ever on your hospitality?"

She went forth with the letter quickly, without another word.

It was but little after noon when there came a great clatter into the simple farmyard that was wont to echo to no brisker sounds than the lumbering progress of the teamsters and their wagon, or the patient steps of Pomona's dairy-cows. A great coach with four horses and running footmen had drawn up before the farm-porch. A man in dark livery, with a sleek, secret face, slipped down from the rumble, reached for a valise, and disappeared round the house. The coach door opened, and the Lady Julia Majendie descended, followed by no less a person than my Lord Majendie himself, who was seldom known to leave his library, much less to accompany his daughter out driving. His presence marked a great occasion. And with them was a very fine lady—a stranger to any of the farm, a little lady with dark hair in ringlets, and high plumes to a great hat, and a dress that shone with as many pale colours as a pigeon's breast. She sniffed, and "Oh!" cried she in very high, loud tones, pressing a vinaigrette to her nose, "can my poor brother be in such a place, "and yet alive?"

"Hush, madam!" said Lord Majendie somewhat testily, for Pomona stood in the door. "I am sure we owe naught but gratitude to this young woman."

He was a gaunt, snuffy, untidy old man, in a dilapidated wig, but his eyes were shrewd and kindly behind the large gold-rimmed spectacles. He peered at Pomona, pale and beautiful.

Lady Julia had evidently inherited her father's short sight, for she, too, was staring through an eyeglass. She carried it on a gold chain, and when she lifted it to one eye, her small, fair face took an air of indescribable impertinence.

She interrupted father and friend, coming to the front with a scarcely perceptible movement of pointed elbows.

"Bring us instantly to Lord Blantyre."

"This way, an it please you," said Pomona.

She led them in, and there in the great kitchen, well within the glow from the deep hearth, propped on patchwork cushions, wrapped in blue homespun, lay the invalid.

The ladies were picking their steps across the flags with a great parade of lifting silken skirts; the worthy old scholar. Lord Majendie, was following, with an expression of benign, childlike interest, but all three seemed struck by the same amazement, almost amounting to consternation. Lord Blantyre lifted his pallid, black-bearded countenance and looked at them with a gaze of uncompromising ill-humour.

"Good Lord, brother!" exclaimed the little lady with the ringlets at last. She made a faint lurch against Lady Julia.

"If your sisterly feelings are too much for you, and you are contemplating a swoon, pray be kind enough to accomplish it elsewhere, Alethea," said Lord Blantyre.

"Oh, my excellent young friend! oh, my dear lord! Tut, tut, tut! I should hardly have known you," ejaculated the old man. "You must tell us how this has come about; we must get you home. Tush! you must not speak. I see you are yet but weakly. My good young woman, this has been a terrible business—nay, I have no doubt he does your nursing infinite credit; but why not have let us know? Tut, tut!"

Before Pomona could speak—and, indeed, as she had no excuse to offer, the words were slow in coming—her patient intervened curtly—

"I would not permit her to tell you," quoth he.

She glanced at him startled; his eyes were averted.

"Oh, my lord! this is cruel hearing for us!" minced Lady Julia.

She might have spoken to the wall for all the effect her smile and ogle produced on him. She turned her glass upon Pomona and ran it up and down her till the poor girl felt herself so coarse, so common, so ugly, that she could have wished herself dead.

"Pray, Lord Majendie," said Blantyre, "is Colonel Craven yet with you?"

Lady Alethea tossed her head, flushed, and shot a look, half defiance, half fear, at her brother.

He propped himself up on his elbow, turned and surveyed her with a sneering smile.

"How pale and wasted art thou, my fair Alethea! Hast been nursing the wounded hero and pining with his pangs? or is't perchance all fond fraternal anguish concerning my unworthy self? Oh, see you, I know what an uproar you made about me all over the countryside, what a hue and cry for the lost brother!"

"A plague on it, Julia!" said Lord Majendie, scratching his wig perplexedly and addressing his daughter in a loud whisper, "what ails the fellow? Does he wander, think you?"

But Lady Alethea seemed to find a meaning in the sick man's words, for she tossed her head once more and answered sharply—

"No, brother, I made no hue and cry for you, for 'tis not the first time it has been your pleasure to play truant and leave your loving friends all without news. How was I to know that you were more sorely hurt than Colonel Craven? He left you, he told us, standing by a tree—laughing at his pierced arm. You are not wont to come out of these affairs so ill."

That they were of the same blood could not be doubted, for it was the very same sneer that sat on both their mouths.

"And pray, since we must bandy words," she went on, gaining yet more boldness, "why did you thus keep me wilfully in suspense?"

"Because," said he sweetly, "I was too ill for thy nursing, my Alethea."

"I presume," said she, "you had a nurse to your fancy?"

Her black eyes rolled flashing on Pomona. The Earl made no reply.

"Let me assure your lordship," put in his would-be host here quickly, "that Colonel Craven is gone."

"'Tis well, then," replied Blantyre ceremoniously, "and I will, with your permission, this very night avail myself of your hospitality for a few days; but you will, I fear, have to send a litter for me. To sit in a coach is yet beyond me."

And while the good-natured nobleman instantly promised compliance, Lord Blantyre, waving away further discourse with a gesture, went on wearily:

"Let me beg of you not to remain or keep these ladies in surroundings so little suited to their gentility. And the sooner, my good lord, you can despatch that litter, the sooner shall you have the joy of my company. Farewell, Julia, for but a brief space. I trust that you and Colonel Craven enjoyed the chase the other day. We shall meet soon again, sister; pray you bear up against our present parting."

Both the ladies swept him such very fine curtsies that the homely kitchen seemed full of the rustle of silk. Lady Julia Majendie had a little fixed smile on her lips.

The farm-servants were all watching at the windows to see the great ladies get into their coach, to see it wheel about with the four horses clattering and curveting. Pomona and Lord Blantyre were alone. She stood, her back against the wall, her head held high—not in pride, for Pomona knew no pride, but with the natural carriage of her perfect strength and balance. Her eyes looked forth, grieving yet untearful, her mouth was set into lines of patient endurance. He regarded her darkly.

"I go this evening, Pomona."

"Aye, my lord."

The tall, wooden clock ticked off a heavy minute.

"Is my man here?" asked Lord Blantyre. "Bid him come to me, then, to help me to my room."

His lordship's toilet was a lengthy proceeding, for neither his strength nor his temper was equal to the strain. But it was at length accomplished, and perfumed, shaven, clothed once again in fine linen and silk damask, wrapped in a great, furred cloak. Lord Blantyre sat in the wooden armchair and drank the cordial that Pomona had prepared him.

He was panting with his exertions, his heart was fluttering, but Pomona's recipes were cunning; in a little while he felt his pulses calm down and a glow of power return to him, and with the help of his cane and his servant he was able to advance towards the door.

"The young woman is outside waiting to take leave of your lordship," volunteered the sleek Craik.

His master halted and fixed him with an arrogant eye.

"The young woman of the farm," explained the valet glibly. "And knowing your lordship likes me to see to these details, I have brought a purse of gold—twenty pieces, my lord."

He stretched out his hand and chinked the silken bag as he spoke.

"For whom is that?" asked Lord Blantyre.

The man stared.

"For the young woman, my lord."

Lord Blantyre steadied himself with the hand that gripped the speaker's arm; then lifting the cane with the other, struck the fellow across the knuckles so sharply that with, a howl he let the purse fall.

"Pick it up," said the Wicked Earl; "put it into your pocket, and remember, for the future, that the servant who presumes to know his master's business least understands his own."

The litter was brought to the door of his chamber, and they carried him out through the kitchen to the porch; and there, where Pomona stood waiting, he bade them halt and set it down. She leaned towards him to look on him, she told herself, for the last time. Her heart contracted, to see him so wan and exhausted.

"Good-bye, Pomona," said he, gazing up into her sorrowful eyes, distended in the evening dimness. He had seen a deer look at him thus, in the dusk, out of a thicket.

"Good-bye, my lord," said she.

"Ah, Pomona!" said he, "I made a sweeter journey the day I came here!"

And without another word to her he signed to the men, and they buckled to their task again.

Her heart shuddered as she watched the slow procession pass into the shadows. They might have been bearing a coffin. With the instinct of her inarticulate grief, she went to seek the last memory of him in his room. By the light of a flaring tallow candle, she found Lord Blantyre's man re-packing his master's valise. He looked offensively at her as she entered.

"Young woman," said he, shaking his Lead, "you have taken a very great liberty."

Then picking up the coarse white shift and surveying it with an air of intense disgust. "'Tis a wonder," quoth he, "his lordship didn't die of this."

*****

"I fear, my fair Julia, that, fondly as I should love it, I shall never call you sister."

Julia turned at the fleer and flung a glance of acute anger at her friend.

"If you had not been yourself so determined to have the nursing of Colonel Craven's wound, my dearest Alethea," responded she sweetly, "the friendly desire of your heart might be in a better way of accomplishment. And oh!" she fanned herself and tittered, "I pity you, my poor Alethea, I do indeed, when I think of those wasted attentions."

Lady Alethea had her feelings less under control than her cool-blooded friend. Her dark cheek empurpled, her full lips trembled.

"My woman tells me," proceeded Julia, "that the creature Craik, your brother's man, hath no doubt of my Lord Blantyre's infatuation. 'Pomona!' he will call in his sleep. Pomona! 'Tis the wench's name. I wish you joy of your sister-in-law, indeed!"

Lady Alethea wheeled upon her with an eye of fire.

"Need my brother wed the woman because he calls upon her name?" she mocked.

"If I know my lord your brother, he might well wed her even because he need not …" smiled the other. "Now you are warned. 'Tis none of my concern, I thank my Providence! You will be saved a dairy-maid, at least."

Alethea's wavering colour, her flurried breath, bore witness to discomposure.

"My Lord Blantyre," pursued Lady Julia relentlessly, "has ever taken pleasure in astonishing the world."

Lady Alethea clenched her hands.

"Your father rules here: let him transport the slut!"

"Nay," said Julia. She placed her hand upon the heaving shoulder and looked at her friend with a singular light in her pale yet brilliant eyes. "Do you think to break a man of a fancy by such measures? 'Twould be as good as forging the ring. Nay, my sweet, I can better help thee—aye, and give thee an hour's sport besides."

And as Alethea raised questioning eyes, Julia shook her silver-fair ringlets and laughed again.

"Leave it to me," quoth she.

*****

"Will Mistress Pomona favour the Lady Julia Majendie with her company at the Castle?"

This was the message carried to the farmhouse by a mounted servant. He had a pillion behind him on the stout palfrey, and his orders were, he said, to bring Mistress Pomona back with him.

Pomona came running out, with the harvest sunshine on her copper hair; her cheek was drained of blood.

"Is my lord ill again?" she queried breathlessly.

The man shook his head; either he was dull or well-drilled.

Pomona mounted behind him without a second's more delay, just as she was, bare-headed, her apron stained with apple-juice, and her sleeves rolled up above her elbows. She had no thought for herself, and only spoke to bid the servant hurry.

For a fortnight she had heard no word of her patient. In her simple heart she could conceive no other reason for being summoned now than because he needed her nursing.

But when she reached the Castle, and was passed with mocking ceremony from servant to servant, the anxious questions died on her lips; and when she was ushered, at length, into a vast bedchamber, hung with green silk, gold fringed, and was greeted by Lady Julia, all in green herself, like a mermaid, smiling sweetly at her from between her pale ringlets, she was so bewildered that she forgot even to curtsy. She never heeded how the tirewoman, who had last received her, tittered as she closed the door.

"A fair morning to you, mistress," said Lady Julia. "I am sensible of your kindness in coming to my hasty invitation."

"Madam!" faltered Pomona, and remembered her révérence; "I am ever at your service, honourable madam; I hope my lord is not sick again."

"My father!" mocked the mermaid, running her white hand through her curls. But Pomona neither understood nor practised the wiles of women.

"I meant my Lord Blantyre," said she.

"Oh, the Lord Earl, your patient. Nay, it goes better with him. Oh! he has been sadly, sadly. We have had a sore and anxious time; such a wound as his, neglected——" she shook her ringlets.

Pomona's lip suddenly trembled, she caught it between her teeth to steady it.

"Ah!" said Julia, interrupting herself and turning on her chair, "here comes the Lady Alethea."

Alethea entered, mincing on high-heeled shoes, her cherry lips pursed, her dark eyes dancing as if a pair of mischievous sprites had taken lodging there. She gazed at Pomona, so large, so work-stained, so incongruous a figure in the bright, luxurious room. Her nostrils dilated. She looked as wicked as a kid.

"My brother," said she, addressing her friend, though she kept staring at Pomona, "has heard of this wench's arrival. He would speak with her."

"I will go with you, even now," said Pomona.

Both the ladies shrieked; so did the maid who had followed Lady Alethea into the room.

"My good creature! in that attire?"

"My brother, so fastidious, so suffering!"

"And she," cried the tirewoman, taking up the note, "still with the stench of the saucepan about her! Positively, madam, the room reeks."

If Pomona carried any savours beyond those of lavender and the herbs she loved, it was of good, sweet apples and fragrant, burnt sugar. But she stood in her humiliation, and felt herself more unfit for all the high company than the beasts of her farmyard.

"You must not take it unkindly, child," said Lady Julia, with her cruel little laugh and her soft voice; "but my Lord Blantyre, you see, hath ever a great distaste of all that is homely and uncomely. He hath suffered extraordinarily in that respect of late. We must humour him."

Truly Pomona was punished. She marvelled now at herself, remembering what her presumption had been.

"I will go home, madam, if you permit me."

Again the ladies cried out. To thwart the invalid—'twas impossible. Was the girl mad? Nay, she would do as they bid? 'Twas well, then. Lady Julia, so kind was she, would help to clothe her in some better apparel and make her fit to present herself. The while the Lady Alethea would return to her post of assiduous nurse and inform his lordship of Pomona's speedy attendance.

Pomona gave herself into their hands.

Lord Blantyre lay on a couch in the sunshine. A fountain played merrily to his right; to his left his sister sat demurely at embroidery. In spite of her ladyship's melancholy account, the patient seemed to have gained marvellously in strength. But he was in no better humour with the world than on the last day of his stay at the farm.

He tossed and fretted among his rich cushions.

"She tarries," he said irritably for the twentieth time. "You are all in league to plague me. Why did you tell me she was coming?"

"My good brother," answered the fair embroidress, tilting her head to fling him the family sneer, "I pray you curb your impatience, for yonder comes your siren."

Here was Julia indeed undulating towards them, and after her, Pomona!

Lord Blantyre sat up suddenly and stared. Then he fell back on his cushions and shot a look at Alethea, before which she quailed.

Stumbling in high heels that tripped her at every step, she who had been wont to move free as a goddess; scarce able to breathe in the laced bodice that pressed her form out of all its natural shapeliness, and left so much of her throat bare that the white skin was all crimson in shame down to the borrowed kerchief; her artless, bewildered face raddled with white and red, her noble head scarcely recognisable through the bunching curls that sat so strangely each side of it—what Pomona was this?"

"Here is your kind nurse," fluted Lady Julia. "She had a fancy to bedizen herself for your eyes. I thought 'twould please you, my lord, if I humoured the creature."

"Everyone is to be humoured here," thought poor Pomona vaguely.

"Come to his lordship, child," bade Julia, her tones tripped up with laughter.

Pomona tottered yet a pace or two, and then halted. Taller even than the tall Lady Julia, the lines of her generous womanhood took up the silken skirt to absurd brevity, exposing the awkward, twisting feet. Nymph no longer was she, but a huge painted puppet. Only the eyes were unchanged, Pomona's roedeer eyes, grieving and wondering, shifting from side to side in dumb pleading. Truly this was an excellent jest of Lady Julia Majendie's!

It was strange that Lady Alethea, bending closer and closer over her work, should have no laughter left after that single glance from her brother's eyes; and that Lord Blantyre himself should show such lack of humorous appreciation. There was a heavy silence. Pomona tried to draw a breath to relieve her bursting anguish, but in vain; she was held as in a vice. Her heart fluttered; she felt as if she must die.

"Pomona," said Lord Blantyre suddenly, "come closer."

He reached and caught up his sister's scissors from her knee, and leaning forward, snipped the laces that strained across the fine scarlet satin of Pomona's cruel bodice.

"Now breathe," ordered he.

And while the other two were staring, unable to credit their eyes, Pomona's prison fell apart, and over her heaving bosom her thick white shift took its own noble folds.

Then the woman in her awoke and revolted. She flung from her feet the high-heeled shoes, and with frenzied hands tearing down her mockery of a head-dress, she ran to the fountain and began to dash the paint off her face. The tears streamed down her cheeks as she laved them.

"Sweet and gentle ladies," said the Wicked Earl—his tones cut the air like a fine blade—"I thank you for a most excellent demonstration of the superiority of high breeding. May I beg you both to retire upon your triumph, and leave me to deal with this poor, inferior wretch, since you have now most certainly convinced me she can never aspire to such gentility as yours?"

Alethea rose, and scattering her silks on one side, her embroidery on the other, walked straight away down the terrace, without casting a look behind her. Julia ran after her with skipping step, caught her under the arm, and the laughter of her malice rang out long after she had herself disappeared.

"Pomona," said Lord Blantyre.

Often he had called to her, in feverish complaint, or anger, or pettishly like a child, but never in such a tone as this. She came to him, as she had always come; and then she stood in shame before him, her long hair streaming, the tears rolling down her cheeks, her hands folded at her throat, her shapely feet gripping the ground in Julia Majendie's green silk stockings. Slowly his gaze enveloped her. All at once he smiled, and then, meeting her grieving eyes, he grew grave again, and suddenly his haughty face was broken up by tenderness. He caught one dripping twist of hair and pulled her towards him after his gentle, cruel fashion. She fell on her knees beside him and hid her face in his cushions.

"Kiss me, Pomona," said he.

"Oh, my lord," she sobbed, "spare me; I am only a poor girl!"

Many a time she had dreamed since the morning in the orchard that she was carrying that bleeding body, her lips on the dying roses of his lips; but never, in her humility, had she, even in her sleep, thought of herself as in his arms. This was no dream, and yet so he clasped her.

He bent his dark head over her radiant hair, his voice dropped words sweeter than honey, more healing than balm, into her heart that was still so bruised that it could scarce beat to joy.

"When I first beheld you in the orchard, I was sorry that I might have to die, Pomona, because you were in life. You carried me in your arms, and kept my soul from passing by the touch of your lips. When the fever burnt me, you brought me coolness—you lifted me and gave me breath. All night you held me. Patient, strong Pomona! You bore with all my humours. You came to me in the night from your sleep, all in white like an angel, your bare feet on the boards. Oh, my gentle nurse, my humble love, my mate, my wife!"

She raised her head to gaze at him. Yet she took the wonder, like a child, not disclaiming, not questioning.

"Oh!" she said, with a deep, soft sigh.

He fondly pushed the tangled hair from her brow.

"And shall a man make shift with sham and hollow artifice, when he can possess truth itself? They put paint on your cheeks, my Pomona, and tricked you out in gauds, and behold, I saw how great was the true woman beside the painted doll!"

He kissed her lips, and then he cried:

"Oh, Golden Apple, how is the taste of thee sweet and pure!"

And after a silence he said to her faintly, for he was still weak for such rapture—

"Lift me, my love, and let me lie awhile against your woman's heart, for never have I drawn such sweet breath as in your arms."