One Maid's Mischief

Volume One – Chapter Ten.

Miss Rosebury Speaks Seriously

The next day, when the visitors had been driven back by the Reverend Arthur, his sister met him upon the step, and taking his arm, led him down the garden to the vine-house.

“Let us go in here, Arthur,” she said. “It is such a good place to talk in; there is no fear of being overheard.”

“Yes, it is a quiet retired place,” he said thoughtfully.

“I hope you were careful in driving, and had no accident, Arthur?”

“N-no; I had no accident, only I drove one wheel a little up the bank in Sandrock Lane.”

“How was that? You surely did not try to pass another carriage in that narrow part?”

“N-no,” hesitated the Reverend Arthur. “Let me see, how was it? Oh, I remember. Miss Perowne had made some remark to me, and I was thinking of my answer.”

“And nearly upset them,” cried Miss Rosebury. “Oh! Arthur – Arthur, you grow more rapt and dreamy every day; What is coming to you I want to know?”

The Reverend Arthur started guiltily, and gazed at his sister.

“Oh! Arthur,” she cried, shaking a warning finger at him, “you are neglecting your garden and your natural history pursuits to try and make yourself a cavalier of dames, and it will not do. There – there, I won’t scold you; but I am beginning to think that it will be a very good thing when our visitors have gone for good.”

The Reverend Arthur sighed, and half turned away to snip off two or three tendrils from a vine-shoot above his head.

“I want to talk to you very seriously, Arthur,” said the little lady, whose cheeks began to flush slightly with excitement; and she felt relieved as she saw her brother turn a little more away.

“I want to talk to you very seriously indeed,” said Miss Rosebury.

“I am listening,” he said hoarsely; but she did not notice it in her excitement.

There was a minute’s pause, during which the Rev. Arthur broke off the young vine-shoot by accident, and then stood trying to replace it again.

At last Miss Rosebury spoke.

“Arthur,” she said – and her brother started and seemed to shiver, though she saw it not – “Arthur, Henry Bolter has asked me to be his wife!”

The Reverend Arthur turned round now in his astonishment, with his face deadly white and the tiny beads of perspiration upon his forehead. “Asked you to be his wife?” he said. “Yes, dear.”

“I am astonished,” cried the Reverend Arthur. “No, I am not,” he added thoughtfully. “He seemed to like you very much, Mary.”

“And I like him very much, Arthur, for I think him a truly good, amiable, earnest man.”

“He is my dear Mary – he is indeed; but – but – ”

“But what, Arthur? Were you going to say that you could not spare me?”

“I – I hardly know what I was about to say, Mary, you took me so by surprise. It would be very strange, though, to be here without you.”

“And you will not be, Arthur. I felt that I must tell you. I have nothing that I keep from you; but I have refused him.”

“You have refused him,” he said thoughtfully. “Yes, I felt that it would not be right to let a comparative stranger come in here and break up at once our happy little home. No, Arthur, this must all be like some dream. You and I, dear brother, are fast growing into elderly people; and love such as that is the luxury of the young.”

“Love such as that,” said the Reverend Arthur, softly, “is the luxury of the young!”

“Yes, dear brother, it would be folly in me to give way to such feelings!”

“Do you like Harry?” he exclaimed, suddenly.

“Yes,” she said, quietly. “I have felt day by day, Arthur, that I liked him more and more. It was and is a wonder to me at my age; but I should not be honest if I did not own that I liked him.”

“It is very strange, Mary,” said the curate, softly.

“Yes, it is very strange,” she said; “and as I think of it all, I am obliged to own to myself, that after all I should have liked to be married. It is such a revival of the past.”

The curate nodded his head several times as he let himself sink down upon the greenhouse steps, resting his hands upon his knees.

“But it is all past now, Arthur,” said the lady, quickly, and the tears were in her eyes, “we are both too old, my dear brother; and as soon as these visitors are gone, we will forget all disturbing influences, and go back to our happy old humdrum life.”

She could not trust herself to say more, but hurried off to her room, leaving the Reverend Arthur gazing fixedly at the red-brick floor.

“We are too old,” he muttered softly, from time to time; and as he said those words there seemed to stand before him the tall, well-developed figure of a dark-eyed, beauteous woman, who was gazing at him softly from between her half-closed, heavily-fringed lids.

“We are too old,” he said again; and then he went on dreaming of that day’s drive, and Helen’s gentle farewell – of the walks they had had in his garden – the flowers she had taken from his hand. Lastly, of his sister’s words respecting disturbing influences, and then settling down to their own happy humdrum life once again.

“It is fate!” he said, at last – “fate. Can we bring back the past?”

He felt that he could not, even as his sister felt just then, as she knelt beside one of the chairs in her own sweet-scented room, and asked for strength, as she termed it, to fight against this temptation.

“No,” she cried, at last; “I cannot – I will not! For Arthur’s sake I will be firm.”

Volume One – Chapter Eleven.

A Difficulty Solved

A week passed, during which all had been very quiet at the Rectory, brother and sister meeting each other hour by hour in a kind of saddened calm. The Reverend Arthur was paler than usual, almost cadaverous, while there was a troubled, anxious look in little Miss Rosebury’s eyes, and a sharpness in her voice that was not there on the day when Dr Bolter proposed.

No news had been heard of the young ladies at Miss Twettenham’s; and Dr Bolter, to Miss Rosebury’s sorrow, had not written to her brother.

But she bravely fought down her suffering, busying herself with more than usual zeal in home and parish; while the Reverend Arthur came back evening after evening faint, weary, and haggard, from some long botanical ramble.

The eighth day had arrived, and towards noon little Miss Rosebury was quietly seated by the open window with her work, fallen upon her knee, and a sad expression in her eyes as she gazed wistfully along the road, thinking, truth to tell, that Dr Bolter might perhaps come in to their early dinner.

Doctors were so seldom ill, or perhaps he might be lying suffering at some hotel.

The thought sent a pang through the little body, making her start, and seizing her needle, begin to work, when a warm flush came into her cheeks as she heard at one and the same time the noise of wheels, and a slow, heavy step upon the gravel.

The step she well knew, and for a few moments she did not look up; but when she did she uttered an exclamation.

“Tut – tut – tut!” she said. “If anyone saw poor Arthur now they would think him mad.”

Certainly the long, gaunt figure of the Reverend Arthur Rosebury, in his soft, shapeless felt hat, and long, clinging, shabby black alpaca coat, was very suggestive of his being a kind of male Ophelia gone slightly distraught as the consequence of a disappointment in love.

For in the heat of a long walk the tie of his white cravat had gone round towards the nape of his neck, while his felt hat was decorated to the crown with butterflies secured to it by pins. The band had wild flowers and herbs tucked in here and there. His umbrella – a very shabby, baggy gingham – was closed and stuffed with botanical treasures; and his vasculum, slung beneath one arm, was so gorged with herbs and flowers of the field that it would not close.

He was coming slowly down the path as wheels stopped at the gate just out of sight from the window, where little Miss Rosebury sat with her head once more bent down over her work; but she could hear a quick, well-known voice speaking to the driver of the station fly; then there was the click of the latch as the gate swung to, and the little lady’s heart began to go pat, pat – pat, pat – much faster than the quick, decided step that she heard coming down the long gravel path.

Her hearing seemed to be abnormally quickened, and she listened to the wheels as the fly drove off, and then heard every word as the doctor’s quick, decided voice saluted his old friend.

“Been horribly busy, Arthur,” he cried; “but I’m down at last. Where’s Mary?”

Hiding behind the curtain, for she had drawn back to place her hand upon her side to try and control the agitated beating of her foolish little heart.

“Oh, it is dreadful! How can I be so weak?” she cried angrily, as she made a brave effort to be calm – a calmness swept away by the entrance of the doctor, who rushed in boisterously to seize her hands, and before she could repel him, he had kissed her heartily.

“Eureka! my dear Mary! Eureka!” he cried. “I have it – I have it!”

“Henry – Dr Bolter!” she cried, with a decidedly dignified look in her pleasant face.

“Don’t be angry with me, my dear,” he cried; “the news is so good. You couldn’t leave poor Arthur, could you?”

“No!” she cried, with an angry little stamp, as she mentally upbraided him for tearing open the throbbing wound she was striving to heal. “You know I will not leave him.”

“I love and honour you for it more and more, my dear,” he cried. “But what do you think of this? Suppose we take him with us?”

“Take him with us?” said the little lady, slowly.

“Yes,” cried the doctor, excitedly; “take him with us, Mary – my darling wife that is to be. The chaplaincy of our settlement is vacant. Did you ever hear the like?”

Little Miss Rosebury could only stare at the excited doctor in a troubled way, for she understood him now, though her lips refused to speak.

“Yes, and I am one of the first to learn the news. I can work it, I feel sure, if he’ll come. Then only think; lovely climate, glorious botanical collecting trips for him! The land, too, whence Solomon’s ships brought gold, and apes, and peacocks. Ophir, Mary, Ophir! Arthur will be delighted.”

“Indeed!” said that lady wonderingly.

“Not a doubt about it, my dear. My own discovery. All live together! Happiness itself.”

“But Arthur is delicate,” she faltered. “The station is unhealthy.”

“Am not I there? Do I not understand your brother thoroughly? Oh! my dear Mary, do not raise obstacles in the way. It is fate. I know it is, in the shape of our Political Resident Harley. He came over with me, and goes back in the same boat. He has had telegrams from the station.”

“You – you take away my breath, doctor,” panted the little lady. “I must have time to think. Oh! no, no, no; it is impossible. Arthur would never consent to go.”

“If you will promise to be my wife, Mary, I’ll make him go!” cried the doctor, excitedly.

“No, no; he never would. He could not give up his position here, and I should not allow him. It would be too cruelly selfish on my part. It is impossible; it can never be.”

The next moment the doctor was alone, for Miss Rosebury had hurried out to go and sob passionately as a girl in her own room, waking up more and more, as she did, to the fact that she had taken the love distemper late in life; but it was none the weaker for being long delayed.

“It isn’t impossible, my dear,” chuckled the doctor, as he rubbed his hands; “and if I know anything of womankind, the darling little body’s mine. I hope she won’t think I want her bit of money, because I don’t.”

He took a turn up and down the room, rubbing his hands and smiling in a very satisfied way.

“I think I can work Master Arthur,” he said. “He’ll be delighted at the picture I shall paint him of our flora and fauna. It will be a treat for him, and we shall be as jolly as can be. We’ll see about duty and that sort of thing. Why, it will be a better post for him ever so much, and he’s a splendid old fellow.”

There was another promenade of the room, greatly to the endangerment of Miss Rosebury’s ornaments. Then the doctor slapped one of his legs loudly.

“Capital!” he cried. “What a grand thought. What a card to play! That will carry her by storm. I’ll play that card at our next interview; but gently, Bolter, my boy, don’t be in too great a hurry! She’s a splendid specimen, and you must not lose her by being precipitate; but, by Jove! what a capital thought – tell her it will be quite an act of duty to come with me and act a mother’s part to those two girls.”

“She’ll do it – she’ll do it,” he cried, after a pause, “for she quite loves little Grey, and a very nice little girl too. Then it will keep that dark beauty out of mischief, for hang me if I think I could get her over to her father disengaged, and so I told Harley yesterday.”

The doctor did knock off an ornament from a stand at his next turn up and down the room, breaking it right in two; and this brought him to his senses, as, full of repentance, he sought the Reverend Arthur Rosebury in his study to act as medium and confess his sin.

Volume One – Chapter Twelve.

Playing the Card

The Reverend Arthur had removed the butterflies and wild flowers from his hat by the time Dr Bolter reached him, and was walking slowly up and down the study with his hands clasped behind him.

There was a wrinkled look of trouble in his face.

As the doctor entered he smilingly placed a chair for his friend, and seemed to make an effort to get rid of the feeling of oppression that weighed him down.

Then they sat and talked of butterflies and birds for a time, fencing as it were, for somehow Dr Bolter felt nervous and ill at ease, shrinking from the task which he had set himself, while the Reverend Arthur, though burning to ask several questions upon a subject nearest his heart, shrank from so doing lest he should expose his wound to his friend’s inquisitorial eyes.

“I declare I’m as weak as a child,” said the doctor to himself, after making several vain attempts at beginning. “It’s dreadfully difficult work!” and he asked his friend if the lesser copper butterfly was plentiful in that district.

“No,” said the Reverend Arthur, “we have not chalk enough near the surface.”

Then there was a pause – a painful pause – during which the two old friends seemed to be fighting hard to break the ice that kept forming between them.

“I declare I’m much weaker than a child,” said the doctor to himself; and the subject was the next moment introduced by the Reverend Arthur, who, with a guilty aspect and look askant, both misinterpreted by the doctor, said, hesitatingly:

“Do you know for certain when you go away, Harry?”

“In three weeks, my boy, or a month at most, and there is no time to lose in foolish hesitation, is there?”

“No, of course not. You mean about the subject Mary named?”

“Yes, yes, of course,” cried the doctor, who was now very hot and excited. “You wouldn’t raise any objection, Arthur?”

“No, I think not, Harry. It would be a terrible loss to me.”

“It would – it would.”

“And I should feel it bitterly at first.”

“Of course – of course,” said the doctor, trying to speak; but his friend went on excitedly.

“Time back I could not have understood it; but I am not surprised now!”

“That’s right, my dear Arthur, that’s right; and I will try and make her a good husband.”

“She is a very, very good woman, Harry!”

“The best of women, Arthur, the very best of women; and it will be so nice for those two girls to have her for guide.”

“Do – do they go – both go – with you – so soon?” said the Reverend Arthur, wiping his wet forehead and averting his head.

“Yes, of course,” said the doctor, eagerly.

“And – and does Mary say she will accept you, Harry?”

“No,” said a quick, decided voice. “I told him I could not leave you, Arthur;” and the two gentlemen started guiltily from their chairs.

“My dear Mary,” said the curate, “how you startled me.”

“I have not had time to tell him yet,” said the doctor, recovering himself; and taking the little lady’s hand, he led her to the chair he had vacated, closed the door, and then stood between brother and sister. “I have not had time to tell him yet, my dear Miss Rosebury, but I have been saying to him that it would be so satisfactory for you to help me in my charge of those two young ladies.”

Miss Rosebury started in turn, and coloured slightly.

“And now, my dear old friend,” said the doctor, “let me ask you, treating you as Mary’s nearest relative, will you give your consent to our marriage?”

“No, Arthur, you cannot,” said the little lady, firmly. “I could not leave you.”

“But I have an offer to make you, my dear old friend,” said the doctor; “the chaplaincy at our station is vacant; will you come out with us and take it? There will be no separation then, and – ”

He stopped short, for at his words the Reverend Arthur seemed to be galvanised into a new life. He started from his seat, the listless, saddened aspect dropped away, his eyes flashed, and the blood mounted to his cheeks.

“Come with you?” he cried. “Chaplaincy? Out there?”

It seemed as if he had been blinded by the prospect, for the next moment he covered his face with his hands, and sank back in his seat without a word.

“I knew it!” cried little Miss Rosebury, in reproachful tones; and, leaving her chair, she clung to her brother’s arm. “I told you he could not break up his old home here. No, no, Arthur, dear Arthur, it is all a foolish dream! I do not wish to leave you – I could not leave you. Henry Bolter, pray – pray go,” she said, piteously, as she turned to the doctor. “We both love you dearly as our truest friend; but you place upon us burdens that we cannot bear. Oh, why – why did you come to thus disturb our peace? Arthur, dear brother, I will not go away!”

“Hush! hush, Mary!” the curate said, from behind his hands. “Let me think. You do not know. I cannot bear it yet!”

“My dear old Arthur,” began the doctor.

“Let me think, Harry, let me think,” he said, softly.

“No, no, don’t think!” cried the little lady, almost angrily. “You shall not sacrifice yourself for my sake! I will not be the means of dragging you from your peaceful happy home – the home you love – and from the people who love you for your gentle ways! Henry Bolter, am I to think you cruel and selfish instead of our kind old friend?”

“No, no, my dear Mary!” cried the doctor, excitedly. “Selfish? Well, perhaps I am, but – ”

“Hush!” said the curate softly; and again, “let me think.”

A silence fell upon the little group, and the chirping of the birds in the pleasant country garden was all that broke that silence for many minutes to come.

Then the Reverend Arthur rose from his seat and moved towards the door, motioning to them not to follow him as he went out into the garden, and they saw him from the window go up and down the walks, as if communing with all his familiar friends, asking, as it were, their counsel in his time of trial.

At last he came slowly back into the room, where the elderly lovers had been seated in silence, neither daring to break the spell that was upon them, feeling as they did how their future depended upon the brother’s words.

They looked at him wonderingly as he came into the room pale and agitated, as if suffering from the reaction of a mental struggle; but there was a smile of great sweetness upon his lips as he said, softly:

“Harry, old friend, I never had a brother. You will be really brother to me now.”

“No, no!” cried his sister, excitedly. “You shall not sacrifice yourself like this!”

“Hush, dear Mary,” he replied calmly; “let me disabuse your mind. You confessed to me your love for Harry Bolter here. Why should I stand in the way of your happiness?”

“Because it would half kill you to be left alone.”

“But I shall not be left alone,” he cried, excitedly. “I shall bitterly regret parting from this dear old home; but I am not so old that I could not make another in a foreign land.”

“Oh! Henry Bolter,” protested the little lady, “it must not be!”

“But it must,” said her brother, taking her in his arms, and kissing her tenderly. “There are other reasons, Mary, why I should like to go. I need not explain what those reasons are; but I tell you honestly that I should like to see this distant land.”

“Where natural history runs mad, Arthur,” cried the doctor, excitedly. “Hurrah!”

“Oh, Arthur!” cried his sister, “you cannot mean it. It is to please me.”

“And myself,” he said, quietly. “There; I am in sober earnest, and I tell you that no greater pleasure could be mine than to see you two one.”

“At the cost of your misery, Arthur.”

“To the giving of endless pleasure to your husband and my brother,” said the Reverend Arthur, smiling; and before she could thoroughly realise the fact, little quiet Miss Mary Rosebury was sobbing on the doctor’s breast.

Volume One – Chapter Thirteen.

On the Voyage

In these busy days of rail and steam, supplemented by their quick young brother electricity, time seems to go so fast that before the parties to this story had thoroughly realised the fact, another month had slipped by, another week had been added to that month, the Channel had been crossed, then France by train, and at Marseilles the travellers had stepped on board one of the steamers of the French company, the Messageries Maritimes, bound for Alexandria, Aden, Colombo, Penang, and then, on her onward voyage to Singapore and Hong Kong, to drop a certain group of her passengers at the mouth of the Darak river, up which they would be conveyed by Government steamer to Sindang, the settlement where Mr Harley, her Britannic Majesty’s Resident at the barbaric court of the petty Malay Rajah-Sultan Murad had the guidance of affairs.

It was one of those delicious, calm evenings of the South, with the purple waters of the tideless Mediterranean being rapidly turned into orange and gold. Away on the left could be seen, faintly pencilled against the sky, the distant outlines of the mountains that shelter the Riviera from the northern winds. To the right all was gold, and purple, and orange sea; and the group seated about the deck enjoying the comparative coolness of the evening knew that long before daybreak the next morning they would be out of sight of land.

There were a large number of passengers; for the most part English officials and their families returning from leave of absence to the various stations in the far East; and as they were grouped about the spacious quarter-deck of the sumptuously-fitted steamer rapidly ploughing its way through the sun-dyed waters, the scene was as bright and animated as painter could depict.

Gentlemen were lounging, smoking, or making attempts to catch the fish that played about the vessel’s sides without the slightest success; ladies were seated here and there, or promenading the deck, while other groups were conversing in low tones as they drank in the soft, sensuous air, and wondered how people could be satisfied to exist in dull and foggy, sunless England, when nature offered such climes as this.