Read Ebook: Camilleana Collecção das obras de Camillo Castello Branco by Mota Jo O Xavier Da

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Ebook has 148 lines and 10369 words, and 3 pages

"Look here," said he, keeping her down by gentle pressure of the hand, "I am going to London and we will go together, but we shall have to wait until to-morrow. Will not that suit? If you are in a desperate hurry you can leave early to-morrow. Do you know Bax's farm?"

"Of course I do," she answered, turning her face up the road.

"Bax shall give you a bedroom," said he, "since you refuse to return with me to my father. A good supper and a good night's rest are the doctoring you stand in need of. I find you in a dead faint in a ditch, and so you come under my care, and I am answerable for you. We are old friends."

She faintly smiled and looked at him.

"You will do exactly what I ask, and at Bax's farm we shall have leisure for a little talk."

She bowed her head, and he saw that she cried again.

They spied a man at the bottom of the hill coming up. The girl started, and said, "I am quite strong enough to stand and walk," and she stood up, one of the most beautiful figures amongst women, with a sweet ingenuous sauciness which was the flavouring grace of her happy hours, distinguishable still, even in this time of misery and illness. The man coming along was a common labourer, but she did not choose that any one should see her sitting in a ditch.

They walked slowly up the road. She leaned upon his arm and occasionally stopped to rest, and their talk until they arrived at the farm was not much; indeed she said little more than that she had been making up her mind for some weeks to leave her father's house for ever and to sail to a colony, where she would be willing to accept the lowest menial office so long as she was independent, and received the respect that was due to her as a lady. She had left her home that day in the afternoon, meaning to walk to the station and take the train to London, whence she intended to write to her father to forward her clothes in the box which stood ready corded in her bedroom. When she had walked some distance--it might be five miles--a sudden faintness seized her, and she sat down under a hedge to rest. She then must have fainted, and knew no more until she returned to consciousness, and found herself resting against Hardy.

This talk brought them to Bax's farm.

It was not a farm, though it was called so. Bax sold milk and garden produce and eggs, and the countryside called his house a farm. It had two gables and a thatched roof, small latticed windows, and a door that opened direct into the sitting-room. In the summer the house was enchanting with its flowers and shrubbery and the climbing green stuff about it, and then the concert of the woods thrilled in the trees beyond, and the air was full of sweet smells.

Bax was a man of about sixty, immensely stout behind and in front, with a face that seemed powdered with pale, scissors-shorn whisker, and small eyes which had drowned their lustre in beer. He stood in the doorway in his shirt-sleeves smoking a pipe, and was not at all surprised when the couple passed through the gate and approached the porch. He merely pulled out his pipe, and said:

"Good evening, Mr. Hardy; good evening, Miss Armstrong. Come for a bit of a sit down? Will y' 'ave chairs here? or the sitting-room's at your sarvice."

"How d'ye do, Mr. Bax?" said Hardy.

"Good evening, Mr. Bax," said Miss Armstrong, in a faint voice.

"Take us into your sitting-room," said Hardy; and they entered the door and were in the sitting-room at once--a cosy little room, hung with portraits of Bax and his dead wife and daughter, decorated with a small mantel-glass in fly-gauze, and hospitable with a round table on one leg and three claws, the top beautified by a knitted cover.

Julia sank into a little armchair. Bax was beginning to gaze at her earnestly; he knew her perfectly well, knew her father also, who frequently looked in for a drink; also he knew Hardy perfectly well, likewise his father, who attended him when he was attacked by gout.

"Mr. Bax," said Hardy, putting his cap down upon the table, "we have come to occupy your house this night."

"Joost been married, have yer?" asked Bax, slipping his pipe into his waistcoat pocket.

"No," answered Hardy, gravely; "Miss Armstrong is leaving her home for good. If you don't guess why, I'll tell you presently."

Bax looked knowing; he looked more knowing an instant later when a fine Persian kitten ran up his back and curled its tail upon his shoulder, for then two pairs of eyes were fastened upon Hardy, the kitten, being no beer drinker, gazing more steadfastly than the other.

"Have you a bedroom that you can place at Miss Armstrong's disposal?"

"Is there no later train?" asked Julia.

"We would not take it if there were," replied Hardy.

She curtseyed to the visitors, and then, after pursing her lips and knitting her brow, she replied to her father that Miss Armstrong could have the spare room over the sitting-room.

"Can I have a bedroom?" said Hardy.

Bax mused, looking at his daughter, and then said, "Not unless you sleeps along with me."

"With you?" laughed Hardy, looking at his stomach. "How much of you lies in bed all at once? That'll do for me," said he, and he jerked his head at a wide hair-sofa.

The father, the kitten, and the daughter looked a little strangely at Hardy and Julia Armstrong, as though before proceeding they wanted to see things in a clearer light. Hardy understanding this, spoke out with the bluntness of a sailor.

"Look here, Bax," said he, "I'm going to London to join my ship. I was bound away to-night, but on the road I fell in with this young lady, who lay in a swoon."

"Oh, dear, poor thing!" groaned Miss Bax.

"She came to, and I brought her here after learning that she was leaving her home for good on account of the barbarous behaviour of her stepmother--"

"Oh, I know, I know," interrupted Miss Bax.

The kitten purred as it fretted Bax's cheek. Bax said, "It's all right, Mr. Hardy, and you shall be made comfortable. What 'ull you 'ave for supper?"

What would be better than some cold ham and a dish of eggs and bacon, a dish of sausages in mashed potato, and the half of a beautiful apple tart, along with a jug of real cream? And for drink there was some first-class ale kept by Bax for Bax himself, for he held no license, and his dealings were secret, and if he took money it was a gift for a kindness.

"Will you come up-stairs and see your room, Miss Armstrong, before I goes about and gets your supper for you?" exclaimed Miss Bax.

"Have you got no baggage?" inquired old Bax, jerking the kitten on to the table.

"It will follow me to London," said Miss Armstrong, and she rose and went up-stairs with Miss Bax.

Hardy sat down upon the sofa, and Bax went to work to lay the cloth. There was plenty of room at that little table for two. Bax had been a gardener in a great family, and had often helped the coachman, the footman, and the butler to wait. He possessed some good old-fashioned table apparel, and before Miss Armstrong returned the room looked bright and hospitable with the light of an oil lamp reflected in cutlery, glass, and cruet-stand.

Julia entered, and Bax walked out. She went and sat beside Hardy, and the lovely Persian kitten sprang into her lap. Her hair was as beautiful as her figure, and her gray eyes were full of heart and meaning. You could not have called her pretty, yet you were sensible of a charm in her face that had nothing to do with the shape of her nose or the character of her mouth.

"Do you feel better?" said Hardy.

"Much; I never thought to find myself stopping a night here. Of course, I have been the means of your losing your train?"

"To-morrow will do just as well," he answered. "Where did you mean to sleep when you got to London to-night?"

"I should have found a room," she answered.

"Will they send on your luggage if you write for it?"

"Father will," she replied. "Yes, he will do that, but he will not write to ask me to return. He does not care what becomes of me. He never cared what I did when I left his house to fill a situation."

Her nostrils enlarged, her eyes looked angry. A little blood visited her pale cheek. Hardy's memory pictured her father: a middle-sized man with pale, weak eyes, a chuckling laugh like the gurgle of liquor, much reference to his ships and to naval things in general, a large Micawber-like indifference to his existing circumstances, and a quality of talkativeness about outside matters, such as the queen, the trouble at Pekin, the discovery of the North Pole, which would make you think that he did not know what home worries were.

"Bax," said Hardy, "may covertly send along to let them know you are here."

"What of that?" she exclaimed. "If they were to send twenty men they would have to drag me to move me. I would not set foot in that house again if my stepmother lay dead in the gutter opposite the door. It is my father's fault."

She bit her lip, stroked the kitten, and said, "Oh, it is hard upon a girl to have a bad father--a weak, selfish, foolish father."

Here Bax came again with a tumbler full of autumn flowers. He placed them in the middle of the table and went out, looking nowhere, as if he walked in his sleep; but whilst the door lay open they heard the spitting of the frying-pan.

"What are you going to do when you get to London?" said Hardy.

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