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+Project Gutenberg's Bulldog And Butterfly, by David Christie Murray
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Bulldog And Butterfly
+       From "Schwartz" by David Christie Murray
+
+Author: David Christie Murray
+
+Release Date: August 8, 2007 [EBook #22273]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK BULLDOG AND BUTTERFLY ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by David Widger
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+BULLDOG AND BUTTERFLY
+
+By David Christie Murray
+
+Author Of 'Aunt Rachel,' 'The Weaker Vessel,' Etc.
+
+
+
+
+I
+
+Castle Barfield, Heydon Hey, and Beacon Hargate form the three points
+of a triangle. Barfield is a parish of some pretensions; Heydon Hey is a
+village; Beacon Hargate is no more than a hamlet. There is not much that
+is picturesque in Beacon Hargate, or its neighbourhood. The Beacon Hill
+itself is as little like a hill as it well can be, and acquires what
+prominence it has by virtue of the extreme flatness of the surrounding
+country. A tuft of Scotch firs upon its crest is visible from a distance
+of twenty miles in some directions. A clear but sluggish stream winds
+among its sedges and water-lilies round the western side of the Beacon
+Hill, and washes the edge of a garden which belongs to the one survival
+of the picturesque old times Beacon Hargate has to show.
+
+The Oak House was built for a mansion in the days of Queen Elizabeth,
+but who built it nobody knows at this time of day, or, excepting perhaps
+a hungry-minded antiquary or two, greatly cares to know. The place
+had been partly pulled down, and a good deal altered here and there.
+Stables, barns, cow-sheds, and such other outhouses as are needful to
+a farm had been tacked on to it, or built near it; and all these
+appurtenances, under the mellowing hand of time and weather, had grown
+congruous, insomuch that the Oak House if stripped of them would have
+looked as bare even to the unaccustomed eye as a bird plucked of its
+feathers.
+
+The house faced the stream, and turned its back upon the Beacon with
+its clump of fir-trees. It had chimneys enough for a village--an
+extraordinary wealth of chimneys--'twisted, fluted, castellated, stacked
+together in conclave or poised singly about the gables. The front of
+the house was crossed laterally and diagonally by great beams of
+black-painted oak. The windows, which are full of diamonded panes, were
+lowbrowed, deep-sunken, long, and shallow. The door had a porch, and
+this porch was covered with creepers. In summer time climbing roses and
+honeysuckle bloomed there. The garden ran right up to the house, and
+touched it all round. The fragrant sweet-william, nestling against the
+walls, looked as though it were a natural fringe. Without the faintest
+sense of primness, or even of orderliness, everything had an air of
+being precisely where it ought to be, and conveyed somehow a suggestion
+of having been there always. The house looked less as if it had been
+built than as if it had grown, and this feeling was heightened by the
+vegetable growth about it and upon it--the clinging ivy, the green
+house-leek, the purple and golden moss on the roofs and walls. In the
+course of its three hundred years the Oak House had stood long enough to
+be altogether reconciled to nature, and half absorbed by it.
+
+In 1850--which, though it seem a long while ago, is well within human
+memory--and for many years before, the Oak House was tenanted by a
+farmer who bore the name of Fellowes, a sturdy and dogmatic personage,
+who was loud at the table of the market ordinary once a week, and for
+the most part silent for the rest of his life at home. The gray mare
+was the better horse. Excepting within doors at the Oak House, Fellowes
+ruled the hamlet. There were no resident gentry; the clergyman was
+an absentee; the tiny church was used only as a chapel-of-ease; and
+Fellowes was the wealthiest and most important personage for a mile or
+two. He was a little disposed to be noisy, and to bluster in his show of
+authority, and therefore fell all the more easily captive to his wife,
+who had a gift for the tranquil saying of unpleasant things which was
+reckoned quite phenomenal in Beacon Hargate. This formidable woman was
+ruled in turn by her daughter Bertha.
+
+Bertha, unless looked at through the eyes of susceptible young manhood,
+would by no means be pronounced formidable. She was country-bred and
+quite rustic; but there are refinements of rusticity; and for Beacon
+Hargate, Bertha was a lady. She would have been a lady anywhere
+according to her chances; for she was naturally sensitive to refining
+influences, and of a nature which, remembering how strong it was, was
+curiously tender.
+
+It was May, in the year 1850--mid-May--and the weather was precisely
+what mid-May weather ought to be, perfumed and softly fresh, with
+opposing hints of gaiety and languor in it. The birds were singing
+everywhere--a vocal storm, and the sheep--who can never express
+themselves as being satisfied in any weather--bleated disconsolately
+from the meadows. The clucking of fowls, the quacking of ducks, the very
+occasional grunt of some contented porker in the backward regions of
+the place, the stamp of a horse's foot, and the rattle of a chain in
+a manger-ring--sounds quite unmusical in themselves--blended with the
+birds' singing, and the thick humming of the bees, into an actual music
+in which no note was discordant. The day was without a cloud, and the
+soft light was diffused everywhere on a skyey haze of whitish blue.
+
+In this positively delightful weather, Bertha stood with folded hands
+in the porch of the Oak House (the floor and the far wall of the kitchen
+behind her patched with gleams of red and brown light), like the central
+figure of a picture framed in live green. She was pretty enough to be
+pleasant to look at; but her charms were mainly the growth of tranquil
+good temper and sound sense. Broad brow, gray eyes, resolute little
+chin, the mouth the best feature of the face, her expression thoughtful,
+serene, and self-possessed, the gray eyes a trifle inclined to dream
+wide-awake, hair of no particular colour, but golden in the sunlight.
+She stood leaning sideways, with one shoulder touching the trellis-work
+of the porch, and one pretty little foot crossed over the other, her
+head poised sideways and nestled into the ivy. She was looking far away,
+seeing nothing, and her folded hands drooped before her. A bridge, with
+a hand-rail on either side of it, crossed the stream and led from a
+meadow path to the garden. This meadow path was hidden--partly by the
+garden wall, and partly by the growth of alder and pollard at the side
+of the stream--and a man came marching along it, unobserved. Before he
+reached the bridge he brought his footsteps to a sudden halt, and sent a
+glance towards the porch. Seeing the girl there, sunk in day dreams, he
+slipped back into the shelter of the withies and took a good long look
+at her. Twice or thrice, though his feet did not quit the ground, he
+made a faint movement to go on again, and at length, after two or three
+minutes of indecision, he walked briskly to the foot of the bridge,
+threw open the little gate at the end of it, and, suffering it to fall
+with a clanking noise behind him, tramped across the hollow-resounding
+boards.
+
+At this sudden break upon the rural stillness--for, in spite of the
+chorus of the birds and the farmyard noises which mingled with it, the
+general effect was somehow of stillness and solitude--the girl looked
+round at the new-comer, drew herself up from her lounging attitude,
+placed her hands behind her and there re-folded them, and stood waiting,
+with an added flush of colour on her cheek. The new-comer strode along
+in a kind of awkward resoluteness, looking straight at the girl with a
+glance which appeared to embarrass her a little, though she returned it
+frankly enough.
+
+'Here I am, you see,' said the new-comer, halting before her.
+
+He was tallish, well-made, and of middle age. His expression was
+a trifle dogged, and for a man who came love-making he looked less
+prepossessing than he himself might have wished.
+
+'Good afternoon, Mr. Thistlewood,' said the girl, in a tone which a
+sensitive man might have thought purposely defensive.
+
+'Is it yes or no to-day, Bertha?' asked Mr. Thistlewood.
+
+'It has always been no,' she answered, looking down.
+
+'Oh,' he answered, 'I'm perfectly well aware of that. It always has been
+no up till now, but that's no reason why it should be no to-day. And if
+it's no to-day that's no reason why it should be no again this day three
+months. Maids change their minds, my dear.'
+
+'It is a pity you should waste your time, Mr. Thistlewood,' said Bertha,
+still looking down.
+
+'As for wasting my time,' returned John Thistle-wood, 'that's a thing as
+few can charge me with as a general rule. And in this particular case,
+you see, I can't help myself. The day I see you married I shall make up
+my mind to leave you alone until such time as you might happen to be a
+widow, and if that should come to pass I should reckon myself free to
+come again.'
+
+'It has always been no,' said Bertha. 'It is no to-day. It will always
+be no.'
+
+The words in themselves were sufficiently decisive, and the voice,
+though it had something soft and regretful in it, sounded almost as
+final as the words.
+
+'Let's look at it a bit, my dear,' said John Thistle-wood, grasping in
+both hands the thick walking-stick he carried, and pressing it firmly
+against his thighs as he leaned a little forward and looked down upon
+her. 'Why is it no? And if it's no again to-day, why is it always going
+to be no?'
+
+'I like you very well, Mr. Thistlewood,' she answered, looking up at
+him, 'but I don't like you in a marrying way, and I never shall.'
+
+'As for never shall,' said he, 'that remains to be seen.'
+
+He straightened himself as he spoke, and releasing the walking-stick
+with his left hand put the point of it softly, slowly, and strongly down
+upon the gravel, dinting the ground pretty deeply with the pressure.
+
+'Let's look at it a little further,' he added.
+
+'It is of no use,' the girl answered pleadingly. 'It hurts us both, and
+it can do no good at all.'
+
+'Let's look at it a bit further,' he said again. 'This day month you
+said there was nobody you'd seen you liked better than me. Is that true
+still?'
+
+'It is quite true,' she answered, 'but it makes no difference.'
+
+'That remains to be seen,' said John Thistlewood again. 'And as for not
+liking me in a marrying way, that's a thing a maid can't be supposed to
+know much of.' He waited doggedly as if to hear her deny this, but she
+made no answer. 'You've known me all your life, Bertha, and you never
+knew anything again me.'
+
+'Never,' she said, almost eagerly.
+
+'I'm well-to-do,' he went on stolidly, but with all his force, as if
+he were pushing against a wall too heavy to be moved by any pressure he
+could bring to bear against it, and yet was resolute to have it down.
+'I'm not too old to be a reasonable match for a maid of your years.
+You've had my heart this five years I waited two afore I spoke at all
+There's a many--not that I speak it in a bragging way--as would be
+willing enough to have me.'
+
+'It's a pity you can't take a fancy to one of them,' she said, with
+perfect simplicity and good faith.
+
+'Perhaps it is,' answered Thistlewood, with a dogged sigh; 'but be that
+as it may, I can't and shan't. Where my fancy lies it stays. I didn't
+give my heart away to take it back again. You'll wed me yet, Bertha, and
+when you do you'll be surprised to think you didn't do it long before.'
+
+At this point the voice of a third person broke in upon the colloquy.
+
+'That caps all!' said the voice. 'There's Mr. Forbes, the Scotch
+gardener at my Lord Barfield's, tells me of a lad in his parts as prayed
+the Lord for a good consate of himself. That's a prayer as you'll never
+find occasion t'offer, John Thistlewood.'
+
+'Maybe not, Mrs. Fellowes,' answered Thistlewood, addressing the owner
+of the voice, who remained invisible; 'but I wasn't speaking in a
+braggart way.'
+
+'No--no,' returned the still invisible intruder. 'Wast humble enough
+about it, doubtless. You'm bound to tek a man's own word about his own
+feelings. Who is to know 'em if he doesn't?'
+
+'Just so,' said Thistlewood, with great dryness. He appeared to be
+little if at all disturbed by the interruption, but Bertha was blushing
+like a peony.
+
+'I sat quiet,' said the girl's mother, leisurely walking round the
+door with a half-finished gray worsted stocking depending from the
+knitting-needles she carried in both hands,--' I sat quiet so as not
+to be a disturbance. It's you for making love to a maid, I must allow,
+John.'
+
+The girl ran into the house and disappeared from view.
+
+'It's me for speaking my mind, at least, ma'am,' returned John, with
+unaltered tranquil doggedness.
+
+'Ah!' responded the farmer's wife; 'you're like a good many more of 'em;
+you'd sooner not have what you want than go the right way to get it.'
+
+Thistlewood digested this in silence, and Mrs. Fellowes set the
+knitting-needles flashing.
+
+'I've always fancied,' he said in a little while, 'as I had your
+goodwill in the matter.'
+
+'You've got my goodwill, in a way to be sure,' said the old woman.
+'You'd mek the gell a goodish husband if her could find a fancy for
+you--but the fancy's everything--don't you see, John?'
+
+'I'm not above taking advice, Mrs. Fellowes,' said Thistlewood, digging
+at the gravel with his walking-stick. 'Will you be so good as to tell me
+where I'm wrong?'
+
+'There's one particular as you're wrong in,' returned Mrs. Fellowes,
+knitting away with a determinedly uninteresting air, 'and, I misdoubt
+me, you can't alter it.'
+
+'What's that?' asked Thistlewood, looking up at her suddenly.
+
+'You're the wrong man, John.'
+
+'That remains to be seen,' he answered, with the same dogged patience as
+before.
+
+'You can't win a maid's heart by going at her as solemn as a funeral,'
+pursued the old woman. 'If you'd ha' begun sprightly with the gell, you
+might ha' had a chance with her. "La!" says you, "what a pretty frock
+you're a-wearing to-day;" or "How nice you do do up your hair for a
+certainty."'
+
+'I don't look on marriage as a thing to be approached i' that fashion,'
+said Thistlewood.
+
+'Well,' returned the old woman, clicking her needles with added
+rapidity, 'I've always said there's no end to the folly o' men. D'ye
+hear that there cuckoo? Go and catch him wi' shoutin' at him. An' when
+next you're in want of toast at tay-time, soak your bread in a pan o'
+cold water.'
+
+Thistlewood stood for a time in a rather dogged-looking silence,
+sometimes glancing at the notable woman and glancing away again. Her
+eye expressed a triumph which, though purely dialectic, was hard for a
+disappointed lover to endure, even whilst he refused to recognise his
+disappointment.
+
+'I should regard any such means of gettin' into a maid's good graces as
+being despisable,' he said, after a while.
+
+'Very well, my Christian friend,' the farmer's wife retorted, with a
+laugh. 'Them as mek bread without barm must look to spoil the batch.'
+
+'I was niver of a flatterin' turn of mind,' said Thistlewood.
+
+'You niver was, John,' responded Mrs. Fellowes, with an accent which
+implied something beyond assent.
+
+He flushed a little, and began to tap at his corduroyed leg with the
+stick he carried, at first with a look of shamefaced discomfiture, and
+then with resolution. He finished with a resounding slap, and looked up
+with a light in his eyes.
+
+'I'm pretty hard to beat, ma'am,' he said, 'though I say it as should
+not. I'm not going to be conquered here if I can help it. And I look to
+have you and Mr. Fellowes on my side, as far as may be asked in reason.
+Her'll find no better husband than I should be to her, I _am_ sure.
+There's more than a wheedlin' tongue required to mek a married woman
+happy. I've pretty well proved as I'm not changeable. There's a strong
+arm to tek care of her. There's a homely house with plenty in it.
+There's a goodish lump at the bank, and there's nothing heart can desire
+as her might not have by asking for it.'
+
+'Well, John,' said the farmer's wife, clicking her needles cheerfully,
+'I've not a word to say again the match. Win the wench and welcome. My
+dancin' days is pretty nigh over, but I'll tek the floor once more with
+pleasure, if you won't be too long in mekin' ready for me.'
+
+'There's nothing more to be done at present, I suppose,' the lover said
+presently, 'and so I'll say good-bye for this afternoon, Mrs. Fellowes.'
+
+With this he turned upon his heel, and marching sturdily down the
+path and across the little bridge, disappeared behind the withies and
+pollards.
+
+The farmer's wife waited a while until he was out of hearing, and then,
+without turning her head, shrilled out 'Bertha!' The girl came silently
+downstairs and joined her in the doorway. The mother pursued her
+knitting in silence, a faint flicker of a humorous smile touching her
+face and eyes now and again. At length she spoke, looking straight
+before her.
+
+'Why woot'ent marry the man?'
+
+'Mr. Thistlewood?' asked Bertha, making the feeblest possible defence
+against this direct attack.
+
+'Ay,' said her mother, 'Mr. Thistlewood to be sure. Why woot'ent marry
+him?'
+
+'I like him well enough in a way,' the girl answered 'But I don't like
+him that way!
+
+'What way?'
+
+'Why--in a marrying way,' said Bertha.
+
+'Pooh!' answered the notable woman. 'What's a maid know how she'd like a
+man?'
+
+'I should have the greatest respect for him,' Bertha answered, wisely
+avoiding the discussion of this question, 'if he wouldn't come bothering
+me to marry him.'
+
+'Ay! 'said her mother, assenting with a philosophic air. 'That's a
+wench's way. When a man wants nothing her'll give him as much as her
+can spare. But look hither, my gell! You listen to the words of a old
+experienced woman. There's a better love comes after the weddin', if
+a gell marries a worthy solid man, than ever her knows before it. If a
+gell averts from a man that's another matter. But if her can abide him
+to begin with, and if he's a good man, her'll be fond of him before her
+knows it.'
+
+'I should never be fond of Mr. Thistlewood, mother,' the girl answered,
+flushing hotly. 'It's of no use to speak about him.'
+
+'Did the man ever mek love to you at all,' the mother asked, 'beyond
+comin' here and barkin', "Wool't marry me?"'
+
+'I wish you wouldn't talk of him, mother,' Bertha answered in a troubled
+voice. 'I respect him very highly, but as for marrying him, it's out of
+the question. I can't do it.'
+
+'Well, well,' returned her mother, 'nobody's askin' you to do anything
+o' the sort. I'm trying to find your mind about him. It's high time
+'twas made up one way or other. You've come to a marriageable age.'
+
+'I'm very well as I am,' said Bertha, rather hastily. 'I'm not in a
+hurry to be married.'
+
+'You've never been much like other gells,' said her mother, with a
+dry humorous twinkle which looked more masculine than feminine. 'But I
+reckon you'll be in about as much of a hurry as the rest on 'em be when
+the right man comes.'
+
+At this moment a whistle of peculiar volume, mellowness, and flexibility
+was heard. The whistler was trilling 'Come lasses and lads' in tones as
+delightful as a blackbird's.
+
+'Is this him?' said the old woman, turning upon her daughter.
+
+Bertha blushed, and turned away. The mother laughed. A light footstep
+sounded on the echoing boards of the little bridge, and the
+human blackbird, marching gaily in time to his tune, flourished a
+walking-stick in salutation as he approached.
+
+'Good-afternoon, Mrs. Fellowes,' cried the newcomer. 'Good-afternoon,
+_Miss_ Fellowes.'
+
+They both returned his salutation, and he stood before them smilingly,
+holding his stick lightly by the middle, and swinging it hither and
+thither, as if keeping time to an inward silent tune. His feet were
+planted a little apart, he carried his head well back, and his figure
+was very alert and lithe. He made great use of his lips in talking, and
+whatever he said seemed a little overdone in emphasis. His expression
+was eager, amiable, and sensitive, and it changed like the complexion of
+water in variable weather. He was a bit of a dandy in his way, too. His
+clothes showed his slim and elastic figure to the best advantage, and a
+bright-coloured neckerchief with loose flying ends helped out a certain
+air of festal rural opera which belonged to him.
+
+'I passed Thistlewood on my way here,' he said, laughing brightly. 'He
+looked as cheerful as a frog. Did y' ever notice what a cheerful-looking
+thing a frog is?'
+
+He made a face ludicrously like the creature he mentioned. The old woman
+laughed outright, and Bertha smiled, though somewhat unwillingly.
+
+'I don't like to hear Mr. Thistlewood made game of, Mr. Protheroe,' she
+said a moment later.
+
+'Don't you, Miss Fellowes?' asked Mr. Protheroe. 'Then it shan't be done
+in your presence again.'
+
+'That means it may be done out of my presence, I suppose,' the girl said
+coldly.
+
+'No, nor out of it,' said the young fellow, bowing with something of a
+flourish, 'if it displeases you.'
+
+'Come in, Lane, my lad,' said the mother, genially. 'I've got the
+poultry to look after at this hour. Bertha 'll tek care of you till I
+come back again.'
+
+Lane Protheroe bowed again with the same gay flourish, and recovering
+himself from the bow with an upward swing of the head, followed the
+women-folk into the wide kitchen as if he had been crossing the floor in
+a minuet. If these airs of his had been assumed they would have touched
+the ridiculous, but they were altogether natural to him; and what
+with them and his smiling, changeful, sympathetic ways, he was a prime
+favourite, and seemed to carry sunshine into all sorts of company.
+
+When the mother had left the kitchen the girl seated herself
+considerably apart from the visitor, and taking up a book from a dresser
+beside her, began to turn over its pages, stopping now and again to read
+a line or two, and rather ostentatiously disregarding her companion.
+He sat in silence, regarding her with a grave face for a minute or
+thereabouts, and then, rising, crossed the room and placed himself
+beside her, bending over her, with one hand resting on the dresser. She
+did not look up in answer to this movement, but bent her head even a
+little more than before above the book.
+
+'I'm glad to be left alone with you for a minute, Miss Fellowes,' he
+began gently, and with a faint tremor and hesitation in his voice,
+'because I've something very special and particular to say to you.'
+
+There he paused, and Bertha with a slight cough, which was a trifle too
+casual and unembarrassed to be real, said, 'Indeed, Mr. Protheroe?' and
+kept her eyes upon the book.
+
+'They say a girl always knows,' he went on, 'and if that's true you know
+already what I want to say.'
+
+He paused, but if he expected any help from her in the way either of
+assent or denial, he was disappointed. He stooped a little lower and
+touched her hand with a gentle timidity, but she at once withdrew it.
+
+'You know I love you, Bertha? You know you're dearer to me than all the
+whole wide world beside?'
+
+Still Bertha said nothing, but the hand that turned the leaves of the
+book trembled perceptibly.
+
+'I've come to ask you if you'll be my wife, dear! if you'll let me make
+you my lifelong care and joy, my darling! You don't guess how much I
+love you. You don't know how much your answer means to me.'
+
+The girl rose, and, carrying the book with her, walked to the kitchen
+window and looked out upon the garden, the river, and the fields,
+without seeing anything. She was evidently agitated, and did not find
+an answer easily. Lane followed her, and when for a moment she dared
+to look up at him she encountered a look so tender, anxious, and ardent
+that she lowered her eyes in quick confusion. He seized her hand, and
+for a brief instant she let it rest in his.
+
+'Speak to me,' he murmured, caressingly and pleadingly. 'Tell me.'
+
+'I don't understand you, Mr. Protheroe,' the girl said pantingly.
+
+'Not understand me, dear? 'he whispered; 'I am asking you to be my
+wife.'
+
+'I understand that,' she answered, drawing herself away from him,
+and speaking with difficulty. 'It is _you_ I don't understand.
+You--yourself.'
+
+'Tell me how, darling,' he said softly.
+
+'You tell me,' she said, lifting a pale and agitated face, 'that I can't
+guess how much my answer means to you. But you come here whistling and
+dancing, as you always come, as if you hadn't a care upon your mind.'
+
+'Don't make that a reproach against me, dear,' said he. 'Why it was just
+the thought of you made me so happy.'
+
+She looked up at him with an expression of doubt and pain, and as their
+eyes met he caught one of her hands in both his, and held it.
+
+'Dear Bertha!' he said, with a sudden moisture in his eyes. 'There is
+nobody so good. There is nobody so lovely.'
+
+She drew away from him again, though some sort of electric influence
+seemed to come out of him, and draw her strongly to him.
+
+'I must wait,' she said. 'I--I don't know you well enough. I don't
+understand you. You are too light. You are too careless. I don't know
+how far I can believe you.'
+
+'Oh!' he cried, 'believe me altogether, dear. I love you with all my
+heart and soul!'
+
+She moved to the middle of the room, and sheltered herself behind a
+table which stood there.
+
+'I hardly know whether you have a heart,' she answered then. 'You fancy
+you feel all you say,' she added quickly. 'You feel it for the minute.'
+
+He stood at the other side of the table with brows suddenly grown
+gloomy.
+
+'I shall feel it all my life,' he said. 'It's the one thing I've ever
+been in earnest about. I never thought I should feel as I do. If you
+like to wait, dear, before answering me, I'll wait just as long as ever
+you please.' His gloom was gone, and he was all eagerness and vivacity
+again. 'There's nothing I won't do for your asking. I'll cure every
+fault I've got. I'll be everything you'd like to have me. Try me,
+darling. Wait and see. But give me only just a little bit of hope. Don't
+send me away quite hungry. Tell me you care for me just a little--not
+as I care for you--I don't expect that. It doesn't stand to reason yet
+awhile you should.'
+
+There she shot one swift glance at him, averting her gaze at once.
+
+'I won't say I don't like you,' she answered with a candour half rustic,
+half characteristic of herself 'But I won't answer yes or no just yet.'
+
+'Very well, dear,' he answered tenderly. 'You shall have time to know
+if I'm in earnest, or if I've taken nothing more than a passing fancy.
+Shall I ask you again this day six months?'
+
+'I won't promise you an answer then,' she said. 'I will answer you when
+I am certain.'
+
+'You could care for me, then,' he urged her, 'if you were only quite
+sure I loved you, and always would love you? Why, Bertha, I'd put my
+hand in that fire to save you from a finger-ache. I'd jump into the
+Weale there if I thought I could make you happy by doing it. I'd live my
+whole life your servant for a smile a year.'
+
+His eyes flashed or moistened with every phrase, his gestures were
+superabundant and intense, and his voice was genuinely tender and
+impassioned.
+
+His ardent eyes and voice thrilled the girl, and yet she doubted him.
+There was a fear in her mind which she could not shake away.
+
+People in Beacon Hargate were not rich in opportunities for the study
+of the acted drama, but Bertha had seen a play or two in the great town
+hard by, and Lane looked and talked rather too much like a stage lover
+to her mind. In the unreal life behind the footlights lovers talked with
+just such a fluency, just such a tender fiery emphasis. In real life
+John Thistlewood came doggedly a-wooing with a shoulder propped against
+a doorpost, and had hard work to find a word for himself. If only that
+one absent element of faith could be imported into the business, Lane
+Protheroe's fashion of courting was certain to be infinitely more
+delightful than John Thistlewood's, but then the absent element was
+almost everything. And for poor Bertha the worst part of it seemed
+that she loved the man she doubted, and could not love the man in whose
+affection she held the profoundest faith. That the rough, clumsy, and
+persistent courtier loved her was one of the indisputable facts of life
+to her. She knew it just as surely as she knew that she was alive. She
+knew it, and the knowledge hurt her, for she could fancy nothing less
+hopeful than Thistle-wood's wooing, and she was without a spark of mere
+vanity.
+
+'I think it is because you say so much that I don't feel quite able to
+believe it all,' she said. 'You feel it when you talk about it, but it
+seems to me as if you _had_ to talk before you get to feel it.'
+
+His brows bent down over gloomy eyes again, and he folded his arms as he
+looked at her. Once more poor Bertha thought of the stage lover she had
+seen, and a long-drawn sigh escaped her.
+
+'I can't think it's all quite real,' she said, almost desperately.
+
+'You think I say too much?' he retorted. 'It seems to me as if I said
+too little. It seems to me as if there weren't any words to speak such
+thoughts and feelings.'
+
+'Is that because you don't value the words? 'she .' asked him. 'Don't
+you think that if you felt what the words do mean that they'd seem
+enough for you?'
+
+'I know I'm a good-for-nothing beggar,' he answered, with a sudden air
+of weary self-loathing and disdain. 'I know. I've got a way of taking
+everything in deadly earnest for an hour or two. But,' with a sudden
+swerve into the track of self-justification, 'if that makes you think
+I'm fickle and weak-willed, you're all wrong, darling. There are some
+fellows--I know plenty--who go through life like a lot of oysters. They
+don't feel anything--they don't care about anything, or anybody. But,
+bless your heart, my dear, they never get doubted.'
+
+Bertha took this for a satiric dig at the absent Thistlewood, and spoke
+up for him, needlessly, as it happened.
+
+'Still waters run deep, Mr. Protheroe.'
+
+'Some of 'em do,' responded Mr. Protheroe, with profoundest gloom, which
+lightened suddenly into a smile as bright as sunshine. 'But some of 'em
+don't run at all. And some of 'em are as shallow as any puddle you'll
+find along the road, only they're so bemuddled you can't see to the
+bottom of 'em. You can plumb 'em with your little finger, though, if you
+don't mind soiling it.'
+
+Now this innocent generalisation seemed gratuitously offensive to the
+absent Thistlewood, and chilled Bertha greatly.
+
+'That may be very true of some people,' she responded; 'but it isn't
+true of all the quiet people in the world.. And I don't think, Mr.
+Protheroe, that the people who make the greatest parade of their
+feelings are the people who really have the most to speak of.'
+
+'Why, that's true, too, of some people,' returned Protheroe; 'but there
+are all sorts in the world, dear. Some say a lot and feel a lot Some
+feel a lot and say nothing. Some say nothing and feel nothing. It may be
+a fault with me--I don't know--but when I start to say a thing I want
+to say all of it. But surely a feeling isn't less real because you don't
+seem able to express it whatever words you choose.'
+
+'Where the feeling's sacred the words are sacred,' Bertha objected.
+
+'Tell me what it is you fear about me,' he besought her, leaning across
+the table, and searching her face with his eyes. 'You don't believe
+I should have a wandering mind if you said yes, and we should once be
+married?'
+
+She had laid the book upon the table, and now betook herself to
+fingering the leaves again.
+
+'I've no right to pick faults in you, or give you lessons, Mr.
+Protheroe.'
+
+'Oh yes, you have,' he answered. 'All the right in the world. If you'll
+take in hand to show me my faults, I'll take in hand to cure 'em so far
+as a man may.'
+
+'I don't think you're fickle,' said the girl hesitatingly; 'but I do
+think you're shallow, Mr. Protheroe.'
+
+'Not a bit of it, dear,' he protested. 'I'm as deep as Gamck. As for
+your still waters running deep, it'd be a better proverb to my mind to
+say deep waters run still--at times. Niagara's deepish, folks say that
+have seen it. That's not to say that I even myself with Niagara, you'll
+understand, though 'tis in my nature to splash about a good deal. But
+all that apart, Bertha dear, try to make up your mind to take me as I
+am, and help me to make a man o' myself.'
+
+At this point back came the farmer's wife with a clatter of pails in
+the back kitchen to indicate her arrival in advance. Lane took his leave
+with a reluctant air, going away much more gravely than he had arrived.
+
+'Well,' said Mrs. Fellowes, drawing her knitting from a capacious pocket
+and falling to work upon it at once, 'hast sent Number Two about his
+business?'
+
+Bertha cast an embarrassed look at her and blushed.
+
+'Mother,' she said, 'you seem to find out everything.'
+
+'Can find my way to the parish church by daylight,' the elder woman
+answered with complacency. 'But you tek care, my wench, whilst thee
+beest throwin' all the straight sticks aside, as thee doesn't pick up a
+crooked 'un at the last. Thee hast a fancy for the lad, too, that's as
+plain to be seen as the Beacon.'
+
+'Oh!' cried Bertha, reddening again. 'I hope not.'
+
+'For me, my gell,' said her mother. 'For me. And it's outside my
+thinkin' why a maid shouldn't tek a fancy to him. A lad as is stiddy
+an' handsome, and as blithe as sunshine! He's as fond as a calf into the
+bargain.'
+
+She liked to hear him praised, and, woman-like, began to depreciate him
+faintly.
+
+'I don't think he's very solid, mother,' she said.
+
+The elder woman smiled at the transparent artifice, and refused to be
+entrapped by it.
+
+'No,' she answered. 'Lane's a bit of a butterfly, I will say. And Jack
+Thistlewood's a bulldog. Mek your ch'ice betwixt 'em while they'm there
+to be chose from. Which is it to be? Butterfly or bulldog?'
+
+But Bertha answered nothing.
+
+
+
+
+II
+
+Things may have changed of late years, but in those days the parish
+churchyard was the great meeting-place for lovers who as yet were
+undeclared or unaccepted. The youth and the maid were both there for
+a purpose altogether removed from love-making--the meeting had the
+advantage of being accidental and certain. It was a tacit assignation
+which was almost certain to be kept, and even the shyest of sweethearts
+would dare to walk homewards together a little of the way even in the
+lightest of summer evenings.
+
+When Sunday morning came, and the one musical bell began to tinkle,
+Bertha stood before her open bedroom window, tying her bonnet-ribbons at
+the glass, in the embarrassing certainty that both her lovers would be
+waiting outside the church to meet her. This certainty was the less
+to be endured, because Bertha had the sincerest desire to close with
+heavenly rather than with earthly meditations on a Sunday, but she could
+no more help being flustered by the thought of Lane Protheroe, and being
+chilled by the anticipation of Thistlewood's look of bulldog fidelity,
+than she could help breathing. The girl's trouble was that she could not
+give her heart to the man who commanded her respect, whilst it was drawn
+fluttering with all manner of electric palpitations towards another whom
+she thought infinitely less worthy.
+
+There was nothing in the world against Lane Protheroe in any serious
+sense. Nobody spoke or thought ill of him, or had ground for ill
+speaking or thinking. But it was generally conceded that he _was_ a
+butterfly kind of young fellow, and there was a general opinion that
+he wanted ballast. Rural human nature is full of candour of a sort, and
+Lane was accustomed to criticism. He took it with a bright carelessness,
+and in respect to the charge of wanting ballast was apt to answer
+that ballast was a necessary thing for boats that carried no cargo.
+Thistlewood was generally admitted to be a well-ballasted personage--a
+man steady, resolved, serious, entirely trustworthy.
+
+'John Thistlewood's word is as good as his bond,' said one of his
+admirers one day in his presence.
+
+'John Thistlewood's word _is_ his bond,' said John Thistlewood, 'as any
+man's ought to be.'
+
+People remembered the saying, and quoted it as being characteristic of
+the man,--a man cut roughly out of the very granite of fidelity.
+
+Surely, thought Bertha, a girl ought to esteem herself happy in being
+singled out by such a man. The cold surface covered so steady, so
+lasting a glow. And as for Lane--well, Lane's heats seemed the merest
+flashes, intense enough to heat what was near them, but by no means
+enduring. There was danger that anything which was of a nature to keep
+on burning might catch fire at him, and when well lit might find that
+the creating heat had gone out, or had withdrawn itself. She knew
+herself, by instinct, faithful to the core, and if once she consented to
+love the man, she would have to go on doing it. That looked likely to be
+terrible, and she fought against herself continually. And she not only
+tried not to love the butterfly, but had tried her loyal hardest to love
+the bulldog. The last chance of success in the second enterprise went
+out finally when Thistlewood had once so far conquered his clumsy
+reticence of manner as actually to put his arm about her waist. Then
+every fibre of her body cried out against him, and she escaped him,
+shivering and thrilling with a repulsion so strong that it seemed like
+a crime to her. How dared she feel the touch of so estimable a man to be
+so hateful? But from that moment the thing was settled beyond a doubt.
+She could respect John Thistlewood, she could admire the solidity and
+faithfulness of his character--but, marry him? That was asking for more
+than nature could agree to.
+
+If Lane had only resembled John a little--ah! there was a glow of
+certainty called up by that fancy which might have been altogether
+delicious had the fancy been well grounded. If John had only been a
+little more like Lane? She was hardly so sure. Obviously, John was not
+the man for this girl to warm her heart at.
+
+The worst of it was that he would never find or look for another girl,
+and his long courtship, though it could never endear him, or even make
+him tolerable as a lover, served at least to have established a sort of
+claim upon her. The great faithful heart might break if she should
+throw herself away. The depth of his affection, as she realised it for
+herself, could only be understood by one capable of an equal passion.
+She never guessed, or came near to guessing, that her conception of him
+was the realisation of herself; but it is only great hearts which
+truly know what great hearts can be, and her profound conception of
+Thistle-wood's fidelity was her own best certificate to faithfulness.
+
+The little musical bell went on tinkling as she walked across the
+fields. It had various rates of movement to indicate to distant
+worshippers the progress of the time, and she gave a careful ear to its
+warnings, so regulating her steps as only to enter the churchyard at the
+last minute.
+
+There sure enough were both John and Lane waiting to pay their morning
+salutation. Happily, to her own mind, there was time for no more than
+a mere hand-shaking and a good-morning, and she walked into the church,
+beautifully tranquil to look at, though she could hardly believe that
+all the congregation could not guess with what a startled feeling her
+heart had begun to beat. By and by the influences of the place and the
+service began to soothe her, though she only succeeded in excluding
+her lovers by a conscious process of forgetfulness which was not so far
+removed from memory as it might have been.
+
+The Thistlewood pew was a little to the front on her right, and the
+Protheroe pew a little to her front on the left, but she kept her
+eyes so studiously downcast that she got no glimpse of either, until a
+strange and altogether remarkable feeling of something missing surprised
+her into looking up. Her eyes went first to the Protheroe pew, and Lane
+was not there. Then in spite of herself she listened for Thistlewood's
+voice in the Responses, and not detecting it, was impelled to look
+for him. He also was absent, and she began to quake a little. Was it
+possible they had stayed outside to quarrel? This fear would have been
+sufficiently serious at any time, but on a Sunday, during church hours,
+it magnified itself, which fact is in itself enough to prove that though
+the idea perturbed her she foresaw no very terrible consequences. It
+would be hateful to be quarrelled over, but both the combatants--if
+combatants they were to be--would respect her too much to proceed to
+extremities, and thereby make the quarrel public, and her a target for
+all tongues.
+
+John and Lane had met in the churchyard pretty early, and whilst there
+were friends to greet, and to pass the time of day with, things went
+smoothly enough. But as the churchgoers filed by ones and twos into the
+building, each began to be aware of a solitude which was peopled only
+by the disagreeable presence of the other. John, ostentatiously
+disregardful of his adversary, planted himself at the gate, so as to be
+before him in his greeting. Lane, rather unusually erect and martial in
+his walk, marched past him into the village roadway, and there loitered
+for the same intent. Thistlewood, recognising the meaning of this
+manouvre, strolled into the roadway, and doggedly planted himself a yard
+or two beyond the spot where his rival had halted. Lane, with an air to
+the full as ostentatiously and offensively dis-regardful as the other's,
+marched past Thistlewood with half a dozen soldierly-looking strides,
+and bringing himself to an abrupt halt made a disdainful back at him.
+Again Thistlewood advanced, but this time he drew himself up a trifle
+behind his rival, and laid a finger on his shoulder.
+
+'Well?' said Protheroe, without turning his head.
+
+'I shall want a word with thee by and by, my lad,' Thistlewood said
+quietly.
+
+'Have it now,' replied Lane, settling his shoulders jauntily.
+
+'There's time in plenty afore us,' Thistlewood answered, regarding him
+with supreme disfavour.
+
+The younger man looked straight before him with an exasperating aspect
+of indifference.
+
+'When you like,' he said.
+
+'Very well,' replied Thistlewood. 'In five minutes' time from now.'
+
+'Church time,' said Lane smilingly, surveying the landscape.
+
+'Beest that keen set on the sermon?' John inquired.
+
+'Don't know that I am,' replied the enemy, rising a little on his toes,
+and then settling his shoulders anew.
+
+'Five minutes' time from now.'
+
+The jaunty airs and scornful disregard began to warm Thistlewood's blood
+a little.
+
+'Canst look a man i' the face when thee talk'st to him? 'he asked.
+
+'Yes, bless your heart and soul alive!' cried Lane, swaggering round and
+beaming on him.
+
+For half a minute they looked at each other, the one angry, resolute,
+and lowering, with head bent a little forward, his glance directed
+upward past his down-drawn brows, the other smiling with seeming
+sweetness and gaiety.
+
+Thistlewood seemed to restrain himself with something of an effort.
+
+'We'll talk together by and by,' he said, and turning, deliberately
+walked back into the churchyard.
+
+For a few seconds Lane stood glorying, but on a sudden it occurred to
+him that his rival was behaving in a more dignified manner than himself,
+and this was a reflection not to be endured without instant action.
+So he marched back into the churchyard also, and left John in the
+foreground. When Bertha appeared her elder lover paid his respects
+first, and Lane came up afterwards, looking, as she remembered later on,
+prodigiously gloomy and resolved.
+
+The bell had been silent for a minute, and the curate's voice had begun
+to drone within the building. The rivals were alone, and nobody was
+within sight or earshot.
+
+'Shall we walk a pace or two, Mr. Protheroe?' asked John.
+
+Mr. Protheroe, without speaking, sauntered out at the gate, vaulted a
+stile opposite, and paused in a field pathway. Thistlewood followed,
+throwing first one leg and then the other over the rail with a sort of
+laboured deliberation.
+
+'Now,' said Lane.
+
+'We'll walk on a little bit,' answered Thistlewood, and there was
+silence for a minute or two as they strode along the grass. Then when
+they had reached the shelter of a little copse which hid them from the
+whole landscape on the church side, John said, 'Now,' in turn, and the
+two halted. Each was paler than common by this time, and Lane's eyes
+sparkled, whilst the other's burned steady with resentment.
+
+''Twixt man and man as is willing to come to understand one another, Mr.
+Protheroe,' said Thistlewood, 'a very few words suffices. I'll have thee
+nor no man else poaching on my manor.'
+
+'Well,' Lane answered, 'if ever I should arrive at owning a manor, I'd
+say the same. But I'd be sure of my title-deeds afore I took to warning
+other men off the ground.'
+
+'Let's talk plain English,' said John, apparently quite untouched by
+this rejoinder.
+
+'With all my heart,' said his rival, 'the plainer the better.'
+
+'I find you very much i' my way,' Thistlewood began ponderously.
+
+'I don't find you a little bit in mine,' Lane answered.
+
+'You talk to sting,' said Thistlewood, with dull dignity. 'I want to
+talk so as to be understood. I find you very much i' my way, as I was
+saying, and I won't have you theer.'
+
+'No?'
+
+'No!'
+
+'And how do you mean to set about getting rid of me?'
+
+'I've set about harder jobs than that i' _my_ time, lad.'
+
+'Like enough. But how do you mean to set about this one?'
+
+'All in good time,' said Thistlewood. 'Sha'st find out speedily.'
+
+'Show me now,' said Lane.
+
+A breach of the peace seemed imminent, but, 'Afore thee and me comes
+to that,' the elder answered, 'I want thee to have fair warnin'. It's
+unbecomin' in a man to brawl over the maid he wants to marry---- I'm a
+man as never changed nor halted nor turned aside from anything he set
+his mind upon. I've been courtin' Miss Fellowes now this three year. It
+stands to reason as a frivolish young chap like you can mek no count of
+how a man feels, or of what a man 'ud do in a like case.'
+
+'That stands to reason, does it?' 'It stands to reason,' answered
+Thistlewood. 'I suppose it stands to reason likewise that I am to stand
+to one side, and leave the road clear after this?'
+
+'It'd be the wisest thing you ever did.' 'Well, now, Thistlewood, you'll
+please understand that, for all so frivolous as I may be, I'm hardly
+that easy to be swayed. As for who has a right on the ground, it's a
+mere piece of impudence to talk about it. That's neither for me nor you
+to choose. If ever I get straight "No" I'll go, but I'll have it before
+I go, for that's a man's bounden duty to himself.'
+
+'Understand thyself as bein' warned away,' said Thistlewood.
+
+'Understand thy warning as being laughed at,' answered Lane. 'You talk
+plain English? So will I. You've got the wrong pig by the ear. You're
+no better than a dog in the manger. You've always been spoken of up till
+now as a man to play fair, but now it strikes me you play very far from
+fair, and cut a poor figure. As for threats--a man who won't take a
+hiding when it's offered to him--what's _he_ good for, I should like to
+know?'
+
+Here, as elsewhere, Mr. Protheroe was true to nature, and spoke with
+striking emphasis. He was quite red-hot with scorn at the imaginary
+fellow who would not take the proffered hiding, though a minute earlier,
+when he had told Thistlewood that he had the wrong pig by the ear, his
+manner had been marked by a cold and lofty superiority.
+
+'Beest warned! 'said Thistlewood, 'that's enough.'
+
+'Not half enough, nor yet a quarter,' cried Lane, with a bellicose air,
+not unmixed with swagger. 'I've taught my hands to take care of my head,
+sir, and they'll be ready to do it whenever the time occurs. But it
+always seemed a bit ridiculous to me to talk about fighting beforehand
+When the fight's over there _is_ something to talk about.'
+
+'You seem to be in a hurry for that there hiding,' said Thistlewood.
+
+'Hurry's no word for it,' the younger man responded, with cheerful
+alacrity.
+
+'Very well,' said the elder, taking off his hat and bestowing it
+carefully upon the grass, 'sha'st have it.'
+
+Lane, for his part, threw down his hat, flourished his coat off, dropped
+it behind him, rolled up his sleeves, and waited whilst Thistlewood made
+his preparations more slowly. Protheroe set that mellow whistle of his
+to work on 'The British Grenadiers,' and his enemy smiled grimly to
+think how soon he would silence the music.
+
+Half a minute later they were standing foot to foot and eye to eye,
+the music already silenced. It would have been difficult from the mere
+aspect of the men to say on which side the advantage lay. In height and
+reach they were nearly equal, and, if Thistlewood's weight and muscle
+were in his favour, Protheroe was as active as a cat.
+
+And here might have been recorded a bit of history to warm the blood of
+such as love and remember the old-fashioned manhood of England. We are
+grown too refined and civilised nowadays for the old rude arbitrament,
+and so fair play has ceased to be the Englishman's motto in fighting,
+and the English rustic shoots and stabs like the rustic of other
+lands. All fighting is foolish, more or less, but we had the manliest,
+friendliest, most honourable, and least harmful way of doing it amongst
+all the sons of men, and so our Legislature killed out the 'noble art'
+from amongst us, and brought us to the general ugly level.
+
+It was in the reign of the Tipton Slasher--which, as people learned in
+the history of manners will remember, was a longish time ago--when these
+two Britons stood up to arrange their differences after the fashion
+then in vogue. There was nobody to see fair play, and so they saw it
+for themselves, as all fighting Englishmen did when there was a code of
+honour to go by. It was not a mere affair of hammer and tongs, but very
+fair scientific fighting, the science vivified by enjoyment, and full of
+energy, but never forgotten for a second. The pleasure was keen on both
+sides, for from the beginning of their knowledge of each other these two
+had been in antagonism, and at the last it was a real treat to let all
+go and have at it.
+
+'I was always a bit frivolous, as you said just now, Mr. Thistlewood,'
+Lane remarked in the first enforced pause of the combat, 'but I'd like
+you to bear me witness that I stick to what I'm at while I'm at it.'
+
+This address was delivered pantingly, whilst the speaker lay flat upon
+his back on the grass, with his arms thrown out crosswise. Thistlewood
+disdained response, and sat with one great shoulder propped against a
+dwarf oak, breathing fast and hard. When this sign of distress had
+a little abated, he arose, and said 'Time' as if he had been a mere
+cornerman in the affair, and rather bored by it than otherwise. Lane
+rolled over on to his face, rose to his hands and knees, smiled at his
+adversary for a little while, as if to give him an appetite for the
+business in hand, and then got to his feet and made ready.
+
+Now for a man to hold his own at this particular form of fighting
+against an equal adversary for a bare five minutes argues five grand
+things for him, and these are chastity, temperance, hardihood, strength,
+and courage. It speaks well for these admirable qualities in both of
+them that Messrs. Thistlewood and Protheroe made a good hour of it. The
+advantages and disadvantages had been so equally distributed that by
+this time they were pretty nearly harmless to each other, but each was
+sustained by the hope of victory, and each would have died, and, for the
+matter of that, would have gone on dying, rather than yield the precious
+palm to the other.
+
+Now the clergyman who ministered to the spiritual wants of Beacon
+Hargate was never disposed to gorge his flock with too much doctrine
+at a time, and on this Sabbath had an invitation to luncheon at a great
+house some four or five miles away, and so treated his parishioners--to
+the scandal of some and the joy of others--to the shortest discourse
+they had ever heard from the pulpit. By this mischance it happened that
+the combatants were discovered by a silent male advance-guard of the
+home-returning congregation, who ran back--his footsteps soundless on
+the grass--to spread the splendid news. Sunday or week-day there was no
+more welcome break in the monotony of life in Beacon Hargate than that
+afforded by a fight. The time being church-time, and the combatants men
+of respectable position, lent piquancy to the event, of course, as who
+shall say me nay? The churchgoers, two or three farmers, Mr. Drake,
+the manager of Lord Barfield's estates at Heydon Hey, and a handful of
+labourers came up, at first stealthily, and then more boldly, and looked
+on at the finish.
+
+It was plain that the fight had been severe, but it was equally plain
+that the best of it was over; and when Farmer Fellowes interposed as
+_amicus curio_, nobody but the two most concerned had any especial
+resentment against him.
+
+Even for them Farmer Fellowes had a crumb of comfort.
+
+'Finish it another time, lads,' he said. 'Where's the good o' goin' on
+wi' it i' this manner? Why a child might homber the pair on you. Get
+fresh an' have another turn to-morrow, if the 'casion's worth it.'
+
+So the fight was left undecided after all, and the adversaries were
+led off to the neighbouring brook, where they made themselves as
+respectable to look at as they could before they took their several
+ways. They were unsightly for a week or two, and were close watched by
+their women folk lest they should renew the strife.
+
+Beacon Hargate knew perfectly well the reason of the battle, and Bertha
+was mightily disdainful and indignant over both her lovers, who, to her
+fancy, had disgraced themselves and her. Six days after the fight John
+Thistlewood's business for once in a way, as well as his inclination,
+took him to Fellowes's farm, and there Bertha (who for very shame had
+not quitted the house since Sunday) first saw the result of the fray.
+The stalwart farmer's face was discoloured, and, in places, still
+swollen. She saw the wicked handiwork of Lane Protheroe, and vowed
+within herself that she would see that dreadful young man no more. She
+could have cried for pity of poor Mr. Thistlewood, who had been thus
+shamefully treated for the crime of being faithful in love.
+
+If John had known it, he had at this instant the best chance of being
+taken as Bertha's husband he had ever had, or was like to find. But
+he was shamefaced about the matter, as heroes not uncommonly are with
+regard to their achievements, and was disposed to think himself at an
+even unusual disadvantage.
+
+Bertha stifled in her heart whatever tender sentiments Protheroe had
+inspired, and was prepared to pass him whenever she might meet him with
+such a manner as should indicate her new opinion of him beyond chance of
+mistake. Thistlewood had appeared on the Saturday, and on the Monday
+the fates threw her younger lover in her way. She discerned him from a
+distance, herself unseen. His figure dipped down into the hollow, and
+she could not see him again until they met at some turning or other of
+the tortuous lane. If pride had not forbidden it she could have turned
+to fly homewards, but she hardened her heart and went on until his
+footsteps sounded clearly on the stony road.
+
+Then he turned the corner, and she lifted one glance of superb disdain
+which melted suddenly under a terror-stricken pity. For this hero was
+worse battered than Number One had been, and one of those eyes, which
+had used to be so expressive and eloquent, was decorated by a shade.
+
+'Oh, Lane!' cried the girl, clasping her hands, and turning white with
+pity.
+
+'Did I frighten you, my dear?' said Lane. 'It's nothing. It'll all be
+right in a day or two.'
+
+'I hope so,' she answered, recovering herself, and seizing on principle
+before it made away for ever. 'I wish you to know that I think you
+have behaved very disgracefully, and I hope you will never speak to me
+again.'
+
+'Why,' said Lane, 'that's hard measure, Bertha; and as for behaving
+disgracefully--if a man threatens to punch your head you must give him
+the chance to punch it. That's man's law, anyhow, whether it's woman's
+or not.'
+
+'I am sure Mr. Thistlewood is no quarreller,' said Bertha, with great
+dignity and severity of demeanour. 'It takes no great penetration to
+guess who began it.'
+
+'There's one thing I will say for him,' returned Lane; 'he's a
+truth-telling fellow, to the best of my belief. Ask him who began it.
+He'll tell you. Not that I should take any particular blame or shame for
+having begun it myself, but since that's how you look at it, dear--why,
+I should like you to be satisfied.'
+
+'Do you think, Mr. Protheroe,' demanded Bertha, 'that it's the way to
+win a girl's esteem to brawl about her in public on a Sunday?'
+
+'That's what Thistlewood said,' Lane answered, with cunning simplicity.
+'"It's unbecoming," said he, "in a man to brawl over the maid he wants
+to marry."'
+
+'I was certain he would say so, and think so,' returned Bertha, with a
+sinking of the heart. She wanted grounds for pardoning Lane.
+
+'Well,' said Lane, with a retrospective air, 'we talked for a while, and
+he was good enough to promise me a hiding if I didn't keep out of his
+way--meaning, of course, at your father's house. I didn't seem to take
+it quite so meekly as he thought I ought to, and by and by says he, "You
+seem to be in a hurry for that hiding." So I just made answer that hurry
+was no word for it, and then, the pair of us being keen set, we got to
+it. The day was an accident, and I daresay a piece of forgetfulness on
+both our sides. But you see, my dear, a man's just as bound to guard his
+self-respect on a Sunday as on a week-day.'
+
+'I have been very deeply wounded,' said Bertha. 'I wished to respect
+you both, and now I can respect neither of you. Good-morning, Mr.
+Protheroe.'
+
+Mr. Protheroe stood discomfited, and looked mournfully after her as she
+walked away. When she had disappeared round the bend of the road he sat
+down upon the bank and plucked grasses with mechanical fingers, turning
+the thing up and down in his mind for an hour or thereabouts. Suddenly
+he jumped to his feet and resumed his walk, smiling with head erect, and
+that mellow whistle of his rose on the air with jollity in every note of
+it, for it had broken upon his mind like sunshine to remember her first
+exclamation on seeing him. He was a young man who was in the habit
+of making sure of things, and he had never in his life been surer of
+anything than he felt about this. The name, the tone, the look, meant
+more than a common interest in him. She had called him 'Lane' for the
+first time in his life. She had clasped her hands, and turned pale at
+the sight of him. All this meant victory for his dearest hopes, and so
+he leapt to his feet, and marched off whistling like the throstle.
+
+
+
+
+III
+
+Bertha pursued her way along the tortuous bridlepath with thoughts which
+resembled the way she travelled. Like the road, her fancy seemed to turn
+back upon itself pretty often and yet in the main it held in the same
+direction. Of course, fighting was a brutal business to a girl's way
+of thinking, but then, when she came really to think of it; men
+were strange creatures altogether, half terribly glorious and half
+contemptible. Lane had endured all these injuries simply and merely
+because he loved her! She could have no conception of the possibilities
+of masculine joy in a fight for its own sake, or of the masculine sense
+of honour which compelled the meeting of a challenge half-way. Of course
+it was mightily unpleasant to be talked about, as the heroine of such a
+business. The village tongues had been busy, and would never altogether
+stop wagging for the remainder of her lifetime.
+
+The influence of long years of respect for Thistle-wood seemed to turn
+her mental steps backward now and then. That so quiet and retired a man,
+and so little given to proclaiming himself should have made the most
+sacred wishes of his heart a matter of common gossip was understandable
+only on one hypothesis. His love and his despair carried him out of
+himself. That, of course, was a daring thing for any girl to think, but
+then Bertha was bound to find reasons.
+
+Mainly, her mind was occupied in the reconstruction of her previous
+belief about Lane Protheroe. He also, it would seem, had manly qualities
+in him--could stand up to be beaten in the cause of the woman he loved.
+The blows hurt her so, in the mere fancy of them, that she more than
+once put up her hands to her face to guard it. By the time she had
+accomplished her errand, and was on the way back to her father's
+farmhouse, she was all tenderness and forgiveness and admiration for the
+newly-revealed Lane, but then, as the fates would have it, just as she
+began to think of her cruelty to him, and of the terribly low spirits
+into which she must have thrown him, the familiar jocund whistle broke
+upon her ears, and when she stood still in a dreary amaze at this, she
+could hear the steps of the lover, who ought to have been altogether
+love-lorn, marching along in something very like a dance in time to his
+own music. What was one to think of such a man? She was back in a
+moment to her old opinion of him. No rooted feeling in him--no
+solidity--nothing to be sure of!
+
+She made haste home, and there shut herself in her own room and cried.
+Her mother walked upstairs, and finding the girl thus mournfully
+engaged, sat down tranquilly beside her and produced her knitting.
+The click of the needles had an effect of commonplace which helped to
+restore Bertha to her self-possession, and in a little time her tears
+ceased, and moving to the window she stood there looking out upon the
+landscape. The monotonous click of the needles ceased, and she knew that
+her mother had laid down her work in her lap and was regarding her. She
+turned, with a ghost of a smile.
+
+'You're thinkin', no doubt, as you're full o' trouble, my wench,' began
+the mother, 'and it's no manner o' use in talkin' to young folks to try
+an' mek out as a thing as pains don't hurt. But if you can only bring
+'em t' understand as it won't hurt much by and by, you've done summat
+for 'em, may be. What's the trouble, wench? Come an' tell thy mother.'
+
+'It's all over now, mother,' said Bertha
+
+'Not it,' returned Mrs. Fellowes, 'nor won't be yet a while. Beesn't one
+as cries for nothing, like most gells. I was niver o' that kind myself.'
+
+Bertha would not, perhaps could not, make a confidante even of her
+mother in this matter, but Mrs. Fellowes had a remarkable faculty for
+striking human averages, and she got near the truth in her guesses.
+
+'There's one thing fixed and sure, my dear,' she said, 'and that is
+as follows: ayther you must find a mind to wed one of 'em, or you must
+pluck up a spirit and tell 'em you'll wed nayther.'
+
+'I have told Mr. Thistlewood that I can never marry him,' said Bertha.
+
+'And what about Lane?' her mother asked her.
+
+'I can never marry him either,' the girl answered steadily. She had her
+voice under perfect control, but her averted face and the very lines of
+her figure enlightened the shrewd old mother.
+
+'Hast told him so?' she asked.
+
+'I have told him,' Bertha answered, 'never to speak to me again.'
+
+'Hoity, toity, deary me!' cried the old woman. 'And what says he to
+that?'
+
+'He didn't greatly seem to care,' said Bertha, with a beautifully
+assumed air of indifference.
+
+'Maybe he didn't set such store by what you told him as to tek it in
+earnest?'
+
+'Oh,' said the girl, languidly and indifferently, 'he knew I meant it.'
+
+'And didn't seem to care? My dear, you're talkin' of Lane Protheroe!'
+
+'He cared for a minute, perhaps,' Bertha said, her assumed indifference
+and languor tinctured with bitterness by this time. 'He cared for a
+minute, perhaps; just as he does about everything. I heard him whistling
+an hour afterwards.'
+
+The disguise was excellent, and might have deceived a woman who had
+known her less intimately and watched her less closely, but it was
+transparent to the mother.
+
+'That's the trouble, is it?' said Mrs. Fellowes, gravely betaking
+herself once more to her knitting. Bertha had been crying already, and
+had hard work to restrain herself. 'Look here, my darlin',' the mother
+said, with unwonted tenderness of tone and manner, 'if you can't read
+your own mind, you must let a old experienced woman read it for you. The
+lad's as the Lord made him. What we see in any o' the men to mek a fuss
+about, the Lord in His mercy only knows; but, to my mind, Lane's 'the
+pick o' ten thousand. He's alive, and that's more than _can_ be said
+of many on 'em. He's a clever lad, he's well to look at, and he's
+well-to-do.'
+
+'Mother,' cried the girl, almost passionately, her own pain wrung her
+so, 'he has no heart. He cares for a thing one minute, and doesn't care
+for it the next. He pretends--no, he doesn't pretend--but he thinks he
+cares, and while he thinks it I suppose he does care. But out of sight
+is out of mind with him.'
+
+'Makest most o' thine own troubles, like the rest on us,' said Mrs.
+Fellowes philosophically. But, in a moment, philosophy made way for
+motherly kindness, and, rising from her seat, she bestowed her knitting
+in a roomy pocket and put her arms about her daughter's waist. 'Art fond
+of the lad all the same,' she said. 'Ah, my dear, there's nothin' likely
+to be sorer than the natur as picks flies in the things it's fond on.
+There's a deal o' laughin' at them as thinks all their geese is swans,
+but they're better off in the long run than them as teks all their swans
+to be geese.'
+
+Bertha said nothing, but she trembled a little under the caress, and her
+mother, observing this, released her, went back to her chair, and once
+more drew forth her knitting.
+
+'I reckon,' she said, after a pause, 'as John Thistlewood's had the
+spoiling of thee. Thee'st got to think so much o' them bulldog ways of
+his'n, that nothin' less 'll be of use to any man as comes a-courtin'.'
+
+'Don't talk about it any more, mother,' said Bertha, with an air of
+weary want of interest. 'I have said good-bye to both of them.'
+
+And there the interview ended.
+
+
+
+
+IV
+
+It became evident that Bertha was likely to have a troublesome time
+before her. First of all came John Thistlewood, dogged and resolute as
+ever, propping himself against the chimney-piece, flogging his gaitered
+legs with the switch he carried, and demanding Ay or No before his time.
+Bertha determined to treat him with some spirit.
+
+'You don't need me to tell you that I respect you very highly, Mr.
+Thistlewood. But you oughtn't to need me to answer your question any
+more. I shall be obliged if you will be so good as not to ask it again.'
+
+'I shall ask it,' said the dogged John, 'till it comes to be answered
+one way or another.'
+
+'It has been answered almost often enough to my way of thinking,' said
+Bertha.
+
+She had never been tart with Thistlewood until that moment, but he
+manifested no surprise or emotion of any kind.
+
+'It never has been answered, an' never will be till I see thee married,
+whether to me or another. When that day come to pass you've heard the
+last of my question.'
+
+Thus the dogged John; and he being disposed of for a while, came Lane.
+To him the persecuted maid was a little less severe than she had been,
+but she was inexorable.
+
+'If you like to come here as a friend, Mr. Protheroe, in a few months'
+time, I daresay we shall all be very glad to see you.'
+
+'Well,' said Lane, with fine irrelevance, 'as an enemy this is a house
+I shall never make a call at. But look at the matter for a minute, my
+darling----'
+
+'You must not talk to me like that, Mr. Protheroe,' Bertha said, with
+great coldness.
+
+'Like what, my dear?' asked the ingenious Lane.
+
+'Like that, Mr. Protheroe,' replied Bertha.
+
+'I think it so often, that I'm afraid I'm bound to say it sometimes;
+but, if it offends, I hope you'll forgive me. You know you _are_ my
+darling, don't you? You know there isn't a queen in the world I'd even
+with you if every hair of her head was hung with Koh-i-noors. "Out of
+the fulness of the heart the mouth speaketh," the Wise Man says. So, if
+I do let slip "my dear" or "my darling" now and then, you'll know it's
+accident, and you won't take offence at it--will you?'
+
+This was agile but unsatisfactory.
+
+'Please understand me, Mr. Protheroe,' said Bertha, with rural dignity;
+'you must not come here again until you can come merely as a friend.'
+
+'Bertha! You can't mean it! What have I done? What has changed you?'
+
+'Mr Protheroe!'--the rural dignity made an insulted goddess of her to
+Lane's fancy--'what right have you to say that I have changed?'
+
+'Why, Bertha,' he said, meekly and strickenly, 'wasn't I to come in six
+months' time and get an answer?'
+
+'Will you oblige me by coming for your answer in six months' time,'
+answered Bertha. 'Good-afternoon, Mr. Protheroe.'
+
+Bertha thought herself more cruel to herself than to him. She knew how
+infinitely more cruel she was to Thistlewood, but that was not a thing
+to be avoided. She and he alike must suffer--she in giving pain and he
+in bearing it. Bertha's heart ached over Lane, and the bitterness of it
+was to know that in a week or two the butterfly nature would have ceased
+to care. He was hotly in love to-day, no doubt, but he would be out
+of love to-morrow, may be, and in a month or two hotly in love again
+elsewhere.
+
+On the Sunday following these interviews dogged John was at church, and
+the butterfly Protheroe also. Thistlewood looked as he always
+looked, rudely healthy, and a masterpiece of masterfulness and sullen
+perseverance and resolve. Lane was pallid and miserable, and Bertha
+remarking him was compelled to fall back on the bitter consolation of
+her former thoughts. He would take it heavily for a day or two, and
+would then forget all about it. He cast a glance or two in Bertha's
+direction, and his eyes were full of melancholy appeal. But for her
+certainty he would have moved her, for she was predisposed to be moved,
+and she had hardly expected to have had so much effect upon him.
+He walked dejectedly out of church at the close of the service, and
+Thistlewood half by accident shouldered him. He took it meekly, and made
+no sign.
+
+Two or three days later came a piece of news of the sort Bertha had
+expected. Mr. Protheroe was heard of as having made one of a picnic
+party in the neighbourhood of Heydon Hey, and of this party he was said
+to have been the life and soul. He was reported to have paid marked
+attentions to Miss Badger, daughter of a wealthy cheesemonger in Castle
+Barfield High Street. The young lady was rumoured to be possessed of
+great personal attractions, and a pretty penny, present and prospective.
+
+Foreseen as it was, the news stung a little when it came. Even the most
+butterfly-like of lovers might have waited a little longer!
+
+And yet next Sunday, when Bertha went to church, quite resolved not to
+waste so much as a glance upon him, he looked paler and more dejected
+than he had done a week ago. She looked in spite of herself--she must
+needs look at him,--and it was evident that as yet the cheesemonger's
+daughter had found no way to cheer him. Thistlewood never altered. Those
+strong self-contained natures have a power upon themselves as they
+have on other people. He could last for years in solid and complete
+devotion--he could apparently wait for ever--and could yet hide from the
+eyes of the outer world the steady fires which burned within him.
+That butterfly nature of poor Lane's forced Thistlewood's virtues into
+prominence by contrast, and the girl had them almost constantly in her
+thoughts. There was nothing--she told herself remorsefully--that this
+typical piece of solidity and devotion would not do for her. Her faith
+in his attachment transcended bounds, and she felt it to be a thousand
+pities that she could not love him.
+
+It does not happen in every life-history that this sort of profound
+feeling finds an opportunity of proof, but in the story of the lives of
+John Thistlewood and Lane Protheroe this thing came to pass in such wise
+that he who ran might read the natures of the men, and know them once
+for all.
+
+Bulldog John had gone on doggedly courting, and butterfly Lane had taken
+to seeing too much convivial company in Heydon Hey and Castle Barfield,
+and there was a fear in Bertha's mind that if her influence had not been
+permanent, it had at least started the young man on a track likely to
+prove disastrous. These emotional people, quick to feel and quick to
+forget, are hardly to be dealt with without danger.
+
+Lane's dissipations must have been graver than even rumour gave them
+discredit for being. His midnight junketings had made a ghost of him,
+and to see him at any moment when he thought himself unobserved was
+to wonder how long such a mournful and broken young gentleman could
+possibly rouse himself to fill the part of King even in a rustic
+Bohemia.
+
+Autumn was on the land. The corn-shocks were standing in the stubbled
+fields, and the night air was full of gossamer, which twined itself
+about the faces of all wayfarers. Rural work had gone on merrily all
+day, and when the sun set silence fell, and darkness like a warm shroud.
+Lights flickered a while in the village and the farmhouse, and then went
+out one by one. The moon stole over the Beacon Hill, and looked mildly
+across the valley.
+
+There was not a breath of air stirring, and not a sound upon the night
+except for the placid and continual gurgle of the stream which had no
+voice at all by day. Yes. One other sound there was, a sound as of some
+one moving uneasily in a creaking chair. Creak, creak, creak It grew
+momently. Crackle, crackle, crackle. Still it grew. A tongue like the
+tongue of a snake--so light and fine and swift was it--flashed out of
+a crevice, and flew back again, flashed out again, and again withdrew.
+Then the snake's body flashed out after it, and melted on the moonlit
+air. Another, and another, and another. Then a low roaring noise, and
+all the windows of the basement shone out ruby-coloured, and the moon
+looked bleared by contrast.
+
+A distant voice from the village called out 'Fire!' There was a crash
+of opening windows, a tumult of clapping doors, a storm of barking dogs,
+excited voices, hurrying feet.
+
+Old and young, male and female, robed anyhow, ran hard towards the
+farmhouse, and poured in a thunderous stream across the echoing wooden
+bridge which spanned the river. The farmhouse was a tower of flame,
+fantastic turrets springing here and there. The dry timbers, centuries
+old, made the best of food for fire, and the place flamed like a
+tar-barrel. The screams of doomed horses came with hideous uproar from
+the stables in the rear.
+
+The farmer and his wife, the men servants and the maid servants, were
+in the garden, all pale with fear and helpless; but the mother tore the
+night with calling on her daughter's name.
+
+Bulldog John and his rival came last of all, though they ran like
+hounds, and they crossed the bridge and dashed through the crowd
+together.
+
+'Oh, John,' cried the agonised mother, clutching at him as though he
+were an ark of safety. 'You'll save her--won't you? God help her! You'll
+save her--won't you, John?'
+
+One figure, black as night against the fierce glow of the flame, dashed
+across the space between the crowd and the farmhouse. It was hardly
+seen, and scarce believed in by those who thought they saw.
+
+'John,' cried the wretched mother, 'you'll save her! You as loved her
+so! You'll save her!'
+
+There is no manhood in the world that needs to be ashamed to hang back
+from an enterprise so hopeless and so terrible. The woman shrieked and
+prayed--the man stood motionless with white face and staring eyes.
+
+Then came one wild cry from half a dozen throats at once, and next
+upleapt a roar that struck the noise of the fire out of being for an
+instant. For the figure, black against the fiery glow, was back again,
+by some such stupendous chance, or heaven-wrought miracle, as only
+desperate valour ever wins. A figure huddled in a blanket lay in his
+arms, and as he came racing towards the crowd they fell together.
+They were lifted and borne out of the circle of fierce heat and flying
+sparks.
+
+The house was left to burn, and every thought was centred on the rescuer
+and the rescued. The fresh air roused Bertha from her swoon, and at the
+first opening of her eyes and the first words she spoke the mother went
+as mad with joy as she had been with terror.
+
+'Alive!--alive! Safe!--safe! And oh, my God! my Christian friends, it
+was the Butterfly as did it!'
+
+But it was a full month later when Lane Protheroe asked his first
+question,
+
+'Where's Bertha?'
+
+'Hush! my dear, dear darlin',' said Mrs. Fellowes, her eyes brimful of
+tears. 'Lie quiet, there's a dear.'
+
+'Where's Bertha?'
+
+'Safe and well, love; safe and well.'
+
+'I'm thirsty,' said the Butterfly.
+
+He was supplied with a cooling drink, and fell to sleep smiling, with
+unchanged posture. In half a dozen hours he woke again.
+
+'Where's Bertha?'
+
+'Here, dearest.'
+
+And we leave them hand in hand, yearning on each other through their
+blissful tears.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's Bulldog And Butterfly, by David Christie Murray
+
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