George Fenn - The Man with a Shadow

“Do what, miss?” said Dally Watlock. “That! There, you did it again.”

“La, miss; I on’y thought my face might be a bit smudgy, and I wiped it.”

“Don’t tell me a falsehood, Dally. I know what it means. You felt guilty, and your face burned.”

“La, miss; I don’t know what you mean.”

“Then I’ll tell you, Dally. You are growing too light and free, and your conduct is far from becoming, or what it should be for a maid-servant at the Rectory. If girls are so foolish they must not be surprised at young men – gentlemen – taking such liberties. Now go. And mind this: if it ever occurs again, I shall acquaint my brother.”

“Well, I couldn’t help it, miss. I didn’t ask Mr Tom Candlish to kiss me.”

“Silence! How dare you? Leave the room.”

“I was a-going to, miss. He popped out from behind the hedge just as Billy Wilkins had given me the letters, and he says, ‘Give this note to Miss Leo, Dally,’ he says, ‘and mind no one else sees.’”

“I told you to leave the room, girl.”

“Well, miss, I’m a-going, ain’t I? And then, before I could help it, he put his arm round me and said my cheeks were like apples.”

“Will – you – leave – the – room?”

“Yes, miss, of course I will; and then he kissed me just as Billy Wilkins looked back, and now he’ll go and tell Joe Chegg, and he’ll scold me too. I’m a miserable girl.”

Red-cheeked, ruddy-lipped Dally Watlock – christened Delia as a compromise for Delilah – covered her round face with her apron, and began to sob and try to pump up a few tears to her bright dark eyes, as her young mistress seized her by the shoulders, and literally forced her out of the room, when Dally went sobbing down the passage and through the baize door before she dropped her apron and began to laugh.

“She’s as jealous as jel!” cried the girl. “It made her look quite yellow. Deal she’s got to talk about, too. Tell master! She daren’t! The minx! I could tell too. Who cares for her – tallow-face? Thinks she’s precious good-looking; but she ain’t everybody, after all. Master Joe Chegg, too, had better mind. I don’t care if he does know now.”

Then as if the spot burned, or as if a natural instinct taught her that the kiss imprinted upon her cheek was not as cleanly as it should have been, or as one of the honest salutes of the aforesaid Joe Chegg, Dally Watlock lifted her neat white apron, and wiped the place again.

“How dare he kiss her?” said Leo Salis, frowning, as she laid the post letters beside her brother’s place at the breakfast-table, and then stood with the note in her hand. “I’ll punish him for this!”

She hastily tore open the note, which was written in a good, manly hand, but contained in ten lines four specimens of faulty spelling, and a “you was” which looked as big as a blot.

The note was brief and contained a pressing invitation to meet the writer in Red Cliff Wood that morning, as soon after breakfast as she could.

“I won’t go,” she said passionately. “I’ll punish him!”

Then, as if feeling that she would punish herself, the girl stood thinking, and then hastily crushed the note in her hand and walked to the window, to be apparently studying the pretty Warwickshire landscape as her brother and sister entered the room.

“Morning, Leo, dear,” said Mary Salis, the elder of the two; a fair English girl, grey-eyed, with high forehead and dark-brown, wavy hair, her type of countenance, allowing for feminine softness, being wonderfully like that of the robust, manly-looking clergyman who entered with his hand resting upon her shoulder.

“Morning, Mary,” said Leo quietly; and her handsome dark, almost Spanish, features seemed perfectly calm and inanimate as she returned her sister’s salute; and then, in a half weary way, rather distantly held up her cheek for her brother to kiss.

“Get out!” said the latter boisterously, as he caught the handsome girl by the shoulders, and tried to look in her eyes which avoided his. “No nonsense, Leo, my dear. No grumps. Give me a good, honest kiss. Lips – lips – lips.”

She raised her face in obedience to the emphatic demand, and then extricated herself from the two strong hands, to take her place at the table; while her sister, who seemed nervous and anxious, and kept glancing from one to the other, went to the head of the table, and began to make the tea.

“You and I must not be on two sides, Leo, my dear,” said the brother, smiling, but with a troubled look on his face, which seemed the reflection of that in the eyes of the elder sister. “I’m like a grandfather to you, my darling, and what I say and advise is for the best.”

“Do you wish to send me back to my room, Hartley?” said the girl, half rising.

“Name of a little fiddler in France, no!” cried Hartley Salis. “There – mum! I’ve done, dear. Breakfast! I’m as hungry as two curates this morning. What is it, Dally?”

“Ammonegs, sir,” said the little maid, who entered with a covered dish.

“Didn’t know Ammon ever laid ’em,” muttered the curate, with a dry look at his sisters. “Now then: letters. Let me see.”

He proceeded to open his letters, and read and partook of his breakfast at the same time, making comments the while for the benefit of his sisters, when he thought the news would please.

“Humph! May!” he said aloud; and then skimmed the ill-written, crabbed lines in silence.

“Hang him!” he said to himself. “What mischief-making wretch inspired that?” and he re-read the letter. “‘Not becoming of the sister of a clergyman to be seen so often in the hunting-field – better be engaged over parish work – excites a good deal of remark – hope shall not have to make this painful allusion again’ – Humph!”

The curate’s face was full of the lines of perplexity, and rapidly doubling up the letter, he swallowed half a cup of tea at a gulp, much hotter than was good for him, and quite sufficiently so to cause pain.

“Phew! More milk, Mary, dear.”

A long white hand raised the milk-jug quickly, and the earnest grey eyes which belonged sought the curate’s as he held out his cup.

“Any bad news, Hartley, dear?”

“Bad news? No, no, dear, only one of May’s old worries. The old boy’s got gout again.”

“Has he, dear?”

“Well, he doesn’t say so, but it breathes in that style. He feels it his duty to stir me up now and then, and he generally does it with a sharp stick.”

He glanced as he spoke at Leo, who sipped her tea and read a novel, without apparently heeding what was going on.

“It’s a great shame, Hartley, working so hard in the parish as you do,” said Mary quietly; “while he – ”

“Oh, silence! thou reviler of those in high clerical places,” cried the curate merrily, as he inserted his knife in the envelope fold of another missive, and slit it open. “Here’s a letter from North.”

The face of Mary Salis was perfectly composed, but there was a flash from her eyes and an eager look of inquiry as the letter was opened.

“Ha! Busy as a bee! Conferences; lectures. Going to be present at a great operation. Nasty wretch! How he does glory in great operations!”

“It is his love of his profession,” said Mary quietly.

“Too enthusiastic,” said the curate. “Why doesn’t he, a man with his income, make himself happy by doing what good he can to his patients, and have his game of chess here when his work is done?”

“It is his desire to do good to his patients which makes him so earnest about scientific matters, dear,” said Mary, smiling at her brother.