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Mrs. Lancaster’s Rival

Chapter XXVII. Anthony and Dick

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Chapter XXVII. Anthony and Dick.

Mr. Strange came down early the next morning, as usual, and found his letters waiting for him. There were long discussions from his antiquarian friends, reports from archæological societies, anxious for his valuable help; clerical business, magisterial business, advertisements, and begging letters. Anthony was generally ready enough to give his attention to all these things, but on this particular morning there was one letter which eclipsed them all, and that was directed in a trembling girlish hand. The others were pushed into a heap, unopened. Anthony read this letter, threw himself into a chair to think, started up again instantly, and rushed up-stairs three steps at a time to his mother’s room. But when he reached the door he changed his mind; perhaps he remembered that Mrs. Strange was not likely to be up, or ready to listen to him. He ran downstairs again, and meeting the butler in the hall, told him to ask the ladies not to wait breakfast for him, took his hat, and went out. The butler looked after him with some surprise, as he hurried across the garden, and shut the iron gate behind him with a sharp clang.

‘Master looks as happy as if it was his wedding-day,’ said the butler to the cook.

‘There’s never a lady in these parts good enough for him, bless his kind heart,’ replied she.

Anthony had his own short cut to Pensand through lanes and fields. No doubt he trespassed continually, but he was so well known and loved that nobody thought of this. Now the way was shorter than ever, for he could strike across stubble-fields, from which the golden page 253 corn had been reaped and carried away. So he went straight across country to Pensand as the crow flies; his long legs might truly be said to devour the way, and he carried Mabel’s little letter open in his hand.

‘Poor dear child!’ thought Anthony almost aloud, as he strode through the stubble. ‘What it must have cost her to write this! What a blind fool I have been not to see, all this time, that I need only speak again! That wretched Randal must have driven her to this.’ Anthony grasped his stick and shook it in the air. ‘Thank heaven, she knew there was a refuge open to her, my little Mabel. There is not one girl in a thousand who would have had the noble courage to write this; but she knew who she had to deal with, whose heart was her own. I shall see her this morning, but we will say nothing to those Hawkes—how well their name suits them! Then I will go back and tell my mother, and we will go together to fetch our darling this afternoon. I defy you to keep her, Randal, now that she has given herself to me.’

Such thoughts as these kept good Anthony Strange company through that morning walk of his, till he came to the end of the fields, where a stile and a rough flight of stone steps led down into the lane. On reaching this more public part of his walk he folded up Mabel’s letter and put it away; it was not for ordinary eyes, such as he might meet in the lane. And he had not gone many yards between those two high banks of reddened leaves and curling fern, when he met Dick Northcote, marching along in equal haste with himself.

‘I’m glad I met you,’ said Dick, shaking hands with great heartiness. ‘I was going to Carweston to consult you about something.’

‘Then walk on with me. I am going to Pensand,’ said Anthony.

Dick wondered what could take this funny old fellow page 254 to Pensand at such an hour in the morning. ‘Some good reason, probably,’ he thought, as he looked at Anthony’s beaming face. ‘I’ll tell him all about it at once, and I’m sure he will help me if he can.’

‘I was at Pensand last night,’ he said; ‘I saw Miss Ashley.’

‘Did you?’ said Anthony.

‘Yes; and she ought not to stay there any longer. It is not a fit place for her, especially now that General Hawke is ill. You know what Randal is, as well as I do. Fortunately she hates him.’

‘It won’t last much longer,’ said Anthony.

‘Is the General going to die, or what is going to happen?’ asked Dick, in a decided manner. ‘Don’t be surprised at my taking it up, for I’m tremendously interested.’

‘Not more than I am, Dick,’ said Mr. Strange.

‘Ah! but you don’t know what I’m driving at. I must explain—of course in confidence. I should not mention the subject, only I know how friendly you have always been to her—and I don’t think she would object to my asking your advice. The plot is thickening, you see. I thought it was only Randal, but there’s some one else in the wind now.’

‘I don’t understand you, my friend,’ said Anthony.

He stopped in the middle of the road, folded his arms, and gazed at Dick with a slight puzzled frown.

Dick smiled under his beard, and stared at the opposite hedge.

‘Well, you know,’ he said, ‘you might search all over England without finding a nicer girl than she is. I’ve come to that conclusion, so now you understand.’

Anthony’s face grew graver; a kind sorrowful look came into his eyes.

‘Poor old Dick! I’m sorry for you,’ he said, in a low voice.

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‘I shall not begin to be sorry just yet,’ said Dick, ‘till I am quite sure there’s nothing to be done. I may as well tell you all about it. I found her in the garden last night wandering about by herself, her spirits at a very low ebb, and in the course of talking to her I let out what I meant. Poor little thing, she was most awfully cut up, and she told me she was engaged to some one else—not Randal; but it is quite plain to me, whoever he is, she doesn’t care for him, and is wretched. So I shall be obliged to you if you will show me the way out of this labyrinth.’

‘Who does she care for?’ said Anthony dreamily.

‘Me,’ said Dick.

He thought Anthony Strange more of a natural curiosity than ever; here he was turning quite pale—from sympathy, Dick supposed.

‘Are you sure of that?’ said Anthony.

‘Positively certain.’

Anthony stared along the lane for a minute or two, then on the ground at his feet. Then he seemed to rouse himself, drew a long breath, and straightened his shoulders.

‘This wants thinking about, old fellow,’ he said. ‘I won’t go on to Pensand now. Come back with me to breakfast.’

Dick spent most of that morning talking to his aunt about Mabel, and pouring out his feelings. She could not help smiling a little as she listened, though this pleased her better than the Mrs. Lancaster affair.

Anthony, also, was talking to his mother about Mabel. He was asking her to go to Pensand that very afternoon, and to bring the poor girl away from that ‘hawk’s nest,’ as he called it.

‘Insist upon it, mother,’ he said. ‘You always can do things if you choose. Bring her away; bring the page 256 child away, and let us have her here with us for a little while. No matter what may happen afterwards.’

‘What is likely to happen afterwards, Anthony? said Mrs. Strange.

‘Who knows? Perhaps Dick,’ said Anthony.

‘Dick! Does Dick admire her?’

‘I have some reason to think so.’

‘Well,’ said Mrs. Strange thoughtfully, ‘Dick has been a flirt, but I always liked him. He has a good heart underneath the flirting, and in that affair the other day the fault was probably on Mrs. Lancaster’s side Mabel Ashley might do worse than marry my old friend Dick. Better than Randal Hawke, at any rate. Do you know, Anthony, at one time I had an idea that you might yourself—’

She laid her hand on his shoulder as he sat beside her, and looked at him, smiling a little.

‘Even you, old Rector,’ she said. ‘Your heart is young enough still.’

‘May it never grow old!’ said Anthony.

He made her no other reply, and though he smiled, it was so sadly that she felt something must be wrong with him. This instinct troubled her, but she asked him no more questions; and there was one little explanation that certainly she would never see. Mabel’s letter lay on the hearth in Anthony’s room, a small heap of flimsy gray ashes.