Waynflete. Coleridge Christabel Rose

excited his nerves; and, in his ordinary life at college, he had suffered less from them than at home, when, certainly, his grand-aunt and his brother were not likely to suspect them.

      But what was he to do now? If he told, if he could so far oppose his instincts, his aunt would think him a liar, like the other Guy – or mad? That last might be. It was a view of the matter which had not escaped him. As for drinking, well, he might be driven to that before the end. There were times when the brandy was tempting. That was another ancestral ghost that might be more dreadful than the first.

      But he could not confute the charge, and, besides – here a much simpler part of the Waynflete nature came into play – he was not going to notice such confounded insolence on Cooper’s part, or such suspicious mistrust on that of his great-aunt.

      He locked up the picture, and then, perceiving that it was still only five o’clock, and that the mill had not yet “loosed,” he took up his hat and went down there, walking in upon the astonished John Cooper, with as cool a manner as if nothing had passed.

      “Step into my room, will you?” he said. “There are two or three letters that I left this morning.”

      Then, as the old manager took up and turned over the letters indicated, not knowing what to say, and feeling his statements to Mrs Waynflete considerably invalidated by the young gentleman’s look and manner, Guy deliberately unlocked the cupboard, took out the brandy-bottle, and held it up to the light.

      “Nearly empty,” he said, in his soft, mocking voice. “Here, Joe Cass,” to the office boy, “just run down to the Lion, and ask for a bottle of the best French brandy – for me. Bring it back with you.”

      “Lord! sir!” exclaimed Cooper, as the boy departed staring; “if you do want brandy, you’d a deal better bring it down from the house yourself, than send the boy on such errands!”

      “Perhaps Mrs Waynflete wouldn’t give it to me; and you see, I like to have it, to ‘put to my lips, when I feel so dispoged.’ Take half a glass of the remains of this? No? Then I will. Now, as to that colonial contract – ”

      Guy poured out the remainder of the brandy and drank it off. He felt revived by it, and went on with the details of the colonial contract with the most accurate clearness, till the boy came back, when he took the bottle, locked it up, put the key in his pocket, and gave Joe the old bottle to throw away.

      “Well, Mr Guy,” said Cooper, desperately; “I ask your pardon if I mistook your condition; but I’d as soon see my own son with a locked-up brandy-bottle as you – at your age. Eh, my lad, it’s a grand mistake ye’re making.”

      “I shan’t let the business go to the dogs in consequence, if I’ve ever a hand in it,” said Guy, but with more softness; “but just make up your mind that I don’t care a – ” Here Guy used an expression which appeared to Cooper almost as bad a breach of business propriety as the brandy, and added with much bathos, “I don’t care a brass farthing what any one thinks.”

      This act of schoolboy defiance was the refuge of Guy’s manhood, which had not learned a better mode of self-assertion. His soft eyes had a somewhat evil look as he watched his routed enemy, and then went back to the house, where he was unusually lively at dinner, and through the evening.

      But either the brandy or the excitement revenged itself next day with a real headache, so violent that he could not lift up his head, and which left him pale and languid and without spirits for any more defiance of consequences. Moreover, Mrs Waynflete decreed that he was to go with her to Waynflete.

      Guy resented the proposal as an act of mistrust, and dreaded it from the bottom of his soul. He resisted it, and offended his aunt more bitterly than he had ever done before, since he could only put forward indifference to and contempt of Waynflete and its interests.

      And after all, Howarth, the second manager, had a violent attack of gout, and Guy’s presence at Ingleby could hardly be dispensed with. So he remained, in semi-disgrace, with Cousin Susan Joshua to keep house for him. Jeanie went up to Waynflete with the rest of the party.

      He had got no answer to his proposals, and no definite authority for the mill. Nevertheless, he made his presence felt there, and people began to feel that he was master.

      Part 1, Chapter IX

      “Go Back, My Lord, Across the Moor.”

      “Cousin Susan,” said Guy, a few days after he had been left behind at Ingleby, “I promised Miss Vyner that she and her friends should see the mills. If it suits you, I should like to ride over to Moorhead, and ask them to come down next Thursday, and have luncheon here. Then I would take them round.”

      “Yes, my dear Guy; yes, certainly. I think it would be most proper, under the circumstances; and with my being here, there can be no objection. I’m glad you’ve given me the hint, my dear Guy.”

      Guy thought his very straightforward request had been something more than a hint. He had made it partly because he was extremely dull, and wanted a little variety, and partly because he did not choose to acquiesce in the idea that he was out of favour. Most of Guy’s actions at this time were marked by a certain note of defiance.

      He set off on a fresh breezy afternoon, when great clouds flung great shadows over the open moor, and the dark green of the bilberry and the purple of the heather were in full glory of contrast. He rode slowly uphill, over wide roads with low grey walls on either side, behind which grew oats and turnips, past strong-looking stone villages, all white and grey and wind swept, till the land grew poorer and more open, and turf, mixed with furze and heather, began to appear, and at length he turned over the top, and came out upon the great rolling moors, here clear and sunny, there veiled in the smoke and fog of distant centres of human life.

      As he drew near the end of his ride, he saw a figure sitting on some rough ground by the roadside, and looking up and away at a broken hillock of rock and heather, which, owing to the falling away of the ground behind, was relieved against the sky.

      By the pose of her head and the lines of her figure he at once recognised Florella Vyner, and as he came near she saw him, and rising, answered his greeting with a smile as he dismounted beside her.

      “I have ridden over,” said Guy, “with a message from Mrs Joshua Palmer, to ask if your sister still cares to show Ingleby Mills to her friends. My aunt and my brother are at Waynflete, but I have been left behind. And I hope, too, that Moorhead is satisfactory?”

      “Oh yes,” said Florella, “we are delighted with it. It suits us quite. The others are all very near by. Would you like to take your horse to the farm, and then come and join us? You will see them a few steps further on.”

      “There’s Bill Shipley,” said Guy, looking up the road. “I’ll ask him to take Stella.”

      He came back after giving his horse to the boy, with a brighter and sweeter look on his face than it often wore. “May I look first at the drawing? What have you found out about the moor flowers?”

      “Oh, they are so difficult – look at those harebells on the top of the road, swinging about in the wind – blue against blue. It is such heavenly colour. But I can’t paint them! I haven’t begun to try. I’m seeing them!”

      “I see,” said Guy. “Yes, the sky seems to show through. But what do they say? Your pictures all say something. Are they moor spirits?”

      “Well,” she said, “I don’t think I quite know. But what I want to say is ‘living blue,’ – you know the hymn? —

      ”‘Sweet fields beyond the swelling flood

      All dressed in living green.’

      “That gives one such a feeling of spring.”

      “Yes,” said Guy, “things growing. And ‘living blue’?”

      “Well,” said Florella, looking up at the harebells, “I think it must mean thoughts – spirit, soul, growing and springing, perhaps. They are so very ethereal!”

      Florella had much of Constancy’s self-possession. In her it showed