Ernest Maltravers. Эдвард Бульвер-Литтон
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let me go and work with the other girls at the factory? I should make money there for you and me both.”
The man smiled—such a smile—it seemed to bring into sudden play all the revolting characteristics of his countenance. “Child,” he said, “you are just fifteen, and a sad fool you are: perhaps if you went to the factory, you would get away from me; and what should I do without you? No, I think, as you are so pretty, you might get more money another way.”
The girl did not seem to understand this allusion: but repeated, vacantly, “I should like to go to the factory.”
“Stuff!” said the man, angrily; “I have three minds to—”
Here he was interrupted by a loud knock at the door of the hovel.
The man grew pale. “What can that be?” he muttered. “The hour is late—near eleven. Again—again! Ask who knocks, Alice.”
The girl stood for a moment or so at the door; and as she stood, her form, rounded yet slight, her earnest look, her varying colour, her tender youth, and a singular grace of attitude and gesture, would have inspired an artist with the very ideal of rustic beauty.
After a pause, she placed her lips to a chink in the door, and repeated her father’s question.
“Pray pardon me,” said a clear, loud, yet courteous voice, “but seeing a light at your window, I have ventured to ask if any one within will conduct me to———; I will pay the service handsomely.”
“Open the door, Alley,” said the owner of the hut.
The girl drew a large wooden bolt from the door; and a tall figure crossed the threshold.
The new-comer was in the first bloom of youth, perhaps about eighteen years of age, and his air and appearance surprised both sire and daughter. Alone, on foot, at such an hour, it was impossible for any one to mistake him for other than a gentleman; yet his dress was plain and somewhat soiled by dust, and he carried a small knapsack on his shoulder. As he entered, he lifted his hat with somewhat of foreign urbanity, and a profusion of fair brown hair fell partially over a high and commanding forehead. His features were handsome, without being eminently so, and his aspect was at once bold and prepossessing.
“I am much obliged by your civility,” he said, advancing carelessly and addressing the man, who surveyed him with a scrutinising eye; “and trust, my good fellow, that you will increase the obligation by accompanying me to———.”
“You can’t miss well your way,” said the man surlily: “the lights will direct you.”
“They have rather misled me, for they seem to surround the whole common, and there is no path across it that I can see; however, if you will put me in the right road, I will not trouble you further.”
“It is very late,” replied the churlish landlord, equivocally.
“The better reason why I should be at———. Come, my good friend, put on your hat, and I will give you half a guinea for your trouble.”
The man advanced, then halted; again surveyed his guest, and said, “Are you quite alone, sir?”
“Quite.”
“Probably you are known at———?”
“Not I. But what matters that to you? I am a stranger in these parts.”
“It is full four miles.”
“So far, and I am fearfully tired already!” exclaimed the young man with impatience. As he spoke he drew out his watch. “Past eleven too!”
The watch caught the eye of the cottager; that evil eye sparkled. He passed his hand over his brow. “I am thinking, sir,” he said in a more civil tone than he had yet assumed, “that as you are so tired and the hour is so late, you might almost as well—”
“What?” exclaimed the stranger, stamping somewhat petulantly.
“I don’t like to mention it; but my poor roof is at your service, and I would go with you to———at daybreak to-morrow.”
The stranger stared at the cottager, and then at the dingy walls of the hut. He was about, very abruptly, to reject the hospitable proposal, when his eye rested suddenly on the form of Alice, who stood eager-eyed and open-mouthed, gazing on the handsome intruder. As she caught his eye, she blushed deeply and turned aside. The view seemed to change the intentions of the stranger. He hesitated a moment, then muttered between his teeth: and sinking his knapsack on the ground, he cast himself into a chair beside the fire, stretched his limbs, and cried gaily, “So be it, my host: shut up your house again. Bring me a cup of beer, and a crust of bread, and so much for supper! As for bed, this chair will do vastly well.”
“Perhaps we can manage better for you than that chair,” answered the host. “But our best accommodation must seem bad enough to a gentleman: we are very poor people—hard-working, but very poor.”
“Never mind me,” answered the stranger, busying himself in stirring the fire; “I am tolerably well accustomed to greater hardships than sleeping on a chair in an honest man’s house; and though you are poor, I will take it for granted you are honest.”
The man grinned: and turning to Alice, bade her spread what their larder would afford. Some crusts of bread, some cold potatoes, and some tolerably strong beer, composed all the fare set before the traveller.
Despite his previous boasts, the young man made a wry face at these Socratic preparations, while he drew his chair to the board. But his look grew more gay as he caught Alice’s eye; and as she lingered by the table, and faltered out some hesitating words of apology, he seized her hand, and pressing it tenderly—“Prettiest of lasses,” said he—and while he spoke he gazed on her with undisguised admiration—“a man who has travelled on foot all day, through the ugliest country within the three seas, is sufficiently refreshed at night by the sight of so fair a face.”
Alice hastily withdrew her hand, and went and seated herself in a corner of the room, when she continued to look at the stranger with her usual vacant gaze, but with a half-smile upon her rosy lips.
Alice’s father looked hard first at one, then at the other.
“Eat, sir,” said he, with a sort of chuckle, “and no fine words; poor Alice is honest, as you said just now.”
“To be sure,” answered the traveller, employing with great zeal a set of strong, even, and dazzling teeth at the tough crusts; “to be sure she is. I did not mean to offend you; but the fact is, that I am half a foreigner; and abroad, you know, one may say a civil thing to a pretty girl without hurting her feelings, or her father’s either.”
“Half a foreigner! why, you talk English as well as I do,” said the host, whose intonation and words were, on the whole, a little above his station.
The stranger smiled. “Thank you for the compliment,” said he. “What I meant was, that I have been a great deal abroad; in fact, I have just returned from Germany. But I am English born.”
“And going home?”
“Yes.”
“Far from hence?”
“About thirty miles, I believe.”
“You are young, sir, to be alone.”
The traveller made no answer, but finished his uninviting repast and drew his chair again to the fire. He then thought he had sufficiently ministered to his host’s curiosity to be entitled to the gratification of his own.
“You work at the factories, I suppose?” said he.
“I do, sir. Bad times.”
“And your pretty daughter?”
“Minds the house.”
“Have you no other children?”
“No; one mouth besides my own is as much as I