“How do you do, Miss Jessy?”
She put her hand out in answer to his; but seemed to have been struck as dumb as the old stone image on the monument against the wall.
“These are your sisters, I presume, Miss Jessy? Will you do me the honour of introducing me to them?”
“Mr. Marcus Allen,” murmured Jessy. “My sister Abigail; my sister Susan.”
Mr. Marcus Allen, bowing over his hat, said something about the pleasure it gave him to make their acquaintance personally, after hearing so much of them from Miss Jessy at Aberystwith, and begged to be allowed to shake their hands. Miss Page, when the hand-shaking was over, said in her straightforward way that she did not know who he was, her young sister never having mentioned him. Jessy, standing like a little simpleton, her eyes bent down on the aisle bricks, murmured in confusion that she “forgot it.” John Drench had his face over the cushion all that time, and Tod’s arms began to ache, holding up the bunch of green.
Mr. Marcus Allen, it turned out, was related in some way to the Allens of Aberystwith: he happened to go to the town soon after Jessy Page and her brother went there, and he stayed until they left it. Not at the Allens’ house: he had lodgings elsewhere. Mrs. Allen spoke of him to Jessy as a “grand gentleman, quite above them.” An idea came over me, as we all now stood together, that he had been Jessy’s companion in the walking and the sitting by the sea.
“I told Miss Jessy that I should be running down some day to renew my acquaintanceship with her and make that of her family,” said Mr. Marcus Allen to Miss Page. “Having no particular engagement on my hands this Christmas time, I came.”
He spoke in the most easy manner conceivable: his accent and manner were certainly those of a gentleman. As to the fashionable attire and the rings and chains, rather startling though they looked to us in the dark church on that dark and busy evening, they were all the rage for dandies in the great world then.
Noticing the intimation that he had come purposely to see them, Miss Page supposed that she ought, in hospitably good manners, to invite him to stay a day or two at the farm, but doubted whether so imposing a gentleman would condescend to do so. She said nothing about it then, and we all went out of the church together; except John Drench, who stayed behind with Leek to help clear up the litter for the man to carry away. It was light outside, and I took a good look at the stranger: a handsome man of seven-or-eight-and-twenty, with hard eyes, and black whiskers curled to perfection.
“In what way is he related to the Allens of Aberystwith, Jessy?” questioned Miss Page, drawing her sister away, as we went through the coppice.
“I don’t quite know, Abigail. He is some distant cousin.”
“How came you never to speak of him?”
“I—I did not remember to do so.”
“Very careless of you, child. Especially if he gave you cause to suppose he might come here. I don’t like to be taken by surprise by strangers; it is not always convenient.”
Jessy walked along in silence, meek as a lamb.
“What is he?—in any profession, or trade?”
“Trade? Oh, I don’t think he does anything of that kind, Abigail. That branch of the family would be above it, Mrs. Allen said. He has a large income, she says; plenty of money.”
“I take it, then, that he is above us,” reasoned Miss Page.
“Oh dear, yes: in station. Ever so much.”
“Then I’m sure I don’t care to entertain him.”
Miss Page went straight into the best kitchen on arriving at home. Her father sat in the large hearth corner, smoking his pipe. She told him about the stranger, and said she supposed they must ask him to stay over the morrow—Christmas-Day.
“Why shouldn’t we?” asked Mr. Page.
“Well, father, he seems very grand and great.”
“Does he? Give him the best bedroom.”
“And our ways are plain and simple, you know,” she added.
“He must take us as he finds us, Abigail. Any friend of Mrs. Allen’s is welcome: she was downright kind to the children.”
We had a jolly tea. Tod and I had been asked to it beforehand. Pork-pies, Miss Susan’s making, hot buttered batch-cakes, and lemon cake and jams. Mr. Marcus Allen was charmed with everything: he was a pleasant man to talk to. When we left, he and Mr. Page had gone to the best kitchen again, to smoke together in the wide chimney corner.
You Londoners, who go in for your artistic scrolls and crosses, should have seen the church on Christmas morning. It greeted our sight, as we entered from the porch, like a capacious grove of green, on which the sun streamed through the south windows. Old Bumford’s dressing had never been as full and handsome as this of ours, for we had rejected all niggardly sprays. The Squire even allowed that much. Shaking hands with Miss Page in the porch after service, he told her that it cut Clerk Bumford out and out. Mr. Marcus Allen, in fashionable coat, with the furred over-coat flung back, light gloves, and big white wristbands, was in the Pages’ pew, sitting between old Page and Jessy. He found all the places for her in her Prayer-book (a shabby red one, some of the leaves loose); bowing slightly every time he handed her the book, as if she had been a princess of the blood royal. Such gallantry was new in our parts: and the congregation were rather taken off their devotions watching it. As to Jessy, she kept flushing like a rose.
Mr. Marcus Allen remained more than a week, staying over New-Year’s Day. He made himself popular with them all, and enjoyed what Miss Abigail called their plain ways, just as though he had been reared to them. He smoked his pipe in the kitchen with the farmer; he drove Miss Susan to Alcester in the tax-cart; he presented Miss Abigail with a handsome work-box; and gave Charley a bright half-sovereign for bullseyes. As to Jessy, he paid her no more attention than he did her sisters; hardly as much: so that if Miss Susan had been entertaining any faint hope that his object in coming to the Copse was Jessy, and that in consequence John Drench might escape from bewitching wiles, she found the hope fallacious. Mr. Marcus Allen had apparently no more thought of Jessy than he had of Sally, the red-armed serving-girl. “But what in the world brought the man here at all?” questioned Miss Susan of her sister. “He wanted a bit of country holiday,” answered Miss Page with her common sense.
One day during the week the Squire met them abroad, and gave an impromptu invitation to the Manor for the evening. Only the three Miss Pages came. Mr. Marcus Allen sent his compliments, and begged to be excused on the score of headache.
One evening at dusk we met him and Jessy. She had been out on some errand, and he overtook her in the little coppice path between the church and the farm. Tod, dashing through it to get home for dinner, I after him, nearly dashed right upon them. Mr. Marcus Allen had his face inside her bonnet, as if he were speaking in the ear of a deaf old lady of seventy. Tod burst out laughing when we got on.
“That fellow was stealing a sly kiss in the dark, Johnny.”
“Like his impudence.”
“Rubbish,” retorted Tod. “It’s Christmas-tide, and all fair. Didn’t you see the bit of mistletoe he was holding up?” And Tod ran on, whistling a line of a song that the Squire used to sing in his young days:
“We all love a pretty girl, under the rose.”
Mr. Marcus Allen left the Copse Farm with hearty thanks for its hospitality. He promised to come again in the summer, when the fields should be sweet with hay and the golden corn was ripening.
No sooner had he gone than John Drench asked Jessy to promise to be his wife. Whether he had felt any secret jealousy of Mr. Marcus Allen and his attractions, and deemed it well to secure Jessy as soon as the coast was clear, he spoke out. Jessy did not receive the honour kindly. She tossed her pretty head in a violent rage: the idea, she said, of her marrying him. Jessy had never flirted with John Drench since the Aberystwith journey, or encouraged him in