Chapter 10 A LONG RESPITE.

Bryda had nearly reached the entrance to Dowry Square, fearing she might be reprimanded for delay, when her heart beat fast as she recognised the Squire, Mr Bayfield, crossing over it to meet her.

His manner had changed, and he was gentle and even deferential as he bowed low and addressed Bryda.

'Good-day to you, Miss Palmer. I have come, by your leave, to hear your decision.'

'My decision was made, sir, when I last saw you. I have no more to say.'

'Hearken, fair lady, I am not one to be beaten in the race. See here, I had determined, as you know, to get that money, my lawful due. When I saw you standing at the cross roads like an incarnation of spring's loveliness my courage forsook me. In our future interviews it grew fainter and ever fainter. I love you, madam, and if you will promise to be my wife I swear I will never press that old man again for the money. I will work honestly to redeem the neglect of the past, at my poor home, and I swear further I will see you its fair mistress ere another year is out.

'Nay, sir,' Bryda said, gathering up all her strength, 'nay, sir, do not swear what is impossible to perform. Not even to save those I love from penury will I accept your proposal.'

'Another suitor is more favoured, I presume. Who is he?'

'Nay, sir,' Bryda said, with heightened colour and flashing eyes, 'there is a limit to such questions. I decline to answer them.'

'Now, see here,' Mr Bayfield went on, 'I give you a proof of my ardent affection. Name a time for the further consideration of this matter, and as I ride back to-day I will give them warning at Bishop's Farm that I extend the time for claiming my dues. Name the time, and I grant it, for your sweet sake, and for yours alone. Speak, and I obey-command me as your slave.'

Bryda hastily went over in her mind the probability that after all this was but a subterfuge, and that Mr Bayfield would not be true to his word. Then she thought of what the joy and relief at the farm would be when a long delay was granted-much might happen in six months-the winter might be hard, and there would be a terrible pinch, perhaps, for the necessaries of life at Bishop's Farm.

But could she trust Mr Bayfield?

She felt a strange recoil from him, and yet something like admiration, for he was a distinctly handsome man, and had an air and bearing far above good Jack Henderson, or any of her old admirers in her native village. After a moment's pause, while she nervously pinched the corners of the paper bag containing the Bath buns, she looked up with her clear guileless eyes into the Squire's face.

'Will you grant a delay of a year, sir?' she asked.

'A year-no! I am not made of the stuff of patient Job,' he replied, with a little laugh. 'No, madam, I will not wait a year.'

'Till Eastertide next year, then?'

'Well, you are a little witch. I think you have cast a spell over me. I will wait till then. Come, thank me-give me a sign of gratitude.'

Bryda put out her little hand, and the Squire took it, bowed over it, raised it to his lips, and then said,-

'If I keep this hand your grandfather shall keep the money.'

'But I do not promise, sir-mind, I do not promise. I only crave for delay-understand me, sir.'

'I do understand,' was the reply, and then there were steps along the pavement of the square, as the apprentice hurried home for his midday meal in the kitchen.

Bryda reached the door at the same moment, but Chatterton made no remark.

He was in one of his unquiet moods. No news from Horace Walpole-no reply to his repeated demands for his manuscripts-nothing but complaints of him at the office-nothing but indignities in the house where he lived as a servant. What was it to him that Bryda's sweet face was clouded by distress-that tears stood on her long curled lashes-and that Mrs Lambert's voice was heard from the parlour door, raised in no pleasant tones?

'Miss Palmer, you are late in returning. Unpunctuality I cannot tolerate. Remember, miss, you are bound to follow my instructions, and-'

Then the door closed, and Chatterton heard no more.

But that afternoon he went into Mr Antony Henderson's office in Corn Street, where poor Jack Henderson sat on his low stool, with his long legs bent up under the watchmaker's counter, pulling to pieces a large watch in a pinchbeck case, and thinking more of Bryda than the wheels of that cumbrous bit of mechanism.

Chatterton bent over him, and whispered in his ear,-

'Look about you, Henderson. Your fair lady has another suitor. He was with her in the square to-day at noon. A fine fellow, too, I swear he was.'

Jack started so that the pinchbeck watch had a narrow escape of falling from the counter, and the man who had the care of the apprentices at Mr Henderson's exclaimed,-

'Take care, you clumsy lout. You spoil more things than you mend. You'll never be fit for the trade. You might as well put one of your mother's heifers in here to learn the business.'

Jack paid little heed to this taunt, and bent his head lower over the watch.

Chatterton laughed a low laugh.

'Well,' he said, 'I advise you to look out or your fair one will slip through your fingers.'

And then he was gone.

Jack had to wait till the following Sunday before he could see Bryda. Everything was against him, for a heavy rain was falling, and there was no chance of Bryda coming out for a Sunday walk. But he went boldly up the steps before Mr Lambert's house and gave a heavy thud on the door with the knocker.

The footboy opened it, and Jack said,-

'Can I see Miss Palmer?'

'I don't know. She is reading to the missis. But,' said the boy, with a knowing wink, 'the missis takes a nap after dinner, and if she is gone off Miss Palmer may get out on the sly. I'll peep in and see. You are Miss P.'s beau, ain't you?'

'Hold your tongue,' Jack said wrathfully, 'you impudent young villain.'

'Oh, that's it, is it? Then I sha'n't do no more for you. You may stand there till the "crack of doom" the 'prentice is always talking about.'

The voices in the little lobby attracted Bryda's attention. Mrs Lambert was comfortably asleep, and Bryda opened the door softly, and saw Jack standing near it, arrayed in his Sunday best-blue coat, bright buttons, and large buff waistcoat.

Bryda closed the door behind her and said,-

'I cannot come out to-day, Jack, it is raining so hard.'

'I know that. Can't I speak to you here a minute?'

'Mr Lambert is gone out for the day. Yes, you may come into his study. Is anything wrong, Jack?' she asked, looking anxiously into his face.

'What have you got to do with that brute of a Squire Bayfield? I know it was he you were talking to t'other day. Don't have aught to do with him or you'll rue it, I tell you. You will-'

'I don't know why you should be so cross, Jack,' Bryda said, assuming a jesting air. 'I shall sing you the old rhyme,-

Crosspatch, draw the latch,

Sit by the fire and spin.'

'Don't be silly, Bryda. It is no laughing matter.'

'No, perhaps it isn't,' Bryda replied, 'but I have had a letter from my dear Bet, which the carrier brought, which will please you, or ought to please you.'

Bryda plunged her little hand into her deep pocket and drew out Betty's letter. Betty had not the gift of either penmanship or composition, and this letter had cost her much trouble.

'Here, read what Bet says,' Bryda exclaimed, holding out the letter to Jack.

'No, thank you. I don't want to read it.'

'Then I shall read it for you,' Bryda exclaimed, 'you stupid old Jack.'

How pretty she looked as she stood before Jack with the open letter, her face flushed with the most delicate crimson, her eyes sparkling as she began,-

'Dear Bryda,-This leaves me well, as I hope it finds you at present. Dear Bryda, the young Squire, Mr Bayfield, came over here last evening. He was as kind as he could be. Grandfather is not to trouble about the money for another few months. The Squire says he won't press it, and so we can go on as we are till next Easter. Dear Bryda, I think the Squire was tender-hearted when he saw grandfather so old and broken. I don't wonder. He looks ten years older since it came out about the money and our poor father. That's what cuts him to the heart-'

Bryda sighed as she read these words, and Jack was touched. He had been cross-grained, he knew, but nevertheless he would gladly have got the Squire at that moment in his hands and thrashed him without mercy.

'That's all in the letter,' Bryda said. 'There's only love and kisses, and a few words written below to say grandfather had eaten a good supper and was more like himself for this good news.'

'It's all very well,' Jack said, 'but it seems to me if the Squire gets the money at Easter he might as well have it now. What's the odds?'

'Oh, Jack, they will have the winter to look about them. It does make a difference.'

'Well,' Jack said, 'I would not trust that man. He has got some reason for this, depend on it.'

But poor Jack dare not trust himself to ask what that reason might be. His was a mind slow to reach any conclusion. He was filled with a subtle uneasiness as to what might be the relations between Bryda and the Squire, and yet he dared not come to the point and ask the plain question. Bryda would resent it, and he might lose what was so precious to him-the Sunday walks and the sight of her who was the light of his eyes. He only repeated,-

'He has got some reason, I'll warrant.'

'Kindness to an old man of seventy-six years is not that a reason enough to please you,' Bryda said, and then she added, 'I must go back to the parlour now. Mrs Lambert will awake and be angry if I am not at hand. Good-bye, Jack, good-bye. I hope it will be fair weather next Sunday, and then we'll go to the Redcliffe Meadows again. Good-bye.'

Jack turned away sorrowful and uneasy, determined to watch the movements of the Squire and question Chatterton about him. 'And yet I should not like to act spy to her,' he sighed, as he went out into the relentless rain, which pattered on his best Sunday coat and dimmed the glory of the large gilt buttons with moisture.

In a city like Bristol, then as now, many stories of love and hatred, of vain aspirations and blighted hopes, are told out, of which the passer-by in the busy streets knows nothing.

To-day, as yesterday, our hermit spirits dwell apart, and even those with whom we live in daily intercourse but dimly guess what reason we have to smile or sigh.

Perhaps there never has been anyone, dwelling apart in the dreams of romance, and the world of the past peopled by his own fervid imagination, whose short, sad story can be compared with that of Mr Lambert's apprentice.

At this time of which I write-when Bryda Palmer was full of her own troubles, and with many misgivings tried to persuade herself she had given Mr Bayfield no promise, yet dreading lest he should interpret her acquiescence in the delay as a promise-Chatterton was brooding over his wrongs, and in August was in a frenzy of indignation when he received his cherished manuscripts back from Mr Walpole in a blank cover. This was the unkindest cut of all, for we all know that the wound to pride is, to a sensitive nature, the sorest and the slowest to heal.

But Bristol took but little heed of the slender figure of Mr Lambert's apprentice as he paced the street, with hands clenched and brows knit, nursing his wrath against the great man who had once raised his hopes, and by his moody and fitful temper turning even his friends against him, or at any rate tending to make them indifferent to his woes. For Bristol citizens had many more important subjects claiming their attention at this particular time than the angry disappointment of a self-conscious and irritable boy.

Mr Wilkes was with some the hero of the hour, and the rebellious feeling in America, of which Bristol had perhaps the earliest intelligence, excited the popular feeling, and roused the sympathy of many for those who resisted the enforcement of the Stamp Act, and the indignation of others who were of the old Tory faction and thought that submission was the duty of their brethren on the further side of the great dividing ocean.

Chatterton was too much occupied with his own grievances to be keenly interested in what he heard discussed at Mr Barrett's supper-table or Mr Catcott's tavern. This good, simple-hearted man was faithful in his allegiance to the boy, and never doubted but the great work Chatterton had done in unearthing the poems of Rowley the priest would in time meet its reward.

'A fig for Mr Walpole!' he said. 'Never you fear, my lad, you'll find your level, and it will be a good deal above the level of Mr Walpole, with all his grand relations and riches. Go on, go on, and write for the Town and Country Magazine. Why, what a feather that is in your cap. There's not another fellow in Bristol to match you. Bless you, my brother Alexander's history of the Deluge is mighty dry reading though a watery subject,' and Mr Catcott sipped the large tankard before him, and setting it down with a loud thud on the tavern table, he laughed at his own wit. 'And then there's Barrett, his history is learned and all the rest of it, but I'd sooner read one of your own poems, my lad, let alone hear you recite from Rowley's 'Tragedy of ?lla,' than I would read twenty pages of history. It suits my tastes,' the worthy man said, 'and I have some taste and discernment, though my brother won't allow it. If I had none I should never have valued you as I do, my boy,' and then Mr Catcott flung down his money for his pot of beer, and clapping Chatterton on the back, went out with him into the streets of the city again, his arm linked in his, and his portly figure contrasting with the slight boyish form at his side.

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