Yet she was frank, too, with the frankness of those who have no thought of being misunderstood.She said she had come there out of curiosity to see how he would "get on" with his ancestors.She had been watching him from the chancel ever since he came,--and she was disappointed.As far as emotion went she thought he had the advantage of the stoniest and longest dead of them all.Perhaps he did not like them? But he must be careful what he SAID, for some of her own people were there,--manifestly this one.(She put the toe of her buckled shoe on the crusader Peter had just looked at.)And then there was another in the corner.So she had a right to come there as well as he,--and she could act as cicerone! This one was a De Brecy, one of King John's knights, who married an Atherly.
(She swung herself into a half-sitting posture on the effigy of the dead knight, composed her straight short skirt over her trim ankles, and looked up in Peter's dark face.) That would make them some kind of relations,--wouldn't it? He must come over to Bentley Towers and see the rest of the De Brecys in the chapel there to-morrow.Perhaps there might be some he liked better, and who looked more like him.For there was no one here or at the Grange who resembled him in the least.
He assented to the truth of this with such grave, disarming courtesy, and yet with such undisguised wonder,--as she appeared to talk with greater freedom to a stranger than an American girl would,--that she at once popped off the crusader, and accompanied him somewhat more demurely around the church.Suddenly she stopped with a slight exclamation.
They had halted before a tablet to the memory of a later Atherly, an officer of his Majesty's 100th Foot, who was killed at Braddock's defeat.The tablet was supported on the one side by a weeping Fame, and on the other by a manacled North American Indian.
She stammered and said: "You see there are other Atherlys who went to America even before your father," and then stopped with a sense of having made a slip.
A wild and inexplicable resentment against this complacent historical outrage suddenly took possession of Peter.He knew that his rage was inconsistent with his usual calm, but he could not help it! His swarthy cheek glowed, his dark eyes flashed, he almost trembled with excitement as he hurriedly pointed out to Lady Elfrida that the Indians were VICTORIOUS in that ill-fated expedition of the British forces, and that the captive savage was an allegorical lie.So swift and convincing was his emotion that the young girl, knowing nothing of the subject and caring less, shared his indignation, followed him with anxious eyes, and their hands for an instant touched in innocent and generous sympathy.
And then--he knew not how or why--a still more wild and terrible idea sprang up in his fancy.He knew it was madness, yet for a moment he could only stand and grapple with it silently and breathlessly.It was to seize this young and innocent girl, this witness of his disappointment, this complacent and beautiful type of all they valued here, and bear her away--a prisoner, a hostage--he knew not why--on a galloping horse in the dust of the prairie--far beyond the seas! It was only when he saw her cheek flush and pale, when he saw her staring at him with helpless, frightened, but fascinated eyes,--the eyes of the fluttering bird under the spell of the rattlesnake,--that he drew his breath and turned bewildered away."And do you know, dear," she said with naive simplicity to her sister that evening, "that although he was an American, and everybody says that they don't care at all for those poor Indians, he was so magnanimous in his indignation that I fancied he looked like one of Cooper's heroes himself rather than an Atherly.It was such a stupid thing for me to show him that tomb of Major Atherly, you know, who fought the Americans,--didn't he?--or was it later?--but I quite forgot he was an American." And with this belief in her mind, and in the high expiation of a noble nature, she forbore her characteristic raillery, and followed him meekly, manacled in spirit like the allegorical figure, to the church porch, where they separated, to meet on the morrow.But that morrow never came.
