CRISPIN
"Bla! run, take a jug of ale to Ravenhill," called the host
down the cellar stairs. "He's come for his luncheon."
Bladys hastily wiped her eyes and mounted the steps, fetched
what was required, and went into the guest-room, where Crispin, the bargeman, was pacing.
"I will not have it here. Outside," said he, "under the elm." And then went forth.
The girl followed.
Crispin Ravenhill was a tall man, with fair hair, yet were his
eyes dark; they were large, velvety; and a gentle, iridescent
light played, passing in waves through them. Unlike the men of
his time, he was completely unshaven, and wore a long light beard
and moustache.
He seated himself on a bench beneath one of those "Worcester
weeds," as the small-leaf elm is termed; and as Bladys placed his
bread and cheese on a table there, he looked attentively at
her.
"You have been weeping," said he.
"I have cause, when about to be thrust from my home," she
answered, in a muffled voice. She resented his remark, yet was
unable to restrain an expression of the bitterness that worked
within.
"And with whom will you leave home?" he asked.
"That the bowls decide, not I."
Then she turned to leave; but he caught her wrist. "You shall
not go. Much depends on what now passes between us," said he.
"What passes between us is bread and cheese from me to thee, and seven-pence in return."
"If that be all, go your way," said he. "Yet no; you have
tears in your heart as well as in your eyes. Sit down and let us
speak familiarly together."
"I cannot sit down," answered she—for indeed it would have
been indecorous for her to seat herself along with a customer. She might converse with him standing for half-an-hour with impunity, but to sit for one minute would compromise her character. Such was tavern etiquette.
"I pity you, my poor child, from the deep of my heart; in very
deed I am full of pity."
There was a vibration in his rich, deep voice, a flutter of
kindly light in his brown eyes that sent a thrill through the
heart of Bladys. In a moment her eyes brimmed, and he was
conscious of a quiver in the muscles of the wrist he grasped.
"They make sport of you. 'Give not that which is holy unto
dogs, neither cast ye your pearls before swine,' was not spoken
of lifeless objects, but of living jewels, of consecrated beings. They make sport of you to your shame, and to that of the entire place. But the place can take of itself—not so thou, poor child."
She did not speak.
"God help you," he continued. "A frail, white lily planted, springing out of a good soil,—and to be plucked up by the roots and transplanted, none can say whither."
Never hitherto had any one spoken to Bladys in this manner. There was something pedantic in his mode of speech, formed by contact with his uncle; but there was genuine sincerity in the tone of voice, real sympathy breaking out in flashes from his opalescent eyes.
The mother of Bladys had been a good but a hard woman, practical not imaginative, kind but unsympathetic; engrossed in her own grievances, she had been incapable of entering into the soul of her child, and showing motherly feeling for its inarticulate yearnings and vague shrinkings.
"This is none of your doing," proceeded Crispin. "To this you
gave no consent."
Her lips moved. She could not speak.
"Nay," said he, "I need no words."