They are older now and have probably
forgotten the stranger to whom they gave their fresh little hearts, who
presently left their country never to return; for all this happened a
long time ago - I think about three years. In a way they were rivals,
yet had never seen one another, perhaps never will, since they inhabit
two villages more than a dozen miles apart in a wild, desolate, hilly
district of West Cornwall.
Let me first speak of Millicent, the elder. I knew Millicent well,
having at various times spent several weeks with her in her parents'
house, and she, an only child, was naturally regarded as the most
important person in it. In Cornwall it is always so. Tall for her
years, straight and slim, with no red colour on her cheeks; she had
brown hair and large serious grey eyes; those eyes and her general air
of gravity, and her forehead, which was too broad for perfect beauty,
made me a little shy of her and we were not too intimate. And, indeed,
that feeling on my part, which made me a little careful and ceremonious
in our intercourse, seemed to be only what she expected of me. One day
in a forgetful or expansive moment I happened to call her "Millie,"
which caused her to look to me in surprise. "Don't you like me to call
you Millie - for short?" I questioned apologetically. "No," she returned
gravely; "it is not my name - my name is Millicent." And so it had to be
to the end of the chapter.
Then there was her speech - I wondered how she got it! For it was unlike
that of the people she lived among of her own class. No word-clipping
and slurring, no "naughty English" as old Nordin called it, and sing-
song intonation with her! She spoke with an almost startling
distinctness, giving every syllable its proper value, and her words
were as if they had been read out of a nicely written book.
Nevertheless, we got on fairly well together, meeting on most days at
tea-time in the kitchen, when we would have nice sober little talks and
look at her lessons and books and pictures, sometimes unbending so far
as to draw pigs on her slate with our eyes shut, and laughing at the
result just like ordinary persons.
It was during my last visit, after an absence of some months from that
part of the country, that one evening on coming in I was told by her
mother that Millicent had gone for the milk, and that I would have to
wait for my tea till she came back. Now the farm that supplied the milk
was away at the other end of the village, quite half a mile, and I went
to meet her, but did not see her until I had walked the whole distance,
when just as I arrived at the gate she came out of the farm-house
burdened with a basket of things in one hand and a can of milk in the
other. She graciously allowed me to relieve her of both, and taking
basket and can with one hand I gave her the other, and so, hand in
hand, very friendly, we set off down the long, bleak, windy road just
when it was growing dark.
"I'm afraid you are rather thinly clad for this bleak December
evening," I remarked. "Your little hand feels cold as ice."
She smiled sweetly and said she was not feeling cold, after which there
was a long interval of silence. From time to time we met a villager, a
fisherman in his ponderous sea-boots, or a farm-labourer homeward
plodding his weary way. But though heavy-footed after his day's labour
he is never so stolid as an English ploughman is apt to be; invariably
when giving us a good-night in passing the man would smile and look at
Millicent very directly with a meaning twinkle in his Cornish eye. He
might have been congratulating her on having a male companion to pay
her all these nice little attentions, and perhaps signalling the hope
that something would come of it.
Grave little Millicent, I was pleased to observe, took no notice of
this Cornubian foolishness. At length when we had walked half the
distance home, in perfect silence, she said impressively: "Mr. Hudson,
I have something I want to tell you very much."
I begged her to speak, pressing her cold little hand.
She proceeded: "I shall never forget that morning when you went away
the last time. You said you were going to Truro; but I'm not sure -
perhaps it was to London. I only know that it was very far away, and
you were going for a very long time. It was early in the morning, and I
was in bed. You know how late I always am. I heard you calling to me to
come down and say good-bye; so I jumped up and came down in my
nightdress and saw you standing waiting for me at the foot of the
stairs. Then, when I got down, you took me up in your arms and kissed
me. I shall never forget it!"
"Why?" I said, rather lamely, just because it was necessary to say
something. And after a little pause, she returned, "Because I shall
never forget it."
Then, as I said nothing, she resumed: "That day after school I saw
Uncle Charlie and told him, and he said: 'What! you allowed that tramp
to kiss you! then I don't want to take you on my knee any more - you've
lowered yourself too much."
"Did he dare to say that?" I returned.
"Yes, that's what Uncle Charlie said, but it makes no difference. I
told him you were not a tramp, Mr. Hudson, and he said you could call
yourself Mister-what-you-liked but you were a tramp all the same,
nothing but a common tramp, and that I ought to be ashamed of myself.
'You've disgraced the family,' that's what he said, but I don't care - I
shall never forget it, the morning you went away and took me up in your
arms and kissed me."
Here was a revelation!
