The Witch's Head

BOOK I.-6

“How do you do?” said Florence, in her sharp manner. “You looked as though you were walking in your sleep.”

Before Jeremy could find a reply to this remark, the other young lady, who had been looking intently over the edge of the cliff, turned round and struck him dumb. In his limited experience he had never seen such a beautiful woman before.

She was a head and shoulders taller than her sister, so tall indeed that only her own natural grace could save her from looking awkward. Like her sister she was a brunette, only of a much more pronounced type. Her waving hair was black, and so were her beautiful eyes and the long lashes that curled over them. The complexion was a clear olive, the lips were like coral, and the teeth small and regular. Every advantage that Nature can lavish on a woman she had endowed her with in abundance, including radiant health and spirits. To these charms must be added that sweet and kindly look which sometimes finds a home on the faces of good women, a soft voice, a quick intelligence, and an utter absence of conceit or self-consciousness, and the reader will get some idea of what Eva Ceswick was like in the first flush of her beauty.

“Let me introduce my sister Eva, Mr. Jones.”

But Mr. Jones was for the moment paralysed; he could not even take off his hat.

“Well,” said Florence, presently, “she is not Medusa; there is no need for you to turn into stone.”

This woke him up—indeed, Florence had an ugly trick of waking people up occasionally—and he took off his hat, which was as usual a dirty one, and muttered something inaudible. As for Eva, she blushed, and with ready wit said that Mr. Jones was no doubt astonished at the filthy state of her dress (as a matter of fact, Jeremy could not have sworn that she had one on at all, much less to its condition). “The fact is,” she went on, “I have been lying flat on the grass and looking over the edge of the cliff.”

“What at?”

“Why, the bones.”

The spot on which they were standing was part of the ancient graveyard of Titheburgh Abbey, and as the sea encroached year by year, multitudes of the bones of the long dead inhabitants of Kesterwick were washed out of their quiet graves and strewed upon the beach and unequal surfaces of the cliff.

“Look,” she said, kneeling down, an example that he followed. About six feet below them, which was the depth at which the corpses had originally been laid, could be seen fragments of lead and rotting wood projecting from the surface of the cliff, and, what was a more ghastly sight, eight inches or more of the leg-bones of a man, off which the feet had been washed away. On a ledge in the sandy cliff, about twenty-five feet from the top and sixty or so from the bottom, there lay quite a collection of human remains of all sorts and sizes, conspicuous among them being the bones which had composed the feet that belonged to the projecting shanks.

“Isn’t it dreadful?” said Eva, gazing down with a species of fascination; “just fancy coming to that! Look at that little baby’s skull just by the big one. Perhaps that is the mother’s. And oh, what is that buried in the sand?”

As much of the object to which she pointed at was visible looked like an old cannon-ball, but Jeremy soon came to a different conclusion.

“It is a bit of a lead coffin,” he said.

“Oh, I should like to get down there and find out what is in it. Can’t you get down?”

Jeremy shook his head. “I’ve done it as a boy,” he said, “when I was very light; but it is no good my trying now: the sand would give with me, and I should go to the bottom.”

He was willing to do most things to oblige this lovely creature, but Jeremy was above all things practical, and did not see the use of breaking his neck for nothing.

“Well,” she said, “you certainly are rather heavy.”

“Fifteen stone,” he said, mournfully.

“But I am not ten; I think I could get down.”

“You’d better not try without a rope.”

Just then their conversation was interrupted by Florence’s clear voice:

“When you two people have quite finished staring at those disgusting bones, perhaps, Eva, you will come home to lunch. If you only knew how silly you look, sprawling there like two Turks going to be bastinadoed, perhaps you would get up.”

This was too much for Eva; she got up at once, and Jeremy followed suit.

“Why could you not let us examine our bones in peace, Florence?” said her sister, jokingly.

“Because you are really too idiotic. You see, Mr. Jones, anything that is old and fusty, and has to do with old fogies who are dead and gone centuries ago, has the greatest charms for my sister. She would like to go home and make stories about those bones: whose they were, and what they did, and all the rest of it. She calls it imagination; I call it fudge.”

Eva flushed up, but said nothing; evidently she was not accustomed to answer her elder sister, and presently they parted to go their separate ways.

“What a great oaf that Jeremy is!” said Florence to her sister on their homeward way.

“I did not think him an oaf at all,” she replied, warmly; “I thought him very nice.”

Florence shrugged her square shoulders. “Well, of course, if you like a giant with as much brain as an owl, there is nothing more to be said. You should see Ernest; he is nice, if you like.”

“You seem very fond of Ernest.”

“Yes, I am,” was the reply; “and I hope that when he comes you won’t poach on my manor.”

“You need not be afraid,” answered Eva, smiling; “I promise to leave your Ernest alone.”

“Then that is a bargain,” said Florence, sharply. “Mind that you keep to your word.”

CHAPTER VI.

JEREMY FALLS IN LOVE

Jeremy, for the first time for some years, had no appetite for his dinner that day, a phenomenon that filled Dorothy with alarm.

“My dear Jeremy,” she said afterwards, “what can be the matter with you? you had only one helping of beef and no pudding!”

“Nothing at all,” he replied sulkily; and the subject dropped.

“Doll,” said Jeremy presently, “do you know Miss Eva Ceswick?”

“Yes, I have seen her twice.”

“What do you think of her, Doll?”

“What do you think of her?” replied that cautious young person.

“I think she is beautiful as—as an angel.”

“Quite poetical, I declare! What next? Have you seen her?”

“Of course, else how should I know she was beautiful?”

“Ah, no wonder you had only once of beef!”

Jeremy coloured.

“I am going to call there this afternoon; would you like to come?” went on his sister.

“Yes, I’ll come.”

“Better and better; it will be the first call I ever remember your having paid.”

“You don’t think she will mind, Doll?”

“Why should she mind? Most people don’t mind being called on, even if they have a pretty face.”

“Pretty face! She is pretty all over.”

“Well, then, a pretty all over. I start at three; don’t be late.”

Thereupon Jeremy went off to beautify himself for the occasion, and his sister gazed at his departing form with the puzzled expression that had distinguished her as a child.

“He’s going to fall in love with her,” she said to herself, “and no wonder; any man would: she is ‘pretty all over,’ as he said, and what more does a man look at? I wish that she would fall in love with him before Ernest comes home;” and she sighed.

At a quarter to three Jeremy reappeared, looking particularly huge in a black coat and his Sunday trousers. When they reached the cottage where Miss Ceswick lived with her nieces, they were destined to meet with a disappointment, for neither of the young ladies was at home. Miss Ceswick, however, was there, and received them very cordially.

“I suppose that you have come to see my newly imported niece,” she said; “in fact, I am sure that you have, Mr. Jeremy, because you never came to call upon me in your life. Ah, it is wonderful how young men will change their habits to please a pair of bright eyes!”

Jeremy blushed painfully at this sally, but Dorothy came to his rescue.

“Has Miss Eva come to live with you for good?” she asked.

“Yes, I think so. You see, my dear, between you and me, her aunt in London, with whom she was living, has got a family of daughters, who have recently come out. Eva has been kept back as long as possible, but now that she is twenty it was impossible to keep her back any more. But then, on the other hand, it was felt—at least I think that it was felt—that to continue to bring Eva out with her cousins would be to quite ruin their chance of settling in life, because when she was in the room, no man could be got to look at them. And so, you see, Eva has been sent down here as a penalty for being so handsome.”

“Most of us would be glad to undergo heavier penalties than that if we could only be guilty of the crime,” said Dorothy, a little sadly.

“Ah, my dear, I daresay you think so,” answered the old lady. “Every young woman longs to be beautiful and get the admiration of men, but are they any the happier for it? I doubt it. Very often that admiration brings endless troubles in its train, and perhaps in the end wrecks the happiness of the woman herself and of others who are mixed up with her. I was once a beautiful woman, my dear—I am old enough to say it now—and I can tell you that I believe that Providence cannot do a more unkind thing to a woman than to give her striking beauty, unless it gives with it great strength of mind. A weak-minded beauty is the most unfortunate of her s*x. Her very attractions, which are sure to draw the secret enmity of other women on to her, are a source of difficulty to herself, because they bring her lovers with whom she cannot deal. Sometimes the end of such a woman is sad enough. I have seen it happen several times, my dear.”

Often in after-life, and in circumstances that had not then arisen, did Dorothy think of old Miss Ceswick’s words, and acknowledge their truth; but at this time they did not convince her.

“I would give anything to be like your niece,” she said bluntly, “and so would any other girl. Ask Florence, for instance.”

“Ah, my dear, you think so now. Wait till another twenty years have passed over your heads, and then if you are both alive see which of you is the happiest. As for Florence, of course she would wish to be like Eva; of course it is painful for her to have to go about with a girl beside whom she looks like a little dowdy. I daresay that she would have been as glad if Eva had stopped in London as her cousins were that she left it. Dear, dear! I hope they won’t quarrel. Florence’s temper is dreadful when she quarrels.”