CHAPTER I.—A DANCING LESSON UNDER DIFFICULTIES.

Twelve years before the occurrence of the incident described in my prologue, a curious group was assembled in a quiet corner of Grayfleet Churchyard. Gray fleet is a damp, aguish, lonely, desolate village, on the verge of the great Essex marshes; and its old church, like a skull with two empty, lifeless eyes, gazes with two dreary windows right down on the marshes, towards that low-lying mist where they mingle with the sea.

The group of which I have spoken consisted of some six girls and one little boy. The girls were of divers ages, from six to sixteen, and all were more or less smartly dressed in holiday clothes, for it was a Good Friday. They stood in a ring round a flat tombstone, grey with age, and green with slime of moss. On this tombstone a fair little girl of eight, with dishevelled hair and flushed cheeks, was practising the first steps of a dance. Her instructress was the eldest of the party, a pale, red-haired wench of sixteen, who watched her with keenly critical eyes, and at times stepped forward, took her place on the tombstone, and showed her how to use her feet.

First position—heel and toe—cut and shuffle.

‘Lookee here, Mawther!’ cried one of the girls to a passer by. ‘Come and see Polly Lowther teaching Mark Peartree’s girl to dance.’

Another girl came running into the churchyard, and joined the group.

‘That’s the style!’ exclaimed Polly Lowther, as the red-haired girl was called. ‘You’ll soon learn, if you only try. Look at me, Madlin. Watch my feet.’

First position—heel and toe—cut and shuffle.

The girls clapped their hands enthusiastically, and the little boy, who was sitting astride on a green grave, grinned approval.

Fired by the applause bestowed on her teacher, the little fair girl—‘Madlin,’ as the others called her—began wildly practising the steps.

First position—heel and toe—cut and shuffle.

Suddenly there was a rush, a cry. The troop of girls scattered on every side and disappeared: the little boy cried and ran. Only ‘Madlin’ remained, so absorbed for the time being in her dancing that for a moment she did not notice that she was left alone, and that a tall figure in black, with white neckcloth, stood frowning at her.

The next moment she was conscious of her predicament. Flushed and panting, she stood and gazed, and recognised to her horror the Rector of the parish.

She gave one glance around, to see if she was quite abandoned, and then, seeing no trace of her companions, she curtsied timidly, and stood her ground.

‘Little girl,’ said the Rector, in a terrible voice, ‘I don’t know you—what is your name?’

She hung her head awkwardly, and made no reply.

‘Do you hear me? What is your name?’

The little girl raised her head, looked straight at the Rector, and answered in a clear voice—

‘If you please, sir, I’m Madlin—Mark Peartree’s girl.’

The Rector’s brows came down still more.

‘Mark Peartree; I think I know the man—he lives down at the ferry, and sails in a barge. Is he your father?’

The girl, who had a common straw hat swinging by the ribbon in her mouth, gnawed the ribbon, and replied shortly—

‘No, he ain’t.’

‘What is he, then?’ asked the Rector. ‘Some relation?’

‘No,’ was the immediate reply. ‘I call him uncle, but he isn’t a real uncle, nor Uncle Luke neither. I’m a foundling—Aunt Jane found me, out there!’

And with a back sweep of her hand, the little girl indicated the great marshes, steaming and reddening in the setting sun.

‘And whoever you are, are you not aware,’ said the Rector, improving the occasion, ‘that you are a very wicked little girl? Upon this holy day of all days in the year I find you practising a vicious pastime here, in God’s own acre! On a tombstone! Little girl, do you know that there is a dead fellow-creature lying under you, and that you are profaning his place of rest?’

The girl gave a start and a scared look downward, as if half expecting the dead man to arise and confront her; then half unconsciously she edged off the tombstone and stood ankle deep in the long churchyard grass.

‘I am afraid,’ said the Rector, shaking his forefinger at her. ‘I am really very much afraid that you have been very badly brought up. Tell me, have you ever heard the word of God? Do you ever go to church?’

The answer was at any rate prompt and explicit.

‘No—never.’

‘Ah, I thought so. A sad case. And your father—I mean your adopted father—is he not ashamed of himself to bring you up in ignorance and sin?’

This was touching rather a dangerous chord. The little girl flushed, panted, opened her large blue eyes full on the minister and exclaimed—

‘Uncle Mark isn’t ashamed of himself, no more is Uncle Luke! They go to their meeting, and I go too. They’re United Brethren, and when I grow up, I’m to be a Brethren too!9

‘Brethren!’

This was said in a tone which clearly implied that their cup of moral delinquency, in the Rector’s eyes, was now full and overflowing. The good pastor could have endured a family which repudiated Christianity altogether, but any form of Dissent was worse even than the rankest blasphemy. It is doubtful what turn the interview would have taken, but just at this moment an unexpected diversion took place. A thin shrill voice, doubtless appertaining to one of the little girl’s late companions, suddenly pealed out, from some mysterious corner where its owner lay hidden—

‘Look out, Madlin! Here’s your Uncle Luke a-comin’!’

Madeline looked startled; then, strange to say, her face grew quite bright and eager. The Rector seemed perplexed, and uncertain what to say next. Just then the gate of the churchyard opened, and a little man, with very short legs and a very large head, looked in, and seeing Madeline, quietly entered.

‘Uncle! Uncle Luke!’

The little man nodded his head and smiled. Then, seeing the Rector, he took off his hat and grinned.

It was a peculiarity of the little man that he expressed all thoughts and moods by means of a rather mindless smile, sometimes broadening into a grin. For the rest, he had large watery eyes and a large mouth, and his general appearance was homely and awkward in the extreme.

By this time Madeline was at his side, holding his hand and looking up into his face.

The Rector strode across the churchyard.

‘I have just been warning this child against dancing upon the tombstones. I have told her that she is a very wicked child, and she has informed me that her relations belong to some Methodist persuasion. Be that as it may, you will doubtless agree with me that her conduct to-day has been extremely sacrilegious.’

The little man, still holding his hat in his hand, looked at the Rector, then looked at Madeline, then smiled imbecilely, then, feeling the smile out of place, tried to frown, but only succeeded in distorting his good-humoured countenance into a confirmed grin. Then suddenly darting his mouth down to the little girl’s ear, he hoarsely whispered—

‘What is it, Madlin? What’s the matter?’

‘Polly Lowther was teaching me to cut and shuffle,’ said the girl out loud, fixing her eyes in a fearless way on the Rector; ‘and Parson came out and found us, and all the others ran away. I know dancing’s wicked, because Uncle Mark says so, but I couldn’t help it, and Parson says Uncle Mark ought to be ashamed of himself, and I told Parson it isn’t true!’

This explanation seemed to confuse the little man still more. He scratched his head and peeped at the Rector with a grin.

‘Dancing’s downright wicked,’ he said, ‘no doubt o’ that.’

‘It is no laughing matter,’ cried the Rector, indignantly, irritated at the unaccountable expression on the little man’s face. ‘Be good enough to leave the precincts of the church. The child is a bad child, and has been badly trained. There, there, hold your tongue—I desire no further explanations; only remember this, if that child desecrates the churchyard again, I shall resort to severer measures.’

So saying he waved the pair from the churchyard, shut the gate sharply upon them, and stalked away to the Rectory, with a bosom full of holy emotion and Christian wrath.

The little man stood for some minutes in the open road, dazed, gaping, and looking at the tall retreating figure. Then he quietly put on his hat, and, conscious of the little hand within his own, looked down at his companion, at a loss what to say or do. At last he cut the Gordian knot of his perplexity by grinning from ear to ear.

‘Parson be in a powerful rage,’ he said; ‘but dancing be downright wicked, that’s a fact;’ and he added, with a perplexed look, as if communing with his own thoughts, ‘What shall I say to your Uncle Mark?’

Madeline seemed to muse for some moments, then, as if struck by a sudden inspiration, she exclaimed—

‘Come along, Uncle Luke—let’s go home.’

The little man laughed contentedly, as if finding in the proposition a solution of all his difficulty; and the little legs began to move. Hand in hand, the two hurried down the descent leading from the church to the outskirts of the village. As they went along, Madeline peeped up quietly from time to time at her companion, as if trying to read his thoughts; then, squeezing his hand tight, she said in a coaxing voice—

‘Uncle Luke!’

‘Yes, Madlin.’

‘You won’t tell Uncle Mark about my dancing.’

‘I don’t know—dancing be downright wicked.’

‘I couldn’t help it. Polly Lowther offered to teach me, and all the other girls can dance a bit. And if you won’t say a word to Uncle Mark, I’ll let you cut up my new money-box that Uncle Mark gave me, and find out what’s inside.’

Unaccountable as it may seem, this extraordinary proposition seemed to find peculiar favour in Uncle Luke’s eyes. His large eyes twinkled, and his mouth broadened from ear to ear, but he pretended to shake his head from side to side in solemn deprecation of the bribe. Madeline watched him keenly, and just as he seemed wavering, she lifted his great brown hand to her mouth, and gave it a passionate kiss. This seemed to unsettle Uncle Luke altogether, and he murmured eagerly—

‘All right, Madlin, I shan’t tell.’

And Madeline knew well that a promise of this sort from Uncle Luke was as good as an oath from any other man. They quickened their pace, but she continued to play with and fondle his hand, and now and then to hold it to her lips. Confidence of this sort was what the little man loved best of all things in the world, and the smile upon his face grew broad and bright with intelligent content.