The mournful vibrations of her voice died away.
"It is very tiring to hate anybody," said Lettice, deftly plucking the core of meaning out of these wild speeches. Dorothea did not seem to hear. Her eyes, transparent windows of her soul, were miserably sad. Presently with a quick sigh she roused herself, turned the key on memory and drew down the blind.
"There, that's enough about me. I didn't mean to tell you all this, but never mind, I'm glad you know. Now let's talk about something cheerful. Tell me about that handsome cousin of yours. What's he like?"
Lettice, who could not bear to see a book mishandled, had picked up Dorothea's, and was smoothing its rumpled pages. She accommodated herself with patience to this violent change of subject. "Denis?" she said. "He is very nice." Convenient word! In Lettice's vocabulary it covered a multitude of meanings.
"I like his face. He looks as if he were in the army. Is he in the army? What does he do?"
"He—he's a sort of engineer."
"An engineer? A civil engineer? That's not bad; they do do things worth doing—they and an explorer here and there, and the flying men—I like them best. I like courage, physical courage, it's far more interesting than moral. I shouldn't think your cousin would ever know what it was to feel afraid. And wouldn't he never tell a lie?"
"Never," said Lettice, her eyes straying to her Latin grammar.
"Not even to save a friend? He'd do anything else, take any risk himself, but just not that? So that if he was pushed into a corner he'd have to tell the truth? That's just what I should have expected. Of course there are a few things I have against him," Dorothea ran on, seemingly at random, though her downcast eyes were glowing. "He shouldn't like cats, nasty treacherous things, they're not a man's animal. And he shouldn't sing the hymns on Sunday out of that big book with tunes. Going to church is all right, and suits him, but I can't bear that book. It's like the W.S.P.A." Presumably Miss O'Connor meant the Y.M.C.A. "Mr. Gardiner's his very greatest friend, isn't he? Would he tell lies, do you think?"
"I don't know," said Lettice, far down the passive voice ofamo.
"What do you think of him?"
"I think he's very nice."
Out shot Dorothea's arm, and Lettice, amazed, aggrieved, found herself being vigorously shaken.
"Donottalk like that! I never in my life knew any one so—so perfectly systematically untruthful as you are! I don't believe you've once this morning said one single thing you really mean!" (But she was wrong, for Lettice had done so—once.) "Tell me what you think of Mr. Gardiner.Tellme. I want to know."
Lettice, chafing her arm, mutely reproachful, indicated the creases which Dorothea's grip had left on her pale blue linen sleeve. "You, you, you—you are soviolent," she complained in herpianissimodrawl, which held always a hint of make-believe. "I don't know what you mean. I do think Mr. Gardiner is very nice." Then for the second time she let out a little piece of truth. "I shouldn't think he'd take failure well."
"Oh."
Abrupt silence. Dorothea sprang up and wandered off into the forest, slashing at the brambles with her stick,jumping over logs that came in her way, just as a boy might have done. Indeed she looked like a boy in her rough tweeds and Norfolk coat, with her brown face and well-scratched hands. She had worn neither hat nor gloves since she came.
Lettice looked at her with shrewd and wideawake curiosity. She and Denis, pooling their observations, had been following the hidden course of Gardiner's love affair. So circumspectly had the pair behaved that not a soul in the hotel, except the two allies, had any inkling of the romance in progress. Yet it was serious enough, at any rate for Gardiner. He was in it up to the neck; no doubt about him. And Dorothea? Denis was of opinion that she meant business. Hadn't Lettice seen the expression (love-light was the word in his mind, but he didn't like to use it) in her eyes?
Lettice had always had her doubts as to that love-light, though she kept them to herself. This morning they had become certainty. Dorothea did not love Harry Gardiner—it was not love which had looked out of those too-clear eyes of hers when she asked that imperious question. No! Lettice had been illuminated by the certainty that he was the man whom, on her own showing, she had singled out to hate. Dorothea could hate, no doubt of that. The plain black and white of her emotions, love and hate, rapture and agony, they were somewhat startling in a world of neutral grays.
But at this point Lettice found herself up against a blank wall. What was Gardiner's offense, and how did it happen that he did not know it himself? For he did not know; and Dorothea was planning her attack against a man who had thrown away his armor for love of her. This was not sporting. Lettice always instinctively took sides with the weak against the strong, with the victim against the avenger. Besides, she liked Gardiner. She liked Dorothea too—with reservations; but her character was simpler, more homogeneous, easier to follow. She, in fact, was interesting historically, but not analytically. Now the uncertain balanceof strength and weakness in Gardiner made him an engrossing study. He was transparent to Lettice, while she was opaque to him. "That inoffensive but very ordinary little person"—so he had called her: what a pity he could not look into her mind!
Thus Lettice abandoned the study of the passive ofamofor its active voice. In the midst of her cogitations she was surprised to see Denis come in view, striding through the bracken. He sometimes called for her on his way back from the river, but now he was approaching from the direction of the hotel. Moreover, gloom sat upon his brow.
"I say, Lettice," he called out, the Irish accent unusually strong, "isn't it a nawful nuisance? Wandesforde's had a smash-up in his car, and he wants me back at once!"
Lettice gazed at him, slowly and thoughtfully rubbing her nose.
"I got the wire just as I was startin' for the river. No, he's not bad, only a broken arm. But the nuisance of it is that he's entered for a race on Friday week, and he wants me to take it on instead. I hate racing on a Friday—I hate racing at all, for that matter, mixin' oneself up with newspaper men and that sort of raffle; but I'll have to do it."
"A race? What fun! What for?" asked Dorothea, coming up in time to hear the last words. She dropped down on a bundle of faggots, and extended under Lettice's nose a brown and purple palm full of blackberries. Lettice shook her head, slowly, twice. Dorothea, with a glint of fun, reached out to offer them to Denis. He screwed his eyeglass into place, gazed at them absently, and said: "No, thank you." Dorothea continued to wave them under his nose, in the manner of the importunate sidesman offering the plate to the stingy parishioner. Denis, yielding, still absently, chose a berry and swallowed it whole like a pill. Dorothea with a broad smile emptied the rest of her handful into her mouth, and hugged her knees again with her crimson hands. The whole had taken but a moment. "I didn't know you went in for racing. What did you say it was for?" she repeated.
"Silver trophy offered by theBirmingham Courier. Cross-country, with compulsory halts at Redditch, Coventry, Polesworth, and Walsall. He'd scratch, if it weren't that we're both rather keen on testin' our new little bus. She's done one hundred and twenty and over on her trial flights—"
"Flights? It's an aeroplane race? You fly? You told me he was an engineer!" cried Dorothea, rounding on Lettice in hot reproach. "Why, I've been longing to meet a flying man for years! Go on, go on, tell me all about it. Do you fly much? Howidioticof me not to recognize your name!"
Here was the enthusiastic young lady, Denis's pet aversion; but, strange to say, he did not seem to mind her.
"Well, I build aeroplanes," he said, smiling. "It's my partner does the ornamental work. You may know his name—Wandesforde."
"Wandesforde? Sydney Wandesforde? Why, I should just think I do! He was the man who came in first in the London-Berlin race, and was disqualified for passing inside one of the controls in a fog. And then he had that marvelous escape, when his machine turned over in the air, and spilt him in a heap on the top plane, and he managed to regain control, and brought her down safely after all! Why, he's magnificent! I'd give—I'd give a thousand pounds to go up with him!"
"You can do it for less than that," said Denis, amused.
"Ah, but I mean in a race. A big flying race—it's about the one thrill worth having left in the world!"
"You should fly your own machine. That's better fun than bein' a passenger. Any one of the big schools would take you on, for a matter of seventy pounds or so. It's quite simple."
"Would they? Will you build me an aeroplane, if they do?"
"With pleasure, if you give me the commission."
"I shall come and see you about it directly I get back to England."
"Do."
Lettice gazed from one to the other. Dorothea was like a rose, her eyes were sparkling; Denis was amused and interested. True that at present he saw only the enthusiast, not the woman, but it was not to be supposed that he lacked the common instincts of human nature. Was this sudden friendship to be encouraged? Lettice answered that question by uprooting herself from her seat.
"It is one o'clock," she announced. "I am going home."
Denis, as her escort, rose too. Dorothea sat still, looking decidedly sulky.
"Aren't you coming, Miss O'Connor?"
"No. She doesn't want me to."
Lettice, who had already started on her homeward journey, obviously was not given to hear. Denis glanced, irresolute, from that expressive back to Dorothea, but ended by raising his cap and hastening after his cousin.
"I'm sorry we bored you," he said, taking possession of her coat and bag and book.
"Don'tmentionit," returned Lettice with politeempressement.
Do one thing at least I can—Love a man or hate a manSupremely.Pippa Passes.
Do one thing at least I can—Love a man or hate a manSupremely.Pippa Passes.
Do one thing at least I can—Love a man or hate a manSupremely.Pippa Passes.
Do one thing at least I can—
Love a man or hate a man
Supremely.
Pippa Passes.
"Louisa!"
"Yes, Miss Dot?"
"Has either of those two recognized you?"
"Well, miss, Mr. Smith haven't, that's sure. I might be a sack of potatoes for all the notice he takes. Men he'll look at, and I'd be sorry to be the one as tried to do him; but women—no. He's a real gentleman, he is. He've taken his ticket for up above, and he ain't goin' to waste it."
"And the other one?"
"Mr. Gardiner? I see him stare at me pretty hard times and again, but it's always, 'Now, have I seen you before or haven't I?' so I just stares back as bold as a cucumber and puts him off. He can't be sure, see, about a old thing as is just like any other old thing. He've seen a many maids, miss."
"I never realized you were a danger till I'd got you here, and then it was too late. Never mind, you'll come in useful. Very useful. I didn't see how to begin, but I do now. I'm going to get it out of Gardiner himself if I possibly can, that's only fair; but if I can't, I can always fall back on Merion-Smith. You see, if I can only get either of them to make any sort of admission, it's all I need, and that murderer's under my thumb. Because Merion-Smith won't swear to a lie. Not even to save a friend—Lettice owned it this morning. At the inquest he escaped because nobody thought of asking him any questions, but once I get him into thewitness-box again—oh! Imustmake Gardiner speak—Iwill!"
"Miss, if you 'op about so I can't do your hair, and I shall pull you crool."
"Do I care?"
With a jerk and a tug, Dorothea dragged her long tresses out of Louisa's hands, and buried her face on the dressing-table. Gaunt and patient, Louisa waited behind her chair. Her sympathies were divided; she found it hard to believe harm of a man, a mere bachelor man, who kept his house so scrupulously clean.
"It's a wicked thing you're after, miss, though I suppose it's no use me saying so," she remarked dispassionately.
"It is not wicked! It's justice. That's all I want: to make him answer to the law for what he's done. I wouldn't touch him with a pitchfork myself!"
"But look at the nasty underhanded way of it, miss! Mascarooning as if you wasn't married, and you the way you been last year and all—it ain't hardly decent, to my mind. It makes me sick to see him hangin' on your footsteps, so to speak, and you leadin' him on. And it's my belief it's a wild mare's nest you got in your head, and him a babe unborn all the time; and then where'll you be?"
"Where I was before, of course. If it's so I shall find it out, and no harm done."
"No harm, with him trustin' the very ground you tread on, and then coming all of a jolt on the truth—"
"Oh, I can't go into all that," said Dorothea impatiently. "I didn't ask him to admire me, did I? It was he began it. I never dreamed of such a thing. Besides, I'm right, I know I am, and so would you if you'd been there. He did it. He's accountable for two lives, and one of them so innocent, so innocent—You know what Guy did for me, what he saved me from; how do you think I could ever face him or my baby again if I let them go unavenged?"
"It's not in heaven you'll be meeting that dear little innocent, nor never seeing her no more—"
"Oh,be quiet, Louisa!" Dorothea stamped; "PutUncle Jack's stars in my hair," she ordered. "And I'll not wear that old black thing to-night. I'll have the silver brocade."
"The brocade, miss? It ain't suitable, miss. A deal too dressy."
Dorothea slewed round in her chair and looked up with an expression which sent Louisa off to fetch the silver brocade without another word. Persuasion was no good with Dorothea. Flat contradiction might sometimes avail; and the flatter it was, the more likely to hit the turning angle of that incalculable young person. But if it did not chance to hit that angle—well, there was nothing for it but prompt obedience.
Dorothea, a world-weary cynic of twenty-one, not infrequently thought in terms of the penny novelettes which were her favorite reading. She had conceived the idea of arraying herself for conquest, after the fashion of the Lady Ermyntrude inThe Heart of a Countess. Every evening hitherto she had worn what the author of that interesting romance might have described as "a modest little black frock of some soft, clinging material." The brocade was full dress; it had a short-waisted bodice, with strands of silver crossing on the breast and a silver girdle. The petticoat, heavily embroidered, was short enough to show her silver shoes. Over her shoulders, jasmine-white and dimpled, fell a scarf of silver gauze; and there were diamond stars in the darkness of her hair. In fine, when Louisa had done with her, she was herself a star of loveliness bright enough to dazzle anybody.
Lettice was waiting in the hall to see her cousin start, Denis having as usual got ready half-an-hour too soon, with his rod and his rug and his bag and a basket for Geraldine the kitten. They were exchanging those labored last words which even the best of friends manufacture while the carriage delayeth its coming, when this vision swept down on them, with her nose in the air. Evidently Dorothea had not forgiven Lettice for cutting short her talk, or Denis for suffering it to be done. She sailed on to the salon, whereher entrance was greeted with a comically sudden hush, such as fell on the dinner-table when a new course made its appearance. Lettice relieved her feelings with one of her favorite words; not "nice" this time, but "Well!"
"There, you see you've lost me a commission, Lettice!" said Denis, laughing.
"Me? I didn't do anything!"
"What's up?" asked Gardiner. He had come out of his den, with a pot of flowers in his arms, just in time to witness the transit of Venus, and had been favored, in contradistinction to the others, with a gracious smile; his face had changed, ever so little, in response. Denis opened his lips to reply, but Lettice was too quick for him.
"Why, Miss O'Connor and I were having such a nice cozy talk together, and Denis would come bothering with hisold aeroplanes" (the tone of spite was delicious), "and of course she didn't like it, and now he's cross with me because she doesn't want to buy one! Robs me of my only friend, and they says it's my fault, and abuses me like, like—like a pickpocket! Well, well!"
Nobody could play the injured innocent better than Lettice, above all when she was in the wrong. She played with Denis as delicately as a kitten plays with a leaf. "Yes, you're an ill-used person, aren't you?" he said. He put his arm round her shoulders and gently pressed her down into a chair; he would never let her stand if he could help it. "At any rate, you're not in it, Harry," he said, speaking over her head to Gardiner. "She's not carried over our sins to you, that's one good thing!"
"Yes, didn't I get a beamer?" said Gardiner, with his easy laugh. He fell back to observe the flowers he had been arranging. "Not that I should afflict myself if she did. So long as she pays her bill, it's all one to me!"
He fancied, as he spoke, that a gleam passed over Miss Smith's countenance; but at that moment the omnibus arrived, and amid good-bys and good wishes Dorothea was forgotten. When the traveler had departed, and when Gardiner had stood on the step waving his hand till the lastminute, he turned, and came face to face with Lettice. They looked at each other as the two intimate friends of a common friend do look, when the link (or should it be called a barrier?) is removed from between them. It might be said that this was the first time Gardiner had ever seen Lettice, for, remembering that gleam, he looked with curiosity. He found himself gazing into a pair of perfectly intelligent and faintly derisive hazel eyes.
When you have summed up a person as ordinary and inoffensive, it is a shock to discover that the said person has turned the tables by reading the inmost secrets of your heart. Gardiner felt as though he had suddenly become transparent. Fairly disconcerted, he wheeled round, and almost fell over the chambermaid, who was at his elbow offering him a note. "Tiens!" said Rosalie. The note dropped; the draught from the open door whisked it down the hall to Lettice's feet. Lettice, like her cousin, was a dandy in affairs of honor, and would not willingly have glanced even at the envelope of another person's letter; but in this case, as she stooped, she could not avoid seeing that the handwriting was Dorothea's. She gave it back, and had the unique satisfaction of seeing Gardiner color as he thanked her. Then she slipped away, and left him to enjoy his letter alone.
"Could you possibly give me justfive minutesthis evening, I have somethingvery importantI want to ask you. I will be up at the crucifix at half-past nine on the chance.—D. M. O'C."
"Could you possibly give me justfive minutesthis evening, I have somethingvery importantI want to ask you. I will be up at the crucifix at half-past nine on the chance.—D. M. O'C."
Above the gardens of the Bellevue, which had a slope of one in six, there was an orchard of white-stockinged fruit trees, which had a slope of one in four. Above that again rose the grassy hill-side, steeper and steeper, till after a veritable scramble you reached the top, which was marked by a cairn of stones and a crucifix. Beyond the crucifix were level uplands—dry silvery grass, dark knots of furze or bramble, clayey ruts winding away to a wood of stunted firs which leaned, like the grasses, all along the wind. Buton the other side of the cross, what a view! This hill was scarcely a mile as the crow flies from the cliffs of Rochehaut, yet it faced a wholly different reach of the river, some ten miles distant, by water, from the ford where Dorothea had cut her foot; the river performed a figure of eight in between. This was no scene of theatrical beauty, no famouspointe de vue, like that above Frahan; yet Gardiner loved it more. It gave him the free wind and the open sky, and it gave them to him alone; no one ever came up here, except perhaps a laborer trudging inland to Rochehaut, the village of the middens.Odi profanum vulgus.For Gardiner, beautiful Frahan was forever tainted by the thousands of admiring eyes which had rested upon it.
The hills here sank down in wide-spreading slopes, great shoulders and flanks all silvery and slippery with grass. At their feet the river rippled, shallow and broad; and on the green floor of the valley were clustered the houses of Poupehan, a tiny gray hamlet with a tiny gray bridge which gathered the stream within its span, though above and below it spread out its rounded pools. On the farther bank, the hills rose like a wall, a sweep of dark woods. That white streak, could it be a road? Yes, it was the bridle track going up to Corbion on the height; it hung against the side-hill like a scarf. At the top you might see the gray extinguisher cap of Corbion church, among trees. But the eye came back to rest on those glorious woods; how rich they were, deep-plumaged, somber, steep as a curtain!
By dint of neglecting his letters, and scamping his flowers, Gardiner managed to keep tryst some minutes before the time appointed. He sat down on the stones and leaned against the crucifix, which shot up over his head, lank and black and forlornly crooked, a ten-foot spar supporting a ten-inch figure. The moon was coining liquid silver in a slate-blue sky; the faint gold lamps of Poupehan showed vague in the gray depth of the valley. There by the river the mists were rising, the meadows drenched and cold and silvery with dew; here on the hill-top the air was velvet-warm and dry, and sweet with honeysuckle. Big grasshopperswhirred all round in the grass, and a corncrake in the fir-wood behind let off at intervals his long mechanical rattle. There were owls, too, hoo-hooing, and one whose note was like a silvery bell, calling from the woods across the valley. It was a night of romance—a night for love.
Gardiner's planets were Mercury and Venus; he incongruously combined the money-getting instinct with a sensuous temperament. He had intended to spend those minutes calmly in reviewing the pros and cons of marriage with Dorothea—for there were a good many cons; marriage, even with a rich woman, did not come into his scheme of life. But the white enchantment of the moonlight was too much for him; he became a lover and nothing more.
Meanwhile Dorothea, climbing the hill, was beginning to wish she had not put on that silver brocade. If she was not careful, he would get out of hand; and if he got out of hand—She had come to Rochehaut, in the first instance, bent on hunting down her enemy, but without any definite plan. True, the Lady Ermyntrude used her attractions for the undoing of the wicked Lord Henry; but it had never entered Dorothea's head to do the like, probably because the idea was instinctively repugnant. It was very repugnant; and when chance, and the accident at the ford, showed her her power, though she used it, it was only after a struggle. Not that she had any scruples of morality: Dorothea was as unmoral a creature as one could find in a Christian land, she was guided solely by her feelings. But, in spite of eight months of marriage, she was still fiercely virginal; she could not with equanimity suffer herself to be desired, above all by Gardiner. Still, being perfectly persuaded that she owed this duty to her dead, she was not going to turn back. Dorothea had the merits of her defects; she was not a coward.
She arrived breathless, with her skirts tucked over her arm, and one glance told her that her naïve plan for dazzling him had succeeded a little too well. His eyes caught sudden fire; he was on his feet in a moment, bowing to her with a dash of foreign extravagance.
"Barbarous behavior!" he said. "Rank cruelty, no less. Do you know you're three and a half minutes behind time?"
Decidedly he was getting out of hand. Dorothea retreated a pace or two, and wound her arm round the stem of the cross as if for support.
"I—I wanted to speak to you for a moment—"
"So you said; on business, wasn't it? I'm all attention. You don't look much like business to-night, do you know?"
"I can't say anything if you look at me like that!" cried Dorothea in a rush. Gardiner laughed and cast down his eyes. "No, please, if you'd turn right away—I shall never get it out to your face—"
"Señorita, if the moon doesn't desire to be looked at, she shouldn't appear in silver," said Gardiner, complying. "That suit? Now, what's the trouble?"
"It's a little difficult to explain." It was; her breath came fluttering and her voice shook. "You must be patient with me if I say it wrong." ("Patient! I'll be something besides patient," Gardiner murmured.) "It's—well, it's just this. Have you—do you remember ever seeing my maid before?"
There was an instant change in the atmosphere.
"Your maid? That gaunt female who looks like the Nonconformist conscience? I might have. Why?"
"She says she's seen you."
"Where?"
"At your hotel at Grasmere."
"At Grasmere? At the Easedale?"
Dorothea nodded.
"Go on," he prompted steadily.
"It was last August," said Dorothea. "She was in the service of a Mrs. Trent—"
She stopped. She could feel the sudden increase of tension. "Ah, I thought from your tone I'd been doing something reprehensible," said Gardiner, with a dry laugh. "Go on. I suppose she's told you a pretty yarn. I'm a murderer—is that it?"
"Oh, no,no! it's only that she says the whole truth didn'tcome out at the inquest. She says you—you threw something at him—a chisel—Mrs. Trent picked it up afterwards—no, please wait a moment till I've done! Louisa says too—I made her tell—that he, the man who died, had a temper, that he very likely said the most horrid things. I don't think even she thinks you were much to blame, while of course I—But she did think I ought to know; and I think so too. So I want you to tell me the very truth. Did you do it?"
Gardiner met her pleading glance, and a confession rose to his lips. Then—whether he caught some shade of expression which was not wholly innocent: whether the truth was that at heart he really trusted no one save Denis and his father—he temporized.
"Why do you want to know?"
"I think so much of you!"
"How much do you think of me? Enough to warrant my telling you a thing like that?—always supposing I'd done it, of course, which I don't admit."
"Yes."
"It would be next door to murder, you know. A man wouldn't be safe to confess a murder except to his wife."
"Oh!—well, tell me, then."
"You mean that?"
She nodded.
"Sure?"
"Yes, yes. Tell me."
"Ah!" said Gardiner, with an exultant laugh, "when you're my wife, I will!"
He stepped forward and took her in his arms. Dorothea struggled, and he thought little of it; but she got her arm free, doubled her fist, and hit out with such fury that he let her go, and fell back, his illusions tumbling about his ears. What a face she turned on him—all coarsened and distorted with passion!
"I hate you," she said.
"You loved me just now!"
"Never, never. I never did. I wish you were in hell.Oh! shall I ever feel clean again?" She was scrubbing away at her face as if she would have scraped off the skin. Gardiner stared, stupefied. Suddenly he gripped her arm.
"Whoare you?"
Dorothea shook him off frantically; all her plans went overboard in one surge of fury.
"The wife of the man you murdered!"
This is away in the fields—miles!Pippa Passes.
This is away in the fields—miles!Pippa Passes.
This is away in the fields—miles!Pippa Passes.
This is away in the fields—miles!
Pippa Passes.
On the day after Denis left the Bellevue, Dorothea also departed, with her mountain of trunks. She did not see Gardiner again. Louisa paid the bill. The feelings of the rejected lover, who had to make up the account and take the money, deserve mention as being probably unique.
On the second morning after this, Lettice received a letter from her cousin, inclosing a cheque for £20 and an entreaty that she would stay on at the Bellevue. "Send it back, my dear girl, if you don't feel like taking it," Denis wrote, "or call it a loan: I'd much rather you didn't, but I shan't feel hurt if you do. Only remember I don't need the money, and I'd rather spend it this way than any other. I hate to see you looking seedy, and you're not anything like fit yet, you know. Besides, I'd like you and Gardiner to get to know each other. You never would, so long as I was there in the way." A remark which showed that Denis was no fool. Lettice, who had been looking forward to an unpeaceful time in the bosom of her family, accepted the loan with simple gratitude, and stayed. It was easy to take favors from Denis: could higher testimonial be given?
* * * * * * * * *
Bredon was a seaside place without a single villa; just half-a-dozen old cottages and a new church, standing on the verge of the chalk cliffs of Thanet. This church was a building of surprising ugliness, red brick outside, decoratedinside with stenciled texts chopped up like pieces of a jigsaw puzzle. The east window had paper transparencies, leaded and colored to imitate glass. The holy table was a table, with obvious legs, having the Ten Commandments above and a Bible upon it—none of your papistical altars. The vicar was a robust Evangelical with a mustache. Denis did not like him very much, but he approved of his doctrine, and attended his church.
Picture him, then, on his first Sunday at home, coming out into the churchyard among that humble congregation (vicar's wife, vicar's man, school children, candidate for coals, village policeman in uniform, one girl—
"And what took her there, do you guess?Her sweet little duck of a bonnet,And her new second-hand silk dress")
"And what took her there, do you guess?Her sweet little duck of a bonnet,And her new second-hand silk dress")
"And what took her there, do you guess?Her sweet little duck of a bonnet,And her new second-hand silk dress")
"And what took her there, do you guess?
Her sweet little duck of a bonnet,
And her new second-hand silk dress")
and setting forth on his three-mile tramp across the marshes. Denis would neither cycle, motor, nor fly upon a Sunday. This was the more inconvenient because, if Bredon was out of the world, Dandelion Farm, the present home of the Smith aeroplane, might be said to be howling in the wilderness.
It was still early in September, and after a rainy night the sky was blue again, the air crystal-pure over the flat green land. The road had neither fence nor hedgerow, but on either side a dark blue ribbon of water lay brimming and crumpling in the sea wind. Other such dikes, intersecting, ruled out the square fields of Thanet, where red cattle, like wooden beasts out of a Noah's Ark, grazed on pastures coarsely green. There was no sign of autumn but in the sedge, withered putty-color, and rustling a dry, pleasant song. In spring the yellow iris fringed the waterways; later, forget-me-not, loosestrife, meadow-sweet; now only the tall mud-clotted stems of the willow-herb, and its pink stars seeding in silvery down. Denis walked on, content. He did not consciously think about his surroundings, but unconsciously he was happier here than among the hills and woods of Arden. Thanet was English, and he wasEnglish—well, he was Irish; but he had all the Englishman's conservatism and love for the ways of home, what foreigners call his insularity.
Straight ahead at the end of the track rose a delicately penciled group of trees, with a gray roof showing beside, and white dots of sheep on the gray-green of their pasture. This was Dandelion,videlicetDent-de-lion. Till a few months since, the partners had rented a bungalow on the sands near Bredon; but there Denis had been so pestered with interviewers, autograph hunters, and less estimable gentry who came to pick his brains, that after some debate they had transferred themselves to this lodge in the wilderness. Part of the ground that went with the house was to be flooded, for the use of seaplanes; while there was ample space in addition for an aerodrome and for workshops, hangars, etc., which could be shut off behind a palisading, and defy curiosity.
These new erections were frankly ugly, but there was a certain dignity about the square gray Georgian farm-house and its outbuildings. Denis passed a barn, its thatched roof cushioned with mosses, then a haystack, exhaling its warm sweet scent, then the stone gate-posts of the entrance. The gate was open, and he paused to latch it; gates left to swing shake off their hinges. He walked round the curve of the drive, his mind agreeably occupied with thoughts of cold beef, came in sight of the pillared portico—thrice horrid sight! there was a car standing at the door!
It was not his partner's, for the letter was P, not LD; nor was the car itself much like the battered and beloved old racer which Wandesforde liked to use. This was a Rolls-Royce touring car of the present year's model. No chauffeur was in charge. After prowling round to satisfy the curiosity which any piece of machinery roused in his engineer's brain, Denis went into the house to make inquiries. The porch opened into a passage with rooms on either side. Denis was tiptoeing towards the kitchen, where he hoped to find his man, when the door on the left opened suddenly, revealing the visitor—Dorothea O'Connor.
"So here you are at last!" she said. "Iamso glad! I've been stuck here ever since eleven!"
Denis did not echo her joy. "I thought you were at Rochehaut!"
"Me? No, wasn't it funny? I had to leave, in a hurry, the very day after you did. I came off down here first thing this morning. It's a glorious run through Kent—the car did travel!"
"Your chauffeur, I suppose, is in with my man?"
"Isn't. I didn't bring one," she airily explained. "I didn't bring anybody. I hate being driven, I like to do things for myself. I've come to see the aeroplanes, you know. I told you I should!"
She stuck her hands in her pockets and propped her slim shoulders against the wall, looking up with a naughty and audacious tilt of the chin. "Here I am and you can't get rid of me!" she seemed to say.
Denis did not want her in the least. It was two o'clock, and humanity constrained him to ask her to lunch; there was not an inn for miles where she could get a meal, if he didn't, and she must actually have seen his cold beef on the table. But Denis was an Irishman, with strict ideas of propriety. Dorothea, not for the first time, had forgotten her part; while posing as a young girl, she claimed the freedom of a married woman. Reading her mistake in his face, she was quick to seize the bull by the horns.
"I suppose I've no business here, and I know you don't want me, but I'm not going back now till I've seen everything!" she announced; and then, melting into the wheedling, insinuating smile of a child: "You can look on me as a man and a brother, or you can count me as business—Iam—I don't care what you do, only do forgive me, and do, do,doask me to lunch, for I'msohungry!"
Denis smiled too, though stiffly, making the best of it. "I shall be very pleased to show you the place, Miss O'Connor, but it's a pity you've come to-day, for you'll not see any flyin'. The men are all home, you know."
"Why, I came on purpose because I thought Sunday wastheday!"
"It isn't with us."
Dorothea was subdued. She did not ask why, but meekly reëntered the room. The partners had divided the house between them, and this was Denis's den, corresponding to Wandesforde's across the passage. Wandesforde, though he lived in town and was only a casual visitor at Dent-de-lion, had made himself extremely comfortable; Denis had brought his old furniture from Bredon and dumped it in the room, just as it was. There were two sash windows, filled with small panes. Under one stood a table as big as a four-poster, covered with papers. Denis could lay his hand on any packet in the dark; but when papers are in order, unfortunately it does not follow that they are tidy. In the middle of the floor stood a second table, just large enough to take Denis's plate and the cold beef. Beside the fireplace, which had a marbled wooden mantelpiece, stood a pair of leathern arm-chairs, once plum-colored, now seamed with white cracks, and with every spring broken. The walls were covered with drab paper, fading to yellow, there was a square of drab drugget on the floor, and the ceiling was drab also, from ancient lamp smoke. Dorothea thought in passing that it was the ugliest room she had ever been in, but she, like Denis, was highly indifferent to her surroundings.
But she was by no means indifferent to her host; she thought him the handsomest man she had ever seen, an opinion held by other young ladies before her, though Denis's looks were not at all in the style of the barber's block. He was just under six feet in height, lightly built and light in movement, all bone and sinew. His face was thin too, a little pinched at the temples, a little hollow in the cheeks, with dark brows, dark hair, and a white skin which burnt biscuit-brown, not red. Irish coloring and deep-set, dark blue Irish eyes, "put in with a dirty finger" under their long soft lashes. The lower part of the face, nose and lips and chin, was most delicately modeled, fine,high-bred, rather ascetic in type. In short, he was as handsome as a paladin,à fendre le cœur, and so purely indifferent to the fact, one way or the other, that Lettice when she poked her soft fun at him got no more than an absent-minded smile. No rises were to be had in that quarter. But Dorothea was not given to poking fun at people; she planted her elbows on the table and her chin in her hands, adoring his looks, hanging breathless on his words, divided in admiration between his person and his profession—and how those great eyes of hers could lighten and glow! They were not the same eyes, she was not the same girl who had poured out her lightnings on Harry Gardiner.
In telling her tale to Lettice, Dorothea had said less than the truth. For one thing, she was ashamed to own that she had been physically afraid of her uncle. The anger of a stupid and wrong-headed man may be a very brutal thing. When he threatened to knock her down, Dorothea gave in, in helpless rage and humiliation, bad companions for a high-spirited girl. Also she suffered more than she herself realized from her isolation. Dorothea was the born devotee; she would never have learned to hate if she had had any one to adore. But she was quite alone. The neighborhood was up in arms, no doubt, but nobody was anxious to stand forth as her champion: partly because people are always loath to interfere in a neighbor's business, partly because the unlucky little heiress had been painted by her loving relatives in such very lurid colors that some of the paint had stuck.
Then came Major Trent to stay at the Anglers' Rest. He met Dorothea one morning when she had been sent out to exercise her aunt's Chow. The amiable Xit tried to bite the stranger, and did bite Dorothea when she hauled him off. Naturally Trent expressed his concern. Naturally Dorothea did not mention the incident at home. They met again next day, of course by chance, in the same place—in fine, Dorothea had found her champion. The affair was rushed through in a month. Mrs. O'Connor woke up one morning to miss her early cup of tea. She descended in adressing-gown to scold Dorothea, but no Dorothea was to be found. She had gone, without leaving so much as the traditional note on her pin-cushion. Next day came the announcement of her marriage, by special license, to Major Trent, D.S.O.
Dorothea when she married was innocent and ignorant as a child. She came to Trent with eager fresh gratitude and affection. She spent eight months with him; eight feverish, hothouse-forcing months of premature emotion. Towards the end of the time, when his passion had cooled, and when she herself was calmed and steadied by the hope of motherhood, she began to look at her battered knight with wondering eyes, which would soon have grown critical. His tragic death, however, made criticism disloyal, and invested Trent with all his former glories. It swept away, too, the hope to which the girl had been looking forward with grave, ennobling joy. Only Louisa knew how frantically Dorothea grieved for her baby. Her long illness was really an obstinate refusal to be comforted. Louisa, it may be noted, had not been Dorothea's devoted nurse. She had been Mr. O'Connor's incomparable cook; and the unkindest blow his niece dealt was that she carried off, when she went, the only perfect maker ofsouffléshe had ever known.
Here was Dorothea, then, at twenty-one, half a child and half a woman, frantic with grief, and convinced that the murderer of her husband and child was going free unpunished. She vowed herself to vengeance as a sacred duty. She was unpersuadably sure that all she had done to Gardiner was justifiable. But Denis was different. True, he had screened the murderer, but Dorothea couldn't but own that in his shoes she would have done the same. She was not quite happy in her mind; but she crushed the scruple, telling herself that when justice is done the innocent must suffer with the guilty. She crushed it, and presently she forgot it, yes, and her vengeance into the bargain, when they went out to see the works. Aeroplanes are so exciting! After all, Dorothea was not much more than a baby, and she had long arrears of play to make up.
In old days, Denis and his man Simpson had built the machines with their own hands; later, at Bredon, they employed half-a-dozen men; now there were twenty, and the number was growing. Behind the tall palisade a nest of sheds was springing up—wood and metal working shops, rigging rooms, offices, stores, Simpson's cabin where he slept as night watchman, and finally the hangars. Great ugly erections of brickwork and corrugated iron, with gable ends and sliding doors, they caught the eye at once. The first held an unfinished seaplane, marked for rebuilding after undergoing her trials; a biplane built in 1911, now hopelessly out of date; and a Blériot monoplane belonging to Wandesforde which Denis hated, and which, he gravely assured his companion, would kill him if he gave it the chance. But he hurried Dorothea past these to the smaller shed, which contained only one machine: his favorite, his beloved, the 80 h.p. monoplane scout which had been entered for the Birmingham race.
She was very small, scarcely larger than Santos-Dumont's famous "Demoiselle." There was a slender bird-like body, the fuselage, in which the pilot sat, deep-sunk, with passenger behind, engine and propeller in front, the two long blades standing out like antennæ. Pale wings arched and tilted upwards on either side, curving like the wings of a gull in flight. The whole stood on a light framework, the chassis or under-carriage, corresponding to the feet of a bird. Dorothea listened, while Denis explained the perfections of his handiwork. Tangential, lift coefficient, angle of incidence, such terms went in at one ear and out at the other; she was not interested in scientific aeronautics. Denis was expounding the principles of stream-line design, as shown in the curves of his fuselage, when she interrupted.
"Mr. Merion-Smith, will you teach me to fly?"
"Will I teach you to fly?"
"Yes. You said I could learn. I want to learn."
He shook his head, smiling. "You should go to Hendon or Brooklands. We don't run a flying school, you know."
"I don't want to go to Hendon or Brooklands, I want togo to you," retorted Dorothea flatly. "I want you to build me a machine like this one, and I want you to teach me to manage it. Will you?"
"I'm afraid that's out of the question."
"Why?"
If Denis had told the bare truth, he must have answered, Because I don't want to. As that was unsayable, he hedged.
"Well, for one thing, I've no plane you could learn on. You need a special school machine, with duplicate control for pilot and pupil—we've nothing of the sort."
"If that's all, I'll buy one."
"Buy a machine that'll be no earthly use to you six months hence?"
"Why not? Why shouldn't I throw my money away if I want to? It's good for trade, and it can't possibly matter to you!"
Denis looked as though it mattered a good deal. Geraldine, who had followed them from the house like a dog, seized this moment to make a scrambling leap on his shoulder. He steadied her with one hand mechanically as she walked to and fro, pushing now her nose and now her tail into his face, after the inconsiderate manner of a happy cat, but obviously she was too much a matter of course to interrupt his thoughts. All he said was: "I should wait till I was older, if I were you."
"Pooh! I'm as old as that boy who was killed at Eastchurch last week, and he'd had his ticket for two years."
"Quite possibly, but then you see he is dead."
"Ah, you say that because you think I'm reckless, but that's only with money. I shouldn't be reckless flying, I should love my plane far too much." She rubbed her cheek softly against the varnished fabric of the wing.
"That remains to be seen," said Denis, smiling.
"No, it doesn't. Iamcareful. I've driven my car about town for two years now, and never had a summons or an accident."
Denis looked at her with more respect, but he continued to shake his head. "Go to Hendon and get your ticket,and then come back to me, and I'll build you a machine with pleasure."
"I won't. I'll learn of you, or not at all."
"Then I'm afraid it will have to be not at all."
"Oh, you are hateful," said Dorothea succinctly. She turned her back on him and marched towards the door. Half-way there she thought better of it, and came back to lay her clasped hands on his arm, frankly imploring. "Oh, do teach me!" she besought. "Do.Do.You don't know how much I want it! Why won't you? Is it because I'm not a man?"
Denis was driven a step nearer the truth. "I've really not the time. I'm a designer, not an instructor; it would not be fair to my partner to undertake outside work."
"Ah, but I shouldn't take long to learn. I'm good with machinery. Besides, if you won't teach me I won't buy one of your machines, and that'll be worse for your partner than just the few hours you'd have to give up—two, wasn't it, that man learned in the other day? Won't you at least ask Mr. Wandesforde if he'd mind? Please, please say yes!"
Denis was wishing her at Jericho. He delighted in a battle, but he had no armor against coaxing. He did not in the least want to teach Miss O'Connor, or any one else, to fly. He had a full winter's work before him on the seaplane, and he hated (like Lettice) to be dragged out of his rut. Finally, Dorothea was a woman; and women are an endless bother. Seeing a chance of evading her, he jumped at it.
"Well, I'll ask Wandesforde if you like," he conceded.
Dorothea took her hands off his arm with a nod of satisfaction. "I thought I'd get you to do it," she said. "I always know what I want and I generally get it. It's only a question of wanting it hard enough. I'll go now, and leave you in peace. You'll write to him at once, won't you?"
Oh yes, Denis would write at once. He was already concocting the letter as he locked up the sheds. "I've hada nuisance of a woman here pretending she wants to order a machine on condition that one of us teaches her to fly. Quite young, and I should say quite irresponsible. I told her, of course, that we didn't run a school, but I wouldn't absolutely refuse without consulting you."
He had got as far as this when Dorothea broke in. She was looking rather solemn.
"I forgot to say one thing. Do you mind, if you're writing to Mr. Gardiner, not telling him anything about me? Or Lettice either," she added.
"Certainly, if you wish it," said Denis after a moment.
"I do wish it."
They walked on in silence. At the steps Dorothea paused for a last word.
"I've had a quarrel with him. A bad quarrel. I don't want him to know I'm here, because if he does he'll think it his duty to write and warn you against me."
This was the truth, and, as truth often does, it conveyed a false impression.
"Gardiner?" said Denis, incredulous. "He would never do that."
"He would, he would, you don't know. He might not to any one else, but he would to you."
This was true again, and again misleading. Denis was puzzled. "I thought you and he were—friends," he said.
"Not now. He hates me."
"Gardiner hates you?"
"Yes. Thinks me wicked. Wouldn't willingly be under the same roof. He does, he does. And we can never make it up. I'm angry with Lettice too, at present, but Ishallmake it up with her, because I love her. But not with Mr. Gardiner—never, never."
"Well, if you say so," said Denis, "but I thought—"
Dorothea looked up with a flash of understanding. No need to put into words what he had thought about her and Gardiner.
"That?" she said. "Oh no—never, never,never!"
This time Denis believed her.