When Reynold Harding assured Miss Wilton that it made very little difference to him whether he got rid of his pupil for a day or not, he told a lie. From the moment when he heard of Guy's holiday, he had resolved in his own mind that on that day of freedom, he would see Barbara Strange.
He knew that she was staying with the Ashfords, and he had heard the Robinson girls talking about her one day after luncheon.
"That pretty little Devonshire girl findsit dull, I think," said Violet.
"Who wouldn't?" her sister exclaimed. "She has had time to hear all old Ashford's stories a dozen times before this, and they are stupid enough the first time. But how do you know she finds it dull?"
"They say she is always running about the fields looking for primroses and cowslips. I saw her when I was out riding this morning, leaning on the gate into Nutfield Lane, with her hands full of them."
"How very picturesque! Looking into the lane for some more?"
"Or for some one to help her carry what she'd got. I don't know what I mightn't be driven to, myself, if I had to listen to old Ashford's prosing, and then go crawling out for a couple of hours boxed up in Mother Ashford's stuffy old brougham, two or three times a week. And Willy Ashford hardlyever comes, now he's engaged to that girl in Kensington."
"No," said Muriel, "and I don't know that he would mend matters much if he did. Well, perhaps somebody with a taste for cowslips and innocence, will happen to walk along Nutfield Lane next time Miss Strange is looking over the gate. What did you think of doing this afternoon?"
They were standing in the window, and speaking low. But their voices were metallic and penetrating, and the tutor, who was watching Guy's progress through a meal, which had worn out his sisters' patience, heard every word. He had his back to the light, and the boy did not see the black full veins on his forehead.
"But I want some more tart," said Guy.
The request was granted with carelessliberality.
"Is that enough?" Harding asked.
The boy eyed it. He did not think he could possibly manage any more, but he said—
"I don't know," just as a measure of precaution.
"Well, eat that first," said the other, and sat, resting his head on his hand.
He knew Nutfield Lane. It was three or four miles from the Priory; Guy and he went that way sometimes. He remembered a gate there, with posts set close to a couple of towering elms, that arched it with their budding boughs, and thrust their roots above the trodden pathway. There was a meadow beyond, the prettiest possible background for a pretty little Devonshire girl with her hands full of cowslips. As to her looking out for any one—he would like towalk straight up to those vulgar, chattering, expensive young women, and knock their heads together. It seemed to Harding that there would be something very soothing and satisfying about such an expression of his opinion, if only it were possible! But it could not be, and he relinquished the thought with a sigh, as he had relinquished the pursuit of other unattainable joys.
"N—no, I don't want any more," said Guy, regretfully. "Only some more beer."
Harding nodded, with that absent-minded acquiescence which had endeared him to his pupil. Guy was only to him like a buzzing fly, or any other tiresome little presence, to be endured in silence, and, as far as possible, ignored. But when that afternoon the boy came to him with the announcement that he should be twelve on Tuesday, and his father was going to take him somewherefor the whole day, Reynold raised his head from the exercise he was correcting, and looked at him fixedly.
"That's all right," he said, after a moment.
In that moment he had made up his mind. He wanted to see Barbara. And then? He did not know what then, but he wanted to see her.
The white spring sunshine lighted the page which Guy had scrawled and blotted, and Reynold sat with the pen between his fingers, dreaming. He would see Barbara, but he would not even attempt to think what he would do or say when they met. He had planned and schemed before, and chance had swept all his schemes away. Now he would leave it all to chance; it was enough for him to think that he would certainly see her again.
He would see her, not standing as he hadseen her first, in sad autumnal scenery, not coming towards him in the pale firelit room, not walking beside him to the village, while the wind drove flights of dead leaves across the grey curtain of the sky, not as she faced him, frightened and breathless, in the quivering circle of lamplight on the stairs, not as he remembered her last of all, when she stood beyond the boundary which he might not cross, and Mitchelhurst Place rose behind her in the light of the moon, white and dead as dry bones. It seemed to him that it must always be autumn at Mitchelhurst, with dim, short days, and gusty nights, and the chilly atmosphere laden with odours of decay. But all this was past and over, and he was going to meet Barbara in the spring. Barbara in April—all happy songs of love, all the young gladness of the year, all tender possibilitieswere summed up in those three words. He was startled at the sudden eagerness which escaped from his control, and throbbed and bounded within him when he resolved to see her once again. But he did not betray it outwardly, unless, perhaps, by an attempt to write his next correction with a dry pen.
He listened to Guy's excited chatter as the day drew near, and set out with him to carry the invitation to Bob Wilton, in a mood which, on the surface, was one of apathetic patience. Nothing he could do would hasten the arrival of Tuesday, but nevertheless it was coming. When the two boys went off to the stables together, he waited. He might as well wait in the Wiltons' sunny drawing-room as anywhere else. And when some one entered by the further door and began toplay, he listened, not ill pleased. He had no ear for music, but the defect was purely physical, and except for that hindrance he might have loved it. As it was he could not appreciate the meaning of what was played beyond the curtain, nor could he recognise the skill and delicacy with which it was rendered. To him it was only a bright, formless ripple of sound, gliding vaguely by, till suddenly Barbara's tune, rounded and clear and silver sweet, awoke him from his reverie.
For a moment he sat breathless with wonder. Only a dull memory of her music had stayed with him, a kind of tuneless beating of its measure, and the living notes, melodiously full, pursued that poor ghost through his heart and brain. His pulses throbbed as if the girl herself were close at hand. Then he rose, and softlystepped across the room. Who was it who was playing Barbara's tune? Who but the man who had played it to Barbara?
Considered as a piece of reasoning this was weak. Anybody would have told him the name of the composer, and could have assured him that dozens and scores of men might play the thing. Barbara might have heard it on a barrel organ! But Harding's thoughts went straight to the one man who had left music lying about at Mitchelhurst with his name, "Adrian Scarlett," written on it. Barbara's tune jangled wildly in his ears; she had learnt it from this man, or she had taught it to him.
Thus it happened that Adrian looked up from his playing, and saw the picture in the mirror, the face that followed him with its intent and hostile gaze. And Reynold, standing apart and motionless, watched themusician, and noted his air of careless ease and mastery, the smile which lingered on his lips, and the way in which he threw back his head and let his glances rove, though of course he did not know that all these things were a little accentuated by Adrian's self-consciousness under his scrutiny. He was sure, even before a word had been uttered, that this was the man whose name had haunted him at Mitchelhurst, and who won Mr. Pryor's heart by singing at his penny reading. To Reynold, standing in the shadow, Scarlett was the type of the conquering young hero, swaggering a little in the consciousness of his popularity and his facile triumphs.
To some extent he wronged Adrian, and on one point Adrian wronged him. He believed that Harding had exulted in the idea of putting him on the wrong scentwith his "Sandmoor near Ilfracombe." But in point of fact Harding had given the address with real reluctance. He had been asked where the Stranges lived, and had told the truth. To have supplemented it with information as to Barbara's whereabouts would have been to assume a knowledge of Scarlett's meaning in asking the question, a thing intolerable and impossible. Yet Harding's morbid pride was galled by his unwilling deceit, and he wished that the subject had never been mentioned. He had no doubt that his rival would go to Sandmoor, but he did not exult in the thought of the disappointment that awaited him there.
Still, when Tuesday came it undoubtedly was a satisfaction to feel that the express was carrying Mr. Scarlett further and further from the gate which led intoNutfield Lane. Otherwise the day was of but doubtful promise, its blue blotted with rain-clouds, which Guy Robinson regarded as a personal injury. It brightened, however, after the birthday party had started, and Reynold set out on his rather vague errand, under skies which shone and threatened in the most orthodox April fashion. The heavens might have laid a wager that they would show a dozen different faces in the hour, from watery sadness to glittering joy. It was hardly a day on which Mrs. Ashford would care to creep out in her brougham, but a little Devonshire girl, tired of a dull house, might very well face it with an umbrella and her second-best hat.
Harding made sure that she would. If she failed to do so he had no scheme ready. He did not know the Ashfords,and to go up to their house and ask for Miss Strange, could lead, at the best, to nothing but a formal interview under the eyes of an old lady who would consider his visit an impertinence. But Barbara would come! It was surely time that his luck should turn. When the hazard of the die has been against us a dozen times we are apt to have an irrational conviction that our chance must come with the next throw, and Harding strolled round the Ashfords' place, questioning only how, and how soon, she would appear. To see her once—it was so little that he asked!—to see her, and to hold her hand for a moment in his own, and to make her look up at him, straight into his eyes. And if she had the fancy still, as he somehow thought she had, to hear him say that he forgave her, why, he would say it. As ifhe had ever blamed her for the little forgetfulness which had ended all his hopes of fortune! And yet, if Barbara could have known how near that fortune had been! The old man's health had failed suddenly during the winter, the great inheritance was about to fall in, and Reynold would have been a partner and his own master within a few months from his decision. "Well," he said to himself as he leant on the gate in Nutfield Lane, "and even so, what harm has she done? Was I not going to say No before I saw her? And if she persuaded me to write the Yes which turned to No at the bottom of her apron pocket, am I to complain of her for that?"
He thought, that he would ask her for a flower, a leaf, or a budding twig from the hedge, just by way of remembrance. At present he had none, except the unopenedletter which she had given back to him in his lodgings at Mitchelhurst.
The day grew fairer as it passed. Though a couple of sparkling showers, which filled the sunlit air with the quick flashing of falling drops, drove him once and again for shelter to a hay-stack in a neighbouring meadow, the blue field overhead widened little by little, and shone through the tracery of leafless boughs. He felt his spirits rising almost in spite of himself. He came back, after the second shower, by the field path to the lane, and was in the act of getting over the gate when he heard steps coming quickly towards him. Not Barbara's, they were from the opposite direction. He sprang hastily down, and found himself face to face with Mr. Adrian Scarlett, who was humming a tune.
Reynold drew a long breath, and stoodas if he were turned to stone. Adrian was only mortal, he lifted his hat, and smiled his greeting, with a look in his grey-blue eyes which said as plainly as possible, "Didn't you think I was at Sandmoor?" and then walked on towards the Ashfords' house, where he had been to the tennis party two years before. He would be very welcome there. And if he should chance to meet Barbara by the way,heknew very well what he was going to say to her. But a moment later he felt a touch of pity for the luckless fellow who had not outwitted him after all. "Poor devil!" he said, as he had said the day before.
The epithet, which, like many another, is flung about inappropriately enough, hit the mark for once. Reynold stood pale and dumb, choked with bitter hate, buthelpless and hopeless enough for pity. He would do no more with hate than he had done with love. He knew it, and presently he turned and walked drearily away. He did not want to see Barbara when she had met Adrian Scarlett. He had meant to see herfirst, to end his unlucky little love-story with a few gentle words, to hold her hand for a moment, and then to step aside and leave her free to go her way. What harm would there have been? But this man, who was to have everything, had baulked him even in this. She would not care for his pardon now, and perhaps it would hardly have been worth taking. If one is compelled to own one's forgiveness superfluous it is difficult to keep it sweet.
So he did not see Barbara when, a little later, she came up Nutfield Lane by Scarlett's side. They stopped by the gate, andleant on it. Barbara had no flowers in her hands, but it seemed to her that all the country-side was blossoming.
She looked a little older than when Adrian had bidden her his mute farewell at Mitchelhurst. The expression of her face was at once quickened and deepened, her horizon was enlarged, though the gaze which questioned it was as innocent as ever. But her dark eyes kept a memory of the proud patience with which she had waited through the winter. There had been times when her faith in theClergy Listhad been shaken, and she had doubted whether Adrian would ever consult its pages, and find out where her father lived. She did not blame him; he was free as air; yet those had been moments of almost unbearable loneliness. She never spoke of him to anybody; to have been joked andpitied by Louisa and Hetty would have been hateful to her. She thought of him continually, and dreamed of him sometimes. But there was only a limited satisfaction in dreaming of Adrian Scarlett; he was apt to be placed in absurdly topsy-turvy circumstances, and to behave unaccountably. Barbara felt, regretfully, that a girl who was parted from such a lover should have dreamed in a loftier manner. She was ashamed of herself, although she knew she could not help it. Now, however, there was no need to trouble herself about dreams or clergy lists; Adrian was leaning on the gate by her side.
"What you must have thought of me!" he was saying. "Never to take the least notice of your uncle's death! I can't think how I missed hearing of it."
"It was in theTimesand some of theother papers," said Barbara.
The melancholy little announcement had seemed to her a sort of appeal to her absent lover.
"I never saw it. I was—busy just then," he explained with a little hesitation. "I suppose I didn't look at the papers. I have been fancying you at Mitchelhurst all the time, and promising myself that I would go back there, and find you where I found you first."
Barbara did not speak; she leaned back and looked up at him with a smile. Adrian's answering gaze held hers as if it enfolded it.
"Imighthave written," he said, "or inquired—I might have donesomething, at any rate! I can't think how it was I didn't! But I'd got it into my head that I wanted to get those poems of mine out—wanted to go back to you withmy volume in my hand, and show you the dedication. I was waiting for that—I never thought——"
"Yes," said the girl with breathless admiration and approval. "And are they finished now?"
"Confound the poems!" cried Adrian with an amazed, remorseful laugh. A stronger word had been on his lips. "Don't talk of them, Barbara! To think that I neglected you while I was polishing those idiotic rhymes, and that you think it was all right and proper! Oh, my dear, if you tried for a week you couldn't make me feel smaller! If—if anything had happened to you, and I had been left with my trumpery verses—"
"You shall not call them that! Don't talk so!"
"Well, suppose you had got tired ofwaiting, and had come across some better fellow. There was time enough, and it would have served me right."
"I don't know about serving you right, but there wouldn't have been time for me to get tired of waiting," said Barbara, and added more softly, "not if it had been all my life."
"Listen to that!" Adrian answered, leaning backward, with his elbows on the gate. "All her life—forme!"
His quick fancy sketched that life: first the passionate eagerness, throbbing, hoping, trusting, despairing; then submission to the inevitable, the gradual extinction of expectation as time went on; and finally the dimness and placidity of old age, satisfied to worship a pathetic memory. Hardly love, rather love's ghost, that shadowy sentiment, cut off from the strong actualexistence of men and women, and thinly nourished on recollections, and fragments of mild verse. Scarlett turned away, as from a book of dried flowers, to Barbara.
"What did you think of me?" he said, still dwelling on the same thought. "Never one word!"
"Well, I felt as if there were a word—at least, a kind of a word—once," she said. "I went with Louisa to the dentist last February—it was Valentine's Day—she wanted a tooth taken out. There were some books and papers lying about in the waiting-room. One of them was an old Christmas number, with something of yours in it. Do you remember?"
"N—no," said Scarlett doubtfully.
"Oh, don't say it wasn't yours! A little poem—it had your name at the end. There can't beanother, surely," said Barbara,with a touch of resentment at the idea. "There were two illustrations, but I didn't care much for them; I didn't think they were good enough. I read the poem over and over. I did so hope I should recollect it all; but he was ready for Louisa before I had time to learn it properly, and our name was called. It was a very bad tooth, and Louisa had gas, you know. I was obliged to go. I am so slow at learning by heart. Louisa would have known it all in half the time; but I did wish I could have had just one minute more."
"Tell me what it was," Adrian said.
"My love loves me," Barbara began in a timid voice.
"Oh—that! Yes, I remember now. The man who edits that magazine is a friend of mine, and he asked me for some littlething for his Christmas number. If I had thought you would have cared I could have sent it to you."
Her eyes shone with grateful happiness.
"But I didn't," said Adrian. "I didn't do anything. Well, go on, Barbara, tell me how much you remembered."
Barbara paused a moment, looking back to the open page on the dentist's green table-cloth. As she spoke she could see poor Louisa, awaiting her summons with a resigned and swollen face, an old gentleman examining a picture in theIllustrated London Newsthrough his eyeglass, and a lady apprehensively turning the pages of the dentist's pamphlet,On Diseases of the Teeth and Gums. Outside, the rain was streaming down the window panes. Barbara recalled all this with Adrian's verses.
"My love loves me. Then wherefore careFor rain or shine, for foul or fair?My love loves me.My daylight hours are golden wine,And all the happy stars are mine,My love loves me!"
"My love loves me. Then wherefore careFor rain or shine, for foul or fair?My love loves me.My daylight hours are golden wine,And all the happy stars are mine,My love loves me!"
"My love loves me. Then wherefore careFor rain or shine, for foul or fair?My love loves me.My daylight hours are golden wine,And all the happy stars are mine,My love loves me!"
"My love loves me. Then wherefore care
For rain or shine, for foul or fair?
My love loves me.
My daylight hours are golden wine,
And all the happy stars are mine,
My love loves me!"
"Love flies away," she began more doubtfully, and looked at Adrian, who took it up.
"Love flies away, and summer mirthLies cold and grey upon the earth,Love flies away,The sun has set, no more to rise,And far, beneath the shrouded sides,Love flies away."
"Love flies away, and summer mirthLies cold and grey upon the earth,Love flies away,The sun has set, no more to rise,And far, beneath the shrouded sides,Love flies away."
"Love flies away, and summer mirthLies cold and grey upon the earth,Love flies away,The sun has set, no more to rise,And far, beneath the shrouded sides,Love flies away."
"Love flies away, and summer mirth
Lies cold and grey upon the earth,
Love flies away,
The sun has set, no more to rise,
And far, beneath the shrouded sides,
Love flies away."
"Yes!" cried Barbara, "that's it! I had forgotten those last lines—how stupid of me!"
"Not at all," said Adrian. "You remembered all that concerned you, the rest was quite superfluous."
"Oh, but how I did try to remember the end!" she continued pensively. "It haunted me. If I had only had a minutemore! But all the same I felt as if I had had something of a message from you that day. It was my valentine, wasn't it?"
Scarlett's eyes, with a look half whimsical, half touched with tender melancholy, met hers.
"Iwishwe were worth a little more—my poems and I!" said he. "I wish I were a hero, and had written an epic. Yes, by Jove! an epic in twelve books."
"Oh, not for me!" cried Barbara.