CHAPTER XVIII.
‘Life is thorny, and youth is vain!’
‘Life is thorny, and youth is vain!’
‘Life is thorny, and youth is vain!’
‘Life is thorny, and youth is vain!’
Not so quickly as Susan, however. He could hardly have flown with the fleetness of that heart-troubled nymph. She—at the first chance, when her father, rising hurriedly at the flight of his curate, had breathed the blessing—had flown down the side-aisle and through the small oak door into the golden air outside; and from there into a small lane filled with flowering weeds, that led straight homewards.
Running—racing, indeed—goes Susan, with her heart on fire, as her cheeks, and her lovely, child-like eyes darkened and bright with the sense of coming disaster.
She does not draw breath until she findsherself safe in her own little room, with just five precious minutes (precious, unusual five minutes, gained only by that swift run that has left them all behind) in which to think out as calmly as she can what has befallen her.
A thief! She had called him a thief! He—Mr. Crosby—the distinguished traveller! Oh! what is to become of her? Not even now, at this last gasp, does she try to persuade herself that the man in the Crosby pew was a fraud—that he wasn’t Mr. Crosby. She knows as positively as though she had been introduced to him that he is Mr. Crosby.
Introduced to him! As if——She covers her face with her hands. No, no; there need be no fear of that. He will go away soon—at once. People say he cannot bear civilized life; that he always hankers after savages, and lions, and things. He will go away, of course. Oh, if only he will go away soon enough, and never come back! Susan, with her hands before her gentle eyes, has suddendreams of people who have been devoured by lions, and for the first time fails to see the extreme horror of it.
Yes, he will go away soon; and in the meantime—well, in the meantime it is very unlikely that she will come face to face with him.
‘Susan, Susan! are you there?’
‘Yes,’ says Susan. She goes to the door, and finds Jacky on the threshold of it.
‘Dinner is ready,’ says that solemn youth; ‘and they sent me up for you.’
‘I can’t come down,’ says Susan. ‘I have a headache. Jacky—dear, dear Jacky, say I have a headache. And I have, too—I have indeed. There won’t be any lie. The heat—you must have felt the heat in church—you fell asleep——’
‘Yes, I know,’ says Jacky, in his queer way, that always expresses anger with difficulty suppressed. ‘You won’t come down, then?’
‘No; I can’t—I——’ She lifts her hand to her head.
Jacky hesitates, turns slowly, and then throws a glance at her.
‘Susan, did you see that man in the Crosby pew?’
Susan’s nerves being a little overwrought, she almost jumps at this.
‘Yes, yes,’ says she in a hurried way.
‘He was very like the thief, wasn’t he?’ says Jacky anxiously. Susan colours hotly.
‘Nonsense, Jacky’—with a very poor attempt at scorn. ‘That gentleman in Mr. Crosby’s pew was, I think, Mr. Crosby himself, or, at all events, some friend of his.’
‘Well, the thief was the image of him,’ says Jacky slowly. That’s the worst of Jacky, he is always so abominably slow. ‘I looked at him, and I said to myself, “That’s Susan’s thief,” and,’ with awful obstinacy, ‘I think it was, too.’
‘No, no, no!’ says Susan. ‘It was Mr. Crosby, I tell you. I saw Lady Millbank nod and smile at him.’
Jacky considers.
‘Very well,’ says he, in a thoroughly unconvincedtone. He moves away a bit and then looks back. ‘If that is true,’ says he, ‘Mr. Crosby looks like a thief.’
At half-past three Susan, having come to the conclusion that sitting up here won’t help her out of her difficulty, wanders downstairs and into the schoolroom, where Betty makes much of her, and makes her sandwiches out of the still warm mutton, which, in spite of their nastiness and her headache, Susan devours with avidity. Hunger is a great sauce; no one has ever yet invented one to beat it. And perhaps, if all were known, Susan’s ache belongs more to the heart than the head. When the sandwiches are finished, she declares herself much better, and Jane coming to say that Lady Millbank is in the drawing-room, she rises, and expresses a desire to see her.
Lady Millbank, or ‘the Sack,’ as the irreverent young Barrys always call her, thinks it the correct thing to be in with, and civil to, her Rector—without giving herselfany unnecessary trouble. The drive from Millbank to the parish church is five good miles, so she always makes a point of lunching with some of her friends and taking afternoon tea at the Rectory. Even so far she would not have condescended, but that the Rector, poor as he is, has sprung from a good old stock, and that his wife was a connection of the late Sir Geoffrey Millbank.
‘So sorry to hear you have been ill,’ says she, as Susan enters. Susan is a favourite of hers. ‘The heat, eh?’ She speaks exactly as she looks. She is one of those people who can be very gracious when they like, and perfectly abominable on other occasions. She is ugly and shapeless, and careless about her dress, but no one can mistake for a minute that she is well born.
‘It was very warm,’ says Susan.
‘You look pale, my dear. I think, Miss Barry, she ought not to go to church this evening.’
‘No, no, of course not, Susan,’ says Miss Barry severely; she is sitting behind a wonderfullybattered old teapot that has certainly seen service, and must have been pure at heart to have come out of the trial thus victoriously, though maimed and wounded. It is the pride of Miss Barry’s life, and has come down to the Rector after many days.
‘I suppose you saw that George Crosby has come home?’ says Lady Millbank. ‘I had heard a rumour of his coming a week or so ago, but thought nothing of it. Such a man as he is can never be relied upon, and when he turned up actually alive last week, I was more surprised than I can tell you.’
Last week! She had seen him, had talked with him. Had he told her? Susan’s heart sinks within her. Positive despair makes her raise her eyes and look at Lady Millbank. Oh, if——
But Lady Millbank is still chatting on, and in her eyes, as they meet Susan’s, there is noarrière-pensée. No; he had not betrayed her.
‘I don’t suppose we shall see much of him; he is always on the stampede,’ Lady Millbankis saying. ‘One would think from his habits that he was a criminal running before the law. I told him so. Ah’—rising suddenly and looking out of the window—‘there he is! And coming here! Of course, to call upon Mr. Barry. Your brother was a great friend of George Crosby’s father, I think. Eh?’
‘There was a friendship,’ says Miss Barry. ‘Susan, how pale you are! Come out of that dark corner, child, and sit near the window. The air will do you good.’
‘I like being here,’ says Susan quickly.
There is no time to say any more. Susan’s ‘thief’ is in the room.