"Do you want to sleep? Or may I stop and talk to you a bit?" Miles asked, when he had found the somewhat battered cigarette case and restored it to her.
"As I'm very plainly off duty, I suppose you may stay and talk—if I fall asleep in the middle you must not be offended. You'll find plenty of chairs in the tool house."
When Miles returned Meg had lit her cigarette, and he begged a light from her.
What little hands she had! How fine-grained and delicate her skin!
Again he felt that queer lump in his throat at the absurd, sweet pathos of her.
He placed his chair where he had her full in view, not too near, yet comfortably so for conversation. Jan had swung the hammock very high, and Meg looked down at Miles over the edge.
"It is unusual," she said, "to find a competent nurse spending her morning in this fashion, but if you know Miss Ross at all, you will already have realised that under her placid exterior she has a will of iron."
"I shouldn't say you were lacking in determination."
"Oh, I'm nothing to Jan. She exerts physical force. Look at me perched up here! How can I get down without a bad fall, swathed like a mummy in wraps; while my employer does my work?"
"But you don't want to get down. You look awfully comfortable."
"I am awfully comfortable—but it's most ... unprofessional—please don't tell anybody else."
Meg closed her eyes, looking rather like a sleepy kitten, and Miles watched her in silence with a pain at his heart. Something kept saying over and over again: "Six years ago that girl there ran off with Walter Brooke. Six years ago that apparently level-headed, sensible little person was dazzled by the pinchbeck graces of that epicure in sensations." Miles fully granted his charm, his gentle melancholy, his caressing manner; but with it all Miles felt that he was so plainly "a wrong-'un," so clearly second-rate and untrustworthy—and a nice girl ought to recognise these things intuitively.
Miles looked very sad and grave, and Meg, suddenly opening her eyes, found him regarding her with this incomprehensible expression.
"You are not exactly talkative," she said.
"I thought, perhaps, you wanted to rest, and would rather not talk. Maybe I'm a bit of a bore, and you'd rather I went away?"
"You have not yet asked after William."
"I hoped to find William, but he's nowhere to be seen."
"He's with Jan and the children. I think"—here Meg lifted her curly head over the edge of the hammock—"he is the very darlingest animal in the world. I love William."
"You do! I knew you would."
"I do. He's so faithful and kind and understanding."
"Well ... once or twice he may have been a little—destructive—but you expect that with children."
"I hope you punish him."
"Jan does. Jan has a most effectual slap, but there's always a dreadful disturbance with the children on these occasions. Little Fay roars the house down when William has to be chastised."
"What has he done?"
"I'm not going to tell tales of William."
Miles and Meg smiled at one another, and Walter Brooke faded from his mind.
"Perhaps," he said, and paused, "you will by and by allow to William's late master a small portion of that regard?"
"If William's master on further acquaintance proves half as loyal and trustworthy as William—I couldn't help it."
"I wonder what you mean exactly by loyal and trustworthy?"
"They're not very elastic terms, are they?"
"Don't you think they mean rather the same thing?"
"Not a bit," Meg cried eagerly; "a person might be ever so trustworthy and yet not loyal. I take it that trustworthy and honest in tangible things are much the same. Loyalty is something intangible, and often means belief in people when everything seems against them. It's a much rarer quality than to be trustworthy. William would stick to one if one hadn't a crust, just because he liked to be there to make things a bit less wretched."
Miles smoked in silence for a minute, and again Meg closed her eyes.
"By the way," he said presently, "I didn't know you and my cousin Pen were friends. I met her in the Park the day before yesterday. Her hair's rather the same colour as yours—handsome woman, isn't she?"
Meg opened her eyes and turned crimson. Had the outspoken Lady Pen said anything about her hair, she wondered.
Miles, noting the sudden blush, put it down to Lady Pen's knowledge of what had happened at the Trents, and the miserable feelings of doubt and apprehension came surging back.
"She's quite lovely," said Meg.
"A bit too much on the big side, don't you think?"
"I admire big women."
Silence fell again. Meg pulled the rug up under her chin.
Surely it was not quite so warm as a few minutes ago.
Miles stood up. "I have a guilty feeling that Miss Ross will strongly disapprove of my disturbing you like this. If you will tell me which way they have gone I will go and meet them."
"They've gone to your uncle's woods, and I think they must be on their way home by now. If you call William he'll answer."
"I won't say good-bye," said Miles, "because I shall come back with them."
"I shall be on duty then," said Meg. "Good-bye."
She turned her face from him and nestled down among her cushions. For a full minute he stood staring at the back of her head, with its crushed and tumbled tangle of short curls.
Then quite silently he took his way out of the Wren's End garden.
Meg shut her eyes very tight. Was it the light that made them smart so?
CHAPTER XIX
THE YOUNG IDEA
SQUIRE WALCOTE had given the Wren's End family the run of his woods, and, what was even more precious, permission to use the river-path through his grounds. Lady Mary, who had no children of her own, was immensely interested in Tony and little Fay, and would give Jan more advice as to their management in an hour than the vicar's wife ever offered during the whole of their acquaintance. But then she had a family of eight.
But the first time Tony went to the river Jan took him alone; and not to the near water in Squire Walcote's grounds, but to the old bridge that crossed the Amber some way out of the village. It was the typical Cotswold bridge, with low parapets that make such a comfortable seat for meditative villagers. Just before they reached it she loosed Tony's hand, and held her breath to see what he would do. Would he run straight across to get to the other side, or would he look over?
Yes. He went straight to the low wall; stopped, looked over, leaned over, and stared and stared.
Jan gave a sigh of relief.
The water of the Amber just there is deep and clear, an infinite thing for a child to look down into; but it was not of that Jan was thinking.
Hugo was no fisherman. Water had no attraction for him, save as a pleasant means of taking exercise. He was a fair oar; but for a stream that wouldn't float a boat he cared nothing at all.
Charles Considine Smith had angled diligently. In fact, he wrote almost as much about the habits of trout as about wrens. James Ross, the gallant who carried off the second Tranquil, had been fishing at Amber Guiting when he first saw her. Anthony's father fished and so did Anthony; and Jan, herself, could throw a fly quite prettily. Yet, your true fisherman is born, not made; it is not a question of environment, but it is, very often, one of heredity; for the tendency comes out when, apparently, every adverse circumstance has combined to crush it.
And no mortal who cares for or is going to care for fishing can ever cross a bridge without stopping to look down into the water.
"There's a fish swimming down there," Tony whispered (was it instinct made him whisper? Jan wondered), "brown and speckledy, rather like the thrushes in the garden."
Jan clutched nervously at the little coat while Tony hung over so far that only his toes were on the ground. She had brought a bit of bread in her pocket, and let him throw bits to the greedy, wily old trout who had defied a hundred skilful rods. On that first day old Amber whispered her secret to Tony and secured another slave.
For Jan it was only another proof that Tony possessed a sterling character. Since her sister's disastrous marriage she had come to look upon a taste for fishing as more or less of a moral safeguard. She had often reflected that if only Fay had not been so lukewarm with regard to the gentle craft—and so bored in a heavenly place where, if it did rain for twenty-three of the twenty-four hours, even a second-rate rod might land fourteen or fifteen pounds of good sea-trout in an afternoon—she could never have fallen in love with Hugo Tancred, who was equally without enthusiasm and equally bored till he met Fay. Jan was ready enough now to blame herself for her absorption at this time, and would remember guiltily the relief with which she and her father greeted Fay's sudden willingness to remain a week longer in a place she previously had declared to be absolutely unendurable.
The first time Tony's sister went to Amber Bridge Meg took them both. Little Fay descended from her pram just before they reached it, declaring it was a "nice dly place to walk." She ran on a little ahead, and before Meg realised what she was doing, she had scrambled up on to the top of the low wall and run briskly along it till her progress was stopped by a man who was leaning over immersed in thought. He nearly fell in himself, when a clear little voice inquired, "Do loo mind if I climb over loo?"
It was Farmer Burgess, and he clasped the tripping lady of the white woolly gaiters in a pair of strong arms, and lifted her down just as the terrified Meg reached them.
"Law, Missie!" gasped Mr. Burgess, "you mustn't do the like o' that there. It's downright fool'ardy."
"Downlight foolardy," echoed little Fay. "And what nelse?"
According to Mr. Burgess it was dangerous and a great many other things as well, but he lost his heart to her in that moment, and she could twist him round her little finger ever after.
To be told that a thing was dangerous was to add to its attractions. She was absolutely without fear, and could climb like a kitten. She hadn't been at Wren's End a week before she was discovered half-way up the staircase on the outside of the banisters. And when she had been caught and lifted over by a white-faced aunt, explained that it was "muts the most instasting way of going up tairs."
When asked how she expected to get to the other side at the top, she giggled derisively and said "ovel."
Jan seriously considered a barbed-wire entanglement for the outside edge of her staircase after that.
While Meg rested in the hammock Jan spent a strenuous morning in Guiting Woods with the children and William. Late windflowers were still in bloom, and early bluebells made lovely atmospheric patches under the trees, just as though a bit of the sky had fallen, as in the oft-told tale of "Cockie Lockie." There were primroses, too, and white violets, so that there were many little bunches with exceedingly short stalks to be arranged and tied up with the worsted provident Auntie Jan had brought with her; finally they all sat down on a rug lined with mackintosh, and little Fay demanded "Clipture."
"Clipture" was her form of "Scripture," which Auntie Jan "told" every morning after breakfast to the children. Jan was a satisfactory narrator, for the form of her stories never varied. The Bible stories she told in the actual Bible words, and all children appreciate their dramatic simplicity and directness.
That morning Joseph and his early adventures and the baby Moses were the favourites, and when these had been followed by "The Three Bears" and "Cock Robin," it was time to collect the bouquets and go home. And on the way home they met Captain Middleton. William spied him afar off, and dashed towards him with joyful, deep-toned barks. He was delighted to see William, said he had grown and was in the pink of condition; and then announced that he had already been to Wren's End and had seen Miss Morton. There was something in the tone of this avowal that made Jan think. It was shy, it was proud, it seemed to challenge Jan to find any fault in his having done so, and it was supremely self-conscious. He walked back with them to the Wren's End gate, and then came a moment of trial for William.
He wanted to go with his master.
He wanted to stay with the children.
Captain Middleton settled it by shaking each offered paw and saying very seriously: "You must stay and take care of the ladies, William. I trust you." William looked wistfully after the tall figure that went down the road with the queer, light, jumpetty tread of all men who ride much.
Then he trotted after Jan and the children and was exuberantly glad to see Meg again.
She declared herself quite rested; heard that they had seen Captain Middleton, and met unmoved the statement that he was coming to tea.
But she didn't look nearly so well rested as Jan had hoped she would.
After the children's dinner Meg went on duty, and Jan saw no more of the nursery party till later in the afternoon. The creaking wheels of two small wheelbarrows made Jan look up from the letters she was writing at the knee-hole table that stood in the nursery window, and she beheld little Fay and Tony, followed by Meg knitting busily, as they came through the yew archway on to the lawn.
Meg subsided into one of the white seats, but the children processed solemnly round, pausing under Jan's window.
"I know lots an' lots of Clipture," her niece's voice proclaimed proudly as she sat down heavily in her wheelbarrow on the top of some garden produce she had collected.
"How much do you know?" Tony asked sceptically.
"Oh, lots an' lots, all about poor little Jophez in the bullushes, and his instasting dleams."
"Twasn't Jophez," Tony corrected. "It was Mophez in the bulrushes, and he didn't have no dreams. That was Jophez."
"How d'you know," Fay persisted, "that poor little Mophez had no dleams? Why shouldn't he have dleams same as Jophez?"
"It doesn't say so."
"It doesn't say he didn't have dleams. He had dleams, I tell you; I know he had. Muts nicer dleams van Jophez."
"Let's ask Meg; she'll know."
Jan gave a sigh of relief. The children had not noticed her, and Meg had a fertile mind.
The wheelbarrows were trundled across the lawn and paused in front of Meg, while a lively duet demanded simultaneously:
| { | "Did little Mophez have dleams?" |
| "Didn't deah littoo Mophez have dleams?" |
When Meg had disentangled the questions and each child sat down in a wheelbarrow at her feet, she remarked judicially: "Well, there's nothing said about little Moses' dreams, certainly; but I should think it's quite likely the poor baby did have dreams."
"What sort of dleams? Nicer van sheaves and sings, wasn't they?"
"I should think," Meg said thoughtfully, "that he dreamed he must cry very quietly lest the Egyptians should hear him."
"Deah littoo Mophez ... and what nelse?"
Meg was tempted and fell. It was very easy for her to invent "dleams" for "deah littoo Mophez" lying in his bulrush ark among the flags at the river's edge. And, wholly regardless of geography, she transported him to the Amber, where the flags were almost in bloom at that moment, such local colour adding much to the realism of her stories.
Presently William grew restless. He ran to Anthony's Venetian gate in the yew hedge and squealed (William never whined) to get out. Tony let him out, and he fled down the drive to meet his master, who had come a good half-hour too soon for tea.
Jan continued to try and finish her letters while Captain Middleton, coatless, on all-fours, enacted an elephant which the children rode in turn. When he had completely ruined the knees of his trousers he arose and declared it was time to play "Here we go round the mulberry-bush," and it so happened that once or twice he played it hand-in-hand with Meg.
Jan left her letters and went out.
The situation puzzled her. She feared for Meg's peace of mind, for Captain Middleton was undoubtedly attractive; and then she found herself fearing for his.
After tea and more games with the children Captain Middleton escorted his hostess to church, where he joined his aunt in the Manor seat.
During church Jan found herself wondering uneasily:
"Was everybody going to fall in love with Meg?"
"Would Peter?"
"What a disagreeable idea!"
And yet, why should it be?
Resolutely she told herself that Peter was at perfect liberty to fall in love with Meg if he liked, and set herself to listen intelligently to the Vicar's sermon.
Meg started to put her children to bed, only to find that her fertility of imagination in the afternoon was to prove her undoing in the evening; for her memory was by no means as reliable as her powers of invention.
Little Fay urgently demanded the whole cycle of little Mophez' dleams over again. And for the life of her Meg couldn't remember them either in their proper substance or sequence—and this in spite of the most persistent prompting, and she failed utterly to reproduce the entertainment of the afternoon. Both children were disappointed, but little Fay, accustomed as she was to Auntie Jan's undeviating method of narrating "Clipture," was angry as well. She fell into a passion of rage and nearly screamed the house down. Since the night of Ayah's departure there had not been such a scene.
Poor Meg vowed (though she knew she would break her vow the very first time she was tempted) that never again would she tamper with Holy Writ, and for some weeks she coldly avoided both Jophez and Mophez as topics of conversation.
Meg could never resist playing at things, and what "Clipture" the children learned from Jan in the morning they insisted on enacting with Meg later in the day.
Sometimes she was seized with misgiving as to the propriety of these representations, but dismissed her doubts as cowardly.
"After all," she explained to Jan, "we only play the very human bits. I never let them pretend to be anybody divine ... and you know the people—in the Old Testament, anyway—were most of them extremely human, not to say disreputable at times."
It is possible that "Clipture's" supreme attraction for the children was that it conveyed the atmosphere of the familiar East. The New Testament was more difficult to play at, but, being equally dramatic, the children couldn't see it.
"Can't we do one teeny miracle?" Tony would beseech, but Meg was firm; she would have nothing to do with either miracles nor yet with angels. Little Fay ardently desired to be an angel, but Meg wouldn't have it at any price.
"You're not in the least like an angel, you know," she said severely.
"What for?"
"Because angels are perfectly good."
"I could pletend to be puffectly good."
"Let's play Johnny Baptist," suggested the ever-helpful Tony, "and we could pittend to bring in his head on a charger."
"Certainly not," Meg said hastily. "That would be a horrid game."
"Let me be the daughter!" little Fay implored, "and dance in flont of Helod."
This was permitted, and Tony, decorated with William's chain, sat gloomily scowling at the gyrations of "the daughter," who, assisted by William, danced all over the nursery: and Meg, watching the representation, decided that if the original "daughter" was half as bewitching as this one, there really might have been some faint excuse for Herod.
Hannah had no idea of these goings-on, or she would have expected the roof to fall in and crush them. Yet she, too, was included among the children's prophets, owing to her exact and thorough knowledge of "Clipture." Hannah's favourite part of the Bible was the Book of Daniel, which she knew practically by heart; and her rendering of certain chapters was—though she would have hotly resented the phrase—extremely dramatic.
It is so safe and satisfying to know that your favourite story will run smoothly, clause for clause, and word for word, just as you like it best, and the children were always sure of this with Hannah.
Anne Chitt would listen open-mouthed in astonishment, exclaiming afterwards, "Why, 'Annah, wot a tremenjous lot of Bible verses you 'ave learned to be sure."
The children once tried Anne Chitt as a storyteller, but she was a failure.
As she had been present at several of Hannah's recitals of the Three Children and the burning fiery furnace, they thought it but a modest demand upon her powers. But when—instead of beginning with the sonorous "Then an herald cried aloud, To you it is commanded, O people, nations and languages"—when she wholly omitted any reference to "the sound of cornet, flute, harp, sackbut, psaltery, and dulcimer, and all kinds of musick"—and essayed to tell the story in broad Gloucestershire and her own bald words, the disappointed children fell upon her and thumped her rudely upon the back; declaring her story to be "kutcha" and she, herself, a budmash. Which, being interpreted, meant that her story was most badly made and that she, herself, was a rascal.
Anne Chitt was much offended, and complained tearfully to Jan that she "wouldn't 'ave said nothin' if they'd called 'er or'nery names, but them there Injian words was more than she could abear."
CHAPTER XX
"ONE WAY OF LOVE"
AMONG the neighbours there was none more assiduous in the matter of calls and other friendly manifestations than Mr. Huntly Withells—emphasis on the "ells"—who lived at Guiting Grange, about a couple of miles from Wren's End. Mr. Withells was settled at the Grange some years before Miss Janet Ross left her house to Jan, and he was already a person of importance and influence in that part of the county when Anthony Ross and his daughters first spent a whole summer there.
Mr. Withells proved most neighbourly. He had artistic leanings himself, and possessed some good pictures; among them, one of Anthony's, which naturally proved a bond of union. He did not even so much as sketch, himself—which Anthony considered another point in his favour—but he was a really skilled photographer, possessed the most elaborate cameras, and obtained quite beautiful results.
Since Jan's return from India he had completely won her heart by taking a great many photographs of the children, pictures delightfully natural, and finished as few amateurs contrive to present them.
It was rumoured in Amber Guiting that Mr. Withells' views on the subject of matrimony were "peculiar"; but all the ladies, especially the elderly ladies, were unanimous in declaring that he had a "beautiful mind."
Mrs. Fream, the vicar's wife, timidly confided to Jan that Mr. Withells had told her husband that he cared only for "spiritual marriage"—whatever that might be; and that, as yet, he had met no woman whom he felt would see eye to eye with him on this question. "He doesn't approve of caresses," she added.
"Well, who wants to caress him?" Jan asked bluntly.
Meg declared there was one thing she could not bear about Mr. Withells, and that was the way he shook hands, "exactly as if he had no thumbs. If he's so afraid of touching one as all that comes to, why doesn't he let it alone?"
Yet the apparently thumbless hands were constantly occupied in bearing gifts of all kinds to his friends.
In appearance he was dapper, smallish, without being undersized, always immaculately neat in his attire, with a clean-shaven, serious, rather sallow face, which was inclined to be chubby as to the cheeks. He wore double-sighted pince-nez, and no mortal had ever seen him without them. His favourite writer was Miss Jane Austen, and he deplored the licentious tendency of so much modern literature; frequently, and with flushed countenance, denouncing certain books as an "outrage." He was considered a very well-read man. He disliked anything that was "not quite nice," and detested a strong light, whether it were thrown upon life or landscape; in bright sunshine he always carried a white umbrella lined with green. The game he played best was croquet, and here he was really first class; but he was also skilled in every known form of Patience, and played each evening unless he happened to be dining out.
As regards food he was something of a faddist, and on the subject of fresh air almost a monomaniac. He declared that he could not exist for ten minutes in a room with closed windows, and that the smell of apples made him feel positively faint; moreover, he would mention his somewhat numerous antipathies as though there were something peculiarly meritorious in possessing so many. This made his entertainment at any meal a matter of agitated consideration among the ladies of Amber Guiting.
Nevertheless, he kept an excellent and hospitable table himself, and in no way forced his own taste upon others. He disliked the smell of tobacco and hardly ever drank wine, yet he kept a stock of excellent cigars and his cellar was beyond reproach.
He had been observing Jan for several years, and was rapidly coming to the conclusion that she was an "eminently sensible woman." Her grey hair and the way she had managed everything for her father led him to believe that she was many years older than her real age. Recently he had taken to come to Wren's End on one pretext and another almost every day. He was kind and pleasant to the children, who amused and pleased him—especially little Fay; but he was much puzzled by Meg, whom he had known in pre-cap-and-apron days while she was staying at Wren's End.
He couldn't quite place Meg, and there was an occasional glint in her queer eyes that he found disconcerting. He was never comfortable in her society, for he objected to red hair almost as strongly as to a smell of apples.
He really liked the children, and since he knew he couldn't get Jan without them he was beginning to think that in such a big house as the Grange they would not necessarily be much in the way. He knew nothing whatever about Hugo Tancred.
Jan satisfied his fastidious requirements. She was dignified, graceful, and, he considered, of admirable parts. He felt that in a very little while he could imbue Jan with his own views as to the limitations and delicate demarcations of such a marriage as he contemplated.
She was so sensible.
Meanwhile the object of these kind intentions was wholly unaware of them. She was just then very much absorbed in her own affairs and considerably worried about Meg's. For Captain Middleton's week-end was repeated on the following Saturday and extended far into the next week. He came constantly to Wren's End, where the children positively adored him, and he seemed to possess an infallible instinct which led him to the village whensoever Meg and her charges had business there.
On such occasions Meg was often quite rude to Captain Middleton, but the children and William more than atoned for her coldness by the warmth of their welcome, and he attached himself to them.
In fact, as regards the nursery party at Wren's End, Miles strongly resembled William before a fire—you might drive him away ninety and nine times, he always came thrusting back with the same expression of deprecating astonishment that you could be other than delighted to see him.
Whither was it all tending? Jan wondered.
No further news had come from Hugo; Peter, she supposed, had sailed and was due in London at the end of the week.
Then Mr. Huntly Withells asked her one afternoon to bicycle over to see his spring irises—he called them "irides," and invariably spoke of "croci," and "delphinia"—and as Meg was taking the children to tea at the vicarage, Jan went.
To her surprise, she found herself the sole guest, but supposed she was rather early and that his other friends hadn't come yet.
They strolled about the gardens, so lovely in their spring blossoming, and it happened that from one particular place they got a specially good view of the house.
"How much larger it is than you would think, looking at the front," Jan remarked. "You don't see that wing at all from the drive."
"There's plenty of room for nephews and nieces," Mr. Withells said jocularly.
"Have you many nephews and nieces?" she asked, turning to look at him, for there was something in the tone of his voice that she could not understand.
"Not of my own," he replied, still in that queer, unnatural voice, "but you see my wife might have ... if I was married."
"Are you thinking of getting married?" she asked, with the real interest such a subject always rouses in woman.
"That depends," Mr. Withells said consciously, "on whether the lady I have in mind ... er ... shall we sit down, Miss Ross? It's rather hot in the walks."
"Oh, not yet," Jan exclaimed. She couldn't think why, but she began to feel uncomfortable. "I must see those Darwin tulips over there."
"It's very sunny over there," he objected. "Come down the nut-walk and see the myosotis arvensis; it is already in bloom, the weather has been so warm.
"Miss Ross," Mr. Withells continued seriously, as they turned into the nut-walk which led back towards the house, "we have known each other for a considerable time...."
"We have," said Jan, as he had paused, evidently expecting a reply.
"And I have come to have a great regard for you...."
Again he paused, and Jan found herself silently whispering, "Curtsy while you're thinking—it saves time," but she preserved an outward silence.
"You are, if I may say so, the most sensible woman of my acquaintance."
"Thank you," said Jan, but without enthusiasm.
"We are neither of us quite young"—(Mr. Withells was forty-nine, but it was a little hard on Jan)—"and I feel sure that you, for instance, would not expect or desire from a husband those constant outward demonstrations of affection such as handclaspings and kisses, which are so foolish and insanitary."
Jan turned extremely red and walked rather faster.
"Do not misunderstand me, Miss Ross," Mr. Withells continued, looking with real admiration at her downcast, rosy face—she must be quite healthy he thought, to look so clean and fresh always—"I lay down no hard-and-fast rules. I do not say should my wife desire to kiss me sometimes, that I should ... repulse her."
Jan gasped.
"But I have the greatest objection, both on sanitary and moral grounds to——"
"I can't imagine anyone wanting to kiss you," Jan interrupted furiously; "you're far too puffy and stippled."
And she ran from him as though an angry bull were after her.
Mr. Withells stood stock-still where he was, in pained astonishment.
He saw the fleeing fair one disappear into the distance and in the shortest time on record he heard the clanging of her bicycle bell as she scorched down his drive.
"Puffy and stippled"—"Puffy and stippled"!
Mr. Withells repeated to himself this rudely personal remark as he walked slowly towards the house.
What could she mean?
And what in the world had he said to make her so angry?
Women were really most unaccountable.
He ascended his handsome staircase and went into his dressing-room, and there he sought his looking-glass, which stood in the window, and surveyed himself critically. Yes, his cheeks were a bit puffy near the nostrils, and, as is generally the case in later life, the pores of the skin were a bit enlarged, but for all that he was quite a personable man.
He sighed. Miss Ross, he feared, was not nearly so sensible as he had thought.
It was distinctly disappointing.
For the first mile and a quarter Jan scorched all she knew. The angry blood was thumping in her ears and she exclaimed indignantly at intervals, "How dared he! How dared he!"
Then she punctured a tyre.
There was no hope of getting it mended till she reached Wren's End, when Earley would do it for her. As she pushed her bicycle along the lane she recovered her sense of humour and she laughed. And presently she became aware of a faint, sweet, elusive perfume from some flowering shrub on the other side of somebody's garden wall.
It strongly resembled the smell of a blossoming tree that grew on Ridge Road, Malabar Hill. And in one second Jan was in Bombay, and was standing in the moonlight, looking up into a face that was neither puffy nor stippled nor prim; but young and thin and worn and very kind. And the exquisite understanding of that moment came back to her, and her eyes filled with tears.
Yet in another moment she was again demanding indignantly, "How dared he!"
She went straight to her room when she got in, and, like Mr. Withells, she went and looked at herself in the glass.
Unlike Mr. Withells, she saw nothing there to give her any satisfaction. She shook her head at the person in the glass and said aloud:
"If that's all you get by trying to be sensible, the sooner you become a drivelling idiot the better for your peace of mind—and your vanity."
The person in the glass shook her head back at Jan, and Jan turned away thoroughly disgusted with such a futile sort of tu quoque.
CHAPTER XXI
ANOTHER WAY OF LOVE
MEG and the children, returning from their tea-party at the vicarage, were stopped continually in their journey through the main street by friendly folk who wanted to greet the children. It was quite a triumphal progress, and Meg was feeling particularly proud that afternoon, for her charges, including William, had all behaved beautifully. Little Fay had refrained from snatching other children's belongings with the cool remark, "Plitty little Fay would like 'at"; Tony had been quite merry and approachable; and William had offered paws and submitted to continual pullings, pushings and draggings with exemplary patience.
Once through the friendly, dignified old street, they reached the main road, which was bordered by rough grass sloping to a ditch surmounted by a thick thorn hedge. They were rather late, and Meg was wheeling little Fay as fast as she could, Tony trotting beside her to keep up, when a motor horn was sounded behind them and a large car came along at a good speed. They were all well to the side of the road, but William—with the perverse stupidity of the young dog—above all, of the young bull-terrier—chose that precise moment to gambol aimlessly right into the path of the swiftly-coming motor, just as it seemed right upon him; and this, regardless of terrified shouts from Meg and the children, frantic sounding of the horn and violent language from the driver of the car.
It seemed that destruction must inevitably overtake William when the car swerved violently as the man ran it down the sloping bank, where it stuck, leaving William, unscathed and rather alarmed by all the clamour, to run back to his family.
Meg promptly whacked him as hard as she could, whereupon, much surprised, he turned over on his back, waving four paws feebly in the air.
"Why don't you keep your dog at the side?" the man shouted with very natural irritation as he descended from his seat.
"He's a naughty—stupid—puppy," Meg ejaculated between the whacks. "It wasn't your fault in the least, and it was awfully good of you to avoid him."—Whack—whack.
The man started a little as she spoke and came across the road towards them.
Meg raised a flushed face from her castigation of William, but the pretty colour faded quickly when she saw who the stranger was.
"Meg!" he exclaimed. "You!"
For a tense moment they stared at one another, while the children stared at the stranger. He was certainly a handsome man; melancholy, "interesting." Pale, with regular features and sleepy, smallish eyes set very near together.
"If you knew how I have searched for you," he said.
His voice was his great charm, and would have made his fortune on the stage. It could convey so much, could be so tender and beseeching, so charged with deepest sadness, so musical always.
"Your search cannot have been very arduous," Meg answered drily. "There has never been any mystery about my movements." And she looked him straight in the face.
"At first, I was afraid ... I did not try to find you."
"You were well-advised."
"Who is 'at sahib?" little Fay interrupted impatiently. "Let us go home." She had no use for any sahib who ignored her presence.
"Yes, we'd better be getting on," Meg said hurriedly, and seized the handle of the pram.
But he stood right in their path.
"You were very cruel," the musical voice went on. "You never seemed to give a thought to all I was suffering."
Meg met the sleepy eyes, that used to thrill her very soul, with a look of scornful amusement in hers that was certainly the very last expression he had ever expected to see in them.
She had always dreaded this moment.
Realising the power this man had exercised over her, she always feared that should she meet him again the old glamour would surround him; the old domination be reasserted. She forgot that in five years one's standards change.
Now that she did meet him she discovered that he held no bonds with which to bind her. That what she had dreaded was a chimera. The real Walter Brooke, the moment he appeared in the flesh, destroyed the image memory had set up; and Meg straightened her slender shoulders as though a heavy burden had dropped from them.
The whole thing passed like a flash.
"You were very cruel," he repeated.
"There is no use going into all that," Meg answered in a cheerful, matter-of-fact tone. "Good-bye, Mr. Brooke. We are most grateful to you for not running over William, who is," here she raised her voice for the benefit of the culprit, "a naughty—tiresome dog."
"But you can't leave me like this. When can I see you again—there is so much I want to explain...."
"But I don't want any explanations, thank you. Come children, we must go."
"Meg, listen ... surely you have some little feeling of kindness towards me ... after all that happened...."
He put his hand on Meg's arm to detain her, and William, who had never been known to show enmity to human creature, gave a deep growl and bristled. A growl so ominous and threatening that Meg hastily loosed the pram and caught him by the collar with both hands.
Tony saw that Meg was flustered and uncomfortable. "Why does he not go?" he asked. "I thought he was a sahib, but I suppose he is the gharri-wallah. We have thanked him—does he want backsheesh? Give him a rupee."
"He does want backsheesh," the deep, musical voice went on—"a little pity, a little common kindness."
It was an embarrassing situation. William was straining at his collar and growling like an incipient thunderstorm.
"We have thanked you," Tony said again with dignity. "We have no money, or we would reward you. If you like to call at the house, Auntie Jan always has money."
The man smiled pleasantly at Tony.
"Thank you, young man. You have told me exactly what I wanted to know. So you are with your friends?"
"I can't hold this dog much longer," Meg gasped. "If you don't go—you'll get bitten."
William ceased to growl, for far down the road he had heard a footstep that he knew. He still strained at his collar, but it was in a direction that led away from Mr. Walter Brooke. Meg let go and William swung off down the road.
"Shall we all have a lide in loo ghalli?" little Fay asked—it seemed to her sheer waste of time to stand arguing in the road when a good car was waiting empty. The children called every form of conveyance a "gharri."
"We shall meet again," said this persistent man. "You can't put me off like this."
He raised his voice, for he was angry, and its clear tones carried far down the quiet road.
"There's Captain Middleton with William," Tony said suddenly. "Perhaps he has some money."
Meg paled and crimsoned, and with hands that trembled started to push the pram at a great pace.
The man went back to his car, and Tony, regardless of Meg's call to him, ran to meet William and Miles.
The back wheels of the car had sunk deeply into the soft wet turf. It refused to budge. Miles came up. He was long-sighted, and he had seen very well who it was that was talking to Meg in the road. He had also heard Mr. Brooke's last remark.
Till lately he had only known Walter Brooke enough to dislike him vaguely. Since his interview with Mrs. Trent this feeling had intensified to such an extent as surprised himself. At the present moment he was seething with rage, but all the same he went and helped to get the car up the bank, jacking it up, and setting his great shoulders against it to start it again.
All this Tony watched with deepest interest, and Meg waited, fuming, a little way down the road, for she knew it was hopeless to get Tony to come till the car had once started. Once on the hard road again, it bowled swiftly away and to her immense relief passed her without stopping.
She saw that Miles was bringing Tony, and started on again with little Fay.
Fury was in her heart at Tony's disobedience, and behind it all a dull ache that Miles should have heard, and doubtless misunderstood, Walter Brooke's last remark.
Tony was talking eagerly as he followed, but she was too upset to listen till suddenly she heard Miles say in a tone of the deepest satisfaction, "Good old William."
This was too much.
She stopped and called over her shoulder: "He isn't good at all; he's a thoroughly tiresome, disobedient, badly-trained dog."
They came up with her at that, and William rolled over on his back, for he knew those tones portended further punishment.
"He's an ass in lots of ways," Miles allowed, "but he is an excellent judge of character."
And as if in proof of this William righted himself and came cringing to Meg to try and lick the hand that a few minutes ago had thumped him so vigorously.
Meg looked up at Miles and he looked down at her, and his gaze was pained, kind and grave. His eyes were large and well-opened and set wide apart in his broad face. Honest, trustworthy eyes they were.
Very gently he took the little pram from her, for he saw that her hands were trembling: "You've had a fright," he said. "I know what it is. I had a favourite dog run over once. It's horrible, it takes months to get over it. I can't think why dogs are so stupid about motors ... must have been a near shave that ... very decent of Brooke—he's taken pounds off his car with that wrench."
While Miles talked he didn't look at Meg.
"I say, little Fay," he suddenly suggested, "wouldn't you like to walk a bit?" and he lifted her out. "There, that's better. Now, Miss Morton, you sit down a minute; you've had a shake, you know. I'll go on with the kiddies."
Meg was feeling a horrible, humiliating desire to cry. Her eyes were bright with unshed tears, her knees refused to bear her. Thankfully she sat down on the foot-board of Fay's little pram. The tall figure between the two little ones suddenly grew blurred and dim. Furtively she blew her nose and wiped her eyes. They were not a stone's throw from the lodge at Wren's End.
How absurd to be sitting there!
And yet she didn't feel inclined to move just yet.
"'Ere, my dear, you take a sip o' water; the gentleman's told me all about it. Them sort o' shocks fair turns one over."
And kind Mrs. Earley was beside her, holding out a thick tumbler. Meg drank the deliciously cold water and arose refreshed.
And somehow the homely comfort of Mrs. Earley's presence made her realise wherein lay the essential difference between these two men.
"He still treats me like a princess," she thought, "even though he thinks ... Oh, what can he think?" and Meg gave a little sob.
"There, there!" said Mrs. Earley, "don't you take on no more, Miss. The dear dog bain't 'urted not a 'air of him. 'E cum frolicking in that friendly—I sometimes wonders if there do be anyone as William 'ud ever bite. 'E ain't much of a watchdog, I fear."
"He nearly bit someone this afternoon," Meg said.
"Well, I'm not sorry to yer it. It don't do for man nor beast to be too trustful—not in this world it don't."
At the drive gate Miles was standing.
Mrs. Earley took the pram with her for Earley to clean, and Meg and Miles walked on together.
"I'm sorry you've had this upset," he said. "I've talked to William like a father."
"It wasn't only William," Meg murmured.
They were close to the house, and she stopped.
"Good night, Captain Middleton. I must go and put my children to bed; we're late."
"I don't want to seem interfering, Miss Morton, but don't you let anyone bully you into picking up an acquaintance you'd rather drop."
"I suppose," said Meg, "one always has to pay for the things one has done."
"Well, yes, sooner or later; but it's silly to pay Jew prices."
"Ah," said Meg, "you've never been poor enough to go to the Jews, so you can't tell."
Miles walked slowly back to Amber Guiting that warm May evening. He had a good deal to think over, for he had come to a momentous decision. When he thought of Meg as he had just seen her—small and tremulous and tearful—he clenched his big hands and made a sound in his throat not unlike William's growl. When he pictured her angry onslaught upon William, he laughed. But the outcome of his reflections was this—that whether in the past she had really done anything that put her in Walter Brooke's power, or whether he was right to trust to that intangible quality in her that seemed to give the direct lie to the worst of Mrs. Trent's story, Meg appeared to him to stand in need of some hefty chap as a buffer between her and the hard world, and he was very desirous of being that same for Meg.
His grandfather, "Mutton-Pie Middleton," had married one of his own waitresses for no other reason than that he found she was "the lass for him"—and he might, so the Doncaster folk thought, have looked a good deal higher for a wife, for he was a "warm" man at the time. Miles strongly resembled his grandfather. He was somewhat ruefully aware that in appearance there was but little of the Keills about him. He could just remember the colossal old man who must have weighed over twenty stone in his old age, and Miles, hitherto, had refused to buy a motor for his own use because he knew that if he was to keep his figure he must walk, and walk a lot.
Like his grandfather, he was now perfectly sure of himself; Meg "was the lass for him"; but he was by no means equally sure of her. By some infallible delicacy of instinct—and this he certainly did not get from the Middletons—he knew that what the world would regard as a magnificent match for Meg, might be the very circumstance that would destroy his chance with her. The Middletons were all keenly alive to the purchasing powers of money, and saw to it that they got their money's worth.
All the same, a man's a man, whether he be rich or poor, and Miles still remembered the way Meg had smiled upon him the first time they ever met. Surely she could never have smiled at him like that unless she had rather liked him.
It was the pathos of Meg herself—not the fact that she had to work—that appealed to Miles. That she should cheerfully earn her own living instead of grousing in idleness in a meagre home seemed to him merely a matter of common sense. He knew that if he had to do it he could earn his, and the one thing he could neither tolerate nor understand about a good many of his Keills relations was their preference for any form of assistance to honest work. He helped them generously enough, but in his heart of hearts he despised them, though he did not confess this even to himself.
As he drew near the Manor House he saw Lady Mary walking up and down outside, evidently waiting for him.
"Where have you been, Miles?" she asked, impatiently. "Pen has been here, and wanted specially to see you, but she couldn't stay any longer, as it's such a long run back. She motored over from Malmesbury."
"What did she want?" Miles asked. "She's always in a stew about something. One of her Pekinese got pip, or what?"
Lady Mary took his arm and turned to walk along the terrace. "I think," she said, and stopped. "Where were you, Miles?"
"I strolled down the village to get some tobacco, and then I saw a chap who'd got his motor stuck, and helped him, and then ..." Here Miles looked down at his aunt, who looked up at him apprehensively. "I caught up with Miss Morton and the children, and walked back to Wren's End with them. There, Aunt Mary, that's a categorical history of my time since tea."
Lady Mary pressed his arm. "Miles, dear, do you think it's quite wise to be seen about so much with little Miss Morton ... wise for her I mean?"
"I hope I'm not the sort of chap it's bad to be seen about with...."
"Of course not, dear Miles, but, you see, her position...."
"What's the matter with her position?"
"Of course I know it's most creditable of her and all that ... but ... when a girl has to go out as a sort of nursery governess, it is different, isn't it, dear? I mean...."
"Yes, Aunt Mary, I'm awfully interested—different from what?"
"From girls who lead the sheltered life, girls who don't work ... girls of our own class."
"I don't know," Miles said thoughtfully, "that I should say Pen, for instance, lives exactly a sheltered life, should you?"
"Yes, but before she was married ... eh, Aunt Mary? Be truthful, now."
Miles held his aunt's arm tightly within his, and he stooped and looked into her face.
"And does the fact that Pen is married explain or excuse her deplorable taste in men? Which does it do, Aunt Mary? Speak up, now."
Lady Mary laughed. "I'm not here to defend Pen; I'm here to get your answer as to whether you think it's ... quite fair to make that little Miss Morton conspicuous by running after her and making her the talk of the entire county, for that's what you're doing."
"What good old Pen has been telling you I'm doing, I suppose."
"I had my own doubts about it without any help from Pen ... but she said Alec Pottinger had been talking...."
"Pottinger's an ass."
"He doesn't talk much, anyhow, Miles, and she felt if he said anything...."
"Look here, Aunt Mary, how's a chap to go courting seriously if he doesn't run after a girl?... he can't work it from a distance ... not unless he's one of those poet chaps, and puts letters in hollow trees and so on. And you don't seem to have provided any hollow trees about here."
"Courting ... seriously!" Lady Mary repeated with real horror in her tones. "Oh, Miles, you can't mean that!"
"Surely you'd not prefer I meant the other thing?"
"But, Miles dear, think!"
"I have thought, and I've thought it out."
"You mean you want to marry her?"
Lady Mary spoke in an awed whisper.
"Just exactly that, and I don't care who knows it; but I'm not at all sure she wants to marry me ... that's why I don't want to rush my fences and get turned down. I'm a heavy chap to risk a fall, Aunt Mary."
"Oh, Miles! this is worse than anything Pen even dreamt of."
"What is? If you mean that she probably won't have me—I'm with you."
"Of course she'd jump at you—any girl would.... But a little nursemaid!"
"Come now, Aunt Mary, you know very well she's just as good as I am; better, probably, for she's got no pies nor starch in her pedigree. Her father's a Major and her mother was of quite good family—and she's got lots of rich, stingy relations ... and she doesn't sponge on 'em. What's the matter with her?"
"Please don't do anything in a hurry, dear Miles."
"I shan't, if you and Pen and the blessed 'county,' with its criticism and gossip, don't drive me into it ... but the very first word you either say or repeat to me against Miss Morton, off I go to her and to the old Major.... So now we understand each other, Aunt Mary—eh?"
"There are things you ought to know, Miles."
"You may depend," said Miles grimly, "that anything I ought to know I shall be told ... over and over again ... confound it.... And remember, Aunt Mary, that what I've told you is not in the least private. Tell Pen, tell Mrs. Fream, tell Withells, but just leave me to tell Miss Ross, that's all I beg."
"Miles, I shall tell nobody, for I hope ... I hope——"
"'Hope told a flattering tale,'" said Miles, and kissed his aunt ... but to himself he said: "I've shut their mouths for a day or two anyway."