Etheldreda the Ready Part 22

Guy Seton was troubled with no fears about the missing girls; but hearing Rowena mention the word "tired," became straightway devoured with anxiety lest the epithet should in any way apply to herself. In vain did she protest with the most radiant and dimpling of smiles. She could no more deny that four hours in the saddle was an unusual exertion than that the weather had taken a change for the worse, and that home lay a good eight miles away. The exhilaration of the moment was such that she felt as if it were impossible ever to be tired again; nevertheless, it was sweet to be cared for, sweet to subject her own will to that of Guy Seton. So the end of the discussion was that the hunt was abandoned, and while the field went gaily chasing after a fresh scent, these two riders turned their horses' heads and jogged slowly in the direction of home.

Suddenly an overpowering feeling of shyness seized upon Rowena. Every moment took her farther away from her companions; the country ahead looked misty and solitary; Guy Seton's eyes were fixed upon her face with an expression at once so wistful and so ardent that it seemed impossible to meet it with her own. In her heart of hearts Rowena knew perfectly well what that look meant; but with the curious inconsistency of her s.e.x the impulse was strong upon her to fly from what she had most longed for and desired. Conversation was the best refuge for the moment, and she plunged hastily into the first subject which presented itself.

"I wonder if we shall find Dreda waiting at home! Poor Dreda, she was so disgusted at having to follow on wheels. She refused point blank to come, as she had not a mount; but at the last moment it seemed too dull to stay at home all by herself. She is such a good horsewoman--far better than I am. Perhaps next meet you will be very, very kind and take her with you?"

Guy Seton's face suddenly a.s.sumed an expression of acute anxiety and discomfort.

"Why should I take her? You are not--surely you are not _going away_?"

"Oh, no--oh, no; but it is Dreda's holiday. She would love it so! It would be such a treat."

"And you? Does that mean that you _don't_ enjoy it? That you would rather stay at home and let her come in your place?"

Rowena blushed.

"Of course it doesn't. I love it, too; but I wasn't thinking of myself.

Dreda thinks--she believes that you made some sort of promise that you would give her a mount, and she is counting upon you to keep it. She would be so disappointed--"

But Guy Seton had forgotten all about his lightly spoken words, and was in no mood to be reminded.

"I think she must be mistaken, don't you know!" he protested easily.

"It's always the same thing with youngsters of that age. If one is foolish enough to say a word, they leap to the conclusion that it is a definite arrangement. I've learnt that with my own nephews and nieces.

I saw so very little of Miss Dreda before she went off to school that I could hardly have had time to promise."

"I don't think it took very much time. So far as I understand, it was on the afternoon when you first met--"

"The afternoon when I came over to call? I remember nothing whatever about that afternoon except that I saw you, for the first time, and that you were unkind to me, and wouldn't speak."

The blush on Rowena's cheeks flamed up again more rosily than before.

"Don't speak of it, please! It makes me hot and so furious with Maud even now. You are not a girl, so you can't understand; but I was so wretchedly embarra.s.sed, and angry, and ashamed."

"But why? That's what I could not understand! You had been sweet enough, and unselfish enough, and hospitable enough to go to the trouble of putting on a pretty frock--I adore that blue frock--for the benefit of a casual stranger whom you had never even seen. Why should you be ashamed of that? I think it was jolly unselfish. It's such a f.a.g changing one's kit. You ought to have been very complacent and pleased.

You _would_ have been if you could have changed places with me for a minute, and seen yourself walking into the room. If you knew what I thought--"

He paused, and Rowena, scenting danger, resolved that nothing on earth would make her put the obvious question. The resolution lasted for a whole half-minute, at the end of which time a feeble little voice demanded softly:

"Wh-at did you think?"

"I thought--oh, Rowena! so many, many things! I thought that I had dreamt of you all my life, and had found you at last. I thought you were the loveliest thing in the whole wide world. I wished I had been a better man for your sake! I was so happy to have met you, and so miserable because you were cross. It was such a bad beginning that I was afraid you would always be prejudiced--always dislike me."

Again he paused, and Rowena bent over her horse's head, stroking its mane, keeping her eyes persistently downcast. They traversed another hundred yards before the low, insistent tones again struck on her ear.

"_Do_ you, Rowena?"

"Do I--what?"

"Dislike me still?"

"I? Oh, what a question! I never disliked you. I was angry with Maud, and with myself--not with you at all."

"But I want so much more. Don't you know that, Rowena? I tumbled headlong in love with you that very afternoon, and I've gone on tumbling deeper and deeper ever since. Do you care for me a little bit, Rowena?

_Could_ you care? I'm such a stupid, ordinary sort of fellow. I don't know how I dare ask such a thing of a girl like you--the loveliest, sweetest girl that ever lived--but I just _have_ to, and that's the truth! I can't stand the suspense another hour.--If I waited long enough would there be a chance for me in the end? If I were very, very patient!"

A dimple dipped in the lovely curve of Rowena's cheek. She was sure now--quite, quite sure! It was not merely a foolish, girlish imagination. Guy loved her. Guy wanted her for his wife. She had entered into her woman's kingdom, and, womanlike, began instantly to adopt provocative little airs and graces.

"But I--I don't want you to be--to be--"

"To be what? _What_ don't you want me to be, Rowena?"

"P-atient!" sighed Rowena, and turned her head with a smile and a glance and a blush which transformed the grey winter landscape into a very Garden of Eden for the man by her side.

Ah, well! it was a blissful half-hour which followed, filled with the inevitable questionings and recollections which every fresh Adam and Eve believe to be their own exclusive property. "What did you think?"

"What did you mean?"

"Why did you say?"

"What was the first--the very first moment when you began to care?"

Hand in hand they pa.s.sed along the country lanes, the reins lying slack on the necks of their tired steeds; hand in hand they turned in at the farther gate of the ploughed roads which lay across the fields, and halfway along its length came suddenly upon the two still, half- conscious figures of Dreda and Norah West.

CHAPTER TWENTY FIVE.

The alarm was given at the nearest farm, and the two girls conveyed with all speed to The Meads, where a doctor was at once summoned to their aid.

Norah's right knee was found to be badly fractured, from the effects of which she had to face intense pain and discomfort for some days, and a long, dragging convalescence. Given rest and care, however, recovery was only a matter of time, and the onlookers were less anxious about her than the other patient, who was raving with delirium in an adjoining room. Dreda, like many robust people, had been more affected by the deadly chill of those long waiting hours than was her more fragile companion. Perhaps in nursing Norah upon her knee she had screened her friend from the biting wind, which had seemed to cut like knives through her own back. She had been like a figure of ice when she was carried into the house; but before she had been an hour in bed the reaction had set in and she was burning with a fever heat.

The old nursery expression, "hotty-cold," was a true description of that miserable night, when she alternately shuddered and burnt, and when morning came the dread word "pneumonia" was whispered from lip to lip.

A hospital nurse was called in to aid Mrs Saxon in the care of the two patients. Rowena took over the housekeeping duties, and went about her work with a smile on her lips and a tear in her eye. Poor, poor darling Dreda! It was pitiful to hear her loud, painful breathing. Rowena's heart stood still at the thought that Dreda's life was in danger--but Guy was coming. Guy would take her in his arms; she would lay her tired head on Guy's broad shoulder, and be comforted. Was it wrong to feel that nothing, nothing in the world could be unbearable while Guy's arms held her close?

Susan hurried over to The Meads whitefaced and trembling, longing to help, to be of use; but Rowena waved aside her offers half-heard. She could do nothing. The house was already too full; another inmate would only be an additional burden. But Susan gently intimated that she was not dreaming of offering her own presence. "I thought perhaps you would let me have Maud. It must be lonely for Maud, and she may be a little in your way. If you would let Maud stay with us for a time I would try to make her happy."

"Oh, you nice Susan! Oh, Susan, how dear of you!" cried Rowena, fervently. "No words can express the relief which it would be to get rid of Maud just now. She doesn't know what to do with herself, and she follows us about all over the house, asking questions from morning till night--millions of questions--and she makes mother cry, and upsets the maids, and drops things with a bang outside Dreda's door when they are trying to make her sleep, and--and,"--the colour rose in Rowena's smooth cheeks--"you can't get away from her. She's always there! It _would_ be sweet of you to take her, but I'm afraid you'd be very bored."

"No," said Susan simply, "I couldn't be bored. It's the only way in which I can help Dreda. The more difficult it is the better I shall be pleased."

Rowena looked at her in silence. Little, plain, insignificant Susan Webster, whom an hour ago she had pitied with all her heart. She had no Guy to love her. Considering her unattractive exterior, and the inherent love of men for beauty and charm, it was exceedingly doubtful whether she ever _would_ have a Guy. But she understood. She had risen already to a higher conception of love than the bride whose predominating joy was still in being loved--in receiving rather than giving! At that moment Rowena had a flash-like glimpse into the n.o.bility of Susan Webster's nature, and her former disdain turned into admiration and love.

When the first painful days had pa.s.sed, it cannot be denied that Dreda thoroughly enjoyed her position of invalid, with all the petting and consideration which it involved. She was inclined to pose as a heroine, moreover; for had not her own sufferings been the result of standing by a companion in distress! "I could not leave her," she announced to the doctor when he cross-questioned her concerning the events of the fateful afternoon. "She shrieked every time I made the least movement. It was the knee that was broken, but the pain seemed to stretch all the way up.

It would have been cruel to move her."

"One has sometimes to be cruel to be kind, Miss Dreda. It would have been better for her, as well as for yourself, if you had insisted upon going for help at once," said the doctor in reply; but even as he spoke he laid his hand on her shoulder with a friendly pat, and Dreda felt complacently convinced that he considered her a marvel of bravery and self-sacrifice.

Mrs Saxon was the most devoted of nurses, and shed tears of thankfulness over each step of the invalid's progress towards convalescence; but Dreda was by no means satisfied with the att.i.tude of her elder sister. Rowena floated in and out of the sick-room with a smile and a kiss; but instead of begging to be allowed to stay, she seemed always in a hurry to be gone, and on one or two occasions when Dreda made feeble efforts at conversation, her attention wandered so hopelessly that she said "Yes" and "No" in the wrong places, or blushingly requested to have the question repeated.

"How odd Rowena is! So absent-minded and stupid. She doesn't listen to half one is saying, and smiles to herself in the silliest way.--I think the housekeeping must be too much for her brain!" Dreda declared to her mother, and Mrs Saxon smiled in response and skilfully turned the conversation to a safer topic. Dreda was not strong enough to bear any excitement yet awhile.