Fennel and Rue Part 5

"It is," she approved, as with novel conviction. "The landscape is really beautiful. So nice and flat," she added.

He took her intention, and he said, as he craned his neck out of the carryall to include the nearer roadside stretches, with their low bushes lifting into remoter trees, "It's restful in a way that neither the mountains nor the sea, quite manage."

"Oh yes," she sighed, with a kind of weariness which explained itself in what she added: "It's the kind of thing you'd like to have keep on and on." She seemed to say that more to herself than to him, and his eyes questioned her. She smiled slightly in explaining: "I suppose I find it all the more beautiful because this is my first real look into the world after six months indoors."

"Oh!" he said, and there was no doubt a prompting in his tone.

She smiled still. "Sick people are terribly, egotistical, and I suppose it's my conceit of having been the centre of the universe so lately that makes me mention it." And here she laughed a little at herself, showing a charming little peculiarity in the catch of her upper lip on her teeth. "But this is divine--this air and this sight." She put her head out of her side of the carryall, and drank them in with her lungs and eyes.

When she leaned back again on the seat she said, "I can't get enough of it."

"But isn't this old rattletrap rather too rough for you?" he asked.

"Oh no," she said, visiting him with a furtive turn of her eyes. "It's quite ideally what invalids in easy circ.u.mstances are advised to take carriage exercise."

"Yes, it's certainly carriage exercise," Verrian admitted in the same spirit, if it was a drolling spirit. He could not help being amused by the situation in which they had been brought together, through the vigorous prompt.i.tude of Miss Macroyd in making the victoria her own, and the easy indifference of Mrs. Westangle as to how they should get to her house. If he had been alone he might have felt the indifference as a slight, but as it was he felt it rather a favor. If Miss Shirley was feeling it a slight, she was too secret or too sweet to let it be known, and he thought that was nice of her. Still, he believed he might recognize the fact without deepening a possible hurt of hers, and he added, with no apparent relevance, "If Mrs. Westangle was not looking for us on this train, she will find that it is the unexpected which happens."

"We are certainly going to happen," the girl said, with an acceptance of the plural which deepened the intimacy of the situation, and which was not displeasing to Verrian when she added, "If our friend's vehicle holds out." Then she turned her face full upon him, with what affected him as austere resolution, in continuing, "But I can't let you suppose that you're conveying a society person, or something of that sort, to Mrs. Westangle's." His own face expressed his mystification, and she concluded, "I'm simply going there to begin my work."

He smiled provisionally in temporizing with the riddle. "You women are wonderful, nowadays, for the work you do."

"Oh, but," she protested, nervously, anxiously, "it isn't good work that I'm going to do--I understand what you mean--it's work for a living.

I've no business to be arriving with an invited guest, but it seemed to be a question of arriving or not at the time when I was due."

IX.

Verrian stared at her now from a visage that was an entire blank, though behind it conjecture was busy, and he was asking himself whether his companion was some new kind of hair-dresser, or uncommonly cultivated manicure, or a nursery governess obeying a hurry call to take a place in Mrs. Westangle's household, or some sort of amateur housekeeper arriving to supplant a professional. But he said nothing.

Miss Shirley said, with a distress which was genuine, though he perceived a trace of amus.e.m.e.nt in it, too, "I see that I will have to go on."

"Oh, do!" he made out to utter.

"I am going to Mrs. Westangle's as a sort of mistress of the revels.

The business is so new that it hasn't got its name yet, but if I fail it won't need any. I invented it on a hint I got from a girl who undertakes the floral decorations for parties. I didn't see why some one shouldn't furnish suggestions for amus.e.m.e.nts, as well as flowers. I was always rather lucky at that in my own fam--at my father's--" She pulled herself sharply up, as if danger lay that way. "I got an introduction to Mrs.

Westangle, and she's to let me try. I am going to her simply as part of the catering, and I'm not to have any recognition in the hospitalities.

So it wasn't necessary for her to send for me at the station, except as a means of having me on the ground in good season. I have to thank you for that, and--I thank you." She ended in a sigh.

"It's very interesting," Verrian said, and he hoped he was not saying it in any ign.o.ble way.

He was very presently to learn. Round a turn of the road there came a lively clacking of horses' shoes on the hard track, with the muted rumble of rubber-tired wheels, and Mrs. Westangle's victoria dashed into view. The coachman had made a signal to Verrian's driver, and the vehicles stopped side by side. The footman instantly came to the door of the carryall, touching his hat to Verrian.

"Going to Mrs. Westangle's, sir?"

"Yes."

"Mrs. Westangle's carriage. Going to the station for you, sir."

"Miss Shirley," Verrian said, "will you change?"

"Oh no," she answered, quickly, "it's better for me to go on as I am.

But the carriage was sent for you. You must--"

Verrian interrupted to ask the footman, "How far is it yet to Mrs.

Westangle's?"

"About a mile, sir."

"I think I won't change for such a short distance. I'll keep on as I am," Verrian said, and he let the goatskin, which he had half lifted to free Miss Shirley for dismounting, fall back again. "Go ahead, driver."

She had been making several gasping efforts at speech, accompanied with entreating and protesting glances at Verrian in the course of his brief colloquy with the footman. Now, as the carryall lurched forward again, and the victoria wheeled and pa.s.sed them on its way back, she caught her handkerchief to her face, and to Verrian's dismay sobbed into it. He let her cry, as he must, in the distressful silence which he could not be the first to break. Besides, he did not know how she was taking it all till she suddenly with threw her handkerchief and pulled down her veil.

Then she spoke three heart-broken words, "How could you!" and he divined that he must have done wrong.

"What ought I to have done?" he asked, with sullen humility.

"You ought to have taken the victoria."

"How could I?"

"You ought to have done it."

"I think you ought to have done it yourself, Miss Shirley," Verrian said, feeling like the worm that turns. He added, less resentfully, "We ought both to have taken it."

"No, Mrs. Westangle might have felt, very properly, that it was presumptuous in me, whether I came alone in it or with you. Now we shall arrive together in this thing, and she will be mortified for you and vexed with me. She will blame me for it, and she will be right, for it would have been very well for me to drive up in a shabby station carryall; but an invited guest--"

"No, indeed, she shall not blame you, Miss Shirley. I will make a point of taking the whole responsibility. I will tell her--"

"Mr. Merriam!" she cried, in anguish. "Will you please do nothing of the kind? Do you want to make bad worse? Leave the explaining altogether to me, please. Will you promise that?"

"I will promise that--or anything--if you insist," Verrian sulked.

She instantly relented a little. "You mustn't think me unreasonable. But I was determined to carry my undertaking through on business principles, and you have spoiled my chance--I know you meant it kindly or, if not spoiled, made it more difficult. Don't think me ungrateful. Mr.

Merriam--"

"My name isn't Merriam," he resented, at last, a misnomer which had annoyed him from the first.

"Oh, I am so glad! Don't tell me what it is!" she said, giving a laugh which had to go on a little before he recognized the hysterical quality in it. When she could check it she explained: "Now we are not even acquainted, and I can thank a stranger for the kindness you have shown me. I am truly grateful. Will you do me another favor?"

"Yes," Verrian a.s.sented; but he thought he had a right to ask, as though he had not promised, "What is it?"

"Not to speak of me to Mrs. Westangle unless she speaks of me first."

"That's simple. I don't know that I should have any right to speak of you."

"Oh yes, you would. She will expect you, perhaps, to laugh about the little adventure, and I would rather she began the laughing you have been so good."