In the Mist of the Mountains Part 16

While dressing she peeped between the laths of the blind, agitated, now the disturbance was over, to think of the sudden arrival of Hugh upon the scene. What a masterful man he was! How he had grasped her shoulder and pushed her along! But, oh! how stupid--how stupid he must have considered her for not thinking of water for the poor children herself!

Yes, he had called it an insanity of folly! She peeped mournfully through the blind.

And across at "Tenby" now was a wagonette, with Mrs. Gowan and two such pretty, fashionable girls in it! And out came Hugh with a small portmanteau in his hand, and rather a better suit on than he generally wore, and certainly a better hat.

And Kate came after and kissed him good-bye!

Was his holiday, then, over? Was he going back to town? Oh, no, of course! Had not Lynn said he was going to the Jenolan Caves for a week with his other sister and her party? But Lynn had not said anything about those very pretty girls! Miss Bibby sighed, she knew not why, as the wagonette drove away.

Then, in a mood from which all buoyancy had fled, drowned probably with the ants in the unexpected bath, she began to work at the interview again.

A mile along the way Hugh gave an exclamation of annoyance; not so strong certainly as the one Miss Bibby had overheard, but still indicative of much vexation.

"I went expressly to 'Greenways'," he said, "to deliver a communication, and that ant business drove it out of my head. I'm really afraid I shall have to turn back."

The ladies protested a little. Was it very important? As it was they would barely make the first twenty-five miles of the journey, and reach the first hotel of their route before dark.

"Yes," said Hugh, really perturbed, "it is important--rather. I'm afraid I'll have to go back."

The coachman sulkily brought his horses round; the "ant business" had kept him waiting at "Tenby" gate nearly half an hour, and he had a strong objection to arriving at hotels when the dinner hour was long past and the cook, pettish at having to set to work again, quite callous about what she set before him.

But at the critical moment Larkin appeared--Larkin who had a perfect genius for appearing on the spot when he was wanted.

"h.e.l.lo! here's Middlecut to the rescue," Hugh cried, hailing him with a shout. "Hi, young man, can you go off on a message for me?"

Larkin grinned and nodded a.s.sent. He had no notion why the book gentleman always gave him this name of Middlecut, but he had also no objection. Any gentleman who made his commission advance by leaps and bounds, as this one had done, was at liberty to call him any name that came handy.

Hugh had his fountain-pen, but no further vehicle for his message; none of the ladies could help him with as much as a visiting card--what help in emergencies can be expected from pocketless persons?

Larkin came to the rescue with the eternal card of Octavius Smith and his bacon at elevenpence.

"Dear Madam" (wrote Hugh upon the back of this choice stationery), "kindly burn any nonsense I may have said to you yesterday. On my return in a week I will see what I can do to give you better information. I was on my way to tell you this when m.u.f.fie's engaging adventure drove it out of my head. Pray excuse this card--necessity knows no etiquette.

"Yours,

"Hugh Kinross."

A minute later the wagonette was gaily upon its way again, Hugh in excellent spirits now he had laid the little demon of compunction that had been troubling his kind heart since breakfast.

And Larkin was cantering happily down to "Greenways," his own pocket (he kept his right-hand pocket for the money due to Octavius, and his left-hand for his own tips) the heavier by a shilling.

"Miss Bibby, Miss Bibby!" cried Pauline.

"And now what is it?" said Miss Bibby, whose nerves by this time were in a condition that made the reiteration of her own name a positive offence to her. She was dressed for going to the post, and had a long official envelope directed "To the Editor of the _Evening Mail_" tucked under her arm. But she had paused by the kitchen fire on her way out to superintend the blancmange which Anna was making for the children's tea, and which, they complained bitterly, she always made lumpy.

"Larkin is at the door," said Pauline, "and he's got something for you from Mr. Kinross."

"Where, where?" said Miss Bibby, fluttering forward. Larkin pa.s.sed the card to Pauline. Pauline pa.s.sed it to Miss Bibby--and on such small things does our destiny hang--the wrong side up.

That is to say the nauseating statement about the prime middle cut at elevenpence a pound was what met the eye of the eager Miss Bibby.

An ebullition of anger such as rarely visited the gentle lady rose within her now.

She flung the card angrily into the fire.

"You are a very rude little girl, Pauline," she said; "it is excessively ill-bred to play jokes upon people older than yourself. And as for Larkin----"

But Larkin had disappeared, his shilling being earned, and some business urgently needing his attendance.

Pauline slipped away to the garden, a resigned look upon her face. She had not meant to be ill-bred; she had no idea she was playing a joke.

But she remembered now that Miss Bibby had several times swept down the cards of Octavius that they had placed on the drawing-room mantelpiece as a means of attracting any visitors' custom to Larkin. Still she need not have spoken in that angry tone, and called her "ill-bred."

"Ill-bred" was a very uncomfortable word to have suddenly thrust upon one. Pauline leapt up at the gymnastic bar, and swung and wriggled there to shake it off.

Hot and perspiring after several brilliant efforts, that included hanging by the feet, and swinging upwards again, and resuming the perpendicular, Pauline climbed up and sat on the bar, holding to a post and dangling her legs.

From here through a break in the trees she could see the hill, and climbing up it steadily, steadily, Miss Bibby with her long precious envelope for the post tucked beneath her arm.

CHAPTER XII

IN BLACK AND WHITE

Four days later Kate was reading, rocking and eating banana again in the privacy of the little side verandah, when there came a familiar tramp across the room behind her.

"It can't be Hugh," she said aloud, for it had been allowed by the whole party that the seven days of a week were not too long to devote to the thorough "doing" of the marvellous caves.

"By George though, can't it?" said that gentleman as he came through the doorway, dropped his bag on one chair, and sat down heavily on another.

Kate laughed at him outright; his linen suit was red over with fine dust, dust lay half an inch deep on the brim of his Panama, his very eyebrows were red with the molecules of the mountain roads.

"Well, my girl," he said, "it was worth it--well worth it. Blessed be motor-cars henceforth and forever, though hitherto I've never had a good word to throw at one. Great Scott! to think of it; but for the chance of one chap laying another fifty to a hundred that his car could do the journey down in ten minutes under the other chap's, those girls would be jabbering in my ears yet."

"But I thought they were such wonderful girls," said Kate amusedly; "'ducky little girls', you called them, and 'little pets'."

"That's all very well," said Hugh; "little pets are very nice in their place, and no one appreciates them better than faithfully yours, for an hour or so. But when you get 'em for breakfast and lunch and dinner. And they even insist upon trifling with the holies of your smoking times, trying to light up cigarettes themselves, and jabbering all the time, why then you seize on a civil offer to risk your neck in a racing car as a drowning man would catch at a torpedo if he found it floating handy."

"You seem to have returned heart-whole, at all events," said Kate; "and I've had my suspicions of you."

"No," said Hugh, fanning himself composedly with a newspaper, "my day is not yet, though as I've told you before I'm like the fellow in the comic opera, there is that within me that tells me that when my time _does_ come the convulsion will be tremendous! When I love, it will be with the acc.u.mulated fervour of sixty-six years! But I have an ideal--a semi-transparent Being filled with an inorganic fruit jelly--and I have never yet seen the woman who approaches within reasonable distance of it. All--all opaque--opaque--opaque."

Kate laughed. "Then I'm afraid you don't feel much better for the change," she said.

They had both hoped that a week's "junketing" with lively companions might bring back the pen's good hour.