Laid up in Lavender Part 18

"Bab! Why, Miss Bab, what is the matter?"

Safe and sound! Yes, when I turned he was there, safe, and strong, and cool, rod in hand, and a smile in his eyes. Just as I had seen him yesterday, and thought never to see him again; and saying "Bab"

exactly as of old, so that something in my throat--it may have been anger at his rudeness, but I do not think it was--prevented me answering a word until all the others came around us, and a babel of Norse and English, and something that was neither yet both, set in.

"But how is this?" my father objected, when he could be heard, "you are quite dry, my boy?"

"Dry! Why not, sir? For goodness' sake, what is the matter?"

"The matter! Didn't you fall in, or something of the kind?" father asked, bewildered by the new aspect of the case.

"It does not look like it, does it? Your daughter gave me a very uncomfortable start by nearly doing so."

Every one looked at me for an explanation. "How did you manage to get from the ledge?" I asked feebly. Where was the mistake? I had not dreamed it.

"From the ledge? Why, by the other end, to be sure. Of course I had to walk back round the hill; but I did not mind. I was thankful that it was the plank and not you that fell in."

"I--I thought--you could not get from the ledge," I muttered. The possibility of getting off at the other end had never occurred to me; and so I had made such a simpleton of myself. It was too absurd, too ridiculous. It was no wonder that they all screamed with laughter at the fool's errand they had come upon, and stamped about and clung to one another. But, when he laughed too--and he did until the tears came into his eyes--there was not an ache or pain in my body--and I had cut my wrist to the bone against a splinter of rock--that hurt me one-half as much. Surely he might have seen another side to it. But he did not; and so I managed to hide my bandaged wrist from him, and father drove me home. There I broke down entirely, and Clare put me to bed, and petted me, and was very good to me. And when I came down next day, with an ache in every part of me, he was gone.

"He asked me to tell you," said Clare, not looking up from the fly she was tying at the window, "that he thought you were the bravest girl he had ever met."

So he understood now, when others had explained it to him. "No, Clare," I said coldly, "he did not say that; he said 'the bravest little girl.'" For indeed, lying upstairs with the window open I had heard him set off on his long drive to Laerdalsoren. As for father he was half-proud and half-ashamed of my foolishness, and wholly at a loss to think how I could have made the mistake.

"You've generally some common-sense, my dear," he said that day at dinner, "and how in the world you could have been so ready to fancy the man was in danger, I--can--not--imagine!"

"Father," Clare put in suddenly, "your elbow is upsetting the salt."

And as I had to move my seat at that moment to avoid the glare of the stove which was falling on my face, we never thought it out.

CHAPTER II

HIS STORY

I was not dining out much at that time, partly because my acquaintance in town was limited, and partly because I cared little for it. But these were pleasant people, the old gentleman witty and amusing, the children, lively girls, nice to look at and good to talk with. All three had a holiday flavour about them wholesome to recall in Scotland Yard; and as I had expected that, playtime over, I should see no more of them, I was pleased to find that Mr. Guest had not forgotten me, and pleased also--foreseeing that we should kill our fish over again--to regard his invitation to dine at a quarter to eight as a royal command.

But if I took it so, I was wanting in the regal courtesy to match.

What with one delay owing to work which would admit of none, and another caused by a cabman strange to the ways of town, it was fifteen minutes after the hour named when I reached Bolton Gardens. A stately man, so like the Queen's Counsel, that it was plain upon whom the latter modelled himself, ushered me into the dining-room, where Guest greeted me kindly, and met my excuses by apologies on his part--for preferring, I suppose, the comfort of eleven people to mine. Then he took me down the table, and said, "My daughter," and Miss Guest shook hands with me and pointed to the chair at her left. I had still, as I unfolded my napkin, to say, "Clear, if you please," and then I was free to turn and apologise to her--feeling a little shy, and being, as I have said, a somewhat infrequent diner out.

I think that I never saw so remarkable a likeness--to her younger sister--in my life. She might have been little Bab herself, but for her dress and, of course, some differences. Miss Guest could not be more than nineteen, in form almost as fairy-like as the little one, and with the same child-like innocent look in her face. She had the big, grey eyes, too, that were so charming in Bab; but hers were more tender and thoughtful, and a thousand times more charming. Her hair too was brown and wavy; only, instead of hanging loose or in a pig-tail anywhere and anyhow in a fashion I well remembered, it was coiled in a coronal on the shapely little head, that looked Greek, and in its gracious, stately, old-fashioned pose was quite unlike Bab's. Her dress, of some creamy, gauzy stuff, revealed the prettiest white throat in the world, and arms decked in pearls, and these, of course, no more recalled my little fishing mate than the sedate self-possession and dignity of the girl, as she talked to her other neighbour, suggested Bab making pancakes and chattering with the landlady's children in her wonderfully acquired Norse. It was not Bab in fact: and yet it might have been: an etherealised, queenly womanly Bab, who presently turned to me--

"Have you quite settled down after your holiday?" she asked, staying the apologies I was for pouring into her ear.

"I had until this evening, but the sight of your father is like a breath of fiord air. I hope your sisters are well."

"My sisters?" she murmured wonderingly, her fork half-way to her pretty mouth and her att.i.tude one of questioning.

"Yes," I said, rather puzzled. "You know they were with your father when I had the good fortune to meet him. Miss Clare and Bab."

She dropped her fork on the plate with a great clatter.

"Perhaps I should say Miss Clare and Miss Bab."

I really began to feel uncomfortable. Her colour rose, and she looked me in the face in an odd way as if she resented the inquiry. It was a relief to me, when, with some show of confusion, she faltered, "Oh, yes, I beg your pardon, of course they were! How very foolish of me.

They are quite well, thank you," and so was silent again. But I understood now. Mr. Guest had omitted to mention my name, and she had taken me for some one else of whose holiday she knew. I gathered from the aspect of the table and the room that the Guests saw much company, and it was a very natural mistake, though by the grave look she bent upon her plate it was clear that the young hostess was taking herself to task for it: not without, if I might judge from the lurking smile at the corners of her mouth, a humorous sense of the slip, and perhaps of the difference between myself and the gentleman whose part I had been unwittingly supporting. Meanwhile I had a chance of looking at her unchecked; and thought of Dresden china, she was so dainty.

"You were nearly drowned, or something of the kind, were you not?" she asked, after an interval during which we had both talked to others.

"Well, not precisely. Your sister fancied I was in danger, and behaved in the pluckiest manner--so bravely that I can almost feel sorry that the danger was not real to dignify her heroism."

"That was like her," she answered in a tone just a little scornful.

"You must have thought her a terrible tom-boy."

While she was speaking there came one of those dreadful lulls in the talk, and Mr. Guest, overhearing, cried, "Who is that you are abusing, my dear? Let us all share in the sport. If it's Clare, I think I can name one who is a far worse hoyden upon occasion."

"It is no one of whom you have ever heard, father," she answered, archly. "It is a person in whom Mr.--Mr. Herapath--" I had murmured my name as she stumbled--"and I are interested. Now tell me, did you not think so?" she murmured, leaning the slightest bit towards me, and opening her eyes as they looked into mine in a way that to a man who had spent the day in a dusty room in Great Scotland Yard was sufficiently intoxicating.

"No," I said, lowering my voice in imitation of hers. "No, Miss Guest, I did not think so at all. I thought your sister a brave little thing, rather careless as children are, but likely to grow into a charming girl."

I wondered, marking how she bit her lip and refrained from a.s.sent, whether there might not be something of the shrew about my beautiful neighbour. Her tone when she spoke of her sister seemed to import no great goodwill.

"You think so?" she said, after a pause. "Do you know," with a laughing glance, "that some people think I am like her?"

"Yes," I answered, gravely. "Well, I should be able to judge, who have seen you both and am not an old friend. And I think you are both like and unlike. Your sister has beautiful eyes"--she lowered hers swiftly--"and hair like yours, but her manner and style are different.

I can no more fancy Bab in your place than I can picture you, Miss Guest, as I saw her for the first time--and on many after occasions,"

I added, laughing as much to cover my own hardihood as at the queer little figure I conjured up.

"Thank you," she replied--and for some reason she blushed to her ears.

"That, I think, must be enough of compliments for to-night--as you are not an old friend." And she turned away, leaving me to curse my folly in saying so much, when our acquaintance was in the bud, and as susceptible to over-warmth as to a temperature below zero.

A moment later the ladies left us. The flush I had brought to her cheek lingered, as she swept past me with a wondrous show of dignity in one so young. Mr. Guest came down and took her place, and we talked of the "land of berries," and our adventures there, while the rest--older friends--listened indulgently or struck in from time to time with their own biggest fish and deadliest flies.

I used to wonder why women like to visit dusty chambers; why, they get more joy--I am fain to think they do--out of a scrambling tea up three pairs of stairs in Pump Court, than from the same materials--and comfort withal--in their own house. I imagine it is for the same reason that the bachelor finds a charm in a lady's drawing-room, and there, if anywhere, sees her with a reverent mind. A charm and a subservience which I felt to the full in the Guests' drawing-room--a room rich in subdued colours and a cunning blending of luxury and comfort. Yet it depressed me. I felt myself alone. Mr. Guest had pa.s.sed on to others and I stood aside, the sense that I was not of these people troubling me in a manner as new as it was absurd: for I had been in the habit of rather despising "society." Miss Guest was at the piano, the centre of a circle of soft light, which showed up a keen-faced, close-shaven man leaning over her with the air of one used to the position. Every one else was so fully engaged that I may have looked, as well as felt, forlorn; at any rate, meeting her eyes I could have fancied she was regarding me with amus.e.m.e.nt--almost with triumph. It must have been mere fancy, bred of self-consciousness, for the next moment she beckoned me to her, and said to her cavalier--

"There, Jack, Mr. Herapath is going to talk to me about Norway now, so that I don't want you any longer. Perhaps you won't mind stepping up to the schoolroom--Fraulein and Clare are there--and telling Clare, that--that--oh, anything."

There is no piece of ill-breeding so bad to my mind as for a man who is at home in a house to flaunt his favour in the face of other guests. That young man's manner as he left her, and the smile of intelligence which pa.s.sed between them, were such a breach of good manners as would have ruffled any one. They ruffled me--yes, me, although it was no concern of mine what she called him, or how he conducted himself--so that I could do nothing but stand by the piano and sulk. One bear makes another, you know.

She did not speak; and I, content to watch the slender hands stealing over the keys, would not, until my eyes fell upon her right wrist. She had put off her bracelets and so disclosed a scar upon it, something about which--not its newness--so startled me that I said abruptly, "That is very strange! Pray tell me how you did it?"

She looked up, saw what I meant, and stopping hastily, put on her bracelets; to all appearances so vexed by my thoughtless question, and anxious to hide the mark, that I was quick to add humbly, "I asked because your sister hurt her wrist in nearly the same place on the day when she thought I was in trouble. And the coincidence struck me."

"Yes, I remember," she answered, looking at me I thought with a certain suspicion, as though she were not sure that I was giving the right motive. "I did this in the same way. By falling, I mean. Isn't it a hateful disfigurement?"

It was no disfigurement. Even to her, with a woman's love of conquest it must have seemed anything but a disfigurement--had she known what the quiet, awkward man at her side was thinking, who stood looking shyly at it and found no words to contradict her, though she asked him twice, and thought him stupid enough. A great longing for that soft, scarred wrist was on me--and Miss Guest had added another to the number of her slaves. I don't know now why the blemish should have so touched me any more than I could then guess why, being a commonplace person, I should fall in love at first sight and feel no surprise at my condition, but only a half-consciousness that in some former state of being I had met my love, and read her thoughts, and learned her moods; and come to know the womanly spirit that looked from her eyes as well as if she were an old friend. But so vivid was this sensation, that once or twice, then and afterwards, when I would meet her glance, another name than hers trembled on my tongue and pa.s.sed away before I could shape it into sound.

After an interval, "Are you going to the Goldmace's dance?" she asked.