Once Aboard the Lugger Part 52

"He's clean-shaven."

"And you don't like a--"

"I can't stand a--"

"But if he had a--"

"Oh, if he had a--Margaret, I hear Mr. Marrapit calling. I must fly."

She fled.

Upon a sad little sigh the poet moved to her table; drew heliotrope paper towards her; wrote:

"Why are your hearts asunder, ye so fair?"

A thought came to her then, and she put her pen in her mouth; pursued the idea. That evening she walked to the gate and met George upon his return. After a few paces, "George," she asked, "do you like Mary?"

George was never taken aback. "Mary? Mary who?"

"Miss Humfray."

"Oh, is her name Mary?"

"Of course it is." Margaret slipped her arm through George's; gazed up at him. "Do you like her, George?"

"Like whom?"

"Why, Mary--Miss Humfray."

"Oh, I think she's a little better than Mrs. Major--in some ways. If that's what you mean."

Margaret sighed. Such mulish indifference was a dreadful thing to this girl. But she had set her heart on this romance.

"George, dear, I wish you would do something for me."

"Anything."

"How nice you are! Will you grow a moustache?"

She anxiously awaited the answer. George took his handkerchief from his pocket and wiped his eyes. He did not speak.

She asked him: "What is the matter?"

He said brokenly: "You know not what you ask. I cannot grow a moustache. It is my secret sorrow, my little cross. There is only one way. It is by pushing up the hairs from inside with the handle of a tooth-brush and tying a knot to prevent them slipping back. You have to do it every morning, and I somehow can never remember it."

Margaret slipped her arm free; without a word walked to the house.

She was hurt. This girl had the artistic temperament, and the artistic temperament feels things most dreadfully. It even feels being kept waiting for its meals.

II.

George followed the pained young woman into the house; set down in the hall the books he carried; left the house again; out through the gate, and so, whistling gaily along roads and lanes, came to the skirts of an outlying copse. By disused paths he twisted this way and that to approach, at length, a hut that once was cottage, whose dilapidated air advertised long neglect.

It was a week after Mary's arrival at Herons' Holt that, quite by chance, George had stumbled upon this hut. He had taken his books into the copse, had somehow lost his way in getting out, and through thick undergrowth had plumped suddenly upon the building. Curiosity had taken him within, shown him an outer and an inner room, and, in the second, a sight that had given him laughter; for he discovered there sundry empty bottles labelled "Old Tom," a gla.s.s, an envelope addressed to Mrs. Major. It was clear that in this deserted place-- somehow chanced upon--the masterly woman had been wont, safe from disturbance, to meet the rascal who, taken to Herons' Holt on that famous night, had so villainously laid her by the heels.

Nothing more George had thought of the place until the morning of this day when, leaving for hospital, his Mary had effected a brief whispered moment to tell him that Mr. Marrapit had thought her looking pale, had told her to take a long walk that afternoon. Immediately George gave her directions for the hut; there he would meet her at five o'clock; there not the most prying eye could reach them.

Now he approached noiselessly; saw his pretty Mary, back towards him, just within the threshold of the open door. It was their first secluded meeting since she had come to Herons' Holt.

Upon tip-toe George squirmed up to her; hissed "I have thee, girl"; sprang on his terrified Mary; hugged her to him.

"The first moment together in Paltley Hill!" he cried. "The first holy kiss!"

His Mary wriggled. "George! You frightened me nearly out of my life.

It's not holy. You're hurting me awfully."

"My child, it is holy. Trust in me."

"George, you _are_ hurting."

"Scorn that. It is delicious!"

He let her from his arms; but he held her hands, and for a s.p.a.ce, looking at one another, they did not speak. Despite he was in wild spirits, despite her roguishness, for a s.p.a.ce they did not speak. His hands were below hers and about hers. The contact of their palms was the junction whence each literally could feel the other's spirit being received and pouring inwards. The metals were laid true, and without hitch or delay the delectable thrill came pouring; above, between their eyes, on wires invisible they signalled its safe arrival.

They broke upon a little laugh that was their utmost expression of the intoxication of this draught of love, just as a man parched with thirst will with a little sigh put down the gla.s.s that has touched him back to vigour. Dumb while they drank, their innate earthiness made them dumb before effort to express the spiritual heights to which they had been whirled. In that moment when, spirit mingling with spirit through the medium of what we call love, all our baseness is driven out of us, we are nearest heaven. But our vocabulary being only fitted for the needs about us, we have no words to express the elevation.

Debase love and we can speak of it; let it rush upwards to its apotheosis and we must be dumb.

With a little laugh they broke.

"Going on all right, old girl?" George asked.

"Splendidly."

"Happy?"

She laughed and said: "I will give the proper answer to that. How can I be other than happy, oh, my love, when daily I see your angel form?"

"I forgot that. Yes, you're a lucky girl in that way--very, very lucky. Beware lest you do not sufficiently prize your treasure.

Cherish it, tend it, love it."

"Oh, don't fool, George. Whenever we have two minutes together you waste them in playing the goat. Georgie, tell me--about your exam."

"To-morrow."

She was at once serious. "To-morrow?"

"To-morrow I thrust my angel form into the examination room. To-morrow my angel voice trills in the examiners' ears."