Shining Ferry Part 5

"You must think better of the sport than I do, to come all that distance."

John Rosewarne lifted his eyes for the first time and turned them upon the young man.

"_What_ sport?" he asked.

"Eh? Why, fishing, to be sure. What else?" stammered the corporal, taken aback.

"Tut!" said the old man curtly. "Here she comes. Now, what are you going to do?"

Without waiting for an answer, he bent his gaze on the float again, and kept it fastened there, as a pretty shop-girl came strolling along the river path. She had taken off her hat, of broad-brimmed straw with artificial poppies and cornflowers, and swung it in her hand as she came.

Her eyes roamed the landscape carelessly, avoiding only that particular spot where the corporal, as she approached, scrambled to his feet; then, her start of surprise was admirable.

"Oh, it's _you!_ Good-evening."

"Good-evening, miss."

"Why, whoever--! It seems to me you spend most of your time fishing."

She paused, gathering in her skirt a little--and this obviously was the cue for a gallant soldier. The corporal began, indeed, to wind up his line, but with a foolish grin and a glance at Rosewarne's back.

"It keeps beautiful weather," he answered at length.

"_I_ call it sultry." She held out her hat with a little deprecating laugh. "I took it off for the sake of fresh air," she explained. Then, as he stood stock-still, a flush crept up her cheek to her pretty forehead.

"Well, good-evening; I won't interrupt you by talking," she said, and began to move away.

Come to think of it, it _do_ look like thunder, "the corporal remarked to Rosewarne, staring after her and then up at the sky.

"If you had eyes in your head, you'd have seen that without her telling you. That cloud yonder has been rising against the wind for an hour.

Look you along the bank, how every man Jack is unjointing his rod and making for home. Go, and leave me in peace!"

He did not turn his head even when the corporal, having packed together his gear, wished him good-night and hurried after the print frock as it vanished in the twilit shadows. One or two of the departing anglers paused as they went by to promise him that a storm was imminent and the fish had ceased feeding. He thanked them, yet sat on--solitary, in the leaden dusk.

The scene he had just witnessed--how it called up the irremediable past, with all the memories which had drawn him hither, summer after summer!

And yet how common it was and minutely unimportant! Nightly by the banks of Avon couples had been courting--thousands in these thirty-five years-- each of them dreaming, poor fools, that their moment's pa.s.sion held the world in its hands. But the world teemed with rivers ten times lordlier than Avon--rivers stretching out in an endless map, with bridges on which lovers met and whispered, with banks down which they went with linked arms into the shadows--

"Were I but young for thee, as I hae been, We should hae been gallopin' doun in yon green, And linkin' it owre the lily-white lea-- And wow gin I were but young for thee!"

He had been young, and had loved and wronged a woman, and bitterly repented. He had married her, and marriage had killed neither love nor remorse. The woman was dead long since: he had married again, but never forgotten her nor ceased to repent. She, a pretty tradesman's daughter of Warwick, had collected her savings and taken ship for the West Indies, trusting to his word, facing a winter's pa.s.sage in the sole hope that he would right her. Until the day of embarking she had never seen the sea; and the sea, after buffeting her to the verge of death, in the end betrayed her. A gale delayed the ship, and in the height of it her child was born. Rosewarne, a private soldier, went to his captain, as soon as she was landed, made a clean breast of it, and married her. But it was too late. She lived to return with him to England; but he knew well enough when she died that her sufferings on the pa.s.sage out, and the abiding anguish of her shame, had killed her. A common tale! Men and women still go the way of their instinct, by which the race survives. "All the rivers run into the sea, and yet the sea is not full. The thing that hath been, it is that which shall be, and that which is done is that which shall be done."

A tale as common as sunset! Yet upon all rivers and upon every bridge and willow-walk along their courses the indifferent sun shines for each pair of fools with a difference, lighting their pa.s.sion with a separate flame.

The woman was dead; and he--he that had been young--sat face to face with death.

He leaned forward, oblivious of the clouded dusk, with his half-shut eyes watching the grey gleam of the river; but his mind's eye saw the shadowy mead behind him, and a girlish figure crossing it with feet that seemed to faint, holding her back from doom, yet to be impelled against their will.

They drew nearer. He heard their step, and faced about with a start.

An actual woman stood there on the river path, most like in the dusk to that other of thirty-five years ago; but whereas _she_ had worn a print frock, this one was clad in total black.

"Mr. Rosewarne,"--she began; but her words came to a halt, checked by a near flash of lightning and by what it revealed.

He was in the act of rising--had risen, in fact, on one knee--when a spasm of pain took him, and his hand went up to his breast. For a moment he knelt so, turning on her a face of anguish; then sank and dropped in a heap at her feet.

Quick as thought she was down on her knees beside him, and, slipping an arm beneath his head, drew it upon her lap. While with swift fingers she loosened his collar and neckcloth, a peal of thunder rumbled out, and the first large raindrops fell splashing on her hand. She recalled that last gesture of his, and with sudden inspiration searched in his breast-pocket, found and drew out a small phial, uncorked it, and forced the liquid between his teeth before they clenched in a second spasm. Two or three sharp flashes followed the first. In the glare of them her eyes searched along the river-bank, if haply help might be near; but all the anglers had departed. Rosewarne's face stared up at her, blue as a dead man's in the dazzling light. At first it seemed to twitch with each opening of the heavens; but this must have been a trick of eyesight, for his head lay quiet against her arm as she raised him a little, shielding him against the torrential rain which now hissed down, in ten seconds drenching her to the skin, blotting out river and meadow in a sheet of grey. It forced her to stoop her shoulders, and, so covering him, she put out a hand and laid it over his heart. Yes, it beat, though feebly. Once more she picked up the phial and gave him to drink, and in a little while he stirred feebly and found his voice.

"Rain? Is it rain?" he muttered.

"Yes; but I can spread my skirt over you. It will keep off a little.

Are you better?"

"Better? Yes, better. Let me feel the rain--it does me good."

He lay silent for a minute or so. "I shall be right again in a few minutes. Did you find the phial?"

"Yes."

"Good girl. It was touch and go." By and by he made a movement to sit up. "Let us get home quickly. You can throw the rod into the river.

I shan't want it again."

But she stood up, and, groping for the rod, drew the float ash.o.r.e, and untackled it, still in the hissing rain. The storm, after a brief lull, had redoubled its rage. The darkness opened and shut as with a rapidly moving slide, the white battlements of Caesar's Tower gleaming and vanishing above the castle elms, and reappearing while their fierce candour yet blinded the eye. The thunder-peals, blending, wrapped Warwick as with one roar of artillery. Rosewarne had risen, and stood panting.

He grasped her shoulder. "Come!" he commanded. The girl, dazzled by the lightning, puzzled by his sudden renewal of strength, turned and peered at him. He declined her arm. They walked back across the sodden meadow to the town, over the roofs of which, as the storm pa.s.sed away northward, the lightning yet glimmered at intervals, turning the gaslights to a dirty orange.

At the summit of the High Street, hard by the Leycester Hospital, they came to the doorway of a small shuttered shop, over which by the light of a street lamp one could read the legend, "J. Marvin, Secondhand Bookseller." The girl opened the door with a latchkey. An oil lamp burned in an office at the back of the shop--if that can be spoken of as a separate room which was, in fact, entirely walled off with books laid flat and rising in stacks from the floor. The place, in fact, suggested a cave or den rather than a shop, with stalagmites of piled literature and a subtle pervading odour of dust and decayed leather. The girl, after shutting the bolts behind her, led the way cautiously, and, crossing a pa.s.sage at the rear of the shop, opened a door upon a far more cheerful scene. Here, in a neat parlour hung with old prints and mezzotints and water-colours, a hanging lamp shed its rays on a China bowl heaped with Warwickshire roses, and on a white cloth and a table spread for supper.

"H'm!" grunted Rosewarne, glancing in through the doorway, while she lit a candle for him at the foot of the stairs. "Your father and I used to sup in the kitchen, with old Selina to wait on us."

"But since there is no longer any Selina! I had to pension her off, poor old soul, and she is gone to the almshouse."

She handed him the light.

"Now, if you will go up to your room, I will fetch the hot water, and then you must give me your change of clothes. They shall be warmed for a few minutes at the kitchen fire, and you shall have them hot-and-hot."

"It seems to me that while all this is doing, you will stand an excellent chance of rheumatic fever."

"Oh, I shall be all right," she announced cheerfully. "No--don't look at me, please. I know very well that the dye has run out of these c.r.a.pes, and my face is beautifully streaked with black! Can you walk upstairs alone? Very well. And if you feel another attack coming, you are to call me at once."

She must have been expeditious; for when he came downstairs again he found her awaiting him in the parlour, clad in a frock of duffel-grey, which, with her damp, closely plaited hair, gave her a Quakerish look. Yet the frock became her; the natural wave of her hair, defying moisture, showed here and there rebelliously, and her cheeks glowed after a vigorous towelling.

Rosewarne drew from under his coat a bottle of champagne, and set it on the table, where the lamp's ray fell full on its gold foil. Her eyes opened wide; for he had always visited this house in his oldest clothes and pa.s.sed for a poor man.

"Since you insist upon the parlour," said he, "I must try to live up to it." He produced a knife from his pocket, with a pair of nippers, and began to cut the wire. "Why are you wearing grey?" he demanded.

She flushed. "This is my school frock. I have only one suit of mourning as yet."

"And you sent away Selina. You wanted money, I suppose?"

"No," she answered, after a moment, meeting his eyes frankly; "at least, not in the way you mean. The doctor's bills were heavy, and for years father had done business enough to keep the roof over him and no more.

So at first there was--well, a pinch. The books will sell, of course; two honest men are already bidding for them--one at Birmingham and the other at Bristol. But meanwhile I must pinch a little or run in debt.

I hate debt."