The Half-Hearted Part 18

George, who wanted to smoke, sat down unwillingly in the chair which his sister had left. The lady, whose airs and graces were all for men, put on her most bewitching manner.

"Your sister and I have just been talking about this exquisite place, Mr. Winterham. It must be delightful to live in such a centre of old romance. That lovely 'Riding of Etterick' has been running in my head all the way up."

George privately wondered at the confession. The peculiarly tragic and ghastly fragments which made up "The Riding of Etterick," seemed scarcely suited to haunt a lady's memory.

"Had you a long drive?" he asked in despair for a topic.

"Only from Glenavelin."

He awoke to interest. "Are you staying at Glenavelin just now? The Wisharts are in it, are they not? We were a great deal about the place when the Manorwaters were there."

"Oh yes. I have heard about Lady Manorwater from Alice Wishart. She must be a charming woman; Alice cannot speak enough about her."

George's face brightened. "Miss Wishart is a great friend of mine, and a most awfully good sort."

"And as you are a great friend of hers I think I may tell you a great secret," and the lady patted him playfully. "Our pretty Alice is going to be married."

George was thoroughly roused to attention. "Who is the man?" he asked sharply.

"I think I may tell you," said Mrs. Andrews, enjoying her sense of importance. "It is Mr. Stocks, the new member."

George restrained with difficulty a very natural oath. Then he looked at his informant and saw in her face only silliness and truth. For the good woman had indeed persuaded herself of the verity of her fancy. Mr.

Stocks had told her that he had her father's consent and good wishes, and misinterpreting the girl's manner she had considered the affair settled.

It was unfortunate that Mr. Wishart at this moment showed such obvious signs of restlessness that the lady rose to take her leave, otherwise George might have learned the truth. After the Glenavelin party had gone he wandered out to the lawn, pulling his moustache in vast perplexity and cursing the twisted world. He had no guess at Lewis's manner of wooing; to him it had seemed the simple, straightforward love which he thought beyond resistance. And now, when he learned of this melancholy issue, he was sore at heart for his friend.

He was awakened from his reverie by Lewis himself, who, having ridden straight to the stables, was now sauntering towards the house. A trim man looks at his best in riding clothes, and Lewis was no exception. He was flushed with sun and motion, his spirits were high, for all the journey he had been dreaming of a coming meeting with Alice, and the hope which had suddenly increased a thousand-fold. George marked his mood, and with a regret at his new role caught him by the arm and checked him.

"I say, old man, don't go in just yet. I want to tell you something, and I think you had better hear it now."

Lewis turned obediently, amazed by the gravity of his friend's face.

"Some people came up from Glenavelin this afternoon and among them a Mrs. Andrews, whom I had a talk to. She told me that Al--Miss Wishart is engaged to that fellow Stocks."

Lewis's face whitened and he turned away his eyes. He could not credit it. Two days ago she had been free; he could swear it; he remembered her eyes at parting. Then came the thought of his blindness, and in a great horror of self-mistrust he seemed to see throughout it all his criminal folly. He, poor fool, had been pleasing himself with dreams of a meeting, when all the while the other man had been the real lover.

She had despised him, spared not a thought for him save as a pleasing idler; and he--that he should ever have ventured for one second to hope!

Curiously enough, for the first time he thought of Stocks with respect; to have won the girl seemed in itself the proof of dignity and worth.

"Thanks very much for telling me. I am glad I know. No, I don't think I'll go into the house yet."

The days pa.s.sed and Alice waited with anxious heart for the coming of the very laggard Lewis. To-day he will come, she said each morning; and evening found her--poor heart!--still expectant. She told herself a thousand times that it was sheer folly. He meant nothing, it was a mere fashion of speech; and then her heart would revolt and bid common sense be silent. He came indeed with some of the Etterick party on a formal call, but this was clearly not the fulfilment of his promise. So the girl waited and despaired, while the truant at Etterick was breaking his heart for the unattainable.

Mr. Stocks, having won the official consent, conducted his suit with commendable discretion. Suit is the word for the performance, so full was it of elaborate punctilios. He never intruded upon her unhappiness.

A studied courtesy, a distant thoughtfulness were his only compliments.

But when he found her gayer, then would he strive with subtle delicacies of manner to make clear the part he desired to play.

The girl saw his kindness and was grateful. In the revulsion against the Andrews he seemed a link with the more pleasant sides of life, and soon in her despair and anger his modest merits took heroic proportions in her eyes. She forgot her past dislike; she thought only of this, the simple good man, contrasted with the showy and fickle-hearted--true metal against glittering tinsel. His very weaknesses seemed homely and venial. He was of her own world, akin to the things which deep down in her soul she knew she must love to the last. It is to the credit of the man's insight that he saw the mood and took pains to foster it.

Twice he asked her to marry him. The first time her heart was still sore with disappointment and she refused--yet half-heartedly.

He waited his time and when the natural cheerfulness of her temper was beginning to rise, he again tried his fortune.

"I cannot," she cried. "I cannot. I like you very much, but oh, it is too much to ask me to marry you."

"But I love you with all my heart, Alice." And the honesty of his tone and the distant thought of a very different hope brought the tears to her eyes.

He had forgotten all pompous dreams and the stilted prospects with which he had aforetime hoped to beguile his wife. The man was plain and simple now, a being very much on fire with an honest pa.s.sion. He may have left her love-cold, but he touched the sympathy which in a true woman is love's nearest neighbour. Before she knew herself she had promised, and had been kissed respectfully and tenderly by her delighted lover. For a moment she felt something like joy, and then, with a dreadful thought of the baselessness of her pleasure, walked slowly homewards by his side.

The next morning Alice rose with a dreary sense of the irrevocable. A door seemed to have closed behind her, and the future stretched before her in a straight dusty path with few nooks and shadows. This was not the blithe morning of betrothal she had looked for. The rapturous outlook on life which she had dreamed of was replaced by a cold and business-like calculation of profits. The rose garden of the "G.o.d unconquered in battle" was exchanged for a very shoddy and huckstering paradise.

Mrs. Andrews claimed her company all the morning, and with the pertinacity of her kind soon guessed the very obvious secret. Her gushing congratulations drove the girl distracted. She praised the good Stocks, and Alice drank in the comfort of such words with greedy ears.

From one young man she pa.s.sed to another, and hung lovingly over the perfections of Mr. Haystoun. "He has the real distinction, dear," she cried, "which you can never mistake. It only belongs to old blood and it is quite inimitable. His friends are so charming, too, and you can always tell a man by his people. It is so pleasant to fall in with old acquaintances again. That dear Lady Clanroyden promised to come over soon. I quite long to see her, for I feel as if I had known her for ages."

After lunch Alice fled the house and sought her old refuge--the hills.

There she would find the deep solitude for thought. She was not broken-hearted, though she grieved now and again with a blind longing of regret. But she was confused and shaken; the landmarks of her vision seemed to have been removed, and she had to face the grim narrowing-down of hopes which is the sternest trial for poor mortality.

Autumn's hand was lying heavy on the hillsides. Bracken was yellowing, heather pa.s.sing from bloom, and the clumps of wild-wood taking the soft russet and purple of decline. Faint odours of wood smoke seemed to flit over the moor, and the sharp lines of the hill fastnesses were drawn as with a graving-tool against the sky. She resolved to go to the Midburn and climb up the cleft, for the place was still a centre of memory. So she kept for a mile to the Etterick road, till she came in view of the little stone bridge where the highway spans the moorland waters.

There had been intruders in Paradise before her. Broken bottles and sc.r.a.ps of paper were defacing the hill turf, and when she turned to get to the water's edge she found the rushy coverts trampled on every side.

From somewhere among the trees came the sound of singing--a silly music-hall catch. It was a sharp surprise, and the girl, in horror at the profanation, was turning in all haste to leave.

But the Fates had prepared an adventure. Three half-tipsy men came swinging down the slope, their arms linked together, and bowlers set rakishly on the backs of their heads. They kept up the chorus of the song which was being sung elsewhere, and they suited their rolling gait to the measure.

"For it ain't Maria," came the tender melody; and the rea.s.suring phrase was repeated a dozen times. Then by ill-luck they caught sight of the astonished Alice, and dropping their musical efforts they hailed her familiarly. Clearly they were the stragglers of some picnic from the town, the engaging type of gentleman who on such occasions is drunk by midday. They were dressed in ill-fitting Sunday clothes, great flowers beamed from their b.u.t.ton-holes, and after the fashion of their kind their waistcoats were unb.u.t.toned for comfort. The girl tried to go back by the way she had come, but to her horror she found that she was intercepted. The three gentlemen commanded her retreat.

They seemed comparatively sober, so she tried entreaty. "Please, let me pa.s.s," she said pleasantly. "I find I have taken the wrong road."

"No, you haven't, dearie," said one of the men, who from a superior neatness of apparel might have been a clerk. "You've come the right road, for you've met us. And now you're not going away." And he came forward with a protecting arm.

Alice, genuinely frightened, tried to cross the stream and escape by the other side. But the crossing was difficult, and she slipped at the outset and wet her ankles. One of the three lurched into the water after her, and withdrew with sundry oaths.

The poor girl was in sad perplexity. Before was an ugly rush of water and a leap beyond her strength; behind, three drunken men, their mouths full of endearment and scurrility. She looked despairingly to the level white road for the Perseus who should deliver her.

And to her joy the deliverer was not wanting. In the thick of the idiot shouting of the trio there came the clink-clank of a horse's feet and a young man came over the bridge. He saw the picture at a glance and its meaning; and it took him short time to be on his feet and then over the broken stone wall to the waterside. Suddenly to the girl's delight there appeared at the back of the roughs the inquiring, sunburnt face of Lewis.

The men turned and stared with hanging jaws. "Now, what the d.i.c.kens is this?" he cried, and catching two of their necks he pulled their heads together and then flung them apart.

The three seemed sobered by the apparition. "And what the h-ll is your business?" they cried conjointly; and one, a dark-browed fellow, doubled his fists and advanced.

Lewis stood regarding them with a smiling face and very bright, cross eyes. "Are you by way of insulting this lady? If you weren't drunk, I'd teach you manners. Get out of this in case I forget myself."

For answer the foremost of the men hit out. A glance convinced Lewis that there was enough sobriety to make a fight of it. "Miss Wishart ... Alice," he cried, "come back and go down to the road and see to my horse, please. I'll be down in a second."

The girl obeyed, and so it fell out that there was no witness to that burn-side encounter. It was a complex fight and it lasted for more than a second. Two of the men had the grace to feel ashamed of themselves half-way through, and retired from the contest with shaky limbs and aching faces. The third had to be a.s.sisted to his feet in the end by his antagonist. It was not a good fight, for the three were pasty-faced, overgrown young men, in no training and stupid with liquor.