The Odds Part 25

"Bless your heart," said Jerry, lifting her fingertips to his lips, "I won't utter a syllable, good or bad, without your express permission.

You'll come, then?"

"Yes, I'll come," she said, allowing the smile that would not be suppressed. "But if you don't make it very nice, I shall never come again."

"All right," said Jerry cheerily. "I'll bring my banjo. You always like that. Come early, like a saint. I'll be at the boat-house at eleven."

He was; and Nan was not long after. The lake stretched for about a mile in the squire's park, and many were the happy hours that they had spent upon it.

It was a day of perfect summer, and they drifted through it in sublime enjoyment. Jerry soon discovered that the girl's marriage and anything remotely connected with it were subjects to be avoided, and as he had no great wish himself to investigate in that direction he found small difficulty in confining himself to more familiar ground. Without effort they resumed the old friendly intercourse that the girl's rash step had threatened to cut short, and long before the end of the afternoon they were as intimate as they had ever been.

"You mustn't go in yet," insisted Jerry, when a distant clock struck seven. "Wait another couple of hours. There's plenty of food left. And the moonrise will be grand to-night."

Nan did not need much persuading. She had always loved the lake, and Jerry's society was generally congenial. He had, moreover, been taking special pains to please her, and she was quite willing to be pleased.

She consented, therefore, and Jerry punted her across to her favourite nook for supper. She thoroughly enjoyed the repast, Jerry's ideas of what a picnic-basket should contain being of a decidedly lavish order.

The meal over, he took up his banjo and waxed sentimental. Nan lay among her cushions and listened in sympathetic silence. Undeniably Jerry knew how to make music, and he also knew when to stop--a priceless gift in Nan's estimation.

When the moon rose at last out of the summer haze, he had laid his instrument aside and was lying with his head on his arms and his face to the rising glory. They watched it dumbly in the silence of goodfellowship, till at last it topped the willows and shone in a broad, silver streak across the lake right up to the prow of the boat.

After a long time Jerry turned his dark head.

"I say, Nan!" he said, almost in a whisper.

"Yes?" she murmured back, her eyes still full of the splendour. The boy raised himself a little.

"Do you remember that day ever so long ago when we played at being sweethearts on this very identical spot?" he asked her softly.

She turned her eyes to his with a doubtful, questioning look.

"We weren't in earnest, Jerry," she reminded him.

He jerked one shoulder with a sharp, impatient gesture, highly characteristic of him.

"I know we weren't. I shan't dream of being in earnest in that way for another ten--perhaps twenty--years. But there's no harm in making believe, is there, just now and then? I liked that game awfully, and so did you. You know you did."

Nan did not attempt to deny it. She sat up instead with her hands clasped round her knees and laughed like an elf.

Her wedding-ring caught the moonlight, and the boy leaned forward with a frown.

"Take that thing off, won't you, just for to-night? I hate to think you're married. You're not, you know. We're in fairyland, and married people never go there. The fairies will turn you out if they see it."

Very gently he inserted one finger between her clasped ones and began to draw the emblem off.

Nan made no resistance whatever. She only sat and laughed. She was in her gayest, most inconsequent mood. Some magic of the moonlight was in her veins that night.

"There!" said Jerry triumphantly. "Now you are safe. Jove! Did you hear that water-sprite gurgling under the boat? It must be ripping to be a water-sprite. Can't you see them, Nan, whisking about down there in couples along the stones? Give me your hand, and we'll dive under and join them."

But Nan's enthusiasm would not stretch to this. She fully understood his mood, but she would only sit in the moonlight and laugh, till presently Jerry, infected by her merriment, began to laugh too, and spun the ring he had filched from her high into the moonlight.

How it happened neither of them could ever afterwards say; but just at that critical moment when the ring was glittering in mid-air, some wayward current, or it might have been the water-sprite Jerry had just detected, lapped the water smartly against the punt and b.u.mped it against the bank. Jerry exclaimed and nearly overbalanced backwards; Nan made a hasty grab at her falling property, but her hand only collided with his, making a similar grab at the same moment, and between them they sent the ring spinning far out into the moonlit ripples.

It disappeared before their dazzled eyes into that magic bar of light, and the girl and the boy turned and gazed at one another in speechless consternation.

Nan was the first to recover. She drew a deep breath, and burst into a merry peal of laughter.

"My dear boy, for pity's sake don't look like that! I never saw anything so absolutely tragic in my life. Why, what does it matter? I can buy another. I can buy fifty if I want them."

Thus rea.s.sured, Jerry began to laugh too, but not with Nan's abandonment.

The incident had had a sobering effect upon him.

"But I'm awfully sorry," he protested. "All my fault. You must let me make it good."

This suggestion added to Nan's mirth. "Oh, I couldn't really. I should feel as if I was married to you, and I shouldn't like that at all. Now you needn't look cross, for you know you wouldn't either. No, don't be silly, Jerry. It doesn't matter the least little bit in the world."

"But, I say, won't the absent one be savage?" suggested Jerry.

Nan tossed her head. "I'm sure I don't know. Anyhow it doesn't matter."

"Do you really mean that?" he persisted. "Don't you really care?"

Nan threw herself back in the boat with her face to the stars.

"Why, of course not," she declared, with regal indifference. "How can you be so absurd?"

And in face of such sublime recklessness, he was obliged to be convinced.

CHAPTER IV

Nan's picnic on the lake was not concluded much before ten o'clock.

She ran home through the moonlight, bareheaded, whistling as carelessly as a boy. Night and day were the same thing to her in the place in which she had lived all her life. There was not one of the village folk whom she did not know, not one for whom the doings of the wild Everards did not provide food for discussion. For Nan undoubtedly was an Everard still, her grand wedding notwithstanding. No one ever dreamed of applying any other t.i.tle to her than the familiar "Miss Nan" that she had borne from her babyhood. There was, in fact, a general feeling that the unknown husband of Miss Nan was scarcely worthy of the high honour that had been bestowed upon him. His desertion of her on the very day succeeding the wedding had been freely criticised, and in many quarters condemned out of hand. No one knew the exact circ.u.mstances of the case, but all were agreed in p.r.o.nouncing Miss Nan's husband a defaulter.

That Miss Nan herself was very far from fretting over the situation was abundantly evident, but this fact did not in any way tend to justify the offender, of whom it was beginning to be opined round the bars of the village inns that he was "one o' them queer sort of cusses that it was best for women to steer clear of."

Naturally these interesting shreds of gossip never reached Nan's ears.

She was, as she had ever been, supremely free from self-consciousness of any description, and it never occurred to her that the situation in which she was placed was sufficiently peculiar to cause comment. The Everards had ever been a law unto themselves, and it was inconceivable that anyone should attempt to apply to them the conventional rules by which other people chose to let their lives be governed. Of course they were different from the rest of the world. It had been an accepted fact as long as she could remember, and it certainly had never troubled her, nor was it ever likely to do so.

She was sublimely unconscious of all criticism as she ran down the village street that night, nodding carelessly to any that she met, and finally turned lightly in at her father's gates, walking with elastic tread under the great arching beech trees that blotted the moonlight from her path.

The front door stood hospitably open, and she entered to find her father stretched in his favourite chair, smoking.

He greeted her with his usual gruff indulgence.

"Hallo, you mad-cap! I was just wondering whether I would scour the country for you, or leave the door open and go to bed. I think it was going to be the last, though, to be sure, it would have served you right if I had locked you out. Had any dinner?"