Tiny Luttrell Part 9

CHAPTER VI.

A MATTER OF ANCIENT HISTORY.

The focusing cloth clung to her head like a cowl as she raised it and bowed. There must have been nervousness on both sides, for the moment, but it did not prevent Lord Manister from taking off his hat with a sweep and swiftness that amounted almost to a flourish, nor Christina from noticing this and his clothes. He was so admirably attired in summer gray that she took pleasure in reflecting that she was herself unusually shabby, her idea being that contact with the incorrect was rather good for him. Correctness of any kind, it is to be feared, was ridiculously wrong in her eyes. Otherwise she might have been different herself.

"I knew it was you!" Lord Manister declared, having shaken her hand.

"How could you know?" said Christina, smiling. "You must be very clever."

"I wish I was. No; I met your brother running like anything with some wooden things under his arm. He wouldn't see me, but I saw him. I was going to pull up, but he wouldn't see me."

Miss Luttrell explained that her brother had gone back for plates, which they had both very stupidly forgotten; she added that she was sure he could not have recognized Lord Manister.

"Plates!" said this n.o.bleman. "Ah, they're important, I know."

"Well, they're your cartridges; you can't shoot anything without them."

Lord Manister gave a louder laugh than the remark merited; then he studied his boots among the daisies. Christina smiled as she watched him, until he looked up briskly, and nearly caught her.

"I say, Miss Luttrell, I should like immensely to be on in this scene, if you would let me! I mean to say I should like to see the thing taken.

Perhaps you could do with the trap and my mare on the bridge; she's something special, I a.s.sure you. And I have been thinking--if you think so too--that my man might go back for your brother and give him a lift.

It must be monstrous hot walking. It's a monstrous hot day, you know."

This was not only an exaggeration, but a puff of smoke revealing hidden fires within the young man's head. Christina fanned the fire until it tinged his cheek by willfully hesitating before giving him a gracious answer. For when she spoke it was to say, with a smile at his anxiety, "Really, you are very considerate, Lord Manister, and I am sure Herbert will be grateful." They walked to the bridge, and stood upon it the next minute, watching the dogcart swing out of sight where the road bent.

"Your brother is very likely halfway back by this time," remarked Lord Manister, who would have been very sorry to believe what he was saying.

"I dare say my man will pick him up directly; if so, they'll be back in a minute."

"I hope they will," said Christina--"the light is so excellent just now," she was in a hurry to add.

"Ah, the light in Australia was better for this sort of thing."

"As a rule, yes; but it would surely be difficult to beat this morning anywhere; the great thing is, over here, that you are so free from glare."

"Then you like England?"

"Well, I must say I like this corner of England; I haven't seen much else, you know."

"Good! I am glad you like this corner; you know it's ours," said the young fellow simply. Then he paused. "How strange to meet you here, though!" he added, as if he could not help it, nor the slight stress that laid itself upon the personal p.r.o.noun.

"It should rather strike me as strange to meet you," Miss Luttrell replied pointedly; "for I am sure I told you that my sister and her husband had taken Essingham Rectory for August. You may have forgotten the occasion. It was in London."

"Dear me, no, I'm not likely to forget it. To be sure you told me--at Lady Almeric's."

"Then perhaps you remember saying that you knew _of_ Essingham?"

It was not, perhaps, because this was very dryly said that Lord Manister smiled. Nor was the smile one of his best, which were charming; it was visibly the expression of his nervousness, not his mirth.

"Yes, I am sorry to say I do remember that," he confessed with an awkwardness and humility which made Christina tingle in a sudden appreciation of his position in the world. "It was very foolish of me, Miss Luttrell."

"I wonder what made you?" remarked Christina reflectively, but in a friendlier tone.

"Ah! don't wonder," he said impatiently. His eyes fell upon her for one moment, then wandered down the road, as he added strangely: "You do and say so many foolish things without a decent why or wherefore. They're the things for which you never forgive yourself! They're the things for which you never hope to be forgiven!"

The girl did not look at him, but her glance chased his down the road to the bend where the dogcart had vanished and would reappear. She, however, was the next to speak, for something had occurred to her that she very much desired to explain.

"You see, I didn't know you lived here. I had never heard of Mundham when we met in town; if I had I shouldn't have known it was yours. I never dreamt that I should meet you here. You understand, Lord Manister?"

"My dear Miss Luttrell," cried Manister earnestly, "anybody could see that!"

So Christina lost nothing by her little exhibition of anxiety to impress this point upon him; for his reply was a triumphant flourish of the opinion she desired him to hold, to show her that he had it already; and his anxiety in the matter was even more apparent than her own.

"Thank you, Lord Manister," said Christina, looking him full in the face. Then her glance dropped to his hand; and his fingers were entangled in his watch-chain; and in the knowledge that the greater awkwardness was on his side she raised her eyes confidently, and met the dogged stare of a young Briton about to make a clean breast of his misdeeds.

"Do you want to know why I didn't mention our having taken this place--that time in town?"

"That depends on whether you want to tell me."

"I must tell you. It was because I feared--I mean to say, it crossed my mind--that perhaps you mightn't care to come here if you knew."

He paused and watched her. She was looking down, with her chin half buried in the focusing cloth, which had slipped from her head and fallen round her shoulders. The coolness of her face against the black velvet exasperated him, and the more so because he felt himself flushing as he added, "I see I was a fool to fear that."

"It was certainly unnecessary, Lord Manister," said the girl calmly, and not without a note of amus.e.m.e.nt in her voice.

"So you don't mind meeting one!"

"Lord Manister, I am delighted. Why should I mind?"

"You know I behaved like a brute."

"You did, I'm afraid." He winced. "You went away without saying good-by to your friends."

"I went away without saying good-by to you."

"Among others."

"No!" he cried sharply. "You and I were more than friends."

Christina drummed the ground with one foot. Her glance pa.s.sed over Lord Manister's shoulder. He knew that it waited for the dogcart at the bend of the road.

"We were more than friends," he repeated desperately.

"I don't think we ever were."

"But you thought so once!"

The girl's lip curled, but her eyes still waited in the road.