We Two Part 44

At last the dressing bell rang, and Leslie took out his watch with an air of surprise.

"The afternoon has flown!" he exclaimed. "I had no idea it was so late.

I wanted to ask you, by the bye, whether I could see the coffee tavern at Greyshot. We are going to start one down at our place, and I want to see one or two well-managed ones first. Whereabouts is it? I think I'll ride on now, and have a look at it."

"Dine with us first," said Donovan, "and I'll ride over with you between eight and nine, that is the best time for seeing it in full swing."

So Leslie Cunningham stayed to dinner, and talked a great deal about temperance work, but did not succeed in blinding his host, who knew well enough that Erica had been the real cause of his desire to go over to Greyshot.

Temperance, however, proved a fortunate subject, for it was, of course, one in which she was deeply interested, all the more so now that it formed one of the strongest bonds remaining between herself and her father's followers. A large number of the Raeburnites were either teetotalers or very strong temperance advocates, and Erica, who was constantly out and about in the poorer parts of London, had realized forcibly the terrible national evil, and was an enthusiastic temperance worker.

Donovan, perhaps out of malice prepense, administered a good many dry details about the management of coffee taverns, personal supervision, Etzenberger's machines, the necessity of a good site and attractive building, etc., etc. Erica only wished that Tom could have been there, he would have been so thoroughly in his element. By and by the conversation drifted away to other matters. And as Leslie Cunningham was a good and very amusing talker, and Gladys the perfection of a hostess, the dinner proved very lively, an extraordinary contrast to the dreary, vapid table talk to which Erica had lately been accustomed. After the ladies had left the room, Donovan, rather to his amus.e.m.e.nt, found the talk veering round to Luke Raeburn. Presently, Leslie Cunningham hazarded a direct question about Erica in a would-be indifferent tone.

In reply, Donovan told him briefly and without comment what he knew of her history, keeping on the surface of things and speaking always with a sort of careful restraint. He was never very fond of discussing people, and perhaps in this case the realization of the thousand objections to any serious outcome of Leslie's sudden admiration strengthened his reserve. However, fate was apparently kinder though perhaps really more cruel than the host, for Donovan was summoned into the library to interview an aggrieved const.i.tuent, and Leslie finding his way to the drawing room, was only too delighted to meet Gladys going upstairs to see her children.

The lamps were lighted in the drawing room, but the curtains were not drawn, and beside the open window he saw a slim, white-robed figure.

Erica was looking out into the gathering darkness. He crossed the room, and stood beside her, his heart beating quickly, all the more because she did not move or take any notice of his presence. It was unconventional, but perhaps because he was so weary of the ordinary young ladies who invariably smiled and fluttered the moment he approached them, and were so perfectly ready to make much of him, this unconventionality attracted him. He watched her for a minute in silence.

She was very happy, and was looking her loveliest. Presently she turned.

"I think it is the stillness which is so wonderful!" she exclaimed.

It was spoken with the frankness of a child, with the spontaneous confidence of the pure child-nature, which instinctively recognizes all the lovable and trustable. The clear, golden eyes looked right into his for a moment. A strange reverence awoke within him. He had seen more beautiful eyes before, but none so entirely wanting in that unreality of expression arising from a wish to produce an effect, none so beautifully sincere.

"The country stillness, you mean?" he replied.

"Yes; it is rest in itself. I have never stayed in the country before."

"Is it possible!" he exclaimed.

He had often languidly discussed the comparative advantages of Murren and Zermatt with girls who took a yearly tour abroad as naturally as their dinner, but to talk to one who had spent her whole life in towns, who could enjoy a country evening so absolutely and unaffectedly, was a strange and delightful novelty.

"You are one of those who can really enjoy," he said. "You are not blasee you are one of the happy mortals who keep the faculty of enjoyment as strongly all through life as in childhood."

"Yes, I think I can enjoy," said Erica. "But I suppose we pay for our extra faculty of enjoyment.

"You mean by being more sensitive to pain?"

"Yes, though that sounds rather like d.i.c.kens's Mrs. Gummidge, when she thought she felt smoky chimneys more than other people."

He laughed.

"How I wish you could turn over your work to me, and go to Switzerland tomorrow in my place! Only I should wish to be there, too, for the sake of seeing you enjoy it."

"Do you go tomorrow?"

"Yes, with my father."

"Ah! How delightful! I confess I do envy you a little. I do long to see snow mountains. Always living in London makes me--"

He interrupted her with a sort of exclamation of horror.

"Oh! Don't abuse London!" she said, laughing. "If one must live all the year round in one place, I would rather be there than anywhere. When I hear people abusing it, I always think they don't know how to use their eyes. What can be more lovely, for instance, than the view from Greenwich Park by the observatory? Don't you know that beautiful clump of Scotch firs in the foreground, and then the glimpse of the river through the trees? And then there is that lovely part by Queen Elizabeth's oak. The view in Hyde Park, too, over the Serpentine, how exquisite that is on a summer afternoon, with the Westminster towers standing up in a golden haze. Or Kensington Gardens in the autumn, when the leaves are turning, and there is blue mist in the background against the dark tree trunks. I think I love every inch of London!"

Leslie Cunningham would have listened to the praises of the Black Country, if only for the sake of hearing her voice.

"Well, as far as England goes, you are in the right place for scenery now; I know a few lovelier parts than this."

"What are those lights on the lower terrace?" asked Erica, suddenly.

"Glow worms. Have you never seen them? Come and look at them nearer."

"Oh, I should like to!" she said, with the charming enthusiasm and eagerness which delighted him so much.

To guide her down the steps in the dusky garden, to feel her hand on his arm, to hear her fresh, naive remarks, and then to recall what Donovan Farrant had just told him about her strange, sad story, all seemed to draw him on irresistibly. He had had three or four tolerably serious flirtations, but now he knew that he had never before really loved.

Erica was delighted with the glow worms, and delighted with the dewy fragrance of the garden, and delighted with the soft, balmy stillness of the night. She was one of those who revel in Nature, and all that she said was evidently the overflow of a rapturous happiness, curiously contrasting with the ordinary set remarks of admiration, or falsely sentimental outbursts too much in vogue. But Leslie Cunningham found that the child-likeness was not only in manner, but that Erica had no idea of flirting; she was bright, and merry, and talkative, but she had no thought, no desire of attracting his attention. She had actually and literally come out into the garden to see the glow worms, not to monopolize the much-run-after young M.P, and as soon as she had seen them she said she felt cold, and suggested going back again.

He was disappointed, but the words were so perfectly sincere, so free from suspicion of mere conventionality, that there was nothing for it but to return. Half amused, half piqued, but wholly in love, he speedily forgot himself in real anxiety.

"I hope you haven't taken cold," he said, with great solicitude.

"Oh, no," said Erica; "but I want to be careful for the night-school work will be beginning soon, and I must go home fresh for that."

Something in her words broke the spell of perfect happiness which had hitherto held him. Was it the mention of her every-day life, with its surroundings unknown to him? Or was it some faint perception that in the world of duty to which she referred their paths could not rightly converge? A cold chill crept over him.

"You were quite right," he said with an involuntary shiver. "It is decidedly cold out here; the mist rises from the river, I expect, or else your reference to the working-day world has recalled me from fairy-land. You should not speak of work in such a place as this it is incongruous."

She smiled.

"Ernst ist das leben," she replied quietly. "One can't forget that even at such a time as this, and in such a place."

"How is it that some never forget that for a moment, while others never remember it at all?" he said musingly.

"Some of us have no excuse for ever forgetting," she answered "hardly a chance either."

And though the words were vague, they shadowed out to him much of her life a life never free from sorrow, burdened with constant care and anxiety, and ever confronted by some of the most perplexing world problems. A longing to shield, and protect, and comfort her rose in his heart, yet all the time he instinctively knew that hers was the stronger nature.

It seemed that the seriousness of life was to be borne in upon them specially that evening, for, returning to the drawing room, they found Donovan released from his interview, and relating with some indignation the pitiable story he had just heard. It only reached Leslie Cunningham in fragments, however over crowding, children sleeping six in a bed, two of them with scarlet fever, no fever hospital, no accommodation for them, an inspector, medical officer, the board how drearily dry all the details seemed to him. He could do nothing but watch Erica's eager face with its ever-varying play of expression. He hardly knew whether to be angry with Donovan Farrant for alluding to matters which brought a look of sadness to her eyes, or to thank him for the story which made her face light up with indignation and look, if possible, more beautiful than before.

"Don't offer to put up a fever shanty on the lawn," said Gladys when her husband paused.

"I wish we had an empty cottage where we could put them" said Donovan; "but I am afraid all I can do is to bring pressure to bear upon the authorities. We'll ride over together, Cunningham, and Jack Trevethan, our manager, shall show you the tavern while I rout out this medical officer."

They had had tea; there was no longer any excuse for delaying. Leslie, with an outward smile and an inward sigh, turned to take leave of Erica.

She was bending over a basket in which was curled up the invalid fox terrier. For a moment she left off stroking the white and tan head, and held out her hand.

"Goodbye," she said frankly.

That was all. And yet it made Leslie's heart bound. Was he indeed to go to Switzerland tomorrow? He MUST manage to get out of it somehow.

And all the way to Greyshot he listened to schemes for the work to be done next session from the ardent sanitary reformer, though just then the devastation of all England would scarcely have roused him so long as he was a.s.sured of the safety of Luke Raeburn's daughter.