"Et voilà que vieillie et qu'infirme avant l'heure
Ta main tremble à jamais qui n'a jamais tremblé,
Voilà qu'encore plus haute et que toujours meilleure
L'âme seule est debout dans ton être accablé...."
P. D.
"Who ever rigged fair ships to lie in harbours?"
DONNE.
Mrs. Rebell was surprised to note the state and decorum with which the
meal to which she sat down in the dining-room was served. She looked
with some curiosity at the elderly impassive butler and the young
footman--where had they been at the moment of her arrival?
Barbara had yet to learn that implicit obedience to the wills of Doctor
McKirdy and of Mrs. Turke was the rule of life in Chancton Priory, but
that even they, who when apart were formidable, and when united
irresistible, had to give way when any of their fancies controverted a
desire, however lightly expressed, of their mistress.
Doctor McKirdy would long ago have abolished the office of butler, and
even more that of footman; it irked him that two human beings,--even
though one, that selected by himself, was a Scotchman,--should be eating
almost incessantly the bread of idleness. But Madame Sampiero had made
it clear that she wished the entertainment of her infrequent guests to
be carried on exactly as if she herself were still coming and going with
fleet, graceful steps about the house of which she had been for so many
years the proud and happy mistress. She liked to feel that she was still
dispensing hospitality in the stately dining-room, from the walls of
which looked down an odd collection of family portraits, belonging to
every period of English history and of English art; some, indeed the
majority, so little worthy from the artistic point of view, that they
had been considered unfit to take their places on the cedarwood panels
of the great reception rooms.
* * * * *
Barbara found the doctor waiting for her in the hall, walking
impatiently up and down, his big head thrust forward, his hands clasped
behind his back. He was in high good humour, well pleased with the new
inmate of the Priory, and impressed more than he knew by Barbara's
fragile beauty and air of high breeding. In theory no living man was
less amenable to the influence of feminine charm or of outward
appearance, but in actual day-to-day life Alexander McKirdy, doubtless
owing to the old law of opposites, had a keen feeling for physical
perfection, and all unconsciously he abhorred ugliness.
As Mrs. Rebell came silently towards him from behind the Chinese screen
which concealed the door leading from the great hall to the dining-room,
he shot but at her a quick approving glance. Her white gown, made more
plainly than was the fashion of that hour, fell in austere folds about
her upright slender figure; the knowledge that she was about to see
Madame Sampiero had brought a flush to her pale cheeks and a light to
her dark eyes. Without a word the doctor turned and led the way up the
winding stair with which Barbara was already feeling a pleasant sense of
familiarity; an old staircase is the last of household strongholds which
surrenders to a stranger.
When they reached the landing opposite the music gallery, the doctor
turned down the wide corridor, and Barbara, with a sudden feeling of
surprise, realised that this upper floor had become the real
centre,--the heart, as it were,--of Chancton Priory. The great hall, the
drawing-room in which she had received Doctor McKirdy's odd confidences,
even the dining-room where a huge fire blazed in her honour, had about
them a strangely unlived-in and deserted air; but up here were light and
brightness, indeed, even some of the modern prettinesses of life,--huge
pots of fragrant hothouse flowers, soft rugs under-foot.
When opposite to the high door with which the corridor terminated,
Doctor McKirdy turned and looked for a moment at his companion; and, as
he did so, it seemed to Barbara that he was deliberately smoothing out
the deep lines carved by ever-present watchfulness and anxiety on the
rugged surface of his face. Then he knocked twice, sharp quick knocks,
signal-like in their precision; and, scarcely waiting for an answer, he
walked straight through, saying as he did so, "Just wait here a
moment--I will make you a sign when to come forward."
And then, standing just within the door, and gazing with almost painful
eagerness before her, Mrs. Rebell saw as in a vision that which
recalled, and to a startling degree, a great Roman lying-in-state to
which she had been taken, as a very young girl, during a winter spent by
her with her parents in Italy.
Between the door and the four curtainless windows, through one of which
now gleamed the young October moon, Barbara became aware that on a long
narrow couch, placed catafalque fashion, in the centre of the room, an
absolutely immobile figure lay stretched out. The light shed from
candles set in branching candlesticks about the room threw every detail
of the still figure, and especially of the head supported on high
pillows, into prominent relief.
From the black satin cushion on which rested two upright slippered feet,
the gazer's fascinated eyes travelled up--past the purple velvet gown
arranged straightly and stiffly from waist to hem, past the cross-over
lace shawl which almost wholly concealed the velvet bodice, and so to
the still beautiful oval face, and the elaborately dressed, thickly
powdered hair. On the mittened hands, stiffly folded together, gleamed a
diamond and a ruby. There was present no distortion--the whole figure,
only looking unnaturally long, was simply set in trembling immobility.
Madame Sampiero--the Barbara Rebell of another day--was still made up
for the part she chose to play to the restricted audience which
represented the great band of former adorers and friends, some of whom
would fain have been about her still had she been willing to admit them
to her presence in this, her time of humiliation.
As the door had opened, her large, wide open deep blue eyes, still full
of the pride of life, and capable of expressing an extraordinary amount
of feeling, turned with a flash of inquiry to the left, and a touch of
real colour--a sign of how deeply she was moved--came into the
delicately moulded, slightly rouged cheeks. The maid who stood by,--a
gaunt Scotchwoman who, by dint of Doctor McKirdy's fierceness of manner,
and the foreknowledge of constantly increased wages, had been turned
into little more than a trained automaton,--retreated noiselessly
through a door giving access to a room beyond, leaving the doctor, his
patient, and Mrs. Rebell alone.
Tears started to Barbara's eyes, but they were brought there, not so
much by the sight she saw before her, as by the sudden change which that
same sight seemed to produce in the elderly man who now stood by her.
Doctor McKirdy's whole manner had altered. He had become quite gentle,
and his face was even twisted into a wry smile as he put his small
strong hands over the trembling fingers of Madame Sampiero.
"Well, here's Mrs. Barbara Rebell at last!" he said, "and I'm minded to
think that Chancton Priory will find her a decided acquisition!"
Barbara was amazed, indescribably moved and touched, to see the light
which came over the stiff face, as the dark blue eyes met and became
fixed on her own. Words, nay, not words, but strange sounds
signifying--what did they signify?--came from the trembling lips. Mrs.
Rebell herself soon learned to interpret Madame Sampiero's muffled
utterances, but on this first occasion she thought Doctor McKirdy's
quick understanding and translating of her godmother's meaning almost
uncanny.
"Madam trusts you enjoyed a good journey," he said; and then, after
apparently listening intently for a moment to the hoarse muttered
sounds, "Ay, I've told her that already,--Madam wants you to understand
that the rooms prepared for you were those preferred by Mrs. Richard."
He bent forward, and put his hand to his ear, for even he had difficulty
in understanding the now whispered mutterings, "Ay, ay, I will tell her,
never fear--Madam wishes you to understand that there are some letters
of your mother's,--she thinks you would like to see them and she will
give them to you to-morrow. And now if you please she will say
good-night."
Following a sudden impulse, Mrs. Rebell bent down and kissed the
trembling mittened hands. "I do thank you," she said, almost inaudibly,
"very very gratefully for having allowed me to come here."
The words seemed, to the woman who uttered them, poor and inadequate,
for her heart was very full, but Doctor McKirdy, glancing sharply at
their still listener, saw that Madame Sampiero was content, and that his
experiment--for so the old Scotchman regarded the coming of Barbara
Rebell to Chancton--was likely to be successful.
* * * * *
Had Mrs. Rebell, as child and girl, lived the ordinary life of a young
Englishwoman, she would have realised, from the first moment of her
arrival at Chancton Priory, how strange, how abnormal were the
conditions of existence there; but the quiet solitude brooding over the
great house suited her mood, and soothed her sore humiliation of spirit.
As she moved about, that first morning, making acquaintance with each of
the stately deserted rooms lying to the right and left of the great
hall, and seeking to find likenesses to her father--ay, even to
herself--in the portraits of those dead and gone men and women whose
eyes seemed to follow her as she came and went among them, she felt a
deep voiceless regret in the knowledge that, but for so slight a chain
of accidents, here she might have come six years ago.
In fancy she saw herself, as in that case she would have been by now, a
woman perhaps in years--for Barbara, brought up entirely on the
Continent, thought girlhood ended at twenty--but a joyous single-hearted
creature, her only past a not unhappy girlhood, and six long peaceful
years spent in this beautiful place, well spent too in tending the
stricken woman to whom she already felt so close a tie of inherited love
and duty.
Ah! how much more vividly that which might have been came before her
when she heard the words with which Mrs. Turke greeted her--Mrs. Turke
resplendent in a black satin gown, much flounced and gathered, trimmed
with bright red bows, and set off by a coral necklace.
"I do hope and trust, Miss Barbara"----and then she stopped, laughing
shrilly at herself, "What am I saying?--well to be sure!--I _am_ a silly
old woman, but it's Madam's fault,--she's said it to me and the doctor a
dozen times this fortnight, 'When Miss Barbara's come home so-and-so
will have to be done,'--And now that you are come home, Ma'am (don't you
be afraid that I'll be 'Missing' you again), I'll have the holland
covers taken off the furniture!"
For they were standing in the first of the two great drawing-rooms, and
Mrs. Turke looked round her ruefully: "I did want to have it done
yesterday, but the doctor he said, 'Let them be.' Of course I know
there'll be company kept now, and a good thing too! If it wasn't for the
coming here so constant of my own young gentleman--of Mr. James Berwick,
I mean--we would be perished with dulness. 'The more the
merrier'--you'll hardly believe, Ma'am, that such was used to be the
motto of Chancton Priory. That was long ago, in the days of Madam's good
father, and of her lady mother. I can remember them merry times well
enough, for I was born here, dear only daughter to the butler and to
Lady Barbara's own woman--that's what they called ladies' maids in those
days. Folk were born, married, and died in the same service."
"Then I suppose you have never left Chancton Priory?" Mrs. Rebell was
looking at the old woman with some curiosity.
"Oh! Lord bless you _yes_, Ma'am! I've seen a deal of the world. There
was an interlude, a most romantic affair, Miss Barbara--there I go
again--well, Ma'am, I'll tell you all about it some day. It's quite as
interesting as any printed tale. In fact there's one story that reminds
me very much indeed of my own romantic affair,--no doubt you've read
it,--Mr. James Berwick, he knows it quite well,--that of the Primrose
family. Olivia her name was, and she was deceived just as I was,--but
there, I made the best of it, and it all came to pass most
providentially. Why, they would never have reared Mr. Berwick if it
hadn't been for me and my being able to suckle the dear lamb, and
_there_ would have been a misfortune for our dear country!"
A half shuffling step coming across the hall checked, as if by magic,
Mrs. Turke's flow of reminiscence. She looked deprecatingly into
Barbara's face. "You won't be mentioning what I've been telling you to
the doctor, will you, Ma'am? He hates anything romantic, that he do, and
as for love and poetry,--well, he don't even know the meaning of those
expressions! I've often had to say that right out to his face!"
"And then what does he say?"
"It just depends on the mood he's in: sometimes--I'm sorry to say it of
him, that I am--he uses most coarse expressions,--quite rude ones! Only
yesterday, he said to me, 'If you will talk about spades, Mrs. Turke,
then talk about spades, don't call them silver spoons,'--as if I would
do such a silly thing! But there, he do lead such a horrid life, all
alone in that little house of his, it's small wonder he don't quite know
how to converse with a refined person. But he's wonderfully
educated--Madam's always thought a deal of him."
As Doctor McKirdy opened the door Mrs. Turke slipped quickly past him,
and silently he watched her go, with no jibe ready. He was looking
straight at Mrs. Rebell, hesitating, even reddening dully, an odd
expression in his light eyes.
Barbara's heart sank,--what was he going to tell her?--what painful
thing had he to say? Then he came close to her, and thrust a large open
envelope into her hand. "Madam bid me give you these," he said; "when
you are wanting anything, just send one or more along by post,--duly
registered, of course,"--and under her hand Barbara felt the crinkle of
bank notes. "She would like you to get your things, your clothes and a'
that, from Paris. Old Léonie, Madam's French maid,--I don't think you've
seen her yet,--will give you the addresses. Madam likes those about her
to look well. I'm the only one that has any licence that way--oh! and
something considerably more valuable she has also sent you," he fumbled
in his pocket and held out a small gilt key. "Madam desires you to take
her writing-table, here, for your own use. Inside you'll find the
letters she spoke of yesterday night--those written by Mrs.
Richard,--the other packets, you will please, she says, not disturb."
He waited a moment, then walked across to the Louis XV. escritoire which
was so placed at right angles to one of the windows that it commanded
the whole wide view of woods, sea, and sky. "Now," he said, "be pleased
to place that envelope in there, and turn the key yourself." As Barbara
obeyed him, her hand fumbling with the lock, he added with a look of
relief, "After business, let's come to pleasure. Would you be feeling
inclined for a walk? Madam will be expecting you to tell her what you
think of the place. She's interested in every little thing about it."
Doctor McKirdy hurried her through into the hall, and Barbara was
grateful indeed that he took no notice and seemed oblivious of the
tears--tears of oppressed, moved gratitude--which were trickling slowly
down her cheeks. "Don't go upstairs to your room,--no bonneting is
wanted here!" he said quickly, "just put this on." He brought her the
long white yachting cloak, yet another gift, this time disguised as a
loan, of Grace Johnstone, and after he had folded it round her with
kindly clumsy hands, and when she had drawn the white hood over her dark
hair,--"You look very well in that," he observed, in the tone in which
he might have spoken to a pretty child, "I'm minded to take you up to
Madam and let her see you so--and yet--no, we've not so long a time
before your dinner will be coming," and so they passed through the porch
into the open air.
* * * * *
Alexander McKirdy had come to have something of the pride of ownership
in Chancton Priory, and as he walked his companion quickly this way and
that,--making no attempt to suit his pace to hers,--he told her much
that she remembered afterwards, and which amused and interested her at
the time, of the people who had lived in the splendid old house. The
life-stories of some of Barbara's forbears had struck the Scotchman's
whimsical fancy, and he had burrowed much in the muniment room where
were kept many curious manuscripts, for the Rebells had ever been
cultivated beyond the usual degree of Sussex squiredom.
When they had skirted the wide lawns, the doctor hurried her through a
small plantation of high elms to the stables. In this large quadrangular
building of red brick, wholly encompassed by trees, reigned a great air
of desolation: there were three horses stabled where there had once been
forty, and as they passed out from the courtyard where grass grew
between each stone, Barbara asked rather timidly, for her liking for the
doctor was still tempered by something very like fear, "Why are there no
flowers? I thought in England there were always flowers."
Now Doctor McKirdy was unaccustomed to hear even the smallest word of
criticism of Chancton Priory. "What do ye want flowers for?" he growled
out, "grass and trees are much less perishable. Is not this prospect
more grand and more permanently pleasing than that which would be
produced by flowers? Besides, you've got the borders close to the
house."
He had brought her to an opening in the high trees which formed a
rampart to the lawn in front of the Priory, and, with his lean arm
stretched out, he was pointing down a broad grass drive, now flecked
with long shafts of golden October sunlight. On one side of this grassy
way rose a holly hedge, and on the other, under the trees, was a drift
of beech leaves.
Turning round, Barbara suddenly gave a cry of delight; set in an arch,
cut out of the dense wall of holly, was a small iron gate, and through
the aperture so made could be seen a rose garden, the ancient rosery of
Chancton Priory, now a tangle of exquisite colouring, a spot evidently
jealously guarded and hidden away even from those few to whom the
familiar beauties of the place were free.
Doctor McKirdy followed her gaze with softened melancholy eyes. He had
not meant to bring Mrs. Rebell to this spot, but silently he opened the
little iron gate, and stood holding it back for her to pass through into
the narrow rose-bordered way.
Surrounded by beech trees and high hedges, the rosery had evidently been
designed long before the days of scientific gardening, but in the
shadowed enclosure many of the summer roses were still blooming. And yet
a feeling of oppression came over Barbara as she walked slowly down the
mossy path: this lovely garden, whose very formality of arrangement was
an added grace, looked not so much neglected as abandoned, uncared for.
As the two walked slowly on side by side, they came at last to a
fantastic fountain, set in the centre of the rosery, stone cupids
shaking slender jets of water from rose-laden cornucopias, and so to the
very end of the garden--that furthest from the Priory. It was bounded by
a high red brick wall, probably all that remained of some building older
than the rosery, for it had been cleverly utilised to serve as a
background and shelter to the earliest spring roses, and was now bare of
blossom, almost of leaves. In the centre of this wall, built into the
old brick surface, was an elaborate black and white marble tablet or
monument, on which was engraved the following inscription:--
"Hic, ubi ludebas vagula olim et blandula virgo,
Julia, defendunt membra foventque rosæ.
Laetius ah quid te tenuit, quid purius, orbis?--
Nunc solum mater quod fueris meminit"
"What is it? What is written there?" Barbara asked with some eagerness.
"How strange a thing to find in a rose garden!"
She had turned to her companion, but for a while he made no answer. Then
at last, speaking with an even stronger burr than usual, Doctor McKirdy
translated, in a quiet emotionless voice, the inscription which had been
composed by Lord Bosworth, at the bidding of Madame Sampiero, to the
memory of their beloved child.
"Here, where thou wert wont once to play, a little sweet
wandering maid, Julia, the roses protect and cherish thy limbs.
Ah, what happier or purer thing than thee did the world contain?"
"Do ye wish to hear the rest?" he said, rather sharply, "'Twas put in
against my will and conscience, for 'tis false--false!"
She bent her head, and he read on,
"Now, only thy mother remembers that thou wast."
Barbara looked up, questions trembling on her lips, but her eyes dropped
as they met his. "Madam would have her put here," he said; "Julia's
garden,--that's what we used to call it, and that is what it still is,
for here she lies,--coffinless."
Again he pointed to the last line, "Madam ought not to have had that
added when there's not a man or woman about the place who's forgotten
the child! But beyond the walls,--ah! well, who knows what is remembered
beyond the walls?"
"What do you mean?" asked Barbara in a low tone; out of the past she was
remembering a June day at St. Germains. What had she been promised?--ah,
yes! "the sweetest of playfellows."
"Well, I was just meaning that Madam, when she made us put in those
words, was thinking may-be of some who do not belong to the Priory, who
live beyond the walls. I make no doubt that those folk have no time to
cast their minds back so far as to remember little Julia."
He turned sharply round and walked as if in haste through the garden,
his head thrust forward, his hands clasped behind his back, in what
Barbara already knew to be his favourite attitude.
Once outside the gate, Doctor McKirdy looked long, first towards the
Priory, then down the broad grass drive. "And now," he said briskly,
"let's get away to the downs,--there's more air out there than here!"
* * * * *
The road leading from the Priory gates to the open downs lay along a
western curve of country-side, and was over-arched by great elms. To the
west Mrs. Rebell caught glimpses of a wide plain verging towards the
sea, and in the clear autumn air every tree and bush flamed with glory
of gold and russet.
As they walked along the white chalky ridged cart track, the doctor
looked kindly enough at the woman by his side. She was not beautiful as
had been her mother, and yet he saw that her features were very perfect,
and that health,--perfect recovery from what had evidently been a bad
illness,--might give her the bloom, the radiance, which were now
lacking. The old Scotchman also told himself with satisfaction that she
was intelligent--probably cultivated. With the one supreme exception of
Madame Sampiero, Doctor McKirdy had had very little to do with
intelligent women; but Barbara, from her way of listening to his stories
of Chancton Priory, from her questions and her answers, had proved--or
so thought the doctor--that she was one of the very few members of her
sex who take the trouble to think for themselves.
"I suppose Mr. Sampiero is dead?"
Never was man more unpleasantly roused from an agreeable train of
thought.
"He was dead last time we heard of him, but that happened once before,
and then he came to life again--and most inopportunely."
There was a pause, and Doctor McKirdy added, in a tone which from him
was new to Barbara, "I wonder if you are one to take offence, even if
the offensive thing be said for your own exclusive benefit?" He did not
wait for her reply, "I think you should just be informed that the
man--that individual to whom you referred--is never to be mentioned.
Here at Chancton he is forgotten, completely obliterated--wiped out." He
made a fierce gesture as though his strong hands were destroying,
crushing the life out of, some vile thing.
"Since I came here, thirty years ago, no one has dared to speak of him
to me, and the only time that Madam had to communicate with me about him
she wrote what she had to say--I, making answer to her, followed the
same course. I thought, may-be, I'd better let you know how he is felt
about in this place."
"I am sorry," faltered Barbara. "I did not know--My father and mother
told me so little----"
"They're a fearsome gossiping lot in Chancton," Doctor McKirdy was still
speaking in an angry ruffled voice; "I don't suppose you'll have much
call to see any of them, but Madam may just mean you to do so, and you
may as well be put on your guard. And then you'll be having your own
friends here, I'm thinking"--he shot a quick look at her--"Madam bid me
tell you that she has no idea of your shutting yourself up, and having
no company but Mrs. Turke and,"--he turned and made her an odd, ungainly
little bow--"your most humble servant here!"
"I have no friends," said Barbara, in a very low tone. "Nay, I should
not say that, for I have two very good friends, a Mr. Johnstone, the
Governor of Santa Maria, and his wife--also, since yesterday, a
third,--if he will take me on trust for my mother's sake." She smiled on
her companion with a touch of very innocent coquetry. Doctor McKirdy's
good humour came back.
"Ay," he said, "there's no doubt about that _third_ friend," but his
brow clouded as Barbara added, "There is one person in Chancton I'm very
anxious to see,--a Mrs. Boringdon. She is the mother of my friend Mrs.
Johnstone."
The mention of this lady's name found Doctor McKirdy quite prepared, and
ready with an answer. "Well, I'm not saying you'll like her, and I'm not
saying you'll dislike her."
"If she's at all like her daughter I know I shall like her."
"May-be you will prefer the son, Mr. Oliver Boringdon--I do so myself,
though I've no love to waste on him."
How the doctor longed to tell Mrs. Rebell what he really thought of this
Mrs. Boringdon, the mother of Madame Sampiero's estate agent, and of how
badly from his point of view this same young gentleman, Oliver
Boringdon, sometimes behaved to him! But native caution, a shrewd
knowledge that such warnings often bring about the exact opposite to
what is intended by those who utter them, kept him silent.
Barbara's next words annoyed him keenly.
"Oliver!" she cried, "of course I shall like him!"
"Oliver? Then you're already acquainted with him?" The doctor felt
beside himself with vexation. He was a man of feuds, and to him the land
agent, all the more so that he was a highly educated man, who had been a
civil servant, and later, for a brief period of glory, a member of
Parliament, was a very real thorn in the flesh.
But Barbara was laughing, really laughing, and for the first time since
her arrival at Chancton. "If I were acquainted with him," she cried,
"surely I should not be calling him by his Christian name! But of course
his sister, Mrs. Johnstone, has talked to me of him: he is her only
brother, and she thinks him quite perfect."
"It's well there are two to think him so! I refer, o' course, Ma'am, to
the youth himself, and to this lady who is a friend of yours."
"Is he conceited? Oh! what a pity!"
"Conceited?" Doctor McKirdy prided himself on his sense of strict
justice and probity: "Nay, nay, that's no' the word for it. Mr. Oliver
Boringdon just considers that he is always right, and that such a good
thinker as himself can never be wrong. He's encouraged in his ideas by
the silly women about here."
"Does my godmother like him?--he's her land-agent, isn't he?"
"Madam!" cried Doctor McKirdy indignantly, "Madam has never wasted a
thought upon him,--why should she?"
He looked quite angrily at his companion. Barbara was still smiling: a
delicate colour, the effect of walking against the wind, had come into
her face.
"They're all alike," growled the doctor to himself, "just mention a
young man to a young woman and smiling begins," but the harsh judgment,
like most harsh judgments, was singularly at fault. Poor Barbara was
waking up to life again, ready to take pleasure in the slightest matter
which touched her sense of humour. The doctor, however, had become
seriously uneasy. Why this strange interest in the Boringdons? Mrs.
Rebell now belonged to the Priory, and so was surely bound to adopt
without question all his, Alexander McKirdy's, views and prejudices. Her
next words fortunately gave him the opening he sought.
"I suppose there are many young ladies at Chancton?"
"There is just one," he said, brightening, "a fine upstanding lass. The
father of her is General Thomas Kemp. May-be you've heard of him, for
he's quite a hero, Victoria Cross and a' that, though the fools about
here don't recognise him as such."
"No," said Barbara, "I never heard of the heroic General Kemp."
Her eyes were brimming over with soft laughter. Living with her parents
first in one and then in another continental town, she had had as a
young girl many long solitary hours at her disposal, and she had then
read, with keen zest, numberless old-fashioned novels of English life.
This talk seemed to bring back to her mind many a favourite story, out
of which she had tried in the long ago to reconstruct the England she
had then so longed to know. Ah! now she must begin novel-reading again!
And so she said, "I suppose that Oliver Boringdon is in love with the
General's daughter."
Doctor McKirdy turned and looked at her, amazed and rather suspicious;
"you show great prescience--really remarkable prescience, Ma'am. I was
just about explaining to you that there is no doubt something like a
kindness betwixt them. There's another one likes her, a Captain Laxton,
but they say she won't have aught to say to him."
"Oh no! she must be true to Mr. Boringdon, and then, after a long
engagement,--oh! how wise to have a long engagement,"--Barbara sighed
instinctively--"they will be married in the little church which I look
down upon from my stone balcony? and then--why then they will live happy
ever after!"
"No, no, I cannot promise you that," said Doctor McKirdy gruffly, "that
would be forecasting a great deal too much!"
Even as he spoke the deeply rutted path was emerging abruptly on a vast
expanse of rolling uplands. They were now on the open down; Barbara laid
a detaining hand on the old Scotchman's arm, and looked about her with
enraptured eyes. Before her, to the east, lay a dark oasis, a
black-green stretch of fir plantation, redeemed a hundred years ago from
the close cropped turf, and a large white house looked out from thence
up the distant sea. To the north, some three miles away, rose the high
sky-line. A dense wood, said to be part of the primeval forest, crept
upwards on a parallel line. There, so says tradition, Boadicea made her
last stand, and across this down a Roman road still asserts the final
supremacy of the imperial force.
A sound of voices, of steady tramping feet, broke the exquisite
stillness. Towards them, on the path which at a certain point sharply
converged from that on which Doctor McKirdy and Barbara stood, advanced
Fate, coming in the shape of two men who were in sharp contrast the one
to the other.
Oliver Boringdon--dark, upright, steady-eyed--had still something of the
Londoner and of the Government official about his appearance. His dark,
close-cropped hair was covered by a neat cap which matched his serge
coat and knickerbockers. His companion, James Berwick, looked--as indeed
he was--far more a citizen of the world. He was bare-headed, his fair
hair ruffled and lifted from his lined forehead by the wind; his
shooting clothes, of rough tweed and ugly yellow check colouring, were
more or less out of shape. He was smoking a huge pipe, and as he walked
along, with rather ungainly steps--the gait of a man more at home in the
saddle than on foot--he swung an oak stick this way and that, now and
again throwing it in the air and catching it again--a trick which sorely
tried the patience of his staider companion.
When they reached the nearest point to Doctor McKirdy and Mrs. Rebell,
the one took off his cap and the other waved his stick vigorously by way
of greeting. Indeed Berwick, as Doctor McKirdy very well saw, would have
soon lessened the ten yards space between the two groups, but Boringdon,
looking before him rather more straightly than before, was already
walking on.
"Well," said the doctor, "you have now had your wish, Ma'am: that was
Mr. Oliver Boringdon, and the other is his fidus Achates, Mr. James
Berwick: _he's_ a conceited loon if you like. But then he's more reason
to be so! Now what d'ye think they reminded me of as they walked along
there?"
"I don't know," faltered Barbara. She was still feeling as if a sudden
blast of wind had beaten across her face--such had been the effect of
the piercing, measuring glance of the man whom she took to be Oliver
Boringdon. No doubt the over-bold look was excused by the fact that he
recognised in her his sister's friend. Barbara flushed deeply; she was
wondering, with acute discomfort, what account of her, and of her
affairs, Grace Johnstone--impetuous, indiscreet Grace--had written to
her mother and brother? Oh! surely she could be trusted to have kept
secret certain things she knew--things which had been discovered by the
Johnstones, and admitted by Barbara in her first moments of agonised
relief from Pedro Rebell's half-crazy ill-usage.
"Well, I'll tell you what the sight of the two of them suggested to me,"
went on Doctor McKirdy, "and in fact what they exactly appeared like,
just now,----" he hesitated a moment, and then with manifest enjoyment
added, "The policeman and the poacher! That's what any stranger might
well ha' taken them for, eh?" But Barbara had given no heed to the bold
gazer's more drab companion.