THE MEETING ON THE FOOT-BRIDGE.
Taking a short cut round by the moat, and crossing the stile above
the King's Arms, Ruth soon gained the river towing-path.
As the sights and sounds of the new day greeted her, she felt a
little cheered. One must have been wretched indeed not to have found
an agreeable distraction in the blithe bird chorus overhead, and the
buzzing of the insects in the young grass studded with the early
summer flowers, whose brilliant hues mirrored themselves in the clear
water rippling up into tiny bays to her very feet.
What a bright merry world it was! How hard to think that it had in
it any such thing as sorrow, or sin, or cruelty, or--and ere the
shadow of the sad word could flit across her thoughts, a butterfly
fell at her feet, and fluttering its poor bruised wings for a moment,
lay motionless on the flinty path.
It was quite dead; and Ruth bent down, and gently placing it on a
fresh young dock-leaf, laid it beneath a whitethorn bush, well hidden
from all tread of hob-nailed shoes and ruthless plough-boy fingers;
and leaving the soft west wind sweeping low through the sedge, to
sigh it a dirge, she pursued her way, till a turn of the path brought
her within sound of rushing water, and in a few minutes she reached a
rough foot-bridge composed of one plank with a hand-rail of
hazel-bough, which was thrown across a little rivulet, thickly
screened at its furthermost end by a copse of elder and hazel bushes.
Into this cool retreat a posse of old mother sheep had penetrated
with their lambs, and lay in soft white heaps down to the water's
very brink, not in the least put about at the apparition of Ruth, as
she came to a standstill in the middle of the bridge to watch the
pranks of the lambs with a half amused, half absent smile.
So absorbed was she, that the touch of a hand laid ever so gently on
her shoulder caused her to start with surprise.
"Lawrence!" she exclaimed, for he it was.
"Ay, Lawrence!" he answered; "and good-morrow to you, Ruth! Were you
coming to the Hall?"
She nodded.
[Sidenote: Lawrence Lee prevaricates.]
"To be sure then," he went on, "some good angel brought me by the
copse, instead of going round by the weir, for in that case I should
have missed you."
"And where were you going?" asked she.
"Waltham," he replied, after a momentary hesitation.
"But this is not the way to Waltham."
"Nay, is it not?" he said, with well-assumed carelessness; "all the
same, I am right glad I came it, since I have met you upon it, Ruth
dear."
"That is fine talking," pouted Ruth; "but you're not telling me the
truth, Lawrence. You weren't going to Waltham."
[Sidenote: Sharp words.]
"Wasn't I?" returned the young man, flushing a little. "Well, look
here, my dear, people who ask no questions, hear no lies. I doubt I
may go where I list, without Mistress Ruth Rumbold's leave," and then
he made a pretence of being about to stalk on; but the attempt was a
sorry failure, breaking down instantly as he saw the tears brimming
up into the eyes so persistently fixed on the silly lambs. "Ruth,"
he whispered, as in a moment he was beside her again; and taking her
chin in his hands, he turned her face up to his, "come, let's kiss
and be friends. Eh, shall we? You know I'd not vex you for--for--a
king's ransom. Indeed I did not mean to vex you, only--there, it was
so plaguy inquisitive of you, don't you know, to--there, never mind;
what have you got in this basket?" concluded he, turning the
conversation, like the wise diplomatist he thought himself.
"Now who's inquisitive, I wonder?" cried Ruth, folding her arms tight
down upon the lid of the basket, and breaking into a saucy smile,
which, however, faded in an instant. "Lawrence, where were you
going? Tell me, dear."
"If you'll tell me what you've got in that basket, perhaps I may,"
laughed he. "Come, is it a bargain, Mistress Pry?"
"Yes, Mr. Pry."
"To Hoddesdon, then. There, I hope you're happier for the
information."
"Not happier; no, Lawrence," she answered very slowly. "Wait a bit
now," she went on, as he laid aggressive hands on the basket. "To
Hoddesdon! What for?"
"Oh, come now, that's not in the bond. Why, nothing; nothing, little
woman, that you know anything about."
"But I want to know," insisted she, still valiantly protecting the
basket's most vulnerable points; "that's just it, I want to know."
"Then want must be your master," he said angrily. "Little girls must
not know everything," he added, mending his rude speech, and seizing
basket, and Ruth, and all in his arms.
"I'm not a little girl any longer," she cried, struggling to free
herself, and digging her pink nails ever so hard into his bronzed
wrists, till he decided to loosen his hold.
"No, you're a little wild kitten, with the sharpest claws in the
world; that's what you are," he said; "but it won't do, I'm master."
[Sidenote: A bitter secret.]
"'Tis no good you're going to Hoddesdon for," she said bluntly,
looking up into his laughing eyes, "or you'd tell me when I ask you,
without all this silly nonsense. You never kept a secret from me
before, Lawrence."
"Perhaps I never had one to keep."
"But now?"
"Hang it! you'd try a saint's temper," growled he, wrinkling his
brows into a most unsanctified frown, and letting her go with such a
sudden abruptness that she stumbled a little, and in the effort to
maintain her footing on the narrow plank the basket slipped from her
arm, and would have fallen into the water had not Lee caught it, with
a dexterous turn of his wrist.
"See now, Ruth," he said, as he restored it to her, his eye grown
radiant again in his pride at his clever legerdemain, "if you're not
at my mercy after all. Might I not have been revenged for your
refusal, and helped myself to a peep into this mighty particular
basket, if I wasn't honour bright from top to toe?"
[Sidenote: The mysterious basket.]
"But you are, Lawrence, aren't you?" challenged she, with a strange
earnestness, that sent his eyes, which were gazing into hers, back to
the basket; "and evil be to him who evil thinks," she went on.
"And--"
"Oh, plague take it!" he interrupted impatiently; "what are you
driving at? Now for the basket. Come."
"You really care to see inside it?"
"Not a straw, my dear child," he said loftily. "'Tis full of
emptiness, I daresay. That's just what delights you girls more than
anything; teasing and tantalizing a fellow all about nothing."
"Ay, but there is something in it. Something I was bringing to the
Hall on purpose to show you, and--and to ask your opinion about. And
yet--and yet--" she went on wistfully, "I hope you won't be able
to--to give me one."
"Why, my dear girl," rejoined he with a superior smile, "how mighty
mysterious we are, to be sure!"
"'Tis a fearful-looking thing, let me tell you," she said, gingerly
raising one corner of her basket lid.
"Some queer fish, is it?--out of the river?" he asked eagerly, for he
was a mighty fisherman.
"Out of the river," nodded she.
"A pike of some sort perhaps."
"Yes, I should say, of some sort."
"You dear, splendid, diamond of a girl," ecstatically cried Lawrence,
"as I live 'tis a pike! can't I see it gleaming?" and he clutched at
the concealing hay--"a big silver pike!"
"No, a steel one," she said, as the weapon lay exposed in all its
nakedness, and steadily she lifted her eyes to his face.
[Sidenote: Found out.]
It had grown ashen white, and he staggered back for support against
the bridge rail. "Ruth!" he gasped, as the handful of hay dropped
from his powerless fingers and floated away on the swirl of the
stream, "what is the meaning of this?"
"That you must tell me, Lawrence."
"Where did you find it?" he went on.
"In the river. The river Lea. Close by the water steps in Mistress
Sheppard's garden. And when? Last night, while you were in the
King's Arms, talking to those men. The men," she went on in steady
tones, though he was biting his lip, and his pale face flushed
painfully, "who were there; instead of going straight home, as you
ought to have done--"
"Ought!" angrily interrupted he; "and who made you spy over me?"
"I wasn't spying. I was only--taking a peep, just a little peep
at--at the boat."
"Boat?"
"The _Queen Ruth_," Lawrence dear.
"And since you set such store by honour bright and 'oughts,' and all
that sort of thing all at once, what business had you to be abroad
all in the dark when your father had bidden you go indoors?"
She coloured a little. "I did go in," she answered after a moment's
silence. "Only--only--"
"Only you came out again, that's all," he said with a low mocking
laugh. "Ruth, Ruth! what possessed you to do such a thing?"
[Sidenote: Changed indeed.]
"I was ill at ease, Lawrence," she said, colouring deeper still. "I
feared--nay, I do not know what I feared. But I could not stay in
the house. Its air stifled me. I could not breathe. I thought--I
fancied--nay, something has seemed so amiss with everything--with
father and you, Lawrence, with you for these long, long weeks past.
I have fancied--"
"Psha! Fancies indeed!" he cried with an impatient twitch of his
lips, and turning from her, he stood and gazed with lack-lustre eyes
into the water.
"And you're not a bit like the old Lawrence. And all day yesterday
you--never mind. Lawrence, what do those dreadful men want here?"
[Sidenote: The bayonet.]
He turned his face and gazed broodingly into hers, following the
direction of her eyes as they fell again on the contents of the
basket. "Bringing their horrid--what is the thing called?"
"A bayonet," he answered curtly.
"Their horrid bayonets here; and dropping them all over the place?"
"Well," he said with a faint smile, "they didn't do that purposely,
be sure. 'Twas an accident. A stupid, infernal--"
"Oh, Lawrence! Fie, now! For shame, sir!" and Ruth's little hand
shut up his lips.
"An awkward little mistake, then," he went on, "of that
clod-hopping--never mind names, Ruth."
"Rumsey," said Ruth; "I heard father call him so--Colonel Rumsey."