THE LOOKING-GLASS
GILBERT hurried forward as he saw Lady Eliza.
‘The pigeons are safe,’ he said. ‘I have locked up two of these rascals
in the dovecot. The third, I fear, has got away.’
‘Indeed, sir, I am vastly obliged to you,’ exclaimed she. ‘You seem
considerably hurt.’
‘He has had a stiff fight, ma’am,’ said Captain Somerville.
‘You are very good to have protected my property,’ she continued,
looking at the two gentlemen. ‘All I can do now is to send for the
police from Kaims, unless the dovecot is a safe place for them until
morning.’
‘Young Stirk has gone to Kaims with my carriage,’ said Somerville, ‘for
the door is not very strong, and I fancy your men have no wish to watch
it all night.’
‘It seems,’ said Lady Eliza, turning to Speid, ‘that I have only to be
in a difficulty for you to appear.’
Her voice was civil, and even pleasant, but something in it rang false.
Gilbert felt the undercurrent instinctively, for, though he had no idea
of her real sentiments towards himself, he recognised her as a person
in whose doings the unexpected was the natural.
‘I think I can do nothing more,’ he said, with a formality which came
to him at times, ‘so I will wish your ladyship a good-night.’
‘May I ask where you are going, sir, and how you propose to get there
in that condition?’
‘It is nothing,’ replied Gilbert, ‘and Whanland is a bare four miles
from here. With your permission I will start at once.’
‘Nonsense, Mr. Speid! You will do nothing of the sort. Do you suppose I
shall allow you to walk all that way, or to leave Morphie till your
face has been attended to? Come, Captain Somerville, let us go to the
house. Sir, I insist upon your coming with us.’
The men from the stable were instructed to remain at the dovecot door
until Jimmy should return with the police, and Gilbert recognised
Macquean as Lady Eliza again drove him forward to light the party back
under the trees. He made no comment, feeling that the moment was
unsuitable, and being somewhat interested in the fact that a young
woman, of whose features he could only occasionally catch a glimpse,
was walking beside him; as the torchlight threw fitful splashes across
her he could see the outline of a pale face below a crown of rather
elaborately dressed dark hair. Lady Eliza had directed him to follow
his servant, and was herself delayed by the sailor’s slow progress.
Though he had never seen his companion before, she was known to him by
hearsay. Her silent step, and the whiteness of her figure and drapery
against the deep shadows between the trees, gave him a vague feeling
that he was walking with Diana. He grew aware of his bloody face, and
immediately became self-conscious.
‘I fear I am a most disagreeable object, Miss Raeburn,’ he said.
‘I had not observed it, sir,’ she replied.
‘You are very kind, but you must think me unpleasant company in this
condition, all the same.’
‘I can think of nothing but that you have saved my aunt’s pigeons. She
says little, but I knows he is grateful. There has always been a large
flock at Morphie, and their loss would have vexed her very much.’
‘I owe Stirk--Stirk, the young cadger--a debt for bringing me word of
what was going to happen. He heard of it in Blackport, and came
straight to tell me.’
‘I wonder why he went to you instead of warning us,’ said she.
‘We are rather friendly, he and I. I suppose he thought he would like
the excitement, and that I should like it, too. He was not wrong, for I
do,’ replied Gilbert, unconsciously using the present tense.
‘Then what has brought Captain Somerville? It all happened so suddenly
that there has been no time for surprise. But it is strange to find him
here.’
‘He was dining with me when the news was brought, and he insisted on
coming. He managed to trip a man up, and sit on him till Stirk and I
came to his help. He did it with his wooden leg, I believe,’ said
Gilbert, smiling in spite of his injured face.
Cecilia laughed out.
‘I think that is charming,’ she said.
Gilbert had known many women more or less intimately, but never one of
his own countrywomen. He had heard much of the refinement and delicacy
of the British young lady. This one, who seemed, from the occasional
view he could obtain of her, and from the sound of her voice, to
possess both these qualities in the highest degree, struck him as
having a different attitude towards things in general to the one he had
been led to expect in the class of femininity she represented. As she
had herself said, there had been no time for surprise, and he now
suddenly found that he was surprised--surprised by her presence,
surprised to find that she seemed to feel neither agitation nor any
particular horror at what had happened. He had known women in Spain who
found their most cherished entertainment in the bull-ring, but he had
never met one who would have taken the scene she had broken in upon so
calmly.
The changed customs of our modern life have made it hard to realize
that, in the days when Gilbert and Cecilia met by torchlight, it was
still a proof of true sensibility to swoon when confronted by anything
unusual, and that ladies met cows in the road with the same feelings
with which they would now meet man-eating tigers. Indeed, the woman of
the present moment, in the face of such an encounter, would probably
make some more or less sensible effort towards her own safety, but, at
the time of which I speak, there was nothing for a lady to do at the
approach of physical difficulties but subside as rapidly as possible on
to the cleanest part of the path. But Cecilia had been brought up
differently. Lady Eliza led so active a life, and was apt to require
her to do such unusual things, that she had seen too many emergencies
to be much affected by them. There was a deal of the elemental woman in
Cecilia, and she had just come too late to see the elemental man in
Speid brush away the layer of civilization, and return to his natural
element of fight. She was almost sorry she had been too late.
She walked on beside him, cool, gracious, the folds of her skirt
gathered up into her hand, and he longed for the lamp-lit house, that
he might see her clearly.
‘The man with the torch is your servant, is he not?’ said she. ‘He told
me he had come from Whanland.’
‘He is,’ replied Speid; ‘but how long he will remain so is another
matter. I am very angry with him--disgusted, in fact.’
‘What has he done, sir, if I may ask?’
‘Everything that is most intolerable. He drove me to the very end of my
patience, in the first instance.’
‘How long is your patience, Mr. Speid?’
‘It was short to-night,’ replied Gilbert.
‘And then?’
‘Then I brought him here to be of some use, and while I was looking
over the wall for these thieving ruffians, he ran away.’
‘He does not look very brave,’ observed Cecilia, a smile flickering
round her lips. ‘He arrived at the door, and rang up the house, and I
could see that he was far from comfortable.’
‘He will be more uncomfortable to-morrow,’ said Gilbert grimly.
‘Poor fellow,’ said Cecilia softly. ‘It must be a terrible thing to be
really afraid.’
‘It is inexcusable in a man.’
‘I suppose it is,’ replied she slowly, ‘and yet----’
‘And yet--you think I should put up with him? He has enraged me often
enough, but he has been past all bearing to-night.’
‘Do you really mean to send him away? He has been years at Whanland,
has he not?’
‘He has,’ said Gilbert; ‘but let us forget him, Miss Raeburn, he makes
me furious.’
When they reached the house, Lady Eliza led the way to the dining-room,
and despatched such servants as were to be found for wine. Her
hospitable zeal might even have caused a fresh dinner to be cooked, had
not the two men assured her that they had only left the table at
Whanland to come to Morphie.
‘If I may have some water to wash the cut on my face, I will make it a
little more comfortable,’ said Speid.
He was accordingly shown into a gloomy bedroom on the upper floor, and
the maid who had opened the door to Macquean, having recovered from her
hysterics, was assiduous in bringing him hot water and a sponge. As the
room was unused, it had all the deadness of a place unfrequented by
humanity, and the heavy curtains of the bed and immense pattern of
birds and branches which adorned the wall-paper gave everything a
lugubrious look. He examined his cut at the looking-glass over the
mantelshelf, an oblong mirror with a tarnished gilt frame.
The stone which had struck him was muddy, and he found, when he had
washed the wound, that it was deeper than he supposed. It ached and
smarted as he applied the sponge, for the flint had severed the flesh
sharply. As he dried his wet cheek in front of the glass, he saw a
figure which was entering the room reflected in it.
‘Lady Eliza has sent me with this. Can I help you, sir?’ said Cecilia
rather stiffly, showing him a little case containing plaster.
She held a pair of scissors in her hand. He turned.
‘Ah!’ she exclaimed, as she saw the long, red scar; ‘that is really
bad! Do, pray, use this plaster. Look, I will cut it for you.’
And she opened the case, and began to divide its contents into strips.
‘You are very good,’ he said awkwardly, as he watched the scissors
moving.
She did not reply.
‘I had no intention of disturbing the house in this way,’ he continued;
‘it is allowing to Macquean’s imbecility. You need never have known
anything till to-morrow morning.’
‘You are very angry with Macquean,’ said Cecilia. ‘I cannot bear to
think of his leaving a place where he has lived so long. But you will
be cooler to-morrow, I am sure. Now, Mr. Speid, I have made this ready.
Will you dip it in the water and put this strip across the cut?’
Gilbert did as he was bid, and, pressing the edges of the wound
together, began to lay the plaster across his cheek.
‘You can hardly see,’ said she. ‘Let me hold the light.’
She raised the candle, and the two looked intently into the glass at
his fingers, as he applied the strip. He met with scant success, for it
stuck to his thumb and curled backwards like a shaving. He made another
and more careful attempt to place it, but, with the callous obstinacy
often displayed by inanimate things, it refused to lie flat.
The two pairs of eyes met in the looking-glass.
‘I cannot make it hold,’ said he. ‘It is not wet enough, and I am too
clumsy.’
His arm ached where it had been hit below the elbow; it was difficult
to keep it steady.
‘I can do it,’ said Cecilia, a certain resolute neutrality in her
voice. ‘Hold the candle, sir.’
She took the strip from him, and, dipping it afresh in the water, laid
it deftly across his cheek-bone.
As her cool fingers touched his hot cheek he dropped his eyes from her
face to the fine handkerchief which she had tucked into her bosom, and
which rose and fell with her breathing. She took it out, and held it
pressed against the plaster.
‘You will need two pieces,’ she said. ‘Keep this upon the place while I
cut another strip.’
He had never been ordered in this way by a girl before. Caprice he had
experience of, and he had known the exactingness of spoilt women, but
Cecilia’s impersonal commanding of him was new, and it did not
displease him. He told himself, as he stood in front of her, that, were
he to describe her, he would never call her a girl. She was essentially
a woman.
‘That is a much better arrangement,’ observed Captain Somerville, as
Gilbert entered the dining-room alone. ‘I did not know you were such a
good surgeon, Speid.’
‘Don’t praise me. I was making such a clumsy job of it that Miss
Raeburn came to my help; she has mended it so well that a few days will
heal it, I expect.’
‘You will have a fine scar, my lad,’ said the sailor.
‘That doesn’t matter. I assure you, the thing is of no consequence. It
is not really bad.’
‘It is quite bad enough,’ said Lady Eliza.
‘You think far too much of it, ma’am.’
‘At any rate, sit down and help yourself to some wine. I have not half
thanked you for your good offices.’
‘I fancy he is repaid,’ said Somerville dryly, glancing at the strips
of plaster.
Lady Eliza had ordered a carriage to be got ready to take Speid and the
sailor home, and Captain Somerville had sent a message to Kaims by
Jimmy Stirk, telling his family to expect his return in the morning, as
he had accepted Gilbert’s suggestion that he should remain at Whanland
for the night. He looked kindly on this arrangement, for he was over
sixty, and it was a long time since he had exerted himself so much.
While they stood in the hall bidding Lady Eliza good-night, Cecilia
came downstairs. She had not followed Gilbert to the dining-room. She
held out her hand to him as he went away.
‘Thank you,’ said he, looking at her and keeping it for a moment.
He leaned back in the carriage beside Somerville, very silent, and,
when they reached Whanland and he had seen his friend installed for the
night, he went to his own room. What had become of Macquean he did not
know and did not care. He sat late by the fire, listening to the
snoring of the sailor, which reached him through the wall.
A violent headache woke him in the morning and he lay thinking of the
events of the preceding night. He put his hand up to his cheek to feel
if the plaster was in its place. Macquean came in, according to custom,
with his shaving-water, looking neither more nor less uncouth and
awkward than usual. Though he shifted from foot to foot, the man had a
complacency on his face that exasperated his master.
‘What did you mean by leaving the carriage last night?’ said Gilbert.
‘A’ went awa’ to Morphie,’ said Macquean.
‘And who told you to do that?’
‘Aw! a’ didna’ speir[1] about that. A’ just tell’t them to gang awa’
down to the doo’cot. Her ladyship was vera well pleased,’ continued
Macquean, drawing his lips back from his teeth in a chastened smile.
[1] Ask.
‘Get out of the room, you damned fellow! You should get out of the
house, too, if it weren’t for--for--get out, I say!’ cried Gilbert,
sitting up suddenly.
Macquean put down the shaving-water and went swiftly to the door. When
he had shut it behind him he stood a moment to compose himself on the
door-mat.
‘He shouldna speak that way,’ he said very solemnly, wagging his head.