OUT OF THE BLUE
Twenty minutes afterward he drove up to the door with the best that the
village liveryman had to give for the highest price his customer could
offer--a tall black horse of fair proportions, and a hurriedly washed
buggy of the type in vogue in country districts. But as Georgiana went
down the path she was conscious that the figure which stood hat and
reins in hand awaiting her would lend dignity to any vehicle, short of a
wheelbarrow, in which he might be seen to ride.
Then presently the pair were driving along country lanes in the very
midst of all the burgeoning beauty of the season, and Georgiana was like
a captive bird let loose. Her companion as well responded to the call of
Nature at her loveliest, and the tireless worker of the study seemed
changed at a word to a bright-eyed idler of the most carefree sort. The
two gave themselves up without restraint to the enjoyment of the hour.
"I wonder how long it is," said Mr. Jefferson, letting the reins lie
loose at a leafy curve of the road while the black horse willingly
walked, "since I have had a drive like this. Not for ten years at
least."
"You've lived always in a great city?"
"Since boyhood--in the heart of it."
"And have driven motors, not horses, for those ten years."
"Yes, like everybody else. But I spent all my summers as a boy on my
grandfather's farm, and there I drove horses and rode them and did
acrobatic feats on their bare backs. I was a wild Indian, a cowboy, and
a captain of cavalry by turns. Those were happy days, and on a day like
this they don't seem long ago."
"They can't be so dreadfully long ago," she dared, with a glance at the
interesting profile beside her.
"Can't they? Don't I look pretty aged compared with your youth?"
"I'm not so remarkably young," she retorted.
"Aren't you? You are about ten years younger than I. That's a big leap
and must make me seem a grandfather indeed."
"But you don't know how old I am."
"I could come pretty close to it," said he with a quick look.
"How could you know?"
"When you see a spray of apple blossoms like those"--he pointed toward a
mass of pink and white at the stage of perfection beyond an old rail
fence--"can't you tell at a glance whether they've been out a day or a
week?"
"I should say that if things had happened to them to make them feel as
if they'd been out a week when they had been out only two days----"
"A heavy rain, for instance? In that case we should be
deceived--perhaps. But in the case of a human being those heavy rains
sometimes only mature without fading---- Hello,----what's this?"
A small and very ragged boy had emerged suddenly from a meadow gateway,
his face convulsed with pain and fright. He nursed one hand in the other
and the colour had deserted his round cheek, leaving it pallid under its
freckles. The only house nearby was an abandoned one and there were no
others for some distance in either direction.
Mr. Jefferson stopped his horse. "Does it hurt badly, lad?" he asked in
the friendliest of tones, which yet had a bracing quality. "Don't you
want to let me see if I can help it?"
The boy stood still, tears silently making their way down his face.
Giving the reins to Georgiana, Mr. Jefferson jumped out and gently
examined the small hand, the middle finger of which, as the onlooker
could plainly see, was badly distorted and somewhat swollen. The skin,
however, did not seem to be broken.
"We can make that more comfortable right away," the man promised the
little boy. "Sit down on the grass for a minute or two, laddie, while I
find something I want."
He pulled out a handkerchief, as yet folded and fresh from its ironing,
and handed it to Georgiana. "Will you tear that into strips an inch
wide, please, while I take a look back here for a bit of wood?" and he
disappeared down the road, while Georgiana with the aid of her strong
white teeth tore the fine linen as he had bidden, and spoke comfortingly
to the little fellow, who seemed glad enough to have fallen into
friendly hands.
When he shortly returned Mr. Jefferson was rapidly cutting and whittling
a stick into a little splint, which he then wound carefully with a strip
of the handkerchief until it was covered from view. Then he took the
injured hand in his own capable ones--his assistant had often noted
those hands--and said quietly, "I'm going to hurt you just a minute,
little man, but you'll be all right, so be game," and in two deft
motions he had pulled and twisted the broken finger, and had set it
straight as the others, with but one sharp outcry from the owner. In
less time than it can be told in, the set finger was bound securely with
its neighbouring finger to the padded splint, and the whole neatly
bandaged with the torn linen, the entire procedure accomplished with
the rapidity and skill of the practised hand. No amateur surgery this,
as Georgiana understood well enough.
"There," said Mr. Jefferson, drawing forth another handkerchief as
spotless as the first--she wondered if he went always thus provided
against emergency--and improvising a little sling in which the bandaged
hand swung comfortably, "I think you'll do. Rest a bit and then go home,
and tell your mother not to touch that finger for three weeks. By that
time it will be as good as new, only be careful with it when you first
use it. Good-bye, laddie, and better luck next time."
Georgiana saw the uninjured hand of the boy close over something bright
as the man's hand left it, and heard a low sound which might have been
almost anything indicative of surprise and joy. Then the black horse was
moving on, and Mr. Jefferson was saying: "Weren't we talking about apple
blossoms?"
"We had finished with them, I think," Georgiana replied, wondering if he
really were going to offer no explanation of the hint of mystery which
had been about him ever since her work with him had begun.
But he did not offer any, only went on with the pleasant talk with which
he had all along beguiled the way. Georgiana was recognizing this
afternoon, more than she had yet done, what a well-stored mind was
possessed by this unassuming man, whose manner and speech yet did not
lack that quality of quiet assurance which is the product only of
genuine knowledge and experience.
The black horse was within a mile of home, passing through the last
stretch of woodland which would justify the walking pace, in which,
greatly to his astonishment, he was being allowed to indulge at all such
points, when a motor car, slowing down beside him, caused him to lay
back his ears in displeasure.
Georgiana, turning, beheld the handsome, eager face of Miles Channing as
he leaned toward her, his hand hushing his engine as he spoke.
"Miss Warne--Mr. Jefferson--forgive me for stopping you! I should have
gone on and waited for you if I had been sure you were on your way home.
But I'm a messenger from the Croftons; they beg you to let me bring you
back with me to-night." His eyes rested on Georgiana.
"To-night? Is anybody ill?"
"Oh, no, no; nothing like that. It's for quite a different reason they
want you; only I'm to ask you not to question me. You're to come on
faith, if you will. And they'll agree to have you back in the morning by
breakfast-time, if you insist."
Georgiana looked puzzled, but, being human, she was naturally interested
and attracted by this mysterious plan. "It's very odd," she mused, "but
if father can spare me----"
"I will undertake to see that your father is not lonely this evening,"
said Mr. Jefferson's quiet voice at her side. "And please don't bother
about to-morrow morning or to-morrow at all, if you would like to be
away."
"If Mr. Jefferson wouldn't object----" began Channing; but Mr. Jefferson
anticipated him.
"Please don't hesitate to go on with Mr. Channing, if you would like to
gain a little time," he suggested to his companion. "He will have you at
home before I can reach the bend in the road."
Georgiana looked round at him. "I prefer to finish one ride before I
begin another," she declared, smiling. "It's only a mile, Mr. Channing;
we shall be there nearly as soon as you. Please go on."
It thus came about ten minutes later that James Stuart, walking up to
his home from a field where he had been superintending an interesting
new departure in cultivation, caught sight first of a now-familiar
roadster of aristocratic lines whose appearance thereabouts had become
most unwelcome, and shortly thereafter of a less pretentious vehicle,
being rapidly drawn by a still more familiar black horse, and occupied
by two people whom it gave Stuart no acute pleasure to see together.
"Well, I should say George was displaying her admirers in great shape
this afternoon," he said gloomily to himself. "It's a wonder I'm not
trailing on behind with a wheelbarrow. But I vow I'd like to know since
when her contract with Jefferson has taken them out into the
country--and in working hours, too!"
Afterward it was all rather a strange memory to Georgiana when she
recalled it. She had flown about to prepare the appetizing early supper
with which she was accustomed to serve her small family, and to which
she now added a delicacy or two on account of its seeming the natural
thing to ask Mr. Miles Channing to remain rather than to allow him to go
to the small village hotel. Then she had cleared her table and left the
after-work to the neighbour who was to come to the rescue as before. She
had dressed with hurried fingers for the trip, and had driven away with
a devoted escort who spared no pains to make her feel that he was
exceedingly pleased at the success of his mission.
There was no place in her memory for something she did not see nor would
have thought of imagining significant if she had seen it. When she left
the house Mr. Jefferson was in his room, searching for a book from which
to read aloud to his self-assumed charge of the evening. When he heard
Georgiana's blithe cry of farewell to her father in the doorway below,
he left the bookcase and went with a quick step to the window. He
watched the car driven by Mr. Channing out of sight down the road; then
he descended to the garden, pipe in hand. Before he returned to the
house to take his place by the evening lamp and begin the reading to the
gentle invalid stretched on the couch, he had covered many furlongs up
and down the straggling pathways and had consumed much more than his
usual quota of choice tobacco. And though all about him had been the May
environment at its loveliest, through all his marching up and down he
had never once looked up.
Miles away, and ever more miles away, Georgiana had flown like the wind
in the swift car under its skilfully guiding hand. The drive was a
blurred impression of slowly gathering rosy twilight, of the odour of
the apple blossoms--somehow a different and more seductive fragrance
than it had been in the sunlit afternoon--and always there was the sense
of there being beside her a presence which disturbed. Channing's low
laugh, his vibrant voice in her ear, the things he said, half serious,
half earnest, always full of an only slightly veiled intent--the girl
who had spent so many days of her life in hard study or harder
housewifery could do no less than yield herself for the hour to the
pulse-quickening charm of it and forget everything else.
Just as twilight settled into dusk and for the first time the headlights
of the car came on with a long reach like a golden ribbon along the
road, Channing, suddenly slowing down, a few miles out of the city,
began a rapid speech on a subject so unexpected that it fairly took his
hearer's breath away.
"It's not fair of me to tell you, but I've simply got to get in the
first word. You must pretend you haven't heard it, but if there's any
persuading to be done I want my share, and want it first. Your cousins
are going to invite you to sail with them next week for a summer in
England after a fortnight in Paris--Paris in June! You don't know what
that means; you can't even imagine it. I can--I know it--don't I know
it!" He laughed softly. "Since they're to be away and won't need her
they'll send down their housekeeper--the most competent person in the
world--to stay with your father and make him absolutely comfortable, so
you don't have to hesitate on that score."
"It's perfectly wonderful, but"--Georgiana was staring at him through
the dusk--"but--oh, I couldn't, Mr. Channing! how could I? Father is so
feeble; something might happen."
"Not in summer. Things don't happen to elderly people in summer. It's in
winter--pneumonia and things like that. And don't you know he'd be
delighted to have you go? He wouldn't let you miss such a chance; I know
him already well enough for that."
"But, you see, I'm engaged to work for Mr. Jefferson----"
"Well, he'll be all right; he's a traveled man himself; anybody can see
that. He wouldn't stand in the way of your good, not for a moment; of
course he wouldn't. He'd urge you to go. Why, there's nothing else for
you to do. Think of the glorious summer we'll have--glorious! Why,
I----"
"What do you mean? I don't understand." Georgiana felt her cheeks grow
scarlet in the darkness.
"Mean? What could I mean? Why, I'm going, too, of course. Sailing when
you do. Invited to spend a month in Devon with the Croftons--and you."
His voice sank lower. "And that fortnight in Paris--oh, I'll be in
Paris, too, no doubt of that! I'll show you what Paris is like on a June
evening. Do you think I'd want to send you out of this country if I
weren't going, too? Not I--Georgiana!"