IN NUTFIELD LANE.
When Reynold Harding assured Miss Wilton that it made very little
difference to him whether he got rid of his pupil for a day or not, he
told a lie. From the moment when he heard of Guy's holiday, he had
resolved in his own mind that on that day of freedom, he would see
Barbara Strange.
He knew that she was staying with the Ashfords, and he had heard the
Robinson girls talking about her one day after luncheon.
"That pretty little Devonshire girl finds it dull, I think," said
Violet.
"Who wouldn't?" her sister exclaimed. "She has had time to hear all old
Ashford's stories a dozen times before this, and they are stupid enough
the first time. But how do you know she finds it dull?"
"They say she is always running about the fields looking for primroses
and cowslips. I saw her when I was out riding this morning, leaning on
the gate into Nutfield Lane, with her hands full of them."
"How very picturesque! Looking into the lane for some more?"
"Or for some one to help her carry what she'd got. I don't know what I
mightn't be driven to, myself, if I had to listen to old Ashford's
prosing, and then go crawling out for a couple of hours boxed up in
Mother Ashford's stuffy old brougham, two or three times a week. And
Willy Ashford hardly ever comes, now he's engaged to that girl in
Kensington."
"No," said Muriel, "and I don't know that he would mend matters much if
he did. Well, perhaps somebody with a taste for cowslips and innocence,
will happen to walk along Nutfield Lane next time Miss Strange is
looking over the gate. What did you think of doing this afternoon?"
They were standing in the window, and speaking low. But their voices
were metallic and penetrating, and the tutor, who was watching Guy's
progress through a meal, which had worn out his sisters' patience, heard
every word. He had his back to the light, and the boy did not see the
black full veins on his forehead.
"But I want some more tart," said Guy.
The request was granted with careless liberality.
"Is that enough?" Harding asked.
The boy eyed it. He did not think he could possibly manage any more, but
he said--
"I don't know," just as a measure of precaution.
"Well, eat that first," said the other, and sat, resting his head on his
hand.
He knew Nutfield Lane. It was three or four miles from the Priory; Guy
and he went that way sometimes. He remembered a gate there, with posts
set close to a couple of towering elms, that arched it with their
budding boughs, and thrust their roots above the trodden pathway. There
was a meadow beyond, the prettiest possible background for a pretty
little Devonshire girl with her hands full of cowslips. As to her
looking out for any one--he would like to walk straight up to those
vulgar, chattering, expensive young women, and knock their heads
together. It seemed to Harding that there would be something very
soothing and satisfying about such an expression of his opinion, if only
it were possible! But it could not be, and he relinquished the thought
with a sigh, as he had relinquished the pursuit of other unattainable
joys.
"N--no, I don't want any more," said Guy, regretfully. "Only some more
beer."
Harding nodded, with that absent-minded acquiescence which had endeared
him to his pupil. Guy was only to him like a buzzing fly, or any other
tiresome little presence, to be endured in silence, and, as far as
possible, ignored. But when that afternoon the boy came to him with the
announcement that he should be twelve on Tuesday, and his father was
going to take him somewhere for the whole day, Reynold raised his head
from the exercise he was correcting, and looked at him fixedly.
"That's all right," he said, after a moment.
In that moment he had made up his mind. He wanted to see Barbara. And
then? He did not know what then, but he wanted to see her.
The white spring sunshine lighted the page which Guy had scrawled and
blotted, and Reynold sat with the pen between his fingers, dreaming. He
would see Barbara, but he would not even attempt to think what he would
do or say when they met. He had planned and schemed before, and chance
had swept all his schemes away. Now he would leave it all to chance; it
was enough for him to think that he would certainly see her again.
He would see her, not standing as he had seen her first, in sad autumnal
scenery, not coming towards him in the pale firelit room, not walking
beside him to the village, while the wind drove flights of dead leaves
across the grey curtain of the sky, not as she faced him, frightened and
breathless, in the quivering circle of lamplight on the stairs, not as
he remembered her last of all, when she stood beyond the boundary which
he might not cross, and Mitchelhurst Place rose behind her in the light
of the moon, white and dead as dry bones. It seemed to him that it must
always be autumn at Mitchelhurst, with dim, short days, and gusty
nights, and the chilly atmosphere laden with odours of decay. But all
this was past and over, and he was going to meet Barbara in the spring.
Barbara in April--all happy songs of love, all the young gladness of
the year, all tender possibilities were summed up in those three words.
He was startled at the sudden eagerness which escaped from his control,
and throbbed and bounded within him when he resolved to see her once
again. But he did not betray it outwardly, unless, perhaps, by an
attempt to write his next correction with a dry pen.
He listened to Guy's excited chatter as the day drew near, and set out
with him to carry the invitation to Bob Wilton, in a mood which, on the
surface, was one of apathetic patience. Nothing he could do would hasten
the arrival of Tuesday, but nevertheless it was coming. When the two
boys went off to the stables together, he waited. He might as well wait
in the Wiltons' sunny drawing-room as anywhere else. And when some one
entered by the further door and began to play, he listened, not ill
pleased. He had no ear for music, but the defect was purely physical,
and except for that hindrance he might have loved it. As it was he could
not appreciate the meaning of what was played beyond the curtain, nor
could he recognise the skill and delicacy with which it was rendered. To
him it was only a bright, formless ripple of sound, gliding vaguely by,
till suddenly Barbara's tune, rounded and clear and silver sweet, awoke
him from his reverie.
For a moment he sat breathless with wonder. Only a dull memory of her
music had stayed with him, a kind of tuneless beating of its measure,
and the living notes, melodiously full, pursued that poor ghost through
his heart and brain. His pulses throbbed as if the girl herself were
close at hand. Then he rose, and softly stepped across the room. Who was
it who was playing Barbara's tune? Who but the man who had played it to
Barbara?
Considered as a piece of reasoning this was weak. Anybody would have
told him the name of the composer, and could have assured him that
dozens and scores of men might play the thing. Barbara might have heard
it on a barrel organ! But Harding's thoughts went straight to the one
man who had left music lying about at Mitchelhurst with his name,
"Adrian Scarlett," written on it. Barbara's tune jangled wildly in his
ears; she had learnt it from this man, or she had taught it to him.
Thus it happened that Adrian looked up from his playing, and saw the
picture in the mirror, the face that followed him with its intent and
hostile gaze. And Reynold, standing apart and motionless, watched the
musician, and noted his air of careless ease and mastery, the smile
which lingered on his lips, and the way in which he threw back his head
and let his glances rove, though of course he did not know that all
these things were a little accentuated by Adrian's self-consciousness
under his scrutiny. He was sure, even before a word had been uttered,
that this was the man whose name had haunted him at Mitchelhurst, and
who won Mr. Pryor's heart by singing at his penny reading. To Reynold,
standing in the shadow, Scarlett was the type of the conquering young
hero, swaggering a little in the consciousness of his popularity and his
facile triumphs.
To some extent he wronged Adrian, and on one point Adrian wronged him.
He believed that Harding had exulted in the idea of putting him on the
wrong scent with his "Sandmoor near Ilfracombe." But in point of fact
Harding had given the address with real reluctance. He had been asked
where the Stranges lived, and had told the truth. To have supplemented
it with information as to Barbara's whereabouts would have been to
assume a knowledge of Scarlett's meaning in asking the question, a thing
intolerable and impossible. Yet Harding's morbid pride was galled by his
unwilling deceit, and he wished that the subject had never been
mentioned. He had no doubt that his rival would go to Sandmoor, but he
did not exult in the thought of the disappointment that awaited him
there.
Still, when Tuesday came it undoubtedly was a satisfaction to feel that
the express was carrying Mr. Scarlett further and further from the gate
which led into Nutfield Lane. Otherwise the day was of but doubtful
promise, its blue blotted with rain-clouds, which Guy Robinson regarded
as a personal injury. It brightened, however, after the birthday party
had started, and Reynold set out on his rather vague errand, under skies
which shone and threatened in the most orthodox April fashion. The
heavens might have laid a wager that they would show a dozen different
faces in the hour, from watery sadness to glittering joy. It was hardly
a day on which Mrs. Ashford would care to creep out in her brougham, but
a little Devonshire girl, tired of a dull house, might very well face it
with an umbrella and her second-best hat.
Harding made sure that she would. If she failed to do so he had no
scheme ready. He did not know the Ashfords, and to go up to their house
and ask for Miss Strange, could lead, at the best, to nothing but a
formal interview under the eyes of an old lady who would consider his
visit an impertinence. But Barbara would come! It was surely time that
his luck should turn. When the hazard of the die has been against us a
dozen times we are apt to have an irrational conviction that our chance
must come with the next throw, and Harding strolled round the Ashfords'
place, questioning only how, and how soon, she would appear. To see her
once--it was so little that he asked!--to see her, and to hold her hand
for a moment in his own, and to make her look up at him, straight into
his eyes. And if she had the fancy still, as he somehow thought she had,
to hear him say that he forgave her, why, he would say it. As if he had
ever blamed her for the little forgetfulness which had ended all his
hopes of fortune! And yet, if Barbara could have known how near that
fortune had been! The old man's health had failed suddenly during the
winter, the great inheritance was about to fall in, and Reynold would
have been a partner and his own master within a few months from his
decision. "Well," he said to himself as he leant on the gate in Nutfield
Lane, "and even so, what harm has she done? Was I not going to say No
before I saw her? And if she persuaded me to write the Yes which turned
to No at the bottom of her apron pocket, am I to complain of her for
that?"
He thought, that he would ask her for a flower, a leaf, or a budding
twig from the hedge, just by way of remembrance. At present he had
none, except the unopened letter which she had given back to him in his
lodgings at Mitchelhurst.
The day grew fairer as it passed. Though a couple of sparkling showers,
which filled the sunlit air with the quick flashing of falling drops,
drove him once and again for shelter to a hay-stack in a neighbouring
meadow, the blue field overhead widened little by little, and shone
through the tracery of leafless boughs. He felt his spirits rising
almost in spite of himself. He came back, after the second shower, by
the field path to the lane, and was in the act of getting over the gate
when he heard steps coming quickly towards him. Not Barbara's, they were
from the opposite direction. He sprang hastily down, and found himself
face to face with Mr. Adrian Scarlett, who was humming a tune.
Reynold drew a long breath, and stood as if he were turned to stone.
Adrian was only mortal, he lifted his hat, and smiled his greeting, with
a look in his grey-blue eyes which said as plainly as possible, "_Didn't
you think I was at Sandmoor?_" and then walked on towards the Ashfords'
house, where he had been to the tennis party two years before. He would
be very welcome there. And if he should chance to meet Barbara by the
way, _he_ knew very well what he was going to say to her. But a moment
later he felt a touch of pity for the luckless fellow who had not
outwitted him after all. "Poor devil!" he said, as he had said the day
before.
The epithet, which, like many another, is flung about inappropriately
enough, hit the mark for once. Reynold stood pale and dumb, choked with
bitter hate, but helpless and hopeless enough for pity. He would do no
more with hate than he had done with love. He knew it, and presently he
turned and walked drearily away. He did not want to see Barbara when she
had met Adrian Scarlett. He had meant to see her _first_, to end his
unlucky little love-story with a few gentle words, to hold her hand for
a moment, and then to step aside and leave her free to go her way. What
harm would there have been? But this man, who was to have everything,
had baulked him even in this. She would not care for his pardon now, and
perhaps it would hardly have been worth taking. If one is compelled to
own one's forgiveness superfluous it is difficult to keep it sweet.
So he did not see Barbara when, a little later, she came up Nutfield
Lane by Scarlett's side. They stopped by the gate, and leant on it.
Barbara had no flowers in her hands, but it seemed to her that all the
country-side was blossoming.
She looked a little older than when Adrian had bidden her his mute
farewell at Mitchelhurst. The expression of her face was at once
quickened and deepened, her horizon was enlarged, though the gaze which
questioned it was as innocent as ever. But her dark eyes kept a memory
of the proud patience with which she had waited through the winter.
There had been times when her faith in the _Clergy List_ had been
shaken, and she had doubted whether Adrian would ever consult its pages,
and find out where her father lived. She did not blame him; he was free
as air; yet those had been moments of almost unbearable loneliness. She
never spoke of him to anybody; to have been joked and pitied by Louisa
and Hetty would have been hateful to her. She thought of him
continually, and dreamed of him sometimes. But there was only a limited
satisfaction in dreaming of Adrian Scarlett; he was apt to be placed in
absurdly topsy-turvy circumstances, and to behave unaccountably. Barbara
felt, regretfully, that a girl who was parted from such a lover should
have dreamed in a loftier manner. She was ashamed of herself, although
she knew she could not help it. Now, however, there was no need to
trouble herself about dreams or clergy lists; Adrian was leaning on the
gate by her side.
"What you must have thought of me!" he was saying. "Never to take the
least notice of your uncle's death! I can't think how I missed hearing
of it."
"It was in the _Times_ and some of the other papers," said Barbara.
The melancholy little announcement had seemed to her a sort of appeal to
her absent lover.
"I never saw it. I was--busy just then," he explained with a little
hesitation. "I suppose I didn't look at the papers. I have been fancying
you at Mitchelhurst all the time, and promising myself that I would go
back there, and find you where I found you first."
Barbara did not speak; she leaned back and looked up at him with a
smile. Adrian's answering gaze held hers as if it enfolded it.
"I _might_ have written," he said, "or inquired--I might have done
_something_, at any rate! I can't think how it was I didn't! But I'd got
it into my head that I wanted to get those poems of mine out--wanted to
go back to you with my volume in my hand, and show you the dedication. I
was waiting for that--I never thought----"
"Yes," said the girl with breathless admiration and approval. "And are
they finished now?"
"Confound the poems!" cried Adrian with an amazed, remorseful laugh. A
stronger word had been on his lips. "Don't talk of them, Barbara! To
think that I neglected you while I was polishing those idiotic rhymes,
and that you think it was all right and proper! Oh, my dear, if you
tried for a week you couldn't make me feel smaller! If--if anything had
happened to you, and I had been left with my trumpery verses--"
"You shall not call them that! Don't talk so!"
"Well, suppose you had got tired of waiting, and had come across some
better fellow. There was time enough, and it would have served me
right."
"I don't know about serving you right, but there wouldn't have been time
for me to get tired of waiting," said Barbara, and added more softly,
"not if it had been all my life."
"Listen to that!" Adrian answered, leaning backward, with his elbows on
the gate. "All her life--for _me_!"
His quick fancy sketched that life: first the passionate eagerness,
throbbing, hoping, trusting, despairing; then submission to the
inevitable, the gradual extinction of expectation as time went on; and
finally the dimness and placidity of old age, satisfied to worship a
pathetic memory. Hardly love, rather love's ghost, that shadowy
sentiment, cut off from the strong actual existence of men and women,
and thinly nourished on recollections, and fragments of mild verse.
Scarlett turned away, as from a book of dried flowers, to Barbara.
"What did you think of me?" he said, still dwelling on the same thought.
"Never one word!"
"Well, I felt as if there were a word--at least, a kind of a
word--once," she said. "I went with Louisa to the dentist last
February--it was Valentine's Day--she wanted a tooth taken out. There
were some books and papers lying about in the waiting-room. One of them
was an old Christmas number, with something of yours in it. Do you
remember?"
"N--no," said Scarlett doubtfully.
"Oh, don't say it wasn't yours! A little poem--it had your name at the
end. There can't be _another_, surely," said Barbara, with a touch of
resentment at the idea. "There were two illustrations, but I didn't care
much for them; I didn't think they were good enough. I read the poem
over and over. I did so hope I should recollect it all; but he was ready
for Louisa before I had time to learn it properly, and our name was
called. It was a very bad tooth, and Louisa had gas, you know. I was
obliged to go. I am so slow at learning by heart. Louisa would have
known it all in half the time; but I did wish I could have had just one
minute more."
"Tell me what it was," Adrian said.
"_My love loves me_," Barbara began in a timid voice.
"Oh--that! Yes, I remember now. The man who edits that magazine is a
friend of mine, and he asked me for some little thing for his Christmas
number. If I had thought you would have cared I could have sent it to
you."
Her eyes shone with grateful happiness.
"But I didn't," said Adrian. "I didn't do anything. Well, go on,
Barbara, tell me how much you remembered."
Barbara paused a moment, looking back to the open page on the dentist's
green table-cloth. As she spoke she could see poor Louisa, awaiting her
summons with a resigned and swollen face, an old gentleman examining a
picture in the _Illustrated London News_ through his eyeglass, and a
lady apprehensively turning the pages of the dentist's pamphlet, _On
Diseases of the Teeth and Gums_. Outside, the rain was streaming down
the window panes. Barbara recalled all this with Adrian's verses.
"_My love loves me. Then wherefore care
For rain or shine, for foul or fair?
My love loves me.
My daylight hours are golden wine,
And all the happy stars are mine,
My love loves me!_"
"_Love flies away_," she began more doubtfully, and looked at Adrian,
who took it up.
"_Love flies away, and summer mirth
Lies cold and grey upon the earth,
Love flies away,
The sun has set, no more to rise,
And far, beneath the shrouded sides,
Love flies away._"
"Yes!" cried Barbara, "that's it! I had forgotten those last lines--how
stupid of me!"
"Not at all," said Adrian. "You remembered all that concerned you, the
rest was quite superfluous."
"Oh, but how I did try to remember the end!" she continued pensively.
"It haunted me. If I had only had a minute more! But all the same I
felt as if I had had something of a message from you that day. It was my
valentine, wasn't it?"
Scarlett's eyes, with a look half whimsical, half touched with tender
melancholy, met hers.
"I _wish_ we were worth a little more--my poems and I!" said he. "I wish
I were a hero, and had written an epic. Yes, by Jove! an epic in twelve
books."
"Oh, not for me!" cried Barbara.