RECOGNITION
"Go from me. Yet I feel that I shall stand
Henceforward in thy shadow. Nevermore
Alone upon the threshold of my door
Of individual life, I shall command
The uses of my soul, nor lift my hand
Serenely in the sunshine as before."
--SONNETS FROM THE PORTUGUESE.
It had been arranged that the fledgling architect should be
accompanied by Mr. Helston, and have the benefit of his knowledge and
experience when she went down to look at Captain Brooke's estate at
Clunbury. But fate decreed otherwise. On Thursday morning Mr.
Helston was in bed with a high temperature and sore throat. A
railway journey on a raw, gusty day in early spring was out of the
question for him; and Melicent was obliged to go alone.
Brenda suggested something about her being unchaperoned, which was
met by the young lady with unspeakable scorn.
"Better throw up my profession at once, if Mrs. Grundy is to have a
say in my business arrangements," she remarked; and caught her train
at Paddington with professional composure.
She alighted at a small station on a branch line, which was the
nearest point to the village; and as she stepped from the
compartment, Captain Brooke approached, in a suit of country tweeds,
gaiters and knickerbockers. In such guise he reminded her of her
beloved Dalesmen, and the idea gave kindness to her smile of greeting.
As he approached, she noted that he looked pale under his tan, and
seemed not perfectly ready to speak at once.
"So Mr. Helston was unable," he brought out, after manifest
hesitation.
The girl looked surprised.
"I am so sorry! He is in bed with a severe chill. I bring you his
apologies. But if you think he is indispensable--" she added, as an
afterthought, puzzled by the disturbance visible in his face.
"Oh! by no means. It is good of you to come alone," he said
hurriedly. "This way, please; I have only a hired trap at present,
and am putting up at the inn near here, which is two miles from the
village. I've ordered lunch, but it won't be much good, I'm afraid;
these English country inns are astonishingly bad."
"Please don't apologise," she said. "I am used to roughing it, and I
like it."
He smiled, as he tucked her into the dog-cart, and remarked, as he
climbed to his seat beside her.
"Collis Square didn't seem very rough to me."
"Ah! But you haven't seen me at work. I can lay bricks, mix mortar,
point walls--it's delicious."
He laughed. "I feel sure you could do anything you tried," he said.
They drove on briskly, through a lane whose hedges were beginning to
show bronze buds upon their blackness. The sky, after some
boisterous sleet storms, was washed a clear, pure blue. A faint
golden haze of willow catkins brooded over the adjacent brown copses,
and the wet sparkles on the bare boughs threw back the sunbeams.
Here and there the lazy reek from a cottage chimney hung pearly
against the indigo fir woods--a typical English April, and a typical
English landscape.
"Do you like this country?" he asked abruptly, and his tone seemed to
imply that he thought anybody must.
She made a conventional answer that it was very pretty.
"Perhaps you don't care for scenery?" he inquired anxiously.
She turned to him laughing.
"Oh," she said, "scenery is my particular fad. But this is too tame
for me. You should see my Cleveshire moors and dales!"
His silence, in some inscrutable way, conveyed to her the idea of
extreme mortification.
"Do you mean," he presently asked, "that you wouldn't care to live in
this part of England?"
"I shouldn't choose it," she replied carelessly. "But then, I have
no links with it. I quite appreciate your reason for choosing it."
"You do?"
"Undoubtedly. Your ancestry drew their living from this soil; they
ate the corn it grew, the cattle it fed. In a real sense, you are
part of this little bit of little England. There must be something
in you that is in mysterious sympathy with it."
"That's how I feel," he replied, as though gratified to be so
interpreted by her. "But I admire the country for itself too; it
seems a great pleasure-ground--a sort of park laid out by God
Almighty."
"I like more mystery, more wildness."
"I've had enough wildness," he answered very determinedly. "I like
this because of its cultivation and fertility and order."
"I'd like to show you Fransdale," she said, smiling.
"I hope you will," he replied. "I'm going to Ilbersdale, you know."
He reflected for some minutes, then said: "Should you advise me not
to decide on this till I've seen the other?"
"What!" cried Millie, "when you've bought your land, and found your
ancestors and all! I never heard of such a thing."
"I might put up a shooting-box on the moors," he said reflectively.
"You must be very rich," commented the girl, in wonder.
"I suppose I am. I did a big deal in land out there," he replied.
Privately she thought he had more money than wits; but perhaps he
would make none the worse client for that.
They reached the inn, and he ushered her into the quaint, low
parlour, with the usual stuffed birds, coloured almanacks and corner
cupboard.
During the interval before the appearance of the roast fowl and
boiled ham, she unrolled the drawings she had brought, spread them on
a table in the window, and described them to him. The sun streamed
in at the lattice, gilding her hair where it curled over and about
the edges of her wide, flat, dark-blue cap as she sat absorbed in her
plans and ideas. Her companion drank in the details of her dainty
presence--from her fine skin to her firm, little hands, from her
natty, embroidered collar to the strong, laced boots appearing below
her short blue serge skirt. He was considering whether he found her
more adorable in the lamplight in her white gown, or in the sunshine,
in her workmanlike, country suit Suddenly he was conscious that he
had failed to answer a question, and that a severe, surprised little
face was being lifted to his.
Their glances met; he had a moment's awful apprehension. It seemed
to him that she had caught him unawares without his mask. He had no
notion what was the question she had asked, and he floundered
desperately.
"You were saying--I am such a thundering ass--my mind had gone off.
I was thinking that you can see the Lone Ash, where I want to
build--from this window--there. That hill to the left--"
The inn maid-servant, bringing in the lunch, saved him.
But his moment of confusion, so much greater than the occasion seemed
to warrant, had jarred the smooth, impersonal nature of Miss
Lutwyche's opinion of him. There had been so remarkable a
look--almost of consternation--in the man's eyes as he faced her.
She had been at some pains to expound the main principle of the
Lee-Simmons system of drainage for isolated houses, which was her
special fancy, and which she was most anxious to have him adopt; and
it was certainly annoying to find that she had been speaking to deaf
ears. But his curious expression when she had looked at him! He had
seemed like one suddenly caught in the act--taken red-handed. What
could the thought be which had absorbed his attention, and reddened
his brown cheek?
She was so kind as to repeat her information while they sat at lunch
together, and had no cause this time to complain of lack of
attention. But his momentary lapse had occasioned in her a subtle
change of mental attitude. She was, without knowing why, suddenly on
her guard--all at once concerned with this man, about whom before she
had not thought at all.
Of course she did not say this to herself. Like all deep-seated
motions of the mind, it was spontaneous, unrealised. But it was
there; and the man encountered it, felt it with his alarming
sensitiveness where she was concerned; and by degrees there arose up
within him a profound uneasiness, which made the simplest sentence an
effort.
Melicent soon settled, in her positive way, what was wrong. She
thought the Captain, being rich and eligible, was nervous of being
_tête-à-tête_ with his youthful lady architect. She spoke with
elaborate ease and unconcern, determined to show him there was
nothing to fear; but he seemed each moment more self-conscious.
There was, nevertheless, no doubt that he was interested--not only in
the speaker, but in what she was saying. By the time lunch was over,
he had practically decided upon the Lee-Simmons idea, and was eager
to transport his architect to the scene of her enterprise at once.
He went outside to the little rough plot of green before the inn to
find the ostler; and urged by an impulse of such curiosity as she
seldom felt, Melicent went to the window to watch him.
A few village children were at play upon the green; and one little
girl, probably inspired by parents who hoped for some advantage from
the rich man who was going to make his home among them, shyly
approached him as he stood.
He had put his hands behind him, and forgotten himself in staring at
the hill crowned by the Lone Ash, where he meant his fairy palace to
arise. The little fair girl advanced diffidently, shyly holding out
a big round bouquet of primroses, tightly tied together. He turned,
looking down at her, half-amused; and Melicent thought that the big,
fine man and the blushing child with her flowers, illumined by the
crude spring sunshine, looked like the coloured supplement to a
Christmas Number.
The Captain accepted the flowers, felt in his pocket for a penny, and
turned back towards the inn door, with the intention of presenting
the floral tribute to Miss Lutwyche.
Now, what was there in that action--what sudden thrill of memory--of
recognition--of pain, like a sharp blow on a raw spot--darted to the
brain of the girl who watched in the window?
She had seen a man come into a room once, with a bunch of flowers in
his awkward, unaccustomed hand; she had heard the slapping thud with
which they had been hurled into the grate.
"_So you'll break your word!_"
It seemed to her that the words were spoken aloud, now, at this
moment, in the room. And a blinding light illuminated her. She
knew, as completely as a moment before she had ignored, that Captain
Brooke was none other than Bert Mestaer.
Waves of cold and heat, sudden dizziness clutched her. He was coming
in--in a moment he would be there--she could not face him.
Terror prevented unconsciousness. Catching at the furniture, she
staggered across the room to the inner room leading to the kitchen.
"Take me upstairs--a bedroom--I must lie down!" she gasped; and as
the maid-servant, scared by her white face, rushed forward and
encircled her with a strong arm, she gasped: "Don't say anything to
Captain Brooke ... please. I shall be ... better directly."
The girl half supported, half dragged her up the narrow stair.
"Dear miss, what shall I do? Burnt feathers? Key down your back?"
cried she distractedly.
"Is there--cold water? Yes, that's all. Go away please. Go! Come
back in ten minutes. Leave me alone now."
Melicent turned the key in the door, and sank upon the scanty
feathers of the rocky bed. For several minutes her one overpowering,
paralysing sensation was fear. She could not think at all.
She lay prone, while the surging currents of her nerves slowly
settled themselves and adjusted their balance. Her sense of outward
things came back to her by degrees. The fine cold air flowed through
the little casement with the sunshine. Wheels crunched upon the
gravel below; a dog barked; someone spoke; in the distance a cow
lowed. The world went on as usual, lapt in afternoon, rural peace.
But from her skies the sun had dropped. The nightmare that had
pursued her for years was now beside her in bodily shape, dogging her
steps. Mestaer had come back.
How came it that she had not known? She answered herself bitterly
that it was because she had trusted Carol Mayne, and he had allowed
her to be deceived. Not for one moment did she now doubt Captain
Brooke's identity. The marvel was that she had not detected him at
once.
This had been the first time of her looking at him, he being
unconscious of the fact of her observation; and in that moment he had
betrayed himself, she could not have told how.
And now in what a net was she caught! The thought of the man's
persistency turned her cold. She was committed to his acquaintance,
involved in a business transaction with him--he was going to
Ilbersdale. Even in Fransdale she should not be safe from him! And
Carol Mayne had connived at this betrayal!
It did not take her long to form a decision on one point; namely,
that her only hope lay in going on as if nothing had happened.
Surely she was capable of that! She, the self-contained,
self-reliant professional woman!
Reaction had set in. Passionate anger, active defiance succeeded
fear. It was quite simple, after all. She had stolen a march upon
the conspirators and surprised their plans. It was the best thing
that could have happened. She knew now what to guard against--could
avoid intimacy and repel advances.
Springing from the bed, she dashed water into the basin, bathed her
hot forehead, and was once more her own mistress, all her spirit, all
her force, summoned up to defend her liberty.
She peeped from the window. Captain Brooke stood waiting by the trap
below. His attitude betrayed a subdued impatience. Undoubtedly he
was much changed--completely altered from the man she had known.
There was real excuse for her non-recognition. But that he should
have imagined that such an incognito could be sustained! No wonder
he had betrayed nervousness that morning when he faced the idea of a
day alone with her!
Well, they were equals now! He knew, and she knew. If she could
prevent his knowing that she knew, all would be well.
She snatched up her gloves, and ran lightly downstairs, not allowing
herself time to pause, but passing straight out into the sunshine to
meet him.