A GREAT RELIEF.
Next afternoon Gladys herself drove the lawyer and his wife from
Bourhill to the station.
'Now, my dear,' said Mrs. Fordyce, as they were about to part, 'I shall
allow the girls to come down on Saturday, on condition that you return
with them at the end of a week, prepared to accompany us to London.'
Gladys nodded, with a bright smile.
'Yes, I shall do everything you wish. I believe I am rather tired of
having my own way, and I should not mind having a change, even from
Bourhill.'
As they stood lingering a little over their good-byes, a train from
Glasgow came puffing into the station, and, with a sudden gleam of
expectation, Mrs. Fordyce glanced anxiously at the alighting passengers.
'My dear, why, there is George! actually George himself.'
Gladys cast a startled glance in the direction indicated and the colour
mounted high to her brow, then faded quite, leaving her rather
strikingly pale.
'Why does he come here?' she asked quickly, 'I have not asked him.'
'Unless you have broken off your engagement with him, Gladys, he has a
right to come whether you ask him or not. Tom dear, here is our train
now, and we must run over that bridge. We dare not miss it, I suppose?'
'I daren't, seeing I have to take the chair at a dinner in the Windsor
Hotel to-night,' replied the lawyer; 'but if you like to remain a little
longer, why not, Isabel?'
Mrs. Fordyce hesitated a moment. Her nephew was giving up his ticket to
the collector at the little gate, and their train was impatiently
snorting at the opposite platform.
'I had better go,' she decided quickly, as her husband began to run off.
Turning to Gladys, she gave her a hasty kiss, and observed seriously,--
'Be kind to poor George, Gladys; he is very fond of you, and you can
make anything of him you like. Write to me, like a dear, this evening,
after he is away.'
She would have liked a word in her nephew's private ear also, but time
forbade it. She waved her hand to him from the steps of the bridge, but
he was so occupied looking at Gladys that he did not return her
salutation.
Gladys stepped composedly into the phaeton, and, sitting up in rather a
dignified way, accorded him a very calm, cool greeting. His demeanour
was significant of a slight nervousness as he approached the carriage,
not at all sure of his ground.
'I am in luck, Gladys,' he said, trying to speak with a natural gaiety.
'Have I your permission to take a seat beside you?'
'If you are going to Bourhill, of course you may,' she replied quite
calmly; then, turning to the groom, she said, without any hesitation,
'You can walk home, William. Put my letters in at the post as you pass,
and bring me five shillings' worth of stamps.'
The groom touched his hat, took the money and the letters, and walked
off, indulging in a grin when his face was turned away from the
occupants of the carriage.
'Shall I take the reins, Gladys?' inquired George, with a very bright
look on his face. He perceived that, though there might be 'rows,' as he
mentally expressed it, they would be of a mild nature, easily explained;
the bolt had _not_ fallen, if anything was to be gathered from her
demeanour.
'No, thank you. I dislike sitting idle in a carriage. I always drive
myself,' she said calmly, and, with a rather tighter hand than usual on
the reins, she turned the ponies' heads, and even gave each a sharp
flick with the whip, which sent them up the leafy road at a very smart
pace.
'I have come to make my peace, Gladys, and it's awfully good of you to
send the fellow away,' George began impressively. 'I'm in luck, I tell
you. I pictured to myself a long dusty walk through the sunshine.'
'I sent him away because we had a long drive this morning, and I wanted
Castor and Pollux to have an easier load to pull up the hill,' she
replied. 'I suppose if I had allowed you to walk instead of William, it
would have been rather rude.'
Her manner, though very calm and unruffled, was rather unpromising.
George looked at her a trifle anxiously, as if hardly sure how to
proceed.
'Are you awfully angry with me, Gladys? I always expected a letter from
you. I thought you were so angry with me that I was afraid to write.'
'You were quite wrong, then. I was not angry at all. But why should I
have written when you did not?'
This was rather unanswerable, and he hesitated a moment over his next
words. He had to weigh them rather carefully for the ears of this
singularly placid and self-possessed young lady, whose demeanour was so
little index to her state of mind.
'Well, if I admit I was in the wrong all the time, though I really, upon
my word, don't know very well what the row was about, will you forgive
me?' he asked in his most irresistible manner, which was so far
successful that the first approach to a smile he had seen since they met
now appeared on her lips.
'You know very well what it was all about; you have not forgotten a word
that passed, any more than I have,' she answered. 'But you ought to have
written all the same. I am generous enough to admit, however, that you
had more reason on your side than I was induced to admit that night. The
experiment I tried has not been a success. Have you heard that Lizzie
Hepburn has run away from us?'
He swallowed the choking sensation in his throat, and answered, with
what indifference he could command,--
'Yes, I heard it.'
'And is that why you have come?' she asked, with a keen, curious glance
at him,--'to crow over my downfall That is not generous in the least.'
'My darling, how can you think me capable of such meanness? Would it not
be more charitable to think I came to condole and sympathise with you?'
'It would, of course,' she admitted, with a sigh; 'but I am rather
suspicious of everybody. I am afraid I am not at all in a wholesome
frame of mind.'
She looked so lovely as she uttered these words, her sweet face wearing
a somewhat pensive, troubled look, that her lover felt that nothing
would ever induce him to give her up. They had now left the town
behind, and were on the brow of the hill where four roads meet. To the
right stood the cosy homestead of Mossgiel, and to the left the whole
expanse of lovely country, hill and field and wood, which had so often
filled the soul of Burns with the lonely rapture of the poet's soul.
Gladys never passed up that way without thinking of him, and it seemed
to her sometimes that she shared with him that deep, yearning depression
of soul which found a voice in the words--
'Man was made to mourn.'
The road was quite deserted. Its grassy slopes were white with the
gowan, and in the low ragged hedges there were clumps of sweet-smelling
hawthorn. All the fields were green and lovely with the promise which
summer crowns and autumn reaps; and it was all so lovely a world that
there seemed in it no room for care or sadness or any dismal thing.
Being thus alone, with no witness to their happiness but the birds and
the bees, the pair of lovers ought to have found it a golden hour; but
something appeared still to stand between them, like a gaunt shadow
keeping them apart.
'I have been awfully miserable, Gladys. You see, I didn't know what to
do; you are so different from any girl I have ever met. I never know
exactly what will please you and what will aggravate you. Upon my word,
you have no idea what an amount of power you have in those frail little
hands.'
Gladys smiled and coloured a little. She was not quite insensible to
flattery; she was young enough to feel that it was rather pleasant, on
the whole, to have so much power over a big handsome fellow like George
Fordyce.
'I wish you would not talk so much nonsense,' she said quickly; but her
tone was more encouraging, and with a sudden inspiration George
followed up his advantage. He put his arm round the slender waist, to
the great amazement of Castor and Pollux, who, finding the firm hand
relax on the reins, had no sort of hesitation about coming to an
immediate stop.
'But, all the same, I'm going to keep hold of these little hands,' he
said passionately, 'because they hold my happiness in their grasp, and
I'm not going to allow them to torture me very much longer. How soon can
you be ready to marry me, Gladys?'
'To marry you! Oh, not for ages. Let me go. Just look at the ponies!
They are utterly scandalised,' she cried, her sweet face suffused with
red. But he did not release her until he had stolen a kiss from her
unwilling lips, a kiss which seemed to him to bridge entirely the slight
estrangement which had been between them.
She sat very far away from him, and, gathering up the reins again,
brought Castor and Pollux to their scattered senses; but her face was
not quite so grim and unreadable as before. After all, it was something
to be of so much importance to one man. The very idea of her power over
him had something intoxicating in it, thus proving her to be a very
woman.
'I am going to London very soon with your Aunt Isabel and the girls,'
she said, trying to lead the conversation into more commonplace grooves.
'And couldn't you see about your trousseau when you are there? Isn't
London the place to get such things?' he asked. But Gladys calmly
ignored this speech.
'I have engaged Christina Balfour to remain at least all summer at
Bourhill. She can be useful to Miss Peck in many ways, and she is
devoted to the place. Poor Lizzie has fearfully disappointed me. What
would you advise me to do about her?'
'Nothing. There is nothing you can possibly do now but leave her alone,'
he answered at once. 'Do you think it is wise to keep the other one
here?'
'Oh yes; why not? I am really going to perfect that scheme for the
working girls soon. Meantime, I think I have got a little disheartened;
I am afraid I am not very brave. I hoped that you would help me in
that.'
She turned to him with a look which no man living could resist.
'My darling, I'll do anything you wish. I'm not half good enough for
you,' he cried, uttering this solemn truth with all sincerity. 'Only
give me the right to be interested in all that interests you, and you'll
find you can make of me what you like.'
Gladys was silent a moment, on her face a strange look. She was
thinking, not of the lover pleading so passionately at her side, but of
one who, while loving her not less dearly, had sufficient manliness and
strength of will to go his way alone--conquering, unassisted,
difficulties which would appear unsurmountable to most men. George
Fordyce, looking at her, wondered at the cloud upon her brow.
'Promise me, my darling, that you won't keep me waiting too long. Surely
three months is long enough for the making of the best trousseau any
woman can want? Won't you promise to come to me in autumn, and let us
have a lovely holiday, coming back in winter to work together in real
earnest?'
She turned her head to him slowly, and her eyes met his with a long,
questioning, half-pathetic look.
'In autumn? That is very soon,' she said. 'But, well, perhaps I will
think about it, only you must let me be till I have made up my mind.
Why, here we are already at home.'
[Illustration]