JANET'S RETURN.
"There he is! there is dear Major Strickland!"
The tidal train was just steaming into London Bridge station on a
certain spring evening as the above words were spoken. From a window
of one of the carriages a bright young face was peering eagerly, a
face which lighted up with a smile of rare sweetness the moment Major
Strickland's soldierly figure came into view. A tiny gloved hand was
held out as a signal, the major's eye was caught, the train came to a
stand, and next moment Janet Holme was on the platform with her arms
round the old soldier's neck, and her lips held up for a kiss.
The publicity of this transaction seemed slightly to shock the
sensibilities of Miss Close, the English teacher, in whose charge
Janet had come over; but she was won to a quite different view of the
affair when the major, after requesting to be introduced to her, shook
her cordially by the hand, said how greatly obliged he was to her for
the care she had taken of "his dear Miss Holme," and invited her to
dine next day with himself and Janet. Then Miss Close went her way,
and the Major and Janet went theirs in a cab, to a hotel not a hundred
miles from Piccadilly.
Janet's first words as they got clear of the station were:
"And now you must tell me how everybody is at Dupley Walls."
"Everybody was quite well when I left home, except one person--Sister
Agnes."
"Dear Sister Agnes!" said Janet, and the tears sprang to her eyes in a
moment. "I am more sorry than I can tell to hear that she is ill."
"Not ill exactly, but ailing," said the major. "You must not alarm
yourself unnecessarily. She caught a severe cold one wet evening about
three months ago, as she was on her way home from visiting some poor
sick woman in the village, and she seems never to have been quite well
since."
"I had a letter from her five days ago, but she never hinted to me
that she was not well."
"I can quite believe that. She is not one given to complain about
herself, but one who strives to soothe the complaints of others. The
good she does in her quiet way among the poor is something wonderful.
I must tell you what an old bedridden man, to whom she had been very
kind, said to her the other day. Said he, 'If everybody had their
rights in this world, ma'am, or if I was king of fairyland, you should
have a pair of angel's wings, so that everybody might know how good
you are.' And there are a hundred others who would say the same
thing."
"If I had not had her dear letters to hearten me and cheer me up, I
think that many a time I should have broken down utterly under the
dreadful monotony of my life at the Pension Clissot. I had no
holidays, in the common meaning of the word; no dear friends to go and
see; none even to come once in a way to see me, were it only for one
happy hour. I had no home recollections to which I could look back
fondly in memory, and the future was all a blank--a mystery. But the
letters of Sister Agnes spoke to me like the voice of a dear friend.
They purified me, they lifted me out of my common work-a-day troubles,
and all the petty meannesses of school-girl existence, and set before
me the example of a good and noble life as the one thing worth
striving for in this weary world."
"Tut, tut, my dear child!" said the major, "you are far too young to
call the world a weary world. Please heaven, it shall not be quite
such a dreary place for you in time to come. We will begin the change
this very evening. We shall just be in time to get a bit of dinner,
and then, heigh! for the play."
"The play, dear Major Strickland!" said Janet, with a sudden flush and
an eager light in her eyes; "but would Sister Agnes approve of my
going to such a place?"
"I scarcely think, poverina, that Sister Agnes would disapprove of any
place to which I might choose to take you."
"Forgive me!" cried Janet, "I did not intend you to construe my words
in that way."
"I have never construed anything since I was at school fifty years
ago," answered the major, laughingly. "Can you tell me now from your
heart, little one, that you would not like to go to the play?"
"I should like very, very much to go, and after what has been said I
will never forgive you if you do not take me."
"The penalty would be too severe. It is agreed that we shall go."
"To me it seems only seven days instead of seven years since I was
last driven through London streets," resumed Janet, as they were
crawling up Fleet Street. "The same shops, the same houses, and even,
as it seems to me, the same people crowding the pathways; and, to
complete the illusion, the same kind travelling companion now as
then."
"To me the illusion seems by no means so complete. To London Bridge,
seven years ago, I took a simple child of twelve: to-day I bring back
a young lady of nineteen--a woman, in point of fact--who, I have no
doubt, understands more of flirtation than she does of French, and
would rather graduate in coquetry than in crochet-work."
"Take care then, sir, lest I wing my unslaked arrows at you."
"You are too late in the day, dear child, to practise on me. I am your
devoted slave already--bound fast to the wheel of your triumphant car.
What more would you have?"
The hotel was reached at last, and the major gave Janet a short
quarter of an hour for her toilette. When she got downstairs dinner
was on the point of being served, and she found covers laid for three.
Before she had time to ask a question, the third person entered the
room. He was a tall well-built man of six or seven-and-twenty. He had
light-brown hair, closely-cropped but still inclined to curl, and a
thick beard and moustache of the same colour. He had blue eyes, and a
pleasant smile, and the easy self-possessed manner of one who had seen
"the world of men and things." His left sleeve was empty.
Janet did not immediately recognise him, he looked so much older, so
different in every way; but at the first sound of his voice she knew
who stood before her. He came forward and held out his hand--the one
hand that was left him.
"May I venture to call myself an old friend, Miss Holme? and to hope
that even after all these years I am not quite forgotten?"
"I recognise you by your voice, not by your face. You are Mr. George
Strickland. You it was who saved my life. Whatever else I may have
forgotten, I have not forgotten that."
"I am too well pleased to find that I live in your memory at all to
cavil with your reason for recollecting me."
"But--but, I never heard--no one ever told me--" Then she stopped with
tears in her eyes, and glanced at his empty sleeve.
"That I had left part of myself in India," he said, finishing the
sentence for her. "Such, nevertheless, is the case. Uncle there says
that the yellow rascals were so fond of me that they could not bear to
part from me altogether. For my own part, I think myself fortunate
that they did not keep me there _in toto_, in which case I should not
have had the pleasure of meeting you here to-day."
He had been holding her hand quite an unnecessary length of time. She
now withdrew it gently. Their eyes met for one brief instant, then
Janet turned away and seated herself at the table. The flush caused by
the surprise of the meeting still lingered on her face, the tear-drops
still lingered in her eyes, and as George Strickland sat down opposite
to her he thought that he had never seen a sweeter vision nor one that
appealed more directly to his imagination and his heart.
Janet Holme at nineteen was very pleasant to look upon. Her face was
not one of mere commonplace prettiness, but had an individuality of
its own that caused it to linger in the memory like some sweet picture
that once seen cannot readily be forgotten. Her eyes were of a tender
luminous grey, full of candour and goodness. Her hair was a deep
glossy brown; her face was oval, and her nose a delicate aquiline. On
ordinary occasions she had little or no colour, yet no one could have
taken the clear pallor of her cheek as a token of ill health; it
seemed rather a result of the depth and earnestness of the life within
her.
In her wardrobe there was a lack of things fashionable, and as she sat
at dinner this evening she had on a dress of black alpaca, made after
a very quiet and nun-like style; with a thin streak of snow-white
collar and cuff round throat and wrist; but without any ornament save
a necklace of bog-oak, cut after an antique pattern, and a tiny gold
locket in which was a photographic likeness of Sister Agnes.
That was a very pleasant little dinner party. In the course of
conversation it came out that, a few days previously, Captain George
had been decorated with the Victoria Cross. Janet's heart thrilled
within her as the major told in simple unexaggerated terms of the
special deed of heroism by which the great distinction had been won.
The major told also how George was now invalided on half-pay; and
her heart thrilled with a still sweeter emotion when he went on
to say that the young soldier would henceforth reside with him at
Tydsbury--at Tydsbury which is only a short two miles from Dupley
Walls! The feeling with which she heard this simple piece of news was
one to which she had hitherto been an utter stranger. She asked
herself, and blushed as she asked, whence this new sweet feeling
emanated. But she was satisfied with asking the question, and seemed
to think that no answer was required.
When dinner was over they set out for the play. Janet had never been
inside a theatre before, and for her the experience was an utterly
novel and delightful one.
On the third day after Janet's arrival in London they all went down to
Tydsbury together--the major, and she, and George. But in the course
of those three days the major took Janet about a good deal, and
introduced her to nearly all the orthodox sights of the Great
City--and a strange kaleidoscopic jumble they seemed at the time, only
to be afterwards rearranged by Memory as portions of a bright and
sunny picture the like of which she scarcely dared hope ever to see
again.
Captain Strickland parted from the major and Janet at Tydsbury
station. The two latter were bound for Dupley Walls, for the major
felt that his task would have been ill performed had he failed to
deliver Janet into Lady Pollexfen's own hands. As they rumbled along
the quiet country roads, which brought vividly back to Janet's mind
the evening when she saw Dupley Walls for the first time, said the
major: "Do you remember, poppetina, how, seven years ago, I spoke to
you of a certain remarkable likeness which you then bore to some one
whom I knew when I was quite a young man? or has the circumstance
escaped your memory?"
"I remember quite well your speaking of the likeness, and I have often
wondered since who the original was of whom I was such a striking
copy. I remember, too, how positively Lady Pollexfen denied the
resemblance which you so strongly insisted upon."
"Will her ladyship dare to deny it to-day?" said the major, sternly.
"I tell you, child, that now you are grown up, the likeness seen by me
seven years ago is still more clearly visible. When I look into your
eyes I seem to see my own youth reflected there. When you are near me
I can fancy that my lost treasure has not been really lost to me--that
she has merely been asleep, like the Princess in the story-book, and
that while time has moved on for me, she has come back out of her
enchanted slumber as fresh and beautiful as when I saw her last. Ah,
poverina! you cannot imagine what a host of recollections the sight of
your sweet face conjures up whenever I choose to let my day-dreams
have way for a little while."
"I remember your telling me that my parents were unknown to you,"
answered Janet. "Perhaps the lady to whom I bear so strong a
resemblance was my mother."
"No, not your mother, Janet. The lady to whom I refer died unmarried.
She and I had been engaged to each other for three years; but Death
came and claimed her a fortnight before the day fixed for our wedding;
and here I am, a lonely old bachelor still."
"Not quite lonely, dear Major Strickland," murmured Janet, as she
lifted his hand and pressed it to her lips.
"True, girl, not quite lonely. I have George, whom I love as though he
were a son of my own. And there is Aunt Felicity, as the children used
to call her, who is certainly very fond of me, as I also am of her."
"Not forgetting poor me," said Janet.
"Not forgetting you, dear, whom I love like a daughter."
"And who loves you very sincerely in return."
A few minutes later they drew up at Dupley Walls.