ANTONY FINDS A GLOVE
Trix's appearance at the door in the wall had fairly dumbfounded Antony.
He had recognized her instantly. And the amazing thing was that she was
exactly as he had seen her in his dream. Her announcement had carried the
dream sense further, and it was with a queer feeling of intense
disappointment that he found no one standing outside the gate. There was
nothing but the silent deserted wood and the mound of leaf-mould. For a
moment or so he stood listening, almost expecting to hear a footstep
among the trees. Nothing but silence greeted him, however, broken only by
the faint rustling of the leaves.
He turned back to the garden. It was empty. There was nothing, nothing on
earth to prove that the whole thing had not been an extraordinarily vivid
waking dream. And if it were a dream, surely it was calculated to dispel
the relief the first dream had brought him. Yet was it a dream? Could it
have been? Wasn't he entirely awake, and in the possession of his right
senses?
Demanding thus of his soul, solemn, bewildered, and reflective, he turned
once more to his wheelbarrow. Ten minutes later, trundling it down a
cinder path, his eye fell on an object lying beneath a gooseberry bush.
He dropped the barrow, and picked up the object.
It was a long soft doe-skin glove.
"It wasn't a dream," said Antony triumphantly. "But where in the name of
all that's wonderful did she come from? And where did she vanish to?"
He put the glove into his pocket, and resumed his work.
"I am afraid," he remarked to himself as he heaved the leaf-mould out of
the barrow, "that she knew perfectly well there was no one at the gate. I
wonder why she said there was, and why, above all, she made such an
extraordinarily unexpected appearance."
These considerations engrossed his mind for at least the next half-hour,
when, the leaf-mould having been transported from the wood, he went round
to the front of the house to trim the edges of the lawn. He was on his
knees on the gravel path, busily engaged with a pair of shears, when he
heard the amazing sound of the front door opening and shutting. He looked
round over his shoulder, to see the same apparition that had appeared to
him from the wood, walking calmly down the steps and in the direction of
the drive. Apparently she was too engrossed with her own thoughts to
observe him where he was kneeling at a little distance to the eastward of
the front door.
"Well!" ejaculated Antony bewildered. And he gazed after her.
It was not till her white dress had become a speck in the distance, that
Antony remembered the long soft glove reposing in his pocket. He dropped
his shears, and bolted after her.
Trix was half-way down the drive, when she heard rapid steps behind her.
She looked back, to see that she was being pursued by the young man who
had formerly been trundling a wheelbarrow.
Her first instinct was one of flight. Her second, conscious that the
owner of the property had condoned her intrusion, and also having in view
the fact that there was nowhere but straight ahead to run, and he was in
all probability fleeter of foot than she, was to stand her ground, and
that as unconcernedly as possible.
"Yes?" queried Trix with studied calmness, as he came up to her.
"Excuse me, Miss, but you dropped this in the kitchen garden." Antony
held out the long soft glove.
"Oh, thank you," said Trix, infinitely relieved that his rapid approach
had signified nothing worse than the restoration of her own lost
property. And then she looked at him. Where on earth had she seen him
before?
"There wasn't any one at the gate, Miss," said Antony suddenly.
Trix flushed. "Oh, wasn't there? I--" she broke off.
Then she looked straight at him.
"I knew there wasn't," she confessed. "But I was afraid to go back, so I
had to make you look away while I ran. It was the cows." She sighed. She
felt she had been making bovine explanations during the greater part of
the afternoon.
"Cows, Miss?" queried Antony, a twinkle in his eyes.
Trix nodded.
"Yes; awful beasts with white faces, in the field above the wood. I'm not
sure they weren't bulls."
Antony laughed.
"Sure, and why weren't you telling me, then? I'd have tackled them for
you."
Trix smiled.
"I never thought of that way out of the difficulty," she owned. "But it
will be all right, I ex--" She broke off. She had been within an ace of
saying she had explained matters to Mr. Danver. She really must be
careful. "I expect--I'm sure you won't get into trouble about it," she
stuttered.
"Sure, that's all right," he said, a trifle puzzled.
There was a queer pleasure in this little renewal of the acquaintanceship
of the bygone days, despite the fact of its being an entirely one-sided
renewal. He'd have known her anywhere. It was the same small vivacious
face, the same odd little upward tilt to the chin, the same varied
inflection of voice, the same little quick gestures. He would have liked
to keep her standing there while he recalled the small imperious child in
the elfin-like figure before him. But, her property having been restored,
there was nothing on earth further he could say, no possible reason for
prolonging the conversation. He waited, however, for Trix to give the
dismissal.
Trix was looking at him, a queer puzzlement in her eyes. Why _was_ his
face so oddly familiar? It was utterly impossible that she should have
met him before, at all events on the intimate footing the familiarity of
his face suggested. It must be merely an extraordinary likeness to
someone to whom she could not at the moment put a name. Quite suddenly
she realized that they were scrutinizing each other in a way that
certainly cannot be termed exactly orthodox. She pulled herself
together.
"Thank you for restoring my glove," said she with a fine resumption of
dignity; and she turned off once more down the drive.
Antony went slowly back to his shears.