THE DAWN OF LOVE.
Major Strickland did not forget his promise to Janet. On the eighth
morning after his return from London he walked over from Eastbury to
Deepley Walls, saw Lady Chillington, and obtained leave of absence for
Miss Hope for the day. Then he paid a flying visit to Sister Agnes, for
whom he had a great reverence and admiration, and ended by carrying off
Janet in triumph.
The park of Deepley Walls extends almost to the suburbs of Eastbury, a
town of eight thousand inhabitants, but of such small commercial
importance that the nearest railway station is three miles away across
country and nearly five miles from Deepley Walls.
Major Strickland no longer resided at Rose Cottage, but at a pretty
little villa just outside Eastbury. Some small accession of fortune had
come to him by the death of a relative; and an addition to his family in
the person of Aunt Félicité, a lady old and nearly blind, the widow of a
kinsman of the Major. Besides its tiny lawn and flower-beds in front,
the Lindens had a long stretch of garden ground behind, otherwise the
Major would scarcely have been happy in his new home. He was secretary
to the Eastbury Horticultural Society, and his fame as a grower of prize
roses and geraniums was in these latter days far sweeter to him than any
fame that had ever accrued to him as a soldier.
Janet found Aunt Félicité a most quaint and charming old lady, as
cheerful and full of vivacity as many a girl of seventeen. She kissed
Janet on both cheeks when the Major introduced her; asked whether she
was fiancée; complimented her on her French; declaimed a passage from
Racine; put her poodle through a variety of amusing tricks; and pressed
Janet to assist at her luncheon of cream cheese, French roll,
strawberries and white wine.
A slight sense of disappointment swept across Janet's mind, like the
shadow of a cloud across a sunny field. She had been two hours at the
Lindens without having seen Captain George. In vain she told herself
that she had come to spend the day with Major Strickland, and to be
introduced to Aunt Félicité, and that nothing more was wanting to her
complete contentment. That something more was needed she knew quite
well, but she would not acknowledge it even to herself. HE knew of her
coming; he had been with Aunt Félicité only half an hour before--so much
she learned within five minutes of her arrival; yet now, at the end of
two hours, he had not condescended even to come and speak to her. She
roused herself from the sense of despondency that was creeping over her
and put on a gaiety that she was far from feeling. A very bitter sense
of self-contempt was just then at work in her heart; she felt that never
before had she despised herself so utterly. She took her hat in her
hand, and put her arm within the Major's and walked with him round his
little demesne. It was a walk that took up an hour or more, for there
was much to see and learn, and Janet was bent this morning on having a
long lesson in botany; and the old soldier was only too happy in having
secured a listener so enthusiastic and appreciative to whom he could
dilate on his favourite hobby.
But all this time Janet's eyes and ears were on the alert in a double
sense of which the Major knew nothing. He was busy with a description of
the last spring flower show, and how the Duke of Cheltenham's auriculas
were by no means equal to those of Major Strickland, when Janet gave a
little start as though a gnat had stung her, and bent to smell a sweet
blush-rose, whose tints were rivalled by the sudden delicate glow that
flushed her cheek.
"Yes, yes!" she said, hurriedly, as the Major paused for a moment; "and
so the Duke's gardener was jealous because you carried away the prize?"
"I never saw a man more put out in my life," said the Major. "He shook
his fist at my flowers and said before everybody, 'Let the old Major
only wait till autumn and then see if my dahlias don't--' But yonder
comes Geordie. Bless my heart! what has he been doing at Eastbury all
this time?"
Janet's instinct had not deceived her; she had heard and recognised his
footstep a full minute before the Major knew that he was near. She gave
one quick, shy glance round as he opened the gate, and then she wandered
a yard or two further down the path.
"Good-morning, uncle," said Captain George, as he came up. "You set out
for Deepley Walls so early this morning that I did not see you before
you started. I am glad to find that you did not come back alone."
Janet had turned as he began to speak, but did not come back to the
Major's side. Captain George advanced a few steps and lifted his hat.
"Good-morning, Miss Hope," he said, with outstretched hand. "I need
hardly say how pleased I am to see you at the Lindens. My uncle has
succeeded so well on his first embassy that we must send him again, and
often, on the same errand."
Janet murmured a few words in reply--what, she could not afterwards have
told; but as her eyes met his for a moment, she read in them something
that made her forgive him on the spot, even while she declared to
herself that she had nothing to forgive, and that brought to her cheek a
second blush more vivid than the first.
"All very well, young gentleman," said the Major; "but you have not yet
explained your four hours' absence. We shall order you under arrest
unless you have some reasonable excuse to submit."
"The best of all excuses--that of urgent business," said the Captain.
"You! business!" said the laughing Major. "Why, it was only last night
that you were bewailing your lot as being one of those unhappy mortals
who have no work to do."
"To those they love, the gods lend patient hearing. I forget the Latin,
but that does not matter just now. What I wish to convey is this--that I
need no longer be idle unless I choose. I have found some work to do.
Lend me your ears, both of you. About an hour after you, sir, had
started for Deepley Walls, I received a note from the editor of the
_Eastbury Courier_, in which he requested me to give him an early call.
My curiosity prompted me to look in upon him as soon as breakfast was
over. I found that he was brother to the editor of one of the London
magazines--a gentleman whom I met one evening at a party in town. The
London editor remembered me, and had written to the Eastbury editor to
make arrangements with me for writing a series of magazine articles on
India and my experiences there during the late mutiny. I need not bore
you with details; it is sufficient to say that my objections were talked
down one by one; and I left the office committed to a sixteen-page
article by the sixth of next month."
"You an author!" exclaimed the Major. "I should as soon have thought of
your enlisting in the Marines."
"It will only be for a few months, uncle--only till my limited stock of
experiences shall be exhausted. After that I shall be relegated to my
natural obscurity, doubtless never to emerge again."
"Hem," said the Major, nervously. "Geordie, my boy, I have by me one or
two little poems which I wrote when I was about nineteen--trifles flung
off on the inspiration of the moment. Perhaps, when you come to know
your friend the editor better than you do now, you might induce him to
bring them out--to find an odd corner for them in his magazine. I
shouldn't want payment for them, you know. You might just mention that
fact; and I assure you that I have seen many worse things than they are
in print."
"What, uncle, you an author! Oh, fie! I should as soon have thought of
your wishing to dance on the tight-rope as to appear in print. But we
must look over these little effusions--eh, Miss Hope. We must unearth
this genius, and be the first to give his lucubrations to the world."
"If you were younger, sir, or I not quite so old, I would box your
ears," said the Major, who seemed hardly to know whether to laugh or be
angry. Finally he laughed, George and Janet chimed in, and all three
went back indoors.
After an early dinner the Major took rod and line and set off to capture
a few trout for supper. Aunt Félicité took her post-prandial nap
discreetly, in an easy-chair, and Captain George and Miss Hope were left
to their own devices. In Love's sweet Castle of Indolence the hours that
make up a summer afternoon pass like so many minutes. These two had
blown the magic horn and had gone in. The gates of brass had closed
behind them, shutting them up from the common outer world. Over all
things was a glamour as of witchcraft. Soft music filled the air; soft
breezes came to them as from fields of amaranth and asphodel. They
walked ever in a magic circle, that widened before them as they went.
Eros in passing had touched them with his golden dart. Each of them hid
the sweet sting from the other, yet neither of them would have been
whole again for anything the world could have offered. What need to tell
the old story over again--the story of the dawn of love in two young
hearts that had never loved before?
Janet went home that night in a flutter of happiness--a happiness so
sweet and strange and yet so vague that she could not have analysed it
even had she been casuist enough to try to do so. But she was content to
accept the fact as a fact; beyond that she cared nothing. No syllable of
love had been spoken between her and George: they had passed what to an
outsider would have seemed a very common-place afternoon. They had
talked together--not sentiment, but every-day topics of the world around
them; they had read together--poetry, but nothing more passionate than
"Aurora Leigh;" they had walked together--rather a silent and stupid
walk, our friendly outsider would have urged; but if they were content,
no one else had any right to complain. And so the day had worn itself
away--a red-letter day for ever in the calendar of their young lives.