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 Tydsbury to
Dupley Walls, saw Lady Pollexfen, and obtained leave of absence for
Miss Holme 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 Dupley Walls extends almost to the suburbs of Tydsbury, 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 Dupley Walls.
Major Strickland no longer resided at Rose Cottage, but at a pretty
little villa just outside Tydsbury. 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 Felicité, 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 Tydsbury Horticultural Society, and his
fame as a grower of prize roses and prize 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 Felicité 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 Felicité, 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 Felicité 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 to have 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
Tydsbury 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 Dupley 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 Holme," 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 afterward
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 got some
work to do. Lend me your ears, both of you. About an hour after you,
sir, had started for Dupley Walls I received a note from the editor of
the _Tydsbury 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
Tydsbury 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 wouldn't want paying 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 Holme? 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 Felicité took her post-prandial
nap discreetly, in an easy-chair, and Captain George and Miss Holme
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.
They 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 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 commonplace
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.