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 Hope 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 Hope," 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 Deepley 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 complaining 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 bed-ridden 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 Hope? And to trust
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 Hope 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 be readily 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 Eastbury--at Eastbury, which
was only two short miles from Deepley 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
Eastbury 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 Eastbury station.
The two latter were bound for Deepley Walls, for the Major felt that his
task would have been ill-performed had he failed to deliver Janet into
Lady Chillington's own hands. As they rumbled along the quiet country
roads--which brought vividly back to Janet's mind the evening when she
saw Deepley Walls for the first time--the Major said: "Do you remember,
poppetina, how seven years ago I spoke to you of a certain remarkable
likeness which you then bore to someone 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 Chillington 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, child, 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 as a daughter."
"And who loves you very sincerely in return."
A few minutes later they drew up at Deepley Walls.