With the passing of the jetty, fear awoke for the first time in Darsie's
breast--the fear which arises when the possibility of action is over and
nothing remains but to sit still and await the end. In one moment of
time an incredible number of thoughts flashed through her brain; she
thought of her father and mother, of their grief and pain at the
knowledge of her untimely end; she thought of her brothers and sisters,
of Vie Vernon and plain Hannah, and Dan; she saw a vision of them all
garbed in black, sitting round the study fire, enlarging upon her own
virtues and graces; she thought of Aunt Maria and her responsibility;
she saw a vision of herself, cold and still, being dragged out of the
millpond, with her hair floating like seaweed behind her, and at the
thought a wild rebellion rose in her heart, a determination to fight on,
to fight to the end for her precious life! One or two large trees stood
out from the bank.
Darsie leaped to her feet and, raising the paddle so high above her head
that it caught against the branches, strove to delay the progress of the
punt. The result was to upset her own equilibrium, and as she fell
forward she screamed loudly, a shrill, penetrating scream of panic and
appeal.
With almost startling quickness the answer came, in the form of an
answering cry, close at hand. Round the corner of the next clump of
bushes dashed the figure of Ralph Percival, bareheaded, eager-faced,
and, thank Heaven! unhesitating in action. Not for one fraction of a
second did he hesitate, but with the assurance of one who knows every
inch of the land rushed forward waist-deep into the river; halted there,
and called out a sharp command--
"Your paddle! Stretch out your paddle towards me! Hold hard! Lean out
as far as you can!"
Darsie fell on her knees, and, leaning forward to the utmost extent of
her body, held out the paddle as directed. There was a moment of
sickening suspense, then came a halt, a jerk that seemed to pull her
arms half out of the sockets, and the punt swung heavily towards the
shore. The danger was over; she was helped on to the bank, where she
collapsed in a little heap, while Ralph worked the punt slowly along to
the jetty and fastened it to its chain.
_The short_ breathing space had allowed Darsie to recover her self-
possession, to master the overpowering temptation to cry, and to swallow
the lump in her throat sufficiently to be able to say in a weak little
voice--
"You've saved my life!"
"You've spoiled my trousers!" retorted Ralph in a matter-of-fact manner
calculated to put an instant check on sentimentality. He sat down on
the bank, unfastened his mud-soaked gaiters, and threw them on one side.
"The river's beastly dirty, and the mud sticks like the Dickens. A new
suit, too! It will never look the same again."
"I'm sorry."
"So you ought to be. Things are bad enough as they are, _but_... How
on earth did you come to be careering about alone in that punt?"
"I was waiting to see your sisters. I wandered down here, and thought
I'd just sit in it for a rest, then I thought I could just paddle up and
down. I managed quite well going up the stream; I got as far as the
willow!" Even at that moment a faint note of pride crept into Darsie's
voice. "We grounded there, and I--I must have fallen asleep, I suppose,
and that hateful old mill must needs choose the opportunity to begin
working at that very moment... Just my luck!"
Ralph pursed his lips in eloquent comment.
"If it comes to that, I think you have had a fair amount of luck in
another way! I heard the noise of the mill and came down to look on.
If I hadn't been there, you'd have been pretty considerably in Queer
Street by this time. Nice thing it would have been for us to discover
your drowned body in the millpond, and have had to tell your aunt!"
"I thought of that," agreed Darsie meekly. "It was one of my dying
thoughts. Don't scold me, please, for I feel so shaky, and you wouldn't
like it if I cried. It was my own fault, and I got what I deserved. I
wasn't a bit frightened till I missed the jetty, but that one moment was
like a hundred years. Did my yell sound very awful?"
"Pretty middling blood-curdling!" replied Ralph, smiling. "Good thing
it did. Gave me a bit of a shock, I can tell you, to see the old punt
dashing down to the gates, with you sitting huddled up in the bottom,
with your hair hanging wild, and your face the colour of chalk. You
looked like a young Medusa."
"Sounds attractive, I must say! Medusa froze _other_ people's blood,
not her own," declared Darsie, tilting her chin with a little air of
offence, at which her companion laughed triumphantly.
"Oh, _you're_ better; you're coming round again all right! I was afraid
you were going to faint. I don't mind telling you that you were jolly
plucky. Most girls would have started screaming miles before, but you
held on like a Briton. How do the arms feel now? Rather rusty at the
hinges, I expect. The stiffness will probably spread to the back by to-
morrow, but it'll come all right in time. It is a pretty good weight,
that punt, and I had to pull for all I was worth... Don't you think
you'd better come up to the house and have some tea?"
"Yes, please. And you can change your clothes, too. I should feel so
miserable if you caught cold."
"No fear of that. I'm used to splashing in and out of the water half a
dozen times a day. You need have no anxiety about me."
"But--the trousers?"
"Oh, bother the trousers! I piled that on a bit, just to prevent you
from getting sentimental. _They're_ all right!" Ralph paused a moment,
then, "I say!" he cried anxiously, "is this going to get you into
trouble with the aunt? Need you say anything about it, do you think?
I'll swear to secrecy, if you say the word, and not a soul need know."
Darsie debated the point thoughtfully while the two walked side by side
along the gravelled paths, and finally arrived at a conclusion.
"I think, on the whole, I'll tell! Aunt Maria allowed me to go out
alone as a great concession, and it was mean to take advantage and run
risks. So upsetting for her if I were killed in her house! So I'm in
honour bound to confess, and promise not to do it again."
"You might do something else just as bad! Probably she'll withdraw her
permission and keep you under her thumb as she did those first weeks."
"She _may_; but I don't think she _will_! I think she will appreciate
my confidence," said Darsie, with a grandiloquent air, at which her
companion whistled softly, his face twitching with amusement. He was
much more natural and boyish in his manner than on either of the
previous occasions on which Darsie had met him, and the agitation of the
last few minutes seemed to have carried them in a bound past all the
formalities of early acquaintance.
"Right you are!" he said briskly. "I like a straight girl. But if you
don't mind we won't speak of it before the mater. She's a bit nervous,
and would be always imagining that the girls were going to have the same
experience. You might warn Lady Hayes not to speak of it either. We'll
keep it a secret between us."
"Just as you like! I _believe_," said Darsie shrewdly, "that you're
afraid of being praised and fussed over, as you would be if people knew
that you had saved my life! Men hate a fuss, but you can't escape my
gratitude. I didn't want to die. It came over me with a sort of
horror--the thought of leaving the flowers, and the trees, and the blue
sky, and all the people I love. Have you ever been so nearly dead to
know how it feels?"
"Once--when I had enteric at school. It was a near squeak at the
crisis."
"And how did you feel? What did you think?"
"I didn't care a whit one way or another. I wanted to have the pillow
turned. That seemed a hundred times more important than life or death;
I was too ill to think... Well, thank goodness, you are _not_ dead! I
hope you'll live for many years to be a pride and glory to--er--er--the
ranks of women blue-stockings!"
Darsie looked at him sharply.
"The girls have been telling you of my ambitions! Mean of them! They
might have known you'd scoff. All boys do, but I fail to see why if a
girl has brains she should not use them as well as a man."
"The inference being--"
"Certainly! I'm unusually clever for my years!" returned Darsie
proudly, whereupon they simultaneously burst into a peal of laughter.
"Well, you goaded me to it!" Darsie declared in self-vindication. "I
can't stand it when boys are superior. Why must they sneer and jeer
because a girl wants to go in for the same training as themselves,
especially when she has to make her own living afterwards? In our two
cases it's more important for me than for you, for you will be a rich
landowner, and I shall be a poor school marm. You ought to be kind and
sympathetic, and do all you can to cheer me on, instead of being lofty
and blighting."