Nell walked rapidly and talking quickly as they went down to the jetty,
and it was not until the _Annie Laurie_ was slipping out into the bay
that she grew silent and thoughtful. She sat in the stern with her arm
over the tiller, her eyes cast down, her face grave; and Drake, feeling
uncomfortable, said at last:
"Might one offer a penny for your thoughts, Miss Nell?"
She looked up and met the challenge with a sweet seriousness.
"I was thinking of something that you told me the other day--when we
were riding," she said.
"I've told you so much----" "And so little!" he added mentally.
"You said that you had been unlucky, that you had lost a great deal of
money lately," she said, in a low voice.
He nodded.
"Yes; I think I did. It's true unfortunately; but it doesn't much
matter."
"Does it not?" she asked. "Why did you give mamma so costly a present?
Oh, please don't deny it. I don't know very much about diamonds, but I
know that that bracelet must have cost a great deal of money."
"Not really," he said, with affected carelessness. "Diamonds are very
cheap now; they find 'em by the bucketful in the Cape, you know."
She looked at him with grave reproach.
"You are trying to belittle it," she said; "but, indeed, I am not
deceived. And the gun, too! That must have been very expensive. Why--did
you spend so much?"
He began to feel irritated.
"Look here, Miss Nell," he said; "it is true that I have lost some
money, but I'm not quite a pauper, and, if I were, the least I could do
would be to share my last crust with--with your people for their amazing
goodness to me."
"A diamond bracelet and an expensive gun are not crusts," she said,
shaking her head.
"Oh, dash it all!" he retorted impatiently. "The stupid things only very
inadequately represent my----Oh, I'm bad at speech making and expressing
myself. And don't you think you ought to be very grateful to me?"
She frowned slightly in the effort to understand.
"Grateful! I have just been telling you that I think you ought not to
have spent so much. Why should I be grateful?"
"That I didn't buy something for you," he said.
She colored, and looked away from him.
"I--I should not have accepted it," she said.
"I know that," he blurted out. "If I thought you would have done so--but
I knew you wouldn't. And so I've got a grievance to meet yours. After
all, you might have let me give you some trifle----"
"Such as a diamond bracelet, worth perhaps a hundred pounds?"
"To remember me by. After all, it's only natural I should want to leave
something behind me to remind you of me."
"We shan't need such gifts to--to remind us," she said simply. "I think
we had better luff."
The sail swung over as she put the helm down; there was silence for a
moment or two, then he said:
"I'm sorry I've offended you, Miss Nell. Perhaps it was beastly bad
taste. I see it now. But just put yourself in my place----" He slid over
the thwart in his eagerness, and coiled himself at her feet. "Supposing
you had broken your confounded arm--I beg your pardon!--your arm, and
had been taken in and tended by good Samaritans, and nursed and treated
like a prince for weeks, and had been made to feel happier than you've
been for--for oh, years, would you like to go away with just a 'Oh,
thanks; awfully obliged; very kind of you'? Wouldn't you want to make a
more solid acknowledgment? Come, be fair and just--if a woman can be
fair and just!--and admit that I'm not such a criminal, after all!"
She looked down at him thoughtfully, then turned her eyes seaward again.
"What do you want me to say?" she asked.
"Oh, well; I see that you won't change your mind about these things, so
perhaps I'd better be content if you'll say: 'I forgive you.'"
A smile flitted across her face as she looked down at him again, but it
was rather a sad little smile.
"I--I forgive you!" she said.
He raised his cap, and took her hand, and, before she suspected what he
was going to do, he put his lips to it.
Her face grew crimson, then pale almost to whiteness. It was the first
time a man's lips had touched her virgin hand, and----A tremor ran
through her, her eyes grew misty, as she looked at him with a
half-pained, half-fearful expression. Then she turned her head away, and
so quickly that he saw neither the change of color nor the expression in
her eyes.
"I feel like a miscreant who had received an unexpected pardon," he said
lightly, and yet with a touch of gravity in his voice, "and, like the
miscreant, I at once proceed to take advantage of the lenity of my
judge."
She turned her eyes to him questioningly; there was still a
half-puzzled, half-timid expression in them.
"I want to be rewarded--as well as pardoned--rewarded for my noble
sacrifice of the desire to bestow a piece of jewelry upon you."
"Rewarded?" she faltered.
He nodded.
"Yes. After the awful rebuke and scolding you have administered, you
cannot refuse to accept some token of my--some acknowledgment of my
gratitude, Miss Nell. See here----"
He felt in his waistcoat pocket, then in those of his coat, and at last
brought out a well-worn silver pencil case.
"I want you to be gracious enough to accept this," he said. "Before you
refuse with haughty displeasure and lively scorn, be good enough to
examine it. It is worth, I should say--shall I say five shillings? That,
I should imagine, is its utmost value. But, on the other hand, it is a
useful article, and I display my natural cunning in selecting it--it's
the only thing I've got about me that I could offer you, except a match
box, and, as you don't smoke, you've no use for that--because you will
never be able to use it, I hope and trust, without thinking of the
unworthy donor and the debt of gratitude which no diamond bracelet could
discharge."
During this long speech, which he had made to conceal his eager desire
that she should accept, and his fear, that she should not, Nell's color
had come and gone, but she kept her eyes fixed on his steadily, as if
she were afraid to remove them.
"Are you going to accept it--or shall I fling it into the sea as a
votive offering? It would be a pity, for it is useful, a thing of sorts,
and has been my constant companion for many a year. Yes, or no?"
He held the pencil up, as if he were offering it by auction.
Nell hesitated, then she held out her hand without a word. He dropped
the battered pencil case into it, and his bantering tone changed
instantly.
"Thank you!" he said gravely, earnestly. "I--I was afraid that you were
going to refuse, and--well, that would have hurt me. And that would have
hurt you; for I know how gentle-hearted you are, Miss Nell."
Her hand closed over the pencil case tightly until the silver grew warm,
then she slipped the thing into her pocket.
"Please observe," he said, after a pause, during which he lit a
cigarette, "that I am not in need of any token as a reminder. I am not
likely to forget--Shorne Mills."
He turned on his elbow and gazed at the jetty and the cottages which
straggled up from it in the narrow ravine to the heights above, to the
unique and quaint village upon which the still hot sun was shining as
the boat danced toward it.
"No. I shan't find it difficult to remember--or regret."
He stifled a sigh. A sigh rose to her lips also, but she checked it, and
forced a smile.
"One does not break one's arm every day, and it is not easy to forget
that," she said; "and yet, I dare say you will remember Shorne Mills. I
don't think you will see many prettier places. Isn't it quite lovely
this evening, with the sun shining on the cliffs and making old
Brownie's windows glitter--like--like the diamonds in mamma's bracelet?"
She laughed with a girlish mischievousness, and ran on rapidly, as if
she must talk, as if a pause were to be averted as a peril.
"I've heard people say that there is only one other place in the world
like it--Cintra, in Portugal, isn't it?"
He nodded. He was gazing at the picturesque little place, the human
nests stuck like white stones in the cleft of the cliffs; and something
more than the beauty of Shorne Mills was stirring, almost oppressing,
his heart. He had stayed at, and departed from, many a place as
beautiful in other ways as this, and had left it with some little
regret, perhaps, but never with the dull, aching feeling such as weighed
upon him this evening.
"And at night it's lovelier still," went on Nell cheerfully, after a
snatch of song, just sung under her breath, to show how happy and free
from care she was at that moment. "To sail in on the tide of an autumn
evening when the lights have been lit, and every cottage looks like a
lantern; and the blue haze hangs over the village, and the children's
voices come floating over the water as if through a mist; then, on
nights like that, the sea is all phosphorescent, and the boat leaves a
line of silvery light in its wake; and one seems to have all the world
to oneself----"
She stopped suddenly and sighed unconsciously. Was she thinking that,
when that autumn night came, and Drake Vernon was not with her, she
would indeed have all the world to herself, and that all the world is
all the nicer when one has a companion? He lowered his eyes to her face.
"That was a pretty picture," he said, in a low voice. "I shall think of
that--wherever I may be in the autumn."
Nell laughed as the boat ran beside the jetty slip, and she rose.
"Do you think you will? Perhaps you will be too much amused, engrossed
with whatever you are doing. I know I should be, if--if I were to leave
Shorne Mills, and go into the big world."
"You do yourself an injustice," he said, rather curtly; and she laughed,
and flushed a little.
"I deserve that," she said. "Of course, I should not forget Shorne
Mills; but you----Ah, it is different!"
She sprang out before he could get on shore and offer his hand.
"I shall want her to-morrow morning at eleven, Brownie," she said to the
old fisherman who was preparing to take the _Annie Laurie_ to her
moorings.
He touched his forehead.
"Aye, aye, Miss Nell! And you'll not be wanting me?" he asked, as a
matter of form, and with a glance at Drake, who stood waiting with his
hands in his pockets.
"Oh, yes, please," she said. "I forgot; Mr. Vernon is going away
to-morrow," she added cheerfully; and she began to sing under her breath
again as they climbed upward. But Drake did not sing, and his face was
gloomy.
Throughout that evening, Mrs. Lorton contributed to the entertainment of
her guest by admiring her bracelet and deploring his departure.
"Of course I am aware that you must be anxious to go," she said, with a
deep sigh. "It has been dull, I've no doubt, very dull; and I am so
sorry that the state of my health has prevented me going out and about
with you. There are so many places of interest in the neighborhood which
we could have visited; but I am sure you will make allowances for an
invalid. And we will hope that this is not your last visit to Shorne
Mills. I need not say that we shall be glad, delighted, indeed, at any
time----"
Every now and then Drake murmured his acknowledgments; but he made the
due responses absently. He was left entirely at Mrs. Lorton's mercy that
evening--for Nell had suddenly remembered that she ought really to go
and see old Brownie's mother, a lady whose age was set down at anything
between a hundred and a hundred and ten, and Dick was in his "workshop"
cleaning the new and spotless gun.
Nell did not come in till late, was full of Grandmother Brownie's
sayings and wonderfully maintained faculties, and ran off to bed very
soon, with a cheerful "Good night, Mr. Vernon. Dick has ordered the trap
for nine o'clock."
Drake got up early the next morning; there were the horses to be
arranged for--he was going to leave two behind, for a time, at any rate,
in the hope that Dick and Miss Nell might use them; and he had to say
good-by--and tip--sundry persons. He performed the latter operation on
so liberal a scale that amazement sat upon the bosom of many a man and
woman in Shorne Mills for months afterward. Molly, indeed, was so
overcome by the sight and feel of the crisp ten-pound note, and her face
grew so red and her eyes so prominent, that Drake was seriously afraid
that she was going to have a fit.
Nell had got up a few minutes after him, and had prepared his farewell
breakfast; but she was not present, and Mrs. Lorton presided. It was not
until the arrival of the trap that she came in hurriedly. She had her
outdoor things on, and explained that she had had to go to the farm to
order a fowl; and she was full of some story the farmer's wife had told
her--a story which had made her laugh, and still seemed to cause her so
much amusement that Mrs. Lorton felt compelled to remind her that Mr.
Vernon was going.
"Ah, yes! I suppose it is time. The train starts at ten-forty-five. Have
you got some lunch for Mr. Vernon, Dick?"
She had packed a neat little packet of sandwiches with her own hands,
but put the question casually, as if she hoped that somebody had
considered their departing guest's comfort.
The girl's bright cheerfulness got on Drake's nerves. His farewell to
Mrs. Lorton lacked grace and finish, and he could only hold out his hand
to Nell, and say, rather grimly and curtly:
"Good-by, Miss Nell."
Just that; no more.
Her hand rested in his for a moment. Did it tremble, or was it only
fancy on his part? She said, "Good-by, and I hope you will have a
pleasant journey," quite calmly.
Dick burst in with:
"Now, Mr. Vernon, if you've kissed everybody, we'd better be starting,"
and Drake got into the trap.
Mrs. Lorton looked after the departing guest, and waved her hand with an
expression of languid sorrow; then turned to Nell with a sigh.
"I might have known that he would go; but still I must say that it is a
disappointment--a great disappointment. These trials are sent for our
good, and----I do wish you would not keep up that perpetual humming,
Eleanor. On an occasion like this it is especially trying. And how pale
you look!" she added, staring unsympathetically.
"I've--I've rather a headache," said Nell, turning toward the door. "I
suppose it was hurrying up to the farm. It is very hot this morning.
I'll go and take off my hat."
She went upstairs slowly, slipped the bolt in her bedroom door, and,
taking off her hat, stood looking beyond the glass for a moment or two;
then she absently drew an old and somewhat battered pencil case from her
pocket. She gazed at it thoughtfully, until suddenly she could not see
it for the tears that gathered in her eyes, and presently she began to
tremble. She slipped to her knees besides the bed, and buried her
forehead in the hands clasped over Drake's "token of remembrance and
gratitude."
And as she struggled with the sobs that shook her, she still trembled;
for there was something in the feeling of utter, overwhelming desolation
which frightened her--something she could neither understand nor resist,
though she had been fighting against it all through the long and weary
night.
Oh, the shame of it! That she should cry because Mr. Drake Vernon had
left Shorne Mills! The shame of it!