They had been walking along the narrow hilly road that branched off
from the broad highway between the little town of Framsby and the
villages of Dean Grange, Beastlington, and Elfrisleigh, and now they
were standing on the ridge of the Down that overlooked the lovely valley
of the Wadron. The day was one toward the end of April, when everything
in nature, including men and women and healthy girls, feels stirred with
the impulses of the Spring, and while all fancy they are living only
in the joy of the present, they are yet giving their thoughts to the
future. Everything in nature was showing signs of thinking of the
future. The early flowers were looking after themselves, doing their
best to offer allurements to the insects which they trusted to
carry their love tokens for them from stamen to pistil; and the pale
butterflies became messenger Cupids all unconsciously. But the birds
were doing their own love-making. Every bough was vocal, every brake
quivered in harmony. In that green lane there was the furtive flutter of
wings. Some nests had been built and padded for the eggs, and here and
there a stranger looking carefully through the interspaces among
the glossy leaves could see the glitter of the beady eye of a hiding
blackbird, and, with greater pains, the mottling of a thrush’s throat.
Love-making and home-making on all sides--this is what the Spring meant,
and it was probably because she was so closely in touch with the season
and its instincts that one of the girls had spoken out some of the
thoughts that made her warm as though her thoughts were infants of the
Spring, to be cherished very close to her body.
They stood at that part of the road which bridged one of the tributary
streams that went down to the Wadron, losing itself for many yards where
it crept among the bosky slopes nearest to the road, but making its
course apparent by many a twinkle of quick water, and now and again by
a crystal pool, overflowing among mossy stones and cascading where there
was a broad steep rock. Again it disappeared among the wilderness of
bramble, but when one looked for its continuation, its glistening, not
directly downward, but many yards to one side, gave one a glad surprise.
And all its course was marked by primroses. The park through which it
flowed was carpeted with primroses, and all the distance of the valley
was tinted with ten thousand tufts. Only on one of the high banks of the
parkland, where the pines stood in groups, was the brown earth covered
with a haze of bluebells. Close though this bank was to the road, it was
picked over with rabbit burrows, and when the girls came near there was
a scurrying of brown and a flicker of white among the bluebells and the
ferns.
“It is getting wilder and wilder,” said Rosa.
“Thank goodness!” added Priscilla. “It was the wisest thing that ever
the owner did, to die and keep every one out of it for all these years.”
“Yes, so far as we are concerned,” said Rosa. “We have got more out of
the place than any one else.”
“You would have been a visitor to the Manor in any case,” said
Priscilla; “but what chance would I have had? Well, I might have come in
under the shelter of your wing, not otherwise.”
“Perhaps the son’s wife might not have been so stuck up as the rest of
the people in our neighbourhood,” remarked Rosa, consolingly.
Priscilla laughed.
“I think I should take their--their--standoffishness more to heart if
you were not here, Rosa,” said Priscilla, thoughtfully “What shall I do
when you go away?”
“Go away? I heard nothing about my going away.”
“I hear a good deal about it to-day from the birds, and the sheep, and
all the other voices of the Spring. They have talked about nothing else
all the morning.”
Rosa looked at her anxiously for some moments. Then she gave a sound
that had something of contempt in it, crying, “What rot! My dear girl,
you know as well as I do that I have no intention of going away--that
I do not bother my head with any notion of--of that sort of thing. I am
quite content to remain here. It would take a lot of coaxing to carry
me away. Come along now, I don’t trust strangers, and I certainly don’t
trust April weather, and I certainly don’t trust that cloud that puts a
black cap on Beacon Hill. If we are to get our baskets full in time we
would do well not to wait here sentimentalizing.”
She led the way on the road by the park fence, and Priscilla was still
behind her when they went round the curve, where the road had been
widened in front of the pillars that supported a pair of well-worn
entrance gates. Lodges were on each side, picturesque sexagonal
cottages, their shape almost undiscernible through the straggling mass
of the creepers that covered them.
“Do you remember the pheasants’ eggs?” whispered Rosa, when they had
gone through the gates and had just passed the lodges.
“I am trying my best to forget them,” replied Priscilla. “How awful it
would be if I accidentally spoke of that omelette in the hearing of some
one who would mention it to Mr. Dunning!”
“It would be awful!” acquiesced Rosa.
Their exchange of confidences related to the hospitality of the wife of
one of the keepers, who occupied the lodge on the right. One day during
the previous year the girls had been drenched in the park, and while
they were drying their clothes the good woman, who had been a cook at
the Manor, made them an omelette, using pheasants’ eggs, of which quite
a number were in her larder awaiting consumption.
“It was a nice omelette,” said Priscilla, “but it made me feel that old
Mr. Wingfield mightn’t have been so wise after all in allowing the place
to remain unoccupied for so long.”
Signs of neglect were to be observed on all sides--not by any means the
neglect that suggests the Court of Chancery or an impoverished owner;
merely the neglect that is the result of the absence of any one
interested in the maintenance of tidiness. The broad carriage drive was
a trifle green, where fresh gravel was needed, and the grass borders had
become irregular. The enormous bough that had broken away from the trunk
of one of the elms of the avenue was lying just where it had fallen,
sprawling halfway across the drive, and much of the timber shielding of
a sapling had been broken down by some animal and remained unmended, so
that the bark of the young tree had been injured. These tokens that some
one had been saying “What does it matter?” a good many times within the
year, were not the only ones to be seen within the grounds; and when
Priscilla pointed them out to Rosa, she too said, “What does it matter?
Who is there to make a row? You don’t expect them to keep the place tidy
for us?”
Priscilla said that nothing was further from her expectations, but still
she thought--but of course beggars can’t be choosers, and after all a
primrose by the river’s brim was still a yellow primrose, and a joy to
the cottage hospital.
“And a black cloud is a beast of a thing when it bursts,” added Rosa,
pointing to the menace in the distance, above the balloon-like foliage
of the immemorial elms.
Priscilla shook her head.
“We’ll do it,” she cried; “yes, if we hurry. I don’t want to get this
frock wet, so we’ll rush for the primroses and shelter at the house. It
will be an April shower, but we’ll dodge it.”
“No fear,” acquiesced Rosa.
Down they plunged among the trees of the long slope, at the bottom of
which the trout stream curled among the mossy stones, spreading its
delicate white floss over some, and threading the narrows with a cord of
silk, and then spattering the ferns on each side of a rock that met its
advance too abruptly.
In a few minutes the girls were among the primroses. They were like the
yellow pattern upon a green carpet at this place, only one could not see
the carpet for the pattern. When the two serviceable baskets were packed
with primroses there did not seem to be a clump the less in this garden
that appeared to be the very throne of Spring itself--the throne and the
golden treasury of the millionaire Spring.
And all the time that they were filling their baskets the blackbirds
were making music among the bracken on the opposite slope, and once a
great thrush came down with a wild winnowing of wings to a bramble that
swung above the ripples of the water. It sounded its cackling note of
alarm, and before it had ceased a cuckoo was heard as it flew from among
a clump of chestnuts, gorgeous in drapery, to where a solitary ash, not
yet green, stood far away from the billowy foliage of the slope.
And then the sunlit land became aware of a shadow sweeping up the
valley. The rumble of thunder came from the distance.
“We’re in for it!” cried Rosa, springing up from the carpet where she
had been kneeling.
“We’ll be in for it, as fast as we make ourselves--in the porch at
least,” shouted Priscilla, catching up her basket and making a run for
the zig-zag track up the bank. She was followed by Rosa with all speed,
but before they got to the carriage drive at the top the first drops
were making kettledrums of the crowns of their straw hats, and once
again the organ of the orchestra was beginning to peal.
They gathered up their print skirts and ran like young does for the
shelter of the house. It was an example of dignified Georgian, with a
pillared porch and square windows. People said there was no nonsense
about Overdean Manor; and others remarked that that was a pity. The
front was masked by trees from the carriage drive. Some people said that
it was just as well that this was so; it gave the horses a chance. No
horse could maintain a trot in view of so dignified a front.
But it had an ample porch, and into its sheltering embrace the two girls
plunged with only breath enough left for their laughter.
“Not a dozen drops,” they gasped, pinching each other’s blouses at
their arms. “Actually not a dozen drops--practically dry--but hot--oh,
goodness, wasn’t it hot!” And now they were going to have it in earnest.
They had it in earnest, but only as a spectacle. They were glowing after
their race, but the porch contained no seats, and so they leant against
the pillars and looked out at the rollicking Spring storm. It came with
all the overdone vehemence of a practical jester--a comical bellow and
a swirl and a swish; the topmost branches began complaining of
their ill-treatment, bending and waving at first gracefully, then
wildly--panic-stricken. Then the rain came--a comical flood suggesting
the flinging of buckets of water--the rough play of grooms in the
stable yard. The air became dark where the first swish of the rain swept
by--dark and silent among the trees, while that madcap wind rushed on
and made its fun on the fringe of the plantation. Out of the darkness a
flash, and out of the distance a bombastic roar of thunder, but not the
thunder of a storm that meant devastation; it was more like the laughter
of good-humoured gods over some boy’s joke--something that had to do
with the bursting of a cistern, or the turning on of a standpipe in the
centre of a score of unsuspecting gentlemen wearing tall hats. The
girls joined in the laughter of that boisterous thunder; but only for
a moment. They became aware of an extraordinary pause--the suspicious
silence of a room where the schoolboys are in hiding and ready to jump
out on you. Then came the sound of a mighty rushing in the air that
was not the rushing of the wind. Half-a-dozen rooks whirled in a
badly-balanced flight across the tops of the nearest trees, cawing
frantically; and the next instant they were seen by the girls like fish
in the tanks of an aquarium. The world had become a world of waters.
They were looking out upon a solid wall of water, and a hurricane of
hail made up the plate glass in front of the tank.
They watched its changes for the five minutes that it lasted, and the
lightning became more real and the thunder more in earnest. Then it went
slamming away into the distance, leaving the big sweep of the carriage
drive in front of the house the glistening lake of a minute, and
transforming the Georgian mansion into an Alpine mountain of innumerable
rushing torrents. It seemed as if a thousand secret springs of water had
been set free in a moment, and all rushing down through their runnels to
the valley.
“It will all be over in a few minutes, now; but wasn’t it a squelcher
while it lasted!” cried Rosa, taking a cautious step outside to look
round for the rainbow.
“I knew that we could just dodge it if we were slippy,” said Priscilla.
“I wish we had some place to sit down.”
“Not worth while. We’ll be off in a minute.”
But it soon became plain that they would not be off quite so soon. When
the thunderstorm with its wild blustering had departed, it left behind
it, not the blue sky that might reasonably have been expected, but a
tame flock of clouds that lumbered onward, discharging their contents
upon the earth beneath with no great show of spirit, but with the
depressing persistency of the mediocre.
“Hopeless!” sighed Priscilla.
“Horrid!” exclaimed Rosa.
After a few more minutes of waiting, the word “hungry” followed in
alliterative sequence from both of them.
“If we could get round to Mrs. Pearce we might have some bread and
butter,” suggested Rosa. (Mrs. Pearce was the name of the caretaker, and
her premises were naturally at the other side of the Georgian mansion.)
“If we made a rush for the lodge we might have some plovers’ eggs,” said
Priscilla.
Rendered desperate and, consequently, courageous by the thought of such
dainties, one of the pair suggested the possibility of attracting the
attention of the caretaker by ringing the door bell. The idea was a
daring one, but they felt that their situation was so desperate as to
make a desperate remedy pardonable, if reasonably formulated.
Hallo! there was no need to pull the bell; looking about for the handle,
they found that the hall door was ajar to the extent of four or five
inches.
“Careless of Mrs. Pearce! We must speak seriously to her about this,”
said Rosa.
“When we have eaten her bread and butter,” whispered Priscilla, with a
sagacious nod.
They passed into the great square hall, with its imposing pillars
supporting the beams of the ceiling, and then they stopped abruptly, for
they found themselves confronted by a vivid smell of tobacco smoke.
“Has Mother Pearce been indulging?” whispered Rosa.
“Oh, dear, no; it’s not that sort of tobacco,” replied the sagacious
Priscilla. “No; it only means that Mr. Dunning has been paying a visit
of inspection.”
(Mr. Dunning was the agent of the estate.)
They passed without further hesitation through the tobacco barrier, and
seeing one of the doors open just beyond, they pushed through it and
entered the room which they knew to be the library. They had been in
the house more than once, before the days of its emptiness, and so knew
their way about it.
“Hallo! we’re in luck,” said Rosa, pointing to where the table was laid
with a cloth and plates, bread, cheese, biscuits, lettuce, and actually
plovers’ eggs. There was, however, only one knife and fork, only one
glass, and only one bottle--it was a bottle of hock, and Rosa hastened
to read its label--Liebfraumilch.
“Mr. Dunning is here on business and is having a scratch lunch,” said
Priscilla. “Liebfraumilch is a lovely wine, taking it year in and year
out. Of course there are exceptionally good years of Liebfraumilch; but
taking it all round it is a good sound wine.”
“_Vide_ auctioneer’s catalogue,” said Rosa. “But I decline to touch it,
highly recommended though it is by a distinguished canootzer. I’ll have
of that bread, however, une trauche, s’il vous plait, and I’ll poach a
couple of those eggs, if I do get three months for it. How funny! Didn’t
I say something about plovers’ eggs just now?”
“I’d be afraid to meddle with the eggs, but I’ll back you up in the
matter of the bread and cheese; I’m fairly starving. On the whole,
perhaps we would do well to hunt up Mrs. Pearce first. It’s as well to
be ceremonial even in a house that you have broken into by stealth. If
you take so much as a bite of that egg before we can start level, I’ll
cut you up into such small slices.”
The knife which Priscilla had picked up for the purpose which she had
but partly defined, fell from her hand. A sound had come from the big
hooded chair in the shadow of the screen at the fireplace, and she had
glanced round and seen, looking round the side of the chair at her, a
man’s face.
The knife fell from her grasp at the startling sight. Rosa, following
the direction of her gaze, turned round and saw the apparition; but she
did not let fall the egg which she had taken up for critical inspection.
There was an awkward silence, but an effective tableau, had any one been
present to see it. There was the large square room, with bookcases of
the loveliest Chippendale design hiding all its walls, and at one side
of the table stood a young woman, with a face beautifully rosy, and
a mouth slightly open to complete the expression of astonishment
that looked forth from her eyes; at the end of the table nearest the
fireplace, another girl glancing over her shoulder at the man’s face
that protruded beyond the line of downward slope at one side of the
chair.
Perhaps the expression of astonishment on the man’s face was the
strongest of the three. His mouth was quite wide open, and his eyes were
staring curiously, with a look within them that suggested that he had
not quite succeeded in taking in the details of the picture before
him--that he had not succeeded in reconciling all that he saw with the
actualities of life.
Both the girls perceived in a moment that he had just awakened; but this
fact did not prevent their being paralysed for the moment--for several
moments. The moments went on into minutes, until the whole thing had the
note of the child’s game of “Who speaks first?”
It was this broadening of an impressive silence into a child’s comedy
that was the saving of the situation. A smile, to which his open mouth
lent itself quite readily, came over the young man’s face--he was
a young man, and his face was still younger--and, after a maidenly
hesitancy of a few seconds, the girls also smiled. His smile broadened
into a grin, and both girls broke into a peal of laughter.
He pulled himself round in his chair and got upon his feet, still
grinning, and then they saw that he was just what girls accustomed to
tall men would call short, or what girls accustomed to short men would
call medium-sized. He had very short hair of an indefinite shade of
brown, and his mouth, when he grinned, was well proportioned, if it was
designed to make a gap touching the lobe of each ear.
He stood up before them and shook himself out, as it seemed, after the
manner of a newly awakened dog. Then he took in a reef or two (also
speaking figuratively) of his mouth, and it became quite ordinary. He
bowed as awkwardly as most men do in ordinary circumstances, and this
fact was pleasing to the girls; no girl who is worth anything tolerates
a man who makes a graceful bow.
“This is an unexpected pleasure,” he said. “That is--for me; it can’t be
the same for you--that is, of course it’s unexpected, but little enough
of the pleasure. Only if I had known--you didn’t say you were coming,
you know--maybe you are in the habit of coming every day.”
The girls shook their heads; both glanced toward the window. He followed
their example.
“Gloriana!” he said, “it has been raining after all.”
“Yes,” said Priscilla. “It has been a thunderstorm--a terrible
thunderstorm!”
“You don’t say so! Long ago?”
“Half an hour ago. You must have heard it--the hail was terrific!”
continued Priscilla.
“Gloriana! I’m afraid I’ve given myself away. If I said I wasn’t asleep
I suppose you wouldn’t believe me.”
He looked from one to the other as if to guess whether of the twain
was the more charitable or the more likely to make a fool of herself by
telling a lie that would take in no one. He could not make up his mind
on either point; and so he illuminated the silence by another grin.
The girls looked at each other; they could hardly be blamed; and they
certainly were not blamed by him.
He became quite serious in a moment, and his mouth seemed actually
normal.
“I think that I’m rather lucky, do you know, in awaking to find such
visitors--my first visitors--the first people to give me a welcome in
my house. Before I have slept a single night under its roof--only for a
matter of half an hour, and that in the day--I have two visitors. I hope
that you will let me bid you welcome and that you will welcome me.
May we exchange cards? My name is Wingfield--Jack Wingfield. I am the
grandson, you know. You didn’t take me for the grandfather, did you?”