treasures and curios which they laid out all over the room. There was a
famous rug of Tasmanian opossum skins, a dozen emu eggs, the tail of a
lyre-bird, the skin of an immense carpet-snake, a deadly collection of
boomerangs and spears, and a necklace of quandong stones mounted with
silver. Mrs. Edmonstone beheld in silent wonder. As for Fanny, she was
in ecstasies ("It is as good as the Exhibition," she said). So the time
slipped away, and before half the quaint things had been examined and
described it was dinner-time. They were all so happy together that first
afternoon!
Few and simple were the courses at Iris Lodge, but at dessert Maurice
produced some particular old Benedictine (which had been in the family
as long as he had), and Dick's health was drunk with unspeakable
enthusiasm. Dick blushed; for it made what he burned to say more
awkward; but at last he blurted out, apparently appealing to the
mildewed Benedictine bottle:
"I say--will you all think me an awful brute if I clear out for an hour
or two? Mother, will you? You know what I have still to do--whom to
see--to complete my first day in old England."
"Why, of course!" from the younger ones; and Mrs. Edmonstone simply
pronounced the question: "Graysbrooke?"
"Yes," said Dick. "I must go and see them, you know. You know why, too,"
he added simply.
No one said anything. There was a rather awkward pause, which it fell to
Fanny to break.
"By the bye," she said tentatively, "they have a visitor there."
She was prepared to add further information, but Dick looked at her
blankly, and clearly was not listening. They rose from the table, and
almost directly the three who went into the drawing-room heard the front
door open and shut.
Dick was thankful to be out in the cool and the twilight, and alone. The
day had been showery and dull, but late in the afternoon the clouds had
broken up, and now they floated serenely in the still air, just touched
with a pale pink rim to westward. The gravelly ground was wet enough to
sound crisply underfoot--nothing more. Drip-drip fell the drops from the
laburnums in the gardens all down the road; drip-drip all round, from
tree, shrub, and flower; every leaf distilling perfume every minute.
Dick appreciated the evidence of his nostrils with the relish of a man
who has smelt nothing but brine for four months, nothing like this for
four years. Nevertheless, he walked on briskly, down into the London
road, that here lies parallel with the river, then down a curve to the
left, as the highroad bends away from the river to form the High Street
of Teddington; then to a full stop at a corner opposite the old
churchyard. He had intended to walk along the lower road towards
Kingston, straight to the gates of Graysbrooke, which fronted the river.
But now the thought occurred to him (prompted by the sweetness of the
evening, and backed up by the fact that it was as yet rather early to
drop in casually for the evening anywhere--even at the house of one's
sweetheart whom one hadn't seen for over four years). How about hiring a
boat and rowing to Graysbrooke? It was no distance; and then, only to be
afloat again on the dear old Thames! Dick did not hesitate at the corner
long, but turned sharp down to the left, and hired his shallop at the
ferry landing.
Down with the stream a hundred yards, and he was level with the lock; a
few strong strokes against the stream, and the way already on the boat,
and her nose grounded on the rollers; a minute's exertion, a minute's
fumbling for coppers, and he floated out into the narrow reach beyond
the lock. He paddled slowly along, bestowing friendly glances on the
banks. The cottages on the left, close to the lock, he remembered just
as he saw them; but the poplars on the island, inverted in the glassy
water--he felt convinced they had grown. With each stroke of the oars
the voice of the weir grew louder; it seemed to be roaring its rough
welcome to him, just as yonder alders, right across the stream, through
the danger-posts, were bowing theirs. How glorious it was, this first
row on the Thames!
But now the house was almost in sight, and he could think no longer of
the river. Slowly, as he sculled on, Graysbrooke discovered itself: a
gray, stone, turreted building, set in leafy trees. There were
battlements along the coping, which might have looked venerable but for
the slates that peeped between them; yet the stone was mellowed by time;
and altogether there was nothing either offensively new or unwholesomely
ancient in the appearance of the house. Dick saw it all in his mind even
before he stopped rowing to satisfy the cravings of his hungry eyes.
Still twilight, and the river here a mirror without flaw, every stone
had its duplicate in the clear depths below; that parallelogram of ruddy
light that fastened Dick's attention showed with especial sharpness in
the reflection. The light was in the drawing-room. They had finished
dinner. He could storm them now--at once.
A little inlet entered one end of the lawn; in here he sculled and
moored his boat. Then he sprang upon the close-cropped grass and stood
transfixed.
The light in the dining-room was turned low; but that in the room to the
right of the hall-door--the room with the French window--was shining
brightly. And through the open window there burst, as Dick's feet
touched the grass, the sound of a girl's song. The voice was low and
clear, and full of youth and tenderness; it rose, and fell, and
trembled, for the singer possessed feeling; it hastened here and
lingered there, and abused none of these tricks, for she sang with what
is rarer than feeling--taste. Dick trembled violently; he wanted to rush
into the room then and there, but he was thrilled, and rooted to the
ground; and after a bar or two the voice soothed him and set his spirit
at rest, like the touch of a true friend's hand in the hour of pain.
Then he stood quite humbly, hoping it would never, never end. What the
song was he didn't know, and never thought of finding out afterwards; he
might have heard it a hundred times or never before; he knew nothing
during these few transported minutes--nothing, except that he was
listening to her voice.
As the last low note was borne out upon the air, and voices within the
room murmured the conventional grace after song, Dick stepped forward,
meaning to boldly enter. Two yards from the window, however, he silently
halted; it was so dark that he could see into the room without himself
being seen from within. The temptation to avail himself of so obvious an
advantage was too strong to be resisted.
There were three persons in the room, but for the eyes of Dick only
one--the two men made no immediate impression on his physical
perception. It was a supreme moment in his life. He had left England for
the sake of a young girl, to make his way in the world so that he might
return and proudly claim her: for he had won her heart. And now he had
made his way through toil and privation to a small fortune, and had
come back to woo her hand. She was here--this girl for whom he had given
his early manhood's strength, his brain's essence, the best drops of his
life's blood; this girl whose image had beckoned him onward when he grew
faint, and urged him still further in the hour of success; whose name
had risen to his lips in despair and in peril, inspiring new
courage--here, within ten feet of him; he striving to realise it, and to
grow cool before going into her presence, yet yearning to fling himself
at her feet.
It was good that she was ignorant of his approach, for it showed her to
him in a fair light straight away--completely natural and unconscious of
herself. She had seated herself after her song at a low table, and was
making an indolent attack on some trifling work with her scissors. The
lamplight, from under its crimson shade, fell upon her hair and face and
neck with marvellous results, for it made her beautiful. She was not at
all beautiful. She had a peerless complexion, a good nose, matchless
teeth; otherwise her features were of no account. But she was
exceedingly pretty; and as she sat there with the warm lamplight
changing her ordinary light-coloured hair into a ruddy gold fit for any
goddess, a much less prejudiced person than Dick Edmonstone might have
been pardoned the notion that she was lovely, though she was not.
When at last he managed to raise his eyes from her they rested upon a
face that was entirely strange. A tall, massive man, in evening dress,
leaned with an elbow on the chimneypiece, his head lightly resting on
his hand, one foot on the edge of the fender. There could be no two
opinions as to the beauty of this face--it was handsome and striking to
the last degree. Burnt, like Dick's, to the colour of brick-dust, it was
framed in dark curly hair, with beard and whiskers of a fairer hue,
while the mouth was hidden by a still fairer, almost golden, moustache.
The effect was leonine. Dick caught his profile, and saw that the
steady, downward gaze was bent upon the dainty little head that glowed
in the lamplight. From his vantage-post outside the window he glanced
from observer to observed. They were a sufficiently good-looking pair,
yet he overrated the one and underrated the other. He was by no means
attracted to this unknown exquisite; there was an ease about his pose
which bespoke freedom also; and his scrutiny of the unconscious girl was
of a kind that would at least have irritated any man in Dick's position.
Dick allowed his attention to rest but briefly upon the third occupant
of the room--a man with snowy hair and whiskers, who was apparently
dropping off to sleep in a big armchair. Somehow or other, the sight of
the men--but particularly of the stranger--acted on his heart like a
shower-bath on a man's head; his pulse slackened, he regained with
interest the self-possession with which he had first approached the
window. He took three steps forward, and stood in the middle of the
room.
A startled cry escaped the old man and the girl. The man by the
fireplace dropped his forearm and turned his head three inches.
Dick strode forward and grasped an outstretched hand.
"Colonel Bristo!"
"Dick Edmonstone!--is it really Dick?" a well-remembered voice repeated
a dozen times. "We knew you were on your way home, but--bless my soul!
bless my soul!"
The old soldier could think of nothing else to say; nor did it matter,
for Dick's salute was over and his back turned; he was already clasping
the hand of the fair young girl, who had risen, flushed and breathless,
to greet him.
He was speechless. He tried to say "Alice," but the sound was
inarticulate. Their eyes met.
A clatter in the fender. The tall man's heel had come down heavily among
the fire-irons.
"Let me introduce you," said Colonel Bristo to this man and Dick. "You
will like to know each other, since you both come from the same country:
Mr. Edmonstone, from Australia; Mr. Miles, from Australia! Mr. Miles was
born and bred there, Dick, and has never been in England before. So you
will be able to compare notes."
The two men stared at each other and shook hands.
V
THE FIRST EVENING AT GRAYSBROOKE
"Sit down, boy, sit down," said Colonel Bristo, "and let us have a look
at you. Mind, we don't know yet that you're not an impostor. You should
have brought proofs."
"Here are five-foot-ten of them," said Dick, laughing.
"To believe that, we must put you through examination--and
cross-examination," the Colonel added with a glance at his daughter;
"although I half believe you really are the man you profess to be. What
do you say, Alice?"
"I have a strong case--" Dick was beginning, but he was cut short.
"It is Dick," said the oracle sweetly.
"You take his word for it?" asked her father.
"No, I identify him," Alice answered with a quiet smile; "and he hasn't
altered so very much, when one looks at him."
Dick turned his head and met her eyes; they were serene and friendly.
"Thank you," he said to her, with gratitude in his voice. And, indeed,
he felt grateful to them all; to the Colonel for his ponderous
pleasantry, to Alice for her unembarrassed manner, to Mr. Miles for the
good taste he showed in minding his own business. (He had strolled over
to the window.)
"And when did you land?" inquired the Colonel.
"This morning."
"Only this morning!" exclaimed Alice; "then I think it was too good of
you to come and see us so soon; don't you, papa?"
Very kind of him indeed, papa thought. Dick was pleased; but he thought
they might have understood his eagerness. Alice, at any rate, should not
have been surprised--and probably was not. "I couldn't put it off," he
said, frankly.
There was a slight pause; then the Colonel spoke:
"That's kindly said, my boy; and if your mother knew how it does us good
to see you here, she would scarcely grudge us an hour or two this
evening--though grudge it you may depend she does. As for ourselves,
Dick, we can hardly realise that you are back among us."
"I can't realise it at all," murmured Dick, aloud but to himself.
"I won't worry you by asking point-blank how you like Australia," the
Colonel went on, "for that's a daily nuisance in store for you for the
next six months. But I may tell you we expect some tough yarns of you;
our taste has been tickled by Miles, who has some miraculous--why, where
is Miles?"
Miles had vanished.
"What made him go, I wonder?" asked Alice, with the slightest
perceptible annoyance. Dick did not perceive it, but he thought the
question odd. To disappear seemed to him the only thing a stranger, who
was also a gentleman, could have done; he was scarcely impartial on the
point, however.
Alice took up the theme which her father had dropped.
"Oh, Mr. Miles has some wonderful stories," said she; "he has had some
tremendous adventures."
"The deuce he has!" thought Dick, but he only said: "You should take
travellers' tales with a grain of salt."
"Thanks," Alice instantly retorted; "I shall remember that when you tell
yours."
They laughed over the retort. All three began to feel quite at ease.
"So you kept up your sketching out there, and drew bush scenes for our
illustrated papers?" said the Colonel.
"Two or three times; more often for the Colonial papers."
"We saw them all," said Alice, graciously--"I mean the English ones. We
cut them out and kept them." (She should have said that she did.)
"Did you, though?" said Dick, delighted.
"Yes," said Alice, "and I have a crow to pick with you about them. That
'Week in the Sandwich Islands'--it was yours, wasn't it?"
Dick admitted that it was.
"Oh, and pray when were you in the Sandwich Islands?"
He confessed that he had never seen them.
"So you not only cheated a popular journal--a nice thing to do!--but
deceived the British public, which is a far more serious matter. What
explanation have you to offer? What apology to 'One who was
Deceived'--as I shall sign my 'Times' letter, when I write it?"
"Alice, you are an inquisitor," said Colonel Bristo. But Alice replied
with such a mischievous, interested smile that Dick immediately ceased
to feel ashamed of himself.
"The fact is," he owned, "your popular journal doesn't care a fig
whether one has been to a place so long as one's sketches of it are
attractive. I did them a thing once of a bullock-dray stuck up in the
mud; and how did it appear? 'The War at the Cape: Difficulties in
Reaching the Front.' And they had altered the horns of my bullocks, if
you please, to make 'em into South African cattle! You see, just then
Africa was of more interest to your British public than Australia.
Surely you won't be so hard on me now? You see you have made me divulge
professional secrets by your calumnies."
Alice said she forgave him, if all that was true; but she added, slyly:
"One must take travellers' tales with a pinch of salt, you know!"
"Come, Alice," said her father, "if you insist on pitching into our
artist, he shall have his fling at our photographer. Dick, she's taken
to photography--it's lately become the fashion. Look on that table,
under the lamp; you'll find some there that she was trimming, or
something, when you dropped in our midst."
"May I look at them?" Dick asked, moving over to Alice.
"Certainly; but they're very bad, I'm afraid; and since you artists
scorn photography--as so inartistic, you know--I suppose you will be a
severe critic."
"Not when this is the subject," said Dick, in a low voice, picking up a
print; "how did you manage to take yourself?"
He was sitting beside her at the little table, with the lamp between
them and the Colonel; he instinctively lowered his voice, and a grain of
the feeling he had so far successfully repressed escaped into his tone.
"Someone took off the cap for me."
"Oh. Who?"
"Who? Oh, I get anybody to take the cap off when I am so vain as to take
myself--anybody who is handy."
"Mr. Miles, for instance?" It was a stray question, suggested by no
particular train of thought, and spoken carelessly; there was no trace
of jealousy in the tone--it was too early for that; but Alice looked up,
quick to suspect, and answered shortly:
"Yes, if you like."
Dick was genuinely interested, and noticed in her tone nothing amiss.
Several of the photographs turned out to be of Alice, and they charmed
him.
"Did Mr. Miles take all these?" he asked, lightly; he was forced to
speak so before her father: the restraint was natural, though he
marvelled afterwards that he had been able to maintain it so long.
Alice, however, read him wrong. She was prepared for pique in her old
lover, and imagined it before it existed. She answered with marked
coldness:
"A good many of them."
This time Dick detected the unpleasant ring in her words--he could not
help but detect it. A pang shot to his heart. His first (and only)
impression of Miles, which had fled from his mind (with all other
impressions) while talking to her, swiftly returned. He had used the
man's name, a minute ago, without its conveying anything to his mind; he
used it now with a bitterness at heart which crept into his voice.
"And don't you return the compliment? I see no photographs of Mr. Miles
here; and he would look so well in one."
"He has never been taken in his life--and never means to be. Now, Dick,
you have seen them all," she added quite softly, her heart smiting her;
and with that she rolled all the prints into one little cylinder. Dick
was in that nervous state in which a kind word wipes out unkindness the
moment it is spoken, and the cloud lifted at once from his face. They
were silent for more than a minute. Colonel Bristo quietly left the
room.
Then a strange change came over Dick. While others had been in the room,
composure had sat naturally upon him; but now that they were alone
together, and the dream of his exile so far realised, that armour fell
from him, and left his heart bare. He gazed at his darling with
unutterable emotion; he yearned to clasp her in his arms, yet dared not
to profane her with his touch. There had been vows between them when
they parted--vows out of number, and kisses and tears; but no betrothal,
and never a letter. He could but gaze at her now--his soul in that
gaze--and tremble; his lips moved, but until he had conquered his
weakness no words came. As for Alice, her eyes were downcast, and
neither did she speak. At length, and timidly, he took her hand. She
suffered this, but drew ever so slightly away from him.
"Alice," he faltered, "this is the sweetest moment of my life. It is
what I have dreamt of, Alice, but feared it might never come. I cannot
speak; forgive me, dear."
She answered him cunningly:
"It is very nice to have you back again, Dick."
He continued without seeming to hear her, and his voice shook with
tenderness: "Here--this moment--I can't believe these years have been; I
think we have never been separated----"
"It certainly doesn't seem four years," said Alice sympathetically, but
coolly.
Dick said nothing for a minute; his eyes hung on her downcast lids,
waiting for an answering beam of love, but one never came.
"You remember," he said at last, in a calmer voice, "you remember the
old days? and our promises? and how we parted?" He was going on, but
Alice interrupted him by withdrawing her hand from his and rising from
her chair.
"Dick," said she, kindly enough, "don't speak of them, especially not
now--but don't speak of them at all. We can't have childhood over again;
and I was a child then--of seventeen. I am grown up now, and altered;
and you--of course you have altered too."
"Oh Alice!"--the turning of the door handle made him break off short,
and add in a quick whisper, "I may speak to you to-morrow?"
"Very well," she answered indifferently, as there entered upon them a
little old lady in rustling silk and jingling beads--an old lady with a
sallow face and a piercing black eye, who welcomed Dick with a degree of
fussy effusiveness, combined with a look and tone which discounted her
words.
"Delighted to see you back, Mr. Richard--a pleasure I have often looked
forward to. We don't welcome conquering heroes every day," were in
themselves sufficiently kindly words, but they were accompanied by a
flash of the beady eyes from Dick to Alice, and a scrutiny of the young
fellow's appearance as searching as it was unsympathetic; and when a
smile followed, overspreading her loose, leathery, wrinkled skin, the
effect was full of uncanny suggestion.
"Yes, it is jolly to be back, and thanks very much," said Dick civilly;
"and it is charming to find you still here, Mrs. Parish."
"Of course I am still here," said the leathery little lady brusquely: as
if Colonel Bristo could live without his faithful domestic despot, as if
Graysbrooke could stand without its immemorial housekeeper! This Mrs.
Parish was ugly, vain, and old, and had appeared as old and as vain and
as ugly when, more than twenty years ago, she first entered the
Colonel's service. She had her good points, however, and a sense of duty
according to her lights. Though it be no extravagant praise, she was a
better person at heart than on the surface.
She now inquired with some condescension about Dick's Australian life,
and how he liked it, and where he had been, and how he should like
living altogether out there. She congratulated him on his success (she
called it "luck"), which she declared was in the mouths of everybody. On
that he felt annoyed, and wondered if she knew any details, and what
figure she would bid for some--of, say, his first year--in the local
gossip market.
"Of course you will go back," said the old woman with conviction; "all
lucky Colonists do. You will find England far too dull and slow for
you." At this point Colonel Bristo and Mr. Miles came back, chatting. "I
was saying," Mrs. Parish repeated for their benefit, "that of course Mr.
Richard will soon return to Australia; he will tire of England in six
weeks; it is always the way. Mr. Miles is the happy exception!" with a
smile upon that gentleman which strove to be arch--with doubtful
success.
"I never said I meant to make 'Home' my home," said the Australian, with
the drawl of his race, but in tones mellow and musical. His long frame
sank with graceful freedom into a chair beside Mrs. Parish, and his
clear blue eyes beamed upon them all--all except Dick, whom he forgot to
notice just then.
"I don't think Dick means to go back," said the Colonel cheerily. "That
would be treating us all abominably; in fact, we could never allow
it--eh, Dick?"
Dick looked gravely at the carpet.
"I mean to settle down in England now," said he; and he could not
refrain from a sly glance at Alice. Her eyes, bent thoughtfully upon
him, instantly filled with mischief.
"You mean to stay at home, yet sketch the ends of the earth; is that
it?" Her tone changed swiftly to one of extreme kindness. "Well, it
would be dreadful if you didn't stop at home now. Whatever you do" (he
changed colour; she added calmly), "think of Mrs. Edmonstone and Fanny!"
A little later, Alice and her father told Dick all the news of
themselves that they could think of--how they had been in Italy last
year, and in Scotland the year before, and how they had taken a
shooting-box in Yorkshire for this year. And Alice's manner was very
courteous and kindly, for she was beginning to reproach herself for
having been cruel to him on this his first evening, and to wonder how
she could have had the heart. She asked him if he had forgotten how to
dance, and said he must begin learning over again at once, in order to
dance at her ball--her very own party--on the second of July.