AN AWKWARD MEETING.
A fortnight after this paragraph in the “Guardian” had filled
Claversham with astonishment and Mr. Clode with a modest thankfulness
that he was spared the burden of office, a little dark man—Jack Smith,
in fact—drove briskly into Paddington Station, and, disregarding the
offers of the porters, who stand waiting on the hither side of the
journey like Charon by the Styx, and see at a glance who has the
obolus, sprang from the hansom without assistance, and bustled on to
the platform.
Here he looked up and down as if he expected to meet some one, and
then, glancing at the clock, found that he had a quarter of an hour to
spare. He made at once for the bookstall, and, with a lavishness which
would have surprised some of his friends, bought “Punch,” a little
volume by Howells, the “Standard,” and finally, though he blushed as he
asked for it, the “Queen.” He had just gathered his purchases together
and was paying for them, when a high-pitched voice at his elbow made
him start. “Why, Jack! what in the world are you buying all those
papers for?” The speaker was a girl about thirteen years old, who in
the hubbub had stolen unnoticed to his side.
“Hullo, Daintry,” he answered. “Why did you not say that you were here
before? I have been looking for you. Where is Kate? Oh, yes, I see
her,” as a young lady turning over books at the farther end of the
stall acknowledged his presence by a laughing nod. “You are here in
good time,” he went on, while the younger girl affectionately slipped
her arm through his.
“Yes,” she said. “Your mother started us early. And so you have come to
see us off, after all, Jack?”
“Just so,” he answered drily. “Let us go to Kate.”
They did so, the young lady meeting them halfway. “How kind of you to
be here, Jack!” she said. “As you have come, will you look us out a
comfortable compartment? That is the train over there. And please to
put this, and this, and Daintry’s parcel in the corners for us.”
This and this were a cloak and a shawl, and a few little matters in
brown paper. In order to possess himself of them, Jack handed Kate the
papers he was carrying.
“Are they for me?” she said, gratefully indeed, but with a placid
gratitude which was not perhaps what the donor wanted. “Oh, thank you.
And this too? What is it?”
“‘Their Wedding Journey,’” said Jack, with a shy twinkle in his eyes.
“Is it pretty?” she answered dubiously. “It sounds silly; but you are
supposed to be a judge. I think I should like ‘A Chance Acquaintance’
better, though.”
Of course the little book was changed, and Jack winced. But he had not
time to think much about it, for he had to bustle away through the
rising babel to secure seats for them in an empty compartment of the
Oxford train, and see their luggage labelled and put in. This done, he
hurried back, and pointed out to them the places he had taken. “Oh,
dear, they are in a through carriage,” Kate said, stopping short and
eyeing the board over the door.
“Yes,” he answered. “I thought that that was what you wanted.”
“No, I would rather go in another carriage, and change. We shall get to
Claversham soon enough without travelling with Claversham people.”
“Indeed we shall,” Daintry chimed in. “Let us go and find seats, and
Jack will bring the things after us.”
He assented meekly—very meekly for sharp Jack Smith—and presently came
along with his arms full of parcels, to find them ensconced in the
nearer seats of a compartment, which contained also one gentleman who
was already deep in the “Times.” Jack, standing at the open door, could
not see his face, for it was hidden by the newspaper, but he could see
that his legs wore a youthful and reckless air; and he raised his
eyebrows interrogatively. “Pooh!” whispered Daintry in answer. “How
stupid you are! It is all right. I can see he is a clergyman by his
boots!”
Jack smiled at this assurance, and, putting in the things he was
holding, shut the door and stood outside, looking first at the platform
about him, on which all was flurry and confusion, and then at the
interior of the carriage, which seemed in comparison peaceful and
homelike. “I think I will come with you to Westbourne Park,” he said
suddenly.
“Nonsense, Jack!” Kate replied, with crushing decision. “We shall be
there in five minutes, and you will have all the trouble of returning
for nothing.”
He acquiesced meekly—poor Jack! “Well,” he said, with a new effort at
cheerfulness, “you will soon be at home, girls. Remember me to the
governor. I am afraid you will be rather dull at first. You will have
one scrap of excitement, however.”
“What is that?” said Kate, very much as if she were prepared to
depreciate it before she knew what it was.
“The new rector!”
“He will make very little difference to us!” the girl answered, with an
accent almost of scorn. “Papa said in his letter that he thought it was
a great pity a local man had not been appointed—some one who knew the
place and the old ways. You say he is clever and nice; but either way
it will not affect us much.”
No one noticed that the “Times” newspaper in the far corner of the
compartment rustled suspiciously, and that the clerical boots became
agitated on a sudden, as though their wearer meditated a move; and, in
ignorance of this, “I expect I shall hate him!” said Daintry calmly.
“Come, you must not do that,” Jack remonstrated “You must remember that
he is not only a very good fellow, but a great friend of mine.”
“Then we ought indeed to spare him!” Kate said frankly, “for you have
been very good to us and made our visit delightful.”
His face flushed with pleasure even at those simple words of praise.
“And you will write and tell me,” he continued eagerly, “that you have
reached your journey’s end safely.”
“One of us will,” was the answer. “Daintry,” Kate went on calmly, “will
you remind me to write to Jack to-morrow evening?”
His face fell sadly. So little would have made him happy. He looked
down and kicked the step of the carriage, and made his tiny moan to
himself before he spoke again. “Good-bye,” he said then. “They are
coming to look at your tickets. You are due out in one minute.
Good-bye, Daintry.”
“Good-bye, Jack. Come and see us soon,” she cried earnestly, as she
released his hand.
“Good-bye, Kate.” Alas! Kate’s cheek did not show the slightest
consciousness that his clasp was more than cousinly. She uttered her
“Good-bye, Jack, and thank you so much,” very kindly, but her color
never varied by the quarter of a tone, and her grasp was as firm and as
devoid of shyness as his own.
He had not much time to be miserable, however, then, for, the
ticket-collector coming to the window, Jack had to fall back, and in
doing so made a discovery. Kate, hunting for her ticket in one of those
mysterious places in which ladies will put tickets, heard him utter an
exclamation, and asked, “What is it, Jack?”
To her surprise, the collector having by this time disappeared, he
stretched out his hand through the window to some one beyond her. “Why,
Lindo!” he cried, “is that you? I had not a notion of your identity. Of
course you are going down to take possession.”
Kate, trembling already with a horrible presentiment, turned her head.
Yes, it was the clergyman in the corner who answered Jack’s greeting
and rose to shake hands with him, the train being already in motion. “I
did not recognize your voice out there,” he said, looking rather hot.
“No? And I did not know you were going down to-day,” Jack answered,
walking beside the train. “Let me introduce you to my cousins, Miss
Bonamy and Daintry. I am sorry that I did not see you before. Good luck
to you! Good-bye, Kate!”
The train was moving faster and faster, and Jack was soon left behind
on the platform gazing pathetically at the black tunnel which had
swallowed it up. In the carriage there was silence, and in the heart of
one at least of the passengers the most horrible vexation. Kate could
have bitten out her tongue. She was conscious that the clergyman had
bowed in acknowledgment of Jack’s introduction and had muttered
something. But then he had sunk back in his corner, his face wearing,
as it seemed to her, a frown of scornful annoyance. Even if nothing
awkward had been said, she would still have shunned, for a certain
reason, such a meeting as this with a new clergyman who did not yet
know Claversham. But now she had aggravated the matter by her
heedlessness. So she sat angry, and yet ashamed, with her lips pressed
together and her eyes fixed upon the opposite cushion.
For the Rev. Reginald, he had been by no means indifferent to the
criticisms he had unfortunately overheard. Always possessed of a fairly
good opinion of himself, he had lately been raising his standard to the
rectorial height; and, being very human, he had come to think himself
something of a personage. If Jack Smith had introduced him under the
same circumstances to his aunt, there is no saying how far the
acquaintance would have progressed or how long the new incumbent might
have fretted and fumed. But presently he stole a look at Kate Bonamy
and melted.
He saw a girl, slightly above the middle height, graceful and rounded
of figure, with a grave stateliness of carriage which oddly became her.
Her complexion was rather pale, but it was clear and healthy, and there
was even a freckle here and a freckle there which I never heard a man
say that he would have had elsewhere. If her face was a trifle long,
with a nose a little aquiline and curving lips too wide, yet it was a
fair and dainty face, such as Englishmen love. The brown hair, which
strayed on to the broad white brow and hung in a heavy loop upon her
neck, had a natural waviness—the sole beauty on which she prided
herself. For she could not see her eyes as others saw them—big gray
eyes that from under long lashes looked out upon you, full of such
purity and truth that men meeting their gaze straightway felt a desire
to be better men and went away and tried—for half an hour. Such was
Kate outwardly. Inwardly she had faults of course, and perhaps pride
and a little temper were two of them.
The rector was still admiring her askance, surprised to find that Jack
Smith, who was not very handsome himself, had such a cousin, when
Daintry roused him abruptly. For some moments she had been gazing at
him, as at some unknown specimen, with no attempt to hide her interest.
Now she said suddenly, “You are the new rector?”
He answered stiffly that he was; being a good deal taken aback at being
challenged in this way. Remonstrance, however, was out of the question,
and Daintry for the moment said no more, though her gaze lost none of
its embarrassing directness.
But presently she began again. “I should think the dogs would like
you,” she said deliberately, and much as if he had not been there to
hear; “you look as if they would.”
Silence again. The rector smiled fatuously. What was a beneficed
clergyman, whose dignity was young and tender, to do, subjected to the
criticism of unknown dogs? He tried to divert his thoughts by
considering the pretty sage-green frock and the gray fur cape and hat
to match which the elder girl was wearing. Doubtless she was taking the
latest fashions down to Claversham, and fur capes and hats,
indefinitely and mysteriously multiplying, would listen to him on
Sundays from all the nearest pews. And Daintry was silent so long that
he thought he had done with her. But no. “Do you think that you will
like Claversham?” she asked, with an air of serious curiosity.
“I trust I shall,” he said, a flush rising to his cheek.
She took a moment to consider the answer conscientiously, and, thinking
badly of it, remarked gravely, “I don’t think you will.”
This was unbearable. The clergyman, full of a nervous dread lest the
next question should be, “Do you think that they will like you at
Claversham?” made a great show of resuming his newspaper. Kate,
possessed by the same fear, shot an imploring glance at Daintry; but,
seeing that the latter had only eyes for the stranger, hoped
desperately for the best.
Which was very bad. “It must be jolly,” remarked the unconscious
tormentor, “to have eight hundred pounds a year, and be a rector!”
“Daintry!” Kate cried in horror.
“Why, what is the matter?” asked Daintry, turning suddenly to her
sister with wide-open eyes. Her look of aggrieved astonishment at once
overcame Lindo’s gravity, and he laughed aloud. He was not without a
charming sense, still novel enough to be pleasing, that Daintry was
right. It was jolly to be a rector and have eight hundred a year!
That laugh came in happily. It seemed to sweep away the cobwebs of
embarrassment which had lain so thickly about two of the party. Lindo
began to talk pleasantly, pointing out this or that reach of the river,
and Kate, meeting his cheery eyes, put aside a faint idea of
apologizing which had been in her head, and replied frankly. He told
them tales of summer voyages between lock and lock, and of long days
idly spent in the Wargrave marshes; and, as the identification of
Mapledurham and Pangbourne and Wittenham and Goring rendered it
necessary that they should all cross and recross the carriage, they
were soon on excellent terms with one another, or would have been if
the rector had not still detected in Kate’s manner a slight stiffness
for which he could not account. It puzzled him also to observe that,
though they were ready, Daintry more particularly, to discuss the
amusements of London and the goodness of cousin Jack, they both grew
reticent when the conversation turned toward Claversham and its
affairs.
At Oxford he got out to go to the bookstall.
“Jack was right,” said Daintry, looking after him. “He _is_ nice.”
“Yes,” her sister allowed, rising and sitting down again in a restless
fashion. “But I wish we had not fallen in with him, all the same.”
“It cannot be helped now,” said Daintry, who was evidently prepared to
accept the event with philosophy.
Not so her sister. “We might go into another carriage,” she suggested.
“That would be rude,” said Daintry calmly.
The question was decided for them by the young clergyman’s return. He
came along the platform, an animated look in his face. “Miss Bonamy,”
he said, stopping at the open door with his hand extended, “there is
some one in the refreshment-room whom I think that you would like to
see. Mr. Gladstone is there, talking to the Duke of Westminster, and
they are both eating buns like common mortals. Will you come and take a
peep at them?”
“I don’t think that we have time,” she objected.
“There is sure to be time,” Daintry cried. “Now, Kate, come!” And she
was down upon the platform in a moment.
“The train is not due out for five minutes yet,” Lindo said, as he
piloted them through the crowd to the doorway. “There, on the left by
the fireplace,” he added.
Kate glanced, and turned away satisfied. Not so Daintry. With rapt
attention in her face, she strayed nearer and nearer to the great men,
her eyes growing larger with each step.
“She will be talking to them next,” said Kate, in a fidget.
“Perhaps asking him if he likes Downing Street,” Lindo suggested slyly.
“There, she is coming now,” he added, as Miss Daintry turned and came
to them at last.
“I wanted to make sure,” she said simply, seeing Kate’s impatience,
“that I should know them again. That was all.”
“Quite so; I hope you have succeeded,” Kate answered drily. “But, if we
are not quick, we shall miss our train.” And she led the way back with
more speed than dignity.
“There is plenty of time—plenty of time,” Lindo answered, following
them. He could not bear to see her pushing her way through the mixed
crowd, and accepting so easily a footing of equality with it. He was
one of those men to whom their womenkind are sacred. He took his time,
therefore, and followed at his ease; only to see, when he emerged from
the press, a long stretch of empty platform, three porters, and the
tail of a departing train. “Good gracious!” he stammered, with dismay
in his face. “What does it mean?”
“It means,” Kate said, in an accent of sharp annoyance—she did not
intend to spare him—“that you have made us miss our train, Mr. Lindo.
And there is not another which reaches Claversham today!”