"Yes--and thank God, thank God," with emotion, "that it was not worse."
"I do."
"I ought never to carry a gun again!"
"I won't exact that penalty." She looked at him very kindly.
"And you will forgive me? You will do your best to forgive me?"
"I will do my best, if you will not carry off my basket," she replied, for he was turning away with the basket on his arm. "Thank you,"
as he restored it, and in his embarrassment nearly dropped his gun.
"Good-bye."
"You are sure that you will be safe now?"
"If you have no fresh accident with your firearms," she laughed.
"Please be careful."
She nodded, and turned and tripped away. But she had hardly left him, she had not passed ten paces beyond the bridge, before her mood changed. The cloak of playfulness fell from her, reaction did its work. The color left her cheeks, her knees shook as she remembered.
She felt again the hot blast on her cheek, lived through the flash, the shock, the onset of faintness. Again she clung to the stile, giddy, breathless, the landscape dancing about her. And through the haze she saw his face, white, drawn, terror-stricken--saw it and strove vainly to reassure him.
And now--now he was soothing her. He was pouring out his penitence, he was upbraiding himself. Presently she was herself again; her spirits rising, she was playing with him, chiding him, exercising a new sense of power, becoming the recipient of a man's thoughts, a man's hopes and ambitions. The color was back in her cheeks now, her knees were steady, she could walk. She went on, but slowly and more slowly, full of thought, reviewing what had happened.
Until, near the garden door, she was roughly brought to earth. Miss Peacock, visiting the yard on some domestic errand, had discerned her.
"Josina!" she cried. "My certy, girl, but you have been quick! I wish the maids were half as quick when they go! A whole afternoon is not enough for them to walk a mile. But you've not brought the eggs?"
"I didn't go," said Josina. "I was frightened by a gun."
"A gun?"
"And I felt a little faint."
"Faint? Why, you've got the color of a rose, girl. Faint? Well, when I want galeny eggs again I shan't send you. Where was it?"
"Under the Thirty Acres--by the stile. A gun went off, and----"
"Sho!" Miss Peacock cried contemptuously. "A gun went off, indeed! At your age, Josina! I don't know what girls are coming to! If you don't take care you'll be all nerves and vapors like your aunt at the Cottage! Go and take a dose of gilly-flower-water this minute, and the less said to your father the better. Why, you'd never hear the end of it! Afraid because a gun went off!"
Josina agreed that it was very silly, and went quickly up to her room.
Yes, the less said about it the better!
CHAPTER VII
The terraced garden at Garth rested to the south and east on a sustaining wall so high that to build it to-day would tax the resources of three Squires. Unfortunately, either for defence or protection from the weather, the wall rose high on the inner side also, so that he who walked in the garden might enjoy the mellow tints of the old brickwork, but had no view of the country except through certain loop-holes, gable-shaped, which pierced the wall at intervals, like the port-holes of a battleship. If the lover of landscape wanted more, he must climb half a dozen steps to a raised walk which ran along the south side. Thence he could look, as from an eyrie, on the green meadows below him, or away to the line of hills to westward, or turning about he could overlook the operations of the gardener at his feet.
More, if it rained or blew there was at the south-west corner, and entered from the raised walk, an ancient Dutch summer-house of brick, with a pyramidal roof. It had large windows and, with much at Garth that served for ornament rather than utility, it was decayed, time and damp having almost effaced its dim frescoes. But tradition hallowed it, for it was said that William of Orange, after dining in the hall at the oaken table which still bore the date 1691, had smoked his pipe and drunk his Schnapps in this summer-house; and thence had watched the roll of the bowls and the play of the bias on the turf below. For in those days the garden had been a bowling green.
There on summer evenings the Squire would still drink his port, but in winter the place was little used, tools desecrated it, and tubers took refuge in it. So when Josina began about this time to frequent it, and, as winter yielded to the first breath of spring, began to carry her work thither of an afternoon, Miss Peacock should have had her suspicions. But the good lady saw nothing, being a busy woman. Thomas the groom did remark the fact, for idle hands make watchful eyes, but for a time he was none the wiser.
"What's young Miss doing up there?" he asked himself. "Must be tarnation cold! And her look's fine, too! Ay, 'tis well to be them as has nought to do but traipse up and down and sniff the air!"
Naturally it did not at once occur to him that the summer-house commanded a view of the path which ran along the brook side; nor did he suppose that Miss had any purpose, when, as might happen perhaps once a week, she would leave her station at the window and in an aimless fashion wander down to the mill--and beyond it. She might be following a duck inclined to sit, or later--for turkeys will stray--be searching for a turkey's nest. She might be doing fifty things, indeed--she was sometimes so long away. But the time did come when, being by chance at the mill, Thomas saw a second figure on the path beside the water, and he laid by the knowledge for future use. He was a sly fellow, not much in favor with the other servants.
Presently there came a cold Saturday in March, a wet, windy day, when to saunter by the brook would have too odd an air. But would it have an odd look, Josina wondered, standing before the glass in her room, if she ran across to the Cottage for ten minutes about sunset? The bank closed early on Saturdays, and men were not subject to the weather as women were. Twice she put on her bonnet, and twice she took it off and put it back in its box--she could not make up her mind. He might think that she followed him. He might think her bold. Or suppose that when they met before others, she blushed; or that they thought the meeting strange? And, after all, he might not be there--he was no favorite with Mrs. Bourdillon, and his heart might fail him. In the end the bonnet was put away, but it is to be feared that that evening Jos was a little snappish with Miss Peacock when arraigned for some act of forgetfulness.
Had she gone she might have come off no better than Clement, who, braving all things, did go. Mrs. Bourdillon did not, indeed, say when he entered, "What, here again?" but her manner spoke for her, and Arthur, who had arrived before his time, received the visitor with less than his usual good humor. Clement's explanation, that he had left his gun, fell flat, and so chilly were the two that he stayed but twenty minutes, then faltered an excuse, and went off with his tail between his legs.
He did not guess that he had intruded on a family difference, a trouble of some standing, which the passage of weeks had but aggravated. It turned on Ovington's offer, which Arthur, pluming himself on his success and proud of his prospects, had lost no time in conveying to his mother. He had supposed that she would see the thing with his eyes, and be as highly delighted. To become a partner so early, to share at his age in the rising fortunes of the house! Surely she would believe in him now, if she had never believed in him before.
But Mrs. Bourdillon had been imbued by her husband with one fixed idea--that whatever happened she must never touch her capital; that under no circumstances must she spend it, or transfer it or alienate it. That way lay ruin. No sooner, therefore, had Arthur come to that part of his story than she had taken fright; and nothing that he had been able to say, no assurance that he had been able to give, no gilded future that he had been able to paint, had sufficed to move the good woman from her position.
"Of course," she said, looking at him piteously, for she hated to oppose him, "I'm not saying that it does not sound nice, dear."
"It is nice! Very nice!"
"But I'm older than you, and oh, dear, dear, I've known what disappointment is! I remember when your father thought that he had the promise of the Benthall living and we bought the drawing-room carpet, though it was blue and buff and your father did not like the color--something to do with a fox, I remember, though to be sure a fox is red! Well, my dear," drumming with her fingers on her lap in a placid way that maddened her listener, "he was just as confident as you are, and after all the Bishop gave the living to his own cousin, and the money thrown clean away, and the carpet too large for any room we had, and woven of one piece so that we couldn't cut it! I'm sure that was a lesson to me that there's many a slip between the cup and the lip. Believe me, a bird in the hand----"
"But this is in the hand!" Arthur cried, restraining himself with difficulty. "This is in the hand!"
"Well, I don't know how that may be. I never was a business woman, whatever your uncle may say when he is in his tantrums. But I do know that your father told me, nine or ten times----"
"And you've told me a hundred times!"
"Well, and I'm sure your uncle would say the same! But, indeed, I don't know what he wouldn't say if he knew what we were thinking of!"
"The truth is, mother, you are afraid of the Squire."
"And if I am," plaintively, "it is all very well for you, Arthur, who are away six days out of seven. But I'm here and he's here. And I have to listen to him. And if this money is lost----"
"But it cannot be lost, I tell you!"
"Well, if it is lost, we shall both be beggars! Oh, dear, dear, I'm sure if your father told me once he told me a hundred times----"
"Damn!" Arthur cried, fairly losing his temper at last. "The truth is, mother, that my father knew nothing about money."
At that, however, Mrs. Bourdillon began to cry and Arthur found himself obliged to drop the matter for the time. He saw, too, that he was on the wrong tack, and a few days later, under pressure of necessity, he tried another. He humbled himself, he wheedled, he cajoled; and when he had by this means got on the right side of his mother he spoke of Ovington's success.
"In a few years he will be worth a quarter of a million," he said.
The figure flustered her. "Why, that's----"
"A quarter of a million," he repeated impressively. "And that's why I consider this the chance of my life, mother. It is such an opportunity as I shall never have again. It is within my reach now, and surely, surely," his voice shook with the fervor of his pleading, "you will not be the one to dash it from my lips?" He laid his hand upon her wrist. "And ruin your son's life, mother?"
She was shaken. "You know, if I thought it was for your good!"