The Half-hearted Page 16

  By four o'clock the snow showed no sign of clearing, but fell in the same steady, noiseless drift. The mistress of the place made the girl tea and dispatched her son to Glenavelin. But the errand would take time, for the boy was small, and Alice, ever impatient, stood drumming on the panes, watching the dreary weather with a dreary heart. The goodwife was standing at the door on the look-out for a passing gig, and her cry brought the girl to attention.

  "I see a machine comin'! I think it's the Etterick dowg-cairt. Ye'll get a drive in it."

  Alice had gone to the door, and lo! through the thick fall a dog-cart came into view driven by a tall young man. He recognized her at once, and drew up.

  "Hullo, Miss Wishart! Storm-stayed? Can I help you?"

  The girl looked distrustfully at the very restless horse and he caught her diffidence.

  "Don't be afraid. 'What I don't know about 'oases ain't worth knowin','" he quoted with a laugh; and leaning forward he prepared to assist her to mount.

  There was nothing for it but to accept, and the next minute she found herself in the high seat beside him. Her wraps, sufficient for walking, were scarcely sufficient for a snowy drive, and this, to his credit, the young man saw. He unbuttoned his tweed shooting-cape, and gravely put it round her. A curious dainty figure she made with her face all bright with wind, framed in the great grey cloak.

  The horse jibbed for a second and then swung along the wild road with the vigorous ease of good blood skilfully handled. George was puzzling his brain all the while as to how he should tell his companion something which she ought to know. The strong drift and the turns of the road claimed much of his attention, so it is possible that he blurted out his news somewhat baldly.

  "Do you know, Miss Wishart, that Lewis Haystoun and I are going off next week? Abroad, you know."

  The girl, who had been enjoying the ecstasy of swift motion through the bitter weather, glanced up at him with pain in her eyes.

  "Where?" she asked.

  "To the Indian frontier. We are going to be special unpaid unofficial members of the Intelligence Department."

  She asked the old, timid woman's question about danger.

  "It's where Lewis was before. Only, you see, things have got into a mess thereabouts, and the Foreign Office has asked him to go out again.

  By the by, you mustn't tell any one about this, for it's in strict confidence."

  The words were meaningless, and yet they sent a pang through her heart.

  Had he no guess at her inmost feelings? Could he think that she would talk to Mr. Stocks of a thing which was bound up for her with all the sorrow and ecstasy of life?

  He looked down and saw that her face had paled and that her mouth was drawn with some emotion. A sudden gleam of light seemed to break in upon him.

  "Are you sorry?" he asked half-unwittingly.

  For answer the girl turned her tragic eyes upon him, tried to speak, and faltered. He cursed him-self for a fool and a brute, and whipped up an already over-active horse, till it was all but unmanageable. It was a wise move, for it absorbed his attention and gave the poor child at his side a chance to recover her composure.

  They came to Glenavelin gates and George turned in. "I had better drive you to the door, in this charming weather," he said. The sight of the pale little face had moved him to deep pity. He cursed his blindness, the blindness of a whole world of fools, and at the same time, with the impotence of the honest man, he could only wait and be silent.

  At the door he stopped to unbutton his cape from her neck, and even in his nervousness he felt the trembling of her body. She spoke rapidly and painfully.

  "I want you to take a message from me to-to-Lewis. Tell him I must see him. Tell him to come to the Midburn foot, to-morrow in the afternoon. Oh, I am ashamed to ask you, but you must tell him." And then without thanks or good-bye she fled into the house.

  Chapter XIX

  THE BRIDGE OF BROKEN HEARTS

  Listless leaves were tossing in the light wind or borne downward in the swirl of the flooded Midburn, to the weary shallows where they lay, beached high and sodden, till the frost nipped and shrivelled their rottenness into dust. A bleak, thin wind it was, like a fine sour wine, searching the marrow and bringing no bloom to the cheek. A light snow powdered the earth, the grey forerunner of storms.

  Alice stood back in the shelter of the broken parapet. The highway with its modern crossing-place was some hundreds of yards up stream, but here, at the burn mouth, where the turbid current joined with the cold, glittering Avelin, there was a grass-grown track, and an ancient, broken-backed bridge. There were few passers on the high-road, none on this deserted way; but the girl in all her loneliness shrank back into the shadow. In these minutes she endured the bitter mistrust, the sore hesitancy, of awaiting on a certain but unknown grief.

  She had not long to wait, for Lewis came down the Avelin side by a bypath from Etterick village. His alert gait covered his very real confusion, but to the girl he seemed one who belonged to an alien world of cheerfulness. He could not know her grief, and she regretted her coming.

  His manners were the same courteous formalities. The man was torn with emotion, and yet he greeted her with a conventional ease.

  "It was so good of you, Miss Wishart, to give me a chance to come and say good-bye. My going is such a sudden affair, that I might have had no time to come to Glenavelin, but I could not have left without seeing you."

  The girl murmured some indistinct words. "I hope you will have a good time and come back safely," she said, and then she was tongue-tied.

  The two stood before each other, awkward and silent-two between whom no word of love had ever been spoken, but whose hearts were clamouring at the iron gates of speech.

  Alice's face and neck were dyed crimson, as the impossible position dawned on her mind. No word could break down the palisade, of form.

  Lewis, his soul a volcano, struggled for the most calm and inept words.

  He spoke of the weather, of her father, of his aunt's messages.

  Then the girl held out her hand.

  "Good-bye," she said, looking away from him.

  He held it for a second. "Good-bye, Miss Wishart," he said hoarsely.

  Was this the consummation of his brief ecstasy, the end of months of longing? The steel hand of fate was on him and he turned to leave.

  He turned when he had gone three paces and came back. The girl was still standing by the parapet, but she had averted her face towards the wintry waters. His step seemed to fall on deaf ears, and he stood beside her before she looked towards him.

  Passion had broken down his awkwardness. He asked the old question with a shaking voice. "Alice," he said, "have I vexed you?"

  She turned to him a pale, distraught face, her eyes brimming over with the sorrow of love, the passionate adventurous longing which claims true hearts for ever.

  He caught her in his arms, his heart in a glory of joy.

  "Oh, Alice, darling," he cried. "What has happened to us? I love you, I love you, and you have never given me a chance to say it."

  She lay passive in his arms for one brief minute and then feebly drew back.

  "Sweetheart," he cried. "Sweetheart! For I will call you sweetheart, though we never meet again. You are mine, Alice. We cannot help ourselves."

  The girl stood as in a trance, her eyes caught and held by his face.

  "Oh, the misery of things," she said half-sobbing. "I have given my soul to another, and I knew it was not mine to give. Why, oh why, did you not speak to me sooner? I have been hungering for you and you never came."

  A sense of his folly choked him.

  "And I have made you suffer, poor darling! And the whole world is out of joint for us!"

  The hopeless feeling of loss, forgotten for a moment, came back to him.

  The girl was gone from him for ever, though a bridge of hearts should always cross the chasm of their severance.

  "I am going away," he said, "to make reparation. I have my r
epentance to work out, and it will be bitterer than yours, little woman. Ours must be an austere love."

  She looked at him till her pale face flushed and a sad exultation woke in her eyes.

  "You will never forget?" she asked wistfully, confident of the answer.

  "Forget!" he cried. "It is my only happiness to remember. I am going away to be knocked about, dear. Wild, rough work, but with a man's chances!"

  For a moment she let another thought find harbour in her mind. Was the past irretrievable, the future predetermined? A woman's word had an old right to be broken. If she went to him, would not he welcome her gladly, and the future might yet be a heritage for both?

  The thought endured but a moment, for she saw how little simple was the crux of her destiny. The two of them had been set apart by the fates; each had salvation to work out alone; no facile union would ever join them. For him there was the shaping of a man's path; for her the illumination which only sorrows and parting can bring. And with the thought she thought kindly of the man to whom she had pledged her word.

  It was but a little corner of her heart he could ever possess; but doubtless in such matters he was not ambitious.

  Lewis walked by her side down the by-path towards Glenavelin. Tragedy muffled in the garments of convention was there, not the old picturesque Tragic with sword and cloak and steel for the enemy, but the silent Tragic which pulls at the heart-strings.

  "The summer is over," she said. "It has been a cruel summer, but very bright."

  "Romance with the jarring modern note which haunts us all to-day," he said. "This upland country is confused with bustling politics, and pastoral has been worried to death by sickness of heart. You cannot find the old peaceful life without."

  "And within?" she asked.

  "That is for you and me to determine, dear. God grant it. I have found my princess, like the man in the fairy-tale, but I may not enter the kingdom."

  "And the poor princess must sit and mope in her high stone tower? It is a hard world for princesses."

  "Hard for the knights, too, for they cannot come back and carry off their ladies. In the old days it used to be so, but then simplicity has gone out of life."

  "And the princess waits and watches and cries herself to sleep?

  "And the knight goes off to the World's End and never forgets."

  They were at Glenavelin gates now, and stood silent against the moment of parting. She flew to his arms, for a second his kisses were on her lips, and then came the sundering. A storm of tears was in her heart, but with dry eyes she said the words of good-bye. Meanwhile from the hills came a drift of snow, and a dreary wind sang in the pines the dirge of the dead summer, the plaint of long farewells.

  Part II

  Chapter XX

  THE EASTERN ROAD

  If you travel abroad in certain seasons you will find that a type predominates among the travellers. From Dover to Calais, from Calais to Paris, there is an unnatural eagerness on faces, an unrest in gait, a disorder in dress which argues worry and haste. And if you inquire further, being of a speculative turn, you will find that there is something in the air. The papers, French and English, have ugly headlines and mystic leaders. Disquiet is in the atmosphere, each man has a solution or a secret, and far at the back sits some body of men who know that a crisis is near and square their backs for it. The journalist is sick with work and fancied importance; the diplomat's hair whitens with the game which he cannot understand; the statesman, if he be wise, is in fear, knowing the meaning of such movements, while, if he be foolish, he chirps optimistically in his speeches and is applauded in the press. There are grey faces at the seats of the money-changers, for war, the scourge of small cords, seems preparing for the overturning of their tables, and the castigation of their persons.

  Lewis and George rang the bell in the Faubourg St. Honorй on a Monday afternoon, and asked for Lord Rideaux. His lordship was out, but, if they were the English gentlemen who had the appointment with M. Gribton, Monsieur would be with them speedily.

  Lewis looked about the heavily furnished ante-room with its pale yellow walls and thick, green curtains, with the air of a man trying to recall a memory. "I came over here with John Lambert, when his father had the place. That was just after I left Oxford. Gad, I was a happy man then.

  I thought I could do anything. They put me next to Madame de Ravignet because of my French, and because old Ankerville declared that I ought to know the cleverest woman in Europe. Sйry, the man who was Premier last year, came and wrung my hand afterwards, said my fortune was assured because I had impressed the Ravignet, and no one had ever done it before except Bismarck. Ugh, the place is full of ghosts Poor old John died a year after, and here am I, far enough, God knows, from my good intentions."

  A servant announced "Monsieur Gribton," and a little grizzled man hobbled in, leaning heavily on a stick. He wore a short beard, and in his tanned face two clever grey eyes twinkled sedately. He shook hands gravely when Lewis introduced George, but his eyes immediately returned to the former's face.

  "You look a fit pair," he said. "I am instructed to give you all the help in my power, but I should like to know your game. It isn't sport this time, is it, Haystoun? Logan is still talking about his week with you. Well, well, we can do things at our leisure. I have letters to write, and then it will be dinner-time, when we can talk. Come to the club at eight, 'Cercle des Voyageurs,' corner of Rue Neuve de St.

  Michel. I expect you belong, Haystoun; and anyway I'll be there."

  He bowed them out with his staccato apologies, and the two returned to their hotel to dress. Two hours later they found Gribton warming his hands in the smoking-room of the Cercle, a fussy and garrulous gentleman, eager for his dinner. He pointed out such people as he knew, and was consumed with curiosity about the others. Lewis wandered about the room before he sat down, shaking hands with several and nodding to many.

  "You seem to know the whole earth," said Gribton.

  "I suppose that a world of acquaintance is the only reward of slackness," Lewis said, laughing. "It's a trick I have. I never forget a face and I honestly like to see people again."

  George pulled his long moustache. "It's simply hideous the way one is forgotten. It's all right for the busy people, for they shift their sets with their fortune, but for drones like me it's the saddest thing in life. Before we came away, Lewie, I went up for a day to Oxford to see about some things, and stopped a night there. I haven't been down long, and yet I knew nobody at the club except the treasurer, and he had nothing to say to me except to ask after you. I went to dinner with the dons at the high table, and I nearly perished of the blues. Little Riddell chirped about my profession, and that bounder Jackson, who was of our year, pretended that he had been your bosom friend. I got so bored that I left early and wandered back to the club. Somebody was making a racket in our old rooms in the High, windows open, you know, and singing. I stopped to look at them, and then they started, 'Willie brewed a peck o' maut,' and, 'pon my soul, I had to come away. Couldn't stand it. It reminded me so badly of you and Arthur and old John Lambert, and all the honest men that used to be there. It was infernally absurd that I should have got so sentimental, but that wasn't the worst of it. For I met Tony and he made me come round to a dinner, and there I found people I didn't know from Adam drinking the old toasts we started. Gad, they had them all. 'Las Palmas,' 'The Old Guard,'

  'The Wandering Scot,' and all the others. It made me feel as low as an owl, and when I got back to the club and saw poor old John's photograph on the wall, I tell you I went to bed in the most wretched melancholy."

  Lewis stared open-mouthed at George, the irrepressible, in this new attitude. He, as the hardened traveller, had had little more than a decent pang of home-sickness. His regret was far deeper and more real than the sentimental article of commerce, and he could afford to be almost gay while George sat in the depths.

  "I'm coming home, and I'm not happy; you young men are going out, and you have got the blues. T
here's no pleasing weak humanity. I say, Haystoun, who's that old man?" Gribton's jovial looks belied his words.

  Lewis mentioned a name for his host's benefit. The room was emptying rapidly, for the Cercle dined early.

  "Now for business," said Gribton, when a waiter had brought the game course, and they sat in the midst of a desert of linen and velvet. "I have given the thing up, but I spent twenty of my best years at Bardur.

  So, as I am instructed to do all in my power to aid you, I am ready.

  First, is it sport?

  "Partly," said George, but Lewis's head gave denial.

  "Because, if it is, I am not the best man. Well, then, is it geographical? For if it is, there is much to be done."

  "Partly," said Lewis.

  "Then I take it that the residue is political. You are following the popular avenue to polities, I suppose. Leave the 'Varsity very raw, knock about in an unintelligent way for three or four years on some frontier, then come home, go into the House, and pose as a specialist in foreign affairs. I should have thought you had too much humour for that."

  "Only, you see, I have been there before. I am merely going back upon my tracks to make sure. I go purely as an adventurer, hoping to pick up some valuable knowledge, but prepared to fail."

  Gribton helped himself to champagne. "That's better. Now I know your attitude, we can talk like friends. Better come to the small smoking-room. They've got a '51 brandy here which is beyond words.

  Have some for a liqueur."

  In the smoking-room Gribton fussed about coffee and cigars for many minutes ere he settled down. Then, when he could gaze around and see his two guests in deep armchairs, each smoking and comfortable, he returned to his business.