CHAPTER VII KISSES

“To thank me?” she repeated, round-eyed. “You mean that is what brings you here—to thank me for such a little thing?”

“Not such a little thing, either,” he replied with a smile, as he rose; “the saving, perhaps, of my life and my comrade’s.”

“Oh, indeed, yes—a very great thing!—but a little thing to do—so easily done. And to come all the way hither to thank—” She stopped short and looked at him steadily, then blushed deeper. “Oh!—you will think me a fool, sir:—for a moment I believed exactly what you said; I made no allowance for compliment; I am inexperienced, as you can see.”

“Nay, but upon my honour I spoke the truth,” he protested in surprise.

“Then you indeed came here only to thank me?”

“To thank you, but not only that. I came to see and hear you.”

“You mean—nothing else—brought you to this neighbourhood?”

“Nothing but you. Had I not met you at the inn yesterday, I should now be with my friend, far on the road Southward.”

The look of apprehension returned to her face.

“Oh, heaven, yes!—the danger you are in! How do you intend to save yourself? Are you not risking your life by remaining in England?”

“Pray don’t be alarmed on that score: I have the means of leaving England when the time comes.”

“When the time comes? When will that be? What is it that delays you?”

He was not prepared with an answer. “Why,—ah—you must know my friend has some matters to settle before he leaves;—we are to sail together, when he is ready.”

“Then you should have remained together. Why did you leave him? If what you said is true, you have interrupted your flight—to see me.”

“You are worthy of a far greater compliment than that,” said he, as gallantly as the confusion he felt in her presence allowed him to speak.

“But if danger came to you through this, how I should have to reproach myself! Oh, I beg you, follow your friend: overtake him. Lose no time: now that you have thanked me, go—go quickly!”

“And have you the heart to send me away when I have but just found you?”

“Nay, if your life were not at stake—no, I mean not that. I ought not to talk with you—I ought not to stay here.”

Trembling, she made to retreat, but he gently interposed.

“Nay,” he said, very tenderly, “the ‘oughts’ and ‘ought nots’ of custom do not apply to us, situated as we are. Are you not among people who make you unhappy? Am I not a man whose life you have saved, and who would do anything in the world for you? Can you not trust me as I trust you? Why then shouldn’t you talk with me? Tell me, what if my life were not at stake?”

“I have forgot what I was saying.”

“If my life were not at stake, you would not bid me go?”

“How can I tell?—Why shouldn’t I?”

“You were startled to see me here. Did you not think I might come?”

She could have truly answered that she had been without the slightest expectation of ever seeing him again. Yet she had permitted her imagination the indulgence of a vague scene of future meeting, not far unlike that which was now taking place. The consciousness of this added to the sweet embarrassment she felt, and she could only reply, foolishly, “Why should I have thought so?”

Everell sighed, realizing that, as far as speeches went, he was not making rapid progress. “At all events,” said he, rallying his powers of gaiety, “here I am, and in this neighbourhood I mean to stay for a time, so ’tis of no use bidding me go—”

“But are you safe in this neighbourhood?” she broke in, her eyes forgetting their shyness in searching his face to see if his confidence was real. “That man at the inn may have described you to many people.”

“I will take care none of them see me. I have a secure hiding-place in the wilderness, and a friend to supply my wants. I shall be visible to none but him—and you.”

“To me? How to me?”

“Even as I am at this moment: here, in this garden. ’Tis evidently a deserted place; the shrubbery and walls conceal us, and escape is easy to the glen yonder if we should hear anybody approach. No one, finding you here alone, would suspect you had had a visitor.”

“I must not risk that discovery,—for your sake, I must not. I shall be missed in the house, I’m afraid,—my uncle and his friends have returned.”

“Nay, don’t go yet. Pray, not yet! I have said nothing yet, accomplished nothing.”

“What would you say, then? Speak quickly.”

“A thousand things. I can’t unload my heart of a sudden at the cry, ‘Stand and deliver!’—you send my thoughts into confusion. Do not go yet!—’tis not so much saying what I would, as being with you.”

“But they will be inquiring for me—my maid will be seeking. My uncle—”

“Is your uncle so heedful of you that he must always know where you are?”

“Far from it. I am nothing to him and his friends. But if the whim should seize him—if by any chance they should find me talking with a stranger—Oh, really, sir, I must go.”

“Again you call me stranger!”

“Why, in their eyes you would be a stranger.”

“But not in yours? Ah, thank you for that much, at least. You acknowledge me as a friend?”

“Why, I suppose—since you declare yourself so, I must needs believe you. Heaven knows, I have felt some want of a friend, having none in this house. Were it otherwise, were this place my aunt’s, perhaps I should not have stayed a moment to hear you.”

“I must bless my fortune, then, that this house is not your aunt’s. I can even be glad you are not among friends here, since that leaves room in your heart for me. And yet I could slay any who were lacking in the friendship you had a right to expect of them. How can they be so, to you?”

His gaze had so much ardour that her own eyes softened in it, and the consequence of that melting was that he swiftly folded her in his arms and pressed a kiss obliquely upon her lips.

“Now I must go,” she whispered, after a moment, gently pushing him away.

“Now less than ever, sweet,” he replied, still clasping her.

“Oh, but I must—sure I beg—Prudence will be looking for me.”

Her insistence of manner was such that he dared not hold her longer without feeling guilty of violence. But he still retained her hand, to say:

“And when will you be here again?”

“I know not,” she answered, hurriedly. “How can I say?”

“Well, then, whenever you do come, you will find me waiting for you.”

“No, no; that will not be safe. I had forgotten the danger you are in. Do not come here at all—by daylight.—If you must, why, come after sunset. They will be at their cards and wine then.”

“And you?—you are sure to be here then?”

“’Tis the safest time. They will think me in my room—well, I may be here—to-morrow evening—if nothing prevents.”

“But why not this evening?”

“No. I will really go to my room this evening, as I did yesterday: they will take it as a matter of course afterwards. To-morrow evening, perhaps.”

“But ’tis so far away: so many hours must pass till then!” He still detained her hand, though she was at arm’s length to be gone.

“You will have the more time to reconsider—to resolve upon joining your friend, and not tarrying here longer at the risk of your life.”

“What, do you still wish me to go at once?”

“If you should be taken!—if you should have to meet the fate—oh, I dare not think of it! How can I wish you to stay, when I think of the danger?”

“’Tis for me to think of the danger; ’tis for you only to let me love you—and to meet me here as often as you will.”

“Well, I shall no doubt be here to-morrow after sunset. I must take my maid into confidence: she can keep watch at the terrace steps. Farewell, then!—and be careful—till to-morrow sunset!”

He stepped forward in hope of repeating the kiss, but she recovered her hand from his grasp and fled rapidly up the lane of shrubbery. Everell followed, and saw her ascend the steps, hasten along the terrace, and disappear without looking back. He stood and sighed, thinking how short had been the long-awaited meeting, how tedious would be the time till the next. But he had the kiss to comfort his reflections, at least,—the kiss and the compliant though startled manner in which she had submitted to it. His heart glowing at this recollection, he turned his steps to the seclusion of the glen.

Since she would not meet him before the end of the next day—what an interminable stretch of empty time the interval appeared!—he knew his best course was to return at once to John Tarby’s cottage. But he found it so hard to drag his legs farther from the Foxwell mansion, that he decided to remain concealed among the bracken, on the possibility that she might change her mind and revisit the garden that evening. In this hope he tarried till an hour after nightfall, without reward. He then betook himself reluctantly, with the pangs of hunger and the sighs of disappointment for company, to where his road left the park. At that place Tarby was waiting, and with little speech the two made their way homeward. Everell took the lead, that he might test his knowledge of the path; twice or thrice he had to fall back upon the poacher’s guidance, but on these occasions he made such note of landmarks as should assure him of going right in future.

When they arrived at the cot, Everell gave a different reception to his host’s mention of supper from that which he had given on the previous night. Though love had enabled him to go all the day without food, it did not weaken his appetite now that supper was to be had. John Tarby proved to be no mean cook, and the Jacobite officer, the rustic poacher, and the poacher’s dog partook together of a hearty though simple meal with manifest enjoyment. But love, not to be denied its proverbial effects in all things, asserted its presence by robbing Everell of some hours of sleep, and by directing his dreams when at last his eyes did close.

The next day was but a repetition of that which had gone before, save that the love-sick young gentleman, by taking the forethought to provide himself with bread and cheese, was able, as he reclined among the bracken, to pay some observance to dinner-time when it arrived. At last the slow sun descended upon the Westward hills. A bit of its rim still showed over the sky-line, when Everell glided into the garden, his heart beating faster than ever it had beat when he was going into battle.

Georgiana did not keep him waiting long. She came down the steps, with her finger on her lip, and with the maid Prudence, all excitement, at her heels. “Oh, lor!” whispered Prudence at first sight of Everell; “Oh, lor!” again, when, having taken her station near the steps, she saw Everell lead her mistress up the lane of shrubbery; and “Oh, lor!” a third time when the young man, not yet trusting himself to speech, raised Georgiana’s hand in his trembling fingers to his lips.

And now Everell had to learn that the second interview in a love-affair does not begin where the first left off. Whether it is that the ardour of expectation produces by reaction a chill that mutually benumbs; or whether each participant, still uncertain of the other’s heart, awaits some assurance before again committing his or her own; or whether it be due to any one or all of a dozen conceivable causes, the truth is that the second meeting usually begins with an embarrassment, or shyness, or other feeling, that seems to put the lovers farther apart than they were at the outset; and yet under this the craving for the tokens of love is as strong as ever. This was now Everell’s experience; he wondered why Georgiana was perversely cool, and then why he himself was tongue-tied, powerless to express what was in his heart.

When they had paced the more secluded walks of the garden some fifteen minutes, speaking of anything but that which was most in Everell’s mind, Georgiana suddenly reverted to the question of his safety. The anxious concern with which she regarded him served to break the spell he had suffered under. Making light of his danger, he showed himself so grateful for her solicitude that a still more encouraging tenderness appeared in her eyes. With love in his looks, and in the touch of his hand upon hers, he burst out with declarations of his happiness in her company, and of his misery in her absence. She made no verbal return for these tributes, but the sweet agitation visible in her face was enough. He was about to venture a similar embrace to that of the day before, when they heard Prudence call, in a low but excited voice, “Oh, mistress, mistress, we shall be discovered!” Georgiana, in alarm, whispered to Everell, “Conceal yourself!—good night!” and fled swiftly to where the maid was watching. Standing perfectly still, Everell heard the two women go up the steps, and soon the sound of their footfalls on the terrace died out. They had returned to the house, then; what had caused the maid to give the alarm, he knew not, for there was no sound to indicate any human presence.

Vexed at this abrupt termination of the interview at the very moment when it seemed about to reward him, he waited in the hope of Georgiana’s return. But the hope was vain, and after two or three hours of diminishing expectancy, he sadly—nay, with heart-burning, grievous sighing, and clenching of teeth—resigned himself to the prospect of another long night and another endless day ere the next meeting. And indeed there was no certainty of the meeting even after that vast interval, for no appointment had been made. But he trusted to her humanity, if he dared not count upon feelings fully reciprocal to his own, to bring her to the garden at the next sunset. If she did not come, he knew not what rash thing he might do.

His reliance upon her compassion was not in vain. She was prompt in appearance when at last the long night and the slow day had passed. Taking pity, perhaps, on his haggard countenance, she was kind from the outset of their interview. Prudence attended, as before, but with instructions to be more certain before crying danger than she had been on the previous evening, when, as Georgiana now told Everell, the maid, in the novelty of her duty, had given the alarm at the mere sound of laughter in the house—the laughter of Foxwell and his visitors over their wine and cards.

But though this, the third clandestine meeting of these two young people, was not marred by any preliminary chill or by any waste of time, it was soon over. Georgiana herself had set the limit of half an hour, and, whatever it may have cost her of inner reluctance, she showed her resolution by breaking away at the end of that time, silencing her lover’s protests with a voluntary kiss so swiftly bestowed that, in his delighted surprise, he let her slip from his grasp. Again he stood alone in the garden while the dusk came on. Again that weary blank of lagging hours faced him, with the promise of such brief joy to compensate him at the end. He lingered late in the garden, now reviewing in his memory the delectable scene of the evening—delectable but too fleeting!—and now repining at the conditions under which his love had to subsist. “Oh, to be with her one whole day—one day as long as those I pass in waiting for the sunset!” was the burden of his thought.

He stood near the terrace steps, taking his last look at the house for the night. The lateness of the hour, the comparative darkness, and perhaps the petulance of his feelings, made him less than usually cautious against observation. Suddenly he heard a patter of feet on the terrace, and the voice of a maid servant calling, “Puss! puss! come, puss!—Devil take the cat!” Everell remained motionless, lest any sound might attract the girl’s attention. In a moment, a cat appeared at the head of the steps, glided along the top of the bank, and plunged amidst the shrubbery of the garden. It had no sooner disappeared than the girl in chase arrived at the edge of the terrace, where she stopped and peered down into the garden, launching imprecations at the animal that had eluded her. Her eyes fell upon Everell, and her wrath died upon her lips.

She stood gaping as if rendered powerless by fright, and Everell could think of nothing better than to continue perfectly still. Wrapped in his cloak, and with his face turned toward the maid, he did not move even his eyes, but appeared not to be aware of her presence. His thought was that this unlifelike behaviour might cause the rustic wench to take him for an apparition, or a trick of her fancy, the more so as the darkness would give vagueness to his figure. After a few seconds of this silent confrontation, the maid, uttering a faint wail of terror, apparently at the back of her mouth, turned and took to her heels. Everell profited by her flight to leave the garden instantly, and made his best speed for John Tarby’s castle. If the girl told of what she had seen, and brought investigators to the spot, who could find nothing to verify her account, they would doubtless believe she had suffered from a delusion. As she herself, whether she came to their conclusion or not, was likely to avoid the place after dark in future, Everell considered that the garden was not the less safe as a meeting-place for this occurrence.

When he met Georgiana the next evening, he expected some allusion by her to the incident, as he supposed the maid servant must have spread the tale through the household. But Georgiana said nothing of the matter. She had indeed heard nothing of it, for the isolation in which she dwelt in the house was copied by her maid, partly in imitation and partly because, with her Southern ideas of propriety, Prudence found herself as much antagonized by the rude Northern servants of the house as by the affected London attendants of the visitors. Thus she spent as much of her time as possible in her mistress’s apartments, big with the secret entrusted to her of the clandestine meetings. Being thus on sniffing terms with her equals in the servants’ hall, and out of their gossip, she remained in ignorance of the kitchen-maid’s adventure. From Georgiana’s silence on the subject, Everell inferred that the occurrence had created no talk in the house; and he did not mention it himself, lest Georgiana, in her scruples as to his safety and her own conduct, might lessen the frequency of their meetings. His periods of longing were sufficiently endless, his tastes of joy sufficiently brief, as they were.

But the kitchen-maid’s adventure had not really gone without circulation. “You never told us your house was haunted, Foxwell,” said Lady Strange, meeting her host at the breakfast-table, from which Georgiana had already gone. Mrs. Winter and Rashleigh were yet to appear.

“I never knew it—till this moment, at least,” replied Foxwell, stifling a yawn which owed itself, perhaps, to the punch or primero of the previous night. “Though every crumbling old brick-heap like this has its ghost or so, no doubt. But what do you mean?”

“My waiting-woman has been telling me of a strange figure that appeared to your scullery-maid the other night. In the sunken garden, I believe it was: a man in a cloak, wearing a sword.”

“It must have been a ghost, indeed,” said Foxwell, smiling. “There is certainly no such living man whose appearance in that garden is probable—unless Rashleigh has taken to mooning outdoors after bedtime.”

“Not I,” said Rashleigh, who had just entered. “What are you talking of?”

“My lady has discovered, through the servants, that a ghost walks in the sunken garden—a man in a cloak, with a sword at his side. I say it must be a ghost indeed, and yet there is this difficulty: suppose there are ghosts of human beings, what of the clothes they appear in? What of this ghost’s cloak and sword?—are they real cloak and sword, or are they the ghosts of cloak and sword?—and do inanimate things have ghosts?”

“Why, certainly, ghosts always appear in clothes,” said Lady Strange, quite ignoring the dilemma, and not entering into Foxwell’s skeptical mirth.

“And pray what did the ghost do or say while the scullery-maid was present?”

“Merely gazed at her in a strange, supernatural manner till she ran away. But hadn’t you best question the maid?”

“By all means. One ought to be well informed about the ghosts that haunt one’s house—though I don’t consider my ancestors did so much for me that I need care a button if one of them does find his grave uneasy. I’ll have the girl up for interrogation after breakfast.”

But this promise was driven from Foxwell’s mind just as the time came to perform it. A visitor was announced, whose name caused him surprise: it was that of Mr. Thornby.

“What should bring him to see me?” said Foxwell, showing his astonishment to his guests. “’Tis my lubberly neighbour, of whom I have told you. He abominates me because I sometimes pit my powers of speech against his boorish arrogance, and show him what a bumpkin he is. I thought he was sworn never to cross my threshold.”

Ruled by courtesy and curiosity, Foxwell went immediately to the adjoining drawing-room, where he found his enemy standing on the hearth, his legs wide apart, and his burly figure clad in a riding costume neither well-fitting nor new.