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Mrs. Lancaster’s Rival

Chapter VIII. Dick’s Fate

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Chapter VIII. Dick’s Fate.

For a good many days after that Sunday, Dick saw hardly anything of Mrs. Lancaster. Once he stopped and talked to her at the gate, when she was gathering roses. Another day they walked down Fore-street together as far as the post-office, where she posted a very thick letter. Miss Northcote was surprised and thankful that there were no appointments for evening walks, or boating, or sitting in the combe, and began to think she had done Mrs. Lancaster injustice; she did not seem inclined to run after Dick at all. The old Captain met him in Morebay one day, and asked him to come in and see them that evening, but fortunately Dick had another engagement. He was everything to his aunt, and she was quite happy. All their old friends in the neighbourhood were anxious to see the returned wanderer. Dick was ready to go everywhere, liked it all the better if his aunt went with him, and delighted the old friends by his good-humour, pleasantness, and intelligence. They found it hard to believe that this was the unsatisfactory lad of ten years ago.

On the day of Randal Hawke’s visit to Pensand, it happened that Dick had walked over in the morning to Carweston, and had lunched with Mrs. Strange and Anthony. Then he and Anthony had walked together a good part of the way back, parting at a corner in the road, where Anthony struck off across the fields towards Pensand. Soon afterwards the rain came down sharply, and Dick turned into a cottage by the roadside, where an old woman lived who had been his nurse. Her garden page 68 was full of roses. A sweet small-leaved honeysuckle clustered over the green porch, which was partly glazed, and lined with shelves of geraniums; on each side stood tall white lilies in a row.

Mrs. Penny’s two little rooms were museums of old oak and old china; her late husband, as she told Dick, had been fond of ‘picking up they things.’

‘Bless you, he bought’ em all down to Morebay,’ said she. ‘A lot o’ rubbish, Master Dick, but it pleased him, poor man.’

‘If you were to sell them to the right people,’ said Dick, ‘you would find them anything but rubbish. Mrs. Strange would buy them all in a minute.’

‘No,’ said she, ‘I won’t sell ‘em. It pleased him, poor man. It’d vex him to know as I didn’t care about ‘em, and he was always a kind soul.’

With these words Mrs. Penny went into a cupboard, from which she presently brought out her best tea-things. Dick found that he was expected to drink tea with her, and took it philosophically, though the rain had cleared off and the sky was blue again. There was something of the schoolboy left in him still; to this and his thorough good nature Mrs. Penny owed one of the pleasantest hours she had spent for many a year, hearing from Master Dick’s own mouth a history of his life in New Zealand, with adventures which made her tremble. But he was none the worse for it all, that was a comfort.

‘Well,’ said she, as he was going away, ‘Mrs. Lancaster told me as you’d grown into ever such a handsome man. She’s gone off a good bit, ain’t she, Master Dick? What a pretty girl she was, to be sure! I often see her. She walks along this road pretty constant. She likes the view down below there, so she tells me. But I believe she’s got a young man somewheres out this way.’

‘You shouldn’t gossip, nurse,’ said Dick. The old page 69 woman’s words were intensely annoying to him; he hardly knew why, and was angry with himself for being annoyed. ‘Mrs. Lancaster would not like it.’

‘I saw her talking to somebody, though, one afternoon,’ Mrs. Penny persisted. ‘It was near a month ago. When they saw me turn the corner, he walked into one o’ them fields, and she came on as if nothing was the matter. I couldn’t see him well for the distance, and my sight not being what it was. But he weren’t near such a man as you be, Master Dick.’

‘All right, nurse. Whoever he might be, it is no business of yours or mine.’

As Dick went off down the road, he was troubled with a feeling that something disagreeable had happened. He tried to reason himself out of it. Flora Lancaster was nothing to him. If she was entangled with somebody else, so much the better, perhaps. Aunt Kate, at least, would be glad.

By the time Dick had walked a quarter of a mile, he had convinced himself that Mrs. Penny’s gossip was the best news he could have heard. Still, though he might whistle as he walked, and congratulate himself on the pleasantness of things in general, and the beauty of this view in particular, the fact remained that he was in a very bad temper, angry with himself, angry with Flora, angry with the old woman and her tea, and the nonsense she had poured out after it.

The road grew more beautiful, but he had scarcely eyes to see what lay before him. On the right there were high green banks sprinkled with heather; on the left a low stone wall running along the edge of the road, on which every shade of colour was to be found—ivy, fern, varied lichens, and in one place a blaze of brilliantly yellow stone-crop. Clouds were passing over the purple distance, but the sun just caught this, and deepened it into a wall of glowing gold. Beyond, the ground went page 70 down in long gradual slopes, trending towards the river Mora, which took and polished all the colours of clouds and hills and trees, lying here outspread like a great mirror, and losing itself further on among the wild high banks that came crowding down to it. Beyond it, distant hills and moors rose up into the sky, fading away into fainter tints of distance, but seeming, in the clearness of that summer evening, to be painted with a fine brush on the background of tender blue. The clouds that shaded the middle distance were passing gradually away, and all the hills were coming out one by one into sunshine. And in the foreground, between that yellow wall and the river, one tall Scotch fir rose from the upper part of the slope, its red trunk and dark solemn foliage standing out deep and vivid against clouds and far off hills.

Dick stopped at the turn in the road which brought this view before his eyes, but not entirely for the sake of its beauty. In the full sunlight, close to the mass of yellow stone-crop, a woman was standing, looking over the wall. There was something about her familiar to Dick, and as he walked on and drew nearer he saw that his first impression was right: it was Flora Lancaster. She turned round and faced him. Her colour was unusually bright, and her eyes shone as they used to shine when she was a girl; but as Dick came up, he thought there was something odd and nervous in her manner.

‘Did you ever see anything more lovely than this view?’ she said, turning her face towards it again. ‘Those hills, and the shadows on the water. I can’t tear myself away.’

‘Are you very fond of this road?’ said Dick, leaning on the wall, with his elbows planted in the stone-crop. ‘It is splendid, certainly, and you made half the view, standing here in the foreground. Do you often walk this way?’

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‘Sometimes—but I don’t walk much, you know.’

‘You prefer it to the Combe?’

‘Yes. One gets more fresh air here,’ said Flora, gazing up the road. Dick found her face more interesting than the hills and the Mora. He looked, and wondered what was the meaning of the strange excitement in it. After a minute, she looked at him, saw that he was interested, and smiled rather sadly.

‘My ways are a puzzle to you, Mr. Northcote, are they not? You wonder what brings me out for solitary walks. Don’t you know the luxury of being alone?’

‘I can’t say I do,’ said Dick. ‘I hate nothing so much as being alone.’

‘O, I love it. That shows how different your life and mine have been.’

Dick was forgetting his ill temper. It occurred to him that now was the time for finding out whether there was any truth in Mrs. Penny’s gossip, and whether Flora was a humbug when she talked about solitary walks. A point-blank question would settle it, he thought.

‘I have seen nothing of you this last week,’ he said. ‘Are you waiting here for anybody, or may I walk back with you?’

She was gazing up the road again, but there was no change in her face as she answered, with a short sigh,

‘Who should I be waiting for? O, yes, I shall be very glad of your company.’

For a minute or two more they lingered by the wall. Then she seemed tired of standing there, and they strolled slowly down the road. She was rather silent till they came to a lonely cottage standing under the hill. She asked Dick to wait for her a moment, whilst she spoke to the woman there. She was in the cottage two or three minutes; and when she came out, and page 72 walked away with Dick, the woman came to the door and looked after them.

‘Have you been to Pensand again?’ she asked Dick presently.

‘No. “Well, I never cared much for the General. He always was a martinet with everybody but his son, who would not stand it. I don’t think it a pleasant house to go to. I like to be made welcome.’

‘Ah, you always did,’ said Flora, after a moment’s pause.? How does Miss Ashley get on there, I wonder?’

‘Very well, I think. The General seems fond of her. Anthony Strange goes there a great deal, and admires her immensely. You know Anthony?’

‘By sight. He is very odd-looking; but I suppose he is good. Admires her! What do you mean by that?’

‘O, likes her—thinks her pretty and clever and a nice girl altogether.’

‘Nothing more?’

‘No. Why, he is old enough to be her father. He will never marry, if you mean that,’ said Dick, beginning to laugh. ‘The idea is ridiculous. Besides—’

‘What?’

‘I don’t know. Nothing!’

‘I believe you are a little bit touched yourself with those splendid eyes!’

‘Not in the least. Who said they were splendid? Don’t, please. I could not stand that—from you!’

‘O, nonsense !’ said Flora. ‘Don’t be silly! Well, I do like my friends to marry happily, and to be happy—no matter how.’

‘Are you happy yourself?’ said Dick; and repented the next moment.

‘Don’t you think that is rather an odd question?’ she said gently.

‘Yes. You must forgive me.’

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‘We really are old friends,’ said Mrs. Lancaster; ‘and we can’t talk like strangers, I see. I must let you say what you like. Yes; I forgive you. I am happy now and then, or think myself so. I try to be happy always, but I suppose no one succeeds in that. After my losses it would be strange if I was.’

There was something in this speech that silenced Dick effectually. After being told that he might say what he liked, it became impossible to say anything. He was very much touched by Flora’s soft regretful tone and the confidence she seemed ready to give him, but he suddenly lost the power of expressing himself. She did not carry on the subject, and their talk became stupid and uninteresting to a degree. Dick did not feel inclined to meet the blue eyes that appealed to him so often; even his flirting powers seemed to have entirely deserted him, and he felt as foolish as if he was once more eighteen. But when they had reached St. Denys, and he had wished Mrs. Lancaster good-bye at her gate, he turned back, after going a few steps up the hill, and found himself at the gate again. She was not far off, for she had stopped to gather a spray of jessamine from the garden-wall.

‘Flora!’ said Dick, half under his breath. She started and looked round.

‘Mr. Northcote!’ with a slight laugh. ‘I did not tell you—’

‘Never mind,’ said Dick, as she came back to the gate. ‘There is something I want to read to you. Will you meet me to-morrow evening in the combe?’

Flora looked at him with grave surprise, and yet the faint shadow of a smile. She did not answer him instantly.

‘What have I said or done, I wonder, to make you ask me that? I don’t see how I have deserved it. I should like to know.’

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‘Is it such a very strange thing to ask an old friend?’ said Dick. ‘I did not mean to offend you.’

‘I am not offended. But you forget that we are both ten years older, and that what was very safe nonsense with a boy of eighteen—though I believe he did mean what he said, and was not simply amusing himself, as—Don’t answer me, please. I am sorry to say this, but I think you are forgetting yourself a little.’

‘Then I can only beg your pardon, Mrs. Lancaster, most sincerely,’ said Dick, colouring crimson.

‘No, Dick. I tell you I am not angry. Only don’t bother me. Why can’t you be natural and friendly, without all this nonsense? Meet you in the combe, indeed! I am not quite young and foolish enough for that.’

Dick had wisdom enough left to let her laugh it off, and not to say the mad words that were in his mind. It was almost too much to be accused of amusing himself. Any truth that there might have been in the accusation was melting away before Flora’s distracting prettiness.

‘You don’t understand me,’ he said; ‘but; it is because you won’t. Perhaps I have made fool enough of myself for one day. So good-bye. Do give me that.’

He held out his hand for the jessamine. She gave it to him at once.

‘Has Miss Northcote any in her garden?’ she said. ‘Shall I get you some more?’

‘No, thank you,’ said Dick; and this time he fairly did walk away up the hill.

That evening, for the first time, Dick behaved to his aunt with a want of consideration. He scarcely spoke at dinner, and afterwards lounged in the window, staring out with an intensity which made Miss Northcote ask whether he was watching for anything.

‘Ah, come here. You have first-rate eyes,’ said Dick.

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‘Do you see those two figures going down into the combe? Who are they, I wonder?’

‘A man and a woman foolish things,’ said Miss Northcote, leaning over his shoulder. ‘Impossible to say, from this distance, whether they belong to our acquaintance. Most likely not.’

‘It might be Mrs. Lancaster, though.’

‘Why, Dick! Poor thing! Who could be with her?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘Then it is scarcely friendly or manly of you to suggest it,’ said Miss Northcote. ‘Mrs. Lancaster would not be obliged to you.’

Dick made no answer.

‘They are sitting on the rocks,’ he said presently.

‘My dear Dick, I call this morbid curiosity. What are those people to yon? Come away from the window and talk to me.’

But Dick lingered there, till the gathering twilight made it impossible to see anything that moved in the depths of the combe. Then he turned away from the window and came to the table, winking his eyes in the light of his aunt’s lamp.

‘I’m good for nothing to-night. I have a headache,’ he said. ‘Sorry to be so useless. I’m going out for a stroll, and shall come in better, perhaps.’

‘Don’t rout out your friends in the combe: that would be too hard-hearted,’ said Miss Northcote.

‘I prefer the roads at this time of night,’ answered Dick.

He left his aunt a little anxious and uneasy: she could not help fancying that there was more in this than he chose her to understand. Perhaps she would have been sorry for Dick, if she had known what a horrible state of mind he was in. There was no peace for him in the golden and purple twilight that brooded over rock and river. He was obliged to confess to himself that page 76 he had been mistaken in thinking himself free from Flora’s influence: it was stronger than ever. Still reason struggled against it: all the objections rose up constantly, only to be forgotten the next moment in the intense attraction of Flora herself. Everything was made worse by her matter-of-fact way of treating him, the idea that after all she was quite indifferent to him, the still more unbearable idea that she might care for somebody else. Dick did not know where all his good resolutions were gone, his cool judgment of Flora and her belongings. Since he had walked down that road with his head full of her, and had suddenly come upon her, standing there by the wall with such a light in her face, he knew that it was all up with him; cool reasonings had had their day. Though he had not yet reached the point of telling her so—somehow, feverishly anxious as he was, he shrank from that and its consequences—he knew that his fate was in Flora’s hands, and that she must do as she pleased with him. He knew he was a fool, and called himself one many times over, but the fact remained the same.

He strolled slowly down the hill, past Captain Car-dew’s house, which was all silent, on over the railway. bridge, and down the shaded lane which led towards the combe. He met nobody. The distant sounds in the village and on the river only made the silence up here seem more deep. Now and then the softest little wind stirred in the fir-trees at the corner, and brought faint sweet scents from the hedges and the gardens below. Dick did not go far down the lane. After lingering a few minutes near the head of it, staring into its darker recesses, where low trees stretched their boughs across it, and honeysuckle twined itself from side to side, he turned and walked slowly back. Then he stopped again.

This time it was not all silence. Footsteps were coming up the lane, and with them a low murmur of page 77 voices. Then a horror of seeing or being seen by any one he knew came over Dick. He did not wait for these people to come up, but walked away more quickly till he reached the bridge. Here three roads met, one of them the lane where old Fenner lived, and where he had met Flora that first evening. He walked a few steps down this, and then stood still in the shadow of the hedge, with an undefined feeling that those people, whoever they were, would turn up the hill. In another minute they reached the corner, where the wind was moaning a little in the tops of the Scotch firs, and there they also stood still.

Dick saw two dark figures, standing very close together, but so much in the shadow that he could not distinguish them well.

One of them spoke in a whisper, and a man’s voice answered, ‘No; I must see you home.’

Dick fancied that he knew the voice, but could not tell how, or to whom it belonged, and those two walked on immediately, over the bridge and up the hill. Dick did not feel inclined to follow them, though by doing so he might perhaps have resolved his doubts. He lingered on the bridge with his cigar for about ten minutes longer, then wondered what he was doing there, and advanced a few paces up the hill in a slow objectless way. He was scarcely off the bridge, however, when he met a man walking rather quickly down towards the station, which lay not much more than a hundred yards below. He too was smoking, carried a stick in his hand, and was in the fullest light of the stars and the summer evening—a young well-dressed man, pale, with a black moustache, and his hat pulled forward over his eyes. They met in the middle of the road, and Dick stared at him so hard as to attract his attention, half stopping and turning round, as if he could not believe his eyes.

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‘Do you wish to speak to me?’ said the other man, staring at Dick in his turn.

‘I must be right, I think,’ said Dick. ‘You are Randal Hawke?’

‘You have the advantage of me.’

‘Don’t you know me? I’m Northcote.”

‘What, Dick! How are you? Very glad to see you,’ said Randal, quite ready to shake hands. ‘Surprised, though, to find you loafing about the lanes at night. I heard you had left all your bad ways behind at the Antipodes.’

‘Who told you that?’ said Dick.

‘Different friends of yours. Did anybody know you when you came home? The climate out there must be favourable. How is Miss Northcote?’

‘Very well, thanks.’

‘Did you find that you had left all the pretty faces behind in the old country? Well, did Flora forgive you for deserting her, when you told her that? How do you find her? Still the belle of the West?’

‘What do you think about it?’ said Dick.

‘What do you mean?’

‘You are as good a judge as I am.’

‘You are come back in a very nice frame of mind, Dick. You always were an amiable fellow. Walk down with me to the station; my train will be here directly.’

‘Come, as to Mrs. Lancaster,’ said Dick, ‘you perhaps know as well as I do. I’m not mistaken, am I, in thinking that you walked up this hill with her, ten minutes ago?’

Randal looked at him for a moment curiously. There was an odd tone in Dick’s voice. In size and strength he certainly had the advantage.

‘Are you mad? or what in the world are you talking about?’ said Randal, in his coolest tone. ‘Or do you want to quarrel with me?’

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‘Not at all,’ said Dick; ‘but I should like that little piece of information.’

‘Then you can be easily satisfied. I have been spending a few hours at Pensand, and have just walked down to the train. The old man there doesn’t like sending his horses out at night, and I always was a dutiful son. There! I would not have cleared myself of the frightful charge to everybody; but I can feel for a friend’s anxieties.’

‘It was not you, then?’ said Dick thoughtfully.

‘Nor Mrs. Lancaster either, probably. She might be rather angry at the suspicion. More likely to have been a grocer’s boy and a milliner’s girl. Dick, take my advice, and don’t let the green-eyed monster get hold of you. By Jove, I must laugh at you. What could have made you think it was me?’

‘I thought it was a voice that I knew.’

‘His, or hers?’

‘His. But it was not yours, of course. I don’t know what can have made me think so. I must have been dreaming.’

‘The grocer must be a superior fellow. Really, though, I would stay indoors after dinner, if I was subject to seeing visions. You might get yourself into an awkward scrape.’

The absurdity of the whole thing struck Dick so forcibly, under the new light Randal had thrown upon it, that he burst into a roar of laughter, in which his companion made some show of joining.

‘Don’t mention it to any one, for heaven’s sake,’ said Dick, as soon as he had recovered. ‘How could I be such a fool?’

‘Fortunately you attacked the right person, or the consequences might have been serious,’ said Randal quietly. ‘What she would have said—but that’s enough of it. Let us talk about something else.’