Mason looked round, saw the little figure in the doorway, and hastily saluting the Friedlands, took his leave.
"My dear," said the doctor anxiously, laying hold on his wife"s arm, "should we have asked him to lunch?"
His wife smiled.
"By no means. That"s Laura"s business."
"Well, but, Jane--Jane! had you realised that young man?"
"Oh dear, yes," said Mrs. Friedland. "Don"t excite yourself, John."
"Laura--gone out with a young man," said the doctor, musing. "I have been waiting for that all the winter--and he"s extremely good-looking, Jane."
Mrs. Friedland lost patience.
"John! I really can"t talk to you, if you"re as dense as that."
"Talk to me!" cried the doctor--"why, you unreasonable woman, you haven"t vouchsafed me a single word!"
"Well, and why should I?" said Mrs. Friedland provokingly.
Half an hour pa.s.sed away. Mason and Laura were sitting in the garden of Trinity.
Up till now, Laura had no very clear idea of what they had been talking about. Mason, it appeared, had been granted three days" holiday by his employers, and had made use of it to come to Cambridge and present a letter of introduction from his old teacher, Castle, the Whinthorpe organist, to a famous Cambridge musician. But, at first, he was far more anxious to discuss Laura"s affairs than to explain his own; and Laura had found it no easy matter to keep him at arm"s length. For nine months, Mason had brooded, gossiped, and excused himself; now, conscious of being somehow a fine fellow again, he had come boldly to play the cousin--perhaps something more. He offered now a few words of stammering apology on the subject of his letter to Laura after the announcement of her engagement. She received them in silence; and the matter dropped.
As to his moral recovery, and material prospects, his manners and appearance were enough. A fledgeling ambition, conscious of new aims and chances, revealed itself in all he said. The turbid elements in the character were settling down; the permanent lines of it, strong, vulgar, self-complacent, emerged.
Here, indeed, was a successful man in the making. Once or twice the girl"s beautiful eyes opened suddenly, and then sank again. Before her rose the rocky chasm of the Greet; the sound of the water was in her ears--the boyish tones of remorse, of entreaty.
"And you know I"ll make some money out of my songs before long--see if I don"t! I took some of em to the Professor this morning--and, my word, didn"t he like em! Why, I couldn"t repeat the things he said--you"d think I was bluffing!"
Strange gift!--"settling unaware"--on this rude nature and poor intelligence! But Laura looked up eagerly. Here she softened; here was the bridge between them. And when he spoke of his new friend, the young musical apostle who had reclaimed him, there was a note which pleased her. She began to smile upon him more freely; the sadness of her little face grew sweet.
And suddenly the young man stopped and looked at her. He reddened; and she flushed too, not knowing why.
"Well, that"s where "tis," he said, moving towards her on the seat. "I"m going to get on. I told you I was, long ago, and it"s come true. My salary"ll be a decent figure before this year"s out, and I"m certain I"ll make something out of the songs. Then there"s my share of the farm.
Mother don"t give me more than she"s obliged; but it"s a tidy bit sometimes. Laura!--look here!--I know there"s nothing in the way now. You were a plucky girl, you were, to throw that up. I always said so--I didn"t care what people thought. Well, but now--you"re free--and I"m a better sort--won"t you give a fellow a chance?"
Midway, his new self-confidence left him. She sat there so silent, so delicately white! He had but to put out his hand to grasp her; and he dared, not move a finger. He stared at her, breathless and open-mouthed.
But she did not take it tragically at all. After a moment, she began to laugh, and shook her head.
"Do you mean that you want me to marry you, Hubert? Oh! you"d so soon be tired of that!--You don"t know anything about me, really--we shouldn"t suit each other at all."
His face fell. He drew sullenly away from her, and bending forward, began to poke at the gra.s.s with his stick.
"I see how "tis. I"m not good enough for you--and I don"t suppose I ever shall be."
She looked at him with a smiling compa.s.sion.
"I"m not in love with you, Mr. Hubert--that"s all."
"No--you"ve never got over them things that happened up at Whinthorpe,"
he said roughly. "I"ve got a bone to pick with you though. Why did you give me the slip that night?"
He looked up. But in spite of his bravado, he reddened again, deeply.
"Well--you hadn"t exactly commended yourself as an escort, had you?" she said lightly. But her tone p.r.i.c.ked.
"I hadn"t had a drop of anything," he declared hotly; "and I"d have looked after you, and stopped a deal of gossip. You hurt my feelings pretty badly. I can tell you."
"Did I?--Well, as you hurt mine on the first occasion, let"s cry quits."
He was silent for a little, throwing furtive glances at her from time to time. She was wonderfully thin and fragile, but wonderfully pretty, as she sat there under the cedar.
At last he said, with a grumbling note:
"I wish you wouldn"t look so thin and dowie-like, as we say up at home--you"ve no cause to fret, I"m sure."
The temper of twenty-one gave way. Laura sat up--nay, rose.
"Will you please come and look at the sights?--or shall I go home?"
He looked up at her flashing face, and stuck to his seat.
"I say--Miss Laura--you don"t know how you bowl a fellow over!"
The expression of his handsome countenance--so childish still through all its athlete"s force--propitiated her. And yet she felt instinctively that his fancy for her no longer went so deep as it had once done.
Well!--she was glad; of course she was glad.
"Oh! you"re not so very much to be pitied," she said; but her hand lighted a moment kindly and shyly on the young man"s arm. "Now, if you wouldn"t talk about these things, Hubert--do you know what I should be doing?--I should be asking you to do me a service."
His manner changed--became businesslike and mannish at once.
"Then you"ll please sit down again--and tell me what it is," he said.
She obeyed. He crossed his knees, and listened.
But she had some difficulty in putting it. At last she said, looking away from him:
"Do you think, if I proposed it, your mother could bear to have me on a visit to the farm?"
"Mother!--you!" he said in astonishment. A hundred notions blazed up in his mind. What on earth did she want to be in those parts again for?
"My stepmother is very unwell," she said hurriedly. "It--well, it troubles me not to see her. But I can"t go to Bannisdale. If your mother doesn"t hate me now, as she did last summer--perhaps--she and Polly would take me in for a while?"