This was Margaret"s nightly practice, but to-night this girl was most exquisitely melancholy, and with melancholy her thoughts of her William were tinged. She had not seen him that day; and now she brooded upon the bitter happening that had forced all her meetings with her lover to be s.n.a.t.c.hed--fugitive, secret.
For Mr. William Wyvern was not allowed at Herons" Holt. When love first sent its herald curiosity into William"s heart, the young man had sought to relieve its restlessness by a visit ostensibly on George, really upon Margaret, and extremely ill-advised in that at his heels gambolled his three bull-terriers.
Korah, Dathan, and Abiram these were named, and they were abrupt dogs to a point reaching brusqueness.
At the door, as William had approached, beamed Mr. Marrapit; upon the drive the queenly Rose of Sharon sat; and immediately tragedy swooped.
The dogs sighted the Rose. Red-mouthed the shining pack flew at her.
Dignity fell before terror: wildly, with streaming tail, she fled.
Orange was the cat, white the dogs: like some orange and snow-white ribbon magically inspired, thrice at enormous speed they set a belt about the house. With tremendous bounds the Rose kept before her pursuers--heavily labouring, horrid with thirsty glee. Impotent in the doorway moaned Mr. Marrapit, his dirge rushing up to a wail of grief each time the parti-coloured ribbon flashed before his eyes.
With Mr. Fletcher the end had come. Working indoors, aroused by the din, the gardener burst out past his master just as the ribbon fluttered into sight upon the completion of its fourth circuit. Like a great avalanche it poured against his legs; as falls the oak, so pressed he fell.
Each eager jaw snapped once. Korah bit air, Dathan the cat"s right ear. She wrenched; freed; sprang high upon the porch to safety, blood on her coat.
Abiram put a steely nip upon Mr. Fletcher"s right b.u.t.tock.
William called off his dogs; stood aghast. Mr. Marrapit stretched entreating arms to his adored. Mr. Fletcher writhed p.r.o.ne.
The torn Rose slipped to Mr. Marrapit"s bosom. Clasping her he turned upon William--"You shall pay for this blood!"
William stammered: "I"m very sorry, sir. If--"
"Never again enter my gates. I"ll have your curs shot!"
Curs was unfortunate; the evil three were whelped of a mighty strain.
"If your fool of a man hadn"t got in the way, the cat would have escaped," William hotly cried. Indignant he turned. Banishment was nothing then; in time it came to be a bitter thing.
Mr. Marrapit had raged on to Mr. Fletcher, yet writhing.
"You hear that?" he had cried. "Dolt! You are responsible for this!"
He touched the blood-flecked side, the abrased ear; clasped close the Rose; called for warm water.
Mr. Fletcher clapped a hand to his wound as shakily he rose.
"I go to rescue his cat!" he said; "I"m near worried to death by "ounds. I"m a dolt. I"m responsible. It"s "ard,--d.a.m.n "ard. I"m a gardener, I am; not a dog muzzle."
A dimness clouded Margaret"s beautiful eyes as this bitter picture-- she had watched it--was again reviewed. She murmured "Oh, Bill!"; stretched her soft arms to the night; moved her pretty lips in a message to her lover; snuggled between the sheets and made melancholy her bedfellow.
IV.
By seven she was up and in the fresh garden. George was before her.
She cried brightly: "Why, how early you are!" and ran to him--very pretty in her white dress: at her breast a rose, the poem fluttering in her hand.
"Yes; for once before you."
George"s tone did not give back her mood, purposely keyed high. She played on it again: "Turning a new leaf?"
He drummed at the turf with his heel: "Yes--for to-day." He threw out a hand towards her: "But in the same old book. I"ve had eight--nine years of it, and now there are three more months."
"Poor George! But only three months, think how they will fly!"
He was desperately gloomy: "I haven"t your imagination. Each single day of them will mean a morning--here; a night--here."
"Oh, is it so hard?"
"Yes, now. It"s pretty deadly now. You know, when I wasn"t precisely killing myself with overwork, I didn"t mind so much. When it was three or four years, anyway, before I could possibly be free, a few extra months or so through failing an exam, didn"t trouble me. But this is different. I was right up against getting clear of all this"--he comprehended garden and house in a sweep of the hand--"counted it a dead certainty--and here I am pitched back again."
"But, George, you did work so hard this time. It isn"t as though you had to blame yourself." She put a clinging hand into his arm. "You can suffer no--remorse. That is what makes failure so dreadful--the knowledge that things might have been otherwise if one had liked."
George laughed quite gaily. Gloom never lay long upon this young man.
"You"re a sweet little person," he said. "You ought to be right, but you are wrong. When I didn"t work I didn"t mind failing. It"s when I"ve tried that I get sick."
Margaret"s eyes brightened. There was melancholy here.
"Oh, I know what you mean. I know so well. I have felt that. You mean the--the haunting fear that you may never be able to succeed; that you have not the--the talent, the capacity." She continued pleadingly: "Oh, you mustn"t think that. You can--you _will_ succeed next time, you know."
"Rather!" responded George brightly.
Margaret was quite pained. She would have had him express doubt, despondently sigh; would have heartened him with her poem. The confident "rather!" jarred. She hurried from its vigour.
She asked: "What had you intended to do?"
"I was to have got a _loc.u.m tenens_. I think it would have developed into a permanency. A big, rough district up in Yorkshire with a man who keeps six horses going. His second a.s.sistant--a pal of mine--wants to chuck it."
"Why?"
"Why? Oh, partly because he"s fed up with it, partly because he wants a practice of his own."
"Ah! ... But, George, don"t you want a practice of your own? You don"t want to be another man"s a.s.sistant, do you?"
George laughed. "I can"t choose, Margi. You know, if you imagine there are solid groups of people all over England anxiously praying for the arrival of a doctor, you must adjust that impression, as your father would say. These things have to be bought. I"ve got about three pounds, so I"m not bidding. They seldom go so cheap."
Margaret never bantered. She had no battledore light enough to return an airy shuttlec.o.c.k. Now, as always, when this plaything came buoyantly towards her she swiped it with heavy force clean out of the conversational field.
She said gravely: "Ah, I know what you mean. You mean that father ought to buy you a practice--ought to set you up when you are qualified. I can"t discuss that, can I? It wouldn"t be loyal."
"Of course not. I don"t ask you."
They moved towards the sound of the breakfast bell.
"You think," Margaret continued, "that father ought to buy you a practice because your mother left him money for the purpose?"