"Not a bit," called out one of the children, it was Janey, "it is very good of us to have him when there"s only one duck. Anthony, you mustn"t eat duck, as we don"t often get one and you have hundreds."
"Not I, dear, I hate ducks," he relied automatically, for his eyes were seeking the face of Barbara.
Barbara was seated in the wooden armchair with a cushion on it, near the fire of driftwood, advantages that were accorded to her in honour of her still being an invalid. Even to a stranger she would have looked extraordinarily sweet with her large and rather plaintive violet eyes over which the long black lashes curved, her waving chestnut hair parted in the middle and growing somewhat low upon her forehead, her tall figure, very thin just now, and her lovely sh.e.l.l-like complexion heightened by a blush.
To Anthony she seemed a very angel, an angel returned from the sh.o.r.es of death for his adoration and delight. Oh! if things had gone the other way--if there had been no sweet Barbara seated in that wooden chair!
The thought gripped his heart with a hand of ice; he felt as he had felt when he looked at the window-place from the crest of Gunter"s Hill. But she _had_ come back, and he was sure that they were each other"s for life. And yet, and yet, life must end one day and then, what? Once more that hand of ice dragged at his heart strings.
In a moment it was all over and Mr. Walrond was speaking.
"Why don"t you bid Barbara good-day, Anthony?" he asked. "Don"t you think she looks well, considering? We do, better than you, in fact," he added, glancing at his face, which had suddenly grown pale, almost grey.
"He"s going to give Barbara the violets and doesn"t know how to do it,"
piped the irrepressible Janey. "Anthony, why don"t you ever bring _us_ violets, even when we have the whooping cough?"
"Because the smell of them is bad for delicate throats," he answered, and without a word handed the sweet-scented flowers to Barbara.
She took them, also without a word, but not without a look, pinned a few to her dress, and reaching a cracked vase from the mantelpiece, disposed of the rest of them there till she could remove them to her own room.
Then Mr. Walrond began to say grace and the difficulties of that meeting were over.
Anthony sat by Barbara. His chair was rickety, one of the legs being much in need of repair; the driftwood fire that burned brightly about two feet away grilled his spine, for no screen was available, and he nearly choked himself with a piece of very hot and hard potato. Yet to tell the truth never before did he share in such a delightful meal. For soon, when the clamour of "the girls" swelled loud and long, and the attention of Mr. and Mrs. Walrond was entirely occupied with the burnt beef and the large duck that absolutely refused to part with its limbs, he found himself almost as much alone with Barbara as though they had been together on the wide seash.o.r.e.
"You are really getting quite well?" he asked.
"Yes, I think so." Then, after a pause and with a glance from the violet eyes, "Are you glad?"
"You know I am glad. You know that if you had--died, I should have died too."
"Nonsense," said the curved lips, but they trembled and the violet eyes were a-swim with tears. Then a little catch of the throat, and, almost in a whisper, "Anthony, father told me about you and the window-blind and--oh! I don"t know how to thank you. But I want to say something, if you won"t laugh. Just at that time I seemed to come up out of some blackness and began to dream of you. I dreamed that I was sinking back into the blackness, but you caught me by the hand and lifted me quite out of it. Then we floated away together for ever and for ever and for ever, for though sometimes I lost you we always met again. Then I woke up and knew that I wasn"t going to die, that"s all."
"What a beautiful dream," began Anthony, but at that moment, pausing from her labours at the beef, Mrs. Walrond said:
"Barbara, eat your duck before it grows cold. You know the doctor said you must take plenty of nourishment."
"I am going to, mother," answered Barbara, "I feel dreadfully hungry,"
and really she did; her gentle heart having fed full, of a sudden her body seemed to need no nourishment.
"Dear me!" said Mr. Walrond, pausing from his labours and viewing the remains of the duck disconsolately, for he did not see what portion of its gaunt skeleton was going to furnish him with dinner, and duck was one of his weaknesses, "dear me, there"s a dreadful smell of burning in this room. Do you think it can be the beef, my love?"
"Of course it is not the beef," replied Mrs. Walrond rather sharply.
"The beef is beautifully done."
"Oh!" e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed one of the girls who had got the calcined bit, "why, mother, you said it was burnt yourself."
"Never mind what I said," replied Mrs. Walrond severely, "especially as I was mistaken. It is very rude of your father to make remarks about the meat."
"Well, something _is_ burning, my love."
Janey, who was sitting next to Anthony, paused from her meal to sniff, then exclaimed in a voice of delight:
"Oh! it is Anthony"s coat tails. Just look, they are turning quite brown. Why, Anthony, you must be as beautifully done as the beef. If you can sit there and say nothing, you are a Christian martyr wasted, that"s all."
Anthony sprang up, murmuring that he thought there was something wrong behind, which on examination there proved to be. The end of it was that the chairs were all pushed downwards, with the result that for the rest of that meal there was a fiery gulf fixed between him and Barbara which made further confidences impossible. So he had to talk of other matters.
Of these, as it chanced, he had something to say.
A letter had arrived that morning from his elder brother George, who was an officer in a line regiment. It had been written in the trenches before Sebastopol, for these events took place in the mid-Victorian period towards the end of the Crimean War. Or rather the letter had been begun in the trenches and finished in the military hospital, whither George had been conveyed, suffering from "fever and severe chill," which seemed to be somewhat contradictory terms, though doubtless they were in fact compatible enough. Still he wrote a very interesting letter, which, after the pudding had been consumed to the last spoonful, Anthony read aloud while the girls ate apples and cracked nuts with their teeth.
"Dear me! George seems to be very unwell," said Mrs. Walrond.
"Yes," answered Anthony, "I am afraid he is. One of the medical officers whom my father knows, who is working in that hospital, says they mean to send him home as soon as he can bear the journey, though he doesn"t think it will be just at present."
This sounded depressing, but Mr. Walrond found that it had a bright side.
"At any rate, he won"t be shot like so many poor fellows; also he has been in several of the big battles and will be promoted. I look upon him as a made man. He"ll soon shake off his cold in his native air----"
"And we shall have a real wounded hero in the village," said one of the girls.
"He isn"t a wounded hero," answered Janey, "he"s only got a chill."
"Well, that"s as bad as wounded, dear, and I am sure he would have been wounded if he could." And so on.
"When are you going back to Cambridge, Anthony?" asked Mrs. Walrond presently.
"To-morrow morning, I am sorry to say," he answered, and Barbara"s face fell at his words. "You see, I go up for my degree this summer term, and my father is very anxious that I should take high honours in mathematics. He says that it will give me a better standing in the Bar.
So I must begin work at once with a tutor before term, for there"s no one near here who can help me."
"No," said Mr. Walrond. "If it had been cla.s.sics now, with a little refurbishing perhaps I might. But mathematics are beyond me."
"Barbara should teach him," suggested one of the little girls slyly.
"She"s splendid at Rule of Three."
"Which is more than you are," said Mrs. Walrond in severe tones, "who always make thirteen out of five and seven. Barbara, love, you are looking very tired. All this noise is too much for you, you must go and lie down at once in your own room. No, not on the sofa, in your own room. Now say good-bye to Anthony and go."
So Barbara, who was really tired, though with a happy weariness, did as she was bid. Her hand met Anthony"s and lingered there for a little, her violet eyes met his brown eyes and lingered there a little; her lips spoke some few words of commonplace farewell. Then staying a moment to take the violets from the cracked vase, and another moment to kiss her father as she pa.s.sed him, she walked, or rather glided from the room with the graceful movement that was peculiar to her, and lo! at once for Anthony it became a very emptiness. Moreover, he grew aware of the hardness of his wooden seat and that the noise of the girls was making his head ache. So presently he too rose and departed.
CHAPTER III
AUNT MARIA
Six months or so had gone by and summer reigned royally at Eastwich, for thus was the parish named of which the Reverend Septimus Walrond had spiritual charge. The heath was a blaze of gold, the cut hay smelt sweetly in the fields, the sea sparkled like one vast sapphire, the larks beneath the sun and the nightingales beneath the moon sang their hearts out on Gunter"s Hill, and all the land was full of life and sound and perfume.
On one particularly beautiful evening, after partaking of a meal called "high tea," Barbara, quite strong again now and blooming like the wild rose upon her breast, set out alone upon a walk. Her errand was to the cottage of that very fisherman whose child her father had baptised on the night when her life trembled in the balance. Having accomplished this she turned homewards, lost in reverie, events having happened at the Rectory which gave her cause for thought. When she had gone a little way some instinct led her to look up. About fifty yards away a man was walking towards her to all appearance also lost in reverie. Even at that distance and in the uncertain evening light she knew well enough that this was Anthony. Her heart leapt at the sight of him and her cheeks seemed to catch the hue of the wild rose on her bosom. Then she straightened her dress a little and walked on.
In less than a minute they had met.
"I heard where you had gone and came to meet you," he said awkwardly.