"I don"t know the name."
"He was one of the soldiers on the beach this evening."
"The devil!"
"But he hadn"t come about _that_ business."
"About what, then?"
"Well now, sir, I must ask you a question. They were talking about "the beauty down at the cottage." Who would that be?"
"That," said he slowly, "would be Isabel Brooks, for a certainty."
"And the cottage?"
"Remember the one we pa.s.sed on the road?--the one with a light downstairs? That"s it. She lives there with her father--an old soldier and three-parts blind. There"s no mischief brewing against _her_, I hope?"
"I don"t know sir," I went on breathlessly. "But if you please, go on answering me. Do you know a young man called Plinlimmon-- Archibald Plinlimmon?"
"Plinlimmon? Ay, to be sure I do. Met him there once--another soldier, youngish and good-looking--in the ranks, but seemed a gentleman--didn"t catch his Christian name. The Major introduced him as the son of an old friend--comrade-in-arms, he said, if I remember.
He was there with a black-faced fellow, whose name I didn"t catch either."
"That was Letcher!"
"What? The man Whitmore was talking with? What were they saying?"
"They said something about a christening. And Letcher asked for money."
"A christening? What in thunder has a christening to do with it?"
"That"s what I don"t know, sir."
Mr. Rogers looked at me and rubbed his chin. "I meant to take you to Lydia," he said; "but now that Whitmore"s mixed up in this, I"ll be shot if I do. That fellow has bewitched her somehow, and where he"s concerned--" He glanced up the slope and clutched me suddenly by the shoulder: for Whitmore himself was there, walking alone, and coming straight towards us. "Talk of the devil--here, hide, boy--duck down, I tell you, there behind the bushes! No! Through the hedge, then--"
I burst across the hedge and dropped through a mat of brambles, dragging my rug after me. The fall landed me on all-fours upon the sunken high road, along which I ran as one demented--stark naked, too--a small Jack of Bedlam under the broadening eye of day; ran past Miss Belcher"s entrance gate with its sentinel ma.s.ses of tall laurels, and had reached the bend of the road opening the low cottage into view, when a sudden jingling of bells and tramp of horses drove me aside through a gate on the left, to cower behind a hedge there while they pa.s.sed.
Two wagons came rumbling by, each drawn by six horses and covered by a huge white tilt bearing in great letters the words "Russell and Co., Falmouth to London." On the front of each a lantern shone pale against the daylight. At the head of each team rode a wagoner, mounted on a separate horse and carrying a long whip. Beside the wagons tramped four soldiers with fixed bayonets, and two followed behind: they wore the uniform of the North Wilts Regiment.
I knew them well enough by repute--these famous wagons conveying untold treasure between London and the Falmouth Packets.
They pa.s.sed, and I crept out into the road again, to stare after them.
With that, turning my head, I was aware of a girl in the roadway outside the cottage door. But if she had come out to gaze after the wagons, she was gazing now at me. It was too late to hide, and moreover I had come almost to the end of my powers. With a cry for pity I ran towards her.
CHAPTER XV.
MINDEN COTTAGE.
Stark naked though I was, she did not flinch as I came; only her eyes seemed to widen upon me in wonder. And for all my desperate hurry I had time to see, first, that they were graver than other girls" eyes, and next that they were exceedingly beautiful.
In those days I had small learning (I have little enough, even now), or I might have fancied her some G.o.ddess awaiting me between the night and the dawn. She stood, tall and erect, in a loose white wrapper, the collar of which had fallen open and revealed the bodice-folds of her nightgown--a cloud at the base of her firm throat. Her feet were thrust into loose slippers: and her hair hung low on her neck in dark ma.s.ses as she had knotted them for the night.
"Where do you come from, boy?" she asked; but an instant later she put that question aside as an idle one. "Someone has been ill-treating you! Come indoors!"
She held out a hand and, as I clung to it, led me to the door; but turned with her other hand on the latch. "Is anyone following?"
I shook my head. She was attempting now, but gently, to draw back the hand to which I clung; and, in resisting, my fingers met and pulled against a ring--a single ring of plain gold.
Seeing that I had observed it, she made no further effort, but let her hand lie, her eyes at the same moment meeting mine and searching them gravely and curiously.
"Come upstairs," she said; "but tread softly. My father is a light sleeper."
She took me to a room in the corner of which stood a white bed with the sheets neatly turned down, prepared and ready for a guest.
The room was filled with the scent of flowers--fragrant scent of roses and clean aromatic scent of carnations. There were fainter scents, too, of jasmine and lavender; the first wafted in from a great bush beyond the open lattice, the second (as I afterwards discovered) exhaled by the white linen of the bed. But flowers were everywhere, in bowls and jars and gla.s.ses; and as though other receptacles for them had failed, one long spray of small roses climbed the dressing-table from a brown pitcher at its foot.
She motioned me to a chair beside the bed, and, almost before I knew what was intended, she had fetched a basin of water and was kneeling to wash my feet.
"No--please!" I protested.
"But I love children," she whispered; "and you are but a child."
So I sat in a kind of dream while she washed away the dust and blood, changing the water twice, and afterwards dried each foot in a towel, pressing firmly but never once hurting me.
When this was done, she rose and stood musing, contemplating me seriously and yet with a touch of mirth in her eyes.
"You are such a little one!" she said. "Father"s would never fit."
And having poured out fresh water and bidden me wash my body, she stole out.
She returned with a white garment in her hand and real mirth now in her eyes. My toilet done, she slipped the garment over me. It fell to my feet in long folds, yet so lightly that I scarcely felt I was clothed: and she clapped her hands in dumb-show. It was one of her own night-gowns.
I glanced uneasily towards the bed. Its daintiness frightened me, used as I was to the housekeeping--coa.r.s.e if clean--of Mrs. Trapp.
"Your prayers first," she whispered. "Don"t you know any?" She eyed me anxiously again. "But you are a good boy? Surely you are a good boy? Don"t boys say their prayers? They ought to."
Since pa.s.sing out of Miss Plinlimmon"s tutelage, I had sadly neglected the habit: but I knelt down obediently and in silence.
She stepped close behind me. "But you"re not speaking," she murmured. "Father always says his aloud, and so do I. You mustn"t pretend, if you don"t really know any. I can teach you."
She knelt down beside me, and began to say the Lord"s Prayer softly.
I repeated it after her, sentence by sentence: and this was really shamming, for of course I knew it perfectly. At the time I felt only that she--this beautiful creature beside me--was in a strange state of exaltation which I could not in the least understand. I know now something of the springs I had touched and loosened within her--I, a naked waif coming to her out of the night and catching her hand for protection. It was not I she taught, nor over me that she yearned.
She was reaching through me to a child unknown, using me to press against a strange love tearing at the roots of her body, and to break the pain of it--the roots of her body, I say; for he who can separate a woman"s soul from her body is a wiser man than I.
She rose from her knees; threw back the sheets and tucked them about me as I snuggled down.
"What is your name?"
"Harry Revel. Are you Miss Isabel Brooks?"