"I am Isabel."
"Why were you crying, out in the road?"
"Was I crying?"
"Well, not crying exactly: but you looked as if you wanted to."
She smiled. "We both have our secrets it seems; and you shall tell me yours to-morrow. Will yours let you sleep?"
"I think so, Miss Isabel. I am so tired--and so clean--and this bed is so soft--" I stretched out my arms luxuriously, and almost before I knew it she was bending to kiss me, and they were about her neck.
Her hair fell over me in a shower and in the shade of it she laughed happily, kissing me by the ear and whispering, "I have my happy secret, too!"
She straightened herself up, tossed back the dark locks with curved sweep of arm and wrist, and moved to the door.
"Good night, Harry Revel!"
A bird was cheeping in the jasmine bush when I dropped asleep, and when I awoke he was cheeping there still. Of my dreams I only remember that they ended in a vague sense of discomfort, somehow arising from a vision of Mr. Rogers in the act of throwing bread at the swans, and of the hen bird"s flurry as she paddled away. But the sound which I took for the splashing of water came in fact from the rings of the window curtain, which Miss Isabel was drawing to shut out the high morning sun.
She heard me stir and faced about, with her hand yet on the curtain.
"Awake?" she cried, and laughed. "You shall have a basin of bread-and-milk presently: and after that you may get up and put on these." She held out a suit of clothes which lay across her arm.
"I have borrowed them from Miss Belcher, who distributes all sorts of garments at Christmas among the youngsters hereabouts, and has rummaged this out of her stock. And after that my father will be glad to make your acquaintance. We shall find him in the garden.
Now I must go and see to preparing dinner: for it is past noon, though you may not know it."
Behold me, half an hour later, clad in a blue jacket very tight at the elbows and corduroy breeches very tight at the knees and warm for the time of year, as I descended with Isabel into the walled garden at the back of the cottage. Its whole area cannot have been an acre, and even so the half of it was taken up by a plot of turf, smooth as a bowling green: but beyond this stretched a miniature orchard, and along the walls ran two deep borders crowded with midsummer flowers-- tall white lilies and Canterbury bells; stocks, sweet williams, mignonette, candytuft and larkspurs; bushes of lemon verbena, myrtle, and the white everlasting pea. Near the house all was kept in nicest order, with trim ranks of standard roses marching level with the turfed verges, and tall carnations staked and bending towards them across the alley: but around the orchard all grew riotous.
The orchard ended in a maze of currant bushes, through which the path seemed to wander after the sound of running water till it emerged upon another clearing of turf, with a tall filbert tree, and a summer-house beneath it, and a row of beehives set beside a stream.
The stream, I afterwards learned, came down from Miss Belcher"s park, and was the real boundary of the garden: but Miss Belcher had allowed the Major to build a wall for privacy, on the far side of it, yet not so high as to shut off the sun from his bee-skeps; and had granted him a private entrance through it to the park--a narrow wooden door approached by a miniature bridge across the stream.
"Papa!" called Isabel.
I heard a movement in the summer-house, and her father appeared in the doorway. He was old, but held himself so erect that his head almost touched the lintel of the summer-house door, the posts of which he gripped and so stood framed--a giant of close upon six and a half feet in stature. He wore a brown holland suit, with grey stockings and square-toed shoes; and at first I mistook him for a Quaker. His snow-white hair was gathered back from his temples, giving salience to a face of ineffable simplicity and goodness--the face of a man at peace with G.o.d and all the world, yet touched with the scars of bygone pa.s.sions.
"Papa, this is Harry Revel."
He bowed with ceremony, a little wide of me. I saw then that his eyes were sightless.
"I am happy to make your acquaintance, young sir. My daughter informs me that you are in trouble."
"He has promised to tell me all about it," Isabel put in. "We need not bother him with questions just now."
"a.s.suredly not," he agreed. "Well, if you will, my lad, tell it to Isabel. What is your age? Barely fourteen? Troubles at that age are not often incurable. Only whatever you do--and you will pardon an old man for suggesting it--tell the whole truth. When a man, though he be much older than you and his case more serious than yours can possibly be--when a man once brings himself to make a clean breast of it, the odds are on his salvation. Take my word for that, and a wiser man"s--By the way, do you understand Latin?"
"No, sir."
"I am sorry to hear it. But perhaps you play the drum?"
"I--I have never tried, sir."
"Dear, dear, this is unfortunate: but at least you can serve me by leading me round the garden and telling me where the several flowers grow, and how they come on. That will be something."
"I will try, sir: but indeed I can hardly tell one flower from another."
At this his face fell again. "Do you, by chance, know a bee when you see one?"
"A bee? Oh yes, sir."
"Come, we have touched bottom at length! Do you understand bees?
Can you handle them?"
Here Isabel, seeing my chapfallen face, interposed.
"And if he does not, papa, you will have the pleasure of teaching him."
"Very true, my dear. You must excuse me"--here Major Brooks turned as if seeing me with his sightless eyes. "But understand that I like you far better for owning up. There are men--there is a clergyman in our neighbourhood for one--capable of pretending a knowledge of Latin which they don"t possess."
"Doesn"t Mr. Whitmore know Latin?" I asked.
"Hey? Who told you I was speaking of Whitmore?"
I glanced at Isabel, for her eyes drew me. They were fixed on me almost in terror.
"I have heard him talk it, sir."
"Excuse me: you may have heard him pretending."
"But, papa--" Isabel put forth a hand as if in protest, and I noted that it trembled and that the ring was missing which she had worn overnight. "You never told me that he--that Mr. Whitmore--"
"Was an impostor? My dear, had you any occasion to seek my opinion of him, or had I any occasion to give it? None, I think: and but for Master Revel"s incomprehensible guess you had not discovered it now. I have been betrayed into gossip."
He turned abruptly and, feeling with his hand over the surface of the summer-house table, picked up a small volume lying there. It struck me that his temper for the moment was not under perfect control.
Isabel cast at me a look which I could not interpret, and went slowly back to the house.
"The meaning of my catechism just now," said her father, addressing me after listening for awhile to her retreating footsteps, "may be the plainer when I tell you that I am translating the works of the Roman poet Virgil, line for line, into English verse, and have just reached the beginning of the Fourth Georgic. He is, I may tell you, a poet, and the most marvellous that ever lived; so marvellous, that the middle ages mistook him for a magician. That any age is likely to mistake me--his translator--for a conjuror I think improbable.
Nevertheless I do my best. And while translating I hold this book in my hand, not that I can see to read a line of it, but because the mere touch of it, my companion on many campaigns, seems to unloose my memory. Except in handling this small volume, I have none of the delicate gift of touch with which blind men are usually credited.
But this is page 106, is it not?" He held out the open book towards me, and added, with sudden apprehension, "You can read, I trust?"
I a.s.sured him that I could.
"And write? Good again! Come in--you will find pen, ink, and paper on the side-drum in the corner. Bring them over to the table and seat yourself. Ready? Now begin, and let me know when you cannot spell a word."
I seated myself, silently wondering what might be the use of the side-drum in the corner.
"Let me see--let me see--" He thumbed the book for a while, murmuring words which I could not catch; then thrust it behind his back with a finger between its pages, straightened himself up, and declaimed:
"Next of aerial honey, gift divine, I sing. Maecenas, be once more benign!"
He paused and instructed me how to spell "aerial" and "Maecenas."