But Philip Meryon had read lots of books, and liked those that she liked.
He could read French too, as she could. And he had lent her some French books, which she had read eagerly--at night or in the woods--wherever she could be alone and un.o.bserved. Why shouldn"t she read them? There was one among them--"Julie de Trecoeur," by Octave Feuillet, that still seemed running, like a great emotion, through her veins. The tragic leap of Julie, as she sets her horse to the cliff and thunders to her death, was always in Hester"s mind. It was so that she herself would like to die, spurning submission and patience, and all the humdrum virtues.
She raised herself, and the dog beside her sprang up and barked. The sun was just dropping below a bank of fiery cloud, and a dazzling and garish light lay on the red undulations of the heath. As she stood up she suddenly perceived the figure of a man about a hundred yards off emerging from a gully--a sportsman with his gun over his shoulder. He had apparently just parted from the group with whom he had been shooting, who were disappearing in another direction.
Philip Meryon! Now she remembered! He and two other men had taken the shooting on this side of the Chase. Honestly she had forgotten it; honestly her impression was that he had gone to Scotland. But of course none of her family would ever believe it. They would insist she had simply come out to meet him.
What was she to do? She was in a white serge dress, and with Roddy beside her, on that bare heath, she was an object easily recognized.
Indeed, as she hesitated, she heard a call in the distance, and saw that Meryon was waving to her and quickening his pace. Instantly, with a leaping pulse, she turned and fled, Roddy beside her, barking his loudest. She ran along the rough track of the heath, as though some vague wild terror had been breathed into her by the local Pan. She ran fleet and light as air--famous as a runner from her childhood. But the man behind her had once been a fine athlete, and he gained upon her fast.
Soon she could hear his laugh behind her, his entreaties to her to stop.
She had reached the edge of the heath, where the wood began, and the path ran winding down it, with banks of thick fern on either hand.
If it had not been for the dog she could have slipped under the close-set trees, whence the light had already departed, and lain close among the fern. But with Roddy--no chance! She suddenly turned toward her pursuer, and with her hand on the dog"s neck awaited him.
"Caught--caught!--by Jove!" cried Philip Meryon, plunging to her through the fern. "Now what do you deserve--for running away?"
"A _gentleman_ would not have tried to catch me!" she said haughtily, as she faced him, with dilating nostrils.
"Take care!--don"t be rude to me--I shall take my revenge!"
As he spoke, Meryon was fairly dazzled, intoxicated by the beauty of the vision before him--this angry wood-nymph, half-vanishing like another Daphne into the deep fern amid which she stood. But at the same time he was puzzled--and checked--by her expression. There was no mere provocation in it, no defiance that covers a yielding mind; but, rather, an energy of will, a concentrated force, that held at bay a man whose will was the mere register of his impulses.
"You forget," said Hester coolly, "that I have Roddy with me." And as she spoke the dog couching at her side poked up his slender nose through the fern and growled. He did not like Sir Philip.
Meryon looked upon her smiling--his hands on his sides. "Do you mean to say that when you ran you did not mean me to follow?"
"On the contrary, if I ran, it was evidently because I wished to get away."
"Then you were very ungrateful and unkind; for I have at this moment in my pocket a book you asked me to get for you. That"s what I get for trying to please you."
"I don"t remember that I asked you to get anything for me."
"Well, you said you would like to see some of George Sand"s novels, which--for me--was just the same. So when I went to London yesterday I managed to borrow it, and there it is." He pointed triumphantly to a yellow-paper-bound volume sticking out of his coat pocket. "Of course you know George Sand is a sort of old Johnnie now; n.o.body reads her. But that"s your affair. Will you have it?" He offered it.
The excitement, the wild flush in the girl"s face, had subsided. She looked at the book, and at the man holding it out.
"What is it?" She stooped to read the t.i.tle--"Mauprat." "What"s it about?"
"Some nonsense about a cad tamed by a sentimental young woman." He shrugged his shoulders, "I tried to read it, and couldn"t. But they say it"s one of her best. If you want it, there it is."
She took it reluctantly, and moved on along the downward path, he following, and the dog beside them.
"Have you read the other book?" he asked her.
""Julie de Trecoeur?" Yes."
"What did you think of it?"
"It was magnificent!" she said shortly, with a quickened breath. "I shall get some more by that man."
"Well, you"d better be careful!" He laughed. "I"ve got some others, but I didn"t want to recommend them to you. Lady Fox-Wilton wouldn"t exactly approve."
"I don"t tell mamma what I read." The girl"s young voice sounded sharply beside him in the warm autumnal dusk. "But if you lent me anything you oughtn"t to lend me I would never speak to you again!"
Meryon gave a low whistle.
"My goodness! I shall have to mind my p"s and q"s. I don"t know that I ought to have lent you "Julie de Trecoeur" if it comes to that."
"Why not?" Hester turned her great, astonished eyes upon him. "One might as well not read Byron as not read that."
"Hm--I don"t suppose you read _all_ Byron."
He threw her an audacious look.
"As much as I want to," she said, indifferently. "Why aren"t you in Scotland?"
"Because I had to go to London instead. Beastly nuisance! But there was some business I couldn"t get out of."
"Debts?" she said, raising her eyebrows.
The self-possession of this child of eighteen was really amazing. Not a trace in her manner of timidity or tremor. In spite of her flight from him he could not flatter himself that he had made any impression on her nerves. Whereas her beauty and her provocative way were beginning to tell deeply on his own.
"Well, I daresay!" His laugh was as frank as her question. "I"m generally in straits."
"Why don"t you do some work, and earn money?" she asked him, frowning.
"Frankly--because I dislike work."
"Then why did you write a play?"
"Because it amused me. But if it had been acted and made money, and I had had to write another, that would have been work; and I should probably have loathed it."
"That I don"t believe," she said, shaking her head. "One can always do what succeeds. It"s like pouring petrol into the motor."
"So you think I"m only idle because I"m a failure?" he asked her, his tone betraying a certain irritation.
"I wonder why you _are_ idle--and why you _are_ a failure?" she said, turning upon him a pair of considering eyes.
"Take care, Mademoiselle!" he said, gasping a little. "I don"t know why you allow yourself these _franchises_!"
"Because I am interested in you--rather. Why won"t the neighbourhood call on you--why do you have disreputable people to stay with you? It is all so foolish!" she said, with childish and yet pa.s.sionate emphasis. "You needn"t do it!"
Meryon had turned rather white.
"When you grow a little older," he said severely, "you will know better than to believe all the gossip you hear. I choose the friends that suit me--and the life too. My friends are mostly artists and actors--they are quite content to be excluded from Upcote society--so am I. I don"t gather you are altogether in love with it yourself."
He looked at her mockingly.
"If it were only Sarah--or mamma," she said doubtfully.