"Jimmy, my father wouldn"t--father--father--doesn"t--"
"Doesn"t like me?"
She nodded miserably.
A great wave of relief swept over Jimmy. He had imagined--he hardly knew what he had imagined: some vast, insuperable obstacle; some tremendous catastrophe, whirling them asunder. He could have laughed aloud in his happiness. So, this was it, this was the cloud that brooded over them--that Mr. McEachern did not like him! The angel, guarding Eden with a fiery sword, had changed into a policeman with a truncheon.
"He must learn to love me," he said, lightly.
She looked at him hopelessly. He could not see; he could not understand. And how could she tell him? Her father"s words rang in her brain. He was "crooked." He was "here on some game." He was being watched. But she loved him, she loved him! Oh, how could she make him understand?
She clung tighter to him, trembling. He became serious again. "Dear, you mustn"t worry," he said. "It can"t be helped. He"ll come round.
Once we"re married--"
"No, no. Oh, can"t you understand? I couldn"t, I couldn"t!"
Jimmy"s face whitened. He looked at her anxiously.
"But, dear!" he said. "You can"t--do you mean to say--will that--"
he searched for a word-"stop you?" he concluded.
"It must," she whispered.
A cold hand clutched at his heart. His world was falling to pieces, crumbling under his eyes.
"But--but you love me," he said, slowly. It was as if he were trying to find the key to a puzzle. "I--don"t see."
"You couldn"t. You can"t. You"re a man. You don"t know. It"s so different for a man! He"s brought up all his life with the idea of leaving home. He goes away naturally."
"But, dear, you couldn"t live at home all your life. Whoever you married--"
"But this would be different. Father would never speak to me again.
I should never see him again. He would go right out of my life.
Jimmy, I couldn"t. A girl can"t cut away twenty years of her life, and start fresh like that. I should be haunted. I should make you miserable. Every day, a hundred little things would remind me of him, and I shouldn"t be strong enough to resist them. You don"t know how fond he is of me, how good he has always been. Ever since I can remember, we"ve been such friends. You"ve only seen the outside of him, and I know how different that is from what he really is. All his life he has thought only of me. He has told me things about himself which n.o.body else dreams of, and I know that all these years he has been working just for me. Jimmy, you don"t hate me for saying this, do you?"
"Go on," he said, drawing her closer to him.
"I can"t remember my mother. She died when I was quite little. So, he and I have been the only ones--till you came."
Memories of those early days crowded her mind as she spoke, making her voice tremble; half-forgotten trifles, many of them, fraught with the glamour and fragrance of past happiness.
"We have always been together. He trusted me, and I trusted him, and we saw things through together. When I was ill, he used to sit up all night with me, night after night. Once--I"d only got a little fever, really, but I thought I was terribly bad--I heard him come in late, and called out to him, and he came straight in, and sat and held my hand all through the night; and it was only by accident I found out later that it had been raining and that he was soaked through. It might have killed him. We were partners, Jimmy, dear. I couldn"t do anything to hurt him now, could I? It wouldn"t be square."
Jimmy had turned away his head, for fear his face might betray what he was feeling. He was in a h.e.l.l of unreasoning jealousy. He wanted her, body and soul, and every word she said bit like a raw wound. A moment before, and he had felt that she belonged to him. Now, in the first shock of reaction, he saw himself a stranger, an intruder, a trespa.s.ser on holy ground.
She saw the movement, and her intuition put her in touch with his thoughts.
"No, no," she cried; "no, Jimmy, not that!"
Their eyes met, and he was satisfied.
They sat there, silent. The rain had lessened its force, and was falling now in a gentle shower. A strip of blue sky, pale and watery, showed through the gray over the hills. On the island close behind them, a thrush had begun to sing.
"What are we to do?" she said, at last. "What can we do?"
"We must wait," he said. "It will all come right. It must. Nothing can stop us now."
The rain had ceased. The blue had routed the gray, and driven it from the sky. The sun, low down in the west, shone out bravely over the lake. The air was cool and fresh.
Jimmy"s spirits rose with a bound. He accepted the omen. This was the world as it really was, smiling and friendly, not gray, as he had fancied it. He had won. Nothing could alter that. What remained to be done was trivial. He wondered how he could ever have allowed it to weigh upon him.
After awhile, he pushed the boat out of its shelter on to the glittering water, and seized the paddle.
"We must be getting back," he said. "I wonder what the time is. I wish we could stay out forever. But it must be late. Molly!"
"Yes?"
"Whatever happens, you"ll break off this engagement with Dreever?
Shall I tell him? I will if you like."
"No, I will. I"ll write him a note, if I don"t see him before dinner."
Jimmy paddled on a few strokes.
"It"s no good," he said suddenly, "I can"t keep it in. Molly, do you mind if I sing a bar or two? I"ve got a beastly voice, but I"m feeling rather happy. I"ll stop as soon as I can."
He raised his voice discordantly.
Covertly, from beneath the shade of her big hat, Molly watched him with troubled eyes. The sun had gone down behind the hills, and the water had ceased to glitter. There was a suggestion of chill in the air. The great ma.s.s of the castle frowned down upon them, dark and forbidding in the dim light.
She shivered.
CHAPTER XX
A LESSON IN PICQUET
Lord Dreever, meanwhile, having left the waterside, lighted a cigarette, and proceeded to make a reflective tour of the grounds.
He felt aggrieved with the world. Molly"s desertion in the canoe with Jimmy did not trouble him: he had other sorrows. One is never at one"s best and sunniest when one has been forced by a ruthless uncle into abandoning the girl one loves and becoming engaged to another, to whom one is indifferent. Something of a jaundiced tinge stains one"s outlook on life in such circ.u.mstances. Moreover, Lord Dreever was not by nature an introspective young man, but, examining his position as he walked along, he found himself wondering whether it was not a little unheroic. He came to the conclusion that perhaps it was. Of course, Uncle Thomas could make it deucedly unpleasant for him if he kicked. That was the trouble. If only he had even--say, a couple of thousands a year of his own--he might make a fight for it. But, dash it, Uncle Tom could cut off supplies to such a frightful extent, if there was trouble, that he would have to go on living at Dreever indefinitely, without so much as a fearful quid to call his own.
Imagination boggled at the prospect. In the summer and autumn, when there was shooting, his lordship was not indisposed to a stay at the home of his fathers. But all the year round! Better a broken heart inside the radius than a sound one in the country in the winter.
"But, by gad!" mused his lordship; "if I had as much as a couple--yes, dash it, even a couple of thousand a year, I"d chance it, and ask Katie to marry me, dashed if I wouldn"t!"
He walked on, drawing thoughtfully at his cigarette. The more he reviewed the situation, the less he liked it. There was only one bright spot in it, and this was the feeling that now money must surely get a shade less tight. Extracting the precious ore from Sir Thomas. .h.i.therto had been like pulling back-teeth out of a bull-dog.
But, now, on the strength of this infernal engagement, surely the uncle might reasonably be expected to scatter largesse to some extent.