"Well, I hope ye"ll be happier than maist o" the married folks I ken.
Eh!"--with a chuckle--"but Roger"s picked a stick for his own back!"
Nan smiled.
"Do you think I"ll be so bad to live with, then?"
""Tisn"t so much that you"ll be bad with intent. But you"re that Varincourt woman"s own great-grand-daughter. Not that ye can help it, and I"m no blamin" ye for it. But "tis wild blood!"
Nan rose, laughing, and kissed her aunt.
"After such a snub as that, I think I"d better take myself off. It"s really time I started, as I"m walking."
"Let me run you back in the car," suggested Sandy eagerly.
"No, thanks. I"m taking the short cut home through the woods."
Sandy accompanied her down the drive. At the gates he stopped abruptly.
"Nan," he said quietly. "Is it quite O.K. about your engagement?
You"ll be really happy with Trenby?"
Nan paused a moment. Then she spoke, very quietly and with a touch of cynicism quite foreign to the fresh, sweet outlook upon life which had been hers before she had ever met Maryon Rooke.
"I don"t suppose I should be really happy with anyone, Sandy. I want too much. . . . But it"s quite O.K. and you needn"t worry."
With a parting nod she started off along the ribbon of road which wound its way past the gates of Trevarthen Wood, and then, dipping into the valley, climbed the hill beyond and lost itself in the broad highway of light which shimmered from the western sky. Presently she turned aside from the road and, scrambling through a gap in a stone wall, plunged into the cool shadows of the woods. A heavy rain had fallen during the night, soaking the thirsty earth, and the growing green things were all responsively alive and vivid once again, while the clean, pleasant smell of damp soil came fragrantly to her nostrils.
Though she tramped manfully along, Nan found her progress far from swift, for the surface of the ground was sticky and sodden after the rain. Her boots made soft little sucking sounds at every step. Nor was she quite sure of her road back to Mallow by way of the woods. She had been instructed that somewhere there ran a tiny river which she must cross by means of a footbridge, and then ascend the hill on the opposite side. "And after that," Barry had told her, "you can"t lose yourself if you try."
But prior to that it seemed a very probable contingency, and she was beginning to weary of plodding over the boggy land, alternately slapped by outstanding branches or--when a little puff of wind raced overhead--drenched by a shower of garnered raindrops from some tree which seemed to shake itself in the breeze just as a dog may shake himself after a plunge in the sea, and with apparently the same intention of wetting you as much as possible in the process.
At last from somewhere below came the sound of running water, and Nan bent her steps hopefully in its direction. A few minutes" further walking brought her to the head of a deep-bosomed coombe, and the mere sight of it was almost reward enough for the difficulties of the journey. A verdant cleft, it slanted down between the hills, the trees on either side giving slow, reluctant place to big boulders, moss-bestrewn and grey, while athwart the tall brown trunks which crowned it, golden spears, sped by the westering sun, tremulously pierced the summer dusts.
Nan made her way down the coombe"s steep side with feet that slipped and slid on the wet, shelving banks of mossy gra.s.s. But at length she reached the level of the water and here her progress became more sure.
Further on, she knew, must be the footbridge which Barry had described--probably beyond the sharp curve which lay just ahead of her.
She rounded the bend, then stopped abruptly, startled at seeing the figure of a man standing by the bank of the river. He had his back towards her and seemed engrossed in his thoughts. Almost instantly, however, as though subconsciously aware of her approach, he turned.
Nan stood quite still as he came towards her, limping a little. She felt that if she moved she must surely stumble and fall. The beating of her heart thundered in her ears and for a moment the river, and the steep sides of the coombe, and the figure of Peter Mallory himself all seemed to grow dim and vague as though seen through a thick mist.
"Nan!"
The dear, familiar voice, with an ineffable tenderness in its slow drawl, reached her even through the thrumming beat of her heart.
"Peter--oh, Peter--"
Her voice failed her, and the next moment they were shaking hands conventionally just as though they were two quite ordinary people with whom love had nothing to do.
"I didn"t know you were coming to-day," she said, making a fierce effort to regain composure.
"I wired Kitty on the train. Hasn"t she had the telegram?"
"Yes, I expect so. Only I"ve been out all afternoon, so knew nothing about it. And now I"ve lost my way!"
"Lost your way?"
"Yes. I expected to find a footbridge round the corner."
"It"s round the next one. I sent the car on with my kit, and thought I"d walk up from the station. So we"re both making for the same bridge. It"s only about two minutes" walk from here."
They strolled on side by side, Peter rather silent, and each of them vibrantly conscious of the other"s nearness. Suddenly Mallory pulled up and a quick exclamation broke from him as he pointed ahead.
"We"re done! The bridge is gone!"
Nan"s eyes followed the direction of his hand. Here the river ran more swiftly, and swollen by last nights storm of wind and rain, it had swept away the frail old footbridge which spanned it. Only a few decayed sticks and rotten wooden stumps remained of what had once been known as the Lovers" Bridge--the trysting place of who shall say how many lovers in the days of its wooden prime?
Somehow a tinge of melancholy seemed to hang about the few sc.r.a.ps of wreckage. How many times the little bridge must have tempted men and maidens to linger of a summer evening, dreaming the big dreams of youth--visions which the spreading wings of Time bear away into the Land of Lost Desires. Perhaps some kind hand garners them--those tender, wonderful, courageous dreams of our wise youth and keeps them safely for us against the Day of Reckoning, so that they may weight the scales a little in our favour.
Peter stood looking down at the scattered fragments of the bridge with an odd kind of gravity in his eyes. It seemed a piece of trenchant symbolism that the Lovers" Bridge should break when he and Nan essayed to cross it. There was a slight, whimsical smile, which held something of pain, on his lips when he turned to her again.
"I shall have to carry you across," he said.
She shook her head.
"No, thanks. You might drop me. I can wade over."
"It"s too deep for you to do that. I won"t let you drop."
But Nan still hesitated. She was caught by sudden panic. She felt that she couldn"t let Peter--Peter, of all men in the world--carry her in his arms!
"It isn"t so deep higher up, is it?" she suggested. "I could wade there."
"No, it"s not so deep, but the river bed is very stony. You"d cut your feet to pieces."
"Then I suppose you"ll have to carry me," she agreed at last, with obvious reluctance.
"I promise I won"t drop you," he a.s.sured her quietly.
He gathered her up into his arms, and as he lifted her the rough tweed of his coat brushed her cheek. Then, holding her very carefully, he stepped down from the bank into the stream and began to make his way across.
Nan had no fear that he might let her fall. The arms that held her felt pliant and strong as steel, and their clasp about her filled her with a strange, new ecstasy that thrilled her from head to foot. It frightened her.
"Am I awfully heavy?" she asked, nervously anxious to introduce some element of commonplace.
And Peter, looking down at the delicately angled face which lay against his shoulder, drew his breath hard.
"No," he answered briefly. "You"re not heavy."
There was that in his gaze which brought the warm colour into her face.