GLADYS AND WALTER.
he fleeting vision of Liz Hepburn's familiar face appeared to fill Gladys with excitement and unrest. As Mina looked at her flushed cheeks and shining eyes, she felt a vague uneasiness visit her own heart. They did not speak of her as they drove home, but when the girls gathered, as was their wont, round the cheerful fire in the guest-chamber before retiring for the night, Gladys asked them a question.
'Did you see her? She looked very ill, and very distressed. Do you not think so? Oh, I fear she has been in trouble, and I must do all I can to find out about her. If you will allow me, I shall remain another day in town, and I can send a telegram to Miss Peck in the morning.'
Mina, on her knees beside her chair, her plump bare arm showing very white and fair against the black lace of Gladys's gown, looked up at her with a slightly troubled air.
'Gladys, I wish you wouldn't bother about that girl. You lay things far too much to heart. It can't possibly concern you now. Let her own people look after her.'
Gladys received this remark with rather an indignant look.
'Mina, that is not like you. You only assume such hard-heartedness. If you saw her face as I saw it, it must haunt you. Her eyes were quite wild and despairing, I cannot forget them.'
'Oh, I think you exaggerate,' said Mina lightly. 'I saw her very well. It was the usual calm, rather insolent stare these girls give. I do not think she looked either very ill or very desperate, and she seemed comfortably clothed. What do you think, Clara?'
'Oh, I didn't see her,' answered Clara, with a slight yawn. 'Yes, Gladys dear, I do think you worry too much over things. What can that girl possibly be to you? Of course we are very sorry for her; still, if she is in trouble, she has brought it on herself. It will never do for you to mix yourself up with all sorts and conditions. I say, wasn't Sims Reeves heavenly to-night, and "Come into the garden, Maud," more entrancing than ever? To think what immense power that man wields in his voice! He can do with his audience as he likes. He was in splendid form.'
Gladys remained silent. The concert had given her a rare pleasure, but it was obliterated at the moment by the incident of the face at the carriage window.
'We had better get to bed, girls, or mamma will be sending Katherine to us presently,' said Mina, as she picked herself up from the rug. 'Good-night, dear, and don't worry. If you wrinkle up your brows like that over every trifle, you will be old before your time.'
Gladys faintly smiled, and bade them good-night. She 'worried' a good deal more than either of them imagined.
'I say, Clara, I do wish we could induce Gladys to leave that girl alone,' Mina said to her sister, as she threw off her evening gown and began to brush out her hair. 'I have the oddest feeling about it, just as if it would make mischief. Haven't you?'
'No; but you needn't try to dissuade Gladys from anything she has set her mind upon. I never saw anybody so "sot," as Artemus Ward would say; she's positive to the verge of obstinacy. But what makes you have any feeling in the matter I can't imagine; you never even saw the girl in your life.'
'No, but I feel interested in her, all the same. And, I say'—
She broke off there rather suddenly, and meditatively brushed her hair for a few seconds in silence.
'Did you notice that afternoon we had the tea, after all the people were gone, you remember that Cousin George spilled the contents of a cup on mamma's gown?'
'Yes, I remember that, of course, but what can it have to do with Gladys and this Hepburn girl?'
'Did nothing occur to you in connection with his unusual awkwardness? Don't you remember what we were talking of at the time?'
'No,' replied Clara, and she paused with her bodice half pulled over her lovely shoulders, and a slow wonder on her beautiful, placid face.
'Well, Gladys was telling us at the very moment about the disappearance of this Hepburn girl, as you call her, and I happened to be looking at Cousin George while she was speaking, and, Clara, I can't for the life of me help thinking he knows something about it.'
No sooner were the words out of her mouth than Mina saw that she had made a profound mistake. The red colour leaped into her sister's face, dyeing even the curves of her stately throat.
'I think you are a wicked, uncharitable girl, Mina,' she said, with icy coldness. 'I wonder you are not ashamed to have such a thought for a moment. I only beg of you not to let it go any further. It may do more harm than you think.'
So saying, Clara gathered up all her wraps and marched off to her own room, leaving her sister feeling rather hurt and humiliated, though not in the least convinced that she had simply given rein to an uncharitable imagination. Mina was indeed so much troubled that she went off her sleep—a most unusual experience for her; and the morning failed to banish, as it often benignly banishes, the misgivings of the night.
Once more Gladys made a pilgrimage to the old home where Walter dwelt alone, working early and late, the monotony of his toil only brightened by one constant hope. It was a strange existence for the lad on the threshold of his young manhood, and many who knew something of his way of life wondered at the steady and dogged persistence with which he pursued his avocation. He appeared to have reached, while yet not much past his boyhood, the grave, passionless calm which comes to most men only after they have outlived the passion of their youth. He was regarded as a sharp, hard-working young man, with a keen eye for business, and honourable and just, but conspicuously hard to deal with—one whose word was as his bond, and who, being so absolutely reliable himself, suffered no equivocation or crooked dealings in others. By slow but certain degrees he had extricated himself from the strange network which old Abel Graham had woven about the business, and established it upon the basis of sound, straightforward dealing. The old customers, in spite of certain advantages the new system offered, dropped away from him one by one, but others took their place. When Walter balanced his books at the end of the first year, he had reason to be not only content, but elated, and he was enabled to carry out at once certain extensions which he had quite expected would only be justifiable after the lapse of some years. But, while prospering beyond his highest anticipations, what of the growth of the true man, the development of the great human soul, which craves a higher destiny than mere grovelling among the sordid things of earth? While supremely unconscious of any change in himself, there was nevertheless a great change—a very great change indeed. It was inevitable. A life so narrow, so circumscribed, so barren of beauty, lived so solitarily, away from every softening influence, was bound to work a subtle and relentless change. The man of one idea is apt to starve his soul in his effort to make it subservient to the furtherance of his solitary aim. To be a successful man, to win by his own unaided effort a position which would entitle him to meet Gladys Graham on equal ground, such was his ambition, and it never did occur to him that this very striving might make him unfit in other ways to be her mate. His isolated life, absolutely unrelieved by any social intercourse with his fellows, made him silent by choice, still and self-contained in manner, abrupt of speech. In his unconsciousness it never occurred to him that it is the little courtesies and graces of speech and action which commend a man first to the notice of the woman he wants to win. He was, though he did not know it, a melancholy spectacle; but his awakening was at hand.
Gladys made her second call at the house in Colquhoun Street, as before, early in the day. It seemed very familiar, though it was many months since she had passed that way. It seemed a more hopeless and squalid street than she had yet thought it. She picked her steps daintily through the greasy mud, holding her skirts high enough to show a most bewitching pair of feet, cased in Parisian boots, only there was nobody visible to admire them but a grimy butcher's boy, with a basket on his head, and he stared with all his might.
The warehouse door, contrary to the old custom, stood wide open, as if inviting all comers. Gladys gave a glance along the passage which led to the living-rooms, but was not moved to revisit them. She went at once up the grimy staircase, giving a little light cough as she neared the landing, a herald of her coming. She heard quite distinctly the grating of the stool on the floor, and a step coming towards her—a step which even now sounded quite familiarly in her ears.
'It is I—Gladys,' she said, trying to speak quite naturally, but conscious of a shrinking embarrassment which made her cheeks nervously flush. 'The door was open, so I came right in. How are you, Walter?'
In his face shone something of the old bright friendliness, but as she looked at the shabby youth, with his unshaved face and threadbare clothes, her fastidious eye disapproved of him just as it had disapproved of him when they met, boy and girl, for the first time in the rooms below.
'I am quite well,' he answered in his quick, abrupt unsmiling manner. 'But why do you always come without any warning? If you let me know, I should be ready for you. I am always busy in the morning, and a fellow who has so much hard work to do can't always be in trim to receive ladies.'
It was rather an ungracious greeting, which Gladys was quick enough to resent. The gentle meekness of the girl had merged itself into the dignity of the woman, which insists upon due deference being paid.
'I am quite sorry if I intrude, Walter,' she said rather stiffly. 'I shall not keep you long. All the same, I am coming in to sit down for a little, as I have something very particular to speak to you about.'
'Come in. Of course you know I am glad to see you,' he said hurriedly; and Gladys could not help rather enjoying his evident confusion. If he felt nervous and awkward in her presence, it was no more than he deserved to feel, since she was so entirely unchanged.
'I am glad you have the grace to be civil, at least,' she said, with a bewildering smile, which vanished, however, when she seated herself on the battered old office-stool; all her anxiety and troubled concern made her face grave to sadness as she put the question—
'Do you know that your sister is in Glasgow?'
