III.
THE EMPTY ENVELOPE.
Commander Blacklock closed the front door.
"Chilly night," he observed.
"It is rather," said Eileen.
The wind droned through a distant keyhole mournfully and continuously. That melancholy piping sound never rose and never fell; monotonous and unvarying it piped on and on. Otherwise the house had that peculiar feeling of quiet which houses have when stirring events are over and people have departed.
The two remaining inhabitants re-entered the parlour, glanced at one another with a half smile, and then seemed simultaneously to find a little difficulty in knowing what to do next.
"Well," said Blacklock, "our business seems over."
He felt he had spoken a little more abruptly than he intended, and would have liked to repeat his observations in a more genial tone.
"Yes," said she almost as casually, "there is nothing more to be done to-night, I suppose."
"I shall have to write up my report of our friend Mr Belke's life and last words," said he with a half laugh.
"And I have got to get over to Mrs Brown's," she replied, "and so I had better go at once."
"Oh, there's no such desperate hurry," he said hastily; "I haven't much to write up to-night. We must have some supper first."
"Yes," she agreed, "I suppose we shall begin to feel hungry soon if we don't. I'll see about it. What would you like?"
"The cold ham and a couple of boiled eggs will suit me."
She agreed again.
"That won't take long, and then you can begin your report."
Again he protested hastily.
"Oh, but there's no hurry about that, I assure you. I only wanted to save trouble."
While she was away he stood before the fire, gazing absently into space and scarcely moving a muscle. The ham and boiled eggs appeared, and a little more animation became apparent, but it was not a lively feast. She talked for a little in an ordinary, cheerful way, just as though there was no very special subject for conversation; but he seemed too absent-minded and silent to respond even to these overtures, except with a brief smile and a briefer word. They had both been quite silent for about five minutes, when he suddenly said in a constrained manner, but with quite a different intonation—
"Well, I am afraid our ways part now. What are you going to do next?"
"I've been wondering," she said; "and I think if Mrs Craigie still wants me I ought to go back to her."
"Back to the Craigies!" he exclaimed. "And become—er—a governess again?"
"It will be rather dull at first," she laughed; "but one can't have such adventures as this every day, and I really have treated the Craigies rather badly. You see you told Mr Craigie the truth about my desertion of them, and they may forgive me. If they do, and if they still need me, I feel I simply must offer my services."
"It's very good of you."
She laughed again.
"It is at least as much for my own interest as Mrs Craigie's. I have nowhere else to go to and nothing else to do."
"I wish I could offer you another job like this," said he.
A sparkle leapt into her eyes.
"If you ever do see any chance of making any sort of use of me—I mean of letting me be useful—you will be sure to let me know, won't you?"
"Rather! But honestly, I'm not likely to have such a bit of luck as this again."
"What will you be doing?"
"Whatever I'm told to do; the sort of thing I was on before—odd jobs of the 'hush' type. But I wish I could think of you doing something more—well, more worthy of your gifts."
"One must take one's luck as it comes," she said with an outward air of philosophy, whatever her heart whispered.
"Exactly," he agreed with emphasis. "Still——"
He broke off, and pulled a pipe out of his pocket.
"I'll leave you to smoke," she said, "and say good-night now."
"One moment!" said he, jumping up; "there's something I feel I must say. I've been rather contrite about it. I'm afraid I haven't quite played cricket so far as you are concerned."
She looked at him quickly.
"What do you mean?" she asked.
"It's about Belke. I'm afraid Phipps was quite right in saying I'm rather cold-blooded when I am keen over a job. Perhaps it becomes a little too much of a mere problem. Getting you to treat Belke as you did, for instance. You were very nice to him to-night—though he was too German to understand how you felt—and it struck me that very possibly you had been seeing a great deal of him, and he's a nice-looking fellow, with a lot of good stuff in him, a brave man, no doubt about it, and—well, perhaps you liked him enough to make you wish I hadn't let you in for such a job. I just wondered."
She looked at him for an instant with an expression he did not quite understand; then she looked away and seemed for a moment a little embarrassed, and then she looked at him again, and he thought he had never seen franker eyes.
"You're as kind and considerate as—as, well, as you're clever!" she said with a half laugh. "But, if you only knew, if you only even had the least guess how I've longed to do something for my country—something really useful, I mean; how unutterably wretched I felt when the trifling work I was doing was stopped by a miserable neglected cold and I had to have a change, and as I'd no money I had to take this stupid job of teaching; and how I envied the women who were more fortunate and really were doing useful things; oh, then you'd know how grateful I feel to you! If I could make every officer in the German navy—and the army too—fall in love with me, and then hand them over to you, I'd do it fifty times over! Don't, please, talk nonsense, or think nonsense! Good-night, Mr Tiel, and perhaps it's good-bye."
She laughed as she gave him his nom-de-guerre, and held out her hand as frankly as she had spoken. He did not take it, however.
"I'm going to escort you over to Mrs Brown's," he said with a very different expression now in his eyes.
"It's very good of you," she said; "you are sure you have time?"
"Loads!" he assured her.
He opened the door for her, but she stopped on the threshold. A young woman was waiting in the hall.
"Mrs Brown has sent her girl to escort me," she said, "so we'll have to"—she corrected herself—"we must say good-night now. Is it good-bye, or shall I see you in the morning?"
His face had become very long again.
"I'm very much afraid not. I've got to report myself with the lark. Good-bye."
The front door closed behind her, and Commander Blacklock strode back to the fire and gazed at it for some moments.
"Well," he said to himself, "I suppose, looking at things as they ought to be looked at, Mrs Brown's girl has saved me from making a damned fool of myself! Now to work: that's my proper stunt."
He threw some sheets of foolscap on the table, took out his pen, and sat down to his work. For about five minutes he stared at the foolscap, but the pen never made a movement. Then abruptly he jumped up and exclaimed—
"Dash it, I must!"
Snatching up an envelope, he thrust it in his pocket, and a moment later was out of the house.
*****
Miss Holland and her escort were about fifty yards from Mrs Brown's house when the girl started and looked back.
"There's some one crying on you!" she exclaimed.
Eileen stopped and peered back into the night. It had clouded over and was very dark. Very vaguely something seemed to loom up in the path behind them.
"Miss Holland!" cried a voice.
"It's the minister!" said the girl.
"The—who?" exclaimed Eileen; and added hastily, "Oh yes, I know who you mean."
A tall figure disengaged itself from the surrounding night.
"Sorry to trouble you," said the voice in curiously quick and jerky accents, "but I've got a note I want this girl to deliver immediately."
He handed her an envelope.
"Hand that in at the first farm on the other side of the Manse," he commanded, pointing backwards into the darkness. "I'll escort Miss Holland."
"Which hoose——" began the girl.
"The first you come to!" said the Commander peremptorily. "Quick as you can!"
Then he looked at Eileen, and for a moment said nothing.
"What's the matter?" she asked anxiously. "Has anything gone wrong?"
"Yes," he said with a half laugh, "I have. I even forgot to lick down that envelope. How the deuce I'm to explain an empty, unaddressed, unfastened envelope the Lord only knows!" His manner suddenly changed and he asked abruptly, "Are you in a desperate hurry to get in? I've something to say to you."
He paused and looked at her, but she said not a word in reply, not even to inquire what it was. A little jerkily he proceeded—
"I'm probably making just as great a fool of myself as Belke. But I couldn't let you go without asking—well, whether I am merely making a fool of myself. If you know what I mean and think I am, well, please just tell me you can manage to see yourself safely home—I know it's only about fifty yards—and I'll go and get that wretched envelope back from the girl and tell her another lie."
"Why should I think you are making a fool of yourself?" she asked in a voice that was very quiet, but not quite as even as she meant.
"Let's turn back a little way," he suggested quickly.
She said nothing, but she turned.
"Take my arm, won't you," he suggested.
In the bitterness of his heart he was conscious that he had rapped out this proposal in his sharpest quarter-deck manner. And he had meant to speak so gently! Yet she took his arm, a little timidly it is true, but no wonder, thought he. For a few moments they walked in silence, falling slower and slower with each step; and then they stopped. At that, speech seemed to be jerked out of him at last.
"I wonder if it's conceivable that you'd ever look upon me as anything but a calculating machine?" he inquired.
"I never thought of you in the least as that!" she exclaimed.
The gallant Commander evidently regarded this as a charitable exaggeration. He shook his head.
"You must sometimes. I know I must have seemed that sort of person."
"Not to me," she said.
He seemed encouraged, but still a little incredulous.
"Then did you ever really think of me as a human being—as a—as a—" he hesitated painfully—"as a friend?"
"Yes," she said, "of course I did—always as a friend."
"Could you possibly—conceivably—think of me as"—he hesitated, and then blurted out—"as, dash it all, head over ears in love with you?"
And then suddenly the Commander realised that he had not made a fool of himself after all.
The empty envelope was duly delivered, but no explanation was required. Mrs Brown's girl supplied all the information necessary.
"Of course I knew fine what he was after," said she.
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