IV
Graeme's first thought was that he was dreaming. He blinked his eyes to make sure they were not playing him false.
If she had disappeared at that moment, he would have sworn to hallucinations and the visibility of spirits to the day of his death.
But she did not disappear, and Punch proved her no spirit by stalking gravely up to give her welcome. Without taking her startled eyes off Graeme, she dropped one white hand on to the great brown head and the diamonds sprinkled her dove-coloured dress.
"Mr. Graeme!" she said, in a voice which very fully expressed her own doubts as to his reality also.
"Mar—Miss Brandt? ... Is it possible?"
They had both drawn nearer, he along the broad gravel walk, she along the narrow path between the eucalyptus trees.
"Are you quite sure you are real?" he asked breathlessly, and for answer she laughed and stretched a friendly hand towards him.
He took it with shining eyes, and then bent suddenly and kissed it gently, and his eyes were shining still more brightly as she drew it hastily away.
"But whatever brings you here?" she asked abruptly.
"We're just out of the sea,"—and the joy of the sea and the morning, and this greatest thing of all, was in his face.
"But why are you here? What are you doing here?"
"Doing? We're living here."
"Did you know I was here? How——?" she began, with a puzzled wrinkle of the fair white brow, and stopped.
"I did not know. I wish I had."
"If you did not know, how—why——?"
"If I had known perhaps I should not have dared to follow you. On the whole I'm glad I did not know."
"I don't understand.... How long have you been here?"
"Just four weeks," he said, with a smile at thought of the blackness of those four weeks now that he stood in the sunshine.
"Four weeks! Then you mean—you mean that I—that we—followed——"
"In the mere matter of time, yes!—and of place too," he laughed." For you turned me out of my rooms."
"Do you mean to say you are the Bogey-Man?"
"Well,—no one ever called me so to my face before, but I'm bound to say I've felt uncommonly like one for the past four or five weeks."
"Come with me," she said hastily. "I must put this right at once, or Hennie——" and she turned and went through the gap in the hedge.
"Put what right?" he asked, as he followed.
"Oh—you," she said hastily.
"I'm all right—now. And who is Hennie?"
"My friend Miss Penny—"
"I beg your pardon. I thought you said Hennie."
"Henrietta Penny. She was at school with me. We are taking care of one another."
They had come to the forecourt of the cottage.
"Hen!" cried Margaret. The window was wide open, but the blind was discreetly down.
"Hello, Chum!" came back in muffled tones. "What's up now? Been and got yourself lost again?"
"Come out, dear. I want you."
"Half a jiff, old girl. Give a fellow a chance with his back hair. You had first tub this morning, remember." At which Graeme's eyes twinkled in unison with Margaret's.
"There's a gentleman waiting to see you, dear," said Margaret, to prevent any further revelations.
"A what?"—and there followed a clatter of falling implements as though a sudden start had sent them flying. "Wretch!—to upset one like that! It's that big brown dog, I suppose. I know you, my child!"
Then the blind whirled up and a merry face, in a cloud of dishevelled hair, looked out, a pair of horrified eyes rested momentarily on Graeme, and the blind rattled down again with something that sounded like a muffled feminine objurgation.
And presently the inner door opened and Miss Penny came forth demurely, and bowed distantly in the direction of Margaret and Graeme.
She was of average height but inclined to plumpness, and so looked smaller than Margaret; and she had no great pretensions to beauty, Graeme thought—but then he was biassed for life and incapable of free and impartial judgment—save such as might be found in a very frank face given to much laughter, a rather wide mouth and nice white teeth, abundant dark hair and a pair of challenging brown eyes which now, getting over their first confusion—and finding herself at all events fully dressed, wherein she had the advantage of him—rested with much appreciation on the young man in front of her.
The salt water was still in his hair, and the discrepancies in his hasty attire were but partly hidden by the damp towel round his neck. Nevertheless he was very good to look upon. His moustache showed crisp against the healthy brown of his face; his hair, short as it was, had a natural ripple which sea-water could not reduce; and his eyes were brimming with the new joy of life and repressed laughter. Miss Penny liked the looks of him.
"Margaret Brandt, I will never forgive you as long as I live," said she emphatically.
"All right, dear! This is Mr. Bogey-man whose rooms we have appropriated. He wished to be introduced to the other malefactor. Miss Henrietta Penny—Mr. John Graeme! Mr. Graeme and I have met before."
If Mr. John Graeme had had more experience of women, the flash that shot across from the brown eyes to the dark blue ones might have told him stories—for instance, that his name and would-have-been standing towards her friend were not entirely unknown to Miss Penny; that, for a brief half second, she wondered—doubted—and instantly chid herself for such a thought in connection with Margaret Brandt.
But Margaret herself, being a woman, caught the momentary challenge and repelled it steadily.
"I am very pleased to meet you, Miss Penny—in such a place, and in such company. I have heard of you from Miss Brandt," said Graeme.
"Never till five minutes ago," laughed Margaret.
"Yes, if you will pardon me—once before, at Lady Elspeth Gordon's. Unless I am mistaken, Miss Penny had just been across to Dublin to take a degree which Cambridge ungallantly declined to confer upon her."
"Quite right!" said Miss Penny. "M.A. They're misogynists at Cambridge."
"Will you oblige me by informing Miss Penny, Mr. Graeme, that this meeting is purely accidental? I caught a spark in her eye and I know what it means. Had you the very slightest idea that we were coming to Sark?"
"Not the remotest. When I saw you standing in the hedge there, with the morning glories all about you, I first doubted my eyes, then I thought you a vision—"
"And do you think it possible that I knew of you being here?"
"I am certain you did not. Nobody knows. I left no address, and I told no one where I was going. I have not had a letter since I left London. I have been buried alive in this heavenly little place."
"There now, Mademoiselle," said Margaret, with a bow. "Are you satisfied now?"
"I was satisfied before you opened your mouth, my dear. The possibility inevitably suggested itself, but it was stillborn. Has not our friendship passed its seventh birthday?"
"Thank you, dear. But the coincidence of our coming to bury ourselves in Sark, and Mr. Graeme's coming to bury himself in Sark, was almost unbelievable."
"Not at all," said Miss Penny. "If you could both trace back you would probably find the same original spring of action—a chance word from some common friend, or some article you have both read. Then, when circumstances loosed the spring, you both shot in the same direction. What was it loosed your spring, Mr. Graeme?"
"Well,—I wanted to get away out of things. I'm busy on a book, you see, and I'd heard of Sark—"
"Same here!" said Miss Penny—"less the book. We wanted to get away out of things—and people, and we'd heard of Sark, and here we are. Was it you suggested Sark, or I, Meg?"
"I'm sure I don't know, dear. You, I should think."
"I will take all the credit of it."
Just then Mrs. Carré, who had been down to John Philip's for bread, turned in out of the road with a loaf under each arm. At sight of all her guests fraternising, her face lit up with a broad smile, and Scamp, who had whirled in after her, twisted himself into hieroglyphics of delight and rent the air with his expression of it, and then launched himself at Punch and taxed him with perfidy in going off to bathe without him.
"Ah, you have med friends with the leddies," she said to Graeme. "Scamp! Bad beast, be qui-et! A couche!"
"I'm doing my best, Mrs. Carré."
"That iss very nice."
"Very nice, indeed!" And Miss Penny asserted afterwards that he was looking at Margaret all the time.
"I told them you were a nice quiet gentleman and wouldn't disturb them at all," said Mrs. Carré.
"I'll do my very best not to. So far the disturbance has been all on their side, but I'm standing it very well, you see. You'll let me show you the sights, won't you?" he said to Miss Brandt. "I've been here a month, you see, and I know it all like a book. I've done nothing but moon about since I came—"
"I thought you were busy on a book," said Miss Penny.
"Er—well, you see, you have to do a lot of thinking before you start writing. I've been thinking," and perhaps more than one of them had a fairly shrewd suspicion as to the line his thoughts had taken.
"Now, if I don't cut away and dress, and get my breakfast and clear out, I shall be in the way of the ladies, and Mrs. Carré will never forgive me," he said. "I do hope you will include me in your plans for the day."
His bow included them both, and he sped off up the path through the high hedge, with the two dogs racing alongside.
"Meg, my child, we will go for a little walk," said Miss Penny.