XI
Graeme's two minutes were each set with considerably more than the regulation sixty seconds—diamond seconds of glowing anticipation, every one of them. And, to his credit, be it recorded that he allotted several of them to the invocation of most fervent blessings on Miss Penny, who, at the moment, was vigorously disclaiming any pretension thereto.
But, quite soon enough for his hosts, as he considered them,—his guests, according to Miss Penny,—he appeared at the cottage, bodily and mentally prepared for the feast, and showing both in manner and attire due sense of the honour conferred upon him.
It was a festive, and for one of them at all events, a never-to-be-forgotten meal. The strong Sark air had got into all their heads, and whatever prudish notions might have been working in Margaret, she had bidden them to heel and took her pleasure as it came.
Her mood, however, for the moment was receptive rather than expressive. Miss Penny and Graeme still did most of the talking, and Margaret sat and listened and laughed, not a little astonished at finding herself in that galley.
"What is the penalty for aiding and abetting a criminal in an evasion of the law, Mr. Graeme?" chirped Miss Penny one time, and took Margaret's energetic below-table expostulation without a wince.
"It would depend, I should say, on the particular dye of criminal. What has your friend been up to, Miss Penny? Is he a particularly black specimen?"
"In the first place he's a she, and in the next place her complexion has a decided tendency towards blonde. As to dye—I am in a position to state on oath that she does not."
For a moment he was mystified, then his eye fell on Margaret's face, full of glorious confusion at this base betrayal by her bosom friend.
"The Sark air does get into people's heads like that at times," he said diplomatically. "It's just in the first few days. But you soon get used to it. I felt just the same myself—losing faith in things and thinking ill of my friends, and so on. You'll be quite all right in a day or two, Miss Penny,"—with a touch of sympathetic commiseration in his voice.
"Oh, I'm quite all right now," said Miss Penny enjoyably. "I thought it only right and proper to let you know where you stand. At the present moment you are as likely as not aiding and abetting a breaker of the British laws and her accomplice. You may become involved in serious complications, you see."
"If that means that I can be of any service in the matter I shall be only too delighted,—if you will not look upon me as an intruder." He spoke to Miss Penny but looked at Margaret.
"Ah-ha! Qualms of conscience——"
"Hennie is a little raised, Mr. Graeme," broke in Margaret. "Please excuse her. A good night's rest will make her all right."
"Never felt better in my life," sparkled Miss Penny. "But seriously, Mr. Graeme, it is only right you should understand, for we don't quite know where we are ourselves, and I'm going to tell you even though Margaret kicks all the skin off my leg in the process. In a word,—we've bolted."
"Bolted?" he echoed, all aglow with hopeful interest.
"Yes—from Mr. Pixley and all his works. And as he had been threatening to make us a Ward of Court, you see—well, there you are, don't you know."
"I see," he said, and there was a new light in his eyes as he looked at Margaret, and his soul danced within him again as David's before the Ark.
"For reasons which seemed adequate to myself, Mr. Graeme,"—began Margaret, in more sober explanation.
"They were, they were. I am sure of it," sang his heart. And his brain asked eagerly, "Had Charles Svendt anything to do with it, I wonder?"
"—I thought it well to remove myself from the care of my guardian Mr. Pixley——"
"Splendid girl! Splendid girl!" sang his heart.
"—And as I have still some of my time to serve——"
"How long, O Lord, how long?" chaunted his heart, with no sense of impropriety, for it was sounding pæans of joyful hope.
"—You see——" said Margaret.
"I see."
"Do you think they could make me go back to him?" she asked anxiously.
"To Mr. Pixley? Certainly not—that is if your reasons for leaving him seemed adequate to the Court, as I am sure they would."
She offered no explanation on this point. All that she left unsaid, and that he would have given much to hear, seemed dancing just inside Miss Penny's sparkling eyes, and as like as not to come dancing out at any moment.
"You see," said Graeme, "I happen to have been making some enquiries from a legal friend on that very point——"
"Oh!" said Margaret, and Miss Penny's eyes danced carmagnoles.
"In connection with a story, you know. One likes to get one's legal points all right. In any case, as I was just about to tell Miss Penny for the benefit of her criminal friend, there would be lots of red tape to unwind before they could do anything, and this little isle of Sark is the quaintest place in the world in the matter of its own old observances and their integrity, and the rejection of new ideas. Mr. Pixley does not know you are here, of course?"
"Not much, or he'd have been over by special boat long since," said Miss Penny. "We managed it splendidly."
"And how long?" began Graeme, in pursuance of his train of thought, but stopped short at sound of the words, since they bore distant resemblance to a curiosity which seemed to himself impertinent.
But Miss Penny knew no such compunctions. She did not want to miss one jot or tittle of her enjoyment of the situation.
"About six months," said she quickly.
"Well, I should think we"—how delightful to him that "we," and how Miss Penny rejoiced in it!—"could hold them at bay for that length of time. The machinery of the law is slow and cumbersome at best, and in this case, I imagine, it would not be difficult to put a few additional spokes in its wheels."
If his face was anything to go by there were many more questions he would have liked to put—judicial questions, you understand, for a fuller comprehension of the case. But he would not venture them yet. He had got ample food for reflection for the moment, and his hopes stood high.
Never for him had there been a dinner equal to that one. Better ones he had partaken of in plenty. But the full board and the quality of the faring are not the only things, nor by any means the chief things, that go to the making of a feast.
The nearest approach to it had been that dinner with the Whitefriars, at which he first met Margaret Brandt, and that did not come within measurable distance of this one.