"Come, Taff," said I, giving the dog a little kick, "get up."
The dog sprang to his feet with his tail between his legs. No wonder he was frightened and surprised. I had never done such a thing to him before. But I had a vague feeling that if he had not hindered me I should have got over the gate alone, and I was savage at the idea of having needed help from a man.
"Good-evening to you," said I, curtly, nodding my head in the direction of the man, but without looking at him again.
"Good-evening," answered he, raising his hat. "I hope you'll be none the worse for your fall."
I vouchsafed no answer to this speech, but strode on down the track as fast as my aching limbs and dizzy head would allow me to do. The sea murmured on the beach at my right. I could not see it for the fog, but I could hear it. After a while I think it must have lulled my anger to rest. The sea has always been a good friend to me, in its storms as in its calm. I like to see it rage as I dare not rage, and I like to see it calm as I cannot be calm. The restless sea has taught me as many things as the quiet marsh; they are both very wide. And that day I am sure it lulled my irritable temper.
Before long I began to think that I, to say the least of it, had treated my deliverer with scant courtesy. When I got to the farm that divides the marsh from the beach I turned round to see if he were following. The fog was beginning to lift. The distant hills of the South Downs rose out of the sea of vapor, and were as towering mountains in the mystery, lying dim and yet blue against the struggling light of the sunset behind. The white headland that I had left detached itself boldly against the sea-line—for the mist was only on the level land now, where it lay like a sheet a few feet above the marsh, so that the objects on the ground itself shone, illumined by the slanting rays of the sun, till each one had a value of its own in the scene. Through the golden spray of the sunlit vapor the red and the white cattle shone like jewels upon the brown land, where every little line of water was like a snake in the vivid light; and as I turned and looked towards the gray cliff, where I had climbed the bank after the bird's-nest an hour ago, the long line of hill behind, dotted with fir-trees and church-steeples and little homesteads, lay midway in the air through the silver veil.
I stood a while looking back. I do not know that I was conscious of the wonder of the scene, but I remember it very vividly. At the time I think I was chiefly busy wishing the stranger to come up that I might rectify my lack of courtesy. I saw him at last. He came in sight very slowly, and stood a long while leaning against the last gate lighting his pipe. I watched him several minutes, and he never once looked along the path to see if I was there. Why was I annoyed? I had dismissed him almost rudely. He did but do as he was bid. And yet I do believe I was annoyed; I do believe I was unreasonable to that point.
CHAPTER XIV.
When I came into supper that evening my friend of the fog was standing beside father on the parlor hearth-rug. Directly I saw him, I wondered how I could have been such a fool as not to have guessed at once that that was Mr. Trayton Harrod. But it had never occurred to me for a moment; and when I recognized in the man to whom I had promised to be friendly, also the person who had presumed to take me by the waist and pitch me over a gate, all my bad temper of before swelled up within me worse than ever, and I felt as though it would be quite impossible for me even to be civil. And yet I had since promised somebody, even more definitely than I had promised Joyce, that I would do my best to make matters run smoothly.