James Prescott gave a great gulp at a lump which was rising in his throat, and warmly grasped Kate Mellon's proffered hand. As she raised her eyes he noticed her colour fade, and saw a troubled expression in her face.
"Good by, Jim," the said hurriedly. "Just strike down that path, will you? Get away quickly; here's some one coming; and--and I don't want to be seen talking to you. Quick! there's a good fellow. Good by."
She touched her horse with her slight whip, and cantered off at once. Prescott looked in the direction she had indicated, and saw Mr. Simnel, mounted on a handsome thoroughbred, calmly curveting up the Row.
What could there be between Kate Mellon and Robert Simnel?
[CHAPTER XIV.]
MISS LEXDEN ON MATRIMONY.
After that episode at the stile, which, as it happened, formed such a crisis in their destinies, Barbara Lexden and Frank Churchill did not move towards the house, but quietly turned into that fir plantation through which they had strolled some days previously on their return from the shooting party. At first neither spoke; Barbara walked with her eyes downcast, and Churchill strolled idly by her side; then, after a few paces, he took her unresisting hand and placed it in his arm. She looked, up into his face with calm, earnest, trustful eyes, and he bowed his head until, for the first time in his life, his lips touched hers, and as he withdrew them he murmured, "My darling! my own darling! thank God for this!" His arm stole round her waist, and for an instant he held her tightly clasped; then gently releasing her, he again passed her hand through his arm, covered it with his other hand, and walked on quietly by her side. There was no need of speech; it was all known, all settled, all arranged; that restored glove, that one fervent sentence, that one look in which each seemed to read the secrets of the other's soul, had done it all. This was first love, undisturbed by the fact that on either side there had probably been some half-dozen attacks of that spurious article, that saccharine bliss, that state of pleasant torture which reveals itself in sheep-like glances and deep-drawn sighs, in a tendency to wear tight boots and to increase the already over-swollen tailor's bill, to groan and be poetical, and to shrink from butchers' meat. Although the existent state of Barbara and Churchill had none of these characteristics, it was still first love.
Marvellous, marvellous time! so short in its duration, but leaving such an indelible impress on the memory! A charming period, a hasheesh-dream impossible ever to be renewed, a prolonged intoxication scarcely capable of realisation in one's sober moments. A thing of once, which gone never comes again, but leaves behind it remembrances which, while they cause the lips to curl at their past folly, yet give the heart a twinge in the reflection that the earnestness which outbalanced the folly, the power of entering into and being swayed by them, the youth--that is it, after all; confess it!--the youth is vanished for ever and aye. What and where was the glamour, the power of which you dimly remember but cannot recall? Put aside the claret-jug, and, with your feet on the fender, as you sit alone, try and analyse that bygone time. The form comes clearly out of the mist: the dark-brown banded hair, the quiet earnest eyes the slight lissome figure and delicate hands; and with them a floating reminiscence of a violet perfume, a subtle, delicate essence, which made your heart beat with extra vigour even before your eyes rested on what they longed for. Kisses and hand-clasps and ardent glances were the current coin of those days; one of either of the former missed, say at parting for the night, for instance, made you wretched; one of the latter shot in a different direction sent you to toss sleepless all night on your bed, and to rise with the face of a murderer, and with something not very different from the mind of one. There were heartaches in those days, real, dead, dull pains, sickening longings, spasms of hope and fear; dim dread of missing the prize on the attainment of which the whole of life was set, a psychical state which would be as impossible to your mind now as would the early infantile freshness to your lined cheek, or the curling locks of boyhood to your grizzled pate. It is gone, clean gone. Perhaps it snapped off short with a wrench, leaving its victim with a gaping wound which the searing-iron of time has completely cicatrised; perhaps it mellowed down into calm, peaceful, conjugal, and subsequently paternal affection. But tell me not, O hard-hearted and worldly-minded bachelor, intent on the sublimation of self, and cynically enough disposed to all that is innocent and tender,--tell me not, O husband, however devoted to your wife, however proud of your offspring,--tell me not that a regret for that vanished time does not sometimes cross your mind, that the sense of having lost the power of enjoying such twopenny happiness, ay, and such petty misery, does not cost you an occasional pang. It still goes on, that tragi-comedy, the same as ever, though the actors be different, though our places are now in the cushioned gallery among the spectators instead of on the stage, and we witness the performance, not with envy, not with admiration, but with a strange feeling of bewilderment that such things once were with us,--that the dalliance of the puppets, and the liquid jargon which they speak, once were our delight, and that we once had the pass-key to that blissful world whose pleasures and whose sorrows now alike fail to interest us.
So in the thorough enjoyment of this new-found happiness, in all tranquillity and repose, as in a calm haven after tempest, three or four days passed over Barbara and Churchill. Their secret was their own, and was doubly dear for being known but to themselves. No one suspected it. Churchill joined the shooting-party on two occasions; but as he had previously been in the habit of detaching himself after luncheon, no one remarked his doing so now, and no one knew that the remainder of the day until dinner-time was spent with Barbara alone. After dinner Barbara would sometimes sing, and then Churchill would hover round the piano, perhaps with more empressement than he had previously shown (because, though fond, as every man of any sensitiveness must be, of music, he was by no means an enthusiast, and was racked wofully with smothered yawns during the performance of any elaborate piece), yet by no means noticeably. And during all the time each had the inward satisfaction of knowing that their words and actions were appreciated by the other, and that the "little look across the crowd," as Owen Meredith says, was full of meaning to and thoroughly understood by the person it was intended to reach. At length, about the fourth day after the proceedings at the stile, their conversation took a more practical turn. They had been wandering slowly along, and had at length stopped to rest on a grass-covered bank which was screened from the sight of the distant house by a thick belt of evergreens, while far away in front of them stretched a glorious prospect of field and woodland. As sometimes happens in October, the sun seemed to have recovered his old July force, and blazed so fiercely that they were glad to sit under the friendly shade. Barbara had removed the glove from her right hand, and sat looking down at her lover, who lay by her side, idly tracing the course of one of the violet veins in the little hand which rested in his own broad palm. Suddenly he looked up and said:
"Darling, this lotus-eating is rapidly coming to an end. It would be sweet enough, thus 'propped on beds of amaranth and moly,' to remain and dream away the time together; but there's the big world before us, and my holiday is nearly finished."