“Let me be frank, Mr Reed. I look back upon the time you spent with us, sir, as a bright little spot in rather a dark existence. You impressed me favourably, sir. This is a very unconventional admission, but I am eccentric. Let me tell you openly that you impressed me very favourably, and when you do have a leisure evening, you will be conferring a kindness upon me by coming across to the cottage, where we will do our best to make your stay such as would be acceptable to a busy man—restful and calm. There, Dinah, what do you say to that for a long complimentary speech.”
Dinah murmured something, but her eyes did not endorse her father’s words, for they fell, and the nerves about the corners of her lips twitched slightly as she listened to their visitor’s reply.
“This is very good and kind of you, Major Gurdon,” he said; “and I should be ungrateful if I did not accept your hospitality. Let me be frank, though, with you, sir. I came down here to try and forget my troubles in hard work. My mission is to make this mine a successful venture for the sake of those who have embarked in the scheme, and my thoughts run upon the work, and that alone. I shall prove to be a very dreary guest.”
“Let me have my opinion about that,” said the Major, smiling. “You have done wisely, sir. Hard work in these solitudes will restore your tone. I came down years ago in despair, to die forgotten; but I soon found out that ‘there is a divinity which shapes our ends, rough hew them as we may.’ I was not to die, sir. Life began to have attractions once more. I found that there was something to live for besides self. Here we are, then, and, Mr Reed, you are very welcome.”
He drew back for his guest to enter, and he in turn made place for Dinah, who raised her eyes to thank him in silence for his courtesy, when he saw a sudden change come over her countenance, which in an instant was full of a painful look of utter despair, as she seemed to have caught sight of something over his shoulder.
The next moment she had hurried in, and Clive Reed followed, feeling a new interest in his host’s child, and at the same moment asking himself whether she were not suffering from some mental trouble, which was eating away the hopefulness of a life so young as hers.
There was something very restful and calm about that evening at the cottage. Dinah hardly spoke a word, but after the pleasant meal sat engaged upon some piece of work, over which her white fingers passed hastily to and fro, as the guest sat back in his chair and watched them, while the Major smoked his cigar at the window, and chatted at times about London and India, where he had gone through some service at the time of the Mutiny.
But there were many lapses into silence, and the whole tone of the evening was grave and still, according wonderfully with Clive Reed’s state of mind, as he felt a kind of sympathy for the lady before him, and found himself working out her career, without female companionship, saving that of the stern-looking elderly servant. Dinah Gurdon, he thought, must have gone through some terrible time of anguish to wear such an aspect as he had noticed more than once, and he pitied her, as he saw the busy hands, utterly devoid of any ornament but their natural beauty of form and whiteness, still going to and fro the needlework in the light cast upon them by the shaded lamp.
And then all at once it was late, and time for him to go; but he did not care to stir—all was truly calm, there was such a sweet repose about the place that life had suddenly grown dreamy, and he lay back in his chair listening to the Major, and still watching those hands that were as beautiful as—more beautiful than—Janet’s.
Her face came into his mind with that, like a painful jarring discord in the midst of some soft, dreamy symphony, and he started up.