He would see her, not standing as he had seen her first, in sad autumnal scenery, not coming towards him in the pale firelit room, not walking beside him to the village, while the wind drove flights of dead leaves across the grey curtain of the sky, not as she faced him, frightened and breathless, in the quivering circle of lamplight on the stairs, not as he remembered her last of all, when she stood beyond the boundary which he might not cross, and Mitchelhurst Place rose behind her in the light of the moon, white and dead as dry bones. It seemed to him that it must always be autumn at Mitchelhurst, with dim, short days, and gusty nights, and the chilly atmosphere laden with odours of decay. But all this was past and over, and he was going to meet Barbara in the spring. Barbara in April—all happy songs of love, all the young gladness of the year, all tender possibilities were summed up in those three words. He was startled at the sudden eagerness which escaped from his control, and throbbed and bounded within him when he resolved to see her once again. But he did not betray it outwardly, unless, perhaps, by an attempt to write his next correction with a dry pen.
He listened to Guy's excited chatter as the day drew near, and set out with him to carry the invitation to Bob Wilton, in a mood which, on the surface, was one of apathetic patience. Nothing he could do would hasten the arrival of Tuesday, but nevertheless it was coming. When the two boys went off to the stables together, he waited. He might as well wait in the Wiltons' sunny drawing-room as anywhere else. And when some one entered by the further door and began to play, he listened, not ill pleased. He had no ear for music, but the defect was purely physical, and except for that hindrance he might have loved it. As it was he could not appreciate the meaning of what was played beyond the curtain, nor could he recognise the skill and delicacy with which it was rendered. To him it was only a bright, formless ripple of sound, gliding vaguely by, till suddenly Barbara's tune, rounded and clear and silver sweet, awoke him from his reverie.
For a moment he sat breathless with wonder. Only a dull memory of her music had stayed with him, a kind of tuneless beating of its measure, and the living notes, melodiously full, pursued that poor ghost through his heart and brain. His pulses throbbed as if the girl herself were close at hand. Then he rose, and softly stepped across the room. Who was it who was playing Barbara's tune? Who but the man who had played it to Barbara?
Considered as a piece of reasoning this was weak. Anybody would have told him the name of the composer, and could have assured him that dozens and scores of men might play the thing. Barbara might have heard it on a barrel organ! But Harding's thoughts went straight to the one man who had left music lying about at Mitchelhurst with his name, "Adrian Scarlett," written on it. Barbara's tune jangled wildly in his ears; she had learnt it from this man, or she had taught it to him.
Thus it happened that Adrian looked up from his playing, and saw the picture in the mirror, the face that followed him with its intent and hostile gaze. And Reynold, standing apart and motionless, watched the musician, and noted his air of careless ease and mastery, the smile which lingered on his lips, and the way in which he threw back his head and let his glances rove, though of course he did not know that all these things were a little accentuated by Adrian's self-consciousness under his scrutiny. He was sure, even before a word had been uttered, that this was the man whose name had haunted him at Mitchelhurst, and who won Mr. Pryor's heart by singing at his penny reading. To Reynold, standing in the shadow, Scarlett was the type of the conquering young hero, swaggering a little in the consciousness of his popularity and his facile triumphs.
To some extent he wronged Adrian, and on one point Adrian wronged him. He believed that Harding had exulted in the idea of putting him on the wrong scent with his "Sandmoor near Ilfracombe." But in point of fact Harding had given the address with real reluctance. He had been asked where the Stranges lived, and had told the truth. To have supplemented it with information as to Barbara's whereabouts would have been to assume a knowledge of Scarlett's meaning in asking the question, a thing intolerable and impossible. Yet Harding's morbid pride was galled by his unwilling deceit, and he wished that the subject had never been mentioned. He had no doubt that his rival would go to Sandmoor, but he did not exult in the thought of the disappointment that awaited him there.
Still, when Tuesday came it undoubtedly was a satisfaction to feel that the express was carrying Mr. Scarlett further and further from the gate which led into Nutfield Lane. Otherwise the day was of but doubtful promise, its blue blotted with rain-clouds, which Guy Robinson regarded as a personal injury. It brightened, however, after the birthday party had started, and Reynold set out on his rather vague errand, under skies which shone and threatened in the most orthodox April fashion. The heavens might have laid a wager that they would show a dozen different faces in the hour, from watery sadness to glittering joy. It was hardly a day on which Mrs. Ashford would care to creep out in her brougham, but a little Devonshire girl, tired of a dull house, might very well face it with an umbrella and her second-best hat.
Harding made sure that she would. If she failed to do so he had no scheme ready. He did not know the Ashfords, and to go up to their house and ask for Miss Strange, could lead, at the best, to nothing but a formal interview under the eyes of an old lady who would consider his visit an impertinence. But Barbara would come! It was surely time that his luck should turn. When the hazard of the die has been against us a dozen times we are apt to have an irrational conviction that our chance must come with the next throw, and Harding strolled round the Ashfords' place, questioning only how, and how soon, she would appear. To see her once—it was so little that he asked!—to see her, and to hold her hand for a moment in his own, and to make her look up at him, straight into his eyes. And if she had the fancy still, as he somehow thought she had, to hear him say that he forgave her, why, he would say it. As if he had ever blamed her for the little forgetfulness which had ended all his hopes of fortune! And yet, if Barbara could have known how near that fortune had been! The old man's health had failed suddenly during the winter, the great inheritance was about to fall in, and Reynold would have been a partner and his own master within a few months from his decision. "Well," he said to himself as he leant on the gate in Nutfield Lane, "and even so, what harm has she done? Was I not going to say No before I saw her? And if she persuaded me to write the Yes which turned to No at the bottom of her apron pocket, am I to complain of her for that?"
He thought, that he would ask her for a flower, a leaf, or a budding twig from the hedge, just by way of remembrance. At present he had none, except the unopened letter which she had given back to him in his lodgings at Mitchelhurst.
The day grew fairer as it passed. Though a couple of sparkling showers, which filled the sunlit air with the quick flashing of falling drops, drove him once and again for shelter to a hay-stack in a neighbouring meadow, the blue field overhead widened little by little, and shone through the tracery of leafless boughs. He felt his spirits rising almost in spite of himself. He came back, after the second shower, by the field path to the lane, and was in the act of getting over the gate when he heard steps coming quickly towards him. Not Barbara's, they were from the opposite direction. He sprang hastily down, and found himself face to face with Mr. Adrian Scarlett, who was humming a tune.