It was a perfect summer's morning when Mary, for the first time in many years, left her little home in Weircombe and started upon a journey she had never taken and never had thought of taking—a journey which, to her unsophisticated mind, seemed fraught with strange possibilities of difficulty, even of peril. London had loomed upon her horizon through the medium of the daily newspaper, as a vast over-populated city where (if she might believe the press) humanity is more selfish than generous, more cruel than kind,—where bitter poverty and starvation are seen side by side with criminal extravagance and luxury,—and where, according to her simple notions, the people were forgetting or had forgotten God. It was with a certain lingering and wistful backward look that she left her little cottage embowered among roses, and waved farewell to Mrs. Twitt, who, standing at the garden gate with Charlie in her arms, waved hearty response, cheerfully calling out "Good Luck!" after her, and adding the further assurance—"Ye'll find everything as well an' straight as ye left it when ye comes 'ome, please God!"
Angus Reay accompanied her in the carrier's cart to Minehead, and there she caught the express to London. On enquiry, she found there was a midnight train which would bring her back from the metropolis at about nine o'clock the next morning, and she resolved to travel home by it.
"You will be so tired!" said Angus, regretfully. "And yet I would rather you did not stay away a moment longer than you can help!"
"Don't fear!" and she smiled. "You cannot be a bit more anxious for me to come back than I am to come back myself! Good-bye! It's only for a day!"
She waved her hand as the train steamed out of the station, and he watched her sweet face smiling at him to the very last, when the express, gathering speed, rushed away with her and whirled her into the far distance. A great depression fell upon his soul,—all the light seemed gone out of the landscape—all the joy out of his life—and he realised, as it were suddenly, what her love meant to him.
"It is everything!" he said. "I don't believe I could write a line without her!—in fact I know I wouldn't have the heart for it! She is so different to every woman I have ever known,—she seems to make the world all warm and kind by just smiling her own bonnie smile!"
And starting off to walk part of the way back to Weircombe, he sang softly under his breath as he went a verse of "Annie Laurie"—
"Like dew on the gowan lyin'
Is the fa' o' her fairy feet;
And like winds in simmer sighin'
Her voice is low an' sweet
Her voice is low an' sweet;
An' she's a' the world to me;
An' for bonnie Annie Laurie
I'd lay me doun and dee!"
And all the beautiful influences of nature,—the bright sunshine, the wealth of June blossom, the clear skies and the singing of birds, seemed part of that enchanting old song, expressing the happiness which alone is made perfect by love.
Meanwhile, no adventures of a startling or remarkable kind occurred to Mary during her rather long and tedious journey. Various passengers got into her third-class compartment and got out again, but they were somewhat dull and commonplace folk, many of them being of that curiously unsociable type of human creature which apparently mistrusts its fellows. Contrary to her ingenuous expectation, no one seemed to think a journey to London was anything of a unique or thrilling experience. Once only, when she was nearing her destination, did she venture to ask a fellow-passenger, an elderly man with a kindly face, how she ought to go to Chancery Lane. He looked at her with a touch of curiosity.