“Poor young gentleman! I do pity he to be sure. He are a good sort, an’ everybody likes him. So do she, but not the way he want her to. Well; things o’ that kind allers do go contrary wise—never seem to run smooth like. I’d help him myself if ’twar in my power, but it ain’t. In such cases help can only come frae the place where they say matches be made—that’s Heaven. Ha! he’s lookin’ a bit brighter! What’s cheerin’ him? The boat coming back? I can’t see it from here, nor I don’t hear any rattle o’ oars!”
The change he notes in George Shenstone’s manner is not caused by the returning pleasure craft. Simply a reflection which crossing his mind, for the moment tranquillises him.
“What a stupid I am!” he mutters self-accusingly. “Now I remember, there was nothing said about the hour we were to go riding, and I suppose she understood in the afternoon. It was so the last time we went out together. By Jove! yes. It’s all right, I take it; she’ll be back in good time yet.”
Thus reassured he remains listening. Still more satisfied, when a dull thumping sound, in regular repetition, tells him of oars working in their rowlocks. Were he learned in boating tactics he would know there are two pairs of them, and think this strange too; since the Gwendoline carries only one. But he is not so skilled—instead, rather averse to aquatics—his chosen home the hunting field, his favourite seat in a saddle, not on a boat’s thwart. It is only when the plashing of the oars in the tranquil water of the bye-way is borne clear along the cliff, that he perceives there are two pairs at work, while at the same time he observes two boats approaching the little dock, where but one belongs!
Alone at that leading boat does he look; with eyes in which, as he continues to gaze, surprise becomes wonderment, dashed with something like displeasure. The boat he has recognised at the first glance—the Gwendoline—as also the two ladies in the stern. But there is also a man on the mid thwart plying the oars. “Who the deuce is he?” Thus to himself George Shenstone puts it. Not old Joe, not the least like him. Nor is it the family Charon who sits solitary on the thwarts of that following. Instead, Joseph is now by Mr Shenstone’s side, passing him in haste—making to go down the boat stairs!
“What’s the meaning of all this, Joe?” asks the young man, in stark astonishment.
“Meanin’ o’ what, sir?” returns the old boatman, with an air of assumed innocence. “Be there anythin’ amiss?”
“Oh, nothing,” stammers Shenstone. “Only I supposed you were out with the young ladies. How is it you haven’t gone?”
“Well, sir, Miss Gwen didn’t wish it. The day bein’ fine, an’ nothing o’ flood in the river, she sayed she’d do the rowin’ herself.”
“She hasn’t been doing it for all that,” mutters Shenstone to himself, as Joseph glides past and on down the stair; then repeating, “Who the deuce is he?” the interrogation as before, referring to him who rows the pleasure-boat.