“Oh, how foolish you must think me!” cried Violet, drying her eyes. “It is not that I am frightened. It is because I know all that made him ill. Oh, Mr Brown, tell me about it—tell me everything! He is my cousin, and he has always been like my—brother. He used to bring me here when I was a child. You can’t think how everything here is full of him—and then all at once never to hear a word!” Between every broken sentence the tears fell in little bright showers from Violet’s eyes.
Dick sat down on the same fallen tree, but at a respectful distance, and told her all he knew—which was not everything, for his mother had not entered into details, and he knew little about the incident on the river, and her share in it. Violet listened, never taking her eyes from his face, which was hard upon Dick, yet not undelightful to him. He had gone through a great many experiences that morning. But even Lady Eskside’s strange emotion, her curiosity about himself, and agitated manner, had not the same effect as this still more unexpected and strange encounter. He sat, at first rather awkwardly, upon the edge of his end of the tree, with his face turned towards her, but not always bold enough to look at her. The slant of the sunbeam, which was gradually dying off the scene, fell in the middle between them like a rail of gold, separating them from each other. Across this heavenly line of separation her eyes shone like stars, often bewildering Dick, though he kept pretty straight in his narrative, taking as little account as possible of the occasional giddiness that came over him, and the dazzling sensation in his eyes. Violet, interrupting him now and then by a brief question, sometimes crying softly under her breath, gave her entire attention to every word; and Esk ran on through all, with a murmur as of a third person keeping them company; and the wood contributed those numberless soft sounds which make up the silence of nature, enveloping them in an atmosphere of her own. Dick was not much given to poetry, but he felt like something in a fairy tale. It was an experience altogether new and strange; for hitherto there had been no enchantments in his life. How different it was to her and to him! To the young man, the first thrill of romance, the first touch of magic—the beginning of all sweet delusions, follies, and dreams; to the girl, an imperfect, faltering narrative, filled out by imagination, a poor, blurred picture—better, far better, indeed, than nothing, and giving her for the moment a kind of miserable happiness, but in itself nothing. It is frightful to think at what a disadvantage people meet each other in this world. Dick’s life, which had all been honest prose up to this moment, became on the spot, poetry; but, poor fellow, he was nothing but prose, poor prose to Vi, to whom these woods were full of all the lyric melodies of young life. She listened to him without thinking of him, drinking in every word and not ungrateful, any more than she was ungrateful to the fallen tree, or the beech boughs that sheltered her. Nay, she had a warmer feeling, a sense of grateful friendship, to Dick.
“Mr Brown,” she said, when his tale was done, “I am very, very thankful to you for telling me. I should never have known but for you. For I ought to say that my people and Val’s people—I mean my cousin’s—are not quite—quite good friends. I must not say whose fault it is,” said Vi, with a suppressed sob; “and I don’t see Lady Eskside now—so without you I should not have known. Mr Brown! would you mind writing—a little note—just two lines—to say how he is when you get back?”
“Mind!” said Dick. “If you will let me——”
“And you can tell him when he gets well,” cried the girl, her voice sinking very low, her eyes leaving Dick’s face, and straying into the glow of sunshine (as he thought) between the two great trees—“you can tell him that you met me here; and that I was thinking of him, and was glad—glad to hear of him——” To show her gladness, Violet let drop two great tears which for some time had been brimming over her eyelids. “It is dreadful to be parted from a friend and to hear no word; but now that I know, it will not be so hard. Mr Brown, you will be sure to send just two lines, two words, to tell me——”
Here her voice faltered, and lost itself in a flutter of suppressed sound—sobs painfully restrained, which yet would burst forth. She did her very best, poor child, to master them, and turning to Dick with a pathetic smile, whispered as well as she could—“I can’t tell you how it all is. It is not only for Val being ill. It is everything—everything that is wrong! Papa, too—but I can’t tell you; only tell him that you met Violet at the linn.”
“I will tell him everything you have said. I will write, if you like, every day,” cried poor Dick, his heart wrung with sympathy—and with envy as well.
“Would that be too much?” she asked, with an entreating look. “Oh, if it would not be too much! And, Mr Brown, perhaps it will be best to send it to mamma. I cannot have any secrets, though I may be unhappy. If you will give me a piece of paper, I will write the address, and thank you—oh, how I will thank you!—all my life.”
Dick, who felt miserable himself, he could scarcely tell why, got out his note-book, with all the rough little drawings in it of the brackets at Rosscraig. He had not known, when he put them down, how much more was to befall him in this one brief afternoon. She wrote the address with a little hand which trembled.
“My hand is so unsteady,” she said. “I am spoiling your book. I must write it over again. Oh, I beg your pardon; my hand never used to shake. Tell Val—but no, no. It is better that you should not tell him anything more.”