CHAPTER V.
t was chilly as only an English spring knows how to be. The fir-woods were deserted—the pathways through them wet and slippery. But overhead there was fitful sunshine and patches of blue sky, though the Surrey hills were misty and the fields were sodden with many rains. The leaves were beginning to unfold, fresh and green; the primroses were thick in the hedges; and here and there the little white stitchwort showed itself, tearful and triumphant. The thrushes and blackbirds were making ready for summer, though as yet there was not a sign of it.
Alfred Wimple and Aunt Anne had been more than a month at the cottage. The latter pottered about the garden, looking at every up-coming plant with absent recognition; but that was all. She was too sad to care any more for the delights of the country. She had grown feeble, too, and could not walk very far—even the garden tired her. Mrs. Burnett’s governess-cart had been her great comfort. She had no fear of doing the pampered pony, as she called it, any harm, and had driven herself for hours along the lonely roads between the fir-trees, and the hedges of awakening gorse and heather. The straggling population for three miles round knew her well—the lonely old lady, with the black bonnet and the long black cloak fastened with the steel clasp. Alfred Wimple never went with her; he had refused from the very first. But he had a way of disappearing by himself for long hours together. Where he went she could never divine; and to ask him questions, she told herself once, was like trying to look at the bottom of the sea by pushing away the water with her two hands. Still it was a mystery she was determined to unravel sooner or later: she felt that the solution lay at Liphook, and dreaded to think what it might be. Into her heart, against her will, lately there had sometimes crept a suspicion that was shame and agony; but she would not own, even in the lowest, most secret whisper, that it was possible. She never went to Liphook, though it would have been easy enough to drive there; she never dared: something seemed to hold her back from that which she felt to be only a few miles away, on the other side of Hindhead. She would not try to put into any shape at all what her dread was: least of all would her pride let her for a single moment imagine that it was the one thing of which the humiliation would kill her. But, silently, she watched, and hour after hour she sat wondering what was in the heart of that strange, inscrutable young man, who spoke so few words, and seemed to be always watching and waiting for the accomplishment of some mysterious plan he revolved again and again in his mind, but to which he had no intention of giving a clue.
He could hire no more waggonettes at Steggall’s without paying for them, or without her knowledge; but once or twice she had seen him going along a by-path towards the station, so that he would arrive there just about the time there was a train to Liphook. She remembered that on the first occasion, he had pulled a shilling out of his pocket an hour or two before he started and looked at it, as if wondering whether it would be enough for a return ticket.
“Alfred,” she asked one day, “will you take me to see your country quarters, my love? I should like to visit the place which has been of so much benefit to you?”
“No,” he answered, looking at her steadfastly, as he always did; “I don’t wish you to go there.”
“May I ask your reason?”
“My wish should be sufficient.”