“Well, last time I saw him he was in the garden; then I see him going down the dip.”
She was silent for a moment, then she asked gently—
“Was he at home all the morning?” and received an answer in the affirmative. She was silent, and seemed to turn something over in her mind.
“You are quite sure he went down the dip, and not much more than an hour and a half ago?” She stood by the kitchen fire, and she spoke absently. “I have brought a sole for dinner,” she said. “I must ask you to cook it more carefully than you did the last one, Jane. Mr. Wimple is most particular about fish—he cannot eat it unless it is quite dry. After the sole there is a chicken and some asparagus. Give me my bag—there are some other things in it, and a bottle of claret at the bottom, which I wish put on the dining-room mantelshelf for an hour. I trust you have made a good fire, Jane?”
“Yes, ma’am; but I had to do it of wood, for the coals are nearly out.”
“I prefer wood; it is not my intention to have in more coal just yet,” said Aunt Anne, firmly. “Where have you put the primroses I brought? I wish to arrange them in a bowl for the centre of the table.”
“Hadn’t you better take off your shawl first, ma’am—it’s wringing wet—and let me make you a cup of tea?”
“No, thank you, I will not trouble you to do that,” Aunt Anne said gently. “But put Mr. Wimple’s slippers by the fire in the dining-room.” She went into the drawing-room and held a match to the grate, and stood beside it while the paper blazed and the wood crackled, thinking that she and Alfred would sit over the fire cosily that evening after dinner.
“I am sure he is worried about money,” she said to herself, “and that he is in debt; but he shall not have these anxieties long—it is much better that his uncle should know about our marriage.” Her eyes turned towards the window and the garden and the trees with the rain falling on them. “I wonder if he has gone far; I hope he is not depressed. I fear he worries himself unduly,” she said, and went into the dining-room. The slippers were toasting in the fender; she turned the easy-chair towards the fire and put beside it a little table from the corner of the room. Then she went for the papers she had brought from London, and arranged them on the table, and put the bunch of violets in a glass and set it by the papers. She drew back and looked at the cosy arrangement with satisfaction. “My darling Alfred!” she said to herself; and then, softly, as if she were afraid of Jane hearing her, she crept out of the front door and under the verandah that went round the house, and looked out at the weather. The rain had nearly stopped, but the sky was grey and the air was cold. She pulled her shawl closer, and, trying to shake off the chill that was overtaking her, went swiftly down the garden pathway. At the far end the grass was long and wet; the drops fell from the beeches and larches above. She found the narrow pathway that led to the dip, and went along it. She looked anxiously ahead, but there was no sign of Alfred. “I know he will be glad to see me,” she thought. “I know the silent tenderness of his heart—my darling—my darling, you are all I have in the world!”
On she went among the gorse, between the firs, and over the clumps of budding heather, a limp black figure in the misty twilight. She had no definite reason for supposing he would return that way; but she knew it to be a short cut from the Liphook direction, and some strange instinct seemed to be sending her on: she did not hesitate or falter, but just obeyed it. The pathway was very narrow, the wet growth on either side brushed her skirts as she passed by—down and down—lower and lower—towards the valley. On the other side, a quarter of a mile away, she could see the little thatched shed the children called their “house,” where perhaps in past days a cow had been tethered. There was not a sign of Alfred. “Perhaps he is a little farther on, over the ridge,” she said, and sped on. A miserable aching was upon her; she had been out of doors many hours; she was wet and cold through and through. Every moment the long grasses and the dead bracken of a past year swept over her feet. The mist stole up to her closer and closer. The drops fell from the leaves above on to her shoulders. “He must be so cold and wet,” she thought; “I know he will make his cough worse; I am glad I kept the lozenges in my pocket.” She hesitated at the bottom of the valley for a moment, and then began the upward path. “I know he wants me,” she said aloud, with an almost passionate note in her feeble voice; “I can feel that he wants me.” She looked through the straggling firs that dotted the ground over which she was now making her way. Still, there was not a sign of Alfred. Only the trees and the undergrowth, sodden with the long day’s rain.