“It’s one of those jobs where they don’t expect a man to take the master’s place,” said Inman with crafty hesitation. “I’d go in a minute if I thought it was the best plan; but will Mr. Clegg like it?”
“Of course he will; and if he doesn’t he can lump it,” replied Baldwin, who knew that he was no match for his foreman in a wordy argument with a man of the world like his banker. “If you hadn’t ha’ been Nancy’s husband it ’ud ha’ been different; but seeing as you are there’s naught more fitting. If you could catch t’ noon train you could be back i’ t’ morning, or maybe to-night.”
“Very well,” said Inman; “but don’t expect me before morning. These are jobs that can’t be hurried, and a bit of time lost is neither here nor there.”
The glamour of spring sunlight was on the landscape as Inman set out upon his six-mile tramp to the station, and even the grey hills looked warm and hospitable, whilst the meadows of the low-lands were a mosaic of rich greens of varied shade. Signs of new and joyous life were everywhere. Yellow celandines and dandelions caught the sunshine on their outspread petals and sparkled in the shadows of the dry walls and river banks. Nor was the eye the only recipient of April’s gifts, for the sweet scents that Nature had released at the coming of spring greeted another sense; the delicate odours of budding trees and the good smell of newly-turned earth. And with all these bounties another equally good—a brave, bracing wind from the heights, sharp and sweet, charged with the power to stimulate and purify. It was a day to make a man shout aloud for very joy of being alive.
But let Nature do her utmost—spread her glories like a peacock,—a man’s thoughts may curtain his senses and stifle every emotion except that which is uppermost, so that the hills may clap their hands never so loudly and he will be deaf as the dead to their music. Inman’s thoughts were not of yellow sunlight but of yellow gold; and though he was devising traps as he walked along the road with his eyes on the ground, they were certainly not intended to catch sunbeams. Beyond the curt statement that he was going to Airlee on the firm’s business he had given his wife no explanation of his journey; but it was Nancy’s interests that occupied his thoughts to the exclusion of all others, for Nancy’s interests were now his. Baldwin might go to the devil for all he cared; and if a push of his foot could speed him there it should be given with great goodwill, provided always he did not lose his own balance in the act, and that the kick should be from behind. A finer ambassador than Inman could not have been found in all the empire if Baldwin’s object was to save the throne regardless of who should occupy it. “All for my-sen!” A smile flitted across the man’s hard face as the thought occurred to him.
Soon after six o’clock that evening Nancy visited the Cove for the first time since the fatal quarrel with Jagger. She had thought she would never see the place again with pleasure—there had been one hour of bitter repentance when she had vowed that the scene of her folly should have no existence for her in the future—but she was surprised to find her heart warm as she looked upon the great crag and saw the jackdaws wheeling about in the neighbourhood of their nests. The sun would not set for another hour, but its couch was behind the mountains and Mawm would see it no more until the morrow, yet there was a wash of amber on the limestone, and the rock looked genial and friendly. There was something soul-stirring and at the same time strangely soothing in the contemplation of the ponderous cliff that faced unmoved the most violent storms and all the vicissitudes of the years. Cold as it was Nancy sat down on a rock beside the stream, and the rippling water, murmuring like an infant on its mother’s lap, turned her thoughts in another direction and brought the hot blush to her cheeks.
Raising her eyes she became conscious that a man was descending the lower slope a hundred yards away, and her face lost its colour as she recognised Jagger, and saw that she was unobserved. She was not afraid to encounter him, though they had not met in privacy before since her marriage, and had exchanged scarcely a dozen words; rather, her senses were numbed and she watched him incuriously, as if he had been a bird that had dropped down to the river to drink; and when she saw him bend his head and stand motionless, though she knew what his thoughts must be, no emotion of pity or contempt disturbed her, and she experienced no desire to steal away and escape his notice. Her feelings were turned to stone, like the man who stood as rigid as the boulders at his feet.
Even when he wheeled round and came towards her with his eyes still on the ground; when she knew that she must inevitably be discovered, her pulse beat no more quickly; but when he brushed against her dress, and uttered a startled exclamation of recognition as his eyes leaped to her face she smiled.
“I’ve been watching you this last five minutes,” she said in a calm voice, but with the weary intonation of a care-worn woman.