Cursed by a Fortune Part 39

"Then you will come?" he said, in the same low pa.s.sionless way.

"I will."

Five minutes after, John Garstang was helping her carefully to descend the ladder, guarding her every footstep so that she could not fall; and as they reached the ground, he quietly offered her his arm.

"What a beautifully calm and peaceful night!" he said gravely. "Do you feel the cold?"

"No; my cheeks are burning," she answered.

"Ah! yes, a little excitement; but don't be alarmed. The fly is waiting about half a mile away. A sharp walk will bring back the correct circulation. Almost a shame, though, my child, to take you from the clear pure air of the country to my gloomy house in Great Ormond Street.

Not very far from your old home."

"Don't talk to me, please, Mr Garstang," she said painfully.

"I most, my dear; and about everything that will take your attention from the step you are taking. Are your shoes pretty stout? I must not have you suffering from wet feet. By the way, my dear, you were nineteen on your last birthday. You look much older. I thought so yesterday. Dear, dear, ii my poor wife had lived, how she would have blessed me for bringing her a daughter to our quiet home! How you would have liked her, my dear! A sweet, good, clever woman--so different to Maria Wilton. Well, well, a good woman, too, in spite of her weakness for her boy."

He chatted on, with Kate walking by him in silence, till the fly was reached, with the horse munching the gra.s.s at the road side, and the driver asleep on the box, but ready to start into wakefulness at a word.

An hour later, Kate sat back in the corner of a first-cla.s.s carriage, when her strength gave way, and she burst into a hysterical fit of sobbing. But she heard Garstang's words:

"I am glad to see that, my child. Cry on; it will relieve your overburdened heart. You will be better then. You have done right; never fear. To-morrow you can rest in peace."

CHAPTER TWENTY TWO.

Jenny was almost breathless when she reached the park palings of the Manor House, some little distance from the gate at the end of the avenue; and here she paused for a few moments beneath an oak which grew within the park, but which, like many others, spread out three or four huge horizontal boughs right across the boundary lane, and made the way gloomy even on sunny days.

She looked sharply back in the direction by which she had come, but the evening was closing in more and more gloomy, and the mist exceedingly closely related to a rain, was gathering fast and forming drops on the edges of dead leaves and twigs, beside making the gra.s.s overhanging the footpath so wet that the girl's feet and the lower parts of her skirts were drenched.

No one was in sight or likely to be in that secluded spot, and having gained her breath, she started off once more, heedless of the sticky mud of the lane, and followed it on, round by the park palings, where the autumn leaves lay thick and rustled as her dress swept over them. In a few minutes she reached a stile in the fence, where a footpath--an old right of way much objected to by Squire Wilton, as the village people called him--led across the little park, pa.s.sing the house close by the end of the shrubbery, and entering another lane, which curved round to join the main road right at the far end of the village, a good mile away from the Doctor's cottage.

There were lights in the drawing-room and dining-room, making a dull glow on the thickening mist, as Jenny halted at the end of the shrubbery, and all was still as death, till a dog barked suddenly, and was answered by half a dozen others, pointers and retrievers, in the kennel by the stables. This lasted in a dismal, irritating chorus, which made the girl utter little e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.i.o.ns suggestive of impatience, as she waited for the noise to end.

She glanced round once more, but the evergreens grew thickly just over an iron hurdle fence, and she satisfied herself that as she could only indistinctly see the shrubs three or four yards away, it was impossible for her to be seen from the house.

The barking went on in a full burst for a few minutes. Then dog after dog finished its part; the s.e.xtette became a quartette, a trio, a duet; and then a deep-voiced retriever performed a powerful solo, ending it with a prolonged bay, and Jenny raised her hand to her lips, when the hill chorus burst out again, and the girl angrily stamped her foot in the wet gra.s.s.

"Oh, what a cold I shall catch," she muttered. "Why will people keep these nasty dogs?"

The barking went on for some minutes, just as before, breaking off by degrees into another solo; but at last all was still, the little sighs and e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.i.o.ns Jenny had kept on uttering ceased too. Then she raised her head quickly, and a shrill chirp sounded dead and dull in the misty air, followed at intervals by two more.

It was not a regular whistle, but a repet.i.tion of such a call as a night bird might utter in its flight as it floated over the house.

The mist seemed to stifle the call, and the girl was about to repeat it, but it was loud enough for the dogs to hear, and they set up a fierce baying, which lasted till there was a loud commotion of yelps and cries, mingled with the rattling of chains, the same deep-mouthed dog breaking out in a very different solo this time, one suggestive of suffering from the application of boot toes to its ribs.

Then quiet, and Jenny with trembling hand once more raised the little silver whistle to her lips, and the shrill chirps rang out in their former smothered way.

"Oh," sighed Jenny. "It will be a sore throat--I'm sure it will. I must go back; I dare not stay any longer. Ugh! How I do hate the little wretch. I could kill him!"

The girl's pretty little white teeth grated together, and once more she stamped her foot, following up this display of irritation by stamping the other.

"Cold as frogs," she muttered, "and the water's oozy in my boots.

Wretch!"

"Ullo!" came in a harsh whisper, followed by the cachination which often accompanies a grin. "You've come, then!"

There was a rustle of the bushes before her, and the dimly seen figure of Claud climbed over the iron hurdle, made a s.n.a.t.c.h at the girl's arm with his right and a trial to fling his left about her waist, but she eluded him.

"Keep off," she said sharply; "how dare you!"

"Because I love you so, little d.i.c.ky-bird," he whispered.

"I thought you didn't mean to come."

"No, you didn't, pet. I heard you first time, but I had to go out and kick the dogs. They heard it, too, and thought it was poachers. Only one, though--come after me!"

"You!" she said, contemptuously. "You, sir! Who would come after you?"

"Why, you would."

"Such vanity!"

"Then what did you come for?"

"To bring you back this rubbis.h.i.+ng little whistle."

"Nonsense; you'd better keep that."

"I tell you I don't want it. Take it, sir."

"No, I shan't take it. Keep it."

"There it is, then," she cried; and she threw it at him.

"Gone in among the hollies," he said. "Well, I'm not going to p.r.i.c.k myself hunting for it in the dark. What a little spit-fire it is!

What's the matter with you to-night?"

"Matter enough. I've come to tell you never to make signals for me to come out again."

"Why? I say, what a temper you are in to-night. Here, let me help you over, and we'll go round to the arbor. You'll get your feet wet standing there."

"They are wet, and I shall catch a cold and die, I hope."

"Oh, I say, Jenny!"

"Silence, sir! How dare you speak to me like that!"