GILBERT hurried forward as he saw Lady Eliza.
‘The pigeons are safe,’ he said. ‘I have locked up two of these rascals in the dovecot. The third, I fear, has got away.’
‘Indeed, sir, I am vastly obliged to you,’ exclaimed she. ‘You seem considerably hurt.’
‘He has had a stiff fight, ma’am,’ said Captain Somerville.
‘You are very good to have protected my property,’ she continued, looking at the two gentlemen. ‘All I can do now is to send for the police from Kaims, unless the dovecot is a safe place for them until morning.’
‘Young Stirk has gone to Kaims with my carriage,’ said Somerville, ‘for the door is not very strong, and I fancy your men have no wish to watch it all night.’
‘It seems,’ said Lady Eliza, turning to Speid, ‘that I have only to be in a difficulty for you to appear.’
Her voice was civil, and even pleasant, but something in it rang false. Gilbert felt the undercurrent instinctively, for, though he had no idea of her real sentiments towards himself, he recognised her as a person in whose doings the unexpected was the natural.
‘I think I can do nothing more,’ he said, with a formality which came to him at times, ‘so I will wish your ladyship a good-night.’
‘May I ask where you are going, sir, and how you propose to get there in that condition?’
‘It is nothing,’ replied Gilbert, ‘and Whanland is a bare four miles from here. With your permission I will start at once.’
‘Nonsense, Mr. Speid! You will do nothing of the sort. Do you suppose I shall allow you to walk all that way, or to leave Morphie till your face has been attended to? Come, Captain Somerville, let us go to the house. Sir, I insist upon your coming with us.’
The men from the stable were instructed to remain at the dovecot door until Jimmy should return with the police, and Gilbert recognised Macquean as Lady Eliza again drove him forward to light the party back under the trees. He made no comment, feeling that the moment was unsuitable, and being somewhat interested in the fact that a young woman, of whose features he could only occasionally catch a glimpse, was walking beside him; as the torchlight threw fitful splashes across her he could see the outline of a pale face below a crown of rather elaborately dressed dark hair. Lady Eliza had directed him to follow his servant, and was herself delayed by the sailor’s slow progress. Though he had never seen his companion before, she was known to him by hearsay. Her silent step, and the whiteness of her figure and drapery against the deep shadows between the trees, gave him a vague feeling that he was walking with Diana. He grew aware of his bloody face, and immediately became self-conscious.
‘I fear I am a most disagreeable object, Miss Raeburn,’ he said.
‘I had not observed it, sir,’ she replied.
‘You are very kind, but you must think me unpleasant company in this condition, all the same.’
‘I can think of nothing but that you have saved my aunt’s pigeons. She says little, but I knows he is grateful. There has always been a large flock at Morphie, and their loss would have vexed her very much.’
‘I owe Stirk—Stirk, the young cadger—a debt for bringing me word of what was going to happen. He heard of it in Blackport, and came straight to tell me.’
‘I wonder why he went to you instead of warning us,’ said she.
‘We are rather friendly, he and I. I suppose he thought he would like the excitement, and that I should like it, too. He was not wrong, for I do,’ replied Gilbert, unconsciously using the present tense.
‘Then what has brought Captain Somerville? It all happened so suddenly that there has been no time for surprise. But it is strange to find him here.’
‘He was dining with me when the news was brought, and he insisted on coming. He managed to trip a man up, and sit on him till Stirk and I came to his help. He did it with his wooden leg, I believe,’ said Gilbert, smiling in spite of his injured face.
Cecilia laughed out.
‘I think that is charming,’ she said.
Gilbert had known many women more or less intimately, but never one of his own countrywomen. He had heard much of the refinement and delicacy of the British young lady. This one, who seemed, from the occasional view he could obtain of her, and from the sound of her voice, to possess both these qualities in the highest degree, struck him as having a different attitude towards things in general to the one he had been led to expect in the class of femininity she represented. As she had herself said, there had been no time for surprise, and he now suddenly found that he was surprised—surprised by her presence, surprised to find that she seemed to feel neither agitation nor any particular horror at what had happened. He had known women in Spain who found their most cherished entertainment in the bull-ring, but he had never met one who would have taken the scene she had broken in upon so calmly.
The changed customs of our modern life have made it hard to realize that, in the days when Gilbert and Cecilia met by torchlight, it was still a proof of true sensibility to swoon when confronted by anything unusual, and that ladies met cows in the road with the same feelings with which they would now meet man-eating tigers. Indeed, the woman of the present moment, in the face of such an encounter, would probably make some more or less sensible effort towards her own safety, but, at the time of which I speak, there was nothing for a lady to do at the approach of physical difficulties but subside as rapidly as possible on to the cleanest part of the path. But Cecilia had been brought up differently. Lady Eliza led so active a life, and was apt to require her to do such unusual things, that she had seen too many emergencies to be much affected by them. There was a deal of the elemental woman in Cecilia, and she had just come too late to see the elemental man in Speid brush away the layer of civilization, and return to his natural element of fight. She was almost sorry she had been too late.
She walked on beside him, cool, gracious, the folds of her skirt gathered up into her hand, and he longed for the lamp-lit house, that he might see her clearly.
‘The man with the torch is your servant, is he not?’ said she. ‘He told me he had come from Whanland.’
‘He is,’ replied Speid; ‘but how long he will remain so is another matter. I am very angry with him—disgusted, in fact.’
‘What has he done, sir, if I may ask?’
‘Everything that is most intolerable. He drove me to the very end of my patience, in the first instance.’
‘How long is your patience, Mr. Speid?’
‘It was short to-night,’ replied Gilbert.
‘And then?’
‘Then I brought him here to be of some use, and while I was looking over the wall for these thieving ruffians, he ran away.’
‘He does not look very brave,’ observed Cecilia, a smile flickering round her lips. ‘He arrived at the door, and rang up the house, and I could see that he was far from comfortable.’
‘He will be more uncomfortable to-morrow,’ said Gilbert grimly.
‘Poor fellow,’ said Cecilia softly. ‘It must be a terrible thing to be really afraid.’
‘It is inexcusable in a man.’
‘I suppose it is,’ replied she slowly, ‘and yet——’
‘And yet—you think I should put up with him? He has enraged me often enough, but he has been past all bearing to-night.’
‘Do you really mean to send him away? He has been years at Whanland, has he not?’
‘He has,’ said Gilbert; ‘but let us forget him, Miss Raeburn, he makes me furious.’
When they reached the house, Lady Eliza led the way to the dining-room, and despatched such servants as were to be found for wine. Her hospitable zeal might even have caused a fresh dinner to be cooked, had not the two men assured her that they had only left the table at Whanland to come to Morphie.
‘If I may have some water to wash the cut on my face, I will make it a little more comfortable,’ said Speid.
He was accordingly shown into a gloomy bedroom on the upper floor, and the maid who had opened the door to Macquean, having recovered from her hysterics, was assiduous in bringing him hot water and a sponge. As the room was unused, it had all the deadness of a place unfrequented by humanity, and the heavy curtains of the bed and immense pattern of birds and branches which adorned the wall-paper gave everything a lugubrious look. He examined his cut at the looking-glass over the mantelshelf, an oblong mirror with a tarnished gilt frame.
The stone which had struck him was muddy, and he found, when he had washed the wound, that it was deeper than he supposed. It ached and smarted as he applied the sponge, for the flint had severed the flesh sharply. As he dried his wet cheek in front of the glass, he saw a figure which was entering the room reflected in it.
‘Lady Eliza has sent me with this. Can I help you, sir?’ said Cecilia rather stiffly, showing him a little case containing plaster.
She held a pair of scissors in her hand. He turned.
‘Ah!’ she exclaimed, as she saw the long, red scar; ‘that is really bad! Do, pray, use this plaster. Look, I will cut it for you.’
And she opened the case, and began to divide its contents into strips.
‘You are very good,’ he said awkwardly, as he watched the scissors moving.
She did not reply.
‘I had no intention of disturbing the house in this way,’ he continued; ‘it is allowing to Macquean’s imbecility. You need never have known anything till to-morrow morning.’
‘You are very angry with Macquean,’ said Cecilia. ‘I cannot bear to think of his leaving a place where he has lived so long. But you will be cooler to-morrow, I am sure. Now, Mr. Speid, I have made this ready. Will you dip it in the water and put this strip across the cut?’
Gilbert did as he was bid, and, pressing the edges of the wound together, began to lay the plaster across his cheek.
‘You can hardly see,’ said she. ‘Let me hold the light.’
She raised the candle, and the two looked intently into the glass at his fingers, as he applied the strip. He met with scant success, for it stuck to his thumb and curled backwards like a shaving. He made another and more careful attempt to place it, but, with the callous obstinacy often displayed by inanimate things, it refused to lie flat.
The two pairs of eyes met in the looking-glass.
‘I cannot make it hold,’ said he. ‘It is not wet enough, and I am too clumsy.’
His arm ached where it had been hit below the elbow; it was difficult to keep it steady.
‘I can do it,’ said Cecilia, a certain resolute neutrality in her voice. ‘Hold the candle, sir.’
She took the strip from him, and, dipping it afresh in the water, laid it deftly across his cheek-bone.
As her cool fingers touched his hot cheek he dropped his eyes from her face to the fine handkerchief which she had tucked into her bosom, and which rose and fell with her breathing. She took it out, and held it pressed against the plaster.
‘You will need two pieces,’ she said. ‘Keep this upon the place while I cut another strip.’
He had never been ordered in this way by a girl before. Caprice he had experience of, and he had known the exactingness of spoilt women, but Cecilia’s impersonal commanding of him was new, and it did not displease him. He told himself, as he stood in front of her, that, were he to describe her, he would never call her a girl. She was essentially a woman.
‘That is a much better arrangement,’ observed Captain Somerville, as Gilbert entered the dining-room alone. ‘I did not know you were such a good surgeon, Speid.’
‘Don’t praise me. I was making such a clumsy job of it that Miss Raeburn came to my help; she has mended it so well that a few days will heal it, I expect.’
‘You will have a fine scar, my lad,’ said the sailor.
‘That doesn’t matter. I assure you, the thing is of no consequence. It is not really bad.’
‘It is quite bad enough,’ said Lady Eliza.
‘You think far too much of it, ma’am.’
‘At any rate, sit down and help yourself to some wine. I have not half thanked you for your good offices.’
‘I fancy he is repaid,’ said Somerville dryly, glancing at the strips of plaster.
Lady Eliza had ordered a carriage to be got ready to take Speid and the sailor home, and Captain Somerville had sent a message to Kaims by Jimmy Stirk, telling his family to expect his return in the morning, as he had accepted Gilbert’s suggestion that he should remain at Whanland for the night. He looked kindly on this arrangement, for he was over sixty, and it was a long time since he had exerted himself so much.
While they stood in the hall bidding Lady Eliza good-night, Cecilia came downstairs. She had not followed Gilbert to the dining-room. She held out her hand to him as he went away.
‘Thank you,’ said he, looking at her and keeping it for a moment.
He leaned back in the carriage beside Somerville, very silent, and, when they reached Whanland and he had seen his friend installed for the night, he went to his own room. What had become of Macquean he did not know and did not care. He sat late by the fire, listening to the snoring of the sailor, which reached him through the wall.
A violent headache woke him in the morning and he lay thinking of the events of the preceding night. He put his hand up to his cheek to feel if the plaster was in its place. Macquean came in, according to custom, with his shaving-water, looking neither more nor less uncouth and awkward than usual. Though he shifted from foot to foot, the man had a complacency on his face that exasperated his master.
‘What did you mean by leaving the carriage last night?’ said Gilbert.
‘A’ went awa’ to Morphie,’ said Macquean.
‘And who told you to do that?’
‘Aw! a’ didna’ speir[1] about that. A’ just tell’t them to gang awa’ down to the doo’cot. Her ladyship was vera well pleased,’ continued Macquean, drawing his lips back from his teeth in a chastened smile.
‘Get out of the room, you damned fellow! You should get out of the house, too, if it weren’t for—for—get out, I say!’ cried Gilbert, sitting up suddenly.
Macquean put down the shaving-water and went swiftly to the door. When he had shut it behind him he stood a moment to compose himself on the door-mat.
‘He shouldna speak that way,’ he said very solemnly, wagging his head.