William smiled. “I don’t know where you can pick up gold and diamonds for the stooping. Not where I am going.”
“No, not in New York. You should make your way to the Australian gold-fields, Brook, or to the rich Californian mines, or to the diamond mountains in Africa, and come back—as you would in no time—with a sack of money on your shoulders, large enough to satisfy even Delorane.”
“Or lose my health, if not my life, in digging, and come home without a shirt to my back; a more common result than the other, I fancy,” remarked William. “Well, good-bye, old friend.”
St. George, towering aloft in his height and strength, put his arm around William’s shoulder and walked thus with him to the street-entrance. There they shook hands, and parted. Ellin Delorane, her face shaded behind the drawing-room curtain from the October sun, watched the parting.
There was to be no set farewell allowed to her. She understood that. But she gathered from Aunt Hester, during the day, that her father had not been altogether obdurate, and that if William could get on in the future, perhaps things might be suffered to come right. It brought to her a strange comfort. So very slight a ray, no bigger than one of the specks that fall from the sky, as children say, will serve to impart a most unreasonable amount of hope to the troubled heart.
Towards the close of the afternoon, Ellin went in her restlessness to pay a visit to her friend Grace at the Rectory, who had recently become Herbert Tanerton’s wife, and sat talking with her till it was pretty late. The moon, rising over the tops of the trees, caused her to start up with an exclamation.
“What will Aunt Hester say?”
“If you don’t mind going through the churchyard, Ellin,” said Grace, “you would cut off that corner, and save a little time.” So Ellin took that route.
“Ellin!”
“William!”
They had met face to face under the church walls. He explained that he was sparing a few minutes to say farewell to his friends at the Rectory. The moon, coming out from behind a swiftly passing cloud, for it was rather a rough night, shone down upon them and upon the graves around them. Wildly enough beat the heart of each.
“You saw papa to-day,” she whispered unevenly, as though her breath were short.
“Yes, I saw him. I cannot say that he gave me hope, Ellin, but he certainly did not wholly deny it. I think—I believe—that—if I can succeed in getting on, all may be well with us yet.”
William Brook spoke with hesitation. He felt trammelled; he could not in honour say what he would have wished to say. This meeting might be unorthodox, but it was purely accidental; neither he nor Ellin had sought it.
“Good-bye, my darling,” he said with emotion, clasping her hands in his. “As we have met, there cannot be much wrong in our saying it. I may not write to you, Ellin; I may not even ask you to think of me; I may not, I suppose, tell you in so many words that I shall think of you; but, believe this: I go out with one sole aim and end in view—that of striving to make a position sufficiently fair to satisfy your father.”
The tears were coursing down her cheeks; she could hardly speak for agitation. Their hearts were aching to pain.
“I will be true to you always, William,” she whispered. “I will wait for you, though it be to the end of life.”
To be in love with a charming young lady, and to have her all to yourself in a solitary graveyard under the light of the moon, presents an irresistible temptation for taking a kiss, especially if the kiss is to be a farewell kiss for days and for years. William Brook did not resist it; very likely did not try to. In spite of Mr. Delorane and every one else, he took his farewell kiss from Ellin’s lips.
Then they parted, he going one way, she the other. Only those of us—there are not many—who have gone through this parting agony can know how it wrings the heart.
But sundry superstitious gossips, hearing of this afterwards, assured Ellin that it must be unlucky to say farewell amidst graves.
The time went on. William Brook wrote regularly to his people, and Minty whispered the news to Ellin Delorane. He would send kind remembrances to friends, love to those who cared for it. He did not dislike the work of a mercantile life, and thought he should do well—in time.
In time. There was the rub, you see. We say “in time” when we mean next Christmas, and we also say it when we mean next century. By the end of the first year William Brook was commanding a handsome salary; but the riches that might enable him to aspire to the hand of Miss Delorane loomed obscurely in the distance yet. Ellin seemed strong and well, gay and cheerful, went about Timberdale, and laughed and talked with the world, just as though she had never had a lover, or was not waiting for somebody over the water. Mr. Delorane thought she must have forgotten that scapegrace, and he hoped it was so.
It was about this time, the end of the first year, that a piece of good luck fell to Mr. St. George. He came into a fortune. Some relative in the West Indies died and left it to him. Timberdale put it down at a thousand pounds a-year, so I suppose it might be about five hundred. It was thought he might be for giving up his post at Mr. Delorane’s to be a gentleman at large. But he did nothing of the kind. He quitted his lodgings over Salmon’s shop, and went into a pretty house near Timberdale Court, with a groom and old Betty Huntsman as housekeeper, and set up a handsome gig and a grey horse. And that was all the change.
As the second year went on, Ellin Delorane began to droop a little. Aunt Hester did not like it. One of the kindest friends Ellin had was Alfred St. George. After the departure of young Brook, he had been so tender with Ellin, so considerate, so indulgent to her sorrow, and so regretful (like herself) of William’s absence, that he had won her regard. “It will be all right when he comes back, Ellin,” he would whisper: “only be patient.”
But in this, the second year, Mr. St. George’s tone changed. It may be that he saw no hope of any happy return, and deemed that, for her own sake, he ought to repress any hope left in her.
“There’s no more chance of his returning with a fortune than there is of my going up to the moon,” he said to Tod confidentially one day when we met him striding along near the Ravine.
“Don’t suppose there is—in this short time,” responded Tod.
“I’m afraid Ellin sees it, too: she seems to be losing her spirits. Ah, Brook should have done as I advised him—gone a little farther and dug in the gold-fields. He might have come back a Crœsus then. As it is—whew! I wouldn’t give a copper sixpence for his chance.”
“Do you know what I heard say, St. George?—that you’d like to go in for the little lady yourself.”
The white eye-balls surrounding St. George’s dark orbs took a tinge of yellow as they rolled on Tod. “Who said it?” he asked quietly.
“Darbyshire. He says you are in love with her as much as ever Brook was.”
St. George laughed. “Old Darbyshire? Well, perhaps he is not far wrong. Any way, love’s free, I believe. Were I her father, Brook should prove his eligibility to propose for her, or else give her up. Good-day, Todhetley; good-day, Johnny.”
St. George went off at a quick pace. Tod, looking after him, made his comments. “Should not wonder but he wins her. He is the better man of the two–”
“The better man!” I interrupted.
“As to means, at any rate: and see what a fine upright free-limbed fellow he is! And where will you find one more agreeable?”
“In tongue, nowhere; I admit that. But I wouldn’t give up William Brook for him, were I Ellin Delorane.”
That St. George was in love with her grew as easy to be seen as is the round moon in harvest. Small blame to him. Who could be in the daily companionship