Just as they gain the road an equestrian trots by, a young man with a pale vapid countenance. He slackens his pace as he passes, and sticking up his eyeglass favours Olive with an admiring stare. Her escort’s hand instinctively clenches.
“Who is that—cub?”
“Yes, ‘cub,’ that’s just what he is,” answers the girl angrily. “It’s Hubert Dorrien.”
“Oh!”
Her companion keeps a strange silence for the rest of the way, and there is a slight frown upon his face.
“Here we are at Wandsborough,” he says at length, as they gain the outskirts of the town. “I ought to have relieved you of my company before, only there was no means of doing so, as our ways both lay along the same road. Now, good-bye. I shall remember this morning for a very long time. This is a small place, and we are sure to meet again. I shall look forward to the pleasure of improving our acquaintance.”
She flashes upon him a bright little smile, and trips away lightly down the empty street—thankful that it is empty. Then for the first time it occurs to her she has been talking to this stranger all the morning as freely and naturally as if she had known him all her life.
Chapter Six.
“Mr Rowlands.”
Roland Dorrien paced slowly up and down the little garden in front of his lodgings, smoking his after-breakfast cigar, and making up his mind to the discharge of an unpleasant duty.
He had been nearly a week at Wandsborough, and was surprised to find how quickly the days had slipped by. The country was new to him, the weather delightful, and he thoroughly enjoyed his long rambles, with the faithful Roy for his sole companion. Venn’s letter of introduction had been duly handed in at the Rectory, but hitherto no notice had been taken of it, a circumstance which did not trouble him, for he was by no means tired of his own company.
The unpleasant duty to which he was making up his mind, was the betaking of himself to Cranston. It would be a constrained sort of a meeting, and therefore unpleasant. He had gathered enough during his stay in Wandsborough to show that his people had not changed for the better. Well, it had to be got through somehow; but he would not betake himself thither straight from here. He would run up to Town, and come down as if for the first time.
His cogitations were interrupted by the voice of his landlady announcing in a tone of flurried importance:
“Dr Ingelow, sir.”
“So sorry I was not able to look in upon you earlier, Mr Rowlands,” began the rector in his bright genial manner. “The fact is, I am short-handed just now, and busy times are the result. And this must be my excuse for calling at such an early hour.”
“Not at all—very good of you. Here, Roy—come away, sir—I am afraid that dog never will learn manners. Go and lie down, sir.” For Roy, without even a preliminary growl, had made friends at once with the rector. Indeed so demonstrative had been his friendliness that that excellent priest’s cassock bore token of the same, in the acquisition of many white and brown hairs.
“Don’t send him away—he’s taken to me at once—fine fellow?” said the rector, patting him. “And pray don’t throw away your cigar, as I see you were about to do. I like smoke—too well, my girls tell me. And how is Venn? Let me see, it must be many years since I saw him. What’s he doing now?”
“Something in the City—stockbroking, I believe.”
“Is he! His people tried ever so hard to make a parson of him, but he didn’t see it at all—nothing would induce him to become one—and he was right. Venn is the best of good fellows, but he’d never have done for a parson. His father sent him to me to try and get him hammered into Orders, and more than half quarrelled with me because I could take a horse to the water but couldn’t make him drink—ha! ha!”
“H’m! Queer people, fathers,” said Roland with a laugh, in which his visitor joined right heartily.
“You think so, do you? Wait till you get to my age, and you’ll be still more of that opinion. At least, if you’re not it’ll be for no want of telling.”
They chatted for a few minutes longer, and then the rector rose.
“I hope you’ll come and dine with us some evening,” he said in his easy genial way. “There’ll be only ourselves, and we shall be delighted to see you. Let me see—why not come to-night—that is, if you have nothing better to do?”
“Nothing will give me greater pleasure.”
“Very good. Then this evening at seven. Now I must say good-bye, for I have to rush about all the morning. So glad to make the acquaintance of a friend of Venn’s.”
When the rector had gone, Roland was so preoccupied with recalling the strong family likeness existing between his companion on the beach and his departing visitor, that he quite overlooked the fact that the latter had made no reference whatever to Cranston; rather a strange thing, under the circumstances.
“Well, sir, and our rector’s a nice pleasant gentleman, isn’t he?” remarked the landlady, while laying the cloth an hour later.
“He is indeed, Mrs Jenkins. Been here long?”
“Nigh upon sixteen years. Miss Margaret and Miss Olive were little then, and Miss Sophie were a baby. They do say as Dr Ingelow was dreadful cut up when he lost his poor lady.”
“Oh, he’s a widower then?”
“Yes, sir. His lady died shortly before he came here, I’ve heard tell. But law bless you, sir, Miss Margaret, she did for all the younger ones as though she was a grown-up young lady.”
“How many of them are there—daughters, I mean?”
“Three, sir. You must have seen them in church, in the front seat of all. Not on the side of the heagle—the other side.”
“Oh!”
“Yes, and they’re that good—although the two younger ones, leastways, are merry and fond of a bit of mischief. Why when Jenkins broke his leg”—and the good woman launched out into a dissertation after the manner of her kind, straying far away from the goodness of the parson’s daughters, which Jenkins’ broken leg was hauled in to illustrate—far away even from that fractured, but once more useful, member itself into a great cloud of reminiscence, wherein the speaker’s uncle’s deceased wife’s sister’s third cousin once removed and a certain tom-cat endowed with marvellous properties largely figured.
Her auditor gave a weary sigh. In the hope of finding out more about his new acquaintance, he had let the woman’s tongue run on, and found, like the ingenious Oriental who invented a steamboat, that having once set it going he was unable to stop it.
Roland ate his luncheon in a brown study. His landlady’s gossip had told him what he wanted to know. The girl by whose side he had sat and walked yesterday morning—the girl who had so strangely attracted him in the parish church, was the daughter of his late visitor—and to-night he was to dine at the Rectory. Things couldn’t have turned out better. Yet all this was in the highest degree absurd. What could it matter to him who she was—or indeed if he never saw her again! But that morning on the beach! Bosh! He had not fallen in love with her—not he. He knew better than that. Yet Roland Dorrien, gloomy of temperament and entertaining no spark of affection for any living soul, was obliged to admit to himself that he had thought and was still thinking a good deal about that oval-faced girl with the dark expressive eyes.
And here a new idea struck him. That assumed name had been