Viewed from the other side, from the cliffs, the scene made a different impression. Not the intervening valley but the house held the eye. It was not large, but the knoll on which it stood was scarped on that side, and the walls of weathered brick rose straight from the rock, fortress-like and imposing, displaying all their mass. The gables and the stacks of fluted chimneys dated only from Dutch William, but tradition had it that a strong place, Castell Coch, had once stood on the same site; and fragments of pointed windows and Gothic work, built into the walls, bore out the story.
The road leaving the village made a right-angled turn round Garth and then, ascending, ran through the upper part of the Thirty Acres, skirting the foot of the rocks. Along the lower edge of the covert, between wood and water, there ran also a field-path, a right-of-way much execrated by the Squire. It led by a sinuous course to the Acherley property, and, alas, for good resolutions, along it on the afternoon of the very day which saw the elder Ovington at Garth came Clement Ovington, sauntering as usual.
He carried a gun, but he carried it as he might have carried a stick, for he had long passed the bounds within which he had a right to shoot; and at all times, his shooting was as much an excuse for a walk among the objects he loved as anything else. He had left his horse at the Griffin Arms in the village, and he might have made his way thither more quickly by the road. But at the cost of an extra mile he had preferred to walk back by the brook, observing as he went things new and old; the dipper curtseying on its stone, the water-vole perched to perform its toilet on the leaf of a brook-plant, the first green shoots of the wheat piercing through the soil, an old laborer who was not sorry to unbend his back, and whose memory held the facts and figures of fifty-year-old harvests. The day was mild, the sun shone, Clement was happy. Why, oh, why were there such things as banks in the world?
At a stile which crossed the path he came to a stand. Something had caught his eye. It was a trifle, to which nine men out of ten would not have given a thought, for it was no more than a clump of snowdrops in the wood on his right. But a shaft of wintry sunshine, striking athwart the tiny globes, lifted them, star-like, above the brown leaves about them, and he paused, admiring them--thinking no evil, and far from foreseeing what was to happen. He wondered if they were wild, or--and he looked about for any trace of human hands--a keeper's cottage might have stood here. He saw no trace, but still he stood, entranced by the white blossoms that, virgin-like, bowed meek heads to the sunlight that visited them.
He might have paused longer, if a sound had not brought him abruptly to earth. He turned. To his dismay he saw a girl, three or four paces from him, waiting to cross the stile. How long she had waited, how long watched him, he did not know, and in confusion--for he had not dreamed that there was a human being within a mile of him--and with a hurried snatch at his hat, he moved out of the way.
The girl stepped forward, coloring a little, for she foresaw that she must climb the stile under the young man's eye. Instinctively, he held out a hand to assist her, and in the act--he never knew how, nor did she--the gun slipped from his grasp, or the trigger caught in a bramble. A sheet of flame tore between them, the blast of the powder rent the air.
"O my God!" Clement cried, and he reeled back, shielding his eyes with his hands.
The smoke hid the girl, and for a long moment, a moment of such agony as he had never known, Clement's heart stood still. What had he done? oh, what had he done at last, with his cursed carelessness! Had he killed her?
Slowly, the smoke cleared away, and he saw the girl. She was on her feet--thank God, she was on her feet! She was clinging with both hands to the stile. But was she--"Are you--are you----" he tried to frame words, his voice a mere whistle.
She clung in silence to the rail, her face whiter than the quilted bonnet she wore. But he saw--thank God, he saw no wound, no blood, no hurt, and his own blood moved again, his lungs filled again with a mighty inspiration. "For pity's sake, say you are not hurt!" he prayed. "For God's sake, speak!"
But the shock had robbed her of speech, and he feared that she was going to swoon. He looked helplessly at the brook. If she did, what ought he to do? "Oh, a curse on my carelessness!" he cried. "I shall never, never forgive myself."
It had in truth been a narrow, a most narrow escape, and at last she found words to say so. "I heard the shot--pass," she whispered, and shuddering closed her eyes again, overcome by the remembrance.
"But you are not hurt? They did pass!" The horror of that which might have been, of that which had so nearly been, overcame him anew, gave a fresh poignancy to his tone. "You are sure--sure that you are not hurt?"
"No, I am not hurt," she whispered. "But I am very--very frightened. Don't speak to me. I shall be right--in a minute."
"Can I do anything? Get you some water?"
She shook her head and he stood, looking solicitously at her, still fearing that she might swoon, and wondering afresh what he ought to do if she did. But after a minute or so she sighed, and a little color came back to her face. "It was near, oh, so near!" she whispered, and she covered her face with her hands. Presently, and more certainly, "Why did you have it--at full cock?" she asked.
"God knows!" he owned. "It was unpardonable. But that is what I am! I am a fool, and forget things. I was thinking of something else, I did not hear you come up, and when I found you there I was startled."
"I saw." She smiled faintly. "But it was--careless."
"Horribly! Horribly careless! It was wicked!" He could not humble himself enough.
She was herself now, and she looked at him, took him in, and was sorry for him. She removed her hands from the rail, and though her fingers trembled she straightened her bonnet. "You are Mr. Ovington?"
"Yes. And you are Miss Griffin, are you not?"
"Yes," smiling tremulously.
"May I help you over the stile? Oh, your basket!"
She saw that it lay some yards away, blackened by powder, one corner shot away; so narrow had been the escape! He had a feeling of sickness as he took it up. "You must not go on alone," he said. "You might faint."
"Not now. But I shall not go on. What----" Her eyes strayed to the wood, and curiosity stirred in her. "What were you looking at so intently, Mr. Ovington, that you did not hear me?"
He colored. "Oh, nothing!"
"But it must have been something!" Her curiosity was strengthened.
"Well, if you wish to know," he confessed, shamefacedly, "I was looking at those snowdrops."
"Those snowdrops?"
"Don't you see how the sunlight touches them? What a little island of light they make among the brown leaves?"
"How odd!" She stared at the snowdrops and then at him. "I thought that only painters and poets, Mr. Wordsworth and people like that, noticed those things. But perhaps you are a poet?"
"Goodness, no!" he cried. "A poet? But I am fond of looking at things--out of doors, you know. A little way back"--he pointed up-stream, the way he had come--"I saw a rat sitting on a lily leaf, cleaning its whiskers in the sun--the prettiest thing you ever saw. And an old man working at Bache's told me that he--but Lord, I beg your pardon! How can I talk of such things when I remember----?"
He stopped, overcome by the recollection of that through which they had passed. She, for her part, was inclined to ask him to go on, but remembered that this, all this was very irregular. What would her father say? And Miss Peacock? Yet, if this was irregular, so was the adventure itself. She would never forget his face of horror, the appeal in his eyes, his poignant anxiety. No, it was impossible to act as if nothing had happened between them, impossible to be stiff and to talk at arm's length about prunes and prisms with a person who had all but taken her life--and who was so very penitent. And then it was all so interesting, so out of the common, so like the things that happened in books, like that dreadful fall from the Cobb at Lyme in