But she must not linger now. Later, when she was alone in her room, she could piece it together and make a whole of it, and think of it, and compass the full wonder of the adventure. But she must go now. She told him so, the primness in her tone reflecting her thoughts. "Will you kindly give me the basket?"
"I am going to carry it," he said. "You must not go alone. Indeed you must not, Miss Griffin. You may feel it more by and by. You may--go off suddenly."
"Oh," she replied, smiling, "I shall not go off, as you call it, now."
"I will only come as far as the mill," humbly. "Please let me do that."
She could not say no, it could hardly be expected of her; and she turned with him. "I shall never forgive myself," he repeated. "Never! Never! I shall dream of the moment when I lost sight of you in the smoke and thought that I had killed you. It was horrible! Horrible! It will come back to me often."
He thought so much of it that he was moving away without his gun, leaving it lying on the ground. It was she who reminded him. "Are you not going to take your gun?" she asked.
He went back for it, covered afresh with confusion. What a stupid fellow she must think him! She waited while he fetched it, and as she waited she had a new and not unpleasant sensation. Never before had she been on these terms with a man. The men whom she had known had always taken the upper hand with her. Her father, Arthur even, had either played with her or condescended to her. In her experience it was the woman's part to be ordered and directed, to give way and to be silent. But here the parts were reversed. This man--she had seen how he looked at her, how he humbled himself before her! And he was--interesting. As he came back to her carrying the gun, she eyed him with attention. She took note of him.
He was not handsome, as Arthur was. He had not Arthur's sparkle, his brilliance, his gay appeal, the carriage of the head that challenged men and won women. But he was not ugly, he was brown and clean and straight, and he looked strong. He bent to her as if he had been a knight and she his lady, and his eyes, grey and thoughtful--she had seen how they looked at her.
Now, she had never given much thought to any man's eyes before, and that she did so now, and criticised and formed an opinion of them, implied a change of attitude, a change in her relations and the man's; and instinctively she acknowledged this by the lead she took. "It seems so strange," she said half-playfully--when had she ever rallied a man before?--"that you should think of such things as you do. Snowdrops, I mean. I thought you were a banker, Mr. Ovington."
"A very bad banker," he replied ruefully. "To tell the truth, Miss Griffin, I hate banking. Pounds, shillings, and pence--and this!" He pointed to the country about them, the stream, the sylvan path they were treading, the wood beside them, with its depths gilded here and there by a ray of the sun. "A desk and a ledger--and this! Oh, I hate them! I would like to live out of doors. I want"--in a burst of candor--"to live my own life! To be able to follow my own bent and make the most of myself."
"Perhaps," she said with naïveté, "you would like to be a country gentleman?" And indeed the lot of a country gentleman in that day was an enviable one.
"Oh no," he said, his tone deprecating the idea. He did not aspire to that.
"But what, then?" She did not understand. "Have you no ambition?"
"I'd like to be--a farmer, if I had my way."
That surprised as well as dashed her. She thought of her father's tenants and her face fell. "Oh, but," she said, "a farmer? Why?" He was not like any farmer she had ever seen.
But he would not be dashed. "To make two blades of grass grow where one grew before," he answered stoutly, though he knew that he had sunk in her eyes. "Just that; but after all isn't that worth doing? Isn't that better than burying your head in a ledger and counting other folk's money while the sun shines out of doors, and the rain falls sweetly, and the earth smells fresh and pure? Besides, it is all I am good for, Miss Griffin. I do think I understand a bit about that. I've read books about it and I've kept my eyes open, and--and what one likes one does well, you know."
"But farmers----"
"Oh, I know," sorrowfully, "it must seem a very low thing to you."
"Farmers don't look at snowdrops, Mr. Ovington," with a gleam of fun in her eyes.
"Don't they? Then they ought to, and they'd learn a lot that they don't know now. I've met men, laboring men who can't read or write, and it's wonderful the things they know about the land and the way plants grow on it, and the live things that are only seen at night, or stealing to their homes at daybreak. And there's a new wheat, a wheat I was reading about yesterday, Cobbett's corn, it is called, that I am sure would do about here if anyone would try it. But there," remembering himself and to whom he was talking, "this can have no interest for you. Only wouldn't you rather plod home weary at night, feeling that you had done something, and with all this"--he waved his hand--"sinking to rest about you, and the horses going down to water, and the cattle lowing to be let into the byres, and--and all that," growing confused, as he felt her eyes upon him, "than get up from a set of ledgers with your head aching and your eyes muddled with figures?"
"I'm afraid I have not tried either," she said. But she smiled. She found him new, his notions unlike those of the people about her, and certainly unlike those of a common farmer. She did not comprehend all his half-expressed thoughts, but not for that was she the less resolved to remember them, and to think of them at her leisure. For the present here was the mill, and they must part. At the mill the field-path which they were following fell into a lane, which on the right rose steeply to the road, on the left crossed a cart-bridge, shaken perpetually by the roar and wet with the spray of the great mill-wheel. Thence it wound upwards, rough and stony, to the back premises of Garth.
He, too, knew that this division of the ways meant parting, and humility clothed him. "Heavens, what a fool I've been," he said, blushing, as he met her eyes. "What must you think of me, prating about myself when I ought to have been thinking only of you and asking your pardon."
"For nearly shooting me?"
"Yes--and thank God, thank God," with emotion, "that it was not worse."
"I do."
"I ought never to carry a gun again!"
"I won't exact that penalty." She looked at him very kindly.
"And you will forgive me? You will do your best to forgive me?"
"I will do my best, if you will not carry off my basket," she replied, for he was turning away with the basket on his arm. "Thank you," as he restored it, and in his embarrassment nearly dropped his gun. "Good-bye."
"You are sure that you will be safe now?"
"If you have no fresh accident with your firearms," she laughed. "Please be careful."
She nodded, and turned and tripped away. But she had hardly left him, she had not passed ten paces beyond the bridge, before her mood changed. The cloak of playfulness fell from her, reaction did its work. The color left her cheeks, her knees shook as she remembered. She felt again the hot blast on her cheek, lived through the flash, the shock, the onset of faintness. Again she clung to the stile, giddy, breathless, the landscape dancing about her. And through the haze she saw his face, white, drawn, terror-stricken--saw it and strove vainly to reassure him.
And now--now he was soothing her. He was pouring out his penitence, he was upbraiding himself. Presently she was herself again; her spirits rising, she was playing with him, chiding him, exercising a new sense of power, becoming the recipient of a man's thoughts, a man's hopes and ambitions. The color was back in her cheeks now, her knees were steady, she could walk. She went on, but slowly and more slowly, full of thought, reviewing what had happened.
Until, near the garden door, she was roughly brought to earth. Miss Peacock, visiting the yard on some domestic errand, had discerned her. "Josina!" she cried. "My certy, girl, but you have been quick! I wish the maids were half as quick when they go! A whole afternoon