asked Minnie indignantly. “It was very naughty of you.”
“I was out of temper, Minnie; not fit company for nice people. How do you do, Hilda?”
He had fallen into the way of calling her by her Christian name almost from the beginning of their acquaintance; in those days when he had been so much brighter and happier than he seemed to be now.
The donkey jogged on, carrying off the twins, Minnie holding forth all the time, lecturing Bothwell for his rudeness. The Fräulein followed, eager to protect her charges. They were only a few paces in advance, but Hilda felt as if she were alone with Bothwell.
“So the children have had their long-promised tea-party,” he said, “and I was out of it. Hard lines.”
“They missed you very much,” said Hilda. “But did not you know it was to be this afternoon?”
“I knew yesterday—Dora told me,” answered Bothwell, hitting the wild flowers savagely with his cane, as he walked by Hilda’s side.
Unconsciously they had fallen into a much slower pace than the Fräulein and the donkey, and they were quite alone.
“I knew all about the tea-party, and I meant to be with you; and then something went wrong with me this morning, and I felt only fit company for devils. If Satan had been giving a tea-party anywhere within reach, I would have gone to that,” concluded Bothwell vindictively.
“I am very glad Satan does not give tea-parties in Cornwall. Of course you know that he would never trust himself in our county, for fear our Cornish cooks should make him into a pie,” answered Hilda, trying to smile. “But I am very sorry to hear you have been worried.”
“My life has been made up of worries for the last six months. I try sometimes to be cheerful—reckless rather—and to forget; and then the viper begins to bite again.”
Hilda would have given much to be able to comfort him. It seemed almost as if he looked to her for comfort, and yet what could she say to a man whose troubles she knew not, who kept his own secret, and hardened his heart against his friends?
They walked on in silence for a little way. Some of the reapers were going homeward in the soft evening light; there was a great wain being loaded a field or two off, and the voices of men and women sounded clear and musical through the summer stillness.
“Would you be sorry for a man who had brought trouble on himself from his own folly, from his own wrong-doing, Hilda?” Bothwell asked presently.
“I should be all the more sorry for him on that account,” she answered gently.
“Yes, you would pity him. Such women as you and Dora are angels of compassion. They never withhold their pity; but it is tempered with scorn. They despise the sinner, even while they are merciful to him.”
“You ought not to say that. I am not given to despising people. I am too conscious of my own shortcomings.”
“You are an angel,” said Bothwell piteously. “O Hilda, how much I have lost in life—how many golden opportunities I have wasted!”
“There are always other opportunities to be found,” answered the girl, trying to speak words of comfort, vaguely, hopelessly, in her utter ignorance of his griefs or his perplexities. “There is always the future, and the chance of beginning again.”
“Yes, in Queensland, in the Fijis, in Peru. If you mean that I may some day learn to make my own living, I grant the possibility. Queensland or Peru may do something for me. But my chances of happiness, my chances of renown—those are gone for ever. I lost all when I left the army. At seven-and-twenty I am a broken man. Hard for a man to feel that this life is all over and done with before he is thirty.”
“I fancy there must be a time in every life when the clouds seem to shut out the sun; but the darkness does not last for ever,” said Hilda softly. “I hope the cloud may pass from your sky.”
“Ah, if it would, Hilda—if that cloud could pass and leave me my own man again, as I was nine years ago, before I went to India!”
“You seemed to be very happy last winter—in the hunting season,” said Hilda, trying to speak lightly, though her heart was beating as furiously as if she had been climbing a mountain.
“Yes, I was happy then. I allowed myself to forget. I did not know just then that the trouble I had taken upon my shoulders was a lifelong trouble. Yes, it was a happy time, Hilda, last winter. How many a glorious day we had together across country! You and I were always in the first flight, and generally near each other. Our horses were always such good friends, were they not? They loved to gallop neck-and-neck. O my darling, I was indeed happy in those days—unspeakably happy.”
He had forgotten all prudence, all self-restraint, in a moment. He had taken Hilda’s hand and lifted it to his lips.
“O my dear one, let me tell you how I love you,” he said. “I may never dare say more than that, perhaps, but it is true, and you shall hear it, if only once. Yes, Hilda, I love you. I have loved you ever since last winter, when you and I used to ride after the hounds together. O, those happy winter days, those long waits at the corners of lanes, or in dusky thickets, or on the bleak bare common! I shall never forget them. Do you think I cared what became of the fox in those days, or whether we were after the right or the wrong one? Not a jot, dear. The veriest tailor that ever hung on to a horse could have cared no less for the sport than I. It was your sweet face I loved, and your friendly voice, and the light touch of your little hand. I was full of hope in those days, Hilda; and then a cloud came over my horizon and I dared hope no more. I never meant to tell you—I knew I had no right to tell you this; but my feelings were too strong for me just now. Will you forgive me, Hilda, that I, who dare not ask you to be my wife, have dared to tell you of my love? Can you forgive me?”
“There is nothing to forgive,” she answered gently, looking at him with tear-dimmed eyes.
She was very pale, and her lips trembled faintly as she spoke. In her inmost heart she was exulting at the knowledge of his love. It was as if she had drunk a deep draught of the strong wine of life. In the rapture of knowing herself beloved she had no room for any other consideration. His love might be foolish, vain, unprofitable, fatal even. For the moment she could not measure the consequences, or look into the future. She cared only for the fact that Bothwell Grahame loved her. That love which she had given to him in secret, in all maiden modesty, purest, most ethereal sentiment of which woman’s heart is capable, had not been lavished upon a blind and dumb idol, upon a god of wood and stone.
They walked on for a few minutes in silence, Bothwell still holding Hilda’s hand, but saying never a word. He had said too much already, since he dared say no more. He had told his secret, and had entreated to be forgiven. And now he came to a dead stop. Fate had walled him round with difficulties, had set a barrier before his steps: Fate or his only folly, that easy yielding to temptation which a man prefers to think of afterwards as fatality.
The thud of a horse’s hoofs upon the grass on the other side of the hedge startled Bothwell from his reverie, and Hilda from her beatitude. They looked up, and saw Edward Heathcote cantering towards them on his powerful black. Mr. Heathcote was renowned for his hunters. He never counted the cost of a good horse; and he never had been known to buy a bad one. He was a man who could pick out a horse in a field a quarter of a mile off, ragged and rough and unshorn, altogether out of condition, long mane and neglected tail, and could distinguish the quality of the animal to a shade. He had made many of the hunters he rode, and was not afraid to tackle the most difficult subject. He loved horses, and they loved him. This was a subject upon which he and Bothwell sympathised; and it had been a link between them hitherto. Nothing had been more friendly than their intercourse until the last few weeks, during which time Mr. Heathcote had carefully avoided Penmorval and Bothwell Grahame.
He rode through a gap in the hedge, acknowledged Bothwell’s presence with a nod that was barely courteous, and then turned to his sister.
“You had better hurry home, Hilda, if you mean to be in time for dinner,” he said.