Chapter 9. By Lerryn Water

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_ CHAPTER IX. BY LERRYN WATER

"O will you accept of the mus-e-lin so blue,
To wear in the morning and to dabble in the dew?"

---Old Song.

Miss Marty had duly visited the meadow and eaten and paid for her breakfast of bread and cream. But she had eaten it in some constraint, sitting alone. She had never asserted her position as the Major's kinswoman in the eyes of Miss Pescod and the ladies of Miss Pescod's clan, who were inclined to regard her as a poor relation, a mere housekeeper, and to treat her as a person of no great account. On the other hand, the majority of the merrymakers deemed her, no doubt, a stiff stuck-up thing; whereas she would in fact have given much to break through her shyness and accost them. For these reasons, the meal over, she was glad to pay her sixpence and escape from the throng back to the woodland paths and solitude.

The children by this time had grown tired of straying, and were trooping back to the village. Fewer and fewer met her as she followed the shore; the two slumberers were gone from the mossy bank; by and by the procession dried up, so to speak, altogether. She understood the reason when a drum began to bang overhead behind the woods and passed along the ridge, still banging. The Gallants were returning; and apparently flushed with victory, since between the strokes she could hear their distant shouts of laughter.

At one moment she fancied they must be descending through the woods: for a crackling of the undergrowth, some way up the slope, startled and brought her to a halt. But no; the noise passed along the ridge towards the village. The crackling sound must have come from some woodland beast disturbed in his night's lair.

She retraced her way slowly to the spot where she had disembarked; but when she reached it, Cai and the boat had vanished. No matter; Cai was a trustworthy fellow, and doubtless would be back ere long. Likely enough he had pulled across to the farther shore to bear a hand in what Troy euphemistically called the "salvage" of the long-boats' cargoes. Happy in her solitude, rejoicing in her extended liberty, Miss Marty strolled on, now gazing up into the green dappled shadows, now pausing on the brink to watch the water as it swirled by her feet, smooth and deep and flawed in its depths with arrow-lights of sunshine.

She came by and by to a point where the cart-track turned inland to climb the woods and a foot-path branched off from it, skirting a small recess in the shore. A streamlet of clear water, hurrying down from the upland by the Devil's Hedge, here leapt the low cliff and fell on a pebbly beach, driving the pebbles before it and by their attrition wearing out for itself a natural basin. Encountering a low ridge of rock on the edge of the tideway, the stones heaped themselves along it and formed a bar, with one tiny outlet through which the pool trickled continually, except at high spring tides when the river overflowed it.

Now Miss Marty, fetching a compass around this miniature creek, came in due course to the stream and seated herself on a fallen log, to consider. For the ground on the farther side appeared green and plashy, and she disliked wetting her shoes.

Overhead a finch piped. Below her, hidden by a screen of hazel, chattered the fall. Why should she wend farther? She must be greedy of solitude indeed if this sylvan corner did not content her.

And yet. . . . High on the opposite bank there grew a cluster of columbine, purple and rosy pink, blown thither and seeded perhaps from some near garden, though she had heard that the flower grew wild in these woods. Miss Marty gazed at the flowers, which seem to nod and beckon; then at the stream; then at the plashy shore; lastly at her shoes. Her hand went down to her right foot.

She drew off her shoes. Then she drew off her stockings.

By this time she was in a nervous flurry. Almost you may say that she raced across the stream and clutched at a handful of the columbines. In less than a minute she was back again, gazing timorously about her.

No one had seen; nobody, that is to say, except the finch, and he piped on cavalierly. Miss Marty glanced up at him, then at a clearing of green turf underneath his bough, a little to her left. Why not? Why should she omit any of May morning's rites?

Miss Marty picked up her skirts again, stepped on to the green turf, and began to dabble her feet in the dew.

"The morn that May began,
I dabbled in the dew;
And I wished for me a proper young man
In coat-tails of the blue. . . ."

"_Whoop! Whoo-oop!_"

The cry came from afar; indeed, from the woods across the river. Yet as the hare pricks up her ears at the sound of a distant horn and darts away to the covert, so did Miss Marty pause, and, after listening for a second or two, hurry back to the log to resume her shoes and stockings.

Her shoes she found where she had left them, and one stocking on the rank grass close beside them. _But where was the other?_

She looked to right, to left, and all around her in a panic. Could she have dropped it into the stream in her hurry? And had the stream carried it down the fall?

She drew on one stocking and shoe, and catching up the other shoe in her hand, crept down to explore. The stream leapt out of sight through a screen of hazels. Parting these, she peered through them, to judge the distance between her and the pool and see if any track led down to it. A something flashed in her eyes, and she drew back. Then, peering forward again, she let a faint cry escape her.

On the pebbly bank beside the pool stood a man--Dr. Hansombody--in regimentals. In one hand he held a razor (this it was that had flashed so brightly in the sunlight), in the other her lost stocking. Apparently he had been shaving, kneeling beside the pool and using it for a mirror; for one half of his face was yet lathered, and his haversack lay open on the stones by the water's edge beside his shako and a tin cup under which he had lit a small spirit-lamp; and doubtless, while he knelt, the stream had swept Miss Marty's stocking down to him. He was studying it in bewilderment; which changed to glad surprise as he caught sight of her, aloft between the hazels.

"Hallo!" he challenged. "A happy month to you!"

"Oh, please!" Miss Marty covered her face.

"I'll spread it out to dry on the stones here."

"Please give it back to me. Yes, please, I beg of you!"

"I don't see the sense of that," answered the Doctor. "You can't possibly wear it until it's dry, you know."

"But I'd _rather_."

"Are you anchored up there? Very well; then I'll bring it up to you in a minute or so. But just wait a little; for you wouldn't ask me to come with half my face unshaven, would you?"

"I can go back. . . . No, I can't. The bank is too slippery. . . . But I can look the other way," added Miss Marty, heroically.

"I really don't see why you should," answered the Doctor, as he resumed his kneeling posture. "Now, to my mind," he went on in the intervals of finishing his toilet, "there's no harm in it, and, speaking as a man, it gives one a pleasant sociable feeling."

"I--have often wondered how it was done," confessed Miss Marty. "It looks horribly dangerous."

"The fact is," said the Doctor, wiping his blade, "I cannot endure to feel unshaven, even when campaigning."

He restored the razor to his haversack, blew out the spirit-lamp, emptied the tin cup on the stones, packed up, resumed his shako, and stood erect.

"My stocking, please!" Miss Marty pleaded.

"It is by no means dry yet," he answered, stooping and examining it. "Let me help you down, that you may see for yourself."

"Oh, I _couldn't_!"

"Meaning your foot and ankle? Believe me you have no cause to be ashamed of _them_, Miss Marty," the Doctor assured her gallantly, climbing the slope and extending an arm for her to lean upon.

"Those people--across the water," she protested, with a slight blush and a nod in the direction of the shouting, which for some minutes had been growing louder.

"Our brave fellows--if, as I imagine, the uproar proceeds from them-- are pardonably flushed with their victory. They are certainly incapable, at this distance, of the nice observation with which your modesty credits them. Good Lord!--now you mention it--what a racket! I sincerely trust they will not arouse Sir Felix, whose temper-- _experto crede_--is seldom at its best in the small hours. There, if you will lean your weight on me and advance your foot--the uncovered one--to this ledge--Nay, now!"

"But it hurts," said Miss Marty, wincing, with a catch of her breath. "I fear I must have run a thorn into it."

"A thorn?" The Doctor seized the professional opportunity, lifted her bodily off the slope, and lowered her to the beach. "There, now, if you will sit absolutely still . . . for one minute. I command you! Yes, as I suspected--a gorse-prickle!"

He ran to his haversack, and, returning with a pair of tweezers, took the hurt foot between both hands.

"Pray remain still . . . for one moment. There--it is out!" He held up the prickle triumphantly between the tweezers. "You have heard, Miss Marty, of the slave Andrew Something-or-other and the lion? Though it couldn't have been Andrew really, because there are no lions in Scotland--except, I believe, on their shield. He was hiding for some reason in a cave, and a lion came along, and--well, it doesn't seem complimentary even if you turn a lion into a lioness, but it came into my head and seemed all right to start with."

"When I was a governess," said Miss Marty, "I used often to set it for dictation. I had, I remember, the same difficulty you experience with the name of the hero."

"Did you?" the Doctor exclaimed, delightedly. "That _is_ a coincidence, isn't it? I sometimes think that when two minds are, as one might say, attuned--"

"They are making a most dreadful noise," said Miss Marty, with a glance across the river. "Did I hear you say that you were victorious to-night?"

"Completely."

"The Major is a wonderful man."

"Wonderful! As I was saying, when two minds are, as one might say, attuned--"

"He succeeds in everything he touches."

"It is a rare talent."

"I sometimes wonder how, with his greatness--for he cannot but be conscious of it--he endures the restrictions of our narrow sphere. I mean," Miss Marty went on, as the Doctor lifted his eyebrows in some surprise, "the petty business of a country town such as ours."

"Oh," said the Doctor. "Ah, to be sure! . . . I supposed for a moment that you were referring to the--er--terrestrial globe."

He sighed. Miss Marty sighed likewise. Across in the covert of the woods someone had begun to beat a tattoo on the drum. Presently a cornet joined in, shattering the echoes with wild ululations.

"Those fellows will be sorry if Sir Felix catches them," observed the Doctor, anxiously. "I can't think what Hymen's about, to allow it. The noise comes from right under the home-park, too."

"You depreciate the Major!" Miss Marty tapped her bare foot impatiently on the pebbles; but, recollecting herself, drew it back with a blush.

"I do not," answered the Doctor, hotly. "I merely say that he is allowing his men yonder to get out of hand."

"Perhaps _you_ had better go, and, as the poet puts it, 'ride on the whirlwind and direct the storm,'" she suggested, with gentle sarcasm.

The Doctor rose stiffly. "Perhaps, on the whole, I had. Your stocking"--he lifted and felt it carefully--"will be dry in five minutes or so. Shall I direct Cai Tamblyn to bring the boat hither if I pass him on my way?"

She glanced up with a quivering lip.

"Isn't--isn't that a Sulphur Yellow?" she asked, pointing to a butterfly which wavered past them and poised itself for an instant on a pebble by the brink of the pool.

"Eh? By George! so it is." The Doctor caught up his shako and raced off in pursuit. "Steady now! . . . Is he gone? . . . Yes. . . . No, I have him!" he called, as with a swift wave of his arm he brought the shako down smartly on the pebbles and, kneeling, held it down with both hands.

"Where?" panted Miss Marty.

"Here . . . if you will stoop while I lift the brim. . . . Carefully, please. Now!"

Miss Marty stooped, but could not reach low enough to peer under the shako. She dropped on her knees. The Doctor was kneeling already. He showed her how to look, and this brought their cheeks close together. . . .

"Oh!" cried Miss Marty, suddenly.

"I couldn't help it," said the Doctor.

"And--and you have let him escape!" She buried her face in both hands, and broke into a fit of weeping.

"I don't care. . . . Yes, I do!" He caught her hands away from her face and, their hiding being denied her, she leant her brow against his shoulder. With that, his arm crept around her waist.

For a while he let her sob out her emotion. Then, taking her firmly by both wrists, he looked once into her eyes, led her to a seat upon the pebble ridge, and sat himself down beside her.

For a long while they rested there in silence, hand clasped in hand. The uproar across the river had ceased. They heard only the splash of the small waterfall and, in its pauses, the call of bird to bird, mating amid the hazels and the oaks.

They drew apart suddenly, warned by the sound of dipping oars, the creak of thole-pins; and in a few seconds the rower hove into view, pulling up-stream as if for dear life. It was Cai Tamblyn. Catching sight of them, with a sharp exclamation he ceased rowing, held water, and bringing the boat's nose round, headed in for shore.

"You're wanted, quick!" he called to the Doctor. "They sent me off in search of you."

"Hey? What? Has there been an accident?"

Cai brought his boat alongside, glanced at Miss Marty, and lowered his voice.

"'Tis Lady Felix-Williams. These here conquerin' 'eroes of the Major's have swarmed down through the woods an' ran foul of the liquor. The Band in partikler's as drunk as Chloe, an' what with horning and banging under her ladyship's window, they've a-scared her before her time. She's crying out at this moment, and old Sir Felix around in his dressing-gown like Satan let loose. Talk about Millenniums!"

"Good Lord!" Dr. Hansombody caught up his haversack. "The Millennium? I'd clean forgot about it!"

Miss Marty gazed at him with innocent inquiring eyes.

"But--but isn't this the Millennium?" she asked. _

Read next: Chapter 10. Gunner Sobey Turns Loose The Millennium

Read previous: Chapter 8. "Come, My Corinna, Come!"

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