The White Virgin

Chapter Fifteen.

The Undercurrent

“Hah! I nearly had you that time, my fine fellow,” said Major Gurdon, as he stood deep in the shade, where twilight was falling fast, and ever and anon he deftly threw a fly with his lissome rod right across to the edge of the black water, where the deep suddenly grew shallow, and a sharp rippling was made by the swiftly flowing stream.

“Feel it chilly, my dear?” he said, as he made the brass winch chirrup as he drew out more line.

“No, dear,” said Dinah, with her pale, troubled face lighting up, as she stood there holding a landing-net. “It is very beautiful and cool and pleasant now.”

“Ah! that sounds better,” said the Major, as he made his fine line whish through the air and sent the fly far away down-stream. “You have been fidgeting me, my dear.”

“I, papa?” said the girl hurriedly.

“Yes. You haven’t seemed the same since you had that fall.”

“Oh, it was nothing much, dear.”

“But it was a good deal to make you look so white and upset ever since. – Missed him! – Do you know, my dear,” continued the Major, making another throw, “I lay awake half last night thinking that I ought to take you up to London to see some clever physician.”

“Oh, no, no, no,” said the girl hurriedly. “You shouldn’t fidget about that. I am better. I am, indeed.”

“Then impossibilities have come to pass, and your little face is deceitful.”

“You take too much notice of things, dear,” said Dinah, shrinking a little behind her father, so as to hide the fresh shade of trouble in her countenance.

“Oh no, I don’t,” said the Major, as he threw his fly again. “I have not studied your face since you were a baby, Diny, for nothing. Do you know, my dear,” he continued, as his child stood with her lips pressed so firmly together that they formed a thin white line, “I really think that fish have more gumption than we give them credit for. They really do get to be educated and know when they are being fished for.”

“Well, what wonder that they should refuse to take a tiny patch of hair and feathers hiding a hook?”

“But it’s a lovely black gnat I am trying, my dear. I couldn’t tell it in the water from the real; and there: look at that,” he cried, in a tone full of vexation, as a big trout suddenly sucked down an unfortunate fly floating close by the Major’s cunningly made lure. “I knew that fellow was there, and I hereby register a vow that I mean to have him wrapped in buttered writing-paper and grilled for my breakfast before I have done. What a – ah! that’s a good throw, right above him. That ought to tempt any natural fish. Got him! – Be ready with the net,” he cried. “Not yet,” as there was a wallow, a boil in the water, a splash, and an ejaculation as the Major’s rod, which had bent nearly double, became straight again.

“Lost him, papa?”

“Lost him! Of course. My usual luck. Lightly hooked in the lip. – Eh? – No. A badly-tempered hook snapped short off. I wish the scoundrel who made it – Dinah, my dear, would you mind walking just out of hearing. There are a few good old trooper’s oaths just suitable to this occasion, and I should like to let them off.”

Dinah did not stir, but a sad smile crossed her features, and she stood waiting while her father selected a fresh fly, straightened the gut, and began to fasten it to the collar of his line.

“Such a pity! Just as I had hooked him too. I wonder whether he will try again. I was going to say what a deal of trouble one does take, and what an amount of time one does waste in fishing. And so you think that I need not take you up to town?”

“Oh, no, no,” cried Dinah quickly. “I am quite well.”

“Ahem!”

“Well, nearly well again, dear. Don’t fidget about me, pray.”

“Oh, no. You are of no consequence whatever, not the slightest; and I am to take no interest in you of any kind. Ah! you are a strange girl, Di, but you make my life bearable, only it seems brutally selfish to keep you down here in this wilderness.”

“You know I am very happy here.”

“No, I do not,” said the Major, whipping the stream rather viciously. “You have looked miserable for a month past.”

“No, no, dear, you exaggerate,” said Dinah, with a smile that was piteous. “There! I am going to be as cheerful as can be now, and you shall hear me singing about the place again.”

“Hah! at last!” cried the Major, striking sharply. “Home this time, Di. I believe it’s that big trout with the distorted tail-fin. That’s right, my fine fellow; run, but I think I have you. No more lovely May-flies to be sucked down your capacious gullet. I have you, my tyrant of the waters. I’ll bring him in ten yards lower down, my dear. Mind and get your net well under him, and don’t touch him with the ring.”

There followed five minutes’ playing of the gallant fish, which leaped twice out of the water in its desperate efforts to escape, and then it was gently reeled in and lifted out on the stones.

“Best this season, my dear. A beauty,” said the Major, transferring the speckled beauty to his creel, and preparing for another throw. It was suppertime with the trout in the twilight, and they were feeding eagerly now, as the Major began once more – casting his line, and chatting the while to his child, who stood just beside him on his left.

“They’re pretty busy bringing the machinery over to the mine, I see.”

“Indeed?”

“Yes; and the men told me that Mr What’s-his-name, Reed, is down again.”

Dinah drew a faint breath and exhaled it in something like a sigh.

“Reed – bad name for a man of trust. I say, Dinah, I don’t like that other fellow, that man Sturgess, at all.”

Dinah’s hands grasped the landing-net handle convulsively.

“He is offensive. A coarse, overbearing, brutal sort of fellow. I don’t like the way he looks at me. I suppose in his eyes a man living down here in a cottage cannot be a gentleman. I shall have to give him a setting down. He is not coming to lord it over us. I saw him fishing below here the other day.”

“No, no, don’t speak to him,” cried Dinah hastily.

“Nonsense! I have commanded bigger and uglier fellows than he, my dear. The fellow’s insolent, and I saw him twice over clambering round the rocks and staring into the garden. I won’t have it. He shall respect my boundaries, and – Ah! good evening, Mr Reed. Down again, then! What is the last news in London?”

Clive Reed had come upon them suddenly from behind one of the angles of the perpendicular rock which rose up from the narrow pathway beside the river, and was quite unnoticed until he was close at hand.

Dinah turned pale as death as she uttered a low gasp, and for the moment looked as if she were about to turn and run.

“Good evening, Miss Gurdon,” said Clive.

He took off his hat to the Major’s daughter as he spoke; and then, as the fisherman released the hand which had been warmly grasped, the young man stood hesitating; but as Dinah made no sign, he let it fall to his side.

“I have been expecting to see something of you,” continued the Major. “Have you been to the cottage?”

“No,” said Clive, in a quiet, constrained tone, and to Dinah’s great relief he did not look her way, but seemed to stare about him strangely. “I did not call. I did not expect to meet you here.”

“Ah! well, never mind; we are glad to see you, but – Good heavens! – Mr Reed! You’ve been ill or something. My dear sir, have you had some accident up at the mine?”

“No,” said Clive, smiling faintly. “The trouble is past. I have lost my father, Major Gurdon, since I was here. He died suddenly.”

“God bless me!” cried the Major, in a tone full of sympathy, as he threw his rod aside, and laid his hand with a sympathetic movement upon the young man’s arm. “And I was thoughtlessly amusing myself here while you were in trouble. In the midst of life – dear, dear me! I am deeply grieved, sir – we are deeply grieved. Mr Reed, you have suffered much. Dinah, my child, I am sure Mr Reed will give us his company to-night.”

Dinah bent her head, and, in spite of herself, gave their companion a commiserating glance, their eyes meeting, and his resting upon hers with a sad, wistful look as if he were grateful for their kindly sympathy. Then he turned to the Major.

“I thank you warmly,” he said, “but not this evening. I have been down in the mine all day, and chose this path for the sake of the cool, sweet, moist air.”

“The more need for a little rest and quiet communion with others, my dear young friend,” said the Major. “You will give us pain if you do refuse, Mr Reed. I too have known trouble, perhaps greater than yours. Don’t say no, sir. You will come?” Dinah stood with her lips apart, listening, as she mentally prayed that her father’s hospitality might be refused.

“You wish it?” said Clive.

“My dear sir,” paid the Major, speaking rather stiffly, “I very rarely ask a visitor to my little hermitage. I have many failings, but my daughter here will endorse my words when I tell you that insincerity is not one.”

“I beg your pardon, Major Gurdon,” said Clive, more warmly, “I beg Miss Gurdon’s. I am not a society man, and – and trouble and anxiety have made me rather boorish, I am afraid.”

“Suppose we set aside attack and defence, my dear sir,” said the Major gravely. “I too am no society man, a mere hermit living in this desolate – no, not desolate spot. Dinah here makes my home a place of happiness and rest.”

It was on Clive Reed’s lips to say coldly that he was sure that was the case, but he was in no mood for passing empty compliments, and he remained silent.

“Let me be frank, Mr Reed. I look back upon the time you spent with us, sir, as a bright little spot in rather a dark existence. You impressed me favourably, sir. This is a very unconventional admission, but I am eccentric. Let me tell you openly that you impressed me very favourably, and when you do have a leisure evening, you will be conferring a kindness upon me by coming across to the cottage, where we will do our best to make your stay such as would be acceptable to a busy man – restful and calm. There, Dinah, what do you say to that for a long complimentary speech.”

Dinah murmured something, but her eyes did not endorse her father’s words, for they fell, and the nerves about the corners of her lips twitched slightly as she listened to their visitor’s reply.

“This is very good and kind of you, Major Gurdon,” he said; “and I should be ungrateful if I did not accept your hospitality. Let me be frank, though, with you, sir. I came down here to try and forget my troubles in hard work. My mission is to make this mine a successful venture for the sake of those who have embarked in the scheme, and my thoughts run upon the work, and that alone. I shall prove to be a very dreary guest.”

“Let me have my opinion about that,” said the Major, smiling. “You have done wisely, sir. Hard work in these solitudes will restore your tone. I came down years ago in despair, to die forgotten; but I soon found out that ‘there is a divinity which shapes our ends, rough hew them as we may.’ I was not to die, sir. Life began to have attractions once more. I found that there was something to live for besides self. Here we are, then, and, Mr Reed, you are very welcome.”

He drew back for his guest to enter, and he in turn made place for Dinah, who raised her eyes to thank him in silence for his courtesy, when he saw a sudden change come over her countenance, which in an instant was full of a painful look of utter despair, as she seemed to have caught sight of something over his shoulder.

The next moment she had hurried in, and Clive Reed followed, feeling a new interest in his host’s child, and at the same moment asking himself whether she were not suffering from some mental trouble, which was eating away the hopefulness of a life so young as hers.

There was something very restful and calm about that evening at the cottage. Dinah hardly spoke a word, but after the pleasant meal sat engaged upon some piece of work, over which her white fingers passed hastily to and fro, as the guest sat back in his chair and watched them, while the Major smoked his cigar at the window, and chatted at times about London and India, where he had gone through some service at the time of the Mutiny.

But there were many lapses into silence, and the whole tone of the evening was grave and still, according wonderfully with Clive Reed’s state of mind, as he felt a kind of sympathy for the lady before him, and found himself working out her career, without female companionship, saving that of the stern-looking elderly servant. Dinah Gurdon, he thought, must have gone through some terrible time of anguish to wear such an aspect as he had noticed more than once, and he pitied her, as he saw the busy hands, utterly devoid of any ornament but their natural beauty of form and whiteness, still going to and fro the needlework in the light cast upon them by the shaded lamp.

And then all at once it was late, and time for him to go; but he did not care to stir – all was truly calm, there was such a sweet repose about the place that life had suddenly grown dreamy, and he lay back in his chair listening to the Major, and still watching those hands that were as beautiful as – more beautiful than – Janet’s.

Her face came into his mind with that, like a painful jarring discord in the midst of some soft, dreamy symphony, and he started up.

“Eh? What is the matter?” cried the Major suddenly.

“It is late, sir. I am keeping you up far beyond your usual time, I am sure.”

“Yes, and thank you for doing so,” said the Major. “It is a pleasant change. Early to bed is good, but not too early. Why, you do not suppose, Mr Reed, that we are going to let you tramp across the bleak mountain-side to-night, and have inquiries made for you in the morning, because you have not gone to the mine.”

“But really, Major Gurdon,” protested Reed.

“My dear sir, after all these years in this solitude, I know the place by heart, and there are dozens of spots – old shafts and the like – where a man may lose his life.”

“But indeed – ”

“You are a new-comer. Yes, my dear sir, and we must take care of you. See how dark it is. Look, Dinah, my child. Go and see what the night is like.”

Dinah trembled as she went to the open French window, stepped into the verandah, and came back looking ghastly, just as the dog began to bark fiercely from somewhere at the back.

“Poachers after the grouse,” said the Major decisively. “I hope, Mr Reed, you will use your influence to keep your men from trespassing and going after the game – and my trout.”

“Of course, sir, but – ”

“Well, Dinah?” said the Major, without noticing her agitated face.

“It is very dark,” she said huskily.

“Exactly! Too dark for you to go, my dear sir. Stay! We will have an early breakfast, and you can walk across to the mine. I will not have my peace of mind destroyed by being summoned to sit on a jury at an inquest upon my late guest.”

There was a mingling of mirth and seriousness in the Major’s words, and Reed hesitated.

“Well, sir,” he said, involuntarily glancing across at Dinah, and meeting her troubled gaze.

“I insist,” cried the Major. “What do you say, my dear?”

Dinah started, and her voice sounded strange as she said hurriedly —

“It would be very imprudent of Mr Reed to go back – on so dark a walk.”

“Exactly! There, my dear sir, you are a prisoner for to-night.”

“Mr Reed will excuse me now,” said Dinah quietly. “Good-night,” and she held out her hand.

“Good-night,” he replied, with a grave sympathy in his tone; and he stood gazing at the door through which she had passed with the touch of her cold, moist, trembling hand still lingering in his, till the Major spoke again, after walking to the window, and shouting to the dog to lie down.

“Been madness to have gone,” he said. “Why, even in broad daylight the way across the mountain needs care. My poor darling there had that nasty slip some little time ago, and she has not been the same since. You noticed, perhaps, that she looks pale and quite hysterical?”

“I had noticed – I did on my first visit too – that Miss Gurdon looked very pale and ill.”

“Exactly! She gives me a great deal of concern about her health. I shall be obliged to take her up to town for good advice. But come, sit down; I will not trouble you about my cares.”

“It is very late, sir.”

“It is. But only a few minutes, Mr Reed. I wish to say something to you.”

Reed seated himself.

“Only a few words, sir, and I shall begin by asking you to pardon a much older man for his frankness.”

“Pray speak, sir.”

“Well, Mr Reed, I like you, and therefore I say, as a man whose life and hopes were blasted when he was young, and who would see with pain another suffer a defeat, be careful.”

“Over what, sir?” said Clive sadly.

“That mine. Don’t think me impertinent; but I would say to you, as a young man to whom the income you receive as engineer or manager may be of importance, don’t put too much faith in that ‘venture.’”

“May I ask why, sir?”

“Because mining is very treacherous, and you might be bitterly disappointed. I have seen so many failures. There, my dear sir, that is all. To put it in plain English, don’t put all your hopes or eggs into one basket. I don’t believe in that ‘White Virgin’ at all. There! forgive me: – good-night.”

“I forgive you, sir,” said Clive warmly, as he clasped the hand extended to him, “and thank you, too. Good-night.”

Half-an-hour later Clive Reed was lying in the pretty little bedroom, thinking again how restful and calm it all was, and that instead of lying mentally feverish, and tossing restlessly in turn, a pleasant drowsiness was coming over him.

Then he was wide awake and attent, for, from somewhere close at hand, he could hear the sound of a woman sobbing gently, evidently in her despair, and after a time it came to him that the wall on one side of his room was merely a papered over partition, and the sobs that came so faintly to his ears must be those of Dinah Gurdon, suffering from some terrible mental burden of which her father was possibly not aware.

The sobbing ceased, but in spite of the peacefulness of the place, Clive Reed did not drop off to sleep, but lay thinking of the mine. Then came thoughts of Janet and of his brother – his father’s wishes – of the Doctor, and then, by a natural sequence, of the Major and his child.

What was the Major? Of course his name would be in old Army Lists, but why was he down there leading so retired a life? He had hinted at some trouble. Then there was his child! Sweet, ladylike, with a charm and dignity that were strange in such a cottage as that. What was her great trouble? It was evidently mental, and her father was in ignorance, and attributed it to bodily infirmity; and that being so, she must have some secret hidden from him, possibly too from her father.

So restful the minute before, now Clive Reed felt as if a hot iron had seared him, and he turned angrily on his couch.

“What is it to me?” he said to himself. “She is like the rest of them – pleasant to the eye and good for food, but once plucked, no more paradise. The old story! Pater in profound ignorance, and there is a lover. Well, I did not come here to play the spy upon Mademoiselle’s love affairs. I have had my stab, and it has been sharp. I suppose now that I ought to turn cynic and look on. No; I am too busy even for that. I have my betrothed – my ‘White Virgin’ – to whom I must be faithful. Hang the girl! why couldn’t she go and cry at the bottom of the garden – top, I ought to say – or down by the river, and not where I could hear her? Mademoiselle Dinah Gurdon, you and I will never be friends, but I like the old man, and I should like to know what his secret has been. Has no faith in the mine, hasn’t he? ‘Don’t trust it, young man’ – ‘Don’t place all your eggs in one basket.’ I suppose he thinks I am a regular employé. Well, I look it, coming fresh out of it covered with limestone mud. Well meant, old gentleman, and I like you all the better for it. I know that you are not civil to me because I happen to be well off, and don’t ask me here because I might prove to be an eligible party for your daughter.”

“Rubbish!” he muttered; “don’t be an idiot. If I thought that, I’d stay away. But it is not that. The old man is a thorough gentleman, and the girl is ladylike and nice enough.”

She proved to be nice enough to make Clive Reed lie wakeful still, with his mind running upon her pale, care-marked face, and begin to wonder who the man might be who troubled her rest.

“Some one at a distance,” he thought; “and the fellow doesn’t write. That’s it. Poor lassie! These women do not monopolise all the deception. It is on the other side here. Little Phyllis is left neglected in this out-of-the-way place, quite forgotten perhaps, while Corydon has gone up to London, and plunged into all the gaieties of life – and so the world runs on.”

Suddenly it struck him that there was a photograph over the mantelpiece of a fine, handsome fellow in undress uniform. He noted it when he came into the room, but thought no more of it. Now it came strongly to his mind, and suggested a fresh train of thought.

That was it! The portrait of the gentleman. The father was an old soldier: the more likely for the lover to be military, and he was either away on foreign service, or leading a giddy life in some barrack town.

“Why, by Jove!” thought Clive, raising himself upon his elbow. “This is a tiny cot of a place, without a spare room, I should say. The old man would be too Spartan and military to have anything but the simplest of accommodation, and the best is given to the guest. I am in my lady’s chamber. Of course. The place is feminine and full of knick-knacks. So that is the cavalier’s portrait, and I have the key to the Pandora’s box of troubles. Poor girl! But what a shame for me to turn her out. What’s that?”

The endorsement of one set of Clive Reed’s musings, the overturning of others, and a glimpse into Dinah Gurdon’s secret care. For, sharp and clear, there was the rattle of a few shot against the lattice panes of the window.

Then in the stillness that instantly followed there was a movement on the other side of the partition, and directly after the ringing, echoing report of a gun fired from a room on the other side of the cottage.

Chapter Sixteen.

Sturgess Shows his Teeth

The loud barking of a dog followed the shot, and directly after Reed heard a sharp, light tap on a neighbouring door, and the Major’s voice —