CHAPTER XX

THE OTHER GENTLEMAN

Miss Cavendish sat in a large easy chair pouring over a volume of Wordsworth. Her fine profile was outlined against the green of growing plants in the window and the long lines of her graceful figure were distinctly picturesque in the pose she had taken. Gabriella was at the table, her pen flying across her sheet of writing paper. It was raining dismally, but Sidney had gone to the post-office. Presently a gentle voice at the open door said: “I beg your pardon, miss, but the other gentleman thought he would like a suet pudding to-day. Would you ladies care to ’ave one, too?”

“It sounds rather comfortable on this wet cool day,” said Gabriella in response to Miss Cavendish’s questioning look. “If the ‘other gentleman’ thinks it is the thing, why shouldn’t we have it?”

“Very well, we’ll have suet pudding, Mrs. Graves,” said Miss Cavendish returning to her book.

“The other gentleman” was a mystery. He was the only other lodger in the house, and had been seen but on two occasions: once Gabriella had encountered him upon the stairs; once Sidney had met him as he was coming in the front door. Miss Cavendish had never seen him and neither of the three knew his name. Mrs. Graves never referred to him except as “the other gentleman,” to the great amusement of the girls. That he was a scholarly person engrossed in his books was about the only thing they had learned about him. He always managed to leave the house after his fellow lodgers had gone out, and came in before they did, not a very difficult thing to do since they spent most of their time out-of-doors, for Grasmere afforded an endless variety of delightful walks, rendered the more interesting by their association with the Wordsworths.

“Isn’t she a dear?” said Gabriella when Mrs. Graves had softly closed the door. “I’d like to take ’er ’ome with me. Isn’t it perfectly lovely the way she always says ‘the other gentleman?’”

“I am quite curious to see that individual,” remarked Miss Cavendish. “What does he look like, Gabriella?”

“Oh, he’s rather nondescript, neither old nor young; not very tall, not very short; wears glasses, stoops a little; has a good, kind face I think, but hasn’t a particle of curiosity, as I well realize. He wears a disreputable old rain-streaked overcoat and a cap. To my mind he looks as if he needed a wife.”

Miss Cavendish laughed. “I fancy he is some old Oxford professor, who has no thought above dry-as-dust books and parchments.”

“He looks it,” returned Gabriella. “I’m afraid it is going to be too wet for that climb up Helm Crag, although the clouds are breaking a little over Silver How, but, even if it does clear, it will be slippy for climbing.”

“Perhaps it will not be too wet for Loughrigg Terrace, or at all events for Rydal Water by the lower road.”

“Radical Reform you mean. I do like Dr. Arnold’s facetious names for the three roads. Yes, we might go to Rydal even in the rain. Rydal Water is lovely under any circumstances; it is even just a little bit lovelier than Grasmere, though I acknowledge it grudgingly.”

By noon the sun was shining. “In the woodsy roads we may find it damp,” said Miss Cavendish, “though I, for one, shall not be afraid to try the Borrowdale road, turning off before you come to the place where we climb Helm Crag. There is a little white farmhouse somewhere along there where we may be able to get tea.”

They took their way through the pretty green village with its scattered houses surrounded by gardens, past the old church and up the Easedale road over which “the lion and the lamb” and “the ancient woman beside her rifted cell” keep watch from the heights of Helm Crag. Verdant pastures stretched to their right, and through these the babbling little Easedale beck chattered “over stony ways in little sharps and trebles,” while beyond the hills arose in purple and orange splendor, for the bracken had already turned to a gorgeous yellow and showed in patches upon the mountain-side. Once in a while, from some rocky platform above them, the plaintive bleat of a mountain sheep came to their ears. The wild birds flew around the lonely heights with strange cries. The rain had washed everything clean, but the excellent road showed little effect of the showers except that there was no dust.

Miss Cavendish carried a small red book which she had bought the day before. Once in a while she referred to it, and when they sat down upon one of the benches provided for the wayfarer, she would read snatches aloud.

Their walk finally brought them to the white cottage set in a garden where masses of late blossoms showed freshly fair after the rain. They were ushered into a low raftered room which delighted Gabriella’s artistic soul, and here they were served fragrant tea with thick cream, thin slices of bread and butter, home-made jam and plum cake.

“Isn’t it all perfectly delicious?” exclaimed Gabriella. “I’d like to transport the whole place to America; those lovely old beams darkened by time, this quaint table, that row of shining brass candlesticks and the little maid herself. Fancy making such a discovery at home. Who could drop into a casual farmhouse and be served all this so daintily, so exquisitely, and pay only sixpence for it?”

“Gabriella, it is well that you are soon going home or you would become an Anglomaniac,” declared Miss Cavendish.

“I am afraid I should.”

“Yes, I notice that you vaunt your country less than you did in Paris,” said Sidney, “though seriously, this tea is remarkably good with the fresh cream.”

“So is the bread and butter.”

“So is the plum cake, and also, so are our appetites,” this last from Gabriella who helped herself to a second slice of cake.

They left the low-ceiled cottage, refreshed, and passed out between rows of scarlet and gold blossoms, then took the road again. Half way home they saw some one coming toward them, the visor of his cap pulled down over his eyes, and his attention riveted on the book he was striving to read as he stumbled along. “It’s ‘the other gentleman,’” whispered Gabriella, nudging Miss Cavendish. The man passed on, but as Gabriella turned to speak to her companion she saw that she was deadly pale, and that she had dropped down upon a rock beside the way. “Gem dear, are you ill? Have you sprained your ankle? What is the matter?” asked the girl in alarm.

“It is John Price,” answered Miss Cavendish faintly.

Gabriella looked back to where Sidney was gathering a few late wild flowers. The man’s figure was disappearing around a bend in the road. Gabriella sat down by her friend’s side and put her arm around her. “Oh, Gem,” she whispered, “did it mean anything to you after all these years?”

“It was a surprise; that was all,” returned Miss Cavendish, regaining her composure and rising to her feet. She walked on and Gabriella waited for Sidney, the two overtaking Miss Cavendish a little further ahead. She smiled as she saw them approaching. “I had a scare, Sidney. Did Gabriella tell you that I saw a ghost?” she said lightly. “I think now that perhaps I was mistaken. Ten years may make a great difference in one’s looks and I may have forgotten. It does not seem possible that I should meet one whom I once knew so well in this quiet little corner of the world. Resemblances are sometimes startling and I am convinced that I was mistaken. Come, shall we go over Butterlip How and across by the Swan inn? It will take us home by another way.”

They continued their walk, crossing Goody Bridge and turning aside before they reached the town. But when they came again to the highroad they met “the other gentleman” a second time face to face. This time the book was in his pocket. He looked up. The expression of indifference upon his face grew into one of surprise, then to one of pleasure. He sprang forward and held out his hand. “Isabel Cavendish! Isabel, it can’t be you,” he exclaimed.

“It is I, John,” she answered simply.

“And these are?” he turned to the girls.

“My two goddaughters who are travelling with me.” She presented them. The girls meekly fell behind while the older two walked on.

“Isn’t it a coincidence?” said Gabriella. “Do you suppose anything will happen, Sid?”

“What could happen?”

“The same thing that might come about if you were not to see your girlhood’s lover for ten years and were to meet him just here.”

“Dear me.”

“I confess to feeling absurdly jealous. I am in a rage,” declared Gabriella. “Oh, you old blundering nose-in-a-book, she is far too good for the likes of you. I hope your suet pudding will choke you.” She shook her fist at the back of Mr. Price’s weather-stained coat.

“There’s no getting away from him, you see,” said Sidney, “for he lives just across the hallway and can’t stay at home on account of the weather.”

“If he has any sort of consideration for us he will move right away.”

This Mr. Price did not do, but from this time on he was no longer “the other gentleman” to them, for his books were neglected, his old coat was disdained. He appeared in a bran-new mackintosh on rainy days, and on sunny ones in as correct a costume as even Gabriella’s fastidious eyes could approve. He climbed the hills with them to little Easedale tarn where they had tea in a tiny lonely hut. He had them for a drive to Ambleside, a sail on Lake Windermere. He helped them uphill and followed them down dale for the week longer that they remained under Mrs. Graves’s roof, and while the girls grew to like him better and better “the light that never was on land or sea” added a new beauty to the face of Isabel Cavendish.

“And I suppose,” said Gabriella ruefully to her godmother, “you will be wearing that lace bertha before long.”

“We must make up for lost time, dearie. He has waited for me for ten long years,” returned Miss Cavendish quietly. And Gabriella, who was experiencing some of the pangs of “hope deferred,” threw her arms around her friend and hugged her close.

“But as I am never going to marry,” she said, “all my plans are nipped in the bud. I was going to have it that you and mamma and I would live together for the rest of our days in some sweet little countrylike place which we could make as English as possible.”

“It is what we shall do, Rella, and you shall spend weeks with me.”

“Not when there is a horrid man who will carry you off for dry discussions about things I can’t possibly understand. If he were a business man one could hope not to see too much of him, but a professor, and of Greek at that. No, Gem, much as I love you I cannot feel happy at the prospect.” Then seeing that Miss Cavendish looked a trifle hurt she called herself a beast and declared that John Price was the very nicest man in the world and that she had but one objection to him, and that was that he had superseded her small self in Miss Cavendish’s affections, a statement which Miss Cavendish denied, saying that each had a select and distinct place, after which Gabriella went to talk with Sidney about their bridesmaid frocks.

Mr. Price would need to take an earlier sailing than the others, as his college demanded his presence by the first of October, so the three lingered a few days longer in the sweet vale of Grasmere to take a last cup of tea at the white cottage, to walk once more over Loughrigg Terrace, to make one more round of Grasmere lake and Rydal Water. Then, one October morning, when the mists were rolling down from Helm Crag and Silver How, they bade adieu to the spot where they had all been very happy, and where had come to Isabella Cavendish the crowning joy of her journey.

“You have had heartache all these years and now you are perfectly happy,” said Gabriella wistfully, “but I am putting the ocean between me and my hope.”

“So I thought I had done, and I have not had heartache all these years, dear child. My life has been very full, and you, sweetheart, have helped to fill it. Will you stay over, Gabriella? It is not too late. Miss Bailey said that if you should change your mind at the last moment you had but to let her know.”

But Gabriella shook her head. “I couldn’t disappoint my mother, and it is too late anyhow.”

Yet there was a glad look in the eyes of all three as they turned their faces toward Liverpool. Soon the ocean would no longer roll between those whom they had left behind, and who so ardently longed to see them. Only Miss Cavendish looked back as one who is not saying a long farewell. “We shall come over again next year,” she murmured, and Gabriella knew that the pronoun did not include her. She gazed wistfully out the window as lake and mountain and green pastures faded from their sight, and the lovely lake district gave place to chimneyed factories and smoky towns on the way to Liverpool.

Another day saw them on the deck of a huge ocean steamer. They idly watched till the last trunk was on board, till the hoarse whistle announced the fact that the hour for departure had come, then they turned away and went to look for steamer letters. In consequence of this they were too late to see a young man rush up the gangway at the very last moment. In one hand he carried a suit case and in the other a great bunch of roses. He was barely in time; another minute and the great paddle wheels began to turn. They were off.

Gabriella in her stateroom, with a little catch at her heart, was reading Miss Bailey’s farewell letter. “We are looking every day for Mr. Morgan,” she wrote. “He has been to some out-of-the-way place in Germany, but is coming back to England, and you, too, my dear, will some day come back to us, I am sure.”

There was a tap at the door of the adjoining room and presently Gabriella looked up to see Sidney holding out a bunch of saffron-colored roses and a letter. “The steward just brought these,” she said. “Oh, Rella, they remind me of Italy. Who could have sent them?”

Gabriella buried her hot face in the cool fragrant flowers, and then she took the letter. She gave a half startled look at Sidney before she read: “I have just learned from my dear old friends that you are to sail to-morrow. I have learned other things, too, which give me courage to try to reach Liverpool in time for your steamer. If I may cross the ocean and ask your mother for the dearest girl in the world, will you wear one of these roses down to dinner? But if my presence will trouble you, and you would rather that we should not meet, do not wear the rose, and I will leave the steamer at Queenstown.”

The notes of the bugle call for dinner sounded along the corridor. Gabriella drew from the roses in her lap one perfect bud, which she pinned to her gown. Then she turned and held out a hand to each of her two comrades. “Come,” she said. “He is here, and I, too, shall come back some day.”

THE END.

TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES:

Italicized text is surrounded by underscores: _italics_.

Perceived typographical errors have been corrected.

Inconsistencies in hyphenation have been standardized.

Archaic or variant spelling has been retained.