CHAPTER XXIV

AN OLD ACQUAINTANCE

"SUCH a little while since I came, and yet Old Maxham feels quite a home to me now! I suppose we are like creeping plants, putting out tendrils wherever they chance to be, and clinging fast. Only a few months ago I felt so alone and friendless in the world, and now it's all different,—isn't it, Hero?"

Mildred paused to pat the dog's head, as he followed close behind her. "Less than a year, and so much to have happened."

She looked down at her black dress, not yet discarded. Close upon eleven months had passed since the death of her brother and his child; and the earlier months of those eleven had dragged by very slowly while the later months, being full of work and interest, had fled three times as fast. It was difficult to believe that one year ago she had never heard of Old Maxham, or of Jessie, or of Miss Perkins.

The afternoon was keen and cold, but very still. Old Maxham had been a good deal excited during the last few days; for the long-wished-for lifeboat had at last arrived, and was now installed in the boat-house, built beforehand in readiness to receive it.

Some time might elapse before a storm should arise, and longer still, it was to be hoped, before a wreck should call out the boat; but here it now was, ready for need, a possible ark of refuge for drowning sailors or passengers, no longer to be vainly cried for in a last despair.

Already a full crew had been enrolled, double the number actually needed to man the boat; and more than one practice had taken place, by way of getting their hands in. Old Adams had been appointed coxswain, with a fixed salary of eight pounds a year, with Robins for bowman at a salary of thirty shillings. There would also be regular additional payments; four shillings usually to each man of the crew, when they went afloat for exercise; ten shillings to each by day, and one pound to each by night, when going to save life, whether or no they were successful in the effort; and these sums would be increased by one-half during the winter months, from the beginning of October to the end of March.

Such and other expenses would be undertaken by the National Lifeboat Institution, out of its regular funds; but collections were to be made annually in the neighbourhood, managed by a small local committee, to do what might be possible in the way of helping to support their own lifeboat. All Maxham was delighted with this new possession, and certainly not least so the Vicar, who had had so much to do with getting it.

Mildred had lately been very hard at work, with her two helpers, Jessie and Mimy. She seemed always to have her hands more than full; and, indeed, she might easily have kept two or three more assistants employed. But this would have meant a change of abode, as no room in Periwinkle Cottage was large enough for more than three workers, spending many hours of the day together.

A fourth might sit with them occasionally, but not as a regular thing: and Mildred was not anxious to make a big concern of her dressmaking business. She preferred to undertake no more than she could herself cut out and properly overlook; and she did not at all wish to quit Miss Perkins' little house, which had become a home to her.

This afternoon she meant to treat herself to a lonely ramble; lonely, except for the companionship of Hero—and she never went for a walk without taking him. Hero had saved her life; and he was the one link which bound her present to her past life.

Everything and everybody else was new; dating not so far back as the shipwreck which had swept away her belongings. Hero alone had been in her former life. Much as Mildred cared for Jessie, and for other Old Maxham friends, not one of them could be to her what faithful Hero was; and she loved now and then to get away with him into the country, there to indulge in dreams of the past, which were not all sad, because they were mingled with dreams of the future.

Solitary as she might be in a sense, that solitariness was not for ever. Those who were gone she had not lost. They had only passed before her into the fairer Land. By-and-by she would join them there; and all her best hopes were anchored on that reunion. It helped her sometimes to pass out of reach of other people's chit-chat, and to lose herself in thought of the future.

"Come, Hero, we'll go through the fields," she said, speaking to the dog as to a friend of her own standing.

Hero always seemed to understand.

The ground was dry, because frozen; and a slight fall of snow had taken place. Each tiny twig bore its little clothing on the upper side, of delicate whiteness; and the ground sparkled, as if strewn with diamonds, in the sunshine. A good many clouds were scattered over the sky, one and another passing from time to time over the face of the sun; but each brief shadow was followed by renewed brightness.

"Not a bad day," Mildred decided. "And winter cannot last much longer now. A few weeks will see us well into spring."

She walked on, musing after her favourite fashion, keeping up a good pace, and covering a greater distance than she quite realized.

Hero walked close at her heels, after his usual fashion; and with him she never minded where she went, for no man would ever have dared to molest her while Hero was at hand. Gentle as the dog looked and was, he would have made short work of anybody who should have threatened harm to his mistress. He would let a little child tug his hair and poke its fingers into his eyes, with unlimited patience; but his grip could be deadly, if occasion called for it. This was understood in the country round, since one day when Hero found that a man in a lonely lane had evil intent towards Mildred. That man had a narrow escape of his life.

Mildred suddenly woke up to the fact of how fast and how far she had walked. The sun was dipping below the horizon, and the air had begun to gain an extra sharpness, suggestive of approaching night.

"I must be going back," Mildred said aloud; but she felt rather tired, and paused, to lean against the low parapet of a bridge, where the road passed over a stream.

She determined to give herself three minutes' rest, and then to return as fast as she had come.

Hero laid himself down at her feet, to await her pleasure.

It was singularly still. Hardly a breath of air stirred; hardly a twig of any bush moved. The brightness of sunlight, causing snow-sparkles all around, had now vanished, and the whole landscape lay under a grey shadow, which momentarily deepened. She would scarcely get back to the village before dark; but with Hero at her side, this did not matter; and Mildred enjoyed keen cold. It braced her up, she said.

The water of the sluggish little stream below ran quietly, with barely power to make itself heard. It was not a singing brook, though the water moved. Such frost as there was had not been able to bind it into stillness; but a little harder frost would succeed with so slow a brook.

Somebody was coming along the road, from that direction towards which she had been walking; that is to say he was on the way to Old Maxham. Not a tramp or a beggar. Mildred knew this at once, while he was still distant. She knew it from the quick step, the purposeful onward motion, which spoke of another class of man, though what class she could not yet conjecture.

In general outline the figure did not recall any one with whom she was acquainted in the neighbourhood; yet there was about it a curious suggestion of familiarity, as if she had known the person once upon a time, she could not recall when. She watched with a dreamy interest the gradual approach of the figure, as it came onward steadily, never swerving, nor hastening, nor slackening, but gradually increasing in apparent size as it filled a larger and larger space in her eye.

Then she began to see that it was an elderly man, or at least that he looked elderly, and that he had longish loose grey hair, curling, and falling almost to his shoulders. The kind benevolent face under his hat brought back in a flash a certain day, when she had been in the Churchyard, alone and lonely and well-nigh hopeless, and a stranger had spoken to her words of comfort.

"I thought I should see him again some day," she said to herself, and she went a step or two forward to meet him.

"How do you do?" she said, putting out her hand, with no hesitation. "We have met before, you know."

"Yes, I know," he replied pleasantly. "I remember you well,—very well indeed."

"We have only met once. It was one day in the Churchyard. You told me some truths, and made me feel how wrong I was. It did me a great deal of good. I am glad to be able to thank you for it now."

He smiled, as if recalling what had passed.

"You are Miss Pattison, who was saved last year from the shipwreck. When the Vicar behaved so gallantly, and all the other good fellows too. And your brave dog, not least of them all. Yes, yes, of course I heard all about that. The place was very full of the story when I came. And when I was here last, you were all trying hard to get enough money for a lifeboat."

"Have you been here a second time? I did not see you."

"No, I ran down for a week only. In fact, I only stayed three or four days. I had to hurry back to London. So I promised your good doctor to come again, and to stay a little longer. He and I are firm friends. Now, do you think you are wise to stay here in the cold?" This question came in a half-coaxing tone of remonstrance, as to a child.

"No, perhaps not; but I wanted a minute or two of rest, before starting for home."

"Then we are both going the same way. You will let me see you safely to the village. You are excuse me—hardly old enough to wander alone in these lonely roads."

"I feel very old! And I have no fear, with Hero. No one dares to touch me when he is here. He does not seem to mind you."

"I have spoken to Hero several times,—meeting him in the village. He is a fine fellow."

"I owe my life to him. But for Hero, I could not have escaped from the wreck."

"So I was told. And you are of course very grateful to him. You could not be otherwise."

Mildred walked silently for some seconds. "Yes," she said at length, "I am grateful now. I see that life is worth keeping, that it must be worth keeping, no matter how lonely or how sad one may be,—because there is always something to be done for somebody, and because it is God's gift to us, and meant to be valued. But that day, when you found me in the Churchyard, I was not grateful at all. It seemed to me that it would have been so very much happier, if only I had been taken too, with my brother and the little one. I had no one left, and life seemed to have no object."

"I remember. That was what you felt; one could see it. I wished that I could make you see how close a tie there really is between all brother men, and—" with a slight break,—"'specially those who are of the Household of Faith.'"

"You did help me to see it. I began to understand from that hour. You did not say much, but what you did say took hold of me."

"Come, that's cheering," and he smiled. "One likes to be made use of sometimes, in a stray sort of way. I am very much alone in the world, too, after a fashion: that is to say, I have no one belonging to me in the way of near relations. But I have been used to comfort myself with thinking that everybody belonged to me, and that I might always be doing something for somebody or other."

The speaker paused, and began afresh,—"I wonder whether you remember a certain sermon or address of your good Vicar, when he said something about Nobody's Business being commonly Everybody's Business. That struck me, just because it was a favourite thought of my own. Odd, how much one is impressed by what a man says in the pulpit, if one has happened to have that very same idea in one's own mind before. Why should one think better of it, merely because it has been one's own notion? However, so things are; and I had often said to myself,—

"'Now, John Willoughby, you haven't got much business of your own to attend to, so the best you can do is to look about and see whatever happens to be "nobody's business," and then just take that up and make it "your business."'

"And when I heard your Vicar say pretty much the same thing, I was delighted. No reason for being so, but I was, and I suppose most people would have been in my place. Man's an odd being, you know. But here am I chattering on, and letting you have no time to put in a single word."

"No; I like to hear you. Please go on," Mildred answered quietly. "Tell me how you carry out that plan."

"Not much difficulty. There's always something wanting to be done, or somebody needing to be helped. And though I haven't kith or kin, I have no lack of money. So the question is—how to use my money to the best advantage. Not always in the regular channels, you know, but in doing things that perhaps nobody else is quite able or quite willing to do. No end of things turn up, one way and another."

Then another pause.

"I had a very good business in the second-hand book trade for years; and when health showed signs of failing, I disposed of that, and money came to me unexpectedly from another quarter. So, of course, the question arose, what to do with myself and my money, to the best advantage? I'm no advocate for reckless giving to anybody that asks,—just pauperising those who ought to work for themselves. But very often one may help those who are down to get up again, or those who are in difficulties to get out of them. I can't go in for regular hard work, but I can see to that sort of thing."

A sudden thought had come to Mildred, making her eyes brighten. She looked round at him, and said, "And perhaps, sometimes, if you find a collection being made for something that is very much wanted, you give a check to help it on."

"Sometimes, yes,—if that seems to be the right thing to do."

He showed no particular signs of consciousness, and Mildred added,—

"You say you were here once, since that time that I saw you. And that must have been when Mr. Gilbert was preaching for the new lifeboat. That was the time, I think, when he said so much about Nobody's Business. Mr. Gilbert was in great difficulties about getting all the money he wanted. And some one generously gave ninety pounds towards it." Mildred forgot that she had once condemned any attempt to find out the donor. People are not always consistent.

"Ah!" Mr. Willoughby answered gravely. "That was quite right of somebody." Then, as he met Mildred's smile, "You are a little too keen in putting two and two together. I ought to have kept clear of these subjects,—but—the fact is, I had a wish to know you better, after the curious beginning of our acquaintanceship. So it seemed natural to tell you frankly a little about myself. But if I do not deny what you suggest, I shall ask you to keep my secret."

"May I some day tell the Vicar? He would be so much interested. It almost seems as if he ought to know."

"I don't see the need; but I won't make a fuss and tie you down too closely. If you have no especial reason for telling him, please say nothing. If you have, then ask him to let it go no farther. There is too much in this day of making everything public that one does. And, after all, what was it worth? I did not want the money for myself. I had enough besides for every need of my own."