CHAPTER IV

ON A SANDBANK

MRS. DE CRESSIERS' political dinners were a great success. When Sidney was returning home again, that lady said to her:

"I wish you were my daughter. You are such a help to me when I am entertaining."

"Or daughter-in-law, mother," put in Austin. He was driving Sidney back in his high dogcart, and could not resist adding to his mother's words.

Sidney laughed.

"I will come whenever you want me, Cousin Clarice."

Then, as they drove away, she reproved Austin for his levity:

"Your mother looked quite shocked."

"Oh, no," Austin said calmly. "I often tell her if I had come into the world a little sooner, I might have had a chance with you. As it is, you scorn me and call me a mere boy."

"And so you are, and ever will be in my eyes; so don't you try to be different."

"As long as we're chums, I don't much care. When is that man going away?"

"Which man?"

"Oh, there aren't so many about here—Neville. I took him fishing, and didn't cotton to him."

"For any reason?"

"Now, don't speak with that distant air. He wouldn't unbend. I chaffed him about his politics. Hate a fellow who won't stand chaff! He treated me like a fly upon the wall."

"You're very young," said Sidney; then, meeting a glare from the corner of Austin's eye, she added quietly: "and impudent."

"A de Cressiers is never snubbed in these parts," said Austin laughing. "That's my mother's creed, you know, and Neville gave her the biggest snub she has received for a long while, so she and I both bear him a grudge. Why is he so superior?"

"He never strikes me to be anything different from ourselves," said Sidney. "He is a reserved man, and not a very happy one. He is a disappointed man, I should say. Life has treated him hardly."

"You seem to know a lot about him. I'm a disappointed man, and life is treating me hardly, but I don't talk to people as if I am in the sky and they in the gutter."

Austin finished with a little chuckle. His naturally sunny temper overcame his sudden prejudice.

"We'll let him go hang!" he said. "Will you come out sand-eeling with me to-morrow?"

And in the interest of this new topic, Randolph sank into the background.

About a week later, Randolph went to dine with the Admiral. He arrival punctually at eight o'clock, but found the house in a commotion. The Major met him at the door.

"Have you seen my niece? We thought she might be at the Farm."

"Is she lost?" Randolph asked lightly.

"By George!" said the Major, bringing his fist down with force upon the hall table. "Do you think we're going to allow that for a moment? She went out after lunch, and said she would be back to tea. It's close on eight now, and no one seems to have seen anything of her."

"She has not been near the Farm," said Randolph, sobering at once. "Did she go on the river?"

"She never said she was going," said the Major. "Is the boat missing?"

No one seemed to have thought of looking. The Admiral came forward:

"It was only ten minutes ago that we discovered that she was not in the house. I have been out riding all the afternoon, and have not been in long. Wherever she is, she must have been delayed by some grave cause, for she is never late for dinner."

Randolph almost smiled as he recalled Monica's remark to him about the clockwork regularity of the Admiral's household, and then he was surprised at the anxiety tugging at his heart. Why should Sidney's unpunctuality be of such moment to him? He almost ran down to the boathouse. There was no boat in it, nor was it moored to its anchorage. The tide was out, and the low sandbanks across the river were plainly discernible.

"She's stuck on the mud somewhere," was his thought, and he shouted it out to the Major, who was following him down the garden.

He shook his head.

"Don't believe it! She has more gumption than that. She knows the river better than we do."

Randolph lost no time. He pulled out another boat close by—a boat built for the sea, and not for the river. He threw off his overcoat and dress-coat; turning up his white shirt sleeves, he shoved off and cautiously rowed in the shallow current down towards the sea.

The Major shouted after him: "I'll go down to the village and make inquiries there. Don't get on the mud yourself."

Randolph rowed off, and as he looked back, saw the old Admiral fussing round his horse, and evidently preparing to ride off again in search of his daughter.

"Three of us," he said, bending to his oars with a will. "I mean to come in winner."

It was getting dark, and the navigation of his boat was difficult. Progress was necessarily slow.

He wondered now if he had better have ridden along the banks and trusted to his sharp eyes to discover her whereabouts. To add to his discomfort, black clouds rolled up, and soon torrents of rain poured down almost perpendicularly.

"I'm rather a fool if she has landed safely hours ago and is making her way home," he muttered, but he knew that nothing would make him go back. Three miles down was the sea and the fishing village of Yalstone. This was his goal. He knew she invariably rowed seawards.

Suddenly he slipped in his oars and listened. Was it fancy that the following words were wafted over the water towards him?

"For what is the use of endless sorrow? Though the sun goes down, it will rise to-morrow."

Was it a trick of imagination? The rain was lessening. He struck a match and lighted up his pipe whilst he listened; and then very distinctly came a "Hallo!" across the river. He shouted back, and Sidney's voice came like a bell in response:

"I'm on a sandbank. Don't come too close."

"Why," he muttered to himself, "I was within an ace of passing her!"

Deftly and cautiously, he worked the boat towards the centre of the river.

"Go on singing," he shouted. "I can't see, but I can hear."

"I've sung myself hoarse!" came the cry.

Then came a rift in the rolling clouds, and a watery moon showed itself for a moment or two. Randolph saw his goal, and in a few minutes had pulled up by the side of a low sandbank.

Sidney was there in her boat, stuck hard and fast.

"Take care!" she cried. "You will stick too!"

Randolph was reckless.

"I've come down all right; I can go back. Now step in."

Sidney extended two very cold hands with her gay laugh.

"I really never expected that you would be my rescuer. I pictured you in the midst of the pudding course."

"Did you imagine that we should dine without you?"

He was wrapping her in his overcoat. Sidney protested.

"My dear man, I am soaked through. What I want is exercise, not wrappings. I really think our best plan will be to land and walk home. We shall only get stuck on another sandbank. I know them better than you. It's just a fluke that you rowed safely down. It's too dark to see anything."

"Can we land?" Randolph said, peering through the darkness.

"I'm afraid it must be on the wrong side—this side; there's a bit of beach close to us. I was making for it when I got stuck."

"Let's chance rowing back."

"We shan't do it. Father won't sleep if I'm out all night."

"Will you steer, then, as you know where you are? Confound the boat; I believe it has stuck."

He backed with all his might and just saved it. Sidney steered still downstream.

"We shall get to the end of this bank and then slip across. Now, then, row for your life. Give me an oar."

It was a breathless moment, but they did it, and drove the boat fast and firm on a stony beach.

In another moment both were out on dry ground.

"There!" said Sidney. "Now we'll say good-bye to our boats and make the best of our way home. It's a good six miles round by the bridge, but there are no obstacles to prevent speed."

They scrambled up a steep bank, after making the boat fast to a post close by, and found themselves on a good high road.

Sidney slipped out of Randolph's overcoat and held it out to him.

"I really couldn't walk in it," she said apologetically; "but it has sent a little circulation through me."

"You are wet through," he said, just for one moment letting his hand rest on her shoulder.

"Yes; but I'm hardy, and am going to enjoy my walk. I honestly am very grateful to you. I was preparing to make myself comfortable for the night when I heard the splash of oars, so then, Lorelei-like, I began to sing, knowing that I might be luring you to a similar fate."

"Who did you think it was?" demanded Randolph.

"Not you."

"Why not? You knew I was coming to dine."

"But you don't know the tricks of our river, and Uncle Ted does. I'm disappointed in him."

"I got to the boat first," explained Randolph. "He didn't give you credit for sticking in the mud; said you had too much gumption."

Sidney laughed out.

"I've never done such a thing in my life before; and now he'll never let me forget it. I was a fool, I own I was, but—I was thinking too much."

She hesitated, and Randolph, not liking the drop in her voice, said cheerfully:

"How long shall we give ourselves for getting round?"

"Four miles an hour. In an hour and a half we shall be walking up the drive. Oh, yes, I feel you have no faith in my walking powers, but when I wind myself up I'm equal to any man—and the difficulty is to stop. When I'm thoroughly in it, I feel I could walk on for ever."

She walked as if she liked it; her feet hardly seemed to touch the ground, her tread was so light and springy.

"What a pity you don't smoke!" Randolph said. "Would you object to my pipe?"

"Of course not. Dad is old-fashioned; I think I am too. I never could take to it. I assure you I'm a century behind most contemporaries of mine."

Randolph did not respond.

She went on:

"It's an advantage in one way. I don't get sick longings for an active independent life. I'm too pleased with myself and my surroundings. Don't you think I'm a very self-satisfied creature? Aunt Dannie says I am."

"I think you would be contented with very little," said Randolph gravely. "I wish I could be. Hand your secret on to me. I can't be content with my circumstances."

"Ah," said Sidney, drawing a long breath, "content or discontent is a matter of long or short sight, isn't it? I have learnt that it is."

Randolph began to think it out.

"How?" he questioned. "Even a sandbank in a deluge doesn't affect your spirits."

"Well, it might be worse," said Sidney; "and I'm not going to have you think me other than I am. A fit of discontent took me out this afternoon and abstracted me from the present. When I stuck, I readjusted my focus, and then felt better."

"Still I don't understand."

"'For our light affliction, which is but for a moment, worketh for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory.'"

The words came softly but very firmly from Sidney's lips.

"But you don't apply that to the sandbank?"

Sidney's laugh rippled out.

"I was going to the cause that made me drift to the sandbank. We were talking of general content and discontent, weren't we? That quotation gives present and future; if we see as far as the end of it, there's not much to grumble at, is there?"

"You're very religious," Randolph said vaguely.

"Oh, I'm not. I wish I were; but I stake my all on the Book from which that saying comes. I believe it through and through. And it's such a cheerful creed."

Randolph walked along silently for a few minutes. He thought over his disappointments and disillusions in life, and he wondered if he had taken the Bible as his guide whether it would have brought him cheer and comfort.

"I wish you would tell me more," he said. "If you bring disaster wilfully upon yourself, can you still look ahead and forget the present? It sounds ghostly and unreal. What is our future? Who can tell? It is the present that matters."

"Well," said Sidney gaily, "our present is rather a nasty one. I'm treading water in my shoes, and haven't a dry inch on me, but we're not taking it to heart much; we're getting home—on our way there—and the thought of the fires and food and comforts that will be ours makes us think lightly of the present, does it not?"

"You're going home," said Randolph with emphasis.

"We've all got the same home at the end of life—at least, we can have it if we want to—and we're getting home, that's what I keep saying to myself."

Strange memories crowded into Randolph's heart. He had had a good mother, and he knew that she had reached home and expected to see him there. In a vague fashion, he expected to meet her again; but he had never troubled his head about the way to do it. He felt as if he would like to walk on for ever, listening to Sidney's soft bright voice as she spoke so naturally of the things that were usually locked away from ordinary conversation. They tramped along; from grave subjects they turned to gay; once Sidney spoke regretfully of her father and his anxiety.

"I wouldn't make him uneasy for worlds. I do hope, he hasn't sallied out anywhere after me. He has had a cold, and his throat is always delicate. What a dinner party for you! I really think you most long-suffering not to be enraged with me!"

"I haven't missed my dinner," said Randolph quietly; "but this will be my last visit to you. I am off to-morrow."

"Are you, really? We—my father will miss you."

"Why did you correct yourself?" Randolph asked with a short laugh. "I should like to think you missed me. I haven't too many friends; perhaps it's as well. The fewer you have, the fewer you lose. They want me in town about a billet abroad."

"Why do you leave poor old England? I heard you were a good speaker. We have not many at present in Parliament."

Then Randolph spoke with passion underlying his tone:

"They are offering me a frontier post. I shall have things my own way there; but it's a disgrace to the Empire at present. I shall get a chance of a good sweep out, and a general clean up. If I can clean one corner for the country and keep it clean, it's better work than fighting for party, and swallowing one's convictions and conscience with one gulp."

"Yes," said Sidney slowly; "perhaps. And we want strong men for those isolated frontiers. You are going to accept it?"

"Most certainly. I am a single man and have no ties; there isn't a soul who will miss me. I have nothing and nobody to keep me at home."

Bitterness was in his tone.

"Oh, don't say that."

"It's true. You were good enough to hint you might miss me down here. But for how long? A month hence your remembrance of me will be vague. A few years hence you may take up a paper and read of the death by fever or some such epidemic of a certain Randolph Neville. And you will say to your father, 'Wasn't that the man who visited Monnie once? I seem to remember the name.'"

Very lightly Sidney laid her hand on his arm, and the touch thrilled Randolph, though he was furious to have to acknowledge it to himself.

"Have I deserved such a speech?"

"I don't know why I'm talking of myself at all," said Randolph gruffly; "it isn't my way."

"Life will be better to you than you think. It's a good world to live in. Don't doubt everything and everybody."

"Ah, you have as yet had no disillusions!"

Then, aghast, he recollected; and her tense cry once more came to his ears: "Teach me to forget! Teach me to forget!"

"I have had a few," said Sidney very quietly; "but the world is big, and we are not meant to grow bitter in it."

Randolph caught his breath.

Then through the darkness came a shout, and the next moment the Admiral's groom reined up his horse by them.

"Oh, Baker, is that you? I am all right, and we're coming home as fast as we can."

Sidney's voice was brisk and cheerful.

"Ride back and tell the Admiral I'm coming. I got stranded on a sandbank."

The groom galloped off.

All serious talk was over, and very soon they were in the hall, with the Admiral and the Major fussing round them. The Major had just got in, very tired and rather cross now that the excitement was over.

"We thought your boat had got upset," he said testily. "We never expected you would stick in the mud."

"I'm so sorry I have disappointed you," said Sidney; then she put her arms up round her father's neck, and gave him a hug. "You are not sorry to see me back again, are you, dad?"

Her father laid his hand caressingly on her head.

"I shall say my prayers to-night with a grateful heart," he said; then he looked towards Randolph. "Thanks much to you for bringing me back my little girl. I could not live without her."

Then Sidney slipped away to change her wet clothes. Half-way up the low broad staircase, she stopped and looked down at the little group in the hall.

"Make Mr. Neville change his wet things, dad. Uncle Ted's clothes will fit him. And we shall be ready for dinner in twenty minutes."

The belated dinner was served at half-past ten, and it was a cheerful meal. Afterwards, in the drawing-room, Randolph bade Sidney good-bye.

"Shall we never meet again?" she exclaimed, as she laid her hand in his, and felt the emphasis of his words. "I don't like to make friends and lose them so quickly. Won't you be in these parts again before you sail?"

He shook his head.

"If I go, I go next week. Miss Urquhart, I shall be a lonely man out there. Will you write me a line occasionally? May I write to you? Just to keep up our friendship, which I trust we have started."

"I shall like to hear from you how you are getting on, and will certainly answer your letters," responded Sidney gravely.

Randolph's eyes for one moment rested upon her slim graceful figure as she stood before him. Surely, he thought, those fringed grey eyes that looked with a sunny calm into his could be trusted! And then he saw them droop before his gaze, and was not sure whether it was only his imagination that made him think he saw a glistening drop hanging on the tip of those dark curled lashes.

He went, and Sidney watched him go with a strange sinking of heart.

"I feel so sorry for him," she said, turning to her father; "he is conscious of his integrity and clean hands; but has always been abused and misunderstood and deceived by those whom he trusted most."

"Well, you seem to know a lot about him," said her father; "but Neville will make his way. He is a rising man, and if he gets this billet, he'll be the right man in the right corner."

"Monnie has told me a good deal about him," said Sidney, with a wistful look in her eyes. "He is not a happy man, I am afraid; and yet, he deserves to be. I wish he were not going out to such desolation."

"It's time some right-minded man tackled that job," the Admiral said. "I happen to know a good bit about that place. We coasted round it once. There is only a handful of Europeans, and they say English lads sent out there either die in five years' time, or come back hopeless drunkards. They go to pieces; climate, isolation, and drink are too much for them. But they've had bad administrators; it's a blot on our Empire. Neville will remedy that."

"I wish he had never left the House," said Sidney warmly. "He will be wasted out there. We want strong men at home in the present state of affairs."

"We want them in all quarters of the globe," said the Admiral. And his daughter said no more.

Randolph did not go to bed very early that night; when he got back, he sat up with Monica over a little log fire, the first she had had; but the rain was heavy. And though she had no idea how much he had been exposed to it, she expected that he would have a wet walk home. She and he were very good friends, and she was genuinely sorry that he was leaving her the following day.

"You have done me a lot of good," she said to him. "I get into a rut of my own, and want to be shaken out of it. But dear though Aunt Dannie is, she is not a conversationalist, and we think so very differently that we agree to go our own ways. You make me see that my ways are not infallible; and your presence here has been good for Chuckles. Oh, Randolph, do you think I shall make a good man of him? I get so anxious. Sometimes I think I am too severe; sometimes overindulgent. And it is such a loss for a boy to have no father!"

"I don't know," said Randolph; "it rather depends on the father. I believe a woman is better at training than a man—up to a certain age. I know all the good that ever came to me was through my mother. I remember her teaching; it has stuck to me through life—at least, some of it has; I don't remember anything learnt from my father. He was indifferent to me, and died when I was ten. A woman lays a better foundation than a man."

Monica sighed. Sidney's words came to her: "Duty is a good foundation; but it is not the right one."

"I shall get Sidney to help me with him," she said. "She happens to have that happy knack of teaching without any effort. I get ponderous when I talk to him for his good. And he and I are both relieved when it is over. I wonder when you will come down here again?"

"Not for some years, I should say."

"Oh, don't bury yourself out there. You must have a home of your own one day, Randolph. I know you don't feel like it now; but time brings changes to our feelings, as well as to everything else. And do choose an English girl for a wife!"

"Are you afraid I shall choose a dark-skinned one?" Randolph said, with a little laugh.

"I know you will be lonely out there," said Monica gravely.

"I don't know the meaning of that word," said Randolph, squaring his shoulders and compressing his lips, quite forgetting his parting words to Sidney. "I have always lived alone and thought alone; but that is second nature to me. The difficulty to me is to include my fellow-creatures in my calculations."

"Now, that is nonsense! No one has worked harder for his fellow-beings than you have."

"Yes, and have received kicks and abuse for it accordingly. Never mind! I suppose I must have one more try, and then, if I come back a failure, I'll struggle no more against the stream."

"You will never become a drifter," said Monica with conviction.

The next morning, at breakfast, Chuckles was told of Randolph's coming departure.

"Why are you going away, Cousin Ran? I'm very fond of you. I was hoping you would take me with you to London."

"I'm going a little farther than London," said Randolph. "No, you'll have to do your growing without me for a bit now, Chuckles. When I come back, I'll find you a first-class farmer, I hope."

"I'd rather be a builder," said Chuckles, looking across at his aunt with his mouth full of bread and butter. "I'm specially intellested in building just now. Miss Sid is talking a lot to me about it."

"What does she say?" asked Randolph, laughing at the child's solemn eyes.

"We've all got to build," Chuckles said. "I'm practisin' on the sand, but I always put a big stone first at the bottom of my castles. That's the funation, you know. It must be a stone—rock, the Bible says. The funation is awfully differcult. Miss Sid says we're all builders. Fancy! God put us in the world to build! Did you know that?"

"Well, I'm going to do a bit of Empire building, I trust," said Randolph, looking across at Monica with a queer smile, "so I shall be fulfilling my destiny."

"Yes," she answered gravely, "and I, in my corner, building up a prosperous heritage, I trust, for a certain small boy, who may defeat and disappoint my hopes."

"Not if Miss Urquhart is as successful a builder in her corner as you are," returned Randolph.

"Yes, I'm a better builder at farms than characters," said Monica with a little sigh.

"So we're all building something, Chuckles," said Randolph, looking at the small boy with a twinkle in his eyes. "I've been an unsuccessful builder so far; two of my cherished castles have toppled over."

Chuckles clapped his hands exultantly.

"That's acause you didn't have a stone funation, like the man on the sand. The winds blew, and the flood came, and the big sea washed it over."

"Yes," said Randolph, the twinkle dying away; "the winds blew, and the flood came, and the big sea washed them quite away. I'm having another try now. Wish me success, little man."

Chuckles looked at him with big eyes.

"How high will you build? Up to heaven?"

"Go on with your breakfast," said Monica quickly.

Chuckles said no more until his good-bye came, and then he looked with awe at the small gold piece pressed into his chubby palm.

"Why, that will buy me a pony, won't it?" he questioned, beginning to caper up and down. "Oh, Cousin Ran, thank you truly! And may I come out to see you building in India one day? Me and Miss Sid will come out togever."

"And what will become of Aunt Monnie?"

"She'll come, too. We'll all come, and we'll all build togever!"

"A happy family!" laughed Randolph, as he waved his adieux.

He had much food for thought during his journey up to town, and somehow or other Sidney's slim gracefulness, her sweet vibrating voice, her eager shining eyes, haunted him. He carried away the impress of her personality with him, and also the lisping words of the child: "How high will you build? Up to heaven?"