CHAPTER XXII

RECOGNITION

"Go from me. Yet I feel that I shall stand Henceforward in thy shadow. Nevermore Alone upon the threshold of my door Of individual life, I shall command The uses of my soul, nor lift my hand Serenely in the sunshine as before." --SONNETS FROM THE PORTUGUESE.

It had been arranged that the fledgling architect should be accompanied by Mr. Helston, and have the benefit of his knowledge and experience when she went down to look at Captain Brooke's estate at Clunbury. But fate decreed otherwise. On Thursday morning Mr. Helston was in bed with a high temperature and sore throat. A railway journey on a raw, gusty day in early spring was out of the question for him; and Melicent was obliged to go alone.

Brenda suggested something about her being unchaperoned, which was met by the young lady with unspeakable scorn.

"Better throw up my profession at once, if Mrs. Grundy is to have a say in my business arrangements," she remarked; and caught her train at Paddington with professional composure.

She alighted at a small station on a branch line, which was the nearest point to the village; and as she stepped from the compartment, Captain Brooke approached, in a suit of country tweeds, gaiters and knickerbockers. In such guise he reminded her of her beloved Dalesmen, and the idea gave kindness to her smile of greeting.

As he approached, she noted that he looked pale under his tan, and seemed not perfectly ready to speak at once.

"So Mr. Helston was unable," he brought out, after manifest hesitation.

The girl looked surprised.

"I am so sorry! He is in bed with a severe chill. I bring you his apologies. But if you think he is indispensable--" she added, as an afterthought, puzzled by the disturbance visible in his face.

"Oh! by no means. It is good of you to come alone," he said hurriedly. "This way, please; I have only a hired trap at present, and am putting up at the inn near here, which is two miles from the village. I've ordered lunch, but it won't be much good, I'm afraid; these English country inns are astonishingly bad."

"Please don't apologise," she said. "I am used to roughing it, and I like it."

He smiled, as he tucked her into the dog-cart, and remarked, as he climbed to his seat beside her.

"Collis Square didn't seem very rough to me."

"Ah! But you haven't seen me at work. I can lay bricks, mix mortar, point walls--it's delicious."

He laughed. "I feel sure you could do anything you tried," he said.

They drove on briskly, through a lane whose hedges were beginning to show bronze buds upon their blackness. The sky, after some boisterous sleet storms, was washed a clear, pure blue. A faint golden haze of willow catkins brooded over the adjacent brown copses, and the wet sparkles on the bare boughs threw back the sunbeams. Here and there the lazy reek from a cottage chimney hung pearly against the indigo fir woods--a typical English April, and a typical English landscape.

"Do you like this country?" he asked abruptly, and his tone seemed to imply that he thought anybody must.

She made a conventional answer that it was very pretty.

"Perhaps you don't care for scenery?" he inquired anxiously.

She turned to him laughing.

"Oh," she said, "scenery is my particular fad. But this is too tame for me. You should see my Cleveshire moors and dales!"

His silence, in some inscrutable way, conveyed to her the idea of extreme mortification.

"Do you mean," he presently asked, "that you wouldn't care to live in this part of England?"

"I shouldn't choose it," she replied carelessly. "But then, I have no links with it. I quite appreciate your reason for choosing it."

"You do?"

"Undoubtedly. Your ancestry drew their living from this soil; they ate the corn it grew, the cattle it fed. In a real sense, you are part of this little bit of little England. There must be something in you that is in mysterious sympathy with it."

"That's how I feel," he replied, as though gratified to be so interpreted by her. "But I admire the country for itself too; it seems a great pleasure-ground--a sort of park laid out by God Almighty."

"I like more mystery, more wildness."

"I've had enough wildness," he answered very determinedly. "I like this because of its cultivation and fertility and order."

"I'd like to show you Fransdale," she said, smiling.

"I hope you will," he replied. "I'm going to Ilbersdale, you know." He reflected for some minutes, then said: "Should you advise me not to decide on this till I've seen the other?"

"What!" cried Millie, "when you've bought your land, and found your ancestors and all! I never heard of such a thing."

"I might put up a shooting-box on the moors," he said reflectively.

"You must be very rich," commented the girl, in wonder.

"I suppose I am. I did a big deal in land out there," he replied.

Privately she thought he had more money than wits; but perhaps he would make none the worse client for that.

They reached the inn, and he ushered her into the quaint, low parlour, with the usual stuffed birds, coloured almanacks and corner cupboard.

During the interval before the appearance of the roast fowl and boiled ham, she unrolled the drawings she had brought, spread them on a table in the window, and described them to him. The sun streamed in at the lattice, gilding her hair where it curled over and about the edges of her wide, flat, dark-blue cap as she sat absorbed in her plans and ideas. Her companion drank in the details of her dainty presence--from her fine skin to her firm, little hands, from her natty, embroidered collar to the strong, laced boots appearing below her short blue serge skirt. He was considering whether he found her more adorable in the lamplight in her white gown, or in the sunshine, in her workmanlike, country suit Suddenly he was conscious that he had failed to answer a question, and that a severe, surprised little face was being lifted to his.

Their glances met; he had a moment's awful apprehension. It seemed to him that she had caught him unawares without his mask. He had no notion what was the question she had asked, and he floundered desperately.

"You were saying--I am such a thundering ass--my mind had gone off. I was thinking that you can see the Lone Ash, where I want to build--from this window--there. That hill to the left--"

The inn maid-servant, bringing in the lunch, saved him.

But his moment of confusion, so much greater than the occasion seemed to warrant, had jarred the smooth, impersonal nature of Miss Lutwyche's opinion of him. There had been so remarkable a look--almost of consternation--in the man's eyes as he faced her. She had been at some pains to expound the main principle of the Lee-Simmons system of drainage for isolated houses, which was her special fancy, and which she was most anxious to have him adopt; and it was certainly annoying to find that she had been speaking to deaf ears. But his curious expression when she had looked at him! He had seemed like one suddenly caught in the act--taken red-handed. What could the thought be which had absorbed his attention, and reddened his brown cheek?

She was so kind as to repeat her information while they sat at lunch together, and had no cause this time to complain of lack of attention. But his momentary lapse had occasioned in her a subtle change of mental attitude. She was, without knowing why, suddenly on her guard--all at once concerned with this man, about whom before she had not thought at all.

Of course she did not say this to herself. Like all deep-seated motions of the mind, it was spontaneous, unrealised. But it was there; and the man encountered it, felt it with his alarming sensitiveness where she was concerned; and by degrees there arose up within him a profound uneasiness, which made the simplest sentence an effort.

Melicent soon settled, in her positive way, what was wrong. She thought the Captain, being rich and eligible, was nervous of being _tête-à-tête_ with his youthful lady architect. She spoke with elaborate ease and unconcern, determined to show him there was nothing to fear; but he seemed each moment more self-conscious.

There was, nevertheless, no doubt that he was interested--not only in the speaker, but in what she was saying. By the time lunch was over, he had practically decided upon the Lee-Simmons idea, and was eager to transport his architect to the scene of her enterprise at once. He went outside to the little rough plot of green before the inn to find the ostler; and urged by an impulse of such curiosity as she seldom felt, Melicent went to the window to watch him.

A few village children were at play upon the green; and one little girl, probably inspired by parents who hoped for some advantage from the rich man who was going to make his home among them, shyly approached him as he stood.

He had put his hands behind him, and forgotten himself in staring at the hill crowned by the Lone Ash, where he meant his fairy palace to arise. The little fair girl advanced diffidently, shyly holding out a big round bouquet of primroses, tightly tied together. He turned, looking down at her, half-amused; and Melicent thought that the big, fine man and the blushing child with her flowers, illumined by the crude spring sunshine, looked like the coloured supplement to a Christmas Number.

The Captain accepted the flowers, felt in his pocket for a penny, and turned back towards the inn door, with the intention of presenting the floral tribute to Miss Lutwyche.

Now, what was there in that action--what sudden thrill of memory--of recognition--of pain, like a sharp blow on a raw spot--darted to the brain of the girl who watched in the window?

She had seen a man come into a room once, with a bunch of flowers in his awkward, unaccustomed hand; she had heard the slapping thud with which they had been hurled into the grate.

"_So you'll break your word!_"

It seemed to her that the words were spoken aloud, now, at this moment, in the room. And a blinding light illuminated her. She knew, as completely as a moment before she had ignored, that Captain Brooke was none other than Bert Mestaer.

Waves of cold and heat, sudden dizziness clutched her. He was coming in--in a moment he would be there--she could not face him.

Terror prevented unconsciousness. Catching at the furniture, she staggered across the room to the inner room leading to the kitchen.

"Take me upstairs--a bedroom--I must lie down!" she gasped; and as the maid-servant, scared by her white face, rushed forward and encircled her with a strong arm, she gasped: "Don't say anything to Captain Brooke ... please. I shall be ... better directly."

The girl half supported, half dragged her up the narrow stair.

"Dear miss, what shall I do? Burnt feathers? Key down your back?" cried she distractedly.

"Is there--cold water? Yes, that's all. Go away please. Go! Come back in ten minutes. Leave me alone now."

Melicent turned the key in the door, and sank upon the scanty feathers of the rocky bed. For several minutes her one overpowering, paralysing sensation was fear. She could not think at all.

She lay prone, while the surging currents of her nerves slowly settled themselves and adjusted their balance. Her sense of outward things came back to her by degrees. The fine cold air flowed through the little casement with the sunshine. Wheels crunched upon the gravel below; a dog barked; someone spoke; in the distance a cow lowed. The world went on as usual, lapt in afternoon, rural peace. But from her skies the sun had dropped. The nightmare that had pursued her for years was now beside her in bodily shape, dogging her steps. Mestaer had come back.

How came it that she had not known? She answered herself bitterly that it was because she had trusted Carol Mayne, and he had allowed her to be deceived. Not for one moment did she now doubt Captain Brooke's identity. The marvel was that she had not detected him at once.

This had been the first time of her looking at him, he being unconscious of the fact of her observation; and in that moment he had betrayed himself, she could not have told how.

And now in what a net was she caught! The thought of the man's persistency turned her cold. She was committed to his acquaintance, involved in a business transaction with him--he was going to Ilbersdale. Even in Fransdale she should not be safe from him! And Carol Mayne had connived at this betrayal!

It did not take her long to form a decision on one point; namely, that her only hope lay in going on as if nothing had happened.

Surely she was capable of that! She, the self-contained, self-reliant professional woman!

Reaction had set in. Passionate anger, active defiance succeeded fear. It was quite simple, after all. She had stolen a march upon the conspirators and surprised their plans. It was the best thing that could have happened. She knew now what to guard against--could avoid intimacy and repel advances.

Springing from the bed, she dashed water into the basin, bathed her hot forehead, and was once more her own mistress, all her spirit, all her force, summoned up to defend her liberty.

She peeped from the window. Captain Brooke stood waiting by the trap below. His attitude betrayed a subdued impatience. Undoubtedly he was much changed--completely altered from the man she had known. There was real excuse for her non-recognition. But that he should have imagined that such an incognito could be sustained! No wonder he had betrayed nervousness that morning when he faced the idea of a day alone with her!

Well, they were equals now! He knew, and she knew. If she could prevent his knowing that she knew, all would be well.

She snatched up her gloves, and ran lightly downstairs, not allowing herself time to pause, but passing straight out into the sunshine to meet him.