face and firm build of the man who had just been publicly dubbed “coward.”
“For shame!” hotly retorted the girl. “I have no wish to talk to you any more, or ever again. Please go.”
He made no reply. Lifting his hat ceremoniously he turned away. A few yards’ glide brought him to the bank. He sat down, deliberately removed his skates, lit a cigar, then started upon his way; the no-longer restrained jeers which followed him falling upon his ears with no other effect than to cause him to congratulate himself upon having given others the opportunity of performing the feat from which he had refrained.
The subject of all this disturbance was showing signs of restoration to life and consciousness. Seen in the midst of the gaping—and for the most part useless—crowd which hemmed him in, he was an urchin of about thirteen or fourteen, with a debased type of countenance wherein the characteristics of the worst phase of guttersnipe—low cunning, predatoriness, boundless impudence, and aggressive brutality—showed more than incipient. Such a countenance was it, indeed, as to suggest that the rescue of its owner from a watery death went far to prove the truth of a certain homely proverb relating to hanging and drowning. And now, gazing upon it, Violet Courtland was conscious of an unpleasant truth in those last words spoken by her fiancé. She was forced to own to herself that the saving of this life assuredly was not worth the risking of his. Yet she had implored him to do something towards the rescue, and he had done nothing. He had replied that there was nothing to be done; had stood, calmly looking on while others had risked their lives, he fearing for his. Yes, fearing. It looked like that.
And yet—and yet! She knew but little of his past, except what he had told her. She had taken him on trust. He had led something of an adventurous life in wild parts of Africa. Two or three times, under pressure, he had told of an adventurous incident, wherein assuredly he himself had not played a coward’s part. Yet the recollection so far from clearing him in her estimation produced a contrary effect, and her lips curled as she decided that he had merely been bragging on these occasions; that if the events had happened at all they must have happened to somebody else. For, when all was said and done, he had shown himself a coward in her sight. Her hastily formed judgment stood—if anything—stronger than before. And—she was engaged to marry a coward!
With a sad sinking of heart she left the spot, and, avoiding all escort or companionship, took her way homeward alone. The short winter afternoon was waning, and a red afterglow was already fast fading into the grey of dusk. Against it the chimney stacks of Courtland Hall stood silhouetted blackly, while farther down, among the leafless and frost spangled tree-tops, the old church-tower stood square and massive.
It was Christmas Eve, and now the bells in the tower rang out in sudden and tuneful chime, flinging their merry peal far and wide over leafless woodland and frozen meadow. They blended, too, with the ring of belated blades on the ice-bound mere behind, and the sound of voices mellowed by distance. To this girl, now hurrying along the field path, her little skates dangling from her wrist, but for the events of the last half-hour how sweet and hallowed and homelike it would all have been; glorified, too, by the presence of one! Now, anger, disgust, contempt filled her mind; and her heart was aching and sore with the void of an ideal cast out.
One was there as she struck into the garden path leading up to the terrace. He was pacing up and down smoking a cigar.
“Well?” he said, turning suddenly upon her. “Well, and have you had time to reconsider your very hastily expressed opinion?”
“It was not hastily expressed. It was deliberate,” she replied quickly. “I have no words for a coward. I said that before.”
“Yes, you said that before—for the amusement of a mob of grunting yokels, and an odd social equal or two. And now you repeat it. Very well. Think what you please. It is utterly immaterial to me now and henceforward. I will not even say good-bye.”
He walked away from her in the other direction, while she passed on. A half impulse was upon her to linger, to offer him an opportunity of explanation. Somehow there was that about his personality which seemed to belie her judgment upon him. But pride, perversity, superficiality of the deductive faculty, triumphed. She passed on without a word.
The hour was dark for Piers Lamont—dark indeed. He was a hardened man, and a strong-willed one, but now he needed all his hardness, all his strength. He had loved this girl passionately and almost at first sight, secretly and at a distance for some time before accident had brought about their engagement, now a matter of three months’ duration. And she had returned his love in full, or had seemed to, until this disastrous afternoon. And now his sense of justice was cruelly outraged, and that he felt as if he could never forgive. Moreover, his was one of those natures to which an occurrence of this kind was like chipping a piece out of a perfect and valuable vase or statue. The piece may be restored, but, however skilfully such be done, the rift remains, the object is no longer perfect. It is probable that at that moment he felt more bitterly towards Violet than she did towards him, which is saying a great deal. He had been rudely thrown out of his fool’s paradise, and with grim resolution he must accept the position and live down the loss. But the flower-like face, and the deep blue eyes which had brimmed up at him with love, and the soft, wavy brown hair which had pillowed against his breast in restful trust—could he ever tear the recollection from his mind? Pest take those jangling Christmas bells though, cleaving the night with their mockery of peace and good-will!
“Here, Violet. What the dickens is the meaning of this?” said her father, an hour or two later, as he met her going upstairs to dress for dinner. “Here’s Lamont cleared at a moment’s notice, without the civility even to say good-bye. Leaves this,”—holding out an open letter—“saying he’s been called away on urgent business—a qualified lie you know, because no one does business on Christmas Day, and it’s nearly that now—and won’t be able to return; may have to go abroad immediately; and all the stock balderdash men write under the circumstances; though how they imagine anybody is going to be such an idiot as to believe them, I can’t make out. Now, you are at the back of all this. Had a row?”
“Oh, I don’t care to talk about it,” she said, with a movement as though to pass on.
“But you must care to talk about it, my dear girl; at any rate for my satisfaction. You had to consult me, didn’t you, in order to bring about this engagement? and now if you’ve thrown the man over—and it looks deucedly as if you had—I’ve a right to know why. Here—come in here.”
Squire Courtland was by no means of the type usually described as “one of the old school,” except in so far that he was very much master in his own house. For the rest, he prided himself on being exceedingly up-to-date—and his estimate of woman was almost savage in its cynicism. Between himself and Violet there was an utter lack of sympathy; resulting, now that she was grown up, in an occasional and very unpleasant passage of arms.
“If I’ve thrown the man over!” quoted Violet angrily, when they were alone in her father’s own private ‘den,’ “of course you are sure to take his part.”
“I must know what ‘his part’ is before taking it or not. You women always expect us to hang a man first and try him afterwards; or rather to hang him on your sweet evidence alone, and not try him at all.”
“Oh, father, please don’t talk to me in that horrid tone,” restraining with vast effort the paroxysm of sobbing which threatened, and which she knew would only irritate him. “I am not feeling so extra happy, I can tell you.”
“Well, get it over then. What has Lamont done?”
“I can’t marry a coward.”
“Eh?
