Chapter 6.
A Clerical Warning.
The children’s tea-party lasted a long time, and the twins enjoyed themselves prodigiously in the yew-tree arbour, albeit both their hostess and their aunt were curiously absent-minded, and returned vaguest answers to Minnie’s continuous prattle, and to occasional remarks propounded gravely by Jennie between two mouthfuls of cake.
Perhaps the twins enjoyed themselves all the more under this condition of things, for they were allowed to range at will from one dainty to another, and were not worried by those troublesome suggestions of unwholesomeness, which are apt to harass juvenile gourmands.
Tea was over at last, and then they had a game at ball on the grass in front of the fountain; after that they fed the gold fish, until Hilda began to talk of getting them home. It was nearly seven o’clock by this time, and Bothwell had not appeared.
The whole business seemed flat, stale, and unprofitable to Hilda, for want of that familiar presence. He had been such a pleasant companion of late—not attentive or flattering of speech, as young men are to girls they admire. He had said none of those pretty things which call up blushes in girlish cheeks; but he had been kind and brotherly, and Hilda was satisfied to accept such kindness from him. She thought it even more than her due. She was not what is called a high-spirited girl. She did not expect men to bow down and worship her; she did not expect that hearts were to be laid at her feet for her to trample upon them. She had none of the insolence of conscious beauty. If ever she were to love, it would be secretly, meekly, patiently, as Shakespeare’s Helena loved Bertram, with a gentle upward-looking affection, deeming her lover remote and superior as a star.
There had been a time when she thought that Bothwell cared for her a little, and then he had been to her as Bertram. Now he was kind and brotherly, and she was grateful for his kindness.
She was somewhat heavy-hearted as she arranged her disordered hair—rumpled in a final game of romps with the twins—and put on her hat to go home. The donkey was waiting before the old stone porch, and Fräulein Meyerstein had come to assist in escorting the twins.
“I thought Minnie might be troublesome after tea,” she said, as if tea had the effect of champagne upon Minnie’s temperament.
They set out across the fields in the warm glow of evening sunlight, a little procession—the children full of talk and laughter, Hilda more silent than usual. It was harvest-time, and the corn stood in sheaves in one wide field by which they went, a field on the slope of a hill on the edge of the moorland. On the lower side of the field there was a tall overgrown hedge; a hedge full of the glow of sunshine and the colour of wild flowers, red and blue and yellow, an exuberance of starry golden flowers, scattered everywhere amidst the tangle of foliage.
There was a gap here and there in the hedge, where cattle or farm-labourers had made a way for themselves from field to field, and through one of these gaps a man scrambled, and jumped into the path just in front of the donkey.
The animal gave a feeble shy, and the twins screamed, first with surprise and then with pleasure. The man was Bothwell, whom the twins adored.
“Why didn’t you come to tea?” asked Minnie indignantly. “It was very naughty of you.”
“I was out of temper, Minnie; not fit company for nice people. How do you do, Hilda?”
He had fallen into the way of calling her by her Christian name almost from the beginning of their acquaintance; in those days when he had been so much brighter and happier than he seemed to be now.
The donkey jogged on, carrying off the twins, Minnie holding forth all the time, lecturing Bothwell for his rudeness. The Fräulein followed, eager to protect her charges. They were only a few paces in advance, but Hilda felt as if she were alone with Bothwell.
“So the children have had their long-promised tea-party,” he said, “and I was out of it. Hard lines.”
“They missed you very much,” said Hilda. “But did not you know it was to be this afternoon?”
“I knew yesterday—Dora told me,” answered Bothwell, hitting the wild flowers savagely with his cane, as he walked by Hilda’s side.
Unconsciously they had fallen into a much slower pace than the Fräulein and the donkey, and they were quite alone.
“I knew all about the tea-party, and I meant to be with you; and then something went wrong with me this morning, and I felt only fit company for devils. If Satan had been giving a tea-party anywhere within reach, I would have gone to that,” concluded Bothwell vindictively.
“I am very glad Satan does not give tea-parties in Cornwall. Of course you know that he would never trust himself in our county, for fear our Cornish cooks should make him into a pie,” answered Hilda, trying to smile. “But I am very sorry to hear you have been worried.”
“My life has been made up of worries for the last six months. I try sometimes to be cheerful—reckless rather—and to forget; and then the viper begins to bite again.”
Hilda would have given much to be able to comfort him. It seemed almost as if he looked to her for comfort, and yet what could she say to a man whose troubles she knew not, who kept his own secret, and hardened his heart against his friends?
They walked on in silence for a little way. Some of the reapers were going homeward in the soft evening light; there was a great wain being loaded a field or two off, and the voices of men and women sounded clear and musical through the summer stillness.
“Would you be sorry for a man who had brought trouble on himself from his own folly, from his own wrong-doing, Hilda?” Bothwell asked presently.
“I should be all the more sorry for him on that account,” she answered gently.
“Yes, you would pity him. Such women as you and Dora are angels of compassion. They never withhold their pity; but it is tempered with scorn. They despise the sinner, even while they are merciful to him.”
“You ought not to say that. I am not given to despising people. I am too conscious of my own shortcomings.”
“You are an angel,” said Bothwell piteously. “O Hilda, how much I have lost in life—how many golden opportunities I have wasted!”
“There are always other opportunities to be found,” answered the girl, trying to speak words of comfort, vaguely, hopelessly, in her utter ignorance of his griefs or his perplexities. “There is always the future, and the chance of beginning again.”
“Yes, in Queensland, in the Fijis, in Peru. If you mean that I may some day learn to make my own living, I grant the possibility. Queensland or Peru may do something for me. But my chances of happiness, my chances of renown—those are gone for ever. I lost all when I left the army. At seven-and-twenty I am a broken man. Hard for a man to feel that this life is all over and done with before he is thirty.”
“I fancy there must be a time in every life when the clouds seem to shut out the sun; but the darkness does not last for ever,” said Hilda softly. “I hope the cloud may pass from your sky.”
“Ah,
