“By the way have you ever seen Gormala since?” It was with a queer feeling which I could not then analyse, but which I found afterwards contained a certain proportion of exultation I answered:
“Oh yes! I saw her only two days ago—” Here I stopped for I was struck with a new sense of the connection of things. Miss Anita saw the wonder in my face and drawing close to me said:
“Tell me all about it!” So I told her of the auction at Peterhead and of the chest and the papers with the mysterious marks, and of how I thought it might be some sort of account—“or,” I added as a new idea struck me—“secret writing.” When I had got thus far she said with decision:
“I am quite sure it is. You must try to find it out. Oh, you must, you must!”
“I shall,” said I, “if you desire it.” She said nothing, but a blush spread over her face. Then she resumed her movement towards the hotel.
We walked in silence; or rather we ran and stumbled, for the fierce wind behind us drove us along. The ups and downs of the surface were veiled with the mist of flying sand swept from amongst the bent-grass on the tops of the sandhills. I would have liked to help her, but a judicious dread of seeming officious—and so losing a step in her good graces—held me back. I felt that I was paying a price of abstinence for that kiss. As we went, the silence between us seemed to be ridiculous; so to get over it I said, after searching in my mind for a topic which would not close up her sympathies with me:
“You don’t seem to like Spaniards?”
“No,” she answered quickly, “I hate them! Nasty, cruel, treacherous wretches! Look at the way they are treating Cuba! Look at the Maine!” Then she added suddenly:
“But how on earth did you know I dislike them.” I answered:
“Your voice told me when you spoke to yourself whilst I was telling you about the ghosts and the man with the eyes.”
“True,” she said reflectively. “So I did. I must keep more guard on myself and not let my feelings run away with me. I give myself away so awfully.” I could have made a reply to this, but I was afraid. That kiss seemed like an embodied spirit of warning, holding a sword over my head by a hair.
It was not long before I found the value of my silence. The lady’s confidence in my discretion was restored, and she began, of her own initiative, to talk. She spoke of the procession of ghosts; suddenly stopping, however, as if she had remembered something, she said to me:
“But why were you so anxious that Gormala should not have seen you saving us from the rock?”
“Because,” I answered, “I did not want her to have anything to do with this.”
“What do you mean by ‘this’?” There was something in the tone of her query which set me on guard. It was not sincere; it had not that natural intonation, even, all through, which marks a question put in simple faith. Rather was it in the tone of one who asks, knowing well the answer which will or may be given. As I have said, I did not know much about women, but the tone of coquetry, no matter how sweet, no matter how ingenuous, no matter how lovable, cannot be mistaken by any man with red blood in his veins! Secretly I exulted, for I felt instinctively that there rested some advantage with me in the struggle of sex. The knowledge gave me coolness, and brought my brain to the aid of my heart. Nothing would have delighted me more at the moment than to fling myself, actually as well as metaphorically, at the girl’s feet. My mind was made up to try to win her; my only thought now was the best means to that end. I felt that I was a little sententious as I replied to her question:
“By ‘this’ I mean the whole episode of my meeting with you.”
“And Mrs. Jack,” she added, interrupting me.
“And Mrs. Jack, of course,” I went on, feeling rejoiced that she had given me an opportunity of saying something which I would not otherwise have dared to say. “Or rather I should perhaps say, my meeting with Mrs. Jack and her friend. It was to me a most delightful thing to meet with Mrs. Jack; and I can honestly say this day has been the happiest of my life.”
“Don’t you think we had better be getting on? Mrs. Jack will be waiting for us!” she said, but without any kind of reproach in her manner.
“All right,” I answered, as I ran up a steep sandhill and held out my hand to help her. I did not let her hand go till we had run down the other side, and up and down another hillock and came out upon the flat waste of sand which lay between us and the road, and over which a sort of ghostly cloud of sand drifted.
Before we left the sand, I said earnestly:
“Gormala’s presence seems always to mean gloom and sorrow, weeping and mourning, fear and death. I would not have any of them come near you or yours. This is why I thanked God then, and thank Him now, that in our meeting Gormala had no part!”
She gave me her hand impulsively. As for an instant her soft palm lay in my palm and her strong fingers clasped mine, I felt that there was a bond between us which might some day enable me to shield her from harm.
When Mrs. Jack, and ‘her friend’, were leaving the hotel, I came to the door to see them off. She said to me, in a low voice, as I bade farewell:
“We shall, I daresay, see you before long. I know that Mrs. Jack intends to drive over here again. Thank you for all your kindness. Good night!” There was a shake of the reins, a clatter of feet on the hard road, a sweeping round of the rays of light from the lamp as the cart swayed at the start under the leap forward of the high-bred horse and swung up the steep inland roadway. The last thing I saw was a dark, muffled figure, topped by a tam-o’-shanter cap, projected against the mist of moving light from the lamp.
Next morning I was somewhat distrait. Half the night I had lain awake thinking; the other half I had dreamt. Both sleeping and waking dreams were mixed, ranging from all the brightness of hope to the harrowing possibilities of vague, undefined fear.
Sleeping dreams have this difference over day dreams, that the possibilities become for the time actualities, and thus for good and ill, pleasure or pain, multiply the joys or sufferings. Through all, however, there remained one fixed hope always verging toward belief, I should see Miss Anita—Marjory—again.
Late in the afternoon I got a letter directed in a strange hand, fine and firm, with marked characteristics and well formed letters, and just enough of unevenness to set me at ease. I am never quite happy with the writer whose hand is exact, letter by letter, and word by word, and line by line. So much can be told by handwriting, I thought, as I looked at the letter lying beside my plate. A hand that has no characteristics is that of a person insipid; a hand that is too marked and too various is disconcerting and undependable. Here my philosophising came to an end, for I had opened the envelope, and not knowing the writing, had looked at the signature, “Marjory Anita.”
I hoped that no one at the table d’hote breakfast noticed me, for I felt that I was red and pale by turns. I laid the letter down, taking care that the blank back page was uppermost; with what nonchalance I could I went on with my smoked haddie. Then I put the letter in my pocket and waited till I was in my own room, secure from interruption, before I read it.
That one should kiss a letter before reading it, is conceivable, especially when it is the first which one has received from the girl he loves.
It was not dated nor addressed. A swift
