Part 103

Neeld forbore to remind her of the entirely voluntary nature of her sacrifices; after all he was not the man to throw stones on that account.

"Wait a few days anyhow," he urged her. In a few days something must happen.

"A few days? Oh, yes!" As a matter of fact she meant to stay all the winter. "She's started," she went on, with an irritated jerk of her head toward the Long Gallery, "putting all the things in different places and rearranging everything."

"I should imagine that Mr Gainsborough's enjoying himself then?"

"She doesn't let him touch a thing," replied Mina with a fleeting smile. "He just stands about with a duster. That contents him well enough, though. Oh, yes, I shall go. The Broadleys won't care about me, and Cecily won't want me long."

Neeld could give real comfort only at the price of indiscretion. Moreover he was not at all sure that a disclosure of the truth would bring any comfort, for Mina wanted to be on both sides and to harmonize devotion to Cecily with zeal for Harry. Neeld did not quite see how this was to be done, since it was understood that as Harry would take nothing from Cecily, so Cecily would refuse anything from Harry.

"We must wait and see how it all turns out," said he.

"I hate people who say that," grumbled Mina disconsolately. "And I do think that the Ivers have grown extraordinarily stupid--caught it from Bob Broadley, I suppose."

When injustice springs not from judgment but from temper, it is not worth arguing against. Neeld held his tongue and they sat silent on the seat by the river, looking across to Merrion and hearing the voices of their friends through the open windows of the Long Gallery.

Presently there came to them through the stillness of the night the sound of wheels, not on the Blentmouth side, but up the valley, on the Mingham and Fillingford road. The sound ceased without the appearance of any vehicle, but it had reminded Neeld of the progress of time.

"It must be getting late," he said, rising. "I'll go and see if they think of starting home. Did you hear wheels on the road--toward the Pool?"

"Bob Broadley's cart coming for him, I suppose."

"No, I don't think so. He's going back to Fairholme with us. I heard him say so."

Mina was languidly indifferent, and Mr Neeld trotted off into the house. Mina sat on, frowning at the idea that in a few minutes she would have to go in and say good-by; for the voices came no more from the Long Gallery and she heard the guests laughing and chattering in the hall, as they prepared for departure. Suddenly she discerned the figure of a man coming into sight across the river. He walked slowly, as it seemed stealthily, till he came to the end of the footbridge. Then he halted and looked up at the house. It was gayly lighted. After waiting a moment the man turned back and disappeared up the road in the direction of Mingham. Mina rose and strolled to the bridge. She crossed it and looked up the road. She could make out dimly the stranger's retreating form.

She heard Cecily calling to her, and ran back to the house. A wonderful idea had come into her head, born of a vaguely familiar aspect that the bearing of the man had for her. But she laughed at it, telling herself that it was all nonsense; and as she joined in the talk and farewells it grew faint and was almost forgotten. Yet she whispered to old Neeld with a laugh:

"I saw a man on the road just now who looked rather like Harry. I couldn't see him properly, you know."

Neeld started and looked at her with obvious excitement. She repaid his stare with one of equal intensity.

"Why, you don't think----?" she began in amazement.

"Come, Neeld, we're waiting for you," cried Iver from the wagonette, while Bob in irrepressible spirits burst into song as he gathered up the reins. He had deposed the coachman and had Janie with him on the box.

They drove off, waving their hands and shouting good-night. Mina ran a little way after them and saw Neeld turning his head this way and that, as though he thought there might be something to see. When she returned she found Gainsborough saying good-night to his daughter; at the same moment the lights in the Long Gallery were put out. Cecily slipped her arm through hers and they walked out again into the garden. After three or four minutes the wagonette, having made the circuit necessary to reach the carriage-bridge, drove by on the road across the river, with more waving of hands and shouts of good-night. An absolute stillness came as the noise of its wheels died away.

"I've got through that all right," said Cecily with a laugh, drawing her friend with her toward the bridge. "I suppose I shall be quite accustomed to it soon."

They went on to the bridge and halted in the middle of it, by a common impulse as it seemed.

"The sound of a river always says to me that it all doesn't matter much," Cecily went on, leaning on the parapet. "I believe that's been expressed more poetically!"

"It's great nonsense, however it's expressed," observed Mina scornfully.

"I sometimes feel as if it was true." Probably Cecily thought that nobody--no girl--no girl in love--had ever had the feeling before. A delusive appearance of novelty is one of the most dangerous weapons of Cupid. But Mina was an experienced woman--had been married too!

"Don't talk stuff, my dear," she cried crossly. "And why are we standing on this horrid little bridge?"

She turned round; Cecily still gazed in melancholy abstraction into the stream. Cecily, then, faced down the valley, Mina looked up it; and at the moment the moon showed a quarter of her face and illuminated a streak of the Fillingford road.

The man was there. He was there again. The moonlight fell on his face. He smiled at Mina, pointed a hand toward Blentmouth, and smiled again. He seemed to mock the ignorance of the vanished wagonette. Mina made no sign. He laid his finger on his lips, and nodded slightly toward Cecily. The clouds covered the moon again, and there was no more on the Fillingford road than a black blotch on the deep gray of the night; even this vanished a moment after. And still Cecily gazed down into the Blent.