'To the Indian frontier. We are going to be special unpaid unofficial members of the Intelligence Department.'
She asked the old, timid woman's question about danger.
'It's where Lewis was before. Only, you see, things have got into a mess thereabouts, and the Foreign Office has asked him to go out again.
By the by, you mustn't tell any one about this, for it's in strict confidence.'
The words were meaningless, and yet they sent a pang through her heart.
Had he no guess at her inmost feelings? Could he think that she would talk to Mr. Stocks of a thing which was bound up for her with all the sorrow and ecstasy of life?
He looked down and saw that her face had paled and that her mouth was drawn with some emotion. A sudden gleam of light seemed to break in upon him.
'Are you sorry?' he asked half-unwittingly.
For answer the girl turned her tragic eyes upon him, tried to speak, and faltered. He cursed him-self for a fool and a brute, and whipped up an already over-active horse, till it was all but unmanageable. It was a wise move, for it absorbed his attention and gave the poor child at his side a chance to recover her composure.
They came to Glenavelin gates and George turned in. 'I had better drive you to the door, in this charming weather,' he said. The sight of the pale little face had moved him to deep pity. He cursed his blindness, the blindness of a whole world of fools, and at the same time, with the impotence of the honest man, he could only wait and be silent.
At the door he stopped to unbutton his cape from her neck, and even in his nervousness he felt the trembling of her body. She spoke rapidly and painfully.
'I want you to take a message from me to-to-Lewis. Tell him I must see him. Tell him to come to the Midburn foot, to-morrow in the afternoon. Oh, I am ashamed to ask you, but you must tell him.' And then without thanks or good-bye she fled into the house.
Chapter XIX
THE BRIDGE OF BROKEN HEARTS
Listless leaves were tossing in the light wind or borne downward in the swirl of the flooded Midburn, to the weary shallows where they lay, beached high and sodden, till the frost nipped and shrivelled their rottenness into dust. A bleak, thin wind it was, like a fine sour wine, searching the marrow and bringing no bloom to the cheek. A light snow powdered the earth, the grey forerunner of storms.
Alice stood back in the shelter of the broken parapet. The highway with its modern crossing-place was some hundreds of yards up stream, but here, at the burn mouth, where the turbid current joined with the cold, glittering Avelin, there was a grass-grown track, and an ancient, broken-backed bridge. There were few passers on the high-road, none on this deserted way; but the girl in all her loneliness shrank back into the shadow. In these minutes she endured the bitter mistrust, the sore hesitancy, of awaiting on a certain but unknown grief.
She had not long to wait, for Lewis came down the Avelin side by a bypath from Etterick village. His alert gait covered his very real confusion, but to the girl he seemed one who belonged to an alien world of cheerfulness. He could not know her grief, and she regretted her coming.
His manners were the same courteous formalities. The man was torn with emotion, and yet he greeted her with a conventional ease.
'It was so good of you, Miss Wishart, to give me a chance to come and say good-bye. My going is such a sudden affair, that I might have had no time to come to Glenavelin, but I could not have left without seeing you.'
The girl murmured some indistinct words. 'I hope you will have a good time and come back safely,' she said, and then she was tongue-tied.
The two stood before each other, awkward and silent-two between whom no word of love had ever been spoken, but whose hearts were clamouring at the iron gates of speech.
Alice's face and neck were dyed crimson, as the impossible position dawned on her mind. No word could break down the palisade, of form.
Lewis, his soul a volcano, struggled for the most calm and inept words.
He spoke of the weather, of her father, of his aunt's messages.
Then the girl held out her hand.
'Good-bye,' she said, looking away from him.
He held it for a second. 'Good-bye, Miss Wishart,' he said hoarsely.
Was this the consummation of his brief ecstasy, the end of months of longing? The steel hand of fate was on him and he turned to leave.
He turned when he had gone three paces and came back. The girl was still standing by the parapet, but she had averted her face towards the wintry waters. His step seemed to fall on deaf ears, and he stood beside her before she looked towards him.
Passion had broken down his awkwardness. He asked the old question with a shaking voice. 'Alice,' he said, 'have I vexed you?'
She turned to him a pale, distraught face, her eyes brimming over with the sorrow of love, the passionate adventurous longing which claims true hearts for ever.
He caught her in his arms, his heart in a glory of joy.
'Oh, Alice, darling,' he cried. 'What has happened to us? I love you, I love you, and you have never given me a chance to say it.'
She lay passive in his arms for one brief minute and then feebly drew back.
'Sweetheart,' he cried. 'Sweetheart! For I will call you sweetheart, though we never meet again. You are mine, Alice. We cannot help ourselves.'
The girl stood as in a trance, her eyes caught and held by his face.
'Oh, the misery of things,' she said half-sobbing. 'I have given my soul to another, and I knew it was not mine to give. Why, oh why, did you not speak to me sooner? I have been hungering for you and you never came.'
A sense of his folly choked him.
'And I have made you suffer, poor darling! And the whole world is out of joint for us!'
The hopeless feeling of loss, forgotten for a moment, came back to him.
The girl was gone from him for ever, though a bridge of hearts should always cross the chasm of their severance.
'I am going away,' he said, 'to make reparation. I have my repentance to work out, and it will be bitterer than yours, little woman. Ours must be an austere love.'
She looked at him till her pale face flushed and a sad exultation woke in her eyes.
'You will never forget?' she asked wistfully, confident of the answer.
'Forget!' he cried. 'It is my only happiness to remember. I am going away to be knocked about, dear. Wild, rough work, but with a man's chances!'
For a moment she let another thought find harbour in her mind. Was the past irretrievable, the future predetermined? A woman's word had an old right to be broken. If she went to him, would not he welcome her gladly, and the future might yet be a heritage for both?
The thought endured but a moment, for she saw how little simple was the crux of her destiny. The two of them had been set apart by the fates; each had salvation to work out alone; no facile union would ever join them. For him there was the shaping of a man's path; for her the illumination which only sorrows and parting can bring. And with the thought she thought kindly of the man to whom she had pledged her word.
It was but a little corner of her heart he could ever possess; but doubtless in such matters he was not ambitious.
Lewis walked by her side down the by-path towards Glenavelin. Tragedy muffled in the garments of convention was there, not the old picturesque Tragic with sword and cloak and steel for the enemy, but the silent
