“Do you think I regret the sacrifice in the cause of friendship? There go the Marchant girls, steaming on ahead. We had better overhaul them at once. Don’t mind me, Vansittart. I have been doing gooseberry ever since I wore Eton jackets. Only one word—Is it serious?”
“Very serious—sink or swim—Heaven or Hades.”
“And all in honour?”
“All in honour.”
“Then I am with you to the death. You want a long walk and a long talk with Miss Marchant; and you want me to take the whole bunch of sisters off your hands.”
“Just so, my best of friends.”
“Consider it done.”
They overtook the young ladies in the dip of the road, where a lane branches off to Bexley Hill. Here they stopped to shake hands all round, and to talk of the church, and the weather—quite the most exquisite Easter Sunday that any of them could remember, or could remember that they remembered, for no doubt memory severely interrogated would have recalled Easter Days as fair.
“Mr. Tivett and I are pining for a long walk,” said Vansittart, “so we are going to see you home—if you will let us—or, if you are not tied for time, will you join us in a ramble on Bexley Hill? It is just the day for the hill—the views will be splendid—and I know that you young ladies are like Atalanta. Distance cannot tire you!”
“We could hardly help being good walkers,” said Sophy, rather discontentedly. “Walking is our only amusement.”
Hetty and Peggy clapped their hands. “Bexley Hill, Bexley Hill,” they cried; “hands up for Bexley Hill.”
There were no hands lifted, but they all turned into the lane.
“We can go a little way just to look at the view,” assented Eve; and the younger girls went skipping off in their short petticoats, and the two elder girls were speedily absorbed in Mr. Tivett’s animated conversation, and Eve and Vansittart were walking alone.
“A little way.” Who could measure distance or count the minutes in such an exhilarating atmosphere as breathed around that wooded hillside in the balmy April morning? Every step seemed to take them into a finer air, and to lift their hearts with an increasing gladness. All around them rippled the sea of furze and heather, broken by patches of woodland, and grassy glades that were like bits stolen out of the New Forest, and flung down here upon this swelling hillside. Here and there a squatter’s cottage, with low cob wall and steep tiled roof, stood snug and sheltered in its bit of garden, under the shadow of a venerable beech or oak—here and there a little knot of children sprawled and sunned themselves in front of a cottage door. The rest was silence and solitude, save for the voices of those rare birds which inhabit forest and common land.
“Gussie,” whispered Vansittart, when they had passed one of these humble homesteads, and were ascending the crest of the hill, “do you think you could contrive to lose yourself—and the girls—for half an hour?”
“Of course I can. You will have to cooey for us when you want to see our faces again.”
This little conversation occurred in the rear of the five girls, who had scattered themselves over the hillside, every one believing in her own particular track as the briefest and best ascent.
Eve had climbed highest of all the sisters, by a path so narrow, and so hemmed in by bramble and hawthorn, that only one, and that one a dexterous climber, could mount at a time.
Vansittart followed her desperately, pushing aside the brambles with his stick. He was breathless when he reached the top, where she stood lightly poised, like Mercury. The ascent, since he stopped to speak to Tivett, had taken only ten minutes or so, but when he looked round him and downward over the billowy furze and rugged hillside there was not one vestige of Augustus Tivett or the four Miss Marchants in view.
“What can have become of them all?” questioned Eve, gazing wonderingly around. “I thought they were only just behind me—I heard them laughing a few minutes ago. Have they sunk into the earth, or are they hiding behind the bushes?”
“Neither. They are only going round the other side of the hill. They will meet us on the top.”
“It’s very silly of them,” said Eve, obviously distressed. “There is always some folly or mischief when Hetty is one of our party. Peggy is ever so much more sensible.”
“Don’t blame poor Hetty till you are assured she is in fault. I shouldn’t wonder if it were all Tivett’s doing. You must scold good little Tivett. I hope you don’t mind being alone with me for a quarter of an hour. I have been longing for the chance of a little serious talk with you. Shall we sit down for a few minutes on this fine old beech trunk? You are out of breath after mounting the hill.”
She was out of breath, but the hill was not the cause. Her colour came and went, her heart beat furiously. She was speechless with conflicting emotions—fear, joy, wonder, self-abasement.
They were on the ridge of the hill. In front of them, far away towards the south stretched the Sussex Downs, purple in the distance, save for one pale shimmering streak of light which meant the sea. Below them lay the Sussex Weald, rippling meadows, and the vivid green of spacious fields where the young corn showed emerald bright in the sun—pools and winding streamlets, copses and grey fallows, cottage roofs and village spires, a world lovely enough for Satan to use as a lure for the tempted.
But for Vansittart that world hardly existed. He had eyes, thoughts, comprehension for nothing but this girl who sat mutely at his side, the graceful throat bending a little, the shy violet eyes looking at the ground.
So far there had been
