In Silk Attire: A Novel. William Black

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ and stumbled, and set each other right again, and laughed right heartily over the mad performance.

      Then there was a sudden shriek, clear and sharp, that rang through the darkness; the dancing suddenly ceased; and Anerley sprang forward just in time to prevent Miss Brunel from sinking to the ground, her face pale as death.

      "Did you not see it?" she gasped, still trembling. "Something white flashed past through the trees there – in a moment – and it seemed to have no shape."

      "By Jove, I saw it too!" said Melton, who had abruptly ceased his singing; "and for the life of me I can't imagine what it was."

      "A white cow," suggested Anerley.

      "I tell you it flew past like a streak of lightning," said Melton.

      "More likely a white doe belonging to the park over there," said the Count, who was inwardly the most terrified person present.

      "Let us get away from here," said Miss Brunel, who had recovered her self-composure, but was very grave. "Whatever it was, the grass is too wet for us to remain."

      So they left the meadow, and walked rather silently back to the toll-bar, got into the brougham, and were driven to their respective homes.

      CHAPTER V.

      ST. MARY-KIRBY

      Champagne has many good qualities, but none more marked than the mild and temporary nature of the stimulus it affords. The bright and cheerful excitement it produces – so long as it is neither Russian champagne, nor one of those highly ingenious products which chemistry and the wit of man have devised – does not last so long as to interfere with any serious occupation, even should that be merely sleep; while it involves none of the gloomy reaction which too often haunts the sparkle of other wines with a warning shadow. When Will Anerley got up on the morning following the wild escapade on Hounslow Heath, it was not indulgence in wine which smote him with a half-conscious remorse. He had neither a throbbing headache nor a feverish pulse. But as he looked out of his bedroom window and saw the pale sun glimmering down on the empty streets, the strange calm of a Sunday morning – touching even in the cramped thoroughfares of London – fell upon him, and he thought of the hectic gaiety of the previous night, and knew that all the evening one tender girlish heart had been wearying for his coming, away down in a quiet Kentish vale.

      His absence was the more inexcusable in that it was uncertain how soon he might have to leave England. He was a civil engineer; and from the time he had left the apprentice stool his life had been a series of foreign excursions. He had been two years in Turkey, another year in Canada, six months in Russia, and so on; and at this moment he had been but a short time home from Wallachia, whence he had returned with his face browner his frame tougher than ever. There was little of the young Englishman about him. There was a Celtic intensity in him which had long ago robbed him of the loose fat, the lazy gait, the apathetic indifference which generally fall to the lot of lads born and brought up as he had been; and now – with his big brown moustache, thick hair, and hazel eyes, and with that subdued determination in his look, which had made the little soubrette call him an Ancient Briton – he was a man whom some would call handsome, but whom most people would admire chiefly on account of the intelligence, firmness of character, and determination written upon his face.

      He dressed and breakfasted hastily; got a cab, and was just in time to catch the train. After nearly an hour's drive down through Kent – pleasant enough on that bright Spring morning – he reached Horton, the station nearest to St. Mary-Kirby.

      Horton stands on the top of a hill sloping down into the valley in which lies St. Mary-Kirby; and if you climb, as Will Anerley did, to the top of a coal heap which generally stands besides the empty trucks of the station, you will see the long wooded hollow from end to end, with its villages, churches, and breadths of field and meadow. It was not to look again, however, on that pretty bit of scenery which he knew so well that he scrambled to the top of the coals, and stood there, with his hand shading his eyes from the sunlight. It was Dove Anerley he wished to see come along the valley, on her way to church; and he waited there to discover what route she should take, that so he might intercept her.

      Yet there seemed to be no living thing in the quiet valley. Sleepily lay the narrow river in its winding channel, marked by twin rows of pollard willows, now green with their first leaves; sleepily lay the thin blue smoke above the far white cottages and the grey churches; sleepily lay the warm sunlight over the ruddy ploughed fields, the green meadows, the dark fir-wood along the top of the hill; and sleepily it struck on the great, gleaming chalk-pit on the side of the incline; while a faint blue haze hung around the dim horizon, half hiding the white specks of houses on the distant uplands. It was a beautiful picture in the tender light of the young spring; but there was no Dove Anerley there.

      He looked at his watch.

      "Half-past ten," he thought, "and as our church is under repair, she is sure to walk to Woodhill church. But if I go down into the valley, I shall be sure to miss her."

      As he spoke, there was visible a tiny speck of grey and brown crossing a broad meadow near the river; and almost at the same moment the subdued and distant music of the church bells floated up on the air. Will Anerley leaped from the coal-heap to the ground; and then straight down the hill he went, making free use of the fields on his way.

      He suddenly found that the still valley was full of life, and sound, and gladness; that the morning was a miracle of mornings; that the breath of the sweet spring air seemed laden with the secret odours of innumerable flowers. And, indeed, as he walked on, there was plenty to delight him, even had Dove Anerley not been there. For the lamblike March had bequeathed to his fickle sister a legacy of golden weather, and she now carried it in her open hand, sharing it with all of us. The orchards were white with bloom, here and there a rose-red apple-tree among the snowy bunches of the pears; the meadows were thick with daisies and cowslips, the grey sheep throwing sharp black shadows on the glowing green; the tall elms, sprinkled over with young leaves, rose from rough and ragged earth banks that were covered with withered brier, and glistening celandine, dull coltsfoot, and ruddy dead-nettle; the stately chesnuts had burst their resinous buds and were already showing brown spikes of closed flowers; along the hedges, where the blackbird was nursing her young, and the thrush sitting on her second nestful of blue eggs, the blossoms of the blackthorn sparkled here and there like white stars among the rich, thick green of the elm; and through all these colours and lights and shadows ran, and hummed, and sung the coarse cawing of rooks, the murmur of bees, the splashing of the river down at the mill, and the silvery music of a lark which hung as if suspended by a thread from the cold, clear blue above.

      St. Mary-Kirby was just visible and no more. You could see the quaint old mill down by the riverside, and near it an ancient farm-house, with black cattle and horses in the yard, and white pigeons flying about the rusty-red tiles of the farm buildings. Further up, the old grey church, built of "Kentish rag," shone brightly in the sunshine; and then, among the trees, you caught a glimpse of the cottages, of Mr. Anerley's house, fronting the village-green, and of the old inn with its swaying sign. There is not in Kent a more thoroughly English village than St. Mary-Kirby; and one, at least, of its inhabitants used to pray fervently every Sunday morning that no railway should ever come near its precincts.

      When Will Anerley reached the bottom of the valley, he found a number of St. Mary-Kirby people walking in isolated groups, towards Woodhill church; but one only of these people had chosen a somewhat circuitous route through the meadows lying on the south side of the river. Why she had chosen this route was probably known only to herself; but, at any rate, Will paused by the side of a stile to which the path through the meadows led. He had recognised from a considerable distance the slate-grey silk dress and brown velvet jacket which she wore; and now, as he watched her coming along, he saw that she, too, had recognised him, and that there was a pleased look in her eyes.

      "Why СКАЧАТЬ