The Rain-Girl. Herbert George Jenkins
too. She——" Lady Drewitt broke off suddenly and gazed searchlngly at her nephew.
"When did this ridiculous idea first take possession of you?" she had demanded, with the air of a counsel for the prosecution about to make a great point.
"I've been a vagabond all my life," he had confessed with a smile. "I've never been really respectable, you know."
Lady Drewitt's jaws had met with a snap. Lord Drewitt gazed at her with interest. Neither he nor Beresford had ever permitted themselves to be overawed by their aunt. They were the only two relatives she possessed who were not ill at ease in her presence.
"You're Irish," she continued relentlessly, addressing Beresford in a voice that savoured of accusation.
"Half Irish," Beresford had corrected.
"I remember now," there was a marked solemnity in her voice, "a week before you were born, your poor dear mother was greatly frightened by a tramp who had managed to get into the garden."
"Then," Lord Drewitt had said, "Richard must not be blamed. Like Napoleon, he is clearly a man of destiny."
"But," said Edward Seymour, screwing up his face as was his wont when asking a question, "I don't see why being in the trenches should make Richard want to become a tramp."
"You wouldn't, my dear Teddy," Lord Drewitt had said softly. "You see it's an A1 question and you are a C3 man."
Mrs. Edward had flashed a vindictive look at Lord Drewitt, then with a swift change of expression she turned to Lady Drewitt.
"Perhaps now that Richard knows how—how it would pain you, Aunt Caroline, he won't——"
"Don't be a fool, Cecily," snapped Lady Drewitt; whereat Edward Seymour had looked across at his wife with a leer of triumph.
That night as they had walked away from Drewitt House, Beresford had explained more fully to Lord Drewitt what had led up to his decision to cut adrift from the old life.
"My dear Richard," he had said with a sigh of regret, "I wish I had the Aunt's courage and your convictions."
Beresford smiled at the thought of that evening. He paused to light his pipe. He looked about him, hoping to find somewhere a break in the clouds giving promise of fine weather—for the morrow. No; Nature's frown showed no sign of lifting. It was as if she had decided never to attempt the drying up of this drenched and dripping landscape.
He turned once more and faced the wind and rain. His thoughts returned to his family. He had always been something of a problem to them. As a standard by which to measure failure, he had been not without his uses. He had passed through Winchester and Oxford without attracting to himself particular attention, enviable or otherwise. He had missed his cricket "blue" through that miracle of misfortune, a glut of talent, and he had taken a moderately good degree. He had come down from Oxford and the clouds, loving sport, art, literature, and above all beauty.
Mrs. Edward Seymour had once remarked plaintively to Lady Drewitt that it seemed so odd that a man who had nearly got his cricket "blue" should be fond of roses and wall-papers, poetry and skylarks. "It seemed," she ventured to add, "not quite nice." Whereat Lady Drewitt had besought her not to be a fool; but to remember that the Battle of Waterloo was won on the playing-fields of Eton. Mrs. Edward Seymour had gone away sorely puzzled as to her Aunt's exact meaning; but not daring to enquire.
Coming down from Oxford, Beresford had been shot unprotesting into the Foreign Office, which he had accepted as part of the enigma of life until that fateful August 4th, 1914, when he had enlisted.
That was four and a half years ago, and now, having thoroughly earned the disapproval of his aunt, he had turned his face to the open road, a vagabond; but a free man. The blue sky would be above him; he had pictured it all, the white flecks of cloud swimming across the sun day by day, and the winking of the stars by night. There would be the apple and the plum-blossom, the pear and the cherry. There would be the birds, the lowing of cattle and the bleating of sheep. Then there would be the voices of the haymakers, the throb of the mowing-machines and the rumble of the heavily laden wains, as they grumbled their way to the rick-yard. The night sounds, the sudden whirr of a frightened pheasant, the hoot of some marauding owl, the twitter of a dreaming thrush; he had realised them all, expected them all—everything but the rain.
He had foreseen rain, it is true, the storm, the flood even; but they had always presented themselves to his mind's eye with himself safely quartered in some comfortable old inn.
"Nature discourages eccentricity."
Nature was discouraging him by flooding the earth on the first day of his adventure.
"I wonder what Aunt Caroline would say if she saw me now?" he muttered.
He laughed aloud at the thought.
Suddenly he stopped, not only laughing, but walking, and stood staring in astonishment at a gate that lay a few yards back from the roadside.
In an instant Lady Drewitt, Nature, eccentricity and the weather were banished from his thoughts. Nothing that his imagination was capable of suggesting could have caused him more astonishment than what he saw perched upon this gate giving access to a wayside meadow. Had it been a griffin, a unicorn, or the Seven-Headed Beast of the Apocalypse, he would have accepted it without question as the natural phenomenon of an abnormal day.
It was not a griffin, a unicorn, or the Beast of the Apocalypse that he saw; but a girl perched jauntily upon the top bar of the roadside gate, meditatively smoking a cigarette. She seemed indifferent to the rain, indifferent to the wretchedness of her surroundings, indifferent to Beresford's presence, indifferent to everything—she was merely a spectator.
For some seconds he regarded her in astonishment. The trim, grey, tailor-made costume, knapsack, tweed hat with waterproof covering he mentally registered them all; but what struck him most was the girl's face. Nondescript but charming, was his later verdict; but now his whole attention was arrested by her eyes. Large and grey, with whites that were almost blue, and heavy dark lashes, they gazed at him gravely, wonderingly; but quite without any suggestion of curiosity.
For nearly a minute he stood staring at her in astonishment. Then suddenly realising the rudeness of his attitude, he slowly and reluctantly turned to the wind and continued his way.
"A rain-girl," he muttered. "I wonder if she knows that Nature discourages eccentricity?"
CHAPTER II "THE TWO DRAGONS" AND THE RAIN-GIRL
DINNER will be ready in ten minutes, sir."
The waiter led the way to a small table on the right-hand side of the fireplace, in which burned a large fire surmounted by a log that crackled and spat a cheerful welcome.
"Empty!" remarked Beresford as he looked round the dining-room.
"It's the weather, sir," explained the waiter in an apologetic tone, as he gave a push to the log with his boot; then, after a swift glance round to satisfy himself that everything was as it should be, he withdrew.
Beresford shivered. The day's wetting had chilled him. What a day it had been. "The Two Dragons" was a godsend.
As he warmed himself before the fire, he mentally reviewed the events of the day, and came to the conclusion that there had been only one event, the girl on the gate.
For the past two hours her eyes had entirely eclipsed that absurd little phrase that had so obsessed his mind earlier in the day. It had been a strange day, he mused, a day of greyness: grey sky, grey sheets of rain, a grey prospect before him, and then that girl's grey eyes. They had seemed to change everything. They were like grey fire, seeming to blot out the other greys, as the dawn makes the stars to pale.
It was to him a