Under the Country Sky

by Grace S. Richmond

  CHAPTER XIV

  OUT OF THE BLUE

  Twenty minutes afterward he drove up to the door with the best that thevillage liveryman had to give for the highest price his customer couldoffer--a tall black horse of fair proportions, and a hurriedly washedbuggy of the type in vogue in country districts. But as Georgiana wentdown the path she was conscious that the figure which stood hat andreins in hand awaiting her would lend dignity to any vehicle, short of awheelbarrow, in which he might be seen to ride.

  Then presently the pair were driving along country lanes in the verymidst of all the burgeoning beauty of the season, and Georgiana was likea captive bird let loose. Her companion as well responded to the call ofNature at her loveliest, and the tireless worker of the study seemedchanged at a word to a bright-eyed idler of the most carefree sort. Thetwo gave themselves up without restraint to the enjoyment of the hour.

  "I wonder how long it is," said Mr. Jefferson, letting the reins lieloose at a leafy curve of the road while the black horse willinglywalked, "since I have had a drive like this. Not for ten years atleast."

  "You've lived always in a great city?"

  "Since boyhood--in the heart of it."

  "And have driven motors, not horses, for those ten years."

  "Yes, like everybody else. But I spent all my summers as a boy on mygrandfather's farm, and there I drove horses and rode them and didacrobatic feats on their bare backs. I was a wild Indian, a cowboy, anda captain of cavalry by turns. Those were happy days, and on a day likethis they don't seem long ago."

  "They can't be so dreadfully long ago," she dared, with a glance at theinteresting profile beside her.

  "Can't they? Don't I look pretty aged compared with your youth?"

  "I'm not so remarkably young," she retorted.

  "Aren't you? You are about ten years younger than I. That's a big leapand must make me seem a grandfather indeed."

  "But you don't know how old I am."

  "I could come pretty close to it," said he with a quick look.

  "How could you know?"

  "When you see a spray of apple blossoms like those"--he pointed toward amass of pink and white at the stage of perfection beyond an old railfence--"can't you tell at a glance whether they've been out a day or aweek?"

  "I should say that if things had happened to them to make them feel asif they'd been out a week when they had been out only two days----"

  "A heavy rain, for instance? In that case we should bedeceived--perhaps. But in the case of a human being those heavy rainssometimes only mature without fading---- Hello,----what's this?"

  A small and very ragged boy had emerged suddenly from a meadow gateway,his face convulsed with pain and fright. He nursed one hand in the otherand the colour had deserted his round cheek, leaving it pallid under itsfreckles. The only house nearby was an abandoned one and there were noothers for some distance in either direction.

  Mr. Jefferson stopped his horse. "Does it hurt badly, lad?" he asked inthe friendliest of tones, which yet had a bracing quality. "Don't youwant to let me see if I can help it?"

  The boy stood still, tears silently making their way down his face.Giving the reins to Georgiana, Mr. Jefferson jumped out and gentlyexamined the small hand, the middle finger of which, as the onlookercould plainly see, was badly distorted and somewhat swollen. The skin,however, did not seem to be broken.

  "We can make that more comfortable right away," the man promised thelittle boy. "Sit down on the grass for a minute or two, laddie, while Ifind something I want."

  He pulled out a handkerchief, as yet folded and fresh from its ironing,and handed it to Georgiana. "Will you tear that into strips an inchwide, please, while I take a look back here for a bit of wood?" and hedisappeared down the road, while Georgiana with the aid of her strongwhite teeth tore the fine linen as he had bidden, and spoke comfortinglyto the little fellow, who seemed glad enough to have fallen intofriendly hands.

  When he shortly returned Mr. Jefferson was rapidly cutting and whittlinga stick into a little splint, which he then wound carefully with a stripof the handkerchief until it was covered from view. Then he took theinjured hand in his own capable ones--his assistant had often notedthose hands--and said quietly, "I'm going to hurt you just a minute,little man, but you'll be all right, so be game," and in two deftmotions he had pulled and twisted the broken finger, and had set itstraight as the others, with but one sharp outcry from the owner. Inless time than it can be told in, the set finger was bound securely withits neighbouring finger to the padded splint, and the whole neatlybandaged with the torn linen, the entire procedure accomplished withthe rapidity and skill of the practised hand. No amateur surgery this,as Georgiana understood well enough.

  "There," said Mr. Jefferson, drawing forth another handkerchief asspotless as the first--she wondered if he went always thus providedagainst emergency--and improvising a little sling in which the bandagedhand swung comfortably, "I think you'll do. Rest a bit and then go home,and tell your mother not to touch that finger for three weeks. By thattime it will be as good as new, only be careful with it when you firstuse it. Good-bye, laddie, and better luck next time."

  Georgiana saw the uninjured hand of the boy close over something brightas the man's hand left it, and heard a low sound which might have beenalmost anything indicative of surprise and joy. Then the black horse wasmoving on, and Mr. Jefferson was saying: "Weren't we talking about appleblossoms?"

  "We had finished with them, I think," Georgiana replied, wondering if hereally were going to offer no explanation of the hint of mystery whichhad been about him ever since her work with him had begun.

  But he did not offer any, only went on with the pleasant talk with whichhe had all along beguiled the way. Georgiana was recognizing thisafternoon, more than she had yet done, what a well-stored mind waspossessed by this unassuming man, whose manner and speech yet did notlack that quality of quiet assurance which is the product only ofgenuine knowledge and experience.

  The black horse was within a mile of home, passing through the laststretch of woodland which would justify the walking pace, in which,greatly to his astonishment, he was being allowed to indulge at all suchpoints, when a motor car, slowing down beside him, caused him to layback his ears in displeasure.

  Georgiana, turning, beheld the handsome, eager face of Miles Channing ashe leaned toward her, his hand hushing his engine as he spoke.

  "Miss Warne--Mr. Jefferson--forgive me for stopping you! I should havegone on and waited for you if I had been sure you were on your way home.But I'm a messenger from the Croftons; they beg you to let me bring youback with me to-night." His eyes rested on Georgiana.

  "To-night? Is anybody ill?"

  "Oh, no, no; nothing like that. It's for quite a different reason theywant you; only I'm to ask you not to question me. You're to come onfaith, if you will. And they'll agree to have you back in the morning bybreakfast-time, if you insist."

  Georgiana looked puzzled, but, being human, she was naturally interestedand attracted by this mysterious plan. "It's very odd," she mused, "butif father can spare me----"

  "I will undertake to see that your father is not lonely this evening,"said Mr. Jefferson's quiet voice at her side. "And please don't botherabout to-morrow morning or to-morrow at all, if you would like to beaway."

  "If Mr. Jefferson wouldn't object----" began Channing; but Mr. Jeffersonanticipated him.

  "Please don't hesitate to go on with Mr. Channing, if you would like togain a little time," he suggested to his companion. "He will have you athome before I can reach the bend in the road."

  Georgiana looked round at him. "I prefer to finish one ride before Ibegin another," she declared, smiling. "It's only a mile, Mr. Channing;we shall be there nearly as soon as you. Please go on."

  It thus came about ten minutes later that James Stuart, walking up tohis home from a field where he had been superintending an interestingnew departure in cultivation, caught sight first of a now-familiarroadster of aristocratic lines whose
appearance thereabouts had becomemost unwelcome, and shortly thereafter of a less pretentious vehicle,being rapidly drawn by a still more familiar black horse, and occupiedby two people whom it gave Stuart no acute pleasure to see together.

  "Well, I should say George was displaying her admirers in great shapethis afternoon," he said gloomily to himself. "It's a wonder I'm nottrailing on behind with a wheelbarrow. But I vow I'd like to know sincewhen her contract with Jefferson has taken them out into thecountry--and in working hours, too!"

  Afterward it was all rather a strange memory to Georgiana when sherecalled it. She had flown about to prepare the appetizing early supperwith which she was accustomed to serve her small family, and to whichshe now added a delicacy or two on account of its seeming the naturalthing to ask Mr. Miles Channing to remain rather than to allow him to goto the small village hotel. Then she had cleared her table and left theafter-work to the neighbour who was to come to the rescue as before. Shehad dressed with hurried fingers for the trip, and had driven away witha devoted escort who spared no pains to make her feel that he wasexceedingly pleased at the success of his mission.

  There was no place in her memory for something she did not see nor wouldhave thought of imagining significant if she had seen it. When she leftthe house Mr. Jefferson was in his room, searching for a book from whichto read aloud to his self-assumed charge of the evening. When he heardGeorgiana's blithe cry of farewell to her father in the doorway below,he left the bookcase and went with a quick step to the window. Hewatched the car driven by Mr. Channing out of sight down the road; thenhe descended to the garden, pipe in hand. Before he returned to thehouse to take his place by the evening lamp and begin the reading to thegentle invalid stretched on the couch, he had covered many furlongs upand down the straggling pathways and had consumed much more than hisusual quota of choice tobacco. And though all about him had been the Mayenvironment at its loveliest, through all his marching up and down hehad never once looked up.

  Miles away, and ever more miles away, Georgiana had flown like the windin the swift car under its skilfully guiding hand. The drive was ablurred impression of slowly gathering rosy twilight, of the odour ofthe apple blossoms--somehow a different and more seductive fragrancethan it had been in the sunlit afternoon--and always there was the senseof there being beside her a presence which disturbed. Channing's lowlaugh, his vibrant voice in her ear, the things he said, half serious,half earnest, always full of an only slightly veiled intent--the girlwho had spent so many days of her life in hard study or harderhousewifery could do no less than yield herself for the hour to thepulse-quickening charm of it and forget everything else.

  Just as twilight settled into dusk and for the first time the headlightsof the car came on with a long reach like a golden ribbon along theroad, Channing, suddenly slowing down, a few miles out of the city,began a rapid speech on a subject so unexpected that it fairly took hishearer's breath away.

  "It's not fair of me to tell you, but I've simply got to get in thefirst word. You must pretend you haven't heard it, but if there's anypersuading to be done I want my share, and want it first. Your cousinsare going to invite you to sail with them next week for a summer inEngland after a fortnight in Paris--Paris in June! You don't know whatthat means; you can't even imagine it. I can--I know it--don't I knowit!" He laughed softly. "Since they're to be away and won't need herthey'll send down their housekeeper--the most competent person in theworld--to stay with your father and make him absolutely comfortable, soyou don't have to hesitate on that score."

  "It's perfectly wonderful, but"--Georgiana was staring at him throughthe dusk--"but--oh, I couldn't, Mr. Channing! how could I? Father is sofeeble; something might happen."

  "Not in summer. Things don't happen to elderly people in summer. It's inwinter--pneumonia and things like that. And don't you know he'd bedelighted to have you go? He wouldn't let you miss such a chance; I knowhim already well enough for that."

  "But, you see, I'm engaged to work for Mr. Jefferson----"

  "Well, he'll be all right; he's a traveled man himself; anybody can seethat. He wouldn't stand in the way of your good, not for a moment; ofcourse he wouldn't. He'd urge you to go. Why, there's nothing else foryou to do. Think of the glorious summer we'll have--glorious! Why,I----"

  "What do you mean? I don't understand." Georgiana felt her cheeks growscarlet in the darkness.

  "Mean? What could I mean? Why, I'm going, too, of course. Sailing whenyou do. Invited to spend a month in Devon with the Croftons--and you."His voice sank lower. "And that fortnight in Paris--oh, I'll be inParis, too, no doubt of that! I'll show you what Paris is like on a Juneevening. Do you think I'd want to send you out of this country if Iweren't going, too? Not I--Georgiana!"