Chapter IX: A Holiday

ONE afternoon Lancelot Dane came to see her father.

Hope was sitting out in the garden reading the "Times" to Mr. St. Clair. She was delighted to see her father welcome his visitor with more warmth of manner than he had ever shown towards any one before. And after a few desultory remarks, she got up and left them together.

Half an hour later, she, assisted by Anne, brought out tea upon the lawn, and she heard with pleasure her father's hearty laugh as he talked with Lancelot. When she joined them, the latter turned at once and included her in the conversation.

"I am going to take your father fishing to-morrow, Miss St. Clair. Will you spare him for the day? Did he tell you that we did a week of camping out together once in Canada?"

"Yes," said Hope; "I have heard how you rescued him from the buffalo. I am sure fishing will do him good."

Mr. St. Clair shook his head doubtfully.

"I will try it, but it will be an experiment," he said.

"Will you join us at lunch, Miss St. Clair?" asked Lancelot in his keen quick tone. "You look as if you want a day out."

Hope seemed for a minute as if she were going to say yes. Then she remembered her small brothers.

"No," she said, stifling a sigh, "I must give the boys their early dinner and see them off to school."

"Let them dine alone for once; it will do them good."

Mr. St. Clair looked at his daughter thoughtfully.

"I think the day out would do you good," he said; "you had better come."

"Perhaps I might. I could trust the boys for once."

The longing in her eyes touched her father.

"You young people want diversion sometimes," he said. "I'm afraid you miss your gaiety now."

Hope turned away. The extraordinary kindness of her father's tone brought the tears to her eyes, and she would not let them be seen.

One quick comprehensive look Lancelot gave her, then he said lightly:

"Very well, we will consider it settled that you come to look after us, Miss St. Clair, and I will call here to-morrow at ten o'clock, if that time will suit."

"It will be delicious," said Hope impulsively; and she told Brian later that she was going "to have her day out."

"I feel like Anne did when she departed last Thursday. She said to me, 'I means to be a lady for the day!'"

The next day was bright and sunny. The boys vowed they would be perfect saints at dinner-time; and at half-past ten Hope, with a radiant face, was walking along the buttercup meadows between her father and Lancelot Dane. She chatted unreservedly to the latter.

Her father was in one of his silent moods, and when they came to the river, soon fixed upon his spot and got out his rod. Lancelot sauntered further on.

"And now I mustn't speak to either of you till lunch-time," said Hope to him. "I know what fishermen are like. And I shall be quite as absorbed in my book that I have brought with me, and my thoughts, as either of you are with your fish. And I think I shall choose that tree for my resting-place."

"Capital! We will have lunch under its shade. You wouldn't like to have a line yourself? I have a second rod with me."

"No, thank you. I have never had sufficient practice to be a good fisherwoman. Besides, I don't like the moment when the fish are wriggling on the hook. I wish violent deaths were not necessary in the world. Why should not everything live its allotted time and die of old age?"

"It would be more cruel in some cases," said Lancelot promptly. "They would die of lingering starvation—no teeth or claws to kill their prey, and no one to attend to their needs."

"But they need have no prey. Could we not live without preying upon each other?"

"We could be vegetarians; but apply that to carnivorous animals, and I fancy their strength and beauty and intelligence would suffer in consequence. We can't turn the world into the millennium before its time, you know."

"Do you believe in a millennium?"

"Do not you?"

"I know so little of these things," said Hope, with a deprecating shake of her head.

"So do most of us, but we get the outlines given to us in the Bible."

"I wish you would tell me some of them. But not now. I shall interrupt your sport."

He smiled, and watched her walk away with her easy grace to the old oak-tree a short distance off. And then he turned to his fishing with a little contraction of brow.

Hope, seated under the shady tree, looked out that summer morning upon the beauties of nature with a keen sense of enjoyment. The murmur of the river in front of her, with all the wonderful lights and shadows from the fleeting clouds above, the rich golden sheen of the cornfield on the slope of the hills, the graceful droop of the willows by the water's edge, and the green meadows around her with the cows lazily munching as they moved to and fro, all combined to form a picture that remained in her memory for years to come. She did not read, but closing her eyes gave herself up to the bliss of meditation, and the rarity of such leisure in the morning intensified the delight she felt at it now.

She was startled at last by her father's voice.

"What! No lunch? Look at my luck!"

He opened his basket and showed a handsome trout weighing quite three pounds, and a few smaller ones besides. Then Lancelot Dane found them, but he had not been so fortunate. He insisted upon helping Hope to unpack the luncheon-basket.

"It is my place to wait on you, not yours to wait on me," he said; "I have nothing to show for my morning's efforts, so ought to work for my lunch."

"I have nothing to show for my morning," said Hope; "for it has only benefited me. How I have enjoyed it!"

Mr. St. Clair had also enjoyed himself. Hope had not seen her father so bright for a long time.

"I have heard a London physician say," said Lancelot, when Mr. St. Clair mentioned his health, "that a few hours spent every day in pure country air would do more for his patients than tons of medicine and special diet."

"Yes, but it is an expensive cure for many," said Mr. St. Clair. "I am talking of breadwinners, of course. That is why the colonies do so much for our young fellows. But there comes a time when fresh air will do nothing for you."

Gloom settled upon his face again, and Hope turned the conversation quickly upon the different species of trout.

Luncheon over, Mr. St. Clair, encouraged by his success, went back to his sport. Lancelot stayed where he was, under the oak-tree, and asked permission to smoke a pipe.

Unconsciously Hope began to tell him a good deal about herself; he invited confidence. And she gave details of her past London life, as well as her present one. They found they had several mutual friends in town, and presently Lancelot said:

"I suppose you have a good many friends, have you not? What do they say to your sudden disappearance from society?"

"I don't know that I have very many real friends," Hope said thoughtfully. "I suppose I could number them on my five fingers. And time and absence will reduce them. It always does."

"Are you given to making sudden friendships?"

"No, I do not think I am. How would you define a friend, Mr. Dane?"

He was silent. For a moment his eyes rested on her with deep thought, then he said:

"A friend is some one who comes into our life to stay there."

"I suppose so. That is what one would wish."

"After such a definition, do you think it premature of me to propose that you and I should become friends?"

If Hope was a little startled, it was only because Lancelot Dane was such a different stamp of man from most of her acquaintances. Such a speech did not seem like him.

She tried to answer lightly.

"We are friends already, I think. I cannot regard you as otherwise, when I know at one time you saved my father's life."

"Friends for all time?"

She looked at him, and for an instant their eyes met. In that moment, with a quick-caught breath, Hope realised that this quiet man, with his resolute face, was going to dominate her being. It was no idle talk with him. He seemed to be weighing every word he spoke. Turning her face away towards the flowing river, she said very gently:

"Yes."

Lancelot rose to his feet, and took a few quick turns up and down the meadow before he spoke again.

"Will you smile if I tell you something? You remember the first time you came into the cathedral? We were perfect strangers. I had never seen you before, but I had an intuition then that I should see you again, that I should speak to you, that I should know one day the cause of the trouble that was upon your face—may I say the tears that you shed in that dark corner of yours?"

Hope looked up genuinely astonished.

"How observant you must be! I was very unhappy that afternoon, but it was a turning-point in my life. And the hymn I heard sung so sweetly was what helped me and stayed with me. Do you remember it—'Peace, perfect peace'? I feel it has woven itself into my life. I am living in the second verse now."

"It is my mother's favourite hymn. I know it well. I learnt it as a boy to please her."

He stood still, looking down upon her, until Hope felt nervous under his gaze, and rather abruptly suggested that she should join her father. Lancelot acquiesced, and accompanied her further down the river. Just before they joined Mr. St. Clair, he said:

"And now, Miss St. Clair, whilst I am in England I want to claim a friend's privileges. Will you send for me when your father wants a cheery chat? If you want help at any time with those youngsters, will you turn to me? If you have any commissions or messages to friends in town, will you let me take them? You see, I mean to prove my genuineness."

"You are very kind. Are you soon returning to India?"

"In another six weeks or so. I must tell you that my mother is very anxious that I should give up my appointment out there. We have a small property in the North of England which has been let for a number of years, but the tenant has just died, and things want looking into. Her great desire is that I should settle there myself, and I know she would love to return to it, for it is the house in which we boys spent our childhood and in which my father died. But I feel I am not old enough yet to retire into such a life of ease. I want to be in the battle of life, not in a backwater. And my mother's reason and judgment are with me in this, if her heart is against the Indian life."

"I suppose it is not a large enough property to employ you there?"

"Not unless I dismiss our agent; and he has been working for us all his life, so I could not."

No more was said. Hope did not leave her father till it was time to return home, but as they separated, Lancelot took her hand in his.

"Goodbye, Miss St. Clair. We have made a covenant of friendship to-day, remember! The future will hold us to it."

He smiled as he spoke, and Hope found it an effort to respond as lightly as she wished.

"A new friend is always welcome," she said, "especially in Kayminster."

But as she turned into the house, she took herself to task with some severity for the rapid beating of her heart.