Chapter II

The white mist, giving promise of a hot and glorious day, had hardly cleared itself from the earth, when, at ten o'clock on the Thursday morning, Jane and Oliver Preen set off in the gig for North Villa, both of them as spruce as you please; Jane in that pretty summer dress she had spent so much work over, a straw hat with its wreath of pink may shading her fair face, Oliver with a white rose in his button-hole. The party was first to assemble at Mrs. Jacob Chandler's, and to go from thence in waggonettes. There had been some trouble about the gig, Mr. Preen wanting it himself that day, or telling Jane and Oliver that he did, and that they could walk. Jane almost cried, declaring she did not care to arrive at North Villa looking like a milkmaid, hot and red with walking; and Mr. Preen gave way. Oliver was to drive himself and Jane, Sam being sent on to Crabb to bring back the gig.

Mr. Preen did not regard the picnic with favour. Mr. Preen could not imagine what anybody could want at one, he said, when ungraciously giving consent to Oliver's absenting himself from that delightful Buttery for a whole day.

Picnics in truth are nearly all alike, and are no doubt more agreeable to the young than to the old. This one was given conjointly by the Jacob Chandlers, the Letsoms, the Coneys, and the Ashtons of Timberdale. A few honorary guests were invited. I call them honorary because they had nothing to do with finding provisions. Tod got an invitation, myself also; and uncommonly vexed we were not to be able to arrive till late in the afternoon. The Beeles from Pigeon Green were coming to spend the day at Crabb Cot, and the Squire would not let us off earlier.

The picnic was held upon Mrs. Cramp's farm, not far from Crabb, and a charming spot for it. Gentle hills and dales, shady groves and mossy glens surrounded the house, which was a very good one. So that it may be said we all were chiefly Mrs. Cramp's guests. Mrs. Cramp made a beaming hostess, and was commander-in-chief at her own tea-table. Tea was taken in her large parlour, to save the bother of carrying things out. Dinner had been taken in the dell, under shade of the high and wide-spreading trees.

They were seated at tea when we got there. Such a large company at the long table; and such tempting things to eat! I found a seat by Emma Paul, the prettiest girl there; Oliver Preen was next her on the other side. Mary MacEveril made room for Tod beside her. The MacEverils were proud, exclusive people, and Miss MacEveril privately looked down on some of her fellow guests; but Tod was welcome; he was of her own order.

Two or three minutes later Tom Chandler came in; he also had not been able to get away earlier. He shook hands with his aunt, Mrs. Cramp, nodded to the rest of us, and deftly managed to wedge himself in between Emma Paul and young Preen. Preen did not seem pleased, Emma did; and made all the room she could, by crushing me.

"I wouldn't be in your shoes to-morrow morning, young man," began Mr. Chandler, in a serio-comic tone, as he looked at Dick MacEveril across the table. "To leave the office to its own devices the first thing this morning, in defiance of orders----"

"Hang the musty old office!" interrupted MacEveril, with a genial laugh.

Valentine Chandler had done the same by his office; pleasure first and business later always with both of them; but Valentine was his own master and MacEveril was not. In point of fact, Mr. Paul, not a man to be set at defiance by his clerks, was in a great rage with Dick MacEveril.

I supposed the attractions of the picnic had been too powerful for Dick, and that he thought the sooner he got to it the better. But this proved to be a fallacy. Mrs. Cramp was setting her nephew right.

"My dear Tom, you are mistaken. Mr. MacEveril did not come this morning; he only got here an hour ago--like two or three more of the young men."

"Oh, did he not, Aunt Mary Ann?" replied Tom, turning his handsome, pleasant face upon her.

"Yes, and if you were not at the office I should like to know what you did with yourself all day, Dick," severely cried Miss MacEveril, bending forward to regard her cousin.

"I went to see the pigeon-match," said Dick, coolly.

"To see the pigeon-match!" she echoed. "How cruel of you! You had better not let papa know."

"If anyone lets him know it will be yourself, Miss Mary. And suppose you hold your tongue now," cried Dick, not very politely.

This little passage-at-arms over, we went on with tea. Afterwards we strolled out of doors and disposed of ourselves at will. Some of the Chandler girls took possession of me, and I went about with them.

When it was getting late, and they had talked me deaf, I began looking about for Tod, and found him on a bench within the Grove. A sheltered spot. Sitting there, you could look out, but people could not look in. Mary MacEveril and Georgiana Chandler were with him; Oliver Preen stood close by, leaning against the stump of a tree. I thought how sad his look was, and wondered what made it so.

Within view of us, but not within hearing, in a dark, narrow walk Tom Chandler and Emma Paul were pacing side by side, absorbed evidently in one another. The sun had set, the lovely colours in the sky were giving place to twilight. It was the hour when matter-of-fact prosaic influences change into romance; when, if there's any sentiment within us it is safe to come out.

"It is the hour when from the boughs
The nightingale's high note is heard;
It is the hour when lovers' vows
Seem sweet in every whispered word,"

as Lord Byron says. And who could discourse on love--the true ring of it, mind you--as he did?

"Do sing," said Tod to Miss MacEveril; and I found they had been teasing her to do so for the last five minutes. She had a pleasant voice and sang well.

"I'm sure you don't care to hear me, Mr. Todhetley."

"But I'm sure I do," answered Tod, who would flirt with pretty girls when the fit took him. Flirt and flatter too.

"We should have everyone coming round us."

"Not a soul of them. They are all away somewhere, out of hearing. Do sing me one song."

She began at once, without more ado, choosing an old song that Mrs. Todhetley often chose; one that was a favourite of hers, as it was of mine: "Faithless Emma." Those songs of the old days bore, all of them, a history.

"I wandered once at break of day,
While yet upon the sunless sea
In wanton sighs the breeze delayed,
And o'er the wavy surface played.
Then first the fairest face I knew,
First loved the eye of softest blue,
And ventured, fearful, first to sip
The sweets that hung upon the lip
Of faithless Emma.

So mixed the rose and lily white
That nature seemed uncertain, quite,
To deck her cheek which flower she chose,
The lily or the blushing rose.
I wish I ne'er had seen her eye,
Ne'er seen her cheeks of doubtful dye,
Nor ever, ever dared to sip
The sweets that hung upon the lip
Of faithless Emma.

Now though from early dawn of day,
I rove alone and, anxious, stray
Till night with curtain dark descends,
And day no more its glimmering lends;
Yet still, like hers no cheek I find,
No eye like hers, save in my mind,
Where still I fancy that I sip
The sweets that hung upon the lip
Of faithless Emma."

"I think all Emmas are faithless," exclaimed Georgiana, speaking at random, as the last sounds of the sweet song died away.

"A sweeping assertion, Miss Georgie," laughed Tod.

"Any way, I knew two girls named Emma who were faithless to their engaged lovers, and one of them's not married yet to any one else," returned Georgie.

"I think I know one Emma who will be true for ever and a day," cried Tod, as he pointed significantly to Emma Paul, still walking side by side with Tom Chandler in the distance.

"I could have told you that before now," said Mary MacEveril. "I have seen it for a long time, though Miss Emma will never confess to it."

"And now, I fancy it will soon be a case," continued Tod.

"A case!" cried Georgie. "What do you mean?"

"A regular case; dead, and gone, and done for," nodded Tod. "Church bells and wedding gloves, and all the rest of the paraphernalia. Looks like it, anyhow, to-night."

"Oh!" exclaimed Georgie, "then how sly Tom has been over it, never to tell us! Is it really true? I shall ask Valentine."

"The last person likely to know," said Tod. "You'll find it's true enough, Georgie."

"Then----" Georgie began, and broke off. "Listen!" she cried. "They are beginning to dance on the lawn. Come, Mary." And the two girls moved away, attracted by the scraping of the fiddle.

Oliver Preen moved a step forward from the tree, speaking in a low, calm tone; but his face was white as death.

"Were you alluding to _them_?" he asked, looking across to those two pacing about. "Why do you say it is a 'case'?"

"Because I am sure it is one," answered Tod. "They have been in love with one another this many a day past, those two, months and months and years. As everyone might see who had eyes, except old Paul. That's why, Preen."

Oliver did not answer. He had his arm round the trunk of a tree looking across as before.

"And I wouldn't stake a fortune that Paul has not seen it also," went on Tod. "All the same, I had a rumour whispered to me to-day that he sees it now, and has said, 'Bless you, my children.' Tom Chandler is to be made his partner and to marry Emma."

"We are too many girls there, and want you for partners," cried Eliza Letsom, dashing up. "Do come and dance with us, Johnny!"

What else could I do? Or Tod, either.

It was nearly eleven o'clock when the party separated. The waggonettes held us all, and nice scrambling and crowding we had for seats. One of the vehicles, after setting down some of its freight--ourselves and the Miss Chandlers--continued its way to Duck Brook with Jane and Oliver Preen.

It was a lovely night. The moon had risen, and was flooding the earth with its soft light. Jane sat looking at it in romantic reverie. Suddenly it struck her that her brother was unusually still; he had not spoken a single word.

"How silent you are, Oliver. You are not asleep, are you?"

Oliver slowly raised his bent head. "Silent?" he repeated. "One can't talk much after a tiring day such as this."

"I think it must be getting on for twelve o'clock," said Jane. "What a delightfully happy day it has been!"

"The one bad day of all my life," groaned Oliver, in spirit. But he broke into the two lines, in pretended gaiety, that some one had sung on the box-seat of the waggonette when leaving Mrs. Cramp's:

"For the best of all ways to lengthen our days
Is to steal a few hours from the night, my dear."