There & Back Part 28

I folded me up in the heart of his tune, And fell asleep in the sinking moon; I woke with the day's first golden gleam, And lo, I had dreamed a precious dream!

CHAPTER XXVI. _RICHARD AND ALICE_.

One evening Richard went to see his grandfather, and asked if he would allow him to give Miss Wylder a lesson in horseshoeing: she wanted, he said, to be able to shoe Miss Brown--or indeed any horse. Simon laughed heartily at the proposal: it was too great an absurdity to admit of serious objection!

"Ah, you don't know Miss Wylder, grandfather!" said Richard.

"Of course not! Never an old man knew anything about a girl! It's only the young fellows can fathom a woman! Having girls of his own blinds a man to the nature of them! There's going to be a law pa.s.sed against growing old! It's an unfortunate habit the world's got into somehow, and the young fellows are going to put a stop to it for fear of losing their wisdom!"

As the blacksmith spoke, he went on rasping and filing at a house-door key, fast in a vice on his bench; and his words seemed to Richard to fall from his mouth like the raspings from his rasp.

"Well, grandfather," said Richard, "if Miss Wylder don't astonish you, she'll astonish me!"

"Have you ever seen her drive a nail, boy?"

"Not once; but I am just as sure she will do it--and better than any beginner you've seen yet!"

"Well, well, lad! we'll see! we'll see! She's welcome anyhow to come and have her try! What day shall it be?"

"That I can't tell yet."

"It makes me grin to think o' them doll's hands with a great hoof in them!"

"They _are_ little hands--she's little herself--but they ain't doll's hands, grandfather. You should have seen her box Miss Vixen's ears for making a face at me! Her ears didn't take them for doll's hands, I'll be bound! The room rang again!"

"Bring her when you like, lad," said Simon.

It was moonlight, and when Richard arrived at the lodgeless gate, he saw inside it, a few yards away, seated on a stone, the form of a woman. He thought the first moment, as was natural, of Barbara, but the next, he knew that this was something strange. She sat in helpless, hopeless att.i.tude, with her head in her hands. A strange dismay came upon him at the sight of her; his heart fluttered in a cage of fear. He did not believe in ghosts. If he saw one, it would but show that sometimes when a person died there was a shadow left that was like him! There might be millions of ghosts, and no G.o.d the more! What are we all but spectres of the unknown? What was death but a vanis.h.i.+ng of the unknown? What are the dead but vanishments! Yet he shuddered at the thought that he had actually come upon one of the dead that are still alive, of whom, once or twice in a long century, one is met wandering vaguely about the world, unable to find what used to make it home. He peered through the iron bars as into a charnel-house: one such wanderer was enough to make the whole vault of night a gaping tomb.

Putting his key in the lock made a sharp little noise. The figure started up, her face gleaming white in the moon, but dropped again on her stone, unable to stand. Richard could not take his eyes off her.

While closing the gate he dared not turn his back to her. She sat motionless as before, her head in her hands, her elbows on her knees.

He stood for a moment staring and trembling, then, with an effort of the will that approached agony, went toward her. As he drew nearer, he began to feel as if he had once known her. He must have seen her in London somewhere, he thought. But why was her shadow sitting there, the lonely hostless guest of the night's caravansary?

He went nearer. The form remained motionless. Something reminded him of Alice Manson.

He laid his hand on the figure. It was a woman to the touch as well as to the eye. But not yet did she move an inch. He would have raised her face. Then she resisted. All at once he was sure she was Alice.

"Alice!" he cried. "Good G.o.d!--sitting in the cold night!"

She made him no answer, sat stone-still.

"What shall I do for you?" he said.

"Nothing," she answered, in a voice that might well have been that of a spectre. "Leave me," she added, as if with the last entreaty of despair.

"You are in trouble, Alice!" he persisted. "Why are you so far from home? Where's Arthur?"

"What right have _you_ to question me?" she returned, almost fiercely.

"None but that I am your brother's friend."

"Friend!" she echoed, in a faint far-away voice.

"You forget, Alice, that I did all I could to be your friend, and you would not let me!"

She neither spoke nor moved. Her stillness seemed to say, "Neither will I now."

"Where are you going?" he asked, after a hopeless pause.

"Nowhere."

"Why did you leave London?"

"Why should I tell you?"

"I think you will tell me!"

"I will not."

"You know I would do anything for you!"

"I daresay!"

"You know I would!"

"I don't."

"Try me."

"I will not."

Her voice grew more and more faint and forced. Her words and it were very unlike.

"Don't go on like that, Alice. You're not being reasonable," pleaded Richard.

"Oh, do leave me alone!"

"I won't leave you."

"As you please! It's nothing to me."

"Alice, why do you speak to me like that? Tell me what's wrong."

"Everything is wrong. Everybody is wrong. The whole world is wrong."

Her voice was a little stronger. She raised herself, and looked him in the face.