Heriot's Choice Part 57

'That is what Aunt Milly says. Ah, how good she is!' sighed the girl, enviously; 'almost a saint. I wish I were more like her.'

'I am satisfied with Polly as she is, though she is no saint.'

'No, are you really?' looking up at him brightly. 'Do you know, I have been thinking a great deal since--you know when----' her colour giving emphasis to her unfinished sentence.

'Indeed? I should like to know some of those thoughts,' with a playful glance at her downcast face. 'I must positively hear them, Polly. How sweet and still it is this evening. Suppose we sit and rest ourselves for a little while, and you shall tell me all about them.'

Polly shook her head. 'They are not so easy to tell,' she said, looking very shy all at once. Dr. Heriot had placed her on a stile at the head of the little lane that skirted Podgill; the broad sunny meadow lay before them, gemmed with trefoil and Polly's favourite eyebright; blue gentian, and pink and white yarrow, and yellow ragwort, wove straggling colours in the tangled hedgerows; the graceful campanula, with its bell-like blossoms, gleamed here and there, towering above the lowlier rose-campion, while meadow-sweet and trails of honeysuckle scented the air.

Dr. Heriot leant against the fence with folded arms; his mood was sunny and benignant. In his gray suit and straw hat he looked young, almost handsome. Under the dark moustache his lip curled with an amused, undefinable smile.

'I see you will want my help,' he said, with a sort of compa.s.sion and amus.e.m.e.nt at her shyness. Whatever she might own, his little fearless Polly was certainly afraid of him.

'I have tangled them dreadfully,' blushed Polly; 'the thoughts, I mean.

Every night when I go to bed I wish--I wish I were as wise as Aunt Milly, and then perhaps I should satisfy you.'

'My dear child!' and then he stopped a little, amazed and perplexed. Why was Mildred Lambert's goodness to be ever thrust on him, he thought, with a man's natural impatience? He had not bent his neck to her mild sway; her friends.h.i.+p was very precious to him--one of the good things for which he daily thanked G.o.d; but this innocent harping on her name fretted him with a vague sense of injury. 'Polly, who has put this in your head?' he said; and there was a shadow of displeasure in his tone, quiet as it was.

'No one,' she returned, in surprise; 'the thought has often come to me.

Are you never afraid,' she continued, timidly, but her young face grew all at once sweet and earnest--'are you not afraid that you will be tired--dreadfully tired--when you have only me to whom to talk?'

Then his gravity relaxed: the speech was so like Polly,--so like his honest, simple-minded girl.

'And what if I were?' he repeated, playing with her fears.

'I should be so sorry,' she returned, seriously. 'No, I should be more than sorry; I think it would make me unhappy. I should always be trying to get older and wiser for your sake; and if I did not succeed I should be ready to break my heart. No, do not smile,' as she caught a glimpse of his amused face; 'I was never more serious in my life.'

'Why, Mary, my little darling, what is this?' he said, lifting the little hand to his lips; for the bright eyes were full of tears now.

'No, call me Polly--I like that best,' she returned, hurriedly. 'Only my father called me Mary; and from you----'

'Well, what of me, little one?'

'I do not know. It sounds so strange from your lips. It makes me feel afraid, somehow, as though I were grown up and quite old. I like the childish Polly best.'

'You shall be obeyed, dear--literally and entirely, I mean;' for he saw her agitation needed soothing. 'But Polly is not quite herself to-night; these fears and scruples are not like her. Let me hear all these troublesome thoughts, dearest; you know I am a safe confidant.' And encouraged by the gentleness of his tone, Polly crept close into the shelter of the kind arm that had been thrown round her.

'I don't think it hurts one to have fears,' she said, in her simple way; 'they seem to grow out of one's very happiness. You must not mind if I am afraid at times that I shall not always please you; it will only be because I want to do it so much.'

'There, you wound and heal in one breath,' he replied, half-laughing, and half-touched.

'It has come into my mind more than once that when we are alone together; when I come to take care of you; you know what I mean.'

'When you are my own sweet wife--I understand, Polly;' and now nothing could exceed the grave tenderness of his voice.

'Yes, when you bring me home to the fireside, which you say has been so lonely,' she returned, with touching frankness, at once childlike and womanly. 'When you have no one but me to comfort you, what if you find out too late that I am so young--so very young--that I have not all you want?'

'Polly--my own Polly!'

'Ah, you may call me that, and yet the disappointment may be bitter. You have been so good to me, I love you so dearly, that I could not bear to see a shade on your face, young as I am. I do not feel like a child about this.'

'No, you are not a child,' he returned, looking at her with new reverence in his eyes. In her earnestness she had forgotten her girlish shyness; her hands were clasped fearlessly on his arm, truth was written on her guileless face, her words rang in his ear with mingled pathos and purity.

'No, you are not a child,' he repeated, and then he stopped all of a sudden; his wooing had grown difficult to him. He had never liked her so well, he had never regarded her with such proud fondness, as now, when she pleaded with him for toleration of her undeveloped youth. For one swift instant a consciousness of the truth of her words struck home to him with a keen sense of pain, marring the pleasant harmony of his dream; but when, he looked at her again it was gone.

And yet how was he to answer her? It was not petting fondness she wanted--not even ordinary love-speeches--only rest from an uneasy fear that hara.s.sed her repose--an a.s.surance, mute or otherwise, that she was sufficient for his peace. If he understood her aright, this was what she wanted.

'Polly, I do not think you need to be afraid,' he said at last, hesitating strangely over his words. 'I understand you, my darling; I know what you mean; but I do not think you need be afraid.'

'Ah, if I could only feel that!' she whispered.

'I will make you feel it; listen to me, dear. We men are odd, unaccountable beings; we have moods, our work worries us, we have tired fits now and then, nothing is right, all is vanity of vanity, disgust, want of success, blurred outlines, opaque mist everywhere--then it is I shall want my little comforter. You will be my veritable Sunbeam then.'

'But if I fail you?'

'Hush, you will never fail me. What heresy, what disbelief in a wife's first duty! Do you know, Polly, it is just three years since I first dreamt of the beneficent fairy who was to rise up beside my hearth.'

'You thought of me three years ago?'

'Thought of you? No, dreamt of you, fairy. You know you came to me first in a ladder of motes and beams. Don't you remember Dad Fabian's attic, and the picture of Cain, and the strange guardian coming in through the low doorway?'

'Yes, I remember; you startled me.'

'Polly is a hundred times prettier now; but I can recognise still in you the slim creature in the rusty black frock, with thin arms, and large dark eyes, drinking in the sunlight. It was such a forlorn Polly then.'

'And then you were good to me.'

'I am afraid I must have seemed stern to you, poor child, repelling your young impulse in such a manner. I remember, while you were pleading in your innocent fas.h.i.+on, and Miss Lambert was smiling at you, that a curious fancy came into my head. Something hardly human seemed to whisper to me, "John Heriot, after all, you may have found a little comforter."'

'I am so glad. I mean that you have thought of me for such a time.'

Polly was dimpling again; the old happy light had come back to her eyes.

'You see it is no new idea. I have watched my Polly growing sweeter and brighter day by day. How often you have confided in me; how often I have shared your innocent thoughts. You were not afraid to show me affection then.'

'I am not now,' she stammered.

'Perhaps not now, my bright-eyed bird; you have borrowed courage and eloquence for the occasion, inciting me to all manner of lover-like and foolish speeches. What do you say, little one--do you think I play the lover so badly, after all?'

'Yes--no--it does not suit you, somehow,' faltered Polly, truthful still.

'What, am I too old?' but Dr. Heriot's tone was piqued in spite of its a.s.sumed raillery.

'No, you know you are not; but I like the old ways and manners best.

When you talk like this I get shy and stupid, and do not feel like Polly at all.'

'You are the dearest and sweetest Polly in the world,' he returned, with a low, satisfied laugh; 'the most delightful combination of quaintness and simplicity. I wonder what wise Aunt Milly would say if she heard you.'

'That reminds me that she will be expecting us,' returned Polly, springing off the stile without waiting for his hand. She had shaken off her serious mood, and chatted gaily as they hurried along the upper woodland path; her hands were full of roses and great cl.u.s.ters of campanula by the time they reached Mildred, who was sitting on a little knoll that overlooked the Scar. In winter-time the beck rushed noisily down the high rocky face of the cliff, but now the long drought had dried up its sources, and with the exception of a few still pools the riverbed was dry.