The Real Charlotte - Edith Somerville [181]
They all strolled slowly on towards the boat-house, Hawkins walking behind with Miss Mullen, Francie in front with her host. It was not her first meeting with him since her return to Lismoyle, and she found it quite easy to talk with him of her travels, and of those small things that make up the sum of ordinary afternoon conversation. She had come to believe now that she must have been mistaken on that afternoon when he had stood over her in the Tally Ho drawing-room and said those unexpected things to her—things that, at the time, seemed neither ambiguous nor Platonic. He was now telling her, in the quietly hesitating voice that had always seemed to her the very height of good breeding, that the weather was perfect, and that the lake was lower than he had ever known it at that time of year, with other like commonplaces, and though there was something wanting in his manner that she had been accustomed to, she discerned none of the awkwardness that her experience had made her find inseparable from the rejected state.
There was no sign of Captain Cursiter or his launch when they reached the pier, and, after a fruitless five minutes of waiting, they went on, at Christopher’s suggestion, to see the bluebells in the wood that girdled the little bay of Bruff. Before they reached the gate of the wood, Miss Mullen had attached herself to Christopher, having remarked, with engaging frankness, that Mr. Hawkins could only talk to her about Lismoyle, and she wanted Sir Christopher to tell her of the doings of the great world; and Francie found herself following them with Hawkins by her side. The park turned inwards and upwards from the lake, climbing, by means of a narrow flight of mossgrown stone steps, till it gained the height of about fifty feet above the water. Walking there, the glitter of the lake came up brokenly to the eye through the beech-tree branches, that lay like sprays of maiden-hair beneath them; and over the hill and down to the water’s edge and far away among the grey beech stems, the bluebells ran like a blue mist through all the wood. Their perfume rose like incense about Francie and her companion as they walked slowly, and ever more slowly, along the path. The spirit of the wood stole into their veins, and a pleasure that they could not have explained held them in silence that they were afraid to break.
Hawkins was the first to make a diffident comment.
“They’re ripping, aren’t they? They’re a great deal better than they were last year.”
“I didn’t see them last year.”
“No, I know you didn’t,” he said quickly; “you didn’t come to Lismoyle till the second week in June.”
“You seem to remember more about it than I do,” said Francie, still maintaining her attitude of superiority.
“I don’t think I’m likely to forget it,” he said, turning and looking at her.
She looked down at the ground with a heightening colour and a curl of the lip that did not come easily. If she found it hard to nurse her anger against Charlotte, it was thrice more difficult to harden herself to the voice to which one vibrating string in her heart answered in spite of her.
“Oh, there’s nothing people can’t forget if they try!” she said, with a laugh. “I always find it much harder to remember!”
“But people sometimes succeed in doing things they don’t like,” said Hawkins pertinaciously.
“Not if they don’t want to,” replied Francie, holding her own, with something of her habitual readiness.
Hawkins’ powers of repartee weakened a little before this retort. “No, I suppose not,” he said, trying to make up by bitterness of tone for want of argument.
Francie was silent,