Part 7 (1/2)

”Do they have such picnics as this in England?” Anna asked, as she gathered up the crumbs of her biscuit.

”I have never been to one,” Julia answered, and inwardly she thought of her mother and Violet driving in a wheeled ark to the wood, there to sit at little wooden tables and stretch their mouths in the public eye.

”Ah!” said Vrouw Snieder; ”then it is all the more of a pleasure and a novelty to you.”

Julia said it was, and soon afterwards they rose from the table to walk in the wood. The two elder ladies did not get far, and before long came back to sit on their wooden chairs again. The girls went some little distance, all keeping together, and being careful not to wander out of sight and sound of the other picnic parties. Once when they came to the extreme limit of their walk, Julia half-hesitated.

She looked into the quiet green distance. It would be easy to leave them, to give them the slip; she could walk at double their pace with half their exertion, she could lose herself among the trees while they were wondering why she had gone, and making up their minds to follow her; and, most important of all, when she came back she could explain everything quite easily, so that they would not think it in the least strange--an accident, a missing of the way, anything. Should she do it--should she? The wild creature that had lived half-smothered within her for all the twenty years of her life fluttered and stirred.

It had stirred before, rebelling against the shams of the Marbridge life, as it rebelled against the restrictions of the present; it had never had scope or found vent; still, for all that it was not dead; possibly, even, it was growing stronger; it called her now to run away. But she did not do it; advisability, the Polkingtons' patron saint, suggested to her that one does not learn to s.h.i.+ne in the caged life by allowing oneself the luxury of occasional escape.

She turned her back on the green distance. ”Shall we not go back to where the music is playing?” she said.

They went, walking with their arms entwined as other girls were doing, Julia between the broad, white-skinned sisters, like a rapier between cus.h.i.+ons. The two younger girls ran on in front. ”There is Mevrouw,”

they cried. ”She is calling us. The carriage is ready, too; oh, do you think it is already time to go?”

It seemed as if it really was the case. Vrouw Snieder stood clapping her hands and beckoning to them, and the coachman appeared impatient to be off. With reluctance, and many times repeated regrets, they collected their wraps and baskets, and got into the carriage.

”Good-bye, beautiful wood, good-bye!” Denah said, leaning far out as they started. ”Oh, if one could but remain here till the moon rose!”

”It would be very damp,” her mother observed. ”The dew would fall.”

To which incontestable remark Denah made no reply.

The return journey was much like the drive there, with one exception; they pa.s.sed one object of interest they had not seen before. It was when they were nearing the outskirts of the town that Anna exclaimed, ”An Englishman! Look, look, Miss Julia, a compatriot of yours!”

The season was full early for tourists, and at no time did the place attract many. Englishmen who came now probably came on business which was unlikely to bring them out to these quiet, flat fields. But Anna and Denah, who joined her in a much more demonstrative look-out than Marbridge would have considered well-bred, were insistent on the nationality.

”He walks like an Englishman,” Anna said, ”as if all the world belonged to him.”

”And looks like one,” Denah added; ”he has no moustache, and wears a gla.s.s in his eye, look, Miss Julia.”

Julia looked, then drew back rather quickly. They were right, it was an Englishman; it was of all men Rawson-Clew.

What was he doing here? By what extraordinary chance he came to be in this unlikely place she could not think. She was very glad that Mevrouw felt the air chilly, and so had had the leather flaps pulled over part of the open sides of the carriage; this and the eager sisters screened her so well that it was unlikely he could see her.

”Is he not an Englishman?” Anna asked.

”Yes,” she answered; ”one could not mistake him for anything else.”

”I wonder if he recognised you as a country-woman,” Anna speculated; and Julia said she did not consider herself typically English in appearance.

The sisters talked for the rest of the way of the Englishman; of his air and bearing, and the fact, of which they declared themselves convinced, that he was a person of distinction.

But it was not till the drive was over, and the party had separated, that Denah was able to say what was burning on her tongue. They had left the clerk's children at their house, said good-bye to Vrouw Van Heigen and Julia, and were within their own home at last; the girls went up to their bedroom, and Denah carefully fastened the door, then she said mysteriously, ”Miss Julia knows that Englishman.”

Anna jumped at the intelligence, and still more at the tone. ”Did she tell you?” she asked.

”No,” Denah replied with some scorn; ”she would not tell any one, she wishes it concealed; she thinks it is so, but I saw it.”

The tone and manner suggested many things, but Anna was a terribly matter-of-fact person, to whom suggestions were nothing. ”Why should she wish it concealed?” she inquired.