Part 38 (2/2)
”Hum! too bad. Where did Miss Esther tell you to go?” he asked guilelessly.
”To the meadow over against the school.”
”What time?”
”Half past two.”
”Well, cheer up, I'll tell you what--I'll go and help Miss Esther pick the daisies. I can pick quite as fast as you. And I'll speak to Aunt Sykes and make it right with her. So if you run now and get dressed you and Bubble may go just as soon as you've had breakfast. And stay all day. Be sure you stay all day, mind.”
A good sound hug was the natural answer to this and when the conspirators met at breakfast everything had been satisfactorily arranged. Ann had her holiday and the doctor's way lay clear before him.
For all his apparent ignorance Callandar knew that daisy field quite as well as Ann. It was wild and lonely, yet full of cosy nooks and hollows.
Mild-eyed cows sometimes pastured there. It was a perfect paradise for meadow-larks. Could any man ask better than to meet the girl he loved in a field like that?
”You're not eating a mite, Doctor.”
With a start, Callandar helped himself to marmalade.
So much for the morning of the eventful day. We have given it in detail because it was so commonplace, so empty of any incident which might have foreshadowed the happenings of the afternoon. Callandar was restless, but any man is restless under such circ.u.mstances. He found the morning long, but that was natural. Long afterwards he thought of its slow moving hours, lost in wonder that he should have caught no glimpse, heard no whisper, while all the time, through the beauty of the scented, summer day, the footsteps of inescapable fate drew so swiftly near.
Fortunate indeed for us that the fragile house we dwell in is provided with no windows on the future side, and that the veil of the next moment is as impenetrable as the veil of years.
What are they, anyway, these curious combinations of unforeseen incidents which under the name of ”coincidence” startle us out of our dull acceptance of things? Can it be that, after all, s.p.a.ce and circ.u.mstance are but pieces in a puzzle to which the key is lost, so that, playing blindly, we are startled by the _click_ which announces the falling of some corner of the puzzle into place? Or is it merely that we are all more closely linked than we know, and is ”coincidence”
but the flas.h.i.+ng of one of numberless invisible links into the light of common day? Some day we shall know all about it; in the meantime a little wonder will do us good.
It was, of course, coincidence that this afternoon Mary Coombe should offer to gather the marguerites for Esther and that, the Sat.u.r.day help having failed to materialise, Esther was glad of the offer which left her free to help Aunt Amy in the kitchen. It was also coincidence that Mary should choose to wear her one blue dress and her shady hat which looked a little like Esther's. But, given these coincidences, it is easy to understand why the doctor, pa.s.sing slowly by the field of marguerites, felt his heart bound at the supposed sight of Esther among the flowers.
Now that the moment had really come, his restlessness fell from him. He felt cool, confident, happy! The world, the beautiful world, was gay in gold and green. Over the rise, half hidden by its gentle undulation, he caught the glint of a blue gown--
Running his car under the shade of some nearby trees, the doctor leapt the pasture fence in one fine bound. The blue figure among the daisies was stooping, her face hidden by a shady hat. No one else was in sight--just he and she in all the lovely, sunny, breeze-swept earth! He came towards her softly; called her name, but so low that she did not hear. Then a meadow-lark, disturbed, flew up with his piercing ”sweet!”
the stooping figure turned and he saw, in the clear sunlight, the face under the shady hat--
Had something in his brain snapped? Or was he living through a nightmare from which he would awake presently? The world, the daisy field, the figure in blue, himself, all seemed but baseless fabrics of some fantastic vision!
For, by a strange enchantment, the face which should have been Esther's face was the face of Molly Weston, his lost wife!
It could not be! But it was.
Incredible the swiftness with which nature rights herself after a stunning shock. Only for a moment was Callandar left in his paradise of uncertainty. The next moment, he knew that he beheld no vision, knew it and accepted it as certainly and completely as if all his life had been but a preparation for the revelation.
”You!” he said. It was only a whisper but it seemed to fill the universe. ”You--Molly!”
At the name, the hazel eyes which had met his so blankly sprang suddenly alive--recognition, knowledge, fear, entreaty, flashed across them in one moment's breathless s.p.a.ce--then they grew blank again and Mary Coombe fell senseless beside her sheaf of daisies.
CHAPTER XXIII
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