One of them was the fact that Mrs Thorne had so set her heart on her daughter’s marriage with Archie. It was rather an unusual thing for a mother of Mrs Thorne’s stamp to insist on her girl marrying a penniless young doctor, entirely depending on her own help as to his present expenditure, and on his profession for his future support, but there were still more peculiar circumstances in the affair. From what Archie had himself told me, I had little doubt that Mrs Thorne absolutely disliked her nephew. If he had simply neglected to fall in with her views by ignoring his cousin Hester’s charms and preference, it would have been bad enough, but the silly fellow had gone and fallen in love with some pretty child in the neighbourhood of his aunt’s place, and when she came to find it out there would be the – ahem – to pay.
‘I see you are getting quite nervous, Archie,’ I said bantering-ly, as the train neared Puntwater.
‘I am,’ he said ‘and you needn’t laugh about it. It’s all sure to be found out before we go back, for I can’t and won’t be appropriated any longer, now that I am really engaged to Bessie – poor little girl! If she only knew how wild aunt will be she would be terrified out of her life. You see, Mark, I’ve been accustomed to take things easy at home, and let them do with me as they liked, for peace sake, but now it must be different and there’s sure to be scenes.
‘What sort of man was your uncle? Do you remember him at all?’
‘A little – he was peculiar, too, but kind withall. It is nine or ten years since he died, I think.’
‘In this colony?’
‘Yes, and rather suddenly. I was at school, but although aunt never speaks of him, Hester has done so occasionally. He was ill, and aunt took him to town for medical advice – he died there, and she came back a widow.’
There was no one in the compartment with us, and we could speak freely.
‘See here, mate,’ I said. ‘I don’t quite understand my role in this affair; what is it that you expect me to do in it? Am I to try and frighten your good aunt out of her anxiety for your alliance by declaring you to be incorrigibly dissipated, or what?’
‘That game won’t do,’ he answered with a laugh that came from his teeth only. ‘I’ve tried it myself, and it didn’t effect any good purpose. I don’t know what you’re to do for me, Mark, but I’ve every confidence in you. You’re such a clever chap, you see, that you’ll corner them up somehow. At all events, I depend on you to back me if there’s a regular row about Bessie.’
‘And get kicked out? Well I suppose it wouldn’t much matter if I did. We’ll see, old boy – if I’m not grateful for the dose of flattery you’ve given me, I ought to be.’
It was yet early in the day when we reached Puntwater, and our first move was to refresh and brighten ourselves up at the hotel before presenting ourselves to Mrs and Miss Thorne. They expected us, though they were not aware of the day we should arrive, so no fear of their being waiting lunch or any other meal prevented us from resting before we set out for Riverdale. For that was the name bestowed by its godfathers and godmothers on Mrs Thorne’s property, and it was a pretty suitable one. It was about half a mile from the township, and situated so near the Loddon that the grounds sloped down to the river. The house itself was of brick and wood, and a prettily picturesque building, the old look of which was partly concealed by quantities of climbing plants and vines and a group of the original old monarchs of the bush in the shape of box and peppermint trees.
‘It’s the prettiest place I’ve seen for many a day,’ I observed, as Archie paused and turned toward the river. ‘You might do worse than please mamma, marry your cousin, and settle down to live a delightfully rural and domestic life.’
He did not answer, and seeing that he was intently gazing at a pretty little cottage that stood almost close to the Loddon on a lovely, sloping, green bank, I guessed at once.
‘Oh, I see! That’s the home of Bessie, the beloved, eh? And I suppose that is the sweet girl herself, sitting down there by the water, dressed in white?’
‘Where?’ he asked, eagerly.
‘Here, just below us, with her back against a tree, and her eyes, not on the book she holds in her lap, but on the river. But no, it can’t be; your fiancée is fair, and this girl is black as night. It must be Miss Thorne.’
‘It is,’ Archie answered shortly and turned to continue his way toward the cottage.
‘I say, Archie, I don’t think Miss Thorne has observed us. I have a fancy for making the acquaintance of that young lady in some unconventional manner. Just you go on and prepare aunt and get your blowing up, and I’ll join you after.’
All right – please yourself, only mind, I didn’t tell them you were a detective.’
‘Ashamed of the D’s acquaintance, eh? Well, perhaps it’s all the better. Ta-ta.’
We had moved on a few steps, and when we parted, there were some trees between me and the young lady by the river; but when I made a circuit of them, I saw she still sat like an image of stone in the same spot.
I may well say like an image, for I never did see anything like the apparent immobility of that girl. I had an opportunity of studying her face before she observed me and before the sound of my foot attracted her. It was as calm as the river at her feet, and far more expressionless.
And it was a remarkable face for all that – one that would hold your eye as would a statue with a story in every line; it was pale as the face of a living, healthy subject could possibly be, and its pallor was apparent all the more from the strong contrast of hair – as black as night – and strongly marked, straight, black brows above black-lashed, deeply-set eyes of the hue of coal.
She was small and slight of figure and prettily dressed in black silk, and she was about twenty-three or four. Her attire was rather odd in some way – I recognised that fact at once, but I suppose in consequence of my lamentable ignorance of drapery and fashions, I could not decide where, or in what the oddity began. Her glossy hair was drawn back smoothly from her face and worn in a large coil high on the back of her head, and with the exception of a massive brooch fastening her collar, she had not a single ornament about.
I stood for a moment and examined the small and delicate, yet sharp features, and saw that the white hands crossed idly on her lap were small and thin, and that the black dress fitted her perfect figure with a precision almost wonderful. There did not seem to be a crease or a wrinkle anywhere, even in the careless attitude she held, leaning against the trunk of the old tree.
Gazing at the river, I have said, and gazing as if she was thoughtless. I mean that her face was so expressionless as to make me wonder if it could be possible for any girl of her age to sit there without thinking of anything, no more than if she were really the image I have compared her to.
‘A strange girl this, and one worth studying; though she is not the sort one might get up a pleasant, silly flirtation with, and as for falling in love with her – phew?’
Something like that, I thought to myself as I advanced until she was attracted by the sound of my footstep. She lifted up the heavy eyelashes and turned upon me a pair of blazing, black eyes that almost electrified me as they met mine.
You see, I had been speculating so on the strange immobility of the still-looking face, that when the piercing orbs looked at me with that fiery intensity, the fact struck me as though a corpse had suddenly returned to life and turned a look full of terrible vitality on me, and I assure that I took no small credit to myself and my training for especial emergencies that I managed to retain my self-possession and not to expose my astonishment to the lady.