He turned sulkily and condescendingly permitted Mary to knot the cravat, a task she always undertook for him, and which she now performed neatly and dexterously, so that presenting himself again before the mirror, he regarded the result with satisfaction.
"Brilliantine," he demanded next, forgiving her by his command. She handed him the bottle from which he sprinkled copious libations of mellifluous liquid upon his hair and with a concentrated mien he then combed his locks into a picturesque wave.
"My hair is very thick, Mary," he remarked, as he carefully worked the comb behind his ears. "I shall never go bald. That ass Couper said it was getting thin on the top the last time he cut it. The very idea! I'll stop going to him in future for his impertinence."
When he had achieved the requisite undulation amongst his curls, he extended his arms and allowed her to help him to assume his coat, then took a clean linen handkerchief, scented it freshly with Sweet Pea Perfume, draped it artistically from his pocket, and surveyed the finished result in the glass steadily.
"Smart cut,” he murmured, "neat waist. Miller does wonderfully for a local tailor, don't you think ?" he queried. "Of course I keep him up to it and he's got a figure to work on! Well, if Agnes is not pleased with me to-night, she ought to be." Then, as he moved away, he added inconsequently, "And don't forget, Mary, half-past ten to-night, or perhaps a little shade later."
"I'll be awake, Matt," she murmured reassuringly.
"Sure now?"
"Sure!"
This last remark exposed the heel of Achilles, for this admirable, elegant young man, smoker, mandoliiiist, lover, the future intrepid voyager to India had one amazing weakness he was afraid of the dark. He admitted Mary to his confidence and companionship incontestably for the reason that she would meet him by arrangement on these nights when he was late and escort him up the obscure and
gloomy stairs to his bedroom, without fail and with a loyalty which never betrayed him. She never considered the manner of her service to him, but accepted his patronizing favour gratefully, with humility, and now as he went out, leaving behind him a mingled perfume of cigars, brilliantine and sweet pea blossom and the memory of his bold and dashing presence, she followed his figure with fond and admiring eyes.
Presently, bereft of the tinsel of his personality, Mary's spirits drooped, and unoccupied, with time to think of herself, she became disturbed, restless, excited. Every one in the house was busy: Nessie frowning over her lessons, Mamma deeply engaged in her novel, Grandma sunk in the torpor of digestion. She wandered about the kitchen, thinking of her father's command, uneasy, agitated, until Mamma looked up in annoyance.
"What's wrong with you wanderin* about like a knotless thread! Take up your sewing, or if you've nothing to do, away to your bed and leave folks to read in peace!"
Should she go to bed? she considered perplexedly. No! It was too ridiculously early. She had been confined in the house all day and ought perhaps to get into the open for a little, where the freshness of air would restore her, ease her mind after the closeness of the warm day. Every one would think she had gone to her room; she would never be missed. Somehow, without being aware of her movements, she was in the hall, had put on her old coarse straw bonnet with the
weather-beaten little bunch of cherries and the faded pink ribbon, had slipped on her worn cashmere coat, quietly opened the front door and moved down the steps.
She was startled, almost, to find herself outside, but thought reassuringly that with such clothes it was impossible for her to go anywhere, and as she reflected that she had no really nice things to wear, she shook her head sadly so that the woebegone cherries, which had hung from her hat through two long seasons, rattled in faint protest and almost dropped to the ground. Now that she was in the open her mind moved more freely and she wondered what Denis was doing. Getting ready to go to the fair, of course. Why was every one else allowed to go and not she? It was unjust, for there was no harm in it. It was an institution recognised, and patronised tolerantly, by even the very best of the townspeople. She leant over the front gate, swinging to and fro gently, drinking in the cool beauty of the dusk, fascinated by the seductive evening, so full of dew-drenched
odours, so animate with the awakening life that had been still during the day. Swallows darted and circled around the three straight silver birches in the field opposite, whilst a little further oflf a yellow-hammer called to her, entreatingly, "Come out! Come out! Jingle, jingle, jingle the keys, jingle, jingle, jingle the keys!" It was a shame to be indoors on a night like this! She stepped into the roadway, telling herself that she would take a little walk, just to the end of the road before coming back for that game of draughts with Nessie. She sauntered on unobserved, noting unconsciously that in the whole extent of the quiet road no person was in sight. Denis was expecting her to-night at the fair. He had asked her to meet him, and she, like a mad woman, had promised to be there. The pity of it that she could not go! She was terrified of her father and he had absolutely forbidden it.
How quickly she reached the end of the road, and although she seemed to have been out only for a moment she knew that she had come far enough, that it was now time for her to go back; but as her will commanded her to turn, some stronger force forbade it, and she kept on, her heart thumping furiously, her steps quickening in pace with her heartbeats. Then, through the magic of the night, the sound of music met her ears, faint, enticing, compelling. She hastened her gait almost to a run, thought, "I must, oh! I must see him," and
rushed onwards. Trembling, she entered the fair ground.
II
LEVENFORD FAIR was an annual festival, the nucleus of which was the congregation of a number of travelling troupes and side shows, a small menagerie, which featured actually an elephant and a cage of two lions, an authentic shooting gallery where real bullets were used, and two fortune tellers with unimpeachable and freely displayed credentials, which, together with a variety of other minor attractions, assembled at an agreed date upon that piece of public land known
locally as the Common.
The ground was triangular in shape. On one side, at the town end, stood the solidly important components of the fair, the larger tents and marquees, on another the moving vehicles of pleasure, swings, roundabouts and merry-go-rounds, and on the third, bordering the meadows of the river Leven, were the galleries, coconut shies, lab-in-the-tub and molly-dolly stalls, the fruit, lemonade, hokey-pokey and nougat vendors, and a multitude of small booths which engaged and fascinated the eye. The gathering was by far the largest of its kind
in the district and, its popularity set by precedent and appreciation, it
drew like a magnet upon the town and countryside during the evenings for the period of one scintillating week, embracing within its confines a jovial mass of humanity, which even now slowly surged around the triangle on a perpetually advancing wave of pleasure.
Mary plunged into the tide and was immediately engulfed. She ceased to become an entity and was absorbed by the sweep of pushing, laughing, shouting, gesticulating beings, which bore her forward independent of her own volition, and as she was pushed this way and that, yet always borne onwards by this encompassing force, she became at once amazed at her own temerity. The press of the rough crowd was not what her idyllic fancy had pictured, the blatant shouts
and flaring lights not the impressions of her imagination, and she had not been five minutes on the ground before she began to wish she had not come and to perceive that, after all, her father might be right in his assertion, wise to have forbidden her to come. Now she felt that, though the sole purpose of her coming was to see Denis, it would be impossible for him to discover her in such a throng, and as a sharp, jostling elbow knocked against her ribs and a fat ploughboy trod upon her foot and grinned uncouthly in apology, she grew wretched and frightened. What manner of feeling had drawn her amongst these vulgar clowns? Why had she so imprudently, rashly, dangerously disobeyed her father and come with such light and ardent unrestraint at the beck of a youth whom she had known for only one month?
As she swayed around she viewed that month in retrospect, recollecting with a melancholy simplicity that the swing doors of the Borough Public Library had been, in part, responsible. These doors bore on the inside the authoritative word "Pull", and, in obedience to that terse mandate, when coming out of the Library, one was supposed to pull strenuously upon them; but they were so stiff and heavy that, when one was cumbered with a book and unobserved by the compelling eye of the janitor of the Borough Buildings, it was much easier to disregard the law and push. Upon one memorable occasion she had, undoubtedly, pushed, and thrusting forward with no uncertain hand, had launched herself straight into the waistcoat of a young man in brown. The impetus of her exit allowed her to observe fully the colour of his neat suit. His hair, too, was brown, and his eyes, and his face which had tiny freckles of a deeper brown
dusted upon it; and as she raised her startled eyes she had noticed immediately, despite her discomposure, that his teeth, when he smiled, as he did instantly, were white and perfect. Whilst she stared at him with wide eyes and parted lips, he had composed his features, had politely collected her fallen book, calmly opened it, and looked at her name on the borrower's ticket.
"I am sorry to have upset you, Miss Mary Brodie," he had said gravely, but smiling at her the while out of his hazel eyes. "These doors are exceedingly treacherous. They ought, of course, to have glass windows to them. It is entirely my fault, for not having brought the matter before the Borough Council."
She had giggled insanely, immodestly, but alas, irrepressibly at his delicious raillery and had only ceased when he added, tentatively, as though it were of no importance: "My name is Foyle I live in Darroch." They looked at each other for a long moment, while she, of course, had flushed like a fool (since then he had told her that it was an adorable blush) and had said timidly, "I'm afraid I must be going." What a weak remark, she now reflected! He had not attempted to detain her, and with perfect courtesy had stepped aside, lifted his hat and bowed; but all the way down the street she had felt those lively brown eyes upon her, respectful, attentive, admiring. That had been the beginning!
Presently she, who had never before seen him in Levenford, for the good reason that he had seldom come there, began to see him frequently in the streets. They were, in fact, always encountering each other, and although he had never had the opportunity to speak, he always smiled and saluted her, cheerfully yet deferentially. She began to love that gay spontaneous smile, to look for the jaunty set of his shoulders, to desire the eager radiance of his glance. Sometimes she discerned him with a group of the hardier and more intrepid spirits of Levenford standing at the newly opened ice-cream saloon of Bertorelli's, and perceived with awe that these bold striplings accepted him as an equal, even as a superior, and this, together with the knowledge that he should frequent a place so wild and reckless as an Italian ice-cream shop, made her tremble. His slight acquaintance with her had, too, given her distinction, and even in his absence, when she passed this group of the youthful elect, a polite silence immediately ensued, and as one man the members of the band swept off their hats to honour her thrilling, but disconcerting her.
A week later she had again visited the Library, and despite the fact that this time she carefully pulled the doors as a public gesture of self-reproach and censure, openly avowing her penitence, she again found Denis Foyle outside.
"What a coincidence, Miss Brodie!" he had said. "Imagine us meeting here again. Strange that I should be passing just at this moment." How could she know, poor thing, that he had been waiting for two hours on the opposite side of the street.
"May I see what book you are reading this week?"
" Tomeroy Abbey', by Mrs. Henry Wood," she had stammered.
"Ah, yes; volume two. I saw you had volume one last time you were here."
He had, she mused, given himself away there, and as she observed a slight, shy eagerness in his glance, realised that he was altogether less composed, less assured than upon their previous encounter, and a melting tenderness filled her as she heard him say fervidly:
"Will you permit me to carry your book for you, please, Miss Brodie?" She blushed darkly now at her unladylike and unpardonable conduct, but the unalterable fact remained that she had given him the book, had surrendered the volume without a word, as though in effect she had meekly proffered him the modest volume in return for the sweet acceptance of his attentions. She sighed as she thought of that small and apparently trivial beginning, for since that occurrence they had met on several, no, on many occasions, and she had become so enwrapped by a strange and incomprehensible regard for him that it left her really hurt and lonely to be away from him.
With a start she came out of the past. By this time she had been once around the fair without seeing anything but a blur of gaudy colours, she became once more aware of her unpleasant predicament, of the hopelessness of ever distinguishing amongst this nightmare sea of faces that seethed around her the one she sought, and as she was now opposite an opening in the crowd which permitted access to the street, she began with difficulty to squeeze her way out.
Suddenly a warm hand clasped her small, cold fingers. Hurriedly she looked up and saw that it was Denis. A wave of security enveloped her and invaded her veins in a delicious sense of comfort, filling her with such relief that she pressed his hand in hers and in the open simplicity of her nature said hurriedly, ardently, before he could speak:
"Oh! Denis, I've been so miserable here without you! I felt as if I had lost you for ever."
He looked at her tenderly, as he replied:
"I was a fool to ask you to meet me here in all this crowd, Mary. I knew I would find you, but I quite forgot that you might get into the crush before then. My train was late too. Have you been here long?"
"I don't know how long," she murmured. "It seemed like years, but I don't care now that you're here."
"I hope you didn't get pushed about in the crowd," he protested. "I blame myself for letting you come on by yourself. Indeed I do! I should have met you outside, but I hadn't an idea there would be so many here to-night. You're not annoyed?"
She shook her head negatively; and without concealing her delight in him, without upbraiding him for his tardiness or permitting him to see the risk she had taken in coming to meet him here, replied guilelessly, happily:
"It's all right, Denis. I don't mind the crowd nothing matters now that you've found me."
"What a girl you are, Mary," he cried. "It's an angel you are to forgive me. But I'll not rest till I've made it up to you. Let's make up for lost time. I'll not be happy till I've given you the time of your life. What shall we do first? Say the word and it's as good as done."
Mary looked around. How changed everything was! How glad she was to have come! She saw that the people around were not rough but merely boisterous and happy, and had she now been confronted with the heavy-footed ploughboy she would have returned his rustic grin with an understanding smile. She saw everywhere