CHAPTER IV.

WISHING WELL AND ILL.

Lottie's birthday had dawned, the fresh morning hours had slipped away, the sun had declined from his midday splendor into golden afternoon, and yet to Lottie herself the day seemed scarcely yet begun. Its crowning delight was to be a dance given in her honor, and she awaited that dance with feverish anxiety.

It was nearly three o'clock when the dog-cart from Brackenhill came swiftly along the dusty road. It was nearing its destination: already there were distant glimpses of Fordborough with its white suburban villas. Percival Thorne thoroughly enjoyed the bright June weather, the cloudless blue, the clear singing of the birds, the whisper of the leaves, the universal sweetness from far-off fields and blossoms near at hand. He gazed at the landscape with eyes that seemed to be looking at something far away, and yet they were observant enough to note a figure crossing a neighboring field. It was but a momentary vision, and the expression of his face did not vary in the slightest degree, but he turned to the man at his side and spoke in his leisurely fashion: "I'll get down here and walk the rest of the way. You may take my things to Mr. Hardwicke's."

The man took the reins, but he looked round in some wonder, as if seeking the cause of the order. His curiosity was unsatisfied. The slim girlish figure had vanished behind a clump of trees, and nothing was visible that could in any way account for so sudden a change of purpose. Glancing back as he drove off, he saw only Mr. Percival Thorne, darkly conspicuous on the glaring road, standing where he had alighted, and apparently lost in thought. The roan horse turned a corner, the sound of wheels died away in the distance, and Percival walked a few steps in the direction of Brackenhill, reached a stile, leaned against it and waited.

"Many happy returns of the day to you!" he said as the girl whom he had seen came along the field-path.

Light leafy shadows wavered on her as she walked, and, all unconscious of his presence, she was softly whistling an old tune.

The color rushed to her face, and she stopped short. "Percival! You here?" she said.

"Yes: did I startle you? I was driving into the town, and saw you in the distance. I could not do less--could I?--than stop then and there to pay my respects to the queen of the day. And what a glorious day it is!"

Lottie sprang over the stile, and looked up and down the road. "Oh, you are going to walk?" she said.

"I'm going to walk--yes. But what brings you here wandering about the fields to-day?"

She had recovered her composure, and looked up at him with laughing eyes: "It is wretched indoors. They are so busy fussing over things for to-night, you know."

"Exactly what I thought you would be doing too."

"I? Oh, mamma said I wasn't a bit of use, and Addie said that I was more than enough to drive Job out of his mind. The fact was, I upset one of her flower-vases. And afterward--well, afterward I broke a big china bowl."

"I begin to understand," said Percival thoughtfully, "that they might feel able to get on without your help."

"Yes, perhaps they might. But they needn't have made such a noise about the thing, as if nobody could enjoy the dance to-night because a china bowl was smashed! Such rubbish! What could it matter?"

"Was it something unique?"

"Oh, it was worse than that," she answered frankly: "it was one of a set. But I don't see why one can't be just as happy without a complete set of everything."

"There I agree with you," he replied. "I certainly can't say that my happiness is bound up with crockery of any kind. And, do you know, Lottie, I'm rather glad it was one of a set. Otherwise, your mother might have known that there was something magical about it, but one of a set is prosaic--isn't it? Suppose it had been a case of--

If this glass doth fall, Farewell then, O Luck of Edenhall!"

"Well, the luck would have been in uncommonly little bits," she replied. "I smashed it on a stone step, and they were so cross that I was crosser, so I said I would come out for a walk."

"And do you feel any better?" he asked in an anxious voice.

"Yes, thank you. Being in the open air has done me good."

"Then may I go with you? Or will nothing short of solitude effect a complete cure?"

"You may come," she said gravely. "That is, if you are not afraid of the remains of my ill-temper."

"No, I'm not afraid. I don't make light of your anger, but I believe I'm naturally very brave. Where are we going?"

She hesitated a moment, then looked up at him: "Percival, isn't this the way to the wishing-well? Ever since we came to Fordborough, three months ago, I've wanted to go there. Do you know where it is?"

"Oh yes, I know it. It is about a mile from here, or perhaps a little more. That won't be too far for you, will it?"

"Too far!" She laughed outright. "Why, I could walk ten times as far, and dance all night afterward."

"Then we'll go," said Percival. And, crossing the road, they passed into the fields on the opposite side. A pathway, too narrow for two to walk abreast, led them through a wide sea of corn, where the flying breezes were betrayed by delicate tremulous waves. Lottie led the way, putting out her hand from time to time as she went, and brushing the bloom from the softly-swaying wheat. She was silent. Fate had befriended her strangely in this walk. The loneliness of the sunlit fields was far better for her purpose than the crowd and laughter of the evening, but her heart almost failed her, and with childish superstition she resolved that she would not speak the words which trembled on her lips until she and Percival should have drunk together of the wishing-well. He followed her, silent too. He was well satisfied to be with his beautiful school-girl friend, free to speak or hold his peace as he chose. Freedom was the great charm of his friendship with Lottie--freedom from restraint and responsibility. For if Percival was serenely happy and assured on any single point, he was so with regard to his perfect comprehension of the Blakes in general, and Lottie in particular. He had some idea of giving his cousin Horace a word of warning on the subject of Mrs. Blake's designs. He quite understood that good lady's feelings concerning himself. "I'm nobody," he thought. "I'm not to be thrown over, because I introduced Horace to them; besides, I'm an additional link between Fordborough and Brackenhill, and Mrs. Blake would give her ears to know Aunt Middleton. And I am no trouble so long as I am satisfied to amuse myself with Lottie. In fact, I am rather useful. I keep the child out of mischief, and I don't give her black eyes, as that Wingfield boy did." And from this point Percival would glide into vague speculation as to Lottie's future. He was inclined to think that the girl would do something and be something when she grew up. She was vehement, resolute, ambitious. He wondered idly, and a little sentimentally, whether hereafter, when their paths had diverged for ever, she would look back kindly to these tranquil days and to her old friend Percival. He rather thought not. She would have enough to occupy her without that.

It was true, after a fashion, that Lottie was ambitious in her dreams of love. Her lover must be heroic, handsome, a gentleman by birth, with something of romance about his story. A noble poverty might be more fascinating than wealth. There was but one thing absolutely needful: he must not be commonplace. It was the towering yet unsubstantial ambition of her age, a vision of impossible splendor and happiness. Most girls have such dreams: most women find at six or seven and twenty that their enchanted castles in the air have shrunk to brick-and-mortar houses. Tastes change, and they might even be somewhat embarrassed were they called on to play their parts in the passionate love-poems which they dreamed at seventeen. But the world was just opening before Lottie's eyes, and she was ready to be a heroine of romance.

"This way," said Percival; and they turned into a narrow lane, deep and cool, with green banks overgrown with ferns, and arching boughs above. As they strolled along he gathered pale honeysuckle blossoms from the hedge, and gave them to Lottie.

"How pretty it is!" said the girl, looking round.

"Wait till you see the well," he replied. "We shall be there directly: it is prettier there."

"But this is pretty too: why should I wait?" said Lottie.

"You are right. I don't know why you should. Admire both: you are wiser than I, Lottie."

As he spoke, the lane widened into a grassy glade, and Lottie quickened her steps, uttering a cry of pleasure. Percival followed her with a smile on his lips. "Here is your wishing-well," he said. "Do you like it, now that you have found it out?"

She might well have been satisfied, even if she had been harder to please. It was a spring of the fairest water, bubbling into a tiny hollow. The little pool was like a brimming cup, with colored pebbles and dancing sand at the bottom, and delicate leaf-sprays clustered lightly round its rim. And this gem of sparkling water was set in a space of mossy sward, with trees which leant and whispered overhead, their quivering canopy pierced here and there by golden shafts of sunlight and glimpses of far-off blue.

"It is like fairy-land," said Lottie.

"Or like something in Keats's poems," Percival suggested.

"I never read a line of them, so I can't say," she answered with defiant candor, while she inwardly resolved to get the book.

He smiled: "You don't read much poetry yet, do you? Ah, well, you have time enough. How about wishing, now we are here?" he went on, stooping to look into the well. "Your wishes ought to have a double virtue on your birthday."

"I only hope they may."

"What! have you decided on something very important? Seventeen to-day! Lottie, don't wish to be eighteen: that will come much too soon without wishing."

"I don't want to be eighteen. I think seventeen is old enough," she answered dreamily.

"So do I." He was thinking, as he spoke, what a charming childish age it was, and how, before he knew Lottie, he had fancied from books that girls were grown up at seventeen.

"Now I am going to wish," she said seriously, "and you must wish after me." Bending over the pool, she looked earnestly into it, took water in the hollow of her hand and drank. Then, standing back, she made a sign to her companion.

He stepped forward, and saying, with a bright glance, "My wishes must be for you to-day, Queen Lottie," he followed her example. But when he looked up, shaking the cold drops from his hand, he was struck by the intense expression on her downward-bent face. "What has the child been wishing?" he wondered; and an idea flashed suddenly into his mind which almost made him smile. "By Jove!" he said to himself, "there will be a fiery passion one of these fine days, when Lottie falls in love." But even as he thought this the look which had startled him was gone.

"We needn't go back directly, need we?" she said. "Let us rest a little while."

"By all means," Percival replied, "I'm quite ready to rest as long as you like: I consider resting my strong point. What do you say to this bank? Or there is a fallen tree just across there?"

"No. Percival, listen! There are some horrid people coming: let us go on a little farther, out of their way."

He listened: "Yes, there are some people coming. Very likely they are horrid, though we have no fact to go upon except their desire to find the wishing-well: at any rate, we don't want them. Lottie, you are right: let us fly."

They escaped from the glade at the farther end, passed through a gate into a field, and found themselves once more in the broad sunlight. They paused for a moment, dazzled and uncertain which way to go. "_Why_ did those people come and turn us out?" said Thorne regretfully. A shrill scream of laughter rang through the shade which they had just left. "What shall we do now?"

"I don't mind: I like this sunshine," said Lottie. "Percival, don't you think there would be a view up there?"

"Up there" was a grassy little eminence which rose rather abruptly in the midst of the neighboring fields. It was parted from the place where they stood by a couple of meadows.

"I should think there might be."

"Then let us go there. When I see a hill I always feel as if I must get to the top of it."

"I've no objection to that feeling in the present case, as the hill happens to be a very little one," Percival replied. "And the shepherds and shepherdesses in our Arcadia are unpleasantly noisy. But I don't see any gate into the next field."

"Who wants a gate? There's a gap by that old stump."

"And you don't mind this ditch? It isn't very wide," he said as he stood on the bank.

"No, I don't mind it."

He held out his hand: she laid hers on it and sprang lightly across, with a word of thanks. A few months earlier she would have scorned Cock Robin's assistance had the ditch been twice as wide, as that day she would have scorned any assistance but Percival's. It was well that she did not need help, for his outstretched hand, firm as it was, gave her little. It rather sent a tremulous thrill through her as she touched it that was more likely to make her falter than succeed. She was not vexed that he relapsed into silence as they went on their way. In her eyes his aspect was darkly thoughtful and heroic. As she walked by his side the low grass-fields became enchanted meads and the poor little flowers bloomed like poets' asphodel. A lark sang overhead as never bird sang before, and the breeze was sweet with memories of blossom. When they stood on the summit of the little hill the view was fair as Paradise. A big gray stone lay among the tufts of bracken, as if a giant hand had tossed it there in sport. Lottie sat down, leaning against it, and Percival threw himself on the grass at her feet.

She was nerving herself to overcome an unwonted feeling of timidity. She had dreamed of this birthday with childish eagerness. Her fancy had made it the portal of a world of unknown delights. She grew sick with fear, lest through her weakness or any mischance the golden hours should glide by, and no golden joy be secured before the night came on. Golden hours? Were they not rather golden moments on the hillside with Percival? He loved her--she was sure of that--but he was poor, and would never speak. What could she say to him? She bent forward a little that she might see him better as he lay stretched on the warm turf unconscious of her eyes. Through his half-closed lids he watched the little gray-blue butterflies which flickered round him in the sunny air, emerging from or melting into the eternal vault of blue.

"Percival!"

She had spoken, and ended the long silence. She almost fancied that her voice shook and sounded strange, but he did not seem to notice it.

"Yes?" he said, and turned his face to her--the face that was the whole world to Lottie.

"Percival, is it true that your father was the eldest son, and that you ought to be the heir?"

He opened his eyes a little at the breathless question. Then he laughed: "I might have known that you could not live three months in Fordborough without hearing something of that."

"It is true, then? Mayn't I know?"

"Certainly." He raised himself on his elbow. "But there is no injustice in the matter, Lottie. The eldest son died, and my father was the second. He wanted to have his own way, as we most of us do, and he gave up his expectations and had it. He did it with his eyes open, and it was a fair bargain."

"He sold his birthright, like Esau? Well, that might be quite right for him, but isn't it rather hard on you?"

"Not at all," he answered promptly. "I never counted on it, and therefore I am not disappointed. Why should I complain of not having what I did not expect to have? Shall I feel very hardly used when the archbishopric of Canterbury falls vacant and they pass me over?"

"But your father shouldn't have given up your rights," the girl persisted.

"Why, Lottie," he said with a smile, "it was before I was born! And I'm not so sure about my rights. I don't know that I have any particular rights or wrongs." There was a pause, and then he looked up. "Suppose the birthright had been Jacob's, and he had thrown it away for Rachel's sake: would you have blamed him?"

"No," said Lottie, with kindling eyes.

"Then Jacob and Rachel's son is not hardly used, and has no cause to complain of his lot," Percival concluded, sinking back lazily.

Lottie was silent for a moment. Then she apparently changed the subject: "Do you remember that day Mrs. Pickering called and talked about William?"

"Oh yes, I remember. I scandalized the old lady, didn't I? Lottie, I'm half afraid I scandalized your mother into the bargain."

"I've been thinking about what you said," Lottie went on very seriously--"about being idle all your life."

"Ah!" said Percival, drawing a long breath. "_You_ are going to lecture me? Well, I don't know why I should be surprised. Every one lectures me: they don't like it, but feel it to be their duty. I dare say Addie will begin this evening." He was amused at the idea of a reproof from Lottie, and settled his smooth cheek comfortably on his sleeve that he might listen at his ease. "Go on," he said: "it's very kind of you, and I'm quite ready."

"Suppose I'm not going to lecture you," said Lottie.

"Why, that's still kinder. What then?"

"Suppose I think you are right."

"Do you?"

"Yes," she answered simply. "William Pickering may spend his life scraping pounds and pence together. Men who can't do anything else may as well do that, for it _is_ nice to be rich. But if you have enough, why should you spend your time over it--the best years of your life which will never come back?"

"Never!" said Percival. "You are right."

There was a long pause. Lottie pulled a bit of fern, and looked at him again. There was a line between his dark brows, as if he were pursuing some thought which her words had suggested, but he held his head down and was silent. She threw the fern away and pressed her hands together: "But, Percival, you do care for money, after all. You set it above everything else, as they all do, only in a different way. You are right in what you say, but they are more honest, for they say and do alike."

"Do I care for money? Lottie, it's the first time I have ever been charged with that."

"Because you talk as if you didn't. But you do. Why did you say you would never marry an heiress? The color went right up to the roots of your hair when they talked about it, and you said it would be contemptible: that was the word--contemptible. Then I suppose if you cared for her, and she loved you with all her heart and soul, you would go away and leave her to hate the world and herself and you, just because she happened to have a little money. And you say you don't care about it!"

"Lottie, you don't know what you are talking about." His eyes were fixed on the turf. She had called up a vision in which she had no part. "You don't understand," he began.

"It is you who don't understand," she answered desperately. "You men judge girls--I don't know how you judge them--not by themselves: by their worldly-wise mammas, perhaps. Do you fancy we are always counting what money men have or what we have? It's you who think so much about it. Oh, Percival!" the strong voice softened to sudden tenderness, "do you think I care a straw about what I shall have one day?"

"Good God!" Percival looked up, and for the space of a lightning flash their eyes met. In hers he read enough to show him how blind he had been. In his she read astonishment, horror, repulsion.

Repulsion she read it, but it was not there. To her dying day Lottie will believe that she saw it in his eyes. Did she not feel an icy stab of pain when she recognized it? Never was she more sure of her own existence than she was sure of this. And yet it was not there. She had suddenly roused him from a dream, and he was bewildered, shocked--sorry for his girl-friend, and bitterly remorseful for himself.

Lottie knew that she had made a terrible mistake, and that Percival did not love her. There was a rushing as of water in her ears, a black mist swaying before her eyes. But in a moment all that was over, and she could look round again. The sunlit world glared horribly, as if it understood and pressed round her with a million eyes to mock her burning shame.

"No, I never thought you cared for money," said Percival, trying to seem unconscious of that lightning glance with all its revelations. He had not the restless fingers so many men have, and could sit contentedly without moving a muscle. But now he was plucking nervously at the turf as he spoke.

"What does it matter?" said Lottie. "I shall come to care for it one of these days, I dare say."

He did not answer. What could he say? He was cursing his blind folly. Poor child! Why, she _was_ only a child, after all--a beautiful, headstrong, wilful child, and it was not a year since he met her in the woods with torn frock and tangled hair, her long hands bleeding from bramble-scratches and her lips stained with autumn berries. How fiercely and shyly she looked at him with her shining eyes! He remembered how she stopped abruptly in her talk and answered him in monosyllables, and how, when he left the trio, the clear, boyish voice broke instantly into a flood of happy speech. As he lay there now, staring at the turf, he could see his red-capped vision of Liberty as plainly as if he stood on the woodland walk again with the September leaves above him. He felt a rush of tender, brotherly pity for the poor mistaken child--"brotherly" in default of a better word. Probably a brother would have been more keenly alive to the forward folly of Lottie's conduct. Percival would have liked to hold out his hand to the girl, to close it round hers in a tight grasp of fellowship and sympathy, and convey to her, in some better way than the clumsy utterance of words, that he asked her pardon for the wrong he had unconsciously done her, and besought her to be his friend and comrade for ever. But he could not do anything of the kind: he dared not even look up, lest a glance should scorch her as she quivered in her humiliation. He ended as he began, by cursing the serene certainty that all was so harmless and so perfectly understood, which had blinded his eyes and brought him to this.

And Lottie? She hardly knew what she thought. A wild dream of a desert island in tropic seas, with palms towering in the hot air and snow-white surf dashing on the coral shore, and herself and Cock Robin parted from all the world by endless leagues of ocean, flitted before her eyes. But that was impossible, absurd.

_He_ was laughing at her, no doubt--scorning her in his heart. Oh, why had she been so mad? Suppose a thunder-bolt were to fall from the blue sky and crush him into eternal silence as he lay at her feet pulling his little blades of grass? No! Lottie did not wish that: the thought was hideous. Yet had not such a wish had a momentary life as she stared at the hot blue sky? Was it written there, or wandering in the air, or uttered in the busy humming of the flies, so that as she gazed and listened she became conscious of its purport? Surely she never wished it. Why could not the gray rock against which she leaned totter and fall and bury her for ever, hiding her body from sight while her spirit fled from Percival? Yet even that was not enough: they might meet in some hereafter. Lottie longed for annihilation in that moment of despair.

This could not last. It passed, as the first faintness had done, and with an aching sense of shame and soreness (almost worse to bear because there was no exaltation in it) she came back to every-day life. She pushed her hair from her forehead and got up. "I suppose you are not going to stay here all day?" she said.

Percival stretched himself with an air of indolent carelessness: "No, I suppose not. Do you think duty calls us to go back at once?"

"It is getting late," was her curt reply; and he rose without another word.

She was grave and quiet: if anything, she was more self-possessed than he was, only she never looked at him. Perhaps if he could have made her understand what was in his heart when first he realized the meaning of her hasty words, she might have grasped the friendly hand he longed to hold out to her. But not now. Her face had hardened strangely, as if it were cut in stone. They went down the hill in silence, Percival appearing greatly interested in the landscape. As they crossed the level meadows Lottie looked round with a queer fancy that she might meet the other Lottie there, the girl who had crossed them an hour before. At the ditch Thorne held out his hand again. She half turned, looked straight into his eyes with a passionate glance of hatred, and sprang across, leaving him to follow.

He rejoined her as she reached the glade. While they had been on the hill the sun had sunk below the arching boughs, and half the beauty of the scene was gone. The noisy picnic party had unpacked their hampers, the turf was littered with paper and straw, and a driver stood in a central position, with his head thrown back, drinking beer from a bottle. Lottie went straight to the well and took another draught.

"Two wishes in one day?" said Percival.

"Second thoughts are best," she answered, turning coldly away. "Is there no other way home? I hate walking the same way twice."

"There is the road: I'm afraid it may be hot, but it would be a change."

"I should prefer the road," she said.

That walk seemed interminable to Percival Thorne. He was ready to believe that the road lengthened itself, in sheer spite, to leagues of arid dust, and that every familiar landmark fled before him. At last, however, they approached a point where two ways diverged--the one leading straight into the old town, while the other, wide and trimly kept, passed between many bright new villas and gardens. At that corner they might part. But before they reached it a slim, gray-clad figure appeared from the suburban road and strolled leisurely toward them. Percival looked, looked again, shaded his eyes and looked. "Why, it's Horace!" he exclaimed.

Lottie made no reply, but she awoke from her sullen musing, a light flashed into her eyes, and she quickened her pace toward the man who should deliver her from her _tête-à-tête_ with Percival.