Chapter 29

“WHY DOES SHE TAKE HIM FROM ME?”

“Why—why—why?” Ellice asked herself. Why should this woman who did not love him wish to take him away from her, who worshipped the ground he trod on, who looked up to him as the best, the finest of all God’s created creatures?

That Joan Meredyth did not love John Everard no one understood more clearly than Ellice Brand. She had watched them when they were together, she had watched the girl apart; and the watcher’s body might be that of a child, but her eyes were the eyes of a woman, as was her heart too.

“Why should she take him from me?” she asked herself, and all her being rose in passionate revolt and resentment.

“Perhaps she does not know that I love him. Perhaps she looks on me only as a child—a silly, foolish, infatuated child. But I am not! I am not!” Ellice cried. “I am not! I love him. I loved him when I was a baby, when I came here eight years ago, and now I am eighteen and a woman, and I have never changed and never shall!”

During the days that followed the announcement of Joan Meredyth’s engagement to John Everard, Connie watched the girl. She felt troubled, anxious, and yet scarcely could say why. She knew the girl’s passionate nature. Connie almost dreaded something reckless even tragic. She was more worried than she could say and of course she could not consult Johnny. There was no one to consult but Helen, and Helen did not understand Ellice in the least. Helen was inclined to look down on Ellice from her superior height as a wayward, wilful, foolish child—nothing more.

“Send her away. I suppose she is really too old to go to school now, Connie. How old is she, sixteen?”

“Eighteen.”

“She has the heart and the body of a child.”

“And the soul of a woman!”

“Sometimes, Connie dear,” said Helen sweetly, “you make me almost angry. You actually seem to be siding with this foolish little thing!”

Connie sighed. “In—in some ways I do. She loves him so, and I know it. I can’t be hard-hearted, I can’t blind myself to the truth. Of course, I know that Johnny’s marriage with Joan is the best thing in the world for both of them, but—”

“But just because a stupid, self-willed girl of eighteen believes herself deeply in love with Johnny—Oh, Connie, do be your own reasonable self.”

Johnny Everard, blind as most men are, did not notice how quiet and reserved Ellice had grown of late, how seldom she spoke to him, how when he spoke to her she only answered him in brief monosyllables, and how never came a smile now to her red lips, and certainly never a smile into her great dark eyes.

He did not see what Connie saw—the heaviness about those eyes, the suggestion of tears during the night, when she came down silently to her breakfast. She had changed, and yet he did not see it, and if he had seen it might never guess at the cause.

And Connie too, always kindly and gentle, always sweet and unselfish; during these days the girl’s unselfishness was something to wonder at.

She had always loved Ellice; she had understood the child as none other had. And now there seemed to be a bond between them that drew them closer.

Three years ago Johnny had bought a bicycle for Ellice. She had been going daily then to Miss Richmond’s school at Great Langbourne, three miles away, and he had bought the bicycle that she might ride to school and back again. Since she had left school the bicycle had remained untouched and rusted in one of the outhouses, but now Ellice had got the machine out and cleaned it and put new tyres on it.

Deep down in her mind was a plan, as yet not wholly formed, a desperate venture that one day she might embark on, and the old bicycle was part of that plan, for she would need it to carry out the plan. She had not decided yet, not even if she would ever carry it out, but she might.

Day after day saw her on the road; more often than not her way lay towards Starden village. She would ride the six and a half miles to Starden, wait there for a time, and then ride back. She never called at Starden Hall. Helen knew nothing of these trips.

Connie watched the girl with misgivings and doubts, and Ellice knew that the elder girl was watching her.

“Connie, I want to speak to you,” she said quietly one morning.

“Yes, darling?”

Ellice slipped her small brown hand into Connie’s.

“I—I know that you are worrying, dear, that you are anxious—and for me.”

Connie nodded, tears came into her eyes.

“I want you to understand, Connie, that I—I promise you I will do nothing—nothing, I will never do anything unless I come to you first and tell you. I promise you that I will do nothing—nothing that I should not do, nothing mad and foolish and wrong, unless I come to you first and tell you just what I am going to do.”

“Thank you, dear, for telling me this. It lifts a great weight and a great anxiety from my heart. Thank you, dear—oh, Ellice darling, I thought once that it would be a fine thing for him, but now—now I could wish it otherwise!”

Another moment and the girl was in her arms, clasping her passionately, and kissing her passionately and gratefully.

Then suddenly Ellice broke away, and a few minutes later was riding hard down the road to Starden.

It was always to Starden that she rode. Always she passed the great gates of Starden Hall, yet never even glanced at them. She rode into the little village, propped her bicycle against the railings that surrounded the old stocks that stood on the village green, and there sat on a seat and watched the ducks in the green village pond and the children playing cricket. Then, after waiting perhaps an hour, she would mount and ride slowly back to Buddesby again.

It was the programme that she carried out this morning. It was twelve o’clock when she came in sight of Buddesby village, a mile distant as yet.

“Missy! Missy!” Someone was calling. Ellice slowed down and looked about her. On the bank beside the road a man sat, and he was nursing an ugly yellow lurcher dog in his arms.

“Missy!” the man called, and his voice was broken and harsh with suffering.

It was Rundle, the poacher, and his dog, and there was blood on Rundle’s hand, blood trickling down from a wound in the dog’s side. The man was holding the dog as he might have held a child. The big ugly yellow head was against the man’s breast, and in its agony the dog was licking the man’s rough hand.

And watching, there came back to Ellice’s memory what she had said of this man and his dog.

“You’ll do something for me, missy, something as I—I can’t do myself!” He shuddered. “Will you ride on to Taylor’s and ask him to come here and bring—his gun?”

“Why?”

“I—I can’t do it myself!”

“He might be cured.”

“There’s only Mister Vinston, the Vet, and he wouldn’t look at this poor tyke of mine. He hates him too bad for that, because Snatcher killed one of them fancy poodle dogs of his two years ago; and Mr. Vinston ain’t never forgot it—and never will. He wouldn’t do nothing to save Snatcher, miss. Ask Taylor to come and bring his gun.”

Ellice nodded. She stretched out her hand and touched the shaggy yellow head, and in her eyes was infinite pity. Then she mounted the bicycle, and rode like the wind to Buddesby. What she said to Mr. Ralph Vinston, the smart young veterinary surgeon, only she and Mr. Ralph Vinston knew.

He had refused definitely and decidedly. “It’ll be a blessing to the place if the beast dies,” he said. “You’d better take his message to Taylor. The gun’s the best remedy for Rundle’s accursed dog, Miss Ellice.”

And then the girl had talked to him, had talked with flashing eyes and heaving breast, and the end of it was that Ralph Vinston made a collection of surgical instruments, bandages, and other necessaries, bundled them into his little car, and was away down the road with Ellice in company within ten minutes.