But it was not till one day, when we landed at Tresco, that I felt certain she genuinely loved him--there in one glance the truth flashed upon me. I was walking with one of the gardeners down one of the long shady paths of that lovely little island, with its curiously foreign look, when we suddenly came face to face with Derrick and Freda. They were talking earnestly, and I could see her great grey eyes as they were lifted to his--perhaps they were more expressive than she knew--I cannot say. They both started a little as we confronted them, and the colour deepened in Freda's face. The gardener, with what photographers usually ask for--'just the faint beginning of a smile,'--turned and gathered a bit of white heather growing near.
"They say it brings good luck, miss," he remarked, handing it to Freda.
"Thank you," she said, laughing, "I hope it will bring it to me. At any rate it will remind me of this beautiful island. Isn't it just like Paradise, Mr. Wharncliffe?"
"For me it is like Paradise before Eve was created," I replied, rather wickedly. "By the bye, are you going to keep all the good luck to yourself?"
"I don't know," she said laughing. "Perhaps I shall; but you have only to ask the gardener, he will gather you another piece directly."
I took good care to drop behind, having no taste for the third-fiddle business; but I noticed when we were in the gig once more, rowing back to the yacht, that the white heather had been equally divided--one half was in the waist-band of the blue serge dress, the other half in the button-hole of Derrick's blazer.
So the fortnight slipped by, and at length one afternoon we found ourselves once more in Southampton Water; then came the bustle of packing and the hurry of departure, and the merry party dispersed.
Derrick and I saw them all off at the station, for, as his father's ship did not arrive till the following day, I made up my mind to stay on with him at Southampton.
"You will come and see us in town," said Lady Probyn, kindly. And Lord Probyn invited us both for the shooting at Blachington in September. "We will have the same party on shore, and see if we can't enjoy ourselves almost as well," he said in his hearty way;
"the novel will go all the better for it, eh, Vaughan?"
Derrick brightened visibly at the suggestion. I heard him talking to Freda all the time that Sir John stood laughing and joking as to the comparative pleasures of yachting and shooting.
"You will be there too?" Derrick asked.
"I can't tell," said Freda, and there was a shade of sadness in her tone. Her voice was deeper than most women's voices--a rich contralto with something striking and individual about it. I could hear her quite plainly; but Derrick spoke less distinctly--he always had a bad trick of mumbling.
"You see I am the youngest," she said, "and I am not really 'out.'
Perhaps my mother will wish one of the elder ones to go; but I half think they are already engaged for September, so after all I may have a chance."
Inaudible remark from my friend.
"Yes, I came here because my sisters did not care to leave London till the end of the season," replied the clear contralto. "It has been a perfect cruise. I shall remember it all my life."
After that, nothing more was audible; but I imagine Derrick must have hazarded a more personal question, and that Freda had admitted that it was not only the actual sailing she should remember. At any rate her face when I caught sight of it again made me think of the girl described in the 'Biglow Papers':
"''Twas kin' o' kingdom come to look On sech a blessed creatur.
A dogrose blushin' to a brook Ain't modester nor sweeter.'"
So the train went off, and Derrick and I were left to idle about Southampton and kill time as best we might. Derrick seemed to walk the streets in a sort of dream--he was perfectly well aware that he had met his fate, and at that time no thought of difficulties in the way had arisen either in his mind or in my own. We were both of us young and inexperienced; we were both of us in love, and we had the usual lover's notion that everything in heaven and earth is prepared to favour the course of his particular passion.
I remember that we soon found the town intolerable, and, crossing by the ferry, walked over to Netley Abbey, and lay down idly in the shade of the old grey walls. Not a breath of wind stirred the great masses of ivy which were wreathed about the ruined church, and the place looked so lovely in its decay, that we felt disposed to judge the dissolute monks very leniently for having behaved so badly that their church and monastery had to be opened to the four winds of heaven. After all, when is a church so beautiful as when it has the green grass for its floor and the sky for its roof?
I could show you the very spot near the East window where Derrick told me the whole truth, and where we talked over Freda's perfections and the probability of frequent meetings in London. He had listened so often and so patiently to my affairs, that it seemed an odd reversal to have to play the confidant; and if now and then my thoughts wandered off to the coming month at Mondisfield, and pictured violet eyes while he talked of grey, it was not from any lack of sympathy with my friend.
Derrick was not of a self-tormenting nature, and though I knew he was amazed at the thought that such a girl as Freda could possibly care for him, yet he believed most implicitly that this wonderful thing had come to pass; and, remembering her face as we had last seen it, and the look in her eyes at Tresco, I, too, had not a shadow of a doubt that she really loved him. She was not the least bit of a flirt, and society had not had a chance yet of moulding her into the ordinary girl of the nineteenth century.
Perhaps it was the sudden and unexpected change of the next day that makes me remember Derrick's face so distinctly as he lay back on the smooth turf that afternoon in Netley Abbey. As it looked then, full of youth and hope, full of that dream of cloudless love, I never saw it again.
