The Half-Hearted | Page 9

the world
glorious. She dressed and ran out to the lawn, then past the loch right to
the very edge of the waste country. A high fragrance of heath and
bog-myrtle was in the wind, and the mouth grew cool as after long
draughts of spring water. Mists were crowding in the valleys, each bald
mountain top shone like a jewel, and far aloft in the heavens were the
white streamers of morn. Moorhens were plashing at the loch's edge,
and one tall heron rose from his early meal. The world was astir with
life: sounds of the _plonk-plonk_ of rising trout and the endless twitter
of woodland birds mingled with the far-away barking of dogs and the
lowing of the full-uddered cows in the distant meadows. Abashed and
enchanted, the girl listened. It was an elfin land where the old witch
voices of hill and river were not silenced. With the wind in her hair she
climbed the slope again to the garden ground, where she found a
solemn-eyed collie sniffing the fragrant wind in his morning stroll.
Breakfast over, the forenoon hung heavy on her hands. It was Lady
Manorwater's custom to let her guests sit idle in the morning and follow
their own desire, but in the afternoon she would plan subtle and
far-reaching schemes of enjoyment. It was a common saying that in her
large good-nature she amused people regardless of their own expense.
She would light-heartedly make town-bred folk walk twenty miles or

bear the toil of infinite drives. But this was after lunch; before, her
guests might do as they pleased. Lord Manorwater went off to see some
tenant; Arthur, after vain efforts to decoy Alice into a fishing
expedition, went down the stream in a canoe, because to his fool's head
it seemed the riskiest means of passing the time at his disposal; Bertha
and her sister were writing letters; the spectacled people had settled
themselves below shady trees with voluminous papers and a pile of
books. Alice alone was idle. She made futile expeditions to the library,
and returned with an armful of volumes which she knew in her heart
she would never open. She found the deepest and most comfortable
chair and placed it in a shady place among beeches. But she could not
stay there, and must needs wander restlessly about the gardens,
plucking flowers and listlessly watching the gardeners at their work.
Lunch-time found this young woman in a slightly irritable frame of
mind. The cause direct and indirect was Mr. Stocks, who had found her
alone, and had saddled her with his company for the space of an hour
and a half. His vein had been badinage of the serious and reproving
kind, and the girl had been bored to distraction. But a misspent hour is
soon forgotten, and the sight of her hostess's cheery face would have
restored her to good humour had it not been for a thought which could
not be exorcised. She knew of Lady Manorwater's reputation as an
inveterate matchmaker, and in some subtle way the suspicion came to
her that that goddess had marked herself as a quarry. She found herself
next Mr. Stocks at meals, she had already listened to his eulogy from
her hostess's own lips, and to her unquiet fancy it seemed as if the
others stood back that they two might be together. Brought up in an
atmosphere of commerce, she was perfectly aware that she was a
desirable match for an embryo politician, and that sooner or later she
would be mistress of many thousands. The thought was a barbed
vexation. To Mr. Stocks she had been prepared to extend the tolerance
of a happy aloofness; now she found that she was driven to dislike him
with all the bitterness of unwelcome proximity.
The result of such thoughts was that after lunch she disregarded her
hostess's preparations and set out for a long hill walk. Like all perfectly
healthy people, much exercise was as welcome to her as food and sleep;

ten miles were refreshing; fifteen miles in an afternoon an exaltation.
She reached the moor beyond the policies, and, once past this rushy
wilderness, came to the Avelin-side and a single plank bridge which
she crossed lightly without a tremor. Then came the highway, and then
a long planting of firs, and last of all the dip of a rushing stream
pouring down from the hills in a lonely wooded hollow. The girl loved
to explore, and here was a field ripe for adventure.
Soon she grew flushed with the toil and the excitement; climbing the
bed of the stream was no child's play, for ugly corners had to be passed,
slippery rocks to be skirted, and many breakneck leaps to be effected.
Her spirits rose as the