A Sprig of Heather

by E. Phillips Oppenheim

A SPRIG OF HEATHER.

By E. PHILLIPS OPPENHEIM.

THAT was a halcyon month for Fred and for me—the month we spent Dick down at his bungalow on the Norfolk coast. Never was anything more opportune than Dick's invitation. We were in one of the tightest corners I ever remember. Davids had turned rusty; nothing that we could either of us turn out seemed in the least to satisfy those mysterious purchasers of his. He had put his foot down firmly. He would not look at another picture for a month! And there we were, owing three weeks' rent, and our credit pledged up to the hilt at every commercial establishment in the neighbourhood. Even Jones the tobacconist—Jones the long-suffering and good-natured—had grumbled at that last half-pound of flake we had sent for, and had enclosed in the box our joint account, with an expression of his peremptory desire for some manner of settlement. And with it all the thermometer was 90 deg. in the shade, and the air of Stile's Row was fœtid. We sat in our shirt-sleeves before the open window and stewed. The sight of a cab passing by laden with seaside luggage, steamer chairs and travelling-easel, white umbrella and golf-clubs, came like the last straw. Fred got up and kicked our one hassock to the other end of the room.

"Oh, d—n!" he exclaimed savagely. "I beg your pardon, old chap. It's so beastly stuffy."

I murmured a sympathetic assent. It was undeniably stuffy.

"Fancy," Fred continued softly, with his eyes fixed upon me; "fancy a strong fresh sea breeze, just a dash of brine in it you know, and sunshine fresh from heaven—not focussed upon us through the fogs and evil odours of this Sodom of a city! Bah! Isn't it enough to make a man sick with longing?"

"It is," I groaned. "Pass the tobacco and shut up."

I relit my pipe, and Fred followed suit. The blue cloud around us grew thicker, and our hearts grew heavier. Then came Dick bounding into the room with hot, eager face and a roar of greeting.

"Hurrah! you fellows," he exclaimed, "I 've an idea. Where's my pipe?"

He went to the mantelpiece and selected his own cherished briar. He still kept it in the old place, although sometimes we saw nothing of him for a month together.

"Hand over the baccy," he continued after a preliminary and apparently satisfactory blow down the stem.

Fred passed the already half-empty box with a dismal glance at its diminishing contents. Dick helped himself recklessly. His pipe had a large bowl, and he pressed the tobacco down with an iron fore-finger. I began to foresee the climax of our miseries—a tobaccoless evening.

"How are things?" he inquired tersely.

"Bad," Fred growled.

"Disgustingly bad," I echoed.

"Ah, I thought they might be," Dick continued with unabated cheerfulness. "Wrong time of the year to work. Wrong time of the year to try and sell pictures. Now, you chaps, attention!"

We composed ourselves to listen. Dick evidently had something to say. He waited until his pipe was well alight, and then commenced.

"You fellows, you know, haven't treated me exactly well since I came into my tin," he said slowly. "I haven't said much about it, but I 'm going to have my little growl now. You won't come to see me because I live in Mayfair. you wouldn't even come to shoot with me last September because——"

I laid my hand upon his arm.

"Shut up, Dick," I said firmly. "We've been through all this before. What's the good of it? you know why we didn't come. Our ways are not Mayfair ways, neither are our clothes. It's good of you to want us, but it's no go. We shouldn't be comfortable, and you wouldn't."

"And as to shooting," Fred put in, "we haven't a gun between us, nor any of the rig-out. Owen's quite right. We 're glad to see you here, Dick, and we 're glad—jolly glad—that you don't forget us. I hope we 'll always be pals—the three of us—and all that; but it's no use closing our eyes to facts, is it? You belong to a different world now. You didn't come here to kick against the pricks again, surely?"

Dick cheered up. A gleam of satisfaction shone in his blue eyes.

"No, I did not," he assented. "The fact is, I 've got you this time on toast, both of you. I saw an advertisement in last week's Field—Bungalow to let on the Norfolk coast, close to sea; bathing, fishing, golf, and all the rest of it. I went down the day before yesterday and took it straight away. Now listen to me seriously. This is not a request; it is not an invitation. I insist upon it. You two fellows have just got to pack up and go down with me to-morrow. Not one other soul is going to be there except the servants. We 'll have a glorious time. You can make it pay too! Lots of pretty bits among the cliffs, and such a sea! Fred, old boy, it's on, isn't it? Owen, old chap?"

Fred and I exchanged rapid glances.

"No other visitors did you say, Dick? None of your own people even?" I inquired with assumed carelessness.

"Not a soul except us three, I pledge you my word," Dick declared earnestly.

"No pier, no dressing up or promenading, or any of that sort of thing, just flannels and a good old comfortable time!"

Fred went to our vaulting-bar, and performed a fancy acrobatic feat of his own invention.

"Hurrah!" he exclaimed, coming down upon his head. "It's on! Good old Dick!"

And in a more dignified manner I signified our acceptance of Dick's invitation.

*****

What a time that was—what a halcyon month! It stands for ever alone in the wilderness of our memories, marked with a great white stone. The bungalow was simply perfect. It stood on a little table-land of green lawn, between two mighty cliffs, with a forest of pines and firs behind, and the sea, the blue sparkling sea, stretching away in front. The first breath of the place as we drove from the station in the evening was like a strong sweet tonic, and that night we were like children, walking backwards and forwards upon the cliffs, sniffing the breeze, and watching the lights far out at sea.

We breakfasted the next morning in a long low room, whose open windows looked full upon the German Ocean—and such a breakfast it was! Dick was always famous at the commissariat! Stile's Row seemed very far away.

"I don't know whether you fellows care about swimming," Dick said as we filled our pipes. "There are steps right away down to the beach from the bottom of the garden there, and I 've had a tent fixed up and some bathing togs sent in. What do you say?"

What did we say! Not much. But with the first plunge into the salt water the burden of years was gone, the poison of weariness and disappointment had glided from out our veins, and faded away in thin air. We were boys again, animal creatures only, glorying in our strength, and the power of cleaving those long blue waves, whose murmuring and gurgling in our ears was like the sweetest of all music. Stroke for stroke, shoulder to shoulder, through the cool, rushing waters we swam. I opened my arms to the sea, and the joy of it was like the joy of fine wine. Most glorious of all physical emotions is the delight of meeting and buffeting those rolling waves.

That was a halcyon time indeed. Dick had a little yacht there, and we sailed her up and down the coast, lounging on the deck with the sunlight we had longed for all around us, and the salt spray flying in our faces. At the end of a week or so we began to feel a healthy desire for work, and on one hot day we fetched out our easels and settled down upon the cliffs in a spot where only choice of subject was difficult. And on that first day commenced our episode.

Our episode, of course, was feminine. She came up behind us with Dick and her father, just as we had got fairly to work. She had brown hair, which rippled and waved as a woman's should, a curiously childlike face, and large soft eyes. She was wearing a brown holland gown with a bunch of heather stuck in her bosom. She was fresh, and sweet, and well bred. That is all I know about her. Fred could have gone on describing her for an hour; but this is not Fred's story.

General Chesham, her father, lived in the white; house we could see through the trees, and he was Dick's nearest neighbour. He was an Anglo-Indian, genial, hearty, and good-humoured. They stayed for some time, and the girl talked all the while to Fred, preferring, as I could see, his dashing style and easy manipulation of colour to my own slower, and, in a sense, more laborious work. I never knew what they talked about then or on those other days; but they certainly did talk a good deal, and to some purpose. Morning after morning she came gliding down to us, flitting in and out of the pine-trees in her father's grounds, a soft white figure in the glancing sunlight, and blithely crossing the cliffs towards our chosen spot, with a man-servant behind bearing her easel. She, too, painted, not at all badly, and she was never weary of talking about art and the beauty of devoting one's life to it. To amuse her, Fred would tell her stories of our life in London, dwelling only upon the bright side of it, treating our impecuniosity as a joke, and blurring over our hardships. She sat and listened as though entranced. She was by no means an ordinary girl, and sometimes as I watched her face upturned to Fred's, I became conscious of a dim feeling of uneasiness. I wished that her father would interfere. She certainly had more liberty than was good for her. But, after all, it seemed to be no business of mine. It was the first holiday I had had for years, and it might be the last for many more. I put away all thoughts of trouble. I would have none of them. The days were golden with June sunshine and sweet with the perfume of fragrant winds. I read poetry among the cliffs, and now and then I began to dream again. Not altogether happy dreams are those when youth—or, at any rate, youth's most buoyant season—has gone, and a bushel of bright hopes has changed into a handful of dry sticks. Yet I was thankful enough to find that the capacity still lingered. To be past the age of dreams is to stand upon the threshold of death—the death of mediocre content, or mortally wounded sensibility. So I was glad to plant my foot once more—even though with difficulty—upon the borderland of the world of strange fancies—that glittering world of dreams.

But while I dreamed of dead things, Fred was drifting into a living trouble. I was walking homewards one evening through the heather, when I came suddenly upon two figures. Their easels were side by side; a field of waving scarlet poppies and yellowing corn ran down the sloping cliff to the sea before them. But they were not painting. She was standing, bending over him, her hands upon his shoulders; he was leaning forward, with his head bent low. And the light upon their faces was that light which comes but once in a lifetime, and which no man can mistake.

I dropped my easel with a crash, and they both started round.

"How you frightened us, Mr. Wrathall!" the girl cried, looking at me with flushed face and not too friendly aspect.

"Not so much as you frightened me," I answered gravely. "We shall have to hurry, sha'n't we, Fred?" I added.

The colour had mounted to his sunburnt brow, but he met my steady gaze fearlessly. I had done wrong to doubt Fred for a moment. Poor old chap!

I passed my arm through his when the girl had gone. He commenced at once. His voice shook several times. Poor old chap!

"It isn't my fault, Owen," he said; "at least, I think not. I have never said a single word to her which her father might not have heard. I see now, though, that it was not well for us to have been together so much. I thought that I was the only one who could suffer. I used to be fond of girls, you know—that sort of girl; and lately—well, the kind of feminine society we can command isn't exactly edifying, is it?" he broke off, with a hard little laugh. "Well, it's over!"

I pressed his arm.

"Brace up, old chap!" I murmured. "We've had a glorious time. Nine-thirty's the morning train, I think. You can manage that?"

He nodded, and we went in to dinner. I felt a brute, but what else was there to do?

*****

Stile's Row had never seemed more cheerless than when we slowly trudged up those interminable flights of stairs and unlocked our door. Yet I, at any rate, was a better man. We were both sun-burnt—as brown as berries—and we were bringing back work which we should have no need to hawk about. We could pay our debts, and start with a bit in hand. We talked this over, smoking a late pipe, and Fred did his best to be cheerful. When we parted he smiled quite bravely.

"Don't you bother about me, Owen," he said as we clasped hands the last thing, an old habit of ours. "I'm hit, but not mortally. And—and I wouldn't be without the memory of that month—not for worlds."

His voice shook a little, and we both looked out of window at the entrancing vision of grey roofs stretching away in a dreary wilderness to the smoke-begrimed horizon. Then we went to our hard little beds and made mild jokes at our short lapse into luxury. But when I woke up in the middle of the night Fred was sitting on the window-sill, half dressed and smoking. I let him be. A fellow with grit in him gets over those things better without sympathy. I too had spent nights like that. Memory is a sweet torturer; yet who would not sometimes be a victim?

We sold our pictures well, and we went to work in grim earnest. A month passed. Then, one night, there was a timid knock at the door, and she walked in.

I sprang to my feet and stood between them. Fred was off his guard with a sudden joy, and had I not been there she would have been in his arms.

"Miss Chesham!" I exclaimed breathlessly. "Are you alone?"

She set down a dressing-bag which she had been carrying, and for a moment her eyes met mine defiantly.

"Yes, I am. I have run away. I am going to be an artist. I was miserable at home."

She held out her hands to Fred. He took them gravely; but he kept her at arm's length.

"Do they know where you have come?" I asked sternly. She shook her head, impatient at my questioning.

"No. I shall write and tell them presently. Mr. Montavon—Fred—you are not angry? You don't seem at all pleased to see me!"

I suppose she knew that he cared, and she had hoped to find him alone. But I stood between them.

"You ought not to have come here," I said. "It is not a fit place for you."

Her lips trembled. She stamped her foot. She was half crying, half furiously angry with me. For all her child's face she was bewitchingly pretty.

"I did not come here to see you," she exclaimed. "You have no right to interfere. You are very horrid. Fred, say that you are glad to see me!"

"I cannot," he answered hoarsely. "Wrathall is right. It sounds cruel, but it is right! This is not a fit place for you! You must go away!"

"I cannot," she answered doggedly. "I do not know a soul in London. I have some money, plenty of money, and I am going to take a studio here and paint. You talk to me as though I were a child. I am not a child! I am a woman, and women do those things I know. You treat me as though I were a girl who had run away from school. Don't be cruel, please! Let me stay here! I shall be no trouble, and I want to take that empty studio you told me about. I do not mind roughing it—not a little bit, Fred!"

He shook his head bravely. He could not trust himself to speak. She sat down on an empty box—our last chair had given way—and sobbed. Fred and I looked at one another. We had neither of us contemplated anything like this. I went up to him.

"Will you leave it to me, Fred?" I asked, laying my hand upon his shoulder.

He nodded.

"Yes. Take her away, old chap—quickly."

I snatched up my hat, and, hastily slipping off my smock, put on my most decent coat.

"Miss Chesham," I said firmly, "will you come with me, please?"

She stood up, wiping her eyes.

"No, I won't!" she answered. "I hate you! Fred!"

He shook his head, and kept away from her.

"You don't seem to understand," he said quietly. "Look around you. This is where and how we live. How——"

"It's all right, only it wants a good cleaning," she interposed. "Those cabinets are dreadful. Your landlady ought to be ashamed of herself."

"I daresay," Fred continued, "she thinks the same of us. We are nearly always behind with our rent. We earn just enough to keep body and soul together—and only just enough. There is not a woman in the whole building. It is not a fit place for women."

"You do not care for me," she cried with feminine irrelevance. "You have forgotten—those days."

"I shall never forget them," he answered; "but you must go away. Go with Wrathall, please. Do as he tells you. It is best."

She held out her hand to him, and he raised it gently to his lips. Then she let me lead her down the stairs. Her own eves were blinded with tears. Outside we found a hansom, and I handed her in.

"Eighteen, Hereford Gardens," I told the driver. She pulled down her veil, and we spoke never a word all the way. I knew that she hated me. Yet she did everything as I told her.

A man-servant opened the door. To my great relief, his mistress was at home. She came to us in a moment or two—a stern-faced, grey-haired old lady, yet kindly enough, as I knew well. When she saw me, she stopped short.

"What, Owen!" she cried.

"Yes, Aunt," I answered. "I have come to ask you a favour. This young lady is the daughter of General Chesham, of Norfolk, and owing to an unfortunate accident she finds herself in London alone. Will you receive her as your guest until her father can take her away?"

She held out her hand to the girl, and I breathed freely.

"I had hoped, Owen," she said, with a shade of reproach in her tone, "that the first favour you have thought fit to ask me would have been for yourself. However, I shall be exceedingly glad to receive Miss Chesham. I know her father quite well."

I left them together, and walked back with a sense of huge relief. Fred was striding up and down the studio waiting for me.

"I have left her at my aunt's in Hereford Gardens," I said. "She will be all right there."

"You are a brick," he declared. He knew that it had cost me something to ask that favour.

"And now we must telegraph to her father," I reminded him. "What shall we say?"

But there was no need to write that telegram. There was a sharp knock at our door, and the General himself appeared upon the threshold. He was white with fury. Fred was standing by his easel, and he marched straight up to him.

"Where is my daughter?" he thundered. "What have you done with her, you—blackguard?"

I stepped between them.

"Your daughter, General Chesham, is quite safe," I told him. "She is with my aunt, Lady Wrathall, at Eighteen, Hereford Gardens."

He drew a long breath and looked at me from underneath his bushy eyebrows.

"Are you telling me the truth, Sir?" he asked sternly.

"We are neither of us," I answered, "in the habit of telling untruths; nor are we accustomed to be addressed in such a fashion. Your daughter called here about an hour ago. We gathered that she had left home unknown to you, and we persuaded her to go to my aunt's. I have just returned from escorting her there."

He held out his hand. "Sir, I thank you," he said. "I apologise. Mr. Montavon, pray forgive my use of so unwarrantable an epithet. I was excited and nervous. Pray accept my apology."

Fred shook hands with him silently. Then he turned to me again.

"Eighteen, Hereford Gardens, I think you said. I will go there at once."

"It would he as well," I answered. "Allow me to light you downstairs."

When I returned Fred was groping upon the floor. He got up with a little sprig of heather in his hand. I pretended not to see him slip it into his pocket.

"What mad creatures girls are!" I remarked, lighting my pipe, with my back to him.

"Very," he answered absently.

Her name was Dorothy.