XXI
"LISTEN!" she whispered; "did you hear that?"
"What?" he asked, dazed.
"On the Bedford road! do you hear the horses? Do you hear them running?"
"W-what horses?"
"Tarleton's!" she gasped, pressing her white face between her hands."Can't you hear their iron scabbards rattle? Can't you hear their buglehorn? Where is Jack? _Where_ is Jack?"
A flurry of mellow music burst out among the trees, followed by a loudreport.
"Oh, God!" she whispered, "the British!"
Brown stared at her.
"Why, that's only an automobile horn--and their tire just blew out," hebegan, astonished.
But she sprang past him, calling, "Jack! Jack! Where are you?" and heheard the door fly open and her childish cry of terror outside in thesunshine.
The next second he followed her, running through the hall and out throughthe door to the porch; and at the same moment a big red touring car cameto a standstill before the house; the chauffeur descended to put on a newtire, and a young girl in motor duster and hood sprang lightly from thetonneau to the tangled grass. As she turned to look at the house shecaught sight of him.
Brown took an uncertain step forward; and she came straight toward him.
Neither spoke as they met face to face. He looked at her, passed his handover his eyes, bewildered, and looked again.
She was slim and red-haired and slightly freckled, and her mouth wasperhaps a shade large, and it curled slightly at the corners, and hereyes were quite perfectly made except that one was hazel-brown and theother a hazel-grey.
She looked at him, and it seemed to him as though, in the fearlessgravity of her regard, somewhere, somehow--perhaps in the curled cornersof her lips, perhaps in her pretty and unusual eyes--there lurked alittle demon of laughter. Yet it could not be so--there were onlyserenity and a child's direct sweetness in her gaze.
"I suppose you have come to look at this old-time place?" she said."People often come. You are perfectly welcome."
And, as he made no answer:
"If you care to see the inside of the house I will be very glad to showit to you," she added pleasantly.
"Is--is it _yours_?" he managed to say, "or--or your sister's?"
She smiled. "You mistake me for somebody else. I have no sister. This isthe old Brown place--a very, very old house. It belonged to my greatgrandmother. If you are interested I will be glad to show you theinterior. I brought the key with me."
"But people--relatives of yours--are living there now," he stammered.
"Oh, no," she said, smiling, "the house is empty. We are thinking ofputting it in shape again. If you care to come in I can show you thequaint old fireplaces and wainscoting--if you don't mind dust."
She mounted the step lightly and, fitting the key and unlocking thedoor--which he thought he had left open--entered.
"Come in," she called to him in a friendly manner.
He crossed the threshold to her side and halted, stunned. An empty house,silent, shadowy, desolate, confronted him.
The girl beside him shook out her skirts and glanced at her dusty gloves.
"A vacuum cleaner is what this place requires," she said. "But _isn't_ ita quaint old house?"
He pressed his shaking hands to his closed eyes, then forced them to openupon the terrible desolation where _she_ had stood a moment since--andsaw bare boards under foot, bare walls, cobwebs, dust.
The girl was tiptoeing around the four walls examining the condition ofthe woodwork.
"It only needs electric lights and a furnace in the cellar and somekalsomine and pretty wall paper----"
She turned to glance back at him, and stood so, regarding him with amusedcuriosity--for he had dropped on his knees in the dust, groping in an oddblind way for a flower that had just fallen from his coat.
"There are millions of them by the roadside," she said as he stumbled tohis feet and drew the frail blossom through his buttonhole with unsteadyfingers.
"Yes," he said, "there are other roses in the world." Then he drew adeep, quiet breath and smiled at her.
She smiled, too.
"This was her room," she explained, "the room where she first met herhusband, the room into which she came a bride, the room where she died,poor thing. Oh, I forgot that you don't know who _she_ was!"
"Elizabeth Tennant," he answered calmly.
"Why--how did _you_ know?"
"God knows," he said; and bent his head, touching the petals of the wildrose with his lips. Then he looked up straight into her eyes--one washazel-brown, one hazel tinged with grey.