CHAPTER XV MR. WINTER

THE housekeeper, grim and silent as usual, opened the door. Her look and manner alone were sufficient to alarm Priscilla, and send her home with errand undone.

“Is—is Mr. Winter at home?” she asked.

“Yes, he is,” answered the woman. She was so absorbed in staring at Priscilla, and studying every detail of her face and figure and clothing, one could have been excused for thinking she had not really taken in what was said to her. Under her rude stare and forbidding manner, a faint pink flush came into Priscilla’s pale cheeks.

“Is Mr. Winter at home, please?” repeated Priscilla; adding, as firmly as she could, “I want to see him.”

“Then you can’t,” answered the housekeeper rudely; “he don’t see visitors. What’s your name?”

“I think Mr. Winter would see me,” said Priscilla eagerly. The fear that after all she might not be able to reach him with her appeal made her desperate. She had never contemplated failure of that kind. “My name is Carlyon, but I don’t suppose Mr. Winter would know it. I want very much indeed to see him, though. It is most important.”

“What for? What can a little girl like you want to be troubling a gentleman like Mr. Winter for?” she asked roughly. “If you’re come begging for clubs or charities or things, I can tell you at once, it isn’t any good, and you can run away as quick as you come.”

“But I am not begging,” said Priscilla emphatically—“not for money.”

“Well, we haven’t got any flowers or fruit to give away. I can tell ’ee that too. So you may as well run ’long home to where you come from.”

“You shouldn’t speak like that,” said Priscilla indignantly; “you shouldn’t be rude.” She was hurt and insulted, and she felt that this woman would prevent her seeing her master if she possibly could. “I spoke quite civilly to you, and I’ve come on important business, and I am sure Mr. Winter would see me if he knew I wanted him. But it doesn’t matter; I will write to him,” and she turned away with great dignity, but only just in time to prevent the woman from seeing the tears that would well up in her eyes.

Very angry indeed, Mrs. Tucker shut the door with a bang, while Priscilla walked down the gravel path with great dignity, her head held high, but with, oh! such an aching heart, such despair and disappointment; and then, suddenly, a gentleman appeared at her side and was speaking to her quite kindly.

“What is the matter?” he asked, not ungently; “you are in trouble? Can I do anything for you?”

Just for a second he had thought this must be his little culprit of a day or two since, but when he looked again he saw that the strange visitor was taller and older, and her face, though like that other one, was paler, and thinner, and graver.

For a moment Priscilla could not control the quivering of her lips, or choke back the tears which had forced their way up.

“I wanted to see Mr. Winter,” she gasped. “I want very much to see him, and the woman was so rude, she wouldn’t even ask him if he would see me.”

“I know; I heard her,” said the stranger sternly. “But it is all right. I am Mr. Winter. What do you want with me?”

And then when she was face to face with him, with the morose recluse, the mysterious tyrant who was going to do all sorts of unkind things to Loveday and Aaron, Priscilla could not for a moment think of anything she wanted to say.

“Please,” she stammered, wondering where she could begin, “I have come to—to—to ask you to forgive my little sister, Loveday Carlyon. I know she was mischievous, but she didn’t mean to be—she didn’t, really; she wanted to be kind to you, because they said—because—oh, because she thought you were sad and lonely, and she—and she—oh! you won’t have her punished very severely, will you, or sent to gaol? Oh, please, don’t! She will never, never do such a thing again, I know!”

“Um! She won’t, won’t she?”

“Oh no!” said Priscilla eagerly; “never! She really did think it was the piskies that put the straw there to annoy you——”

“Nonsense!” said Mr. Winter sharply. Then he added, more gently: “The idea of any one believing such rubbish in these days!”

“Loveday does,” said Priscilla earnestly—“she does, really—and—and I want her to go on believing. I did once, and it was, oh! ever so much nicer than now when I know it isn’t any use to. I wish I’d never been told there aren’t any fairies, really. When you think there are, it seems as if such lots of beautiful things may happen, you never know what, and—and it always seems as if they were going to.”

“Ay, ay, little girl,” said Mr. Winter, looking down at her thoughtfully, “it is very sad when folk don’t leave us fairies, or—or anything else to believe in. But they won’t.”

Priscilla did not know what reply to make to this, so she made none. After a pause Mr. Winter looked at her again.

“You look pale and tired,” he said, trying still to speak coldly, but not succeeding very well. “You don’t look as strong as that mischievous sister of yours.”

“I have been ill,” said Priscilla, and she told him of the accident with the swing, and throwing back her cloak to show him her arm still in its sling, she saw, and for the first time remembered, her hat. For a moment a hot blush dyed her face, and then she burst into a hearty peal of laughter. At the sound of it Mr. Winter started, then grew even paler than he had been. No sound of childish laughter had been heard in that place since the day his boy left him to start on his fatal expedition.

“I meant to have put it on,” she explained, “before I reached your gate; I thought it was more—more right to have on a hat when one paid a call. I only put on my cloak because I was afraid my dress would show as I came up the cliff, and I was afraid some one would see me and stop me.”

Mr. Winter had recovered himself by this time, and seeing that she could but badly manage with one hand to slip back the hood and put on her hat, he actually helped her. At the touch of the soft curls, at the frank, grateful glance of the childish eyes, a new sense of life and happiness ran through his chilled veins, a new peace came to the heart that had for so long waged a bitter, resentful war against God, himself, and his fellow-creatures.

When the hat was satisfactorily adjusted, a sudden silence fell upon them; his mind and heart were teeming with thoughts and sensations that to Priscilla would have been incomprehensible. Priscilla was wondering what she could say and do next. He had not said he would forgive Loveday, and she did not like to leave without his promise, and oh! she was feeling so tired she did not know how to begin her pleading again. She must, though. She felt that; and then she would go away, and when she got out of sight she would rest a little before she went all down that steep path again.

“Mr. Winter—you haven’t said yet, but will you forgive Loveday, please?” she asked, suddenly growing shy and nervous again. But it was the weariness, the weakness of her voice that struck her hearer most. He looked sharply at her, and her pale, wan little face sent a pang to his heart, a pang he could not understand.

“Yes, of course, child, of course,” he said hastily. “I am not an ogre. I was only pretending to be, to frighten the two young scamps a little. I did not intend to punish them any further. You may run home and tell your sister what I say. But,” he added abruptly, “you are not fit to walk all the way back; you have walked too far already, and I have kept you standing all this time. Come in and rest for a few minutes, and have a glass of milk. You will get home in half the time after it.”

But Priscilla hesitated. She was shy of penetrating that gloomy house, with only this stranger, of whom she still felt some awe, and that dreadful woman, whom she frankly disliked.

“You would rather not,” he said, quick to notice her hesitation; “don’t be afraid to speak out, child. I quite understand.”

But Priscilla noticed the hurt tone in his voice, and was touched. “I would like to very much, thank you,” she said weakly. “I am dreadfully tired,” she added, almost as though the words escaped her against her will. The next moment she was crossing the bare stone hall into which Loveday had peered so enviously, and was admitted to Mr. Winter’s own private sitting-room, which no one but himself had entered for years.

Of all the women in this wide world, Mr. Winter’s housekeeper was at that moment the most astounded, and what to make of things, and of the change in her master, she did not know. But in her heart she very much wished that she had treated this little visitor more civilly when she had first come knocking at the door.

Priscilla sat in a big arm-chair, and drank milk and ate biscuits, and Mr. Winter sat in another and stared out of window, his mind absorbed in thoughts. They wandered far and wide, yet when, presently, Priscilla’s voice broke the silence, both his and hers must have been hovering near the same subject.

“Miss Potts,” she broke out suddenly—“she is a friend of mine at home,” she explained—“Miss Potts couldn’t bear the sight of the sea either; it had swallowed up all her family, all but her and her mother.” Mr. Winter’s eyelids quivered, and his face contracted sharply, but Priscilla could not see his face, or she might have paused in what she was saying. As it was, though, she continued: “But she left it. She didn’t draw her blinds because she couldn’t bear to look at it, but she went right away, and—and she told me she had been ever so much happier ever since.”

A deep silence followed her remarks, a silence which presently frightened Priscilla, and as it continued, she slipped off her chair and crept to the door. She felt that she had offended past forgiveness. “I ought not to have mentioned the sea, or the blinds, or let him know I knew anything about the story,” she thought with a sudden, overwhelming sense of her own want of tact. But when she reached the door she paused; she could not, after all his kindness, go and leave him without a word. So she crept back again very gently and very slowly, until she reached his side.

“I—I am dreadfully sorry,” she gasped. “I did not mean to hurt you.” Then, as still he did not speak, in real distress she laid her hand on his thin hand as it rested on his knee, while the other supported his head. “Mr. Winter,” she said, in a frightened voice, her lip quivering, “I am so sorry; I did not mean to hurt you, only I—I felt so sorry for you, and—”

“You haven’t hurt me, child,” he said at last, speaking very slowly, in a curious still voice; “it is I who have hurt myself all these years. I was very glad to hear about your friend. I am grateful to you for telling me about her. She was a wise and brave woman. Now,” rousing himself and rising, “if you are rested you would like to go home, I expect. I will see you to the gate.”

At the gate he took the little hand she held out. “You will come and see me again, I hope?” he asked.

“Oh yes,” said Priscilla warmly; “I will come quite soon, if you would like me to.”

As she walked away she turned every now and then to wave her hand to the solitary-looking old man who stood at his gate, and watched her until she had disappeared from his sight.

“Did you see him? What did he say? Was he very cross?” whispered Loveday anxiously, rushing to find her the moment they returned.

“He—oh, he asked me to come again,” said Priscilla absently.

“But didn’t he say anything about me and Aaron?”—with a surprised and disappointed look.

“Oh yes. He told me to say he forgave you, and he wouldn’t think anything more about it.”

“Well,” cried Loveday, in a voice full of reproach, “you might have told me at once, when you knew how anxious I was. I have been thinking about it all the time I’ve been out. You don’t look a bit as though you had good news for me; I thought you would have been—oh, ever so glad that I wasn’t to be sent to prison;” and Loveday’s lip actually quivered with disappointment at Priscilla’s seeming indifference.

“I am!” cried Priscilla, rousing herself; “I am so glad; and, oh dear, there are such lots of things to be glad about. I don’t know which to think about first.”