“There is a Lady sweet and kind, Was never face so pleased my mind,
I did but see her passing by,
And yet I love her till I die,”
sang Peter, in a pleasant tenor voice.
 
He was sitting by the window of his cottage, engaged—truth will out—in darning a pair of green socks. Occasionally he lifted his head from his work and gazed through the window. It was intensely still outside; not a leaf, not a blade of grass was stirring. It was almost overpoweringly close and sultry. Peter had set both door and window open in invitation to a non-existent breeze to enter.
 
From the north, where a great bank of ominous black clouds was piled, came a low, sinister rumble.
 
“It’s coming,” said Peter aloud, looking through the window. “The storm, the tempest, the whole wrath of the furious elements will shortly be loosed upon us. The clouds are coming up with extraordinary rapidity, considering there’s no wind at all down here. Up there it must be blowing half a gale. We’ll get rain soon.”
 
He returned to his darning.
 
“Her gesture, motion, and her smiles,
Her wit, her voice, my heart beguiles,
Beguiles my heart, I know not why,
And yet I love her till I die,”
he sang, sticking his needle carefully in and out of the heel of the sock.
 
“And the green of the wool doesn’t match the green of the sock one little bit!” he said ruefully. “But, after all, no one looks at me; and I certainly can’t look at my own heels—at least, not without a certain amount of effort, so n’importe, as they say in France.”
 
“Cupid is wingèd and doth range
Her country, so my love doth change;
But change she earth, or change she sky,
Yet will I love her till I die.”
Peter cut the wool with his pocket-knife, and [Pg 173]contemplated the sock with his head on one side. Then he threw it on to the table. There was a little laugh in his eyes, not caused by the contemplation of the sock.
 
“I believe,” he said whimsically, “that that fellow—what was his name?—Neil Macdonald, was right after all, and that Chaucer is—well, an old fraud. Yet,” and a wistful look crept into his blue eyes, “I might have done much better if I’d gone on believing in him. Yet, I don’t know. After all, Peter, my son, isn’t the joy worth a bit of heartache!”
 
He got up from his chair and went towards the door. He could look over the hedge and up and down the lane from his position. A couple of big drops, large as half-crowns, had just fallen on his spotlessly white doorstep—Peter was proud of his doorstep. They were followed by another and another. There was a flash, a terrific peal, and then with a sudden hiss came the deluge. Straight down it fell, as if poured from buckets, and the lightning played across the sky and the thunder pealed.
 
“Ouf!” said Peter, drawing in a huge breath as the refreshing scent of the grateful earth came to his nostrils. “That’s really quite the very best smell there is, and worth all your eau-de-colognes, and your phulnanas, and—and your whatever you call ’em put together. It really is—” And then he broke off, for down the lane came running a woman, her head bent, the rain beating, drenching down upon her. Peter was at the gate in a moment.
 
“Come in here!” he called.
 
She paused, hesitated. Peter saw her face. His heart jumped, and then started off klip-klopping at a terrible rate.
 
“I—” she began. A blinding flash of lightning, followed by a terrific peal right overhead, stopped the words.
 
“Come at once!” said Peter imperatively, sharply almost. “It’s not safe.”
 
She ran up the path, he following. In the shelter of the cottage she turned and faced him. The colour in her face was not, perhaps, quite to be accounted for by the rain and her own haste.
 
“You’re drenched,” said Peter abruptly. “You can’t stay in those wet things a moment longer than absolutely necessary. With your permission, I shall go to your house and order your carriage to be sent immediately. But first—” He had put her a chair by the fireplace; he was on his knees applying a match to the pile of sticks and fir-cones already laid therein.
 
“But,” protested Lady Anne, “I cannot give my permission. You will yourself be soaked—drenched—if you venture out in this downpour.”
 
Peter laughed lightly. “It will not be the first time, nor, I dare to say, the last. Rain has but little effect on me.” He rose from his knees. The flames were twining and twisting from stick to stick in long tongues of orange and yellow and blue. There was a merry crackling, there were flying sparks.
 
Peter crossed to the cupboard. From it he brought a black bottle and a wineglass.
 
“I have, alas! no brandy to offer you, but port wine will, I hope, prove as efficacious against a chill.” Without paying the smallest heed to her protestations he poured her out a glass, which he held towards her. “Drink it,” he said, in somewhat the tone one orders a refractory child to take a glass of medicine.
 
Anne took the glass, meekly, obediently, with [Pg 176]the faintest gurgle of laughter. “To your health!” she said as she sipped the wine.
 
Peter’s heart beat hotly, madly. Here was She, actually She in the flesh, toasting him in his own room. He poured out another glass.
 
“To you,” he said, and under his breath he added, “My Lady, my Star, my altogether Divinity!” Then he moved firmly to the door.
 
“I cannot allow you to go,” said Anne quickly.
 
“Alas!” said Peter, smiling, “then I must forego your permission. In less than half an hour, in twenty minutes perhaps, your carriage will be here.” And he vanished into the sluice without.
 
“And now,” he said, as he set off at a half-canter down the lane, “if she does glance round the room and find it sleeping-apartment as well as sitting-room, she will, I trust, be less embarrassed. For Heaven knows whether in some particulars she may not bow to old Dame Grundy’s decrees. Bless her!” And it is to be conjectured that it was not on Mrs. Grundy’s head that Peter’s blessing was invoked.
 
Anne, left to solitude, a blazing fire, and a glass of port, sat for a moment or so deep in thought. Who was this man............