第48章 THE MELANCHOLY HUSSAR OF THE GERMAN LEGION(10)

She informed her old lover,in an uncertain penmanship which suggested a trembling hand,of the trouble she had been put to in ascertaining his address,and then broached the subject which had prompted her to write.Four years ago,she said with the greatest delicacy of which she was capable,she had been so foolish as to refuse him.Her wilful wrong-headedness had since been a grief to her many times,and of late particularly.As for Mr.Ollamoor,he had been absent almost as long as Ned--she did not know where.She would gladly marry Ned now if he were to ask her again,and be a tender little wife to him till her life's end.

A tide of warm feeling must have surged through Ned Hipcroft's frame on receipt of this news,if we may judge by the issue.

Unquestionably he loved her still,even if not to the exclusion of every other happiness.This from his Car'line,she who had been dead to him these many years,alive to him again as of old,was in itself a pleasant,gratifying thing.Ned had grown so resigned to,or satisfied with,his lonely lot,that he probably would not have shown much jubilation at anything.Still,a certain ardour of preoccupation,after his first surprise,revealed how deeply her confession of faith in him had stirred him.Measured and methodical in his ways,he did not answer the letter that day,nor the next,nor the next.He was having 'a good think.'When he did answer it,there was a great deal of sound reasoning mixed in with the unmistakable tenderness of his reply;but the tenderness itself was sufficient to reveal that he was pleased with her straightforward frankness;that the anchorage she had once obtained in his heart was renewable,if it had not been continuously firm.

He told her--and as he wrote his lips twitched humorously over the few gentle words of raillery he indited among the rest of his sentences--that it was all very well for her to come round at this time of day.Why wouldn't she have him when he wanted her?She had no doubt learned that he was not married,but suppose his affections had since been fixed on another?She ought to beg his pardon.

Still,he was not the man to forget her.But considering how he had been used,and what he had suffered,she could not quite expect him to go down to Stickleford and fetch her.But if she would come to him,and say she was sorry,as was only fair;why,yes,he would marry her,knowing what a good little woman she was at the core.He added that the request for her to come to him was a less one to make than it would have been when he first left Stickleford,or even a few months ago;for the new railway into South Wessex was now open,and there had just begun to be run wonderfully contrived special trains,called excursion-trains,on account of the Great Exhibition;so that she could come up easily alone.

She said in her reply how good it was of him to treat her so generously,after her hot and cold treatment of him;that though she felt frightened at the magnitude of the journey,and was never as yet in a railway-train,having only seen one pass at a distance,she embraced his offer with all her heart;and would,indeed,own to him how sorry she was,and beg his pardon,and try to be a good wife always,and make up for lost time.

The remaining details of when and where were soon settled,Car'line informing him,for her ready identification in the crowd,that she would be wearing 'my new sprigged-laylock cotton gown,'and Ned gaily responding that,having married her the morning after her arrival,he would make a day of it by taking her to the Exhibition.One early summer afternoon,accordingly,he came from his place of work,and hastened towards Waterloo Station to meet her.It was as wet and chilly as an English June day can occasionally be,but as he waited on the platform in the drizzle he glowed inwardly,and seemed to have something to live for again.

The 'excursion-train'--an absolutely new departure in the history of travel--was still a novelty on the Wessex line,and probably everywhere.Crowds of people had flocked to all the stations on the way up to witness the unwonted sight of so long a train's passage,even where they did not take advantage of the opportunity it offered.

The seats for the humbler class of travellers in these early experiments in steam-locomotion,were open trucks,without any protection whatever from the wind and rain;and damp weather having set in with the afternoon,the unfortunate occupants of these vehicles were,on the train drawing up at the London terminus,found to he in a pitiable condition from their long journey;blue-faced,stiff-necked,sneezing,rain-beaten,chilled to the marrow,many of the men being hatless;in fact,they resembled people who had been out all night in an open boat on a rough sea,rather than inland excursionists for pleasure.The women had in some degree protected themselves by turning up the skirts of their gowns over their heads,but as by this arrangement they were additionally exposed about the hips,they were all more or less in a sorry plight.

In the bustle and crush of alighting forms of both sexes which followed the entry of the huge concatenation into the station,Ned Hipcroft soon discerned the slim little figure his eye was in search of,in the sprigged lilac,as described.She came up to him with a frightened smile--still pretty,though so damp,weather-beaten,and shivering from long exposure to the wind.

'O Ned!'she sputtered,'I--I--'He clasped her in his arms and kissed her,whereupon she burst into a flood of tears.

'You are wet,my poor dear!I hope you'll not get cold,'he said.

And surveying her and her multifarious surrounding packages,he noticed that by the hand she led a toddling child--a little girl of three or so--whose hood was as clammy and tender face as blue as those of the other travellers.

'Who is this--somebody you know?'asked Ned curiously.

'Yes,Ned.She's mine.'

'Yours?'

'Yes--my own!'

'Your own child?'

'Yes!'

'Well--as God's in--'