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THE FACE IN THE RIVER
The porter did not know; the station-master was not sure; but both were agreed that it was a "good step to the 'all"--by which they signified the Derbyshire mansion of the third Earl of Melbourne.
"Might be you'd get a cab, might be you wouldn't," said the porter somewhat loftily--for here was a passenger who had spoken of walking over: "that'll depend on Jacob Price and the beer he's drunk this night. Some nights he can drive a man and some nights he can't. I'm not here to speak for him more than any other."
The station-master, who had been giving the whole weight of his intelligence to a brown paper parcel with no address upon it, here chimed in to ask a question in that patronizing manner peculiar to station-masters.
"Did his lordship expect you, sir?" he asked with some emphasis; as though, had it been the case, he certainly should have been informed of it. The reply found him all civility.
"Had we known that his lordship expected a guest, we'd have answered for a carriage," added the station-master, still apologetically.
The tall, fair-haired Englishman perplexed him. He hardly knew whether he addressed a Duke or a commoner. The voice and manner suggested the former; the intention to walk spoke of a vulgar habit rather befitting his lordship's curate than the honored guest of Melbourne Hall. Gavin Ord, upon his part, perhaps, delighted in perplexing people. He quite understood the kind of curiosity he had aroused; and, refusing to gratify it, he snatched up a light dressing bag; and leaving directions for his heavier luggage to be forwarded in the morning, he set off briskly upon the high road to Moretown, beyond which, as all the world knows, lies the Manor of Melbourne.
"Going to make a long stay, sir?" had been the amiable station-master's last shot.
"Oh, I may settle down there for a long time," said Ord in reply; and this news was all over the village in an hour.
Strangers upon the road to Melbourne Hall were not so many that one should escape remark.
"If he's for the Lady Evelyn," the blithe porter confessed over his cups at a later hour, "she might go farther and get a worse-looking man. Gave me a shillin', he did, and carried his bag hisself. That's what I call a gentleman, now."
Unconscious of this tribute to his qualities, Gavin Ord was then more than three miles upon his road to Melbourne Hall. A hot day of August had given place to a delicious night, fresh and cool and redolent of sweet perfumes. The moon stood high above the horizon, shining with glorious mellow light upon the gathered sheaves and the grattan where the wheat was garnered. So plain were the hill-tops to be seen that the very flocks could almost be numbered upon them; while the bare walls of limestone, the tors of spar, and the higher mounts were veined as by rifts of jewels, giving back in glittering flashes the moonbeams they had husbanded. The roads themselves were eloquent by night. When a farmer's cart went rumbling by, Gavin could hear the echo of the horse's hoofs and the rolling sound of wheels for quite a long time.
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