← catalogue

The Dark Flower

by John Galsworthy · English · Gutenberg #2192 · 448,646 chars · public domain (US)

The Project Gutenberg eBook of The Dark Flower
    
This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and
most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions
whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms
of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online
at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States,
you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located
before using this eBook.

Title: The Dark Flower

Author: John Galsworthy


        
Release date: June 14, 2006 [eBook #2192]
                Most recently updated: February 22, 2018

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/2192

Credits: Produced by Donald Lainson; David Widger


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE DARK FLOWER ***




Produced by Donald Lainson; David Widger




THE DARK FLOWER


by John Galsworthy



                     “Take the flower from my breast, I pray thee,
                      Take the flower too from out my tresses;
                      And then go hence, for see, the night is fair,
                      The stars rejoice to watch thee on thy way.”

                   —From “The Bard of the Dimbovitza.”






    CONTENTS


    THE DARK FLOWER

    PART I—SPRING

    PART II—SUMMER

    PART III—AUTUMN





THE DARK FLOWER





PART I—SPRING

I

He walked along Holywell that afternoon of early June with his short
gown drooping down his arms, and no cap on his thick dark hair. A youth
of middle height, and built as if he had come of two very different
strains, one sturdy, the other wiry and light. His face, too, was a
curious blend, for, though it was strongly formed, its expression was
rather soft and moody. His eyes—dark grey, with a good deal of light in
them, and very black lashes—had a way of looking beyond what they saw,
so that he did not seem always to be quite present; but his smile was
exceedingly swift, uncovering teeth as white as a negro's, and giving
his face a peculiar eagerness. People stared at him a little as he
passed—since in eighteen hundred and eighty he was before his time in
not wearing a cap. Women especially were interested; they perceived that
he took no notice of them, seeming rather to be looking into distance,
and making combinations in his soul.

Did he know of what he was thinking—did he ever know quite definitely
at that time of his life, when things, especially those beyond the
immediate horizon, were so curious and interesting?—the things he was
going to see and do when he had got through Oxford, where everybody
was 'awfully decent' to him and 'all right' of course, but not so very
interesting.

He was on his way to his tutor's to read an essay on Oliver Cromwell;
and under the old wall, which had once hedged in the town, he took out
of his pocket a beast. It was a small tortoise, and, with an extreme
absorption, he watched it move its little inquiring head, feeling it all
the time with his short, broad fingers, as though to discover exactly
how it was made. It was mighty hard in the back! No wonder poor old
Aeschylus felt a bit sick when it fell on his head! The ancients used
it to stand the world on—a pagoda world, perhaps, of men and beasts and
trees, like that carving on his guardian's Chinese cabinet. The Chinese
made jolly beasts and trees, as if they believed in everything having
a soul, and not only being just fit for people to eat or drive or make
houses of. If only the Art School would let him model things 'on his
own,' instead of copying and copying—it was just as if they imagined it
would be dangerous to let you think out anything for yourself!

He held the tortoise to his waistcoat, and let it crawl, till, noticing
that it was gnawing the corner of his essay, he put it back into his
pocket. What would his tutor do if he were to know it was there?—cock
his head a little to one side, and say: “Ah! there are things, Lennan,
not dreamed of in my philosophy!” Yes, there were a good many not
dreamed of by 'old Stormer,' who seemed so awfully afraid of anything
that wasn't usual; who seemed always laughing at you, for fear that you
should laugh at him. There were lots of people in Oxford like that. It
was stupid. You couldn't do anything decent if you were afraid of being
laughed at! Mrs. Stormer wasn't like that; she did things because—they
came into her head. But then, of course, she was Austrian, not English,
and ever so much younger than old Stormer.

And having reached the door of his tutor's house, he rang the bell....

II

When Anna Stormer came into the study she found her husband standing at
the window with his head a little on one side—a tall, long-legged figure
in clothes of a pleasant tweed, and wearing a low turn-over collar (not
common in those days) and a blue silk tie, which she had knitted, strung
through a ring. He was humming and gently tapping the window-pane with
his well-kept finger-nails. Though celebrated for the amount of work
he got through, she never caught him doing any in this house of theirs,
chosen because it was more than half a mile away from the College which
held the 'dear young clowns,' as he called them, of whom he was tutor.

He did not turn—it was not, of course, his habit to notice what was not
absolutely necessary—but she felt that he was aware of her. She came to
the window seat and sat down. He looked round at that, and said: “Ah!”

It was a murmur almost of admiration, not usual from him, since, with
the exception of certain portions of the classics, it was hardly his
custom to admire. But she knew that she was looking her best sitting
there, her really beautiful figure poised, the sun shining on her brown
hair, and brightening her deep-set, ice-green eyes under their black
lashes. It was sometimes a great comfort to her that she remained so
good-looking. It would have been an added vexation indeed to have felt
that she ruffled her husband's fastidiousness. Even so, her cheekbones
were too high for his taste, symbols of that something in her character
which did not go with his—the dash of desperation, of vividness, that
lack of a certain English smoothness, which always annoyed him.

“Harold!”—she would never quite flatten her r's—“I want to go to the
mountains this year.”

The mountains! She had not seen them since that season at San Martino di
Castrozza twelve years ago, which had ended in her marrying him.

“Nostalgia!”

“I don't know what that means—I am homesick. Can we go?”

“If you like—why not? But no leading up the Cimone della Pala for ME!”

She knew what he meant by that. No romance. How splendidly he had
led that day! She had almost worshipped him. What blindness! What
distortion! Was it really the same man standing there with those bright,
doubting eyes, with grey already in his hair? Yes, romance was over! And
she sat silent, looking out into the street—that little old street into
which she looked day and night. A figure passed out there, came to the
door, and rang.

She said softly: “Here is Mark Lennan!”

She felt her husband's eyes rest on her just for a moment, knew that he
had turned, heard him murmur: “Ah, the angel clown!” And, quite still,
she waited for the door to open. There was the boy, with his blessed
dark head, and his shy, gentle gravity, and his essay in his hand.

“Well, Lennan, and how's old Noll? Hypocrite of genius, eh? Draw up;
let's get him over!”

Motionless, from her seat at the window, she watched those two figures
at the table—the boy reading in his queer, velvety bass voice; her
husband leaning back with the tips of his fingers pressed together, his
head a little on one side, and that faint, satiric smile which never
reached his eyes. Yes, he was dozing, falling asleep; and the boy, not
seeing, was going on. Then he came to the end and glanced up. What eyes
he had! Other boys would have laughed; but he looked almost sorry. She
heard him murmur: “I'm awfully sorry, sir.”

“Ah, Lennan, you caught me! Fact is, term's fagged me out. We're going
to the mountains. Ever been to the mountains? What—never! You should
come with us, eh? What do you say, Anna? Don't you think this young man
ought to come with us?”

She got up, and stood staring at them both. Had she heard aright?

Then she answered—very gravely:

“Yes; I think he ought.”

“Good; we'll get HIM to lead up the Cimone della Pala!”

III

When the boy had said good-bye, and she had watched him out into the
street, Anna stood for a moment in the streak of sunlight that came in
through the open door, her hands pressed to cheeks which were flaming.
Then she shut the door and leaned her forehead against the window-pane,
seeing nothing. Her heart beat very fast; she was going over and over
again the scene just passed through. This meant so much more than it had
seemed to mean....

Though she always had Heimweh, and especially at the end of the summer
term, this year it had been a different feeling altogether that made her
say to her husband: “I want to go to the mountains!”

For twelve years she had longed for the mountains every summer, but had
not pleaded for them; this year she had pleaded, but she did not long
for them. It was because she had suddenly realized the strange fact that
she did not want to leave England, and the reason for it, that she
had come and begged to go. Yet why, when it was just to get away from
thought of this boy, had she said: “Yes, I think he ought to come!” Ah!
but life for her was always a strange pull between the conscientious
and the desperate; a queer, vivid, aching business! How long was it now
since that day when he first came to lunch, silent and shy, and suddenly
smiling as if he were all lighted up within—the day when she had said
to her husband afterwards: “Ah, he's an angel!” Not yet a year—the
beginning of last October term, in fact. He was different from all the
other boys; not that he was a prodigy with untidy hair, ill-fitting
clothes, and a clever tongue; but because of something—something—Ah!
well—different; because he was—he; because she longed to take his head
between her hands and kiss it. She remembered so well the day that
longing first came to her. She was giving him tea, it was quite early
in the Easter term; he was stroking her cat, who always went to him,
and telling her that he meant to be a sculptor, but that his guardian
objected, so that, of course, he could not start till he was of age. The
lamp on the table had a rose-coloured shade; he had been rowing—a very
cold day—and his face was glowing; generally it was rather pale. And
suddenly he smiled, and said: “It's rotten waiting for things, isn't
it?” It was then she had almost stretched out her hands to draw his
forehead to her lips. She had thought then that she wanted to kiss him,
because it would have been so nice to be his mother—she might just have
been his mother, if she had married at sixteen. But she had long known
now that she wanted to kiss, not his forehead, but his lips. He was
there in her life—a fire in a cold and unaired house; it had even become
hard to understand that she could have gone on all these years without
him. She had missed him so those six weeks of the Easter vacation,
she had revelled so in his three queer little letters, half-shy,
half-confidential; kissed them, and worn them in her dress! And in
return had written him long, perfectly correct epistles in her still
rather quaint English. She had never let him guess her feelings; the
idea that he might shocked her inexpressibly. When the summer term
began, life seemed to be all made up of thoughts of him. If, ten years
ago, her baby had lived, if its cruel death—after her agony—had not
killed for good her wish to have another; if for years now she had not
been living with the knowledge that she had no warmth to expect, and
that love was all over for her; if life in the most beautiful of all old
cities had been able to grip her—there would have been forces to check
this feeling. But there was nothing in the world to divert the current.
And she was so brimful of life, so conscious of vitality running to
sheer waste. Sometimes it had been terrific, that feeling within her,
of wanting to live—to find outlet for her energy. So many hundreds
of lonely walks she had taken during all these years, trying to lose
herself in Nature—hurrying alone, running in the woods, over the fields,
where people did not come, trying to get rid of that sense of waste,
trying once more to feel as she had felt when a girl, with the whole
world before her. It was not for nothing that her figure was superb, her
hair so bright a brown, her eyes so full of light. She had tried many
distractions. Work in the back streets, music, acting, hunting; given
them up one after the other; taken to them passionately again. They had
served in the past. But this year they had not served.... One Sunday,
coming from confession unconfessed, she had faced herself. It was
wicked. She would have to kill this feeling—must fly from this boy who
moved her so! If she did not act quickly, she would be swept away. And
then the thought had come: Why not? Life was to be lived—not torpidly
dozed through in this queer cultured place, where age was in the blood!
Life was for love—to be enjoyed! And she would be thirty-six next month!
It seemed to her already an enormous age. Thirty-six! Soon she would be
old, actually old—and never have known passion! The worship, which had
made a hero of the distinguished-looking Englishman, twelve years older
than herself, who could lead up the Cimone della Pala, had not been
passion. It might, perhaps, have become passion if he had so willed. But
he was all form, ice, books. Had he a heart at all, had he blood in his
veins? Was there any joy of life in this too beautiful city and these
people who lived in it—this place where even enthusiasms seemed to be
formal and have no wings, where everything was settled and sophisticated
as the very chapels and cloisters? And yet, to have this feeling for a
boy—for one almost young enough to be her son! It was so—shameless! That
thought haunted her, made her flush in the dark, lying awake at night.
And desperately she would pray—for she was devout—pray to be made pure,
to be given the holy feelings of a mother, to be filled simply with the
sweet sense that she could do everything, suffer anything for him, for
his good. After these long prayers she would feel calmed, drowsy, as
though she had taken a drug. For hours, perhaps, she would stay like
that. And then it would all come over her again. She never thought of
his loving her; that would be—unnatural. Why should he love her? She
was very humble about it. Ever since that Sunday, when she avoided the
confessional, she had brooded over how to make an end—how to get away
from a longing that was too strong for her. And she had hit on this
plan—to beg for the mountains, to go back to where her husband had come
into her life, and try if this feeling would not die. If it did not,
she would ask to be left out there with her own people, away from this
danger. And now the fool—the blind fool—the superior fool—with his
satiric smile, his everlasting patronage, had driven her to overturn her
own plan. Well, let him take the consequences; she had done her best!
She would have this one fling of joy, even if it meant that she must
stay out there, and never see the boy again!

Standing in her dusky hall, where a faint scent of woodrot crept out
into the air, whenever windows and doors were closed, she was all
tremulous with secret happiness. To be with him among her mountains, to
show him all those wonderful, glittering or tawny crags, to go with him
to the top of them and see the kingdoms of the world spread out below;
to wander with him in the pine woods, on the Alps in all the scent of
the trees and the flowers, where the sun was hot! The first of July; and
it was only the tenth of June! Would she ever live so long? They would
not go to San Martino this time, rather to Cortina—some new place that
had no memories!

She moved from the window, and busied herself with a bowl of flowers.
She had heard that humming sound which often heralded her husband's
approach, as though warning the world to recover its good form before
he reached it. In her happiness she felt kind and friendly to him. If
he had not meant to give her joy, he had nevertheless given it! He came
downstairs two at a time, with that air of not being a pedagogue, which
she knew so well; and, taking his hat off the stand, half turned round
to her.

“Pleasant youth, young Lennan; hope he won't bore us out there!”

His voice seemed to have an accent of compunction, to ask pardon for
having issued that impulsive invitation. And there came to her an
overwhelming wish to laugh. To hide it, to find excuse for it, she ran
up to him, and, pulling his coat lapels till his face was within reach,
she kissed the tip of his nose. And then she laughed. And he stood
looking at her, with his head just a little on one side, and his
eyebrows just a little raised.

IV

When young Mark heard a soft tapping at his door, though out of bed, he
was getting on but dreamily—it was so jolly to watch the mountains lying
out in this early light like huge beasts. That one they were going
up, with his head just raised above his paws, looked very far away out
there! Opening the door an inch, he whispered:

“Is it late?”

“Five o'clock; aren't you ready?”

It was awfully rude of him to keep her waiting! And he was soon down in
the empty dining-room, where a sleepy maid was already bringing in their
coffee. Anna was there alone. She had on a flax-blue shirt, open at the
neck, a short green skirt, and a grey-green velvety hat, small, with one
black-cock's feather. Why could not people always wear such nice things,
and be as splendid-looking! And he said:

“You do look jolly, Mrs. Stormer!”

She did not answer for so long that he wondered if it had been rude to
say that. But she DID look so strong, and swift, and happy-looking.

Down the hill, through a wood of larch-trees, to the river, and across
the bridge, to mount at once by a path through hay-fields. How could old
Stormer stay in bed on such a morning! The peasant girls in their
blue linen skirts were already gathering into bundles what the men had
scythed. One, raking at the edge of a field, paused and shyly nodded to
them. She had the face of a Madonna, very calm and grave and sweet, with
delicate arched brows—a face it was pure pleasure to see. The boy
looked back at her. Everything to him, who had never been out of England
before, seemed strange and glamorous. The chalets, with their long wide
burnt-brown wooden balconies and low-hanging eaves jutting far beyond
the walls; these bright dresses of the peasant women; the friendly
little cream-coloured cows, with blunt, smoke-grey muzzles. Even the
feel in the air was new, that delicious crisp burning warmth that lay so
lightly as it were on the surface of frozen stillness; and the special
sweetness of all places at the foot of mountains—scent of pine-gum,
burning larch-wood, and all the meadow flowers and grasses. But
newest of all was the feeling within him—a sort of pride, a sense
of importance, a queer exhilaration at being alone with her, chosen
companion of one so beautiful.

They passed all the other pilgrims bound the same way—stout square
Germans with their coats slung through straps, who trailed behind them
heavy alpenstocks, carried greenish bags, and marched stolidly at a pace
that never varied, growling, as Anna and the boy went by: “Aber eilen
ist nichts!”

But those two could not go fast enough to keep pace with their spirits.
This was no real climb—just a training walk to the top of the Nuvolau;
and they were up before noon, and soon again descending, very hungry.
When they entered the little dining-room of the Cinque Torre Hutte, they
found it occupied by a party of English people, eating omelettes,
who looked at Anna with faint signs of recognition, but did not cease
talking in voices that all had a certain half-languid precision, a
slight but brisk pinching of sounds, as if determined not to tolerate a
drawl, and yet to have one. Most of them had field-glasses slung round
them, and cameras were dotted here and there about the room. Their faces
were not really much alike, but they all had a peculiar drooping smile,
and a particular lift of the eyebrows, that made them seem reproductions
of a single type. Their teeth, too, for the most part were a little
prominent, as though the drooping of their mouths had forced them
forward. They were eating as people eat who distrust the lower senses,
preferring not to be compelled to taste or smell.

“From our hotel,” whispered Anna; and, ordering red wine and schnitzels,
she and the boy sat down. The lady who seemed in command of the English
party inquired now how Mr. Stormer was—he was not laid up, she hoped.
No? Only lazy? Indeed! He was a great climber, she believed. It seemed
to the boy that this lady somehow did not quite approve of them. The
talk was all maintained between her, a gentleman with a crumpled collar
and puggaree, and a short thick-set grey-bearded man in a dark Norfolk
jacket. If any of the younger members of the party spoke, the remark was
received with an arch lifting of the brows, and drooping of the lids, as
who should say: “Ah! Very promising!”

“Nothing in my life has given me greater pain than to observe the
aptitude of human nature for becoming crystallized.” It was the lady in
command who spoke, and all the young people swayed their faces up
and down, as if assenting. How like they were, the boy thought, to
guinea-fowl, with their small heads and sloping shoulders and speckly
grey coats!

“Ah! my dear lady”—it was the gentleman with the crumpled collar—“you
novelists are always girding at the precious quality of conformity. The
sadness of our times lies in this questioning spirit. Never was there
more revolt, especially among the young. To find the individual judging
for himself is a grave symptom of national degeneration. But this is not
a subject—”

“Surely, the subject is of the most poignant interest to all young
people.” Again all the young ones raised their faces and moved them
slightly from side to side.

“My dear lady, we are too prone to let the interest that things arouse
blind our judgment in regard to the advisability of discussing them. We
let these speculations creep and creep until they twine themselves round
our faith and paralyze it.”

One of the young men interjected suddenly: “Madre”—and was silent.

“I shall not, I think”—it was the lady speaking—“be accused of licence
when I say that I have always felt that speculation is only dangerous
when indulged in by the crude intelligence. If culture has nothing to
give us, then let us have no culture; but if culture be, as I think it,
indispensable, then we must accept the dangers that culture brings.”

Again the young people moved their faces, and again the younger of the
two young men said: “Madre—”

“Dangers? Have cultured people dangers?”

Who had spoken thus? Every eyebrow was going up, every mouth was
drooping, and there was silence. The boy stared at his companion. In
what a strange voice she had made that little interjection! There seemed
a sort of flame, too, lighted in her eyes. Then the little grey-bearded
man said, and his rather whispering voice sounded hard and acid:

“We are all human, my dear madam.”

The boy felt his heart go thump at Anna's laugh. It was just as if she
had said: “Ah! but not you—surely!” And he got up to follow her towards
the door.

The English party had begun already talking—of the weather.

The two walked some way from the 'hut' in silence, before Anna said:

“You didn't like me when I laughed?”

“You hurt their feelings, I think.”

“I wanted to—the English Grundys! Ah! don't be cross with me! They WERE
English Grundys, weren't they—every one?”

She looked into his face so hard, that he felt the blood rush to his
cheeks, and a dizzy sensation of being drawn forward.

“They have no blood, those people! Their voices, their supercilious eyes
that look you up and down! Oh! I've had so much of them! That woman with
her Liberalism, just as bad as any. I hate them all!”

He would have liked to hate them, too, since she did; but they had only
seemed to him amusing.

“They aren't human. They don't FEEL! Some day you'll know them. They
won't amuse you then!”

She went on, in a quiet, almost dreamy voice:

“Why do they come here? It's still young and warm and good out here. Why
don't they keep to their Culture, where no one knows what it is to ache
and feel hunger, and hearts don't beat. Feel!”

Disturbed beyond measure, the boy could not tell whether it was in her
heart or in his hand that the blood was pulsing so. Was he glad or sorry
when she let his hand go?

“Ah, well! They can't spoil this day. Let's rest.”

At the edge of the larch-wood where they sat, were growing numbers
of little mountain pinks, with fringed edges and the sweetest scent
imaginable; and she got up presently to gather them. But he stayed where
he was, and odd sensations stirred in him. The blue of the sky, the
feathery green of the larch-trees, the mountains, were no longer to him
what they had been early that morning.

She came back with her hands full of the little pinks, spread her
fingers and let them drop. They showered all over his face and neck.
Never was so wonderful a scent; never such a strange feeling as they
gave him. They clung to his hair, his forehead, his eyes, one even got
caught on the curve of his lips; and he stared up at her through their
fringed petals. There must have been something wild in his eyes then,
something of the feeling that was stinging his heart, for her smile
died; she walked away, and stood with her face turned from him.
Confused, and unhappy, he gathered the strewn flowers; and not till he
had collected every one did he get up and shyly take them to her, where
she still stood, gazing into the depths of the larch-wood.

V

What did he know of women, that should make him understand? At his
public school he had seen none to speak to; at Oxford, only this one. At
home in the holidays, not any, save his sister Cicely. The two hobbies
of their guardian, fishing, and the antiquities of his native
county, rendered him averse to society; so that his little Devonshire
manor-house, with its black oak panels and its wild stone-walled park
along the river-side was, from year's end to year's end, innocent of
all petticoats, save those of Cicely and old Miss Tring, the governess.
Then, too, the boy was shy. No, there was nothing in his past, of not
yet quite nineteen years, to go by. He was not of those youths who are
always thinking of conquests. The very idea of conquest seemed to him
vulgar, mean, horrid. There must be many signs indeed before it would
come into his head that a woman was in love with him, especially the one
to whom he looked up, and thought so beautiful. For before all beauty
he was humble, inclined to think himself a clod. It was the part of life
which was always unconsciously sacred, and to be approached trembling.
The more he admired, the more tremulous and diffident he became. And so,
after his one wild moment, when she plucked those sweet-scented blossoms
and dropped them over him, he felt abashed; and walking home beside her
he was quieter than ever, awkward to the depths of his soul.

If there were confusion in his heart which had been innocent of trouble,
what must there have been in hers, that for so long had secretly desired
the dawning of that confusion? And she, too, was very silent.

Passing a church with open door in the outskirts of the village, she
said:

“Don't wait for me—I want to go in here a little.”

In the empty twilight within, one figure, a countrywoman in her black
shawl, was kneeling—marvellously still. He would have liked to stay.
That kneeling figure, the smile of the sunlight filtering through into
the half darkness! He lingered long enough to see Anna, too, go down on
her knees in the stillness. Was she praying? Again he had the turbulent
feeling with which he had watched her pluck those flowers. She looked so
splendid kneeling there! It was caddish to feel like that, when she was
praying, and he turned quickly away into the road. But that sharp, sweet
stinging sensation did not leave him. He shut his eyes to get rid of her
image—and instantly she became ten times more visible, his feeling ten
times stronger. He mounted to the hotel; there on the terrace was his
tutor. And oddly enough, the sight of him at that moment was no more
embarrassing than if it had been the hotel concierge. Stormer did not
somehow seem to count; did not seem to want you to count him. Besides,
he was so old—nearly fifty!

The man who was so old was posed in a characteristic attitude—hands in
the pockets of his Norfolk jacket, one shoulder slightly raised, head
just a little on one side, as if preparing to quiz something. He spoke
as Lennan came up, smiling—but not with his eyes.

“Well, young man, and what have you done with my wife?”

“Left her in a church, sir.”

“Ah! She will do that! Has she run you off your legs? No? Then let's
walk and talk a little.”

To be thus pacing up and down and talking with her husband seemed quite
natural, did not even interfere with those new sensations, did not in
the least increase his shame for having them. He only wondered a little
how she could have married him—but so little! Quite far and academic was
his wonder—like his wonder in old days how his sister could care to play
with dolls. If he had any other feeling, it was just a longing to get
away and go down the hill again to the church. It seemed cold and lonely
after all that long day with her—as if he had left himself up there,
walking along hour after hour, or lying out in the sun beside her. What
was old Stormer talking about? The difference between the Greek and
Roman views of honour. Always in the past—seemed to think the present
was bad form. And he said:

“We met some English Grundys, sir, on the mountain.”

“Ah, yes! Any particular brand?”

“Some advanced, and some not; but all the same, I think, really.”

“I see. Grundys, I think you said?”

“Yes, sir, from this hotel. It was Mrs. Stormer's name for them. They
were so very superior.”

“Quite.”

There was something unusual in the tone of that little word. And the boy
stared—for the first time there seemed a real man standing there. Then
the blood rushed up into his cheeks, for there she was! Would she come
up to them? How splendid she was looking, burnt by the sun, and walking
as if just starting! But she passed into the hotel without turning her
head their way. Had he offended, hurt her? He made an excuse, and got
away to his room.

In the window from which that same morning he had watched the mountains
lying out like lions in the dim light, he stood again, and gazed at the
sun dropping over the high horizon. What had happened to him? He felt
so different, so utterly different. It was another world. And the most
strange feeling came on him, as of the flowers falling again all over
his face and neck and hands, the tickling of their soft-fringed edges,
the stinging sweetness of their scent. And he seemed to hear her voice
saying: “Feel!” and to feel her heart once more beating under his hand.

VI

Alone with that black-shawled figure in the silent church, Anna did
not pray. Resting there on her knees, she experienced only the sore
sensation of revolt. Why had Fate flung this feeling into her heart,
lighted up her life suddenly, if God refused her its enjoyment? Some of
the mountain pinks remained clinging to her belt, and the scent of them,
crushed against her, warred with the faint odour of age and incense.
While they were there, with their enticement and their memories, prayer
would never come. But did she want to pray? Did she desire the mood
of that poor soul in her black shawl, who had not moved by one hair's
breadth since she had been watching her, who seemed resting her humble
self so utterly, letting life lift from her, feeling the relief of
nothingness? Ah, yes! what would it be to have a life so toilsome, so
little exciting from day to day and hour to hour, that just to kneel
there in wistful stupor was the greatest pleasure one could know? It was
beautiful to see her, but it was sad. And there came over Anna a longing
to go up to her neighbour and say: “Tell me your troubles; we are both
women.” She had lost a son, perhaps, some love—or perhaps not really
love, only some illusion. Ah! Love.... Why should any spirit yearn, why
should any body, full of strength and joy, wither slowly away for want
of love? Was there not enough in this great world for her, Anna, to have
a little? She would not harm him, for she would know when he had had
enough of her; she would surely have the pride and grace then to let
him go. For, of course, he would get tired of her. At her age she could
never hope to hold a boy more than a few years—months, perhaps. But
would she ever hold him at all? Youth was so hard—it had no heart!
And then the memory of his eyes came back—gazing up, troubled, almost
wild—when she had dropped on him those flowers. That memory filled her
with a sort of delirium. One look from her then, one touch, and he
would have clasped her to him. She was sure of it, yet scarcely dared
to believe what meant so much. And suddenly the torment that she must go
through, whatever happened, seemed to her too brutal and undeserved! She
rose. Just one gleam of sunlight was still slanting through the doorway;
it failed by a yard or so to reach the kneeling countrywoman, and Anna
watched. Would it steal on and touch her, or would the sun pass down
behind the mountains, and it fade away? Unconscious of that issue, the
black-shawled figure knelt, never moving. And the beam crept on. “If it
touches her, then he will love me, if only for an hour; if it fades out
too soon—” And the beam crept on. That shadowy path of light, with its
dancing dust-motes, was it indeed charged with Fate—indeed the augury
of Love or Darkness? And, slowly moving, it mounted, the sun sinking; it
rose above that bent head, hovered in a golden mist, passed—and suddenly
was gone.

Unsteadily, seeing nothing plain, Anna walked out of the church. Why she
passed her husband and the boy on the terrace without a look she could
not quite have said—perhaps because the tortured does not salute her
torturers. When she reached her room she felt deadly tired, and lying
down on her bed, almost at once fell asleep.

She was wakened by a sound, and, recognizing the delicate 'rat-tat' of
her husband's knock, did not answer, indifferent whether he came in or
no. He entered noiselessly. If she did not let him know she was awake,
he would not wake her. She lay still and watched him sit down astride of
a chair, cross his arms on its back, rest his chin on them, and fix
his eyes on her. Through her veil of eyelashes she had unconsciously
contrived that his face should be the one object plainly seen—the more
intensely visualized, because of this queer isolation. She did not feel
at all ashamed of this mutual fixed scrutiny, in which she had such
advantage. He had never shown her what was in him, never revealed what
lay behind those bright satiric eyes. Now, perhaps, she would see! And
she lay, regarding him with the intense excited absorption with which
one looks at a tiny wildflower through a magnifying-lens, and watches
its insignificance expanded to the size and importance of a hothouse
bloom. In her mind was this thought: He is looking at me with his real
self, since he has no reason for armour against me now. At first his
eyes seemed masked with their customary brightness, his whole face with
its usual decorous formality; then gradually he became so changed that
she hardly knew him. That decorousness, that brightness, melted off what
lay behind, as frosty dew melts off grass. And her very soul contracted
within her, as if she had become identified with what he was seeing—a
something to be passed over, a very nothing. Yes, his was the face of
one looking at what was unintelligible, and therefore negligible; at
that which had no soul; at something of a different and inferior species
and of no great interest to a man. His face was like a soundless avowal
of some conclusion, so fixed and intimate that it must surely emanate
from the very core of him—be instinctive, unchangeable. This was
the real he! A man despising women! Her first thought was: And he's
married—what a fate! Her second: If he feels that, perhaps thousands of
men do! Am I and all women really what they think us? The conviction in
his stare—its through-and-through conviction—had infected her; and she
gave in to it for the moment, crushed. Then her spirit revolted with
such turbulence, and the blood so throbbed in her, that she could
hardly lie still. How dare he think her like that—a nothing, a bundle of
soulless inexplicable whims and moods and sensuality? A thousand times,
No! It was HE who was the soulless one, the dry, the godless one; who,
in his sickening superiority, could thus deny her, and with her all
women! That stare was as if he saw her—a doll tricked out in garments
labelled soul, spirit, rights, responsibilities, dignity, freedom—all so
many words. It was vile, it was horrible, that he should see her thus!
And a really terrific struggle began in her between the desire to get
up and cry this out, and the knowledge that it would be stupid,
undignified, even mad, to show her comprehension of what he would never
admit or even understand that he had revealed to her. And then a sort of
cynicism came to her rescue. What a funny thing was married life—to have
lived all these years with him, and never known what was at the bottom
of his heart! She had the feeling now that, if she went up to him and
said: “I am in love with that boy!” it would only make him droop the
corners of his mouth and say in his most satiric voice: “Really! That
is very interesting!”—would not change in one iota his real thoughts
of her; only confirm him in the conviction that she was negligible,
inexplicable, an inferior strange form of animal, of no real interest to
him.

And then, just when she felt that she could not hold herself in any
longer, he got up, passed on tiptoe to the door, opened it noiselessly,
and went out.

The moment he had gone, she jumped up. So, then, she was linked to one
for whom she, for whom women, did not, as it were, exist! It seemed to
her that she had stumbled on knowledge of almost sacred importance,
on the key of everything that had been puzzling and hopeless in their
married life. If he really, secretly, whole-heartedly despised her,
the only feeling she need have for one so dry, so narrow, so basically
stupid, was just contempt. But she knew well enough that contempt would
not shake what she had seen in his face; he was impregnably walled
within his clever, dull conviction of superiority. He was for ever
intrenched, and she would always be only the assailant. Though—what did
it matter, now?

Usually swift, almost careless, she was a long time that evening over
her toilette. Her neck was very sunburnt, and she lingered, doubtful
whether to hide it with powder, or accept her gipsy colouring. She did
accept it, for she saw that it gave her eyes, so like glacier ice, under
their black lashes, and her hair, with its surprising glints of flame
colour, a peculiar value.

When the dinner-bell rang she passed her husband's door without, as
usual, knocking, and went down alone.

In the hall she noticed some of the English party of the mountain
hut. They did not greet her, conceiving an immediate interest in the
barometer; but she could feel them staring at her very hard. She sat
down to wait, and at once became conscious of the boy coming over from
the other side of the room, rather like a person walking in his sleep.
He said not a word. But how he looked! And her heart began to beat. Was
this the moment she had longed for? If it, indeed, had come, dared she
take it? Then she saw her husband descending the stairs, saw him greet
the English party, heard the intoning of their drawl. She looked up
at the boy, and said quickly: “Was it a happy day?” It gave her such
delight to keep that look on his face, that look as if he had forgotten
everything except just the sight of her. His eyes seemed to have in
them something holy at that moment, something of the wonder-yearning of
Nature and of innocence. It was dreadful to know that in a moment that
look must be gone; perhaps never to come back on his face—that look so
precious! Her husband was approaching now! Let him see, if he would! Let
him see that someone could adore—that she was not to everyone a kind
of lower animal. Yes, he must have seen the boy's face; and yet
his expression never changed. He noticed nothing! Or was it that he
disdained to notice?

VII

Then followed for young Lennan a strange time, when he never knew from
minute to minute whether he was happy—always trying to be with her,
restless if he could not be, sore if she talked with and smiled at
others; yet, when he was with her, restless too, unsatisfied, suffering
from his own timidity.

One wet morning, when she was playing the hotel piano, and he
listening, thinking to have her to himself, there came a young German
violinist—pale, and with a brown, thin-waisted coat, longish hair, and
little whiskers—rather a beast, in fact. Soon, of course, this young
beast was asking her to accompany him—as if anyone wanted to hear him
play his disgusting violin! Every word and smile that she gave him hurt
so, seeing how much more interesting than himself this foreigner was!
And his heart grew heavier and heavier, and he thought: If she likes
him I ought not to mind—only, I DO mind! How can I help minding? It was
hateful to see her smiling, and the young beast bending down to her.
And they were talking German, so that he could not tell what they were
saying, which made it more unbearable. He had not known there could be
such torture.

And then he began to want to hurt her, too. But that was mean—besides,
how could he hurt her? She did not care for him. He was nothing to
her—only a boy. If she really thought him only a boy, who felt so old—it
would be horrible. It flashed across him that she might be playing that
young violinist against him! No, she never would do that! But the young
beast looked just the sort that might take advantage of her smiles.
If only he WOULD do something that was not respectful, how splendid it
would be to ask him to come for a walk in the woods, and, having told
him why, give him a thrashing. Afterwards, he would not tell her, he
would not try to gain credit by it. He would keep away till she wanted
him back. But suddenly the thought of what he would feel if she really
meant to take this young man as her friend in place of him became so
actual, so poignant, so horribly painful, that he got up abruptly and
went towards the door. Would she not say a word to him before he got out
of the room, would she not try and keep him? If she did not, surely it
would be all over; it would mean that anybody was more to her than
he. That little journey to the door, indeed, seemed like a march
to execution. Would she not call after him? He looked back. She was
smiling. But HE could not smile; she had hurt him too much! Turning his
head away, he went out, and dashed into the rain bareheaded. The feeling
of it on his face gave him a sort of dismal satisfaction. Soon he would
be wet through. Perhaps he would get ill. Out here, far away from his
people, she would have to offer to nurse him; and perhaps—perhaps in
his illness he would seem to her again more interesting than that young
beast, and then—Ah! if only he could be ill!

He mounted rapidly through the dripping leaves towards the foot of the
low mountain that rose behind the hotel. A trail went up there to the
top, and he struck into it, going at a great pace. His sense of injury
began dying away; he no longer wanted to be ill. The rain had stopped,
the sun came out; he went on, up and up. He would get to the top quicker
than anyone ever had! It was something he could do better than that
young beast. The pine-trees gave way to stunted larches, and these to
pine scrub and bare scree, up which he scrambled, clutching at the tough
bushes, terribly out of breath, his heart pumping, the sweat streaming
into his eyes. He had no feeling now but wonder whether he would get
to the top before he dropped, exhausted. He thought he would die of
the beating of his heart; but it was better to die than to stop and be
beaten by a few yards. He stumbled up at last on to the little plateau
at the top. For full ten minutes he lay there on his face without
moving, then rolled over. His heart had given up that terrific thumping;
he breathed luxuriously, stretched out his arms along the steaming
grass—felt happy. It was wonderful up here, with the sun burning hot in
a sky clear-blue already. How tiny everything looked below—hotel, trees,
village, chalets—little toy things! He had never before felt the sheer
joy of being high up. The rain-clouds, torn and driven in huge white
shapes along the mountains to the South, were like an army of giants
with chariots and white horses hurrying away. He thought suddenly:
“Suppose I had died when my heart pumped so! Would it have mattered the
least bit? Everything would be going on just the same, the sun shining,
the blue up there the same; and those toy things down in the valley.”
That jealousy of his an hour ago, why—it was nothing—he himself nothing!
What did it matter if she were nice to that fellow in the brown coat?
What did anything matter when the whole thing was so big—and he such a
tiny scrap of it?

On the edge of the plateau, to mark the highest point, someone had
erected a rude cross, which jutted out stark against the blue sky. It
looked cruel somehow, sagged all crooked, and out of place up here; a
piece of bad manners, as if people with only one idea had dragged it
in, without caring whether or no it suited what was around it. One might
just as well introduce one of these rocks into that jolly dark church
where he had left her the other day, as put a cross up here.

A sound of bells, and of sniffing and scuffling, roused him; a large
grey goat had come up and was smelling at his hair—the leader of a
flock, that were soon all round him, solemnly curious, with their queer
yellow oblong-pupilled eyes, and their quaint little beards and tails.
Awfully decent beasts—and friendly! What jolly things to model! He lay
still (having learnt from the fisherman, his guardian, that necessary
habit in the presence of all beasts), while the leader sampled the
flavour of his neck. The passage of that long rough tongue athwart his
skin gave him an agreeable sensation, awakened a strange deep sense of
comradeship. He restrained his desire to stroke the creature's nose.
It appeared that they now all wished to taste his neck; but some were
timid, and the touch of their tongues simply a tickle, so that he was
compelled to laugh, and at that peculiar sound they withdrew and gazed
at him. There seemed to be no one with them; then, at a little distance,
quite motionless in the shade of a rock, he spied the goatherd, a boy
about his own age. How lonely he must be up here all day! Perhaps he
talked to his goats. He looked as if he might. One would get to have
queer thoughts up here, get to know the rocks, and clouds, and beasts,
and what they all meant. The goatherd uttered a peculiar whistle,
and something, Lennan could not tell exactly what, happened among the
goats—a sort of “Here, Sir!” seemed to come from them. And then the
goatherd moved out from the shade and went over to the edge of the
plateau, and two of the goats that were feeding there thrust their noses
into his hand, and rubbed themselves against his legs. The three looked
beautiful standing there together on the edge against the sky....

That night, after dinner, the dining-room was cleared for dancing, so
that the guests might feel freedom and gaiety in the air. And, indeed,
presently, a couple began sawing up and down over the polished boards,
in the apologetic manner peculiar to hotel guests. Then three pairs of
Italians suddenly launched themselves into space—twirling and twirling,
and glaring into each other's eyes; and some Americans, stimulated by
their precept, began airily backing and filling. Two of the 'English
Grundys' with carefully amused faces next moved out. To Lennan it seemed
that they all danced very well, better than he could. Did he dare ask
HER? Then he saw the young violinist go up, saw her rise and take his
arm and vanish into the dancing-room; and leaning his forehead against
a window-pane, with a sick, beaten feeling, he stayed, looking out into
the moonlight, seeing nothing. He heard his name spoken; his tutor was
standing beside him.

“You and I, Lennan, must console each other. Dancing's for the young,
eh?”

Fortunately it was the boy's instinct and his training not to show his
feelings; to be pleasant, though suffering.

“Yes, sir. Jolly moonlight, isn't it, out there?”

“Ah! very jolly; yes. When I was your age I twirled the light fantastic
with the best. But gradually, Lennan, one came to see it could not be
done without a partner—there was the rub! Tell me—do you regard women as
responsible beings? I should like to have your opinion on that.”

It was, of course, ironical—yet there was something in those
words—something!

“I think it's you, sir, who ought to give me yours.”

“My dear Lennan—my experience is a mere nothing!”

That was meant for unkindness to her! He would not answer. If only
Stormer would go away! The music had stopped. They would be sitting out
somewhere, talking! He made an effort, and said:

“I was up the hill at the back this morning, where the cross is. There
were some jolly goats.”

And suddenly he saw her coming. She was alone—flushed, smiling; it
struck him that her frock was the same colour as the moonlight.

“Harold, will you dance?”

He would say 'Yes,' and she would be gone again! But his tutor only made
her a little bow, and said with that smile of his:

“Lennan and I have agreed that dancing is for the young.”

“Sometimes the old must sacrifice themselves. Mark, will you dance?”

Behind him he heard his tutor murmur:

“Ah! Lennan—you betray me!”

That little silent journey with her to the dancing-room was the happiest
moment perhaps that he had ever known. And he need not have been so much
afraid about his dancing. Truly, it was not polished, but it could not
spoil hers, so light, firm, buoyant! It was wonderful to dance with her.
Only when the music stopped and they sat down did he know how his head
was going round. He felt strange, very strange indeed. He heard her say:

“What is it, dear boy? You look so white!”

Without quite knowing what he did, he bent his face towards the hand
that she had laid on his sleeve, then knew no more, having fainted.

VIII

Growing boy—over-exertion in the morning! That was all! He was himself
very quickly, and walked up to bed without assistance. Rotten of him!
Never was anyone more ashamed of his little weakness than this boy. Now
that he was really a trifle indisposed, he simply could not bear the
idea of being nursed at all or tended. Almost rudely he had got away.
Only when he was in bed did he remember the look on her face as he left
her. How wistful and unhappy, seeming to implore him to forgive her! As
if there were anything to forgive! As if she had not made him perfectly
happy when she danced with him! He longed to say to her: “If I might be
close to you like that one minute every day, then I don't mind all the
rest!” Perhaps he would dare say that to-morrow. Lying there he still
felt a little funny. He had forgotten to close the ribs of the blinds,
and moonlight was filtering in; but he was too idle, too drowsy to get
up now and do it. They had given him brandy, rather a lot—that perhaps
was the reason he felt so queer; not ill, but mazy, as if dreaming, as
if he had lost the desire ever to move again. Just to lie there, and
watch the powdery moonlight, and hear faraway music throbbing down
below, and still feel the touch of her, as in the dance she swayed
against him, and all the time to have the scent about him of flowers!
His thoughts were dreams, his dreams thoughts—all precious unreality.
And then it seemed to him that the moonlight was gathered into a single
slip of pallor—there was a thrumming, a throbbing, and that shape of
moonlight moved towards him. It came so close that he felt its warmth
against his brow; it sighed, hovered, drew back soundless, and was gone.
He must have fallen then into dreamless sleep....

What time was it when he was awakened by that delicate 'rat-tat' to see
his tutor standing in the door-way with a cup of tea?

Was young Lennan all right? Yes, he was perfectly all right—would be
down directly! It was most frightfully good of Mr. Stormer to come! He
really didn't want anything.

Yes, yes; but the maimed and the halt must be attended to!

His face seemed to the boy very kind just then—only to laugh at him a
very little—just enough. And it was awfully decent of him to have come,
and to stand there while he drank the tea. He was really all right, but
for a little headache. Many times while he was dressing he stood still,
trying to remember. That white slip of moonlight? Was it moonlight?
Was it part of a dream; or was it, could it have been she, in her
moonlight-coloured frock? Why had he not stayed awake? He would not dare
to ask her, and now would never know whether the vague memory of warmth
on his brow had been a kiss.

He breakfasted alone in the room where they had danced. There were two
letters for him. One from his guardian enclosing money, and complaining
of the shyness of the trout; the other from his sister. The man she
was engaged to—he was a budding diplomat, attached to the Embassy at
Rome—was afraid that his leave was going to be curtailed. They would
have to be married at once. They might even have to get a special
licence. It was lucky Mark was coming back so soon. They simply MUST
have him for best man. The only bridesmaid now would be Sylvia....
Sylvia Doone? Why, she was only a kid! And the memory of a little girl
in a very short holland frock, with flaxen hair, pretty blue eyes, and
a face so fair that you could almost see through it, came up before
him. But that, of course, was six years ago; she would not still be in
a frock that showed her knees, or wear beads, or be afraid of bulls that
were never there. It was stupid being best man—they might have got
some decent chap! And then he forgot all—for there was SHE, out on
the terrace. In his rush to join her he passed several of the 'English
Grundys,' who stared at him askance. Indeed, his conduct of the night
before might well have upset them. An Oxford man, fainting in an hotel!
Something wrong there! . . .

And then, when he reached her, he did find courage.

“Was it really moonlight?”

“All moonlight.”

“But it was warm!”

And, when she did not answer that, he had within him just the same
light, intoxicated feeling as after he had won a race at school.

But now came a dreadful blow. His tutor's old guide had suddenly turned
up, after a climb with a party of Germans. The war-horse had been
aroused in Stormer. He wished to start that afternoon for a certain hut,
and go up a certain peak at dawn next day. But Lennan was not to go. Why
not? Because of last night's faint; and because, forsooth, he was not
some stupid thing they called 'an expert.' As if—! Where she could go he
could! This was to treat him like a child. Of course he could go up this
rotten mountain. It was because she did not care enough to take him!
She did not think him man enough! Did she think that he could not climb
what—her husband—could? And if it were dangerous SHE ought not to be
going, leaving him behind—that was simply cruel! But she only smiled,
and he flung away from her, not having seen that all this grief of his
only made her happy.

And that afternoon they went off without him. What deep, dark thoughts
he had then! What passionate hatred of his own youth! What schemes he
wove, by which she might come back, and find him gone-up some mountain
far more dangerous and fatiguing! If people did not think him fit to
climb with, he would climb by himself. That, anyway, everyone admitted,
was dangerous. And it would be her fault. She would be sorry then. He
would get up, and be off before dawn; he put his things out ready, and
filled his flask. The moonlight that evening was more wonderful than
ever, the mountains like great ghosts of themselves. And she was up
there at the hut, among them! It was very long before he went to sleep,
brooding over his injuries—intending not to sleep at all, so as to be
ready to be off at three o'clock. At NINE o'clock he woke. His wrath was
gone; he only felt restless and ashamed. If, instead of flying out, he
had made the best of it, he could have gone with them as far as the hut,
could have stayed the night there. And now he cursed himself for being
such a fool and idiot. Some little of that idiocy he could, perhaps,
retrieve. If he started for the hut at once, he might still be in time
to meet them coming down, and accompany them home. He swallowed his
coffee, and set off. He knew the way at first, then in woods lost it,
recovered the right track again at last, but did not reach the hut till
nearly two o'clock. Yes, the party had made the ascent that morning—they
had been seen, been heard jodelling on the top. Gewiss! Gewiss! But they
would not come down the same way. Oh, no! They would be going home down
to the West and over the other pass. They would be back in house before
the young Herr himself.

He heard this, oddly, almost with relief. Was it the long walk alone, or
being up there so high? Or simply that he was very hungry? Or just these
nice friendly folk in the hut, and their young daughter with her fresh
face, queer little black cloth sailor hat with long ribbons, velvet
bodice, and perfect simple manners; or the sight of the little
silvery-dun cows, thrusting their broad black noses against her hand?
What was it that had taken away from him all his restless feeling, made
him happy and content?... He did not know that the newest thing always
fascinates the puppy in its gambols! ... He sat a long while after
lunch, trying to draw the little cows, watching the sun on the cheek of
that pretty maiden, trying to talk to her in German. And when at last he
said: “Adieu!” and she murmured “Kuss die Hand. Adieu!” there was quite
a little pang in his heart.... Wonderful and queer is the heart of
a man!... For all that, as he neared home he hastened, till he was
actually running. Why had he stayed so long up there? She would be
back—she would expect to see him; and that young beast of a violinist
would be with her, perhaps, instead! He reached the hotel just in time
to rush up and dress, and rush down to dinner. Ah! They were tired,
no doubt—were resting in their rooms. He sat through dinner as best he
could; got away before dessert, and flew upstairs. For a minute he stood
there doubtful; on which door should he knock? Then timidly he tapped
on hers. No answer! He knocked loud on his tutor's door. No answer! They
were not back, then. Not back? What could that mean? Or could it be
that they were both asleep? Once more he knocked on her door; then
desperately turned the handle, and took a flying glance. Empty, tidy,
untouched! Not back! He turned and ran downstairs again. All the guests
were streaming out from dinner, and he became entangled with a group of
'English Grundys' discussing a climbing accident which had occurred in
Switzerland. He listened, feeling suddenly quite sick. One of them, the
short grey-bearded Grundy with the rather whispering voice, said to him:
“All alone again to-night? The Stormers not back?” Lennan did his best
to answer, but something had closed his throat; he could only shake his
head.

“They had a guide, I think?” said the 'English Grundy.'

This time Lennan managed to get out: “Yes, sir.”

“Stormer, I fancy, is quite an expert!” and turning to the lady whom the
young 'Grundys' addressed as 'Madre' he added:

“To me the great charm of mountain-climbing was always the freedom from
people—the remoteness.”

The mother of the young 'Grundys,' looking at Lennan with her
half-closed eyes, answered:

“That, to me, would be the disadvantage; I always like to be mixing with
my own kind.”

The grey-bearded 'Grundy' murmured in a muffled voice:

“Dangerous thing, that, to say—in an hotel!”

And they went on talking, but of what Lennan no longer knew, lost in
this sudden feeling of sick fear. In the presence of these 'English
Grundys,' so superior to all vulgar sensations, he could not give vent
to his alarm; already they viewed him as unsound for having fainted.
Then he grasped that there had begun all round him a sort of luxurious
speculation on what might have happened to the Stormers. The descent was
very nasty; there was a particularly bad traverse. The 'Grundy,' whose
collar was not now crumpled, said he did not believe in women climbing.
It was one of the signs of the times that he most deplored. The mother
of the young 'Grundys' countered him at once: In practice she agreed
that they were out of place, but theoretically she could not see
why they should not climb. An American standing near threw all into
confusion by saying he guessed that it might be liable to develop their
understandings. Lennan made for the front door. The moon had just come
up over in the South, and exactly under it he could see their mountain.
What visions he had then! He saw her lying dead, saw himself climbing
down in the moonlight and raising her still-living, but half-frozen,
form from some perilous ledge. Even that was almost better than this
actuality of not knowing where she was, or what had happened. People
passed out into the moonlight, looking curiously at his set face staring
so fixedly. One or two asked him if he were anxious, and he answered:
“Oh no, thanks!” Soon there would have to be a search party. How soon?
He would, he must be, of it! They should not stop him this time. And
suddenly he thought: Ah, it is all because I stayed up there this
afternoon talking to that girl, all because I forgot HER!

And then he heard a stir behind him. There they were, coming down
the passage from a side door—she in front with her alpenstock and
rucksack—smiling. Instinctively he recoiled behind some plants. They
passed. Her sunburned face, with its high cheek-bones and its deep-set
eyes, looked so happy; smiling, tired, triumphant. Somehow he could not
bear it, and when they were gone by he stole out into the wood and threw
himself down in shadow, burying his face, and choking back a horrible
dry sobbing that would keep rising in his throat.

IX

Next day he was happy; for all the afternoon he lay out in the shade of
that same wood at her feet, gazing up through larch-boughs. It was so
wonderful, with nobody but Nature near. Nature so alive, and busy, and
so big!

Coming down from the hut the day before, he had seen a peak that looked
exactly like the figure of a woman with a garment over her head, the
biggest statue in the world; from further down it had become the figure
of a bearded man, with his arm bent over his eyes. Had she seen it? Had
she noticed how all the mountains in moonlight or very early morning
took the shape of beasts? What he wanted most in life was to be able to
make images of beasts and creatures of all sorts, that were like—that
had—that gave out the spirit of—Nature; so that by just looking at them
one could have all those jolly feelings one had when one was watching
trees, and beasts, and rocks, and even some sorts of men—but not
'English Grundys.'

So he was quite determined to study Art?

Oh yes, of course!

He would want to leave—Oxford, then!

No, oh no! Only some day he would have to.

She answered: “Some never get away!”

And he said quickly: “Of course, I shall never want to leave Oxford
while you are there.”

He heard her draw her breath in sharply.

“Oh yes, you will! Now help me up!” And she led the way back to the
hotel.

He stayed out on the terrace when she had gone in, restless and unhappy
the moment he was away from her. A voice close by said:

“Well, friend Lennan—brown study, or blue devils, which?”

There, in one of those high wicker chairs that insulate their occupants
from the world, he saw his tutor leaning back, head a little to one
side, and tips of fingers pressed together. He looked like an idol
sitting there inert, and yet—yesterday he had gone up that mountain!

“Cheer up! You will break your neck yet! When I was your age, I remember
feeling it deeply that I was not allowed to risk the lives of others.”

Lennan stammered out:

“I didn't think of that; but I thought where Mrs. Stormer could go, I
could.”

“Ah! For all our admiration we cannot quite admit—can we, when it comes
to the point?”

The boy's loyalty broke into flame:

“It's not that. I think Mrs. Stormer as good as any man—only—only—”

“Not quite so good as you, eh?”

“A hundred times better, sir.”

Stormer smiled. Ironic beast!

“Lennan,” he said, “distrust hyperbole.”

“Of course, I know I'm no good at climbing,” the boy broke out again;
“but—but—I thought where she was allowed to risk her life, I ought to
be!”

“Good! I like that.” It was said so entirely without irony for once,
that the boy was disconcerted.

“You are young, Brother Lennan,” his tutor went on. “Now, at what age
do you consider men develop discretion? Because, there is just one thing
always worth remembering—women have none of that better part of valour.”

“I think women are the best things in the world,” the boy blurted out.

“May you long have that opinion!” His tutor had risen, and was
ironically surveying his knees. “A bit stiff!” he said. “Let me know
when you change your views!”

“I never shall, sir.”

“Ah, ah! Never is a long word, Lennan. I am going to have some tea;”
and gingerly he walked away, quizzing, as it were, with a smile, his own
stiffness.

Lennan remained where he was, with burning cheeks. His tutor's words
again had seemed directed against her. How could a man say such things
about women! If they were true, he did not want to know; if they were
not true, it was wicked to say them. It must be awful never to have
generous feelings; always to have to be satirical. Dreadful to be like
the 'English Grundys'; only different, of course, because, after all,
old Stormer was much more interesting and intelligent—ever so much more;
only, just as 'superior.' “Some never get away!” Had she meant—from
that superiority? Just down below were a family of peasants scything and
gathering in the grass. One could imagine her doing that, and looking
beautiful, with a coloured handkerchief over her head; one could imagine
her doing anything simple—one could not imagine old Stormer doing
anything but what he did do. And suddenly the boy felt miserable,
oppressed by these dim glimmerings of lives misplaced. And he resolved
that he would not be like Stormer when he was old! No, he would rather
be a regular beast than be like that! . . .

When he went to his room to change for dinner he saw in a glass of water
a large clove carnation. Who had put it there? Who could have put it
there—but she? It had the same scent as the mountain pinks she had
dropped over him, but deeper, richer—a scent moving, dark, and sweet. He
put his lips to it before he pinned it into his coat.

There was dancing again that night—more couples this time, and a violin
beside the piano; and she had on a black frock. He had never seen her
in black. Her face and neck were powdered over their sunburn. The first
sight of that powder gave him a faint shock. He had not somehow thought
that ladies ever put on powder. But if SHE did—then it must be right!
And his eyes never left her. He saw the young German violinist hovering
round her, even dancing with her twice; watched her dancing with others,
but all without jealousy, without troubling; all in a sort of dream.
What was it? Had he been bewitched into that queer state, bewitched by
the gift of that flower in his coat? What was it, when he danced with
her, that kept him happy in her silence and his own? There was no
expectation in him of anything that she would say, or do—no expectation,
no desire. Even when he wandered out with her on to the terrace, even
when they went down the bank and sat on a bench above the fields where
the peasants had been scything, he had still no feeling but that quiet,
dreamy adoration. The night was black and dreamy too, for the moon was
still well down behind the mountains. The little band was playing the
next waltz; but he sat, not moving, not thinking, as if all power of
action and thought had been stolen out of him. And the scent of the
flower in his coat rose, for there was no wind. Suddenly his heart
stopped beating. She had leaned against him, he felt her shoulder press
his arm, her hair touch his cheek. He closed his eyes then, and turned
his face to her. He felt her lips press his mouth with a swift, burning
kiss. He sighed, stretched out his arms. There was nothing there but
air. The rustle of her dress against the grass was all! The flower—it,
too, was gone.

X

Not one minute all that night did Anna sleep. Was it remorse that kept
her awake, or the intoxication of memory? If she felt that her kiss had
been a crime, it was not against her husband or herself, but against the
boy—the murder of illusion, of something sacred. But she could not help
feeling a delirious happiness too, and the thought of trying to annul
what she had done did not even occur to her.

He was ready, then, to give her a little love! Ever so little, compared
to hers, but still a little! There could be no other meaning to that
movement of his face with the closed eyes, as if he would nestle it down
on her breast.

Was she ashamed of her little manoeuvres of these last few days—ashamed
of having smiled at the young violinist, of that late return from the
mountain climb, of the flower she had given him, of all the conscious
siege she had laid since the evening her husband came in and sat
watching her, without knowing that she saw him? No; not really ashamed!
Her remorse rose only from the kiss. It hurt to think of that, because
it was death, the final extinction of the mother-feeling in her; the
awakening of—who knew what—in the boy! For if she was mysterious to
him, what was he not to her, with his eagerness, and his dreaminess,
his youthful warmth, his innocence! What if it had killed in him trust,
brushed off the dew, tumbled a star down? Could she forgive herself for
that? Could she bear it if she were to make him like so many other boys,
like that young violinist; just a cynical youth, looking on women as
what they called 'fair game'? But COULD she make him into such—would
he ever grow like that? Oh! surely not; or she would not have loved
him from the moment she first set eyes on him and spoke of him as 'an
angel.'

After that kiss—that crime, if it were one—in the dark she had not known
what he had done, where gone—perhaps wandering, perhaps straight up to
his room. Why had she refrained, left him there, vanished out of his
arms? This she herself hardly understood. Not shame; not fear; reverence
perhaps—for what? For love—for the illusion, the mystery, all that made
love beautiful; for youth, and the poetry of it; just for the sake of
the black still night itself, and the scent of that flower—dark flower
of passion that had won him to her, and that she had stolen back, and
now wore all night long close to her neck, and in the morning placed
withered within her dress. She had been starved so long, and so long
waited for that moment—it was little wonder if she did not clearly know
why she had done just this, and not that!

And now how should she meet him, how first look into his eyes? Would
they have changed? Would they no longer have the straight look she so
loved? It would be for her to lead, to make the future. And she kept
saying to herself: I am not going to be afraid. It is done. I will take
what life offers! Of her husband she did not think at all.

But the first moment she saw the boy, she knew that something from
outside, and untoward, had happened since that kiss. He came up to her,
indeed, but he said nothing, stood trembling all over and handed her
a telegram that contained these words: “Come back at once Wedding
immediate Expect you day after to-morrow. Cicely.” The words grew
indistinct even as she read them, and the boy's face all blurred. Then,
making an effort, she said quietly:

“Of course, you must go. You cannot miss your only sister's wedding.”

Without protest he looked at her; and she could hardly bear that look—it
seemed to know so little, and ask so much. She said: “It is nothing—only
a few days. You will come back, or we will come to you.”

His face brightened at once.

“Will you really come to us soon, at once—if they ask you? Then I don't
mind—I—I—” And then he stopped, choking.

She said again:

“Ask us. We will come.”

He seized her hand; pressed and pressed it in both his own, then stroked
it gently, and said:

“Oh! I'm hurting it!”

She laughed, not wishing to cry.

In a few minutes he would have to start to catch the only train that
would get him home in time.

She went and helped him to pack. Her heart felt like lead, but, not
able to bear that look on his face again, she kept cheerfully talking
of their return, asking about his home, how to get to it, speaking of
Oxford and next term. When his things were ready she put her arms round
his neck, and for a moment pressed him to her. Then she escaped.
Looking back from his door, she saw him standing exactly as when she
had withdrawn her arms. Her cheeks were wet; she dried them as she went
downstairs. When she felt herself safe, she went out on the terrace. Her
husband was there, and she said to him:

“Will you come with me into the town? I want to buy some things.”

He raised his eyebrows, smiled dimly, and followed her. They walked
slowly down the hill into the long street of the little town. All the
time she talked of she knew not what, and all the time she thought: His
carriage will pass—his carriage will pass!

Several carriages went jingling by. At last he came. Sitting there, and
staring straight before him, he did not see them. She heard her husband
say:

“Hullo! Where is our young friend Lennan off to, with his
luggage—looking like a lion cub in trouble?”

She answered in a voice that she tried to make clear and steady:

“There must be something wrong; or else it is his sister's wedding.”

She felt that her husband was gazing at her, and wondered what her face
was like; but at that moment the word “Madre!” sounded close in her ear
and they were surrounded by a small drove of 'English Grundys.'

XI

That twenty mile drive was perhaps the worst part of the journey for the
boy. It is always hard to sit still and suffer.

When Anna left him the night before, he had wandered about in the dark,
not knowing quite where he went. Then the moon came up, and he found
himself sitting under the eave of a barn close to a chalet where all was
dark and quiet; and down below him the moon-whitened valley village—its
roofs and spires and little glamorous unreal lights.

In his evening suit, his dark ruffled hair uncovered, he would have made
a quaint spectacle for the owners of that chalet, if they had chanced
to see him seated on the hay-strewn boards against their barn, staring
before him with such wistful rapture. But they were folk to whom sleep
was precious....

And now it was all snatched away from him, relegated to some immensely
far-off future. Would it indeed be possible to get his guardian to ask
them down to Hayle? And would they really come? His tutor would surely
never care to visit a place right away in the country—far from books
and everything! He frowned, thinking of his tutor, but it was with
perplexity—no other feeling. And yet, if he could not have them down
there, how could he wait the two whole months till next term began! So
went his thoughts, round and round, while the horses jogged, dragging
him further and further from her.

It was better in the train; the distraction of all the strange crowd of
foreigners, the interest of new faces and new country; and then sleep—a
long night of it, snoozed up in his corner, thoroughly fagged out. And
next day more new country, more new faces; and slowly, his mood changing
from ache and bewilderment to a sense of something promised, delightful
to look forward to. Then Calais at last, and a night-crossing in a wet
little steamer, a summer gale blowing spray in his face, waves leaping
white in a black sea, and the wild sound of the wind. On again to
London, the early drive across the town, still sleepy in August haze;
an English breakfast—porridge, chops, marmalade. And, at last, the train
for home. At all events he could write to her, and tearing a page out of
his little sketch-book, he began:

“I am writing in the train, so please forgive this joggly writing—”

Then he did not know how to go on, for all that he wanted to say was
such as he had never even dreamed of writing—things about his feelings
which would look horrible in words; besides, he must not put anything
that might not be read, by anyone, so what was there to say?

“It has been such a long journey,” he wrote at last, “away from the
Tyrol;” (he did not dare even to put “from you,”) “I thought it would
never end. But at last it has—very nearly. I have thought a great deal
about the Tyrol. It was a lovely time—the loveliest time I have ever
had. And now it's over, I try to console myself by thinking of the
future, but not the immediate future—THAT is not very enjoyable. I
wonder how the mountains are looking to-day. Please give my love
to them, especially the lion ones that come and lie out in the
moonlight—you will not recognize them from this”—then followed a sketch.
“And this is the church we went to, with someone kneeling. And this is
meant for the 'English Grundys,' looking at someone who is coming in
very late with an alpenstock—only, I am better at the 'English Grundys'
than at the person with the alpenstock. I wish I were the 'English
Grundys' now, still in the Tyrol. I hope I shall get a letter from
you soon; and that it will say you are getting ready to come back. My
guardian will be awfully keen for you to come and stay with us. He
is not half bad when you know him, and there will be his sister, Mrs.
Doone, and her daughter left there after the wedding. It will be simply
disgusting if you and Mr. Stormer don't come. I wish I could write all I
feel about my lovely time in the Tyrol, but you must please imagine it.”

And just as he had not known how to address her, so he could not tell
how to subscribe himself, and only put “Mark Lennan.”

He posted the letter at Exeter, where he had some time to wait; and his
mind moved still more from past to future. Now that he was nearing home
he began to think of his sister. In two days she would be gone to
Italy; he would not see her again for a long time, and a whole crowd of
memories began to stretch out hands to him. How she and he used to
walk together in the walled garden, and on the sunk croquet ground; she
telling him stories, her arm round his neck, because she was two years
older, and taller than he in those days. Their first talk each holidays,
when he came back to her; the first tea—with unlimited jam—in the old
mullion-windowed, flower-chintzed schoolroom, just himself and her and
old Tingle (Miss Tring, the ancient governess, whose chaperonage would
now be gone), and sometimes that kid Sylvia, when she chanced to be
staying there with her mother. Cicely had always understood him when
he explained to her how inferior school was, because nobody took any
interest in beasts or birds except to kill them; or in drawing, or
making things, or anything decent. They would go off together, rambling
along the river, or up the park, where everything looked so jolly and
wild—the ragged oak-trees, and huge boulders, of whose presence old
Godden, the coachman, had said: “I can't think but what these ha'
been washed here by the Flood, Mast' Mark!” These and a thousand other
memories beset his conscience now. And as the train drew closer to their
station, he eagerly made ready to jump out and greet her. There was
the honeysuckle full out along the paling of the platform over the
waiting-room; wonderful, this year—and there was she, standing alone on
the platform. No, it was not Cicely! He got out with a blank sensation,
as if those memories had played him false. It was a girl, indeed, but
she only looked about sixteen, and wore a sunbonnet that hid her hair
and half her face. She had on a blue frock, and some honeysuckle in her
waist-belt. She seemed to be smiling at him, and expecting him to smile
at her; and so he did smile. She came up to him then, and said:

“I'm Sylvia.”

He answered: “Oh! thanks awfully—it was awfully good of you to come and
meet me.”

“Cicely's so busy. It's only the T-cart. Have you got much luggage?”

She took up his hold-all, and he took it from her; she took his bag,
and he took it from her; then they went out to the T-cart. A small groom
stood there, holding a silver-roan cob with a black mane and black swish
tail.

She said: “D'you mind if I drive, because I'm learning.”

And he answered: “Oh, no! rather not.”

She got up; he noticed that her eyes looked quite excited. Then his
portmanteau came out and was deposited with the other things behind; and
he got up beside her.

She said: “Let go, Billy.”

The roan rushed past the little groom, whose top boots seemed to twinkle
as he jumped up behind. They whizzed round the corner from the station
yard, and observing that her mouth was just a little open as though this
had disconcerted her, he said:

“He pulls a bit.”

“Yes—but isn't he perfectly sweet?”

“He IS rather decent.”

Ah! when SHE came, he would drive her; they would go off alone in the
T-cart, and he would show her all the country round.

He was re-awakened by the words:

“Oh! I know he's going to shy!” At once there was a swerve. The roan was
cantering.

They had passed a pig.

“Doesn't he look lovely now? Ought I to have whipped him when he shied?”

“Rather not.”

“Why?”

“Because horses are horses, and pigs are pigs; it's natural for horses
to shy at them.”

“Oh!”

He looked up at her then, sidelong. The curve of her cheek and chin
looked very soft, and rather jolly.

“I didn't know you, you know!” he said. “You've grown up so awfully.”

“I knew you at once. Your voice is still furry.”

There was another silence, till she said:

“He does pull, rather—doesn't he, going home?”

“Shall I drive?”

“Yes, please.”

He stood up and took the reins, and she slipped past under them in
front of him; her hair smelt exactly like hay, as she was softly bumped
against him.

She kept regarding him steadily with very blue eyes, now that she was
relieved of driving.

“Cicely was afraid you weren't coming,” she said suddenly. “What sort of
people are those old Stormers?”

He felt himself grow very red, choked something down, and answered:

“It's only he that's old. She's not more than about thirty-five.”

“That IS old.”

He restrained the words: “Of course it's old to a kid like you!” And,
instead, he looked at her. Was she exactly a kid? She seemed quite tall
(for a girl) and not very thin, and there was something frank and soft
about her face, and as if she wanted you to be nice to her.

“Is she very pretty?”

This time he did not go red, such was the disturbance that question
made in him. If he said: “Yes,” it was like letting the world know his
adoration; but to say anything less would be horrible, disloyal. So he
did say: “Yes,” listening hard to the tone of his own voice.

“I thought she was. Do you like her very much?” Again he struggled with
that thing in his throat, and again said: “Yes.”

He wanted to hate this girl, yet somehow could not—she looked so soft
and confiding. She was staring before her now, her lips still just
parted, so evidently THAT had not been because of Bolero's pulling; they
were pretty all the same, and so was her short, straight little nose,
and her chin, and she was awfully fair. His thoughts flew back to that
other face—so splendid, so full of life. Suddenly he found himself
unable to picture it—for the first time since he had started on his
journey it would not come before him.

“Oh! Look!”

Her hand was pulling at his arm. There in the field over the hedge a
buzzard hawk was dropping like a stone.

“Oh, Mark! Oh! Oh! It's got it!”

She was covering her face with both her hands, and the hawk, with a
young rabbit in its claws, was sailing up again. It looked so beautiful
that he did not somehow feel sorry for the rabbit; but he wanted to
stroke and comfort her, and said:

“It's all right, Sylvia; it really is. The rabbit's dead already, you
know. And it's quite natural.”

She took her hands away from a face that looked just as if she were
going to cry.

“Poor little rabbit! It was such a little one!”

XII

On the afternoon of the day following he sat in the smoking-room with
a prayer book in his hand, and a frown on his forehead, reading the
Marriage Service. The book had been effectively designed for not
spoiling the figure when carried in a pocket. But this did not matter,
for even if he could have read the words, he would not have known what
they meant, seeing that he was thinking how he could make a certain
petition to a certain person sitting just behind at a large bureau with
a sliding top, examining artificial flies.

He fixed at last upon this form:

“Gordy!” (Why Gordy no one quite knew now—whether because his name was
George, or by way of corruption from Guardian.) “When Cis is gone it'll
be rather awful, won't it?”

“Not a bit.”

Mr. Heatherley was a man of perhaps sixty-four, if indeed guardians have
ages, and like a doctor rather than a squire; his face square and puffy,
his eyes always half-closed, and his curly mouth using bluntly a voice
of that refined coarseness peculiar to people of old family.

“But it will, you know!”

“Well, supposin' it is?”

“I only wondered if you'd mind asking Mr. and Mrs. Stormer to come here
for a little—they were awfully kind to me out there.”

“Strange man and woman! My dear fellow!”

“Mr. Stormer likes fishing.”

“Does he? And what does she like?”

Very grateful that his back was turned, the boy said:

“I don't know—anything—she's awfully nice.”

“Ah! Pretty?”

He answered faintly:

“I don't know what YOU call pretty, Gordy.”

He felt, rather than saw, his guardian scrutinizing him with those
half-closed eyes under their gouty lids.

“All right; do as you like. Have 'em here and have done with it, by all
means.”

Did his heart jump? Not quite; but it felt warm and happy, and he said:

“Thanks awfully, Gordy. It's most frightfully decent of you,” and turned
again to the Marriage Service. He could make out some of it. In places
it seemed to him fine, and in other places queer. About obeying, for
instance. If you loved anybody, it seemed rotten to expect them to obey
you. If you loved them and they loved you, there couldn't ever be any
question of obeying, because you would both do the things always of your
own accord. And if they didn't love you, or you them, then—oh! then
it would be simply too disgusting for anything, to go on living with a
person you didn't love or who didn't love you. But of course SHE
didn't love his tutor. Had she once? Those bright doubting eyes, that
studiously satiric mouth came very clearly up before him. You could
not love them; and yet—he was really very decent. A feeling as of pity,
almost of affection, rose in him for his remote tutor. It was queer to
feel so, since the last time they had talked together out there, on the
terrace, he had not felt at all like that.

The noise of the bureau top sliding down aroused him; Mr. Heatherley was
closing in the remains of the artificial flies. That meant he would be
going out to fish. And the moment he heard the door shut, Mark sprang
up, slid back the bureau top, and began to write his letter. It was hard
work.

“DEAR MRS. STORMER,

“My guardian wishes me to beg you and Mr. Stormer to pay us a visit as
soon as you come back from the Tyrol. Please tell Mr. Stormer that only
the very best fishermen—like him—can catch our trout; the rest catch our
trees. This is me catching our trees (here followed a sketch). My sister
is going to be married to-morrow, and it will be disgusting afterwards
unless you come. So do come, please. And with my very best greetings,

“I am,

“Your humble servant,

“M. LENNAN.”

When he had stamped this production and dropped it in the letter-box, he
had the oddest feeling, as if he had been let out of school; a desire
to rush about, to frolic. What should he do? Cis, of course, would
be busy—they were all busy about the wedding. He would go and saddle
Bolero, and jump him in the park; or should he go down along the river
and watch the jays? Both seemed lonely occupations. And he stood in the
window—dejected. At the age of five, walking with his nurse, he had been
overheard remarking: “Nurse, I want to eat a biscuit—ALL THE WAY I want
to eat a biscuit!” and it was still rather so with him perhaps—all the
way he wanted to eat a biscuit. He bethought him then of his modelling,
and went out to the little empty greenhouse where he kept his
masterpieces. They seemed to him now quite horrible—and two of them, the
sheep and the turkey, he marked out for summary destruction. The idea
occurred to him that he might try and model that hawk escaping with the
little rabbit; but when he tried, no nice feeling came, and flinging the
things down he went out. He ran along the unweeded path to the tennis
ground—lawn tennis was then just coming in. The grass looked very rough.
But then, everything about that little manor house was left rather wild
and anyhow; why, nobody quite knew, and nobody seemed to mind. He stood
there scrutinizing the condition of the ground. A sound of humming came
to his ears. He got up on the wall. There was Sylvia sitting in the
field, making a wreath of honeysuckle. He stood very quiet and listened.
She looked pretty—lost in her tune. Then he slid down off the wall, and
said gently:

“Hallo!”

She looked round at him, her eyes very wide open.

“Your voice is jolly, Sylvia!”

“Oh, no!”

“It is. Come and climb a tree!”

“Where?”

“In the park, of course.”

They were some time selecting the tree, many being too easy for him, and
many too hard for her; but one was found at last, an oak of great age,
and frequented by rooks. Then, insisting that she must be roped to him,
he departed to the house for some blind-cord. The climb began at four
o'clock—named by him the ascent of the Cimone della Pala. He led the
momentous expedition, taking a hitch of the blind-cord round a branch
before he permitted her to move. Two or three times he was obliged to
make the cord fast and return to help her, for she was not an 'expert';
her arms seemed soft, and she was inclined to straddle instead of
trusting to one foot. But at last they were settled, streaked indeed
with moss, on the top branch but two. They rested there, silent,
listening to the rooks soothing an outraged dignity. Save for this
slowly subsiding demonstration it was marvellously peaceful and remote
up there, half-way to a blue sky thinly veiled from them by the crinkled
brown-green leaves. The peculiar dry mossy smell of an oak-tree was
disturbed into the air by the least motion of their feet or hands
against the bark. They could hardly see the ground, and all around,
other gnarled trees barred off any view.

He said:

“If we stay up here till it's dark we might see owls.”

“Oh, no! Owls are horrible!”

“What! They're LOVELY—especially the white ones.”

“I can't stand their eyes, and they squeak so when they're hunting.”

“Oh! but that's so jolly, and their eyes are beautiful.”

“They're always catching mice and little chickens; all sorts of little
things.”

“But they don't mean to; they only want them to eat. Don't you think
things are jolliest at night?”

She slipped her arm in his.

“No; I don't like the dark.”

“Why not? It's splendid—when things get mysterious.” He dwelt lovingly
on that word.

“I don't like mysterious things. They frighten you.”

“Oh, Sylvia!”

“No, I like early morning—especially in spring, when it's beginning to
get leafy.”

“Well, of course.”

She was leaning against him, for safety, just a little; and stretching
out his arm, he took good hold of the branch to make a back for her.
There was a silence. Then he said:

“If you could only have one tree, which would you have?”

“Not oaks. Limes—no—birches. Which would you?”

He pondered. There were so many trees that were perfect. Birches and
limes, of course; but beeches and cypresses, and yews, and cedars, and
holm-oaks—almost, and plane-trees; then he said suddenly:

“Pines; I mean the big ones with reddish stems and branches pretty high
up.”

“Why?”

Again he pondered. It was very important to explain exactly why; his
feelings about everything were concerned in this. And while he mused she
gazed at him, as if surprised to see anyone think so deeply. At last he
said:

“Because they're independent and dignified and never quite cold, and
their branches seem to brood, but chiefly because the ones I mean are
generally out of the common where you find them. You know—just one or
two, strong and dark, standing out against the sky.”

“They're TOO dark.”

It occurred to him suddenly that he had forgotten larches. They, of
course, could be heavenly, when you lay under them and looked up at the
sky, as he had that afternoon out there. Then he heard her say:

“If I could only have one flower, I should have lilies of the valley,
the small ones that grow wild and smell so jolly.”

He had a swift vision of another flower, dark—very different, and was
silent.

“What would you have, Mark?” Her voice sounded a little hurt. “You ARE
thinking of one, aren't you?”

He said honestly:

“Yes, I am.”

“Which?”

“It's dark, too; you wouldn't care for it a bit.”

“How d'you know?”

“A clove carnation.”

“But I do like it—only—not very much.”

He nodded solemnly.

“I knew you wouldn't.”

Then a silence fell between them. She had ceased to lean against him,
and he missed the cosy friendliness of it. Now that their voices and
the cawings of the rooks had ceased, there was nothing heard but the dry
rustle of the leaves, and the plaintive cry of a buzzard hawk hunting
over the little tor across the river. There were nearly always two up
there, quartering the sky. To the boy it was lovely, that silence—like
Nature talking to you—Nature always talked in silences. The beasts, the
birds, the insects, only really showed themselves when you were still;
you had to be awfully quiet, too, for flowers and plants, otherwise you
couldn't see the real jolly separate life there was in them. Even the
boulders down there, that old Godden thought had been washed up by the
Flood, never showed you what queer shapes they had, and let you feel
close to them, unless you were thinking of nothing else. Sylvia, after
all, was better in that way than he had expected. She could keep quiet
(he had thought girls hopeless); she was gentle, and it was rather jolly
to watch her. Through the leaves there came the faint far tinkle of the
tea-bell.

She said: “We must get down.”

It was much too jolly to go in, really. But if she wanted her tea—girls
always wanted tea! And, twisting the cord carefully round the branch, he
began to superintend her descent. About to follow, he heard her cry:

“Oh, Mark! I'm stuck—I'm stuck! I can't reach it with my foot! I'm
swinging!” And he saw that she WAS swinging by her hands and the cord.

“Let go; drop on to the branch below—the cord'll hold you straight till
you grab the trunk.”

Her voice mounted piteously:

“I can't—I really can't—I should slip!”

He tied the cord, and slithered hastily to the branch below her; then,
bracing himself against the trunk, he clutched her round the waist and
knees; but the taut cord held her up, and she would not come to anchor.
He could not hold her and untie the cord, which was fast round her
waist. If he let her go with one hand, and got out his knife, he would
never be able to cut and hold her at the same time. For a moment he
thought he had better climb up again and slack off the cord, but he
could see by her face that she was getting frightened; he could feel it
by the quivering of her body.

“If I heave you up,” he said, “can you get hold again above?” And,
without waiting for an answer, he heaved. She caught hold frantically.

“Hold on just for a second.”

She did not answer, but he saw that her face had gone very white. He
snatched out his knife and cut the cord. She clung just for that moment,
then came loose into his arms, and he hauled her to him against the
trunk. Safe there, she buried her face on his shoulder. He began to
murmur to her and smooth her softly, with quite a feeling of its being
his business to smooth her like this, to protect her. He knew she was
crying, but she let no sound escape, and he was very careful not to show
that he knew, for fear she should feel ashamed. He wondered if he ought
to kiss her. At last he did, on the top of her head, very gently. Then
she put up her face and said she was a beast. And he kissed her again on
an eyebrow.

After that she seemed all right, and very gingerly they descended to the
ground, where shadows were beginning to lengthen over the fern and the
sun to slant into their eyes.

XIII

The night after the wedding the boy stood at the window of his pleasant
attic bedroom, with one wall sloping, and a faint smell of mice. He was
tired and excited, and his brain, full of pictures. This was his first
wedding, and he was haunted by a vision of his sister's little white
form, and her face with its starry eyes. She was gone—his no more!
How fearful the Wedding March had sounded on that organ—that awful old
wheezer; and the sermon! One didn't want to hear that sort of thing when
one felt inclined to cry. Even Gordy had looked rather boiled when he
was giving her away. With perfect distinctness he could still see the
group before the altar rails, just as if he had not been a part of
it himself. Cis in her white, Sylvia in fluffy grey; his impassive
brother-in-law's tall figure; Gordy looking queer in a black coat, with
a very yellow face, and eyes still half-closed. The rotten part of
it all had been that you wanted to be just FEELING, and you had to be
thinking of the ring, and your gloves, and whether the lowest button
of your white waistcoat was properly undone. Girls could do both, it
seemed—Cis seemed to be seeing something wonderful all the time, and
Sylvia had looked quite holy. He himself had been too conscious of the
rector's voice, and the sort of professional manner with which he did it
all, as if he were making up a prescription, with directions how to take
it. And yet it was all rather beautiful in a kind of fashion, every
face turned one way, and a tremendous hush—except for poor old Godden's
blowing of his nose with his enormous red handkerchief; and the
soft darkness up in the roof, and down in the pews; and the sunlight
brightening the South windows. All the same, it would have been much
jollier just taking hands by themselves somewhere, and saying out
before God what they really felt—because, after all, God was everything,
everywhere, not only in stuffy churches. That was how HE would like to
be married, out of doors on a starry night like this, when everything
felt wonderful all round you. Surely God wasn't half as small as people
seemed always making Him—a sort of superior man a little bigger than
themselves! Even the very most beautiful and wonderful and awful things
one could imagine or make, could only be just nothing to a God who had a
temple like the night out there. But then you couldn't be married alone,
and no girl would ever like to be married without rings and flowers and
dresses, and words that made it all feel small and cosy! Cis might
have, perhaps, only she wouldn't, because of not hurting other people's
feelings; but Sylvia—never—she would be afraid. Only, of course, she
was young! And the thread of his thoughts broke—and scattered like beads
from a string.

Leaning out, and resting his chin on his hands, he drew the night air
into his lungs. Honeysuckle, or was it the scent of lilies still? The
stars all out, and lots of owls to-night—four at least. What would night
be like without owls and stars? But that was it—you never could think
what things would be like if they weren't just what and where they were.
You never knew what was coming, either; and yet, when it came, it seemed
as if nothing else ever could have come. That was queer-you could do
anything you liked until you'd done it, but when you HAD done it, then
you knew, of course, that you must always have had to... What was that
light, below and to the left? Whose room? Old Tingle's—no, the little
spare room—Sylvia's! She must be awake, then! He leaned far out, and
whispered in the voice she had said was still furry:

“Sylvia!”

The light flickered, he could just see her head appear, with hair all
loose, and her face turning up to him. He could only half see, half
imagine it, mysterious, blurry; and he whispered:

“Isn't this jolly?”

The whisper travelled back:

“Awfully.”

“Aren't you sleepy?”

“No; are you?”

“Not a bit. D'you hear the owls?”

“Rather.”

“Doesn't it smell good?”

“Perfect. Can you see me?”

“Only just, not too much. Can you?”

“I can't see your nose. Shall I get the candle?”

“No—that'd spoil it. What are you sitting on?”

“The window sill.”

“It doesn't twist your neck, does it?”

“No—o—only a little bit.”

“Are you hungry?”

“Yes.”

“Wait half a shake. I'll let down some chocolate in my big bath towel;
it'll swing along to you—reach out.”

A dim white arm reached out.

“Catch! I say, you won't get cold?”

“Rather not.”

“It's too jolly to sleep, isn't it?”

“Mark!”

“Yes.”

“Which star is yours? Mine is the white one over the top branch of the
big sycamore, from here.”

“Mine is that twinkling red one over the summer house. Sylvia!”

“Yes.”

“Catch!”

“Oh! I couldn't—what was it?”

“Nothing.”

“No, but what WAS it?”

“Only my star. It's caught in your hair.”

“Oh!”

“Listen!”

Silence, then, until her awed whisper:

“What?”

And his floating down, dying away:

“CAVE!”

What had stirred—some window opened? Cautiously he spied along the face
of the dim house. There was no light anywhere, nor any shifting blur
of white at her window below. All was dark, remote—still sweet with the
scent of something jolly. And then he saw what that something was. All
over the wall below his window white jessamine was in flower—stars, not
only in the sky. Perhaps the sky was really a field of white flowers;
and God walked there, and plucked the stars....

The next morning there was a letter on his plate when he came down to
breakfast. He couldn't open it with Sylvia on one side of him, and old
Tingle on the other. Then with a sort of anger he did open it. He need
not have been afraid. It was written so that anyone might have read;
it told of a climb, of bad weather, said they were coming home. Was
he relieved, disturbed, pleased at their coming back, or only uneasily
ashamed? She had not got his second letter yet. He could feel old Tingle
looking round at him with those queer sharp twinkling eyes of hers, and
Sylvia regarding him quite frankly. And conscious that he was growing
red, he said to himself: 'I won't!' And did not. In three days they
would be at Oxford. Would they come on here at once? Old Tingle was
speaking. He heard Sylvia answer: “No, I don't like 'bopsies.' They're
so hard!” It was their old name for high cheekbones. Sylvia certainly
had none, her cheeks went softly up to her eyes.

“Do you, Mark?”

He said slowly:

“On some people.”

“People who have them are strong-willed, aren't they?”

Was SHE—Anna—strong-willed? It came to him that he did not know at all
what she was.

When breakfast was over and he had got away to his old greenhouse, he
had a strange, unhappy time. He was a beast, he had not been thinking of
her half enough! He took the letter out, and frowned at it horribly. Why
could he not feel more? What was the matter with him? Why was he such
a brute—not to be thinking of her day and night? For long he stood,
disconsolate, in the little dark greenhouse among the images of his
beasts, the letter in his hand.

He stole out presently, and got down to the river unobserved.
Comforting—that crisp, gentle sound of water; ever so comforting to sit
on a stone, very still, and wait for things to happen round you. You
lost yourself that way, just became branches, and stones, and water,
and birds, and sky. You did not feel such a beast. Gordy would never
understand why he did not care for fishing—one thing trying to catch
another—instead of watching and understanding what things were. You
never got to the end of looking into water, or grass or fern; always
something queer and new. It was like that, too, with yourself, if you
sat down and looked properly—most awfully interesting to see things
working in your mind.

A soft rain had begun to fall, hissing gently on the leaves, but he
had still a boy's love of getting wet, and stayed where he was, on the
stone. Some people saw fairies in woods and down in water, or said they
did; that did not seem to him much fun. What was really interesting was
noticing that each thing was different from every other thing, and what
made it so; you must see that before you could draw or model decently.
It was fascinating to see your creatures coming out with shapes of
their very own; they did that without your understanding how. But this
vacation he was no good—couldn't draw or model a bit!

A jay had settled about forty yards away, and remained in full view,
attending to his many-coloured feathers. Of all things, birds were
the most fascinating! He watched it a long time, and when it flew on,
followed it over the high wall up into the park. He heard the lunch-bell
ring in the far distance, but did not go in. So long as he was out there
in the soft rain with the birds and trees and other creatures, he was
free from that unhappy feeling of the morning. He did not go back till
nearly seven, properly wet through, and very hungry.

All through dinner he noticed that Sylvia seemed to be watching him,
as if wanting to ask him something. She looked very soft in her white
frock, open at the neck; and her hair almost the colour of special
moonlight, so goldy-pale; and he wanted her to understand that it wasn't
a bit because of her that he had been out alone all day. After dinner,
when they were getting the table ready to play 'red nines,' he did
murmur:

“Did you sleep last night—after?”

She nodded fervently to that.

It was raining really hard now, swishing and dripping out in the
darkness, and he whispered:

“Our stars would be drowned to-night.”

“Do you really think we have stars?”

“We might. But mine's safe, of course; your hair IS jolly, Sylvia.”

She gazed at him, very sweet and surprised.

XIV

Anna did not receive the boy's letter in the Tyrol. It followed her to
Oxford. She was just going out when it came, and she took it up with
the mingled beatitude and almost sickening tremor that a lover feels
touching the loved one's letter. She would not open it in the street,
but carried it all the way to the garden of a certain College, and sat
down to read it under the cedar-tree. That little letter, so short,
boyish, and dry, transported her halfway to heaven. She was to see him
again at once, not to wait weeks, with the fear that he would quite
forget her! Her husband had said at breakfast that Oxford without 'the
dear young clowns' assuredly was charming, but Oxford 'full of tourists
and other strange bodies' as certainly was not. Where should they go?
Thank heaven, the letter could be shown him! For all that, a little
stab of pain went through her that there was not one word which made
it unsuitable to show. Still, she was happy. Never had her favourite
College garden seemed so beautiful, with each tree and flower so cared
for, and the very wind excluded; never had the birds seemed so tame
and friendly. The sun shone softly, even the clouds were luminous and
joyful. She sat a long time, musing, and went back forgetting all she
had come out to do. Having both courage and decision, she did not leave
the letter to burn a hole in her corsets, but gave it to her husband at
lunch, looking him in the face, and saying carelessly:

“Providence, you see, answers your question.”

He read it, raised his eyebrows, smiled, and, without looking up,
murmured:

“You wish to prosecute this romantic episode?”

Did he mean anything—or was it simply his way of putting things?

“I naturally want to be anywhere but here.”

“Perhaps you would like to go alone?”

He said that, of course, knowing she could not say: Yes. And she
answered simply: “No.”

“Then let us both go—on Monday. I will catch the young man's trout;
thou shalt catch—h'm!—he shall catch—What is it he catches—trees? Good!
That's settled.”

And, three days later, without another word exchanged on the subject,
they started.

Was she grateful to him? No. Afraid of him? No. Scornful of him? Not
quite. But she was afraid of HERSELF, horribly. How would she ever be
able to keep herself in hand, how disguise from these people that she
loved their boy? It was her desperate mood that she feared. But since
she so much wanted all the best for him that life could give, surely she
would have the strength to do nothing that might harm him. Yet she was
afraid.

He was there at the station to meet them, in riding things and a nice
rough Norfolk jacket that she did not recognize, though she thought she
knew his clothes by heart; and as the train came slowly to a standstill
the memory of her last moment with him, up in his room amid the luggage
that she had helped to pack, very nearly overcame her. It seemed so
hard to have to meet him coldly, formally, to have to wait—who knew how
long—for a minute with him alone! And he was so polite, so beautifully
considerate, with all the manners of a host; hoping she wasn't tired,
hoping Mr. Stormer had brought his fishing-rod, though they had lots,
of course, they could lend him; hoping the weather would be fine; hoping
that they wouldn't mind having to drive three miles, and busying himself
about their luggage. All this when she just wanted to take him in her
arms and push his hair back from his forehead, and look at him!

He did not drive with them—he had thought they would be too crowded—but
followed, keeping quite close in the dust to point out the scenery,
mounted on a 'palfrey,' as her husband called the roan with the black
swish tail.

This countryside, so rich and yet a little wild, the independent-looking
cottages, the old dark cosy manor-house, all was very new to one used
to Oxford, and to London, and to little else of England. And all was
delightful. Even Mark's guardian seemed to her delightful. For Gordy,
when absolutely forced to face an unknown woman, could bring to the
encounter a certain bluff ingratiation. His sister, too, Mrs. Doone,
with her faded gentleness, seemed soothing.

When Anna was alone in her room, reached by an unexpected little
stairway, she stood looking at its carved four-poster bed and the wide
lattice window with chintz curtains, and the flowers in a blue bowl.
Yes, all was delightful. And yet! What was it? What had she missed?
Ah, she was a fool to fret! It was only his anxiety that they should be
comfortable, his fear that he might betray himself. Out there those last
few days—his eyes! And now! She brooded earnestly over what dress she
should put on. She, who tanned so quickly, had almost lost her sunburn
in the week of travelling and Oxford. To-day her eyes looked tired, and
she was pale. She was not going to disdain anything that might help. She
had reached thirty-six last month, and he would be nineteen to-morrow!
She decided on black. In black she knew that her neck looked whiter, and
the colour of her eyes and hair stranger. She put on no jewellery, did
not even pin a rose at her breast, took white gloves. Since her husband
did not come to her room, she went up the little stairway to his. She
surprised him ready dressed, standing by the fireplace, smiling faintly.
What was he thinking of, standing there with that smile? Was there blood
in him at all?

He inclined his head slightly and said:

“Good! Chaste as the night! Black suits you. Shall we find our way down
to these savage halls?”

And they went down.

Everyone was already there, waiting. A single neighbouring squire and
magistrate, by name Trusham, had been bidden, to make numbers equal.

Dinner was announced; they went in. At the round table in a dining-room,
all black oak, with many candles, and terrible portraits of departed
ancestors, Anna sat between the magistrate and Gordy. Mark was opposite,
between a quaint-looking old lady and a young girl who had not been
introduced, a girl in white, with very fair hair and very white skin,
blue eyes, and lips a little parted; a daughter evidently of the faded
Mrs. Doone. A girl like a silvery moth, like a forget-me-not! Anna
found it hard to take her eyes away from this girl's face; not that she
admired her exactly; pretty she was—yes; but weak, with those parted
lips and soft chin, and almost wistful look, as if her deep-blue
half-eager eyes were in spite of her. But she was young—so young! That
was why not to watch her seemed impossible. “Sylvia Doone?” Indeed! Yes.
A soft name, a pretty name—and very like her! Every time her eyes could
travel away from her duty to Squire Trusham, and to Gordy (on both of
whom she was clearly making an impression), she gazed at this girl,
sitting there by the boy, and whenever those two young things smiled and
spoke together she felt her heart contract and hurt her. Was THIS why
that something had gone out of his eyes? Ah, she was foolish! If every
girl or woman the boy knew was to cause such a feeling in her, what
would life be like? And her will hardened against her fears. She was
looking brilliant herself; and she saw that the girl in her turn could
not help gazing at her eagerly, wistfully, a little bewildered—hatefully
young. And the boy? Slowly, surely, as a magnet draws, Anna could feel
that she was drawing him, could see him stealing chances to look at
her. Once she surprised him full. What troubled eyes! It was not the old
adoring face; yet she knew from its expression that she could make him
want her—make him jealous—easily fire him with her kisses, if she would.

And the dinner wore to an end. Then came the moment when the girl
and she must meet under the eyes of the mother, and that sharp,
quaint-looking old governess. It would be a hard moment, that! And it
came—a hard moment and a long one, for Gordy sat full span over his
wine. But Anna had not served her time beneath the gaze of upper Oxford
for nothing; she managed to be charming, full of interest and questions
in her still rather foreign accent. Miss Doone—soon she became
Sylvia—must show her all the treasures and antiquities. Was it too dark
to go out just to look at the old house by night? Oh, no. Not a bit.
There were goloshes in the hall. And they went, the girl leading, and
talking of Anna knew not what, so absorbed was she in thinking how for a
moment, just a moment, she could contrive to be with the boy alone.

It was not remarkable, this old house, but it was his home—might some
day perhaps be his. And houses at night were strangely alive with their
window eyes.

“That is my room,” the girl said, “where the jessamine is—you can just
see it. Mark's is above—look, under where the eave hangs out, away to
the left. The other night—”

“Yes; the other night?”

“Oh, I don't—! Listen. That's an owl. We have heaps of owls. Mark likes
them. I don't, much.”

Always Mark!

“He's awfully keen, you see, about all beasts and birds—he models them.
Shall I show you his workshop?—it's an old greenhouse. Here, you can see
in.”

There through the glass Anna indeed could just see the boy's quaint
creations huddling in the dark on a bare floor, a grotesque company of
small monsters. She murmured:

“Yes, I see them, but I won't really look unless he brings me himself.”

“Oh, he's sure to. They interest him more than anything in the world.”

For all her cautious resolutions Anna could not for the life of her help
saying:

“What, more than you?”

The girl gave her a wistful stare before she answered:

“Oh! I don't count much.”

Anna laughed, and took her arm. How soft and young it felt! A pang went
through her heart, half jealous, half remorseful.

“Do you know,” she said, “that you are very sweet?”

The girl did not answer.

“Are you his cousin?”

“No. Gordy is only Mark's uncle by marriage; my mother is Gordy's
sister—so I'm nothing.”

Nothing!

“I see—just what you English call 'a connection.'”

They were silent, seeming to examine the night; then the girl said:

“I wanted to see you awfully. You're not like what I thought.”

“Oh! And what DID you think?”

“I thought you would have dark eyes, and Venetian red hair, and not be
quite so tall. Of course, I haven't any imagination.”

They were at the door again when the girl said that, and the hall light
was falling on her; her slip of a white figure showed clear. Young—how
young she looked! Everything she said—so young!

And Anna murmured: “And you are—more than I thought, too.”

Just then the men came out from the dining-room; her husband with the
look on his face that denoted he had been well listened to; Squire
Trusham laughing as a man does who has no sense of humour; Gordy having
a curly, slightly asphyxiated air; and the boy his pale, brooding look,
as though he had lost touch with his surroundings. He wavered towards
her, seemed to lose himself, went and sat down by the old governess. Was
it because he did not dare to come up to her, or only because he saw the
old lady sitting alone? It might well be that.

And the evening, so different from what she had dreamed of, closed in.
Squire Trusham was gone in his high dog-cart, with his famous mare whose
exploits had entertained her all through dinner. Her candle had been
given her; she had said good-night to all but Mark. What should she
do when she had his hand in hers? She would be alone with him in that
grasp, whose strength no one could see. And she did not know whether to
clasp it passionately, or to let it go coolly back to its owner;
whether to claim him or to wait. But she was unable to help pressing it
feverishly. At once in his face she saw again that troubled look; and
her heart smote her. She let it go, and that she might not see him say
good-night to the girl, turned and mounted to her room.

Fully dressed, she flung herself on the bed, and there lay, her
handkerchief across her mouth, gnawing at its edges.

XV

Mark's nineteenth birthday rose in grey mist, slowly dropped its veil
to the grass, and shone clear and glistening. He woke early. From his
window he could see nothing in the steep park but the soft blue-grey,
balloon-shaped oaks suspended one above the other among the round-topped
boulders. It was in early morning that he always got his strongest
feeling of wanting to model things; then and after dark, when, for want
of light, it was no use. This morning he had the craving badly, and
the sense of not knowing how weighed down his spirit. His drawings,
his models—they were all so bad, so fumbly. If only this had been his
twenty-first birthday, and he had his money, and could do what he liked.
He would not stay in England. He would be off to Athens, or Rome, or
even to Paris, and work till he COULD do something. And in his holidays
he would study animals and birds in wild countries where there were
plenty of them, and you could watch them in their haunts. It was stupid
having to stay in a place like Oxford; but at the thought of what Oxford
meant, his roaming fancy, like a bird hypnotized by a hawk, fluttered,
stayed suspended, and dived back to earth. And that feeling of wanting
to make things suddenly left him. It was as though he had woken up,
his real self; then—lost that self again. Very quietly he made his way
downstairs. The garden door was not shuttered, not even locked—it must
have been forgotten overnight. Last night! He had never thought he would
feel like this when she came—so bewildered, and confused; drawn towards
her, but by something held back. And he felt impatient, angry with
himself, almost with her. Why could he not be just simply happy, as this
morning was happy? He got his field-glasses and searched the meadow that
led down to the river. Yes, there were several rabbits out. With the
white marguerites and the dew cobwebs, it was all moon-flowery and
white; and the rabbits being there made it perfect. He wanted one badly
to model from, and for a moment was tempted to get his rook rifle—but
what was the good of a dead rabbit—besides, they looked so happy! He put
the glasses down and went towards his greenhouse to get a drawing block,
thinking to sit on the wall and make a sort of Midsummer Night's Dream
sketch of flowers and rabbits. Someone was there, bending down and doing
something to his creatures. Who had the cheek? Why, it was Sylvia—in
her dressing-gown! He grew hot, then cold, with anger. He could not bear
anyone in that holy place! It was hateful to have his things even looked
at; and she—she seemed to be fingering them. He pulled the door open
with a jerk, and said: “What are you doing?” He was indeed so stirred
by righteous wrath that he hardly noticed the gasp she gave, and the
collapse of her figure against the wall. She ran past him, and vanished
without a word. He went up to his creatures and saw that she had placed
on the head of each one of them a little sprig of jessamine flower. Why!
It was idiotic! He could see nothing at first but the ludicrousness of
flowers on the heads of his beasts! Then the desperation of this attempt
to imagine something graceful, something that would give him pleasure
touched him; for he saw now that this was a birthday decoration. From
that it was only a second before he was horrified with himself. Poor
little Sylvia! What a brute he was! She had plucked all that jessamine,
hung out of her window and risked falling to get hold of it; and she had
woken up early and come down in her dressing-gown just to do something
that she thought he would like! Horrible—what he had done! Now, when
it was too late, he saw, only too clearly, her startled white face and
quivering lips, and the way she had shrunk against the wall. How
pretty she had looked in her dressing-gown with her hair all about her,
frightened like that! He would do anything now to make up to her for
having been such a perfect beast! The feeling, always a little with
him, that he must look after her—dating, no doubt, from days when he had
protected her from the bulls that were not there; and the feeling of her
being so sweet and decent to him always; and some other feeling too—all
these suddenly reached poignant climax. He simply must make it up to
her! He ran back into the house and stole upstairs. Outside her room he
listened with all his might, but could hear nothing; then tapped
softly with one nail, and, putting his mouth to the keyhole, whispered:
“Sylvia!” Again and again he whispered her name. He even tried the
handle, meaning to open the door an inch, but it was bolted. Once he
thought he heard a noise like sobbing, and this made him still more
wretched. At last he gave it up; she would not come, would not be
consoled. He deserved it, he knew, but it was very hard. And dreadfully
dispirited he went up to his room, took a bit of paper, and tried to
write:

“DEAREST SYLVIA,

“It was most awfully sweet of you to put your stars on my beasts. It
was just about the most sweet thing you could have done. I am an awful
brute, but, of course, if I had only known what you were doing, I
should have loved it. Do forgive me; I deserve it, I know—only it IS my
birthday.

“Your sorrowful

“MARK.”

He took this down, slipped it under her door, tapped so that she might
notice it, and stole away. It relieved his mind a little, and he went
downstairs again.

Back in the greenhouse, sitting on a stool, he ruefully contemplated
those chapletted beasts. They consisted of a crow, a sheep, a turkey,
two doves, a pony, and sundry fragments. She had fastened the jessamine
sprigs to the tops of their heads by a tiny daub of wet clay, and had
evidently been surprised trying to put a sprig into the mouth of one
of the doves, for it hung by a little thread of clay from the beak. He
detached it and put it in his buttonhole. Poor little Sylvia! she took
things awfully to heart. He would be as nice as ever he could to her all
day. And, balancing on his stool, he stared fixedly at the wall against
which she had fallen back; the line of her soft chin and throat seemed
now to be his only memory. It was very queer how he could see nothing
but that, the way the throat moved, swallowed—so white, so soft. And
HE had made it go like that! It seemed an unconscionable time till
breakfast.

As the hour approached he haunted the hall, hoping she might be first
down. At last he heard footsteps, and waited, hidden behind the door of
the empty dining-room, lest at sight of him she should turn back. He had
rehearsed what he was going to do—bend down and kiss her hand and say:
“Dulcinea del Toboso is the most beautiful lady in the world, and I the
most unfortunate knight upon the earth,” from his favourite passage out
of his favourite book, 'Don Quixote.' She would surely forgive him then,
and his heart would no longer hurt him. Certainly she could never go on
making him so miserable if she knew his feelings! She was too soft and
gentle for that. Alas! it was not Sylvia who came; but Anna, fresh from
sleep, with her ice-green eyes and bright hair; and in sudden strange
antipathy to her, that strong, vivid figure, he stood dumb. And this
first lonely moment, which he had so many times in fancy spent locked in
her arms, passed without even a kiss; for quickly one by one the
others came. But of Sylvia only news through Mrs. Doone that she had a
headache, and was staying in bed. Her present was on the sideboard, a
book called 'Sartor Resartus.' “Mark—from Sylvia, August 1st, 1880,”
together with Gordy's cheque, Mrs. Doone's pearl pin, old Tingle's
'Stones of Venice,' and one other little parcel wrapped in
tissue-paper—four ties of varying shades of green, red, and blue,
hand-knitted in silk—a present of how many hours made short by the
thought that he would wear the produce of that clicking. He did not fail
in outer gratitude, but did he realize what had been knitted into those
ties? Not then.

Birthdays, like Christmas days, were made for disenchantment. Always
the false gaiety of gaiety arranged—always that pistol to the head:
'Confound you! enjoy yourself!' How could he enjoy himself with the
thought of Sylvia in her room, made ill by his brutality! The vision
of her throat working, swallowing her grief, haunted him like a little
white, soft spectre all through the long drive out on to the moor, and
the picnic in the heather, and the long drive home—haunted him so that
when Anna touched or looked at him he had no spirit to answer, no spirit
even to try and be with her alone, but almost a dread of it instead.

And when at last they were at home again, and she whispered:

“What is it? What have I done?” he could only mutter:

“Nothing! Oh, nothing! It's only that I've been a brute!”

At that enigmatic answer she might well search his face.

“Is it my husband?”

He could answer that, at all events.

“Oh, no!”

“What is it, then? Tell me.”

They were standing in the inner porch, pretending to examine the
ancestral chart—dotted and starred with dolphins and little full-rigged
galleons sailing into harbours—which always hung just there.

“Tell me, Mark; I don't like to suffer!”

What could he say, since he did not know himself? He stammered, tried to
speak, could not get anything out.

“Is it that girl?”

Startled, he looked away, and said:

“Of course not.”

She shivered, and went into the house. But he stayed, staring at the
chart with a dreadful stirred-up feeling—of shame and irritation, pity,
impatience, fear, all mixed. What had he done, said, lost? It was that
horrid feeling of when one has not been kind and not quite true, yet
might have been kinder if one had been still less true. Ah! but it was
all so mixed up. It felt all bleak, too, and wintry in him, as if he had
suddenly lost everybody's love. Then he was conscious of his tutor.

“Ah! friend Lennan—looking deeply into the past from the less romantic
present? Nice things, those old charts. The dolphins are extremely
jolly.”

It was difficult to remember not to be ill-mannered then. Why did
Stormer jeer like that? He just managed to answer:

“Yes, sir; I wish we had some now.”

“There are so many moons we wish for, Lennan, and they none of them come
tumbling down.”

The voice was almost earnest, and the boy's resentment fled. He felt
sorry, but why he did not know.

“In the meantime,” he heard his tutor say, “let us dress for dinner.”

When he came down to the drawing-room, Anna in her moonlight-coloured
frock was sitting on the sofa talking to—Sylvia. He kept away from them;
they could neither of them want him. But it did seem odd to him, who
knew not too much concerning women, that she could be talking so gaily,
when only half an hour ago she had said: “Is it that girl?”

He sat next her at dinner. Again it was puzzling that she should be
laughing so serenely at Gordy's stories. Did the whispering in the
porch, then, mean nothing? And Sylvia would not look at him; he felt
sure that she turned her eyes away simply because she knew he was
going to look in her direction. And this roused in him a sore
feeling—everything that night seemed to rouse that feeling—of injustice;
he was cast out, and he could not tell why. He had not meant to hurt
either of them! Why should they both want to hurt him so? And presently
there came to him a feeling that he did not care: Let them treat him as
they liked! There were other things besides love! If they did not
want him—he did not want them! And he hugged this reckless, unhappy,
don't-care feeling to him with all the abandonment of youth.

But even birthdays come to an end. And moods and feelings that seem so
desperately real die in the unreality of sleep.

XVI

If to the boy that birthday was all bewildered disillusionment, to Anna
it was verily slow torture; SHE found no relief in thinking that
there were things in life other than love. But next morning brought
readjustment, a sense of yesterday's extravagance, a renewal of hope.
Impossible surely that in one short fortnight she had lost what she had
made so sure of! She had only to be resolute. Only to grasp firmly what
was hers. After all these empty years was she not to have her hour? To
sit still meekly and see it snatched from her by a slip of a soft girl?
A thousand times, no! And she watched her chance. She saw him about noon
sally forth towards the river, with his rod. She had to wait a little,
for Gordy and his bailiff were down there by the tennis lawn, but they
soon moved on. She ran out then to the park gate. Once through that
she felt safe; her husband, she knew, was working in his room; the girl
somewhere invisible; the old governess still at her housekeeping; Mrs.
Doone writing letters. She felt full of hope and courage. This old
wild tangle of a park, that she had not yet seen, was beautiful—a true
trysting-place for fauns and nymphs, with its mossy trees and boulders
and the high bracken. She kept along under the wall in the direction
of the river, but came to no gate, and began to be afraid that she was
going wrong. She could hear the river on the other side, and looked for
some place where she could climb and see exactly where she was. An old
ash-tree tempted her. Scrambling up into its fork, she could just see
over. There was the little river within twenty yards, its clear dark
water running between thick foliage. On its bank lay a huge stone
balanced on another stone still more huge. And with his back to this
stone stood the boy, his rod leaning beside him. And there, on the
ground, her arms resting on her knees, her chin on her hands, that girl
sat looking up. How eager his eyes now—how different from the brooding
eyes of yesterday!

“So, you see, that was all. You might forgive me, Sylvia!”

And to Anna it seemed verily as if those two young faces formed suddenly
but one—the face of youth.

If she had stayed there looking for all time, she could not have had
graven on her heart a vision more indelible. Vision of Spring, of all
that was gone from her for ever! She shrank back out of the fork of the
old ash-tree, and, like a stricken beast, went hurrying, stumbling away,
amongst the stones and bracken. She ran thus perhaps a quarter of a
mile, then threw up her arms, fell down amongst the fern, and lay there
on her face. At first her heart hurt her so that she felt nothing but
that physical pain. If she could have died! But she knew it was nothing
but breathlessness. It left her, and that which took its place she tried
to drive away by pressing her breast against the ground, by clutching
the stalks of the bracken—an ache, an emptiness too dreadful! Youth to
youth! He was gone from her—and she was alone again! She did not cry.
What good in crying? But gusts of shame kept sweeping through her; shame
and rage. So this was all she was worth! The sun struck hot on her back
in that lair of tangled fern, where she had fallen; she felt faint and
sick. She had not known till now quite what this passion for the boy had
meant to her; how much of her very belief in herself was bound up with
it; how much clinging to her own youth. What bitterness! One soft slip
of a white girl—one YOUNG thing—and she had become as nothing! But
was that true? Could she not even now wrench him back to her with the
passion that this child knew nothing of! Surely! Oh, surely! Let him
but once taste the rapture she could give him! And at that thought
she ceased clutching at the bracken stalks, lying as still as the very
stones around her. Could she not? Might she not, even now? And all
feeling, except just a sort of quivering, deserted her—as if she had
fallen into a trance. Why spare this girl? Why falter? She was first!
He had been hers out there. And she still had the power to draw him. At
dinner the first evening she had dragged his gaze to her, away from that
girl—away from youth, as a magnet draws steel. She could still bind him
with chains that for a little while at all events he would not want to
break! Bind him? Hateful word! Take him, hankering after what she could
not give him—youth, white innocence, Spring? It would be infamous,
infamous! She sprang up from the fern, and ran along the hillside, not
looking where she went, stumbling among the tangled growth, in and out
of the boulders, till she once more sank breathless on to a stone. It
was bare of trees just here, and she could see, across the river valley,
the high larch-crowned tor on the far side. The sky was clear—the sun
bright. A hawk was wheeling over that hill; far up, very near the blue!
Infamous! She could not do that! Could not drug him, drag him to her by
his senses, by all that was least high in him, when she wished for
him all the finest things that life could give, as if she had been his
mother. She could not. It would be wicked! In that moment of intense
spiritual agony, those two down there in the sun, by the grey stone and
the dark water, seemed guarded from her, protected. The girl's white
flower-face trembling up, the boy's gaze leaping down! Strange that a
heart which felt that, could hate at the same moment that flower-face,
and burn to kill with kisses that eagerness in the boy's eyes. The
storm in her slowly passed. And she prayed just to feel nothing. It was
natural that she should lose her hour! Natural that her thirst should go
unslaked, and her passion never bloom; natural that youth should go to
youth, this boy to his own kind, by the law of—love. The breeze blowing
down the valley fanned her cheeks, and brought her a faint sensation
of relief. Nobility! Was it just a word? Or did those that gave up
happiness feel noble?

She wandered for a long time in the park. Not till late afternoon did
she again pass out by the gate, through which she had entered, full of
hope. She met no one before she reached her room; and there, to be
safe, took refuge in her bed. She dreaded only lest the feeling of utter
weariness should leave her. She wanted no vigour of mind or body till
she was away from here. She meant neither to eat nor drink; only to
sleep, if she could. To-morrow, if there were any early train, she could
be gone before she need see anyone; her husband must arrange. As to what
he would think, and she could say—time enough to decide that. And what
did it matter? The one vital thing now was not to see the boy, for she
could not again go through hours of struggle like those. She rang the
bell, and sent the startled maid with a message to her husband. And
while she waited for him to come, her pride began revolting. She must
not let him see. That would be horrible. And slipping out of bed she got
a handkerchief and the eau-de-Cologne flask, and bandaged her forehead.
He came almost instantly, entering in his quick, noiseless way, and
stood looking at her. He did not ask what was the matter, but simply
waited. And never before had she realized so completely how he began,
as it were, where she left off; began on a plane from which instinct and
feeling were as carefully ruled out as though they had been blasphemous.
She summoned all her courage, and said: “I went into the park; the sun
must have been too hot. I should like to go home to-morrow, if you don't
mind. I can't bear not feeling well in other people's houses.”

She was conscious of a smile flickering over his face; then it grew
grave.

“Ah!” he said; “yes. The sun, a touch of that will last some days. Will
you be fit to travel, though?”

She had a sudden conviction that he knew all about it, but that—since
to know all about it was to feel himself ridiculous—he had the power of
making himself believe that he knew nothing. Was this fine of him, or
was it hateful?

She closed her eyes and said:

“My head is bad, but I SHALL be able. Only I don't want a fuss made.
Could we go by a train before they are down?”

She heard him say:

“Yes. That will have its advantages.”

There was not the faintest sound now, but of course he was still there.
In that dumb, motionless presence was all her future. Yes, that would
be her future—a thing without feeling, and without motion. A fearful
curiosity came on her to look at it. She opened her gaze. He was still
standing just as he had been, his eyes fixed on her. But one hand, on
the edge of his coat pocket—out of the picture, as it were—was
nervously closing and unclosing. And suddenly she felt pity. Not for her
future—which must be like that; but for him. How dreadful to have grown
so that all emotion was exiled—how dreadful! And she said gently:

“I am sorry, Harold.”

As if he had heard something strange and startling, his eyes dilated in
a curious way, he buried that nervous hand in his pocket, turned, and
went out.

XVII

When young Mark came on Sylvia by the logan-stone, it was less
surprising to him than if he had not known she was there—having watched
her go. She was sitting, all humped together, brooding over the water,
her sunbonnet thrown back; and that hair, in which his star had caught,
shining faint-gold under the sun. He came on her softly through the
grass, and, when he was a little way off, thought it best to halt. If
he startled her she might run away, and he would not have the heart to
follow. How still she was, lost in her brooding! He wished he could see
her face. He spoke at last, gently:

“Sylvia!... Would you mind?”

And, seeing that she did not move, he went up to her. Surely she could
not still be angry with him!

“Thanks most awfully for that book you gave me—it looks splendid!”

She made no answer. And leaning his rod against the stone, he sighed.
That silence of hers seemed to him unjust; what was it she wanted him
to say or do? Life was not worth living, if it was to be all bottled up
like this.

“I never meant to hurt you. I hate hurting people. It's only that my
beasts are so bad—I can't bear people to see them—especially you—I want
to please you—I do really. So, you see, that was all. You MIGHT forgive
me, Sylvia!”

Something over the wall, a rustling, a scattering in the fern—deer, no
doubt! And again he said eagerly, softly:

“You might be nice to me, Sylvia; you really might.”

Very quickly, turning her head away, she said:

“It isn't that any more. It's—it's something else.”

“What else?”

“Nothing—only, that I don't count—now—”

He knelt down beside her. What did she mean? But he knew well enough.

“Of course, you count! Most awfully! Oh, don't be unhappy! I hate people
being unhappy. Don't be unhappy, Sylvia!” And he began gently to stroke
her arm. It was all strange and troubled within him; one thing only
plain—he must not admit anything! As if reading that thought, her blue
eyes seemed suddenly to search right into him. Then she pulled some
blades of grass, and began plaiting them.

“SHE counts.”

Ah! He was not going to say: She doesn't! It would be caddish to say
that. Even if she didn't count—Did she still?—it would be mean and low.
And in his eyes just then there was the look that had made his tutor
compare him to a lion cub in trouble.

Sylvia was touching his arm.

“Mark!”

“Yes.”

“Don't!”

He got up and took his rod. What was the use? He could not stay there
with her, since he could not—must not speak.

“Are you going?”

“Yes.”

“Are you angry? PLEASE don't be angry with me.”

He felt a choke in his throat, bent down to her hand, and kissed it;
then shouldered his rod, and marched away. Looking back once, he saw her
still sitting there, gazing after him, forlorn, by that great stone. It
seemed to him, then, there was nowhere he could go; nowhere except among
the birds and beasts and trees, who did not mind even if you were all
mixed up and horrible inside. He lay down in the grass on the bank. He
could see the tiny trout moving round and round the stones; swallows
came all about him, flying very low; a hornet, too, bore him company for
a little. But he could take interest in nothing; it was as if his spirit
were in prison. It would have been nice, indeed, to be that water, never
staying, passing, passing; or wind, touching everything, never caught.
To be able to do nothing without hurting someone—that was what was so
ghastly. If only one were like a flower, that just sprang up and lived
its life all to itself, and died. But whatever he did, or said now,
would be like telling lies, or else being cruel. The only thing was to
keep away from people. And yet how keep away from his own guests?

He went back to the house for lunch, but both those guests were out, no
one seemed quite to know where. Restless, unhappy, puzzled, he wandered
round and about all the afternoon. Just before dinner he was told of
Mrs. Stormer's not being well, and that they would be leaving to-morrow.
Going—after three days! That plunged him deeper into his strange and
sorrowful confusion. He was reduced now to a complete brooding silence.
He knew he was attracting attention, but could not help it. Several
times during dinner he caught Gordy's eyes fixed on him, from under
those puffy half-closed lids, with asphyxiated speculation. But he
simply COULD not talk—everything that came into his mind to say
seemed false. Ah! it was a sad evening—with its glimmering vision into
another's sore heart, its confused gnawing sense of things broken, faith
betrayed; and yet always the perplexed wonder—“How could I have helped
it?” And always Sylvia's wistful face that he tried not to look at.

He stole out, leaving Gordy and his tutor still over their wine, and
roamed about the garden a long time, listening sadly to the owls. It was
a blessing to get upstairs, though of course he would not sleep.

But he did sleep, all through a night of many dreams, in the last of
which he was lying on a mountain side, Anna looking down into his eyes,
and bending her face to his. He woke just as her lips touched him. Still
under the spell of that troubling dream, he became conscious of the
sound of wheels and horses' hoofs on the gravel, and sprang out of
bed. There was the waggonette moving from the door, old Godden driving,
luggage piled up beside him, and the Stormers sitting opposite each
other in the carriage. Going away like that—having never even said
good-bye! For a moment he felt as people must when they have unwittingly
killed someone—utterly stunned and miserable. Then he dashed into his
clothes. He would not let her go thus! He would—he must—see her again!
What had he done that she should go like this? He rushed downstairs.
The hall was empty; nineteen minutes to eight! The train left at eight
o'clock. Had he time to saddle Bolero? He rushed round to the stables;
but the cob was out, being shoed. He would—he must get there in time.
It would show her anyway that he was not quite a cad. He walked till the
drive curved, then began running hard. A quarter of a mile, and already
he felt better, not so miserable and guilty; it was something to feel
you had a tough job in hand, all your work cut out—something to have to
think of economizing strength, picking out the best going, keeping out
of the sun, saving your wind uphill, flying down any slope. It was cool
still, and the dew had laid the dust; there was no traffic and scarcely
anyone to look back and gape as he ran by. What he would do, if he got
there in time—how explain this mad three-mile run—he did not think. He
passed a farm that he knew was just half-way. He had left his watch.
Indeed, he had put on only his trousers, shirt, and Norfolk jacket; no
tie, no hat, not even socks under his tennis shoes, and he was as hot
as fire, with his hair flying back—a strange young creature indeed for
anyone to meet. But he had lost now all feeling, save the will to get
there. A flock of sheep came out of a field into the lane. He pushed
through them somehow, but they lost him several seconds. More than a
mile still; and he was blown, and his legs beginning to give! Downhill
indeed they went of their own accord, but there was the long run-in,
quite level; and he could hear the train, now slowly puffing its way
along the valley. Then, in spite of exhaustion, his spirit rose. He
would not go in looking like a scarecrow, utterly done, and make a
scene. He must pull himself together at the end, and stroll in—as if
he had come for fun. But how—seeing that at any moment he felt he might
fall flat in the dust, and stay there for ever! And, as he ran, he made
little desperate efforts to mop his face, and brush his clothes. There
were the gates, at last—two hundred yards away. The train, he could hear
no longer. It must be standing in the station. And a sob came from his
overdriven lungs. He heard the guard's whistle as he reached the gates.
Instead of making for the booking-office, he ran along the paling, where
an entrance to the goods'-shed was open, and dashing through he fell
back against the honeysuckle. The engine was just abreast of him; he
snatched at his sleeve and passed it over his face, to wipe the sweat
away. Everything was blurred. He must see—surely he had not come in time
just not to see! He pushed his hands over his forehead and hair, and
spied up dizzily at the slowly passing train. She was there, at a
window! Standing, looking out! He dared not step forward, for fear of
falling, but he put out his hand—She saw him. Yes, she saw him! Wasn't
she going to make a sign? Not one? And suddenly he saw her tear at her
dress, pluck something out, and throw it. It fell close to his feet.
He did not pick it up—he wanted to see her face till she was gone. It
looked wonderful—very proud, and pale. She put her hand up to her lips.
Then everything went blurred again and when he could see once more, the
train had vanished. But at his feet was what she had thrown. He picked
it up! All dry and dark, it was the flower she had given him in the
Tyrol, and stolen back from his buttonhole.

Creeping out, past the goods'-shed, he made his way to a field, and lay
down with his face pressed to that withered thing which still had its
scent....

The asphyxiated speculation in his guardian's eyes had not been without
significance. Mark did not go back to Oxford. He went instead to Rome—to
live in his sister's house, and attend a school of sculpture. That was
the beginning of a time when nothing counted except his work.

To Anna he wrote twice, but received no answer. From his tutor he had
one little note:

“MY DEAR LENNAN,

“So! You abandon us for Art? Ah! well—it was your moon, if I
remember—one of them. A worthy moon—a little dusty in these days—a
little in her decline—but to you no doubt a virgin goddess, whose hem,
etc.

“We shall retain the friendliest memories of you in spite of your
defection.

“Once your tutor and still your friend,

“HAROLD STORMER.”

After that vacation it was long—very long before he saw Sylvia again.





PART II—SUMMER

I

Gleam of a thousand lights; clack and mutter of innumerable voices,
laughter, footsteps; hiss and rumble of passing trains taking gamblers
back to Nice or Mentone; fevered wailing from the violins of four
fiddlers with dark-white skins outside the cafe; and above, around,
beyond, the dark sky, and the dark mountains, and the dark sea, like
some great dark flower to whose heart is clinging a jewelled beetle. So
was Monte Carlo on that May night of 1887.

But Mark Lennan, at one of the little marble-topped tables, was in too
great maze and exaltation of spirit and of senses to be conscious of
its glare and babel, even of its beauty. He sat so very still that his
neighbours, with the instinctive aversion of the human creature to what
is too remote from its own mood, after one good stare, turned their eyes
away, as from something ludicrous, almost offensive.

He was lost, indeed, in memory of the minutes just gone by. For it had
come at last, after all these weeks of ferment, after all this strange
time of perturbation.

Very stealthily it had been creeping on him, ever since that chance
introduction nearly a year ago, soon after he settled down in
London, following those six years of Rome and Paris. First the merest
friendliness, because she was so nice about his work; then respectful
admiration, because she was so beautiful; then pity, because she was so
unhappy in her marriage. If she had been happy, he would have fled. The
knowledge that she had been unhappy long before he knew her had kept his
conscience still. And at last one afternoon she said: “Ah! if you come
out there too!” Marvelously subtle, the way that one little outslipped
saying had worked in him, as though it had a life of its own—like
a strange bird that had flown into the garden of his heart, and
established itself with its new song and flutterings, its new flight,
its wistful and ever clearer call. That and one moment, a few days later
in her London drawing-room, when he had told her that he WAS coming,
and she did not, could not, he felt, look at him. Queer, that nothing
momentous said, done—or even left undone—had altered all the future!

And so she had gone with her uncle and aunt, under whose wing one might
be sure she would meet with no wayward or exotic happenings. And he had
received from her this little letter:

“HOTEL COEUR D'OR, “MONTE CARLO. “MY DEAR MARK,

“We've arrived. It is so good to be in the sun. The flowers are
wonderful. I am keeping Gorbio and Roquebrune till you come.

“Your friend,

“OLIVE CRAMIER.”

That letter was the single clear memory he had of the time between her
going and his following. He received it one afternoon, sitting on an old
low garden wall with the spring sun shining on him through apple-trees
in blossom, and a feeling as if all the desire of the world lay before
him, and he had but to stretch out his arms to take it.

Then confused unrest, all things vague; till at the end of his journey
he stepped out of the train at Beaulieu with a furiously beating heart.
But why? Surely he had not expected her to come out from Monte Carlo to
meet him!

A week had gone by since then in one long effort to be with her and
appear to others as though he did not greatly wish to be; two concerts,
two walks with her alone, when all that he had said seemed as nothing
said, and all her sayings but ghosts of what he wished to hear; a week
of confusion, day and night, until, a few minutes ago, her handkerchief
had fallen from her glove on to the dusty road, and he had picked it up
and put it to his lips. Nothing could take away the look she had given
him then. Nothing could ever again separate her from him utterly. She
had confessed in it to the same sweet, fearful trouble that he himself
was feeling. She had not spoken, but he had seen her lips part, her
breast rise and fall. And HE had not spoken. What was the use of words?

He felt in the pocket of his coat. There, against his fingers, was that
wisp of lawn and lace, soft, yet somehow alive; and stealthily he took
it out. The whole of her, with her fragrance, seemed pressed to his face
in the touch of that lawn border, roughened by little white stars. More
secretly than ever he put it back; and for the first time looked round.
These people! They belonged to a world that he had left. They gave him
the same feeling that her uncle and aunt had given him just now, when
they said good-night, following her into their hotel. That good Colonel,
that good Mrs. Ercott! The very concretion of the world he had been
brought up in, of the English point of view; symbolic figures of health,
reason, and the straight path, on which at that moment, seemingly, he
had turned his back. The Colonel's profile, ruddy through its tan,
with grey moustache guiltless of any wax, his cheery, high-pitched:
“Good-night, young Lennan!” His wife's curly smile, her flat, cosy,
confidential voice—how strange and remote they had suddenly become! And
all these people here, chattering, drinking—how queer and far away! Or
was it just that he was queer and remote to them?

And getting up from his table, he passed the fiddlers with the
dark-white skins, out into the Place.

II

He went up the side streets to the back of her hotel, and stood by the
railings of the garden—one of those hotel gardens which exist but to
figure in advertisements, with its few arid palms, its paths staring
white between them, and a fringe of dusty lilacs and mimosas.

And there came to him the oddest feeling—that he had been there before,
peering through blossoms at those staring paths and shuttered windows.
A scent of wood-smoke was abroad, and some dry plant rustled ever so
faintly in what little wind was stirring. What was there of memory in
this night, this garden? Some dark sweet thing, invisible, to feel whose
presence was at once ecstasy, and the irritation of a thirst that will
not be quenched.

And he walked on. Houses, houses! At last he was away from them, alone
on the high road, beyond the limits of Monaco. And walking thus through
the night he had thoughts that he imagined no one had ever had before
him. The knowledge that she loved him had made everything seem very
sacred and responsible. Whatever he did, he must not harm her. Women
were so helpless!

For in spite of six years of art in Rome and Paris, he still had a
fastidious reverence for women. If she had loved her husband she would
have been safe enough from him; but to be bound to a companionship that
she gave unwillingly—this had seemed to him atrocious, even before
he loved her. How could any husband ask that? Have so little pride—so
little pity? The unpardonable thing! What was there to respect in such a
marriage? Only, he must not do her harm! But now that her eyes had said,
I love you!—What then? It was simply miraculous to know THAT, under
the stars of this warm Southern night, burning its incense of trees and
flowers!

Climbing up above the road, he lay down. If only she were there beside
him! The fragrance of the earth not yet chilled, crept to his face; and
for just a moment it seemed to him that she did come. If he could keep
her there for ever in that embrace that was no embrace—in that ghostly
rapture, on this wild fragrant bed that no lovers before had ever
pressed, save the creeping things, and the flowers; save sunlight and
moonlight with their shadows; and the wind kissing the earth! . . .

Then she was gone; his hands touched nothing but the crumbled pine dust,
and the flowers of the wild thyme fallen into sleep.

He stood on the edge of the little cliff, above the road between the
dark mountains and the sea black with depth. Too late for any passer-by;
as far from what men thought and said and did as the very night itself
with its whispering warmth. And he conjured up her face, making certain
of it—the eyes, clear and brown, and wide apart; the close, sweet mouth;
the dark hair; the whole flying loveliness.

Then he leaped down into the road, and ran—one could not walk, feeling
this miracle, that no one had ever felt before, the miracle of love.

III

In their most reputable hotel 'Le Coeur d'Or,' long since remodelled and
renamed, Mrs. Ercott lay in her brass-bound bed looking by starlight at
the Colonel in his brass-bound bed. Her ears were carefully freed
from the pressure of her pillow, for she thought she heard a mosquito.
Companion for thirty years to one whose life had been feverishly
punctuated by the attentions of those little beasts, she had no love
for them. It was the one subject on which perhaps her imagination was
stronger than her common sense. For in fact there was not, and could not
be, a mosquito, since the first thing the Colonel did, on arriving at
any place farther South than Parallel 46 of latitude, was to open the
windows very wide, and nail with many tiny tacks a piece of mosquito
netting across that refreshing space, while she held him firmly by the
coat-tails. The fact that other people did not so secure their windows
did not at all trouble the Colonel, a true Englishman, who loved to act
in his own way, and to think in the ways of other people. After that
they would wait till night came, then burn a peculiar little lamp with
a peculiar little smell, and, in the full glare of the gaslight,
stand about on chairs, with slippers, and their eyes fixed on true or
imaginary beasts. Then would fall little slaps, making little messes,
and little joyous or doleful cries would arise: “I've got that one!”
“Oh, John, I missed him!” And in the middle of the room, the Colonel, in
pyjamas, and spectacles (only worn in very solemn moments, low down on
his nose), would revolve slowly, turning his eyes, with that look in
them of out-facing death which he had so long acquired, on every inch
of wall and ceiling, till at last he would say: “Well, Dolly, that's the
lot!” At which she would say: “Give me a kiss, dear!” and he would kiss
her, and get into his bed.

There was, then, no mosquito, save that general ghost of him which
lingered in the mind of one devoted to her husband. Spying out his
profile, for he was lying on his back, she refrained from saying:
“John, are you awake?” A whiffling sound was coming from a nose, to
which—originally straight—attention to military duties had given a
slight crook, half an inch below the level of grizzled eyebrows raised a
little, as though surprised at the sounds beneath. She could hardly see
him, but she thought: “How good he looks!” And, in fact, he did. It was
the face of a man incapable of evil, having in its sleep the candour of
one at heart a child—that simple candour of those who have never known
how to seek adventures of the mind, and have always sought adventures of
the body. Then somehow she did say:

“John! Are you asleep?”

The Colonel, instantly alive, as at some old-time attack, answered:

“Yes.”

“That poor young man!”

“Which?”

“Mark Lennan. Haven't you seen?”

“What?”

“My dear, it was under your nose. But you never do see these things!”

The Colonel slowly turned his head. His wife was an imaginative woman!
She had always been so. Dimly he perceived that something romantic was
about to come from her. But with that almost professional gentleness
of a man who has cut the heads and arms off people in his time, he
answered:

“What things?”

“He picked up her handkerchief.”

“Whose?”

“Olive's. He put it in his pocket. I distinctly saw him.”

There was silence; then Mrs. Ercott's voice rose again, impersonal, far
away.

“What always astonishes me about young people is the way they think
they're not seen—poor dears!”

Still there was silence.

“John! Are you thinking?”

For a considerable sound of breathing, not mere whiffling now, was
coming from the Colonel—to his wife a sure sign.

And indeed he WAS thinking. Dolly was an imaginative woman, but
something told him that in this case she might not be riding past the
hounds.

Mrs. Ercott raised herself. He looked more good than ever; a little
perplexed frown had climbed up with his eyebrows and got caught in the
wrinkles across his forehead.

“I'm very fond of Olive,” he said.

Mrs. Ercott fell back on her pillows. In her heart there was just that
little soreness natural to a woman over fifty, whose husband has a
niece.

“No doubt,” she murmured.

Something vague moved deep down in the Colonel; he stretched out his
hand. In that strip of gloom between the beds it encountered another
hand, which squeezed it rather hard.

He said: “Look here, old girl!” and there was silence.

Mrs. Ercott in her turn was thinking. Her thoughts were flat and rapid
like her voice, but had that sort of sentiment which accompanies the
mental exercise of women with good hearts. Poor young man! And poor
Olive! But was a woman ever to be pitied, when she was so pretty as
that! Besides, when all was said and done, she had a fine-looking man
for husband; in Parliament, with a career, and fond of her—decidedly.
And their little house in London, so close to Westminster, was a
distinct dear; and nothing could be more charming than their cottage by
the river. Was Olive, then, to be pitied? And yet—she was not happy.
It was no good pretending that she was happy. All very well to say that
such things were within one's control, but if you read novels at all,
you knew they weren't. There was such a thing as incompatibility. Oh
yes! And there was the matter of difference in their ages! Olive was
twenty-six, Robert Cramier forty-two. And now this young Mark Lennan was
in love with her. What if she were in love with him! John would realize
then, perhaps, that the young flew to the young. For men—even the best,
like John, were funny! She would never dream of feeling for any of her
nephews as John clearly felt for Olive.

The Colonel's voice broke in on her thoughts.

“Nice young fellow—Lennan! Great pity! Better sheer off—if he's
getting—”

And, rather suddenly, she answered:

“Suppose he can't!”

“Can't?”

“Did you never hear of a 'grande passion'?”

The Colonel rose on his elbow. This was another of those occasions that
showed him how, during the later years of his service in Madras and
Upper Burmah, when Dolly's health had not been equal to the heat, she
had picked up in London a queer way of looking at things—as if they
were not—not so right or wrong as—as he felt them to be. And he repeated
those two French words in his own way, adding:

“Isn't that just what I'm saying? The sooner he stands clear, the
better.”

But Mrs. Ercott, too, sat up.

“Be human,” she said.

The Colonel experienced the same sensation as when one suddenly knows
that one is not digesting food. Because young Lennan was in danger of
getting into a dishonourable fix, he was told to be human! Really, Dolly
was—! The white blur of her new boudoir cap suddenly impinged on his
consciousness. Surely she was not getting—un-English! At her time of
life!

“I'm thinking of Olive,” he said; “I don't want her worried with that
sort of thing.”

“Perhaps Olive can manage for herself. In these days it doesn't do to
interfere with love.”

“Love!” muttered the Colonel. “What? Phew!”

If one's own wife called this—this sort of—thing, love—then, why had he
been faithful to her—in very hot climates—all these years? A sense of
waste, and of injustice, tried to rear its head against all the side
of him that attached certain meanings to certain words, and acted up
to them. And this revolt gave him a feeling, strange and so unpleasant.
Love! It was not a word to use thus loosely! Love led to marriage;
this could not lead to marriage, except through—the Divorce Court. And
suddenly the Colonel had a vision of his dead brother Lindsay,
Olive's father, standing there in the dark, with his grave, clear-cut,
ivory-pale face, under the black hair supposed to be derived from a
French ancestress who had escaped from the massacre of St. Bartholomew.
Upright fellow always, Lindsay—even before he was made bishop! Queer
somehow that Olive should be his daughter. Not that she was not upright;
not at all! But she was soft! Lindsay was not! Imagine him seeing that
young fellow putting her handkerchief in his pocket. But had young
Lennan really done such a thing? Dolly was imaginative! He had mistaken
it probably for his own; if he had chanced to blow his nose, he would
have realized. For, coupled with the almost child-like candour of
his mind, the Colonel had real administrative vigour, a true sense of
practical values; an ounce of illustration was always worth to him a
pound of theory! Dolly was given to riding off on theories. Thank God!
she never acted on 'em!

He said gently:

“My dear! Young Lennan may be an artist and all that, but he's a
gentleman! I know old Heatherley, his guardian. Why I introduced him to
Olive myself!”

“What has that to do with it? He's in love with her.”

One of the countless legion that hold a creed taken at face value, into
whose roots and reasons they have never dreamed of going, the Colonel
was staggered. Like some native on an island surrounded by troubled
seas, which he has stared at with a certain contemptuous awe all his
life, but never entered, he was disconcerted by thus being asked to
leave the shore. And by his own wife!

Indeed, Mrs. Ercott had not intended to go so far; but there was in
her, as in all women whose minds are more active than their husbands',
a something worrying her always to go a little farther than she meant.
With real compunction she heard the Colonel say:

“I must get up and drink some water.”

She was out of bed in a moment. “Not without boiling!”

She had seriously troubled him, then! Now he would not sleep—the blood
went to his head so quickly. He would just lie awake, trying not to
disturb her. She could not bear him not to disturb her. It seemed so
selfish of her! She ought to have known that the whole subject was too
dangerous to discuss at night.

She became conscious that he was standing just behind her; his figure in
its thin covering looked very lean, his face strangely worn.

“I'm sorry you put that idea into my head!” he said. “I'm fond of
Olive.”

Again Mrs. Ercott felt that jealous twinge, soon lost this time in
the motherliness of a childless woman for her husband. He must not be
troubled! He should not be troubled. And she said:

“The water's boiling! Now sip a good glass slowly, and get into bed, or
I'll take your temperature!”

Obediently the Colonel took from her the glass, and as he sipped, she
put her hand up and stroked his head.

IV

In the room below them the subject of their discussion was lying very
wide awake. She knew that she had betrayed herself, made plain to
Mark Lennan what she had never until now admitted to herself. But the
love-look, which for the life of her she could not keep back, had been
followed by a feeling of having 'lost caste.' For, hitherto, the world
of women had been strictly divided by her into those who did and those
who did not do such things; and to be no longer quite sure to which
half she belonged was frightening. But what was the good of thinking, of
being frightened?—it could not lead to anything. Yesterday she had
not known this would come; and now she could not guess at to-morrow!
To-night was enough! To-night with its swimming loveliness! Just to
feel! To love, and to be loved!

A new sensation for her—as different from those excited by the
courtships of her girlhood, or by her marriage, as light from darkness.
For she had never been in love, not even with her husband. She knew
it now. The sun was shining in a world where she had thought there was
none. Nothing could come of it. But the sun was shining; and in that
sunshine she must warm herself a little.

Quite simply she began to plan what he and she would do. There were six
days left. They had not yet been to Gorbio, nor to Castellar—none of
those long walks or rides they had designed to do for the beauty of
them. Would he come early to-morrow? What could they do together? No one
should know what these six days would be to her—not even he. To be with
him, watch his face, hear his voice, and now and then just touch him!
She could trust herself to show no one. And then, it would be—over!
Though, of course, she would see him again in London.

And, lying there in the dark, she thought of their first meeting, one
Sunday morning, in Hyde Park. The Colonel religiously observed Church
Parade, and would even come all the way down to Westminster, from his
flat near Knightsbridge, in order to fetch his niece up to it. She
remembered how, during their stroll, he had stopped suddenly in front of
an old gentleman with a puffy yellow face and eyes half open.

“Ah! Mr. Heatherley—you up from Devonshire? How's your
nephew—the—er—sculptor?”

And the old gentleman, glaring a little, as it seemed to her, from
under his eyelids and his grey top hat, had answered: “Colonel Ercott,
I think? Here's the fellow himself—Mark!” And a young man had taken
off his hat. She had only noticed at first that his dark hair grew—not
long—but very thick; and that his eyes were very deep-set. Then she saw
him smile; it made his face all eager, yet left it shy; and she decided
that he was nice. Soon after, she had gone with the Ercotts to see his
'things'; for it was, of course, and especially in those days, quite an
event to know a sculptor—rather like having a zebra in your park.
The Colonel had been delighted and a little relieved to find that the
'things' were nearly all of beasts and birds. “Very interestin'” to one
full of curious lore about such, having in his time killed many of them,
and finding himself at the end of it with a curious aversion to killing
any more—which he never put into words.

Acquaintanceship had ripened fast after that first visit to his studio,
and now it was her turn to be relieved that Mark Lennan devoted himself
almost entirely to beasts and birds instead of to the human form,
so-called divine. Ah! yes—she would have suffered; now that she loved
him, she saw that. At all events she could watch his work and help it
with sympathy. That could not be wrong....

She fell asleep at last, and dreamed that she was in a boat alone on the
river near her country cottage, drifting along among spiky flowers
like asphodels, with birds singing and flying round her. She could move
neither face nor limbs, but that helpless feeling was not unpleasant,
till she became conscious that she was drawing nearer and nearer to
what was neither water nor land, light nor darkness, but simply some
unutterable feeling. And then she saw, gazing at her out of the rushes
on the banks, a great bull head. It moved as she moved—it was on both
sides of her, yet all the time only one head. She tried to raise her
hands and cover her eyes, but could not—and woke with a sob.... It was
light.

Nearly six o'clock already! Her dream made her disinclined to trust
again to sleep. Sleep was a robber now—of each minute of these few days!
She got up, and looked out. The morning was fine, the air warm already,
sweet with dew, and heliotrope nailed to the wall outside her window.
She had but to open her shutters and walk into the sun. She dressed,
took her sunshade, stealthily slipped the shutters back, and stole
forth. Shunning the hotel garden, where the eccentricity of her early
wandering might betray the condition of her spirit, she passed through
into the road toward the Casino. Without perhaps knowing it, she was
making for where she had sat with him yesterday afternoon, listening
to the band. Hatless, but defended by her sunshade, she excited the
admiration of the few connoisseurs as yet abroad, strolling in blue
blouses to their labours; and this simple admiration gave her pleasure.
For once she was really conscious of the grace in her own limbs,
actually felt the gentle vividness of her own face, with its nearly
black hair and eyes, and creamy skin—strange sensation, and very
comforting!

In the Casino gardens she walked more slowly, savouring the aromatic
trees, and stopping to bend and look at almost every flower; then, on
the seat, where she had sat with him yesterday, she rested. A few paces
away were the steps that led to the railway-station, trodden upwards
eagerly by so many, day after day, night after night, and lightly or
sorrowfully descended. Above her, two pines, a pepper-tree, and a palm
mingled their shade—so fantastic the jumbling of trees and souls in this
strange place! She furled her sunshade and leaned back. Her gaze,
free and friendly, passed from bough to bough. Against the bright sky,
unbesieged as yet by heat or dust, they had a spiritual look, lying
sharp and flat along the air. She plucked a cluster of pinkish berries
from the pepper-tree, crushing and rubbing them between her hands to
get their fragrance. All these beautiful and sweet things seemed to be a
part of her joy at being loved, part of this sudden summer in her heart.
The sky, the flowers, that jewel of green-blue sea, the bright acacias,
were nothing in the world but love.

And those few who passed, and saw her sitting there under the
pepper-tree, wondered no doubt at the stillness of this dame bien mise,
who had risen so early.

V

In the small hours, which so many wish were smaller, the Colonel had
awakened, with the affair of the handkerchief swelling visibly. His
niece's husband was not a man that he had much liking for—a taciturn
fellow, with possibly a bit of the brute in him, a man who rather rode
people down; but, since Dolly and he were in charge of Olive, the notion
that young Lennan was falling in love with her under their very noses
was alarming to one naturally punctilious. It was not until he fell
asleep again, and woke in full morning light, that the remedy occurred
to him. She must be taken out of herself! Dolly and he had been slack;
too interested in this queer place, this queer lot of people! They had
neglected her, left her to. . . Boys and girls!—One ought always to
remember. But it was not too late. She was old Lindsay's daughter; would
not forget herself. Poor old Lindsay—fine fellow; bit too much, perhaps,
of the—Huguenot in him! Queer, those throw-backs! Had noticed in horses,
time and again—white hairs about the tail, carriage of the head—skip
generations and then pop out. And Olive had something of his look—the
same ivory skin, same colour of eyes and hair! Only she was not severe,
like her father, not exactly! And once more there shot through the
Colonel a vague dread, as of a trusteeship neglected. It disappeared,
however, in his bath.

He was out before eight o'clock, a thin upright figure in hard straw hat
and grey flannel clothes, walking with the indescribable loose poise
of the soldier Englishman, with that air, different from the French,
German, what not, because of shoulders ever asserting, through their
drill, the right to put on mufti; with that perfectly quiet and modest
air of knowing that, whatever might be said, there was only one way
of wearing clothes and moving legs. And, as he walked, he smoothed his
drooping grey moustache, considering how best to take his niece out of
herself. He passed along by the Terrace, and stood for a moment looking
down at the sea beyond the pigeon-shooting ground. Then he moved on
round under the Casino into the gardens at the back. A beautiful spot!
Wonderful care they had taken with the plants! It made him think
a little of Tushawore, where his old friend the Rajah—precious old
rascal!—had gardens to his palace rather like these. He paced again to
the front. It was nice and quiet in the early mornings, with the sea
down there, and nobody trying to get the better of anybody else. There
were fellows never happy unless they were doing someone in the eye. He
had known men who would ride at the devil himself, make it a point
of honour to swindle a friend out of a few pounds! Odd place this
'Monte'—sort of a Garden of Eden gone wrong. And all the real, but quite
inarticulate love of Nature, which had supported the Colonel through
deserts and jungles, on transports at sea, and in mountain camps,
awoke in the sweetness of these gardens. His dear mother! He had never
forgotten the words with which she had shown him the sunset through the
coppice down at old Withes Norton, when he was nine years old: “That
is beauty, Jack! Do you feel it, darling?” He had not felt it at the
time—not he; a thick-headed, scampering youngster. Even when he first
went to India he had had no eye for a sunset. The rising generation
were different. That young couple, for instance, under the pepper-tree,
sitting there without a word, just looking at the trees. How long, he
wondered, had they been sitting like that? And suddenly something in the
Colonel leaped; his steel-coloured eyes took on their look of out-facing
death. Choking down a cough, he faced about, back to where he had stood
above the pigeon-shooting ground.... Olive and that young fellow!
An assignation! At this time in the morning! The earth reeled. His
brother's child—his favourite niece! The woman whom he most admired—the
woman for whom his heart was softest. Leaning over the stone parapet, no
longer seeing either the smooth green of the pigeon-shooting ground, or
the smooth blue of the sea beyond, he was moved, distressed, bewildered
beyond words. Before breakfast! That was the devil of it! Confession,
as it were, of everything. Moreover, he had seen their hands touching on
the seat. The blood rushed up to his face; he had seen, spied out, what
was not intended for his eyes. Nice position—that! Dolly, too, last
night, had seen. But that was different. Women might see things—it
was expected of them. But for a man—a—a gentleman! The fullness of his
embarrassment gradually disclosed itself. His hands were tied. Could he
even consult Dolly? He had a feeling of isolation, of utter solitude.
Nobody—not anybody in the world—could understand his secret and intense
discomfort. To take up a position—the position he was bound to take up,
as Olive's nearest relative and protector, and—what was it—chaperon,
by the aid of knowledge come at in such a way, however unintentionally!
Never in all his days in the regiment—and many delicate matters
affecting honour had come his way—had he had a thing like this to deal
with. Poor child! But he had no business to think of her like that. No,
indeed! She had not behaved—as—And there he paused, curiously unable to
condemn her. Suppose they got up and came that way!

He took his hands off the stone parapet, and made for his hotel. His
palms were white from the force of his grip. He said to himself as he
went along: “I must consider the whole question calmly; I must think it
out.” This gave him relief. With young Lennan, at all events, he
could be angry. But even there he found, to his dismay, no finality
of judgment. And this absence of finality, so unwonted, distressed him
horribly. There was something in the way the young man had been sitting
there beside her—so quiet, so almost timid—that had touched him. This
was bad, by Jove—very bad! The two of them, they made, somehow, a nice
couple! Confound it! This would not do! The chaplain of the little
English church, passing at this moment, called out, “Fine morning,
Colonel Ercott.” The Colonel saluted, and did not answer. The greeting
at the moment seemed to him paltry. No morning could be fine that
contained such a discovery. He entered the hotel, passed into the
dining-room, and sat down. Nobody was there. They all had their
breakfast upstairs, even Dolly. Olive alone was in the habit of
supporting him while he ate an English breakfast. And suddenly he
perceived that he was face to face already with this dreadful situation.
To have breakfast without, as usual, waiting for her, seemed too
pointed. She might be coming in at any minute now. To wait for her, and
have it, without showing anything—how could he do that?

He was conscious of a faint rustling behind him. There she was, and
nothing decided. In this moment of hopeless confusion the Colonel acted
by pure instinct, rose, patted her cheek, and placed a chair.

“Well, my dear,” he said; “hungry?”

She was looking very dainty, very soft. That creamy dress showed off
her dark hair and eyes, which seemed somehow to be—flying off somewhere;
yes—it was queer, but that was the only way to put it. He got no
reassurance, no comfort, from the sight of her. And slowly he stripped
the skin from the banana with which he always commenced breakfast. One
might just as well be asked to shoot a tame dove or tear a pretty flower
to pieces as be expected to take her to task, even if he could, in
honour. And he sought refuge in the words:

“Been out?” Then could have bitten his tongue off. Suppose she answered:
“No.”

But she did not so answer. The colour came into her cheeks, indeed, but
she nodded: “It's so lovely!”

How pretty she looked saying that! He had put himself out of court
now—could never tell her what he had seen, after setting, as it were,
that trap for her; and presently he asked:

“Got any plans to-day?”

She answered, without flinching in the least:

“Mark Lennan and I were going to take mules from Mentone up to Gorbio.”

He was amazed at her steadiness—never, to his knowledge, having
encountered a woman armoured at every point to preserve a love that
flies against the world. How tell what was under her smile! And in
confusion of feeling that amounted almost to pain he heard her say:

“Will you and Aunt Dolly come?”

Between sense of trusteeship and hatred of spoiling sport; between
knowledge of the danger she was in and half-pitying admiration at the
sight of her; between real disapproval of an illicit and underhand
business (what else was it, after all?) and some dim perception that
here was something he did not begin to be able to fathom—something that
perhaps no one but those two themselves could deal with—between these
various extremes he was lost indeed. And he stammered out:

“I must ask your aunt; she's—she's not very good on a mule.”

Then, in an impulse of sheer affection, he said with startling
suddenness: “My dear, I've often meant to ask, are you happy at home?”

“At home?”

There was something sinister about the way she repeated that, as if the
word “home” were strange to her.

She drank her coffee and got up; and the Colonel felt afraid of her,
standing there—afraid of what she was going to tell him. He grew very
red. But, worse than all, she said absolutely nothing; only shrugged her
shoulders with a little smile that went to his heart.

VI

On the wild thyme, under the olives below the rock village of Gorbio,
with their mules cropping at a little distance, those two sat after
their lunch, listening to the cuckoos. Since their uncanny chance
meeting that morning in the gardens, when they sat with their hands just
touching, amazed and elated by their own good fortune, there was not
much need to say what they felt, to break with words this rapture of
belonging to each other—so shyly, so wildly, so, as it were, without
reality. They were like epicures with old wine in their glasses, not yet
tired of its fragrance and the spell of anticipation.

And so their talk was not of love, but, in that pathetic way of
star-crossed lovers, of the things they loved; leaving out—each other.

It was the telling of her dream that brought the words from him at last;
but she drew away, and answered:

“It can't—it mustn't be!”

Then he just clung to her hand; and presently, seeing that her eyes were
wet, took courage enough to kiss her cheek.

Trembling and fugitive indeed that first passage of their love. Not much
of the conquering male in him, nor in her of the ordinary enchantress.

And then they went, outwardly sober enough, riding their mules down the
stony slopes back to Mentone.

But in the grey, dusty railway-carriage when she had left him, he was
like a man drugged, staring at where she had sat opposite.

Two hours later, at dinner in her hotel, between her and Mrs. Ercott,
with the Colonel opposite, he knew for the first time what he was faced
with. To watch every thought that passed within him, lest it should by
the slightest sign betray him; to regulate and veil every look and every
word he spoke to her; never for a second to forget that these other
persons were actual and dangerous, not merely the insignificant and
grotesque shadows that they seemed. It would be perhaps for ever a part
of his love for her to seem not to love her. He did not dare dream of
fulfilment. He was to be her friend, and try to bring her happiness—burn
and long for her, and not think about reward. This was his first real
overwhelming passion—so different to the loves of spring—and he brought
to it all that naivete, that touching quality of young Englishmen, whose
secret instinct it is to back away from the full nature of love, even
from admitting that it has that nature. They two were to love, and—not
to love! For the first time he understood a little of what that meant. A
few stolen adoring minutes now and then, and, for the rest, the presence
of a world that must be deceived. Already he had almost a hatred of that
orderly, brown-faced Colonel, with his eyes that looked so steady
and saw nothing; of that flat, kindly lady, who talked so pleasantly
throughout dinner, saying things that he had to answer without knowing
what they signified. He realized, with a sense of shock, that he was
deprived of all interests in life but one; not even his work had any
meaning apart from HER. It lit no fire within him to hear Mrs. Ercott
praise certain execrable pictures in the Royal Academy, which she had
religiously visited the day before leaving home. And as the interminable
meal wore on, he began even to feel grief and wonder that Olive could
be so smiling, so gay, and calm; so, as it seemed to him, indifferent to
this intolerable impossibility of exchanging even one look of love. Did
she really love him—could she love him, and show not one little sign
of it? And suddenly he felt her foot touch his own. It was the faintest
sidelong, supplicating pressure, withdrawn at once, but it said: 'I know
what you are suffering; I, too, but I love you.' Characteristically, he
felt that it cost her dear to make use of that little primitive device
of common loves; the touch awoke within him only chivalry. He would
burn for ever sooner than cause her the pain of thinking that he was not
happy.

After dinner, they sat out on a balcony. The stars glowed above the
palms; a frog was croaking. He managed to draw his chair so that he
could look at her unseen. How deep, and softly dark her eyes, when for
a second they rested on his! A moth settled on her knee—a cunning little
creature, with its hooded, horned owl's face, and tiny black slits of
eyes! Would it have come so confidingly to anyone but her? The Colonel
knew its name—he had collected it. Very common, he said. The interest in
it passed; but Lennan stayed, bent forward, gazing at that silk-covered
knee.

The voice of Mrs. Ercott, sharper than its wont, said: “What day does
Robert say he wants you back, my dear?”

He managed to remain gazing at the moth, even to take it gently from her
knee, while he listened to her calm answer.

“Tuesday, I believe.”

Then he got up, and let the moth fly into the darkness; his hands and
lips were trembling, and he was afraid of their being seen. He had never
known, had not dreamed, of such a violent, sick feeling. That this man
could thus hale her home at will! It was grotesque, fantastic, awful,
but—it was true! Next Tuesday she would journey back away from him to be
again at the mercy of her Fate! The pain of this thought made him grip
the railing, and grit his teeth, to keep himself from crying out. And
another thought came to him: I shall have to go about with this feeling,
day and night, and keep it secret.

They were saying good-night; and he had to smirk and smile, and
pretend—to her above all—that he was happy, and he could see that she
knew it was pretence.

Then he was alone, with the feeling that he had failed her at the first
shot; torn, too, between horror of what he suddenly saw before him, and
longing to be back in her presence at any cost.... And all this on the
day of that first kiss which had seemed to him to make her so utterly
his own.

He sat down on a bench facing the Casino. Neither the lights, nor
the people passing in and out, not even the gipsy bandsmen's music,
distracted his thoughts for a second. Could it be less than twenty-four
hours since he had picked up her handkerchief, not thirty yards away?
In that twenty-four hours he seemed to have known every emotion that man
could feel. And in all the world there was now not one soul to whom he
could speak his real thoughts—not even to her, because from her, beyond
all, he must keep at any cost all knowledge of his unhappiness. So
this was illicit love—as it was called! Loneliness, and torture! Not
jealousy—for her heart was his; but amazement, outrage, fear. Endless
lonely suffering! And nobody, if they knew, would care, or pity him one
jot!

Was there really, then, as the ancients thought, a Daemon that liked to
play with men, as men liked to stir an earwig and turn it over and put a
foot on it in the end?

He got up and made his way towards the railway-station. There was the
bench where she had been sitting when he came on her that very morning.
The stars in their courses had seemed to fight for them then; but
whether for joy he no longer knew. And there on the seat were still the
pepper berries she had crushed and strewn. He broke off another bunch
and bruised them. That scent was the ghost of sacred minutes when her
hand lay against his own. The stars in their courses—for joy or sorrow!

VII

There was no peace now for Colonel and Mrs. Ercott. They felt themselves
conspirators, and of conspiracy they had never had the habit. Yet how
could they openly deal with anxieties which had arisen solely from what
they had chanced secretly to see? What was not intended for one's eyes
and ears did not exist; no canon of conduct could be quite so sacred.
As well defend the opening of another person's letters as admit the
possibility of making use of adventitious knowledge. So far tradition,
and indeed character, made them feel at one, and conspire freely. But
they diverged on a deeper plane. Mrs. Ercott had SAID, indeed, that here
was something which could not be controlled; the Colonel had FELT it—a
very different thing! Less tolerant in theory, he was touched at
heart; Mrs. Ercott, in theory almost approving—she read that dangerous
authoress, George Eliot—at heart felt cold towards her husband's niece.
For these reasons they could not in fact conspire without, in the end,
saying suddenly: “Well, it's no good talking about it!” and almost at
once beginning to talk about it again.

In proposing to her that mule, the Colonel had not had time, or, rather,
not quite conviction enough as to his line of action, to explain so
immediately the new need for her to sit upon it. It was only when, to
his somewhat strange relief, she had refused the expedition, and
Olive had started without them, that he told her of the meeting in the
Gardens, of which he had been witness. She then said at once that if she
had known she would, of course, have put up with anything in order to
go; not because she approved of interfering, but because they must think
of Robert! And the Colonel had said: “D—n the fellow!” And there the
matter had rested for the moment, for both of them were, wondering
a little which fellow it was that he had damned. That indeed was the
trouble. If the Colonel had not cared so much about his niece, and had
liked, instead of rather disliking Cramier; if Mrs. Ercott had not found
Mark Lennan a 'nice boy,' and had not secretly felt her husband's niece
rather dangerous to her peace of mind; if, in few words, those three had
been puppets made of wood and worked by law, it would have been so
much simpler for all concerned. It was the discovery that there was
a personal equation in such matters, instead of just a simple rule of
three, which disorganized the Colonel and made him almost angry; which
depressed Mrs. Ercott and made her almost silent.... These two good
souls had stumbled on a problem which has divided the world from birth.
Shall cases be decided on their individual merits, or according to
formal codes?

Beneath an appearance and a vocabulary more orthodox than ever, the
Colonel's allegiance to Authority and the laws of Form was really
shaken; he simply could not get out of his head the sight of those two
young people sitting side by side, nor the tone of Olive's voice, when
she had repeated his regrettable words about happiness at home.

If only the thing had not been so human! If only she had been someone
else's niece, it would clearly have been her duty to remain unhappy. As
it was, the more he thought, the less he knew what to think. A man who
had never had any balance to speak of at his bank, and from the nomadic
condition of his life had no exaggerated feeling for a settled
social status—deeming Society in fact rather a bore—he did not unduly
exaggerate the worldly dangers of this affair; neither did he honestly
believe that she would burn in everlasting torment if she did not
succeed in remaining true to 'that great black chap,' as he secretly
called Cramier. His feeling was simply that it was an awful pity; a sort
of unhappy conviction that it was not like the women of his family to
fall upon such ways; that his dead brother would turn in his grave; in
two words that it was 'not done.' Yet he was by no means of those who,
giving latitude to women in general, fall with whips on those of their
own family who take it. On the contrary, believing that 'Woman in
general' should be stainless to the world's eye, he was inclined to make
allowance for any individual woman that he knew and loved. A suspicion
he had always entertained, that Cramier was not by breeding 'quite the
clean potato' may insensibly have influenced him just a little. He had
heard indeed that he was not even entitled to the name of Cramier, but
had been adopted by a childless man, who had brought him up and left him
a lot of money. There was something in this that went against the grain
of the childless Colonel. He had never adopted, nor been adopted by
anyone himself. There was a certain lack about a man who had been
adopted, of reasonable guarantee—he was like a non-vintage wine, or a
horse without a pedigree; you could not quite rely on what he might
do, having no tradition in his blood. His appearance, too, and
manner somehow lent colour to this distrust. A touch of the tar-brush
somewhere, and a stubborn, silent, pushing fellow. Why on earth had
Olive ever married him! But then women were such kittle cattle, poor
things! and old Lindsay, with his vestments and his views on obedience,
must have been a Tartar as a father, poor old chap! Besides, Cramier, no
doubt, was what most women would call good-looking; more taking to the
eye than such a quiet fellow as young Lennan, whose features were rather
anyhow, though pleasant enough, and with a nice smile—the sort of young
man one could not help liking, and who certainly would never hurt a
fly! And suddenly there came the thought: Why should he not go to young
Lennan and put it to him straight? That he was in love with Olive? Not
quite—but the way to do it would come to him. He brooded long over this
idea, and spoke of it to Mrs. Ercott, while shaving, the next morning.
Her answer: “My dear John, bosh!” removed his last doubt.

Without saying where he was going, he strolled out the moment after
breakfast—and took a train to Beaulieu. At the young man's hotel he sent
in his card, and was told that this Monsieur had already gone out for
the day. His mood of marching straight up to the guns thus checked, he
was left pensive and distraught. Not having seen Beaulieu (they spoke
of it then as a coming place), he made his way up an incline. That whole
hillside was covered with rose-trees. Thousands of these flowers were
starring the lower air, and the strewn petals of blown and fallen roses
covered the light soil. The Colonel put his nose to blossoms here and
there, but they had little scent, as if they knew that the season was
already over. A few blue-bloused peasants were still busy among them.
And suddenly he came on young Lennan himself, sitting on a stone and
dabbing away with his fingers at a lump of putty stuff. The Colonel
hesitated. Apart from obvious reasons for discomfiture, he had that
feeling towards Art common to so many of his caste. It was not work, of
course, but it was very clever—a mystery to him how anyone could do it!
On seeing him, Lennan had risen, dropping his handkerchief over what he
was modelling—but not before the Colonel had received a dim impression
of something familiar. The young man was very red—the Colonel, too, was
conscious suddenly of the heat. He held out his hand.

“Nice quiet place this,” he stammered; “never seen it before. I called
at your hotel.”

Now that he had his chance, he was completely at a loss. The sight of
the face emerging from that lump of 'putty stuff' had quite unnerved
him. The notion of this young man working at it up here all by himself,
just because he was away an hour or two from the original, touched him.
How on earth to say what he had come to say? It was altogether different
from what he had thought. And it suddenly flashed through him—Dolly was
right! She's always right—hang it!

“You're busy,” he said; “I mustn't interrupt you.”

“Not at all, sir. It was awfully good of you to look me up.”

The Colonel stared. There was something about young Lennan that he had
not noticed before; a 'Don't take liberties with me!' look that made
things difficult. But still he lingered, staring wistfully at the young
man, who stood waiting with such politeness.

Showing first 200,000 characters. Full text: gutenberg.org/ebooks/2192