She would have overslept again had it not been for the faithful maid
with her coffee. She sprang out of bed at once, a trifle disburdened
by the thought of a long ramble alone in the early morning, and,
postponing her swim in the tanks below until her return, dressed so
hurriedly that had hats been in vogue hers no doubt would have gone
on back foremost. She was feverishly afraid of being intercepted,
although such a thing had never occurred, the other women being far
too elegant to rise so early, and a proper sense of decorum forbidding
the young men to offer their escort.
The sea had never been a stiller, hotter blue, the mountain more
golden, the sky more like an opening rose. But she strode on seeing
nothing. Sleep had given her no rest and she was in a torment of
spirit that was a new experience in her uneventful life. She recalled
the angry astonished eyes of Warner as she danced with all the abandon
of a girl at her first ball. No doubt he had thought her vain and
frivolous, the average young lady at whose approach he fled when he
could. No doubt he thought her in love with Abergenny, whose habit of
turning female heads was well known to him, and upon whom she had
certainly beamed good will. No doubt he had expected her to manage to
pass him, knowing his diffidence, and offer her congratulations;
whereas she had taken no notice of him whatever. No doubt--oh, no
doubt--he had rushed off in a fury of disappointment and disgust, and
all the good work of the past weeks had been undone, all her plans of
meeting him a year hence as handsome and fine a man as he had every
right to be, were frustrated. She had for some time past detected
signs that apathy was gradually relieving a naturally fine spirit of
its heavy burden, that his weary indifference was giving place to a
watchful alertness, which in spite of the old mask he continued to
wear, occasionally manifested itself in a flash of the eye or a quiver
of the nostril. Anne could not doubt that he loved her, inexperienced
in such matters as she might be. However she may have kept him at a
distance her thoughts had seldom left him, and he had betrayed
himself in a hundred ways.
Had she been half interested in Hunsdon or Abergenny and they had been
so unreasonable as to rush off and disappear merely because she had
enjoyed her first ball-room triumphs as any girl must, she would have
been both derisive and angry at the liberty; but Warner inspired no
such feminine ebullition. He was a great and sacred responsibility,
one, moreover, that she had assumed voluntarily. That he had
unexpectedly fallen in love with her but deepened this responsibility,
and she had betrayed her trust, she had betrayed her trust!
She left the road suddenly and struck upward into one of the sheltered
gorges, sat down in the shadow of the jungle and wept with the brief
violence of a tropical storm in summer. Relief was inevitable. When
the paroxism was over she found a shaded seat under a cocoanut tree
and determined not to return to the hotel for breakfast, nor indeed
until she felt herself able to endure the sight of mere people; and
endeavoured to expel all thought of Warner from her still tormented
mind. In the distance she could see Monserrat and Antigua, gray blurs
on the blue water, she could hear the singing of negroes in the cane
fields far away, but near her no living thing moved save the monkeys
in the tree tops, the blue butterflies, the jewelled humming-birds. On
three sides of her was a dense growth of banana, cocoanut and palm
trees, cactus, and a fragrant shrub covered with pink flowers. Almost
overhanging her was the collar of forest about the cone, and the
ever-faithful snow-white cloud that only left the brow of Nevis to
creep down and embrace her by night. She took off her bonnet and
wished as she had rarely done before that she might never leave this
warm fragrant poetic land. It was made for such as she, whose whole
nature was tuned to poetry and romance, even if denied the gift of
expression--or of consummation! Why should she not remain here? She
had some money, quite enough to rent or even build a little house in
one of these high solitudes, where she could always look from her
window and see the sapphire sea, that so marvellously changed to
chrysoprase near the silver palm-fringed shore, inhale these delicious
scents, and dream and dream in this caressing air. She hated the
thought of London. The world had no real call for her. She wondered
at her submission to the will of a woman who had not the least
comprehension of her nature. On Nevis would she stay, live her own
life, find happiness in beauty and solitude, since the highest
happiness was not for her; and at this point she heard a step in the
jungle.
She sprang to her feet startled, but even before the heavy leaves
parted she knew that it was Warner. When he stood before her he lifted
his hat politely and dropped it on the ground, and although he did not
smile he certainly was sober.
The relief, the reaction, was so great that the blood rushed to Anne's
brow, the tears to her eyes. She made no attempt to speak at once and
he looked at her in silence. Perhaps it was the mountain solitude that
gave his spirit greater freedom; perhaps it was merely the effect of
the beneficial régime of the past two months; there might be another
reason less easy of analysis; but she had never seen him so assured,
so well, so much a man of his own world. His shoulders were quite
straight, his carriage was quite erect, there was colour in his face
and his eyes were bright. Nor did the haunted, tormented expression
she had so often seen look out at her. These were the eyes of a man
who had returned to his place among men. He looked young, buoyant.
She spoke finally. "I--we all thought--you disappeared so
abruptly--_what_ am I saying?"
"You believed that I had returned to the pit out of which you--you
alone, mind you--had dragged me. You might have known me better."
"You should not put such a burden on me. You have character
enough----"
"Oh yes, I had character enough, but doubtless you noticed when you
first met me that I had ceased to exercise it. I went to the dogs
quite deliberately, and, with my enfeebled will and frame, I should
have stayed there, had not you magnetised me into your presence, where
I was forced to behave if I would remain. Later, for reasons both
prosaic and sentimental, I remained without effort. I have never had
any real love of spirits, although I loved their effect well enough."
"You must have loved that oth--that woman very much."
"She made a fool of me. There is always a time in a man's life when he
can be made a complete ass of if the woman with the will to make an
ass of him happens along coincidently. I fancied myself sated with
fame, tired of life, a remote and tragic figure among men--the trail
of Byron is over us all. That was the moment for the great and fatal
passion, and the woman was all that a malignant fate could devise;
not only to inspire the passion, but to transform a frame of mind
arbitrarily imagined into a sickening reality. From a romantic
solitary being I became a prosaic outcast. Nor could I recall anything
in the world I had left worth the sacrifice of the magician that gave
me brief spells of happiness and oblivion. Nobody pretended that it
injured my work, and I remained in the pit."
"And your self-respect? You were satisfied? Oh surely--you
looked--when I first saw you----"
"I loathed myself, of course. My brain was unaffected, was it not? I
abhorred my body, and would willingly have slashed it off could I have
gone on writing without it. Either I compelled my soul to stand aside,
or I was made on that plan--I cannot tell; but my inner life was
never polluted by my visible madness. I have been vile but I have
never had a vile thought. I fancy you understand this. And when I am
writing my ego does not exist at all--my worst enemies have never
accused me of the egoism common to poets. I have lived in another
realm, where I have remembered nothing of this. Had it been otherwise
no doubt I should have put it all at an end long ago."
Anne had averted her eyes, caught in one of those inner crises where
the faculties are almost suspended. She faltered out: "And after--when
I come back next year, shall I find you like this?"
He paused so long before replying that she moved with uncontrollable
excitement, and as she did so his eyes caught hers and held them.
The intensity of his gaze did not waver but he said, unsteadily, until
his own excitement mastered him, "I have assured myself again and
again that I never should dare to tell you that I loved you; that I
was not fit to approach you; that I must let you go, and try to live
with the memory of you. But now I remember nothing but that I love
you. I can speak of what I have been, but I cannot recall it. I feel
nothing but that I am a man in the restored vigour of youth in the
presence of the woman I want. If love is egoistical then I am rampant
this moment with egoism. If I could have the bliss of marrying you I
never should return to the past even in thought. I am a poet no
longer. I am nothing but a lover. I remember nothing, want nothing,
but the perfection of human happiness I should find with you."
The words poured from his lips before he finished, and the trained
monotony of his voice had gone to the winds. His face was violently
flushed, his eyes flashing. "I dare!" he cried exultingly. "I dare! It
would be heaven of a sort to have broken through those awful barriers
even if you told me to go and never enter your presence again."
"I cannot do that! I cannot!" And then she flung her arms out from her
deep womanly figure with a gesture expressive as much of maternal
yearning as of youthful and irresistible passion. "I will stay with
you forever," she said.