The President of the “Literific,” who was wonderfully well equipped for
that office, for she habitually spent weeks in London every year, and
during them positively lived in galleries, concert-rooms, and theatres
and had been to Venice no less than four distinct times, was dining
informally, “taking pot-luck,” as Canon Alington expressed it, at his
vicarage that night, and he could not but feel that it was a fortunate
circumstance that Mrs. Owen should thus be dropping in while Hugh was
there, for he distinctly liked Hugh to know that though they lived in
the provinces they were not provincial, and that the pulse of artistic
and intellectual life beat as strongly, if not more strongly, at
Mannington than in town. The last of Mrs. Alington’s fortnightly dinners
had taken place only the week before, so that it was impossible to
parade the intellect of Mannington in its cohorts, but, as her husband
dressed for dinner, he thought that this one informal guest would be
likely to give Hugh a better notion of the high mental activity of
Mannington than even one of the larger and more formal parties could
have done. For Mrs. Owen, the brightest star in their intellectual
constellation, really shone best alone, and Agnes often told her husband
that he never talked half so well to her as he did to Mrs. Owen.
This was quite true, though the sentiment had no touch of resentment or
regret about it, for Agnes was perfectly aware that it was quite natural
that it should be so. For she had so identified herself with all the
tastes, pursuits and industries of her husband’s life that such a thing
as discussion, except on such points as floral decoration or outdoor
relief, could hardly exist between them. But Mrs. Owen always had some
fresh topic of literary or artistic interest, as indeed a person who was
quite in “a set” in London and went to Venice so frequently could not
fail to have, and necessarily she could talk about Tintoret to Canon
Alington and strike out fresh lights from him in a way that Agnes was
incapable of doing, though in the matter of actual familiarity with
Venice the husband and wife were exactly on a par, since neither had
ever been there. But he had so fine and retentive a memory that he could
from photograph-knowledge only quite hold his own in these discussions,
and indeed he sometimes corrected her as to the locality of some Titian
or Tintoret, and what was referred to by Mrs. Owen as being in S.
Giorgio was sometimes allocated by the Canon to its true position in the
Scuola di San Rocco or the Accademia, a position which Baedeker, when
consulted, confirmed. In fact, these very fruitful discussions on the
subject of sixteenth century art sometimes rather narrowed down to the
point as to where a particular picture was rather than what were its
merits when it was there.
But in the matter of dates Canon Alington readily recognised the immense
superiority of the guest’s knowledge, particularly in musical matters.
She knew quite unerringly when Wagner was born, when Schubert died, how
old Mozart was when he wrote the Jupiter Symphony, and in what year
“Faust” was first presented. Nor was her knowledge confined to these
bones, so to speak, of music. She herself had composed, and her
compositions had been both published and sung, so that on the first
page of the _Daily Telegraph_ one was liable to see that “Galahad’s
Good-night” (words and music to Gladys Owen) would be sung at the Drill
Hall, Hastings, on the 12th. Her songs were mostly written in what is
known as “waltz-time,” which when taken andante is meltingly pathetic,
especially when there is a change to the minor in the second and middle
part. They were, with the exception of “Galahad’s Good-night,” which was
markedly religious throughout, based rather on one general plan. People
met (long ago) in the first verse in an orchard or a meadow in which
bowers generally rhymed with flowers, and were very loving and
light-hearted; tribulations and sorrow (in the minor key) overtook them
in the second verse, which was slower and in four time; while in the
third, to the accompaniment of grave octaves from the left hand and
arpeggios from the right, and the resumption of slow waltz-time, the
tremulous hope was expressed that they would meet again “above.” They
were equally suitable for either male or female voices (with the
exception again of “Galahad’s Good-night”), for the sentiments expressed
were perfectly creditable to those of either sex, and there was always
an alternative high note on the word “heaven,” or “above,” or “love,” at
the end of the third verse, where the tenor could crack the roof or
burst himself if he felt inclined. Then the arpeggios ceased, and two or
three loud thumps all over the piano denoted the accomplishment of their
desires.
Mrs. Owen was tall, rather thin, not exactly pretty, but, as everybody
said, she had a very sweet expression. She had pale blue eyes, and even
when she was talking on the most grave and serious subjects her mouth
was generally smiling, which, no doubt, was largely responsible for the
sweet expression. When she laughed, which she often did, she quite
closed her eyes, and sometimes she clapped her hands softly at that
which had amused her. She always dressed in pale, soft colours, cut in a
somewhat Greek and classical style, and wore as ornaments a necklace of
Greek silver coins and a couple of bracelets composed of the same. Her
hair, too, was braided something in the Greek manner, and the flower or
two that she wore in it was secured by a Venetian ducat of the dogeship
of one of the Mocenigos. Throughout the dinner the conversation had
ranged over an infinite variety of topics, deep calling unto deep, and
now toward the end, after the Royal Academy, the New Gallery, and the
Opera (for she had only just returned from a whole month in London), the
drama was being discussed.
“Yes, I adore the theatre,” she was saying, “but London really has been
such a whirl that I did not go as often as I should have wished. But I
went to see ‘Gambits.’ You have seen ‘Gambits,’ Mr. Grainger?”
“Oh, yes! I have been more than once,” said he.
Mrs. Owen leaned forward.
“Now, I wonder if we agree about it. I thought it was beautiful, so
pathetic, and so teaching, if I may borrow one of your words, Canon
Alington. It showed us, did it not, how from misery is born misery, and
how wretchedness is the result of our mistakes.”
She looked from Hugh to the Canon, whose upper lip had begun to lengthen
a little.
“Oh, I am sure you are going to scold me for being a wee bit Bohemian!”
she said.
“Well, Hugh agrees with you,” he said. “I should have to scold you
both.”
Mrs. Owen looked down at her plate a moment. “You have seen it?” she
asked.
“No; but I have read a review of it. That, as I told Hugh, was enough.”
Mrs. Owen hesitated.
“Now I’m going to be very brave,” she said. “I am going to ask you to
see it. There is something in it, is there not, Mr. Grainger, which
somehow redeems the painful character of the plot. It is not wrong-doing
that one condones, I think; it is the dreadful punishment that one
pities. Surely one may pity everyone who is being punished, however
justly.”
Then Canon Alington made an enormous concession.
“I do not wish to condemn the play unheard,” he said. “And when I am in
town next I will go to see it. But I don’t think anybody but you could
have persuaded me to! You see, I hold very strong views on the question
of what are fit subjects for Art to treat of. I believe that the object
of all Art is to raise our aspirations, to make us braver, better than
we were. But pity, I allow, is a Christian virtue. I confess I had not
thought of the play in that light. From what I read, I drew a very
different conclusion; indeed, it inspired me with the subject I am going
to talk about on Tuesday at the Literific.”
Mrs. Owen clapped her hands, not having heard what was known in
Mannington as the Canon’s “last portmanteau-word.”
“Literific!” she cried. “How delightful! What a sweet portmanteau. And
is the paper written? And what is its title? Is it fair to ask?”
“Yes, Agnes sent out the cards this afternoon, did you not, dear? So it
is no longer a secret. I call it: ‘The True Test of Literary and
Artistic Immortality.’”
Mrs. Owen’s face beamed at the thought.
“And now,” she said, “I am going to be very brave again. Might we, dear
Canon Alington, hear a little of it, just a little, if it would not tire
you, after dinner? It would be such a treat!”
Ambrose, as has been mentioned, though he did not dine, sat with his
parents during dinner, either reading or drawing some simple object on
the table, or joining in the conversation. As a rule he went to bed at
dessert-time, having been given two or three strawberries (which were
not reckoned among his ration), but when Mrs. Owen dined he was allowed
to sit up and hear her sing one song. Here he turned to his father.
“Oh, papa,” he said, “may I for a great treat sit up a little later
to-night and hear you read? I shall have heard Mrs. Owen sing, and have
heard you read: it will make me so happy.”
“You wouldn’t understand it, my son,” said Canon Alington.
This was interpreted by Mrs. Owen to mean that he would read to them,
and she clapped her hands again.
“How it pays to be brave!” she said. “Oh, thank you, dear Canon
Alington!”
Ambrose never interrupted, and he waited, looking at his father through
his spectacles till she had finished.
“But I could try, papa,” he said; “and I’m sure I should understand some
of it, because it’s about books and pictures and music being meant to
make us better, and I understand that. And when Uncle Hugh sings or Mrs.
Owen sings I always feel that I want to be good. So I do understand some
of it.”
“And it will make you happy?” asked his father.
“Yes.”
“Well, as I heard of a little boy to-day who gave away his strawberries
to make a poor old woman happy, you shall sit up till half-past nine.”
Hugh had given a slight groan at Ambrose’s allusion to the moral effects
of his singing, but even if heard, it was at once forgotten in the boy’s
cries of joy who ran galloping round the table with very high action of
his small knickerbockered legs to kiss his father, while Agnes, having
told Mrs. Owen in good, firm French, so that Ambrose should not
understand, the story of the little boy who gave the old woman the
strawberries, rose to go.
“You mustn’t sit long over your cigarettes, Dick,” she said, “or we
shall never get through with all we are going to do.”
“No, we won’t be long,” he said; “there’s a heavy programme in front of
us, eh, Mrs. Owen?”
“I’m sure your part of it won’t be heavy,” she said.
Dick passed the port to Hugh when the ladies had left the room with
Ambrose prancing on ahead.
“A very charming, cultivated woman,” he said. “She knows Venice as I
know my parish. And I would be far from asserting off-hand that there
was not something to be said of her view of ‘Gambits.’ It was an idea
that hadn’t occurred to me. You found a valuable ally there, eh, Hugh?”
Hugh poured out a glass of port, lit a cigarette, and then drank off the
port merely with the air of a thirsty man, neither tasting it nor
thinking about it. That sort of thing always rather annoyed the Canon,
who paid high prices for sound wine, though he did not take it himself.
“Oh, I don’t know that one wants allies if one is quite convinced of a
thing,” he said. “In matters of conviction you are perfectly content to
stand alone, if nobody agrees with you.”
Hugh always spoke very quickly, but in the speed of this his
brother-in-law thought he detected the note of impatience.
“You rather imply that you would sooner Mrs. Owen didn’t agree with
you,” he said.
“Yes, I think I do. I’m sure her view of the play is founded on reason
which is a faculty perfectly incapable of judging works of art.”
“Indeed, what do you judge by, then?”
“Why, by impulse, by instinct. You don’t want to reason about beautiful
things, or find out why they are beautiful. You want just to enjoy them,
to lose yourself in their beauty.”
“A rather dangerous view, surely?”
“Why dangerous?” asked Hugh.
The upper lip again lengthened itself.
“Because it rather implies that you exempt beauty from other standards,
such as those of morals and enlightenment. Of course, I am sure you
can’t mean that. Shall we go?”
Hugh got up.
“Do I mean that?” he asked. “I’m not sure that I don’t.”
“My dear fellow, of course you can’t. I should like to discuss it with
you, but we have received our marching orders, have we not? But, indeed,
the point is rather fully discussed in the paper that Mrs. Owen insists
on my reading.”
Mrs. Owen always brought “her music” with her when she went out to dine,
because it was always quite certain that she would be asked to sing, and
she always consented, saying that she did happen to have brought a song
or two which was in the hall with her cloak. She always said hall,
especially if it happened to be a very narrow passage with a barometer
on one side and a hat rack on the other and a rich smell of cooking
coming from kitchen stairs at the end. For she was incapable of sarcasm,
and thus if the hall happened to be an artery of this description, it
merely made her hosts think that the “entry” was larger than they had
supposed. Canon Alington, however, in his commodious vicarage had a
hall, and almost immediately after joining the ladies in the
drawing-room he, with Ambrose again prancing in front of him, went to
fetch “the music” in. Ambrose asked to be allowed to carry it, and this
boon was granted him. Mrs. Owen always played her own accompaniments,
and Ambrose, who was full of treats to-night, turned over for her, being
already able to follow music if it did not go too fast, which Mrs.
Owen’s songs did not. But at the end of this particular combination of
orchards, tribulation and heaven above, he was terribly torn in half,
for on the one hand Mrs. Owen was perfectly willing to sing again, and
on the other bedtime was inexorably fixed for half-past nine, so that
the longer Mrs. Owen sang the less he would hear of his father’s paper
for the Literific. So with the simplicity of childhood he settled that
“mamma should choose,” and mamma, as she could hardly fail to do, chose
another song first.
There was no time for Hugh to sing after this, if the tests of
immortality in literature and art were to be really inquired into, and,
indeed, he had with some adroitness protested that it would be too hard
to make him sing after Mrs. Owen, feeling quite sure that no sarcastic
intention could possibly be imputed to him, since both his sister and
Dick considered that Mrs. Owen sang with more expression than anyone
they had ever heard, professional or amateur. Thus there was a full
half-hour of reading for Ambrose before half-past nine sounded, and a
full half-hour of reading for the rest of them afterwards, for the
author’s suggestion that he should leave out or abridge his work was
strongly deprecated by Mrs. Owen if he was quite sure it did not hurt
his throat, and he felt perfectly certain it did not.
Hugh went up to bed that night rather early, though, as a matter of
fact, he felt particularly wakeful, for he wanted, somewhere deep down
inside him, to get away alone, to lie on his bed and think, or, better
still--a plan which he put into operation--to get behind the curtains of
his window and lean out into the night. He wanted to be alone, but to be
in the presence of the very simple things of the world, the night, the
large silent sky, the things that grew unconsciously and did not improve
themselves or anyone else, and, he added rather viciously to himself,
did not sing. He had passed his evening with perfectly sincere and
unaffected people (with the exception of Ambrose, for with the best will
in the world he could not believe that Ambrose really liked giving his
strawberries to an old woman, and even if he did, a child had no right
to be unselfish and kind at that age, and ought to be smacked for it),
yet in spite of their sincerity he felt that the whole evening had been
unreal. He was sure that Mrs. Owen was genuine in her musical tastes,
but it was not real music that she liked, but false sentiment. He was
sure that his brother-in-law was desperately in earnest on the true
tests of immortality in art, but what he really liked was writing about
it. He was certain that Agnes was genuinely interested in parish work,
true tests of immortality, music and all the topics of the evening, but
not of her own self, only because they were of interest to her husband.
All the sincerity, he felt, was second-hand; they none of them cared for
things quite simply and passionately with the mere love of life for the
things of life. There had been, too, whole lumps of knowledge flying
about all evening in every direction: they had all kept up a perfect
fusillade of facts; but what of wisdom? Where should wisdom be found? He
had once compared his brother-in-law’s mind to a rich sort of cake, that
consists entirely of other things--you came upon an almond one moment, a
raisin the next, a piece of spice, or sometimes a large hard stone.
These were all (except the stone) proper ingredients for making cake,
but, somehow, there wasn’t any cake: it was all ingredients. There was
his golf, his gardening, his literary abilities, his fragments of rock
from Nazareth, his mottoes, his knowledge of the galleries of Venice,
but where was It, the man, the personality, the deeps? And all the time
he was aware that both Agnes and Dick felt that he himself wanted
deepening, and very likely Mrs. Owen and Ambrose thought so, too. And he
felt himself injured and inflamed at the thought, so that he was moved
to say out loud: “Thank God, I don’t want any of your deepening, not at
any price.” As likely as not Dick and his sister were talking over the
evening now, feeling, dear, good souls! that amusement had been combined
with instruction, and that sun of culture had shone on the scene without
intermission.
Hugh felt rather better when he had announced to the night that he did
not wish to be subjected to this process of deepening, and leaned
further out into the soft darkness. The moon was not yet risen, but
behind the gray square Norman tower of the church that rose on the right
the sky was dove-coloured and the stars burned with a half-quenched
light, showing that moon-rise would not be long delayed. Just below his
windows stretched the herbaceous bed that led down each side of the road
to the gate, and in the deep dusk of this summer night it was only
white flowers like the tobacco-plant and the Madonna lily that could be
distinguished in the fragrant huddle of the summer. A little breeze
stirred there occasionally, making the purple clematis that climbed up
on each side of his window tremble and vibrate, and like wavelets
lisping on the edge of a calm sea it whispered and bore to him the
veiled odours of the beds and the damp smell of the dew-drenched lawn.
Beyond lay the water-meadows of the Kennet, with wisps and streamers of
white mist lying here and there like gauzy raiment of the fairies hung
out to dry, while down the centre wandered the steel-coloured stream;
and again, but with diminished viciousness, Hugh thought to himself that
he was glad that he knew nothing whatever about the formation of dew or
the cooling that made the moisture of the atmosphere condense. His own
enjoyment and appreciation of it, his mental likening it to fairy
raiment was quite enough for him, nor did he believe he would be deeper
if he knew about its formation. To the left stood the elms of the
hedgerow, black blots against the sky, and outlined with stars, while
glimmering here and there against the black hillside he caught glimpses
of the white road along which he had walked that morning. Far away, too,
in another grove of trees there glimmered a light or two from the
windows of the house he had visited that morning.
He had been conscious all day that somewhere deep inside him, far below
the superficial perceptions and interests that had gone to make up the
ordinary mental life of the others, a current was moving slowly and
irresistibly in one direction. He knew, too, that it called to him to
come down out of the sunlight and surface of things, and though he
longed to obey this summons which all the time he knew he could not
resist, yet he feared it, with the awe that hangs about the unknown.
Ever since that evening of June a month ago, when he had come into the
lit tent where dinner was in progress on the lawn at Cookham, the call
of the deep had been in his ears, very softly at first and very
distantly, but gradually getting more insistent, till the whole air by
now had become thick with it. All this month, too, another hidden river
had been flowing within him--his worship, for it was no less than that,
for the beautiful unknown mind which had spoken to him so often and so
intimately across the footlights. This morning those two rivers had met
and joined; they flowed down mingled together now, and the two voices
were one. The river had its name too; it was River Edith.
And with that, swift as a stone falls through the divided air, he took
the plunge that had been so long delayed, down from the surface of
everyday happenings, from the comedies and the pleasant sunny ways of
life, into the depths and well-springs of being, surrendering himself
and all he was or had, and by the very completeness of surrender
unfolding the banner of the conqueror.
All this, this leap into the infinite, was measured in the world of time
but by one deep-drawn breath and drunk in with the full inspiration of
the singer, head back so that song could come from the open throat, and
next moment whispered below his breath, yet with each note round and
shining as a pearl, came the first line of the Schumann song he had sung
to her and Peggy on that evening by the riverside. But now he sang it
alone, but he sang it to her; wherever she was, he was there too, his
spirit enfolded and embraced hers. He sang no more than that first line;
it was all there on the birthday of his life.
And then, swift as the plunge itself, which had been a spiritual thing,
there rushed in (for the mind is mated with the spirit and acts but
infinitesimally less quickly) the stubborn actuality, and he was heaved
back into the confines of things probable and real, and the humility,
the knowledge of utter unworthiness that always goes hand in hand with
the winged irresistible god came to him. How had he ever allowed himself
to imagine, though only for this one second or two, that she could ever
look at him presenting himself in the capacity of lover? She would not
laugh at him, for she was too kind for that, but how gently her heart
would pity him, and how that pity would hurt! How kindly and with what
real regret--for he could assert that they were friends, which is a big
word--would she look at him out of those wonderful eyes; how softly, how
tremulously perhaps for she was so kind, would her mouth say the
inevitable word! How gently would she reject him! And then--somehow he
felt sure she would not find it necessary to speak those unspeakable
banalities about hoping that they would still remain great friends. Her
wisdom would do better than that. Yet what could it do? She would know.
But love never acquiesces long in that sort of surrender; its true
surrender is the surrender he had felt before, when above his head as he
gave up his sword floated the scarlet and gold of the triumphant banner.
Again, as he looked out across the water-meadows hung with the skeins
and wisps of mist, to where a light or two still burned very small and
distantly in the house among the trees, the imperiousness of love that
admits no defeat, and in thought breaks any obstacle or impossibility
away as a heedless foot breaks away the gossamer webs that are woven in
the dark between stems of meadow grass, invaded and occupied him. And,
had he but known it, even then by a window the light of which had been
that moment quenched there stood another also looking out into the
velvet dusk of the night across those same meadows between them toward
the house from which he looked. And, as she let the blind fall again
over the open sash, she said below her breath that first line of song
which he had whispered to the night and her.
The moon by now had risen and the shadow of the window-bars lay black on
the blind she had drawn down. Outside the air was very still, but every
now and then the little breeze that had stirred among the flowers in the
garden at St. Olaf’s moved here also, and tapped with the wooden roller
of the blind against the window-frame as the soft leaden-footed hours
passed. But though she lay without closing her eyes until the dawn began
to lift tired eyelids in the east, she was conscious of none of the
tedium and fret that often goes with watchfulness. She had not the wish
to sleep even, the desire for it was as remote from her as the power.
She lay there thinking intently. She wanted first of all to find out and
lay before herself as before the tribunal of her mind exactly what had
happened.
It was so few weeks ago that she had said to Peggy that she did not
expect very much from life, though she believed that many pleasant
things would be hers, and that little joys and occupations would keep
her busy and cheerful. And when she had said that it was absolutely
true. But to-day she knew it was true no longer. All that had then
seemed so cheerful and bright was at this moment as gray as ash to her;
indoors, perhaps, it would still be possible to see that fire lived and
burned in those embers, but they were now as if the sun had shone on
them, dimming and rendering invisible in that glorious blaze the lesser
illumination of the sticks and coals. With what honesty, too, and
complete straightforwardness of purpose she had come down to settle here
in Mannington, to absorb herself, in pursuance of the future she had
sketched out to Peggy, in the quiet occupations with which her garden
and the little local interests of the place would supply her, while she
pushed forward over the gray sea of elderly years. And then, without
warning almost, so swift had been its coming, the bomb had exploded, so
to speak, in the middle of her flower-beds. She loved Hugh, no longer
with the pale snowdrop love of girls, but with the full colour and glory
of her mature womanhood. So much was certain.
She believed as she lay there, hearing the tapping blind, seeing the
darkness-shrouded shapes of the things in her room, that more than this
was certain. Vivid, full of moods and brightnesses as he was, she had
never seen on his face until to-day the look that was there when she
told him who that was for whom he had been seeking so diligently, whose
was the mind that had conceived and the hand that wrote the work which
had inspired him with so heartfelt a sympathy and admiration. All the
last month they had been advancing daily in intimacy and friendliness,
but there was something in the blank silence with which he received her
announcement, something in his quiet salute of the hand that had written
“Gambits,” something in the boyish shout of exultation with which he had
thrown up his hat into the air, that told her that it was as if his soul
had leaped some stream or barrier across which up till now they had done
no more than shake friendly hands, and that they stood together now, not
friends any longer, but lovers. In the stillness and loneliness of
night, when above all other times a woman is honest with herself,
neither exaggerating nor extenuating, but setting down quietly and
firmly what she believes, Edith believed that. She could not and did not
attempt to reason her way to the conclusion, any more than a bird
measures the distance of the branch on which her nest is built or
calculates the speed of flight when she would drop there. She just
lights there, without calculation, by the nest-side, where love “keeping
her feet” has guided her.
Again, for a little space, as she turned in her cool rustling bed, she
detached these thoughts from herself and but listened to the tapping of
the blind against her window. But it was for few seconds that that
detachment was possible, for all her warm woman’s heart, tender and kind
and starving to give and to receive this love which was its appointed,
God-ordained food, beat upon her and shook her into life again. It was
no wind that tapped there; it was he who tapped at her heart and had
been admitted with doors flung back and kingly welcome. And, half
laughing to herself, laughter that comes not out of the lips or of the
amused brain, but of the deep bubbling with the well-spring of the
heart, “Come in, Hughie, come in!” she whispered, and looked toward the
window, knowing that it was but her imagination that made her speak, yet
feeling it would not be strange if she saw there, across the shadow of
the window-bars, the shadow of his head. And what then? She would go
across to the window, not frightened, knowing it was he, and he would
say the words that were wine to her, and she would give him wine for his
wine.
Then suddenly the character and significance of the tapping blind
changed altogether, and she sat up in her bed, frightened at its new
message. It warned her, and warned her with terrible distinctness. He
was so young, it told her, while for her all youth was gone. There might
be one or two bright warm November days for her, a week perhaps of
Indian summer, but after that, chill and the fogs of November and its
frosts; she would be no match for that dear spirit of spring that had
lost its way and come here by mistake, making it shiver, making it long
to escape. It would be unable to see below the rime and the fog; it
would judge, as all youth did, by appearance, by the flush of smooth
cheeks, by the brightness of the eye in its unwrinkled frame, by the
gloss of abundant hair, by laughter and the indefatigable joy of day and
night; and since these things would be soon missing to her, it would
think that the surface rime pierced below, that the depths were hard
with the iron of age, that the heart was silvered with frost even as the
head was silvered.
She got quickly out of bed and lit her candles, for this was nightmare,
and placing them one on each side of her looking-glass, looked long at
herself, critically and honestly. And as she looked courage and hope
came back to her. Where were the wrinkles she had feared, or where the
frosted hair? Thick and black and untouched by white it lay round her
head, and her face was smooth and unpitted by the years that had gone,
and her eyes were bright with the dawn of the fulfilment of her
womanhood, which she had missed so long, but was now streaking her
heaven in lines of gold and crimson, and flush of delicate green, even
as outside across the water-meadows and behind the gray tower of St.
Olaf’s dawn was coming swiftly. Surely it had been but for a moment that
night had been heavy, and on the wings of the morning came joy.
Canon Alington, as his wife often told him, had a great deal of tact,
and how prodigious was the amount with which Nature had endowed him may
be gathered from the fact that he never asked any of the guests who
might happen to be staying at St. Olaf’s over a Sunday whether or no
they were going to church. He was, such was his liberal doctrine,
primarily their host, and as such was bound to give them religious as
well as all other liberties, and consequently when Hugh at about ten
minutes to eleven came through the hall, where Ambrose was prancing
about in a slightly subdued and Sabbatical manner with a hymn-book and
prayer-book and a Bible in his hand, and a threepenny bit in his pocket,
and met Canon Alington just coming out of his study on his way to
church, Hugh’s appearance in gray flannels and a straw hat roused no
comment of disapprobation. Indeed, Canon Alington said, “It will be cool
in the garden.” But Ambrose’s tact was not equal to his father’s. He
looked up at Hugh with the light shining on his spectacles.
“Aren’t you coming to church, Uncle Hugh?” he asked.
“No, not this morning.”
“Aren’t you well, Uncle Hugh? I’m so sorry! Shall I stop behind, as
mamma does when I’m not well, and read the psalms and lessons to you? Or
shall I go to church and tell you about the sermon afterward?”
“Yes, thanks awfully, old boy!” said Hugh; “I think that would be the
best plan. Now run after your father, or else you will be late.”
Canon Alington had purposely walked on at the beginning of this
colloquy, and into his head there came the words “a little child shall
lead them.” He was a trifle disconcerted when he found that his little
child was not leading anybody, until Ambrose explained the plan about
the sermon.
* * * * *
But there was for Hugh no coolness of the garden, not, at any rate, of
this garden, and he only waited for the low thunder of the organ to come
booming out from the open church door, to set out, at a pace most
unsuited to this hot morning, along the road up which he had gone at
much about the same time yesterday. All the doubts and questioning of
the evening before were gone, or if not gone were invisible in the flame
that consumed them, were perhaps but the sticks and fuel that
contributed to the brightness of its burning. He had to declare to her
his love; that was his part, and nothing else was his part. He had no
spare emotion with which to feel nervous or afraid; all he felt or was,
it seemed to him, was caught up into the burning, into the beacon that
leaped in flame within him. He did not know whether the road seemed long
or short, or the morning hot or cold; the minor consciousness of life
had no existence for him just then. In a few minutes he would be with
the reality of life, the best was no more than shadow. And once again he
was told she was in the garden, and once again, hatless, he followed the
butler out.
She saw and knew; it was the face of her lover that looked at her
dumbly, eagerly, and both waited, for he had but the one word to say to
her, till they were alone. Then he came a step closer to her, and his
eyes were like hot coals.
“_Meine Seele, mein Herz_,” he said, still very quietly, still without
putting out his hand even to her.
And but for those burning eyes, and his mouth that trembled a little,
you would have said that nothing momentous, nothing that concerned life
and death and the deeps of the human soul, was passing on that quiet,
sunny terrace.
But how well she knew it, and how it seemed to her that her heart must
take wings and fly to him. Yet even as it poised, fluttering, in act to
go, all the warnings of the tapping window blind last night came into
her mind. He was so young, and the years that would make her old would
but be adding strength and vigour to his manhood. And she put up her
hand, as if to keep him off.
“No, no,” she said. “You don’t mean it, Hugh, you don’t consider--you
don’t know.”
“It is all I know,” he said.
There was a moment’s absolute silence; he had said all that he had come
to say, but from her answer he had to say more.
“Do you send me away?” he asked.
She turned from him, and looked out across the blue haze of heat that
hung on the meadows.
“Ah, no, not that!” she half moaned to herself.
“What then?” said he quietly.
Then she turned to him again, and in her eyes no less than in his shone
the authentic fire. Whatever trouble was there, whatever perplexity, it
paled in the brightness of that shining.
“Just this, dear Hugh,” she said--“that I ask you--oh, how feeble it
seems!--I ask you to give me a little time, to let me think and
determine. It is all so new and strange, and--and so wonderful. I ask
you to go away now, but not in the way you meant. Thank you for your
love for me--it is precious, so precious! But I had never thought of it,
never guessed it till yesterday.”
Hugh’s mouth had suddenly gone quite dry. He tried to moisten his lips
to speak, but could not, and it was but a whisper that came.
“You love me?” he asked.
“Ah! you mustn’t ask me any more now. I have had enough. I--there, go,
dear. I want----”
And she threw herself down on the garden bench where they had sat
yesterday and burst into a passion of sobbing.