Next morning I walked along the north beach in the hope that I might
catch sight of her. I was sure that she had shared my quickening of
passion; it was because she had felt it and been frightened by it, that
she had wakened Dorrie and hurried so abruptly away. I was sufficiently
vain to assure myself that only the timidity of love could account for
the sudden scurry of her flight.
With incredible short-sightedness, I had allowed them to leave me
without ascertaining their surname. My only clue, whereby I might
trace them, was the abbreviated forms of their Christian names. Dorrie
probably stood for Dorothy or Dorothea; Vi for Vivian or Violet.
Directly after breakfast I had studied the visitors’ list in _The
Ransby Chronicle_, hoping to come across these two Christian names in
combination with the same surname. My search had been unrewarded, for
only the initials of Christian names were printed and the V’s and the
D’s were bewilderingly plentiful.
On approaching the wreck I became oppressed with a nervous sense of the
proprieties. I was ashamed of intruding myself again. If she were there,
how should I excuse my coming? That attraction to her was my only motive
would be all too plain. I had at my disposal none of the social cloaks
of common interests and common acquaintance, which serve as a rule to
disguise the primitive fact of a man’s liking for a woman. The hypocrisy
of pretending that a second meeting in the same place was accidental
would be evident.
When I got there my fears proved groundless; nervousness was followed by
disappointment. The shore was deserted. I called Dorrie’s name to make
my presence known; no answer came. Having reconnoitered the wreck from
the outside, I entered through a hole in the prow where the beams had
burst asunder. Then I knew that Vi had been there that morning. The
surface of the sand which had drifted in had been disturbed. It was
still wet in places from her bathing and bore the imprint of her
footsteps, with smaller ones running beside them which were Dorrie’s. I
must have missed them by less than a hour.
Turning back to Ransby, I determined to spend the rest of the day in
searching. Surely she must be conscious of my yearning--sooner or
later, even against her inclination, it would draw her to me. Even
now, somewhere in the pyramided streets and alleys of the red-roofed
fishing-town, her steps were moving slower and her face was looking
back; presently she would turn and come towards me.
All that morning I wandered up and down the narrow streets, agitated
by unreasonable hopes and fears. Ransby has one main thoroughfare: from
Pakewold to the harbor it is known as the London Road; from the harbor
to the upper lighthouse on the cliff it is known as the High Street.
Leading off from the High Street precipitously to the denes are winding
lanes of many steps, which are paved with flints; they are rarely more
than five feet wide and run down steeply between gardens of houses. They
make Ransby an easy place in which to hide. As I zigzagged to and fro
between the denes and the High Street by these narrow passages, I was
tormented with the thought that she might be crossing my path, time and
again, without my knowing.
At lunch my grandmother inquired whether I had been to Woadley Hall. She
had noticed how preoccupied I had been since my arrival, and attributed
it to over-anxiety concerning my prospects with Sir Charles.
“The best thing you can do, my dear,” she said, “is to go along out
there this afternoon. I’m not at all sure that you oughtn’t to make
yourself known at the Hall. At any rate, you’ve only got to meet Sir
Charles and he’d know you directly. There’s not an ounce of Cardover in
you; you’ve got your mother’s face.”
Falling in love is like committing crime; it tends to make you
secretive. You will practise unusual deceptions and put yourself to all
kinds of ridiculous inconvenience to keep the sweet and shameful fact,
that a woman has attracted you, from becoming known. My grandmother had
set her heart on my going to Woadley. There was no apparent reason why I
shouldn’t go. It would be much easier to make the journey, than to
have to concoct some silly excuse for not having gone. So, with great
reluctance, I set out, having determined to get there and back with
every haste, so that I might have time to resume my search for Vi before
nightfall.
I had been walking upwards of an hour and was descending a curving
country lane, when I heard the smart trotting of a horse behind. The
banks rose steeply on either side. The road was narrow and dusty.
I clambered up the bank to the right among wild flowers to let the
conveyance go by. It proved to be a two-wheeled governess-car, such as
ply for hire by the Ransby Esplanade. In it were sitting Dorrie and
Vi. Vi had her back towards me but, as they were passing, Dorrie caught
sight of me. She commenced to shout and wave, crying, “There he ith.
There he ith.” They were going too fast on the downgrade to draw up
quickly, and so vanished round a bend. Then I heard that they had
halted.
As I came up with the conveyance, Dorrie reached out her arms
impulsively and hugged me. She was all excitement. Before anything could
be said, she began to scold me. “Naughty man. I wanted you to play thips
with me thith morning, like you did yetherday.”
I was looking across the child’s shoulder at Vi. Her color had risen.
I could swear that beneath her gentle attitude of complete control her
heart was beating wildly. Her eyes told a tale. They had a startled,
frightened, glad expression, and were extremely bright.
“I should have liked to play with you, little girl,” I said, “but I
didn’t know where you were staying. I looked for you this morning, but
couldn’t find you.”
“Dorrie seems to think that you belong to her,” said Vi, in her laughing
voice. “She’s a little bit spoilt, you know. If she wants anything, she
wants it badly. She can’t wait. So, when we didn’t run across you, she
began to worry herself sick. If we hadn’t found you, I expect there’d
have been an advertisement in to-morrow’s paper for the young man who
played ships with a little girl on the north beach.”
“You won’t go away again,” coaxed Dorrie, patting my face.
“Where are you walking?” asked Vi.
“To Woadley.”
“That’s where we’re going, so if you don’t mind the squeeze, you’d
better get in and ride.”
A governess-car is made to seat four, but they have to be people of
reasonable size. The driver’s size was not reasonable. Good Ransby ale
and a sedentary mode of life had swelled him out breadthwise, so that
there was no room left on his side of the carriage except for a child;
consequently I took my seat by Vi.
The driver thought he knew me, but was still a little doubtful in his
mind. With honest, Suffolk downrightness, he immediately commenced to
ask questions.
“You bain’t a Ransby man, be you, sir?”
“I’m a half-and-half.”
“Thought I couldn’t ’a’ been mistooken. I’ve lived in Ransby man and
boy, and I never forgets a face. Which ’alf of you might be Ransby?”
“I’m Ransby all through on my parents’ side, but I’ve lived away.”
“Why, you bain’t Mr. Cardover, be you--gran’son to old Sir Charles?”
“You’ve guessed right.”
“Well, I never! And to think that you should be goin’ to Woadley! Why, I
knew your Ma well, Mr. Cardover; The gay Miss Fannie Evrard, we called
’er. Meanin’ no disrespec’ to you, sir, I was groom to Miss Fannie all
them years ago, before she run away with your father. She were as nice
and kind a mistress as ever a man might ’ope to find. It’s proud I am
to meet you this day.”
As we bowled along through the leafy country, all shadows and sunshine,
he fell to telling me about my mother, and I was glad to listen to
what he had to say. The story had been told often before. By his
inside knowledge of the elopement, he had acquired that kind of local
importance which money cannot buy. It had provided him with the one
gleam of lawless romance that had kindled up the whole of his otherwise
dull life. According to his account, the marriage would never have come
off, unless he had connived at the courting. My mother, he said, took
him into her confidence, and he was the messenger between her and my
father. He would let my father know in which direction they intended to
ride. When they came to the place of trysting, he would drop behind and
my mother would go on alone. He pointed with his whip to some of the
meeting-places with an air of pride. He was godfather, as you might say,
to the elopement. After it had taken place, Sir Charles had discovered
his share in it, and had dismissed him. The word had gone the round
among the county gentry--he had never been able to find another
situation. So he had bought himself a governess-car and pony, and had
plied for hire. “And I bain’t sorry, sir,” he said. “If it were to do
again, I should be on the lovers’ side. I’m only sorry I ’ad to take
to drivin’ instead o’ ridin’; it makes a feller so ’eavy.”
Vi laughed at me out of the corners of her eyes. She had listened
intently. I felt, without her telling me, that this little glimpse into
my private history had roused her kindness. And the affair had its comic
side--that this mountain of flesh sitting opposite should be my first
ambassador to her, bearing my credentials of respectability.
“Ha’ ye heerd about Lord Halloway?” he inquired.
I nodded curtly. Encouraged by my former sympathetic attention, he
failed to take the intended warning.
“Thar’s a young rascal for ye, for all ’e ’olds ’is ’ead so
’igh! Looks more’n likely now that you’ll be the nex’ master o’
Woadley. Doan’t it strike you that way, sir?”
When I maintained silence, he carried on a monologue with himself. “And
’e war goin’ to Woadley, he war. And I picks ’un up by h’axcident
like. And I war groom to ’is ma. Wery strange!”
But there were stranger things than that, to my way of thinking: and
the strangest of all was my own condition of mind. A golden, somnolent
content had come over me, as though my life had broken off short, and
commenced afresh on a higher plane. Every motive I had ever had for good
was strengthened. The old grinding problems were either solved or seemed
negligible. I saw existence in its largeness of opportunity, and I
saw its opportunity in a woman’s eyes. It was as though I had been
colorblind, and had been suddenly gifted with sight so penetrating that
it enabled me to look into exquisite distances and there discern all the
subtle and marvelous disintegrations of light.
As the car swung round corners or rattled over rough places, our bodies
were thrown into closer contact as we sat together, Vi and I. Now her
shoulder would lurch against mine; now she would throw out her hand
to steady herself, and I would wonder at its smallness. I watched the
demure sweetness of her profile, and how the sun and shadows played
tricks with her face and throat. The fragrance of her hair came to me. I
followed the designed daintiness of the little gold curls that clustered
with such apparent carelessness against the whiteness of her forehead. I
noticed the flicker of the long lashes which hid and revealed her
eyes. How perishable she was, like a white hyacinth, or a summer’s
morning--and how remotely divine.
And the tantalizing fascination of it all was that I must be restrained.
She might escape me any day.
In a hollow of the country from between the hedges, Woadley crept into
sight. First we saw the gray Norman tower of the church, smothered
in ivy; then the thatched roofs of the outlying cottages; then the
sun-flecked whiteness of the village-walls, with tall sunflowers and
hollyhocks peeping over them.
As we passed the churchyard the driver slowed down. “Thar’s the last
place your father met ’er, Mr. Cardover, before they run away. It
war a summer evenin’ about this time o’ the year, and they stayed for
upwards o’ an hour together in the porch. She’d told old Sir Charles
that she war goin’ to put flowers on ’er mawther’s grave. Aye, but she
looked beautiful; she war a fine figure o’ a lady.”
I told him I would alight there. He was closing the door, on the point
of driving on, when I said to Vi, “Wouldn’t you like to get out as well?
The church is worth a visit.”
She gave me her hand and I helped her down. The governess-car went
forward to the village inn.
They had been scything the grass in the churchyard and the air was full
of its cool fragrance. Dorrie ran off to gather daisies in a corner
where it still stood rank and high.
We walked up the path together to the porch and tried the door. It was
locked. We turned away into the sunlight, where dog-roses climbed over
neglected graves and black-birds fluttered from headstones to bushes,
from bushes to the moss-covered surrounding walls.
It was Vi who broke the pleasant silence. “I hope you didn’t mind the
man talking.”
“Not at all. I expect I should have told you myself by and by.”
“Your mother must have been very beautiful. I like to think of her.
All this country seems so different now I know about her; it was so
impersonal before. Was--was she happy afterwards?”
I told her. I told her much more than I realized at the time. So few
people had ever cared to hear me talk about her, and for all of them
she was something past--dead and gone. My grandmother talked of her as
a lottery-ticket; so did the Spuffler; at home we never mentioned her at
all. Yet always she had been a real presence in my life. I felt jealous
for her; it seemed to me that she must be glad when we, whom she had
loved, remembered her with kindness.
Dorrie came back to us with her lap full of flowers. Seeing that we were
talking seriously, she seated herself quietly beside us and commenced to
weave the flowers into a chain.
The gate creaked. Footsteps came up the path. They paused; seemed to
hesitate; came forward again. Behind us they halted. Turning my head,
I saw an erect old man, white-haired, standing hat in hand, his back
toward us, regarding a weather-beaten grave.
We rose, instinctively feeling our presence irreverent. My eye caught
the name on the headstone of the grave:
MARY FRANCES EVRARD
BELOVED WIFE OF SIR CHARLES EVRARD
OF WOADLEY HALL
The old gentleman put on his hat, preparing to move away. Recognizing
our intention to give him privacy, he turned and bowed with stiff,
old-fashioned courtesy.
I gazed on him fascinated. It was the first time I had seen my
grandfather. His eyes fell full on my face.
His was one of the most remarkable faces I have ever gazed on. He was
clean shaven; his skin was ashy. His features were ascetic, boldly
chiseled and yet sensitively fine. They seemed to remodel themselves
with startling rapidity to express the thought that was passing in
his mind. The forehead was bony, high, and wrinkled. The nose was
large-nostriled and aquiline. The eye-brows were shaggy; beneath
them burnt sparks of fire, steady and almost cruel in their scorching
penetration. From the nostrils to the corners of the mouth two heavy
lines cut deep into the flesh, creating an expression of haughty
contemplation and aloof sadness. The mouth was prominent, fulllipped,
and almost sensual, had it not been so delicately shaped. The chin
was long, pointed, and sank into the breast. It was an actor’s face,
a poet’s face, a rejected prophet’s face, according to the mood which
animated it. When the lines deepened into sneering melancholy and the
corners of the large mouth drooped, it became almost Jewish. The strong
will that was always striving to cast the outward appearance into an
expression of immobile pride, was continually being thwarted by the
man’s quivering, abnormal capacity to feel and to be wounded.
He stared at me in troubled amazement. Yearning, despairing tenderness
fought its way into his eyes; for an instant, his whole expression
relaxed and softened. He had recognized my mother in me and was
remembering. He made a step towards me. Then his face went rigid again.
The skin drew tight over the cheek-bones. Setting his hat firmly on his
head, he turned upon his heel. At the gate he looked back once, against
his will. Then he passed out resolutely and vanished down the road.
Twilight was gathering as we drove back to Ransby. Rays of the sun crept
away from us westward through the meadows, like golden snakes. Vi and I
were silent--the presence of the driver put a constraint upon us.
He had a good deal to say, for he had warned all the village of my
arrival, and all the village, furtively from behind curtained windows,
had watched Sir Charles’s journey to and from the churchyard.
It had been pleasant at the inn to hear myself addressed as “Miss
Fannie’s son.” The windows of the low-ceilinged room in which we had
had our tea, faced out on the tall iron gates which gave entrance to
the park. Far up the driveway, hidden behind elms, we had just caught
a glimpse of Woadley Hall. And all the while we were eating, the
broad-hipped landlady had stood guard over us, talking about my mother
and the good old days. She had mistaken Vi for my wife at first; in
speaking to Dorrie she had referred to me as “your Papa.” Up to the last
she had persisted in including Vi and Dorrie in her prophecies for my
future. She never doubted that Vi and I were engaged. She assured us
that she ’oped to see us at the ’All one day, and a ’andsome
couple we would make.
At the time we had been abashed by her conversation, and had drunk our
tea in flustered fashion with our eyes in our cups. We had hated this
big complacent person for her clumsy, interfering kindness. But now,
as the little carriage threaded its way through dusky lanes, her errors
gave rise to a pleasant train of imaginings. I saw Vi as my wife--as
Lady Cardover, mistress of Woadley Hall. I planned the doings of
our days, from the horse-back ride in the early morning to the quiet
evenings together by the cozy fire. And why could it not be possible?
Country lovers, unashamed, with arms encircling one another, drew aside
to let us pass, as our lamps flashed down the road. Night birds were
calling. Meadowsweet and wild thyme spread their fragrance abroad. As
the wind blew inland, between great silences, it carried to our ears the
moan of the sea. While twilight hovered in the open spaces Dorrie, since
no one talked to her, kept up an undercurrent song:
“How far is it to Babylon?
_Three score miles and ten_.
Can I get there by candlelight?
_Ah yes,--and back again._”
As night crept on, the piping little voice grew indistinct and
murmurous, like a bee humming; the fair little head nodded and sank
against the arm of the bulky driver. Vi leant forward to lift her into
her lap; but I took Dorrie from her. With the child in my arms, for the
first time the desire to be a father came over me. In thinking of what
love might mean, I had never thought of that.
We entered Ransby at the top of the High Street and drew up outside an
old black flint house. Vi got out first and rang the bell. When the door
opened, I put Dorrie into her arms. I bent over and kissed the sleeping
child. Vi drew back her head sharply; my lips had passed so near to
hers. We faced one another on the threshold. The light from the hall,
falling on her face, showed me that her lips were parted as though she
had something that she was trying to get said. Then, “Good-night.” she
whispered, and the door closed behind her.
I crossed the street and wandered to and fro, watching the house. All
the front was in darkness; her rooms must be at the back. I was greedy
for her presence; if I could only see her shadow pass before a window I
would be content. With the closing of the door, she seemed to have shut
me out of her life. There was so much to say, and nothing had been said.
I turned out of the High Street down a long dark score, toward the
beach. Walls rose tall on either side. The salt wind, hurrying up
the narrow passage, struck me in the face and caused the gas-lamps
to quiver. Far down the tunnel at the end of the steps lay a belt of
blackness, and beyond that the tossing lights of ships at sea.
Reaching the Beach Road, I passed over the denes. The town stretched
tall across the sky, like a shadowy curtain through which peered golden
eyes. The revolving light of the lighthouse on the denes pointed a long
white finger inland, till its tip rested on the back of Vi’s house. I
fancied I saw her figure at the window. The finger swept on in a circle
out to sea, leaving the town in darkness. The upper-light on the cliff
replied, pointing to the place where I was standing, making it bright as
day. If she were still at the window, she would be able to see me as
I had seen her. Next time her window was illumined she had vanished. I
watched and waited; she did not return.
I roamed along the shore towards the harbor, purposeless with desire.
The sea, like a blind old man, kept whimpering to itself, trying to drag
itself up the beach, clutching at the sand with exhausted fingers.
Wearied out with wandering, I turned my steps homeward. The shop looked
so dark that I was ashamed to ring the bell lest they had all retired.
I tapped on the shutters, and heard a shuffling inside; my grandmother
opened the door to me. She was in her dressing-gown and a turkey-red
petticoat. The servant had been in bed some hours.
In the keeping-room I found a supper spread. Instead of being annoyed,
she was bubbling over with excitement. She could not sit down, but
stood over my chair while I ate; she was sure something wonderful had
happened.
“So you saw Sir Charles, my boy, and he recognized you! Tell me
everything, chapter and verse, with all the frills and furbelows.”
I had not much that I could tell, but I spread it out to satisfy her.
“And what did you think of ’im?” she asked. “Isn’t he every inch the
aristocrat?”
“Yes. But why is he so dark? There are times when he looks almost
Jewish.”
“Why, my dear, that’s ’cause he’s got gipsy-blood. His mother was one
of the Goliaths. Didn’t your father ever tell you that? Seems to me he
don’t tell you nothing. You have to come to your poor old Grannie
to learn anything. Why, yes, old Sir Oliver Evrard, his father, your
greatgrandfather, fell in love with a gipsy fortune-teller and married
’er. Ever since then the gipsies have been allowed to camp on Woadley
Ham. They do say that it was the wild gipsy streak that made your mother
do what she did. But there--that’s a long story. It’ll keep. We’d better
go to bed.”