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.