Nearly a thousand feet above the fertile valley of the Youle,
stretched a waste of moorland. Here all the trees were gnarled and
dwarfed above the patches of rust-coloured bracken; save only the
delicate silver birch, which swayed and yielded to the wind.
Great boulders were scattered among the thorn bushes, and over their
rough and glistening breasts were flung velvet coverings of green moss
and grey lichen.
On this October day, the heather yet sturdily bore a few last rosy
blossoms, and the ripe blackberries shone like black diamonds on the
straggling brambles. Here and there a belated furze-bush erected its
golden crown.
Over the dim purple of the distant hills, a brighter purple line
proclaimed the sea. Closer at hand, on a ridge exposed to every wind
of heaven, sighed a little wood of stunted larch and dull blue pine,
against a clear and brilliant sky.
Sarah was enthroned on a mossy stone, beneath the yellowing foliage of
a sheltering beech.
Her glorious ruddy hair was uncovered, and a Tyrolese hat was hung on
a neighbouring bramble, beside a little tweed coat. She wore a loose
white canvas shirt, and short tweed skirt; a brown leather belt, and
brown leather boots.
Being less indifferent to creature-comforts than to the preservation
of her complexion, Miss Sarah was paying great attention to the
contents of a market-basket by her side. She had chosen a site for
the picnic near a bubbling brook, and had filled her glass with clear
sparkling water therefrom, before seating herself to enjoy her cold
chicken and bread and butter, and a slice of game-pie.
Peter was very far from feeling any inclination towards displaying the
hilarity which an outdoor meal is supposed to provoke. He was obliged
to collect sticks, and put a senseless round-bottomed kettle on a
damp reluctant fire; to himself he used much stronger adjectives in
describing both; he relieved his feelings slightly by saying that he
never ate lunch, and by gloomily eying the game-pie instead of aiding
Sarah to demolish it.
"It wouldn't be a picnic without a kettle and a fire; and we _must_
have hot water to wash up with. I brought a dish-cloth on purpose,"
said Sarah. "I can't think why you don't enjoy yourself. You used to
be fond of eating and drinking--_anywhere_--and most of all on the
moor--in the good old days that are gone."
"I am not a philosopher like you," said Peter, angrily.
"I am anything but that," said Sarah, with provoking cheerfulness. "A
philosopher is a thoughtful middle-aged person who puts off enjoying
life until it's too late to begin."
"I hate middle-aged people," said Peter.
"I am not very fond of them myself, as a rule," said Sarah,
indulgently. "They aren't nice and amusing to talk to, like you and
me; or rather" (with a glance at her companion's face), "like _me_;
and they aren't picturesque and fond of spoiling us, as _really_ old
people are. They are just busy trying to get all they can out of
the world, that's all. But there are exceptions; or, of course, it
wouldn't be a rule. Your mother is an exception. No one, young or old,
was ever more picturesque or--or more altogether delicious. It was I
who taught her that new way of doing her hair. By-the-by, how do you
like it?"
"I don't like it at all," growled Peter.
"Perhaps you preferred the old way," said Sarah, turning up her short
nose rather scornfully. "Parted, indeed, and brushed down flat over
her ears, exactly like that horrid old Mrs. Ash!"
"Mrs. Ash has lived with us for thirty years," said Peter, in a tone
implying that he desired no liberties to be taken with the names of
his faithful retainers.
"That doesn't make her any better looking, however," retorted Sarah.
"In fact, she might have had more chance of learning how to do her
hair properly anywhere else, now I come to think of it."
"Of course everything at Barracombe is ugly and old-fashioned," said
Peter, gloomily.
"Except your mother," said Sarah.
"Sarah! I can't stand any more of this rot!" said Peter, starting from
his couch of heather. "Will you talk sense, or let me?"
Sarah shot a keen glance of inquiry at his moody face.
"Well," she said, in resigned tones, "I did hope to finish my lunch in
peace. I saw there was something the matter when you came striding up
the hill without a word, but I thought it was only that you found the
basket too heavy. Of course, if I had known it was only to be lunch
for one, I would not have put in so many things; and certainly not a
whole bottle of papa's best claret. In fact, if I had known I was to
picnic practically alone, I would not have crossed the river at all."
Then she saw that Peter was in earnest, and with a sigh of regret,
Sarah returned the dish of jam-puffs to the basket.
"I couldn't talk sense, or even listen to it, with those heavenly
puffs under my very nose," she said. "Now, what is it?"
"I hate telling you--I hate talking of it," said Peter, and a dark
flush rose to his frowning eyebrows. He threw himself once more at
Sarah's feet, and turned his face away from her, and towards the blue
streak of distant sea. "John Crewys wants to marry--my mother," he
said in choking tones.
"Is that all?" said Sarah. "I've seen that for ages. Aren't you glad?"
"Glad!" said Peter.
"I thought," Sarah said innocently, "that _you_ wanted to marry _me_?"
"Sarah!"
"Well!" said Sarah. She looked rather oddly at Peter's recumbent
figure. Then she pushed the loosened waves of her red hair from her
forehead with a determined gesture. "Well," she said defiantly, "isn't
that one obstacle to our marriage removed? Your aunts will go to the
Dower House, and your mother will leave Barracombe, and you'll have
the place all to yourself. And you dare to tell me you're sorry?"
"Yes," said Peter, sitting up and facing her, "I dare."
"I'm glad of that," said Sarah. Her deep voice softened. "I should
have thought less of you if you hadn't dared."
Suddenly she rose from her mossy throne, shook the crumbs off her
skirt, and looked down upon Peter with blue eyes sparkling beneath her
long lashes, and the fresh red colour deepening and spreading in her
cheeks, until even the tips of her delicate ears and her creamy throat
turned pink.
"_Well_," said Sarah, "go and stop it. Make your mother sorry and
ashamed. It would be very easy. Tell her she's too old to be happy.
But say good-bye to me first."
"Sarah!"
"Why is it to be all sunshine for you, and all shade for her?" said
Sarah. "Hasn't she wept enough to please you? Mayn't she have her St.
Martin's summer? God gives it to her. Will _you_ take it away?"
"Sarah!"
He looked up at her crimsoned tearful face in dismay. Was this Sarah
the infantile--the pink-and-white--the seductive, laughing, impudent
Sarah? And yet how passionately Peter admired her in this mood of
virago, which he had never seen since the days of her childish rages
of long ago.
"Why do you suppose," said Sarah, disdainfully, "that I've been
letting you follow _me_ about all this summer, and desert _her_;
except to show her how little you are to be depended upon? To bring
home to her how foolish she'd be to fling away her happiness for your
sake. _You_, who at one word from me, were willing to turn her out of
her own home, to live in a wretched little villa at your very door.
Don't interrupt me," said Sarah, stamping, "and say you weren't
willing. You told her so. I meant you to tell her, and yet--I could
have killed you, Peter, when I heard her sweet voice faltering out to
me, that she would be ready and glad to give up her place to her boy's
wife, whenever the time should come."
"_She_ told you?" cried Peter.
"But she didn't say you'd asked her," cried Sarah, scornfully. "_I_
knew it, but she never guessed I did. She was only gently smoothing
away, as she hoped, the difficulties that lay in the path to _your_
happiness. Oh, that she could have believed it of me! But she thinks
only of your happiness. _You_, who would snatch away hers this minute
if you could. She never dreamt I knew you'd said a word."
She paused in her impassioned speech, and the tears dropped from the
dark blue eyes. Sarah was crying, and Peter was speechless with awe
and dismay.
"I think she would have died, Peter," said Sarah, solemnly, "before
she would have told me how brutal you'd been, and how stupid, and how
selfish. I meant you to show her all that. I thought it would open
her eyes. I was such a fool! As if anything could open the eyes of a
mother to the faults of her only son."
Peter looked at her with such despair and grief in his dark face that
her heart almost softened towards him; but she hardened it again
immediately.
"Do you mean that you--you've been playing with me all this time,
Sarah? They--everybody told me--that you were only playing--but I've
never believed it."
"I _meant_ to play with you," said Sarah, turning, if possible, even
redder than before; "I meant to teach you a lesson, and throw you
over. And the more I saw of you, the more I didn't repent. You, who
dared to think yourself superior to your mother; and, indeed, to
any woman! Kings are enslaved by women, you know," said Miss Sarah,
tossing her head, "and statesmen are led by them, though they oughtn't
to be. And--and poets worship them, or how could they write poetry?
There would be nothing to write about. It is reserved for boys and
savages to look down upon them."
She sat scornfully down again on her boulder, and put her hands to her
loosened hair.
"I can't think why a scene always makes one's hair untidy," said
Sarah, suddenly bursting into a laugh; but the whiteness of Peter's
face frightened her, and she had some ado to laugh naturally. "And I
am lost without a looking-glass," she added, in a somewhat quavering
tone of bravado.
She pulled out a great tortoise-shell dagger, and a heavy mass of
glorious red-gold hair fell about her piquant face, and her pretty
milk-white throat, down to her waist.
"Dear me!" said Miss Sarah. She looked around. Near the bubbling
brook, dark peaty hollows held little pools, which offered Nature's
mirror for her toilet.
She went to the side of the stream and knelt down. Her plump white
hands dexterously twisted and secured the long burnished coil. Then
she glanced slyly round at Peter.
He lay face downwards on the grass. His shoulders heaved. The pretty
picture Miss Sarah's coquetry presented had been lost upon the foolish
youth.
She returned in a leisurely manner to her place, and leaning her chin
on her hand, and her elbow on her knee, regarded him thoughtfully.
"Where was I? Yes, I remember. It is a lesson for a girl, Peter, never
to marry a boy or a savage."
"Sarah!" said Peter. He raised his face and looked at her. His eyes
were red, but he was too miserable to care; he was, as she had said,
only a boy. "Sarah, you're not in earnest! You can't be! I--I know I
ought to be angry." Miss Sarah laughed derisively. "Yes, you laugh,
for you know too well I can't be angry with you. I love you!" said
Peter, passionately, "though you are--as cruel as though I've not had
pretty well as much to bear to-day, as I know how to stand. First,
John Crewys, and now you--saying--"
"Just the truth," said Sarah, calmly.
"I don't deny," said Peter, in a quivering voice, "that--that some of
the beastly things he said came--came home to me. I've been a selfish
brute to _her_, I always have been. You've said so pretty plainly, and
I--I dare say it's true. I think it's true. But to _you_--and I was so
happy." He hid his face in his hand.
"I'm glad you have the grace to see the error of your ways at last,"
said Sarah, encouragingly. "It makes me quite hopeful about you. But
I'm sorry to see you're still only thinking of _our_ happiness--I mean
_yours_," she corrected herself in haste, for a sudden eager hope
flashed across Peter's miserable young face. "Yours, yours, _yours_.
It's your happiness and not hers you think of still, though you've all
your life before you, and she has only half hers. But no one has ever
thought of her--except me, and one other."
"John Crewys?" said Peter, angrily.
"Not John Crewys at all," snapped Sarah. "He is just thinking of his
own happiness like you are. All men are alike, except the one I'm
thinking of. But though I make no doubt that John Crewys is just as
selfish as you are, which is saying a good deal, yet, as it happens,
John Crewys is the only man who could make her happy."
"What man are you thinking of?" said Peter.
Jealousy was a potent factor in his love for Sarah. He forgot his
mother instantly, as he had forgotten her on the day of his return,
when Sarah had walked on to the terrace--and into his heart.
"I name no names," said Sarah, "but I hope I know a hero when I see
him; and that man is a hero, though he is--nothing much to look at."
It amused her to observe the varying expressions on her lover's face,
which her artless words called forth, one after another.
"If you are really not going to eat any luncheon, Peter," she said, "I
must trouble you to help me to wash up and pack the basket. The fire
is out and the water is cold, but it can't be helped. The picnic has
been a failure."
"We have the whole afternoon before us. I cannot see that there is any
hurry," said Peter, not stirring.
"I didn't mean to break bad news to you," said Sarah, "until we'd had
a pleasant meal together in comfort, and rested ourselves. But
since you insist on spoiling everything with your horrid premature
disclosures, I don't see why I shouldn't do the same. I must be at
home by four o'clock, because Aunt Elizabeth is coming to Hewelscourt
this very afternoon."
"Lady Tintern!" cried Peter, in dismay. "Then you won't be able to
come to Barracombe this evening?"
"I am not in the habit of throwing over a dinner engagement," said
Sarah, with dignity. "But in case they won't let me come," she added,
with great inconsistency, "I'll put a lighted candle in the top window
of the tower, as usual. But you can guess how many more of these
enjoyable expeditions we shall be allowed to make. Not that we need
regret them if they are all to be as lively as this one. Still--"
She helped herself to a jam-puff, and offered the dish to Peter, with
an engaging smile. He helped himself absently.
"I don't deny I am fond of taking meals in the open air, and more
especially on the top of the moor," said Sarah, with a sigh of
content.
"What has she come for?" said Peter.
"I shall be better able to tell you when I have seen her."
"Don't you know?"
"I can pretty well guess. She's going to forgive me, for one thing.
Then she'll tell me that I don't deserve my good luck, but that Lord
Avonwick is so patient and so long-suffering, that he's accepted her
assurance that I don't know my own mind (and I'm not sure I do), and
he's going to give me one more chance to become Lady Avonwick, though
I was so foolish as to say 'No' to his last offer."
"You didn't say 'No' to _my_ last offer!" cried Peter.
"I don't believe an offer of marriage is even legal before you're
one-and-twenty," said Miss Sarah, derisively. "What did it matter what
I said? Haven't I told you I was only playing?"
"You may tell me so a thousand times," said Peter, doggedly, "but I
shall never believe you until I see you actually married to somebody
else."