THE FRIENDSHIP GROWS
"A whole white world of revival awaits May's whisper a while,
Abides and exults in the bud as a soft hushed laugh in a smile.
As a maid's mouth, laughing with love and subdued for the love's
sake, May
Shines, and withholds for a little the word she revives to say."
--A. C. SWINBURNE.
For three weeks, Melicent came down to the cottage on Tuesday and
stayed till Friday. The first twice Brenda had accompanied her; but
Pater grumbled, and the third time she came alone.
She was growing bold. Brooke's behaviour never varied. He was
courteous and easy, but never confidential. He would come down the
lane with his dogs, whistling, and lean over the gate among the
lilacs until Melicent appeared from the cottage door, and they went
on to Lone Ash together. His first greeting always was:
"How are you? Good news of Burmester, I hope?"
He was in great social request, and dined out most nights, often
hurrying away from the absorbing spectacle of the rising walls of his
home to lunch with some neighbouring magnate.
During the third week, except for their morning chat together, she
scarcely saw him at all until Friday afternoon.
The week had been wet and cold, and she had been tramping about in a
mackintosh and gaiters; but to-day was brilliantly fine, and she was
lunching _al fresco_, up at the works, being immensely interested in
some fresh boring operations then in progress in connection with her
beloved fish-pond. She was sitting upon a pile of dry planks, making
a dessert of almonds and raisins, and deep in a book, when she saw
the Captain drive up. He seldom brought the motor up to the works.
He had his own cart now, and a fast cob; and a trim young groom to
look after them.
He sprang out, came up to where she sat, and began asking eager
questions about the boring. They talked shop for several minutes, he
sitting among the planks a little below her perch, bare-headed, and
with his gaze upon the long foundation-lines.
Then a short silence fell, while the exhilarating May air sang about
them. Looking straight before him, he said unconcernedly:
"Came to see if you cared for a drive this afternoon. It's a jolly
day, and I've got to go to Arnstock. Care to come?"
She hesitated. Why not? She had evicted Mrs. Grundy long ago, and
on what other grounds could she refuse? Yet something within said,
"Don't," so loudly as to drown the voice of calm reason.
"I think I'd better not. I'm waiting here to see them begin to lay
the damp course. Thanks all the same."
He looked at his watch. Then turned to her with a gleam in his eye.
"They quit work in an hour, so that reason won't do. Don't you trust
me?"
"I have no notion what you mean," said Melicent, instantly frozen.
"Well," he said, "of course I know you despise conventionalities or
you would not be following your present profession. When a girl
steps down into the arena and joins the wrestling, one takes it for
granted that she doesn't mind what folks say. So, if you refuse to
let me take you a drive, I have to conclude that your objection is
personal, don't I?"
"Then you don't consider it possible that I really may not wish to
take a drive this afternoon?"
"Seeing what the weather's been this week, and what it is to-day, and
the way you've been sticking to work, I think it's unlikely," he said
calmly. He rose. "Pity you won't come," he added. "They're
enlarging Arnstock Churchyard, and they've unearthed the head of a
Saxon cross." Melicent sprang involuntarily to her feet. He looked
at her steadily. "Knot-work," he said firmly. "As clean-cut as if
it had been carved last week. They have got several bits. Harland
thinks they may find it all. That's what I'm going to see."
She laughed a little uneasily. "I don't believe I can resist that,"
she said.
"Come along then," he replied coolly, picking up her warm coat from
the planks. "There's Alfred to play propriety, you know."
"I don't believe you've ever been to Arnstock," he said, as they
bowled lightly along the firm high-road. "You do nothing but stick
to work. It isn't good for you."
"I have been to tea with the Harlands, and I am going to dine there
next week. I don't know what more you can suggest in the way of
dissipation. I'm sorry if I am ridiculous about Lone Ash, but you
must consider the fascination of it. My first house--my dream! To
see it taking shape before my eyes!"
She gazed before her with eyes that saw visions, and Hubert looked at
her.
"I feel great scruples about monopolising you so much," he remarked.
"Ought not all your energies just now to be concentrated on your
_trousseau_?"
He was in a position to see the full play of expression in the face
she sought to avert He marked the instinctive repugnance, the effort
at concealment, the cold annoyance.
"Lancelot understands that I must first do what I undertook to do,"
she said stiffly.
"Then I am actually postponing the wedding arrangements? This is
serious. My only excuse must be that there was no one who had a
prior claim when you pledged yourself to me."
For just one moment she misunderstood--for one second she was on the
verge of self-betrayal. It was on her tongue to say: "I never
pledged myself to you!" when she saw the trap laid for her. Was it
intentional? Swiftly she flashed a look at him. No babe could have
been more innocent in expression.
"My private concerns will never be allowed to clash with business
arrangements," she said haughtily. "What man would postpone, or
throw up good work, just because he was going to be married?"
"Marriage is a mere episode nowadays, isn't it?" he said. "Just a
holiday experience. The English fashion of it wouldn't content me."
"Marriage is not a thing you can talk about in the abstract," she
said irritably. "One marriage is not a bit like another. You can
choose your own kind, I suppose."
"Can you?" he asked urgently, in the candid tones of one seeking
useful information.
There was a shadow of emphasis on the pronoun. She made no reply,
and he went on:
"People's circumstances are so different I can imagine that _you_
might face the idea of marriage as a mere interlude, because your
life is so full, and holds so much else of love and fame and what
not. Now in my case ... will you allow a lonely man the luxury of
talking about himself for five minutes?"
"I am interested," said Melicent, quite politely.
"Well, you see, here am I, alone in the world. I can hardly remember
my mother. I never had but one real friend--a man. I don't think I
can remember a woman speaking one solitary kind word to me until I
turned up in England with money. Now do you see, that friendless as
I am, without human ties of kith or kin, what seems to you just a
convenient arrangement, is to me the one possibility life offers? ...
I wonder if you have ever thought what it must be to live altogether
without intimacies, as I have done, for thirty years?"
There was a quiet, earnest simplicity in his voice which disarmed
her. Suddenly she saw him in a new light. He was no longer the
relentless pursuer, the man who hunted down a girl as his desired
quarry. He was a lonely, heart-hungry fellow, who had been starving
for kind words, thirsting for feminine sympathy. Seeing him in the
light of what he had since become, she revolted from the memory of
her own hardness. She had been the only English girl--the only
creature with whom he felt affinity--in Slabbert's Poort. Among all
the degradation and savagery of the place, he had stretched out
appealing hands to the one woman who might have understood. And she
had never given him one kind word! He said he could not remember one!
Without her own volition she felt her heart assailed with a rush of
pity and tenderness wholly new in her self-centred, balanced
experience. Without a word of reproach, with an almost bald
simplicity, this man had opened the flood-gates of compassion. He
had done more; made her ashamed of herself. She felt her face
suffused with colour--she knew that her eyes swam with tears. The
brilliant sun, facing them as they drove westward, almost blinded
her. She felt she must say something; but the effect of his words
had been so unexpected, so overwhelming, that she could not control
her voice at once. At last, feeling that her lack of response must
seem unkind, she faltered out:
"I--I am so sorry for you. I never guessed you were so--lonely!"
And to her rage and fury, her eyes over-brimmed and two tears--rare
indeed with her--splashed down upon the rug that covered her knees.
Hubert made some kind of an inarticulate exclamation, and an abrupt
movement, abruptly checked by the consciousness of the neatly
apparelled back of Alfred, the groom, almost touching his own. He
maintained complete silence for a long minute, then, bending towards
Melicent:
"Were those tears for me?" he asked, very low.
She had hastily found her handkerchief.
"I--I think so. I can't quite explain; what you said recalled
something else ... and I suppose I'm tired."
"Nevertheless," he replied, still below his breath, "I have had, at
least for a moment, the sympathy of a woman. I shan't forget that.
I hope you don't think I am in the habit of puling and drivelling
about my lonely lot. I don't know what impelled me to sentiment, but
I assure you it is all over now. See, there is Arnstock Church! We
will have tea at the inn, and then the workmen will be gone home, and
we can have the churchyard to ourselves."
They pulled up at a little low inn, covered with wisteria and
honeysuckle. As he helped her down, she realised that her fear of
him had suddenly disappeared.
Seated by a little table at an open window over-looking a quaint
garden, she poured out tea for him, and enjoyed home-made bread, and
honey from the row of hives which stood before the hawthorn hedge.
They talked easily and naturally, like two between whom a barrier has
been swept away. Hubert told her of his search among his mother's
papers, his discovery there of the name of his grandfather's native
village, his coming to England, and his quest of what Lance called
his ancestral acres.
Tea over, they proceeded to the churchyard, and spent a vivid
half-hour with the fragments of the Saxon cross and its knot-work.
Melicent was in a fever of eagerness to discover runes, but there
were none. However, they found what was almost as good, a series of
grotesques down the sides of the shaft.
The workmen had turned up almost all the pieces, and when Melicent
suggested, in a moment of inspiration, that the Captain should pay
for its restoration and erection in the churchyard, by way of
inaugurating his reign at Clunbury, he took up the idea with avidity.
They drove back almost in silence; but a silence so full for both,
that they hardly realised their lack of words.
At the lilac-decked cottage gate, Hubert jumped out, and as usual
held his hands to help her down. She had just drawn off her leather
gloves, and there seemed something significant and wonderful in the
warm contact of their bare hands. The light was not good. That, or
something else, caused her foot to slip on the high step.
For just one moment she felt an instinctive tightening of his grasp,
and one arm went round her so swiftly that all danger of a fall was
over before recognised. She was set on the ground ... she felt
dizzy, and almost staggered when released. For in that arresting
instant, his mouth had been close to her ear, and she thought a
sentence came to her--that he said, so low that she could scarcely
hear:
"_Hadn't you better give in?_"
She had regained her poise, drawn herself away, her eyes shot a
bewildered glance at him in the twilight. He did not look at her,
but seemed in a tremendous hurry to be off. He had jumped back into
the cart and was spinning down the lane before she had time to draw
breath, or to ask herself if he had really said what she thought she
heard.
She stood there, listening to the brisk beat of the horse's hoofs on
the dry road, for quite a long time. Not a twig stirred in a
stillness which seemed almost portentous. The dampness and fragrance
of earth and growing things rose about her like incense. In a
thicket not far distant, a nightingale began to bubble and gurgle
into song.
Had he said it? If so, what did he mean? To what was she to give
in? To the influence which that afternoon had softened, and as it
were, dilated her heart? To the new kindness which she felt for him?
It must be illusion. Would he have asked a question of the kind and
ridden away without an answer? Was it an inner voice that had
spoken? If so, what was the purport?
Anger and self-will awoke. Her understanding, her emotions, her will
were and should remain in her own keeping. What was the sensation
she had experienced a moment ago, with his arms about her? She felt
herself blush scarlet in the darkness.
* * * * * * * *
Next morning she went back to London.