As soon as old Jervaise had gone, all of them had turned with an instinct
of protection towards the head of the family. He, alone, had been
sacrificed. Within an hour his whole life had been changed, and I began to
doubt, as Anne had doubted, whether so old a tree would bear
transplanting. Whatever tenderness and care could do, would be done for
him, but the threat of uprooting had come so suddenly. In any case, I
could not help those gentle foresters whose work it would be to conduct
the critical operation; and I walked out of the room without offering any
perfunctory excuse for leaving them.
I made my way into the garden by the side door through which I had first
entered the Home Farm; and after one indeterminate moment, came to a halt
at the gate on the slope of the hill. I did not want to go too far from
the house. For the time being I was no more to the Banks than an
inconvenient visitor, but I hoped that presently some of them--I put it
that way to myself--would miss me, and that Arthur or Anne would come and
tell me what had been arranged in my absence. I should have been glad to
talk over the affair with Arthur, but I hoped that it would not be Arthur
who would come to find me.
For a time my thoughts flickered capriciously over the astonishing events
of my adventurous week-end. I was pleasantly replete with experience. In
all my life I had never before entered thus completely into any of the
great movements of life. I recalled my first thrills of anticipation
amidst the glowing, excited youth of the resting dancers at the Hall. We
had been impatient for further expression. The dragging departure of the
Sturtons had been an unbearable check upon the exuberance of our desires.
In my thought of the scene I could see the unspent spirit of our vitality
streaming up in a fierce fount of energy.
And with me, at least, that fount, unexpectedly penned by the first hints
of disaster, had still played furiously in my mind as I had walked with
Frank Jervaise through the wood. My intoxicated imagination had created
its own setting. I had gone, exalted, to meet my wonderful fate. Through
some strange scene of my own making I had strayed to the very feet of
enduring romance.
But after that exciting prelude, when the moon had set and slow dawn, like
a lifting curtain, had been drawn to reveal the landscape of a world
outside the little chamber of my own being, I had been cast from my
heights of exaltation into a gloomy pit of disgrace. Fate, with a
fastidious particularity, had hauled me back to the things of everyday. I
was not to be allowed to dream too long. I was wanted to play my part in
this sudden tragedy of experience.
My thought went off at a tangent when I reached that point of my
reflection. I had found myself involved in the Banks's drama, but what
hope had I of ever seeing them again after the next day? What, moreover,
was the great thing I was called upon to do? I had decided only an hour or
two before that my old way of life had become impossible for me, but
equally impossible was any way of life that did not include the presence
of Anne.
I looked at my watch, and found that it was after ten o'clock, but how
long I had been standing at the gate, I had no idea; whether an hour or
ten minutes. I had been dreaming again, lost in imaginative delights;
until the reminder of this new urgency had brought me back to a reality
that demanded from me an energy of participation and of initiative.
I wished that Anne would come--and by way of helping her should she,
indeed, have come out to look for me, I strolled back to the Farm, and
then round to the front of the house.
The windows of the sitting-room had been closed but the blinds were not
drawn. The lamp had been lit and splayed weak fans of yellow light on to
the gravel, and the flower-beds of the grass plot. The path of each beam
was picked out from the diffused radiance of the moonlight, by the dancing
figures of the moths that gathered and fluttered across the prisms of
these enchanted rays. But I did not approach the windows. In the stillness
of the night I could hear Anne's clear musical voice. She was still there
in the sitting-room, still soothing and persuading her father. Her actual
words were indistinguishable, but the modulations of her tone seemed to
convey the sense of her speech, as a melody may convey the ideas of form
and colour.
I returned to my vigil at the gate and to thoughts of Anne--to romantic
thoughts of worship and service; of becoming worthy of her regard; of
immense faithfulness to her image when confronted with the most
provocative temptations; to thoughts of self-sacrifice and bravado, of
humility and boasting; of some transcending glorification of myself that
should make me worthy of her love.
I was arrested in the midst of my ecstatic sentimentalism by the sight of
the Hall, the lights of which were distantly visible through the trees.
The path by the wood was not the direct line from the Hall to the Farm;
the sanctities of the Park were not violated by any public right of way.
The sight of the place pulled me up, because I was suddenly pierced by the
reflection that perhaps old Jervaise had thus postured to win the esteem
of his daughter's governess. He, it is true, had had dignity and prestige
on his side, but surely he must have condescended to win her. Had he, too,
dreamed dreams of sacrifice at the height of his passion? Had he
alternately grovelled and strutted to attract the admiration of his lady?
I found the reflection markedly distasteful. I was sorry again, now, for
the old man. He had suffered heavy penalties for his lapse. I remembered
Mrs. Banks's hint that his wife had adopted Brenda in the first place in
order that he might have before him a constant reminder of his disgrace. I
could believe that. It was just such a piece of chicane as I should expect
from that timid hawk, Mrs. Jervaise. But while I pitied the man, I could
not look upon his furtive gratifications of passion with anything but
distaste.
No; if my love for Anne was to be worthy of so wonderful an object, I must
not stupefy myself with these vapours of romance. The ideal held something
finer than this, something that I could not define, but that conveyed the
notion, however indeterminately, of equality. I thought of my fancy that
we had "recognised" each other the night before. Surely that fancy
contained the germ of the true understanding, of the conceptions of
affinity and remembrance.
No tie of our present earth life could be weighed against that idea of a
spirit love, enduring through the ages; a love transcending and immortal,
repeating itself in ever ascending stages of rapture. The flesh was but a
passing instrument of temporal expression, a gross medium through which
the spirit could speak only in poor, inarticulate phrases of its
magnificent recognition of an eternal bond. ... Oh! I was soon high in the
air again, riding my new Pegasus through the loftiest altitudes of lonely
exaltation. I was a conqueror while I had the world to myself. But when at
last I heard the rustle of a woman's dress on the path behind me, I was
nothing more than a shy, self-conscious product of the twentieth century,
all too painfully aware of his physical shortcomings.
* * * * *
She came and stood beside me at the gate, without speaking; and my mind
was so full of her, so intoxicated with the splendour of my imaginings,
that I thought she must surely share my newfound certainty that we had met
once more after an age of separation. I waited, trembling, for her to
begin. I knew that any word of mine would inevitably precipitate the
bathos of a civilised conversation. I was incapable of expressing my own
thought, but I hoped that she, with her magic voice, might accomplish a
miracle that was beyond my feeble powers. Indeed, I could imaginatively
frame for her, speech that I could not, myself, deliver. I knew what I
wanted her to say--or to imply. For it was hardly necessary for her to say
anything. I was ready, wholly sympathetic and receptive. If she would but
give me the least sign that she understood, I could respond, though I was
so unable to give any sign myself.
I came down from my clouds with a feeling of bitter disappointment, a
sense of waking from perfect dreams to the realisation of a hard, inimical
world, when she said in a formal voice.
"It's after eleven. My mother and father have gone to bed."
"Is he--is he in any way reconciled?" I asked, and I think I tried to
convey something of resentment by my tone. I still believed that she must
guess.
"In a way," she said, and sighed rather wearily.
"It must have been very hard for him to make up his mind so quickly--to
such a change," I agreed politely.
"It was easier than I expected," she said. "He was so practical. Just at
first, of course, while Mr. Jervaise was there, he seemed broken. I didn't
know what we should do. I was almost afraid that he would refuse to come.
But afterwards he--well, he squared his shoulders. He is magnificent. He's
as solid as a rock. He didn't once reproach us. He seemed to have made up
his mind; only one thing frightened him..."
"What was that?" I asked, as she paused.
"That we haven't any capital to speak of," she said. "Even after we have
sold the furniture here, we shan't have more than five or six hundred
pounds so far as we can make out. And he says it isn't enough. He says
that he and mother are too old to start again from small beginnings.
And--oh! a heap of practical things. He is so slow in some ways that it
startled us all to find out how shrewd he was about this. It was his own
subject, you see."
"There needn't be any difficulty about capital," I said eagerly. I had
hardly had patience for her to finish her speech. From her first mention
of that word "capital" I had seen my chance to claim a right in the
Banks's fortunes.
"I don't see..." she began, and then checked herself and continued
stiffly, "My father would never accept help of any kind."
"Arthur might--from a friend," I said.
"He thinks we've got enough--to begin with," she replied. "They've been
arguing about it. Arthur's young and certain. Father isn't either, and
he's afraid of going to a strange country--and failing."
"But in that case Arthur must give way," I said.
Anne was silent for a moment and then said in a horribly formal voice. "Am
I to understand, Mr. Melhuish, that you are proposing to lend Arthur this
money?"
"On any terms he likes," I agreed warmly.
"Why?"
I could not mistake her intention. I knew that she expected me to say that
it was for her sake. I was no less certain that if I did say that she
would snub me. Her whole tone and manner since she had come out to the
gate had challenged me.
"Here we are alone in the moonlight," her attitude had said. "You've been
trying to hint some kind of admiration for me ever since we met. Now, let
us get that over and finished with, so that we can discuss this business
of my father's."
"Because I like him," I said. "I haven't known him long, of course; only a
few hours altogether; but..." I stopped because I was afraid she would
think that the continuation of the argument might be meant to apply to her
rather than to Arthur; and I had no intention of pleading by innuendo.
When I did speak, I meant to speak directly, and there was but one thing I
had to say. If that failed, I was ready to admit that I had been suffering
under a delusion.
"Well?" she prompted me.
"That's all," I said.
"Weren't you going to say that it wasn't how long you'd known a person
that mattered?"
"It certainly didn't matter in Arthur's case," I said. "I liked him from
the first moment I saw him. It's true that we had been talking for some
time before there was light enough for me to see him."
"You like him so much that you'd be willing to lend him all the money he
wanted, without security?" she asked.
"Yes, all the money I have," I said.
"Without any--any sort of condition?"
"I should make one condition," I replied.
"Which is?"
"That he'd let me come and stay with him, and Brenda, and all of you--on
the farm."
"And, of course, we should all have to be very nice to you, and treat you
as our benefactor--our proprietor, almost," she suggested cruelly.
I was hurt, and for a moment I was inclined to behave much as young
Turnbull had behaved that afternoon, to turn away and sulk, and show that
I had been grievously misunderstood. I overcame that impulse, however. "I
shouldn't expect you to curtsey!" I said.
She turned to me with one of her instant changes of mood.
"Why don't you tell me the truth?" she asked passionately.
"The truth _you_ mean hasn't anything whatever to do with what we're
talking about now," I said.
"Oh! but it has. It must have," she protested. "Aren't you trying to buy
my good-will all the time? All this is so heroic and theatrical. Aren't
you being the splendid benefactor of one of your own plays--being
frightfully tactful and oh! _gentlemanly_? It wouldn't be the right thing,
of course, to--to put any sort of pressure on me; but you could put us all
under every sort of obligation to you, and afterwards--when you came to
stay with us--you'd be very forbearing and sad, no doubt, and be very
sweet to my mother--she likes you already--but every one would know just
why; and you'd all expect me--to--to do the right thing, too."
If I had not been truly in love with her I should have been permanently
offended by that speech. It stung me. What she implied was woundingly true
of that old self of mine which had so recently come under my observation
and censure. I could see that; and yet if any one but Anne had accused me
I should have gone off in high dudgeon. The hint of red in my hair would
not permit me to accept insult with meekness. And while I was still
seeking some way to avoid giving expression to my old self whose influence
was painfully strong just then, she spoke again.
"Now you're offended," she said.
I avoided a direct answer by saying, "What you accused me of thinking and
planning might have been true of me yesterday; it isn't true, now."
"Have you changed so much since yesterday?" she asked, as if she expected
me to confess, now, quite in the familiar manner. She had given me an
opportunity for the proper continuation. I refused it.
"I have only one claim on you," I said boldly.
"Well?" she replied impatiently.
"You recognised me last night."
It was very like her not to fence over that. She had a dozen possible
equivocations, but she suddenly met me with no attempt at disguise.
"I _thought_ I did," she said. "Just for a minute."
"And now? You know...?"
She leaned her elbows on the gate and stared out over the moonlit
mysteries of the Park.
"You're not a bit what I expected," she said.