There is no wild wind in his soul,
No strength of flood or fire;
He knows no force beyond control,
He feels no deep desire.
He knows no altitudes above,
No passions elevate;
All is but mockery of love,
And mimicry of hate.
--EDGAR VINE HALL.
The morning after the storm Wentworth was sitting in the library at
Barford, looking out across the garden to the down. Behind the down lay
Priesthope, where Fay was.
He was thinking of her. This shewed a frightful lapse in his regulated
existence. So far he had allowed the remembrance of Fay to invade him
only in the evenings over his cigarette, or when he was pacing amid his
purpling beeches.
Was she now actually beginning to invade his mornings, those mornings
sacred to the history of Sussex? No! No! Dismiss the extravagant
surmise. Wentworth was far more interested in his attitude towards a
thing or person--in what he called his point of view--than in the thing
viewed.
He was distinctly attracted by Fay, but he was more occupied with his
feelings about her than with herself. It was these which were now
engrossing him.
For some time past he had been working underground--digging out the
foundations--and as a rule invisible as a mole within them--of a tedious
courtship undertaken under the sustaining conviction that marriage is
much more important to a woman than to a man. This point of view was not
to be wondered at, for Wentworth, like many other eligible, suspiciously
diffident men, had so far come into contact mainly with that large
battalion of women who forage for themselves, and who take upon
themselves with assiduity the work of acquaintanceship and courtship. He
had never quite liked their attentions or been deceived by their "chance
meetings." But his conclusions respecting the whole sex had been formed
by the conduct of the female skirmishers who had thrown themselves
across his path; and he, in common with many other secluded masculine
violets, innocently supposed that he was irresistible to the other sex;
and that when he met the _right_ woman she would set to work like the
others, only with a little more tact, and the marriage would be
conveniently arrived at.
But Fay showed no signs of setting to work, no alacrity, no apparent
grasp of the situation: I mean of the possible but by no means certain
turn which affairs might one day take.
At first Wentworth was incredulous, but he remembered in time that one
of the tactics of women is to retreat in order to lure on a further
masculine advance. Then he became offended, stiff with injured dignity,
almost anxious. But he communed with himself, analysed his feelings
under various headings, and discovered that he was not discouraged. He
was aware--at least, he told himself that he was aware--that
extraordinary efforts must be made in love affairs. I don't know how he
reconciled that startling theory with his other tenets, but he did. The
chance suggestions of his momentary moods he regarded as convictions,
and adopted them one day and disowned them the next with much _naif_
dignity, and offended astonishment, if the Bishop or some other old
friend actually hinted at a discrepancy between diametrically opposed
but earnestly expounded views. He imagined that he was now grappling
with the difficulties inherent to love in their severest form. It was of
estrangements like these that poets sang. He opened his Browning and
found he was on the right road, passing the proper milestones at the
correct moment. He was sustained in his idleness this morning by the
comfortable realisation that he was falling desperately in love. He
shook his head at himself and smiled. He was not ill pleased with
himself. He would return to a perfectly regulated life later on. In the
meanwhile he would give a free rein to these ecstatic moods, these wild
emotions. When he had given a free rein to them they ambled round a
little paddock, and brought him back to his own front door. It was
delicious. He had thoughts of chronicling the expedition in verse.
I fear we cannot escape the conclusion that Wentworth was on the verge
of being a prig. But he was held back as it were by the coat-tails from
the abyss by a certain _naivete_ and uprightness of character. The
Bishop once said of him that he was so impressed with the fact that
dolls were stuffed with sawdust that it was impossible not to be fond of
him.
Wentworth in spite of his sweeping emotions was still unconsciously
meditating a possible retreat as regards Fay, was still glancing
furtively over his shoulder. Strange how that involuntary,
self-protective attitude on a man's part is never lost on a woman,
however dense she may otherwise be, almost always ends by ruining him
with her. Others besides Lot's wife have become petrified by looking
back.
Fay, he reflected, must make it perfectly clear to him that if he did
propose he would be accepted--she in short must commit herself--and
then--after all a bachelor's life had great charm. But still--at any
rate he might come back from Lostford this afternoon by way of Pilgrim
Road. That would tie him to nothing. She often walked there. It would be
an entirely chance meeting. Wentworth had frequently used this "short
cut" of late which did not add more than two miles to the length of his
return journey from Lostford.
It was still early in the afternoon when he rode slowly down Pilgrim
Road feeling like a Cavalier. There was no hurry. The earth was
breathing again after the storm. Everything was resting, and waking in
the vivid March sunshine. As he rode at a foot's pace along the mossy
track dappled with anemones, as he noted the thin powder of green on the
boles of the beech trees, and the intense blue through the rosy haze of
myriad twigs, the slight hunger of his heart increased upon him. There
was a whisper in the air which stirred him vaguely in spite of himself.
At that instant he caught sight of a slight black figure sitting on a
fallen tree near the track.
For one moment the Old Adam in him actually suggested that he should
ride past, just taking off his hat. But he had ridden past in life,
just taking off his hat, so often that the action lacked novelty. He
almost did it yet again from sheer force of habit. Then he dismounted
and walked up to Fay, bridle in hand.
"What good fortune to meet you," he said. "I so seldom come this way."
This may have been the truth in some higher, rarer sense than its
obvious meaning, for Wentworth was a perfectly veracious person. Yet
anyone who had seen him during the last few weeks constantly riding at a
foot's pace down this particular glade, looking carefully to right and
left, would hardly have felt that his remark dovetailed in with the
actual facts. The moral is--morals cluster like bees round certain
individuals--that we must not ponder too deeply the meanings of men like
Wentworth.
"I often used to come here," said Fay, "but not of late. I came to get
some palm."
She had in her bare hand a little bunch of palm, the soft woolly buds on
them covered with yellow dust. She held them towards Wentworth, and he
looked at them with grave attention.
The cob, a privileged person, of urbane and distinguished manners,
suddenly elongated towards them a mobile upper lip, his sleek head
slightly on one side, his kind, sly eyes half shut.
"Conrad," said Wentworth, "we never ask. We only take what is given us."
Fay laughed, and gave them both a twig.
Wentworth drew his through his buttonhole. Conrad twisted his in his
strong yellow teeth, turned it over, and then spat it out. The action,
though of doubtful taste in itself, was ennobled by his perfect
rendering of it. He brought it, so to speak, forever within the sphere
of exquisite manners.
Wentworth led him back to the path, tied him to a tree, and then came
back and sat down at a little distance from Fay on the same trunk. He
had somehow nothing to say, but of course he should think of something
striking directly. One of Fay's charms was that she did not talk much.
A young couple close at hand were not hampered by any doubts as to a
choice of subject.
From among the roots of a clump of alder rose a sweet little noise of
mouse talk, intermittent, _affaire_, accompanied by sudden rustlings and
dartings under dead leaves, momentary glimpses of a tiny brown bride and
bridegroom. Ah! wedded bliss! Ah! youth and sunshine, and the joy of
life in a new soft silken coat!
Fay and Wentworth watched and listened, smiling at each other from time
to time.
"I am forced to the conclusion," said Wentworth at last, "that even in
these early days Mrs. Mouse does not listen to all Mr. Mouse says."
"How could she, poor thing, when he never leaves off talking?"
"Well, neither does she. They both talk at once. I suppose they have not
our morbid craving for a listener."
"Do you think--I mean really and truly--that they are talking about
themselves?" said Fay, looking at Wentworth as if any announcement of
his on the subject would be considered final.
"No doubt," he said indulgently, willing to humour her, and feeling more
like a cavalier than ever.
Then he actually noticed how pale she was.
"You look tired," he said. "I am afraid the storm last night kept you
awake."
"Yes," she said, and hung her head.
Wentworth, momentarily released from his point of view, looked at her
more closely, and perceived that her lowered eyelids were heavy with
recent tears. And as he looked, he realised, by some other means than
those of reasoning and deduction, by some mysterious intuitive feeling
new to him, that all these weeks when he had imagined she was drawing
him on by feminine arts of simulated indifference she had in reality
been thinking but little of him because she was in trouble. The
elaborate edifices which he had raised in solitude to account for this
and that in her words one day, in her attitude towards him another day,
toppled over, and he saw before him a simple creature, who for some
unknown and probably foolish reason, had cried all night.
He perceived suddenly, without possibility of doubt, that she had never
considered him in the light of a lover, had never thought seriously
about him at all, and that what he had taken to be an experienced woman
of the world was in reality an ignorant child at heart.
He felt vaguely relieved. There were evidently no ambushes, no
surprises, no pitfalls in this exquisite nature. There was really
nothing to withdraw from. He suddenly experienced a strong desire to go
forward, a more imperative desire than he had ever known about anything
before. Even as he was conscious of it Fay raised her eyes to his and it
passed away again, leaving a great tranquillity behind, together with a
mounting sense of personal power.
If Fay had spoken to him he had not heard what she had said. But he did
not mind having missed it. The meaning of the spring was reaching him
through her presence like music through a reed. He had never understood
it till now. Poor empty little reed! Poor entranced listener mistaking
the reed for music!
Can it be that when God made His pretty world He had certain things
exceeding sharp and sweet to say to us, which it is His will only to
whisper to us through human reeds: the frail human reeds on which we
sometimes deafly lean until they break and pierce our cruel hands?
The mystery of the spring was becoming clear and clearer. What Wentworth
had believed hitherto to be a deceptive voice was nothing but a
reiterated faithful prophecy, a tender warning to him so that he might
be ready when the time came.
"The primroses will soon be out," he said as if it were a secret.
"Very soon," she said, though they were out already. Fay always assented
to what was said.
"I must be going," she said, getting up. "I have walked too far. If I
sit here any longer I shall never get home at all."
"Let me take you home on Conrad."
Fay hesitated.
"I am frightened of horses."
"But not of Conrad. He is only an armchair stuffed to look like a horse.
And I will lead him."
Fay still hesitated.
He took an authoritative tone. He must insist on her riding home. She
was tired already, and it was a long mile up hill to Priesthope.
Fay acquiesced. To-day of all days she was not in a condition for
anything but a dazed acceptance of events as they came.
Wentworth lifted her gently onto the saddle, and put one small dangling
foot into a stirrup shortened to meet it.
She was alarmed and clutched Conrad's mane, but gradually her timidity
was reassured, and they set out slowly together, Wentworth walking
beside her, with his hand on the rein.
The little bunch of palm was forgotten. It had done its part.
Wentworth talked and Fay listened, or seemed to listen. Her mind
wandered if Conrad pricked his ears, but he did not prick them very
often.
Wentworth felt that it was time Fay made more acquaintance with his
mind, and he proceeded without haste, but without undue delay to
indicate to her portions of his own attitude towards life, his point of
view on various subjects. All the sentiments which must infallibly have
lowered him in the eyes of a shrewder woman he spread before her with
childish confidence. He gave her of his best. He expressed a hope that
he did not abuse for his own selfish gratification his power of entering
swiftly into intimacy with his fellow creatures. He alluded to his own
freedom from ambition, his devotion--unlike other men--to the _small_
things of life, love, friendship, etc.: we know the rest. Wentworth had
been struck by that sentence when he first said it to the Bishop, and
he repeated it now. Fay thought it very beautiful. She proved a more
sympathetic listener than the Bishop.
I don't know whether like Mrs. Mouse she did not listen to all Mr. Mouse
said. But at any rate she noticed for the first time how lightly
Wentworth walked, how square his shoulders were, and the beauty of his
brown thin hand upon the bridle; and through her mind a little streak of
vanity came back to the surface, momentarily buried under the _debris_
of last night's emotion. Wentworth was interested in her. He admired
her. _He_ did not know anything uncomfortable about her--_as Magdalen
did_. He thought a great deal of her. It was nice to be with a person
who thought highly of one. It had been a relief to meet him. How well he
talked! What a wide-minded, generous man!
The gate into the gardens must have been hurrying towards them, it was
reached so soon. Wentworth, after a momentary surprise at beholding it,
stopped the cob, and helped Fay with extreme care to the ground. One of
Fay's attractions was her appearance of great fragility. Men felt
instinctively that with the least careless usage she might break in two.
She must be protected, cheered, have everything made smooth for her. She
was in reality much stronger than many of her taller, more
robust-looking sisters, who, whether wives or spinsters, if they
required assistance, had to look for it in quinine. An uneasy jealousy
of Fay led Lady Blore frequently to point out that Fay was always well
enough to do what she wanted. Aunt Mary's own Roman nose and stalwart
figure warded off from her the sympathy to which her severe cramps
undoubtedly entitled her.
"When shall I see you again?" said Wentworth, suddenly realising that
the good hour was over.
Fay did not answer. She was confused. A very delicate colour flew to her
cheek.
Wentworth, reddening under his tan, said: "Perhaps Pilgrim Road is a
favourite walk of yours?"
"Yes. I often go there in the afternoon."
"I have to pass that way, too, most days," he said. "It is a short cut
to Lostford."
He had forgotten that an hour before he had announced that he seldom
used that particular path. It did not matter, for Fay had not noticed
the contradiction any more than he did. Fay was easy to get on with
because she never compared what anyone said one day with what they said
the next. She never would feel the doubts, the perplexities that keener
minds had had to fight against in dealing with him.
For the first time she looked at his receding figure with a sense of
regret and loss.
Magdalen was in the house waiting to give her her tea, dear Magdalen who
was so good, and so safe, such a comforter--_but who knew_. Fay shrank
back instinctively as she neared the house, and then crept upstairs to
her own room, and had tea there.
* * * * *
[Illustration: "FAY NOTICED FOR THE FIRST TIME HOW LIGHTLY WENTWORTH
WALKED, HOW SQUARE HIS SHOULDERS WERE"]
Wentworth rode home feeling younger that he had done for years. What is
thirty-nine? No age for a thin man. (He was in reality nearly
forty-one.) He was pleased with himself. How quaintly amusing he had
been about the mouse. He regretted, not for the first time, that he
did not write novels, for little incidents like that, which the
conventional mind of the ordinary novelist was incapable of perceiving,
would intertwine charmingly with a love scene. The small service he had
rendered Fay linked itself to a wish to do something more for her--he
did not know exactly what--but something larger than to-day. Any fool,
any bucolic squireen, could have given her a lift home on a cob. He
would like to do something which another person could _not_ do,
something which would cheer her, console her, and at the same time place
him in a magnanimous light.
We all long for an opportunity to act with generosity and tenderness to
the one we love. We need not trouble ourselves to seek for such an
occasion, for though many things fail us in this life the opportunity so
to act has never yet failed to arrive, and has never arrived alone,
always hand in hand with some prosaic hideously difficult circumstance,
which, if we are of an artistic temperament, may appear to us too ugly.
Wentworth had never wished to do anything for the gay little lady who, a
few years ago, had crossed his path. The principal subject of his
cogitations about her had been whether she would be able to adapt
herself to him and his habits, to understand his many-sided wayward
nature, and to add permanently to his happiness; or whether, on the
contrary, she might not prove a bar to his love of solitude, a drag on
his soaring spirit. So I think we may safely conclude that his feelings
for her had not gone to breakneck length. But the germ in his mind of
compassionate protection and instinctive desire to help Fay had in it
the possibility of growth, of some expansion. And what other feeling in
Wentworth's clean, well-regulated, sterilized mind had shown any power
of growth?
The worst of growth is that a small acorn does not grow into a large
acorn as logical persons expect. It ought to, but it does not. It grows
instead into something quite unrecognisable from its small beginnings,
something for which, perhaps, beyond a certain stage, there is no
room,--not even a manger.
Those who love must discard much. Wentworth had not yet felt the need of
discarding anything, and he had not the smallest intention of doing so.
He intended instead to make a small ornamental addition, a sort of
portico, to his life. His mind had got itself made up this afternoon,
and he contemplated the proposed addition with some complacency as
already made.
There is, I believe, a method of planting an acorn in a bottle,
productive of the happiest results--for those who love small results.
You only give the acorn a little water every day,--no soil of course.
The poor thing will push up a thin twig of stem through the bottle neck,
and in time will unfold a few real oak leaves. Men like Wentworth would
always prefer the acorn to remain an acorn, but if it shews signs of
growth, some of them are wise enough, take alarm early enough, to
squeeze it quickly down a bottle neck before it has expanded too much to
resist the passage.
Had Fate in store for Wentworth a kinder, sterner destiny than that, or
would she allow him to stultify himself, to mutilate to his own
convenience a great possibility?