It was Saturday, and they were at River Mead--one of those ideal places
that seem to have been raised along the upper Thames by an enchanter's
wand rather than by the vulgar arts of architect and builder, so
exquisitely do they harmonise with the landscape that enshrines them.
No hideous chimney, no mammoth reservoir, no thriving metropolitan High
Street, defiled the neighbourhood of River Mead. All around was rustic
peace. Green meadows and blue waters, amidst which there lay gardens
that had taken a century to make--grass walks between yew hedges, and
labyrinths of roses; and in the distance purple woods that melted into
a purple horizon. It was a place that people always thought of as
steeped in golden sunlight; but not even in the glory of a midsummer
afternoon was River Mead quite as lovely as on such a night as this,
when Claude and Vera strolled slowly along the river path, in the
silver light of a great round moon, hung in the blue deep of a sky
without a cloud.
The magic of night and moonshine was upon everything; the mystery
of light and shadow gave a charm to things that were commonplace by
day--to the white balustrade in front of the drawing-rooms, to the
flight of steps and the marble vases, above which the lighted windows
shone golden, the gaudy yellow light of indoor lamps shamed by the
white glory of the moon.
The windows were all open, and the voices of the card-players travelled
far in the clear air--they could even hear the light sound of their
cards, manipulated by a dexterous hand. Everybody was playing bridge,
everybody was absorbed in the game, winning or losing, happy or
unhappy, but absorbed--except these two. Everybody except these two,
who had been missing since ten o'clock; and the great stable clock had
sounded its twelve slow, sonorous strokes half an hour ago. They had
not been wanted. The tables were all full. Two or three of the players
had looked round the room once or twice, and, noting their absence, had
exchanged the quiet smile, the almost imperceptible elevation of arched
eyebrows, with which, in a highly civilised community, characters can
be killed. For Lady Okehampton--she who had more than once sounded the
note of warning, and who should have been on the alert to see danger
signals--from the moment the tables were opened and the players seated,
the world of men and women outside that charmed space--where cards
fluttered lightly upon smooth green cloth, four eager faces watching
them as they fell--had ceased to exist. She was not a stupid woman;
but she had a mind that moved slowly, and she could not think of two
serious things at once. For her bridge was a serious thing; and from
tea-time on Saturday till this Sunday midnight bridge had occupied all
her thoughts, to the exclusion of every other consideration. Smiles
might be exchanged and eyebrows raised when, on Sunday morning, Claude
Rutherford carried off her niece two miles up the river to a village
church, which by his account was a gem in early Gothic that was worth
more than the two miles' sculling a light skiff against the current;
but Lady Okehampton was too absorbed even to wonder whether there was
anything not quite correct in the excursion. Why should not people want
to see the old church at Allersley? It was one of the lions of the
neighbourhood, and counted among the attractions of River Mead.
Lady Okehampton's cards on Saturday night had seemed to be dealt to her
by a malignant fiend, an invisible devil guiding the smooth white hands
of human dealers. She had lain awake till the Sunday morning bells were
ringing for the early service to which good people were going, fresh
and light of foot, with minds at ease. She had tossed and turned in
her sumptuous bed in a feverish unrest, playing her miserable hands
over and over again, with the restless blood in her brain going round
and round like a mill wheel, or plunging backwards and forwards like
a piston rod. There had been no time to think of Vera and Claude. She
could think only of Sunday evening, and of her chance of revenge. It
was not that she minded her money losses, which were despicable when
reckoned against the price of Okehampton's autumn sport. Two thousand
pounds for a grouse moor and a salmon river--an outlay of which he
talked as lightly as if it were a new hat. The money was nothing. He
would give as much for an Irish setter as she lost in an evening. But
the vexation and humiliation of a long evening's bad luck were too much
for nerves that had been strained to snapping point by many seasons
of experimental treatment, all over Europe; and the mistress of River
Mead had left her visitors to amuse themselves at their own sweet will,
until dinner-time on Sunday evening, while their hostess slept in her
easy-chair by the open window of her morning-room, soothed by the
lullaby of the stream running down the weir, and sweet airs from a
garden of roses, such roses as only grow in a riverside garden.
The choice of amusements or occupations after luncheon on this Sunday
afternoon was somewhat limited. Two girls and their youthful admirers
played a four-handed game of croquet. A middle-aged spinster, who had
been suspected of tricky play on Saturday, trudged a mile and a quarter
to the little town where there was a church so old-fashioned as to
provide a substantial afternoon service for adult worshippers. Most
of the masculine guests wrote letters, or read Sunday papers in the
billiard-room, or slumbered in basket chairs on the river lawn. Vera
and Claude did nothing out of the common in strolling up the hill to
the wood, where they lost themselves during the lazy two hours between
the end of a leisurely luncheon and the appearance of tea-tables in
the shady drawing-room. Coming back a little tired after her idle
afternoon, Vera sat on a sofa in the darkest corner of the spacious
room, by the side of a comfortable matron, an old friend of her aunt's,
with whom she exchanged amiable truisms, and mild opinions upon books,
plays and sermons--a kind of talk that demanded neither thought nor
effort, while Claude sat among a distant group, bored to death, but
smiling and courteous.
After tea there was the garden till dressing time. Everybody was in
the garden, so it was only natural that these two should be sauntering
in lanes of roses, exchanging light talk with other saunterers, and
lingering a little at the crossing of the ways, where the slow drip of
a fountain made a coolness in the sultry evening, or stopping at an
opening in the flowery rampart, to look across the blue water towards
the grey old tower, and listen to the pensive music of church bells.
These two had been alone all day, without interference or espial from
chaperon Aunt, unconscious of observation, if they were observed, alone
in this little world of summer verdure and sunlit water; as much alone
as in a pathless wilderness. All that long summer day they had been
alone, talking, talking, talking, as only lovers talk; and now, at
midnight, they were still alone in the garden that was changed in the
moonlight, changed from the warm glow of colour to the silvery paleness
and mysterious shadow, in which the prolific clusters of the Félicité
pérpétuelle looked like the ghosts of roses.
If it were sin to love, the sin had been sinned; from the hour in which
he had drawn the confession of her love from the lips that he kissed
for the first time.
She had tried to hold him off--tried to keep those lips unprofaned by
the kiss of guilt. They were alone in the wood on the hill that fatal
Sunday afternoon, safe only for the moment, since the woodland path was
a favourite walk with visitors at River Mead. But he had drawn her from
the footpath into the shade of great beech trees, and they were alone.
He had kissed her, and she had submitted to the guilty kiss, and she
knew that she was lost.
Did she love him? She whispered yes. With all her heart and soul? Yes.
Could she be happy if he left her for ever? No, no, no. Could she give
up all the world for him, as he would for her? The lips that he had
kissed were too tremulous for speech. She hid her face upon his breast,
and was dumb.
"The die is cast," he said in a low, grave voice, "and now we have only
to think of our future."
"Our future?" Henceforth they were one; united by a bond as strong as
if they had been married before the high altar in Westminster Abbey,
with all the best people in London looking on and approving the bond.
Nothing else could matter now. They belonged to each other. He was to
command, and she was to obey. It was almost as if, in the moment of
her confession, her personal entity had ceased. In all those hours
of delicious intimacy, in fond imaginings of their future life, the
thought of her husband had never come between her and her lover--and
to-night, when she thought of Mario Provana, it was only to tell
herself that he had long ceased to care for her, and that it would not
hurt him if she were to vanish out of his life.
Provana had been gone more than fourteen days, and his cabled messages
told her of delays and difficulties. The financial crisis was more
serious than he had anticipated, and he would have to see it out. He
had sent her several messages, but only one letter--a kind letter,
such as an uncle might have written to a niece; but it seemed to her
there was no love in it, not even such love as he had lavished on his
daughter. There was nothing left of the love that had wrapped her
round like summer sunlight, the strong man's love that had made her so
proud of having been chosen by him, so tranquil in the assurance of a
happiness that nothing could change.
The change had come before they had lived a year in that great, gloomy
London house, when she had been less than two years a wife.
It was after parting with Claude in the garden, and creeping quietly
up to her room in the second hour of the new day, while doors were
beginning to open and voices to sound as the card-players bade
good-night; it was in the stillness of the pretty guest-chamber that
Vera began to think of Mario Provana, and the impassioned love that had
ended in a frozen aloofness.
He had said, "Let there be no pretending." Could he have told her more
absolutely that his love was dead, and that no charm of sweetness in
her could make it live again? She had made her poor little attempt to
win him back; and it had failed. What more was left but to be happy in
her own way?