situation at the Castle, and on the whole approved of it. As for Harry
himself they one and all adored him. They were the only friends he had
had outside his home from his childhood, and they were real friends.
There was not one of them, man, woman or child, who had not some special
feeling for him different from that of the rest. He knew them all, and
was interested in them all, with a purely human sympathy. When the time
came for him to take the reins, he would be dealing not with an
impersonal aggregate, but with those whose interests were also his; and
he would be regarded with a loyalty and affection which is enjoyed by
few landowners.
Wilbraham kept himself more to himself, as was said of him, but had his
friends too at Royd. It was he who brought Harry's heart to his mouth
this afternoon by the announcement, made in a casual voice: "There is an
artist come to stay at Mrs. Ivimey's. He rejoices in the name of
Michael Angelo Bastian, which ought to mean that he is a very fine
artist; but I've never heard of him. Have you?"
"No," said Lady Brent, who had been addressed. "But I did not know that
Mrs. Ivimey let rooms. I think she should have asked me first. Nobody
at Royd has done it hitherto."
"I wonder how she could get any one to take rooms in such an
out-of-the-way place as hers," said Mrs. Brent.
"I can tell you that," said Wilbraham. "I had it all from Prout."
Prout combined the occupations of shoemaker and postman at Royd. "Mrs.
Ivimey has a sister who lives in London and lets lodgings. Michael
Angelo Bastian lodges with her. The rest is plain to the meanest
intelligence."
Harry was faced with the immediate alternative of acknowledging that he
was aware of the fact stated or of affecting ignorance of it. If he
kept silence now it would be deliberate and purposeful silence, and he
might later on be called upon to explain it. He had not faced this; he
had not faced anything in connection with Viola that had to do with the
future.
Perhaps he would have spoken, if his mind had not been so full of his
late disappointment, and of his reviving hopes of still meeting Viola
that evening. He could not bring himself immediately to the point of
making a decision, and when Lady Brent had next spoken, and Wilbraham
had answered her, the time had gone by for him to speak. His not having
done so directly Bastian's name had been mentioned would need
explanation now. With a mental shrug of the shoulders he kept silence,
and felt a warm delicious glow as he took the further step towards a
fenced and guarded intimacy with Viola which no one outside must
penetrate. The pleasure of hugging his secret afresh swamped the
half-guilty feeling which had preceded it in his mind. He did not even
ask himself why it should have come to him, but his attitude towards his
elders underwent a slight change from that moment. His youth was to be
defended from them; it had its rights, which could brook no
interference.
As he hurried off again to the trysting-place, he was glad once more
that he had refrained from betraying his secret, as he had been glad
that he had resisted the impulse to confide in his mother the night
before. He knew now that they would have disapproved. Some breath from
the outside world, which divides people up into categories in a way he
had never had to take into account, had come to him from the discussion
he had just listened to. His grandmother had shown persistent concern
at Mrs. Ivimey's having let her rooms without consultation with her.
Such a thing had never happened before in Royd. You didn't know what
sort of people you might get, if it became a practice. An artist--there
was no great harm perhaps in an artist; but-- The postman had evidently
not known, or if he had he had not told Wilbraham, that this particular
artist had invaded the sanctities of Royd accompanied by a daughter, but
Harry had felt instinctively that her presence would have increased the
objections expressed by Lady Brent to Mrs. Ivimey's taking in anybody at
all. It had come to him somehow that Viola's delicious charm would have
done nothing to recommend her, had she been known, and that his mother
would by no means have taken the confidence that it had been in his mind
to make to her the night before in the spirit in which it would have
been offered.
The reasons for all this were not clear to him. He had of course no
idea that he was to be preserved at all costs from falling into
unauthorized love; he had no more than a purely academic knowledge of
what falling in love meant, and no idea as yet that he was already very
deep in it himself. There were many things in which his inclinations
had clashed with the rules formulated by his elders--as, for instance,
in the matter of visits to the stables, during his early childhood.
This was one of them, but he was not to be bound now by the views of his
elders, and it was not necessary to examine their origin. There was a
vague discomfort in the idea that he was setting himself against them,
but no admission in his mind that he was in any way wrong in doing so.
And even the slight discomfort was more than balanced by the feeling
that his secret must certainly now be guarded, which had the effect of
somehow bringing him and Viola more closely together.
It had been decided chat Wilbraham was to seek out the artist, and if he
found him to be the sort of person who could be asked to Royd, he was to
ask him there. Harry smiled to himself, as he thought of the
possibilities ahead. He must tell Viola, and he and she must decide
what was to be done about it. It gave him a thrill to think of their
deciding anything together. He quickened his steps. There were such
oceans to talk to her about. He had no doubts now about her coming to
meet him; he had almost persuaded himself that she would be there
waiting for him.
But the green frame was still empty of its picture, as he had left it an
hour before. The evening light was slanting on it now, giving warning
that the time they would have to spend together was diminishing. But
there were nearly two hours of daylight still. Surely she would come
before the dusk fell!
He stretched himself under a tree, from where he could watch the place
where she would appear. His mood was not yet impatient. She would
surely come, and in the meantime he could think about her.
He did not think of her as a lover thinks of the mistress enthroned in
his heart, to worship her there. He had not consciously enthroned her as
yet. He thought of her as a wonderful revelation of something he must
surely have been looking for all his life, since it was impossible now
to think of life without her. She had come into his life, in some way
to translate its meaning for him--for both of them. She was a
revelation from the good influences all around him, as the vision of the
fairies had been. He had got as far as that, and had told her so. It
had been very sweet to tell her that; it would be sweet to tell her
everything that came into his head. There was nothing that he would not
want to tell her, at once and first of all. In his innocence of the
world and the way of the world, he had reached that point in love's
pilgrimage where the loved one shines out as the sweet vessel into which
all confidences may be poured, and the desire is strong for a common aim
and a common vision. But he had not reached the point, which usually
precedes it, of an ardent desire for some sort of surrender. Perhaps it
is not true to say that he had not yet enthroned Viola in his heart, for
she sat there the centre of everything. But she sat there apart, as if
she had mounted the steps of the throne without his hand to raise her.
She must descend again and stand with him on the level ground of mutual
desire before her seat should be secure and acknowledged.
But as he waited for her, and the desire for her sheer presence became
stronger and stronger, he was being led towards that desire for
surrender. The sweetest thing now would be, not to pour himself out in
confidences to her, which would still be very sweet, but to obtain from
her that look or that word which would move him to the depths.
He went over in his mind the looks and words he had received from her,
and thirsted for more. The very first time their eyes had met, before a
word had been spoken between them, she had looked at him, with something
behind the look with which his memory blissfully played. Once or twice
that morning, by the pool, and again when she had turned towards him and
stood gazing, far off, there had been something that thrilled him with
happiness to remember. And there had been tones in her voice, little
things she had said--he dwelt upon them all, and longed to draw more of
them from her. He would say this to her; greatly daring, he would say
that. And she would reply; or if she spoke no answer he would watch her
face, and gain courage from it for speeches still more daring.
But an hour passed, and she had not come to him.
The sun was sinking now. Outside the wood, under the open sky, its rays
would be drawing the shadow of the rocks and the gorse across the close
turf; there would be a soft golden radiance in all the air, and on the
bright distant pavement of the sea. But here under the trees it was
already dusk, and a gloom descended on his heart, as he thought of the
sunset, from the sight of which he was shut off.
It was like a parable to him. He had never before missed the glory of a
sunset, if he was out of doors. The woods had never kept him from that
enlarging sight. They were for other times; not less loved then, but now
seeming to hold him enchained in a menacing gloom. And so, just out of
his reach was the solace for which he craved, but in place of it
darkness was settling down over his heart, and trouble clutching at it.
But he would not go out of the wood. She might come still. The thought
brought him no relief; his long watch had emptied his mind of the
springs of hope. But still he waited for her. If she did come, she
must find him there.
The darkness had settled down now. There was a fading light in the sky
that could be seen here and there through the thick canopy of leaves,
but beneath them only eyes that had grown used to the darkness could
have descried anything.
The boy lay stretched at length on the grass, his face to the ground,
utterly weary and utterly miserable. He had no strength to tear himself
from this unhappy spot and go home; he only wanted to lie there in his
pain, which still had a little of sweetness in it as long as he lingered
in the place where he had last seen her.
He never moved. His body was as still as on that night in which he had
kept his eager vigil, and at last been rewarded. But it was the
stillness of exhaustion. No hope was left to him now.
But his ears, trained since his childhood to catch the lightest whispers
of nature, and to interpret them, alert in spite of himself, heard
something that was not of the life sinking to rest around him. He
raised himself suddenly, almost violently, and peered into the darkness,
all his senses once more on edge.
And out of the darkness she came, no more than a moth-glimmer flitting
towards him. A wild joy filled him, down to the very depths of his
being. He sprang up and ran towards her.
She gave a little cry that was half a sob, and flew to his embrace. His
arms were around her, and his lips on hers. In all the long hours
through which he had yearned for her, and played with the thought of her
sweetness, no such blissful end to his waiting had entered his mind as
this.
*CHAPTER XIII*
*THE TEMPLE*
Her face was wet with her tears, but he could just see her smile
glimmering through the darkness. His eyes were as hungry as his lips.
That sweet flower-like face, with the tender eyes and the mouth
a-quiver--would he ever be able to gaze his fill of it?
She made no effort to draw herself from him, but nestled to him, and
poured out a broken sobbing explanation of her absence to which he
hardly listened. What did it matter how she had been prevented from
coming to him, since she had longed for him as he had longed for her,
and was with him now?
He kissed away her tears; she had not returned his kisses since her
first unconsidered impelled surrender, but was still sweetly receptive
of them. "Oh, I ought not to," she said, smiling at him. "But I do
love you, and I have wanted you so."
Yes, this was love, of which he had never consciously, thought. She had
spoken the word first, but he knew before she had spoken it that all his
joy and all his pain had sprung from that source, and exulted in his new
knowledge.
"I love you too--Viola," he said, lingering caressingly on her name.
"Oh, how I love you!"
He drew a long breath, and they gazed silently into one another's eyes,
to find in them what no speech could utter. The melting sweetness of
her gaze filled him with trembling rapture. The secret of life and all
its beauty which he thought he had divined, now seemed to have depths
beneath depths of meaning, beyond mental capacity to grasp, in their
almost intolerable rapture. With a sigh they released each other, and
speech flowed to their relief, broken and melodious, bearing them again
to the surface of their bliss.
They withdrew a little from the path where they had met, and told over
the tale of their love. By and by they moved along it again, in a
common impulse to escape from the thick darkness of the wood, and gain
the freedom of the starry night.
They passed the cottage where Viola dwelt and never gave it a thought.
At a later time they confessed to one another that they had no
recollection of passing it at all. They were so wrapped up in one
another that nothing and nobody else in the wide world mattered to them
at that moment. But when they had emerged from the wood they turned
aside, instinctively perhaps, to escape prying eyes, and passed slowly
along the path which they had taken the afternoon before.
After the darkness of the wood, the sky, moonless, but lit by the
innumerable lanterns of the stars, had the effect of brightness. Their
young faces could be plainly seen in this soft radiance, and they stood
to worship one another afresh.
"You're so beautiful, Viola! How beautiful you are! I must have been
blind not to see it before."
"I saw that you were from the very first."
Here were two statements of surpassing interest. They had to be enlarged
upon and explained, with new and immeasurable content gained from the
disclosures that were made. Nothing had ever happened like it before.
They were pioneers in the uncharted country of love, and the springs at
which they refreshed themselves, and the flowers brushed by their feet
as they wandered through it, had been waiting for them unseen and
unguessed at since the world began. The wonder of it increased.
They sat down on a low rock, jutting through the fern, and gave
themselves up to the miracle of their discoveries. Harry held her hands
in his, and his eyes were never off her face, except when he looked out
into space as if trying to fathom something that passed his
comprehension. Sometimes they drew together by an irresistible mutual
impulse, but every kiss he gave her was a consecration. She was too
beautiful and too sacred a thing not to be treated with high reverence.
Instinctively he held himself back, though without cessation he thirsted
for her sweetness, and her lips assuaged his thirst only so long as his
were upon them.
For more than an hour they sat there, and the time seemed as nothing.
Then she sprang up suddenly and said she must go in. She had only meant
just to run out and tell him why she had not been able to come in the
afternoon. As she said it, a voice was heard calling: "Viola! Viola!"
out of the darkness. She raised herself hurriedly to kiss him, of her
own accord, and tearing her hands from his ran off without a word.
Harry stood for a long time where she had left him, while the unhurrying
stars marched on to their celestial music and looked down upon him, a
creature of the moment, who had yet found his way into the courts of
eternity. He looked up at them, and in the rapture of the revelation
that had come to him worshipped anew in the temple whose gates he had
besieged all his life. It was for this that he had been born; it was
for this that the heavens were lit, and the earth put forth its beauty.
At last he had been admitted into the innermost sanctuary of the temple,
and the secret of life was his.
He moved slowly towards the cottage which enshrined his love, unable to
leave its hallowed precincts.
There were lights in the lower windows, and presently in that upper one
which he knew to be Viola's. Perhaps she knew that he would linger out
there under the stars, for she came to the window and stood there for a
long time, and before she left it she kissed the tips of her fingers and
threw her message out into the darkness.
Presently her light went out. Harry laid himself down on the warm turf.
He would sleep there that night, as he had sometimes slept out in the
open on warm summer nights before, but not with that sense of bliss
enfolding him. He would keep guard over her, and perhaps, when the
stars had paced onwards in their western march, and the moon had arisen,
she would come to the window again, as she had come the night before.
He had told her that he had seen her there. He thought she would come.
And surely her presence would make itself felt through his dreams, and
he would awake to see her! It was not possible that he should sleep
while she was awake near him.
He pillowed his head on the fern and slept, and for a long time there
was silence, on the moor and in the cottage, while the stars watched
over them and waited for their waking.
It happened just as Harry had thought when he laid himself down to
sleep. He awoke to find the moor flooded by the bright radiance of the
moon, which shone also upon the front of the cottage and the window of
Viola's room. And she was there, with her dusky hair about her face and
on her shoulders, and with some dark wrap round her, so that her face
alone, and her hands, were softly illumined.
He arose and went towards her. She saw him coming, for she gave a
little start, and then sat motionless again until he stood just beyond
the garden fence, where he could see her face, though his was in shadow.
He stood there; neither of them spoke and neither of them moved, but
drank their fill of one another's presence. They made no motion of
farewell when at last Harry moved away and his form was lost in the
shadows of the wood.
He could go home now and sleep, with his great happiness to bear him
company. On the morrow he would see her again, and new happiness would
be his lot.
*CHAPTER XIV*
*BASTIAN*
Wilbraham picked his way along the woodland path, humming a tune. His
only preoccupation for the moment was to preserve his shoes from getting
wet, for much rain had fallen, and there were spongy patches to be
avoided.
Wilbraham disliked exercise of almost every sort. His bad times, in the
winter, were when he felt impelled to go for a walk, which was for at
least an hour every afternoon unless the weather absolutely forbade. In
the summer he did not mind it so much, except when the heat tried him;
but he would always have preferred to spend his leisure with a book in
the library, or in the garden.
He had long ceased to accompany Harry in any out of door expedition.
They saw quite enough of one another indoors, and their respective
preferences in the matter of pace were so in opposition that it was a
pleasure to neither of them to take the air together. Mrs. Brent
sometimes accompanied him in his constitutionals, but he seldom invited
her to do so. They also saw enough of one another indoors, or at least
he saw enough of her. He liked her, but she did not interest him in
conversation, while she did expect him to interest her. He was quite
capable of doing so, but the effort spoilt the mild refreshment that
came from leaving his brain to wander where it would while his body was
being gently exercised. He found abundant interest in the thoughts of
his well-stored mind, and sometimes stayed out for longer than he had
intended because he had fallen into such an absorbing train of
speculation.
Yet this man, who lived his monotonous life with books as his chief
recreation and his intercourse with his fellows narrowed to the few with
whom he lived, was very fond of company. His walk this afternoon,
longer than he usually imposed upon himself in the heat of summer, was
cheered by having an object other than that of keeping his liver from
troubling him. He was going to make a new acquaintance. This artist,
with the rather absurd name, who was lodging with Mrs. Ivimey, might
possibly be a man of intelligence, with views upon the art he practised;
or he might be a mere commercial dauber. If he proved to be a man of
intelligence, it would be agreeable to exchange views with him, for
after books Wilbraham liked pictures, better even than he liked music.
Or rather, his taste for music had become a little atrophied, since he
was cut off from enjoyment of it, while art could always be read about,
and there were always pictures or reproductions of pictures to be seen.
He reached the cottage on the outskirts of the wood, and looked about
him with pleasure before he entered it. The great open space upon which
it faced was a refreshment after the wooded environment of the Castle,
and the few buildings that enlivened this point relieved it of the
impression of loneliness which was unpleasing to a man of Wilbraham's
fibre. It was half a mile further by the path he had taken than by the
one he usually took if his humour led him towards the common, but he
thought as he stood there with his hat off, so that the breeze could
cool his brow, that he would come there more often, even if Mr. Bastian
should not turn out to be the sort of person that he might want to come
for.
A well-satisfied gentleman he looked as he stood there leaning on his
stick, his brow rather bald, his presence on the verge of portliness,
though he was not otherwise of the habit of body that runs to flesh.
The look of discontent that Grant had remarked about him on a first
acquaintance was absent now. In his suit of dark grey flannel, with his
black-ribboned straw hat, he had something of a clerical air, and as he
turned towards the cottage his unusually sharp ears heard the sound of
hurried movement through the open window of a downstairs room, and a
voice uttering the words: "The parson come to call! Good Lord, I'm
lost; I can't get out."
He stood chuckling to himself as he waited for an answer to his knock.
The door stood open. The artist could not have escaped him if his fears
had been justified. This pleased his humour, especially as he
anticipated the pleasure of bringing relief to him.
Mrs. Ivimey did not respond to his summons, and as he was preparing to
knock again, a door on the left of the little passage opened and the
artist came out to him.
"I'm afraid Mrs. Ivimey is out at the back somewhere," he said. "Shall
I go and call her for you?"
"Thanks, it's you I've come to see, if you're Mr. Bastian," said Mr.
Wilbraham. "I'm tutor to young Sir Harry Brent at the Castle. We heard
you were here, and as we don't get many visitors at Royd I came to look
you up."
Bastian's face changed. "That's very kind of you," he said. "Do come
in."
He led the way into the little sitting-room, and Wilbraham followed him
with the feeling that his visit had justified itself.
Bastian was a tall thin man with a shock of untidy grey hair, but a
curiously young face. His eyes were very light blue. He had a
half-whimsical, half-appealing look, as if he was in a constant state of
amusement at himself and was begging not to be taken too seriously. The
upper part of his face was firmly and delicately modelled, but his mouth
was indeterminate and his chin weak. He was atrociously dressed, in an
old discoloured suit of light grey flannel, and a pair of stained canvas
shoes, and he wore no collar; but he did not apologize for his
appearance. Wilbraham judged him to be about forty-five, but discovered
later that he was three or four years younger.
Mrs. Ivimey's parlour was furnished with the customary mixture of old
good things and bad new ones. A few canvases stood with their faces
against the wall, and a half-finished picture of a flaming sunset over
the moor and the sea was propped on the mantelpiece. Wilbraham threw a
glance at it as he entered, but could not make up his mind whether it
was going to be a good picture or an exceptionally bad one. There were
some books on the round table in the middle of the room, as well as some
of the untidy paraphernalia of an artist. On a smaller table in the
window was a bottle of whisky, a glass and a jug of water, and by the
side of the table was a shabby but comfortable looking easy chair, upon
which was a book face downwards. The room was full of the odour of
strong tobacco.
"I'm afraid it's rather like a bar-parlour," said Bastian. "I have a
horrible habit of smoking shag, which some people object to strongly.
Will you have some whisky?"