It was a time of wonderful discoveries for Howard, that month spent in
the little house under the cliff and beside the cove. It was a tiny
hamlet with half a dozen fishermen's cottages and two or three larger
houses, holiday-dwellings for rich people; but there was no one living
there, except a family of children with a governess. The house they
were in belonged to an artist, and had a big studio in which they
mostly sate. An elderly woman and her niece were the servants, and the
life was the simplest that could be imagined. Howard felt as if he
would have liked it prolonged for ever. They brought a few books with
them, but did little else except ramble through the long afternoons in
the silent bays. It was warm, bright September weather, still and hazy;
and the sight of the dim golden-brown promontories, with pale-green
grass at the top, stretching out one beyond another into the distance,
became for Howard a symbol of all that was most wonderful and perfect
in life.
He could not cease to marvel at the fact that this beautiful young
creature, full of tenderness and anxious care for others, and with love
the one pre-occupation of her life, should yield herself thus to him
with such an entire and happy abandonment. Maud seemed for the time to
have no will of her own, no thought except to please him; he could not
get her to express a single preference, and her guileless diplomacy to
discover what he preferred amused and delighted him. At the same time
the exploration of Maud's mind and thought was an entire surprise to
him--there was so much she did not know, so many things in the world,
which he took for granted, of which she had never heard; and yet in
many ways he discovered that she knew and perceived far more than he
did. Her judgment of people was penetrating and incisive, and was
formed quite instinctively, without any apparent reason; she had, too,
a charming gift of humour, and her affection for her own circle did not
in the least prevent her from perceiving their absurdities. She was not
all loyalty and devotion, nor did she pretend to be interested in
things for which she did not care. There were many conventions, which
Howard for the first time discovered that he himself unconsciously
held, which Maud did not think in the least important. Howard began to
see that he himself had really been a somewhat conventional person,
with a respect for success and position and dignity and influence. He
saw that his own chief motive had been never to do anything
disagreeable or unreasonable or original or decisive; he began to see
that his unconscious aim had been to fit himself without self-assertion
into his circle, and to make himself unobtrusively necessary to people.
Maud had no touch of this in her nature at all; her only ambition
seemed to be to be loved, which was accompanied by what seemed to
Howard a marvellous incapacity for being shocked by anything; she was
wholly innocent and ingenuous, but yet he found to his surprise that
she knew something of the dark corners of life, and the moral problems
of village life were a matter of course to her. He had naturally
supposed that a girl would have been fenced round by illusions; but it
was not so. She had seen and observed and drawn her conclusions. She
thought very little of what one commonly called sins, and her
indignation seemed aroused by nothing but cruelty and treachery. It
became clear to Howard that Mr. Sandys and Mrs. Graves had been very
wise in the matter, and that Maud had not been brought up in any silly
ignorance of human frailty. Her religion was equally a surprise to him.
He had thought that a girl brought up as Maud had been would be sure to
hold a tissue of accepted beliefs which he must be careful not to
disturb. But here again she seemed to have little but a few fine
principles, set in a simple Christian framework. They were talking
about this one day, and Maud laughed at something he said.
"You need not be so cautious," she said, "though I like you to be
cautious--you are afraid of hurting me; but you won't do that! Cousin
Anne taught me long ago that it was no use believing anything unless
you understood more or less where it was leading you. It's no good
pretending to know. Cousin Anne once said to me that one had to choose
between science and superstition. I don't know anything about science,
but I'm not superstitious."
"Yes," said Howard, "I see--I won't be fussy any more; I will just
speak as I think. You are wiser than the aged, child! You will have to
help me out. I am a mass of crusted prejudices, I find; but you are
melting them all away. What beats me is how you found it all out."
Thus the hours they spent together became to Howard not only a source
of joy, but an extraordinary simplification of everything. Maud seemed
to have lived an absolutely uncalculating life, without any idea of
making any position for herself at all; and it sickened Howard to think
how so much of his own existence had been devoted to getting on the
right side of people, driving them on a light rein, keeping them deftly
in his own control. Maud laughed at this description of himself, and
said, "Yes, but of course that was your business. I should have been a
very tiresome kind of Don; we don't either of us want to punish people,
but I want to alter them. I can't bear stupid people, I think. I had
rather people were clever and unsatisfactory than dull and good. If
they are dull there's no reason for their being good. I like people to
have reasons!"
They talked--how often they did that!--about the complications that had
beset them.
"The one thing I can't make out," said Maud, "is how or why you ever
thought I cared for that little boy. He was such a nice boy; but he had
no reasons. Oh, dear, how wretched he made me!"
"Well," said Howard, "I must ask you this--what did really happen on
that awful afternoon at the Folly?"
Maud covered her face with her hands. "It was too dreadful!" she said.
"First of all, you were looking like Hamlet--you don't know how
romantic you looked! I did really believe that you cared for me then--I
couldn't help it--but there was some veil between us; and the number of
times I telegraphed from my brain to you that day, 'Can't you
understand?' was beyond counting. I suppose it was very unmaidenly, but
I was past that. Then there was that horrible imitation; such a
disgusting parody! and then I was prouder of you than ever, because you
really took it so well. I was too angry after that for anything, and
when you went off with father, and Monica sketched and Jack lay down
and smoked, Freddy Guthrie walked off with me, and I said to him, 'I
really cannot think how you dared to do that--I think it was simply
shameful!' Well, he got quite white, and he did not attempt to excuse
himself; and I believe I said that if he did not put it straight with
you, I would never speak to him again: and then I rather repented; and
then he began making love to me, and said the sort of things people say
in books. Howard, I believe that people really do talk like books when
they get excited--at all events it was like a bad novel! But I was very
stern--I can be very stern when I am angry--and said I would not hear
another word, and would go straight back if he said any more; and then
he said something about wanting to be friends, and wanting to have some
hope; and then I got suddenly sorry about it all--it seemed such a
waste of time--and shook hands with him, feeling as if I was acting in
an absurd play, and said that of course we were friends; and I think I
insisted again on his apologising to you, and he said that I seemed to
care more for your peace of mind than his; and I simply walked away and
he followed, and I shouldn't be surprised if he was crying; it was all
like a nightmare; but I did somehow contrive to make it up with him
later, and told him that I thought him a very nice boy indeed."
"I daresay that was a great comfort to him," said Howard.
"I meant it to be," said Maud, "but I did not feel I could go on acting
in a sort of melodrama."
"Now, I am very inquisitive," said Howard, "and you needn't answer me
if you don't like--but that day that I met you going away from Aunt
Anne--oh, what a pig I was! I was at the top of my highminded
game--what had happened then?"
"Of course I will tell you," said Maud, "if you want to know. Well, I
rather broke down, and said that things had gone wrong; that you had
begun by being so nice to me, and we seemed to have made friends; and
that then a cloud had come between us: and then Cousin Anne said it
would be all right, she KNEW; and she said some things about you I
won't repeat, to save your modesty; and then she said, 'Don't be
AFRAID, Maud! don't be ashamed of caring for people! Howard is used to
making friends with boys, and he is puzzled by you; he wants a friend
like you, but he is afraid of caring for people. You are not afraid of
him nor he of you, but he is afraid of his own fear.' She did not seem
to know how I cared, but she put it all right somehow; she prayed with
me, for courage and patience; and I felt I could afford to wait and see
what happened."
"And then?" said Howard.
"Why, you know the rest!" said Maud. "I saw as we sate by the wall, in
a flash, that you did indeed care for me, and I thought to myself,
'Here is the best thing in the world, and we can't be going to miss it
out of politeness;' and then it was all over in a moment!"
"Politeness!" said Howard, "yes, it was all politeness; that's my
greatest sin. Yes," he added, "I do thank God with all my heart for
your sweet courage that day!" He drew Maud's hand into his own, as they
sate together on the grass just above the shingle of the little bay,
where the sea broke on the sands with crisp wavelets, and ran like a
fine sheet of glass over the beach. "Look at this little hand," he
said, "and let me try to believe that it is given me of its own will
and desire!"
"Yes," said Maud, smiling, "and you may cut it off at the wrist if you
like--I won't even wince. I have no further use for it, I believe!"
Howard folded it to his heart, and felt the little pulse beat in the
slender wrist; and presently the sun went down, a ball of fire into the
opalescent sea-line.