The wet day arrived with all the promptness that might have been
expected of it in this land of rains and mists. The alder bushes behind
the gymnasium dripped monotonously leaf upon leaf, added to this being
the purl of the shallow stream a little way off, producing a sense of
satiety in watery sounds. Though there was drizzle in the open meads,
the rain here in the thicket was comparatively slight, and two men with
fishing tackle who stood beneath one of the larger bushes found its
boughs a sufficient shelter.
‘We may as well walk home again as study nature here, Willy,’ said
the taller and elder of the twain. ‘I feared it would continue when we
started. The magnificent sport you speak of must rest for to-day.’
The other looked at his watch, but made no particular reply.
‘Come, let us move on. I don’t like intruding into other people’s
grounds like this,’ De Stancy continued.
‘We are not intruding. Anybody walks outside this fence.’ He indicated
an iron railing newly tarred, dividing the wilder underwood amid which
they stood from the inner and well-kept parts of the shrubbery, and
against which the back of the gymnasium was built.
Light footsteps upon a gravel walk could be heard on the other side of
the fence, and a trio of cloaked and umbrella-screened figures were
for a moment discernible. They vanished behind the gymnasium; and again
nothing resounded but the river murmurs and the clock-like drippings of
the leafage.
‘Hush!’ said Dare.
‘No pranks, my boy,’ said De Stancy suspiciously. ‘You should be above
them.’
‘And you should trust to my good sense, captain,’ Dare remonstrated. ‘I
have not indulged in a prank since the sixth year of my pilgrimage. I
have found them too damaging to my interests. Well, it is not too dry
here, and damp injures your health, you say. Have a pull for safety’s
sake.’ He presented a flask to De Stancy.
The artillery officer looked down at his nether garments.
‘I don’t break my rule without good reason,’ he observed.
‘I am afraid that reason exists at present.’
‘I am afraid it does. What have you got?’
‘Only a little wine.’
‘What wine?’
‘Do try it. I call it “the blushful Hippocrene,” that the poet describes
as
“Tasting of Flora and the country green;
Dance, and Provencal song, and sun-burnt mirth.”’
De Stancy took the flask, and drank a little.
‘It warms, does it not?’ said Dare.
‘Too much,’ said De Stancy with misgiving. ‘I have been taken unawares.
Why, it is three parts brandy, to my taste, you scamp!’
Dare put away the wine. ‘Now you are to see something,’ he said.
‘Something--what is it?’ Captain De Stancy regarded him with a puzzled
look.
‘It is quite a curiosity, and really worth seeing. Now just look in
here.’
The speaker advanced to the back of the building, and withdrew the wood
billet from the wall.
‘Will, I believe you are up to some trick,’ said De Stancy,
not, however, suspecting the actual truth in these unsuggestive
circumstances, and with a comfortable resignation, produced by the
potent liquor, which would have been comical to an outsider, but which,
to one who had known the history and relationship of the two speakers,
would have worn a sadder significance. ‘I am too big a fool about you to
keep you down as I ought; that’s the fault of me, worse luck.’
He pressed the youth’s hand with a smile, went forward, and looked
through the hole into the interior of the gymnasium. Dare withdrew
to some little distance, and watched Captain De Stancy’s face, which
presently began to assume an expression of interest.
What was the captain seeing? A sort of optical poem.
Paula, in a pink flannel costume, was bending, wheeling and undulating
in the air like a gold-fish in its globe, sometimes ascending by her
arms nearly to the lantern, then lowering herself till she swung level
with the floor. Her aunt Mrs. Goodman, and Charlotte De Stancy, were
sitting on camp-stools at one end, watching her gyrations, Paula
occasionally addressing them with such an expression as--‘Now, Aunt,
look at me--and you, Charlotte--is not that shocking to your weak
nerves,’ when some adroit feat would be repeated, which, however, seemed
to give much more pleasure to Paula herself in performing it than to
Mrs. Goodman in looking on, the latter sometimes saying, ‘O, it is
terrific--do not run such a risk again!’
It would have demanded the poetic passion of some joyous Elizabethan
lyrist like Lodge, Nash, or Constable, to fitly phrase Paula’s
presentation of herself at this moment of absolute abandonment to every
muscular whim that could take possession of such a supple form. The
white manilla ropes clung about the performer like snakes as she took
her exercise, and the colour in her face deepened as she went on.
Captain De Stancy felt that, much as he had seen in early life of beauty
in woman, he had never seen beauty of such a real and living sort as
this. A recollection of his vow, together with a sense that to gaze
on the festival of this Bona Dea was, though so innocent and pretty a
sight, hardly fair or gentlemanly, would have compelled him to withdraw
his eyes, had not the sportive fascination of her appearance glued
them there in spite of all. And as if to complete the picture of Grace
personified and add the one thing wanting to the charm which bound him,
the clouds, till that time thick in the sky, broke away from the upper
heaven, and allowed the noonday sun to pour down through the lantern
upon her, irradiating her with a warm light that was incarnadined by her
pink doublet and hose, and reflected in upon her face. She only
required a cloud to rest on instead of the green silk net which actually
supported her reclining figure for the moment, to be quite Olympian;
save indeed that in place of haughty effrontery there sat on her
countenance only the healthful sprightliness of an English girl.
Dare had withdrawn to a point at which another path crossed the path
occupied by De Stancy. Looking in a side direction, he saw Havill
idling slowly up to him over the silent grass. Havill’s knowledge of the
appointment had brought him out to see what would come of it. When he
neared Dare, but was still partially hidden by the boughs from the third
of the party, the former simply pointed to De Stancy upon which Havill
stood and peeped at him. ‘Is she within there?’ he inquired.
Dare nodded, and whispered, ‘You need not have asked, if you had
examined his face.’
‘That’s true.’
‘A fermentation is beginning in him,’ said Dare, half pitifully; ‘a
purely chemical process; and when it is complete he will probably be
clear, and fiery, and sparkling, and quite another man than the good,
weak, easy fellow that he was.’
To precisely describe Captain De Stancy’s admiration was impossible. A
sun seemed to rise in his face. By watching him they could almost see
the aspect of her within the wall, so accurately were her changing
phases reflected in him. He seemed to forget that he was not alone.
‘And is this,’ he murmured, in the manner of one only half apprehending
himself, ‘and is this the end of my vow?’
Paula was saying at this moment, ‘Ariel sleeps in this posture, does
he not, Auntie?’ Suiting the action to the word she flung out her arms
behind her head as she lay in the green silk hammock, idly closed her
pink eyelids, and swung herself to and fro.