In the weeks that followed, Lynette, in the course of many interviews held
with Janellan Pugh on the subject of lunch and dinner, learned much anent
the difficulty of obtaining fresh fish in a sea-coast village, more as
regards the Satanic duplicity with which even a Calvinistic Methodist
butcher will substitute New Zealand lamb for the native animal, and still
more about Saxham.
Janellan, who had been a rosy maid in the service of the Doctor's
grandfather, the Parson, had thought the world's worth of Master Owen,
from the first time she set eyes on him in a white frock, with a
sausage-roll curl and diamond-patterned socks. She had a venerable and
spotty photograph of him as a square-headed, blinking little boy in a
velvet suit and lace collar, and another photograph, coloured by hand,
taken at the age of fourteen, and paid for out of his own pocket-money, to
send to Janellan, who had nursed him through a holiday scarlet-fever. And
regularly had her blessed boy remembered her and Tafydd, said Janellan,
until the Cruel Time came, and he was lost sight of in Foreign Parts. Then
Mrs. Saxham died, and the Captain--mentioned by Janellan with the ringing
sniff that speaks volumes of disparagement--had turned her and her old man
out of the Plas "without as much as that!"--here Janellan snapped her
strong thumb-nail against her remaining front tooth--in recognition of
their forty years of faithful service.
But Master Owen, coming to his own again, "and 'deed an' 'deed, but the
Plas ought to have been his from the beginning!" had sought out the old
couple, living in decent poverty at St. Tirlan's, and reinstated them in
their old home. And well might Tafydd, who was a better judge of the
points of a pig than any man in Herion--or in all Wales for the matter of
that--well might Tafydd declare that the Lord never made a better man than
Dr. Owen Saxham! What grand things they had said of him in the papers! No
doubt the young mistress would have plenty more to tell that had not got
into print?
"I can tell you many things of the Doctor," said Lynette, smiling in the
black-eyed, streaky-apple face "that you and Tafydd will be proud and glad
to hear."
She shunned the giving or receiving of caresses as a rule but this morning
she stooped and kissed the red-veined, wrinkled cheek within Janellan's
white-quilled cap-border. Then, her household duties done, she pinned a
rough, shady straw-hat upon the red-brown hair, and drew loose
chamois-leather gloves over the slim white exquisite hands that were,
perhaps her greatest beauty, chose a walking-stick from the hall-rack, ran
down the steep cliff pathway, crossed the spidery, red-rusted iron
foot-bridge that spanned the railway-line, descended upon the farther side
of the wood of chestnut and larch that made green shadows at the base of
the cliff, and was upon the sand-dunes, walking with the free, undulating
gait she had acquired from the Mother, towards the restless line of white
breakers that rose and fell a mile away.
She was happy. A glorious secret kept her bosom-company; a new hope gave
her strength. She drank in long draughts of the strong, salt, fragrant
air, and as it filled her lungs, knew her soul brimmed with fresh delight
in the beauty of the world. And a renewed and quickened sense of the joy
of life made music of the beating of her pulses and the throbbing of her
heart.
She was a child of the wild veld, but none the less a daughter of this
sea-girt Britain: the blue, restless waves beyond that line of white
frothing breakers washed the shores of the Mother's beloved green island,
Emerald Airinn, set in silver foam. A few miles, St. George's Channel
spanned--then straight as the crow flies over Wicklow, Queen's County,
King's County, taking Galway at the acute angle of the wild mallard's
flight; and there would be the chained lakes and winding silver rivers,
the grey-green mountains and the beetling cliffs, the dreamy valleys and
wild glens of Connemara, with the ancient towers of Castleclare rising
from its mossed lawns studded with immemorial oaks. And Loch Kilbawne
among the wild highlands, and Lochs Innsa and Barre, and Ballybarron
Harbour, with its Titanic breakwater, and three beacons, and the dun-brown
islands bidden in their veil of surf-edged spindrift, shaken by the voices
of hidden waters roaring in their secret caves.
A faint smile played about her sensitive lips. Her golden eyes dreamed as
she walked on swiftly, a slender figure dressed in a plain skirt of rough
grey-blue, and a loose-sleeved blouse of thick white silk, her slight
waist belted with a silver-mounted lizard-skin girdle, a pleasant tinkle
of silver chatelaine appendages accompanying her steps.
And those steps were to her no longer uncompanioned. It was as though the
Mother were living, so enfolding and close was the sense of her presence
to-day. God was in His Heaven, and the world, His footstool, bore the
visible impress of His Feet. And it seemed to Lynette, who had learned to
see the faces of Christ and of His Mother Mary through the lineaments of
the earthly face that had first looked love upon herself in her terrible
abandonment, that those Divine and glorious countenances looked down on
her and smiled. And her chilled faith spread quivering wings, basking in
their ineffable mild radiance as the little blue and tortoiseshell
butterflies basked in the glorious sunshine that had followed the
morning's storm.
The tangible presence seemed to move beside her, through the white powdery
sand. Over the knotted grasses, between the tufts of poppies and the
prickly little yellow roses that fringed the hollows, the garments of
another seemed to sweep beside her own. The folds of a thin veil upborne
on the elastic breeze fluttered beside her cheek, blew against her lips,
bringing the rare delicate fragrance--the familiar perfume that clung to
everything the Mother habitually wore and used and touched. She did not
look round, or stretch out her hand. She walked along, drinking in
blissfulness and companionship at every pore of her thirsty soul, joyfully
realising that this would last; that by-and-by the great void of
loneliness would not close in on her again.
Only the night before, upon the brink of the supreme discovery that the
dead in Christ are not only living in Him, but for us also who are His,
she had hesitated and doubted. Before the sunrise of this glorious day she
had learned to doubt no more.
* * * * *
She had been restless and unhappy. Saxham had not written for a week. She
bitterly missed the short, cold, kind letters in the clear, small, firm
handwriting, that had reached her at intervals of three days, to be
answered by her constrained and timid notes, hoping that he was well and
not overworking, describing the place and her pleasure in it, without
mention of her loneliness; giving details of Major Wrynche's progress
towards recovery, and left-handed attempts at golf, winding up with
messages from Lady Hannah and dutiful remembrances from Tafydd and
Janellan, and signed, his affectionate wife, Lynette Saxham.
Trite and laboured and schoolgirlish enough those epistles seemed to their
writer. To Saxham they were drops of rain upon the parching soil of his
heart, the one good that life had for him in this final lap of the race.
And yet he had ceased to write that they might come no more.
If he had known how his own letters to her were welcomed, how tenderly
they were read and re-read, how sweetly kept and cherished.... But he did
not know! He could only look ahead, and strain on to the nearing goal with
the great, dim, mysterious curtain hanging beyond it, hearing the thudding
of his wearied heart, and the whistling of those sharp breaths in his
strained lungs, and the measured sound of his own footfalls bearing him on
to the end, while night closed in on her, fevered and wakeful in her bed,
thinking of him, praying for him, longing for the sight and sound of him.
Sleep, when it came now, brought her dreams less crystal than of old. Hued
with the fiery rose of opals some, because in these he loved her; and that
shadowy woman, in whose existence she only half-believed, had no part in
him at all. But on the night preceding the revelation she had not dreamed.
She awakened in the grey of dawn, when the thrushes were calling, and lay
straight and still, listening to the glad bird-voices from the garden, her
soft, fringed eyelids closed, her white breasts gently heaving, her small
feet crossed, her slender, bare arms pillowing the little Greek head; a
heavy plait of the silken wealth that crowned it drawn down on either side
of the sweet, pale face and the pure throat, intensifying their virginal
beauty. The dull smart of loneliness, the famished ache of loss, were gone
altogether. She felt strangely peaceful and calm and glad. Then she knew
she was not at Herion; she was not even in London.... She was back at the
Convent, in the little whitewashed room with the stained deal
furniture--the room with the pleasant outlook on the gardens that had been
hers from the first. Surely it was past the rising hour? Ah, yes! but she
had had a touch of fever. That was why she was lying here so quietly, with
the Mother sitting by the bed.
There could be no doubt.... The light firm, pressure that she knew of old
was upon her bosom, just above the beating of her heart.... That was
always the Mother's way of waking you. She sat beside you, and looked at
you, and touched you, and presently your eyes opened, that was all!...
Thinking this, a streak of gold glimmered between Lynette's thick dusky
lashes; her lips wore a smile of infinite content. She stole a glance, and
there it was, the large, beautiful, lightly clenched hand. The loose
sleeve of thin black serge flowed away from the strong, finely moulded
wrist; the white starched _guimpe_ showed snowy between the drooping folds
of the nun's veil.... These familiar things Lynette drank in with a sense
of unspeakable content and pleasure. Then--her eyes opened widely, and she
knew.
She was looking into eyes that had seen the Beatific Vision--great grey
eyes that were unfathomable lakes of heavenly tenderness and love divine.
And the face that framed them was a radiant pale splendour, indescribable
in its glorious beauty, unfathomable in its fulfilled peace. Her own eyes
drank peace from them, deeply, insatiably, while the Herion thrushes sang
their dewy matins, and the scent of mignonette and sweet-peas and early
roses mingled with the smell of the sea, stole in at the open casement
where the white blind swelled out like a breeze-filled sail.
How long Lynette lay there storing up content and rapture she did not
know, or want to know. But at last the wonder of those eyes came
nearer--nearer! She felt the dear pressure of the familiar lips upon her
own. A fragrance enveloped her, an exquisite joy overbrimmed her, as a
voice--the beloved, unforgotten voice of matchless music--spoke. It said:
"_Love your husband as I loved Richard! Be to a child of his what I have
been to you!_"
* * * * *
Eyes and face and voice, white hand and flowing veil, were all gone then.
Lynette sat up, sobbing for joy, and blindly holding out her arms, and the
rising sun looked over the mountains eastward, and drew one hushing,
golden finger over the lips of the cold, grey, whispering sea.