As for her son, he did not go to bed very soon. He had a good deal
to think about apart from that grave step which he had taken in the
morning--the first important step he had ever taken before breakfast. As
a matter of fact, everything that he had to think about he thought about
quite apart from his discharging the drowsy and thirsty Mr. Verrall,
though to be sure there was a certain connection between the person whom
he had in his mind and his recently-acquired zeal to set his household
in order.
He had come upon her on the tennis ground when he was about to enter the
court for the Mixed Doubles, and she had greeted him with smiles, but
with no cry of “You see what I made you do yesterday!” He had asked her
at what time she had left the ground the previous day, and she had said
“Just after your match.”
“You saw it, then?”
“Oh, yes, I saw it. You surprised poor Mr. Glenister.”
“And anyone else?”
“Probably yourself.”
“Probably everyone on the ground except you.”
“I am glad you except me.”
“I could swear by the horns of the altar that you were not a bit
surprised.”
“And you would not perjure yourself--I’m not sure if the horns of the
altar are binding as a form of oath; but anyhow, you would have been
right. I did not fancy for a moment that my judgment as a prophetess was
in jeopardy when Mr. Glenister took two or three games from you.”
“Then you watched it all?”
“Every stroke after the first couple of sets.”
“That was very nice of you. I kicked out Farmer Verrall before breakfast
this morning.”
“What, the manager of your farm?”
“There was no help for it. I went over the place yesterday afternoon,
and I saw with half an eye that he had allowed the whole farm to go to
the dogs--to the greyhounds.”
“The greyhounds? You are coming on, Mr. Wingfield. We shall have
you running a dairy farm yourself and taking away our bread and
butter--certainly the butter--if we don’t look out.”
That was the sum of their conversation before the alert official
had separated them, dragging him off to play in the M.D.s and get
ignominiously beaten, for which he had apologized most humbly to his
partner, and she went away affirming that he was a very nice man, only
it was a pity he didn’t practise more. But she was careful not to let
a whisper of this reach the ears of their successful opponents; she was
not sure that they would not say that it was her silly play that had
lost the game.
He had manoeuvred to get close to her at lunch, but in this he was
not very successful. She was with the Gainsforth set, and they hadn’t
invited him to their table; but afterwards he had managed to beat to
windward of the party and to sail down upon her at the right moment.
Unfortunately it was only for a moment that he was allowed to be beside
her. He had only time to say, “I want to have a long talk with you,” and
to hear her answer “You will find me a most appreciative listener, Mr.
Wingfield,” when Lady Cynthia carried her off in one direction and the
alert official carried him off in another to play a single. When he had
beaten his man and set out to look for her, he saw that she was between
Lady Gainsforth and another watching a paltry match in which Lady
Cynthia was doing some effective work with a partner who tried to poach
every ball that came to her.
He had strolled away, and had passed a dim halfhour by the side of Rosa
Caffyn, who presented him to her mother, and her mother had asked him if
he did not think Miss Wadhurst was looking extremely well, considering
all that she had come through, poor thing! and she feared that a good
many people would say that it was in rather doubtful taste for her to
appear in a public place and not in mourning, though her husband had
been dead scarcely more than two months; and he had replied that she
had the doubtful taste to refrain from that form of etiquette known as
hypocrisy; and Rosa had clapped her hands, crying “Bravo! That’s what I
have said all along.”
His thoughts went over all the ground that he traversed during the day.
It was when he was motoring to the Manor that he had made up his mind
to mention her name to his mother, and she had replied to him. And what
then?
What then?
That was the question which remained to be answered by himself to
himself.
Why was he taking so much trouble to bring her and his mother
together? Was it in order to give his mother the privilege of another
acquaintance? or was he anxious to show Priscilla how charming a mother
was his?
He had gone out upon the terrace with his cigar when his mother had
left him, and now he sat in the long chair among some very well-disposed
cushions. It was a night that lent itself with all the seductiveness
of an English June, not to thought, but to feeling. One could feel the
earth throbbing with the sensuousness of the season, although the
stars of that summer night were but feebly palpitating out of the faint
mystery of their grey-blue canopy. He had started thinking, but he was
soon compelled to relinquish it in favour of feeling.
“If she were but sitting in that other chair--nay, why the other chair?
Why should there not be only one chair between us?” He fancied her
sitting where he sat, her head among the cushions--oh, that perfect
head, with its glory of hair, shining like some of the embroidery of
that satin cushion at his shoulder! He pulled up the pillow and put his
cheek close to it. Oh, if only she were there! He would sit on the rest
for her feet, and hold them in his hands and put his face down upon the
arch of their instep. He had seen her feet that day when she had been
watching the game, by the side of her friends, and he knew what they
would be like to kiss. And then he would kneel by the side of the chair
and put his head down to the cushion that was below hers, so that their
faces--their lips--should not be far apart--not further apart than a
finger’s breadth--sometimes not even so far.
And they would be silent together, drinking deep of the delight of each
other’s silence. For what would they have to talk about on such a night
as this?
And while he sat there, abandoning himself to the abandonment of
Nature--that glorious Nature whose passionate heart was beating in
everything under the stars of this June night--a nightingale began to
sing out of the darkness of the shrubbery. He listened to it, feeling
that that singing was the most complete expression of the passion of
June.
But the incompleteness of his life--sitting there alone, full of that
longing which the nightingale could so interpret! Why was she not here
beside him--in his arms?
A window was being opened in one of the rooms above where he sat. Why
was not that the window of her room? Why was it not opened to let her
speak out to him--to whisper to him that she was there--waiting for
him--waiting for him? He was a sane man under the influence of a
pure passion--a passion whose chief property it is to stimulate the
imagination even of the unimaginative; and every sound that he heard
breaking the silence of this exquisite summer night had this effect upon
him. He felt that he could not live without her. He had fallen into such
a condition of thinking about her as made it impossible for him to weigh
in connection with her such considerations as prudence, propriety and
Mrs. Grundy; all that he knew, or was capable of knowing, was that he
loved her, and that he wanted her to be with him always--he loved her
and nothing else in the world; he was incapable of loving anything else
in the world. She absorbed all the love of which he was capable. He felt
that he should be deserving of the fate of Ananias and Sapphira his wife
if he had kept back any of his possessions of love from her to bestow
upon some one else. He cared nothing for anything in the heaven above
or the earth beneath, or the waters that are under the earth, apart from
her; but with her he felt that he loved them all!
This was the condition of the man who had never in his life been
involved in an affair in which love played any but the most subordinate
part. He had had his chances, as most men who have lived for nearly
thirty years with no recognized occupation usually have. If he had
caused the worldly mothers of eligible daughters (and too many of them)
who were aware of his prospects, to hold him in contempt, he had at the
same time caused the husbands of uncertain wives no uneasiness whatever
He had had his little episodes, of course--those patches of pattern
which go so far to relieve the fabric of a man’s life from monotony;
but, to continue the simile, this pattern had not been printed in fast
colours; it had not stood the test of time or cold water, but had faded
out of his life, leaving scarcely a trace behind. He had never believed
himself to be capable of rising to the dizzy heights of such a passion
as this in whose grasp he felt himself, high above the earth and all
earthly considerations. He was astonished at first when he found himself
walking about the turf of the tennis ground in order to catch a
glimpse of her--detesting the play, and so making it pretty hot for his
opponents because it stood between her and himself; cursing the nice
people who had found her so nice that they took care to keep her near
themselves; and at last leaving the ground in sheer despair of being
able to find her alone, so that he could sit beside her and watch her
face, or the exquisite lines of her figure down to her fairy feet which
he wanted to kiss.
He had driven to his home at something in excess of the legal maximum,
hating her (as he thought--the most solid proof of his love for her) and
hating himself for being such a fool as he felt himself to be.
The necessity for strategy in talking to his mother helped to bring him
within the range of ordinary well-ordered life once more, and he had
ridden his soul on the curb, so to speak, ever since; but now his mother
had gone to bed, and here he was stretched at full length on his chair,
having abandoned himself to his passion--thrown out every ounce of
ballast in order that he might get a little nearer to the stars that
were as soft as pearls above him.
He had ceased to be astonished at himself. He had reached that rarer
atmosphere where the conditions of life are altogether different from
those that prevail on lower levels, and where extravagance of thought is
simply the result of breathing the air. His intoxication took the form
of feeling that he was on the brink of a great happiness--that he was a
king on the eve of a great victory--that he was so considerable a person
in the world that he could carry out with a high hand every purpose
in life. In his heart was all the swagger of those braggart warriors
strutting about in armour and feathers on the walls of Troy or beneath
them.
And in this condition of intoxication and its consequent hallucination
he remained until the stars of the one hour of the summer night waxed
paler than pearls in the exquisite dawn of the summer day.
The nightingale that had been singing in the early night had long
ago become hushed. From a distant meadow there came the sound of the
unmelodious corncrake. There was a little cheeping and rustling among
the ivy of the walls, and then came a blackbird’s syrupy contralto from
among the laurels of the shrubbery, and far away the delicious liquid
ripples of a lark--two larks--three--the pearly air was thrilling with
the melody of larks and with the flutings of thrushes, and the cooings
of the wood pigeons, long before the sultans of the farmyards sent forth
their challenges to be passed on and on like the ripple on a lake, until
the last could be but faintly heard coming from the height of the Downs.
He sat there listening to everything, and scarcely conscious of the
melting of the night into the dawn. There had been no darkness at any
time of that June night, and the dawn was only like all the pearls of
the sky melting in the liquid air.
At last he got up from his seat and walked to the balustrade of the
terrace, looking forth over the white mists that curled and rose from
the lawns and the meadows beneath. He felt that his new day had arisen
for him. He went upstairs to his room, and when he had got into bed, he
was asleep within five minutes.
It so happened, however, that the room in which his mother slept was
just opposite to his on the same corridor, and even the slight sound
that he made closing his door was enough to awaken her. She could then
hear the sound of his swinging back the curtains which the careful
housemaids invariably drew across his windows when they were turning
down the counterpane; and then she knew that he must just have come
upstairs. Her room was quite light, so that she could see the hour shown
by the little bracket clock. It was five minutes past two.
So he had passed the four hours that elapsed since they had parted,
sitting alone in the empty room! (She knew nothing of his having gone
out upon the terrace.)
Her knowledge of this circumstance told her a great deal more of his
condition than she could have learned from his own lips had he felt
inclined to confess to her all that was in his heart.
It was true, then--the inference that she had drawn from his guarded
words respecting the young woman was correct. It was on her account he
had made up his mind that there was no place like home.
The mother was in great distress for some time. She shed some tears, but
not many, for she reflected that at least a year must elapse before this
young widow--for she was a widow, whatever sophists might say--could
make another matrimonial venture, and what may not happen within a year?
This reflection comforted her, and so did the thought:
“After all, I have not seen her yet.”