An idea struck Archie which had not occurred to him before.
"Am I ill, Blessington?" he asked. "Am I going to die?"
At that there was no question of what Blessington was doing. Her laughing quite ceased, and she gave a great sob.
"No, my darling, you're not going to die," she said. "Get that out of your silly head. You're not…"
And then she broke down altogether, and hid her face in the towel with which she had been washing Archie's left foot. He saw her shoulders shaking; he knew that, for some reason, she could not speak. But she was crying, and was not cross with him for being cross. It behoved a man to administer consolation.
"Oh, don't cry, Blessington," he said. "What is there to cry about?Unless it's because I'm so cross."
"I don't mind your crossness," she said. "You let me finish wiping your foot. And then I'll go down and tell your mamma—"
"Oh, don't say I was cross," said Archie. "I'm sorry I was cross."
"Nay, I'll just tell her how much better you feel this morning. And I shouldn't wonder if there was a great treat coming, something you'll like ever so much."
"Is it another train?" asked Archie.
"Bless the boy!" said she. "How you think about trains!"
* * * * *
Archie ate his breakfast, and passed an entrancing morning. Everybody seemed desirous of congratulating him, as if he had done something particularly meritorious, as on the occasion of his not getting drowned when he jumped out of the boat after the pike. He held a sort of levee, the most remarkable incident of which was the appearance of Miss Bampton with a piece of white chalk, with which she drew on the green drugget by his bed, so that he could easily see it, a great map of England and Central Europe. There was the South of England, with London written large, and here was Lacebury also conspicuously marked. Then there was the English Channel with France below it, and Paris in the middle, and away to the right, some distance below, the Lake of Geneva. Then, still explaining, she made marks like caterpillars which were mountains, and said that now the mountains were covered with snow, even down to the tails of the caterpillars and below was the Lake of Geneva, quite blue. All the roads were covered with snow up by the caterpillars' tails, and there were no wheels on the carriages, but they slid over the frozen snow instead. There was skating up there, for they made lakes which were covered with ice. They just put water into flat places, and there was your lake, and it instantly froze. It never rained there, but if it wanted to do anything, it just snowed. Usually it didn't want to do anything, and there was the sun and the snow, and wouldn't it be jolly to go there?
This presented itself to Archie's mind as a purely abstract proposition. Of course it would be jolly to go to a place where you saw the real mountains and had a glimpse of the real Lake of Geneva, and slid instead of walking; but what next? Did any one ever go there?
Apparently. Right at the tail of the caterpillar was a place called Grives. There it was, written down: the railway only went as far as Bex, and there the sledges began. And always the sun shone, so that you sat out of doors with the snow all round you, and felt perfectly warm.
Suddenly Archie could stand it no longer. It was like talking to a starving man about roast beef. There was roast beef somewhere in the world, and he wanted it so badly. In the same way something inside Archie starved for sun and snow and thin air.
"Oh, shut up, Miss Bampton," he said. "I want it so frightfully."
His mother was sitting on the edge of his bed watching the map ofEurope.
"Archie, we're going to Grives in a few days," she said. "You andBlessington and Jeannie and I."
* * * * *
It was memorable moment when the boat rose up and then curtsied to the big seas that were jostling each other up the Channel. Archie's only knowledge of the sea was culled from a single visit to Brighton two years ago, and the sea to him then appeared but one among an assembly of unusual bright objects: nigger-minstrels and tin buckets and piers and penny-in-the-slot machines. But on this bright winter day he hailed a new and glorious creature, when he saw the steep white-capped waves, grey in the bulk but lit with lovely green where they grew thin, come streaming up to the ship's side and fall away again in puffs of white smoke and squirts of high-flung foam. Warmly wrapped up in his new fur-coat, he sat on deck sheltered from the weather and watched with ecstatic wonder the rollicking, untamed creatures that sent the boat now over on one side, now on the other, and threw it up and caught it again within their firm, liquid embrace. Behind it lay a wake of white foam, like a long string still tying them to dazzling chalk cliffs and the wave-smothered pier, and overhead the masts, thrumming to the wind, struck right and left across a wide arc of the sky, and their shadows sped across the deck. These swervings and upliftings and descents of the ship as she whacked her way across the shifting mountains produced in him no physical discomfort, but only the sense that a new and glorious being had come into his life.
All too soon, even as the jig-saw puzzle of the map of Europe had warned him by the narrowness of the straits, the shores of France began to rear themselves up above the wave-moulded horizon, and presently another pier received them, and men spoke a strange tongue (probably French, though it might have been Hebrew) and made novel gestures, and wore blouses, and boots that turned up at the toes more than was usual in England. There were no platforms: you had to climb the sheer carriage side from ground-level, and the engines were altogether different, and the movement of the train was other than that he was accustomed to. Then, sure enough, they came after nightfall to a great town, and drove across it, keeping firmly to the wrong side of the road, though, as everybody else did the same, there were not so many collisions as might have been expected. Then came the novelty of eating dinner in a restaurant perched up in another station, from the windows of which you could romantically observe train after train sliding out into the winter night. Before long Archie's train did the same, and then came the glorious experience of undressing in a train, while it was going at full speed. There was never so remarkable a bedroom, all gold and looking-glass and stamped leather, and instead of his bed and Blessington's being put on the floor, one, which Archie begged to have, was put above the other. Close by him in the roof of the carriage was the electric light which, when you turned a small handle the requisite distance, dwindled to a mere speck. At some timeless hour he woke up, and found a very polite stranger in his bedroom, to whom Blessington explained that they had neither spirits nor lace nor tobacco in their luggage. And the total stranger then apparently guessed that he had been misinformed, for he went away again without another word.
The clever train found its way without any mistake through the darkness of the long winter's night, for next morning it was skimming along by the edge of a lake so large that no wonder it appeared on the jig-saw map of Europe. The lake at home, once an almost boundless sheet of water, was no more than a wayside puddle to this; the hills at home were no more than the tunnelled earth of moles compared with those slopes on which the rows of pines looked smaller than the edging of a table-cloth against the blue. Blue? Archie thought he had never known what blue was till now, not what sunshine was until he saw the dazzle of it on those sparkling slopes. And they, so his mother told him, were not mountains at all: they were only hills; but soon he should see what mountains meant. As they passed through the glittering towns that stood on the edge of the lake, he could see the sleighs sliding over the streets with jingle of bells crisply sounding in the alert air. Other smaller sleighs were drawn by pleased, smiling dogs. There was never such a morning of discoveries. The only drawback was that, though it ought only to have been ten o'clock, the Swiss chose that it should be eleven, and thus an hour of this immortal day was lost; but his mother told him that the French had taken care of it, and would give it back to them when they returned.
All this was romantic enough, but the romance grew more deep-hued yet when, in the early afternoon, Archie was packed into a sleigh and the journey up through the pine-woods began. White-capped and white-cloaked stood the red-trunked trees, and now and then, with a falling puff of snow, a laden branch, free of its burden, sprang upwards again. Then the pines were tired of climbing, and the sleigh left them and came out on to a plateau high above the valley. And could that have been sunshine down there? For the valley seemed choked with grey fog, and here above was real sunshine and air that refreshed you as with wine. The hills that had appeared so gigantic had sunk below them, but behind them rose the spears and precipices, remote and blue, of the real mountains, and, as they went upwards, these soared ever above them, and presently the blue on them was tinged with apricot and rose in the glow of the declining sun. And the driver cracked his whip, and the horses jingled their bells in response, and, pointing with it to a row of toy houses still far above them, he grinned at Archie and said "Grives."
The rose of sunset had faded and the snows were turned to ivory-crystal beneath the full moon when they entered the long, lit village street, with its old carved wooden houses, deep-balconied towards the south, and the modern hotels now just opening again for the winter season. These, too, they left behind them, and again mounting a steep slope, came to where, round a sudden corner, stood the big chalet which Archie's mother had taken.
"And here we are," she said.
Archie sat staring. Somehow he felt he knew the house; perhaps it was a house he had dreamed of. There were pines to right and left of it, just as there were in this picture of a house that existed somewhere in his mind; it had the same broad balconies, where you could lie all day in the sun, and look over the village roofs below and across the valley from which all afternoon they had climbed. He felt he knew it inside too: there would be rooms with wooden walls, and china stoves—where had he heard of china stoves?—and the smell of pine-wood haunting all the house. It was extraordinarily interesting…
A big, genial woman had turned up the electric light outside the door when she heard the crack of the driver's whip, and stood bareheaded, ready to welcome them. Archie felt that he knew something about her too.
"Ah,miladi," she said to his mother in very crisp good English, yet with a funny precision, as if she had learned it as a lesson, "I give you welcome back to Grives. And how is my dear Madame Blessington?"
Archie thought his mother interrupted these greetings rather suddenly.
"How are you madame Seiler?" she said. "And here is my daughter Jeannie and Archie"—and she added something in an undertone, which sounded like the language Miss Schwarz used to talk.
Madame Seiler whisked round with renewed cordiality.
"And such lovely weather you have come to," she said. "The sun all day and the frost all night. But we keep out the frost and let the sun in."
They passed into the entrance-hall, aromatic and warm, heated by a big china stove that roared pleasantly, and instantly, without any reason, there came into Archie's mind the remembrance of the words his hand had scribbled one morning with the signature "Martin." It came out of the darkness like a light seen distantly at night; it flashed like a signal and vanished again. But for one second it had been there, remote, but visible and luminous.
Lady Davidstow, for some obscure and grown-up reason, thought good at supper that night to explain incidentally that she had written to Madame Seiler that Blessington was coming, and that was how she had known Blessington's name. Archie had a very strong and wholesome confidence in his mother, but he knew that grown-up people sometimes made statements which have got (by the rules) to be accepted, but which do not always convince. Blessington's saying that she could not run any more because she had a bone in her leg was an instance of this class of statement, as also was the occasion when his mother spoke, a year ago, about Abracadabra's sneezings. This mode of accounting for Madame Seiler's knowing Blessington's name came under the same head: as far as it went it might be true, and though it did not particularly interest him whether it was true, so to speak, all the way, he felt that there was something mildly mysterious about it. And, having made this unconvincing statement, his mother at once passed on to more interesting topics.
It was a blow, when Blessington called him next morning, to be told that he was tired with the journey and must stop in bed for breakfast. That was a perfectly unfounded statement, but, like those others, had grumblingly to be accepted, though Archie knew quite well that he had never felt less tired.
"You mayn't feel it, dear," said Blessington, "but you are."
"I should think I ought to know best," said Archie.
"No, I know best," said Blessington firmly. "And your mamma says so, too."
Archie began to wonder they were not right. He did not feel tired, as he had told Blessington, but something inside him said that it did not want to run about, or even skate, but it was very well pleased that his body, well wrapped up, should sit up in bed, and bask in the sun which blazed in through the opened French window communicating with the big balcony outside his room. Then, after breakfast, there came in his mother with a big jovial man, whose name was Dr. Dobie.
"I never saw such a lazy fellow," exclaimed this rather attractive person. "Fancy not being up yet!"
"They wouldn't let me," said Archie.
"Well, as soon as I've had a look at you, up you shall get," said the doctor. "But I can't wait till you're dressed. Now, undo your coat a minute."
Once again the instrument with plugs was produced, and the ninety-nine game played.
"That's capital," said the doctor, "and now in a minute I'll have done with you. Just put that into your mouth with the end under your tongue. There, like that."
This was a very short process, and Dr. Dobie got up.
"Now, my plan for you is this," he said. "You shall dress and lie out in the sun on your balcony. And, after you've had dinner, you shall go for a sleigh drive, and walk a little on your way back. Then balcony again, till it's dark."
"But mayn't I skate?" asked Archie, who didn't really want to.
"No, not just yet. We'll have you skating before long, but not at present. The more you do as you're told, the sooner you'll skate."
During the next week, but so gradually that at no moment was it a discovery, it dawned on Archie that he was ill, and that his illness dated from the time when his mouth bled. The knowledge did not in the least depress him, because with it came the absolute certainty in his own mind that he was going to get quite well again. For the most part he did not feel ill, though there was often an uncomfortable period towards evening when he felt sometimes hot and sometimes cold, and one moment would want another coat on, and soon would have liked to throw off all the clothes he had. These odd feelings were accompanied by a sort of extra vividness in his perceptions: he felt tingling and alert, and the lights seemed brighter than their wont. But when this had been more marked than usual in the evening, he always felt very tired next day, and more than once he did not get up at all but had his bed pulled out on to the balcony. Then, as the weeks passed on, there was less of this, and before long he was allowed to tie his toboggan to the back of the sleigh, and be towed up-hill through the pine-wood that climbed the slopes behind the village. That was a delightful experience; on each side stood the snowy trees frosted like a Christmas cake, now almost meeting above the narrow track, and then standing away from it again, so that the deluge of sun poured down as into a pool, while from in front came the jingle of the horse's bells, and from below him the squeak of his runners. Then they came out again on to the ski-ing slopes, where visitors to Grives played the entrancing game of seeing, apparently, who could fall down most often in the most complicated manner. Where the slope was steepest there was erected a sort of platform, so that the runner, flying down the slope above, was shot into the air, touching ground again yards below. Or, on other mornings, when things went well, and there had been no hot-and-cold period the evening before, he tobogganed down the slope below the house to the edge of the skating-rink and sat there in the snow, with everything round frozen hard, yet feeling perfectly warm, so potent were the beams of this ineffable sun through the thin, dry air. Jeannie was learning to skate and progressed, in wobbling half-circles, and shrilly announced that this and no other was the outside edge. Or four of the experts in a railed-off and hallowed place at the end of the huge rink would put down an orange, and proceed to weave a mystic dance in obedience to the shouted orders of one of them. At one moment all four would be swiftly converging on a back-edge to their orange, and, just at the moment when a complicated collision seemed imminent, would somehow change their direction, and, lo, all four were sailing outwards and forwards again in big, sweeping curves. Then there were the hoarse, angry cries of the curlers to listen to, and the pleasant sight of the stone sliding swiftly down the ice and butting, with a hollow chunk, into any other that stood in its way. And then a slow sliding stone would come down, and people swept violently in front of it to encourage it not to lie down and die, which for the most part it did. But always too soon, his mother or Blessington would come to tell him that it was time to go home again and he would tie his toboggan to the back of the sleigh, and be pulled up-hill to the house. That was a tiresome moment, and Archie found himself wondering, with a pang of jealousy, why, when so many were hale and hearty round him, it should be just he who was obliged to go and lie down on the roofed balcony, instead of skating or curling. But even when he had set-backs, and had to lie all day on the balcony, he never faltered in his belief that he was going to get well.
Here then, in brief, were the outward aspects of Archie's life at Grives, new and attractive and full of sun and dry, powdery snow. He took no active part in the activities, and was but an observer, but all the time there were inward aspects of his life, which no one shared with him, and which no one ever observed. He was always on the alert, even on those mornings of tiredness after he had had a rise of temperature the evening before, for the development of a certain thing, the existence of which came to him only in hints and whispers. But the thing itself was always there, though he had no control over its manifestations. He could no more bring it into the exterior life of the senses, he could no more see or hear it or produce any evidence of it, as he willed, than he could make the sun pierce and scatter the clouds, which for a whole week in January alternately rained and snowed on to Grives. All he could do was to wait for it, and he waited in a perpetual serene excitement. It came always when he was alone: he got to think of solitude, in this present stage, as an essential for its manifestation. And, as the weeks went on, he associated it more and more with the balcony on which he lay for the greater part of the day. It, the thing he waited for, and was completely silent about even when he had intimate good-night talks with his mother, was no other than "Martin" (whoever Martin might be) whose presence had come into his mind with such unexpected vividness when first he saw the chalet. Never was the idea of "Martin" absent from his mind: it might lurk concealed behind the excitement of trailing after the sleigh, or of watching the skaters on the ice, but at all times it was ready to enfilade him. And, among all the diversions of the snow and the ice and the sun, he had an inward eye turned towards this inscrutable "Martin"—no winged nester in the sand-cliffs, but somebody, somebody…
Lessons in a mild way had begun again before this wretched rainy and snowy week, and Miss Bampton sent out from home the most entrancing and topical copies. "Hot outside-edge for lunch," was one, in allusion to the news of Jeannie's skating; "Cold inside-edge for dinner" was another. Whatever the weather was, Archie was out of doors all day, and Jeannie, during lesson-time, used to sit out on his balcony and do her more advanced tasks, which, with his, were taken in to Lady Davidstow for correction. More often his mother used to sit on the balcony, too, but during this damp, abominable week she suffered from a heavy cold, and the lessons were brought to her by Jeannie. And on this particular morning, Jeannie had finished her French translation first, and so went in to her mother to have it corrected, leaving Archie to finish the last three lines of his copy.
Ever since his first entry into the house, there had been for him nothing more than the perception of Martin's presence. With the patience of a child who wants something, a thing only equalled by the patience of a cat watching a mouse-hole, he had never taken his inward eye off this. He was always ready for it. As Jeannie went in with her completed French lesson, he laid down his pen, and looked for a moment at the streaming icicles on the eaves of his shelter, and listened with a sense of depression to the drip of the melted water that formed grey pits in the whiteness of the snow below. Because there was a thaw, the air felt colder than when there were twenty degrees of frost, and the blanket on his couch was studded with condensed moisture. "It is warmer," thought Archie to himself, "so it ought tobewarmer. But it's colder."
At this moment he felt a sudden thrill in his right wrist, and thought that a melted drop had fallen on it. But he saw there was no drop there, and wondered at this sensation of touch. Then he saw his fingers begin to twitch, and instantly recognized the sensation he had felt once before. He swept his incomplete copy off his pad of blotting-paper, and took his pen up again. Surely he could write on his blotting-paper.
At first the meaningless scribbles appeared, made more grotesque and senseless by the running of the ink. There was a pencil on the table by him, and he took that up instead of the pen, while his hand twitched and jerked to be at its task again. The day before he had pinched his finger in the hinge of a slamming window, and he saw the moon-shaped blot of blood below the nail quivering as his fingers starved to hold an instrument of writing again. Then his hand settled down, like a hovering bird on to a bough, as he picked up the pencil.
For a little while the scribbles went on: then, watching the marks on the blotting-paper just as an excited spectator watches the action of a play, he saw words coming. His brain did not know what they were till they appeared on the paper.
"Archie, Archie," said the pencil, "I want to talk to you. I can't always, but sometimes I can. Dear Archie, try to be ready when I get through. Lovely to talk to you. Can't to mother."
An incontrollable excitement seized the boy. "Oh, who is it?" he said aloud. "Is it Martin?"
He felt the twitching die away in his fingers, and presently he was left sitting there, his copy on the floor and the scrawl on the blotting-paper. But he had, somewhere inside him, a sense of extraordinary satisfaction. Something or somebody had "got through," whatever that meant. The words in pencil on his blotting-paper had "got through." And he turned it over hastily, and picked up the unfinished copy, as the door-handle into his room rattled, and Jeannie came out on to the balcony again with her corrected French exercise.
Several days of this chilly dripping weather, with thefoehnwind from the south went by, and when that ceased, and the wind veered to the north, blowing high over Grives, and raising feathers of snowdust on the peaks to the north, while the sheltered valley basked in calm and sunlight again, there were eventful days of carting the snow from the rinks before any further development took place in Archie's secret life. This carting of the snow was splendid fun, for, when a hand-sleigh of it was piled high, Archie would squat on the front of it (thereby adding considerably to the weight) and in a shrill voice direct the men who pushed it to right or left, in order to reach the steep bank down which they discharged their burden. When they were come to the edge of it, some large, strong man lifted Archie off his perch, and waited with him, while the sleigh was pushed to the very brink, and its burden overturned in a jolly lumpy avalanche that poured down the built-up bank of the rink. Then Archie mounted his throne again and was pulled back to where the men with spades loaded up again… When the sleigh seemed to be sufficiently full he called out "Stop," and made the return journey to the side of the rink. This was all tremendously grand, and he had an idea that the clearing of the rink could never have taken place without him. Certainly his sleigh worked much faster than any other, for, in his honour, those who pushed always ran to discharge their burden at top speed, instead of going slowly like the others.
"Oh, that was a pace," he would say as somebody lifted him off. "Look, mummy, they're going to turn it over."
The rink then was clear again (thanks to Archie's great exertions) before his secret life made any step forward. But one afternoon, when he had been watching the skating from his balcony, something further occurred. He was alone, for his mother had gone down with Jeannie to the rink, and Blessington had gone shopping, and there was a bell by him, by means of which he could summon Madame Seiler if he wanted anything. But he had no thoughts of summoning Madame Seiler; he was extremely content to lie in the sun, and watch the rink sometimes, and sometimes to read a fascinating book calledThe Rose and the Ring, which his mother had given him. There were absurd pictures of Prince Bulbo, an enormously fat young gentleman, whom Archie did not wish to resemble, but was rather afraid of resembling, since Dr. Dobie at his last visit had told him he was getting fat…
It was all very peaceful and happy, and he had lost interest in Jeannie's falls and even in Prince Bulbo's executions, and was staring placidly at a very bright spot of glistening snow which caught the sun at the edge of the rink, when lines of shadow began to pass over the field of his vision, exactly as they used to pass over the green-lit ceiling of his night-nursery at home. This was interesting: he did not feel in the least sleepy, but very wide awake, and was conscious of sinking down through this lovely luminous air, with the bright spot of light getting every moment higher above him, when he suddenly heard his name called.
"Archie, Archie," said the voice, which was close to him, and wonderfully friendly. And at the same moment he felt on the back of his hand the touch of another hand that was smooth and young and somehow familiar, though he had never felt it before.
He tried not to disturb the impression. There was some sort of spell on him, light as a gossamer-web, which the slightest movement, physical or mental, on his part, might break.
"Yes, I'm Archie," he said.
But, the moment he spoke, he knew that he had spoken somehow in the wrong way. Another part of him, not his lips and their voluntary movements, should have answered. He ought to have thought the answer with that part of him that saw the lines of shadow passing across the bright steel surface of the rink below, that felt himself sinking down and down beneath the bright spot opposite… He could not have explained, but he knew it was so, and instantly there was he back on his balcony again withThe Rose and the Ringin his hand, and Jeannie on the rink. Madame Seiler clattering dishes in the kitchen, and himself all alone, lying in the sunshine. He knew that something inside him had been tremendously happy when his name was called and his hand touched in that intimate manner, and, now that the touch and the voice were gone, he felt something akin to what he felt when he was feverish, and Blessington had said "good-night" and left him. But then, he always knew that Blessington had only gone into the next room, and could be summoned. And he could not summon him who had called "Archie" to him. He had not the least doubt that it was Martin who had called, that it was Martin's hand that had been laid on his. But who was this dear person called "Martin," and where was Martin? Secure in the knowledge that it was Martin who had come to him, and touched him and called to him, he put down his book, and shut his eyes so that his feeling of being alone should be intensified.
"Martin," he whispered. "Oh, Martin!"
He lay there tense and excited, sure that Martin would come again. Then in a dim, child-like manner, not formulating anything to himself, but only feeling his way, he knew he had called wrong. He must call differently, if he hoped to have any reply, call from inside. But, the more earnestly he attempted to "call from inside," the further he got away from that "inside" mood, which he knew, but could not recapture.
"Oh, what rot!" he said at length, and picked upThe Rose and the Ringagain to ascertain whether Bulbo was really going to be executed on this second occasion when he piled his table on his bed and his chair on his table, and his hat-box on his chair, and peeped out of the window from his horrid cell, to see whether it was eight o'clock yet…
Every day, in this return of frost and sunshine, Archie felt stronger, and soon the desire to skate took firm hold of him. Oddly enough, the pleasant Dr. Dobie began to agree with him, and within a day or two of the time when Archie's desire to skate became a pressing need, Dr. Dobie sanctioned it, and Archie had a humiliating hour or two. He had seen Jeannie lean outwards, and announce the outside edge, he had seen Jeannie lean a little inwards and proclaim the inside edge and round she went in curves that Archie could not but envy. He had only got to lean outwards and inwards like that, and surely he was master of his curves. But he found that his curves were master of him, and tumbled him down instead, or would have done so if a kind Swiss on skates had not always been on hand to prevent any disaster of this kind. But then Jeannie had learned, so it seemed to Archie, by falling down, and he resented the hand that saved him from falling.
"Do let me fall down," he said. "I can't learn unless I fall down."
"Better not fall down, sir," said this amiable young man. "I hold you; you learn best so."
"But Jeannie didn't," said Archie.
"No; but she is a girl," whispered his Swiss.
"Oh, ought girls to fall down and not boys?" asked Archie, rather interested in this new difference between the sexes.
* * * * *
Archie was allowed, by the end of January, to skate for half an hour before lunch with his Swiss hovering over him like a friendly eagle, to have lunch with Jeannie seated side by side on a toboggan at the edge of the rink, and skate for half an hour again afterwards at the end of which time a second eagle appeared in the person of Blessington or his mother, and carried him off to the sleigh. Right on through half February lasted the golden frosty weather; then came a great snowfall, and with that the frost broke. The snow degenerated into rain, the wind veered again into the slack south, and the roofs dripped and the trees tossed their white burdens from them. But, as the snow melted, wonderful things happened in the earth at the summons of the suns of spring, for gentians pushed their lengthening stems up through the thinning crust, and put forth their star-like flowers, deep as the blue of night and brilliant as the blue of day. The call of the spring, though yet the snow-wreaths lingered, pierced through them, and the listening grasses and bulbs pricked up their little green ears above the soil. Wonderful as last spring had been, the first that Archie had ever consciously noticed, this Alpine Primavera was twice as magical, for winter was caught in her very arms, and warmed to life again. Morning by morning the pine-woods steamed like the hot flank of a horse, and when the mists cleared nature's great colour-box had been busy again with fresh greens, and more vivid reds on the tree-trunks, and weak, pale snowdrops and mountain crocuses shone like silver and gold in the sheltered hollows. A more tender blue took the place of the crystallized skies of winter, and for the barren, brilliant light of the January sun was exchanged a fruitful and caressing luminousness that flooded the world instead of merely looking down upon it. Soon from the lower slopes the snow was quite vanished, and instead of the tinkle of sleigh-bells there came from the pastures the deeper note from the bells of feeding cattle, which all winter long had been penned up in chalets, eating the dry cakes of last year's harvest of grass.
Archie had been lying in his balcony one morning writing an account of these things to Miss Bampton. His mother had gone back to England to take Jeannie home, but would be back at the end of the week, and in the absence of an instructor Archie's task was to write a long letter daily to somebody at home. This he enjoyed doing, for the search for words in which to express himself had begun to interest him, and he had just written: "If you listen very hard, you can almost hear the grass and the flowers fizzing. Is it the sap? It's like fizzing anyhow. That's what I mean."
As he paused at the end of his third page, he felt something in his hand that also reminded him of fizzing. There was that queer thrill and twitching in his fingers, which he recognized at once, and words, not searched for by him, but coming from some other source, began to trace themselves on the blank fourth page. To-day there were no preliminary scrawls, the firm, upright handwriting was coherent from the first.
"Archie, I've got through again," it wrote. "Isn't it fun? If you want a test ("Test?" thought Archie, "what's that?") you'll find a circle cut on the bark of the pine opposite the front-door. Dig in the earth just below it. There's a box and some things in it. I hid them."
A wave of conscious excitement came over the boy, and instantly his hand stopped writing.
"Oh, bother; it's stopped," he said to himself. "I wish I hadn't interrupted it."
But he had interrupted it, and, since he could not get back into that particular quiescence which, he had begun to see, always accompanied these manifestations, he could at least do what the writing suggested, and, slipping off his couch, he tip-toed downstairs in order not to let Blessington hear his exit.
There were two pine-trees, either of which might have been described as opposite the front-door, and he searched in vain round the first of these for any sign of the circle cut on the bark. Then, coming to the other, he at once saw, with a sudden beating of his heart, a rough circle cut in the bark just opposite his eyes. A grey ring of lichen had grown into it, making it so conspicuous that he wondered he had never noticed it before. Next moment he was down on his knees, grubbing up the loose earth directly below it, with the eager, absolute certainty of success. The earth came away very easily, and his hole was not yet a foot deep when he saw something white and shining at the bottom of it, and presently he drew out a small, round tin box, like that which stood on the table in his father's study, and held tobacco. He hastily filled the earth into his excavation again, and, undetected, tip-toed back to his balcony.
For a while the lid resisted his efforts to open it, but soon he got it loose and looked inside. On the top lay a folded piece of paper; below there was a stick of chocolate in lead paper, a pencil, a match-box, and a photograph of a boy about nine years old whom Archie instantly knew to be like himself. Then he opened the piece of folded paper, and saw words written on it in a hand he knew quite well:
"This is Martin Morris's," was the inscription, "and belongs to him alone, and not anybody else at all ever."
Archie read this, looked at the photograph again, and a flood of light poured in on his mind. It was no wonder that he had felt that Martin was friendly and affectionate, that Martin wanted to talk to him, that Martin told him of thecachehe had made, for to whom should he tell it but to his brother?
Yes: Martin was here, for Martin had written to him, had called him… And then, in a moment, more light flashed on him. Certainly Martin was alive, but he was not alive in the sense that his mother was alive or Blessington. In that sense Martin was dead. There was nothing in the least shocking or terrifying in the discovery, and it burst upon him as the sense of spring had done. It was just a natural thing, wonderfully beautiful, to find out for certain, as he felt he had found out, that there was close to him, always perhaps, and certainly at times, this presence of the brother whom he had never seen, but who in some way, not more inexplicable than the appearance of the blue gentians pricking up through the snow, could occasionally speak to him, calling him by name, or using his hand to write with.
A few days afterwards Lady Davidstow arrived back from England, and on the first evening of her return, after dusk had fallen, Archie was sitting on the floor against her knee in front of the one open fire-place in the house, where pine-logs fizzed and smouldered and burst into flame, and glowed into a core of heat. Sometimes, for that pleasant hour before bed-time, she read to him, but to-night there had been no reading, for she had been telling him of the week she had passed at home. They had moved up to London while she was there, and London was miry and foggy and cold.
"Altogether disgusting, dear," she said. "You don't want to go there, do you?"
"Not an atom," said Archie firmly. "I like this place better than any I have ever been in."
"I'm so glad, Archie. I was afraid you would dislike it after the frost went."
Archie was staring dreamily at the fire, and suddenly he knew that Martin was here, and he looked quickly round wondering if, by any new and lovely miracle, he should see the boy whose face was now familiar to him from the photograph. But there was nothing visible; only the firelight leaped on the wooden walls.
"What is it, Archie?" asked his mother.
Suddenly Archie felt that he could preserve his secret no longer. As on the day in church when he wanted his mother to share with him the pleasure of that glorious comedian, the man with the wagging beard, so now he wanted her to share with him the secret joy of Martin's presence.
"Mummy, I want to tell you about Martin," he said. "You know whom I mean: Martin, my brother."
"Archie, who has been telling you about Martin?" she asked.
Archie laughed.
"Why, Martin, of course. It's too lovely. Once he called me out loud, and he writes for me. He's written for me three times, once at home and twice here. I knew he was particularly here, the moment we got here. And last time he told me about what he had hidden under the pine-tree, and I found it. Don't you want to see it? I hid it away in the paper in my portmanteau. Oh, and what is a test? He said it was a test."
"A test? A test is a proof."
Archie laughed again.
"That makes sense," he said. "Now shall I show you the test? I kept it all together with what he wrote to me about it first."
He came back in a moment with his precious possession.
"Look, that's what he wrote on the paper of my letter to Miss Bampton," he said. "He said there was a circle cut on the pine-tree, and I found it, and I dug as he told me, and found this. Look! Isn't it lovely, and that's Martin's photograph, isn't it?"
It was impossible to question the validity of this evidence, and, indeed, Lady Davidstow had no desire to do so. For herself, she believed implicitly in the fact of life everlasting, without which the whole creation of God, with its pains and its agonies and its yearning and its love, becomes the cruellest of all sorry jests concocted by the omnipotent power of a mind infinitely brutal and cynical, who tortures the puppets He has created with unutterable anguish, or ravishes their souls with a joy as meaningless as dreams. Well she remembered Martin's cutting the circle on the pine-tree, but what its significance was he had never told her. But now, five years after his death, he had told it, she could not doubt, to the brother who had no normal remembrance of him. There they were, the little pathetic tokens of his childish secrecy, a pencil, a piece of chocolate, a photograph, and, above all, the well-formed, upright handwriting identical with that of the message traced on the last page of Archie's unsent letter. How it happened, what was the strange mechanism that fashioned by material means this mysterious communication between the living and the dead she had no idea, but of its having happened she had no doubt.
She turned these relics over, she kissed the handwriting so long buried, and tears of tender amazement rose in her eyes.
"Oh Archie, my darling," she said. "You lucky boy!"
"Aren't I?" said Archie. "But does Martin never write to you?"
"No, dear; I suppose he cannot."
"And why is he so particularly here?" demanded Archie.
She paused a moment.
"He died here," she said.
"In this house?" asked he. "Which room?"
"Blessington's."
Archie gave a great sigh.
"Oh, mummy, do let me have that room instead of mine!" he said.
Archie was precariously perched on the side of his little Una-rigged, red-sailed boat, looking with dancing blue eyes at the rocky coast all smothered in billows and sunlit spray some quarter of a mile ahead, and wondering if he would be able to make the harbour of Silorno on this tack. He wondered also what was the best thing to do if he could not. There seemed to be two alternatives, the one to beat out to sea again and come in on another tack, the other to run before the wind to the head of the bay, away to the right, where he knew there was a sandy beach, tumble himself out as best he might, and, he was afraid, see his belovedAmphitritebeing pounded to bits by the rollers; for, with all his optimism, he could not picture himself hauling her up out of harm's way. But even this seemed preferable to the other alternative, for to beat out again in such a sea seemed really a challenge to the elements to swamp him, in which case he was like to lose theAmphitriteand his own life as well.
The wind was blowing with all the violence of a summer Italian gale straight down the bay from the open sea. A high wall of rock against which the breakers smashed themselves, and would smash anything else that rode them, was in front of him; then came the narrow opening into Silorno harbour for which he was making, after which the rocks, on the top of which ran the road to Santa Margharita, continued right up to the head of the bay. It had been rough when he started to sail there, in order to get some cigarettes, which now were stowed away in his coat which he had wrapped round them and placed where it would receive as small a share as possible of the spray that from time to time fell in a solid sheet into the boat. That seemed almost the most important thing of all, to keep the cigarettes dry, for it would be too futile to have taken all this trouble, and so greatly have ventured himself and hisAmphitrite, if at the end the cigarettes should prove to be a mash of tobacco and salt water, for they were only in a cardboard box. And next in importance came the need of demonstrating to his mother and Harry and Helena and Jessie that he had been perfectly wise and prudent in sailing across to Santa Margharita, in spite of their land-lubber fears, in a freshening gale and a lumpy sea, in order to get these Egyptian cigarettes instead of the despised Italian brand. He made no doubt that the whole party of them were at this moment watching him through glasses from the terraced garden of the Castello that sat perched at the top of the steep, olive-clothed hill in front of him, and he spared a second to wave a hand in their direction in case they were there. But he did it in a rather hurried manner, for he wanted that hand to be ready to loosen the sheet in case any more wind was on its way to him, and the other hand must retain its hold on the tiller.
Archie was clad in a jersey stained and whitened with salt-water, and the rest of his attire consisted of grey flannel trousers. His coat was defending to its last dry stitch the trophy of cigarettes; his shoes he had put under his coat, for it was just as well to keep them dry, while, if by any chance he had to swim, they would be of no use to him either dry or wet. The sleeves of his jersey rolled up nearly to his shoulder, disclosed slim, strong arms, incredibly browned with a month of sea-bathing, and his sockless feet were of the same fine tan of constant exposure. His hair, thick and dripping from the spray, had for the present lost its tawny curliness, and he had to throw back his head from time to time, in order to keep it out of his eyes. And in his mind there was the same wildness of out-of-doors rapture that characterized the youth of his supple body: he could have laughed with pleasure at the mere fact of this doubtful battle between himself and the wind-maddened sea. But all the time in some secret chamber of his brain there sat, so to speak, a steadfast and keen observer, who was making notes with all his might, and pushing them down into the cool caves of memory, to be brought forth (in case Archie came safely to land) from their cold storage, and fitted with words which should reproduce the exultation of wind and sun and sea. And in a chamber more secret yet, a chamber not in his brain but in his heart, sat the knowledge that among the others his second cousin, Helena Vautier, in particular was surely looking at him from the terraced garden high above the cliff. She should see (and, for that matter, so should her sister Jessie) how to handle a boat. She had been strong in her dissuasion of his starting at all, and that, if Archie was quite honest with himself, was one of the principal reasons why he had insisted on doing so. She had mentioned casually the other day that there was nothing in the world she liked better than the careless "go-to-the-deuce" attitude towards danger which to her represented manliness, and Archie had been only too delighted to give her this vigorous exhibition of it. But it tremendously pleased him that, on his announcement of his intention to go across the bay, she should have so strenuously dissuaded him. To his mind that conveyed the impression that she liked him as much as she liked exhibitions of manliness.
He was already opposite the opening into the harbour and still several hundred yards distant, and for the time all the attention of the observer who some day was going to put this experience into words, and of the other observer who knew that Helena was watching him, was diverted to the job that engaged his more superficial self. But that part of him, intent and eager though it was on the hazard that lay before it, sang and shouted with glee at the fact that he was alone out here on the sea. For this very sane and healthy personage, Archie Morris, might almost be described as an aqua-maniac, so intense was his passion for that gladdest and most glorious creature of God. He did not want to be a sailor, for a sailor inhabited an impregnable fort which, though surrounded by sea, was still impenetrably removed from it, and defied it by means of colossal cylinders and pounding pistons and steel sides. Best of all was to be swimming in the sea, but not far removed from that was to coax and wheedle the sea through the medium of a big sail and a tiny boat: being alone with the sea, as with all lovers, was necessary to the full realization of passion. A river was a fair substitute for the sea or a lake; but there had to be a quantity of water. He loved to dive, and open his eyes under water, so as to see the sun shining through it. That was a very early passion, dating from the time when he had stepped out of a boat in his anxiety about a pike that was on the end of his line…
Then, for a moment, all other considerations were subordinated to keen physical activity. The wind was sweeping him across the mouth of the harbour, and he had either to put about at once to avoid being taken onto the rocks at its northern end, or, risking being swamped, put his helm even harder a-port, and tighten his sheet. With his habit of swift decision, he determined to go for it, and, throwing his leg across the tiller, he pulled on his sheet with both hands. The spray from the waves that broke themselves on the rocks fell solid and drenched him, but next moment, with but a yard or two to spare, he skimmed by them into the broadening harbour. There the promontory on which the Castello stood came between him and the wind, his sail flapped idly, and in dead calm he picked up his sculls to row theAmphitriteto her anchorage. But, before he took them up, he laughed aloud.
"Gosh, what sport!" he said.
* * * * *
The anchorage of theAmphitritelay in a bay not far from the entrance to the harbour, screened by the steep-climbing olive groves belonging to this Castello of Silorno which Archie's mother had taken for the months of May and June: Silorno itself, that incredibly picturesque huddle of pink and yellow walls, of campaniles, and lacemakers, who, with bright coloured kerchiefs over their comely heads, plied their wooden bobbins all day in the shade of its narrow streets, rose, roof over roof, at the head of the harbour. A big cobbled piazza sloped down to the quay wall where sailors chatted and dozed in the shadow all day, putting to sea for their night-fishing by the light of flares about the time of sunset. The village was impenetrable to wheeled traffic, for the road along the bay came to an end at its outskirts, and thereafter became a narrow cobbled track, built in steps where the steepness of its streets demanded. Round the town rose an amphitheatre of hills broken only by the low saddle, where the final promontory on which the Castello stood swam out seawards in three wooded humps of hills. And, sitting here, you could observe on days like these the breakers crashing on the reefs to the right, where the seas rolled in from the open Mediterranean, while the land-locked harbour, into which Archie had just brought his boat, lay smooth as a mirror at your feet towards the left. Straight in front ran the ascending path that passed below the Castello to the head of the promontory, where enlightened Italian enterprise was building an execrable and totally useless lighthouse to supplant the little Madonna chapel that had stood there for centuries.
Archie took down his sail, anchored theAmphitrite, and punted himself across in a small boat to the landing-stage at the foot of the hill on which the Castello stood. Here the trees stood untroubled by the gale that poured high over them from the south, though on the other side of the harbour the wind roared in the olives, and turned their green to the grey of the underleaf, and the great surges beat and burst on the rocks he had narrowly avoided. But here that tumultuous stir was unfelt, and the resinous smell of pines and the clean odour of the eucalyptus-trees hung in the warm and sheltered air. Out of that denser shade he passed into the belt of olives that grew higher on the slope, mixed with angled and contorted fig-trees, where the fruit was already beginning to swell and ripen. Above rose the great grey bastion of the retaining fortress wall, tufted with stone-crop and valerian that was rooted in the crevices, and above that again was spread the umbrella of the stone-pine that grew at the corner of the garden. The path he followed wound round the base of this wall and passed below its easterly side, where he came into the blast of the warm south wind again that swept along the face of the Castello, and made the cypresses bend and buckle like fishing-rods which feel the jerk and pull of some hooked giant of the waters. The hillside here plunged very precipitously downwards to the bay three hundred feet below, wrinkled with waves, and feathered with foam, and, lover of the sea though he was, he felt content to observe that tumult of windy water. Not a sail was visible right across to the farther shore of the gulf, and to-night there would be no illumination of the fishing-boats that in calm weather rode out there, twinkling and populous as a town. But he stood looking at the sea a moment before he turned into the narrow stone passage that led to the gate of the house, as a man may look with love on his horse that, unruly and obstreperous, has yet carried him so gallantly.
A girl came up the cobbled way from the town just as he turned in. She had on a very simple linen dress that the wind blew close to her body, and a flapping linen sunbonnet, tied below her chin, to prevent the wind capturing it. She was tall and slight, moved easily, as with a boyish carelessness; a very pleasant face, also boyish and quite plain, peered from under her flapping bonnet. Her hands were noticeable: they were large but extremely well shaped, and the fingers showed both perception and efficiency. It may be remarked that Archie had never noticed her hands at all.
"Hullo, Jess," said he. "I'm just back. Lord, I've had such a ripping afternoon. And the cigarettes are quite dry. Where have you been?"
"Just down into Silorno. Cousin Marion wanted a telegram sent about their sleeping-berths to-morrow."
Archie frowned. He had noticed that Jessie was often sent on errands.People who can absolutely be relied on usually are.
"I should have thought my mother might have sent Pasqualino," he observed.
The girl laughed.
"Oh, she wanted to, but I said I would go instead. You see, Cousin Marion and Helena were getting in what might be called rather a state about you. I tried to infect them with my own calm, but they wouldn't catch it. So I thought a little walk would be pleasant."
"Oh, was Helena frightened?" asked Archie rather greedily.
"Yes. So was Cousin Marion. I wasn't."
"Then you were beastly unsympathetic. I had an awful shave getting into the harbour," remarked Archie.
"But you knew what you were about, and I didn't, nor did Helena. So I preferred to have confidence in you and go for a walk, rather than observe you in what looked remarkably like danger."
Archie had walked up from the landing-stage with his shoes and his coat under his arm. The coat was too wet to put on, so he dusted his feet with it, and resumed his shoes.
"Oh, a ripping afternoon," he said again.
The sound of the clanging gate into the Castello was heard out in the garden, and as they walked up the dim stone-flagged passage that led out into it, another girl came running in. She, like her sister, was tall and slight, but there the resemblance altogether ended. A delicate, small-featured face, entirely feminine, gleamed below yellow hair; her eyes, set rather wide apart, giving her an adorably childish look, opened very widely below their dark eyelashes. Beside her, Jessie looked somewhat like a well-bred plough-boy.
"Oh, Archie!" she cried. "How horribly rash of you! Your mother and I have had a terrible half-hour."
"I bring you cigarettes to soothe your disordered nerves," said Archie sententiously. "I am happy to say that they are dry, though I am not."
Jessie had walked on, with that pleasant expression on her face that might or might not be a smile, and the two were left alone for a moment.
"As if I cared about the cigarettes," she said.
"You did this morning. But you weren't really anxious, were you?"
"Indeed I was. You were naughty to sail back in this gale. Do be good now and change your clothes at once. I will bring you some fresh tea into the garden. Cousin Marion and I have had tea. We drank cup after cup to fortify ourselves, and looked over the wall at your boat between each sip. Then we trembled and had another sip. Before you got past that horrid rock, we had drained the teapot and broken our chairs with our tremblings."
The strict veracity of this entertaining summary did not of course concern Archie; it was sufficient that it had Helena's light and picturesque touch. It made a tableau that caused him to smile to himself as he changed his shirt, that was now stiffening with salt, and put on a pair of socks over his tanned feet. All this he did hurriedly, for it was the last evening, so he told himself, that they would all be together, by which he really meant that it was the last evening on which Helena would be here, since to-morrow, at break of dawn, she and his mother would start for England, leaving Jessie, Harry Travers, and himself to follow after another fortnight. When, a week before, that scheme had been suggested, it seemed to Archie the most admirable of plans, since, though his mother and Helena would be gone, he would secure another fortnight of intercourse with his beloved sea instead of inhabiting that smoky cave known as London. But since then Helena had begun to dawn on him, though as yet it would be an exaggeration to say that he was in love with her. But she was dawning, her light illuminated the sky above the horizon, and, if the plan was to be suggested again to him in his present attitude of attracted expectancy, it is probable that he would have voted for London and Helena, rather than an extension of his days at the Castello.
The scheme had originally been Helena's, and, like all her plans, had been exceedingly well thought out, before it was produced in the guise of an impulse, prompted by kindliness and thought for others. It was, when edited as an impulse, of the simplest and most considerate sort. The hot weather did not really suit Cousin Marion, so why should not Cousin Marion go back to England with herself, Helena, as travelling companion? Of course Silorno was the most delicious place, and she would be ever so sorry to go, but certainly Cousin Marion felt the heat, and, though she was far too unselfish to suggest breaking up the party, she would be glad to go northwards earlier than the end of June, when her two months' tenancy expired.
Helena had produced this plan to Archie one morning as they sat after breakfast under the stone-pine.
"But my mother would not in the least mind going home alone, if she preferred to go before the end of June," he said.
Helena shook her head.
"Oh, I know she would say she didn't mind," she said, "or she would stop on in spite of her headaches sooner than break up the party—"
"Has she been having headaches?" asked Archie.
"Yes, but you mustn't know that. She told me not to tell any one," saidHelena, with complete self-possession. "Promise, Archie."
"All right."
Helena felt quite safe now.
"So she must go back sooner than at the end of June," she continued, "and clearly I am the right person to go with her, for she hates travelling alone."
"Oh, we'll all go then," said Archie.
"It isn't the least necessary. Jessie or I must go with her, for she certainly wouldn't hear of your going, and Jessie is enjoying this so much that I couldn't bear that she should have her days here cut short. So it's for me to go."
"That's awfully good of you," said he, only as yet half convinced.
"It isn't the least. It's a necessity, though you are so kind as to make a virtue of it. And then there's this as well. Cousin Marion would never consent to go, if she thought it was for her sake that I was going with her. So you must go to her, and say you think that it's me whom the heat doesn't suit, and you will see if she doesn't say at once that she will go back with me. And the real reason for her going will be our secret, just yours and mine."
Archie looked at her for a moment in silence, and the silence was one of unspoken admiration. Somehow this kindly thoughtful plan kindled his appreciation of her beauty: her beauty took on a tenderer and more touching look. Before now, it had vaguely occurred to him that, of the two sisters, it was Jessie who most gave up her own way to serve the ways of others; but this secret of Helena's made him feel that he had done her an injustice.
"But I don't want you to give up your time here if you enjoy it," he said.
"Ah, don't make me tell a fib, and say that I don't enjoy it," she said. "I will if you press me. I'll say it bores me frightfully, sooner than give up my plan."
"Well, I think it's wonderfully kind of you," he said. "Now I'm to tell my mother that you are feeling the heat, and see what she says. Is that it?"
"Yes, just that," said Helena.
Archie had strolled indoors to put this plan to the test, and before he returned a quarter of an hour later with his mother Helena had approved of her own ingenuity very warmly. She had, if her scheme succeeded, secured for herself an additional fortnight of the London season, for she and Jessie were, for the present, going to make their home with their cousins and she was already satisfied that her unselfishness had made a considerable impression on Archie. This was the most important thing: hitherto she felt she had failed to make her mark, so to speak. He was on excellent friendly terms with her, just as he was with Jessie, but she wanted (or at any rate wished for) something more than that. It was not that she wanted him to flirt with her; she had much more serious ends in view. She wanted (and here was her perspicacity) to dazzle his eyes by means of touching his heart, for she guessed, with clear-sighted vision, that he was the kind of young man who, if he did not mean everything, would mean nothing, and she believed that she could not entangle his affection by mere superficial appeals. And, indeed, she was not a flirt herself; she was poor, and clever, and attractive, and she proposed to use her cleverness and attraction in the legitimate pursuit of securing a husband who was not poor. That Archie was now Lord Davidstow, and at his father's death would be Lord Tintagel, was in his favour, and to make an impression on him, and then to go self-sacrificingly away, seemed to her a very promising manoeuvre. She was not in the least afraid of leaving Jessie with him, for, with her habitual adroitness, she had conveyed to her sister, by little sighs, glances, and words that seemed to escape from her lips unawares, what her design (yet without making it appear a design) on Archie was. She had but allowed her feelings, all unconsciously, to betray themselves, as when she said "Darling, wouldn't it be lovely to be Archie's sister, instead of only cousin?" That put it quite plainly enough, and she felt sure that Jessie understood. And, in addition to this impregnable safeguard of Jessie's loyalty, she was satisfied that Jessie's friendliness with Archie was of the most unsentimental character. Indeed, to speak of her sense of security with regard to Jessie would be a labouring of the point: she was so secure that her security scarcely struck her, any more than the security of a house consciously strikes its inhabitant.
* * * * *
The week that had passed between the acceptance of her plan and this, the last night of her stay at Silorno, confirmed the soundness of her strategy. Archie's frank friendliness towards herself had undergone a subtle change, while his relations with her sister remained precisely on the same calm tableland of comradeship. But below his comradeship with herself, like the sun glowing faintly through a mist without heat at present, but with penetration of light, she knew that there was growing an emotional brightness. It was with light and with a nameless quickening that his eye dwelt on her, and now as they sat in the deep dusk of the garden, illumined only by the stars that twinkled like minute golden oranges in the boughs of the stone-pine, she knew that he was looking at the pale wraith of her face, which was all the starlight left her with, in a manner that was not yet a week old. It was so dark, here in the deep shade, that she saw nothing of his sun-tanned face beyond a featureless oval, but when, from time to time, he drew on his cigarette, it leaped into distinctness. There was emotion there, or, at any rate, the stuff from which emotion is made; there was need, not yet wholly conscious of itself, but waiting, like buried treasure, to be released.
And on her side, also, something was astir behind her calculated plan. She felt sorry, until the wisdom of her project laid its calming hand upon her again, that she was being so unselfish as to accompany Cousin Marion back to town. It would have been extraordinarily pleasant to sit here many times more with Archie, and both watch and take part in the growth of the situation of which the seed had been deliberately planted by herself. It was but a weak little spike as yet, but undeniably there was the potentiality of growth in it.
Suddenly his face leapt into light, as he struck a match, and the gain of a fortnight's London season seemed to her insignificant. And the success of her plan, the wisdom of which she still endorsed, was but a frigid triumph, for she felt to a degree yet unknown to her his personal charm.
"Oh, Archie, I wish I wasn't going away," she said. "It has been a nice time. I wish—no, I suppose that's selfish of me."
"I want to know what is selfish of you," said he.
"Do you? Well, as it's our last evening you shall. I wish I thought you would miss me more."
He moved just a shade closer to her.
"Oh, I shall miss you quite enough," he said.
She laughed.
"I don't think you will," she said. "You'll have your bathing and your boating and your writing. I expect you will have a very jolly time."
He seemed to think over this.
"Yes, I shall have all those things," he said. "And I like them. Why shouldn't I? But—no, like you, I won't say that."
"But I did," she remarked.
"Well, I will too. I shall miss you much more than I should have missed you if you had gone away a week ago."
She, too, hesitated a moment. Then very coolly she replied:
"Thank you very much."
There was calculation in that: she had thought over her polite, chilly manner swiftly but carefully. And she had calculated rightly. He chucked away the cigarette he had only just lit.
"Helena, have I offended you?" he asked. "Why do you speak like that?"
Again she traversed a second's swift thought.
"Of course you haven't offended me," she said lightly. "You'll have to try harder than that if you want to offend me. My dear, do try again. Try to make me feel hurt."
Archie was a little excited. There was some small intimate contest going on, that affected him physically, with secret delight, just as he was affected in his limbs by some cross-current to the direction of his swimming, or in his brain by the tussle for the word he wanted when he was writing. He was sparring with something dear to him.
"Try to hurt me," she said softly.
"Very well," said he. "I'm glad you're going away to-morrow. Will that do?"
She laughed again.
"It would do excellently well if you meant it," she said. "But you don't mean it."
"You're very hard to please," said he.
"Not in the least. If you want to please me, say that you'll be very glad to see me again in a few weeks."
"I certainly shall, but I shan't say it. You know it quite well enough without my assurance."
She leaned forward a little.
"But say it all the same, Archie," she said. "Say it quite out loud."
Archie threw back his head and shouted at the stone-pine.
"I shall be very glad to see you again in—what was it?—in a few weeks," he cried.
"Ah, that is nice of you. No, I'm not sure that it's nice, because you've brought Jessie and Mr. Harry out into the garden."
That seemed to be the case, for undeniably the two moved out into the bright square of light cast from the lit passage within. Archie got up swiftly and suddenly, with a bubble of laughter.
"Oh, let's be like the garden scene inFaust," he whispered. "Don't you know, when the two couples wander about? Ah, they've seen us: they don't do that in well-conducted opera."
This was true enough, for immediately Helena's name was called by her sister. She gave a little sigh.
"Yes, darling," she said.
"Cousin Marion thinks it's time you went to bed," said Jessie. "And isArchie there too? She wants to see him."
Archie and Helena exchanged a quick glance in the darkness. They knew it, rather than saw it: Helena, at any rate, was quite certain of it.
"I must go in then," he said. "Your fault for making me shout."