I have been here before,But when or how I cannot tell.Sudden Light.
I have been here before,But when or how I cannot tell.Sudden Light.
I have been here before,But when or how I cannot tell.Sudden Light.
I have been here before,
But when or how I cannot tell.
Sudden Light.
"My dearest dear, will you come for a little walk?"
"Muy señora mia, with all the pleasure in life."
Lettice, who was stooping over a new kitten which she had adopted since the departure of Geraldine, straightened herself and looked at Gardiner with a discouraging expression. They were at the back of the house; she had been about to climb the steep hill orchard to watch the sunset when her minute friend charged out of the kitchen door, on her weak little legs no thicker than matches, with her tiny triangular tail flourishing in the air. Lettice had not, however, expected her host to follow directly on the kitten's heels.
He stood there laughing. "It's time for your evening constitutional. You haven't been out once since Denis went off. He left you in my charge; I shan't feel I'm doing my duty if I don't accept your very pressing invitation."
"I was not speaking to you," said Lettice deliberately.
He only laughed again.
"I know that; you never do speak to a Christian if you can possibly get out of it, do you? Give me that atom. No, I won't hurt her; I've some milk for her here—she was just going to drink it when she heard your welcome footstep and affection was too much for her. Come on, vidita mia."
Dexterously, even tenderly, he detached the clinging claws from Lettice's shoulder, and set down the mite at the saucer. The little head nodded over it, sniffing tentatively, and thenout came a minute pink tongue and she began to lap, crouching down and crooning a contented purr. Lettice liked the way Gardiner lifted out a paw which had insinuated itself into the saucer, and stroked one finger down four inches of tabby spine. Then he looked up.
"As a matter of fact, I've an errand on hand, at the farm where we get our milk. Will you come with me? I wish you would. I'm bored of my own company."
"Is it far?" asked Lettice defensively.
"Mile. Don't come if you're fagged, but sacrifice yourself to oblige a fellow-creature if it's only laziness—or unsociability."
"Well," said Lettice, permitting herself the hint of a smile. She liked again the quick way he picked himself up, taking her at her word to the instant.
"Come on, then. There's only just time; I've masses of letters to write before the post goes, and I know you aren't going to be hurried."
For all his quickness (and he was instinctively quick and light in every movement), Lettice found him a more considerate companion than Denis, who walked her off her legs. Their way led up through the steep hill orchard to the grassy hill-side above. Once he stopped and turned to help her over the rough ground, but when she silently avoided seeing his extended hand, he did not offer it again. Denis, rooted in his old-fashioned courtesy, had never learned to leave her alone. This was a very different type of mind; less restful, because more perceptive. When they reached the crest of the hill he pulled up. Lettice tried to persuade herself it was not done to let her get her breath, but she was quite sure it was.
"See that hedge over there?" he said, pointing across the expanse of level silvery grass. "Well, you'd never think it, but beyond that it's nothing but arable flats, beet and cabbages and potatoes, all the way to Rochehaut. Anything duller you can't imagine. And yet under this very spot where we're standing there's a cave that's never been explored, running Lord knows how deep into the hill.Stalactites and stalagmites and an underground river. I went in once with my torch, but I had to come back—too unsafe. Some day I'll have that place shored up and made accessible, and charge five francs for admission, like the caves of Han. Leg-up for the Bellevue, what? I like this sort of mixed grill, you know, wild and tame together—I like all this country. No, not that way—there's some view from the crucifix you see against the sky-line, but we haven't time for it to-night. Along here, through the wood."
Lettice looked round, before following him into the copse of starveling firs, and gorse, and ragged heather. From where they stood, a little below the crucifix, they could not see the valley; only the silvery undulating hill-side, and the evening sky, and the grasses leaning sidelong in the wind. It was lonely and bare enough to please her. "Are you going to stop here?" she asked.
"I am.D.V.What? Oh yes, I'm pious in my way, especially when I get off alone among these hills. I believe I belong here—sort of ancestral feeling; talking of which, I'll show you something rather queer at the farm when we get there. Yes, I'm going to stay, if I'm let." He walked on, twirling his stick in the air. "Last time I was up here it was with Miss O'Connor," he added irrelevantly.
Lettice was a good deal surprised; she thought she understood now why he had not wished to come alone. She had not been told, but she knew, as well from his looks as from Dorothea's headlong flight, that the explosion had come. Gardiner might keep up his laugh, that eternal laugh which grated on a sensitive ear like the squeaking of a pen, but he could not hide the change in his features, pinched and sharpened by suffering. Suffering—yes—pain: physical pain, that was what his face betrayed: not grief. His dark eyes—they were, the poet decided, like the depths of a pine-wood: dark blackish-brown, with undertones of dark green—were like those of a dog that has been run over. No one else seemed to notice anything wrong; at the pension one woman had remarked casually that Mr. Gardiner was looking seedy, that was all; but then no one but Lettice held the key.
If his frankness surprised her, it surprised himself more, for he had by no means intended to mention Dorothea. He sheered off the subject in a hurry. "I've been up here most evenings lately," he said. "Madame Hasquin has a bureau on which I've set my heart; she means me to have it in the end, but I can't get her to terms. No, it's not the money, it's the fun—sheer delight in bargaining. I don't mind. It's rather jolly up here in the evenings, you get the sunset; and it's soul-refreshingly lonely. This wood—you'd never guess there was a house within five minutes, would you? Stand still a moment."
He laid his hand on her arm to detain her, and the silence fell on them like a pall. Not a leaf stirred; the firs raised their black spikes rigid against the sky, some erect, some doubled and contorted like ogres. Brambles, crouching low, thrust out long stealthy clutching claws across the track. The sky was golden, and gold were the strips of water lying in the ruts, winding away to the open hill and safety; but the wood was dark, dark, and already in its depths, here and there, a glow-worm had lit its tiny keen speck of unearthly fire, glass-green, steady, burning but unconsumed. "That's the way to the cave," murmured Gardiner, his voice dropping, his grip tightening on her arm. "Cosas de brujas—witches, I mean. Never tell me a wood isn't alive!"
He meant it. Lettice, who professed to be stolid, found herself responding to his fancy with an involuntary thrill. Therewassomething wrong about the place; it had its finger on its lip; it seemed to hold a secret of its own, to threaten them with it, to jeer at their unforeseeing ignorance.
The silence was broken by a sudden outburst of merry childish laughter and the sharp barks of a dog. Gardiner laughed too, releasing her. "And now come on. Round this corner—mind the gate, it'll pinch your fingers, better let me. There: what do you think of that?"
They were clear of the wood and out on the open hill-side, looking down into a valley, a green crease among velvet-green hills softly molded, falling away to a line of trees, among which tinkled the crystal cascades of a brook. Onthe upward slope beyond rose a group of buildings. A round squat tower, a line of loopholed wall; the low white front of a dwelling-house, rising among golden ricks; the flickering brightness of a bonfire, a tall, slender ribbon of golden incandescence, burning in a golden fume, gilding the dark branches of the orchard, loosing flakes of flame and drifts of lavender-gray smoke into the lavender-blue of the sky. Two children and a dog were dancing round it, feeding it with masses of golden bracken; it was their laughter which had broken into the enchanted wood.
"When the Bellevue started life as a convent, that was the convent farm," said Gardiner. "Fortified—Lord, yes, they needed forts in those days; it dates from Spanish times. Didn't you know that? There's not much of the old stuff left in my Bellevue, bar the gateway and thesalle, which is substantially the old refectory. But that old tower down there is pretty much as it was in the beginning. Ferme de la Croix, they call it; Convent of the Holy Cross, you'd say, but I don't myself believe that's the origin of the name. Come on down and I'll show you."
Lettice had not contributed much in words to the conversation, but she had done her part for all that, in following the quick turns of his mind. They went down, crossed a bridge built of slabs of uncut stone, and were greeted at the door by a woman of fifty who looked seventy. She had not a tooth in her head; it was hard to believe she was the mother and not the grandmother of the two tow-headed children. "Eh, monsieur, quelles nouvelles?" But the sweetness of her smile redeemed the plainness of her face.
Gardiner followed her down a white passage, not one line of which was true, into a low-pitched, pleasant living-room, with scarlet geraniums in the window. There beside the open hearth stood the bureau, black as bog oak and richly carved, with shining brass handles on drawers that slipped in and out at the touch of a finger. Madame chattered in her abominable Walloon French, Gardiner laughed and argued back; it was sadly plain to Lettice, who could distinguish such niceties, that he had picked up the accent ofthe country. There are disadvantages in being imitative. They came to the question of price, and Lettice, feeling herselfde trop, withdrew to the open door. She waited there, between rose and crimson hollyhocks, making love to a lean flanked sandy cat who rushed effusively out of the stable-yard, and reared herself on hind legs to press her hard head against the visitor's hand. The children had disappeared, but their voices were heard in the orchard. In the west, soft bluish clouds were floating on lakes of burning rose. A big star was born above the dark spires of the enchanted wood, keen silver in the faint and fading gold.
Gardiner came out in high good-humor. "You've brought me luck," he said. "Madame's given in at last. I've had my eye on the bureau ever since the first time I came up here—haven't I, madame? And now, when's the four-poster coming? When I've been at you about it for another couple of years—is that the idea?"
"Jamis, ja-mais," said madame, vigorously shaking her head, laughing all over her wrinkles. "Non, monsieur, non. Je tiens à mon lit, savez-vous!"
"Et moi aussi, j'y tiens, et je vas l'avoir, savez-vous?" Gardiner laughed back, cheerfully ungrammatical. He laid his hand again on Lettice's arm—a small elegant brown hand: in nothing was he more un-English than in the shape and size of his hands and feet: Lettice looked down on it with an insulted expression which was quite wasted, as he wheeled her round to face the house—"Here's what I said I'd show you; it really is rather queer. That stone above the arch—do you see?"
The farm had a square-shouldered doorway; the headpiece was a single massive block of stone. Deep carved thereon, in the same old-fashioned numerals which appeared on the lintel of the Bellevue, was the same date: 1548. Above the date was lettering, moss-grown and indistinct.
"Can you read it?" asked Gardiner.
Was there anything requiring eyes which Lettice could not read? "Manuel de la Cruz," she spelt out.
"Cruz," Gardiner corrected her, giving to the "z" its softCastilian lisp. "Now I do not in the least believe the convent, and consequently this farm, was dedicated to the Holy Cross. I believe it was named for its founder. But the odd part of the story is that it's my name as well. My mother was half Spanish—born Florentina de la Cruz; and I'm called after her: Henry de la Cruz Gardiner."
"Well, that is queer," said Lettice, for once with conviction.
"Isn't it? There aren't so many traces left of the Spanish occupation; I call it something of a coincidence that that should have survived, and that I should come on it—should actually take over and settle down in the house built by my namesake. Of course it's a not uncommon name in Spain, but it does set one thinking. And see here, too." He dragged her across to the tower. The gateway was half ruinous; one of the jambs had fallen, bringing some of the stones along with it, and others seemed ready to follow. "No, this isn't war's alarms, though as a matter of fact I have found a cannon ball embedded in the barn. Jules backed the engine into it the other day. This lintel's all cock-eye, but you can still see the cross and initials—can you?—carved on the end here." He was tracing out the mark.
"Take care!" said Lettice suddenly.
She was too late. The stone above—perhaps he had brushed against it; at any rate, it settled down, quietly and inexorably, grinding his hand between itself and the block below. Lettice's arm sprang out; she could be quick on occasion, but he was quicker still. "No! keep off!" he cried out, instantly fending her off, shouldering her out of the way; and in the same breath he inserted the point of his stick into the crevice. A very slight leverage, and the upper stone tipped and fell to the ground, in a shower of dust and rubble. He drew away his hand and stepped back. "They ought to have that seen to, I'll warn madame," he said. "It's jolly dangerous, with those kids about."
"You've hurt yourself," said Lettice.
"Yes, I've done myself proud this time," he said, andcoolly put his hand behind his back. "Don't look at it, it isn't pretty. I'll cut in and get some warm water out of madame, and do it up."
He turned and walked off to the house. Unfortunately, in turning he forgot that his hand was behind him, and Lettice saw it. It was dripping blood; he left his trail across the golden straw to the door. Lettice stayed where she was. She was not going where she was not wanted. She felt a little sick; not for the sight of blood, but in sympathy with him. She had seen him change color. Yet he was cool enough; she could hear his voice inside, answering madame's exclamation as lightly as ever. Presently he came out again, with a white-bandaged paw, and a face not much less pallid than the linen.
"Thanks so much for not fussing," he said. "I had a gay ten minutes with madame; I thought she was going to embrace me. Let's get on home now, do you mind? All this bobbery has taken the dickens of a time, and I've masses of things still to do before dinner."
Lettice fell in beside him without a word. For once in her life, she walked fast. Gardiner was silent too, twirling his stick in his left hand instead of the right. They had reached the hill of the crucifix, and were descending the orchard, before Lettice opened her lips.
"You won't be able to write your letters. How will you manage?"
He shrugged his shoulders. "Make shift with my left hand, I suppose."
"You'd better let me do them for you."
"It's nearly eight o'clock. Time for you to have your supper and go to by-by."
"I don't always go to bed at nine," said Lettice.
"Would you really be so good as to do it, for once?"
"Of course."
"Servidor de ustéd, señorita," said Gardiner, "que sus piés besa—your servant, madam, who kisses your feet: I don't know why I want to talk Spanish to you, but I undoubtedly do—I shall be inexpressibly grateful."
Hark! I am called; my little spirit, see,Sits in a foggy cloud, and stays for me.Macbeth.
Hark! I am called; my little spirit, see,Sits in a foggy cloud, and stays for me.Macbeth.
Hark! I am called; my little spirit, see,Sits in a foggy cloud, and stays for me.Macbeth.
Hark! I am called; my little spirit, see,
Sits in a foggy cloud, and stays for me.
Macbeth.
Sydney Wandesforde, Denis's partner, was a big, heavy-featured, heavily built man, whose appearance nobody could have called aristocratic. Plutocratic was more like it. There had been patent pills on the distaff side of his ancestry, and unfortunately he had taken after them, instead of after the belted earls of the paternal line. He had, however, the easy manners, the clean movements, the soft voice of his class, and if he was plain he looked able.
He had never got beyond surnames with Denis; which meant that he had never met the soft side of that pugnacious Irish tongue. Denis was Haus-engel, Strassteufel, a lamb to his friends, a lion abroad. There were moments when Wandesforde thought him the most irritating man on the face of the globe; but he bore with it, never coming to a quarrel, because he liked and valued his partner too much to let him go. At the time of their first meeting, Denis had spent every penny he possessed, and had nothing to put into the partnership except his brains, and an aeroplane which at that date (1907) couldn't be induced to quit the ground. Yet the agreement was drawn as between equals, and Wandesforde claimed not more but less control than in an ordinary partnership. Why? Because he was shrewd enough to see that Denis would never work as a subordinate; and because, as aforesaid, he valued his partner too much to give him any excuse for throwing up his work and going off in a huff of outraged independence, as he would have done on the least provocation—so sensitive is anUlsterman's pride! "Give him his head? Of course I do!" he said with half a laugh to his brother, who had expressed some mild surprise. "Eccentricities of genius, what? Oh yes, he is a genius, head and shoulders above the rest of the crowd; and a nice chap too, and abso-lutely straight. Can't help liking him. I admit he's a bit trying at times, but it's worth it. I'd rather work with him than with any man I know!"
Now Denis saw the position as clearly as his partner; he knew that he could do pretty much as he liked, that Wandesforde, though he paid the piper, would carefully refrain from calling the tune. Therefore, having a conscience, he felt bound to do of his own accord most of the things his partner wanted, but wouldn't ask. All which preamble leads us to the fact that Wandesforde, not gathering from his letter that Denis abhorred the idea of teaching Dorothea, wrote back warmly approving of the plan. He had taken up flying in the first instance to amuse himself; but times were hard, Dent-de-lion had been expensive, and why shouldn't he recoup himself, as others had done, by laying out an aerodrome and starting a flying school? The idea had been simmering in his head for some time, and he poured it all out as soon as Denis gave him an opening. Afterwards, when he saw how the land lay, he retracted; but he had shown his wishes so plainly that Denis, ready to gnash his teeth for rage, felt bound to sink his own feelings and accept Dorothea as a pupil. In the net he had laid privily was his own foot taken.
The lessons were deferred, however, until after the Birmingham race; in which Denis met the luck he had expected. Over the first part of the course he made better time than any of the other competitors. Between Polesworth and Walsall he had to come down, with valve trouble. He set it right, and went to restart the engine by "swinging the prop," while half-a-dozen laborers held on to the tail of the machine. Unfortunately they were so much surprised by the sudden pull that they let go; Denis had barely time to get out of the way of the murderous whizzing blades. Thenfollowed a wildly funny scene, the monoplane charging about the field with devilish energy, while Denis and his six penitent assistants pelted after it. In the end it butted its nose into the bank, broke the propeller, and put itself out of the race.
"I told you what would come of flyin' on a Friday," said Denis in self-righteous gloom to his partner, over one of those strange meals which pilots learn to eat in village pubs. No one should fly who isn't physically fit, so presumably their digestions are equal to the strain. This meal had begun with beer and bacon, and gone on to buns—three-days-old currant buns.
Wandesforde, with his wife, had been following the race in a car. His arm was still in a sling, and his looks had not been improved by a blow which had knocked his front teeth crooked. He was patiently mincing up his bun with knife and fork; bite into it he could not.
"Well, dash it all, if a race is run on a Friday you have to fly it on a Friday, don't you?" he said, annoyed. "I wouldn't have let you in if I could possibly have held the joy-stick. I'm not superstitious about the days of the week myself."
"No, you've had smashes on every one of the seven, haven't you?"
Bearing this with an effort, Wandesforde gave up his bun as a bad job and consoled himself with a cigar. "I suppose now you'll go back to Dent-de-lion and take on Miss O'Connor?" he asked, by way of changing the subject.
"Teach her to commit suicide expensively," said the morose Denis. "She'll never make a pilot; anybiddy can see that. Women haven't it in them. Any old thing that's idiotic they'll do—start without fillin' up the tank, as soon as not!"
The sting of this speech was that Wandesforde, not being always as careful as his partner deemed desirable, had recently made this very omission himself, and paid for it by crashing a friend's favorite bus. The silence was broken by a small subdued sound of amusement from Mrs.Wandesforde, which consoled her husband in proportion as it annoyed Denis. He scowled at her through his eyeglass, and then, muttering something about the monoplane, stalked out of the room.
"Lord!" said Wandesforde, getting up and squaring his broad shoulders against the mantelpiece with an audible sigh of relief, "he's in a pretty rank temper, what? I hoped he hadn't heard about Wyatt's Avro. Never knew him so cut up about a smash before!"
His wife, a piece of silvery transparent loveliness, shook her fair head. "Not the smash," she pronounced, oracular. "Miss O'Connor!"
Meanwhile Dorothea had established herself in a furnished cottage at Bredon, with an old governess as companion-chaperon. Miss Byrd had been living in an alms-house on ten shillings a week, when her half-forgotten pupil sought her out. It should be noted in passing that if Dorothea pursued her enemies with vengeance, she also pursued her friends with gratitude. More than this; she could be generous even to her enemies. Against her lawyer's advice, she had insisted on making her uncle an allowance. "I'm not going to be a pig, because he was!" she said. Vengeance and revenge are, in fact, very different, as different as the lion and the hyena. But this is by the way; and indeed at this time Dorothea's vengeance had dropped out of sight. Just as she flung herself on Gardiner, so she had now attacked Denis, without definite plan, on the opportunist theory that something would turn up; and something had, but not what she expected. Her own youth lifted its head. She had come to exploit the aeroplanes for her vengeance; and lo and behold! she forgot her vengeance in the aeroplanes.
Denis had adapted the 1911 model for use as a school machine, and Dorothea began in the usual way by "rolling"—i.e., taxi-ing on the ground. Most pupils "break wood" during this process, for an aeroplane will run any way but straight, preferring to curl round like a puppy after its own tail. But Dorothea had by nature that automatic sixth senseof machinery which most people acquire only by practice. She would have learned to fly in a week, representing some three or four hours actually in the air, if Denis had given her full time; but he would not. Three days out of the six he kept sacred to his work. On the remaining three Dorothea and her car appeared at Dent-de-lion whenever the weather was favorable, and often when it wasn't. There were many rough days that September.
At first Denis found her an unmitigated nuisance. It was bad enough to put up with her when it was calm; but on a day of storm and tempest, with a fifty-mile gale—then to be interrupted by rosy-hopeful youth clamoring for a lesson—it was intolerable! Nature had never designed Denis for a teacher. He would have crushed a stupid pupil. He was hard even on Dorothea, when she failed to know what he hadn't told her. But she was so eager, pliant, uncrushable, so ardently in earnest, so reverent in attention, so insinuating in meekness: in a word, she flattered him so sweetly that he began, unconsciously at first, yet surely, he began to enjoy teaching her.
Even if there had been no question of Trent, Dorothea and Harry Gardiner would never have made friends. They had nothing in common. She, a little materialist, living in her feelings, caring not a rap for the pleasures of the mind or fancy; he, a restless thinker, imaginative, uneven in grain, too close in sympathy with nature to be wholly civilized. That strain of wildness would keep him always solitary; but Dorothea, though she had never yet had a chance to find herself, was essentially a home woman. She wanted to adore, to be ruled by, to mother her man in the good old-fashioned way. All that would simply have bored Gardiner. To Denis, on the other hand, it was the ideal of married life.
They sat side by side, his hands over hers, guiding the aeroplane, and he forgot she was a woman. Not till then did her womanhood begin to make its impression. She had attracted Gardiner, the man of reason, through his senses, she attracted Denis, the man of instinct, through his reason. He liked the quick answer of her mind to his own.Then one day she met with an accident; her hand was grazed by the propeller. Had it struck her full it would have shorn off her fingers in a moment, and even as it was she was badly bruised. Denis ordered her to see a doctor. Dorothea, pale but valiant, wanted to go on with her lesson.
"It's the first fine day we've had this week," she pleaded. "I shall never, never fly if I stop for every miserable little trifle!"
"I shouldn't think of lettin' you," said Denis, grim and peremptory. "You've broken one of the small bones, as likely as not."
"That I haven't!" retorted Dorothea, giving the hand a vigorous shake to emphasize her words. Denis seized her arm.
"Do not do that! Don't you feel pain?"
"Yes, of course I do, but I can't be bothered to think about it when I'm enjoying myself, can I?"
She stamped her foot, so absurdly enraged that Denis could not help laughing. Her unceremonious fortitude appealed to him, just as her pretended sensibility, when she cut her foot, had appealed to Gardiner. Odd that in each case the quality that drew them was the precise opposite of what each really asked for in a woman!
Dorothea had to give way; she went to a doctor, and was forbidden to use the hand. This cut her off from her car as well as from flying, for if she couldn't drive herself she wouldn't be driven. "Sit by and see a hateful hired chauffeur doing my work? No, thank you!" said she. So she sulked at Bredon, and Denis went back to his desk. He had "scrapped" the old seaplane, lock, stock and barrel, and was working on a new design, "a boat that would fly rather than an aeroplane that would float," of his favorite monoplane type. Denis had long wanted to build a monoplane which should be for the English air service what Blériots and Moranes were for the French, or Taubes for the German; and as he wished to show his new model at the Aero Exhibition in the spring, he had his work cut out. The fever of invention was upon him. Yet he missed histiresome, charming pupil. In the brief lucid intervals when he came to the surface, he was conscious of a vague discomfort which neither beef nor bed availed to soothe. Her accident and the delay were giving time for his feelings to mature. Gardiner, who was interested in his own mental processes, would soon have found himself out; Denis, a stranger to self-consciousness, was blind as any well-brought-up young lady of the fifties.
Dorothea came back at last unexpectedly. After leaving his lunch to get cold, and then bolting it in five minutes, Denis had rushed back to his desk to finish a calculation. He was writing the last figures when a car turned in at the gates, and he lifted his head with a frown, which changed suddenly into a smile of pleasure. Well he knew that gay little tune on the horn, the sound of that fresh young voice in the porch! Down went his pen, and out he hurried to greet her, with an eagerness which surprised himself.
"Here's your bad penny again, you see!" she cried, coming in with the scent of the wind on her suit and the rose of it in her cheeks. "Aren't you sick to see me? Old Turner said this morning I might use my hand, so I came straight off. But whathaveyou been doing to yourself? You look half starved—doesn't he, Birdie? Have you had any lunch? If you haven't it's very wrong of you, and I shall just stand over you till it's gone—do you hear?"
Denis, laughing, lingered to shake hands with Miss Byrd, who always satisfied the proprieties by escorting her young friend, before following his impetuous pupil into the parlor. Dorothea was scornfully inspecting the remains of the meal.
"H'm! One sausage—I know it can't be more, for Rogers never gives you more than seven, at the outside, to the pound—it's not half enough for you. This room's hatefully uncomfortable, too," she added, frowning round with eyes which saw it all anew. Dorothea was blind to beauty, but wide awake to comfort, especially somebody else's comfort. "I should like to talk to that Simpson woman.I'd soon make her sit up! I think she neglectsyou shamefully. You're looking quite pale—isn't he, Birdie?—and I know it's all her fault. I've no use at all for a woman who can't keep her own people comfy!"
It was a novel experience for Denis to be scolded for neglecting himself. "I assure you Miss Simpson's guiltless," he said, smiling. "I've had a bit of a rush lately, that's all. I've not been able to get out these last few days."
"Well, you're coming out with me this afternoon, or I'll know the reason why. I can't have you looking like this," retorted Dorothea, nodding her decision; and then, with a sudden beguiling change, clasping both hands over his arm: "You're going to let me do straights on my own to-day, aren't you? You almost promised you would, last time!"
Denis looked down on her hands, as though he found them a very pleasing adornment to his sleeve. "We'll see," he said, and from that he would not budge, for all her coaxing. He was inordinately cautious in his tuition. They left Miss Byrd tucked up by the fire with a book, and Denis went down to the hangars, while Dorothea got into her flying kit. He was never tired of dinning into his pupil's ears the duty of prudence, and certainly he set the example himself. When Dorothea appeared at the sheds, in her tan leather coat and leggings and safety helmet, she found her instructor tuning up the machine, and had to wait as patiently as she might till he had done.
The morning until ten o'clock had been white and chill with one of those luminous, snowy September fogs, which clear off into noons of sapphire. The sky was astoundingly blue, the meadow insolently green, the sheds all hard-edged, vivid, with keen black shadows. In the full blaze of sunshine stood the monoplane, tall in front where the long brown blades of the propeller cleared the ground, sloping down towards the fin-like tail planes, and spreading its pale wings in curves not unlike those of the gulls which sailed by, calling and fishing over the marshes.
Dorothea climbed into her seat, Denis took his place beside her, the men behind let go, and off they went, skimming fast and faster over the grass, gaining speed and power forsoaring. The elevator tilted, and they parted from the earth, the moment imperceptible; only the country, which had lain ahead, spread out suddenly below them like a carpet. There were the green marshes, ruled out like a chess-board with glistening waterways, and bordered with the dark blue sea: the farm, and the sheds, and the outbuildings, all like toys made of cardboard and glittering tin.
After circling over the aerodrome to get his height, Denis turned his back on the coast and flew inland. As they passed, the great farm horses plunged and fidgeted, the laborers stood still in the fields, peering up from under their hands, the cottagers ran out into the road to watch them overhead. Some said: "Well, I wouldn't be up in one of them things for a thousand pounds!" and others: "Silly fools! serve 'em right if they break their necks!" The Englishman, in fact, received the novelty as he receives any strange thing or person, in the spirit summed once and for all byPunch. Not that Denis had any right to grumble. Except with regard to his work, he was just as conservative, just as ready to heave his half-brick as any Bill among them.
They flew to Canterbury, and turned, banking in a steep curve, to shoot back over the way they had come. They were five thousand feet up, and the wind was ferocious; it seemed to press the breath back down their throats, to wrench at the flesh on their faces. Much Dorothea cared! On that homeward flight she was allowed, for the first time, to guide the aeroplane herself. Denis kept his hands ready to resume control, in case of a slip, but he was not needed; she held the pillar till the time came to switch off the engine and glide in a long, long slant towards the landing ground. B-rr, the motor purred again, as the monoplane cocked up her tail, like a bird, to "flatten out" before alighting. The landing wheels took off the shock, and they ran smoothly over the grass till the momentum was exhausted.
Denis stayed at the hangars to see the machine housed. When he came back to the house he found his pupil waiting for him on the steps of the porch. She had taken off herhelmet and her leather coat, and wore the same rough tweeds in which she had wandered about the woods of the Semois. Her skirt was short enough to show a pair of neat brown ankles, as well as the brown shoes below them, and her hair hung down her back in a yard and a quarter of pigtail. She said she couldn't coil it under the helmet. Her eyes were sparkling, and her cheeks were pink, and she propped herself against the white pillar, first on one foot, then on the other, with the long-legged, supple awkwardness of a schoolgirl. Strange how the years had fallen away, how little mark had been left by her marriage, even by motherhood!
"I did it all right, didn't I?" she demanded, naïvely eager. "I didn't make any bad breaks?"
"Not a break!" Denis assured her.
"Really? Truly? Will you let me do a figure of eight next time? I know I could!"
"We'll see when next time comes."
Dorothea looked exceedingly naughty, like Geraldine caught stealing the cream—the simile was Denis's own. "It's coming again to-morrow!" she announced daringly.
Denis shook his head, smiling at her. "No, it's not."
"Ah, do let me! I've wasted so much time with the weather, and then this hateful hand, and I do so want to learn—Ican'twait till Saturday!"
"I'm sorry to disappoint such ardor, but I'm afraid you must."
"Why? You know it may change any day now into the equinoctial gales. I think you might leave your old seaplane for once. I've never asked you before.Do!"
Denis, standing below her on the path, continued to smile provokingly and to shake his head. It amused him to see her stamp her foot, which she did punctually, with a thunderous frown.
"I think you'remostunkind. It's not your duty, it's your pleasure you're thinking of. Youlikethose miserable calculations, and that's why you won't come. Ihatethe seaplane!"
"There might be some point in your strictures," said Denis, teasing her, "if I happened to be workin' at the seaplane to-morrow."
"What are you going to do, then, if not that?"
"I'm dinin' Wandesforde in town."
"O-oh," said Dorothea, undecided between storm and sunshine. "Then I hate Mr. Wandesforde!" she concluded viciously.
"You hate so many things, don't you?"
Again she was almost ready to sulk like an offended baby; but no—out shone the sun, and the clouds fled away. "Well, I do," she owned, laughing back at him, "of course I do! So would anybody who wasn't a perfect frog. It's only cold-blooded people like you and Lettice who are tolerant. Besides, I love heaps of things to make up. I hate the seaplane and I hate Mr. Wandesforde, but I love the monoplane and I love you—"
It would have been nothing, nothing, if she had not pointed her words by stopping dead and turning scarlet. Denis, puzzled, gazed at her with his honest eyes; and then, like the falling of a curtain, saw what her confusion meant, both to her and to himself. He stepped forward impulsively, putting out his hands. Dorothea pressed back against the pillar, glancing desperately from side to side; then, striking them away, she turned and darted in at the open door, like a rabbit into its burrow.
I looked and saw your heartIn the shadow of your eyes,As the seeker sees the goldIn the shadow of the stream.Three Shadows.
I looked and saw your heartIn the shadow of your eyes,As the seeker sees the goldIn the shadow of the stream.Three Shadows.
I looked and saw your heartIn the shadow of your eyes,As the seeker sees the goldIn the shadow of the stream.Three Shadows.
I looked and saw your heart
In the shadow of your eyes,
As the seeker sees the gold
In the shadow of the stream.
Three Shadows.
There is a legend which says that September is the month of the fading leaf. Townsmen may fancy so, looking at their own starved avenues, which begin to shrivel and strip themselves as early as July; but in the country the massive woods (except that an elm here and there hangs out a single crocus-yellow spray) keep the somber green of late summer to the very end of the month. Then, as the days pass, first the lime "strips to the cold and standeth naked above her yellow attire." The horse-chestnuts on some night of frost let drop all their fans in a rustling heap. The woodland paths are crisp with fawn-colored oak leaves. Last of all, in mid-November, the elms loosen to the wind and the rain those faint clouds of green and greenish-gold which have rounded the shape of their limbs, till all the wet meadows are strewn with them; and it is winter.
At Rochehaut it was September still, late September. Gardiner, at leisure after the summer rush, had been to his bank at Bouillon, and, instead of returning by thevicinal, had chosen to walk back over the hills through Botassart. This route brought him past the crucifix. He had not been there since the grand explosion, and it cost him an effort to go back; but he refused to be sentimental, or allow a beautiful thing to be spoiled for him by fancies. There he lay then on the grass, smoking and dreaming.
It seemed long, long since that summer night; so longthat he could look back now, on it and on Dorothea, as part of the past. Heavens! how she had hurt him! There was that time as a boy, when he tumbled waist-deep into a vat of scalding liquid at some chemical works; he could compare his feelings only to that violent assault of pain. Yes, she had hurt him abominably; the pain of his crushed hand had been by contrast a relief and a distraction. But the wound was on the surface; and, though he scarcely knew it himself, already it was beginning to heal. There was no poison in it. His passion for Dorothea had been effectually cauterized; he thought of her now without either resentment or desire. He was profoundly sorry; sorrier for Dorothea O'Connor than even for Mrs. Trent. This pity, oddly enough, confirmed him in impenitence. "I did her a good turn when I cleared that fellow out of her road," he said to himself with inverted satisfaction. "If he'd lived long enough for her to find him out, there'd have beenla de Dios es Cristo!"
Three days of pale still sunshine had closed in threatening gloom. The grassy hill of the crucifix was burnt putty-color; the hill of forests opposite was olive-somber; the valley fumed with tawny vapors, breathing down from the gloom of the sky, and up from the dark current of the river. All was still, grave, overcast, till the sun found his sunset crevice in the clouds and split them, overflowing in long lines of liquid gold between iron-heavy bars. Splendid transparent fan-rays of light and dark alternate streamed up the sky; they rimmed vague forms of mist with burning wire, they filled the empty blue with bronze and golden vapors; the whole vault of heaven was on fire, the wet brown hills flamed back responsive glory.
Gardiner, susceptible to every earth influence, found his senses flooded with that golden exhilaration. Vague mists of thought took shape in its light; he knew now that that name on the lintel of the farm was not a mere coincidence. When he first saw the Bellevue, "Why, I've been here before," he had said to himself, with a thrill of startled recognition. And now, "I belong here," he added, half aloud,with a touch of solemnity, as though the spoken word must be irrevocable. Old ties were dear; but he knew in his heart, his body knew, that the wild Semois down there in the valley was more to him than the Darenth of his boyhood. This was his home.
Bringing his dazzled eyes to earth, he saw that a figure had detached itself from the orchards of the Bellevue, and was slowly mounting the hill. One person only would climb like that, with so many divagations to avoid steep places, and so many halts to admire the view—or could it be to get her breath? It was Lettice.
Since his accident, now five weeks ago, Gardiner had seen a good deal of Miss Smith. His hand had been unexpectedly troublesome; indeed he was only now beginning to use it. Meantime he had made use of Lettice as his amanuensis, repaying her services by refusing to allow her to settle her bill. "No, I amnotgoing to take that money," he said, energetically nodding towards the pile of notes she had deposited on his table. "I'll pitch it into the fire if you leave it there. Also I shall wire to town for a regular secretary. Pick it up and take it away." Lettice did not like it in the very least; but very slowly and very stubbornly she did pick the money up and return it to her purse. Nor was her temper soothed when Gardiner looked at her direct, with a glint in his eye, and added, "I know you wind Denis round your little finger, but I am not Denis. Two can play at being obstinate, savez-vous?" Still, she continued to act as his secretary; until by the end of the month she knew his methods and his business almost as well as he did himself.
It was after this episode that she began to play with him, admitting him to rank as an intimate; and that he began to discover what it was that Denis loved in those velvet touches. But he was more uncertain than Denis—he was not to be run by formula; he would turn unexpectedly, and parry, and strike back. Once or twice, too, especially at first, when he was acting the urbane and cheerful host, he found her eyes fixed upon him. They were instantlywithdrawn; but he knew she knew he was suffering, and oddly enough he did not resent it. Oddly, be it understood, because Gardiner was by no means fond of sympathy. His instinct when hard hit was to cover up the wound and keep it hidden from the world, and especially from his friends. Yet it seemed he did not mind Lettice. And now, though he saw she was making for the crucifix, to disturb his regal solitude, he did not stir.
She had not seen him. She plodded on without looking up, and presently was hidden in a fold of the hill. When she emerged again, it was within ten yards of the crucifix and that lazy, smiling figure. She stopped short; one could almost hear her spirit say "Oh!" though her lips were silent. Her first impulse obviously was to beat a retreat (Gardiner chuckled, he had known it would be!), but she thought better of it, and came on. After surveying the heap of stones, she chose the one comfortable place, settled herself, and got out the inevitable green tablecloth. Lettice made great play with that tablecloth.
Since she would not speak, Gardiner did.
"I didn't know you'd found your way up here."
"Why, you told me about it yourself."
"Do you like it better than your wood pile in the forest?"
Lettice paused in the act of threading her needle to look round on the brown and gold of hills and woods and sky. "Yes," said she; and if she had raved for an hour she could have expressed no more. Comfortable silence fell between them. Lettice stitched, and Gardiner smoked, and in the west the sunset flared in citron, amber, saffron, bronze, and a thousand shades of glory. In the east a scroll of cloud reared dazzling sunny heights of snow against dazzling blue. Lettice's needle slackened; it came to a standstill.
"Penny for your thoughts," said Gardiner.
"I haven't any."
"I thought you were composing a poem."
Insults of insults! Lettice looked volumes of reproach. "I wasnot," said she.
"But you do write poetry."
"Who told you so?"
"Who do you suppose? Denis has told me quite a lot about you. Hasn't he told you a lot about me?"
"Yes; but it wasn't all of it true."
Gardiner burst out laughing. "Well, that is good! How do you know?"
"Oh, it's, it's—it's obvious," said Lettice, with an exasperated wave of the hand to help out her meaning. She began to sew very fast. Gardiner contemplated her with a broad smile; but presently it faded, and he turned over and lay plucking at the grass.
"Did Miss O'Connor leave her address with you?"
Lettice shook her head.
"She went off in such a hurry!"
Gardiner opened his mouth to speak, and checked himself for a garrulous fool. He did not know why he had mentioned Dorothea at all. A moment later the impulse came again, and he found himself, to his surprise, telling Lettice the very thing he had decided not to mention. "Rather a queer thing about that young lady," he remarked lightly. "I found out—to be exact, she hurled the fact in my teeth—that she wasn't a Miss, and that O'Connor wasn't her name. She was a widow—a Mrs. Trent."
"Mrs. Trent? What, the, the—"
"Oh, you know about her, do you? Yes, the Mrs. Trent of Easedale. She's firmly persuaded that I killed her husband. I believe she came over here simply and solely in order to worm some sort of confession out of me."
He stopped, amazed at himself. Then he looked at Lettice. If deep unaffected interest can pull confidences out of a man, here was his excuse. Why, she was all eyes and ears!
"So that was it!" she said. "That was who she was!"
"You don't mean to tell me you knew about this before?"
"No, no, not her name. But I knew she didn't much like you."
"The dickens you did! Did she say so?"
"No, I, I—I sort of gathered it."
"I begin to think what Denis said about you was true," Gardiner remarked after a pause.
"What did Denis say about me?"
"That you could see through a flight of stairs and a deal door."
"I don't knowwhatyou mean."
"You wouldn't, it's out of Dickens," said Gardiner, with a laugh which hid considerable perturbation. So she had guessed that, had she, before he knew it himself? What was there she did not guess? He began to feel helplessly transparent. Yet again he was surprised to find he did not hate her for intruding. Lettice could pick her way among sensibilities like a cat among china, and she neither misunderstood nor misjudged. There were episodes in his life which he would have been ashamed to show to Denis. He could have shown them every one to Lettice, unmarried girl though she was, and with no experience of the rough and tumble of life. Somehow one never thought of Lettice as a girl. He looked up at her. She had dropped her work and sat motionless, her eyes fixed on the sunset. In nature as in human nature, Lettice looked to the limit of sight, and beyond, to the city of God. It was that distant view which gave her the perspective for things near. While Gardiner was making these reflections, she turned her head suddenly and surprised him with a question:
"Does Denis know about Mrs. Trent?"
"I should say not. I haven't told him."
"I think you'd better."
It was so unlike Lettice to offer advice that he stared in surprise.
"Why?"
"He ought to know."
"I don't want to go into that business again," said Gardiner. "He did hate it all so desperately—no, I don't want to rake it up again. Nor do I see any necessity. What does it matter?"
"Would you mind if I told him?"
"Why the dickens are you so keen?"
She hesitated. She found it chronically hard to put her thoughts into speech, and in this case there were reservations to be made. Gardiner took the words out of her mouth.
"You don't mean you think she'd go for him too?"
Lettice nodded. "She meant to get a confession out of one or the other of you."
"Oh, my Lord!" said Gardiner, and caught himself up. "But if there's nothing to confess?"
A flash went over Lettice's face. Was it conceivable that she had guessed even that last thing? No, it wasn't, Gardiner decided hastily, that was beyond her, she couldn't possibly know. For an instant he thought of telling her himself, but caution, habit, above all self-derision held him back. He blurt out that damaging truth to a chance acquaintance? He wasn't such a fool!—All this passed through his mind in the instant between his question and her reply.
"Well, she didn't give you much of a time while she was trying to find out, did she?"
"No; but—oh, shecouldn'ttry that game on again, it would be too beastly low down, with a man like Denis! Besides, he isn't taking any, he simply hates women.... Look here, tell me exactly what you know, do you mind? What makes you so certain she meant to go for him?"
Lettice drew a long breath. Her explanation, when it came, ran clear and straight. Indeed, her thought was always lucid; it was the words that failed.
"It was that last day before she went. She began by telling me about herself and how unhappy she had been; and then she let out that there was some man she hated; and then she began asking questions about you and Denis, coupling you together, do you see?—but so that you couldn't help guessing it was you she'd been talking about. One thing she asked was whether Denis would tell a lie to save a friend. And then Denis himself came up, and they talked flying; and she said she should go to Bredon some day and see the aeroplanes."
"You think she really meant business?"
"Yes, I do."
"Pleasant," said Gardiner, tugging at his mustache, with a sort of hard restraint. "If she exploits Denis as she did me, he'll enjoy himself. Yes, I shall be very much obliged if you'll write to him. He'll take it better from you than from me."
"I wish I'd known before," said Lettice, folding up her work.
"Oh, it's all right so far, she hasn't turned up at Bredon yet. I heard from Denis this morning."
"Yes, but don't you see if she did go she'd be sure to tell him not to tell you?"
He did see, and felt sick. It cost him an effort to lie still. But he pulled himself together; that last secret, at least, she should not read. What to say, then? He would not confess, but equally he would not lie to her. He found something which was neither lie, confession, nor equivocation, but a piece of plain fact.
"If she ever does get hold of the truth about Trent, she'll be uncommonly sorry she tried to find out."
Then he discovered that Lettice was neither looking at nor thinking of him.
"I hope she won't get it out of Denis," she said. "I hope you'll be in time to prevent that."
The words were mild; the spirit, not so. Gardiner was shamed out of his self-absorption. He saw Lettice's love for her cousin, roused in his defense; and he saw, too, with her, Denis tricked into betraying his friend. Why, he would never forgive himself!
"My Lord, yes!" he said with unexpected gravity. "That would be a worse business than anything she's done or could do to me."