CHAPTER XIV
Springwas early, and very gracious, the year of Helen’s marriage. Day after day warm sunshine lighted up the little square where the lilacs and hawthorns were budding, and the crocuses blazed with purple and golden flames in the grass borders.
“We’ll go into the country, all of us, one day before I’m married,” Helen declared. “I want to pick primroses—don’t you want to pick primroses, Bid? It shall bemyday. I will take father and you and Aunt Charlotte—and Jim, if he’s good—and Mr. Carey, if he’ll come, because he’s Jim’s friend; also because I like him. When shall we go? Next Saturday, shall we?—because it’s Bid’s holiday!”
The Professor and Miss Mansfield fell in with her whim, and the little party was arranged for the following week. Trelawney undertook to discover a place at Bushberry—their proposed destination—where they could get lunch and tea. Helen stipulated for a farmhouse.
They met Carey at Victoria, the following Saturday. He came up just as the train was starting, and was execrated and dragged into the carriage unceremoniously by Trelawney. There was a babel of laughter and greetings as the train moved out of the station.
“I expected to see Jim got up like Corydon, with a smock frock and a crook, and an oaten pipe in his waistcoat pocket,” Carey declared. “It was entirely owing to my hesitation about my own apparel for this Arcadian festival that I was late. This is a delicious idea of yours, Miss Mansfield,” he said, turning to her. “I haven’t been into an English wood in spring for years.”
“He’s relying exclusively on this experience to provide him with lyrics for the next twelve months,” Trelawney explained. “He looks upon this day from a purely pecuniary standpoint, believe me. Helen, it’s an idyllic farmhouse; there is surrounding it an aura of butter and cream and new-laid eggs. And you get your tea for ninepence a-head.”
Bridget struck in with a laughing comment. At the sound of her voice Carey turned to her for the first time.
“It is ages since we met, Mrs. Travers,” he remarked.
“Is it?” she returned. “We have both beenbusy, I suppose. One doesn’t notice how the time goes when one is busy.”
She leant back, and watched the green fields they were whirling through, abstractedly. “We seem to have left the streets behind very quickly,” she said, presently. “How delicious the color of that grass is!—and see, the trees are in full leaf, almost!”
Carey was conscious of a coldness, a certain constraint, in her manner he had never noticed before. It had all at once become difficult to talk to her. The realization of this fell blankly, depressingly, upon him.
The impression did not wear off when they reached the little country station, and began to climb the hill, between white hedgerows, towards the farmhouse.
Helen and Trelawney walked on a little ahead. Bridget and he followed with the Professor and Miss Mansfield, and the conversation was general; yet through it all he intuitively felt the new distance in her manner towards him. Her words were gay enough. She stopped, every now and then, with a delighted exclamation, before a hawthorn bush, veiled in bridal white, and he cut blossom-laden branches for her till her arms were full.
“They’ll die, Bridget,” Miss Mansfield expostulated. “What is the use of picking them now?”
She declared that they would adorn the luncheon-table most appropriately, and, when the farmhouse was reached, busied herself in putting the dazzling white boughs in great brown jars on the table.
Lunch was served in the farmhouse parlor, with the lattice windows open to the sweet spring air, and the sunlight lying in checkered squares across the coarse white table-cloth and on the flagged floor.
Bridget sat opposite to Carey at the table, with the faint blue sky for background behind her dusky hair. He had not seen her for several weeks, and the change in her was very noticeable. He was struck by the thin outline of her cheek when he caught her face in profile. He wondered vaguely whether she was ill, or overworked.
When lunch was over, they started for the woods. Their way led through level meadows, starred with pale cuckoo flowers. Here and there cowslips lifted their delicate green stalks and dainty yellow blossoms. From the woods, covered by a misty veil of green, the cuckoo’s note rang clear and dainty sweet.
“Cuckoo! cuckoo!” Bridget repeated. She stopped every now and then to snap a cowslip from its stalk.
“They break so crisply, it’s a delight to pickthem!” she exclaimed, and tucked the bunch she had gathered into the front of her gown.
“I can’t be altruistic about flowers. Iwantthem. I must have them!” She put her lips down to those on her breast and caressed them.
“Isn’t it delicious—deliciousto be in the country in the spring?” she said, raising shining eyes to the Professor. She took his arm, with a little affectionate movement. The smiling glance they exchanged was full of mutual understanding and sympathy. In the wide, sunny meadow Bridget seemed to Carey to be herself again; though she spoke very little to him directly, the intangible barrier between them was, he felt, in some way broken down.
A stile separated the fields from the woods they were to pass through in the walk they had planned.
A winding, mossy path, across which gnarled roots of trees made easy steps, led slightly upwards. The trees were not yet in full leaf; the sycamores still held some of their dainty rose-pink sheaths, from which the brilliant translucent green was breaking. The larches, enveloped in a mysterious filmy green mist, wavered in the sunshine. All the underwood was in full leaf. It sprang from a carpet of russet and yellow,—the leaves of yester year;nestling between them were clumps of primroses. Their pure pale yellow stars burnt softly above their dark bed. Here and there the ground was white with frail anemones.
Bridget dived into the thicket with a rapturous exclamation, and began to fill her basket, heedless of Carey’s laughing assurances of open spaces farther on.
The rest of the party walked on more soberly. When they emerged—Bridget with loosened hair where the sweeping branches had caught it, but triumphant, with half filled basket—they were out of sight. She sent a swift glance up the empty, sun-flecked path.
“The road is quite easy to follow,” Carey hastened to say. “It leads in a half-circle back again to the farm, though it’s a good long walk. We shall find our way, though they seem to have deserted us.” They walked in silence for a moment—a silence which Bridget broke with a question about some book.
Carey replied with an eagerness somewhat out of proportion to the subject; but the conversation, once started, did not flag.
He did not look at her as they walked, but kept his eyes fixed on the winding wood-path. He spoke fluently, as usual, but to Bridget his talk was mechanical. Her thoughts wandered; it seemed to her impossible to keep up the strainof even conversation much longer. Her heart began to beat, at first with slow, heavy throbs, then faster and faster, as she struggled to keep her voice steady. In spite of herself, her hands shook. Two or three of the flowers on the top of her basket were scattered on the path.
Carey stooped for them. As he put them into the basket his hand touched hers.
He drew it back quickly, as though he had been stung; and at the moment their eyes met.
Bridget’s face was white.
“You are tired,” he said quickly, with an effort. “You are not looking well. Let us sit down and rest a little. I’ve walked too fast for you. What a brute I am!”
Bridget sank down upon one of the great roots across the path. She could not trust herself to reply. An awful fear possessed her that if he spoke to her again she should burst into tears. She was fighting desperately, despairingly, for self-control.
There was silence. Carey watched the sunlight strike along the shining ivy leaves that trailed towards the edge of the path. The words of an exquisite spring song came involuntarily to his mind as he looked at them:—
“Now on some twisted ivy-net,Now by some twinkling rivulet.”
“Now on some twisted ivy-net,Now by some twinkling rivulet.”
“Now on some twisted ivy-net,
Now by some twinkling rivulet.”
How did it end?
“A man had given all other bliss,And all his worldly worth for this,To waste his whole heart in one kissUpon her perfect lips.”
“A man had given all other bliss,And all his worldly worth for this,To waste his whole heart in one kissUpon her perfect lips.”
“A man had given all other bliss,
And all his worldly worth for this,
To waste his whole heart in one kiss
Upon her perfect lips.”
He turned to her abruptly. “I’ve made up my mind to go abroad again,” he said. “I start in a week or two.”
For one second she gazed at him with wide eyes and parted lips; then, with a half-stifled cry, she put out both hands as though to ward off a blow. Almost at the same moment she rose wildly to her feet. Carey rose, too, and caught her hands, with a startled, incredulous exclamation.
“Bridget!” he whispered hoarsely. “What do you mean? Say it,—say it!” he implored. His face was close to hers, his eyes blazing.
She cowered, and hesitated for one moment. Then she turned and faced him.
“Say your part first,” she said, looking at him with a long, steady gaze.
He drew himself up. “I love you!” he said. “And you?”
“I love you!” she repeated, in a low, vibrating voice. The color rushed into her face as she said the words.
Carey’s arms closed round her, and she liftedher lips to his. She freed herself presently. She was trembling from head to foot, but she smiled radiantly, meeting his eager eyes. At the sight of her face he groaned. “Bridget,” he began, “what have I done—?”
“You have dared to tell the truth. You have made me the happiest woman in the world!” she replied simply. “But why didn’t you tell me before? I—I believe I’ve got quite thin.” She pulled the sleeve of her dress away from her wrist, and held it out to him with a little laugh, which held tears.
He seized both her slender hands, and put them passionately to his lips.
“My love!—Bridget—I didn’t guess,” he began, incoherently. In the midst of her tremulous joy she was startled to see him so moved, so almost terribly shaken. His imperturbable coolness had been one of the qualities she had first noticed as peculiar to him; it had always filled her with something between admiration and amusement. His vehemence almost frightened her.
“I thought the suffering was all on my side,” he said. “Bridget, I’ve endured the torture of the damned these last few months!” He tightened his grasp on her hands till it hurt her. “I kept away; how I did it, I don’t know; but I kept away from you because I couldn’t trustmyself. I was afraid you would know it, and it would worry you. Poor child!—and you have trouble enough already.” His voice suddenly dropped into infinite tenderness for her.
The tears sprang to Bridget’s eyes. With a sudden movement she laid her cheek caressingly against his hand.
“My darling!” he whispered, holding her close. “You know what it means? Bridget, you poor little girl, have you thought?”
She drew herself away.
“No,” she said, with downcast eyes. “I know there’s a battle coming. We shall have to decide—I know that; but, Larry, Ican’tthink of it now. There’s no room in my heart for anything but joy! Dear, let us have our moment! We shall have plenty of time to think,—plenty of time!” she repeated sadly.
He knelt beside her, murmuring her name in a half-incredulous voice. “This day, at least, is ours,” he said triumphantly, defiantly. “Nothing can take it from us!”