His mother, though not an invalid, had need to be very careful as to her health. Undoubtedly she had been better since she had come to the Manor than she had been for years; but it so happened that she had not felt well enough to go with her son Jack to the opening day of the Lawn Tennis meeting. She easily submitted to his injunction to remain in her chair on the terrace. The great magnolia that would make the whole side of the house so glorious in another month, was not yet in bloom, but a couple of old-fashioned climbing roses had worked their way round the angle of the wall and laid out fantastic arms heavy with blooms over the trellis, and Mrs. Wingfield loved roses of all sorts, and nightingales and all the other old-fashioned things of the English garden. She was quite content with her surroundings and her canopy and her pavement on this J une day, and felt confident that her son’s assurance that she would enjoy her day very much more as he arranged it for her, than if she were to join the giddy throng in watching him knock the balls about, was well founded. He had settled her in her chair and exclaimed:
“Why was I such an idiot as to enter for the two events? The chances are that I’ll scratch when I get on the ground and come straight back to you.”
“You must do nothing of the sort, my dear,” she said. “Play all your games; it will make a good impression upon the people.”
“My aim in life is to impress Framsby,” said he. “It strikes me that the only impression my play will produce upon the privileged beholders will be that whatever I may be in other respects I’m a thundering duffer at tennis.”
“You can’t tell what their form maybe. You may have to play a second or third class man who is worse even than you,” said his mother, in the tone of the invalid who has been told by her doctor to be cheerful.
He laughed. “Bless you, my dear mother, for your kind intentions; but I feel that you are a sad flatterer,” he said, going off, having lighted his pipe.
She watched him as the mother of an only son watches him; and when he had disappeared and she heard him start the engine of his motor, she laid down her magazine and sighed. She knew very well why she did so. She knew how large her hopes had been that his entering into possession of his property would mean a settling down for him. In the days of their poverty—comparative poverty—the settling up every now and again was what she had good reason to dread, and now that they were wealthy—comparatively wealthy—the settling down occupied her thoughts quite as painfully.
She had seen, with a sinking of the heart, that he was beginning to lose a sense of the novelty of his position. He had become weary of it already. He had not fallen properly into the place which his grandfather had occupied; his grandfather had thought it the highest place to which a human being could aspire—the position of an English country gentleman. Jack Wingfield was beginning to be bored by it already, she could see. It was a life of pottering, she knew, and pottering, as a profession, must either be begun very early or very late in life if one is to attain to eminence in its practice. Jack had set about it too late for a young man and too early for an old one. He had had nearly six years of wandering—a little in Africa and a great deal in South America. They had been busy years, and certainly they had been restless years; but they had been years of life, not of vegetating. The rolling stone does not become associated with even so humble a form of vegetation as moss; but when it has done its rolling and finds itself in a position for such an accumulation, it is rather a pitiable object.
For more than a week Mrs. Wingfield had noted the approach of that cloud ofennuiwhich she had always dreaded when she had thought of him as entering upon a career of pottering. She had made several suggestions to him with a view to its dispersal before it settled down upon him. She thought of the hounds—might it not be possible for him to take the hounds? Was the present master not tired of them yet? And then she thought of the pheasants—the pheasants had never been properly looked after, she knew, though she was quite unaware of how handy the gamekeeper’s wife at the lodge had found their eggs when she had to make an omelette in a hurry.
Only when she had thought of these ways of anchoring a man to the county, the bower anchor of the hounds and the kedge anchor of the pheasant, did she think of the third way—The Girl. She had been thinking a great deal about the girl during the previous week; and already she was wondering if she might not pencil in some dates in her diary for mothers with nice—really nice, girls—they were getting scarcer and scarcer, she thought—to pay a visit to the Manor and so give Providence a chance of doing something for her son and incidentally for the girl: for would she not be a fortunate girl who should attract the attention of so eligible a man?
She had dreams of cosy house parties; and now, instead of making herself familiar with the stores of wisdom in the magazines on the table beside her, she was looking wistfully out from the terrace across the lawn to the water garden with its old stonework and its shrubberies and its many fascinating and secluded nooks. How happy she would be if she could but see her boy emerge from one of those romantic places with a charming roseate girl—if he would lead that girl to her side with a word or two to ask her to welcome a daughter!
And it was just when such a picture was presenting itself to her that the postbag arrived and was brought to her by a footman. She unlocked it, and found within half-a-dozen letters for herself, a large number of the inevitable tradesmen’s circulars, offering coal at the lowest summer prices and a fine choice of grates in which to consume it. She threw them to one side; but she did not so treat the two long envelopes with evidently bulky enclosures which remained among the contents of the mail. One had its origin printed right across it—“The East Indian Steam Ship Company”; the other was floridly embossed with a tropical scene, and the strap that enclosed it was stamped “The Madagascar Direct Route.” A sort of guide-book pamphlet entitled “Try Patagonia” had also come, addressed to her son, and a small volume purporting to be on “Tarpon, and How to Catch Them.”
She looked at each of them a second time, and read all the reading there was on the covers. Then she laid them on her table, and kept her hand on the topmost as though she were anxious to hide it from every eye.
It had come—she had seen it coming—she had seen the restlessness in his eyes that told her that the call had come to him out of the distance of dreams—those dreams which had always been his—dreams of a sea that he had never sailed on—a land that his feet had never trodden. The end of their life together at this house which she hoped would be their home, had come before it had well begun.
The poor woman lay back on her chair and closed her eyes, thinking her thoughts—asking herself how it was that she, a woman who cared about nothing in the world so much as a home, should be denied one, just when she fancied that the gift for which she had always yearned had been given to her. She knew all that a home meant—that it was not merely a well-appointed dwelling, but a place the tenure of which should be secure to her so long as she lived. Such had been denied to her all her life; for her husband had been a wanderer with no certainty in his wanderings except of their continuance; and now, when she fancied that the desire of her life had been given to her, it was snatched away before she had taken more than a sip of its sweetness. He was preparing to go away from her once more. He could not help it; the travel lust had taken possession of him, and once more she would be left alone.
She sat there asking herself if she had failed in her duty toward her son. Had she too easily yielded to him, letting him have his own way in the matter of travel? What had she left undone that might have prepared him for the “settling down” which was bound to come, she thought, when he really had a home to return to? Even now it might not be too late to do something that would make him not merely endure the home that he had inherited, but enjoy it as well.
She could think of nothing that had not been in her thoughts long ago; and so the day wore on, but the pain which she had at her heart was not outworn.
Oh, who could leave this place that was meant for that repose which is the sweetest part of life—this gracious land of woodland and park and meadow and paddock—the songs of the blackbird and the thrush—the glimpse of the quick swallows athwart the lawn—the melodious murmur of innumerable bees—the scent of the roses: who would choose to leave such a place for the dread uncertainties of other lands? She knew something of Jack’s travels; they had not been under the control of a personal conductor. He had slept with a rifle by his side and a revolver under his pillow, and when he was not suffering from a plague of mosquitoes he was having his toes cut open to expel the enterprising “jigger” that had made a burrow for itself and its progeny beneath his flesh.
That was a very fair synopsis of his travels, she thought—at any rate, those were the points that appealed most powerfully to her imagination; and yet she had imagination enough to perceive how, having once tasted of the excitement of living that wild life, he should feel the tameness of his new inheritance to be unendurable.
She had her invalid’s lunch brought to her where she sat, and she was still in her chair when she heard the sound of his motor returning. He strolled round to her on the terrace at once, still wearing his flannels.
“Well, what sort of a day had you—rollicking, eh?” he cried. “I got away in good time to have tea with you. They had no use for me any more.”
“Did you not play after all?” she asked; she felt sure that he had not troubled himself to play, or if he had played it was only one set. She knew his ways.
“Oh, yes, I played,” he replied.
“But you did nothing? How could you expect to do anything? You left here not caring whether you played or not. I wish you wouldn’t take it all so pleasantly. Why don’t you rail against your luck?”
“I don’t see why the mischief I should; I’ve nothing to complain of in the way of luck,” said he.
“That’s the way with you, Jack—it has always been the way with you; you will blame no one and nothing—only yourself.”
“That shows how strongly developed is my sense of justice, dear mother. I should make a first-class judge, if I hadn’t to debase myself by being a lawyer to start with. But you see I am just enough not to blame my luck.”
“You had no luck, I suppose, all the same?”
“Not a scrap. I did it all by sheer good play, and a straight upper lip.”
“You beat anybody?”
“I beat Paisley first and Glenister second.”
“Glenister? But he is one of the best men! You never beat Glenister.”
“Six—two. Poor Glenny never got the better of his surprise when I stole my first game from him. He tried to think that it was a dream; I don’t believe that he has recovered yet. Nairne was my last man. He got a pain in his in’ards when the game stood four—love; and by the advice of an old prescription of the family doctor, he retired into the shade. Poor chap! he played very well in the M.D.s five minutes later. A splendid recovery! I know that there’s nothing like taking a thing in time—especially the advice of the family medico.”
“I can’t understand how you did so well, considering that you have had no practice.”
He was silent. He had picked up his post and was glancing at the covers. She watched him nervously. He read the steamship company’s imprint on each, and then smiled queerly. She fancied that he was smiling at the thought of being once again away from such absurdities of civilization as lawn tennis. But suddenly his smile ceased. He allowed his eyes to stray in the direction that hers had taken a few hours earlier—over the green of the lawns, and the ballooning foliage on the outskirts of the park. He continued so for a long time, siffling an air between his lips, and tapping the large envelopes fitfully on his palm.
She watched him, waiting for what was to come—he was going to say something to her, she felt—something in the way of breaking the news of his departure to her.
She watched him.
Suddenly his soft whistling ceased. He drew a long breath, and smiled still more queerly than before.
At that instant he caught her eye. He gave a little start, saying with something of surprise in his voice:
“What’s the matter? Why are you looking at me in that way?”
She continued gazing at him in silence. And then he saw that her eyes had filled with tears even while they were on his face.
“My dear girl, what’s the matter? Who has been saying what to you, and why?” he asked.
She pointed to the envelopes in his hand. He glanced down at them, saying:
“What—what’s the matter here?”
She shook her head and then turned away, and he knew that her tears had begun to fall.
In a moment he perceived all.
She heard him laugh, and raised her head, trying to disguise her tears.
She saw the smile that was on his face as he tore in two each unopened cover, and then tore the two in four, and the four into eight, tossing the fragments over the balustrade of the terrace on to the roof of a great pyramid bay below. The act was one of great untidiness, but she easily forgave him, garden worshipper and all though she was. She stretched a white hand across the table to him eagerly, and once again her eyes were moist.
“My dear boy! My dear boy! You mean to stay?” she whispered.
“Yes, I mean to stay,” he replied.
She waited for something to follow—something that would let her into the secret of his flinging away the fragments of the circulars for which he had written to the officials of the steamship companies. She would have liked to know that it was on her account he had abandoned whatever project of travel he had in his mind; but dear as the reflection that he had done it for her sake would have been, it would have brought with it a certain pang to feel that she was a brake upon his enterprises.
She had a mother’s instinct that there was something to be told to her—something that would suggest to her what were his reasons for making up his mind to give his new life a fair trial. So she waited. She could see that something had touched him and left its mark upon him, whether for good or bad she could not tell; but surely, she thought, it must be for good. She was not so simple as to fancy that his success in the tennis tournament was the incident that had been potent enough to cause him to change his plans. The very fact of his enlarging as he did upon his own play and the play of the other men was enough to convince her that the day’s tennis had nothing to do with the matter. So she listened, and became animated in her commendation of his perseverance, and waited.
He drank tea with her, still talking of the tennis, with an occasional discursion in respect of the people who were on the ground; and then he lit a cigar, and fell into a train of thoughtfulness. She believed that he would now tell her something of what she wanted to, know; but he was still reticent, and before he had got halfway through his cigar he rose from his chair saying:
“I think that I shall take a stroll across the park to the farm. Funny, isn’t it, that I only spent about half an hour there since I arrived?”
“I am sure that they will appreciate a visit,” said his mother. “After so long an interregnum they will welcome the appearance of a new ruler.”
“Especially if he doesn’t rule,” said he, grimly.
“I don’t know that,” she replied. “These people even in this democratic age like a little ruling. Where is Mr. Dunning? Would it not be well to take him with you, or get him to coach you on a few points?”
“I think I prefer to drive my own coach a bit,” said he, and so he went off.
He returned about half an hour before it was time to dress for dinner, and during that comparatively short space of time he gave her aresumeof the more prominent points which he had observed in the mismanagement of the farm. He could not have believed it possible, he declared, that such gross negligence could exist on any estate. Verrall, the manager, had not been on the premises, he said, and no one seemed to know exactly where he was to be found; and that gave the owner a chance of poking about the place himself, and thus seeing all that there was to be seen, without the assistance of a guide to prevent him from straying into corners which might be considered inconvenient to inspect. The owner had, it appeared, done a good deal of straying on his own account.
“The place is simply disgraceful,” he said. “Dunning hasn’t been near it for more than a year. I got so much out of one of the hands. He has been leaving everything in the hands of Verrall; and Verrall, it seems, is a great authority in coursing. He has quite a large kennel of greyhounds, which naturally he keeps and has been keeping at my expense. I will say that they looked first-rate dogs. But it seemed as if the kennel was kept up at the sacrifice of the dairy. The dairy is a disgrace. Unclean! That gives no idea of what it was like—absolutely filthy—sickening. The pump in the dairy is out of order. And when had it been in order? I asked. Seven months ago, I found out by crossexamining some of the slovenly hands who were loafing about. And the cattle! Dunning had told me that there were some fine beasts on the home farm. He knew nothing about it. There was not a single good point among the cows.”
“And your grandfather was so proud of his herd!” said Mrs. Wingfield.
“He wouldn’t see much to be proud of among their successors,” said Jack. “I never felt so ashamed in all my life. Verrall drove up in a dogcart when I was in the dairy, and began bawling out for some one to come to the horse. He had brought a new greyhound with him, and he bawled out for some one to come and look after the dog. I saw the origin of all this bawling when he tried to get down. He wasn’t over successful. He certainly wasn’t over sober. I had a very brief interview with him. He was startled at first, and then he thought that the right way to get round me was by becoming jocular. I fancy that, fuddled and all as he was, he has come to the conclusion by this time that that was a strategical mistake.”
“You gave him notice to quit?”
“Oh, no; I couldn’t very well go so far as that on the spot; but I am to go over the books of the farm to-morrow—I had previously found out that no books were kept—and I’m inclined to think that Mr. Verrall will give me notice of his intention to take himself off before we get far in our investigation of how the books came to be accidentally burnt or drowned or eaten by the prize cattle—whatever story he may invent to account for their disappearance.”
So he went on as they sat in the hall looking out upon the western sun that was sending his level beams over the great elms of the avenue. He had become quite heated in his account of the mismanagement of the farm. A few hours ago his mother would have refused to believe in the possibility of his being sufficiently interested in such an episode in the profession of a potterer as to become even warm over its narration. How on earth had the sudden change come about?
That was the question which she kept asking herself all the time her maid was dressing her for dinner, and her son Jack was splashing in his bath, trying to remove some of the memories of his visit to his farm. But it was not until the following afternoon that she got from him any suggestion that she could accept as a clue to the secret of the situation.
He had been at the home farm at six in the morning and had dismissed Farmer Verrall before breakfast. Farmer Verrall had looked for his coming about eleven or twelve, and having been up until pretty late the night before, he had not quite succeeded in his endeavour to do himself justice by “sleeping it off”—the phrase was Mrs. Verrall’s—so that Mr. Wingfield had further opportunities for inspection before the man had got on even the most rudimentary clothing.
After the simultaneous discharge of his duty and his manager, Jack Wingfield had eaten a good breakfast and gone off to the tennis ground, where he succeeded in beating two more antagonists in the G.S.s, and had then got knocked out in the first set he played with a partner—a very wild young woman—in the M.D.s. After these excitements he returned to have tea with his mother.
It was after a long pause at the close of that meal that he remarked, so casually as to awaken the suspicions of his mother in a moment:
“Talking of the dairy—” he had been saying a word or two respecting the dairy—“I wonder if you have ever heard of a man named Wadhurst—a great authority on shorthorns—in fact, a great dairyman altogether.”
“Of course I have heard of him, several times,” she replied. “Why, I heard something of him only a few weeks ago—something in a newspaper. Something he had done in America, I think—something brave—not connected with a dairy. What nonsense! I remember now. It was another man—was it his son who tried to save some people on a wreck and got drowned himself?”
“Not exactly his son. The man who did that was a scheming rascal who had inveigled Mr. Wadhurst’s daughter into a marriage with him and got arrested for a swindle on the steps of the church.”
“Of course, that was it. Stupid of me to forget. But really, what between these Frenchwomen poisoning their husbands and Americans getting divorces, it is hard to remember the details of any one particular case. But I only need to be reminded and the whole thing comes back to me.”
“Miss Wadhurst of course returned to her father’s house. She is living there at present. She never had slept a night out of it.”
“The detectives were just in time! How lucky for her! But she is not Miss Wadhurst: she must be Mrs. something or other. The ceremony was gone through with, wasn’t it?”
“I believe it was, but it was only natural—only right—just—that she should revert to her maiden name. She had a right to her maiden name, hadn’t she?”
“I suppose so; but a marriage is a marriage, and a sacred thing, whatever the Americans may say.”
“A sacred swindle, this particular one was, my dear mother. Anyhow, the young woman is here and I have met her, and I don’t think I ever met a more clearheaded young woman. She practically runs that big dairy of her father’s off her own bat—they send a thousand gallons of milk to London every morning.”
In a moment she perceived what was the origin of her son’s zeal in the matter of dairy work; her heart sank. But she made no sign. She only remarked:
“A thousand gallons! Surely that is impossible, Jack! A thousand——”
“It’s a fact. It’s by far the biggest dairy in the county. I am going up the hill to see it one of these days; and meantime——”
He paused, and she looked up from the old lace that she was mending—she looked up interrogatively.
“Meantime I want her to give me a hint or two, and I should like, if you don’t mind, to ask her to visit you.”
“Is that necessary, do you think? Wouldn’t she feel more at home if she looked in at the farm? She could then see in a moment at what end to begin to work as regards your improvements.”
“I think that she would feel at home anywhere or in any society,” said he. “You would agree with me if you saw her and had a chat. She is really a very clever girl.” Jack Wingfield’s mother had a natural antipathy to clever girls. She had met a few in the course of her life with a reputation for cleverness, and for some reason or other the impression that she had acquired of them and their ways was that a clever girl was another name for a scheming girl, and that whether she was called clever or scheming she was an unscrupulous girl. That was why she shook her head, saying:
“I’m not sure that clever girls are quite at home in my company, Jack. I know that I am never at home in theirs.”
“And if you’re not I’m sure that I’m not,” said he. “But you’ll not find that Miss Priscilla Wadhurst is that sort of a clever girl.”
Mrs. Wingfield felt that if the young woman had impressed upon her son the fact that she was a clever girl, but not that sort of a clever girl, she was the cleverest girl of all; but she herself, being possessed of a certain share of this particular quality, knew perfectly well that in the way of a man with a maid there is nothing so stimulating as opposition, especially reasonable opposition, so she hastened to assure him that of course she should be greatly pleased if Mrs.—or, as she wished to be called, Miss Wadhurst—would call upon her; and the son, without being a clever man, had still no difficulty in perceiving that his mother was afraid to show any further opposition to his suggestion lest mischief might come of it. But he only said, “That’s all right, then. I think she may come, though I’m not quite sure.”
“I don’t suppose that she would find a visit to an old woman who has lived away from everything in the world for so long very attractive,” she remarked. “Have you asked this young person to advise you as to the dairy?”
“Not I. But I’m sure she’ll do it. She wears no frills.”
“You met her yesterday?”
“Well, I was going to speak to Lady Cynthia Brooks about the Mixed Doubles, when she rushed into the arms of Miss Wadhurst—there was kissing and all that; it seems that they had been at school together, and very chummy. Lady Gainsforth was tremendously taken with her.”
He did not think that it was absolutely necessary for him to tell his mother that he first made the acquaintance of Miss Wadhurst in the room next to that in which they were sitting; and he saw no harm in introducing the name of a countess and her daughter in the course of his account of meeting Miss Wadhurst.
“Cynthia Brooks was always a nice girl,” said Mrs. Wingfield. “I’m not sure that going about from one tennis meeting to another is very good for a girl; but if her mother doesn’t mind—— Wasn’t it at Biarritz we met them? That was three years ago—just before you went to South America.”
“Yes; it was at Biarritz. We carried off the M.D.s; but we had a very shady lot against us. We should have no chance playing together at such a meeting as this.”
Not another word passed between them on the subject of Miss Wadhurst, and Mrs. Wingfield went to her bed in a condition of great uncertainty on the subject of her son and the young woman who was to come to pay her a visit. A farmer’s daughter, with views of dairy management; that was rather a curious sort of young person for Jack to take up—if he had taken her up. But Jack was, she knew, like many other young men of whom she had been hearing recently—ready to do the unexpected. It was shocking to hear of them marrying girls who danced and did things. She had not quite succeeded in determining whether dancing or a dairy was the worse. Hadn’t some well-known man written a poem about a dairymaid?—or was it a musical comedy? But here was a dairymaid with a romantic story swirling round her like one of those gauzy robes in which somepremiere danseusewas accustomed to make her gyrations. Mrs. Wingfield had a horror of being in anyway associated with a person who had had a romance in his or her life. She connected romance with unrespectability just as she did cleverness and scheming.
She sighed at the thought of her son’s marrying a dairymaid; but if he had set his heart on marrying her and failed to do so, would he not forthwith start once again upon his wanderings?
Which of the two prospects was to be preferred? That was the question which she had to decide. It was a case of Scylla and Charybdis—Priscilla and Charybdis, she thought; but she went asleep before she had made up her mind on this question. After all, was there any reason for her to keep awake thinking if it was possible that her son, who had run the gauntlet of many young women in search of husbands, and many young women—these were the more dangerous—having husbands of their own already, during the previous four years, was now head and ears in love with a red-faced, brownarmed, blowsy dairymaid?
She hoped for the best.
As for her son, he did not go to bed very soon. He had a good deal to think about apart from that grave step which he had taken in the morning—the first important step he had ever taken before breakfast. As a matter of fact, everything that he had to think about he thought about quite apart from his discharging the drowsy and thirsty Mr. Verrall, though to be sure there was a certain connection between the person whom he had in his mind and his recently-acquired zeal to set his household in order.
He had come upon her on the tennis ground when he was about to enter the court for the Mixed Doubles, and she had greeted him with smiles, but with no cry of “You see what I made you do yesterday!” He had asked her at what time she had left the ground the previous day, and she had said “Just after your match.”
“You saw it, then?”
“Oh, yes, I saw it. You surprised poor Mr. Glenister.”
“And anyone else?”
“Probably yourself.”
“Probably everyone on the ground except you.”
“I am glad you except me.”
“I could swear by the horns of the altar that you were not a bit surprised.”
“And you would not perjure yourself—I’m not sure if the horns of the altar are binding as a form of oath; but anyhow, you would have been right. I did not fancy for a moment that my judgment as a prophetess was in jeopardy when Mr. Glenister took two or three games from you.”
“Then you watched it all?”
“Every stroke after the first couple of sets.”
“That was very nice of you. I kicked out Farmer Verrall before breakfast this morning.”
“What, the manager of your farm?”
“There was no help for it. I went over the place yesterday afternoon, and I saw with half an eye that he had allowed the whole farm to go to the dogs—to the greyhounds.”
“The greyhounds? You are coming on, Mr. Wingfield. We shall have you running a dairy farm yourself and taking away our bread and butter—certainly the butter—if we don’t look out.”
That was the sum of their conversation before the alert official had separated them, dragging him off to play in the M.D.s and get ignominiously beaten, for which he had apologized most humbly to his partner, and she went away affirming that he was a very nice man, only it was a pity he didn’t practise more. But she was careful not to let a whisper of this reach the ears of their successful opponents; she was not sure that they would not say that it was her silly play that had lost the game.
He had manoeuvred to get close to her at lunch, but in this he was not very successful. She was with the Gainsforth set, and they hadn’t invited him to their table; but afterwards he had managed to beat to windward of the party and to sail down upon her at the right moment. Unfortunately it was only for a moment that he was allowed to be beside her. He had only time to say, “I want to have a long talk with you,” and to hear her answer “You will find me a most appreciative listener, Mr. Wingfield,” when Lady Cynthia carried her off in one direction and the alert official carried him off in another to play a single. When he had beaten his man and set out to look for her, he saw that she was between Lady Gainsforth and another watching a paltry match in which Lady Cynthia was doing some effective work with a partner who tried to poach every ball that came to her.
He had strolled away, and had passed a dim halfhour by the side of Rosa Caffyn, who presented him to her mother, and her mother had asked him if he did not think Miss Wadhurst was looking extremely well, considering all that she had come through, poor thing! and she feared that a good many people would say that it was in rather doubtful taste for her to appear in a public place and not in mourning, though her husband had been dead scarcely more than two months; and he had replied that she had the doubtful taste to refrain from that form of etiquette known as hypocrisy; and Rosa had clapped her hands, crying “Bravo! That’s what I have said all along.”
His thoughts went over all the ground that he traversed during the day. It was when he was motoring to the Manor that he had made up his mind to mention her name to his mother, and she had replied to him. And what then?
What then?
That was the question which remained to be answered by himself to himself.
Why was he taking so much trouble to bring her and his mother together? Was it in order to give his mother the privilege of another acquaintance? or was he anxious to show Priscilla how charming a mother was his?
He had gone out upon the terrace with his cigar when his mother had left him, and now he sat in the long chair among some very well-disposed cushions. It was a night that lent itself with all the seductiveness of an English June, not to thought, but to feeling. One could feel the earth throbbing with the sensuousness of the season, although the stars of that summer night were but feebly palpitating out of the faint mystery of their grey-blue canopy. He had started thinking, but he was soon compelled to relinquish it in favour of feeling.
“If she were but sitting in that other chair—nay, why the other chair? Why should there not be only one chair between us?” He fancied her sitting where he sat, her head among the cushions—oh, that perfect head, with its glory of hair, shining like some of the embroidery of that satin cushion at his shoulder! He pulled up the pillow and put his cheek close to it. Oh, if only she were there! He would sit on the rest for her feet, and hold them in his hands and put his face down upon the arch of their instep. He had seen her feet that day when she had been watching the game, by the side of her friends, and he knew what they would be like to kiss. And then he would kneel by the side of the chair and put his head down to the cushion that was below hers, so that their faces—their lips—should not be far apart—not further apart than a finger’s breadth—sometimes not even so far.
And they would be silent together, drinking deep of the delight of each other’s silence. For what would they have to talk about on such a night as this?
And while he sat there, abandoning himself to the abandonment of Nature—that glorious Nature whose passionate heart was beating in everything under the stars of this June night—a nightingale began to sing out of the darkness of the shrubbery. He listened to it, feeling that that singing was the most complete expression of the passion of June.
But the incompleteness of his life—sitting there alone, full of that longing which the nightingale could so interpret! Why was she not here beside him—in his arms?
A window was being opened in one of the rooms above where he sat. Why was not that the window of her room? Why was it not opened to let her speak out to him—to whisper to him that she was there—waiting for him—waiting for him? He was a sane man under the influence of a pure passion—a passion whose chief property it is to stimulate the imagination even of the unimaginative; and every sound that he heard breaking the silence of this exquisite summer night had this effect upon him. He felt that he could not live without her. He had fallen into such a condition of thinking about her as made it impossible for him to weigh in connection with her such considerations as prudence, propriety and Mrs. Grundy; all that he knew, or was capable of knowing, was that he loved her, and that he wanted her to be with him always—he loved her and nothing else in the world; he was incapable of loving anything else in the world. She absorbed all the love of which he was capable. He felt that he should be deserving of the fate of Ananias and Sapphira his wife if he had kept back any of his possessions of love from her to bestow upon some one else. He cared nothing for anything in the heaven above or the earth beneath, or the waters that are under the earth, apart from her; but with her he felt that he loved them all!
This was the condition of the man who had never in his life been involved in an affair in which love played any but the most subordinate part. He had had his chances, as most men who have lived for nearly thirty years with no recognized occupation usually have. If he had caused the worldly mothers of eligible daughters (and too many of them) who were aware of his prospects, to hold him in contempt, he had at the same time caused the husbands of uncertain wives no uneasiness whatever He had had his little episodes, of course—those patches of pattern which go so far to relieve the fabric of a man’s life from monotony; but, to continue the simile, this pattern had not been printed in fast colours; it had not stood the test of time or cold water, but had faded out of his life, leaving scarcely a trace behind. He had never believed himself to be capable of rising to the dizzy heights of such a passion as this in whose grasp he felt himself, high above the earth and all earthly considerations. He was astonished at first when he found himself walking about the turf of the tennis ground in order to catch a glimpse of her—detesting the play, and so making it pretty hot for his opponents because it stood between her and himself; cursing the nice people who had found her so nice that they took care to keep her near themselves; and at last leaving the ground in sheer despair of being able to find her alone, so that he could sit beside her and watch her face, or the exquisite lines of her figure down to her fairy feet which he wanted to kiss.
He had driven to his home at something in excess of the legal maximum, hating her (as he thought—the most solid proof of his love for her) and hating himself for being such a fool as he felt himself to be.
The necessity for strategy in talking to his mother helped to bring him within the range of ordinary well-ordered life once more, and he had ridden his soul on the curb, so to speak, ever since; but now his mother had gone to bed, and here he was stretched at full length on his chair, having abandoned himself to his passion—thrown out every ounce of ballast in order that he might get a little nearer to the stars that were as soft as pearls above him.
He had ceased to be astonished at himself. He had reached that rarer atmosphere where the conditions of life are altogether different from those that prevail on lower levels, and where extravagance of thought is simply the result of breathing the air. His intoxication took the form of feeling that he was on the brink of a great happiness—that he was a king on the eve of a great victory—that he was so considerable a person in the world that he could carry out with a high hand every purpose in life. In his heart was all the swagger of those braggart warriors strutting about in armour and feathers on the walls of Troy or beneath them.
And in this condition of intoxication and its consequent hallucination he remained until the stars of the one hour of the summer night waxed paler than pearls in the exquisite dawn of the summer day.
The nightingale that had been singing in the early night had long ago become hushed. From a distant meadow there came the sound of the unmelodious corncrake. There was a little cheeping and rustling among the ivy of the walls, and then came a blackbird’s syrupy contralto from among the laurels of the shrubbery, and far away the delicious liquid ripples of a lark—two larks—three—the pearly air was thrilling with the melody of larks and with the flutings of thrushes, and the cooings of the wood pigeons, long before the sultans of the farmyards sent forth their challenges to be passed on and on like the ripple on a lake, until the last could be but faintly heard coming from the height of the Downs.
He sat there listening to everything, and scarcely conscious of the melting of the night into the dawn. There had been no darkness at any time of that June night, and the dawn was only like all the pearls of the sky melting in the liquid air.
At last he got up from his seat and walked to the balustrade of the terrace, looking forth over the white mists that curled and rose from the lawns and the meadows beneath. He felt that his new day had arisen for him. He went upstairs to his room, and when he had got into bed, he was asleep within five minutes.
It so happened, however, that the room in which his mother slept was just opposite to his on the same corridor, and even the slight sound that he made closing his door was enough to awaken her. She could then hear the sound of his swinging back the curtains which the careful housemaids invariably drew across his windows when they were turning down the counterpane; and then she knew that he must just have come upstairs. Her room was quite light, so that she could see the hour shown by the little bracket clock. It was five minutes past two.
So he had passed the four hours that elapsed since they had parted, sitting alone in the empty room! (She knew nothing of his having gone out upon the terrace.)
Her knowledge of this circumstance told her a great deal more of his condition than she could have learned from his own lips had he felt inclined to confess to her all that was in his heart.
It was true, then—the inference that she had drawn from his guarded words respecting the young woman was correct. It was on her account he had made up his mind that there was no place like home.
The mother was in great distress for some time. She shed some tears, but not many, for she reflected that at least a year must elapse before this young widow—for she was a widow, whatever sophists might say—could make another matrimonial venture, and what may not happen within a year?
This reflection comforted her, and so did the thought:
“After all, I have not seen her yet.”