Icould not understand Vi. It would seem that she was trying to avoid me. If I met her in the street she was usually driving and, while she bowed and smiled, never halted. I took many strolls by her house, hoping to catch her going in or out. I think she must have watched me. Once only, when she thought the coast was clear, I came upon her just as she was leaving the house. She saw me and flushed gloriously; then pretended that she had not seen me and re-entered, closing the door hurriedly behind her.
After that I gave up my pursuit of her. It seemed not straightforward—too much like spying. I kept away from the places she was likely to frequent. Wandering the quays, where there were only sailors and red-capped Brittany onion-sellers, I racked my brains, trying to recall in what I had offended. I felt no resentment for Vi’s conduct. It never occurred to me that she was a coquette. I thought that she might be actuated by a woman’s caution, and gave her credit for motives of which I had no knowledge. The more she withdrew beyond my attainment, the more desirable she became to me.
My grandmother noticed my fallen countenance and concluded that Sir Charles’s indifference was the cause of it. She tried to cheer me with fragments of wise sayings which had helped her to keep her courage. She told me that there were more fish in the sea than ever came out of it. She even feigned contempt for Sir Charles, saying that I should probably be just as happy without his begrudged money. She resorted to religion for comfort, saying that if God didn’t intend me to inherit Woadley, it was because it wouldn’t be good for me. She painted for me the pleasures of the contented life:
“No riches I covet, no glory I want,
H’ambition is nothing to me;
The one thing I beg of kind ’eaven to grant
Is a mind independent and free.”
But she couldn’t stir me out of my melancholy, for she didn’t know its cause. She physicked me for financial disappointments; what I wanted was a love-antidote.
As my whole energies had formerly been bent on encountering Vi, so now they were directed towards avoiding her. For hours I would lounge in the bake-house or sit in the shop while Grandmother Cardover did her knitting, served customers, or gossiped with her neighbors. Then, against my better judgment, curiosity and longing for one more glimpse of her would drag me out into the streets. Yet, once in the streets, my chief object was to flee from her.
Now when I should have refrained from pestering her, some obstinate fate was always bringing us face to face. I was sorriest for the effect that our attitude was having on Dorrie. At first she would rush forward in a gale of high spirits to greet me, until restrained by Vi. Next time, with a child’s forgetfulness, she would lift to me her pansy-face smiling, and remembering would hang back. At last she grew afraid of my troubled looks, and would hide shyly behind Vi’s skirts when she saw me.
For five days I had not met them. A desperate suspicion that they had left town grew upon me. I became reckless in my desire for certainty. I could not bear the suspense. I was half-minded to call at the house where she had been staying, but that did not seem fair to her. I called myself a fool for not having stopped her in the street while I had the chance, when an explanation and an apology might have set everything on a proper footing.
On the sixth morning of her absence I rose early and went out before breakfast. The skies were gray and squally. A slow drizzle had been falling all night and, though it now had ceased, the pavements were wet. The wind came in gusts, whistling round corners of streets and houses, whirling scraps of paper high in the air. When I came to the harbor, I saw that the sea was choppy and studded with white horses. Against the piles of the pier waves were dashing and shattering into spray. From up channel, all along the horizon, drove long lines of leaden clouds.
I struck out across the denes between the sea-wall and the Beach Road. No one was about. I braced myself against the wind, enjoying its stinging coldness. The tormented loneliness of the scene was in accord with my mood. The old town, hanging red along the cliff, no longer seemed to watch me; it frowned out on the desolate waste of water in impersonal defiance.
My thoughts were full of that first morning when I had met her. I gave my imagination over without restraint to reconstructing its sensuous beauty. I saw the fire of the furze again, and scented the far-blown fragrance of wall-flowers, hiding in their crannies. But I saw as the center of it all the slim white girl with the mantle of golden hair, the deep inscrutable eyes of violet, and the slow sweet smile ofLa Giocondaplaying round the edges of her mouth: gold and ivory, with poppies for her lips and sunshine for a background.
The hot blood in me was up—the gipsy blood. A stream of impassioned fancies passed before me. Ah, if I were to meet her now, I would have done with fine-spun theories of what was gentlemanly. On the lonely beach I would throw my arms about her, however she struggled, and hold her fast till she lay with her dear face looking up, crushed and submissive in my breast. After that she might leave me, but she would at least have learnt that I was a man and that I loved her.
Ahead lay the sullen wreck. I had been there only once since our first meeting. Motives of delicacy, which I now regretted, had held me back. Now I could go there. On such a morning, though she were still in Ransby, there would be no fear of surprising her.
On entering the hull through the hole in the prow, the wind ceased, though it whistled overhead. I leant against the walls of the stranded ship, recovering my breath. I drew out my pipe, intending to take a smoke while I rested. As I turned to strike a match, an open umbrella lying in a corner on the sand, caught my attention. I went over and looked behind it; there lay a pair of woman’s shoes and stockings, and a jacket, with stones placed on it to keep it down. Beneath the jacket was a disordered pile of woman’s clothing.
My first thought was shame of what she might think of me, were she to find me. My second was of angry fear because she had been so foolhardy as to bathe from such a shore on such a morning.
Hurrying out of the wreck, I strode across the beach to where the surf rushed boiling up the pebbles. The waves ran high, white, and foam-capped, hammering against the land. Gazing out from shore, I could see nothing but leaden water, rising and falling, rising and falling. The height of the waves might hide a swimmer from one standing at the water’s level; I raced back up the beach, and climbed the wreck. I could not discover her. The horror of what this meant stunned me; I could think of nothing else. My mind was in confusion. Then I heard my voice repeating over and over that she was not dead. The sheer monotony of the reiterated assertion, produced a sudden, unnatural clearness. “If she is not drowned, she must be somewhere out there,” I said.
I commenced to sweep the sea with my eyes in ever widening circles. Two hundred yards down the shore to the left and about fifty out, I sighted something. It was white and seemed only foam at first. The crest of a wave tossed it high for a second, then shut it out; when the next wave rose it was still there.
I shouted, but my voice would not carry against the wind. The next time the white thing rose on the crest I was sure that it was the face of a woman. I saw her arm thrown out above the surface; she was swimming the overarm stroke in an effort to make headway toward the land. I knew that she could never do it, for the current along the north beach runs seawards and the tide was going out. I gazed round in panic. The shore was forlorn and deserted. Behind me to the northward stretched the gaunt, bare cliffs. To the southward, a mile distant across the denes, stood the outskirts of the sleepy town. Before ever I could bring help, she would have been carried exhausted far out to sea, or else drowned. There was no boat on the shore between myself and the harbor. There was nothing between her and death but myself. And to go to her rescue meant death.
I scarcely know what happened. I became furious with unreasonable anger. I was angry with her for her folly, and angry with the world because it took no notice and did not care. I was determined that, before it was too late, I would go to her, so that she might understand. Yet, despite my passion, I acted with calculation and cunning. All my attention was focused on that speck of white, bobbing in the waste of churned up blackness. As I ran along the beach I kept my eyes fixed on that. When I came opposite, I waved to it. It took no notice. I hurried on a hundred yards further; the current would bear her down towards me northwards. I stripped almost naked, tearing off everything that would weigh me down. I waded knee-deep into the surf, up to where the beach shelved suddenly. I waited till a roller was on the point of breaking; diving through it, I struck out.
It was difficult to see her. Only when the waves threw us high at the same moment, did I catch a glimpse of her and get my direction. The shock of the icy coldness of the water steadied my nerves and concentrated my purpose. I was governed by a single determination—to get to her. My thought went no further than that. Nothing else mattered. I had no fear of death or of what might come after—I had no time to think about it. I wanted to get her in my arms and shake her, and tell her what a little fool she was, and kiss her on the mouth.
Lying on my right side, keeping low in the water, I dug my way forward with an over-arm left-stroke. As my first wind went from me and I waited for my second, I settled down into the long plugging stroke of a mile race. The tide was with me, but the roughness of the water prevented rapid progress. I had to get far enough out to be at the point below her in the current to which she was being swept down.
I started counting from one to ten to keep myself from slackening, just as the cox of a racing-eight does when he forces his crew to swing out. I regarded my body impersonally, without sympathy, as though we were separate. When it suffered and the muscles ached, I lashed it forward with my will, silently deriding it with brutal profanities. The wind poured over the sea; the spray dashed up and nearly choked me. It was difficult to keep her in sight. When I saw her again, I smiled grimly at her courage and hit up a quicker pace. Who would have thought that her fragile body, so flower-like and dainty, had the strength and nerve to fight like that?
I was far enough out now to catch her. I halted, treading water; but the inaction gave my imagination time to get to work, and, when that happened, I felt myself weakening. I started up against the current, going parallel with the beach, to meet her. The one obsessing thought in my mind was to get to her. It was not so much a thought as an animal instinct. I was reduced to the primitive man, brutally battling his way towards his mate at a time of danger. While I acted instinctively, the flesh responded; directly I paused to think, my body began to shirk and my strength to ebb. Somewhere in that raging waste of water I must find and touch her. I did not care to hear her voice—simply to hold her.
Thirty feet away a gray riot of stampeding water rose against the horizon; in it I saw her face. With the swift trudging stroke of a polo-player I made towards her. In the foam and spray I saw what looked like golden seaweed. She was drifting past me; I caught her by the hair. Out of the mist of driven chaos we gazed in one another’s eyes. Her lips moved. “You!” she said.
My mind was laughing in triumph. My body was no longer weary—it was forgotten and strong again. In all the world there were just she and I. She had tried to escape me, but now the waves jostled us together. She had striven not to see me, but now my face focused all her gaze. She might look away into the smoking crest of the next roller, but her eyes must always come back. Of all live things we had loved or hated, now there remained just she and I. We had been stripped of all our acquirements and thrown back to the primitive basis of existence—a man and a woman fighting for life in chaos. For us all the careful conventions, built up by centuries, were suddenly destroyed. The polite decencies and safeguards of civilization were swept aside. The shame of so many natural things, which had made up the toll of our refinement, was contemptuously blotted out—the architecture of the ages was shattered in an instant. We were thrown back to where the first man and woman started. The only virtue that remained to us was the physical strength by which death might be avoided. The sole distinguishing characteristic between us was the female’s dependence on the male, and the male’s native instinct to protect her, if need be savagely with his life. Over there, a mile away, stood the red comfortable town on the cliff, where all the smug decencies were respected which we had perforce abandoned. Between us and the shore stretched fifty yards of water—a gulf between the finite and the infinite. Over there lay the moment of the present; here in eternity were she and I.
I gazed on her with stern gladness; I had got to her—she was mine. The madness for possession, which had given me strength, was satisfied. Now a fresh motive, still instinctive and primal, urged me on—I must save her. I lifted her arm and placed it across my shoulder, so that I might support her. The great thing was to keep her afloat as long as possible. There was no going back over the path that we had traversed—both tide and current were dead against us. Already the shore was stealing away—we were being carried out to sea.
I remembered, how on that first morning, when I had warned her against bathing from the north beach, she had told me she was a good swimmer. In my all-embracing ignorance of her, I had no means of estimating how much or how little that meant. For myself, barring accidents, I judged I could keep going for two hours.
Vi was weakening. With her free left hand she was still swimming pluckily, but her right hand kept slipping off my shoulder; I had to watch her sharply and lift it back. Her weight became heavier. Her lips were blue and chattering. I noticed that her fingers were spread apart; she had cramp in the palms of her hands. Her body dragged beside me; she was losing control of it. She was no longer kicking out.
To talk, save in monosyllables, was impossible, and then one had to shout. Our ears were stopped up with water; the clash of the wind against the waves was deafening. My one fear for her was that the cramp would spread. If that happened, we would go down together.
I felt her cold lips pressed against my shoulder. As I looked round, she let go of me. “I’m done,” she said.
She went under. I slipped my arm about her and turned over on my back, so that my body floated under her, and she lay across my breast. “You shan’t go,” I panted furiously.
“Let me,” she pleaded.
But I held her. “You shan’t go,” I said.
My anger roused her. I turned over again, swimming the breast-stroke. She placed her arm round my neck. Her long hair washed about me.
Sometimes her eyes were closed and I thought she had fainted. Her lips had ceased to chatter. Her face lay against my shoulder, pinched and quiet as though she were dead. My own motions were becoming mechanical. It was sheer lust of life that kept me going. I had lost sensation in my feet and hands. The shore had dwindled behind us; it seemed very small and blurred, though it was probably only half-a-mile distant. The water was less turbulent now; it rose and fell, rose and fell, with a rocking restfulness. I felt that I would soon be sleeping soundly. But in the midst of drowsing, my mind would spring up alert and I would drag her arm closer about my neck.
Above the clamor of the waves I heard a shout. At first I thought that I had given it myself. I heard it again; it was unmistakable.
Looking up out of the trough of a wave, I saw a patched sail hanging over us. My sight was misty; the sail was indistinct and yet near me. As I rose on the crest, a hand grabbed me and I felt myself lifted out on to a pile of nets.
Thar, lad, lie still. Yow’ll be ’ome direc’ly.”
The gray-bearded man at the tiller smiled to me in a friendly manner. He didn’t seem at all excited, but took all that had happened stoically, as part of the day’s work. Seeing me gaze round questioningly, he added, “The lassie’s well enough, Mr. Cardover. She’ll come round. A mouthful o’ salt water won’t ’urt ’er.”
I wondered vaguely how he knew my name. Then, as my brain cleared, I remembered him as one of the fishermen who called in at my grandmother’s shop for an occasional chat, seated on a barrel.
I raised myself on my elbow. We were rounding the pier-head, running into the harbor. I was in a little shrimping-boat. The nets hung out over the stern. The old man at the tiller was in oilskins and a younger man was shortening sail.
I felt sick, and giddy, and stiff. A tarpaulin was thrown over me. I tried to recollect how I came there. Then I saw Vi lying near me in the bows. A sailor’s coat was wrapped about her. Her hair lay piled in a golden heap over her white throat and breast. Her eyes were closed. The blueness of the veins about her temples enhanced her pallor. I made an effort to crawl towards her; but the motion of the boat and my own weakness sent me sprawling.
People from the pier-head had seen us. As we stole up the harbor, questions were shouted to the man at the tiller and answers shouted back. When we drew in at the quayside an excited crowd had gathered. To every newcomer the account was given of how Joe Tuttle, as ’e war a-beating up to the ’arbor, comed across them two a-driftin’ off the nor’ beach, ’alf a mile or so from land.
Coats were torn off and folded round us. Someone was sent ahead to warn neighbor Cardover of what she must expect. Vi was tenderly lifted out and carried down the road in the arms of Joe Tuttle. I was hoisted like a sack across the shoulders of our younger rescuer. Accompanying us was a shouting, jabbering, eager crowd, anxious to tell everyone we passed what had happened. My most distinct recollection is the shame I felt of the bareness of my dangling legs.
The tramp of heavy feet invaded the shop. I heard the capable voice of Grandmother Cardover getting rid of sightseers. “Now then, my good people, there’s nothing ’ere for you. Out you go; you’re not wanted in my shop. Thank goodness, we can worry along without your ’elp.” Then I heard her in a lower voice giving directions for us to be carried upstairs.
Hot blankets, brought from the bake-house oven, were soon about me and I was tucked safe in bed. I have a faint recollection of the doctor coming and of hot spirits being forced down my throat. Then they left me alone and I fell into the deep sleep of utter weariness.
When I awoke, the room was in darkness and a fire was burning. I felt lazy and comfortable. I turned on my side and found that I was alone. I began to think back. The thought that filled my mind seemed a continuation of what I had been dreaming. I was in the trough of a wave, the sea was washing over me, Vi’s arm was heavy about my neck, and her lips were kissing my shoulder. I looked round; her eyes shone into mine, and her hair swayed loose about her like the hair of a mermaiden. I listened. There were footsteps on the stair. The door opened and my grandmother tiptoed to the bed.
I raised myself up. The torpor cleared from my brain. Before the question could frame itself, my grandmother had answered it. “She’s all right, Dante; she’s in the spare bedroom and sleeping soundly.”
She seated herself beside me and slipped her wrinkled old hand into mine beneath the bed-clothes. She sat in silence for some minutes. The light from the street-lamp shining in at the window, fell upon her. I could see her gray curls wabbling, the way they always did when she was agitated. At last she spoke. “How did it ’appen, Dante?”
I told her.
“Then you knowed ’er before?”
Little by little I gave her all the story.
“A nice young rascal you are,” she said; “and a pretty way you’ve got o’ love-making. You beat your own father, that you do. And what’s her name?”
“I don’t know.”
“He doesn’t know!” She laughed till the tears ran down her face. “And I suppose you think you’re goin’ to marry ’er?”
“I know I am.”
“Well, the sooner the better I say. Judging by her looks, you might ’ave chose worse. When it comes to wimmen, the Evrards and the Cardovers are mad.”
She went downstairs to get me some supper. I had given her Vi’s address, that she might send off a message to Vi’s landlady. Poor little Dorrie must be beside herself by now, wondering what had happened.
While I ate my supper, my grandmother kept referring to what I had told her. She was very proud and happy. Her eyes twinkled behind her spectacles. I had added an entirely original chapter to the history of our family’s romance. “I keep wishin’,” she said, “that your dear ma ’ad been alive. It would just ’a’ suited her.”
The morning broke bright and sunny. I insisted on getting up to breakfast. I was a trifle stiff, but apart from that none the worse for my experience. It was odd to think that Vi was sleeping in the same house—Vi, who had passed me in the streets without seeing me, Vi from whom I had hidden myself, Vi who at this time yesterday morning had seemed so utterly unattainable. The sense of her nearness filled me with wild enthusiasm. I hummed and whistled while I dressed. I wondered how long she would make me wait before we were married. She was mine already. Why should we wait? I was impatient to go to her, I could feel the close embrace of her long white arm about my neck. I was quite incurious as to who she was or where she came from. Life for me began when I met her.
As I passed her door I halted, listening. I could hear my grandmother talking inside, but in such a low voice that I could catch nothing of what was said. She was bustling about, beating up the pillows and, as I judged, making Vi tidy. Hearing her coming towards the door, I hurried down the stairs. The stairs entered into the keeping-room. When she came down, she carried an empty breakfast-tray in her hand. I noticed that she had on her Sunday best: a black satin dress, a white lace apron trimmed with black ribbon, and her finest lace cap spangled with jet.
“She’s been askin’ for you.”
I jumped up from my chair.
“But she won’t see you until you’ve breakfasted.”
While I hastened through the meal, my grandmother chattered gaily. She quite approved my choice of a wife and had drawn from Vi one fact, of which I was unaware—that she was an American. She was burning with curiosity to learn more about her and was full of the most rosy conjectures. She was quite sure that Vi was an heiress—all American women who traveled alone were.
She went up to see that all was ready; then she came to the top of the stairs and beckoned.
“I’m goin’ to leave you alone,” she whispered, taking my face between her hands. “God bless you, my boy.” Then she vanished all a-blush and a-tremble into the keeping-room.
The blood was surging in my brain. I felt weak from too much happiness. Opening the door slowly, I entered.
I scarcely dared look up at first. The room swam before me. The old-fashioned green and red flowers in the carpet ran together. I raised my eyes to the large four-poster mahogany bed—it seemed too large to hold such a little person. I could see the outline of her figure, but the heavy crimson curtains, hanging from the tester, hid her face from me.
“Vi, darling!”
She sat up, with her hands pressed against her throat. The sunlight, shining in at the window, poured down upon her, burnishing her two long plaited ropes of hair. She turned towards me; her eyes were misty, her bosom swelling. She seemed to be calling me to her, and yet pushing me back. I felt my knees breaking under me, and the sob beginning in my throat. I ran towards her and knelt down at the bedside, placing my arms about her and drawing her to me. For an instant she resisted, then her body relaxed. I looked up at her, pouring out broken sentences. I felt that the tears were coming through excess of gladness and bowed my head.
She was bending over me, so near she stooped that her breath was in my hair. The sweet warmth of her was all about me. Her lips touched my forehead. I held her more closely, but I would not meet her eyes. I dared not till my question was answered. The silence between us stretched into an eternity. Her hands wandered over me caressingly; it seemed a child comforting a man. “Poor boy,” she whispered over and over, “God knows, neither of us meant it.”
When I lifted my face to hers, the tenderness in her expression was wiped out by a look of wild despair. She tore my hands from about her body and tumbled her head back into the pillows with her face turned from me, shaken by a storm of sobbing. Muttered exclamations rose to her lips—things and names were mentioned which I only half heard, the purport of which I could not understand. I tried to gather her to me, but she broke away from me. “Oh, you mustn’t,” she sobbed, “you mustn’t touch me.”
With her loss of self-control my strength returned. I sat beside her on the bed, stroking her hand and trying to console her—trying to tell myself that this was quite natural and that everything was well.
Gradually she exhausted herself and lay still. “You ought to go,” she whispered; but when I rose to steal away, her hand clutched mine and drew me back. In a slow, weary voice she began to speak to me. “I can’t do what you ask me; I’m already married. I thought you would have guessed from Dorrie.”
She paused to see what I would say or do. When I said nothing, but clasped her hand more firmly, she turned her face towards me, gazing up at me from the pillow. “I thought you would have left me after that,” she said. “It’s all my fault; I saw how things were going.”
“Dearest, you did your best.”
“Yes, I did my best and hurt you. When I told you that I was done yesterday, why didn’t you let me go? It would all have been so much easier.”
“Because I wanted you,” I said, “and still want you.” The silence was so deep that I could hear the rustle of the sheets at each intake of her breath.
“You can’t have me.”
Her voice was so small that it only just came to me. “I belong to Dorrie’s father. He’s a good man and he trusts me, though he knows I don’t love him.”
She sat up, letting go my hand. I propped the pillows under her. She signed to me to seat myself further away from her.
“She is mine. She is mine,” I kept thinking to myself. “We belong to one another whatever she says.”
“I shall be better soon,” she said; “then I can go away. You must try to forget that you ever knew me.”
“I can never forget. I shall wait for you.” Then the old treacherous argument came to me, though it was sincerely spoken. “Why need we go out of one another’s lives? Vi dearest, can’t we be friends?”
She hesitated. “I was thinking ofyouwhen I said it. For me it would be easier; I have Dorrie to live for. It would be more difficult for you—you are a man.”
“Can’t you trust me, Vi? You told me that he trusted you just now.”
Her voice was thin and tired. “Could we ever be only friends?”
“We must try—we can pretend.”
“But such trials all have one ending.”
“Ours won’t.”
Her will was broken and her desire urged it. She held out her hand. “Then let’s be friends.”
I took it in mine and kissed it. Even then, I believe, we doubted our strength.
TheRansby Chroniclehad a full account of the averted bathing fatality. In a small world of town gossip it was a sensation almost as important as a local murder. Columns were filled up with what Vi’s landlady said, and Joe Tuttle, and Mrs. Cardover, and even Dorrie. They tried to interview me without success; they couldn’t interview Vi, for she was in bed. From the landlady they gleaned some facts of which I was ignorant. Vi was Mrs. Violet Carpenter, of Sheba, Massachusetts. Her husband was the owner of large New England cotton factories. She had been away from America upwards of a year, traveling in Europe. She expected to return home in a month. The history of my parentage was duly recorded, including an account of my father’s elopement. All the old scandal concerning my mother was raked up and re-garnished.
Knowing what my intentions had been toward Vi, my grandmother was terribly flustered at the discovery that Vi was a married woman. She was hurt in her pride; she wanted to blame somebody. Her sense of the proprieties was offended, and she felt that her reputation was secretly tarnished. An immoral situation was existing under her roof—at least, that was what she felt. She wanted to get rid of Vi directly, but the doctor forbade her to be moved.
“And to think I should ’ave come to this!” she kept exclaiming, “after livin’ all these years honored and respected in my little town! Mind, I don’t blame you, and I don’t blame ’er. Poor things! You couldn’t ’elp it. But I can’t get over it—there was you a-proposin’ in my spare bedroom to a married woman, and she a-lyin’ in bed! What would folks say if they was to ’ear about it? And in my ’ouse! And me so honored and respected!”
Her horror seemed to center in the fact that it should have happened in the spare bedroom of all places, where all her dead had been laid out.
She took it for granted that Vi and I would part forever, as soon as she was well enough to travel. “By all showings, it’s ’igh time she went back to ’er ’usband,” she said.
She suffered another shock when I undeceived her. “You’re playin’ with fire, Dante; that’s what you’re doin’. Take the word of an old woman who knows the world—friendship will drift into familiarity and, more’n likely, familiarity ’ll drift into something else. A Cardover’s bad enough where wimmen is concerned, but an Evrard’s the devil. It’s the gipsy blood that makes ’em mad.”
I turned a deaf ear to all her protests. Vi and I had done nothing wicked, and we weren’t going to run away from one another as though we had. A mistake had occurred which concerned only ourselves; we had nothing to be ashamed of. Then my grandmother threatened to send for Ruthita so that, at least, we might not be alone together. I was quick to see that Ruthita’s presence would be a protection, so agreed that she should be invited down to Ransby provided she was told nothing. Meanwhile no meetings between Vi and myself were allowed. My grandmother guarded the spare bedroom like a dragon.
But in a timid way, in her heart of hearts, she was proud of the complication. It intrigued her. It made us all interesting persons. She wore the indignant face of a Mother Grundy because she knew that society would expect it of her; in many little sympathetic ways she revealed her truer self. She would take her knitting up to Vi’s bedside—Mrs. Carpenter as she insisted on calling her—and would spend long hours there. When conversing with me in the keeping-room late at night, she would grow reminiscent and tell brave stories of the rewards which came at length to thwarted lovers. I learnt from her that Mr. Randall Carpenter was much older than either Vi or myself. If he were to die——!
On the second morning that Vi had been in the house I returned from a desultory walk to find my grandmother in close conference with a stranger. He was a dapper, perky little man, white-haired, bald-headed, whiskered, with darting birdlike manners and a dignified air of precision about him. He had the well-dressed appearance of a city gentleman rather than of a Ransbyite. He wore a frock-coat, top-hat, gray trousers, shiny boots, and white spats. I judged that he belonged to a profession.
Apologizing for my intrusion, I crossed the keeping-room, and was on the point of mounting the stairs when the little man rose, all smiles.
“Your grandson, Mrs. Cardover, I presume? He’s more of an Evrard than a Cardover—all except his mouth.”
He was introduced to me as Mr. Seagirt, the lawyer.
“Happy to know you, Mr. Cardover. Happy to know you, sir.” He pulled off his gloves and shook hands in a gravely formal manner. “We shall see more of one another as time goes on. I hope it most sincerely. In fact, I may say, from the way things are going, there is little doubt of it.”
We all sat down. There was a strange constrained atmosphere of excitement and embarrassment about both Mr. Seagirt and my grandmother. They balanced on the edge of their chairs, flickering their eyelids and twiddling their thumbs. Lawyer Seagirt kept up a hurried flow of procrastinating conversation, continually limiting or overemphasizing his statements.
“I have heard of what you did a day or two ago, Mr. Cardover—we have all heard of it. You have created an excellent impression—most excellent. The papers have been very flattering, but not more so than you deserve. Ransby feels quite proud of you. Though you are a Londoner, you belong to Ransby—no getting away from that. I suppose you’d tell us that you belong to Oxford. Ah, well, it’s natural—but we claim you first.”
All the time he had been talking he and my grandmother had been signaling to one another with their eyes, as though one were saying, “You tell him,” and the other, “No, you tell him.”
When they did make up their minds to take me into their secret, they did it both together.
“Your grandfather—Sir Charles Evrard,” they began, and there they stuck.
At last it came out that my grandfather had expressed a wish to see me, and had sent Lawyer Seagirt to make the necessary inquiries about me. This action on his part could have but one meaning.
Two days later I was invited over to Woadley Hall to spend a week there. Before I went, I had an interview with Vi, in my grandmother’s presence. She promised me that she would not leave Ransby until after I returned. My fear had been that some spasm of caution might make her seize this opportunity to return to America.
I drove out to Woadley Hall late in the afternoon, planning to get there in time for dinner. I felt considerably nervous. I had been brought up in dread of Sir Charles since childhood. I did not know what kind of conduct was expected from me or what kind of reception I might expect.
As we swung in through the iron gates and passed up the long avenue of chestnuts and elms which led through the parkland to the house, my nervousness increased into childish consternation. The pride of ancestry and the comfortable signs of wealth filled me with distress. I belonged to this, and was on my way to be examined to see whether I could prove worthy. I was not ashamed of my father’s family, but I was prepared to be angry if anyone else should show shame of them.
Far away, on the edge of the green grassland, just where the woods began to cast their shadow, I could see dappled fallow-deer grazing. Colts, hearing us approaching, lifted up their heads and stared, then whisking their tails galloped off to watch us from behind their dams. Turrets and broken gables of the old Jacobean Hall rose out of the trees before us. Rooks were coming home to their nests in the tall elms, cawing. The home-farm lay over to our left; the herd was coming out from the milking, jingling their bells. A streak of orange lay across the blue of the west—the beginning of the sunset.
Immediately on my arrival, I was shown to my bedroom to dress. I began to have the sense of “belonging.” The windows looked out on a sunken garden, all ablaze with stocks, snap-dragon, sweet-william, and all manner of old-world flowers. In the scented stillness I could hear the splash of a fountain playing in the center. Beyond that were other gardens, Dutch and Italian, divided by red walls and terraces. Beyond them all, through the shadowed trees one caught glimpses of a lake, with swans and gaily-painted water-fowl sailing like toy-yachts upon its surface.
When the servant had left me, I commenced to dress leisurely. After that I sat down, waiting for the gong to sound. I wondered if this was the room where my mother had slept. How much my father’s love must have meant to her that she should have sacrificed so much prosperous certainty to share his insecure fortunes. Yet, as I looked back, it was a smiling face that I remembered, with no marks of misgiving or regret upon it.
I did not meet my grandfather until the meal was about to be served. I think he had planned our first encounter carefully, so that our conduct might be restrained by the presence of servants. His greeting was that of any host to any guest. Our conversation at dinner was on impersonal, intellectual topics—the kind that is carried on between well-bred persons who are thrown together for the moment and are compelled to be polite to one another. The only way in which he betrayed nervousness was by crumbling his bread with his left hand while he was conversing.
Finding that I was not anxious to force matters, he became more at his ease. He addressed me as Mr. Cardover, with stiff and kindly courtesy. We took our cigars out on to the terrace to watch the last of the sunset. He was talking of Oxford, and the changes which had taken place in the University since he was an undergraduate.
“I believe you are a Fellow of Lazarus, Mr. Cardover?”
“Yes.”
“I had a nephew there a few years ago, Lord Halloway, the son of my poor brother-in-law, the Earl of Lovegrove. You may know him.”
“Only by hearsay. He was before my time.”
My grandfather knocked the ash from his cigar. Then, speaking in a low voice, very deliberately, “I’m afraid you have heard nothing good about him. He has not turned out well.”
He paused: I felt that I was being tested. When I kept silent, he continued, “I have no son. He was to have followed me.”
Shortly afterwards he excused himself, saying that he was an old man and retired early to bed.
For six days we maintained our polite and measured interchange of courtesies. I was left free most of the time to entertain myself. He was a perfect host, and knew exactly how far to share my company without appearing niggardly of his companionship or, on the other hand, intruding it on me to such an extent that we wore out our common fund of interests. For myself, I wished that I might see more of him. Never by any direct statement did he own that there was any relationship between us. Yet gradually he began to imply his intention in having me to visit him.
I would have been completely happy, had it not been that Vi was absent. I reckoned up the hours until I should return. All day my imagination was following her movements. I refused to look ahead to the certainty of approaching separation—it was enough for me that I could be near her in the present.
It was strange how poignant the world had become, how subtly, swiftly suggestive, since I had discovered her presence in it. All my sensations, even those outwardly unrelated to her, grouped themselves into a memory of her sweetness. It was a blind and pagan love she had aroused—one which recognized no standards, but craved only fulfilment.
There were times when I stood back appalled, as a man who comes suddenly to the edge of a precipice, when I realized where this love was leading. Then my awakened conscience would remind me of my promise—that we would be only friends.
These were the thoughts which now made me glad, now sorrowful, as I rode through the leafy lanes round Woadley at the side of my proud old grandfather. I would steal guilty glances at him, marveling that no rumor of what I was thinking had come to him by some secret process of telepathy. He looked so cold and unimpassioned, I wondered if he had ever loved a woman.
I began to love the Woadley country with the love which only comes from ownership. The white Jacobean Hall, with the chestnuts and elm-trees grouped about it and the doves fluttering above its gables, became the starting point for all the future chapters of my romance. I began to see life in its prosperous, substantial aspect. The stately dignity of my environment had its subconscious effect upon my lawless turbulence. In the morning I would wake with the rooks cawing and, going to the window, would look out on the sunken garden, the peaches ripening against the walls, the dew sparkling on the trim box-hedges, and the leaves beating the air like wings of anchored butterflies as the wind from the sea stirred them. Everywhere the discipline of history was apparent—the accumulated, ordered effort of generations of men and women dead and gone. I had been accustomed to regard myself as an isolated unit, responsible to myself alone for my actions.
The last evening on entering my bedroom, I noticed that there had been a change in the ornaments on my dressing-table. A gold-framed miniature had been placed in the middle of the table, face up, before the mirror. It was a delicate, costly piece of work done on ivory. I held it to the light to examine it, wondering how it had come there.
It must have been taken in the heyday of my mother’s girlhood, when all the county bachelors were courting her. The gray eyes looked out on me with bewitching frankness. The red lips were parted as if on the point of widening into laughter. The long white neck held the head poised at an angle half-arch, half-haughty. As I gazed on it, I saw that the similarity between our features was extraordinary. It was my grandfather’s way of expressing to me the tenderness that he could not bring himself to utter. .
After breakfast next morning, he led the way into the library. He looked graver and more unapproachable than ever. “Mr. Cardover, your visit has been a great pleasure to me. Mr. Seagirt will be here before you leave. Before he comes I wish to say that I want no thanks for what I am doing. It is more or less a business matter. All your life there have been strained relations between myself and your father, which it is impossible for any of us to overlook or forget. So far as you are concerned, you owe him your loyalty. I do not propose to bring about unhappiness between a father and a son by encouraging your friendship further. This week was a necessary exception; I could not take the step I have now decided on without knowing something about you.”
He cleared his throat and rose from his chair, as if afraid that I might lay hold of him. He walked up and down the library, with his head bowed and his right hand held palm out towards me in a gesture that asked for silence. He halted by the big French window, on the blind before which years ago I had watched his shadow fall. He stood with his back towards me, looking down the avenue. Then he turned again to me. The momentary emotion which had interrupted him had vanished. His voice was more cold and polite than ever. Only the twitching of the muscles about his eyes betrayed the storm of feeling that stirred him.
“In any case,” he said, “you would have inherited my baronetcy. Perhaps, you did not know that. I could not alienate that from you. The patent under which it is held allows it to pass, for one generation, through the female line to the next male holder. Until recently my will was made in the favor of my nephew, Lord Halloway. Circumstances have arisen which lead me to believe that such a disposal of my estate would be unwise. We Evrards have had our share of frailties, but we have always been noted as clean men. Something that I saw about you in the papers brought your name before my notice. I made up my mind then and there that, if you proved all that I hoped for, I would make you my successor. As I have said, this is a business transaction, in return for which I neither expect nor wish any display of gratitude.”
While we had been speaking I had heard the trot of a horse approaching. Just as he finished Mr. Seagirt entered.
“Mr. Seagirt,” said Sir Charles, “I have explained the situation to Mr. Cardover. Any communications he or I have to make to one another relative to the estate, we will make through you. If you have brought the will, I will sign it.”
He was fingering his pen, when I startled him by speaking. “Sir Charles, you have spoken of not encouraging my friendship. I am a grown man and of an age to choose my own friendships where I like, and this without offense to my father. I have another loyalty, to my dead mother—a loyalty which you share. If you care to trust me, I should like to be your friend.”
He took my hand in his and for one small moment let his left hand rest lightly on my shoulder. We gazed frankly into one another’s eyes without pretense or disguise. Then the shame of revealing his true feelings returned.
“We shall see. We shall see,” he muttered hastily; “I am an old man.”