CHAPTER XVII
LYNETTE INTERPOSES
At such a parting of the ways, Canterton’s elemental grimness showed itself. He was the peasant, sturdy, obstinate, steady-eyed, ready to push out into some untamed country, and to take and hold a new domain. For under all his opulent culture and his rare knowledge lay the patient yet fanatical soul of the peasant. He was both a mystic and a child of the soil, not a city dweller, mercurial and flippant, a dog at the heels of profit and loss.
Eve had talked of the impossible, but when he took Lynette by the hand and went down with her into the Wilderness, Canterton could not bring himself to play the cynic. Sitting in the bracken, and watching Lynette making one of her fairy fires, he felt that it was Eve’s scepticism that was impossible, and not his belief in a magnanimous future. He was so very sure of himself that he felt too sure of other people. His name was not a thing to be made the sport of rumour. Men and women had worked together before now; and did the world quarrel with a business man because he kept a secretary or a typist? Moreover, he believed himself to be different from the average business man, and what might have meant lust for one spoke of a sacrament to the other.
“Daddy, why didn’t Miss Eve come yesterday?”
“She had work at home, Princess.”
“And to-day too?”
“It seems so.”
“Why don’t we go and see her, then?”
“Why not?”
The mouth of the child had offered an inspiration. Was it possible to look into Lynette’s eyes and be scared by sinister suggestions? Why, it was a comradeship of three, not of two. They were three children together, and perhaps the youngest was the wisest of the three.
“Lynette, come here, old lady! Miss Eve thinks of going away.”
“Miss Eve going away?”
“Yes.”
“Oh, no, daddy, how can she?”
“Well, one has only to get into a train, even if it be a train of thought.”
Lynette was kneeling between her father’s knees.
“I’ll ask her not to go.”
“You might try it.”
“Oh, yes, let’s! Let’s go down to Orchards Corner now—at once!”
Eve had been suffering, suffering for Canterton, Lynette and herself. She saw life so clearly now—the lights and shadows, the sunlit spaces, the sinister glooms, the sharp, conventional horizons. Canterton did not know how much of the woman there was in her, how very primitive and strong were the emotions that had risen to the surface of her consciousness. The compact would be too perilous. She knew in her heart of hearts that the youth in her desired more than a spiritual dream, and she was trying to harden herself, to build up barriers, to smother this splendid thing, this fire of the gods.
She had taken her work out into the garden, and was striving against a sense of perfunctoriness and the conviction that the life at Fernhill could not last. She had more than hinted at this to Canterton, bracing herself against his arguments, and against all the generous steadfastness of his homage that made the renunciation harder for her to bear.
And now an impetuous tenderness attacked her at white heat, a thing that came with glowing hair and glowing mouth, and arms that clung.
Lynette had run up the lane in front of Canterton, and Lynette was to make Eve Carfax suffer.
“Oh, Miss Eve, it isn’t true, is it?”
“What isn’t true, dear heart?”
“That you are going right away.”
Eve felt a thickness at the throat. All that was best in life seemed conspiring to tempt and to betray her.
“I may have to go, dear.”
“But why—why, when we love you so much? Aren’t you happy?”
“When I am with you, yes. But there are all sorts of things that you wouldn’t understand.”
“Oh, but I could!”
“Perhaps some day you will.”
“But, Miss Eve, you won’t really go, will you?”
Canterton came in at the white gate, and Eve’s eyes reproached him over the glowing head of the child. “It is ungenerous of you,” they said, “to let the child try and persuade me.”
She hugged Lynette with sudden passion.
“I don’t want to go, dear, but some big devil fairy is telling me I shall have to.”
She was shy of Canterton, and ready to hide behind the child, for there was a grim purposefulness about his idealism that made her afraid. His eyes hardly left her, and, though they held her sacred, they would have betrayed everything to the most disinterested of observers.
“I thought I would work at home on some of these sketches.”
“And Lynette and I have been making a fire in the Wilderness. We missed you.”
Eve felt stifled. Lynette was looking up into her face, and she was fingering the white lace collar round the child’s neck. She knew that she must face Canterton. It was useless to try to shirk the challenge of such a man.
“Isn’t it close to-day? Lynette, dear, what about some raspberries? I’m so thirsty.”
“Where are they, Miss Eve? Aren’t they over?”
“No, they are a late kind. You know, round behind the house. Ask Anne for a dish.”
“I’ll get a rhubarb leaf, and pick the biggest for you.”
“Dear heart, we’ll share them.”
Lynette ran off, and they were left alone together. Canterton had brought up a deck chair, and was looking over some of Eve’s sketches that lay in a portfolio on the grass. His silence tantalised her. It was a force that had to be met and challenged.
“I sent Lynette away because I wanted to speak to you.”
He laid the sketch aside and sat waiting.
“Why did you let her come to tempt me?”
“Because I can see no real reason why you should go.”
Her eyes became appealing.
“Oh, how blind! And you let the child rush at me, let me feel her warm arms round my neck. It was not fair to me, or to any of us.”
“To me it did not seem unfair, because I do not think that I am such a criminal.”
“I know; you are so sure of yourself. But if you thought that the child would persuade me, you were very much deceived. It has made me realise more than anything else that I cannot go on with the life at Fernhill.”
He bent forward in his chair.
“Eve, I tell you from my heart that you are wrong. I want you to be something of a mother to Lynette. I can give the man’s touches, but my fingers are not delicate enough to bring out all the charm. Think, now.”
She sat rigid, staring straight before her.
“I have made up my mind.”
“It is the privilege of wise minds to change, Eve. I want you as well as Lynette.”
“Don’t make me suffer. Do you think it is easy?”
“Let me show you——”
“No, no! If you try to persuade me, I shall refuse to listen.”
And then silence fell on both of them, for Lynette returned with a large rhubarb leaf holding a little mountain of red fruit.
CHAPTER XVIII
EVE SPEAKS OUT
Eve felt very restless that evening, and with seeming illogicality went up to her room at the old-time hour of nine.
The day had been close and sultry, and the bedroom still felt hot after the hours of scorching sunlight on the tiles. Eve drew the curtains back, and opened the casement to its widest, for the upper windows were still fitted with the old lead-lights. The sill was deep, nearly a foot and a half broad, and Eve half lay and half leant upon it while the night air streamed in.
And what a night! All jet and silver; for the moon was up over the fir woods, just as on the night when her mother died. The stillness was the stillness of a dawn where no birds sing. The nightingale had long been mute, and the nightjar preferred the oak woods in the clayland valleys. Eve’s ears could not snatch a single sound out of that vast motionless landscape, with its black woods and mysterious horizons.
The silence made her feel lonely, eerily lonely, like a sensitive child lost in a wood. She remembered how she had started awake at night sometimes, terrified by this horror of loneliness, and crying out “Mother, mother!” It was absurd that the grown woman should feel like the child, and yet she found herself hungering for that little placid figure with its boring commonplaces and amiable soft face. What a prig she had been! She had let that spirit of superiority grow in her, forgetting that the hands that were always knitting those foolish woollen superfluities had held and comforted her as a child. Now, in the white heat of an emotional ordeal, she missed the nearness of that commonplace affection. What a mistake it was to be too clever; for when the heart ached, one’s cleverness stood by like a dreary pedagogue, helpless and dumb.
The stillness! She wished those dim stars would send down astral rain, and patter on this roof of silence. The sound of dripping water would be welcome. Yes, and those Latimer fountains, were they still murmuring under the cypresses, or did not the spirit of sage economy turn off the water-cocks and shut down the sluices? Life! It, too, was so often a shutting down of sluices. The deep waters had to be tamed, dammed back, kept from pouring forth as they desired. Modern conventional life was like a canal with its system of locks. There were no rapids, no freshets, no impetuous cataracts. You went up, steadily, respectably, lock by lock; you came down steadily, and perhaps just as respectably. In between was the gliding monotony of the long stretches between artificial banks, with either a religious tow-rope or a puffing philosopher to draw you.
She suffered on account of the stillness and this atmosphere of isolation, and yet the nearness of some very human incident was as a stabbing pain compared to a dull ache. Leaning there over the window-sill, with the moonlight glimmering on the lozenged glass in the lattices, she knew that she was looking towards Fernhill and all that it represented. Lynette, the child; the great gardens, that wide, free spacious, colour-filled life; Canterton’s comradeship, and even more than that. The whole future quivered on one sensitive thread. A breeze could shake it away as a wind shakes a dewdrop from the web of a spider.
She told herself that Canterton must have realised by now the impossible nature of the position he was asking her to assume. If he only would go back to the yesterday of a month ago, and let that happy, workaday life return! But then, would she herself be content with that? She had sipped the wine of Tristan and Isoult, and the magic of it was in her blood.
Her thoughts had come to this point, when something startled her. She had heard the latch of the gate click. There was a man’s figure standing in the shade of a holly that grew close to the fence.
Eve was not conscious of any fear, only of an intense curiosity—a desire to know whether she was on the brink of some half foreseen crisis. It might be a tramp, it might be the man who came courting her girl Anne; but Anne had gone to bed with a headache an hour before Eve had come to her own room.
In spite of these other possibilities, she felt prophetically convinced that it was Canterton. She did not move away from the window, knowing that the man, whoever he was, must have seen the outline of her head and shoulders against the light within. Her heart was beating faster. She could feel it as she leant with her bosom pressing upon the window-sill.
She knew Canterton the moment he moved out into the moonlight, and, crossing the grass, came and stood under her window. He was bareheaded, and his face, as he looked up at her, gave her an impression of pallid and passionate obstinacy.
“I had to come!”
She felt a flutter of exultation, but it was the exultation of tragedy.
“Madman!”
“No, I am not mad. It is the sanest moment of my life.”
“Then all the rest of the world is mad. Supposing—supposing the girl is still awake. Supposing——Oh, there are a hundred such suppositions! You risk them, and make me risk them.”
“Because I am so sure of myself. I take the risk to promise you a homage that shall be inviolate. Am I a fool? Do you think that I have no self-control—that I shall ever cause this most spiritual thing to be betrayed? I tell you I can live this life. I can make it possible for you to live it.”
Eve raised herself on her elbows, and seemed to be listening. There was the same stillness everywhere, the stillness that had been broken by Canterton’s voice.
She leant out and spoke to him in an undertone.
“I will come down. I suppose I must let you say all that you have to say.”
She put out the light and felt her way out of the room and down the stairs into the hall. Her brain felt as clear as the sky out yonder, though the turmoil in her heart might have been part of the darkness through which she passed. Unlocking and unbolting the door, she found Canterton waiting.
“You are making me do this mad thing.”
She had not troubled to put on a hat, and her face was white and clear and unhidden. Its air of desperate and purposeful frankness struck him. Her eyes looked straight at his, steadily and unflinchingly, with no subtle glances, no cunning of the lids.
“Let’s go down to the woods. Come!”
She spoke as though she had taken command of the crisis, snatched it out of his strong hands. And Canterton obeyed her. They went down the lane in the high shadow of the hedgerows and across the main road into the fir woods, neither of them uttering a word.
Eve paused when they had gone some two hundred yards into the woods. The canopy of boughs was a black vaulting, with here and there a crevice where the moonlight entered to fall in streaks and splashes upon the tree trunks and the ground. On every side were the crowding fir boles that blotted out the distance and obscured each other. The woodland floor was covered deep with pine needles, and from somewhere came the smell of bracken.
“Now, let me hear everything.”
He appeared a little in awe of her, and for the moment she was the stronger.
“I have told you all that there is to tell. I want you to be the bigger part of my life—the inward life that not another soul knows.”
“Not even Lynette?”
“She is but a child.”
Eve began to walk to and fro, and Canterton kept pace with her.
“Let’s be practical. Let’s be cold, and sure of things. You want me to be a spiritual wife to you, and a spiritual mother to Lynette?”
“Yes.”
“And you think you can live such a life?”
“I know I can.”
She was smiling, the strange, ironical, half-exultant smile of a love that is not blind.
“You are sure of yourself. Let me ask you a question. Are you sure of me?”
He looked at her searchingly in the dim light.
“Eve, I am not vain enough to ask you whether——”
“Whether I care?”
“You have said it.”
She paused, gazing at the ground.
“Is a man so much slower than a woman?”
“Sometimes one does not dare to think——”
“But the woman knows without daring.”
He stood silently before her, full of that devout wonder that had made him such a watcher in Nature’s world.
“Then, surely, child——”
Her face and eyes flashed up to him, and her hands quivered.
“Don’t call me child! Haven’t you realised that I am a woman?”
“The one woman.”
“There, it is all so impossible! And you don’t understand.”
He spoke gently, almost humbly.
“Why is it impossible? What is it that I don’t understand?”
“Oh, dear man, must I show you everything? This is why it is impossible.”
Her arms went out and were round his neck. Her mouth was close to his. In the taking of a breath she had kissed him, and he had returned the kiss, and his arms were round her.
“Jim, don’t you understand now? I care too much. That is why it is impossible.”
CHAPTER XIX
AN HOUR IN THE FIR WOODS
The warm scent of the fir woods was about them, and a darkness that made their very thoughts seem secret and secure. They were the lovers of some ancient tale wandering in an old forest of enchantments, seeing each other’s faces pale and yearning in the dim light under the trees.
Eve rested against Canterton’s outspread arm, her head upon his shoulder, as they wandered to and fro between the tall trunks of the firs. They were like ghosts gliding side by side, for the carpet of pine needles deadened the sound of their footsteps, and they spoke but little, in voices that were but murmurs.
For a brief hour they were forgetting life and its problems, letting self sink into self, surrendering everything to an intimate exultation in their nearness to each other. Sometimes they would pause, swayed by some common impulse, and stand close together, looking into each other’s eyes.
They spoke to each other as a man and woman speak but once or twice in the course of a lifetime.
“Dear heart, is it possible that this is you?”
“Am I not flesh and blood?”
“That you should care!”
“Put your hand here. Can you not feel my heart beating?”
He would slip his hand under her head, draw her face to his, and kiss her forehead, mouth and eyes. And she would sigh with each kiss, closing her eyes in a kind of ecstasy.
“Did you ever dream of me?”
“Often.”
“It sounds like a child’s question. Strange—I wonder if our dreams crossed. Did you ever dream while I was at Latimer?”
“Nearly every night.”
“And I of you. And all through the day you were with me. I felt you standing beside me. That’s why I painted Latimer as I did.”
Canterton had moments of incredulity and of awe. He would stand motionless, holding Eve’s hands, and looking down into her face.
“It is very wonderful—very wonderful!”
His man’s awe made her smile.
“What a boy you are!”
“Am I?”
“I love you like that. And yet, really, you are so strong and masterful. And I could trust you utterly, only——”
“Only?”
“You, and not myself. Oh, if we could never wake again!”
A plaintive note came into her voice. She was beginning to think and to remember.
“Eve!”
“Ah, that name!”
“Is it so impossible now?”
She reached up and gripped his wrist.
“Don’t spoil this! Oh, don’t spoil it! It will have to last us both for a lifetime. Take me back, dear; it is time.”
He felt a relaxing of her muscles as though she had suddenly grown faint and hesitating.
“Not yet.”
“Yes, now. I ask it of you, Jim.”
They began to wander back towards the road, and sometimes a shaft of moonlight struck across their faces. Their exultation weakened, the wings of their flight together were fluttering back towards the ground.
“Eve, to-morrow——”
She turned her face to his and spoke with a whispering vehemence.
“There can be no to-morrow.”
“But, dear heart!”
“I could not bear it. Have pity on me, Jim. And remember——”
They saw the white road glimmering beyond the black fir trunks. Eve paused. They stood for some moments in silence.
“Say good-bye to me here.”
“I will say good night.”
“Oh, my dearest—my dear!”
He held her very close, and she felt the strength of his great arms. The breath seemed to go out of her body, her eyes were closed.
“Now, let me go.”
He released her, and she stepped back just a little unsteadily, but trying to smile.
“Good-bye! Go back now.”
She turned, went out of the wood, and crossed the moonlit road. It lay between them like some dim river of the underworld. And Canterton was left standing in the gloom of the fir woods.
CHAPTER XX
NIGHT AND A CHILD
Eve relocked the door of the cottage, and stood in the darkness of the hall, trying to realise all that had happened.
It was like coming back out of a dream, save that the dream remained as a compelling and fateful reality, a power, a parting of the ways, a voice that cried “Explicit!” Her clarity of vision returned as she stood there in the darkness. There was only one thing to be done, whatever anguish the doing of it might cause her.
Yet for the moment she shrank from this renunciation, this surrender of the things that made life desirable, this going forth into a world of little poverties, little struggles, little sordid anxieties. It was hard, very hard to leave this spacious existence, this corner of the earth where beauty counted, and where she had been so happy in her work. Why had he made it so hard for her? And yet, though she was in pain, her heart could not utter any accusation against him. He had misunderstood her, and she had had to ruin everything by showing him the truth.
This part of her life was ended, done with; and Eve repeated the words to herself as she felt her way up the stairs and into her room. She lit the candle and stood looking about her. How cold and small and matter-of-fact the place seemed. The whole atmosphere had changed, and the room no longer felt like hers. The bedclothes were neatly turned back, but she knew that she would never sleep in that bed again. It was absurd—the very idea of sleep, when to-morrow——
She sat on the bed awhile, thinking, forcing herself to make those plans that shape themselves like hot metal poured into a mould. A hunger for physical activity seized her. She might falter or break down if she did too much thinking. Feeling under the bed, she dragged out a light leather valise, and opening it began to tumble out a collection of tissue paper, odd pieces of dress material, ribbons and scraps of lace. The very first thing she saw when she went to open the hanging cupboard was the big straw sun-hat she had worn at Latimer and Fernhill. That inanimate thing, hanging there, sent a shock of pain through her. She felt things as a sensitive child feels them, and sorrow was more than a mere vague regret.
Presently the valise was packed, and her more personal trifles collected into a handbag. She began to open all the drawers and cupboards, to sort her clothes and lay them on the bed. Once or twice she went downstairs to fetch books or something she specially needed, pausing outside the maid’s door to listen, but the girl was fast asleep. Eve sorted out all her Fernhill and Latimer studies, tied them up in brown paper, and addressed them to Canterton. Her portfolios, paint boxes, and a few odd canvases she packed into a stout parcel, labelled them, and carried them up to her room.
Then, as to money. Eve kept it locked in a little drawer in a cabinet that stood in a corner of her bedroom, and though she went to count it, she knew what was there, almost to the last penny. Seventeen pounds, thirteen shillings and ninepence. There were a pass and cheque-book also, for she had a hundred pounds in a bank at Reading, Canterton having paid her the first instalment of her salary. Eve felt loath to consent to thinking of the money as her own. Perhaps she would return it to him, or keep it untouched, a sentimental legacy left her by this memorable summer.
It was one in the morning when she lit a fresh candle and went down into the dining-room to write letters. The first was to a local house-agent and auctioneer, stating that she was leaving Basingford unexpectedly, and that the maid would deposit the keys of Orchards Corner at his office, and desiring him to arrange for a sale of all her furniture. The next letter was to Anne, the maid. Eve enclosed a month’s wages and an odd sum for current expenses, and asked her to pack two trunks and have them taken to the station and sent to the luggage office at Waterloo. Eve drew out a list of the things that were to be packed. Everything else was to be disposed of at the sale.
Then came the letter to James Canterton.
“I am taking the only course that seems open to me, and believe me when I say that it is best for us both.“I am leaving you the Latimer pictures, and all the studies I made at Fernhill. You will find them here, on the table, wrapped up and addressed to you.“I am giving Mr. Hanstead orders to sell all the furniture.“It is probable that I shall try to make some sort of career for myself in London.“Perhaps I will write to you, when my new life is settled. Don’t try to see me. I ask you, from my heart, not to do that.“Kiss Lynette, and make her think the best you can.“I am sealing this and leaving it here for you with the pictures.“Eve.”
“I am taking the only course that seems open to me, and believe me when I say that it is best for us both.
“I am leaving you the Latimer pictures, and all the studies I made at Fernhill. You will find them here, on the table, wrapped up and addressed to you.
“I am giving Mr. Hanstead orders to sell all the furniture.
“It is probable that I shall try to make some sort of career for myself in London.
“Perhaps I will write to you, when my new life is settled. Don’t try to see me. I ask you, from my heart, not to do that.
“Kiss Lynette, and make her think the best you can.
“I am sealing this and leaving it here for you with the pictures.
“Eve.”
A great restlessness came upon her when she had completed all these preparations, and she felt a desire to rush out and end the last decisive phase of her life at Fernhill. She hunted up a local time-table, and found that the first train left Basingford at half-past six in the morning. The earliness of the hour pleased her. The valise and bag were not very heavy, and she could walk the two miles to the station before the Basingford people were stirring.
Then a new fear came upon her, the fear that Canterton might still be near, or that he would return. A book that she picked up could not hold her attention, and the old bent cane rocking-chair that she had used so often when she was feeling like a grown child, made her still more restless. She went over the house, reconsidering everything, the clothes laid out on the bed, the furniture she was to leave, and whether it would be worth her while to warehouse the rather ancient walnut-cased piano, with its fretwork and magenta-coloured satin front. She wrote labels, even started an inventory, but abandoned it as soon as she entered her mother’s room.
The watch on her dressing-table told her that it was five-and-twenty minutes to four. Dawn would be with her before long, and the thought of the dawn made the little house seem dead and oppressive. She put on a pair of stout shoes, and, letting herself out into the garden, made her way to the orchard at the back of the house.
It had grown very dark before the dawn, and the crooked apple trees were black outlines against an obscure sky. They made her think of bent, decrepit, sad old men. The grass had been scythed a month ago, and the young growth was wet with dew. Everything was deathly still. Not a leaf moved on the trees. It was like a world of the dead.
She walked up and down for a long while before a vague greyness began to spread along the eastern horizon. A bird twittered. The foliage of the trees changed from black to an intense greyish blue. The fruit became visible—touches of gold, and maroon, and green. Eve could see the dew on the grass, the rust colour of the tiles on the roof, the white frames of the windows. A rabbit bolted across the orchard, and disappeared through the farther hedge.
She stood watching, wondering, and her wonder went out to the man who had caused her to suffer this pain. How had the night gone with him? What was he doing? Had he slept? Was he suffering? And then the first flush of rose came into the pearl grey east. Great rays of light followed, diverging, making the clouds a chaos of purple and white. Presently Eve saw the sun appear, a glare of gold above the fir woods.
She returned to the house, put on her hat and coat, made sure that she had her watch and purse, and carried her bag and her valise downstairs. She would leave Orchards Corner at half-past five, and there was time for a meal before she went. The girl had left dry wood ready on the kitchen stove. Eve boiled the kettle, made tea, and ate her breakfast at the kitchen table, listening all the while for any sound of the girl moving overhead. But the silence of the night still held. No one was to see her leave Orchards Corner.
Eve had wondered whether James Canterton was suffering. It is not given to many of us to feel acutely, or to travel beyond the shallows of an emotional self-pity, but Canterton had much of the spirit of the Elizabethans—men built for a big, adventurous, passionate play. He had slept no more than Eve had done, and had spent most of the night walking in the woods and lanes and over the wastes of heather and furze. He, too, was trying to realise that this experience was at an end, that a burning truth had been shown him—that they had flown too near the sun, and the heat had scorched their wings.
Yet his mood was one of rebellion. He was asking why and wherefore, thrusting that masterful creativeness of his against the conventional barriers that the woman had refused to challenge. For the first time his vitality was running in complete and tumultuous opposition to the conventional currents that had hardly been noticed by him till his will was defied. The scorn of theory was upon him, and he felt the strong man’s desire to brush the seeming artificiality aside. Had he not made self-restraint his own law, and was he to herd with men who put their signatures openly to the sexual compact, and broke their vows in secret?
Eve was afraid, not only for herself, but for him and for Lynette. But, good God! had he ever intended to force her to sacrifice herself, to defy society, or to enter into a conspiracy of passion? Was it everything or nothing with such a woman? If so, she had shown a touching magnanimity and wisdom, and uttered a cry that was heroic. But he could not believe it; her pleading that this love of theirs was mad and impossible. It was too pathetic, her confessing that she could not trust herself. He was strong enough to be trusted for them both. The night had made everything more sacred. He would refuse to let her sacrifice their comradeship.
Canterton, too, saw the dawn come up, and the sun appear as a great splash of gold. He was standing on the south-east edge of the Wilderness, with the gloom of the larch wood behind him, and as the sun rose, its level rays struck on the stream in the valley, and the deep pool among the willows where the water lay as black and as still as glass.
A clear head and a clean body. The whim that seized him had logic and symbolism. He walked down over the wet grass to the pool among the willows, where a punt lay moored to a landing stage, and a diving board projected over the water. Canterton stripped and plunged, and went lashing round and round the pool, feeling a clean vigour in his body, as his heart and blood answered the cold sting of the water.
It was half-past six when he made his way back up the hill to the gardens. A glorious day had come, and the dew still sparkled on the flowers. Wandering across the lawns he saw an auburn head at an open window, and a small hand waving a towel.
“Daddy, I’m coming—I’m coming!”
He looked up at her like a man who had been praying, and whose eyes saw a sign in the heavens.
“Hallo! Up with the lark!”
“Let’s go down to the Wilderness.”
“Come along, Queen Mab.”
“I’ve only got to put my frock on.”
“You’re just the very thing I want.”
CHAPTER XXI
THE WOMAN’S EYES IN THE EYES OF A CHILD
Lynette asked her father to tell her a story. They were walking through the wet bracken on the edge of the larch wood, Canterton holding the child’s hand.
“Presently, little Beech Leaf. A good fairy is talking to me, and I must listen.”
“Then I’ll keep ever so quiet till she’s done.”
Canterton had looked into the eyes of the child, and had seen the woman’s eyes, Eve’s eyes, in the child’s. For Eve’s eyes had been like the eyes of Lynette, till he, the man, had awakened a more primitive knowledge in them. He remembered how it had been said that the child is a finer, purer creation than either the man or the woman, and that the sex spirit is a sullying influence, blurring the more delicate colours; and Eve had had much of the child in her till he, in all innocence, had taught her to suffer.
A great pity overtook him as he looked down at Lynette, and wondered how he would feel if some blind idealist were ever to make her suffer. His pity showed him what love had failed to discover. He understood of a sudden how blind, how obstinate, and over-confident he must have seemed to Eve. He had killed all the child in her, and aroused the woman, and then refused to see that she had changed.
“I have been torturing her.”
His compassion was touched with shame.
“You are making it so impossible.”
That cry of hers had a new pathos. It was she who had suffered, because she had seen things clearly, while he had been too masterful, too sure of himself, too oblivious of her youth. One could not put the language of Summer into the mouth of Spring. It was but part of the miracle of growth that he had been studying all these years. Certain and inevitable changes had to occur when the sun climbed higher and the sap rose.
Canterton paused while they were in the thick of the larch wood.
“Lynette, old lady!”
“Yes, daddy?”
“The fairy has just said that we ought to go and see Miss Eve.”
“What a sensible fairy. Yes, do let’s go. She may let me see her do her hair.”
Canterton smiled. He meant to carry Lynette on his shoulders into the garden of Orchards Corner, to hold her up as a symbol and a sign, to betray in the child his surrender. Assuredly it was possible for them to be healed. He would say, “Let’s go back into yesterday. Try and forgive me for being blind. We will be big children together, you and I, with Lynette.”
Some warning voice seemed to speak to him as they entered the lane, questioning this plan of his, throwing out a vague hint of unexpected happenings. He heard Eve saying good-bye over yonder among the fir trees. She had refused to say good night.
He set Lynette down under the hedge, and spoke in a whisper.
“We’ll play at hide and seek. I’ll go on and see if I can find her.”
“Yes. I’ll hide, and jump out when you bring her into the lane, daddy.”
“That’s it.”
He wondered what sort of night Eve had spent, and his eyes were instinctively towards her window as he walked up the path to the house. His ring was answered almost immediately. The little, bunchy-figured maid stood there, looking sulky and bewildered.
“Is Miss Carfax in?”
The girl’s eyes stared.
“No, she ain’t. She’s gone to London, and ain’t coming back.”
“When did she go?”
“Must have been this morning before I was up. She’d ’ad ’er breakfast, and written me a letter. She’s left everything to me, and I don’t know which way to turn. There’s luggage to be packed and sent off to London, and the house to be cleaned, and the keys to be taken to Mr. Hanstead’s. I’m fair bothered, sir. I ain’t going to sleep ’ere alone, and my ’ome’s at Croydon. Maybe my young man’s mother will take me in.”
“If not some of my people can.”
“Miss Carfax left a letter for you, sir.”
“Let me have it.”
The girl went into the dining-room, and Canterton followed her. The letter was lying on the parcel that contained the Latimer and Fernhill pictures. He went to the window, broke the seal, and read Eve’s letter.
The girl watched him, and he was conscious of her inquisitive eyes. But his face betrayed nothing, and he acted as though there were nothing wonderful about this sudden flight.
“Miss Carfax did not tell you that she was expecting the offer of work in London?”
“No, sir.”
“I see. She has been sent for rather hurriedly. A very fine situation I believe. You had better follow out her orders. This parcel is for me.”
He took it under his arm, went to the front door, and called Lynette.
“No hide and seek this morning.”
He wanted the girl to see Lynette, but he did not want Lynette to hear the news.
“Isn’t she in?”
Canterton met her as she came up the path.
“Not at home, Princess, and Anne’s as busy as can be, and I’ve got this parcel to carry back.”
“What’s in it, daddy?”
“Pictures.”
And he felt that he carried all the past in those pictures.
Lynette wondered why he walked so fast, and why his face looked so quiet and funny. She had to bustle her slim legs to keep up with him, and he had nothing whatever to say.
“What a hurry you’re in, daddy.”
“I have just remembered I’ve got to go down to the village before breakfast. And, by George! here’s something I have forgotten to give to Lavender. Will you take it, old lady, while I go down to the village?”
“Yes, daddy.”
He gave her an envelope he had in his pocket. It contained nothing but some seeds he had taken from a plant a few days ago, but the ruse served.
Canterton left the parcel of pictures at one of the lodges. It took him just twenty minutes to reach Basingford station, for he had to walk through the village after taking some of the field paths at a run. A solitary milk cart stood in the station yard, and a clattering of cans came from the up platform. Canterton entered the booking office, glanced into the waiting-room, and strolled through to the up platform. There was no Eve. The place was deserted, save for a porter and the driver of the milk cart, who were loading empty cans on to a truck.
Canterton remembered that he had a freight bill in his pocket, and that he owed the railway company three pounds and some odd silver. He called the porter.
“Gates!”
The man came at once, touching his cap.
“Is the goods office open?”
“Yes, sir.”
“I have a bill I owe them. Anyone there to take the money?”
“They’ll be ready for that, Mr. Canterton.”
“Oh, by the way, Gates, did Miss Carfax catch her train all right? I mean the early one?”
“The lady from Orchards Corner, sir?”
“Yes. You know Miss Carfax.”
“To be sure. She was earlier than me, sir, and down here before I got the booking office swept out.”
“That’s good. I’m glad she caught it. Good morning, Gates.”
“Good morning, sir.”
As Canterton walked across to the goods office, he found himself confessing to a bitter and helpless sense of defeat. He had made this woman suffer, and it seemed out of his power now even to humble himself before her. She had fled out of his life, and appealed to him not to follow her—not to try and see her. It was better for them both, she had said, to try and forget, but he knew in his heart of hearts that it would never be forgotten.
PART II