CHAPTER XXXIX
LYNETTE
They found themselves at the “Black Boar” at Basingford, sitting round a green table under a may tree in the garden. The “Black Boar” was an ancient hostelry, all white plaster, black beams, and brown tiles, its sign swinging on a great carved bracket, its parlour full of pewter and brass. It had the pleasant smell of a farmhouse rather than the sour odour of an inn. Everything was clean, the brick-floored passages, the chintz curtains at the windows, the oak stairs, the white coverlets on the solid mahogany beds. A big grandfather clock tick-tocked in the main passage. The garden at the back ended in a bowling-green that was remarkably well kept, its mown sward catching the yellow evening light through the branches of ancient elms.
They were having tea under the may tree, whose trusses of white blossom showered down an almost too sweet perfume. At the edge of the lawn was a border packed full of wallflowers, blood red and cloth of gold. It was sunny and windless. The tops of the tall elms were silhouetted against the blue.
“Are you going to preach here?”
It was Eve who asked the question, and Joan Gaunt who answered it.
“No. We are just private individuals on a walking tour.”
“I see. And that means?”
“Someone on the Black List.”
Eve smothered a sigh of relief. From the moment of entering Basingford she had felt the deep waters of life flowing under her soul. She was herself, and more than herself. A strange, premonitory exultation had descended on her. Her mood was the singing of a bird at dawn, full of the impulse of a mysterious delight, and of a vitality that hovered on quivering wings. The lure of the spring was in her blood, and she was ready to laugh at the crusading faces of her comrades.
She pushed back her chair.
“I shall go and have a wash.”
“What, another wash!”
Her laughter was a girl’s laughter.
“I like to see the water dimpling in the sunlight, and I like the old Willow Pattern basins. What are you going to do?”
Joan had letters to write. Lizzie was reading a book on “Sex and Heredity.”
Eve left them under the may tree, washed her face and hands in the blue basin, tidied her hair, put on her hat with unusual discrimination, and went out to play the truant.
She simply could not help it. The impulse would brook no argument. She walked through Basingford in the direction of Fernhill. She wanted to see the familiar outlines of the hills, to walk along under the cypress hedges, to feel herself present in the place that she loved so well. For the moment she was conscious of no purpose that might bring her into human contact with Fernhill. She wanted memories. The woman in her desired to feel!
Her first glimpse of the pine woods made her heart go faster. Here were all the familiar lanes and paths. Some of the trees were her intimates, especially a queer dwarf who had gone all to tam-o’-shanter. Even the ditches ran in familiar shadow lines, carrying her memories along. From the lodge gate she could see the top of the great sequoia that grew on the lawn before the Fernhill house. It was absurd how it all affected her. She could have laughed, and she could have wept.
Then a voice, a subtle yet imperious voice, said, “Go down to the Wilderness!” She bridled at the suggestion, only to remind herself that she knew a path that would take her round over the hill and down into the valley where the larches grew. The impulse was stronger than anything that she could oppose to it. She went.
The green secrecy of the wood received her. She passed along the winding path between the straight, stiff poles of the larches, the gloom of the dead lower boughs making the living green above more vivid. It was like plunging from realism into romance, or opening some quaint old book after reading an article on the workings of the London County Council. Eve was back in the world of beauty, of mystery and strangeness. The eyes could not see too far, yet vision was stopped by crowded and miraculous life and not by bricks and mortar.
The trees thinned. She was on the edge of the fairy dell, and she paused instinctively with a feeling that was akin to awe. How the sunlight poured down between the green tree tops. Three weeks ago the bluebells must have been one spreading mist of lapis-lazuli under the gloom of the criss-cross branches. And the silence of it all. She knew herself to be in the midst of mystery, of a vital something that mattered more than all the gold in the world.
Supposing Lynette should be down yonder?
Eve went forward slowly, and looked over the lip of the dell.
Lynette was there, kneeling in front of the toy stove that Eve had sent her for Christmas.
An extraordinary uprush of tenderness carried Eve away. She stood on the edge of the dell and called:
“Lynette! Lynette!”
The child’s hair flashed as she turned sharply. Her face looked up at Eve, wonderingly, mute with surprise. Then she was up and running, her red lips parted, her eyes alight.
“Miss Eve! Miss Eve!”
They met half way, Eve melting towards the running child like the eternal mother-spirit that opens its arms and catches life to its bosom. They hugged and kissed. Lynette’s warm lips thrilled the woman in Eve through and through.
“Oh, my dear, you haven’t forgotten me!”
“I knew—I knew you’d come back again!”
“How did you know?”
“Because I asked God. God must like to do nice things sometimes, and of course, when I kept asking Him——. And now you’ve come back for ever and ever!”
“Oh, no, no!”
“But you have. I asked God for that too, and I have been so good that I don’t see, Miss Eve, dear, how He could have said no.”
Eve laughed, soft, tender laughter that was on the edge of tears.
“So you are still making feasts for the fairies?”
“Yes, come and look. The water ought to be boiling. I’ve got your stove. It’s a lovely stove. Daddy and I make tea in it, and it’s splendid.”
Every thing was in readiness, the water on the boil, the fairy teapot waiting to be filled, the sugar and milk standing at attention. Eve and Lynette knelt down side by side. They were back in the Golden Age, where no one knew or thought too much, and where no one was greedy.
“And they drink the tea up every night?”
“Nearly every night. And they’re so fond of cheese biscuits.”
“I don’t see any biscuits!”
“No, daddy brings them in his pocket. He’ll be here any minute. Won’t it be a surprise!”
Eve awoke; the dream was broken; she started to her feet.
“Dear, I must be getting back.”
“Oh, no, no!”
“Yes, really.”
Lynette seized her hands.
“You shan’t go. And, listen, there’s daddy!”
Eve heard a deep voice singing in a soft monotone, the voice of one who hardly knew what he was singing.
She stood rigid, face averted, Lynette still holding her hands and looking up intently into her face.
“Miss Eve, aren’t you glad to see daddy?”
“Why, yes.”
A sudden silence fell. The man’s footsteps had paused on the edge of the wood. It was as though the life in both of them held its breath.
Eve turned. She had to turn to face something that was inevitable. He was coming down the bank, his face in the sunlight, his eyes staring straight at her as though there were nothing else in the whole world for him to look at.
Lynette’s voice broke the silence.
“Daddy, she wanted to run away!”
Eve bent over her.
“Oh, child, child!”
Her face hid itself for a moment in Lynette’s hair.
She heard Canterton speaking, and something in his voice helped and steadied her.
“Lynette has caught a fairy. She was always a very confident mortal. How are you—how are you?”
He held out his hand, the big brown hand she remembered so well, and hers went into it.
“Oh, a little older!”
“But not too old for fairyland.”
“May I never be too old for that.”
CHAPTER XL
WHAT THEY SAID TO EACH OTHER
They walked back through the larchwood with Lynette between them, keeping them apart, and yet holding a hand of each.
“Miss Eve, where’ve you been all the winter? In London?”
“Yes, in London.”
“Do you like London better than Fernhill?”
“No, not better. You see, there are no fairies in London.”
“And did you paint pictures in London?”
“Sometimes. But people are in too much of a hurry to look at pictures.”
Miss Vance, as much the time-table as ever, met them where the white gate opened on to the heath garden. It was Lynette’s supper hour, an absurd hour, she called it, but she obeyed Miss Vance with great meekness, remembering that God still had to be kept without an excuse for being churlish.
Eve and Miss Vance smiled reminiscently at each other. It was Miss Vance’s last term at Fernhill.
“Good night, Miss Eve, dear. You will come again to-morrow?”
“Yes; I will try to.”
Canterton and Eve were left alone together, standing by the white gate that opened into the great gardens of Fernhill. Canterton had been silent, smilingly silent. Eve had dreaded being left alone with him, but now that she was alone with him, she found that the dread had passed.
“Will you come and see the gardens?”
“May I?”
He opened the gate and she passed through.
May was a month that Eve had missed at Fernhill, and it was one of the most opulent of months, the month of rhododendrons, azaleas, late tulips, anemones, and Alpines. Never since last year’s roses had she seen such colour, such bushes of fire, such quiet splendour. It was a beauty that overwhelmed and silenced; Oriental in some of its magnificence, yet wholly pure.
The delicate colouring of the azaleas fascinated her.
“I never knew there were such subtle shades. What are they?”
“Ghents. They are early this year. Most people know only the old Mollis. There are such an infinite number of colours.”
“These are just like fire—magic fire, burning pale, and burning red, the colour of amber, or the colour of rubies.”
They wandered to and fro, Eve pointing out the flowers that pleased her.
“We think the same as we did last year—am I to know anything?”
She looked up at him quickly, with a quivering of the lashes.
“Oh, yes, if you wish it! But I am not a renegade.”
“I never suggested it. How is London?”
Her face hardened a little, and her mouth lost its exquisite delight.
“Being here, I realise how I hate London to live and struggle in. What is the use of pretending? I tried my strength there, and I was beaten. So now——”
She paused, shrinking instinctively from telling him that she had become one of the marching, militant women. Fernhill, and this man’s presence, seemed to have smothered the aggressive spirit—rendered it superfluous.
His eyes waited.
“Well?”
“I am on a walking tour with friends.”
“Painting?”
“No, proselytising.”
“As a Suffragette?”
“Yes, as a Militant Suffragette.”
She detested the label with which she had to label herself, for she had a sure feeling that it would not impress him.
“I had wondered.”
His voice was level and unprejudiced.
“Then it doesn’t shock you?”
“No, because I know what life may have been for you, trying to sell art to pork-butchers. It is hard not to become bitter. Won’t you let me hear the whole story?”
They were in the rosery, close to a seat set back in a recess cut in the yew hedge. Eve thought of that day when she had found him watching Guinevere.
“Would you listen?”
“I have been listening ever since the autumn, trying to catch any sounds that might come to me from where you were.”
They sat down, about two feet apart, half turned towards each other. But Eve did not look at Canterton. She looked at the stone paths, the pruned rose bushes, the sky, the outlines of the distant firs. Words came slowly at first, but in a while she lost her self-consciousness. She felt that she could tell him everything, and she told him everything, even her adventure with Hugh Massinger.
And then, suddenly, she was conscious that a cloud had come. She glanced at his face, and saw that he was angry.
“Why didn’t you write?”
“I couldn’t. And you are angry with me?”
“With you! Good God, no! I am angry with society, with that particular cad, and that female, the Champion woman. I think I shall go and half kill that man.”
She stretched out a hand.
“Don’t! I should not have told you. Besides, it is all over.”
He contradicted her.
“No, these things leave a mark—an impression.”
“Need it be a bad one?”
“Perhaps not. It depends.”
“On ourselves? Don’t you think that I am broader, wiser, more the queen of my own soul? I am beginning to laugh again.”
He stared at his clasped hands, and then raised his eyes suddenly to her face.
“Eve!”
His uttering of the name thrilled her.
“If you are wiser, why are you gadding about with these fools?”
She gave a little nervous laugh.
“Oh, because they were kind to me, because they are out to better things for women.”
“Have they a monopoly of all the kindness?”
“I—I don’t know.”
“Yes, you do. I am an ordinary sort of man in many ways, and we, the average men, have a growing understanding of what are called the wrongs of women. Give me one.”
She flushed slightly, and hesitated.
“They—they want us to bribe them when we want work—success.”
“I know. It is the blackguard’s game. But women can change that. The best men want to change it. But I ask you, are there no female cads who demand of men what some men demand of women?”
“You mean——”
“It is not all on one side. How are many male careers made? Isn’t there favouritism there too? I know men who would never be where they are, but for the fact that they were sexually favoured by certain women. I could quote you some pretty extraordinary cases, high up, near the summit. Besides, a sex war is the maddest sort of war that could be imagined.”
She felt driven to bay.
“But can we help fighting sometimes?”
“There is a difference between quarrelling and fighting.”
“Oh, come!”
“There is, when you come to think about it. I want neither. Does quarrelling ever help us?”
“It may.”
“When it drags us at once to a lower, baser, more prejudiced level? And do you think that these fanatics who burn houses are helping their cause?”
“Some of them have suffered very bitterly.”
“Yes, and that is the very plea that damns them. They are egotists who must advertise their sufferings. Supposing we all behaved like lunatics when we had a grievance? Isn’t there something finer and more convincing than that? The real women are winning the equality that they want, but these fools are only raising obstinate prejudices. Am I, a fairly reasonable man, to be bullied, threatened and nagged at? Instinctively the male fist comes up, the fist that balances the woman’s sharper tongue. For God’s sake, don’t let us get to back-alley arguments. Sex is marriage, marriage at its best, reasonable and human. Let’s talk things over by the fireside, try not to be little, try to understand each other, try to play the game together. What is the use of kicking the chessboard over? Perhaps other people, our children, have to pick up the pieces.”
Because she had more than a suspicion that he was right, she began to quote Mrs. Falconer, and to give him all the extreme theories. He listened closely enough, but she knew intuitively that he was utterly unimpressed.
“Do you yourself believe all that?”
“No; not all of it.”
“It comes to this, you are quoting abnormal people. You can’t generalise for the million on the idiosyncrasies of the few. These women are abnormal.”
“But the workers are normal.”
“Many of them lead abnormal lives. But do you think that we men do not want to see all that bettered?”
“Then you would give us the vote?”
Her eyes glimmered with sudden mischief, and his answered them.
“Certainly, to the normal women. Why not?”
“Are all the male voters normal?”
“Don’t make me say cynical things. If so many hundreds of thousands of fools have the vote at present, I do not see that it matters much if many more thousands of fools are given it.”
“That isn’t you!”
“It is a sensible, if a cynical conclusion. But I hope for something better. We are at school, we moderns, and we may be a little too clever. But if any parson tells me that we are not better than our forefathers, I can only call him a liar.”
She laughed.
“Oh, that’s healthy—that’s sound. I’m tired of thinking—criticising. I want to do things. It may be that quiet work in a corner is better than all the talking that ever was.”
“Of course. Read Pasteur’s life. There’s the utter damning of the merely political spirit.”
He pulled out his watch and looked at it reflectively.
“Half-past six. Where are you staying?”
“At the ‘Black Boar.’”
“I have something that I should like to show you. Have you time?”
She smiled at him shyly.
“Now and again time doesn’t matter.”
Canterton led her through the great plantations to the wild land on the edge of the fir woods where he had built the new cottage. It was finished, but empty. The garden had been turfedand planted, and beyond the young yew hedge the masses of sandstone were splashed with diverse colours.
“It’s new!”
“Quite! I built it in the winter.”
She stood at gaze, her lips quivering.
“How does it please you?”
“Oh, I like it! It is just the cottage one dreams about when one is in a London suburb. And that rock garden! The colours are as soft and as gorgeous as the colours on a Persian dish.”
Canterton had the key with him. They walked up the path that was paved with irregular blocks of stone. Eve’s eyes saw the date on the porch. She understood in a flash why he had not told her for whom he had built it.
Canterton unlocked the door. A silence fell upon her, and her eyes became more shadowy and serious as she went from room to room and saw all the exquisite but simple details, all the thought that had been put into this cottage. Everything was as she would have imagined it for herself. She touched the oak panelling with the tips of her fingers and smiled.
“It is just perfect!”
He took her to one of the windows.
“The vision is not cramped?”
“No.”
She looked away over the evening landscape, and the broad valley was bathed in gold. It was very beautiful, very still. Eve could hear the sound of her own breathing. And for the moment she could not look at Canterton, could not speak to him. She guessed what was in his mind, and knew what was in her own.
“A place to dream in!”
“Yet it was built for a worker!”
She rested her hands on the window sill, steadying herself, and looking out over the valley. Canterton went on speaking.
“You can guess for whom this was built.”
“I can guess.”
“Man, as man, has shocked you. I offer no bribes. I ask for none. You trust me?”
He could hardly hear her “Yes.”
“I know that chance brought us together to-day. May I make use of it? I am remembering my promise.”
“Perhaps it was more than chance. It was rash of me to want to see Lynette. And I trust you.”
He stood back a little, leaving her by the window.
“Eve, I do not ask for anything. I only say, here is a life for you—a working life. Live it and express yourself. Do things. You can do them. No one will be prouder of your work than I shall be. In creating a woman’s career, you can help other women.”
Her lips were quivering.
“Oh, I trust you! But it is such a prospect. You don’t know. I can’t face it all in a moment.”
“I don’t ask you to do that. Go away, if you wish it, think it over, and decide. Don’t think of me, the man, the comrade. Think of the working life, of your art, the real life—just that.”
He made a movement towards the door, and she understood the delicacy of his self-effacement, and the fine courtesy that forefelt her sensitive desire to escape to be alone. They passed out into the garden. Canterton spoke again as he opened the gate.
“I still believe all that I believed last summer!”
He had to wait for her answer, but it came.
“I am older than I was. I have suffered a little. That refines or hardens. One does not ask for everything when one has had nothing. And yet I do not know what to say to you—the man.”
CHAPTER XLI
CAMPING IN THE FIR WOODS
Lizzie Straker and Joan Gaunt were at supper when Eve walked into their private sitting-room at the “Black Boar.” Eight o’clock had struck, but the window of the room faced west, and the lamp on the table had not been lit.
“You’re pretty late.”
Eve sat down without taking off her hat. She had a feeling that these two had been discussing her just before she had come into the room, and that things which she was not expected to see had been, so to speak, pushed hurriedly under the sofa.
“I’ve had a long ramble, and I’m hungry.”
She found a round of cold beef, and a dish of young lettuces on the table. Her companions had got as far as milk pudding and stewed rhubarb.
“You must have been walking about four solid hours. Did you get lost?”
“No. I used to live down here.”
They stared.
“Oh, did you!”
“You’ve got pretty hot, anyhow.”
“I walked fast. I went farther than I meant to.”
“Meet any friends?”
“One or two.”
She caught a pair of mistrustful eyes fixed on her. They belonged to Joan Gaunt, who sat at the end of the table.
“I think we’ll have the lamp, Lizzie.”
“Right oh! or Eve won’t be able to hunt the slugs out of the lettuces.”
“Don’t be beastly.”
“You might cut me a piece of bread.”
The lamp was lit. The other two had finished their supper, but appeared inclined to sit there and watch Eve eat.
“You met some old friends?”
“Yes.”
“I hope you were careful.”
“Of course. I told them I was on a walking tour. I dare say I shan’t see them again.”
“No. I don’t think you’d better.”
Something in Joan Gaunt’s voice annoyed her. It was quietly but harshly dictatorial, and Eve stiffened.
“I don’t think you need worry. I can look after my own affairs.”
“Did you live in Basingford?”
“No. Out in the country.”
Lizzie Straker and Joan Gaunt exchanged glances. Something had happened to the woman in Eve, a something that was so patent and yet so mysterious that even these two fanatics noticed it and were puzzled. Had she looked into a mirror before entering the sitting-room, she would have been struck by a physical transfiguration of which she was for the moment unconscious. She had changed into a more spring-like and more sensitive study of herself. There was the indefinable suggestion of bloom upon fruit. Her face looked fuller, her skin more soft, her lips redder, her eyes brighter yet more elusive. She had been bathing in deep and magic waters and had emerged with a shy tenderness hovering about her mouth, and an air of sensuous radiance.
Supper was cleared away. The lamp was replaced on the table. Joan Gaunt brought out a note-book and her cypher-written itinerary. Lizzie Straker lit a cigarette.
“Business!”
They exchanged glances.
“Come along, Eve.”
Somehow the name seemed to strike all three of them with symbolical suggestiveness. Her comrades looked at her mistrustfully.
They sat down at the table.
“As you happen to know people here, you had better be on your guard. There is work to be done here. I have just wired to Galahad.”
Eve met Joan Gaunt’s eyes.
“Are there black sheep in Basingford?”
“A particularly black one. An anti-suffrage lunatic. She has been on platforms against us. That makes one feel bitter.”
“So it’s a she!”
“She’s a traitress—a fool.”
“I wonder if I know her name.”
“It’s Canterton—Mrs. James Canterton.”
Eve was leaning her elbows on the table, trying not to show how this news affected her. And suddenly she began to laugh.
Joan Gaunt’s face stiffened.
“What are you laughing at?”
It was wholesome, helpless, exquisite laughter that escaped and bubbled over from a delicious sense of fun. What an ironical comedy. Eve did not realise the complete significance of what she said until she had said it.
“Why, I should have thought she was one of us!”
Her two comrades stared. They were becoming more and more puzzled, by this feminine thing that did not shape as they expected it to shape.
“I don’t see anything to laugh at.”
Eve did.
“But she ought to belong to us!”
“You seem to find it very funny. I don’t see anything funny about a woman being a political pimp for the men, and a rotten sentimentalist.”
“I should never have called Mrs. Canterton a sentimentalist.”
“Of course, you know her!”
“A little.”
“Well, she’s marked down here with three asterisks. That means trouble for her. Of course, she’s married.”
“Yes.”
“And dotes on her husband and children, and all that.”
Eve grew serious.
“No, that’s the strange part of it. She and her husband don’t run in double harness. And she’s a fool with her own child.”
“But that’s absurd. I suppose her husband has treated her badly, as most of them do.”
“Oh, I don’t think so.”
“In nine cases out of ten it’s the man’s fault.”
“Perhaps this is the tenth.”
“Oh, rot! There’s a man somewhere. There must be someone else besides her husband, or she wouldn’t be talking for the men.”
“I don’t think so. If you knew Mrs. Canterton, you might understand.”
Yet she doubted whether they would have understood, for busybodies and extremists generally detest each other, especially when they are arguing from opposite sides of the table.
Eve wanted to be alone, to think things out, to face this new crisis that had opened before her so suddenly. It was the more dangerous and problematical since the strong current of her impulses flowed steadily towards Fernhill. She went to bed early, leaving Joan Gaunt and Lizzie Straker writing letters.
When the door had closed on Eve, they put down their pens and looked at each other.
“Something funny.”
“What’s happened to her?”
Lizzie Straker giggled.
“She’s met someone, a man, I suppose. That’s how it struck me.”
Joan looked grim.
“Don’t giggle like that. She has been puzzling me for a long time. Once or twice I have almost suspected her of laughing at us.”
This sobered Lizzie Straker.
“What! I should like to see her laugh at me! I’ve learnt jiu-jitsu. I’d suppress her!”
“The question is, is she to be trusted? I’m not so sure that our Horsham friend wasn’t right.”
“Well, don’t tell her too much. And test her. Make her fire the next place. Then she’ll be compromised.”
“That’s an idea!”
“She has always hung back and let us do the work.”
They looked at each other across the table.
“All right. We had better go and scout by ourselves to-morrow.”
“Galahad ought to be here by lunch time.”
“We can make our arrangements. Leave after tea, hide in the woods, and do the job after dark.”
Eve slept well, in spite of all her problems. She woke to the sound of a blackbird singing in the garden, and the bird’s song suited her waking mood, being just the thing that Nature suggested. She slipped out of bed, drew back the chintz curtains, and looked out on a dewy lawn all dappled with yellow sunlight. The soul of the child and of the artist in her exulted. She wanted to play with colours, to express herself, to make pictures. Yes; but she wanted more than that, and she knelt down in her nightdress before the looking-glass, and leaning her elbows on the table, stared into her own eyes.
She questioned herself.
“Woman, can you trust yourself? It is a big thing, such a big thing, both for him, and for you.”
It was a sulky breakfast table that morning. Lizzie Straker had the grumps, and appeared to be on the watch for something that could be pounced on. She was ready to provoke Eve into contradicting her, but the real Eve, the Eve that mattered, was elsewhere. She hardly heard what Lizzie Straker said.
“We move on this evening!”
“Oh!”
“Does that interest you?”
“Not more than usual.”
A telegram lay half hidden under Joan Gaunt’s plate.
“Lizzie and I are going off for a ramble.”
The hint that Eve was not wanted was conveyed with frankness.
“You had better stay in.”
“Dear comrade, why?”
“Well, you are known here.”
“That doesn’t sound very logical. Still, I don’t mind.”
The dictator in Joan Gaunt was speaking, but Eve was not irked by her tyranny on this particular morning. She was ready to laugh gently, to bear with these two women, whose ignorance was so pathetic. She would be content to spend the day alone, sitting under one of the elms at the end of the bowling green, and letting herself dream. The consciousness that she was on the edge of a crisis did not worry her, for somehow she believed that the problem was going to solve itself.
Joan Gaunt and Lizzie Straker started out from Basingford soon after nine, and chartered a small boy, who, for the sum of a penny, consented to act as guide to Fernhill. But all this was mere strategy, and when they had got rid of the boy, they turned aside into the fir woods instead of presenting themselves at the office where would-be visitors were supposed to interview one of the clerks. Joan Gaunt had a rough map drawn on a piece of note-paper, a map that had been sent down from headquarters. They explored the fir woods and the heath lands between Fernhill and Orchards Corner, and after an hour’s hunt they discovered what they had come in search of—Canterton’s new cottage standing with white plaster and black beams between the garden of rocks and the curtained gloom of the fir woods.
Joan Gaunt scribbled a few additional directions on the map. They struck a rough sandy road that was used for carting timber, and this woodland road joined the lane that ran past Orchards Corner. It was just the place for Galahad’s car to be hidden in while they made their night attack on the empty cottage.
In the meanwhile Eve was sitting under one of the elms at the end of the bowling green with a letter-pad on her knees. She had concluded that her comrades had designs upon Canterton’s property, that they meant to make a wreck of his glass-houses and rare plants, or to set fire to the sheds and offices, and she had not the slightest intention of suffering any such thing to happen. She was amused by the instant thoroughness of her own treachery. Her impulses had deserted without hesitation to the opposite camp.
She wrote:
“I am writing in case I should not see you to-day. My good comrades are Militants, and your name is anathema. I more than suspect that some part of your property will be attacked to-night. I send you a warning. But I do not want these comrades of mine to suffer because I choose to play renegade. Balk them and let them go.“I am thinking hard,“Eve.”
“I am writing in case I should not see you to-day. My good comrades are Militants, and your name is anathema. I more than suspect that some part of your property will be attacked to-night. I send you a warning. But I do not want these comrades of mine to suffer because I choose to play renegade. Balk them and let them go.
“I am thinking hard,
“Eve.”
She wrote “Important ” and “Private” on the envelope, and appealed to the proprietor of the “Black Boar” to provide her with a reliable messenger to carry her letter to Fernhill. An old gentleman was taking a glass of beer in the bar, and this same old gentleman lived as a pensioner in one of the Fernhill cottages. He was sent out to see Eve, who handed him a shilling and the letter.
“I want Mr. Canterton to get this before twelve o’clock, and I want you to make sure he has it.”
“I’ll make sure o’ that, miss. I ain’t likely to forget.”
He toddled off, and before twelve o’clock Eve knew that her warning had carried, for a boy on a bicycle brought her a note from Canterton.
“Many thanks indeed. I understand. Let nothing prejudice you.”
“Many thanks indeed. I understand. Let nothing prejudice you.”
Joan Gaunt and Lizzie Straker returned about half-past twelve, and five minutes later a big grey motor pulled up outside the inn. Mr. Lawrence Kentucky climbed out, and went in to order lunch.
From her room Eve had a view of the bowling green and of the doorway of a little summer-house that stood under the row of elms. She saw Lizzie Straker walk out into the garden and arrive casually at the door of the summer-house. Two minutes later Lawrence Kentucky wandered out with equal casualness, appeared drawn by some invisible and circuitous thread to the summer-house, and vanished inside.
Eve smiled. It was a comedy within a comedy, but there was no cynical edge to her amusement. She felt more kindly towards Lizzie Straker, and perhaps Eve pitied her a little because she seemed so incapable of distinguishing between gold and brass.
Lawrence Kentucky did not stay more than five minutes in the summer-house. He had received his instructions, and Joan Gaunt’s map, and a promise from Lizzie Straker that she would keep watch in the lane up by Orchards Corner, so that he should not lose himself in the Fernhill woods. Lawrence Kentucky went in to lunch, and drove away soon afterwards in his big grey car.
She found that Lizzie Straker was in a bad temper when they sat down to lunch. Thetête-à-têtein the summer-house had been too impersonal to please her, and Lawrence Kentucky had shown great tactlessness in asking questions about Eve. “Is Miss Carfax here? Where did you pick her up? Oh, one of Pallas’s kittens! Jolly good-looking girl.”
Lizzie was feeling scratchy, and she sparred with Eve.
“You’re a puzzler. I don’t believe you’re a bit keen, not what I call keen. I can’t sleep sometimes before doing something big.”
“I’m quite keen enough.”
“I don’t think you show it. You’ll have to buck up a bit, won’t she, Joan? We have to send in sealed reports, you know. Mrs. Falconer expects to know the inside of everybody.”
“Perhaps she expects too much.”
“Anyhow, it’s her money we’re spending.”
Eve flushed.
“I shall pay her back some day before very long.”
“You needn’t think I called you a sponger—I didn’t.”
“Oh, well, would it have mattered?”
They spent the afternoon in the garden, and had tea under the may tree. Joan Gaunt had asked for the bill, and for three packets of sandwiches. They paid the one, and stowed the sandwiches away in their knapsacks, and about five o’clock they resumed their walking tour.
A march of two miles brought them into the thick of the fir woods, and they had entered them by the timber track without meeting a soul. Joan Gaunt chose a spot where a clump of young firs offered a secret camping ground, for the lower boughs of the young trees being still green and bushy, made a dense screen that hid them admirably.
Eve understood that a night attack was imminent, and realised that no individual rambles would be authorised by Joan Gaunt. She was to be penned in with these two fanatics for six long hours, an undenounced traitor who had betrayed them into the enemy’s hands. Canterton would have men on guard, and for the moment she was tempted to tell them the truth and so save them from being fooled.
But some subtle instinct held her back. She felt herself to be part of the adventure, that she would allow circumstances to lead, circumstances that might prove of peculiar significance. She was curious to see what would happen, curious to see how the woman in her would react.
So Eve lay down among the young firs with her knapsack under her head, and watched the sunlight playing in the boughs of the veterans overhead. They made a net of sable and gold that stretched out over her, a net that some god might let fall to tangle the lives of women and of men. She felt the imminence of Nature, felt herself part of the mysterious movement that could be sensed even in this solemn brooding wood.
Her two comrades lay on their fronts, each with a chin thrust out over a book. But Lizzie Straker soon grew restless. She kept clicking her heels together, and picking up dry fir cones and pulling them to pieces. Eve watched her from behind half closed lids.
She felt sorry for Lizzie Straker, because she guessed instinctively that Nature was playing her deep game even with this rebel.