This set Considine thinking, and from his deliberations emerged the much more ambitious scheme of taking over Lapton Manor, and equipping it as a special school for the education of really expensive boys. He decided that he would not take a greater number than he could educate by himself. His pupils must all be well-connected or wealthy. He would teach them not only the things with which a public school might reasonably be expected to equip them, but the whole duty of a landed proprietor. The neglected Manor lands, already a drag on the Halberton property, should be his example. His pupils should see it recover gradually with their own eyes. The fees they paid should go to its development, and provide at the end of three or four years' work the satisfaction of a model and profitable estate.
All Considine's heart was in the plan. He loved teaching, and he loved the land. He had a natural aptitude for both, and the opportunity of developing them seemed too good to be missed. Lord Halberton agreed. A lease was signed in which Considine, paying a nominal rent for Lapton Manor, undertook to restore the lands and house to the condition from which they had fallen. Both landlord and tenant were delighted with their bargain. In six weeks the Rectory had been vacated and relet to an old lady from the north of England who wanted to die in Devonshire, and the Considines had moved to the Manor, under the benignant eyes of Lady Halberton. In another fortnight the first pupils, the Tracey boys, arrived, and Considine was advertising inThe Morning PostandThe Timesfor three at fees that even Lord Halberton considered outrageous. "There's plenty of money in the country," said Considine. With the insight of genius he added to his advertisement, "Special care is given to backward or difficult pupils."
When Mrs. Payne had the good luck to stumble on Considine's advertisement—for, in spite of the strange complications that ensued for the Considines the occasion was certainly fortunate for her—that remarkable person was at her wits' ends. If she had not been a woman of resource and character as well as a devoted mother I think she would have given up the problem of Arthur as a bad job long before this; but it was literally the only thing that really mattered to her in life, and if she had abandoned the struggle I do not know what would have become of her.
By ordinary canons Mrs. Payne could not be considered an attractive woman. The only striking features in her plain, and rather expressionless face were her eyes, which were of a soft and extraordinarily beautiful grey. She had large hands and feet, no figure to speak of, and she dressed abominably. She possessed in fact, all the virtues and none of the graces, and was, in this respect at any rate, the diametrical opposite of her son. Her appearance suggested that life had given her a tremendous battering, a condition that would have been pitiful if it were not that she also gave the impression of having doggedly survived it; and for this reason one could not help admiring her.
Her husband had been a business man of exceptional brilliance, of a brilliance, indeed, that was almost pathological, and may have accounted in part for the curious mentality of Arthur. In a short, but incredibly active life, he had amassed a fortune that was considerable, even in the midlands where fortunes are made. I do not know what he manufactured, but his business was conducted in Gloucester, and the Overton estate, which he acquired shortly before his death, lay under the shadow of Cotswold, between its escarpment and the isolated hill of Bredon, within twenty miles of that city. Mr. Payne had died of acute pneumonia in a sharp struggle that was in keeping with his strenuous mode of life. Seven months after his death his only child, Arthur, was born.
In the care of her son, and the control of the fortune to which he would later succeed, Mrs. Payne, who was blessed with an equal vocation for motherhood and finance, became happily absorbed. Everything promised well. The business in Gloucester realised more than she could have expected, and she settled down in the placid surroundings of Overton with no care in the world but Arthur's future.
He was a singularly beautiful child, fair-haired, with a skin that even in manhood was dazzlingly white, and eyes that were as arresting as his mother's: a creature of immense vitality, who shook off the usual diseases of childhood without difficulty, and developed an early and almost abnormal physical perfection. He was not, it is true, particularly intelligent. He did not begin to talk until he was over three years old; but this slowness of development was only in keeping with his mother's physical type, and his early childhood was a period of sheer delight to her in which no shadow of the imminent trouble appeared.
By the time that he had reached his seventh year, Mrs. Payne was beginning to be worried about him. His bodily health was still magnificent, but there was a strain in his character that worried her. It appeared that it was impossible for him to tell the truth. Haphazard lying is no uncommon thing in children, proceeding, as it sometimes does, from an excess of imagination and an anxiety to appear startling; but imagination was scarcely Arthur's strong point, and his lies were not haphazard, but deliberately planned.
To a woman of Mrs. Payne's uncompromising truthfulness this habit appeared as a most serious failing. She could not leave it to chance, in a vague hope that Arthur would "grow out of it." She tackled it, heroically and directly, by earnest persuasion, and later, by punishments. By one method and another she determined to appeal to his moral sense, but after a couple of years of hopeless struggling she was driven to the conclusion that this, exactly, was what he lacked. It seemed that he had been born without one.
The thing was impossible to her, for his father had been a man of exceptional probity and, without self-flattery, she knew that she herself was the most transparently honest person on earth. As the boy grew older his opportunities for showing this fatal deficiency increased. Whatever she said or did, and however sweetly he accepted her persuasions and punishments, it became evident that she, at any rate, was incapable of keeping his hands from picking and stealing and his tongue from evil speaking, lying, and slandering. The condition was the more amazing in the face of his great natural charms. All her friends and visitors at Overton found the boy delightful; his physical beauty remained as wonderful as ever; on the surface he was a normal and exceptionally attractive child; but in her heart she realised bitterly that he was a completely a-moral being.
In nothing was this more apparent than in his behaviour towards animals. Overton, lying as it did in the midst of a green countryside, was a natural sanctuary for all wild creatures, in which Arthur, from his earliest years, had always shown a peculiar interest. As a child, he would spend many hours with the keeper, developing an instinct for wood-craft that seemed to be the strongest in his composition. He knew all the birds of the estate, their habits, their calls, their refuges. Once in the shadow of the woods, he himself was a wild animal, a creature of faunish activity and grace. Mrs. Payne always encouraged this passion of his as a natural and admirable thing, until, one day, the keeper, who was no more humane than the majority of keepers, came to her with a shocking story of Arthur's cruelty: an enormity that it would have taken the mind of a devil, rather than a man, to imagine. When she taxed the boy with it he only laughed. She thrashed the matter out; she pointed out to him that he had done a devilish thing; but in the end she had to give it up, for it became clear to her that he was trying as hard as he could to see her point of view but couldn't, simply because it wasn't in him. She began to realise slowly and reluctantly that it was no good for her to appeal to something that didn't exist. The boy had been born with a body a little above the normal, and a mind a little below the average, but nature had cruelly denied him the possession of a soul, and neither her prayers nor her devotion could give him what he congenitally lacked.
She wondered whether the isolation of his life at Overton had anything to do with it, whether contact with other children of his own age would reduce him to the normal. She took the risk, and sent him at the age of twelve, to a preparatory school in Cheltenham. Before the first term was half over they sent for her and asked her to remove him. The head master confessed that the case was beyond him. On the surface the boy was one of the most charming in the whole school, but his heart was an abyss of the most appalling blackness. Mrs. Payne entreated him to tell her the worst. He hedged, said that it wasn't just one thing that was wrong, but everything—everything. She asked him if he had ever known a case that resembled Arthur's. No, he thanked Heaven that he hadn't. Could he advise her what to do? Lamely he suggested a tutor, and then, as an afterthought, a mental specialist.
The word sent a chill into Mrs. Payne's heart. The idea that this bright, delightful child, the idol of her hopes, was the victim of some obscure form of moral insanity frightened her. But she was a woman of courage and determined to know the worst. She took him to a specialist in London.
Arthur thoroughly enjoyed this desolating trip. The specialist talked vaguely, leaving her nothing but the faintest gleam of hope. There were more things in heaven and earth, he said, than were dreamed of in the philosophy of the most distinguished alienists. He talked indefinitely of internal secretions. It was possible, he said—and underlined the word—possible, just barely possible, that in a year or two—to put it bluntly, at the time of puberty—the boy's disposition might suddenly and unaccountably change. He implored her not to count on it, and assured her that, for the present, medical science could do no more. If, by any chance, his prophecy should be fulfilled, he begged Mrs. Payne to let him know. The case, if she would pardon the use of this objectionable word, was one of the greatest professional interest.
She took Arthur back to Overton and waited desperately. Tutor succeeded tutor. Each of them found Arthur charming and impossible. For herself she saw no change in him that was not physical. By this time she had abandoned any idea of finding him a profession. At the same time, she was anxious to make him capable of managing the Overton estate, and though she dared not send him to one of the ordinary agricultural colleges for fear of a repetition, on a larger scale, of the Cheltenham disaster, she thought that it might be possible to find a capable land-agent who would give him some kind of training and put up with his idiosyncrasy for the sake of a substantial fee.
While searching for a suitable instructor she happened to see Considine's advertisement. The fact that he gave the name of a great landowner, Lord Halberton, as a reference, convinced her that the opportunity was genuine, and the prospectus promised instruction in all the subjects that would be most useful to Arthur. The fact that only a small number of pupils was to be taken, and that the place should be regarded as a friendly country-house rather than as a school, attracted her; but the part of the advertisement that finally persuaded her to a faint glimmer of hope was Considine's artfully worded final paragraph: "Special care is given to backward or difficult pupils."
Like all sufferers from incurable diseases she was only too ready to place confidence in any person who laid claim to special knowledge. She began to wonder if Considine was such a specialist. She wrote to him, looking for a miracle to save her from her afflictions.
Considine replied formally. He did not jump at the idea of taking Arthur, a fact which convinced her that education at Lapton Manor was something of a privilege, and this made her disregard the fact that the privilege was expensive. Still, his note was direct and business-like. He made it clear that if he were willing to take backward or difficult boys he expected to be paid a little more for his trouble, but the confident tone in which he wrote suggested that he was a man who knew his business.
He did know his business. Considine was a clear-headed and capable person with a degree of confidence in himself that went a long way towards assuring his success. He proposed, finally, that it would be more satisfactory for both of them if Mrs. Payne were to visit him at Lapton and see the place and its owners for herself. Then they could talk the matter over, and define the peculiar difficulties of Arthur's case. More and more impressed, she accepted the proposal. Considine met her train at Totnes with a dogcart and drove her to Lapton Manor.
In that part of the world the early autumn is the most lovely season of the year. The country in its variety and sudden violences of shape and colour seemed to her sensationally lovely after the mild beauty of her own midland landscape, dominated and restrained by the level skylines of Cotswold. Considine, who spoke very little as he drove, but was a stylish whip, told her the names of the villages through which they passed, names that were as soft and sleepy as Lapton Huish itself. He showed her his church, with a flicker of pride, and the hung slates of the Rectory wall through a gap in the green. Then they passed into the open drive of Lapton Manor.
He explained to her that the estate had been neglected and was now the subject of an experiment; but it seemed to her that the level fields through which the drive extended had already come under the influence of his orderly mind. To everything that Considine undertook there clung an atmosphere of formal precision that suggested nothing so much as the eighteenth century. The Manor, suddenly sweeping into view from behind a plantation of ilex, confirmed this impression. It was such a house as Considine must inevitably have chosen, a solid Georgian structure, square and sombre, with a pillared portico in front shading the entrance and its flanking windows. The window panes of the upper storey blazed in the setting sun.
In the hall Gabrielle Considine awaited them. She was dressed in black—probably she was still in mourning for Jocelyn—with a white muslin collar such as a widow might have worn. To Mrs. Payne, by an unconscious personal contrast, she seemed very tall and graceful and exceedingly well-bred. No doubt Considine had prepared the way for this impression. On the drive up he had spoken several times of Lord Halberton, "my wife's cousin." Mrs. Considine's voice was very soft, with the least hint of Irish in it, an inflection rather than a brogue. Her hands, her neck and her face were very white. Possibly her skin seemed whiter because of the blackness of her hair and of her dress and the beautiful shape of her pale hands. Curiously enough, the chief impression she made on Mrs. Payne was not the obvious one of youth; and this shows that Gabrielle, outwardly, at any rate, had changed enormously in the last year. Mrs. Payne did not know then, and certainly would never have guessed, that the lady of the house was under twenty years of age. She only saw a creature full of grace, of dignity, and of quietness, and she knew that Considine was proud of these qualities that his wife displayed. There was nothing to suggest that the pair were not completely happy in their marriage.
After dinner they proceeded to business. They sat together in the drawing-room, Mrs. Considine busy with her embroidery at a small table apart, while her husband, capably judicial, begged Mrs. Payne to tell him the peculiar features of Arthur's case. She found Considine sympathetic, and the telling so easy that she was able to express herself naturally in the most embarrassing part of her story. Considine helped her with small encouragements. Gabrielle said nothing, bending over her work while she listened. Indeed, she had scarcely spoken a dozen words since Mrs. Payne's arrival. When she came to the episode of Arthur's expulsion from the school at Cheltenham, Considine made an uneasy gesture suggesting that his wife should retire, and Gabrielle quietly rose.
Mrs. Payne begged her to stay. "It is much better that you should both know everything," she said. "I want you to realise things at their worst. It is much better that you should know exactly where we stand."
She wondered afterwards why Considine had suggested that Gabrielle should go. At first she had taken it for granted that he was merely considering her own maternal feelings in an unpleasant confession. It was not until she thought the matter out quietly at Overton that she decided that his action was really in keeping with the rest of his attitude towards his wife; that he did, in fact, regard her as a small child who should be repressed and denied an active interest in his affairs. Gabrielle's quietness had puzzled her. Perhaps this was its explanation.
For the time the story absorbed her and she thought no more of Gabrielle. Considine was such an excellent listener, sitting there with his long fingers knotted and his eyes fixed on her, that she found herself subject to the same sort of mesmeric influence as had overcome Lord Halberton. He inspired her with a curious confidence, and she began to hope, almost passionately, that he would undertake the care of Arthur. Before she had finished her narrative she was assailed with a fear that he wouldn't—he seemed to be weighing the matter so carefully in his mind—and burst out with an abrupt: "But youwilltake him, won't you?"
Considine smiled. "I shall be delighted," he said.
Her thankfulness, at the end of so much strain, almost bowled her over.
"You make me feel more settled about him already," she said. "I'm almost certain that he will be happy here. I feel that I'm so lucky to have heard of you. You and your wife," she added, for all the time that she had been speaking, she had been conscious of the silent interest of Gabrielle. When it came to a question of terms there was nothing indefinite about Considine. The fees that he suggested were enormous, but Mrs. Payne's faith in him was by this time so secure that she would gladly have paid anything. All through the rest of her visit this slow and steady confidence increased. From the bedroom in which she slept she could see the wide expanse of the home fields. It seemed to her that the quiet of Lapton was deeper and mellower and more intense than any she had ever known. It was saturated with the sense of ancient, stable, sane tradition. It breathed an atmosphere in which nothing violent or strange or abnormal could ever flourish. She felt that, in contrast with their restless modern Cotswold home, its intense normality must surely have some subtle reassuring effect upon her son. Gazing over those yellow fields in the early morning she felt a more settled happiness than she had ever known since her husband's death.
So, full of hope, she returned to Overton and announced the arrangements she had made to Arthur. He took to them gladly. He was tired of the unnatural indolence of Overton, and in any case he would have welcomed a change. In everything but his fatal abnormality he was an ordinary healthy boy, and the prospect of going into a new county, and learning something of estate management, a subject in which he was really interested, appealed to him. She described the drive from the station, the house, and the general conditions in detail. Her enthusiasm for Considine rather put him off.
"I hope he isn't quite such a paragon as you make out," he said, "or he'll have no use for me."
Gabrielle appeared as a rather shadowy figure in his mother's background. "Oh, there's a wife, is there?" he said. "That's rather a pity." She smiled, for this was typical of his attitude towards women.
Even though she smiled at it her heart was full of thankfulness, for, as he had grown older, she had lived in an indefinite terror of what might happen when Arthur did begin to notice women. It was quite bad enough that he should be without a conscience in matters of truth and property; if he were to be found without conscience in matters of sex there was no end to the complications with which she might have to deal. She always remembered the specialist's prophecy that the period of puberty might be marked by a complete change for the better in his dangerous temperament, but she was secretly haunted by a fear that this critical age might, by an equal chance, reveal some new abnormality or even aggravate the old. Arthur was now nearly seventeen, and physically, at any rate, mature. For the present she lived in a state of exaggerated hopes and fears.
The amazing part of the whole business was that Arthur didn't realise it. He looked upon the anxiety which Mrs. Payne found it so difficult to conceal as feminine weakness. He wished to goodness that she wouldn't fuss over him, being convinced that he himself was an ordinary, plain-sailing person who had submitted for long enough to an unreasonable degree of pampering. He didn't see any reason why he shouldn't be treated like any other boy of his age, and felt that he had already been cheated of many of the rights of youth. One of the principal reasons why he welcomed the Lapton plan was that it would free him from the constant tug of apron-strings, and allow him to mix freely with creatures of his own age and sex.
He went off to Lapton in the highest spirits, determined to have a good time, rejoicing in the prospect of freedom in a way that made his mother feel that she had been something of an oppressor. She could not resist the temptation of seeing the last of him, and so they travelled down together. This time she stayed a couple of days at Lapton. It was part of Considine's plan to let parents see as much of the place as they wanted, if only to convince them that they were getting their money's worth.
Everything that Mrs. Payne saw reassured her. The routine of the house seemed to be reasonable and healthy. The mornings were devoted to lessons in the library. After lunch the pupils went out over the fields or into the woods where Considine instructed them in details of farming and forestry. Their work was not merely theoretical. They had to learn to use their hands as well as their brains, to plough a furrow, or bank a hedge, or dig a pit for mangolds. Considine kept them busy, and at the same time made them useful to himself. They used to come in at tea-time flushed with exercise and pleasantly fatigued. The late afternoon and evening were their own. They played tennis or racquets, or read books in the library, a long room with many tall windows that had been set aside for their instruction and leisure.
Mrs. Payne rejoiced to find that their life at Lapton was so full. In the absence of any idleness that was not well-earned she saw the highest wisdom of Considine's system; for it seemed to her that her anxiety for Arthur had probably done him an injustice in depriving him of a natural outlet for his energies. At Lapton he could scarcely find time for wickedness.
In this way her admiration for Considine increased. She only regretted that she had not been able in the past to secure a tutor of his capable and energetic type. Reviewing the series of languid and futile young men whom the very best agencies had sent her, she came to the conclusion that no man of Considine's type could ever have been forced to accept a tutor's employment. Even in the choice of his pupils she saw signs of his discrimination. In addition to the two Traceys, whose delightful manners were undeniable, he had secured two other boys: one the younger son of an East Anglian peer, and the other a boy whose father was a colonel in the Indian army. The paragraph in Considine's advertisement that had first attracted her had made her wonder if his school might not develop into a collection of oddities, but all the pupils that she saw were not only the sons of gentlemen but obviously normal. She felt that their influence, seconding the control of Considine, must surely have a stabilising effect upon Arthur, and was content.
During the two days of her visit she still found Gabrielle a little puzzling. She couldn't quite believe that her extreme quietness and reserve were nothing more than simplicity. Knowing nothing of her origins she did not realise that Gabrielle was actually shy of her, and that this, and nothing else, explained her air of mystery. On the last night, however, feeling that after all Gabrielle was the only woman in the house in whom she could confide, she overcame her own diffidence, and told her the whole story over again from a personal and feminine point of view. Gabrielle listened very quietly.
"I'm so anxious that I felt bound to tell you, just in the hope that you'd be interested," said Mrs. Payne. "One woman feels that it takes another woman to understand her. If you had children of your own, you'd understand quite easily what I mean."
"I think I do understand," said Gabrielle.
"There are little things about which I should be ashamed to worry your husband. I wonder if it would be asking too much of you to hope that you would sometimes write to me, and tell me how he is? Naturally I can't expect you to take a special interest in Arthur, more than in others——" She found it difficult to say more.
"Of course I will write to you if you want me to," said Gabrielle.
Mrs. Payne, impulsively, kissed her.
Gabrielle fulfilled her promise. All through the first term, while autumn hardened into winter, at Lapton a season of sad sunlight, she kept Mrs. Payne posted in the chronicle of Arthur's progress, and these dutiful letters comforted his mother in her unusual loneliness at Overton. They were not particularly interesting letters, and they never brought to her any announcement of the long-awaited miracle, but they gave her the assurance that some other woman had her eye on him, and this, for some strange reason that may have been explained by Arthur's dependence on her through her long widowhood, comforted her.
In the beginning Gabrielle interested herself in Arthur simply for the sake of Mrs. Payne; she had been touched by the mother's anxiety and found her, perhaps, a little pathetic; but in a little time she began to be interested in Arthur for himself.
In the ordinary way she did not see a great deal of her husband's pupils. Nominally, of course, she was the female head of the household, but Considine, aware of her limited domestic experience, and her ignorance of English customs, had secured a housekeeper from his own home in Wiltshire, a Mrs. Bemerton, who also filled the office of matron. As might be expected in a woman of Considine's choice, Mrs. Bemerton was capable and, as luck would have it, she was also kindly. All the domestic arrangements at Lapton ran smoothly under her direction. She was reasonably popular with the boys and mothered them. She even found time to mother Gabrielle—respectfully, for she had come from a county that is staunchly feudal, and was aware of her mistress's august connections.
It was fortunate for Gabrielle in her relations with the boys that she had so little to do with their domestic management. The fact that she only saw them in their moments of recreation saved her from being regarded as an ogress, her only suspicious circumstance being the fact that she was married to Considine. Before the winter came she had played games with them, and since she had so much of the tomboy in her, had made herself acceptable as a sportswoman and a good sort. By the time that Arthur Payne arrived the days were drawing in, and she saw very little of them, except in the evenings, after dinner, when she and Considine would join them in a game of snooker in the billiard-room, or take a hand of whist, old-fashioned whist, in the library.
It was here that she first became personally aware of Arthur's disability. For several weeks she had been getting used to him as a normal being, attractive because he was so undeniably handsome and well-developed, more than usually attractive to her, perhaps, because she was dark and he was fair. She had noticed his eyes, so like the beautiful eyes of Mrs. Payne, his splendid teeth, and the charming ingenuousness of his manner. Subtly influenced by these physical features, and taking him for granted, she had almost forgotten the curious history that Mrs. Payne had confided to her, and it came as a shock to her playing cards against him one evening, to realise suddenly that he was cheating.
Her first impulse was one of indignation; but as she was not quite sure of herself she said nothing, waiting to see if she could possibly have been mistaken. In a few moments he cheated again, this time beyond any possible doubt. She flushed with vexation. It seemed to her an enormous thing. She was just on the point of throwing down her cards when Mrs. Payne's story came back to her. Instead of dislike she felt a sudden wave of pity and wonder. She had wanted, on the spur of the moment, to give him away; but she realised that this would only discredit him with the other boys and probably lay him open to a sort of persecution. If he wasn't really responsible, that would be a pity; and so she held her tongue.
All the same she couldn't go on playing cards with him. She knew that if she did she would be bound to continue on the look-out, and be shocked by a series of these ugly incidents. She asked Considine if he would read to them, and he consented readily. He liked reading aloud, partly because he was, not unreasonably, vain of his speaking voice and partly because the practice was part of his theory of education. At that time he was reading Stevenson, an author who was supposed to combine a flawless literary style with the soundest moral precepts and an attitude towards life that encouraged the manly virtues peculiar to Englishmen. Gabrielle enjoyed his reading thoroughly, for she had so much of the boy in herself, and was quite unacquainted with any Victorian literature. He readCatrionaslowly, and with gusto. Gabrielle from her corner watched Arthur Payne, sprawling on a sofa at the edge of the lamp-light. He was really a remarkably handsome young animal with his fair hair tangled and his hands clasped on his knees. She could see his eyes in the gloom. They seemed to burn with eagerness while he listened, as though his imagination were on fire within. She forgot that Considine was reading and went on watching the boy. It seemed to her incredible that it was he whom she had detected in such a deliberate dishonour half an hour before. It was melancholy. She felt most awfully sorry for him. She wished, above all things, that she could help him. People said that he was beyond help. In the end he became conscious of her scrutiny and smiled across at her. And this broke the spell of reflection. She heard Considine's voice:
'I will take up the defence of your reputation,' she said. 'You may leave it in my hands.' And with that she withdrew out of the library."That's the end of chapter nineteen."
He closed the book, putting a marker in it methodically, as was his wont. Gabrielle thanked him. She smiled to herself, for it seemed to her that the words of Miss Grant with which he had recalled her from her abstraction had a curious and prophetic meaning for herself. She was thankful, for a moment, that she hadn't thoughtlessly given Arthur's reputation away to his comrades. She felt herself thrilled by a new and curious interest. She determined, as a part of her duty to his mother, to speak to Arthur himself about what she had observed.
She caught him in the passage just as the boys were going to bed, and drew him aside into the drawing-room. The room was quite dark.
"Arthur, I want to speak to you," she said.
He laughed. "What's the matter?"
"When we were playing cards to-night you cheated."
For a moment there was silence. Then he laughed again—not an uneasy, shameful laugh, but one of sheer amusement. It shocked her. At last he said:
"Did you see it? Then why didn't you make a fuss about it?"
She was thankful, at any rate, that he had not lied to her. That was what she had fearfully expected.
"I didn't want to give you away to the others."
"Why not? It wouldn't have been any news to them. They know that I cheat already. That's why they're up against me. But that doesn't worry me."
"I don't understand you. It seemed to me a horrible thing to do.Can't you see that?"
"No, I can't. Perhaps I'm different. When I play I play to win."
"But that's the whole point. If you don't stick to the rules of the game there's no credit in winning, is there?"
He was silent for a moment. Then, with an effort of the most courageous honesty, he said: "Well, it feels the same to me. I like winning—anyhow."
She hesitated for a moment.
"It makes it so that—so that we can't respect you," she said.
"Now I suppose you'll go and tell Dr. Considine. Just my luck."
"Indeed, and I shan't do anything of the sort. It's between us two," she replied.
He was silent.
"Well, it does no good talking about it," he said mournfully. "I'm made differently, that's all. Do you want anything else?"
She didn't, and he left her in the dark.
This small incident and the conversation that followed opened her eyes to the reality of the problem. She didn't indeed tell Considine what had happened, but she did talk to him once or twice about the history of Arthur Payne. He did not tell her much, for it was part of his plan that his wife should not be mixed up in the business of the school. These things, in his opinion, lay entirely outside a woman's province. Her place was in the drawing-room and her position that of a hostess or, providentially, that of a mother. For the present there were no signs of her fulfilling the latter.
In spite of Considine's discouragement her interest in Arthur was now fully aroused, and more eagerly for the very reason of the limits which her husband had set to her activities. Life at Lapton Manor to a person of Gabrielle's essential vitality was dull. The nature of the surrounding country with its near horizons and lack of physical breadth or freedom imprisoned her spirit. Even Roscarna in its decay had been more vital than this sad, smug Georgian manor-house set in its circle of low hills. Over there, in winter, there had been rough Atlantic weather, and a breath of ice from the snowy summits of Slieveannilaun or the mountains of Maamturk. Here, even in their more frequent sunshine, the air lay dead, ebbing like a sluggish river, from Dartmoor to the sea. In winter the county families went to sleep like dormice, so that no strange-calling conveyances passed the lodge-gates at Lapton, and the life of Gabrielle was like that of those sad roses that lingered on the south wall beneath her bedroom window in a state that was neither life nor death. If she had shared Considine's interest in his profession things might have been different. No doubt she would have thrown herself into it with enthusiasm; but her enthusiasm was of a very different nature from the steady flame that burned in Considine. No doubt he knew this, and felt that her sharing would be disturbing by its violence. In the ordinary course of events I suppose he expected that she would have another child, but as this interest was denied her, she was thrown more and more upon her own resources.
Her promise to Mrs. Payne gave her a reasonable excuse for her growing interest in Arthur. She had never returned to the card-playing incident; but as time went on a number of others equally distressing presented themselves. Having constituted herself his special protectress and the saviour of his reputation she tackled each of them with courage. In every case she found herself baffled by the fact that arguments which seemed to her unanswerable made no appeal to him, not because he wasn't anxious to see things with her eyes, but because they came within the area of a kind of blind-spot in his brain. She soon found that she couldn't appeal on moral grounds to an a-moral intelligence. She would have appealed on grounds material, but it seemed to be ironically decreed that material and moral grounds should be rarely at one. Sweet persuasion was equally useless. And indeed, how could she expect to succeed by her influence where maternal love had failed so signally? Even so, she would not own herself beaten. It was tantalising; for the more she saw of Arthur the better she liked him, and in these days she was seeing a good deal of him.
The opportunity arose from Arthur's trouble. He had told her the truth when he said his fellow-pupils at Lapton were already aware of his lack of honour in games. Nothing is less easily forgiven by boys, and when the others discovered that he cheated and lied, not so much by accident as on principle, they began to treat him as an outcast from their decent society. The Traceys went so far as to report his failing to Considine. An unpleasantcontretemps, but one that Considine had expected. He explained to them that Payne was not entirely to blame, and that his constitution was not normal. He advised them to take the weakness for granted. Even when he did this he knew that such distinctions were unlikely to be acceptable to a boyish code of honour. On the other hand the special fees that Mrs. Payne was paying him were essential to the development of his plans. As a compromise he decided to keep Arthur apart from the others in their amusements in the most natural way he could devise. Practically for want of a better solution he handed him over to the care of Gabrielle.
Arthur resented this. He was fond of games and of sport. He liked winning and he liked killing; he thought it humiliating to his manly dignity to be relegated to Gabrielle's society. He wrote bitterly to his mother about it, using the contemptuous nickname that the boys had invented for Mrs. Considine.
"I think old Considine," he wrote, "must be thinking of turning me into a nursemaid. I'm always being told off to help Gaby in the garden or take her for drives in the pony-cart. Not much fun taking a woman shopping!"
But Gabrielle was glad of it. The new plan supplied her with the first prolonged companionship of a person of her own age—there were less than three years between them—that she had known. Little by little Arthur accepted it, and they became great friends.
It was a curious relation, for though it must have been simple on his side, on hers it was full of complication. To begin with his society was a great relief from her loneliness. Again, she had already, for want of another enthusiasm, conceived an acute interest in his curious temperament, and her eagerness to get to the bottom of it, and, if possible, to find a cure, was now fanned by something that resembled a maternal passion. They spent the greater part of his spare time together, and often, at hours when he would normally have been working with Considine, she would ask for him to take her driving into Totnes or Dartmouth, their two market towns. In the evenings they would walk out together in search of air along the lip of the basin in which Lapton Manor lay.
On one of these evening walks a strange thing happened. They had climbed the hills and had sat for a few minutes on the summit watching the sun go down behind the level ridges that lead inward from the Start. While they were sitting there in silence, Arthur suddenly slipped away over the brim of a little hollow full of bracken on the edge of the wood. A moment later Gabrielle heard him laughing, and walked over quietly to see what he was doing. She saw him crouched, quite unconscious of her presence, among the ferns at the bottom of the hollow. He had caught a baby rabbit, and now he was torturing the small terrified creature, its beady eyes set with fear, just as a cat plays with a mouse. He was watching it intently: letting it escape to the verge of freedom and then catching it and throwing it violently back. For a second it would lie motionless with terror and then make another feeble attempt at escape. She watched this display of animal cruelty with horror, and yet she could not speak, for she wanted to see what he would do next. At last the rabbit refused to keep up the heartless game any longer. It simply lay and trembled. Arthur prodded it with his foot, but it would not move. This appeared to incense him. He took a flying kick at the poor beast and killed it. It lay for a moment twitching, its muzzle covered in blood. A little thing no bigger than a kitten two months old——
Gabrielle ran to him flaming with anger. She picked up the mutilated rabbit and hugged it to her breast.
"Why did you do that? You beast, you devil!" she cried.
She could have flown at him in her anger. Arthur only laughed. He stood there laughing, staring straight at her with his wide honest eyes.
"It's dead. It's all right," he said.
Her fingers were all dabbled with the blood of the rabbit that twitched no longer. She could do nothing. She dropped the carcase with a pitiful gesture of despair and burst into bitter tears.
She sat sobbing on the edge of the hollow. She could not see him, but presently she heard his voice, curiously shaken with emotion, at her side.
"I say, Mrs. Considine," he said. "Don't—please don't—I simply can't stand it."
"Oh, get away—leave me alone," she sobbed. "I can't bear you to be near me. It was so little. So happy——"
He wouldn't go. He spoke again, and his voice was quite changed—she had never heard a note of feeling in it before. "I can't bear it. You—I can't bear that you should suffer. I swear I won't do a thing like that again—not if it hurts you. On my honour I won't."
"Yes, you will. I suppose you can't help it. It's awful. You haven't a soul. You aren't human."
His voice choked as he replied. "I swear it—I do really. I could do anything for you, Mrs. Considine. I feel that I could. For God's sake try me!"
She compelled herself, still sobbing, to look at him. She saw that his face was tortured, and his eyes full of tears. But she could say no more, and they walked home in silence.
This distressing picture troubled Gabrielle for several days, and yet, beneath her remembrance of anger and disgust, she could not help feeling a curious excitement when she reflected that, for the first time since she had known him, Arthur had shown her signs of pity and tenderness. For a little while they lived under its shadow though neither of them spoke of it again. Arthur, in particular, was awkward; but whether he were ashamed of his cruelty, or merely of the effect that it had produced on her, she could not say. Although she found it difficult to believe in the first explanation she was deeply touched, and perhaps a little flattered, by the possibility of the second. Certainly his attitude toward her had changed. In everything that he said or did, he now seemed pathetically anxious to please her, and even this was encouraging. She didn't tell Considine what had happened. She knew very well that he would consider the incident trivial and, in a few words, shatter her illusion of its significance. And this fear proved that she was not so very sure that it was significant herself.
The curious atmosphere that now developed between them revealed itself more particularly in the letters which they were both of them writing to Mrs. Payne at Overton. Arthur's had never been very fluent, but Gabrielle had found an outlet for herself in this correspondence. In his early letters from Lapton Arthur had rarely mentioned Gabrielle; whenever he had done so it had been half contemptuously, as though the feeling of repression which emanates from the best of schoolmasters had attached itself to the schoolmaster's wife. At the same time Gabrielle had been brief, but extremely natural. With the card-playing incident a new situation had developed. Arthur, as we have seen, had been inclined to turn up his nose at Gabrielle's society when it was thrust upon him by Considine, while Gabrielle had given signs of a more maternal care. In the later stages of this period Gabrielle, being taken as a matter of course, had practically dropped out of Arthur's letters. The episode of the rabbit changed all this, for while Arthur now began to expand in a naïve enthusiasm, Gabrielle's attempts at writing about him fell altogether flat. Judging by her letters Mrs. Payne might reasonably have supposed that she had grown thoroughly sick of the boy.
The real cause of her reticence was not so easily fathomable. I suppose it was her instinctive method of withdrawing a subject that was secretly precious to her from the knowledge of the one person in the world who might reasonably assert a right to share it. If she had analysed it, no doubt she would have proved that her interest in Arthur was more intimate than she had ever confessed. But she didn't analyse it. Neither, for that matter, did Mrs. Payne. Looking backward, a year later, that good woman realised what a psychological howler she had made. At the time she was merely thankful that Arthur was happy in the society of a woman whom she liked and trusted—to whom, indeed, she had more or less confided him—and sorry that at the very moment when her influence might have counted, Gabrielle appeared to be losing interest in the boy. It cheered her to think that Arthur was expressing any admiration so human and, to be frank, so unlike himself. She was even more cheered when she received Considine's report on him at the beginning of the Christmas holidays. "There have been one or two unpleasant incidents," wrote the tactful Considine, "but during the latter part of the term I must say that your boy's conduct has been practically unexceptionable. I think it is only right to tell you that I have great hopes of him." At the same time Gabrielle was silent.
Of course Considine didn't really know as much about it as she did. He had seen the broad effects of Arthur's adoration—for that is what it was now becoming—but he knew nothing of the struggles that had gone to their making. During the latter part of the term his conduct had not been by any means "unexceptionable"; but it was part of Gabrielle's queer policy of secrecy to hide any lapse on Arthur's part from her husband. She tackled them alone, forcing herself, against her own compassionate instincts, to play upon Arthur's feelings. She had now discovered that where appeals to general morality, or even to reason, were bound to fail, the least sign of suffering on her part could reduce Arthur to a miserable and perfectly genuine repentance. Such was the end of all their struggles; and there were many; for she would not let the least sign of his old weakness pass. At times she felt that she was cruel, but she allowed herself to be harrowed, finding, perhaps, in the pain that she inflicted on both of them, something that was flattering both to her conscience and to her self-esteem.
During all this time there was nothing approaching intimacy between them. To him, however he might adore her, she was always Mrs. Considine. In all their relations they preserved the convention that she was a creature of another world and of another age. No doubt his childishness made the illusion easy to him. With her there must surely have been moments of emotion when she realised that the barrier was artificial. It is impossible to say how soon the first of these moments came.
Certainly when he returned to Overton for the holidays with Considine's encouraging report, she felt terribly lonely. For the last two months she had concerned herself so passionately with the discovery—one might almost say the creation—of his soul, that his departure left her not only with a physical blank, but with a spiritual anxiety. She wondered all the time what was happening to him; whether in her absence he was keeping it up or drifting into a state of tragic relapse. On the evening before he left she had made him promise to write to her, but his boyish letters were wholly unsatisfactory. She believed that he was telling her the truth in them, and yet he told her so little. She even wished that she had kept up the habit of writing to Mrs. Payne; for the least sidelight on the condition of affairs at Overton would have been grateful to her. She did write to Mrs. Payne, but destroyed the letter, feeling that a sudden revival of her custom when Arthur was no longer at Lapton would seem merely ridiculous.
The Christmas holidays were a dreary time for her. Deserted by all youth the Manor House slipped back into its ancient and melancholy peace. Winter descended on them. She had been told that the climate of South Devon resembled that of Connemara, but this was not the kind of winter that she had known before. Snow never fell, as it used to fall on her own mountains, turning Slieveannilaun into a great ghost, and bringing the distant peaks of the Twelve Pins incredibly nearer. Perhaps snow fell on Dartmoor; but from Lapton Dartmoor could not be seen. In those deep valleys it could only be felt as a reservoir of chilly moisture, or a barrier confining cold, dank air. Instead of snowing it rained incessantly. The soft lanes became impassable with mud, turning Lapton into a peninsula, if not an island.
At the New Year they went on a visit to Halberton House. During their stay there Lady Barbara conceived a sudden and violent passion for Gabrielle, that culminated in Gabrielle being taken solemnly to her cousin's virginal bedroom and hearing the story of an old unhappy love-affair. All the time that she listened to Lady Barbara's plaintive voice Gabrielle was wondering what had happened at Overton, and whether Arthur was keeping to the solemn undertaking that he had given her. She wondered if it were possible that regard for his mother's feelings might now be filling the place of her own influence; if Mrs. Payne were arrogantly taking to herself the credit for the miracle which Lapton had seen so laboriously begun. She hoped, knowing that it was wicked of her to do so, that this had not happened. She felt that the change in Arthur was hers and hers only. She found herself forced to confess that she was jealous of Mrs. Payne….
"And then," said Lady Barbara, "just when I was certain, positively certain that he cared for me—after that morning in church, you know—his mother broke her leg huntin' in Leicestershire. The wire came in with the mornin' letters, and the first thing I knew of his goin' was seein' the luggage cart with his hat-box in the drive. Then, poor dear, he met this widow at a dance at Belvoir. I begged mother to let me go and stay with the Pagets at Somerby, but she said it would be undignified. He was killed in the Chitral a year later. I felt I must tell you, dear, because I can't help feelin' a little envious of your happy marriage. Dr. Considine is such a man … and I always feel it's so safe marryin' a clergyman."
The idea of envying her marriage with Considine was so ridiculous that Gabrielle couldn't repress an inexcusable smile, but Lady Barbara cut short her blushing apology. "I don't begrudge you your happiness, my dear," she said.
Seeing Lady Barbara sitting opposite to her with her thin arms sticking straight out of a camisole, and two plaits of hair pathetically trailing one on either side of her narrow forehead, Gabrielle was suddenly overwhelmed with the consciousness of her own youth—not only that, but her amazing difference in temperament from these people of her own blood. Retiring from her cousin's chaste kisses to her own room, she stood for a long while in front of her mirror, tinglingly aware of her freshness and beauty and vitality. Considine, emerging from his dressing-room, found her there.
"Vanity, vanity!" he said, taking her in his arms and kissing her. Gabrielle suddenly thought how glad she would be to hand him over to the admiring Lady Barbara. She remembered the chill kiss of her cousin, and then the kiss of Considine. Neither of them, she decided, was a real kiss.
The new term began on the twenty-fifth of January. Gabrielle had awaited it with a subdued excitement. When the day came, she compelled herself to appear more placid than usual. It was a sunny morning of the kind that often gives a feeling of spring to the Devon winter, a morning full of promise. Considine had suggested that she should drive into Totnes and do some shopping before meeting the train from the Midlands, but she would not do so. All morning she made herself busy in the house, and later in the day, hearing the wheels of the wagonette on the drive, she slipped out into the garden to visit a border where the crocus spears were pushing through the soil. She could not explain her own sudden shyness. She was tremulous, tremulous with life. There was a smell of spring in the air. Arthur came out to find her in the garden. His eyes glowed with the pleasure of seeing her again, but she would not look at him.
"Well," she said, "what happened?"
"Oh, it was all right," he said. "I think it was all right. I'm almost sure of it. I always thought of you, you see. Imagined what you'd think of me." He didn't say that he had considered what his mother would think. She was suddenly, jealously, thankful.
With his return she regained her content, feeling no longer the weight of winter. He spoke no more regretfully of his exclusion from the sports of the other pupils and they settled down once again into their happy routine of walks and drives. In a little while the crocuses burst into flame in the borders, and in the hedges the wild arums began to unfold.
One Friday afternoon in the middle of March she asked Considine to let Arthur drive her into Dartmouth. The day was so mild that they chose the high-road that skirts the edge of Start Bay. There was a feeling of holiday in the air, for the sea beneath them was of a pale and shimmering blue like a stone blazing with imprisoned light or a butterfly's wing. On the road they met a long procession of carriers' vans heaped high with shopping baskets, and the happy faces of country people stared at them from under the hoods. The road shone white, having been scoured with rain, and all the hedgerows smelt of green things growing, with now and then a waft of the white violet. The sky was so clear that they could see the smoke of many liners, hull down, making the Start. When they reached the crest of the hill above Dartmouth a man-of-war appeared, a three-funnelled cruiser, steaming fast towards the land. She was so fleet and strong that she seemed to share in the exhilaration of the day. They dropped down slowly into Dartmouth and lost sight of her.
Gabrielle had a great deal of shopping to do, and Arthur drove her from one shop to another, waiting outside in the pony-trap while she made her purchases. Then they had tea together in a restaurant on the quay. They had never been more happy together. When they came out of the tea-shop on to the pavement they found themselves entangled in a group of sailors, liberty-men who had been disembarked from the cruiser that now lay anchored in the mouth of the Dart. They came along the footpath laughing, pleased to be ashore. Arthur and Gabrielle stood aside to let them pass, and as they did so Gabrielle saw the nameH.M.S. Pennantupon their cap-ribbons. She became suddenly pale and silent. The light had faded from the day. She begged Arthur to drive her home as quickly as he could.
Arthur was puzzled by her strangeness. He could not understand why she did not speak to him. They drove on in silence through the dusk. So they came to the point at which the coast road turns inward towards Lapton Huish, a lonely spot where the cliffs break away into low hills, and the highroad runs between a ridge of shingle on one side and on the other two reedy meres. The night was windless, and they heard no sound but a faint shivering of reed-beds, and the plash and withdrawal of languid waves lapping the miles of fine shingle with a faint hiss like that of grain falling on to a mound.
On the bridge that spanned the channel connecting the two meres Gabrielle asked him to stop. He did so, wondering, and she climbed out of the trap, and leaned upon the coping, looking out over the water. He couldn't think what to make of her. He did not know how dear is mystery to the heart of a woman. He stood by, awkwardly looking at her. At last she said slowly, "I hate the sea…. I hate it. But I love lake-water," which didn't lead much further. But he knew that she was for some reason unhappy, and found this difficult to bear. He came near to her, leaning over the bridge at her side.
"I wish you'd tell me what's the matter," he said. "It's all very well your helping me, but it's a bit one-sided if I can't do anything for you."
She gazed at his shadowy face in the darkness, and then gently put her hand on his. She felt a kind of shudder go through him as he clasped it.
After that night it is difficult to believe that Gabrielle any longer deceived herself, though I do not suppose that Arthur realised the true meaning of their relation. The significant feature in it is that he was gradually and almost imperceptibly becoming a normal human being. Gabrielle had begun by developing in him a substitute for a conscience; for since he had begun to consider everything that he said or did in the light of its probable effect upon his idol, it had become a habit with him to follow a definite code of conduct, and the saying that habit is second nature finds an example in his extraordinary case.
It is fascinating, but I believe profitless, to speculate on the subtle hereditary influences that underlay their attraction for each other. One can imagine that their state presented an example of the way in which people of abnormal instincts tend to drift together: Arthur, the a-moral prodigy, and Gabrielle, the last offshoot of the decayed house of Hewish, daughter of the definitely degenerate Sir Jocelyn. But I do not think that there was anything abnormal or decadent in Gabrielle's composition. Her nature was gay and uncomplicated, in singular contrast to her involved and sombre fate. One is forced to the conclusion that the Payne miracle was the result of nothing more uncommon than the natural birth of a tender passion between two young people of opposite sexes, whom chance had isolated and thrown into each other's company. The specialist who had vaguely suggested to Mrs. Payne the hope that manhood might work a change in Arthur had been nearer the mark than he himself supposed, for though the physical state effected nothing in itself, its first consequence, the growth of an ideal love, became his soul's salvation.
Of all that happened during the Easter term we can know nothing, save that it was spring, that they were supremely happy, and that Considine was blind … blind, that is, to everything in the case but the results of Arthur's infatuation. These, indeed, were so obvious that he could not very well miss them. The boy's essential childishness, the thing that had added an aspect of horror to his habits of stealth and cruelty, gradually disappeared. He began to grow up. I mean that his mind grew up, for he had already shown a premature physical development. Practically the space of a single term had changed him from a child into a man. Considine, seeing this, innocently flattered himself upon the admirable results of his educational system. A country life, with plenty of exercise in the open air, and an unconventional but logical type of literary education that was his own invention. Result: "Mens sana in corpore sano." Arthur was a show case, and seemed to make possible the acquisition of a long series of "difficult" pupils at enormous and suitable fees.
When once the boy got going, the rate of his mental development made it difficult for Considine to keep pace with him. His mind, that had once been slow, worked with a sort of feverish activity, as though he were subconsciously aware that he had whole years of leeway to make up. The other pupils, who had always taken Arthur's comparative dulness for granted, and looked down upon him for it, noticed the change, and found that if they were not careful he would outstrip them. At the same time they began to discover that he was a thoroughly good fellow and to wonder how on earth they had been so mistaken in him before. From being something of an outcast he now became a favourite, asserting, for the first time, the full advantage of his physical maturity.
Considine was quick to take advantage of the change. He had always been tempted by the idea of examination successes, and although he realised the disadvantage with which Arthur, in his renaissance, was starting, he saw no reason why the boy should not eventually do him credit in some public competition. There should be no difficulty for example, in getting him into Sandhurst … or, perhaps, Woolwich, as his new aptitude for mathematics suggested. He wrote at length to Mrs. Payne, discussing these possibilities. This was his quiet and considered way of revealing to her his success.
Mrs. Payne, whose glimpses of the new Arthur in the Christmas holidays had buoyed her with hopes in which she dared not place too much faith, replied to his letter in a fever of excitement. Was it really possible to think of such a career? Was there now no fear that if Arthur went to Woolwich or Sandhurst something terrible might happen? Of course, seeing what he had done already, she was prepared to trust Dr. Considine's judgment in everything; but in any case, if the future that he suggested were remotely possible, she would very much rather that Arthur should not go into the army. One of their neighbours had lately been killed in the Boer War.
Her letter paved the way for Considine's triumph. He wrote and told her that he thought he could now safely say that there was nothing at all abnormal about her son. He did not wish to take undue credit for the revolutionary change in Arthur's disposition, but could not help feeling that the boy was a credit to the Lapton regime. Seeing that Arthur was her only son he could quite understand her objection to his adopting the hazardous calling of a soldier. As an alternative he now suggested the Civil Service. Arthur's money—if he might descend to such a practical consideration—would be extremely useful to him if he served under the Foreign Office. Of course he could not promise success, but under the new conditions he thought it worth while trying to prepare Arthur for one of the examinations. Mrs. Payne consented. She only hoped that Considine had not been deceived.
Arthur did not object to the process of cramming that he now underwent at Considine's hands. His newly-awakened thirst for knowledge was not easily quenched. Considine, taking his education as a serious proposition for the first time, naturally considered that the many hours that Arthur spent with Gabrielle were waste. He also felt that since he was now acceptable to them as a sportsman, Arthur should take his place again with the other boys. He had not calculated the effect of his decision on Gabrielle or on Arthur himself. That it could have any effect at all upon her had never entered his mind.
Gabrielle painfully decided that she would say nothing, but Arthur found himself torn between two interests. Even during the growth of his devotion to Gabrielle he had always felt a sneaking suspicion that his constant enjoyment of her society was a little derogatory to his manly dignity. He knew that his big limbs were made for more active pursuits than walking over a hillside at a woman's pace, or driving a pony-cart into Dartmouth. At the same time he saw that he could not now desert her without a feeling of shame in addition to that of love.
"What shall I do about it?" he said to her.
"You must do what you think right." The sentence would have had no meaning less than six months before.
"It isn't that exactly, I suppose I must do what Dr. Considine orders."
"Very well…. You must do what he orders."
"I shall never see you, Mrs. Considine!" She was still Mrs. Considine to him. For answer she only took his hand and smiled.
From that time he followed obediently his master's plans. Considine kept him busy, and the walks and drives that he had taken with Gabrielle almost ceased. At first, making a deliberate sacrifice, she had wondered if she would lose him; but she need never have feared this. The moments in which they met were stolen and therefore sweet. She still remained the confidante of all his emotions and thoughts, and since the time in which these confidences could be given to her was now so short, each moment of it burned with a new intensity. They met by calculated chances and in strange places; and their meetings were lovers' meetings, even if they never spoke of love.
If the holidays at Christmas had been a desolation to Gabrielle, her parting from Arthur next Easter was clouded by a sense of more positive want. It was the season of lovers, days of bright sunshine, evenings of a surpassing tenderness. She went to the station with him in the pony-cart alone. She sat like a statue in the trap while the train puffed its way slowly up the gradient and its noise died away in a rhythmical rumble. When she awoke to the fact that he had gone she felt a sudden impulse to do something desperate, if only she could think of anything desperate to do. She felt that she would like to shock Considine and the Halbertons and the whole county, to be, for one moment, outrageous and unrestrained. But she couldn't do anything of the kind; her wild spark of energy seemed so pathetically small and feeble against the vast inertia of that dreamy countryside. Even if she were to cry out at the top of her voice she couldn't assert her identity; those huge passive folds of green country wouldn't believe her. They wouldn't accept the fact that she was Gabrielle Hewish, now called Considine. To them she was just the wife of a country parson dawdling through the leafy lanes in a pony-trap. She lashed the pony into a canter, but felt no better for it. The animal settled down again into his shamble. No power on earth could make him keep on cantering over the hills of the South Hams, and he knew it.
Arrived at Lapton she handed over the pony to a groom and set off walking violently across country, hoping in this way to cool the heat of her blood. She felt that she would like to go on walking till she dropped, but as soon as her limbs began to tire she knew that this would not bring her content. She hurried back to the Manor a few minutes late for dinner. Considine, to whom unpunctuality was the eighth deadly sin, was pacing up and down the hall, his hands behind his back, with the impatience of an animal prowling in a cage.
"Ah, here you are at last!" he said.
They went in to dinner, but she could not eat. Considine's appetite was as regular as everything else in his time-table. He ate heartily and methodically. She found it difficult to sit still and watch him eating.
"What's the matter with you?" he said at last.
"I don't know. I'm restless to-day."
"Well, there's no reason why you shouldn't rest now that the house is empty again. The holidays come as a great relief in a place like this. And the Spring Term is always the most trying."
He watched her narrowly, then and for several days afterwards. When he became solicitous about her health she always knew that he was wondering if at last she was going to fulfil his desire for a child of his own. On these occasions he overwhelmed her with attentions.
Meanwhile Arthur, in the best of spirits, had arrived at Overton. Mrs. Payne awaited him in a state of tremulous emotion. Now, for the first time, she was to see her son made whole. Her elation was not without misgiving, for the news of the miracle was almost too good to be true; she couldn't help feeling that the Considines had judged him with a scrutiny more superficial than her own, and though it was not for her to dispute the intellectual blossoming that had raised such hopes in his master, she couldn't be sure about the deeper, moral change until she had seen for herself. Certainly his appearance on the station platform gave her a sudden thrill of pleasure. Her boy had become a man; his body had gained in solidity and balance, and his upper lip was fledged with a fair down. He took her in his arms and kissed her with a serious manliness that was new to her, and made her heart leap with pride. His voice, too, had deepened. It was soft and low and uncannily like his father's. Time after time she was struck by little tricks of gesture and expression that were familiar to her, but had never appeared in him before. He was indeed a stranger, yet a hundred times more lovable than the son she had known.
A couple of days convinced her that the change was not merely something added, but vital and elemental. He showed it in a multitude of small things—in his consideration for the servants, in his attentions to herself, in the serious interest that he showed in matters that had not touched him before, in affairs, in books, in newspaper politics. Even so she had been flattered too often by transient improvements to be convinced. Deliberately and fearfully she tested him, but never found him wanting. Then her joy and thankfulness were too deep for words.
And yet the position was not without its awkwardness. She knew that Arthur was kinder, more human, and—if that were possible to her—more lovable, but, in spite of these things, she could not help feeling that there was something in this new and delightful nature that was foreign to herself … foreign, and even, subtly, hostile. It seemed to her that in some peculiar way he was on the defensive. Up to a certain point she could enter freely into his confidence, but after that point she knew in her heart that there was something that he denied her. Now, more than ever in her life, she wanted to feel that he was wholly hers; and now, if she were to confess the truth, he seemed less hers than he had ever been before. At times, indeed, when their intimacy should have been at its best, she felt that she had lost him altogether, and that his mind was hundreds of miles away from her, as indeed it was. She consoled herself by supposing that his life was now so crowded with new interests and dreams of future adventure that he could be forgiven if their wonder enthralled and overwhelmed him. It was indeed a wonderful thing if this son of hers, at the age of seventeen, should see life with the eyes of a child new-born into the world. She envied him this ecstasy, even though its real explanation was far simpler than that which she imagined. When he walked in silence with her through the fields, or sat dreaming under the cedar on the lawn when evening came, it is possible that Arthur had sight of the new heaven and new earth that she imagined, for his eyes were lover's eyes. But this she never guessed.