He did not know we were approaching till I called him, then he started slightly as he saw the tall, proud girl.
"Mr Saxton--Miss D'Arcy," I said, and he shook hands with her. Immediately his manner became ironic, for he had seen his hand big and coarse and inflamed with the snaith clasping the lady's hand.
"We thought you looked so fine," she said to him, "and men are so embarrassing when they make love to somebody else--aren't they? Save us those foxgloves, will you--they are splendid--like savage soldiers drawn up against the hedge--don't cut them down--and those campanulas--bell-flowers, ah, yes! They are spinning idylls up there. I don't care for idylls, do you? Oh, you don't know what a classical pastoral person you are--but there, I don't suppose you suffer from idyllic love--" she laughed, "--one doesn't see the silly little god fluttering about in our hayfields, does one? Do you find much time to sport with Amaryllis in the shade?--I'm sure it's a shame they banish Phyllis from the fields--"
He laughed and went on with his work. She smiled a little, too, thinking she had made a great impression. She put out her hand with a dramatic gesture, and looked at me, when the scythe crunched through the meadow-sweet.
"Crunch! isn't it fine!" she exclaimed, "a kind of inevitable fate--I think it's fine!"
We wandered about picking flowers and talking until teatime. A manservant came with the tea-basket, and the girls spread the cloth under a great willow tree. Lettie took the little silver kettle, and went to fill it at the small spring which trickled into a stone trough all pretty with cranesbill and stellaria hanging over, while long blades of grass waved in the water. George, who had finished his work, and wanted to go home to tea, walked across to the spring where Lettie sat playing with the water, getting little cupfuls to put into the kettle, watching the quick skating of the water-beetles, and the large faint spots of their shadows darting on the silted mud at the bottom of the trough.
She glanced round on hearing him coming, and smiled nervously: they were mutually afraid of meeting each other again.
"It is about tea-time," he said.
"Yes--it will be ready in a moment--this is not to make the tea with--it's only to keep a little supply of hot water."
"Oh," he said, "I'll go on home--I'd rather."
"No," she replied, "you can't because we are all having tea together: I had some fruits put up, because I know you don't trifle with tea--and your father's coming."
"But," he replied pettishly, "I can't have my tea with all those folks--I don't want to--look at me!"
He held out his inflamed, barbaric hands.
She winced and said:
"It won't matter--you'll give the realistic touch."
He laughed ironically.
"No--you must come," she insisted.
"I'll have a drink then, if you'll let me," he said, yielding. She got up quickly, blushing, offering him the tiny, pretty cup.
"I'm awfully sorry," she said.
"Never mind," he muttered, and turning from the proffered cup he lay down flat, put his mouth to the water, and drank deeply. She stood and watched the motion of his drinking, and of his heavy breathing afterwards. He got up, wiping his mouth, not looking at her. Then he washed his hands in the water, and stirred up the mud. He put his hand to the bottom of the trough, bringing out a handful of silt, with the grey shrimps twisting in it. He flung the mud on the floor where the poor grey creatures writhed.
"It wants cleaning out," he said.
"Yes," she replied, shuddering. "You won't be long," she added, taking up the silver kettle.
In a few moments he got up and followed her reluctantly down. He was nervous and irritable.
The girls were seated on tufts of hay, with the men leaning in attendance on them, and the manservant waiting on all. George was placed between Lettie and Hilda. The former handed him his little egg-shell of tea, which, as he was not very thirsty, he put down on the ground beside him. Then she passed him the bread and butter, cut for five-o'clock tea, and fruits, grapes and peaches, and strawberries, in a beautifully-carved oak tray. She watched for a moment his thick, half-washed fingers fumbling over the fruits, then she turned her head away. All the gay tea-time, when the talk bubbled and frothed over all the cups, she avoided him with her eyes. Yet again and again, as someone said: "I'm sorry, Mr Saxton--will you have some cake?"--or "See, Mr Saxton--try this peach, I'm sure it will be mellow right to the stone,"--speaking very naturally, but making the distinction between him and the other men by their indulgence towards him, Lettie was forced to glance at him as he sat eating, answering in monosyllables, laughing with constraint and awkwardness, and her irritation flickered between her brows. Although she kept up the gay frivolity of the conversation, still the discord was felt by everybody, and we did not linger as we should have done over the cups. "George," they said afterwards, "was a wet blanket on the party." Lettie was intensely annoyed with him. His presence was unbearable to her. She wished him a thousand miles away. He sat listening to Cresswell's whimsical affectation of vulgarity which flickered with fantasy, and he laughed in a strained fashion.
He was the first to rise, saying he must get the cows up for milking.
"Oh, let us go--let us go. May we come and see the cows milked?" said Hilda, her delicate, exquisite features flushing, for she was very shy.
"No," drawled Freddy, "the stink o' live beef ain't salubrious. You be warned, and stop here."
"I never could bear cows, except those lovely little highland cattle, all woolly, in pictures," said Louie Denys, smiling archly, with a little irony.
"No," laughed Agnes D'Arcy, "they--they're smelly,"--and she pursed up her mouth, and ended in a little trill of deprecatory laughter, as she often did. Hilda looked from one to the other, blushing.
"Come, Lettie," said Leslie good-naturedly, "I know you have a farmyard fondness--come on," and they followed George down.
As they passed along the pond bank a swan and her tawny, fluffy brood sailed with them the length of the water, "tipping on their little toes, the darlings--pitter-patter through the water, tiny little things," as Marie said.
We heard George below calling "Bully--Bully--Bully--Bully!" and then, a moment or two after, in the bottom garden: "Come out, you little fool--are you coming out of it?" in manifestly angry tones.
"Has it run away?" laughed Hilda, delighted, and we hastened out of the lower garden to see.
There in the green shade, between the tall gooseberry bushes, the heavy crimson peonies stood gorgeously along the path. The full red globes, poised and leaning voluptuously, sank their crimson weight on to the seeding grass of the path, borne down by secret rain, and by their own splendour. The path was poured over with red rich silk of strewn petals. The great flowers swung their crimson grandly about the walk, like crowds of cardinals in pomp among the green bushes. We burst into the new world of delight. As Lettie stooped, taking between both hands the gorgeous silken fullness of one blossom that was sunk to the earth. George came down the path, with the brown bull-calf straddling behind him, its neck stuck out, sucking zealously at his middle finger.
The unconscious attitudes of the girls, all bent enraptured over the peonies, touched him with sudden pain. As he came up, with the calf stalking grudgingly behind, he said:
"There's a fine show of pyeenocks this year, isn't there?"
"What do you call them?" cried Hilda, turning to him her sweet, charming face full of interest.
"Pyeenocks," he replied.
Lettie remained crouching with a red flower between her hands, glancing sideways unseen to look at the calf, which with its shiny nose uplifted was mumbling in its sticky gums the seductive finger. It sucked eagerly, but unprofitably, and it appeared to cast a troubled eye inwards to see if it were really receiving any satisfaction,--doubting, but not despairing. Marie, and Hilda, and Leslie laughed, while he, after looking at Lettie as she crouched, wistfully, as he thought, over the flower, led the little brute out of the garden, and sent it running into the yard with a sm
ack on the haunch.
Then he returned, rubbing his sticky finger dry against his breeches. He stood near to Lettie, and she felt rather than saw the extraordinary pale cleanness of the one finger among the others. She rubbed her finger against her dress in painful sympathy.
"But aren't the flowers lovely!" exclaimed Marie again. "I want to hug them."
"Oh, yes!" assented Hilda.
"They are like a romance--D'Annunzio--a romance in passionate sadness," said Lettie, in an ironical voice, speaking half out of conventional necessity of saying something, half out of desire to shield herself, and yet in a measure express herself.
"There is a tale about them," I said.
The girls clamoured for the legend.
"Pray, do tell us," pleaded Hilda, the irresistible.
"It was Emily told me--she says it's a legend, but I believe it's only a tale. She says the peonies were brought from the Hall long since by a fellow of this place--when it was a mill. He was brown and strong, and the daughter of the Hall, who was pale and fragile and young, loved him. When he went up to the Hall gardens to cut the yew hedges, she would hover round him in her white frock, and tell him tales of old days, in little snatches like a wren singing, till he thought she was a fairy who had bewitched him. He would stand and watch her, and one day, when she came near to him telling him a tale that set the tears swimming in her eyes, he took hold of her and kissed her and kept her. They used to tryst in the poplar spinney. She would come with her arms full of flowers, for she always kept to her fairy part. One morning she came early through the mists. He was out shooting. She wanted to take him unawares, like a fairy. Her arms were full of peonies. When she was moving beyond the trees he shot her, not knowing. She stumbled on, and sank down in their tryst place. He found her lying there among the red pyeenocks, white and fallen. He thought she was just lying talking to the red flowers, so he stood waiting. Then he went up, and bent over her, and found the flowers full of blood. It was he set the garden here with these pyeenocks."
The eyes of the girls were round with pity of the tale and Hilda turned away to hide her tears.
"It is a beautiful ending," said Lettie, in a low tone, looking at the floor.
"It's all a tale," said Leslie, soothing the girls.
George waited till Lettie looked at him. She lifted her eyes to him at last. Then each turned aside, trembling.
Marie asked for some of the peonies.
"Give me just a few--and I can tell the others the story--it is so sad--I feel so sorry for him, it was so cruel for him And Lettie says it ends beautifully--"
George cut the flowers with his great clasp-knife, and Marie took them, carefully, treating their romance with great tenderness. Then all went out of the garden and he turned to the cowshed.
"Good-bye for the present," said Lettie, afraid to stay near him.
"Good-bye," he laughed.
"Thank you so much for the flowers--and the story--it was splendid," said Marie, "--but so sad!"
Then they went, and we did not see them again.
Later, when all had gone to bed at the mill, George and I sat together on opposite sides of the fire, smoking, saying little. He was casting up the total of discrepancies, and now and again he ejaculated one of his thoughts.
"And all day," he said, "Blench has been ploughing his wheat in, because it was that bitten off by the rabbits it was no manner of use, so he's ploughed it in: an' they say with idylls, eating peaches in our close."
Then there was silence, while the clock throbbed heavily, and outside a wild bird called, and was still; softly the ashes rustled lower in the grate.
"She said it ended well--but what's the good of death--what's the good of that?" He turned his face to the ashes in the grate, and sat brooding.
Outside, among the trees, some wild animal set up a thin, wailing cry.
"Damn that row!" said I, stirring, looking also into the grey fire.
"It's some stoat or weasel, or something. It's been going on like that for nearly a week. I've shot in the trees ever so many times. There were two--one's gone."
Continuously, through the heavy, chilling silence, came the miserable crying from the darkness among the trees.
"You know," he said, "she hated me this afternoon, and I hated her--"
It was midnight, full of sick thoughts.
"It is no good," said I. "Go to bed--it will be morning in a few hours."
PART THREE
CHAPTER I - A NEW START IN LIFE
Lettie was wedded, as I had said, before Leslie lost all the wistful traces of his illness. They had been gone away to France five days before we recovered anything like the normal tone in the house. Then, though the routine was the same, everywhere was a sense of loss, and of change. The long voyage in the quiet home was over; we had crossed the bright sea of our youth, and already Lettie had landed and was travelling to a strange destination in a foreign land. It was time for us all to go, to leave the valley of Nethermere whose waters and whose woods were distilled in the essence of our veins. We were the children of the valley of Nethermere, a small nation with language and blood of our own, and to cast ourselves each one into separate exile was painful to us.
"I shall have to go now," said George. "It is my nature to linger an unconscionable time, yet I dread above all things this slow crumbling away from my foundations by which I free myself at last. I must wrench myself away now--"
It was the slack time between the hay and the corn harvest, and we sat together in the grey, still morning of August pulling the stack. My hands were sore with tugging the loose wisps from the lower part of the stack, so I waited for the touch of rain to send us indoors. It came at last, and we hurried into the barn. We climbed the ladder into the loft that was strewn with farming implements and with carpenters' tools. We sat together on the shavings that littered the bench before the high gable window, and looked out over the brooks and the woods and the ponds. The tree-tops were very near to us, and we felt ourselves the centre of the waters and the woods that spread down the rainy valley.
"In a few years," I said, "we shall be almost strangers."
He looked at me with fond, dark eyes and smiled incredulously.
"It is as far," said I, "to the 'Ram' as it is for me to London--farther."
"Don't you want me to go there?" he asked, smiling quietly.
"It's all as one where you go, you will travel north, and I east, and Lettie south. Lettie has departed. In seven weeks I go.--And you?"
"I must be gone before you," he said decisively.
"Do you know--" and he smiled timidly in confession, "I feel alarmed at the idea of being left alone on a loose end. I must not be the last to leave--" he added almost appealingly.
"And you will go to Meg?" I asked.
He sat tearing the silken shavings into shreds, and telling me in clumsy fragments all he could of his feelings:
"You see, it's not so much what you call love. I don't know. You see, I built on Lettie"--he looked up at me shamefacedly, then continued tearing the shavings--"you must found your castles on something, and I founded mine on Lettie. You see, I'm like plenty of folks, I have nothing definite to shape my life to. I put brick upon brick, as they come, and if the whole topples down in the end, it does. But you see, you and Lettie have made me conscious, and now I'm at a dead loss. I have looked to marriage to set me busy on my house of life, something whole and complete, of which it will supply the design. I must marry or be in a lost lane. There are two people I could marry--and Lettie's gone. I love Meg just as well, as far as love goes. I'm not sure I don't feel better pleased at the idea of marrying her. You know I should always have been second to Lettie, and the best part of love is being made much of, being first and foremost in the whole world for somebody. And Meg's easy and lovely. I can have her without trembling, she's full of soothing and comfort. I can stroke her hair and pet her, and she looks up at me, full of trust and lovingness, and there is no flaw, all restfulness in one another--"
Three weeks later, as I lay in the August sunshine in a deck-chair on the lawn, I heard the sound of wheels along the gravel path. It was George calling for me to accompany him to his marriage. He pulled up the dog-cart near the door and came up the steps to me on the lawn. He was dressed as if for the cattle market, in jacket and breeches and gaiters.
"Well, are you ready?" he said, standing smiling down on me. His eyes were dark with excitement, and had that vulnerable look which was so peculiar to the Saxtons in their emotional moments.
"You are in good time," said I, "it is but half-past nine."
"It wouldn't do to be late on a day like this," he said gaily, "see how the sun shines. Come, you don't look as brisk as a best man should. I thought you would have been on tenterhooks of excitement. Get up, get up! Look here, a bird has given me luck"--he showed me a white smear on his shoulder.
I drew myself up lazily.
"All right," I said, "but we must drink a whisky to establish it."
He followed me out of the fragrant sunshine into the dark house. The rooms were very still and empty, but the cool silence responded at once to the gaiety of our sun-warm entrance. The sweetness of the summer morning hung invisible like glad ghosts of romance through the shadowy room. We seemed to feel the sunlight dancing golden in our veins as we filled again the pale liqueur.
"Joy to you--I envy you today."
His teeth were white, and his eyes stirred like dark liquor as he smiled.
"Here is my wedding present!"
I stood the four large water-colours along the wall before him. They were drawings among the waters and the fields of the mill, grey rain and twilight, morning with the sun pouring gold into the mist, and the suspense of a midsummer noon upon the pond. All the glamour of our yesterdays came over him like an intoxicant, and he quivered with the wonderful beauty of life that was weaving him into the large magic of the years. He realised the splendour of the pageant of days which had him in train.