"Thank you so much," she said softly, giving his hand a last pressure before she let it go. He could not answer, so he sat down, bowing his head, then looking up at her in suspense. He smiled at her.
Presently the children came in. They looked very quaint, like acolytes, in their long straight dressing-gowns of quilted blue silk. The boy, particularly, looked as if he were going to light the candles in some childish church in paradise. He was very tall and slender and fair, with a round fine head, and serene features. Both children looked remarkable, almost transparently clean: it is impossible to consider anything more fresh and fair. The girl was a merry, curly-headed puss of six. She played with her mother's green jewels and prattled prettily, while the boy stood at his mother's side, a slender and silent acolyte in his pale blue gown. I was impressed by his patience and his purity. When the girl had bounded away into George's arms, the lad laid his hand timidly on Lettie's knee and looked with a little wonder at her dress.
"How pretty those green stones are, Mother!" he said. "Yes," replied Lettie brightly, lifting them and letting their strange pattern fall again on her bosom. "I like them."
"Are you going to sing, Mother?" he asked.
"Perhaps. But why?" said Lettie, smiling.
"Because you generally sing when Mr Saxton comes." He bent his head and stroked Lettie's dress shyly.
"Do I?" she said, laughing. "Can you hear?"
"Just a little," he replied. "Quite small, as if it were nearly lost in the dark."
He was hesitating, shy as boys are. Lettie laid her hand on his head and stroked his smooth fair hair.
"Sing a song for us before we go, Mother--" he asked, almost shamefully. She kissed him.
She played without a copy of the music. He stood at her side, while Lucy, the little mouse, sat on her mother's skirts, pressing Lettie's silk slippers in turn upon the pedals. The mother and the boy sang their song.
"Gaily the troubadour touched his guitar As he was hastening from the war."
The boy had a pure treble, clear as the flight of swallows in the morning. The light shone on his lips. Under the piano the girl child sat laughing, pressing her mother's feet with all her strength, and laughing again. Lettie smiled as she sang.
At last they kissed us a gentle "good night", and flitted out of the room. The girl popped her curly head round the door again. We saw the white cuff of the nurse's wrist as she held the youngster's arm.
"You'll come and kiss us when we're in bed, Mum?" asked the rogue. Her mother laughed and agreed.
Lucy was withdrawn for a moment; then we heard her, "Just a tick, nurse, just half a tick!"
The curly head appeared round the door again.
"And one teenie sweetie," she suggested, "only one!"
"Go, you--!" Lettie clapped her hands in mock wrath. The child vanished, but immediately there appeared again round the door two blue laughing eyes and the snub tip of a nose.
"A nice one, Mum--not a jelly one!"
Lettie rose with a rustle to sweep upon her. The child vanished with a glitter of laughter. We heard her calling breathlessly on the stairs--"Wait a bit, Freddies--wait for me!"
George and Lettie smiled at each other when the children had gone. As the smile died from their faces they looked down sadly, and until dinner was announced they were very still and heavy with melancholy. After dinner Lettie debated pleasantly which bon-bon she should take for the children. When she came down again she smoked a cigarette with us over coffee. George did not like to see her smoking, yet he brightened a little when he sat down after giving her a light, pleased with the mark of recklessness in her.
"It is ten years today since my party at Woodside," she said, reaching for the small Roman salt-cellar of green jade that she used as an ash-tray.
"My Lord--ten years!" he exclaimed bitterly. "It seems a hundred."
"It does and it doesn't," she answered, smiling.
"If I look straight back, and think of my excitement, it seems only yesterday. If I look between then and now, at all the days that lie between, it is an age."
"If I look at myself," he said, "I think I am another person altogether."
"You have changed," she agreed, looking at him sadly. "There is a great change--but you are not another person. I often think--there is one of his old looks, he is just the same at the bottom!"
They embarked on a barge of gloomy recollections and drifted along the soiled canal of their past.
"The worst of it is," he said, "I have got a miserable carelessness, a contempt for things. You know I had such a faculty for reverence. I always believed in things."
"I know you did," she smiled. "You were so humblyminded--too humbly-minded, I always considered. You always thought things had a deep religious meaning, somewhere hidden, and you reverenced them. Is it different now?"
"You know me very well," he laughed. "What is there left for me to believe in, if not in myself?"
"You have to live for your wife and children," she said with firmness.
"Meg has plenty to secure her and the children as long as they live," he said, smiling. "So I don't know that I'm essential."
"But you are," she replied. "You are necessary as a father and a husband, if not as a provider."
"I think," said he, "marriage is more of a duel than a duet. One party wins and takes the other captive, slave, servant--what you like. It is so, more or less."
"Well?" said Lettie.
"Well!" he answered. "Meg is not like you. She wants me, part of me, so she'd kill me rather than let me go loose."
"Oh, no!" said Lettie, emphatically.
"You know nothing about it," he said quietly.
"In the marital duel Meg is winning. The woman generally does; she has the children on her side. I can't give her any of the real part of me, the vital part that she wants--I can't, any more than you could give kisses to a stranger. And I feel that I'm losing--and don't care."
"No," she said, "you are getting morbid."
He put the cigarette between his lips, drew a deep breath, then slowly sent the smoke down his nostrils.
"No," he said.
"Look here!" she said. "Let me sing to you, shall I, and make you cheerful again?"
She sang from Wagner. It was the music of resignation and despair. She had not thought of it. All the time he listened he was thinking. The music stimulated his thoughts and illuminated the trend of his brooding. All the time he sat looking at her his eyes were dark with his thoughts. She finished the "Star of Eve" from Tannhäuser and came over to him.
"Why are you so sad tonight, when it is my birthday?" she asked plaintively.
"Am I slow?" he replied. "I am sorry."
"What is the matter?" she said, sinking onto the small sofa near to him.
"Nothing!" he replied--"You are looking very beautiful."
"There, I wanted you to say that! You ought to be quite gay, you know, when I am so smart tonight."
"Nay," he said, "I know I ought. But the tomorrow seems to have fallen in love with me. I can't get out of its lean arms."
"Why!" she said. "Tomorrow's arms are not lean. They are white, like mine." She lifted her arms and looked at them, smiling.
"How do you know?" he asked, pertinently.
"Oh, of course they are," was her light answer.
He laughed, brief and sceptical.
"No!" he said. "It came when the children kissed us."
"What?" she asked.
"These lean arms of tomorrow's round me, and the white arms round you," he replied, smiling whimsically. She reached out and clasped his hand.
"You foolish boy," she said.
He laughed painfully, not able to look at her.
"You know," he said, and his voice was low and difficult "I have needed you for a light. You will soon be the only light again."
"Who is the other?" she asked.
"My little girl!" he answered. Then he continued, "And you know, I couldn't endure complete darkness, I couldn't. It's the sol
itariness."
"You mustn't talk like this," she said. "You know you mustn't." She put her hand on his head and ran her fingers through the hair he had so ruffled.
"It is as thick as ever, your hair," she said.
He did not answer, but kept his face bent out of sight. She rose from her seat and stood at the back of his low armchair. Taking an amber comb from her hair, she bent over him, and with the translucent comb and her white fingers she busied herself with his hair.
"I believe you would have a parting," she said softly.
He laughed shortly at her playfulness. She continued combing, just touching, pressing the strands in place with the tips of her fingers.
"I was only a warmth to you," he said, pursuing the same train of thought. "So you could do without me. But you were like the light to me, and otherwise it was dark and aimless. Aimlessness is horrible."
She had finally smoothed his hair, so she lifted her hands and put back her head.
"There!" she said. "It looks fair fine, as Alice would say. Raven's wings are raggy in comparison."
He did not pay any attention to her.
"Aren't you going to look at yourself?" she said, playfully reproachful. She put her finger-tips under his chin. He lifted his head and they looked at each other, she smiling, trying to make him play, he smiling with his lips, but not with eyes, dark with pain.
"We can't go on like this, Lettie, can we?" he said softly. "Yes," she answered him, "Yes; why not?"
"It can't!" he said, "it can't, I couldn't keep it up, Lettie."
"But don't think about it," she answered. "Don't think of it."
"Lettie," he said. "I have to set my teeth with loneliness."
"Hush!" she said. "No! There are the children. Don't say anything--do not be serious, will you?"
"No, there are the children," he replied, smiling dimly.
"Yes! Hush now! Stand up and look what a fine parting I have made in your hair. Stand up, and see if my style becomes you."
"It is no good, Lettie," he said, "we can't go on."
"Oh, but come, come, come!" she exclaimed. "We are not talking about going on; we are considering what a fine parting I have made down the middle, like two wings of a spread bird--" she looked down, smiling playfully on him, just closing her eyes slightly in petition.
He rose and took a deep breath, and set his shoulders.
"No," he said, and at the sound of his voice, Lettie went pale and also stiffened herself.
"No!" he repeated. "It is impossible. I felt as soon as Fred came into the room--it must be one way or another."
"Very well then," said Lettie, coldly. Her voice was "muted" like a violin.
"Yes," he replied, submissive. "The children." He looked at her, contracting his lips in a smile of misery.
"Are you sure it must be so final?" she asked, rebellious, even resentful. She was twisting the azurite jewels on her bosom, and pressing the blunt points into her flesh. He looked up from the fascination of her action when he heard the tone of her last question. He was angry.
"Quite sure!" he said at last, simply, ironically.
She bowed her head in assent. His face twitched sharply as he restrained himself from speaking again. Then he turned and quietly left the room. She did not watch him go, but stood as he had left her. When, after some time, she heard the grating of his dog-cart on the gravel, and then the sharp trot of hoofs down the frozen road, she dropped herself on the settee, and lay with her bosom against the cushions, looking fixedly at the wall.
CHAPTER VII - THE SCARP SLOPE
Leslie won the conservative victory in the general election which took place a year or so after my last visit to Highclose.
In the interim the Tempests had entertained a continuous stream of people. I heard occasionally from Lettie how she was busy, amused, or bored. She told me that George had thrown himself into the struggle on behalf of the candidate of the Labour Party; that she had not seen him, except in the streets, for a very long time.
When I went down to Eberwich in the March succeeding the election, I found several people staying with my sister. She had under her wing a young literary fellow who affected the "Doady" style--Dora Copperfield's "Doady". He had bunches of half-curly hair, and a romantic black cravat; he played the impulsive part, but was really as calculating as any man on the stock-exchange. It delighted Lettie to "mother" him. He was so shrewd as to be less than harmless. His fellow guests, a woman much experienced in music and an elderly man who was in the artistic world without being of it, were interesting for a time. Bubble after bubble of floating fancy and wit we blew with our breath in the evenings. I rose in the morning loathing the idea of more bubble-blowing.
I wandered around Nethermere, which had now forgotten me. The daffodils under the boat-house continued their golden laughter, and nodded to one another in gossip, as I watched them, never for a moment pausing to notice me. The yellow reflection of daffodils among the shadows of grey willow in the water trembled faintly as they told haunted tales in the gloom. I felt like a child left out of the group of my playmates. There was a wind running across Nethermere, and on the eager water blue and glistening grey shadows changed places swiftly. Along the shore the wild birds rose, flapping in expostulation as I passed, peewits mewing fiercely round my head, while two white swans lifted their glistening feathers till they looked like grand double water-lilies, laying back their orange beaks among the petals, and fronting me with haughty resentment, charging towards me insolently.
I wanted to be recognised by something. I said to myself that the dryads were looking out for me from the wood's edge. But as I advanced they shrank, and glancing wistfully, turned back like pale flowers falling in the shadow of the forest. I was a stranger, an intruder. Among the bushes a twitter of lively birds exclaimed upon me. Finches went leaping past in bright flashes, and a robin sat and asked rudely, "Hello! Who are you?"
The bracken lay sere under the trees, broken and chavelled by the restless wild winds of the long winter.
The trees caught the wind in their tall netted twigs, and the young morning wind moaned at its captivity. As I trod the discarded oak-leaves and the bracken they uttered their last sharp gasps, pressed into oblivion. The wood was roofed with a wide young sobbing sound, and floored with a faint hiss like the intaking of the last breath. Between, was all the glad out-peeping of buds and anemone flowers and the rush of birds. I, wandering alone, felt them all, the anguish of the bracken fallen face down in defeat, the careless dash of the birds, the sobbing of the young wind arrested in its haste, the trembling, expanding delight of the buds. I alone among them could hear the whole succession of chords.
The brooks talked on just the same, just as gladly, just as boisterously as they had done when I had netted small, glittering fish in the rest-pools. At Strelley Mill a servant girl in a white cap, and white apron-bands, came running out of the house with purple prayer-books, which she gave to the elder of two finicking girls who sat disconsolately with their blacksilked mother in the governess cart at the gate, ready to go to church. Near Woodside there was barbed-wire along the path, and at the end of every riding it was tarred on the tree-trunks, "Private".
I had done with the valley of Nethermere. The valley of Nethermere had cast me out many years before, while I had fondly believed it cherished me in memory.
I went along the road to Eberwich. The church bells were ringing boisterously, with the careless boisterousness of the brooks and the birds and the rollicking coltsfoots and celandines.
A few people were hastening blithely to service. Miners and other labouring men were passing in aimless gangs, walking nowhere in particular, so long as they reached a sufficiently distant public-house.
I reached the Hollies. It was much more spruce than it had been. The yard, however, and the stables had again a somewhat abandoned air. I asked the maid for George.
"Oh, master's not up yet," she said, giving a little significant toss of her head, and smiling. I waited a moment.
"But he rung for a bottle of beer about ten minutes since, so I should think--" she emphasised the word with some ironical contempt, "--he won't be very long," she added, in tones which conveyed that she was not by any means sure. I asked for Meg.
"Oh, Missis is gone to church--and the children--but Miss Saxton is in, she might--"
"Emily!" I exclaimed.
The maid smiled.
"She's in the drawing-room. She's engaged, but perhaps if I tell her--"
"Yes, do," said I, sure that Emily would receive me.
I found my old sweetheart sitting in a low chair by the fire, a man standing on the hearth-rug pulling his moustache. Emily and I both felt a thrill of old delight at meeting.
"I can hardly believe it is really you," she said, laughing me one of the old intimate looks. She had changed a great deal. She was very handsome, but she had now a new self-confidence, a fine, free indifference.
"Let me introduce you. Mr Renshaw, Cyril. Tom, you know who it is; you have heard me speak often enough of Cyril. I am going to marry Tom in three weeks' time," she said, laughing.
"The devil you are!" I exclaimed involuntarily.
"If he will have me," she added, quite as a playful afterthought.
Tom was a well-built fair man, smoothly, almost delicately tanned. There was something soldierly in his bearing, something self-conscious in the way he bent his head and pulled his moustache, something charming and fresh in the way he laughed at Emily's last preposterous speech.
"Why didn't you tell me?" I asked.
"Why didn't you ask me?" she retorted, arching her brows. "Mr Renshaw," I said. "You have out-manoeuvred me all unawares, quite indecently."
"I am very sorry," he said, giving one more twist to his moustache, then breaking into a loud, short laugh at his joke.
"Do you really feel cross?" said Emily to me, knitting her brows and smiling quaintly.
"I do!" I replied, with truthful emphasis.