Part 10

When the musical flow of his voice had ended, they had advanced many paces further on the path they were treading together, but its end was not yet known to either of them. Viola's cheeks were rose-flushed and her eyes were shining. There was silence for a time as they looked at one another, and love flew to and fro between them unhampered in his flight but hidden from them.

Viola breathed a deep sigh, as she drew her eyes away from his, half unwillingly. "It's lovely," she said. "I didn't know how lovely it was till you said it. I'm glad I've got the most beautiful name in the world."

"And the most beautiful eyes in the world," he said. "I never knew that there was anything half so beautiful as you, though I have always loved the beautiful things in the world. I used to wonder what they meant, and a year ago I thought I had found out. But now I know that I only knew half of it."

"Tell me," she said. "What did you find out a year ago?"

He told her of his moonlight vigil, which he had never thought to tell any one, and the vision that had come to him at the end of it.

Again she listened to him, fascinated, with her eyes on his and her lips apart. But as he drew to the end of his story her face grew a little troubled.

"I should never have seen that," she said when he had finished.

"We might have seen it together if you had been there," he said. "There is no secret I could see that you couldn't see."

"No," she said, rather sadly. "You have always lived in this beautiful place, and you have seen nothing that isn't beautiful--all your life. Of course you could see that, because there was nothing to get in the way. But it isn't at all beautiful where I live. I have seen so many ugly things all round me."

"It must always be beautiful where you live--Viola."

He spoke her name caressingly. It was the first time he had uttered it, except impersonally, and it made a new sweet contact between them.

She smiled at him. "Perhaps if you love beautiful things, and think about them," she said, "it doesn't so much matter if you can't always have them about you. Do you think I could really see the fairies, if I were with you?"

He thought for a moment, with a slight frown on his face, which made the words that should come out of his thought of great importance to her. It was not in him to say something just to please her. The lightest thing that he might say to her would come from the depths of the unspoilt spirit that was in him.

His face cleared, and he looked up at her again. "I think that when you are very young you may see something like that," he said, "--or, by chance, when you are older. It means something very important, or else it doesn't mean much. It meant something very important to me to see them, but now it's not so important. If I had never seen it I should have seen you, and it would have been just the same."

"Why would it have been just the same?"

She was fascinated anew. Did ever a girl have such incense as this burned before her? And it was incense lit from a flame in the heart, not from a spark on the tongue. Her nostrils were eager for the fume of it.

Again the little considering frown. "It would," he said, "I know it would. It all meant you, somehow, though I have never seen you until now. There was something wanting in it all the time; and it was you. I should never look at anything now, and think how beautiful it was, without thinking of you."

Lover's words, spoken by an unconscious lover. They pleased and pained her at the same time.

"I'm afraid you make too much of me," she said, with a sigh. "If I had lived here always, as I am living now----!"

She did not complete her sentence. The memory of things she had seen and known and of which he had known nothing, rose up between them. But she put them aside, and smiled at him again. "After all," she said, "I am here now, and I have never been so happy anywhere else. Perhaps I have been keeping myself for it, without knowing that it was this I was meant for. I think I was meant for it, because all the rest seems like nothing at all. When I go back, it will be less than ever to me."

Her talk of going back stabbed him. Life would be an incredible thing when they were parted. They stirred each the other's fears and shrinkings as they talked of it, but behind all the pain was the thought that they would be with one another for a long time yet. They were so young that time in front of them was not measured by the same rule as time that had passed. More than two whole weeks and most of a third Viola had still to spend in Paradise. They would meet every day. Surely, nothing could prevent their meeting every day! Twice a day they would meet, in this secret place, and be undisturbed for long summer hours in their happiness. No need to spoil it by thinking of the end.

They parted for a time. The last Harry saw of her was the white figure framed in its arch of green. Before she passed out of it she turned and stood there for a moment, motionless. She was too far for him to see her face clearly, but the message passed to and fro between them again. It was all there, though they had not yet spoken it in words, and eyes were too far off to be read.

*CHAPTER XII*

*AT THE THRESHOLD*

Harry went home to luncheon and hurried to the wood again immediately afterwards. He had much farther to go to the trysting-place than she. She might even be waiting for him when he got there.

She was not there, and after half an hour she had not come.

Oh cruel! And yet he knew, as his longing grew and his hopes fell, that she would have come if she could. Her father had claimed her; something out of her power to prevent or foresee had kept her away. She would not stay away from him for ever.

Yet he was increasingly unhappy as the time passed and the green frame remained empty of its sweet picture. The heat of a summer afternoon lay brooding on the silent wood, and was like lead upon his heart. He paced up and down the path, to the corner from which the garden of the cottage could be seen. He thought of going to it, and talking to Mrs. Ivimey, who would know what had become of Viola, and would certainly talk to him about her. But no, he could not do that. It would be sweet to hear her name on other lips, but he would have to pretend that he was hearing of her for the first time, and he shrank from that, and from all that it would imply. He never went farther than the corner, and by and by his hope of seeing her that afternoon died away completely.

He had come out prepared to stay away until dinnertime, but now he thought he would go home to tea, and come back immediately afterwards. His absence would not then be questioned until he came back at night. They did not like him to stay away from dinner too often, but he had not done so for some time, and if he said that he was going out into the woods they would not seek to prevent him.

He was all at sea with himself as at last he dragged himself away from the empty place, which might still be brightened by her coming, with many backward looks and much lingering. He knew that something that could easily be explained had kept her, and yet he was desperately unhappy because she had failed him. Did she want him as much as he wanted her? Would anything in the world have kept him away if he had promised to come to her? Supposing she should not come at all that day! He shrank from the thought of the long night that would divide him from her, if he had not seen her before it fell. But his spirit was tired with suspense. The world seemed full of trouble and disappointment as he made his way homewards.

The one thing he never thought of was that, somehow, their meeting of the morning might have been discovered, and she had been forbidden to meet him again. They had met, and promised to meet again, in all the innocence of their youth. If their elders had known of it, it would have spoilt their happy secret, but that was all. It had not occurred to Harry that it would spoil anything else.

They had tea on the terrace outside the drawing-room. It was always the same at home. Day after day, all the year round, it was always the same. In winter the tea tables were placed near one of the two fires that warmed the long room, at other times near one of the windows, or in the summer on the terrace outside. The four of them would sit round and talk, Lady Brent dispensing the tea, over which she was very particular. Occasionally some one from the Vicarage would be there, but scarcely ever anybody else. The friendships that had formerly been between the Castle and other big houses within reach had fallen off, and it was the rarest thing for visitors to appear there.

It might have been expected that, meeting like that, day after day, at formal meals as well as at this informal one, and with no intrusion from the outer world to break the monotony of their lives, they would have had nothing to say to one another. But there was always a great deal to say. Wilbraham read voluminously, Lady Brent read, and even Mrs. Brent read. They talked of what they had read in the papers and what they had read in books; but Mrs. Brent did not take part in the conversation over what they had read in books.

And there was the life immediately around them to talk about. If Royd Castle was cut off from the ordinary social intercourse that gathers about a large country house, it was by no means divided from the interests that depend upon ownership. There were a few hundred people living around it in direct relationship, and the personal contact with them was the closer because it represented nearly all the human interest there was in the life that was led there. It supplied the gossip which in some form or other is congenial to the most exalted minds, and without which little Mrs. Brent at least would have found the conversation unbearably arid.

Lady Brent visited among the tenantry assiduously. She was inclined to exercise authority, but could not fairly be said to be dictatorial. They were on their best behaviour before her, but there were few among them who had not some kindness to remember from her. Mrs. Brent also visited them and avoided doing so in the company of her mother-in-law if she possibly could. Her intercourse with them was on a more intimate plane. Her position as a great lady had to be implicitly accepted, but if this was done she would sit and talk with more than mere affability. Harry was her chief subject of conversation, and all the people of Royd loved Harry and expected great things of him. It might have surprised Lady Brent if she had known how clearly it was in the minds of those whom she treated as her dependents that she was only exercising temporary authority, and how much they looked forward to the time when her rule would be over. This was not because they found it irksome, for she ruled justly and considerately. But she had ruled for a long time and change is pleasant to most of us. Besides, the Castle provided very little variety of interest to those who lived within its shadow. It had not always been so, and it was expected that it would not be so when Harry came into his own.

Mrs. Brent could sometimes be induced to talk about the time that was coming, if she was flattered into a state of intimacy and skilfully drawn out. She was always careful not to create an impression that she and Lady Brent were at all antagonistic, but it was understood by everybody that this was so, the extent of the antagonism was gauged to a nicety, and the causes for it were frequently discussed and generally agreed upon.

The fact that Mrs. Brent derived from the stage was not actually known, but it would have surprised nobody to hear it; nor did her claims to belonging of right to the class into which she had married carry the smallest weight, however much they might be indulged. It was generally agreed that Lady Brent had done the right thing in absorbing her into the atmosphere of the Castle, and in keeping her closely under its influence. Poor little lady! She'd have liked to get away from it sometimes, and small blame to her! But 'twouldn't ha' done. She was all right where she was, and a nice little thing too, if you took her the right way; but there! she wasn't what you'd expect for Sir Harry's mother, and her ladyship's was the only way to keep him from knowing it.

So these remote but clear-sighted and kindly people judged of the situation at the Castle, and on the whole approved of it. As for Harry himself they one and all adored him. They were the only friends he had had outside his home from his childhood, and they were real friends. There was not one of them, man, woman or child, who had not some special feeling for him different from that of the rest. He knew them all, and was interested in them all, with a purely human sympathy. When the time came for him to take the reins, he would be dealing not with an impersonal aggregate, but with those whose interests were also his; and he would be regarded with a loyalty and affection which is enjoyed by few landowners.

Wilbraham kept himself more to himself, as was said of him, but had his friends too at Royd. It was he who brought Harry's heart to his mouth this afternoon by the announcement, made in a casual voice: "There is an artist come to stay at Mrs. Ivimey's. He rejoices in the name of Michael Angelo Bastian, which ought to mean that he is a very fine artist; but I've never heard of him. Have you?"

"No," said Lady Brent, who had been addressed. "But I did not know that Mrs. Ivimey let rooms. I think she should have asked me first. Nobody at Royd has done it hitherto."

"I wonder how she could get any one to take rooms in such an out-of-the-way place as hers," said Mrs. Brent.

"I can tell you that," said Wilbraham. "I had it all from Prout." Prout combined the occupations of shoemaker and postman at Royd. "Mrs. Ivimey has a sister who lives in London and lets lodgings. Michael Angelo Bastian lodges with her. The rest is plain to the meanest intelligence."

Harry was faced with the immediate alternative of acknowledging that he was aware of the fact stated or of affecting ignorance of it. If he kept silence now it would be deliberate and purposeful silence, and he might later on be called upon to explain it. He had not faced this; he had not faced anything in connection with Viola that had to do with the future.

Perhaps he would have spoken, if his mind had not been so full of his late disappointment, and of his reviving hopes of still meeting Viola that evening. He could not bring himself immediately to the point of making a decision, and when Lady Brent had next spoken, and Wilbraham had answered her, the time had gone by for him to speak. His not having done so directly Bastian's name had been mentioned would need explanation now. With a mental shrug of the shoulders he kept silence, and felt a warm delicious glow as he took the further step towards a fenced and guarded intimacy with Viola which no one outside must penetrate. The pleasure of hugging his secret afresh swamped the half-guilty feeling which had preceded it in his mind. He did not even ask himself why it should have come to him, but his attitude towards his elders underwent a slight change from that moment. His youth was to be defended from them; it had its rights, which could brook no interference.

As he hurried off again to the trysting-place, he was glad once more that he had refrained from betraying his secret, as he had been glad that he had resisted the impulse to confide in his mother the night before. He knew now that they would have disapproved. Some breath from the outside world, which divides people up into categories in a way he had never had to take into account, had come to him from the discussion he had just listened to. His grandmother had shown persistent concern at Mrs. Ivimey's having let her rooms without consultation with her. Such a thing had never happened before in Royd. You didn't know what sort of people you might get, if it became a practice. An artist--there was no great harm perhaps in an artist; but-- The postman had evidently not known, or if he had he had not told Wilbraham, that this particular artist had invaded the sanctities of Royd accompanied by a daughter, but Harry had felt instinctively that her presence would have increased the objections expressed by Lady Brent to Mrs. Ivimey's taking in anybody at all. It had come to him somehow that Viola's delicious charm would have done nothing to recommend her, had she been known, and that his mother would by no means have taken the confidence that it had been in his mind to make to her the night before in the spirit in which it would have been offered.

The reasons for all this were not clear to him. He had of course no idea that he was to be preserved at all costs from falling into unauthorized love; he had no more than a purely academic knowledge of what falling in love meant, and no idea as yet that he was already very deep in it himself. There were many things in which his inclinations had clashed with the rules formulated by his elders--as, for instance, in the matter of visits to the stables, during his early childhood. This was one of them, but he was not to be bound now by the views of his elders, and it was not necessary to examine their origin. There was a vague discomfort in the idea that he was setting himself against them, but no admission in his mind that he was in any way wrong in doing so. And even the slight discomfort was more than balanced by the feeling that his secret must certainly now be guarded, which had the effect of somehow bringing him and Viola more closely together.

It had been decided chat Wilbraham was to seek out the artist, and if he found him to be the sort of person who could be asked to Royd, he was to ask him there. Harry smiled to himself, as he thought of the possibilities ahead. He must tell Viola, and he and she must decide what was to be done about it. It gave him a thrill to think of their deciding anything together. He quickened his steps. There were such oceans to talk to her about. He had no doubts now about her coming to meet him; he had almost persuaded himself that she would be there waiting for him.

But the green frame was still empty of its picture, as he had left it an hour before. The evening light was slanting on it now, giving warning that the time they would have to spend together was diminishing. But there were nearly two hours of daylight still. Surely she would come before the dusk fell!

He stretched himself under a tree, from where he could watch the place where she would appear. His mood was not yet impatient. She would surely come, and in the meantime he could think about her.

He did not think of her as a lover thinks of the mistress enthroned in his heart, to worship her there. He had not consciously enthroned her as yet. He thought of her as a wonderful revelation of something he must surely have been looking for all his life, since it was impossible now to think of life without her. She had come into his life, in some way to translate its meaning for him--for both of them. She was a revelation from the good influences all around him, as the vision of the fairies had been. He had got as far as that, and had told her so. It had been very sweet to tell her that; it would be sweet to tell her everything that came into his head. There was nothing that he would not want to tell her, at once and first of all. In his innocence of the world and the way of the world, he had reached that point in love's pilgrimage where the loved one shines out as the sweet vessel into which all confidences may be poured, and the desire is strong for a common aim and a common vision. But he had not reached the point, which usually precedes it, of an ardent desire for some sort of surrender. Perhaps it is not true to say that he had not yet enthroned Viola in his heart, for she sat there the centre of everything. But she sat there apart, as if she had mounted the steps of the throne without his hand to raise her. She must descend again and stand with him on the level ground of mutual desire before her seat should be secure and acknowledged.

But as he waited for her, and the desire for her sheer presence became stronger and stronger, he was being led towards that desire for surrender. The sweetest thing now would be, not to pour himself out in confidences to her, which would still be very sweet, but to obtain from her that look or that word which would move him to the depths.

He went over in his mind the looks and words he had received from her, and thirsted for more. The very first time their eyes had met, before a word had been spoken between them, she had looked at him, with something behind the look with which his memory blissfully played. Once or twice that morning, by the pool, and again when she had turned towards him and stood gazing, far off, there had been something that thrilled him with happiness to remember. And there had been tones in her voice, little things she had said--he dwelt upon them all, and longed to draw more of them from her. He would say this to her; greatly daring, he would say that. And she would reply; or if she spoke no answer he would watch her face, and gain courage from it for speeches still more daring.

But an hour passed, and she had not come to him.

The sun was sinking now. Outside the wood, under the open sky, its rays would be drawing the shadow of the rocks and the gorse across the close turf; there would be a soft golden radiance in all the air, and on the bright distant pavement of the sea. But here under the trees it was already dusk, and a gloom descended on his heart, as he thought of the sunset, from the sight of which he was shut off.

It was like a parable to him. He had never before missed the glory of a sunset, if he was out of doors. The woods had never kept him from that enlarging sight. They were for other times; not less loved then, but now seeming to hold him enchained in a menacing gloom. And so, just out of his reach was the solace for which he craved, but in place of it darkness was settling down over his heart, and trouble clutching at it.

But he would not go out of the wood. She might come still. The thought brought him no relief; his long watch had emptied his mind of the springs of hope. But still he waited for her. If she did come, she must find him there.

The darkness had settled down now. There was a fading light in the sky that could be seen here and there through the thick canopy of leaves, but beneath them only eyes that had grown used to the darkness could have descried anything.

The boy lay stretched at length on the grass, his face to the ground, utterly weary and utterly miserable. He had no strength to tear himself from this unhappy spot and go home; he only wanted to lie there in his pain, which still had a little of sweetness in it as long as he lingered in the place where he had last seen her.

He never moved. His body was as still as on that night in which he had kept his eager vigil, and at last been rewarded. But it was the stillness of exhaustion. No hope was left to him now.

But his ears, trained since his childhood to catch the lightest whispers of nature, and to interpret them, alert in spite of himself, heard something that was not of the life sinking to rest around him. He raised himself suddenly, almost violently, and peered into the darkness, all his senses once more on edge.

And out of the darkness she came, no more than a moth-glimmer flitting towards him. A wild joy filled him, down to the very depths of his being. He sprang up and ran towards her.