Part 12

"I was the son of a poor parson," he said. "I got my scholarship, and if I had worked I should probably have got my fellowship too. I did work at what interested me, but the devil of it was that it didn't interest the dons. Those prizes are reserved for the people who have the sense to stick at one thing till they've got them. Then they can do what they like. They're not necessarily the people who are best at their subjects. I've got a real love for the classics, and I probably know a good deal more about them than a lot of the people who got Firsts when I only got a Second. It's the concentration of those few years that counts."

Bastian laughed again. "Firsts and Seconds!" he said. "I didn't take a degree at all. The smash had come before then, and I was tied up for life."

Wilbraham was rather taken aback. It looked as if confidences were coming, and he had the gentleman's dislike to receiving them unless they are given with full intention. "Don't tell me anything you'll be sorry for afterwards," he said, with another look at Bastian's glass.

"Oh, my dear fellow, I'm not drunk," said Bastian. "I drink a lot, and no doubt it has had a good deal to do with keeping me where I am; but I don't get drunk. I don't often meet anybody like you, who belongs to the world I used to inhabit. It's a relief sometimes to unburden oneself. Besides, there's Viola. Viola doesn't often get the chance of talking to a gentleman. I think you'll open your eyes when you see Viola. I haven't been able to raise myself out of the muck, but it hasn't touched her. She's the flower that has grown out of it."

Wilbraham still felt some discomfort. If it were true that Bastian never got drunk, he was none the less under the influence of drink now, or he wouldn't have talked about himself with quite that absence of control. He must have been referring to his wife when he had said that he had been tied up for life, and men don't talk to one another in that way about their wives on a first acquaintance when they are in full possession of themselves.

"I shouldn't let anything you told me go any further," Wilbraham said.

Bastian did not seem to have heard this. He was looking down with a frown of concentrated purpose. To unburden himself was evidently imperative on him for the moment, and he was collecting his faculties to that end.

"I don't want to give you a false impression," he said. "My wife was a woman in a thousand. Never did I have one moment's regret that I had married her. I think, if she'd lived, she might have made a man of me still. Perhaps it was a fluke--I don't want to make myself out better than I was, and I was a rotten young fool in those days--perhaps it was a fluke that she was what she was, because it was only her beauty that I fell in love with, and I hadn't the sense then to see what there was behind it. But what I do say is that my people ought to have seen. I'll never forgive them for that, and I'll never let Viola have anything to do with them. She doesn't even know their name, and----"

"I don't quite understand," said Wilbraham, as he seemed to be off on another gallop. "Why did your people object to your marrying?"

"Oh, well of course it was a fool's trick. I wasn't even of age, and she was a girl off the stage, but one of the sweetest, kindest girls that ever stepped. I only had her for a few years, but I tell you I'm in love with her memory still. She's been dead seventeen years and I miss her as much as ever. Life's nothing to me, though I'm not old yet; I buried it all in her grave."

It was curious, thought Wilbraham, that there should be a story here not dissimilar from the one that he had lived with for about the same length of time. But the girl whose father had made the same mistake as Harry's had not been shielded from its consequences as he had. She was hardly likely to have escaped the contamination of the rougher, harder world to which her father had descended. Wilbraham attributed Bastian's praise of his wife largely to the diffuse sentiment of the moment. He had not otherwise created the impression of a man living upon a life-long regret. His daughter, if she was the close companion of his poverty and the witness of his habits, could hardly be the rare and delicate flower that he painted her, though she was probably beautiful. At any rate it would be just as well to preserve Harry from contact with her. It would be an ironic stroke of fate if in this remote corner in which he had been brought up the glamour of the stage should obtrude itself once more.

"Is your daughter on the stage?" he asked outright, at this point in his reflections.

Bastian roused himself, and seemed to shake off completely his mood of hopeless regret. "God forbid!" he said. "I wouldn't have risked that, though if I had I believe she'd have come through it. You must see Viola. I don't know where she is now. She's like a sweet young creature of the woods--roams about in them all day. That'll tell you what she is--a London girl, who can throw London off her altogether when she gets away from it. She's less bound to it even than I am. Come up to-morrow, will you? I'll tell her to be in to tea. She sometimes takes it out with her. Can you come about half-past four?"

Wilbraham had been thinking rapidly. If this girl was in the habit of roaming the woods all day she might come across Harry, who was also in the habit of roaming the woods. All the ideas with which Wilbraham had lived for years past gathered themselves into the instinct to watch and guard. He must see this girl of Bastian's, and he must be prepared for what should come, so that he could deal with it without surprise and without hurry. Fortunately, he had not announced his intention of calling upon the artist that afternoon. He would say nothing about his visit at the Castle, but would announce one for the next day.

"Yes, I should like to come," he said, as he rose from his seat. "I must be getting back now."

About a third of the whisky remained in his glass. He stood looking at it, as Bastian expressed his pleasure in having seen him, and then drained it off before he left the room.

*CHAPTER XV*

*WILBRAHAM*

Harry and Viola were in the log cabin. They had varied their meeting-places. Best of them all they loved the secret pool, but that was only for very hot still weather. Rain was falling intermittently this afternoon, but every now and then the sun shone. The weather made little difference to their happiness, and the cabin, Harry's handiwork, provided them with a shelter when they needed it, which brought them also a grateful sense of seclusion and joint possession. The Rectory was empty; Sunday duty was performed by a visiting clergyman; nobody was in the least likely to disturb them in their retreat. Viola had got rid of her slight suspicion of Jane, which she had already confessed to Harry, with happy laughter. "She may not know it," she had said, "but of course she's in love with you, poor child! She couldn't help being, if she was only nine instead of thirteen. I was a little jealous of her being so much with you. But I love her for loving you, and of course I'm not jealous of anybody now."

The log cabin was roughly furnished. Not much more would have been required if it had really been the home of a pioneer. Harry and Viola had played with the idea of living together in such a cabin, with a new beautiful world to be tamed all around them, and this as the nest of their love and companionship. So he had played with the children, but Viola's presence had given their cabin a wonderful romantic charm which it had never had and which it would never lose. Her presence would illumine every place in which she might rest. Harry's old castle was still in shadow because she had not yet visited it.

It was the morning of the day upon which Wilbraham was to take tea with Bastian, and Viola was to be there to be exhibited to him. Harry had been concerned at hearing that he had already been to the cottage.

"He has said nothing about it at home," he said. "This morning at breakfast he did say that he had thought of going to see your father this afternoon, but that it looked like raining all day. What does it mean?"

"Nothing very dreadful," said Viola. "He and father seem to have got on very well together yesterday, but perhaps he wasn't quite sure enough of him to ask him to the Castle. Perhaps he wants to see what I'm like first."

Harry threw her a quick loving look. They were sitting together on a bench underneath the eaves of the hut. They might not have been taken for lovers by anyone who had seen them; their caresses were rarer than might have been expected, fathoms deep in love with one another as they were; but looks and smiles flashed between them like summer lightning, and scarcely the lightest word was spoken without emotion.

"When he sees you," Harry began; but she interrupted him. "Father doesn't want to go if he does ask us," she said. "And I couldn't go, Harry dear. I love you so much that I couldn't keep it back. I'm afraid I shan't be able to keep it back this afternoon from Mr. Wilbraham, if he says anything about you."

"I've asked myself sometimes," Harry said, thoughtfully, "whether it's right to keep it back. You're so much above everybody else in the world, Viola, that----"

Again she interrupted him. "Harry darling," she said, "I've thought about it too. There are lots of things that I know about in the world that you don't. I only want to forget them while I'm here with you; and I can't if other people know how much I love you, and that you love me. They wouldn't let us forget them."

"What sort of things, Viola dear? I'm not a child, though perhaps they have tried to keep me one for too long, at home. I'm going to take care of you, for all our lives. I ought to know as much as you do."

"I hope you never will, darling," she said, a little sadly. "I know that the things I have learnt haven't spoilt me, or else I shouldn't feel so happy as I do in your loving me. But other people might not believe that. We're very young, both of us. We love as deeply as people who are older love, and we know we shall go on loving each other all our lives. But others wouldn't believe that. They would try to part us. They would part us, as long as I stayed here; and there's such a little time left. Oh, let us be happy together while it lasts, and keep our lovely secret."

"Why should they try to part us, Viola? Who is there? My grandmother and my mother. If they only saw you!"

She smiled at him. "It wouldn't be enough," she said, "whatever I was. And they wouldn't look at me with your eyes. Perhaps nobody else would. What was it made you love me so much, Harry?"

He had told her a hundred times, and now told her again; and she told him that she had loved him the very first moment she had set eyes on him, riding up on his gallant horse with his dogs around him. "You were like a splendid young knight," she said. "No girl could have helped loving you. But I love you a thousand times more now than I did then, and I suppose I shall go on loving you more and more all my life."

It was like the old stories of his childhood, which had to be told over and over again, and were better every time they were told. But now it was not as it had been then, when no variation must be admitted in the telling. There was always something new--some little discovery that deepened the sense of perfection and wonderment, some answering thought that showed them to have been close to one another, even in the hours in which they were parted and were pasturing on their sweet memories of one another.

It was with a kind of solemnity of sweetness that Harry dwelt upon Viola's trust in him and his manhood. By a thousand little signs it had been made plain that she knew more of the world than he, but she put all that knowledge aside and looked up to him and submitted to him as if infinite wisdom and experience were his. And in truth he had grown greatly in mental stature since her love had come into his life to change it so completely. They must have remarked upon it at home if he had not taken such advantage of the freedom that was granted him and been so little at home at this time. His mother actually had told him that he was altered, after he had expressed himself with more than usual self-confidence when they had talked about the war over the dinner-table. She was always on the look-out for signs of something that might take him from her, and she feared the war and what might come of it with an unreasoning fear, considering the information at her command. Harry was thinking a great deal about the war now, which does not mean that there were any times at which he was not thinking about Viola. With the coming of love his sense of the deeper values of life had become strengthened. If he had felt himself borne along on a strong current that would carry him to whatever of action or duty or mere state of being that was laid down for him, then whatever happened to him was part of the whole, and nothing in his life would be dissociated from anything else. It was this sense of unity that lifted his fresh boy's adoration of a girl as young and as pure as himself into something bigger and more rooted than that, beautiful as it is. His love gave the divine note of joy to all his purpose, sweetened and solemnized it at the same time. It was not like a great happiness in which he could forget himself, and which he must also forget for a time if something more serious had to be faced.

This morning, for the first time, influenced perhaps by the breath from outside which had come through Wilbraham's advent upon the scene, which, however, they put aside from them, they talked about the time when Viola should have gone away.

Their extreme youth moved them to sadness, which was not wholly painful because the time was not near yet, and present bliss was only heightened by the thought of parting. They were so far unlike most young lovers that no mention was made of writing, or even of meeting again. It was as if the contact between them was so close and so sure that however far apart they might be in space, and for whatever time, they would still be together.

Harry was serious about the future. "I don't know exactly what is going to happen," he said. "I'm supposed to be going to Sandhurst in January, but that's a long time ahead. I seem to see the war swallowing up everything. There's something to be done here about it, and perhaps it will be for me to do it. But there's nothing to show yet. I think there won't be till you go away, my darling. I think there's nothing that will come in the way of my being with you, and thinking about nothing but you."

"Do you think you will have to go and fight, Harry? Oh, surely you're too young for that, darling!"

"I'm not too young to love you."

She thought over this. It was one of the things he sometimes said that meant more than it seemed to. She loved those speeches of his, springing from something in him to which she could give all her faith and all her devotion. They helped her to plumb the depths in him, and she had never found anything there that did not make her glad and proud of loving him.

This time her pride brought the tears close to her eyes. There was more than the sweetness of young love in this--to be loved as something in full alliance with all the biggest things that a man might be called upon to do in the world, and to which he must bring all that he was and all that he had, even his life itself if it should be required of him.

"I shouldn't want you not to, Harry," she said.

He did not tell her of his conviction that the war would claim him. She was his to be protected, and some things she must be spared. When the time came, she would somehow be concerned in it, because she would be concerned in everything that he did, and whatever he should want of her then she would give him. He had as much confidence in her as she in him.

"The war is like a great shadow over everything," he said. "We're in the sunshine just now, you and I--the most glorious sunshine. I don't think that we need fear the shadow for ourselves. But for others--for some it's very deep."

The shadow seemed to creep closer and touch her heart as he spoke. They were silent for a time, her hand resting in his. The contact strengthened them both, and the shadow passed away from her. For the rest of their time together that morning they made love and built their airy rainbow castles, almost as unsubstantial as those of children. In fact they played with the idea of having Jane and Pobbles to live with them. It hardly seemed fair to be using the cabin in which they had a proprietary share and leave them out of it. They would pass suddenly from grave to gay in this way, and there were many times when the children could have taken a full part in their conversation without being at all in the way.

At about six o'clock that evening Wilbraham was walking along the woodland path that led from the cottage to the Castle. He walked slowly with his eyes on the ground all the time, and his face was very thoughtful. He started violently as he looked up to see Harry standing in the path in front of him.

For a moment they stood there looking at one another.

"Well?" said Harry.

Wilbraham's eyes dropped, and he walked on, Harry with him. "You've been meeting here," he said.

"Yes."

Another pause. Then from Wilbraham: "You've been making love."

"Making love? I don't like the expression. We love each other--yes."

Wilbraham said nothing, and they walked on together. Presently they came to a fallen tree by the side of the path. "Let's sit down here and have it out," said Wilbraham.

Harry spoke first. "I'm glad you know," he said. "I'd like all the world to know; you can tell why, now you've seen her. But I suppose it wouldn't do for mother and Granny to know--not just yet."

Wilbraham seemed to pull his determination together. "My dear boy," he said, "you mustn't take it for granted that they're not to know. It has come as a complete surprise to me; I don't know what to do about it yet."

Harry laughed. The situation seemed to contain no awkwardness for him, whatever doubts it might have brought to Wilbraham. "Before you settle that," he said, "tell me what you think of her."

"She's a very beautiful child," said Wilbraham, thoughtfully. He laid no stress on the word "child," to belittle Harry's confession of love. It was as she had struck him.

He had gone into the little parlour to find Bastian there, dressed more in accordance with what he had seemed to be than on the day before. A faint smell of his strong tobacco hung about the room, but it had been tidied, and freshened up with flowers, and tea was laid on the table, with signs of ceremony and care. Then Viola came in, and he had the impression of Bastian triumphantly watching him as he introduced her.

He did indeed open his eyes at first sight of her, as her father had foretold. He would not have been so surprised at the vision of her, fresh and delicate, very simply dressed in her white frock, with all the air about her of breeding and refinement, if it had not been for the memory of Bastian the day before, with his deteriorated tastes, and his talk of downfall. A flower, he had said of her, growing out of the mire; but who had tended her growing?

Mrs. Ivimey came in with the tea, and was voluble with Wilbraham about her ladyship and Sir Harry. Wilbraham's eyes were on Viola the whole time, and he saw the colour rise on her soft cheeks as Harry's name was mentioned, but made nothing of it at the time.

Nothing more was said about the Castle when Mrs. Ivimey had left the room. Wilbraham had not given the invitation that might have been expected of him. He recognized with a sense of gratitude that no hints towards it need be feared. Bastian showed up much more as a gentleman than on the afternoon before; his clothes were old enough but no longer disreputable, and he was obviously entirely free from the influence of drink. The difference in his speech and bearing seemed to exaggerate his state of the afternoon before into one of actual drunkenness.

They talked chiefly about books, and more particularly about poetry. Viola talked very little, but her father sometimes referred to her, as if to show with pride what she was. Her enthusiasms showed here and there. Wilbraham's wonder grew at her.

Harry came to his mind again. He brought his name in deliberately. "Harry, my pupil, used to shout that out when he first read it. He loves poetry, and it takes him like that."

Viola made no reply, but the flush dyed the rose-petal of her cheeks again. "It's the youth in him," her father said. "Poetry brings you real joy when you're young, doesn't it, Viola?"

She had to look up at last, and Wilbraham saw her eyes. She made a brave effort to speak evenly, but her voice trembled a little as she said, "Yes, all the beautiful things in the world make you glad."

Then Wilbraham knew, and a wave of sympathy and tenderness flowed over him, but was brought up short against the wall that all the aims of the past years had built up around Harry, and dashed back on him to overwhelm him. He emerged gasping, but with the instinct strong in him to keep his knowledge from being seen. In the rest of the time he stayed at the cottage nothing was said to cause Viola to betray herself further, but he was observing her all the time, and his bewilderment grew.

She seemed to have divined that the danger was over, and came out of her shell and smiled and prattled delightfully. Her happiness was too strong in her to be kept under, and she would not have been human, or feminine, if she had not wished to make a pleasant impression upon Wilbraham, who was so near to Harry. It was the impression of delicious sparkling youth that came to him most strongly. It was as if the confession was drawn out of him reluctantly when in his answer to Harry's question he said slowly: "She's a very beautiful child."

"Why didn't you teach me what a beautiful thing love is?" asked Harry. "We've read a lot about it together, but I never had an idea of it until now. I don't think anybody in the world has ever been so happy as I am."

Wilbraham was torn in two again. His appreciations were not all bookish, and he loved Harry. He saw that in a nature such as his love would come as a very beautiful thing, and his searching observation of Viola had revealed nothing in her that could make it less so. And yet--!

"How long have you known her?" he asked.

"What does it matter?" said Harry. "I've known her all my life. If I look back to any time in it, she was there, though I'd never seen her. We've been meeting every day, if that's what you mean."

It was what Wilbraham had meant, and he felt discomfort at having asked the question. It was the discomfort that must come from probing into this situation, with the fear before him of saying something that would smirch the bright purity of Harry's mind. Anything that brought his actions to the test must do that, if he came to understand what tests were applicable to his meetings with Viola.

"Why didn't you tell us?" seemed to be the safest thing to say, and he said it with a half hope that the answer would give him some handle, though without mental acknowledgment of the hope.

"Well, I felt somehow that you'd try to stop me," said the boy. "At least mother and Granny would. I did nearly tell mother, the first time I'd seen Viola, but something warned me not to. I've been glad since that I didn't. It has just been she and I--Viola and I. Oh, how I love her! I'm glad _you've_ seen her. But you must keep it to yourself. We haven't much longer together. I can't have our time spoilt."