The Master Mummer Part 25

"I have been watching you," I answered. "Besides, for a perfectly lazy person, are you not rather a hard task-mistress? Consider that this is our first day of summer--the first time we have seen the sun make diamonds on the sea, the first west wind which has come to us with the scent of cowslips and wild roses. I claim the right to be lazy if I want to be."

She smiled.

"The poet," she murmured, "finds these things inspiring."

"The poet," I answered, "is an ordinary creature. Nowadays he eats mutton-chops, plays golf, and has a banking account. The real man of feeling, Isobel, is the man who knows how to be idle. Believe me, there is a certain vulgarity in seeking to make a stock-in-trade of these delicious moments."

"That is not fair," she protested. "How should we all live if none of you did any work?"

"For your age, Isobel," I declared seriously, "you are very nearly a practical person. You make me more than ever anxious for an answer to my last question. What were you thinking of just now?"

Her eyes seemed to drift away from mine. A touch of her new seriousness returned. She pointed to that thin blue line.

"Beyond there," she said, "is to-morrow, and all the to-morrows to come.

One sees a very little way."

"Our limitations," I answered, "are life's lesson to us. If to-morrow is hidden, so much the more reason that we should live to-day."

"Without thought for the morrow?"

"Without care for it," I answered. "Are we not Bohemians, and is it not our text?"

She shook her head.

"It is not yours," she answered slowly. "I am sure of that."

I looked at her quickly.

"What do you mean?"

"Just what I say," she answered gravely. "Men and women to whom the present is sufficient surely cannot achieve very much in life. All the time they must concentrate powers which need expansion. I think that it must be those who try to climb the walls, those even who tear their fingers and their hearts in the great struggle for freedom, who can make themselves capable of great things, even if escape is impossible. But I do not think that escape is so impossible after all, is it? There have been men, and women too, who have lived in all times, to whom there have been no to-morrows or any yesterdays. Only it seems rather hard that life for those who seek it must always be a battle!"

I did not answer her for several minutes. It was true, then, that the old days had pa.s.sed away. Isobel, the child whom we had known and loved so well, had disappeared. It was Isobel the incomprehensible who was taking her place. What might the change not mean for us?...

Later we walked back over an open heath yellow with gorse, and faintly pink with the promise of the heather to come. Isobel carried her hat in her hand. She walked with her head thrown back, and a smile playing every now and then upon her lips. She was so completely absorbed that I found myself every now and then watching her, half expecting, I believe, to find some physical change to accord with that other more mysterious evolution. She walked with all the grace of long limbs and unfettered clothing. Her figure, though perfectly graceful, and with that same peculiar distinction which had first attracted me, was as yet wholly immature. But in the face itself there were signs of a coming change.

Wherein it might lie I could not tell, but it was there, an intangible and wholly elusive thing. I think that a certain fear of it and what it might mean oppressed me with the sense of coming trouble. I was more fully conscious then than ever before of the moral responsibility of our peculiar charge.

We crossed a straight dusty road, cleaving the rolling moor like a belt of ribbon. Isobel looked thoughtfully along it.

"I wonder," she said, "when Arthur will come down!"

The folly of a man is a thing sometimes outside his own power of control. A second before I had been wondering of whom and what she had been thinking.

"Not just yet, I'm afraid," Allan answered, stopping to light his pipe.

"It is not easy for him to get backwards and forwards, and I believe that he is by way of being rather busy just now."

"What a nuisance!" Isobel declared, looking behind her regretfully. "The roads about here seem so good."

"The roads are good, but the heath is better," Allan answered. "I will race you for half a pound of chocolates to that clump of pines!"

"You are such a slow starter," she laughed, bounding away before he had time to drop his easel. "Make it a pound!"

I picked up Allan's easel and strolled away after them. Was it the motoring, I wondered, which had prompted her half-wistful question, or had I been wise too late? Arthur had been very confident. So much that he had said had carried with it a certain ring of truth. Youth and the temperament of youth were surely irresistible. Like calls to like across the garden of spring flowers with a cry which no interloper can still, no wanderer of later years can stifle. Somehow it seemed to me just then that the sun had ceased to s.h.i.+ne, and a touch of winter after all was lingering in the western breeze....

They disappeared round the pine plantation, Isobel leading by a few yards, her skirts blowing in the wind, running still with superb and untired grace. I climbed a bank to gain a better view of the finish, and became suddenly aware that I was not the only interested spectator of their struggle. About a hundred yards to my left a man was standing on the top of the same bank, a pair of field-gla.s.ses glued to his eyes, watching intently the spot where they might be expected to reappear. The sight of him took me by surprise. A few moments ago I could have sworn that there was not a human being within a mile of us. There was only one explanation of his appearance. He must have been concealed in the dry mossy ditch at the foot of the bank. It was possible, of course, that he might have been like us, a casual way-farer, and yet the suddenness of his appearance, the intentness of his watch, both had their effect upon me. I moved a few yards towards him, with what object I perhaps scarcely knew. A dry twig snapped beneath my feet. He became suddenly aware of my approach. Then, indeed, my suspicions took definite shape, for without a moment's hesitation the man turned and strode away in the opposite direction.

I shouted to him. He took no notice. I shouted again, and he only increased his pace. I watched him disappear, and I no longer had any doubts at all. He was not in the least like a tramp, and his flight could bear but one interpretation. Isobel was not safe even here. We had been followed from London--we were being watched every hour. For the first time I began seriously to doubt what the end of these things might be.

CHAPTER VI

"Silence and perfume and moon-flooded meadows," Allan murmured. "Arnold, we shall all become corrupted. You will take to writing pastorals, and I--I--"

Isobel, from her seat between us, smiled up at him. Touched by the yellow moonlight, her face seemed almost ethereal.

"You," she said, "should paint a vision of the 'enchanted land.' You see those blurred woods, and the fields sloping up to the mists? Isn't that a perfect impression of the world unseen, half understood? Oh, how can you talk of such a place corrupting anybody, Allan!"

"I withdraw the term," he answered. "Yet Arnold knows what I meant very well. This place soothes while the city frets. Which state of mind do you think, Miss Isobel, draws from a man his best work?"

"Don't ask me enigmas, Allan," she murmured. "I am too happy to think, too happy to want to do anything more than exist. I wish we lived here always! Why didn't we come here long ago?"

"You forget the wonders of our climate," I remarked. "A month ago you might have stood where you are now, and seen nothing. You would have s.h.i.+vered with the cold. The field scents, the birds, the very insects were unborn. It is all a matter of seasons. What to-day is beautiful was yesterday a desert."

She shook her head slowly. Bareheaded, she was leaning now over the little gate, and her eyes sought the stars.

"I will not believe it," she declared. "I will not believe that it is not always beautiful here. Arnold, Allan, can you smell the honeysuckle?"

"And the hay," Allan answered, smoking vigorously. "To-morrow we shall be sneezing every few minutes. Have you ever had hay fever, Isobel?"

She laughed at him scornfully.

"You poor old thing!" she exclaimed. "You should wear a hat."

"A hat," Allan protested, "is of no avail against hay fever. It's the most insidious thing in the world, and is no respecter of youth. You, my dear Isobel, might be its first victim."

"Pooh! I catch nothing!" she declared, "and you mustn't either. I'm sure you ought to be able to paint some beautiful pictures down here, Allan.

And, Arnold, you shall have your writing-table out under the chestnut tree there. You will be so comfortable, and I'm sure you'll be able to finish your story splendidly."

"You are very anxious to dispose of us all here, Isobel," I remarked.

"What do you propose to do yourself?"

"Oh, paint a little, I suppose," she answered, "and--think! There is so much to think about here."

I shook my head.