Rest Harrow: A Comedy of Resolution Part 33

"I don't want to know that at all, if it's a new one. I have three already."

"Perhaps," said Morosine, with a friendly look, "it's to cancel some of them."

She held up a book. "Is that what you mean? Do look. _Songs,_ by S. Glyde.

Did you mean to tell me of that?"

Chevenix stared. "The poet Glyde? No. By Jove, though, not a bad shot. I referred, my dear, to the poet Senhouse."

She received that full in the face. She paled, then coloured. Her heart leaped, then stood still. She spelt with her blue eyes, "Tell me."

Chevenix peered at her. "Thought I should fetch you, my dear. The poet Senhouse is run to ground, and I'm going to see him. That's all."

It was plain to Morosine that she was very much concerned with this intelligence. She simply sat there, staring at Chevenix, shaking, moving her white lips. She was as white as chalk and her eyes burned black in her face. What on earth--who on earth--? He couldn't for the life of him make it out. He had never heard of the man. It was a shock to him to discover-- so soon we flatter ourselves--that Sanchia had any reserve of confidence.

He had felt so sure of her!

"Another new poet?" he asked her. She recovered herself, shook her head.

"He's not new--to me. He's the greatest friend I ever had." That was all she could say. She turned to Chevenix, her desire fainting in her eyes.

"You're going to see him? Oh, take me with you!"

"Right," said Chevenix.

BOOK V

OF THE NATURE OF AN EPILOGUE, DEALING WITH DESPOINA

I

Her spirits on the rebound, her courage waving in her face, like the flag on a citadel, she hesitated at nothing. On Chevenix's suggestion that they must "play the game with Nevile," she told her betrothed what she proposed to do. He had raised his eyebrows, but said, "Why not?"

"I thought you didn't love each other," had been her answer, and he had responded:

"Well, I have no reason to dislike him. In fact, he gave you to me, if you remember." He chuckled over the memory. "When the thing between us was at its reddest heat, your man came pelting up to me. He had seen you, it appears, and nothing would stop him. I never told you this tale, but you may as well have it now. The man's a lunatic, you know. What do you think he wanted? How do you think he put it? As thus: 'I loathe you, my dear man'--I'm giving you the substance--'You stand for everything I'm vowed to destroy; but I hope you'll marry her, and tie her to you for life.' That was his little plan. As you know, I couldn't oblige him. He thought I could!"

She had been staring out of the window while he harangued from the hearthrug, his favourite post in a room. At this time she had no eyes but for the Open Country, or what of it could be seen over the chimney-pots.

But at those last words she did turn and look at him! "Why did he think you could?"

It was for Ingram then to stare. "Why did he think so? My dear, I'll tell you why no sane man would have thought so, if you insist. He thought that as I had lived alone ever since Claire bolted, I could get a divorce.

That's what _he_ thought."

Sanchia pondered his reply, facing the window again. Ingram fidgeted, with his hands in his pockets. "Men don't live like that," he said. Sanchia did not move. More as if it were to satisfy herself than to credit him, she said, to the window and street beyond it, "I wonder that he didn't remember that you would never drag any one into notoriety whom you had once--loved." Ingram grinned.

"As your man Glyde tried to drag you, my dear! Well, that's one way of accounting for old Senhouse, certainly. I don't know that _that_ would have stood in the light, after the way she behaved. Notoriety! She managed that for herself."

"Then--" she began, but did not finish. She stopped, looked sharply about her, out of window, across the room, seemed to be listening to something, or for something. Then she said, "I see." For the rest of the evening she was very quiet, burning in a hidden fire.

Here was Sat.u.r.day, and to-morrow she should see him again--the man who had loved her so much that he had never kissed her. Love such as that, rendered in kisses, was unthinkable. She knew that she must not think of it, though she could not help her dreams. But there was no fear. The man who had not dared to kiss her when he might should find that she was worthy of such high honour.

Through the strings blew the wind from the south-west. "I love him--I shall see him to-morrow--I shall never tell him so--but he will read it in my eyes. He never kissed me when he might--he will not do it now when he must not. I am a fool, a fool, a fool! Thank G.o.d, I am a fool again!"

II

"I fancy," said Chevenix, as they breasted the down, "that to the candid observer we present a very pretty sight. He's not here, but I wish he were. A free-moving young lady--this is my idea--a Diana of the Uplands-- wasn't there a picture of the name?--going to see an emanc.i.p.ated party of the Open Road, with a chain round her heart, in the custody of a gentleman-friend."

She took him on his own terms. "Explain your idea. What, for instance, is in the gentleman-friend's custody? The chain or the heart? Because, I a.s.sure you--"

"A truce," said Chevenix, "to your a.s.surances. What I mean is this. It's jolly decent of Nevile to let you off. I don't know how he can bear you out of his sight after the way he's behaved."

She was in high spirits. She laughed at the vision of Nevile, deeply contrite and afraid that she would find him out. "I don't think Nevile cares much, whatever I may do." But Chevenix shook his head.

"You never know where to have Nevile. What says the Primer? _Timeo Danaos_--don't you know?"

She pleaded, Might they not forget Nevile out here in the open? "Do you know," she asked him, "that I haven't been out like this--"

"On the loose, eh?" he interposed. She nodded.

"Yes, like this--free to do as I like--the world before me--" She fronted the blue valley for a moment, and then turned to the wind--"and the wind in my face, ever since I left Wanless?" Then she reflected with wide and wondering eyes. "And before that--long before. I haven't been free, you know, ever since I knew Nevile. Oh!"--and she inhaled the spirit of the hour--"Oh, I could fall down and hug the earth. Don't you love the thymy smell? I don't know why, but it always makes me think of poetry--and _that_." She lifted her rapt face to where, like a fountain of sound, a lark flooded the blue. "To lift up, and up, and up, to be so lovely because one was so glad! n.o.body could do that!--except Jack," she added half in a whisper.

"That old chap's not a man," said Chevenix, "he's a spirit."

"They used to call him the Faun, at Bill Hill, where I first met him," she said. "I fancy now that I never knew him at all. But he knew all about me.

That's why I'm so happy. n.o.body has ever known me since--and it's such a bore to have to explain yourself. Other people seem to think I am extraordinary. I'm not at all--I'm the most ordinary person in the world.

But he liked me like that."

Chevenix, watching her, said, "He'll like you like this, I expect. May I tell you that you're a heady compound? Do be quiet. Remember that I'm holding the chain. I won't swear to every link." She laughed, and pressed forward, the wind kissing her eyes.

They reached the racecourse, and had, behind them and before, two valleys.

Their road lay now due west, keeping the ridge--a broad gra.s.s track belted rarely by woods on the north, but open on the south to hill and vale in diversity of sun and shade, a billowy sea of gra.s.s where no sign of man was to be seen. Sanchia's heart was so light she scarcely touched the ground. She swam the air, not flew. Chevenix pounded in her wake.

"You know," he told her by and by, "he's alone here? A solitary figure?

Doing the hermit? Crying in the Wilderness?"

She had guessed, but not known that. Caution set a guard upon her eyes and tongue. "Do you mean--that he's always alone?"

"Bless you, yes. His lady couldn't stick it. She fled. But she's quite fond of him--in her way. I found out his address from her. She was quite glad I was going to see him. But she never goes herself, I believe. She's married. Other views altogether, she has. Or _he_ has--her husband, you know. It was a rum business altogether, her taking up with old Senhouse. I could have told her what would come of that, if she'd asked me. No malice, you know--now. They're good friends. Write to each other. As a fact, she's married. She was a widow. She married a man I know, a chap in the House, name of Duplessis. Sulky chap, but able. Keeps her in order. Old Senhouse will speak about it--you see if he don't."

She was full of thought over these sayings. What had he been about when he mated with a woman of this sort? "A man don't live like that," had been Nevile's explanation of part of his own history. Was this the meaning of her friend's vagary? Would he tell her? She would never ask him, but would give worlds to know.