Watersprings Part 4

"It seems to me so wrong to talk during music," she said; "perhaps it wasn't polite of me to stop you, but I can't bear to interrupt music--it's like treading on flowers--it can't come again just like that!"

"Yes," said Howard, "I know exactly what you mean; but I expect it is a mistake to think of a beautiful thing being wasted, if we don't happen to hear or see it. It isn't only meant for us. It is the light or the sound or the flower, I think, being beautiful because it is glad."

"Yes," said the girl, "perhaps it is that. That is what Mrs. Graves thinks. Do you know, it seems to me strange that you have never been here before, though you are almost her only relation. She is the most wonderful person I have ever seen. The only person I know who seems always right, and yet never wants anyone else to know she is right."

"Yes," said Howard, "I feel that I have been very foolish--but it has been going on all the time, like the music and the light. It hasn't been wasted. I have had a wonderful talk with her to-day--the most wonderful talk, I think, I have ever had. I can't understand it all yet--but she has given me the sense of some fine purpose--as if I had been kept away for a purpose, because I was not ready; and as if I had come here for a purpose now."

The girl sate looking at him with open eyes, and with some strange sense of surprise. "Yes," she said, "it is just like that; but that you could have seen it so soon amazes me. I have known her all my life, and could never have put that into words. Do you know how things seem to come and go and s.h.i.+ft about without any meaning? It is never so with her; she sees what it all means. I cannot explain it."

They sate in silence for a moment, and then Howard said: "It is very curious to be here; you know, or probably you don't know, how much interested I am in Jack; and somehow in talking to him I felt that there was something behind--something more to know. All this"--he waved his hand at the room--"my aunt, your father, yourself--it does not seem to me new and unfamiliar, but something which I have always known. I can't tell you in what a dream I have seemed to be moving ever since I came here. I have been here for twenty-four hours, and yet it seems all old and dear to me."

"I know that feeling," said the girl, "one dips into something that has been going on for ever and ever--I feel like that to-night. It seems odd to talk like this, but you must remember that Jack tells me most things, and I seem to know you quite well. I knew it would be all easy somehow."

"Well, we are a sort of cousins," said Howard lightly. "That's such a comfort; it needn't entail anything, but it can save one all sorts of fencing and ceremony. I want to talk to you about Jack. He is a little mysterious to me still."

"Yes," she said, "he is mysterious, but he really is a dear: he was the most aggravating boy that ever lived, and I sometimes used really to hate him. I am afraid we used to fight a great deal; at least I did, but I suppose he was only pretending, for he never hurt me, and I know I used to hurt him--but then he deserved it!"

"What a picture!" said Howard, smiling; "no wonder that boys go to their private schools expecting to have to fight for their lives. I never had a sister; and that accounts perhaps for my peaceful disposition." He had a sudden sense as he spoke that he was talking as if to an undergraduate in friendly irony. To his surprise and pleasure he saw that his thought had translated itself.

"I suppose that is how you talk to your pupils," said the girl, smiling; "I recognise that--and that's what makes it easy to talk to you as Jack does--it's like an easy serve at lawn-tennis."

"I am glad it is easy," said Howard, "you don't know how many of my serves go into the net!"

"Lawn-tennis!" said Mr. Sandys from the other side of the room.

"There's a good game, Howard! I am not much of a hand at it myself, but I enjoy playing. I don't mind making a spectacle of myself. One misses many good things by being afraid of looking a fool. What does it matter, I say to myself, as long as one doesn't FEEL a fool? You will come and play at the vicarage, I hope. Indeed, I want you to go and come just as you like. We are relations, you know, in a sort of way--at least connections. I don't know if you go in for genealogy--it's rather a hobby of mine; it fills up little bits of time, you know. I could reel you off quite a list of names, but Mrs. Graves doesn't care for genealogy, I know."

"Oh, not that!" said Mrs. Graves. "I think it is very interesting. But I rather agree with the minister who advised his flock to pray for good ancestors."

"Ha! ha!" said Mr. Sandys, "excellent, that; but it is really very curious you know, that the further one goes back the more one's ancestors increase. Talk of over-population; why if one goes back thirty or forty generations, the world would be over-populated with the ancestors of any one of us. I remember posing a very clever mathematician with that once; but, as a fact, it's quite the reverse, one finds. Are you interested in neolithic men, Howard? There are graves of them all over the down--it is not certain if they were neolithic, but they had very curious burial customs. Knees up to the chin, you know. Well, well, it's all very fascinating, and I should like to drive you over to Dorchester to look at the museum there--there are some questions I should like to ask you. But we must be off. A delightful evening, cousin Anne; a delightful evening, Howard. I feel quite rejuvenated--such a lot to ponder over."

Howard went to the door to see them off, and was rewarded by a parting smile from Maud, which made him feel curiously elated. He went back to the drawing-room with that faint feeling of flatness which comes of parting with lively guests; and yet it somehow gave him a pleasant sense of being at home.

"Well," said Mrs. Graves, "so now you have seen the Sandys interior.

Dear Frank, how he does chatter, to be sure! but he is all alive too in his own way, and that is what matters. What did you think of Maud? I want you to like her--she is a great friend of mine, and really a fine creature. Not very happy just now, perhaps. But while dear old Frank never sees past the outside of things--what a lot of things he does see!--she sees inside, I think. But I am tired to death. I always feel after talking to Frank as if I had been driving in a dog-cart over a ploughed field!"

VII

COUNTRY LIFE

Howard woke early, after sweet and wild dreams of great landscapes and rich adventures; as his thoughts took shape, he began to feel as if he had pa.s.sed some boundary yesterday; escaped, as a child escapes from a familiar garden into great vague woodlands. There was his talk with Mrs. Graves first--that had opened up for him a new region, indeed, of the mind and soul, and had revealed to him an old force, perhaps long within his grasp, but which he had never tried to use or wield. And the vision too of Maud crossed his mind--a perfectly beautiful thing, which had risen like a star. He did not think of it as love at all--that did not cross his mind--it was just the thought of something enchantingly and exquisitely beautiful, which disturbed him, awed him, threw his mind off its habitual track. How extraordinarily lovely, simple, sweet, the girl had seemed to him in the dim room, in the faint light; and how fearless and frank she had been! He was conscious only of something adorable, which raised, as beautiful things did, a sense of something unapproachable, some yearning which could not be satisfied. How far away, how faded and dusty his ordinary contented Cambridge life now seemed to him!

He breakfasted alone, read a few letters which had been forwarded to him, and went to the library. A few minutes later Miss Merry tapped at the door, and came in.

"Mrs. Graves asked me to say--she was sorry she forgot to mention it--that if you care for shooting or fis.h.i.+ng, the keeper will come in and take your orders. She thinks you might like to ask Jack to luncheon and go out with him; she sends you her love, and wants you to do what you like."

"Thank you very much!" said Howard, "I rather expect Jack will be round here and I will ask him. I know he would like it, and I should too--if you are sure Mrs. Graves approves."

"Oh, yes," said Miss Merry, smiling, "she always approves of people doing what they like."

Miss Merry still hesitated at the door. "May I ask you another question, Mr. Kennedy--I hope I am not troublesome--I wonder if you could suggest some books for us to read? I read a good deal to Mrs.

Graves, and I am afraid we get rather into a groove. We ought to read some of the new books; we want to know what people are saying and thinking--we don't want to get behind."

"Why, of course," said Howard, "I shall be delighted--but I am afraid I am not likely to be of much use; I don't read as much as I ought; but if you will tell me the sort of things you care about, and what you have been reading, we will try to make out a list. Won't you sit down and see what we can do?"

"Oh, I don't like to interrupt you," said Miss Merry. "But if you would be so kind."

She sat down at the far end of the table, and Howard was dimly and amusedly conscious that this tete-a-tete was of the nature of a romantic adventure to the little lady. He was surprised, when they came to talk, to find how much they appeared to have read of a solid kind.

He asked if they had any plan.

"No, indeed," said Miss Merry, "we just wander on; one thing suggests another. Mrs. Graves likes LONG books; she says she likes to get at a subject quietly--that there ought not to be too many good things in books; she likes them slow and s.p.a.cious."

"I am afraid one has to go back a good way for that!" said Howard.

"People can't afford now to know more than a manual of a couple of hundred pages can tell them about a subject. I can tell you some good historical books, and some books of literary criticism and biography. I can't do much about poetry or novels; and philosophy, science, and theology I am no use at all for. But I could get you some advice if you like. That's the best of Cambridge, there are so many people about who are able to tell what to read."

While they were making out a list, Jack arrived breathlessly, and Miss Merry shamefacedly withdrew. Howard said: "Perhaps that will do to go on with--we will have another talk to-morrow. I begin to see the sort of thing you want."

Jack was in a state of high excitement.

"What on earth were you doing," he said, as the door closed, "with that sedate spinster?"

"We were making out a list of books!"

"Ah," said Jack with a profound air, "books are dangerous things--that's the intellectual way of making love! You must be a great excitement here, with all your ideas!--but now," he went on, "here I am--I hurried back the moment breakfast was over. I have been horribly bored--a lawn-tennis party yesterday, the females much to the fore--it's no good that, it's not the game; at least it's not lawn-tennis; it's a game all right, but I much suspect it has to do with love-making rather than exercise."

"You seem very suspicious this morning," said Howard; "you accuse me of flirting to begin with, and now you suspect lawn-tennis."

Jack shook his head. "I do hate love-making!" he said, "it spoils everything--it gets in the way, and makes fools of people; the longer I live, the more I see that most of the things that people do are excuses for doing something else! But never mind that! I said I had got to get back to be coached; I said that one of our dons was staying in the village and had his eye on me. What I want to know is whether you have made any arrangements about shooting or fis.h.i.+ng? You said you would if you could."

"The keeper is coming in," said Howard, "and we will have a talk to him; but mind, on one condition--work in the morning, exercise in the afternoon; and you are to stop to lunch."

"Cousin Anne is bursting into hospitality," said Jack, "because Maud is coming in for the afternoon. I haven't had time to pump Maud yet about you, but, by George, I'm going to pump you about her and father. Did you have a very thick time last night? I could see father was rather licking his lips."

"Now, no more chatter," said Howard; "you go and get some books, and we will set to work at once." Jack nodded and fled.

When he came back the keeper was waiting, a friendly old man, who seemed delighted at the idea of some sport. Jack said, "Look here, I have arranged it all. Shooting to-day, and you can have father's gun; he hardly ever uses it, and I have my own. Fis.h.i.+ng to-morrow, and so on alternately. There are heaps of rabbits up the valley--the place crawls with them."

Howard taught Jack for an hour, as clearly and briskly as he could, making him take notes. He found him quick and apt, and at the end, Jack said, "Now if I could only do this every day at Cambridge, I should soon get on. My word, you do do it well! It makes me shudder to think of all the practice you must have had."

Howard set Jack down to prepare some further work by himself, and attacked his own papers; and very soon it was time for lunch.

Mrs. Graves greeted Jack with much affectionateness, and asked what they had arranged for the afternoon. Howard told her, and added that he hoped she did not object to shooting.

"No, not at all," said Mrs. Graves, "if YOU can do it conscientiously--I couldn't! As usual I am hopelessly inconsistent. I couldn't kill things myself, but as long as I eat meat, I can't object.

It's no good arguing about these things. If one begins to argue about destroying life, there are such excellent reasons for not eating anything, or wearing anything, or even crossing the lawn! I have long believed that plants are conscious, but we have got to exist somehow at each other's expense. Instinct is the only guide for women; if they begin to reason, they get run away with by reason; that is what makes fanatics. I won't go so far as to wish you good sport, but you may as well get all the rabbits you can; I'll send them round the village, and try to salve my conscience so."