'Whilst she was here
Methought the beams of light that did appear
Were shot from her; methought the moon gave none
But what it had from her.'
Safely out on the terrace in the moonlight! Not, it is true, a great wash of moonlight such as went billowing over the earth when she paid her former night-visit to milady's garden; but such small radiance as a lessening crescent, now and then dimmed by over-flung cloud-kerchiefs, can lend. The stars, indeed, seeing their lady faint and fail, eke her out with their lesser lights. Peggy stands drawing deep breaths, staring up at them with her head thrown back, as they shine down upon her in their overwhelming, overpowering distance, and purity and age. But between her and their august and soothing silence comes again that odious refrain:
'Some other man!
.....'
She puts her fingers in her ears and runs, nor does she stop until she has reached the close of the long, broad gravel walk that keeps the house-front company from end to end. Then she pauses and listens. No, she is not far enough off even yet. Fainter, but still perfectly audible, comes the vulgar ribaldry:
'Some other man!
.....'
and then the storm of applause. Let her at all events reach some spot where she will be unable to detect any tone of Prue's in that insane mirth! But is there such a spot? To her excited fancy it seems as if in the remotest dell, the loneliest coppice of the park, she would still overhear her Prue's little voice applauding that disgusting pleasantry.
She walks quickly on, between flower-borders and shrubberies, until she reaches a wrought-iron gate that leads into the walled garden. She opens it and passes through, then stands still once again to listen. She has succeeded at last. Not an echo of Betty's high-pitched indecencies attains to this quiet garden-close to offend her ears. There is no noise less clean and harmless than that of the south wind delicately wagging the heads of the slumberous flowers.
The garden, as its name implies, is hedged in from each rude gust on three sides by stout walls, stone-coped and balled. On the fourth, towards the sun-setting, it is guarded only by a light decorated iron railing, now muffled in the airy fluff of the traveller's joy, and embraced by the luxuriant arms of the hop, the clematis, and the wandering vine. Between their tendrils, between the branches of the strong tea-rose and the Virginia creeper's autumn fires, one catches friendly glimpses of the church tower and the park, and the gentle deer. Inside, the garden is encompassed by wide and crowded flower-borders, but the middle is sacred to the green simplicity of the velvet grass.
Margaret draws a deep breath of relief, and begins to walk slowly along. A row of tall, white gladioli, nearly as high-statured as herself, looking ghostly fair in the starshine, keep her company, lovely and virginal as May lilies; and from the farther side of the garden comes an ineffable waft of that violet smell which we used to connect only with spring. As she paces to and fro the ugly din fades out of her ears and the ireful red out of her cheeks. A sort of peace settles down upon her--only a sort of peace, however! Her mind is still oppressed by the image of Prue, and by a vague misgiving of coming trouble, coupled with a sense, which she will not own to herself, of personal disappointment, and of a mortified covert self-gratulation upon not having worn her best gown, or in anywise tricked herself out.
To one, however, whose hand is on the garden-latch, as she so thinks, she looks tricked out enough, indeed, in her own fairness; enough to make his heart sick with the hopelessness of its longing as he goes towards her. After all, she is not much surprised at his having followed her! Possibly he may have a message of recall for her.
'Well!' she says, meeting him with a delicate moonlit smile.
Low as the light is, it is light enough to show that there is no answering smile on his face.
'So you escaped at last!' he says, with a sort of groan. 'I watched to see how long you could stand it.'
The shadow that the star-beams, and the violet breath, and Heaven knows what other gentle influence, have chased from her features, settles down on them again.
'I am never fond of comic songs,' she answers stiffly; 'and I do not think that that was a particularly favourable specimen.'
He makes a gesture of disgust.
'Pah!' Then adds: 'I should have followed you before, only that I wanted to get Prue away. I knew that you would be glad if I could; but it was impossible!'
He has never spoken of her as 'Prue' before; but in his present agitation--an agitation for which Peggy is at a loss to account--he has obviously clean forgotten the formal prefix.
She is too much touched by his thoughtfulness for her to answer.
'My chief motive for following you,' continues he, speaking in an unusual and constrained voice, 'was that I thought I might possibly not have another opportunity of giving you this.'
As he speaks he puts a small parcel into her hands.
'It is only the ladder for the birds.'
She breaks into a laugh.
'They are in no such great hurry for it,' says she gaily; 'they could have waited until to-morrow.'
He sighs.
'I am afraid that they would have had to wait longer than until to-morrow!'
'Well, I daresay that they might have made shift until Wednesday,' returns she.
The entire unsuspiciousness of her tone makes his task a tenfold harder one than it would otherwise have been.
'It is--it is better that you should take it yourself to them,' he says, hesitating and floundering. 'I--I--might be prevented after all from coming. There is a chance of my--my--being obliged after all to go to-morrow!'
The star and moonlight are falling full on her face, lifted and attentive: he can see it as plainly as at high noonday. It seems to him that a tiny change passes over it. But still she does not suspect the truth.
'What!' says she; 'has your chief telegraphed for you? What a thing it is to be so indispensable!'
Shall he leave her in her error? Nothing would be easier! Leave her in the belief that a legitimate summons to honourable work has called him away; leave her with a friendly face turned towards him, expecting and perhaps lightly hoping his return. The temptation is strong, but he conquers it.
'No,' he says, trying to speak carelessly; 'my chief is innocent this time of breaking into my holiday. I expect that he is enjoying his own too much; I am not going Londonwards; but--but--other reasons compel me to leave to-morrow.'
How unutterably flat and naked it sounds! There is no mistake now as to the change in her face--the change that he has dreaded and yet known would come--the hardening of eye and tightening of lip. Well, it is better that it should come! And yet, do what he may, he cannot leave her in the belief that, as he sees, has in one moment stolen all the frank sweetness out of her eyes.
'I--I--am not going north, either,' he cries, in miserable, eager stammering. 'I--I--do not know where I am going!'
'You are compelled to go, and yet you do not know where you are going! is that a riddle?' asks she ironically.
Her tone jars horribly upon his strung and aching nerves.
'Not much of a riddle,' he answers, with a bitter laugh. 'I do not know the exact road I am going to take; I only know the direction--downhill.'
She fixes her eyes steadily upon his for a moment or two, a ray of compassion stealing into them. So they are to pass each other, like ships upon the sea! After all, he has not been able to wrench himself out of the arms of his octopus! A transient flash of self-derision crosses her mind for having ever supposed it possible that he could, coupled with an immense pity.
This is to be their last speech together; for some instinct tells her that he will not return. Let it not, then, be bitter speech! Poor fellow! There are aloes enough, God wot, in the cup he has brewed for himself!
'Well!' she says, smiling kindly, albeit very sadly, at him, 'whether you go uphill or downhill, the birds and I must always have a good word for you. I do not know what we should have done without you; you have been so kind to us all--to me and my Prue, and my fox and my birds!'
He ought to make some acknowledgment of this farewell civility of hers; but to 'ought' and to do have, since the world was, never been one and the same thing. He receives it in a suffocated silence.
'And I was so rude to you at first,' pursues she, lightly brushing, as she speaks, her own lips with a bit of mignonette she has gathered from the odorous bed at her feet, perhaps to hide the slight tremble of which she cannot but be conscious in them--'so angry at being sent in to dinner with you! but, then'--with another friendly starlit smile--'you must remember that I did not know how well you could mow!'
He is still silent, his throat choked with words he dare not utter. Oh, if she would only stop! But she goes on in all innocence:
'You never took your bunch of lavender after all to-day. I thought of bringing it up for you to-night, but then I remembered that I should see you to-morrow, so I did not; I wish I had now.'
Cannot he find even one word? one word of prayer to her in mercy to be silent? Not one!
'Are you going by an early train?' continues she; 'because, if not, I might send up Alfred with it in the morning, if you really cared to have it.'
Perhaps it is that last most unnecessary clause that loosens the string of his tied tongue.
'Do not!' he says almost rudely; 'I hope I shall never smell the scent of lavender again!'
For a moment she looks at him, astonished at his discourtesy; but probably his face explains it, for her eyes drop. When next she speaks it is in a rather colder key.
'At all events I must send you back your books; you left some books with us to-day, if you remember.'
If he remember the Keats from which he was to have read aloud to her to-morrow, sitting beside her under the Judas-tree, with her little finches calling to her from the house, with Mink crouched on her white skirt, and the parrot waddling over the sward, with his toes turned in, to have his head scratched by her! If he remember! She must be the very 'belle dame sans merci' of whom John Keats spake, to ask him that! May not he at least beg her to keep his Keats to remember him by--laying here and there among the leaves a sprig of the lavender they together plucked? No! No! No! Out of her life he and his Keats must depart, as she and her lavender out of his. Who, in his place, will read her 'La Belle Dame sans merci'? As if in devilish mockery of the jealous anguish of this question comes Betty's disgusting refrain darting across his mind:
'Some other man!
.....
.....'
He grinds his teeth. It is some minutes before he can regain sufficient command over himself to answer with a tolerable appearance of composure:
'You are right; I will send for them!'
A little sighing gust has risen; sighing for him perhaps, he thinks, with a flash of imaginative self-pity, as he watches its soft antics among the lily-like flowers, and its light ruffling of Peggy's gown. It has mistaken her for one of the flowers! What foolish fancies are careering through his hot brain! There can be none in hers, or how could she be holding out such a cool hand and lifting such a suave calm look to his?
'I must be going,' she says, speaking in a rather lower voice than is her wont; 'good-bye! Since'--a wavering smile breaking tremulously over her face--'since you are so determined to go downhill, I suppose I dare not say that I hope our roads will ever meet again!'
Her hand slides out of his unreturning clasp. He feels that if he keep that soft prisoner for one instant, he must keep it through eternity.
'Good-bye!' he says.
He would like to bid God bless her; but he can no more do it than Macbeth could say 'Amen.' What right has he to bid God bless her? Will God be more likely to send her a benison for his unworthy asking? So he lets her go unblessed.
