On one of the last days of that brilliant October, just before the grey curtain of rains descended to blot out autumn fields and twinkling waters, Colonel Lewknor and his wife moved into the hostel.
On that first evening Mrs. Lewknor came down the broad stair-case in "review order," as she called it, to celebrate the consummation of the first stage of her project, and found her husband standing at the sea-ward window of the hall, a Mestophelian figure, holding back the curtain and peeping out. Quietly she came and stood beside him, about her shoulders the scarlet cape a Rajput Princess had given her after Lord Curzon's durbar.
The house, which was the solitary building in the great coombe, stood back some hundred yards from the cliff along which the coast-guard's path to Beau-nez showed up white-dotted in the darkness. The Colonel was staring out over the misty and muffled waters, mumbling to himself, as was his way.
"We shall get a nice view from here, anyway," he said with his satyr-like chuckle.
She laid her hand upon his shoulder.
"Of what?" she asked.
"The landing," he replied.
She rippled off into a delicious titter. After thirty years of married life her Jocko was still for Rachel Lewknor the most entertaining of men.
"You and Mr. Trupp!" she said. "A pair of you!" For the two men had drawn singularly close since the Colonel on retirement had established himself in Meads.
The old soldier in truth came as something of a revelation to the great surgeon, who delighted in the other's philosophical mind, his freedom from the conventional limitations and prejudices of the officer-caste, his wide reading and ironical humour.
On his evening ride one day about this time Mr. Trupp and Bess came upon the Colonel halted at the flag-staff on the top of the Head, and gazing out over the wide-spread waters with solemn eyes, as though watching for a tidal wave to sweep up out of the East and overwhelm his country. Mr. Trupp knew that the old soldier was often at that spot in that attitude at that hour, a sentinel on guard at the uttermost end of the uttermost peninsula that jutted out into the Channel; and he knew why.
"Well, is it coming?" the doctor growled, half serious, half chaffing.
The Colonel, standing with his hat off, his fine forehead and cadaverous face thrusting up into the blue, answered with quiet conviction.
"It's coming all right."
"It's been coming all my time," answered the other sardonically. "If it don't come soon I shall miss it. In the seventies it was Russia. Any fool, who wasn't a criminal or a traitor or both, could see that a clash was inevitable. Two great races expanding at incredible speed in Asia, etc., etc. Then in the nineties it was France. Any man in his right mind could see it. It was mathematically demonstrable. Two great races expanding in Africa, etc., etc.... And now it's Germany..." He coughed and ended gruffly, "Well, you may be right this time."
"We were right about William the Conqueror," said the Colonel urbanely. "He came."
"But that was some time ago, my daughter tells me," replied Mr. Trupp. "And you've been wrong every time since."
Bess giggled; and the Colonel adjusted his field-glasses with delicate precision.
"If you say it's going to rain and keep on saying it long enough you'll probably prove right in the end," he remarked. "It's dogged as does it in the realm of speculation as elsewhere in my experience."
The old surgeon and his daughter turned their backs on the flagstaff and the solitary watchman beside it, and jogged towards the sunset red-strewn behind the white bluff of the Seven Sisters Newhaven-way.
Two figures topped the brow of Warren Hill in front and came swiftly over the short turf towards them. It was Saturday: Ruth and Ernie were on their way to their secret covert above Cow Gap as usual.
"About your last week-end up here before the weather breaks, I should say," chaffed the old surgeon as he passed them.
Ernie laughed a little nervously.
"Yes, sir. Just what I were a-sayin to Ruth," he answered. He had thought his secret known to none.
"Well, I hope the police won't catch you," remarked the other with a grin as he rode on.
"Never!--not unless someone was to give us away, sir!" said Ruth demurely, as she looked across the sea under lowered brows.
Bess called back reassuringly over her shoulder:
"You're all right, Ruth. I'll square Mr. Trupp."
The riders struck Duke's Drive and dropped down into Meads.
"How happy Ernie looks now!" said Bess. "It's delightful to see him."
"Yes," replied her father--"too happy. He's going to sleep again--just what I told you. And when he's well away in the land of dreams IT'll pounce on him once more."
That evening over his coffee Mr. Trupp returned to the subject, which was a favourite with him.
"I always knew how it would be," he said with gloomy complacency.
"Of course," answered Mrs. Trupp, glancing mischievously at Bess.
"Makes him too comfortable," the wise man continued. "Fatal mistake. What he wants is an occasional flick with the whip to keep him up to the mark. We all do."
It was not, indeed, in Ruth's nature to use the whip or inspire the fear which few of us as yet are able to do without. And at present she did not bother much. For at first her beauty and spiritual power were quite enough to hold Ernie. He found in her the comfort and the stay the tree finds in the earth it is rooted in. She was the element in which he lived and moved and had his being. She satisfied his body and his spirit as the sea satisfies the fish which dwells in it. She steadied him and that was what he needed.
The marriage, indeed, proved as successful as are most. That is to say it was not a failure, in that both the contracting parties were on the whole the happier for it. Certainly Ern was: for there was no doubt that he was in love with Ruth, nor that his love was real and enduring.
Ruth on her side was fond of Ern, and grateful to him, if only because of little Alice; although her feeling was more that of the mother for the child than of the woman for her mate. She was full of pity for him and occasionally unuttered resentment. That was inevitable because Ern was weak. She had continually to prop him up, though she would rather have let him do the propping. And perhaps for her own growth it was good that she must give support rather than receive it.
In a way she was not the ideal wife for Ern: her strength was her weakness. She appeared almost too big of soul and tranquil of spirit. But there was another side of her, largely undeveloped, that had as yet only revealed itself in gleams, or rather, to be exact, in one lurid flash of lightning which had thrown her firmament into ghastly and twittering relief. Her quiet was the hushed and crouching quiet of the young lilac in winter, lying secretly in wait for the touch of April sun, to leap forth from its covert in an amazing ecstasy of colour, fragrance, loveliness and power.
For the time being Ruth was glad to lie up, as a tigress in whelp, after long hunting, is content to harbour in the green darkness, drinking in draughts of refreshing through sleep, while her mate prowls out at dusk to find meat. But that would not last for ever. Her life must be full and brimming over or her insatiable vitality and that all-devouring spirit of hers, reaching out like a creeper to embrace the world, might find outlet in mischief, innocent enough in the intention, and yet, as experience had already proved, catastrophic in its consequences.
In her secret deeps, indeed, Ruth was one to whom danger was the breath of life, although she was still unaware of it: an explorer and pioneer, gay and gallant, sailing her skiff over virgin oceans, reckless of the sunken reefs that might at any moment rip the bottom out of her frail craft. The outward sedateness of the Sussex peasant was liable at any moment to sudden overthrow, as some chance spark caused the southern blood in her veins to leap and frolic into flame; and that Castilian hidalgo, her remote ancestor, who lurked behind the arras of the centuries, called her away from the timid herd to some dear and desperate enterprise of romance.
Mrs. Trupp alone was aware of this buccaneer quality hidden in the young woman's heart and undiscovered of the world. Ruth's Miss Caryll had told her friend of it long ago when the girl was in her service at the Dower-house, Aldwoldston.
"It's the Spaniard in her," Miss Caryll had said.
And when at the time of her distress Ruth had told her story to the wife of the great surgeon who had succoured her, Mrs. Trupp, keen-eyed for all her gentleness, had more than once detected the flash of a sword in the murk of the tragedy.
The girl had dared--and been defeated. She would dare again--until she found her conqueror: thus Mrs. Trupp envisaged the position.
