"What good fortune to meet you," he said. "I so seldom come this way."
This may have been the truth in some higher, rarer sense than its obvious meaning, for Wentworth was a perfectly veracious person. Yet anyone who had seen him during the last few weeks constantly riding at a foot"s pace down this particular glade, looking carefully to right and left, would hardly have felt that his remark dovetailed in with the actual facts. The moral is--morals cl.u.s.ter like bees round certain individuals--that we must not ponder too deeply the meanings of men like Wentworth.
"I often used to come here," said Fay, "but not of late. I came to get some palm."
She had in her bare hand a little bunch of palm, the soft woolly buds on them covered with yellow dust. She held them towards Wentworth, and he looked at them with grave attention.
The cob, a privileged person, of urbane and distinguished manners, suddenly elongated towards them a mobile upper lip, his sleek head slightly on one side, his kind, sly eyes half shut.
"Conrad," said Wentworth, "we never ask. We only take what is given us."
Fay laughed, and gave them both a twig.
Wentworth drew his through his b.u.t.tonhole. Conrad twisted his in his strong yellow teeth, turned it over, and then spat it out. The action, though of doubtful taste in itself, was enn.o.bled by his perfect rendering of it. He brought it, so to speak, forever within the sphere of exquisite manners.
Wentworth led him back to the path, tied him to a tree, and then came back and sat down at a little distance from Fay on the same trunk. He had somehow nothing to say, but of course he should think of something striking directly. One of Fay"s charms was that she did not talk much.
A young couple close at hand were not hampered by any doubts as to a choice of subject.
From among the roots of a clump of alder rose a sweet little noise of mouse talk, intermittent, _affaire_, accompanied by sudden rustlings and dartings under dead leaves, momentary glimpses of a tiny brown bride and bridegroom. Ah! wedded bliss! Ah! youth and sunshine, and the joy of life in a new soft silken coat!
Fay and Wentworth watched and listened, smiling at each other from time to time.
"I am forced to the conclusion," said Wentworth at last, "that even in these early days Mrs. Mouse does not listen to all Mr. Mouse says."
"How could she, poor thing, when he never leaves off talking?"
"Well, neither does she. They both talk at once. I suppose they have not our morbid craving for a listener."
"Do you think--I mean really and truly--that they are talking about themselves?" said Fay, looking at Wentworth as if any announcement of his on the subject would be considered final.
"No doubt," he said indulgently, willing to humour her, and feeling more like a cavalier than ever.
Then he actually noticed how pale she was.
"You look tired," he said. "I am afraid the storm last night kept you awake."
"Yes," she said, and hung her head.
Wentworth, momentarily released from his point of view, looked at her more closely, and perceived that her lowered eyelids were heavy with recent tears. And as he looked, he realised, by some other means than those of reasoning and deduction, by some mysterious intuitive feeling new to him, that all these weeks when he had imagined she was drawing him on by feminine arts of simulated indifference she had in reality been thinking but little of him because she was in trouble. The elaborate edifices which he had raised in solitude to account for this and that in her words one day, in her att.i.tude towards him another day, toppled over, and he saw before him a simple creature, who for some unknown and probably foolish reason, had cried all night.
He perceived suddenly, without possibility of doubt, that she had never considered him in the light of a lover, had never thought seriously about him at all, and that what he had taken to be an experienced woman of the world was in reality an ignorant child at heart.
He felt vaguely relieved. There were evidently no ambushes, no surprises, no pitfalls in this exquisite nature. There was really nothing to withdraw from. He suddenly experienced a strong desire to go forward, a more imperative desire than he had ever known about anything before. Even as he was conscious of it Fay raised her eyes to his and it pa.s.sed away again, leaving a great tranquillity behind, together with a mounting sense of personal power.
If Fay had spoken to him he had not heard what she had said. But he did not mind having missed it. The meaning of the spring was reaching him through her presence like music through a reed. He had never understood it till now. Poor empty little reed! Poor entranced listener mistaking the reed for music!
Can it be that when G.o.d made His pretty world He had certain things exceeding sharp and sweet to say to us, which it is His will only to whisper to us through human reeds: the frail human reeds on which we sometimes deafly lean until they break and pierce our cruel hands?
The mystery of the spring was becoming clear and clearer. What Wentworth had believed hitherto to be a deceptive voice was nothing but a reiterated faithful prophecy, a tender warning to him so that he might be ready when the time came.
"The primroses will soon be out," he said as if it were a secret.
"Very soon," she said, though they were out already. Fay always a.s.sented to what was said.
"I must be going," she said, getting up. "I have walked too far. If I sit here any longer I shall never get home at all."
"Let me take you home on Conrad."
Fay hesitated.
"I am frightened of horses."
"But not of Conrad. He is only an armchair stuffed to look like a horse.
And I will lead him."
Fay still hesitated.
He took an authoritative tone. He must insist on her riding home. She was tired already, and it was a long mile up hill to Priesthope.
Fay acquiesced. To-day of all days she was not in a condition for anything but a dazed acceptance of events as they came.
Wentworth lifted her gently onto the saddle, and put one small dangling foot into a stirrup shortened to meet it.
She was alarmed and clutched Conrad"s mane, but gradually her timidity was rea.s.sured, and they set out slowly together, Wentworth walking beside her, with his hand on the rein.
The little bunch of palm was forgotten. It had done its part.
Wentworth talked and Fay listened, or seemed to listen. Her mind wandered if Conrad p.r.i.c.ked his ears, but he did not p.r.i.c.k them very often.
Wentworth felt that it was time Fay made more acquaintance with his mind, and he proceeded without haste, but without undue delay to indicate to her portions of his own att.i.tude towards life, his point of view on various subjects. All the sentiments which must infallibly have lowered him in the eyes of a shrewder woman he spread before her with childish confidence. He gave her of his best. He expressed a hope that he did not abuse for his own selfish gratification his power of entering swiftly into intimacy with his fellow creatures. He alluded to his own freedom from ambition, his devotion--unlike other men--to the _small_ things of life, love, friendship, etc.: we know the rest. Wentworth had been struck by that sentence when he first said it to the Bishop, and he repeated it now. Fay thought it very beautiful. She proved a more sympathetic listener than the Bishop.
I don"t know whether like Mrs. Mouse she did not listen to all Mr. Mouse said. But at any rate she noticed for the first time how lightly Wentworth walked, how square his shoulders were, and the beauty of his brown thin hand upon the bridle; and through her mind a little streak of vanity came back to the surface, momentarily buried under the _debris_ of last night"s emotion. Wentworth was interested in her. He admired her. _He_ did not know anything uncomfortable about her--_as Magdalen did_. He thought a great deal of her. It was nice to be with a person who thought highly of one. It had been a relief to meet him. How well he talked! What a wide-minded, generous man!
The gate into the gardens must have been hurrying towards them, it was reached so soon. Wentworth, after a momentary surprise at beholding it, stopped the cob, and helped Fay with extreme care to the ground. One of Fay"s attractions was her appearance of great fragility. Men felt instinctively that with the least careless usage she might break in two.
She must be protected, cheered, have everything made smooth for her. She was in reality much stronger than many of her taller, more robust-looking sisters, who, whether wives or spinsters, if they required a.s.sistance, had to look for it in quinine. An uneasy jealousy of Fay led Lady Blore frequently to point out that Fay was always well enough to do what she wanted. Aunt Mary"s own Roman nose and stalwart figure warded off from her the sympathy to which her severe cramps undoubtedly ent.i.tled her.
"When shall I see you again?" said Wentworth, suddenly realising that the good hour was over.
Fay did not answer. She was confused. A very delicate colour flew to her cheek.
Wentworth, reddening under his tan, said: "Perhaps Pilgrim Road is a favourite walk of yours?"
"Yes. I often go there in the afternoon."
"I have to pa.s.s that way, too, most days," he said. "It is a short cut to Lostford."
He had forgotten that an hour before he had announced that he seldom used that particular path. It did not matter, for Fay had not noticed the contradiction any more than he did. Fay was easy to get on with because she never compared what anyone said one day with what they said the next. She never would feel the doubts, the perplexities that keener minds had had to fight against in dealing with him.