Lavendar had a strong desire to take those same hands in his and kiss them, but instead he rose and spread out his own long brown fingers on the edge of the wall, a man"s hands, fine and supple, but meant to work.
"I seem to have done nothing," he exclaimed. "You look so young, so irresponsible, so like a bird on a bough, that I cannot a.s.sociate dull care with you, yet you have lived more deeply than I. Life seems to have touched me on the shoulder and pa.s.sed me by; these hands of mine have never done a real day"s work, Mrs. Loring, for they"ve been the servants of an unwilling brain. I hated my own work as a younger man, and, though I hope I did not shirk it, I certainly did nothing that I could avoid." He paused, and went on slowly, "I"ve thought sometimes, of late I mean, that if life is to be worth much, if it is to be real life, and not mere existence, one must put one"s whole heart into it, and that two people--" He stopped; he was silent with embarra.s.sment, conscious of having said too much.
"Can help each other. Indeed they can," Mrs. Loring went on serenely, "if they have the same ideals. Hardly anyone, fortunately, is so alone as I, and so I have to help myself! Your sisters, now; don"t they help?"
"Not a great deal," Lavendar confessed. "One would, but she"s married and in India, worse luck! The other is--well, she"s a candid sister."
He laughed, and looked up. "If my best friend could hear my sister Amy"s view of me, just have a little sketch of me by Amy without fear or favour, he, or she, would never have a very high opinion of me again, and I am not sure but that I should agree with her."
"Nonsense! my dear friend," exclaimed Robinette in a maternal tone she sometimes affected,--a tone fairly agonizing to Mark Lavendar; "we should never belittle the stuff that"s been put into us! My equipment isn"t particularly large, but I am going to squeeze every ounce of power from it before I die."
"Life is extraordinarily interesting to you, isn"t it?"
"Interesting? It is thrilling! So will it be to you when you make up your mind to squeeze it," said Robinette, jumping off the wall. "There is Carnaby signalling; it is time we went to the station."
"Life would thrill me considerably more if Carnaby were not eternally in evidence," said Lavendar, but Robinette pretended not to hear.
XII
LOVE IN THE MUD
The next day Robinette was once more sitting in the boat opposite to Lavendar as he rowed. They were going down the river this time, not across it. Somehow they had managed that afternoon to get out by themselves, which sounds very simple, but is a wonderfully difficult thing to accomplish when there is no special reason for it, and when there are several other people in the house.
Fortunately Mrs. de Tracy did not like to be alone, so that wherever she went Miss Smeardon had to go too, and there happened to be a sale of work at a neighbouring vicarage that afternoon where she considered her presence a necessity. Robinette had vanished soon after luncheon and the middy had been dull, so after loitering around for a while, he too had disappeared upon some errand of his own. Lavendar walked very slowly toward the avenue gateway, then he turned and came back. He could scarcely believe his good fortune when he saw Mrs. Loring come out of the house, and pause at the door as if uncertain of her next movements. She looked uncommonly lovely in a white frock with touches of blue, while the ribbon in her hair brought out all its gold. She wore a flowery garden hat, and a pair of dainty most un-English shoes peeped from beneath her short skirt.
"Are you going out, or can I take you on the river?" Lavendar asked, trying without much success to conceal the eagerness that showed in his voice and eyes.
Robinette stood for a moment looking at him (it seemed as if she read him like a book) and then she said frankly, "Why yes, there is nothing I should like so much, but where is Carnaby?"
"Hang Carnaby! I mean I don"t know, or care. I"ve had too much of his society to-day to be pining for it now."
"Well, he does chatter like a magpie, but I feel he must have such a dull time here with no one anywhere near his own age. Elderly as I am, I seem a bit nearer than Aunt de Tracy or Miss Smeardon. Aunt de Tracy, all the same, will never understand my relations with that boy, or with anyone else for that matter. I did try so hard," she went on, "when I first arrived, just to strike the right note with her, and I"ve missed it all the time, by that very fact, no doubt. I"m so unused to trying--at home."
"You mean in America?"
"Yes, of course; I don"t try there at all, and yet my friends seem to understand me."
"Does it seem to you that you could ever call England "home"?"
"I could not have believed that England would so sink into my heart,"
she said, sitting down in the doorway and arranging the flowers on her hat. "During those first dull wet days when I was still a stranger, and when I looked out all the time at the dripping cedars, and felt whenever I opened my lips that I said the wrong thing, it seemed to me I should never be gay for an hour in this country; but the last enchanting sunny days have changed all that. I remember it"s my mother"s country, and if only I could have found a little affection waiting for me, all would have been perfect."
"You may find it yet." Lavendar could not for the life of him help saying the words, but there was nothing in the tone in which he said them to make Robinette conscious of his meaning.
"I"m afraid not," she sighed, thinking of Mrs. de Tracy"s indifference.
"I"m much more American than English, much more my father"s daughter than the Admiral"s niece; perhaps my aunt feels that instinctively. Now I must slip upstairs and change if we are going boating."
"Never!" cried Lavendar. "If I don"t s.n.a.t.c.h you this moment from the devouring crowd I shall lose you! I will keep you safe and dry, never fear, and we shall be back well before dark."
They went down the river after leaving the little pier, pa.s.sing the orchards heaped on the hillsides above Wittisham, and Lavendar wanted to row out to sea, but Robinette preferred the river; so he rowed nearer to the sh.o.r.e, where the current was less swift, and the boat rocked and drifted with scarcely a touch of the oars. They had talked for some time, and then a silence had fallen, which Robinette broke by saying, "I half wish you"d forsake the law and follow lines of lesser resistance, Mr. Lavendar. Do you know, you seem to me to be drifting, not rowing! I"ve been thinking ever since of what you said to me on the sands at Weston."
"Ungrateful woman!" he exclaimed, trying to evade the subject, "when these two faithful arms have been at your service every day since we first met! Think of the pennies you would have taken from that tiny gold purse of yours for the public ferry! However, I know what you mean; I never met anyone so plain-spoken as you, Mrs. Robin; I haven"t forgotten, I a.s.sure you!"
"How about the candid sister? Isn"t she plain-spoken?"
"Oh, she attacks the outside of the cup and platter; you question motive power and ideals. Well, I confess I have less of the former than I ought, and more of the latter than I"ve ever used." Lavendar had rested on his oars now and was looking down, so that the twinkle of his eyes was lost. "I suppose I shall go on as I have done hitherto, doing my work in a sort of a way, and getting a certain amount of pleasure out of things,--unless--"
"Oh, but that"s not living!" she exclaimed; "that"s only existing.
Don"t you remember:--
It is not growing like a tree In bulk doth make man better be.
It"s really _living_ I mean, forgetting the things that are behind, and going on and on to something ahead, whatever one"s aim may be."
"What are you going to do with yourself, if I may ask?" said Lavendar.
"Don"t be too philanthropic, will you? You"re so delightfully symmetrical now!"
"I shall have plenty to do," cried Robinette ardently. "I"ve told you before, I have so much motive power that I don"t know how to use it."
"How about sharing a little of it with a friend!"
Lavendar"s voice was full of meaning, but Robinette refused to hear it. She had succ.u.mbed as quickly to his charm as he to hers, but while she still had command over her heart she did not intend parting with it unless she could give it wholly. She knew enough of her own nature to recognize that she longed for a rowing, not a drifting mate, and that nothing else would content her; but her instinct urged that Lavendar"s indecisions and his uncertainties of aim were accidents rather than temperamental weaknesses. She suspected that his introspective moods and his occasional lack of spirits had a definite cause unknown to her.
"I haven"t a large income," she said, after a moment"s silence, changing the subject arbitrarily, and thereby reducing her companion to a temporary state of silent rage.
"Yet no one would expect a woman like this to fall like a ripe plum into a man"s mouth," he thought presently; "she will drop only when she has quite made up her mind, and the bough will need a good deal of shaking!"
"I haven"t a large income," repeated Robinette, while Lavendar was silent, "only five thousand dollars a year, which is of course microscopic from the American standpoint and cost of living; so I can"t build free libraries and swimming baths and playgrounds, or do any big splendid things; but I can do dear little nice ones, left undone by city governments and by the millionaires. I can sing, and read, and study; I can travel; and there are always people needing something wherever you are, if you have eyes to see them; one needn"t live a useless life even if one hasn"t any responsibilities. But"--she paused--"I"ve been talking all this time about my own plans and ambitions, and I began by asking yours! Isn"t it strange that the moment one feels conscious of friendship, one begins to want to know things?"
"My sister Amy would tell you I had no ambitions, except to buy as many books as I wish, and not to have to work too hard," said Mark smiling, "but I think that would not be quite true. I have some, of a dull inferior kind, not beautiful ones like yours."
"Do tell me what they are."
He shook his head. "I couldn"t; they"re not for show; shabby things like unsuccessful poor relations, who would rather not have too much notice taken of them. In a few weeks I am going to drag them out of their retreat, brighten them up, inject some poetry into their veins, and then display them to your critical judgment."
They were almost at a standstill now and neither of them was noticing it at all. As Mrs. Loring moved her seat the boat lurched somewhat to one side. Mark, to steady her, placed his hand over hers as it rested on the rail, and she did not withdraw it. Then he found the other hand that lay upon her knee, and took it in his own, scarcely knowing what he did. He looked into her face and found no anger there. "I wish to tell you more about myself," he stammered, "something not altogether creditable to me; but perhaps you will understand. Perhaps even if you don"t understand you will forgive."
She drew her hands gently away from his grasp. "I shall try to understand, you may rely on that!" she said.
"I"m not going to trouble you with any very dreadful confessions," he said, "only it"s better to hear things directly from the people concerned, and you are sure to hear a wrong version sooner or later."--Then stopping suddenly he exclaimed, "Hullo! we"re stuck, I declare! look at that!"
Robinette turned and saw that their boat was now scarcely surrounded with water at all. On every side, as if the flanks of some great whale were upheaving from below, there appeared stretches of glistening mud.
Just in front of them, where there still was a channel of water, was an upstanding rock. "Shall we row quickly there?" she cried. "Then perhaps we can get out and pull the boat to the other side, where there is more water. What has happened?"
"Oh, something not unusual," said Lavendar grimly, "that I"m a fool, and the sea-tide has ebbed, as tides have been known to do before. I"m afraid a man doesn"t watch tides when he has a companion like you! Now we"re left high, but not at all dry, as you see, till the tide turns."