"And you know, darling boy, the dreadful thing is that I very nearly missed the train owing to the idiocy of the head porter at the hotel."
She was smiling through her tears, and very soon she became her stately self again.
Michael went at once to Ararat House, and told Lily that he had promised his mother to put off their marriage for three months. She pouted over her frocks.
"I wish you"d settled that before. What good will all these dresses be now?"
"You shall have as many more as you want. But will you be happy here without me?"
"Without you? Why are you going away?"
"Because I must, Lily. Because ... oh, dearest girl, can"t you see that I"m too pa.s.sionately in love with you to be able to see you every day and every night as I have been all this fortnight?"
"If you want to go away, of course you must; but I shall be rather dull, shan"t I?"
"And shan"t I?" he asked.
She looked at him.
"Perhaps."
"I shall write every day to you, and you must write to me."
He held her close and kissed her. Then he hurried away.
Now that he had made the sacrifice to please his mother, he was angry with himself for having done so. He felt that during this coming time of trial he could not bear to see either his mother or Stella. He must be married and fulfill his destiny, and, after that, all would be well. He was enraged with his weakness, wondering where he could go to avoid the people who had brought it about.
Suddenly Michael thought he would like to see Clere Abbey again, and he turned into Paddington Station to find out if there were a train that would take him down into Berkshire at once.
CHAPTER VIII
SEEDS OF POMEGRANATE
It was almost dark when Michael reached the little station at the foot of the Downs. He was half inclined to put up at the village inn and arrive at the Abbey in the morning; but he was feeling depressed by the alteration of his plans, and longed to withdraw immediately into the monastic peace. He had bought what he needed for the couple of nights before any luggage could reach him, and he thought that with so little to carry he might as well walk the six miles to the Abbey. He asked when the moon would be up.
"Oh, not much before half-past nine, sir," the porter said.
Michael suddenly remembered that to-morrow was Easter Sunday, and, thinking it would be as well not to arrive too late, in case there should be a number of guests, he managed to get hold of a cart. The wind blew very freshly as they slowly climbed the Downs, and the man who was driving him was very voluble on the subject of the large additions which had been made to the Abbey buildings during the last few years.
"They"ve put up a grand sort of a lodge--Gatehouse, so some do call it.
A bit after the style of the Tower of London, I"ve heard some say."
Michael was glad to think that Dom Cuthbert"s plans seemed to be coming to perfection in their course. How long was it since he and Chator were here? Eight or nine years; now Chator was a priest, and himself had done nothing.
The Abbey Gatehouse was majestic in the darkness, and the driver pealed the great bell with a portentous clangor. Michael recognized the pock-marked brother who opened the door; but he could not remember his name. He felt it would be rather absurd to ask the monk if he recognized him by this wavering lanthorn-light.
"Is the Reverend--is Dom Cuthbert at the Abbey now?" he asked. "You don"t remember me, I expect? Michael Fane. I stayed here one Autumn eight or nine years ago."
The monk held up the lanthorn and stared at him.
"The Reverend Father is in the Guest Room now," said Brother Ambrose.
Michael had suddenly recalled his name.
"Do you think I shall be able to stay here to-night? Or have you a lot of guests for Easter?"
"We can always find room," said Brother Ambrose. Michael dismissed his driver and followed the monk along the drive.
Dom Cuthbert knew him at once, and seemed very glad that he had come to the Abbey.
"You can have a cell in the Gatehouse. Our new Gatehouse. It"s copied from the one at Cerne Abbas in Dorsetshire. Very beautiful. Very beautiful."
Michael was introduced to the three or four guests, all types of ecclesiastical laymen, who had been talking with the Abbot. The Compline bell rang almost at once, and the Office was still held in the little chapel of mud and laths built by the hands of the monks.
Keep me as the apple of an eye.
Hide me in the shadow of thy wing.
Here was worship unhampered by problems of social behavior: here was peace.
Lying awake that night in his cell; watching the lattices very luminous in the moonlight; hearing the April wind in the hazel coppice, Michael tried to reach a perspective of his life these nine months since Oxford, but sleep came to him and pacified all confusions. He went to Ma.s.s next morning, but did not make his Communion, because he had a feeling that he could only have done so under false pretenses. There was no reason why he should have felt thus, he a.s.sured himself; but this morning there had fallen upon him at the moment a dismaying chill. He went for a walk on the Downs, over the great green s.p.a.ces that marked no season save in the change of the small flowers blowing in their turf. He wondered if he would be able to find the stones he had erected that July day when he first came here with Chator. He found what, as far as he could remember, was the place; and he also found a group of stones that might have been the ruins of his little monument. More remarkable than old stones now seemed to him a Pasque anemone colored a sharp cold violet. It curiously reminded him of the evening in March when he had walked with Lily in the wood at Hardingham.
The peace of last night vanished in a dread of the future: Michael"s partial surrender to his mother cut at his destiny with ominous stroke.
He was in a turmoil of uncertainty, and afraid to find himself out here on these Downs with so little achieved behind him in the city. He hurried back to the Abbey and wrote a wild letter to Lily, declaring his sorrow for leaving her, urging her to be patient, protesting a feverish adoration. He wrote also to Miss Harper a hundred directions for Lily"s entertainment while he was away. He wrote to Nigel Stewart, begging him to look after Barnes. All the time he had a sense of being pursued and haunted; an intolerable idea that he was the quarry of an evil chase. He could not stay at the Abbey any longer: he was being rejected by the spirit of the place.
Dom Cuthbert was disappointed when he said he must go.
"Stay at least to-night," he urged, and Michael gave way.
He did not sleep at all that night. The alabaster image of the Blessed Virgin kept turning to a paper thing, kept nodding at him like a zany.
He seemed to hear the Gatehouse bell clanging hour after hour. He felt more deeply sunk in darkness than ever in Leppard Street. At daybreak he dressed and fled through the woods, trampling under foot the primroses limp with dew. He hurried faster and faster across the Downs; and when the sun was up, he was standing on the platform of the railway station.
To-day he ought to have married Lily.
At Paddington, notwithstanding all that he had suffered in the parting, unaccountably to himself he did not want to turn in the direction of Ararat House. It puzzled him that he should drive so calmly to Cheyne Walk.
"I think my temperature must have been a point or two up last night,"
was the explanation he gave himself of what already seemed mere sleeplessness.
Michael found his mother very much worried by his disappearance; she had a.s.sumed that he had broken his promise. He consoled her, but excused himself from staying with her in town.
"You mustn"t ask too much of me," he said.
"No, no, dearest boy; I"m glad for you to go away, but where will you go?"
He thought he would pay an overdue visit to Cobble Place.
Mrs. Ross and Mrs. Carthew were delighted to see him, and he felt as he always felt at Cobble Place the persistent tranquillity which not the greatest inquietude of spirit could long withstand. It was now nearly three years since he had been there, and he was surprised to see how very old Mrs. Carthew had grown in that time. This and the active presence of Kenneth, now a jolly boy of nine, were the only changes in the aspect of the household. Michael enjoyed himself in firing Kenneth with a pa.s.sion for birds" eggs and b.u.t.terflies, and they went long walks together and made expeditions in the canoe.