CHAPTER XIV.

'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.