Chapter V: Part 5

Very soon I could hear the stones crunching or slipping or rolling under his boots. Surely, I told myself angrily, any man who wasn't a bounder or a madman could see that I resented the pursuit. But he came ever quicklier on. And, as I gained the path up the beck, he positively broke into a run.

I turned round.

It was Gibson.

"Gibson!" I cried; "Gibson! Is it you?"

"Yes, Ma'am," he answered firmly, pulling off his hat and standing, six feet away, bare-headed in the sun.

"What has brought you here?" I demanded as sternly as I could. But I was too greatly relieved to make a convincing display of indignation.

"I haven't been near the hotel, Ma'am," said Gibson, meeting my eyes.

"Of course you haven't. The idea! But, if you had, you'd have startled me less than by running after me on the beach like this."

"It's about Susan, Ma'am," said Gibson. Gibson is not a man of words, and I could see that he was determined not to be scolded or flurried out of the speech he had been rehearsing.

"Susan's all right," I said; "I told you so in my letter."

"I thank you, Ma'am," said Gibson, less aggressively. "I sha'n't never forget how kind you wrote."

"What's the matter, then? You don't seem to realize, Gibson, that I'm very much annoyed. Didn't I tell you not to come to Sainte Veronique unless I sent for you?"

"You did, Ma'am, you did," answered Gibson, losing his self-control and speaking more and more excitedly; "and I give you my word, Ma'am, I won't come nearer Sinn Verrynick than this bit of ground I'm standing on. Oh, yes, Ma'am! You've wrote right enough, and I thank you. But it's Susan. She hasn't wrote not one line, Ma'am--not so much as a card with a photygraph of the pier on it!"

"You've forgotten the bargain, Gibson. I'm ever so sorry for you; but what did you say at Traxelby? You said you could bear Susan marrying some one else so long as everything was honourable and above-board. You were not to come here unless I found that"--I nearly let slip Lord Ruddington's name--"that Susan's admirer was not going to play the game."

"So I did, Ma'am," broke out Gibson hotly. "That's what I said. That's what I promised. And I've cursed myself every day, every minute of every day, since I said it. It was a lie, Ma'am. Whether Susan's took away from me honest or took away from me dishonest, I can't stand it, and I won't. Susan's mine! I was a dirty hound, Ma'am, ever to say as I would give her up, even if it's the Emperor of France that comes begging for her with a sack of gold and dymonds. Susan's mine! She's the only girl in the world I ever cared about. Yes, Ma'am," he cried proudly, raising his voice and taking a step forward, "and Susan's never cared a straw about any man in the world 'cept me, and she never shall."

"Susan is a free woman, Gibson," I said. "Ever since we left Traxelby she hasn't mentioned your name. I know nothing about it. But how do you know that Susan ever cared for you? Perhaps she only led you on, as girls do. And, supposing she did care for you, how do you know she hasn't changed her mind?"

"That's just the trouble, Ma'am," said Gibson bitterly. "I don't deny they may have changed her mind. If they've dangled a lot o' money before her eyes, and fine clothes and joolry, and motor-cars and going to Egypt, and all that, I don't deny they may have managed to change her mind. They may have been too strong for a poor girl. Oh, yes, Ma'am, they may have changed Susan's mind! But ... but they can't never change her heart, Ma'am. Her heart'll go on beating true all the same, all the time; and when she's got tired of the fine things..."

He clenched his fist and finished off the sentence with a gesture between rage and despair. I was forced to turn away from the white heat of his rough eloquence and superb sincerity.

"What is it you want, Gibson?" I asked, as soon as I was able.

"I want to know first, Ma'am, has Susan got herself engaged?"

"No, she has not."

"Is she going to be, Ma'am?"

"I don't know. It isn't my affair. I think she hasn't made up her mind one way or the other."

I met Gibson's eyes. But, this time, it was he who looked away. Apologetically, clumsily, he asked:

"If I may make so bold, Ma'am ... is the party at Sinn Verrynick?"

"The party?"

"I mean, Ma'am, the rich party that's took a fancy to Susan?"

"No, he is not. I have never so much as seen him. Neither has Susan. But what did I promise? Didn't I give you my word that, if he came here, I would let you know? That's why I'm so vexed, Gibson, at your coming like this."

He accepted the rebuke without a word.

"What are you going to do now?" I asked.

"I suppose, Ma'am," he said slowly and painfully, "I'd better go back to Granpong."

I asked him a few questions. It turns out that he came over on Saturday, _via_ Southampton and "Lee Harver." He held a letter from a chauffeur he had met in Derlingham to a Havre motor-accessories firm. The Havre people, hearing he wanted to be near Sainte Veronique, gave him a letter to a small cycle and motor jobber in Grandpont who speaks a little English. He boards and lodges Gibson, and teaches him the driving and mending of cars, in return for English conversation, Gibson's labour, and thirty francs a week.

"Of course, if you object to me staying on at Granpong, Ma'am..." said Gibson.

"If I'd known beforehand I should have objected very much, Gibson," I said. "But you've been so lucky in your arrangements, I hardly like to disturb them. Give me your Grandpont address."

Gibson gave me a printed card. He is staying "A la Descente des Automobilistes." The "Descente" announces, on a card adorned with crossed billiard-cues over a foaming bock, that it speaks Englisch, and that it is equal to billiards, coffee, repairs, and beefsteacks _a toute heure_.

"Are you comfortable, Gibson?" I asked.

"Very," he answered. "I never could abide cider, and the beer is shocking, Ma'am. But I'm quite comfortable."

"I'm glad, Gibson," I said. "I won't lose the address. Good-morning."

I record it to my shame that I was heartless enough to begin moving away. Indeed, I had advanced twenty or thirty paces up the beck before Gibson decided on a second pursuit.

"About Susan, Ma'am!" he said, with red cheeks. "Shall you tell Susan, Ma'am, that I'm in these parts?"

"That reminds me, Gibson," I retorted, "you've forgotten so much of the bargain we made at Traxelby that I can't be certain of anything. You promised not to tell Susan that I had ever let you discuss her with me."

"I sha'n't forget, Ma'am. But ... can't I see Susan for a minute?"

"How? Where?"

"I might hang about, Ma'am."

"And frighten her out of her life. No thank you, Gibson! If there's to be any meeting, you'd better write about it from Grandpont."

"It'd take time, Ma'am."

"Surely you can wait a day or two, Gibson?"

He lost his self-command once more.

"No!" he cried, "I can't wait. And if I could wait, I won't. I must see Susan before another sun goes down."

"Don't shout, Gibson," I said; "people will hear you. Even if it isn't against your interest to force yourself on Susan, how do you know she will see you? Perhaps she won't."

He started. Then he turned aside in such sharp trouble, that my hard heart melted.

"The most I can do," I said, "is this. I will tell Susan how you met me on the beach, and that I was very angry. I will say nothing about our talk that night in the garden at Traxelby, and you must not mention it either. All I'm supposed to know is, that you're very keen about Susan, and that you think she encouraged you, and that you're worrying because she doesn't write. In short, if you and Susan meet, you must keep to your own affairs, and not bring me in at all. Above all, never say that I wrote to you. I will tell Susan that you will be on the beach at half-past two. She must please herself whether she meets you or not. But remember, to-day is exceptional. No secret meetings. You can get something to eat in the village at the Cafe de la Marine. I must go."

I found Susan sitting under an apple-tree with Georgette. Georgette was jabbering over a fearful and wonderful plum-coloured blouse which the two were slashing and altering. It may have been my fancy, but Georgette looked a bit sheepish as she went away. "Mees Breegs" advanced to meet me.

"Susan," I said, "some one whom you know is in the neighbourhood."

Susan's colour fled.

"Is he, Miss?" she asked fearfully.

"At Grandpont," I went on. "Madame Dupoirier told me about it last night. She was at Grandpont station in the 'bus yesterday. He read the name of the hotel, and asked Madame if you were here."

As usual, Susan's colour rushed back, with reinforcements. She began to tremble.

"It's that flower, Miss!" she gasped, "Georgette's flower! Oh, Miss Gertrude, I can't face him yet! I can't, I can't!"

"You don't need to, Susan," I said. "It isn't Lord Ruddington."

Susan moaned a little moan of thankfulness. But her face clouded again as I added:

"It is somebody else."

She searched my eyes. Then she asked, in an agonized whisper:

"Not ... It isn't ... Not Gibson, Miss?"

"Yes," I answered, "Gibson."

Susan turned half round and gazed over the sea. Her pretty country-girl's figure shook with hardly pent feeling. For the first time I saw Susan bitter and angry.

"I'm ashamed of him, Miss," she burst out. "I could never have believed it of him."

Not knowing what to say, I refrained from saying it. Susan's wrath waxed stronger. She turned upon me with something dangerously like active resentment.

"You ... you knew last night, Miss?" she said, almost fiercely.

"Certainly not, Susan," I replied. "Madame told me that an Englishman had asked her questions at Grandpont. But she didn't know who he was, and I never asked her to describe him."

"Then how do you know it is Gibson?" asked Susan, a very little less pugnaciously.

"Because I've just seen him."

Susan collapsed.

"Where, Miss? where, Miss? ... Oh!" gasped Susan.

"Come, come," I said, "I was quite as much annoyed as you are. I told Gibson very plainly what I thought about it. But, Susan, I must admit that there is some little excuse for him. Of course he hasn't repeated to me a single word that he ever said to you, or that you ever said to him. But it is plain that he's very fond of you. And he thinks you encouraged him. He says you haven't sent him even so little as a postcard for a fortnight."

Susan's Amazonian ire had died down to a village beauty's pout.

"I can never forgive him, Miss," she said. "I wouldn't have believed it of Gibson. Not to mention the disrespect to you, Miss Gertrude."

"Never mind the disrespect to me," I answered, "I can look after that myself. No doubt it's very silly and weak of him; but the point is, that Gibson is so badly in love that he's madly jealous."

"Please, Miss, you didn't tell him about ... Lord Ruddington?" asked Mees Breegs in a fright.

"Susan," I said, "I'm surprised. What are you thinking of? Unless you've told him yourself, he can't have the faintest notion that there's a Lord Ruddington in the case. But I can see he suspects there is somebody. That's why he couldn't sit quiet in England while his rival cuts him out in France."

"I shall never forgive him, Miss," snapped Susan more conclusively than ever.

"Don't say that, Susan," I said; "or, if you say it, take care you don't mean it."

"But I do, Miss."

"Then it's nothing to be proud of. Don't hate a man for merely loving you."

"He ought to have stopped at home, Miss."

"He ought. But he hasn't. You see, Susan, I don't know how it is, but you seem to have a way of making people do mad things. Gibson cares for you quite as much as Lord Ruddington does. But he hasn't done anything madder than Lord Ruddington's first letter, has he?"

"No, Miss," said Susan, mollified and visibly flattered. And, after a minute's pleasant meditation on the unsuspected range and power of her charms, she added prettily: "But Lord Ruddington does stop at home when I tell him to, Miss."

"That's true," I granted; "but Lord Ruddington has all the advantages. Poor Gibson is so frightfully handicapped. I suppose he thinks that all's fair in love and war. I'm annoyed with him for coming here, but I admire his spirit. Gibson isn't a muff, Susan."

"Oh, no, Miss," she answered promptly and heartily.

"In fact, this morning I felt quite vexed with Lord Ruddington for stepping between you. But I mustn't say more about that. I will come to the point. I have brought a message."

Susan's agitation began afresh.

"I've told Gibson he mustn't come here. He is lodging at Grandpont. At this minute he's getting something to eat in the village. But he will be on the beach at half-past two."

"To-day, Miss?" she asked faintly.

"Yes, to-day. You can please yourself whether you see him or not. But understand, Susan, I've told him it must be only this once. No meetings on the sly."

"Of course not, Miss," Susan answered, with a touch of indignation, which I ignored.

"If you do go to-day," I added, "you won't mention Lord Ruddington's name. But, Susan, if there has been anything between you and Gibson, I'm bound to say that you have no right to trifle with him. It isn't fair to him, or to yourself, or to Lord Ruddington; or even to me. Perhaps it's still too soon for you to decide whether you will accept Lord Ruddington; but it's high time for you to decide whether you will drop Gibson. If you find you can't drop Gibson, the other matter will settle itself. Be a good girl, and remember that the only way to be happy is to do right. Only, for heaven's sake, don't prolong the agony. I'm not going to grumble, Susan, but you must have seen that, although I came to Sainte Veronique for peace and rest, I've had to spend nearly three weeks worrying my head over people that want to marry you. It's getting to be a bit tiresome."

"You've been awfully good to me, Miss," said Susan with all her usual meekness. "I'll try."

I must stop. Here's Georgette with a litre of cider, and a crisp roll three feet long, and a dish of _raie au beurre noir_.

_A quarter past two_.

Susan has just started down to the beach.

_Three o'clock_.

Susan didn't say anything before she went. While she was brushing my hair--it had got all anyhow in the hammock after lunch--she hardly uttered a word.

I have been thinking strange thoughts and wondering at some wonders.

What on earth can it be that has turned a china shepherdess like Susan into a Helen of Troy? Why is she a storm-centre, a battlefield of heroes? I have seen enough of the world to know that both Gibson and Lord Ruddington are exceptional men. What is it in Susan that drives them mad? Susan's is not a case of the Eternal Masculine basely desiring lamb-like innocence and childish beauty. In her case the groom is as good as the lord in native chivalry and honour.

Madame's magnificent old Empire cheval-glass reflected us full-length while Susan was busy with my hair. In the autumnal light, and with the background of bright hangings and bold furniture, we looked less like a mere reflection in a mirror than like one of those vivid modern French pictures. At first the feeling was uncanny; but, by degrees, this full-coloured life-sized, gilt-framed portrait mastered me until I was able to look at it as dispassionately as if it had been on a wall of the Luxembourg. It was then I began to wonder at wonders and think thoughts.

One must not praise oneself up, even in one's diary. But one may, one must, be sincere. And it is the simple truth, that the more I compared the full-length portrait of Susan with the full-length portrait of myself, the deeper and more inscrutable became the mysteries of life. I looked at the two portrayed forms and the two portrayed faces as critically and with as much detachment as if I had never seen the originals in the real world.

Ruddington has seen Susan thrice. But he has seen me thrice also. He says that I was with Susan every one of the three times. Perhaps Susan's brushing jogged my wits; but, face to face with that double portrait, I couldn't help being reminded of what I scolded Susan for saying this morning. As a matter of purely speculative interest, as a curious human problem, I couldn't help saying to myself: "He saw us both. Why didn't he fall in love with me?"

To be immodestly candid, the only answer I could arrive at was: "I don't know!"

Of course, what he says in his letter to Susan about shrinking from making love to Miss Langley is absurd. It is merely a fanciful thought after the event, a pretty conceit, a gossamer compliment partly to Susan and mainly to himself. He fell wildly, instantly, irresistibly in love with Susan because there is Something in Susan which gave him no choice. He looked at me and was cold, because the Something has been left out.

Never before to-day have I looked at myself in a glass hungrily. But to-day I peered with all the strength of my eyes into the confused depths of the secret. It was no good. I cannot read the riddle.

I will write this page without reserve. It is no more my merit, my own work, that I am beautiful than it would be my fault, my disgrace, if I had been born ugly. I will call a spade a spade, and beauty beautiful. So here goes.

If Susan is pretty, I am beautiful, and I am more beautiful than Susan is pretty. If Susan is as graceful as a nymph, I am as noble as a goddess. If Susan's blue eyes are as blue as the sky, my brown eyes are deeper than the sea. If Susan is curds and cream, I am fire and snow. If Susan can turn plain men into heroes, I ought to raise heroes into gods.

Yes. Although I have a hundred deformities of mind, a thousand uglinesses of conduct and character, which I could help and for which I am to blame, it is the plain truth that God chose to make me beautiful. Has not every one told me so, as long as I can remember? But Heaven knows that, although I have always felt glad, it has never made me puffed up or vain. And I'm thankful it hasn't. If it had, this would have been a bitter day for my pride. For, after all, Ruddington saw us both; and he fell in love with Susan.

I can think of only one answer to the enigma, and I hope it isn't the right one. I suspect that men of abundant manliness, like Lord Ruddington and Gibson, instinctively seek for their opposites in the shape of some passive, clinging femininity like Susan's. They demand that the woman shall be pretty as well as clinging and passive and feminine; because they know that they are brave, and that the brave deserve the fair, I suspect that these strong characters find sweet repose in a simple woman's characterlessness. Their eager spirits recuperate in her placidity.

Conversely, a flabbier man rejoices in a strenuous, all-alive woman. Take poor Alice. She is taller than I am; stronger, quicker, harder, more self-willed. And I suppose that is why Hugh, in his humdrum way, adores her, and is wretched when she's away, like a faithful hound.

If this be the sound theory, I shall never marry. How could I endure a man weaker and pettier than myself? And yet the only kind of man I could ever want ... won't ever want me!

I wish I hadn't begun to think these thoughts. Still more do I wish I hadn't made them become clearer by writing them down. It makes the world seem so mean and lean. There ought to be grander men than Ruddington--men who would spurn honeyed sloth with dolls like Susan--men who would exult at the challenge of a proud, high-spirited woman as climbers exult at the white blaze of the Jungfrau, as hunters exult at the roaring of a desert lion, as soldiers exult at the sight of a strong city set on a hill. But, alas for this shrunken, sluggish, poverty-stricken time, when I, poor I, who am so far short of being a heroine, must begin to regard myself as a Brynhild doomed to virgin sleep because the Siegfrieds are all too timid and too puny to leap through the small fires of my will and my pride.

_Four o'clock_.

These worries have been too much for my nerves. I feel all overstrung, as if a little thing would make me break down and cry.

For example, just now I went into Susan's room to make sure that she had taken me out of her frame. I find that, instead of taking me out, she's left me in, and taken out Ruddington. There I am, staring across the hinges at an empty oval.

Last time I saw the frame it had both of us in it, and Susan's room was warm and brilliant with floods of morning sunshine. But, just now, her room was chill and dim. The paper background of the empty oval showed up ghostly white.

I walked to the mantelpiece, and gazed at my own photograph. Instead of looking like one half of a happy honeymoon couple, I looked like a girl-widow staring at a shroud. Outside, in the sunless garden, a gust of wind smote a leafy apple-branch against the window, like a slap of a hand; and at the same moment a great dreariness, an utter loneliness, fell like a blight, like a frost, like a black shadow, on my soul.

I have come back to my own room, where it is more cheerful. But I see that I have written too much to-day in this book. Since sunrise this morning I must have written two or three hours. No wonder I am morbid and dumpy!

I swear an oath. Whatever happens, and whatever Susan may report, not another word will I write to-day.

_Thursday morning, in the summer-house_.

I hate to think of yesterday. Hitherto I have hugged a fond belief that my nerves were of steel. Yet the trivial shock of Gibson's chase, coming on top of my early rising, bowled me over for the rest of the day.

It is humiliating to read all the stuff I wrote in this book--the feverish retrospects, prospects, introspects. After I had skimmed through it this morning, I nearly vowed to lock it up and not write another word until I am back in England. But, if I don't jot them in a diary, I mix up dates so frightfully.

For example, I was trying the other night to remember the three days when Ruddington saw me with Susan. While Alice was with me, I let this book slide; and the result is I can't recall being with Susan once except at the post-office; and Susan declares that Ruddington's photograph isn't the least like the young man who stared at her in a dark green suit.

I don't even remember where Susan was while he was feasting his eyes on her through the pillars of the monument. Perhaps she sat behind Alice and me. Or did she sit with the servants? It's tantalizing to think that perhaps I've seen him, and perhaps stared back at him, and that it's all slipped out of my mind.

So I sha'n't stop entering things in this journal. But I mean to enter them more curtly.

Luckily there isn't much to write about Susan and Gibson, even if I were disposed to write it. Susan didn't come back till half-past four. Until after dinner she avoided the subject; and it was only when I was mounting to a very early bed that I asked any questions.

"Well, Susan," I said, "and what have you done with poor Gibson?"

"I've sent him home, Miss."

"To England?"

"Oh no, Miss. To Grandpont."

"He had to go to Grandpont whether you sent him there or not," I said. "But didn't you give him an answer?"

Susan had replied to my questions rapidly and defiantly; but, without any warning, she sat down plump on the top stair with the candlestick in her lap, and sobbed the plentifullest and heartiest sobs of all her many sobbings since Ruddington wrote his first letter. Overwrought as I was, I wonder that the unexpectedness and oddity of it did not drive me into hysterical laughter. I controlled myself only by speaking to Susan roughly.

"Get up, you silly creature!" I said. "Georgette will hear you, and Madame! What's the matter?"

"Oh, Miss Gertrude," she sobbed, "I know I oughtn't to have said the things to Gibson that I did say. I oughtn't, I know, I know!"

"Then what did you say them for?"

"It was all his fault, Miss, not mine. I oughtn't to have said the things I did. But why did he say such bitter, cruel, awful things to me?"

"I've no idea, Susan," I said, taking the candlestick from her lap and leaving her to follow.

She did not appear till she had dried her eyes and regained some composure. When she came into my room, her lips were set, and she did not speak.

"Susan," I explained, "I was sorry to cut you short. But we mustn't have scenes on the stairs. Besides, to-night I'm tired out. Gibson upset me this morning. But I'm sorry if you've quarrelled."

Susan broke down again.

"I hate him, Miss," she cried with a stamp of her pretty foot. "I sha'n't never forgive him for the things he's said to-day! I sha'n't never speak to him again! Not a word, Miss. Not if I live to be a thousand!"

At that I stopped her, and I don't know any more.

_Friday, three o'clock_.

Susan came to me in the summer-house this morning, and said firmly:

"Please, Miss, I've decided."

Certainly I am out of sorts. As she paused on the verge of her announcement, my heart stood still. No doubt the strain and excitement of these three weeks have sapped me and mined me, and Susan's and Gibson's affairs have been so constantly present to my mind that I suppose they have become affairs of my own. Anyhow, I felt myself chilling ridiculously and going pale as Susan spoke.

"What have you decided?" I asked at last.

"I have decided," replied Susan in her most important manner, "that I will keep company with his Lordship for a month. I mean, Miss, when we're back at Traxelby."

"You'll take him for a month on trial?" I said, jesting feebly.

"Yes, Miss. I don't think I ought to be married to him till I'm sure I can put up with him."

"Of course, Susan," I answered. "But that was settled all along. He isn't expecting you at present to say that you will marry him. He simply asks whether he may come in person and persuade you."

"Yes, Miss," said Susan, colouring charmingly. And after thirty seconds she added, "Please, Miss Gertrude, I beg pardon, ... but when shall we go back to Traxelby?"

The prospect vexed me suddenly and enormously. I foresaw myself enmeshed for another month in ignominious arrangements for the comings and goings of the Lord of the Towers to the lady's-maid at the Grange. The presentiment of inevitable complications and humiliations on my very own territory was too much for my patience, and I answered Susan sharply.

"Really, Susan," I said, "do try to understand that I must think about myself a little as well as you! With all these worries, I feel as if I've hardly had three clear days at Sainte Veronique all these three weeks. You and Lord Ruddington might be the only people in the world!"

"I'm very sorry, Miss," said the bride-elect, completely penitent. "I only asked, Miss, so that we could..."

"Could what?"

"Put it in the letter, Miss."

"Susan," I enquired, "how have you got on with your writing? This letter will be very short. Don't you think you can manage it yourself? Bring down my writing-case and your own pen, and see what you can do!"

"I'll try, Miss," she said, most deeply disappointed. And she went away.

When she sat down again by my side I admit that Susan astonished me by the speed and the tolerable skill with which she executed a fully-addressed envelope. But my surprise had a short life. It seems that Susan's handwriting exercises have been practically confined to the scribing and rescribing, a hundred times, of the words "Lord Ruddington" and "Ruddington Towers." But, when she sat face to face with a blank sheet of note-paper, ideas, words, and penwomanship alike failed. Susan sighed, moaned, squinted, wriggled, ate the penholder, pouted, and finally adorned the middle of the paper with a big tear.

Doubtless it was my duty to transmit that sheet of paper, tear-drop and all, to the Lord Ruddington so that he might frame it in gold and ivory or treasure it in a casket of bejewelled silver. But I was quite heartless this morning. I snatched the sheet away unkindly, crushed it up profanely, and said:

"You're wasting paper, Susan, and what's worse, you're wasting time. Can you do it or not?"

"No, Miss," whimpered Susan. Her shoulders began to heave, and she shed two more big tears.

"Hand me my own pen, then," I said, less harshly, "and a clean sheet of paper. You may come back in ten minutes to see if what I've written will do."

"I know it will do, Miss," said Susan fervently. "All the letters you write, Miss, are beautiful. I don't always understand them at first; but when I think them over and over after they're posted----"

"Now, run along, Susan," I cut in. "I'll leave the letter inside this case in my room. Your own envelope will do. Post it if you think it is all right."

Here is the letter:

DEAR LORD RUDDINGTON,--Your question is: Do I consent to one or more interviews between us on my return to England?

My answer is: Yes.

After we have met, one or the other or both of us may decide that it is better we should not meet again. I repeat that you have read too much into my letters, and that you have formed expectations concerning me which are bound to be disappointed.

I think our meetings, like this correspondence, ought not to be oftener than once a week, and that we ought to make up our minds once for all at the end of a month. When our return-day is fixed, I must tell all that is in my mind to Miss Langley, and must fall in with her wishes as to the place and time of meeting. Probably she will prefer London to Traxelby.

I hope to hear that you are well.--Yours very sincerely,

SUSAN BRIGGS.

I can't expect Susan to be over-pleased. To use her own old scared phrase, it gives his lordship a chance of backing out. But it makes the only arrangements that are fair and safe all round. Besides, if Susan thinks it is too prudent and cold, she can easily warm it up by getting Georgette to shove in an appropriate collection of sentimentiferous flowers.

_Saturday night_.

This day have coffee'd, read _Les Chouans_, bathed, lunched, read more _Chouans_, walked to the village, dined, read more _Chouans_, and am just going to bed.

_Sunday night_.

There was a letter for Susan this morning, with the Grandpont postmark. She regarded Gibson's waiting on the envelope with darkling brows, and thrust the packet unopened into her pocket.

So far as Gibson is concerned, I am not exactly delighted with the situation. He ought to go home. But I can't tell him so. When the new Lady Ruddington begins her reign at the Towers, Gibson will hardly enjoy life at the Grange. I shall feel his going very much. But I'm getting used to Ruddington's wrecking. He's wrecked my holidays, he's stealing Susan, and I suppose I must spend the autumn watching him smash up my whole household. In any case, I mustn't command or persuade Gibson to leave Grandpont so long as he thinks that a smattering of motor-mending will help him in his next place.

I can't guess what the poor lad has written to Susan or how she is going to take it. But love and hate, even the loves and hates of poor and simple people, come home to me so vividly here at Sainte Veronique, that I can't help feeling miserable over Gibson's trouble. With the undimmed sun shining down from a cloudless heaven on the endless waters and the immeasurable uplands, such elemental verities as love and life and death seem to be at home.

It was to Berigny that I went for Mass. The cure spoke to me afterwards, as I was sitting under the shadow of the Calvary. He is a simple soul; but he talked with spirit and intelligence about his Church and his country. I found him still smarting under the well-meant fussiness of two old maids from Bournemouth who were at the Hotel du Dauphin last month. It appears that they distributed Evangelical tracts in French, wherein the present troubles of the Church in France were explained as a divinely appointed punishment of Popery and as a divine call to the French people to embrace Scriptural truth. The cure spoke with fine scorn of that British sectarian animosity which hates the Pope ten times worse than the Devil. And he confirmed what I had learned from the more blatant Paris journals--that the so-called campaign against clericalism is at heart a campaign against Christianity, and not only against Christian dogma, but even against many ancient precepts of Christian morals. More. He confirmed what I have myself read in the speeches of deputies and even of Ministers--that the attack is not merely against Christianity, but against the whole idea of supernatural religion, and that it is avowedly an attempt to establish a lay state, a purely secular community trained from childhood to believe that all religion is superstition and that human science alone can teach men how to live and die.

After the cure went home to break his fast, I still lingered in the churchyard. A new plank-monument had been raised during the week over a new tomb; and its jet-black letters on a snow-white ground reminded me of the resolve I had made to offer a De Profundis for the faithful dead.

I found the place in my _paroissien_, and said the opening words aloud. The sound of my own voice in that sunny field of death frightened me, and I stopped. I began again, reading to myself. But it was of no use. I couldn't go on.

When it comes to downright earnest, you can't skip from one religion to another. Lost in a crowd one can coquet with another religion, tolerate it, even enjoy its unfamiliar ancient ritual. But, with my De Profundis it was different. I couldn't shed my Protestantism like an old cloak in the twinkling of an eye.

Not that I felt, as I sat down again on the platform of the Calvary, that praying for the dead was false doctrine and superstitious error. I dared not say it was true; but still less dared I say that it was false. I thought of the two old maids from Bournemouth, their half-knowledge, their meddling; and I felt it would be, at the very least, an unpardonable impertinence to offer doubting prayers for needs that I could only half understand.

I ought to have remembered the Ancient Mariner; how, with a heart as dry as dust, seven days, seven nights, he stood alone on a wide, wide sea with Death; how, at last, he watched the water-snakes, coiling and swimming, blue, glossy green, and velvet black, in the shadow of the ship; how a spring of love gushed from his heart and he blessed them unaware; and how, the self-same moment, he could pray.

With me it was the other way about. At Berigny this morning I began with faith and ended with unfaith. I went to pray and came away to doubt. Hardly had I clasped my book and resolved that it would be bad taste to pray, before a shadow fell upon all things. The light of the sun was broad and bright; but, within me, there grew a bleak wonder that any one should be able to believe in God.

I mean the Christian's God, of course. If He is truly identical with the eternal Cause of the universe and yet yearns for man's love and worship, how can his heart be content that his right arm should hang idle while puny unbelievers are closing his temples and muzzling his messengers?

I looked along the wooded ravine where the beck chatters down to Sainte Veronique, with Grandpont spire away to the right, and I thought of Susan and Ruddington and Gibson. If God's delight is in the virtuous happiness of men and women, why this hateful tangle? Perhaps it was a blasphemous thought; but the tangle was so cruel, so useless, so cunning, that it seemed to require an omnipotent Devil for its explanation.

The cruelty of it brought tears to my eyes. I thought, for the first time, of a coincidence that deepened the wrong. Susan, Ruddington, and I--we are all orphans. As for Gibson, if he has parents it is fifteen years since they made a sign. Each one of us robbed before we could speak, or think, or remember, of a mother's care and love; and, for compensation, Gibson cheated of love altogether, Susan beloved where she cannot love. Ruddington loving with no love to answer.

I thought of myself. If the Christian's God is one with the Upholder of all things, his was the lightning which struck the old Grange and slew my father and mother as they slept. Where are they to-day? Are they annihilated, body and soul--as dead as stones on the beach? Or do their spirits wander wearily _in profundis_ bowed under the burden of new sorrows, awful and unknown?

Yes. I thought of myself. Except grannie, who was fifty years my senior, who has ever loved me dearly, whom have I ever dearly loved? No one. Not even Alice, though we have been good chums.

I resolved on Thursday never again to think the thoughts I thought before the glass. But thoughts will not be denied. In the churchyard this morning, as I sprang up and paced among the graves, a hot, vast, rebellious anger nearly drove me mad. To-day I knew that I was made for love--for a love immense as the sea, ever-lasting as the hills, more splendid than the sun. Why has it been written that love must pass me by?

So I did not say a De Profundis. I know that God exists; but the depths seemed too deep for him to pity and the heights too high for him to hear. I clanged the churchyard gate behind me harshly; and it was in vain that the jet-black letters on the snow-white plank of the new grave whispered: "If you please."

_Monday_, 2.45 _p.m._

Susan is behaving strangely, and I don't like it.

There is a letter from Ruddington. When it arrived, Susan made no secret of it; but she has neither shown it to me nor mentioned it, although she has been with me all the morning.

In one sense I grant that it is Susan's letter, not mine, and that she is under no obligation to let me read a line. But, in another sense, it is as much mine as hers. The letters Ruddington writes are answers to my letters, not Susan's. The Susan he thinks about and writes to is no longer the palpable Susan with whom he fell in love at Traxelby. He has a new Susan, a composite Susan, a Susan who never was and never will be, a Susan idealized as much from my letters as from his recollections of her face. If Susan, at last, feels competent to compose and write her replies, well and good. But she should say so. To take back the whole affair into her own hands without a word is rather cool. Not that I care one jot about what Ruddington has written. But I do feel rather sick about Susan's uncouthness. After the pains I've taken, it is so monstrously ungrateful.

_Bed-time_.

Susan drifted down the garden path about three o'clock, and came to anchor beside my chair. She began turning up the gravel with her toe.

"He wrote this morning, Miss," she said suddenly.

"I know, Susan," I said, "I saw the envelope."

Susan went on furrowing the gravel.

"Would you like to read it, Miss?" she asked.

"Perhaps there's no necessity," I answered a little stiffly. "Perhaps you can manage the reply yourself."

"I wish you would read it, Miss," she said, after a very long pause.

"Where is it?"

"Upstairs, Miss."

"Then how can I read it?"

"Please, Miss," said Susan coyly. "I don't like to show it you. It's so loving."

"Indeed," I said. "Then be sure you don't worry me with it unless you find you can't answer it."

"Yes, Miss," said Susan.

She went back to the hotel with a clouded face.

The afternoon dragged. To tell the truth, I wanted to see his letter immensely. Yet how could I? To have read it out of mere curiosity would have been like peeping through a hedge at an unsuspecting pair of sweethearts, or like eavesdropping behind some Lover's Seat. Still, it was terribly tantalizing to have the door of the play-house slammed in my face just as the piece was getting exciting. I tried to read, work, walk about, write; but in vain. All I could do was to think, remember, anticipate, dream, till I felt like the loneliest of lonely outcasts. Ruddington's love-affair, which had been so silly and worrying and tiresome, suddenly became as warm and homely, and bright and cosy as a Christmas hearth; and I felt like a friendless orphan wandering outside in the gloom and the cold.

By six o'clock, I was so deep in the dumps that I positively made some sort of a weather-remark to the enormous, silent Frenchman who has been here a week. I hadn't guessed that he was a mountain of shyness. At my voice he jumped, flushed crimson, knocked over his wine, choked, and nearly frightened me out of my wits before he could utter an intelligible word. Georgette was sulky about the spilt claret; and, from merely feeling solitary, I went on to the knowledge that I was roundly hated. When I came up to my room, an hour ago, I found Susan had left Ruddington's letter under my blotting-pad. Envelope and contents were so flat and uncrumpled that I hardly think they have been cherished next to Susan's wildly-beating heart. Ruddington says:

SUZANNE, ALL MINE,--As ever, I love, honour and obey. Take a month, if you will, before you speak the word. But I have settled it with the stars in their courses what the word must be. For ever, everywhere, you are Suzanne, all mine.

In her neighbourly good-nature and excellent wisdom, Miss Langley may choose for our meeting-place, Traxelby or London, or the Equator or the North Pole, or Sainte Veronique or the New Moon, or the summit of Mont Blanc or Ruddington Towers, or a coral island, or the Bottomless Pit, or the top of the Monument, or any other square yard she pleases. So long as Suzanne is there in the midst, the arid, scorching heat of the Sahara will be Eve's garden refreshed and guarded by the four streams of Paradise.

Suzanne has promised that she will come an inch to meet me. She shall never turn back alone.

But let not Suzanne mistake this perfect confidence of mine for vanity. I believe that Suzanne will run to be all mine, not because she gives herself lightly (for where is there a prouder than Suzanne?) and not because I am handsome, or desirable or magnetic. I am not magnetic, I am not desirable, I am not handsome. No. I believe that Suzanne must be all mine because I am all hers; because it is unthinkable that she should come close to the blaze of such a love as mine without herself taking fire.

Unless the Devil is torturing the world, such love as mine for Thee implies, requires, compels an equal love of thine for Me.

What a Suzanne this is, who is all mine! When I recall her face as I saw it in Traxelby church, what a wonderful, beautiful Suzanne! But, when I read her letters, I cry again, with threefold gratitude: what a beautiful, wonderful Suzanne! Her pride is as fine as the curl of a rose leaf; but her sweetness, like the rose's perfume, hovers over it all.

Not that Suzanne thinks that she has ever revealed herself in her letters. She believes that she has veiled herself in veils of prudence and reserve. But my eyes have found her out--have found her, more beautiful for her dissembling, like a great bright star hiding in the Milky Way.

Suzanne, it is no use hiding any longer. The hour has come for shining out without a cloud between. Do not wait for our meeting. Write to me, just once, without distrust of yourself or of me. I have obeyed, have I not, in all things? Reward me at last. Pour out your heart, even if it be a-brim with fears.

When she reads this, prudent Suzanne will be moved to answer that I am taking too long and sudden a leap, and that I am skipping over two or three seemly stages. She will say that she has written nothing which I have the right to answer with a love-letter like this.

But this is not an answer to Suzanne's letter. It is an answer to her flower.

RUDDINGTON

In a corner of the envelope I found something which his Lordship's wonderful beautiful Susan has overlooked. It was a petal of a creamy rose. Poor Ruddington! And to think that it is nobody's fault.

_Tuesday at sunrise_.

How can I write it?

Only because, if I write it not, my brain will turn, my heart will break.

I love Ruddington.

For days and weeks I have lied to myself, I have lied to this book. With my wits I have parried the truth; but in the heart of my heart, ever since the day I took his portrait in my hand, I have known.

As I have looked for his writing by every post, I have known. As I have read his letters, grave or gay, I have known. As I have sat replying, I have known. Every hour of every day, by the sea, in the garden, in this room, I have known.

When I saw his portrait facing mine, I knew. When I saw his place empty in the frame, I knew----oh, how hungrily! And when I sat on Sunday, bitter-hearted, under the Berigny Calvary, I knew.

Yet God knows how I have fought it, how I have held it down even out of my own sight. And God knows how, according to my light, I have striven to do my duty by Susan, and by Gibson, and by them all.

My poor wits are too weary. They can parry the truth's bright, cruel thrusts no more.

So, before I tear this book into tatters and burn it till not a letter of his name remains, once for all I will confess. I love Ruddington. I fell asleep last night with his rose-leaf, my stolen rose-leaf, under my pillow. I dreamed a dream of peace--a peace as sweet and strong as death. I dreamed I was at rest within his arms. And I awoke in the loneliness of the rainy daybreak, holding out my hands to him and murmuring his name.

_Tuesday_, 2 _p.m._

I shall burn this book. But not to-day.

The world seems hushed, remote, unreal. To-day, I seem to belong, not to Life, but all to Love and Death.

As soon as the sun had conquered the mist, we went down, Susan and I, to bathe. The tide was high, with warm boisterous waves. Perhaps I went out too far, or breasted the rude buffeting too long.

Without warning, my strength forsook me. I half swooned in the water. The undertow drew my feet away from their hold on the ribbed sand, and, at the same moment, a towering, craggy wave broke with a shattering crash full over me.

Involuntarily, by the animal impulse of a creature clinging to life, I raised a foolish cry which filled my mouth with water; I threw up foolish hands, and straightway began to sink. But, instantly, calm and self-control returned. The great waters were chanting in my ears. I even opened my eyes and looked up through the green crystal at the noon-day sun--a round, moon-like sun, mild and cool and kind.

I believed it was the end. Death was all round me and under me and over me, like the sea. But I was not afraid. Till Death was near, I had not dreamed that he could be so sweet. To sink down, down, down in his arms was not a frightful descent into horror; it was a gentle settling into unutterable peace.

But it was not to be. For the present I belong to Life, who is so niggardly and cruel, not to Love who is so lavish, or to Death who is so kind. Susan had seen me collapse; and when a thunderous wave swung me towards her she plucked me from its grasp.

Susan does not know that Death has laid his lips on mine and that I have looked into his pitiful eyes. She thinks I merely lost my footing, and she knows nothing of the swoon. But she says I look ill and shaken; and I do believe she has forgotten her own affairs in mine.

_At sunset_.

Susan won't let me leave my room. She has guessed that this morning's affair was more serious than a mere swallowing of salt water, and she insists that I am an invalid for the rest of the day.

Georgette has made a crackling wood-fire. The logs rest on quaint old iron dogs and, in one sense, the blaze is cheerful. In another sense it is depressing. The sun has set early, and these logs are the funeral-pyre of summer.

Everybody is so kind. Georgette set a table between the hearth and the window, and Madame has sent up such a _poulet en casserole_ as I have never tasted before. Dupoirier chose out a Burgundy, dry and bold and strong.

Now that I feel so much better, I know that I was ill. Before dinner, I lay down on my bed and slept two unrestful hours. I dreamed that I was climbing toilfully up a stony path between ruinous walls and close-grown ancient thorns. I climbed in a light that was neither of the night nor of the day: in the wan and chilly light of a moon-like sun such as I had seen through the water. And, all the time I climbed, I knew that he was near. Thrice I saw him through the briers, and once he called my name: but he was always at the other side of the wall.

I dreamed much more. But though I couldn't help dreaming, I can help recalling it all, I can keep writing it.

Yet what can I do if I don't write? I can't get to close grips with a book. The end of _Les Chouans_ is too beautiful, too sorrowful, and I've no one to talk to, save Susan. Susan has been an angel all day: but I couldn't talk to her just now. I will go to bed.

_Midnight_.

The house is quiet as the grave.

I cannot sleep. Perhaps the fire was too restless and bright.

The room is so warm that I am sitting without even a dressing-gown, just as I slipped out of bed. I have a plan of wooing sleep.