Chapter III: The Gift (1)

For some days Everest and Regina had no opportunity of meeting in the enchanted garden. The family had the idea that their guest was to be entertained and amused, and set themselves to their self-imposed task with commendable thoroughness. He was driven out to afternoon teas, escorted to flower-shows, taken to garden-parties; lawn-tennis was arranged for the morning; rides in the wood or motorboat excursions on the sea for the afternoon; and though Regina took no part in a great many of these various diversions, still the same roof was sheltering them both, they saw each other constantly, and almost always at breakfast the conversation was entirely theirs. In this way the passion between them grew and grew; all the more steadfastly as it was impossible for them to gratify their strenuous wish to be alone in each other's society, to know the joy again--the "divine joy," as Plato describes it, "of the kiss and the touch."

Regina grew to admire him more and more as their talks together revealed his views and opinions; his wonder at the logical clearness of her mind, the extent of her reading, the leaping quickness of her intellect, increased with each day, and as his passions had always a large share of mentality in them this brilliance of her brain attracted him as much as her soft colour or her waving hair. Every day as she talked with him across the breakfast-table, or listened to him, with wide, interested, reverent eyes, he longed to press those bright lips and draw the dear clever head down on his shoulder.

At last, after some days of unintermittent social gaiety, he said to the Rector, when they were alone: "Look here, John, I don't want you to exert yourself to provide these sorts of amusements for me. I can have all this in town. You know I came here to rest and be quiet and get rid of the fever. I like it best when I can just stroll about in the woods and have nothing to do."

"You're perfectly free to do just what suits you best," returned the Rector, "don't let anyone worry you. The girls are going to some garden-party this afternoon, I believe, but don't let them drag you there if you don't care about it."

"I think I will really stay away this time," Everest answered. "I should like to stroll somewhere in the country this afternoon and so get some exercise."

It fell out accordingly that the feminine portion of the family, exclusive of the youngest daughter, drove away to the garden-party after luncheon, the Rector went to the village to inspect his schools and Everest was left alone to walk down to the sea, to the enchanted garden, to Regina.

She was there waiting for him under the blossom-laden trees, in her prettiest of pale green dresses, and without any speech at all they rushed into each other's arms, and kissed, driven by a wild instinctive, self-preservative longing to make an exchange of that electricity, that had been stored up in each of them for many days, increasing every hour, and, since it was denied any outlet, burning into their own heart and brain, and consuming their vitality.

Those sweet, glad kisses restored the balance of electricity between them and seemed to fill them with new life and energy. It was such a lovely day, where should they go, what should they do? And when Everest suggested walking somewhere, the girl was ready with ideas and plans, like an orderly laying the new route before the colonel.

"Let us walk if you like along the sands to the next village. There is a dear little inn in the bay where we can have tea and then come round by the wood home. Would you like that?" she asked, gazing up to his handsome face, the skin of which looked so cool and clear in the green light of the garden--green light which intensified the darkness of his eyes in their downward gaze upon her.

"Very much," he answered simply; and so they started, descending from the garden by a little gate in the porphyry balustrade, and a steep flight of steps to the hard glistening sands, to walk to Heddington, a small sunlit village lying far back in the bay. That walk, how it remained always in the girl's memory!--that happy walk along those glittering sands, at the border of the purple sea. How her dancing feet carried her along beside him! She felt so joyously conscious of her youth and health. She knew that the sloping sunbeams turned her hair into gold beneath her straw hat, that the purple of the sea and the blue of the sky got into her eyes, and that he was pleased with her as his gaze met hers. And their talk; what a splendid thing it was; its newness, its range over so many themes delighted her. The talk of Stossop always stayed in Stossop, and wearied the girl to death by its inane repetitions, but their talk wandered all over the world and took them with it and up and down the centuries from Palæolithic times, and sometimes it called up visions of Indian coral and they almost looked to see it in the Devon sea, and sometimes it made a distant group of black rocks seem like an ancient caveman fighting a bear. And yet it was all so light and laughter-filled, with none of the pedagogic solemnity of the half-educated person, trying to show the half of him that knows and keep concealed the half which is ignorant.

Everest never talked like a schoolmaster, but as an artist--in pictures; and Regina had nothing of the schoolmistress in her, only that true, deep thirst for knowledge, that had carried her down into the depths of the heaviest learning and from which she had emerged, her brain brilliant and shining, her language full of beauty and supple and keen.

To both, the moments seemed to race by like a golden stream. They hardly seemed to have left the red steps of the garden before they found themselves at Heddington, and Everest ordered tea for them to be brought out on the creeper-covered terrace, that hung over the shining sea.

When they first turned the angle of rock, and came into the small, white-sanded bay and saw the inn just in front of them, in its bridal veil of white roses, the girl sighed and stayed still.

"Oh, I am so sorry to think our walk is over!"

Everest came close to her, slipped his hand through her arm and pressed it.

"Why should you be sorry, darling?" he asked. "We are not going to part here. We shall still be together."

There was a tender accent, a stress of deep feeling in his voice. Her eyes looked up to his face, her breath came and went quickly. She was not to be sorry--and he was not--because they were still together.

So the great fact was voiced between them, and they became aware of the pressing desire, the colossal wish, beside which everything else became insignificant, the wild, passionate longing in each--to be together.

"I know," she said falteringly, after a pause, "but I am so sorry to think that half the time is gone. We are that much nearer to it being over," and from that minute she felt inclined to catch at each moment going by; all of them were wonderful, precious moments, and they shone in her memory afterwards, like golden stars, in the dark nights of her future.

The moment when they entered the cramped dark hall of the inn, where a mysterious blue light reigned, owing to the blue paper covering the glass of the end window, and giving effectively, yet economically, the idea of a stained-glass casement. This blue light, in its novelty, called fresh pleasure to her mind, as she saw the reflection of her own face in the hall mirror float mistily and lily-like in it.

The moment when, emerging on the terrace, they sat down under the canopy of rose, looking out towards the sea, now calm, only slightly tremulous, all pink and silver in the quiet bay, and she heard Everest ordering tea for them, with every luxury imaginable added for her, she knew for her, since he rarely took cakes and chocolates and strawberries and cream; and the moment when they sat silent and very near together, looking at each other over the empty tea-cups, and drinking in the peace and sweetness, the calm of all about them.

What a pity to have to go back to the Rectory. Overhead a little window, embowered in roses, looked out upon the sea. That window belonged to a room that the voluble innkeeper had offered Everest if they wanted to stay the night. What a pity that they couldn't stay at the little inn and sit side by side on its terrace, looking out to a pink and silver distance for ever and ever! Such thoughts were in their minds, equally in the man's as in the girl's; with such little simple pleasures does cunning Nature amuse her cleverest children, for these little things, these tiny golden seconds, are bridges leading over to the great, the greatest things in life.

And the walk back inland, through the great green woods, was a rapture too, though pierced by pain, as each step brought them nearer home.

Their talk went on, bright, inspiring talk, never personal, never petty, but always on the wide, open fields, in the broad plains of thought and intellect; for these two were absolutely alike in their abhorrence of the common and the commonplace, the mean, the small and the trivial, and they were also very singularly akin in all emotions and modes of thought, in their estimation of man, in their view of him as the blot upon creation, as Nature's mistake, in their estimation of his rapacity and cruelty, his infinite littleness and stupidity. They were alike too in their love for the animal world, for all the gracious, sweet and lovely lives about us on this earth, that man, in his stupendous imbecility, dares to say were created for him to trample upon.

In this connection, the girl asked him suddenly if it were true that he had shot much in Africa, and Everest replied: "I used to shoot a good deal, but I never liked it, except as an exhibition of skill, and as one gets older one sees more and more into the horror of taking innocent and beautiful lives for one's own amusement." And Regina loved him more than ever for this speech.

Their minds in their kinship were like two eagles, that, flying from different quarters, had suddenly met and, happy in companionship, after lonely travel, soared upwards to the blue zenith together.

The difference in age was hardly perceptible between them. Everest had been at eighteen just like Regina now, and Regina at forty-six would be like Everest now, and so they met and talked on equal ground, as a man soliloquises with himself.

Everest did not seek to kiss her until they came to the border of the home copse where they must part. There he drew her into a close, long embrace and she threw her arms about his neck and kissed him back as she had not ventured to do till now--their talk had drawn them so near to each other. Then white and breathless she ran from him through the mossy copse and so home and upstairs, and Everest later slowly crossed the lawn to the Rectory and his own rooms, entering by the long French windows.

For many days after this, they met in the enchanted garden, and Regina lived in paradise.

Everest was supposed to need exercise, and every afternoon took a walk to the sea unaccompanied. The two elder girls were not good walkers enough to be able to go with him, and after a hint from their father forbore to press their own or other society upon him, but, as he spent the entire morning and evening in their company, left him undisturbed in the afternoon, to sleep if he felt touches of fever returning on him, or to walk where the fancy took him.

Though they did not know it, it always took him to the Chalet and its garden. Every day the girl in her new-found emotions, in her joy and pride and innocent happiness, grew more lovely. Her eyes shone more brightly, her skin grew more exquisitely transparent; but it was not the same with Everest; the sense of the Future gripped him too strongly, and sleepless, troubled nights brought back the fever. Daily his cheek grew paler, and except when talking, or under the influence of some emotion, his face did not have the same animation, nor his eyes the same brilliance, as when he came.

One afternoon when they met in the garden she saw at once that something was oppressing him. His face was white, and the usually calm lines of the brows were contracted with pain.

"My darling, I cannot stay here," he said, after their first long kiss. "You must not ask me, sweetest one. It is killing me, and it is too dangerous for you. This garden seems to alter everything.... When I am here, I forget the world of men outside, in which, after all, vile as it is, we have to live. I must go, Regina, before it is too late."

"It is too late," she answered, in a low voice. "Oh, Everest, if you knew what I shall feel when you go. It is so dreadful, so impossible, to give you up.... All the rest of my life must be wretched.... I have only this time, these wonderful days, while you are here, to be happy in.... Don't shorten them. Stay with me a little longer...!"

And in the still magic shade of the garden, Everest promised to stay, because it seemed to him, too, that it was impossible to leave her, and all the world, the hateful, ridiculous, jarring world, seemed far away, non-existent, under those fragrant roses, where the nightingales sang and Nature held full sway.

But that same night, at home, in his room, the idea came again very sharply before him that his duty was either to go away or to offer to marry Regina.

It was treacherous, cruel, dishonourable to stay any longer, unless he did that; he had stayed too long as it was, he knew; but that was done now. He could not help it, all he could do was to go at once, before things were still worse. Mechanically, he began to put a few things together that he always packed himself. Then he stopped, and sat down again. Suppose he just followed his own desires, and did not trouble about anything else?... Suppose he married Regina, and gave himself up to golden weeks of wandering with her?... There was no reason why he should not. He was free to marry if he chose. But the permanence of it, the insane laws of the thing frightened him, as it had done all his life.

He sat silent, looking down at the floor, thinking deeply; everything grows so much more complicated and difficult to decide as one grows older. One loses that saving narrowness of view that, in youth, prevents one from seeing more of a project than the side presented to one, and so simplifies one's course of conduct. In youth, too, everything seems so permanent; that clears away another difficulty. In love matters it makes everything remarkably easy.... We love, and our passion is certain to last for ever and ever. Then, it is fairly easy to arrange for it. But as we grow older we see that nothing is permanent. Everything is moving, shifting, changing, and the whole difficulty of man arises from the fact that he will shut his eyes to this universal truth. He makes institutions and laws, which would only be good and serviceable if our emotions, our passions, ourselves were lasting and changeless instead of being the victims of constant metamorphoses, and consequently man's life is a perpetual and fruitless struggle to adapt these solid, permanent and unelastic inventions to the restless varying of his life and his being.

Thus do we bid him build the solid rock house of marriage--where?--upon the shifting sands of his passions and emotions.

Can we expect it to be a success?

Everest knew that he loved Regina now, that he passionately longed for and desired her; and the feeling seemed so strong, so deeply rooted that it might well last for the traditional "ever." ... But experience told him that, of the many, many passions and loves he had felt before, all had varied, and shifted, and changed, and in due course, from one ailment or another, languished, sickened and died.

And on their death he had been free. But in this case he was considering, when they died, he would be enveloped, shackled in the chains of marriage! He thought of all his married friends.... There was not one who did not envy him his freedom, and yet most of them must have felt at some time that same stress of emotion for their wives as he felt for Regina now. He sprang to his feet suddenly.

"No! No! I will not be so foolish as to be led into it! In town, in a few weeks, I may have forgotten her altogether."

He recommenced collecting his letters and papers with feverish vigour. He knew he must go, and he would do so the day after to-morrow. His resolve was quite genuine, and he looked out the up-trains himself in Miss Marlow's ready laid hand-book, and packed his writing-case and small trunks.

But Nature, who doesn't mind in the least about marriage, but is very keen on carrying out those matters which really concern her, is not to be put off by a human being just packing his suit-case.

The following afternoon, when Everest started from the Rectory for his walk seawards, as he left the grounds, he met the curate coming up from the village, and as he greeted him the young man joined him.

"I'm going to visit a parishioner who lives in a little cottage on the beach. Are you going that way? If so, we might walk down together."

Everest assented pleasantly, though on that particular day no man's company was particularly welcome to him. His whole excitable nature was now strung up to one painful and horrible duty: the wrenching himself away from a woman that he loved with certainly the best and highest passion he had ever felt in his life. His blood seemed all on fire, and running the wrong way in his veins; his teeth seemed on edge; all his nerves shaken. But he showed none of this: he looked to the curate singularly calm, quiet and self-possessed.

For a few minutes they spoke on indifferent subjects, and then the young man said suddenly:

"You are making quite a long stay in Devon?"

There was a sort of questioning note in his voice, and Everest, not having spoken to anyone yet of his resolved departure, merely answered:

"Yes; it is very lovely here."

There was a silence, in which Everest felt sure the curate was gathering strength to address him on some subject of special import, and his mind went immediately to village schools, the poor and subscriptions, but, to his amaze, when the curate spoke, it was of--Regina!

"I expect you have great opportunities of talking with her, have you not?"

To which Everest replied frankly, wondering what was coming:

"Yes, we have talked a great deal."

"Has she ever," the curate coughed nervously, "told you about me?" he said at last.

Everest's surprise grew.

"Not beyond mentioning your name and your services to her father, I think," he answered.

"She never mentioned, I suppose, that I ... I was anxious ... I proposed to marry her?"

"No; certainly not. I never heard it," returned Everest promptly and emphatically.

A wave of hot emotion, he could not tell exactly of what kind, but certainly surprise and anger mixed in it, came over him as he heard another man speak of Regina, and reveal his attitude towards her, speak of marriage with her! She was his ... his ... his.... How dare the curate talk of her!... She was wholly Everest's, his own property. She belonged solely, utterly to him, and then the memory came: he was going to leave her, _he_ was going away, he was leaving her to herself, to Stossop, to the people here, to this ... curate!

In a whirl of anger he heard the next words:

"She refused me," uttered the young man faintly. "You see," he continued, "she is so very young, I think perhaps she hardly knows her own mind, and I, of course, have no chance of being very much with her or pleading my cause. I thought it was just possible, since you are with her so much, you could put in a word for me. A girl is so much influenced sometimes by what an older man says. He has the weight of a father, and yet more than the influence of a father, because he comes from the outside. He's a stranger. Regina would listen, I think, to all you said.... I want her to consider things a little, to consider how lonely a woman's life is, unmarried...."

The curate's voice went on, but Everest lost what he was saying in the angry maze and swirl of his own thoughts.

So this was what he was driving at! It was not flannel clubs, nor coal tickets, nor choir classes now; it was not subscriptions this time. He was being asked to persuade Regina--his Regina--to marry another man, this man--this limited, narrow-minded, microscopic curate!

Then he became aware that the man was talking of Regina herself, telling him how wonderful she was, so unlike the other sisters, so unlike anyone he had ever known, and drawn on by Everest's quiet, apparently sympathetic attention he began to dilate on his own love for her, his ardent desire for her happiness.

"And do you think a girl like Regina Marlow would be happy as a clergyman's wife?" interrupted Everest mildly.

Inwardly he was furious at the tone of proprietorship that unconsciously crept into the curate's voice.

"I think she would when she had settled down," he answered. "I know she is very original, and has all sorts of fancies, now, but that soon disappears. When once a girl is married, and face to face with her duties in life, her children, her home, her regular employment steady and settle her."

A silent rage consumed Everest as he heard this speech, delivered in the rather pompous tones that the curate, without meaning to be offensive, generally slipped into.

That morning, when he had been thinking of that alternative to his going--marrying Regina--deep in his heart had been the idea of children. Never before in his life had he met a woman by whom he would so gladly have had sons as by her. It was just that steel-like sharpness of the brain, that clear, unclouded intellect, that swiftness of motion, that agility of limb, that vital force of energy in body and mind, that he would like to see in his sons--if he had them. That soul of a lioness, that frank, brave, upright nature she had revealed to him, is not a very modern type. It reminded him more of the old Roman spirit that lived in Regulus and Lucretia, and this thought had swayed him very near indeed to the idea of marriage. Only again, to his sensitive, comprehensive brain, the thought of maternity brought the idea of sacrifice, and it showed how deeply really his love for the woman had gone, that he shrank from anything which would involve her in suffering and danger. He felt he could not bear the thought of this gay, beautiful, radiant creature, risking, and perhaps giving up, her life, so full of powers for artistic creation, for his sake, through the gratification of his passion in bearing children to satisfy his ambitions.

And this had carried his mind away again from marriage; it made the matter more complex still. If he married, it was essential for his property that his wife should have children, but he saw suddenly now, and for the first time, what an ordeal loomed before him in giving over a woman, whom he loved as much as he loved Regina, to suffering and to danger.

Perhaps the ancient Greeks were influenced by this same feeling when they married women merely to have and rear their children, while giving their love and devotion and life companionship to others.

And now, here, when he, Everest, whom the girl loved, and who had such great compensations to give in return for all he asked from a woman, hesitated and contemplated the extreme of sacrifice, that this sacred life might be left undisturbed, while he was planning to leave her, to tear himself from her, for her sake, this wretched man at his side was quietly talking of her duties, the tasks she was to be forced into, the quiet, humdrum, irksome life she was to be bound to, the risks of maternity she was to face, to gratify him, that he might enjoy to the full this lovely flower, which Everest held too sacred to gather himself! It was no use to leave her! If he did, this man, or some other like him, would force her into an odious existence, such as was here sketched out.

His heart seemed to swell with fury, as he thought of it, dark mists of rage rose over his brain, darkening his mental vision.

"I am sure I shall win her in time," the voice went on at his side. "All that is wanted is persistence, determination.... That young Markham, who shot himself in London, it was a wrong thing to do, of course--and so foolish! If he had come back here, and persisted, he might have won her, just as I firmly believe I shall win her."

And in answer to a question of Everest's, he was taken through the history of Regina's refusal to Markham, and the tragedy which followed, and the other histories of the refusals, and all this talk went to Everest's brain like corroding fire. It awoke and inflamed all that selfishness of his love which, with Regina, and for her sake, he had kept suppressed, and controlled. It rose up now to its full power and fought with his reason. It filled him with rage. He longed to take the curate up by his neck, and throw him over the hedge.

At last the waving trees of the garden came in sight, and he was now all impatience to get away from him, but he felt bound to accompany him to the cottage, and see the door shut upon him, before turning to the garden.

"A clergyman wants a wife for all this sort of thing," the latter remarked plaintively, as they neared the dirty little hovel on the beach; "these people must be visited, especially when they are sick, and it's a woman's work: it takes too much of a man's time."

Everest ground his teeth silently. He would not trust himself to speak. Another moment, and they were at the door.

A filthy woman, followed by a crowd of still filthier children, opened it. The sound of coughing and a baby crying came from the dark interior.

"You won't come in?" said the curate.

Everest declined, the curate disappeared, and the door was shut.

Feeling mad, like one who has drunk vitriolised brandy, his nerves exasperated and his control all gone, Everest turned and walked back rapidly towards the garden, with the swift, eager step of the thirsting wolf scenting water. He came to the gate and laid his hand on it. It was locked. He called her name. There was no answer. Each little thing, each resistance made his anger mount higher, augmented the state of turmoil he was in. He drew back a little from the gate, then jumped over it, feeling he could have leapt over one a hundred times higher, and began to scour the silent, scented ways of the garden.

The birds called over his head, the fragrance came in clouds to meet him, he noticed nothing.

Suddenly, as his quick feet carried him down one of the darkest rose alleys, he came upon Regina. She was asleep on a little bank, in the deep shade, almost invisible under the drooping boughs of a laburnum, that poured its golden treasure to the ground.

With a single step he was beside her, he had caught her into his arms. She awoke to find herself clasped to his breast, her face being covered with wild, fierce kisses.

"You are mine. You cannot and shall not belong to anyone else ...!"

The garden held them--that magic garden that waved and bloomed in quiet peace, far from the riot of the hard and noisy world. Far more beautiful than any cathedral's were its green and shaded aisles; more beautiful than the anthem's roll its exquisite melody of rejoicing birds; more sweet its perfume than incense, and Nature breathed over her children there a greater blessing than man can ever give.

Three hours later Everest came back to the Rectory; he went straight up to his room, turned the key in his door, and threw himself face downwards on his bed.

He knew he ought to feel regret, to wish his action undone, to feel fear of future ill, but he could not; still less was any sense of reaction, of revolt, familiar to him in similar situations, near him now.

From head to foot, one great pulse of elation, satisfaction, joy and triumph beat through him. She was his, and those moments had been his--moments unequalled before in all his life of varied success with women. He recalled the scene with wondering ecstasy: the beauty of the garden, the transfigured face of the girl, the pure, unclouded rapture of those lustrous eyes, as she yielded to his arms, the radiant glory of all the air about them, its intoxicating, fragrant stillness. Was the garden really enchanted, as she called it. What was she, this girl? Was she a goddess who had descended to his embrace? In the proud joy of her self-surrender, in the ecstatic passion of her kiss, in the glamour of poetry and beauty she threw over every action which with other women was so commonplace, she seemed to be.

Of their act she had made a thing akin with beauty, with radiance, with light, and he could only feel glorified, as he saw she did.

Innocently, grandly, full of a fervent delight in him as she had in beauty, she had given herself to him, as Venus might have given herself to Anchises; he could think of no other simile.

And to the tender love he had felt invade his soul for her in those after moments which to some are so bitter, he could find no parallel in all his former existence.

His one desire was to hold her again in his arms, though he had so lately left her, to feel the tender bosom strain against his, to gaze into the wonderful light and fire of those eyes.

This ecstatic state, this empire of mere nature, which knows nothing of convention, nor the ways and laws of the world, over him; this delight of the senses, the afterglow, as it were, of passion, remained with him all the night, and then with the white light of the dawn came a horrible sense of dismay.

What had he done? He had allowed the torrent of his own wishes, his own desire, to sweep him over the brink of disaster, and he had dragged this innocent, loving creature with him. Some men, in similar circumstances, blame the woman; Everest only cursed himself, as he sprang from his bed to face the coming day.

This bright, young life, so full of wonderful talent, this beautiful, fresh flower, only just opened to the sunlight of life, he had sacrificed to himself, to his passion and pleasure of an hour. It seemed incredible to him, as he thought of it, that he could have been so selfish, so weak, so vile.

What was there in that maddening garden that stole away all sense of the outside world, and seemed to whisper that man was not the trained puppet of the wretched, artificial sphere he has created, but the free, natural, joyous creature Nature intended him to be?

Man must always remember that _he is_ a puppet, and a slave, and that the laws of Nature now exist no longer for him. He in his blindness has made other and contrary laws, which he has to obey.

Regina? What of her? What of this waking hour for her? She had not appeared at dinner the previous night. He had not seen her since leaving her in the garden. Was she suffering as he was? He longed to see her, to speak to her.... Were those glorious eyes clouded by tears? Was that sweet, smiling face convulsed in misery? It was like iron twisting in his heart to think of it.

He felt as if he had taken a swift, joyous swallow, just rising to the sun, and broken both its wings, and thrown it to the ground, to die. He loathed himself.

He dressed rapidly, made himself some tea with his own lamp, and then sat down by the window, thinking. The girl was just above him; if he could only go to her, see her, find out what she was thinking, feeling.

Other episodes with women had affected him differently. In nearly all it had been possible to compensate the woman in some way, or else she was in some invulnerable position of safety, where their deeds would not react upon her. But Regina? He foresaw every possible kind of suffering for her in the future, and no reparation could be offered her--except--marriage....

Yes, the thought came whirling into his disordered brain with stunning force. He had the power to change everything for her. If she were in tears, he could dry them instantly; if her heart was beating with fear, he could allay all its terror. He could not undo what he had done, but he could go farther and, as far as she was concerned, give her complete protection and happiness. As he thought of her, as she had been last evening, in the soft shades of the garden, as her image came before him, radiant, inspiring, irresistible, in those moments of ecstasy, he thought he would do that. It was not what he had thought of, wished or desired, when he had come there; but neither was this. To enter his friend's home welcomed by all, and then to steal the fairest ornament there, to leave misery and wretchedness where he had found joyous innocence, unquestioning love and trust....

No, he could not do this. A sense of being dishonoured, if he did, came over him. Never in his life yet had he done a mean or cruel action, and somehow, looked at in all its lights, this seemed to be both.

Well, he would do that; he would give up all other views and thoughts for his future, and he would marry Regina.

This resolve came rolling into his mind on the flood-tide of his troubled thoughts, and found a harbour there.

It was easier for it to do so, because of the very real passion he had for her. Of all the women he had known, none had given him a greater joy than she had, and the idea of possessing her, and her love and youth, and all her passionate impulses, chaining them to himself only, had its seduction.

Everest had reached the meridian of his years, and already, through the green woods of his life, was stealing the cold whisper of the coming winter of age, but with Regina he forgot it; she seemed to enwrap him in her eighteen years, to hold the cup of elixir of eternal youth to his lips. With her warm arms about him, her fresh, joyful heart beating on his, it seemed the spring of life must always stay with him. He could not part with her, he would keep her, and know again and again with her those happy hours that were worth all the world could give. Full of the new determination, he rose, and going over to the mantelpiece he closed the open velvet case that contained the perfect face, the delicate, cameo-like features of his cousin, and laid it away amongst other cases, books and papers. That idea was over; that matter was of the past.

He found his writing materials and wrote a few lines to Regina.

He did not see her till she came in at the last moment before luncheon, and took her place at the table. He felt afraid to look much at her, lest his eyes should in any way betray him to the others, but one glance at her face told him that she looked pale, and as if she had not slept much the previous night.

Time seemed a blank until the hour arrived when he could start for his afternoon walk, and then he hastened his steps as much as possible, dreading some interruption, some hindrance to seeing her. He felt he could not exist longer, unless he could have speech with her. When he came in sight of the garden he saw the door stood open, and beyond it, against the deep green within, her white lace dress was visible. He hurried forward, and in another moment the gate was shut upon them and their embrace. She had come to meet him. She was not, as he had tortured himself by imagining, tear-stained, broken and drooping, full of sadness and reproaches. She was smiling, fresh, radiant, as usual, with her face full now of rose and pearl, lifted to his, and her soft arms tightly twined round his neck.

They walked a few steps farther, into the deepest recesses of the place, and he told her all he had suffered, and how he hated himself for his selfishness, and how his only thought now was to efface it all from her mind by their marriage as soon as possible.

"I think we will go up to town together, and we will marry there. What do you say?"

His face was very pale as he spoke the decisive words--words that had never passed his lips to any woman before, and that he had always thought vaguely he would say some day in such different circumstances--circumstances where they would mean linking himself to brilliant, worldly prospects, to landed possessions, to high lineage, to a family old as his own; and now they were being said to this simple girl, who had none of these, and not even that surprising beauty which sometimes outweighs them all.

She had conquered him where other women all his life long had tried and tried in vain. Why was it? Unless this ground on which they walked were indeed enchanted. As is the case with so many men, love and marriage stood widely separated in his mind. Love was a wonderful, passionate pleasure, which had been his companion all his life. Marriage was a stupid business arrangement, that he might have to make some time, because certain practical advantages went with it.

He had immense property to leave behind him, and as he entertained the usual family dislike of all his brothers and sisters, he would have preferred to have a legitimate son to whom it would go, but it had been urged upon him, ever since he could remember, that to marry was "his duty," and as he had always found the "duties" discovered for him by others were extremely disagreeable, he had come naturally to have a very real distaste for it. No one had suggested to him that marriage meant, or could or ought to mean, pleasure.

Pleasure and sin were always jumbled together, and held before his eyes, through his childhood and youth, in his severe Scottish home, and marriage was associated with duty, with constraint, with bondage, with monetary considerations, and nothing else; with everything that he most hated.

And the result of this training had been far from what his stern family would have wished. The Oriental youth, who leads a cleaner life than English youths, and is a stranger to dissipation, is taught differently. Marriage to him is not represented as a holy penance, involving renunciation and sacrifice, but as the only gate to supreme delight. In all Eastern languages the word for marriage is identical with the word for pleasure.

Does it not seem a wiser method?

So that, considering his upbringing, it was no wonder that Everest's face paled and his heart sank as he pronounced the dismal word "marry," which had always seemed to him to mean the end of everything, the termination of freedom, the finishing of pleasure, the dismissal of love, only to be compensated for by great worldly gain. And here there was no gain. His feet had somehow got entangled in the horrid mesh at last. Yet, as he glanced at the girl beside him, so bright, with her springing step, her rose-like face and her wide, innocent eyes, he could not feel that she had spread it for him, as others had done in vain. No, he had courted disaster, and himself pulled it down upon his head.

Regina stopped in her walk, and looked up at him.

What loveliness in those blue eyes, full of the sky and heaven's own light.

"No, Everest, I am not going to marry you."

The man could never recall exactly what his feelings were as he heard her. Amaze was certainly the first, then a sort of relief, then disappointment, and then, so strange is humanity, a nascent desire that they _should_ marry after all.

"But, my darling, why not?"

"Because you don't really wish it; you ask me because you think it is your duty, after what has happened. But I have given you my love and myself as free gifts, not at a price that you must pay. I have no price. No one can buy me, either by marriage or anything else. Most women have; the women of the town bargain for so many shillings before they give themselves; the women of our class bargain for marriage and settlements, for a home, for fixed income, for the chained servitude to them, for all his life, of the man they say they love; but I feel differently, Everest." And she turned to him suddenly, stopping under the branch of the swaying palm; her eyes were alight, her form seemed to expand and heighten, red shafts of the sunlight sought out her hair and rested there, crowning her with light. "I have _given_ you what I have given. There is _nothing_ I want from you. I have given you myself, and you have given me passion and intense, overwhelming happiness. I do not want, and I will not accept, anything more."

Everest looked back at her and could not take his eyes away. As in the first hour of their passion, she seemed less to him like a woman than a goddess, an immortal. To talk of worldly things to her, to think of them in her presence, seemed suddenly absurd. In his own room, while thinking of her, she had seemed a helpless girl, whom he had injured, and was bound in honour to protect. Face to face with her now, in the garden, she seemed an all-powerful divinity, who had bestowed upon him gifts that had no earthly price. The vivid sky above them enveloped her with light, turning her white clothing into gold, and her fair hair into flame, the red glow of it fell across the smooth pallor of her face and shone in the wide-open eyes, regarding him with proud, fearless confidence.

He felt silenced, abashed, confused, with a still more violent passion waking within him for her, now that she seemed to hold herself aloof from him full of conscious power, self-reliant, seeking and asking nothing from him. Like most men, Everest felt a sort of instinctive intolerance of women who clung to him, pursued him. He was kind to them, for that was his nature, but his own passion and desire began to wane the moment its object seemed to be clinging dependently to him. The wild spring towards liberty, the elastic rebound of the captive in his arms, were what stirred the fiercest fires within him, nerved him to the greatest efforts to hold her to him. Now, looking at the passionate, beautiful form of the woman before him, and understanding that she neither wished to curtail his freedom nor give up her own, he really felt he would like to lead her to church, and there bind her to him fast, by all the laws that man and God could devise. He advanced towards her with one of those quick, easy movements that always wrapped her in delight when she saw them, and brought the red deer of Exmoor to her mind.

He took her arms above the elbows; through the muslin she was wearing he could feel their soft firmness, their satin surface. How the touch thrilled him, and her also! The electric shock of joy in the contact was so great to them both that neither could speak or move for the moment, but each stood motionless, gazing into the other's transfigured face.

"But, Regina, I wish it! I want you to marry me!"

"Then you should have asked me before, when you first said you loved me, and I would have consented, to obtain the joy of giving myself to you. Now it is too much like paying a price, too much as if you felt obliged to offer me some reparation, too much as if I had led you into accepting gifts from me, knowing that you would feel bound in honour to pay for them afterwards. Marriage was not in your mind when you came here, not when you saw me, not when you desired me. You wished to go away and I persuaded you to stay. Yes, but not to obtain anything from you, Everest, only to give.... To give to you.... And, if you knew what supreme delight you have given me, what these hours in this garden have been to me, you would know there is no debt, no need for reparation.... If I have to pay with my life for them, which is quite possible, I am ready to pay."

Everest drew her close up to his breast, and held her there tightly.

"My sweet, don't say such things. As long as I am in the world, nothing shall ever hurt you. Say you will come up to town now, and marry me.... It will make me much happier."

He looked down on the radiant, light-crowned head pressed against his breast and thought again of the mortal Anchises when the goddess stooped to his kiss.

"Of course I will do anything you wish, if you continue to wish it, a little later, but not now. You shall not feel that, like Medea, I have thrown enchantment over you, and made you do what you never planned."

Everest was silent, lost in a maze of wondering thought. He saw he had been right in his estimation of Regina. She had not the ordinary modern mind, which measures everything by the standards of the world and of convention. She chose to do what she thought was right, and as it did not seem to her right to accept him she would not do so, overwhelming as the advantage to herself would be, horrible in its risks and dangers, its ruin, according to all worldly ideas, as her position without it now was. She had, as he had thought, just the soul of Regulus, who gave himself up to the Carthaginian tortures rather than speak a few words of false advice to Rome. How he admired her, loved her! He realised the greatness of her feelings towards him. She had perfect, absolute trust in him, as she had shown from the first. She was willing to pay the highest price herself for his love, and yet shield him from paying in the smallest coin. How different, how utterly different from all the women he had ever known! There was not one among those who had not fought and scrambled and clutched for self-advantage, self-gain--not one who, in spite of her love for him, would not have willingly sacrificed him to herself.

Regina, like her name, had come to him from Latin times.

He put his arm round her, and they sat down together, very close, sheltered by the laburnum, and the doves flew down, and walked, cooing, on the velvet moss at their feet. They talked of their plans, and Everest got her to promise this much, that if, when he had been away from her some time, living his own life, amongst his own people, if he then asked her again, perhaps she would consent to marry him.

"You see, my very dearest," she said, in that soft voice of hers, which always stirred his senses, "if you still wish it we will do it, but, if you do change, how much better for you not to have married me now!"

"And better for you too?" he asked.

"No, no, no! You know, just for myself, there would be nothing in the world better for me than to marry you," she returned passionately. "Everest, there is no need for me to tell you that, surely? You must see how it all appears to me.... You are so wonderful, so exceptional!... I feel you ought to have the very best and loveliest woman who ever existed...."

"Have I not got her here?" returned Everest, with equal passion, leaning over her, and kissing her on the mouth and eyes, so that she could neither breathe nor see. "You try to make me the most conceited man in the world, but I have sense enough left to know I am not half worthy of you."

Regina yielded herself up to his caresses, nestling close against his breast, her lips on the warm brown of his neck, above his collar.

"Listen," she whispered, "I want you to listen to me. I have just this one quality that is good: I love you so intensely, so absorbingly, that myself is nothing to me beside you. It is very difficult to put the absolute extremes of emotion into words, but I love you so much that when I think of you my own life, my own happiness means nothing to me, beside yours. You must be happy, that's all that matters. Nothing else is of any account at all. If I can in any way make you happy that would be my greatest delight, as it has been already; but I am not sure I should be really doing that by marrying you, and until I am sure, I won't do it. I am after all only a country rector's daughter, without any special birth, position or beauty.... No--hush," she said, putting her hand over his mouth, as he tried to interrupt her. "I am only beautiful just now, because I am young and in love with you--blazing with love for you in every vein. That fire lights up my eyes and paints my cheeks and lips, and makes me look beautiful, but that is your gift," she interrupted herself passionately, kissing him on his black hair, above the ear, "you have given me that beauty.... It is not the stone-cut massive regularity that the world calls beauty, and so, when your friends saw me as your wife they would say: 'Why has he married her? He must have been trapped in some way--she is only this; she is only that--she has no this, and no that,' and perhaps, after a time, you might get to feel so too. And it would kill me, simply, nothing else, to see you regretted marrying me. You came here as our guest, and we all, as hosts, have a sacred duty towards you. I want you to go away as absolutely free and untied as when you came, free to marry, if you wish, some rich great, wonderful person, your equal, who has magnificent beauty and everything else to offer you."

"Do you think that I could do that now, after yesterday? Marry another woman and put her in the place that belongs to you? I feel now I shall never care to take another woman in my arms again. You were so sweet to me, so unquestioning, so trusting, and I acted so badly, I shall never forgive myself! It is not you that tie me, my own action binds me."

Regina raised herself with a quick spring in his clasp.