Chapter III: The Gift (2)

"Whatever obligation there was, if there were any," she said in a low tone, "is paid in full now by your offer and my refusal. Yesterday was a gift to you, a gift, a gift, a gift," she repeated, with hot kisses on his hand at each word, "just as I would give my life itself to you, if you wanted it."

"There must be many days like yesterday, and you can give me something else, which no other woman can, when we are married, for we will marry whatever you say."

"What could I give you?" she asked, with a swift, eager note in her voice.

"A son," returned Everest, kissing her questioning lips, "just like yourself, all courage and fire, and strength, in body and mind. Would you like that, my sweet?"

She clasped her arms tightly round his neck.

"Anything done for you would be my greatest, my supreme delight! Do you wish for children, Everest?"

"No, not personally, but there is the property. I must have a legitimate son or let it all go to my brother. I should hate to have a weak, mindless, feeble child, which could never happen if Regina were its mother! So if, when my visit here ends, I go away to Scotland for some weeks, as I must do to look after my place, when I come back, you will marry me, will you not?"

"If you wish it--yes," she murmured.

"The suffering, the sacrifices, the danger of maternity, that does not frighten you?"

"No, I am not afraid of anything, Everest."

He looked into her eyes, and in their blue depths he saw that cool, serene courage that he loved, that made his heart throb with admiration, with some sentiment which it was new for him to feel for a woman.

He wanted to tell her this, but he could not at the moment find words in which to define and express it; so in silence he kissed her again, where the sun darting through the leaves lighted up the pink down of her cheek, and, as is the way with lovers, all their talk melted into caresses, and their arguments became kisses, and every thought and emotion were soon merged into mere overwhelming delight in each other.

The golden hours went by, and nothing came to disturb them in their solitude until the evening light, a most gentle messenger, stole through the blossoms in a rosy glow, warning them that they must part.

Everest rose after one last strenuous passionate embrace, and as she saw him standing above her, his brilliant face flushed and smiling, his dark eyes kindling with elation, she felt that this life had given her her due, if it gave no more. When he had gone she lay still for a little while longer in the shadow.

"I was right to refuse to marry him. I am sure I was right. If he loves me he will still wish it. If not, it is I who will suffer, not he, and he will know--he must know now--that I only care about him, that I would die for his happiness," she thought vaguely, mistily, for she was tired and would have liked to stay there, half waking, half dreaming of him.

It was with a great effort that she got up a little later and walked slowly back to the Rectory.

With dressing for dinner and appearing reasonably conversational at the meal, Everest had not much time for quiet thought until late that night when he was going to bed. Then, as his mind reverted to the afternoon, the stupendous unselfishness of Regina's attitude came before him. If a girl refused such a marriage with a man to whom she was indifferent, the refusal would be remarkable for its negation of so much worldly good; but for one filled with intense and passionate desire for the man who offered it, such a refusal must need the most heroic courage, the greatest steadfastness of purpose, the highest fortitude, the acme of devotion. He sat in his room, absorbed in the contemplation of it, unable to go to bed, unable to sleep, feeling compelled to study this new light on a woman's love.

It was worth while conquering and winning and possessing a woman like that. All his blood glowed within him as he thought of the greatness of that character, the largeness and the splendour of that soul that had yielded to his influence, that had submitted so unquestioningly to him. He had been accustomed to view women somewhat as soft and pretty kittens, liable to scratch and bite sometimes in their little tempers, but, on the whole, caressable and lovable, charming to indulge and to fondle; but he had often thought vaguely how differently he could feel for another type, how glad he would be if a wild lioness, full of her splendid strength and mettle and independence, sprang across his path and became gentle and tame to him. Caressing a lioness he would like much better than stroking a kitten. And this now had actually happened! He knew that in Regina, under her soft and beautiful exterior, lay just those same wild, brave impulses, that contempt for the dangers of life, that enthusiasm for great things and emotions that burned within himself. The realisation that now he had made this soul his own, that, grand though it was, it now virtually knew no law except his will and his pleasure, seemed to send waves of fire through his whole being.

When he at last went to bed that night, it was only to dream of her as she had stood crowned with ruddy light in the garden.

The golden days of June slipped by swiftly, silently, vanishing into the past like radiant dreams, and while the rest of the household, in the sleepy, creeper-covered Rectory, led their ordinary, bovine existence of feeding and sleeping, varied by their unbovine petty quarrelling, these two at least lived a life of which every hour flew off to Eternity on gilded, flame-coloured wings. When two such deep and strong natures as Everest's and Regina's come together and mingle, the education to each, the interchange and interplay of emotion and feeling are very great. And as each lovely day of sunshine, or gentle silver rain, or turbulent grey cloud wrought imperceptible changes in the nature round them, added different notes to the nightingales' songs, unclosed new roses and ripened fresh blossom on the lime and chestnuts, ardently leading onward and upward to the glorious perfection of midsummer, so did each day work mysteriously and enchantingly on the passion and intimacy of these two, unfolding fresh impulses, new thoughts, striking hidden chords, unveiling deep recesses.

This period for them was different in its gentle and subtle teaching, in its gradual drawing away of the sacred veil that floats before the face of passion, from the conventional honeymoon with its abrupt and violent candour, its sudden wrenching down of all the delicate curtains of mystery, of idealism, of poetical fancy which fall round the shrine of love. In a honeymoon the two lovers are flung suddenly into incessant contact, absolute isolation with each other, from which they cannot escape, as one might push a couple of prisoners into a cell. Every obstacle, every bar between them that has till now raised their passion to divine heights is removed. Every duty, every work from which either has been accustomed to receive moral stimulus and support, is laid aside, every diversion, every amusement and occupation taken away. Night and day, without change, without rest, they are thrust into each other's arms. Is it surprising that when the moon is past so few have anything but utter satiety to show for it?--that the wonderful flame of love that lives on excitement, danger, privation, romance, difficulties, should for ever be quenched and put out?--leaving the travellers to wander on down the narrow lane of marriage without its sparkling, radiant light to guide them in its dark places.

Everest and Regina could never meet except by the overcoming of difficulties, by planning, by suffering, between periods of eager waiting, and when they met the parting was never far off, the possibility of discovery, of interruption always present. So the wild pleasure of their first embrace lived in all the others, and their passion for each other increased, as a fire blazes all the more fiercely for a little water thrown on to it and other futile attempts to extinguish it. For the girl, life had suddenly turned into the mazes of a glorious dream. Her ordinary existence of hard work, of study, stood still. She mixed with the rest of the family and did such tasks and duties as were required of her, exactly as a well-regulated machine would have done, her real life for herself began and ended only in the garden. She was glad that she had always spent so much time there, in solitude and away from the others: it made her absences from home now less noticeable.

She would start for the garden the moment after luncheon, and walk with the books, that were never opened, clasped to her as usual, through the hot, silent noonday slowly towards the sea. She loved to reach the garden and be there before Everest, so that she might have time to think and dream there, of him alone. At this scorching hour there was such a deep silence in the thick green shades. The birds were quiet, taking their noontime rest after their ceaseless labours since the first grey light of dawn; the doves even sat puffed and voiceless in and about their cotes; her own light step on the sandy paths was the only sound. How lovely it was to go on, past the lilac bushes, of which the blossom was now over, but the leaves were still fair in their smooth, neat green, between the round and bunchy may-trees, most of them still laden with their pink and white snow and under the hanging veils of gold of the laburnum, until she reached the green turf beneath the palm, where the roses, so luxuriant in their June growth, no longer stood, as in the winter, like girls waiting for their partners, but joined hands with each other and danced merrily, nodding a thousand blooms as the light breath of summer passed over them. Here she would sit quietly, feeling her heart beating tumultuously at the thought that he was coming to find her there, that she would see the foliage part and the roses give way as the slim, beautiful figure came towards her, the green shade and gold light alternately falling on him. She was never quite sure that he would come. There was always that breathless uncertainty about it that is so painful and yet so delicious. Anything might occur at home that would make it impossible for him to insist on going out alone, and very often it did happen that he was kept and delayed at the last moment, and Regina waited and waited, trembling under the roses, her cheek flushing and paling, her bosom broken up by her heart-beats, until the intensity of longing and hoping and fearing became such that when he did appear she would fall into his arms in a passion of weeping from relief and delight.

But the moments before he came and before she began to fear that he would not come, while the hour was still early, and she sat there awaiting him in her pretty fresh dress, knowing that she was lovely as the flowers themselves in the tender light beneath the trees, were very dear to her. She lost herself in golden, glowing dreams of the future: she would be with him; they would wander together in those wonderful places where he loved to go; she would be beside him, and perhaps danger would come upon him and she would be able to protect him, save him; perhaps she would have the supreme privilege of dying for him. She would give up her life, oh, how gladly, in shielding him from pain or hurt; but what spoiled the happiness of this dream was the knowledge that Everest must suffer by her death, and yet that idea was delicious too, and she saw into his nature so well, she knew that he too would think nothing of his life if called upon to give it for her. Fortunately, dreams are not exacting, they do not make demands upon our logic. They lull us, soothe us and shut us in with rosy mists and lead us gently along soft, golden ways.

Sometimes all night she could not sleep for the joy of thinking of the morrow, and all the morning she could not read, nor paint, nor play for thinking of the afternoon and looking forward to the moment when she might take her way through the sleepy Rectory garden to the highroad and the sea.

Love is always wonderful, and to a woman always beautiful and entrancing, no matter what the guise in which it comes, or what the time or circumstances. If it comes to her late, when her face has lines in it which cause her agony lest her lover should perceive them, if her lover himself is a very imperfect specimen of humanity, that even her blinded eyes are offended by, even then love still gives her pleasure; but in Regina's case all of her love's setting and circumstance was as lovely as love itself and her joy was unclouded, exquisite, complete. Radiant in her eighteen years, she had no burden of deceit or cares or fears; she could lift her face to Everest and know there was nothing there, nor in her heart, that she dreaded him to find, and in his countenance bending over her there was that beauty, that perfection that gives rapture to the eyes as a melody does to the ears. Often returning from the garden, through the sweet-scented meadows in the long, light evenings, those calm evenings of the English summer which seem to carry madness to the blood of youth, after a long and happy afternoon spent with him, it seemed to her as if her head was light with joy, as if her brain or heart must burst with the excited happiness of loving and being loved by such a man as this.

In the soft violet dark that gathers under the limes, she would stand still, drinking in the fragrance of all the grasses rising from the cooling earth and listening to the triumphant laugh of the cuckoo when he found at last his mate in the thorn thicket beside her, and the call of the nightingale and all the hundred lesser voices of the wood, each summoning its mate, and would realise slowly in awed wonder that she too now was sharing in the great universal joy of the world. Sometimes also when she was with the others, and should have kept her mind free from all private thought, irresistibly the memory of some hour in the sheltered garden would come over her with such force that it absolutely shut her brain and senses to surrounding things. Once at the luncheon-table her father addressed her as she sat towards the other end and her ears were so sealed that she did not hear his voice, her eyes so fixed on the vision they saw that the figures round her, the wonder growing on all their faces as she sat immovable, like one suddenly deaf and blind, did not exist for her. It was only the sense of touch that remained true to its post, guarding the body, whence for the moment the mind, on Memory's wings, had fled. When her sister Violet tugged at her arm to rouse her she started, and came back to herself to find the whole table gazing upon her with various degrees of amusement and surprise. She flushed scarlet, to herself the blood seemed to get into her very eyes and burn.

"Father has spoken to you three times," remarked Violet, "you seem quite deaf." Regina apologised, beneath her drooping lashes over her burning cheeks her eyes took a glance at Everest opposite her. He was smiling too. He could well guess where her thoughts had been.

After that she tried hard never to think of all this wonderful inner life she was living, except when alone, but Love was sometimes insistent and far stronger than she, and she could not always shut the door of her thoughts upon him. So one day when she was obliged to go to the village on a mission for her mother, instead of to the garden, she lost her purse, and the eighteen shillings in it, and could never remember where it slipped from her hand, though she had never lost or forgotten it in her life before.

And to Everest, also, this time was very full of emotion, charged with an intensity of feeling that was new to him, although he kept his wits about him at luncheon and did not lose his purse. There were times for him, too, when he could think of nothing but Regina, when the image of the girl came before him with an insistence that would not be denied, and swept whatever he was doing aside and claimed him for its own. He longed to have her with him and for himself; he hated the long separations that now intervened often between their meetings, though they were in reality very good for him and helped to make the supreme delight of those moments in the garden.

The day of his departure came at length and his face grew pale and his heart beat painfully when he awoke at dawn and realised he had to leave her. It was arranged that the Rector and the two elder girls should drive him over to Stossop station in the landau, Regina being left out, as usual, of any general programme. She did not mind--their real good-byes had been exchanged yesterday under the whispering trees of the garden. An exceptionally lovely day, it was like the centre jewel on Summer's forehead in her diadem of wondrous days and nights. Warm and golden, without wind or cloud, it seemed to bless the lovers as they met in the deep hush of the sheltered spot and walked slowly, side by side, down the little narrow winding paths covered in by aloe and tamarisk and climbing giant rose towards the balustrade above the sea. How vital and life-giving was its warm salt breath as it met their faces, stealing up through the thickets, talking to them of its cool, seaweed-filled caves, of its still green pools teeming with infinite life; and at last they came in sight of it, calm and deeply purple, swaying and heaving gently as a maiden's bosom, under a rosy golden haze, softly, very softly, traced in delicate lilac against the evening sky lay the outlines of the hills across the bay; colour and light were jewel-like in their transparency. They approached the porphyry railing; but Regina could not look at the soft loveliness of the scene, she could only gaze up at him, so soon to be taken from her. Oh, the ache of that parting now it had come so near. She could have gone with him, claimed him openly, spared herself all pain. He had wished it, offered it. With a single word now she could be free from suffering, she could keep by his side. For a moment it seemed to her she must speak that word; but no, she held to her strength with both hands. Better to let him go free, better to prove to him the quality, the selflessness of her love, better to leave her fate in his hands. So she was silent, and only continued to gaze and gaze on the outline of his head, dark against the glowing sky. They leant there silent, each thinking of the first day when they had stood there, before their pact was made for meeting in solitude, before the influence of the garden had made them each other's and its own. But there was no bitterness, no regret in the thought of either. Their union had been full of magic beauty, of divine rapture, as if it had been in the Elysian fields, and they would not either of them have wished it in any way different.

When he drew her gently from the balustrade, and they turned inward again to the dark, close-roofed-in, leafy recesses of the garden, they were talking earnestly with beating hearts of the life that might spring from those dear glad hours there, and in a tiny glade, where the turf was like velvet and the great tamarisk-trees twisting and intertwining their thick branches overhead made a perfect roof, and the may-trees stood so thickly round that the nightingales were already singing there in the soft green dusk, he pressed her close to him and said one sentence that burnt into her brain and remained there as if stamped in with fire.

"If you know it when I am away from you, do not feel frightened or oppressed, dear one. I should hate you to feel that; write to me at once, that I may arrange for you to come to me, and for our marriage, and remember, it is my dearest wish."

Regina listened, pale, her bosom fluttering with emotion, a little overawed, but the next moment she was clinging to him passionately, trying to tell him how deep, how infinite her love for him was, and nothing could frighten her: she would only be intensely, wildly glad when she knew. The hour passed golden-edged, full of tumultuous happiness, and when at last Everest left her and walked away down the silent green road, full now of ruby light, he realized that, crowded as his life had been with experience, adventure, emotion, yet here in this garden behind him the greatest thing of all had happened to him: he had seen Divinity itself. Eros with his rainbow wings had descended to him there. To-day he was going. A subdued sadness was visible in the whole party. Only Violet, the middle sister, seemed indifferent. The Rector was kind and genial as usual, but Mrs. Marlow and Jane were notably pale and silent.

Regina stood at the Rectory door beside her mother to see the carriage start. His luggage had been sent to the station previously. Jane and Violet, in their delicate dresses, their large and shady hats, got in, and Regina thought how lovely they looked--like flowers themselves in the bright sunshine. Then he came out of the house and shook hands with her mother, and said how much he had enjoyed his visit. He was in the travelling suit she had first seen him in. He was holding his hat, and the sun poured down on his thick, dark hair and the clear pale bronze of the perfectly modelled face. He was quite calm and natural in his bearing, and Regina knew it was due to them both that she should appear so too; as he turned to her and held out his hand she felt all the blood surge violently to her heart; she was as pale as white stone, otherwise not a tremor passed over her face as she gave a little smile and said good-bye, laying her hand in his. His firm warm fingers closed over it instantly, and the quick, close, iron pressure of it told her many things, and seemed to give her nerve-force and courage. He was in the carriage. Then the Rector entered, and in a few moments more the white dust of the road was rising in a cloud as the carriage rolled out on it from the Rectory garden.

Mrs. Marlow and Regina turned slowly back into the house. It seemed very still and quiet, the very air seemed to hang more heavily and with less movement now the essentially vital personality of Everest had gone. The doors of his rooms stood open as they passed by--the scent of the roses that he had always had on his table came out to them.

They passed on to Mrs. Marlow's sitting-room, which lay at the back of the Rectory, with a bow window looking out on to the garden.

"Are you going out, mother?" asked Regina, "or shall we have tea together?"

"No; I have no engagements this afternoon. Come in, and we'll have tea here. It will be late before the others get back."

Tea was brought in, and Regina, seated in the deep bay of the window, watched her mother pour it out.

"I am very sorry Mr. Lanark did not take a fancy to either of the girls," she remarked; "it would have been a splendid match for them."

"Perhaps he would if they had been more clever," hazarded Regina, in a low tone.

"Beauty is always supposed to be the great thing in a woman."

"Yes, the beauty attracts, but it does not rivet the chain it throws round the beholder. It is something else, mind or talent, that does that. In all the histories of the _grandes passions_ of the world the woman has had a certain amount of beauty, of course, but she has _always_ been clever too."

Mrs. Marlow looked up, surprised. Regina stirred her tea absently, gazing out into the sunlit garden.

"Well, he ought to have proposed to marry you, then," Mrs. Marlow said smilingly, without for an instant dreaming that was just what Everest had done. "You are clever enough and very pretty too."

Regina flushed rose-red and laughed. But when tea was over and she slipped away, her face was very sad again. She passed Everest's rooms on her way to her own and went in there. They stood in perfect order, just as they had been while he was in them. She took all the roses from the vases, the flowers she knew he had gathered and looked after himself, and took them away with her and went up slowly to her room. There she stood at the window looking out. It was the last day of June. He had been with them not quite a month. Three weeks she had had of absolute, unclouded happiness. There are a few human beings who can claim that much out of the whole of their life. Now, whatever the result, whatever the price she had to pay, she would never regret, never wish one moment of that perfect time obliterated.

Day after day passed slowly by, and to the girl, after that tremendous expenditure of energy, that intense excitement, it seemed as if her life literally stood still. In the soft, sombre quiet of the monotonous Rectory days she seemed to herself to have been wrapped up in cotton wool and buried. Was it possible that people like her sleepy sister Violet, and all the other twenty-eight unmarried ladies of Stossop, could go on existing like this, twenty--thirty--forty years, their whole life? Like flashes of hot light shot from a distant furnace came Everest's letters to her; they seemed to illumine the twilight of her quiet tomb. She went to the garden whenever it was fine, and sat there and dreamed of him beneath the waving trees, or hung over the balustrade looking down on to the sea, listening to its vital whispers and picturing his image in its deep purple mirrors. Her brain felt too tired to read or to learn, she neither played nor painted any more.

For the time he became her life.