Chapter XXXI: ‘back to a World of Death’

They had taken horse for the moors all in the sweet sunrise, for Brion had set his heart on going round by the Glen, which would mean a thirty mile ride in all, and it was necessary for them to start with the dawn. And sure no sweeter Eos than this young bride of a night could have brought the morning over the hills, or given assurance of a lovelier day to come. She wore the rose of shy fulfilment in her cheek, and the heaven of happiness in her eyes; and Love went with her, beating his golden fans against the streaming air, and the purple blossom of the heather rose about her horse’s pasterns, trying to kiss her feet. She had deserved all her rapture for her faith, and, better, that test of womanliness, which was to prove her not only a thing for man’s joy, but for his support and refuge in affliction.

They stopped mid-way to water at a little spring, and eat the fruit and cakes they had brought with them; then pushed on and, gaining the heavenly glen about mid-day, tethered their horses to a tree, and in the soft October stillness climbed the side of the hill, and reached the bower. And there, as he had predetermined, Brion knelt at his dear love’s knee, and confessed, what he had hitherto withheld, the name of his sore temptation.

And she held him to her, stroking his hair and temples, yielding wholly to him the passion which the memories of that fragrant isolation stirred beyond repression.

‘My king, my love,’ she whispered: ‘it is only for poor Alse I sorrow--not thy thought. Could I grudge thee that, and not wrong her, who after all had the first claim on thee? And that dear Clerivault that so loved and desired her for thee. He knew what was right and honourable. How can I of myself ever make good to thee that bitter loss?’

‘My Joan,’ he said: ‘no loss to me in all the world could ever be like to that of losing thee; and no recovery so perfect. I am resigned to meeting Harlequin in Heaven: no Joan would have satisfied my endless longing but Joan on earth.’

A while they dwelt there in the bliss of kisses and soft speech; and then, at last, with a sigh, Brion rose and cried they must be going.

‘For home,’ he said--‘home with Joan: we are bringing our idyll home. We know not what awaits us, girl; but what we carry with us in ourselves, that must we find there. It will suffice us, whatever haps.’

They climbed down hand in hand, and regaining their cropping steeds, mounted and rode on. It took them no long while to cover the remaining distance, and by two o’clock they were entering into the first of the track which led towards the Moated Grange. As they drew near the point where its chimneys would first come into sight, a flutter of emotions arose in Brion’s breast. How was he returning, and to what, after six months’ silence and separation from these old familiar scenes? And with a wife no one of them knew or guessed? A sudden shyness of the explanatory rôle he had to play, in the midst of welcome and excitement, seized on him like a paralysis. Yet he felt no doubt as to Joan’s reception: they would all love her for his sake, and not least his Uncle, to whom her gentle winsome presence would appeal like sunshine breaking out of long storm.

The afternoon was very still and hazy, with a curious vaporous closeness in it, which seemed to meet their faces in hot whiffs, as when one stands near a wind-swayed bonfire. Brion sniffed, raising his head.

‘What is that?’ said he. ‘Are they burning heather? My faith, it is sultry here; and the insects they so hum and drone, one might be in a wood instead of the open. And yet ’tis not like insects neither.’

The murmur, or clamour, whatever it was, appeared all in front of them, and to swell in volume as they advanced. They could see nothing beyond the sloping track before them, and the trees which topped it. As they reached these, Brion pulled on his rein, bidding his companion stop.

‘Listen!’ he said.

The noise, with their reaching the level ground, had sensibly increased, as when a swell is opened in an organ. Busy, multitudinous, inarticulate, it seemed as if compounded of a confusion of human voices, and cracking whips, and hissing kettles, their shrill spasmodic utterance perpetually punctuating a dull booming roar which never ceased; but all in a minor key, as though subdued by distance, and the closeness of the high trees which here shut in the track.

‘What is it, Brion?’ whispered the girl fearfully.

Something caught the tail of his eye, and he looked up to see a drift of what he could not mistake scudding over the tree-tops.

‘I don’t know,’ he said. His face was suddenly set like death. ‘Stay where you are, Joan, while I go and see.’

He drove spurs into his horse, and, leaping forward, rushed the few score yards to the bend where the Grange would come into view. He was incredulous still: it would appear too impossible a devilry on the part of Fate to have struck this blow, and struck it coincidently with his return. Yet, even before he reached the bend, he knew that it was true--was true. The red sparkle of it, like a cluster of hellish jewels, blinked and snickered at him through the green leaves. And then the next moment he had broken into the open, and pulling up so sharply as almost to throw his horse back on its haunches, rose in his stirrups and saw. From base to attic the house was one streaming robe of flame.