"Hopeless vulgarian!" exclaimed Cecil, almost before they were out of earshot,"Oh, Cecil!""I can't help it. It would be wrong not to loathe that man.""He isn't clever, but really he is nice.""No, Lucy, he stands for all that is bad in country life. In London he would keep his place. He would belong to a brainless club, and his wife would give brainless dinner parties. But down here he acts the little god with his gentility, and his patronage, and his sham aesthetics, and every one--even your mother--is taken in.""All that you say is quite true," said Lucy, though she felt discouraged. "I wonder whether--whether it matters so very much.""It matters supremely. Sir Harry is the essence of that garden-party. Oh, goodness, how cross I feel! How I do hope he'll get some vulgar tenant in that villa--some woman so really vulgar that he'll notice it. GENTLEFOLKS! Ugh! with his bald head and retreating chin! But let's forget him."This Lucy was glad enough to do. If Cecil disliked Sir Harry Otway and Mr. Beebe, what guarantee was there that the people who really mattered to her would escape? For instance, Freddy.
Freddy was neither clever, nor subtle, nor beautiful, and what prevented Cecil from saying, any minute, "It would be wrong not to loathe Freddy"? And what would she reply? Further than Freddy she did not go, but he gave her anxiety enough. She could only assure herself that Cecil had known Freddy some time, and that they had always got on pleasantly, except, perhaps, during the last few days, which was an accident, perhaps.
"Which way shall we go?" she asked him.
Nature--******st of topics, she thought--was around them. Summer Street lay deep in the woods, and she had stopped where a footpath diverged from the highroad.
"Are there two ways?"
"Perhaps the road is more sensible, as we're got up smart.""I'd rather go through the wood," said Cecil, With that subdued irritation that she had noticed in him all the afternoon. "Why is it, Lucy, that you always say the road? Do you know that you have never once been with me in the fields or the wood since we were engaged?""Haven't I? The wood, then," said Lucy, startled at his queerness, but pretty sure that he would explain later; it was not his habit to leave her in doubt as to his meaning.
She led the way into the whispering pines, and sure enough he did explain before they had gone a dozen yards.
"I had got an idea--I dare say wrongly--that you feel more at home with me in a room.""A room?" she echoed, hopelessly bewildered.
"Yes. Or, at the most, in a garden, or on a road. Never in the real country like this.""Oh, Cecil, whatever do you mean? I have never felt anything of the sort. You talk as if I was a kind of poetess sort of person.""I don't know that you aren't. I connect you with a view--a certain type of view. Why shouldn't you connect me with a room?"She reflected a moment, and then said, laughing:
"Do you know that you're right? I do. I must be a poetess after all. When I think of you it's always as in a room. How funny!"To her surprise, he seemed annoyed.
"A drawing-room, pray? With no view?"
"Yes, with no view, I fancy. Why not?"
"I'd rather," he said reproachfully, "that connected me with the open air."She said again, "Oh, Cecil, whatever do you mean?"As no explanation was forthcoming, she shook off the subject as too difficult for a girl, and led him further into the wood, pausing every now and then at some particularly beautiful or familiar combination of the trees. She had known the wood between Summer Street and Windy Corner ever since she could walk alone;she had played at losing Freddy in it, when Freddy was a purple-faced baby; and though she had been to Italy, it had lost none of its charm.
Presently they came to a little clearing among the pines--another tiny green alp, solitary this time, and holding in its bosom a shallow pool.
She exclamed, "The Sacred Lake!"
"Why do you call it that?"
"I can't remember why. I suppose it comes out of some book. It's only a puddle now, but you see that stream going through it?
Well, a good deal of water comes down after heavy rains, and can't get away at once, and the pool becomes quite large and beautiful. Then Freddy used to bathe there. He is very fond of it.""And you?"
He meant, "Are you fond of it?" But she answered dreamily, "Ibathed here, too, till I was found out. Then there was a row."At another time he might have been shocked, for he had depths of prudishness within him. But now? with his momentary cult of the fresh air, he was delighted at her admirable simplicity. He looked at her as she stood by the pool's edge. She was got up smart, as she phrased it, and she reminded him of some brilliant flower that has no leaves of its own, but blooms abruptly out of a world of green.
"Who found you out?"
"Charlotte," she murmured. "She was stopping with us. Charlotte--Charlotte."
"Poor girl!"
She smiled gravely. A certain scheme, from which hitherto he had shrank, now appeared practical.
"Lucy!"
"Yes, I suppose we ought to be going," was her reply.
"Lucy, I want to ask something of you that I have never asked before."At the serious note in his voice she stepped frankly and kindly towards him.
"What, Cecil?"
"Hitherto never--not even that day on the lawn when you agreed to marry me--"He became self-conscious and kept glancing round to see if they were observed. His courage had gone.
"Yes?"
"Up to now I have never kissed you."
She was as scarlet as if he had put the thing most indelicately.
"No--more you have," she stammered.
"Then I ask you--may I now?"
"Of course, you may, Cecil. You might before. I can't run at you, you know."At that supreme moment he was conscious of nothing but absurdities. Her reply was inadequate. She gave such a business-like lift to her veil. As he approached her he found time to wish that he could recoil. As he touched her, his gold pince-nez became dislodged and was flattened between them.
Such was the embrace. He considered, with truth, that it had been a failure. Passion should believe itself irresistible. It should forget civility and consideration and all the other curses of a refined nature. Above all, it should never ask for leave where there is a right of way. Why could he not do as any labourer or navvy--nay, as any young man behind the counter would have done? He recast the scene. Lucy was standing flowerlike by the water, he rushed up and took her in his arms; she rebuked him, permitted him and revered him ever after for his manliness. For he believed that women revere men for their manliness.
They left the pool in silence, after this one salutation. He waited for her to make some remark which should show him her inmost thoughts. At last she spoke, and with fitting gravity.
"Emerson was the name, not Harris."
"What name?"
"The old man's."
"What old man?"
"That old man I told you about. The one Mr. Eager was so unkind to."He could not know that this was the most intimate conversation they had ever had.