Chapter Sixteen.
The Die is Cast.
“Rather perfect? I should just think it was,” cries Olive, gazing around. “Confess now, you hardened cynic, that in all your wanderings you never saw anything so perfectly lovely as this.”
“I’ll own up readily enough. I never did,” is her companion’s reply.
“But—you are not looking at it,” turning to find that his glance has been fixed upon herself while he spoke, and colouring softly at the discovery.
“Oh, yes, I am. I repeat, I never saw anything so perfectly lovely as this. What a distrustful little article it is, to require so much reassuring!” and his hand, which has been toying with her small fingers, closes upon them with a fond pressure, as looking straight into her eyes he repeats her words.
From their heathery resting-place on the summit of Minchkil Beacon, they gaze idly upon the glories of the panorama unfolded beneath and around. The great slopes of the downs are gorgeous with flaming gorse and crimson heather. A rich summer haze lying over the landscape adds distance to meadow and woodland, alternating in many an undulating roll—the latter just perceptibly assuming its first autumnal tints; and cosy homesteads, nestling among their sheltering trees, look doubly snug and prosperous as contrasted with their counterparts of the upland farms, whose corn-ricks and a few stunted firs form the only shade. Villages, too, and tiny hamlets, dropped about, as it were. Frondesham, beyond the lofty steeple of Wandsborough Church, which latter rises above that long, grassy ridge as if refusing to be hidden, and on the further side of the valley, the hamlets of Cranston and Ardleigh; the mile and a half of straight, dusty road connecting them looking like a mere streak of whitewash—and, higher up, Cranston Hall, half hidden in its noble park.
And turning to seaward—space. The broad expanse of limitless sea, far down, four hundred feet beneath—blue and placid as the firmament overhead. Two or three brown specks—fishing boats lying with listless sails—are the only signs of life upon its motionless waters. Not even a gull is on the wing, and the wavelets have forgotten to break on the shingly beach. The sun drives on his flaming chariot, slowly, slowly towards the west, and the great cliffs of the bold coastline reflect his lengthening rays in many a ruddy gleam—Hadden’s Slide, and beyond, Smugglers’ Ladder, a black fissure, rending the whole face of the cliff from brow to base. Then on the other side The Skegs, tranquil, and forgetting to look grim and dour, as they start sleepily from their setting of still, blue water—and above them the lofty headland where looms the grey tower of Durnley Castle—a mouldering ruin. Farther and farther recedes the outline of the rugged coast, in rocky bay and bold promontory, with here a strip of shingle, there a line of seaweed-covered reefs, till it loses itself in a faint confusion of distant blue.
It is golden August now—rich, glowing, sensuous, lovely August—when summer, as if suddenly awaking to a sense of opportunities neglected and to the consciousness that her days are nearly numbered, would fain crowd all her accumulated glories into the few yet remaining to her, pouring out her choicest gifts with a lavish hand, as though anxious that we should think kindly of her when she is no more, by virtue of her sudden repentance and amendment at the eleventh hour.
Should you, while taking your walks abroad some fine summer’s day, chance, unexpectedly, and in a secluded spot, to light upon about six foot of Young England taking it remarkably easy in a reclining attitude among the soft and fragrant heather; and should you, moreover, descry seated in very close juxtaposition to Young England aforesaid, a sweetly pretty girl, occupied mainly in dividing the shelter of her sunshade with the male and recumbent head, while listening attentively to words of wisdom—or the reverse—emanating from the male lips; you would, we trow, if of a kindly disposition, retire as you came, leaving the idyllic pair undisturbed. If of a cynical turn you would, we trow, chuckle, as you went, over one more instance of human fatuity. But whatever your nature you would decide that affairs between this particular couple had gone tolerably far.
Well—and so they had.
There are, we take it, about three ways which lead to what the provincial reporter delights to term “the hymeneal altar.” The first is the ordinary “proposal,” wherein John is conventionally supposed to sue humbly for the privilege of maintaining Mary for the term of her natural life, eke Mary’s prospective lineal descendants in any number—not exceeding seventeen—peradventure with a mother-in-law thrown in, and to count life as not worth living, in the event of these multifold advantages—we will not call them liabilities—being denied him. The second may be termed the extraordinary “proposal,” wherein the overtures are precisely the other way about, barring, it may be, the maintenance condition and the mother-in-law; and this, by the bye, is not so uncommon as Mrs Grundy affects to believe. The third differs in toto from the other two, in that it does not deal with “proposals” at all, but is the result of evolution—taking rise in a tacit and intangible understanding, and culminating in an arrangement neither more nor less definite than any entente à deux can be said ever to be. This way, on the face of it, is the most risky of the three, but it has its advantages.
Whatever its risks, however, just such an understanding exists between the pair whom we find alone here on the summit of Minchkil Beacon. Roy, curled up there among the heather and apparently asleep, will take good care that the intruding steps of any afternoon wayfarer shall not approach unsignalled—and meanwhile to all purposes these two have the world to themselves.
“Am I distrustful?” says Olive softly, in comment on her companion’s last remark.
“No, you’re not,” is the vehement reply, “but I am. I thought you were never coming back, and was very nearly going up to Town myself. Now look here. I can’t let you go again!”
“But I must go again,” she objected demurely, but with a flash of mirth in her dark eyes. “I shall have to go soon, too.”
“You shan’t.” His hand closes, on hers, as if the prohibition was to be put in force at that moment and by physical agency.
“Diddums teasums then!” says the girl in tones of mock soothing, passing her little hand over his forehead and hair caressingly. “You know, dear, I like sometimes to arouse the savage in your composition. It amuses me, because I can send him back into his shell in a minute. But it’s all very well. You had a very good time of it while I was away. At Ardleigh, for instance!”
For all answer he laughs—quietly, almost inarticulately, as a man will laugh over some proposition manifestly, absurdly preposterous.
“That’s all very well, but I hear the Nevilles are very delightful people, and—”
“Broomsticks.”
”—And Clara and Maud, you know, were very sweet to you, and Isabel Pagnell—”
”—And Mother Frewen, and Miss Munch and Mrs Bunch. Go on. Run through the whole list—of broomsticks.”
“And then you used to have snug talks with Margaret over the fire on wet afternoons, and I don’t believe poor little me was missed a bit. Margaret can be very entertaining when she likes.”
“A broomstick!”
“Mr Dorrien! That’s rude.”
“Excessively. But in evoking the latent barbarian, for whom you just now expressed—er—a flattering partiality—you have once more provided yourself with further amusement.”
Her only answer is a merry laugh, and for a few minutes neither speak. The whirr of a reaping machine—for the early harvest has already begun—and the sound of reapers’ voices is borne up from the valley, with now and then the barking of a farmhouse dog. The rallying note of a covey of scattered partridges, the distant cawing of rooks, and the hum of bees gathering their stores from the cells of the blossoming heather, all blend into a luxurious harmony, well in keeping with the still witchery of the waning afternoon. They are outside the world, for the time being, these two—away in a cloudland of their own, bounded by the purple heather around and the sapphire sea below, the ordinary considerations of mere prosaic, everyday life as far removed as the distant sights and sounds in the valley beneath. Stay, though. One of them cannot altogether shut out these obtrusive considerations. Roland, cool and cynical beyond his years, cannot forget that the brightest picture has its reverse side, and that there will be a morrow to this cloudless day of radiance and of love.
He has striven to cherish a vague and desperate hope that something may occur tending to smooth matters—yet it is hardly likely. That unlucky stay at Ardleigh—how far back it looked now—seemed somehow to have committed him to the fulfilment of his father’s wish; in the latter’s eyes, that is, for he stood committed in nobody else’s. Moreover, as General Dorrien’s hints on the subject grew plainer, so did his animosity towards the Ingelows increase, and this to such a pitch that more than once a terrible rupture was imminent, as Roland found himself compelled to listen to his father’s violent and unreasoning tirades. Still, he managed to conceal his feelings. But every hour confirmed him in the certainty that the day he decisively announced his intention of running counter to his father’s cherished scheme, that day would see him disinherited.
And now a sweet, serious look has come over Olive’s face, and it seems as if the bright, merry-hearted girl had been changed, all in a minute, into a tender, thoughtful, loving woman, who knew the world and its sorrows well.
“Darling?” she exclaims softly. “There is something I want to say to you, and I don’t quite know how to say it; however, I must try. I have been thinking so much lately whether you are not making a great mistake—whether I have any right to let you risk your future, whether it would not have been much better for you had we never met. Wait—don’t interrupt—let me say all, it’s difficult enough, Heaven knows. Why should you imperil your interests and perhaps be for ever separated from others you love—and all for me? Why should I bring sorrow upon you? Roland, darling, think well of what I say. Remember it is not too late now. The day may come when you will look back upon this sweet—this beautiful time”—a quiver in her voice—“with nothing but bitterness. What then?”
Has her love for him at its climax given her a sudden and magical insight into the future? Is the time coming when he will remember her prophetic words—but their fulfilment, it may be, in a different sense to that in which they are uttered?
“What then?” is the vehement reply. “Only this, that—that”—(the strong, cool-headed man finds himself helplessly stuttering)—“that this understanding of ours—delicious as it is to have it all to ourselves—must become public property to-morrow. You must never be in a position to say such things to me again.”
“Oh, my darling! I am only thinking of you and your happiness.” Then, with a warm rush of feeling: “Can such a day as this ever come again in a lifetime? It is very foolish of me, but I have a presentiment that there is trouble before us, and that even now it would be better for you had we never met. I want you to do nothing in a hurry. Better to wait—to go on as we are—than to risk your prospects for me.”
He finds no great difficulty in reassuring her as they sit there in their golden lotus-dream, with all the glories of earth and air spreading around them. The busy world lies far beneath; here, silence and the evensong of birds, and the flood of dazzling sheen on the purple sea, as the sun dips down nearer and nearer to his liquid bed. Just then, in silvery chimes, distant yet clear, the bells of Wandsborough steeple ring out the Angelus.
Then they descend the heather-clad slope, and make their way through the dewy, silent fields. And now a great orb of fire touches the farther edge of the glowing sea, tingeing it blood-red, and the horizon is all aflame. A passing gleam, as a ray from an enchanted world, strikes broadly over hill and lea, then fades, leaving the earth in shadow, and the fragrant breaths of gathering night fall thickly around. There is a scent as of crushed roses in the air, and the grass is already wet with dew. The distant bark of a sheep-dog from an upland farm, the lowing of kine wending their way to the milking yard, the whistle of the reapers leaving their labour—only these sounds breaking musically now and again upon this stillness of rural peace.
So ends the day. But what of the morrow?