VI
“If I'm to be made the arbiter of other destinies when my own are more than I can manage” (they were dallying over figs and apricots at breakfast)—“pray, you two good people tell me, kindly, when shall we begin to throw our bonnets over the mill? In other words, on what day and in what month do we start in search of Winter in the North?” Ruth enquired, to a feint of cheerfulness and little dreaming.
“Oh, to-morrow—To-morrow, if you like,” jerked Pontycroft. “Wait not upon the order of your going, but start at once.”
“Start to-morrow!” Lucilla cried, “start to-morrow? Impossible.”
“Why impossible? Nothing is impossible. Ruth wants to go. She said so last night, she more than hints it, to-day. What woman wants, God wants.” Oblivious to the truth that a woman, his sister, panted to remain, Pontycroft glanced at the newspaper at his elbow. “A steamer sails from Genoa tomorrow afternoon, the Princess Irene. I'll go down to Humbert's this moment as ever is,” he added, “and have them wire for a deck cabin.”
“No, no,” protested Lucilla. “Why leave all this loveliness at once? Impossible! Besides, we have people coming to dinner tomorrow,” she remembered hopefully. “Thursday. The Newburys and young Worthington. We can't put them off.”
“We can, and we shall,” asseverated Ponty. “There's nothing so dreadful, Lucilla, as these long superfluous drawn-out farewells, these impending good-byes. Send Pietro, if you like, to say we've all responded to a call of duty. Tell your friends in all charity, that when duty calls the wise youth replies: 'I won't.' Why?... Because he knows that nine times out of ten duty is only what somebody else thinks he ought to be doing. But tell them duty's only skin deep, by way of advice. Tell them one's response to duty is generally the mere weak living up to somebody else's good opinion of one. Say to them: 'Vanity, vanity, all is vanity.' But say that in this case it's otherwise—we're not wise, and we've answered with one accord: 'I will.' Say to them that therein lies our folly.—We're exceedingly sorry—sorry, but we must be off. It shall be a seven days' wonder, Florence shall have something to talk about. She needs brisking up. Ruth, I'm off to engage your passage. The sooner you go, the sooner you'll come back to tell us all about it,—tell us whether the play was worth the candle.”
Ponty rang for his stick and his hat, lighted the inevitable cigarette.
“Paolina will pack you up, Ruth, if she has to keep busy until midnight,” he directed, between two puffs. “Lucilla, Pietro can help Maria with your paraphernalia; when I'm back here with our tickets he'll be half through the packing. Lazy duffer though he be, once he begins, he's rapid as radium.” Ponty was gone before either Lucilla or Ruth could protest.
They looked at one another.... What ludicrous extravagance of sudden breaking up! This high-handed method of bringing matters summarily to a climax struck them both. Lucilla and Ruth broke into peals of laughter.
The irresponsible sun glared—into their eyes—played, flamboyant among the glass and silverware of the breakfast table; it winked in prismatic rays from crystal angles of honey pots and threw its splashes of blinding light over the damask table cloth, borrowing rosy tints from a mass of pink geranium in a bowl of Nagasaki ware. It glanced at all the polished surfaces of the old carved oak furniture; the room was one flagrant and joyous outburst of morning sunlight, the garden an invitation to come out, come out and play, and enjoy life from its inception! Elusive, dewy, odorous lovelinesses rested upon it, mounted from it, entreated you to step under the trees, wander among growing tender things, bathed all in a dew and glister. And called to you to come and loiter,—and mark the passage of Aurora and her maidens, hours ago.
“It's just a trifle odd to be swept off one's feet in this whoop-and-begone-with-you manner,” Ruth, with half a laugh, half a sob, commented. “Maugre the thing's to be sooner rather than later, Lucilla, I can't see though why my going should mean yours, too!”
“Dear infant,” Lucilla answered, tenderly, “don't worry.... Whatever should Ponty and myself do here alone? We'd get on one another's nerves in a week and part in a temper. Since things have happened as they have, things are better as they are; leave them to hammer out their own salvation. Things, I find, are very like the little sheep in Mother Goose. You let them alone and they come home, wagging their tails behind them.... But oh, oh, oh,” sighed Lucilla, “how I adore this! How I would stay here forever! It is a blow,” her voice was vibrant of regret.... “But, of course, Harry's right, he's always right. Shall we obey orders?”
“Y—es,” said Ruth. She felt a tightening at her heart, a sudden lump in her throat. The glory of the October morning had all at once departed.... A decided glamour enveloped the project of a visit to her uncle. Moreover, her heart drew her to him. The fine sense of an affront she must fly from had, too, gathered strength in the night; the indignity put upon her by Bertram's letter she must resent. Her pride protested fiercely, she must retaliate even though Ponty should express to Bertram her thanks with refusal of the honour conferred upon her. But now these emotions were quelled by an unspeakable depression, a loneliness, a sense of isolation, of dread, a dread of the Unknown.... The dread swept her off her feet. Dread of something more, too.... How was she,—how was she, Ruth Adgate,—to live away from these two people? To-morrow would mark the beginning of an ocean rolled up between her old life and the new one she would be journeying towards. To-morrow! to-morrow! To-morrow would see the end, for how many, many dreary months, of this beauty laden, gracious existence; the camaraderie of these two people whom she had reason to love best in the world, at whose side she had grown up,—Lucilla and Henry Pontycroft, whom she understood, who understood her! Instinctively, she felt she was electing for herself a grimmer fate, a sterner life and land, than any she had known, could dimly divine....
Yes, the glory of the April morning had departed into chill and nothingness. It might have already been December though it was only October, and Pontycroft had gone to buy her ticket. The first, the irremediable step was taken. She must put the best face she could upon this adventure of her choice.
Lucilla, to whom Ruth and her thoughts were transparent as flies in amber, put her arms about her neck.
“Ruth,” she whispered, “it's because he can't bear the parting, the thought of it. It's going to be a horrible break for him. What we'll either of us do when you're no longer within reach, when you are no longer part of our daily life, I can't imagine. I can't imagine any of it without you, and neither of us will want this, without you.”
Ruth's eyes glowed. Bending forward she kissed Lucilla, and they marched away, arm-inarm, to do their packing.