The Heart of Penelope

by Marie Belloc Lowndes

I

That Sir George Downing should spend the last days of his sojourn in Dorset at Kingpole Farm, a seventeenth-century homestead, where, according to local tradition, Charles II. had spent a night in hiding during his hurried flight after the Battle of Worcester, had been Mrs. Robinson's wish and suggestion. He had welcomed the idea of leaving Monk's Eype with an eagerness which had pained her, though in her heart she was aware that she had thus devised a way out of what had become to them both a most difficult and false situation.

Very soon after Downing's arrival at Monk's Eype Penelope had become acutely conscious of the mistake she had made in asking him to come there. After painful moments spent with him—moments often of embarrassed silence—she had divined, with beating heart and flushed cheek, why all seemed to go ill between them during this time of waiting and of suspense, which she had actually believed would prove a prolongation of the halcyon, dream-like days that had followed their first meeting.

This beautiful, intelligent woman, with her strange half-knowledge of the realities of human life, and the less strange ignorances, which she kept closely hidden from those about her, had often received, especially in her 'Perdita' days, confidences which had inspired her with a deep distaste of those ignoble shifts and ruses which perforce so often surround a passion not in itself ignoble, or in any real sense impure.

She had been glad to assure herself that in this case—that of her own relation to Downing—nothing of the kind need sully the beginnings of what she believed with all her heart would be a noble and lifelong love-story. Accordingly, there had been a tacit pact as to the reserve and restraint which should govern their relations the one to the other during the few weeks of Downing's stay in England.

When the time came they would leave together openly, and with a certain measured dignity, but till then they would be friends, merely friends, not lovers.

But Mrs. Robinson had not considered it essential, or indeed desirable, that there should be no meeting in the interval, and she had seen no reason why her friend's schemes should not have what slender help was possible from the exercise of her woman's wits. Hence she had planned the meeting with David Winfrith; hence she had asked Downing to become one of her guests at Monk's Eype, and after some demur he had reluctantly obeyed.

During the days that had immediately followed his coming, days which saw Downing avoiding rather than seeking his hostess's presence, Penelope often pondered over the words, the first he had uttered when they had found themselves alone: 'I feel like a thief—nay, like a murderer—here!' Extravagant, foolish words, uttered by one whose restraint and wisdom had held for her from the first a curious fascination.

Alas! She knew now how ill-advised she had been to bring him to Monk's Eype, to place him in sharp juxtaposition with her mother, with her cousin Wantley, even with such a girl as Cecily Wake. The very simplicity of the life led by Mrs. Robinson's little circle of unworldly, simple-minded guests made intimate talk between herself and Downing difficult, the more so that feminine instinct kept few her visits to the Beach Room.

Now and again, however, a softened glance from the powerful lined face, a muttered word expressive of deep measureless feeling, the feel of his hand grasping hers, would suddenly seem to prove that everything was indeed as she wished it to be between them, and for a few hours she would feel, if not content, at least at peace.

But even then there was always the haunting thought that some extraneous circumstance—sometimes she wondered if it could have been any foolish, careless word said by Wantley—had modified the close intimacy of their relation.