I
Horace Lestrange was intent upon his occupation; he was throwing stones into the lake. He did it with skill and success; he made each stone jump four times, but he was using only his outer layer of attention; his inner self was turning over and over again a personal problem; he would have said he was thinking it out, but this was a mistake. The case was very plain and required no thought; he was only feeling it over, probing sensation to find how much weight it would bear, and at what point his heart would cry out to him to stop. Ten years ago he had lost his wife, after one year’s marriage. Perhaps, if she had lived, he would have grown tired of her; but she was very beautiful, and she had died when love was new and every golden day of her presence a thing divine and separate, intolerable to lose.
She had left him something; instead of her love and her ripened youth, she had given him a baby son; he had put the child in his sister’s care and gone abroad.
Annette used to go to church very devoutly, and Horace went to please her. He tried to suppose that Providence was in the right, but he said to his oldest friend (and this was the only comment he was heard to make upon his grief):
“It seems to me, Bambridge, love is rather a let in.”
Bambridge cleared his throat sympathetically.
“A deuced lot of things are,” he muttered.
Annette had always thought Bambridge rather cynical.
Time heals wounds, but it leaves scars. Ten years had done a great deal for Horace Lestrange. There was no mark of his great grief left; but although time works very well as a narcotic, it is not stimulating; it had not renewed Horace’s youth. He did not think of love now; he thought of marriage--comfortable, consoling marriage.
The girl who had suggested this idea to him was a thoroughly nice girl, pretty, well-educated, and kind-hearted. She had been very good to Horace; they had rowed on the lake together, and her ways were energetic without hardness, and swift with grace. They had climbed some of the surrounding peaks side by side, and she had shown admirable characteristics--quietness, pluck, instantaneous obedience, and endurance. She was a good companion (she challenged no comparison with Annette, who was helpless, clinging, and thoroughly silly, the kind of woman whom--if she dies soon enough--a man never forgets). Edith’s hair and eyes were dark; she had a full sweet mouth and a round chin. She was quite thirty and she wouldn’t expect romance. . . .
The last stone failed to jump four times; perhaps it didn’t agree with Horace that there is a time limit for romance.
“It would be an excellent thing for the boy,” said Lestrange, putting his hands in his pockets. “Etta of course is a good woman; clever, plenty of tact, but she is so managing. I never knew such a woman; she sponges one up. She has been everything to the little chap though for the last eight years. I hope he won’t make a fuss at leaving her. I don’t think he will; Edith is good with kids. Well, I’ll go and look her up.”
He went to look her up. She was usually easy to discover when Lestrange wanted her. She did not run after him, as a sillier woman would have done, neither did she run away from him, as young girls sometimes run from their lovers, but when he looked for her she was there. She sat under a big ilex tree on the terrace of the hotel garden. It was not easy to remember that it was an hotel, for once it had been an old Italian palace, and something of its ancient dignity remained. The lake lay at its foot, a vast and shimmering expanse of silver and azure. The mountains were half withdrawn into vague shadows; sometimes moonstone and sometimes purple, and when the wind blew aside their thin veil of mist, the sun shone over slopes vivid, luminous and green.
Around Edith Walton were huge bushes of camellias, red and white and very splendid. A mad riot of roses flung itself over a pergola. In the distance a magnolia tree slowly opened wonderful flowers to the sun--flowers that seemed like the birth of spiritual treasures, white cloistered buds filled with aromatic fragrance.
Edith sat quite still with her hands in her lap; there was something expectant in her appearance; it seemed part of the general hush. The wind had dropped suddenly and the tiny village lay embosomed on quivering water lines.
Edith knew who was coming towards her, as flowers know the quickening soft rain of spring, and as the ocean knows the dominance of the tides.
“You’ve got an awfully jolly corner,” said Lestrange rather awkwardly.
“There are so many awfully jolly corners here,” said Edith. Then she smiled at him, the tender smile of a woman who laughs in secret triumph at the man she loves; she lets him think he is concealing his purpose from her, but she smiles.
“I wish you weren’t going away to-morrow,” Lestrange began. He thought he was leading up to his goal with extraordinary skill and subtlety. “Must you really?”
Edith hesitated; he would have to put it better than that.
“I think my aunt has made all her arrangements,” she said. Then she looked away towards the lake over his shoulder. “I shall be sorry to leave--all this,” she murmured quietly.
“I don’t see why you can’t stay with me,” said Lestrange, sitting down on the seat beside her. “I mean always.”
He was certainly not putting it very well. Edith tried to believe that he was; she wanted to believe it. She looked at him, and her lips quivered. She was not an emotional woman; he had taken good care to find that out, but her dark eyes looked strange and stormy. She seemed as if she was feeling something strongly, almost more than she could bear.
“Do you want me very much?” she murmured.
Well, of course he wanted her. If you ask a woman to marry you, you must want her unless you are a young fool under the influence of glamour. There was no glamour. Horace had never pretended in his life, and he did not pretend now. He simply said:
“It would make me very happy if you would be my wife, Edith.”
“I should like so much to make you very happy,” said Edith. Then, suddenly, inconsequently, and very foolishly, she burst into tears.
“Don’t, my dear--don’t,” he exclaimed hurriedly. He tried to take her hands from her face, but she would not let him. He looked at her in bewilderment; she shook with these astonishing sobs; and she was a most sensible woman, and thirty. He could not understand her.
He kissed the clenched hands which covered her face, and almost as suddenly the sobs ceased. She drew in her breath with a quick sound. He walked to the balustrade and began to whistle. They were in a very secluded part of the gardens, but one never knew. No! fortunately there was no one in sight. What an extraordinary, lovely scene it was! Perhaps Edith would stop crying soon.
She did; she brushed the tears from her eyes and laughed.
“Oh, how silly you must think me!” she said. “And I’m thirty--you know I’m thirty?”
“I think this is the third time that you have told me you are,” cried Horace. He came and sat down beside her again. She did not make him feel uncomfortable any more.
“Do smoke,” said Edith quickly. “I know you’re dying to.”
“Thanks, if I may.” He lit; a cigarette. And she saw with a sudden sinking of her heart that his hands were steady.
“There is the little chap at home,” he said, turning his eyes to her with a restored friendliness. “You’re sure you won’t mind him?”
“Oh, I shall love him!” said Edith. “Do you know--you must not be jealous, but that is half the reason why I am so--why I am going to marry you, you know!”
Horace was not jealous. He was very pleased, and he said so.
“But what,” Edith asked anxiously, “will your sister say, Horace?”
“Oh, my sister!” stammered Lestrange. “Do you think she will mind very much?”
“You darling stupid!” cried Edith. “She’ll mind most horribly.”
Then she blushed; she hadn’t meant to call him “darling.” She looked at him anxiously, but he had not noticed it.
“By Jove, I believe she will; you’re right, Edith. I’m afraid she’ll cut up frightfully rough! I thought I had managed to think it all out--about you, you know, and the little chap and me--and Annette, my dead wife.”
He spoke these last words in a voice she had never heard him use before. But he spoke them bravely and honestly, with his eyes on hers. Her courage leapt to meet his.
“My dear,” she said quickly, “I want you to behave as if I had loved her too. I want you to talk to me of her, to let her share our life, or rather to let me share yours and hers. I want you never to be afraid that I do not understand. I come to you to give you all the help and comfort that I can, but I come to you knowing that she has your heart.”
Then Lestrange kissed her. The last hesitation fell away from this new purpose, the last cloud melted. His heart went out in friendship and gratitude to this woman who did not seek to rob him of his past. There was a moment’s splendid recognition between them, as strong as passion and as kind as love. Then the breathless hush of the air broke in a chill and sudden shower; they passed through the drenched garden quickly into the big hotel.