That look towards the sea.”
So she came to the stile which led to the buttercup field, crimson and white now with sorrel and ox-eyed daisies. And standing among the flowers was a slim figure, the figure of a woman dressed all in white. Ruth stopped on the stile to look. It was so beautiful in poise and outline, it gave her that little delightful shock of joy which only beauty gives. Backed by the blue sky, bathed in the broad afternoon sunlight, it was worthy even of her flower fields. Very still the figure stood, gazing across those fields that “looked towards the sea,” and just as still, in a breathless pause, Ruth stood and watched and wondered.
For gradually she became aware of a strange appearance as of fire surrounding the slim figure. It was of oval shape, vivid scarlet in colour, deepening at the base. Other colours there were in the oval, but the fiery glow of the red drowned them into insignificance. Ruth shaded her eyes with her disengaged hand, suspecting some illusion of light, but the oval held its shape under the steady scrutiny, and with a little gasp she realized that she was looking at that which the ordinary physical sight does not reveal. Vague memories of things read in old books out of Raphael Goltz’s library, descriptions of the coloured auric egg which, invisible to the human eye, surrounds all living forms, raced hurriedly through her mind, but she had read of them more with curiosity than with any thought that they would ever come within the boundary of her own consciousness. As she realized what the phenomenon was, a growing shrinking from it, a sense of horror, a feeling that there was something sinister, threatening, in the fiery implacable red of the appearance, came over her like a wave. She was glad of Bertram Aurelius’s warm little body against her own, and found she was fighting a desire to turn back and retrace her steps. A desire so wholly absurd on the face of it, that she shook herself together and resolutely moved forward. As she did so, the white figure moved too, coming down the slope of the field to meet her, and as it came the scarlet oval faded, flickered, and, so far as Ruth was concerned, seemed to go out. The ordinary everyday things of life came back with a curious dislocating jerk, and she found herself looking into a very wonderful pair of golden-brown eyes set in short, but oddly thick, black lashes, and a light high voice spoke, a voice with sudden bell-like cadences in it, so often heard in the voice of French women. It was as attractive as all the rest of Violet Riversley’s physical equipment.
“Is it Miss Seer? May I introduce myself? I expect as Roger North’s daughter will be simplest,” she said, holding out her hand “Father dropped me here on his way to Fairbridge with Lady Condor. They are both calling here later to see you and pick me up, also hoping for tea, father told me to say. Your maid told me I should find you if I came down this way. Do you mind that I have picked some of your moon daisies? There are none fine as grow in this field.”
“No, no, of course not,” Ruth half stammered, realizing for the first time that she carried a sheaf of daisies in the bend of her arm. Why, everything would have been hers but for the chance of war. This was the woman who was to have married Dick Carey. And somehow, all at once, Ruth knew that this meeting was not the ordinary everyday occurrence such meetings mostly are. It had a meaning, a purpose of its own. She felt a sudden shrinking of some inner sense, even as she had just now felt a physical shrinking. She wanted to back out of something, she knew not what, just as she had had that ridiculous desire just now to turn round and go the other way. And yet, standing staring at her in this stupid dumb way, she did not dislike Violet Riversley; far from it. She was distinctly attracted by her, and her beauty drew Ruth like a charm.
It seemed quite a long time before she heard her own voice saying, “Please pick—take—anything you like.”
“Thanks ever so much,” said Mrs. Riversley. She had turned to walk up the path. “I’m just like a child. I always want to pick flowers when I see them, and they seem to grow here better than anywhere else I know. Mr. Carey used to say he had squared the Flower Elementals.”
She spoke the name quite simply and casually, while Ruth was conscious of a ridiculous feeling of shyness.
“I think it quite likely,” she answered. “Look at the wisteria.” They had reached the ridge of the slope and could see where the flowered fields merged into the garden proper. “All along the top of the wall, against the blue. I have never seen any so wonderful.”
It was amazingly wonderful, but Mrs. Riversley looked at it without any apparent pleasure.