CHAPTER XIV
LOVE AMONG THE RUINS
"Well—if I bide, lo! This wild flower for me!"
(Lancelot and Elaine).
It was a glorious day, after a night of rain; and a blazing sun poured its rays down upon the rocks. Some instinct led Steven (he was perhaps already more of a lover than he believed) to the place where Sidonia sat, a ledge on the steep grassy slope which lay just outside the bramble-hidden opening of the cave—the cave that had yielded them back, in the dawn, to a new life.
She was alone, seated under the wall, in a child-like attitude, her chin in her hand, wrapt, it seemed, in profound cogitation. The sunshine brought a golden fire about her uncovered hair. Steven flung himself beside her. She did not move her head, merely turned her grave eyes upon him; and, for a while, there was silence between them.
The air was full of the humming of busy insects, sweet with the spices of the thousand thymy herbs that flourished in the dry, rocky soil. Above them the ruinous wing of the castle towered into the nebulous blue. Below, far away, the brown roofs of the village lay in shadow. Faint cries rose up from it; and from some unseen pasture, the tinkle of cow-bells—dim little sound, homely, yet so strangely in harmony with the solitudes of nature. The calls of the mountain birds came fitfully; and underlying all was the distant roar of the torrent seeking its issue far away from the secret well. Sidonia spoke at last.
"You have finished with them all, up there?" she asked.
"With them all, up there; yes," he answered her; and a joyousness was upon him, for which he could have given no reasons. It was born, perhaps, of his sudden entrance into the power of manhood—for protection, for conquest, for ownership. She, however, saw nothing of the flash in his eye, of the eager trembling of his lip.
"You could have Uncle Ludo put in prison, of course, but you will not do that. And that is the worst punishment of all. You leave him just with contempt.—It is a great humiliation for Wellenshausen!" she said.
For some moments he made no answer. He was considering with pleasure the delicate ear under the waving sweep of hair, the colour, weight and length of the plaits that, divided, hung on either side of her neck and tipped the ground. He was noticing the shape of the nails in the slight brown hands, the shadow of the eyelashes on the cheek, the arch of the foot, the slender beauty of which even the country shoe could not conceal. How blind he had been on their first meeting! Geiger-Hans had, indeed, been justified in chiding him.... "She? a peasant girl! Then you never looked at her feet, nor at her delicate eyebrow. It is a noble child!"