CHAPTER XXIX.
And now let me pause a while and think. Ten years have passed since the time of which I write. I am a woman, twenty-nine years old—a woman in judgment as well as in years, for many things have happened since then which have taught me more than the mere passage of time. And I can see clearly enough now that what I am going to tell happened through no fault of others; my pain and my disappointment were the result only of my own mistake; let me state that as a fact—it will be a satisfaction to my own conscience. I never had any excuse for that mistake. I was a foolish, passionate, romantic girl, and out of the whirlwind of my own love I conjured up the answering love that I craved; but it was never there—it was a phantom of my own making.
A month had passed since Joyce had come home, since that night when Trayton Harrod and I stood under the abbey eaves in the lightning and the storm—a long, long summer's month. The hay had all been gathered in long ago, and the harvest was golden and ready for the reaping; the plain that had once been so green was growing mellower every day; the thick, reedy grass that blooms with a rich dark tassel upon our marsh made planes of varied brown tints over the flatness of the pastures—the whole land was warm with color; the gray castle lay sleeping upon the flaxen turf, with the gray beach beyond; the white sheep cropped lazily what blades they could find; between the two lines of tall rushes yellow and white water-lilies floated upon the dikes, and meadowsweet bloomed upon their banks; the scarlet poppies had faded from the cornfields, and the little harvest-mouse built her nest upon the tall ears of wheat.
Every sign told that the summer would soon be fading into autumn; the young broods were all abroad long ago; the swallows and the martins were preparing for a second hatching; the humming of the snipe, as his tardy mate sat on her nest, made a pleasant bleating sound along the dikes near to the sea; the swift, first of all birds to leave us, would soon be taking her southward flight; on the beach the yellow sea-poppies bloomed amid their pale green leaves.
There had been the same little trouble over the bringing of reaping and threshing machines onto the farm as there had been over the mowing. Poor father did not appear to be reconciled to these innovations, although he seemed to have made up his mind to give in to Trayton Harrod up to a certain point; he had not, however, wavered an inch on the subject of the length of the laborers' working-hours; on that he and the bailiff still preserved an ill-concealed attitude of hostility.
I did what I could to preserve the peace, so did mother, so did we all; but I don't think that father grew to like Trayton Harrod any better as time went on. I think he respected him thoroughly. More than once, I recollect, he took occasion to observe that he was an upright and honorable man, and yet, somehow, he scarcely seemed even to thoroughly trust him.
I know, at least, that one morning about this time he called me into his study and bade me ride into town at once with a letter for Mr. Hoad, which I was to deliver privately into his own hands, letting nobody know my errand. Three months ago how proud I should have been of this trust, which might have been given to the man who had been called in to supplant me! But now I did not like it; it filled me with apprehensions, with misgivings, with anger at the slight to him.
"Are you afraid to go, Meg?" father had asked, seeing me hesitate. "I'll go myself."
The word must have lit up my gray eyes with the light that he was wont to laugh at, for he put down his stick and sank into his chair.