Sir Harry: A Love Story

by Archibald Marshall

"They never want to know where I'm going," said Harry. "I go out after breakfast and come back to lunch, and sometimes I tell them where I've been and sometimes I don't."

It seemed natural that their elders should go their way, and they should go theirs, in which elders had no concern. It was their secret, to which no one had a right but themselves. But it gave Harry great pleasure to hear from her in that way that it was to be their secret. "That's the way of June," he caroled again, in no very obvious connection.

They came to the still waters of the hidden pool. It would not have been surprising if no eye but Harry's had seen it since the trees had grown up around it. They had to make their way to it through thick bushes, which even in winter time could have concealed it. He had been careful in his visits not to go in and out of the thicket by the same way, and so leave a break. It was as if he had kept it secret for himself and her.

When they had pushed their way through they were in a little grassy fern-fringed space open to the sky, though it was flanked by big trees. There were one or two more of these tiny lawns sloping to the edge of the water, but that on to which they came was the largest. An age-old oak stood sentinel in the middle of it and it was flanked on one side by a yew that must have been older still, so vast was its dark circumference and so thick its red ravelled trunk.

Viola exclaimed with delight. The pool stretched in front of them, its surface unruffled, mirroring the blue sky and the green depths of the trees and the tall ferns that grew round it. There was no vegetation on it anywhere. Harry told her that it must be very deep, with a spring somewhere, or it would have been covered with weed. "It's much nicer like this," she said, laughing at him. When he asked her why she laughed, she said: "You're so proud of it." It did not seem much of a reason, but he liked her to laugh at him like that, looking at him and showing her pleasure in everything that he said that revealed a little of him.

For one moment as they stood by the edge of the water he had a slight sense of anti-climax. He had brought her, not without difficulty, to the pool, as if in some way it was to be the end of things, and in some way also the beginning. But without some lead on her part there was nothing much to stay there for. It must be either the accepted scene, or nothing but a point of interest from which they would presently move on, with nothing more that he had yet thought of in front of them.

The feeling disappeared as she turned towards the mossed roots of the oak, which made a seat for her. He threw himself among the fern at her feet with a sensation of desire accomplished. She had accepted it. The little lawn by the still water, hidden from all human eyes but theirs, was now consecrated by the simple fact of her taking her seat under the oak. She was queen of the pool and the deep summer woods.

So far in their intercourse little points had arisen in which it had been for one or the other of them to take a step further, if it were to continue. She had stood waiting as Harry rode up to her, he had stopped, and she had spoken; he had walked with her; he had asked her to meet him again; he had brought her to the pool, and she had seated herself there to await what should come. The initiative had been more his than hers, and now it was his again. The fact of her taking her seat there, under the tree, was an invitation, though she may not have meant it as such. They might talk there through the long morning hours, but their talk could not be only of externals. It must be on a more intimate note, or they might just as well roam the woods together lightly. This green nook by the water, hidden and secret, was a shrine in which they would worship together, as yet they knew not what, but it would be something sacred and beautiful that was calling to both of them.

There was silence between them for a moment—the silence of recollection which comes before an act of devotion. Then Harry looked up at her and said, with his voice trembling a little: "I've never told any one of this place before. I think I kept it for you."

She smiled down at him, with the light soft in her eyes. "I'm glad you did that," she said. "I shall never forget it. It is so quiet and green and beautiful," she added, a little hurriedly, as if the meaning of her words might be mistaken.