He followed her with his eyes till she was gone. There was nothing insulting in the gallantry with which he admired her; he seemed rather surprised—that was all. For a minute he continued conversing with me in an absent-minded manner, then he wished me good-by, hoping that we might meet again in Oxford. I walked out on to the pavement and watched him down the street. Then I hurriedly fetched my hat and followed.
It might have been accidental and I may have been over-suspicious, but his path lay in the same direction as Ruthita’s; he never walked so quickly as to overtake her or so slowly as not to keep her well in sight. When she entered the old flint house, he hesitated, as though the purpose of his errand was gone; then, seeing me out of the tail of his eye, he turned leisurely to the left down a score. Next day I heard that he had departed from Ransby.
I could not rid myself for many days of the impression this incident had created. Like a Hogarth canvas, it typified for me the ugly nemesis of illicit passion in all its grotesque nakedness. There was horror in connecting such a man as Halloway with such a woman as Lottie. The horror was emphasized by the child. Yet Lottie had once been “as nice and kind a little girl as there was in Ransby,” until he destroyed her. Doubtless at the time, their sinning had seemed sweet and excusable—much the same as the love of any lover for any lass. Only the result had proved its bitterness.
This thought made me go with a tightened rein. When impulse tempted me to give way, the memory of that woman with her half-witted child, brazening out her shame before a crowd of pleasure-seekers on the sunlit esplanade, sprang into my mind and turned me back like the flame of a sword.
CHAPTER VII—THE GARDEN OF TEMPTATION
It was the late afternoon of a September day. We had had tea early at the black flint house, Vi, Ruthita, Dorrie, and I. After tea a walk had been proposed; but Dorrie had said she was “tho tired” and Ruthita had volunteered to stay with her.
For two months Vi and I had never allowed ourselves the chance of being alone together; yet every day we had met. To her I was “Mr. Cardover”; to me she was “Mrs. Carpenter.” Even my grandmother had ceased to suspect that any liking deeper than friendship existed between us. She loved to have young people about her, and therefore encouraged Vi and Dorrie. She thought that we were perfectly safe now that we had Ruthita. Through the last two months we four had been inseparable, rambling about, lazy and contented. Our conversations had all been general, Vi and I had never trusted ourselves to talk of things personal. If, when walking in the country, Ruthita and Dorrie had run on ahead to gather wild flowers, we had made haste to follow them, so betraying to each other the tantalizing fear we had one of another. We were vigilant in postponing the crisis of our danger, but neither of us had the strength to bring the danger to an end by leaving Ransby, lest our separation should be forever.
If our tongues were silent, there were other ways of communicating. Did I take her hand to help her over a stile, it trembled. Did I lift her wraps and lean over her in placing them about her shoulders, I could see the faint rise of her color. Her eyes spoke, mocked, laughed, dared, and pleaded, when no other eyes were watching.