He gave his foolish laugh. “That’s a new name for the Lovegrove titles. I’d better be going. If I stay longer, you may make me angry.”
I rose to see him take his departure. He had passed out and gone a few steps down the passage, when I heard him returning. The door just opened wide enough for him to look in on me. “My dear Cardover,” he said, “I came back to remind you of another of those evasive realities. You know, she isn’t your sister.”
A week later I received an indignant letter from Ruthita, saying that Lord Halloway had been to Pope Lane to see my father, and had asked for her hand in marriage. She had refused even to see him. By the same mail came a letter from the Snow Lady, couched in milder terms and asking for information. She wanted to know whether Halloway was as black as he was painted. I referred her to Ruthita, telling her to ask her to describe what happened on the esplanade. As a result I received a final letter, agreeing with me that the matter was impossible, but at the same time enlarging on the wealth and prestige of the Lovegrove earldom.
For a fortnight I refused to have anything to do with my cousin, but his imperturbable good-humor made rancor impossible. In the cabined intimacies of college life a quarrel was awkward. To the aristocratic much is forgiven; moreover he was a splendid all-round athlete and one of the hardest riders to hounds that the ’Varsity had ever had. So he was popular with dons and undergraduates alike. One morning when he stopped me in Merton Street, offering me his hand, I took it, agreeing to renew his acquaintance. My commonsense told me that the defeated party had most cause for grievance. His sporting lack of bitterness sent him up in my estimation.
Spring broke late on the world that year in a foam of flowers. Like a swollen tide it swept through our valley in wanton riot and stormed across the walls of our gray old town. It surged into shadowy cloisters and dashed up in spray of may-blossom and lilac. Every tree was crested with the flying foam of its hurry. The Broad Walk, leading down to the barges, was white with blown bloom of chestnuts.
Quadrangles became gay with geraniums. Through open windows music and men’s laughter sounded. Flanneled figures, carrying rackets and cricket-bats, shot hither and thither on bicycles. At evening, in the streets beneath college windows, groups of strolling minstrels strummed on banjos and sang. Fresh-faced girls, sweethearts and sisters of the undergraduates, drifted up and down our monastic by-ways, smiling eagerly into their escort’s eyes, leaving behind them ripples of excitement.
All live things were mating. The instinct for love was in the air. My longing for Vi was quickened. The sight of girls’ faces filled me with poignancy. Every beauty of sound, or sight, or fragrance became commemorative of her. By day I traced her resemblance in the features of strangers. Inflamed desire wove tapestries of passion on the canvas of the night. Roaming through lanes of the countryside, I would meet young lovers in secluded places, and flee from them in a tempest of envy. Had she sent me one little sign that she still cared, I would have abandoned everything and have gone to claim her. My mind was burning. I poured out my heart to her in letters which, instead of sending, I destroyed. I became afraid.
Halloway was in the same plight. He never mentioned Ruthita; but he would come to my room, and pause before her photograph and fall silent. However, he knew how to shuffle his fortune to convenience his environment. He had his comforters. Gorgeous young females fluttered in and out of his apartments, like painted butterflies. His only discretion was in the numbers of his choice. They might have been the daughters of dukes by their appearance, but you knew they were chorus-girls from London. One day when I questioned him, he threw me a cynical smile, saying, “I’m trying the expulsive power of a new affection.”
The phrase took root. If I was to do the honorable thing by Vi, I also must employ my heart in a new direction. The thing was easy to say, but it seemed impossible that I should ever be attracted by another woman.
It had become my habit to spend much of my time sitting by the open window of my room, gazing out into the college garden. Hyacinths, tulips, crocuses bubbled up from beneath the turf. Every day brought a change. In the spring breeze the garden tossed and nodded, applauding its own endeavor. Songsters had returned to their last year’s nests. From morn to dusk they caroled in the shrubberies. Twittering their love-songs or trailing straws, they flashed across gulfs which separated the chestnuts. Over Bagley Wood, as I sat at work, I could hear the cuckoo calling. From the unseen river came the shouting of coaches to their crews, and the long and regular roll of oars as they turned in their rowlocks.