“Nay, what, friendship and such-like is never wasted, surely!” he had affirmed stoutly. “I don’t hold with gardeners getting too thick with folks, nor their wives, neither. There’s some as’ll seek you out just for the sake of what’s behind you. But it isn’t good, all the same, to be always by yourself, and a few nice friends’d likely help you to settle down.”
But, unfortunately for his cause, he had hit on the one plea that was least likely to weigh with her.
“Nay, but that’s just what I don’t want to do,” she had said, looking past him, with the effect, which he was later to know so well, of seeing beyond him into great distances. “I don’t know how to put it, but it would be wrong for me, would that. It’d be losing something as is right down necessary to me. If making friends with folks is going to mean settling down, then I’m best without it.”
That part of the explanation he had been quite unable to understand, so he had concentrated upon the other.
“I don’t see there’ll be that much wasted just by you going to Mrs. Grisedale’s christening-party!” he had said humorously. “It seems a real pity you shouldn’t have a pill-gill now and then. I’ve always thought you were just cut out for going amongst folks and keeping ’em all lively.”
At all events he had succeeded in making her laugh at that, changing her, to his relief, from the far-gazing woman who chilled him with her strangeness to the brisk, cheerful girl whom he had sought in marriage.
“Ay, I generally manage to make a stir, wherever I am!” she had said gaily. “I’m not one for sitting mum in corners, and never was. If I’d had luck to hit on a spot I liked, I’d have done as much as anybody to keep things going; but it’s no use thinking about it here.”
And she had never swerved from her determination during the years which followed,—never swerved at heart, that is, for she had not been hard and fast about it. She had got to know both Mrs. Grisedale and Mrs. Ellwood in the end, as well as the usual run of people in the district. She had gone to parties in her time. She was never behindhand, either, when help of any sort was required, for she was a kind enough woman, in spite of her discontent. But she had never got to the point of making intimate friends. Always she had looked beyond her neighbours to that distant thing in which they had neither lot nor part.
Descending the steep steps which led to the water’s edge, he came to the catamaran moored in its pool between the wooded sides of the worn gorge. Going aboard, he began to wind himself from bank to bank, the light, wooden raft moving easily on its steel pulleys. The water was quiet enough here, black and almost still, but on either hand he could see the fretted rush of one of the fastest streams in England. A beautiful river, winding and sweeping and leaping.... A river which could rise in a few hours and become a broad, flying torrent, with crisp, curling waves like those of the neighbouring sea.
And at once, almost the very moment, it seemed, that he pushed off, the ache at his heart left him, succumbing to that curious influence which water has upon the human mind. The detachment it breeds worked upon him even in that black pool which could for no more than a moment give pause to the sea-going mountain stream. The smooth rush out across the unrippled surface was a steady rush into peace. His nerves eased in the gliding movement of the raft, held to earth though it was by that velvet pull on its under side. He drew deep breaths as he worked at the creaking handle. His released mind took to itself wings.