About that love itself she had at present no qualms, she admitted no recognition of its hopelessness, she had no perception of its dangers. She was too full of the first wonder of its dawning to guess or to care what the risen day might bring forth. The fact that Edward was engaged to be married to her cousin was a complete safeguard against dangers which she barely conjectured, and the very thought of hope or hopelessness made no imprint on her mind, for in the presence of the thing herself she could not bring herself to consider the possible issues of it. It exalted and possessed her; the fact that she loved filled her entire being, which already brimmed with her new perceptions of music. Each heightened the other, each was infinite, possessing the whole of her. She had no thought for the morrow, or for the day, or for herself. The whole of the eagerness of her youth was enslaved in a perfect freedom. She was blind and ecstatic, and in truth was running heedlessly, sightlessly between quicksands and deep seas and precipices, unconscious of them all, and above all, unconscious of herself, absorbed by love and melody, even as the dew on the lawn was being absorbed by the sun.
Above, the sky was unflecked by cloud and as yet of pale and liquid blue; the warm air had still a touch of night's coolness in it, and the young day seemed like a rosy child awakening from sleep. At the end of the garden the tall elms stood motionless, towers of midsummer leaf, and the smell of the evaporating dew that had lain all night in the bosom of red roses and among the thick-blade grass of the lawn, told her where it had slept. It hung thick on the threads of the netted fruit-trees, and glimmered on the red-brick wall that ran alongside the shining gravel walk. Already the bees had begun their garnerings, the birds were a-chuckle in the bushes, and suddenly the whole pervading sweetness and song of the morning smote on Elizabeth's heart, already full to overflowing, and demanded the expression of her gratitude. She was compelled to thank somebody for it—not Ellis, not Aunt Julia, not Edward even.
"Somebody, anyhow!" she said aloud.
[CHAPTER VIII]
THE MOUNTAIN-TOP
Edward, from long living at Heathmoor, had little to learn about comfort, and the arrangements he had made for the two girls were of a completeness that Mrs. Hancock could hardly have rivalled, even if she had been concerned with plans for herself. He had gone up to town by the 9.6 a.m. that morning, and had shown himself but briefly at his office, devoting the rest of his time to orders and inspection. He had been to see the rooms prepared for their reception at the Savoy, bedrooms for the two girls, with a sitting-room between, had shown in a practical way that he recollected Elizabeth's ardour for sweet peas and Edith's respect for roses, had ordered tea to be ready for their arrival, a table to be reserved in the restaurant for their dinner between the acts, and an entrancing little supper to be served in the sitting-room when the opera was over. Finally, he was waiting at the station with his motor for their arrival.
It was not only the desire for their comfort that prompted this meticulous supervision, for the evening in prospect was symbolical to him of a parting, a farewell, and, with the spirit in which all farewells should be said, he wished to join hands with Elizabeth once more festally and superbly, not with lingering glances and secret signs, but to the sound of music and to the sight of a glorious drama. He had spent this last week among waves and billows of emotions, and, though his ship had not foundered, his lack of experience as a sailor in such seas had completely upset him in every other sense. But to-night, he had told himself, he would reach port; already he had rounded the pier-head, and within a few hours now he would put Elizabeth ashore. The pier was decorated for her reception, flags waved and bands played. He would part with her splendidly, and go back to his boat, where Edith would await him for their lifelong cruise in calm and pleasant waters.
He had made, so he honestly believed, the honest decision, and though honesty is a virtue which is so much taken for granted that it is ranked rather among the postulates of life than among its acquirements, honest decisions are not always made without struggle and difficulty. He felt for Elizabeth, the actual flesh and blood and spirit of her, what he had only hitherto imagined in the dreams which, a few months before, he had settled to have done with. Bitterly, and with more poignancy of feeling than he had thought himself capable of, he regretted his precipitancy in their abandonment; in a few months more he would have seen them realized, he would have had his human chance, of an attractive boy with a girl, to have made them true. But he had not waited; he had shaken himself awake, and, with full sense of what he was doing, had made love to and been accepted by the girl he knew and liked and admired. To-day he acknowledged his responsibility and had no intention of shirking it. A week of what was not less than spiritual anguish had resulted in this decision. In one direction he was pulled by honour, in the other by love. He had a "previous engagement," which, he had settled, took rank before anything else whatever. He believed, without the smallest touch of complacency, that Edith loved him, but he believed also (and again not a grain of that odious emotion entered into his belief) that had he been free Elizabeth would have accepted him. Since his deplorable lapse a week ago, she had treated him with a friendlier intimacy than ever; this, for they had had no further word on the subject, he interpreted to mean that out of the generosity of her nature she had completely forgiven him and obliterated the occurrence, and that her friendliness was meant to show how entirely she trusted him for the future. In this he was absolutely right; he was right also in the corollary he instinctively added, that she would not have adopted this attitude unless she was fond of him. She could quite correctly have kept him at arm's length, she could have continued to manifest that slight hostility to him which had previously characterized her behaviour. But she had not; she had given him a greater warmth and friendliness than ever before.
So far he could let his thoughts bear him without shame or secrecy. But there went on beneath them a tow, an undercurrent, which, though he suppressed and refused to regard it, was what had caused, in the main, the soul-storm in which he had been buffeted all this week. He believed there was more than friendliness in her regard for him, and with the terrible sharpsightedness of blind love (as if one of his eyes saw nothing, while the other was gifted with portentous vision) he had not missed the signs, little signs, a look, a word, a movement, which are the feelers of love, waving tentacles of infinite sensitiveness, that threadlike and invisible to the ordinary beholder, shrivel and spring and touch instinctively without volition on their owner's part. No one, fairly and impartially judging, could say that Elizabeth had behaved to him except with friendly unreserve. But to him she seemed to reserve much, to reserve all.