"You're the last leaf of an old tree, and I'd have you live beautifully, and make a good end, and leave a fragrant memory to your children."
"He's the last of his line, too—Christopher."
"That rests with him probably. It is well that he should be if he's no more than appears. But I have done, and am cool again. I'm sorry if I've hurt you. I love you better far than anything in the world, yet you've given me cause for deep mourning of late days."
Honor prepared to speak, but did not do so. She looked at her uncle's wrinkled, grey face and blind eyes, bent down, kissed him on the forehead, and then hastened away without any more words.
While the matter of this serious speech was in his wife's mind, it chanced that Stapledon and the Squire of Godleigh met after the dawn hour, each being led to the same spot upon his homeward way. Neither had seen the other for some weeks, and by mutual exchange of thought, a common subject leaped to the mind of each.
Myles had been upon Kes Tor to see the sunrise; Christopher was returning from a further point; and now in the valley beneath Batworthy Farm they met, where Teign, touched with ruddy gold of the morning, wound murmuring along. Upon one bank the hill rose sharply under silver birch, mountain ash, oak, and concourse of tall pines; to the north more gradual acclivities of shaggy moor extended, and these were broken into leek-green beds of sphagnums, and gemmed with ruddy sundews, where springs opened or rivulets wound with little bubbling whispers to the river. A red dawn scattered the stream with stars and sparks reflected from low eastern clouds above the sunrise; and this radiance, thrown upward from the water, touched the under-leaf of the alders, where they hung above the stream and slashed the shadows with sanguine light. A spirit, sweet, fresh and dewy as any naiad, dwelt here; the place was bedecked with mossy greens and olives, duns and transparent velvet-browns, all softened and swept with the purest opaline blue, by contrast of dawn shadows with dawn fire. Rock shapes upon the river-bed, perfect in their relations of colour and of form, made most harmonious medley of manifold planes. They were touched by sunshine, modelled to the outlines of their mosses by great violet shadows spread between flame-lances from on high, blended by ripple and shimmer of reflected light from the river, broken in mass by the green rushes and tall grasses, by the dancing briar, its point under a waterfall, by the snowy blossoms of great umbel-bearers, and by the majestic foliage of king fern. Teign splashed and spouted crystal-bright through this display of forms and colours, and there was pleasant music of water and murmur of new-born leaves, while red light came and went through the dawn purity, soaked each dingle with misty gold, and chequered the river with many shades of ambers and agates and roses agleam together.
"Sons of the young morning—you and I! This is our hour, and we suck life from the risen day," said Christo, extending a hand to the other as they met at stream-side.
"Rain's coming," answered Myles; "and this splendour will be drowned long before noon."
"Then let us make the most of it. I'm glad we met here. A happy place to talk in, with fair things to fill one's eyes."
"What is there to talk about? I'm afraid our interests are too widely separated."