One Friday afternoon in the middle of March she asked Considine to let Arthur drive her into Dartmouth. The day was so mild that they chose the high-road that skirts the edge of Start Bay. There was a feeling of holiday in the air, for the sea beneath them was of a pale and shimmering blue like a stone blazing with imprisoned light or a butterfly's wing. On the road they met a long procession of carriers' vans heaped high with shopping baskets, and the happy faces of country people stared at them from under the hoods. The road shone white, having been scoured with rain, and all the hedgerows smelt of green things growing, with now and then a waft of the white violet. The sky was so clear that they could see the smoke of many liners, hull down, making the Start. When they reached the crest of the hill above Dartmouth a man-of-war appeared, a three-funnelled cruiser, steaming fast towards the land. She was so fleet and strong that she seemed to share in the exhilaration of the day. They dropped down slowly into Dartmouth and lost sight of her.
Gabrielle had a great deal of shopping to do, and Arthur drove her from one shop to another, waiting outside in the pony-trap while she made her purchases. Then they had tea together in a restaurant on the quay. They had never been more happy together. When they came out of the tea-shop on to the pavement they found themselves entangled in a group of sailors, liberty-men who had been disembarked from the cruiser that now lay anchored in the mouth of the Dart. They came along the footpath laughing, pleased to be ashore. Arthur and Gabrielle stood aside to let them pass, and as they did so Gabrielle saw the name H.M.S. Pennant upon their cap-ribbons. She became suddenly pale and silent. The light had faded from the day. She begged Arthur to drive her home as quickly as he could.
Arthur was puzzled by her strangeness. He could not understand why she did not speak to him. They drove on in silence through the dusk. So they came to the point at which the coast road turns inward towards Lapton Huish, a lonely spot where the cliffs break away into low hills, and the highroad runs between a ridge of shingle on one side and on the other two reedy meres. The night was windless, and they heard no sound but a faint shivering of reed-beds, and the plash and withdrawal of languid waves lapping the miles of fine shingle with a faint hiss like that of grain falling on to a mound.
On the bridge that spanned the channel connecting the two meres Gabrielle asked him to stop. He did so, wondering, and she climbed out of the trap, and leaned upon the coping, looking out over the water. He couldn't think what to make of her. He did not know how dear is mystery to the heart of a woman. He stood by, awkwardly looking at her. At last she said slowly, "I hate the sea…. I hate it. But I love lake-water," which didn't lead much further. But he knew that she was for some reason unhappy, and found this difficult to bear. He came near to her, leaning over the bridge at her side.
"I wish you'd tell me what's the matter," he said. "It's all very well your helping me, but it's a bit one-sided if I can't do anything for you."
She gazed at his shadowy face in the darkness, and then gently put her hand on his. She felt a kind of shudder go through him as he clasped it.
XV
After that night it is difficult to believe that Gabrielle any longer deceived herself, though I do not suppose that Arthur realised the true meaning of their relation. The significant feature in it is that he was gradually and almost imperceptibly becoming a normal human being. Gabrielle had begun by developing in him a substitute for a conscience; for since he had begun to consider everything that he said or did in the light of its probable effect upon his idol, it had become a habit with him to follow a definite code of conduct, and the saying that habit is second nature finds an example in his extraordinary case.
It is fascinating, but I believe profitless, to speculate on the subtle hereditary influences that underlay their attraction for each other. One can imagine that their state presented an example of the way in which people of abnormal instincts tend to drift together: Arthur, the a-moral prodigy, and Gabrielle, the last offshoot of the decayed house of Hewish, daughter of the definitely degenerate Sir Jocelyn. But I do not think that there was anything abnormal or decadent in Gabrielle's composition. Her nature was gay and uncomplicated, in singular contrast to her involved and sombre fate. One is forced to the conclusion that the Payne miracle was the result of nothing more uncommon than the natural birth of a tender passion between two young people of opposite sexes, whom chance had isolated and thrown into each other's company. The specialist who had vaguely suggested to Mrs. Payne the hope that manhood might work a change in Arthur had been nearer the mark than he himself supposed, for though the physical state effected nothing in itself, its first consequence, the growth of an ideal love, became his soul's salvation.
Of all that happened during the Easter term we can know nothing, save that it was spring, that they were supremely happy, and that Considine was blind … blind, that is, to everything in the case but the results of Arthur's infatuation. These, indeed, were so obvious that he could not very well miss them. The boy's essential childishness, the thing that had added an aspect of horror to his habits of stealth and cruelty, gradually disappeared. He began to grow up. I mean that his mind grew up, for he had already shown a premature physical development. Practically the space of a single term had changed him from a child into a man. Considine, seeing this, innocently flattered himself upon the admirable results of his educational system. A country life, with plenty of exercise in the open air, and an unconventional but logical type of literary education that was his own invention. Result: "Mens sana in corpore sano." Arthur was a show case, and seemed to make possible the acquisition of a long series of "difficult" pupils at enormous and suitable fees.