"I shall not be long away from you, Poldie," she said.
"Do not forget me, Helen," he returned. "If you forget me, an enemy will think of me."
His love comforted her, and yet further strengthened her faith in his innocence; and it was with a kind of half-repose, timid, wavering, and glad, upon her countenance—how different from the old, dull, wooden quiescence!—that she joined her cousin in the hall. A moment, and he had lifted her to the saddle, and was mounted by her side.
CHAPTER XXXIII.
THE RIDE.
A soft west wind, issuing as from the heart of a golden vase filled with roses, met them the instant they turned out of the street, walking their horses towards the park-gate.
Something—was it in the evening, or was it in his own soul?—had prevailed to the momentary silencing of George Bascombe:—it may have been but the influence of the cigar which Helen had begged him to finish. Helen too was silent: she felt as if the low red sun, straight into which they seemed to be riding, blotted out her being in the level torrent of his usurping radiance. Neither of them spoke a word until they had passed through the gate into the park.
It was a perfect English summer evening—warm, but not sultry. As they walked their horses up the carriage way, the sun went down, and as if he had fallen like a live coal into some celestial magazine of colour and glow, straightway blazed up a slow explosion of crimson and green in a golden triumph—pure fire, the smoke and fuel gone, and the radiance alone left. And now Helen received the second lesson of her initiation into the life of nature: she became aware that the whole evening was thinking around her, and as the dusk grew deeper and the night grew closer, the world seemed to have grown dark with its thinking. Of late Helen had been driven herself to think—if not deeply, yet intensely—and so knew what it was like, and felt at home with the twilight.
They turned from the drive on to the turf. Their horses tossed up their heads, and set off, unchecked, at a good pelting gallop, across the open park. On Helen's cheek the wind blew cooling, strong, and kind. As if flowing from some fountain above, in an unseen unbanked river, down through the stiller ocean of the air, it seemed to bring to her a vague promise, almost a precognition, of peace—which, however, only set her longing after something—she knew not what—something of which she only knew that it would fill the longing the wind had brought her. The longing grew and extended—went stretching on and on into an infinite of rest. And as they still galloped, and the light-maddened colours sank into smoky peach, and yellow green, and blue gray, the something swelled and swelled in her soul, and pulled and pulled at her heart, until the tears were running down her face: for fear Bascombe should see them, she gave her horse the rein, and fled from him into the friendly dusk that seemed to grade time into eternity.
Suddenly she found herself close to a clump of trees, which overhung the deserted house. She had made a great circuit without knowing it. A pang shot to her heart, and her tears ceased to flow. The night, silent with thought, held THAT also in its bosom! She drew rein, turned, and waited for Bascombe.