“She’s an angel,” thought Clive, “and will certainly make an ideal wife.”
He followed his host out of the hotel and up the hill. The summer girl in pink and blue, sailor hat and shirt-waist, dotted the greenery; in rare instances attended by a swain. On the piazzas of the hotel and cottages older women knitted or read novels.
The day was very warm. The sun shone down into the forest above and about the cottages, where the trees were not so densely planted as in the depths. The under-forest looked very green and fresh. A creek murmured somewhere. Bees hummed drowsily.
Clive’s head still ached and he was hungry; but at this moment he was conscious of nothing but a paramount wish to see Mary Gordon.
Mr. Gordon, a pink-faced man with white side-whiskers, was standing on the piazza of a tiny cottage which looked as if it had been built in a night. He winked at Clive as he came down and shook him heartily by the hand. He had loved his wife and been kind to her, but had always done exactly as he pleased.
“She’s inside,” he whispered, “and I don’t think she’ll row you. Sorry it happened, just vow it never will again and she’ll forget it. They always do, bless them!”
Clive went hastily into the little parlor. Mary Gordon was standing in the middle of the room, her hands tightly clasped, her eyes very bright, her upper lip caught between her teeth. Clive saw in a glance that she had more style and grace of carriage than when she had left England. Her hair was more fashionably arranged, and altogether she was a handsomer girl. He took her in his arms and kissed her many times, and she cried softly on his shoulder. He humbled himself to the dust and was told that he must always do exactly what he wanted; and he felt a distinct thrill of pleasureable domestic anticipation. He had been spoiled all his life, and would have taken to matrimonial discipline very unkindly.
When he had eaten of the broiled chicken and several other substantial delicacies, and was at peace with himself and the world once more, he went for a long walk in the forest with Mary. After a time they sat down on a log, and he lit his pipe and tried to imagine an environment of English oaks and beeches. Again and more forcibly he felt the discordance between the English girl, simplified by generations of discipline and homogeneous traditions, and this green light, this strange brooding silence, this vast solitude suggesting a new world, a new race, an unimaginable future, this hot electric sensuous air.
They talked of the past two years and of their future together.
“I have not told anyone yet that we are engaged,” said Mary. “People here don’t seem to take things as seriously as we do, and I could not stand being chaffed about it. I have merely said that we expected an old and dear friend of the family.”