At dinner and in the saloon later the talk was all of the poet’s disappearance. Some held out for the known eccentricities of genius, others avowed themselves in favour of the theory that respectable society had risen to its surfeit the night before. The natural reaction had set in and he was enjoying himself once more in his own way and wondering that he had submitted to be bored so long. Anne went to bed her mind a chaos of doubt and terror.
CHAPTER XVI
She would have overslept again had it not been for the faithful maid with her coffee. She sprang out of bed at once, a trifle disburdened by the thought of a long ramble alone in the early morning, and, postponing her swim in the tanks below until her return, dressed so hurriedly that had hats been in vogue hers no doubt would have gone on back foremost. She was feverishly afraid of being intercepted, although such a thing had never occurred, the other women being far too elegant to rise so early, and a proper sense of decorum forbidding the young men to offer their escort.
The sea had never been a stiller, hotter blue, the mountain more golden, the sky more like an opening rose. But she strode on seeing nothing. Sleep had given her no rest and she was in a torment of spirit that was a new experience in her uneventful life. She recalled the angry astonished eyes of Warner as she danced with all the abandon of a girl at her first ball. No doubt he had thought her vain and frivolous, the average young lady at whose approach he fled when he could. No doubt he thought her in love with Abergenny, whose habit of turning female heads was well known to him, and upon whom she had certainly beamed good will. No doubt he had expected her to manage to pass him, knowing his diffidence, and offer her congratulations; whereas she had taken no notice of him whatever. No doubt—oh, no doubt—he had rushed off in a fury of disappointment and disgust, and all the good work of the past weeks had been undone, all her plans of meeting him a year hence as handsome and fine a man as he had every right to be, were frustrated. She had for some time past detected signs that apathy was gradually relieving a naturally fine spirit of its heavy burden, that his weary indifference was giving place to a watchful alertness, which in spite of the old mask he continued to wear, occasionally manifested itself in a flash of the eye or a quiver of the nostril. Anne could not doubt that he loved her, inexperienced in such matters as she might be. However she may have kept him at a distance her thoughts had seldom left him, and he had betrayed himself in a hundred ways.
Had she been half interested in Hunsdon or Abergenny and they had been so unreasonable as to rush off and disappear merely because she had enjoyed her first ball-room triumphs as any girl must, she would have been both derisive and angry at the liberty; but Warner inspired no such feminine ebullition. He was a great and sacred responsibility, one, moreover, that she had assumed voluntarily. That he had unexpectedly fallen in love with her but deepened this responsibility, and she had betrayed her trust, she had betrayed her trust!
She left the road suddenly and struck upward into one of the sheltered gorges, sat down in the shadow of the jungle and wept with the brief violence of a tropical storm in summer. Relief was inevitable. When the paroxism was over she found a shaded seat under a cocoanut tree and determined not to return to the hotel for breakfast, nor indeed until she felt herself able to endure the sight of mere people; and endeavoured to expel all thought of Warner from her still tormented mind. In the distance she could see Monserrat and Antigua, gray blurs on the blue water, she could hear the singing of negroes in the cane fields far away, but near her no living thing moved save the monkeys in the tree tops, the blue butterflies, the jewelled humming-birds. On three sides of her was a dense growth of banana, cocoanut and palm trees, cactus, and a fragrant shrub covered with pink flowers. Almost overhanging her was the collar of forest about the cone, and the ever-faithful snow-white cloud that only left the brow of Nevis to creep down and embrace her by night. She took off her bonnet and wished as she had rarely done before that she might never leave this warm fragrant poetic land. It was made for such as she, whose whole nature was tuned to poetry and romance, even if denied the gift of expression—or of consummation! Why should she not remain here? She had some money, quite enough to rent or even build a little house in one of these high solitudes, where she could always look from her window and see the sapphire sea, that so marvellously changed to chrysoprase near the silver palm-fringed shore, inhale these delicious scents, and dream and dream in this caressing air. She hated the thought of London. The world had no real call for her. She wondered at her submission to the will of a woman who had not the least comprehension of her nature. On Nevis would she stay, live her own life, find happiness in beauty and solitude, since the highest happiness was not for her; and at this point she heard a step in the jungle.
She sprang to her feet startled, but even before the heavy leaves parted she knew that it was Warner. When he stood before her he lifted his hat politely and dropped it on the ground, and although he did not smile he certainly was sober.
The relief, the reaction, was so great that the blood rushed to Anne’s brow, the tears to her eyes. She made no attempt to speak at once and he looked at her in silence. Perhaps it was the mountain solitude that gave his spirit greater freedom; perhaps it was merely the effect of the beneficial régime of the past two months; there might be another reason less easy of analysis; but she had never seen him so assured, so well, so much a man of his own world. His shoulders were quite straight, his carriage was quite erect, there was colour in his face and his eyes were bright. Nor did the haunted, tormented expression she had so often seen look out at her. These were the eyes of a man who had returned to his place among men. He looked young, buoyant.