In a few moments she went out to meet Cecil on his return from the moors. On the top of a hillock she turned and looked back at the Abbey. During the last fortnight she had studied it in every light and from every side. She understood why even Emmy loved it, and why Cecil had cared for no other home, even when a child, and with a bare prospect of inheritance; she herself had conceived a feeling that was almost a passion for it. Cecil had rehabilitated its past, and the tales were heroic and dramatic and ghostly enough to satisfy even her girlish imagination; small wonder that she loved the Abbey as the one thing that had been wholly without disappointment, and had made no demands upon her powers of adaptability.
It was nearly half an hour before she met the brakes with the returning sportsmen. The undulations of the moor soon hid every other feature of the landscape. It was a vast and lonely expanse, as primitive and as widely lonely as any prairie of the New World. And it was so beautiful that Lee was faithless to her redwoods; for it came to her with something of a shock that the expression “purple twilight” was not a mere poetic felicity. Whether or not the atmosphere absorbed the heather’s colour, all the light on the moor, and on the mountain beyond, was purple. She had read of the dreary moorland, and had pictured it a dun grey thing; possibly it was in winter. But in its autumn purples it was mysterious and enchanting. And it gave the impression of shouldering the horizon on every side—of possessing the Earth. Far away was a solitary hut; near by a pond of ugly traditions. It was all as it should be, Lee reflected with a quizzical smile. Within the walls of the Abbey Emmy held romance by the throat, but out here on the moor it was impossible to realise her existence, or anything but the England of the poets.
CHAPTER VIII
WHAT Lee did at all she did thoroughly, volatile as she was in some respects; original force of character, fostered and augmented by certain conditions, overbalanced for long periods the lighter qualities of her native atmosphere. She had wanted Cecil for the greater part of her life, and she had got him; to be completely happy with him, and to be all to him that it is given to one mortal to be to another was her fixed purpose, and she applied herself to it with the energy and concentration which have carried many men to their pedestal in a public square.
Cecil was not disposed to desert the grouse after the last of the guests had left the Abbey, and she went out every day with him and the keepers—Lord Barnstaple was still nursing his wrist; and, having a quick eye and a steady hand, occasionally managed to bring down a bird. It was true that walking on the moor was much like walking on a spring-mattress, and, being the child of an earthquake country, she was never quite able to rid herself of an uneasy anticipation of collapse; but so great was the enthusiasm of her nature that she was not only interested, but delighted with this, as with other novelties of her present life.
Shooting in the covers was a more difficult matter, and when she scratched her face or caught her hair on a briary branch, she said things under her breath which would have shocked Mrs. Montgomery or Cecil; but there was no doubt that sport, if one went into it with one’s entire brain, was really exciting, and, had it not been, Cecil’s delight in his wife’s latest development would have sustained her.
In hunting, she took an unqualified pleasure. No Englishwoman had a finer seat in the saddle than she, and, having always loved riding for itself, the additional incentive of pursuit, and the picturesque appearance of the field, made the pastime quite the most perfect she had ever known. Before the season was far advanced she rode as straight as any woman in the county; and perhaps Cecil’s compliments at this period were the most spontaneous of his life. There was no doubt that he was very proud of her, and once he went so far as to hint that he felt rather sorry for the majority of men.
The month at Beaumanoir was rather fatiguing, but very gay—at least, everybody laughed a great deal, and seemed full of energy. Emmy came for a few days, and Lady Mary Gifford remained a fortnight, and bestowed much of her society on Lee.
When they returned to the Abbey there was still more or less shooting and hunting, but Cecil applied himself seriously to the imminent elections. As time passed, and the defeat of his party loomed large in the possibilities, Lee noted that his interest became less impersonal and considerably more acute; his latent ambitions and energies felt their first prick.
He spoke frequently at this time, and as the roar of the storm grew nearer, his own accents lost the cold deliberation of the first weeks and became impassioned and convincing. He had little doubt of his own election, but the threatened downfall of his party harassed and angered him. It was then that his wife discovered that he had not outlived his boyish love of sympathy; and the boudoir in the tower and the lonely moorland were the scenes of many long and intense conversations, until it became his habit to demand the sympathy of his wife for every strait, great and small, in which his country and his party found themselves.