"Yes. Dennis. Our boy, Dennis." Suddenly, the loved face went black, black as charred parchment before her eyes. "I only did it for the boy, Ronnie. Can't you understand?"
Holding her, fainted, in his arms, Ronald Cavendish understood a little of his own unworthiness.
EPILOGUE
1
Windmill House, a modest broad-eaved, slant-gabled Tudor building, stone below, brick and black oak above, the whole roofed with Colleyweston slate-slabs which time had lichened to dark-green velvet, surveys the Rutland hamlet of Little Overdine from the brow of Little Overdine Hill. Beyond its walled gates the white road switches down between two files of red cottages, past the Norman tower of Little Overdine Church, toward Screever Castle and the distant Screever Vale. Behind it and about it the shires sweep sheer fields of ridge-and-furrow to the far and the clear horizons whither--all winter--high-mettled riders and high-mettled horses pour at a gallop after the pouring hounds.
But now, all about Windmill House, the ridge-and-furrows stood knee-deep in hay; and hounds pattered mute at early morning exercise along the white road; and the high-mettled horses grazed leisurely in the shade of the hawthorn hedges; and, in every covert from Lomondham Ruffs to Highborough Gorse the red vixens suckled unmolested. For now, it was spring in Rutland--spring in the little county of the big-bosoming pastures and the big-bosomed women--spring, too, in the heart of Ronald Cavendish!
Yet, for him, spring held its fear. "Your wife will be all right," Dr. Hartley had assured. "Everything's going splendidly. Some time this evening, I expect. About six o'clock if we're lucky. Why don't you go out for a ride?"
And Aliette, smiling up at him through the increasing pangs, had said almost the same thing: "Go away, man. Please go away."
As he went from her, out of the high cretonne-bright room down the blue-carpeted stairs into a hall fragrant with white lilac, apprehension tightened its grip on Ronnie. Suppose Hartley had lied to him--suppose Hartley had made a mistake--suppose Aliette, his Aliette, were--were not to "get over things"?