“I’ll think it over.”
Every word of this confidential talk stuck aggressively into a not unretentive memory as Lionel breasted the hills above Nether-Applewhite. And he knew that his father was right. If he “went” for Margot, he might capture her. Very slowly that conviction came home to him. And she had said that she loved Nether-Applewhite. A carefully directed shaft which made a bull’s eye.
When he reached the high ground, he sat down and filled his pipe. He began to think about Hamlin’s sermon. Was his mind clean? Judged by ordinary standards—yes. But he was no Sir Galahad. Certain moral lapses engrossed his attention. Margot would laugh at them and him, but they obtruded themselves.
How was a mind kept clean?
The Parson had dealt faithfully with this. But he was addressing an audience of farmers and villagers. Handling the same theme before a London congregation from a West End pulpit, Hamlin might have touched upon prosperity in its more tainting manifestations. The material side of life, its increasing luxury, its excitements, would have been presented inexorably. Lionel thought of Fordingbridge cleansed and rejuvenated by poverty and hard work. Fordingbridge must have been tempted to marry a nice little girl with a bit of money. Had he done so, what effect would it have had upon his mind? Lionel returned to his own moral lapses. They had come about when he happened to be on leave, with “money to burn”—at a “loose end.” What a descriptive expression! On duty with his regiment, working hard, temptation passed him by.
Not possessing a vivid imagination, he was unable to evoke a clear picture of a future passed with Margot. It lacked what photographers call “definition.” Outlines were blurred. He had, however, an uneasy feeling that this little Queen would reign over him, and rule his life in lines parallel with hers. The rôle of Prince Consort was not too enviable. More, he had no love of London, no belief in himself as an M.P. Her assurance that he could hold his own with the mandarins failed to convince him.
By this time he was about as unhappy and perplexed as a healthy young man can be. His desire to please and help his father, his acute sense of what Margot’s fortune could accomplish, his growing affection for the little lady, his belief that his mother shared the Squire’s wishes, stood out saliently against—what? A naked fact. He didn’t love Margot. If she consented to marry him, the marriage would be one of convenience. It may be maintained by sentimentalists that recognition of such a fact by an honourable man is in itself a ban. Moxon, for example, would have deemed it so. But Moxon was not the son of an ancient house, nor part of a system. Moxon was capable of immense sacrifice. Like Palissy, he would have burned his bed to keep alight a furnace, if some vital discovery depended upon a few extra sticks of firewood. He would have perished at the stake rather than recant his convictions. And yet, with all his cleverness and sympathy, he couldn’t understand the point of view of men like Sir Geoffrey. To marry to save an estate, he would have condemned as contemptible.
Lionel’s thoughts travelled downhill to Joyce, to the Vicarage garden, where Moxon and she were sitting together. The certainty that on the morrow he would hear of their engagement piled the last straw upon his burden. And yet, with jealousy tearing at him, he failed to realise that love, not friendship, gave the green monster a strangle hold.
He returned to Nether-Applewhite. Passing the Vicarage, he saw Moxon walking up and down the lawn with the Parson. He hurried on, now doubly assured that Joyce had “whistled.” Moxon, no doubt, was receiving the paternal blessing. The green monster gripped her victim tighter. With a gasp, with a quickening of every pulse, Lionel beheld the truth shining blindly upon him. He loved her; he had always loved her, since they were boy and girl together, and—wonder of wonders—Pelion upon Ossa—he had never known it till too late. Fool, idiot that he had been, in love and blinded by love, the plaything of the gods.
The animal instinct to hide turned his steps from the carriage drive, across the park, and into a small wood about two hundred yards from the Vicarage. He stumbled on, making for a summer-house, a tiny temple built by Lady Alicia Pomfret. It stood by the edge of a miniature lake, upon which water-lilies floated—gold and silver cups on round green plates. Lionel approached the temple from behind, silently, for his feet sank into softest moss. Suddenly he stood still, hearing a strangled sob, an attenuated wail of sorrow. Some woman in sore trouble was weeping. Irritated, yet loth to intrude, he swung on his heel. Who could it be? The villagers had free access to the park on Sunday. The Squire liked to see couples wandering, hand in hand, beneath his lordly trees. But this wood was taboo, because wild fowl haunted the pool. A servant-maid—little Prudence, perhaps—crying for her lover? No. The wood was out of bounds for her.