Ta-ra! Ta-ra-ra-ra! Ta-ra! The driver airily salutes the afternoon. Over the ferny walls of the Devonshire lanes, the outside passengers behold the red crags perching picturesquely on the sea-front like petrified monsters of an earlier era, and the trail of redder gold quivering across the great water; the wind rises and flecks the shimmering green as with a flock of skimming sea-birds. Oh, the beauty of the good round earth, the beauty forgotten and blotted out in the reeking back streets of great cities! Oh, gracious privilege of the artist, to seize a moment of the flowing loveliness of all things; to pass it through the alembic of his soul, and give it back transfigured and immortal.
“To feel Beauty growing under one’s hand.” The words were Eleanor’s—they chimed celestially in his ears, not as words, but as her words, stored up as in a phonograph with every dainty intonation, but with their music sweetened rather than deadened. All she had ever said to him he could recall as from a box of heavenly airs. Every syllable had the golden cadence of poesie. To love her was to be young again, fit for every high emprise, sensitive to every tremor of fantasy and romance.
“Stiff collar-work that, sir.”
The driver’s tongue was clattering tirelessly—of his horses, which, more sensible than men, wouldn’t touch a drop more than was good for them; of his life on the box from boyhood, his easy-going content, his pioneer daughter, the first in those parts to wear spectacles; his pleasure in seeing gentlefolk come down to circulate the money, his scorn of chapel-goers; but Matthew Strang’s private phonograph was performing with equal indefatigability, and his spirit leaped incessantly from one to the other, touched to a large geniality for horn-blowing humanity.
The sun was sinking royally in the sea, like a Viking in his burning vessel, when the coach obligingly drew up with a flourish of the horn and a scattering of chickens and a barking of dogs at the farm where Herbert had his headquarters. He was disappointed not to find Herbert there to receive him, as he had telegraphed his advent; but just as he was comfortably installed and was beginning to wonder whether he should start dining alone, that ever-young gentleman galloped up, flushed with health and sun and exercise, and, leaping from his horse, gave Matthew such hearty greeting that the painter had a grateful sense of being welcomed to an ancient seignorial home by a bluff and hospitable squire.
“I’ve been working at the portrait,” Herbert explained, ascending to his room with his hand affectionately on the shoulder of Matthew, who was thus forced to remount the stairs. “Of course I keep my painting kit at their place. And a jolly old place it is, with the sea cleaning the doorsteps, or pretty nearly. They’re beastly comfortable, with their London servants and carriages, and they’ve a motherly old person who seems a combination of cook and chaperon, and turns out delicious dishes, and they’ve taken on a native girl to help them—a sweet simple creature with cheeks like strawberries and cream. Do you remember the lady who said strawberries and cream needed only to be forbidden to be an ecstasy? These are forbidden. Oh, don’t look glum, I haven’t indulged. Forbidden fruit is out of season. I’m tired of it. It’s generally canned. And I have had too much of the foreign brands—ugh! I can see the litter of broken tins. I’m developing a healthy taste for the fresh-growing article, without any prohibitive tariff.”
Matthew turned to grasp his friend’s hand silently, as though sealing some compact. He felt it was Eleanor whose magnetism had uplifted Herbert to that reverence for womanhood he himself had always entertained. It was impossible to live under her spell and remain coarse. And, paradoxically enough, he was glad Herbert was living on a higher plane—it strengthened him in his own purely spiritual devotion to the beautiful friend of his soul. How stupid to have hesitated; how commonplace and ignoble to have gone to see Rosina for fear of Eleanor’s influence upon him. Like the old Roman, he had lost a day. And he had uselessly harrowed his soul to boot.
And yet, perhaps, not altogether uselessly, he reflected consolingly. The visit had laid the ghost of remorse; the full daylight had been turned upon the situation; he had seen beyond reach of further doubt that he was not to blame for it; that he was the victim of the blind tragedy of circumstance. True, the full daylight had also revealed that Rosina was taking the situation far more tragically than he had ever allowed himself to suspect; it was pitiful, but it could not be helped. His own mother had fared far worse, her living death had taught him resentful resignation to the workings of fate. No, Rosina must be put on one side. He had lost happiness; his Art at least must be saved.
Waiting for Herbert to change his clothes, he looked out of the ivy-wreathed, diamond-paned casement, and saw a lonely white wraith of a moon glimmering in the great spaces over the great lonely deep, and heard the moan of the waves under the wind’s lash, and watched the sunset dying in pale greens and pinks and saffrons; and so, in an exalted mood, went down to dinner.
It was getting towards nine o’clock when the cousins lit their cigars and strolled along the cliffs, their feet taking them westwards, where phosphorescent streaks of light green lingered in the sky, sending out thinner lucent shoots to join the eastern gray.