Very divergently does love act on different natures, sometimes, alas! bringing out all that is grotesque and absurd in a human being, happily more often evoking an intelligent tenderness which seeks to promote the material happiness of the beloved.
Penelope had spent happy hours preparing the place where Downing, while under her roof, was to do the work he had so much at heart, and nothing had been omitted from the Beach Room which could minister to his peculiar ideals of comfort.
On the large table, where twenty odd years before the little Penelope Wantley and the dour-faced boy, David Winfrith, had set up their mimic fleets of wooden boats, were many objects denoting how special had been her care. Thus, in addition to the obvious requirements of a writer, stood a replica of the old-fashioned opaquely-shaded reading-lamp which she knew was always included in his travelling kit; close to the lamp were simple appliances for the making of coffee, for she was aware of Downing's almost morbid dislike to the presence, about him, of servants; and, behind a tall eighteenth-century screen, brought from China to Wyke Regis by some seafaring man a hundred years ago, was a camp-bed which would enable the worker, if so minded, to remain with his work all night.
Apart from these things, the large room had been left bare of ordinary furniture, but across the uneven oak boards, never wholly free from cobweb-like sheets of glittering grey sand, were strips of carpet, for Penelope had remembered Downing's once telling her that he generally came and went barefooted in that mysterious Persian dwelling—part fortress, part palace—to which her thoughts now so often turned with a strange mingling of dread and longing.
The man for whom all these preparations had been made, after passing through the heavy wooden door which shut out wind, sand, and spray, paused a moment and looked about him abstractedly.
Downing had always been curiously sensitive to the spirit and influence of place, and the oddly-shaped bare room, partly excavated from the cliff, into which for the moment no sun penetrated, struck him with sudden chill and gloom. Mrs. Robinson, intently watching him, aware of every flicker of feeling sweeping over the lean, strongly-accentuated features, saw the momentary hesitation, the darkening of his face, and there came over her, also, a feeling of sharp misgiving, a fear that all was not well with him.
Since they had first looked into one another's eyes, Penelope had never felt Downing to be so remote from herself as during the brief hours they had spent together the evening before; and now he still seemed to be mentally withdrawn, communing apart in a place whither she could not follow him.
Standing there in the Beach Room, she asked herself whether, after all, she had not been wrong to compel him to come to Monk's Eype, imprudent to subject him, and herself, to such an ordeal. Yet, at the time she had first proposed his coming, she had actually made herself believe that in this way would be softened the blow she knew herself about to inflict on those who loved her, and those whose respect she was eager to retain. 'I want my mother to meet you,' she had said, in answer to a word of hesitation, even, as she now saw looking back, of repugnance, on Downing's part, 'for then, later, she will understand, even if she does not approve, what I am about to do.'
And so at her bidding he had come; and now, this morning, they both knew, and felt ashamed to know, how completely successful they had been in concealing the truth from those about them.
That first night, when out of earshot of Lord Wantley and Cecily Wake, Downing's words, uttered when they had found themselves alone for the first time for many days, had been: 'I feel like a thief—nay, like a murderer—here!' And yet, as she had eagerly reminded herself, he had stolen nothing as yet—that is to say, nothing tangible—only her heart—the heart which had proved so enigmatical a Will-o'-the-wisp to many a seeker.