“Love between a man and a woman is just such a miracle—just as lovely and fragile a thing. But there’s no doubt about it, when it comes—and it ought not to be denied, even if it can be. When there’s a doubt, on either side—the thing’s not to be thought of. Love’s not appetite—Love is nature, and appetite is not nature, but a cursed sophistication produced by all sorts of things, which we may classify for convenience as over-eating. ‘Fed horses in the morning!’ Well, one of these days the real thing will open to you—and then you’ll have no doubt, and no fears either. You’ll go about glorifying God.” He felt her tremble, and instantly removed his touch from her shoulder. He sat on the edge of the plateau with his feet dangling. “Let’s talk of real things,” he continued after a time, “not of feelings and symptoms. This is one of my gardens—but I can show you some more. Above this plateau is another—just such another. I filled it with Xiphion iris—what we call the English iris, although the fact is that it grows in Spain. It’s done well—but is nearly over now. I just came in for the last week of it. And of course I’ve got hepaticas and auriculas and those sort of things all over the place—this mountain’s an old haunt of mine. But my biggest job in Cumberland was a glade of larkspurs in a moraine of Scawfell Pike. I surpassed myself there. Last year they were a sight to thank God for—nine feet high some of them, lifting up great four-foot blue torches off a patch of emerald and gold. I lay a whole morning in the sun, looking at them—and then I got up and worked like the devil till it was dark. . . .
“Some brutal beanfeasters from Manchester fell foul of them soon after—fell upon them tooth and claw, trampled them out of sight—and gave me three weeks’ hard work this spring. But they have recovered wonderfully, and if I have luck this year I sha’n’t fear even a Glasgow holiday let loose on them.”
She was caressing the flowers, half kneeling, half lying by them. “Go on, please,” she said when Senhouse stopped. “Tell me of some more gardens of yours.”
He needed no pressing, being full of his subject, and crowded upon her his exploits, with all England for a garden-plot. To her inexperience it seemed like a fairy tale, but to her kindling inclination all such wonders were fuel, and he could tell her of nothing which did not go to enhancing the magic in himself. Peonies, he told her of, in a Cornish cove opening to the sea—a five years’ task; and a niche on a Dartmoor tor where he had coaxed Caucasian irises to grow like wholesome weeds. Tamarisks, like bushes afire, in a sandy bight near Bristol—“I made the cuttings myself from slips I got in the Landes”—Wistaria in a curtain on the outskirts of an oak wood in the New Forest. That had been his first essay—ten years ago. “You never saw such a sight—the trees look as if they were alight—wrapped in mauve flames. And never touched yet—and been there ten years!
“I’ve got the little Tuscan tulip—clusiana is its name, a pointed, curving bud it has, striped red and white—growing well on a wooded shore in Cornwall; I’ve got hepaticas on a Welsh mountain, a pink cloud of them—and Pyrennean auriculas dropping like rosy wells from a crag on the Pillar Rock. Ain’t these things worth doing? They are worth all Chatsworth to me!”
She caught his enthusiasm; her burning face, her throbbing heart were but flowers of his planting. Once more she was splendidly conscious of discovery, of unsuspected distances seen from a height and once more exulted in the strength which such knowledge gave her. No education could have bettered this—an interest in life itself, in work itself. All that day she laboured by his side—digging, weeding, fetching and carrying in that sunny hollow of the hills. She cooked his meals and waited upon him; she grimed her hands, scratched and blistered them, tore her gown, blowsed herself, was tired, but too happy to rest. This, this was life, indeed.
Towards dusk, after dinner, she was so tired that she could hardly keep her eyes open; and Senhouse who had been watching her with shrewd amusement, bade her to bed. The tent was at her disposal, while she remained. Slowly she obeyed him, unwillingly but without question. The day was fading to a lovely close; night, as it were, was drawing violet curtains over the dome of the sky. The great hills were intensely dark, and the valley between them and below lay shrouded in a light veil of mist. It was so quiet that they could hear the Lingmell beck crisping over the pebbles or swishing between the great boulders; and once a fish leapt in a pool, and the splash he made was like a smack on the cheek.
Mary obeyed slowly. She stood behind him where he sat watching all the still wonder of the dusk, hoping he would speak, afraid herself to break the spell of her own thoughts. She was excited, she felt the exquisite luxury of ease after toil; if she had dared she would have indulged her quivering senses. She could deceive herself no more; she had no need in the world which Senhouse could not satisfy, and no chance of happiness unless he did. But she respected him more than she loved him; it never entered her head for a moment that it would be possible for her to draw such a man on. Still she stayed, as if unable to leave him; his mere neighbourhood was balm to her fever.
So they remained for some unmeasured time, while the silence became crushing and the dark blotted out hill and hollow. She could not hear her heart beating, and the pulses in her temples. In a manner she was rapt in an ecstasy: she thought no more; she was possessed; her happiness was at the point of bliss.
Senhouse sat on, motionless, he, too, absorbed in contemplation—like a priest before his altar-miracles. He may not have known that she was so close to him; or he may have known it very well. If he did, he showed no sign of it. His thoughts, whatever they were, held him, as he sat, his chin between his clasped knees, rigid as a dead Viking, crouched so in his tomb of stones. His black, glazed eyes were fixed sombrely towards the shrouded valley—across it, to the mountains beyond. So at last, when her pleasure became a pain so piercing that, had it endured much longer, she must have cried aloud, she shivered as she clasped her hands together over her breast—and then lightly let one fall to touch his shoulder.