“I’ll see you to-morrow—to say good-bye. You will let me do that? I must know how you are, you see.”
“Yes—come to-morrow if you will. Good-bye. I am much better. I shall be quite well. But come, of course, if you had rather.”
“Of course I shall come.” He lifted his hat, bowed, and turned away. She watched him walk towards his hotel. Then, with a face of flame, she turned to her own affair.
This was to be her last bid for freedom; her last chance. If she was to be the crying shame of her sex, it must be so. Come what might, she must call for help.
She stayed the fly at the door, paid the man, and watched him turn and go galloping down the hill. Then she turned to her affair—across Exeter it took her, to the Honiton road.
She walked the whole way, some two miles out of the city, beyond the suburbs to where the open country began. And here she laid her patteran, with branches of crimson maple, torn from the sunny side of the hedge. At the corners of two by-roads she laid them—one to the South, one to the North. Not satisfied with that, she went North herself to the Cullompton road, and laid two patterans more. Her cheeks burned like fire, and in her heart was a bitter pain; she felt that she had unsexed herself, was bedraggled and bemired. But her need had racked her—you can’t blame the wretch writhing there if he call upon his God.
XIX
HEARTACHE AND THE PHILOSOPHER
Love, which had given her heart wings to soar, clogged Senhouse about the feet, hobbled him and caused him to limp. If she had never loved before, she had played with love; but to him the woe was new. One need not inquire into his relations with women, or believe him immune, to understand that. It was so entirely new to him that he refused to believe in it. She was present with him, though with her face veiled, night and day; the thought of her was joy; his ledge of calochortus took a value in his eyes because she had looked at them, knelt among them, stroked and fondled one, at least. He mocked at himself for searching out and cherishing the marks of her feet, for stooping to touch what seemed to be the printings of her knees; and yet, when he went down the Pillar and stood among other precious growths of his, he saw them a huddle of wet weeds.
The outlook was a bad one. He tried to paint, and smeared out everything he tried; to write, and had nothing to say. He slept badly. And yet he could not leave the north; for he had an appointment in October which would take him to Penrith. A learned man from Baden was coming out to meet him, with proposals in his pocket of Grand Ducal dimensions; two years’ plant-hunting in the Caucasus, and three years’ gardening—with the Schwarzwald for his garden. So far the Grand Ducal Government was prepared to go upon report. The thing had been a year coming to a head, for Senhouse was a difficult man to inoculate with other people’s ideas; but to such a head it was now brought, and he felt that, whatever else he did, he must by all means meet Herr Doktor Löffner.
What was he to do, then, between June and October? Characteristically, with the south calling him, he went north. He shipped at Leith and went to Iceland with Bingo and a saddle-bag for all his luggage. He traversed that island from end to end; and though he could not tire himself, he got his sleeping powers back, began to paint and to believe in his painting, to botanize and to be sure it was worth while. He knew next to nothing of Danish, and was driven in upon himself for company. Upon that fare he throve. He moped no more, forgot Mary for whole hours together, and believed himself cured. In September he returned to Leith and went afoot down to Penrith to meet the Herr Doktor.