“She’d better look out for Tristram, I can tell you,” said Bramleigh. “He’s an ugly customer, if he don’t have his rights. Not that there were any rights, so far as I know—but that makes no difference to Tristram.”
“Is she worth his while? I doubt it.”
“She will be. Germain’s rich. Besides, Tristram sticks up for his rights—tenacious beggar.”
“Should have been kicked young,” quoth the philosopher, and sped Lord Bramleigh on his way.
“Mary Middleham, O Mary of the brown eyes and pretty mouth, I should like to see you married!” he thought, as he packed his tent. “There’s a woman inside you, my friend; you weren’t given her form for nothing. You are not going to be married yet awhile, you know. It’ll take more than a going to church to do that. You’ve got to be a woman first—and you’re not yet born!”
He lifted a shallow box of earth, and fingered some plants in it. “Ramondias—beauties! One of these springs there’ll be a cloud of your mauve flushing a black cliff over the green water. There’s a palette to have given old England! Mauve, wet black, and sea-green. I have the very place for you, out of reach of any save God and the sea-mews and me. But even with them you won’t have a bad ‘assistance.’ That’s a clever word, for how is the artist going to make a masterpiece unless the public makes half of it? Black, mauve, and green—all wet together! We’ll make a masterpiece in England yet. . . .
“That girl’s great eyes haunt me. Lakes of brown wonder—they were the colour of moorland water—a dainty piece! I could see love in her—she was made for it. A dark hot night in summer, and she in your arms. . . .! Good Lord, when the beast in a man gets informed by the mind of a god—there’s no ecstasy beyond the sun to compare with it. . . .
“Two things worth the world—: Power, and Giving. When a girl gives you her soul in her body, and you pour it all back into her lap, you are spending like a king. Why do women mourn Christ on His cross? Where else would He choose to be? A royal giver! To have the thing to give—and to give it all! He was to be envied, not mourned. . . .
“Old Germain—what’s he doing but playing the King on the Cross. He feels it—we all feel it—but has he got anything to give? It’s an infernal shame. He’s bought the child. She’ll never forgive him; she’ll harden, she’ll be pitiless—have no mercy when the hour strikes. There’ll be horrors—it ought to be stopped. I’ve half a mind——
“Damn it, no! She must go to school. If there’s woman in her, after travail she’ll be born. . . .