"Ah, love, but a day,
And the world has changed!
The sun's away
And the bird estranged.
The wind has dropped
And the sky's deranged,
Summer has stopped."
He wished he had had the sense to leave the place a day before instead of a day after the Allonbys. He knew that he had been due at Ardnacruan on Tuesday, and to-day was Thursday. Why on earth had he been so idiotic, so weak, so altogether contemptible?
Well, it was over now, and he meant for the future to possess his soul, untroubled by any distressing emotions; and, meanwhile, the thoughts of Wynifred, as she sat in the train, steaming towards London, were almost exactly a reproduction of his own.
Every turn of the lanes through which they drove brought back to Claud a memory of something which had taken place during the past summer. Here was a view they had admired together—here the quaint old gateway, half-way down the hill which Wynifred had sketched, the lane sloping so abruptly that the back legs of her camp-stool had to be artificially supported. In that field Hilda and Jac had laid out tea, and the whole party had enjoyed a warm discussion on the subject of family shibboleths. It began by Hilda's remarking that poor old Osmond could hardly be looked upon as a war-horse any longer; and, on being pressed to unravel this dark saying, she had explained with some confusion, that war-horse had been Jac's translation of hors de combat at a very early age, and that they had always used it since, which led on to various other specimens from nursery dictionaries, and much amusing nonsense. It was all past now.
In Claud's mind was a bitter thought which has countless times occurred to most of us, that the past is absolutely irreclaimable. We can never have our good minute again; it is gone. He knew the mood would pass, but that did not lessen the suffering while it lasted. Would he ever regret the days that were gone, with a regret that should be lifelong—was it possible that an hour might dawn in the far future when he should be prepared to give all to have that time again, that he might yield to the impulses of his heart, and speak as he felt?
"It will come, I suspect, at the end of life,
When you sit alone and review the past."
What nonsense!
As the dog-cart shot in through the gates of Lower House, he shook himself, and roused from his morbid reverie.
"How conversational we have both been!" he said, with a laugh.
"Yes," said Henry, gazing round with a sad expression in his kind eyes. "We miss those merry girls."