Then a robin singing outside in the evening hush, sent a message to them. Nelly with an effort drew herself away.
'Shan't we go out? We'll tell Mrs. Weston to put supper on the table, and we can come in when we like. But I'll just unpack a little first—in our room.'
She disappeared through a door at the end of the sitting-room. Her last words—softly spoken—produced a kind of shock of joy in Sarratt. He sat motionless, hearing the echo of them, till she reappeared. When she came back, she had taken off her serge travelling dress and was wearing a little gown of some white cotton stuff, with a blue cloak, the evening having turned chilly, and a hat with a blue ribbon. In this garb she was a vision of innocent beauty; wherein refinement and a touch of strangeness combined with the dark brilliance of eyes and hair, with the pale, slightly sunburnt skin, the small features and tiny throat, to rivet the spectator. And she probably knew it, for she flushed slightly under her husband's eyes.
'Oh, what a paradise!' she said, under her breath, pointing to the scene beyond the window. Then—lifting appealing hands to him—'Take me there!'
CHAPTER II
The newly-married pair crossed a wooden bridge over the stream from the Lake, and found themselves on its further shore, a shore as untouched and unspoilt now as when Wordsworth knew it, a hundred years ago. The sun had only just vanished out of sight behind the Grasmere fells, and the long Westmorland after-glow would linger for nearly a couple of hours yet. After much rain the skies were clear, and all the omens fair. But the rain had left its laughing message behind; in the full river, in the streams leaping down the fells, in the freshness of every living thing—the new-leafed trees, the grass with its flowers, the rushes spreading their light armies through the flooded margins of the lake, and bending to the light wind, which had just, as though in mischief, blotted out the dream-world in the water, and set it rippling eastwards in one sheet of living silver, broken only by a cloud-shadow at its further end. Fragrance was everywhere—from the trees, the young fern, the grass; and from the shining west, the shadowed fells, the brilliant water, there breathed a voice of triumphant beauty, of unconquered peace, which presently affected George Sarratt strangely.
They had just passed through a little wood; and in its friendly gloom, he had put his arm round his wife so that they had lingered a little, loth to leave its shelter. But now they had emerged again upon the radiance of the fell-side, and he had found a stone for Nelly to rest on.
'That those places in France, and that sky—should be in the same world!' he said, under his breath, pointing to the glow on the eastern fells, as he threw himself down on the turf beside her.
Her face flushed with exercise and happiness suddenly darkened.
'Don't—don't talk of them to-night!'—she said passionately—'not to-night—just to-night, George!'