'Don't hurry. And go on with the drawing. I shall expect to see it a great deal further on next time. It's all right so far.'
He went his way back, speedily, taking a short cut over Loughrigg to his cottage. His thoughts, as he climbed, were very full of Mrs. Sarratt. But they were the thoughts of an artist—of a man who had studied beauty, and the European tradition of beauty, whether in form or landscape, for many years; who had worked—à contre coeur—in a Paris studio, and had copied Tintoret—fervently—in Venice; who had been a collector of most things, from Tanagra figures to Delia Robbias. She made an impression upon him in her lightness and grace, her small proportions, her lissomness of outline, very like that of a Tanagra figure. How had she come to spring from Manchester? What kindred had she with the smoke and grime of a great business city? He fell into amused speculation. Manchester has always possessed colonies of Greek merchants. Somewhere in the past was there some strain of southern blood which might account for her? He remembered a beautiful Greek girl at an Oxford Commemoration, when he had last attended that function; the daughter of a Greek financier settled in London, whose still lovely mother had been drawn and painted interminably by the Burne Jones and William Morris group of artists. She was on a larger scale than Mrs. Sarratt, but the colour of the flesh was the same—as though light shone through alabaster—and the sweetness of the deep-set eyes. Moreover she had produced much the same effect on the bystander, as of a child of nature, a creature of impulse and passion—passion, clinging and self-devoted, not fierce and possessive—through all the more superficial suggestions of reticence and self-control. 'This little creature is only at the beginning of her life'—he thought, with a kind of pity for her very softness and exquisiteness. 'What the deuce will she have made of it, by the end? Why should such beings grow old?'
His interest in her led him gradually to other thoughts—partly disagreeable, partly philosophical. He had once—and only once—found himself involved in a serious love-affair, which, as it had left him a bachelor, had clearly come to no good. It was with a woman much older than himself—gifted—more or less famous—a kind of modern Corinne whom he had met for a month in Rome in his first youth. Corinne had laid siege to him, and he had eagerly, whole-heartedly succumbed. He saw himself, looking back, as the typically befooled and bamboozled mortal; for Corinne, in the end, had thrown him over for a German professor, who admired her books and had a villa on the Janiculum. During the eighteen years which had elapsed since their adventure, he had quite made it up with her, and had often called at the Janiculan villa, with its antiques, its window to the view, and the great Judas tree between it and Rome. His sense of escape—which grew upon him—was always tempered by a keen respect for the lady's disinterestedness, and those high ideals which must have led her—for what else could?—to prefer the German professor, who had so soon become decrepit, to himself. But the result of it all had been that the period of highest susceptibility and effervescence had passed by, leaving him still unmarried. Since then he had had many women-friends, following harmlessly a score of 'chance desires'! But he had never wanted to marry anybody; and the idea of surrendering the solitude and independence of his pleasant existence had now become distasteful to him. Renan in some late book speaks of his life as 'cette charmante promenade à travers la realité.' Farrell could have adopted much the same words about his own—until the war. The war had made him think a good deal, like Sarratt; though the thoughts of a much travelled, epicurean man of the world were naturally very different from those of the young soldier. At least 'the surge and thunder' of the struggle had developed in Farrell a new sensitiveness, a new unrest, as though youth had returned upon him. The easy, drifting days of life before the catastrophe were gone. The 'promenade' was no longer charming. But the jagged and broken landscape through which it was now taking him, held him often—like so many others—breathless with strange awes, strange questionings. And all the more, because, owing to his physical infirmity, he must be perforce a watcher, a discontented watcher, rather than an actor, in the great scene.
* * * * *
That night Nelly, sitting at her open window, with starlight on the lake, and the cluster rose sending its heavy scent into the room—wrote to her husband.
'My darling—it is just a little more than eight hours since I got your telegram. Sometimes it seems like nothing—and then like days—days of happiness. I was very anxious. But I know I oughtn't to write about that. You say it helps you if I keep cheerful, and always expect the best and not the worst. Indeed, George, I do keep cheerful. Ask Miss Martin—ask Bridget—'
At this point two splashes fell, luckily not on the letter, but on the blotting paper beside it, and Nelly hastily lifted her handkerchief to dry a pair of swimming eyes.
'But he can't see—he won't know!' she thought, apologising to herself; yet wrestling at the same time with the sharp temptation to tell him exactly how she had suffered, that he might comfort her. But she repelled it. Her moral sense told her that she ought to be sustaining and strengthening him—rather than be hanging upon him the burden of her own fears and agonies.
She went on bravely—
'Of course, after the news in the paper this morning,—and yesterday—I was worried till I heard. I knew—at any rate I guessed—you must have been in it all. And now you are safe, my own own!—for three whole blessed weeks. Oh, how well I shall sleep all that time—and how much work I shall do! But it won't be all war-work. Sir William Farrell came over to-day, and showed me how to begin a drawing of the lake. I shall finish it for your birthday, darling. Of course you won't want to be bothered with it out there. I shall keep it till you come. The lake is so beautiful to-night, George. It is warmer again, and the stars are all out. The mountains are so blue and quiet—the water so still. But for the owls, everything seems asleep. But they call and call—and the echo goes round the lake. I can just see the island, and the rocks round which the boat drifted—that last night. How good you were to me—how I loved to sit and look at you, with the light on your dear face—and the oars hanging—and the shining water—