The Conservative leaders knew Keble through business dealings or hearsay. Some of them had joined in a deputation to receive Lord Eveley and Mr. Windrom at Witney. They all saw the wisdom of putting up a vigorous, intelligent, and earnest young man, and the supporters of the veteran Conservative candidate, in the hope of a change of luck, ended by yielding to the suggestion. The official invitation was brought to Hillside by Pat Goard, the campaign manager, and his henchman, the editor of the “Witney Weekly News”.
It was on a mild October afternoon. Keble received the delegates in the library, heard their arguments, and asked for an hour to consider. Aunt Denise had bowed with frigid graciousness and withdrawn. Keble asked Miriam to show the visitors over the grounds, then ran down the path to the jetty, jumped into the launch, and motored across the lake, which to-day was an expanse of bright blue rippled by the most gentle of breezes. The slender white trees on the lower shore with their scanty remnants of pale yellow foliage, the bare branches of other hardwoods, and the deep rust of the underbrush were the only tangible proofs of the season. Everything else was gold and sapphire.
As he neared the boat-slip Keble saw that Louise had set up a deck chair in a sunny patch before the cabin, and had installed Dare in it. It was his first glimpse of Dare in several weeks and he was shocked at the wasted face that appeared above the rugs. For the first time he had some inkling of what the other man had been through, and a wave of compassion and affection surged through him.
Louise was sitting at Dare’s side, and they were talking quietly, intimately. Although there was almost a life and death contrast between the two, Keble was no longer blind to the fact that his wife had worn herself to a dangerous margin, and while he could approve of her act, in the sense in which Aunt Denise approved of it, he could not, like Aunt Denise, look on unmoved. Something in the languor of the scene, something in the intimacy which seemed to unite the two, aroused a throbbing ache within him. Like Miriam he had felt futile in the face of this struggle, and now he almost envied Dare the suffering that had opened to him a secret garden. He paid blind tribute to whatever force in Dare,—a force transcending mere personality,—awakened in Louise a spirit that he had never been able to evoke. “I blunder and obtain forgiveness,” he reflected, “while Dare is right, and pays terrific penalties.”
Louise came to the end of the jetty to meet him, and they talked about Dare’s first day outside the improvised hospital.
“Only for an hour,” she said. “Then he has to go back. But it marks the beginning of a new era.”
Keble would not let himself speculate on the nature of the new era. “And you can soon rest,” he said. “Be very careful now. This is the most dangerous time of all for you.”
She waved away the fear. “Who are those men on the terrace?”
Keble explained their mission. “I’d like you to decide for me.”
She remembered an occasion when Keble had wished her to decide upon decorations for the Castle, and she had hurt him by her indifference.