On the elms’ little leaves in the giant espaliered hedge that parts her from the churchyard is the glisten of that sunshine that has just been luring them into life; on the dazzling emerald grass “nice-eyed” wagtails are walking with balanced tails at the foot of the old grey wall which, on the left side of the demesne, drops down a matter of ten feet to the croquet lawn below. She, looking absently over, can see the large-flowered periwinkle staring up at her, and the heaven-shaming blue of the forget-me-not fringe. The sight of the latter blossoms causes her a twinge of discomfort. She had worn a little bunch of them in her white coat, and at his leave-taking, a quarter of an hour ago, Rupert had deliberately unpinned and annexed them. Could he have intended any rebuke or admonishment by an action unlike him in its something of cool ownership? Yet there was certainly nothing of overweening confidence or masterdom in the words with which he had answered her at the moment, sincerely meant and felt—
“This is really too bad.”
“Has absence made the heart grow fonder?” he asks, with a light lip-raillery, which the restrained yet legible wistfulness of his eyes contradicts. “When I see a wave of hatred coming on, I shall know what remedy to apply.”
She has taught him to be sparing of endearments. Yet even he must expect some trifling kindness at parting. It weighs upon her conscience after he is gone that she had deftly chosen a moment when the butler was passing through the hall to bid him her final good-bye.
“All these things are against me!”
Yet even while she repeats the Biblical phrase aloud, to give it greater solidity, a sense of her own hypocrisy comes hotly home to her.
All these things are against her. But is there nothing for her too? Isn’t the May month for her? and the temporary freedom assured to her fifteen minutes ago? and her own heart, capering and curvetting, under all its pack-load of scruples and compunctions?
“For” and “against.” In what a double and contradictory sense is she using both prepositions! She pulls herself up muddled and uneasy, yet helped out of her puzzle by the delicious egotistical noise a thrush is making on a bough near by, insisting on telling all passers-by, at the top of his voice, how well his suit has thriven. A phrase out of one of Keats’ Letters recurs to her àpropos of a like feathered Anacreon—
“That thrush is a fine fellow. I hope he has made a good choice this year.”
Happy thrush, to be in a position to make a choice! Daily, or almost daily, as have been Lavinia’s visits to the wounded man, she never fails before each one to feel afresh the same almost sick excitement as to the precise method of their meeting. To a not very observant onlooker there would not seem to be much variety in their salutations, but to her now practised eye and ear, there lies an infinite range of gradations between the clouded gladness of his mute, yet how legible, “It is very good of your owner to lend you to me for yet another hour!” and the equally mute uncalculating exultation that knows no to-morrow of “You are here!”