She strapped her things together, rose, and turned a sudden and frank face to his.
“Good-bye. I think Lynette will be ever so safe.”
“I shall do my best to keep her away from the multitude of women.”
Eve walked back through the pine woods to Orchards Corner, thinking of Canterton and Lynette, and of the woman who was too busy to know anything about flowers. How Gertrude Canterton had delivered an epigram upon herself by uttering those few words. She was just a restless shuttle in the social loom, flying to and fro, weaving conventional and unbeautiful patterns. And she was married to a man whose very life was part of the green sap of the earth, whose humility watched and wondered at the mystery of growth, whose heart was, in some ways, the heart of a child.
What a sacramental blunder!
She was a little troubled, yet conscious of a tremor of exultation. Was it nothing to her that she was able to talk to such a man as this. He was big, massive, yet full of an exquisite tenderness. She had realised that when she had seen him with the child. He had talked, and half betrayed himself, yet she, the woman to whom he had talked, could forgive him that. He was not a man who betrayed things easily. His mouth and eyes were not those of a lax and self-conscious egoist.
Eve found her mother sitting in the garden, knitting, and Eve’s conscience smote her a little. Orchards Corner did not pulsate with excitements, and youth, with all its ardour, had left age to its knitting needles and wool.
“Have you been lonely, mother?”
“Lonely, my dear? Why, I really never thought about it.”
Eve was always discovering herself wasting her sentiments upon this placid old lady. Mrs. Carfax did not react as the daughter reacted. She was vegetative and quite content to sit and contemplate nothing in particular, like a cat staring at the fire.