Chapter XIV (1)
Morning on the Downs, with the clean, the thrilling wind, intoxicating even in autumn, the air that gives the sensation of a draught of the barest and intensest life, the air of the world’s morning. Add to this youth, a good horse beneath you, and by your side, never henceforth to leave it, that one person who to you sums up the spirit of all these other things. What can Heaven give more?
So, flashingly, thought Horatia, as she and Armand finished their gallop, and her green veil, outstreaming from her tall hat, fell to a position a little more composed. Laughing, a trifle breathless, “O, I should like to ride like this for ever!” she exclaimed, as the horses fell to a walk. “It was glorious!”
Armand de la Roche-Guyon, sitting his big brown mare with the ease of the born rider—a lover of whom any girl might be proud—bent on her a long and smiling look. “We shall often ride in Brittany,” he said. “If the peasants know mythology—which I doubt—they will take you for Diane chasseresse.”
Moving on, they came to the edge of the Downs, the great wind still blowing steadily upon them.
“There is Compton Regis, and there is Compton Parva,” observed Horatia, pointing with her whip. “Do they not seem low from here? And—do you see?—that looks like Papa and Robin, deserting us and making off home.” For the Rector, having ridden with the affianced couple, for propriety’s sake, as far as the Downs, had refused to come any further. The protestations which his action had drawn forth had been singularly lacking in fervour.
“I think,” went on Horatia, “that before we have another gallop, you had better tighten my girth for me, if you will.... But what are you looking at, down there?”
“I was trying to distinguish the road on which you first came to me, like an angel of mercy,” said the young man, swinging off. “And the spot where Mr. Hungerford’s horse so inexplicably cast a shoe! By the way,” he went on, pulling at the girth, “speaking of your cousin, ma toute belle, reminds me that I have long wanted to ask you——”
“My cousin!” broke in Horatia, laughing. “Whom do you mean?—That is tight enough, I think.”
“Mais ce bon Tristram. He is your kinsman... or have you all been deceiving me?”
“Certainly he is my kinsman, but a very distant one. His mother was my mother’s third cousin, or something of the sort. I never think of him as a cousin, exactly; rather as a brother.”
“Not in any other capacity?” inquired Armand, his eyes mocking her as he leant against her horse’s neck. “I have no right to ask you, perhaps—si, I think I have the right.” He laughed. “If he were never in love with you, he ought to have been.”
Horatia looked away from his amused, lazily penetrating glance. “To tell you the truth,” she said, flushing a little, “he was once—years ago. But that is all over, and the proof is, that we have been very good friends ever since.”
“Ah, I wondered. I am glad he had the good taste to be a soupirant once. Were you very cruel to him? He is an original; but I am very grateful to him. Had he been a rival I should have found things much more difficult.”
“No, you would not,” said Horatia suddenly. “He would have behaved just the same, when he found that I really loved you.”
The Comte lifted his expressive eyebrows. “Forgive me, my angel, but I am totally unable to follow you there. Men don’t do those things nowadays; we are not in the pages of Scudéry. You have a soul of the most romantic, my Horatia, in spite of your Greek and Latin; but romance is not in harmony with facts. Your ’cousin’ is a capital fellow, but if I believed him capable of that sort of thing, ma foi, I should be inclined to recommend him for a madhouse. As it is, shall we ask him to stay with us one day?”
“If you like,” said Horatia, looking at her horse’s ears. There was a vague trouble in her voice.
“If I like! But yes, that is perhaps what it comes to. I warn you, I shall be like a tiger for jealousy, and you will turn every man’s head who sees you.... Par exemple, I am sure you must have had many more victims than you will acknowledge. Passe Mr. Hungerford, but what of that so dear friend of his at the college of Oriel?”
Horatia looked absolutely horrified. “Mr. Dormer!”
“Eh bien, why not? You shrink, my angel, as if I had suggested a thing improper, as though he were a priest—one of our priests. But he is not, and you must have met sometimes, and he is bel homme too, for all that austere air of his. Why, now I come to think of it in Mr. Hungerford’s very drawing-room——”
“I cannot conceive why he talked to me that evening,” said Horatia. “I have often thought of it since.... But I will not be catechised about such absurdities. And suppose I were to insist on knowing how many fair ladies have been in love with you, Monsieur?”
“And pray, Mademoiselle, what would you think of me if I answered that question?” asked her betrothed, regaining his saddle. “Ask me how many I have admired, and some day—perhaps—I will tell you.”
They rode on, talking of the—to French eyes—daring honeymoon that they were to spend, alone, at the Breton château, which had come to Armand through his mother. For, since they were to be married in England, nobody could prevent their going straight to Brittany after the tying, by civil as well as by double religious rites, of the triple knot which should, as Armand said, make the most beautiful hand in the world so very securely his.
(2)
Horatia was to stay in London with her aunt for some weeks previous to her marriage. The day before her departure, Tristram rode over to say good-bye. She was out when he arrived, but he was told that she would return shortly, and he went, he did not quite know why, into the garden, where he had so often sat and walked with her, where they had had so many discussions, where—to go back into a life that now scarcely seemed his own—he had run shouting as a boy, glad to escape from his lessons.
Nothing remained of the glory of the summer, not even the corpses of the hollyhocks and the great sunflowers. All had been tidily removed for burial. It would have been more consonant with the wintry misery in his heart that those flowers which had witnessed his happiness should have been there still, black and withered, like his hopes. But the past seemed to have been neatly obliterated, for the Rector’s gardener was very sedulous; the whole place had cast off its last guest and was ready for a new—the winter. To welcome this a bush or two of Michaelmas daisies was in flower, and a robin was singing. And it came into Tristram’s mind, a reminiscence of his year abroad, that in foreign countries they would be keeping the festival of the dead, for it was the second of November.
The garden was intolerable to him, yet he stayed there, walking up and down in the chilly twilight, because he was afraid that if he went in he would find that she had returned, and the moment of farewell would be upon him. For though he had promised her that he would be at her wedding—her threefold wedding—in London, this was to him the real parting. The other could not hurt after this.
At last he saw the comfortable form of Mrs. Martha Kemblet, Horatia’s maid, coming towards him.
“Miss Horatia has just come in, Sir; she’s in the drawing-room.”
“Thank you,” said Tristram. “By the way, you are going to France with her, Mrs. Kemblet, are you not?”
“Indeed I am, Sir,” responded the faithful retainer with emphasis. She had been nurserymaid in the days of Horatia’s childhood, had returned to the Rectory on her husband’s death, and had successfully compassed the airs of the old family nurse. “My lamb shall have someone English about her in the midst of them jabbering foreigners.” Evidently Mrs. Kemblet was not a fervent of the French marriage.
After all, their parting was unimaginably short. Perhaps he would not have had it otherwise.
She was standing in the drawing-room, when he got in, turning up a newly-lit lamp.
“Oh, my dear Tristram,” she said, in a tone too matter-of-fact to be natural. “I am afraid that you have been here a long time, waiting. I am so sorry.”
“I was in the garden,” he answered. “I could well wait...”
“I shall see you in London?” asked Horatia needlessly, turning to the lamp again.
“Yes, without fail. But you will be so occupied then that I must tell you now what I want to say. It is only this... I want you to remember that if ever, at any time, you need me to... to do anything for you, I am always... I shall always...” Firmly as he had begun, he could not finish.
“You do not need to say that to me, Tristram,” came her voice, very soft and moved. She still had her back half turned to him; the lamplight glanced through her hair. “I know it... I am not worthy of it.... You have been a friend more kind...” Then she too stopped, and put her hands over her face.
Tristram stood like a stone. He could not trust himself to go nearer. Moreover, the dark room, with its island of light and her at the heart of it, was threatening to turn round. Seconds passed; then he said more steadily, “I should very much like a memento of you—something you have worn. Is there anything you could spare?”
He saw her drop her hands to her throat and unfasten something—something which, still half turned away, she held out to him without a word. He went forward to take it, and, dropping on one knee, kissed the hand that gave it to him, the hand lost to him for ever.
Then he found himself outside the room, and in his palm, warm from her throat, the little gold fibula, saucer-shaped and delicately worked, which she habitually wore. A thousand years ago it had clasped the cloak over the breast of a woman as beloved, perhaps, as she, but the heart that had once beat under it was not now more dust and ashes than his own.