Part 43 (1/2)

”Would you mind if I stayed?”

Humility considered before answering. ”I had rather you stayed.

He's like a boy over this business; but he's a man, after all.”

After this they fell into quite trivial talk, while Humility prepared the tea things.

”Your mother--Mrs. Venning--how does she face the journey?”

”You must see her,” said Humility, smiling, and led her into the room where the old lady reclined in bed, with a flush on each waxen cheek.

She had heard their voices.

”Bless you”--she was quite cheerful--”I'm ready to go as far as they'll carry me! All I ask is that in the next place they'll give me a window where I can see the boy's lamp when he's built it.”

Humility brought in the table and tea-things, and set them out by the invalid's bed. She went out into the kitchen to look to the kettle.

In that pause Honoria found it difficult to meet Mrs. Venning's eyes; but the old lady was wise enough to leave grudges to others. It was enough, in the time left to her, to accept what happened and leave the responsibility to Providence.

Honoria, replying but scarcely listening to her talk, heard a footfall at the outer door--Taffy's footfall; then the click of a latch and Humility's voice saying, ”There's a visitor inside; come to take tea with you.”

”A visitor?” He was standing in the doorway. ”_You?_” He blushed in his surprise.

Honoria rose. ”If I may,” she said, and wondered if she might hold out a hand.

But he held out his, quite frankly, and laughed. ”Why, of course.

They will be lighting up in half an hour. We must make haste.”

Once or twice during tea he stole a glance from Honoria to his mother; and each time fondly believed that it pa.s.sed undetected. His talk was all about the light-house and the preparations there, and he rattled on in the highest spirits. Two of the women knew, and the third guessed, that this chatter was with him unwonted.

At length he too seemed to be struck by this. ”But what nonsense I'm talking!” he protested, breaking off midway in a sentence and blus.h.i.+ng again. ”I can't help it, though. I'm feeling just as big as the light-house to-night, with my head wound up and turning round like the lantern!”

”And your wit occulting,” suggested Honoria, in her old light manner.

”What is it?--three flashes to the minute?”

He laughed and hurried them from the tea-table. Mrs. Venning bade them a merry good-bye as they took leave of her.

”Come along, mother.”

But Humility had changed her mind. ”No,” said she. ”I'll wait in the doorway. I can just see the lantern from the garden gate, you know. You two can wait by the old light-house, and call to me when the time comes.”

She watched them from the doorway as they took the path toward the cliff, toward the last ray of sunset fading across the dusk of the sea. The evening was warm, and she sat bareheaded with her lace-work on her knee; but presently she put it down.

”I must be taking to spectacles soon,” she said to herself. ”My eyes are not what they used to be.”

Taffy and Honoria reached the old light-house and halted by its white-painted railing. Below them the new pillar stood up in full view, young and defiant. A full tide lapped its base, feeling this comely and untried adversary as a wrestler shakes hands before engaging. And from its base the column, after a gentle inward curve--enough to give it a look of lissomeness and elastic strength-- sprang upright straight and firm to the lantern, ringed with a gallery and capped with a cupola of copper not yet greened by the weather; in outline as simple as a flower, in structure to the understanding eye almost as subtly organised, adapted and pieced into growth.

”So that is your ambition now?” said Honoria, after gazing long.

She added, ”I do not wonder.”