Part 22 (1/2)

He held her close, covering her face with clumsy eager kisses, the first he had ever given a woman, and he gave himself up to wors.h.i.+pping her as she sat on the throne he had made for her.

”Let us go to the boulders above the wood,” whispered Blanche, who even in the grip of one of the deepest feelings of her life kept her unfailing flair for the right background; ”we can see the sun rise there, over the trees....”

He helped her to her feet and they walked together, hand in hand, like children. The keen personal emotion had pa.s.sed, leaving them almost timid; now certainty had settled on them pa.s.sionate inquiry gave place to peace. So they went, and he felt as though he walked in Eden, with the one mate in all the world. Across the moors they went; then--for they were going inland--they came to fields again, and the path ran through acres of cabbages. The curves of the grey-green leaves held the light in wide s.h.i.+mmers of silver, the dew vibrating with diamond colours; edging their two shadows the refraction of the beams brought a halo of brightest white. Another stretch of furze brought them to the boulders above the wood on a level with the ma.s.sed tree-tops. Ishmael made Blanche put on his coat; then he sat beside her, his hand holding the coat together under her chin.

Nestling her head against him, she closed her eyes, and with soft, regular breathings feigned a sleep that presently became reality.

Through the starlit hour between moon-setting and sun-rising Ishmael held her; every now and then she stirred, half woke, and, moving a little to ease his arm, lifted the pallor of her face to his. Before the dawn she awoke completely and began to reproach herself and him.

The time of un-self-consciousness was already over for her, and she was once more the woman who knew how to make men love.

”Oh, how could you let me waste time sleeping? I've not been really asleep--only drowsing. I knew I was sitting beside you all the while.”

”Then it wasn't waste for you either.” His lips trembled a little, and he said nothing about his own emotions; it had been so unutterably sweet to him to hold her, trusting, quiescent, in his arms and feel the night-wind ruffling her hair against his cheek.

It was still dusk, though the misty blue-grey of the tree-tops was imperceptibly changing to a more living hue, and the sky, stained a deep rust colour, showed a molten whiteness where it touched the world's rim.

He unknowingly gripped Blanche's hand till she nearly cried out; except as something that made beauty more beautiful he hardly knew she was there. Slowly the miracle of dawn unfolded; down in the woods birds lifted glad heads, the lids were raised from round, bright eyes, and there came up to the watchers on the rocks the first faint notes that pierced the air of the new day.

Nothing was very wide-awake as yet; all life stirred as though beneath a film; a dim blue coverlet still lay lightly over the wood; the earth held her breath for the moment of birth. What a waiting, what a wide clear sense of certain expectation! The sky, naked of clouds, had become a brightening sphere of pearliness; a deep rose gathered over the hills and spread fanlike, licking up the ashen pallor with stabs of flame. A livid red-gold rim sprang into being behind the hill crests, and slowly and in state the sun swam up the molten sky. He turned to Blanche with the tears in his eyes.

”Dearest, the sun has risen!” He drew her face to his and kissed her, not as before, but with the sense of consummating a sacrament. She rose to her feet a little unsteadily, and they set their faces towards Paradise cottage.

”You must get some rest,” he said; ”it's only half-past four now.”

The exaltation of the dawn had left her, and she quickened her steps, wondering uneasily what her skin looked like unaided in this dazzling light. She slipped noiselessly into the house by the front door, which she barred behind her; the clatter of hobnails from the little yard told that Billy was already about his business, but behind Mrs. Penticost's door all was quiet. With her finger to her lips Blanche leaned from her window and breathed ”Good-night” and disappeared into the shadows.

CHAPTER XII

SHEAVES

The following day dawned still and hot as ever, but overcast with a grey film, though the pale sky held a glaring quality that reflected on to the eyeb.a.l.l.s. Down in the lowest meadow the oats had not yet been gathered into sheaves, and John-James, gazing at the sky, was of opinion that the sooner it was done the better. Ishmael agreed without enthusiasm, till it occurred to him that Blanche, who was so charmed with a farmer's life, would probably enjoy helping. It might be made into a sort of picnic, a _fete champetre_; the beautiful monkey could help, and he could send a boy over to the mill to fetch Phoebe. They would make a day of it--the kind of pastoral occasion which cannot exactly be called artificial and yet which does not in the least represent the actual life of those who live by land.

Va.s.sie was enthusiastic about the idea, and soon the house was in a ferment with preparations; bottles of cider were brought out, a stone puncheon of beer produced for the men, cakes and pasties began to form beneath Va.s.sie's willing hands. Ishmael felt a pang as he watched her.

How could it affect her but adversely, this change he was to make? He felt that Blanche would not want any of his family, even Va.s.sie, living in the house with them, and it was her right to order such a matter as she would. To settle anywhere with her mother was impossible for the proud fastidious Va.s.sie, and, though he could allow her enough money to make her independent, she could hardly, in the ideas of those days, go alone into the world upon it.

There would be terrible scenes with his mother, he realised, before she would consent to go, but he shook the thought of it all off him on this the first morning of his plighted faith with Blanche. It would be unpleasant, but imperative, and how well worth it!... Meanwhile, there was love to be enjoyed, every moment of it--love that was still to him such a shy and delicate thing that he hardly dared to breathe upon it for fear of ruffling in some clumsy way Blanche's fine susceptibilities.

She must have had so much to suffer from undue approaches in her battle with the world; not from him should such tarnis.h.i.+ng come.

He sent a note down to her at Mrs. Penticost's to tell her again, in his morning greeting, of his love and to advise her of the mock-business of the day. Blanche was still in bed when it arrived, and Judith, looking more like a handsome monkey than ever in a faded red Garibaldi, took it in to her.

Judith still admired Blanche above all women, although she saw her as now with a creamed face and hair that resembled a row of little slugs disposed about her brow. Blanche rose above all this as she managed to rise above an inauspicious background, and the lazy stretch she gave beneath the sheet that was all that covered her, bringing out two white arms above her head so that the muscles swelled under the tight skin, was so lovely in its feline grace as to triumph over anything else.

”Here's a note for you; I think it's from Mr. Ruan,” said Judith. ”Mrs.

Penticost said she thought it was.” Judy did not add that Mrs.

Penticost's precise method of giving the information had been to snort out: ”T'young maister can't live through the night wethout writing to she, simminly.... Poor sawl!”