Volume Ii Part 12 (1/2)
It was the time of afternoon tea. Miss Fane rolled off the sofa, and with the hydraulic sniff that can temporarily suspend the laws of nature, proceeded to pour out tea. Presently John and the dogs came in, and Di, who had found Mrs. Courtenay's book without his a.s.sistance, followed. John had not the art of small-talk. Miss Fane, who was in the habit of attempting the simultaneous absorption of liquid and farinaceous nutriment with a perseverance not marked by success, was necessarily silent, save when a carroway seed took the wrong turn. She seldom spoke in the presence of food, any more than others do in church.
Few things apart from the Bull of Bashan commanded Miss Fane's undivided homage, but food never failed to, though it was reserved for plovers'
eggs and the roe of the sturgeon to stir the latent emotion of her nature to its depths.
The dogs did their tricks. Lindo contrived to swallow all his own and half Fritz's portion, but, fortunately for the cause of justice, during a m.u.f.fin-scattering choke on Lindo's part, Fritz's long red tongue was able to glean together fragments of what he imagined he had lost sight of for ever.
Di inquired whether there were evening service.
”Evening service at seven,” said Miss Fane; ”supper at quarter past eight.”
”Do not go to church again,” said John. ”Come for a walk with me.”
Di readily agreed. It was very pleasant to her to be with John. She had begun to feel that he and she were near akin. He was her only first cousin. The nearness of their relations.h.i.+p, accounting as it did in her mind for a growing intimacy, prevented any suspicion of that intimacy having sprung from another source.
They walked together through the forest in the still opal light of the waning day. Through the enlacing fingers of the trees the western sun made ladders of light. Breast-high among the bracken they went, disturbing the deer; across the heather, under the whisper of the pines, down to the steel-white reeded pools below.
They sat down on the trunk of a fallen tree, and a faint air came across the water from the trees on the further side, with a message to the trees on this. Neither talked much. The lurking sadness in the air just touched and soothed the lurking sadness in Di's mind. She did not notice John's silence, for he was often silent. She wound a blade of gra.s.s round her finger, and then unwound it again. John watched her do it. He had noticed before, as a peculiarity of Di's, not observable in other women, that whatever she did was interesting. She asked some question about the lower pool gleaming before them through the trunks of the trees, and he answered absently the reverse of what was true.
”Then perhaps we had better be turning back,” she said.
He rose, and they went back another way, climbing slowly up and up by a little winding track through steepest forest places. Many burrs left their native stems to accompany them on their way. They showed to great advantage on Di's primrose cotton gown. At last they reached the top of the rocky ridge, and she sat down, out of breath, under a group of silver firs, and, taking off her gloves, began idly to pick the burrs one by one off the folds of her gown.
There was no hurry. He sat down by her, and watched her hands. She put the burrs on a stone near her.
They were sitting on the topmost verge of the crag, and the forest fell away in a s.h.i.+mmer of green beneath their feet to the pools below, and then climbed the other side of the valley and melted into the purple of the Overleigh and Oulston moors. Far away, the steep ridge of Hambleton and the headland of Sutton Brow stood out against the evening sky. Some Tempest of bygone days had dared to perpetrate a Greek temple in a clearing among the silver firs where they were sitting, but time had effaced that desecration of one of G.o.d's high places by transforming it to a lichened ruin of scattered stones. It was on one of these scattered stones that Di was raising a little cairn of burrs.
”Forty-one,” she said at last. ”You have not even begun your toilet yet, John.”
No answer.
The sun was going down unseen behind a bar of cloud. A purple light was on the hills. Their faces showed that they saw the glory, but the twilight deepened over all the nearer land. Slowly the sun pa.s.sed below the leaden bar, and looked back once more in full heaven, and drowned the world in light. Then with dying strength he smote the leaden bar to one long line of quivering gold, and sank dimly, redly, to the enshrouding west. All colour died. The hills were gone. The land lay dark. But far across the sky, from north to south, the line of light remained.
Di had watched the sunset alone. John had not seen it. His eyes were fixed on her calm face with the western glow upon it. She did not even notice that he was looking at her. One of her ungloved hands lay on her knee, so near to him yet so immeasurably far away. Could he stretch across the gulf to touch it? His expressionless face took some meaning at last. He leaned a little towards her, and laid his hand on hers.
She started violently, and dropped her sunset thoughts like a surprised child its flowers. Even a less vain man than John might have been cut to the quick by the sudden horrified bewilderment of her face, and of the dazzled light-blinded eyes which turned to peer at him with such unseeing distress.
”Oh, John!” she said, ”not you;” and she put her other hand quickly for one second on his.
”Yes,” he said, ”that is just it.”
Her mouth quivered painfully.
”I thought,” she said, ”we were--surely we _are_ friends.”
”No,” said John, mastering the insane emotion which had leapt within him at the touch of her hand. ”We never were, and we never shall be. I will have nothing to do with any friends.h.i.+p of yours. I'm not a beggar to be shaken off with coppers. I want everything or nothing.”
Her manner changed. Her self-possession came back.