LM

“ Antony liked to picture himself restoring life to the old place. Now and again he allowed himself to see a woman aiding him in the pleasant task. He would picture her standing by the sundial, looking out towards the sparkling water; standing by the marble basin with white pigeons alighted at her feet, and peacocks strutting near her; walking among the marble statues, with a book; passing up the wide steps of the solitary house, taking with her the sunshine of the garden to cheer its gloom. ”

“ And she knew that no single other path could have led her to this place, also that there could be no other prospect as beautiful for her.
“When did you first know?” she had asked him. The question millions of women have asked in their time, and that will be asked by millions more.
“I think,” he had answered smiling, “it was the very first moment you came into the room, looking like a woodland elf in your green frock. Anyhow I am quite certain it was when you were—shall we say a trifle snubbed in the moonlight.”
“Ah, poor Pia,” said Trix. ”

“ In the more ordinary nature of things, the physical conditions will act on the mental, sending your mind up to the point marked gaiety when the sun shines, dropping it down to despair—or, at any rate, down to dulness—when the skies are leaden. Also, in more extreme cases, the mental conditions will act on the physical, if not actually, at least with so good a show of reality as to appear genuine. If you are thoroughly unhappy—no mere, light, passing depression, mind you—it matters not at all how brilliant the sunshine may be, it is nothing but grey fog for all you see of it. ”

“ It was sunset before the Fort Salisbury was once more cleaving her way through the water. Antony, from her decks, looked once more at the receding land. Again he saw it rising, like a purple amethyst, from the sea, but this time it was veiled in the rose-coloured light of the sinking sun. He looked towards that portion of the amethyst where the little courtyard with the orange trees in green tubs was situated. ”

“ Every other possibility vanished before it into the remotest background, unthinkable in the face of what was. Pia di Donatello! Again he repeated the musical syllables. And yet—and yet—he’d have sworn she was English. There wasn’t the faintest trace of a foreign accent in her speech. If anything, there was a hint of Irish,—the soft intonation of the Emerald Isle. Her colouring, too, was Irish, the blue-black hair, the dark violet eyes—he had discovered that they were violet; looking, for all the world, as if they had been put in with a smutty finger, as the saying goes. ”

“ A gleam of a smile flashed across the Duchessa’s face. The reply was so Antonian.
There was quite a long silence. Suddenly Antony roused himself.
“You’ll let me get you some tea, Madam,” he said.
Awaiting no reply, he went into the little scullery, where the fire by which he had cooked his midday meal was still alight. The kettle filled with water and placed on the stove, he stood by it, in a measure wishful, yet oddly reluctant to return to the parlour. Reluctance won the day. He remained by the kettle, gazing at it. ”

“ Those days will ever remain as a golden memory to me.
“Having in mind your words when we lunched together in the garden of that little hotel at Teneriffe, I dare to inscribe myself,
“Always your friend,
“Antony Gray.”
It was not the letter he longed to write, yet he dared not write more explicitly. Honour forbade the smallest hint at the strange position in which he found himself; diffidence held him back from writing the words his heart was crying to her. Bald and flat as he felt the letter to be, he could do no better. It must go as it stood. ”

“ Trix’s gurgling was peculiarly infectious.
“Odd!” laughed Doctor Hilary. “It’s the oddest thing imaginable. No one but Nick could have conceived the whole business, or found the smallest interest in it. But he did find an interest, and that was enough for me. He is lonely now, I grant. But before this—this invention, he was stagnant as well as lonely. His mind, and seemingly his soul with it, had become practically atrophied. His mind has now been roused to interest, though the most extraordinarily eccentric interest.” ”

“ Trix stared thoughtfully into the fire. Its light was playing on the silver-backed brushes on her dressing-table, gleaming on the edges of gilt frames, and throwing her shadow big and dancing on the wall behind her. The curtains were undrawn, and without the trees stood ghostly and bare against the pale grey sky. There was the dead silence in the atmosphere which tells of frost.
It was just that,—the oddness of little things, and their immense importance in life, and simply because of the influence they have on the human soul. ”

“ Wouldn’t it be conceivable, nay, wouldn’t it be natural that she should be indignant at the thought that she had admitted to her friendship a man, who, to 118 her eyes, would appear one of inferior birth? Wouldn’t his behaviour on the Fort Salisbury appear to her in the light of a fraud? Wouldn’t his letter appear to her as a piece of preposterous presumption on his part? How could it be expected that she should see beneath the surface of things as they seemed to be, and solve the riddle of appearances? ”

“ The Duchessa had laughed. It was so entirely like Tibby to think of food the first thing.
“I know,” she had replied. And then reflectively, “I think it might be desirable to telephone to Doctor Hilary and ask him to come too. It really is not fair to ask Father Dormer to meet three solitary females.”
A second time Miss Tibbutt had momentarily and mentally surveyed the contents of the larder, and almost immediately had nodded her entire approval of the idea. She most thoroughly enjoyed the mild excitement of a little dinner party.
“Tibby, angel, what’s the matter with Pia?” ”

“ A big moon was coming up in the dusk behind the trees, its light throwing the shadows dark and soft on the grass.
“It’s so astonishingly silent after London,” said Trix, gazing at the blue-grey velvet of the sky.
She looked more than ever elfin-like, with the moonlight falling on her fair hair and pointed oval face, and the shimmering green of her dress.
“I wonder why we ever go to bed on moonlight nights,” she pursued. “Brilliant sunshine always tempts us to do something—a long walk, a drive, or boating on a river. ”

“ It was this that made the fact of Nicholas Danver giving a tea-party of such extraordinary 333 importance, though, viewed apart from its meaning, it was the most trivial and commonplace thing in the world.
Trix got up from her chair, and went over to the window.
Not a twig of the bare trees was stirring. The earth lay quiet in the grip of the frost king; a faint pink light still lingered in the western sky. She looked at the rustic seat and the table beneath the lime trees. How amazingly long ago the day seemed when she had sat there with Pia, and heard the little tale of wounded pride. ”

“ There is an extraordinary fascination in exploring 53 an unknown land, even if the exploration is to be of somewhat limited duration. The ship by which Antony had travelled to the Cape, had sailed straight out; it had passed the peak of Teneriffe at a distance. Antony had looked at it as it rose from the sea, like a great purple amethyst half veiled in cloud. He had wondered then, idly enough, whether it would ever be his lot to set foot upon its shores. Never, in his wildest dreams, had he imagined under what actual circumstances that lot would be his. ”

“ And Antony followed her up the steps.
They made their way through a swarm of grubby children, and entered the porch. It was cool and dark in the church in contrast to the heat and sunshine without. Here and there Antony descried a kneeling figure,—women with handkerchiefs on their heads, and a big basket beside them; an old man or two; a girl telling her beads before the Lady Altar; and a small dark-haired child, who gazed stolidly at the Duchessa. Votive candles burned before the various shrines. The ruby lamp made a spot of light in the shadows above the High Altar. ”

“ He had been about to wonder aloud as to why on earth Antony should have accepted the conditions, why he should have exchanged the freedom and untrammelled spaces of the veldt for the conventional life of England, even with the Hall and a goodly income, at the end of the year, to the balance. He knew most assuredly that nine hundred and ninety-nine men out of a thousand would have done so, and he knew that he himself was the thousandth who would not. His exceedingly brief acquaintance with Antony had given him the impression that he, also, was a thousandth man. ”

“ He’d had experience enough and to spare,—he smiled grimly to himself,—experience such as an English farm-labourer earning a pound a week, even with a wife and children to keep, and all odds against him, could never in the remotest degree aided by the wildest flights of imagination, conceive. In England water at least is always obtainable. Antony had visions of the jealous husbanding of a few drops of hot moisture in a sunbaked leather bottle. ”

“ She would be civil, of course; there would not be the slightest chances of her forgetting her manners, but—his mind swung to the 336 little hotel courtyard, to the orange trees in green tubs, to the golden sunshine and the sparkle of the blue water, to the woman then sitting by his side.
Memory can become a sheer physical pain at times.
Antony got up from the settle, and moved to the window. ”

“ Where trimness was desirable, they were as neat, as well-ordered, as stately as some old-world lady; where nature was allowed fuller sway, they luxuriated in a very riot of mad colour,—pagan, bacchanalian almost, yet in completest harmony, despite the freedom permitted.
Before the house, beyond a rose-embowered terrace, a wide lawn, soft as thickest velvet, terminated in two great yews, set far apart, a sundial between them, and backgrounded by the sea and sky. To right and left were flower borders brilliant in colour, against yew hedges. ”

“ If we dream of paradise, our dream is modelled on the greatest happiness we have known; therefore, since our happiness is, doubtless, but a rushlight as compared to the sunshine of paradise, our dreams must necessarily fall exceedingly far short of the reality. Hitherto Antony’s happiness had been largely monochrome, flecked with tiny specks of radiance. He might indeed have dreamed of something a trifle brighter, but how was it possible for him to have formed from them the smallest conception of the happiness that was awaiting him? ”

“ Fate never does show her subsequent moves. She puts decisions before us in such a way, that she leaves us to imagine we can shape our succeeding actions to our own mind and according to the decision made. She leaves us to imagine it is simply a question whether we will reach our goal by a road bearing slightly to the right or to the left, by a road which may take a long time to traverse and be a fairly smooth road, or a road which will take a short time to traverse and be a rough one. ”

“ The tone was utterly final. Trix felt the old childish fear of him surging over her. It was quite different from the nervousness she had just been experiencing, and, oddly enough, it gave her a kind of desperate courage. She had no intention of accepting his refusal without a struggle.
“I wouldn’t tell unless it became absolutely necessary,” she urged.
“It never can be absolutely necessary,” he retorted. “It would be no more dishonourable to tell a lie than break a promise.”
Trix went scarlet. ”

“ Nicholas looked towards the fire.
“After the first planning, I don’t honestly know that it has,” he said. “A thing falls flat with no one to share it with you. And Hilary never really approved.”
Again there was a silence, and again the odd pathos, the childishness of the whole thing stirred Trix’s heart. She said she understood, and she did understand more profoundly than Nicholas could possibly have conceived. In the few seconds of silence which followed, she reviewed those solitary years in an amazingly quick mental process. ”

“ Again Antony felt that odd little thrill run through him, this time intensified, while his heart beat and pounded under his immaculate white shirt-front.
Perhaps it is a mercy that shirt-fronts, to say nothing of other things, do hide the vagaries of our hearts. It would be a sorry thing for us if the world at large could perceive them,—the joy, the anguish, the remorse, and the bitter little disappointments. ”

“ He waited, however, for Trix to give the dismissal.
Trix was looking at him, a queer puzzlement in her eyes. Why was his face so oddly familiar? It was utterly impossible that she should have met him before, at all events on the intimate footing the familiarity of his face suggested. It must be merely an extraordinary likeness to someone to whom she could not at the moment put a name. Quite suddenly she realized that they were scrutinizing each other in a way that certainly cannot be termed exactly orthodox. She pulled herself together. ”

“ Antony had established a friendship with the lady of the blue book. The book had been responsible for its beginning. With Emerson’s definition of friendship he would probably have been largely in harmony; not so in his treatment of it. With the following, he would have been at one, with the exception of a word or so:—“I must feel pride in my friend’s accomplishments as if they were mine,—wild, delicate, throbbing property in his virtues. I feel as warmly when he is praised, as the lover when he hears applause of his engaged maiden. We over-estimate the conscience of our friend. ”

“ Pia laughed.
“These two,” she said, “Trix and Doctor Hilary. I told you, you remember, and said there were trains, though I never dreamed they would be utilized quite so literally. Of course it was yesterday?”
“Yes,” nodded Trix again. And then with a huge sigh, “Oh, Pia, I am so happy.”
Pia turned her round towards Miss Tibbutt.
“Tibby, look at her face, and then she tells us she is happy, as though it were necessary to advertise the fact to our slow intelligences.”
Trix laughed, though the tears were in her eyes. Laughter and tears are amazingly close together at times. ”

“ And why was he pretending to be Michael Field, when she—Trix—now knew him to be Antony Gray? The last two proved the greatest difficulty, nor could Trix, for all her gazing into the fire, find the place they ought to occupy. She remembered, too, her own idea regarding the colour of that bubble. Was it possible that she had been right in her idea? Verily, if she had been, in the face of this new discovery, it opened up a yet more astounding problem. Pia actually and verily in love with the man, a man she believed to be under-gardener at the Hall,—Pia, the distant, the proud, the reserved Pia! ”

“ Occasionally he made side tracks into hedges and down rabbit holes, whence at a whistle from Antony, he would emerge innocent in expression, but utterly condemned by traces of red earth on his black nose and white back.
There was a lazy Sundayish atmosphere about the village as Antony passed through it, with Josephus now at his heels. Men lounged by cottage doors, women gossiped across garden fences. ”

“ Had Antony had a free choice of English gardens in which to work, it is quite conceivable that he had chosen these very ones in which fate, or Nicholas Danver’s conditions, had placed him. In an astonishingly short space of time he was taking as great a pride in them as Golding himself. It is not to be supposed, however, that, at the outset, Golding was over-pleased to welcome a young man, who had been thrust upon him from the unknown without so much as a by your leave to him. ”

“ And this is more especially the case when the mistakes and the blankness have been caused by our own actions. There is not even stolid philosophy to come to our aid, a shrugging of the shoulders, a foisting of the blame on to fate. It may be that the majority of the incidents have been forced upon us, that we have not been free agents in the matter, but if we must of honesty say,—Here or there was the mistake which led to them, and I made that mistake of my own free will,—we cannot turn to philosophy regarding fate for our comfort. ”

“ Even should Fate throw a like opportunity in his path again, it was entirely improbable that she would choose the same hour. She is ever chary of exact repetitions. And, if his stammering tongue failed in speech with the soft darkness to cover its shyness, how was it likely it would find utterance in the broad light of day? The Moment—he spelled it with a capital—had passed, and would never again recur. Therefore he seated himself on his own deck-chair, some twenty paces from her, and began to fill his pipe, gloomily enough. ”

“ I know I thought last August that Pia was in love with someone, and now you say you are certain it is this man, and of course, as you say—” Trix hesitated a moment, feeling slightly hypocritical,—“it does seem odd when he is only a gardener, and one wonders how she could have met him, and all that. But, you know, you are not quite certain that you are right; or, even supposing that you are, that Pia will want any interference on our part. We must just wait a day or two and think matters over.”
Miss Tibbutt sighed. ”