saw the woman mopping the doorstep after them, and she laughed. He pulled his watch out of his breeches’ pocket; it was half-past three.
“What are you looking at the time for?” she asked. “Meg’s coming to tea,” he replied.
She said no more, and they walked slowly on.
When they came on to the shoulder of the hill, and looked down on to the mill, and the millpond, she said:
“I will not come down with you — I will go home.”
“Not come down to tea!” he exclaimed, full of reproach and amazement. “Why, what will they say?”
“No, I won’t come down — let me say farewell — jamque Vale! Do you remember how Eurydice sank back into Hell?”
“But”— he stammered, “you must come down to tea — how can I tell them? Why won’t you come?”
She answered him in Latin, with two lines from Virgil. As she watched him, she pitied his helplessness, and gave him a last cut as she said, very softly and tenderly:
“It wouldn’t be fair to Meg.”
He stood looking at her; his face was coloured only by the grey-brown tan; his eyes, the dark, self-mistrustful eyes of the family, were darker than ever, dilated with misery of helplessness; and she was infinitely pitiful. She wanted to cry in her yearning.
“Shall we go into the wood for a few minutes?” she said in a low, tremulous voice, as they turned aside.
The wood was high and warm. Along the ridings the forget-me-nots were knee deep, stretching, glimmering into the distance like the Milky Way through the night. They left the tall, flower-tangled paths to go in among the bluebells, breaking through the close-pressed flowers and ferns till they came to an oak which had fallen across the hazels, where they sat half screened. The hyacinths drooped magnificently with an overweight of purple, or they stood pale and erect, like unripe ears of purple corn. Heavy bees swung down in a blunder of extravagance among the purple flowers. They were intoxicated even with the sight of so much blue. The sound of their hearty, wanton humming came clear upon the solemn boom of the wind overhead. The sight of their clinging, clambering riot gave satisfaction to the soul. A rosy campion flower caught the sun and shone out. An elm sent down a shower of flesh-tinted sheaths upon them.
“If there were fauns and hamadryads!” she said softly, turning to him to soothe his misery. She took his cap from his head, ruffled his hair, saying:
“If you were a faun, I would put guelder roses round your hair, and make you look Bacchanalian.” She left her hand lying on his knee, and looked up at the sky. Its blue looked pale and green in comparison with the purple tide ebbing about the wood. The clouds rose up like towers, and something had touched them into beauty, and poised them up among the winds. The clouds passed on, and the pool of sky was clear.
“Look,” she said, “how we are netted down — boughs with knots of green buds. If we were free on the winds! — But I’m glad we’re not.” She turned suddenly to him, and with the same movement, she gave him her hand, and he clasped it in both his. “I’m glad we’re netted down here; if we were free in the winds — Ah!”
She laughed a peculiar little laugh, catching her breath.
“Look!” she said, “it’s a palace, with the ash-trunks smooth like a girl’s arm, and the elm-columns, ribbed and bossed and fretted, with the great steel shafts of beech, all rising up to hold an embroidered care-cloth over us; and every thread of the care-cloth vibrates with music for us, and the little broidered birds sing; and the hazel-bushes fling green spray round us, and the honeysuckle leans down to pour out scent over us. Look at the harvest of bluebells — ripened for us! Listen to the bee, sounding among all the organ-play — if he sounded exultant for us!” She looked at him, with tears coming up into her eyes, and a little, winsome, wistful smile hovering round her mouth. He was very pale, and dared not look at her. She put her hand in his, leaning softly against him. He watched, as if fascinated, a young thrush with full pale breast who hopped near to look at them — glancing with quick, shining eyes.
“The clouds are going on again,” said Lettie.
“Look at that cloud face — see — gazing right up into the sky. The lips are opening — he is telling us something — now the form is slipping away — it’s gone — come, we must go too.”
“No,” he cried, “don’t go — don’t go away.”
Her tenderness made her calm. She replied in a voice perfect in restrained sadness and resignation.
“No, my dear, no. The threads of my life were untwined; they drifted about like floating threads of gossamer; and you didn’t put out your hand to take them and twist them up into the chord with yours. Now another has caught them up, and the chord of my life is being twisted, and I cannot wrench it free and untwine it again — I can’t. I am not strong enough. Besides, you have twisted another thread far and tight into your chord; could you get free?”
“Tell me what to do — yes, if you tell me.”
“I can’t tell you — so let me go.”
“No, Lettie,” he pleaded, with terror and humility. “No, Lettie; don’t go. What should I do with my life? Nobody would love you like I do — and what should I do with my love for you? — hate it and fear it, because it’s too much for me?”
She turned and kissed him gratefully. He then took her in a long, passionate embrace, mouth to mouth. In the end it had so wearied her that she could only wait in his arms till he was too tired to hold her. He was trembling already.
“Poor Meg!” she murmured to herself dully, her sensations having become vague.
He winced, and the pressure of his arms slackened. She loosened his hands and rose half dazed from her seat by him. She left him, while he sat dejected, raising no protest.
When I went out to look for them, when tea had already been waiting on the table half an hour or more, I found him leaning against the gatepost at the bottom of the hill. There was no blood in his face, and his tan showed livid; he was haggard as if he had been ill for some weeks.
“Whatever’s the matter?” I said. “Where’s Lettie?”
“She’s gone home,” he answered, and the sound of his own voice, and the meaning of his own words made him heave. “Why?” I asked in alarm.
He looked at me as if to say, “What are you talking about? I cannot listen!”
“Why?” I insisted.
“I don’t know,” he replied.
“They are waiting tea for you,” I said.
He heard me, but took no notice.
“Come on,” I repeated, “there’s Meg and everybody waiting tea for you.”
“I don’t want any,” he said.
I waited a minute or two. He was violently sick.
“Vae meum Fervens difficile bile tumet jecur,”
I thought to myself.
