pen it in the street,
but carried it all the way to the garden of a certain College, and sat
down to read it under the cedar-tree. That little letter, so short,
boyish, and dry, transported her halfway to heaven. She was to see him
again at once, not to wait weeks, with the fear that he would quite
forget her! Her husband had said at breakfast that Oxford without 'the
dear young clowns' assuredly was charming, but Oxford 'full of tourists
and other strange bodies' as certainly was not. Where should they go?
Thank heaven, the letter could be shown him! For all that, a little
stab of pain went through her that there was not one word which made
it unsuitable to show. Still, she was happy. Never had her favourite
College garden seemed so beautiful, with each tree and flower so cared
for, and the very wind excluded; never had the birds seemed so tame
and friendly. The sun shone softly, even the clouds were luminous and
joyful. She sat a long time, musing, and went back forgetting all she
had come out to do. Having both courage and decision, she did not leave
the letter to burn a hole in her corsets, but gave it to her husband at
lunch, looking him in the face, and saying carelessly:
"Providence, you see, answers your question."
He read it, raised his eyebrows, smiled, and, without looking up,
murmured:
"You wish to prosecute this romantic episode?"
Did he mean anything--or was it simply his way of putting things?
"I naturally want to be anywhere but here."
"Perhaps you would like to go alone?"
He said that, of course, knowing she could not say: Yes. And she
answered simply: "No."
"Then let us both go--on Monday. I will catch the young man's trout;
thou shalt catch--h'm!--he shall catch--What is it he catches--trees?
Good! That's settled."
And, three days later, without another word exchanged on the subject,
they started.
Was she grateful to him? No. Afraid of him? No. Scornful of him? Not
quite. But she was afraid of HERSELF, horribly. How would she ever be
able to keep herself in hand, how disguise from these people that she
loved their boy? It was her desperate mood that she feared. But since
she so much wanted all the best for him that life could give, surely she
would have the strength to do nothing that might harm him. Yet she was
afraid.
He was there at the station to meet them, in riding things and a nice
rough Norfolk jacket that she did not recognize, though she thought she
knew his clothes
|