it was no unusual thing for canterton to spend hours in the gardens and nurseries after dark. he was something of a star-gazer and amateur astronomer, but it was the life of the earth by night that drew him out with lantern, collecting-box and hand lens. often he went moth hunting, for the history of many a moth is also the history of some pestilence that cankers and blights the green growth of some tree or shrub. no one who has not gone out by night with a lantern to search and to observe has any idea of the strange, creeping life that wakes with the darkness. it is like the life of another world, thousand-legged, slimy, grotesque, repulsive, and yet full of significance to the nature student who goes out to use his eyes.
canterton had some of darwin’s thoroughness and patience. he had spent hours watching centipedes or the spore changes of myxomycetes on a piece of dead fir bough. he experimented with various compounds for the extinction of slugs, and studied the ways of wood-lice and earth worms. all very ridiculous, no doubt, in a man whose income ran into thousands a year. sometimes he had been able to watch a shrew at work, or perhaps a queer snuffling sound warned him of the nearness of a hedgehog. this was the utilitarian side of his vigils. he was greatly interested, æsthetically and scientifically, in the sleep of plants and flowers, and in the ways of those particular plants whose loves are consummated at night, shy white virgins with perfumed bodies who leave the day to their bolder and gaudier fellows. some moth played eros. he studied plants in their sleep, the change of posture some of them adopted, the drooping of the leaves, the closing of the petals. all sorts of things happened of which the ordinary gardener had not the slightest knowledge. there were atmospheric changes to be recorded, frosts, dew falls and the like. very often canterton would be up before sunrise, watching which birds were stirring first, and who was the first singer to send a twitter of song through the grey gate of the dawn.
but as he walked through the fir woods towards orchards corner, his eyes were not upon the ground or turned to the things that were near him. wisps of a red sunset still drifted about the west, and the trunks of the trees were barred in black against a yellow afterglow. soon a full moon would be coming up. heavy dew was distilling out of the quiet air and drawing moist perfumes out of the thirsty summer earth.
blue dusk covered the heathlands beyond orchards corner, and the little tree-smothered house was invisible. a light shone out from a window as canterton walked up the lane. something white was moving in the dusk, drifting to and fro across the garden like a moth from flower to flower.
canterton’s hand was on the gate. never before had night fallen for him with such a hush of listening enchantment. the scents seemed more subtle, the freshness of the falling dew indescribably delicious. he passed an empty chair standing on the lawn, and found a white figure waiting.
“i wondered whether you would come.”
“i did not wonder. what a wash of dew, and what scents.”
“and the stillness. i wanted to see the moon hanging in the fir woods.”
“the rim will just be topping the horizon.”
“you know the time by all the timepieces in arcady.”
“i suppose i was born to see and to remember.”
they went into the little drawing-room that was eve’s despair when she felt depressed. this room was mrs. carfax’s lararium, containing all the ugly trifles that she treasured, and some of the ugliest furniture that ever was manufactured. john carfax had been something of an amateur artist, and a very crude one at that. he had specialised in genre work, and on the walls were studies of a butcher’s shop, a fruit stall, a fish stall, a collection of brass instruments on a table covered with a red cloth, and a row of lean, stucco-fronted houses, each with a euonymus hedge and an iron gate in front of it. the carpet was a kidderminster, red and yellow flowers on a black ground, and the chairs were upholstered in green plush. every available shelf and ledge seemed to be crowded with knick-knacks, and a stuffed pug reclined under a glass case in the centre of a walnut chiffonier.
eve understood her mother’s affection for all this bric-à-brac, but to-night, when she came in out of the dew-washed dusk, the room made her shudder. she wondered what effect it would have on canterton, though she knew he was far too big a man to sneer.
mrs. carfax, in black dress and white lace cap, sat in one of the green plush arm-chairs. she was always pleased to see people, and to chatter with amiable facility. and canterton could be at his best on such occasions. the little old lady thought him “so very nice.”
“it is so good of you to come down and see eve’s paintings. eve, dear, fetch your portfolio. i am so sorry i could not come to mrs. canterton’s garden party, but i have to be so very careful, because of my heart. i get all out of breath and in a flutter so easily. do sit down. i think that is a comfortable chair.”
canterton sat down, and eve went for her portfolio.
“my husband was quite an artist, mr. canterton, though an amateur. these are some of his pictures.”
“so the gift is inherited!”
“i don’t think eve draws so well as her father did. you can see——”
canterton got up and went round looking at john carfax’s pictures. they were rather extraordinary productions, and the red meat in the butcher’s shop was the colour of red sealing wax.
“mr. carfax liked ‘still life.’”
“yes, he was a very quiet man. so fond of a littlelararium fishing—when he could get it. that is why he painted fish so wonderfully. don’t you think so, mr. canterton?”
“very probably.”
eve returned and found canterton studying the row of stucco houses with their iron gates and euonymus hedges. she coloured.
“will the lamp be right, eve, dear?”
“yes, mother.”
she opened her portfolio on a chair, and after arranging the lamp-shade, proceeded to turn over sketch after sketch. canterton had drawn his chair to a spot where he could see the work at its best. he said nothing, but nodded his head from time to time, while eve acted as show-woman.
mrs. carfax excelled herself.
“my dear, how queerly you must see things. i am sure i have never seen anything like that.”
“which, mother?”
“that queer, splodgy picture. i don’t understand the drawing. now, if you look at one of your father’s pictures, the butcher’s shop, for instance——”
eve smiled, almost tenderly.
“that is not a picture, mother. i mean, mine. it is just a whim.”
“my dear, how can you paint a whim?”
eve glanced at canterton and saw that he was absorbed in studying the last picture she had turned up from the portfolio. his eyes looked more deeply set and more intent, and he sat absolutely motionless, his head bowed slightly.
“that is the best classic thing i managed to do.”
he looked at her, nodded, and turned his eyes again to the picture.
“but even there——”
“there is a film of mystery?”
“yes.”
“it was provoking. i’m afraid i have failed.”
“no. that is latimer. it was just what i saw and felt myself, though i could not have put it into colour. show me the others again.”
mrs. carfax knitted, and eve put up sketch after sketch, watching canterton’s face.
“now, i like that one, dear.”
“do you, mother?”
“yes, but why have you made all the poplar trees black?”
“they are not poplars, mother, but cypresses.”
“oh, i see, cypresses, the trees they grow in cemeteries.”
canterton began to talk to eve.
“it is very strange that you should have seen just what i saw.”
“is it? but you are not disappointed?”
his eyes met hers.
“i don’t know anybody else who could have brought back latimer like that. quite wonderful.”
“you mean it?”
“of course.”
he saw her colour deepen, and her eyes soften.
mrs. carfax was never long out of a conversation.
“are they clever pictures, mr. canterton?”
“very clever.”
“i don’t think i understand clever pictures. my husband could paint a row of houses, and there they were.”
“yes, that is a distinct gift. some of us see more, others less.”
“do you think that if eve perseveres she will paint as well as her father?”
canterton remained perfectly grave.
“she sees things in a different way, and it is a very wonderful way.”
“i am so glad you think so. eve, dear, is it not nice to hear mr. canterton say that?”
mrs. carfax chattered on till eve grew restless, and canterton, who felt her restlessness, rose to go. he had come to be personal, so far as eve’s pictures were concerned, but he had been compelled to be impersonal for the sake of the old lady, whose happy vacuity emptied the room of all ideas.
“it was so good of you to come, mr. canterton.”
“i assure you i have enjoyed it.”
“i do wish we could persuade mrs. canterton to spend an evening with us. but then, of course, she is such a busy, clever woman, and we are such quiet, stay-at-home people. and i have to go to bed at ten. my doctor is such a tyrant.”
“i hope i haven’t tired you.”
“oh, dear, no! and please give my kind remembrance to mrs. canterton.”
“thank you. good night!”
canterton found himself in the garden with his hand on the gate leading into the lane. the moon had swung clear of the fir woods, and a pale, silvery horizon glimmered above the black tops of the trees. canterton wandered on down the lane, paused where it joined the high road, and stood for a while under the dense canopy of a yew.
he felt himself in a different atmosphere, breathing a new air, and he let himself contemplate life as it might have appeared, had there been no obvious barriers and limitations. for the moment he had no desire to go back to fernhill, to break the dream, and pick up the associations that fernhill suggested. the house was overrun by his wife’s friends who had come to stay for the garden party. lynette would be asleep, and she alone, at fernhill, entered into the drama of his dreams.
mrs. carfax and the little maid had gone to bed, and eve, left to herself, was turning over her latimer pictures and staring at them with peculiar intensity. they suggested much more to her than the latimer gardens, being part of her own consciousness, and part of another’s consciousness. her face had a glowing pallor as she sat there, musing, wondering, staring into impossible distances with a mingling of exultation and unrest. did he know what had happened to them both? had he realised all that had overtaken them in the course of one short week?
the room felt close and hot, and turning down the lamp, eve went into the narrow hall, opened the door noiselessly, and stepped out into the garden. moonlight flooded it, and the dew glistened on the grass. she wandered down the path, looking at the moon and the mountainous black outlines of the fir woods. and suddenly she stopped.
a man was sitting in the chair that had been left out on the lawn. he started up, and stood bareheaded, looking at her half guiltily.
“is it you?”
“i am sorry. i was just dreaming.”
he hesitated, one hand on the back of the chair.
“i wanted to think——”
“yes.”
“good night!”
“good night!”
she watched him pass through the gate and down the lane. and everything seemed very strange and still.
