at such a parting of the ways, canterton’s elemental grimness showed itself. he was the peasant, sturdy, obstinate, steady-eyed, ready to push out into some untamed country, and to take and hold a new domain. for under all his opulent culture and his rare knowledge lay the patient yet fanatical soul of the peasant. he was both a mystic and a child of the soil, not a city dweller, mercurial and flippant, a dog at the heels of profit and loss.
eve had talked of the impossible, but when he took lynette by the hand and went down with her into the wilderness, canterton could not bring himself to play the cynic. sitting in the bracken, and watching lynette making one of her fairy fires, he felt that it was eve’s scepticism that was impossible, and not his belief in a magnanimous future. he was so very sure of himself that he felt too sure of other people. his name was not a thing to be made the sport of rumour. men and women had worked together before now; and did the world quarrel with a business man because he kept a secretary or a typist? moreover, he believed himself to be different from the average business man, and what might have meant lust for one spoke of a sacrament to the other.
“daddy, why didn’t miss eve come yesterday?”
“she had work at home, princess.”
“and to-day too?”
“it seems so.”
“why don’t we go and see her, then?”
“why not?”
the mouth of the child had offered an inspiration. was it possible to look into lynette’s eyes and be scared by sinister suggestions? why, it was a comradeship of three, not of two. they were three children together, and perhaps the youngest was the wisest of the three.
“lynette, come here, old lady! miss eve thinks of going away.”
“miss eve going away?”
“yes.”
“oh, no, daddy, how can she?”
“well, one has only to get into a train, even if it be a train of thought.”
lynette was kneeling between her father’s knees.
“i’ll ask her not to go.”
“you might try it.”
“oh, yes, let’s! let’s go down to orchards corner now—at once!”
eve had been suffering, suffering for canterton, lynette and herself. she saw life so clearly now—the lights and shadows, the sunlit spaces, the sinister glooms, the sharp, conventional horizons. canterton did not know how much of the woman there was in her, how very primitive and strong were the emotions that had risen to the surface of her consciousness. the compact would be too perilous. she knew in her heart of hearts that the youth in her desired more than a spiritual dream, and she was trying to harden herself, to build up barriers, to smother this splendid thing, this fire of the gods.
she had taken her work out into the garden, and was striving against a sense of perfunctoriness and the conviction that the life at fernhill could not last. she had more than hinted at this to canterton, bracing herself against his arguments, and against all the generous steadfastness of his homage that made the renunciation harder for her to bear.
and now an impetuous tenderness attacked her at white heat, a thing that came with glowing hair and glowing mouth, and arms that clung.
lynette had run up the lane in front of canterton, and lynette was to make eve carfax suffer.
“oh, miss eve, it isn’t true, is it?”
“what isn’t true, dear heart?”
“that you are going right away.”
eve felt a thickness at the throat. all that was best in life seemed conspiring to tempt and to betray her.
“i may have to go, dear.”
“but why—why, when we love you so much? aren’t you happy?”
“when i am with you, yes. but there are all sorts of things that you wouldn’t understand.”
“oh, but i could!”
“perhaps some day you will.”
“but, miss eve, you won’t really go, will you?”
canterton came in at the white gate, and eve’s eyes reproached him over the glowing head of the child. “it is ungenerous of you,” they said, “to let the child try and persuade me.”
she hugged lynette with sudden passion.
“i don’t want to go, dear, but some big devil fairy is telling me i shall have to.”
she was shy of canterton, and ready to hide behind the child, for there was a grim purposefulness about his idealism that made her afraid. his eyes hardly left her, and, though they held her sacred, they would have betrayed everything to the most disinterested of observers.
“i thought i would work at home on some of these sketches.”
“and lynette and i have been making a fire in the wilderness. we missed you.”
eve felt stifled. lynette was looking up into her face, and she was fingering the white lace collar round the child’s neck. she knew that she must face canterton. it was useless to try to shirk the challenge of such a man.
“isn’t it close to-day? lynette, dear, what about some raspberries? i’m so thirsty.”
“where are they, miss eve? aren’t they over?”
“no, they are a late kind. you know, round behind the house. ask anne for a dish.”
“i’ll get a rhubarb leaf, and pick the biggest for you.”
“dear heart, we’ll share them.”
lynette ran off, and they were left alone together. canterton had brought up a deck chair, and was looking over some of eve’s sketches that lay in a portfolio on the grass. his silence tantalised her. it was a force that had to be met and challenged.
“i sent lynette away because i wanted to speak to you.”
he laid the sketch aside and sat waiting.
“why did you let her come to tempt me?”
“because i can see no real reason why you should go.”
her eyes became appealing.
“oh, how blind! and you let the child rush at me, let me feel her warm arms round my neck. it was not fair to me, or to any of us.”
“to me it did not seem unfair, because i do not think that i am such a criminal.”
“i know; you are so sure of yourself. but if you thought that the child would persuade me, you were very much deceived. it has made me realise more than anything else that i cannot go on with the life at fernhill.”
he bent forward in his chair.
“eve, i tell you from my heart that you are wrong. i want you to be something of a mother to lynette. i can give the man’s touches, but my fingers are not delicate enough to bring out all the charm. think, now.”
she sat rigid, staring straight before her.
“i have made up my mind.”
“it is the privilege of wise minds to change, eve. i want you as well as lynette.”
“don’t make me suffer. do you think it is easy?”
“let me show you——”
“no, no! if you try to persuade me, i shall refuse to listen.”
and then silence fell on both of them, for lynette returned with a large rhubarb leaf holding a little mountain of red fruit.
