CHAPTER I

"I CANNOT LIVE WITHOUT YOU"

THE children's hour was over. Anstice sat outside on the terrace enjoying a rest. She heard their happy chatter in the rooms above her, as they were being got ready for bed. It was a lovely evening in late June. Roses were just beginning to riot in the rose-beds and over the walls of the old house. There was a sweet scent of jasmine and of stocks coming from the flower-beds by the hall door. She looked across the park, which was golden in the evening sun, to the still, dark-blue water of the lake, and to the purple Fells beyond it. Much as her soul was enjoying the peaceful beauty of the scene before her eyes, her thoughts were on a certain yacht in Norwegian fiords, and very much with the owner of it.

She and Justin had exchanged a few friendly letters, but she had not heard for a fortnight now, and could not write till she had received his fresh address. He had been gone a month. She wondered if he were on his way to America, and a certain wistfulness gathered in her eyes as for the hundredth time she began to speculate upon her future. She was so engrossed with her thoughts, and so screened by a tall myrtle tree in a tub, that she neither heard nor saw an arrival at the house.

A few minutes later, a shadow came between her and the setting sun; and looking quickly up, to her amazement she saw that it was Justin himself. He stood looking at her for a moment in silence, as she rose to her feet. His eyes were upon her with a grave, inscrutable gaze, but his words were simple and to the point.

"I could not keep away any longer," he said.

Her hand was in his, and he held it, but he did not stoop to kiss her.

The colour had risen in her cheeks. To Justin she had never appeared more beautiful. She was in a soft creamy tea-gown, with a bunch of pale pink roses at her breast. Her eyes looked into his with her soft, sweet candour, and the dimples played in her cheeks, as she smiled him a welcome. If her colour had risen, and her hand trembled ever so lightly as it lay in his, her voice was steadiness itself.

"This is a pleasant surprise. Has a letter gone astray? We did not expect you so soon."

"No. I suddenly determined to come home. I had finished what I went away to do, and so I am back."

He hesitated, then the noiseless Neale appeared.

"If you please, ma'am, the young ladies are in the hall, they and Master Ruffie have seen—"

Justin turned sharply round with an exclamation of impatience.

Anstice said with her happy laugh: "Ruffie has sent them down to bring you up, Justin. They are not in bed yet. What a state of delight he must be in! Come along!"

She led the way into the house.

Josie and Georgie in their blue dressing-gowns stood in the hall. Their notion of proprieties had prevented them straying farther.

"Oh, Dad, we're not asleep. Ruffie is having his milk and biscuits, and he wants—he wants you at once."

Justin's brow was smooth again.

He stooped and kissed them.

"I see well you're not asleep," he said, then he sped up the stairs, and the next moment had his boy in his arms. Ruffie, laying his soft cheek against his father's tanned one, whispered:

"God has answered me much quicker this time. Oh, Dad—I b'lieve I've just prayed and prayed you back, till you couldn't keep away any longer!"

"And that's just what I have said to your mother," replied Justin, pressing his lips to the red gold curls resting against his shoulder; "I couldn't keep away any longer!"

Anstice left him to his children. They met half an hour later at the dinner table, and their conversation was limited to Justin's fishing experiences in the fiords.

There was a good deal of correspondence awaiting his return, and to Anstice's surprise, he shut himself into the smoking-room with it for the rest of the evening.

He wished her good night courteously but hardly affectionately, when she came to him to say that she was going to retire. And then, as she was leaving him, he spoke:

"Anstice, to-morrow morning I want your undivided attention. I am not going to stand any interruption, so will you come out with me directly after breakfast? I see that my only chance will be to get away from both house and children. We're in for a fine spell, so we'll take our lunch in the motor launch."

Anstice hesitated.

"I promised—"

"Whatever promises you have made must be broken. I have come home to have a talk with you, and that talk must be had to-morrow."

"Very well," she said quietly. "Your claims come first. I will send a message through Brenda to the Nixons to say I will go over another day."

She left him, and went upstairs to her room, but she did not go to bed, she sat by her window looking out into the hushed moonlit garden, and her thoughts grew complicated and confused. She heard her husband come up to his room soon after midnight, and later she was conscious of his restless pacing up and down the room.

When she finally went to bed, sleep forsook her. And, as so often when she had sleepless nights, her soul rose upwards in prayer to the One in Whose care and love she was resting.

"My past," she murmured, "has been full of mistakes. Do not let me take a false step now!"

And then at last she fell asleep, and did not wake till the sun was high in the heavens.

But when Justin came to breakfast, she had done all her housekeeping, and was ready for anything that he might require. At half-past ten their luncheon basket was in the launch, and they pushed off on a still, blue lake. The children had made a great outcry when they heard that both "Dad" and "Steppie" were going to disappear for the day, but Anstice promised them that she would be back to tea; and as Justin agreed to this, they were forced to be content.

Justin was unusually grave as they crossed the lake; Anstice began giving him bits of local news to which he barely responded. She saw he was preoccupied with his own thoughts, and waited his time for unfolding them.

He landed at a most delightful little cove away in the hollow of the Fells, a veritable nest of mossy turf against a bank of bracken, overshadowed by a drooping mountain ash. They took out their rugs and luncheon basket, and settled themselves comfortably down, then Justin drew a long breath.

"Now we're alone at last, we can't have any interruptions and you won't be able to get away from me till you've heard me out."

Anstice laughed, but it was an effort to be her natural easy self.

"You are very mysterious; but, as you say, you can now have my undivided attention."

"Why do you think I have come home?" he asked her abruptly.

"I don't quite know, but I think you are getting fond of your home and children."

"I haven't come home with any thoughts of the house or the children. I have come back, wholly and entirely, because of you."

He paused. Anstice did not speak. Her hands were loosely clasped round her knees, and she was gazing out upon the lake before her. On the opposite side was their home, set at the higher end of the beautiful sloping park. Its old chimneys rose behind the big shrubbery on one side, the sun was shining full on the glass in the windows. The cattle grazing under the big trees in the park, the fresh green of the wooded heights behind, and the buttercup meadows edging the lakeside below, all formed a picture of a sweet English home.

But though Anstice's gaze was dwelling on what she loved, her heart was hammering loudly. This masterful man by her side was not the indifferent husband of a year ago. She knew a crisis was now in their lives, and she was not sure whether she was ready to meet it. She would have liked to slip on a little longer in the way that they had been going.

So she did not respond to him. She just listened to what he had to tell her.

"I went away," he said, "because the situation had become impossible for me, and I went to consider the relative values of things. As I fished in Norway, I threshed the subject out, but your figure was always before me. Looking back now, I see what a brutally selfish bargain I made with you. But my ideals of women were shattered, and I only cared for my own peace and comfort. Then, when I returned home, and saw what a good woman's presence and influence could do and how my home and children were transformed, I settled down selfishly still to bask in the sunshine, and to enjoy the fruit of your labours. But as time went on, Anstice, I began to see that such a life would not satisfy me. You yourself, not by any premeditated effort on your part—I think that would have choked me off—but by your personality, your power, your love for every one and everything needing love, in this world; your infinite patience, and may I say your delicious lapses from the divine to the most common things of this life, all this built up afresh for me the ideal womanhood as it should be. It gave me back my faith in women, and in God. I never spoke to you of my mother."

He stopped, and pulled out his watch. Opening the back of it, he held it out to her, and there was an exquisite miniature of a white-haired, dark-eyed woman, a woman with sweet, tender mouth, a determined chin and keen, purposeful eyes. Looking from her face to his, Anstice exclaimed:

"You are like her."

He shook his head.

"She was all that a mother and wife ought to be, and I expected my wife to be like her. I only tell you this to excuse myself. And having once been disillusioned, I had no use for any women afterwards. You knew this when you married me."

"Yes," said Anstice very quietly; "I knew and understood."

"Why did you marry me?" he asked her. "Knowing you now, I know that the mercenary side of it could have no weight with you, but at the time, I thought it might."

"I think it was a dream that made me," said Anstice very simply. "The thought of the poor neglected children had most weight with me. I dreamt that they were in an open boat helpless at the mercy of the waves, and calling out to me to rescue them."

"I have wronged you," said Justin; "and I ask your forgiveness."

"No," said Anstice quietly, "that is unnecessary. I have been thinking that I wronged you. I have taken different views of life since I came here, and I think that no two people ought to wed unless there is real love between them. It is binding two souls in chains; you, a man, ought to woo the wife of your choice, not be tied down by legal marriage to one for whom you have no liking, nor perhaps respect."

"Don't talk like that."

Justin's voice was almost sharp.

"I respected you from the first day I saw you. And you must know that I've had more than a liking for you. Well, the long and short of it is, that we have started our married life all wrong, and we're going, I hope, to put it right. Anstice—" he dropped his masterful tone and became almost humble—"there is only one thing that will keep a man's life straight and pure, and that is faith in a woman. I've been without it these many years, and though I've steered away from some evils through natural distaste, I've given myself over to rancour and bitterness and selfishness. You've given me that faith again, Anstice. May God help me to profit by it."

Anstice sat silent. Her eyes were misty, her hands clenched each other tightly, then after a moment she said:

"It is faith in God, not in woman, that you need, Justin. Faulty, erring woman will let you down over and over again."

"Well, all this has been simmering in my mind whilst I fished in Norway," Justin went on, "but through it and above it surged a great flood which has swept me to your feet. Right or wrong as our past has been, I can offer you all my heart's love, Anstice. I want you, not for what you have done, and are still doing for me, but for you yourself. And this, and this alone, has brought me home. I cannot live without you. I don't want to be like a polite stranger. I want to be your best beloved, as you are to me. Can you take me with all my selfishness and make a better man of me? We have been good comrades and friends; I want to be something truer and deeper. Have I taken you by surprise?"

Anstice still looked away over the lake, but she turned her head at last, and her eyes sought his in wistful appeal.

"Are you sure that your heart wants me, Justin?"

"As sure as the sun above us," said Justin fervently, and then he put his arm around her, and drew her close to himself.

"Have I really won you? Tell me with your own lips."

"I have been yours for a long time," said Anstice.

"Then why have you been so cold and cruel to me? Why did you not let me see a little of your heart?"

Anstice shook her head, and smiled into his eyes.

"How could I? A woman cannot take the first step. You impressed upon me in our first meeting that you meant to be nothing to me; that I was to have no hopes of being anything more than a caretaker and housekeeper. Why should I show you my feelings towards you, before you showed me yours?"

"I have been miserable," Justin owned. "I have almost been jealous of my own children when they gathered round you in the evening. I could not stand it any longer. I had to get away. You seemed so aloof and indifferent."

"I wasn't really. I knew you were not happy. I am quick in reading faces, and I read yours like an open book. I longed to comfort you, and yet how could I? You have been looking so lonely and so wistful, that my heart ached for you."

"I have felt like a lost soul. I was so close to you, and yet so far."

Then he stooped and kissed her passionately.

"I shall demand a great deal of comfort from you now," he said in a tone of such exquisite satisfaction that Anstice broke into a low laugh.

"You are such a boy sometimes," she said.

They had their picnic lunch in that mossy hollow, and every barrier rolled away between them. Hours sped away like moments. Justin took her over the lake again, and they talked of many things. When they eventually reached home about four in the afternoon, their faces were radiant. Josie met them in the hall, and said with her usual frankness:

"Why, Steppie, you look glorious! You must have had a topping time! And Georgie and me have been quarrelling all the afternoon. You've left us such a longtime!"

"Have I?" said Anstice. "But you mustn't depend upon me to keep the peace between you."

"We began to argue about you and Dad. Georgie said you didn't really like Dad being home. You were happier with us, when there was no one to interfere, and I said you laughed much more when he was in the house, and that you were quite miserable the first day he had left us; and then we got to who you really liked best; and then after Ruffie, I thought you liked me, and she said you liked her, and then she reminded me of all the nasty things I did and said to you, and I reminded her of her disgusting ways, and then we went on and on until we came to hate each other. And then we knocked each other down, and now she's locked herself into our room, and I can't get in. Will you come up and make her open the door?"

So Anstice was brought down from Paradise to earth, and she left Justin and went upstairs to assure the little girls, as she had often assured them before, that she liked them equally well, but that the only thing she did not like and would not have in the house was bad temper and quarrelling.

Bob Falkland came over to see Justin when he was at tea, and Anstice and he did not have any more time together till they sat out on the terrace after dinner was over.

It was a lovely evening; the lake lay like a pool of glass under the dark purple Fells. And Anstice, looking up into the bright starlight sky, suddenly put her hand very gently upon Justin's arm.

"I have been thinking, Justin, that this day will be one of the happiest in my life. And I have been thanking God for having given it to me. There is only one thing I want now; and I think I want it even more than I want your love."

"Don't say that," said Justin. "What is it?"

"I want you to know and believe in the Love of God for yourself."

Justin was silent for a moment, then he said, "You shall teach me anything you like. You have restored my faith in woman; you may teach me to have faith in God."

She said no more, for her heart was full.

Justin lit up his cigarette; then his eyes roved over the beautiful lake in front of them, but they did not stay there, they wandered to the old stone house behind them, and finally rested on his wife's sweet face.

"This is your kingdom," he said. "I only ask to be a subject in it."

Anstice protested at once. "My kingdom must have its king," she said. "We'll rule together, Justin. I in my domain, and you in yours."

"I've been an idler," he said, looking at her with a spice of mischief in his eye, "and I dare say I shall get you to be an idler too. Will you come off in the yacht with me round Scotland? I should like you to see the Scotch lochs."

"Some time I may like to do so, but you won't be off again just yet?"

"Perhaps not. You are more than enough for me. I am content at last."

He drew her to him, and they sat on in the fast deepening twilight, feeling the peace and beauty around them typical of what was in their souls.

But when Anstice was alone in her room that evening, she took her small Bible in her hand and tried to find some verses that were running in her mind and thoughts. She found them at last.

"And the woman which hath an husband that believeth not, and if he be pleased to dwell with her, let her not leave him, for the unbelieving husband is sanctified by the wife . . . For what knowest thou, O wife, whether thou shalt save thy husband."

"If any obey not the word, they also may without the word be won by the conversation of the wives."

Musing upon these suggestive words, she knelt in prayer. She had a tremendous belief in its powers, and when she rose from her knees, hope—almost certain hope—was filling her heart.

"If I can't do it, God can. He will lead him to the Way, the Truth and the Life. We both began our wedded life without any religion; if I was led to the right path, Justin will be. I will trust and not be afraid."