CHAPTER XXIII

REBELLION

"----You knew not me Master of your joys and fears; Held my hands that held the key Of the treasure of your years, Of the fountain of your tears.

For you knew not it was I, And I knew not it was you. We have learnt, as days went by. But a flower struck root and grew Underground, and no one knew." --MRS. MEYNELL.

"I'm afraid I've kept you waiting," she said a little breathlessly, as she sprang into the cart.

"Oh, that's nothing, to a fellow who is always waiting," was his calm reply.

"Always waiting! What for?" cried Melicent, wonder overleaping discretion.

"For the future, I suppose," he answered, after a short hesitation. Adding, as though suddenly conscious of being eccentric: "You know--that endless chivying of De Wet got on one's nerves."

"I can quite believe it," said Melicent cheerfully. "But now, to-morrow has come, as I used to say when I was a small child. You've made your pile--you're an English landed proprietor. You're not waiting any longer."

"Oh, yes, I am. There's one thing I haven't got yet," he said, a slow, curious smile curving his fine mouth.

He did not look at her as he spoke, which fact was her salvation. She could rule her voice, but not the rebel blood that waved live banners in her cheeks.

"Obviously," she returned lightly, "there must be a mistress for Lone Ash when it is built. Is this what you're waiting for?"

Her own daring dazzled her. It was a thing that he could not possibly conceive her saying had she had any notion of who he was.

"Yes," he answered quietly, "that's what I'm waiting for."

"And that's just what you'll never get by waiting!" she cried gaily.

He turned sharply upon her. "How do you know? What do you mean?" he asked, amazed.

"If you want a wife, you must go in search of one," she answered mischievously. "They don't drop into people's mouths."

"Well, that's what I will do," was his tranquil answer; "but one thing at a time, you know."

"One thing at a time," she echoed, lightly; and as she spoke, he checked his horse at the gate of a field.

"Here begins my property," he said, "and my idea is to have the drive entrance-gate here, and the house over yonder, just below the brow, screened from the road by those trees. The ground falls away to the south and west, you will notice, but the Lone Ash hill would keep off the wind. I want to know what you would think."

He had alighted, opened the gate, and led the horse and cart through. Now he proceeded, striding over the grass, and Melicent, her arms round her knees, forgot nervousness and bravado alike in her professional enthusiasm. They passed a large cluster of barns.

"The house was here," he said. "The man who bought it found it too far gone to repair, and knocked it down, leaving the outer shell for barn walls. Not much of a place, you see. I don't know why they put it here, except for the well. But there shouldn't be any difficulty about getting water. I sank a shaft up yonder, where I am going to show you, and we struck good water at thirty feet."

She found herself chatting to him about subsoils and surface water in a wholly professional manner.

When he reached the place where he proposed to build, she found herself unable to suggest an improvement. It was an ideal site--near the village, yet secluded, sheltered, but not shut in--overlooking a bit of broken ground which gave quite a prospect; and a regular trap for sunbeams. There was little she could suggest by way of alteration; she grasped the main features of his thought with instant appreciation. They sat down side by side upon the trunk of a felled elm; she brought out her sketch-book, and drew suggestions. By degrees a house shaped itself to her mind's eye--a house full of pleasant detail.

The south front was to face a terrace; the drawing-room to be at the western end, with two sunset avenues, converging upon the large door-window. One was to focus the dying sun in winter, one in summer. Both were to be grass walks, cypress-bordered, and they were to lead to a rectangular fish-pond, set with lilies, and reached by shelving steps. Beyond the fish-pond, a warm brick wall, with deeply alcoved seats.

The cypress-edged grass walks were her special fancy.

"But don't have them unless you like," she earnestly advised. "Some people think them sad."

He would have had hop-poles at her recommendation, but he managed to appear genuinely convinced.

Then, in fancy, his architect wandered back to the house--to the hall, with its two-branched staircase, and the windows in the gallery above.

"This house will be plain grey stone," she said, "and its roof will be of tiles, to prevent the effect being too cold. We shall try to pick up tiles that are already weathered, so that it may not look too new. I will not introduce anything that is a deliberate imitation of what was old, such as timbering, barge-boards, or painted woodwork. You shall have no grotesques; you must not yearn for a letter-box shaped like the Ace of Spades, as they have in Hampstead, nor for garrets with the window set at the end of a tunnel, as one sees in all the new toy suburbs. Our gables will be few; our roof shall not be cut to pieces. All our lines shall be simple, and our chimney-stacks things of beauty."

Her face was rapt as she sat looking at the bare ground where in fancy she saw her creation taking shape. Captain Brooke, sitting at her side, let himself go for a brief moment, gazing his fill upon the face that was always graven on his heart. It did not take her long to become conscious of the scrutiny of his steady eyes. The moment that he saw she had come out of her dream, he rose, and walked away to the excavations his workmen had made, returning with lumps of marl and chalky soil in his hands, and quietly making a remark about foundations.

As they plunged into the discussion of builders, estimates, contracts, etc., she realised that she was full of reluctant admiration for him. How well he bore himself! How completely he was master of his feelings! She felt, she knew, that he was entirely to be trusted. His speech was correct, his bearing dignified; nobody would now take him for anything but an English gentleman. Five years had wrought all this in him. How persistently he must have striven; how hard he must have worked!

And all this, she must conclude, had been done for her--for one whose heart was wholly untouched by any answering feeling--to whom the mere thought of him was pain and humiliation--who asked nothing better than never to see him again.

As the thought of her present position flooded her again, she felt so strong an impulse of resentment that for a long moment she was inclined to throw down her plans, rise and denounce him--repudiate his claims, break the chain that seemed to hold her, leave him where he stood, and flee from him for ever. How could she go on like this, now that she knew? Did not every moment that passed leave her more deeply committed to the incredible situation?

Never did she remember before to have been the victim of indecision. Now she, the self-poised, self-sufficient Miss Lutwyche, was swayed to and fro like a reed in the grip of opposing passions. Terror drew her one way, pride and ambition another. Under all, the mainspring of all, though she knew it not, the desire to defy Bert, to pay him back in his own coin, to seize his masquerade and turn it into a weapon for her own use, to punish him withal.

And all the while the rollicking April wind sang in the tree-tops, the sun moved westward, the light grew mellow, till the lump of earth in the captain's hand gleamed like a lump of gold. And his architect walked to and fro beside him; paused here, moved on again upon a new impulse; measured out the dimensions of things with her long builder's tape, and caused the owner to stick little white bits of wood, marked with weird symbols, into the ground at certain intervals. So they stood and talked, each ignorant of the storms that swept the other.

The surface of the girl's manner--easy, impersonal, remote--was never once impressed by the tremendous undercurrent that lay below the man's cool utterances. She was thinking: "After all, this is quite easy. I could keep it up for ever."

He was telling himself--"This sort of thing can't go on. Could I bear another day like this?"

Suddenly, it was over. She looked at her watch and announced that she must catch the 5.10. For a moment the thought that the strain he had been feeling so acutely was to be forthwith relaxed, gave him so sharp a sense of loss that he could not immediately speak. When he did, it was to beg her to come back first to tea at the inn. She firmly declined this. The inn, to her, was horror-haunted. The ghost of her past had risen there to dog the footsteps which she had believed were free. She replied that she would have an hour at the junction in which to get tea, and must not stop now.

They returned to the dog-cart, and drove back, in so brooding a silence on his part, that she dashed into small talk, lest he should be contemplating some rash words. As they drove past the inn, she averted her eyes that she might not see the green, or recall what had stood there. The vision of poor Bert, with his bashful, uncertain smile, his ridiculous flowers, his hesitating advance, rose before her, creating sheer nausea. Once more she was lying in the parlour at High Farm, once more she felt the agony of her wounds, the scars of which must to this day be hidden from her dressmaker. The crimson of shame suffused her. Oh, if he could but have kept away! Usually she managed to forget all this--to forget that she was branded, physically and morally, by the searing flames of degradation. He was the living reminder of all she hated and rejected.

She fell silent, unable to continue her babble; and Bert was silent too. But as they neared the railway, and he found moments running short, he made a spasmodic effort at conversation.

"You were brought up in Africa, were you not?" he asked, as casually as he could. He might as well have held a match to gunpowder.

She turned upon him with a deadly quietude.

"Never speak to me of it," she said, almost between her teeth. "I have forgotten it all. Every memory, of place or people, revolts me. There is nothing that ever happened there, and nobody I ever knew there, except Mr. Mayne, that inspires me with any feeling but horror."

They were turning into the station yard. He made no reply to her words until he had brought the pony to a standstill; then, turning fully to her, he said, very simply:

"I beg your pardon."

Something in his dignity shamed her. He helped her down in silence, collected her odds and ends, felt under the seat, and brought out the fatal bunch of primroses, which he carried to the platform.

As they stood waiting, she said, hurriedly and nervously:

"I am sorry, Captain Brooke. I didn't mean to speak so horridly about Africa. I hope I didn't hurt your feelings."

"My mistake," he returned good-humouredly. "We're such slight acquaintances, I expect it was pretty cool cheek of me to ask you a personal question. I'm afraid there are a good many holes in my manners."

No man could have shouldered the blame more naturally. The train came in. He found her a carriage, and handed in her things to her; then shyly offered the flowers.

"A little village kid gave me these," he said; and she thought, as he spoke, how fine a head and shoulders he had, framed in the square of the open window. "I thought you might like to take them to town with you."

She just managed to say, with a vague smile, "Thank you." Then the train started, he had raised his hat, stepped back, and she was in solitude. For full five minutes she sat motionless, crouched together, her two hands gripping the seat, her eyes fixed on the unoffending primroses, whose delicate, mysterious fragrance stole towards her on the evening air.

At last, with a strangled cry, she sprang to her feet, seized them, hurled them with all her force through the window; and then, sinking back into her corner, burst into wild, ungovernable tears.