‘The North American kind is just a little different. Come in, my boy, come in, and I’ll show you how they differ. It must be a case of adaptation. Their woods are thicker, they say — more undergrowth.’ And the two men returned towards the house in perfect unanimity. The painted lady had found the secret.
‘Yes,’ said John Moreton as they sat down together after an exhaustive investigation of marble whites, chalk-hill blues, purple emperors, clouded yellows, green hair-streaks, red admirals; ‘Yes, I shall resign my living. But thanks to the young man to whom my daughter is engaged — I have a daughter, sir; she’s away somewhere — I don’t know where’; and he waved his hand vaguely — ‘it will not be necessary for me to leave this village. My daughter and this young man — he’s considerate to me; he knows the value of my work — have taken a cottage nearby, north of where we are now, and they propose that I shall live with them. It’s a good plan. The young man will have the advantage of my scientific knowledge. He’s a painter. And I shall … I shall be indebted to him for my humble wants.’
Richard Storm was reduced to a depressed silence by his host’s words. He stared out of the french window at the lawn and the trees. He felt miserably tired, all the spirit gone from him and a vague ennui turning everything to emptiness. Of course that was it! He might have known it. He had known it. Of course she was engaged to this aggressive youth; and of course her marriage was necessary to her father’s happiness!
The point was: did she, in spite of appearances, love the fellow? If so — and it seemed likely enough — there was nothing for him to do but clear off elsewhere. The idea of settling down to write poetry in the neighbourhood of this happy domestic arrangement didn’t appeal to him. His attraction to Nelly had gone a little too far for that Confound it all! What a thing life was. The day before yesterday — even yesterday — he had felt that his great new idea, that high mystical doctrine which had gathered in his mind, was the one important thing in existence. Nelly’s white fragile face and fair silken hair were only traceries upon the tapestry, no more really essential to him than were the green hieroglyphs at the back of the hair-streak’s wings.
But since he had last seen her, at the lodge gate of the close, ‘the perfume and suppliance’ of her personality had been growing steadily upon him, gathering importance, insinuating themselves into his deeper consciousness.
A horrid thought, black for him as the sooty wings of the rooks he now saw crossing the skyline, flapped down into his mind, trying to find lodgement; the thought, namely, that it might be the fair thing, the honest thing, the kind thing, just to clear off and leave the field quite free for Canyot ‘to bustle in’. Are there any men, he asked himself, really so noble and unselfish that when they see that their presence has caused trouble to any human circle, and is likely to cause more, they just move off, say goodbye, clear out? Yes! he supposed there were such people. He sighed heavily. And how often do such heroic renunciations only cause greater unhappiness in the end? What a world!
His meditations were interrupted by the old naturalist’s giving vent to a tremendous snore, loud as the snort of a slumbrous buffalo.
Exhausted with his ardent cicerone work among the dead forms of those filmy winged people of the air, the vicar had fallen asleep.
A desperate desire for tea awoke in the heart of Richard Storm. It occurred to him very strongly that a considerable portion of his present depression arose from the absence of this beverage. He looked at his watch. It was a quarter past five. Tea I must and will have, ‘he said firmly to himself,’ but heaven knows how I’m going to get it! I can’t quite shake the old fellow by the shoulder and bawl in his ears, “Get me some tea!” and I know by instinct there isn’t a female in the house.’ He stared at the sleeper. The great Schopenhauer-like head looked very noble in its weary passivity.
No! No, he thought, I can’t disturb an old man’s dreams to satisfy my incorrigible tea-lust. I’ll try the farm. If they can put up with Canyot, they can put up with me. I’ll try anyhow.
With these intentions he went very softly to the door, opened it, let himself out, passed through the hallway on tiptoe, and emerged into the garden.
Storm strode quickly across the intervening village green and knocked at the door of the farm. It was a tumbledown, ramshackle old place, with pigs and fowls and ducks and geese wandering about, where beds of trim flowers might well have been.
But Mrs Winsome, the farmer’s wife, although the grimmest of women, seemed quite pleased to welcome him.
‘Tea? Certainly, sir! Friend of Mr Canyot’s? There’s been a telegram for him since early this morning. The boy brought it from Selshurst. Please to come in and excuse everything! Please to sit down. Kettle’s on the boil. Won’t keep you long.’
The hard-featured woman did not keep him long. Indeed, before five minutes had elapsed from his entering her parlour, he was seated before a charming tea tray pouring out for himself cup after cup of the divine nectar.
After the first three cups and the first three pieces of home-made bread and butter, Mr Richard Storm regarded the universe in quite a different manner. He no longer felt the least inclination to be unselfish and leave the field to his rival. He felt inspirited and adventurous, ready to deal with many Mr Canyots. He felt that if he could see Nelly Moreton once more, have her to himself for one long afternoon in these enchanting lanes and fields, he would be able to snatch her out of all her past.
As for the ‘what next?’ which naturally must follow this soul snatching, he did not at that hour, so irresponsible were the pleasant fumes of Mrs Winsome’s tea, give a thought to the matter.
It was so lovely just to feel oneself growing young again, to feel all those vague sweet delicious tremors one feared were quite irrecoverable, once more thrilling one’s nerves, that any cold-blooded virtuous interrogations as to ‘what would come of it all’ seemed most singularly irrelevant.
He found himself, in place of any serious thought, just building up fantastic childish castles in the air. Why shouldn’t he, just as well as this sulky young painter, take a house in this charming spot, marry Nell out of hand, and support the old man for his remaining days?
Having liberally compensated the grim lady of Wind Shuttle Farm for her excellent entertainment and watched her shaking the tablecloth to the ducks and the geese and the chickens, Richard, after a hurried glance towards church and vicarage, started to make his way back to Selshurst.
‘Never rush things!’ he said to himself. ‘Women don’t like to be greeted by their male friends when they come back tired to their domestic hearths. They prefer the position of defence, of being prepared on their own ground. Above all never take women by surprise — except when a traitor within the gates beckons to you over the wall!’
Fortifying himself with these maxims, for Richard was a veritable Rochefoucauld, as far as theory was concerned, he swung along the road to the old city in high and boyish spirits.
He was about two miles from Selshurst when he heard behind the sound of one running.
At first he thought it might be a runaway horse or cow, but before the runner came in sight he recognized the steps of a man and of a man in athletic condition.
Funny! he thought to himself. It can’t be the old gentleman? Who can it be?
His suspense was not very pleasantly ended by the appearance of Robert Canyot.
The young painter pulled up breathless, and saluted him with a couple of gasped-out words of greeting.
‘Going to Selshurst?’ he panted, wiping his forehead. ‘That’s where I’m going.’