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‘You do really love me, sweetheart?’ he said, searching half-angrily, half-tenderly, for that absolute conviction of certitude in those soft feminine eyes for which the whole human race since the beginning has sought in vain.

She answered with so passionate and clinging a kiss that it was difficult to retain the questioning mood, and with the masses of golden-pink sweetness, like an offering to them from her own special gods of her Happy Valley, held in both their arms, they moved slowly back to where they had left their basket.

Their meal was unspoilt by any further difference. Bareheaded they sat opposite each other on a bank of thyme and milkwort; the now un-analytical Richard insisting on twisting a spray of his treasure trove round her head, and round her neck too, while in eager solemnity she untied the provisions.

They ate hungrily and happily, enjoying themselves without thought of past and future, dividing lettuce sandwiches and jam sandwiches between them with the laughing greed of lovers who can afford to play with the lower appetites, as children play with toys.

Having drunk to the very dregs the liberal bottle of milk supplied by Grace they discovered at the bottom of the basket, lying by the side of the vicar’s flask of port wine, nothing less than Nelly’s silver christening mug.

‘Let’s christen our meeting with this!’ cried the girl; and jumping to their feet they filled the little cup to the brim.

The sun shining upon the red wine made it glow like the blood of a god; and when they had both drunk of it and kissed each other ‘with purple-stained mouth’, they poured out what was left as a heathen libation to the powers — whatever they might have been — who had brought about their encounter.

In queer unlovely places, many months after this, in sordid streets, in depressing offices, on crowded pavements, Richard Storm had many occasions to remember that moment of his life, when wreathed with honeysuckle, round head and neck and waist, this girl, the very incarnation of youthful passion, poured out the wine cup upon the earth.

Chapter 9

Robert Canyot showed himself more of a man over the affair of Nelly’s marriage than anyone who had known him would have expected. He put off for several weeks his voyage to America so that he might himself give the bride away.

Mrs Shotover denounced the whole business and refused to be present at the wedding. She was positively rude to Nelly on the subject; accusing her, in very pointed language, language more suitable to the age of Fielding than of Hardy, of having made up her mind to keep both the men. There was certainly this much justification for the old lady’s wrath, that Nelly refused to give up her former fiancé’s ring — the turquoise with little pearls — and wore no other except the thin golden one that proclaimed her a wedded wife.

The old woman only got one chance of giving vent completely to her feelings and that was not to Nelly but to her husband.

If she was ‘eighteenth-century’ in her explicitness to the bride, she was positively ‘Elizabethan’ in her outpouring to the bridegroom. Richard however was far too content with his lot at that moment to do more than lead the woman on and tease her with an exaggerated serenity.

He was as a matter of fact perfectly serene. It suited him in every respect, this devoted and very practical waiting upon her of his bride’s former betrothed. It was precisely one of those situations that Richard’s peculiar nature was eminently adapted to sustain with aplomb and indulgence. He felt thoroughly sorry for his defeated rival and it eased his conscience in the only way his conscience could-be really eased by giving him every facility to make the best of the rind, so to speak, while he enjoyed the fruit.

A man is never displeased to see his mistress adored by another when he feels she is entirely his own; and there was not the remotest shadow of doubt that Nelly was his, just then, from the top of her head to the sole of her foot. The sweetness of her complete abandonment to him during those first days was indeed the most thrilling and delicious experience he had known in his whole life — so wonderful and flawless that he felt it would be an ingratitude to the gods not to dispense in his turn as much happiness as he could. Canyot’s shadow on their pleasure would have been much worse than his real presence, for the painter seemed to have the power of reducing the pain of his loss to a minimum as long as he was not driven away and forgotten.

The truth was that neither Richard nor Nelly had the least idea of what was going on in the young man’s mind. He showed no outward sign of bitterness or moroseness or jealousy.

He was gentler in the expression of his opinions, quicker-witted it almost seemed in his response to their high spirits; and there was not the least tendency on his part to take advantage of the serene indulgence with which Richard tolerated and indeed encouraged his friendship with the bride.

They were married in Littlegate church by the old naturalist, and the service that united them was the last he was permitted, as priest of the church, officially to perform.

They went down to Fogmore for seven days’ honeymoon, during which time the devoted Canyot helped Grace and the old man to settle into Hill Cottage.

On their return from Fogmore the painter informed them that he had decided to put off his voyage to a yet further date, giving as a plausible enough reason that he would be too late now for the Philadelphia exhibition of his work, and that the New York one was not to occur till five or six weeks later.

Instead of leaving them therefore to enjoy their vita nuova in complete isolation the extraordinary young man proceeded quite calmly to settle down again at Wind Shuttle Farm.

This unexpected move of his was not entirely agreeable to Richard but it would have been much more disagreeable to him to have seen the least cloud on his young wife’s face; and she, it appeared, was entirely pleased with the arrangement.

He could not altogether find the clue to her attitude to her old lover, but he contented himself with putting it down to Nelly’s maternal instinct and her girlish desire to soften as far as was possible the boy’s feeling of loss in Mrs Canyot’s death.

‘She wants to “mother” him,’ he said to himself. He derived a certain self-flattering moral unction from the thought that he was being singularly and unconventionally magnanimous to them both.

Thus did those golden June weeks pass by, in almost perfect felicity, for Richard; in whatever mysterious happiness a young girl derives from the satisfaction of her heart’s passion, for Nelly; and in fierce persistent wrestling with new problems of his art, for the recluse at Wind Shuttle Farm.

The only cloud upon the horizon, if it could be called a cloud, was the estrangement between Mrs Richard Storm of Hill Cottage and Mrs George Shotover of Furze Lodge. But this cloud had already broken in two rain-storms of strange language from the latter lady; there now seemed no reason to doubt that among the scanty parishioners of the newly appointed vicar of Littlegate none was more clearly marked out for an unruffled life than the daughter of John Moreton.

It was only the scurrying white-tailed rabbits and the great black-winged rooks haunting the long summer twilights between Furze Cover and Horthing Down who could have predicted any sort of evil omen upon the wind; and these could only have done it had they possessed enough superstitious intelligence to give credence to the angry mutterings of a lonely old woman, deprived by nature’s tricks of the one thing she loved.

The weather continued to bestow upon the newly married couple, as the season drew on towards the longest day, its most wonderful largess of ample sunshine and cool-breathing balmy air. A few heavy showers in those moonless nights kept the light chalk soil from becoming over-dry.