When Maria came down the stairs and stepped out onto the little terrace she was terribly startled to see the white body of a young god flashing and swimming about in the mill race. For a minute her heart was in her mouth. It was as if she had surprised the youthful spirit of all these spring woods sporting in his secret pool. But the head thrust up through the lily pads was that of Denis. For a minute they both looked at each other with horrified surprise, and then burst into a laugh. The blood rushed to his face. "Wait in the tunnel," he cried, "I shall only be a moment." He could hear her laughter echoed from the fern-clad walls while he frantically slipped into his clothes. "I did not expect you so soon!" he called. "I should hope not, mon capitaine." The laughter continued. What a fool he had been, after dressing so carefully, too! Now look, there was mud on the ruffles of his shirt. And his hair!
But she loved his damp curls when she came to him at last. He could not hold her close enough. "Let me go, Denis!" she gasped at length. "You goose, I have something to tell you. Such news," she cried flinging her arms about him again, and whispering into his "driest ear." "He is going to be away for a week, for a whole week! I shall be all alone, and my own mistress at the chateau. It will be like a honeymoon. Let us call it that," and she clapped her hands like a child as she always did when pleased and excited. "Lucia and I have packed luncheon and brought it along. She thought of it. We might have supper here, too. He will be gone, gone all today, and tomorrow."
"And the day after that!" added Denis.
Her eyes grew large at the vista of endless happiness that was about to ensue. They began to plan out the time together, interrupting each other. He drew a little calendar in a patch of sand. Tomorrow they would drive out to a farm that Lucia knew of and get the puppy. "And the next day?" She faltered bewildered by the endless possibilities.
"We will go up on the high hill of Gergovia. It is a wonderful place that," and he began to tell her. The old story of the brave Gauls took on a new lease of life.
"And after that to the old tower on the hill I can see from the chateau."
"Why not?" he said. "Anywhere, anywhere with you! We can arrange it each evening and meet the next day. Only we must not be seen together anywhere. That would cause talk and might get back to the chateau. Remember after all a week is not so long."
How short, how terribly short it suddenly seemed. She had pictured him riding by the side of the little landaulet. It would have been so romantic. She could look back at him and drop her glove. He would dismount and bring it to her, and kiss her hand. The tableau enchanted her. It was not often she could imagine a scene so clearly as that. It was like something out of Paul and Virginia, more real than life and somehow more beautiful.
"It will be better to be very careful now, and so have many days all through the summer," he was saying.
So he was not planning to take her away with him soon. But why not now, this week, while Don Luis was away? They could be gone for days before he knew, she said.
"No, no, that would never do." He began to explain. "He would get the news in a few hours at most after she was missed." They must have some place to go to. He was writing a merchant at Marseilles about a ship. It would take some days, a week or so perhaps to hear. He had thought of Ireland, but America would be better on the whole. He had heard those who had campaigned there and knew the country. He began to tell her about it. By noon they were still lost in an idyll of forest life beyond the seas when Lucia called from the world above and reminded them of lunch.
She brought it down in a little basket; was charmed with monsieur, with his gift also. A brave gentleman, indeed! Her interest in the affair became quite enthusiastic. She laid the luncheon out on a white cloth under the trees and went back to keep watch. "I have mine in the cart, you know. Not many pass this way but it will be well to be with the pony. Monsieur will know what to do if I call—and madame? Ah, she is picking water-lilies!" She gathered a few, placed them in the empty lunch basket by the side of the race and departed to the world above.
They sat down under the trees and ate together. It was their first meal. In her heart she thought of it as a kind of lovers' sacrament. She said a little grace closing her eyes, while he looked on fascinated and remembered to cross himself just in time.
"Ah, it will be like this in America, will it not, Denis? We shall eat out in the woods this way often. And you will not let the savages nor the great beasts come near me?"
He protested again and again that he would not. The tears came into his eyes as he thought of what must be ahead of her in hardships, of the long journey, the ship, a strange land, nowhere to turn, and he a poor man. For a moment his heart failed him. Could he ask that of her? She was so daintily lovely here, so fragile it seemed to him now; almost artificially beautiful with her face like a cameo against the dark convolutions of the roots in the bank before which she sat. Those little rosebuds and garlands embroidered on the clear silk of her gown, what would become of them in Canada? Could he after all? Ah, could he not!
That delightful little golden head! He was mad about that, the face that looked up at him with so much wonder and appeal, so much hope, and innocence and abandon. He must have that near him in the future, forever. The future? Why, here he was dreaming when she was near him now! Who could tell about the far-off days to come? God held them in fee. But this wozy^ this was his, and she was near him. As if he were drawing her back from the shadows of the unknown and would save her from all that his mind might forebode but could not certainly form, he suddenly caught her to him. She saw that he had been weeping. An access of wonder, and unreasoning pity overcame her. She comforted him for she knew not what, for some sorrow that lay within her, too. A great tenderness engulfed them both. Of all the doors by which love enters pity is the widest. Passion, the incendiary, is always waiting close by in the disguise of an importunate beggar to glide over the threshold and set fire to the house.
The afternoon shadows slowly lengthened over the grass. The river fled away forever modulating a monotone. The dead windows of the mill with little pine trees on the sills looked out at nothing. A small bird flitted back and forth over the white table-cloth on the grass. He looked doubtfully at the two figures by the bank under the pine trees. They did not stir. Finally he lit upon a thin stemmed glass and tilting back his little head drank delicately. It was a light, sweet wine but it made him a bad, bold bird. He began to scatter the fragments of Maria's cake wantonly. Finally he put his head under his wing in broad daylight and went to sleep. Under the pine branches there was nothing to show that the two who lay there were alive except the long, slow rise and fall of their breasts. The wind tangled their curls together as it would if they had both been dead. Caught in the full tide of spring they drifted closer and closer together through the long afternoon.
When Denis rode home through the starlit forest that evening it was as if he had discovered himself as an entirely new person. He was inherently one of those rare but strong and natural people in whom the realities of passion actually experienced invariably transcend expectancy. Nor was this due to a lack of imagination. It was merely that his mind could not remember with a thought vivid enough to compass the actual feel of the flesh.
For the first time as he went home that evening he began to realize that he was in a predicament. He had already been caught in the eddy of a current that flowed through him and possessed him. Once in the main stream of it he could neither control nor direct. As his imagination had been unequal to his capabilities, so his will might be found inadequate to the unexpected strain. "Might be?" He knew it would. It came upon him like fate. Yet what could he do? He could not go away now. By every tie that his heart and soul knew he was bound to her. Yes, even despite her marriage, by every tie of an honourable mind. That her father had sold her with good intentions was no reason why he should recognize the bargain. Society, the society he knew, would scoff at such scruples. Her marriage was a circumstance to be circumvented. He would do that. He would make her, so far as the world knew, honourable amends. Beyond the sea they would be man and wife. That last small remnant of his grandfather's estate and the sale of his commission would enable him to . . . oh, yes, that was all quite possible, a matter of correspondence and some little time.