Melisande was glad therefore one day during the second week of December to arrive on the shore and find Leon alone. He was stretched out on the sand, his back propped up against a rock; and when he saw her he leaped to his feet. There was no mistaking the pleasure in his face.
"I was so hoping you'd come," he said.
"It is just for half an hour. I must not stay longer. It gets dark so early."
"I'll walk back with you, so you needn't fear the dark."
"Thanks. But I shall be expected back soon. There is a good deal to do. Do you realize that it is only two weeks to Christmas?"
"And the wedding. I suppose the bridgroom will soon be coming."
"We don't expect him until a day or so before Christmas."
"Melisande. . . . May I call you that? It is what I call you in my thoughts."
"Please do."
"Then to you I may be Leon?"
"Yes, when we are together like this. I think when others are present it should be Monsieur de la Roche and Mademoiselle St. Martin."
"Very well. That shall be our rule. What will you do after the wedding, Melisande?"
"Sir Charles has spoken to me. He has suggested I might stay."
"After Miss Trevenning has gone?"
"Yes. I can make myself useful in the house. There is much I can do, he says. His daughter will be gone and she will take Wenna— one of the servants—with her; the house will be depleted, Sir Charles says, for Caroline and Wenna had certain duties. He suggests that I take over those duties. I think I shall enjoy this, and it is great good fortune."
"He seems a very kind man.'*
"He is a kind man. Few know how kind. But I know. I have seen that kindness. He says that there will be duties for me, and that I seem to be making a home there. He says the Danesboroughs like me . . . and others. He mentioned you. He said that now I have friends here, I would not wish to leave."
"It's the best news I've heard for a long time."
"For you?"
"For me. I have wondered what it would be like here if you left."
"Don't you like this place?"
"I have liked it very much since we met. Our friendship has made a great difference to me." He picked up a stone and threw it into the sea. They watched it hit the water, rise and fall again. "Well, now our friendship goes on."
"I hope it will go on for a long time. But you will not stay here for the summer."
"In the summer I suppose we must go to a different climate. We should go to Switzerland . . . high in the mountains."
"That sounds very pleasant."
He smiled his melancholy smile. "I am ungrateful, you are thinking. I am disgruntled. Sometimes I rail against fate. I say, 'Why should some be born to riches, others to poverty?' "
"I am surprised that you should have such thoughts."
"All poor men have them. It is only the poor who worry about inequality and injustice."
"You long to be rich?"
"I long to be free."
"Free? You mean from Raoul?"
"My position is a difficult one. I often ask myself if I am good for the boy. I ask myself, 'Is this living? What are you? A nurse? A
tutor? A woman could play the first part better, and there are scholars who could make far better tutors than you could.' "
"But it was the wish of Raoul's parents that you should be the nurse, the tutor. He is of your own blood. No one could love him as you do.'!
"You are right and I am ungrateful, as I said I was. It is because you are so sympathetic that I pour my troubles into your ear."
"What would you do if you were rich and free? Tell me. I should like to hear. You would return to France?"
"To France? No. My old home is a government building now. It is in Orleans, I have been there . . . not so long ago, walked through the streets past those old wooden houses, stood on the banks of the Loire and thought: 'If I were rich I would come back to Orleans and build a house, marry, raise a family and live as my people lived before the Terror.' I used to think that. But now I know that I would not go back to Orleans. I would go miles away ... to a new world. Perhaps to New Orleans. The river I should look at would not be the Loire but the Mississippi, and instead of building a great mansion and living like an aristocrat, I should have a plantation and grow cotton or sugar or tobacco. ..."
"That's more exciting than the mansion. For what would you do in the mansion?"
"I should grieve for the past. I should become one of those bores who are always looking backwards."
"And in the New World it is necessary to look forward ... to the next crop of sugar, tobacco or cotton. What do they look like when they are growing, I wonder? Sugar sounds nicest. That's because you can eat it, I suppose."
He laughed suddenly.
"Which would you grow if you could choose?" she asked.
"You have made me think that I should like to grow sugar." He smiled at her. "Melisande, you are so different from me. You are so full of gaiety. I am rather a melancholy person."
"What makes you melancholy?"
"The terrible habit of looking back. I always heard my parents say that the good old days were behind us and that we should never get back to the splendour of those times. They made the past sound wonderful, magnificent, the only life that was worth living. I suppose they heard it from their parents."
"It is an inheritance of melancholy."
He took her hands and said: "I want to escape from it. I long to escape from it."
"You can. This minute. These are the good times. Those were the bad times. Wonderful times are in the future . . . waiting for you."
"Are they?"
"I feel sure of it. Wouldn't Raoul like to grow sugar?"
"The climate would kill him."
"I see. So you cannot go until you are no longer needed to look after him."
"No. But when he is twenty-one, I shall come into a little money. Then he will no longer need me. I shall be free."
"That is a long way to look forward. Still, in the meantime you have Raoul to care for, and you know that, although he is sometimes a rather difficult little boy, he is an orphan, and you . . . you only . . . can love him and help him and look after him as his parents wished."
After a while he began to talk of the New World with an enthusiasm which astonished her, for she had never seen him as animated as this before. He had wanted to go there, he explained, since he had realized that France would never be the France for which his parents had made him yearn.