And they stood and swayed together, folded in each other’s arms, while the wind from the marshes lifted its voice like an exulting human thing as it swept about them.
CHAPTER XLIX
AT STORNHAM AND AT BROADMORLANDS
The exulting wind had swept the clouds away, and the moon rode in a dark blue sea of sky, making the night light purely clear, when they drew a little apart, that they might better see the wonderfulness in each other’s faces. It was so mysteriously great a thing that they felt near to awe.
“I fought too long. I wore out my body’s endurance, and now I am quaking like a boy. Red Godwyn did not begin his wooing like this. Forgive me,” Mount Dunstan said at last.
“Do you know,” with lovely trembling lips and voice, “that for long—long—you have been unkind to me?”
It was merely human that he should swiftly enfold her again, and answer with his lips against her cheek.
“Unkind! Unkind! Oh, the heavenly woman’s sweetness of your telling me so—the heavenly sweetness of it!” he exclaimed passionately and low. “And I was one of those who are `by the roadside everywhere,’ an unkempt, raging beggar, who might not decently ask you for a crust.”
“It was all wrong—wrong!” she whispered back to him, and he poured forth the tenderest, fierce words of confession and prayer, and she listened, drinking them in, with now and then a soft sob pressed against the roughness of the enrapturing tweed. For a space they had both forgotten her hurt, because there are other things than terror which hypnotise pain. Mount Dunstan was to be praised for remembering it first. He must take her back to Stornham and her sister without further delay.
“I will put your saddle on Anstruthers’ horse, or mine, and lift you to your seat. There is a farmhouse about two miles away, where I will take you first for food and warmth. Perhaps it would be well for you to stay there to rest for an hour or so, and I will send a message to Lady Anstruthers.”
“I will go to the place, and eat and drink what you advise,” she answered. “But I beg you to take me back to Rosalie without delay. I feel that I must see her.”
“I feel that I must see her, too,” he said. “But for her—God bless her!” he added, after his sudden pause.
Betty knew that the exclamation meant strong feeling, and that somehow in the past hours Rosalie had awakened it. But it was only when, after their refreshment at the farm, they had taken horse again and were riding homeward together, that she heard from him what had passed between them.
“All that has led to this may seem the merest chance,” he said. “But surely a strange thing has come about. I know that without understanding it.” He leaned over and touched her hand. “You, who are Life—without understanding I ride here beside you, believing that you brought me back.”
“I tried—I tried! With all my strength, I tried.”
“After I had seen your sister to-day, I guessed—I knew. But not at first. I was not ill of the fever, as excited rumour had it; but I was ill, and the doctors and the vicar were alarmed. I had fought too long, and I was giving up, as I have seen the poor fellows in the ballroom give up. If they were not dragged back they slipped out of one’s hands. If the fever had developed, all would have been over quickly. I knew the doctors feared that, and I am ashamed to say I was glad of it. But, yesterday, in the morning, when I was letting myself go with a morbid pleasure in the luxurious relief of it—something reached me—some slow rising call to effort and life.”
She turned towards him in her saddle, listening, her lips parted.
“I did not even ask myself what was happening, but I began to be conscious of being drawn back, and to long intensely to see you again. I was gradually filled with a restless feeling that you were near me, and that, though I could not physically hear your voice, you were surely CALLING to me. It was the thing which could not be—but it was—and because of it I could not let myself drift.”
“I did call you! I was on my knees in the church asking to be forgiven if I prayed mad prayers—but praying the same thing over and over. The villagers were kneeling there, too. They crowded in, leaving everything else. You are their hero, and they were in deep earnest.”
His look was gravely pondering. His life had not made a mystic of him—it was Penzance who was the mystic —but he felt himself perplexed by mysteriously suggestive thought.
“I was brought back—I was brought back,” he said. “In the afternoon I fell asleep and slept profoundly until the morning. When I awoke, I realised that I was a remade man. The doctors were almost awed when I first spoke to them. Old Dr. Fenwick died later, and, after I had heard about it, the church bell was tolled. It was heard at Weaver’s farmhouse, and, as everybody had been excitedly waiting for the sound, it conveyed but one idea to them—and the boy was sent racing across the fields to Stornham village. Dearest! Dearest!” he exclaimed.
She had bowed her head and burst into passionate sobbing. Because she was not of the women who wept, her moment’s passion was strong and bitter.
“It need not have been!” she shuddered. “One cannot bear it—because it need not have been!”
“Stop your horse a moment,” he said, reining in his own, while, with burning eyes and swelling throat, he held and steadied her. But he did not know that neither her sister nor her father had ever seen her in such mood, and that she had never so seen herself.
“You shall not remember it,” he said to her.
“I will not,” she answered, recovering herself. “But for one moment all the awful hours rushed back. Tell me the rest.”
“We did not know that the blunder had been made until a messenger from Dole rode over to inquire and bring messages of condolence. Then we understood what had occurred and I own a sort of frenzy seized me. I knew I must see you, and, though the doctors were horribly nervous, they dare not hold me back. The day before it would not have been believed that I could leave my room. You were crying out to me, and though I did not know, I was answering, body and soul. Penzance knew I must have my way when I spoke to him—mad as it seemed. When I rode through Stornham village, more than one woman screamed at sight of me. I shall not be able to blot out of my mind your sister’s face. She will tell you what we said to each other. I rode away from the Court quite half mad–-” his voice became very gentle, “because of something she had told me in the first wild moments.”
Lady Anstruthers had spent the night moving restlessly from one room to another, and had not been to bed when they rode side by side up the avenue in the early morning sunlight. An under keeper, crossing the park a few hundred yards above them, after one glance, dashed across the sward to the courtyard and the servants’ hall. The news flashed electrically through the house, and Rosalie, like a small ghost, came out upon the steps as they reined in. Though her lips moved, she could not speak aloud, as she watched Mount Dunstan lift her sister from her horse.
“Childe Harold stumbled and I hurt my foot,” said Betty, trying to be calm.
“I knew he would find you!” Rosalie answered quite faintly. “I knew you would!” turning to Mount Dunstan, adoring him with all the meaning of her small paled face.
She would have been afraid of her memory of what she had said in the strange scene which had taken place before them a few hours ago, but almost before either of the two spoke she knew that a great gulf had been crossed in some one inevitable, though unforeseen, leap. How it had been taken, when or where, did not in the least matter, when she clung to Betty and Betty clung to her.
After a few moments of moved and reverent waiting, the admirable Jennings stepped forward and addressed her in lowered voice.