When Mr. Romer left them and returned to his seat on the terrace, the girls did not at once proceed on their way, but waited, hesitating; and amused themselves by pulling down the lower branches of a lime and trying to anticipate the sweetness of its yet unbudded fragrance.
“Let’s stroll down the drive first,” said Gladys presently, “till we are out of sight, and then we can cross the mill mead and get into the orchard that way.” They followed this design with elaborate caution, and only when quite concealed from the windows of the house, turned quickly northward and left the park for the orchards. Between the wall, of the north garden and the railway, lay some of the oldest and least frequented of these shadowy places, completely out of the ordinary paths of traffic, and only accessible by field-ways. Into the smallest and most secluded of all these the girls wandered, gliding noiselessly between the thick hedges and heavy grass, like two frail phantoms of the upper world visiting some Elysian solitude.
Gladys laid her hand on her companion’s arm. “We had better wait here,” she said, “where we can see the whole orchard. They ought to know, by now, where to come.”
They seated themselves on the bowed trunk of an ancient apple-tree that by long decline had at last reached a horizontal position. The flowering season was practically over, though here and there a late cider-tree, growing more in shadow than the rest, still carried its delicate burden of clustered blossoms.
“How many times is it that we have met them here?” whispered the fair girl, snatching off her hat and tossing it on the grass. “This is the fifth time, isn’t it? What dear things they are! I think its much more exciting, this sort of thing, — don’t you? — than dull tennis parties with silly idiots like young Ilminster.”
The Italian nodded. “It is a good thing that James and I get on so well,” she said. “It would be awkward if we were as afraid of one another as when we first met.”
Gladys put her hand caressingly on her companion’s knee and looked into her face with a slow seductive smile.
“You are forgetting your Mr. Quincunx a little, just a little, these days, aren’t you, darling? Don’t be shy, now — or look cross. You know you are! You can’t deny it. Your boy is almost as nice as mine. He doesn’t like me, though. I can see that! But I like him. I like him awfully! You’d better take care, child. If ever I get tired of my Luke—”
“James isn’t a boy,” protested Lacrima.
“Silly!” cried Gladys. “Of course he is. Who cares about age? They are all the same. I always call them boys when they attract me. I like the word. I like to say it. It makes me feel as if I were one of those girls in London. You know what I mean!”
Lacrima looked at her gravely. “I always feel as if James Andersen were much older than I,” she said.
“But your Mr. Quincunx,” repeated the fair creature, slipping her soft fingers into her friend’s hand, “your Mr. Quincunx is not quite what he was to you, before we began these adventures?”
“I wish you wouldn’t say that, Gladys!” rejoined the Italian, freeing her hands and clasping them passionately together. “It is wicked of you to say that! You know I only talk to James so that you can do what you like. I shall always be Maurice’s friend. I shall be his friend to the last!”
Gladys laughed merrily. “That is what I wanted,” she retorted. “I wanted to make you burst out. When people burst out, they are always doubtful in their hearts. Ah, little puritan! so we are already in the position of having two sweethearts, are we? — and not knowing which of the two we really like best? That is a very pretty situation to be in. It is where we all are! I hope you enjoy it!”
Lacrima let her hands fall helplessly to her side, against the grey bark of the apple-tree. “Why do you hate Mr. Quincunx so?” she asked, looking gravely into her friend’s face.
“Why do I hate him?” said Gladys. “Oh, I really don’t know! I didn’t know I did. If I do, it’s because he’s such a weak wretched creature. He has no more spirit than a sick dog. He talks such nonsense too! I am glad he has to walk to Yeoborough every day and do a little work. You ought to be glad too! He could never marry if he didn’t make some money.”
“He doesn’t want to marry,” murmured Lacrima. “He only wants to be left alone.”
“A nice friend he seems to be,” cried the other, “for a girl like you! I suppose he kisses you and that sort of thing, doesn’t he? I shouldn’t like to be kissed by a silly old man like that, with a great stupid beard.”
“You mustn’t say these things to me, Gladys, you mustn’t! I won’t hear them. Mr. Quincunx isn’t an old man! He is younger than James Andersen. He is not forty yet.”
“He looks fifty, if he looks a day,” said Gladys, “and the colour of his beard is disgusting! It’s like dirty water. Fancy having a horrid thing like that pressed against your face! And I suppose he cries and slobbers over you, doesn’t he? I have seen him cry. I hate a man who cries. He cried the other night, — father told me so — when he found he had spent all his money.”
Lacrima got up and walked a few paces away. She loathed this placid golden-haired creature, at that moment, so intensely, that it was all she could do to refrain from leaping upon her and burying her teeth in her soft neck. She leant against one of the trees and pressed her head upon its grey lichen. Gladys slipped down into a more luxurious position. She looked complacently around her. No spot could have been better adapted for a romantic encounter.
The gnarled and time-worn trunks of the old apple-trees, each looking as if it had lingered there, full of remote memories, from an age coeval with the age of those very druids whose sacred mistletoe still clung in patches to their boughs, formed a strange fantastic array of twisted and distorted natural pillars, upon which the foliage, meeting everywhere above their heads, leaned in shadowy security, like the roof of a heathen temple. The buttercups and cuckoo-flowers, which, here and there, sprinkled the heavy grass, were different from those in the open meadows. The golden hue of the one, and the lavender tint of the other, took on, in this diurnal gloom, a chilly and tender pallour, both colours approximating to white. The grey lichen hung down in loose festoons from the higher portions of the knotted trunks, and crept, thick and close, round the moss at their roots. There could hardly be conceived a spot more suggestive of absolute and eternal security than this Hesperidean enclosure.
The very fact of the remote but constant presence of humanity there, as a vague dreamy background of immemorial tending, increased this sense. One felt that the easy invasions of grafting-time and gathering-time, returning perennially in their seasons, only intensified the long delicious solitudes of the intervals between, when, in rich, hushed languor, the blossoms bud and bloom and fall; and the fruit ripens and sweetens; and the leaves flutter down. That exquisite seductive charm, the charm of places full of quietness, yet bordering on the edge of the days’ labour, hung like a heavy atmosphere of contentment over the shadowy aisles of this temple of peace. The wood-pigeons keep up a perpetual murmur, all the summer long, in these untrodden spots. No eyes see them. It is as though they never saw one another. But their drowsy liturgical repetitions answer and answer again, as if from the unfathomable depths of some dim green underworld, worshipping the gods of silence with sounds that give silence itself a richer, a fuller weight.