The Helpmate Part 20

They set out, Majendie carrying the luncheon basket and Anne's coat. He had changed, and appeared in the Norfolk jacket, knickerbockers, and cap he had worn at Scarby. The pang that struck her at the sight of them was softened by her practical perception of their fitness for the adventure.

They became him, too, and she had memory of the charm he had once worn for her with that open-air attire.

An hour's journey by rail brought them to the little wayside station.

They turned off the high road, walked for ten minutes across an upland field, and came to the bridle-path that led down into the beech-woods of Westleydale, in the heart of the hills.

They followed a mossy trail. The shade fell thin, warm, and coloured, from leaves so tender that the light pa.s.sed through their half-transparent panes. Overhead there was the delicate scent of green things and of sap, and underfoot the deep smell of moss and moistened earth.

Anne drew the deep breath of delight. She took off her hat and gloves, and moved forward a few steps to a spot where the wood opened and the vivid light received her. Majendie hung back to look at her. She turned and stood before him, superb and still, shrined in a crescent of tall beech stems, column by column, with the light descending on the fine gold of her hair. Nothing in Anne even remotely suggested a sylvan and primeval creature; but, as she stood there in her temperate and alien beauty, she seemed to him to have yielded to a brief enchantment. She threw back her head, as if her white throat drank the sweet air like wine. She held out her white hands, and let the warmth play over them palpably as a touch.

And Majendie longed to take her by those white hands and draw her to him.

If he could have trusted her; but some instinct plucked him backward, saying to him: "Not yet."

A mossy rise under a beech-tree offered itself to Anne as a suitable throne for the regal woman that she was. He spread out her coat, and she made room for him beside her. He sat for a long time without speaking.

The powers which were working that day for Majendie gave to him that subtle silence. He had, at most times, an inexhaustible capacity for keeping still.

Above them, just discernible through the tree-tops, veiled by a gauze of dazzling air, the hill brooded in its majestic dream. Its green arms, plunging to the valley, gathered them and shut them in.

Majendie's figure was not diminished by the background. The smallest nervous movement on his part would have undone him, but he did not move.

His profound stillness, suggesting an interminable patience, gave him a beautiful immensity of his own.

Anne, left in her charmed, inviolate circle, surrendered sweetly to the spirit of Westleydale.

The place was peace folded upon the breast of peace.

Presently she spoke, calling his name, as if out of the far-off unutterable peace.

"Walter, it was kind of you to bring me here."

"I am so glad you like it."

"I do indeed."

He tried to say more, but his heart choked him.

She closed her eyes, and the peace poured over her, and sank in. Her heart beat quietly.

She opened her eyes and turned them on her husband. She knew that it was his gaze that had compelled them to open. She smiled to herself, like a young girl, shyly but happily aware of him, and turned from him to her contemplation of the woods.

Anne had always rather prided herself on her susceptibility to the beauty of nature, but it had never before reached her with this poignant touch.

Hitherto she had drawn it in with her eyes only; now it penetrated her through every nerve. She was vaguely but deliciously aware of her own body as a part of it, and of her husband's joy in contemplating her.

"He thinks me good-looking," she said to herself, and the thought came to her as a revelation.

Then her young memory woke again and thrust at her.

"He thinks me good-looking. That's why he married me."

She longed to find out if it were so.

"Walter," said she, "I want to ask you a question."

"Well--if it's an easy one."

"It isn't--very. What made you want to marry me?"

He paused a moment, searching for the truth.

"Your goodness."

"Is that really true?"

"To the best of my belief, madam, it is."

"But there are so many other women better than me."

"Possibly. I haven't been happy enough to meet them."

"And if you had met them?"

"As far as I can make out, I shouldn't have fallen in love with them.

I shouldn't have fallen in love with _you_, if it hadn't been for your goodness. But I shouldn't have fallen in love with your goodness in any other woman."

"Have you known many other women?"

"One way and another, in the course of my life--yes. And what I liked so much about you was your difference from those other women. You gave me rest from them and their ways. They bored me even when I was half in love with them, and made me restless for them even when I wasn't a little bit.

It was as if they were always expecting something from me--I couldn't for the life of me tell what--always on the look out, don't you know, for some mysterious moment that never arrived."

She thought she knew. She felt that he was describing vaguely and with incomparable innocence the approaches of the ladies who had once designed to marry him. He had never seen through them; they (and they must have been so obvious, those ladies) had remained for him inscrutable, mysterious. He could deal competently with effects, but he was not clever at a.s.signing causes.

He seemed conscious of her reflections. "They were quite nice, don't you know. Only they couldn't let you alone. You let me alone so perfectly.

Being with you was peace."

"I see," she said quietly. "It was peace. That was all."

"Oh, was it? That was only the beginning, if you must know how it began."

"It began," she murmured, "in peace. That was what struck you most in me.

I must have seemed to you at peace, then."

"You did--you did. Weren't you?"

"I must have been. But I've forgotten. It's so long ago. There's peace here, though. Why didn't we choose this place instead of Scarby?"

"I wish we had. I say--are you never going to forget that?"

"I've forgiven it. I might forget it if I could only understand."

"Understand _what_?"