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Timothy Bellairs took his wife and family that summer to an old house, Low Dene, in the village of Gosforth, which was situated ten miles from Wastwater and a little more than three miles from Seascale on the coast.

Young Tim, now aged five, had not lately been very well; one cold had followed the other. Sea air would do the children good, and he would have found some place on the sea had it not been for Mrs. Bellairs, who disliked the sea and all its works. So a compromise was effected.

Low Dene was one of those large rambling untidy houses of which at that time the country offered many examples. They were especially suited to the large families that good English parents thought it proper to create. The house was in a hollow under the hill to the right of the village; fields ran to the edge of the big scrambling garden; there was a croquet-lawn, a wood, shrubberies, a stream, everything that children desired. The place belonged to a retired Indian colonel whose children were now grown. He had gone with his wife and four daughters to Brighton, where he hoped to marry the daughters and recapture some of his own youth. It was one of those houses which here are furnished and there are not. The drawing-room, some of the bedrooms, were crowded with large and small impedimenta, so crowded that you could scarcely move without disabling a china figure, upsetting an Indian idol or flinging a wool mat to the floor. On the other hand most of the passages, some of the bedrooms, the bathroom, had no covering to the bare boards, the wind whistled through the thin faded wallpapers, the piano was altogether out of tune, every fireplace smoked, the gas hissed, the cistern groaned, there was an odd smell of dog in every room, and draughts played in every corner. In spite of these things the house had an air of cosiness and comfort—why, it would be difficult to say. It was, maybe, because a large family had grown up in it and their games, quarrels, intimacies, pleasures had sunk into the brick, permeated the boards of the passages, helped to stain curtains and wallpapers into their faded homely colours.

Timothy, his wife and children were well pleased. Fell House, Uldale, was the joy and boast of Timothy’s heart, but it was pleasant for a while to escape its responsibilities. Timothy was lazy although he disguised the laziness with true English aplomb. As to the children, this was the happiest summer of their young lives. Discipline was relaxed; their father condescended to walk with them, there was the Farm at the top of the hill, the fields with the haymaking, the mysterious wood, the sea, and above all Vanessa.

It was Timothy who had invited Vanessa to stay with them. Mrs. Bellairs had objected, although in her sleepy, limited fashion she rather liked Vanessa. They had both been deeply shocked—as had Herries up and down the country—when they heard of her engagement to Benjamin Herries. They had thought at first that they would never speak to Vanessa again. But Timothy had as true an affection for her as he had for anyone in the world. In his stout slow body there was little rancour, no spitefulness, temper only with his own children. He was negative in all his emotions except his family pride. He thought that he had the finest house, the finest wife, the finest children in the world, and perhaps, deep in his heart, he loved his children and had an affection for his wife. But it was not the fashion for either husbands or parents to be demonstrative. He was now forty-five years of age, laziness and corpulency made him virtuous, but he had still an eye for a pretty woman, and Vanessa’s beauty, although he might not speak of it (for Mrs. Bellairs could be a jealous woman), gave him the greatest pleasure to look upon. He would stare and stare at her with something of the same emotion with which he would gaze upon a fine shoulder of mutton freshly come to table. Nevertheless he cared for Vanessa. He would, at a push, do more for her than for anyone.

Discussing the tragic Vanessa-Benjie affair in the large family bed at Uldale, he declared that Vanessa should be invited to come with them to Gosforth. Mrs. Bellairs groaned and lamented, but knew that if he had decided on something it was decided. They were both lazy people, but she was lazier than he. His point was that they might influence Vanessa. She had been carried off her feet by the London atmosphere. (He had the greatest contempt for London. He knew that he would not shine if he went there.) Let her spend a week or two with them in the country and they would soon show her her silly mistake.

‘And her father?’ murmured Mrs. Bellairs.

‘Let him come too,’ said Timothy, who tolerated Adam but scorned him because he did nothing with his time but write books. ‘The house is big enough.’

However, Adam refused. He might come over for a day or two.

Timothy, his wife, his sister Jane, now an old maid of forty-two, the children, Mrs. Clopton the nurse, Agnes the young maid, Jim Wilson the coachman, Peter the dog, all moved over to Low Dene in the large family chariot.

Vanessa arrived there two days later.

The real reason of Vanessa’s visit was that she wished to escape from Benjie, whom she had been seeing almost every day for the last three months.

It was not that she loved Benjie less: it was that she loved him more, and this love had plunged her into a turmoil of problems, excitements and distresses not only about him but about herself as well.

She had never, until now, known any very close and intimate relation with anyone save her father and mother. Her life had always moved on certain fixed and stable laws. Her own faults and failings, which were many—impetuous feeling, hasty temper, neglect of obvious duties—had all, when tested by a few principles, been clearly faults and failings. There had never been any question about what she ought to do. Simply she had been wicked and failed.

But she was as honest as anyone alive, both with herself and everyone else, and, after a week with Benjie, she saw that neither right nor wrong conduct would ever be so clear and simple again.

That she had been carried off her feet by Benjie’s return and proposal did not at all blind her to the fact that no one else had. She realised immediately at the first half-hour in the party at Hill Street that no one anywhere was going to approve of the engagement—no, not even Rose. ‘She is throwing herself away,’ she could hear everyone saying. Benjie’s charm and light-heartedness when he was happy affected many when he was with them, and during that final week in London he was very charming indeed, but, returning to Cumberland, she found that even Elizabeth was doubtful. ‘It is what I have always wanted,’ Elizabeth said. ‘And oh, my dear, I do hope he will make you happy!’

And her father? He kissed her and told her that her happiness was dearer to him than anything else on earth. She was a woman now. She knew where her happiness lay.

She simply said: ‘I have loved him all my life.’ He said no more, but she noticed in him after this a constant anxiety, an extra tenderness, and, in herself, a certain reticence that had not been there before. Their relationship was for the first time in their lives a little clouded.

Benjie came up to the Fortress and lived there quietly with his mother. At first he was happy with an exuberance, a generosity to all the world, that showed him at his very best. Everyone noticed the change in him.

‘I think,’ Elizabeth confided to Vanessa after a week or two, ‘that it will be as I hoped. You are going to change him altogether.’ He told her again and again how, during those last months abroad, her image, his adoration of her, obsessed him more and more completely. On his journey home his impatience was a fever. At the sight of her at last in that silly drawing-room he nearly died! They must be married immediately. She was quite ready. She did not want to wait. Let them be married to-morrow!

Then it was he, Benjie, who postponed it. One afternoon, walking again in the garden at the Fortress, all the old doubts came forward. He was not good enough for her. Everyone was right. He would only make her unhappy. When she knew him better she would hate him. She calmed him. She laughed at him. She told him once again that she had known him all her life, that she was not blind nor ignorant about men, that they must trust one another and take what came. She was so certain of her own deep unchangeable love that they need have no fear. He asked her, in a kind of despair, why did she love him as she did. Soon against her will she was asking herself that question. What was Benjie’s power over her? She loved him because he alone in all the world drew everything out of her: she loved him as a woman, as a mother, as a sister, as a friend and a companion. He was honest, generous, gay, independent, brave. He was also careless, selfish, casual, forgetful, always surrendering to the mood of the moment, hating to be tied. But that he adored her no one could doubt. He knew, his mother knew, even the men and women about the place knew that, with all his faults, this love for Vanessa was true, staunch, unyielding. Had his character been as fine as his love they would be happy for evermore!

The wildness in him was quite untamed. She knew that and reckoned with it, but to watch it working at a distance and to have it in close daily communion with herself were two quite different things.

He could conceal nothing that was in his mind, and soon he attacked what he called her ‘childishness.’ He attacked her religion. He told her again and again that he did not want her to change in the least and tried to change her. ‘You know that there can’t be a God, Vanessa. In your heart you must know it. You are a wise woman. You read and think. Well, then, ask yourself. How can there be a God and life be as it is? If there is one He ought to be deuced ashamed of Himself, that’s all I can say.’

She disliked intensely to talk about her religion. She had never done so with anyone save her mother and Elizabeth. Her father had always respected that reticence. But quietly and with humour she answered Benjie’s indignation. ‘We go by our experience, I suppose, Benjie dear. God is as real to me as you are. Of course I don’t know why life is as it is. I am a very ignorant woman, and Mr. Darwin’s monkeys are beyond my scope. But a hundred thousand monkeys wouldn’t alter the truth that I love you, nor would they change my love of God either. Don’t worry about it, Benjie. Let us be what we are.’

Then soon there was another thing. She had never known before what physical love was. She had never been close to Benjie so constantly. She had never conceived her own weakness. One fine day they had ridden out to Borrowdale and, sitting in the sun under some trees above Rosthwaite, they had talked. She knew that everyone thought it very disgraceful that they went about together without a chaperon. Even her father had shyly spoken to her of it. She had laughed and said that he need have no fears. But now, quite suddenly, she realised that he was right to be afraid. It was as though she and Benjie were caught up into a hot burning cloud of light. The world turned so that both sound and vision were obliterated. For a fearful dumb blind moment she was almost lost. Then by the grace of God she escaped into sight and sound again.

Next day she said:

‘Benjie, why should we wait? Let us marry soon.’

But there was her father. She could not endure to leave him. It is true that she would be at the Fortress, not far away, but the thought of his lonely days, his sitting at his table writing, looking up out of window, thinking of her, wanting her, was intolerable. He told her with a smile that he would be quite happy. He had Will, he had his work and garden. She knew that he was doing his best. He did not take her in at all. Then in June he fell ill. He caught a cold, suffered from rheumatism, had to go to bed for a while. When he was better Benjie, who had been wonderful during Adam’s sickness, coming constantly to visit him, laughing, cheering him up, reading to him, suffered from all his old scruples again.

‘Vanessa, give me up! I’ll go away and never come back! I’m not worth all your sacrifice. I’m not worth anyone’s sacrifice.’

But he loved her more than ever and he was more charming than ever. He was, during those weeks in July, unselfish, thoughtful, considered her in everything. But they decided that they would wait until the spring. ‘You will know then finally, once and for all, whether I am worth it.’

‘I know it now,’ she said gently. ‘Nothing can change.’

But she perceived by now that, beyond any doubt, it was something he knew about himself that stirred all his self-depreciation. That, because he knew himself so well and loved her so dearly, he was determined to do this one decent honest thing—not to ruin her life.

But what was it that he knew about himself? He was not, in his attitude to anyone else, self-depreciatory. Far from it. ‘Take me as I am; as I take you,’ was his attitude to the world. Only he would not spoil Vanessa’s life for her.

‘But of course you will not spoil it.’

‘You don’t know me.’

‘I take the risk,’ she answered.

By the end of July she felt that she must, for a little while, be at a distance from him. This indecision and hesitation could not go on. It was making them both sensitive, moody, self-conscious. So she went to Gosforth.

When she had been a day there her spirit was quieted, her gaiety returned.

Gosforth itself, small quiet village that it was, contained all the past. In the churchyard there was a cross of red sandstone which represented a figure chained beneath a serpent dropping upon him poison. This was a Christian cross and yet it had on it a heathen symbol. No one could tell its age, but many Vikings, she understood, had been half Christian, half heathen. She liked to think that this had been a Viking cross. Then there was Gosforth Hall near the church, the very house where Bishop Nicolson in the seventeenth century, as a young archdeacon, courted Barbara Copley. Near the Hall was a holy well where there had been once a mediaeval chapel, and half a mile from the Hall was the Dane’s Camp, and farther from that again the King’s Camp at Laconby. Many of the old houses in the neighbourhood like Ponsonby Hall and Sella Park were packed with history, while not far away was Calder Abbey.

In the middle of all this concentration of Time slept the perfect English countryside. There was often sunshine that August and sweeping shafts of it fell across the cornfields, warming the colours into red gold, falling at the feet of the dark shadows of the woods. It was pastoral everywhere, while on windless days the silence, made more musical by the creaking of a cart, dogs barking, the call of the farmer to his horse, seemed to carry all the summer scents of flowers and corn and trees and pile them about you so that on the hot lawn you need not stir but gather, without motion, everything into your heart.

Yet how strangely even in this country of cornfield, wood and hedgerow still the mountains dominated. At every point, from every rise, Black Combe, thrusting its head like a lazy friendly whale into the sea, held your eye. From Black Combe’s top you could hold in your grasp the Isle of Man, the Scottish and Welsh coasts with Snowdon greeting you, while landwards were Lancashire and the Yorkshire Fells.

To the right from a little hill above the house you could salute the Screes and in your mind’s eye follow them as they rushed with all their power to bury their foundations deep in the heart of the black lake. Standing on her hill Vanessa would watch the clouds hurrying like smoke to invade the serried tops, then to spill themselves in storm or to break into pavilions snow-white or crimson with fire, or to shred and scatter into strands of gold and crimson. And she liked to sense, as she felt the motionless peace of the cornfields below them, catching the sun and throwing it up to her again, that above those hills the wind was raging and that their shining, slanting surface glistened with hardness, and the stone walls, straight as a sword, ran to the skyline over ground that was rough and peaty and free. All history was in this small patch of ground, and all nature too, shadowed by the triumphant wing of the great Eagle to whose kingly progress History was but a day.

In the house and out of it there were the children. They were sternly disciplined. Mrs. Clopton, a tall dark woman with heavy eyebrows and a faint moustache, was a Tartar. She was not unkind, but she thrived on her despair of human nature. She hoped for the best but gloried in her constant disappointment. Her God—she was a deeply religious woman—was the real God of the Israelites, revengeful, on the watch for every blunder, cruel in His punishments. Oddly the children liked her; they were proud of her. She had no need to punish; a look, a word from her was sufficient. Not that they were perfect children. They made their own lives in their world of perpetual discipline. They learnt their Collects on Sunday, said ‘Yes, Mama’ and ‘No, Mama,’ never spoke when with their elders unless spoken to, but, once by themselves, the official eye removed from them, they were free, natural and often naughty. It was as though they understood the terms under which they lived and made their plans accordingly. Violet was delicate—fair-haired, slender, blue-eyed—and was already making her poor health her pleasant advantage.

But Tim was Vanessa’s darling. He was fair and slender like Violet, but strong and wiry. She saw that he was an artist born and that nothing would stop him. He drew unconsciously without any deliberate awareness. He noticed the shapes and colours of clouds, the patterns of leaves, the path that the wind made through the corn, a snail’s shiny track on the lawn, the purple shadows on the flanks of Black Combe. He was already at odds with Herries common sense.

His father would darken the doorway.

‘Tim, what are you doing?’

‘Making a picture, Papa.’

‘Let me see.’

Then after a pause:

‘Now what is this?’

‘A ship with pirates, Papa.’

‘Pirates! Pirates! What do you know about pirates?’

‘Aunt Essie told us, Papa.’

‘And you call this a ship?’

‘I don’t know ships very well and——’

‘Well, wait until you do. Wasting your time like this! What have I often told you?’

‘Not to waste my time, Papa.’

‘Exactly. Now put away that rubbish.’

The children worshipped Vanessa. For half an hour before they went to bed she was allowed to tell them stories. Mrs. Clopton listened in stern astonishment. There was nothing of which she disapproved so thoroughly as stories, but, while her needles clicked, she found herself attending: fairy palaces rose above her head, the Crystal Lake was at her feet and a White Horse of incomparable splendour strode the ice-bound hills.

‘Time for their bed, Miss Vanessa.’

But, over her solitary supper, she wondered, against her will: ‘What did the Princess find behind the secret door? Did the dwarf climb out of the cellar? Why was the Green Necklace the King’s most treasured possession?’

Best of all there was the sea. On fine days they drove there in the victoria. The sand stretched in a floor of mother-of-pearl to the line of trembling white. On the horizon the Isle of Man hung between sea and sky. Timothy slept, Mrs. Bellairs talked, the children were busy with their fantasies, Mrs. Clopton read her Bible, Vanessa thought of Benjamin.

On a sunny afternoon, staring dreamily at the incoming tide, she saw him coming towards her.

At first she was delighted, then she was angry, then delighted again. She wanted not to be pleased! He was for ever breaking his word. They had agreed that they would not meet for three weeks. And why had he not written to her to tell her that he was coming? Or had he perhaps ridden over and to-morrow was returning? Or did he intend ...? The children had seen him and began to run towards him, then stopped, remembering their elders. They loved, however, Benjie better than anyone else in the world—far better indeed. No one, not even Aunt Vanessa nor Aunt Jane nor any other, could create for them a world and then live contentedly inside it as Benjie could.

‘Uncle Benjie! Uncle Benjie!’ Tim cried and woke up his father. Mrs. Bellairs disapproved of Benjamin completely. She was terrified lest he should contaminate the children. She said this, but in actual fact when he was in her company she always surrendered to him. Had she been honest with herself she would have acknowledged that to be so vicious and yet so amiable touched the adventurous woman in her. Although stout and forty, completely the British matron, there hid somewhere within her a girl who longed to see what the other half of the world was like. This girl was slowly starving to death. Once and again she received sustenance: Benjie more than any other kept her alive.

Nevertheless he was dangerous to the children with all the horrible things he had seen and done, the dreadful women he must know. Moreover, had they not invited Vanessa to stay for the sole purpose of showing her how shocking, how impossible Benjie was?

But what were you to do when in a moment he was down on his knees in the sand helping Tim with his castle, which the child had already decorated with a pink shell, the green stopper of a ginger-beer bottle, and a piece of red rag tied to a stick?

And what were you to do when, smiling all over his face, sand on his trousers, waving a child’s spade, he came over to you crying:

‘Just think, Violet, I’ve come all the way from the Fortress on a bicycle.’

‘On a bicycle!’ She sat up, settled her bustle, arranged the large yellow brooch neatly on her bosom and stared with what she trusted was a mixture of disapprobation and dignity.

‘Now don’t look like that, Violet! You know you are glad I have come. One might think I was Cetewayo by your disapproval. I’m not going to poison the children or tell them naughty stories. I may tell you a few later on, but to be honest with you I’ve come to see Vanessa, the lady to whom I’m engaged, and nobody else.... Yes, I’ve come on a bicycle! I bought it in Carlisle last week.’

‘Where is it?’ asked Mrs. Bellairs, speaking as though he had brought with him the late-lamented Jumbo from the Zoo.

‘It is at my lodging.’

‘Your lodging? Then you are going to stay here?’

‘For a day or two—as long as Vanessa will put up with me.’

‘Well, we can’t offer you a bed at Low Dene if that’s what you want. There are rooms enough but no servants. I’m sorry, but you should have told us you were coming.’

Benjie laughed. ‘But, my dear Violet, why will you not understand? I have not come to see you. Of course if you appear sometimes I shall be glad to talk to you and to listen to what you have to say. If you are very good I will tell you a story or two about Port Said. But I have not the slightest interest in either yourself or Low Dene just now. I prefer the company of Mrs. Halliday and Rosemary Cottage.’

‘And who is Mrs. Halliday?’

‘A retired gentlewoman with a beautiful daughter, who, an hour ago, lured me with a card in the window which said that a bedroom was to let on moderate terms. Rosemary Cottage has a sea view, the beautiful daughter was in the parlour tending the plants. Within five minutes terms were arranged, and my bicycle is now occupying all the space in the front hall.’

‘Very well. If you are satisfied. But I’m sure you might leave Vanessa alone for a little. You do not mean to say that you’ve come thirty miles to-day on that bicycle?’

‘No. I stayed last night in Whitehaven and transacted a little piece of business.’

‘I see.’ She rose with great dignity, patted her bosom, shook her dress so that the frills and ruches settled in their proper places, and said:

‘Timothy, it is time we were returning. Come, children. The air is chill.’

But the victoria had to be ordered, and Benjie was able to secure a moment alone with Vanessa.

‘Why have you come?’ Vanessa asked him. ‘Three weeks was our bargain.’

‘I know. I could not help it. I had to show you the bicycle.’

‘No, but I am angry. Really I am. You should not have come.’

‘You haven’t written, Vanessa.’

‘I have only been here four days.’

‘Yes, but four days! An intolerable time. But see how tactful I am. I am here at Rosemary Cottage. There is Mrs. Halliday’s beautiful daughter. I am quite happy, and we need not meet at all.’

‘You know that we shall meet.’

‘Let the others go in front.’ He caught her hand. ‘Vanessa. We must stop this nonsense. We must be married immediately. I mean it. I cannot live even four days without you.’

‘To-morrow you will say something quite different. I cannot trust you from one day to another.’

‘No, I know. That is why we must be married immediately. Next month. I have told my mother. There is nothing against it.’

‘There has never been anything against it,’ she answered. ‘Only your own indecision.’ Then she laughed. ‘Oh, Benjie, I am so glad to see you! I have been wanting you every minute I have been here!’

‘If,’ he said, ‘we walk up through those sand-dunes no one can see us.’

Between the sand-dunes they kissed as though they had been parted for years.

When he had seen them all drive off in the victoria he walked to his lodging, singing. Everything was settled at last. His own indecision was ended. After all, was he not changed? Did he not adore Vanessa? He knew that he did! How beautiful, how very, very beautiful she had looked in the simple blue dress with the high dark collar, the white frill at the throat, the little gold brooch that he had given her, her hair brushed from her splendid forehead, she kneeling there on the sand watching Tim’s castle. No one was so lovely, no one so good and true, no one loved him so dearly! The wildness was gone from his nature. They would settle at the Fortress, soon there would be children, boys like Tim, girls better than Violet; the garden should blossom with the rose, the Fortress should burn with light and heat....

He was approaching Rosemary Cottage. It stood by itself, its feet almost in the sand-dunes, a small wind-blown desolate garden looking on to the sandy track. As he approached it he ceased to sing. The sun was setting: shadows crept over the sea and a mist veiled the little moon.

Before he entered he hesitated. Something about this place checked his high spirits. Vanessa seemed far away. A little wind, suddenly rising, blew the sand in thin spirals among the strong tufted grass.

In the sitting-room the lamp was already lit and a meal spread on the table—a ham, a dish of stewed fruit, cheese.

Mrs. Halliday appeared in the doorway.

‘Shall I bring the eggs and tea now?’ she asked. She was a spare desolate woman in a black silk dress. He noticed that she had no eyebrows and wore mittens on her hands.

‘Thank you,’ he said. He pulled off his boots, changing them for slippers, found in his bag a novel by Ouida, pulled out his pipe. She reappeared with the tea and eggs.

‘I trust you have no objection to smoking in here?’ he asked, looking up at her with a smile.

‘Oh, none at all, Mr.——’ She paused. ‘I beg your pardon. I did not catch your name before. Pray forgive me.’

‘Oh, certainly. My name is Herries.’

‘Thank you. I am a little deaf in one ear.’ She waited as though she expected him to speak.

‘That tea looks splendid.’ He moved to the table. ‘I am exceedingly hungry.’

‘I am very glad, I am sure.’ She waited, then went on. ‘I do hope we shall satisfy you. My daughter and I are not accustomed to having lodgers. We have been in this place barely a month.’

‘Oh yes?’ He cut the bread.

‘Yes. We come from Warwickshire. My husband was a gentleman of means. He was carried off with a severe fever six months ago.’

‘Oh, I am sorry,’ said Benjie. ‘What brought you, then, to this district?’

‘I have a son who has taken a farm in the Buttermere direction. He always was fond of the country, but was of course in very different circumstances when my poor husband was alive.’ She paused, gave a dry little cough. ‘He passed away with great suddenness. His affairs were sadly involved. He was ruined by one whom he thought his friend.’

‘Oh dear, I am sorry,’ Benjie said. But he had been startled by the extreme vindictiveness of that last sentence. Up to then she had spoken so very quietly.

‘Yes, and so after that my daughter and I have had to do what we can.... Thank you, Mr. Herries. I hope that you have everything that you need.’

‘Oh yes, thank you.’

She left the room. What an extremely quiet woman she was! It was not only that she spoke quietly, the words coming from between her thin lips reluctantly, but her movements were quiet, almost stealthy. She had been in the room before he noticed it. Had he been anyone but Benjie he would have said at once that he did not like her, but his charity was all-embracing, at any rate until he had full and sufficient reason for a stern decision. But as he ate his ham and his eggs he felt uncomfortable. He thought that perhaps to-morrow he would make a move. He had half an impulse to get up and see whether his bicycle were safe in the hall. At any rate it was stuffy in here. The room was too full of things, china dogs, pale yellow daguerreotypes, large sea-shells, little tables covered with plush fastened with bright gilt nails. There was a smell in the room as though the windows had not been opened for a very long time—a smell, was it of seaweed, of stale scent, musty and clinging? Ah well, he was an ancient mariner, he had travelled the world over and known every discomfort. He would not be disturbed by a musty smell and a china dog or two. Nevertheless he disliked intensely a large daguerreotype of a pale severe gentleman in black cloth whose cold eyes followed him wherever he moved. Possibly Mrs. Halliday would not object to moving that picture in the morning!

There was a knock on the door; he said ‘Come in!’ and the daughter entered.

‘Mother wished me to see whether you needed anything,’ she said.

‘Not at all,’ he answered. ‘Everything is excellent, thank you.’

The girl stood against the table looking at him.

She was certainly not beautiful, not even pretty. She was thin like her mother and very fair. Her colour was so pale as to be almost white; her large eyes were blue-grey. She looked at him and smiled faintly. No, she was not pretty but there was something striking about her. It was true that she was thin, but her very fragility seemed to claim your protection.

He smiled back at her.

‘Do you like it here?’ he asked her.

‘No,’ she said. ‘I do not.’ She came nearer to him and laid her hand on the cloth. He noticed at once what a beautiful hand she had, finely formed, with slender fingers. Her hand moved towards the teapot while still she looked at him.

He had a mad impulse to put out his hand towards hers.

He jumped up from the table.

‘I shan’t want anything else to-night, thank you,’ he said, turning his back to her abruptly as he filled his pipe.

The world does not grow less mysterious as it grows older, and it is one of its more striking but less incalculable secrets that human love when it is strong enough defies physical distance. This was not the first time nor the last in their history that Vanessa, as now, riding in the victoria through the dark summer hedges to Low Dene, was quite suddenly aware that Benjie was in danger. Benjie was so often in danger, whether spiritual, mental or physical, that there must have been many occasions when Vanessa was unaware. There is also the perfectly plausible theory that Victorian women were exceptionally sensible to chills because they wrapped up so much. In any case Vanessa, sitting in the victoria, perfectly happy, feeling that at last she was on a relationship with Benjie that was safe and secure, began to shiver. They were turning into the long straggling Gosforth street. The sky in front of them was a pale translucent green in whose bright waters some trembling silver stars were glittering.

‘Why! you are shivering, my dear!’ said Mrs. Bellairs. ‘Wrap this round you! I do trust that you haven’t caught a chill!’

Young Tim was sitting beside her, and his hot damp fist was enclosed in her gloved hand. In his fist, as she knew, were several shells and a piece of golden seaweed. She had the obscure and unreasonable fancy that it was through his hot little fist that she caught the sense that Benjie was in danger. How could he be in danger? He had left her only half an hour before to walk, happy and singing, to his lodging. Rosemary Cottage! There could be nothing wrong about Rosemary Cottage. Nevertheless they were both of a strange ancestry, she and Benjie. Francis Herries fighting in the frosty air, Mirabell bending over her lover’s body on the Carlisle stones, Francis Herries looking at a picture on the wall in a London lodging for the last time, John—his son—calling through the mist in Skiddaw Forest: ‘Is anyone there?’, Judith, released at last, running into the road joyfully to greet her friends—these are only moments in a contemporary history where facts are important only as pointers, and where the significance is only externally material, and where Time has no significance at all.

‘Thank you, Violet,’ said Vanessa, gratefully accepting the Shetland shawl. ‘It is cold after the sun sets.’ At the same moment she had a most incongruous thought—that it was so like Timothy and Violet to christen their children with their own names!

She was uneasy all that evening and, next morning, a little talk that she had with Aunt Jane only increased that uneasiness.

It was a blazing summer day and they sat out on the lawn while the children, under the stern eye of Mrs. Clopton, knocked the croquet-balls about. Vanessa had on her knee a novel by Rhoda Broughton, and Aunt Jane had on hers a novel by Mrs. Alexander. Aunt Jane had a dear little face that would soon be covered with wrinkles. Her ringlets, her shawl (even in this warm weather), the spectacles that she used when reading, her little apprehensive starts as though she expected that at any moment a bear would jump out on her from the shrubbery, a round silver biscuit tin from which she would produce suddenly sweet biscuits for the children when Mrs. Clopton wasn’t looking, her extreme delicacy about other people’s feelings, her willing slavery to the wishes of other people, her single-hearted devotion to those whom she loved, none of these attributes concealed from Vanessa the fact that, in spite of her modesty, reserve and deep religious beliefs, she knew a great deal more about life and men and women than did either Timothy or Violet.

Vanessa had not often an opportunity of being alone with her. She was constantly busy on other people’s business. Timothy especially was always providing her with occupations. She was, when others were present, very silent, and her brother and sister-in-law would have been amazed had they realised the things that she perceived and pondered. They were certain that she adored them and considered them perfect human beings. In the first of these they were correct or nearly correct (she loved people in her own way, which was not at all theirs), in the second they were altogether wrong.

The little conversation that Vanessa now had with her was punctuated with Mrs. Clopton’s sharp: ‘Now, Master Tim, don’t dirty your stockings!’ and ‘Let your brother have the ball now, Miss Violet,’ and ‘What did I tell you? You must look where you are going.’

From the field above the garden came the voices of the haymakers.

‘Benjie has come to stay in Seascale, Aunt Jane,’ said Vanessa.

‘Yes, dear, I know. That’s very nice for you.’

‘And we are going to be married in the autumn.’

Aunt Jane took off her spectacles.

‘I’m glad of that too. I think you have been engaged quite long enough.’

‘Why do you think that?’ Vanessa asked quietly.

‘Oh, my dear, I know nothing about marriage of course, but Benjie, I always say, is not at all an ordinary man. I would never expect you to marry an ordinary man, Vanessa dear. You have too much of your grandmother in you. But when a man is not an ordinary man I always say that it is better that he should be married.’

‘Of course Benjie’s not an ordinary man. But then nobody is ordinary if you know them well enough.’

‘Quite so. That’s what Mrs. Alexander, whose book I am finding it extremely difficult to read, does not appear to have discovered. All her characters are so very ordinary.’

Vanessa hesitated. Then she went on:

‘Aunt Jane, I am going to ask you something. You are so very wise. You have known both Benjie and me since we were babies. Why is it, do you think, that when we are together we so often misunderstand one another?’

‘That is just what I mean about marriage,’ said Jane. ‘People always misunderstand one another. But the point about marriage is that if you go on long enough together you arrive at an understanding. Once you are married you are bound together. I believe all married people find the connection very irritating for a long while, and if they were not married they would separate. But being married they cannot, and so, at last, the understanding arrives. I put it very badly of course. I am not clever as your grandmother was. But there it is. That’s what marriage does.’

‘We must not be engaged too long, Benjie and I,’ Vanessa said, as though she were speaking to herself. ‘There is something dangerous about waiting.’

‘There is something dangerous, my dear, about every human relationship. That is God’s intention. People would never learn anything if there were not plenty of danger about. That is what your grandmother always said.’

‘Oh, how I wish she were still alive!’ Vanessa cried. ‘She would have helped me. I know nothing about life at all—nothing about Benjie either, I sometimes think, although I’ve been with him all my life. How can we know anything about men? We are never alone with them; all they do is concealed from us; when they are with us they never tell us the truth.’

‘Yes, dear, you are quite right,’ said Jane. ‘I often think that women to-day are far too sheltered. Not that I like the girls that your Miss Broughton writes about. That is surely going too far. But when your grandmother was a girl, as she often told me, women were far more free. I dare say they will be again one day, but as it is just now they have to spend all their time guessing.’

‘Aunt Jane,’ Vanessa said, staring at the rising field, the sunlight that soaked the lawn, ‘I’m frightened. I feel that one wrong slip and Benjie will be carried away into some place where I can’t reach him. I love him so terribly, but I am only close to him at moments. He’s here. He’s gone. And when he is gone I am so helpless....’

Jane smiled. ‘Don’t be frightened, my dear. Trust God. He knows so very much more than we do. Remember always that Benjie has a tragic history behind him, his father, his grandfather. ... You know, don’t you, that I was the last person to talk to his father on that dreadful day? He was leading his horse from the stable. Of course I was only a little girl then, but I have always thought that perhaps I could have stopped him if I had known what to do or say. I loved him when I was a child more than I loved anyone, and I have been haunted all my life since by the thought that I failed him. But what I say is,’ she went on more cheerfully, ‘that if we do right as far as we can it’s all we can do. Life’s a dangerous thing, my dear, and you can’t escape the danger by staying in bed all day or making other people act for you. Don’t expect things to be easy. Why should they be? God doesn’t arrange the universe only for me—nor for you either. To listen to the way the people talk in this novel of Mrs. Alexander’s you’d think that every time they have a toothache God ought to be ashamed of Himself. ...’ She nodded to herself, picked up her book. ‘I’m at page one hundred and fifty-three and that’s as far as I shall go. I always like to finish a book if I can; when the writer’s taken so much trouble it seems only right; but this time I simply can’t be bothered. Mrs. Alexander will never know, so there’s no harm done.’

For one reason or another this little talk left Vanessa—who as a rule was sensible enough and level-headed—in a kind of panic. That was the quality that Aunt Jane had, that when she did talk she always suggested so much more than she said. Her honesty forbade her to offer false consolations. If people did not inquire what she thought she was too thorough a lady to tell them, but if they did ask her they must accept the consequences. Vanessa now had the conviction that Aunt Jane thought her love for Benjie a disaster!

She endured three days of a distress and apprehension altogether new to her experience. For much of this the child that she still was was responsible. These were perhaps the last days of immaturity, those days when persons and events have still the size and colours of nursery hours, moments when we are left alone in a room where the flickering firelight throws gigantic shadows on the wall, when the clock’s tick is a menace, and the twig tapping on the window-sill threatens the approach of some dreadful stranger!

She had three days of nightmare—and was transported into Paradise!

Timothy, as befitted a Bellairs, liked society if it was proper enough, and at the houses in the neighbourhood—Muncaster and Ponsonby and others—there was plenty. It was still the fashion, if you went out to dinner, to take a footman with you to assist at the meal, there were elaborate croquet-parties and magnificent picnics.

So one fine day Timothy and his wife set off to Muncaster, and Vanessa went with the nurse and children to the sea. They had not been settled on the shore five minutes before Benjie was with them. He and Vanessa started to walk across the long, shining sands.

It was a day of perfect peace. Chroniclers may define that moment as the final peaceful one in English country life—a moment of historic tranquillity when the cornfields lay placid beneath the sun, the hedgerows slept, woods were untrodden, and every village sheltered under its immemorial elm while the villagers slumbered off their beer on the parochial bench. At the final moment, then, before the trumpet of the new world sounded, Benjamin and Vanessa crossed Seascale sands!

She knew at once that he was disturbed. There had been something, then, in her own unrest.

She said at once: ‘Benjie, what is it?’

He caught her arm with his hand and pressed her against his side so that they might walk like one man. She was taller than he. She was wearing a small, rather masculine hat ornamented with blue flowers. She held her parasol high over her head. She was smiling, she was happy. She could feel his hand within her arm against her heart. All her fears were fled.

‘There is nothing the matter except that I love you. And that is the matter, for we must be married in a month’s time. I can wait no longer. I am bad through and through. I am without a redeeming point, but I have told you all that so often that I shall never mention it again.’

‘Certainly we will be married in a month’s time. To-morrow if you like! I have been dreadfully unhappy these three days. I can’t tell you why, but as I was driving back the other evening I had a sudden fear that something had happened to you. That cottage—what did you call it? Where you are staying. I have been dreaming of it, crawling with spiders and earwigs. I have been thinking that if we are not married at once we never will be married. And Aunt Jane frightened me.’

‘What has Aunt Jane been saying?’ he asked quickly.

‘Oh, nothing—dear Aunt Jane! She loves us both, I know. But she is afraid for us. I know she is. She thinks there is dangerous blood in our veins. She wants to see us safe.’

‘She’s right!’ he said fiercely. ‘We must be safe—or someone will part us, something will happen!’

They were standing at the sea-edge on a floor of mother-of-pearl. The incoming tide drew thin lines of white as with a pencil on the shore and beyond the line the sea heaved without breaking, as gently as a sigh.

‘No,’ she said. ‘I think that nothing can part us. I don’t mean because we love one another. I can imagine that you might come to hate me or I would be so proud that I would never see you again, but still we would not be parted. It has been like that all our lives.’

Then she added, as though to herself: ‘That is my worst fault, my pride.’

He turned and looked at her as though he were seeing her newly.

‘What do you mean, Vanessa—your pride?’

‘I would endure anything, I think,’ she answered, ‘or so I feel. I would show what I was suffering to nobody, but it would remain inside me. I could not let it out. I cannot let things go—words that someone said years ago, little things that people have done. No one knows that I remember them, but I never forget. They do something to me. I hate my pride. I would like to be free as you are, Benjie—every day a new day——’

‘No, Vanessa darling,’ he broke in. ‘Not like me. If there were two of us, both like me, oh, what a time we would have! You are the only one in all the world who influences me! That is why you are to marry me, teach me, change me.’

‘I don’t think I can teach anyone.’ She sighed. ‘I don’t know why it is, but I would rather leave people alone, leave them as they are. Father is like that too. Mother used to be constantly distressed at how bad people were. Not that she blamed them. She was too kind. But it bewildered her. Right was so right and wrong was so wrong. I have no conscience for other people, I think—not even for you, Benjie.’

He asked her again for the thousandth time: ‘Why do you love me, Vanessa? Everyone tells you not to.’

‘I love you,’ she answered, ‘as I shall always love you, because you are part of me, because you are all that I have in the world, because without you I am always lonely, because I am not alive without you. There!’ she said, turning round and laughing, looking at him too with infinite tenderness, with a kind of brooding devotion as though she could not look at him enough, could not have him close enough to her. ‘Now—are you satisfied?’

For a moment he was silent, then he took her hand and kissed it.

‘God helping me,’ he said, ‘you shall not regret it.’ Then, characteristically, added as they turned to walk back: ‘Although I don’t believe in Him, I expect Him to help me, you see.’

They discussed details. He had written to Elizabeth the night before. They would be married in Ireby church, a very quiet wedding.

‘There is only Adam,’ Benjie said. ‘I hate to think how he will miss you. We will do everything we can. You can go and stay with him whenever you wish, and he shall stay with us.’

‘He will be happy if I am,’ she answered. ‘And he is well now—stronger than for a long while.’ But nevertheless she knew leaving him would be terrible. They must think of a plan ... some way....

As they neared the children two women passed them. Benjie raised his hat.

‘Do you know them?’ she asked.

‘Yes,’ he said, laughing. ‘That is the enchantress of Rosemary Cottage. Two enchantresses. Mrs. Halliday and her lovely daughter Marion.’

Driving home, with Violet on her lap while Mrs. Clopton told her stories of the heathen in Africa and all that was being done to improve their minds, she was thinking in an ecstasy of happiness:

‘We are safe! We are safe! In a month we shall be married. Nothing can touch us now.’

In the morning the old postman, bent and twisted like a gnome, brought her a letter. It was from her father.

Dearest Van—I am not very well—nothing serious—but I think perhaps you had better come home.—Your loving

Father.