All that evening this thought kept coming back; but, as is not unusual, each time with less poignancy, till it seemed almost a matter of course to be a scoundrel. And--strange!--he did not know whether he was a scoundrel if he meant to go back to Megan, or if he did not mean to go back to her.
They played cards till the children were sent off to bed; then Stella went to the piano. From over on the window seat, where it was nearly dark, Ashurst watched her between the candles--that fair head on the long, white neck bending to the movement of her hands. She played fluently, without much expression; but what a Picture she made, the faint golden radiance, a sort of angelic atmosphere hovering about her! Who could have passionate thoughts or wild desires in the presence of that swaying, white-clothed girl with the seraphic head?
She played a thing of Schumann's called "Warum?" Then Halliday brought out a flute, and the spell was broken. After this they made Ashurst sing, Stella playing him accompaniments from a book of Schumann songs, till, in the middle of "Ich grolle nicht," two small figures clad in blue dressing-gowns crept in and tried to conceal themselves beneath the piano. The evening broke up in confusion, and what Sabina called "a splendid rag."That night Ashurst hardly slept at all. He was thinking, tossing and turning. The intense domestic intimacy of these last two days, the strength of this Halliday atmosphere, seemed to ring him round, and make the farm and Megan--even Megan--seem unreal. Had he really made love to her--really promised to take her away to live with him? He must have been bewitched by the spring, the night, the apple blossom!
This May madness could but destroy them both! The notion that he was going to make her his mistress--that simple child not yet eighteen--now filled him with a sort of horror, even while it still stung and whipped his blood. He muttered to himself: "It's awful, what I've done--awful!" And the sound of Schumann's music throbbed and mingled with his fevered thoughts, and he saw again Stella's cool, white, fair-haired figure and bending neck, the queer, angelic radiance about her. 'I must have been--I must be-mad!' he thought. 'What came into me? Poor little Megan!' "God bless us all, and Mr. Ashes!" "I want to be with you--only to be with you!" And burying his face in his pillow, he smothered down a fit of sobbing. Not to go back was awful! To go back--more awful still!
Emotion, when you are young, and give real vent to it, loses its power of torture. And he fell asleep, thinking: 'What was it--a few kisses--all forgotten in a month!'
Next morning he got his cheque cashed, but avoided the shop of the dove-grey dress like the plague; and, instead, bought himself some necessaries. He spent the whole day in a queer mood, cherishing a kind of sullenness against himself. Instead of the hankering of the last two days, he felt nothing but a blank--all passionate longing gone, as if quenched in that outburst of tears. After tea Stella put a book down beside him, and said shyly:
"Have you read that, Frank?"
It was Farrar's "Life of Christ." Ashurst smiled. Her anxiety about his beliefs seemed to him comic, but touching. Infectious too, perhaps, for he began to have an itch to justify himself, if not to convert her. And in the evening, when the children and Halliday were mending their shrimping nets, he said:
"At the back of orthodox religion, so far as I can see, there's always the idea of reward--what you can get for being good; a kind of begging for favours. I think it all starts in fear."She was sitting on the sofa making reefer knots with a bit of string.
She looked up quickly:
"I think it's much deeper than that."
Ashurst felt again that wish to dominate.
"You think so," he said; "but wanting the 'quid pro quo' is about the deepest thing in all of us! It's jolly hard to get to the bottom of it!"She wrinkled her brows in a puzzled frown.
"I don't think I understand."
He went on obstinately:
"Well, think, and see if the most religious people aren't those who feel that this life doesn't give them all they want. I believe in being good because to be good is good in itself.""Then you do believe in being good?"
How pretty she looked now--it was easy to be good with her! And he nodded and said:
"I say, show me how to make that knot!"
With her fingers touching his, in manoeuvring the bit of string, he felt soothed and happy. And when he went to bed he wilfully kept his thoughts on her, wrapping himself in her fair, cool sisterly radiance, as in some garment of protection.
Next day he found they had arranged to go by train to Totnes, and picnic at Berry Pomeroy Castle. Still in that resolute oblivion of the past, he took his place with them in the landau beside Halliday, back to the horses. And, then, along the sea front, nearly at the turning to the railway station, his heart almost leaped into his mouth. Megan--Megan herself!--was walking on the far pathway, in her old skirt and jacket and her tam-o'-shanter, looking up into the faces of the passers-by. Instinctively he threw his hand up for cover, then made a feint of clearing dust out of his eyes; but between his fingers he could see her still, moving, not with her free country step, but wavering, lost-looking, pitiful-like some little dog which has missed its master and does not know whether to run on, to run back--where to run. How had she come like this?--what excuse had she found to get away?--what did she hope for? But with every turn of the wheels bearing him away from her, his heart revolted and cried to him to stop them, to get out, and go to her! When the landau turned the corner to the station he could stand it no more, and opening the carriage door, muttered: "I've forgotten something!
Go on--don't wait for me! I'll join you at the castle by the next train!" He jumped, stumbled, spun round, recovered his balance, and walked forward, while the carriage with the astonished Hallidays rolled on.
>From the corner he could only just see Megan, a long way ahead now.
