Enter these enchanted woods, You who dare!           
          THE WOODS OF WESTERMAIN

MRS. FOLYAT had her way—as when did she not?—and it was Gertrude, equipped cap-à-pie with new clothes, who went to stay with her uncle William at Sydenham, near the Crystal Palace. Therefore she was not of the party which grew out of Serge’s promise to take Annette into the country on a Saturday. Annette had been unable to keep this entrancing project to herself. Minna had half suggested, half demanded, that she should be of the party. To square the number Serge had asked Basil Haslam, and Minna out of coquetry had invited Herbert Fry, Frederic’s quondam Plymouth comrade, who had turned up on legal business, which, moving slowly, had kept him many weeks, so that, to while away the tedious hours, he had resumed relations with her. He was still “Apollyon,” had an air of great prosperity, flattered Mrs. Folyat up to the eyes, so that he was altogether in her good graces, and she entertained hopes of his carrying Minna back with him to London. (He had told Frederic, but not Mrs. Folyat nor Minna that he was married.) To pair with either Haslam or Fry, as the case might be, Mary was included, and, in compassion for his forlornness in the absence of his “old, old love,” Bennett Lawrie.

Serge paid. Annette made up a great basket of provisions which Bennett Lawrie and Basil Haslam carried between them.

Less than an hour’s journey took them to a great river where they hired two boats—a double-sculler and [Pg 187]a dinghy. Basil Haslam tried to man?uvre Minna into the dinghy, but could not detach her from her “Apollyon,” and was forced to relinquish the little boat to Serge and Annette, who jumped into it while the rest were arguing, pushed off, and rowed away up stream, leaving them to follow in the bigger boat.

“Our party,” said Serge, as he sent the little boat skimming over the water, while Annette dipped her fingers over the side and let the water gurgle up her arm.

“But I’m glad the others came,” answered Annette. “That boy Lawrie looks so pale.”

Serge made her take the rudder lines and taught her how to steer.

“How red your hands are getting,” he said.

“It’s the housework.”

“What a shame!”

“Oh! I like it.”

“Better than governessing?”

“Oh! much, much better. It’s home, you see. And, of course, there’s you. I often sit in your room when you’re not there, and sometimes I look at the things. It must be wonderful to be able to—to draw.”

“Now, why?”

“I don’t quite know, only when you come to beautiful places like this it makes you want to—want to . . .”

“Well?”

“I don’t quite know. . . . It’s like growing . . .”

“That’s quite good. I’d like to know what you think of me, Annette?”

“You’re very puzzling. Sometimes I think you don’t take anything seriously, but then I think it is because you are so different.”

“How different?”

“Not like Frederic.”

Out of the bank near them scuttled a vole, and along and into a hole under the roots of a willow. Annette watched him eagerly, and then returned to Serge, and said:

“Don’t let’s talk about Frederic. I am so happy.”

Serge began to sing. He had very fine deep notes, [Pg 188]but his voice failed him in the upper register, and whenever it cracked he laughed, and when he laughed Annette had to join in. He could never remember any song through to the end, and he invented the most absurd words. Then over a long stretch, as he rowed, he sang a melancholy canoe-song in a minor key that he had heard on the Zambesi. He sang it over and over again.

“I like that,” said Annette. “Do you know, often when I’m in the kitchen I think I’m in a boat sailing away and away. It’s like dreaming, only it goes on and on . . .”

“That’s love.”

“Is it? . . . That’s nonsense. I’m not in love.”

“Not in love, my dear. But it’s love all the same! Your little soul growing and expanding, trying to find an outlet, a channel that will lead it to warmth and the sun . . .”

“You make me feel unhappy when you talk like that.”

“You’re wiser than I am, Annette. You accept things where I think about them.”

“We mustn’t lose the others.”

“We shan’t lose them. They’ll have to come on until they find us. If I thought that Fry was rowing I’d take him ten miles, but I’m pretty sure he isn’t.”

“You don’t like him.”

“No. Do you?”

“No. But he’s very pleasant.”

“You can admire what you don’t like?”

“I like to admire people. When I’m working it’s pleasant to remember the things they do and say, and the way they say them.”

“So you’re a pleased and uncritical audience of the doings in Fern Square?”

Annette dodged the question. She gave a long sigh, and said:

“I am enjoying myself; but I like best being alone with you. It’s such a glorious day.”

And then she began to tell him some of the stories [Pg 189]she composed about him for Deedy Fender’s benefit. When she had done she added:

“Of course, I never imagined anything like you.”

“Are you disappointed?”

“Oh! no.”

They came to a great wood growing down to the water’s edge. Serge ran the boat into the bank and moored her. He filled his pipe and began to smoke, then lay back with his head on the little seat in the bows. Annette sat with her hands in her lap, and they basked in the hot sun and felt that it was very good. The birds were very merry in the trees. In the trees the wind whispered songs gathered from the sea only twenty miles away. Over all blazed the sun. Flies danced above the water. All was harmony and peace.

Round the bend of the river came the other boat. Bennett Lawrie and Basil Haslam were rowing. Mary was steering, and on each side of her were Minna and Herbert Fry.

Fry called out:

“You’ve led us a nice dance. It is an hour past lunch time.”

Serge grinned and shouted pleasantly:

“All the better for eating, my dear.”

The big boat bumped into the dinghy and moored alongside. The luncheon-basket was hauled out, and on the grass under the trees a cloth was spread. They sat round it, and for some time were silent until their hunger began to be appeased.

“At half-past three,” said Serge, “I am going to bathe. Will you join me, Basil?”

Haslam assented.

“What about you, Lawrie?”

“I would like to, only I can’t swim.”

“You can bob up and down in the shallows.”

“I don’t think I will,” said Bennett miserably.

“Some one,” commented Minna, “must stay and look after us. You can’t leave three sisters alone.”

“Fry will protect you from each other,” said Serge.

[Pg 190]

“Delighted,” rejoined Herbert Fry, with a gallant glance at Minna.

Mary said:

“This pie is perfectly delicious, Annette. You certainly make pastry better than any of us.”

“Mary’s first remark to-day,” said Minna, maliciously.

Mary, who had been most amiably disposed, relapsed into silence, then, feeling that she was damping the general cheerfulness, she made another effort and turned to Herbert Fry, and asked him:

“I suppose you find our town very dull after London.”

Herbert Fry replied:

“Of course, you know, London is the only place to live in.”

“It obviously isn’t that,” said Serge, “since there are millions of people who don’t live in it, don’t want to live in it, have never been there, and also many millions who have never heard of it.”

Minna was startled.

“Hullo, Serge! You going to defend our horrid, dirty town?”

“It doesn’t need me to do that. It is quite satisfied with itself. There is really something admirable about its hard, conceited pride. We don’t really belong to it, being parasitic. If we did, we should be like the rest, blinding ourselves with a tragic vanity.”

“Whether I’m a parasite or not,” rejoined Minna, “I’m going to get out of it as soon as I can.”

“So am I,” said Haslam. “I’m going to London at the end of the year. I’ve only been there once, but it is a fine place, and no mistake.”

“I’ve been there twice,” said Minna. “Mary’s been three times. Annette never. Have you been, Bennett?”

Bennett was rather taken aback at being drawn into the conversation. He was rather shy of Minna.

“No,” he said. “I’ve never been to London. My father has been. I don’t suppose I shall ever go. It’s such a long way. It must be a wonderful place. I’ve read a lot about it.”

“I don’t think they have nearly such good music as [Pg 191]we have here . . .” Mary had waited very patiently to produce the remark which had been in her mind when she first spoke. She did so with such a flourish that she brought the conversation to an end. Serge wound it up with:

“We didn’t come into the country to talk of towns.”

“No,” said Minna. “We came to have lunch, and a very good lunch it has been.”

She rose to her feet with a whimsical right-and-left glance at Haslam and Fry, as though she were hazarding which to take with her. Both sprang up together as she moved away, but Haslam was the quicker and reached her side first. They disappeared into the woods, and Fry returned sulkily to the rest of the party. Annette began to gather the plates, knives and forks to take them down to the water.

“Shall I help you?” said Serge.

“No, thank you. I think Bennett might, as he’s the youngest.”

Annette had been feeling very sorry for Bennett. He seemed so solitary, so much out of his element, so unable to cope with grown men like Serge and Basil and the lordly Londoner, Fry. He accepted her invitation with obvious relief, took her burden, and carried it down to the water’s edge, under a willow trailing its leaves in the water.

Herbert Fry offered his escort to Mary, and she acquiesced, bridling.

Serge was left alone. He lay on his back and gazed up at the sky—blue, serene, cheering, and comforting. His body relaxed, and he gave himself up to the sweetness of the day’s mood, not without a final drowsy reflection:

“If such a moment of contentment as this is the highest good, and, since it can be procured at the cost of a little physical labour rewarded by a solid meal, what’s the good of all the rest? The answer to that is that one cannot live alone. What a day for love-making!” He laughed. “Everything leads back to that.”

[Pg 192]

He thought of Herbert Fry fobbed off with Mary, and he chuckled. Then he thought of Bennett Lawrie and Annette together by the water. He raised himself up. He could not see them, but he could hear their voices.

“What a day!” he said again, and added “for love-making.”

 

Down by the river Annette and Bennett were at first very shy of each other. In silence she handed him the plates, and he dipped them in the water and handed them back to her and she dried them; then the forks, and when they came to the knives, Bennett thought:

“Why can’t I say something?”

And Annette thought:

“Why can’t I say something?”

She looked out along the shining river, slow-moving under its green banks; never a house, never a boat in sight, and Bennett was bending down entirely engrossed in his occupation. It was his air of complete absorption in everything he did and said (though he never did and never said anything remarkable) that interested her and made her want to know more of him.

At last, when they had finished, very timidly she asked him:

“Are you going to be a clergyman?”

“I’m afraid not.”

“Oh! I’m sorry!” She remembered very vividly his earnestness in her father’s study.

“It costs too much money, you know. And my mother doesn’t believe in me. It wouldn’t be any good if she did, because there isn’t any money.”

Annette could only say again:

“I’m sorry.”

Instead of moving away, she sat down on the bank, and Bennett knelt quite near her. Seeking to explain away her desire to stay, she said:

“It’s so lovely here.”

“It’s not so beautiful as Scotland.”

“Or Westmoreland.”

“Have you been to Scotland?”

[Pg 193]

“I was at school in Edinburgh.”

“My father comes from Scotland.”
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