The weather signalized Tom’s return to England by a blizzard from the north, which for twenty-four hours spread sheet after sheet of snow on the ground, till one would have thought that the linen-presses of the elements were empty. He had caught a slight cold, and the only possible course was to sit by the fire, talk to his father, who seemed actually pleased to see him, and think of the Acropolis. But during the second night the soft snow-laden outlines of the hills and trees suddenly crispened and crystallized, and a still, windless frost gripped the white earth. A winter’s sun hung like a burnished copper plate low in the south, and the sight of the keeper with his round cheery face, asking if there were any orders, rendered the house impossible.

“Yes, I’ll come out in half an hour,” said Tom. “Get a few beaters, and we’ll just walk through the woods. And send down to the vicarage to ask Mr. Markham if he’d care for a tramp. They don’t have pheasants in Greece, Kimberley: there’s a country for you!”

“Mr. Ted’s not at home, sir,” said Kimberley.

“I know, but his father is. He shoots very well. Send at once, will you? I want to start.{159}”

May had already left the house when the keeper came to bring Tom’s message to her father, and Mr. Markham left a note for her saying where he had gone, and that he would not be in for lunch. He was devoted to shooting, but of late years had not been able to indulge his taste; so some parish work which could easily be put off, as well as the chance of a quiet hour at his Aristophanes, fell into their proper places in the scheme of things.

It was about half-past twelve, and Tom was standing alone at the end of a small clump of fir-trees, round which he had stolen with infinite precautions in order to avoid startling the pigeons. He had studied the habits of pigeons in this particular spot with much care for several years, and the keeper always alluded to it as “Master Tom’s cover.” It stood on a knoll of rising ground, some quarter of a mile away from the house, and by dint of long experience and frequent failure Tom had found that if the pigeons were artfully disturbed by beaters entering towards the centre from opposite sides they always broke cover at two particular points at opposite ends of the knoll, and that one gun stationed at each of these points became a fiery sword, turning, as far as the pigeons were concerned, every way. Tom was standing at one end of the cover, having seen Mr. Markham to his place, and was expecting every moment to hear the tapping of the beaters’ sticks and the swan-song of the pigeons’ wings. He was on the edge of a little footpath which led across the park from the village, half hidden from it by a thick bramble bush, behind which he had placed himself{160} so that he could see without being seen. But at this most critical of all moments he heard with some impatience the sound of a footstep coming crisply and quickly along the frozen path. The path took a sudden bend almost exactly as it came opposite to him, and simultaneously he heard the faint tapping of the beaters’ sticks and saw a figure come round the corner.

For one moment Time stopped, and he stared blankly, wonderingly. Then half to himself, half aloud, he said—

“Oh, all ye gods, she is a goddess!”

The next moment he recognized her, and springing out from his bramble bush he took off his hat to May Markham, and wondered if she remembered him.

The beaters beat, and the pigeons started from the branches, and flew out in the pre-ordained manner, threading their way between the tops of the thick trees, as they and their deceased relations had often done before. Mr. Markham had one of the most delightful five minutes that falls to the lot of sportsmen, and straight over Tom’s head as he stood in the path the steely targets tacked and swerved. But Tom heeded not; the swan-song of their clapping wings for once was unheard and unfulfilled, for in his heart there was another song, no last song of birds’ wings, but the first maddening music which a man’s heart offers to a woman, the song of a youth to a maid, the song of the lover to the beloved, which rises up day by day, and hour by hour, and keeps this old earth young.{161}

May replied that of course she remembered him, and supposed that he had just come back from Greece, and a golden silence descended again. Tom was standing on ground an inch or two lower than the girl, and their faces were on a level: if anything, she appeared the taller of the two, and as his eyes rested on hers they were inclined slightly upwards, so that a thin rim of white showed below his honest brown iris. May was with her back to the low southern sun, but it just caught a few outlying hairs which strayed from beneath her hat, and turned them into spun gold. Her lips were slightly pouted, and through the length of her mouth ran a thin even line showing the white edge of her upper teeth. She had been walking quickly, and her nostrils swelled and receded with each breath, and one could just see the rise and fall of her bosom beneath her blue tightly buttoned jacket.

She met Tom’s eager gaze with unembarrassed, unaverted looks. They had been excellent friends when Tom had stayed with them not long ago at Chesterford, and this seemed simply a continuation of their early comradeship, for it was evident that he was quite a boy still. But almost immediately something in his look, or some half-conscious reminiscence of that moment, a fortnight ago, when she had looked at herself in the glass in Mr. Carlingford’s drawing-room, caused her to turn her eyes down, and for the first time she noticed that Tom was carrying a gun. The desire for an intelligible reason why he should have been found standing in a bramble bush on a cold winter’s morning had not appealed to her before.{162}

“Have you had good sport?” she asked, pointing to the gun.

Tom followed the direction of her finger, and to him also apparently it occurred for the first time that he was out shooting.

“Yes, very fair,” said Tom. “By the way, what’s happened to the pigeons?”

Almost as he spoke the head keeper emerged from the bracken, proud in the consciousness of a skilfully executed duty. He touched his hat to May, and turned to Tom.

“Wonderful lot of pigeons in this morning, sir,” he said. “Didn’t hear you shooting, Master Tom.”

“No, I didn’t see any birds. Did any come out over me?”

“Ten or twelve at least, sir, and the same over Mr. Markham.”

“Oh, well, it can’t be helped,” said Tom, rather confusedly. “We’ll go home to lunch now, Kimberley, and come out again after. We’re quite close to the house.”

“Is my father out with you?” asked May.

“Yes, I suppose you had gone out when I sent down. You can’t come through here—the brambles are so bad. Wait a moment, though.”

Tom gave his gun to the keeper, and trampled down the mixed bramble and bracken. There was one long spray which kept asserting itself again and again straight across the path, waving about two or three feet from the ground. In a fit of sudden impatience Tom seized it in his hand and bent it back{163} among the other bushes. As a natural and inevitable consequence his hand was covered with large prickles.

“Oh, why did you do that?” asked May; “I’m sure you’ve hurt yourself.”

Tom laughed.

“The will is destiny,” he said. “I wish to go this way, and the bramble was in the light. That I got pricked was destiny, but another kind of destiny. We shall meet your father if we go this way.”

To the intensest annoyance of Tom they did meet Mr. Markham in a few moments, walking towards them. The rational thing for him would have been to go round by the path instead of taking a short cut, and poor Tom had pricked his fingers for nothing.

“Capital five minutes I had there, Tom,” said he. “Why, where are you from, May?”

“I’ve just come from the Mills, on my way home to lunch,” said she.

“Oh, but you’ll lunch with us,” said Tom confidently. “We are just going home. Look, there is the house quite close, and we are going to lunch at one in order to shoot again for an hour or two afterwards.”

“Thanks, I’m afraid I had better go home,” said May.

“Oh, but why—why?” asked Tom, forgetting manners and everything else in the contemplation of his visions incarnate.

May turned towards him, smiling.

“Well, I really must go off again in half an hour. It’s very kind of you to ask me,” she added suddenly.

“That’s splendid! We shall be very soon off{164} again too. Mr. Markham has been walking me off my legs already, and I know he will want to do it again the moment lunch is over.”

Mr. Carlingford was standing at the library window as the party came down the grass slope to the house, and a smile gathered on his lips as he watched Tom talking eagerly to May. Then, half to himself, half aloud, he made the following enigmatical quotation: “‘As for the gods of the heathen,’” and rang the bell to order another place at lunch.

Thus entered Tom into the garden of man’s heritage; the crowning gift of love was added to youth and life, the golden key which unlocks the gate of Paradise was in his hand. His whole previous life had in a moment been flushed with an intenser colour; he was like a man born blind, who, until his eyes were opened, knew not, could not have known, his limitations. It was bewitching, blinding, but altogether lovely, this new world into which he had entered. For him the period of bitter joy and sweetest anguish had begun.

That night he went to his bedroom early, saying he was tired and sleepy with the cold air; then ran upstairs three steps at a time, feeling an unutterable desire to be alone with his love; another presence, he felt, was a desecration. He blew out his candle, and lay down full length on his bed, while the firelight danced and shivered on the walls and the flames flapped in the grate, and spread out his arms as if to take the truth in. How was it possible, he wondered, that a man who had ever been in love could speak of it? Love was something white and sacred, a clear{165} flame burning in a casket of gold, to be hidden from the gaze of men. No, that was not it at all; love was a glorious conquering god, and his captives should stand in the market-place of cities and cry aloud, “See, I can move neither hand nor foot, I am chained in golden chains, my limbs are heavy with the chains of love. Envy me, bless me, weep for joy that I am a captive. Bind me closer yet, crush me beneath the weight of fetters. Lead me about in your triumphant procession; I am a captive, a prisoner.”

He sat up, wondering at himself. It was not possible. How can the daughters of the gods dwell with men? “Why, everything is possible to me,” he answered himself. “I am in love, I am the king of all the earth. Nothing is impossible.”

This modest conviction made lying still impossible. He got off his bed, and began walking up and down the room, stopping now and then opposite the fire, which burned brightly and frostily. In the red glow of the coals his brown eyes looked black; his mouth was a little open, and his breath came quickly, as if he had been running a race. His smooth boyish face, tanned by southern suns, was flushed with excitement. Once in his walk he stopped, stood on tip-toe, and stretched himself till he felt every muscle in his body quiver and tingle.

Sleep was impossible, everything but violent action was impossible, thought was impossible and inevitable. Surely it was morning by this time. His watch reminded him that it was just a quarter to twelve; he had been in his room only twenty minutes. Perhaps time had stopped, perhaps he was dead,{166} perhaps this was heaven. He would go to the house-top and cry to the four quarters of heaven, and to the listening earth, the story of his love, how he was out shooting pigeons, and standing in a bramble bush, when he saw her for whom the world was made walking towards him. He would run down through the village to t............