At such a parting of the ways, Canterton’s elemental grimness showed itself. He was the peasant, sturdy, obstinate1, steady-eyed, ready to push out into some untamed country, and to take and hold a new domain2. For under all his opulent culture and his rare knowledge lay the patient yet fanatical soul of the peasant. He was both a mystic and a child of the soil, not a city dweller3, mercurial4 and flippant, a dog at the heels of profit and loss.
Eve had talked of the impossible, but when he took Lynette by the hand and went down with her into the Wilderness5, Canterton could not bring himself to play the cynic. Sitting in the bracken, and watching Lynette making one of her fairy fires, he felt that it was Eve’s scepticism that was impossible, and not his belief in a magnanimous future. He was so very sure of himself that he felt too sure of other people. His name was not a thing to be made the sport of rumour6. Men and women had worked together before now; and did the world quarrel with a business man because he kept a secretary or a typist? Moreover, he believed himself to be different from the average business man, and what might have meant lust7 for one spoke8 of a sacrament to the other.
“Daddy, why didn’t Miss Eve come yesterday?”
“She had work at home, Princess.”
“And to-day too?”
“It seems so.”
“Why don’t we go and see her, then?”
“Why not?”
The mouth of the child had offered an inspiration. Was it possible to look into Lynette’s eyes and be scared by sinister9 suggestions? Why, it was a comradeship of three, not of two. They were three children together, and perhaps the youngest was the wisest of the three.
“Lynette, come here, old lady! Miss Eve thinks of going away.”
“Miss Eve going away?”
“Yes.”
“Oh, no, daddy, how can she?”
“Well, one has only to get into a train, even if it be a train of thought.”
Lynette was kneeling between her father’s knees.
“I’ll ask her not to go.”
“You might try it.”
“Oh, yes, let’s! Let’s go down to Orchards10 Corner now—at once!”
Eve had been suffering, suffering for Canterton, Lynette and herself. She saw life so clearly now—the lights and shadows, the sunlit spaces, the sinister glooms, the sharp, conventional horizons. Canterton did not know how much of the woman there was in her, how very primitive11 and strong were the emotions that had risen to the surface of her consciousness. The compact would be too perilous12. She knew in her heart of hearts that the youth in her desired more than a spiritual dream, and she was trying to harden herself, to build up barriers, to smother13 this splendid thing, this fire of the gods.
She had taken her work out into the garden, and was striving against a sense of perfunctoriness and the conviction that the life at Fernhill could not last. She had more than hinted at this to Canterton, bracing14 herself against his arguments, and against all the generous steadfastness15 of his homage16 that made the renunciation harder for her to bear.
And now an impetuous tenderness attacked her at white heat, a thing that came with glowing hair and glowing mouth, and arms that clung.
............