THE DARK FLOWER Read online

  I am writing in the train, so please forgive this joggly writing--"

  Then he did not know how to go on, for all that he wanted to say was such as he had never even dreamed of writing--things about his feelings which would look horrible in words; besides, he must not put anything that might not be read, by anyone, so what was there to say?

  "It has been such a long journey," he wrote at last, "away from the Tyrol;" (he did not dare even to put "from you,") "I thought it would never end. But at last it has--very nearly. I have thought a great deal about the Tyrol. It was a lovely time--the loveliest time I have ever had. And now it's over, I try to console myself by thinking of the future, but not the immediate future--THAT is not very enjoyable. I wonder how the mountains are looking to-day. Please give my love to them, especially the lion ones that come and lie out in the moonlight--you will not recognize them from this"-- then followed a sketch. "And this is the church we went to, with someone kneeling. And this is meant for the 'English Grundys,' looking at someone who is coming in very late with an alpenstock-- only, I am better at the 'English Grundys' than at the person with the alpenstock. I wish I were the 'English Grundys' now, still in the Tyrol. I hope I shall get a letter from you soon; and that it will say you are getting ready to come back. My guardian will be awfully keen for you to come and stay with us. He is not half bad when you know him, and there will be his sister, Mrs. Doone, and her daughter left there after the wedding. It will be simply disgusting if you and Mr. Stormer don't come. I wish I could write all I feel about my lovely time in the Tyrol, but you must please imagine it."

  And just as he had not known how to address her, so he could not tell how to subscribe himself, and only put "Mark Lennan."

  He posted the letter at Exeter, where he had some time to wait; and his mind moved still more from past to future. Now that he was nearing home he began to think of his sister. In two days she would be gone to Italy; he would not see her again for a long time, and a whole crowd of memories began to stretch out hands to him. How she and he used to walk together in the walled garden, and on the sunk croquet ground; she telling him stories, her arm round his neck, because she was two years older, and taller than he in those days. Their first talk each holidays, when he came back to her; the first tea--with unlimited jam--in the old mullion-windowed, flower-chintzed schoolroom, just himself and her and old Tingle (Miss Tring, the ancient governess, whose chaperonage would now be gone), and sometimes that kid Sylvia, when she chanced to be staying there with her mother. Cicely had always understood him when he explained to her how inferior school was, because nobody took any interest in beasts or birds except to kill them; or in drawing, or making things, or anything decent. They would go off together, rambling along the river, or up the park, where everything looked so jolly and wild--the ragged oak-trees, and huge boulders, of whose presence old Godden, the coachman, had said: "I can't think but what these ha' been washed here by the Flood, Mast' Mark!" These and a thousand other memories beset his conscience now. And as the train drew closer to their station, he eagerly made ready to jump out and greet her. There was the honeysuckle full out along the paling of the platform over the waiting-room; wonderful, this year--and there was she, standing alone on the platform. No, it was not Cicely! He got out with a blank sensation, as if those memories had played him false. It was a girl, indeed, but she only looked about sixteen, and wore a sunbonnet that hid her hair and half her face. She had on a blue frock, and some honeysuckle in her waist-belt. She seemed to be smiling at him, and expecting him to smile at her; and so he did smile. She came up to him then, and said:

  "I'm Sylvia."

  He answered: "Oh! thanks awfully--it was awfully good of you to come and meet me."

  "Cicely's so busy. It's only the T-cart. Have you got much luggage?"

  She took up his hold-all, and he took it from her; she took his bag, and he took it from her; then they went out to the T-cart. A small groom stood there, holding a silver-roan cob with a black mane and black swish tail.

  She said: "D'you mind if I drive, because I'm learning."

  And he answered: "Oh, no! rather not."

  She got up; he noticed that her eyes looked quite excited. Then his portmanteau came out and was deposited with the other things behind; and he got up beside her.

  She said: "Let go, Billy."

  The roan rushed past the little groom, whose top boots seemed to twinkle as he jumped up behind. They whizzed round the corner from the station yard, and observing that her mouth was just a little open as though this had disconcerted her, he said:

  "He pulls a bit."

  "Yes--but isn't he perfectly sweet?"

  "He IS rather decent."

  Ah! when SHE came, he would drive her; they would go off alone in the T-cart, and he would show her all the country round.

  He was re-awakened by the words:

  "Oh! I know he's going to shy!" At once there was a swerve. The roan was cantering.

  They had passed a pig.

  "Doesn't he look lovely now? Ought I to have whipped him when he shied?"

  "Rather not."

  "Why?"

  "Because horses are horses, and pigs are pigs; it's natural for horses to shy at them."

  "Oh!"

  He looked up at her then, sidelong. The curve of her cheek and chin looked very soft, and rather jolly.

  "I didn't know you, you know!" he said. "You've grown up so awfully."

  "I knew you at once. Your voice is still furry."

  There was another silence, till she said:

  "He does pull, rather--doesn't he, going home?"

  "Shall I drive?"

  "Yes, please."

  He stood up and took the reins, and she slipped past under them in front of him; her hair smelt exactly like hay, as she was softly bumped against him.

  She kept regarding him steadily with very blue eyes, now that she was relieved of driving.

  "Cicely was afraid you weren't coming," she said suddenly. "What sort of people are those old Stormers?"

  He felt himself grow very red, choked something down, and answered:

  "It's only he that's old. She's not more than about thirty-five."

  "That IS old."

  He restrained the words: "Of course it's old to a kid like you!" And, instead, he looked at her. Was she exactly a kid? She seemed quite tall (for a girl) and not very thin, and there was something frank and soft about her face, and as if she wanted you to be nice to her.

  "Is she very pretty?"

  This time he did not go red, such was the disturbance that question made in him. If he said: "Yes," it was like letting the world know his adoration; but to say anything less would be horrible, disloyal. So he did say: "Yes," listening hard to the tone of his own voice.

  "I thought she was. Do you like her very much?" Again he struggled with that thing in his throat, and again said: "Yes."

  He wanted to hate this girl, yet somehow could not--she looked so soft and confiding. She was staring before her now, her lips still just parted, so evidently THAT had not been because of Bolero's pulling; they were pretty all the same, and so was her short, straight little nose, and her chin, and she was awfully fair. His thoughts flew back to that other face--so splendid, so full of life. Suddenly he found himself unable to picture it--for the first time since he had started on his journey it would not come before him.

  "Oh! Look!"

  Her hand was pulling at his arm. There in the field over the hedge a buzzard hawk was dropping like a stone.

  "Oh, Mark! Oh! Oh! It's got it!"

  She was covering her face with both her hands, and the hawk, with a young rabbit in its claws, was sailing up again. It looked so beautiful that he did not somehow feel sorry for the rabbit; but he wanted to stroke and comfort her, and said:

  "It's all right, Sylvia; it really is. The rabbit's dead already, you know. And it's quite natural."

  She took her hands away from a face that looked just as if she were going to cry.
r />   "Poor little rabbit! It was such a little one!"

  XII

  On the afternoon of the day following he sat in the smoking-room with a prayer book in his hand, and a frown on his forehead, reading the Marriage Service. The book had been effectively designed for not spoiling the figure when carried in a pocket. But this did not matter, for even if he could have read the words, he would not have known what they meant, seeing that he was thinking how he could make a certain petition to a certain person sitting just behind at a large bureau with a sliding top, examining artificial flies.

  He fixed at last upon this form:

  "Gordy!" (Why Gordy no one quite knew now--whether because his name was George, or by way of corruption from Guardian.) "When Cis is gone it'll be rather awful, won't it?"

  "Not a bit."

  Mr. Heatherley was a man of perhaps sixty-four, if indeed guardians have ages, and like a doctor rather than a squire; his face square and puffy, his eyes always half-closed, and his curly mouth using bluntly a voice of that refined coarseness peculiar to people of old family.

  "But it will, you know!"

  "Well, supposin' it is?"

  "I only wondered if you'd mind asking Mr. and Mrs. Stormer to come here for a little--they were awfully kind to me out there."

  "Strange man and woman! My dear fellow!"

  "Mr. Stormer likes fishing."

  "Does he? And what does she like?"

  Very grateful that his back was turned, the boy said:

  "I don't know--anything--she's awfully nice."

  "Ah! Pretty?"

  He answered faintly:

  "I don't know what YOU call pretty, Gordy."

  He felt, rather than saw, his guardian scrutinizing him with those half-closed eyes under their gouty lids.

  "All right; do as you like. Have 'em here and have done with it, by all means."

  Did his heart jump? Not quite; but it felt warm and happy, and he said:

  "Thanks awfully, Gordy. It's most frightfully decent of you," and turned again to the Marriage Service. He could make out some of it. In places it seemed to him fine, and in other places queer. About obeying, for instance. If you loved anybody, it seemed rotten to expect them to obey you. If you loved them and they loved you, there couldn't ever be any question of obeying, because you would both do the things always of your own accord. And if they didn't love you, or you them, then--oh! then it would be simply too disgusting for anything, to go on living with a person you didn't love or who didn't love you. But of course SHE didn't love his tutor. Had she once? Those bright doubting eyes, that studiously satiric mouth came very clearly up before him. You could not love them; and yet--he was really very decent. A feeling as of pity, almost of affection, rose in him for his remote tutor. It was queer to feel so, since the last time they had talked together out there, on the terrace, he had not felt at all like that.

  The noise of the bureau top sliding down aroused him; Mr. Heatherley was closing in the remains of the artificial flies. That meant he would be going out to fish. And the moment he heard the door shut, Mark sprang up, slid back the bureau top, and began to write his letter. It was hard work.

  "DEAR MRS. STORMER,

  "My guardian wishes me to beg you and Mr. Stormer to pay us a visit as soon as you come back from the Tyrol. Please tell Mr. Stormer that only the very best fishermen--like him--can catch our trout; the rest catch our trees. This is me catching our trees (here followed a sketch). My sister is going to be married to-morrow, and it will be disgusting afterwards unless you come. So do come, please. And with my very best greetings,

  "I am,

  "Your humble servant,

  "M. LENNAN."

  When he had stamped this production and dropped it in the letter- box, he had the oddest feeling, as if he had been let out of school; a desire to rush about, to frolic. What should he do? Cis, of course, would be busy--they were all busy about the wedding. He would go and saddle Bolero, and jump him in the park; or should he go down along the river and watch the jays? Both seemed lonely occupations. And he stood in the window--dejected. At the age of five, walking with his nurse, he had been overheard remarking: "Nurse, I want to eat a biscuit--ALL THE WAY I want to eat a biscuit!" and it was still rather so with him perhaps--all the way he wanted to eat a biscuit. He bethought him then of his modelling, and went out to the little empty greenhouse where he kept his masterpieces. They seemed to him now quite horrible--and two of them, the sheep and the turkey, he marked out for summary destruction. The idea occurred to him that he might try and model that hawk escaping with the little rabbit; but when he tried, no nice feeling came, and flinging the things down he went out. He ran along the unweeded path to the tennis ground--lawn tennis was then just coming in. The grass looked very rough. But then, everything about that little manor house was left rather wild and anyhow; why, nobody quite knew, and nobody seemed to mind. He stood there scrutinizing the condition of the ground. A sound of humming came to his ears. He got up on the wall. There was Sylvia sitting in the field, making a wreath of honeysuckle. He stood very quiet and listened. She looked pretty--lost in her tune. Then he slid down off the wall, and said gently:

  "Hallo!"

  She looked round at him, her eyes very wide open.

  "Your voice is jolly, Sylvia!"

  "Oh, no!"

  "It is. Come and climb a tree!"

  "Where?"

  "In the park, of course."

  They were some time selecting the tree, many being too easy for him, and many too hard for her; but one was found at last, an oak of great age, and frequented by rooks. Then, insisting that she must be roped to him, he departed to the house for some blind-cord. The climb began at four o'clock--named by him the ascent of the Cimone della Pala. He led the momentous expedition, taking a hitch of the blind-cord round a branch before he permitted her to move. Two or three times he was obliged to make the cord fast and return to help her, for she was not an 'expert'; her arms seemed soft, and she was inclined to straddle instead of trusting to one foot. But at last they were settled, streaked indeed with moss, on the top branch but two. They rested there, silent, listening to the rooks soothing an outraged dignity. Save for this slowly subsiding demonstration it was marvellously peaceful and remote up there, half-way to a blue sky thinly veiled from them by the crinkled brown-green leaves. The peculiar dry mossy smell of an oak-tree was disturbed into the air by the least motion of their feet or hands against the bark. They could hardly see the ground, and all around, other gnarled trees barred off any view.

  He said:

  "If we stay up here till it's dark we might see owls."

  "Oh, no! Owls are horrible!"

  "What! They're LOVELY--especially the white ones."

  "I can't stand their eyes, and they squeak so when they're hunting."

  "Oh! but that's so jolly, and their eyes are beautiful."

  "They're always catching mice and little chickens; all sorts of little things."

  "But they don't mean to; they only want them to eat. Don't you think things are jolliest at night?"

  She slipped her arm in his.

  "No; I don't like the dark."

  "Why not? It's splendid--when things get mysterious." He dwelt lovingly on that word.

  "I don't like mysterious things. They frighten you."

  "Oh, Sylvia!"

  "No, I like early morning--especially in spring, when it's beginning to get leafy."

  "Well, of course."

  She was leaning against him, for safety, just a little; and stretching out his arm, he took good hold of the branch to make a back for her. There was a silence. Then he said:

  "If you could only have one tree, which would you have?"

  "Not oaks. Limes--no--birches. Which would you?"

  He pondered. There were so many trees that were perfect. Birches and limes, of course; but beeches and cypresses, and yews, and cedars, and holm-oaks--almost, and plane-trees; then he said suddenly:

  "Pines; I mean the big on
es with reddish stems and branches pretty high up."

  "Why?"

  Again he pondered. It was very important to explain exactly why; his feelings about everything were concerned in this. And while he mused she gazed at him, as if surprised to see anyone think so deeply. At last he said:

  "Because they're independent and dignified and never quite cold, and their branches seem to brood, but chiefly because the ones I mean are generally out of the common where you find them. You know--just one or two, strong and dark, standing out against the sky."

  "They're TOO dark."

  It occurred to him suddenly that he had forgotten larches. They, of course, could be heavenly, when you lay under them and looked up at the sky, as he had that afternoon out there. Then he heard her say:

  "If I could only have one flower, I should have lilies of the valley, the small ones that grow wild and smell so jolly."

  He had a swift vision of another flower, dark--very different, and was silent.

  "What would you have, Mark?" Her voice sounded a little hurt. "You ARE thinking of one, aren't you?"

  He said honestly:

  "Yes, I am."

  "Which?"

  "It's dark, too; you wouldn't care for it a bit."

  "How d'you know?"

  "A clove carnation."

  "But I do like it--only--not very much."

  He nodded solemnly.

  "I knew you wouldn't."

  Then a silence fell between them. She had ceased to lean against him, and he missed the cosy friendliness of it. Now that their voices and the cawings of the rooks had ceased, there was nothing heard but the dry rustle of the leaves, and the plaintive cry of a buzzard hawk hunting over the little tor across the river. There were nearly always two up there, quartering the sky. To the boy it was lovely, that silence--like Nature talking to you--Nature always talked in silences. The beasts, the birds, the insects, only really showed themselves when you were still; you had to be awfully quiet, too, for flowers and plants, otherwise you couldn't see the real jolly separate life there was in them. Even the boulders down there, that old Godden thought had been washed up by the Flood, never showed you what queer shapes they had, and let you feel close to them, unless you were thinking of nothing else. Sylvia, after all, was better in that way than he had expected. She could keep quiet (he had thought girls hopeless); she was gentle, and it was rather jolly to watch her. Through the leaves there came the faint far tinkle of the tea-bell.