Anthony Lyveden Part 21

"In the summer." She hesitated. "I'll show you my window, if you like. It's the best part of a mile, though."

Anthony laughed and turned to summon his terrier.

"Patch and I," he said, "have at least one afternoon a week. As long as I'm back in time to lay the table...."

A moment later he was stepping along by her side.

It had not occurred to him to ask what "her window" might be. If she had offered to show him the mouth of h.e.l.l, he would have a.s.sented as blindly. Whither he went and what he saw did not matter at all, so he was to be in her company. All the same, his instinct pulled him by the sleeve. Hazily he reflected that to retrace such steps as you have taken along the path of Love is a bad business, and that the farther you have elected to venture, so much the more distressing must be your return. And he would have to return. In the absence of a miracle, that journey could not be avoided. For an instant the spectre of Reckoning leaned out of the future.... Then Patch flushed a stray pig, and Valerie laughed joyously, and--the shadow was gone. Cost what it might, Anthony determined to pluck the promise of the afternoon with an unsparing hand.

He had walked in the direction of Bell Hammer for the same reason that had caused Valerie French to bend her young steps towards Hawthorne.

Each drew the other magnetically. It was not at all strange, therefore, that they should have met. Neither, since the attraction was mutual, is it surprising that the effect of each other's company was exhilarating to a degree. Together, they were at the very top of their bent. If the man trod upon air, the maid was glowing. His lady's breath sweetened the smell of autumn; the brush of her lord's jacket made the blood pelt through her veins. Grey eyes shone with the light that blue eyes kindled. Each found the other's voice full of rare melody--music to which their pulses danced in a fierce harmony.

The world was all glorious....

Here was no making of love, but something finer--nothing less, indeed, than the jewel natural, uncut, unworked, unpolished, blazing out of a twofold crown that sat, yoke-like, upon their heads for all to see.

Since, however, they met no one, the diadem was un.o.bserved....

So Jack and Jill pa.s.sed with full hearts by yellow lanes into the red-gold woods, and presently along a bridle-path that curled mysteriously into a great sunlit shoulder of forest, where the driven leaves fussed over their footsteps, and the miniature roar of a toy waterfall strove to make itself heard above the swish and crackle of the carpet the trees had laid.

"I'll tell you one thing I've learned," said Lyveden.

"What?" said Valerie.

"That what you do doesn't matter half as much as who you do it with. I found that out in the Army. The work didn't matter. The discomfort, the food, didn't count--comparatively. It was the company you had to keep that made the difference."

"'Better is a dinner of herbs,'" quoted Valerie.

"Exactly. And it's the same now. I don't say I'd pick out a footman's job, but there's nothing the matter with the work. Everything depends on the other servants. My first two places nearly broke my heart: with the Alison crowd----"

He hesitated, and Valerie completed the sentence.

"Everything in the garden is lovely," she said slowly.

"Comparatively--yes. Of course, it's--it's only a back garden."

"Is it?"

Anthony nodded.

"Entered by the back door and approached by the back stairs. You can't get away from it."

"I can," said Valerie. "Speak for yourself. It's you who can't--won't get away from it. They say that in Russia there are n.o.blemen sweeping the streets. If one of them was a friend of yours, would you turn him down because he carried a broom? Of course you wouldn't."

"No, but----"

"But what?"

"The first duty of a servant," said Anthony, "is to know his place."

Valerie stood still and looked at him.

"I wonder you don't call me 'miss,'" she said, shaking her head gravely.

"Very good, miss," said Lyveden.

"That's better," said Miss French contentedly, slipping an arm through his. "And now, if we leave the path and bear to the right, in about two minutes we shall come to my window."

The two had been climbing steadily, but another fifty paces in the direction Miss French had indicated brought them to the foot of a steeper ascent than ever. This was, in fact, a broad natural bank, some thirty feet high. The careful negotiation of a tiny path, followed by a plunge into a thicket, where the stubborn protests of boughs had to be overruled, landed them in a dwarf clearing, which the density of the surrounding bocage rendered a fastness.

Valerie stepped to the far side and parted the branches.

"Look," she said.

They were upon the lip of a heather-edged bluff which fell sheer for perhaps two hundred feet into a pinewood. Beyond, by mammoth terraces, the glory of the forest sank step by colossal step into the purple distance, from which distant in turn a thread of silver argued the ocean. There never was such a staircase. The grandeur of its proportions diminished the rolling world. The splendour of its covering made colour pale.

Anthony gazed spellbound. At length--

"I didn't know there was such a view in all England," he said.

Miss French smiled. Then she moved cautiously forward, till she was clear of the bushes, there to sit down upon a billowing cushion of heather which grew conveniently about as close to the edge of the bluff as it was prudent to venture. Abstractedly Anthony followed her and, after a glance about him, took his seat by her side upon a patch of gravel.

"I'm in your debt," he said simply. "Deeper than I was before."

Valerie nodded at the wonder of landscape.

"I'll make you a present of this," she said. "What else do you owe me for?"

Anthony spread out his hands.

"Your society," he said.

"You've paid for that--with your own."

"Your pity, then."

"I've never pitied you," said Valerie.

"You've stooped," said Anthony.

"I've not stooped," was the fierce reply.

"We won't argue it," said Anthony. "I owe you for your--your interest, at any rate. You've been good enough to interest yourself in my----"

"Aren't--you--interested?" said Valerie, staring into the distance and seeing nothing.

For a long minute the man sat motionless, not seeming to breathe.

Then--

"Yes," he said slowly, "I am. And that's the devil of it." With a sudden jerk he was on one knee beside her and had caught her hand.

"Oh, lady, don't you see? That's what kills everything. Am I interested? Good G.o.d, I'm--I'm crazy! I can think of nothing else.