In the Year of Jubilee Part 23

'Is this a pretty book?' one of them inquired loftily.

'Oh yes, madam, that's a very pretty book--very pretty.'

Nancy exchanged a glance with her companion and smiled. When they were outside again Tarrant asked:

'Have you found a pretty book?'

She showed the t.i.tle of her choice.

'Merciful heavens! You mean to read that? The girls of to-day! What mere man is worthy of them? But--I must rise to the occasion. We'll have a chapter as we rest.'

Insensibly, Nancy had followed the direction he chose. His words took for granted that she was going into the country with him.

'My friends are on the pier,' she said, abruptly stopping.

'Where doubtless they will enjoy themselves. Let me carry your book, please. Helmholtz is rather heavy.'

'Thanks, I can carry it very well. I shall turn this way.'

'No, no. My way this afternoon.'

Nancy stood still, looking up the street that led towards the sea.

She was still bright-coloured; her lips had a pathetic expression, a child-like pouting.

'There was an understanding,' said Tarrant, with playful firmness.

'Not for to-day.'

'No. For the day when you disappointed me. The day after, I didn't think it worth while to come here; yesterday I came, but felt no surprise that I didn't meet you. To-day I had a sort of hope. This way.'

She followed, and they walked for several minutes in silence.

'Will you let me look at Helmholtz?' said the young man at length. 'Most excellent book, of course. "Physiological Causes of Harmony in Music,"

"Interaction of Natural Forces," "Conservation of Force."--You enjoy this kind of thing?'

'One must know something about it.'

'I suppose so. I used to grind at science because everybody talked science. In reality I loathed it, and now I read only what I like.

Life's too short for intellectual make-believe. It is too short for anything but enjoyment. Tell me what you read for pure pleasure.

Poetry?'

They had left the streets, and were pursuing a road bordered with gardens, gardens of glowing colour, sheltered amid great laurels, shadowed by stately trees; the air was laden with warm scents of flower and leaf. On an instinct of resistance, Nancy pretended that the exact sciences were her favourite study. She said it in the tone of superiority which habit had made natural to her in speaking of intellectual things. And Tarrant appeared to accept her declaration without scepticism; but, a moment after, he turned the talk upon novels.

Thus, for half an hour and more, they strolled on by upward ways, until Teignmouth lay beneath them, and the stillness of meadows all about.

Presently Tarrant led from the beaten road into a lane all but overgrown with gra.s.s. He began to gather flowers, and offered them to Nancy.

Personal conversation seemed at an end; they were enjoying the brilliant sky and the peaceful loveliness of earth. They exchanged simple, natural thoughts, or idle words in which was no thought at all.

Before long, they came to an old broken gate, half open; it was the entrance to a narrow cartway, now unused, which descended windingly between high thick hedges. Ruts of a foot in depth, baked hard by summer, showed how miry the track must be in the season of rain.

'This is our way,' said Tarrant, his hand on the lichened wood. 'Better than the pier or the promenade, don't you think?'

'But we have gone far enough.'

Nancy drew back into the lane, looked at her flowers, and then shaded her eyes with them to gaze upward.

'Almost. Another five minutes, and you will see the place I told you of.

You can't imagine how beautiful it is.'

'Another day--'

'We are all but there--'

He seemed regretfully to yield; and Nancy yielded in her turn. She felt a sudden shame in the thought of having perhaps betrayed timidity.

Without speaking, she pa.s.sed the gate.

The hedge on either side was of hazel and dwarf oak, of hawthorn and blackthorn, all intertwined with giant brambles, and with briers which here and there met overhead. High and low, blackberries hung in mult.i.tudes, swelling to purple ripeness. Numberless the trailing and climbing plants. Nancy's skirts rustled among the greenery; her cheeks were touched, as if with a caress, by many a drooping branchlet; in places, Tarrant had to hold the tangle above her while she stooped to pa.s.s.

And from this they emerged into a small circular s.p.a.ce, where the cartway made a turn at right angles and disappeared behind thickets.

They were in the midst of a plantation; on every side trees closed about them, with a low and irregular hedge to mark the borders of the gra.s.sy road. Nancy's eyes fell at once upon a cl.u.s.ter of magnificent foxgloves, growing upon a bank which rose to the foot of an old elm; beside the foxgloves lay a short-hewn trunk, bedded in the ground, thickly overgrown with mosses, lichens, and small fungi.

'Have I misled you?' said Tarrant, watching her face with frank pleasure.

'No, indeed you haven't. This is very beautiful!'

'I discovered it last year, and spent hours here alone. I couldn't ask you to come and see it then,' he added, laughing.

'It is delightful!'

'Here's your seat,--who knows how many years it has waited for you?'

She sat down upon the old trunk. About the roots of the elm above grew ma.s.ses of fern, and beneath it a rough bit of the bank was clothed with pennywort, the green discs and yellowing fruity spires making an exquisite patch of colour. In the shadow of bushes near at hand hartstongue abounded, with fronds hanging to the length of an arm.

'Now,' said Tarrant, gaily, 'you shall have some blackberries. And he went to gather them, returning in a few minutes with a large leaf full. He saw that Nancy, meanwhile, had taken up the book from where he dropped it to the ground; it lay open on her lap.

'Helmholtz! Away with him!'

'No; I have opened at something interesting.'

She spoke as though possession of the book were of vital importance to her. Nevertheless, the fruit was accepted, and she drew off her gloves to eat it. Tarrant seated himself on the ground, near her, and gradually fell into a half-rec.u.mbent att.i.tude.

'Won't you have any?' Nancy asked, without looking at him.

'One or two, if you will give me them.'

She chose a fine blackberry, and held it out. Tarrant let it fall into his palm, and murmured, 'You have a beautiful hand.' When, a moment after, he glanced at her, she seemed to be reading Helmholtz.

The calm of the golden afternoon could not have been more profound.

Birds twittered softly in the wood, and if a leaf rustled, it was only at the touch of wings. Earth breathed its many perfumes upon the slumberous air.