Mr. Athel drew himself up very straight, pressed the offered hand and said:
‘It shall be as you wish.’ …
Beatrice returned with Mrs. Baxendale. Her desire to be alone was respected during the rest of the day. Going to her the last thing at night, her aunt was reassured; weariness had followed upon nervous strain, and the beautiful eyes seemed longing for sleep.
But in the morning appearances were not so hopeful. The night had after all been a troubled one: Beatrice declined breakfast and, having dressed with effort, lay on a sofa, her eyes closed.
At noon Mrs. Baxendale came near and said gently:
‘Dear, you are not going to be ill?’
The sufferer stirred a little, looked in her aunt’s face, rose to a sitting position.
‘Ill?’ She laughed in a forced way. ‘O, that would never do! Ill after all? Why, that would spoil everything. Are you going out this morning?’
‘Certainly not. I should only have done some idle shopping.’
‘Then you shall do the shopping, and I will go with you. Yes, yes, I will go! It is the only way. Let us go where we shall see people; I wish to. I will be ready in five minutes.’
‘But, Beatrice—.’
‘O, don’t fear my looks; you shall see if I betray myself! Quick, quick,—to Regent Street, Bond Street, where we shall gee people! I shall be ready before you.’
They set forth, and Beatrice had no illness.
CHAPTER XXVI
MID-DAY
Once more at The Firs. Wilfrid had decided to make this his abode. It was near enough to London to allow of his going backwards and forwards as often as might be necessary; his father’s town house offered the means of change for Emily, and supplied him with a
He and Emily established themselves at The Firs towards the end of December, having spent a week with Mr. Athel on their return from the Continent. Emily’s health had improved, but there was no likelihood that she would ever be other than a delicate flower, to be jealously guarded from the sky’s ruder breath by him to whom she was a life within life. Ambition as he formerly understood it had no more meaning for Wilfrid; the fine ardour of his being rejected grosser nourishment and burned in altar-flame towards the passion-pale woman whom he after all called wife. Emily was an unfailing inspiration; by her side the nobler zeal of his youth renewed itself; in the light of her pure soul he saw the world as poetry and strove for that detachment of the intellect which in Emily was a gift of nature.
She, Emily—Emily Athel, as she joyed to write herself—moved in her new sphere like a spirit humbled by victory over fate. It was a mild winter; the Surrey hills were tender against the brief daylight, and gardens breathed the freshness of evergreens. When the sun trembled over the landscape for a short hour, Emily loved to stray as far as that hollow on the heath where she had sat with Wilfrid years ago, and heard him for the first time speak freely of his aims and his hopes. That spot was sacred; as she stood there beneath the faint blue of the winter sky, all the exquisite sadness of life, the memory of those whom death had led to his kindly haven, the sorrows of newborn love, the dear heartache for woe passed into eternity, touched the deepest fountains of her nature and made dim her eyes. She would not have had life other than it was given to her, for she had learned the secrets of infinite passion in the sunless valleys of despair.
She rested. In the last few months she had traversed a whole existence; repose was needful that she might assimilate all her new experiences and range in due order the gifts which joy had lavishly heaped upon her. The skies of the south, the murmur of blue seas on shores of glorious name, the shrines of Art, the hallowed scenes where earth’s greatest have loved and wrought, these were no longer a dream with her bodily eyes she had looked upon Greece and Italy, and to have done so was a consecration, it cast a light upon her brows. ‘Talk to me of Rome;’ those were always her words when Wilfrid came to her side in the evening. ‘Talk to me of Rome, as you alone can.’ And as Wilfrid recalled their life in the world’s holy of holies, she closed her eyes for the full rapture of the inner light, and her heart sang praise.
Wilfrid was awed by his blessedness. There were times when he scarcely dared to take in his own that fine- moulded hand which was the symbol of life made perfect; Emily uttered thoughts which made him fear to profane her purity by his touch. She realised to the uttermost his ideal of womanhood, none the less so that it seemed no child would be born of her to trouble the exclusiveness of their love. He clad her in queenly garments and did homage at her feet. Her beauty was all for him, for though Emily could grace any scene she found no pleasure in society, and the hours of absence from home were to Wilfrid full of anxiety to return. All their plans were for solitude; life was too short for more than the inevitable concessions to the outside world.
But one morning in February, Emily’s eye fell upon an announcement in the newspaper which excited in her a wish to go up to town. Among the list of singers at a concert to be given that day she had caught the name of Miss Beatrice Redwing. It was Saturday; Wilfrid had no occasion for leaving home and already they had enjoyed in advance the two unbroken days.
‘But I should indeed like to hear her,’ Emily said, ‘and she seems to sing so rarely.’
‘She has only just returned to England,’ Wilfrid remarked
They had heard of Beatrice having been in Florence a week or two prior to their own stay there. She was travelling with the Baxendales. Emily was anxious to meet her, and Wilfrid had held out a hope that this might come about in Italy, but circumstances had proved adverse.
‘Have you seen her?’ Emily inquired.
Her husband had not. He seemed at first a little disinclined to go up for the concert, but on Emily’s becoming silent he hastened to give a cheerful acquiescence.
‘Couldn’t we see her tomorrow?’ she went on to ask.
