A red butterfly came by and hovered about her knee, inclined to alight, but perceiving that it glistened with the water, flew onwards over the pool.
Felise moved her feet among the grass, she liked to feel it; she extended her foot to the golden lotus flowers. But the moment of luxurious enjoyment of the sunlight and the air, the liberty of the tunic, was over; her active nature reasserted itself; she rose and walked towards the bathing apartment to dress.
“There’s a rabbit in the ferns,” said Shaw, following her; “I heard him rustle twice. Wonder why you won’t talk today, now. If I was to run round the water like you swim round, I should die of pancking [panting], I should.”
She looked as if such exertion would overcome her: short, plump, and merry.
Felise took no heed of Shaw’s chatter; she was thinking how to accomplish her resolution.
XII
A few days after Barnard met Felise on Ashpen, he was walking by the side of the little estuary where the trout-stream entered the sea. It was a lonely spot, but he looked round to see that no one was near. Then he took from his pocket Felise’s handkerchief, and the piece of mane which she had plaited; and rolling them carefully up round a heavy pebble, he stepped to the edge of the low cliff and hurled the pebble as far as he could into the sea.
Next, he walked home rapidly, mounted Ruy, and rode up to the solitary beech-tree on the downs, under which Felise had stood. The letter M showed much more plainly now the sap had dried—it appeared very distinct. Barnard got off his horse, and taking out his knife cut a circle round the entire letter, which he then tore off, leaving nothing but a circular mark on the tree. The strip of bark he broke in pieces, and flung in various directions; then remounted, and rode home. Thus he got rid of every trace of that morning’s interview.
He would not be fooled any more; or, rather, he would not fool himself a second time. Why should he persuade himself into a state of feeling that was not natural to him? Felise was nothing to him.
To understand his proceedings it is necessary to very briefly recount a part of his history. Like every young man when he surmounted his teens, he thought it was proper for him to fall in love. There was a young lady in Maasbury town, the daughter and heiress of Mr. Wood, a wealthy wine merchant, from whom the Barnards had had their wine for some years. Rosa was a few months younger than himself, bright and talkative; in appearance of the middle height. She had a low forehead with much dark hair about it—the forehead was not really low, but the hair came down it.
Her eyes were brown, the eyebrows well arched, the lips a little thin, but red and laughing. Perhaps her smile was the most effective of her attractions, but she had a very fair figure, and much of the glow of youth in her cheek. Rose was indeed decidedly good-looking, not so much from any especial quality as the aggregate of her appearance. She was clever, and fond of reading, and she was the heiress to the merchant’s money. No one could have found fault with Barnard’s choice; the lady was eligible in every way.
Accordingly he began to pay his addresses to her in a manner which soon distanced every competitor. In the first place he was handsome, and in rather an unusual style; full of life and animated. He was the present representative of a good family. He rode a splendid horse. It was very nice to go over to the Manor House Farm on a picnic. Then there was no other gentleman in the neighbourhood at all his equal; they were boors in comparison, and a woman naturally likes to carry off the leading individual.
Barnard had received an exceptionally good education, and, what is much more important, he had moved in good society as a lad when manners are formed. Some rich and high-placed friends had taken him with them into houses in London not easy to enter. They had designed him to occupy a forward place, and even talked of Parliament. But a quarrel accidentally arose between them and Barnard’s parents, and the boy had to suffer because his elders disagreed. Barnard returned to the country and the somewhat solitary life of a farmhouse.
By nature his ideas were elevated and aspiring; he read much, and of the most varied authors, and some of the spirit of the great dramatists and poets entered into his mind. Youth is always romantic; Martial’s romance was heightened by a quick imagination which coloured everything. As he moved about the hills, and by the sea, his ideas went with him, and the scene was filled with figures and thoughts.
When he fell in love with Rosa—or believed that he had done so—he transferred these romantic imaginings to her. He surrounded her with a cloud (as the immortal goddesses were enveloped), and hid the real woman from himself by the fervour of his fancy. Though he did not write verses, he looked upon her, and acted towards her, as a poet might. There was a delicate refinement in all the attentions he paid her which could only proceed from a sensitive and highly-wrought nature.
Rosa really loved him, but she was not in the least what he thought; he had conferred upon her attributes which she was incapable even of understanding. She would have made a good wife under ordinary circumstances, but she was commonplace. She loved without passion; she had neither the fire of love nor of ambition. There really was no fault to be found with her; but she was not what Martial fancied she was.
This lad’s courtship continued for some
