Dust thickened in the ink, dust thickened among the folds of the papers in the window-ledge, dust strewed the desk except where Robert Godwin’s left arm rested.
One thing leads to another. It was natural that Martial should walk a little way home with Felise; it was an easy step to go as far as the wicket-gate; easy to meet Mr. Goring; not difficult to enter. But a short time elapsed before Martial was a frequent guest at Beechknoll, He did not conceal his opinions, and Mr. Goring found them in a great measure to coincide with his own. He knew a great deal about botany; Mr. Goring was a gardener for his own amusement—a grower of trees and of flowers. Besides, Felise’s will was law and government; her uncle could not have thwarted her in anything.
Seeing this, Robert Godwin abandoned the statistics under pretence that the materials were incomplete, and released Martial from his attendance. Instead of meeting at Godwin’s, they met at Felise’s home still more frequently, with still less restraint, with far more opportunities. Robert Godwin knew that they sat among the flowers, and by the sundial—that they strolled in the copse by the trout-pond; the sweet dew of their kisses was as molten iron on his lips.
He knew these things as he sat at his window, gazing down upon the now vacant lawn. What they talked of, what they did, the close embrace too ardent for words—he knew all; in his mind he saw all gazing from his window.
The narrow shadow of the poplar faded as the sun went down into the dusk of night. His candle burned on till the dawn.
He must have slept at times, but he did not know it.
At last, in the midst of the night Robert Godwin found some work for his hands to do. In the attic where he had arranged and sorted the lumber, the two old flintlock pistols he had turned up were lying on an oaken press, as he had left them. With sand he rubbed away the rust from the barrels—there was not much, for they had been in a dry place—with oil he loosened the locks. In the road by daylight he found splinters of flint, and fitted them to the weapons. As he tried the trigger the sparks flew; had there been powder in the pans it would have exploded.
They were ordinary pistols, such as people commonly carried when they drove on a journey in the days before railways—in the beginning of the century. They were in perfect preservation, and would send a ball almost as true as ever. They were the only firearms in the house, for he had never been a sportsman.
In the midst of the night Robert Godwin polished and scoured them, oiled the locks, and fitted the flints.
XVI
In August the loveliest day is when the thunder booms far off at sea, while over the cornfields the sun shines with increased brilliance. The sky over the wheat is blue, but in the distance some large clouds stay motionless. The upper slopes of these mount-like vapours reflect the rays of the sun, beneath they melt away in an indefinite mist which does not throw back the light. The massy ridges above have no foundation beneath reaching to the horizon; they do not threaten; they add to the beauty of the level azure, as hills about a plain.
Rolling in from the south comes, the wave of heavy sound, too distant to cause uneasiness—the boom of an immense breaker on the shore of heaven. After each burst the sun seems to glow fiercer, the warm haze thickens, the rich blue sky is richer, the insects in the air vibrate their wings more rapidly, and a shriller hum arises; butterflies are busier, and in the wheat the reapers bend, cutting at the yellow straw.
Instead of uneasiness the thunder increases the sense of luxurious, tropical sunlight, colour, and glowing life. All things appear aware that the lightning will not approach—it will remain miles at sea—and they throb and pant with pulses quickened by the discharge of electricity.
The lovers were sitting on a green dry bank near the sundial, in the shade of a beech. Round spots of sunlight came through its branches and dotted the grass at their feet. Behind them there was a belt of beeches, on the right hand a thick and high yew-hedge, on the left a great thicket of hawthorn trees; so that they were enclosed on three sides, but in front the view was open. A square of green sward, raised like a terrace, was before them; at its edge the ground dropped a few feet, and the meadows commenced. Far down their slope the brook passed, and beyond it were the cornfields, undulating away to the hills.
Meadow and brook, wheatfields and hills—a simple landscape, yet such as is not to be surpassed by any on the earth. A common landscape—there are hundreds such in our England—yet beyond compare. There are none like it elsewhere in the wide world.
This green raised platform, like a deck, was the only spot at Beechknoll where a view could be obtained without ascending the steep coombeside by the copse. Mr. Goring had planted himself so round about with trees that nothing could be seen beyond them except in this one place. He had placed a trunk of oak, prepared as a seat, near the sundial under a sycamore by the yew-hedge, but the lovers today preferred the dry green bank.
Beyond the brook in the rising field reapers were labouring at the wheat; afar off the yellow slopes were scarce distinguishable in the August haze. It was one of those loveliest of August mornings when the idle thunder booms at sea.
Felise had dreamed here so many, many times in the past, it was natural she should bring him here. Nominally they were examining a broad portfolio of etchings; in truth they were purely idle.
The reapers were working hard in the
