As it happened, it was one of the days on which we usually motored into the country. At two o’clock I was in the Square with the car; and almost at once the door opened and Elsa appeared. My dreams had far outrun reality; and as the slim fur-clad figure came down the steps I felt my pulse leap. It lasted only for a moment, but I think she read my face like an open book. Behind her came Nordenholt, looking very tired. I could not help seeing the change which the last months had made in him. The deep lines on his face were deeper still; his eyes seemed to be different in some way, though as piercing as ever; and his step had lost the lightness it had when I saw him first in London. He looked me over, as he usually did, but said nothing as he stepped into the back of the car. Elsa took her customary place beside me; and it gave me a novel thrill as I arranged the rug about her. It seemed as though something had fallen from my eyes so that I saw her in a new and wonderful aspect.
As we drove westward and over the Canal, I noticed that she seemed disinclined to talk; and as I myself was busy with my dreams, I did not try to force the conversation. We had passed Bearsden and were in the open country before she had spoken three sentences; and even these were wilfully commonplace. Reflecting on this, and being myself surcharged with emotion, I was vain enough to guess that she was thinking of me and of what I had to tell her; for I had a curious feeling that she must know what was in my mind. So the milestones swept by, and still the three of us remained silent.
It was a dreary landscape through which we drove; but all landscapes in those days were bleak and sinister. In the little wood beyond Bearsden, the trees were uprooted and slanting here and there, owing to the new soil giving them no support. Some, which had threatened to fall across the road, had been cut down. Further on, the Kilpatrick Hills loomed over us, dark from the lack of vegetation; while across the Blane valley, once so green, the smooth folds of the Campsies lay black under the wintry sky. Only here and there, where snow covered the ground, did things remind one of the old days.
Past the Halfway House, along Stockiemuir with its blasted heather under its snow, up the hill at the foot of Finnick Glen the great car ran; and yet none of us spoke a word. Once, after that, Nordenholt gave me a direction; and we turned off toward Loch Lomond.
When we reached the lochside, beyond Balloch, he made me stop the car.
“I’m going to get out here and walk up towards Luss,” he said. “You take the car on to the head of the loch and pick me up on the way back. Don’t hurry. I want some exercise.”
The door slammed; and we moved off. I looked back and saw him standing by the waterside; and it struck me that his attitude was that of an old man. He stood with his hands in the pockets of his motor-coat; and his position seemed to exaggerate the stoop of his shoulders. He looked so very, very tired. I realised, all at once, that he was ageing long before his time, worn out by his colossal task. An emotion which was as much dismay as pity swept over me in an instant. Then, as I watched, he pulled himself up and stood erect again, gazing over the water to the desolate islets. The car swung round a corner; and when I looked back once more, he was out of sight.
But that picture haunted me as I drove up the loch. I guessed at last what this struggle was costing him. Somehow I had never realised it before. I had come to regard Nordenholt as almost akin to the natural forces, the embodiment of some great store of energy which worked upon human destiny calmly and ever certainly. I had looked up to his strength and leaned upon it unconsciously, knowing only that it was there. And now, in that brief vision, I had seen that my support was itself weakening, even though for an instant. There had been a recovery, the old dominating attitude reappeared as he pulled himself together again. But before this I had never seen effort in that attitude; and I saw it now. Even in my exalted condition, the sight of that weary figure struck down into my memory.
Elsa had not looked back. She sat beside me, her clean-cut profile emerging from her dark furs, gazing straight before her at the road ahead. We ran through Luss without a word to each other. My heart was throbbing with excitement; and yet I hesitated to break the silence. Some miles further up the road, before we reached Tarbet, she asked me to stop the car and suggested that we should go down to the water’s edge.
It was there that I at last found speech and, having found it, poured out what I had to say in a torrent of words none of which I can remember now. I had rehearsed that scene many a time in my mind, and yet it all came unexpectedly. I had never anticipated this opportunity. I had thought that some time, when we talked of the future we were planning, I
