Doomsday. Warwick Deeping

to the great spaces of his fields and woodlands. He felt that he could throw his hat as high as the tops of the Six Firs, but she had been caught by a sudden panic of seriousness. She was looking beyond him, and through the quivering air of her emotion at the ultimate choice and its finalities.

      Doomsday! A farm!

      CHAPTER VII

       Table of Contents

      1

      That she should happen to see the wagon pass down the Melhurst road next morning was a mere matter of coincidence. Furze was standing up in the wagon like a charioteer, and she saw the blue wagon and the grey horses and his brown figure melt into the young green of May. A mere coincidence, yes, but it would seem that the subconscious part of her had been at work during the night, and that an idea was materializing. The bluebells in Gore Wood! And to begin with, the idea and its inspiration were as delicate and as virginal as the very scent of the wild hyacinths.

      Arnold had given her the right of free trespass upon his farm, and her choosing to exercise this right while he was away at Melhurst concealed a mood rather than a motive. She hurried through the morning's work, brought out her old bicycle as though she were bound for Carslake, but when the sentinel firs had passed her into the Doomsday lane she dismounted and loitered. She was neither very sure of herself nor of her purpose. The passion to escape, to have a good time, to attain self-expression were like the surge of the sap. And so she loitered, asking herself questions, treading with unsure feet on the edge of her lover's world. What, as a woman, did she mean by self-expression? Escape, whither and how, and to what end? Not to be rooted in routine and interminable repetition? She saw the Doomsday woods rising about her, green with a golden and changeful greenness, and cleft with blue distances. The larches made her pause, throwing their reflections in the still water of the pond where the water-crowfoot was showing white. A wood-pigeon crooned. There was a great silence everywhere, save for the sounds made by living things, the underchant of a spring day. Beautiful? Yes, she had to allow it its beauty, and her blood stirred a little, and her brown eyes became elvish. She turned down towards the farm buildings where a sunny sloth seemed to prevail, and no live thing moved save the hens and sparrows and two or three young porkers scampering over the straw of a byre. Will and his boy were up the fields. She was bound ostensibly for Gore Wood, but the way to it was unknown to her.

      Leaning her bicycle against the gate she looked at the house—his house. She had entered it but once, on that night when she had come for milk, and a place looks so different in the daylight. The house, as a thing of beauty, laid its appeal upon her. Its grey walls and mellowed brick, its lattices and great spreading roof and massive chimneys touched the romance in her, and displayed the old velvet of its texture to her sleek, comfort-loving soul. And the smother of green about it, and the secrecy, and its little silent lattices with the glimmer of their glass lozenges, and the falling meadows, and the old cedar, and the great thorn hedges turning white! She felt that she would like to touch it, know it more intimately. And why not? He had given her leave to go everywhere, and the garden and the orchard were part of the everywhere. Not into the house itself—of course.

      The Eve in her was tempted, and no Eve is without the knowledge of some secret apple, even though it be hidden in the foliage of a charming and wilful vagueness. She fell to the beckoning path beside the yew hedge. There were steps that went up and steps that went down. She eschewed the ascent, and descending, found herself in Mrs. Damaris' garden. She did not know that she was observed.

      So this was his garden! She wandered across the scythed grass, and along the stone path, looking about her a little furtively. She was conscious of the windows of the house, and yet when she turned about to meet their scrutiny she realized that they were sightless eyes. No curtains, no blinds! Also, it seemed to her that the garden had a newness in its oldness. The work was recent, the very plants fetched in hurriedly to a love feast. She stood against the stone wall, and looked across the Doom Paddock to the great thorn hedge. Two large black pigs were feeding in the paddock, their black bellies brushed by the buttercups.

      Observed—yes, and by Mrs. Sarah Blossom who had come in to scrub out the bedrooms, and who, by standing well back in one of the upper rooms, could see my lady without being seen. So, it was Miss Mary Viner—Will had been told that morning that Captain, Mrs. and Miss Viner had wander-rights over the farm, and Will had told Mrs. Will. Captain and Mrs. Viner—indeed! What did Captain and Mrs. Viner signify? It was the girl he wanted down among the bluebells, yes, or on a summer evening in a quiet corner when the bracken was growing high. Miss Mary Viner!

      And here she was. Mrs. Sarah took a good look at her from the back of that upper window, and considered the situation and its possibilities as they concerned herself. The future Mrs. Furze deserved the soft side of her tongue. Mrs. Sarah wiped her hands on her apron, and descended the stairs.

      Mary heard the sound of a lattice being opened, and she faced about to see a woman shaking a duster from the window of Mrs. Damaris' parlour. The woman smiled at her.

      "Good morning, Miss."

      Mary felt caught, though she had every right to be in Arnold Furze's garden. She was quick in remembering her excuse.

      "O,—good morning."

      She approached the window, putting a pleasant face upon the occasion.

      "Can you tell me the way to Gore Wood?"

      "Of course I can, Miss Viner. The flowers—they be lovely—in the spring of the year."

      She conveyed to Mary the impression of a friendly but very respectful creature ripe for a gossip, but very respectful gossiping, of course. Miss Viner was Miss Viner. O, yes, Mrs. Sarah knew how the honey was spread or should be spread.

      "Fine old house, Miss, be'nt it? Yes—I come up Tuesdays and Fridays. Mr. Furze—he be mighty fond of it—All beams it be. And there be a bedroom all walled with wood. I can't call to mind the right word for it, exactly."

      "Panelling," said Mary.

      "Yes, that be the word, Miss Viner. All oak—it be—and black as black."

      She flicked the duster, folded it up, and looked obsequiously sly.

      "I've got to be going down to the cottage to get my man's dinner ready, Miss. Mr. Furze, he be away at Melhurst. I be leaving the key in the door. Maybe—you'd like to look over the house."

      Furze's broad gesture had not opened the house to her, nor should one accept the authority of a Sarah Blossom, so Mary thanked her and denied herself the time to make use of an unlocked door. She said again that she was going down to Gore Wood, and had been looking for someone to show her the way. Mrs. Sarah came out of the house, wearing an old cap of her husband's, and looking if anything more sly.

      "I'll show you, Miss."

      They returned to the lane where Mary had left her bicycle against the gate. Mrs. Blossom assured her that the bicycle would be quite safe there. The way to Gore Wood lay through the field gate opposite the pond, and down across the Gore Field where the short-horns were pastured. Mrs. Sarah left Mary at the gate and went on up the lane. She was sure that Miss Viner would make use of the key when she was left alone with the temptation.

      2

      It would appear that Mrs. Sarah knew her Mary better than Mary knew herself. The temptress had raised the edge of the curtain, and there was more behind Mary's fall than a natural and irresponsible curiosity. She was a twentieth century Eve. When romance offered itself, she fingered the magic garment, turned up the lining, and tried to estimate its wearing qualities. Such caution may be held to be either wise or foolish, balancing on a knife edge, or trying to teach nature to turn a wheel in a cage. People who wade cautiously into life like a timid girl paddling on a rather bleak foreshore are apt to be too conscious of the existence of crabs and pebbles. Nature prefers the plunger. Or you may more quickly learn to swim by