第28章

If to the boy that birthday was all bewildered disillusionment, to Anna it was verily slow torture; SHE found no relief in thinking that there were things in life other than love.But next morning brought readjustment, a sense of yesterday's extravagance, a renewal of hope.Impossible surely that in one short fortnight she had lost what she had made so sure of! She had only to be resolute.Only to grasp firmly what was hers.After all these empty years was she not to have her hour? To sit still meekly and see it snatched from her by a slip of a soft girl? A thousand times, no! And she watched her chance.She saw him about noon sally forth towards the river, with his rod.She had to wait a little, for Gordy and his bailiff were down there by the tennis lawn, but they soon moved on.She ran out then to the park gate.

Once through that she felt safe; her husband, she knew, was working in his room; the girl somewhere invisible; the old governess still at her housekeeping; Mrs.Doone writing letters.She felt full of hope and courage.This old wild tangle of a park, that she had not yet seen, was beautiful--a true trysting-place for fauns and nymphs, with its mossy trees and boulders and the high bracken.

She kept along under the wall in the direction of the river, but came to no gate, and began to be afraid that she was going wrong.

She could hear the river on the other side, and looked for some place where she could climb and see exactly where she was.An old ash-tree tempted her.Scrambling up into its fork, she could just see over.There was the little river within twenty yards, its clear dark water running between thick foliage.On its bank lay a huge stone balanced on another stone still more huge.And with his back to this stone stood the boy, his rod leaning beside him.And there, on the ground, her arms resting on her knees, her chin on her hands, that girl sat looking up.How eager his eyes now--how different from the brooding eyes of yesterday!

"So, you see, that was all.You might forgive me, Sylvia!"And to Anna it seemed verily as if those two young faces formed suddenly but one--the face of youth.

If she had stayed there looking for all time, she could not have had graven on her heart a vision more indelible.Vision of Spring, of all that was gone from her for ever! She shrank back out of the fork of the old ash-tree, and, like a stricken beast, went hurrying, stumbling away, amongst the stones and bracken.She ran thus perhaps a quarter of a mile, then threw up her arms, fell down amongst the fern, and lay there on her face.At first her heart hurt her so that she felt nothing but that physical pain.If she could have died! But she knew it was nothing but breathlessness.

It left her, and that which took its place she tried to drive away by pressing her breast against the ground, by clutching the stalks of the bracken--an ache, an emptiness too dreadful! Youth to youth! He was gone from her--and she was alone again! She did not cry.What good in crying? But gusts of shame kept sweeping through her; shame and rage.So this was all she was worth! The sun struck hot on her back in that lair of tangled fern, where she had fallen; she felt faint and sick.She had not known till now quite what this passion for the boy had meant to her; how much of her very belief in herself was bound up with it; how much clinging to her own youth.What bitterness! One soft slip of a white girl--one YOUNG thing--and she had become as nothing! But was that true? Could she not even now wrench him back to her with the passion that this child knew nothing of! Surely! Oh, surely! Let him but once taste the rapture she could give him! And at that thought she ceased clutching at the bracken stalks, lying as still as the very stones around her.Could she not? Might she not, even now? And all feeling, except just a sort of quivering, deserted her--as if she had fallen into a trance.Why spare this girl? Why falter? She was first! He had been hers out there.And she still had the power to draw him.At dinner the first evening she had dragged his gaze to her, away from that girl--away from youth, as a magnet draws steel.She could still bind him with chains that for a little while at all events he would not want to break! Bind him?