“You sound like a bolster with the stuffing out.” They laughed. She always blew his cobwebs away like this, with a puff of humorous mountain air. Just now the associations he attached to her were various—she reminded him of a heroine of Meredith’s— but a heroine at the end of the book. All had been written about her. She had played her mighty part, and knew that it was over. He and he alone was not content, and wrote for her daily a trivial and impossible sequel.
Last time they had talked about Gerald. But that was some six months ago, when things felt easier. Today Gerald was the faintest blur. Fortunately the conversation turned to Mr. Pembroke and to education. Did women lose a lot by not knowing Greek? “A heap,” said Rickie, roughly. But modern languages? Thus they got to Germany, which he had visited last Easter with Ansell; and thence to the German Emperor, and what a to-do he made; and from him to our own king (still Prince of Wales), who had lived while an undergraduate at Madingley Hall. Here it was. And all the time he thought, “It is hard on her. She has no right to be walking with me. She would be ill with disgust if she knew. It is hard on her to be loved.”
They looked at the Hall, and went inside the pretty little church. Some Arundel prints hung upon the pillars, and Agnes expressed the opinion that pictures inside a place of worship were a pity. Rickie did not agree with this. He said again that nothing beautiful was ever to be regretted.
“You’re cracked on beauty,” she whispered—they were still inside the church. “Do hurry up and write something.”
“Something beautiful?”
“I believe you can. I’m going to lecture you seriously all the way home. Take care that you don’t waste your life.”
They continued the conversation outside. “But I’ve got to hate my own writing. I believe that most people come to that stage—not so early though. What I write is too silly. It can’t happen. For instance, a stupid vulgar man is engaged to a lovely young lady. He wants her to live in the towns, but she only cares for woods. She shocks him this way and that, but gradually he tames her, and makes her nearly as dull as he is. One day she has a last explosion—over the snobby wedding presents—and flies out of the drawing-room window, shouting, ‘Freedom and truth!’ Near the house is a little dell full of fir-trees, and she runs into it. He comes there the next moment. But she’s gone.”
“Awfully exciting. Where?”
“Oh Lord, she’s a Dryad!” cried Rickie, in great disgust. “She’s turned into a tree.”
“Rickie, it’s very good indeed. The kind of thing has something in it. Of course you get it all through Greek and Latin. How upset the man must be when he sees the girl turn.”
“He doesn’t see her. He never guesses. Such a man could never see a Dryad.”
“So you describe how she turns just before he comes up?”
“No. Indeed I don’t ever say that she does turn. I don’t use the word ‘Dryad’ once.”
“I think you ought to put that part plainly. Otherwise, with such an original story, people might miss the point. Have you had any luck with it?”
“Magazines? I haven’t tried. I know what the stuff’s worth. You see, a year or two ago I had a great idea of getting into touch with Nature, just as the Greeks were in touch; and seeing England so beautiful, I used to pretend that her trees and coppices and summer fields of parsley were alive. It’s funny enough now, but it wasn’t funny then, for I got in such a state that I believed, actually believed, that Fauns lived in a certain double hedgerow near the Cog Magogs, and one evening I walked a mile sooner than go through it alone.”
“Good gracious!” She laid her hand on his shoulder.
He moved to the other side of the road. “It’s all right now. I’ve changed those follies for others. But while I had them I began to write, and even now I keep on writing, though I know better. I’ve got quite a pile of little stories, all harping on this ridiculous idea of getting into touch with Nature.”
“I wish you weren’t so modest. It’s simply splendid as an idea. Though—but tell me about the Dryad who was engaged to be married. What was she like?”
“I can show you the dell in which the young person disappeared. We pass it on the right in a moment.”
“It does seem a pity that you don’t make something of your talents. It seems such a waste to write little stories and never publish them. You must have enough for a book. Life is so full in our days that short stories are the very thing; they get read by people who’d never tackle a novel. For example, at our Dorcas we tried to read out a long affair by Henry James—Herbert saw it recommended in ‘The Times.’ There was no doubt it was very good, but one simply couldn’t remember from one week to another what had happened. So now our aim is to get something that just lasts the hour. I take you seriously, Rickie, and that is why I am so offensive. You are too modest. People who think they can do nothing so often do nothing. I want you to plunge.”
It thrilled him like a trumpet-blast. She took him seriously. Could he but thank her for her divine affability! But the words would stick in his throat, or worse still would bring other words along with them. His breath came quickly, for he seldom spoke of his writing, and no one, not even Ansell, had advised him to plunge.
“But do you really think that I could take up literature?”
“Why not? You can try. Even if you fail, you can try. Of course we think you tremendously clever; and I met one of your dons at tea, and he said that your degree was not in the least a proof of your abilities: he said that you knocked up and got flurried in examinations. Oh!”—her cheek flushed,—“I wish I was a man. The whole world lies before them. They can do anything. They aren’t cooped up with servants and tea parties and twaddle. But where’s this dell where the Dryad disappeared?”
“We’ve passed it.” He had meant to pass it. It was too beautiful. All he had read, all he had hoped for, all he had loved, seemed to quiver in its enchanted air. It was perilous. He dared not enter it with such a woman.
“How long ago?” She turned back. “I don’t want to miss the dell. Here it must be,” she added after a few moments, and sprang up the green bank that hid the entrance from the road. “Oh, what a jolly place!”
“Go right in if you want to see it,” said Rickie, and did not offer to go with her. She stood for a moment looking at the view, for a few steps will increase a view in Cambridgeshire. The wind blew her dress against her. Then, like a cataract again, she vanished pure and cool into the dell.
The young man thought of her feelings no longer. His heart throbbed louder and louder, and seemed to shake him to pieces. “Rickie!”
She was calling from the dell. For an answer he sat down where he was, on the dust-bespattered margin. She could call as loud as she liked. The devil had done much, but he should not take him to her.
“Rickie!”—and it came with the tones of an angel. He drove his fingers into his ears, and invoked the name of Gerald. But there was no sign, neither angry motion in the air nor hint of January mist. June—fields of June, sky of June, songs of June. Grass of June beneath him, grass of June over the tragedy he had deemed immortal. A bird called out of the dell: “Rickie!”
A bird flew into the dell.
“Did you take me for the Dryad?” she asked. She was sitting down with his head on her lap. He had laid it there for a moment before he went out to die, and she had not let him take it away.
“I prayed you might not be a woman,” he whispered.
“Darling, I am very much a woman. I do not vanish into groves and trees. I thought you would never come.”
“Did