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American Sunday Monthly Magazine Section
1 am sitting alone in the grey dawn in the turret
chamber now and 1 cannot keep my thoughts from
rushing ahead. In seven weeks Humphrey will
have returned, when all meetings will be impossible.
Alas, and alas, what will happen then?
Oh, spring, with your passionate youth, your
rising sap, your message of fulfilment to the earth,
take pity on two poor lovers, who may only sip at
the cup of joy.
It is the first of May, and the visit to Letitia at
her Cheshire home has been all happiness. Hut
underneath in me there is growing a strange excite
ment, as though voices were saying “Live, live,
poor fool, while you may.” I cannot with all my
will sometimes annihilate,the remembrance that the
days are flying and soon there must come the end,
when the prison door will close again.
Hugh has arranged everything for our meeting
when we go back, he to Minton Dremont and 1 to
Redwood Moat, and we have all the lovely month
of May before us. I will try not to look ahead.
Fate has been kind to us, for only old William has
any idea of the hours his master and 1 spend in
each other's company.
Twice, Hugh has been able to come and call
upon me openly, and I have played to him in the
drawing-room, and we are growing more intimate
in soul every day. We cannot have many books
out in the May sunshine, but we talk and never
seem to tire of each other’s conversation.
“You see, you have the delightful stored reflec
tions of long years of silence and loneliness to im
part to me, precious child,” Hugh said yesterday, as
we sat on the bench old William has constructed for
us in the copse. “And all the wisdom and trained
critical faculties which you show me are a constant
surprise and joy. Fancy what it would have been
like if we had grown up together and learned all
these things hand-in-hand.”
“It would not have been more perfect than it
is, Hugh,” I assured him. "I do not think there
can be two people on earth who are so absolutely
one in everything, of thought, point of view and
desire, as we are—do you?”
“No, we never have a single jar; and if we were
to live together for a hundred years it would
always be the same. That is the agony of it, that
soon——” and then he stopped abruptly, and
covered his eyes with his hand.
One of his greatest pleasures is to lie with his
dear head in my lap and to get me to stroke
and caress his hair. And he always tells me
stories of his mother then.
Humphrey arrives at Southampton on Tues
day the fifth of June, and will be in‘London
at four o’clock in the afternoon. Algernon
and I are to meet him at the station. And
for a week Hugh is going off to Letitia in Paris.
Tomorrow is our last day here. Oh,
how I pray that it may keep fine. I am
going up to Minton Dremont openly in
the morning “to see the gardens.” Hugh ,
rode down and asked me yesterday be
fore Hartington. And then I am to
stay to lunch with the parson and his
wife; and when they go I am to pretend
I am walking back across the park, but
in reality* I expect we shall spend most
of the time in my beloved’s sitting-
room. Oh, 1 cannot bear to think that
the end has nearly come.
A perfectly golden sun dawned for our last
day together at Minton Dremont. When T
looked out of the east window and saw the glor
ious rays above Hugh’s flag my spirit expand
ed with gladness. It seemed to me an omen
of happiness after the storm in the night, an omen
that meant that someday the sun would rise per
manently upon our lives and melt the remem-
branceof thunder and lightning and weeping rain.
Hugh was waiting for me at the gate which leads
to the gardens from the avenue and I got out of the
brougham and went with him there. All the plant
ings we arranged in February seemed to be doing
well, and it was a joy to walk with my beloved and
examine them all. He took extra pains, it would
seem, not by the faintest word to suggest that this
was our last day; we might have been a pair of mar
ried lovers returning to our home, eager to see how
things had grown in our absence.
“Heart of me,” Hugh said, “you have gilded and
sanctified my garden and my house, and nothing shall
ever be altered in it except as you may wish. It
is now our garden, Guinevere.”
An infinite tenderness was between us, and we were
silent as we went through the wrought-iron gate
into the yew-surrounded lawn. Here we sat down
upon the marble bench in the arbour which looks
out over the park.
Then Hugh went back to the house and brought
out some of our pet books, and the morning passed
away thus in perfect happiness. Of the afternoon
I cannot write, it is too sacred, in its deep meaning
to us both, and as the evening shadows began to fall
Hugh walked with me back through the Park.
There seemed an exaltation in us that was not of
earth and we spoke hardly at all, and he came with
me into the courtyard at Redwood Moat, and into
the garden, and then through the turret door and
up to my shrine, and there we said a last good bye
and both our eyes swam with tears, we were beyond
the acting that all was as it would ever be. The
pitiful truth had forced itself into prominence.
Today had been the last day of perfect gladness and
freedom we could hope for at Minton Dremont, and
ahead of us after the few days in London yawned
an abyss of difficulty with Humphrey standing guard.
“God keep you, my soul,” Hugh whispered in
anguish, and turning went towards the door, but
we could not bear it and rushed once more into each
other’s arms.
Chapter XX
Letitia left for Paris yesterday with last counsels
to me about Humphrey.
“Remember, Guinevere,” she said, “you must
curb that foolishness in you which may make you
feel a discomfort with him. You have done nothing
that you yourself think
wrong under the circum
stances. If you feel any
thing it will be only
the current of con
vention still affect
ing you; and which
you had better
get rid of,
recollect
that we
thrash
ed out
Thus the letter ended
and all things became a
blank for a few moments
right and wrong in the beginning and you came
to your conclusions.”
“Yes,” I returned, “1 realize all that. I have
not the slightest regret or sense of anything but
glory and joy in having Hugh for my lover, there
is only the feeling that I loathe all pretence, 1 cannot
say that I will not have odious moments if I have to
dissimulate.”
“Well, try not to be too serious,” my sister
pleaded, “you have another point to console your
self with. Humphrey does not trust you blindly, or
rely upon your honor, he does not trust you at all,
in fact, he could not trust anyone; that is why he is
always being deceived and tricked by the servants
and Algernon and everyone he has to do with he
draws that upon himself by his attitude. He left
you alone, not because ho trusted you, but because
he thinks you are such a poor creature you would
get no chance of amusing yourself. He suspects
everyone all the time of the lowest intentions. It
is only by that extraordinary blindness which seems
to descend upon all jealous husbands when there is
really cause for their fears, that he has not suspected
Hugh.”
“1 will try to be sensible,” I promised.
“Try also to be less timid and quiet, talk to him
at meals, and be bright and gay as you are now with
us all. It will make things easier for you; to see
you together it is as if it were a terrified child with
a cross uncle.”
Then she laughed and kissed me, but at the last
moment when she was leav ing, she came back and
whispered to me while she looked straight into my
eyes:
“Guinevere, tell me, dearest, have I made up to
you for having helped to build your prison-house?
Last year when 1 first stayed at Redwood and it
struck me for the first time what I had done that I
felt perfectly sick and 1 determined then to help
you to live and be happy if I could.”
And though I am naturally undemonstrative I
threw my arms around Letitia’s neck and hugged her.
For indeed she has wiped out all old debts.
We spent Whitsuntide in London, my lover and I,
and it rained, but Hugh had arranged everything so
that we could be together for the entire day in safety
and the weather did not matter. We were divinely
happy, a feverish, passionate joy filled every instant
of the time, knowing its hideously short duration.
And now as I look out upon the starlit sky just
lightening with the approach of dawn, I realize that
indeed the very last day has come and when it is
over a new existence must begin.
Oh, God, let the great laws which You made and
not those which man made, work out in the end for
our happiness.
1 had never been at Eton since I was a child.
Hugh and I left the motor at the White Hart at
Windsor and walked down and over the bridge to
the wall where such generations of darlings have
sat and kicked their legs. And there were an
animated crowd of parents and little sisters,
with nice pale blue sashes and such proud
happy faces, and big sisters, and friends and
old Etonians, all arriving and being wel
comed by the boys, dressed in their best
clothes.
Algernon was among them, groomed to
the last stage of perfection, his tall hat
¥ shining in the sun pushed at the back
\ of his head, and an immaculate
« i umbrella and buttonhole.
\ , ’ / He was extremely glad to
4 see us and introduced several
^ * of his comrades, and we all
went off to hear Absence
called in School Yard, where
Hugh came across numbers
of his old friends, who like
himself had come down to see
some young members of their fami
lies. Here we met Lady Morvaine,
and Adela and Burbridge, the whole party
to be entertained by Hugh at luncheon at the
White Hart.
“It’s all rot, mother, going to hear the speeches,”
Algernon said, “you can do that another year.
I want to show you my room now, and you would
(Continued on next pogc)