A Laodicean

Chapter 7

The wet day arrived with all the promptness that might have

been expected of it in this land of rains and mists. The

alder bushes behind the gymnasium dripped monotonously leaf

upon leaf, added to this being the purl of the shallow stream

a little way off, producing a sense of satiety in watery

sounds. Though there was drizzle in the open meads, the rain

here in the thicket was comparatively slight, and two men with

fishing tackle who stood beneath one of the larger bushes

found its boughs a sufficient shelter.

'We may as well walk home again as study nature here, Willy,'

said the taller and elder of the twain. 'I feared it would

continue when we started. The magnificent sport you speak of

must rest for to-day.'

The other looked at his watch, but made no particular reply.

'Come, let us move on. I don't like intruding into other

people's grounds like this,' De Stancy continued.

'We are not intruding. Anybody walks outside this fence.' He

indicated an iron railing newly tarred, dividing the wilder

underwood amid which they stood from the inner and well-kept

parts of the shrubbery, and against which the back of the

gymnasium was built.

Light footsteps upon a gravel walk could be heard on the other

side of the fence, and a trio of cloaked and umbrella-screened

figures were for a moment discernible. They vanished behind

the gymnasium; and again nothing resounded but the river

murmurs and the clock-like drippings of the leafage.

'Hush!' said Dare.

'No pranks, my boy,' said De Stancy suspiciously. 'You should

be above them.'

'And you should trust to my good sense, captain,' Dare

remonstrated. 'I have not indulged in a prank since the sixth

year of my pilgrimage. I have found them too damaging to my

interests. Well, it is not too dry here, and damp injures

your health, you say. Have a pull for safety's sake.' He

presented a flask to De Stancy.

The artillery officer looked down at his nether garments.

'I don't break my rule without good reason,' he observed.

'I am afraid that reason exists at present.'

'I am afraid it does. What have you got?'

'Only a little wine.'

'What wine?'

'Do try it. I call it "the blushful Hippocrene," that the

poet describes as

'It warms, does it not?' said Dare.

'Too much,' said De Stancy with misgiving. 'I have been taken

unawares. Why, it is three parts brandy, to my taste, you

scamp!'

Dare put away the wine. 'Now you are to see something,' he

said.

'Something--what is it?' Captain De Stancy regarded him with

a puzzled look.

'It is quite a curiosity, and really worth seeing. Now just

look in here.'

The speaker advanced to the back of the building, and withdrew

the wood billet from the wall.

'Will, I believe you are up to some trick,' said De Stancy,

not, however, suspecting the actual truth in these

unsuggestive circumstances, and with a comfortable

resignation, produced by the potent liquor, which would have

been comical to an outsider, but which, to one who had known

the history and relationship of the two speakers, would have

worn a sadder significance. 'I am too big a fool about you to

keep you down as I ought; that's the fault of me, worse luck.'

He pressed the youth's hand with a smile, went forward, and

looked through the hole into the interior of the gymnasium.

Dare withdrew to some little distance, and watched Captain De

Stancy's face, which presently began to assume an expression

of interest.

What was the captain seeing? A sort of optical poem.

Paula, in a pink flannel costume, was bending, wheeling and

undulating in the air like a gold-fish in its globe, sometimes

ascending by her arms nearly to the lantern, then lowering

herself till she swung level with the floor. Her aunt Mrs.

Goodman, and Charlotte De Stancy, were sitting on camp-stools

at one end, watching her gyrations, Paula occasionally

addressing them with such an expression as--'Now, Aunt, look

at me--and you, Charlotte--is not that shocking to your weak

nerves,' when some adroit feat would be repeated, which,

however, seemed to give much more pleasure to Paula herself in

performing it than to Mrs. Goodman in looking on, the latter

sometimes saying, 'O, it is terrific--do not run such a risk

again!'

It would have demanded the poetic passion of some joyous

Elizabethan lyrist like Lodge, Nash, or Constable, to fitly

phrase Paula's presentation of herself at this moment of

absolute abandonment to every muscular whim that could take

possession of such a supple form. The white manilla ropes

clung about the performer like snakes as she took her

exercise, and the colour in her face deepened as she went on.

Captain De Stancy felt that, much as he had seen in early life

of beauty in woman, he had never seen beauty of such a real

and living sort as this. A recollection of his vow, together

with a sense that to gaze on the festival of this Bona Dea

was, though so innocent and pretty a sight, hardly fair or

gentlemanly, would have compelled him to withdraw his eyes,

had not the sportive fascination of her appearance glued them

there in spite of all. And as if to complete the picture of

Grace personified and add the one thing wanting to the charm

which bound him, the clouds, till that time thick in the sky,

broke away from the upper heaven, and allowed the noonday sun

to pour down through the lantern upon her, irradiating her

with a warm light that was incarnadined by her pink doublet

and hose, and reflected in upon her face. She only required a

cloud to rest on instead of the green silk net which actually

supported her reclining figure for the moment, to be quite

Olympian; save indeed that in place of haughty effrontery

there sat on her countenance only the healthful sprightliness

of an English girl.

Dare had withdrawn to a point at which another path crossed

the path occupied by De Stancy. Looking in a side direction,

he saw Havill idling slowly up to him over the silent grass.

Havill's knowledge of the appointment had brought him out to

see what would come of it. When he neared Dare, but was still

partially hidden by the boughs from the third of the party,

the former simply pointed to De Stancy upon which Havill stood

and peeped at him. 'Is she within there?' he inquired.

Dare nodded, and whispered, 'You need not have asked, if you

had examined his face.'

'That's true.'

'A fermentation is beginning in him,' said Dare, half

pitifully; 'a purely chemical process; and when it is complete

he will probably be clear, and fiery, and sparkling, and quite

another man than the good, weak, easy fellow that he was.'

To precisely describe Captain De Stancy's admiration was

impossible. A sun seemed to rise in his face. By watching

him they could almost see the aspect of her within the wall,

so accurately were her changing phases reflected in him. He

seemed to forget that he was not alone.

'And is this,' he murmured, in the manner of one only half

apprehending himself, 'and is this the end of my vow?'

Paula was saying at this moment, 'Ariel sleeps in this

posture, does he not, Auntie?' Suiting the action to the word

she flung out her arms behind her head as she lay in the green

silk hammock, idly closed her pink eyelids, and swung herself

to and fro.