XVI

At her cottage Olive stood often by the river.

What lay beneath all that bright water—­what strange, deep, swaying, life so far below the ruffling of wind, and the shadows of the willow trees?  Was love down there, too?  Love between sentient things, where it was almost dark; or had all passion climbed up to rustle with the reeds, and float with the water-flowers in the sunlight?  Was there colour?  Or had colour been drowned?  No scent and no music; but movement there would be, for all the dim groping things bending one way to the current—­movement, no less than in the aspen-leaves, never quite still, and the winged droves of the clouds.  And if it were dark down there, it was dark, too, above the water; and hearts ached, and eyes just as much searched for that which did not come.

To watch it always flowing by to the sea; never looking back, never swaying this way or that; drifting along, quiet as Fate—­dark, or glamorous with the gold and moonlight of these beautiful days and nights, when every flower in her garden, in the fields, and along the river banks, was full of sweet life; when dog-roses starred the lanes, and in the wood the bracken was nearly a foot high.

She was not alone there, though she would much rather have been; two days after she left London her Uncle and Aunt had joined her.  It was from Cramier they had received their invitation.  He himself had not yet been down.

Every night, having parted from Mrs. Ercott and gone up the wide shallow stairs to her room, she would sit down at the window to write to Lennan, one candle beside her—­one pale flame for comrade, as it might be his spirit.  Every evening she poured out to him her thoughts, and ended always:  “Have patience!” She was still waiting for courage to pass that dark hedge of impalpable doubts and fears and scruples, of a dread that she could not make articulate even to herself.  Having finished, she would lean out into the night.  The Colonel, his black figure cloaked against the dew, would be pacing up and down the lawn, with his good-night cigar, whose fiery spark she could just discern; and, beyond, her ghostly dove-house; and, beyond, the river—­flowing.  Then she would clasp herself close—­afraid to stretch out her arms, lest she should be seen.

Each morning she rose early, dressed, and slipped away to the village to post her letter.  From the woods across the river wild pigeons would be calling—­as though Love itself pleaded with her afresh each day.  She was back well before breakfast, to go up to her room and come down again as if for the first time.  The Colonel, meeting her on the stairs, or in the hall, would say:  “Ah, my dear! just beaten you!  Slept well?” And, while her lips touched his cheek, slanted at the proper angle for uncles, he never dreamed that she had been three miles already through the dew.