They were riding along the top of
the South Downs between Singleton and Arundel, and
when they came to where the old Roman road from Chichester
climbs over Bignor Hill, Stella Derrick raised her
hand and halted. She was then nineteen and accounted
lovely by others besides Henry Thresk, who on this
morning rode at her side. She was delicately yet
healthfully fashioned, with blue eyes under broad
brows, raven hair and a face pale and crystal-clear.
But her lips were red and the colour came easily into
her cheeks.
She pointed downwards to the track
slanting across the turf from the brow of the hill.
“That’s Stane Street. I promised
to show it you.”
“Yes,” answered Thresk,
taking his eyes slowly from her face. It was a
morning rich with sunlight, noisy with blackbirds,
and she seemed to him a necessary part of it.
She was alive with it and gave rather than took of
its gold. For not even that finely chiselled nose
of hers could impart to her anything of the look of
a statue.
“Yes. They went straight,
didn’t they, those old centurions?”
he said.
He moved his horse and stood in the
middle of the track looking across a valley of forest
and meadow to Halnaker Down, six miles away in the
southwest. Straight in the line of his eyes over
a shoulder of the down rose a tall fine spire the
spire of Chichester Cathedral, and farther on he could
see the water in Bosham Creek like a silver mirror,
and the Channel rippling silver beyond. He turned
round. Beneath him lay the blue dark weald of
Sussex, and through it he imagined the hidden line
of the road driving straight as a ruler to London.
“No going about!” he said.
“If a hill was in the way the road climbed over
it; if a marsh it was built through it.”
They rode on slowly along the great
whaleback of grass, winding in and out amongst brambles
and patches of yellow-flaming gorse. The day was
still even at this height; and when, far away, a field
of long grass under a stray wind bent from edge to
edge with the swift motion of running water, it took
them both by surprise. And they met no one.
They seemed to ride in the morning of a new clean
world. They rose higher on to Duncton Down, and
then the girl spoke.
“So this is your last day here.”
He gazed about him out towards the
sea, eastwards down the slope to the dark trees of
Arundel, backwards over the weald to the high ridge
of Blackdown.
“I shall look back upon it.”
“Yes,” she said. “It’s
a day to look back upon.”
She ran over in her mind the days
of this last month since he had come to the inn at
Great Beeding and friends of her family had written
to her parents of his coming. “It’s
the most perfect of all your days here. I am
glad. I want you to carry back with you good memories
of our Sussex.”
“I shall do that,” said he, “but
for another reason.”
Stella pushed on a foot or two ahead of him.
“Well,” she said, “no doubt the
Temple will be stuffy.”
“Nor was I thinking of the Temple.”
“No?”
“No.”
She rode on a little way whilst he
followed. A great bee buzzed past their heads
and settled in the cup of a wild rose. In a copse
beside them a thrush shot into the air a quiverful
of clear melody.
Stella spoke again, not looking at
her companion, and in a low voice and bravely with
a sweet confusion of her blood.
“I am very glad to hear you
say that, for I was afraid that I had let you see
more than I should have cared for you to see unless
you had been anxious to see it too.”
She waited for an answer, still keeping
her distance just a foot or two ahead, and the answer
did not come. A vague terror began to possess
her that things which could never possibly be were
actually happening to her. She spoke again with
a tremor in her voice and all the confidence gone
out of it. Almost it appealed that she should
not be put to shame before herself.
“It would have been a little
humiliating to remember, if that had been true.”
Then upon the ground she saw the shadow
of Thresk’s horse creep up until the two rode
side by side. She looked at him quickly with a
doubtful wavering smile and looked down again.
What did all the trouble in his face portend?
Her heart thumped and she heard him say:
“Stella, I have something very difficult to
say to you.”
He laid a hand gently upon her arm,
but she wrenched herself free. Shame was upon
her shame unendurable. She tingled
with it from head to foot. She turned to him
suddenly a face grown crimson and eyes which brimmed
with tears.
“Oh,” she cried aloud,
“that I should have been such a fool!”
and she swayed forward in her saddle. But before
he could reach out an arm to hold her she was upright
again, and with a cut of her whip she was off at a
gallop.
“Stella,” he cried, but
she only used her whip the more. She galloped
madly and blindly over the grass, not knowing whither,
not caring, loathing herself. Thresk galloped
after her, but her horse, maddened by her whip and
the thud of the hoofs behind, held its advantage.
He settled down to the pursuit with a jumble of thoughts
in his brain.
“If to-day were only ten years
on ... As it is it would be madness ... madness
and squalor and the end of everything ... Between
us we haven’t a couple of pennies to rub together
... How she rides! ... She was never meant
for Brixton ... No, nor I ... Why didn’t
I hold my tongue? ... Oh what a fool, what a
fool! Thank Heaven the horses come out of a livery
stable ... They can’t go on for ever and oh,
my God! there are rabbit-holes on the Downs.”
And his voice rose to a shout: “Stella!
Stella!”
But she never looked over her shoulder.
She fled the more desperately, shamed through and
through! Along the high ridge, between the bushes
and the beech-trees, their shadows flitted over the
turf, to a jingle of bits and the thunder of hoofs.
Duncton Beacon rose far behind them; they had crossed
the road and Charlton forest was slipping past like
dark water before the mad race came to an end.
Stella became aware that escape was impossible.
Her horse was spent, she herself reeling. She
let her reins drop loose and the gallop changed to
a trot, the trot to a walk. She noticed with
gratitude that Thresk was giving her time. He
too had fallen to a walk behind her, and quite slowly
he came to her side. She turned to him at once.
“This is good country for a gallop, isn’t
it?”
“Rabbit-holes though,” said he. “You
were lucky.”
He answered absently. There was
something which had got to be said now. He could
not let this girl to whom he owed well,
the only holiday that he had ever taken, go home shamed
by a mistake, which after all she had not made.
He was very near indeed to saying yet more. The
inclination was strong in him, but not so strong as
the methods of his life. Marriage now that
meant to his view the closing of all the avenues of
advancement, and a life for both below both their needs.
“Stella, just listen to me.
I want you to know that had things been different
I should have rejoiced beyond words.”
“Oh, don’t!” she cried.
“I must,” he answered
and she was silent. “I want you to know,”
he repeated, stammering and stumbling, afraid lest
each word meant to heal should only pierce the deeper.
“Before I came here there was no one. Since
I came here there has been you. Oh,
my dear, I would have been very glad. But I am
obscure without means. There are years
in front of me before I shall be anything else.
I couldn’t ask you to share them or
I should have done so before now.”
In her mind ran the thought:
what queer unimportant things men think about!
The early years! Wouldn’t their difficulties,
their sorrows be the real savour of life and make
it worth remembrance, worth treasuring? But men
had the right of speech. Not again would she forget
that. She bowed her head and he blundered on.
“For you there’ll be a
better destiny. There’s that great house
in the Park with its burnt walls. I should like
to see that rebuilt and you in your right place, its
mistress.” And his words ceased as Stella
abruptly turned to him. She was breathing quickly
and she looked at him with a wonder in her trouble.
“And it hurts you to say this!”
she said. “Yes, it actually hurts you.”
“What else could I say?”
Her face softened as she looked and
heard. It was not that he was cold of blood or
did not care. There was more than discomfort in
his voice, there was a very real distress. And
in his eyes his heart ached for her to see. Something
of her pride was restored to her. She fell at
once to his tune, but she was conscious that both
of them talked treacheries.
“Yes, you are right. It
wouldn’t have been possible. You have your
name and your fortune to make. I too I
shall marry, I suppose, some one” and
she suddenly smiled rather bitterly “who
will give me a Rolls-Royce motor-car.”
And so they rode on very reasonably.
Noon had passed. A hush had fallen
upon that high world of grass and sunlight. The
birds were still. They talked of this and that,
the latest crisis in Europe and the growth of Socialism,
all very wisely and with great indifference like well-bred
people at a dinner-party. Not thus had Stella
thought to ride home when the message had come that
morning that the horses would be at her door before
ten. She had ridden out clothed on with dreams
of gold. She rode back with her dreams in tatters
and a sort of incredulity that to her too, as to other
girls, all this pain had come.
They came to a bridle-path which led
downwards through a thicket of trees to the weald
and so descended upon Great Beeding. They rode
through the little town, past the inn where Thresk
was staying and the iron gates of a Park where, amidst
elm-trees, the blackened ruins of a great house gaped
to the sky.
“Some day you will live there
again,” said Thresk, and Stella’s lips
twitched with a smile of humour.
“I shall be very glad after
to-day to leave the house I am living in,” she
said quietly, and the words struck him dumb. He
had subtlety enough to understand her. The rooms
would mock her with memories of vain dreams.
Yet he kept silence. It was too late in any case
to take back what he had said; and even if she would
listen to him marriage wouldn’t be fair.
He would be hampered, and that, just at this time
in his life, would mean failure failure
for her no less than for him. They must be prudent prudent
and methodical, and so the great prizes would be theirs.
A mile beyond, a mile of yellow lanes
between high hedges, they came to the village of Little
Beeding, one big house and a few thatched cottages
clustered amongst roses and great trees on the bank
of a small river. Thither old Mr. Derrick and
his wife and his daughter had gone after the fire
at Hinksey Park had completed the ruin which disastrous
speculations had begun; and at the gate of one of
the cottages the riders stopped and dismounted.
“I shall not see you again after
to-day,” said Stella. “Will you come
in for a moment?”
Thresk gave the horses to a passing
labourer to hold and opened the gate.
“I shall be disturbing your
people at their luncheon,” he said.
“I don’t want you to go
in to them,” said the girl. “I will
say goodbye to them for you.”
Thresk followed her up the garden-path,
wondering what it was that she had still to say to
him. She led him into a small room at the back
of the house, looking out upon the lawn. Then
she stood in front of him.
“Will you kiss me once, please,”
she said simply, and she stood with her arms hanging
at her side, whilst he kissed her on the lips.
“Thank you,” she said. “Now
will you go?”
He left her standing in the little
room and led the horses back to the inn. That
afternoon he took the train to London.