From the opening of the wood they could see Barbara Vane writing at the garden table, which was littered with correspondence, and the butler with his yellow face waiting behind her chair.
As the lengths of grass lessened between them, and the little group at the table grew larger and clearer in the sunlight, Paynter had a painful sense of being part of an embassy of doom.
It sharpened when the girl looked up from the table and smiled on seeing them.
"I should like to speak to you rather particularly if I may," said the lawyer, with a touch of authority in his respect; and when the butler was dismissed he laid open the whole matter before her, speaking sympathetically, but leaving out nothing, from the strange escape of the poet from the wood to the last detail of the dry bones out of the well. No fault could be found with any one of his tones or phrases, and yet Cyprian, tingling in every nerve with the fine delicacy of his nation about the other sex, felt as if she were faced with an inquisitor.
He stood about uneasily, watched the few colored clouds in the clear sky and the bright birds darting about the wood, and he heartily wished himself up the tree again.
Soon, however, the way the girl took it began to move him to perplexity rather than pity. It was like nothing he had expected, and yet he could not name the shade of difference.
The final identification of her father's skull, by the hole in the hat, turned her a little pale, but left her composed; this was, perhaps, explicable, since she had from the first taken the pessimistic view. But during the rest of the tale there rested on her broad brows under her copper coils of hair, a brooding spirit that was itself a mystery.
He could only tell himself that she was less merely receptive, either firmly or weakly, than he would have expected.
It was as if she revolved, not their problem, but her own.
She was silent a long time, and said at last:
"Thank you, Mr. Ashe, I am really very grateful for this. After all, it brings things to the point where they must have come sooner or later."
She looked dreamily at the wood and sea, and went on: "I've not only had myself to consider, you see; but if you're really thinking THAT, it's time I spoke out, without asking anybody. You say, as if it were something very dreadful, 'Mr. Treherne was in the wood that night.'
Well, it's not quite so dreadful to me, you see, because I know he was.
In fact, we were there together."
"Together!" repeated the lawyer.
"We were together," she said quietly, "because we had a right to be together."
"Do you mean," stammered Ashe, surprised out of himself, "that you were engaged?"
"No, no," she said. "We were married."
Then, amid a startled silence, she added, as a kind of afterthought:
"In fact, we are still."
Strong as was his composure, the lawyer sat back in his chair with a sort of solid stupefaction at which Paynter could not help smiling.
"You will ask me, of course," went on Barbara in the same measured manner, "why we should be married secretly, so that even my poor father did not know. Well, I answer you quite frankly to begin with; because, if he had known, he would certainly have cut me off with a shilling. He did not like my husband, and I rather fancy you do not like him either.
And when I tell you this, I know perfectly well what you will say-- the usual adventurer getting hold of the usual heiress.
It is quite reasonable, and, as it happens, it is quite wrong.
If I had deceived my father for the sake of the money, or even for the sake of a man, I should be a little ashamed to talk to you about it. And I think you can see that I am not ashamed."
"Yes," said the American, with a grave inclination, "yes, I can see that."
She looked at him thoughtfully for a moment, as if seeking words for an obscure matter, and then said:
"Do you remember, Mr. Paynter, that day you first lunched here and told us about the African trees? Well, it was my birthday;I mean my first birthday. I was born then, or woke up or something.
I had walked in this garden like a somnambulist in the sun.
I think there are many such somnambulists in our set and our society; stunned with health, drugged with good manners, fitting their surroundings too well to be alive. Well, I came alive somehow; and you know how deep in us are the things we first realize when we were babies and began to take notice. I began to take notice.
One of the first things I noticed was your own story, Mr. Paynter. I feel as if I heard of St. Securis as children hear of Santa Claus, and as if that big tree were a bogey I still believed in. For I do still believe in such things, or rather I believe in them more and more;I feel certain my poor father drove on the rocks by disbelieving, and you are all racing to ruin after him. That is why I do honestly want the estate, and that is why I am not ashamed of wanting it.
I am perfectly certain, Mr. Paynter, that nobody can save this perishing land and this perishing people but those who understand.
I mean who understand a thousand little signs and guides in the very soil and lie of the land, and traces that are almost trampled out.
My husband understands, and I have begun to understand; my father would never have understood. There are powers, there is the spirit of a place, there are presences that are not to be put by.
Oh, don't fancy I am sentimental and hanker after the good old days.
The old days were not all good; that is just the point, and we must understand enough to know the good from the evil.
We must understand enough to save the traces of a saint or a sacred tradition, or, where a wicked god has been worshiped, to destroy his altar and to cut down his grove."
"His grove," said Paynter automatically, and looked toward the little wood, where the sunbright birds were flying.
"Mrs. Treherne," said Ashe, with a formidable quietness, "I am not so unsympathetic with all this as you may perhaps suppose.
I will not even say it is all moonshine, for it is something better.
