It was a time of wonderful discoveries for Howard, that month spent in the little house under the cliff and beside the cove. It was a tiny hamlet with half a dozen fishermen's cottages and two or three larger houses, holiday-dwellings for rich people; but there was no one living there, except a family of children with a governess. The house they were in belonged to an artist, and had a big studio in which they mostly sate. An elderly woman and her niece were the servants, and the life was the simplest that could be imagined. Howard felt as if he would have liked it prolonged for ever. They brought a few books with them, but did little else except ramble through the long afternoons in the silent bays. It was warm, bright September weather, still and hazy; and the sight of the dim golden-brown promontories, with pale-green grass at the top, stretching out one beyond another into the distance, became for Howard a symbol of all that was most wonderful and perfect in life.
He could not cease to marvel at the fact that this beautiful young creature, full of tenderness and anxious care for others, and with love the one pre-occupation of her life, should yield herself thus to him with such an entire and happy abandonment. Maud seemed for the time to have no will of her own, no thought except to please him; he could not get her to express a single preference, and her guileless diplomacy to discover what he preferred amused and delighted him. At the same time the exploration of Maud's mind and thought was an entire surprise to him—there was so much she did not know, so many things in the world, which he took for granted, of which she had never heard; and yet in many ways he discovered that she knew and perceived far more than he did. Her judgment of people was penetrating and incisive, and was formed quite instinctively, without any apparent reason; she had, too, a charming gift of humour, and her affection for her own circle did not in the least prevent her from perceiving their absurdities. She was not all loyalty and devotion, nor did she pretend to be interested in things for which she did not care. There were many conventions, which Howard for the first time discovered that he himself unconsciously held, which Maud did not think in the least important. Howard began to see that he himself had really been a somewhat conventional person, with a respect for success and position and dignity and influence. He saw that his own chief motive had been never to do anything disagreeable or unreasonable or original or decisive; he began to see that his unconscious aim had been to fit himself without self-assertion into his circle, and to make himself unobtrusively necessary to people. Maud had no touch of this in her nature at all; her only ambition seemed to be to be loved, which was accompanied by what seemed to Howard a marvellous incapacity for being shocked by anything; she was wholly innocent and ingenuous, but yet he found to his surprise that she knew something of the dark corners of life, and the moral problems of village life were a matter of course to her. He had naturally supposed that a girl would have been fenced round by illusions; but it was not so. She had seen and observed and drawn her conclusions. She thought very little of what one commonly called sins, and her indignation seemed aroused by nothing but cruelty and treachery. It became clear to Howard that Mr. Sandys and Mrs. Graves had been very wise in the matter, and that Maud had not been brought up in any silly ignorance of human frailty. Her religion was equally a surprise to him. He had thought that a girl brought up as Maud had been would be sure to hold a tissue of accepted beliefs which he must be careful not to disturb. But here again she seemed to have little but a few fine principles, set in a simple Christian framework. They were talking about this one day, and Maud laughed at something he said.
"You need not be so cautious," she said, "though I like you to be cautious—you are afraid of hurting me; but you won't do that! Cousin Anne taught me long ago that it was no use believing anything unless you understood more or less where it was leading you. It's no good pretending to know. Cousin Anne once said to me that one had to choose between science and superstition. I don't know anything about science, but I'm not superstitious."
"Yes," said Howard, "I see—I won't be fussy any more; I will just speak as I think. You are wiser than the aged, child! You will have to help me out. I am a mass of crusted prejudices, I find; but you are melting them all away. What beats me is how you found it all out."
Thus the hours they spent together became to Howard not only a source of joy, but an extraordinary simplification of everything. Maud seemed to have lived an absolutely uncalculating life, without any idea of making any position for herself at all; and it sickened Howard to think how so much of his own existence had been devoted to getting on the right side of people, driving them on a light rein, keeping them deftly in his own control. Maud laughed at this description of himself, and said, "Yes, but of course that was your business. I should have been a very tiresome kind of Don; we don't either of us want to punish people, but I want to alter them. I can't bear stupid people, I think. I had rather people were clever and unsatisfactory than dull and good. If they are dull there's no reason for their being good. I like people to have reasons!"
They talked—how often they did that!—about the complications that had beset them.
"The one thing I can't make out," said Maud, "is how or why you ever thought I cared for that little boy. He was such a nice boy; but he had no reasons. Oh, dear, how wretched he made me!"
"Well," said Howard, "I must ask you this—what did really happen on that awful afternoon at the Folly?"
Maud covered her face with her hands. "It was too dreadful!" she said. "First of all, you were looking like Hamlet—you don't know how romantic you looked! I did really believe that you cared for me then—I couldn't help it—but there was some veil between us; and the number of times I telegraphed from my brain to you that day, 'Can't you understand?' was beyond counting. I suppose it was very unmaidenly, but I was past that. Then there was that horrible imitation; such a disgusting parody! and then I was prouder of you than ever, because you really took it so well. I was too angry after that for anything, and when you went off with father, and Monica sketched and Jack lay down and smoked, Freddy Guthrie walked off with me, and I said to him, 'I really cannot think how you dared to do that—I think it was simply shameful!' Well, he got quite white, and he did not attempt to excuse himself; and I believe I said that if he did not put it straight with you, I would never speak to him again: and then I rather repented; and then he began making love to me, and said the sort of things people say in books. Howard, I believe that people really do talk like books when they get excited—at all events it was like a bad novel! But I was very stern—I can be very stern when I am angry—and said I would not hear another word, and would go straight back if he said any more; and then he said something about wanting to be friends, and wanting to have some hope; and then I got suddenly sorry about it all—it seemed such a waste of time—and shook hands with him, feeling as if I was acting in an absurd play, and said that of course we were friends; and I think I insisted again on his apologising to you, and he said that I seemed to care more for your peace of mind than his; and I simply walked away and he followed, and I shouldn't be surprised if he was crying; it was all like a nightmare; but I did somehow contrive to make it up with him later, and told him that I thought him a very nice boy indeed."
"I daresay that was a great comfort to him," said Howard.
"I meant it to be," said Maud, "but I did not feel I could go on acting in a sort of melodrama."
"Now, I am very inquisitive," said Howard, "and you needn't answer me if you don't like—but that day that I met you going away from Aunt Anne—oh, what a pig I was! I was at the top of my highminded game—what had happened then?"
"Of course I will tell you," said Maud, "if you want to know. Well, I rather broke down, and said that things had gone wrong; that you had begun by being so nice to me, and we seemed to have made friends; and that then a cloud had come between us: and then Cousin Anne said it would be all right, she KNEW; and she said some things about you I won't repeat, to save your modesty; and then she said, 'Don't be AFRAID, Maud! don't be ashamed of caring for people! Howard is used to making friends with boys, and he is puzzled by you; he wants a friend like you, but he is afraid of caring for people. You are not afraid of him nor he of you, but he is afraid of his own fear.' She did not seem to know how I cared, but she put it all right somehow; she prayed with me, for courage and patience; and I felt I could afford to wait and see what happened."
"And then?" said Howard.
"Why, you know the rest!" said Maud. "I saw as we sate by the wall, in a flash, that you did indeed care for me, and I thought to myself, 'Here is the best thing in the world, and we can't be going to miss it out of politeness;' and then it was all over in a moment!"
"Politeness!" said Howard, "yes, it was all politeness; that's my greatest sin. Yes," he added, "I do thank God with all my heart for your sweet courage that day!" He drew Maud's hand into his own, as they sate together on the grass just above the shingle of the little bay, where the sea broke on the sands with crisp wavelets, and ran like a fine sheet of glass over the beach. "Look at this little hand," he said, "and let me try to believe that it is given me of its own will and desire!"
"Yes," said Maud, smiling, "and you may cut it off at the wrist if you like—I won't even wince. I have no further use for it, I believe!" Howard folded it to his heart, and felt the little pulse beat in the slender wrist; and presently the sun went down, a ball of fire into the opalescent sea-line.
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