"And if I got to know more poetry I might be able to help Owen with his articles," she said, smiling happily, rea.s.sured by his friendly counsel.

"Of course they were quite right--I _am_ stupid and ignorant, but if I work hard I think I ought to be able to make myself useful to Owen, oughtn't I, Mr. Herrick?"

"Don't work too hard," he said, half jesting, half in earnest. "You don't want to turn yourself into a blue-stocking, do you? Don't over-develop your brain at the expense of your heart and soul, as so many learned women have done--to their ultimate despair."

"There's no fear of that." Toni spoke in a low voice, and again he caught a glimpse of something disconcerting in her clear eyes. "Those women said I _had_ no soul. But that's nonsense, because everyone has a soul."

"But not everyone realizes it," he said. "Some people go through life and never know they have more than a body, which claims attention while the soul waits, yearningly, for recognition."

He had spoken half to himself, his thoughts wandering for a moment from the girl beside him to another girl whose soul had been, to him at least, as a sealed book.

"I have been like that," said Toni surprisingly. "But I have a soul--and for Owen's sake I am going to prove it. Only"--she faltered find her brave accents died away--"perhaps it is too late, after all."

And though, when he left her at her own door, refusing her invitation to enter, she had regained much of her usual manner, her last words haunted Herrick all through the long, lonely evening.

He knew quite well that there was a good deal of truth in the accusation brought against the shrinking Toni. Although he lived a solitary life, it was impossible altogether to avoid contact with one's neighbours along the river; and he had heard sundry bits of conversation concerning Toni which went to prove that Owen Rose's choice of a wife was freely criticized in the neighbourhood. People agreed that she was certainly surprisingly pretty, but she did not belong to the cla.s.s which filled all the big houses round about. The charitable said she was shy, the malicious called her _gauche_, without perhaps knowing exactly what they meant; and everyone who had talked to her a.s.serted that she had no conversation, and did not appear in the least a suitable wife for a clever man like Mr. Rose.

"Poor little girl!" Herrick rose from his seat with a sigh at the end of the long, dreary evening. "I'm sorry for her--like the little mermaiden of Hans Andersen, she is ready--now--to dance upon knives for the possession of a soul! Well, she'll win her soul all right, but G.o.d grant the winning of it doesn't end in tragedy!"

He stood for a moment gazing into vacancy with a half-tender, half-cynical smile on his lips. Then he extinguished the lamp, called Olga from her resting-place on the old divan, and went slowly to bed.

CHAPTER XV

Herrick duly sent Toni a list of such books as he thought suitable for her purpose; and then began for Toni a succession of long and, if the truth be told, tedious days spent, in Owen's absence, in the quiet, stately library, while the August sunshine streamed in through the big mullioned windows, and turned the books, in their many-hued bindings, into pools of rich, dim colour, lighted here and there with the flash of gold, the gleam of purple and scarlet.

Toni used to wish, half-rebelliously, that the sun would not shine in so gloriously, turning the polished floor into a golden sea, and bathing her, as she sat at the table, in a flood of dancing sunbeams.

It was so hard to sit there reading, trying in vain to dig out the heart of some book of old stories, sagas and the like, or struggling helplessly to understand a poem written in lovely but surely incomprehensible metaphors, and full of words which, though she realized their beauty, still conveyed little to her intelligence.

Herrick had perhaps slightly over-estimated her powers. He had never before come in contact with quite such an undeveloped mind. His own married life had been too short for him to grasp fully the characteristics of his wife, and although in some respects she had not been unlike Toni, she had been differently educated. Her mind had perhaps little depth, but she was quick and versatile; and owing to her surroundings she had been able, always, to adopt the shibboleth of the social set to which she belonged by right of birth.

So it was that Herrick, with all his sympathy, all his intuition, failed to plumb the shallows of Toni's mind. He gave her Rossetti when he should have given her Ella Wheeler Wilc.o.x; and George Eliot when he should have introduced her to Jane Austen and her gentle sister, Miss Burney. The "Idylls of the King," clothed in Tennyson's poetic garments, would have won her interest--instead he advised her to read Malory, and read him she obediently did, until her brain ached with the clash of swords, and her eyes were wearied with the glitter of the dragons'

scales or the silver mail of the knights who fought to the death for the damsels they served.

Knowing her love of outdoor life, he sent her to Borrow, but even "Lavengro" failed to charm the lonely student, to whom the sun, the moon, the stars were all "sweet things" indeed, when no printed page intervened between her and their sweetness.

It was weary work, toiling there day after day, while the river flashed and gleamed in the sunlight, and Jock ran barking hither and thither under the windows, as though imploring her to leave those musty haunts and come to chase the elusive yellow sunbeams on the lawn.

At first she had been used to take the big, high-backed chair at the head of the table, and spreading out her books, refuse to cast so much as a look at the sunny world without; but after four or five mornings so spent she gave in suddenly and betook herself to the little table in the window, where from her seat she could watch the tall white lilies swaying in the breeze, or catch the fragrance of the mauve and scarlet sweet-peas which climbed their hedge just out of sight.

It was weary work, and Toni's eyes and head ached when the luncheon-bell rang to set her free from her self-imposed task; but she did not give in, and after her hasty meal she would return to the library and struggle till tea-time with half a dozen French exercises, which by the aid of a key she sternly corrected when finished.

When Owen arrived home, shortly before dinner, Toni was worn out with the combined effects of her mental exertions and her lack of fresh air; but Owen, who was turning over in his mind the material for a novel, was not in a mood to notice her unwonted silence, and was relieved when, after dinner, she went early to bed and set him free to spend the evening in his sanctum, making notes and generally planning out the book he felt he could write.

To the novelist there comes, at the inception of a book, a period in which the things and people around him recede into the background before the people and things he seeks to create; and it is scarcely to be wondered at if at these times the writer's vision, which is turned, so to speak, inward, fails to realize the significance of the scenes being enacted beneath his mortal eyes.

And it was so with Owen. During that strenuous fortnight of Toni's laborious study, Owen was so fully occupied with the visions of his brain that he had little time to spare for the flesh and blood inmate of his home; and though he was always kind to Toni, he did not notice that the laughter was absent from her lips, the joyful light of happiness quenched in her eyes.

The idea of his book was beginning to absorb him very thoroughly.

Hitherto he had never had the time to devote to purely imaginative work; but now that the _Bridge_ was going ahead and his series of articles for outside papers was finished, he felt the call of fiction very strongly.

His story was concerned with the conflict between East and West, with the life of an Indian prince who, after his English education, was called upon to rule his dead father's kingdom; and Owen's impressions of India, gathered during a stay of some months in that magic land, formed a brilliant setting for the half-political, half-romantic story he had to tell.

Barry, who was, of course, in the secret, was intensely interested in this new departure; and had no doubt whatever as to the certainty of Owen's success. Indeed Owen himself was surprised at the ease with which he did work he felt to be good. By nature a critic, he would have been the first to detect signs of carelessness, of over-fluency even in his own writing; but the narrative, with its felicitous turns of expression, its lucid, clear-cut phrases, slipped naturally from his pen; and he felt to the full the truth of Stevenson's couplet:

"Bright is the ring of words When the right man rings them."

One afternoon Owen invited Barry to motor down and dine with them at Greenriver; and Barry accepted the invitation with alacrity, for he had not seen Toni for some weeks and was anxious to know how life was treating her.

He hurried over his work for the afternoon, and Miss Loder, the secretary whose services he and Owen shared in common, was secretly surprised, not to say shocked, by his flippant behaviour over a monograph supplied by a valued contributor.

"It's a bit stodgy, eh, Miss Loder? You can feel the ecclesiastical hand upon the pen-holder, can't you?"

Miss Loder was the daughter of a clergyman, whose large family had all been educated with a view to doing some sort of work in the world, and as was only natural she resented the implied censure on the Church.

"If purity of English and clarity of thought are stodgy, Mr. Raymond, I suppose you are right. But what a treat this is after the article of young Bright's! That was hardly in keeping with the tone of the _Bridge_, if you like!"

"Young Bright's article--why, Miss Loder, it was a gem! It was whimsical in tone, I grant you, perhaps here and there a trifle frivolous, but it was splendid in its way. It simply sparkled with wit and a kind of delicate satire."

"You thought so? I'm afraid I didn't." Miss Loder, who at Cambridge had been known as an excellent debater, closed the subject by her tone; and Barry smiled quietly at her self-sufficiency.

Truth to tell, he had never much liked Miss Loder. While admitting her absolute competency for the post--for she was in her way a brilliant young woman--he found her unsympathetic, narrow-minded, wedded to her own standards of thought and behaviour; and he was wont to a.s.sert that her clear grey eye struck terror to his soul.

Miss Loder had been intended for a scholastic career: but although she had pa.s.sed through her College life with distinction, she found that after all teaching was not her vocation.

She was absolutely devoid of patience, and wanting in the tact, the kindly firmness, the warm sympathy, which go to equip the perfect teacher; and although she might have a subject at her very finger-tips, so to speak, she found it almost impossible to hand on her knowledge so that her cla.s.s might share it with her.

Once she realized the fact, Miss Loder very wisely withdrew from the field in which she was unable to shine; and since the death of her father had rendered it imperative that she find some remunerative work without delay, she was glad to accept the post which Owen offered her through a mutual friend.

Having once intended to take up journalism, she was conversant with the mysteries of typewriting and shorthand, and her excellent cla.s.sical education rendered her particularly fitted for the post of secretary to the editor of the _Bridge_ and his coadjutor, Barry Raymond. Her own literary taste was admirable, if a trifle academic; and Owen found her a really useful person with whom to discuss the various departments of his beloved review.

In appearance, Miss Loder was of middle height, with good features, grey eyes of an almost disconcerting frankness, and fair hair which she parted on her forehead and coiled neatly round her head. She was twenty-nine years of age, but looked younger; and she generally wore a well-cut grey skirt and severely plain white shirt, which somehow suited her rather boyish appearance.

At five o'clock on this particular afternoon Barry bade her good-day, and joined Owen in the street outside the office, where the big motor stood throbbing impatiently beneath its owner's hand.

"Jump in, Barry. If we have a good run we might take Toni on the river for an hour. Poor little girl, I'm afraid I've rather neglected her lately."

Barry took his seat, and under Owen's skilful guidance they were soon out of the City tumult, speeding smoothly away in the direction of Richmond.

It was just beyond Staines that the accident happened.

Through no fault of his own Owen collided with a badly-steered motor negotiating a sharp bend; and though no one else was injured it was discovered, after all was over, that Owen had sustained a fracture of the right arm.