Gabrielle left them and he prepared to hear her story. She was very agitated, and found it difficult to express herself. For a little time, in spite of Considine's encouragements, she beat about the bush.

She felt that her revelation would amount to a criticism of Considine's management.

At last, realising that she was getting no further, she produced her doc.u.ments and handed them to him.

Considine examined them slowly and judicially without a flicker of emotion. It seemed to Mrs. Payne a very solemn moment, full of awful possibilities. She waited breathlessly for his verdict.

"Well?" he said at last, putting the papers aside.

"Arthur wrote them."

"Yes.... I recognised his writing."

"He is in love with some woman."

"Presumably ... yes. But I'm not so sure of that."

"What do you mean?" She gasped at the prospect of relief.

He explained to her at length. It was a very common thing for boys of Arthur's age, he said, to write verse.

"Verses of that kind?"

Yes... even verses of that kind. To be perfectly candid he himself, when a boy in his teens, had done very much the same sort of thing. It was true perhaps that the verses which he had written had not been quite so ... perhaps frank was the best word. On the other hand his own development had followed more normal lines. He hadn't, in the manner of Arthur, burst suddenly into blossom. All boys wrote verses.

Often they wrote verses of an amatory character, not particularly because they happened to be in love, but because the bulk of English lyrical poetry, to which they went for their models, was, regrettably, of an amatory character. At this stage in a boy's development, even in the development of the greatest poets (and Arthur, he noticed in pa.s.sing, did not show any signs of amazing genius) the verses were usually imitative. It rather looked as if he had been reading Herrick, or possibly the Shakespeare sonnets ... the dark lady, you know.

Seriously, he didn't think there was anything to worry about. He folded the papers and handed them back to her.

For once in a way Considine didn't satisfy her. There were other things, she said. Things that she hadn't attached any value to at the time when they happened, but which now seemed significant. When she came to think of it Arthur's whole behaviour during the holidays had been that of a youth who was in love. With all deference to Dr.

Considine she felt that she couldn't pa.s.s the matter over. It was her plain duty to enquire into it, and find, if possible, a more obvious reason for this strange and sudden outburst.

Considine agreed that no harm could be done by a little quiet investigation. At the same time he couldn't possibly see what opportunities Arthur could have had for falling in love at Lapton.

"We're very isolated here," he said. "The Manor is a kingdom in itself. It seems to me that circ.u.mstances would force him to invent an ideal for the want of any living model."

She shook her head. There was no isolation, she said, into which love could not enter; and this, in the face of cla.s.sical precedent, Considine was forced to admit. Could she, then, make any suggestions?

Mrs. Payne said, "Servants," and blushed.

Considine also blushed, but with irritation. The suggestion brought the matter uncomfortably near home.

"I think you can put that out of your mind," he said. "I'll admit that I did not consider this point when I engaged them, but I do not think you'll find any one peculiarly attractive among them."

"They're women," said Mrs. Payne obstinately.

It seemed to her that Considine's incredulity was forcing them both into a blind alley.

"If you don't mind," she said, "I think it would be better for me to talk the matter over with your wife. A woman, if you'll allow me to say so, is much more acutely sensitive to ... this kind of thing."

Again Considine blushed. The prospect of engaging Gabrielle in the matter was altogether against his principles. He had always made it a rule that her essential femininity should not be compromised by any contact with the business of the school. He did not even like her to take an intimate share in the management of the house. After all she was a Hewish and a cousin of the august Halbertons. That was why he had employed Mrs. Bemerton as housekeeper.

"I shall be obliged," he said, "if you don't mention a matter that may possibly become unsavoury, to Mrs. Considine. She knows nothing of the servants, and I prefer her to take no part in the affairs of my pupils."

Altogether the good woman felt that she had been snubbed for her pains.

She had expected a great deal from Considine, and even more from Gabrielle. Still, if Considine objected to his wife being consulted, she was prepared to accept his decision. The only course that remained open to her was to make enquiries for herself, and determine, by observation, what women were possibly available for the disposal of Arthur's affections.

"Very well," she said with a sigh. "If you don't wish me to speak to your wife, of course I won't."

"If you'll pardon my saying so, I think you're unduly anxious. After all, the most obvious thing is to ask Arthur himself. Why not do that?"

She hesitated and then spoke the truth.

"I'm afraid he'd tell me a lie. I don't want him to do that ... now.

I'd much rather find out for myself. I wish I could believe you. I do indeed."

She paused for a moment and then said, almost as if she were speaking to herself, "There's no place where there aren't opportunities.

Farmer's daughters ... village girls. There are more women in the world than there are men."

He couldn't help smiling at the mathematical accuracy of her remark, but once more he shook his head.

"At any rate," she said, returning to the practical aspect of the case, "I suppose you've no objection to my staying here for a day or two, and keeping my eyes open. Failing anything else I will speak to Arthur about it."

"Please consider the house your own," said Considine, who had now recovered his usual politeness.

"Thank you," she said. "You're very kind. But you know how grateful I am to you already."

Mrs. Considine returned, and a little later showed her to her room. In the candle-light of the pa.s.sage Mrs. Payne was a.s.sailed by an overwhelming desire to break her promise and disclose her troubles to Gabrielle. She felt that her quest was so lonely. Gabrielle seemed to her sympathetic and she knew that it would be a great relief to her to discuss the affair with another woman. As they paused at her bedroom door, her old attraction towards Mrs. Considine that had once culminated in an impulsive kiss took hold of her again. She wanted, for some obscure reason, to kiss Gabrielle once more. Perhaps there was something in the attraction of her opposite physical type that accounted for this impulse as well as for Arthur's infatuation. For the present she suppressed her inclination. After all Considine had acted fairly enough with her, and she felt that she could not fail him in a point of honour.

Alone in her room she read over Arthur's poems again. Now that she was so near to him they impressed her less with a sense of fear and anxiety than with one of pity and of love. He was her child, and therefore to be protected and caressed. She found it difficult not to leave her room in the night, and grope her way along the creaking corridors to the room in which she knew he was sleeping. She wanted to kiss him and hold him in her arms. She placed the poems on the table at her bedside and blew out the candle. It was unfortunate for her bewilderment that Arthur had not left in his notebook the rough copy of the verses that he had sent to Gabrielle with the box of cowslips, the verses to which she had not dared to reply.

Next morning at breakfast Arthur and his mother met. All through the holidays she had been indefinitely conscious of an awkwardness between them; now, with so much guilty knowledge in her mind, the relation became definitely embarra.s.sing. She wondered if he felt it as deeply as she did. Certainly he showed no sign of any emotion but surprise at her visit.

"But if you came last night, why on earth didn't you come along to my room?" he said. "And why are you so mysterious? What's it all about?"

She put him off as well as she could. "I wanted to see you, that was all," she said. "I thought you would be pleased by the surprise," and then: "You don't seem very pleased."

"Of course I'm pleased," he said, blushing. "But I don't understand it."

Whatever he said she knew in her heart that she wasn't wanted. It was a bitter thing to realise, but it made her more than ever certain that there was a secret to be disclosed.

After breakfast the Sunday morning routine of a country house began.

She and Arthur walked together over the fields to church. The whole country breathed a lazy atmosphere of early summer. Its beauty and its placidity mocked her. Before them went the Considines. He wore a long ca.s.sock that swept the gra.s.s, as they went, while Gabrielle walked in silence at his side. Never once in their journey did she look back.

It struck Mrs. Payne for the first time how young she was, how very much younger and more supple than her husband. And yet they seemed to be happy.

The service was the usual slow ceremony of a village church, Considine moving with the dignity of his vestments from the lectern and the altar to the organ seat which he also occupied. Arthur, standing or kneeling at his mother's side, appeared to be properly engrossed in the service.

Singing the psalms beside him she became aware how much of a man he was now, for his voice, that had been cracking for several years, had now sunk to a deep and sonorous ba.s.s.

It was not until Considine ascended the pulpit and began to preach, that Mrs. Payne became conscious of anything extraordinary. At first she was held by the sermon, which was unusually well constructed, but in the middle of it she became aware that Arthur was not listening. He sat straight in the pew beside her as though he were intent on the preacher, but all the time his eyes were wandering to the other side of the aisle. Mrs. Payne tried to follow their direction. Here, presumably, was a fairly representative collection of the female inhabitants of the village. Here she might expect to find the farmer's daughter, or, in the last emergency, the housemaid, on whom his affections were centred. She heard no more of Considine, only watching Arthur's eyes, and watching, she soon discovered that these were for Mrs. Considine and her alone. She could not deny the fact that Gabrielle, with her fine pale profile set against a pillar of grey sandstone, was a creature of amazing beauty. She herself was fascinated by this vision of refinement and grace to such a degree that she almost shared in Arthur's rapture.

For a little while she could not be sure of it, for this was the last possibility that had entered her mind: but at last it seemed that Gabrielle became conscious of the gaze that she could not see.