第87章 XXIX(3)

"That's all right," he exclaimed, and strolled to the door. The hansom was disappearing round the corner. "That's all right," he repeated in more quavering tones as he returned to the drawing-room and saw that it was littered with sweet-peas. Their colour got on his nerves--magenta, crimson; magenta, crimson. He tried to pick them up, and they escaped. He trod them underfoot, and they multiplied and danced in the triumph of summer like a thousand butterflies. The train had left when he got to the station. He followed on to London, and there he lost all traces.

At midnight he began to realize that his wife could never belong to him again.

Mr. Failing had a letter from Stockholm. It was never known what impulse sent them there. "I am sorry about it all, but it was the only way." The letter censured the law of England, "which obliges us to behave like this, or else we should never get married. Ishall come back to face things: she will not come back till she is my wife. He must bring an action soon, or else we shall try one against him. It seems all very unconventional, but it is not really. it is only a difficult start. We are not like you or your wife: we want to be just ordinary people, and make the farm pay, and not be noticed all our lives."And they were capable of living as they wanted. The class difference, which so intrigued Mrs. Failing, meant very little to them. It was there, but so were other things.

They both cared for work and living in the open, and for not speaking unless they had got something to say. Their love of beauty, like their love for each other, was not dependent on detail: it grew not from the nerves but from the soul.

"I believe a leaf of grass is no less than the journey work of the stars And the pismire is equally perfect, and a grain of sand, and the egg of the wren, And the tree toad is a chef-d'oeuvre for the highest, And the running blackberry would adorn the parlours of heaven."They had never read these lines, and would have thought them nonsense if they had. They did not dissect--indeed they could not. But she, at all events, divined that more than perfect health and perfect weather, more than personal love, had gone to the making of those seventeen days.

"Ordinary people!" cried Mrs. Failing on hearing the letter. At that time she was young and daring. "Why, they're divine! They're forces of Nature! They're as ordinary as volcanoes. We all knew my brother was disgusting, and wanted him to be blown to pieces, but we never thought it would happen. Do look at the thing bravely, and say, as I do, that they are guiltless in the sight of God.""I think they are," replied her husband. "But they are not guiltless in the sight of man.""You conventional!" she exclaimed in disgust.

"What they have done means misery not only for themselves but for others. For your brother, though you will not think of him. For the little boy--did you think of him? And perhaps for another child, who will have the whole world against him if it knows.