The Parson

1

ONE afternoon at the end of a wet northern summer, a most improbable meeting took place between two people from worlds which could hardly have been further apart.

One was a young lieutenant, the eldest of six children whose native country this was, and whose father had died long before, leaving the family in poor circumstances. The other, from the south, was like the heroine of a romantic story, beautiful and extremely rich.

Rejane had just left her current lover after a violent quarrel, meaning to stay away for a week or two, until her absence had reduced him to a sufficiently abject state. She was bored with all the usual places her set frequented, and had come to this northern country because she’d never seen it and it was the remotest place she could think of. But it rained the whole time and the hotel was empty. She was already planning to leave after a few days of solitary boredom when Oswald appeared, and she changed her mind.

The tall, athletic young man, whose skin was tanned much darker than his very fair hair, aroused her interest, not by his good looks but because she immediately saw that there was something puzzling about him, something incongruous, that required explanation.

He was unmistakably an army type; even now, in casual civilian clothes, the uniform could be felt in the background. And he had a certain military assurance, sure of himself as an officer and a gentleman, though without a trace of conceit or swagger. This, with his rather severe good looks and superb physique, made him unusually impressive for such a young man.

Yet it seemed to Rejane, unobtrusively watching him across the hotel room, that his assurance was slightly overstated, as if he needed to convince himself; and, suddenly, in one of the flashes of inspired intuition she sometimes had when her interest was aroused, she saw that it was only his position in life he was sure of — not of himself in the middle of it.

Most strange, this was to her, this division, as if he stood outside his own circumstances. Her interest was stimulated still further.

He looked so straightforward and normal, so extroverted. At a first glance, he seemed all simplicity and directness, a man made for action, not thought, engagingly natural and absolutely trustworthy, within his limitations. He should have been perfectly at ease with himself, entirely at home in his world. And, most of the time, he kept the assured army façade. Only at an occasional unguarded moment his face had a bewildered lost look that was touching and most unexpected. In his dark-blue eyes, to which his tropical tan gave a startling brilliance, could be seen the same lost bewilderment, so inappropriate it was almost uncanny, like an improbable secret he carried always upon his person.

Rejane wasn’t touched by it, but she was intrigued. A secret was always a challenge to her, something she had to possess. On the spot, she decided to make this handsome walking secret her property, although it meant staying on here in the wilds, cut off from everything that composed her real existence. Five minutes ago, this small, out-of-the-way country had seemed a terrible bore, she’d wanted to leave by the very next boat. Now at last it had provided her with an interest — even the weather seemed to have turned over a new leaf.

*

The change in the weather was responsible for the whole thing. If this September day hadn’t unexpectedly brought brilliant hot sunshine, she would never have seen Oswald at all. He would never have driven his mother across the moors to the comfortable little modem hotel where she was staying, which, during his absence abroad, had replaced the dilapidated smugglers’ haunt he’d known all his life.

Though any stranger approaching across the moors would have supposed it to be miles inland, the hotel was really right on the edge of one of the countless inlets which turned the map of that coastline into a sort of fringe; deep narrow lochs, everywhere winding into the sombre landscape of moors and great granite tors.

As soon as the mother and son got out of the car, they could feel the pleasant salty astringency that rose from the unseen creek. Steep steps led down to a rough terrace of half-submerged rocks, around which the pellucid water, clear and solid looking as blue-green glass, lazily swelled and sank, to the barely perceptible rhythm of distant waves. While they were standing here, looking over the bright water to the upland slopes on the other side, a sudden chill penetrated the summery afternoon, as if sent to remind them that it wasn’t really summer and that they were in the north, though the sun still shone and there wasn’t a breath of wind.

So they went indoors and ordered tea in the hotel lounge; where they couldn’t fail to be very much aware of the stranger who was its only other occupant, dressed with an elegant simplicity rarely seen in their sparsely populated district.

In the blond north, in that remote and unlikely setting, Rejane’s dark beauty was quite extraordinary, with its sensuous contrast of pale flawless skin and almost black hair and eyes. Her complexion was pure magnolia. And her hair fell in soft, dark waves that always looked perfect and perfectly natural — everything about her had this inevitable sort of perfection, as if it just happened that way. Naturalness was one of her great assets, her beauty being in no way artificial, but the result of supreme good health. Her body was as perfect as Oswald’s, and, though she was a few years his senior, might have belonged to a slim young girl — except that no young girl ever had so much glamour. The impression she liked to give — it was somewhat misleading — was of a charming and lovely girl, quite simple and unassuming, unspoiled by money and adulation.

To Oswald, she was by far the most enchanting person he’d ever seen. An irresistible attraction drew his eyes towards her; and he hardly tried to resist, as if such glamorous beauty must not be kept private but could be admired, like royalty, without rudeness.

His mother, too, though usually timid with strangers, seemed to feel free to observe this one, so different from herself. And, as if the contrast made her half aware of deficiencies in her own appearance, she vaguely pushed a stray wisp of hair under her ancient hat before picking up the teapot, which had been set in front of her. As she began to pour, still under the spell of the unknown beauty, she murmured, ‘Who can she be? What can she be doing here? She doesn’t look at all the sort of person to come to the moors…’ Then she stopped abruptly, silenced by her son’s disapproving frown.

Though he’d always been deeply devoted to her, at this moment everything about his mother got on his nerves — her dowdiness, her sudden silence and meekness, as much as her muttered personal remarks. At the same time he felt guilty, unfair and unkind, knowing that devotion to her family was responsible for her behaviour — she was shy and awkward for the same reason that she was badly dressed; because the poverty that followed his father’s death had limited her experience of the world, imprisoning her at home, so that she was out of her element in a hotel lounge, almost as if she belonged to a lower class than her handsome, obviously well-bred son.

*

It had been for him, the first bom, rather than for any of his brothers and sisters, that she had saved and slaved, not only to educate him but to add to his share of the meagre patrimony, so that he could enter his father’s regiment, as tradition required. In their small northern country, advanced in some ways, in others behind the times, it was still the age of absolute male supremacy, the divine right of the eldest son hadn’t been questioned. So that Oswald could go into a crack regiment, the education of the younger boys had been skimped; the girls it had not been thought necessary to educate, beyond the rudiments their mother could teach them. This state of affairs Oswald himself found quite natural; but he’d never forgotten his debt, or that it was his duty to do credit to the family, as he always had done, coming back this time more of a credit to them than ever, already promoted, and assured of success in his profession — his superiors said he was sure to get to the top.

With his good looks, good manners and air of breeding, he might meanwhile have been enjoying a great success with the army ladies. But he’d never had any time for the flirtatious creatures who’d done their best to seduce him. Loyalty would have kept him away from them in any case; loyalty to his brother officers, and, still more, to his family, who had made sacrifices for his career — he valued it far too highly to risk a damaging scandal; and, anyhow, he was not attracted.

Because he always treated the women with the same cool politeness, and because he smoked and drank only in moderation and to be like his comrades, they called him The Parson, and the name stuck, being peculiarly appropriate. Even the men under him used it behind his back. In spite of his good fellowship and his natural zest for living, there really was something faintly priestlike about the fine-looking young man, which showed itself in his conscientiousness and integrity and in his dedicated attitude to the regiment. His little air of seriousness was distinctive and rather winning, and acted almost as an aphrodisiac on the spoiled, blase women, bringing them around him like a swarm of bees.

They couldn’t bear his imperviousness to their attractions. Just how impervious he was they never guessed, for he took care to hide the near-disgust they inspired in him physically, over-sexed as he considered them, over-stimulated by the climate and by good living. They couldn’t leave him alone. But the more they pursued, the more distant he became. He really loathed the occasions when he was forced into contact with them. More than any unpleasant duty, he loathed the dances held at regular intervals, which he avoided at first, reading alone in his quarters, while his comrades disported themselves and conducted their more or less discreet intrigues.

The women were, of course, greatly in the minority, even the plainest of them much in demand; but the plethora of young partners didn’t compensate for Oswald; they couldn’t do without him. Finally they got the Colonel to assert his authority, on the grounds that for a junior officer to make himself conspicuous by not dancing showed intolerable conceit, and endangered regimental morale.

Ordered to attend, Oswald did so with the impeccable correctness with which he carried out all his duties, dancing with formal precision with each partner in turn, apportioning his time with scrupulous fairness, so that they all got equal shares. He hated the women now more than ever for forcing him to dance with them; hating above all things to feel, against his hard, fit, muscular body, their soft, yielding semi-nakedness, which always seemed to exude a lustful excitement repugnant to him beyond words. However, he had been given an order, so he had to obey it; always very correct, impersonal, as indifferent to his partner of the moment as if she’d been some piece of military equipment. At first this only inflamed his adorers. Yet, really, it was insulting, the way he let it be seen he hardly knew one of them from another. Circling the room with an expressionless face, holding the woman in his arms well away from him, he seemed to insult the very flesh of his partner. It was his way of getting his own back.

It was not unsuccessful. But he had to pay for it. In the long run it reacted against him. Though the husbands began by sniggering at the discomfiture of the wives they knew were unfaithful, they soon started to resent the implied insult to themselves — these, after all, were the women they’d chosen. And presently, when the women realized that Oswald never would succumb to their seductions, they turned nasty, trying to make trouble for him with their menfolk, creating unpleasant scenes, for which he, of course, got the blame. On the whole, he’d have aroused much less ill-feeling by presenting a new pair of horns all round. What would it have mattered, with the antlers they all wore already?

Since his virtue had made everybody uncomfortable, there was a consequent general withdrawing, a cooling-off towards him, his popularity in the mess suffered a sharp decline, and his nickname, The Parson, came to be used more as a sneer. The really senior officers still thought highly of him; the CO, particularly, valued his dedicated attitude which belonged to a past generation of soldiers, already almost extinct. The older women too remained friends with him, and he with them. There was nothing of the woman-hater in his temperament. On the contrary, it was his idealized notion of womanhood that made the promiscuous sexiness of the young wives so repulsive to him.

For his age, time and position, he was singularly innocent — it was part of his charm — without being in any way prudish, priggish or epicene. His attitude towards sex was rather romantic; he had too much regard for it to degrade it by sordid little affairs and mean escapades. He wasn’t a virgin, but confined his activities to the meek brown women smuggled intermittently into the officers’ quarters. And there was always the sublimation of exercise. Often, at the end of an exacting day, while his companions relaxed over their drinks, he would be out on his sweating polo pony on the parched maidan, practising alone in a cloud of dust, until it got too dark to see the ball.

The army was everything to him, any other sort of existence unthinkable. As long as he’d been accepted in friendliness by his equals, he’d lived untroubled, unthinking, content with his humble but essential place in the structure of the regiment. Only now, in the time of his unpopularity, he began to feel lonely and dissatisfied. He’d given himself absolutely to the discipline of the regiment, and his loyalty couldn’t be shaken. But simply to know he was doing his duty seemed not to be enough. His former thoughtless, almost childish content was no longer possible. He had to think about the way he’d been made to feel isolated, different from his companions; and, as soon as he started thinking, he saw that they’d turned against him unfairly, simply because he’d kept to his principles.

He’d never been lonely before. Good-natured as he was, equable and a natural athlete, popularity had always been his as a matter of course. A slight unconscious sense of inferiority on account of his northern origin had prevented him from making any close friends in the regiment — inevitably he was out of touch with the ideas and opinions the others freely expressed. But, really, he’d felt no need of intimacy, existing always in a group. He’d been satisfied with the rather desultory superficial contact he had with his comrades. Now, suddenly, this was lost to him, he was left stranded.

He assumed indifference and assurance to cover his loneliness. His physical condition was perfect, and nobody must suspect that there was anything wrong with him inwardly. Since he was not introspective, his unsatisfactory state remained for the most part unthought about, undefined. But he knew that all was not well with him. Gradually he developed a nameless sort of yearning, a vague dream of easement, never put into words. And sometimes, listening, under the hot evening sky, to the men singing sentimental songs he had heard at home, he felt restless and sad, stirred by his vague longings.

Only a woman, he knew instinctively, could satisfy them; but none of those accessible to him were sympathetic; so his confused, inarticulate unhappiness became fixed, tolerable because of its definite limitation. Everything would come right again when he went on leave, back to his home and to his mother, he was sure of that. He had always been perfectly happy to spend all his free time with her, never wanting anyone else, even after he’d joined the regiment.

Throughout the voyage home he was dreaming of her, looking forward to their meeting; to a renewal of their close mutual understanding.

Yet, just precisely this time, when he came back after the years of absence, needing her more than he’d ever done since childhood, there seemed no understanding, everything was changed. She seemed changed, older, further away; they seemed to have grown apart. He found he could no longer confide in her as in the past. It was a terrible disappointment to him. He was left with his undefined grievance, his dissatisfaction, of which he became much more conscious, without the distraction of duty and discipline that had kept him going.

All at once, his predicament seemed far more grave, since he could see no end to it. And it seemed so unfair, when all the time he’d been doing his duty in uncongenial circumstances — as a northerner, he’d always hated the tropical heat. Surely he deserved something, after the years of exile? Something of the dream that had touched him when the soldiers sang in the brief moment before the night, and the smoke rose in straight lines, diaphanous, pungent, into the cloudless sky?

His dream was too indefinite to put into words; perhaps no more than the desire to feel at ease again in his life; he knew only that it had failed to materialize. And his home, where nothing was as he had so confidently expected and believed it would be, had failed him.

His brothers had grown up and departed to various jobs; two of his sisters were married and living in distant towns. That left only Vera, the most intelligent and least attractive of the girls, the one he liked least, the one doomed, apparently, to a life of frustration as companion of his mother in her declining years.

As soon as the excitement of his arrival was over, disappointment engulfed him. Since the contact with his mother was broken and couldn’t be mended, there seemed no point in their being together. In spite of their mutual love, the years relentlessly kept them apart. When he answered her questions, he was all the while conscious that she really wanted something more personal than the objective account of his travels that was all he could, or would, give her, feeling — without ever quite allowing the thought to form — that this was all of him she was now able to understand.

His home was very isolated, high up on the moors, miles from any large town. There were no distractions, apart from a few boring visits to scattered neighbours. As things were, he could see no sense in staying on there, and began to make vague plans for getting away.

His sister meant very little to him, a big serious girl who seldom spoke, and whose presence he accepted very much as he accepted the furniture he had known all his life; until she astonished him by saying she knew what he had in mind — it was just like him to go off to enjoy himself, leaving her stuck here with her mother on this godforsaken moor.

Startled by her criticism, Oswald told himself she was warped and bitter because she’d been condemned, practically, as the last unmarried girl, to stay here as long as the old woman lived. But it was such a commonplace of their society, it was always happening, he couldn’t take it very seriously. Her bitterness, anyway, seemed excessive; and why should it be directed against him?

It took him some time longer to find out that what Vera really resented was his acceptance of the money essential to his career, which she helped her mother to earn by doing odd jobs of sewing and preserving and so on, for their richer acquaintances. He’d never even thought about it before. The family tradition required the eldest son to enter his regiment, which necessitated a private income of some kind: therefore an income must be provided for him — it was as simple as that — and, if it could be provided in no other way, so it must be. Now appalling vistas of doubt opened up.

His sister said frankly that it annoyed her to see him taking everything as his right — he should realize what was being done for him — and now let the subject drop. Neither of them ever mentioned it again. But of course it went on working in Oswald’s mind. Not only had he been made to feel guilty but put under an obligation he could neither end nor discharge, since he couldn’t think of leaving the army.

So much for his idea of going away, which now became impossible, an act of monstrous ingratitude he could not contemplate for a moment. Instead, he rather grimly set himself to make amends, devoting himself to his mother, trying to please her in everything.

But it was not a success. Consciously, the old lady understood nothing of what was going on under the surface: though she was grateful and proud to be seen about with her handsome son, so much attention embarrassed her. Feeling the hidden strain, she would have preferred to be treated in the old offhand way that seemed natural to her, and left at home.

Oswald’s efforts began to seem rather futile, as it became clear that he was unable to make her happy — his own unspoken grievances saw to that, making him feel on edge, so that he experienced more and more often the irritation that had twitched at his nerves when she spoke of Rejane.

*

Her presence was a point of anxiety in him now, preventing his thought from concentrating upon the unknown woman across the room. For a second, when he glanced at the stranger, his dream seemed to hover near, an indescribable brightness, spreading wings of promise, of peace. All he wanted was to sit quietly near the woman who had evoked his dream. But, all the time, he had to consider his mother. At any moment she would start fussing, saying they must start for home.

Suddenly a soldier’s automatic awareness of weather conditions made him look out of the window. A peculiar blanching and blurring process was obscuring the light outside. The sun was paling, a curious dimming was everywhere apparent, pallor was diffusing itself into the air, smudging the shapes and stealing the colours of the garden flowers. Eclipsed to a pale lamp, the sun abruptly went out altogether; the cliff withdrew from sight. Only a few of the flowers in the foreground still floated, dim and derealized, colourless ghosts of themselves, in the thick white mist billowing up from the invisible water, which could be heard softly sucking and smacking the rocks below.

All solid reality was now contained by the room, the world outside obliterated by this nebulous whiteness steaming up from the creek. In a sudden childish fantasy Oswald saw it as a screen, behind which the hidden rocks, the flowers, the water, were working to help him attain his dream, that undefined shimmering thing, out of reach, but nearer than it had been, no longer utterly inaccessible.

His mouth softened and lost its sternness. Suddenly he looked younger, boyish, again. Now he was as he should have been all the time, with a more natural confidence, and something altogether warm and winning about him. Feeling happier than for a long time, he leaned back, stretching out his long legs, fully relaxed in his chair for the first time since he’d sat down there.

His natural warmth, which the army trouble had almost suppressed, was restored to him. Now he saw his mother’s face as pathetic instead of provoking, and was filled with compassion for her. Eager to show her how much he still loved her, he said with an affectionate smile, ‘It looks as if we’re here for the night.’

For the night…?’ She was sitting with her back to the window, and had anyhow been far away in some daydream of her own, from which she returned in confusion, not understanding.

‘Look out of the window.’

Instead of doing as she was told, she gazed fixedly at him, astonished by the change, recognizing the humorous, playful look and voice of the past. Her heart began beating fast in joyful excitement. Her beloved son seemed suddenly to have come back to her as he used to be, in his true self, as he hadn’t been since his return. But, even as she looked fondly into his face, where the old, easy, smiling charm had replaced irritation and sternness, in the background was the hurting fear that he might revert to what he had seemed before. So, controlling herself, she looked over her shoulder. And at once the rolling whiteness outside put her into a nervous flutter.

‘Fog! Why didn’t you tell me sooner? But I ought to have guessed from the way it suddenly turned cold… We’ll have to hurry back before it gets any worse…’

Already, while still speaking, she had collected her modest possessions, and now she quickly stood up, her anxious eyes looking down at Oswald, lounging in his chair, smiling, and clearly not intending to move an inch.

‘It’s quite bad enough for me as it is,’ he answered her lightly, ‘so you might just as well sit down again.’

‘But Vera’s expecting us back to dinner… She’ll be wondering…’

‘Then you’d better ring up and explain.’

He leaned back, smilingly assuming from some mysterious reservoir of forgotten disguises the mischievous sly look, with which, as a little boy, he had always charmed her, and which he knew she still couldn’t resist.

‘It may clear in a minute,’ she weakly protested, wanting to be reassured, not about the weather, but that he was indeed the one who’d seemed unaccountably lost to her.

‘It may, or it may not.’ He was consulting his watch. ‘We couldn’t get back in daylight, possibly. And I’m not risking fog-pockets up on the moors in the dark — not even for you.’

Playful, engaging, casual, he refused to be serious, yet wasfixed in his masculine will to stay. The affectionate, teasing voice tugged at her heart. But she had been so hunt, she understood so little, she was afraid to believe in the magical transformation, saying at random, ‘You really think it would be dangerous?’

Stretched out there, immovable as a rock, relaxed and solemnly teasing, he replied, ‘I do’, disguising his impatience. Knowing the pathetic cause of her hesitation, he gazed at her gently, deliberately charming her to accept her own happiness, all irritation gone out of him and forgotten.

‘Very well. I’ll go and telephone Vera.’ With a little ecstatic sigh the mother surrendered finally, incapable of further resistance. By some miracle her darling had been restored to her, all the more precious because he had seemed lost. As she crossed the room she looked back several times, hardly able to let him out of her sight, in case he again disappeared. She idolized him, absolutely, he could do no wrong; therefore the past unhappiness must be her fault, though she didn’t see how…

*

At last the door closed behind her, and Oswald was free to give his whole attention to the lovely pale face, framed by smooth dark hair, of which, all the time, he had been intensely aware, establishing, while he talked to his mother, a curious silent understanding with the unknown woman. Though seeming to take no notice of Rejane, he had known, through his acute consciousness of her, that she was listening to their conversation — it was almost as if she had been included in it. So it now seemed quite natural that she should ask, ‘Is it really dangerous to drive in this?’ With a slightly foreign gesture that he found charming, she indicated the fog, as she got up and went to stand at the window.

‘Yes, it can be dangerous on the moor.’ Oswald stood up too and approached her. ‘It’s easy to miss a turning, or to get off the road altogether.’

To his delight, everything seemed easy and natural. And, as he came to stand at her side, with the dramatic effect of a curtain going up for their special benefit, the dense whiteness parted outside, momentarily revealing a strange grey world of ghost vegetation, quenched and unearthly, every cold leaf and petal running with moisture as if under water, before it descended again.

‘How long will it last?’

Not noticing the frown that accompanied the question, Oswald said cheerfully, ‘No one can tell you that — another two minutes, perhaps. Perhaps another two days.’

‘One might really be stuck here for two whole days?… Not able to get away?’

Now he had to meet Rejane’s incredulous indignant look; a look almost of consternation, the mere notion of being detained forcibly by something she couldn’t control being intolerable to her self-willed nature, which, since childhood, had known no restraint or coercion.

Taken aback and uncomprehending, he made some vague reply, out of his depth suddenly, his confidence abruptly shattered. In all his life no woman had ever moved him like this one, who had brought his dream into the room. But she was receding visibly, and anxiety seized him: he had only these few flying seconds, before his mother returned, in which to establish a bridge to the lovely stranger. Hearing her say, as if following her own thoughts to a conclusion, ‘That settles it. I shall go on the next boat’, he was really alarmed, exclaiming, ‘Oh, but you mustn’t!’ horrified by the prospect of losing the wonderful being he’d only just found, watching her nervously, while she murmured, as if to herself, ‘I should never have come here at all.’

‘My mother said you weren’t the sort of person to come to the moors.’

Why did he have to waste time on such a futile remark, when there wasn’t a second to lose? However, to his immense relief, it seemed to recall her attention.

‘Did she say that? How strange…’

Though Rejane clearly saw more in the words than he did, he dismissed his mother with ‘She’s good at fortune-telling and all that…’, continuing hastily, ‘You can’t have seen much, with all this rain, can you?’ Without giving her time to answer, he went straight on: ‘Some parts of the moor are magnificent, it’s got a beauty of its own — out of this world. But visitors hardly ever see the best places because they’re so hard to get at. But I shouldn’t think you’d mind that. I wouldn’t expect you to like things that were too easy.’ The last words were prompted by a sense of urgency; but, having spoken them, he looked at her doubtfully — had he introduced the personal note too soon? He gazed intently into her face as if in search of a revelation.

Rejane looked back at him with her unchanging, almost black eyes, in which no expression was legible, although she was watching him with a new interest. Strange how he suddenly seemed to have come alive, thrown off some repressive burden. This sudden emergence of intensity and imagination, in conjunction with his solid, manly good looks, was surprising and totally unforeseen. His face, animated now, had that touch of seriousness that had so captivated the army wives — she too found it attractive.

‘What have you seen so far?’ he was meanwhile asking, encouraged by her attentive regard. ‘Isap Tor, I suppose, and the Five Falcons and Roko. All very nice and neat, tidied up for the summer tourists, but not the real moor at all.’ Loneliness had intensified his feeling for the countryside round his home, so that it was easy for him to speak of the moor without any self-consciousness. ‘I could show you wonderful places that are sheer magic. But you wouldn’t be able to drive there because there aren’t any roads — just heather and bracken and rock and the sea creeping in where you least expect it. In the old legends the sea is always at war with the tors, trying to undermine them. But those towers of rock won’t fall until the last judgement. They’ll always be standing there like besieged fortresses, never falling, old as the earth itself, fixed in their places like the sky and the waters under the earth.’

He had a very agreeable soft voice, almost a singer’s voice in its delicate, slow inflections; and now it had unconsciously assumed a slight singsong lilt, imitated from the local storytellers of his childhood. Suddenly he heard it, heard what he was saying, and stopped, slightly embarrassed, as he always was by the sensitive, imaginative self he kept battened down out of sight beneath layers of masculine toughness, only fully aware of it when, as now, it had dangerously exposed itself.

This time there was no danger, apparently; Rejane was looking at him with evident interest. But his practical self had come uppermost, and, determined to persuade her before his mother interrupted them, he said coaxingly, ‘Do stay a bit longer and let me show you something of the real moor.’

She’d already made up her mind to stay, but she said nothing yet. It amused her to watch the delicacy with which, not presuming to touch her, by way of emphasis he laid the tips of his fingers gently on the book she was holding. And his northern voice was fascinating when he was being intense, with its queer singing undertone and extraordinary flexibility; unimagined depths of softness were in it now, almost a coo. She smiled to herself faintly, though she still said nothing.

Her silence was beginning to seem hopeful to him. Now, suddenly, in the midst of his pleasant excited feelings, came one so singularly inappropriate that it distracted him for the length of time he took to wonder why in heaven’s name a danger signal should have gone up in his mind, as if warning him not to go any further. He forgot about it at once, and went on with his pleading: ‘Don’t be frightened away by the fog. Look, it’s lifting already!’

The world outside was in fact reappearing, though minus a dimension, as if made of water, frequented only by the ghosts of things as they were under the sun. Looking back at Rejane, he hoped wildly that she would say yes. The calm magnolia-mask of her face did not change, nor did her jewel-dark eyes, their fluttering fans of lashes long and soft as a sable paintbrush. Unkindly keeping him in suspense, only at the very last, when they’d both heard his mother’s approaching step, she gave him a slight, smiling nod.

Unconscious of any unkindness, he was overwhelmed by a wonderful thrill of joy he could hardly conceal, and in a warm, vibrant voice said to the old woman coming into the room, ‘You must help me describe our moors — we can’t have people going off without appreciating them, can we?’

His mother was a little bewildered by these rapid developments. She’d have liked to keep the son she adored to herself, for a time at least. But whatever he wanted was right, and she wanted it too. Though slightly overawed by the beauty and obvious wealth of this new acquaintance, she was ready to make friends, accepting Rejane as she’d have accepted a Hottentot, had Oswald wished it; for he was her idol, and his will was law.