The Dark Flower | Page 9

of flame, too, lighted in her eyes. Then the little grey-bearded
man said, and his rather whispering voice sounded hard and acid:
"We are all human, my dear madam."
The boy felt his heart go thump at Anna's laugh. It was just as if she
had said: "Ah! but not you--surely!" And he got up to follow her
towards the door.
The English party had begun already talking--of the weather.
The two walked some way from the 'hut' in silence, before Anna said:
"You didn't like me when I laughed?"
"You hurt their feelings, I think."
"I wanted to--the English Grundys! Ah! don't be cross with me! They
WERE English Grundys, weren't they--every one?"
She looked into his face so hard, that he felt the blood rush to his
cheeks, and a dizzy sensation of being drawn forward.
"They have no blood, those people! Their voices, their supercilious
eyes that look you up and down! Oh! I've had so much of them! That
woman with her Liberalism, just as bad as any. I hate them all!"

He would have liked to hate them, too, since she did; but they had only
seemed to him amusing.
"They aren't human. They don't FEEL! Some day you'll know them.
They won't amuse you then!"
She went on, in a quiet, almost dreamy voice:
"Why do they come here? It's still young and warm and good out here.
Why don't they keep to their Culture, where no one knows what it is to
ache and feel hunger, and hearts don't beat. Feel!"
Disturbed beyond measure, the boy could not tell whether it was in her
heart or in his hand that the blood was pulsing so. Was he glad or sorry
when she let his hand go?
"Ah, well! They can't spoil this day. Let's rest."
At the edge of the larch-wood where they sat, were growing numbers of
little mountain pinks, with fringed edges and the sweetest scent
imaginable; and she got up presently to gather them. But he stayed
where he was, and odd sensations stirred in him. The blue of the sky,
the feathery green of the larch-trees, the mountains, were no longer to
him what they had been early that morning.
She came back with her hands full of the little pinks, spread her fingers
and let them drop. They showered all over his face and neck. Never
was so wonderful a scent; never such a strange feeling as they gave him.
They clung to his hair, his forehead, his eyes, one even got caught on
the curve of his lips; and he stared up at her through their fringed petals.
There must have been something wild in his eyes then, something of
the feeling that was stinging his heart, for her smile died; she walked
away, and stood with her face turned from him. Confused, and unhappy,
he gathered the strewn flowers; and not till he had collected every one
did he get up and shyly take them to her, where she still stood, gazing
into the depths of the larch-wood.
V

What did he know of women, that should make him understand? At his
public school he had seen none to speak to; at Oxford, only this one. At
home in the holidays, not any, save his sister Cicely. The two hobbies
of their guardian, fishing, and the antiquities of his native county,
rendered him averse to society; so that his little Devonshire
manor-house, with its black oak panels and its wild stone-walled park
along the river-side was, from year's end to year's end, innocent of all
petticoats, save those of Cicely and old Miss Tring, the governess.
Then, too, the boy was shy. No, there was nothing in his past, of not yet
quite nineteen years, to go by. He was not of those youths who are
always thinking of conquests. The very idea of conquest seemed to him
vulgar, mean, horrid. There must be many signs indeed before it would
come into his head that a woman was in love with him, especially the
one to whom he looked up, and thought so beautiful. For before all
beauty he was humble, inclined to think himself a clod. It was the part
of life which was always unconsciously sacred, and to be approached
trembling. The more he admired, the more tremulous and diffident he
became. And so, after his one wild moment, when she plucked those
sweet-scented blossoms and dropped them over him, he felt abashed;
and walking home beside her he was quieter than ever, awkward to the
depths of his soul.
If there were confusion in his heart which had been innocent of trouble,
what must there have been in hers, that for so long had secretly desired
the dawning of that confusion? And she, too, was