Chapter XII: In the Woods

THE four wended their way along the Kewstoke Road, turning after a while into a broad shady path which slanted upwards to the right, gradually widening its distance from the lower road. It was a charming way through the woods; one of the few really pretty walks in Weston-super-Mare. There had been much soft rain in the spring of this particular year, and the result appeared in a semi-tropical luxuriance of growth. Almost every trunk had its clothing of ivy; and between the thick growth below and the dense foliage above, creepers hung in countless festoons.

To the right of the path, which was almost broad enough to deserve the name of a road, the wooded height ascended somewhat steeply, and to the left it descended in much the same fashion. The path in front rose steadily, and in the rear it slanted downwards, without a bend, arched over by boughs, and seeming to terminate in the sea. The road and beach intervening were not visible. Only the sunlit waters showed in a round green frame.

Beryl was thoughtful, but Pearl had a gay fit on her, and looked her prettiest. She and Ivor chatted together merrily. The little party did not fall into two and two, as might have seemed more natural. Escott attached himself persistently to Pearl's other side. And Beryl walked sometimes evenly with the three, sometimes a little before or behind. Escott became soon as silent as Beryl, but Pearl was so busily conversing with Ivor as for some time not to notice this. Happening at length to make some slight appeal to him, she came to a stand-still.

"Why, Escott,—are we going too fast for you?"

"Only the heat," Escott said, attempting to smile, but he was terribly pale, and thick drops stood on his brow. He leant against the trunk of a tree, evidently thankful for the pause. "This hill is rather a pull."

"I hardly noticed that it was a hill at all," Ivor said, with concerned looks. "But of course it is a warm morning. You must not go any farther, my dear fellow. What have we all been thinking about?"

"Had you not better sit down?" asked Pearl, her sweet eyes bent kindly on him. "Poor Escott! I am afraid you are not much better yet for Weston air. Shall we all rest here for a few minutes, Ivor? It really is a tiring climb."

Escott looked grateful as she betook herself to a little upright tree-stump, motioning him to another. He obeyed, and sat with his face resting on his hands, evidently exhausted.

Ivor hovered about, concerned still, but aware that the kindest plan was to leave his brother alone.

Beryl sat on the opposite bank, near, yet apart. And after a minute, she said bluntly,—"Have you not some eau-de-cologne, Pearl?"

"Of course I have. Thank you for reminding me. We will all refresh ourselves," Pearl said, with tact. "Handkerchiefs out, please,—Beryl—Ivor—Escott."

Beryl declined, saying she disliked scents, but Ivor was not so disdainful, and Escott came in for a bountiful share. "What a pity to give me so much," he said.

"I have plenty more at home, and it will do you good," Pearl said, with another of her kind sweet glances, which carried captive most people's hearts. She did not mean anything by them. Pearl was only fond of Escott in sisterly fashion.

Then Escott was left quiet again, and Pearl and Ivor chatted unceasingly about anything or nothing, and Beryl remained apart, lost in her own thoughts,—thoughts stirred up by the conversation with Diana Fenwick.

Beryl was troubled, and anxious, and unsettled. She did not quite know what, in her heart of hearts, she really wished. Certain words uttered by Suzette Bise had been often in her mind of late, bringing unhappy feelings with them. The year before, she had unhesitatingly decided against offering herself for Confirmation. This year, though she did not exactly wish to be a candidate, yet she wished that she "could" wish it. Beryl was very true and honest. If she took the promises at all, she would feel herself bound to keep them to the best of her ability; so much was clear. She was not quite so clear as to what was contained in the promises; and she believed that a good many things might be implied which she would not like to do: yet somehow she could not feel so easy or contented as the year before, to leave the matter thus.

Beryl wished she had somebody to consult, but there was nobody. Millicent Cumming's very beauty and grace made her, despite her gentle goodness, seem at a hopeless distance, and gave Beryl always a sense of constraint with her. She wanted to find somebody more like herself, more on her own level. Suzette Bise, as a foreigner, would know little about the question, she thought; also Suzette Bise had not yet answered her letter, written immediately on arrival at Weston. Beryl was beginning to decide that Suzette Bise was only another example of fickle human nature. "Another," for she looked upon Pearl as the prime example in her experience, even while loving her still with unchanged affection.

So Beryl sat apart, lonely and self-occupied. Escott sat in a manner apart too, with attention bent not upon self but upon the picture opposite,—the graceful little figure, with shady hat, and smiling eyes, and soft waves of hair showing as gold in the gleam of sunlight which fell upon it through crossing boughs. Escott was only nineteen, but ill-health had developed him early, and in feeling, he was far more of a man than the vigorous sunburnt Ivor. Escott was becoming very much wrapped up in Pearl Fordyce. He loved his mother dearly, yet there was a pedestal in his heart occupied by Pearl and not by Millicent. Ivor could honestly declare his belief that his mother was unrivalled by living woman. But Escott could not quite echo the words. He did not think Pearl "like" his mother, but certainly he thought her unequalled.

Ivor was not at all in love with Pearl. Both boys had been for years on brotherly terms with her; and the change which had begun of late to creep over Escott had not affected Ivor at all. He had not even a boyish fancy that he ought to be in love with so pretty a creature. He admired Pearl greatly,—almost as much as he admired himself. He liked Pearl, and he knew she liked him. The brother-and-sister terms of intimacy were very pleasant, and he was much too gentlemanly to be less polite and attentive because of the intimacy.

And Pearl's manner was easy and natural enough. Perhaps, if she had had a mother living, that mother might have detected danger. For, after all, mere brotherly and gentlemanly attentions are not always quite easily to be distinguished from attentions of another sort, and Pearl at sixteen was not versed in such matters, though already accustomed to a considerable amount of admiration. She had very simple and pretty ways with both the brothers; only now and then a tinge of shyness showed in her manner to Ivor; while her pity for Escott gave her a particularly gentle and winning air with him.

A discussion presently arose as to plans. Escott was suffering symptoms of a bad attack from his inveterate enemy neuralgia, and further walking was not to be thought of. He proposed to return home alone, leaving the other three to go on; but no one quite liked the idea. Ivor and Pearl had been suggesting a ramble "some day" straight up through the woods, to the Roman encampment. Pearl did not generally affect scrambling, but she looked prettily eager over the idea. Beryl, when appealed to, understood it as a suggestion for the present, and held back, saying she did not care to climb, and would walk home with Escott.

Ivor seized on the thought, and asked why Pearl should not go at once. Or at least they could climb a short distance, and decide whether she could manage the whole another day.

"Well, just for five minutes while Escott is resting," Pearl said; "and then we can all walk home together."

"Beryl must go too," said Escott.

"I don't care for climbing," repeated Beryl. "One's things get so torn."

"You are not so great at hedges and ditches as five years ago," Ivor said, holding out a helping hand to Pearl, though somewhat unnecessarily. "We shall be back in a few minutes, I expect; but if not, don't wait for us."

"Oh, I think we are sure to be," said Pearl, nodding and smiling from among the trees.

The two figures slowly disappeared. Escott gazed after them, and murmured something about "little angel."

"Is that your idea of an angel?" asked Beryl, in an oddly matter-of-fact tone.

Escott looked at her in some wonder, and her eyes met his steadily.

"You think I am jealous of Pearl," she said. "But I don't think I am. It is not that. She is very very pretty, only I do not think it is angel-prettiness. Your mother looks much more like my idea of an angel. She almost frightens me."

"But Pearl's is not mere ordinary prettiness," said Escott, in a low voice. "She is so sweet and tender,—so self-forgetting."

"Is Pearl self-forgetting?" asked Beryl slowly. "I should not have thought so. Girls generally know when they are pretty. I don't see how they can help knowing it, and of course they think about their prettiness. Pearl isn't a single grain worse than other girls, only she has more prettiness than other girls, so perhaps she thinks about it a little more."

"You do not call Pearl vain, I hope?" said Escott coldly.

"I don't call her anything. Most girls are vain," said Beryl, with a touch of cynicism. "And, after all, one may be as vain about ugliness as prettiness—not vain 'of' it, but 'about' it. It is just a question of thinking about one's self, I suppose. Pretty girls like Pearl think about their prettiness, and ugly girls like me think about their ugliness."

The pathetic simplicity of the last words recalled the Beryl of earlier days, and melted Escott's annoyance. He looked up, smiling, to say, "You are at least as hard upon yourself as upon others."

"One is driven to it," said Beryl.

"My common experience has been that with less beauty there is often more conceit," said Escott, anxious to generalise in favour of Pearl. "One is glad to find an exception to such a rule."

"I don't believe it is a rule," said Beryl; "and if it is, I don't believe I am an exception."

Escott could hardly help laughing, but the laugh changed into a sigh.

"Had you not better walk home?" asked Beryl. "I do not suppose they will come back. Ivor is bent on getting Pearl to the Roman encampment,—only some stupid heaps of stones, after all."

"You don't pretend to archæological tastes."

"I don't care for that sort of thing. Escott, I do think Mrs. Cumming would say you ought to go home if she saw you. I am sure you are in very bad pain."

"Only neuralgia. Five minutes are hardly over yet, and we must allow them a margin."

Beryl pulled out the old-fashioned silver watch which had been her father's. "They can't expect us to wait more than another five minutes, at any rate," she said.

Then, with the watch in her hand, she sank back into her former train of thought, and was suddenly aroused by the question, "What are you so intent upon?"

Beryl came back to present life with a start. The inquiry took her by surprise, and somehow she responded to it involuntarily, the uppermost idea in her mind finding vent:

"What made you and Ivor wish to be confirmed?"

Then she turned crimson, and would have given anything to recall her own words. "It doesn't matter," she added hastily. "Had we not better go home?" And she stood up.

Escott stood up also, actually forgetting to refer to Pearl and Ivor. He was at least as much taken by surprise as Beryl had been. When they had gone a few paces side by side, his answer came; not at all the answer that Beryl would have expected.

"I was so sorry for you," he said, with real feeling. "It was too bad of Aunt Di."

That touched Beryl to the quick. She was so little used to sympathy that it had the more power over her. He caught one glance from eyes actually full of tears, and then she looked resolutely down.

"It is her way, you know," he said apologetically. "But it must have been very trying and disagreeable. Ivor and I would have made our escape, only it was a little difficult—and nobody knew what was coming. I don't think my aunt understands the feeling of reserve one has on such matters. But I thought you very brave."

The feeling of reserve was on Beryl strongly at this moment. She managed to break through the cobweb sufficiently to say, "I could not be confirmed only just to please her."

"No, of course not. It would not be right. But don't you really wish it yourself?"

He did not think Beryl meant to answer this, and he felt half afraid she was vexed. They left the woods behind them, and walked slowly along the lower road, Beryl gazing steadily into the dust. When at length she spoke, she was evidently quite unconscious of the time which had elapsed since his question.

"I do not know," she said. "If I were good enough, I should wish it, I suppose."

"Only it isn't exactly a question of goodness, after all," Escott said. "Not of our own goodness, I mean."

"I suppose that depends on what one means by goodness," said Beryl. The effort of the conversation was greater to her than to him, though Escott did not speak without constraint. Beryl's shyness rendered her voice gruff. "One ought to want to be what one promises, at all events."

"Are you sure you do not want it?"

"I don't know," she answered. "I don't know what I wish or don't wish. Only 'if' I take those promises, I must keep them. I would rather not take them at all, than not keep them."

"I can understand the feeling," said Escott thoughtfully. "I remember saying almost the same to my mother. She made me see that things were not as I thought—that it was not a question of taking or not taking the promises, but simply of coming forward openly to confirm them. For the promises have been made already, at our Baptism, for us, and nothing can undo that. They are binding on us all the while, whether or no we acknowledge it. Mother always said so. She tried to make us feel that we were 'bound' to God's service, solemnly promised already to Him, though of course we had the power to rebel. And then the very promises would only add to our guilt."

Beryl was looking up with wide-open startled eyes. "I never thought of that," she said. "I thought—of course—I was free to choose—"

"I suppose we are all free, if you mean merely having the power to choose. But God has the 'right' over us," said Escott. "A soldier once enrolled in the Queen's service may be a deserter, but he cannot undo the Queen's right to his obedience."

"Some people would say God has a right over everybody," said Beryl, in a low voice.

"No one could deny that, who believes in Him as Creator and Father. But He has a double right over those who are bound and promised from very infancy to Him."

"I'll think about it," Beryl said, after a pause. "I did not mean to get into all this. Please don't tell anybody."

"Could you not talk to my mother?"

"O no, I would rather not. Don't say a word to anybody, please."

"Very well. I will not."

And these were the last words uttered, until the house was reached.