FullReads

“I reached home only four hours ago, and was haled straightway here to Leo’s wedding. I’m dizzy, Esme. I can’t adjust my old conceptions to this new state of affairs all at once. It seems ridiculous to think that Leo and Alice are married. I’m sure they can’t be really grown up.”

Esme laughed as she drew away her hands. “We are all ten years older,” she said lightly.

“Not you. You are more beautiful than ever, Esme. That sunflower compliment is permissible in an old friend, isn’t it?”

“This mellow glow is kinder to me than sunlight now. I am thirty, you know, Selwyn.”

“And I have some grey hairs,” he confessed. “I knew I had them but I had a sneaking hope that other folks didn’t until Leo destroyed it today. These young brothers and sisters who won’t stay children are nuisances. You’ll be telling me next thing that ‘Baby’ is grown up.”

“‘Baby’ is eighteen and has a beau,” laughed Esme. “And I give you fair warning that she insists on being called Laura now. Do you want to come for a walk with me–down under the beeches to the old lane gate? I came out to see if the fresh air would do my bit of a headache good. I shall have to help with the supper later on.”

They went slowly across the lawn and turned into a dim, moonlight lane beyond, their old favourite ramble. Selwyn felt like a man in a dream, a pleasant dream from which he dreads to awaken. The voices and laughter echoing out from the house died away behind them and the great silence of the night fell about them as they came to the old gate, beyond which was a range of shining, moonlight-misted fields.

For a little while neither of them spoke. The woman looked out across the white spaces and the man watched the glimmering curve of her neck and the soft darkness of her rich hair. How virginal, how sacred, she looked! The thought of Tom St. Clair was a sacrilege.

“It’s nice to see you again, Selwyn,” said Esme frankly at last. “There are so few of our old set left, and so many of the babies grown up. Sometimes I don’t know my own world, it has changed so. It’s an uncomfortable feeling. You give me a pleasant sensation of really belonging here. I’d be lonesome tonight if I dared. I’m going to miss Alice so much. There will be only Mother and Baby and I left now. Our family circle has dwindled woefully.”

“Mother and Baby and you!” Selwyn felt his head whirling again. “Why, where is Tom?”

He felt that it was an idiotic question, but it slipped from his tongue before he could catch it. Esme turned her head and looked at him wonderingly. He knew that in the sunlight her eyes were as mistily blue as early meadow violets, but here they looked dark and unfathomably tender.

“Tom?” she said perplexedly. “Do you mean Tom St. Clair? He is here, of course, he and his wife. Didn’t you see her? That pretty woman in pale pink, Lil Meredith. Why, you used to know Lil, didn’t you? One of the Uxbridge Merediths?”

To the day of his death Selwyn Grant will firmly believe that if he had not clutched fast hold of the top bar of the gate he would have tumbled down on the moss under the beeches in speechless astonishment. All the surprises of that surprising evening were as nothing to this. He had a swift conviction that there were no words in the English language that could fully express his feelings and that it would be a waste of time to try to find any. Therefore he laid hold of the first baldly commonplace ones that came handy and said tamely, “I thought you were married to Tom.”

“You–thought–I–was–married–to–Tom!” repeated Esme slowly. “And have you thought that all these years, Selwyn Grant?”