“Well, I suppose it’s wicked in a way,” he agreed. “But then again it’s his nature. And he’s done his job perfectly. He’s attached his web to twelve points—see? It’s not always so many—depends on what he thinks necessary. But the pattern is always the same. The center of the web is always the center of gravity from the spider’s point of view and the intersection of the threads always make the same angles and—”
“Oh, stop,” she cried, “there’s an insect caught there in the far corner. Oh, get it out, Rannie!”
He broke off a twig and tried delicately to free the struggling insect without breaking the web—a tiny film of a moth it was—but it was too distracted.
“I can’t,” he said, “I’ll break the web.”
“Break it then,” she cried. “Oh, look at that nasty spider! He’s rushed straight to the poor thing—he’s wrapping his beastly little arms about it. Oh, I can’t look!”
She lifted her cane suddenly and struck at the web and ruined it. Spider and moth dropped into the leaves of the shrub and she walked away.
“I won’t let it spoil my morning,” she said with resolution.
“Of course not,” he agreed. “The spider was only acting according to its own built-in rules. Koestler points out that there is a ‘fixed code of rules, which may be innate or learned,’ though its functioning depends on the environment.”
“Oh, be quiet!” she cried, flashing her eyes at him. “I don’t want to hear any more of your old Koestler! Who is he, anyway?”
He was confounded, almost wounded, but he refused to yield to her. “A very great writer,” he said quietly, and was silent for so long that suddenly she smiled at him coaxingly.
“Forgive me,” she said. “I know you can’t help it.”
“Help what?” he inquired.
“Oh—being what you are—a brain, and all that. But you are so—so beautiful, too. Yes, you are, Rann—don’t blush! Why can’t I say you’re beautiful to look at? Why must you be handsome as well as everything else? If I weren’t such a kind, good-natured human being myself, I’d hate you for having everything—that curly hair, too! And blond! Why should you have exactly the color of hair I’ve always wanted—and blue eyes—not watery blue, but ocean blue? I think I do hate you!”
They were both laughing now, and suddenly she threw away her little cane and seized his hand.
“Let’s run!” she cried. “I love to run in the morning!”
And to his astonishment he found himself running across the lawn, her hand in his, and they were laughing—laughing—as they ran.
HE WAS LINGERING FAR TOO LONG in England and he knew it. After a week—or was it two?—when he spoke of going on to France, she had protested.
“But you haven’t seen anything! You sit here in this old library, reading these old books. You don’t even go upstairs to Morey’s library.”
It was true. He had gone upstairs once, her leading the way, to a suite of rooms quite modern in their decor, and then in her abrupt fashion she had left him. He had stayed to read the titles of shelves of books about ships and guns and the history of wars and travels, and then had stood for a while before the portrait of a young man. It was life-size, painted by a modern artist as he could see from the technique, and it was set in a flat frame of gold—Sir Moresby Seaton, a man still young, very powerful in build, dark and strong and smiling, the cheeks ruddy, the eyes alive. Indeed, the portrait was so vivid that, gazing at it, he felt a presence in the room and was made uncomfortable by it. The eyes were insistent, demanding. “Why are you here?” He seemed almost to hear the question hanging in the air. Why, indeed? He had left the room without answer and, going down the great curving stairway, he returned to the old library, where there was no presence except his own and there he evoked life from the books.
“You can’t see England just from books,” Lady Mary was saying, “and so I shall drag you right away. We’ll go to Scotland before it snows, and to the Cotswolds—such charming stone houses in the Cotswolds—and perhaps get into Ireland for a day or two… green Ireland, where I’m always more myself than anywhere else in the world. I’ve a bit of Ireland in me through my grandmother. The O’Hares have a castle or two of their own in Ireland.”
And obedient always to her demanding, willful, pretty ways, they had made their journey, Coates driving them, and he drank in the scenery and the change, marveling at so much variety in so small a space, always engirdled by the sea. But for him there was wonder everywhere, and he spent hours engrossed in accumulating impressions of faces and places, villages and towns and the rare city of Dublin, and she accused him of forgetting that she was even with him.
“I might as well have stayed home,” she cried one day, petulant and laughing.
“Oh, no indeed, Lady Mary,” he had protested. They were in some ancient cathedral, and he had been absorbed in a small book the vendor handed him, giving the story of a knight encased in a coffin of brass, in a crypt there, his image also of brass lying upon the coffin. He put the book down on the image.
“No, indeed, Lady Mary,” he had protested again, and had been about to explain when she broke in.
“And don’t you think you might call me Mary, after all this time of knowing me?”
“I always think of you as Lady Mary,” he replied in all innocence, in such innocence indeed that she had gone into a fit of laughter.
“Why are you laughing?” he inquired gravely.
She had only laughed the more and he was puzzled, but he wanted to know the end of the dead knight’s story too, and so he had taken up the book again and she wandered away.
So had passed one lovely day after another until they came back to the castle, just escaping the first snowstorm. And still he marveled how much green there was in the gardens, the late chrysanthemums still blooming, too, though near their end, and sank back into the old life easily and yet uneasily, because he knew he should be moving on his way, for there was a dangerous charm in the ancient and idyllic setting.
Now here she stood before him in the old library on this day in early December. It was twilight and a coal fire was burning in the grate. She had changed for the evening and wore a long skirt of black velvet with a scarlet bodice and pearls about her neck.
“And still you are reading,” she scolded, “and even without turning on the lights! What is the book now?”
“Darwin—his voyages—”
He had been far away, so far away that she saw how far, and slowly she came and stood before him and gently she put her two palms on his cheeks.
“Do you ever see me?” she demanded, and moving away she turned on the lights, all the lights, so that suddenly all was dark outside and bright within.
“Yes, of course,” he said. “You’re beautiful.”
He looked up at her, smiling, and suddenly she stooped, and he felt on his mouth the pressure of her lips, light at first and then with a quick pressure.
“Now do you see me better?” she demanded, and drew back.
He could not speak. He felt his cheeks get hot, his heart begin beating in his breast, hard and quick.
“Have you never had a woman kiss you?” she asked softly.
“No,” he said in a half whisper.
“Well, now you have,” she said. “You’ll have learned something new in England—something to wonder about—you who are always wondering! So—how do you like it?”
She spoke in so downright a way, her voice half-laughing, almost scornful, that he could only shake his head.
“I don’t know.”
“Don’t know or don’t want to know?”
He did not reply, indeed he could not. He was in a tangle of feeling, repelled and yet enchanted. But the enchantment was in himself. He was not enchanted by her. In a strange way he wanted her to kiss him again.