He stayed on so long upon the downland that he was startled presently by hearing the church clocks from many hamlets and villages out of sight on all sides of him, striking midnight and chiming for it. Soon, the cocks would be crowing. He thought with a pang, then, “to-morrow will be my wedding day, and I shall be married to Margaret.” A qualm passed through his mind, that he had perhaps left marriage till too late in life, and that he would loathe to find his freedom checked. Still, he would have Margaret instead of freedom; a pretty good exchange, for what of value was there in the life he had been leading? and who would care if it ended? He wanted something liker a home than that.
“Well,” he said to himself, “it’ll be cock-crow soon. I’ve got to be at the Works at ten to finish off before going away. I’d better be thinking of moving.”
He walked back to his car through the longish, dry downland grass from which the cockchafers came whirring and blundering. He turned the car across the track, still known as the Shipway, from its having once been the path along which so many thousands of sheep were driven to the downland sheep fairs of May. The chafers blundered against his glass, or hit the bonnet and slithered off it. Soon he was on the road, driving for home. It was not a long drive, for one like himself who liked pace, on a clear night, after midnight. On his way, he suddenly thought of Margaret a few miles from him. He thought that he would like to see her house and garden in the moonlight.
“I’ll just turn aside and have a look at it in the moonlight,” he thought.
About a hundred yards from the house, he left the car and walked along the road towards the rookery trees among which the house stood. He saw what he thought to be a light in Margaret’s bedroom window, but another step showed him that it was only moonlight upon the glass. On his left was a copse or spinney, towards which some little creature ran across the road; to his right a side door into the garden. He thought that this side door might not be locked, as it had a curious catch or trick for opening, not known to many people. He knew the catch, the door at once opened to him: he went into the garden, treading on the grass and feeling a little like a burglar.
There were some white roses close to him; farther on there were masses of white tobacco plant. All the garden was in the drowse of heavy summer, with the moonlight over all. A few moths were moving silently from flower to flower. From time to time a bat came past. He was one of those keen hearers able to catch the faint shrill cry of bats. He listened to the reedy calls, and counted the owls within hearing. From time to time, the noise of these things ceased, leaving a silence unbroken save for some sudden collapse of rose-petals, falling from the overblown flower upon the grass beneath, or the drone of a beetle, or the rustle and click of some beetle alighting perhaps upon a leaf.
He moved farther into the garden, so that he could see the high, sharp roof of the old house. Somebody had said that the house had been a nunnery grange, and that the garden had been laid out by the nuns. It was one of the most beautiful and simple gardens known to him. At the two ends were the very old, simple, graceful summer-houses with pointed roofs and a neat little stone globe over each of the points.
He was thinking, “how wonderful it would be if Margaret were here to share this beauty with me,” when he became aware suddenly that she was in the garden, not fifty yards from him, standing in the grassy walk, half turned away from him, and looking at the moon. She was in a white wrap, which he well knew. He feared to move forward, lest he should scare her, but at last he called “Margaret” in a way agreed on between them, and as she turned, went forward.
“I half thought you might turn up here,” she said. “Isn’t the night wonderful?”
“I’ve been up on the Downs until just now,” he said. “Then, as I came down, I thought I’d just look in to the garden here.”
“Mrs. Grundy will jump if she sees us,” she said.
“Mrs. Grundy may.”
Her hair had been plaited for the night; the dark plaits were caught about her head with a bright narrow clasp. She looked extraordinarily unearthly in her white dress in the moonlight. He was reminded for a moment of one of the Sylphides; the face looked like a mask.
“You’re just like the Prelude dancer in the Sylphides,” he said.
“It is strange, your saying that,” she said. “I was thinking I might be like one of the dancing swan women in the Northern Story. Did you know, that I have a sort of Russian cousin, who dances?”
“No, I didn’t know.”
She moved from him, with swaying arms, in little pas de bourrées.
“You didn’t know that I can dance,” she said.
“Not know?” he said. “Didn’t I fall in love with you at a dance?”
“My cousin was dancing in London last May; but I was away in Sweden.”
“I don’t want to hear about your cousin,” he said, “when I’ve got you here.”
“You’ll have lots of me presently,” she said.
“I’ve long had the idea,” he said, “as you know, of having some of the processes of the Works done up on the Waste above Mullples, if I could get the land there. I’d like to build a real Works with a real town about it. It is only a thought.”
“Well, St. Paul’s was only a thought once,” she said. “We must talk of this thoroughly. What will you call your real town?”
“St. Margarets.”
They talked for a while; the talk of lovers interests themselves only; he suggested that they should meet late that afternoon, or early in the evening, for a walk to the barrow called Grim’s Grave. It was a short walk from where they were at that moment; perhaps two-thirds of a mile over the fields, to a little spinney where the barrow stood, like a little old extinct volcano, with its top all fallen in. He would meet her at the stile leading to the fields at half-past five. At six, they would part until they met at the church next day.
They talked merrily together for a little while; then she told him that he had better be off to bed, as he was still half an hour from his father’s house and might well puncture on the way.
“This time next moon,” he said, “we’ll be looking on the Baltic, I hope. I hope you’ll be happy, Peggy.”