CHAPTER XLVII

MENARVOR

IT was a beautiful evening towards the end of April when Helen found herself at the little Cornish station where she had to get out of the train. It had been a pleasant journey. Though she had not travelled much as a girl, she remembered some parts of the scenery; and when she had left behind the rich red earth and soft rolling lines of Devon, and was in Cornwall again, it all came back to her. How friendly and familiar the country seemed; the deep valleys with their streams and their closegrowing oak woods, and the bare gray hills of the mining districts, and the plain granite houses, and the far-away out-ofthe-world look of everything.

Helen knew that the Russells lived some miles from the railway; but on the platform was the old Admiral looking out for her; and he got Rex out of his prison, and carried Helen off to a well-appointed phaeton that was waiting in the road, and they drove away together.

The evening was clear and warm, and she thoroughly enjoyed her drive. Around her in all directions the country was blazing with gorse. There were great golden hedges entirely made of it, and it bordered the roads and lay in broad patches of gold wherever there was a piece of waste land. Under the loose untrimmed hedgerows, and upon the grassy banks, the primroses were growing in countless numbers. There were violets too, and their scent mingled with the delicate fragrance of the primroses and the gorse, and made the whole air sweet. The trees perhaps were more backward than in Devonshire. The may was only beginning to thicken, and the oaks still held back; but the beeches and limes were covered with fresh young green, the light spring green that is even more beautiful than the full glory of

summer. Here and there, standing out boldly from the brightness around it, was the dark mass of a pine clump. And the blackbirds whistled slowly in the branches overhead, and the air was full of life and hope and joy.

It was a long drive, and when they reached Menarvor the darkness was falling; but Helen could see that there was a broad sloping lawn below the house, with some trees at the end, and some water beyond them. 'Is that the sea?' she said.

'Yes. At least it's salt water. The open sea is three or four miles away. I have my boat moored just off the bank there in the summer.'

'How delightful! I long to see it all by daylight.'

Mrs. Russell gave Helen a warm welcome. Colonel Russell was away on business, but hoped to return in a day or two.

It was cool enough by the waterside to make a fire agreeable in the evening, and they sat round it after dinner and chatted. Helen felt strangely happy and at home.

When she went up to her room Pow came to her. The old lady had left the house at Torquay in charge of her sister, and had accompanied Helen as lady's-maid. Eh, ma'am,' she said, 'it is a lovely place. Just look out of the window and see.'

Helen laughed at her. 'Why, it's pitch dark, Pow; you can't see anything now.'

'Just look, ma'am,' she said, drawing aside the curtain, and Helen went to the window and looked out. It was very beautiful. From the gravel drive under her feet the lawn sloped gently down to a great Scotch fir, with ivy-covered stem, which stood out dark and clear against the moon. Behind and on both sides of it were some limes and beeches, and the water faintly moved and sparkled through their delicate spring foliage. Here and there the moonlight lay on the sloping grass between the long shadows of the trees, and showed the shrubs which were dotted about it, and darkened by contrast the dark nooks and corners where the lawn ran up to right and left under the pines and chestnuts and holly. Beyond the water Helen could see through the tops of the trees the dim straight line of the hills on the opposite shore.

She woke early next morning, while the room was still dark. Soon afterwards she heard the birds wake. A blackbird first broke the silence with a few low sleepy notes, and then a thrush began, and soon, as the daylight broadened, the whole choir burst into song. She fell asleep again with the sound in her

ears, and when she woke the second time the bright sunlight was showing through the sides and top of the curtains. Helen felt so completely rested, and so full of life, that she could not lie in bed. She got up and dressed, and went out and let Rex loose.

The sky was blue, and a very light easterly breeze just stirred the water and deepened its colour. The air was full of scent. Helen walked down a shady gravel path to the left of the lawn, and found herself by the side of an ivy-covered boat-house, looking out upon a landlocked lake or fiord. Twenty feet below her was the blue water. The tide was almost full, and along the shore to the right, close by, she could see it lapping a line of shelving rock indented by little pebbly bays, and overhung by trees which grew at the top of a precipitous earthen bank. or three miles away the masts of some vessels at anchor loomed faintly through the morning mist, and beyond them seemed to be the open sea, which, however, was hidden by a rounded hill with a long projecting point. A flock of gulls were out on the water to the left, some hovering over it, some floating upon its surface. They looked white in the sunlight.

Two

Helen stood by the boat-house for a few minutes, and then went back into the garden. There was a long grassy walk through the trees which overhung the water, and she strolled down it. The birds were singing all round her; and at her feet, under the bushes that topped the steep bank, and by the mossy roots of the limes and pine trees, the primroses grew in thousands. Among them were violets, and here and there patches of anemones. The brave little celandine had had its day with the March winds and the daffodils, and almost all its burnished golden stars had whitened and disappeared, but a few of them were still to be seen. In a patch of oak wood at the end of the walk, where the hanging boughs touched the sea, the ground was white with anemones, and among them a few blue hyacinths were breaking into flower.

Helen came back through the kitchen garden, and saw the mossy hole of a wren's nest in the wall close by the doorway. A pair of wood-pigeons had built in the big pine at the bottom of the lawn, and there was a blackbird's nest with young birds in it in a thorn bush on the sea-bank, and a thrush sitting upon her eggs in a rhododendron a few yards farther on. The whole of the old-fashioned rambling garden seemed full of birds.

She went back to the house, bearing a great dewy bunch of

primroses, anemones, and violets. There were so many that they would not be missed. As she reached the porch, with her hands full of flowers and her eyes bright with spring, a tall squareshouldered figure stepped out into the sunlight to meet her. 'Colonel Russell?' she said in surprise. 'When did you come?'

'I got here half an hour ago. I came down by the night mail and walked over from the station. You are out early.'

'I couldn't stay in bed; it was too perfect a morning. How lovely the place is !'

'I see you have been in the sea-walk,' he said, looking at the flowers.

'Yes. Mrs. Russell won't mind my picking them, will she? They are in thousands. I never saw anything like them. I didn't pick anything in the garden.'

But there is

Russell smiled at her tone of apology. 'Pick anything you like,' he said; 'I will answer for my mother. nothing so beautiful as the wild flowers.'

'That is just what I feel. I suppose going away to India makes one feel it more strongly. I remember thinking it so odd when my father came home and made me pick him bunches of daisies and buttercups. Now I understand. One can admire orchids and things of that kind, but one loves the English flowers.'

'Yes. There is nothing on earth so fresh and sweet as an English spring, but I think I never fully appreciated it till I had been some years away, "sighing my English breath in foreign clouds."

'Nor did I. It is the same with everything. I never appreciated that play until lately, or any of Shakespeare. Now he comes home to me as no one else does, because he is English as no one else is.'

'I did not know you cared for Shakespeare. But that is what always strikes me about him. He is so English, and so proud of being English. You can see that he really loved his country, the "little body with the mighty heart."

'Yes; how he would have rejoiced if he could have known that we should spread all over the world. And can't you imagine his contempt for the cant and sentimentalism of the philosophic radical, the Perish India school, who would let our empire go to pieces?'

Russell was looking out through the trees on to the blue water. 'That school enrages me,' he said, 'as nothing else does; it is

the embodiment of the detestable bourgeois spirit. They like to stay by their firesides and eat buttered toast and criticise others. I wish one could drive them all out to India and America and Australia and Africa, and make them work in building up the empire, and feel, and understand. What would England have been if all Englishmen had been like them? A tenth-rate power or a dependency of France.'

They had to go in to get ready for breakfast, and the conversation dropped; but more than once they recurred to something of the kind, and they found themselves very much in accord. With both of them the love of their country was a living force.

Helen stayed on with the Russells for some weeks. The primroses were dying away, though you could find them still in the wood with the anemones, and in the mossy nooks where the lawn ran up among the trees. The banks and woods and orchards were blue with hyacinths. A great bed of lilies of the valley burst into blossom, and for a time the house was filled with their silver bells and glistening leaves. The gorse was going with the primroses; here and there a little new bright blossom was to be seen on the bushes, but in most places the gold was turning to brown. The paler yellow of the broom was beginning to appear where the gorse had blazed. The swallows were skimming over the edges of the blue water, and the earth began to quiver in the sun, and the air was full of the hum of insects. The chestnut blossoms were coming out, and the pink may, and the lilac; the limes and beeches and sycamores were thickening fast, and even the oaks were green. Once or twice Helen said something about going; but the old people would not hear of her leaving them until June, when they were going away themselves on a visit. So she stayed on and saw the lilies die away, and the hyacinths grow few, and the columbine cover the sloping orchard where primroses and violets and hyacinths had been.

In the meantime she had found pleasure on the water as well as on shore. On the first of May the Admiral announced that his boat was ready, and suggested a sail in the afternoon. Helen accepted the proposal very gladly; the sight of the sea, and of the fishing-boats which passed and repassed before her eyes, had filled her with longing.

When they were at lunch the old gentleman, who was sitting with his face to the window, said, 'There she comes. There is

the Swallow. Doesn't she look beautiful?'

Helen looked out and saw a little cutter tearing along with all