IN THE RUINED ABBY
ALL THE BEAUTY of the night sky foretold nothing. The next day the rain came down relentlessly. It drummed on the roof like an advancing army. It ran down the mountainsides in rivulets and drew a curtain between the house and the ruin of the Abbey. Christopher and the shepherd, attending a sick sheep, came in dripping. Molly was bitter in her disappointment.
“It will do this for a week, you’ll see!” she said, in despair. “We might as well have stayed in London.”
“It will clear,” said her brother. “This can’t last more than a day or two.”
“You’re always so horribly optimistic, you don’t cheer me at all. You make me feel worse.”
He looked at her ruefully. “Anyhow,” he said, “you will have seen us.”
“I know, and that is worth everything to me, but here is Wake longing to explore the mountain.”
“Here am I,” said Wake, “completely happy.”
But he wondered when he would have Molly to himself. Garda brought out her collection of butterflies to show him. Christopher rarely had another young man to talk to and he wanted Wakefield’s views on a number of subjects. When Wake slipped into the chill parlor, hoping Molly would follow, he found Gemmel peering up at him from beside the hearth. She was knitting.
“I’m beginning a pullover for your birthday,” she said. “Molly tells me it is this month. Come here, please, and let me see how the colour suits you.”
He went and sat down beside her. She held the golden-brown wool next his cheek.
“Lovely!” she exclaimed.
“It’s frightfully kind of you.”
“Do you like me?”
“How can I help — when you’re so kind?”
“I mean do you like me for myself?”
“Of course.”
“How much?”
“As much as that.” He held up his hands.
She pushed her head between them. Her hair was thick and lively and there was a look in her eyes.
“Well — are you going to?” she asked.
He kissed her lightly, quickly.
“I’ve won!” she exclaimed, laughing.
“What?”
“Garda and I had a bet as to which of us could get you to kiss her first. She’d no luck with the butterflies. She told me so.”
Wake laughed. “She didn’t give me time.”
“Neither did I.”
She heard her father’s heavy step on the stair. She began to talk fast about her knitting.
Mr. Griffith came into the room slowly. He held out his hand with a genial smile.
“I’m so sorry I was laid up yesterday,” he said. “I hope the children are making you comfortable.”
“I’m teaching him to knit,” said Gemmel.
Her father smiled down at her indulgently. He was very different from what Wake had expected. He had pictured him as somewhat battered and disgruntled but here was a man well-groomed, well pleased, apparently, with himself and his situation. He was blond, stoutish, and tall. He had a smile that took one into his confidence, a voice that made his most trivial remark telling. No wonder his family stood a good deal from him. He added pleasantly: —
“I heard your singing last night and wished I could take part in it. I’m very fond of a good song.”
It was as though a middle-aged London man-about-town had remarked how much he enjoyed a good game of croquet.
He asked a number of questions about Canada and said he had often considered taking his family out there. The morning passed in talk. In the afternoon it was the same. Mr. Griffith dominated the scene. They were like children beside him. He arranged amusements like a bachelor uncle entertaining a rather awkward lot of nieces and nephews. He made Christopher sing. He made Garda, who twice broke down doing it, play a piece on the piano. He made Gemmel recite Wordsworth’s “I wandered lonely as a cloud,” which she did so well that Wake felt a new pang at her helplessness. That girl, he thought, might have somehow made a name for herself. Then Mr. Griffith himself recited and you could see where Gemmel had her talent. Obviously he was proud of his children and seldom had a chance for showing them off. He tried to persuade Althea to display her sketches but she fled from the room. She never spoke.
The rain came pouring down till evening. The rivulets swelled to rushing streams down the mountainside. The sheep, with the lambs trotting beside them, went into the Abbey and took possession there. The sky rested, in solid greyness, on the mountaintops. But at evening it broke into swinging purple clouds as a strong wind whistled inland from the West. The rain lessened, blew slantwise, then ceased. A clear greenish blue fringed the rims of the clouds. Molly and Wake put on windbreakers and went out. For the first time they were really alone together.
The air lay like a cool hand on their hot cheeks. They wanted to run up the steep stony path. They were aimlessly wild like birds suddenly set free. They ran here and there, picking up odd stones, finding mountain flowers that, for all their fragility, had captured the wonder of the mountains in their tiny staring faces.
The Abbey rose pale and rain-washed before them. The sunlight, piercing the purple of the clouds, flickered over the delicately wrought pillars. The stone groinings supported little more than the stormy sky. Here one of the bosses had fallen from a column and lay like a broken lily, there a pilaster was topped by a bird’s nest built of mountain grass. The sheep had discovered that the rain had ceased and they came shouldering each other through the Abbot’s own door, all but one who lay with her lamb beside her on the fallen altar. She lay chewing her cud and blinking coldly at Wake and Molly through her white eyelashes.
“It’s too overwhelmingly picturesque,” thought Wake. “I can’t say what I want to here. I wish I’d said it in London.”
Molly looked the sheep over with an appraising eye. “They’re a nice lot,” she said. “Christopher is pleased with them.”
“Yes. They’re a lovely flock. It’s all lovely and strange and quite unbelievable. Shall we really be back with Ninian Fox next week? I can’t imagine it. I almost wish we could stay here forever.”
“You’d tire of it.”
“You forget that I lived in a monastery for a year.”
“So you did! But I had sooner be working in London.”
“Well — I want to be wherever you are.”
Something in his voice made her suddenly aware of herself physically. She moved, as though for more space, to one of the windows and leaned out. He followed her.
“Look,” she said, “it’s going to be a lovely evening.”
Mountains and valleys unrolled themselves in a luminous scroll. Some, not before seen, showed themselves in the golden distance. The clouds had gathered themselves into purple immensity and were sweeping toward England. In the clear pale sky above, a skylark was pouring down his song unseen.
Wakefield’s arm touched Molly’s and a fire passed through them. He felt his breast swell. He felt that he could draw the mountains, the valleys, the very blades of grass into his heart and enfold them there. He felt a constriction in his throat. Moments passed before he could speak, but the skylark spoke for him, pouring out his love.
Then he drew her toward him. All he had meant to say was suddenly worthless. The simplest words were enough.
“Molly — I love you — will you marry me?”
“Yes,” she answered, almost in a whisper. “Yes, Wake, I will.”