第48章 CHAPTER IX THE PASTEUR CONQUERS(4)

Godfrey was not one of these, because the hand of Circumstance had managed his affairs otherwise. Isobel was no mess of potage, but with all her faults and failings, a fair and great inheritance for him who could take seisin of her. Still, as he believed, she had first treated him badly, then utterly neglected him whose pride she had outraged, by not even taking the trouble to write him a letter, and finally, had vanished away. And he was young, with manhood advancing in his veins, like the pulse of spring, and women are many in the world, some of whom have pretty faces and proper figures. Also, although the fact is overlooked by convention, it has pleased Nature to make man polygamous in his instincts, though where those instincts end and what is called love begins, is a thing almost impossible to define. Probably in truth the limit lies beyond the borders of sex.

So Isobel's grey eyes faded into the background of Godfrey's mental vision, while the violet eyes of Juliette drew ever nearer to his physical perceptions. And here, to save trouble, it may be said at once, that he never cared in the least for Juliette, except as a male creature cares for a pretty female creature, and that Juliette never cared in the least for him, except as a young woman cares in general for a handsome and attractive young man--with prospects. Indeed, she found him too serious for her taste. She did not understand him, as, for his part, in her he found nothing to understand.

After all, ruling out the primary impulses which would make a scullery maid congenial to a genius upon a desert isle, what was there in a Juliette to appeal to a Godfrey? And, with the same qualification, what was there in a Godfrey to appeal to a Juliette? As once, with an accidental touch of poetry, she said to her mother, when at his side she felt as though she were walking over a snow-covered crevasse in the surrounding Alps. All seemed firm beneath her feet, but she never knew when the crust would break, and he would vanish into unfathomed depths, perchance dragging her with him. Or, feeling her danger she might run from him on to safer ground, where she knew herself to be on good, common rock or soil, and no strange, hollow echoes struck her ears, leaving him to pursue his perilous journey alone.

Her mother laughed, and falling into her humour, answered, that beyond the crevasse and at the foot of the further slope lay the warm and merry human town, the best house of which--not unlike the Villa Ogilvy --could be reached in no other way, and that with such a home waiting to receive her, it was worth while to take a little risk. Thereon Juliette shrugged her white shoulders, and in the intervals of one of the French /chansonettes/ which she was very fond of warbling in her gay voice, remarked that she preferred to make journeys, safe or perilous, in the company of a singing-bird in the sunlight, rather than in that of an owl in the dusk, who always reminded her of the advancing darkness.

At least, that was the substance of what she said, although she did not put it quite so neatly. Then, as though by an afterthought, she asked when her cousin Jules, a young notary of Berne, was coming to stay with them.

The winter wore away, the spring came, and after spring, summer, with its greenery and flowers. Godfrey was happy enough during this time.

To begin with, the place suited him. He was very well now, and grew enormously in that pure and trenchant air, broadening as well as lengthening, till, notwithstanding his slimness, he gave promise of becoming a large, athletic man.