He traversed the shrubbery, glanced into the walled garden--no Jon! Nor
where the peaches and the apricots were beginning to swell and colour.
He passed the Cupressus trees, dark and spiral, into the meadow.
Where had the boy got to? Had he rushed down to the coppice--his old
hunting-ground? Jolyon crossed the rows of hay. They would cock it on
Monday and be carrying the day after, if rain held off. Often they had
crossed this field together--hand in hand, when Jon was a little chap.
Dash it! The golden age was over by the time one was ten! He came to the
pond, where flies and gnats were dancing over a bright reedy surface;
and on into the coppice. It was cool there, fragrant of larches. Still
no Jon! He called. No answer! On the log seat he sat down, nervous,
anxious, forgetting his own physical sensations. He had been wrong to
let the boy get away with that letter; he ought to have kept him under
his eye from the start! Greatly troubled, he got up to retrace his
steps. At the farm-buildings he called again, and looked into the dark
cow-house. There in the cool, and the scent of vanilla and ammonia, away
from flies, the three Alderneys were chewing the quiet cud; just milked,
waiting for evening, to be turned out again into the lower field. One
turned a lazy head, a lustrous eye; Jolyon could see the slobber on
its grey lower lip. He saw everything with passionate clearness, in the
agitation of his nerves--all that in his time he had adored and tried
to paint--wonder of light and shade and colour. No wonder the legend put
Christ into a manger--what more devotional than the eyes and moon-white
horns of a chewing cow in the warm dusk! He called again. No answer! And
he hurried away out of the coppice, past the pond, up the hill. Oddly
ironical--now he came to think of it--if Jon had taken the gruel of his
discovery down in the coppice where his mother and Bosinney in those old
days had made the plunge of acknowledging their love. Where he himself,
on the log seat the Sunday morning he came back from Paris, had realised
to the full that Irene had become the world to him. That would have been
the place for Irony to tear the veil from before the eyes of Irene's
boy! But he was not here! Where had he got to? One must find the poor
chap!
A gleam of sun had come, sharpening to his hurrying senses all the
beauty of the afternoon, of the tall trees and lengthening shadows, of
the blue, and the white clouds, the scent of the hay, and the cooing of
the pigeons; and the flower shapes standing tall. He came to the rosery,
and the beauty of the roses in that sudden sunlight seemed to him
unearthly. "Rose, you Spaniard!" Wonderful three words! There she had
stood by that bush of dark red roses; had stood to read and decide that
Jon must know it all! He knew all now! Had she chosen wrong? He bent and
sniffed a rose, its petals brushed his nose and trembling lips; nothing
so soft as a rose-leaf's velvet, except her neck--Irene! On across
the lawn he went, up the slope, to the oak-tree. Its top alone was
glistening, for the sudden sun was away over the house; the lower shade
was thick, blessedly cool--he was greatly overheated. He paused a minute
with his hand on the rope of the swing--Jolly, Holly--Jon! The old
swing! And suddenly, he felt horribly--deadly ill. 'I've over done it!'
he thought: 'by Jove! I've overdone it--after all!' He staggered up
toward the terrace, dragged himself up the steps, and fell against
the wall of the house. He leaned there gasping, his face buried in the
honey-suckle that he and she had taken such trouble with that it might
sweeten the air which drifted in. Its fragrance mingled with awful pain.
'My love!' he thought; 'the boy!' And with a great effort he tottered in
through the long window, and sank into old Jolyon's chair. The book was
there, a pencil in it; he caught it up, scribbled a word on the open
page.... His hand dropped.... So it was like this--was it?...