TWO:Sometimes he would talk to her of the strange voyages he had madehow he had lived on ships ever since he was a boy of twelve, and had seen nearly the whole world, from the fiery steaming forests of Equador to the Northern Lights that make a mock day in Spitzbergen. He told her strange tales of wooded atolls in the South Seas, painting a fairyland she had scarcely dreamed, of palms motionless in the aromatic air, of pink and white shores, and lagoons full of fish all winged and frilled and iridescentof the sudden swift sunrises and sunsets between Cancer and Capricorn, of the great ice-wall in the south, below Tasmania, which he had longed to penetrate, for who knew what lay beyond it in the Unknown? "And there's another like it what I've seen from Franz Josef Landmaybe there's countries beyond it, with gold." Then he told her of the terrible storms south of the Horn, of the uncharted Nelson Straitof northern Baffin Land, where he had once gone on a whaler, of Rio Grande and the buried city of Tenoctitlan"where there's gold." Gold seemed to be hidden in large quantities all over the world according to Dansay, and Caro once asked him why he had never brought any back. "Because I love what's better than[Pg 349] gold," he answered, and drew her, happy and quivering, into his arms.She saw them go out of the tent, still linked and in their dream, then watched their dark shapes stoop against the sky.
TWO:"How can you tell?"Reuben began to fidget about Grandturzel. He told his son-in-law that if things did not improve he would have to go. In vain Realf pleaded bad weather and bad luckneither of them was ever admitted as an excuse at Odiam.
TWO:That evening Caro remembered her own counsels and did not draw back from his love. She let him kiss her as much as he chose, though he saw with amusement that he frightened her sometimes. They wandered on Boarzell through webs of star-fretted mist, they drank the night together, and sacramental silences. It was only when she realised that her father would be shutting[Pg 348] up the house that Caro was able to tear herself away, and this time they parted with many kisses and vows to meet again."Well, of course, if she has a thorough rest from all work and worry, and recovers her health in the meantime, I don't say that in three or four years.... But she's not a strong subject, Mr. Backfield, and you'd do well to remember it."
TWO:"Yours!"