Page:The Climber (Benson).djvu/114

104 "But, of course, I should want both of you to get what you wanted most," she said. "And as for forgiving, you can't forgive or not forgive a thing as big as love. It is destiny, too. It must happen or not happen, independently of us. You might as well quarrel with the sun for rising in the morning."

Lucia laughed.

"Well, I do if it wakes me up," she said.

Maud had not yet met Lucia's aunts, but within a couple of days she was a dweller in the innermost places of Aunt Cathie's heart, partly by virtue of her devotion to Lucia, partly by the charm of her own simplicity and goodness. By virtue of that she at once pierced through Aunt Cathie's reticence and gruffness. She easily divined what tenderness and softness lay beneath that marvellously horny shell, knowing in herself how difficult it was to her to put into words anything that was deeply felt. And Aunt Cathie, she saw at once, had the same barrier in her speech that made words and feelings of kindness and sympathy rebound, so to speak, from it, and stun themselves. These limitations, in fact, of the two were a bond between them, even as was their essential kindness, and in each heart was the same presiding goddess, Lucia.

The presiding goddess had refused to come out this morning till she had written her letters to her three particular girl friends at Brixham; but in obedience to her suggestion, Aunt Cathie had taken Maud out to sit and stroll on the beach, till the bathing-hour of noon. Even in these two days there had been conferred on Cathie the degree of "aunt" to Maud also, and this fact was pathetically precious to her, for it had come naturally, involuntarily. Only yesterday Maud had begun a sentence, "Oh, Aunt Cathie!" by accident, apologizing immediately, and saying that Lucia had so often called her Aunt Cathie that the phrase had escaped without thought. Aunt Cathie had flushed a little, and killed a wasp on the window with extraordinary truculence before she replied. Then she said: "Well, you can't go back now. I'm your aunt, Maud."

So aunt and niece sat together on the shore, each more easily expansive to the other than to anyone else, though their friendship was of so short duration, if measured by the misleading scale of hours. The sea was very far out, for the tide was low, and the glory of the shining sand stretched at their feet. A few red sails