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Updated: June 12, 2025
She was to have but a fortnight of London and then, accompanied by Mrs. Peel and Sally, to go to Merriston for another fortnight or so before coming back to London for final preparations. Gerald was to be at Merriston for part of the time, and Miss Harriet Robinson was coming over from Paris to sustain and guide her through the last throes of her trousseau.
She found, when the fortnight was over, that she was glad, very glad, to get away to Merriston. The comparative solitude would do her good, she felt, and in it, above all, the charm would perhaps work more restoringly than in London.
'But you wouldn't care to live in the country? said Althea. 'There's nowhere else I really care to live. Nothing would please me so much as to spend the rest of my life at Merriston, dabbling at my painting and going in seriously for farming. 'Why don't you do it? 'Why, money! I've got no money. It's expensive work to educate oneself by experience, and I'm ignorant. You show me how ignorant.
'About this rich American, said Gerald; 'is she really going to take Merriston, do you think? It's awfully good of you, Helen, to try and get a tenant for me. 'I don't know that you'd call her rich not as Americans go; but I believe she will take Merriston. She wanted to take it at once, on faith; but I insisted that she must see it first.
She walked along this road for several miles and left it to cross a crisp, grassy slope from where, standing still and turning to see, she looked down over all the country and saw, far away, the roofs of Merriston House. She stood for a long time looking down at it, the hot wind ruffling her skirts and hair. It was a heartless day and she herself felt heartless.
Aunt Julia, conscious of her own honourable career, with its achievements in enlightened philanthropy and its background of careful study, heard this with inexpressible ire; but when she was dragged to the execrable taste of a retaliation, and pointed to the British countryside matron, as they saw her at Merriston a creature, said Aunt Julia, hardly credible in her complacency and narrowness, Miss Buckston rejoined with an unruffled smile: 'Ah, we'll wake them up.
And to-night reality seemed to shake and batter at the doors. She had come to Merriston House to rest, to drink eau rougie and to rest. She wanted to lapse into apathy and to recover, as far as might be, from her recent unpleasant experiments and experiences.
Then came the visits to Merriston House the cheerful, chattering houseful of happy girls, the kind father and mother, and Gerald. Gerald! From the time that he came into her life all the pictures were full of him, so full that she hardly saw herself any longer; she was only some one who watched and felt.
The sunny day at Merriston had not, in her thoughts, brought them near to one another Gerald, and Althea, and her; yet something significant ran through her sudden memory of it. She had moments of her race's sense of second-sight, and it never came without making her aware of a pause a strange, forced pause where she had to look at something, touch something, in the dark, as it were.
'Do you like it? Helen asked her as they passed along the edge of a little wood, glimpses of bright meadow among its clearings. 'We are almost there now, and it's like this all about Merriston. 'I've hardly seen any part of England I like so much, said Althea. 'It has a sweet, untouched wildness rather rare in England. 'I always think that it's a country to love and live in, said Helen.
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