Not a
friendly combination, but an absolute openness and nakedness of
soul, nothing hidden, nothing kept back, everything confessed and
admitted, a passing of two streams of life into one.
XVIII
THE PICNIC
Jack arrived at Windlow in due course, and brought with him Guthrie
to stay. Howard thought, and was ashamed of thinking, that Jack had
some scheme on foot; and the arrival of Guthrie was embarrassing to
him, as likely to complicate an already too complicated situation.
A plan was made for a luncheon picnic on the hill. There was a
tower on the highest eminence of the down, some five miles away, a
folly built by some wealthy squire among woodlands, and commanding
wide views; it was possible to drive to a village at the foot, and
to put up vehicles at a country inn; and it was proposed that they
should take luncheon up to the tower, and eat it there. The Sandys
party were to drive there, and Howard was to drive over with Miss
Merry and meet them. Howard did not at all relish the prospect. He
had a torturing desire for the presence of Maud, and yet he seemed
unable to establish any communication with her; and he felt that
the liveliness of the young men would reduce him to a condition of
amiable ineffectiveness which would make him, as Marie Bashkirtseff
naively said, hardly worth seeing. However, there was no way out,
and on a delicious July morning, with soft sunlight everywhere, and
great white clouds floating in a sky of turquoise blue, Howard and
Miss Merry started from Windlow.
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