# The Bond/Part 4/Chapter 2
### II

THEY found a house on Long Island, and Teresa took a perverse pleasure in the fact that it was within an easy distance of Mrs. Perry's big country-place. Basil had objected to this neighbourhood, but had been overruled. The house was exactly what they wanted—an old farmstead, which had been made habitable by a painter of their acquaintance. It had a big studio, a straggling old-fashion garden, and an orchard where Ronald could play. There were glimpses of the sea. They put in some of their furniture, which had been stored, and Teresa announced that they were settled till December, by which time they might perhaps have found their permanent home. This, she said, must be in some place not infested by the rich; where, therefore, land needn't be bought by the square inch.
Meantime she devoted herself with great energy to the task of making their temporary abode comfortable. She became an active housewife, and sang gaily as she went about with her sleeves rolled up, ordering the place. Basil had settled himself promptly into the studio, where he welcomed interruption. He announced that he was hard at work, but when Teresa passed the door or Ronald looked in at the window, he seized ​upon their society, and would come out to lounge about the house or the garden, smoking and cheerfully inspecting their activities. His tuneless whistle was frequently heard. He was very happy. Teresa too had recovered her old gaiety. The clouds of the past year seemed all to have disappeared.
Basil left all practical arrangements completely in Teresa's hands. She was to choose their home, and everything was to be exactly as she wished. He applauded the meals that she caused to be set before him, made light of any drawbacks, and proclaimed that he had never in his life been so comfortable. He was disinclined to stir from their domestic precincts even for half a day, and neither of them wanted to see any people. He took Ronald down to the beach every day, and taught him to swim. He wanted Teresa always within sight or hearing. He wanted, he said, to wallow in unbridled domesticity.
One morning Teresa, idly looking over the newspaper as she sat in a hammock, with Ronald, scantily clad, making mud-pies near by, saw on the first page an article, under portentous head- lines, on the threatened war between England and Turkey. Turkey had marched troops into the Sinai Peninsula, on the pretext that it was not a part of Egypt. England had let it be understood that if the Turkish forces were not withdrawn she would bombard Constantinople. This ​was the gist of the despatches, eked out by comment and prophecy from various sources to make a startling column and a half.
Teresa read the article several times. It had come, then, the "trouble" that Crayven had foreseen, and that had called him back to his post. And what had come to him there, in his old fort in the desert, with his handful of soldiers? An emergency like this, she knew, had been always before him. Half civilian, half soldier, he was one of those many Englishmen on the outposts of the Empire, living and working obscurely, per- haps fighting and dying obscurely—it was all, as he had said, in the day's work.
She dropped the newspaper and lay back, thinking of him.
She was sure that he would meet his emergency well, with the quiet courage that gives a touch of the heroic to even the simplest human figure. He was steady of nerve and strong of will. He would be calm under fire, he would make the most of his resources. He would assuredly not give way. If there were any dispute about that old powder-magazine and that well—the only water to be had within three days' journey—she could quite see him declining to give it up to a Turkish army camped about him. He was the sort of man who would shut his eyes naturally to the odds against him—and even, out of pure obstinacy perhaps, put a match to the powder-magazine.
​Ronald came up to her, to exhibit a particularly fine pie, and she said to him:
"Do you remember the man—that gave you your stick, you know?"
"Yes," said Ronald thoughtfully. "Is he here?"
"No—he's far away, across the big ocean and the desert. And he's in a fort, with cannon, and there are a lot of soldiers who want to shoot him and take the fort."
Ronald brought his two bare heels together and his hand to his forehead, in the military salute that Crayven had taught him.
"Salute, sir!" he said. "If he has cannons, why doesn't he shoot the soldiers?"
"Perhaps he will, but there are such a lot of them."
Ronald looked very solemn, and dug his thumb into the mud-pie, destroying its symmetry.
"How many are there?" he asked after a pause.
"Oh, I don't know—thousands, perhaps—heaps of them."
"Will he fight with a sword, like granpa, or will he shoot their heads off with the cannons?"
"I don't know, dearest. Go and make another pie, will you? That one's quite spoilt."
"No, make me a fort, with cannons."
"No, I can't now, dearest, I'm going to write a letter."
​She went into the house, meaning to write to Crayven. But Basil called her into the studio to show her a drawing he had just finished, and presently it was lunch-time. The letter was not written that day, nor the next. After all, why write to him? He had said that he didn't want letters.
But within the week there came a letter to her from Crayven. It had been sent to Switzerland, and forwarded by Nina. As it happened, Teresa was out when the rural postman brought that day's mail ; and Basil, according to his frank custom, opened and read the letter. When Teresa came back from her walk with Ronald, Basil gave it to her, with a number of others, without comment, She sat down on the step and began to look them over. Basil, smoking rather nervously, was walking up and down the verandah. When she came to Crayven's letter and looked at the signature, she changed colour slightly and glanced up at Basil. He met her glance sombrely. She read the letter, which had been written a day or so after Crayven's arrival at his post, and which was rather too expressive. Then she folded it up carefully and glanced up again at Basil.
"I wish you would not open my letters," she said calmly.
"I daresay. I won't in future. I didn't know it was a love-letter. Perhaps you'll tell me, if you don't mind, who the devil is 'Athelstan'?"
​"Oh, a man you know—Crayven, that Englishman, you remember."
"And how does he happen to write to you like that? Where have you seen him?"
"He was in the Val d'Iliez this summer."
"You never mentioned him to me."
"No."
"Why didn't you?"
"I didn't choose to."
"Do you mean to tell me about this now?"
Teresa was silent, looking away through the slanting shadows of the orchard. Basil was looking at her, quite pale. She shook her head finally.
"Not on demand. You've no right to demand it. I shall tell you if I choose, when I choose."
"Very well, Teresa. I don't know what you've done, I don't know whether you know what you're doing now—I don't understand the thing. Do as you like, of course, about telling me."
He went into the house, and Teresa sat still, in one position, till tea was brought out, when she got up, her whole body aching from constraint. Basil sent out word that he didn't want any tea and that he was going to town for dinner. Ronald ran up for his bit of cake; and when Basil, with a curt "Good-bye," departed, trotted down to the gate with him. Basil called over his shoulder:
"I may not be back to-night."
​Teresa made no answer, but smiled faintly and scornfully.
It took no more than this, then, to break up the peace of their reunion! How absurd, to quarrel about Crayven! She was angry at Basil's ready distrust of her. The letter was over-expressive, but——
She read it again. Yes, it was a love-letter, but a melancholy one. It was by no means the letter of a happy or triumphant lover. It was not very long: and at the end Crayven said that his district had already been invaded, and that a force of three thousand Turks were camped at two days' journey from him.
"I may not write again," he ended. "But if I get out of this I will, just to let you know. Of course it's a chance whether this letter gets through—but if it does you'll know why I wrote it. I can't help it—I can't go out without a word to you. I was a fool to say I didn't want letters—I do want them. But don't bother about me. Write if you like. But if anything happens to me—there's only one chance out of many that it will—don't let it trouble you. It doesn't matter very much to me, you know."
She sat down and wrote to him, and then walked to the post-office to mail her letter, taking Ronald with her. A way of getting news of him had occurred to her. She sent a cablegram to a friend of hers in London, asking him to find out ​for her Crayven's situation. She also bought an evening paper, but there was nothing in that except scarehead prophecies of the despatch of an English fleet to Constantinople. She threw the paper away and went slowly home along the quiet country road. A fresh wind was blowing from the sea. The September heats were coming to an end. The first hint of autumn was in the air.
So far, since she had read Crayven's letter, she had been thinking only of him. It was not at all like him, she thought, to alarm her for nothing. He must have believed himself in danger, and, as he was not a timorous nor an hysterical person, the danger must be real. She was touched that he should have thought of her and have wished to send her that message, which might be the last. After all, it had been a genuine feeling that he had had for her; she had been sure of it ever since that last day in the Swiss forest. And she felt affection for him, and a longing to know that he was safe.
She regretted nothing about the affair; not even the fact that his letter had made trouble for her with Basil. She did not regret her silence to Basil, nor that he now knew that she had concealed something from him. Of course he would be angry. He had believed always that she had no secrets from him; and in fact, till this, she had had none. It was Basil's doing, that she had kept this from him. If he had his secrets, she ​also bad a right to hers. She had not deliberately resolved to practise any deception upon him; she had not deliberately engaged in a relation which she knew he would resent. She had been led into it instinctively by her feeling of partial estrangement from him, and for this he was responsible. He had made her feel that, after all, she was separate from him; he was one person and she was another. They loved one another, but each, after all, had a life outside that love. Basil had not sacrificed to her his caprice for Mrs. Perry, nor his loyalty to the consequences of that caprice. He had no right then to demand an account from her. He had taken the wrong tone. He had gone off in a rage. No doubt he could not help that he had been taken by surprise and deeply disturbed. He would come back, perhaps, more reasonable—and then she might, or might not, explain. Meantime, she was not sorry that he was disturbed. It would not hurt Basil to suffer a little. He had made her suffer. And with her return she had forgiven him, she had given herself to him again completely, without the shadow of a reproach; less joyously than before, but more seriously, more passionately. She had loved him more because she had—from his point of view—offended against him, and because the account was balanced. She did not feel in the least sinful because of this, but she knew that he would think her so. This consciousness gave her ​an additional tenderness for him, and it freed her absolutely from her resentment of the affair with Isabel. It had enabled her to forgive Basil, and to put the thing entirely out of her mind.
Well, and now? She did not quite know what would happen now, but for the moment she was indifferent. Basil must come back sometime, and then they would see.
She dined alone; and afterward walked by the light of a half moon down to the sea. This was the side of the island which faced the open ocean, and great breakers rolled in to fling themselves on the shore. The wind was still rising. It blew her hair about as she sat on the sand, and whipped it into strings over her forehead, and left on her lips the salt taste of the sea. She sat there till the moon was near setting, feeling with deep pleasure the tumult of the night, and, with something that was not pain, the tumult, the exciting uncertainty of life.