‘I can walk quite fairly fast,’ he replied cheerfully, ‘if you would just let me keep what I can see of you in the corner of my eye while we are crossing the road. May it be the river?’
It must be confessed there was no extravagant oddity in the outward appearance of the two of them, as, busily talking, they steered their way across from Messrs Ewart & Sons, the ironmongers, to the corner a little beyond the post office, and then on down Unicorn Street round by the sawmills. Furtively skirting the Bagshot orchard, they presently found themselves breathing the cool but stagnant sweetness of the air by the river. Its meadows on the farther side were fringed with drifts of fool’s parsley; and on this side were tented with round, leafy, verdant lime trees; while nearer the water, glassing themselves in its flowing dark, hung the whispering green-grey of pollard willows.
Why this young stranger hurried quickly past a seat with a sloping back to it no more than a pace or two from the water and under an Eden-like bower which the authorities had somehow refrained from polling, and why she chose instead a low, hard one of oak full in the thinning glare of the sun, Cecil did not even attempt to guess. His only hope was to postpone for an hour or so the thunderstorm which was obviously completing its preparations; to say all that he wanted to say; and to hear as much as possible of what he longed to hear before it was too desperately near the stroke of one.
Here, then, these two seated themselves. And she herself, her bare hands, on either side of her, clasped on the edge of the hot wood, her narrow face now averted, now swiftly glancing at him, at once began talking so fast that he could scarcely find breath enough to follow her up.
‘I don’t really want to know who you are,’ she said once more. ‘I don’t see that it matters, at least not to me. Not a bit. I believe you about the glove. I don’t believe you have told me anything that is not the truth. So if you do make anything up – just taradiddles, you know – you may as well realize that I shall probably believe you. Then it will be my responsibility. And yet – well, I don’t think somehow you will do that either; though I shouldn’t blame you if you did. I never knew any that didn’t, anyhow. If you’d like to keep the glove, why, keep it. There’s not very much in this world that seems to me much worth troubling about. They don’t even want to mean what they say. But if anyone had told me two or three days ago that I should be sitting here with you this morning, when I had promised to – to go out with a cousin of mine, well —’ the dark eyes continued to brood over the now strangely shadowed meadows on the farther bank of the river, ‘well, what I say is, that’s my business. I’m free to do what I like, I suppose, whatever they may say. Still, you are rather – rather out of the usual, you know.’
And yet, though she had all but implored Cecil not to tell her who he was, ‘or anything like that’, he was presently pouring out very little else. As usual, his mind began to hunt about in what she had been saying like a terrier suddenly let loose in a rabbit warren. Where next, and where next? Perhaps it was the echo in his mind of the word ‘cousin’ that at last made an end to these confessions. His lips closed a little tighter.
‘This is a horribly personal question,’ he faltered, ‘and you need not answer it, of course, if you feel you don’t want to; but would you perhaps mind telling me —’ he pointed a forefinger to within an inch of the turquoises that showed bluer, it seemed, because of the bleached grey of the wood that surrounded the finger which they encircled, ‘would you mind telling me if you are engaged to be married?’
His companion positively gasped. A crimson flush mounted up into her cheeks. She buried her hands in her lap. ‘And so you think,’ she cried, stooping forward over them, her head twisted awry almost under the very rim of his unsightly eye-shade, ‘you think I should be sitting here with you if the man I was engaged to was waiting to – to go out with me? My God! It just shows what horrible mistakes one can make. I don’t say a girl shouldn’t do as she pleases,’ she went on even more rapidly, and stooping closer over her lap, her eyes fixed straight in front of her on the worn green grass at their feet. ‘I am free to do just what I like. But if you think – after what you have said – that I would do a thing like that – when I positively kept my promise to the very minute to be fool enough, after all I’ve gone through, to come and wait there for you in the street – well, all I can say is, I understand exactly the kind of old lady the one you say you live with is.’
Apart from anything else this impassioned speech might imply, it shot a bleaker shaft of light on Grummumma than Cecil even in his most discontented moments had so much as conceived possible. Grummumma! – somehow to get rid of her, to put her exactly in her right place, seemed to be his only way of escape, or at any rate the only possible way of keeping this explosive, enigmatic stranger sitting here beside him in this paradise amid the encircling gloom for just a few minutes longer.
‘I assure you, I swear to you,’ he said, ‘that she is not so bad as that. She has been immensely kind to me. How would you like to have to take charge, or whatever you like to call it, of a person who, who – well, like me! I realize, of course, you must hate the thought of being seen with me. You needn’t suppose I don’t know what they have done for me in making me like this. But I swear, I swear I always supposed a ring on the third finger of anybody’s left hand meant an engagement.’ He groped round as if his mind were absorbed in an inextricable mathematical problem. ‘And after all it is on your left hand!’
A dead silence fell between them. The hands in the worn blue-serge lap tightly clasped themselves together; that was all. The young woman never stirred.
‘Wasn’t that funny of me?’ an almost unrecognizable voice a minute or so afterwards questioned him. ‘Goodness! if I was engaged to my cousin – though this particular he happens to be a she – why, pray, shouldn’t I be sitting here putting things right with you and keep him waiting a bit? I have precious little time to myself. I’ve had my fill of what they really want. And he wouldn’t keep me long engaged if he made a fuss about that, I can tell you. I just – if you must know the truth – I wear this ring now because I prefer to be alone. I’m sick of the way they – well, that’s why. And now, please don’t think I am asking this for any – for any horrible motives; but if you did see this thing on my finger yesterday, why didn’t you give me back my glove?’
In the comparatively few years of his secluded existence, Cecil had become thoroughly accustomed to being catechized. But not exactly like this. And now, unlike most such little experiences in the past, his one aim and desire at this moment was to share with his inquisitor every single little bit of truth that was in him. He succeeded in this so admirably at length that the two of them had soon abandoned all misgivings and reserve and were chasing together every least little thought and experience that happened to poke up its happy head into the wilderness of their minds.
It was a wilderness that had begun to blossom like the rose. They had discovered the solitude only two can share. By now, indeed, not a single human soul was to be seen near at hand. And for obvious reasons.
But though Cecil was capable of leaping blindly to conclusions on what for most people would be the most inadequate grounds, though but one glance at the sullen surface of the water, one moment’s attention to the torpid hush that was now hanging its ever-thickening veils around them, would instantly have warned him of what was coming, he was far too intent on other things to heed. And his companion didn’t care. Never, never could either of them have guessed what an immense reservoir of living water had lain treasured up and concealed in memory. One twist of the fingers that now lay unfolded in the stranger’s lap beneath his very eyes – why, even that empty glove – had suddenly turned on the tap. It seemed the flood would never cease.
As for herself, a courageous, if not dare-devil heedlessness of the future was her unrealized philosophy. She knew well enough what they were in for. It was there before her eyes, in her blood, in her brain, in every nerve. She was its centre, its very eye. And the sudden dar
tings of her dark glances to and fro drank in the complete menace of the scene with avidity.
As she herself had repeatedly hinted, ‘young fellows’ of the utmost assurance and aplomb were to be found in full display morning and night, parading the pavements of the High Street. And yet this young man who now shared the river seat with her, with whom she was actually talking indeed as if they had shared the same nursery, had somehow managed to stay clean outside that dashing category. He was different in appearance, in talk, in manners, in the complete, odd effect he had on her mind, as a coral island is from darkest Africa.
She knew ‘a thing or two’ as well as any thing or two can be known. And the knowledge had sufficed for most little crises in what had been a fairly lively but what could hardly have been described as a lavish existence. She had even confessed to Cecil only a moment or so ago that though the cousin already mentioned had had nothing to do with it, except as a confidante, she had herself already been, as she supposed, more than once in love. Just to say it all quite easily like that seemed somehow to prove how irremediably out of love she was now. The confession seemed to be its own absolution. And yet, with another sudden flaming of colour in her cheek, she had easily managed to refrain from expressing her sentiments concerning the young man who had been responsible for the last experiment.
She could at least play fair even on behalf of a creature who hadn’t the least notion of what the phrase meant. And she had twisted what had first sprung to her lips into: ‘I didn’t see as how I could go on caring for him. There isn’t much in me, but I do believe in trying to be – if you understand what I mean – all of oneself there is. It was no fault of his, not at least that he’d know of, but –’ once more the deep, dark, and tragic eyes stole over the louring meadows that lay beyond the water, ‘well, there, you may think me a beast, if you like, but I came at last to hate him. Oh, how I hated him! It’s gone now; it’s over; and yet it has dyed me through and through. At least so I thought until – I didn’t see what could come of it, I mean, but just a sort of suffocation if …’
Cecil had waited patiently for the end of the sentence.
‘Well, if we had got married,’ she added, as if the word meant hanged-drawn-and-quartered. ‘Not that I suppose we ever should have been. It sounds awful, I know, as my friend said at the time; but I don’t care even if it does. I am glad it …’ Again she broke off, as if in sudden dread of her own impetuosity. ‘There! that’s all, that’s all! I can’t go back. No one could ask me to.’ And the fixed wide eyes which the rejected young man had never really seen, and Cecil couldn’t, were the very straightest of witnesses to the honesty of her tongue.
When at least half a dozen thoughts are entangled together in one’s mind, it is difficult to express any. And Cecil had been utterly unable to make any comment on this statement before the young woman had swiftly dropped the clue. She could not imagine why her cheeks hadn’t the sense to keep their natural pallor this morning; it wasn’t a habit of theirs to go on in this silly fashion. Yet why on earth should it matter what they did, when that funny green shade prevented anybody worth looking at them from seeing them?
‘Here I am,’ her voice ran on breathlessly, in broken cadences up and down its scale – a clear, challenging voice; ‘here I am, talking and talking, yet you are telling me nothing at all about yourself. And soon there won’t be another chance.’
‘Another chance!’ cried Cecil in guttural tones. ‘You mean you won’t see me again? You can’t mean that! Why, here I am, seeing you now – if,’ he added dismally, ‘if seeing is the right word to use. And yet I still keep on saying to myself: “It’s not the ten-thousandth part.” Please do try and understand: I want to see you – you. Oh, your very self! You couldn’t have meant that.’
‘Me?’ returned a faint and rather shaken voice. ‘Me! there’s nothing in me. Besides,’ and the tones flattened a little in spite of the fact that a faint smile had crept into her eyes, ‘that would be seeing me double.’
‘I said it. I mean it,’ said Cecil stubbornly. ‘I don’t believe it would be possible for me ever to know you enough. Everything you say leads me on as if, oh! into another world, and even this one – I can’t explain. I never knew there was such a place to be in as where we are now, and yet,’ it was as if a sudden light had flooded his mind, ‘what you have said as yet has been nothing but – sign-posts.’
The dark eyes pondered. ‘I think,’ she said, ‘if I thought you were not meaning every syllable you say I should never hold up my head again.’
The thin, delicate face was now averted; the narrow left hand, as if purely of its own volition, had turned itself palm upward on her knee. Even a young man twenty times less accustomed to looking down than Cecil might have noticed it. But if he did, he made no movement. He merely sat a little stiller.
‘Mean? You!’ he said, as if in utter perplexity. ‘Why, even to be seen with a creature like me must be a – an imposition.’ His head stared round on its shoulders. ‘I assure you,’ he said with a sudden gleam of humour, ‘it’s an imposition even to me.’
Hardly had the little rill of answering laughter sounded out in the sullen air when a headlong rush of wind swept over the motionless meadows that lay opposite to them, turning their rich seeding brown to a livid green, and sweeping the waters of the river into a rippled shield of beaten metal. Dry leaves were flying in it. The tree above them was swept as if by one vast, multitudinous sigh. There came a pause; and then out of the blue-black, cloud-vaulted heavens above their heads, a thin river of light suddenly flickered, like the fangs of a serpent. And as if at a signal, the solid globe beneath this day-benighted couple shook beneath a rattling crash of thunder.
Of the two, the young man must have been the least prepared for this assault. He showed not the faintest trace of being startled, however. He just quietly laid his hand on the upturned palm and in his haste almost whispered: ‘Quick, how high is the tree above us? I don’t know this place. You are frightened. Where shall I take you? Quick!’
The fingers beneath his remained perfectly passive. The laughter that came in reply seemed almost as meaningless as a child’s, and as full of gaiety.
‘It’s the littlest tree I’ve ever seen,’ she answered, ‘and the loveliest. Green and round and bushy, like a toy tree. And they go on like a row of umbrellas right along the bank. So unless they are really aiming at us up there, nothing will matter. Frightened! Please, please understand, I love it all. It’s only the rain I am thinking of. What happens to me never, never matters. But what will your – what will the lady you spoke to me about think if you get back wet through?’
‘Will you please not talk like that. Please not to. It’s you I am thinking of, and —’
‘And here it comes,’ cried the young woman triumphantly. Her ‘it’ was neither lightning nor thunder, but a dense, league-long veil, part hail, part rain, that had now come sweeping over the all but blotted-out expanse of country before her eyes. Its avant-couriers smote ferociously and with a sharp tap, tap, tap on Cecil’s silk shade. The wind swept over them as if it were perceptibly condensed against their bodies. An enormous confusion filled the air.
And then, well, indeed you never knew what this odd young man would be doing next. At this moment he was unbuttoning his coat. ‘You must take this,’ he was saying; ‘you have got only the flimsiest things on. Why, I can see your arm through the silk.’
‘Please, please,’ she cried, catching both his wrists in her entreaty, ‘don’t do anything so utterly stupid. Oh, please – just think! Whatever would they say! And you’ll get your death of cold. Look now, see, we’ll get round to the other side. There. Do you realize it’s a lime tree over us; and it’s coming into flower. There’s nothing to do – nothing, I swear – but just to stay here quietly underneath it until the rain’s over.’
Quite apart from the haste with which she had panted these sentences, the clamour of the storm now almost drowned her voice. But actions speak louder than words. Cecil
struggled no more. And the two of them cowered as close as they could against the dark, smooth bole of the young linden tree now tenting her bright green branches over their heads.
When Nature is in one of her passing fits of hysteria, poor little humans must just sit still and smile. Nevertheless, any chance observer of one of these young faces, and of all that was visible of the other, would hardly have described them as smiling. There is a happiness of the spirit that seems to draw an almost grotesque mask over human features, that distorts and makes strange and absurd and yet seems to irradiate them, as if they were merely of glass made for a light to show through.
The next few days of Cecil’s life were spent in bed and were at the same time (so far as his mind was concerned), the most active, the most wretched yet rapturous, and the longest he had ever known. The lime tree had proved to be an imperfect umbrella. Cecil had hastened home at last through the rain-washed streets – blindingly silver-bright in the sunshine – in an amazed happiness, on tenterhooks of anxiety, and soaked to the skin.
Grummumma had listened steadily on to his rambling explanations, at the same time rapidly comparing his attempts at chronology with the dining-room clock. Though he had an advantage denied to most men, in that his tell-tale eyes were concealed, Cecil hadn’t the making of a skilful prevaricator. This unusual eloquence in so reticent a young man was suspicious. Grummumma, like an immense well-fed cat at a mouse’s hole, watched his lips and his hands as he sat there, attempting to swallow his belated luncheon without exhibiting too obvious an effort. But whatever speculations she may have pursued within remained unexpressed. She was all credulity and indulgence. Even when next morning she stood over him, clinical thermometer between finger and thumb, and announced that his temperature was 101°, she refrained from any ‘I told you so.’ After all, the mouse was safely in its hole again, and there would be ample time to find out where it had been straying.
Short Stories 1927-1956 Page 15