‘Mr. Martin Fyfe, who was overcome with emotion several times, stated that a few hours previously deceased had declared her willingness to become his wife. This avowal, made on her own initiative, had met with ample response on his side, and there seemed every cause for joy and congratulation. The coroner in returning a verdictof suicide while of unsound mind observed that this reversal of the customary procedure in betrothals was but another example of the lack of self-control so deplorably frequent in the young woman of to-day, and seemed to him sufficient in itself to suggest a distinct lack of mental balance in deceased. He tendered his sincerest sympathy to Mr. Fyfe and absolved him from all blame.’
‘Mr. Martin Fyfe, who was overcome with emotion several times, stated that a few hours previously deceased had declared her willingness to become his wife. This avowal, made on her own initiative, had met with ample response on his side, and there seemed every cause for joy and congratulation. The coroner in returning a verdictof suicide while of unsound mind observed that this reversal of the customary procedure in betrothals was but another example of the lack of self-control so deplorably frequent in the young woman of to-day, and seemed to him sufficient in itself to suggest a distinct lack of mental balance in deceased. He tendered his sincerest sympathy to Mr. Fyfe and absolved him from all blame.’
And Roddy might depart from his habits and inclinations once again, and write Martin a letter of condolence.
No, no. She was going to show him she did not care, was not weeping for him: she was going to announce her engagement to Martin before long.
There would be a paragraph in ‘The Times,’ congratulations, letters to write—(I am a very lucky girl)—a pretty ring—and almost certainly photographs in the illustrated weeklies.
Roddy would smile his cynical smile because she had behaved just as women always did behave: so long as they hooked some poor devil—no matter whom—they were quite satisfied. And a damned fuss they made if a chap refused to be hooked.
Martin would probably insist on being married in Church, and ask Roddy to be his best man.
No. Poor Martin was not going to be able to save her. Perhaps, instead, she was going to destroy him.
She went back to bed and tossed between her sheets till dawn.
Next morning Martin’s face of suppressed excitement shewed only too clearly how deeply the web was tangled now.
She went with him after breakfast to visit his little farm.
There was something in the brown soft earth, in the dark warmth of byres and stables, in the rich smell of animal breath and hay and soil mingled, something in the manysecret, silent heads lifting, snuffing, reaching tentatively out, then tossing away from the outstretched hand; especially something in the clear golden-brown eyes curiously greeting you for a moment, then recoiling, relapsing into their animal aloofness: something that painfully suggested Roddy. He was like animals, electric and mysterious. The half-distrustful fleeting glance, the dark soft glossy head, the appealing grace: these were attributes he had in common with the farm dog, and the calves, the black kittens playing all over the stables, the dark chestnut colt in the meadow.
There was no escape from him in all the world.
She said to herself, moving her lips:
‘Sick fancies. Sick fancies.’
If she could see Roddy as a natural human being, then only could she hope to be free of him.
She climbed a slope and sat on a stile at the top, waiting for Martin while he interviewed a farmer.
Below lay the house and garden she had elected to share with Martin all her life: lovely, intricate patterns of roof and wall in the morning sun; enchanting shapes of violet shadow spilt across the mellow brick; charming lavender smoke spirals from the chimneys; exquisitely-ordered paths and lawns, hedges and flower-beds; two cedar trees motionless in their great planes of gloom on green brightness, green on gloom; and beyond the fruitful walls, the enfolding patiently-productive land which was Martin’s.
You would be thought lucky indeed to live here. Perhaps the land might compensate, drug the mind and give it slow contented musings. Perhaps you could escape from Martin and feel alone with it.... But no: with its medium tints and mild companionable expression it was he himself. You could never get away from Martin here.
As he came running up the hill, eagerly, like a cheerful dog, she watched him coldly. With a faint distaste she observed his agile leap on to the stile beside her.
‘Well?’ he burst out happily.
‘Well, Martin?’
‘What are you thinking of, looking so solemn?’
The unpardonable question. And he would always be asking it and she always answering sweetly with a lie; or else disagreeably with: ‘Nothing.’ No peace ever again, not even to think one’s private disloyal venomous thoughts.
‘I was thinking, Martin, I don’t believe you know a bit what I’m like.’
‘I know enough to know I love you anyway,’ he said with hearty confidence.
‘You don’t,’ she said petulantly. ‘Because you’ve never troubled to find out what I’m really like. It’s never occurred to you there might be anything more than what you see. That’s so like a man.... Lord, how stupid! Everybody dismissed with a little label. Everybody taken for granted once they’ve passed a few idiotic conventional tests....’
‘What on earth have I done now?’ cried Martin despairingly.
‘Nothing. Nothing. I’m only warning you.’
After a pause of non-comprehension he said gently:
‘Of course I don’t take you for granted, Judith. I could never do that. You’re so clever and beautiful and marvellous—much, much too good for me. Oh, my dear!—you don’t know how I value you.’ The tears came into his eyes. ‘Whatever happens, nothing can alter my idea of you. If Icouldbelieve you had any faults, they’d only make me love you more.’
‘Would they? Would they? You don’t know what revolting ones they are.’
He laughed and said indulgently:
‘It’s no good trying to frighten me.’
‘It’strue,’ she cried. ‘D’you suppose I’m trying to be humble because I think it’s the correct idea?’
He said nothing, and she felt him trying with perplexity to think out the proper method of dealing with her mood. Finally he said:
‘Judy. I’ll tell you what seems to me the only importantthing—and that is, that we should be absolutely truthful with each other. Don’t you agree? I think telling the truth is my only principle—besides washing. As long as I know exactly where I am, I can stand anything.’ He drew her to him and turned her face so that his warm kind eyes could look into hers. ‘I’ve always dreamt of finding someone I could tell everything to, and trust absolutely.’
Tell everything to.... O God! Was he going to say: ‘My wife and I must have no secrets from each other’? Was he that sort of fool? He went on:
‘Judith I might as well try to lie to myself as you. And I can’t lie to myself. Why if I were to stop loving you even—if thatcouldbe—I’d have to tell you straight out. I couldn’t pretend. Ihopeyou couldn’t either.’
‘No, I couldn’t.’
He went on with a shade of anxiety.
‘And supposing there was ever anything worrying you—anything on your mind—please try to tell me. You needn’t be afraid. I hope perhaps—you might think it was—rather nice to feel there was a person you could rely on always. Would you, Judith?’
He paused, breathless and deeply moved.
‘Yes, Martin.’
‘Please think of me as that person.’
‘I will, Martin.’
‘You’re not worrying about anything now?’
‘No, no.’
‘That’s right. As long as Iknow. I thought yesterday.... But I suppose it was the rabbit?’
She shuddered, and nodded her head, remembering her dream, unable to speak.
He said in an amused, tender, big-man-to-little-woman way:
‘You poor little thing to be so upset.’
She laughed in response, deprecatingly, drearily.
He tightened his arm round her, sighed happily and said:
‘I can’t believe it.’
‘Nor can I.’
‘I didn’t sleep a wink last night.’
‘Nor did I.’
‘After all these years.... Do you know, I’ve been in love with you ever since I’ve known you? Never anybody else for a moment. But I didn’t dare hope.... I wonder what Roddy will say when we tell him.’
‘I wonder.’
‘You know I was almost sure not so very long ago that if you liked any one of us specially it was Roddy.’
‘Were you really, Martin?’
‘Yes, and what’s more I thought he was bound to fall in love with you. God, I was jealous!’
‘Jealous of Roddy? Were you? How ridiculous!’
‘Not really ridiculous. Roddy’s so terribly nice and attractive, it seemed only natural you should prefer him to a dull chap like me.’
‘He didn’t eversayanything, did he, Martin?’
‘Not he. Roddy’s the darkest horse I know.’
‘Yes, he is, isn’t he?’ She laughed. ‘I suppose heaps of people fall in love with him?’
‘Yes,’ he said gravely. ‘He’s run after all right.’
‘Does he—do you suppose he—falls in love himself, much?’
‘Oh, more or less, I suppose.’
‘Not seriously?’
He laughed and shook his head.
‘Not very seriously I don’t think.’
‘Perhaps hewasa tiny bit in love with me ... for a bit....’
‘I dare say he was. I don’t see how anybody could help being,’ he said with light tenderness, dropping quick kisses on her hair.
‘And then I suppose he stopped.... And found somebody else....’
‘Perhaps he did. Don’t let’s worry about him anyway. He and I have different ideas about—all that sort of thing.He’s rather naughty and spoilt I think—though he is such a good chap,’ he added hastily, as if fearful of sounding disloyal.
She persisted, in anguish:
‘How do you mean, naughty and spoilt, Martin?’
‘Oh, I don’t know.’ He was embarrassed, unwilling to give his friend away. ‘A bit of a sensation-hunter perhaps.’
That was it then: she had been a new sensation: one that had quickly palled, because she had been so swiftly, so entirely yielded up to him. She should have whetted his appetite by offering only a little at a time and then withdrawing it: so, he might still be desirous of her. Instead she had satiated him at the outset.
She would know better next time.... But there would be no next time. Instead, there was Martin now who said:
‘Won’t you kiss me?’
She looked at him, aching with tears that were like an inward bleeding; and put her lips on his cheek for half a second.
‘Listen, Martin.’ She took his hand and started to speak hurriedly, for fear of more kissing. ‘About that truth business. What was I going to say....’ She steadied her voice. ‘Yes. If you tried to—compel the truth you’d expect a lie, wouldn’t you? That’s logic. I’d always expect a lie anyway. I mean ... I shouldn’t be at all surprised by it. I’d say it was my fault for not leaving you alone—not letting you be free enough—I’d think: well, I tried to coerce him, so he chose to deceive me. He was quite right.’
‘A lie’s a lie,’ said Martin obstinately.
‘A lie’s a—What does that mean? It doesn’t mean anything. Unless you believe God watches and writes down in his notebook: Martin Fyfe told a lie on Monday. If this goes on he won’t get his harp. Do you? Truth! What’s truth? Why, half your so-called truths are built on lies. You can scarcely distinguish. I could—I bet I could—act a lie to you all my life and you’d never know it.Bea lie.’
He flushed swiftly at the last words and said in a stiff way:
‘I daresay you could. You’re clever enough for anything and I’m a fool. But don’t try, please....’
‘But there must be no compulsion, Martin!’ she insisted, horribly. ‘You wouldn’t try—to get at me—would you? You’d let me be, by myself? If you ever forced me when I was unwilling I’d tell lies and lies and congratulate myself for it. And I’dneverforgive you.’
He lit a cigarette and said, close-lipped, eyes fixed on the grass:
‘Does all this mean you want me to understand you’ve—changed your mind and wish to cry off?’
She threw out her arms dramatically, crying:
‘Can’t I say anything? Can’t I say anything without being misunderstood?... being....’
‘I’ve never seen you like this, Judith.’ He got up and stood looking at her in despair. ‘It worries me. I don’t understand.’
‘It’s not customary, I suppose, in an engaged young lady....’
She shut her eyes, and the tears scorched their lids bitterly.
‘Judy, what is it? Oh, Judy!’
‘Oh, Martin!’ Hands pressed to forehead, voice a faint moan, she struggled on: ‘Only there are—some things—aren’t there?—there might be things whichcan’tbe told. Things one must forget—try to—at once——’
‘Yes. Yes. If you say so,’ he soothed and whispered.
‘Because of the useless misery ... and because they’ve—withered up your heart—so that you couldn’t recall them—even if you tried.’
‘Yes, my dear.’
‘I’ve had—one or two unhappinesses in my life. Everybody has, I suppose. I want to forget them....’
‘Of course, Judy, of course. You mustnevertell me anything you’d rather not.’
She put her arms round his neck a moment.
‘Thank you, Martin.’ She dried her eyes and said: ‘I won’t be so silly any more.’
And if a doubt or a fear had begun to cloud his mind, his voice was none the less gentle, his eyes none the less trusting.
He took her back to the garden and gathered sun-warmed strawberries for her; and they talked cheerfully together until lunch time.
That afternoon Martin fished for trout in the stream, and she sat on the bank and read a page of her book now and then; and sometimes watched him; and mostly dreamed.
His small-boyish absorption was amusing and rather appealing. He was immensely happy, moving along the bank in cautious excited silence, casting deftly up and down stream. If he were to be disturbed or upset in his pursuit, he would say ‘Ach!’ and swear, and flush all over his face, just as he had in the old days. Even if she were the disturber, it would make no difference. She knew better than to interfere, or to speak except when spoken to, and then briefly and to the point. That was in his eyes one of her most admirable qualities. He loved to have her beside him, behaving nicely and looking pretty, shewing interest, and smiling when it was seemly.
By the constant upward curve of his lips and by occasional dwelling glances, she knew he had thrown off the memory of this morning’s unnatural emotional perplexities, and was content.
If only their marriage could be a perpetual sitting on a green bank by a stream, watching him tolerantly, almost tenderly, with quiet pleasure in his bodily magnificence, with a half-contemptuous smile for his happiness, and yet with comfort in the knowledge of it, and in the knowledge that her mere presence was sufficient for it, while her mind was off on its own, worlds removed from him!...
It would be such an immense easing of the burden if only so much insincerity as was implicit in the acquiescent body was required, without the lies of the lips and the mind. Sheon the green bank always, with leisurely musings, and he moving past her, up and down, not touching her or demanding or possessing, but fishing for ever: it would be a pleasant enough marriage. He would look up now and then, smile approvingly, and say:
‘Still there, Judith?’
‘Still here, Martin.’
‘Quite cheerful?’
‘Quite.’
‘Feeling safe?’
‘Oh, yes.’
‘That’s right. Well, I’ll go on fishing then.’
‘And I’ll go on thinking.’
And he would smile again and send his line whipping and hissing through the air.
All the rest could go by, remain unsaid, with no falsehood at all. Perhaps, after years of patient sitting, even Roddy might be forgotten; or transformed into an object for idle pleasurable regrets.
In the midst of these speculations, Martin came back and threw himself down beside her.
‘No luck, Martin?’
‘Not a nibble.... I don’t care. I’d rather talk to you.’ He gazed lovingly at her and said:
‘What are you thinking of?’
She clenched her hands; then answered softly:
‘ ... of nothing ...When I muse thus I sleep.’
‘ ... of nothing ...When I muse thus I sleep.’
‘ ... of nothing ...When I muse thus I sleep.’
‘ ... of nothing ...When I muse thus I sleep.’
He turned her face towards him with a hand beneath her chin, and gently kissed her lips.
‘Oh, Judith, I’ll try to make you happy.’
‘And I’ll try to make you happy, Martin.’
Perhaps in time.... Perhaps in time even Roddy....
At that moment of wistful peace it seemed admirable to undertake the task of making Martin happy.
He said shyly:
‘I wonder what made you say you’d marry me.’
‘Because I’m so fond of you.’
‘Ah! That’s not quite the same as loving, is it?’ His voice was wistful, but not disappointed.
She took his hand.
‘No, Martin, not quite the same.’
He wrung her hand and said cheerfully:
‘Well, it’s something to be going on with. It’s a great deal more than I deserve. Of course I don’t expect you to feel romantic about me. Nobody could feel romantic about me, anyway.’
‘Oh, I think lots of people could. I’m sure they could,’ she said; and felt suddenly ashamed. For indeed he was a man whom many women might love. What right had she to take him?
‘Well, I don’t want them to,’ he said. ‘Your liking’s more than enough for me.’
‘Oh, Martin! I promise you, at any rate, I wish I were in love with you.’
‘Mightn’t that be the first step?’ he said smiling.
‘No, no,’ she answered lightly. ‘I’ve finished with falling in love. I was in love once.’
‘When?’
‘Years ago! It doesn’t amuse me. I reject it. Never again....’ She felt her lips start to curl and quiver, and stopped: then added in the same bantering tone: ‘Foolishness. That’s what it is. And as far as you are concerned, it would seem almost incestuous.’
‘Don’t use horrid words.’ He sat up, amused but startled.
‘Well it would. Not that I disapprove at all of incest, in theory. Yet I must confess my instinct’s against it.’
‘And so’s mine,’ said Martin firmly. ‘Let’s have no more nonsense.’
He bent forward and dismissed the nonsense with a hearty kiss.
That was the last straw. Her mood, stretched finer andfiner in the preceding few minutes, snapped. She rolled over away from him and stared into the water.
The tiny brilliant green water-plants and cresses grew up from the mud and pebbles and spread their leaflets below the surface in delicate array, motionless as if under glass. Oh, to slip into the water and become something minute and non-sentient, a sort of fresh water amœba, living peacefully among their thin-spun tangle of whitish roots—now at once, before Martin noticed her disappearance! He would peer and peer into the water, with his red anxious face; and all in vain. In the shadow of his face her unimpressive form would be but the more obscured; and, unmoved, she would stare back at him.
God!—to go mad, crack-brained, fantastic, happy mad; or to be stretched upon a rack in a physical anguish which precluded thought!
‘Tea-time,’ said Martin. ‘What a good afternoon it’s been.’
In the hall they were met with a telegram for Judith. “Decided go abroad this week instead of next. Come home to-morrow. Mother.”
Mamma had grown restless then, a trifle sooner than you had expected; and sent this peremptory summons. What an undreamed-of godsend!
‘You can’t go to-morrow, Judy,’ said Martin, much upset.
‘I must, Martin. There’ll be such a lot to see to. I must go as soon as I possibly can. I ought to go to-night.’
The sooner she was out of the house the better.
‘You couldn’t possibly get there to-night by train. It’s such a beastly journey.’ He was struck with an idea and his face cleared a little. ‘I tell you what. Wait till after dinner and I’ll drive you back. If we started about eleven we’d be at your home soon after daybreak. Do, Judy, do. It’d be a marvellous drive. And I’ll break in on Mariella and cadge some breakfast. There’s so much to talk about.And if you’re going abroad we shan’t see each other for weeks. It’s most infernally disappointing, isn’t it?’
She agreed that it was. But as for the drive, that would be a marvellous arrangement. If Martin would send a wire to tell Mamma to leave the front door key under the mat, she would go and explain to his mother. As she left him, her heart felt almost light. Perhaps she could manage to wriggle out and escape now, after all.
Martin’s mother stood on tiptoe to kiss her good-bye, while Martin went to fetch the car.
Her box was ready in the hall. She had given a last glance through the open dining-room door at the family portraits. She had been thankful to find them few and devoid of the likenesses she dreaded. They were just anybody’s respectable family portraits. Of the dead sister there was no likeness.
Martin’s little sitting-room, with its photograph on the mantelpiece of a solemn Roddy in Eton clothes, its cricket groups including Roddy in flannels and a blazer, its painted green fire-screen decorated by Roddy with strange figures—that had been far more terrifying. She would not have to sit there now and look at Martin’s photograph and scrap albums, as he had suggested.
‘I’m sorry you must go,’ said his mother, charming and abstracted.
‘I’m sorry too.’
‘But,’ she said gaily, ‘what a delightful idea, to drive through the night. Martin loves it, you know. I often hear him going off on a lovely night like this. Funny boy.... His horn sounds so dreadfully lonely it makes me want to cry. He likes to have a companion. I used to go with him sometimes, but I’ve had to give it up. I feel too old next day.’
She smiled sweetly; and suddenly, standing above her andseeing her so small and ageing, Judith felt no longer the great barrier of difference of generation, but the basic intimacy of their common sex; and with this an extreme tenderness and pity. She bent and kissed her—the poor thing, who must lie flat in her room thriftily husbanding her resources for the morrow, while she herself, coming thirty years of nights behind her, had the open dark for friend.
She knew well enough you did not love her son: she trusted you not to betray him by marrying him. It would be horrible to force her to hate you ... unthinkable.
Car-wheels grated on the gravel outside, and Martin sounded his horn.
In another few minutes they had waved good-bye to the small figure on the steps, and taken the road.
Into the deep blue translucent shell of night. The air parted lightly as the car plunged through it, washing away in waves that smelt of roses and syringa and all green leaves. The moon struggled with clouds. She wore a faint and gentle face.
‘I shouldn’t be surprised if there was rain before daybreak,’ said Martin; and, reaching at length the wan straight high road, accelerated with a sigh of satisfaction.
‘Faster, Martin, faster.’
Faster and faster he went. She settled herself close against him, and through half-shut eyes saw the hawthorn and wild-rose hedges stream backward on either hand. The night air was a drug from whose sweet insinuating caress she prayed never to wake. Soon, through one leafy roadway after another, the headlights pierced a tunnel of green gloom. The lanes were full of white scuts and little paws, paralyzed; and then, as Martin painstakingly slowed down, dipping and twinkling into the banks. Moths flickered bright-winged an instant in the lamplight before being dashed to their fried and ashy death. Once or twice came human beings, objects of mean and foolish design, incongruous in the night’s vast grandeur; and here and there,under the trees, upon the stiles, in the grass, a couple of them, locked face to face, disquietingly still, gleamed and vanished. She observed them with distaste: passion was all ugliness and vulgar imbecility.
Now the moon looked exhausted behind a gathering film of cloud.
Soon came the rain, with a low murmurous hushing and whispering through the trees; and then a white blindness of lightning aching on the eyelids.
‘Shall we stop?’ asked Martin.
‘No, no.’
‘I remember you hated lightning when you were a tiddler.’
‘Do you remember that?’
‘Yes. I shall never forget the day we were trapped by a thunderstorm in the old boathouse—you and Roddy and I. How you howled! And then you said you’d seen the lightning fall on Roddy’s head and had he been struck dead. I kept on yelling that if only you’d open your eyes you’d see him in front of you, as alive as anything; but you only went on shrieking. And soon we all of us began to believe Roddy might go up in flame any minute.’
‘Oh, yes! I’d forgotten.’ She laughed. ‘I remember Roddy’s face, so solemn and red and doubtful as he felt the top of his head. He was terrified I was making a fool of him and he wouldn’t say a word. I asked him privately afterwards if he thought the Lord had visited him with a tongue of fire. He was disgusted.’
Martin threw his head back to laugh.
‘You were a comic child. We used to think you were a little mad.’
‘Did you, Martin?’ she said, and doubt and sadness swept over her again.
Perhaps even in those days Roddy had laughed at her, thought of her as a joke, never as a companion.
‘It’s a pity really that we——’ She stopped, remembering that she was going to marry Martin—on the verge offinishing her sentence:—“that we met again after we grew up.”
Their relationship should have remained unspoilt in the mysterious enchantment of childhood, and then she would never have seen Roddy grow from that lovable small boy into the elegant indifferent young man who experimented in sensations.
No more lightning; and the rain came softly on to her face through the open wind-screen, blurring eyes and mind and all, until she sank into a half-sleep. Martin clasped her hard against his shoulder, once, as who should say: “Sleep. I am here;” and she felt his enormous protectiveness flowing over her.
When next she opened her eyes, the darkness was taking back first one veil, then another. Purple paled to lilac and lilac wasted to grey. The sky was immaculate and without a glow. The country-side woke from sleep, gently staring and austere, each object upon it separately outlined without interrelation of colour and shadow under the uniform wan light. On the far horizon, a cornfield flashed out one moment in a pale flood of sunlight; but the sun was still hidden. The hedges frothed palely with meadowsweet.
Soon came the beech woods crowning the chalk hills. In the valley below ran the river, blanched and rain-flattened between its willows; and the road sloped gently down till it ran beside it. They were home.
Stiff and blinking, she stumbled out of the car, and stood on the steps of the porch.
‘Thank you, Martin. It was marvellous. I hoped we should never get here. I thought we wouldn’t—I don’t know why. I got it into my head you’d manage a quiet smash without my noticing it. Everything I passed I said good-bye to—looking my last on all things lovely; and when I finally dropped off to sleep I thought I’d never wake up. And after all you brought me safe home, clever boy. IsupposeI’m grateful. But what an effort to have to start again in an hour or two!’
He did not answer at once; but after a few moments of fingering his hat looked away and said:
‘Are youveryunhappy, Judith?’
‘Well—not very, I suppose. Rather. Not more than’s good for me. I shall get over it.... I’m so sleepy I don’t know what I’m saying. Don’t take any notice.’
‘I thought you weren’t happy——’ He stopped, overcome.
‘It’s all right, Martin. Don’t you worry. I laugh at myself. How I laugh at myself!’
‘Can’t you tell me what it’s about?’ he said gruffly.
‘I don’t believe I can.’
He turned away and leaned despondently against the porch.
The sky was glowing now through all its length and breadth, like the inside of a shell. The dew shimmered over the grass and the greyish roses reddened, yellowed on their bushes. The birds bedazed the air with wild crystalline urgent repetition.
‘You go in a day or two,’ he said at last.
‘Yes. And you?’
‘I join Roddy next week.’
‘Ah, yes.’ She turned to unlock the door, and fumbling for the key, lightly remarked: ‘There’s a person I shall never see again.’
‘Who?’
He affected surprise; but he was only pretending. She could feel him saying to himself: ‘So that’s it.’ And suddenly she hated herself for exposing herself, and him for guessing and dissembling, for forcing her to pronounce that name; and she added:
‘I can’t marry you, Martin, after all.’
Silence.
‘Well, I’ve told you the truth at last. I thought I could pretend to you all my life, but I can’t. You ought to be glad.’
He inclined his head.
‘Aren’t you going to say something, Martin?’
He shrugged his shoulders.
‘Please forgive me,’ she said; but she could not feel contrition: only a great weariness.
‘Of course,’ he said. ‘There’s nothing to forgive. I never really believed you’d marry me anyway.’
‘Luckily I’m going abroad. You’d better forget all about me.’
‘It’s no good saying that,’ he said, with a brief and bitter laugh. ‘It was too late for that years ago.’
‘You must try to hate me. I deserve it.’
‘Oh, what’s the good of talking like that?’ he said impatiently. ‘Do youwantme to hate you? You know you don’t.’
‘No, I don’t.’
‘You know perfectly well I can’t do anything except go on loving you.’
He still leaned with dejected shoulders against the porch, talking out into the garden. The eastern sky swam brightly, and the first beams of the sun shot into the garden; and the fluting clamorous chorus redoubled their enthusiasm.
‘I haven’t seen the sun rise for years. Have you, Martin?’ She came near to him and put a hand on his sleeve. At the touch he turned round and confronted her in dumb despair, his eyelashes wet.
‘Martin, I’m sorry, I’m sorry.’
‘I can’t leave you like this,’ he said, and clung to her. ‘Judith, is there nothing I can do?’
She reflected.
‘Yes. Will you do something for me?’
‘Of course I will.’ His eyes lit up for an instant.
‘Listen, Martin. Suppose he ever mentions me——’
She felt herself going white and stopped.
‘Yes?’ he muttered.
She went on breathlessly:
‘I don’t think he will, but if he should.... Supposing he ever starts to tell you something that happened—betweenhim and me—please, you mustn’t let him. Promise! If he begins, stop him. I shall never see him again; soon I shall stop thinking about him: but you mustn’t know what happened. It was just a little silly thing—I shall see it quite differently some day ... but if I thought people knew I shoulddie. Martin, don’t try to find out.’
‘All right, Judith. It’s none of my business.’
‘Perhaps men don’t tell things in the awful way women do? He doesn’t generally tell things, does he?’
She could hardly bear to listen for his reply.
‘No. I don’t think so.’
‘Make it be as if you’d never known me. Oh, don’t talk about me!’
‘I won’t. I promise.’ He looked at her; and she knew by his eyes how deeply she was making him suffer.
After a long time she added:
‘One more thing. Of course I know that whatever he’d done you’d feel just the same towards him, wouldn’t you?...’
‘I love Roddy ...’ he said, his breath, his whole being struggling in anguish.... ‘I’ve always had him—ever since I can remember ... more to me than a brother ever could have been. But if I thought——’ His voice altered, grew terrible—‘if I thought he’d done you an injury——’
‘It was nothing he could be blamed for,’ she said slowly, with intense concentration: ‘It was my fault. If I thought it was going to come between you I should be more unhappy than ever. Will you see that it doesn’t?’
‘I’ll do my best,’ he said in a dead voice.
She began to tremble violently.
‘I must go in now, Martin. What shall you do?’
‘I’ll go straight back. I don’t feel like—seeing Mariella—or any one.’
‘But don’t you want something to eat?’
‘No. I’m not hungry.’
It seemed unbearably pathetic that he should not be hungry—he who was always hungry.
‘Good-bye then, Martin.’
‘Good-bye.’
He took her outstretched hand and clutched it.
‘Judith, if you should want me for anything while you’re abroad—let me know. I’ll come to you. Will you promise?’
‘I promise, my dear.’
He looked a shade less unhappy.
‘And please let me see you when you come back. I won’t be tiresome; but I must see you sometimes.’
‘When I come back then, Martin—if you really want to. But by that time you’ll realise what a pig I am.’
He put his arms round her suddenly.
‘Oh, Judith,’ he whispered, ‘can’t you ever ...?’
‘Martin, can’t you ever not?’
‘No.’ He laid his head down on her shoulder for a few moments; then straightened himself and said with an effort at cheerfulness:
‘Well, I hope you’ll have a good time.’
‘I hope you will. But you’re sure to.’
To think he would be with Roddy for weeks, sharing work and talk and jokes and meals—seeing him sleep and wake; while she herself ... never again. If she saw him coming towards her, she must turn back; if she passed him in the street she must look away.
‘Please take care of yourself, Judith.’
She nodded, smiling wearily.
He jerked round and went down the steps and she waited for him to turn his head again. But, when he reached the corner, without looking back, he waved his hand in a young quick awkward pretense of jauntiness, and strode on.
She stood and saw the fresh garden filling with light and shade; and thought: ‘Poor Martin’s crying’; and shut the door on him and the sun and the screaming of the birds.
The hotels and shops made a circle round the greatPlace; and to and fro all day went the people to their baths and douches and sprays. Bilious obese old Jews and puffy, pallid Americans thronged and perspired; and ancient invalids came in bathchairs with their glum attendants. There was one, a woman long past age and change, with a skin of dusky orange parchment, black all round the staring eyeholes, tight over the cheeks and drawing back the dark lips in a grin. She was alive: her orange claws twitched on the rug. Perched high upon her skull, above the dead and rotten hair, she wore a large black sailor hat trimmed with a wild profusion of black feathers. Every morning, seated idly in front of the hotel, Judith watched for that mostmacabrefigure of all in the fantastical show.
The sun poured down without cloud or breeze, and the buildings and pavements seemed to vibrate in the air. It was too hot to stay in the valley. She joined parties and motored up through the vineyards into the hills—racing along in search of a draught on her face, eating succulent lunches at wayside inns, coming back in the evening to play tennis and bathe; to change and dine and dance; to hear a concert at the Casino; to sit in the open air and drink coffee and eat ices.
The hours of every day were bubbles lightly gone.
She was Miss Earle, travelling with her elegant and charming mother, staying at the smartest hotel and prominent in the ephemeral summer society of the health-resort. Her odd education sank into disreputable insignificance: best not to refer to it. She was adequately equipped in other ways. She had a string of pearls, and slim straight black frocks for the morning, and delicious white and yellow and green and pink ones for the afternoon; and white jumpers with pleated skirts and little white hats for tennis; and, for the evening, straight exquisitely-cut sleeveless frocks to dance in. She had them all. Mamma had ordered themin Paris with bored munificence and perfect taste, and an unenthusiastic ear for the modiste’s rapturous approval of her daughter.
‘If you were a little more stupid,’ said Mamma, ‘you might make a success of a London season even at this late date. You’ve got the looks. Youarestupid—stupid enough, I should think, to ruin all your own chances—but you’re not stupid all through. You’re like your father: he was a brilliant imbecile. I never intended to put you into the marriage-market—but I’ll do so if you like.Ifyou haven’t already decided to marry one of those young Fyfes.... They’re quite a good family, I suppose.’
She appeared to expect no answer and received none.
Judith laughed at Mamma’s epigrammatic dictums and was a social success. She motored, chattered, danced and played tennis, at first with effort—with Roddy rising up now and again to make all dark and crumbling; then gradually with a kind of enjoyment, snapping her fingers at the past, plunging full into the comedy, forgetting to stand aside and watch: silly all through—stupid even: stupider every day.
Demurely she passed through the lounges: they all knew her and looked her up and down as she went, discussed her frocks in whispers, with smiling or stony faces. In the streets they stared, and she liked it; she admired her own reflection in the shop windows. An elderly French count, with two rolls of fat in the back of his neck, entreated Mamma for her daughter’s hand in marriage. It was a very good joke.
Then, one evening after dinner, while she sat in the lounge with Mamma and discussed the clothes of her fellow-visitors, she saw Julian walk in. He wore an old white sweater with a rolled collar, and his long hair was wild upon his pale chiselled forehead. His face, hands and clothes were grey with dust, his cheeks flushed and his eyes bright with extreme weariness. He stood alone by the door, unself-conscious and deliberate, his gaze roving round tofind her among the staring, whispering company. Even before she recognized him, her heart had leapt a little at sight of him; for his fine-drawn blonde length and grace were of startling beauty after a fortnight of small dapper men with black moustaches and fat necks.
‘It’s Julian!’
She ran across the room and took his hand in both her own, joyfully greeting him. A friend from England! He was a friend from England. How much that meant after all! He had, romantically, kept his promise and come to find her, this distinguished young man at whom they were all staring. He and she, standing there hand in hand, were the centre of excited comment and surmise: that was flattering. She was pleased with him for contriving so dramatic an entry.
He had motored from Paris, he said, going all day over execrable roads in stupefying heat. He had found her hotel at the first guess.
He booked a room and went off to have a bath and to change. Judith went back to explain to Mamma, who asked for no explanations. It was, she remarked, pleasant to see a new face; and those Fyfes had always looked well-bred. She was glad Judith would now have a congenial companion while she finished her cure. If to her cat-deep self she said: “So that’s the one!” her diamond-like eyes did not betray her.
He came down half an hour later, elegant in his dinner-jacket, sat down beside Mamma and started at once to entertain her with the easy, civilized, gossiping conversation she enjoyed.
Then, when the band started to pluck voluptuously at the heart-strings withEinmal kommt der Tag, he turned for the first time to Judith, crying:
‘We’ll dance to it, Judith.’ He jumped up. ‘What a tune! We’ll express our sentimentality.’
Mamma’s rasping little laugh of amusement sounded in her ears as she rose and followed him.
He put an arm closely round her and murmured:
‘Come on now. Perform! Perform!’—and they went gliding, pausing and turning round the empty floor, while everyone stared and the band smilingly played up to them. The rhythm of their bodies responded together, without an error, to the music’s broken emotionalism.
‘Once, Julian, you refused to dance with me.’
‘Ah, you were a little girl then. It would have been no use.Et maintenant, n’est-ce-pas, la petite est devenue femme?We shall get on very well.
After a silence he said:
‘You wear beautiful clothes. You carry yourself to perfection. You have an air.... There is nobody in this room to touch you. What are you going to do with it all?’
‘Oh, exploit it, exploit it!’
He held her away from him a moment to look down into her face.
‘Tiens! Tiens!Is gentle Judith going to start being a devil?... It would be amusing to see her try.’
‘Oh, I will! I’d be most successful. You shall see.’
He laughed, watching her.
‘May I help you? Shall we tread the primrose path together?’
She nodded.
‘Well, start by looking a little more as if you were going to enjoy it. Have you ever been happy? No. Whenever you come near to being, you start thinking: ‘Now I am happy. How interesting.... Am I really happy?’ You must learn a little continentalabandon—I’ll teach you.’
‘You!’
‘—— and scornful as well! Oh, Judith, you’re getting on. I like to see your mouth trying to be hard. It has such pretty points.’
The music stopped, and she disengaged herself. A few people clapped, and she nodded and smiled to the band ... performing, performing; conspicuously self-possessed....
‘Good!’ said Julian. ‘Oh, good!’
She turned to him and said:
‘Thank you, Julian. That was exhilarating.’
‘Yes, you look as if you’d found it so.’
His eyes, brilliant with nervous fatigue, pierced her with a glance too penetrating.
‘What a pity,’ he said, ‘you’re so unhappy.’
‘If it were so,’ she said, starting to walk back towards her chair, ‘it would be a pity.... Or perhaps that would be exhilarating too.’
‘Oh, don’t be enigmatical with your old friend,’ he said plaintively.
She laughed and gave him her hand.
‘Good night, Julian. You go to bed. You’re so tired you can hardly stand upright. To-morrow we’ll start enjoying ourselves frightfully. You’ll stay a bit, won’t you?’
‘Oh, I’ll stay,’ he said. ‘I think the moment is auspicious for me.... Didn’t I always say I could wait my turn?’
‘Yes, you said so. You have aflairundoubtedly. You are full offinesse.... Good night.’
She waved a hand and left him.
Something was afoot.... He had come casting shadows before and behind him. Old things were stirring: the old illness of remembering was going to start again. And ahead was not a glimmer.
In that thick, steamy world, in the mingled soils of sickly heat, bilious faces, rich food, sensual dancing, heavy scents of women, applied bow mouths, soft perspiring flesh—sprouted and flourished her response to Julian. Rooted in reluctance, nourished by his skilful arts, it grew, a curious plant: stronger and more curious with every stab of reawakening memory.
Julian must save her this time: surely his wit and wisdom, surely the unknown world of sexual, emotional and intellectual experience which he held so temptingly, just out of reach—surely these would, in time, heap an abiding mound upon the past.
Neither by touch nor look did he seem to desire her. He wove his net with words: he understood her and she felt him coming closer, a step at a time.
He made himself the perfect companion—gossiping and exchanging cynicisms with Mamma, executing commissions for her, his car always at her disposal; taking them to hear music, to eat delicious meals; playing tennis with Judith and her hotel acquaintances.
He even went so far as to say tennis was good for his asthma and played in the tennis-tournament, with herself for partner; and they were barely defeated in the finals by the Brazilian brother and sister, amid scenes of hilarious enthusiasm.
His car was waiting outside the ground to whisk her away from the hot crowd.
Happy, perspiring, dazed with heat and fatigue, she climbed in beside him and lay back.
‘We’ll go and find somewhere to bathe,’ he said.
‘Yes!’
‘And have supper at an inn, and stay out much later than we ought.’
‘Yes. Oh, Julian, we have done nice things together. I shall always remember them.’
She put a hand on his knee, and he smiled and nodded, all simple and brotherly.... He had tried his very hardest to help her win. She was grateful to him for fitting himself to her mood.
The car went spiralling up the vine-covered hills, and the electric air quivered away on each side of them in visible waves. The sun sank magnificently, without a cloud, a blood-red lamp. Its rays had long ago passed from the tortuous, steep and rock-bound way through which they now went; and a grey-green tranquil coolness blessed every sense. Then the road ran into profounder, wooded loneliness, and she espied a stream, leaping and plunging in little falls, far down in the gully below the side of the road.
‘Stop here, Julian. We must bathe.’
She went springing down towards the water and he followed with the bathing suits and towels.
The stream was shallow and broken up with boulders: no use for bathing.
‘Let’s follow it, Julian. We’ll find something, I know.’
Soon it took a turn deeper into the wood’s heart, and began to grow in depth and volume; then all at once plunged in a smooth gentle cascade into a wide rock basin. There it had pause, deep and silent, before dropping again at the basin’s further edge in a sheer plumed column, and racing on downwards, and downwards again.
‘Oh, Julian,whata bathing-pool! Is it possible? Look at that colour I ask you. Is it limestone?’
The whole circular sweep of the rock shimmered in faint silver through the dim bluish depth of water.
‘And deep enough to dive into, Julian—if we dare break into such fairiness.... What do you suppose lives here? It may put a spell on us.... I don’t care! I long to be spell-bound. Don’t you think, if one plunged in, one might come out all silver-blue and cold and gleaming? I’d love to walk through the hotel lounge naked like that, with long blue dripping hair! Oh, come on, Julian—let’s both try! I’ve had no luck for ages, have you? Perhaps it’s turned to-day. You undress here and I’ll go behind this bush and talk to you out of it, like God. Come—off with our lendings!’
And, in a flash, with the uttering of the last words, Jennifer came back, slipping the clothes down off white shoulder and breast, talking and laughing. A tide of memories; Jennifer’s head burning in the sunlight, her body stooping towards the water—the whole of those May terms of hawthorn blossom and cowslips, of days like a warm drowsy wine, days bewildered with growing up and loving Jennifer, with reading Donne and Webster andMarlowe, with dreaming of Roddy.... Where had it all gone—Where was Jennifer?—Whom enchanting now?—How faintly remembering Judith? Compared with that tumultuous richness, how sickly, how wavering was this present feeling—what a sorry pretense! Would one ever be happy again?
Julian, lean and hairy in his bathing-suit, was already feeling the water with his toe when she emerged and, spurring her flagging spirits, leapt down through the bushes, paused a moment beside him, cried ‘Ah!’ and dived into liquid twilight.
He plunged in after her, and they came up together, ‘You shouldn’t have dived like that,’ he cried. ‘Don’t do it again. There’s a great jag of rock just below where you went in,—you might have hit your head. You’re a very naughty girl.’
‘Pooh!’ She splashed and kicked round him, and went swimming close under the waterfall, feeling its weight press down and bubble upon her shoulder. The water was cold: the sun could never reach it save in light flecks through leafy branches. The pouring of the falls made a soft, full, lapsing speech. Nothing in the world was so smooth as the polished silk of their down-curving necks.
‘Hey!’ cried Julian.
She looked round and saw him near the further edge of the basin, trying to save himself from being carried over. She laughed, but he did not laugh back, and dragged himself out and sat on a rock in silence; and she saw that his legs and arms were grazed and bleeding. She went to him remorsefully and washed the blood away with palmfuls of water and sat by him, murmuring little sympathies until the stinging pain eased. He was not strong, she must remember: the shock and pain had made him white about the lips. Poor Julian.... How smooth and creamy her limbs looked beside his....
‘One more dip before dressing, Julian. You sit there and rest.’
He sat and watched while she slipped in again and, lying on her back, pushed off vigorously from the side with both feet and floated in a great ruffle of water to the other edge. Then she climbed out and stood opposite him, dripping and smiling.
Something leapt into his eyes as they rested, for once, full on her: not admiration or desire, but something harsh and hostile, as if the sight of her exasperated him.
‘Oh, yes, it shows you off well,’ he said.
‘What does?’
‘Yourmaillot. I suppose you weren’t aware of it?’
‘No!’ She spat the word at him; and went quickly away.
They had supper at a white inn by the edge of the wood, about half a mile farther on. The same stream flowed, sedately now, through the garden; and a dark plump Madame with great glossy raven plaits brought omelettes and trout and salads and fruits to their table beneath the plane-tree. Birds were singing the last of their songs in all the branches.
‘Listen, Julian!—if that isn’t a thrush? What is he doing out of England? Can you imagine a French thrush? Oh, he sounds homesick!’ A sudden nostalgia overcame her. ‘I want to go home, too! I’m not a traveller. Sick for home—that’s what I am. This thrush and our pool are probably the things I shall most remember about France—and all because they made me think of England.... There was a girl at College I used to bathe with.... You’d have loved to look at her. Her name was Jennifer Baird....’
‘Oh, I think I’ve met her.’
What was he saying so casually?
‘You’ve met her?’ Hands clasped, heart thumping, she stared at him.
‘Yes, I’m sure that was the name. I was staying in Scotland with some cousins of hers.’
‘When, Julian?’
She could scarcely speak.
‘Last year, I believe. I remember now she was at Cambridge and said she knew you; but she wasn’t very forth-coming about you. I’d never have guessed from her that you were bosom friends.’ His voice sounded mocking.
‘No, you wouldn’t!’ she retorted, stung and scornful. ‘She doesn’t tell just anybody when——’ She checked herself; for perhaps after all it had been that Jennifer had not remembered her much in absence. She added quietly: ‘She was a person I knew well for a time. Tell me.... What did you think of her?’
‘Oh, mad as a hatter. But she was more alive than most people. A flame, let us say.’ His voice was ambiguous, unkind.
‘You didn’t like her, then?’
‘No, nor she me.’ He laughed briefly. ‘But she had a power, I admit. I intend to go and find her again some day. I dare say I might make her—like me.’
‘I don’t think you could!’ She wanted to strike him for his cold-blooded self-assurance. ‘If you think you could—manage her, control her, I pity you, that’s all! I’d like to see you try! You’d think you’d got her easily—and then in another moment she’d have slipped through your fingers.... How I’d laugh!... Personally I didn’t need to make her like me: she just did.’
She felt that she was speaking wildly, and fell silent, weak before the flooding onslaught of the past.
It was too much pain. What was the use of trying to go on? You could never get free of the past. It came all around again at a word, and in a trice all save its shadows was trivial and insubstantial.
Julian was watching her; raising his eyebrows in a pretense of polite surprise and watching closely.
‘Well, well!’ he said. ‘Calm yourself, my serpent. You have convinced me my best endeavours would be wasted.’
She hid her face, stooping it over the table with both hands across her forehead, feeling the nausea and sweat of faintness.
He helped himself to grapes and remarked:
‘Not that I shan’t be sorry never to see her on a horse again. She looked magnificent.’
‘Oh, yes! She....’ Still with her face hidden she added, summoning a faint but steady voice: ‘I’d go to her now, this minute, if I knew where she was. But I don’t.’
There was a silence; and then he said gently:
‘I’ll find her for you if you like, my dear.’
She stretched a hand across the table to him.
‘No. Help me forget her ... and everything else....’
He stroked the hand; and without a word left her, to pay the bill. When he came back she was able to raise a calm and smiling face to him.
The stars were out when they took the road again, and the coming dark flowered like a field of pansies.
‘Hadn’t we better go home now, Julian?’
‘No. I’m not going to take you home yet.’
She sat beside him, silent and dully apprehensive.
‘It’s a pity you’re so unhappy,’ said Julian. ‘I think I said so before.’
She made no answer.
‘You know,’ he said, ‘you’re a fool to take on like this.’
Silence.
‘You’re simply destroying yourself over it and it can’t be worth it. Why don’t you tell me about it? I’ll be nice.’
She shook her head.
‘Do tell me, darling. You know, things have a way of swelling to monsters if we lock them up inside us. You see if you won’t feel better after you’ve once got it out of you.’ He spoke like a kindly father, and put an arm round her.
‘I’m in love with someone,’ she whispered. ‘That’s all.I thought it was finished.... Oh, dear, dear, dear, how awful!...’ She drew deep choking breaths.
‘Poor devil,’ he said.
‘You needn’t be sorry.’ She collected herself. ‘It’s good for me. Besides, itisfinished really: I scarcely ever think of it now.’
‘Does that yellow-haired female come into it then?’
‘Jennifer? No. Though she’s gone too ... and that makes it all far worse....’ She added quickly: ‘It’s nobody you know.’
His silence told her that he was not deceived.
‘Anyway,’ she said lightly, ‘there’s one bad thing over in my life: falling in love, I mean. I’mfreeof it!’
‘Oh, don’t be ridiculous, my dear child!Don’tbe such a fool! Why, you haven’t mastered your infant primer yet.Iknow! Do you mean to tell me this unknown fellow has absorbed all your powers of loving to the end of your life? I’m sorry then: you’re less of a person than I thought you. Ah, you think I’m mocking, and you hate me. And I do mock. Yes, yes! And I’m so sorry for you I—— But of course you won’t believe that.’
He spoke with passion, slowing the car down till she scarcely crawled, then finally stopping her altogether by the edge of the road, beneath an overhanging rocky hillside. It was getting very dark: she felt rather than saw the tense expression of his eyes and mouth.
‘You won’t believe that,’ he repeated, ‘and you’re thinking at this moment that such a brute as I never before existed.’
‘No.’ She felt dazed. ‘I think you’re meaning to be kind. But you don’t understand.’
‘Aha! Of course not. How can a coarse male animal like myself understand the feelings of a refined and sensitive young lady?’
‘Oh, Julian—unfair ... unkind!’
‘Well,damnyou, don’t you see I love you myself?’ hecried in a perfect fury. ‘Here am I, alone with you at last for a paltry ten days—after waiting years, mind you,yearsfor my opportunity, and I find you moping and moaning over your lost schoolgirl illusions! Good God! Haven’t you the guts to snap your fingers at a fellow who can’t be bothered with you? Aren’t you attractive and intelligent? Can’t you laugh? Aren’t there plenty of others? What am I here for? Go to the devil for a bit—I’ll help you. I’ll see you through it. Butdon’t moan.’
He paused for breath, and went on:
‘Here am I, as I said, with ten days of your company as my limit—ten days in which to make youlook backinto my eyes, not through them, to make you stop smiling and being polite and tolerant and sorry for me—oh, anything rather than your damned indifference! Why don’t you hate me? I could do some good with you then. I thrive on hatred. Here am I, of all people, not able to sleep or eat for wanting to kiss you, shaking all over when I see you coming, raging when you talk to another man—and here are you, making a fool of yourself—obstinately wasting our time making a romantic fool of yourself.’
‘Well, we’re quits then,’ she interrupted quickly. ‘I love without being loved and I’m a fool. I agree with you. You love without being loved. You’re another.’
He turned to her and said delightedly:
‘You’re angry. I’ve stung you up. You’ve lost your temper.’
‘Oh, you’re impossible.’
‘No, no, I’m not,’ he said coaxingly. ‘Look, I’ll be so nice now. Listen to me, Judy darling. You’re not the sort of person to have one abortive little romance and go to your grave an old maid. An old maid who’s had a disappointment, Judy!—isn’t that what it’s called? There, I’m teasing again and I said I wouldn’t. Darling, what’s the use of being so damned constant?Dofind someone else quick. You’ve no idea how delightful you’ll find it whenyou’re old to remember what a lot of people you’ve loved. And it’s theverybest remedy, Judy, for your indisposition.’
‘Shall you employ it if——’
‘If you turn me down? Probably. But don’t turn me down—not without a trial. Here am I, ready to hand: you could do a damned sight worse than take me. I’ll see we have a good time.’
Moths flittered and spun in the light of the head-lamps; beyond the two still long shafts of brightness the night looked very dark. How many miles from home?
At length she said:
‘I take it this is not a proposal of marriage, Julian.’