§ 7
This meeting was no exception to their other meetings.
The coming to her was a crescendo of poetical desire, the sight of her a climax, and then—an accumulation of irritations. He had thought being with her would be pure delight, and as they went over the down straying after the Bowles and the Geedges towards the Redlake Hotel he already found himself rather urgently asking her to marry him and being annoyed by what he regarded as her evasiveness.
He walked along with the restrained movement of a decent Englishman; he seemed as it were to gesticulate only through his clenched teeth, and she floated beside him, in a wonderful blue dress that with a wonderful foresight she had planned for breezy uplands on the basis of Botticelli’s Primavera. He was urging her to marry him soon; he needed her, he could not live in peace without her. It was not at all what he had come to say; he could not recollect that he had come to say anything, but now that he was with her it was the only thing he could find to say to her.
“But, my dearest boy,” she said, “how are we to marry? What is to become of your career and my career?”
“I’ve left my career!” cried Captain Douglas with the first clear note of irritation in his voice.
“Oh! don’t let us quarrel,” she cried. “Don’t let us talk of all those distant things. Let us be happy. Let us enjoy just this lovely day and the sunshine and the freshness and the beauty.... Because you know we are snatching these days. We have so few days together. Each—each must be a gem.... Look, dear, how the breeze sweeps through these tall dry stems that stick up everywhere—low broad ripples.”
She was a perfect work of art, abolishing time and obligations.
For a time they walked in silence. Then Captain Douglas said, “All very well—beauty and all that—but a fellow likes to know where he is.”
She did not answer immediately, and then she said, “I believe you are angry because you have come away from France.”
“Not a bit of it,” said the Captain stoutly. “I’d come away from anywhere to be with you.”
“I wonder,” she said.
“Well,—haven’t I?”
“I wonder if you ever are with me.... Oh!—I know you want me. I know you desire me. But the real thing, the happiness,—love. What is anything to love—anything at all?”
In this strain they continued until their footsteps led them through the shelter of a group of beeches. And there the gallant captain sought expression in deeds. He kissed her hands, he sought her lips. She resisted softly.
“No,” she said, “only if you love me with all your heart.”
Then suddenly, wonderfully, conqueringly she yielded him her lips.
“Oh!” she sighed presently, “if only you understood.”
And leaving speech at that enigma she kissed again....
But you see now how difficult it was under these mystically loving conditions to introduce the idea of a prompt examination and dispatch of Bealby. Already these days were consecrated....
And then you see Bealby vanished—going seaward....
Even the crash of the caravan disaster did little to change the atmosphere. In spite of a certain energetic quality in the Professor’s direction of the situation—he was a little embittered because his thumb was sprained and his knee bruised rather badly and he had a slight abrasion over one ear and William had bitten his calf—the general disposition was to treat the affair hilariously. Nobody seemed really hurt except William,—the Professor was not so much hurt as annoyed,—and William’s injuries though striking were all superficial, a sprained jaw and grazes and bruises and little things like that; everybody was heartened up to the idea of damages to be paid for; and neither the internal injuries to the caravan nor the hawker’s estimate of his stock-in-trade proved to be as great as one might reasonably have expected. Before sunset the caravan was safely housed in the Winthorpe-Sutbury public house, William had found a congenial corner in the bar parlour, where his account of an inside view of the catastrophe and his views upon Professor Bowles were much appreciated, the hawker had made a bit extra by carting all the luggage to the Redlake Royal Hotel and the caravanners and their menfolk had loitered harmoniously back to this refuge. Madeleine had walked along the road beside Captain Douglas and his motor bicycle, which he had picked up at the now desolate encampment.
“It only remains,” she said, “for that thing to get broken.”
“But I may want it,” he said.
“No,” she said, “Heaven has poured us together and now He has smashed the vessels. At least He has smashed one of the vessels. And look!—like a great shield, there is the moon. It’s the Harvest Moon, isn’t it?”
“No,” said the Captain, with his poetry running away with him. “It’s the Lovers’ Moon.”
“It’s like a benediction rising over our meeting.”
And it was certainly far too much like a benediction for the Captain to talk about Bealby.
That night was a perfect night for lovers, a night flooded with a kindly radiance, so that the warm mystery of the centre of life seemed to lurk in every shadow and hearts throbbed instead of beating and eyes were stars. After dinner every one found wraps and slipped out into the moonlight; the Geedges vanished like moths; the Professor made no secret that Judy was transfigured for him. Night works these miracles. The only other visitors there, a brace of couples, resorted to the boats upon the little lake.
Two enormous waiters removing the coffee cups from the small tables upon the verandah heard Madeleine’s beautiful voice for a little while and then it was stilled....