She told him. And as she went again through that terrible process in her mind, that other thought returned, that idle notion about the wooing in the castle, which she had flung away from her.
She said, faltering and slow, her lips trembling, "Stephen—there's nothing else in it ... is there?... I ought to have guessed?—Stephen, you do love me—don't you?" She stepped uncertainly towards him, and then with a loud cry, "Darling, I do!" he caught her to him. And she knew that it was true.
XVI
In the morning he went out as usual to feed the sea-gulls before breakfast, as if nothing had happened or was likely to happen. He was pleased as usual to see from the window that they were waiting for him, patient dots of grey and white, drifting on the near water. The sun broke thinly through the October haze, and the birds circled in a chattering crowd against the gold. And he had as usual the sense of personal satisfaction when they caught in the air, with marvellous judgment and grace, the pieces of old bread he flung out over the water, and was disappointed as usual when they missed it, and the bread fell into the river, though even then it was delightful to see with how much delicacy they skimmed over, and plucked it from the surface as they flew, as if it were a point of honour not to settle or pause or wet their red feet, tucked back beneath them.
And he had breakfast as usual with Margery and chattering Joan, and as usual afterwards went out with Joan to feed the rabbits, and again enjoyed the mysterious and universal pleasure of giving food to animals and watching them eat. He noted as usual the peculiar habits and foibles of the rabbit Henry and the rabbit Maud, and the common follies of all of them—how they all persisted, as usual, in crowding impossibly round the same cabbage leaf, jostling and thrusting and eating with the maximum discomfort, with urgent anxiety and petulant stamping because there were too many of them, while all around there lay large wet cabbage leaves, inviting and neglected. He listened as usual to little Joan's insane interminable questions, and answered them as usual as intelligently as he could. And he puffed as usual at the perfect pipe of after-breakfast, and swept as usual the dead leaves from the path. But all these things he did with the exquisite melancholy enjoyment of a schoolboy, knowing that he does them for the last time on the last day of his holidays at home.
And he had decided nothing. Margery, too, moved as usual through the busy routine of after-breakfast, "ordering" food for herself and Stephen and the children and the servants, and promising Cook to get some lard and "speaking to" Mary about the drawing-room carpet, and arranging for the dining-room to be "done out" tomorrow, and conferring with Nurse and telephoning for some fish. She did these things in a kind of dream, hating them more than usual, and now and then she looked out of the window, and wondered what Stephen was doing, and what he was thinking. For she knew that he had not decided. And she would not speak to him; she had said her say, and some instinct told her that silence now was her best hope.
So all day they went about in this distressful tranquillity, pretending that this day was as yesterday, and as the day before. At midday the tide was down; the grey sky crept up from the far roofs and hid the sun. There was the damp promise of a drizzle in the air, and the bleak depression of low tide lay over the mud and the meagre stream and the deserted boats. They had lunch almost in silence, and after lunch a thin rain began. Stephen stared out at it silent from the window, thinking and thinking and deciding nothing; and Margery sat silent by the fire, darning. And her silence, and the silent riot of his thoughts, and the silent miserable rain, and the empty abandoned river, united in a vast conspiracy of menace and accusation and gloom. They were leagued together to get on his nerves and drive him to despair. He went out suddenly, and down to the dining-room, and there he drank some whisky, very quickly, and very strong.
Then, because he must do something or he would go mad, he dragged the dinghy over the mud and shingle down to the water, and he rowed up to the Island to pick up firewood from the mud-banks, where the high tides took it and left it tangled in the reeds and young willow stems.
It was an infinite toil to get this wood, but all afternoon he worked there, crashing fiercely through the tall forest of withes and crowded reeds, and slithering down banks into deep mud, and groping laboriously in the slush of small inlets for tiny pieces of tarred wood, and filling his basket with great beams and bits of bark, and small planks and box-wood, and painfully carrying them through the mud and the wet reeds down to the boat. He worked hard, with a savage determination to tire himself, to occupy his mind, cursing with a kind of furious satisfaction when the stems sprang back and whipped him in the face. The sweat came out upon him, and his hands were scratched, and the mud was thick upon his clothes. But all the time he thought. He could not stop thinking.