“Darling, you will be,
Ever young and fair to me.”
It was not true. The song was a lie. He would not love her when she was old. Men don’t. They want roses and bright eyes, youth. Cruel, men are. But she had a few years yet. She would live those years, not spend them with regrets.
She had a wild thought of running out to him, to cry her joy, her bitterness in his arms! He was waiting for her, hoping for her down by the levee; his love was like a schoolboy’s in its eagerness. But the sulky figure of Tom guarded her door. Tom was like Innes, always watching her with distrust, suspicion in his eyes. Whatever she would do, they would have driven her to it. She was going to be happy—to be happy before she was old!
Godfrey, singing to Gerty Hardin, had awakened the camp. Once roused, the brilliant night made sleep impossible. Innes, in her tent, too, was listening. Once, in her childhood, she had wakened to the sound of near music, sweet, unearthly, in its soaring lightness, now antiphonal, now in unison. To-night, so Godfrey’s song pierced her dreams, and brought back that unreal childish night, another white night such as this. She opened her curtain to the wide spread of silvered desert; the moonlight streamed in on her bed.
“Darling, you will be,
Ever young and fair to me!”
So that is the miracle, that wild rush of certain feeling! Yesterday, doubting, to-morrow, more doubts—but to-night, the song, the night isolated them, herself and Rickard, into a world of their own. To-night, it did not even pain her that he had been the lover of Gerty Hardin, faithful through years, as Gerty had hinted, to a love that was not ever to be rewarded; nor that it had passed to her so lightly. Accidental, propinquitous, seemed his love for her. Not based on congeniality, or knowledge of sympathies. She was not vocal with him—what did he love in her? A trick of smile or speech? Better that, even, than that he had yielded, simply, to the human need of loving! Even that did not have a sting for her this night. Life with him on any terms she wanted. To-morrow, the proud rebellions might return; now, she could see the risk of losing him! She had not the trick of persuasion; only one way she knew! When he was her own, they might face their differences, then kiss them away! Daring, then witchery! For she wanted to charm her husband; that, the proudest conquest of all. The wonder it was that all women could not see it that way. To win over again, to conquer against commonplaceness, against satiety—to bewitch one’s own!
Godfrey was returning to Australia’s clapping hands. The desert, Gerty Hardin, were forgotten in the ardor of his singing. To pour out song like that, to make a world listen, be the voice that summons memory! Such a night as this—“Tanto amor—!”
On his army cot, Wooster stirred restlessly between his coarse cotton sheets. Something was disturbing him. He was heavy with sleep. But something was the matter with the night. He covered his ears, but the irritation crept through. He raised his head from the pillow, the small snapping eyes accusing the unknown disturber of his peace.