CHAPTER VI
THE POINT OF VIEW OF THE ORANGE
It was not long before the well had been baled, the gaff run up, and a very wet mainsail flapped in mournful abandon against the mast. Then Stuart pushed off with the quant-pole, while Peter curled herself among the regions of his feet; from the general ooziness she suspected she was sitting in about two inches of water, but by now it seemed more natural to be wet than dry, and she made no efforts towards the latter state. The mists brushed her cheek with clammy fingers; naught of clothing but was damp and cumbersome to the body; the water had insinuated itself into matches and cigarettes, had gurgled into the locker, and soaked into the comestibles. Water-logged, they crept on and on with the tide through the murky twilight, a faint saffron stain in the west betokening where once had rioted the banners of the setting sun. From time to time a light flashed warmly from a house-boat on the banks, or cheery but muffled voices told of sails being laboriously tucked away for the night, masts lowered, clinking crockery washed up for a late meal. Theirs was the only vessel still adrift. Huddled in her big cloak, Peter watched the darkness eating up either shore, while the river took on unfamiliar curves and windings, seemed to branch off into two—ten rivers, all beckoning different ways. And once she called out sharply, “Look ahead!” that Stuart should swing the ‘Tyke’ clear of a gigantic looming ship, three tiers of sails, and a ghostly figurehead. “Why?” And he steered straight through the ship with its three tiers of sails. Peter said no more, not quite trusting what further tricks her sight might choose to play. She crouched still further into the well, content to see naught but the edge of sail against the dense pall of sky, and dimly, where Stuart sat, an outline of bare neck and slouched hat and lean nervous hand upon the tiller. It all went to make perfection: the timeless blue day spent in big spaces, limbs stiff from their perilous tussle, and now the sodden boat, and the shadows, and Stuart beside her. She put out a chill hand to feel if he were indeed solid substance; touched his knee, felt him start and tingle—she could not see the hot rush of blood into his face.
Suddenly he swerved the bows towards a forest of pale reeds; they bent apart to the sliding passage of the boat, then closed up in its wake. The keel ran aground. Stuart let drop the mainsheet; it rattled lazily along its blocks, and was still. The sail drooped forward, fell back again.
... She lay suffocated in a darkness of kisses, that stole her breath away, and her powers of resistance; robbed her of all knowledge save of desire beating itself out upon her lips and her throat and her eyes; upon the lids she drooped for evasion, upon the hands she put up to protect her, upon the hair she tumbled forward, and upon her neck when she turned her head. And then again fiercely upon her mouth, compelling her to be passive, compelling her to response. And through the pain and through her weariness, sang a strain of rejoicing that he should treat her thus; that their brains and their mockery and their intellect should yet have been all blotted to naught in a whirling storm of passion.
... He had drawn a little away. She raised herself; pushed back her hair with the bewildered gesture of a child. Her throat ached as if someone had attempted to strangle her, and her mouth felt stung and bruised. Then Stuart bent towards her, took her in his arms: “Lie still, dear” ... and for the first time Peter lay still; mind and body and soul, still.
It was over, the endless strain of winning and keeping the man; the endless effort of playing-up. He loved her with a great finality of love. She could—lie still.
A shaft of blackness pierced light. And Peter became aware that this very moment which had brought her belief in the endurance of his love, was the moment long foretold when they must consent to end it. Love’s consummation—both had agreed that nothing less must follow.
Did Stuart know?... And suddenly his hands slackened completely their hold on her—then tightened again to an almost intolerable grip. He too had realized the door of exit.
But it was absurd, for an elusive unproven theory, to renounce a thing at its perfection; Peter had doubted always if she would be big enough for that. And now love had proven so much bigger than she had anticipated.