“I don’t think there will be time,” she said, “our train goes at half-past six. We passed a lovely backwater just now, let’s go back to that and have tea.”
Nielsen turned the boat round, and sculled slowly up-stream. He did not look quite at home in a boat, and he finished each stroke with a precision suggestive of earnest endeavour. It was too early in the year for river-folk, and with the exception of a fisherman’s punt, their boat was the only one on the reach. Nielsen pulled through the entrance of the backwater, and ran the boat under a willow bank which formed a shelving islet in the centre. Jocelyn made tea. She handed Nielsen a cup, and he sat, very silent for him, alternately sipping it and puffing at a cigarette.
“What a heavenly day!” she said, with a sigh. Leaning back on the cushions of her seat, she glanced from side to side as if she would drink in to the full the calm beauty of the world. A little bird, sitting on an osier twig, cocked its head on one side, and chirped feebly—an answering chirp came from the branch above her head.
The rushes and the feathery grasses on the banks quivered as if the breeze were kissing them. A cuckoo called, another answered; two wood-pigeons flighted together across to the woods on the other side; a distant weir murmured gently, the willow branches over her head echoed it faintly, and the sun, breaking through the trees, made soft, white holes of light in the running water. A spirit of perfect harmony seemed to be looking gently at her from everywhere around. Her face clouded, and she made a quick movement with her hands. A startled water-rat dropped with a splash into the stream, and swam in a strenuous line for the other bank, where it scrambled to the mouth of its hole and sat calmly looking at her. Two swans with a brood of dusky infants paddled majestically past, hissing faintly; they disappeared up a narrow passage of reed-grown water, leaving tiny eddies for a memory.
A furrow came between her brows. Nielsen, watching her, wondered. He sent a cloud of smoke through his lips.
“What is it you are thinking of?” he said at last. Jocelyn gave a little start, as if she had been brought back from very far.
“I was wondering,” she said, “what it all means.” She clasped her hands together, with their backs towards her. It was a motion that seemed to embrace all that was around them, and her eyes glanced at him with a troubled expression. The blue smoke from his cigarette was melting on all sides into the soft air.
“Even the smoke!” she said to herself quietly.
Nielsen did not answer—he did not understand. Jocelyn rested her chin in her hand; she was thinking: “Why isn’t there a place for me to fill? Why am I always alone? Everything I see has a home, all the birds, and the trees, and the beasts, everything has its mate and its place. I am out in the cold—in the cold, always in the cold.”
Nielsen was bending slightly forward on the seat, staring at her with his eyes screwed up. He held his cup in one hand and his cigarette in the other, and he seemed to have forgotten the existence of both.