‘But,’ she said gaily, ‘what a delightful idea, to drive through the night. Martin loves it, you know. I often hear him going off on a lovely night like this. Funny boy.... His horn sounds so dreadfully lonely it makes me want to cry. He likes to have a companion. I used to go with him sometimes, but I’ve had to give it up. I feel too old next day.’
She smiled sweetly; and suddenly, standing above her and seeing her so small and ageing, Judith felt no longer the great barrier of difference of generation, but the basic intimacy of their common sex; and with this an extreme tenderness and pity. She bent and kissed her—the poor thing, who must lie flat in her room thriftily husbanding her resources for the morrow, while she herself, coming thirty years of nights behind her, had the open dark for friend.
She knew well enough you did not love her son: she trusted you not to betray him by marrying him. It would be horrible to force her to hate you ... unthinkable.
Car-wheels grated on the gravel outside, and Martin sounded his horn.
In another few minutes they had waved good-bye to the small figure on the steps, and taken the road.
Into the deep blue translucent shell of night. The air parted lightly as the car plunged through it, washing away in waves that smelt of roses and syringa and all green leaves. The moon struggled with clouds. She wore a faint and gentle face.
‘I shouldn’t be surprised if there was rain before daybreak,’ said Martin; and, reaching at length the wan straight high road, accelerated with a sigh of satisfaction.
‘Faster, Martin, faster.’
Faster and faster he went. She settled herself close against him, and through half-shut eyes saw the hawthorn and wild-rose hedges stream backward on either hand. The night air was a drug from whose sweet insinuating caress she prayed never to wake. Soon, through one leafy roadway after another, the headlights pierced a tunnel of green gloom. The lanes were full of white scuts and little paws, paralyzed; and then, as Martin painstakingly slowed down, dipping and twinkling into the banks. Moths flickered bright-winged an instant in the lamplight before being dashed to their fried and ashy death. Once or twice came human beings, objects of mean and foolish design, incongruous in the night’s vast grandeur; and here and there, under the trees, upon the stiles, in the grass, a couple of them, locked face to face, disquietingly still, gleamed and vanished. She observed them with distaste: passion was all ugliness and vulgar imbecility.
Now the moon looked exhausted behind a gathering film of cloud.