§ 6
That was in the opening stage of the controversy between their careers. In those days they were both acutely in love with each other. Their friends thought the spectacle quite beautiful; they went together so well. Admirers, fluttered with the pride of participation, asked them for week-ends together; those theatrical week-ends that begin on Sunday morning and end on Monday afternoon. She confided widely.
And when at last there was something like a rupture it became the concern of a large circle of friends.
The particulars of the breach were differently stated. It would seem that looking ahead he had announced his intention of seeing the French army manœuvres just when it seemed probable that she would be out of an engagement.
“But I ought to see what they are doing,” he said. “They’re going to try those new dirigibles.”
Then should she come?
He wanted to whisk about. It wouldn’t be any fun for her. They might get landed at nightfall in any old hole. And besides people would talk— Especially as it was in France. One could do unconventional things in England one couldn’t in France. Atmosphere was different.
For a time after that halting explanation she maintained a silence. Then she spoke in a voice of deep feeling. She perceived, she said, that he wanted his freedom. She would be the last person to hold a reluctant lover to her side. He might go—to any manœuvres. He might go if he wished round the world. He might go away from her for ever. She would not detain him, cripple him, hamper a career she had once been assured she inspired....
The unfortunate man, torn between his love and his profession, protested that he hadn’t meant that.
Then what had he meant?
He realized he had meant something remarkably like it and he found great difficulty in expressing these fine distinctions....
She banished him from her presence for a month, said he might go to his manœuvres—with her blessing. As for herself, that was her own affair. Some day perhaps he might know more of the heart of a woman.... She choked back tears—very beautifully, and military science suddenly became a trivial matter. But she was firm. He wanted to go. He must go. For a month anyhow.
He went sadly....
Into this opening breach rushed friends. It was the inestimable triumph of Judy Bowles to get there first. To begin with, Madeleine confided in her, and then, availing herself of the privilege of a distant cousinship, she commanded Douglas to tea in her Knightsbridge flat and had a good straight talk with him. She liked good straight talks with honest young men about their love affairs; it was almost the only form of flirtation that the Professor, who was a fierce, tough, undiscriminating man upon the essentials of matrimony, permitted her. And there was something peculiarly gratifying about Douglas’s complexion. Under her guidance he was induced to declare that he could not live without Madeleine, that her love was the heart of his life, without it he was nothing and with it he could conquer the world.... Judy permitted herself great protestations on behalf of Madeleine, and Douglas was worked up to the pitch of kissing her intervening hand. He had little silvery hairs, she saw, all over his temples. And he was such a simple perplexed dear. It was a rich deep beautiful afternoon for Judy.
And then in a very obvious way Judy, who was already deeply in love with the idea of a caravan tour and the “wind on the heath” and the “Gipsy life” and the “open road” and all the rest of it, worked this charming little love difficulty into her scheme, utilized her reluctant husband to arrange for the coming of Douglas, confided in Mrs. Geedge....
And Douglas went off with his perplexities. He gave up all thought of France, week-ended at Shonts instead, to his own grave injury, returned to London unexpectedly by a Sunday train, packed for France and started. He reached Rheims on Monday afternoon. And then the image of Madeleine, which always became more beautiful and mysterious and commanding with every mile he put between them, would not let him go on. He made unconvincing excuses to the Daily Excess military expert with whom he was to have seen things. “There’s a woman in it, my boy, and you’re a fool to go,” said the Daily Excess man, “but of course you’ll go, and I for one don’t blame you—” He hurried back to London and was at Judy’s trysting-place even as Judy had anticipated.
And when he saw Madeleine standing in the sunlight, pleased and proud and glorious, with a smile in her eyes and trembling on her lips, with a strand or so of her beautiful hair and a streamer or so of delightful blue fluttering in the wind about her gracious form, it seemed to him for the moment that leaving the manœuvres and coming back to England was quite a right and almost a magnificent thing to do.
§ 7
This meeting was no exception to their other meetings.
The coming to her was a crescendo of poetical desire, the sight of her a climax, and then—an accumulation of irritations. He had thought being with her would be pure delight, and as they went over the down straying after the Bowles and the Geedges towards the Redlake Hotel he already found himself rather urgently asking her to marry him and being annoyed by what he regarded as her evasiveness.
He walked along with the restrained movement of a decent Englishman; he seemed as it were to gesticulate only through his clenched teeth, and she floated beside him, in a wonderful blue dress that with a wonderful foresight she had planned for breezy uplands on the basis of Botticelli’s Primavera. He was urging her to marry him soon; he needed her, he could not live in peace without her. It was not at all what he had come to say; he could not recollect that he had come to say anything, but now that he was with her it was the only thing he could find to say to her.
“But, my dearest boy,” she said, “how are we to marry? What is to become of your career and my career?”
“I’ve left my career!” cried Captain Douglas with the first clear note of irritation in his voice.
“Oh! don’t let us quarrel,” she cried. “Don’t let us talk of all those distant things. Let us be happy. Let us enjoy just this lovely day and the sunshine and the freshness and the beauty.... Because you know we are snatching these days. We have so few days together. Each—each must be a gem.... Look, dear, how the breeze sweeps through these tall dry stems that stick up everywhere—low broad ripples.”
She was a perfect work of art, abolishing time and obligations.
For a time they walked in silence. Then Captain Douglas said, “All very well—beauty and all that—but a fellow likes to know where he is.”
She did not answer immediately, and then she said, “I believe you are angry because you have come away from France.”
“Not a bit of it,” said the Captain stoutly. “I’d come away from anywhere to be with you.”
“I wonder,” she said.
“Well,—haven’t I?”
“I wonder if you ever are with me.... Oh!—I know you want me. I know you desire me. But the real thing, the happiness,—love. What is anything to love—anything at all?”
In this strain they continued until their footsteps led them through the shelter of a group of beeches. And there the gallant captain sought expression in deeds. He kissed her hands, he sought her lips. She resisted softly.
“No,” she said, “only if you love me with all your heart.”
Then suddenly, wonderfully, conqueringly she yielded him her lips.
“Oh!” she sighed presently, “if only you understood.”
And leaving speech at that enigma she kissed again....
But you see now how difficult it was under these mystically loving conditions to introduce the idea of a prompt examination and dispatch of Bealby. Already these days were consecrated....
And then you see Bealby vanished—going seaward....
Even the crash of the caravan disaster did little to change the atmosphere. In spite of a certain energetic quality in the Professor’s direction of the situation—he was a little embittered because his thumb was sprained and his knee bruised rather badly and he had a slight abrasion over one ear and William had bitten his calf—the general disposition was to treat the affair hilariously. Nobody seemed really hurt except William,—the Professor was not so much hurt as annoyed,—and William’s injuries though striking were all superficial, a sprained jaw and grazes and bruises and little things like that; everybody was heartened up to the idea of damages to be paid for; and neither the internal injuries to the caravan nor the hawker’s estimate of his stock-in-trade proved to be as great as one might reasonably have expected. Before sunset the caravan was safely housed in the Winthorpe-Sutbury public house, William had found a congenial corner in the bar parlour, where his account of an inside view of the catastrophe and his views upon Professor Bowles were much appreciated, the hawker had made a bit extra by carting all the luggage to the Redlake Royal Hotel and the caravanners and their menfolk had loitered harmoniously back to this refuge. Madeleine had walked along the road beside Captain Douglas and his motor bicycle, which he had picked up at the now desolate encampment.
“It only remains,” she said, “for that thing to get broken.”
“But I may want it,” he said.
“No,” she said, “Heaven has poured us together and now He has smashed the vessels. At least He has smashed one of the vessels. And look!—like a great shield, there is the moon. It’s the Harvest Moon, isn’t it?”
“No,” said the Captain, with his poetry running away with him. “It’s the Lovers’ Moon.”
“It’s like a benediction rising over our meeting.”
And it was certainly far too much like a benediction for the Captain to talk about Bealby.
That night was a perfect night for lovers, a night flooded with a kindly radiance, so that the warm mystery of the centre of life seemed to lurk in every shadow and hearts throbbed instead of beating and eyes were stars. After dinner every one found wraps and slipped out into the moonlight; the Geedges vanished like moths; the Professor made no secret that Judy was transfigured for him. Night works these miracles. The only other visitors there, a brace of couples, resorted to the boats upon the little lake.
Two enormous waiters removing the coffee cups from the small tables upon the verandah heard Madeleine’s beautiful voice for a little while and then it was stilled....