But though night is good, and stars are good, and sweet communion is
very good, with one’s beloved lying soft and warm in one’s arms, day
also is good, and the stir and zest of it, and men’s voices, and the
wind along the heath.
Such were Christopher’s conclusions when he had been married a week. He
leant on the gate after breakfast on the first weekly anniversary of his
wedding day, smoking and gazing at the field of buttercups that so
gorgeously embroidered the edges of the sea, and reflected that you have
to have both--the blissful night, the active day, so as completely to
appreciate either. That is, if your life is to be as near perfect as
possible. And why shouldn’t his life be as near perfect as possible? It
had all the necessary ingredients--youth, health, and Catherine. Only,
for a day to be happy it must not be too much like the night; there must
be a contrast, and there must be a complete contrast. In the days and
nights of the last week there had been hardly any contrast, and wasn’t
contrast in life as indispensable as salt in cooking? Bliss there had
been, bliss in quantities, wonderful quantities; wild bliss, then quiet
bliss, then wild bliss again, then quiet bliss, but always bliss. He
adored Catherine. Life was marvellous. On that fine May morning he was
certain he was the happiest human being in the island, for nobody could
possibly be happier, nor could anybody be as happy, for nobody else had
Catherine; but he wished that that day----
Well, what did he wish that day? It wasn’t possible that he wanted to be
away from Catherine, yet he did want to,--for a few hours, for a little
while; why, if only to have the joy of coming back to her. He was
conscious, and the consciousness surprised him, that he didn’t want to
kiss her for a bit. No, he didn’t. And fancy not wanting to, when a
month ago he would have sold everything he had, including his soul, to
be allowed to! That came, thought Christopher, narrowing his eyes to
watch a white sail out at sea bending in the wind--Jove, how jolly it
looked, scudding along like that--of not having contrast. There had to
be interruption, pause, the mind switched off on to something else. How
could one ever know the joy of coming back if one didn’t first go?
He wanted to go that day, to go by himself, to do things she couldn’t
do, and then come back all new to her again. He wanted to tramp miles in
the wind he knew was blowing gloriously beyond their sheltering
cliff--look how that yacht cut through the sea--up out into the open
country where the larks were singing; miles and miles he wanted to tramp
in the sun, and stretch all his slack muscles, and get into an almighty
sweat, and drink great draughts of beer, and rid himself of the sort of
sticky languor that was laying hold of him. He couldn’t spend another
day just sitting about or strolling gently round; he must be up and
doing.
Catherine wasn’t able to come with him, and he didn’t want her to. She
said the spring always made her lazy at first, till she got used to it.
She certainly wasn’t able to walk as she had walked with him before her
marriage, and was very evidently soon tired, and sometimes looked so
extraordinarily tired that it frightened him. She ought to rest, these
first spring days, then, just as he ought to take violent exercise. She
slept now very late into the morning, and he was glad she did, his tired
little love; but even that didn’t seem to make her be able to be active
for the rest of the day. He was glad she did sleep late, only it did
break up the day a bit, not knowing when she was coming down. It kept
one hanging about, unable to plan anything. If he could be certain she
wouldn’t wake up, say, till lunch time, he could do a lot in the
morning, but as it was he couldn’t do anything but just wait. And he
always forgot at night to tell her that if she found he wasn’t there
next day when she came down it would be because he had gone for a tramp,
but he would be back to lunch. He always forgot at night, because at
night the thing called next morning seemed so completely unimportant and
uninteresting. He forgot everything at night, except Catherine and love.
And then, in its turn, came morning; and it was important, and it was
interesting.
He opened the gate and went out into the road. The baker’s cart from
Ventnor was swinging round the corner on its two high wheels, the boy
cracking his whip and whistling. Enough to make any one whistle, a day
like that. The boy grinned at him as he passed, and he grinned back. He
would have liked to be driving that fast little mare himself, and
shouting out triumphant epithalamiums as he drove. What was the plural
of epithalamium? He must ask Lewes. Dash it all, why couldn’t one have
one’s friends about one more? They were always somewhere else. If Lewes
were there now they could join the golf club and have a gorgeous time.
Lewes was very good at golf. Lewes was good at everything, really; and
it wasn’t his fault if he was so damned clever into the bargain and
nosed away most of his life in books. Besides, one could swear at Lewes,
be absolutely natural, say any old thing that came into one’s head. With
a woman, with the dearest of women, with her whom one worshipped body,
soul and mind, there was a being-in-the-drawing-room flavour about
things; and after a bout of drawing-room one wanted a bout of
public-house,--putting it roughly, that is, putting it very roughly.
Catherine, his beloved, to whom he whispered things he could never tell
another human being, to whom he told every thought he had of beauty and
romance, was more or less the drawing-room, and Lewes, who drank only
water, and who, though he listened unmoved to any oath on any subject,
was himself in his language most choice, was more or less the
public-house.
He strolled aimlessly about the road, kicking stones out of his path. He
wished old Lewes would appear round the bend from St. Lawrence, and see
for himself what happiness was like. He had been a fool from the start
about Catherine, Lewes had. All wrong. The poor chap hadn’t a notion
what love was. But if he didn’t know about love he knew about most other
things, and it would be jolly to have a yarn with him, and listen to him
being clever.
Christopher looked up the road, and down the road, almost as if, in
answer to his wish, Lewes must appear. The young leaves were bursting
out in the woods on either side, making delicate shadows on the dust.
The sky was intensely blue, and a warm wind full of the scent of
hawthorns tossed the small fat white clouds across it. God, what a day,
what a day to do something tremendous in!
He turned quickly, and went back to the cottage, and looking up at
Catherine’s window whistled softly. If she were awake she would come to
the window, and he would tell her he was going for a quick walk; if she
wasn’t awake he would leave a note for her and be off.
The bedroom window was open, but the curtains were drawn.
He whistled again, and watched for a movement behind them.
Nothing stirred.
He went indoors, scribbled a note saying he would be back to lunch, left
it on the table of the sitting-room, seized a stick, and started down
the path and up the road with great energetic strides in the direction
of Blackgang. It was eleven o’clock, and he would walk as hard as he
knew how for two hours. That ought to do him good; that ought to take
the slackness out of him. Oh, jolly, jolly to be walking again, really
walking....
But hardly had he got a few yards from the cottage when he heard
Catherine calling. He heard her little voice through all the scrunchings
of his footsteps on the road and the rustlings of spring in the trees,
as he would hear it, he was sure, if she should call him from the sleep
of death.
He stopped, and went back slowly.
She was at the bedroom window, holding the curtains a tiny strip apart,
for she shrank from showing herself to him at the window in the morning
light before she had had time to do what she could for her silly face,
which was being so tiresome these days and looking so persistently
haggard.
‘Chris--Chris--where are you going?’ she called.
‘I left you a note, darling.’
‘A note? Why?’
‘I didn’t want to wake you. I’m going for a walk.’
‘Oh I’d love to come too--wait five minutes----’
‘But I want to go very quick, and as far as I can before lunch.’
‘Don’t let’s come back to lunch, then we needn’t hurry. I’ll be down in
five seconds.’
And he heard sounds of hasty moving about the room.
He sat down on the verandah-step and lit his pipe. Well, it couldn’t be
helped; he must wait till to-morrow for his exercise.
She wasn’t five seconds but twenty-five minutes, but when she did come
down in a broad-brimmed hat that shaded her face, and smiled her sweet
smile at him and slipped her hand through his arm, he cheerfully gave up
the idea of fierce solitary exercise and was glad she was there. His
darling. His Catherine. His dream of happiness come true. His
astonishing angel-wife.
‘Let’s stay out all day,’ she said, as they walked up the road, again in
the direction of Blackgang but at a moderate pace that would never, he
knew, however long it went on, get a drop of the sweat he craved for out
of him.
‘But we haven’t brought food.’
‘We’ll get the hotel at Blackgang to cut us some sandwiches and take
them with us. Oh Chris, isn’t it a gorgeous day! Did you ever know
anything like it? Oh, I’m so happy. By the way--good morning.’
She stopped and held up her face. He laughed and kissed it.
‘Darling,’ he said, kissing her again. Yes; it would have been beastly
of him to go off and leave her, to go off and let her wake up and find
herself alone.
At the hotel they asked, as Catherine had suggested, for lunch to take
with them, and while it was being got ready went out through the heat
and hot-house flowers of the glass verandah to the fresh garden glowing
and blowing with the blossoms of May. It was a sight, that garden on the
cliffs above the sea, jewelled with tulips, frothed with fruit-blossom,
and just beyond it, splendidly holding it in with a golden circlet,
gorse.
‘It’s much more beautiful here than at our cottage,’ said Catherine,
looking about her.
‘How could anything ever be more beautiful than our cottage?’ he
answered; and she smiled at him, love in her eyes, and softly slid her
hand along his sleeve.
In the garden, reading <i>The Times</i>, was Mr. Jerrold, the eminent editor
of the <i>Saturday Judge</i>, who with his daughter Sybil to keep him company
had come down from London for a fortnight’s rest and quiet. He had
rested now for a whole week, and was beginning to feel that quiet can be
overdone. His daughter Sybil had long been aware of it. The hotel was
empty--he had hoped it would be when he engaged his rooms, but now
thought that perhaps some one else in it might not be wholly
disagreeable--and when, on raising his eyes from <i>The Times</i> he saw two
visitors emerging from the glass verandah in which he spent his solitary
evenings reading among pots of cinerarias, he was glad.
So was his daughter Sybil, who had been down the cliff and up again
three times already since breakfast, and was wondering what she could do
with the rest of the morning till lunch-time.
Mr. Jerrold watched the new arrivals with deep interest. They would be
a great addition to the party, if he and his daughter could properly be
described as a party. The young man was a good type of clean,
nice-looking young Englishman, public school and university, and would
do admirably to play about with poor Billy, thwarted in her desire for
prolonged and violent exercise by his inability to take it with her,
while he would find the lady, who seemed just about that agreeable age
when conversation is preferred to activity, a pleasant companion
meanwhile.
He awaited their passing where he and Billy were sitting in
basket-chairs under some hawthorns; when they did, he would ask them if
they had seen that morning’s <i>Times</i>, and thus open up channels of
friendship.
But the new arrivals edged away across the grass, not yet realising, no
doubt, how rare was intercourse in that lonely spot and accordingly how
precious. So he got up and strolled after them--(‘Poor father,’ thought
his daughter, who only knew him as reserved, ‘I had no idea he has been
as bored as all that’)--and overtook them at the edge of the garden,
where they were gazing at the sea, brilliant blue between the great
orange-coloured branches of the gorse.
‘Wonderful colour, isn’t it,’ said Mr. Jerrold pleasantly, waving his
<i>Times</i> at the gorse and the sea.
‘Marvellous,’ said the young man heartily.
‘Too wonderful,’ cooed the lady.
In a few minutes they were talking as friends, the young man in
particular, who on closer view was even more what Mr. Jerrold felt sure
would amuse poor Billy, being very friendly.
Mr. Jerrold called to his daughter, who had stayed in her basket-chair.
‘Come and be introduced, Billy,’ he called; and when she had come he
presented her to the lady.
‘My daughter Sybil,’ said Mr. Jerrold, expecting in return to be told
the names of the attractive new arrivals.
He was told. ‘Our name is Monckton,’ said the young man, laughing and
turning redder than ever,--why should he laugh and turn red? wondered
Mr. Jerrold, unaware that this was the very first time Christopher had
spoken of himself and Catherine collectively as Monckton.
‘Ours is Jerrold,’ said Mr. Jerrold; and proceeded pleasantly to assure
the lady that she would find the hotel comfortable.
It was a real disappointment, so much did he like the look of both of
them, so admirably did their ages fit in with his and Billy’s, to be
told they were not going to stay there but had only come over from St.
Lawrence, where they had a cottage, to get some food to take with them
on a walk.
Both the Jerrolds’ faces fell at this. Billy’s broad smile seemed to
contract by about half a yard. She had two long rows of very white
teeth, endless rows they seemed, so wide was her smile, and they looked
even whiter than they were because the sea wind had tanned her face. Her
eyes, too, looked bluer than they were for the same reason, and the
sunshine of a week spent hatless had bleached her hair the colour of
flax. She was a sturdy creature, firm on solid ankles, and not
particularly pretty, but as she stood there bareheaded, and the wind
blew her fair hair across her forehead, and she smiled immensely at
everybody, she fitted in with complete harmony to the young jollity of
the morning and the month.
Christopher thought she looked like a good-natured young shark.
‘What an awful pity,’ she said. ‘We might have gone for excursions
together.’
And she said it with such a heartiness of chagrin that they all laughed.
The end of it was that when the sandwiches came and the Moncktons went,
the Jerrolds, still talking, went with them, first to the entrance of
the hotel garden, then into the road, then, still talking, along the
road.
The Jerrolds not having talked for a week were unable now to leave off.
Mr. Jerrold found himself wishing to tell the small agreeable lady who
he was, and why, and how, and did so with a completeness that surprised
himself. His daughter, striding on ahead with the young man--they seemed
naturally to shoot ahead together, the two young ones, the minute they
got on to the road--explained just as completely to her companion, who
appeared at once to tumble to it, the dreadful feeling of being about to
burst after a week’s flopping round with somebody who couldn’t be left
while one rushed all over the island, and couldn’t, owing to age and
infirmity and being a father and all that, rush too.
‘Just look at those youngsters forging along,’ said Mr. Jerrold, smiling
complacently at the two figures in front, at their four
worsted-stockinged legs moving so quickly in step, at their swinging
arms, and their bare heads turned to each other while they talked and
laughed.
His companion looked, but said nothing. He wondered what relation she
was to the young man that she too should be a Monckton, and decided
that she must be either his father’s second wife or his aunt by
marriage. Not a blood relation, clearly; they were too much unlike.
‘Is there anything more delightful in the world,’ said Mr. Jerrold,
gazing benevolently at the pair ahead, ‘than a wholesome English boy and
girl?’
At this his companion murmured something that he understood meant that
the two would soon be out of sight, which they certainly would be if
they went on at that pace, and he said, ‘Yes--quite. Hi, there,’ he
called, ‘you youngsters! Steady--we can’t keep up!’
But the wind was against him, and they strode on unheeding.
‘Not that,’ said Mr. Jerrold, turning gallantly to the lady, ‘it would
be anything but my gain if they did go on. Why not let them? And you and
I sit down somewhere and talk.’
‘But Christopher has got the sandwiches,’ said his new friend.
‘So he has. Christopher. Delightful name. Attractive youth. Well, let
Christopher eat them, sharing them with Billy somewhere at the end of
their first twenty miles or so, and allow me the pleasure of offering
you lunch in the hotel.’
‘How very kind of you. But Christopher----’
‘Well, you see he doesn’t hear,’ said Mr. Jerrold. ‘I don’t suppose
he’ll even notice that we’re not following. When young people get
together.... I assure you it would give me the greatest pleasure to
entertain you, and we can sit afterwards in that nice garden in
comfortable chairs till they come back.’
Mr. Jerrold paused persuasively in the road. After a week of not
speaking to a soul but his daughter he ached to entertain. The two on in
front turned a corner and disappeared. Mr. Jerrold, whose wife had been
dead some years, felt the situation unfolding romantically. This was a
dear little lady, and she looked as though she needed taking care of. He
had a strong wish to give her lunch.
‘But----’ she began.
‘We will consider no buts,’ said Mr. Jerrold, even more gallantly. ‘Your
nephew--is he your nephew?--won’t notice----’
‘He’s my husband,’ said the little lady, flushing a very bright scarlet.
Well; what a surprise. Mr. Jerrold was really most surprised. Not that
the lady wasn’t, he was sure, a most agreeable wife for any man to have,
but that the young man seemed so very young to have one at all; and if
at all she ought, to match him, be a mere slip of a girl,--somebody
about Billy’s age.
Yes; it was a surprise. Mr. Jerrold didn’t quite know what to say.
‘In that case----’ he began.
But really he hadn’t an idea what to say, and stood in the middle of the
road staring down at the little lady through his monocle--he wore a
monocle--and she stared back at him, while the flush slowly ebbed away
out of her face.