Surely, surely he was asking too much of her?...
Yet he had felt no doubt that she would comply. There had been indeed no
tinge of supplication in his bearing when he had halted with her on the
seaward slope of the sea-wall and pointed to the other wall on the
further side of the creek, and he had told her that on the island it
confined there was a hut which the cattlemen used when the herds
pastured there; where there would be a store of furze with which they
could build a fire; where they could be safe until the people came to
take him. Rather had he spoken triumphantly, as if he had found a hidden
staircase leading out of destiny. And when he left her to see if they
could bribe the fishermen who were painting the keel of a boat on the
grass two hundred yards away to hand over their waders, so that he and
she might walk across dryshod to the island, he did not look over his
shoulder, but walked straight ahead, utterly confident that she would be
there when he returned.
But surely this was far too much to ask of her, who had learned what
life was; who knew that, though life at its beginning was lovely as a
corn of wheat, it was ground down to flour that must make bitter bread
between two human tendencies: the insane sexual caprice of men, the not
less mad excessive steadfastness of women. Roger had died, Richard was
about to die, because of the grinding together of these male and female
faults--Harry and Marion ... Poppy and her sailor ... her own mother and
father.... And love, which she had trusted to resolve all life's
disharmonies, was either ineffectual or dangerous. Her love had not been
able to reach Richard across the dark waters of his mother's love; and
how like a doom that love had lain on him.... Since life was like this,
she would not do what Richard asked. She tried to rise that she might
flee from him, from these marshes, back to the hills where the red roofs
of safe human houses showed among the tended fields.
But she could not move. Although her mind was still arguing the matter,
all the rest of her being had consented. She was going to do this thing.
In panic she looked along the wall at Richard, wishing he would come
back to her. But he was going on talking to the fishermen, though he
held their waders in his hand. She quite understood why he was doing
that, and watched him through tears. This was the last time he would be
able to exercise that charm of which he was a little vain, since on all
his few future days his intercourse with his fellows would be strictly
specialised; so he was taking the opportunity. In watching him and the
reflection of his magnificence in the fishermen's smiling subjugation,
she was shot through by a pang of pride and exultation. Though the night
should engulf Richard and Marion, the triumph was not with the night. In
throwing in her lot with them and with the human race which is
perpetually defeated, she was nevertheless choosing the side of
victory....
She leaned back against the slope and waited. This was a good place to
wait. The call of the redshanks, the cloud shadows that moved over the
marshes like the footprints of invisible presences, made her feel calm.
Nevertheless her heart could not help but beat quick with fear. She
wished that he would come and comfort her. But though he had left the
fishermen he was not coming straight to her. He had climbed the sea-wall
and was looking out to the east, to the open sea, over the country of
the mud. He was thinking of Marion, and wondering where the tide had
carried her. The inexorable womb was continuing to claim its own. She
wanted to start up and cry out to him and hail him noisily from his
obsession; but something in the place, in the call of the redshanks, in
the procession of the shadows, reminded her that when she had cried out
before she had brought death upon her lover. This quietness was the
safer way. She would wait patiently until he came to make his exorbitant
demand.
She sat and looked at the island, and wondered whether it was a son or
daughter that waited for her there.