“No,” she said shortly. “It’s different now.”
“But why should two letters make so much difference?” I said.
“It isn’t only the letters. But it is different. It’s different for
good.”
She halted a little with that sentence, seeking her expression. She
looked up abruptly into my eyes and moved, indeed slightly, but with
the intimation that she thought our talk might end.
But I did not mean it to end like that.
“For good?” said I. “No! . . Nettie! Nettie! You don’t mean that!”
“I do,” she said deliberately, still looking at me, and with all her
pose conveying her finality. She seemed to brace herself for the
outbreak that must follow.
Of course I became wordy. But I did not submerge her. She stood
entrenched, firing her contradictions like guns into my scattered
discursive attack. I remember that our talk took the absurd form of
disputing whether I could be in love with her or not. And there was I,
present in evidence, in a deepening and widening distress of soul
because she could stand there, defensive, brighter and prettier than
ever, and in some inexplicable way cut off from me and inaccessible.
You know, we had never been together before without little enterprises
of endearment, without a faintly guilty, quite delightful excitement.
I pleaded, I argued. I tried to show that even my harsh and difficult
letters came from my desire to come wholly into contact with her. I
made exaggerated fine statements of the longing I felt for her when I
was away, of the shock and misery of finding her estranged and cool.
She looked at me, feeling the emotion of my speech and impervious to
its ideas. I had no doubt—whatever poverty in my words, coolly written
down now—that I was eloquent then. I meant most intensely what I said,
indeed I was wholly concentrated upon it. I was set upon conveying to
her with absolute sincerity my sense of distance, and the greatness of
my desire. I toiled toward her painfully and obstinately through a
jungle of words.
Her face changed very slowly—by such imperceptible degrees as when at
dawn light comes into a clear sky. I could feel that I touched her,
that her hardness was in some manner melting, her determination
softening toward hesitations. The habit of an old familiarity lurked
somewhere within her. But she would not let me reach her.
“No,” she cried abruptly, starting into motion.
She laid a hand on my arm. A wonderful new friendliness came into her
voice. “It’s impossible, Willie. Everything is different
now—everything. We made a mistake. We two young sillies made a mistake
and everything is different for ever. Yes, yes.”
She turned about.
“Nettie!” cried I, and still protesting, pursued her along the narrow
alley between the staging toward the hot-house door. I pursued her like
an accusation, and she went before me like one who is guilty and
ashamed. So I recall it now.
She would not let me talk to her again.
Yet I could see that my talk to her had altogether abolished the
clear-cut distance of our meeting in the park. Ever and again I found
her hazel eyes upon me. They expressed something novel—a surprise, as
though she realized an unwonted relationship, and a sympathetic pity.
And still—something defensive.
When we got back to the cottage, I fell talking rather more freely with
her father about the nationalization of railways, and my spirits and
temper had so far mended at the realization that I could still produce
an effect upon Nettie, that I was even playful with Puss. Mrs. Stuart
judged from that that things were better with me than they were, and
began to beam mightily.
But Nettie remained thoughtful and said very little. She was lost in
perplexities I could not fathom, and presently she slipped away from us
and went upstairs.
§ 6
I was, of course, too footsore to walk back to Clayton, but I had a
shilling and a penny in my pocket for the train between Checkshill and
Two-Mile Stone, and that much of the distance I proposed to do in the
train. And when I got ready to go, Nettie amazed me by waking up to the
most remarkable solicitude for me. I must, she said, go by the road. It
was altogether too dark for the short way to the lodge gates.
I pointed out that it was moonlight. “With the comet thrown in,” said
old Stuart.
“No,” she insisted, “you _must_ go by the road.”