“Oh, well, there’s no to-morrow now. You and I!” She stopped and
confronted me.
“You don’t say a word except to answer!”
“No,” I said.
“Last time you did all the talking.”
“Like a fool. Now—”
We looked at each other’s two dim faces. “You’re glad to be here?”
“I’m glad—I’m beginning to be—it’s more than glad.”
She put her hands on my shoulders and drew me down to kiss her.
“Ah!” she said, and for a moment or so we just clung to one another.
“That’s all,” she said, releasing herself. “What bundles of clothes we
are to-night. I felt we should kiss some day again. Always. The last
time was ages ago.”
“Among the fern stalks.”
“Among the bracken. You remember. And your lips were cold. Were mine?
The same lips—after so long—after so much!... And now let’s trudge
through this blotted-out world together for a time. Yes, let me take
your arm. Just trudge. See? Hold tight to me because I know the way—and
don’t talk—don’t talk. Unless you want to talk.... Let me tell you
things! You see, dear, the whole world is blotted out—it’s dead and
gone, and we’re in this place. This dark wild place.... We’re dead. Or
all the world is dead. No! We’re dead. No one can see us. We’re
shadows. We’ve got out of our positions, out of our bodies—and
together. That’s the good thing of it—together. But that’s why the
world can’t see us and why we hardly see the world. Sssh! Is it all
right?”
“It’s all right,” I said.
We stumbled along for a time in a close silence. We passed a dim-lit,
rain-veiled window.
“The silly world,” she said, “the silly world! It eats and sleeps. If
the wet didn’t patter so from the trees we’d hear it snoring. It’s
dreaming such stupid things—stupid judgments. It doesn’t know we are
passing, we two—free of it—clear of it. You and I!”
We pressed against each other reassuringly.
“I’m glad we’re dead,” she whispered. “I’m glad we’re dead. I was tired
of it, dear. I was so tired of it, dear, and so entangled.”
She stopped abruptly.
We splashed through a string of puddles. I began to remember things I
had meant to say.
“Look here!” I cried. “I want to help you beyond measure. You are
entangled. What is the trouble? I asked you to marry me. You said you
would. But there’s something.”
My thoughts sounded clumsy as I said them.
“Is it something about my position?... Or is it something—perhaps—about
some other man?”
There was an immense assenting silence.
“You’ve puzzled me so. At first—I mean quite early—I thought you meant
to make me marry you.”
“I did.”
“And then?”
“To-night,” she said after a long pause, “I can’t explain. No! I can’t
explain. I love you! But—explanations! To-night my dear, here we are in
the world alone—and the world doesn’t matter. Nothing matters. Here I
am in the cold with you and my bed away there deserted. I’d tell you—I
_will_ tell you when things enable me to tell you, and soon enough they
will. But to-night—I won’t—I won’t.”
She left my side and went in front of me.
She turned upon me. “Look here,” she said, “I insist upon your being
dead. Do you understand? I’m not joking. To-night you and I are out of
life. It’s our time together. There may be other times, but this we
won’t spoil. We’re—in Hades if you like. Where there’s nothing to hide
and nothing to tell. No bodies even. No bothers. We loved each
other—down there—and were kept apart, but now it doesn’t matter. It’s
over.... If you won’t agree to that—I will go home.”
“I wanted,” I began.
“I know. Oh! my dear, if you’d only understand I understand. If you’d
only not care—and love me to-night.”
“I do love you,” I said.
“Then _love_ me,” she answered, “and leave all the things that bother
you. Love me! Here I am!”
“But!—”
“No!” she said.
“Well, have your way.”
So she carried her point, and we wandered into the night together and
Beatrice talked to me of love....
I’d never heard a woman before in all my life who could talk of love,
who could lay bare and develop and touch with imagination all that mass
of fine emotion every woman, it may be, hides. She had read of love,
she had thought of love, a thousand sweet lyrics had sounded through
her brain and left fine fragments in her memory; she poured it out, all
of it, shamelessly, skilfully, for me. I cannot give any sense of that
talk, I cannot even tell how much of the delight of it was the magic of
her voice, the glow of her near presence. And always we walked swathed
warmly through a chilly air, along dim, interminable greasy roads—with
never a soul abroad it seemed to us, never a beast in the fields.
“Why do people love each other?” I said.
“Why not?”
“But why do I love you? Why is your voice better than any voice, your
face sweeter than any face?”
“And why do I love you?” she asked; “not only what is fine in you, but
what isn’t? Why do I love your dullness, your arrogance? For I do.
To—night I love the very raindrops on the fur of your coat!”...
So we talked; and at last very wet, still glowing but a little tired,
we parted at the garden door. We had been wandering for two hours in
our strange irrational community of happiness, and all the world about
us, and particularly Lady Osprey and her household, had been asleep—and
dreaming of anything rather than Beatrice in the night and rain.
She stood in the doorway, a muffled figure with eyes that glowed.
“Come back,” she whispered. “I shall wait for you.”
She hesitated.
She touched the lapel of my coat. “I love you NOW,” she said, and
lifted her face to mine.
I held her to me and was atremble from top to toe. “O God!” I cried.
“And I must go!”
She slipped from my arms and paused, regarding me. For an instant the
world seemed full of fantastic possibilities.
“Yes, _Go!_” she said, and vanished and slammed the door upon me,
leaving me alone like a man new fallen from fairyland in the black
darkness of the night.