The Williamses and Geraldine stayed in a boarding-house that proudly
advertised itself as being situated “right on the front,” and young
Morrison had a room in an apartment house, much cheaper and more
remote, half-way up one of Torquay’s steepest hills. He arranged to
have all his meals except breakfast at the boarding-house.
The weather was very hot, and sunny, and breathless.
Elsie felt as though she had never lived before. Every morning she
came downstairs, her face sunburnt and glowing, but never unbecomingly
freckled, her open-necked, short-sleeved blouses and jumpers
indefinably smart and well put on, her undependable and essentially
variable good looks seeming always to increase.
She was greatly admired in the boarding-house, and Williams for the
first time did not appear to resent this.
He had suddenly become absorbed in a new and obscure digestive
complaint, and would discuss the subject endlessly with his neighbours
at meal-times. An elderly widow without any companion took a fancy to
Geraldine, and as she sometimes gave her presents of clothes, or took
her for a drive, Geraldine always sat next to her at the long table in
the dining-room, and listened to her with a fair pretence of amiability.
Breakfast was a long, hot, abundant meal. The boarding-house knew its
_clientèle_ and catered for it according to the views of business men
who never allowed themselves to eat as much as they would have liked
on week-day mornings during all the rest of the year. Tea and coffee,
eggs and bacon, and fish and sausages were provided, toast and jam and
marmalade and potted meat.
Elsie, who never ate anything but bread-and-butter with jam, and drank
innumerable cups of tea, at her own home, enjoyed the novel fare
because it was novel, and because she had not bought and ordered it
herself, and because she was living in a haze of happiness that made
everything enjoyable.
The prophecy of the clairvoyante had come true. Elsie knew the love
that she had never yet known.
Every morning they went down to the sands and met Leslie Morrison
there. They sat in deck chairs, and ate fruit from paper bags, and
listened to a pierrot entertainment. At midday Elsie and Geraldine ran
back to the boarding-house, undressed, and put on their bathing-suits,
and came back to find Morrison already in the water and Horace Williams
asleep in his deck-chair behind a newspaper.
Elsie’s bathing-dress was blue, trimmed with white braid, and she wore
a rubber cap with a blue-and-red handkerchief knotted over it. Her bare
legs and arms and neck had tanned very slightly; Geraldine’s showed
scarlet patches of sunburn.
As they joined Morrison in the water, both girls always screamed,
clinging to one another’s hands. But once the water was high above
their waists, Elsie, a naturally strong swimmer, struck out boldly,
consciously enjoying the cold water and the exercise of her muscles.
Geraldine, of poor physique and defective circulation, only bobbed up
and down in the shallows, still uttering staccato shrieks.
At first, Elsie and Morrison would keep near her, swimming short
distances, and then returning, or splashing beside her in shallow
water, but sooner or later they would both strike out, swimming side by
side. They spoke very little.
“I say, you swim simply splendidly, Mrs. Williams. Why, I’ve never seen
a girl swim as well as you do.”
“D’you think so? It’s nice, isn’t it?”
“It’s ripping. I’ve never had a holiday like this one--I mean, one that
I’ve enjoyed so much.”
“Neither have I.”
“I hadn’t looked forward to my holiday a bit this year. I never thought
it would be anything like this. I didn’t know that anything in the
world----”
It was always Elsie who suggested that it was time to go back.
“Geraldine’s gone out already. She turns a funny colour if she stays in
too long.”
Once, when they were rather further out than usual, Elsie said that she
was getting tired.
“Put your hand on my shoulder--I’ll help you. Yes, do.”
“Oh no, I couldn’t.”
“Yes, you must.”
“Well, if you are sure you don’t mind....”
“_Mind!_”
His voice was very eloquent, and Elsie was abundantly satisfied.
She laid her hand upon his shoulder, and kept it there after her feet
touched the sandy bottom once more and they were almost out of the
water.
They raced to the bath-towel cloak that she had left under the wall,
and as she put it round her Elsie said, without looking at him and in a
peculiar tone:
“Did you enjoy it?”
“I loved it,” Morrison replied very low, and after a moment he added:
“Better than any of our other bathes.”
Elsie had never before conducted any one of her numerous love-affairs
in a key so reticent, and the very novelty of the experience rendered
it strange and precious.
Subconsciously, they might both be waiting for the spoken word, but on
the surface each was supremely contented in the present.
The presence of Geraldine did not disturb Elsie in the least. Geraldine
had been jealous of her intermittently ever since the days of their
earliest childhood, and her manifestations of temper were always
latent, rather than active. Elsie was used to them, and indifferent to
them.
Besides, Leslie Morrison was always very nice to Geraldine. He
sat between the sisters at the entertainments to which they went
frequently, he gave chocolates and sweets to Geraldine oftener than to
Elsie, and he was always ready to talk of Geraldine’s favourite topic,
the old days in the office.
Only his dark eyes sought Elsie’s face with increasing frequency, his
pleasant young voice altered slightly and indescribably when he found
himself alone with her.
It seemed part of the magic of those enchanted days that Geraldine
should make no scene, Horace Williams appear to perceive nothing.
On Sunday evening a band played in the public gardens. They decided to
go and hear it.
Then Williams developed his mysterious symptoms, and refused to come
out.
“You girls can go with Morrison. I shall take a glass of boiling water
with peppermint,” he declared, “and go to bed. I’m in agony.”
“Would you like me to stay with you?” Elsie asked, her heart sinking.
“No, no, go and enjoy yourself.”
“Perhaps you’ll feel better in a bit, and come and join us,” she
suggested, and thankfully made her escape.
The gardens were lit with Japanese lanterns and crowded with
holiday-makers. Pale frocks and scarves flickered oddly in and out of
the shadows and beyond the bright circle of glaring white light thrown
out from the raised and roofed circular platform of the bandstand.
“No hope of chairs, I suppose,” said Geraldine disconsolately. “We’re
late, thanks to Horace. Just look at the people.”
Morrison volunteered to try and find a seat, and they watched his tall
figure disappear into the throng of people.
“I shall be sick if I have to stand for long, that’s certain,” declared
Geraldine. “I believe the sun was too hot for me this afternoon. My
head’s splitting.”
“Take off your hat, why don’t you?”
Elsie’s own hair was only covered with a blue motor veil, knotted at
either ear, and with floating ends.
“My hair would be all over the place. I like to look tidy, thank you.”
“Please yourself,” said Elsie indifferently. She was absorbed in
watching for the first glimpse of Morrison returning to them.
When she caught sight of him, elbowing his way through the crowd, it
actually seemed to her as though the heart in her body leaped forward
to meet him.
As usual, his eyes sought Elsie’s and held them for an instant before
he turned to Geraldine.
“There’s one chair there. I’ve taken it, and a fellow is kindly keeping
it for me. I thought you and your sister could take it in turns to sit
down.”
“I don’t know....” Geraldine began ungraciously.
“It’s quite a good place, and nice-looking people on either side. The
chap that’s keeping it for us seemed very decent.”
“Oh, go on, Geraldine!” said Elsie. “Hark, they are beginning again.”
The band had struck into a selection from a popular musical comedy.
Leslie Morrison put his arm beneath the girl’s elbow, and they moved
away, Geraldine still grumbling sub-audibly.
Elsie, motionless, waited.
Never before in her life had she known this ecstasy of anticipation, so
poignant as to be almost indistinguishable from pain.
When Leslie came back to her, she thought that she must fall, and
instinctively caught at his arm for support.
Without speaking, he drew her away from the ring of light, into the
deep shadow of a clump of trees. She stumbled against something in the
sudden obscurity, and discerned the low railing that separated the
ornamental shrubs and flower-beds from the crowded gravel paths.
“Come,” said Leslie’s voice in her ear, hoarsely. They stepped together
over the little railing on to the grass. Another few steps, and they
were in an isolation as complete as though a curtain had fallen between
them and the seething mass of talking, laughing, swaying people in the
gardens.
Even the sound of the band only reached them faintly as though from a
great distance.
Leslie Morrison halted abruptly, and they faced one another, their eyes
already accustomed to the semi-darkness.
By an impulse as inevitable as it was irresistible, they were in one
another’s arms.
Neither spoke a word whilst that long throbbing embrace endured.
Through Elsie’s whole being flashed the wordless conviction: “_This_ is
what I’ve been waiting for....”
“Elsie,” whispered the man. “Elsie ... Elsie ... Elsie ... I love you!”
“I love you,” she whispered back again.
They stood clinging to one another, entwined, the hot summer darkness
encompassing them.
“What shall we do?” Morrison murmured at last. “I have no right to say
a word to you, Elsie--I never meant to.”
“What does it matter?” said Elsie recklessly. “Horace and I have never
been happy together. I ought never to have married him. It’s you I
belong to.”
“My darling ... my sweetheart.”
They kissed passionately, again and again.
“What are we going to do?”
Elsie pressed closer and closer against him. “Forget everything, as
long as this holiday lasts, except that we can be together. It’s been
so heavenly, Leslie! We can settle--something--later on, when it’s all
over.”
“I can’t let you go back to that man again. It would drive me mad.”
“Take me away with you,” she whispered.
“Oh, if I could ... if I only could, little girl!”
They spoke as lovers talk, ardently, and tenderly, and with long
silences.
A sudden surging movement, and the distant sound of the National
Anthem, penetrated at last to them through the darkness.
“It’s all over!” Morrison cried, aghast. “Your sister?...”
“I’ll manage her,” said Elsie. “Leslie ... once more....”
Her mouth found his, and then she tore herself out of his arms.
“Come with me.”
Rapidly Elsie found her way to the little pay-desk outside the
enclosure, in which the lights were already being extinguished.
“She’s bound to come out this way.”
They waited, Elsie’s eyes at first dazzled, striving to find her
sister’s form in the crowd. Every fibre of her being was acutely aware
of the presence of Leslie Morrison, standing just behind her, so that
her shoulder touched his breast.
Without turning her head she put out her hand, and felt it clasped in
his and held tightly.
Her senses swam, and it was Geraldine’s own voice that first warned her
of her sister’s approach.
To her relief, Geraldine was talking to a strange young man.
“Good-night,” she said amiably.
“Good-night, and thanks so much for a pleasant evening,” he returned,
raising his soft hat.
Elsie compelled herself to speak. “Have you met a friend?” she
enquired, with simulated interest.
“Hallo! Where have you been, I should like to know? Isn’t it
funny?--that’s a fellow who was at our place for nearly a month during
the war. Belcher, his name is. He was the very one that kept the chair
for me. Did you two get seats somewhere else?”
“Yes,” said Elsie swiftly.
“It was good, wasn’t it--the band I mean? Horace has missed something
by staying at home.”
Geraldine was evidently, and contrary to her wont, in high good humour.
They walked back to the boarding-house, Leslie Morrison between the two
girls, Geraldine openly hanging on to his arm. His other hand was out
of sight in his pocket, Elsie’s warm, soft fingers locked in his.
At the door they parted.
“Good-night and sweet repose,” said Geraldine indifferently, but she
waited for her sister to precede her into the lighted house.
Elsie moved in a dream. It startled her when Geraldine, looking
curiously at her under the glare of the electric light in the hall,
said suddenly:
“What’s the matter with you, Elsie? You look moon-struck, and your
hair’s all over the place, half down your back.”
“Is it?” Elsie put up her hands and pushed up the soft, loose mass
under her veil again. “I’m going to bed,” she said, in a voice that
sounded oddly in her own ears. “Tell Horace, will you? I’ve a splitting
head.”
She felt an unutterable longing to be in the dark, and alone with her
new and overwhelming bliss.
“You’re a nice one, I must say, leaving me alone all the evening, and
then dashing off upstairs the minute we get in. I should think Horace
would find something to say to you----”
Elsie neither heard nor heeded.
She ran upstairs and into the small double bedroom. It contained two
beds, and for the first time since their marriage she and Horace had
occupied separate ones.
To-night Elsie felt that she could never be thankful enough for the
comparative solitude that would enable her to feel herself free again.
She tore off her thin summer clothes, shook down her cloud of hair,
ran across the room in her nightdress to snap off the light, and then
almost threw herself into bed.
In the blessed darkness, Elsie lay with hands clasped over her
throbbing heart, and relived every instant of the evening, thrilling to
a happiness so intense that she felt as though she must die of it.
She was perfectly incapable just then of looking beyond the immediate
present and the glorious certainty of seeing Leslie Morrison again in
the morning.
Although Elsie had been attracted, in a sensual and superficial manner,
by a number of men, she had never in her life loved before, and the
passion for Morrison that had suddenly swept into her life held all the
force of a long repressed element violently and unexpectedly liberated.
Body, soul and spirit, she was obsessed almost to madness by this young
man, several years her junior, whom she had not known a month.
When Horace Williams came up to bed it was nearly midnight, and Elsie,
her face half buried under the sheet, pretended to be asleep.