In her bedroom Jocelyn was thinking. The inner door stood open, and from
the next room came a stream of murmured comments, broken now and then by
a mumble, denoting pins in the mouth, or by the trickle of water into a
basin. Mrs. Travis was going to bed; she loved to relieve the monotony
of the process by discussion upon the events of the day, which never
assumed such vast proportions as when she was taking her leave of them.
Jocelyn leant, in her night-dress, against her open window, smoking a
tiny cigarette through a long amber mouthpiece. She drew at the
cigarette, and, holding it far from her, puffed vigorously through her
parted lips; the smoke, caught by the faint outdraught, blew harmlessly
away in little wreaths and clouds.
Her aunt’s voice came to her in jerky, complacent periods.
“How hot the nights are getting! We can’t stay here much longer, my
dear, nobody stays till June, it’s very late already. If it wasn’t for
my new ‘system,’ I wouldn’t stay another day--I’m sure there’s something
in it.” She appeared for a moment at the door with her arms raised
rectangularly to her back hair.
“How thin Giles is growing!” she said in an injured voice, with a shrewd
look at her niece. “It makes me quite uncomfortable to see him.”
It was a canon with her that people should be plump. She was alive to
the state of Giles’s feelings, but she resented its affecting the
outlines of his person. From much experience she felt secure of her
niece’s invulnerability, she had seen so many darts fall blunted from
her armour, one adorer more or less, even a married one, did not matter.
She always reflected, too, that Giles was a connection of her own by
marriage. Mrs. Travis possessed that order of mind which looks upon
things belonging to themselves as beyond suspicion and reproach. He was
a married man, but a connection of her own, immaculate! Nevertheless she
resented the dwindling of his bulk; perhaps she considered it indecent;
perhaps, in some mysterious way, she regarded it as the removal of her
own property. In any case a moody leanness was unpardonable; to her,
Nielsen, attentive yet well-covered, was more satisfactory.
“I shall recommend him to take cod-liver oil; I don’t think it’s right
for any man to be so thin,” she said.
Jocelyn made an impatient movement, and the frilled sleeves of her
nightdress rustled faintly against the muslin curtain. Mrs. Travis,
disappearing again into her room, continued to talk.
“To-day was quite wasted; we mustn’t gad about so much; I ought to have
been at the tables. Yes, I shall stay the month out, but the first of
June we must go; remind me to take the roses off my new bonnet.” Her
voice, overpowered by pins, ran into a mumble.
Jocelyn braced her slender, curving limbs against the wall. “Go!” The
word brought her an unpleasant shock of reminder. She threw up her head
impatiently. Her small, oval face looked very childish and young in the
loose framework of dark hair, brushed in long, rippling tresses back
over her shoulders. In the darkened room her slight figure, in its thin
white covering, was dimly outlined, and the bare feet, thrust forward as
she leaned back, gleamed in a little patch of light that came from the
other room.
Mrs. Travis came to the door. She was more comfortable than ever in her
night attire, with a comfort that threw off all attempt at decorative
disguise, solely excepting curl papers.
“You naughty girl, you’re smoking!” she said.
Jocelyn shrugged her shoulders.
“It’s for the mosquitoes, and the nerves.”
“Well, I don’t like it--my dear mother would have had convulsions if
she’d seen you. I don’t think it’s right! Shut your windows, and keep
the mosquitoes out, as I do.” She sniffed.
Jocelyn gave a prolonged puff, and flipped the cigarette out of its
holder.
“There!” she said. “Run, or the beasts will eat you, you are so good to
them.”
Mrs. Travis, with a hasty kiss, retreated rapidly, closing the door.
Jocelyn laughed, then she moved restlessly up and down the room.
Presently she came back to the window, and leaned far out into the
darkness. It was late; the town slept, vaguely stretched below in a
rambling confusion of dark shapes and corners, foliage, and dimly
burning lights. It was very still....
In the girl’s heart joy and pain were strangely blended.
The first of June! This was the seventh of May, nearly a month, that was
all! What did it mean? Whither was she being carried? If it could only
be always as it had been that evening! She had been so happy. In less
than a month she would go away! It seemed very strange, very unreal;
there was a desperate discomfort in the thought, the discomfort of
unfulfilment.
The vague, dreaming sweetness was being rudely rent away from her
thoughts--the glamour that hung like a veil over the past day. For a
moment she saw plainly all the naked, unsparing reality. She heard again
the words of the sick woman, “Have a good time, you are young, you are
beautiful--it is fitting.” The devilish, unconscious irony of them! She
felt a great sense of injustice, of hard usage at the hands of fate.
That day a wonderful sweetness had come to her. It was as if, for the
first time, life had whispered some secret of hidden meaning, had
spoken words at which the longing and the lonely restlessness of her
soul had yielded. This was love! Love!
She laughed. The mockery and hopelessness of it were so plain that she
felt its strength the more. Her eyes moved restlessly from side to side
as if seeking a way of escape--she twisted her hands silently, and
pressed them to her cheek. She loved him, and he was beyond her
reach--why? why? She chafed under the thought.
The passionate, penetrating cry of a peacock broke suddenly through the
vibrating air; it echoed painfully within her. Why should she not know
love? What had she done? She had not sought--could she help it? Why put
it away? It was sweet and good to be with him, she wanted nothing more.
Then there flashed before her the look in Giles’s eyes, as he gazed at
her after his struggle with the dog; for one most disquieting moment she
saw into them, behind them; he knew there _was_ something further,
beyond, something fundamental, burning, unknown to her, which passed by,
scorching her like a fiery breath. And for that moment she shrank back
frightened ashamed, and thrust the shutters to, to drive out the long,
fiercely wailing regret in the shrill, bird’s cry.
The figure of the Polish woman, lying in its white drapery, came before
her. A woman with haunting, unhappy eyes, ill--her friend, his wife--her
friend! She made a little impatient movement in the dark room, and
groping, turned to her bed with a shrinking desire to hide herself. She
felt as if in the presence of something contaminating and poisonous; she
shuddered, her pride revolted. She drew aside the curtains, and flung
herself upon the bed. What had she done? Why should she be treated like
this? Tears of impotent rage and self-pity filled her eyes. It was all
so new, so strange, so unreal. She drew the clothes over her, as a child
does to drive away the fear of bogies. She would not think of these
things; there seemed a safety and a refuge in the soft pillows and the
familiar cool rustle of the sheets as she turned from side to side. She
lay a long time rigid, trying not to think, vaguely uneasy, vaguely
unhappy, vaguely frightened; she was very tired too. But in spite of
herself all the mingled feelings of the past weeks came back to her. The
rude shock, so long ago now, of awakening to the knowledge that he loved
her--the horror of it; that horror, which was but sharpened by the
something in her own heart which she would not confess. All the weary
struggle and repression for days and days with no certain knowledge of
what she desired. And this was the end! He could never be hers--and she
loved him! She buried her face in the pillows, and sobbed as if her
heart would break.
After a long time, she fell into a half-conscious, restless state.
Motionless and unreasoning, she passed in succession through all the
events of the day gigantically exaggerated, blending grotesquely one
into the other; then through each one of them, startlingly distinct,
having no relation to any other thing that had ever happened to
her--visions of things, which seemed like vast, shadow-throwing rocks
one might encounter in a desert of sand. Then again, in sudden change, a
great, blurred mist of vaporous phantoms came before her. One by one
she strove to attain them--they were without form and void, and one by
one they passed her by, remote and mournful as the flight of a lapwing.
Images, carved in the air, of people she had known, of faces she had
never seen; words she had heard, words that had never been spoken,
flitted by, hovering like moths with restless wings. All that she had
ever done, seen, or heard, was before her in a dancing maze of coloured
shapes, threading singly to the centre of a blazing wheel, darting
outwards radiant to the misty circle edge, like a flight of gnats round
a fire. The lids fast-closed over her eyes seemed to enclose the world
for her, to drive down into her brain a mass of wheeling unreality. With
an effort she wrenched herself free from her pillows, tossing her bare
arms over her head. She fell back again, with one hand clasped behind
her thick, soft hair, looking up with wide eyes at the dim shape of the
curtained bed roof. It was thus that sleep presently found her....
When she awoke in the morning, a faint feeling of frightened discomfort,
a feeling that something new and dangerous was before her, vanished
with the slanting, brilliant beams of sun striking through the shutters.
She lay, quietly twisting a wisp of her tumbled hair, surprised only
that she had forgotten to plait it the night before. Then, as everything
came back to her with a rush, she wondered what she had found to so
trouble and alarm her. Giles loved her!--well, it was very sweet and
good to be loved by him, and she could not help it. She only wanted to
be with him--to know that he loved her! What harm was there! She sprang
from the bed.
The pulse of life beat very strongly this morning in the green-clothed,
quivering valley behind the town; the almond trees seemed to flush a
deeper pink; the tinkle of bells, as goats shifted dustily along the
road to a new pasture, came with fuller melody to her ears. She leaned
from the window and drew in a deep breath of the freshened air.
After all, there was nearly a month, and life was good just now--nearly
a month of a sweet companionship, and after--well--all things come to a
end!--it was not very good to dwell upon that thought, it was better to
take things as they came. She fell to wondering what time Giles would
be with them.
That morning Mrs. Travis, in pursuance of her resolve, went early into
Monte Carlo. She knew that Giles would come over, but she always shut
her eyes to the possibility of mischief, knowing that to recognise it
would mean the sacrifice of her daily visit to the gambling-tables.
Taking the greatest care never to dive below the surface, she was
enabled to persuade herself quite comfortably that her niece ran no
risk, and she consoled herself for leaving her with her habitual
reflection that Giles was a connection of her own--the elasticity of her
principles enabling her that morning to fix the relationship at some two
degrees nearer than it really was. He was also a married man, a fact
which she could twist either way as it suited her convenience, with an
equally full and just feeling of comfort. She departed, getting over the
ground at a great pace with a dignified, flat-footed gait, her head full
of enthusiasm and artificial flowers. She studied, as she went, a little
book on her “system”--without in the least understanding it, which was
immaterial, as she always abandoned it after playing it for a quarter
of an hour. She assured Jocelyn comfortably, on parting from her, that
she would be back quite early, and Jocelyn looked after her, smiling,
perfectly assured that she would be free till dinner.
Giles came soon after; his face, impassively haggard, lighted up when
Jocelyn came towards him. She had never seemed to him so beautiful and
full of life. She gave him both her hands, with the intuitive feeling
that in frank friendliness alone lay a narrow path of safety and
happiness for the days left to them. She looked at him softly, and so
took from him the bitterness which might have driven him to passionate
words. In the reaction of a long, sleepless night he had schooled
himself painfully to accept this position, but he was relieved beyond
measure not to have to take the initiative. It hurt him to see those two
hands so frankly stretched to him, but he was grateful to her, with a
dull, despairing sort of gratitude.
He had not seen his wife since the scene of the night before--the
impression left upon him by it was too strong and painful. For the
space of a short hour, he had proposed to himself not to see Jocelyn
again, to keep away at all costs, but his resolve had shrivelled, like
all his resolves, before the flame of his passion, and he had come, with
the reservation to let yesterday’s words be as if unspoken.
He spent the whole day with her, and went home in the evening humble,
and almost happy. He was worn out by the conflicting emotions of the
previous day and his sleepless night....
A fortnight of days went by, and as the sands of their hour-glass of
time ran out, the strain upon them became almost unbearable. Jocelyn’s
continual thought was, “I shall go away, and there will be the end!” But
she found that there were moments when she was dumb with the dull
craving to feel his arms round her. At other times she longed to get
away at once, anywhere away; to be free for ever, and at all costs, from
this grinding necessity for repression, from the appealing, haunting
look which Giles could not keep out of his face. With the constant
varying of her moods their meetings became daily more difficult, the
hours spent together more feverish or more dismal. Once Giles broke
through the intolerable restraint, but the piteous, frightened look that
came into her face at the first word held him mute.
Never for one moment did Jocelyn doubt herself. She would go away, and
there would be the end! But the very impossibility of union with him,
which she kept ever before her as the one barrier of safety, roused at
times in her feelings before which she recoiled ashamed, which she had
never thought that her mind could harbour--curiosity to probe her
lover’s nature to its depths, ardent longing to know, and to prove the
full meaning of the passion she saw in his eyes, felt in every touch of
his fingers. At other times she had an intense, passionless pity for the
suffering he could not hide from her. And sometimes the old horror came
over her, and she would turn from him with aversion, only to be smitten
with remorse when he had left her.
She had no one to help her in her trouble; the thought of confiding in
her aunt never even occurred to her, so completely was that lady
associated with the conventional crust of life.
In these days Giles lived only in the minutes that he was with her; the
knowledge that she loved him served but to fan the flame of his passion.
Often after he had left her, he would come back when it was dark, and,
standing in the shadow of the thick bushes along the terrace wall, watch
her bedroom window till the light within it failed.
One night he had watched long; the light behind the closed shutters
still sent a faint glow into the soft darkness. Leaning against the wall
he waited for it to die. A bat flitted past; great moths fluttered out
of the night towards the lamps at the gates; dull murmurs came from the
street, and always the frogs croaked. The scented laurel behind which he
stood gave forth a sweet, hot odour. Suddenly the shutters of the window
swung back, and in the arch of light he saw Jocelyn. She stood
motionless, with her hands clasped behind her head; the sleeves of the
loose, white garment wrapped around her fell back from her bare arms.
His heart stopped beating; the breath of the laurel was heavy in the
air, and ever afterwards its scent brought back with it the sweetness
and emotion of that memory.
As she stood, with her face lifted to the purple heaven where the pale
stars gleamed fitfully, he could see the masses of her dark hair hanging
loose upon her shoulders. He felt, as though with the yearning of his
gaze through the impassive darkness, his whole being clung to her in a
mute caress, as though her heart were beating against him, her lips
quivering upon his own; and, as if in answer, her hands fell to her
sides, and she leant forward on the balcony, looking downwards.
Breathless he watched. With a swift movement she clasped her hands
together into the darkness, and then pressed them to her forehead.
Through the sudden hush of the night he could hear her weeping; his
passion swelled in one long, dumb cry, and ebbed in a sob of pity. With
her face still buried in her hands, she turned inwards with a swaying
movement. The shutters swung slowly to, and the light died....
A cockchafer droned by him, its hum fading into the night. With a groan
he beat his fists against the wall.