The London which Derek had said should be blown up was at its maximum
of life those May days. Even on this outer rampart of Hampstead, people,
engines, horses, all had a touch of the spring fever; indeed, especially
on this rampart of Hampstead was there increase of the effort to believe
that nature was not dead and embalmed in books. The poets, painters,
talkers who lived up there were at each other all the time in their
great game of make-believe. How could it be otherwise, when there was
veritably blossom on the trees and the chimneys were ceasing to smoke?
How otherwise, when the sun actually shone on the ponds? But the four
young people (for Alan joined in—hypnotized by Sheila) did not stay in
Hampstead. Chiefly on top of tram and 'bus they roamed the wilderness.
Bethnal Green and Leytonstone, Kensington and Lambeth, St. James's and
Soho, Whitechapel, Shoreditch, West Ham, and Piccadilly, they traversed
the whole ant-heap at its most ebullient moment. They knew their Whitman
and their Dostoievsky sufficiently to be aware that they ought to love
and delight in everything—in the gentleman walking down Piccadilly with
a flower in his buttonhole, and in the lady sewing that buttonhole in
Bethnal Green; in the orator bawling himself hoarse close to the Marble
Arch, the coster loading his barrow in Covent Garden; and in Uncle John
Freeland rejecting petitions in Whitehall. All these things, of course,
together with the long lines of little gray houses in Camden Town, long
lines of carts with bobtail horses rattling over Blackfriars' Bridge,
long smells drifting behind taxicabs—all these things were as delightful
and as stimulating to the soul as the clouds that trailed the heavens,
the fronds of the lilac, and Leonardo's Cartoon in the Diploma Gallery.
All were equal manifestations of that energy in flower known as 'Life.'
They knew that everything they saw and felt and smelled OUGHT equally to
make them long to catch creatures to their hearts and cry: Hosanna! And
Nedda and Alan, bred in Hampstead, even knew that to admit that these
things did not all move them in the same way would be regarded as a sign
of anaemia. Nevertheless—most queerly—these four young people confessed
to each other all sorts of sensations besides that 'Hosanna' one. They
even confessed to rage and pity and disgust one moment, and to joy and
dreams the next, and they differed greatly as to what excited which. It
was truly odd! The only thing on which they did seem to agree was that
they were having 'a thundering good time.' A sort of sense of “Blow
everything!” was in their wings, and this was due not to the fact that
they were thinking of and loving and admiring the little gray streets
and the gentleman in Piccadilly—as, no doubt, in accordance with modern
culture, they should have been—but to the fact that they were loving and
admiring themselves, and that entirely without the trouble of thinking
about it at all. The practice, too, of dividing into couples was
distinctly precious to them, for, though they never failed to start out
together, they never failed to come home two by two. In this way
did they put to confusion Whitman and Dostoievsky, and all the other
thinkers in Hampstead. In the daytime they all, save Alan, felt
that London ought to be blown up; but at night it undermined their
philosophies so that they sat silent on the tops of their respective
'buses, with arms twined in each other's. For then a something seemed to
have floated up from that mass of houses and machines, of men and trees,
and to be hovering above them, violet-colored, caught between the stars
and the lights, a spirit of such overpowering beauty that it drenched
even Alan in a kind of awe. After all, the huge creature that sat with
such a giant's weight on the country's chest, the monster that had
spoiled so many fields and robbed so many lives of peace and health,
could fly at night upon blue and gold and purple wings, murmur a
passionate lullaby, and fall into deep sleep!
One such night they went to the gallery at the opera, to supper at an
oyster-shop, under Alan's pilotage, and then set out to walk back to
Hampstead, timing themselves to catch the dawn. They had not gone twenty
steps up Southampton Row before Alan and Sheila were forty steps in
front. A fellow-feeling had made Derek and Nedda stand to watch an old
man who walked, tortuous, extremely happy, bidding them all come. And
when they moved on, it was very slowly, just keeping sight of the others
across the lumbered dimness of Covent Garden, where tarpaulin-covered
carts and barrows seemed to slumber under the blink of lamps and
watchmen's lanterns. Across Long Acre they came into a street where
there was not a soul save the two others, a long way ahead. Walking with
his arm tightly laced with hers, touching her all down one side, Derek
felt that it would be glorious to be attacked by night-birds in this
dark, lonely street, to have a splendid fight and drive them off,
showing himself to Nedda for a man, and her protector. But nothing save
one black cat came near, and that ran for its life. He bent round and
looked under the blue veil-thing that wrapped Nedda's head. Her
face seemed mysteriously lovely, and her eyes, lifted so quickly,
mysteriously true. She said:
“Derek, I feel like a hill with the sun on it!”
“I feel like that yellow cloud with the wind in it.”
“I feel like an apple-tree coming into blossom.”
“I feel like a giant.”
“I feel like a song.”
“I feel I could sing you.”
“On a river, floating along.”
“A wide one, with great plains on each side, and beasts coming down
to drink, and either the sun or a yellow moon shining, and some one
singing, too, far off.”
“The Red Sarafan.”
“Let's run!”
From that yellow cloud sailing in moonlight a spurt of rain had driven
into their faces, and they ran as fast as their blood was flowing, and
the raindrops coming down, jumping half the width of the little dark
streets, clutching each other's arms. And peering round into her face,
so sweet and breathless, into her eyes, so dark and dancing, he felt he
could run all night if he had her there to run beside him through the
dark. Into another street they dashed, and again another, till she
stopped, panting.
“Where are we now?”
Neither knew. A policeman put them right for Portland Place. Half past
one! And it would be dawn soon after three! They walked soberly again
now into the outer circle of Regent's Park; talked soberly, too,
discussing sublunary matters, and every now and then, their arms, round
each other, gave little convulsive squeezes. The rain had stopped and
the moon shone clear; by its light the trees and flowers were clothed
in colors whose blood had spilled away; the town's murmur was dying, the
house lights dead already. They came out of the park into a road where
the latest taxis were rattling past; a face, a bare neck, silk hat, or
shirt-front gleamed in the window-squares, and now and then a laugh came
floating through. They stopped to watch them from under the low-hanging
branches of an acacia-tree, and Derek, gazing at her face, still wet
with rain, so young and round and soft, thought: 'And she loves me!'
Suddenly she clutched him round the neck, and their lips met.
They talked not at all for a long time after that kiss, walking slowly
up the long, empty road, while the whitish clouds sailed across the dark
river of the sky and the moon slowly sank. This was the most delicious
part of all that long walk home, for the kiss had made them feel as
though they had no bodies, but were just two spirits walking side by
side. This is its curious effect sometimes in first love between the
very young....
Having sent Flora to bed, Felix was sitting up among his books. There
was no need to do this, for the young folk had latch-keys, but, having
begun the vigil, he went on with it, a volume about Eastern philosophies
on his knee, a bowl of narcissus blooms, giving forth unexpected whiffs
of odor, beside him. And he sank into a long reverie.
Could it be said—as was said in this Eastern book—that man's life was
really but a dream; could that be said with any more truth than it had
once been said, that he rose again in his body, to perpetual life? Could
anything be said with truth, save that we knew nothing? And was that not
really what had always been said by man—that we knew nothing, but were
just blown over and about the world like soughs of wind, in obedience to
some immortal, unknowable coherence! But had that want of knowledge ever
retarded what was known as the upward growth of man? Had it ever stopped
man from working, fighting, loving, dying like a hero if need were? Had
faith ever been anything but embroidery to an instinctive heroism, so
strong that it needed no such trappings? Had faith ever been anything
but anodyne, or gratification of the aesthetic sense? Or had it really
body and substance of its own? Was it something absolute and solid, that
he—Felix Freeland—had missed? Or again, was it, perhaps, but the natural
concomitant of youth, a naive effervescence with which thought and
brooding had to part? And, turning the page of his book, he noticed that
he could no longer see to read, the lamp had grown too dim, and showed
but a decorative glow in the bright moonlight flooding through the study
window. He got up and put another log on the fire, for these last nights
of May were chilly.
Nearly three! Where were these young people? Had he been asleep, and
they come in? Sure enough, in the hall Alan's hat and Sheila's cloak—the
dark-red one he had admired when she went forth—were lying on a chair.
But of the other two—nothing! He crept up-stairs. Their doors were open.
They certainly took their time—these young lovers. And the same sore
feeling which had attacked Felix when Nedda first told him of her love
came on him badly in that small of the night when his vitality was
lowest. All the hours she had spent clambering about him, or quietly
resting on his knee with her head tucked in just where his arm and
shoulder met, listening while he read or told her stories, and now and
again turning those clear eyes of hers wide open to his face, to see
if he meant it; the wilful little tugs of her hand when they two went
exploring the customs of birds, or bees, or flowers; all her 'Daddy, I
love yous!' and her rushes to the front door, and long hugs when he came
back from a travel; all those later crookings of her little finger in
his, and the times he had sat when she did not know it, watching her,
and thinking: 'That little creature, with all that's before her, is my
very own daughter to take care of, and share joy and sorrow with....'
Each one of all these seemed to come now and tweak at him, as the songs
of blackbirds tweak the heart of one who lies, unable to get out into
the Spring. His lamp had burned itself quite out; the moon was fallen
below the clump of pines, and away to the north-east something stirred
in the stain and texture of the sky. Felix opened the window. What
peace out there! The chill, scentless peace of night, waiting for dawn's
renewal of warmth and youth. Through that bay window facing north he
could see on one side the town, still wan with the light of its lamps,
on the other the country, whose dark bloom was graying fast. Suddenly
a tiny bird twittered, and Felix saw his two truants coming slowly from
the gate across the grass, his arm round her shoulders, hers round his
waist. With their backs turned to him, they passed the corner of the
house, across where the garden sloped away. There they stood above the
wide country, their bodies outlined against a sky fast growing light,
evidently waiting for the sun to rise. Silent they stood, while the
birds, one by one, twittered out their first calls. And suddenly Felix
saw the boy fling his hand up into the air. The Sun! Far away on the
gray horizon was a flare of red!