第 70 页

unconsciously. When the time came that he should kiss her again,

a prevention was an annihilation to him. He felt his flesh go

grey, he was heavy with a corpse-like inanition, he did not

exist, if the time passed unfulfilled.

He came to her finally in a superb consummation. It was very

dark, and again a windy, heavy night. They had come down the

lane towards Beldover, down to the valley. They were at the end

of their kisses, and there was the silence between them. They

stood as at the edge of a cliff, with a great darkness

beneath.

Coming out of the lane along the darkness, with the dark

space spreading down to the wind, and the twinkling lights of

the station below, the far-off windy chuff of a shunting train,

the tiny clink-clink-clink of the wagons blown between the wind,

the light of Beldover-edge twinkling upon the blackness of the

hill opposite, the glow of the furnaces along the railway to the

right, their steps began to falter. They would soon come out of

the darkness into the lights. It was like turning back. It was

unfulfilment. Two quivering, unwilling creatures, they lingered

on the edge of the darkness, peering out at the lights and the

machine-glimmer beyond. They could not turn back to the

world--they could not.

So lingering along, they came to a great oak tree by the

path. In all its budding mass it roared to the wind, and its

trunk vibrated in every fibre, powerful, indomitable.

"We will sit down," he said.

And in the roaring circle under the tree, that was almost

invisible yet whose powerful presence received them, they lay a

moment looking at the twinkling lights on the darkness opposite,

saw the sweeping brand of a train past the edge of their

darkened field.

Then he turned and kissed her, and she waited for him. The

pain to her was the pain she wanted, the agony was the agony she

wanted. She was caught up, entangled in the powerful vibration

of the night. The man, what was he?--a dark, powerful

vibration that encompassed her. She passed away as on a dark

wind, far, far away, into the pristine darkness of paradise,

into the original immortality. She entered the dark fields of

immortality.

When she rose, she felt strangely free, strong. She was not

ashamed,--why should she be? He was walking beside her, the

man who had been with her. She had taken him, they had been

together. Whither they had gone, she did not know. But it was as

if she had received another nature. She belonged to the eternal,

changeless place into which they had leapt together.

Her soul was sure and indifferent of the opinion of the world

of artificial light. As they went up the steps of the

foot-bridge over the railway, and met the train-passengers, she

felt herself belonging to another world, she walked past them

immune, a whole darkness dividing her from them. When she went

into the lighted dining-room at home, she was impervious to the

lights and the eyes of her parents. Her everyday self was just

the same. She merely had another, stronger self that knew the

darkness.

This curious separate strength, that existed in darkness and

pride of night, never forsook her. She had never been more

herself. It could not occur to her that anybody, not even the

young man of the world, Skrebensky, should have anything at all

to do with her permanent self. As for her temporal, social self,

she let it look after itself.

Her whole soul was implicated with Skrebensky--not the

young man of the world, but the undifferentiated man he was. She

was perfectly sure of herself, perfectly strong, stronger than

all the world. The world was not strong--she was strong.

The world existed only in a secondary sense:--she existed

supremely.

She continued at college, in her ordinary routine, merely as

a cover to her dark, powerful under-life. The fact of herself,

and with her Skrebensky, was so powerful, that she took rest in

the other. She went to college in the morning, and attended her

classes, flowering, and remote.

She had lunch with him in his hotel; every evening she spent

with him, either in town, at his rooms, or in the country. She

made the excuse at home of evening study for her degree. But she

paid not the slightest attention to her study.

They were both absolute and happy and calm. The fact of their

own consummate being made everything else so entirely

subordinate that they were free. The only thing they wanted, as

the days went by, was more time to themselves. They wanted the

time to be absolutely their own.

The Easter vacation was approaching. They agreed to go right

away. It would not matter if they did not come back. They were

indifferent to the actual facts.

"I suppose we ought to get married," he said, rather

wistfully. It was so magnificently free and in a deeper

world, as it was. To make public their connection would be to

put it in range with all the things which nullified him, and

from which he was for the moment entirely dissociated. If he

married he would have to assume his social self. And the thought

of assuming his social self made him at once diffident and

abstract. If she were his social wife, if she were part of that

complication of dead reality, then what had his under-life to do

with her? One's social wife was almost a material symbol.

Whereas now she was something more vivid to him than anything in

conventional life could be. She gave the complete lie to all

conventional life, he and she stood together, dark, fluid,

infinitely potent, giving the living lie to the dead whole which

contained them.

He watched her pensive, puzzled face.

"I don't think I want to marry you," she said, her brow

clouded.

It piqued him rather.

"Why not?" he asked.

"Let's think about it afterwards, shall we?" she said.

He was crossed, yet he loved her violently.

"You've got a museau, not a face," he said.

"Have I?" she cried, her face lighting up like a pure flame.

She thought she had escaped. Yet he returned--he was not

satisfied.

"Why?" he asked, "why don't you want to marry me?"

"I don't want to be with other people," she said. "I want to

be like this. I'll tell you if ever I want to marry you."

"All right," he said.

He would rather the thing was left indefinite, and that she

took the responsibility.

They talked of the Easter vacation. She thought only of

complete enjoyment.

They went to an hotel in Piccadilly. She was supposed to be

his wife. They bought a wedding-ring for a shilling, from a shop

in a poor quarter.

They had revoked altogether the ordinary mortal world. Their

confidence was like a possession upon them. They were possessed.

Perfectly and supremely free they felt, proud beyond all

question, and surpassing mortal conditions.

They were perfect, therefore nothing else existed. The world

was a world of servants whom one civilly ignored. Wherever they

went, they were the sensuous aristocrats, warm, bright, glancing

with pure pride of the senses.

The effect upon other people was extraordinary. The glamour

was cast from the young couple upon all they came into contact

with, waiters or chance acquaintances.

"Oui, Monsieur le baron," she would reply with a

mocking courtesy to her husband.

So they came to be treated as titled people. He was an

officer in the engineers. They were just married, going to India

immediately.

Thus a tissue of romance was round them. She believed she was

a young wife of a titled husband on the eve of departure for

India. This, the social fact, was a delicious make-belief. The

living fact was that he and she were man and woman, absolute and

beyond all limitation.

The days went by--they were to have three weeks

together--in perfect success. All the time, they themselves

were reality, all outside was tribute to them. They were quite

careless about money, but they did nothing very extravagant. He

was rather surprised when he found that he had spent twenty

pounds in a little under a week, but it was only the irritation

of having to go to the bank. The machinery of the old system

lasted for him, not the system. The money simply did not

exist.

Neither did any of the old obligations. They came home from

the theatre, had supper, then flitted about in their

dressing-gowns. They had a large bedroom and a corner

sitting-room high up, remote and very cosy. They ate all their

meals in their own rooms, attended by a young German called

Hans, who thought them both wonderful, and answered

assiduously:

"Gewiss, Herr Baron--bitte sehr, Frau

Baronin."

Often, they saw the pink of dawn away across the park. The

tower of Westminster Cathedral was emerging, the lamps of

Piccadilly, stringing away beside the trees of the park, were

becoming pale and moth-like, the morning traffic was

clock-clocking down the shadowy road, which had gleamed all

night like metal, down below, running far ahead into the night,

beneath the lamps, and which was now vague, as in a mist,

because of the dawn.

Then, as the flush of dawn became stronger, they opened the

glass doors and went on to the giddy balcony, feeling triumphant

as two angels in bliss, looking down at the still sleeping

world, which would wake to a dutiful, rumbling, sluggish turmoil

of unreality.

[But the air was cold. They went into their bedroom, and bathed before

going to bed, leaving the partition doors of the bathroom open, so that

the vapour came into the bedroom and faintly dimmed the mirror. She was

always in bed first. She watched him as he bathed, his quick, unconscious

movements, the electric light glinting on his wet shoulders. He stood out

of the bath, his hair all washed flat over his forehead, and pressed the

water out of his eyes. He was slender, and, to her, perfect, a clean,

straight-cut youth, without a grain of superfluous body. The brown hair on

his body was soft and fine and adorable, he was all beautifully flushed,

as he stood in the white bath-apartment.

He saw her warm, dark, lit-up face watching him from the pillow--yet

he did not see it--it was always present, and was to him as his own

eyes. He was never aware of the separate being of her. She was like his

own eyes and his own heart beating to him.

So he went across to her, to get his sleeping suit. It was always a

perfect adventure to go near to her. She put her arms round him, and

snuffed his warm, softened skin.

"Scent," she said.

"Soap," he answered.

"Soap," she repeated, looking up with bright eyes. They were both

laughing, always laughing.]

Soon they were fast asleep, asleep till midday, close

together, sleeping one sleep. Then they awoke to the

ever-changing reality of their state. They alone inhabited the

world of reality. All the rest lived on a lower sphere.

Whatever they wanted to do, they did. They saw a few

people--Dorothy, whose guest she was supposed to be, and a

couple of friends of Skrebensky, young Oxford men, who called

her Mrs. Skrebensky with entire simplicity. They treated her,

indeed, with such respect, that she began to think she was

really quite of the whole universe, of the old world as well as

of the new. She forgot she was outside the pale of the old

world. She thought she had brought it under the spell of her

own, real world. And so she had.

In such ever-changing reality the weeks went by. All the

time, they were an unknown world to each other. Every movement

made by the one was a reality and an adventure to the other.

They did not want outside excitements. They went to very few

theatres, they were often in their sitting-room high up over

Piccadilly, with windows open on two sides, and the door open on

to the balcony, looking over the Green Park, or down upon the

minute travelling of the traffic.

Then suddenly, looking at a sunset, she wanted to go. She

must be gone. She must be gone at once. And in two hours' time

they were at Charing Cross taking train for Paris. Paris was his

suggestion. She did not care where it was. The great joy was in

setting out. And for a few days she was happy in the novelty of

Paris.

Then, for some reason, she must call in Rouen on the way back

to London. He had an instinctive mistrust of her desire for the

place. But, perversely, she wanted to go there. It was as if she

wanted to try its effect upon her.

For the first time, in Rouen, he had a cold feeling of death;

not afraid of any other man, but of her. She seemed to leave

him. She followed after something that was not him. She did not

want him. The old streets, the cathedral, the age and the

monumental peace of the town took her away from him. She turned

to it as if to something she had forgotten, and wanted. This was

now the reality; this great stone cathedral slumbering there in

its mass, which knew no transience nor heard any denial. It was

majestic in its stability, its splendid absoluteness.

Her soul began to run by itself. He did not realize, nor did

she. Yet in Rouen he had the first deadly anguish, the first

sense of the death towards which they were wandering. And she

felt the first heavy yearning, heavy, heavy hopeless warning,

almost like a deep, uneasy sinking into apathy,

hopelessness.

They returned to London. But still they had two days. He

began to tremble, he grew feverish with the fear of her

departure. She had in her some fatal prescience, that made her

calm. What would be, would be.

He remained fairly easy, however, still in his state of

heightened glamour, till she had gone, and he had turned away

from St. Pancras, and sat on the tram-car going up Pimlico to

the "Angel", to Moorgate Street on Sunday evening.

Then the cold horror gradually soaked into him. He saw the

horror of the City Road, he realized the ghastly cold sordidness

of the tram-car in which he sat. Cold, stark, ashen sterility

had him surrounded. Where then was the luminous, wonderful world