第 73 页

the lamps under drawn brows. Ursula shuddered. It was the face

almost of an animal yet of a quick, strong, wary animal that had

them within its knowledge, almost within its power. She clung

closer to Krebensky.

"My love?" she said to him, questioningly, when the car was

again running in full motion.

He made no movement or sound. He let her hold his hand, he

let her reach forward, in the gathering darkness, and kiss his

still cheek. The crying had gone by--he would not cry any

more. He was whole and himself again.

"My love," she repeated, trying to make him notice her. But

as yet he could not.

He watched the road. They were running by Kensington Gardens.

For the first time his lips opened.

"Shall we get out and go into the park," he asked.

"Yes," she said, quietly, not sure what was coming.

After a moment he took the tube from its peg. She saw the

stout, strong, self-contained driver lean his head.

"Stop at Hyde Park Corner."

The dark head nodded, the car ran on just the same.

Presently they pulled up. Skrebensky paid the man. Ursula

stood back. She saw the driver salute as he received his tip,

and then, before he set the car in motion, turn and look at her,

with his quick, powerful, animal's look, his eyes very

concentrated and the whites of his eyes flickering. Then he

drove away into the crowd. He had let her go. She had been

afraid.

Skrebensky turned with her into the park. A band was still

playing and the place was thronged with people. They listened to

the ebbing music, then went aside to a dark seat, where they sat

closely, hand in hand.

Then at length, as out of the silence, she said to him,

wondering:

"What hurt you so?"

She really did not know, at this moment.

"When you said you wanted never to marry me," he replied,

with a childish simplicity.

"But why did that hurt you so?" she said. "You needn't mind

everything I say so particularly."

"I don't know--I didn't want to do it," he said, humbly,

ashamed.

She pressed his hand warmly. They sat close together,

watching the soldiers go by with their sweethearts, the lights

trailing in myriads down the great thoroughfares that beat on

the edge of the park.

"I didn't know you cared so much," she said, also humbly.

"I didn't," he said. "I was knocked over myself.--But I

care--all the world."

His voice was so quiet and colourless, it made her heart go

pale with fear.

"My love!" she said, drawing near to him. But she spoke out

of fear, not out of love.

"I care all the world--I care for nothing

else--neither in life nor in death," he said, in the same

steady, colourless voice of essential truth.

"Than for what?" she murmured duskily.

"Than for you--to be with me."

And again she was afraid. Was she to be conquered by this?

She cowered close to him, very close to him. They sat perfectly

still, listening to the great, heavy, beating sound of the town,

the murmur of lovers going by, the footsteps of soldiers.

She shivered against him.

"You are cold?" he said.

"A little."

"We will go and have some supper."

He was now always quiet and decided and remote, very

beautiful. He seemed to have some strange, cold power over

her.

They went to a restaurant, and drank chianti. But his pale,

wan look did not go away.

"Don't leave me to-night," he said at length, looking at her,

pleading. He was so strange and impersonal, she was afraid.

"But the people of my place," she said, quivering.

"I will explain to them--they know we are engaged."

She sat pale and mute. He waited.

"Shall we go?" he said at length.

"Where?"

"To an hotel."

Her heart was hardened. Without answering, she rose to

acquiesce. But she was now cold and unreal. Yet she could not

refuse him. It seemed like fate, a fate she did not want.

They went to an Italian hotel somewhere, and had a sombre

bedroom with a very large bed, clean, but sombre. The ceiling

was painted with a bunch of flowers in a big medallion over the

bed. She thought it was pretty.

He came to her, and cleaved to her very close, like steel

cleaving and clinching on to her. Her passion was roused, it was

fierce but cold. But it was fierce, and extreme, and good, their

passion this night. He slept with her fast in his arms. All

night long he held her fast against him. She was passive,

acquiscent. But her sleep was not very deep nor very real.

She woke in the morning to a sound of water dashed on a

courtyard, to sunlight streaming through a lattice. She thought

she was in a foreign country. And Skrebensky was there an

incubus upon her.

She lay still, thinking, whilst his arm was round her, his

head against her shoulders, his body against hers, just behind

her. He was still asleep.

She watched the sunshine coming in bars through the

persiennes, and her immediate surroundings again melted

away.

She was in some other land, some other world, where the old

restraints had dissolved and vanished, where one moved freely,

not afraid of one's fellow men, nor wary, nor on the defensive,

but calm, indifferent, at one's ease. Vaguely, in a sort of

silver light, she wandered at large and at ease. The bonds of

the world were broken. This world of England had vanished away.

She heard a voice in the yard below calling:

"O Giovann'--O'-O'-O'-Giovann'----!"

And she knew she was in a new country, in a new life. It was

very delicious to lie thus still, with one's soul wandering

freely and simply in the silver light of some other, simpler,

more finely natural world.

But always there was a foreboding waiting to command her. She

became more aware of Skrebensky. She knew he was waking up. She

must modify her soul, depart from her further world, for

him.

She knew he was awake. He lay still, with a concrete

stillness, not as when he slept. Then his arm tightened almost

convulsively upon her, and he said, half timidly:

"Did you sleep well?"

"Very well."

"So did I."

There was a pause.

"And do you love me?" he asked.

She turned and looked at him searchingly. He seemed outside

her.

"I do," she said.

But she said it out of complacency and a desire not to be

harried. There was a curious breach of silence between them,

which frightened him.

They lay rather late, then he rang for breakfast. She wanted

to be able to go straight downstairs and away from the place,

when she got up. She was happy in this room, but the thought of

the publicity of the hall downstairs rather troubled her.

A young Italian, a Sicilian, dark and slightly pock-marked,

buttoned up in a sort of grey tunic, appeared with the tray. His

face had an almost African imperturbability, impassive,

incomprehensible.

"One might be in Italy," Skrebensky said to him, genially. A

vacant look, almost like fear, came on the fellow's face. He did

not understand.

"This is like Italy," Skrebensky explained.

The face of the Italian flashed with a non-comprehending

smile, he finished setting out the tray, and was gone. He did

not understand: he would understand nothing: he disappeared from

the door like a half-domesticated wild animal. It made Ursula

shudder slightly, the quick, sharp-sighted, intent animality of

the man.

Skrebensky was beautiful to her this morning, his face

softened and transfused with suffering and with love, his

movements very still and gentle. He was beautiful to her, but

she was detached from him by a chill distance. Always she seemed

to be bearing up against the distance that separated them. But

he was unaware. This morning he was transfused and beautiful.

She admired his movements, the way he spread honey on his roll,

or poured out the coffee.

When breakfast was over, she lay still again on the pillows,

whilst he went through his toilet. She watched him, as he

sponged himself, and quickly dried himself with the towel. His

body was beautiful, his movements intent and quick, she admired

him and she appreciated him without reserve. He seemed completed

now. He aroused no fruitful fecundity in her. He seemed added

up, finished. She knew him all round, not on any side did he

lead into the unknown. Poignant, almost passionate appreciation

she felt for him, but none of the dreadful wonder, none of the

rich fear, the connection with the unknown, or the reverence of

love. He was, however, unaware this morning. His body was quiet

and fulfilled, his veins complete with satisfaction, he was

happy, finished.

Again she went home. But this time he went with her. He

wanted to stay by her. He wanted her to marry him. It was

already July. In early September he must sail for India. He

could not bear to think of going alone. She must come with him.

Nervously, he kept beside her.

Her examination was finished, her college career was over.

There remained for her now to marry or to work again. She

applied for no post. It was concluded she would marry. India

tempted her--the strange, strange land. But with the

thought of Calcutta, or Bombay, or of Simla, and of the European

population, India was no more attractive to her than

Nottingham.

She had failed in her examination: she had gone down: she had

not taken her degree. It was a blow to her. It hardened her

soul.

"It doesn't matter," he said. "What are the odds, whether you

are a Bachelor of Arts or not, according to the London

University? All you know, you know, and if you are Mrs.

Skrebensky, the B.A. is meaningless."

Instead of consoling her, this made her harder, more

ruthless. She was now up against her own fate. It was for her to

choose between being Mrs. Skrebensky, even Baroness Skrebensky,

wife of a lieutenant in the Royal Engineers, the Sappers, as he

called them, living with the European population in

India--or being Ursula Brangwen, spinster, school-mistress.

She was qualified by her Intermediate Arts examination. She

would probably even now get a post quite easily as assistant in

one of the higher grade schools, or even in Willey Green School.

Which was she to do?

She hated most of all entering the bondage of teaching once

more. Very heartily she detested it. Yet at the thought of

marriage and living with Skrebensky amid the European population

in India, her soul was locked and would not budge. She had very

little feeling about it: only there was a deadlock.

Skrebensky waited, she waited, everybody waited for the

decision. When Anton talked to her, and seemed insidiously to

suggest himself as a husband to her, she knew how utterly locked

out he was. On the other hand, when she saw Dorothy, and

discussed the matter, she felt she would marry him promptly, at

once, as a sharp disavowal of adherence with Dorothy's

views.

The situation was almost ridiculous.

"But do you love him?" asked Dorothy.

"It isn't a question of loving him," said Ursula. "I love him

well enough--certainly more than I love anybody else in the

world. And I shall never love anybody else the same again. We

have had the flower of each other. But I don't care about love.

I don't value it. I don't care whether I love or whether I

don't, whether I have love or whether I haven't. What is it to

me?"

And she shrugged her shoulders in fierce, angry contempt.

Dorothy pondered, rather angry and afraid.

"Then what do you care about?" she asked,

exasperated.

"I don't know," said Ursula. "But something impersonal.

Love--love--love--what does it mean--what

does it amount to? So much personal gratification. It doesn't

lead anywhere."

"It isn't supposed to lead anywhere, is it?" said Dorothy,

satirically. "I thought it was the one thing which is an end in

itself."

"Then what does it matter to me?" cried Ursula. "As an end in

itself, I could love a hundred men, one after the other. Why

should I end with a Skrebensky? Why should I not go on, and love

all the types I fancy, one after another, if love is an end in

itself? There are plenty of men who aren't Anton, whom I could

love--whom I would like to love."

"Then you don't love him," said Dorothy.

"I tell you I do;--quite as much, and perhaps more than

I should love any of the others. Only there are plenty of things

that aren't in Anton that I would love in the other men."

"What, for instance?"

"It doesn't matter. But a sort of strong understanding, in

some men, and then a dignity, a directness, something

unquestioned that there is in working men, and then a jolly,

reckless passionateness that you see--a man who could

really let go----"

Dorothy could feel that Ursula was already hankering after

something else, something that this man did not give her.

"The question is, what do you want," propounded

Dorothy. "Is it just other men?"

Ursula was silenced. This was her own dread. Was she just

promiscuous?

"Because if it is," continued Dorothy, "you'd better marry

Anton. The other can only end badly."

So out of fear of herself Ursula was to marry Skrebensky.

He was very busy now, preparing to go to India. He must visit

relatives and contract business. He was almost sure of Ursula

now. She seemed to have given in. And he seemed to become again

an important, self-assured man.

It was the first week in August, and he was one of a large

party in a bungalow on the Lincolnshire coast. It was a tennis,

golf, motor-car, motor-boat party, given by his great-aunt, a

lady of social pretensions. Ursula was invited to spend the week