She leaned over him, while he gave her a light, and then, the match having gone out in his rather unsteady fingers, leaned still nearer to light his cigarette from hers. But, gently, he laid his hands upon her arms and held her there, looking closely into her eyes. "Do you love me?" he asked.
Her cigarette was between her lips. She could not answer. He released one hand so that she might free herself, and although the gesture might have brought an element of mirth into their gravity she sought no refuge in it. Half leaning, half kneeling beside him, she made no attempt to draw away and he saw her eyes widen in their grief, their perplexity, and their delight. "I don"t know, Bevis dear. I don"t know.
How can I know?" she almost wept.
"You do know. I can tell you that you know, for I do. You love me." He had laid his hold again upon her and he slightly shook her as he spoke.
"I can"t. I can"t. You must let me wait. You must give me time."
"All the time you want. I"ve nothing to do but go on waiting. I"m ready for it. But don"t be too cruel. What do you gain by it?"
"I don"t mean to be cruel. Please believe that; please do."
"You don"t mean it; but you are. It"s enough for you to have me here, waiting, and making love to you, day after day, month after month, as I did in London. I understand it all. You keep him like that, and you keep me. And what torments you is that you can"t see how you can keep us both if you give me more."
"Oh--Bevis. You are so horrible. So horribly clear. You are far, far clearer than I can ever be. Yet--no, that"s not all there is to it. Give me time to think. I told you that I should think better up here, in his home--with you to help me. I can only think clearly if I"m given time."
"You can"t do anything clearly. You"re always in a mist. You want to know yourself; I grant you your honesty; but your feeling makes a mist around you. Listen to me. Let me show it to you. You love him still, of course. I shouldn"t care for you if you didn"t. You"ll go on loving him.
And it will hurt sometimes. It will hurt me, too. People are made up of these irreconcilable knots. It can"t be helped. We"re here in life together, and we belong to each other, and there"s nothing between us but a memory. Perhaps you could go on holding out against me; but you can"t go on holding out against yourself. You want to be mine nearly as much as I want you to be. Darling Tony--your eyes are full of love as you look at me now."
He had held her more tightly, drawn her more near, and now, his haggard young face lighted with the sudden ardour of his conviction, he saw his light flash back to him from her, so that dropping his hands from her arms, he seized her, drew her down to him, enfolded her, and, feeling her yield, kissed her again and again.
"Bevis!" she whispered, amazed, aghast, yet, in her yielding, confessing everything.
When she drew herself away and stood up beside him, it was blindly, putting her hand out for the table, her face averted; and so she stood for a moment, while he saw that the colour bathed her face and neck.
Then he saw that the tears rained down. He had, strangely, never seen her cry before, though he had seen her at the earlier moments of her great grief. She had been frozen, gaunt, lost, then.
"Darling Tony--forgive me."
"Oh," she wept, "it"s not your fault!"
"Yes, it is. Don"t ask me to regret it; but it is."
"No; no. It"s not your fault," she repeated. And she began to move away, blindly.
"Tell me you forgive me." He had drawn himself up in his chair and looked after her.
"Of course I forgive you. I can"t forgive myself."
"That"s just as bad. Must you go?"
"I must. I must. Later--we"ll talk. I"ll try to think. I"ll try to understand. I"ll try to explain everything."
She had got herself to the door and she had not turned her face to him again. "Don"t despise me," she said as she left him.
II
Though the traces of her tears were still visible, Antonia met him at lunch with composure. Like all the rooms at Wyndwards, the dining-room was too accurate and intended and, darkly panelled as it was, the low mullioned windows looking out on the high ring-court, it had, through some miscalculation in the lighting, an uncomfortably sombre air. They sat there, the three of them, around the polished table, with its embroidered linens, its crystal and silver, highly civilized and modern in the highly civilized and modern room. He and Antonia, at all events, were that. Miss Latimer, perhaps, belonged to a more primitive tradition. It struck him that he would have liked Wyndwards better if it had kept to that tradition; the tradition, in fact, of making no attempts. As it was, it didn"t match Miss Latimer, nor, though modern and civilized, did it match him and Tony. It was neither sceptical nor sophisticated, nor indifferent.
Antonia leaned her elbow on the table while she ate and looked out at the ring-court. Miss Latimer stooped, but did not lounge. She still wore her hat and ate in a business-like manner, throwing from time to time a bit of bread or biscuit to the dogs. The task of talking to her fell entirely upon him, for Antonia, though composed, was evidently in no mood for talking. He asked her questions about the country and its birds, beasts, and flowers, and she answered, if not affably, yet with an accuracy that betrayed a community of taste.
She told him that they were rather too far north to get stone-curlews, as he had hoped they might. "I found a nest once," she said: "but that was when I was staying with some people ten miles away."
"What luck! Did you see the birds?"
"Yes. I hid near by for some hours and saw them going to and fro. I could have photographed them if I had had a camera."
"What luck!" Captain Saltonhall repeated, with sincerity. "I"ve only once had a glimpse of one, flying. Queer, watchful, uncanny creatures, aren"t they, with great, clear eyes."
"They are rather strange-looking birds."
It struck him suddenly that Miss Latimer herself looked like a stone-curlew.
"They"ve the same cry, nearly, as the ordinary curlew, haven"t they?" he continued. "You get plenty of those up here, I suppose?"
"Oh, yes. You can hear them any day. It is rather the same sort of cry."
Antonia knew little about the country and was not observant of nature; but now, leaning her head on her hand and looking out of the window, she remarked, unexpectedly: "I hate their cry; if it is the cry of curlews I mean. Aren"t they the birds that have that high, bleak, drifting wail?"
"Oh, I rather like it," said Captain Saltonhall. "Yes, that"s the bird.
It"s the sort of melancholy ordained by Providence to go with tea-time and a wood-fire, as eggs are ordained to go with bacon."
"No," said Antonia. "It"s ordained to go with nothing. It makes me think of something that has been forgotten; something that has given up even the hope of being remembered, yet that laments."
"But the curlew isn"t forgotten. It is probably calling to its mate."
"Probably. I am not talking of the natural history of the bird. Its cry sounds like the cry of a creature that has been forgotten by its mate."
"What do you think it sounds like?" he asked Miss Latimer. He distrusted the direction taken by Antonia"s thoughts.
And, looking before her, seeming not to follow their definitions, she answered coldly:
"I think Antonia describes it very beautifully."
After lunch Antonia said that Miss Latimer must show them the garden. He saw that she intended to keep this companion near them and would not, for the present, be alone with him.
In the flagged hall, wide and light, there were oaken chests and tables and large framed engravings of cathedrals. Antonia selected a sunshade from the stand. None were black; they were all pre-war sunshades, and the one she found made her lovely head, when they went out into the sunlight, seem still paler and darker against its faded poppy-red.
She led them first into the little walled garden of her fears. One stepped out into it from a door in the hall, and, wondering if she had put a wholesome compulsion upon herself, he expressed an indirect approval of her good sense by pausing to look about him and to say, "How delightfully planned this is."
He had never seen so many white fritillaries growing together; their jade green and alabaster white, rising from narrow beds among the flags, seemed like another expression of the stone. The fountain was musical, and the stone bench under the great cedar invited to poetical reverie.
"That cedar is the oldest thing here, isn"t it?" he asked.
Antonia stood, gently turning the handle of the sunshade on her shoulder, and she, too, looked about her, her eyes meeting his for a moment as if, with a grateful humour, acknowledging his approbation.
"I"m not quite as foolish as you may think," they told him.