The Young Desire It (24 page)

She spoke of the School and his work.

‘Don't work too hard, Charles; I'm sure it's not good.'

‘I've got to get through,' he said mechanically, making an effort to return to the room. ‘Mr. Jolly thinks I can. And Mr. Penworth…'

That suited his mood, and he began to talk of Penworth, telling her what a good friend and teacher he was, forcing himself to forget the change he had noticed since that evening of the mid-term holiday. In the enthusiasm of talking, as his feelings, held down long, now found an oblique outlet in words of praise, he did not notice Emily clearing their little table and returning it to its place by the door. The familiar peace of the room encouraged him, and took from his mind the uneasy shadow of secrecy that had been there all day.

But when he lay in bed, feeling the sheets grow warm about his body, wonder and hope and fear returned a little to trouble him, and it was some time before he did fall asleep, with his face still towards the stars gathering so whitely in the window.

She was there when he came.

She lay on the grass, as he had imagined her yesterday, in the full light of the morning sun. He looked, and believed. Black shadow lay beside her, from shoulder to heel, and she seemed not to have seen him; his feet were quiet on the grass. Looking at her body stretched away from him in that unconscious and chaste abandon, and at her fair head rested motionless on her crossed arms, he felt his heart leap with a final shock of amazement and relief, and also with fear. Something sudden and strong urged him to go away unseen, now, at once. It came up swiftly within him, and in it was the knowledge that he would not go; whatever strange vision of a future already accomplished had for one moment said ‘
Go!
' was itself gone. He stood still, trembling, flushed and pale at once; and as he felt this violence and tumult shaking him, a freed, observant part of his mind, an isolated and perfected consciousness, recognized the paper she was holding under the curled fingers of one hand, and said calmly, ‘She has just now found it'.

He stood without moving, a few yards from her, once more watching unobserved. She was not as small as he had thought; stretched there on the close grass she seemed near his own height, and with more bodily fullness. For the first time he was looking at her, at the girl herself; and he ceased in a while to be afraid, for he knew now what was in his heart, as he had not known before. The sight of her did not merely solve the complexity of thoughts of her; it vanished them, and he thought of her no longer. Her stillness seemed forgetful, not dangerous; he was puzzled how to break in upon her now, and bring her out of the dream in which she lay. She was not asleep; he could see that, for her fingers closed and opened sometimes on the bent piece of paper, and there was wakefulness in the still attention of her head on her arms. He felt a great impulse to shout, to throw his voice like a stone into that stillness, but at last all he did was to walk close and say ‘Here I am'.

She turned to raise herself on her elbow, looking at him calmly over the curve of her shoulder. Such calmness made the rage in his heart seem odd and foolish; but he still trembled as he knelt down on the warm grass near her.

‘I knew you were there,' she said.

She was smiling, and the smile was brilliant in the black dilation of her pupils.

‘Here I am,' he repeated. ‘It's great fun to see you again.'

Hearing that it was great fun, something simple, made them both easy, and they could talk without effort. As he chattered, with nervous happiness, of holiday and work, he did not see how closely she looked at him.

‘I came yesterday,' he said later. ‘I suppose I was too soon. I suppose being in a hurry to see you again…It's a long time, isn't it?'

His gaze besought her. She did not answer it, but said quietly, ‘I've often thought of you. It was so silly of me, that day; but really, you did give me a fright. I was frightened. Doesn't it seem stupid now?'

They could not say each other's name, knowing the intimacy there is in a name spoken; but there was no need, for the sky, and the light, and all the quiet of earth in that place knew them well already. Charles looked at her, and she at him; he saw her more and more clearly, as though he had touched her face with his hands; and he thought that never again could he forget the steadiness of her eyes and the pale warmth and fullness of her lips in repose, as she listened to his idle, lively words—a mouth so quiet and gentle that peace might have slept in it, and innocence haunted its still curves. He did not know what he was saying, though the words leapt quick and conscious to his lips, and she appeared to follow where speech led them.

‘Well—what shall we do?' he asked, after a short silence had shown them again each other's single, unknown identity. ‘Would you like to see the place? I could take you to the old farm if you like; but we don't live there, you know. No; we live there—over the hills and far away. But you can't see it until you walk to the top of this slope. Come, and when we get up there I'll show you.'

He was on his feet, holding out his hands to help her; but she got up from the ground without seeming to see his gesture, and smoothed her skirt down about her knees. He saw she wore shoes, but no stockings; her skirt was longer, and the dark green of it was the green of the ribbon bows that swung at the ends of her plaited hair as she moved. Looking at the careful tying of those bows, he tried to imagine her doing it, turning her head sideways as she plaited the shining hair in her fingers, tying the bows with blind, habitual little movements. He thought he could imagine it.

They walked round the end of the grove, looking briefly at the shadow within, and followed its flank up the rising ground. He was filled with complete pleasure and surprise to find her beside him, when he looked sideways, and to feel her easy walk and the happy backward fling of her head which made the fair gloss of hair flow downward from it. When they were at the top of the rise he stopped and looked at her straightly again.

‘Now. It's like being on the top of the world up here, though it's really not so high,' he said, throwing himself down to feel the height and the isolation more keenly. She too lay down, propped up on her elbows, but able, at a turn of her head, to see the far westward deployment of the land, the green or brown fields, and trees standing up round and small on that lowered plane of distance. The high place held them up towards the sky. A light wind brushed their turned faces as they looked, mingling its coolness with the warmth of the sun on their skin.

‘See,' he said. ‘That's home, over that way. It's a bit south of us here, and more than three miles off. Over this way, there's the old farm, less than a mile from home. And here are you, behind us; so it's a sort of quadrilateral triangle, a tall one.'

‘You make it sound like geometry,' she said. ‘I don't like geometry.'

‘I do it every day, but I don't like it much either. I'll be doing it this afternoon.'

‘What,' she said; ‘in the holidays? Will you?'

He told her how hard he was working. It seemed not to surprise her.

‘Why do you do it? Do you have to?'

‘I want to get away from the School as soon as possible,' he said, ‘so when the Headmaster—it was Dr. Fox—he asked me if I'd like to and I said I would, and I was glad. That's why I'm doing it. I want to leave School as soon as I can.'

She looked at him curiously, and then smiled with her eyes on the grass between her fingers.

‘I remember. You said that before.'

‘And you said you didn't mind being at school.'

‘Well—I don't. But I'll like leaving when the time comes.'

She might have been looking into the future, and the dreamy content of youth's optimism was reflected in her face; but he knew she was thinking of herself only, and he felt alone there, where never in his life he had felt alone. He stared at her hands playing with the short grass, stroking it as though it were an animal's coat, and as he stared he reminded himself warmly that, after all, the future life of both of them was still far away, and at present there was all the holiday left for them, and other holidays later, perhaps; yes, surely, surely; so that the present might stretch away beyond sight. When he insisted to himself that this was so, his discontent began to fade, as suddenly as it had cast a shadow over him, and he was able to turn to her again, and to find in the dreaming promise of her face only his own happiness.

‘Do you like being here?' he said.

She lay on her side warmly, where she could watch him. The curve of her body from shoulder to knee, the relaxation of her pose, were so vivid in his mind that he felt her weight on the grass as though it rested upon his own arms.

‘Yes. I like it.'

‘You look so lovely lying there,' he said, and tears came into his eyes. ‘I must say it. It makes me so happy to be here like this. Does it make you happy too?'

His voice trembled like the trembling brilliance of her smile.

‘Yes,' she murmured, as though they might have been overheard. ‘Why do you say things like that?'

‘I don't know.' He shook his head, blinking at the cool tears. ‘What does make me? I don't know what does. But it's true.'

‘You're funny,' she said seriously. ‘You say things nobody would think of saying. But I don't know. You see, I've never known any boys.'

‘And I don't know anything about girls.'

They looked at the grass, their two heads, red-dark and fair, bent together under the weight of the day's light. Minutes fled away, and neither of them spoke. While they listened to their last words, a long enchantment seemed to have fallen upon them, as though this were all a fairy tale, his green love and her knowledge of it, and that in her which might now be gathering together for a response to him; as though they, the people in the tale, were also listening to its telling.

The cool breeze dropped, and the air between them and the high sky was still. All things paused, listening. When they slowly looked up it was at the same moment, as though someone had called them each by name; and they looked into each other's eyes, and found they were not able to speak, nor even to move. At the heavy summons of his heart Charles felt the blood drain from his face and head; and like an echo to this silvery spreading faintness a deep colour rose in her throat, her lips, her cheeks, and even to the golden pallor of her forehead, so that her eyes were dark, as if she had been afraid, or in pain too great to cry against.

They could not look away now. His heart beat so mightily that he thought the earth itself was thrusting up against his ribs. The colour came back to his face when it ebbed from hers, leaving her dangerously white, and still the spell held them, and still they could not look away from each other's eyes, as though some force too rare to be comprehended had lifted them up from a foothold security, leaving them in a space without time. And now they were falling, unable to drag their eyes from one another as they fell swiftly through that space; each the one hope of the other, the one fear, the one vision and the one reality. As they fell they reached out hands to comfort one another; and when their hands touched and clung, the power and the spell were abated, and with his fingers coldly about her wrist Charles let his head fall upon his arm. He could at last close his eyes, feeling as though he had almost drowned.

True worldly innocence must have just such an effect upon the source of love, the first springing desire, as has self-imposed or inevitable restraint, transforming the libidinous upsurging current to something rare, as exquisitely as a fountain's jet transforms its abrupt force of water to beauty. So it must have been with the world's giants, men who in the negation of bereavement found a vision of heaven concealed, with the key to it in the unquenchable thirst of their bodies, and the ultimate belief of their minds.

In just such a subtle and powerful way did Charles's innocence of mind transform the experience of that morning, even at the moment of its happening, into a conception and promise of heaven. He had been unconsciously preparing in his mind for such an episode, and its effect upon him was like that of a burst of thunder to one who has watched the lightning and waited. When their hands touched and he felt the clinging comprehension and compassion of her fingers within his, and the spell between them was at last eased, he was seized by an exhaustion of the body and the mind, as leaden and blind as that which comes upon a man who has hung drowning in the sea, and who suddenly feels land under his feet, and drags himself up into the arms of the shore sand, to lie there not knowing he is there. To such a man the tide seems still to sway and suck at his body; even when he lies upon the hot sand of the beach he feels the rhythm of the waves, dreamy and merciless, swing under him.

So Charles felt as he lay with his face hidden in the crook of his elbow, while his left hand still clung desperately to her warm wrist and she did not draw away. So she may have felt, for she continued to look towards him while the sun fell warmly upon her, and the light breeze, rising again as if impatient of the moment gone, stirred the softest hair at her temples and between the smooth swerve of her plaits where they parted upon her neck. He did not see that her eyes were dark still, and as heavy as though he had possessed her bodily, and not only with that white flame which she had lit in his mind. Even though she was young, she was a woman, lacking that complete innocence which Charles did not realize was his; but in her face there was a candle-light purity as well as the richer illumination of accomplished beauty, suggesting that love would be strange to her, as it was to him.

Penworth had not so wrongly imagined them; but this first step towards some complete consummation seemed almost to have overshot its mark, leaving them helpless, as if dead, and threatening to make coarse all other experience. This silence was the unthinking silence of perfect surprise. They were unaware even of the pledge which that long, desperate look had made between them; only at a later time would the memory of it act upon them, to bring them together and keep them close.