Lover's Leap (4 page)

But now that we have become friends and meet often and have a hundred points of contact, all is changed. I no longer feel that those visions are irrecoverable: they blossom again and again as she looks, listens, talks to me, turns her head or moves her hand. Twice again I have seen on her face that half-shy half-eager look which I saw first in the doorway of the Ethertons' drawing-room; yes, twice that miracle has repeated itself, so that it has become a part of my knowledge of her. Why then should I try in vain to imprison it between the pages of a diary when I know that I may come upon it at any moment alive and blossoming in her face? Nor have I now that urgent need to unbosom myself when I am alone. My happiness can spend itself, now, when I am with her, if not in the
spontaneous flow of love offered and accepted, at least in numbers of small channels that relieve the press of emotion. Soon, I suspect, this diary will peter out. After all, I am no longer the man who began it. I am changed. I no longer stare into my own eyes, probe and analyse my own heart. I have been lifted out of myself, or rather, I have been restored to myself, made single and simple. The man divided against himself, divided into two halves each of which teased and tormented the other, has been resolved into unity. I have never known such perfect well-being, such abounding energy, such certainty of myself. I feel like an athlete whose body is in perfect training, whose flesh and muscles tingle with life as after a cold bath; like a healthy animal, but an animal deliciously aware of its health.

I have worked hard during these last three weeks, harder and more successfully, in fact, than I have ever worked before. Sometimes I have put in as much as eight hours a day. It might have been thought that, having become at one with myself, I would have been content to spend all the time left over from my meetings with Rose and from my painting, alone with my happiness; but it is a curious fact that I have become more, not less sociable. It seems that since my friends have become less important to me I enjoy their company more. The truth is, I suppose, that in my lonely days, when I sought in them what they could not give, my hopeless search falsified my relations with them. Now I meet them on equal terms, a free man among free men.

But what of Rose? What does she feel about this sudden friendship of ours? I ask myself that often, but at present I am not deeply concerned with the answer. She likes me, she enjoys my company; that I can see. Why else should she be willing to meet me so often? But does she feel anything more than friendship? Sometimes a passing light in her eyes, a sudden flushing of her cheeks seem to tell me that
she does; but other things deny it. Our partings, for her, are, I can see, simple matters: she meets me with pleasure and leaves me without regret. Whenever she bids me good-bye in that polite, slightly formal little way of hers, I feel suddenly chilled, as if our friendship had in a moment shrunk to mere acquaintanceship. Yes, she leaves me without a pang, almost without a thought, and watching her go, a slim, exquisite, perfectly self-possessed little figure, I feel that she leaves nothing of herself behind her and takes nothing of me away with her. Well, I can afford to leave my question unsolved for a while. When I have so much, wouldn't it be madness not to pause and draw from our friendship all it will give, before asking, and perhaps asking in vain, for more? Besides, it is too soon to ask. After all, we have known each other only a month, have met only seven times. It is so difficult for me to realize that. But she, no doubt, realizes it, feels towards me no more than a month-old friendship implies. If I were to declare my love and ask her to marry me, I should probably drive her from me.

A week later. A delicious thing happened yesterday afternoon. I met her by accident in Bedford Square. I was walking along its north side when suddenly I saw her coming towards me, still about twenty yards away. How utterly different she is from any other woman. She came along with the neat, bright alertness of a bird. No doubt she was going home to tea after a music-lesson, for she has told me that she has a music-lesson on Thursday afternoons. Should I ask her to have tea with me somewhere? No. Suddenly I had conceived a much bolder plan. When we were only two yards apart she saw me and her face lit up adorably.

‘How surprising!' she said.

‘You're coming back from a music-lesson,' said I.

‘Quite right. And where are you off to?'

‘I'm going to buy a sketch-book,' I said. ‘If it's fine tomorrow I'm going to have a day in the country.'

‘How delightful. Where are you going?'

‘Well,' I said, ‘I want downs and quarries and chalk-pits, so I think I shall go to Barrowhurst. Won't you come too?'

My suggestion took her by surprise. I watched her face. Her first impulse, I saw, was to refuse. ‘Well…' she began doubtfully. Then her face cleared. ‘After all, why shouldn't I?' she said.

I reassured her. ‘Whenever you get tired of me,' I said, ‘you can go off and leave me to my sketching.'

Yes, she would come. We arranged to meet at the train, the nine-twenty from Victoria.

Next evening. This morning proved to be one of those doubtful April mornings which at one moment promise sunshine, at another a long day of misty rain. I was afraid she would not come.

It was sunny when I set off for Victoria, but not for long. Soon the sky became overcast and before I got to the station it had begun to drizzle. As I passed through the barrier and went on to the platform I told myself it was impossible that she would come. One's thoughts at such times, and in fact at nearly all times, have little to do with reason. Reason might have suggested that as it was fine when I left home and the rain started only about ten minutes ago, she would most probably come. But that would have been a most dangerous thought, rash enough, presumptuous enough to defeat the hopes it represented. Yes, one's feelings are controlled by a primitive, superstitious creature for whom reason and the passage of time mean nothing. The creature, this primitive I, obviously believed that such a thought at such a moment might provoke a certain malicious power, whose business it is to defeat expectations, to reverse accomplished fact and even
now, in punishment of my presumption, prevent Rose from starting from home half an hour ago. And so, to fool this power, I made use of a potent spell, I proclaimed that Rose would not come. ‘No, she's not here, she's not coming. I shall get into the train, watch anxiously from the window till the last minute, hoping, still hoping: but the whistle will sound and I shall go alone.'

That is what I said, and I craftily refrained from looking to see if she was among the people standing beside the open doors of the train. In fact I was looking not for her but for an empty carriage when I saw her signing to me only five yards away and knew, with a sigh of profound relief, that the magic had worked. The demon had been defeated, I was out of his power now, and my cautiously closed mind opened wide to receive the nine hours of warmth and sunshine which were now secured to me.

How incredible that: I was getting into a train with her, that we were going off together alone, leaving behind us her friends, my friends, our separate homes, everything that represented our independence of one another; going into unfamiliar country where neither would find any root-hold except in each other. I sat down opposite her, feeling that we were setting out on our spiritual honeymoon. What was she feeling, I wondered? Had she foreseen that the journey, the walk, the picnic would bring us inevitably so much closer together, or was she realizing it only now and did the realization please or embarrass her? I saw that she had bought a paper and felt that I had been put in my place. Evidently she had thought it necessary to provide herself with a barrier. Well, I would reassure her, and going to the door I too bought a paper from a passing newsboy.

We had the carriage to ourselves so far and I cast baleful eyes on the figures that paused outside; but when we started no one had intruded. The train swam out from the glass cavern of the station and a flood of sunshine and spring air flowed into the carriage. I leaned back, feeling
myself filled to the brim with contentment. How long would it be, I wondered, before we were setting off together alone on our real honeymoon. Would it ever happen? Wasn't it too much to ask of life? I glanced at Rose. She was sitting with her hands idle on her lap, looking sedately out of the window. At that moment she turned her head.

‘I was afraid,' I said, ‘that the weather might put you off.'

‘But it's going to be lovely,' she said; ‘sunshine and showers, a real April day. Perhaps we shall see a rainbow.' ‘You won't mind the showers?'

‘Not I. I've got a mackintosh and an extra pair of stockings'; she pointed to a satchel on the rack above her head; ‘and a book, and some knitting,' she added, ‘in case we're driven into a farm or an inn.'

Ah, wasn't she well protected against the weather and me?

‘But what about you?' she said. ‘What's to become of your sketching if we're driven indoors?'

‘I'll probably make a drawing of the shelter we're driven into,' I said, ‘or, if the worst comes to the worst, I'll make one of you.'

Rose laughed. ‘I'm afraid,' she said, ‘I shall make a poor substitute for a chalk-pit.'

We chatted for ten minutes or so, and then, with a neatly managed transition, she took up her newspaper. It was not till the train left the Brighton line and swung east along the weald under the northward slope of the downs that she laid it down and began to watch the bright, cloud-dappled country that swirled slowly past the windows. All this I noted over the top of my paper of which I had actually read almost nothing, but I remained diplomatically behind it until we entered Lewes, when it was Rose, and not I, who began to talk.

What did we talk about? I don't remember. Things, no
doubt, that would sound trivial set down in cold black and white, for talk, which is a true exchange and not a mere mercenary buying and selling, depends hardly at all upon the theme, just as the quality of the music is not affected, whether the keys are ivory or bone or the commonest wood.

When we reached Barrowhurst we bought food for our picnic, going from shop to shop and choosing and buying like a domesticated couple and bestowing the parcels in my knapsack. Then we set off towards the downs, alternately talking and silent. It is silence, silence of any sort, much more than talk that brings two people together; for an embarrassed silence troubles the emotions and melts the ice of conventionality so that every halting attempt to break it is full of a tremulous significance, while a silence that is unembarrassed is a confession of deep and secure intimacy. We climbed a steep grassy track in bright sunshine and every time we turned to look back new expanses of plain and sky and distant hills had opened behind us. I was making for an old chalk quarry that stands like a great pearly fan-shell leaned against the grassy slope of the down. I had thought I might find something to work at there and when we reached it I sat down and got out my materials.

‘And now I'd better go,' said Rose, looking at me doubtfully.

‘Go? Where to?'

‘Anywhere, so long as I leave you,' she said. ‘Don't you want to be left? I thought artists and writers and composers had to be left severely alone when they set to work. I should feel frightened of you if I stayed: I should feel … well, rather as if I were knitting during the Communion Service. I'm sure one isn't allowed to watch.'

‘Would you like to watch?'

‘If it won't bother you.'

I told her she wouldn't bother me in the least, but I
didn't add that anyone else but her would bother me extremely.

‘Well,' she said, ‘I'll watch a little, if I may; then I'll have a little walk and then come back to see how you're getting on.'

I did a quick charcoal drawing and when I had finished it and was starting another, Rose strolled away along the hillside, leaving her mackintosh and satchel. They lay beside me, a couple of sleeping creatures, living manifestations of Rose herself. I stared at them, learning them, resolving their strangeness into familiarity, as if by doing so I should help myself to a completer possession of their owner. When she was out of sight I stretched out my hand and touched them and was thrilled with the sense of her. Delicious sacrilege. Would she know by some mysterious intuition, when she returned, that I had touched them? Would she feel my touch on the coat when she put it on? I touched them again, stroked them, glancing warily like a thief along the hillside in case she should reappear and catch me at it.

Shall I ever again feel as content and secure as I did then, sitting there alone with the certainty that, though out of sight, she was there on that hillside and would infallibly return soon, in a few minutes, to her possessions and to me?

I had just finished my second drawing when a handful of hail, flung from the sky, pattered on my head and shoulders and drummed on my sketch-book. It slackened for a few seconds and then came on with a rush. I jumped up to put away the sketch-book and Rose came running, head down, along the hillside. I held her mackintosh ready for her and, breathlessly laughing, she ran straight into it. Wouldn't it have been the most natural thing in the world to hold her, wrapped in it, in my arms and bend my face to hers? The hail turned into rain and we gathered up our things and ran down into the chalk quarry and huddled under its hollow shoulder.

The rain swept headlong in thickening veils down the slope of the downs and across it we saw a great floating island of sunlight swim rapidly across the plain below.

‘Look! Look!' cried Rose. ‘The rainbow!'

It stood, each foot on the plain, complete and brilliant throughout its span. Its colours fumed and glowed as if exhaling fire. ‘Isn't it marvellous,' she said, ‘too marvellous to be real? No wonder they believed it was a message from God to man. Don't you feel as if it were the prelude to a miracle? Don't you feel that in a moment something incredible is going to happen?'