§ 2
This was Bobby’s second visit to Udimore. Paul Lambone had suddenly seen fit to gather this party; apparently on the spur of Devizes’ engagement. In the interval Bobby had seen Christina Alberta a number of times and developed an immense sense of relationship to her. It filled his life. He had always been dreaming things about her from the time when he anticipated her with blue eyes and a fragile person, and always she was and did things that tore his dreams to shreds. This made her profoundly interesting. More and more he had become dependent upon her for interest. He wanted to marry her if only to make sure he wouldn’t lose the interest of her. She had refused—twice. Without any of the graces proper to the occasion. “No fear, Bobby,” she said. “It wouldn’t do. I’m not the woman you take me for.”
“You never are,” he said. “I don’t mind that.”
“You’re the dearest companion,” she said. “I like the way your hair grows.”
“Then why not make it yours, and be companions for ever?”
“Nothing more frightful,” she said, and so dismissed the proposal.
They went about together; they spent much of their spare time together except for those distressing occasions when she would suddenly throw him over to go to a theatre or walk with Devizes. Or to go to Devizes to talk. She never hesitated to throw him over for Devizes. Yet Bobby got a lot of her. She didn’t know much about theatres or music-halls or restaurants or dancing-places or that sort of thing, and Bobby was discreetly competent in that province. The Malmesburys felt themselves deserted, and Susan was vindictive in her resentment at his frequent absence from her bed-time rituals. Tessy, Bobby declared, remained his dearest friend; but when he tried to tell her all about himself in the old, old fashion—which he did when Christina Alberta was away with Devizes—he naturally had to tell her all about Christina Alberta. But Tessy declined in the most emphatic way to be told about Christina Alberta. It was extremely surprising and disappointing to Bobby to find out how incapable Tessy was of appreciating the endless interestingness and charm of Christina Alberta. It was a blind spot in her mind. She seemed to assume that Christina Alberta was no better than she should be, whereas she was much better. It estranged Bobby and Tessy very much, and it was a great sorrow to Bobby.
Because Christina Alberta was good—and interesting—beyond dispute. She was growing with tremendous rapidity mentally and in her knowledge of the world. Every time he met her she seemed more of a person, with richer, fuller, more commanding ideas. She seemed to be living every moment of her time. She was working now at the Royal College of Science under Macbride. She was taking hold of her new studies there with tremendous enthusiasm. She was in love with comparative anatomy. Bobby had always thought that comparative anatomy was dry, pedantic stuff about bones, but she declared it lit up the whole story of life for her. It changed her ideas about the world and about herself profoundly. “It is the most romantic stuff I have ever read or thought about,” she said. “It makes human history seem silly.”
She took him three times to the Natural History Museum at South Kensington to show him something of the fine realizations that stirred her mind. She made it clear to him how the bones of a wing or the scratches of a flint could restore the storms and sunlight and passions of ten million years ago.
And then suddenly a week ago Christina Alberta had consented to marry Bobby. She had taken back her two refusals. But the way she did it made it like everything else she did, astonishing and disconcerting. She had a confession to make, and for a time until he could think it over thoroughly that confession seemed to Bobby to explain her refusals completely and to clear up everything about her.
She got him to take her to Hampton Court. But they did not go into the gardens because they saw through the park gates that the chestnuts of Bushey Avenue were in full blossom; they went instead by the pond and up under the riotously flowering branches. A belated spring was coming now in a hurry, warm and brilliant. The trees were glorious. It was as if a bright green sea was splashing up warm creamy foam under a shower of cannon shots. The blue sky hummed with light.
“The spring has come fast now that it has begun to come,” she said.
He felt she had something to say and waited.
“I never know, Bobby—this year less than ever—whether spring is the happiest time in the year or the most miserably restless. Everybody and everything is falling in love.”
“I didn’t wait for spring,” said Bobby.
“But what of the frogs that can’t find water?” said Christina Alberta.
“There’s water where there are frogs,” said Bobby.
“Everybody is marrying and giving in marriage,” she said. “I thought—I thought—Dr. Devizes at least was an inconsolable widower. But the spring tides have caught even him. They catch everybody.”
“They’ve caught you?”
“I don’t know. I’m miserable, Bobby, and restless and all astir.”
“Then let yourself go.”
“One aches—alone.”
“But are you alone?”
“Fairly.”
“There’s me.”
“Bobby dear, what do you want in me?”
“You. To be with you. To be always about with you. And to be loved by you.”
“It’s kind of you.”
“Oh, nonsense! Kindness!”
“Listen, Bobby,” she said, and made a long pause.
Her voice when she spoke had adopted the ease of casual conversation. “Do you believe in chastity, Bobby? Could you love a girl who wasn’t—chaste?”
Bobby winced as if she had struck his face with a whip. He went white. “What do you mean?” he asked.
“Plainly,” she said.
For a time neither of them said a word.
“You have had your experiences,” she thrust. “In France. They all did.”
Bobby made no answer to that.
“Now you know,” she flung at him.
For a little while the light had gone out of Bobby’s world.
“Did you love the man?” he asked.
“If I did I don’t remember it. It was just—curiosity. And the stir of growing up. And the intolerable sense of being forbidden. No—I think I was almost—cold-blooded. I liked the look of him. And then I disliked him.... But there it is, Bobby. That’s how things are.”
Bobby weighed his words. “I’d care if it were any girl but you. You—you’re different. I love you. What has or hasn’t happened to you doesn’t matter. At least—it doesn’t matter so much.”
“You’re sure it doesn’t matter so much?”
“Quite.”
“Sure for good?”
“Yes.”
“From this moment you forget, you begin to forget what I have told you? As I want to forget it?”
“It will go soon enough if you want to forget it. It doesn’t matter at all. I see now, it doesn’t matter at all.”
“But why on earth do you want to marry me, Bobby? What is there in me? I’m ugly, rude, greedy, inconsiderate. I’ve no purity, no devotion.”
“You’re incessantly interesting. You’re straight, swift, and endlessly beautiful.”
“Bobby, truly! Does it look like that to you?”
“Yes. Doesn’t my manner—? Don’t you know?”
“Yes,” she said gravely; “I suppose I know.”
She came to a stop in front of him with her arms akimbo. They stood looking at one another, and Bobby winced as if he was going to cry. Her face was grave and troubled, and then at the sight of his expression her smile broke through. Her gravity vanished. She was a different Christina Alberta. She was suddenly the gayest conceivable thing to him, confident and impudent.
“If you were to kiss me, Bobby, right here and now in Bushey Park, would they lock us up?...”
Most wonderful it was to Bobby to take her in his arms. A new Christina Alberta was revealed to Bobby; Christina Alberta seen from a distance of six inches or so, an amazingly beautiful Christina Alberta. One might have thought she had never lived for anything but being loved by Bobby.
“You’re learning,” said Christina Alberta after a little while. “Now do it all over again, Bobby. Nobody seems to be looking....”