II
But though night is good, and stars are good, and sweet communion is very good, with one’s beloved lying soft and warm in one’s arms, day also is good, and the stir and zest of it, and men’s voices, and the wind along the heath.
Such were Christopher’s conclusions when he had been married a week. He leant on the gate after breakfast on the first weekly anniversary of his wedding day, smoking and gazing at the field of buttercups that so gorgeously embroidered the edges of the sea, and reflected that you have to have both—the blissful night, the active day, so as completely to appreciate either. That is, if your life is to be as near perfect as possible. And why shouldn’t his life be as near perfect as possible? It had all the necessary ingredients—youth, health, and Catherine. Only, for a day to be happy it must not be too much like the night; there must be a contrast, and there must be a complete contrast. In the days and nights of the last week there had been hardly any contrast, and wasn’t contrast in life as indispensable as salt in cooking? Bliss there had been, bliss in quantities, wonderful quantities; wild bliss, then quiet bliss, then wild bliss again, then quiet bliss, but always bliss. He adored Catherine. Life was marvellous. On that fine May morning he was certain he was the happiest human being in the island, for nobody could possibly be happier, nor could anybody be as happy, for nobody else had Catherine; but he wished that that day——
Well, what did he wish that day? It wasn’t possible that he wanted to be away from Catherine, yet he did want to,—for a few hours, for a little while; why, if only to have the joy of coming back to her. He was conscious, and the consciousness surprised him, that he didn’t want to kiss her for a bit. No, he didn’t. And fancy not wanting to, when a month ago he would have sold everything he had, including his soul, to be allowed to! That came, thought Christopher, narrowing his eyes to watch a white sail out at sea bending in the wind—Jove, how jolly it looked, scudding along like that—of not having contrast. There had to be interruption, pause, the mind switched off on to something else. How could one ever know the joy of coming back if one didn’t first go?
He wanted to go that day, to go by himself, to do things she couldn’t do, and then come back all new to her again. He wanted to tramp miles in the wind he knew was blowing gloriously beyond their sheltering cliff—look how that yacht cut through the sea—up out into the open country where the larks were singing; miles and miles he wanted to tramp in the sun, and stretch all his slack muscles, and get into an almighty sweat, and drink great draughts of beer, and rid himself of the sort of sticky languor that was laying hold of him. He couldn’t spend another day just sitting about or strolling gently round; he must be up and doing.
Catherine wasn’t able to come with him, and he didn’t want her to. She said the spring always made her lazy at first, till she got used to it. She certainly wasn’t able to walk as she had walked with him before her marriage, and was very evidently soon tired, and sometimes looked so extraordinarily tired that it frightened him. She ought to rest, these first spring days, then, just as he ought to take violent exercise. She slept now very late into the morning, and he was glad she did, his tired little love; but even that didn’t seem to make her be able to be active for the rest of the day. He was glad she did sleep late, only it did break up the day a bit, not knowing when she was coming down. It kept one hanging about, unable to plan anything. If he could be certain she wouldn’t wake up, say, till lunch time, he could do a lot in the morning, but as it was he couldn’t do anything but just wait. And he always forgot at night to tell her that if she found he wasn’t there next day when she came down it would be because he had gone for a tramp, but he would be back to lunch. He always forgot at night, because at night the thing called next morning seemed so completely unimportant and uninteresting. He forgot everything at night, except Catherine and love. And then, in its turn, came morning; and it was important, and it was interesting.
He opened the gate and went out into the road. The baker’s cart from Ventnor was swinging round the corner on its two high wheels, the boy cracking his whip and whistling. Enough to make any one whistle, a day like that. The boy grinned at him as he passed, and he grinned back. He would have liked to be driving that fast little mare himself, and shouting out triumphant epithalamiums as he drove. What was the plural of epithalamium? He must ask Lewes. Dash it all, why couldn’t one have one’s friends about one more? They were always somewhere else. If Lewes were there now they could join the golf club and have a gorgeous time. Lewes was very good at golf. Lewes was good at everything, really; and it wasn’t his fault if he was so damned clever into the bargain and nosed away most of his life in books. Besides, one could swear at Lewes, be absolutely natural, say any old thing that came into one’s head. With a woman, with the dearest of women, with her whom one worshipped body, soul and mind, there was a being-in-the-drawing-room flavour about things; and after a bout of drawing-room one wanted a bout of public-house,—putting it roughly, that is, putting it very roughly. Catherine, his beloved, to whom he whispered things he could never tell another human being, to whom he told every thought he had of beauty and romance, was more or less the drawing-room, and Lewes, who drank only water, and who, though he listened unmoved to any oath on any subject, was himself in his language most choice, was more or less the public-house.
He strolled aimlessly about the road, kicking stones out of his path. He wished old Lewes would appear round the bend from St. Lawrence, and see for himself what happiness was like. He had been a fool from the start about Catherine, Lewes had. All wrong. The poor chap hadn’t a notion what love was. But if he didn’t know about love he knew about most other things, and it would be jolly to have a yarn with him, and listen to him being clever.
Christopher looked up the road, and down the road, almost as if, in answer to his wish, Lewes must appear. The young leaves were bursting out in the woods on either side, making delicate shadows on the dust. The sky was intensely blue, and a warm wind full of the scent of hawthorns tossed the small fat white clouds across it. God, what a day, what a day to do something tremendous in!
He turned quickly, and went back to the cottage, and looking up at Catherine’s window whistled softly. If she were awake she would come to the window, and he would tell her he was going for a quick walk; if she wasn’t awake he would leave a note for her and be off.
The bedroom window was open, but the curtains were drawn.
He whistled again, and watched for a movement behind them.
Nothing stirred.
He went indoors, scribbled a note saying he would be back to lunch, left it on the table of the sitting-room, seized a stick, and started down the path and up the road with great energetic strides in the direction of Blackgang. It was eleven o’clock, and he would walk as hard as he knew how for two hours. That ought to do him good; that ought to take the slackness out of him. Oh, jolly, jolly to be walking again, really walking....
But hardly had he got a few yards from the cottage when he heard Catherine calling. He heard her little voice through all the scrunchings of his footsteps on the road and the rustlings of spring in the trees, as he would hear it, he was sure, if she should call him from the sleep of death.
He stopped, and went back slowly.
She was at the bedroom window, holding the curtains a tiny strip apart, for she shrank from showing herself to him at the window in the morning light before she had had time to do what she could for her silly face, which was being so tiresome these days and looking so persistently haggard.
‘Chris—Chris—where are you going?’ she called.
‘I left you a note, darling.’
‘A note? Why?’
‘I didn’t want to wake you. I’m going for a walk.’
‘Oh I’d love to come too—wait five minutes——’
‘But I want to go very quick, and as far as I can before lunch.’
‘Don’t let’s come back to lunch, then we needn’t hurry. I’ll be down in five seconds.’
And he heard sounds of hasty moving about the room.
He sat down on the verandah-step and lit his pipe. Well, it couldn’t be helped; he must wait till to-morrow for his exercise.
She wasn’t five seconds but twenty-five minutes, but when she did come down in a broad-brimmed hat that shaded her face, and smiled her sweet smile at him and slipped her hand through his arm, he cheerfully gave up the idea of fierce solitary exercise and was glad she was there. His darling. His Catherine. His dream of happiness come true. His astonishing angel-wife.
‘Let’s stay out all day,’ she said, as they walked up the road, again in the direction of Blackgang but at a moderate pace that would never, he knew, however long it went on, get a drop of the sweat he craved for out of him.
‘But we haven’t brought food.’
‘We’ll get the hotel at Blackgang to cut us some sandwiches and take them with us. Oh Chris, isn’t it a gorgeous day! Did you ever know anything like it? Oh, I’m so happy. By the way—good morning.’
She stopped and held up her face. He laughed and kissed it.
‘Darling,’ he said, kissing her again. Yes; it would have been beastly of him to go off and leave her, to go off and let her wake up and find herself alone.
At the hotel they asked, as Catherine had suggested, for lunch to take with them, and while it was being got ready went out through the heat and hot-house flowers of the glass verandah to the fresh garden glowing and blowing with the blossoms of May. It was a sight, that garden on the cliffs above the sea, jewelled with tulips, frothed with fruit-blossom, and just beyond it, splendidly holding it in with a golden circlet, gorse.
‘It’s much more beautiful here than at our cottage,’ said Catherine, looking about her.
‘How could anything ever be more beautiful than our cottage?’ he answered; and she smiled at him, love in her eyes, and softly slid her hand along his sleeve.
In the garden, reading The Times, was Mr. Jerrold, the eminent editor of the Saturday Judge, who with his daughter Sybil to keep him company had come down from London for a fortnight’s rest and quiet. He had rested now for a whole week, and was beginning to feel that quiet can be overdone. His daughter Sybil had long been aware of it. The hotel was empty—he had hoped it would be when he engaged his rooms, but now thought that perhaps some one else in it might not be wholly disagreeable—and when, on raising his eyes from The Times he saw two visitors emerging from the glass verandah in which he spent his solitary evenings reading among pots of cinerarias, he was glad.
So was his daughter Sybil, who had been down the cliff and up again three times already since breakfast, and was wondering what she could do with the rest of the morning till lunch-time.
Mr. Jerrold watched the new arrivals with deep interest. They would be a great addition to the party, if he and his daughter could properly be described as a party. The young man was a good type of clean, nice-looking young Englishman, public school and university, and would do admirably to play about with poor Billy, thwarted in her desire for prolonged and violent exercise by his inability to take it with her, while he would find the lady, who seemed just about that agreeable age when conversation is preferred to activity, a pleasant companion meanwhile.
He awaited their passing where he and Billy were sitting in basket-chairs under some hawthorns; when they did, he would ask them if they had seen that morning’s Times, and thus open up channels of friendship.
But the new arrivals edged away across the grass, not yet realising, no doubt, how rare was intercourse in that lonely spot and accordingly how precious. So he got up and strolled after them—(‘Poor father,’ thought his daughter, who only knew him as reserved, ‘I had no idea he has been as bored as all that’)—and overtook them at the edge of the garden, where they were gazing at the sea, brilliant blue between the great orange-coloured branches of the gorse.
‘Wonderful colour, isn’t it,’ said Mr. Jerrold pleasantly, waving his Times at the gorse and the sea.
‘Marvellous,’ said the young man heartily.
‘Too wonderful,’ cooed the lady.
In a few minutes they were talking as friends, the young man in particular, who on closer view was even more what Mr. Jerrold felt sure would amuse poor Billy, being very friendly.
Mr. Jerrold called to his daughter, who had stayed in her basket-chair.
‘Come and be introduced, Billy,’ he called; and when she had come he presented her to the lady.
‘My daughter Sybil,’ said Mr. Jerrold, expecting in return to be told the names of the attractive new arrivals.
He was told. ‘Our name is Monckton,’ said the young man, laughing and turning redder than ever,—why should he laugh and turn red? wondered Mr. Jerrold, unaware that this was the very first time Christopher had spoken of himself and Catherine collectively as Monckton.
‘Ours is Jerrold,’ said Mr. Jerrold; and proceeded pleasantly to assure the lady that she would find the hotel comfortable.
It was a real disappointment, so much did he like the look of both of them, so admirably did their ages fit in with his and Billy’s, to be told they were not going to stay there but had only come over from St. Lawrence, where they had a cottage, to get some food to take with them on a walk.
Both the Jerrolds’ faces fell at this. Billy’s broad smile seemed to contract by about half a yard. She had two long rows of very white teeth, endless rows they seemed, so wide was her smile, and they looked even whiter than they were because the sea wind had tanned her face. Her eyes, too, looked bluer than they were for the same reason, and the sunshine of a week spent hatless had bleached her hair the colour of flax. She was a sturdy creature, firm on solid ankles, and not particularly pretty, but as she stood there bareheaded, and the wind blew her fair hair across her forehead, and she smiled immensely at everybody, she fitted in with complete harmony to the young jollity of the morning and the month.
Christopher thought she looked like a good-natured young shark.
‘What an awful pity,’ she said. ‘We might have gone for excursions together.’
And she said it with such a heartiness of chagrin that they all laughed.
The end of it was that when the sandwiches came and the Moncktons went, the Jerrolds, still talking, went with them, first to the entrance of the hotel garden, then into the road, then, still talking, along the road.
The Jerrolds not having talked for a week were unable now to leave off. Mr. Jerrold found himself wishing to tell the small agreeable lady who he was, and why, and how, and did so with a completeness that surprised himself. His daughter, striding on ahead with the young man—they seemed naturally to shoot ahead together, the two young ones, the minute they got on to the road—explained just as completely to her companion, who appeared at once to tumble to it, the dreadful feeling of being about to burst after a week’s flopping round with somebody who couldn’t be left while one rushed all over the island, and couldn’t, owing to age and infirmity and being a father and all that, rush too.
‘Just look at those youngsters forging along,’ said Mr. Jerrold, smiling complacently at the two figures in front, at their four worsted-stockinged legs moving so quickly in step, at their swinging arms, and their bare heads turned to each other while they talked and laughed.
His companion looked, but said nothing. He wondered what relation she was to the young man that she too should be a Monckton, and decided that she must be either his father’s second wife or his aunt by marriage. Not a blood relation, clearly; they were too much unlike.
‘Is there anything more delightful in the world,’ said Mr. Jerrold, gazing benevolently at the pair ahead, ‘than a wholesome English boy and girl?’
At this his companion murmured something that he understood meant that the two would soon be out of sight, which they certainly would be if they went on at that pace, and he said, ‘Yes—quite. Hi, there,’ he called, ‘you youngsters! Steady—we can’t keep up!’
But the wind was against him, and they strode on unheeding.
‘Not that,’ said Mr. Jerrold, turning gallantly to the lady, ‘it would be anything but my gain if they did go on. Why not let them? And you and I sit down somewhere and talk.’
‘But Christopher has got the sandwiches,’ said his new friend.
‘So he has. Christopher. Delightful name. Attractive youth. Well, let Christopher eat them, sharing them with Billy somewhere at the end of their first twenty miles or so, and allow me the pleasure of offering you lunch in the hotel.’
‘How very kind of you. But Christopher——’
‘Well, you see he doesn’t hear,’ said Mr. Jerrold. ‘I don’t suppose he’ll even notice that we’re not following. When young people get together.... I assure you it would give me the greatest pleasure to entertain you, and we can sit afterwards in that nice garden in comfortable chairs till they come back.’
Mr. Jerrold paused persuasively in the road. After a week of not speaking to a soul but his daughter he ached to entertain. The two on in front turned a corner and disappeared. Mr. Jerrold, whose wife had been dead some years, felt the situation unfolding romantically. This was a dear little lady, and she looked as though she needed taking care of. He had a strong wish to give her lunch.
‘But——’ she began.
‘We will consider no buts,’ said Mr. Jerrold, even more gallantly. ‘Your nephew—is he your nephew?—won’t notice——’
‘He’s my husband,’ said the little lady, flushing a very bright scarlet.
Well; what a surprise. Mr. Jerrold was really most surprised. Not that the lady wasn’t, he was sure, a most agreeable wife for any man to have, but that the young man seemed so very young to have one at all; and if at all she ought, to match him, be a mere slip of a girl,—somebody about Billy’s age.
Yes; it was a surprise. Mr. Jerrold didn’t quite know what to say.
‘In that case——’ he began.
But really he hadn’t an idea what to say, and stood in the middle of the road staring down at the little lady through his monocle—he wore a monocle—and she stared back at him, while the flush slowly ebbed away out of her face.