LITMIR.BIZ

Скачать книгу

involuntarily, hard, as if against something; but Life forced her through this gate of suffering, too, and she would submit. At any rate, it would give him what he wanted, which was her deepest wish. She brooded and brooded and brooded herself towards accepting him.

      He courted her now like a lover. Often, when he grew hot, she put his face from her, held it between her hands, and looked in his eyes. He could not meet her gaze. Her dark eyes, full of love, earnest and searching, made him turn away. Not for an instant would she let him forget. Back again he had to torture himself into a sense of his responsibility and hers. Never any relaxing, never any leaving himself to the great hunger and impersonality of passion; he must be brought back to a deliberate, reflective creature. As if from a swoon of passion she caged him back to the littleness, the personal relationship. He could not bear it. “Leave me alone—leave me alone!” he wanted to cry; but she wanted him to look at her with eyes full of love. His eyes, full of the dark, impersonal fire of desire, did not belong to her.

      There was a great crop of cherries at the farm. The trees at the back of the house, very large and tall, hung thick with scarlet and crimson drops, under the dark leaves. Paul and Edgar were gathering the fruit one evening. It had been a hot day, and now the clouds were rolling in the sky, dark and warm. Paul combed high in the tree, above the scarlet roofs of the buildings. The wind, moaning steadily, made the whole tree rock with a subtle, thrilling motion that stirred the blood. The young man, perched insecurely in the slender branches, rocked till he felt slightly drunk, reached down the boughs, where the scarlet beady cherries hung thick underneath, and tore off handful after handful of the sleek, cool-fleshed fruit. Cherries touched his ears and his neck as he stretched forward, their chill finger-tips sending a flash down his blood. All shades of red, from a golden vermilion to a rich crimson, glowed and met his eyes under a darkness of leaves.

      The sun, going down, suddenly caught the broken clouds. Immense piles of gold flared out in the south-east, heaped in soft, glowing yellow right up the sky. The world, till now dusk and grey, reflected the gold glow, astonished. Everywhere the trees, and the grass, and the far-off water, seemed roused from the twilight and shining.

      Miriam came out wondering.

      “Oh!” Paul heard her mellow voice call, “isn't it wonderful?”

      He looked down. There was a faint gold glimmer on her face, that looked very soft, turned up to him.

      “How high you are!” she said.

      Beside her, on the rhubarb leaves, were four dead birds, thieves that had been shot. Paul saw some cherry stones hanging quite bleached, like skeletons, picked clear of flesh. He looked down again to Miriam.

      “Clouds are on fire,” he said.

      “Beautiful!” she cried.

      She seemed so small, so soft, so tender, down there. He threw a handful of cherries at her. She was startled and frightened. He laughed with a low, chuckling sound, and pelted her. She ran for shelter, picking up some cherries. Two fine red pairs she hung over her ears; then she looked up again.

      “Haven't you got enough?” she asked.

      “Nearly. It is like being on a ship up here.”

      “And how long will you stay?”

      “While the sunset lasts.”

      She went to the fence and sat there, watching the gold clouds fall to pieces, and go in immense, rose-coloured ruin towards the darkness. Gold flamed to scarlet, like pain in its intense brightness. Then the scarlet sank to rose, and rose to crimson, and quickly the passion went out of the sky. All the world was dark grey. Paul scrambled quickly down with his basket, tearing his shirt-sleeve as he did so.

      “They are lovely,” said Miriam, fingering the cherries.

      “I've torn my sleeve,” he answered.

      She took the three-cornered rip, saying:

      “I shall have to mend it.” It was near the shoulder. She put her fingers through the tear. “How warm!” she said.

      He laughed. There was a new, strange note in his voice, one that made her pant.

      “Shall we stay out?” he said.

      “Won't it rain?” she asked.

      “No, let us walk a little way.”

      They went down the fields and into the thick plantation of trees and pines.

      “Shall we go in among the trees?” he asked.

      “Do you want to?”

      “Yes.”

      It was very dark among the firs, and the sharp spines pricked her face. She was afraid. Paul was silent and strange.

      “I like the darkness,” he said. “I wish it were thicker—good, thick darkness.”

      He seemed to be almost unaware of her as a person: she was only to him then a woman. She was afraid.

      He stood against a pine-tree trunk and took her in his arms. She relinquished herself to him, but it was a sacrifice in which she felt something of horror. This thick-voiced, oblivious man was a stranger to her.

      Later it began to rain. The pine-trees smelled very strong. Paul lay with his head on the ground, on the dead pine needles, listening to the sharp hiss of the rain—a steady, keen noise. His heart was down, very heavy. Now he realised that she had not been with him all the time, that her soul had stood apart, in a sort of horror. He was physically at rest, but no more. Very dreary at heart, very sad, and very tender, his fingers wandered over her face pitifully. Now again she loved him deeply. He was tender and beautiful.

      “The rain!” he said.

      “Yes—is it coming on you?”

      She put her hands over him, on his hair, on his shoulders, to feel if the raindrops fell on him. She loved him dearly. He, as he lay with his face on the dead pine-leaves, felt extraordinarily quiet. He did not mind if the raindrops came on him: he would have lain and got wet through: he felt as if nothing mattered, as if his living were smeared away into the beyond, near and quite lovable. This strange, gentle reaching-out to death was new to him.

      “We must go,” said Miriam.

      “Yes,” he answered, but did not move.

      To him now, life seemed a shadow, day a white shadow; night, and death, and stillness, and inaction, this seemed like BEING. To be alive, to be urgent and insistent—that was NOT-TO-BE. The highest of all was to melt out into the darkness and sway there, identified with the great Being.

      “The rain is coming in on us,” said Miriam.

      He rose, and assisted her.

      “It is a pity,” he said.

      “What?”

      “To have to go. I feel so still.”

      “Still!” she repeated.

      “Stiller than I have ever been in my life.”

      He was walking with his hand in hers. She pressed his fingers, feeling a slight fear. Now he seemed beyond her; she had a fear lest she should lose him.

      “The fir-trees are like presences on the darkness: each one only a presence.”

      She was afraid, and said nothing.

      “A sort of hush: the whole night wondering and asleep: I suppose that's what we do in death—sleep in wonder.”

      She had been afraid before of the brute in him: now of the mystic. She trod beside him in silence. The rain fell with a heavy “Hush!” on the trees. At last they gained the cartshed.

      “Let us stay here awhile,” he said.

      There was a sound of rain everywhere, smothering everything.

      “I feel so strange and still,” he said; “along with everything.”

      “Ay,”

Скачать книгу