Martin was stubbornly silent.

"I agree with Mr. Martin," Phyllis said, "It's not a very cheerful game. If we didn't say our thoughts we must have had some good reason for keeping them silent. Besides, I must speak to Lizzie about breakfast."

"I'll take the car to the stable."

"Can I go with you?" Martin asked.

George had still cherished a forlorn hope that the world was large enough for him and Joyce to have a few moments alone. For several days the stable had been sanctified in his antic.i.p.ation. In the hayloft above the old disused stalls there was a big doorway that opened toward the sea. That mustily fragrant place was his favourite retreat when solitude seemed urgent. There, he had thought, he and Joyce could talk. He had even put an old steamer rug on the hay so they might sit more comfortably. There would be moonlight over the water.

"Is it the same stable where we used to play as kids?" cried Ruth. "Oh, let's all go. I want to see it again.

Why, that old haymow was the first place Ben ever kissed me."

"What did he do that for?" said Martin.

"Perhaps he'll do it again," said George bitterly. It was just like Ruth to ruin the stable for him.

"Well, I don't want to spoil any one else's plans," said Ben.

"We could play hide-and-seek in the hay," Martin suggested.Now they were all piling into the car, to ride round the house to the stable. This was of a piece with the absurdity of everything else, George thought. People were always driving up in crowds to visit his secrets. Like sight-seeing busses loaded with excursionists. The world loves to trample over your private ecstasies and leave them littered with sc.r.a.ps of paper and banana peel. And this fellow Martin, with his cool mockery, was beginning to get on his nerves.

The engine leapt into life with the same eager alacrity as if they had been starting off for a long drive. Yes, the human objective means nothing to the routine of Nature. She looses her lightning indifferently, whether between the sooty termini of a spark plug or from charged cloud to earth. She squanders as much energy in a meadow of hallooing crickets as in a human spirit tormented by conflicting pa.s.sions.

They made the circuit of the house. Down the drive from the front door to the main road, along the side of the house, then up the back lane by the kitchen and the circular bed of cannas. Only a hundred yards, but it seemed interminable because it was futile and meaningless. Something had gone wrong in his time sense. As the car pa.s.sed the kitchen window he could see Phyllis talking to Lizzie, holding up a loaf of bread as she spoke. At the same moment Ruth was saying something about the moon coming up. His mind went off in a long curve. He felt a gush of anger at Phyllis because she had been so unaware of his feeling for Joyce. If she had been spiteful, or jealous, or suspicious, how much easier it would have been.

Her pettiness would have driven him and Joyce blissfully into each other's arms, without the faintest sense of remorse. But this strangely detached Phyllis who seemed to move in a dream, instead of the familiar Phyllis of tempers and reproaches, was a different problem. Even sin, he thought furiously, is to be made as difficult as possible for me. And I had always imagined it would be so easy. Will G.o.d ever forgive me if I don't commit the sins I was intended to? G.o.d will get no praise from me, He's packed the house with a claque of crickets to put the show over. Through the window Phyllis's golden head shone in a haze of lamplight. As always, when angry at her he loved her most. When you love a woman, why make her life miserable by marrying her? Marriage demands too much. . . .

From this speculation he came back to find Ruth just finishing her sentence, the car still opposite the window, the loaf of bread still lifted in Phyllis's hand. It occurred to him that this evening was d.a.m.nably like the slowed motion-pictures in which the stream of life is r.e.t.a.r.ded into its component gestures. Now he was to have the embarra.s.sment of witnessing the actual rhythm of living, the sluggish pattern that underlies gay human ritual, the grave airy dancing of creation treading softly its dark measure to unheard, undreamed music. The smallest alteration in the mind's pace changes everything, as some trifling misprint turns a commonplace newspaper headline into obscenity.

They drove into the stable.

"I miss the nice old horsey smell," said Ruth. "Too bad, it's only a garage now."

"Which was it you wanted to revive, the horsey smell or the embraces of Ben?" said George. "The loft hasn't changed much, I think."

He snapped on the light. While the others climbed the narrow little stair behind the old feed bins he filled the radiator with water and poured oil into the crank case. Morosely he heard their words overhead.

"Someone's left a blanket up here."

"Look, the bay's all full of moonlight. I didn't remember it was like that."

"We were children then, we didn't know about the moon. We had to go to bed too early."

"The old swing's gone." (This was Mr. Martin's voice.)"Why . . . how did you know? Yes, that's where it was, that beam. . . ."

I thought that lunatic had been here before, George said to himself. He seems to know his way about.

He started the motor again. He thought he had noticed a faint roughness in its turning. He listened attentively, marvelling at the strong, hurrying fidelity of those airy explosions. I know why this car has kept her youth, he thought. She hasn't had any proper care, but she's been loved. A soft throbby purring, with a sweet quavering rhythm; the sound of sliding, of revolving, of vapour evenly expelled. It was a consoling, normal kind of sound; complete in itself; it shut out the voices upstairs. A touch on the throttle and it rose to a growl of unused power, a shout of fierce unquestioning a.s.sent, not much different from defiance. The old barn rang. It was as if an officer of some colonial regiment called on his legions for a fatal exploit, and heard in their answering yell a voice of savagery that might turn against himself.

He switched the key; the sound slid off into a soft conclusive sigh. There was an almost human breath of frustration in it. He closed the hood, his mind too vague for thinking, and saw Joyce standing there.

"I thought Mr. and Mrs. Brook would like a moment of privacy," she whispered.

He had her in his arms. On her soft lips was all the bittersweet of their long separation, of their mirth together, of their absurd and precious pa.s.sion, denied by men and ratified by crickets. It was the perfect embrace of those who are no longer children, who can sweeten the impossible by mocking it a little. The tingling triumph of social farce, undreamed by poor candid Nature - the first illicit kiss!

"I suppose," she said tremulously, "that this really is what they call a Guilty Pa.s.sion."

"My dear, my dear. What a queer world, where one has to apologize for loving people."

As though down a long avenue of distance he saw her in the perspective of her life: an exquisite gallant figure going about her brave concerns: so small and resolute in her single struggle with the world, and coming to his arms at last. He knew then that poets have not lied; that fairy tales are true; that life is hunger, and for every emptiness caters its own just food. Her mind that he had loved was tangled up with a body. Chast.i.ty was probably a much overrated virtue. For her sake, if she desired it, he was willing to make the heroic effort which is necessary to yield to temptation.

He held her close, in silence. Austere resolutions slipped away like sand in an hour gla.s.s. For an instant his only thought was a silly satisfaction that she must reach so far upward to meet his lips. His mind taunted him for thinking this.

"Dear fool, dear d.a.m.ned fool," he said. "Yes, you're just as you should be: lips cool and eyelids warm.

And as soft as I always imagined. Oh, it's not fair that any one should be so soft. Joyce, do you know why I had to have you here? It's just a year . . . you remember?"

"Yes. The day you were looking out of the window. How long it seems."

"We begin to feel like a nice old unmarried couple."

She laughed, her rare broken laugh.

"Oh, George, then it is really you. The Fourth you, I mean. I couldn't quite believe it."

Voices came down from the loft. First it was Martin: . . . "That's what I like about her. She looks as if she's happy inside."Then Ruth, with a scornful snicker: "Happy? I dare say. Did you see the way she looked at George at the dinner table? That kind of woman's always happy with someone else's husband."

There was an inaudible murmur, then Ben's voice: "It's a form of nervousness."

Joyce drew back from his arms. Her eyes were dark with horror.

"Oh . . ." she said with a sob. "Why are people so . . . so inadequate."

Ruth's little sneer, falling on them like a crystal spirt of poison, burned George's bare heart.

"Joyce, dear Joyce . . ." He put his hands on her shoulders. "I must tell you, I must. I've waited so long.

Oh, it's so long since I've done anything I want to, I've forgotten how. Joyce, you don't know how I needed you. I was hungry, I was a beggar, you fed me with laughter and taught me how to suffer. You taught me how to love, yes, everything I love I love a thousand times better because I know you. G.o.d help me, I love even Phyllis better because of you. . . ."

With a gesture of pathos and despair she buried her face in his coat. They heard the others beginning to descend. To postpone for a few moments the necessity of speech, he turned wildly to the car and again started the engine. As Ruth appeared at the foot of the stairs, her mouth opening to say something, he speeded the motor to a roar.

"Oh, George," piped Ruth as they were walking back to the house. "I've left my scarf. I must have dropped it in the loft. Ben'll get it. Have you locked the barn?"

"No, we don't lock anything around here."

"You laugh at locksmiths," said Joyce.

"I'll go," George said. "I can find it easier than Ben. There's a flashlight in the car."

He walked back to the stable. A lemonade-coloured moon was swimming above the maple tree. He did not bother to get the torch but slipped up the stair, moving noiselessly on rubber soles. The scarf was lying just at the top, where the steps emerged into the old harness room. He was about to glance into the hayloft, to satisfy his sentimental vision of how it would have looked to him and Joyce, a cavern of country fragrance, a musk of dead summers still banked there in pourried mounds. He was halted, with a catch of breath, by murmuring voices. He peered round the doorpost. A slope of powdery moonlight carved a pale alley through the heavy shadow. On his rug, spread toward the open window, sat Nounou and Brady's man, ardently enlaced.

The whispering pair, engrossed in rudimentary endearment, were oblivious of all else. It amused him to reflect that they must have been hiding anxiously somewhere in the loft while the visitors palavered near them. A single cricket, embalmed in the hay, chirped sweet airy prosits - solitary lutanist (or prothalamist) of the occasion. George stood smitten by the vulgar irony. There was cruel farce and distemper in finding his own dear torment parodied in these terms of yokel dalliance. The parable was only too plain. This back-yard amour was as rich in Nature's eyes as the kingliest smoke-room story of the Old Testament. Nature, genial procuress, who impartially honours the breach and the observance.

With the crude humour of the small boy, never quite buried in any man, he emitted a loud groaning wail of mimic anguish. He thrilled with malicious mirth to see the horrified swains leap up in panic. He tiptoedstealthily away, leaving them aghast.

This has got to end, he said to himself.

XIV

If there were only one moonshiny night in each century, men would never be done talking of it. Old lying books would be consulted; in padded club chairs grizzled gentry whose grandfathers had witnessed it would prate of that milky pervasion that once diluted the unmixed absolute of night. And those who had no vested gossip in the matter would proclaim it unlikely to recur, or impossible to have happened.

Mr. and Mrs. Brook and Martin had gone on toward the veranda. Joyce lingered where the edge of the house's shadow was a black frontier on the gra.s.s. The lawn was a lake of pallor. Under the aquamarine sky, glazed like the curly inmost of a sh.e.l.l, earth was not white or glittering, but a soft wash of argentine grey. There was light enough to see how invisible the world truly is. The pure unpurposeful glamour poured like dissolving spirit on the dull fogged obscure of ordinary evening: the cheap veneers of shadow peeled away, true darkness was perceivable: the dark that threads like marrow in the bones of things: the dark in which light is only an accidental tremble. Where trees and shrubs glowed in foamy tissue, hung c.h.i.n.ks and tinctures of appeasing nothing. This was abyss unqualified, darkness neat.

She was drowned at the bottom of this ocean of transparency. She felt as people look under water, pressed out of shape, refracted, blurred by the pressure of an enormous depth of love. In such clean light a thought, a memory, a desire, could put on shape and living, stare down the cautious masks of habit.

The trustiest senses could play traitor inside this bubble of pearly l.u.s.tre; the hottest bonfires of mirth would be only a flicker in this dim stainless peace. Better to go indoors, join the polite vaudeville of evasion, escape the unbearable reality of this enchanted . . .

"Here you are!" said a voice. "Thank goodness. I want to ask you things. You're different."

It was Martin.

"What's the matter with all these people?" he exclaimed. "Why can't they have fun? Why do they keep on telling me they love me? I don't want to be loved. You can't be happy when you're being loved all the time. It's a nuisance. I want to build castles in the sand and play croquet and draw pictures. I want to go to bed and get a good sleep for the Picnic; and that lady wants me to kiss her. I did it once; isn't that enough?"

Here was a merriment: to expect her, at this particular junction of here and now, to join his deprecations.

"Quite enough," she said. "But it depends on the person. She may not think so."

"It's Mrs. Phyllis. I asked her if she was ready for me to go to bed, and she said I mustn't say such things.

What's the matter with her? I think she's angry. Everybody seems angry. Why is it?"

Her pulses were applauding her private thought: If Phyllis loves him, I can love George.

"And I saw Bunny in the garden. She says you're the only one who can help me because you almost understand."

"Bunny! Bunny who? What do you mean? . . ."

He must be mad. Yet it seemed an intelligible kind of madness: some unrecognized but urgent meaning sang inside it like a sweet old tune. In the misty moonlight she saw the great wheel of Time spinning so fast that its dazzling spokes seemed to shift and rotate backward. But her mind still intoned its own jubilee: If Phyllis loves him, I can love George. It's all right for me to love George. Be ye lift up, ye everlasting doors!"Bunny Richmond, of course. She's playing some kind of hide-and-seek round here. It's not fair."

"It is fair!" cried Bunny pa.s.sionately. He could hear her calling to him from somewhere just round the corner of the path. "Oh, Martin, Martin, can't you see? I can't tell you, you've got to find out for yourself."

Bunny had cried out so eagerly that even Joyce almost heard her. She turned to look.

"What was that, someone whispering?"

"It's only Bunny," he said impatiently. "She's playing tricks on me. She wants me to go away."

Joyce had stepped out of the shadow, and now Martin partly saw.

"Why, I know who you are. Why . . . why, of course. They called you Miss Clyde, that fooled me.

You're not Miss Anybody, you're Joyce . . . the one who gave me the mouse. You don't love me too, do you? People only love you when they want you to do things."

Bunny kept calling him, but he closed his ears to her.

"No, I don't love you," she said slowly. "I love George."

But she had to look at him again to be sure. He was very beautiful and perplexed. Perhaps she loved everybody. For an instant she thought he was George; she could see now that there was a faint resemblance between them. Then she noticed that George was there too. He had come along the path from the stable. His face was sharpened with resolve. He paid no attention to Martin, but spoke directly to her.

"Here's your scarf," he said, almost roughly, holding it out. Then he remembered it was not hers, and thrust it in his pocket. He made an uncertain step toward her.

"Oh, we can't go on like this," he said harshly. "This has got to . . ." He made a queer awkward gesture with his arms. She went to them.

"How funny you are," observed Martin from the shadow. "First you want to push her away and then you hug her."

Apparently George did not hear him.

"Why did you wake me?" he was asking her. "Why couldn't I go on sleepwalking through life? If I had never known you, how much anguish I'd have missed. Oh, my poor dear."

"You mustn't talk to her like that," said Martin. "This is Joyce, she thinks once is enough. She isn't like Phyllis."

"Go away, Martin," called Bunny. "It's no use now."

George held her fiercely. His voice trembled on broken words of tenderness. His bewildered mind craved the ease of words, a little peace, a little resting time. Must this glory of desire be carried for ever secret in his heart?

"You'll hurt her," said Martin angrily.

This they had stumbled on, George's heart cried to him. It was none of their seeking. She belongs to who can understand her, insisted the sweet sophistries of blood. Joyce leaned up to him, the dear backwardcurve of woman yearning to the face of her dream.

"Don't you know me?" Martin appealed to her. "You gave me the mouse yesterday."

He was unheeded. They did not even know he was there.

"You're doing it too," he said to her bitterly, and went away.

"George, when did I give you a mouse?"

"A mouse? What are you talking about? You're going to give me something much better than a mouse.

Do you know what I said to you once in a dream? I said, the worst of my love for you is that it's so carnal."

Her eyes met his, troubled but steady.

"And do you know what you answered?"