第55章 THE EIGHTH(4)

Sir Richmond, faced with his own nocturnal decision, was now moved to oppose it flatly."Nothing that one can do is impossible."She glanced again at Belinda and bent down towards him."Suppose," she said, "you got back into that car with me;suppose that instead of going on as we have planned, you took me away.How much of us would go?""You would go," said Sir Richmond, "and my heart.""And this work of yours? And your honour? For the honour of a man in this New Age of yours will be first of all in the work he does for the world.And you will leave your work to be just a lover.And the work that I might do because of my father's wealth; all that would vanish too.We should leave all of that, all of our usefulness, all that much of ourselves.But what has made me love you? Just your breadth of vision, just the sense that you mattered.What has made you love me? Just that I have understood the dream of your work.All that we should have to leave behind.We should specialize, in our own scandal.We should run away just for one thing.To think, by sharing the oldest, simplest, dearest indulgences in the world, that we had got each other.When really we had lost each other, lost all that mattered...."Her face was flushed with the earnestness of her conviction.

Her eyes were bright with tears."Don't think I don't love you.It's so hard to say all this.Somehow it seems like going back on something--something supreme.Our instincts have got us....Don't think I'd hold myself from you, dear.I'd give myself to you with both hands.I love you--When a woman loves--I at any rate--she loves altogether.But this thing--I am convinced--cannot be.I must go my own way, the way I have to go.My father is the man, obstinate, more than half a savage.For me--I know it--he has the jealousy of ten husbands.If you take me--If our secret becomes manifest--If you are to take me and keep me, then his life and your life will become wholly this Feud, nothing but this Feud.You have to fight him anyhow--that is why I of all people must keep out of the quarrel.For him, it would be an immense excitement, full of the possibility of fierce satisfactions; for you, whether you won me or lost me, it would be utter waste and ruin."She paused and then went on:--"And for me too, waste and ruin.I shall be a woman fought over.I shall be fought over as dogs fight over a bone.I shall sink back to the level of Helen of Troy.I shall cease to be a free citizen, a responsible free person.Whether you win me or lose me it will be waste and ruin for us both.Your Fuel Commission will go to pieces, all the wide, enduring work you have set me dreaming about will go the same way.We shall just be another romantic story....No!"Sir Richmond sat still, a little like a sullen child, she thought."I hate all this," he said slowly."I didn't think of your father before, and now I think of him it sets me bristling for a fight.It makes all this harder to give up.

And yet, do you know, in the night I was thinking, I was coming to conclusions, very like yours.For quite other reasons.I thought we ought not to--We have to keep friends anyhow and hear of each other?""That goes without saying."

"I thought we ought not to go on to be lovers in any way that Would affect you, touch you too closely....I was sorry--Ihad kissed you."

"Not I.No.Don't be sorry for that.I am glad we have fallen in love, more glad than I have been of anything else in my life, and glad we have spoken plainly....Though we have to part.And--"Her whisper came close to him."For a whole day yet, all round the clock twice, you and I have one another."Miss Seyffert began speaking as soon as she was well within earshot.

"I don't know the name of a single one of these flowers" she cried, "except the bluebells.Look at this great handful I've gotten! Springtime in Italy doesn't compare with it, not for a moment."Section 5

Because Belinda Seyffert was in the dicky behind them with her alert interest in their emotions all too thinly and obviously veiled, it seemed more convenient to Sir Richmond and Miss Grammont to talk not of themselves but of Man and Woman and of that New Age according to the prophet Martineau, which Sir Richmond had partly described and mainly invented and ascribed to his departed friend.They talked anthropologically, philosophically, speculatively, with an absurd pretence of detachment, they sat side by side in the little car, scarcely glancing at one another, but side by side and touching each other, and all the while they were filled with tenderness and love and hunger for one another.