At length she moved aside from his caresses and put up her hands against him as he tried to kiss her again.
‘Give me my hat, dearest one,’ she said. ‘We must be good now. We’ve so much to think of. I feel as if I ought to think of everybody now, for the rest of my life. I’ve been so happy with you, my dear!’ She surprised him by suddenly lifting up one of his hands and pressing it against her lips. The gesture touched him more than anything she had ever done. A great wave of tenderness rose up in him, so that at that moment he would have willingly marched straight to death for her sake.
But as she dropped his hand her old mocking-elf’s smile flickered over her white face. ‘Poor old Robert,’ she murmured. ‘Look! I’ve still got on his ring.’
She held up her fingers so that he might see his rival’s gift. It was a simple enough matter — a little turquoise set in pearls; but Richard regarded it with gloom. It brought back to him with a rush of painful thoughts all the troublesome circumstances that hemmed them round.
‘Are you going on wearing it now?’ he asked as she put on her hat and they turned away together leaving the little chiff-chaff in possession of his leafy paradise.
‘I’m not going to take it off today’ she answered. ‘It’s unlucky to take off one ring till you’ve got another!’ And she laughed a naughty child’s laugh at his discomforted face.
Her response irritated him. It seemed the sort of thing that a well-bred girl oughtn’t to say. It was a silly servant-girl remark, he thought, and he teased himself in sulky silence over it till they were halfway back through the Happy Valley. It somehow made him think of Mrs Shotover. Had that confounded old woman really corrupted the girl? Had she put coarse, common, cynical notions into her head?
Observing the effect of her words, Nelly gave way to an irresistible temptation and did what she could to make it worse. ‘How do I know,’ she said, with a mocking little laugh, ‘that you won’t feel quite differently tomorrow? I’d better not throw Robert away too quickly.’
If she had intended to wound him she certainly succeeded. His swarthy face darkened and he raised one of his brown thin hands to his mouth, an instinctive habit of his when seriously annoyed. If the gesture was caused by a desire to hide a certain ugly, cruel, revengeful curve of his lips, it hid nothing at all from her; and she went still further …
‘Robert has faith in me,’ she said, ‘whatever I do and whatever I say, too. Oh you don’t know what things I’ve said to him! And he’s taken them all like the dear lamb he is. Poor old Rob! I’ve been a bad girl to him I’m afraid.’
‘What a wonderful mass of honeysuckle!’ Richard cried in a sort of desperation, anxious to do anything to put an end to this miserable estrangement. ‘I’m going to get you some.’ And he proceeded to clamber up the bank and make his way into the middle of the brushwood. He derived a savage pleasure from the nettle stings and thorn pricks through which he struggled. He felt as though in forcing his way through these obstacles towards the resplendent fragrant clusters above him he were fighting back to those delicious moments of love which her teasing had spoilt.
But how could she drag in that business of ‘dear old Robert’ and his turquoise ring? A ‘lamb’ did she call him? A confounded old tiger! But how could she, after kissing him like that and being kissed, drag things down to banality and commonness and silly servant-girl superstitions? Or was she, after all, quite a different person from what he had imagined, from the Nelly he had fancied himself so fond of? Was she, really, playing the two of them off against each other and ready to take which ever seemed the more desirable catch? He was able for the moment — perhaps the thorn pricks and nettle stings helped him — to think of her thus grossly without the Feast shame; and he thought to himself how queer it was that the fact of men and women being thrilled by one another’s caresses did not in the least really bring them together. They seemed indeed to pay the penalty for that momentary unity by a more absolute relapse into their separate hostile identities when the rare moment was past.
Then he thought within his heart, But after all I love her. But this ‘love’ or whatever it is, seems to have no influence upon our clashes with each other, as fierce separate units of nature, each struggling for its own purposes! He derived, as men of his type do, a revengeful satisfaction from this sort of pedantic analysis.
That he could analyse the girl thus and detach himself from her so quickly after their first embrace gave him a malicious satisfaction and soothed his vanity like a costly ointment.
On the strength of it he tore and rent at the reluctant tangles of yellow and rose-pink sweetness, pulling down huge trailing sprays of it, heedless of scratches upon face and hands, and gathering it in his arms in massed confusion, all mixed up with bindweed and bryony.
From the grassy level below Nelly watched his movements. ‘Bless his heart!’ she said to herself. ‘I love him! I love him! I love him! This is not a dream. This is really true. I am standing in my Happy Valley watching my man pick me honeysuckle.’
Then she thought, ‘I mustn’t tease him. I won’t tease him. I’ll be sweet to him when he comes back. But how could he get so angry when he’s just found out I love him? When we’ve just been together like that?
‘How peculiar men are! Everything seems on the surface with them — how you behave, how you look, what you say. As if it mattered what you said! Don’t they ever say things by opposites? Don’t they ever rage and stamp and scratch and bite and tease without it meaning anything at all; anything except — oh! I don’t know — a sort of stretching out of one’s arms and legs, after sitting in the same position too long? No I suppose they don’t. I suppose they can’t be superficial, however much they try! I suppose their surface is the same as their depth. I suppose they’re all surface!
‘Mrs Richard Storm. It sounds rather nice. I don’t think I shall want to keep him in Littlegate. It would be lovely to have a flat in Paris. But Father can’t be left. Oh how annoying it is not to be entirely alone in the world! No! Father can’t be left. And I must make Robert completely understand that I really shall belong to him much more when I’m married to Richard than I am now. Because he gets on my nerves now with everything unsettled and I can’t love him as much as I do really without his wanting to marry me. But when I’m married to Richard he can’t want to marry me, so I shall be free to be as lovely to him as ever I like. For I won’t stand it if Richard gets jealous. If he has me altogether that must be enough for him. I won’t allow him to be jealous! I won’t have it.’
When Richard did finally come scrambling down the bank to her side his arms were so full of honeysuckle that he looked like a moving bush.
‘Though Birnam Wood be come to Dunsinane!’ cried the girl running to meet him, and with feminine mischief kissing his face through the masses of honeysuckle before he could catch hold of her. ‘Well done! How perfectly beautiful! How sweet they are — intoxicating.’ She pressed a spray to her face and inhaled the heavy fragrance. ‘Oh Richard how happy I am! What a day this is. Oh! my dear, my dear—’
Her words died away, as dropping the great scented bundle at their feet, he clasped her slim form tightly to him and kissed her on the mouth, cheeks, eyelids and chin. Then, while he held her close with one arm round her body, he passed his free hand caressingly over her forehead.