'f can't go on—I can't,' she wept. 'I can't go another step.'
They had walked over twenty-one miles that day; a splendid effort at any time for people unused to walking. Coming °n top of the strain they had previously undergone it had been too much; they were both now at the end of their tether. Dur-■ng the previous night Hemmingway must have walked an additional ten miles while he was searching for Lavina so he was almost as exhausted as she was; yet they now had only five miles to go to be safe among their friends and he stiil hoped that with frequent rests they might get in, even if they only covered a little over a mile an hour and reached their destination about two o'clock in the morning.
Among the heather beside the road there was a pile of last year's bracken. Picking up the sobbing Lavina in his arms, he scrambled with her over the ditch and, laying her down on the heap of dried fern, collapsed beside her.
After a few minutes she stopped crying and asked in a small voice:
'Must we go on? Can't we possibly stay here tonight?'
He sighed. 'I wish we could, but Sam will have been half out of his wits about you. We're on the last lap now and we'll rest a lot, but I think we must do our damnedest to make it.'
It was just as he had finished speaking that the full glory of the setting sun and its strange, malevolent neighbour burst upon them.
The reddish clouds had drifted northwards and the whole world was suffused with radiant light. The comet now looked as big as the moon and its red rays, mingling with the yellow ones of the sun, lit the whole landscape with a strange, unearthly glory, changing the colours of the trees and moorland so that they looked like the work of some mad artist.
Both of them felt a sudden renaissance of their strength. Their tiredness was forgotten. Their veins were filled with fire instead of blood.
They turned on the bracken and stared at each other hungrily. Hemmingway stretched out a hand and grasped Lavina's shoulder. Her voice came huskily:
'I'm sorry about Sam, but he's old and I'm young. I love you darling, and I've never really loved a man before.'
As he took her in his arms she was still choking: 'I love you —oh, I love you.'
The Last Dawn
Hemmingway lay on his back among the bracken, Lavina's golden head pillowed on his chest; clasped in a tight embrace they both slept the sleep of utter exhaustion, but they were not destined to sleep out the night.
Shortly after three in the morning a violent tremor shook the earth, the pile of bracken wobbled, the leaves of the trees rustled loudly, and there was a dull explosion somewhere ir. the distance. Instantly they both started up wide awake.
Two more tremors followed in quick succession, making them feel sick and giddy, then the earth was still again.
Lavina sat up and stared down at Hemmingway. He was lying on his side propped on one elbow, gazing up at her. Each could glimpse the outline of the other but the starlight was too dim for them to see each other's features.
Suddenly Lavina brought her hand up to her mouth to smother a little cry.
'What is it?' he asked. But he knew already. She was thinking of the way they had awakened in each other's arms and of those mad moments between the time when the full glare of the comet had beaten down upon them and the final fading °f its after-glow as they had drifted off to sleep. That had been a glorious hour. Their tiredness forgotten, they had been like drug addicts, hypersensitive to every touch and sound and Perfume; translated for a little time to the status of a pagan god and goddess in the Elysian fields, the past had ceased to have a meaning and the future was without significance.
Now they were sober and sane again, back in the cold predawn world of inhibitions and commitments; conscious of shame and guilt; harrowed by remorse and horror of their Weakness.
'Oh, I hate you!' cried Lavina suddenly.
'Do you?' Hemmingway's voice was bitter. 'I doubt if y0lJ bate me as much as I hate you.'
'How could you do what you did!' she went on quickly, 'After all your talk about your devotion to Sam. You're a fine friend, aren't you! Pretending to take charge of his wife and then making love to her at the first opportunity.'
'It wasn't that way—and you know it!' Hemmingway contradicted her angrily. 'You're a born man-snatcher. It's in your blood. The very first time you set eyes on me you made up your mind to get me, didn't you? Then, at your wedding—yes, even on your wedding day—you tried to make me kiss you. Last night was your big opportunity, and you took it.'
'That's a lie,' Lavina flared. Her own misery had made her want to hurt him and the fact that she now realised that there was just a vague sub-stratum of truth in his accusations about their early meetings made her want to hurt him even more.
'I was in your care, exhausted, utterly done in, terribly wrought up about poor Roy's death and all this frightful business. In such a state any woman would be easy money. But a man's different. Men don't suffer from hysteria or become so overwrought that they don't know what they're doing. No decent man would take advantage of a woman on the verge of lunacy. He'd know she didn't mean a thing she said or did and have the strength of mind to control himself. Instead of thinking for us both, you just let yourself go without the least hesitation. Oh God, how I loathe you!'
'I loathe myself,' Hemmingway murmured bitterly. 'But that doesn't let you out. It's no good pretending you're a precious little innocent—sweet seventeen, never been kissed and all that. We were both under the influence of the comet, of course, but the fact that you were tired out isn't any excuse. I had a much more tiring night than you did before we started to walk out of London; and as a grown woman you were just as capable of resisting your feelings as I was.'
After a moment he went on more calmly. 'As I see it, the effect of the comet is simply to release people's inhibitions and destroy all their sense of values. If they're murderers at heart, they go out and kill someone; if they're quarrelsome, they quarrel; if they've a yen to make daisy-chains or skip, tbey just go to it; if they have a subconscious desire to make love to somebody, out it pops. Call it propinquity in our case, jf you like. If you'd been here with Derek, for example, or I'd been with some other girl, the same thing would probably have happened. Don't flatter yourself that I'm in love with you, because I'm not; and I don't imagine for one moment that you're the least bit more interested in me than you would be in any other healthy young man who happened along. But last night we just felt that way about each other and the responsibility is entirely mutual. That's all there is to it.'
'How flattering!' she sneered. 'To be dismissed like any trollop you might have picked up for the evening. I never thought any man would do that to me.'
'Then it's extremely good for your vanity.'
'You swine!'
'I see. I'm a swine now, because I'm not begging for some more of your remarkably good brand of kisses, am I? You'd like to continue the affair, it seems.'
'I'd like to beat your face in with a hunting crop. Above all, I'd like a bath to try and wash the very touch of you away from me. I feel like a leper at the moment.
'Don't worry! I wouldn't touch you again if you paid me; but since, apparently, you're not prepared to try and forget the whole thing, what's the alternative? D'you want to tell Sam about it when we reach Stapleton?'
'Good God, no!' Lavina's voice suddenly changed to a note of anxiety. 'You won't, will you?'
'Of course not. I've nothing but contempt for people who kiss and tell. What good does it ever do except make some other Person miserable?'