“It’s so perfect for me,” I said, “that I am tempted to look at your hands to see if they are still wet.”
We smiled at each other, then, our eyes meeting with a shyness that was not altogether a shyness; and after a moment, by a common impulse, turned to look out at the red-blossomed tree, from which arose a soft irregular patter. We were silent for a long while. In fact, I think we sat there in complete silence till the nurse-companion came back again for the tea-things; and I remember noticing everything, every minutest detail, in the small brick-walled garden. A laburnum tree at the farther end with long pendulous blossoms, of so bright a yellow that it gave one the illusion of sunlight against the dark wall. And a row of lupins along a flagged path, with a bright eye of water in every one of the dark hand-shaped leaves.… These things are still vivid in my memory. But what we said to each other after that I cannot recall. I don’t think we said very much. We felt, I think, that we had already said all that was essential. I do remember Reine’s saying that “Wilson” had gone off somewhere to play cricket; and also she said something about a dismal female tea-party to which she had gone in Earl’s Court the day before. But that, I think, was all; and not long afterward I rose and came away.
IV.
I never saw her again. In the first place, I funked it—I was afraid that I couldn’t keep it up. The thing was so exquisite as it stood, so perfect—and besides, what could I do? It seemed to me that almost anything, after that, would be an anticlimax. If I were to go again, there might be someone else there—we should have to be stiff and distant with each other—or we wouldn’t be able to talk to each other at all. Wilson might be there, with his loud fake enthusiasms and his horrible Oxford manner and his sprawling tweed legs.…
At bottom, however, it was a kind of terror that kept me away. I was in love with her, and I had more than a hope that she was very nearly in love with me. But hadn’t we already had the finest of it? The thing, as it stood, was all bloom and fragrance; and mightn’t it be only too appallingly easy, by some unguarded shaking of the tree, to destroy the whole rare miracle?… Wouldn’t I—to use a less poetic image—let the cat out of the bag, if I were to go again? And then there was her bad heart, and the fact that we were both, alas, married. The complications and miseries, if we did allow the meeting to go further, might well be fatal to both of us.
Even so, I am not sure that I wouldn’t have gone, had not fate in the guise of the Foreign Office intervened. I was sent, only a few weeks later, to Rome, where my duties kept me for a year and a half. It was while I was there that “Scherzo” came out in book-form. Estlin sent me a copy—and I at once sat down and wrote a letter to Reine, a brief one, telling her again of the incomparable delight it gave me. It was a month or more before I heard from her—and then came a short note from Seville. It was rather cool, rather cryptic, distinctly guarded. She thanked me formally, she was glad I liked the dream so much, she felt, as I did, that the ending was perhaps a shade “tricky,” of a “surprise” sort which didn’t quite “go” with the tone of the rest. That was all. But there was also a postscript at the bottom of the page which seemed to me to be in a handwriting a little less controlled—as if she had hesitated about adding it, and had then, impulsively, dashed it in at the last minute. This was simply: “I always think of you as the man who loves rain.”… That was all.
It was only a few weeks after this, when, opening The Times in a small café in the Via Tritoni, I was shocked to see her name in the column of death announcements. “Suddenly, at Paris, on the 18th of March.”… Suddenly, at Paris, on the 18th of March!… I sat and stared stupidly at the announcement, leaving untouched on the little table before me my granita di cafe con pana.… Reine Wilson was dead—Reine was dead. That little girl who had stood in the dark room by the French windows, her sleeve brushing the stirless curtains, watching the rain—who had dipped her hands through the clearest rain-water to the white piano keys—and seen the little umbrellas of silver—was dead. I got up and walked out blindly into the bright street. Without knowing how I got there, I found myself presently in the Borghese Gardens. There was a little pond, in which a great number of ducks were sailing to and fro, gabbling and quacking, and children were throwing bread into the water. I sat down on a bench under a Judas-tree—it was in blossom, and the path under it was littered with purple. An Italian mother slapped the hand of her small boy who was crying, and said harshly, “Piangi! … Piangi!…” Cry! Cry!… And I too felt like weeping, but I shed no tears. Reine Wilson the novelist was still alive; but Reine Wilson the dark-haired little girl with whom I had fallen in love was dead, and it seemed to me that I too was dead.
A CONVERSATION
The English lecturer, when he visited New Haven, Connecticut, was put up for the night at a certain club, the name of which need not be mentioned. After his lecture he managed to escape from several putative hosts, excusing himself on the ground of fatigue, and crept back to the club. He was tired of lecturing and tired of travel and tired of seeing new people and of trying to be polite to fools. He looked forward with an almost insane joy to the prospect of a night of rest. He had never been so sleepy in his life. Those American sleeping-cars!… Good Lord.
Unfortunately, his room communicated with the adjoining room by a door—locked, of course, and with a small table pushed against it—and no sooner had he crawled into bed than he discovered that sounds, through this door, were distressingly audible. There was first a shuffling of feet in the corridor outside, and then the voices began. There were two of them.
“Well now—if you’ll look on the shelf in that closet, I think you’ll find another glass.”
“So there is.”
“This is the best whisky I ever drank, but it might be worse. Old Royal. Ever hear of it on the other side?”
“Never.”
“It’s evidently been in the water. Soaked. They say they drop them off, you know, with buoys to mark them. The label looks all right. But what makes me suspicious is the cork. Just look at that! No self-respecting cork ought to come out like that. Perfectly good cork—stamped with the name—”