If Winter Comes Part 24

The Cloister Tea Rooms were above a pastry cook's on the first floor of one of the old houses in The Precincts. The irregularly shaped room provided several secluded: tables, and they took one in a remote corner.

But their conversation would have suffered nothing in a more central and neighboured situation. Nona began some account of her summer visitations. Sabre spoke a little of local businesses: had she seen the new railway? Had he been round the Garden Home since her return? But the subjects were but skirmishers thrown out before dense armies of thoughts that ma.s.sed behind; met, and trifled, and rode away. When pretence of dragging out the meal could no longer be maintained, Nona looked at her watch. "Well, I must be getting back. We haven't had a particularly enormous tea, but the chauffeur's had none."

Sabre said, "Yes, let's get out of this." It was as though the thing had been a strain.

He put her into the car. She was so very, very quiet. He said, "I've half a mind to drive up with you. I'd like a ride, and a walk back."

She said the car could run him back, or take him straight over to Penny Green. "Yes, come along up, Marko. They have rather fun in the billiard room after tea."

He got in and she shared with him the heavy fur rug. "Not that I want fun in the billiard room," he said.

She asked him lightly, "Pray what can we provide for you, then?"

"I just want to drive up with you."

III

It was only three miles to Northrepps. It seemed to Sabre an incredibly short time before a turn in the road fronted them with the park gates.

And they had not spoken a word! He said, "By Jove, this car travels!

I'll get down at the gates, Nona. I'm not coming in. I want the walk back."

She made no attempt to dissuade him. She leaned forward and called to the chauffeur; but as the car began to slow down, she gave a little catch of emotion and said, "Well, we have had a chatty drive. You'd better change your mind and come along up, Marko."

He disengaged the rug from about him. "No, I think I'll get out here."

He turned towards her. "Look here, Nona. Get out here and walk up." He echoed the little sound of feeling she had given, pretended laughter.

"It will do you good after that enormous tea."

She said something about the tea being too enormous for exertion.

The car drew up. He got out and turned to her. "Look here. Please do."

He saw the colour fade away upon her face. "What for?"

"To talk." It was all he could say.

She put away the rug and gave him her hand. Warm, and she said, "How dreadfully cold your hand is! Go on and get your tea, Jeffries. I'm going to walk up."

The man touched his cap. The car slid away and left them.

IV

They were within the gates. It had been a dull day. Evening stood mistily far up the long avenue of the drive and in the distances about the park on either hand. Among October's ma.s.sing leaves, a small disquiet stirred. The leaves banked orderly between their parent trunks.

Sabre noticed as a curious thing how, when they stirred, they only trembled in their ma.s.sed formations, not broke their ranks, as if some live thing ran beneath them.

He said, "Do you know what this seems to me? It seems as though it was only yesterday, or this morning, that you came to see me at the office and we talked. Well, I want it to be only yesterday. I want to go on from there."

She said, "Yes."

He hardly could hear the word. He looked at her. She was as tall as he.

Not least of the contributions to her beauty in his eyes was the slim grace of her stature. But her face was averted; and he wanted most terribly to see her face. "Stand a minute and look at me, Nona." He touched her arm. "I want to see your face."

She turned towards him and raised her eyes to his eyes. "Oh, what is it you want to say, Marko?"

There was that which glistened upon her lower lids; and about her mouth were trembling movements; and in her throat a pulse beating.

He said, "It's you I want to say something. I want you to explain some things. Some things you said. Nona, when you came into my room that day and shook hands you said, 'There!' when you gave me your hand. You took off your glove and said, 'There!' I want to know why you said 'There!'

And you said, 'Well, I had to come.' And you said you were flotsam. And that night--when we'd been up to you--you said, 'Oh, Marko, do write to me.' I want you to explain what you meant."

She said, "Oh, how can you remember?"

He answered, "Because I remember, you must explain."

"Please let me sit down, Marko." She faltered a little laugh. "I can explain better sitting down."

A felled trunk had been placed against the trees facing towards the parkland. They went to it and he sat beside her. She sat upright but bending forward a little over her crossed knees, her hands clasped on them, looking before her across the park.

"No, you must look at me," he said.

She very slowly turned her body towards him. He thought her most beautiful and the expression of her beautiful face was most terrible to him in all his emotions.

V

She spoke very slowly; almost with a perceptible pause between each word. She said, "Well, I'll tell you. I said 'flotsam', didn't I? If I explain that--you know what flotsam is, Marko. Have you ever looked it up in the dictionary? The dictionary says it terribly. 'Goods s.h.i.+pwrecked and found floating on the sea.' I'm twenty-eight, Marko. I suppose that's not really very old. It seems a terrible age to me. You see, you judge age by what you are in contrast with what you were. If you're very happy I think it can't matter how old you are. If you look back to when you were happy and then come to the now when you're not, it seems a most terrible and tremendous gulf--and you see yourself just floating--drifting farther and farther away from the happy years and just being taken along, taken along, to G.o.d knows where, G.o.d knows to what." She put out the palms of her hands towards where misty evening banked sombrely across the park. "That's very frightening, Marko."

The live thing ran beneath the leaves banked at their feet. A stronger gust came in the air. A scattering of leaves cl.u.s.tered together and moved with sudden agitation across the sward before them; paused and seemed to be trying to flutter a hold into the ground; rushed aimlessly at a tangent to their former direction; paused again; and again seemed to be holding on. Before a sudden gust they were spun helplessly upward, sported aloft in mazy arabesques, scattered upon the breeze.

"Those leaves!" she said. And as if she had not made the interjection she went on, "Most awfully frightening. Well, all the time there was you, Marko. You were always different from anybody I ever knew. Long ago I used to chaff you because you were so different. In those two years when we were away it got awful. In those two years I knew I was flotsam.

One day--in India--I went and looked at it in the little dictionary in my writing case, and I knew I was. Do you know what I did? I crossed out flotsam in the dictionary and wrote Nona. There it was, and it was the most exact thing--'Nona: goods s.h.i.+pwrecked and found floating in the sea.' I meant to have torn out the page. I forgot. I left it there and Tony saw it."

Sabre said, "What did he say?" In all she had told him there was something omitted. He knew that his question approached the missing quant.i.ty. But she did not answer it.

She went on, "Well, there was you. And I began to want you most awfully.

You were always such a dear, slow person; and I wanted that most awfully. You were so steady and good and you had such quiet old ideas about duty and rightness and things, and you thought about things so, and I wanted that most frightfully. You see, I'd known you all my life--well, that's how it was, Marko. That explains all the things you asked. I said 'There'; and I said I had to come; because I'd wanted it so much, so long. And I wanted you to write to me because I did want to go on having the help I had from you--"

He had desired her to look at him, but it was he who had turned away. He sat with his head between his hands, his elbows on his knees.

She repeated, with rather a plaintive note, as though in his pose she saw some pain she had caused him, "You see, I had known you all my life, Marko--"

He said, still looking upon the ground between his feet, "But you haven't explained anything. You've only told me. You haven't explained why."

She said with astounding simplicity, "Well, you see, Marko, I made a mistake. I made a most frightful mistake. I chose. I chose wrong. I ought to have married you, Marko."

And his words were a groan. "Nona--Nona--"