Twilight, Julia Frankau [100 books to read in a lifetime txt] 📗

As I said, I took two codein pills instead of one that night, and in an hour or so was conscious of the comfort and phantasmagoria of morphia. I was no longer in the bedroom of which I had tired, nor in the rough garden without trees or shade. I had escaped from these and in returning health was beside the sea, happily listening to the little waves breaking on the stones, no soul in sight but those two, Margaret Capel and Gabriel Stanton, in earnest talk that came to me as I sat with my back against a rock, the salt wind in my face. How it was they did not see me and moderate their voices I do not know, morphia gives one these little lapses and surprises.

Margaret looked extraordinarily sedate and yet perverse, her thin lips pink and eyes dancing. I saw the incandescent effect of which Peter Kennedy had told me. It was not only her eyes that were alight but the woman herself, the luminous fair skin and the fairness of her hair stirred and brightened by the sun and the sea-wind. She talked vividly, whilst he sat at her feet listening intently, offering her the homage of his softened angularities, his abandoned scholarship, his adoring eyes.

“Why did you come? I told you not to come. Of course I meant to wire in answer to your letter that you were to stay in London. What was the use of my running away?”

I saw that he fingered the hem of her skirt, and watched her all the time she spoke.

“Tomorrow I shall have no expectation in the post. I hate not to care whether my letters come or not. And Monday too. You have spoiled two mornings for me.”

“I am not as satisfying as my letters to you.” Even his voice was changed, the musical charming Stanton voice. His had deepened and there was the note of an organ in it. She looked at him critically or caressingly.

“Not quite, not yet. I understand your letters better than I do you. And you are never twice alike, not quite alike. We part as friends, intimates. Then we come together again and you are almost a stranger; we have to begin all over again.”

“I am sorry.” He looked perplexed. “How do I change or vary? I cannot bear to think that you should look upon me as a stranger.”

“Only for a few moments.”

“When you met me at the station today?”

“I was at the station early, and then was vexed I had come, looking about me to see if there were any one I knew or who knew me. I took refuge at the bookstall, found ‘ The Immoralists ‘ among the two-shilling soiled.” She left off abruptly, and her face clouded.

“Don’t!” he whispered.

“How quick you are!” Now their hands ,met. She smiled and went on talking. “I heard a click and saw that the signals were down. The train rounded the curve and came in slowly. People descended; I was conscious of half a dozen, although I saw but one. No, I didn’t see you, only your covert coat and felt hat. I felt a pang of disappointment.” Their hands fell apart. I saw he was hurt. She may have seen it too, but made no sign.

“It was not your fault, you had done nothing … you just were not as I expected you. You had cut yourself shaving, for one thing.” He put his hand to his chin involuntarily, there was barely a scratch. “As we walked back from the station my heart felt quite dead and cold. I hated the scratch on your cheek, the shape of your hat, everything.” He turned pale. “I wondered how I was going to bear two whole days, what I should say to you.”

“We talked!”

“I know, but it was outside talk, forced, laboured. You remember, ‘ How warm the weather was in London ‘; and that the train was not too full for comfort. You had papers in your hand, the Saturday Review, the Spectator. You spoke of an article by Runciman in the first.”

“You seemed interested.”

“I was thinking how we were going to get through the two days. What I had ever seen in you, why I thought I liked you so much.”

He was quite dumb by now, the sunken eyes were full of pain, the straight austere mouth was only a line; he no longer touched the hem of her dress.

“You left me in the garden of the hotel when you went to book a room, to leave your bag. I sat on a seat in the garden and looked at the sea, the blue wonder of the sea, the jagged coast-line, and one rock that stood out, then hills and always more hills, the sky so blue, spring in the air. Gabriel…” she leaned forward, touched him lightly on the shoulder. A deep flush came over his face, but he did not move nor put up his hand to take hers. “You were only gone ten minutes. I could not have borne for you to have been away longer. There were a thousand things I wanted to say to you, that I knew I could say to no one but you. About the spring and my heart hunger, what it meant.”

“And when I came out I suppose all you remembered was that I had cut myself shaving?”

She seemed astonished at the bitterness of his tone.

“You are not angry with me, are you?”

“No! Not angry. How could I be?”

“When you came out and I felt rather than saw you were moving toward me across the grass I thought of nothing but that you were coming; that we were going io have tea together, on the ricketty iron table, that I should pour it out for you. That after that we should walk here together, and then you would go home with me, dine together at Carbies, talk and talk and talk….”

He could not help taking her hand again, because she gave it to him, but his face was set and serious.

“Tell me, is it the same with you as it is with me? Am I a stranger to you sometimes? Different from what you expect? Do I disappoint you, and leave you cold, almost as if you disliked me? Don’t answer. I expect, I know it is the same with you. You find me plain, gone off, you wonder what you ever saw in me.”

He answered with a quiet yet passionate sincerity:

“When I see you after an interval my heart rushes out to you, my pulses leap. I feel myself growing pale. I am paralysed and devoid of words. Margaret! My very soul breathes Margaret, my wonderful Margaret. I cannot get my breath.” Her eyes shone and exulted.

“It is not like that always?” she whispered, leaning towards him.

“It is like that always. But today it was more than that. I had not seen you for a week, a whole long week. Sometimes in that week I had not dared look forward.”

“And then you saw me.” She was hanging upon his words. He got up abruptly and walked