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

swiftly that although it had taken them twenty minutes to get there he was barely ten in coming back. He hurried faster when he saw there was a figure at the gate.

“It is too fine to be indoors this morning. I am going down to the sea. I yearn for the sea this morning. Go up to the house, will you? Fetch a cushion or so. Then we can be luxurious.” He executed his commission quickly, and when he came up to her again had not only a cushion but a rug on his arm. She said quickly:

“What a wonderful morning! Isn’t it a God-given morning?”

“All mornings are wonderful and God-given that bring me to you,” he answered little less soberly, walking by her side. “Won’t you lean a little on me, take my arm?”

“Do I look decrepit?” She laughed, walking on light feet. Spring was everywhere, in the soft air, and the throats of courting birds, in the breeze and both their hearts. They went down to the sea and he arranged the cushions against that very rock behind which I had once sat and heard them talk. She said now she must face the sea, the winds that blew from it.

“Not too cold?” he asked her.

“Not too anything. You may sit on the rug too, there is a bit to spare for you. What book have you in your pocket?”

“No book today. I carried Anne’s prayer-book.”

“‘Science and Health’?”

She was full of merriment and laughter.

“No; the ordinary Church Service. There was nothing else available.”

“Oh, yes, there was. I sent for a copy of Mrs. Eddy’s lucubrations.”

“No!”

“Of course I did. I had to make myself acquainted with a subject on which I should be compelled to talk.”

“What a wonderful woman you are.”

“Not at all. If she had been a South Sea Islander I’d have welcomed her with shells or beads. Tell me, have I made a success? Will she give her consent?”

“Have you given yours, have you really given yours? You have never said so in so many words.”

“Well, the implication must have been fairly obvious.” The eyes she turned on him were full of happy laughter, almost girlish. Since yesterday she had had this new strange bloom of youth. “Don’t tell me your sister has not guessed.”

“I told her.”

“You told her! Well! I never! as Stevens would say. And you were pretending not to know!”

“I only said you had never put it into words. Say it now, Margaret, out here, this wonderful Sunday.”

“What am I to say?”

“Put your little hand in mine, your sweet flower of a hand.” He took it.

“Not a flower, a weed. See how brown they have got since I’ve been here.” He kissed the weed or flower of her hand.

“Say, ‘ Gabriel, you shall be my husband. I will marry you the very first day I am free! ‘ Her brows knitted, she took her hand away a little pettishly.

“I am free. Why do you remind me?”

“Say, ‘I will marry you on the last day in May, in six weeks from today.’”

“May marriages are unlucky.”

“Ours could not be.”

“Oh, yes! it could. I am a woman of moods.”

“Every one more lovely than the last.”

“Impatient and irritable.”

“You shall have no time to be impatient. Anything you want I will rush to obtain for you. If you are irritable I will soothe you.”

“And then I want hours to myself.”

“I’ll wait outside your door, on the mat, to keep interruptions from you.”

“I want to write… to play the piano, to rest a great deal.”

“Give me your odd half-hours.” She gave him back her hand instead.

“Let’s pretend. We are to sail away into the unknown; to be happy ever afterwards. Where shall we go, Gabriel? Can we have a yacht?”

“I am not rich.”

“Pretend you are. Where shall we go? To Greece, where every stone is hallowed ground to you. All the white new buildings shall be blotted out and you may turn your back on the museum…”

“I shall only want to look at you.”

“No, on rocks and the blue. AEgean Sea. No, we won’t go to Greece at all. You will be so learned, know so much more than I about everything. I shall feel small, insignificant.”

“Never. Bigger than the Pantheon.”

“We will go to Sicily instead, go down among the tombs.”

“I bar the tombs.”

“Contradicting me already. How dare you, sir?”

So the time passed in happy fooling, but often their hands met, the undercurrents between them ran swift and strong, deep too. Then it was time for lunch. It was Margaret who suggested they would be in time to meet Anne, walk up to the house with her. Nothing had been said about Dr. Kennedy. Gabriel had meant to broach the subject, only touch it lightly, suggest if she still needed medical attendance some one older, less interested might perhaps be advisable.

But he never did broach the subject, it had been impossible on such a morning as this, she in such a mood, he in such accord with her. Anne, when they met her, dashed them both a little. She twittered away about the service and the sermon, but it was nervous and disjointed twitter, and her eyes were red. She responded awkwardly to all Margaret’s kind speeches, her enquiries after her headache; she was even guilty of the heinous offence, heinous in her own eyes when she remembered it afterwards, of saying nothing of the other’s faintness. Her landmarks had been swept away, the ground yawned under her feet. Divorce! She did not think she could live in the house with a divorced person. She knew that some clergymen would not even marry divorced people, nor give them the sacrament. She was miserably distressed, and longing to be at home. She felt she was assisting at something indecorous, if not worse; she thought she ought not to have waited for the sermon, she ought not to have left them so long alone together. All her mingled emotions made her feel ill again. She told Gabriel crossly that he was walking too fast.

“Perhaps Mrs. Capel likes fast walking? Don’t mind me if you do,” she said to Margaret, “I can manage by myself.”

When they had adapted their pace to hers she was little better satisfied; querulous, and as Margaret had pictured her before they met. Luncheon was a miserable meal, or would have been but that nothing could have really damped the spirits of these other two. First Anne found herself in a draught, and then too hot. She never eat eggs, and explained about her digestion, the asparagus tops could not tempt her. A lobster mayonnaise was a fresh offence or disappointment. And she could not disguise her disapproval. After all she prided herself she did know something about housekeeping.

“I never give Gabriel eggs except for breakfast.”

“I do hope I have not upset your liver.” Margaret’s eyes were full of laughter when she questioned him.

“In my young days, in my papa’s house, nor for the matter of that in my uncle’s either, did we ever have lobster salad except for a supper dish.”

Gabriel suggested gently that the whole art of eating had altered in England.

“Cod and egg sauce,” put in Margaret.

“Nectar and ambrosia.”

“We never gave either of them,” said poor hungry Anne.

Fortunately a spatchcock with mushrooms was produced, and the mousse of jambon, although it seemed “odd,” was very light.

“Why didn’t I have boiled mutton and rice pudding?” Margaret lamented in an aside to Gabriel when the omelette au rhum was most decisively declined. Cream cheese and gingerbread proved the last straw. Anne admitted it made her feel ill to see the others eat these in combination.

“I should like to get back to town as early as possible this afternoon,” she said. “I am sure I don’t know what has come over me, I felt well before I came. The place cannot agree with me. I hope you don’t think me very rude, but if we can have a fly for the first train…”

Gabriel was full of consternation and remonstrated with her. Margaret whispered to him it was better so. Nothing was to be gained by detaining her against her will.

“We have next week…”

“All the weeks,” he whispered back.

Margaret offered Stevens’ services, but Anne said she preferred to pack for herself, then she knew just where everything was. The lovers had an hour to themselves whilst she was engaged in this congenial occupation. She reminded Gabriel that he too must put his things together, and he agreed. She thought this made matters safe.

“Stevens will do them for you,” Margaret said softly. He did not care how they were jumbled in, or what left behind, so that he secured this precious hour.

“Something has upset her, it was not only the lunch,” Margaret said sapiently. He did not wish to enlighten her.

“Has she worried you, beloved one?”

“Not very much, not as much as she ought to perhaps. I was selfish with her, left her too much alone. I shall know better another time. But at least we had yesterday afternoon, and this morning… oh! and part of the evening, too. Did I frighten you very much?” she asked him.

“Before I had time to be frightened you smiled, something of your colour came back. Margaret, that reminds me. Do you mind if I suggest to you that if you were really seedy Dr. Kennedy is comparatively a young man…” She laughed.

“But look how devoted he is!”

“That is why.” He spoke a little gravely, and she put her hand in his.

“Jealous!” Her voice was very soft.

“The whole world loves you.”

“I don’t love the whole world.” And when she said this her voice was no longer only soft, it was tenderness itself.

“Thank God!” He kissed her hand.

But returned to his text as a man will. “No, I am not jealous. How could I be? You have honoured me, dowered me beyond all other men. But you are so precious, so supremely and unutterably precious. Margaret, my heart is suddenly shaken. Tell me again. You are not ill, not really ill? When this trying time is over, when I can be with you always…”

“How about those hours I want to myself?” she interrupted.

“When I can be within sound of you, taking care of you all the time, you will be well then?” Now she put a hand on his knee. “Your little fairy hand!” he exclaimed, capturing it.

“I want you to listen,” she began. She did not know or believe herself that she was seriously ill, but remembered what Dr. Lansdowne had said and shivered over it a little.

“Suppose I am really ill, that it is heart disease with me as the German doctors and Lansdowne told me? Not only heart weakness as the others say, would you be afraid? Do you think I ought not to… to marry?”

“My darling, it is impossible, your beautiful vitality makes it impossible. But if it were true, incredibly true, then all the more reason that we should be married as quickly as possible. I must snatch you up, carry you away.” There was an interlude. “You want petting…” He was a little awkward at it nevertheless, inexperienced.

“Isn’t there some great man you could see, and who would reassure you, some specialist?”

“The Roopes?” She laughed, and her short fit of seriousness was over.

“I will find out who is the best man, the head of the profession. No one but the best is good enough for my Margaret. You will let me take you to him?”

“Perhaps. When I come back to London; if I am not well