Chapter XXVI

In the reach of the Thames, just above Sonning Lock, a single sculling boat drifted slowly with the stream; though it was only the second week in May the river glowed with a soft radiance. The boat stole along under the left bank, over a chequered pattern of light and shade thrown on the water through the branches of the willow trees. Upon the far side of the river the hot sun laid a band of golden light spreading on to the path and over the green woods beyond. A slight breeze stirred with a gentle rustling, and a few fleecy clouds stood still in the blue sky.

Nielsen, in a white flannel suit, sat squarely on the rowing thwarts. Now and then he dipped his sculls in the water stiffly, from the elbows, with a motion somewhat suggestive of the “deep-sea” stroke. He had on white shoes, and a broad white hat was pushed back from his forehead. His eyeglass was screwed into his eye, giving his face an expression of anxious concentration, ludicrously out of keeping with his attire and his occupation.

Jocelyn sat opposite him in the stern; the rudder lines were crossed idly in her lap, and she leant sideways, dangling a hand out of the boat and making little signs of the cross in the cool water. Sometimes she caught the young leaf of a water-lily plant, and then she would touch it softly with her fingers as if loth to let it go. She wore a blue skirt and a white silk blouse, which clung softly round the lines of her figure. Her jacket was thrown over the back of the seat, and a Japanese sunshade of a soft apricot colour lay unopened across her feet. She looked tired and languid; on her face there was a grave pre-occupied look, and the corners of her mouth drooped a little.

Nielsen glanced over his shoulder. At the end of the long vista of rippling water and bending trees, the lock stretched, a black and sturdy line across the narrowing river. In the centre of it the figure of the lock-keeper could be seen leaning, in his shirt sleeves, over the railing of the foot-bridge.

“Shall we go through the lock?” said Nielsen.

Jocelyn looked up.

“I don’t think there will be time,” she said, “our train goes at half-past six. We passed a lovely backwater just now, let’s go back to that and have tea.”

Nielsen turned the boat round, and sculled slowly up-stream. He did not look quite at home in a boat, and he finished each stroke with a precision suggestive of earnest endeavour. It was too early in the year for river-folk, and with the exception of a fisherman’s punt, their boat was the only one on the reach. Nielsen pulled through the entrance of the backwater, and ran the boat under a willow bank which formed a shelving islet in the centre. Jocelyn made tea. She handed Nielsen a cup, and he sat, very silent for him, alternately sipping it and puffing at a cigarette.

“What a heavenly day!” she said, with a sigh. Leaning back on the cushions of her seat, she glanced from side to side as if she would drink in to the full the calm beauty of the world. A little bird, sitting on an osier twig, cocked its head on one side, and chirped feebly--an answering chirp came from the branch above her head.

The rushes and the feathery grasses on the banks quivered as if the breeze were kissing them. A cuckoo called, another answered; two wood-pigeons flighted together across to the woods on the other side; a distant weir murmured gently, the willow branches over her head echoed it faintly, and the sun, breaking through the trees, made soft, white holes of light in the running water. A spirit of perfect harmony seemed to be looking gently at her from everywhere around. Her face clouded, and she made a quick movement with her hands. A startled water-rat dropped with a splash into the stream, and swam in a strenuous line for the other bank, where it scrambled to the mouth of its hole and sat calmly looking at her. Two swans with a brood of dusky infants paddled majestically past, hissing faintly; they disappeared up a narrow passage of reed-grown water, leaving tiny eddies for a memory.

A furrow came between her brows. Nielsen, watching her, wondered. He sent a cloud of smoke through his lips.

“What is it you are thinking of?” he said at last. Jocelyn gave a little start, as if she had been brought back from very far.

“I was wondering,” she said, “what it all means.” She clasped her hands together, with their backs towards her. It was a motion that seemed to embrace all that was around them, and her eyes glanced at him with a troubled expression. The blue smoke from his cigarette was melting on all sides into the soft air.

“Even the smoke!” she said to herself quietly.

Nielsen did not answer--he did not understand. Jocelyn rested her chin in her hand; she was thinking: “Why isn’t there a place for me to fill? Why am I always alone? Everything I see has a home, all the birds, and the trees, and the beasts, everything has its mate and its place. I am out in the cold--in the cold, always in the cold.”

Nielsen was bending slightly forward on the seat, staring at her with his eyes screwed up. He held his cup in one hand and his cigarette in the other, and he seemed to have forgotten the existence of both.

There was a long silence, and the boat swayed once with some unseen stir of the water.

Jocelyn said suddenly--

“Do you believe in free will?”

Nielsen put down his cup, a little surprised at the sudden question, and threw away the end of his cigarette; it floated gently away from them, and stuck in some driftweed.

“Yes,” he said, “and--no.”

Jocelyn waited. He cleared his throat.

“That is a verry difficult question, but I think it is like this, don’t you know. One to another of us, has frree will; that is, you know, in our social relations. Looked at from the--er--the narrow point of view, there is of course frree will, yes--frree will, and we make use of it, as we are weak or strrong. But,” and he spread his hands, and looking fixedly at the bank, “there is quite another point of view, don’t you see, equally trrue; of course, we are all at the ends of long chains of--er--of circumstance. Whatever we do, you know, is only what comes out of that--it is all settled before, so that, of course, in that sense there is no frree will. For instance, my dear young lady, if you choose to do something unexpected, it is rreally the expected thing you are doing all the time, because the chains of your circumstances and your tempérrament would not permit you to do otherwise. I am afrraid I do not explain what I mean verry well.”

Jocelyn did not speak, she leaned forward with her chin on her hand gazing downwards.

Nielsen, with a puzzled look, rubbed his hands softly together. “Of course,” he began again, “that is a verry brroad view, too brroad for everyday wear; it is----”

Jocelyn, without looking up, interrupted him--

“And do you believe in morality?”

Nielsen sighed.

“Ah! What _is_ morrality?”

He plucked a long blade of spikey grass from the bank, and said, twisting it in his fingers--

“What we _call_ morrality--I believe in it,” and he shrugged his shoulders. “Certainly. Why? Because _there_ it is, don’t you know? One can see it, it is quite thick, one can cut it with a knife. Every peoples has its own, and every peoples disobeys it more or less, don’t you know; that is natural.” He took out another cigarette, and began to nod his head up and down.

“Yes, yes,” he said, continuing to nod his head. Presently he went on, fixing his eyes on the driftweed, where the end of the cigarette was giving up the ghost of its tobacco, and speaking to himself rather than to her. “Ah! it is a little thing, our morrality; but there is a big morrality, yes, yes, a _big_ morrality; over there, don’t you know,” he pointed with his spike of grass towards the sweep of glistening water and the woods beyond.

“Over there!” he repeated, “everrywhere! Yes, yes, Nature is verry morral. Ah! she is big, but she is morral. She _has_ to be, you know. Look at that grass, my dear young lady,” he said, holding up his spike of grass, and drawing it once or twice gently through his fingers, “she can’t play frreaks, she has got her place, you know. It is wonderful to think, isn’t it, if that little blade of grass vanished quite away, all the world would come undone. Ah! I think that is wonderful, _that_ is morrality.” He lit his cigarette and puffed at it thoughtfully.

“I think you know, everry man and woman has his place according to the big morrality--so have flies”--he went on, stabbing with his spike at an early fly which had settled on the rim of his cup--“and in spite of everrything they come to it at the last.” He did not see Jocelyn’s face. A wave of colour had rushed suddenly into it, and her eyes looked eager and startled; her lips moved--she was repeating to herself his words. A chance current swept the disembodied cigarette gently back past the boat, the paper and tobacco floated apart, pathetically close to each other.

“Ah!” said Nielsen, “there you are, my frriend; when we come apart like you, perrhaps we shall know all about it--this morrality.” He straightened himself on his seat with a sudden jerk, and looking at Jocelyn remarked in an apologetic drawl--

“I am afrraid I have bored you drreadfully.”

She was leaning back again on her cushions, twisting her fingers in her lap in the way peculiar to her when she was troubled or thinking deeply. Her face was still flushed, and her dark eye-lashes almost rested on her cheeks. A faint scent of May-blossom drifted to them from the bank. Nielsen threw away his cigarette. His eyes began to glow, his face suddenly lost its habitual apathy--the attitude of his mind was no longer leisurely. Indeed, it had not been leisurely for eight days, in fact, since he had passed Legard upon the stairs. Legard was gone, he had found that out, but he was still in a hurry.

His cheeks grew slightly red, a rare thing with him, and the lines deepened about his eyes. He bent forward as far as he could upon his seat, and the boat rocked slightly from side to side. He kept his eyes fixed upon her face. The colour was coming and going upon it. He fancied that her eyes were soft under their drooping lids, though he could not see them. Did she know that he was looking at her? Could she be thinking of him?

The long fingers were still twisting in and out of each other upon her knee. He put out his hand and touched one of them gently.

“I am waiting,” he said; “I have been waiting so long.”

She raised her eyes, and he was astonished at them. They were so large, and they changed as he looked at them. At first they were full of shrinking, almost of fear, then suddenly they blazed with excitement, which died away in a gentle look. She did not draw her hand away, she did not seem to know that he was touching her.

“I love you,” he said. “Will you not marry me? I am always waiting.”

It was curious that, generally so full of phrase and gesture, he was obliged to be quite simple in this matter. Her face did not change, but the corners of her mouth shaped themselves into a queer little smile. She did not speak at first, then she said softly--

“Wait a little longer,” and her eyes seemed to be looking at something beyond him; “wait till to-morrow morning; I promise to tell you then--everything comes to its own place at the last, you know.” His own words, but they sounded strange to him, as if used in some sense, he did not know what, which he had not intended for them. His face became puckered with the confusion of his thoughts. He bent it forward, and raising her hand, kissed it gently. She let him do it, but he was left with the feeling that she had known nothing of it.

Presently she rose suddenly to her feet, and stretched herself with a little shake, as if freeing herself from some weight. The colour rushed into her cheeks.

“Come,” she said, “it’s time to go.”

Nielsen got out his sculls, and pushed out into the narrow stream. He said nothing more; with the kiss he had given her hand, he seemed to have relapsed into his usual patient resignation.

Every breath of wind had gone, the swallows were flying low, the hush of a perfect silence lay upon the river, yet there was felt rather than heard a mysterious singing, lost behind the veil of the blue sky--the voice of innumerable larks.

The sun, dropping into the west, laid a touch of warm light on Jocelyn’s cheek when she turned and, looking behind her, as the boat shot through the narrow entrance, grasped at a drift of thistledown floating aimlessly just out of her reach.

“That was like me,” she said to herself softly.

Nielsen, occupied with his sculls, did not catch the words. All the way to Reading she was either moodily silent or talked with spasmodic gaiety. She kept saying nervously, “You don’t think we shall lose the train, do you?”

As they were walking to the station from the river, she suddenly stood still, and said to Nielsen--

“D’you remember that picture we saw at Watts’s studio--the ‘Paolo’?”

“Yes,” he answered, “a drreadful picture.”

“It was _not_ dreadful,” she said, “it was beautiful--you don’t see the meaning in it. I didn’t then, but I do now. There was ‘union’ in that picture--‘union’ in spite of everything else. I never realised it before.”

Before he could answer, she started to walk again. He did not understand her.

It was nearly half-past eight before they got to the Mansions. Jocelyn asked him to come in and have some supper, but she did not appear herself, sending a message from her room to say that she was very tired, and was going straight to bed. Mrs. Travis accepted the excuse with a wry face--she disliked the trouble of entertaining single-handed; she made no remonstrance, however. During the last few days, she had found Jocelyn so variable in her moods, so silent and restless, that for the sake of comfort she mildly accepted any conduct at her hands. It had so happened that she had heard nothing of Legard’s reappearance, but she had been acutely conscious of something disturbing, for which she neither knew, nor cared to know, the reason. She never dived below the surface.

Nielsen took his departure early. The paramount impression on his mind as he drove back to his hotel was that of uneasy perplexity; it did not, however, prevent him from sleeping soundly.

The next morning he rose early, and dressed very carefully. He made a good breakfast, eating it slowly and earnestly, as if he wished to place each morsel where it would be of the greatest service to him. During breakfast he entered into conversation, over the top of his newspaper, with an old gentleman at the adjoining table, to whom he gave much useful advice as to the treatment of lumbago. He had never had it himself. When he had finished his paper, he went out.

It was a beautiful morning, and he moved leisurely along with his square walk, turning every now and then to look at somebody, generally a lady, and removing his grey top-hat politely if he chanced to brush against any one in the crowded street. He stopped at his hairdresser’s, and went in. He had his hair cut, discussing affably with the man the political situation, and a new instrument for crimping hair. When he came out again he drew his gloves on to his round, freckled hands, and hailed a hansom. He directed the man to “Wills & Segar’s,” where he bought a beautiful bouquet of roses and lilies, and an orchid for his own buttonhole. He lectured the florist for two minutes upon the injustice of demanding eighteenpence for his orchid, and gave half-a-crown to a ragged child he found on the doorstep. He told the cabman to drive him to the Mansions. As the cab bowled down to the Embankment, his pale, broad face under its white hat looked out over the bouquet with the weary, anxious expression of a dog sitting on its hind legs.

Arrived at the Mansions, he went up the stairs slowly, holding his bouquet carefully in front of him, and stopping at the top to wipe his forehead. He felt very nervous. The maid, who let him in, looked scared and troubled, and he detained her a moment in the passage to inquire after her health. He was such a constant visitor that he was admitted to the drawing-room without special announcement.

He placed his bouquet upon the table, and rubbed his hands together. A door opened behind him, and Mrs. Travis came into the room. She was incongruously majestic in black silk and a rose-coloured bonnet with hummingbirds in it. She did not shake hands, but held a note out to him. Nielsen looked at her face as he took it. It gave him the impression that she had somehow neglected to finish it that morning. It was, so to speak, patchy, and there were strange and sudden wrinkles round her mouth and eyes. This was alarming to him, as no words could have been. He bowed over her hand, and opened his note.

Mrs. Travis said nothing, but stood in front of him, puffing her lips. His note was from Jocelyn, and it was in these words:--

“DEAR MR. NIELSEN,--What you wish of me _can never be_. You don’t
know me, or what I am. If you did, you would not ask me. I am
going away--‘to my own place.’ I am very, _very_ sorry if I hurt
you, you are so good, and so kind. Will you be like yourself, and
take care of my aunt a little? I’m afraid she will miss me at
first.--Yours ever sincerely,

“JOCELYN LEY.”

He read it over a second time. “To my own place.” What did she mean? The words were familiar. Ah! Yes! his own words. He did not understand, but he was dimly conscious that in some way he had ministered to his own defeat. He looked up, and encountered Mrs. Travis’s green eyes.

“She is gone!” he said slowly, and as if he wanted to impress the fact upon his own mind.

“Yes, she is gone!” he repeated, and he looked at Mrs. Travis’s face. It was twitching nervously, and her eyes were not still for a moment.

“Where?” he said abruptly, and sat stiffly down in a chair. Mrs. Travis’s hand sought her pocket.

“I don’t know,” she said at last, taking out a letter and her handkerchief, “I have had this--a dreadful letter. She says she will write, and that we are not to fuss about her--to fuss,” she sniffed, and went on--

“I came down late to breakfast, and the servant told me she had gone, the naughty girl, and taken her maid and her boxes and dressing-bag, and left me this note. I don’t know what to do--she has her own money. Of course I can’t do anything. It’s not right. What will people say, what will people think?”

Nielsen heard, but he did not answer, he was thinking of other things, and he sat staring at his bouquet with little puckers at the corners of his brown eyes. He drummed with the fingers of one hand upon his knee. The note had fallen out of them, and Jocelyn’s kitten, straying from a corner, patted it furtively with a grey paw. His reverie was painful, and yet it was tinged with a characteristic philosophy. Perhaps it did not hurt him quite so much as he thought. She was lost to him! How beautiful she had been! It was curious, but true, that he already thought of her in the past tense. He smoothed his moustache. Yes! It hurt! The kitten clawed his trousers, and climbed up on to his knee.

“Poor little cat!” he muttered. He felt sorry for the cat. It had a forlorn little face, and it mewed, probably because his trousers were slippery, and because he had no lap.

“Poor little cat!” This was going to be a serious business for them both, eh? He dangled the end of his eyeglass in front of its nose. The kitten cheered up somewhat, and bit it. Nielsen watched it with sympathy. A bad business! He wrinkled his nose thoughtfully, and his face looked older.

A sigh from the other end of the room attracted his attention. It came from Mrs. Travis. She was sitting, tremblingly upright, upon the sofa, constantly smoothing, with a large white hand, the note in her lap. Her face seemed to have become suddenly flabby like a pudding; her cheeks had lost much of their colour; one long end of her fringe dangled into her left eye, and she puffed her lips incessantly. She said nothing; her pride did not allow her to utter any word of complaint, but her green eyes were alive with resentment. The bottom had fallen out of the chair of her comfort, and left her--a large child, pathetic and ridiculous--sitting upon air.

Nielsen put the kitten gently on the floor and got up. He walked across the room, sat squarely down upon the sofa, and took her hand in his.