Chapter V

Giles rode over the next morning. He found Jocelyn and Mrs. Travis in the garden of the hotel talking with a young Englishman. They came forward to meet him, but he felt at once that in Jocelyn’s greeting there was something foreign to her, something almost repellant. After the first moment she did not look at him; all her attention seemed bestowed upon the speech of the young Englishman, who stood, speckless, descanting upon “systems,” the demerits of which he illustrated languidly with his fingers. He was a weakly, immutable young man, sloping from the crown of his head to the soles of his feet. He began it with his forehead, and continued it all the way down; his voice sloped--it came out of him loudly, and died away; his hands sloped--they began large, and ended small. He never smiled--not from set purpose, but because he had lost the art, and his eyes calculated continually out of the monotony of a colourless face.

“‘Systems’ are all rot,” he was saying, “there are only two fellers in Monte Carlo who make it pay, don’t y’ know, old Blore and Nielsen; an’ they don’t do it by figures, only by bein’ so ’nfernally patient.”

Mrs. Travis, sitting upright in a cane chair with her hands in her lap, listened with attentive disapproval; she had a “system,” and did not wish to be convinced of its inefficiency.

“But I watched Baron Zimmermann myself, and I saw him win five hundred louis the day before yesterday, he plays a ‘system,’ I know,” she said.

“Lost it all yesterday, and more,” said the young man dispassionately. It was his _métier_ to know everything about everybody, for which reason Mrs. Travis respected him.

“But perhaps he wasn’t playing his ‘system’ then,” she said.

“Why not?”

“Oh, I don’t think he would be,” a remark which was a fair specimen of her methods of discussion. She never believed what she did not want to, and rarely anything that she did not see with her own eyes.

“Figures are against you, y’ve only got one thing in your favour, don’t y’ know,” said the young man languidly; “you c’n leave off playin’ when y’ like, and the bank has to go on.” His voice ran into a whisper, and he tilted his hat till it sloped down the back of his neck.

Giles stood a little way from them, watching Jocelyn eagerly. He caught her looking at him two or three times with eyes that seemed to be asking a question--eyes that were full of trouble and uncertainty. He could not understand the change in her; recalling the friendly serenity of the parting look she had given him the day before, he wondered with a secret dismay. He went up to her and said--

“Will you come and look at the pony? You said you wanted to see it.”

“Yes,” she answered indifferently, and walked away with him to the stables, leaving the young man caressing the slope of his moustache, and calculating into vacancy. On the way to the stables she hardly talked at all, only answering in monosyllables when he spoke to her; every now and then she would look at him stealthily, with that same expression of perplexity and fear. As she stood talking to the pony, with her arms round its neck, her cheek laid against its mane, and her eyes soft under their long lashes, Giles felt an uncontrollable rush of longing to be near her, to touch her, and share in the tenderness of her voice and her face. He came close, and laid his hand partly over hers upon the pony’s head. She drew it away quickly with a look of positive fright, and the colour rushed furiously into her face. He looked at her silently, and he could not keep the pain and hunger out of his eyes. She went on mechanically stroking the pony’s neck. At last he said, rather because his feelings fought for expression than that the words were those he wished to speak, “What’s the matter, Jocelyn? Why do you treat--?” She stamped her foot upon the straw of the stall, and without saying a word, went out of the stable. He stood there, biting his moustache, dumb with pain and dismay, and the pony thrust its wet nose against the pocket of his coat. He recovered himself a minute later, but she had gone to her room, and though he waited a long time, he did not see her again, and at last went away, half distracted with doubt and fear....

After that, his will made no further remonstrance. All that he thought of, day and night, was to be near her. Conventional morality ceased to be anything to him but a dim, murky shadow, falling at times across the path of his longing. He was face to face with two very grim realities, gaunt and shadowless, which hurt him, bit into his soul, absorbed his consciousness--his great unslaked thirst, and his dread of bringing her harm. He was unable to see issues clearly outlined under the pressure of the throbbing passion which possessed him. All that was highest in him was roused, all the self-sacrifice of which he was capable, all the desire to be of use, of protecting use, to some other human being; and by a grim irony it was aroused by that very implanted impulse in his sensuous fibre to be at one with that other, to be all in all to her, to rend the veil which divided her from him, body and soul. He thought of her reverently, as something sacred and unstained, yet he would have given ten years of his life to put his lips to hers. His will, undermined by years of easy drifting with the tide, made feeble attempts to grapple with the end; painfully achieved resolutions, painfully abandoned them, finally confessed dimly that he could neither give her up nor do anything to bring her harm.

So possessed, he made daily pilgrimage from the sunlit Italian villa into Mentone, and every day a rising tide of passion left him a step higher upon a thirsty beach of thankless indecision.

Shikari, the greyhound, who shared with him the daily journeying, and who slept by his bed at night, was the only living thing that gave him some comfort during those days when his old easy life slipped away from him. Jocelyn’s great love of animals invested the dog with an added attraction. Something of herself, Legard thought, seemed to stay with the caresses and the sweet words she had lavished upon him.

There was, besides, a sense of comradeship in the touch of the brute’s muzzle against his knee, which no human being could give, while his mind was kicking, impotently and incessantly, against the pricks of humanly-ordained circumstance. He managed to keep a certain hand upon his actions; he remained calmly and wearily gentle to his wife, but often when he looked at her, he would awake suddenly to the consciousness that he was trying to measure the ebbing vitality in her face and gestures, and he would turn away hating himself. Every morning he started from the villa, and walked the five dusty miles westwards under the blazing sun with a swinging, hardly restrained stride; every night he came slowly and listlessly back, under cover of the dewy darkness, his face drawn and his lips working. He used to walk both ways, so that in weariness he might get some freedom from thought at night. He did not always see Jocelyn. Sometimes his courage would fail him at the last moment, and he would not even make the attempt, but would hang about the town utterly wretched, and go back at night cursing his cowardice. It was a part of his misery too that he could not understand her. Some days she would hardly speak to him, would shrink if by accident he touched her, and avoided being alone with him; at other times she would seem as friendly and serene as in the old days; but even then she left the impression upon him, that she had been forcing herself not to think and feel, simply to live in the passing moment. She never touched him if she could help it, and her eyes seldom met his; by virtue of her woman’s quickness, they fell soft and luminous under the veil of their dark lashes before he could read the meaning in them. And he knew that it was all his own fault--for, do what he would, he could not hide his feelings. At times he was cold to her, almost sullen, at others quite silent; sometimes he could not keep back the tenderness in his voice, then again he would be suddenly conventional and abrupt, and always--always--he looked at her with hunger in his eyes. When he saw her in the presence of other people he suffered tortures of jealousy, he wanted her ever to himself. That expression of shrinking, almost of horror, in her face, haunted him; sometimes he would go away, cursing himself, calling himself a brute, and a beast, for bringing her a moment’s pain--he would even resolve to give her up and never see her again; but to no end--he could not keep away. Once, when she thought herself unobserved, he saw her looking at him with an expression in her eyes that he had never seen before--an expression in which wonder, fear, pity, and something very deep, were strangely blended; his heart leaped within him, but the next moment the look was gone, and her face was mysterious and inscrutable as a mask. He lived upon that look for days.

In his mind he perpetually reviewed all the unconsidered trifles of their meetings, the words spoken, and the words that seemed to hang unspoken on her lips, the thoughts that showed in her face and the thoughts unimaged, unconfessed--and neither her woman’s instinctive dissimulation, nor the greatly unconscious, greatly untested barrier of a girl’s reserve, could hide them altogether from his despairing eyes. He searched as a thirsty man seeks water in a desert, where to find it is life--to fail death. The knowledge that he was staking his all in that search, and yet that, even if he found it, it must needs be brackish, perhaps undrinkable, gave him a keenness of vision denied to most lover’s eyes. As the days ran into weeks he grew tired and worn-looking, and hollows began to come into his sun-burnt face. He lived, knowing nothing with certainty, nothing of what she felt, nothing of what he desired, nothing of the end. He lived a prey to hunger and to doubt....

One morning, as he was coming up to the hotel, he encountered Mrs. Travis, setting forth upon her daily visit to Monte Carlo. She told him that Jocelyn had taken a book, and gone for a walk by herself. He accompanied the good lady to the station, and watched her train go out, then he took the nearest way through the outskirts of the town to a sloping ridge which he knew to be Jocelyn’s favourite walk. The sun blazed fiercely, and in the town the heat brooded breathlessly over the houses, over the streets, and the dried watercourses. He passed a company of soldiers, in blue jackets and white trousers, straggling dustily along the road; three or four little girls on donkeys clattered by him laughingly, bumping up and down and chattering incessantly, while the drivers followed, flourishing sticks.

In the narrow lane of the steep ascent wild roses hung in clusters from the hedges; and now and then he passed unkempt cottages whence came the smell of burning wood and the barking of dogs. He came out at last upon a ridge, running between two terraced, vine-grown valleys. The uncertainty of his quest gave him courage, and he walked rapidly without dwelling upon the thought whether or not she would be glad to see him; but he had almost given up hope, and was about to retrace his steps, when he suddenly caught sight of her sitting on a bank of thyme, a little way down the left hand slope. Her elbows rested on her knees, and her chin was sunk in her hands; a book lay open by her side. His heart gave a great leap, and beat painfully; he stood still, doubting what he should do, but the sudden ceasing of footsteps had attracted her attention, and she looked up. He lifted his hat.

“May I come? Or shall I go back?” he said.

She looked at him startled, half rising from the ground.

“Shall I go away?” he repeated.

“It would be better,” she said; and then, as if to recall the strange words, she held out her hand and said--

“Oh, no! Come, of course, if you like.”

He went down the slope, dry and slippery under his feet, and threw himself at full length close to her. In the valley below the almond trees were flushing in the sun; on the hillsides the olives glistened, here and there a tall cypress stood like a sentinel over the scene, and pine trees crowning the ridge behind seemed to climb towards the blue of the sky. Cuckoos were calling, bees droning, and the tinkle of cow-bells floated up the valley. Little flowers pushed their tiny heads up around, and in all the still air was the scent of the thyme.

“This is the hour I love best,” said Jocelyn, “when the day is just sleeping; resting after its climb, before it begins to go down hill again. Listen to the bees, what a lullaby!”

She held up her finger, and sat with her head bent a little to one side, and a smile on her lips. Giles watching her, as always, saw the smile fade, leaving her face weary and troubled. He took up her book, and began turning over the leaves, with the feeling that by the trivial action he was warding off the pain which he felt was coming. Suddenly, she said--

“What does the world want with people? They only spoil it! It is _so_ beautiful, except for our horrible, horrible selves.”

She put her hands out, as if she would push away from her something weighty and oppressive. The motion went straight to his heart; he sat up with an abrupt movement, and turning half away from her, clenched his hands; feelings of grief and rage tore at him.

Presently he felt a soft pull at his sleeve. He looked at her. The little oval face, with its large brown eyes, was so pathetic that all bitterness left him, and he thought only of how to bring the light back into it. He began to talk about the book, about anything that came uppermost in his mind, and gradually the old friendly serenity came into her face. They sat there a long time, talking and reading, while the shadows of the pine trees lengthened, and in the slanting sun the light mellowed on the hillside. At last Jocelyn said--

“It’s time for me to go back.”

She was rising to her feet, when her foot slipped, and she fell nearly to the ground. Giles standing close caught her in his arms. He felt her breath on his cheek, the soft pressure of her yielding body against him--and his eyes blazed with the sweet emotion that leaped up in his heart. When she was on her feet again, he held her for one second. Suddenly her frame became rigid, she pushed him violently away from her, and covering her face with her hands, turned, and almost ran up the slope. Giles stood where she had left him, motionless....

Half an hour later he too went up the slope. At the turning into the lane, Jocelyn rose from the trunk of a fallen tree on which she had been sitting, and came up to him without a word. Her face was flushed, there were circles beneath her eyes, and he knew that she had been crying. With a catch in his breath, he took her hand and stroked it gently. They went down the hill together silently.