The Firing Line Part 74

"You did not come again while I was conscious, did you?"

"No."

He pa.s.sed his thin hand across eyes and forehead.

She folded her arms under her breast and hung far over the shadow-dappled wall half-screened in young vine-leaves. Over her pink sun-bonnet and shoulders the hot spring sunshine fell; her face was in shadow; his, under the full glare of the unclouded sky, every ravage starkly revealed. And she could not turn her fascinated gaze or crush out the swelling tenderness that closed her throat to speech and set her eyes glimmering.

The lids closed, slowly; she leaned there without a word, living through in the s.p.a.ce of a dozen pulse-beats, the agony and sweetness of the past; then laid her flushed cheek on her arms and opened her eyes, looking at him in silence.

But he dared not sustain her gaze and took refuge from it in a forced gaiety, comparing his reappearance to the return of Ulysses, where Dame Art, that respectable old Haus-Frau, awaited him in a rocking-chair, chastely preoccupied with her tatting, while rival architects squatted anxiously around her, urging their claims to a dead man's shoes.

She strove to smile at him and to speak coolly: "Will you come in? I have finished the vines and presently I'm going to dig. Wait a moment"--looking behind her and searching with one tentative foot for the ladder--"I will have to let you in--"

A moment later she met him at the grille and flung it wide, holding out her hand in welcome with a careless frankness not quite natural--nor was the nervously vigorous handshake, nor the laughter, light as a breeze, leaving her breathing fast and unevenly with the hue of excitement deepening on lip and cheek.

So, the handshaking safely over, and chatting together in a tone louder and more animated than usual, they walked down the moist gravel path together--the extreme width of the path apart.

"I think," she said, considering the question, with small head tipped sideways, "that you had better sit on this bench because the paint is dry and besides I can talk to you here and dig up these seedling larkspurs at the same time."

"Don't you want me to do some weeding?"

"With pleasure when you are a little stronger--"

"I'm all right now--"

He stood looking seriously at the bare flower-bed along the wall where amber shoots of peonies were feathering out into palmate grace, and older larkspurs had pushed up into fringed mounds of green foliage.

She had knelt down on the bed's edge, trowel in hand, pink sun-bonnet fallen back neglected; and with blade and gloved fingers she began transferring the irresponsible larkspur seedlings to the confines of their proper spheres, patting each frail little plant into place caressingly.

And he was thinking of her as he had last seen her--on her knees at the edge of another bed, her hair fallen unheeded as her sun-bonnet hung now, and the small hands clasping, twisting, very busy with their agony--as busy as her gloved fingers were now, restlessly in motion among the thickets of living green.

"Tell me," she said, not looking back over her shoulder, "it must be heavenly to be out of doors again."

"It _is_ rather pleasant," he a.s.sented.

"Did you--they said you had dreadful visions. Did you?"

He laughed. "Some of them were absurd, Shiela; the most abominably grotesque creatures came swarming and crowding around the bed--faces without bodies--creatures that grew while I looked at them, swelling to gigantic proportions--Oh, it was a merry carnival--"

Neither spoke. Her back was toward him as she knelt there very much occupied with her straying seedlings in the cool shade of the wall.

Jonquils in heavy golden patches stretched away into sun-flecked perspective broken by the cool silver-green of iris thickets and the white star-cl.u.s.ters of narcissus nodding under sprays of bleeding-heart.

The air was sweet with the scent of late apple-bloom and lilac--and Hamil, brooding there on his bench in the sun, clasped his thin hands over his walking-stick and bent his head to the fragrant memories of Calypso's own perfume--the lilac-odour of China-berry in bloom, under the Southern stars.

He drew his breath sharply, raising his head--because this sort of thing would not do to begin life with again.

"How is Louis?" he asked in a pleasantly deliberate voice.

The thing had to be said sooner or later. They both knew that. It was over now, with no sign of effort, nothing in his voice or manner to betray him. Fortunately for him her face was turned away--fortunately for her, too.

There was a few moments' silence; the trowel, driven abruptly into the earth to the hilt, served as a prop for her clinched hand.

"I think--Louis--is very well," she said.

"He is remaining permanently with Mr. Portlaw?"

"I think so."

"I hope it will be agreeable for you--both."

"It is a very beautiful country." She rose to her slender, graceful height and surveyed her work: "A pretty country, a pretty house and garden," she said steadily. "After all, you know, that is the main thing in this world."

"What?"

"Why, an agreeable environment; isn't it?"

She turned smilingly, walked to the bench and seated herself.

"Your environment promises to be a little lonely at times," he ventured.

"Oh, yes. But I rather like it, when it's not over-populated. There will be a great deal for me to do in my garden--teaching young plants self-control."

"Gardens freeze up, Shiela."

"Yes, that is true."

"But you'll have good shooting--"

"I will never again draw trigger on any living thing!"

"What? The girl who--"

"No girl, now--a woman who can never again bring herself to inflict death."

"Why?"

"I know better now."

"You rather astonish me?" he said, pretending amus.e.m.e.nt.

She sat very still, thoughtful eyes roaming, then rested her chin on her hand, dropping one knee over the other to support her elbow. And he saw the sensitive mouth droop a little, and the white lids drooping too until the lashes rested on the bloom of the curved cheek. So he had seen her, often, silent, absent-minded, thoughts astray amid some blessed day-dream in that golden fable they had lived--and died in.

She said, as though to herself: "How can a woman slay?... I think those who have ever been victims of pain never desire to inflict it again on any living thing."

She looked up humbly, searching his face.

"You know it has become such a dreadful thing to me--the responsibility for pain and death.... It is horrible for humanity to usurp such a power--to dare interfere with life--to mar it, end it!... Children do not understand. I was nothing more a few months ago. To my intelligence the shallow arguments of those takers of life called sportsmen was sufficient. I supposed that because almost all the little children of the wild were doomed to die by violence, sooner or later, that the quicker death I offered was pardonable on the score of mercy." ... She shook her head. "Why death and pain exist, I do not know; He who deals them must know why."