The Side Of The Angels Part 34

It was a cuc.u.mber-house. That is, where two or three months earlier there had been lettuce there were now cuc.u.mber-vines running on lines of twine, and already six feet high. It was like going into a vineyard, but a vineyard closer, denser, and more regular than any that ever grew in France. Except for one long, straight aisle no wider than the shoulders of a man it was like a solid ma.s.s of greenery, thicker than a jungle, and oppressive from the evenness of its alt.i.tude. Claude felt smothered, not only by the heat, but by this compact luxuriance that dwarfed him, and which was climbing, climbing still. It was prodigious. In its way it was grotesque. It was like something grown by magic. But a few weeks previous there had been nothing here but the smooth green pavement of cheerful little plants that at a distance looked like jade or malachite.

Now, all of a sudden, as it were, there was this forest of rank verdure, sprung with a kind of hideous rapidity, stifling, overpowering, productive with a teeming, incredible fecundity. Low down near the earth the full-grown fruit, green with the faintest tip of gold, hung heavy, indolent, luscious, derisively cool to touch and taste in this semi-tropical heat. The gherkin a few inches above it defied the eye to detect the swelling and lengthening that were taking place as a man looked on. Tendrils crept and curled and twisted and interlocked from vine to vine like queer, blind, living things feeling after one another.

Pale blossoms of the very color of the sunlight made the sunlight sunnier, while bees boomed from flower to flower, bearing the pollen from the males, shallow, cuplike, richly stamened, to the females growing daintily from the end of the embryo cuc.u.mber as from a pinched, wizened stem.

Advancing a few paces into this gigantic vinery, Claude found the one main aisle intersected by numerous cross-aisles in any of which Rosie might be working. He pushed his way slowly, partly because the warm air heavy with pollen made him faint, and partly because this close pressure of facile, triumphant nature had on his nerves a suggestion of the menacing. On the pathway of soft, dark loam his steps fell noiselessly.

When he came upon Rosie she was buried in the depths of an almost imperceptible cross-aisle and at the end remote from the center. As her back was toward him and she had not heard his approach, he watched her for a minute in silence. His quick eye noticed that she wore a blue-green cotton stuff, with leaf-green belt and collar, that made her the living element of her background, and that her movements and att.i.tudes were of the kind to display the exquisite lines of her body.

She was picking delicately the pale little blossoms and letting them flutter to the ground. Her way was strewn with the frail yellow things already beginning to wither and shrivel, adding their portion of earth unto earth, to be trans.m.u.ted to life unto life with the next rotation in planting.

"Rosie, what are you doing?"

He expected her to be startled, but he was not prepared for the look of terror with which she turned. He couldn't know the degree to which all her thoughts were concentrated on him, nor the fears by which each of her waking minutes was accompanied. She would have been startled if he had come at one of his customary hours toward night; but it was as death in her heart to see him like this in the middle of the forenoon. The emotion was the greater on both sides because the long, narrow perspective focused the eyes of each on the face of the other, with no possibility of misreading. Claude remained where he was. Rosie clung for support to the feeble aid of the nearest vine.

She began to speak rapidly, not because she thought he wanted his question answered, but because it gave her something to say. It was like the effort to keep up by splashing about before going down. She was picking off the superfluous female flowers, she said, in order that the strength of the plant might go into the remaining ones. One had to do that, otherwise--

He broke in abruptly. "Rosie, why did you tell me Thor never said anything about you and me being married?"

"Oh, what's he been saying?" She clasped her hands on her breast, with a sudden beseeching alarm.

"It's not a matter of what he's been saying. It's only a matter of what you say. And I want you to tell me why he's paying me for marrying you."

He spoke brutally not only because his suffering nerves made him brutally inclined, but in the hope of wringing from her some cry of indignation. But she only said:

"I didn't know he was doing that."

"But you knew he was going to do something."

It seemed useless to poor Rosie to keep anything back now; she could only injure her cause by hedging. "I knew he was going to do something, but he didn't tell me what it would be."

"And why should he do anything at all? What had it to do with him?"

She wrung her hands. "Oh, Claude, I don't know. He came to me. He took me--he took me by surprise. I never thought of anything like that. I never dreamt it."

Claude drew a bow at a venture. "You mean that you never thought of anything like that when he said"--he was obliged to wet his lips with his tongue before he could get the words out--"when he said he was in love with you."

She nodded. "And, oh, Claude, I didn't mean it. I swear to you I didn't mean it. I knew he'd tell you. I was always afraid of him. But I just thought it _then_--just for a minute. I couldn't have done it--"

He had but the dimmest suspicion of what she meant, but he felt it well to say: "You could have done it, Rosie, and you would. You're that kind."

She took one timid step toward him, clasping her hands more pa.s.sionately. "Oh, Claude, have mercy on me. If you knew what it is to be me! Even if I had done it, it wouldn't have been because I loved _you_ any the less. It would have been for father and mother and Matt--and--and everything."

The way in which the words rent her made him the more cruel. They made him the more cruel because they rent him, too. "That doesn't make any difference, Rosie. You would have done it just the same. As it is, you were false to me--"

"Only that once, Claude!"

"And if you want me to have mercy on you, you'll have to tell me everything that happened--the very worst."

"The worst that happened was then."

"Then? When? There were so many times."

"But the other times he didn't say anything at all. He just came. I never dreamt--"

"But if you had dreamt, you would have played another sort of hand. Now, wouldn't you?"

"Claude, if you only knew! If you could only imagine what it is to have nothing at all!--to have to live and fight and scrimp and save!--and no one to help you!--and your brother in jail!--and coming out!--coming out, Claude!--and no one to help _him_!--and everything on you--!"

"That's got nothing to do with it, Rosie--"

"It _has_ got something to do with it. It's got everything to do with it. If it hadn't, do you think that I'd have said that I'd marry him?"

Claude felt like a man who knows he's been shot, but as yet is unconscious of the wound. He spoke quietly: "I think I wouldn't have said that I'd marry two men at the same time, and play one off against the other."

There was exasperation in her voice as she cried: "But how could I help it, Claude? Can't you _see_? It wasn't _him_."

"Oh, I can see that well enough. But do you think it makes it any better?"

"It makes it better if I never would have done it unless I'd been obliged to."

"But you'd have _done_ it--"

"No, Claude, I wouldn't--not when it came to the point."

"But why didn't it come to the point? Since you told him you were willing to marry him, why--?"

She implored him. "Oh, what's the use of asking me that, if he's told you already?"

"It's this use, Rosie, that I want to hear it from yourself. You've told me one lie--"

"Oh, Claude!"

"And I want to see if you'll tell me any more."

"I didn't mean it to be a lie, Claude; but what could I say?"

"When we don't mean a thing to be a lie, Rosie, we tell the truth."

"But how _could_ I!"

"Well, perhaps you couldn't; but you can now. You can tell me just what happened--and why more didn't happen, since you were willing that it should."

She began with difficulty, wringing her hands. "It was last January--I think it was January--yes, it was--one evening--I was in the other hothouse making out bills--and he came all of a sudden--and he asked me--he asked me--"

"Yes, yes; go on."

"He asked me if I loved you, and I said I did. And he asked me how much I loved you, and I said--I said I'd die for you--and so I would, Claude.

I'd do it gladly. You can believe me or not--"

"That's all right. What I want to know is what happened after that."