The Tree of Heaven Part 58

"He was too weak to say anything more. But he sent you his love."

Vera said to herself: "He didn't. She made that up."

She hated the Red Cross woman who had been with Lawrence and had seen so much; who had dared to tell her what he meant and to make up messages.

XXIII

Nicholas had applied for a commission, and he had got it, and Frances was glad.

She had been proud of him because he had chosen the ranks instead of the Officers' Training Corps; but she persisted in the belief that, when it came to the trenches, second lieutenants stood a better chance. "For goodness' sake," Nicholas had said, "don't tell her that they're over the parapet first."

That was in December. In February he got a week's leave--sudden, unforeseen and special leave. It had to be broken to her this time that leave as special as that meant war-leave.

She said, "Well, if it does, I shall have him for six whole days." She had learned how to handle time, how to prolong the present, drawing it out minute by minute; thus her happiness, stretched to the snapping point, vibrated.

She had a sense of its vibration now, as she looked at Nicholas. It was the evening of the day he had come home, and they were all in the drawing-room together. He was standing before her, straight and tall, on the hearthrug, where he had lifted the Persian cat, Timmy, out of his sleep and was holding him against his breast. Timmy spread himself there, softly and heavily, hanging on to Nicky's shoulder by his claws; he b.u.t.ted Nicky's chin with his head, purring.

"I don't know how I'm to tear myself away from Timmy. I should like to wear him alive as a waistcoat. Or hanging on my shoulder like a cape, with his tail curled tight round my neck. He'd look uncommonly _chic_ with all his khaki patches."

"Why don't you take him with you?" Anthony said.

"'Cos he's Ronny's cat."

"He isn't. I've given him to you," Veronica said.

"When?"

"Now, this minute. To sleep on your feet and keep you warm."

Frances listened and thought: "What children--what babies they are, after all." If only this minute could be stretched out farther.

"I mustn't," Nicky said. "I should spend hours in dalliance; and if a sh.e.l.l got him it would ruin my morale."

Timmy, unhooked from Nicky's shoulder, lay limp in his arms. He lay on his back, in ecstasy, his legs apart, showing the soft, cream-white fur of his stomach. Nicky rubbed his face against the soft, cream-white fur.

"I say, what a heavenly death it would be to die--smothered in Timmies."

"Nicky, you're a beastly sensualist. That's what's the matter with you,"

John said. And they all laughed.

The minute broke, stretched to its furthest.

Frances was making plans now for Nicky's week. There were things they could do, plays they could see, places they could go to. Anthony would let them have the big car as much as they wanted. For you could stretch time out by filling it; you could multiply the hours by what they held.

"Ronny and I are going to get married to-morrow," Nicky said. "We settled it that we would at once, if I got war-leave. It's the best thing to do."

"Of course," Frances said, "it's the best thing to do."

But she had not allowed for it, nor for the pain it gave her. That pain shocked her. It was awful to think that, after all her surrenders, Nicky's happiness could give her pain. It meant that she had never let go her secret hold. She had been a hypocrite to herself.

Nicky was talking on about it, excitedly, as he used to talk on about his pleasures when he was a child.

If Dad'll let us have the racing car, we'll go down to Morfe. We can do it in a day."

"My dear boy," Anthony said, "don't you know I've lent the house to the Red Cross, and let the shooting?"

"I don't care. There's the little house in the village we can have. And Harker and his wife can look after us."

"Harker gone to the War, and his wife's looking after his brother's children somewhere. And I've put two Belgian refugees into it."

"_They_ can look after us," said Nicky. "We'll stay three days, run back, and have one day at home before I sail."

Frances gave up her play with time. She was beaten.

And still she thought: "At least I shall have him one whole day."

And then she looked across the room to Michael, as if Michael's face had signalled to her. His clear, sun-burnt skin showed blotches of white where the blood had left it. A light sweat was on his forehead. When their eyes met, he shifted his position to give himself an appearance of ease.

Michael had not reckoned on his brother's marriage, either. It was when he asked himself: "On what, then, _had_ he been reckoning?" that the sweat broke out on his forehead.

He had not reckoned on anything. But the sudden realization of what he might have reckoned on made him sick. He couldn't bear to think of Ronny married. And yet again, he couldn't bear to think of Nicky not marrying her. If he had had a hold on her he would have let her go. In this he knew himself to be sincere. He had had no hold on her, and to talk about letting her go was idiotic; still, there was a violent pursuit and possession by the mind--and Michael's mind was innocent of jealousy, that psychic a.s.sault and outrage on the woman he loved. His spiritual surrender of her was so perfect that his very imagination gave her up to Nicky.

He was glad that they were going to be married tomorrow. Nothing could take their three days from them, even when the War had done its worst.

And then, with his mother's eyes on him, he thought: "Does she think I was reckoning on that?"

Nicholas and Veronica were married the next morning at Hampstead Town Hall, before the Registrar.

They spent the rest of the day in Anthony's racing car, defying and circ.u.mventing time and s.p.a.ce and the police, tearing, Nicky said, whole handfuls out of eternity by sheer speed. At intervals, with a clear run before him, he let out the racing car to its top speed on the Great North Road. It snorted and purred and throbbed like some immense, nervous animal, but lightly and purely as if all its weight were purged from it by speed. It flew up and down the hills of Hertfordshire and Buckinghamshire and out on to the flat country round Peterborough and Grantham, a country of silver green and emerald green gra.s.s and purple fallow land and bright red houses; and so on to the great plain of York, and past Reyburn up towards the bare hill country netted with grey stone walls.

Nicholas slowed the car down for the winding of the road.

It went now between long straight ramparts of hills that showed enormous and dark against a sky cleared to twilight by the unrisen moon. Other hills, round-topped, darker still and more enormous, stood piled up in front of them, blocking the head of Rathdale.

Then the road went straight, and Nicholas was reckless. It was as if, ultimately, they must charge into the centre of that incredibly high, immense obstruction. They were thrilled, mysteriously, as before the image of monstrous and omnipotent disaster. Then the dale widened; it made way for them and saved them.

The lights of Morfe on its high platform made the pattern of a coronet and pendants on the darkness; the small, scattered lights of the village below, the village they were making for, showed as if dropped out of the pattern on the hill.

One larger light burned in the room that was their marriage chamber.

Jean and Suzanne, the refugees, stood in the white porch to receive them, holding the lanterns that were their marriage torches. The old woman held her light low down, lighting the flagstone of the threshold.

The old man lifted his high, showing the lintel of the door. It was so low that Nicholas had to stoop to go in.