The Bond/Part 3/Chapter 8
VIII
YOU might call it fidelity to type, I suppose," said Crayven, with an odd, twisted smile. "At any rate, there it is. I don't expect it to make any difference to you—why should it? You have your own life—happy, or at least full of interest. You don't need me. I saw that from the first. But if it had been different—good Lord, what a difference!"
"How different?" murmured Teresa.
"Oh, if you had not been bound—really bound—I would have taken you away with me. You would like the life out there—or if not, I'd have gone anywhere, done anything else you liked. I've money enough, and Adela—could shift for herself. I could divorce her any day."
Crayven's eyes gleamed hard and fierce. In emotion, the strain of un-English blood in him came out strongly. He was another creature. The imperious will to live and to enjoy, the unreflective, passionate surge of life, had broken up and swept away all the mask of indifference and control. His face was ten years younger.
Teresa looked at him, fascinated. He set a new world about her. The strange possibilities of life—the fact that all one's life—might have been different—might even be different—rushed upon her in a dizzying flood. Her world seemed suddenly to become unreal, pale—she lost her grasp upon it, in the feeling that another choice had been possible. And something deep in her answered to Crayven's emotion—a deep correspondence of temperament, some sort of inevitable affinity. And a wild sense of the adventure of life, a desire to set back once more the boundaries of experience, to launch into the unfamiliar, stirred in her.
"Strange—I could have loved you," she said wonderingly.
"Then love me! Good God! if you only knew how lonely I am—how stale life seems to me! I want a little happiness before I die!"
He was sitting beside her on the turf, and now he flung himself full-length, hiding his face on his arms.
Before them the green meadow sloped sharply to the edge of a precipice, below which, two thousand feet below, lay the valley they had climbed from. Behind them lay a tiny lake, fed by a glacier, and the sheer, naked, rough walls of rock, the untrodden peaks of the range. The horizon was one round of serrated peaks. They were in absolute solitude. Far below in the valley cow-bells tinkled faintly; and a swarm of insects danced and hummed in the warm sun over the meadow-flowers.
Teresa was silent. Clasping her hands about her knees she gazed inscrutably at the blue cone of a mountain that rose in France. The sun burned her shoulders, the distant snow sparkled coolly, a light wind swept the feathery tops of the grass and the purple hare-bells.
"What a delicious day," she said vaguely.
Then, after a silence, how long it was she did not know, she said:
"I wish I could."
At last Crayven moved, sat up, took out his cigarette-case.
"Will you have one?" he said with a tired smile.
She looked at his eyes—there had been tears in them—and bent forward and kissed him.
"I do love you," she said softly.
"Ah, yes," he murmured resignedly. "That way."
"That way? Are there so many ways, then?"
"There's only one way. Either it is that or it isn't. … But I knew it from the first. I saw that you were satisfied."
"Satisfied! I'm anything but that."
"Oh, you may not be happy, but you're satisfied. You have no need of anyone. … And I think it was partly that that attracted me in you—that's the irony of my fate! There's nothing beautiful about a need—unless one happens to have the response to it. It's absurd to be hungry, at my time of life. Don't you find me very absurd?"
"I find you very—appealing."
"Oh," he murmured. "It's hard to be absurd twice over."
"Oh, it's life that's absurd. There's such horrid waste in it," said Teresa, almost angrily. "I don't see why one shouldn't love where one likes."
"Because love's like hunger. When it's satisfied you're not hungry any more, that's all. Brown bread and cheese may satisfy you—and then it doesn't matter if Lucullus asks you to dinner—I don't mean that I'm Lucullus! … We can't bear loneliness, any of us. Do you remember Maupassant's 'Solitude'? It's that solitude that we're driven at any cost to get away from. We can't stand too much of ourselves. We must have somebody who answers us … and most of us never find that person. But you've found it."
"Have I? I don't know. I thought I had. But who really knows or understands another person, after all?"
"Not all at once. But it comes. And the process of finding out is interesting."
"Not always pleasant. There are some things one would prefer not to find out."
"What things, for example?"
"Well—other women."
"But there are always other women. Man isn't a monogamous animal. How little they count, though, when there's the one! Don't you know that, you foolish, adorable child?"
"They count to the one," said Teresa, moodily.
"Surely it's what they count for to the man that matters."
"Well, how is one to know how much they count for? Of course, he always says it's nothing."
"And very likely he tells the truth. But you never will understand. … So you have quarrelled with him?"
"Yes, I have quarrelled."
"Foolish creature! Why should you care? You must always be the main one., No man could ever get tired of you."
"I don't care about being the favourite in a harem. I wish I were like him."
"You are foolish. … But you'll work out of it all right. I wish—look here, Teresa, do you know what made me half -wild to-day? For I was. … I've had despatches—there's trouble threatening out there, and I shall have to go back, any moment. I wish I could take you with me. Not exactly where the Turks may come down on us any minute—but I'd like to carry you off where he'd never find you. Why do you happen to be in love with him? I'd bolt the Turks, and we'd be off to the South Seas somewhere." Crayven laughed excitedly, and took her hand and kissed it. "Never mind, I shall take what I can get! You do like me, don't you?"
"Very much. I should like to run away with you, Turks or no Turks."
"Reckless Teresa! Would he mind your liking me, even as much as you do? Is he jealous?"
"He'd mind enormously, if he knew how much I like you. That's one reason I like to do it. I shall tell him."
"You will?" said Crayven drily. "Then why shouldn't you have more to tell? If I'm to be the instrument of chastisement for an erring husband, let me at least be an effective one."
"Oh, if you're going to be sarcastic at my expense, I shall go home."
Teresa sprang up and turned to look at the glacier and the towering rocks, among whose peaks a few fleecy clouds were tangled.
"I shall not go back by that tiresome path," she said. "I want to cut across there."
She pointed to a spur of the hill up which a trail had been worn by falling water.
"It's steeper than it looks. Much better stick to the beaten path."
"I'm tired of the beaten path! Come along." Crayven rose slowly and followed.
"I'll come along. But I warn you, you may get into difficulties. That's all sliding slate above."
"I thought you were a mountaineer!"
"I am. That's why I know that a path is better than an apparently easy short-cut—especially for a woman. Suppose you sprain your ankle on that slate? I should have to carry you all the way back to Anthemoz. Do you realise how lonely it is here? There isn't a human being within two miles of us." He came close to her. His eyes still burned with an excited fire.
"Don't be foolish," he said in a low voice. "I shall go where you lead. I'm not your lord and master."
"I have none—never had," said Teresa firmly. "Come."
She hurried on to the beginning of the sharp ascent, and began to climb, catching at tufts of coarse grass—to help herself up. Soon there was no more grass—nothing but loose stones and crumbling slate. But she went on, with determination and a sense of joy in her recklessness. What had looked like an easy ascent now towered above her, straight up, a wall of rock covered with treacherous debris. She turned, bracing herself carefully, and looked down. Crayven was just behind her. Over his shoulder she caught a sudden glimpse of the abyss that seemed to open below them—there seemed nothing to stop the fall—and the circle of mountain-peaks swam before her eyes.
"Dizzy? Want to come down?" he enquired.
His smile irritated her, and she turned and went on, choosing a difficult and uncertain foothold with each step. A little further above, the mild eminence which had lured her on suddenly reared a vertical surface, as high again as the distance she had climbed. She looked, aghast, her foot slipped and she went sliding down on a fall of loose slate. Crayven caught her, but he, too, slipped down a dozen feet, and they just saved themselves, clinging flat on the treacherous surface, from a bad fall. They had no alpenstocks, for the climb, except for this deviation of Teresa's, was an easy one. Crayven cautiously lifted himself, found a firm point of rock, and helped Teresa to her feet.
"Give me your hand, and come down," he said sharply.
"Oh, please, let me do it by myself! I can get down—and I'm afraid of making you slip" she said, rather frightened.
"Give me your hand!"
She obeyed. The descent was much more difficult than the climb. Looking down, the height was a dizzy one, and each step had to be taken with slow care, Crayven half-supporting her. Even so she reached the bottom with her dress stained with dirt and grass, her arms stained, her hands scratched by the rough stones. She sank down on the ground, her head swimming.
"Horrid little thing!" she cried. "Who would have thought it was such a monster as that! I was sure I could do it easily."
"Next time you'll know better. I was a fool to let you try it," said Crayven grimly. He took her drinking-cup and brought some water from the stream. Teresa drank and smiled at him pensively.
"Were we really in danger?" she asked.
"Oh, we might have got a very nasty fall—and there wouldn't have been any first aid to the injured."
"Well, why did you let me do it, then? You said it was dangerous."
"That's right—blame me. I told you I was a fool. Always have been—epecially where women are concerned—and they know it."
"Well," said Teresa, confidentially, "I have never known a nice man who wasn't."
"Thank you for the adjective. When you've rested a bit we'd better go down to the chalet and get some warm milk. I thought you were going to faint when I'd got you down."
"Nonsense, that would have been too tactless. I feel perfectly all right, except that my shoulder is strained and I'm covered with bruises and my hands are cut. I shouldn't mind if only I'd got to the top. I hate having to pay for something I haven't got."
"Then you shouldn't want something you can't get," said Crayven, sombrely. "I am an excellent person to preach on that text."
As she did not move he sat down again beside her.
"I do not believe," said Teresa, "that you are as badly off as you make out. If you were you wouldn't admit it. The real bankrupts never do."
"You don't believe I care for you, then?"
"As the pale shadow of Rosamond, perhaps!"
She was punished for her coquetry—for Crayven's rough and passoniate kiss woke nothing but repulsion in her. She sprang away from him and stood trembling with a desire to weep. She had turned quite white. After a moment she began to walk away from him down the slope.
"Not that way," he said coldly. "The path is here."
He went on ahead and she turned and followed him. Presently he stopped and waited, with his back to her and his head bent, looking at the ground, till she came near. Then he faced her.
"You should not play with me," he said hoarsely.
"No, I should not," she said.
She passed him and went on down to the chalet where shiftless human beings, cattle, pigs, and chickens huddled together on the very edge of the majestic cliffs. There Teresa drank her warm milk, sitting on a bench in the sun, while Crayven walked back and forth behind her, nervously smoking one cigarette after another. Teresa felt suddenly very tired, and her strained shoulder ached furiously. There was a long walk still before them. But she had quite got back her composure, and when she had finished the milk she was ready to start at once.
"Won't you rest half an hour? You must be tired," said Crayven, with pleading eyes.
"No, I'd rather go on." she answered indifferently.
They went silently along the winding path down the hot, stony hillside where grey herbs sent out a sharp fragrance, and into the depths of the pine-forest, dusky, cool, and sweet. Teresa, still pale and looking melancholy, walked ahead in the narrow path, but when it widened Crayven walked beside her. At last he said:
"Don't be too angry with me. … Did you hate so to have me touch you?"
"I'm not angry. … I don't know—don't talk about it," she said impatiently.
He uttered not a word after that. About them the sleepy, alluring silence of the forest stretched out, glade after glade, mossy, fresh, untrodden, with a light dreamy motion in its high crests, with a soft murmur in its distances.