The Bond/Part 3/Chapter 9
IX
THAT evening Teresa sat watching the bridge-table in Nina's drawing-room. Ernesto had come back from his week in the motor, bland and content with himself, and full of stories and silences about Adela Crayven. At present he and Crayven were playing against the bellicose Vicomte, whose duel somehow had not come off, and his sister, and Ernesto, as always, was excitedly absorbed in the game.
"Contre!" he cried, when "no trumps" had been declared against him, slapping his cards down on the table and folding his arms frenziedly. He played out the hand fiercely, pounding each trick with his fist as he took it in and turned it; lost the odd; and leaned across the table, demanding of his partner with concentrated fury:
"For God's sake, why didn't you lead me a heart!"
"Heart? Heart?" said Crayven vaguely. "I don't think I had one."
"You had! Haven't you just played the king on my ace? You've lost us the game!"
"Very sorry, indeed," murmured Crayven.
"Sorry!" snorted Ernesto, dealing round a fresh pack with desperation.
Nina, crocheting on an endless piece of white wool, glanced at him with alarmed sympathy, and Teresa smiled faintly. Ernesto was never ill-tempered except at cards, but his card-manners were atrocious. Teresa always remembered, when she saw him at play, the phrase of a clever Italian, "Siamo civili mas non civili" No, decidedly, Ernesto was not civilised. The passion to win swept away all his surface civility.
Crayven was undeniably an irritating partner. To-night he was playing his worst; it was clear that his mind was anywhere but on the game. Teresa, from where she sat, a little behind him, glanced now and then at his grave profile, the weary droop of his eyelids. Midway in the last game of the rubber she got up and said good-night to Nina. Ernesto, studying his cards with knitted brows, did not notice her move till the other two men at the table rose; then he protested:
"Oh, don't go now! Wait a few minutes and cut in, Teresa, we're almost done—you take Crayven's place, or mine."
"No, I'm tired—I don't want to play," she said, with a perverse pleasure in Crayven's look of suppressed anger. She knew he had come only in order to walk home with her, but she had not meant that he should ; and now she went away, firmly refusing any escort. It was only a few steps to the hotel. But, in the one lighted street of the little town, she turned the other way and walked slowly, past the lights of the village, out on the quiet road that led down to a bridge over the brawling Vieze. The night was cool, and a current of colder air, swept down by the stream, made her shiver slightly as she wrapped her cloak about her and leaned to look down at the foaming water. She was extremely tired, but nervous restlessness and melancholy dominated her physical fatigue. That was the impression the day had left with her—a mordant melancholy—and she had seen the same thing in Crayven's face that evening. What had happened, after all, and why was it that suddenly all had fallen to ruins in their relation to one another? Why was it that at a touch that world of which he was the centre, and which had for a moment beckoned to her, had crumbled away, vanished like a mirage? It was gone, and she felt desolately ennuyée.
Hard reality stared her in the face—the sense of her bondage. She was not free for a moment, she could never love Crayven nor anyone else. Something far deeper than convention, which she would willingly have thrown overboard, bound her, body and soul. She liked Crayven thoroughly, she felt affection for him, and in her rebellion she wished passionately that she could care more for him or could be deceived into thinking she cared—but she could not. All that pleasant, shimmering illusion of possibility was gone. He was more sympathetic to her in many ways than Basil, she even liked him better, but she had no real emotion for him. Basil had taken it all—all! He had taken her whole self, her will, her imagination, her entire power of loving. She was drained of it all. There was nothing left. She was bound—bound! And she wept with anger as she realised how completely she was delivered into his hands, how vain had been her pretense that she could do without him, could "console" herself. He might be unfaithful, but she never could. How strange was that bond, deeper than the will, deeper than any sympathy of mind, taking no account of the many things in him that she deeply disliked, of the fact that she really disliked his character! It. was infinitely more than a physical bond, it was a passion of the soul. How strange and how terrible!
She looked up at the mountain-chain, black as midnight, cutting with its jagged edge the starry sky; and all its mass suddenly seemed to her an illusion, something immaterial that might dissolve away at a breath. Why was she here in the midst of this unreality, this play-scene set for a drama which did not begin? She felt as though she were in a dream—one of those fatiguing nightmares where endless time passes in preparation for something that never happens. Longing caught at her heart—desire for the one reality, even though a wounding one, in this world of shadow.
••••••
When she met Crayven next day she was sweetly gentle to him. She seemed to want to show her liking for him, to forget the untoward incident at Anthemoz; and Crayven, at first a little bewildered by her kindness, ended by accepting it sadly. They went out as usual after tea into the forest. Teresa had never seen Crayven so intensely melancholy, so almost childish in his depression. He was unreasonable and petulant as a child whom one tries to console for the deprivation of sweets to-day by the promise of a walk to-morrow. All his strength and grip of himself were in abeyance. He complained, and Teresa tried to coax him. She offered to write to him when he went away, which must be, she knew, within a few days.
"Oh, letters," he said ungraciously. "What are they, when I can't see you?"
"Oh, you will like them," she said. "Surely you don't want me to disappear altogether."
"You will disappear. What does a mere friendly liking count, after all? You'll forget all about me in three months. I shall be only an incident. I wish it had never happened. I wish I'd never seen you. I've been shaken up and bothered for nothing—just as I was settling comfortably into middle-ago, and not caring whether anyone cared much for me or not!—Oh, well, no fool like a middle-aged fool. I hope I shall get knocked on the head in this row, if there's going to be one—that'll make it all right."
"Don't be Byronic. I never thought you were sentimental."
"Yes, but I am. I want to be. Bear with me for a little. … I want a photograph of you. Have you got one?"
"Not here, but I'll send you one."
This time Teresa was careful not to say anything about Rosamond. The hour for coquetry was decidedly past, and the freedom of their earlier talks. She was oppressed by Crayven's seriousness, and a little frightened by it.
"That's all I shall have of you," he said moodily. "A photograph—that won't give me anything real of you—not your beautiful colour, nor all that changing expression of your face. But don't forget that I have cared a lot about you—don't forget. I'm a constant brute, a faithful one. If you ever needed me—but that's absurd."
He flung away a half-smoked cigarette, and began tearing up the moss near him with nervous fingers.
"You believe that, don't you?" he went on hurriedly. "You believe there's been something real in this—that it's been real to me?"
"It's hard to believe—it's so unreasonable," she said.
"That's just what reality—is unreason. Who can reason about a thing of this sort? It comes—nobody knows why."
"I've been so little to you, after all—not so much as I might have been, even."
"You've been yourself. There's always one person that cares and one that submits to being cared for. … I wish I could take care of you"
It seemed foolish to mind his taking her hand quietly and holding it; but when she withdrew it abruptly, he looked rather pleased than otherwise.
"Want to soothe my wounded self-esteem? I wish I didn't see through it! You know that one doesn't like to be considered perfectly harmless—what a lot you do know!"
Teresa smiled vaguely, looking into the shadows of the forest.
"Don't you want to walk on?" she asked.
"No, it's better here. Stay a little longer."
He lit another cigarette and smoked silently, looking at her now and then with a long, reflective gaze. Teresa was silent, too, conscious that it would be better to talk, but unable to find the right words. And the living, breathing silence of the forest, enveloping them softly, with golden lights, with mysterious shadows, made itself felt, a lulling, sensuous power, a mighty influence, a will. It dissolved all things into dream. One seemed to feel the world swinging through space, wild, primeval, obedient only to a single law which crushed the individual will to dust. Danger! Danger to one's small individuality, to one's little world, opposing this vast, impersonal, indifferent force!
The blood came to Teresa's face. At the touch of Crayven's lips on her hand she did not move, but the sound of his voice—he murmured her name—sent her to her feet with a leap.
"Come away from here!" she cried, pale and laughing a little. "This place is bewitched! Come at once, or you will turn into something queer! I felt myself turning into a tree as I sat there—a birch-tree, all white and—and taking root by that rock!"
"Ah, why couldn't you let the dream come true," he said, his black eyes glowing.
"No, no—no dreams! I'm afraid of them. One does such odd things in dreams—and if they should come true! And this place! … Why, here one could murder one's grandmother, or do anything odd, and it would seem perfectly natural—only I daresay the Swiss police would find it out!"
She laughed again restlessly, and her eyes, blue as the sky, glanced about the place. Crayyen got up and came close to her.
"Well—before we go—since it is an enchanted wood, kiss me once, will you?" His voice trembled, and he caught his breath suddenly. "I'm—Teresa, I'm going to-morrow."
"To-morrow? … No, you can't be! You don't mean it. …"
"Ah, but I do. I got a despatch this morning. I must go. So. …"
He waited, looking at her with eyes that seemed suddenly tired, seared.
"So, kiss me good-bye, dear," he said.
"To-morrow? " said Teresa confusedly. "Why didn't you tell me? Don't go. …"
He was silent, waiting—his face set and sad. She leaned toward him, flushing suddenly, her eyes veiling themselves. Crayven took her face in his two hands, and his gaze lingered on its every line and contour, its trembling colour, the tremor of the eyelashes and lips. Then he clasped her close and kissed her—a long kiss.
For him it was the end. There was a deep tenderness, a protecting gentleness, in his relinquishment, as he set her free.