The Strange Attraction/Chapter 12
CHAPTER XII
I
O ne Friday night in the third week in September Valerie and Dane worked alone. The front door was open, and there stole in to refresh the stuffy office the soft fragrance of an irresistible night. All day long Valerie had shot envious glances over the top of the whiting on the window across the river at the spreading swamp veiled with the enchantments of spring. And at intervals Dane too had looked out at the river and the swamp, and had thought of friendly little creeks he knew, and plaintive lagoons he knew, and pleasant backwaters he knew, and willow-girdled pools he knew where he craved to be with Valerie.
She leaned back in her chair after she had finished editing a letter from a farmer, and thought of the wonderful week they had had. Dane had brilliantly frustrated two moves on the part of the enemy, had forestalled them in another, and had given George Rhodes some valuable hints to follow up. It was now generally known who it was who was conducting the lively campaign waged by this youngster among journals, and every post brought them back comments on it. Dane’s articles on the North were often copied in full, the party heads were quoting some of his most pungent criticisms of the Ward government, and altogether the eyes of their little world were upon them. This in itself was pleasantly thrilling. But it was nothing to the wonder that was going on inside themselves, gathering intensity from the curbs they put upon it.
Valerie looked at Dane’s head bent forward while his pen raced to finish Monday’s leader. Her fingers ached to play with that seductive hair. The more or less chaste good-night kiss they allowed themselves was fast becoming a very miserable dole to hand out to each other from the splendours of love they felt within them. But Dane had kept more steadily in mind even than she had the hard cold fact that she had to be at the office at eight every morning. And perhaps in the final reckoning of accounts the little thoughtfulnesses will be weighed against the big sins and found to have astonishing tonnage.
But he had come to feel that they were missing their legitimate share of the spring, and, determined that he would get her away from the office for a while at the end of the week, he had given her more help, so that this night they were so well ahead that there was nothing but ordinary routine for the Saturday morning. Then, too, her other anxiety, Bob, was now, in spite of one bad relapse, safely on the road to recovery and would, in another week’s time, be well enough to go home for a final rest before coming back to the drive of the last three weeks.
As he read over his leader Dane felt her insistent scrutiny of him and swung round on his chair. After looking at her he caught her hands.
“Look here, I can’t be noble much longer, can you?”
“No I can’t,” she chuckled delightedly.
He looked at his watch. “It’s only ten. Come out on the river for a while.”
“Oh, glorious, I’ve been wanting that for days.”
“You haven’t wanted it any more than I have,” he said softly.
He took the copy into the composing-room, turned out the lights, and hatless they stood in front of the outer door listening. Then seeing there was no one about she locked up and they crossed the road to the river bank where he now kept his launch when he was working in the office.
It seemed strange to her that it was the first time she had had a chance to get out on the river, with him. She noticed by the light of the lantern he lit for the bow that the interior of the boat was beautifully clean, and wondered if he took care of it himself. It was built like a grayhound and had a forward cabin large enough for two people to sleep in. There were cushions and an old rug on the floor by the stern seat. She sat down there with him and put an arm round his shoulder and sat still.
To her as to him a boat was some kind of sanctuary, a retreat from the world and all its stupidities, frets and fevers, and something about it calmed the excitement that had begun to pound her as they came out of the office. They sat silent while he drove very fast, looking keenly ahead for stray logs or the ends of sunken snags, for the spring rains were liable to bring down sinister things. But it was a clear night and shadows were visible for some distance in the middle of the stream. Presently he steered to the further bank and went more slowly. They made a little breeze which was pleasantly cool against their cheeks. They passed solemn clumps of trees standing black against the stars. They passed valleys belted with strands of cobwebby film. They passed lonely little wharves, merely a few planks negligently attached to wobbly piles, where hopeful settlers from remote gullies came to bring wool and potatoes and grain, and to get in return seeds and wire and kegs of nails. They passed the sheds and camps of timbermen, and the mangrove-sheltered mouths of creeks beckoning for exploration.
Dane told her tales of many of these things for he knew and loved them all. He kept on till the lights about Te Koperu dimly lit the river’s edge and then he turned back and ran till he came to the tree hung arc by his own house. There in the black still water against the frowning range of bush he slowed down, and finally stopped against the rocks at a place where a clump of totara above hid the stars.
He drew up the rug and wrapped it about them and then he drew Valerie into his arms. He felt her grow hot and tense at once, but he had not set out with the intention of making love to her. He was compounded of strange vagaries and powerful moods, and few women had ever been able to impose sentimentality upon him when he did not want it. He liked to vision experience as pictures, and he tried to make life follow the pictures he painted with his imagination. He was not always able to do so, he was fast coming to a stage with Valerie when he would not be able to do so, but this night his mood was dominant. He held her without attempting to kiss her.
Then he began to recite:
Full of tumultuous life and great repose,
Where, twice a day,
The purposeless, glad ocean comes and goes,
Under high cliffs, and far from the huge town,
I sit me down.
For want of me the world’s course will not fail;
When all its work is done the lie shall rot;
The truth is great, and shall prevail,
When none cares whether it prevail or not.
All the fever died out of Valerie. She was afraid to move lest she should break the spell those lines had put upon her. She knew that in saying them he had told her something significant about himself. And contrary to her habit of mind with men her fierce individualism was being insidiously undermined. She was following him.
His mood changing he sang the refrain of a popular French song:
Que vos grands yeux pleins de douceur
Ont charmé tout mon coeur,
Et que c’est pour la vie.
Je sais que c’est une folie,
Que loin de vous je devrais
M’en aller à jamais.
Je sais, je sais que vous êtes jolie.
She loved the gay little air which she had never heard, but because she had sadly neglected the French she had learned from her governess she could not make out all the sense of it.
“What’s that about folly and running away?” she demanded, raising her face.
But he calmly put a hand over her mouth and pushed her head down, and then to puzzle her sang the song through, knowing that it would tease her.
When he had finished she tried to wriggle up. But his arms tightened about her.
“Tell me what it said,” she demanded again.
He leaned down and began to move his lips about in her hair.
“I will not be suppressed,” she said, trying to resist him.
“All right, Miss Freedom,” he said softly, suddenly releasing his hold upon her, so that she slipped back and hit her head against the handle of the rudder.
The solicitude Dane showed over that mishap was out of all proportion to its size, but her appetite for solicitude was fast becoming abnormally increased, and she did not find it over-much. She was only too content to be caught up in his arms and kissed as he began to kiss her then. He became dynamically and startlingly alive; his grip about her seemed to burn into her flesh. He had changed too quickly for her to respond at once and when her mood rose to meet his he had begun to curb his own. He grew still, and held her lightly.
She had a queer sensation that she was being disintegrated by this potent personality who was mesmerizing her into following his moods, that she was being used as an instrument for the play of his mind and his emotion. And the queerest thing about it was that she did not mind.
But the evening did not proceed as she had imagined it might. He took out his pipe, and when he struck the match to light it he looked at his watch.
“It’s eleven, dear. I must get you home.”
Valerie did not want to go home. She almost said so. But she sat up, and a little chilled, more mentally than physically, drew the rug over her knees while he started the engine. When he had the Diana out in midstream he put an arm about her and then appeared to forget her. She wondered as they went on how many women had loved him without understanding him in the least. She was beginning to see that certainly no woman of the society type, caught at first by his looks, could follow the meanderings of his moods, or be satisfied for long by the capriciousness of his attention. But she saw him impersonally as well as personally. She was able, even while succumbing to his looks and charm, to stand off from him and see him for the baffling and appealing creature that he was. She was able to see him against his heredity, against his background, his strengths set against his own weaknesses, his accomplishments against his failures.
It was not till they were by the borders of the town that he asked some of those simple questions that change lives. He was going slowly along the bank looking for a good place to land her.
“What have you to do to-morrow afternoon, dear?”
“Nothing, unless something very unexpected turns up in the morning.”
“Good. Will you come out with me again?”
“Of course I will.”
“And would you come to my house and play to me and have dinner with me?”
“Oh, I’d love to.”
II
The minute they set eyes on each other the next afternoon they knew that each had prepared for a real party.
Valerie wore a charming dress that she had recently had made and sent up to her from Auckland by a dressmaker who knew her tastes. It was of a heavy blue silk crêpe, a shade between navy and indigo that deepened the colour of her eyes, and it was fetchingly decorated with small dull red buttons. It was of the simplest lines imaginable and under it her limbs moved freely. She wore a little straw hat in the same tones of blue and red. It was by no means a boating costume, but caught on the dilemma of the river and dinner she had compromised as best she could.
Dane gave her a long intent look as she stepped forward to the bow of the Diana hidden in the rushes.
And she looked at him in much the same manner. He was wearing white flannels with a navy double-breasted coat and a yachting cap, and more glamorous than any captain who ever before sailed a ship he held out his hand to her. Something had happened to them both since they had parted soberly the night before.
“What a charming dress, dear. It just occurs to me that I have never seen you out of office or riding clothes.”
“I know,” she said regretfully. “And you, how stunning you look in those things.”
They stood in the bow of the boat staring at each other. There were questions and shy evasions in their eyes. Then because this was no place for romance, with the public road only a few chains away and riders likely to be numerous on Saturday afternoon, he moved away and settled a possum rug for her to sit upon at the stern. Then with an oar he pushed the launch off and soon he was making for the other side of the river to avoid boats that might be coming down to Dargaville.
The world was flooded with soft sunshine, and every rush and every mangrove bush and every tree along the bank proclaimed the handiwork of spring.
After half an hour Dane turned in at the narrow mouth of a deep creek and in a minute the river was out of sight behind mangroves. They were soon in a gully with hills shooting up on either side, a gully that was pure beauty from the tree-ferns at the water’s edge to the sun-tinted bush on the skyline. He went more slowly as the stream narrowed, dodging stumps and logs and roots until they came round a bend into an oval pool into which the Diana drifted and stopped.
Valerie drew herself up and looked into that mirror of shaded jade. The sound of a waterfall near explained why it was clear and jewelled with the greens of the hills. She looked round her and caught her breath. Holding the last of the afternoon sun that was finding its way down here was a clump of rimu, and she knew why Dane had brought her. The rimu is the most fragile tree on earth. Some poet among the gods more delicate and mystical than the spirits about him drank a nectar prepared to stimulate imagination and dreamed this tree. It was to be a thing of misty shape, as intangible as gossamer, as variable as a cloud. The gods worked with his idea a long time, and at last they fashioned a magic thing of tasselled fringes, its rich green dusted to luminousness by a silver bloom, a vague shape to sway with every breath of wind, to change with every movement of a bird’s wing, so restless and mobile a tree that it would drive an artist to despair to try to catch its form. Nothing but the music of Debussy quivering upon violin strings could adequately suggest its beauty. And the gods had placed it in the fairest setting they could find, in valleys of tropical prodigality among the nikau and the tree-ferns, where its cobwebby loveliness softened the stiff splendours of the puriri and its lacy perfection humbled the arrogance of the kauri, the king of the bush.
This was what Dane liked to think as he looked upon a rimu tree, and he had brought Valerie there because he knew of no fairer gift to give her that day.
After some minutes they turned to look at each other. Tragedy would have come into their lives there and then if either had spoken a word. He saw a quiver on her lips. He drew her down with him on to the rug, and leaning against the seat held her close to him. And so they stayed making no sound to offend the sensitive deities of that enchanted spot. Presently he began to think of her and of the beauty of her hair, for she had taken off her hat, and the sun’s rays lit up her head lying in the hollow of his arm. And he looked into her clear eyes so generously set in her flushed face, and he was glad without any thought of past or future, for that hour alone.
He said to himself, like the incurable child that he was, that when the sun left her hair he would turn home.
III
“I seem to have known you so long that I cannot realize that you have not been here before.”
They had paused at the end of the path leading from his steps into the garden. Valerie had clutched at his arm with the queer choking feeling that the day was too much for her. She saw the gray house, low and rambling, against its background of garden and forest wall. She saw honeysuckle and ivy softening its corners and crawling over its red roof. She saw an enormous magnolia tree filling the air with its exotic scent, bushes of graceful fuchsias, of old-fashioned roses, of oleander and camellias. She saw tumbledown seats that Dane never sat upon, and a stone bowl on a pedestal overrun with a rich, red ivy geranium. And everywhere as a carpet were violets and narcissi and periwinkle and primroses. It was a gloriously untidy garden. Grass grew upon the paths. Weeds flourished in many spots. There was freedom for all things there.
Full of sweet trees and colour of glad grass.”
Then he paused wondering if she knew the quotation. She shot, for the first time that day, a provocative look at him.
“And the lady?”
“And now, I hope, the lady, ‘clothed like summer with sweet hours,’” he said, very softly.
She closed her eyes as she felt his arms sweeping about her. And it did not seem in the least absurd that they should stand there in the full sunlight kissing each other again. Nor did it seem absurd that as they went on they should stop every now and then, forget the thing they had been talking about, or put down the thing they had taken up, and find their lips pressed hard against each other. They made indeed so lingering a pilgrimage about the garden that the dusk came down upon them while they were yet exploring it.
Then he led her round to the verandah. Valerie knew that invisible things were closing in upon her as she sat down. Life, outwardly so undisturbed in that beautiful old garden, was yet beating fiercely in the recesses of her own heart. But she was helpless to move, either to restrain or to hurry up life, helpless against the mood of the man who gaily set her just where he wanted her to be in a low chair, and then went inside to get the right kind of cushion to put at the back of her head.
Then when he had arranged her to his satisfaction he got into his hammock and looked at her.
With a strange sense of unreality Valerie felt someone come up behind her. She found a tea-table placed in front of her, and she forced herself to smile up at Lee, remembering their former meeting. But the Chinese boy, living his life in the present moment, without reference to past incident or future possibility, gave her but the gravest bow, arranged everything in the most convenient spot and was gone.
Faced with the implements of a feminine craft Valerie pulled herself together.
“I wish you could know how wonderful it is to me to have you here pouring out the tea,” said Dane.
She looked at him helplessly. “Do you take sugar and cream?”
“Yes, a little of both.”
She leaned forward holding out his cup which he was just able to reach. As they drank, the rooms beside them were lit up, the curtains parted, and bands of light streamed over the verandah.
Valerie tried to forget the man who lay in the hammock looking at her. She forced herself to ask questions about the things she had heard he had willed to the Sydney Museum, tried to still the rather sickening pounding of her heart. When they had finished he got out of the hammock and led her into the study where the fire had just been lit. She looked round the room knowing it was just as beautiful as she had expected it to be. It did something to her, exactly what she could not have told. Everything in it began to run together.
“Will you play to me now, dear?” he asked.
“Oh, I—I couldn’t play just now.”
She felt his eyes burning upon her face. She looked up as he caught her against him.
“Then will you play to me—to-morrow?”
Her answer was given to his lips.
And then the world faded away from Valerie, and a man’s imperious face and possessive arms were all there was of substantial stuff left in a great space. And her resolutions and ambitions deserted her as if they had never been, and she stood in her imaginative house of many mansions with but one certainty, that love was all and the world well lost for it, and she consigned all other considerations to the attic to keep company with the spiders and the dust.