FullReads

Out of a deep and dreamless sleep he was awakened by the sound of thumping on the door. A shrill voice called:

“Hi! Breakfast’s ready.”

He jumped up. Where was he–? Ah!

He found them already eating marmalade, and sat down in the empty place between Stella and Sabina, who, after watching him a little, said:

“I say, do buck up; we’re going to start at half-past nine.”

“We’re going to Berry Head, old chap; you must come!”

Ashurst thought: ‘Come! Impossible. I shall be getting things and going back.’ He looked at Stella. She said quickly:

“Do come!”

Sabina chimed in:

“It’ll be no fun without you.”

Freda got up and stood behind his chair.

“You’ve got to come, or else I’ll pull your hair!”

Ashurst thought: ‘Well–one day more–to think it over! One day more!’ And he said:

“All right! You needn’t tweak my mane!”

“Hurrah!”

At the station he wrote a second telegram to the farm, and then tore it up; he could not have explained why. From Brixham they drove in a very little wagonette. There, squeezed between Sabina and Freda, with his knees touching Stella’s, they played “Up, Jenkins “; and the gloom he was feeling gave way to frolic. In this one day more to think it over, he did not want to think! They ran races, wrestled, paddled–for to-day nobody wanted to bathe–they sang catches, played games, and ate all they had brought. The little girls fell asleep against him on the way back, and his knees still touched Stella’s in the narrow wagonette. It seemed incredible that thirty hours ago he had never set eyes on any of those three flaxen heads. In the train he talked to Stella of poetry, discovering her favourites, and telling her his own with a pleasing sense of superiority; till suddenly she said, rather low:

“Phil says you don’t believe in a future life, Frank. I think that’s dreadful.”

Disconcerted, Ashurst muttered:

“I don’t either believe or not believe–I simply don’t know.”

She said quickly:

“I couldn’t bear that. What would be the use of living?”

Watching the frown of those pretty oblique brows, Ashurst answered:

“I don’t believe in believing things because a one wants to.”

“But why should one wish to live again, if one isn’t going to?”

And she looked full at him.

He did not want to hurt her, but an itch to dominate pushed him on to say:

“While one’s alive one naturally wants to go on living for ever; that’s part of being alive. But it probably isn’t anything more.”

“Don’t you believe in the Bible at all, then?”

Ashurst thought: ‘Now I shall really hurt her!’

“I believe in the Sermon on the Mount, because it’s beautiful and good for all time.”

“But don’t you believe Christ was divine?”

He shook his head.

She turned her face quickly to the window, and there sprang into his mind Megan’s prayer, repeated by little Nick: “God bless us all, and Mr. Ashes!” Who else would ever say a prayer for him, like her who at this moment must be waiting–waiting to see him come down the lane? And he thought suddenly: ‘What a scoundrel I am!’

All that evening this thought kept coming back; but, as is not unusual, each time with less poignancy, till it seemed almost a matter of course to be a scoundrel. And–strange!–he did not know whether he was a scoundrel if he meant to go back to Megan, or if he did not mean to go back to her.

They played cards till the children were sent off to bed; then Stella went to the piano. From over on the window seat, where it was nearly dark, Ashurst watched her between the candles–that fair head on the long, white neck bending to the movement of her hands. She played fluently, without much expression; but what a Picture she made, the faint golden radiance, a sort of angelic atmosphere hovering about her! Who could have passionate thoughts or wild desires in the presence of that swaying, white-clothed girl with the seraphic head? She played a thing of Schumann’s called “Warum?” Then Halliday brought out a flute, and the spell was broken. After this they made Ashurst sing, Stella playing him accompaniments from a book of Schumann songs, till, in the middle of “Ich grolle nicht,” two small figures clad in blue dressing-gowns crept in and tried to conceal themselves beneath the piano. The evening broke up in confusion, and what Sabina called “a splendid rag.”