Читать книгу The Meadows of the Moon - James Hilton - Страница 16

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He seemed to accept her offer as a complete shouldering of his burden. He rose, and though he winced whenever he moved his right arm, his manner soon became cheerful again. “Bet you what’ll worry John most is the damage to the car,” he said, with a grin.

By what seemed an especial miracle on their behalf, a thermos-flask of hot tea, left over from the picnic, was still in the car, intact and undamaged. They sat down by the road-side, drinking gratefully, smoking cigarettes, and studying the road-map.

An hour later they walked home through fields of ripening corn, with no worse prospect than that of missing dinner. They had arranged with a farmer to shelter the remains of the car, and the beauty of the evening rose over them like a slow tide quenching all troublous memories. In the east, as they walked, the moon appeared—a milky disc in a blue that was already darkening into a rich velvet purple.

The accident, though they had thrown it off their minds, had stirred them nevertheless to a deep sincerity. They talked of their ambitions, and Michael outlined again, more simply and less truculently than before, his attitude towards John. “It isn’t the thing itself, Fran, so much as the principle of the thing. If I give way over this, I shall have John bossing me all my life....”

She smiled, and he suddenly caught hold of her arm with his uninjured wrist. “You know, Fran, you do help me. Awfully.... I don’t know why or how.... Yet I’m not sure of you—you try to hold yourself aloof—you’re rather scared to be altogether on my side, aren’t you? Somehow, in my mind, I can see you and John talking about me very calmly and sensibly, and deciding that I’m an awful failure ... and you deciding that you won’t have anything to do with me.

“You needn’t worry about that, Micky. That won’t ever happen.”

“No? Do you—do you—really—mean it?”

“Yes, I mean it.”

“You won’t ever let John persuade you to take his side against me?”

She answered quietly: “I don’t feel I shall ever let John persuade me to do anything.”

“Or me either,” he added. “You don’t want to let anybody persuade you, do you? You just want to remain yourself—calm and aloof—always—eh?”

“I don’t know.... I don’t know....”

It was full moonlight when they reached the meadows. He said then: “Old Grimmy used to tell me how your grandfather brought you to our house years ago. You came across those meadows then, but it was night-time and you were fast asleep.”

“Only half-asleep, Micky. I remember blinking my eyes open every now and then and wondering where I was.”

“Do you remember the time before that—when you were in South America?”

“Not very much. I’ve a sort of confused memory of the storm at sea in which my father was drowned, and of my mother holding me very tightly.... It must have been terrible, that night.”

“You remember your father and mother, of course?”

“My mother, yes—very well—and also my old grandfather. But not my father—except that he was very big and had a deep, strong voice. He had to look after the ranches, I suppose—anyhow, he was never much at home.”

He said, whimsically: “Whenever I read anything about South America I always think of you—I picture you wandering through the Amazonian forests, or scampering about in the shadow of Chimborazo—something wild and romantic.”

“There was nothing romantic in my early childhood,” she answered laughing. “Or, if there was, I don’t remember it.” She glanced round her and then added, in a whisper: “Nothing, at any rate, half so romantic as this.”

The tranquil night was all over them, drenching them in radiance; even will-power seemed to dissolve into the opaque tide, leaving mind and body to surrender like bending reeds to the stream.

“The meadows of the moon!” Michael whispered, and at that moment the surrender was made—delicately, and yet in a way that could never be revoked.

“Don’t go in yet,” he cried. “We so often miss dinner that they won’t worry about us.”

She neither agreed nor disagreed, but when he sank down on the grassy slope she flung herself next to him and clasped her hands in front of her knees. She heard him cry out sharply; then she looked round and saw him nursing his injured wrist.

“Damn the thing,” he exclaimed. “I forgot all about it, and I put my hand down—like this—” He gestured. “It hurts like fire, but I don’t care—oh, why should I care?”

“Micky, it may be a bad sprain. Hadn’t we better go up to the house and have it attended to?”

“No ... Don’t bother about it. Forget it....” He leaned sideways to her and put his arm under hers so that his hand covered her breast. “Your heart’s troubling you more than my wrist.”

“What do you mean?”

“I can feel how fast it’s beating.”

“No faster than usual. Or if it is——”

“Yes?”

She hesitated a moment and then replied, with curt nonchalance: “I can’t help it, whether it is or not.”

“Of course you can’t. And you don’t care, either, do you?

“Care about what?”

“About what you—or I—do.”

“I always care about what I do. But it wouldn’t be much good caring about what you did, would it?”

“Not even if——”

She said, before he had time even to finish his sentence: “I should let you.” She flung the words at him challengingly, as much in defiance as in invitation. Then she wondered what he had been going to say, and why she should have made so terrific a mistake.

For a moment he was perfectly still and silent, his sentence unfinished and forgotten, and only hers remembered. Then, at last, with an almost unearthly delicacy, he bent his head to hers and kissed her shyly on the lips. The touch of them seemed to send him spinning back from manhood to boyhood again; it was the boy, the pure boy, who spoke to her a few seconds later, who laughed roguishly in her face and said: “I say, what queer games we’re up to.... Anybody might think....”

That sentence, as well, he left unfinished. But a few minutes later he added, as calmly and abstractly as if he were examining himself through a window: “I can see now what’s happened. I’ve fallen in love with you.... You’re about the nineteenth. But I’m so glad it’s you—this time—and not anybody else.... Isn’t it going to be interesting?”