Читать книгу The Meadows of the Moon - James Hilton - Страница 24

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Years afterwards she pondered, struggling hard with memory, upon the events of those summer days, and tried to think out what really did happen, and whether John or Michael or even she herself were most of all to blame. But she could not remember much. Curious incidents came into her mind, but hardly anything logical or connected. All the time, she knew, she had been fighting Michael, fighting him instinctively, lest he should possess too much of her. Yet it was all (even the fighting) so remote, so unsubstantial, so impossible to analyze or explain. When, for example, he said to her one evening in the meadows: “Fran, this is only light-opera love-making—Strauss—or Puccini.... But beyond it is Mozart ... and beyond that—infinitely beyond that—Beethoven....”

She tried to fight him, but she did not know where to fight. He attacked where she least expected it, and after she had fought a battle she did not know whether she had won or lost. For a while she felt that loving him physically was least of all, a transient unimportant thing that hardly mattered. But by degrees she felt her mind stir with her body to meet him; and then, after that, something farther off still, something deeper than mind or body.

Yet—and she kept this well in the fore-front of her vision—it all meant nothing. If he had proposed to her she would have burst into incredulous laughter. Marriage—with Micky? How absurd! How absurd to think of Micky ever marrying anybody! And besides, she did not want to marry.

The days passed, and nothing seemed to happen except the development of this extraordinary relationship, half game, half idyll. John, as usual, was cordial and polite; Nan, as usual, was completely ignorant of all that was happening; Michael, as usual, could not be persuaded even to think about the future. John had fixed the beginning of September as a time-limit, and it was unlikely that he would not keep his word. Michael also was adamant. He would not give way. He would not apologize. He would not promise anything. He would not accept a post in the tannery office, or in any other office. He would not even discuss his future with John.

“He’s trying to make me, Fran,” he told her, “but I just refuse to discuss the matter. Lord—you should see his face when he can’t get a word out of me. He can’t stand not being argued with.”

“And, after all, Fran, if I don’t give in, he’ll have to. That’s obvious, isn’t it? He can’t have me absolutely physically thrown out of the house—I believe even Nan would put her foot down against that. And besides, there’d be a scene—and he hates scenes....”

Over a week passed and still nothing happened. Once she asked John point-blank: “What are you going to do about Micky? It’s September now, you know.”

And his answer, calm and friendly as ever, was: “Don’t worry. I am going to do just what I think best in the circumstances.”