Chapter 25

AN INTERLUDE OF HAPPINESS

An interlude of happiness, six weeks of almost uninterrupted enjoyment, followed for Rose after she went on board Sir Edmund's yacht.

Edmund Grosse had most distinctly made up his mind that during those weeks he would not betray any ulterior motive whatever. They were all to be amused and to be happy. There is no knowing when an interlude of happiness will come in life; it is not enough to make out perfect plans, the best fail us. But sometimes, quite unforeseen, when all the weather signs are contrary, there come intervals of sunshine in our hearts, in spite of any circumstances and the most uninteresting surroundings. Harmony is proclaimed for a little while, and we wonder why things were black before, and have to remember that they will be black again. But when such a truce to pain falls in the happiest setting, and the most glorious scenery, then rejoice and be glad, it is a real truce of God. So did Rose night by night rejoice without trembling. It wanted much skill on Edmund's part to ward off any scruples, any moments of consciousness. He showed great self-command, surprising self-discipline in carrying out his tactics. There were moments when their talk had slid into great intimacy, when they were close together in heart and in mind, and he slipped back into the commonplace only just in time. There were moments, especially on the return journey, when he could hardly hide his sense of how gracious and delicious was her presence, how acute her instincts, how quaintly and attractively simple her mind, how big her spiritual outlook. But before she could have more than a suspicion of his thoughts Edmund would make any consciousness seem absurd by a comment on the doings of the very young people on board.

"The child does look happy," he said in his laziest voice one evening when he knew his look had been bent for a rashly long moment on Rose. "Happy and pretty," he murmured to himself, and he watched his youngest guest with earnestness. Then he sat down near Rose on a low deck-chair, and put away the glasses he held in his pocket. "I'm not sure I don't get as much pleasure out of the hazy world I see about me as you long-sighted people do; the colours are marvellous." Rose looked at him in surprise.

"But Edmund, don't you see more than haze?"

"Oh, yes, I can see a foreground, and then the rest melts away. I don't know what is meant by a middle distance--that's why I can't shoot."

Rose sat up with an eager look on her face. "I never knew that; I only thought you did not care for shooting."

There was a silence of several minutes, and neither looked at the other. At last Edmund rose and went to the side of the boat and looked over at the water, and then, turning half-way towards her, said: "Why does it startle you so much?"

"Oh, I don't know."

"But you do know perfectly well."

"Indeed, Edmund." Her face was flushed and her voice a little tremulous.

"You shall tell me." He spoke more imperiously than he knew.

"I can't, indeed I can't."

"No," he said; "it would be a difficult thing to say, I admit."

"Couldn't we read something?" said Rose.

"No, no use at all. I am going to tell you why you are so glad I am short-sighted."

"But I am not glad."

"I repeat that you are, and this is the reason why."

"You shall not say it," said Rose, now more and more distressed and embarrassed.

"It's because you never knew before why I did not volunteer for the war, that is why you are so glad." "Yes," he thought in anger, "she has had this thing against me all the time; it is one of the defences she has set up." But he was hurt all the same--hurt and angry; he wanted to punish her. "So all the time you have thought this of me?"

"No, indeed, indeed, Edmund, it wasn't that. I never meant that; I knew you were never that, do believe me."

"Well, if I do believe you so far, what did you think?"

Rose let her book lie on her knee and leant over it with her hands clasped. "I thought that perhaps," she faltered, "you had been too long in the habit of doing nothing much, and that you had grown a little lazy--at least, I didn't really think so, but that idea has struck me."

She came and stood by him. "Oh, Edmund, why do you make me say things when I don't want to, when I hate saying them, when they are not really true at all." She was deeply moved, and he felt that in one sense she was in his power. He gave a bitter sigh.

"Can I make you say whatever I like?" Her face flushed and a different look, one of fear he thought, came into her troubled eyes. "Then say after me, 'I am very sorry I did not understand by intuition that you were too blind to shoot the Boers, and that I was so silly as to think for a moment that you had ever wasted your time or been the least little bit lazy.'"

"No, I won't say anything at all"--she held out both hands to him--"except what the children say, 'let us just go on with the game and pretend that that part never happened.'"

And though Rose was still embarrassed, still inclined to fear she had hurt him, what might have been a little cloud was pierced by sunshine. "How ridiculously glad she is that I'm not a coward!" He, too, in spite of annoyance, felt more hopeful than he had been for a long time.

At Genoa they got long delayed letters and papers. In one of these a short paragraph announced the death of Madame Danterre. "It is believed," were the concluding words, "that she has left her large fortune to her daughter, Miss Mary Dexter." That was the first reminder to Rose that the interlude of mere enjoyment was almost over. She was not going to repine; it had been very good. Coming on board after reading this with a quiet patient look, a look habitual to her during the last two years, but which had faded under the sunshine of happy days, Rose saw Edmund Grosse standing alone in the stern of the boat with a number of letters in his left hand pressed against his leg, looking fixedly at the water. The yacht was already standing out to sea, but Edmund had not glanced a farewell at beautiful and yet prosperous Genoa, a city that no modern materialism can degrade. Like a young bride of the sea, she is decked by things old and things new, and her marble palaces do not appear to be insulted by the jostling of modern commerce. All things are kept fresh and pure on that wonderful coast. Something had happened, of that Rose was sure; but what?

Edmund did not look puzzled; he was deciding no knotty question at this moment. Nor did he look simply unhappy: she knew his expression when in sorrow and when in physical pain or mere disgust. He looked intensely preoccupied and very firm. Perhaps, she fancied, he too had a deep sense of that passing of life, of something akin in the swift movement of the water passing the yacht and the swift movement of life passing by the individual man. Was he, perhaps, feeling how life was going for him and for Rose, and by the simple fact of its passing on while they were standing passive their lives would be fixed apart?--passing, apart from what might have been of joy, of peace, of company along the road? There are moments when, even without the stimulus of passion, human beings have a sort of guess at the possibilities of helping one another, of giving strength, and gaining sweetness, that are slipping by. There are many degrees of regret, between that of ships that pass in the night, and that of those who have voyaged long together. There are passages of pleasure sympathy, and passages of sympathy in fight, and passages of mutual succour, and passages of intercourse when incapacity to help has in itself revealed the intensity of good-will in the watcher. But whenever the heart has been fuller than its words, and the will has been deeper than its actions, there is this beauty of regret. There has been a wealth of love greater than could be given or received--not the love of passion, but the love of the little children of the human race for one another. This regret is too grave to belong to comedy, and too happy to belong to tragedy. Rose's heart was full with this sorrow, if it be a real sorrow. These are the sorrows of hearts that are too great for the occasions of life, whereas the pain is far more common of the hearts that are not big enough for what life gives them of opportunity.

Rose was oppressed by feelings she could not analyse, a sense of possibilities of what might have been after these perfect weeks together. But her feelings were dreamy; she had no sense of concrete alternative; she did not now--he had been too skilful--expect Edmund to ask her, nor did she wish him to ask her, to draw quite close to him. She only felt at the end of this interlude they had spent together a suspicion of the infinite reach of the soul, and the soul not rebelling against its bonds, but conscious of them while awaiting freedom.

"Only I discern infinite passion and the pain Of finite hearts that yearn."

Such were the moments when a man might be pardoned if he called Rose's beauty angelic--angelic of the type of Perugino's pictured angels, a figure just treading on the earth enough to keep up appearances, but whose very skirts float buoyantly in the fresh atmosphere of eternity. They stood a few paces apart, Rose with her look bent vaguely towards the shore, Edmund, still reading his letters, apparently unaware of her presence. He was thus able to take a long exposure sun-picture of the white figure on a sensitive memory that would prove but too retentive of the impression.

But he had to speak at last. "Is it you?"

Edmund thought he spoke as usual, but there was a depth of pain and of tenderness revealed in the face that usually betrayed so little. He held out his hand unconsciously and then drew it back half closed, and looked again at the flowing water. It was a moment of temptation, when love was fighting against itself. Then, with the same half movement of the hand towards her:

"I have had a bolt from the blue, Rose. That man, Hewitt, whom I trusted as I would myself, has absconded. It is thought he has been playing wildly with my money, and that this crisis in South America has been the last blow. I shan't know yet if I am ruined completely or not."

"Oh, Edmund, how dreadful!"

"Don't pity me, dear, it's not worth while. It only means that one of the unemployed will get to work at last. That is, if he can find a job. But I must hurry home at once and leave you to follow. If I put back into Genoa now I can leave by the night express. And you and your mother had better go on to Marseilles in the yacht after you have dropped me."