Saint's Progress. Galsworthy John

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СКАЧАТЬ to that which, in pre-war freedom of opportunity they could afford to regard as of secondary interest. Love and Marriage and Motherhood, fixed as the lot of women by the countless ages, were threatened for these young creatures. They not unnaturally pursued what they felt to be receding.

      When young Morland showed, by following her about with his eyes, what was happening to him, Noel was pleased. From being pleased, she became a little excited; from being excited she became dreamy. Then, about a week before her father’s arrival, she secretly began to follow the young man about with her eyes; became capricious too, and a little cruel. If there had been another young man to favour – but there was not; and she favoured Uncle Bob’s red setter. Cyril Morland grew desperate. During those three days the demon her father dreaded certainly possessed her. And then, one evening, while they walked back together from the hay-fields, she gave him a sidelong glance; and he gasped out: “Oh! Noel, what have I done?” She caught his hand, and gave it a quick squeeze. What a change! What blissful alteration ever since!

      Through the wood young Morland mounted silently, screwing himself up to put things to the touch. Noel too mounted silently, thinking: ‘I will kiss him if he kisses me!’ Eagerness, and a sort of languor, were running in her veins; she did not look at him from under her shady hat. Sun light poured down through every chink in the foliage; made the greenness of the steep wood marvellously vivid and alive; flashed on beech leaves, ash leaves, birch leaves; fell on the ground in little runlets; painted bright patches on trunks and grass, the beech mast, the ferns; butterflies chased each other in that sunlight, and myriads of ants and gnats and flies seemed possessed by a frenzy of life. The whole wood seemed possessed, as if the sunshine were a happy Being which had come to dwell therein. At a half-way spot, where the trees opened and they could see, far below them, the gleam of the river, she sat down on the bole of a beech-tree, and young Morland stood looking at her. Why should one face and not an other, this voice and not that, make a heart beat; why should a touch from one hand awaken rapture, and a touch from another awaken nothing? He knelt down and pressed his lips to her foot. Her eyes grew very bright; but she got up and ran on – she had not expected him to kiss her foot. She heard him hurrying after her, and stopped, leaning against a birch trunk. He rushed to her, and, without a word spoken, his lips were on her lips. The moment in life, which no words can render, had come for them. They had found their enchanted spot, and they moved no further, but sat with their arms round each other, while the happy Being of the wood watched. A marvellous speeder-up of Love is War. What might have taken six months, was thus accomplished in three weeks.

      A short hour passed, then Noel said:

      “I must tell Daddy, Cyril. I meant to tell him something this morning, only I thought I’d better wait, in case you didn’t.”

      Morland answered: “Oh, Noel!” It was the staple of his conversation while they sat there.

      Again a short hour passed, and Morland said:

      “I shall go off my chump if we’re not married before I go out.”

      “How long does it take?”

      “No time, if we hurry up. I’ve got six days before I rejoin, and perhaps the Chief will give me another week, if I tell him.”

      “Poor Daddy! Kiss me again; a long one.”

      When the long one was over, she said:

      “Then I can come and be near you till you go out? Oh, Cyril!”

      “Oh, Noel!”

      “Perhaps you won’t go so soon. Don’t go if you can help it!”

      “Not if I can help it, darling; but I shan’t be able.”

      “No, of course not; I know.”

      Young Morland clutched his hair. “Everyone’s in the same boat, but it can’t last for ever; and now we’re engaged we can be together all the time till I’ve got the licence or whatever it is. And then – !”

      “Daddy won’t like our not being married in a church; but I don’t care!”

      Looking down at her closed eyes, and their lashes resting on her cheeks, young Morland thought:

      ‘My God! I’m in heaven!’

      Another short hour passed before she freed herself.

      “We must go, Cyril. Kiss me once more!”

      It was nearly dinner-time, and they ran down. 4

      Edward Pierson, returning from the Evening Service, where he had read the Lessons, saw them in the distance, and compressed his lips. Their long absence had vexed him. What ought he to do? In the presence of Love’s young dream, he felt strange and helpless. That night, when he opened the door of his room, he saw Noel on the window-seat, in her dressing-gown, with the moonlight streaming in on her.

      “Don’t light up, Daddy; I’ve got something to say.”

      She took hold of the little gold cross on his vest, and turned it over.

      “I’m engaged to Cyril; we want to be married this week.”

      It was exactly as if someone had punched him in the ribs; and at the sound he made she hurried on:

      “You see, we must be; he may be going out any day.”

      In the midst of his aching consternation, he admitted a kind of reason in her words. But he said:

      “My dear, you’re only a child. Marriage is the most serious thing in life; you’ve only known him three weeks.”

      “I know all that, Daddy” her voice sounded so ridiculously calm; “but we can’t afford to wait. He might never come back, you see, and then I should have missed him.”

      “But, Noel, suppose he never did come back; it would only be much worse for you.”

      She dropped the little cross, and took hold of his hand, pressing it against her heart. But still her voice was calm:

      “No; much better, Daddy; you think I don’t know my own feelings, but I do.”

      The man in Pierson softened; the priest hardened.

      “Nollie, true marriage is the union of souls; and for that, time is wanted. Time to know that you feel and think the same, and love the same things.”

      “Yes, I know; but we do.”

      “You can’t tell that, my dear; no one could in three weeks.”

      “But these aren’t ordinary times, are they? People have to do things in a hurry. Oh, Daddy! Be an angel! Mother would have understood, and let me, I know!”

      Pierson drew away his hand; the words hurt, from reminder of his loss, from reminder of the poor substitute he was.

      “Look, Nollie!” he said. “After all these years since she left us, I’m as lonely as ever, because we were really one. If you marry this young man without knowing more of your own hearts than you can in such a little time, you may regret it dreadfully; you may find it turn out, after all, nothing but a little empty passion; or again, if anything happens to him before you’ve had any real married life together, you’ll have a much greater grief and sense of loss to put up with than if you simply stay engaged till after the war. Besides, my child, you’re much too young.”

      She СКАЧАТЬ