For an hour those two rode silently into the country.
"Have we come far enough?" Martin said at last.
Thyme shook her head. A long, steep hill beyond a little sleeping village had brought them to a standstill. Across the shadowy fields a pale sheet of water gleamed out in moonlight. Thyme turned down towards it.
"I'm hot," she said; "I want to bathe my face. Stay here. Don't come with me."She left her bicycle, and, passing through a gate, vanished among the trees.
Martin stayed leaning against the gate. The village clock struck one. The distant call of a hunting owl, "Qu-wheek, qu-wheek!"sounded through the grave stillness of this last night of May. The moon at her curve's summit floated at peace on the blue surface of the sky, a great closed water-lily. And Martin saw through the trees scimitar-shaped reeds clustering black along the pool's shore. All about him the may-flowers were alight. It was such a night as makes dreams real and turns reality to dreams.
'All moonlit nonsense!' thought the young man, for the night had disturbed his heart.
But Thyme did not come back. He called to her, and in the death-like silence following his shouts he could hear his own heart beat. He passed in through the gate. She was nowhere to be seen. Why was she playing him this trick?
He turned up from the water among the trees, where the incense of the may-flowers hung heavy in the air.
'Never look for a thing!' he thought, and stopped to listen. It was so breathless that the leaves of a low bough against his cheek did not stir while he stood there. Presently he heard faint sounds, and stole towards them. Under a beech-tree he almost stumbled over Thyme, lying with her face pressed to the ground. The young doctor's heart gave a sickening leap; he quickly knelt down beside her. The girl's body, pressed close to the dry beech-mat, was being shaken by long sobs. From head to foot it quivered; her hat had been torn off, and the fragrance of her hair mingled with the fragrance of the night. In Martin's heart something seemed to turn over and over, as when a boy he had watched a rabbit caught in a snare. He touched her. She sat up, and, dashing her hand across her eyes, cried: "Go away! Oh, go away!"He put his arm round her and waited. Five minutes passed. The air was trembling with a sort of pale vibration, for the moonlight had found a hole in the dark foliage and flooded on to the ground beside them, whitening the black beech-husks. Some tiny bird, disturbed by these unwonted visitors, began chirruping and fluttering, but was soon still again. To Martin, so strangely close to this young creature in the night, there came a sense of utter disturbance.
'Poor little thing!' he thought; 'be careful of her, comfort her!'
Hardness seemed so broken out of her, and the night so wonderful!
And there came into the young man's heart a throb of the knowledge--very rare with him, for he was not, like Hilary, a philosophising person--that she was as real as himself--suffering, hoping, feeling, not his hopes and feelings, but her own. His fingers kept pressing her shoulder through her thin blouse. And the touch of those fingers was worth more than any words, as this night, all moonlit dreams, was worth more than a thousand nights of sane reality.
Thyme twisted herself away from him at last. "I can't," she sobbed.
"I'm not what you thought me--I'm not made for it!"A scornful little smile curled Martin's lip. So that was it! But the smile soon died away. One did not hit what was already down Thyme's voice wailed through the silence. "I thought I could--but Iwant beautiful things. I can't bear it all so grey and horrible.
I'm not like that girl. I'm-an-amateur!"
'If I kissed her---' Martin thought.
She sank down again, burying her face in the dark beech-mat. The moonlight had passed on. Her voice came faint and stiffed, as out of the tomb of faith. "I'm no good. I never shall be. I'm as bad as mother!"But to Martin there was only the scent of her hair.
"No," murmured Thyme's voice, "I'm only fit for miserable Art.... I'm only fit for--nothing!"They were so close together on the dark beech mat that their bodies touched, and a longing to clasp her in his arms came over him.
"I'm a selfish beast!" moaned the smothered voice. "I don't really care for all these people--I only care because they're ugly for me to see!"Martin reached his hand out to her hair. If she had shrunk away he would have seized her, but as though by instinct she let it rest there. And at her sudden stillness, strange and touching, Martin's quick passion left him. He slipped his arm round her and raised her up, as if she had been a child, and for a long time sat listening with a queer twisted smile to the moanings of her lost illusions.
The dawn found them still sitting there against the bole of the beech-tree. Her lips were parted; the tears had dried on her sleeping face, pillowed against his shoulder, while he still watched her sideways with the ghost of that twisted smile.
And beyond the grey water, like some tired wanton, the moon in an orange hood was stealing down to her rest between the trees.
