Carnival Part 83

"Yes, we can all say that, when we've done something we shouldn't have."

"I know it's not an excuse. But I went away in a jangle of nerves. I set my heart on you coming out to Spain, and when you wouldn't and I was there and thought of the strain of a pa.s.sionate love that seemed never likely to come to anything vital, I gave up all of a sudden. I can't explain. It was like that statue. I had to break it, and I broke my heart in the same way."

"If you'd come back," said Jenny, determined he should know all his folly, "I'd have done anything, anything you asked. I'd have come to live with you forever."

"Oh, don't torture me with the irony of it all. Why were you so uncertain, then?"

"That's my business," she said coolly.

"But I never really was out of love with you. I was always madly in love," Maurice cried. "I traveled all over Europe, thinking I'd finished with love. I tried to be happy without you and couldn't because I hadn't got you. I adored you the first moment I saw you. I adore you now and forever. Oh, believe me, my heart of hearts, my life, my soul, I love you now more, more than ever."

"Only because I'm someone else's," said Jenny.

"No," he cried. "No! no! The pa.s.sion and impetuousness and unrestraint is all gone. I love you now--it sounds like cant--for yourself, for your character, your invincible joyousness, your glory in life, your perfection of form. Words! What are they? See how this fog destroys the world, making it ghostly. My mere pa.s.sion for you is gone like the world. It's there, it must be there always, but your spirit, your personality can destroy it in a moment. Oh, what a tangle of nonsense.

Forgive me. I want forgiveness, and once you said 'Bless you.' I want that."

"I don't hate you now," Jenny said. "I did for a time. But not now. Now you're nothing. You just aren't at all. I've got a boy who I love--such a rogue, bless him--and what are you any more?"

"I deserve all this. But once you were sorry when I--when I----"

"Ah, once," she said. "Once _I_ was mad, too. I nearly died. I didn't care for nothing, not for _any_thing. You was the first man that made me feel things like love. You! And I gave you more than I'd ever given anyone, even my mother. And you threw it all back in my face--because you are a man, I suppose, and can't understand. And when I was mad to do something that would change me from ever, ever being soppy again, from ever loving anyone again, ever, ever, I went and gave myself to a rotter--a real, dirty rotter. Just nothing but that--if you know what I mean. And that was your fault. You started me off by teaching me love. I wanted to be loved. Yes. But I gave too much of myself to you as it was, and I gave nothing to him really. Only anyone would say I did. And then my mother went mad, because she thought I was gone gay; and she died; and I got married to what's nothing more than an animal. But they're all animals. All men. Some are nicer sorts of animals than others, but they're all the same. And that's me since you left me. Only now I've got a boy, and he's like _me_. He's got my eyes, and I'm going to teach him, so as he isn't an animal, see? And I've got my little sister May, who I promised I'd look after, and I have.... Go away, Maurice, leave me. I don't want you. I can't forgive you. I can only just not care whether you're there or not. But go away, because I don't want to be worried by other people."

Maurice bowed his head.

"I see, I see that I have suffered nothing," he said. "Superficial fool that I am. Shallow, shallow a.s.s, incompetent, dull and unimaginative block! I'm glad I've seen you. I'm glad I've heard you say all that.

You've taught me something--perhaps in time. I'm only twenty-eight now--and fancy, you're only twenty-four--so I can go and think what might have been and, better, what I may be through you, what I will be.

I won't say I'm sorry. That would be an impertinence ... as you said, I simply am not at all."

The mist closed round them thicker for a moment; then seemed to lighten very slowly. Jenny was staring at the cliff's top.

"Is that a bush blowing up and down or a man's head bobbing?"

"I don't see any man," he answered.

"Good-bye," Jenny said.

"Good-bye."

She turned to the upward path, pulling herself up the quicker by grasping handfuls of fern fronds. Suddenly there was a shout through the fog.

"Snared, my lill wild thing!"

There came a report. Jenny fell backwards into the ferns and foxgloves and withered bluebells.

"Good G.o.d!" cried Maurice. "You're hurt."

"Something funny's happened. Oh! Oh! It's burning," she shrieked. "Oh, my throat! my throat!... my throat!"

The sea-birds wheeled about the mist, screaming dismay.