Swan Song

Jon tore his lips away. He stood there in her arms, trembling like a startled horse.

With her lips against his ear, she whispered:

“There’s nothing, Jon; there’s nothing.” She could hear him holding-in his breath, and her warm lips whispered on: “Take me in your arms, Jon; take me!” The light had failed completely now; stars were out between the dark feathering of the trees, and low down, from where the coppice sloped up towards the east, a creeping brightness seemed trembling towards them through the wood from the moon rising. A faint rustle broke the silence, ceased, broke it again, Closer, closer—Fleur pressed against him.

“Not here, Fleur; not here. I can’t—I won’t—”

“Yes, Jon; here—now! I claim you.”

The moon was shining through the tree stems when they sat again side by side on the log seat.

Jon’s hands were pressed to his forehead, and she could not see his eyes.

“No one shall ever know, Jon.”

He dropped his hands, and faced her.

“I must tell her.”

“Jon!”

“I must!”

“You can’t unless I let you, and I don’t let you.”

“What have we done? Oh, Fleur, what HAVE we done?”

“It was written. When shall I see you again, Jon?”

He started up.

“Never, unless she knows. Never, Fleur—never! I can’t go on in secret!”

As quickly, too, Fleur was on her feet. They stood with their hands on each other’s arms, in a sort of struggle. Then Jon wrenched himself free, and, like one demented, rushed back into the coppice.

She stood trembling, not daring to call. Bewildered, she stood, waiting for him to come back to her, and he did not come.

Suddenly, she moaned, and sank on her knees; and again she moaned. He must hear, and come back! He could not have left her at such a moment—he could not!

“Jon!” No sound. She rose from her knees, and stood peering into the brightened dusk. The owl hooted; and, startled, she saw the moon caught among the tree tops, like a presence watching her. A shivering sob choked in her throat, became a whimper, like a hurt child’s. She stood, listening fearfully. No rustling; no footsteps; no hoot of owl—not a sound, save the distant whir of traffic on the London road! Had he gone to the car, or was he hiding from her in that coppice, all creepy now with shadows?

“Jon! Jon!” No answer! She ran towards the gate. There was the car—empty! She got into it, and sat leaning forward over the driving wheel, with a numb feeling in her limbs. What did it mean? Was she beaten in the very hour of victory? He could not—no, he could not mean to leave her thus? Mechanically she turned on the car’s lights. A couple on foot, a man on a bicycle, passed. And Fleur still sat there, numbed. This—fulfilment! The fulfilment she had dreamed of? A few moments of hasty and delirious passion—and this! And, to her chagrin, her consternation, were added humiliation that, after such a moment, he could thus have fled from her; and the fear that in wi

At last she started the engine, and drove miserably on, watching the road, hoping against hope to come on him. Very slowly she drove, and only when she reached the Dorking road did she quite abandon hope. How she guided the car for the rest of the drive, she hardly knew. Life seemed suddenly to have gone out.

Chapter IX.

AFTERMATH

Jon, when he rushed back into the coppice, turned to the left, and, emerging past the pond, ran up through the field towards the house, as if it were still his own. It stood above its terrace and lawns unlighted, ghostly in the spreading moonlight. Behind a clump of rhododendrons, where as a little boy he had played hide and seek, or pursued the stag horn beetle with his bow and arrow, he sank down as if his legs had turned to water, pressing his fists against his cheeks, both burning hot. He had known and he had not known, had dreamed and never dreamed of this! Overwhelming, sudden, relentless! “It was written!” she had said. For her, every excuse, perhaps; but what excuse for him? Among those moonlit rhododendrons he could not find it. Yet the deed was done! Whose was he now? He stood up and looked at the house where he had been born, grown up, and played, as if asking for an answer. Whitened and lightless, it looked the ghost of a house, keeping secrets. “And I don’t let you tell!… When shall I see you again?” That meant she claimed a secret lover. Impossible! The one thing utterly impossible. He would belong to one or to the other—not to both. Torn in every fibre of his being, he clung to the fixity of that. Behind the rhododendrons stretching along the far end of the lawn he walked, crouching, till he came to the wall of the grounds, the wall he had often scrambled over as a boy; and, pulling himself up, dropped into the top roadway. No one saw him, and he hurried on. He had a dumb and muddled craving to get back to Wansdon, though what he would do when he got there he could not tell. He turned towards Kingston.

All through that two hours’ drive in a hired car Jon thought and thought. Whatever he did now, he must be disloyal to one or to the other. And with those passionate moments still rioting within him, he could get no grip on his position; and yet—he must!

He reached Wansdon at eleven, and, dismissing the car in the road, walked up to the house. Everyone had gone to bed, evidently assuming that he was staying the night at June’s for a further sitting. There was a light in his and A

“I am sorry I rushed away to-night, but it was better, really. I had to think. I have thought. I’m only certain of one thing yet. To go on IN SECRET is impossible. I shan’t say a word about tonight, of course, until you let me. But, Fleur, unless I can tell everything, it must end. You wouldn’t wish it otherwise, would you? Please answer to the Post Office, Nettlefold.