Part 33 (2/2)
”But I don't want to excite you so late at night,” said Peter, ”so don't think any more about it, but go to sleep, if you've finished that milk.
Does your head ache? Mine does. That's the worst of weak heads; they always ache just when things are getting interesting. But I don't care; we're going to have things--things to like; we're going to get hold of them somehow, if we die in gaol for it; and that's worth a headache or two. Someone says something about having nothing and yet possessing all things; it's one of the things with no meaning that people do say, and that make me so angry. It ought to be having nothing and _then_ possessing all things; because that's the way it's going to be with us.
Good night, Thomas; you may go to sleep now.”
Thomas did so; and Peter lay on the sofa and gazed at the daffodils in the brown jars that filled the room with light.
CHAPTER XIX
THE NEW LIFE
Peter, with Thomas over his shoulder, stepped out of the little station into a radiant April world. Between green, budding hedges, between ditches where blue violets and joyous-eyed primroses peered up out of wet gra.s.s, a brown road ran, gleaming with puddles that glinted up at the blue sky and the white clouds that raced before a merry wind.
Peter said, ”Do you like it, old man? Do you?” but Thomas's heart was too full for speech. He was seeing the radiant wonderland he had heard of; it crowded upon him, a vivid, many-splendoured thing, and took his breath away. There were golden ducklings by the gra.s.sy roadside, and lambs crying to him from the fields, and cows, eating (one hoped) sweet gra.s.s, with their little calves beside them. A glorious scene. The gay wind caught Peter by the throat and brought sudden tears to his eyes, so long used to looking on grey streets.
He climbed over a stile in the hedge and took a field path that ran up to a wood--the wood way, as he remembered, to Astleys. Peter had stayed at Astleys more than once in old days, with Denis. He remembered the keen, damp fragrance of the wood in April; the smooth stems of the beeches, standing up out of the mossy ground, and the way the primroses glimmered, moon-like, among the tangled ground-ivy; and the way the birds made every budding bough rock with their clamorous delight. It was a happy wood, full of small creatures and eager happenings and adventurous quests; a fit road to take questers after happiness to their goal. In itself it seemed almost the goal already, so alive was it and full of joy. Was there need to travel further? Very vividly the impression was borne in on Peter (possibly on Thomas too) that there was no need; that here, perhaps round the next twist of the little brown path, was not the way but the achievement.
And, rounding the next bend, they knew it to be so; for above the path, sitting at a beech-tree's foot among creeping ivy, with head thrown back against the smooth grey stem, and gathered primroses in either hand, was Lucy.
Looking round at the sound of feet on the path, she saw them, and smiled a little, not as if surprised, nor as if she had to change the direction of her thought, but taking them into her vision of the spring woods as if they were natural dwellers in it.
Peter stood still on the path and looked up at her and smiled too. He said, ”Oh, Lucy, Thomas and I have come.”
She bent down towards them, and reached out her hands, dropping the primroses, for Thomas. Peter gave her Thomas, and she laid him on her lap, cradled on her two arms, and smiled, still silently.
Peter sat down on the sloping ground just below her, his back against another tree.
”We've come to see you and Denis. You won't come to see us, so we had to take it into our own hands. We decided, Thomas and I, two days ago, that we weren't going on any longer in this absurd way. We're going to have a good time. So we went out and got things--lots of lovely things. And I've chucked my horrible work. And we've come to see you. Will Denis mind? I can't help it if he does; we've got to do it.”
Lucy nodded, understanding. ”I know. In thinking about you lately, I've known it was coming to this, rather soon. I didn't quite know when. But I knew you must have a good time.”
After a little while she went on, and her clear voice fell strange and tranquil on the soft wood silence:
”What I didn't quite know was whether you would come and take it--the good time--or whether I should have to come and bring it to you. I was going to have come, you know. I had quite settled that. It's taken me a long time to know that I must: but I do know it now.”
”You didn't come,” said Peter suddenly, and his hands clenched sharply over the ivy trails and tore them out of the earth, and his face whitened to the lips. ”All this time ... you didn't come ... you kept away....”
The memory of that black emptiness shook him. He hadn't realised till it was nearly over quite how bad it had been, that emptiness.
The two pale faces, so like, were quivering with the same pain, the same keen recognition of it.
”No,” Lucy whispered. ”I didn't come ... I kept away.”
Peter said, steadying his voice, ”But now you will. Now I may come to you. Oh, I know why you kept away. You thought it would be less hard for me if I didn't see you. But don't again. It isn't less hard. It's--it's impossible. First Denis, then you. I can't bear it. I only want to see you sometimes; just to feel you're there. I won't be grasping, Lucy.”
”Yes,” said Lucy calmly, ”you will. You're going to be grasping in future. You're going to take and have.... Peter, my dear, haven't you reached the place I've reached yet? Don't you know that between you and me it's got to be all or nothing? I've learnt that now. So I tried nothing. But that won't do. So now it's going to be all.... I'm coming to Thomas and you. We three together will find nice things for one another.”
Peter's forehead was on his drawn-up knees. He felt her hand touch his head, and s.h.i.+vered a little.
”Denis,” he whispered.
She answered, ”Denis has everything. Denis won't miss me among so much.
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