Part 18 (1/2)
It was a day or two after this conversation that a light cloud seemed to float across his lover's happiness with Betty. He could not tell the exact moment when it came, nor from what quarter it journeyed. But he felt the obscuring of the sun and the lessening of the lovely warmth of intimacy. He was chilled and alarmed, and at night, when he was alone with Betty in the stern of the _Hatasoo_ bidding her good-bye, he could not refrain from saying:--
”Betty, is anything the matter?”
”The matter, Jack?”
”Yes. Are you quite happy to-day? Quite as happy as you were yesterday?”
”I suppose so--I believe so.”
But she did not speak with a perfect conviction, and Bellairs was more gravely troubled.
”I am certain something is wrong,” he persisted. ”I have done something that has offended you, or said something stupid. What is it? Do tell me.”
”I can't. There is nothing to tell. Really, there is not.”
”You would tell me if there was?”
”Of course.”
”And you love me as much as ever?”
”Oh, yes.”
He looked into her eyes, asking them mutely to tell him the truth. And he thought their expression was strangely cold. The light had surely faded out of them. He kissed her silently and went forward. Clarice was standing there looking at the rising moon.
”Good-night,” he said, holding out his hand.
”How grave you look,” she answered, not seeing the hand.
”The moonlight makes people look unnatural.”
”It does not reach the deck yet.”
”Good-night,” he said again, and he went down the stairs.
She looked after him with a smile. When he had gone, she turned her head and called.
”Betty!”
”Yes!”
”Come here and sit with me. Let us watch the moon. Don't talk. I want to think--and to make you think--as I do.”
The cloud which Bellairs had fancied he noticed did not dissolve in the night. It was not drawn up mysteriously into the sun to fade in gold. On the contrary, next day he could no longer pretend to himself that his anxiety as a lover rendered him foolishly self-conscious, dangerously observant of the merest trifles. There really was a change in Betty, and a change which grew. He became seriously alarmed. Could it be possible that the ardent pa.s.sion which she had displayed in the first moments of their engagement was already subsiding as cynics say pa.s.sion subsides after marriage? Such a supposition seemed ridiculous. The ardour which has never fulfilled itself is not liable to cool. And Betty was a young girl who had not known love before. If she tired of it after so short an experience of its delights, she could be nothing less than a wholly unnatural and distorted being. And she was strangely natural. Bellairs rode out alone with her along the built-up brown roads into the desert, and tried to interest her, but she was abstracted and seemed deep in thought. Often she didn't hear what he was saying, and when she did hear and replied, her answers were short and careless, and rather dismissed than encouraged the subject to which they were applied. Bellairs, at last, gave up attempting to talk, and from time to time stole a cautious glance at her pretty face. He noticed that it wore a puzzled expression, as if she were turning over something in her mind and could not come to a conclusion about it. She did not look exactly sad, but merely grave and distrait. At length he exclaimed, determined to rouse her into some sort of comrades.h.i.+p:--
”You never caught that headache, did you?”
”Clarice's, you mean? No.”