Part 36 (1/2)

He turned towards her then, dropped his pipe, and looked full at her.

”You mean that? You have definitely done it?”

”Undone it,” she said cheerfully; ”it would never have answered. I've known that for ages. He's so much cleverer than I am, but so much less wise! He's just a nice boy who would be the ordinary simple kind if it weren't for his music. And even there we can't agree, you see.”

”I'm not clever--not the kind that can do clever things,” said Ishmael.

”It's not the doing clever things that matters, I've come to the conclusion, though Val would think that was heresy. Being things matters more, somehow. He knows all about music, and they say he's going to be the great English composer, and I only know that even a barrel-organ in the street has always made me feel what I used to call when I was small all 'live-y and love-y.'”

”There is nothing one can get drunk on like music and poetry,” said Ishmael slowly. ”Pictures one needs to understand before they can intoxicate, and prose can fill and satisfy you, but it's only the other two one can go mad on, and this--”

He pulled her to him, a hand beneath her chin, his other arm round her st.u.r.dy, soft little body, and she met his eyes bravely for a moment.

Then hers closed, but he still paused before he kissed her.

”Georgie, are you sure?” he asked. ”Have you thought over all the drawbacks?”

”Such as--?”

”My brothers ... even my son, who will have to come before any we may have.... I don't want any more bad blood over this heritage, Georgie!

And I--I'm a good many years older than you--”

”And terribly sot in your ways, as Mrs. Penticost says ...” murmured Georgie. ”Ishmael, aren't you going to ...?”

Then he did, and Georgie nestled close to him with a sigh of satisfaction. After a little while her indefatigable tongue began again.

”Ishmael, isn't it funny to think it might never have happened? Just suppose I had been actually married to Val instead of only sort of engaged.... I might have been, you know.”

”If you didn't care about him,” began Ishmael, then stopped, feeling he was a poor advocate of a simple and unmistakable method of loving.

”Well, it's very difficult for a girl,” explained Georgie. ”Even when I was getting fond of him I knew it wasn't what I'd imagined falling in love to be like, but I thought it might be all I could manage. You see, in real life, the second-best has such a disconcerting habit of coming along first. You know all the time that it is only the second-best, but you think to yourself, 'Suppose the first-best never comes along for me, and I have said No to this, then there'll be nothing but a third-best to fall back on.' That's why so many women marry just not the right man.”

”And I--am I the first-best ...?” asked Ishmael in a low voice.

Georgie nodded.

”Ah!” she said; ”you need never be jealous of poor Val. If anyone has anything to be jealous over, it's me--not that I'm going to be. After all, one can't be a man's first love and his last, and it's more important to be his last! What's the matter ...? You look funny, somehow....”

”Nothing,” said Ishmael; ”I was only thinking what a dear you are.

You're so sporting about everything. And I--sometimes in the middle of being happy everything seems suddenly empty and stupid to me, and I dread your finding that out. Arid s.p.a.ces.... I don't know how to explain it. They'll come even in my love for you.”

Georgie nodded again, like a wise baby mandarin, as she sat there with her feet tucked up under her. She stared ahead, and slowly a change came over her face, a change like the suffusion of dawn. She caught his head to her and drew it to her breast.

”I've had nothing to make me tired yet, not like you. I almost want you to feel tired and sad and lost if it'll make you come to me, like this....” She stroked his hair gently, holding his head very lightly. He pressed it hard against her; he could feel her heart beating at his ear; he rubbed his cheek against her breast. ”You make me feel like a child again,” he said. ”No one has ever done, that....”

”Do you know,” said Georgie, still stroking rhythmically, ”that every woman wants her husband to be four things--her lover, her comrade, her child, and her master? Did you know that?”