Part 15 (1/2)
”The breath from her lips was sweet, like the breath of cows that have come out of the clover fields: closer and closer they drew to each other.
”'Before you came,' she said, 'there was nothing in the whole world----'
”'There was no sweetness in the world before I came here to you,' he answered.... 'I have come down to you through centuries; all the men of my past are like a few phantoms--there is only you in all the world.'
”With a great rustling there came from the wood a wild sow, but they did not hear it.... There stole in Mr Sorrell's nostrils a penetrating perfume. An immense dread swept down on him, the dumb agony of a nightmare. He seemed unable to move ... agony was in his heart, on his lips that would not speak, in his throat whose muscles would not act.
The perfume overwhelmed him, suffocating, warm, sweet in the throat, sinister and filling him with a mad foreboding. It was the odour of chloroform. He screamed out loud; great beads of sweat burst out on his forehead.
”He stretched out his hand like a madman and clutched at her dress.
”'Are you there?' he asked, and she answered:
”'I am here, beloved of my heart,' and he lifted his face towards hers which was slightly cold with dew and the night.
”'It is so well with me,' she whispered: but Mr Sorrell was full of fears.”
The cleverness of that touch of the chloroform at that particular stage in the story is amazing. I know nothing quite like that chapter in all fiction.
We are then swept back at once to a pageant of colour where the ladies hold a tourney and Mr Sorrell is knighted by Sir Ygorac of Fordingbridge as Sir Guilhelm de Winterburne de St Martin. The Lady Dionissia fights in the lists against the Lady Blanche, first with spears and then with axes, which fight the Lady Dionissia, of course, wins. She then goes with Mr Sorrell to his new castle and her husband returns and kills the new knight of Winterburne ... and Mr Sorrell wakes up, wakes up to intolerable agony in a hospital.
Two months afterwards he goes back to Salisbury to retrace the steps and rides all over the country-side in search of----”A girl shot past them going very fast. She had a face of conspicuous fairness, a dress of light blue print, a white linen coif that hid all her hair.
”'My G.o.d!' Sir William said suddenly. [He is now Sir William Sorrell.]
'Did you see? Who was that? In G.o.d's name who was that?'
”'Why,' young Lee-Egerton said, 'that was Nurse Morane. The one who nursed you till the first time they trepanned you. She broke down the day before they trepanned you the second time. My mother says she couldn't stand the excitement, because she was in love with you.”
Sir William galloped off down the road and up the hill towards a cl.u.s.ter of old and falling buildings.... ”It was so old that you could hardly recognise it for a house, and so forlorn that you s.h.i.+vered when you pa.s.sed it ... the living-room into which Sir William went was large, long and low. It was quite empty ... a door ... opened gently. There appeared a girl in a blue dress.
”'You are Sir William Sorrell,' she said. 'I am Dionissia Morane.... I was born in this room....'
”'What does it all mean?' he asked.
”'I can't tell,' she answered. 'Do you know, after they trepanned you for the first time you said suddenly, ”Es tu la?” and reached out your hand to me, and I took your hand ... and I kept saying to myself, ”It is very well with me,” which is what the country people about here say when they are glad.'”
Sir William builds a replica of the fourteenth-century castle and Dionissia ruminates on the future.
”'In the summer it will be very pleasant: the birds will sing, and we shall walk in the gardens. And in the winter we shall go into our little castle, and we shall sit by our fire, and our friends will come and we shall pa.s.s the time in talking and devising. And all around us there will be the oceans of time and the ages of s.p.a.ce----'
”'I've heard that before,' he said.
”'Yes, certainly you've heard all that before,' she answered. 'It's nothing new; it's the oldest wisdom or the oldest folly. You will find it in Chaucer ... you will find it in the Bible, because there's nothing else really to say.... It's the only thing that's worth saying in life.'”
Quite another vein is struck in _The Good Soldier_, which is essentially a modern novel. It is a story of betrayals. The man who tells the story finds that his wife is the mistress of his friend, the good soldier.
”I can't believe that that long, tranquil life, which was just stepping a minuet, vanished in four cras.h.i.+ng days at the end of nine years and six weeks.”
Edward Ashburnham, the man in the case, ”was the cleanest-looking sort of chap: an excellent magistrate, a first-rate soldier, one of the best landlords in Hamps.h.i.+re.”
There is practically no conversation; the whole novel is a monologue, a going forward or a harking back to unravel intricate motives and to lay bare the souls of men and women.