Part 22 (1/2)
”Spying on you,” she answered, coming out into the open, her arms full of roses which she had been picking.
”That's very wrong of you,” he said.
”Well, you've taken possession of my particular corner,” she laughed, ”and I always get my roses from here.”
”I'm sorry,” he replied as they seated themselves upon the marble bench.
”I though you slacked about upstairs until midday.”
She looked at him squarely. ”You've got a wrong idea about me altogether,” she declared. ”It's true I don't spend my mornings in smas.h.i.+ng up Government property.... By the way, why did you break that wooden stake across your knee?”
He laughed quietly. ”It was a parable: it represented a certain province of the Soudan, and its possible fate at England's hands.”
She thought it out. ”I wonder what would have happened,” she mused, ”if you'd found that you couldn't break it. I suppose in that case you would have said it represented England.”
”No,” he answered, ”I should have been in a bad fix, and it would have served me right for showing off. But I don't often attempt what I don't think I can do. It's a bad thing to fumble about with anything that's beyond one, like a dog with an uncrackable bone.”
”Somebody ought to have invented a proverb,” she said, ”like 'Don't worry what you can't bite.' But, you know, you're fumbling about with me very badly.”
”Would you rather I bit clean through you right away?” he asked.
”Supposing I said I thought I had smashed you open already...?”
”I'd pity your strange delusion,” she answered, and they both laughed, though Muriel did not feel hilarious.
”Well, supposing I just said I thought I _could_ do so, and was going to try?”
”I'd reply: 'Any thing, so long as you don't worry me.'”
Again they laughed, and this time Muriel did so with more sincerity, for she felt that she had answered him well.
He took a rose from the bunch in her hands, and smelt it thoughtfully.
”Yes, I'm going to try,” he said at length. ”I'm going to understand you, and then make you understand yourself. I'm going to show you yourself.”
”You're a busy man,” she answered, at once estranged; ”you'd better not take on any new job.”
”It's worth while, I think,” he replied.
There was something in his voice which changed the tone of their conversation, and arrested the development of her hostile feelings. The flippancy of their words died away, and a new seriousness, a salient eventfulness, took its place. Suddenly Muriel was filled with longing to be understood, to be laid bare mentally both to him and to herself. She felt solitary and her heart cried out for the enlightenment of friends.h.i.+p; yet she did not dare to make an intimate of this man, whose treatment of her s.e.x did not seem to be conspicuously delicate.
Nevertheless the inadequacy, the inutility of her method of life was very forcibly presented to her, and she seemed to be beating at the bars of her cage. There was something so flat and unprofitable in all that she had done, and the desire was urgent in her to realize herself and expand.
”O, I want to be taught,” she exclaimed, ”I want to be taught....” She checked herself, and was silent.
He looked at her in surprise, for she uttered the words with intensity, and it was clear that she meant them; but it was not clear that they were prompted by more than a pa.s.sing emotion, for presently she began to talk about the lighter things of her life, and she spoke of the various events in prospect which would keep her from brooding. The greater part of each day for the next week or so was already filled; and Muriel spoke of these coming events as though they were dispensations granted to her by a benevolent Fortune for her heart's comfort.
”I've come to the conclusion,” she said, ”that the only way to be happy is to be surrounded by amusing people, so that there is no opportunity for thinking about oneself.”
He shook his head. ”No, you're wrong. Your happiness must come from within, from the contentment and fullness of your own mind. The Buddha once said 'Let us dwell free from yearning, among men who are anxious'; and there is an anonymous Oriental poem which says something about the lost paradise being hidden, really, in the human breast. My good girl,”
he exclaimed, warming to his subject, ”don't you realize that what you can get from this restless world of 'society' you live in is only pleasure, not happiness, and even at that it doesn't last. You are like a punctured wheel: so long as people are pumping you up, you seem to be all right, but when they leave you alone you go flat, because your inner tube isn't sound. You ought to be alone in the desert for a bit: it would do you all the good in the world.”
Muriel looked at him questioningly. ”Were you alone in the desert?” she asked. There had come into her mind a vision of that harim of which she had heard tell.