"I suppose," said Rickie as the twilight fell, "this kind of thing is going on all over England." Perhaps he meant that towns are after all excrescences, grey fluxions, where men, hurrying to find one another, have lost themselves. But he got no response, and expected none. Turning round in his seat, he watched the winter sun slide out of a quiet sky. The horizon was primrose, and the earth against it gave momentary hints of purple. All faded: no pageant would conclude the gracious day, and when he turned eastward the night was already established.
"Those verlands--" said Stephen, scarcely above his breath.
"What are verlands?"
He pointed at the dusk, and said, "Our name for a kind of field."Then he drove his whip into its socket,and seemed to swallow something. Rickie, straining his eyes for verlands, could only see a tumbling wilderness of brown.
"Are there many local words?"
"There have been."
"I suppose they die out."
The conversation turned curiously. In the tone of one who replies, he said, "I expect that some time or other I shall marry.""I expect you will," said Rickie, and wondered a little why the reply seemed not abrupt. "Would we see the Rings in the daytime from here?""(We do see them.) But Mrs. Failing once said no decent woman would have me.""Did you agree to that?"
"Drive a little, will you?"
The horse went slowly forward into the wilderness, that turned from brown to black. Then a luminous glimmer surrounded them, and the air grew cooler: the road was descending between parapets of chalk.
"But, Rickie, mightn't I find a girl--naturally not refined--and be happy with her in my own way? I would tell her straight I was nothing much--faithful, of course, but that she should never have all my thoughts. Out of no disrespect to her, but because all one's thoughts can't belong to any single person."While he spoke even the road vanished, and invisible water came gurgling through the wheel-spokes. The horse had chosen the ford.
"You can't own people. At least a fellow can't. It may be different for a poet. (Let the horse drink.) And I want to marry some one, and don't yet know who she is, which a poet again will tell you is disgusting. Does it disgust you? Being nothing much, surely I'd better go gently. For it's something rather outside that makes one marry, if you follow me: not exactly oneself.
(Don't hurry the horse.) We want to marry, and yet--I can't explain. I fancy I'll go wading: this is our stream."Romantic love is greater than this. There are men and women--we know it from history--who have been born into the world for each other, and for no one else, who have accomplished the longest journey locked in each other's arms. But romantic love is also the code of modern morals, and, for this reason, popular. Eternal union, eternal ownership--these are tempting baits for the average man. He swallows them, will not confess his mistake, and--perhaps to cover it--cries "dirty cynic" at such a man as Stephen.
Rickie watched the black earth unite to the black sky. But the sky overhead grew clearer, and in it twinkled the Plough and the central stars. He thought of his brother's future and of his own past, and of how much truth might lie in that antithesis of Ansell's: "A man wants to love mankind, a woman wants to love one man." At all events, he and his wife had illustrated it, and perhaps the conflict, so tragic in their own case, was elsewhere the salt of the world. Meanwhile Stephen called from the water for matches: there was some trick with paper which Mr. Failing had showed him, and which he would show Rickie now, instead of talking nonsense. Bending down, he illuminated the dimpled surface of the ford. "Quite a current." he said, and his face flickered out in the darkness. "Yes, give me the loose paper, quick! Crumple it into a ball."Rickie obeyed, though intent on the transfigured face. He believed that a new spirit dwelt there, expelling the crudities of youth. He saw steadier eyes, and the sign of manhood set like a bar of gold upon steadier lips. Some faces are knit by beauty, or by intellect, or by a great passion: had Stephen's waited for the touch of the years?
But they played as boys who continued the nonsense of the railway carriage. The paper caught fire from the match, and spread into a rose of flame. "Now gently with me," said Stephen, and they laid it flowerlike on the stream. Gravel and tremulous weeds leapt into sight, and then the flower sailed into deep water, and up leapt the two arches of a bridge. "It'll strike!" they cried;"no, it won't; it's chosen the left," and one arch became a fairy tunnel, dropping diamonds. Then it vanished for Rickie; but Stephen, who knelt in the water, declared that it was still afloat, far through the arch, burning as if it would burn forever.
