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Page 100
The daughter of the Droitwiches. . .
Chapter 22
That evening was the evening of the full moon. The garden was an
enchanted place where all the flowers seemed white. The lilies, the
daphnes, the orange-blossom, the white stocks, the white pinks, the
white roses--you could see these as plainly as in the day-time; but the
coloured flowers existed only as fragrance.
The three younger women sat on the low wall at the end of the top
garden after dinner, Rose a little apart from the others, and watched
the enormous moon moving slowly over the place where Shelley had lived
his last months just on a hundred years before. The sea quivered along
the path of the moon. The stars winked and trembled. The mountains
were misty blue outlines, with little clusters of lights shining
through from little clusters of homes. In the garden the plants stood
quite still, straight and unstirred by the smallest ruffle of air.
Through the glass doors the dining-room, with its candle-lit table and
brilliant flowers--nasturtiums and marigolds that night--glowed like
some magic cave of colour, and the three men smoking round it looked
strangely animated figures seen from the silence, the huge cool calm of
outside.
Mrs. Fisher had gone to the drawing-room and the fire. Scrap and
Lotty, their faces upturned to the sky, said very little and in
whispers. Rose said nothing. Her face too was upturned. She was
looking at the umbrella pine, which had been smitten into something
glorious, silhouetted against stars. Every now and then Scrap's eyes
lingered on Rose; so did Lotty's. For Rose was lovely. Anywhere at
that moment, among all the well-known beauties, she would have been
lovely. Nobody could have put her in the shade, blown out her light
that evening; she was too evidently shining.
Lotty bent close to Scrap's ear, and whispered. "Love," she
whispered.
Scrap nodded. "Yes," she said, under her breath.
She was obliged to admit it. You only had to look at Rose to
know that here was Love.
"There's nothing like it," whispered Lotty.
Scrap was silent.
"It's a great thing," whispered Lotty after a pause, during which
they both watched Rose's upturned face, "to get on with one's loving.
Perhaps you can tell me of anything else in the world that works such
wonders."
But Scrap couldn't tell her; and if she could have, what a night
to begin arguing in. This was a night for--
She pulled herself up. Love again. It was everywhere. There
was no getting away from it. She had come to this place to get away
from it, and here was everybody in its different stages. Even Mrs.
Fisher seemed to have been brushed by one of the many feathers of
Love's wing, and at dinner was different--full of concern because Mr.
Briggs wouldn't eat, and her face when she turned to him all soft with
motherliness.
Scrap looked up at the pine-tree motionless among starts. Beauty
made you love, and love made you beautiful. . .
She pulled her wrap closer round her with a gesture of defence,
of keeping out and off. She didn't want to grow sentimental.
Difficult not to, here; the marvelous night stole in through all one's
chinks, and brought in with it, whether one wanted them or not,
enormous feelings--feelings one couldn't manage, great things about
death and time and waste; glorious and devastating things, magnificent
and bleak, at once rapture and terror and immense, heart-cleaving
longing. She felt small and dreadfully alone. She felt uncovered and
defenceless. Instinctively she pulled her wrap closer. With this
thing of chiffon she tired to protect herself from the eternities.
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