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Page 96
What had happened, why she was here, why she was his Rose again,
passed his comprehension; and meanwhile, and until such time as he
understood, he still could kiss. In fact he could not stop kissing;
and it was he now who began to murmur, to say love things in her ear
under the hair that smelt so sweet and tickled him just as he
remembered it used to tickle him.
And as he held her close to his heart and her arms were soft
round his neck, he felt stealing over him a delicious sense of--at
first he didn't know what it was, this delicate, pervading warmth, and
then he recognized it as security. Yes; security. No need now to be
ashamed of his figure, and to make jokes about it so as to forestall
other people's and show he didn't mind it; no need now to be ashamed of
getting hot going up hills, or to torment himself with pictures of how
he probably appeared to beautiful young women--how middle-aged, how
absurd in his inability to keep away from them. Rose cared nothing for
such things. With her he was safe. To her he was her lover, as he
used to be; and she would never notice or mind any of the ignoble
changes that getting older had made in him and would go on making more
and more.
Frederick continued, therefore, with greater and greater warmth
and growing delight to kiss his wife, and the mere holding of her in
his arms caused him to forget everything else. How could he, for
instance, remember or think of Lady Caroline, to mention only one of
the complications with which his situation bristled, when here was his
sweet wife, miraculously restored to him, whispering with her cheek
against his in the dearest, most romantic words how much she loved him,
how terribly she had missed him? He did for one brief instant, for
even in moments of love there were brief instants of lucid thought,
recognize the immense power of the woman present and being actually
held compared to that of the woman, however beautiful, who is somewhere
else, but that is as far as he got towards remembering Scrap; no
farther. She was like a dream, fleeing before the morning light.
"When did you start?" murmured Rose, her mouth on his ear. She
couldn't let him go; not even to talk she couldn't let him go.
"Yesterday morning," murmured Frederick, holding her close. He
couldn't let her go either.
"Oh--the very instant then," murmured Rose.
This was cryptic, but Frederick said, "Yes, the very instant,"
and kissed her neck.
"How quickly my letter got to you," murmured Rose, whose eyes
were shut in the excess of her happiness.
"Didn't it," said Frederick, who felt like shutting his eyes
himself.
So there had been a letter. Soon, no doubt, light would be
vouchsafed him, and meanwhile this was so strangely, touchingly sweet,
this holding his Rose to his heart again after all the years, that he
couldn't bother to try to guess anything. Oh, he had been happy during
these years, because it was not in him to be unhappy; besides, how many
interests life had had to offer him, how many friends, how much
success, how many women only too willing to help him to blot out the
thought of the altered, petrified, pitiful little wife at home who
wouldn't spend his money, who was appalled by his books, who drifted
away and away from him, and always if he tried to have it out with her
asked him with patient obstinacy what he thought the things he wrote
and lived by looked in the eyes of God. "No one," she said once,
"should ever write a book God wouldn't like to read. That is the test,
Frederick." And he had laughed hysterically, burst into a great shriek
of laughter, and rushed out of the house, away from her solemn little
face--away from her pathetic, solemn little face. . .
But this Rose was his youth again, the best part of his life, the
part of it that had had all the visions in it and all the hopes. How
they had dreamed together, he and she, before he struck that vein of
memoirs; how they had planned, and laughed and loved. They had lived
for a while in the very heart of poetry. After the happy days came the
happy nights, the happy, happy nights, with her asleep close against
his heart, with her when he woke in the morning still close against his
heart, for they hardly moved in their deep, happy sleep. It was
wonderful to have it all come back to him at the touch of her, at the
feel of her face against his--wonderful that she should be able to give
him back his youth.
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