Page:Sorrell and Son - Deeping - 1926.djvu/361

 and on the hills flanking the valley great beech woods gloomed. Silent, empty country dreaming dreams, and English in its sadness under that moody sky. Kit did not hurry, for there was no haste in the landscape, nor in the glassy glide of the river, nor in the droop of the willows. He was conscious of a curious reluctance, of a slow desire moving in a world of foreboding. Blind love wandering between the hedgerows, with a little flame in its heart, and a vague foretaste of the eternal bitterness under its tongue.

And why? Ah, why? This one particular woman, this bitter sweet creature, whose own mouth had warned him that she could bring him no happiness! What a fool's passion! And yet he was conscious of the inevitableness of it, and that it had the same quality as this English sky. Tantalizing, grey, elusive, tricking the eyes with a promise of pale sunlight.

But he went on. He came out upon the towing-path and upon a deserted stretch of gleaming water, with the interminable willows feathering the banks, and the green fields heavy and sweet. Not a boat, not a voice; rain in the west, stillness. He felt a kind of shivering excitement, a hard anguish. He turned to the right and walked on towards a whiteness upon an outjutting boss of green, the bungalow and the island. She might be there, and she might not. An uncertain anger at the very uncertainty of it stirred in him.

The bungalow enlarged itself. The island lay towards the south bank, and was separated from it by a backwater overhung and clogged with trees. The island stood feathered with willows. It had a rough lawn and some roses, and he saw the droop of a hammock between two old apple trees. A deep loggia with its posts painted white ran along the front of the bungalow, and Kit's eyes told him that the loggia was not empty. He saw two figures in deck chairs, the figures of a girl and a man. A green punt, and a white dinghy were moored at the wooden landing stage.

Sorrell's son stood quite still upon the towing-path, directly opposite the landing stage, and looked across the river. He did not call or wave; he waited, and with a kind of inexorable and angry obstinacy. All that was sensitive and soft in him became ice.