Page:Sorrell and Son - Deeping - 1926.djvu/365

 that dinner with a pleasant smirk upon his face. And what a piquant little tale it would make when the first glass of champagne had begun to simmer warmly! The buccaneering lover left to soliloquize upon an island.

But Christopher was not coquetting with his sense of humour. He looked at the still water and the heavy hills, and that sky of amethyst threatening rain, and at the sadness of the willows and the fields. Yes, it was the very setting for his mood, sombre and inevitable, deep with a soft green northern intensity. He was in the very midst of it. There was no break in his purpose just as there was no break in the sky. That sophisticated farceur was out of the picture. Two figures were left in the green gloom, his own and Molly's.

He glanced at his wrist-watch and found that the time was six o'clock. If she waited to see Wolffe's train steam out of Marley station, and walked back at once, she should be on the river bank soon after half past six. He had half an hour's idleness before the battle, if battle there was to be, and he wandered about, smoking his pipe and exploring the island, her island. It was less than fifty yards long, and about half as wide, in shape like a green turtle floating upon the water. The backwater, overhung by willows and alders, had a mysterious biackness, and the murk of the water hid rotting wood and sodden leaves. And he thought—"What a place for a lone woman. All right in the sunlight, perhaps. But on a grey day or a wet one." Yet, he had to suppose that Molly liked it, and her liking of such green isolation led him towards the unknown in Molly. How little he knew of her, the real Molly; and leaning against one of the old apple trees supporting the hammock he fell into a contemplation of her hidden self. There was so much of her that seemed to him unknowable, elusive, secret. Clever—yes! Confound that subtlety of hers. There were times when he felt that he was being left to stare at her like an uncomprehending boy. To love did not mean to understand. Perhaps it made for misunderstanding, a blurring of the personality, conflict, repression? And then a rain drop splashed upon the hand that was resting on the hammock rope. He glanced at the sky, and then across the water. No Molly. The hands of his watch stood at half past six.