England -- Social life and customs -- Fiction; World War, 1914-1918 -- Social aspects -- England -- Fiction
Of the physical side of love she had neither image nor conception. In
the old days when she had been with him, if he had come into the room in
which she was, or if he had merely been known to be coming down to the
village, she had hummed all day under her breath and had felt warmer,
little currents passing along her skin. She had read somewhere that to
take alcohol was to send the blood into the surface vessels of the body,
thus engendering a feeling of warmth. She had never taken alcohol, or
not enough to produce recognisably that effect; but she imagined that it
was thus love worked upon the body--and that it would stop for ever at
that!
But, in these later days, much greater convulsions had overwhelmed her.
It sufficed for Tietjens to approach her to make her feel as if her
whole body was drawn towards him as, being near a terrible height, you
are drawn towards it. Great waves of blood rushed across her being as if
physical forces as yet undiscovered or invented attracted the very fluid
itself. The moon so draws the tides.
Once before, for a fraction of a second, after the long, warm night of
their drive, she had felt that impulsion. Now, years after, she was to
know it all the time, waking or half waking; and it would drive her from
her bed. She would stand all night at the open window till the stars
paled above a world turned grey. It could convulse her with joy; it
could shake her with sobs and cut through her breast like a knife.
The day of her long interview with Tietjens, amongst the amassed
beauties of Macmaster furnishings, she marked in the calendar of her
mind as her great love scene. That had been two years ago: he had been
going into the army. Now he was going out again. From that she knew what
a love scene was. It passed without any mention of the word "love"; it
passed in impulses; warmths; rigors of the skin. Yet with every word
they had said to each other they had confessed their love; in that way,
when you listen to the nightingale you hear the expressed craving of
your lover beating upon your heart.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Elsewhere in the archive
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account