The Relentless CityBenson, E. F. (Edward Frederic)
General
The Relentless City
Benson, E. F. (Edward Frederic)
British -- United States -- Fiction; New York (N.Y.) -- Social life and customs -- Fiction; Upper class -- Fiction
'I knew you would say that,' she said, 'and it's perfectly true.
Perhaps I shall get to be able to do it in time. It's all very well to
say that a sketch is merely a matter of line and colour, but it isn't;
there is a "feeling" which is beyond either.'
She took it back from him.
'Anyone could see it was painted by an American,' she observed.
Bertie laughed.
'That's where you are wrong,' he said; 'most Americans would say it was
done by an Englishwoman.'
She smiled to herself with a secret pleasure, laid her sketch by her to
dry, slid off the trunk where she had been sitting, and sat down on the
grass by her husband.
'Read to me again,' she said. 'Read that song that ends:
'"The moan of doves in immemorial elms,
And murmur of innumerable bees."'
She leaned her head on his shoulder, and sat with eyes half-closed, as
in his low, gentle voice he read through the exquisite passage.
'It is English,' she said, when he had finished; 'and, oh, Bertie, that
means a lot to me. Bertie, are you happy?'
He closed the book, and sat thinking a moment before he answered her.
It was true that he had never supposed that he was capable of being so
happy as he had been in these last three months. It was true also that
his affection for his wife had grown with every day they had passed
together, yet the question was a difficult one to answer. A few months
ago, had she asked him in his present mood the same question, he would
instantly have said 'Yes'; but with the growth of his capacity for
happiness and for loving her had grown the demand for happiness and
love which his nature made. Instead of acquiescing in the conclusion
that he never again could possibly love as he had once loved, he had
begun to want that again; he was no longer content with this limitation.
'Ah, my dearest,' he said, 'happiness is not in your power or mine. No,
I am not quite happy; I want something more.'
He sat up as her eyes questioned him.
'I want the impossible, I suppose,' he said; 'I want to be fire. You
have made me want that.'
For a moment some shadow of vague trouble crossed her eyes.
'I don't think I understand,' she said.
Bertie plucked a long feather of grass, and chewed the juicy end of it.
He had not meant to say quite so much.
'I'm not sure that I understand either,' he said. 'It is quite easy
to understand complicated things, but when one gets to the plain,
simple things like love and death, then one realizes how little one
understands. Is it not so?'
The trouble grew.
'I never ask for confidences,' she said, 'so you mustn't think I am
doing so; but, Bertie, sometimes I feel that there is a piece of you
which I do not know--some locked room, or--or it is like that haunted
house we went to the other day, where there is a space unaccounted
for. One goes into all the rooms, but by the measurements there is yet
another room which one cannot find.'
The intuition of this rather startled and shocked him.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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