“We are first!”
He waved his hat gleefully. Myrrha watched him and smiled.
The place where they stood was a high, steep rock in the middle of the woods. From this flat summit with its fringe of nut-trees and little stunted oaks they could see, over the wooded slopes, the tops of the pines bathed in a purple mist, and the long ribbon of the Rhine in the blue valley. Not a bird called. Not a voice. Not a breath of air. A still, calm winter’s day, its chilliness faintly warmed by the pale beams of a misty sun. Now and then in the distance there came the sharp whistle of a train in the valley. Christophe stood at the edge of the rock and looked down at the countryside. Myrrha watched Christophe.
He turned to her amiably:
“Well! The lazy things. I told them so! … Well: we must wait for them. …”
He lay stretched out in the sun on the cracked earth.
“Yes. Let us wait. …” said Myrrha, taking off her hat.
In her voice there was something so quizzical that he raised his head and looked at her.
“What is it?” she asked quietly.
“What did you say?”
“I said: Let us wait. It was no use making me run so fast.”
“True.”
They waited lying on the rough ground. Myrrha hummed a tune. Christophe took it up for a few phrases. But he stopped every now and then to listen.
“I think I can hear them.”
Myrrha went on singing.
“Do stop for a moment.”
Myrrha stopped.
“No. It is nothing.”
She went on with her song.
Christophe could not stay still.
“Perhaps they have lost their way.”
“Lost? They could not. Ernest knows all the paths.”
A fantastic idea passed through Christophe’s mind.
“Perhaps they arrived first, and went away before we came!”
Myrrha was lying on her back and looking at the sun. She was seized with a wild burst of laughter in the middle of her song and all but choked. Christophe insisted. He wanted to go down to the station, saying that their friends would be there already. Myrrha at last made up her mind to move.
“You would be certain to lose them! … There was never any talk about the station. We were to meet here.”
He sat down by her side. She was amused by his eagerness. He was conscious of the irony in her gaze as she looked at him. He began to be seriously troubled—to be anxious about them: he did not suspect them. He got up once more. He spoke of going down into the woods again and looking for them, calling to them. Myrrha gave a little chuckle: she took from her pocket a needle, scissors, and thread: and she calmly undid and sewed in again the feathers in her hat: she seemed to have established herself for the day.
“No, no, silly,” she said. “If they wanted to come do you think they would not come of their own accord?”
There was a catch at his heart. He turned towards her: she did not look at him: she was busy with her work. He went up to her.
“Myrrha!” he said.
“Eh?” she replied without stopping. He knelt now to look more nearly at her.
“Myrrha!” he repeated.
“Well?” she asked, raising her eyes from her work and looking at him with a smile. “What is it?”
She had a mocking expression as she saw his downcast face.
“Myrrha!” he asked, choking, “tell me what you think. …”
She shrugged her shoulders, smiled, and went on working.
He caught her hands and took away the hat at which she was sewing.
“Leave off, leave off, and tell me. …”
She looked squarely at him and waited. She saw that Christophe’s lips were trembling.
“You think,” he said in a low voice, “that Ernest and Ada … ?”
She smiled.
“Oh! well!”
He started back angrily.
“No! No! It is impossible! You don’t think that! … No! No!”
She put her hands on his shoulders and rocked with laughter.
“How dense you are, how dense, my dear!”
He shook her violently.
“Don’t laugh! Why do you laugh? You would not laugh if it were true. You love Ernest. …”
She went on laughing and drew him to her and kissed him. In spite of himself he returned her kiss. But when he felt her lips on his, her lips, still warm with his brother’s kisses, he flung her away from him and held her face away from his own: he asked:
“You knew it? It was arranged between you?”
She said “Yes,” and laughed.
Christophe did not cry out, he made no movement of anger. He opened his mouth as though he could not breathe: he closed his eyes and clutched at his breast with his hands: his heart was bursting. Then he lay down on the ground with his face buried in his hands and he was shaken by a crisis of disgust and despair like a child.
Myrrha, who was not very softhearted, was sorry for him: involuntarily she was filled with motherly compassion, and leaned over him, and spoke affectionately to him, and tried to make him sniff at her smelling-bottle. But he thrust her away in horror and got up so sharply that she was afraid. He had neither strength nor desire for revenge. He looked at her with his face twisted with grief.
“You drab,” he said in despair. “You do not know the harm you
