Over the River

Clare, who for seventeen months had been the wife of Sir Gerald
Corven of the Colonial Service, stood on the boat deck of an Orient
liner in the River Thames, waiting for it to dock. It was ten
o'clock of a mild day in October, but she wore a thick tweed coat,
for the voyage had been hot. She looked pale--indeed, a little
sallow--but her clear brown eyes were fixed eagerly on the land and
her slightly touched-up lips were parted, so that her face had the
vividness to which it was accustomed. She stood alone, until a
voice said:

"Oh! HERE you are!" and a young man, appearing from behind a boat,
stood beside her. Without turning, she said:

"Absolutely perfect day! It ought to be lovely at home."

"I thought you'd be staying in Town for a night at least; and we
could have had a dinner and theatre. Won't you?"

"My dear young man, I shall be met."

"Perfectly damnable, things coming to an end!"

"Often more damnable, things beginning."

He gave her a long look, and said suddenly:

"Clare, you realise, of course, that I love you?"

She nodded. "Yes."

"But you don't love me?"

"Wholly without prejudice."

"I wish--I wish you could catch fire for a moment."

"I am a respectable married woman, Tony."

"Coming back to England because--"

"Of the climate of Ceylon."

He kicked at the rail. "Just as it's getting perfect. I've not
said anything, but I know that your--that Corven--"

Clare lifted her eyebrows, and he was silent; then both looked at
the shore, becoming momentarily more and more a consideration.

When two young people have been nearly three weeks together on
board a ship, they do not know each other half so well as they
think they do. In the abiding inanity of a life when everything
has stopped except the engines, the water slipping along the ship's
sides, and the curving of the sun in the sky, their daily chair-to-
chair intimacy gathers a queer momentum and a sort of lazy warmth.
They know that they are getting talked about, and do not care.
After all, they cannot get off the ship, and there is nothing else
to do. They dance together, and the sway of the ship, however
slight, favours the closeness of their contacts. After ten days or
so they settle down to a life together, more continuous than that
of marriage, except that they still spend their nights apart. And
then, all of a sudden, the ship stops, and they stop, and there is
a feeling, at least on one side, perhaps on both, that stocktaking
has been left till too late. A hurried vexed excitement, not
unpleasurable, because suspended animation is at an end, invades
their faculties; they are faced with the real equation of land
animals who have been at sea.

Clare broke the silence.