In This Our Life by Ellen Glasgow

Author:Ellen Glasgow [Glasgow, Ellen]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Literature
ISBN: 9781447482161
Publisher: Unknown
Published: 1941-01-01T16:00:00+00:00

VI

‘WHERE shall we go?’ Craig asked, without looking round, and Roy answered, ‘Anywhere, anywhere that is away.’

Away from people, away from the present, away from having or not having, away from wanting or not wanting. She gazed eagerly beyond the white streak of road into the shimmering distance. ‘Anywhere,’ she repeated. ‘I could go on for ever.’

‘It is a kind of escape.’ He slowed down and smiled at her, with the wind blowing through his hair and his eyes wistful and dreamy.

‘An escape from what?’

‘From ourselves, from our lives. Out of everywhere into nowhere.’

‘Isn’t that poetry?’

‘I don’t know. I hadn’t thought.’

‘But that’s what I want. Something I’ve never had, something I’ve never known.’ Her eyes sparkled; there was a dark flush in her cheeks.

‘Something . . .’ he began, and stopped, with his gaze fixed on the road ahead.

Watching his sharp, thin profile, which looked, in the brilliant light, a little unearthly, she said to herself: Yes, he is interesting up to a point, but what is there beyond? When that point is reached, would one find nothing or everything? But is it always like that with people? she wondered. Must one go on for ever experimenting and failing, seeking and missing, finding and losing? Was it a perpetual beginning again whenever one came to the end? I want certainty, she thought, but most of all, I want love. Some women may live without love, but I cannot. When love goes, I slip down again into emptiness.

Craig bent his head as if he were listening, and she asked herself: Is he really here? Is he something to hold by? Or when the wheel comes up again, will he also turn to mist and evaporate? She had been hurt once too deeply; the wound was not healed; but some day the memory would drop back into the past. I have forgotten, she forced herself to say over and over. I am making a new life. A hot vapour stung her eyelids; there was the taste of salt on her lips; her throat ached with the hard strain of forgetting. Suddenly, as if by a blow, she saw through her tears, the autumn landscape tossed apart and together. I hate you, Peter, she thought. Oh, how I hate you!

The car came to a stop, and Craig leaned toward her and touched the hand on her knee, the hand that had felt the nearness of Peter. ‘Happy, Roy?’ But he knew. He knew as well as if she had spoken aloud.

‘Yes, happy.’ It had begun as a valiant pretence, this will toward happiness, and then, as the months had gone by, the resolve had seemed to impress itself not only upon their own minds, but even upon circumstances. By repeating that they were happy, they had been able to create the semblance of happiness.

Still looking at her intently, he lifted her hand and pressed it against his cheek. ‘Is there anything better than this freedom and this friendship?’

She smiled at him, without answering in words.

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