CHAPTER III
Gareth did not start his book that night. Kathleen was still up on his return to Pacific Villa; and, lamely, he had to explain the taxi. In their financial condition—his yearly salary amounted to two hundred and seventy pounds—taxicabs were extravagances to be contemplated only when matters of extreme importance were at stake. Gareth did not happen to be a liar by nature, to assert that he had felt ill; nor was he a diplomat, to have resorted to the expedient of stopping the car at the corner of the road. He said simply "I just thought I would like a drive, Kath," and waited for the storm.
She made cold reply: "It's your money, of course. I've written to Ilfracombe. Shall we go to bed now? It's late."
His money, of course. But their room—their bed—their house. It would have been good, that night of nights, to come home to some place of emptiness where unquestioned he could have written far into the night.
Kathleen, as she fumbled for matches to light the gas, reflected how good it would have been also to have motored that hot night; driven away from these poky quarters for a space of time, and hear Gareth say recklessly, "Hang the money! I just thought you'd like a drive, Kath."
"Gareth, the mantle is smashed again."
"Is it?"
"See if you can find another, will you?"
He did not start his book that night.
The inspiration came and went fitfully during the ensuing fortnight. But there was no place where it might take concrete form. Not at the office, certainly. And at home in the evenings, when the dining-room table was cleared away, and Watts' "Love and Life" presided over the stained walls and worn red furniture—how could he recapture his exaltation there, anticipating Kathleen's natural questions directly he brought forth pencil and paper-pad. If he returned an evasive reply, she would not ask again, that he knew. But he would all the while be conscious of her shut-out condition, of her mind torturing itself with reasons and wherefores, of her laborious care in seeming to take no notice. Once, after some condemnatory self-searchings, she had started to take an interest in his office-work, convinced that here lay a remedy for their failure to find oneness. She read quicker than he, was quicker also to condemn, and after her tongue had scorched a romance, his greater tolerance and insight found the task of gathering the ashes too difficult. He had to ask her to desist from reading. This she brooded over long: was it petty jealousy on his part? Had she made a fool of herself in asking to help? No outlet for her energies then, save the domestic hearth. So the legendary cricket was ousted by a veritable hurricane, resulting from the uncompromising fierceness she threw into her mild offices. She changed her tradesmen continually; and no servant stopped long at Pacific Villa.
Gareth recognized that he must make a start on the book, before his natural sloth wrapped itself in blanket-warm layers around inspiration. He tried, the following Sunday; but the machinery of midday dinner creaked loudly in the kitchen next door. Also, there were many barrel-organs in Hammersmith, and many children, and many church-bells; combination of blisses which rendered consistent thought impossible. The afternoon smelt heavy and headachy. Gareth decided not to start his book till he was in Ilfracombe. They were to go next Friday. Mrs. Worley, Lulu's sister-in-law, had written most cordially in reply to Kathleen's letter, hailing the Temples as: "a welcome addition to our little house-party" hinting at "acres of room" in Rapparee House if Mr. Temple cared to bring along Mr. Graham Carr, the famous author of "Piccadilly"—"Lulu tells me he and Mr. Temple are quite inseparable!" Finally, in a casual postscript: "By the way——" and mention of the inconspicuous weekly payment which would more than cover all expenses—"since you insist——"
"Too much," said Kathleen very decisively. And tore the letter in two. "That ends it."
Gareth assented. "It's more than we can afford, but——"
"If it's more than we can afford, it's too much."
"I suppose so...." London was like a grill ... and Ilfracombe, he knew, lay among hills aslant from the Atlantic.... He discovered he wanted to go to Rapparee House very much indeed. And wished Kathleen would not at once, and in manner suggestive of the snap of a handbag, close up all pleasant discussion of improbabilities.
"Shall I write to Mrs. Curtis, and ask if we can have our usual rooms at St. Leonards?"
"I hate St. Leonards; it was drawn with a ruler. There would be rocks and pools and valleys ... at Ilfracombe."
"I've heard it's frightfully hot."
"You only run it down now, because we can't go."
"You only crack it up for the same reason."
The dispute took place in the parlour of Pacific Villa. Gareth jerked his head away from the window—beyond which he had vistaed green water shot through and through with light ... cool damp places to sit in ... jerked his head away—to contemplation of his own photograph upon the mantelpiece—another one pinned to the wall—and yet another ... they were all over the house. Gareth had an inexplicable fondness for being photographed; threw away money upon it; hailed any opportunity of being snapshotted by amateurs. Inexplicable—but not to Kathleen. Kathleen understood this trait in his character: it gave him a feeling of support to be everywhere confronted by the square indomitable lines of his own physiognomy; it was an objective proof of his being and existence which queerly reassured him in those moods when he could not find himself; when grip of his will and expression of his purpose seemed alike slippery and unsubstantial. Gareth, limned on his photographs, was very like the man he thought himself.... Kathleen knew! Sometimes, when he was poring over a newly acquired likeness, he would be aware of her gaze upon him, faintly mocking, all too comprehensive ... despairingly, he wished she had not such a keen perception; wished he could think she attributed his weakness to mere vanity ... but she knew—and knew that he knew it. They moved and lived among these unspoken knowledges.
This particular morning, however, something in the firm lines of his jaw (as portrayed by Messrs. Hankin of Kilburn) moved him to a spurt of self-emulation.
"We go to Ilfracombe," he said; and his jaw set into firm lines. "It shall be managed—somehow."
He expected a sarcastic comment—but Kathleen yielded for once without arguing. She entertained no illusions that Gareth's present stern resolve to "manage it somehow" concealed any power of coping strongly with future difficulties. But sufficient unto the struggle ... she was depleted ... sick of being opposition party. She too wanted the rocks and the pools and the valleys....
She wrote to Mrs. Worley to expect them.
After a steeply downhill drive from the station to the town, and then again steeply uphill to a sturdy red-brick mansion blocking out sight of the sea, they were told that Mrs. Worley and the others were dining at the far end of the garden. There was resentment in the servant's tone which, it was discovered later, arose from an eccentric preference of the Worleys for carting about their meals in all weathers to any sort of inconvenient spot, provided it be not their own dining-room.
... A confused impression of a group squatting on the grass under the wall: Jim Collins, gnome-like, head sunk between his high humped shoulders, grinning them a welcome; echoed shrilly by Lulu, in a sort of draggled fancy-costume representing "Summer." An ugly nimble little man with bronze skin and slanting yellow eyes: beside him, a placid graceful woman, tall and beautifully dressed; prone on the turf, a good-looking schoolboy in flannels, munching in a bored condescending fashion; two oldish ladies disputing over the salad: finally, Trixie Worley, stout and mysterious, tiny features dotted in vast tracts of bursting mauve complexion; and her husband Fred, who was in the eleventh instalment of one of his serial anecdotes, which lasted, with full data, and allowing for interruptions, all day, and sometimes reached the point by evening.
Mrs. Worley came forward at sight of the new-comers, and beckoned them aside:
"MayI speak to you——?" her accents were sepulchral to an extreme, contrasting comically with her wee round mouth, and nose that was a mere pimple of disproportion. Gareth and Kathleen moved aside with her, wondering what portentous announcement was in store....
"Mrs.Temple"—pause—"haveyou brought"—another pause—"yourownsoap?"
In view of the my-God-we-are-observed manner of enquiry, her hearers were conscious of an anti-climax.
"No," said Kathleen. She thought soap might reasonably be included in the price they were paying.
Mrs. Worley breathed hard ... one could almost listen to the weight being rolled off her mind. "Good.... I'veputsome ... in yourroom!"
Kathleen asked if they might be shown to their room to unpack.
They were told, to their immense amazement, that Mrs. Worley had lured them to Rapparee House on false pretences; that not one double bedroom remained vacant; and that she had arranged for Kathleen to occupy a single room in the left wing; and Gareth, an attic.
"My dear," in an enigmatic aside to Kathleen—"itdoesa mangood... for a few weeks ... Iknow..." as they stood for a moment in the doorway of the little white-and-pansy room, down its separate flight of four steep stairs. The space was small but cosy; oak-pannelled; and containing a narrow bed, a grandfather clock, a chintz window-seat, and a quantity of framed texts. The combined dressing-wash-table was behind a pansy chintz curtain, permitting the single occupant of the room to be as reserved as she pleased even with herself for spectator of her toilet. The leaded-window looked down on to a small paved courtyard surrounded by murmurous trees. It was a room for a very young girl ... on the little bookshelf which hung on the wall, the former owner had left "Little Women and Good Wives," "The Lamplighter," "Carrots," and—souvenirs of a more adolescent stage—"Jane Eyre," "Poems of Passion," and the inevitable "Omar Khayyam," and "Pleasant Thoughts Birthday Book."
They left Kathleen there; and went on to inspect Gareth's quarters.
"Mr.Temple.... You're apoet... poetsrevelin studios ... my brother was an actor, and—Iknow...." It was Gareth's turn to receive the enigmatic aside.
The attic was also isolated from the rest of the house; and reached only by a twisting rickety ladder from the second floor landing. It was a fantastic sensation to enter one's future sleeping apartment head first, via a hole in the floor. Gareth's imagination leapt ... looking around him, he forgot Mrs. Worley, confidential from the foot of the ladder.
Beams, everywhere beams, blackened by age, sloping from roof to floor, from wall to cranny, so that to walk around the room partook of the nature of an obstacle race. Windows set carelessly in various angles overhead, patching the dark raftered ceiling with blue sky and drifting cloud. Outjutting corners and burrowing nooks. A stove rooted firmly in the boarded floor. An insecure table that stood solitary by the one window facing seawards. On the whole, more like a rugged bit of coast scenery than a decent sleeping apartment. But Gareth knew that here his book could be written. Here—where he was to be alone. "Grant the path be clear before you...." Fate had cleared it!
He was terrified that Mrs. Worley should of a sudden recollect that after all she had a double bedroom lying about empty.
When she left him, he picked his way carefully over and among and beneath the beams, to the only window which was not a skylight. The sun had set: and beneath him, in the warm purplish dusk, the tiny harbour lay pricked out in an irregular parallelogram of lights. The tide was low; black clumsy boat-shapes sprawled forlornly on the dead sand. Beyond the entrance channel, one sail, a dark triangle pressed against the citron fading from the west, waited patiently for the lifting wave.... Gareth stood motionless.... Presently little separate sounds uncurled themselves from the indistinguishable murmur, and crept up to him ... slap of water round the props of the wooden pier ... two children whispering in a strange rough dialect ... clank of an uneasy chain ... rattle of the red window-curtains drawn across, in the snug eating-house opposite. By-and-by these sounds and sights would become familiar ... already he longed for familiarity ... longed to move confidently in this dream-world which overhung a harbour under the hill....
"Gareth!"
Enchantment was smashed. It was Kathleen urgently calling him from below. He slid aside the trap-door ... hating her. She was standing at the foot of the ladder, a pile of his belongings in her arms.
"As you didn't think of coming for your things, I've brought them to you."
He made no move to relieve her of the load.
"My—things?" in a dazed fashion.
... Then he grasped it: they shared a trunk. And Kathleen had been unpacking while he dreamt. How just like Kathleen....
"Well——" impatiently; "do you expect me to trudge up the ladder with them?"
(And she wondered if he guessed how she had revelled in the sorting-out of their more or less joint property into two separate heaps—his and hers, his and hers now—for a little while.)
He came down a few steps, indecisively—then stopped. It was as though he were afraid to leave his stronghold, afraid to touch his possessions lest by their associations they should re-forge that snapped link with everyday.
"This business is an awful nuisance," he remarked; "she ought to have let us know."
"Of course she ought. That woman's a humbug. It would serve her right if we refused to stop——"
"You've unpacked already," hastily. Then, to cover the betrayal: "You're always in such a hurry——"
"I had to get the trunk out of that poky hole: one can't budge in it, as it is."
"Better than being stowed away in a draughty garret...."
"I'd change with you; it's airier——"
"Isit?—under the roof!"
Both continued to pretend and to grumble, refusing, in their present fierce grab at the isolation vouchsafed them, to mingle even their thanks.
"Youwouldcome!"—a thrust at his one masterful fit, when he had overruled her.
"Well, once you had written ..." and his pause tacitly reminded her of his lukewarmness when Lulu had first propounded the idea.
But their reproachful resentment over the outward inconveniences was genuine. And as for the secret fount of joy——"Anyhow, it's not due to him!" "It's not due to her!" The exact knowledge of it shrined and guarded in Gareth's mind and Kathleen's, was a wound to the vanity of Kathleen and Gareth.
He bent, and took his pile of clothing, brushes, etc.—dropped one or two ... Kathleen restored them to him. Their eyes did not meet—from a sort of shame at the grudging spirit manifested in their short parley——"It's only withhimthat I'm like that," Kathleen informed herself. And Gareth reflected defensively: "It's only withher...." He wasn't such a—a beast, really. Not up there in the attic—alone.
He turned and stumbled up. She followed him. He stopped dead, and faced round, blocking the entrance....
"I just wanted to make sure you were comfortable."
"I'm not;" he clung to his grievance. "But you can't do anything."
"I might speak to Mrs. Worley; get her to fix up something different...." She was so positive by now that his satisfaction was too great to let him acquiesce in any such suggestion, that she could risk tormenting him ...makehim confess his paradise ... it was futile of him to try and deceive her, of all people!
He stood at bay. If once she came in ... it would destroy everything; destroy the peace which had lulled the tired man as though cool fingers were being laid upon the heat and jar of his life hitherto. He realized that she was only prodding him out of harsh amusement; nothing to fear in her threat: she was too glad to be rid of his presence to chance a restoration of it.
"You can't do anything," he repeated.
She shrugged her shoulders ... and without further speech, re-descended the ladder, and went swiftly back to her room.
Her room!
On an impulse of dread she slammed the door, shot the bolt, and then, breathlessly, back against the panels, looked round at what was to her almost tangible solitude. Queer, how all these years she and Gareth had dragged on in that hateful—that indecent intimacy of every inch of space shared, because neither had dared shatter aloud the forced assumption that these conditions were as both wished them. And now, by the merest accident—Trixie Worley as a bungling ludicrous fairy god-mother—they were given their holiday. Their first holiday since Alpenruh. Then, chance had divinely thrown them together; now, chance as divinely held them apart. Her maidenhood was restored to her.... The sensation that at any moment another had the right to walk in, touch her possessions, watch her actions—how had she borne the sixteen years' torment? There burnt within her nature a fierce white-hot virginity, an utter incapacity to share, which all her married life had been powerless to wear away. From the hour when convention and the cramped limits of Pacific Villa had obliged her to watch Gareth struggle with his shirt, love had slipped from her; gave place to an irritation from which there was to be no respite. She had heard him breathing at night——
Oh, the wonder of the holiday nights to come, when she would lie alone....
Luxuriously savouring each unwitnessed movement, she began to undress.
She was feeling rather vividly well. Summer heat had always a stimulating effect upon her; the ghost of her Red Indian grandmother saw to that. A warm colour flushed her haggard face. She crossed to the window, treading lightly as her moccasined ancestors might have done. The air smelt hot and ripe; a faint odour of musk was astir. This was August—she need not begin to think of winter yet. The underlying dread crouched, biding its time. She was forty-three—she need not begin to think of middle-age yet ... not for a moment yet. She was now very much in the same mood as had sent the girl of twenty-seven with Gareth to Alpenruh. That had been the first panic. This—the last?
Squatting on the window-seat, lank strands of hair clinging to shoulders and waist, eyes straining towards the dark land-whipped pines surrounding the courtyard, she sent forth an imperious summons to youth and romance. Kathleen called it romance. She told herself that because she shrank from contact with Gareth, so all her longings must naturally be spiritual. She told herself that her imagination was starved.... Kathleen was forty-three; and the summer heat fevered her blood and flushed her thin face, as with naked breasts she leant from the window of her virginal bedroom.
In the shadowy attic, candle-lit, Gareth wrote the first chapter of "The Round Adventure."