CHAPTER II
"Can'tyou be in time?" demanded Kathleen, not in the harsh tones of the scold, but with tragedy quivering behind her tense demand; "you knew the Collins were invited to dinner."
"I'm sorry," said Gareth gently. How hot it was. How hot—she was.
"And now Lulu has come without Jim—when one only puts up with her for the sake of Jim! And you'll have to see her home."
To Kathleen there were no molehills in a world of mountains.
"It doesn't matter. I hope you started without me?"
"No; we didn't; we're waiting. Come along—come along. Must you go up to wash?"
His hands felt sticky with the heat and the day's work. "Afraid so. I shan't be a minute." He felt her reluctant glance follow him up the stairs, measure the seconds while he plunged his throbbing head into cold water, tug him down again to the dining-room where she and Lulu Collins were already in their places at table.
Mr. and Mrs. Collins had at one time been their neighbours. And though they had moved since then several times—they were of the cheerful but shoddy type who instantly rent a house on the strength of a fiver unexpectedly turning up, and then quite gaily effect what is known as a "moonlight flit" when their fluctuating fortunes wavered downwards again—yet a spasmodic intimacy was still kept up.
"Jim would have come," explained Lulu in voluble apology, as Gareth took up the carving-knife and attacked the mutton; "but he's most frightfully busy. I oughtn't to tell you—but ... well, you've heard of this huge scheme they've got on hand for that new sort of wonderful photography?—well, Jim's in that, and of course it means a fortune to us. We're jogging along anyhow just now ... but in six weeks or so.... And then there's that other thing too—you know!—that's just going to come off with a tremendous bang. But you won't breathe a word of it, will you?"
Automatically the Temples made their vows of silence. Lulu's plucky optimism, her continual brag of her husband as the Power Behind in some gigantic experiment, social, financial, or theatrical, was too often unfounded to inspire the congratulatory awe it demanded. Jim Collins was a nice little chap; but Lulu was fourth-rate. Her illusions were fourth-rate. Her clothes were fourth-rate. She prided herself on a knack of turning "bits of things" into a thoroughly up-to-date rig-out: "Kath, did you notice my hat? I s'pose you thought it was new. Not it! My dear, I made it out of that piece of lace on my blue silk, and the remains of that velveteen dressing-gown Mabel gave me. And I'm sure no one would guess, would they?"... Everyone would guess; she always looked tawdry, fly-away; not dirty—but never definitely clean. Kathleen recognized now all the portions of her garments, and remembered the various conjunctions of bad taste in which they had already figured ... bits of trimming; bits of bead and feather and lace.... Lulu could have stood as a symbolic figure personifying "the Last Day of the Sale."...
"Gareth," said Kathleen, watching critically his incompetence with the joint, "when do you get your holidays?"
"I don't know exactly. At least, I haven't asked. Why?"
"We must decide at once if we're going away, that's all. Lulu says that every corner is booked already, everywhere."
"Yes, really, Mr. Temple. I would hardly believe it when Kath told me you hadn't fixed anything yet. We're going abroad as soon as Jim's thing is settled; I daresay it's not so full there. And meanwhile we're going to Ilfracombe, to my brother and his wife, for a fortnight. Jim must have a rest, poor boy."
"I expect we shall go somewhere ..." said Gareth slowly.
"Somewhere! Where?" from Kathleen.
"Well—where would you like to go?"
She laughed impatiently. "As if that had anything to do with it? Why do you pretend? I shouldlikea holiday in Japan, or on a coral island."
"Japan ..." he mused indolently, unable to resist word-magic. "Ivory blossoms on a light-green sky.... Shall we go to Japan, Kathleen?"
Lulu stared. "Does he mean it?"
"We can afford it so well, can't we?" When Kathleen really craved for something—and her nature allowed nothing less than craving—it seemed to her violation to toss the sacred fancy idly as a toy-balloon. Her pride suffered that Gareth, so sensitive, could yet betray desire for what he made no effort to obtain.
"It would be a lark if you joined us in Ilfracombe. We should be such a large party, wouldn't we? Fred and Trixie, of course. And Fred's pal, Napier Kirby and his wife—the new one—and her son by her old husband—and his mother ... Kirby's, I mean; she's a Maori!—well, no, not exactly; but whatever it is you call them when their mother or father was. And me and Jim; and Trixie's Aunt Emmeline: and you and Kathleen——"
"It's very good of you to want us," said Gareth, striving weakly to extricate himself from Lulu's gaily growing snowball.
"And perhaps some of your great author chums would come too; tell them we're going to have a glorious time." Lulu's glorious times always took on their hues from the brilliant anticipation and the glamorous retrospect between which they were squeezed to invisibility.
Kathleen remarked that probably they were now too late to book rooms in any Ilfracombe boarding-house.
"Oh, my dear, we're not going into a boarding-house. Not much! Fred has taken a house for three months, if you please. Swank, I told him!"
"That finishes it, then. Gareth and I can't plant ourselves on your brother and sister-in-law. We don't know them."
"Oh, but it's quite all right—you can pay your share; needn't stand on ceremony with Trix. You see, the house is ever so much too large for them; they took it together with the Kirbys; and even then Emmeline Frazer is paying towards it——Not Jim and me, of course; but then Fred is very grateful to Jim because he let him in as a favour into that big thing of his I told you about last month, and it's going to do frightfully well. I'm sure Trixie would love to have you—she's awfully keen on literary people. Shall I give you the address for you to write to her?"
Kathleen was rather attracted by the notion. She had that restlessness upon her to get something settled, which came from seeing everyone round about her flitting and migrating, astir as swallows with the fever of the South upon them.
"Shall we try it, Gareth?"
"If you like...."
"Or would you rather I looked round at once for something else?"
"We can think it over; there's plenty of time."
"There isn't. There isn't plenty of time. You hear what Lulu says; every place will be crowded."
"Must we go where there's a crowd?"
She might have said: "Are we the right people to make holiday alone?" ... but pretence had never yet been completely shattered between them. "If we gowhenthere's a crowd, yes. It can't be avoided in August."
He was silent. And helped his guest to prune jelly and custard.
"Shall I write to Ilfracombe? Do say one way or another"; her voice took on that driving note he so dreaded, and which, against his will, always plunged him into a counter-mood of stagnant negation.
"As you please."
"Is there any place you would prefer?"
Goaded less by her irritation than by its tightly drawn restraint, he let fall: "Alpenruh...."
"Where's that?" asked Lulu; "is it abroad? We're going abroad directly Jim's thing is settled—I told you, didn't I? I wonder if we should meet each other."
... Kathleen sat furiously biting her lip. How dared he understand so well what she had been all the while thinking? How dared he share this memory, and give utterance where she was silent?
The remainder of the evening was hardly a success. Her brooding indrawn pain seemed to transform the parlour into a tight hot circle of air, in which Gareth felt himself struggling like a fly in a web. Even Lulu was aware of strain, and rose early to take her departure.
"And here's Trixie's address, Kath, just in case you should decide to go after all."
"I have decided. I shall write to-night. Now. Fetch me the ink, Gareth."
Her glance challenged him to raise objections. But quietly and courteously Gareth did as she bade him. He would have made further amends for his mistake had he known how to do it without hurting her more.
"When did you say you'll be free?"
"I don't know. End of the month, I daresay."
"Can you find out for certain?"
"Perhaps, to-morrow. No, certainly it's no trouble to see you home, Mrs. Collins." Anything to escape the fretting discomfort of Kathleen's voice....
They alighted from the train at Notting Hill Station, and walked the few paces to the shop over which the Collins had rooms.
"Good night!"
"Oh, but you'll come up and have a drink with Jim. He might be able to put you on to something good; influence counts for an awful lot."
"I don't think I'll come up," indeterminedly.... The need of solitude became suddenly overwhelming: "No; if you'll excuse me; I'm tired; long day at the office."
"Good night, then; and I hope you'll arrange something nice for your holidays...."
Gareth sauntered moodily along the dull pavements, and past the blind shop-shutters of Ladbroke Grove. Holidays—and his mind sped back to a phrase in a letter, written some sixteen years ago: "Our holiday—Yes, but I shall always speak the word now according to its derivation: holy day. Holy days—for us, Kathleen."
Well, but what had gone wrong in the years, to have transformed the splendid impulsive creature of his mountain idyll, to the raw hectic woman of nerves who was now his housemate? Nerves—she was one nerve; worn to as thin an edge as the bending blade of an old and useless table-knife. Gareth could not tell how the gradual transformation had occurred. One morning he and Kathleen had had a sharp altercation about—what was it?—Yes, he had wanted to lie abed five minutes longer, and Kathleen had lost her temper; then as suddenly recovered it; and glancing round the untidy bedroom, her strewn brushes vying for place with his razor-strop on the mantelpiece where neither belonged, hearing the drizzle of rain on the window, and the cracked bell from the hall summoning them to a cold breakfast, she cried in a choking voice: "We're not a bit different from other people. I knew it. I warned you," and fled from the room. Then softly Gareth arose, and went to the bathroom, where already the paper was beginning to peel and flap from the damp walls. And there, sitting toothbrush in hand, on the edge of the tin enamelled bath, he strove to recollect the details of Kathleen's outbreak on her horror of certain trivial intimacies of wedlock, that by avoiding them he might yet retain a grip on the slippery substance of their dreams. Bathroom taps; his mind persistently dwelt on that one allusion: "To hear a man's bath-water running in the morning...." But that couldn't be all. The bathroom taps became to him an obsession, wholly responsible for the present state of disillusion between him and Kathleen. She had said it. And unable to cope with the actual trouble, he found relief in clinging to the one tangible grievance she might be nourishing ... he trickled the water very gently into the bath that morning, so that it was barely lukewarm when he stepped in. Gareth disliked lukewarm baths, and he was depressed at breakfast....
Well, after sixteen years, he knew that the bathroom taps had been as much—or as little—responsible as every other link in the dragging chain of habit.
He had learnt to fear Kathleen's intensity of feeling; her exaggeration of every trifle to a matter of life or death; to fear still more the overwhelming responsive leap of her, when he attempted any sudden tenderness. He feared her suffering of remembrance, knowing as he did that a moment lay in store for both when their inability to keep love between them was bound to be drawn from its sheath of pretence. Her one-time dread of seeing step by step that festering intimacy grow upon mystery, had now merged into a still greater dread of hearing the actuality spoken of in so many words. And he was sorry for her disappointment, with a sorrow that was bitterly helpless.
As for himself—Gareth was looking to-night with clear eyes at his cherished dream; and saw that he had dragged it too close, so that it was stained with thumbmarks. If only he could still have kept painless the memory of Alpenruh's glamour; if Kathleen had died directly after—he or Kathleen. She was less at fault than he; she had striven on their return from the land of enchantment to draw a charmed circle thrice around it, wherein to keep it detached and wonderful. It was he who had hung on; he who was responsible for the drab aftermath. Once in conquering vein he had swung past this very church on the hill, down the long slope to the house in North Kensington, to force Kathleen's consent to their marriage....
Gareth was now wandering round and round the wide sweep of road which encircled the church, standing aloof on the topmost crest of the hill. The dark narrow lanes scurrying downwards on all sides to more level streets, were solitary of loiterers. The scent of daisy-studded grass within the railinged spaces of the church lifted from the man his weariness of the long hot London day. Almost he could imagine the cold rush of seven cascades down the steep asphalt lanes; imagine that in the valley of Lansdowne Road stood a wooden châlet with shutters painted green and pink ... somewhere a wan girl waiting in a wood—and oh, to be free to seek her out, and all she stood for of youth and impulse!... "Grant the path be clear before you...."
But twenty-four had stumbled into a bondage that forty could not decently quit. If twenty-four had had the strength to have made a clean end to romance when vision had warned him to do so, had not shirked the unknown quantity of pain and longing and empty days awaiting him in the further blankness—what a passage he might then have made through life, endowed with the power to recognize that adventure need not of necessity be joyous adventure; and that he was no true adventurer who dared not let go of a once-found happiness; who thought a dream could be taken by storm, grabbed, and held forever as a right.... Pale fool and egoist, blindly groping, blindly resenting—while ahead of him strode in conquering mood the man he had thought himself: brave to exchange love's gain for love's loss; willing, for the sake of illusion, to plough through its inevitable aftermath of disappointment; older than needs be, for the contrast of youth forfeited; hands emptier, because they had been but recently so brimful. Yet unhesitating in trust that all could be met again: love and illusion and youth and fortune.... The round adventure, this; no mere arc of the circle, but completing each time the full sweep of the compass....
Gareth was walking faster now, ideas surging on a wine-coloured flood down the reopened channels of his mind.... The man he had thought himself; Kathleen, tumultuous red-and-brown as he had once known her; half-forgotten figures of mediæval song, so alive to his boyhood. All trooping past him like some glowing pageant; set to a cadence of words that sank from triumph to a wistful lilt of regret; swelling again to the clarion-song of achievement. Dimly remembered dreams floating towards him as clouds drift from all corners of the sky into a rich sunset. Fragments of love-scenes, spoken he knew not when. Slim form of the cool girl flitting now beside the conqueror ... now beside the shadowy failure who stumbled in his wake....
But what did it all mean? Was it a book he had somewhere read? He read so many books. Yes, but this idea seemed new to him—"The round adventure; no mere arc of the circle...." Theroundadventure?—a new idea, and good.
It was his own.
Gareth stood stock-still, dizzy with the flash of realization. It was as though a lamp had been lit in the heart of the world. His idea. His book at last. He was glad now that his imagination had lain barren for so long; all that he had should go to the book. His inspiration—his by right of sixteen years' blood-payment.
Gareth strode with pounding heart down Ladbroke Hill. He was in a fever to start, start at once on his book; start that very night, the instant he reached home. Suppose the idea should somehow slide away and leave him with empty hands and blank sight, as the years had done hitherto. Recklessly he hailed a passing taxi, and bade the man drive furiously. Shepherds Bush Road whizzed by, a blurred arcade of colour. A great ship of light swung past with a clanging rhythm. He had thought it a vehicle of misery that afternoon, when it had stood for only just a motor-bus. Gareth let down the windows of his flying chariot, and breathed deeply and happily. Why, every footfall whispered of meaning now. Walls and chimney-pots, the postered railway-bridge beneath which they thundered hollowly, crowds pouring thickly from a gaudy music-hall, the flare of yellow light beneath the striped awning of a kerbstone barrow, hoarse eternal mutter of blended humanity and traffic—these were no more the mere material for other people's books, realities which endlessly echoed the endless echoes of reality that all day he had to read. His now, the fabric from which pavements and green grass alike were woven; his, to create into a book, his book, the book he would start upon that very night.