So he was still the one to be sick.
A small cold mongrel dog came shivering, wriggling across the ice and rolled over before him, waving limp deprecatory paws. Charlie picked it up and wrapped it in his coat, crooning to it and kissing it.
‘Oh, what sweet paws you have, my chap. Mariella, his paws are particularly heart-breaking. Do look,—all blunt and tufted and uncontrolled. Don’t they melt you? Poor chap,—darling chap. You come along with me for a skate.’
He skated away with the dog in his arms, talking his special foolish language to it, and colliding with people at every other step.
Oh, he was strange, thought Judith, looking after him. She had no key to him: she could only dissect him and make notes, learn him by heart and marvel at him,—never hope to meet him some day suddenly, at a chance look, a trifling word, with that secret “Ah!”—that shock of inmost mysterious recognition, as she had once met Roddy.
She thought of Roddy dancing in London, urban and alarming. She saw him distinctly, his dark head, his yellowish pallor, his smile; and wished wildly that he had come instead of Charlie: Charlie who troubled her, made her heavy-hearted with the burden of his lavish indifferent brilliance.
The sharp, blue and white afternoon was paling to sunset. The pond flashed and glittered with empty light. In the middle rose the clump of withered flags, dry starved grasses and marsh plants, berried bushes and little willows,—thewhole a blur of pastel shades, purplish-brown, fading green, yellow and russet, with here and there a burning shred of isolated colour,—a splash of crimson, a streak of gold. The whirr and scratch of skates murmured on the air, and the skaters wove without pause, swiftly, lightly, like flies on a ceiling. Beneath the ice the needling grass-blades and the little water-weeds were still, spellbound; outspread stiffly, delicately in multitudinous and infinitesimal loveliness.
As she stood alone gazing down at them Julian came back to her side and said:
‘Do you ever come to London?’
‘Hardly ever. If Daddy’s at home he generally takes me to a theatre at Christmas; and now and then I go with Mamma for clothes.’
‘Well, you’d better come up some time soon and we’ll go to a play. Fix it with Mariella.’
‘Oh!’
It couldn’t be true,—it could never happen. There was a scratch and stumble of skates, and the other two came to a wavering halt in front of them.
‘We must go,’ said Mariella.
‘Judith’s coming to go to a play with us,’ said Julian.
‘Oh, good,’ said Mariella, not interested.
‘When?’ snapped Julian. ‘Fix it.’
‘I don’t know,’ she said, with a quick glance at him. ‘We must ask Grannie. I’ll ask Grannie, Judith, and let you know to-morrow.’
‘Because we’re coming back to-morrow,’ broke in Charlie. ‘Julian, we must, mustn’t we? Will you be here, Judith?’
‘Oh yes.’
‘That’s good, because I shall need you. I need thee every hour. I shall have forgotten my breast-stroke by to-morrow. I do believe if we hadn’t found you, Judith, we should never have stepped on to the ice at all. We should just have looked at it and faded gracefully back to London. We are soverysilly.’
He sat down to take off his boots, and began whistling—then burst out singing:
‘There were three silliesWho stood like lilies——’
‘There were three silliesWho stood like lilies——’
‘There were three silliesWho stood like lilies——’
A pause—
‘Refusing to spin——’
‘Refusing to spin——’
‘Refusing to spin——’
Another pause—
‘Crying, Hey, Lackaday!The ice will give way,And we shall fall in——’
‘Crying, Hey, Lackaday!The ice will give way,And we shall fall in——’
‘Crying, Hey, Lackaday!The ice will give way,And we shall fall in——’
He pulled off his boots; and finished:
‘If Miss Earle they’d not metThey’d be standing there yet.’
‘If Miss Earle they’d not metThey’d be standing there yet.’
‘If Miss Earle they’d not metThey’d be standing there yet.’
‘Pretty poor,’ cried Julian.
‘Oh, I think it’s awfully good,’ said Judith.
Charlie bowed, and said:
‘I can do more like that.’
‘Go on, then.’
‘Not now. Pouf! I’m tired.’
He looked it. Save for the bright flush on each cheek his pallor was startling. His eyes looked dark in their shadowy rings, and he leaned back against Mariella while she gravely fastened his shoes and buttoned up his coat. When she put on his muffler he dragged it off again, crying:
‘Oh, Mariella.No!I’m so hot.’
‘You’re to wear it,’ she said quietly. ‘You’ll catch cold,’ and she wound it round his neck again, while he submitted and made faces at her, his eyes laughing into hers, like a child coaxing an elder to smiles.
Watching him, Judith thought:
‘Are you conceited and spoilt?’
All that gaiety and proud indifference, all that unconscious-seeming charm, that confident chatter—all might be the product of a complete self-consciousness. Surely he must look in the glass and adore his own reflection. She remembered her old dream of marrying him, and thought with a vast sorrowful prophetic sense of the many people who would yearn to him silently for love, while he went on his way, wanting none of them.
Against the dusk, his head, his face shone as if palely lit.
Narrowly she watched him; but there was no sign for her: all that brilliance of expression glancing and pausing around him, and nothing for her beyond a light smile or two, a casual appreciation of her temporary uses. He and Mariella had scarcely once said: ‘Do you remember?’ If they still cherished any of the past she was not in it. It was strange to think of such indifference, when they, with the other three, were all the pattern, all the colour and richness that had ever come into life.
In the dying light their mystery fell over them again, and they were as unattainable as ever. If only with the rare quality of their physical appearance they must always enslave her; and she felt worn out with the stress of them.
‘To-morrow,’ said Charlie, ‘we’ll bring Roddy.’
‘Yes. Come on,’ said Mariella. ‘We must hurry for our train.’
They tramped in silence across the cold solitude of the marsh, and the wind came after them, keen and menacing. When they arrived at the river’s edge, Charlie stood still, and looked across, saying dreamily:
‘There’s a light in the old house. I suppose that’s the caretaker person. We might look in to-morrow and surprise her. Doesn’t it look lonely?... I wish we would live there again. Where’s your house, Judith? I thought it was next door.’
‘So it is, but the trees hide it.’
‘Oh yes, I’d forgotten.’
Then she ferried them across the river in the punt, and parted from them on the other side, where the lane to the station branched off.
‘Well, see you to-morrow.’
Julian looked up at the sky.
‘I believe it’s thawing,’ he said. ‘I believe it’ll rain in the night.’
‘Rot!’ said Charlie. ‘Why—feel the ground.’
‘Yes, but the air’s milder. And look at the sky.’
To the east and north the frosty stars pointed their darts; but in the smoky, tumultuous west, black clouds devoured the last of the sun.
Panic seized Judith, and she hated Julian, wanted to strike him.
‘Rot! that doesn’t mean anything,’ said Charlie uneasily.
‘And listen to the wind.’
The wind was in the treetops, full and relentless, and driving the clouds.
‘Oh, shut up!’ said Charlie. ‘Can’t there be a wind without a thaw? And come on, can’t you, or we’ll miss our train.’
‘Good-night then.’
‘G’night, Judith. We’ll look out for you.’
‘I’ll be there.’
‘Goo’night.’
‘Good-night.’
Judith ran home, shutting eyes to the clouds, ears to the wind, and with the slam of the front door behind her striving to ignore the God of envy, hatred, malice and all uncharitableness whose portents were abroad in the sky.
‘To-morrow they are coming again and bringing Roddy. To-morrow I shall see Roddy. O God, be merciful!’
Towards dawn she woke and heard the blind, drearily sighing, futile hurry and hiss of the rain,—and said aloud in the darkness: ‘How can I bear it?’
Yet lured by sick fantastic hope she crossed the river that morning and made her way to the pond.
There was nobody there, save one small boy, sliding upon the ice through several inches of water and throwing up before him in his swift career two separate and divided fountains.
Then that was the end. They were lost again. They would not come back, they would not write, she would never go to London to see them. Even Julian would forget about her. They did not care, the rain was glad, there was nothing in the wide world to give her comfort. She turned from the rain-blurred place where their unreal lost images mocked at and confused her,—dreams within the far-off dream of happy yesterday.
It was some time in the middle of the war that she knew for certain that Julian was at the front. She heard it from the old next door gardener, who had given her apples and pears long ago, and it was from the grandmother herself that he knew it. She had written to tell him to plant fresh rose-buds and to keep the tennis lawn in perfect order, for very soon, directly the war was over, the grandchildren were to have the house for their own, as a place for week-ends and holidays.
Mr. Julian was at the front, safe so far, God be thanked, and Mr. Charlie had just been called up; but the fighting, so the grandmother said, would be over before ever he went to France.
Then, nourished afresh on new hopes, desires, and terrors, the children next door came back night after night in dreams.
Julian in uniform came suddenly into the library. He said:
‘I’ve come to say good-bye.’
‘Good-bye? Are you going back to the front?’
‘Yes. In a minute. Can’t you hear my train?’
She listened and heard the train-whistle.
‘Charlie’s going too—He’ll be here in a minute. Good-bye, Judith.’
She put out her hand and he took it and then bent down with a sort of grin and kissed her. He said:
‘That’s what men do when they’re going to the front.’
She thought with pleasure: ‘Then Charlie will want to kiss me too;’ and she looked out of the window, hoping to see him.
It was impenetrably dark, and she thought anxiously: ‘He won’t be able to find his way. He always hated the dark.’
‘Come on,’ said Julian. ‘You must come and wave good-bye to me.’
But still she delayed and peered out, looking with growing panic for Charlie.
All at once she saw him in the darkness outside. He was not in uniform, but in grey flannel shorts and a white shirt open at the neck,—the clothes of his childhood. He trailed himself haltingly, as if his feet hurt him.
‘Sh!’ said Julian in her ear. ‘He’s disguised himself.’
‘Ah, then he won’t get killed....’
‘No.’
She caught sight of his face. It was a terrible disguise,—the shrivelled, yellow mask of an ancient cretin. He looked at her vacantly, and she thought with a pang: ‘Ah! I must pretend I don’t know him.’
He passed out of sight with his queer clothes and his limp and his changed face,—all the careful paraphernalia of his travesty. Looking at him, she was seized with sudden horror. There was something wrong: they would see through it.
She tried to reach him, to warn him; but she was voiceless and he had disappeared.
It was Charlie himself, so the old gardener said, who wrote to tell him that he and Mariella were to be married. Master Charles had always been the beloved one,—the oneto be ready with a smile and a pleasant word, and never a bit of haughtiness for all his Grannie made such a little prince of him.
‘And when this old war’s over, Lacey,’ he says, ‘we’ll be coming back to live in the dear old house. Grannie wants us to,’ he says, ‘and you may be sure we want to. We were never ones to like London. So look out for us before long.’ But ah! he had to come through the fighting first. They were to get married at once, for he was off to the front. Speaking for himself, said the old gardener, he’d have had enough of life if anything happened to Master Charlie.
The next day, the announcement of their marriage at a registry office appeared in the “Times.”
‘Why, they can’t be more than nineteen,’ said Mamma, ‘and first cousins, too. A dreadful mistake. However, I suppose the chances are——’ and she sighed, settling her V.A.D. cap before the mirror. ‘I must write to the old lady. They were good-looking children—one of them especially. Why don’t you send a nice little note to the girl, Judith? You used to play together such a lot.’
‘Oh, she wouldn’t remember me,’ said Judith, and went quickly away, sick with shock.
Married, those two. Mariella a wife: Mrs. Charles Fyfe.
‘I amyoungMrs. Fyfe. This is Charlie, my husband.’
How had it happened?
‘Mariella, you must marry me, you must, youmust. Oh, Mariella, Idowant to marry you, and I’m going to the front so Idothink I might be allowed to have what I want. I may be killed and I shan’t have had anything out of life. Oh, Mariella, please! You know you’re happiest with us, Mariella. You couldn’t marry anyone outside and leave us all, could you? Nor could I. I couldn’t bear to betouchedby any other woman. You and I understand each other so well wecouldn’tbe unhappy. We are different from other people, you know. Marry me and I’ll come back from the war. But if you say no I’ll just go out and let myself be killed at once....’
And Mariella, pale and childish and not understanding, went away. She went—yes—to Julian, and looking at him full with her dazed look said: ‘Charlie has asked me to marry him.’ He said not a word, but looked dark and shrugged his shoulders and turned away as who should reply: ‘What is that to me?’ So Mariella went straight back to Charlie and said:
‘All right.’
Her mouth quivered and she nearly cried then, but not quite: neither then nor afterwards. And the grandmother wept bitterly, till in the end Charlie comforted her; and after that, implacably she would give and sacrifice all to Charlie.
No, no, that was too stupid, too abnormal. People only behaved like that in your unbalanced imagination.
Mariella would never have wept, never have gone to Julian, never dreamed of being in love with him,—him or Charlie or any one else you would have thought, childless, sexless creature that she had always seemed, years behind you in development. How she must have changed to be now liable to passion! All at once she had to be thought of as a woman, the gulf of marriage fixed between you and her.
Had she consented then in her usual placidly agreeable way, just to oblige Charlie, without a notion of what it meant to be in love and marry? Had she gradually fallen in love with him during all the years they were growing up together, or had it been suddenly, with a shock of realization, when he told her he was going to France? Or had he come home one day excited, full of emotion at the thought of what lay ahead for him, and found her looking beautiful, strange, and thrilling to his troubled eyes, and taken her suddenly in his arms, charming her into his own illusion of love?
Or had it been gentle and certain all the time,—an idyll?
‘My dear, you know I shall never love anyone but you.’
‘Nor I anyone but you.’
‘Then let’s marry before I go.’
‘Oh yes,—at once.’
So they married, with all the others gentle and certain, and acquiescent as a matter of course, saying, whatever their secret thoughts: ‘Ah well, it had to be.’
They would spend their few days contentedly together, saying quietly: ‘If anything should happen we shall have had this happiness at least:’ their few nights....
When people married they slept in the same room, perhaps in the same bed: they wanted to. Mariella and Charlie would sleep together: that would be the only change for them who had lived in the same house since childhood and knew all about each other. Why had they wanted to make that change—what had impelled them to seek from each other another intimacy? Charlie’s beauty belonged to someone now: Mariella of all people had claims upon it. She might have a baby, and Charlie would be its father....
It was all so queer and unhappy, so like the dreams from whose improbabilities she woke in heaviness of spirit, that it was impossible to realize. This thing had happened and she was further than ever from them, perplexed in the outer darkness, unremembered, unwanted, nothing at all. She might hold on all her life but they would never be drawn back to her.
She was certain now that Charlie was going to be killed. There was that in the fact of his marriage, of his leaping to fulfil the instincts of normal man for life which proclaimed more ominously by contrast the something,—the fatal excess—that foredoomed him; which made darker the shadow falling ever upon the bright thing coming to confusion.
There seemed nothing now in life but a waiting for his death.
They came and came in her dreams—some that caused her to wake with the happiness of a bird, thinking for a moment: ‘Then he’s safe ...;’ others that made her start into bleak consciousness, heavy with the thought that he was even now dead.
There were dreams of Mariella with a child in her arms; of Mariella and Charlie walking silently up and down, up and down the lawn next door, like lovers, their arms about each other, and kissing as they walked. Then Mariella would turn into Judith, and very soon the whole thing would go wrong: Charlie would cease to walk up and down like a lover, and falter and disappear.
She dreamed of standing in the doorway of the old next door schoolroom looking out into the hall. Between the inner glass doors and the outer white-painted wooden ones, in the little passage where tubs of hydrangeas and red and white lilies stood upon a mosaic floor, Mariella was talking to one of the boys. She must be saying good-bye to Charlie. The back of her neck was visible, the short curls tilting back as she lifted her head to him. Tall and shadowy, faceless, almost formless, he bent over her, and mysteriously, silently they conferred; and she watched, hidden in the doorway. Suddenly Mariella broke away and ran past through the hall. Her face was white and wild, streaming with tears; she bowed it right forward in her hands and fled up the stairs.
‘Oh, look! Mariella is crying for the first time in her life....’
In the doorway the dark figure still stood. It turned and all at once had a face; and was not Charlie but Julian. She sprang back thinking: ‘He mustn’t see me here, spying;’ and in the agitation of trying to slip away unobserved, the dream broke.
There was a dream of playing some game among them all in the next door garden, and of Charlie stopping suddenly, and crawling away with a weak fumbling step, his hand on his heart.
‘He’s got a weak heart.’
‘Ah, then he won’t go to the front.’
‘No, he’s quite safe.’
She woke up happy.
But sometimes Charlie had been to the front and had come back with that feebleness and sickness upon him. Hewas going to die of it. He came all pale into the schoolroom and stopped, leaning against the big oak cupboard. He put his hand on his heart, sighing and moaning, looking about him in appalling distress. He said:
‘I feel ill. I don’t know what it is.... I’d like to consult my brother.’
He had the face of a stranger, an emaciated and elderly man,—nobody in the least like Charlie; but it was he. He shuffled out again, almost too weak to move, looking for Julian, who would not come. In horror-struck groups the others watched him. He was dying beyond a doubt. She woke, aghast.
It was at the close of a day in February. Outside, where the gentle dusk glimmered on rain-wet branches, the bird-calls were like sudden pale jets of light, coming achingly to the mind; and all at once the sun, like a bell, struck out a poignant richness, a long dark-golden evening note with tears in it, searching all the land with its fullness and dying slowly into an obscurer twilight. The tree-tops were quiet against the sky. There was no leaf upon them: yet, in that liquid mauve air they stirred in her a sudden soft pang, a beating of the heart, and were, for a moment, the whole of the still hidden spring.
She stood staring through the window; and wars and rumours of wars receded, dwindling into a little shadow beyond the edge of the enchanted world.
She went out into the garden, towards the river. Ah, these shapely boughs, this smell of buds, that tenderly-trailing blue smoke from the rubbish heap, this air like clear greenish water, washing in luminous tides, those few stars cast up and glowing upon translucent strands between the riven pale deeps of clouds!... Bearing her ecstasy delicately, she came to the bottom of the garden, where the connecting pathway ran towards the house next door. She heard a heavy trailing step she knew, and she waited to bid good-night to the old gardener coming home from work.
‘Good-night, Lacey.’
His mumbling voice said from the shadows:
‘Good-night, Missie.’
‘Lovelyevening, Lacey.’
‘Ah, grand.’
‘How does your garden look next door?’
‘Ah, a bit forward. There’ll be frosts later, you may be bound.’
He sounded tired to-night; he was getting very old. Now for the customary last question.
‘When are they coming back, Lacey? It’s high time, isn’t it?’
He paused; then said:
‘You maybe won’t have heard, Miss....’
‘What?’
‘Master Charlie’s been killed.... Yes, Miss. We ‘ad word from London this afternoon. Ah, it’s cruel. It’ll about kill his Grannie, that’s wot I sez first thing—about kill her it will. He was the apple of her eye. That’s what we all said—the apple of her eye. She says to me once she says: “Lacey,” she says, “Master Charlie’ll live ‘ere when I’m gorn. I’m keepin’ the place on for ’im,” she says. “It shall never be let nor nothing. It’s ‘is, for ’im to bring ‘is wife to. Ah, pore little Miss Mariella, pore soul....” He broke into feeble weeping. “Ah, it’ll about be the death of ‘is Grannie. Pore Master Charlie—pore little chap ... everybody’s favourite, I remember ’im when ‘e was.... Yes, Missie, yes, Miss Judith....’
His voice failed; and with a hand touching his hat over and over again in mechanical apology, confused distress and appeal, he went shuffling away into the shadows.
But of course, of course he was dead; she had expected it all the time. Now it had happened she could turn to other things. She thought: ‘It’s not bad now; it’ll be worse later: then some time it will stop. I must bear it—bear it—bear it!’
That wheezing voice echoed in the solitude and complained: ‘Pore Master Charlie, pore little chap,’ over and over again through the dark lane among the poplars, above the wall of the garden where the poor little boy had lived long ago.
Had he really lived? Forget him, forget him. He was only a shadow any way, a romantic illusion, a beautiful plaything of the imagination: nothing of importance. Put him away, be sensible, be indifferent, gather round you once again the imperturbable mysteries of nature, be blinded and made deaf with them for ever. He was much better dead. He was weak and spoilt, selfish; he wouldn’t have been any good.... He never could bear blood: he must be thankful to be dead.
Where was he? He seemed to be near, listening to what you had to say of his death.
‘Charlie, my darling, if only you’d known how I loved you!’
‘I know now. I shall always be watching you.’
Then there is no cause for weeping: he is alive, he is in God’s keeping. “Lord, into thy hands I commend his spirit.” What did that mean? Pretend, pretend to believe it, cover the blankness with confident assertions.
What had become of that shining head? How did he look now?
At this very moment they were all weeping for Charlie shot dead in France. It was really true: he was dead and in the earth, he had vanished for ever. Her mind wavered and fainted under the burden of their grief: her own she could endure, but theirs was intolerable.
She went back, out of the unregarding night, to the Greek verbs which must be learnt by to-morrow.
A long time after, came the last terrible dream.
They were all bathing together from the next door raft, in a sort of dim luminous twilight. She saw her own white legs reaching out to touch the water; and she stepped inand swam about. Roddy was there, a dark head bobbing vaguely near her. Sometimes he touches her hand or her shoulder, smiling at her in a friendly way. The others made a dim group on the bank. They were all very happy: she felt ecstasy swelling within her, and passing from her among them all.
Charlie suddenly came into the group. Oh, there was Charlie safe and well and alive after all, and nobody need be unhappy any more!
He did not speak. He emerged swiftly from among them, and they all watched him in silence while he stooped to the dim river and slipped in. He turned his face, his hidden face, downstream, and went floating and swimming gently along. He too was happy.
A dark misty solitude of night and water was ahead of him, and he went into it without pause or backward look, and it folded around him. Horror crept in: for he was disappearing.
A voice broke ringingly, in anguish:
‘Come back!’
It shattered itself, aghast, upon emptiness.
Softly he vanished.
She cried aloud and woke into a night streaming, blind with the rain’s enormous weeping.
He never came again.
His son was born and his grandmother died; but he was too far, too spent a ghost to raise his head at that.
THEY were coming back. When she knew this she dared not venture beyond the garden for fear of encountering them unexpectedly. Only the dark was safe; and night after sleepless night she jumped out of the kitchen window into the garden, and crossed the lawn’s pattern of long tree-shadows, sharp-cut upon the blank moon-blanched level of the grass. All the colours were drained away; only the white spring flowers in the border shone up with a glimmer as of phosphorus, and the budding tree-tops were picked out, line by cold line, in a thin and silvery wash of light.
She went dancingly down the garden, feeling moon-changed, powerful and elated; and paused at the river’s edge. The water shone mildly as it flowed. She scanned it up and down; it was deserted utterly, it was hers alone. She took off her few clothes and stepped in, dipping rapidly; and the water slipped over her breasts, round her shoulders, covering all her body. The chill water wounded her; her breath came shudderingly, in great gasps; but after a moment she started to swim vigorously downstream. It was exquisite joy to be naked in the water’s sharp clasp. In comparison, the happiness of swimming in a bathing suit was vulgar and contemptible. To swim by moonlight alone was a sacred and passionate mystery. The water was in love with her body. She gave herself to it with reluctance and it embraced her bitterly. She endured it, soon she desired it; she was in love with it. Gradually its harshness was appeased, and it held her and caressed her gently in her motion.
Soon next door loomed lightless among its trees. If they were there, they were all sleeping. No eyes would be staring in the darkness, gazing at the enchanted water, wondering at the dark object moving upon its surface.
But no, they had not come yet: the moon came frombehind a cloud and illumined the face of the great house; and it was grief-stricken as ever, bowed down with the burden of its emptiness. She turned back and swam home.
The night of full moon came, warm and starry. As she swam towards the willows at the far edge of the next-door garden,—her usual goal—she saw lights in the windows. The long house spread itself peacefully under the moon, throwing out its muffled warmth of lamplight like a quiet smile.
So they had come.
Somebody might be in the garden,—on the river even. She clung close under the bank, by a willow stump, not daring to move, feeling her strength ebb from her.
Then all at once their forms, their voices were near her. Somebody started to play a nocturne of Fauré: Julian. Before her she saw someone tall, in a pale frock, walking along the lawn: Mariella. A moment after a man’s figure came from the shadows and joined hers. Which was he? The twin glow of their cigarettes went ahead of them as they paced slowly, arm in arm, across the lawn, just as Charlie and Mariella had often paced in the dreams.
They were so near they must in a moment look down and see her; but they passed on a few steps and then paused, looking out over the river, and up at the resplendent moon. The piano stopped, and soon another figure came and joined them. They were three tall shadows: their faces were indistinguishable.
‘Hullo!’ said the small clear unchanged voice of Mariella, ‘I can’t understand your music, Julian. Nor can Martin, can you, Martin?’
‘Well it’s so damned dull. No tune in it.’
Julian’s brief laugh came for answer.
It was like all the dreams to listen to these voices dropping, muted but distinct, from invisible lips close to you in the dark, saying trivial things that seemed important because of the strangeness and surprise of the meeting.
‘Why don’t you,’ said Martin, ‘play nice simple wholesome things that we can have on the brain and hum and whistle all day?’
‘I’m not simple and wholesome enough to do them justice. I leave them to your masterly right index, Martin.’
‘Martin’s the world’s finest one-finger man, aren’t you?’ from Mariella, teasing, affectionate.
‘Where’s Roddy?’
‘He went off alone in the canoe.’
‘How romantic,’ said Mariella.
There was a groan.
‘Mariella, why will you——’
‘What?’
‘Quack,’ said Julian. ‘Youmust thinkbefore you speak.’
She laughed.
‘Good-night,’ she said. ‘I’m going to bed. When you come upstairs mind and be quiet past the nursery. Remember it’s notyournursery but Peter’s now. Nannie’ll warm your jacket if you wake him again, Martin.’
Her cigarette end hit the water a few inches from Judith. Her whitish form grew dim and was gone.
‘What a night!’ said Julian, after a silence. ‘The moon is a most theatrical designer.’
The two strolled on,—none too soon, for the water was glacial to her cramped body, her fingers were rigid upon the willow-roots, and her teeth were rattling in her head.
She heard from Martin:
‘When I was in Paris with Roddy——’
And then after a long pause, Julian’s voice suddenly raised: ‘But what if you boredyourself... day after day ... to myself:Christ!Youbloodybore....’
The voices sank into confusion and ceased; but in the ensuing silence they seemed to follow her and repeat themselves, charged with the portentous significance of all overheard fragments of speech; so that she felt herself guiltily possessed of the secrets of their hearts.
The moon shone full on the garden bank when she lifted herself out, exhausted, and lay down on the grass.
Around her the shadows stood still. Her body in the moonlight was transfigured into lines of such mysterious purity that it seemed composed less of flesh than of light. She thought: “Even if they had seen me they wouldn’t have thought me real.”... Martin would have been astonished if not shocked; he would have turned politely away, but Julian would have appraised her curves, critically and with interest. And Roddy,—Roddy was so long ago he was incalculable. But if that someone dark and curious, with Roddy’s face, cherished for years in the part of you which perceived without eyes and knew without reason,—if he had seen, he would have watched closely, and then withdrawn himself from the seduction, from the inconvenience of his own pang; and watched from afar, in silence.
“Oh, Roddy, when will you come and reveal yourself?”
The swim home had warmed her, but now, in spite of excited pulses, she felt the cold beginning to strike deeply. She got up and stood still a moment: soon she must hide her silver-white body in the cloak, and then it would cease to be a miracle.
As she stooped for the garment, she heard the long soft ripple and plash of a paddle; a canoe stole into view, floating down full in the middle of the stream. She gathered her dark cape round her and stepped back into the shadows; and as she watched the solitary figure in the stern she forgot to breathe.
‘Oh, turn! Oh, turn!’ she sent after him silently.
But if he did she would dissolve, be swallowed up....
He did not turn his head; and she watched him go on, past the next-door garden and still onward;—going on all night perhaps....
If only he had seen her he would have beckoned to her.
‘Judith, come with me.’
‘I will.’
And all night they would have floated on together.
Some day it would happen: it must. She had always known that the play of Roddy must be written and that she must act in it to the end—the happy end.
‘Oh, Roddy, I am going to love you.’
The diminishing, unresponsive blot which was he passed out of sight.
Half way back to the house she stopped suddenly, overcome with bewilderment; for that had been Roddy’s self, not his shadow made by the imagination. The solitudes of the darkness now held their very forms, were mysterious with their voices where for so long only imagined shapes had hovered in the emptiness.... They had slipped back in that lucid, credulous life between waking and sleep out of which you start to ponder whether the dream was after all reality—or whether reality be nothing but a dream.
Next day, with unreal ease, she met Mariella in the village. She came out of the chemist’s shop, and they were face to face. There she was, tall and erect, with her dazed green-blue crystal eyes looking without shadow or stain up-upon the world from between dark lashes; her eyes, that knew neither good nor evil,—the icy eyes of an angel or a devil. Under her black hat her short hair curled outwards, her pale smooth face preserved its childish oval, her lips just closed in their soft faint-coloured bow. The mask was still there, more exquisite than of old; yet when she smiled in greeting, something strange looked out for a moment, as if her face in one of its rare breakings-up had been a little wounded, and still retained the slightest, disturbed expression.
She seemed pleased.
‘Judith!... isn’t it?’
‘Mariella!’
‘Then youarestill here. We wondered.’
‘Yes. Still here.’
She seemed at a loss for what to say, and looked away, shy and ill at ease, her eyes glancing about, trying to hide.
‘We—we were wondering about you and we thought you must be away. We remembered you were brainy and Julian said you told him you were going to college or somewhere, so we thought p’raps that’s where you were. We thought you must be dreadfully frightening and learned by now. Aren’t you?’
‘Oh no!’
What reply was possible to such silliness?
‘You were always doing lessons,’ she said in a puzzled voice. Then with a smile: ‘Do you remember Miss Pim?’
‘Yes. Her false teeth.’
‘Hersmell.’ She wrinkled her small nose. ‘I used to sit and get whiffs of her, and think of tortures for her. No wonder I was backward.’ She gave her little giggle and added nervously again: ‘Look here, when will you come and see us? We’d like it. This afternoon?’
‘Oh, Mariella, I’d love to.’
‘They’re all there. D’you remember everyone? Julian was demobilized a little while ago. He’s going back to Oxford in the autumn.’
‘And Martin and Roddy?’
‘Yes, they’re both there. Roddy’s just back from Paris. He’s supposed to be studying drawing there. Martin ought to be at Cambridge, but he’s had appendicitis rather badly so he’s missing the term.’
‘Are you glad to be back here?’
‘Oh yes, we all like it awfully. And it seems to suit the infant.’
‘That’s good.’
There was a pause. She had thrown off her last remark with careless haste, defying you not to know about the infant; and her eyes had escaped again, as if in dread. In the pause the gulf of things never to be said yawned for a moment beneath their feet; and it was clear that Mariella at least would never breathe her husband’s name.
‘I—I was just buying some things for him,’ she said. ‘Some things Nanny wanted. But you can’t get much here....’ Her voice trailed off nervously. Then:
‘This afternoon,’ she said. ‘Good-bye till then. Don’t come too early because the boys are always dreadfully lazy after lunch.’
She smiled and went on.
At five o’clock Judith surprised the parlourmaid by taking off her hat in the hall, wiped her perspiring hands and announced herself.
At the threshold of the sitting room she paused and gasped. The room, magnified by fear, seemed full of giants in grey flannels. Mariella detached herself from a vast crowd and floated towards her.
‘Hullo!’ she said. ‘Do you want tea? I forgot about it. We never have tea. I needn’t introduce, need I? You know every one.’ She put a light hand for a moment on Judith’s arm, and the room began to sink and settle; but the faces of the boys-next-door were nothing but a blur before her eyes as she shook hands.
‘D’you remember which is which?’ said Mariella.
Now she would have to look up and answer, control this trembling, arrest this devouring blush.
‘Of course I do.’
She lifted her eyes, and saw them standing before her, smiling a trifle self-consciously. That gave her courage to smile back.
‘You’re Martin—you’re Roddy—you’re——’ she hesitated. Julian stood aloof, looking unyouthful and haughty. She finished lamely—‘Mr. F-Fyfe.’
There was a roar of laughter, a chorus of teasing voices to which, plunged once more in a welter of blushes and confusion, she could pay no heed.
‘I thought you mightn’t like—might think me—Ididn’t know if—you looked as if you——’ she stammered.
‘I’m sorry, I’m sure, that you should feel the need of any such formality,’ said Julian stiffly. He too was blushing.
‘It was only his shyness,’ mocked a voice.
Judith thought: ‘After all, he was always the friendly one.’ That he too should be shy restored her self-confidence, and she said looking full at him and smiling:
‘I’m sorry. Julian then.’
‘That’s better,’ he said, still stiffly; but he smiled.
Their faces had become clear to her now; but there was still a point of trouble and strangeness in the room,—the queer-looking sallow young man Roddy. Her eyes fluttered over him and went on to Martin. He smiled at her, and she took a step nearer to him.
‘Are you at Cambridge?’ she said.
‘I am.’
‘That’s where I’m going.’
‘Are you really?’
‘For what purpose?’ said Roddy softly.
‘Oh, to learn. I want to learn everything about literature—English literature anyway, from the very beginning,’ she said earnestly.
‘That’s precisely what Martin’s aiming at. Isn’t it, Martin, you bookworm?’
‘I don’t get on much,’ said Martin with a swift confiding smile. ‘I’m such an idle devil. And so slow.’
She pondered.
‘I don’t think I’m particularly clever,’ she said. ‘Do you suppose most girls who go to College are?’
‘Martin and I think they must be,’ said Roddy, twinkling. ‘They look it, I will say.’
‘I saw some when I went for my examination. They were very plain.’ There was laughter; and she added in strict fairness: ‘There were two pretty ones,—two or three.’
‘Then you intend to become a young woman withreallyintellectual interests?’ said Roddy.
‘Oh yes. I think so.’
‘That’s rather serious.’
She became suddenly aware that they were all laughing at her and stopped, overcome with shame and dismay.
‘Never mind.’ Roddy was twinkling at her with irresistible gaiety, and his voice was full of caressing inflections. ‘Martin will be delighted to see you. But don’t go to Newnham or Girton. Awful places—Martin is terrified of them. Go to Trinity. He’ll chaperone you.’
‘Oh, give over, Roddy,’ said Martin indulgently smiling. ‘You’re too funny.’
‘I hope your appendicitis is better?’ asked Judith politely.
‘Much better, thank you.’ He made a little bow.
Nobody had anything more to say. They were not very good hosts. They stood around, making no effort, idly fingering and dropping the tags of conversation she offered them, as if she were the hostess and they most difficult guests. As in the old days, they formed their oppressive self-sufficient circle of blood-intimacy with its core of indifference if not hostility to the stranger. Charlie was dead, but now when they were all gathered together she felt him weighing, drawing them further aloof; and she wished miserably that she had not come.
They were all casually engaged by themselves. Roddy was cleaning his pipe, Martin and Mariella playing with a spaniel puppy. It floundered on to Martin’s lap, and a moment after:
‘Oh, again!’ came Mariella’s clear little pipe. ‘What an uncontrolled chap he is! I’m sorry, Martin.’
‘It’ll dry,’ said Martin equably surveying his trousers. ‘It’s nothing.’
Julian had sat down at the piano and was strummingpianissimo. Roddy took up the tune and whistled it.
‘What shall we do?’ said Mariella. She went on rolling the puppy.
Julian turned round in his playing and looked at Judith.Gratefully she went over and stood beside him. By the piano, watching Julian’s hands, she was isolated with him and need not be afraid.
‘Go on playing. Something of your own.’
He shook his head and said:
‘Oh, that’s all gone.’
What lines, what harshness the war had given his always furrowed face!
‘But it’ll come back.’
‘No. It was a feeble spark; and the God of battles has seen fit to snuff it. The war made some chaps poets—of sorts; but I never heard of it making anyone a musician.’
‘Well, you can still play.’
‘Oh, I strum. I strum.’ He sounded weary and disgusted. Was he saying to himself: ‘Christ!Youbloodybore?’
‘I’d always feel—’ she struggled, ‘—compensated if I could strum as you do. Ever since I was little I’ve envied you to distraction.’
He cheered up a little and smiled, looking interested in the old way.
‘Play what you were playing last night.’
‘How do you know what I was playing last night?’
‘I was on the river and I heard you.’
‘Did you?’ He was flattered. It touched his imagination to think of himself playing out into the night to invisible listeners.
‘All alone, were you?’ He looked her over with alert interest.
‘Oh yes. I said to myself: that must be Mr. Fyfe playing.’
He laughed.
‘You know, you were monstrous.’
‘Not at all. It was you. You defied me to pretend I’d ever known you.’
‘Nonsense. I was looking forward to you. Last time was—When? Centuries ago.’
‘Yes. That skating time.’
‘Lord, yes. Another world.’
Abruptly he stopped his soft playing; and Charlie came pressing upon them, making himself remembered above all else on that day.
‘Why stuff indoors?’ said Mariella. ‘Come out, Judith.’
She followed Mariella almost light-heartedly. After all, she was the sort of girl who could talk to people, even amuse them. She had proved it with Julian; and success with the others might reasonably be expected to follow.
A child was playing on a rug under the cedar tree, and his nurse sat sewing beside him. Judith recognized her as a figure out of the old days, a dragon called Pinkie, Mariella’s nurse who had become her maid. Wrinkled, stern, with the fresh cheeks and clear innocent expression of an old nurse, she sat guarding Mariella’s son.
‘May I please take him, Pinkie?’ said Mariella. ‘Pinkie won’t let me touch him as a rule.’
‘You’re so careless,’ she said severely; then recognised Judith and beamed.
Mariella lifted the child easily and carried him under one arm to where the group of young men had formed by the river’s edge.
Judith watched him with a painful interest and wonder. Here in front of her was Charlie’s child: she must believe it.
He was a tall child of slight build and oddly mature looks for his two years. He had frail looking temples and a neck far too slender, it seemed, to support the large head covered with a shock of fine straight brown hair. He had Mariella’s dark lashes framing brilliant deep-set eyes, and nothing else of his parents save his pallor and a certain fine-boned distinction which no Fyfe could lack.
The circle was a barren thing; it could not stretch to enclose new life. Mariella’s child was outside and irrelevant. Sometimes a cousin put out a large hand to steady him, or whistled to him or made a grimace, squeaked his teddy-bear or shouted at him encouragingly when he fell down. They looked at him with tolerant amused faces like big dogs, mildly gratified when he paused, steadying himself for a moment with a hand on their knees; but they soon forgot about him. Julian alone appeared to have an interest in him: he watched him; and Mariella herself now and then for a moment watched Julian watching him.
It was absurd, incongruous, incredible that this should belong to Mariella, should have been begotten by Charlie, carried in her body for nine months, as any woman carries her child, born of her in the ordinary way with agony and joy, growing up to love and be loved by her, and to call her mother.
But anybody could have a child; even mysterious childish widows like Mariella, tragic dead young husbands like Charlie; the simple proof was there before her eyes. Yet Mariella was such a childless person by nature. It was as if her body had played a trick on her and conceived; but to the creature it had brought forth her unmaternal spirit bore no relationship. So it seemed; but you could never tell with Mariella.
‘Come here,’ said Judith, and held out her hand.
He stared, then edged away nervously.
‘Do you like children?’ asked Mariella politely.
‘I love them,’ said Judith, and then blushed, detecting a fatuous fervour in her voice. But, thank heaven, Roddy had strolled away with Martin and was out of hearing.
‘Do you?’ Mariella glanced at her and seemed to find nothing more to say. She pulled the puppy to her.
‘Good chap, go and play with Peter. Go on.’
‘Then Peter is his name.’
‘MichaelPeter,’ emphasized Julian mockingly. ‘Mariella had the highest motives; but I fear she has done for him. Michael alone or Peter alone hemighthave stood upagainst—but the combination! I tremble for his adolescence. However he ought to have a spurious charm, at any rate until he leaves the university. The only hope is that he himself may find the double burden excessive, and cancel himself out to a healthy James or Henry. We could do with a Henry or so in our family. Perhaps after all we should commend your far-sightedness, Mariella?’
‘I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ she said in her little cheerful voice. ‘I think Michael Peter is a very nice name. And he’s quite a nice boy, isn’t he?’
He was running up and down the lawn with the puppy in pursuit, pawing at him, nipping his calves, tripping him up. At first he bore it equably, but after a while stopped in distress, pushing at the dog with impotent delicate hands, nervously exclaiming and as if expostulating with him in a language of his own, but not once looking towards any of them for assistance. The puppy crouched before him, and all at once let out a sharp yelp of excitement. He put his hands up to his ears. His lip shook.
‘Damn that puppy!’ said Julian furiously. He strode over to his nephew and lifted him in his arms.
‘The boy’s tired, Mariella, and you know it, and there you sit, calmly,calmly,—and let that damn fool noisy puppy bully him and pester him and smash his nerves....’
He was white. He stared with naked antagonism at Mariella, and the air seemed to quiver and grow taut between them. She got up swiftly to catch the puppy and touched her son’s head in passing.
‘Poor Peter-boy,’ she said quietly. ‘Silly boy! It’s all right.’
‘I must go,’ murmured Judith.
It was unbearable. She must slip away and hide from the shame and shock of her own perception of the suppressed hysteria.
‘Must you go?’ Mariella smiled at her with a sort of sweet blankness. ‘Well—you must come again soon. Come often.’
‘I’ll see you to the door,’ said Julian. ‘I’m taking the boy in.’
Without another word or look Mariella went away; and he marched off into the house, carrying the child; and Judith followed him, sick at heart.
Everything had gone wrong. Martin and Roddy had not returned and she dared not seek them to say good-night. Alas, they would not care whether she did so or not since they had not been sufficiently interested in her to stay beside her. Even Martin did not want her, preferred Roddy. She had hoped to gain assurance enough to look at Roddy, once, calmly, and see him as he was; but in the few glances they had exchanged she had seen nothing but an unreality so poignant, so burning that it blurred her whole mind and forced her eyes to escape, helpless. To-night when she was in bed they would all come before her, haunting and tormenting, trebly indifferent and unpossessed now that this longed-for meeting was accomplished, a bitter and fruitless fact. Imagination at least had been fecund, it had fed itself:—but the reality was as sterile as stone. What might she have done, she wondered, that she had not done, how should she have looked in order to please them? Was it her clothes or her looks or her idiotic seriousness about college that had condemned her to them? Bleakly pondering, she followed Julian into the sitting room.
He sat down at the piano with the boy on his knee, and began softly playing. Judith stood beside him.
After a little the child flung his head back against Julian’s shoulder, raptly listening. When he did this Julian’s face smoothed itself out and all but smiled. He continued to play, then stopped and said:
‘Sit down. You needn’t go yet,’—and continued his quiet music.
To free his arms she gently took the child from him and set him on her own lap, where he sat motionless and as if unconscious of the change.
Gradually as she watched the crooked fingers sliding alongthe keys from chord to chord, and saw around her the familiar room, the past stole over her. He was the boy Julian and she the half-dreaming privileged listener; and as if there had been no gap in their knowledge of each other they sat side by side in unselfconscious intimacy. What had there been to fear? She saw now that she would always be able to pick him up just where she had left him, and find him unchanged to her; she could say anything to him without danger of mockery or rebuff. But he had always been the easiest: the sense of blood-relationship was tempered in him by his critical intelligence; and he was always prepared at least to sharpen his wits against the stranger, if not to befriend him.
He paused and she said:
‘Nothing has changed here. I remember every single thing in the room and it’s all the same,—even to the inkstains on those boards. It’s like a dream to be back here talking to you—one of those dreams of remembered places where everything is so familiar it seems ominous. I’ve often had a dream like this——’
She stopped, wishing her last words unsaid; but he took her remark to be general and nodded, and leaned forward to look at Peter, lying wan and sleepy in her lap. He was very tired; but not fretful: only silent and languid. Julian touched his cheek.
‘And is Peter part of the dream too?’ he asked softly.
‘Yes. Isn’t he?’
He was the passive, waiting core of the ominousness, the unexpected thing you shrank from yet knew you had to come back to find. In the dream, it was quite natural to sit there with Julian, holding Charlie’s child.
‘Isn’t it strange,’ he said musingly, ‘that this is the only proof—theonlyproof that Charlie ever lived? A child! Not another whisper from him.... I haven’t even a letter. I supposeshehas.’ An utter misery showed for a moment in his face, and he paused before adding: ‘And no portrait. Do you remember him?’
‘Of course.’ Her throat ached with tears. ‘He was the most beautiful person——’
‘Yes he was. Aspringof beauty. He didn’t care about that, you know, in spite of what people said. His physical brilliance somehow obscured his character, I think, made it difficult to judge. But he had a very simple heart.’
Was it true? Who had ever known Charlie’s heart? Was not Julian speaking as it were in epitaphs, as if his brother had become unreal to him,—a symbol for grief,—the individual ghost forgotten? Perhaps Mariella alone of all people had known his heart—strange thought!—and still had him quick within her; but she would never tell.
‘It’s not often I speak of him to anyone,’ said Julian; and his usually narrow swift-glancing eyes suddenly opened wide and held hers as if he had some unendurable thought. They were pits of misery. What was he remembering?
After a long silence he took the boy on his lap again and said softly:
‘Peter shall play.’
Peter put out both his hands, and carefully, delicately dropped them on the keys, listening and smiling.
‘Is he musical?’
Julian nodded.
‘Oh yes. He’s that—more or less. I seem to detect all the symptoms.’
He looked down at the leaning head on his shoulder with a sort of harsh tenderness; and after a while he spoke again as if out of a deep musing.
‘What, one asks oneself, is she going to do about him?’
‘Mariella?’
‘Yes.’
‘Well—it’s more or less mechanical, with a boy, isn’t it? School and university,—and in his case, musical instruments?’
‘Howwretchedhe’s going to be,’ he said fiercely, ‘Can’t yousee?’
‘She wouldn’t let him be wretched,’ she said, startled.
‘She?—she won’t know it! And if she did, she’d be helpless.’
‘Well, he’s got you.’
‘Me!’ He gave his bark of laughter.
‘I mean—you like him,’ she ventured timidly.
‘I can’t stand brats. And they can’t stand me.’
‘I’m not talking about brats. I’m talking about Peter. I thought you liked him.’
He laughed.
‘You look so shocked. Doyoulike brats then?’
‘Yes.’
‘Hmm—Well, I dare say Mariella says the same. In fact, I’ve heard her. She’s very correct, poor darling, in all her little contributions.’ He looked at the clock. ‘It’s time I took him up. Wait for me.’
When he came back he laughed again.
‘You still look shocked. I’m not a nice man, am I?’
‘I’m not thinking about you.’
After a pause he said:
‘It’s all right, Judy. You’re right. I do like him. But because I’m bound to feel, must I refuse to think?’
‘Think what?’
‘That he ought never to have been born.’
‘Oh!’ she blushed, horrified.
He flung at her:
‘What do you wish for the people you love? Life?’
‘Of course. Don’t you?’ She was confused, out of her depth.
‘No—God, no!’
‘Then what?’
‘Unconsciousness. Heavenly,heavenlyannihilation.’
‘Then why don’t you kill him?’ She was shocked at the sound of her own words.
‘Because I don’t love him enough.’ He laughed. ‘Luckily I don’t love anyone enough—never shall. Not even myself.’ He turned to the window and said, speaking low, with strained composure: ‘Sometimes—in momentsof clear vision—I see it all, the whole futile sickening farce. But it gets obscured. So my friends are safe. Besides, I’m so damned emotional: if they implored me to save them I shouldn’t have the heart to argue how much wiser they’d be to die.’
She wondered with alarm if he were mad and sat silent, waiting in vain for an intelligent counter-argument to present itself. Finally she stammered:
‘But it’s not a futile sickening farce to normal people.’
‘Oh, normal people! they’re the whole trouble. They don’tthink. They don’t see that you can’t miss anything of which you’ve never been conscious. All the things for which they value life—their food, their loves and lusts and little schemes and athletic exercises, all the little excitements—what are they but a desperate questioning: ‘What shall I do to be happy, to fill up the emptiness, leaven the dreariness? How can I best cheat myself and God?’ And, strange to say, they don’t think what a lot of trouble would have been saved if they’d never been—never had to go hunting for their pleasures or flying from their pains. A trivial agitation that should never have begun; and back into nothing again. How silly!... As you may have guessed, I am not altogether convinced of the One Increasing Purpose. I have the misfortune to be doubtful of the objective value of life, and especially of its pains. Neither do my own griefs either interest or purify me. So you see——’
He turned from the window and smiled at her.
‘Yet even I have my compensations: music, food, beautiful people, conversation—or should I say monologue?—especially this sort of bogus philosophy to which you have been so patiently listening. Do you agree with me, by the way?’
‘No. Do you?’
He laughed and shrugged.
‘Still,’ she added, ‘it’s a point of view. I’ll think aboutit. I can’t think quickly. But oh!—--’ She stopped.
‘What?’
‘I’m so thankful I’ve been born.’ She blushed. ‘Even if Iknewyou were right I wouldn’t feel it.’
‘Ah, you’ve never bored yourself. Perhaps you never will. I hope and believe it’s unlikely.’