Dear Judith,Roddy is in Cambridge for two nights, staying with Tony. He wants to see you. Will you come to tea with me to-morrow at 4.30? I am to tell you he will never forgive you (a) if you don’t come (b) if you come with a chaperon. He says that chance alone prevented him from being your bachelor Uncle; and that I myself was a maiden aunt from the cradle. So please come.Martin.
Dear Judith,
Roddy is in Cambridge for two nights, staying with Tony. He wants to see you. Will you come to tea with me to-morrow at 4.30? I am to tell you he will never forgive you (a) if you don’t come (b) if you come with a chaperon. He says that chance alone prevented him from being your bachelor Uncle; and that I myself was a maiden aunt from the cradle. So please come.
Martin.
Dear Martin,Bachelor uncles are notorious; and curious things are apt to happen to strictly maiden aunts as all we enlightened moderns know. But an aunt and uncle bound byholy matrimony are considered safe (as safety goes in this world) and I have notified the authorities of their brief presence in the university and am cordially permitted to wait on them at tea to-morrow at 4.30.Judith.
Dear Martin,
Bachelor uncles are notorious; and curious things are apt to happen to strictly maiden aunts as all we enlightened moderns know. But an aunt and uncle bound byholy matrimony are considered safe (as safety goes in this world) and I have notified the authorities of their brief presence in the university and am cordially permitted to wait on them at tea to-morrow at 4.30.
Judith.
Judith looked around Martin’s room. It was untidy and rather dirty, with something forlorn and pathetic and faintly animal about it, like all masculine rooms. It made you want to look after him. Men were helpless children; it was quite true. You might have known Martin’s room would give you a ridiculous pull at the heart.
‘I’m afraid things are in a bit of a mess,’ said Martin, blowing cigarette ash off the mantelpiece into the fire.
He was smoking an enormous pipe. His face was red. His great form looked lumbering and shapeless in an ancient tweed coat and a pair of voluminous grey flannel trousers.
‘How are you, Judith?’ His brown eye fixed itself on her. He was very shy.
‘I’ve been ill, Martin.’
‘Oh!...’ He looked troubled and embarrassed. ‘Did you—did you have a decent doctor?’
‘Oh yes. It was almost pneumonia, but not quite.’
‘I didn’t know you’d been ill....’
‘You haven’t been to see me for ages, Martin.’
‘I know. I’ve been so busy.’ Violently he blew the ash about. What a shame to pretend to reproach him. He was obviously overcome.... ‘And I didn’t think you wanted.... I suppose you’re all right again now?’
Footsteps sounded outside on the stair. Judith collected herself and sat rigid. The door opened and Roddy, smiling, eager, debonair, came into the room.
‘Hullo, Judy! Marvellous to see you.’
‘Roddy!’
He stood before her and looked down into her face.
‘I thought I was never going to see you again, Judy. You’re looking marvellous.’
He was going to be irresistible. Already something in her was starting to leap up in response to him; and watching his face, she saw with a terrible pang that it was true, unarguable, proved over again more clearly than ever, that he had some quality which separated him from everybody else in the whole world, startled the imagination and made him of appalling significance to her.
‘I’m cold. Thank God for a good fire. It’s starting to snow.’ He flung himself down on the hearth-rug. ‘Trust Martin to make a good thick atmosphere with no beastly fresh air about it. Tea! Tea! Tea! Let me make you some toast, Judy. I make it so well.’
While he toasted great hunks of bread, Martin buttered scones and cut the cake, and Judith poured out tea.
They chattered, joked, teased each other. They played absurd drawing and rhyming games. Judith made them laugh with malicious stories of dons and students. Roddy threw back his head, his whole face wrinkled and flattened with silent laughter, his eyes gleaming with amusement under their lids. Martin stared, laughed, Ha! Ha!—stared again. They encouraged her, listened to her, were delighted with her; and the old sense of abnormal self-assurance grew within her taut mind.
At last she made herself look at the clock. So late! There would barely be time to get back before Hall.
‘I’ve got a car outside,’ said Roddy carelessly. ‘I can run you out in no time.’
He added, interrupting her thanks:
‘It isn’t mine, it’s got no hood, it always breaks down and it’s hellishly uncomfortable, so I don’t advise it really.’
It sounded as if he were suddenly regretting his offer, trying to withdraw it. She looked at him, all her confidence collapsing in a moment. His face had become a mask.
She said swiftly:
‘If you would take me I should be very grateful.’ Her voice sounded to herself strained, beseeching, horrible.
He bowed.
It took ten minutes to get the car started, with Martin and Roddy madly swinging her by turns.
‘Good night, Martin. Thank you for my lovely tea party. I’ll see you again soon, won’t I?’
He nodded, looking gravely down at her in the lamp-light.
‘Don’t catch cold,’ he said. There was something dejected about his attitude, a flatness in his voice.... Things had gone wrong for him.... Ever since that panic-stricken voice had broken in on the laughter and talk, the game for three, with its vibrating cry: “If you would take me home ...” from that moment all had been faintly blown upon by a ruffle of uneasy wind. They were no longer three persons, but two men and one woman.
She knew it and loathed herself because Martin knew it too.
‘I’m due to dine with Tony in twenty minutes,’ said Roddy.... ‘You’d better come along too. I’ll call for you on my way back. I shan’t be long.’
Roddy’s voice had forced a note of carelessness ... as if he were trying to pretend to Martin that nothing had happened; that the female had not suddenly singled him out and stretched an inviting hand to him as he stood beside his friend.
Even Roddy was aware of it.
‘No,’ said Martin, ‘I won’t dine with Tony. I’ll see you to-morrow perhaps.’
He waved his hand and turned away. The car started. She was alone with a strange man.
The night was dark, with a piercing wind and a faint flurry of snow in the air. Roddy drove at a great pace, and she sat beside him in silence, her shoulder touching his.
‘Cold?’ he said suddenly.
‘No, I don’t feel—anything.’
All of life was concentrated in her dark beating mind: her body was insensible to the weather. She saw the gates of College fly past. Its lights gleamed and were gone; and she could not speak. On they went, the long straight empty road flung before them in small lengths by the headlightsand rolled up into nothingness behind them, cast away for ever.
He stopped the car suddenly.
‘Where’s this place?’
‘I think we’ve passed it long ago.’
The wind took her small voice away from him. He leaned towards her.
‘What?’
She turned to him.
‘I think we’ve passed it long ago.’
‘I think we have.’
Silence. The great wind blowing through illimitable deeps of night lifted and whirled her beyond time and space. She saw his hand lying on the wheel—a pale blur; and her own crept out and lay beside it; and she stared at them both. He watched her hand fall beside his and did not move a hair’s breadth nearer to touch it. He and she were alone together. No need for speech or movement. Their hands would lie motionless, side by side, for ever and ever.
She heard him laugh softly; and as he laughed her hand came quickly to her lap.
‘Well, what d’you want to do?’ he said very low.
‘I don’t want to go back.’
‘Do you want to go on?’
‘Yes.’
The car went forward again. Once she leaned towards him and said in his ear:
‘Roddy!’
‘Yes?’
‘Youdidn’t want to go back, did you?’
‘No.’
She lay back again, mindlessly at peace in the midst of the roaring of the wind, and the road’s monotonous unfolding.
Once he burst out laughing, patted her knee and cried:
‘Aren’t we mad?’
His voice rang boyishly, happily.
Now came the snow, thinly at first, but soon in wild drifting clouds, blotting out the road, settling thick and fast over all, sifting and piling on the wind-screen.
‘Oh Lord, we must turn,’ said Roddy. ‘This is frightful.’
He turned the car and then stopped her to light a cigarette. She saw his face, lit by the flare of the match, glow suddenly, warmly out of the darkness with unknown curves and strange planes of light and shadow, and narrowed eyes, eyes not human, never-to-be-forgotten.
He waved the dwindling flame in her face.
‘Solemn face! What are you staring at? Smile—quick, quick, before the match goes out!’
The match went out.
‘I am smiling, Roddy.’
‘That’s right. Poor Judy covered with snow! There you sit, so modest and unassuming. Shall I get you home alive?’
‘I don’t care.’
She slipped her arm through his, and he gave it a quick friendly pressure and drove on.
Now they were before the gates of College. After all they had not driven very far. Time started again with a reluctant painful beat as the car crept in under the archway; and she realized that it was little more than an hour since they had left Martin. It seemed so short now—less than a moment; a pause between a breath and another breath.
They sat side by side in the car without moving.
‘I suppose I must go in now,’ she said at last. ‘They’ll still be at Hall.’
He shivered and beat his hands together. She took one and felt it, and it was icy.
‘Your hands. Oh, Roddy! Will you come in and get warm by my fire?’
He seemed to be considering and then said in a stilted way:
‘If I may—just for a minute—I’ve got rather chilled driving without gloves.’
She could find nothing to say. A cold shy politeness had descended on them both. She led the way into the hall and up the stairs. At every step snow fell off them: their shoulders and arms were covered in it. The corridors were silent and deserted, echoing only her light footsteps, and his heavier ones. She heard her tread, and his following after it, marching, marching towards her far-off door. Judith was bringing Roddy, Judith was in sober truth bringing Roddy to her room. If anyone saw her there would be trouble.
Somebody—Jennifer perhaps—must have drawn the curtains and heaped the fire in the little room. The warmth drew out the smell of the chrysanthemums; and their heavy golden heads, massed in a blue jar, held mysterious intensity of life in the firelight. She switched on the reading lamp, and all the colours in the room leapt up dimly, secretly: purple, blue and rose-colour glowed around them, half-lit, half obscured.
‘This is rather seductive,’ he said. He sank on his knees by the fire and held out his hands to the blaze, looking about him with a faint smile. She came and knelt beside him; and his eyes fastened narrowly on her face.
‘It’s like you: seductive,’ he said softly.
‘Oh, Roddy! Seductive. That’s all it is. I see it now. I hate it. AmInothing more than that?’
‘You.... I don’t know what you are. I can’t make you out. Youneverbehave as I think you probably will.’
‘I’m glad of that.’
‘Why are you glad?’
‘Because I believe you ascribe to me the worst motives,—the most ambiguous. You suspect me—you guard yourself against me.’
‘I don’t, Judy.’
‘Ah, you do. But you needn’t. I won’t do you any harm. Unless being—very fond of you can do you harm. But I don’t think I’m afemme fatale.’
‘I don’t know what you are. You disturb me very much. You seem to me completely incalculable. Your eyes watch me and watch me. Such marvellous eyes.’
She lifted them to his in a long steady look and remained silent.
‘You’re very nice,’ he said. ‘Rather a dear. I believe you’re quite without guile really. Why do you trust people so? It’s very foolish of you.’
‘Is it foolish of me to trust you?’
‘Incredibly foolish.’ He added, raising his voice and speaking slowly: ‘It’s no good trying to make me—adequate.’
‘Ah, you like to destroy yourself to me.’
‘But don’t you see? I go through the days in a sort of apathy; blind and deaf; blinder and deafer every day. I never think, I never care. I’d much better be dead only,—I’m too lazy to shoot myself.’
‘Oh, Roddy, don’t.’
She covered her ears with her hands. He had never spoken at such length, or with such obvious intent to convince.
‘I’m only trying to warn you,’ he said, rather defiantly, ‘I’m not worth saving. Nobody mustevertake me seriously. I’m not worth wasting a moment over. Nobody can do anything with me.’
His mood was verging towards laughter. His face broke up teasingly as he finished speaking and turned to look at her. But she averted her face, drearily pondering.
Why had he spoken like that? A self-contempt so settled, so hopeless.... He had seemed to be warning her to keep away from him for her own sake.
‘It’s no good,’ she said suddenly, involuntarily.
‘What’s no good?’
‘You’re what I choose to think you are. There’s no point in heaping yourself with abuse. You can’t make medislike you; you can only make me sad. But I suppose that gives you pleasure.’
He was silent. She went on tremulously,
‘And when you—when people say they don’t feel or care—that they’re no good—it only makes me think—I could show them how to feel and care. I could make them happy. I could look after them. I dare say you know that’s—the effect it has on me. That’s why you say it.’
He was still silent. She leaned her head forward against the wall and felt tears smart under her lids.
He seemed to be musing, his eyes fixed on the fire, his hands held out to it.
‘Are your hands still cold?’ she said wearily. ‘Get them warm before you go.’
Suddenly he held them out to her.
It was a gesture so impulsive, so uncharacteristic it seemed of startling significance; and she could not answer it.
‘Yes, they are cold,’ he said. ‘Let me feel yours. Yours are cold too. What funny hands—so thin and narrow, such delicate bones. Rather lovely.’ He clasped them hard in his own. ‘When I do that they seem to go to nothing.’
She smiled at him dimly, half-tranced, feeling her eyelids droop over her eyes, giving him, with her helpless hands, all of herself; as if, through her finger-tips, he drew her in to himself in a dark stemlessly flowing tide. He stroked her palms, her whole hand, over and over with a lingering careful touch, as if learning the outline by heart.
‘They feel so kind,’ he said musingly. ‘They are, aren’t they, Judy? Dear little kind things—like the rest of you. Are you always kind, Judy?’
‘Always to you, Roddy, I shouldn’t wonder.’
He relinquished his clasp suddenly, saying with a shake of the head:
‘You shouldn’t be.... However, I’ve warned you.’
‘Yes, you’ve warned me.’
She smiled at him sadly.
In a minute she must tell him to go. They would be coming out of the Hall, bursting into the room to discover the cause of her absence.
‘Are you tired?’ he said.
She nodded, realizing suddenly the collapsed forward droop of her body, the whole pose of deadly fatigue.
‘I’ve been very ill, you know.’
‘Oh, Judy! You never told me. You let me take you for that bloody cold drive. You’ll be ill again.’
‘It’s all right. I shan’t be ill again.’
‘Youarenaughty,’ he said, looking at her anxiously.
He never could bear people to be ill or in pain.
‘Come and lie down at once on the sofa,’ he said.
She obeyed him, and let him arrange the cushions beneath her shoulders, with a delicious sense of dependence.
‘The drive won’t have hurt me,’ she said, ‘because I enjoyed it so much.’
He stood looking down at her.
‘Did you enjoy it?’ he said softly.
‘Yes, didn’t you?’
‘Yes.’
‘Wasn’t it a queer unreal drive?’
‘Quite unreal, I suppose.’
‘I wish it had never stopped.’
He made no answer to this but still stood watching her.
‘You’ll have to go, Roddy. They mustn’t find you. Besides you’ll be missing your dinner.’
‘I’ve missed that long ago, I should think.’
‘Oh, Roddy, how awful! I’ve made you miss your dinner.’
‘I know. It’s monstrous of you. And I’m so hungry.’
‘I’ve missed mine too but I’m not hungry.... Roddy, what will Tony say to you?’
‘He’ll be very much annoyed.’
‘Shall you say you were with me? He wouldn’t like that, would he?’
‘No.’
‘Tony is jealous of me. Once he looked at me with pure hatred. I’ve never forgotten it. Does he love you?’
‘I think he does.’
‘I think he does too. Do you love him? You needn’t answer. I know I mustn’t ask you that.’
‘You can ask me anything you like.’
But he did not answer.
‘It is so terrible to be hated. Tell him I won’t do you any harm.’
But perhaps that was not true. Perhaps she meant endless mischief. Supposing she were to take Roddy from Tony, from all his friends and lovers, from all his idle Parisian and English life, and attach him to herself, tie him and possess him: that would mean giving him cares, responsibilities: it might mean changing him from his free and secret self into something ordinary, domesticated, resentful. Perhaps his lovers and friends would be well advised to gather round him jealously and guard him from the female. She saw herself for one moment as a creature of evil design, dangerous to him, and took her hand away from his that held it lightly.
‘I’ll tell him you won’t do me any harm,’ he repeated absently. He was staring into her face.
‘You’re going away now,’ she said, ‘and I don’t know when I shall see you again.’
‘I don’t know either,’ he said smiling.
‘To-morrow you’ll have forgotten. But I shan’t forget this evening.’
‘Nor shall I. I don’t forget you, Judy. I sometimes wish I could. I’m a little afraid of you.’
‘Afraid of me?’
‘Afraid of you—and me.’
Later on when he was gone she must make herself think of that. It might have power to hurt: she could not tell now, with his unmasked, disturbed face watching her. Now there was nothing but depth under depth of welling happiness.
‘You know, Roddy,’ she said after a silence, ‘the awful thing about you is that I can never pick up again where weleft off. To-night you’ve talked to me as I’ve always longed for you to talk to me, as if we could trust each other, as if we were two creatures of the same sort alone together. Don’t you feel we know each other better after to-night, Roddy?’
He was silent for a moment, his eyes twinkling; then he said:
‘I feel you’ve made me say a great many indiscreet things.’
‘Poor Roddy! You’d better go, before I wring something out of you you’ll regret to your life’s end,’ she said bitterly. ‘You know I shan’t rest until I’ve forced you to tell me all your secrets. And when you have, I’ll go and tell them to everybody else.’
She shut her eyes and turned her face from him. There was a long silence.
‘Don’t be cross with me,’ he said in the end.
‘I’m not.’
‘Didn’t I tell you I was inadequate?’
‘Yes, you told me.’
‘Well now you believe it don’t you?’
‘No. No. No.’
‘Ah—you’re incorrigible.... Good-bye, Judy.’
She turned towards him again, took his hand in both hers and clung to it.
‘Roddy, youhave—quite liked—being with me ... haven’t you?’
His face softened.
‘I’ve adored it,’ he said gently.
‘And when shall I see you again?’
He shook his head.
‘Oh, Roddy, when?’
He stooped swiftly until his face almost touched hers, and murmured, watching her:
‘Whenever you like.’
His lips closed on hers very lightly. She put her arms round his neck and kissed his cheek and forehead. When after a moment or two he raised himself she thought he was smiling again.
She lay perfectly still, watching him while he lit a cigarette, smoothed his hair, put on his coat and went to open the door. Then he turned, still smiling, and nodding as if encouraging her to smile back. But she continued to lie and stare up at him as if from the bottom of a well; as if all of her were dead except the eyes which just moved, following him.
The door closed after him. Soon the sound of his footsteps faded along the corridor.
She raised her hand slowly and with difficulty, as if a weight were holding it to her side, and pulled the lamp’s green shade down; and the whole room sank softly into semi-obscurity.
Some trick of green light brought suddenly to mind the look of early spring woods at twilight: fresh buds and little leaves dashed with rain, an air like dark clear water lighting the branches with a wan glimmer.
She looked at her body lying long, slender and still on the couch; she saw her breast rise and fall faintly with her breathing; and she had a sense of watching herself return from a long swoon, bathed in crystalline new life, transformed and beautified.
The trivial femininities of the room had made, she thought, an inept background for his elegance. But now there seemed something graceful, foreign, curious in the lights and shades, in the forms of flowers, books, furniture; as if he had left his impress upon them.
She heard the footsteps of Jennifer coming swiftly towards her door.... Not a word, not a whisper to Jennifer. She and he could never meet, even in mind. The profoundest instinct forbade it.
Jennifer came gaily in.
‘Tired, darling?’ she said. ‘You were quite right not to come to Hall. It was bloodier than ever. Come, darling, let me put you to bed—you’re so tired. I’ll look after you. I’ll make you some scrambled eggs after you’re in bed.’
Then Jennifer suspected nothing. She did not see that all was changed. She was deep in the mood of tender solicitude which came upon her now and then since the illness, when she remembered to think Judith fragile. She lifted her in her arms, and carried her into the bedroom....
Nothing has changed after all. There was Jennifer laughing, talking, letting the eggs get burnt while she did her hair; bending down finally to kiss you a tender good-night. Judith tried to think of Roddy. A little while ago he had been stooping over her as Jennifer stooped now, with eyes that were different and yet the same. But he had disappeared; she could not now remember what he looked like.
Nothing was altered then, no order was reversed or even shaken. There were these moments; but all around and about the extravagant incongruous brilliances, the divine crudities, the breath-taking magnificences of their pattern, life went on weaving uninterruptedly: weaving uncoloured trivial things into secure fabric.
Then, almost it seemed, while she still told herself these things; while the memory of Roddy’s brief presence still surged up bewilderingly to drown her a hundred times a day, and then slipped away again, lost in the mysterious and doubtful darkness cast by his ensuing silence; while Jennifer remained the unquenched spring of all gaiety and reassurance, all delight: while the whole ordered dream went on as if it could never break; even then, with the third year, the shadow of change began to fall.
It was a look, a turn of the head, a new trick of speech, a nothing in Jennifer which struck at her heart in a moment; and then all had started to fall to pieces. Jennifer was no longer the same. Somewhere she had turned aside without a word, and set her face to a new road. She did not want to be followed. She had given Judith the slip, in the dark; and now, when she still pretended to be there, her voice had the false shrillness of a voice coming from far away.
She remembered Jennifer saying once, suddenly: “There’s one thing certain in my life: that is, that I shall always love you.” And afterwards her eyes had shone as if with tears and laughter. She remembered the surprise and joy, the flooding confidence of that moment; for it had been said so quietly, as if the realization of that “always” held for something sorrowful, a sobering sense of fate. Her manner had had a simplicity far removed from the usual effervescence and extravagance: she had seemed to state a fact to be believed in forever, without question. In her life where all else was uncertain, fluid and undirected, where all turned in mazes of heat and sound, that only was the deep unshaken foundation, the changeless thing.... She had seemed to mean that, sitting back in her chair, her arms laid along her lap, her hands folded together, everything about her quiet and tender, her eyes resting on Judith as they never had before or since, long and full, with a depth of untroubled love.
That had been on a day in late April, at the beginning of the last Summer term. The happiness of reunion had never before seemed so complete. She had been in Scotland, Judith in Paris with Mamma, living resentfully in a reflection of Mamma’s alien existence. And then they were together again, and the summer term had opened with its unfailing week or so of exquisite weather.
They had taken the green canoe one morning and wandered up the river to Grandchester. There was no one at all in the Orchard when they reached it.
“Thank God I see no grey flannels,” said Jennifer. “I suppose the grass is still too wet for undergraduates to sit out.”
A light breeze was blowing through the orchard, ruffling long grass, dandelions, buttercups, and daisies. Under the trees, the little white tables, set in the green silken brilliance, were dappled with running light and shadow, and the apple branches, clotted with full blossom, gleamed against the sky in a tender childish contrast of simple colours,—palepink upon pale blue. The air was dazed with a bewilderment of bird-song.
A rough brown terrier with golden eyes came prancing out on them, making known their presence with barkings half-ferocious, half-friendly. The dark waitress came lazily from the house, reluctant to serve them.
‘Is the Orchard open?’
‘Oh yes, it’s open.’
‘Can you let us have lunch?’
‘Oh I dare say.’
‘What can you let us have?’
‘You can have a cheese omelette and some fruit-salad.’
‘Divine,’ said Jennifer, and leapt for joy.
‘You better have it in the shelter. The grass is wet.’
She wandered away, smoothing her black untidy hair. She would not smile. There was something arresting and romantic in the thin sallow dark-browed young woman, preserving her ugliness, her faint unrelaxing bitterness among all the laughing renewals of her surroundings.
‘I’d like to pick her up and shake her into life. Make her smile and be young. Make her cheeks pink and her eyes bright,’ said Jennifer. ‘If I were a man I’d fall bang in love with her. What is her name do you think? Jessica? Anne? Rosa?’
‘Miriam.’
‘Yes, Miriam.’
How the remembered insignificant words brought flooding back the irrecoverable quality of that day!
Tits and robins, perching all around them, and the golden-eyed dog, had helped them to finish their meal.
Then they had lain back in their chairs, staring and saying nothing. And then it was that Jennifer had turned and broken the silence with her quiet, inevitable-seeming declaration; and after it Judith had reached out to touch her hand for a moment; and continued to sit beside her and dream.
Later in the afternoon they had seen grey-flannelled legs approaching and risen to go.
They met the dark girl walking down the gravel path towards the orchard, carrying a trayful of crockery.
‘We’ve come to pay you,’ said Jennifer radiantly smiling.
She gave the price without a flicker.
‘Judith, have you that much on you, darling?’ said Jennifer, and added, turning again to the girl: ‘Wehaveso enjoyed ourselves.’
There was no response save a quick suspicious glance.
Currant bushes, wallflowers, narcissi, pansies, yellow daisies and tulips blossomed richly on each side of the path.
‘What a delicious garden!’ said Jennifer. ‘It’s at its very best, isn’t it?’
‘It’s looking nice,’ she admitted.
Jennifer pointed to a clump of stiff, serious purple-black tulips.
‘Those tulips are like you,’ she said, her eyes and mouth, all her glowing face, coaxing and appealing.
And suddenly the girl gave a little laugh, looking with soft eyes first at Jennifer, then away, shyly and deprecatingly, as who should say: ‘The idea! Me like a tulip! Well, youarea one—Daft ...’ but gratified and amused all the same.
‘I shall always think of you when I see tulips like that,’ said Jennifer. ‘Good-bye!’
‘Good-bye, Miss....’ She smiled, almost mischievously this time, and hurried on with her tray.
‘She was quite human,’ said Jennifer. ‘I wonder if she’s got a lover or if she’s longing for one, or if she’s been jilted, or what.... What makes her all shadowy and tight inside herself?’
She stood looking after the girl, as if meditating going back to ask her.
How Jennifer struck sparks from ordinary people! She knew how to live. To be with her was to meet adventure; to see, round every corner, the bush become the burning bush.
In a little while she would have forgotten the girl whose problem was now so urgent and exciting; but you yourselfwould always remember,—seeing it all dramatically, seeing it as a quiet story, hearing it as an unknown tune: making of it a water colour painting in gay foolish colours, or an intricate pencil pattern of light and shadow.
They left the Orchard.
‘I think,’ said Jennifer, ‘we will never come here again.’
They had not come again. That time had remained unblurred by any subsequent return in a different mood, with more companions, in another weather or season.
But Judith had thought, while she nodded agreement: ‘Some day, when I’m much older, I’ll come back alone and think of her; and then perhaps write and say: do you remember? Or perhaps not, in case she has forgotten.’
And now, it seemed, far sooner even than Judith had feared, Jennifer was forgetting everything. They had meant to go away together during the summer vacation; go to Brittany, and bathe and walk and read: but in the end Jennifer’s don had said cold things regarding Jennifer’s progress, and requested her to attend college during the Long. Judith had gone on a reading party with three of the circle, and written Jennifer long letters which were answered briefly and at rare intervals. But that was not surprising. Jennifer’s letters had always been spasmodic, if passionately affectionate. Then the letters had ceased altogether. Judith had written asking if they could not spend September together, and Jennifer had answered in five lines, excusing herself. She was going to shoot in Scotland in September.
And then the third year had started, with everything as it had always been, or seeming so, for a few moments; and then in one more moment shivered to pieces.
She would not stay behind alone, after the others had gone, to say good-night. She ceased to talk with abandonment and excitement, her eyes shining to see you listening, to feel you understanding. There seemed nothing to say now. In particular, she would not speak of the Long.
It was, of course, Mabel who was the first to hint of ill-tidings. Eating doughnuts out of a bag, late one night, during one of Judith’s charity visits, she said:
‘Has that Miss Manners been up lately?’
‘Who’s Miss Manners?’
‘Why—that Miss Manners, Jennifer’s friend, who stayed with her so much during the Long.’
‘Oh yes——’
‘I was sure you must have heard about her, because they seemed such very great friends. They were always about together and always up to some lark.’ She gave a snigger. ‘We used to wonder, we really did, how long it would be before Jennifer got sent down, the way they used to go on, coming in so late and all. But somehow Jennifer never gets found out, does she?’ Another snigger. ‘What a striking-looking girl she is.’
‘Who?’
‘Miss Manners.’
‘Oh yes.... I’ve never seen her. Only photographs.’
‘Everybody said what a striking pair they made.... I expect she’ll be up soon again, don’t you?’
‘I don’t know at all,’ said Judith. ‘I expect so.’ Mabel looked solemn.
‘The wrestling matches they used to have out there on the lawn! I used to watch them from my window. I wonder they didn’t.... I really wonder ... any of the don.... It looked so ... throwing each other about like that.... It’s not the sort of thing you expect—quite, is it? I mean....’
‘Oh, wrestling’s glorious,’ said Judith. ‘I love it. Jennifer’s tried to teach me. But I’m not strong enough for her; the—the—Manners girl is much more of a match for her.’
Mabel pursed up her mouth and was silent.
It was necessary to leave her quickly for fear of striking her; because her deliberate intent was obvious; because she knew quite well now that you had never before heard ofMiss Manners; because you were seeing that girl plainly, tall, dark and splendid, striding on the lawn with Jennifer, grasping her in strong arms, a match for her in all magnificent unfeminine physical ways, as you had never been. Her image was all at once there, ineffaceably presenting itself as the embodiment of all hitherto unco-ordinated and formless fears, the symbol for change, and dark alarms and confusions. And the unbearable image of Mabel was there too, watching by herself, gloating down from the window with glistening eyes that said:
‘At last!’
She stopped short in the corridor, and moaned aloud, aghast at the crowding panic of her thoughts.
Judith, returning from her bath, heard voices and laughter late at night behind Jennifer’s door. Should she stop? All the circle must be there as usual, laughing and talking as if nothing were amiss. She alone had excluded herself, sitting with a pile of books in her room, pretending to have important work. It was her own fault. She had said she was busy, and they had believed her and not invited her to join their gathering. She would go in, and sit among them and smoke, and tell them things,—tell them something to make them laugh; and all would be as before. They would drift away in the end and leave her behind; she would turn and look at Jennifer in the firelight, put out a hand and say: ‘Jennifer....’
She opened the door and looked in.
The voices stopped, cut off sharply.
In the strange, charged, ensuing silence, she saw that the curtains were flung back. Purple-black night pressed up against the windows, and one pane framed the blank white globe of the full moon. They were all lying on the floor. Dark forms, pallid, moon-touched faces and hands were dimly distinguishable; a few cigarette points burned in the faint hanging cloud of smoke across the room. The fire was almost out. Where was Jennifer?
‘Hullo, there’s Judith,’ said one.
‘Is there room for me?’ said Judith in a small voice. She came in softly among them all, and went directly over to the window and sat on the floor, with the moon behind her head. She was conscious of her own unnatural precision and economy of movement; of her long slender body wrapped in its kimono crossing the room in three light steps, sinking noiselessly down in its place and at once remaining motionless, expectant.
Where was Jennifer?
‘All in the dark,’ she said, in the same soft voice. And then: ‘What a moon! Don’t you know it’s very dangerous to let it shine on you like this? It will make you mad.’
One or two of them laughed. She could now recognize the three faces in front of her. Jennifer must be somewhere by the fireplace. There was constraint in the room. She thought with awful jealousy: ‘Ah, they hate my coming. They thought they were getting rid of me at last. They come here secretly without me, to insinuate themselves. They all want her. They have all hated me always.’ She said:
‘Give me a cigarette, someone.’
Jennifer’s voice broke in suddenly with a sort of harsh clangour. From her voice, Judith knew how wild her eyes must be.
‘Here, here’s a cigarette, Judith.... Have something to eat. Or some cocoa. Oh—there was a bottle of cherry-brandy, but I believe we’ve finished it.’
Horrible confusion in her voice, a stumbling hurry of noise....
‘I have just licked up the last dregs,’ said a deep voice.
‘Who’s that who spoke then?’ said Judith softly and sweetly.
‘Oh ...’ cried Jennifer shrilly, ‘Geraldine, you haven’t met Judith yet.’
What was she saying? Geraldine Manners was staying the week-end, no, was wrestling on the lawn with her; hadjust arrived, no, had been in the room for months, since the summer, for they were such very great friends....
‘How do you do? I’m guessing what you are like from the way you speak,’ said Judith softly, laughingly.
‘Oh, I’m no good at that.’
How bored, how careless a voice!
‘Shall I switch on the light?’ said someone.
‘No!’ said Judith loudly.
She lifted up her arm against the window. The kimono sleeve fell back from it, and it gleamed cold and frail in the moonlight, like a snake. She spread out her long fingers and stared at them.
‘I would like to be blind,’ she said. ‘I really wish I were blind. Then I might learn to see with my fingers. I might learn to hear properly too.’
And learn to be indifferent to Jennifer; never to be enslaved again by the lines and colours of her physical appearance, the ever new surprise and delight of them; learn, in calm perpetual darkness, how the eyes’ tyrannical compulsions had obscured and distorted all true values. To be struck blind now this moment, so that the dreadful face of the voice by the fireplace remained for ever unknown!... Soon the light would go on, and painfully, hungrily, with awful haste and reluctance, the eyes would begin their work again, fly to their target.
‘Don’t be absurd, Judith,’ said someone. ‘You don’t know what you’re talking about’; and went on to talk of work among the blind, of blinded soldiers, of St. Dunstan’s.
The conversation became general and followed the usual lines: it was better to be deaf than blind, blind than deaf. Jennifer and Geraldine were silent.
‘Oh, it’s time we went to bed,’ said someone. ‘Jennifer, I must go to bed. I’m almost asleep. What’s the time?’
Now the light would go on.
It went on. The room suddenly revealed its confusion of girls, cushions, chairs, cups, plates and cigarette-ends.Everybody was getting up, standing about and talking.
Jennifer was on her feet, voluble, calling loud good-nights. They made a group round her and round somebody still sitting on the floor beside her. Judith caught a glimpse of a dark head leaning motionless against the mantelpiece. Now they were all going away. Judith followed them slowly to the door and there paused, looking over her shoulder towards the fireplace.
‘Stay,’ said Jennifer shrilly. She was standing and staring at Judith with wild eyes; pale, with a deep patch of colour in each cheek, and lips parted.
‘No, I must go. I’ve got some work,’ said Judith, smiling over her shoulder. She let her eyes drop from Jennifer’s face to the other one.
At last it confronted her, the silent-looking face, watching behind its narrowed eyes. The hair was black, short, brushed straight back from the forehead, leaving small beautiful ears exposed. The heavy eyebrows came low and level on the low broad brow; the eyes were long slits, dark-circled, the cheeks were pale, the jaw heavy and masculine. All the meaning of the face was concentrated in the mouth, the strange wide lips laid rather flat on the face, sulky, passionate, weary, eager. She was not a young girl. It was the face of a woman of thirty or more; but in years she might have been younger. She was tall, deep-breasted, with long, heavy but shapely limbs. She wore a black frock and a pearl necklace, and large pearl earrings.
Judith said politely:
‘Is this the first time you have been here?’
‘No.’ She laughed. Her voice was an insolent voice.
‘I’m tired,’ said Jennifer suddenly, like a child.
‘You look it,’ said Judith. ‘Go to bed.’
‘I’ll get undressed.’ Jennifer passed a hand across her forehead and sighed.
The woman by the fireplace fitted a cigarette into an amber holder slowly, and lit it.
‘I’m not sleepy yet,’ she said. ‘I’ll wait till you’re in bed and come and tuck you up.’
‘This room feels——’ cried Jennifer staring around her in horror. She dashed to the window and flung it wide open; then disappeared into her bedroom; and there was not another sound from her.
The woman started singing to herself very low, as if forgetful of Judith’s presence; then broke off to say:
‘I like your kimono.’
Judith wrapped the long red and blue silk garment more closely round her hips.
‘Yes. It was brought me from Japan. I gave Jennifer one. A purple one.’
‘Oh, that one. She’s lent it to me. I forgot to bring a dressing-gown.’
She turned her head away, as if to intimate that so far as she was concerned conversation was neither interesting nor necessary.
Judith bit back the ‘Good-night, Jennifer’ which she was about to call; for she was never going to care any more what happened to Jennifer; never again soothe her when she was weary and excited, comfort her when she was unhappy. She would look at Jennifer coldly, observe her vagaries and entanglements with a shrug, comment upon them with detached and cynical amusement: hurt her, if possible, oh, hurt her, hurt her.
Now she would leave her with Geraldine and not trouble to ask herself once what profound and secret intimacies would be restored by her withdrawal.
She smiled over her shoulder and left the room.
A week later, Geraldine was still there. She and Judith had not met again; when she and Jennifer, arm in arm, were seen approaching, Judith avoided them; and changing her place at Hall—her place which had been beside Jenniferfor two years—went and sat where she could not see the sleek dark head next to the fair one, turning and nodding in response.
All day they were invisible. Geraldine had a car, and they must go miles and miles into the country in the soft late autumn weather.
It seemed to Judith that life had ceased to bear her along upon its tide. It flowed past her, away from her; and she must stay behind, passive and of no account, while the current of Jennifer met and gaily mingled with a fresh current and fled on. It seemed as if even the opportunity for the gesture of relinquishment was to be denied her. And then, wearily returning from lectures one morning she found upon her table a torn scrap of paper scrawled over violently in an unknown hand.