LEGEND
Messrs. Mitchell and Bent will shortly issue ‘The Life of Madala Grey’ by Anita Serle: a critical biography based largely on private correspondence and intimate personal knowledge.
That was inThe Timesa fortnight ago. And now the reviews are beginning—
The Cult of Madala Grey....
The Problem of Madala Grey....
The Secret of Madala Grey....
I wish they wouldn’t. Oh, Iwishthey wouldn’t.
No admirer of the late Madala Grey’s arresting art can fail to be absorbed by these intimate and unexpected revelations....
Delicately, unerringly, Miss Serle traces to its source the inspiration of that remarkable writer.... And—this will please Anita most of all—
We ourselves have never joined in the chorus of praise that, a decade ago, greeted the appearance of ‘Eden Walls’ and its successors, and in our opinion Miss Serle, in her biographical enthusiasm, uses the word genius a little too often and too easily. Madala Grey has yet to be tried by that subtlest of literary critics, the Man with the Scythe. But whether or not we agree with Miss Serle’s estimate of her heroine, there can be notwo questions as to the literary value of the ‘Life’ itself. It definitely places Miss Serle among the Boswells, and as we close its fascinating pages we find ourselves wondering whether our grandchildren will remember Miss Serle as the biographer of Madala Grey, or Madala Grey as the subject matter merely, of a chronicle that has become a classic.
That is to say—La reine est morte. Vive la reine!Anita will certainly be pleased. Well, I suppose she’s got what she wants, what she’s always wanted. She isn’t a woman to change. The new portrait in theBookmanmight have been taken when I knew her: the mouth’s a trifle harder, the hair a trifle greyer; but no real change. But it amuses me that there should be her portrait in all the papers, and none of Madala Grey; not even in theLifeitself. I can hear Anita’s regretful explanations in her soft, convincing voice. She will make a useful little paragraph out of it—
Miss Serle, whose ‘Life of Madala Grey’ is causing no small stir in literary circles, tells us that the brilliant novelist had so great a dislike of being photographed that there is no record of her features in existence. An odd foible in one who, in our own recollection, was not only a popular writer but a strikingly beautiful woman.
And yet, from her heavy, solitary frame (we have no other pictures in our den) that ‘beautiful woman,’ with her flowered scarf and her handful of cowslips, is looking down at this moment at me—at me, and the press cuttings, andThe Times, and Anita’s hateful book. And she says, unmistakably—‘Does it matter? What does it matter?’ laughing a little as she says it.
Then I laugh too, because Anita knows all about the portrait.
After all, does it matter? Does it matter what Anita says and does and writes? And why should I of all people grudge Anita her success? Honestly, I don’t. And I don’t doubt that the book is well written: not that I shall read it. There’s no need: I know exactly what she will have written: I know how convincing it will be. But it won’t be true. It won’t be Madala Grey.
Of course Anita would say—‘My dear Jenny, what do you know about it? You never even met her. You heard us, her friends, her intimates, talking about her for—how long? An hour? Two hours? And on the strength of that—that eaves-dropping five years ago’ (I can hear the nip in her voice still) ‘you are so amusing as to challenge my personal knowledge of my dearest friend. Possibly you contemplate writing the story of Madala Grey yourself? If so, pray send me a copy.’ And then the swish of her skirt. She always wore trains in those days, and she always glided away before one could answer.
But I could answer. I remember that evening so well. I don’t believe I’ve forgotten a word or a movement, and if I could only write it down, those two hours would tell, as Anita’s book never will, the story of Madala Grey.
I ought to be able to write; because Anita is my mother’s cousin; though I never saw her till I was eighteen.
Mother died when I was eighteen.
If she had not been ill so long it would have been harder. As it was—but there’s no use in writing down that black time. Afterwards I didn’t know what to do. The pension had stopped, of course. I’d managed to teach myself typing, though Mother couldn’t be left much; but I didn’t know shorthand, and I couldn’t get work, and my money was dwindling, and I was getting scared. I was ready to worship Anita when her letter came. She was sorry about Mother and she wanted a secretary. If I could type I could come.
I remember how excited I was. I’d always lived in such a tiny place and we couldn’t afford Mudie’s. To go to London, and meet interesting people, and live with a real writer, seemed too good to be true. And it helped that Anita and her mother were relations. Mother used to stay with Great-aunt Serle when she was little. Somehow that made things easier to me when I was missing Mother more than usual.
In the end, after all those expectations, I was only three weeks with Anita. They were a queer three weeks. I was afraid of her. She was one of those people who make you feel guilty. But she was kind to me. I typed most of the day, for she was a fluent worker and never spared either of us; but she took me to the theatre once, and I used to pour out when interesting people came to tea. In the first fortnight I met nine novelists and a poet; but I never found out who they were, because they all called each other by their Christian names and you couldn’t ask Anita questions. She had such a way of asking you why you asked. She used to glide about the room in a cloud of chiffon and cigarette smoke—she had half-shut pale eyes just the colour of the smoke—and pour out a stream of beautiful English in a pure cool voice; but if they interrupted her she used to stiffen and stop dead and in a minute she had glided away and begun to talk to someone else. Old Mrs. Serle used to sit in a corner and knit. She never dropped a stitch; but she always had her eyes on Anita. She was different from the rest of my people. She had an accent, not cockney exactly, but odd. She had had a hard life, I believe. Mother said of her once that her courage made up for everything. But she never told me what the everything was. Great-aunt’s memory was shaky. One day she would scarcely know you, and another day she would be sensible and kind, very kind. She liked parties. People used to come and talk to her because she made them laugh; but every now and then, when Anita was being brilliant about something, she would put up her long gnarled finger and say—‘Hush! Listen to my daughter!’ and her eyes would twinkle. But I never knew if she were proud of her or not.
Everybody said that Anita was brilliant. She could take a book to pieces so that you saw every good bit and every bad bit separated away into little compartments. But she spoiled things for you, books and people, at least she did for me. She sneered. She said of the Baxter girl once, for instance—‘She’s really too tactful. If you go to tea with her you are sure to be introduced to your oldest friend.’ And again—‘She always likes the right people for the wrong reasons.’
Of course one knows what she meant, but I liked the Baxter girl all the same. Beryl Baxter—but everyone called her the Baxter girl. She was kind to me because I was Anita’s cousin, and she used to talk to me when Anita wasn’t in the mood for her. She asked me to call her ‘Beryl’ almost at once. Anita used to be awfully rude to her sometimes, and then again she would have her to supper and spend an evening going through her MSS. and I could tell that she was giving her valuable help. The Baxter girl used to listen and agree so eagerly and take it away to re-write. I thought she was dreadfully grateful. I hated to hear her. And when she was gone Anita would lean back in her chair with a dead look on her face and say—
“God help her readers! Jenny, open the window. That girl reeks of patchouli.” And then—“Why do I waste my time?”
And Great-aunt Serle in her corner would chuckle and poke and mutter, but not loud—
“Why does she waste her time? Listen to my daughter!”
The next time the Baxter girl came Anita would hardly speak to her.
The Baxter girl seemed to take it as a matter of course. But once she said to me, with a look on her face as if she were defending herself—
“Ah—but you don’t write. You’re not keen. You don’t know what it means to be in the set.”
“But such heaps of people come to see Anita,” I said, “people she hardly knows.”
“They’re only the fringes,” said the Baxter girl complacently. “They’re not in the Grey set. They don’t come to the Nights. At least, only a few. Jasper Flood, of course—You’ve met him, haven’t you?—and Lila Howe—Masquerade, you know, andSir Fortinbras.” The Baxter girl always ticketed everyone she mentioned. “And the Whitneys. She used to stay with the Whitneys. And Roy Huth. And of course Kent Rehan.”
“Kent Rehan?”
“TheKent Rehan,” said the Baxter girl.
Then I remembered. The vicar’s wife always sent Mother the Academy catalogue after she had been up to town. I used to cut out the pictures I liked, and I liked Kent Rehan’s. They had wind blowing through them, and sunshine, and jolly blobs that I knew must be raw colour, and always the same woman. But you could never see her face, only a cheek curve or a shoulder line. They were in the catalogue every year, and so I told the Baxter girl. She laughed.
“Yes, he’s always on the line. Anita says that’s the worst she knows of him. And of course the veiled lady——” she laughed again, knowingly, “But there is one full face, I believe.The Spring Songhe calls it. But it’s never been shown. Anita’s seen it. She told me. He keeps it locked away in his studio. They say he’s in love with her.”
“With whom?”
“Madala Grey, of course.”
I said—
“Who is Madala Grey?”
The Baxter girl had sunk into the cushions until she was prone. I had been wondering with the bit of mind that wasn’t listening what the people at home would have said to her, with her cobweb stockings (it was November) and her coloured combs and her sprawl. It was a relief to see her sit up suddenly.
“‘Who’s Madala Grey!’” Her mouth stayed open after she’d finished the sentence.
“Yes,” I said. “Who is she?”
“You mean to say you’ve never heard of Madala Grey? You’ve never readEden Walls? Is there anyone in England who hasn’t readEden Walls?”
“Heaps,” I said. She annoyed me. She—they—they all thought me a fool at Anita’s.
The Baxter girl sighed luxuriously.
“My word, I envy you! I wish I was readingEden Wallsfor the first time—orPloughed Fields. I don’t care so much aboutThe Resting-place.” She laughed. “At least—one’s not supposed to care aboutThe Resting-place, you know. It’s as much as one’s life’s worth—one’s literary life.”
“What’s wrong with it?”
“Sentimental. Anita says so. She says she doesn’t know what happened to her overThe Resting-place.”
“I like the title,” I said.
“Yes, so do I. And I love the opening where——Oh, but you haven’t read it. And you’re Anita’s cousin! What a comedy! Just like Anita, though, not to speak of her.”
“Why? Doesn’t Anita like her?”
The Baxter girl was flat on the cushions again. She looked at me with those furtive eyes that always so strangely qualified her garrulity.
“Are you shrewd? Or was that chance?”
“What?”
“‘Doesn’t Anita like her?’”
“Doesn’t she then?”
“Ah, now you’re asking! Officially, very much. Too much,Ishould say. And too much is just the same as the other thing, I think. Would you like Anita for your bosom friend?”
Naturally I said—
“Anita’s been very kind to me.” Anita’s my cousin, after all. I didn’t like the Baxter girl’s tone.
“Oh, she’s been kind to me.” The Baxter girl caught me up quickly. She was like a sensitive plant for all her crudity. “Oh, I admire Anita. She’s the finest judge of style in England. Jasper Flood says so. You mustn’t think I say a word against Anita. Very kind to me she’s been.” Then, innocently, but her eyes were flickering again—“She was kind to Madala too, till——”
“Well?” I demanded.
“Till Madala was kind to her. Madala’s one of those big people. She’ll never forget what she owes Anita—what Anita told her she owed her. After she made her own name she made Anita’s. Anita, being Anita, doesn’t forget that.”
“How d’you mean—made Anita’s name?”
“Well, look at the people who come here—the people who count. What do you think the draw was? Anita? Oh yes,now. But they came first for Madala. Oh, those early days whenEden Wallswas just out! Of course Anita had sense for ten. She ran Madala for all she was worth.”
“Then you do like Madala Grey?”
“I?” The Baxter girl looked at me oddly. “She read my book. She wrote to me. That’s why Anita took me up. She let me come to the Nights. She started them, you know. Somebody reads a story or a poem, and then it’s talk till the milkman comes. Good times! But now Madala’s married she doesn’t come often. Anita carries on like grim death, of course. But it’s not the same. Last month it was dreary.”
“Is it every month?”
“Yes. It’s tomorrow again. Tomorrow’s Sunday, isn’t it? It’ll amuse you. You’ll come, of course, as you’re in the house.”
“Will she? Herself?” I found myself reproducing the Baxter girl’s eagerness.
“Not now.” The common voice had deepened queerly. “She’s very ill.” She hesitated. “That’s why I came today. I thought Anita might have heard. Not my business, of course, but——” She made an awkward, violent gesture with her hands. “Oh, a genius oughtn’t to marry. It’s wicked waste. Well, so long! See you tomorrow night!”
She left me abruptly.
I found myself marking time, as it were, all through that morrow, as if the evening were of great importance. The Baxter girl was always unsettling, or it may have been Anita’s restlessness that affected me. Anita was on edge. She was writing, writing, all the morning. She was at her desk when I came down. There was a mass of packets and papers in front of her and an empty coffee cup. I believe she had been writing all night. She had that white look round her eyes. But she didn’t need any typing done. Early in the afternoon she went out and at once Great-aunt, in her corner, put down her knitting with a little catch of her breath. But she didn’t talk: she sat watching the door. I had been half the day at the window, fascinated by the fog. I’d never seen a London fog before. I found myself writing a letter in my head to Mother about it, about the way it would change from black to yellow and then clear off to let in daylight and sparrow-talk and the tramp-tramp of feet, and then back again to silence, and the sun like a ball that you could reach up to with your hand and hold. I was deep in my description—and then, of a sudden, I remembered that she wasn’t there to write to any more. It was so hard to remember always that she was dead. I got up quickly and went to Anita’s shelves for a book. Great-aunt hadn’t noticed anything. She was still watching the door.
The little back room that opened on to the staircase was lined to the ceiling with books, all so tidy and alphabetical. Anita lived for books, but I used to wonder why. She didn’t love them. Her books never opened friendlily at special places, and they hadn’t the proper smell. I ran my finger along the ‘G’s’ and pulled outEden Walls.
I began in the middle of course. One always falls into the middle of a real person’s life, and a book is a person. There’s always time to find out their beginning afterwards when you’ve decided to be friends. It isn’t always worth while. But it was withEden Walls. I liked the voice in which the story was being told. Soon I began to feel happier. Then I began to feel excited. It said things I’d always thought, you know. It was extraordinary that it knew how I felt about things. There’s a bit where the heroine comes to town and the streets scare her, because they go on, and on, and on, always in straight lines, like a corridor in a dream. Now how did she know of that dream? I turned back to the first page and began to read steadily.
When Anita’s voice jerked me back to real life it was nearly dark. She was speaking to Great-aunt as she took off her wraps—
“The fog’s confusing. I had to take a taxi to the tube. A trunk call is an endless business.”
“Well?” said Great-aunt.
“Nothing fresh.”
“Didheanswer?”
Anita nodded.
“Was he——? Is she——? Did you ask——? What did he tell you, Anita?”
Anita stabbed at her hat with her long pins. She was flushing.
“The usual details. He spares you nothing. Have you had tea, Mother?” She rang the bell.
Great-aunt beat her hand on the arm of her chair in a feeble, restless way. When I brought her tea she said to me in her confidential whisper—
“Give it to my daughter. She’s tired. She’ll tell us when she’s not so tired.”
She settled herself again to watch; but she watched Anita, not the door.
And in a few minutes Anita did say, as the Baxter girl had said—
“She’s very ill.” And then—“I always told you we ought to have a telephone. I can’t be running out all the evening.”
“Do they come tonight?” said Great-aunt Serle.
Anita answered her coldly—
“They do. Why not?”
Great-aunt tittered.
“Why not? Why not? Listen, little Jenny!”
Anita, as usual, was quite patient.
“Mother, you mustn’t excite yourself. Jenny, give Mother some more tea. What good would it do Madala to upset my arrangements? Besides, Kent will have the latest news. I think you may trust him.” She gave that little laugh that was Great-aunt’s titter grown musical. Then she turned to me.
“By the way, Jenny, I expect friends tonight. You needn’t change, as you’re in mourning. You’ll see to the coffee, please. We’ll have the door open and the coffee in the little room. You might do it now while I dress.”
The big drawing-room was divided from the little outer room by a curtained door. It was closed in the day-time for cosiness’ sake, but when it was flung back the room was a splendid one. The small room held the books and a chair or two, and a chesterfield facing the door that opened on to the passage and the narrow twisting stairs. They were so dark that Anita kept a candle and matches in the hall; but one seldom troubled to light it. It was quicker to fumble one’s way. Anita used to long for electric light; but she would not install it. Anita had good taste. The house was old, and old-fashioned it should stay.
I fastened back the door and re-arranged the furniture, and was sitting down toEden Wallsagain when Great-aunt beckoned me.
“Go and dress, my dear!”
“But Anita said——” I began.
She held me by the wrist, all nods and smiles and hoarse whispers.
“The pretty dress—to show a pretty throat—isn’t there a pretty dress somewhere? I know! Put it on. Put it on. What a white throat! I’ve a necklace somewhere—but then Anita would know. Mustn’t tell Anita!”
She pulled me down to her with fumbling, shaky hands.
“Tell me, Jenny, where’s my daughter?”
“Upstairs, Auntie.”
“Tell me, Jenny—any news? Any news, Jenny?”
I didn’t know what to say to her. I was afraid of hurting her. She was so shaking and pitiful.
“Is it about Miss Grey, Auntie?”
“Carey, Jenny—Carey. Mrs. John Carey. Good name. Good man. But Anita don’t like him. Anita won’t tell me. You tell me, Jenny!”
“Auntie, it’s all right. It’s all right. She’ll tell you, of course, when she hears again.” And I soothed her as well as I could, till she let me loosen her hand from my wrist, and kiss her, and start her at her knitting again, so that I could finish making ready the room. But as I went to wash my hands she called to me once more.
“Yes, Auntie?”
“Put it on, Jenny. Don’t ask my daughter. Put it on.”
She was a queer old woman. She made me want to cry sometimes. She was so frightened always, and yet so game.
But I went upstairs after supper and put on the frock she liked. Black, of course, but with Mother’s lace fichu I liked myself in it too. I did my hair high. I don’t know why I took so much trouble except that I wanted to cheer myself up. It had been a depressing day in spite ofEden Walls. I looked forward to the stir of visitors. And then I was curious to see Kent Rehan.
When I came down the Baxter girl was already there, standing all by herself at the fire. She was strikingly dressed; but she looked stranded. I wondered if Anita had been snubbing her.
Anita was shaking hands with Mr. Flood and with a lady whom I had not seen before. She was blonde, with greenish-golden hair and round eyes, very black eyes that had no lights in them, not even when she smiled. She often smiled. She had a drawling voice and hardly spoke at all, except to Mr. Flood. If he talked to anyone else or walked away from her, she would watch him for a minute, and then say—‘Jasper’ with a sort of purr, not troubling to raise her voice. But he always heard and came. She wore a wonderful Chinese shawl, white, with gold dragons worked on it, and whenever she moved it set the dragons crawling. She was powdered and red-lipped like a clown, and I didn’t really like her, but nevertheless there was something about her that was queerly attractive. When she smiled at me because I gave her coffee, I felt quite elated. But I didn’t like her. Mr. Flood called her ‘Blanche.’ I never heard her other name.
Anita seemed very pleased to see them. I caught scraps.
“Am so glad—one’s friends about one—such a strain waiting for news. I phoned this afternoon. No, the usual phrases. Anxious, of course, but I should certainly have heard if——Good of you to come! No chance of the Whitneys, I’m afraid—too much fog. And what are you reading to us?”
The Baxter girl, as I greeted her, stripped and re-dressed me with one swift look.
“My dear, it suits you! I wish I could look Victorian. But I’m vile in black. Have you seen Lila? I met her on the step. They’ve turned downSir Fortinbrasin America. Isn’t it rotten luck? Anita said they would. Anita’s always right. Any more news of Madala?”
Anita overheard her. She was suddenly gracious to the Baxter girl.
“You may be sure I should always let you know at once. And what is this I hear about Lila? Poor Lila! It’s the last chapter, I’m afraid. I advised her from the beginning that the American public will not tolerate—but dear Lila is a law unto herself.” And then, as Miss Howe came in—“Lila, my dear! How good of you to venture! A night like this makes me wonder why I continue in London. Madala has urged me to move out ever since——No. No news. But Jasper’s been energetic——” She circled mazily about them while I brought the coffee.
“Kent coming?” said Mr. Flood, fumbling with his papers.
Anita shrugged her shoulders.
“Who can account for Kent? It may dawn on him that he’s due here—and again, it may not. It depends as usual, I suppose, on the new picture.”
“Oh yes, there’s a new one,” recollected the Baxter girl carefully.
“There must be! He was literally flocculent yesterday.” Miss Howe chuckled. “That can only mean one of two things. Art or——”
“—the lady! Who can doubt? Well, if Carey doesn’t object to his brotherly love continuing, I’m sure I don’t. But I wish it need not involve his missing his appointments.” Mr. Flood eyed his typescript impatiently.
Anita was instantly all tact.
“Oh, we won’t wait. Certainly not. Pull in to the fire. Now, Jasper!”
But Miss Howe, as she swirled into Anita’s special chair, her skirts overflowing either arm, abolished Mr. Flood and his typescript with a movement of her soft dimply hands.
“Oh, I’m not in the mood even for Jasper’s efforts. I want to let myself go. I want to damn publishers—and husbands! Damn them! Damn them! There! Am I shocking you, Miss Summer?”
She smiled at me over their heads. She was always polite to me. I liked her. She was like a fat, pink pæony.
“Well, if you take my advice——” began Anita.
“My darling, I love you, but I don’t want your advice. I only want one person’s advice—ever—and she has got married and is doing her duty in that state of life——Hence I say—Damn husbands! I tell you I want Madala to soothe me, and storm at the injustice of publishers for me, and then—no, not give me a brilliant idea for the last chapter, but make me tell her one, and then applaud me for it.Youknow, Anita!” She dug at her openly.
I caught a movement in Great-aunt’s corner.
“Coffee, Auntie?”
She gave me a goblin glance.
“My daughter!” She had an air of introducing her triumphantly. “Listen! She don’t like fat women.”
We listened. Anita’s voice was mellow with cordiality.
“Yes indeed. Madala has often said to me that she thought you well worth encouraging.”
Miss Howe laughed jollily.
“I admire your articles, Nita. I wilt when you review me. But you’ll never write novels, darling. You’ve not the ear. Madala may have said that, but she didn’t say it in that way.”
“She certainly said it.”
“Some day I’ll ask her.”
“Some day! Oh, some day!” The Baxter girl was staring at the fire. “Shall we ever get her back?”
“In a year! Let us give her a year!” Mr. Flood looked up at the lady beside him with a thin smile. I couldn’t bear him. He sat on the floor, and he called you ‘dear lady,’ and sometimes he would take hold of your watch-chain and finger it as he talked to you. But he was awfully clever, I believe. He wrote reviews and very difficult poetry that didn’t rhyme. Anita was generally mellifluous to him and she quoted him a good deal. She turned to him with just the same smile—
“Ah, of course! You’ve met John Carey too.”
“For my sins, dear lady—for my sins.”
“Not the same sins, surely,” breathed the blonde lady.
“As the virtuous Carey’s? Don’t be rude to me! It’s a fact—the man’s a churchwarden. He carries a little tin plate on Sundays! Didn’t you tell me so, Anita? No—we give her a year. Don’t we, Anita?”
“But what did she marry him for?” wailed the Baxter girl.
They all laughed.
“Copy, dear lady, copy!” Mr. Flood was enjoying himself. “Why will you have ideals? Carey was a new type.”
“But she needn’t have married him!” insisted the Baxter girl. The argument was evidently an old one.
“She, if I read her aright, could have dispensed with the ceremony, but the churchwarden had his views. Obviously! Can’t you imagine him—all whiskers and wedding-ring?”
“But I thought he was clean-shaven! I thought he was good-looking!” I sympathized with the Baxter girl’s dismay.
“Ah—I speak in parables——”
“You do hate him, don’t you?” said Miss Howe with her wide, benevolent smile. “Now, I wonder——”
Mr. Flood flushed into disclaimers, while the woman beside him looked at Miss Howe with half-closed eyes.
“I? How could I? Our orbits don’t touch.Iapproved, I assure you. An invaluable experience for our Madala! A year of wedded love, another of wedded boredom, and then—a master-piece, dear people! Madala Grey back to us, a giantess refreshed. Gods! what a book it will be!”
“I wonder,” said Miss Howe vaguely.
Anita answered her with that queer movement of the head that always reminded me of a pouncing lizard.
“No need! I’ve watched Madala Grey’s career from the beginning.”
“For this I maintain—” Mr. Flood ignored her—“Eden WallsandPloughed Fieldsmay be amazing (The Resting-placeI cut out. It’s an indiscretion. Madala caught napping) but they’re preliminaries, dear people! mere preliminaries, believe me.”
“I sometimes wonder——” Miss Howe made me think of Saladin’s cushion inThe Talisman. She always went on so softly and imperviously with her own thoughts—“Suppose now, that she’s written herself out, and knows it?”
The Baxter girl gave a little gasp of horrified appreciation.
“So the marriage——”
“An emergency exit.”
But Anita pitied them aloud—
“It shows how little you know Madala, either of you.”
“Does anyone? Do you?”
Anita smiled securely.
“The type’s clear, at least.” Mr. Flood looked round the circle. His eyes shone. “Une grande amoureuse—that I’ve always maintained. Carey may be the first—but he won’t be the last.”
“Is he the first? How did she come to writeThe Resting-placethen? Tell me that!” Anita thrust at him with her forefinger and behind her, in the corner, I saw the gesture duplicated.
“So I will when I’ve read the new book, dear lady.”
“If ever it writes itself,” Miss Howe underlined him.
“As to that—I give her a year, as I say. Once this business is over—” his voice mellowed into kindliness—“and good luck to her, dear woman——”
“Ah, good luck!” said Miss Howe and smiled at him.
“Once it’s over, I say——”
“But shewillbe all right, won’t she?” said the Baxter girl.
“I should certainly have been told——” began Anita.
Miss Howe harangued them—
“Have you ever known Madala Grey fail yet? She’ll be all right. She’ll pull it off—triumphantly. You see! But as for the book—if it comes——”
“When it comes,” corrected Mr. Flood.
“What’s that?” said Anita sharply.
There was a sound in the passage, a heavy sound of feet. It caught at my heart. It was a sound that I knew. They had come tramping up the stairs like that when they fetched away Mother. Thud—stumble—thud! I shivered. But as the steps came nearer they belonged to but one man. The door opened and the fog and the man entered together. Everyone turned to him with a queer, long flash of faces.
“Kent!” cried Anita, welcoming him. Then her voice changed. “Kent! What’s wrong? What is it?”
He shut the door behind him and stood, his back against it, staring at us, like a man stupefied.
The Baxter girl broke in shrilly—
“He’s wired. He’s had a wire!” She pointed at his clenched hand.
Then he, too, looked down at his own hand. His fingers relaxed slowly and a crush of red and grey paper slid to the floor.
“A son,” he said dully.
“Ah!” A cry from the corner by the fire eased the tension. Great-aunt Serle was clapping her hands together. Her face was wrinkled all over with delight. “The good girl! The pretty——And a son too! A little son! Oh, the good girl!”
Anita turned on her, her voice like a scourge—
“Be quiet, Mother!” Then—“Well, Kent? Well?”
“Well?” he repeated after her.
“Madala? How’s Madala? What about Madala Grey?”
“Dead!” he said.
Dead.The word fell amongst the group of us in the circle of lamp-light, like a plummet into a pool.Dead.For an instant one could hear the blank drop of it. Then we broke up into gestures and little cries, into a babel of dismay and concern and rather horrible excitement.
Instinctively I separated myself from them. It was neither bad news nor good news to me, but it recalled to me certain hours, and they—it was as if they enjoyed the importance of bereavement. Anita talked. Miss Howe was gulping, and dabbing at her eyes. The Baxter girl kept on saying—‘Dead?’ ‘Dead?’ under her breath, and with that wide nervous smile that you sometimes see on people’s faces when they are far enough away from laughter. Great-aunt had shrunk into her corner. I could barely see her. The blonde lady had her hand on her heart and was panting a little, as if she had been running, and yet, as always, she watched Mr. Flood. He had pulled out a note-book and a fountain-pen and was shaking at it furiously, while his little eyes flickered from one to another—even to me. I felt his observance pursue me to the very edge of the ring of light, and drop again, baulked by the dazzle, as I slipped past him into the swinging shadows beyond. It’s odd how lamp-light cuts a room in two: I could see every corner of the light and shadow alike, and even the outer room was not too dim for me to move about it easily; but to those directly under the lamp I knew I had become all but invisible, a blur among the other blurs that were curtains and pictures and chairs. They remembered me as little as, absorbed and clamorous, they remembered the man who had brought them their news, and then had brushed his way through question and comment to the deep alcove of the window in the outer room and there stood, rigid and withdrawn, staring out through the uncurtained pane at the solid night beyond. I could not see his face, only the outline of a big and clumsy body, and a hand that twitched and fumbled at the tassel of the blind.
And all the while Anita, white as paper, was talking, talking, talking, saying how great the shock was, and how much Miss Grey had been to her—a stream of sorrow and self-assertion. It was just as if she said—‘Don’t forget that this is far worse for me than for any of you. Don’t forget——’
But the others went on with their own thoughts.
“Dead? Gone? It’s not possible.” Miss Howe was all blubbered and deplorable. “What shall we do without her?”
“Yes—that’s it!” The Baxter girl edged-in her chair to her like a young dog asking for comfort.
“For that matter, from the point of view of literature,” Anita’s voice grated, “she died a year ago.”
“It’s not possible! That’s what I say—it’s not possible!” It was strange how even the Baxter girl ignored Anita. “Dead! I can’t grasp it. It’s—it’s too awful. She was so vivid.”
“Awful?” Mr. Flood was biting his fingers. “Awful? Nothing of the kind. You know that Holbein cut—no, it’s earlier stuff—‘Death and the Lady,’ crude, preposterous. Andthat’swhat it is. Old Bones and Madala Grey? That’s not tragedy, that’s farce! Farce, dear people, farce!” Then his high tripping voice broke suddenly. “Dead? Why, she wasn’t thirty!”
“She was twenty-six last June,” said Anita finally. “Midsummer Day. I know.”
“June!” He caught it up. “Just so—June! Isn’t that characteristic? Isn’t that Madala all over? Of course she was born in June. She would be. ShewasJune. June——
“Her lips and her roses yet maidenA summer of storm in her eyes——”
“Her lips and her roses yet maidenA summer of storm in her eyes——”
“Her lips and her roses yet maidenA summer of storm in her eyes——”
“Her lips and her roses yet maiden
A summer of storm in her eyes——”
Miss Howe winced.
“For God’s sake don’t Swinburnize, Jasper! She’s not your meat. Oh, I want to cry—I want to cry! Dead—at twenty-six——”
“In child-bed,” finished Anita bitterly, and her voice made it an unclean and shameful end.
Mr. Flood’s glance felt its way over her, hatefully. It never lifted to her face.
“Of course from your point of view, dear lady——” he began, and smiled as he made his little bow of attention.
I thought him insolent, and so, I believe, did Miss Howe. She lifted her head sharply and I thought she would have spoken; but Anita gave her no time. There was always a sort of thick-skinned valiance about Anita.
“Oh, but you all know my point of view. She knew it herself. I never concealed it. You know how I devoted myself——”
“A bye-word, a bye-word!” said Miss Howe under her breath.
“—but not so much to her as to her gift. I should never allow a personal sentiment to overpower me. I haven’t the time for it. But she had the call, she had the gift, and because she had it I say, as I have always said, that for Madala Grey, marriage——”
“And all it implies——” Mr. Flood was still smiling.
She accepted it.
“Marriage and all that it implies was apostasy. I stand for Literature.”
“And Literature,” with a glance at the others, “is honoured.”
They wearied me. It seemed to me that they sparked and fizzled and whirred with the sham life of machinery: and like machinery they affected me. For at first I could not hear anything but them, and then they confused and tired me, and last of all they faded into a mere wall-paper of sound, and I forgot that they were there, save that I wondered now and then, as stray sentences shrilled out of the buzz, that they were not yet oppressed into silence.
For there was grief abroad—a grief without shape, without sound, without expression—a quality, a pulsing essence, a distillation of pure pain. From some centre it rayed out, it spread, it settled upon the room, imperceptibly, like the fall of dust. It reached me. I felt it. It soaked into me. I ached with it. I could not sit quiet. I was not drawn, I was impelled.Dead—the dull, bewildered voice was still in my ears.ThatI heard. But it was statement, not appeal. It was not his suffering that demanded relief, but some responding capacity for pain in me that awoke and cried out restlessly that such anguish was unlawful, beyond endurance, that still it I must, I must!
I rose. I looked round me. Then I went very softly into the outer room.
He was still standing at the window. The street lamp, level with the sill, was quenched to a yellow gloom. It lit up the wet striped branches and dead bobbins of the plane-tree beside it, and the sickly undersides of its shrivelled last leaves. I never thought a tree could look so ghastly. Against that unnatural glitter and the luminous thick air the man and the half-drawn curtain stood out in solid, unfamiliar bulk of black.
I came and stood just behind him. He was so big that I only reached his shoulder. He may have heard me: I think he did; but he did not turn. I was not frightened of him. That was so queer, because as a rule I can’t talk to strangers. I get nervous and red, and foolish-tongued, especially with men. Of course I knew all the usual men, the doctor at home, and the church people, and husbands that came back by the five-thirty, and now all Anita’s friends, and Mr. Flood; but I never had anything to say to them or they to me. But with Kent Rehan, somehow, it was different. He was different. I never thought—‘This is a strange man.’ I never thought—‘He doesn’t know me: it’s impertinent to break in upon him: what will he think?’ I never thought of all that. I never thought about myself at all. I was just passionately desiring to help him and I didn’t know how to do it.
I think I stood there for four or five minutes, trying to find words, opening my lips, and then catching back the phrase before a sound came, because it seemed so poor and meaningless. And all the while the Baxter girl’s words were running in my head—‘They say he was in love with her.’
With her—with Madala Grey. She was the key. I had the strangest pang of interest in this unknown woman. Who was she? What was she? What had she been? What had she done so to centre herself in so many, in such alien lives? What had she in common for them all? Books, books, books—I’dnever heard of her books! And she was married. Yet the loss of her, unpossessed, could bring such a look (as he turned restlessly from the window at last) such a look to Kent Rehan’s face. I was filled with a sort of anger against that dead woman, and I envied her. I never saw a man look so—as if his very soul had been bruised. It was not, it was never, a weak face, and it was not a young one; yet in that instant I saw in it, and clearly, its own forgotten childhood, bewildered by its first encounter with pain. It was that fleeting look that touched me so and gave me courage, so that I found myself saying to him, very low and quickly, and with a queer authority—
“It won’t always hurt so much. It will get easier. I promise you it will. It does. Truly it does. In six months—Idoknow.”
He looked down at me strangely.
I went on because I had to, but it was difficult. It was desperately difficult. I could hear myself blundering and stammering, and using hateful slangy phrases that I never used as a rule.
“I had to tell you. It isn’t cheek. I know—it hurts like fun. It’ll be worst out of doors. You see them coming, you see them just ahead of you, and then it isn’t them. But it won’t always hurt so horribly. I promise you. One manages. One gets used to living with it. I know.”
He looked at my black dress.
“Your husband?”
“No. Mother.”
He said no more. But he did not go away from me. We stood side by side at the window.
The voices in the other room insisted themselves into my mind again, against my will, like the ticking of a clock in the night. I was thinking about him, not them. But Anita called to me to put coal on the fire and, once among them, I did not like to go back to him again.
They had re-grouped themselves at the hearth. Miss Howe was in the chair with the chintz cover that was as pink and white and blue-ribboned as she herself. The Baxter girl crouched on the pouf and the fire-light danced over her by fits and starts till, what with her violet dress and her black boy’s head with the green band in it and that orange glow upon her, she looked like one of the posters in the Tube. The blonde lady had pushed back her chair to the edge of the lamp-light, so that her face was a blur and her white dress yellow-grey. Her knees made a back for Mr. Flood sitting cross-legged at her feet, and watching the Baxter girl as if he admired her. Once the blonde lady put her hand on his shoulder, and he caught it and played with the rings on it while he listened to her, and yet still watched the Baxter girl. She went on whispering, her hand in his, till at last he put back his head and caught her eye and laughed. Then she leaned back again as if she were satisfied. But I thought—‘How I should hate to have that dank hair rubbing against my skirt.’ Beside Mr. Flood lay the MS. he had brought, but I think Anita had forgotten it. She, sitting at the table in her high-backed chair (she never lolled), was still talking, indeed they were all talking about this Madala Grey. Anita’s voice was as pinched as her face.
“Oh, I knew from the first what it would be! She could never do anything by halves. She had no moderation. The writing, the work, all that made her what she was, tossed aside, for a whim, for a madness, for a man. I can’t help it—it makes me bitter.”
“Do you grudge it her so?” The Baxter girl looked at her wonderingly. “I kicked at it too, of course. We all did, didn’t we? But now, I like to think how happy she looked the last time she came here. Do you remember? I liked that blue frock. And the scarf with the roses—I gave her that. Liberty. She was thin though. She always worked too hard. Poor Madala! Heigh-ho, the gods are jealous gods.”
Anita stared in front of her.
“Just gods. She served two masters. She was bound to pay.”
“You are hard,” said the Baxter girl in a low voice.
Miss Howe rocked herself.
“But don’t you know how she feels? I do. It’s the helplessness——”
Anita’s pale eye met and held her glance as if she resented that sympathy. Then, as if indeed she were suddenly grown weak, she acquiesced.
“I suppose so. Yes, it’s the helplessness. ‘If this didn’t happen’—‘If that weren’t so’—Little things, little things—and they govern one. A broken doll—a cowslip ball—stronger than all my strength. And she needn’t have met Carey. It was just a chance. If I’d known—that day! I used to ask her questions, just to make her talk. I remember asking her about her old home—more to set her off than anything. I said I’d like to see it some day. It was true. I was interested. But it was only to make her talk. But she—oh, you know how she foamed up about a thing. ‘My old home! Would you, Anita? Would you like to come? Wouldn’t it bore you, Anita? It’s all spoiled, you know. But I go down now and then. Nobody remembers me. It’s like being a ghost. Oh, Ifeelfor ghosts. Would you really like to come? Shall we go soon? Shall we go today?’ And then, of course, down we go. And then we meet Carey. And then the play begins.”
Miss Howe shook her head.
“Ends.”
Anita accepted it.
“Ends. Then the play ends.” And then, frowning—“If I’d known that day—if I’d known! I was warned, too. That’s strange. I’ve never thought of it from that day to this. If I were an old wife now——” She shivered.
“What happened?” said the Baxter girl curiously.
“Oh, well, off we went! We had a carriage to ourselves. I was glad. I thought she might talk.”
“And you always tried to make her talk,” said Miss Howe softly.
Anita went on without answering her.
“She grew quite excited as we travelled down, talking about her ‘youth.’ She always spoke as if she were a hundred.”
“She put something into that youth of hers, I shouldn’t wonder,” said Miss Howe.
“She did. The things she told me that day. I knew she had been in America, but I never dreamed——She landed there, if you please, without a penny in her pocket, without a friend in the world.”
“I never understood why she went to America,” said Miss Howe. “I asked her once.”
“What did she say?” said Anita curiously.
“To make her fortune. But I never got any details out of her.”
“Didn’t you know?” said Anita. “Her people emigrated. The father failed. It happened when Madala was eighteen, and she and her mother persuaded him, expecting him, literally, to make their fortunes. The mother seems to have been an erratic person. Irish, I believe. Beautiful. Extravagant. I have always imagined that it was her extravagance—but Madala and the husband seem to have adored her. I remember Madala saying once that her father had been born unlucky, ‘except when he married Mother!’ I suspect, myself, that that was the beginning of his ill-luck. Anyhow, when the crash came, they gathered together what they had and started off on some romantic notion of the mother’s to make their fortune farming. America. Steerage. TheSylvania.”
“Sylvania?That’s familiar. What was it? A collision, wasn’t it?”
“No, that was theEmpress of Peru. TheSylvaniacaught fire in mid-ocean—a ghastly business. There were only about fifty survivors. Both her people were drowned.”
“Oh, that’s what she meant,” began Miss Howe, “that time at the Academy. We were looking at a storm-scape, and she said—‘People don’t know. It’s not like that. They wouldn’t try to paint it if they knew.’ She was quite white. Of course I never dreamed——Poor old Madala! Well, what happened?”
“Oh, she reached America in what she stood up in. There was a survivors’ fund, of course, but money melts in a city when you’re strange to it.”
“Couldn’t she have come back to England?”
“I believe she had relations over here, but her mother had quarrelled with them all in turn. They didn’t appreciate her mother and that was the unforgivable sin for Madala. She’d have starved sooner than ask them to help her. I shouldn’t wonder if she did, too!—half starve anyway. I shouldn’t wonder if those first bare months haven’t revenged themselves at last.”
“Oh, if one had known!” began the Baxter girl. “How is it that no one ever knows—or cares?”
“You? You were a schoolgirl. Who had heard of her in those days? But she made friends. There was a girl, a journalist, who had been sent to interview the survivors. She seems to have helped her in the beginning. She found her a lodging—oh, can’t you see how she uses that lodging inEden Walls?—and gave her occasional hack jobs, typing, and now and then proof-reading. Then she got some work taken, advertisement work, little articles on soaps and scents and face-creams that she used to illustrate herself. She was comically proud of them. She kept them all.”
“I suppose in her spare time she was already working atEden Walls?”
“No. I asked her. And she said—‘Oh, no, I was too miserable. Oh, Anita, Iwasmiserable.’ And then she began again telling funny stories about her experiences. No, she was back in England before she beganEden Walls. However, she seems to have made quite a little income at last, even to have saved. And then, just when she began to see her way before her to a sort of security, then she threw it all up and came home.”
“Just like Madala! But why?”
“Heaven knows! Homesick, she said.”
“But she hadn’t got a home!”
“It was England—the English country—the south country—the Westering Hill country. She used to talk about it like—like a lover.”
“Isn’t that more probable?” said Mr. Flood.
“What?”
“A lover.”
“Carey?”
“Not necessarily Carey.”
Anita looked at him with a certain approval.
“Ah—so you’ve thought of that, too? Now what exactly do you base it on?”
He shrugged and smiled.
“Delightfullest—my thoughts are thistle-down.”
“But you have your theory?” She pinned him down. “I see that you too have your theory.”
“Our theory.” He bowed.
“You’ve got wits, Jasper.”
“What are you two driving at?” Miss Howe fidgeted.
“We’re evolving a theory—a theory of Madala Grey. Who lived in the south country, Anita?”
“Carey, for that matter.”
“Matters not. She didn’t come home for Carey. You can’t make books without copy. Not her sort of book. Any more than you can make bricks without straw. But she didn’t make her bricks from his straw, that I’ll swear.”
“No, she didn’t come home for Carey,” said Anita. “I tell you, that was the day she met him. It’s barely a year ago. She had made her name twice over by then. She was already casting about for her third plot. I think it was that that made her so restless. She’d grown very restless. But she certainly didn’t come home for Carey.”
“Then why?”
“Homesick.”
“That’s absurd.”
“I’m telling you what she said. She insisted on it. She used a queer phrase. She said—‘I longed for home till my lips ached.’”
The lady with Mr. Flood stirred in her shadows.
“She didn’t imagine that. That happens. That is how one longs——” She broke off.
“For home?” he said, with that smile of his that ended at his mouth and left his eyes like chips of quartz.
She answered him slowly, him only—
“I suppose, with some women, it could be for home. If she says so——That is what confounds one in her. She knows—she proves that she knows, in a phrase like that, things that (when one thinks of her personality) shecan’tknow—couldn’t know. It’s inexplicable. ‘Till one’s lips ache’——Oh, Lord!” She laughed harshly.
Anita looked at them uncertainly.
“Well, that’s what she said. And to judge from her description Westering was something to be homesick for. I expected a paradise.”
“Westering? That’s quite a town.”
“Yes, I know. There’s a summer colony. Madala mourned over it. She was absurd. She raced me out of the station and up the hill, and would scarcely let me look about me till we were at the top, because the lower end of the village had been built over. It might have been the sack of Rome to hear her—‘Asphalt paths! Disgraceful! The grocer used to haveblueblinds. They’ve spoiled the village green.’ And so it went on until we reached Upper Westering.”
“Oh, where they live now?”
“Yes. And then she turned to me and beamed—‘This ismycountry.’ It certainly is a pretty place. There’s a fine view over the downs; but too hilly for me. We climbed up and down lanes and picked ridiculous bits of twig and green stuff till I protested. Then she took me into the churchyard. We wandered about: very pleasant it was: such a hot spring day, and pretty pinkish flowers—what did she call the stuff?—cuckoo-pint, springing from the graves—and daffodils. Then we sat down in the shadow of the church to eat our lunch. We began to discuss architecture and I was growing interested, really beginning to enjoy myself—some of it was pre-Norman—when a man climbed over the stile from the field behind the church, and came down the path towards us. As he passed, Madala looked up and he looked down, and up she jumped in a moment. ‘Why,’ she said, ‘I do believe—Idobelieve—’ You know that little chuckly rise in her voice when she’s pleased—‘I do believe it’s you!’ ‘Oh, Madala,’ I said, ‘the sandwiches!’ They were in a paper on her lap, you know. She had scattered them right and left. But I might have talked to the wind. I must say he had perfectly respectable manners. He turned back at once, and smiled at her, and hesitated, and began to pick up the sandwiches, though he evidently didn’t know her. ‘Oh,’ she said, ‘don’t you remember? Aren’t you Dr. Carey? You mended my camel when I was little. I’m Madala!’ She was literally brimming over with pleasure. But, you know, such a silly way to put it! If she had said ‘Madala Grey’ he would have known in a moment. There were a couple ofEden Wallson the bookstall as we went through. I saw them. However, he remembered her then. He certainly seemed pleased to see her, in his awkward way. He stood looking down at her, amused and interested. People always got so interested in Madala. Haven’t you noticed it? Even people in trams. Though I thought to myself at the time—‘How absurd Madala is! What can they have in common?’ Yes, I thought it even then.”
“Well, what had they in common?”
“Heaven knew! She was ten and he was twenty-five when they last met. He knew her grand-people: he had mended her dolls for her: he lived in her old home: that, according to her, was all that mattered. She said to me afterwards, I remember, ‘Just imagine seeing him! Iwaspleased to see him. He belongs in, you know.’ ‘No, Madala,’ I said, ‘I don’t know. Such a fuss about a man you haven’t seen since you were a child! I call it affectation. It’s a slight on your real friends.’ ‘Oh,’ she said, ‘but he belongs in.’ She looked quite chastened. She said—‘Nita, it wasn’t affectation. I believe he was pleased too—honestly!’ He was. Who wouldn’t be? You know the effect she used to make.”
“What did he say?” asked the Baxter girl.
“Oh, he looked down at her as if he were shy. Then he said—‘You’ve a long memory, Madala!’ Yes, he called her Madala from the first. It annoyed me. She said—‘Oh, do you remember when Mother was so ill once? You were very kind to me then.’ Then she said something which amazed me. I’d known her for two years before she told me anything about thatSylvaniatragedy, but to him she spoke at once. ‘They’re dead,’ she said, ‘Mother and Father. They’re drowned. There isn’t anyone.’ But her voice! It made me quite nervous. I thought she was going to break down. He said, with a stiff sort of effort—‘Yes. I heard.’ That was all. Nothing sympathetic. He just stood and looked at her.”
“Well?” said Miss Howe impatiently.
“Oh—nothing else. I finished picking up the sandwiches. She introduced me, but I don’t think he realized who I was. It annoyed me very much that she insisted on his eating lunch with us. As I said to her afterwards, it wasn’t suitable. Buns in a bag! But there he sat on a damp stone (he gave Madala his overcoat to sit upon) perfectly contented. I confess I wasn’t cordial. But he noticed nothing. Obtuse! That was how I summed him up from the first—obtuse! And no conversation whatever. Madala did the talking. I believe she asked after every cat and dog for twenty miles round. And her lack of reticence to a comparative stranger was amazing. She told him more about herself in half an hour than she had told me in four years. But she was an unaccountable creature.”
“Yes, that’s just it. One never knew what Madala would do next, and yet when she’d done it, one said—‘Of course! Just what Madalawoulddo!’ But it wasn’t like her to neglect you, Nita!”
“Oh, she noticed after a time. She began to be uncomfortable. I—withdrew myself, as it were. You know my way. She didn’t like that. She tried—I will say that for her—she did try to direct the conversation towards my subjects. Useless, of course. He was, not illiterate—no, you can’t say illiterate—but curiously unintellectual. Socialism now—somehow we got on to socialism. That roused him. I must say, though he expressed himself clumsily, that he had ideas. But so limited. He had never heard of Marx. Bernard Shaw was barely a name to him. Socialism—his socialism—when we disentangled it, was only another word for the proper feeding of the local infants—drains—measles—the village schools. Beyond that he was mute. But Madala chimed in with details of American slum life, and roused him at once. They grew quite eloquent. But not one word, if you please, of her own work. Anything and everything but her work. He did ask her what she was doing. ‘Oh,’ said she in an offhand way, ‘I scribble. Stories.’ And then—‘It earns money, and it kills time.’ Yes, that’s exactly how she put it. ‘Madala!’ I said, ‘that’s not the spirit—’ I’d never heard her use such a tone before. She had such high ideals of art. It jarred me. I thought that she ought to have known better. But she looked at me in such a curious way—defiant almost. She said—‘It’s my own spirit, Nita. Oh, let me have a holiday!’ And at that up she jumped and left us sitting there, and wandered off to the stile and was over it in a second. We sat still. The hedge hid her. Then we heard her call—‘Cowslips! Oh, cowslips!’ I thought he would go when she called, but he sat where he was, listening. It was one of those hot, still days, you know. There was a sort of spell on things. There were bees about. We heard a cart roll up the road. I wanted to get up and talk, make some kind of diversion, and yet I couldn’t. We heard her call again—‘Hundreds of cowslips! I’m going to make a cowslip ball.’ Her voice sounded far away, but very clear. And there was a scent of may in the air, and dust—an intoxicating smell. It made me quite sleepy. It was just as if time stood still. Three o’clock’s a drowsy time, I suppose. And he never stirred—just sat there stupidly. But I was too sleepy to be bored with him. Presently back she came. She had picked up her skirt and her petticoat showed—it was that lavender silk you gave her, Lila. So unsuitable, you know, on those dirty roads. And her skirt was full of cowslips. She was just a dark figure against the sky until she was close to us; but then, I thought that she looked pretty, extremely pretty. Bright cheeks, you know, and her eyes so blue——”
“Grey—” said Mr. Flood, “the grey eyes of a goddess.”
“They looked blue, and she didn’t look like a goddess. She looked like a little girl. Well, there she stood, with her grey skirt and her lavender silk, and her cowslips—you know they have a sweet smell, cowslips, a very sweet smell—and tumbled them all down on the tombstone. Then she wanted string. Carey seemed to wake up at that. He’d been looking at her as if he had dreamed her. He produced string. He was that sort of man. Then she made her cowslip ball. I held one end of the string and he held the other, and she nipped the stalks off the flowers and strung them athwart it. That is the way to make a cowslip ball.”
“Nita, I love you!” cried Miss Howe for the second time, and the others laughed.
She stopped. She stiffened.
“I don’t know what you mean.”
“Ne’ mind! Go on!”
She said offendedly—
“There’s nothing more to tell. We got up and came away.”
But as we sat silently by, still waiting, the storyteller crept back into her face.
“Oh, yes—” up went her forefinger. “It was then that it happened. We went stumbling over the graves, round to the east end, to see the lepers’ window, a particularly interesting one. Ruskin mentions it. Yes, Carey came with us. There’s a little bit of bare lawn under the window before the stones begin again, and as we crossed it Madala gave a kind of shuddering start. He said—‘Cold?’ smiling at her. She shivered again, in spite of herself as it were, for she’d been joking and laughing, and said—‘Someone must be walking over my grave.’ And at that he gave her such a look, and said loudly in a great rough voice—‘Rubbish! don’t talk such rubbish!’ Really, you know, the tone! And I thought to myself then as I’ve thought many times since—‘At heart the man’s a bully—that’s what the man is.’ But Madala laughed. We didn’t stay long after that. The window was a disappointment—restored. There was nothing further to see and Madala was quite right—it was chilly. The sky had clouded over and there was a wind. I thought it time to go. Madala made no objection. She had grown curiously quiet. She tired easily, you know. And he didn’t say another word. Quite time to go. I thought we might try for the earlier train, so we went off at last in a hurry. No, he didn’t come with us: we shook hands at the gate. And when I looked back a minute later he had turned away. We caught our train.”
There was a little pause that Miss Howe ended.
“Queer!” she said.
Anita stared at them. Her hands twitched.
“Oh, I’m a practical person, but—‘You’re walking on my grave,’ she said. And there or thereabouts, I suppose, she’ll lie.”
“Coincidence,” said Mr. Flood quickly.