XXIV
The children had whooping cough that summer. When it was better we went to the seaside. We took lodgings on the Norfolk coast; it was cheap to go there because of the War; people were afraid of the German Navy, and bombardments from the sea, and Zeppelins.
There was no bombardment, nothing while we were there, but it was very dreary. There were soldiers there as everywhere, and barbed wire along the cliffs. It was cold too and rainy.
Walter came down for a fortnight. The children still coughed a great deal, they coughed especially at night. Maud came for a bit too, and helped me with the children.
I thought:
‘That is kind of Maud—I have been horrid about Maud’—but even so, I was glad when she went away.
I was glad to leave that place. London was much better than that. We came home in September.
I went to see Grandmother at Campden Hill Square. She was away and there was a new maid who did not know me.
Mrs. Woodruffe was in the country, she said. She was expected back next month.
I knew she had been at Yearsly. I had hoped that she was back. The maid did not offer me tea, and I did not ask her for it. I felt disappointed to an absurd degree. I walked across Campden Hill to Kensington Church, and thought of my wedding there four years before. I took a bus from there down to Chelsea and walked past Mollie’s flat. The blinds were down and there were no flowers in the window-boxes. That was natural, of course, with Mollie far away. I turned back again towards the bridge. I went into the little tea shop where we used to have meals very often. Here too the waitress was new, everything was changed; different and strange. It seemed as though I had been away for years and years.
And then as I sat and waited for some tea, I caught sight of my own face in a looking-glass that was hanging on the wall; and I realized suddenly with a shock that my own face was changed. I looked so shabby, so provincial, somehow, and dull. I had not realized before that I looked like that now. I had hardly thought of my own appearance for so long.
I stared at myself in that looking-glass, and felt ready to cry.
How was it that I had not seen myself like this before?
I looked at myself every morning, of course, when I did my hair, but I had not really looked for months, even when I dressed to go out with Guy. Was I getting old? I was nearly thirty now, was that really old?
I had seen myself so often in the same looking-glass before, an oval looking-glass it was, in a dark lacquered frame. I had sat so often at this same table with Mollie, and George, and Guy, and Hugo. Would they all be changed when I saw them again? If I did see any of them—George I would never see.
I tried to remember his face as he had last sat there, in that little restaurant, at that same table; but I could not remember any particular time as the last.
He at least had not faded nor tarnished:
‘They carry back bright to the coiner the mintage of man,
The Lads who will die in their glory and never be old.’
I repeated the lines to myself, and they made me happy, with their familiar beauty. I remembered the first time that I had read them, lying on the sofa in the drawing-room, at Campden Hill Square. A big, deep sofa with a green Morris chintz.
I had had a bad cold; it was winter and the fire was burning in the grate. I had watched the light flickering on the ceiling as I lay on my back, and repeated the lines with wonder and delight to myself. All this came back to me.
I had thought them so true, so full of meaning; and how little I had really understood.
Now I was oppressed and overpowered by the dread of old age, of deterioration, and change, and loss. It was gone already, the wonder of youth, and light, and life; it was slipping through my fingers before I had had time to realize and enjoy it. This was not life, this daily drudgery, this struggle to keep going, to get through, to exist. I was marking time, we were all marking time, waiting and waiting for the strain to relax, for the War to end; and meantime our youth was going.
Before in the old days we had been waiting, too, but that had been different. We had been waiting then for something to begin, to happen, this was waiting for something to end, to stop happening.
The waitress brought my tea. The toast was spread with a very rank margarine. The cake tasted of cocoa butter, and I remembered what delicious bread and butter they used to give us here.
I sat still for a long time after my tea, looking out at the familiar view; the trees, the wide road, and the river. Then I paid my bill and walked up the street to my bus.