2
Then they came again—straying so suddenly, strangely, briefly across the timeless confusions of adolescence, that they left behind them an even more disturbing sense of their unreality,—an estrangement profounder than before.
It was winter—the time of the long frost and the ten days’ skating,—the time when crossing the river to get to the skating pool was dangerous because of the great blocks of ice coming down with the stream. Those ten days flashed out for ever in life,—a sparkling pure breathless intoxication of movement and light and air that seemed each evening too delightful to be allowed to last; and yet each succeeding morning—she first listening to the day then fearfully peeping at it—had miraculous prolongation. She prayed: Oh God, let the skating last. Let me skate. Take not my happiness from me and I will love Thee as I ought. And for ten days He hearkened unto her.
Each day she abandoned lessons and, crossing the river, ran across the crunching frost-bound marsh to the edge of the pond. Over and over it the people slipped, glided, swirled with shouts of laughter in the sun. Their lips were parted, their eyes shone, they were beautified.
She wore a white sweater and a crimson muffler. At first people looked at her and then they began smiling at her; and soon she was greeting all those who came regularly and smiling at fresh strangers every day.
There was a girl who came each morning from the London train. She was slender and fair, and she skated with the flying grace of a dream. Her pleated skirt swung out as she moved, her feet in their trim boots were narrow and small, and when she twirled her long slim legs showed to the knee. She appeared like a goddess in the midst of the cheerful sociable incompetent herd. Judith skated to and fro in front of her every day, hoping in vain for a look; for she was proud and absorbed and ardent, holding herself aloof and noticing no one, skating and skating till it got dark. One day she brought a handsome young man with her, and to him was not at all proud and indifferent.
They waltzed, they spun, they cut figures, they ran hand in hand, they laughed at each other; and when they rested they sat side by side talking and smoking cigarettes. Unlike his companion, the young man looked at Judith not once but many times: and then he smiled at her; then he whispered something to the goddess, and Judith’s heart beat wildly. But the cold scornful creature merely glanced once in a bored way, nodding and went on skating. When evening fell and they were preparing to go he looked up from taking off his boots as Judith passed, and radiantly smiling with white teeth and blue eyes, said ‘Good night.’ That was, to her regret, the only time she saw this handsome and friendly young man, whose wife she would have been pleased to be.
There was an old gentleman with glasses and a grey moustache who skated very sedately and who took a great deal of trouble to teach her the outside edge. He called her ‘my dear’, and his eyes gazed at her from behind his glasses with a hungry watery wistfulness. He had little if any conversation, but he would clear his throat and open his mouth as he looked at her as if for ever on the verge of some tremendous confidence. There was also a common but polite boy with pimples who could skate very fast indeed and who for several afternoons raced panting up and down the ice, while she hung on to the belt of his Norfolk jacket, and shrieked.
The tenth morning was Saturday. The London train brought several parties. The goddess had a little girl with her. There were many vulgar shouting groups of incompetents, and one or two quiet and moderately proficient ones. Judith noticed a curious trio of tall slender refined looking people—two boys and a girl. They sat on the bank and slowly ate sandwiches. When they had finished they got up and stood grouped together, making no movement to adjust the skates they carried. As soon as they stood up, Judith recognized them: Mariella, Julian and Charlie.
It had happened.
They had not changed much, but they had grown most alarmingly. Mariella must be close on six foot. Her body had merely been stretched out without much alteration of the long vague curves of childhood. She hardly dared look at the boys: they were enormous.
That was Charlie, really Charlie, that yellow-headed one, a little wild-looking, more beautiful than ever.... She felt choked.
At that moment Mariella’s eyes fell on her. A fearful blush and heart-beating went all through her, and she turned hastily away. But she could feel them observing, questioning, conferring about her. She executed a perfect half-circle on the outside edge, and felt that now, if they did recognise her, she could just bear it.
Somebody was calling from the edge.
‘Hey! Hey! Hi!’
She looked round cautiously. There was no doubt about it. Charlie was calling her, and they were all nodding and beckoning. They could, it seemed, easily bear to recognize her, and the sight of her skating towards them caused them no apparent faintness or anguish.
Charlie said rather peevishly:
‘I say, how do you do it? That turn thing. Who taught you?’
Judith was dumb.
‘She doesn’t recognize us,’ said Mariella with a little giggle. ‘You are Judith Earle, aren’t you?’
‘Oh yes. Oh, I do. Only you’ve grown so.’ She tried to look at them and to her horror felt the tears smart under her eyelids. ‘I didn’t expect——’ Her mouth was trembling, and she stopped in despair, hanging her head.
It was such a shock, such a deep pang of joy and misery.... They would not understand.... After all these years of thinking about them, seeing them so passionately, nursing in her imagination their unreal and dream-like existence, that they should all at once quite casually be there! It was almost as if dead people were to come to life. She prayed to be swallowed up in the ice.
‘Well, you’re no pigmy,’ said Julian.
And they all laughed. Then it was all right. They ceased to swell and waver before her eyes, settled down, began to grow real.
‘Well, I don’t know how it’s done,’ said Charlie, still rather angrily looking at the ice. ‘Mariella, what on earth did you drag us here for? You don’t know any more than I do how it’s done. What a stupid waste of a day!’ The stress of his petulance made his voice, which was breaking, squeak suddenly now and then, in the funniest way, so that nobody could have taken him seriously.
‘Well, you needn’t have come.’ Mariella’s voice was still cool and childish. With her little smile, she turned away from him to watch the skaters.
‘And my feet are so cold I can’t feel them,’ went on Charlie. ‘Three great gawps, that’s what we are, three great gawps.’ He looked at Mariella’s back. ‘And Mariella’s easily the gawpest.’
That seemed to unburden him, for he suddenly threw off his bad temper and laughed.
‘Put on your skates, chaps,’ he said. ‘We’ll do our damndest.’
He began to whistle and sat down, struggling with his boots.
‘Judith shall show us how it’s done. She is so extremely able.’ He looked at her, giving her his attention for the first time, and charmingly smiled. His eyes were amazing when they looked full at you—brilliant, icy-blue, a little too wide open. His long red girlish lips still parted a trifle in repose; and the whole head had a breath-taking extravagance of beauty.
‘How are you, Judith?’ he said. ‘Do you remember the dear old days?’
‘Yes, I do.’
What self-possession he had! She was not up to him. He lost interest in her, and went on with his boots, fiercely whistling.
‘Do you really still live here, Judith?’ said Mariella.
‘Yes, really. Where do you live?’
‘Well, we’re in London now. Grannie moved there to be near my school. Where do you go to school?’
‘I don’t. I have classes by myself with a man who coaches boys for Oxford and Cambridge. He’s a vicar. And then I have music lessons from a person who comes from London, and Daddy teaches me Greek and Latin. My Mother and Father don’t believe in girl’s schools.’ That sounded rude and priggish. She blushed and added. ‘But I do. It’s awfully dull by myself.’
‘Why don’t you get your Mother to send you to my school?’ said Mariella. ‘It’s ripping fun. You could come up to London every day.’
‘Mariella loves her school,’ said Julian. ‘It’s topping. She doesn’t learn anything and plays hockey all day. Judith’s parents want her to be educated, Mariella. You don’t understand. Isn’t that so, Judith?’
Judith blushed again and was afraid it was so.
‘I believe in female education,’ muttered Julian to his boots.
They had become extremely queer creatures as they grew up, thought Judith. The boys especially were very peculiar, with their height and pallor and their trick of over-emphatic speech. Julian was immensely tall and cadaverous, with a stormy, untidy, hideous face, and eloquent eyes that seemed always to be changing colour in their deep sockets. He actually had lines in his cheeks, and his nose was becoming hooked, with dilated, back-sweeping nostrils.
‘Well, I wish you’d come,’ said Mariella unruffled, after a silence. ‘It’s ripping. You’d love it.’
It was nice of Mariella to be so friendly and pressing. Perhaps she had always been very fond of you, had missed you.... Judith’s heart warmed.
‘I wish you’d come back and live here, Mariella. It was so lovely when you did.’
‘I’d like to,’ said Mariella complacently. ‘P’raps we will some day. If Grannie’s rheumatism would only get better we might come every summer.’
‘But it never will get better,’ said Julian. ‘Not at her age.’
The boots were all on at last, the skates fastened. They got up and wobbled out a few inches on to the ice. There was a chorus of ‘Hell!’ ‘Wow!’ ‘Goodness!’
Charlie slipped up with a crash, Mariella followed him.
‘It’s beastly,’ he said furiously. ‘You can’t keep your skates still. I think I’ve broken my wrist. I shall go home.’ The others took no notice. They wobbled further and further out, giggling. They were too tall and thin to balance properly, and their ankles kept on betraying them.
‘Come and help us, Judith,’ screamed Julian. ‘We’ve never skated before in our lives. We can’t stop. We’re too thin to be allowed to fall down.’
They were dragging each other on helplessly.
‘Come here,’ wailed Charlie. ‘Judith, come and help me to stand. Shan’t we fall in? Are you sure it’s safe? My feet are frozen.’
Judith giggled as she went from one to the other encouraging, admonishing, supporting. The three ridiculous sillies! They enjoyed their silliness, they enjoyed making her laugh, they were not a bit frightening after all. Never, never since she had bidden them good-bye years ago had been such warm and bubbling happiness. Everything delightful was really starting at last.
As they began to improve they became ambitious. They declared their desire to learn fancy skating, and Charlie swore he would cut a figure of eight before the day was out; and all the time they were simply no good at all. Out of the corner of an eye Judith saw the old gentleman and the boy in the Norfolk jacket wistfully looking on, and she ignored them.
‘Now, come along Mariella,’ said Charlie. ‘Take hands like this, crossed, and we’ll go for a glide.’ They sailed rather haltingly away.
Under Mariella’s blue wool cap the dark short hair curled softly upwards now, longer than the boyish crop of yore. Her face had preserved its pure and innocent mask. She was laughing, not as other people laughed, unreservedly in the enjoyment of physical pleasures, but rather as if she were making a concession to Charlie’s mood, and found the abandonment of laughter alien to her. There was still the curious likeness between the two clear bloodless faces, though Charlie’s was forever changing with quick emotions and Mariella’s was still, empty almost. They would understand each other, thought Judith. In spite of the friction that used to go on between them, they had always been more obviously, more oppressively blood-relations than any other members of the circle. With years the bond had become even more subtly defined.
Julian was left out. He had never taken any notice of Mariella, yet he had always been the one upon whom her light gaze had dwelt with a faint difference, as if it meant to dwell. In the old days it had sometimes seemed as if she would have been pleased—really pleased, not just indifferently agreeable as she generally was—if Julian had offered to take her for a beetle-walk. She appeared to have a slight respectful interest in him, and a manner which suggested, though only to a remorseless watcher, that she would have valued his good opinion. It still seemed so. When he was teasing her about her school, her eyes, uncertain yet dwelling, had fallen on him a moment; but now, as formerly, you could detect no affection between them.
‘We wondered if we should meet you,’ said Julian shyly. ‘I’m so glad we did.’
Then they had not completely forgotten. She blessed him for the assurance, which only he would have given.
‘I couldn’t believe it was you,’ she said. ‘I didn’t think I’d ever see you again. I did miss you after you went. I thought perhaps Martin might write to me, but he didn’t. How is Martin?’
‘He’s all right. We don’t see him so much now. His people are back from Africa and he spends most of the holidays with them.’ He smiled and added: ‘I remember Martin was terribly devoted to you. I must tell him I’ve seen you.’
‘And where’s Roddy?’
‘Oh, Roddy.... He’s all right. He’s in London. Roddy’s very grown up: he’s having dancing lessons.’ Julian snorted.
‘Does he still draw?’
‘I don’t know. Should think he’s too lazy.’
Julian had never liked Roddy.
‘Do you still compose, Julian?’
‘Oh, do you remember that?’ He smiled with pleasure.
‘Of course. The “Stag-Beetles” Dance. And “Spring with the Cuckoo in it.”’
‘Oh, that rot. Fancy your remembering!’ He looked at her in just the old way, amused but interested, thinking well of her.
‘I thought it was beautiful. Have you written anything lately?’
‘No. No time. I’ve given it all up. I’ve been working like mad for a scholarship. P’raps I’ll take to it again a bit at Oxford.’
He seemed to have become enthusiastic about it all at once, encouraged by her interest. He had not changed much.
‘And did you get your scholarship?’
‘Yes. Balliol. I go up next year.’ He was being brief and modest, actually blushing. But Balliol meant nothing to her: she was thinking of his great age.
‘You must be eighteen.’
‘Yes.’
‘D’you know, I remember all your birthdays.’
As she said it she almost cried again, it seemed such a confession of long-cherished vain hope and love. He stared at her, ready to be amused, and then, seeing her face, looked away suddenly, as if he half-understood and were astonished, embarrassed, touched.
‘Oh, look at those two,’ he said quickly.
Charlie had taken off his coat, and they were holding it up as a sail. With a pang of dismay Judith realized for the first time the ominous strength of the wind. It filled the coat full, and Mariella and Charlie, bearing it high in front of them, went sailing straight across the pond. They could not stop. They shrieked in laughter and agony and went ever faster. They were borne to the pond’s edge, stubbed their skates and fell violently in a heap on the grass.
Charlie lay on his back and moaned.
‘I’ve got a pain. I’ve got a pain. Oh, Mariella! Oh, God! Oh, all you people! The anguish, the sensation!—like the Scenic Railway—transports of horror and bliss. I thought: Never, never shall we stop. We went faster, and fas.... Oh, Mariella, your face.... I shall die....’
He writhed with laughter, the tears poured down his face. ‘I t-tried to say: drop the c—— I hadn’t any voice—Oh, what a feeling!... those skimming dreams.... O God!’
He shut his eyes exhausted.
Then soon he had to try again. Then they all tried, and were a nuisance to the other skaters. Every one looked at Charlie, and nobody was annoyed because of his beauty and radiant spirits, and his charming apologies when he got in the way.
Judith ached with giggling; even Mariella and Julian were wiping their eyes. Charlie was so excited that he looked quite feverish. In his enthusiasm he threw his arms wide and cried:
‘Oh, darlings!’—and Judith was thrilled because she felt herself included in the endearment.
‘You know,’ said Julian, ‘you’ll be sick to-night, Charlie, if you go on like this.’
So he was still the one to be sick.
A small cold mongrel dog came shivering, wriggling across the ice and rolled over before him, waving limp deprecatory paws. Charlie picked it up and wrapped it in his coat, crooning to it and kissing it.
‘Oh, what sweet paws you have, my chap. Mariella, his paws are particularly heart-breaking. Do look,—all blunt and tufted and uncontrolled. Don’t they melt you? Poor chap,—darling chap. You come along with me for a skate.’
He skated away with the dog in his arms, talking his special foolish language to it, and colliding with people at every other step.
Oh, he was strange, thought Judith, looking after him. She had no key to him: she could only dissect him and make notes, learn him by heart and marvel at him,—never hope to meet him some day suddenly, at a chance look, a trifling word, with that secret “Ah!”—that shock of inmost mysterious recognition, as she had once met Roddy.
She thought of Roddy dancing in London, urban and alarming. She saw him distinctly, his dark head, his yellowish pallor, his smile; and wished wildly that he had come instead of Charlie: Charlie who troubled her, made her heavy-hearted with the burden of his lavish indifferent brilliance.
The sharp, blue and white afternoon was paling to sunset. The pond flashed and glittered with empty light. In the middle rose the clump of withered flags, dry starved grasses and marsh plants, berried bushes and little willows,—the whole a blur of pastel shades, purplish-brown, fading green, yellow and russet, with here and there a burning shred of isolated colour,—a splash of crimson, a streak of gold. The whirr and scratch of skates murmured on the air, and the skaters wove without pause, swiftly, lightly, like flies on a ceiling. Beneath the ice the needling grass-blades and the little water-weeds were still, spellbound; outspread stiffly, delicately in multitudinous and infinitesimal loveliness.
As she stood alone gazing down at them Julian came back to her side and said:
‘Do you ever come to London?’
‘Hardly ever. If Daddy’s at home he generally takes me to a theatre at Christmas; and now and then I go with Mamma for clothes.’
‘Well, you’d better come up some time soon and we’ll go to a play. Fix it with Mariella.’
‘Oh!’
It couldn’t be true,—it could never happen. There was a scratch and stumble of skates, and the other two came to a wavering halt in front of them.
‘We must go,’ said Mariella.
‘Judith’s coming to go to a play with us,’ said Julian.
‘Oh, good,’ said Mariella, not interested.
‘When?’ snapped Julian. ‘Fix it.’
‘I don’t know,’ she said, with a quick glance at him. ‘We must ask Grannie. I’ll ask Grannie, Judith, and let you know to-morrow.’
‘Because we’re coming back to-morrow,’ broke in Charlie. ‘Julian, we must, mustn’t we? Will you be here, Judith?’
‘Oh yes.’
‘That’s good, because I shall need you. I need thee every hour. I shall have forgotten my breast-stroke by to-morrow. I do believe if we hadn’t found you, Judith, we should never have stepped on to the ice at all. We should just have looked at it and faded gracefully back to London. We are so very silly.’
He sat down to take off his boots, and began whistling—then burst out singing:
‘There were three sillies
Who stood like lilies——’
A pause—
‘Refusing to spin——’
Another pause—
‘Crying, Hey, Lackaday!
The ice will give way,
And we shall fall in——’
He pulled off his boots; and finished:
‘If Miss Earle they’d not met
They’d be standing there yet.’
‘Pretty poor,’ cried Julian.
‘Oh, I think it’s awfully good,’ said Judith.
Charlie bowed, and said:
‘I can do more like that.’
‘Go on, then.’
‘Not now. Pouf! I’m tired.’
He looked it. Save for the bright flush on each cheek his pallor was startling. His eyes looked dark in their shadowy rings, and he leaned back against Mariella while she gravely fastened his shoes and buttoned up his coat. When she put on his muffler he dragged it off again, crying:
‘Oh, Mariella. No! I’m so hot.’
‘You’re to wear it,’ she said quietly. ‘You’ll catch cold,’ and she wound it round his neck again, while he submitted and made faces at her, his eyes laughing into hers, like a child coaxing an elder to smiles.
‘Are you conceited and spoilt?’
All that gaiety and proud indifference, all that unconscious-seeming charm, that confident chatter—all might be the product of a complete self-consciousness. Surely he must look in the glass and adore his own reflection. She remembered her old dream of marrying him, and thought with a vast sorrowful prophetic sense of the many people who would yearn to him silently for love, while he went on his way, wanting none of them.
Against the dusk, his head, his face shone as if palely lit.
Narrowly she watched him; but there was no sign for her: all that brilliance of expression glancing and pausing around him, and nothing for her beyond a light smile or two, a casual appreciation of her temporary uses. He and Mariella had scarcely once said: ‘Do you remember?’ If they still cherished any of the past she was not in it. It was strange to think of such indifference, when they, with the other three, were all the pattern, all the colour and richness that had ever come into life.
In the dying light their mystery fell over them again, and they were as unattainable as ever. If only with the rare quality of their physical appearance they must always enslave her; and she felt worn out with the stress of them.
‘To-morrow,’ said Charlie, ‘we’ll bring Roddy.’
‘Yes. Come on,’ said Mariella. ‘We must hurry for our train.’
They tramped in silence across the cold solitude of the marsh, and the wind came after them, keen and menacing. When they arrived at the river’s edge, Charlie stood still, and looked across, saying dreamily:
‘There’s a light in the old house. I suppose that’s the caretaker person. We might look in to-morrow and surprise her. Doesn’t it look lonely?... I wish we would live there again. Where’s your house, Judith? I thought it was next door.’
‘So it is, but the trees hide it.’
Then she ferried them across the river in the punt, and parted from them on the other side, where the lane to the station branched off.
‘Well, see you to-morrow.’
Julian looked up at the sky.
‘I believe it’s thawing,’ he said. ‘I believe it’ll rain in the night.’
‘Rot!’ said Charlie. ‘Why—feel the ground.’
‘Yes, but the air’s milder. And look at the sky.’
To the east and north the frosty stars pointed their darts; but in the smoky, tumultuous west, black clouds devoured the last of the sun.
Panic seized Judith, and she hated Julian, wanted to strike him.
‘Rot! that doesn’t mean anything,’ said Charlie uneasily.
‘And listen to the wind.’
The wind was in the treetops, full and relentless, and driving the clouds.
‘Oh, shut up!’ said Charlie. ‘Can’t there be a wind without a thaw? And come on, can’t you, or we’ll miss our train.’
‘Good-night then.’
‘G’night, Judith. We’ll look out for you.’
‘I’ll be there.’
‘Goo’night.’
‘Good-night.’
Judith ran home, shutting eyes to the clouds, ears to the wind, and with the slam of the front door behind her striving to ignore the God of envy, hatred, malice and all uncharitableness whose portents were abroad in the sky.
‘To-morrow they are coming again and bringing Roddy. To-morrow I shall see Roddy. O God, be merciful!’
Towards dawn she woke and heard the blind, drearily sighing, futile hurry and hiss of the rain,—and said aloud in the darkness: ‘How can I bear it?’
Yet lured by sick fantastic hope she crossed the river that morning and made her way to the pond.
There was nobody there, save one small boy, sliding upon the ice through several inches of water and throwing up before him in his swift career two separate and divided fountains.
Then that was the end. They were lost again. They would not come back, they would not write, she would never go to London to see them. Even Julian would forget about her. They did not care, the rain was glad, there was nothing in the wide world to give her comfort. She turned from the rain-blurred place where their unreal lost images mocked at and confused her,—dreams within the far-off dream of happy yesterday.