3
At five o’clock Judith surprised the parlourmaid by taking off her hat in the hall, wiped her perspiring hands and announced herself.
At the threshold of the sitting room she paused and gasped. The room, magnified by fear, seemed full of giants in grey flannels. Mariella detached herself from a vast crowd and floated towards her.
‘Hullo!’ she said. ‘Do you want tea? I forgot about it. We never have tea. I needn’t introduce, need I? You know every one.’ She put a light hand for a moment on Judith’s arm, and the room began to sink and settle; but the faces of the boys-next-door were nothing but a blur before her eyes as she shook hands.
‘D’you remember which is which?’ said Mariella.
Now she would have to look up and answer, control this trembling, arrest this devouring blush.
‘Of course I do.’
She lifted her eyes, and saw them standing before her, smiling a trifle self-consciously. That gave her courage to smile back.
‘You’re Martin—you’re Roddy—you’re——’ she hesitated. Julian stood aloof, looking unyouthful and haughty. She finished lamely—‘Mr. F-Fyfe.’
There was a roar of laughter, a chorus of teasing voices to which, plunged once more in a welter of blushes and confusion, she could pay no heed.
‘I thought you mightn’t like—might think me—I didn’t know if—you looked as if you——’ she stammered.
‘I’m sorry, I’m sure, that you should feel the need of any such formality,’ said Julian stiffly. He too was blushing.
‘It was only his shyness,’ mocked a voice.
Judith thought: ‘After all, he was always the friendly one.’ That he too should be shy restored her self-confidence, and she said looking full at him and smiling:
‘I’m sorry. Julian then.’
‘That’s better,’ he said, still stiffly; but he smiled.
Their faces had become clear to her now; but there was still a point of trouble and strangeness in the room,—the queer-looking sallow young man Roddy. Her eyes fluttered over him and went on to Martin. He smiled at her, and she took a step nearer to him.
‘Are you at Cambridge?’ she said.
‘I am.’
‘That’s where I’m going.’
‘Are you really?’
‘For what purpose?’ said Roddy softly.
‘Oh, to learn. I want to learn everything about literature—English literature anyway, from the very beginning,’ she said earnestly.
‘That’s precisely what Martin’s aiming at. Isn’t it, Martin, you bookworm?’
‘I don’t get on much,’ said Martin with a swift confiding smile. ‘I’m such an idle devil. And so slow.’
She pondered.
‘I don’t think I’m particularly clever,’ she said. ‘Do you suppose most girls who go to College are?’
‘Martin and I think they must be,’ said Roddy, twinkling. ‘They look it, I will say.’
‘I saw some when I went for my examination. They were very plain.’ There was laughter; and she added in strict fairness: ‘There were two pretty ones,—two or three.’
‘Then you intend to become a young woman with really intellectual interests?’ said Roddy.
‘Oh yes. I think so.’
‘That’s rather serious.’
She became suddenly aware that they were all laughing at her and stopped, overcome with shame and dismay.
‘Never mind.’ Roddy was twinkling at her with irresistible gaiety, and his voice was full of caressing inflections. ‘Martin will be delighted to see you. But don’t go to Newnham or Girton. Awful places—Martin is terrified of them. Go to Trinity. He’ll chaperone you.’
‘Oh, give over, Roddy,’ said Martin indulgently smiling. ‘You’re too funny.’
‘I hope your appendicitis is better?’ asked Judith politely.
‘Much better, thank you.’ He made a little bow.
Nobody had anything more to say. They were not very good hosts. They stood around, making no effort, idly fingering and dropping the tags of conversation she offered them, as if she were the hostess and they most difficult guests. As in the old days, they formed their oppressive self-sufficient circle of blood-intimacy with its core of indifference if not hostility to the stranger. Charlie was dead, but now when they were all gathered together she felt him weighing, drawing them further aloof; and she wished miserably that she had not come.
They were all casually engaged by themselves. Roddy was cleaning his pipe, Martin and Mariella playing with a spaniel puppy. It floundered on to Martin’s lap, and a moment after:
‘Oh, again!’ came Mariella’s clear little pipe. ‘What an uncontrolled chap he is! I’m sorry, Martin.’
‘It’ll dry,’ said Martin equably surveying his trousers. ‘It’s nothing.’
Julian had sat down at the piano and was strumming pianissimo. Roddy took up the tune and whistled it.
‘What shall we do?’ said Mariella. She went on rolling the puppy.
Julian turned round in his playing and looked at Judith. Gratefully she went over and stood beside him. By the piano, watching Julian’s hands, she was isolated with him and need not be afraid.
‘Go on playing. Something of your own.’
He shook his head and said:
‘Oh, that’s all gone.’
What lines, what harshness the war had given his always furrowed face!
‘But it’ll come back.’
‘No. It was a feeble spark; and the God of battles has seen fit to snuff it. The war made some chaps poets—of sorts; but I never heard of it making anyone a musician.’
‘Well, you can still play.’
‘Oh, I strum. I strum.’ He sounded weary and disgusted. Was he saying to himself: ‘Christ! You bloody bore?’
‘I’d always feel—’ she struggled, ‘—compensated if I could strum as you do. Ever since I was little I’ve envied you to distraction.’
He cheered up a little and smiled, looking interested in the old way.
‘Play what you were playing last night.’
‘How do you know what I was playing last night?’
‘I was on the river and I heard you.’
‘Did you?’ He was flattered. It touched his imagination to think of himself playing out into the night to invisible listeners.
‘All alone, were you?’ He looked her over with alert interest.
‘Oh yes. I said to myself: that must be Mr. Fyfe playing.’
He laughed.
‘You know, you were monstrous.’
‘Not at all. It was you. You defied me to pretend I’d ever known you.’
‘Nonsense. I was looking forward to you. Last time was—When? Centuries ago.’
‘Yes. That skating time.’
‘Lord, yes. Another world.’
Abruptly he stopped his soft playing; and Charlie came pressing upon them, making himself remembered above all else on that day.
‘Why stuff indoors?’ said Mariella. ‘Come out, Judith.’
She followed Mariella almost light-heartedly. After all, she was the sort of girl who could talk to people, even amuse them. She had proved it with Julian; and success with the others might reasonably be expected to follow.
A child was playing on a rug under the cedar tree, and his nurse sat sewing beside him. Judith recognized her as a figure out of the old days, a dragon called Pinkie, Mariella’s nurse who had become her maid. Wrinkled, stern, with the fresh cheeks and clear innocent expression of an old nurse, she sat guarding Mariella’s son.
‘May I please take him, Pinkie?’ said Mariella. ‘Pinkie won’t let me touch him as a rule.’
‘You’re so careless,’ she said severely; then recognised Judith and beamed.
Mariella lifted the child easily and carried him under one arm to where the group of young men had formed by the river’s edge.
Judith watched him with a painful interest and wonder. Here in front of her was Charlie’s child: she must believe it.
He was a tall child of slight build and oddly mature looks for his two years. He had frail looking temples and a neck far too slender, it seemed, to support the large head covered with a shock of fine straight brown hair. He had Mariella’s dark lashes framing brilliant deep-set eyes, and nothing else of his parents save his pallor and a certain fine-boned distinction which no Fyfe could lack.
The circle was a barren thing; it could not stretch to enclose new life. Mariella’s child was outside and irrelevant. Sometimes a cousin put out a large hand to steady him, or whistled to him or made a grimace, squeaked his teddy-bear or shouted at him encouragingly when he fell down. They looked at him with tolerant amused faces like big dogs, mildly gratified when he paused, steadying himself for a moment with a hand on their knees; but they soon forgot about him. Julian alone appeared to have an interest in him: he watched him; and Mariella herself now and then for a moment watched Julian watching him.
It was absurd, incongruous, incredible that this should belong to Mariella, should have been begotten by Charlie, carried in her body for nine months, as any woman carries her child, born of her in the ordinary way with agony and joy, growing up to love and be loved by her, and to call her mother.
But anybody could have a child; even mysterious childish widows like Mariella, tragic dead young husbands like Charlie; the simple proof was there before her eyes. Yet Mariella was such a childless person by nature. It was as if her body had played a trick on her and conceived; but to the creature it had brought forth her unmaternal spirit bore no relationship. So it seemed; but you could never tell with Mariella.
‘Come here,’ said Judith, and held out her hand.
He stared, then edged away nervously.
‘Do you like children?’ asked Mariella politely.
‘I love them,’ said Judith, and then blushed, detecting a fatuous fervour in her voice. But, thank heaven, Roddy had strolled away with Martin and was out of hearing.
‘Do you?’ Mariella glanced at her and seemed to find nothing more to say. She pulled the puppy to her.
‘Good chap, go and play with Peter. Go on.’
‘Then Peter is his name.’
‘Michael Peter,’ emphasized Julian mockingly. ‘Mariella had the highest motives; but I fear she has done for him. Michael alone or Peter alone he might have stood up against—but the combination! I tremble for his adolescence. However he ought to have a spurious charm, at any rate until he leaves the university. The only hope is that he himself may find the double burden excessive, and cancel himself out to a healthy James or Henry. We could do with a Henry or so in our family. Perhaps after all we should commend your far-sightedness, Mariella?’
‘I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ she said in her little cheerful voice. ‘I think Michael Peter is a very nice name. And he’s quite a nice boy, isn’t he?’
He was running up and down the lawn with the puppy in pursuit, pawing at him, nipping his calves, tripping him up. At first he bore it equably, but after a while stopped in distress, pushing at the dog with impotent delicate hands, nervously exclaiming and as if expostulating with him in a language of his own, but not once looking towards any of them for assistance. The puppy crouched before him, and all at once let out a sharp yelp of excitement. He put his hands up to his ears. His lip shook.
‘Damn that puppy!’ said Julian furiously. He strode over to his nephew and lifted him in his arms.
‘The boy’s tired, Mariella, and you know it, and there you sit, calmly, calmly,—and let that damn fool noisy puppy bully him and pester him and smash his nerves....’
He was white. He stared with naked antagonism at Mariella, and the air seemed to quiver and grow taut between them. She got up swiftly to catch the puppy and touched her son’s head in passing.
‘Poor Peter-boy,’ she said quietly. ‘Silly boy! It’s all right.’
‘I must go,’ murmured Judith.
It was unbearable. She must slip away and hide from the shame and shock of her own perception of the suppressed hysteria.
‘Must you go?’ Mariella smiled at her with a sort of sweet blankness. ‘Well—you must come again soon. Come often.’
‘I’ll see you to the door,’ said Julian. ‘I’m taking the boy in.’
Without another word or look Mariella went away; and he marched off into the house, carrying the child; and Judith followed him, sick at heart.
Everything had gone wrong. Martin and Roddy had not returned and she dared not seek them to say good-night. Alas, they would not care whether she did so or not since they had not been sufficiently interested in her to stay beside her. Even Martin did not want her, preferred Roddy. She had hoped to gain assurance enough to look at Roddy, once, calmly, and see him as he was; but in the few glances they had exchanged she had seen nothing but an unreality so poignant, so burning that it blurred her whole mind and forced her eyes to escape, helpless. To-night when she was in bed they would all come before her, haunting and tormenting, trebly indifferent and unpossessed now that this longed-for meeting was accomplished, a bitter and fruitless fact. Imagination at least had been fecund, it had fed itself:—but the reality was as sterile as stone. What might she have done, she wondered, that she had not done, how should she have looked in order to please them? Was it her clothes or her looks or her idiotic seriousness about college that had condemned her to them? Bleakly pondering, she followed Julian into the sitting room.
He sat down at the piano with the boy on his knee, and began softly playing. Judith stood beside him.
After a little the child flung his head back against Julian’s shoulder, raptly listening. When he did this Julian’s face smoothed itself out and all but smiled. He continued to play, then stopped and said:
‘Sit down. You needn’t go yet,’—and continued his quiet music.
To free his arms she gently took the child from him and set him on her own lap, where he sat motionless and as if unconscious of the change.
Gradually as she watched the crooked fingers sliding along the keys from chord to chord, and saw around her the familiar room, the past stole over her. He was the boy Julian and she the half-dreaming privileged listener; and as if there had been no gap in their knowledge of each other they sat side by side in unselfconscious intimacy. What had there been to fear? She saw now that she would always be able to pick him up just where she had left him, and find him unchanged to her; she could say anything to him without danger of mockery or rebuff. But he had always been the easiest: the sense of blood-relationship was tempered in him by his critical intelligence; and he was always prepared at least to sharpen his wits against the stranger, if not to befriend him.
He paused and she said:
‘Nothing has changed here. I remember every single thing in the room and it’s all the same,—even to the inkstains on those boards. It’s like a dream to be back here talking to you—one of those dreams of remembered places where everything is so familiar it seems ominous. I’ve often had a dream like this——’
She stopped, wishing her last words unsaid; but he took her remark to be general and nodded, and leaned forward to look at Peter, lying wan and sleepy in her lap. He was very tired; but not fretful: only silent and languid. Julian touched his cheek.
‘And is Peter part of the dream too?’ he asked softly.
‘Yes. Isn’t he?’
He was the passive, waiting core of the ominousness, the unexpected thing you shrank from yet knew you had to come back to find. In the dream, it was quite natural to sit there with Julian, holding Charlie’s child.
‘Isn’t it strange,’ he said musingly, ‘that this is the only proof—the only proof that Charlie ever lived? A child! Not another whisper from him.... I haven’t even a letter. I suppose she has.’ An utter misery showed for a moment in his face, and he paused before adding: ‘And no portrait. Do you remember him?’
‘Of course.’ Her throat ached with tears. ‘He was the most beautiful person——’
‘Yes he was. A spring of beauty. He didn’t care about that, you know, in spite of what people said. His physical brilliance somehow obscured his character, I think, made it difficult to judge. But he had a very simple heart.’
Was it true? Who had ever known Charlie’s heart? Was not Julian speaking as it were in epitaphs, as if his brother had become unreal to him,—a symbol for grief,—the individual ghost forgotten? Perhaps Mariella alone of all people had known his heart—strange thought!—and still had him quick within her; but she would never tell.
‘It’s not often I speak of him to anyone,’ said Julian; and his usually narrow swift-glancing eyes suddenly opened wide and held hers as if he had some unendurable thought. They were pits of misery. What was he remembering?
After a long silence he took the boy on his lap again and said softly:
‘Peter shall play.’
Peter put out both his hands, and carefully, delicately dropped them on the keys, listening and smiling.
‘Is he musical?’
Julian nodded.
‘Oh yes. He’s that—more or less. I seem to detect all the symptoms.’
He looked down at the leaning head on his shoulder with a sort of harsh tenderness; and after a while he spoke again as if out of a deep musing.
‘What, one asks oneself, is she going to do about him?’
‘Mariella?’
‘Yes.’
‘Well—it’s more or less mechanical, with a boy, isn’t it? School and university,—and in his case, musical instruments?’
‘How wretched he’s going to be,’ he said fiercely, ‘Can’t you see?’
‘She wouldn’t let him be wretched,’ she said, startled.
‘She?—she won’t know it! And if she did, she’d be helpless.’
‘Well, he’s got you.’
‘Me!’ He gave his bark of laughter.
‘I mean—you like him,’ she ventured timidly.
‘I can’t stand brats. And they can’t stand me.’
‘I’m not talking about brats. I’m talking about Peter. I thought you liked him.’
He laughed.
‘You look so shocked. Do you like brats then?’
‘Yes.’
‘Hmm—Well, I dare say Mariella says the same. In fact, I’ve heard her. She’s very correct, poor darling, in all her little contributions.’ He looked at the clock. ‘It’s time I took him up. Wait for me.’
When he came back he laughed again.
‘You still look shocked. I’m not a nice man, am I?’
‘I’m not thinking about you.’
After a pause he said:
‘It’s all right, Judy. You’re right. I do like him. But because I’m bound to feel, must I refuse to think?’
‘Think what?’
‘That he ought never to have been born.’
‘Oh!’ she blushed, horrified.
He flung at her:
‘What do you wish for the people you love? Life?’
‘Of course. Don’t you?’ She was confused, out of her depth.
‘No—God, no!’
‘Then what?’
‘Unconsciousness. Heavenly, heavenly annihilation.’
‘Then why don’t you kill him?’ She was shocked at the sound of her own words.
‘Because I don’t love him enough.’ He laughed. ‘Luckily I don’t love anyone enough—never shall. Not even myself.’ He turned to the window and said, speaking low, with strained composure: ‘Sometimes—in moments of clear vision—I see it all, the whole futile sickening farce. But it gets obscured. So my friends are safe. Besides, I’m so damned emotional: if they implored me to save them I shouldn’t have the heart to argue how much wiser they’d be to die.’
She wondered with alarm if he were mad and sat silent, waiting in vain for an intelligent counter-argument to present itself. Finally she stammered:
‘But it’s not a futile sickening farce to normal people.’
‘Oh, normal people! they’re the whole trouble. They don’t think. They don’t see that you can’t miss anything of which you’ve never been conscious. All the things for which they value life—their food, their loves and lusts and little schemes and athletic exercises, all the little excitements—what are they but a desperate questioning: ‘What shall I do to be happy, to fill up the emptiness, leaven the dreariness? How can I best cheat myself and God?’ And, strange to say, they don’t think what a lot of trouble would have been saved if they’d never been—never had to go hunting for their pleasures or flying from their pains. A trivial agitation that should never have begun; and back into nothing again. How silly!... As you may have guessed, I am not altogether convinced of the One Increasing Purpose. I have the misfortune to be doubtful of the objective value of life, and especially of its pains. Neither do my own griefs either interest or purify me. So you see——’
He turned from the window and smiled at her.
‘Yet even I have my compensations: music, food, beautiful people, conversation—or should I say monologue?—especially this sort of bogus philosophy to which you have been so patiently listening. Do you agree with me, by the way?’
‘No. Do you?’
He laughed and shrugged.
‘Still,’ she added, ‘it’s a point of view. I’ll think about it. I can’t think quickly. But oh!—--’ She stopped.
‘What?’
‘I’m so thankful I’ve been born.’ She blushed. ‘Even if I knew you were right I wouldn’t feel it.’
‘Ah, you’ve never bored yourself. Perhaps you never will. I hope and believe it’s unlikely.’
She looked at him with distress. Poor Julian! He had to be theatrical, but his unhappiness was sincere enough. His jesting was so humourless, so affected that it crushed the spirit; and all his talking seemed less a normal exercise than a forced hysterical activity assumed to ease sharp wretchedness. It was not fair to judge and dislike him: he was a sick man.
He sat down again at the piano, and she rose on an impulse and went and stood beside him.
‘Some chaps dance,’ he said. ‘They haven’t stopped dancing since they’ve been back. I play——’ He plunged into a medley of ragtime—‘and play—and play—and play. Syncopation—gets you—right on the nerves—like cocaine—No wonder it’s popular.’
‘Do you like it?’
‘Intellectually,’ he said, ‘I adore it. It’s so clever.’
He played on loudly, rapidly, with pyrotechnical brilliance, then stopped. ‘My passions, however, are too debile to be stirred.’
He flung round on the piano stool and dropped his face into his hands, rubbing his eyes wearily.
‘Julian—I wish you weren’t—I wish you could——’
He looked up, startled, saw her expression, looked quickly away again and gave an embarrassed laugh like a boy.
‘It’s all right,’ he said, ‘You needn’t take any notice of me. I’m being a bore. I’m sorry.’ The last words were faintly husky.
‘Oh, you’re not a bore, you’re not! Only—don’t be so miserable.’
In the awkward silence that followed she said:
‘I must go.’
‘No, you’re not to go,’ he said gently. ‘Stay and talk to me.’ He paused. ‘The trouble is, I can’t sleep, you know, and it makes me a bit jumpy. I don’t like my thoughts, and they will, they will be thought about. But I shall get better in time.’
‘Poor Julian!’
He allowed his face to relax, and his manner was suddenly quiet and simple, almost happy: the unexpected sympathy had made him cheerful.
‘You mustn’t go, Judith, you must stay to supper.’
‘I can’t. What will Mariella say?’
‘Mariella doesn’t say. Whether she thinks is the problem,—or even feels. Is she a very remarkable person? Or is it simply arrested development?’
‘No. I don’t think so.’
‘Not?’
She smiled to herself, struck with a fancy.
‘Perhaps she’s a fairy, Julian.’
As she said it she grew suddenly thoughtful; for it had flashed upon her that perhaps that was the explanation of Roddy; perhaps he was a fairy, and in that case it was no use—he would never....
‘A fairy. I never thought of that.’ He mused, pleased with the idea. ‘You know it must mean something, that nobody’s ever suggested giving her a petit nom, or curtailing the mouthful; she’s always been Mariella.’
He began humming a little tune in his contentment. Quickly she said:
‘Just to go back to Peter. You don’t mean it, do you? Why should he be wretched? Think of the things you can teach him. You know you’ll love that.’
He looked a trifle dashed; but after a moment his face cleared again, and his eyes smiled kindly at her.
‘Don’t worry. At all events, I’ll see he’s not ill-treated—except in my own way. That is, if she’ll let me. She will. She’s very good-tempered, I must say. She’s never allowed me to quarrel with her. She well might have.’
He looked like brooding again; but seeing her gazing at him anxiously, added:
‘It’s odd how natural it seems to be talking to you alone like this. You haven’t changed a bit. I always remember you listening so solemnly and staring at me. I’m so glad I’ve found you again. I could always talk to you.’
‘At me,’ she corrected.
He made a face at her, but looked cheerful. She had always known how near the edge to venture without upsetting him. He hummed his little tune again, then played it on the piano.
‘I think I made that up.... It’s rather a nice little tune. Perhaps I’ll take up my music seriously again.’
‘Oh, you must, Julian. It is so well worth it: such a special talent.’
He looked at her with sudden attention.
‘How old are you, Judith?’
‘Seventeen. Nearly eighteen.’
He studied her.
‘You must put your hair up.’
‘Must I?’
‘Yes, because then you’ll be beautiful.’
She was still speechless when Mariella, Martin, two Great Danes and the puppy came in.
‘Hullo!’ said Mariella. ‘Still here?’
‘I’m afraid so. But I’m just going.’
‘She’s not. She’s staying to supper,’ said Julian.
‘Oh, good,’ said Martin surprisingly; and his shy red face smiled at her.
‘Of course you must,’ said Mariella cheerfully. ‘We’re just going to eat now. Where’s Roddy?’
‘He stayed down at the boathouse. He said he’d come soon.’
‘He’d better,’ said Julian, and turning to Judith explained politely: ‘What with poor Martin having to build himself up so, experience has proved it’s wiser to be punctual.’
‘I’ll go and fetch him,’ said Judith, to her own surprise.
She left them amicably wrestling, and escaped light-heartedly into the garden. The cool air refreshed her brain, shaken and excited from its contact with Julian; and she walked slowly to the boathouse by the shrubbery path, sniffing as she went at wild cherry, japonica, almond and plum. It was joy to look for and recognize afresh the beauties of the garden; its unforgotten corners,—places of childish enchantment. Somewhere near, under the laurel, was the rabbit’s grave. She remembered that evening, how she had been shaken with revelation. This was just such another mysterious and poignant fall of the light: anything might happen. Her senses were so overstrung that the slightest physical impression hit her sharply, with a shock.
There on the raft was the curious young man Roddy. He raised his head from the examination of an old red-painted canoe, and smiled when he saw her.
‘I’m sent to say supper’s ready.’
‘Thank you very much. I’ll come.’
‘I’m staying to supper.’ She smiled radiantly at him, sure of herself and full of an immense amusement.
‘I’m delighted.’
His golden-brown eyes sent her their clear and shallow light.
‘What are you doing?’
‘Seeing if this old canoe is sea-worthy. You see, there’s a leak, but I don’t think it’s anything much. I’ll leave her in the water over-night. I want to rig her up with a sail.’ He stroked the canoe lovingly.
‘You like going in boats, don’t you?’
‘I suppose I do rather.’
‘I like it too. Especially at night.’
But he would not give himself away. She saw him slipping down the stream, alone in his canoe, the night before, but she was not to know it, she could not say: ‘I saw you.’
He bent over his canoe, fingering the wood, then straightened himself and stood looking down the long willow-bordered stretch of water. The sun had gone out of it and it was a quiet grey limpid solitude. A white owl flew over, swooping suddenly low.
‘There he goes,’ said Roddy softly. ‘He goes every evening.’
‘Yes, I know.’
She smiled still in her immense mysterious amusement. She saw him look up at the poplar from whence the owl had come, and as he did so his whole image was flung imperishably on her mind. She saw the portrait of a young man, with features a trifle blurred and indeterminate, as if he had just waked up; the dark hair faintly ruffled and shining, the expression secret-looking, with something proud and sensual and cynical, far older than his years, in the short full curve of his lips and the heaviness of his under-lids. She saw all the strange blend of likeness and unlikeness to the boy Roddy which he presented without a clue.
He caught her smile and smiled back, all his queer face breaking up in intimate twinklings, and the mouth parting and going downward in its bitter-sweet way. They smiled into each other’s eyes; and all at once the light in his seemed to gather to a point and become fixed, dwelling on her for a moment.
‘Well?’ he said at last; for they still lingered uncertainly, as if aware of something between them that kept them hesitating, watching, listening subconsciously, each waiting on the other for a decisive action.
He spread out his hands and looked down at them; a nervous gesture and look she remembered with a pang.
‘Yes, we must go,’ she said softly.
At supper he sat opposite to her, and twinkled at her incessantly, as if encouraging her to continue to share with him a secret joke. But, confused amongst them all, she had lost her sense of vast amusement and assurance; she was unhappy because he was a stranger laughing at her and she could not laugh back.
Beside him was the face of Martin, staring solemnly, with absorption, watching her mouth when she spoke, her eyes when she glanced at him.
Thank God the meal was soon over.
A gay clipped exhilarating dance tune sounded from the drawing-room. Roddy had turned on the gramophone. He came and took Mariella without a word and they glided off together. Judith stayed with Julian and Martin in the verandah, looking in at them. She was frightened; she could not dance, so she would be no use to Roddy.
‘Do you dance, Julian?’
‘No. At least only with two people.’
Alas,—wounding reminder of his elegant unknown world where she had no place!... She blushed in the dusk.
‘Julian’s very lordly about his dancing;’ said Martin. ‘I expect he’s rotten really.’
‘It may be,’ said Julian, stung and irritable. ‘It may be that I therefore bestow the burden of my gyrations on the only two creatures of my acquaintance whose rottenness equals mine. It may be that I derive more satisfaction from the idea of this artistic whole of rottenness than from the physical delights of promiscuous contact.’
‘It may be,’ said Martin pleasantly, unperturbed.
Julian hunched his shoulders and went away, clouded by a dreadful mood.
‘Poor old Ju,’ said Martin softly.
‘Yes, poor thing.’ Her voice implied how well she understood, and he looked grateful.
In the drawing-room, Roddy and Mariella moved like a dream, smoothly turning, pausing and swaying, quite silent.
‘Well, shall we?’ Martin smiled down at her.
Now she must confess.
‘I can’t, Martin, I don’t know how. I’ve never learnt. I haven’t ever——’ Shame and despair flooded her.
‘Oh, you’ll soon learn,’ he said cheerfully. ‘Come and try.’
‘Oh, I couldn’t.’
She glanced at the competent interweaving feet of Mariella and Roddy, at Marietta’s slender back pivoting gracefully from the hips, at Roddy’s composed dancing-face and shoulders. She could not let them see her stumbling and struggling.
‘Well, come and practise in the hall. Here now. Can you hear the music? Follow me. This is a fox-trot. Look, your feet between my feet. Now just go backwards, following my movements. Don’t think about it. If you step on my feet it’s my fault and vice versa. Now—short, long, short, two short. Don’t keep your back so stiff,—quite free and supple but quite upright.’
‘Do it by yourself,’ said Judith perspiring with anxiety. ‘Then I can see.’
He chasséd solemnly round the hall, pausing now and then to show her how he brought his feet together; then, with a firm hand on her shoulder-blades he made her follow him.
‘That’s good. It’s coming. Oh, good! Sorry, that was my fault. You’ve got the trick now.’
All at once the music had got into her limbs; it seemed impossible not to move to it.
‘But you can!’ said Martin, letting her go and beaming at her in joyful surprise.
‘Come back into the drawing-room,’ said Judith, exalted. They went.
‘Now,’ she said trembling.
Martin put his arm round her and they glided off. It was easier than walking, it was more delicious than swimming or climbing; her body had always known how it was done. Martin looked down at her with eloquent eyes and said:
‘You know, you’re marvellous. I didn’t know anyone could learn so quickly.’
‘It’s because I’ve had such a good teacher,’ she said sweetly.
They went on dancing, and every now and then she looked up and smiled at him and his eyes shone and smiled in answer, happy because of her pleasure. He really was a dear. In his looks he had improved beyond expectation. He was still a little red, a little coltish and untidy, but his figure was impressive, with powerful heavy shoulders and narrow hips; and the muscles of his thigh and calf bulged beneath his trousers. His head with the brown wings of hair brushed flat and straight on it, was finely set, his eyes were dark and warm, kindly rather than intelligent; his nose was biggish and thick, his mouth long, thin and rather ineffectual, with a faint twitch at one corner,—the corner that lifted first, swiftly, when he smiled his frequent shy smile. His teeth were magnificent; and he smelt a little of Virginian cigarettes.
‘You must dance with Roddy,’ said Martin. ‘He’s ever so much better than I am.’
Roddy and Mariella were dancing in the porch now, not speaking or looking about them. The record came to an end, but they went on whirling while Martin sought a new tune and set it going; then they glided forward again.
Roddy had forgotten her: she was not up to his dancing.
At last Mariella stopped and disengaged herself.
‘I want to dance with Martin now,’ she said.
Roddy left her and strolled over to Judith.
‘Been giving Martin a dancing-lesson?’ he said.
‘Goodness, no! He’s been teaching me. I didn’t know how.’
‘Oh?—How did you get on?’
‘Quite well, thank you. It’s easy. I think I can dance now.’
‘Good!’
It was plain he was not interested; or else was incredulous. He thought she was just a stumbling novice; he was not going to dance with her or even offer to go on teaching her. Roddy would never have bothered to give her hints or be patient while she was awkward. He was so good himself that he could not condescend to incompetence. But Judith, still, though more doubtfully, exalted, said:
‘Shall we dance?’
He looked surprised.
‘All right. Certainly. Just let me cool down a bit.’
He was not in any hurry. He sat on the table and watched Marietta’s neatly moving feet.
‘She’s good at her stuff,’ he said.
‘Do you adore dancing?’
‘Well, I don’t know that I adore it. It’s fun once in a way.’
‘It seems funny not to be mad about a thing if you can do it so beautifully.’
He looked at her with amusement.
She must remember not to ask Roddy if he adored things. His secret life went on in a place where such states of feeling were unknown.
‘Shall we?’ he said at last.
She was not going to be able to do it; the rhythm had gone out of her limbs. He was going to be too good for her and she would stumble and he would get disgusted and not dance with her any more....
After a few moments of anguish, suddenly she could, after all. Long light movements flowed from her body.
Roddy looked down.
‘But you can dance,’ he said.
‘I told you I could. You didn’t believe me.’
He laughed.
‘You don’t mean to tell me you’ve never danced before?’
‘Never.’
‘Swear?’
‘Cross my heart.’
‘But of course,’ said Roddy, ‘you couldn’t help dancing, such a beautiful mover as you.’
He had really said that! She lifted her face and glowed at him: life was too, too rich.
The music came to an end. Roddy stood still with his arm round her waist and called imperiously to Martin for another tune.
‘Come on,’ he said, and tightened his arm round her. You might almost dare to suppose he was a little, a very little exalted too.
‘But you do love it, Roddy!’
He looked down at her and smiled.
‘Sometimes.’
‘Do you now?’
‘Yes.’
‘Roddy!’
She was silenced by happiness.
They were alone now. Martin and Mariella were on the verandah, and she heard Mariella say:
‘Darlin’ Martin, fetch me my coat.’
‘Mariella’s very fond of Martin, isn’t she?’
‘I don’t know. I suppose she is. What makes you think so?’
‘I just heard her call him darling just now.’
He laughed.
‘Oh yes. She does that now and again.’
‘She doesn’t call you darling,’ said Judith twinkling.
‘No. Nobody ever does.’
‘Not anybody,—ever?’
‘Not anybody—ever.’
‘What a pity! And it is so enjoyable to be called darling.’
‘I’ve no doubt it is. I tell you I’ve no experience.’ He peered into her face, and repeated piteously: ‘Nobody ever does.’
Judith laughed aloud.
‘I will,’ she heard her own voice saying.
‘You really will?’
She waited.
‘Go on,’ he urged.
‘Go on, go on!’ he shouted triumphantly.
‘Oh, be quiet!’
‘Please!...’
‘No....’
She hid her face away from him and blushed. Laughing silently he gathered her up and started whirling, whirling. A deeper dream started. The room was a blur, flying, sinking away; only Roddy’s dark red tie and the line of his cheek and chin above it were real.
She laughed and gasped, clinging to him.
‘Giddy?’
‘Yes. No. I don’t know.’
He stopped and looked at her amusedly.
‘Oh, I am.’
She threw out an arm blindly and he caught it and supported her.
‘Come out on the verandah and get sober,’ he said.
The spring night greeted them with a chill fragrance. Roddy’s eyes were so bright that she could see them shining, brimming with amusement in the dim light.
‘What are you looking at, Roddy?’
‘You.’
‘I can see your eyes. Can you see mine?’ He bent his head over hers.
‘Yes, of course. They’re like stars. Lovely dark eyes.’
‘Are they?... Roddy paying compliments,—how funny! Roddy, I remember you. Do you remember yourself when we were children?’
‘Not much. I never remember the past. I suppose I’m not interested enough—or interesting enough.’
She felt checked, and dared not ask the ‘What do you remember about me?’ which should have opened the warm little paths of childish reminiscence. Roddy had no desire to recall the uninteresting figures of himself and the little girl Judith: that trifling relationship had been brushed away as soon as it had ceased. She must realize that, for him, no long threads came dragging from the web of the past, tangling the present.
She stared into the dark garden, wondering what safe topic to propose.
‘When do you go back to Paris, Roddy?’
‘Oh,—soon, I suppose.’
‘Do you work very hard there?’
‘Terribly hard.’
‘Drawing or painting?’
‘Some of both. Nothing of either.’
‘I suppose you wouldn’t show me some of your things?’
‘Couldn’t. I’ve nothing here. I’m having a rest.’ He twinkled at her.
‘What a pity! I should so have loved.... Which are you best at, drawing or painting?’
‘Oh, I don’t know. Drawing, I think. But I’m not any good. I just waste time.’
‘Why do you?’
‘Why indeed?’
‘How funny! If I could draw I’d draw all day. I’d be so excited at being able to, I’d go on and on. I’d be so horrid and enthusiastic. I wouldn’t have any sense of humour about it. You’d think me nauseating, wouldn’t you?’
He nodded, smiling.
‘But I’d draw. I’d be the best drawer in the world. Oh, you are lucky! I do envy people with a specialty, and I do love them. Isn’t it funny how fingers take naturally to one form of activity and not to another? Mine—mine—’ she spread them out and looked at them—‘mine wouldn’t draw if I spent all my life trying to make them; but—they know how to touch a piano—only a little of course; but they understand that without having it explained. And some fingers can make lovely things with a needle and thread and a bit of stuff. There’s another mystery! Then there are the machine makers, and the ones that can use knives like artists to take away bits of people or put bits in,—and the ones that can remove pain just by touching.... Some people are their hands, aren’t they? They understand with them. But most people have idiot hands,—destroyers. Roddy, why are some of our senses always idiots? All my senses are semi-imbecile, and I’m better off than lots of people, I suppose. Seems to me, what they call the norm is practically idiot, and any departure is just a little more or less so. Yet one has this idea of perfection——’
She stopped abruptly. He was not interested, and his face in the wan light was a blank which might be hiding mockery or distrust of a girl who affected vaporous philosophizings, trying, no doubt, to appear clever. She flushed. Such stuff had been her food for years, chewed over secretly, or confided to the one friend, the Roddy of her imagination; and here she was in the foolishness of her elation pouring it out to this unmoved young man who thought—she must remember this—that he was meeting her for the first time. It was plain, it must be plain to him, that she was a person with no notion of the rules of behaviour.
‘Come back and dance,’ suggested Roddy at last.
It was curious how much easier it was to get on with Roddy if he had an arm round you. His mind, the whole of him, came freely to meet you then; there was entire happiness, entire peace and harmony. It was far more difficult to find him on the plane where only minds, not senses, had contact,—the plane on which a Julian, one whose physical touch could never be desirable, was reached without any groping. Roddy put something in the way. He guarded himself almost as if he suspected you of trying to catch him out; or of taking an impertinent interest in him. His mind would be thrilling if you could dig it out: all hidden and withheld things were.
‘I don’t want ever to stop,’ she said suddenly.
‘We won’t,’ he promised and held her closer, as if he were as much caught away and dazed as she.
He bent his head and whispered laughingly:
‘Just say it.’
‘That word you like—in your delicious voice—just as a kindness.’
‘No, I won’t—now.’
‘When will you?’
‘You are naughty, Roddy.... Perhaps when I know you better.’
‘You’ll never know me better than you do now.’
‘Don’t say that. Why do you?’
‘There’s nothing more to know.’
‘Oh, if there’s nothing more to know, then you are——’
‘What?’
‘More or less—as far as I can tell——’
‘What?’
She whispered.
‘A darling.’
‘Ah, thank you.’ He added rapidly, in the full soft voice of laughter: ‘Thank you, darling.’
‘Now we’ve both said it. Roddy, aren’t we absurd?’
‘No, very sensible.’
‘Did you like it?’
‘I adored it.’
‘Roddy, are we flirting?’
‘Are we?’
‘If we are, it’s your fault. You make me feel sort of stimulated. I didn’t flirt with Martin.’
‘I’m very glad to hear it. Martin wouldn’t have liked it at all.’
They laughed and danced on. He held her very close, the cold rim of his ear touching her forehead.
‘To think I’ve never danced before!’
‘Why haven’t you?’
‘Nobody to dance with.’
‘Nobody?’
‘Nobody at all.’
‘Have you been living on your little lone since I went away?’
‘Well, now I’ve come back we’ll dance a lot, won’t we?’
‘Oh yes. But you’ll disappear again, I know you will.’
‘Not yet. And not for long.’
She could have cried, he was so comforting.
He spun, holding her tightly, stopped, held her a moment more, and let her go as the record came to an end. She watched him as he went, with that secret of idle grace in his movements, to switch off the gramophone. He looked pale and composed as ever, while she was flushed, throbbing and exhausted with excitement. She stood at the open French windows and leaned towards the cool night air; and he found her silent when he came back.
‘A penny for them, Judith.’
‘I was thinking—what extraordinary things one says. I suppose it’s the dancing. It seems so incredibly easy to behave as one naturally wouldn’t——’
‘I find that myself,’ he said solemnly.
‘The—the unsuitable things that generally stay inside one’s head,—they spring to one’s lips, don’t they?’
‘They do.’
‘Values are quite changed. Don’t you think so?’
She must make him realize that she was not really a cheap flirtatious creature: re-establish her dignity in his eyes. She had behaved so lightly he might be led to think of her and treat her without respect, and laugh at her behind her back after she had ceased to divert him. It was very worrying.
‘Quite, quite changed,’ he said.
‘Isn’t it queer? I suppose—it doesn’t do much harm? One oughtn’t to think worse of a person for——’
He threw back his head to laugh at his ease, silently, as always, as if his joke were too deep down and individual for audible laughter.
‘Are you laughing at me, Roddy?’
‘I can’t help it. You’re so terribly funny. You’re the funniest person I’ve ever met.’
‘You’re so incredibly serious.’
‘I’m not—not always.’
‘I’m afraid you are. I’m afraid you’re terribly introspective.’
‘Am I? Is that wrong? Roddy, please don’t laugh at me. It leaves me out if you laugh by yourself like that. I could laugh with you at any thing, if you’d let me——’ she pleaded.
‘Anything—even yourself?’
She pondered.
‘I don’t know. Perhaps not. That’s a weakness, isn’t it?’
‘There you go again! Never mind about your weaknesses. I was only teasing you. Let me see you smile.’
To obey him her lips went upwards sorrowfully; but when she saw his laughing, coaxing face, her heart had to lift too.
‘Well you’re very nice anyway,’ he said, ‘serious or no. Have you forgiven me?’
‘Oh yes. Yes, Roddy.’
As she said it she realised with a passing prophetic sense of helplessness and joy and fear that whatever he did she would always inevitably forgive him. But she must not tell him that, yet.
Martin and Mariella came strolling back from the garden, the spark of their cigarettes going before them. She heard Mariella’s little laugh bubbling out contentedly, her childish voice answering his in an easy chatter. Yes, Mariella was happy with Martin. He was polite and kind to her, and she was equal to him without effort. As she came into the light Judith was struck afresh by the lack of all emphasis, the careful absence of any one memorable feature in the memorable whole of her beauty. Her lovely athletic body effaced itself in simple clothes of no particular fashion or cut; subdued in colour, moderately long, moderately low in their necks and short in their sleeves,—negative clothes that nevertheless were distinguished, and said “Mariella” and nothing else in the world.
It was time to go.
‘Oh, must you?’ said Mariella.
Roddy said not a word. He had detached himself as soon as the others came in, and was idly busy in a corner, tuning a guitar. Either he had not heard or was not interested. It seemed impossible that his face had been off its guard a few minutes ago, warming and lighting in swift response.
Julian lounged in again silently, a book in his hand. He looked tired and fierce, as if daring her to remember his recent lapse into friendliness. The strange disheartening people....
She stammered: ‘Well, good-night everybody. Thank you so much.’
‘One of the boys will see you home,’ said Mariella dubiously.
‘Oh no. It isn’t necessary. I’ll just climb over the wall if the gate’s locked. I shall be quite all right, honestly....’
There was no need to protest. They dismissed the matter in silence.
‘Well, come in any time,’ said Mariella.
But any time was no good. She had dreaded just such a non-committal invitation. Any time probably meant never. Despondently she looked back to smile her thanks; and as her eyes took in the group of them standing there looking at her, she felt suddenly startled.
But they were all alike!
So strange, so diverse in feature and colour, they yet had grown up with this overpowering likeness; as if one mind had thought them all out and set upon them, in spite of variations, the unmistakable stamp of itself. Alone among all the tall distinguished creatures Roddy made sharp departure, and preserved, though not wholly intact, the profounder individuality of his unimportant features.