5
Martin was a great athlete. He was always rowing, always training; but once or twice he borrowed a motor-bicycle and came out to tea, when Judith and Jennifer gave combined tea-parties to young men. On these occasions his face was very red and he looked too big for the room. He was quite silent and stared with concentration at Judith and Jennifer alternately; and seemed not to take to his fellow guests. He was undoubtedly a heavy young man to have at a tea-party—a bad mixer. Jennifer’s jokes, oaths and sallies brought no gleam to his countenance, and Jennifer was bored with him. Impossible to convince her that Martin was not a dull young man.
Martin dull?...
God-like in form he dived from the raft and swam over the river, swiftly, with laughter, water and sun upon his face. He sat among them all and smoked his pipe, looking kindly and comforting. You could depend on his eyes solicitously watching, his smile inviting you to come in, when all the others, neither kindly nor comforting, had shut the door and gone away. He was the one to whom Mariella chattered at her ease and made little childish jokes, calling him ‘darlin’,’ looking at him with candour and affection, sometimes even with a glint of mischief, as if she were a girl like any other girl; as if that something never fell across her clear face and obscured it. He shared a bedroom with Roddy; had a little screen at home, so he said, which Roddy had decorated, and given to him; he came walking up garden-paths with Roddy laughing and talking at his side.
In the darkness under the cherry-tree he bent his head and tried to speak, twisting his scrap of cherry, trembling with enchantment. He had been a thing to fly from, surprised, with beating heart.
But when Jennifer said he was a dull young man, it was very difficult to argue with her; for it seemed almost as if, transplanted alone to this new world, he were indeed quite dull, rather ordinary.
He came to tea three times. The last time Judith went with him down the stairs—his deliberate, assured masculine tread sounding significant, almost alarming in that house of flustered uneven foolish-sounding steps—and said good-night to him at the front door.
Fumbling with the lamps of his motor-bicycle he said:
‘Why can’t one ever see you alone?’
‘It’s not allowed, Martin. I can’t ask you to tea alone. And I can’t come to your rooms without a chaperon.’
‘Oh, damn the chaperon. I shan’t ask you to tea at all. Can’t you break a footling rule for anybody you know as well as me?’
She said deprecatingly that it was impossible.
‘You mean you won’t.’
That was what she meant. It was not worth while to break rules for dull Martin.
‘Who’s that Jennifer person you’re always with?’
‘A person I’m very fond of——’ She flared at his tone.
‘Never see you anywhere without her,’ he muttered.
‘Well you needn’t come to tea with me.’
‘Oh, I shan’t come again.’
Silence fell. She looked up at the dark and starless sky; then at him still adjusting lamps, his head averted.
What were they about, parting in anger? How far indeed they were from the other world to mistrust and misunderstand so obstinately they had to quarrel!
Her heart misgave her suddenly at sight of the great building looming above her: there was no security in it, no kindness. Supposing when she went back Jennifer’s room were empty, and Jennifer, utterly weary of her, had taken the chance to escape, and were even now knocking at strangers’ doors, sure of her welcome?... How quickly without that form, that voice, all would crumble and dissolve and be but a lightless confusion! She should never have left the places where Martin stood by her side, listening, watching, waiting everywhere to wrap her in safety.
She said softly:
‘Martin, when’s Roddy coming to see you?’
‘He was here,’ said Martin, ‘a week or two ago. Staying with Tony Baring,’ he added. And then again: ‘Only for a night or two.’
Then finally trying in great embarrassment to soothe the pain which, even to his ears, cried out terribly in the silence and could not find words to cover it:
‘I scarcely saw him myself. He was very busy—so many people to see. He’ll be up again soon, I expect and then we must have a party.’
‘Oh yes, Martin.... You know, it’s very naughty of him. He said he’d come and see me.’
Her voice was thin and cheerful.
‘He’s very forgetful,’ said Martin helplessly.
‘I suppose,’ she suggested lightly, ‘he forgot even to ask after me.’
‘Oh no, he asked after you. I’m sure he did.’
She laughed.
‘Well I must go in.... Tell him when you write to him.... No, don’t tell him anything. But, Martin, you must come and see me sometimes, please, please,—in this hateful place. I feel I shall lose you all again. You know mother’s going to live abroad for a year or two? So I shan’t be there in the summer, next door. It’s awful. She let the house without telling me. What shall I do without it? Please come and see me. Or listen, I tell you what: it doesn’t seem to work somehow, your coming here. I can’t talk to you and I feel I don’t know you; but when the days get longer we’ll go for a long walk together, miles and miles. Shall we? Remember!’
‘Rather!’
He was happy again.
She called after him:
‘And, Martin, I’m sorry I was cross.’
‘My fault,’ came his ringing cheerful voice; and his engine started and he departed with a roar and a rush.
Alone in the dark she stood still and contemplated the appalling image of Roddy risen up again, mockingly asserting that only he was real; that his power to give himself or withhold himself was as the power of life and death.
It was urgent, now, to find Jennifer quickly. She was in her room, lying on the floor, staring at the flicker of firelight over her yellow velvet frock.
‘Oh, Jennifer!’
Judith sank down beside her, burying her face in her lap.
‘Darling.’
‘I’m not very happy to-night. It’s a mood. I think I don’t feel very well. And the night seems so sad and uneasy, with this wind. Don’t you feel it?’
Jennifer put out her hands and clasped them round Judith’s face, gazing at her sombrely.
‘What has he said to you?’ she whispered.
‘Who?’
‘That Martin.’
‘Nothing. It’s nothing to do with him.’
‘You love somebody, I think. Who is it you love?’
Jennifer must never never know, suspect, dream for a moment....
‘You mustn’t love anybody,’ said Jennifer. ‘I should want to kill him. I should be jealous.’ Her brooding eyes fell heavily on Judith’s lifted face. ‘I love you.’
And at those words, that look, Roddy faded again harmlessly: Jennifer blinded and enfolded her senses once more, and only Jennifer had power.
When the longer days came and Martin wrote to ask her to come for a walk one Sunday, she had another engagement and regretfully refused; and after that he wrote to tell her to bring a friend to a river picnic with him and another young man. She brought Jennifer; and Jennifer flirted broadly with the other young man; and the picnic was not a success.
After that the year closed without sight or sign of him; and she forgot to care.