7
Martin’s mother stood on tiptoe to kiss her good-bye, while Martin went to fetch the car.
Her box was ready in the hall. She had given a last glance through the open dining-room door at the family portraits. She had been thankful to find them few and devoid of the likenesses she dreaded. They were just anybody’s respectable family portraits. Of the dead sister there was no likeness.
Martin’s little sitting-room, with its photograph on the mantelpiece of a solemn Roddy in Eton clothes, its cricket groups including Roddy in flannels and a blazer, its painted green fire-screen decorated by Roddy with strange figures—that had been far more terrifying. She would not have to sit there now and look at Martin’s photograph and scrap albums, as he had suggested.
‘I’m sorry you must go,’ said his mother, charming and abstracted.
‘I’m sorry too.’
‘But,’ she said gaily, ‘what a delightful idea, to drive through the night. Martin loves it, you know. I often hear him going off on a lovely night like this. Funny boy.... His horn sounds so dreadfully lonely it makes me want to cry. He likes to have a companion. I used to go with him sometimes, but I’ve had to give it up. I feel too old next day.’
She smiled sweetly; and suddenly, standing above her and seeing her so small and ageing, Judith felt no longer the great barrier of difference of generation, but the basic intimacy of their common sex; and with this an extreme tenderness and pity. She bent and kissed her—the poor thing, who must lie flat in her room thriftily husbanding her resources for the morrow, while she herself, coming thirty years of nights behind her, had the open dark for friend.
She knew well enough you did not love her son: she trusted you not to betray him by marrying him. It would be horrible to force her to hate you ... unthinkable.
Car-wheels grated on the gravel outside, and Martin sounded his horn.
In another few minutes they had waved good-bye to the small figure on the steps, and taken the road.
Into the deep blue translucent shell of night. The air parted lightly as the car plunged through it, washing away in waves that smelt of roses and syringa and all green leaves. The moon struggled with clouds. She wore a faint and gentle face.
‘I shouldn’t be surprised if there was rain before daybreak,’ said Martin; and, reaching at length the wan straight high road, accelerated with a sigh of satisfaction.
‘Faster, Martin, faster.’
Faster and faster he went. She settled herself close against him, and through half-shut eyes saw the hawthorn and wild-rose hedges stream backward on either hand. The night air was a drug from whose sweet insinuating caress she prayed never to wake. Soon, through one leafy roadway after another, the headlights pierced a tunnel of green gloom. The lanes were full of white scuts and little paws, paralyzed; and then, as Martin painstakingly slowed down, dipping and twinkling into the banks. Moths flickered bright-winged an instant in the lamplight before being dashed to their fried and ashy death. Once or twice came human beings, objects of mean and foolish design, incongruous in the night’s vast grandeur; and here and there, under the trees, upon the stiles, in the grass, a couple of them, locked face to face, disquietingly still, gleamed and vanished. She observed them with distaste: passion was all ugliness and vulgar imbecility.
Now the moon looked exhausted behind a gathering film of cloud.
Soon came the rain, with a low murmurous hushing and whispering through the trees; and then a white blindness of lightning aching on the eyelids.
‘Shall we stop?’ asked Martin.
‘No, no.’
‘I remember you hated lightning when you were a tiddler.’
‘Do you remember that?’
‘Yes. I shall never forget the day we were trapped by a thunderstorm in the old boathouse—you and Roddy and I. How you howled! And then you said you’d seen the lightning fall on Roddy’s head and had he been struck dead. I kept on yelling that if only you’d open your eyes you’d see him in front of you, as alive as anything; but you only went on shrieking. And soon we all of us began to believe Roddy might go up in flame any minute.’
‘Oh, yes! I’d forgotten.’ She laughed. ‘I remember Roddy’s face, so solemn and red and doubtful as he felt the top of his head. He was terrified I was making a fool of him and he wouldn’t say a word. I asked him privately afterwards if he thought the Lord had visited him with a tongue of fire. He was disgusted.’
Martin threw his head back to laugh.
‘You were a comic child. We used to think you were a little mad.’
‘Did you, Martin?’ she said, and doubt and sadness swept over her again.
Perhaps even in those days Roddy had laughed at her, thought of her as a joke, never as a companion.
‘It’s a pity really that we——’ She stopped, remembering that she was going to marry Martin—on the verge of finishing her sentence:—“that we met again after we grew up.”
Their relationship should have remained unspoilt in the mysterious enchantment of childhood, and then she would never have seen Roddy grow from that lovable small boy into the elegant indifferent young man who experimented in sensations.
No more lightning; and the rain came softly on to her face through the open wind-screen, blurring eyes and mind and all, until she sank into a half-sleep. Martin clasped her hard against his shoulder, once, as who should say: “Sleep. I am here;” and she felt his enormous protectiveness flowing over her.
When next she opened her eyes, the darkness was taking back first one veil, then another. Purple paled to lilac and lilac wasted to grey. The sky was immaculate and without a glow. The country-side woke from sleep, gently staring and austere, each object upon it separately outlined without interrelation of colour and shadow under the uniform wan light. On the far horizon, a cornfield flashed out one moment in a pale flood of sunlight; but the sun was still hidden. The hedges frothed palely with meadowsweet.
Soon came the beech woods crowning the chalk hills. In the valley below ran the river, blanched and rain-flattened between its willows; and the road sloped gently down till it ran beside it. They were home.
Stiff and blinking, she stumbled out of the car, and stood on the steps of the porch.
‘Thank you, Martin. It was marvellous. I hoped we should never get here. I thought we wouldn’t—I don’t know why. I got it into my head you’d manage a quiet smash without my noticing it. Everything I passed I said good-bye to—looking my last on all things lovely; and when I finally dropped off to sleep I thought I’d never wake up. And after all you brought me safe home, clever boy. I suppose I’m grateful. But what an effort to have to start again in an hour or two!’
He did not answer at once; but after a few moments of fingering his hat looked away and said:
‘Are you very unhappy, Judith?’
‘Well—not very, I suppose. Rather. Not more than’s good for me. I shall get over it.... I’m so sleepy I don’t know what I’m saying. Don’t take any notice.’
‘I thought you weren’t happy——’ He stopped, overcome.
‘It’s all right, Martin. Don’t you worry. I laugh at myself. How I laugh at myself!’
‘Can’t you tell me what it’s about?’ he said gruffly.
‘I don’t believe I can.’
He turned away and leaned despondently against the porch.
The sky was glowing now through all its length and breadth, like the inside of a shell. The dew shimmered over the grass and the greyish roses reddened, yellowed on their bushes. The birds bedazed the air with wild crystalline urgent repetition.
‘You go in a day or two,’ he said at last.
‘Yes. And you?’
‘I join Roddy next week.’
‘Ah, yes.’ She turned to unlock the door, and fumbling for the key, lightly remarked: ‘There’s a person I shall never see again.’
‘Who?’
He affected surprise; but he was only pretending. She could feel him saying to himself: ‘So that’s it.’ And suddenly she hated herself for exposing herself, and him for guessing and dissembling, for forcing her to pronounce that name; and she added:
‘I can’t marry you, Martin, after all.’
Silence.
‘Well, I’ve told you the truth at last. I thought I could pretend to you all my life, but I can’t. You ought to be glad.’
‘Aren’t you going to say something, Martin?’
He shrugged his shoulders.
‘Please forgive me,’ she said; but she could not feel contrition: only a great weariness.
‘Of course,’ he said. ‘There’s nothing to forgive. I never really believed you’d marry me anyway.’
‘Luckily I’m going abroad. You’d better forget all about me.’
‘It’s no good saying that,’ he said, with a brief and bitter laugh. ‘It was too late for that years ago.’
‘You must try to hate me. I deserve it.’
‘Oh, what’s the good of talking like that?’ he said impatiently. ‘Do you want me to hate you? You know you don’t.’
‘No, I don’t.’
‘You know perfectly well I can’t do anything except go on loving you.’
He still leaned with dejected shoulders against the porch, talking out into the garden. The eastern sky swam brightly, and the first beams of the sun shot into the garden; and the fluting clamorous chorus redoubled their enthusiasm.
‘I haven’t seen the sun rise for years. Have you, Martin?’ She came near to him and put a hand on his sleeve. At the touch he turned round and confronted her in dumb despair, his eyelashes wet.
‘Martin, I’m sorry, I’m sorry.’
‘I can’t leave you like this,’ he said, and clung to her. ‘Judith, is there nothing I can do?’
She reflected.
‘Yes. Will you do something for me?’
‘Of course I will.’ His eyes lit up for an instant.
‘Listen, Martin. Suppose he ever mentions me——’
She felt herself going white and stopped.
‘Yes?’ he muttered.
She went on breathlessly:
‘I don’t think he will, but if he should.... Supposing he ever starts to tell you something that happened—between him and me—please, you mustn’t let him. Promise! If he begins, stop him. I shall never see him again; soon I shall stop thinking about him: but you mustn’t know what happened. It was just a little silly thing—I shall see it quite differently some day ... but if I thought people knew I should die. Martin, don’t try to find out.’
‘All right, Judith. It’s none of my business.’
‘Perhaps men don’t tell things in the awful way women do? He doesn’t generally tell things, does he?’
She could hardly bear to listen for his reply.
‘No. I don’t think so.’
‘Make it be as if you’d never known me. Oh, don’t talk about me!’
‘I won’t. I promise.’ He looked at her; and she knew by his eyes how deeply she was making him suffer.
After a long time she added:
‘One more thing. Of course I know that whatever he’d done you’d feel just the same towards him, wouldn’t you?...’
‘I love Roddy ...’ he said, his breath, his whole being struggling in anguish.... ‘I’ve always had him—ever since I can remember ... more to me than a brother ever could have been. But if I thought——’ His voice altered, grew terrible—‘if I thought he’d done you an injury——’
‘It was nothing he could be blamed for,’ she said slowly, with intense concentration: ‘It was my fault. If I thought it was going to come between you I should be more unhappy than ever. Will you see that it doesn’t?’
‘I’ll do my best,’ he said in a dead voice.
She began to tremble violently.
‘I must go in now, Martin. What shall you do?’
‘I’ll go straight back. I don’t feel like—seeing Mariella—or any one.’
‘But don’t you want something to eat?’
‘No. I’m not hungry.’
It seemed unbearably pathetic that he should not be hungry—he who was always hungry.
‘Good-bye then, Martin.’
‘Good-bye.’
He took her outstretched hand and clutched it.
‘Judith, if you should want me for anything while you’re abroad—let me know. I’ll come to you. Will you promise?’
‘I promise, my dear.’
He looked a shade less unhappy.
‘And please let me see you when you come back. I won’t be tiresome; but I must see you sometimes.’
‘When I come back then, Martin—if you really want to. But by that time you’ll realise what a pig I am.’
He put his arms round her suddenly.
‘Oh, Judith,’ he whispered, ‘can’t you ever ...?’
‘Martin, can’t you ever not?’
‘No.’ He laid his head down on her shoulder for a few moments; then straightened himself and said with an effort at cheerfulness:
‘Well, I hope you’ll have a good time.’
‘I hope you will. But you’re sure to.’
To think he would be with Roddy for weeks, sharing work and talk and jokes and meals—seeing him sleep and wake; while she herself ... never again. If she saw him coming towards her, she must turn back; if she passed him in the street she must look away.
‘Please take care of yourself, Judith.’
She nodded, smiling wearily.
He jerked round and went down the steps and she waited for him to turn his head again. But, when he reached the corner, without looking back, he waved his hand in a young quick awkward pretense of jauntiness, and strode on.
She stood and saw the fresh garden filling with light and shade; and thought: ‘Poor Martin’s crying’; and shut the door on him and the sun and the screaming of the birds.