8
The next moment so it seemed, the soft and coloured Autumn days were there again; the corridors, the echoing steps, the vast female yell of voices in Hall, the sense of teeming life in all the little rooms, behind the little closed doors—all these started again to weave their strange timeless dream; and the second year had begun.
Midway through the term came Martin’s letter.
Dear Judith,
Roddy is in Cambridge for two nights, staying with Tony. He wants to see you. Will you come to tea with me to-morrow at 4.30? I am to tell you he will never forgive you (a) if you don’t come (b) if you come with a chaperon. He says that chance alone prevented him from being your bachelor Uncle; and that I myself was a maiden aunt from the cradle. So please come.
Martin.
Dear Martin,
Bachelor uncles are notorious; and curious things are apt to happen to strictly maiden aunts as all we enlightened moderns know. But an aunt and uncle bound by holy matrimony are considered safe (as safety goes in this world) and I have notified the authorities of their brief presence in the university and am cordially permitted to wait on them at tea to-morrow at 4.30.
Judith.
Judith looked around Martin’s room. It was untidy and rather dirty, with something forlorn and pathetic and faintly animal about it, like all masculine rooms. It made you want to look after him. Men were helpless children; it was quite true. You might have known Martin’s room would give you a ridiculous pull at the heart.
‘I’m afraid things are in a bit of a mess,’ said Martin, blowing cigarette ash off the mantelpiece into the fire.
He was smoking an enormous pipe. His face was red. His great form looked lumbering and shapeless in an ancient tweed coat and a pair of voluminous grey flannel trousers.
‘How are you, Judith?’ His brown eye fixed itself on her. He was very shy.
‘I’ve been ill, Martin.’
‘Oh!...’ He looked troubled and embarrassed. ‘Did you—did you have a decent doctor?’
‘Oh yes. It was almost pneumonia, but not quite.’
‘I didn’t know you’d been ill....’
‘You haven’t been to see me for ages, Martin.’
‘I know. I’ve been so busy.’ Violently he blew the ash about. What a shame to pretend to reproach him. He was obviously overcome.... ‘And I didn’t think you wanted.... I suppose you’re all right again now?’
Footsteps sounded outside on the stair. Judith collected herself and sat rigid. The door opened and Roddy, smiling, eager, debonair, came into the room.
‘Hullo, Judy! Marvellous to see you.’
‘Roddy!’
He stood before her and looked down into her face.
‘I thought I was never going to see you again, Judy. You’re looking marvellous.’
He was going to be irresistible. Already something in her was starting to leap up in response to him; and watching his face, she saw with a terrible pang that it was true, unarguable, proved over again more clearly than ever, that he had some quality which separated him from everybody else in the whole world, startled the imagination and made him of appalling significance to her.
‘I’m cold. Thank God for a good fire. It’s starting to snow.’ He flung himself down on the hearth-rug. ‘Trust Martin to make a good thick atmosphere with no beastly fresh air about it. Tea! Tea! Tea! Let me make you some toast, Judy. I make it so well.’
While he toasted great hunks of bread, Martin buttered scones and cut the cake, and Judith poured out tea.
They chattered, joked, teased each other. They played absurd drawing and rhyming games. Judith made them laugh with malicious stories of dons and students. Roddy threw back his head, his whole face wrinkled and flattened with silent laughter, his eyes gleaming with amusement under their lids. Martin stared, laughed, Ha! Ha!—stared again. They encouraged her, listened to her, were delighted with her; and the old sense of abnormal self-assurance grew within her taut mind.
At last she made herself look at the clock. So late! There would barely be time to get back before Hall.
‘I’ve got a car outside,’ said Roddy carelessly. ‘I can run you out in no time.’
He added, interrupting her thanks:
‘It isn’t mine, it’s got no hood, it always breaks down and it’s hellishly uncomfortable, so I don’t advise it really.’
It sounded as if he were suddenly regretting his offer, trying to withdraw it. She looked at him, all her confidence collapsing in a moment. His face had become a mask.
She said swiftly:
‘If you would take me I should be very grateful.’ Her voice sounded to herself strained, beseeching, horrible.
It took ten minutes to get the car started, with Martin and Roddy madly swinging her by turns.
‘Good night, Martin. Thank you for my lovely tea party. I’ll see you again soon, won’t I?’
He nodded, looking gravely down at her in the lamp-light.
‘Don’t catch cold,’ he said. There was something dejected about his attitude, a flatness in his voice.... Things had gone wrong for him.... Ever since that panic-stricken voice had broken in on the laughter and talk, the game for three, with its vibrating cry: “If you would take me home ...” from that moment all had been faintly blown upon by a ruffle of uneasy wind. They were no longer three persons, but two men and one woman.
She knew it and loathed herself because Martin knew it too.
‘I’m due to dine with Tony in twenty minutes,’ said Roddy.... ‘You’d better come along too. I’ll call for you on my way back. I shan’t be long.’
Roddy’s voice had forced a note of carelessness ... as if he were trying to pretend to Martin that nothing had happened; that the female had not suddenly singled him out and stretched an inviting hand to him as he stood beside his friend.
Even Roddy was aware of it.
‘No,’ said Martin, ‘I won’t dine with Tony. I’ll see you to-morrow perhaps.’
He waved his hand and turned away. The car started. She was alone with a strange man.
The night was dark, with a piercing wind and a faint flurry of snow in the air. Roddy drove at a great pace, and she sat beside him in silence, her shoulder touching his.
‘Cold?’ he said suddenly.
‘No, I don’t feel—anything.’
All of life was concentrated in her dark beating mind: her body was insensible to the weather. She saw the gates of College fly past. Its lights gleamed and were gone; and she could not speak. On they went, the long straight empty road flung before them in small lengths by the headlights and rolled up into nothingness behind them, cast away for ever.
He stopped the car suddenly.
‘Where’s this place?’
‘I think we’ve passed it long ago.’
The wind took her small voice away from him. He leaned towards her.
‘What?’
She turned to him.
‘I think we’ve passed it long ago.’
‘I think we have.’
Silence. The great wind blowing through illimitable deeps of night lifted and whirled her beyond time and space. She saw his hand lying on the wheel—a pale blur; and her own crept out and lay beside it; and she stared at them both. He watched her hand fall beside his and did not move a hair’s breadth nearer to touch it. He and she were alone together. No need for speech or movement. Their hands would lie motionless, side by side, for ever and ever.
She heard him laugh softly; and as he laughed her hand came quickly to her lap.
‘Well, what d’you want to do?’ he said very low.
‘I don’t want to go back.’
‘Do you want to go on?’
‘Yes.’
The car went forward again. Once she leaned towards him and said in his ear:
‘Roddy!’
‘Yes?’
‘You didn’t want to go back, did you?’
‘No.’
She lay back again, mindlessly at peace in the midst of the roaring of the wind, and the road’s monotonous unfolding.
Once he burst out laughing, patted her knee and cried:
‘Aren’t we mad?’
His voice rang boyishly, happily.
Now came the snow, thinly at first, but soon in wild drifting clouds, blotting out the road, settling thick and fast over all, sifting and piling on the wind-screen.
‘Oh Lord, we must turn,’ said Roddy. ‘This is frightful.’
He turned the car and then stopped her to light a cigarette. She saw his face, lit by the flare of the match, glow suddenly, warmly out of the darkness with unknown curves and strange planes of light and shadow, and narrowed eyes, eyes not human, never-to-be-forgotten.
He waved the dwindling flame in her face.
‘Solemn face! What are you staring at? Smile—quick, quick, before the match goes out!’
The match went out.
‘I am smiling, Roddy.’
‘That’s right. Poor Judy covered with snow! There you sit, so modest and unassuming. Shall I get you home alive?’
‘I don’t care.’
She slipped her arm through his, and he gave it a quick friendly pressure and drove on.
Now they were before the gates of College. After all they had not driven very far. Time started again with a reluctant painful beat as the car crept in under the archway; and she realized that it was little more than an hour since they had left Martin. It seemed so short now—less than a moment; a pause between a breath and another breath.
They sat side by side in the car without moving.
‘I suppose I must go in now,’ she said at last. ‘They’ll still be at Hall.’
He shivered and beat his hands together. She took one and felt it, and it was icy.
‘Your hands. Oh, Roddy! Will you come in and get warm by my fire?’
He seemed to be considering and then said in a stilted way:
‘If I may—just for a minute—I’ve got rather chilled driving without gloves.’
She could find nothing to say. A cold shy politeness had descended on them both. She led the way into the hall and up the stairs. At every step snow fell off them: their shoulders and arms were covered in it. The corridors were silent and deserted, echoing only her light footsteps, and his heavier ones. She heard her tread, and his following after it, marching, marching towards her far-off door. Judith was bringing Roddy, Judith was in sober truth bringing Roddy to her room. If anyone saw her there would be trouble.
Somebody—Jennifer perhaps—must have drawn the curtains and heaped the fire in the little room. The warmth drew out the smell of the chrysanthemums; and their heavy golden heads, massed in a blue jar, held mysterious intensity of life in the firelight. She switched on the reading lamp, and all the colours in the room leapt up dimly, secretly: purple, blue and rose-colour glowed around them, half-lit, half obscured.
‘This is rather seductive,’ he said. He sank on his knees by the fire and held out his hands to the blaze, looking about him with a faint smile. She came and knelt beside him; and his eyes fastened narrowly on her face.
‘It’s like you: seductive,’ he said softly.
‘Oh, Roddy! Seductive. That’s all it is. I see it now. I hate it. Am I nothing more than that?’
‘You.... I don’t know what you are. I can’t make you out. You never behave as I think you probably will.’
‘I’m glad of that.’
‘Why are you glad?’
‘Because I believe you ascribe to me the worst motives,—the most ambiguous. You suspect me—you guard yourself against me.’
‘Ah, you do. But you needn’t. I won’t do you any harm. Unless being—very fond of you can do you harm. But I don’t think I’m a femme fatale.’
‘I don’t know what you are. You disturb me very much. You seem to me completely incalculable. Your eyes watch me and watch me. Such marvellous eyes.’
She lifted them to his in a long steady look and remained silent.
‘You’re very nice,’ he said. ‘Rather a dear. I believe you’re quite without guile really. Why do you trust people so? It’s very foolish of you.’
‘Is it foolish of me to trust you?’
‘Incredibly foolish.’ He added, raising his voice and speaking slowly: ‘It’s no good trying to make me—adequate.’
‘Ah, you like to destroy yourself to me.’
‘But don’t you see? I go through the days in a sort of apathy; blind and deaf; blinder and deafer every day. I never think, I never care. I’d much better be dead only,—I’m too lazy to shoot myself.’
‘Oh, Roddy, don’t.’
She covered her ears with her hands. He had never spoken at such length, or with such obvious intent to convince.
‘I’m only trying to warn you,’ he said, rather defiantly, ‘I’m not worth saving. Nobody must ever take me seriously. I’m not worth wasting a moment over. Nobody can do anything with me.’
His mood was verging towards laughter. His face broke up teasingly as he finished speaking and turned to look at her. But she averted her face, drearily pondering.
Why had he spoken like that? A self-contempt so settled, so hopeless.... He had seemed to be warning her to keep away from him for her own sake.
‘It’s no good,’ she said suddenly, involuntarily.
‘What’s no good?’
‘You’re what I choose to think you are. There’s no point in heaping yourself with abuse. You can’t make me dislike you; you can only make me sad. But I suppose that gives you pleasure.’
He was silent. She went on tremulously,
‘And when you—when people say they don’t feel or care—that they’re no good—it only makes me think—I could show them how to feel and care. I could make them happy. I could look after them. I dare say you know that’s—the effect it has on me. That’s why you say it.’
He was still silent. She leaned her head forward against the wall and felt tears smart under her lids.
He seemed to be musing, his eyes fixed on the fire, his hands held out to it.
‘Are your hands still cold?’ she said wearily. ‘Get them warm before you go.’
Suddenly he held them out to her.
It was a gesture so impulsive, so uncharacteristic it seemed of startling significance; and she could not answer it.
‘Yes, they are cold,’ he said. ‘Let me feel yours. Yours are cold too. What funny hands—so thin and narrow, such delicate bones. Rather lovely.’ He clasped them hard in his own. ‘When I do that they seem to go to nothing.’
She smiled at him dimly, half-tranced, feeling her eyelids droop over her eyes, giving him, with her helpless hands, all of herself; as if, through her finger-tips, he drew her in to himself in a dark stemlessly flowing tide. He stroked her palms, her whole hand, over and over with a lingering careful touch, as if learning the outline by heart.
‘They feel so kind,’ he said musingly. ‘They are, aren’t they, Judy? Dear little kind things—like the rest of you. Are you always kind, Judy?’
‘Always to you, Roddy, I shouldn’t wonder.’
He relinquished his clasp suddenly, saying with a shake of the head:
‘You shouldn’t be.... However, I’ve warned you.’
‘Yes, you’ve warned me.’
In a minute she must tell him to go. They would be coming out of the Hall, bursting into the room to discover the cause of her absence.
‘Are you tired?’ he said.
She nodded, realizing suddenly the collapsed forward droop of her body, the whole pose of deadly fatigue.
‘I’ve been very ill, you know.’
‘Oh, Judy! You never told me. You let me take you for that bloody cold drive. You’ll be ill again.’
‘It’s all right. I shan’t be ill again.’
‘You are naughty,’ he said, looking at her anxiously.
He never could bear people to be ill or in pain.
‘Come and lie down at once on the sofa,’ he said.
She obeyed him, and let him arrange the cushions beneath her shoulders, with a delicious sense of dependence.
‘The drive won’t have hurt me,’ she said, ‘because I enjoyed it so much.’
He stood looking down at her.
‘Did you enjoy it?’ he said softly.
‘Yes, didn’t you?’
‘Yes.’
‘Wasn’t it a queer unreal drive?’
‘Quite unreal, I suppose.’
‘I wish it had never stopped.’
He made no answer to this but still stood watching her.
‘You’ll have to go, Roddy. They mustn’t find you. Besides you’ll be missing your dinner.’
‘I’ve missed that long ago, I should think.’
‘Oh, Roddy, how awful! I’ve made you miss your dinner.’
‘I know. It’s monstrous of you. And I’m so hungry.’
‘I’ve missed mine too but I’m not hungry.... Roddy, what will Tony say to you?’
‘He’ll be very much annoyed.’
‘Shall you say you were with me? He wouldn’t like that, would he?’
‘Tony is jealous of me. Once he looked at me with pure hatred. I’ve never forgotten it. Does he love you?’
‘I think he does.’
‘I think he does too. Do you love him? You needn’t answer. I know I mustn’t ask you that.’
‘You can ask me anything you like.’
But he did not answer.
‘It is so terrible to be hated. Tell him I won’t do you any harm.’
But perhaps that was not true. Perhaps she meant endless mischief. Supposing she were to take Roddy from Tony, from all his friends and lovers, from all his idle Parisian and English life, and attach him to herself, tie him and possess him: that would mean giving him cares, responsibilities: it might mean changing him from his free and secret self into something ordinary, domesticated, resentful. Perhaps his lovers and friends would be well advised to gather round him jealously and guard him from the female. She saw herself for one moment as a creature of evil design, dangerous to him, and took her hand away from his that held it lightly.
‘I’ll tell him you won’t do me any harm,’ he repeated absently. He was staring into her face.
‘You’re going away now,’ she said, ‘and I don’t know when I shall see you again.’
‘I don’t know either,’ he said smiling.
‘To-morrow you’ll have forgotten. But I shan’t forget this evening.’
‘Nor shall I. I don’t forget you, Judy. I sometimes wish I could. I’m a little afraid of you.’
‘Afraid of me?’
‘Afraid of you—and me.’
Later on when he was gone she must make herself think of that. It might have power to hurt: she could not tell now, with his unmasked, disturbed face watching her. Now there was nothing but depth under depth of welling happiness.
‘You know, Roddy,’ she said after a silence, ‘the awful thing about you is that I can never pick up again where we left off. To-night you’ve talked to me as I’ve always longed for you to talk to me, as if we could trust each other, as if we were two creatures of the same sort alone together. Don’t you feel we know each other better after to-night, Roddy?’
He was silent for a moment, his eyes twinkling; then he said:
‘I feel you’ve made me say a great many indiscreet things.’
‘Poor Roddy! You’d better go, before I wring something out of you you’ll regret to your life’s end,’ she said bitterly. ‘You know I shan’t rest until I’ve forced you to tell me all your secrets. And when you have, I’ll go and tell them to everybody else.’
She shut her eyes and turned her face from him. There was a long silence.
‘Don’t be cross with me,’ he said in the end.
‘I’m not.’
‘Didn’t I tell you I was inadequate?’
‘Yes, you told me.’
‘Well now you believe it don’t you?’
‘No. No. No.’
‘Ah—you’re incorrigible.... Good-bye, Judy.’
She turned towards him again, took his hand in both hers and clung to it.
‘Roddy, you have—quite liked—being with me ... haven’t you?’
His face softened.
‘I’ve adored it,’ he said gently.
‘And when shall I see you again?’
He shook his head.
‘Oh, Roddy, when?’
He stooped swiftly until his face almost touched hers, and murmured, watching her:
‘Whenever you like.’
His lips closed on hers very lightly. She put her arms round his neck and kissed his cheek and forehead. When after a moment or two he raised himself she thought he was smiling again.
She lay perfectly still, watching him while he lit a cigarette, smoothed his hair, put on his coat and went to open the door. Then he turned, still smiling, and nodding as if encouraging her to smile back. But she continued to lie and stare up at him as if from the bottom of a well; as if all of her were dead except the eyes which just moved, following him.
The door closed after him. Soon the sound of his footsteps faded along the corridor.
She raised her hand slowly and with difficulty, as if a weight were holding it to her side, and pulled the lamp’s green shade down; and the whole room sank softly into semi-obscurity.
Some trick of green light brought suddenly to mind the look of early spring woods at twilight: fresh buds and little leaves dashed with rain, an air like dark clear water lighting the branches with a wan glimmer.
She looked at her body lying long, slender and still on the couch; she saw her breast rise and fall faintly with her breathing; and she had a sense of watching herself return from a long swoon, bathed in crystalline new life, transformed and beautified.
The trivial femininities of the room had made, she thought, an inept background for his elegance. But now there seemed something graceful, foreign, curious in the lights and shades, in the forms of flowers, books, furniture; as if he had left his impress upon them.
She heard the footsteps of Jennifer coming swiftly towards her door.... Not a word, not a whisper to Jennifer. She and he could never meet, even in mind. The profoundest instinct forbade it.
Jennifer came gaily in.
‘Tired, darling?’ she said. ‘You were quite right not to come to Hall. It was bloodier than ever. Come, darling, let me put you to bed—you’re so tired. I’ll look after you. I’ll make you some scrambled eggs after you’re in bed.’
Then Jennifer suspected nothing. She did not see that all was changed. She was deep in the mood of tender solicitude which came upon her now and then since the illness, when she remembered to think Judith fragile. She lifted her in her arms, and carried her into the bedroom....
Nothing has changed after all. There was Jennifer laughing, talking, letting the eggs get burnt while she did her hair; bending down finally to kiss you a tender good-night. Judith tried to think of Roddy. A little while ago he had been stooping over her as Jennifer stooped now, with eyes that were different and yet the same. But he had disappeared; she could not now remember what he looked like.
Nothing was altered then, no order was reversed or even shaken. There were these moments; but all around and about the extravagant incongruous brilliances, the divine crudities, the breath-taking magnificences of their pattern, life went on weaving uninterruptedly: weaving uncoloured trivial things into secure fabric.