He was going to say it, she felt it coming. He was going to say depot instead of station. George always said depot when they were in the country, and she couldn’t bear it. It was coming, it was coming; everything was predestined; all her life she had known this scene was on the way, sitting under the hot croup-kettle smell of the pine trees, blue thunder piling up on the skyline, poor adorable George mumbling away, and Mr. Martin watching them with his air of faint surprise. It was like the beginning of some terrible poem. Everything in life was a symbol of everything else. The slices of lemon lying at the bottom of the iced-tea jug, on a soft cloud of undissolved sugar, even they were a symbol of something....
“George!” she interrupted desperately. “I had the most terrible premonition. I felt that you were going to say depot.”
“Why, yes, I was going to say, just about the time I’m ready to drive over——”
For his own sake, for her sake, for Mr. Martin’s sake, George must be prevented. If he used that word, she would know that all this was foreordained, beyond help and hope. With a quick movement she pushed her glass of tea off the table; it cascaded onto George’s ankle. He paused in surprise.
“I’m so sorry. How careless of me, your nice white socks, look out, that little piece of ice is going down inside your shoe.”
She felt that the guest’s eyes were upon her. He must have seen her do it. “Is that why they call it a tumbler?” he said.
“Never mind,” said George cheerfully. “It feels fine. I wish it was down my neck.”
For a moment transparent Time swung in a warm, dull, uncertain equilibrium. Phyllis could see Lizzie jolt heavily down the kitchen steps and bend over the garbage can. The grinding clang of the lid came like a threatening clap of cymbals. How glorious it would be if she and Lizzie, each with a garbage can and lid, could suddenly break into a ritual dance on the lawn, posturing under the maddening sunlight, clashing away their fury in a supreme dervish protest. How surprised George and Mr. Martin would be. She and Lizzie making frantic and mocking gestures, sweating the comedy out of their veins, breaking through the dull mask of polite behaviour into the great rhythms and furies of life. No longer to be tired out by little things, but to be exhausted and used by some great ecstasy. She was watching every movement life made, and thinking, as it was finished, There, that’s over, it never can happen again. But it all would happen again, and how weary she was of keeping to herself her heavy burden of secret desires and pangs. Why couldn’t she tell George? But if you tried to tell George things, he went far, far away—because, probably, he too had so much that he yearned to tell. You can’t really be intimate with people who know you so well. Yet she had never been so fond of him. Here, in this garden, they seemed for an instant secure from the terror of the world. Behind these walls, these burning roses, disorderly forces could not reach them.
Mr. Martin was a comforting sort of guest, he did not talk but just looked happy and was spooning up the sugar from the bottom of his glass. Drink life to the bottom of the vessel, you always find some sugar there, all the more palatable for the lemony taste.
A clear compulsory ringing trilled keenly across the lawn. They listened, unwilling to move.