“I guess we’ve all changed,” he said mildly. “The old house hasn’t, it looks just the same.”
“Miss Clyde’s brought her paint box,” George said. “She’s going to do a picture.”
“Oh, yes, and we have another—why, that’s fine, Miss Clyde—we have another artist here too, Mr. Martin. You must all come in and meet him.”
She stood holding the screen door aside, welcoming them in. George, coming last, saw how her cheerful smile faded to expressionless blank when the guests had passed. She had relapsed into automatic Hostess. How lonely she must be to look like that. I wish it was over, he thought. His mind felt like a spider that has caught several large flies at once: the delicate web was in danger of breaking.
They entered the hall.
“It isn’t changed a bit!” Ruth said. “Exactly as I remember it—except it seems smaller. That old table, for instance, that used to be just enormous. Well, hot water first. I can sentimentalize much better when I’m clean.”
George was thinking: Ruth’s probably the kind of woman who always twists the toothpaste tube crooked, but her babble will help us around corners.
“I hope Miss Clyde won’t mind being in the little sitting room downstairs: you see we’re just camping out here, you must all make yourselves at home.”
Joyce tried to frame some appropriate reply to Phyllis’s clear, faintly hostile voice. She was in the tranced uneasiness of revisit. Coming from the station she had been trying to realize the Island again: her mind was startled by the permanence of the physical world. Things she had not thought of for so long—things that she had apparently been carrying, unawares, in memory—were still there, unaltered, reproaching her own instability. The planks of the station platform, the old scow rotting in the mud, the road of crushed oyster shells, the same vacancy of sand and sky.
In the car she and George were both achingly mute. There seemed to be a sheet of glass between them. The Brooks emitted cheerful chatter from the back seat, George replied with bustling geniality, his only mask. How wonderful if they could just have made this ride in silence; she had a feeling that all sorts of lovely meanings were escaping her. There was the notch of blue light where the road slipped over a prickling horizon of pines. How just right were the slopes of the puppy-coloured sand hills, the tasselled trees against the pure lazy air, the coloured veining of the fields. Now, now; here, here; I’m here and now, she had to remind herself. It’s God’s world, whatever that can mean. Golly, you must be careful how you make fun of religion: it’s a form of art. She imagined a painting of that aisle of sandy road, climbing through the tall resiny grove. Religion would be a good name for it.—George had never seemed so far away as now when she sat beside him. Would it always be like that? Oh, teach yourself not to love things, she thought. Be indifferent. It’s love that causes suffering, it’s tenderness that weighs heavy on the heart. How ridiculous to say that God loves the world. He doesn’t give a damn about it, really. That’s why He’s so cheerful ... such a competent artist. His hand doesn’t shake. Still, I don’t think I want to meet Him. It’s a mistake to meet artists you admire; they’re always disappointing.