Jocelyn

by John Galsworthy

Jocelyn did not speak for a minute. She could not control her voice, and it trembled when she answered—

“You can go, of course, if you want to, I shall stay here. I hate the place.” She got up. “I thought you said just now you were never going there again!” As she spoke, she walked across to the window. Throwing it open, she stood leaning against it, looking out over the river.

Mrs. Travis sniffed subduedly with surprise and anger. It was unlike her niece to oppose her, it was unlike her to speak with emotion. She collected herself in her chair. On this occasion, it must be confessed, it took her while a person might count ten to see that she had not contradicted herself. Then she rose from her seat, the uncompleted garment in her hand. Throwing her feet out well in front of her, she walked to the door, an imposing figure in black silk.

“It was entirely on your account,” she said with dignity, opening the door, and going out with a rustle of offended petticoats.

Jocelyn, left alone, shrugged her shoulders. The grey kitten had followed her across the room, and was rubbing its arched back against her dress. She stooped, and picked it up.

She felt very lonely. The soft west wind driving the broken sky over the grey, untroubled river, was sweet with the mysterious scent of growing things, of the sap in the trees, of the earth after rain, of the flow of life; the spring scent that seems to tell us to begin again, stirs the blood to vague, unimaged longing, grips our hearts with a sweet aching.

It was the meeting of the lights—the buildings and chimneys loomed from across the river like shadowy monsters, peering into the dusk with reddening eyes. The lighted lamps on the steadfast bridges seemed to her to fling their greetings from one to the other, daring in linked chains the gathering gloom. She counted three barges, huge, amphibious beasts, creeping, black and sluggish, up river against the ebbtide. The dull hoot of a distant steamer, plying westwards, was carried now and again to her ears on the wind. The streets murmured ceaselessly from the back, roosting sparrows twittered sleepily in the trees, and from the square tower of the old church came a chime of Lenten bells. She leaned over the balcony. The bare boughs of the trees in the garden below swayed slowly. One by one the lamps of the embankment flared up; and beyond, under the drift of the restless sky, under the breath of the homeless wind, the river flowed, grey and untroubled, to the sea. The river, grey with the knowledge of the meanness and tragedy of life, untroubled in its strength and in its constancy; a philosopher to whom men confide all secrets, the recoil of the fainting spirit, the stirring of great endeavours; an image of human life, unceasing in the ebbing and flowing tides of surface emotion, whereon the traffic of living shifts to and fro, resistless in its unseen stream which is ever compelled to that mysterious sea where truth lies hidden, where life ends and life begins. Tears started into the girl’s eyes. The vague solemnity of the evening, the soft breath of spring in the air, bewildered her. She had a longing to know what it all meant, to feel the life stirring in that width of darkened water, in the flashing, yellow lights, in the wind that fanned her flushed face. She stretched out her arms with a sudden movement, and thought, “Ah! not to be so terribly alone!” Surely, all that she saw, felt, heard, could give her some companionship!

The wind fanned and passed her by, the lamps shone with a hard light, the river flowed cold and relentless. No truth, no life, no solace! She was alone! She turned away with an aching, as if some one had struck her in the chest.

She sat down at her piano, and began to play, a rhapsody of Brahms. The chords rang full and true under her slender fingers, the passionate throb of unending life seemed to beat in them. It was as though Nature were singing a song of full rejoicing, in the echoes of lofty mountains, in the rustling of yellow cornfields, in the medley of river torrents, and the hush of the unstained sea.

She played with her head bent a little forward, and with parted lips, and her dark eyes seemed trying to reach, beyond the music of the notes, a secret, mysterious and unfathomable. She was lost in the melody which swelled quivering into the room. When she had played the last bar, she left her hands nerveless and cold upon the keys. Suddenly, she bent her head down upon them in an uncontrollable burst of weeping. It seemed to her that all around the pulse of life was throbbing, in herself alone it stood still....