Thunder on the left

By Christopher Morley

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Title: Thunder on the left

Author: Christopher Morley

Release Date: July 4, 2023 [eBook #71117]

Language: English

Credits: Emmanuel Ackerman, David E. Brown, and the Online Distributed
         Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was
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THUNDER ON THE LEFT




OTHER BOOKS BY THE SAME AUTHOR

_Fiction_

  PARNASSUS ON WHEELS
  THE HAUNTED BOOKSHOP
  KATHLEEN
  TALES FROM A ROLLTOP DESK
  WHERE THE BLUE BEGINS
  PANDORA LIFTS THE LID
             (_with Don Marquis_)

_Essays_

  SHANDYGAFF
  MINCE PIE
  PIPEFULS
  PLUM PUDDING
  TRAVELS IN PHILADELPHIA
  THE POWDER OF SYMPATHY
  INWARD HO!
  RELIGIO JOURNALISTICI

_Poetry_

  SONGS FOR A LITTLE HOUSE
  THE ROCKING HORSE
  HIDE AND SEEK
  CHIMNEYSMOKE
  TRANSLATIONS FROM THE CHINESE
  PARSONS’ PLEASURE

_Plays_

  ONE ACT PLAYS




  _Thunder_
  ON
  The LEFT

  _A_mong the notionable dictes of antique Rome was the fancy that
  when men heard thunder on the left the gods had somewhat of speciall
  advertisement to impart.

  _T_hen did the prudent pause and lay down their affaire to studye
  what omen Jove intended.

  --SIR EUSTACE PEACHTREE.
  _THE DANGERS OF THIS MORTALL LIFE._

  _By_ CHRISTOPHER MORLEY

  [Illustration]

  _Garden City_      _New York_
  DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY
  1925




  COPYRIGHT, 1925, BY DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY.
  ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. COPYRIGHT, 1925, BY HARPER
  & BROTHERS. PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES
  AT THE COUNTRY LIFE PRESS, GARDEN CITY, N. Y.

  FIRST EDITION




  TO
  S. A. E.


  The undertaking a comedy not merely sentimental was very dangerous.

                                                     --OLIVER GOLDSMITH.

  On parla des passions. “Ah! qu’elles sont funestes!” disait
  Zadig.--“Ce sont les vents qui enflent les voiles du vaisseau,”
  repartit l’ermite: “elles le submergent quelquefois; mais sans elles
  il ne pourrait voguer. La bile rend colère et malade; mais sans la
  bile l’homme ne saurait vivre. Tout est dangereux ici-bas, et tout
  est nécessaire.”

                                                    --VOLTAIRE, _Zadig_.

  “Your mind had to be tormented and fevered and exalted before you
  could see a god.”

  “It was cruel of you to do this,” she said.

                                                     --JAMES STEPHENS,
                                                 _In the Land of Youth_.




THUNDER ON THE LEFT




Thunder on the Left




I


Now that the children were getting big, it wasn’t to be called the
Nursery any longer. In fact, it was being repapered that very day: the
old scribbled Mother Goose pattern had already been covered with new
strips, damp and bitter-smelling. But Martin thought he would be able
to remember the gay fairy-tale figures, even under the bright fresh
paper. There were three bobtailed mice, dancing. They were repeated
several times in the procession of pictures that ran round the wall.
How often he had studied them as he lay in bed waiting for it to be
time to get up. It must be excellent to be Grown Up and able to dress
as early as you please. What a golden light lies across the garden
those summer mornings.

At any rate, it would be comforting to know that the bobtailed mice
were still there, underneath. To-day the smell of the paste and new
paper was all through the house. The men were to have come last week.
To-day it was awkward: it was Martin’s birthday (he was ten) and he and
Bunny had been told to invite some friends for a small party. It was
raining, too: one of those steady drumming rains that make a house so
cosy. The Grown-Ups were having tea on the veranda, so the party was
in the dining room. When Mrs. Richmond looked through the glass porch
doors to see how they were getting on, she was surprised to find no one
visible.

“Where on earth have those children gone?” she exclaimed. “How
delightfully quiet they are.”

There was a seven-voiced halloo of triumph, and a great scuffle and
movement under the big mahogany table. Several steamer rugs had been
pinned together and draped across the board so that they hung down
forming a kind of pavilion. From this concealment the children came
scrambling and surrounded her in a lively group.

“We had all disappeared!” said Bunny. She was really called Eileen, but
she was soft and plump and brown-eyed and twitch-nosed; three years
younger than her brother.

“You came just in time to save us,” said Martin gaily.

“Just in time to save my table,” amended Mrs. Richmond. “Bunny, you
know how you cried when you scratched your legs going blackberrying. Do
you suppose the table likes having its legs scratched any better than
you do? And those grimy old rugs all over my lace cloth. Martin, take
them off at once.”

“We were playing Stern Parents,” explained Alec, a cousin and less awed
by reproof than the other guests, who were merely friends.

Mrs. Richmond was taken aback. “What a queer name for a game.”

“It’s a lovely game,” said Ruth, her face pink with excitement. “You
pretend to be Parents and you all get together and talk about the
terrible time you have with your children----”

Martin broke in: “And you tell each other all the things you’ve had to
scold them for----”

“And you have to forbid their doing all kinds of things,” said Ben.

“And speak to them Very Seriously,” chirped Bunny. Mrs. Richmond felt a
twinge of merriment at the echo of this familiar phrase.

“And every time you’ve punished them for something that doesn’t really
matter----” (this was Phyllis).

“--You’re a _Stern Parent_, and have to disappear!” cried Martin.

“You get under the table and can’t come out until someone says
something nice about you.”

“It’s a very instructing game, ’cause you have to know just how far
children can be allowed to go----”

“But we were _all_ Stern Parents, and had all disappeared.”

“Yes, and then Mother said we were delightfully quiet, and that saved
us.”

“What an extraordinary game,” said Mrs. Richmond.

“All Martin’s games are extraordinary,” said Phyllis. “He just made up
one called Quarrelsome Children.”

“Will you play it with us?” asked Bunny.

“I don’t believe that’s a new game,” said her mother. “I’m sure I’ve
seen it played, too often. But it’s time for the cake. Straighten up
the chairs and I’ll go and get it.”

Seated round the table, and left alone with the cake, the lighted
candles, and the ice cream, the children found much to discuss.

“Ten candles,” said Alec, counting them carefully.

“I had thirteen on mine, last birthday,” said Phyllis, the oldest of
the girls.

“That’s nothing, so did I,” said Ben.

“Your cook’s clever,” said Ruth. “She’s marked the places to cut, with
icing, so you can make all the pieces even.”

“I think it was foolish of her,” said Martin, “because Bunny is quite
a small child still; if she has too much chocolate she comes out in
spots.”

Bunny and Joyce, at the other end of the table, looked at each other
fleetingly, in a tacit alliance of juniority. Joyce was also seven, a
dark little elf, rather silent.

“Why don’t you blow out the candles?” shrilled Bunny.

This effectively altered the topic. After the sudden hurricane had
ceased, Martin began to cut, obediently following the white spokes of
sugar.

“I wonder what it feels like to be grown up?” said Alec.

“I guess we’ll know if we wait long enough,” said Phyllis.

“How old do you have to be, to be grown up?” asked Ruth.

“A man’s grown up when he’s twenty-one,” Ben stated firmly.

“Is Daddy twenty-one?” said Bunny.

Cries of scorn answered this. “Of course he is,” said Martin. “Daddy’s
middle-age, he’s over thirty. He’s what they call _primeoflife_, I
heard him say so.”

“That’s just before your hair begins to come out in the comb,” said
Alec.

Bunny was undismayed, perhaps encouraged by seeing in front of her more
ice cream than she had ever been left alone with before.

“Daddy _isn’t_ grown up,” she insisted. “The other day when we played
blind man’s buff on the beach, Mother said he was just a big boy.”

“Girls grow up quicker,” said Phyllis. “My sister’s eighteen, she’s so
grown up she’ll hardly speak to me. It happened all at once. She went
for a week-end party, when she came back she was grown up.”

“That’s not grown up,” said Ben. “That’s just stuck up. Girls get like
that. It’s a form of nervousness.”

They were not aware that Ben had picked up this phrase by overhearing
it applied to some eccentricities of his own. They were impressed, and
for a moment the ice cream and cake engaged all attentions. Then a
round of laughter from the veranda reopened the topic.

“Why do men laugh more than ladies?” asked Bunny.

“It must be wonderful,” said Martin.

“You bet!” said Ben. “Think of having long trousers, and smoking a
pipe, blowing rings, going to town every day, going to the bank and
getting money----”

“And all the drug stores where you can stop and have sodas,” said Ruth.

“Sailing a boat!”

“Going shopping!”

“The circus!” shouted Bunny.

“I don’t mean just _doing_ things,” said Martin. “I mean thinking
things.” His eager face, clearly lit by two candles in tall silver
sticks, was suddenly and charmingly grave. “Able to think what you
want to; not to have to--to do things you know are wrong.” For an
instant the boy seemed to tremble on the edge of uttering the whole
secret infamy of childhood; the most pitiable of earth’s slaveries;
perhaps the only one that can never be dissolved. But the others hardly
understood; nor did he, himself. He covered his embarrassment by
grabbing at a cracker of gilt paper in which Alec was rummaging for the
pull.

Joyce had slipped from her chair and was peeping through one of the
windows. Something in the talk had struck home to her in a queer,
troublesome way. Suddenly, she didn’t know why, she wanted to look at
the Grown-Ups, to see exactly what they were like. The rest of the
party followed her in a common impulse. Joyce’s attitude caused them to
tiptoe across the room and peer covertly from behind the long curtains.
Without a word of explanation all were aware of their odd feeling of
spying on the enemy--an implacable enemy, yet one who is (how plainly
we realize it when we see him off guard in the opposing trench, busy at
his poor affairs, cooking or washing his socks) so kin to ourselves.
With the apprehensive alertness of those whose lives may depend on
their nimble observation, they watched the unconscious group at the tea
table.

“Daddy’s taking three lumps,” said Bunny. She spoke louder than is
prudent in an outpost, and was s-s-sh-ed.

“Your mother’s got her elbow on the table,” Ruth whispered.

“Daddy’s smacking his lips and chomping,” insisted Bunny.

“That’s worse than talking with your mouth full.”

“How queer they look when they laugh.”

“Your mother lifts her head like a hen swallowing.”

“Yours has her legs crossed.”

“It’s a form of nervousness.”

“They do all the things they tell us not to,” said Joyce.

“Look, he’s reaching right across the table for another cake.”

Martin watched his parents and their friends. What was there in the
familiar scene that became strangely perplexing? He could not have put
it into words, but there was something in those voices and faces that
made him feel frightened, a little lonely. Was that really Mother, by
the silver urn with the blue flame flattened under it? He could tell by
her expression that she was talking about things that belong to that
Other World, the thrillingly exciting world of Parents, whose secrets
are so cunningly guarded. That world changes the subject, alters the
very tone of its voice, when you approach. He had a wish to run out on
the veranda, to reassure himself by the touch of her soft cool arm in
the muslin dress. He wanted to touch the teapot, to see if it was hot.
If it was, he would know that all this was real. They had gone so far
away.--Or were they also only playing a game?

“They look as though they were hiding something,” he said.

“They’re having fun,” Phyllis said. “They always do; grown-ups have a
wonderful time.”

“Come on,”--Martin remembered that he was the host--“the ice cream will
get cold.” This was what Daddy always said.

Bunny felt a renewed pride as she climbed into her place at the end of
the table. Martin looked solemnly handsome in his Eton collar across
the shining spread of candlelight and cloth and pink peppermints. The
tinted glass panes above the sideboard were cheerful squares of colour
against the wet grey afternoon. She wriggled a little, to reëstablish
herself on the slippery chair.

“Our family is getting very grown up,” she said happily. “We’re not
going to have a nursery any more. It’s going to be the guest room.”

“I don’t think I want to be grown up,” said Alec suddenly. “It’s silly.
I don’t believe they have a good time at all.”

This was a disconcerting opinion. Alec, as an older cousin, held a
position of some prestige. A faint dismay was apparent in the gazes
that crossed rapidly in the sparkling waxlight.

“I think we ought to make up our minds about it,” Martin said gravely.
“Pretty soon, the way things are going, we _will_ be, then it’ll be too
late.”

“Silly, what can you do?” said Phyllis. “Of course we’ve got to grow
up, everyone does, unless they die.” Her tone was clear and positive,
but also there was a just discernible accent of inquiry. She had not
yet quite lost her childhood birthright of wonder, of belief that
almost anything is possible.

“We’d have to Take Steps,” cried Alec, unconsciously quoting the enemy.
“We could just decide among ourselves that we simply wouldn’t, and if
we all lived together we could go on just like we are.”

“It would be like a game,” said Martin, glowing.

“With toys?” ejaculated Bunny, entranced.

Ben was firmly opposed. “I won’t do it. I want to have long trousers
and grow a moustache.”

Martin’s face was serious with the vision of huge alternatives.

“That’s it,” he said. “We’ve got to know before we can decide. It’s
terribly important. If they _don’t_ have a good time, we’d better----”

“We could _ask_ them if they’re happy,” exclaimed Ruth, thrilled by the
thought of running out on the veranda to propose this stunning question.

“They wouldn’t tell you,” said Alec. “They’re too polite.”

Phyllis was trying to remember instructive examples of adult
infelicity. “They don’t tell the truth,” she agreed. “Mother once said
that if Daddy went on like that she’d go mad, and I waited and waited,
and he did and she didn’t.”

“You mustn’t believe what they say,” Martin continued. “They never tell
the truth if they think children are around. They don’t _want_ us to
know what it’s like.”

“Perhaps they’re ashamed of being grown up,” Ben suggested.

“We must find out,” Martin said, suddenly feeling in his mind the
expanding brightness of an idea. “It’ll be a new game. We’ll all be
spies in the enemy’s country, we’ll watch them and see exactly how they
behave, and bring in a report.”

“Get hold of their secret codes, and find where their forces are
hidden,” cried Ben, who liked the military flavour of this thought.

“I think it’s a silly game,” said Phyllis. “You can’t really find out
anything; and if you did, you’d be punished. Spies always get caught.”

“Penalty of death!” shouted the boys, elated.

“It’s harder than being a real spy,” said Martin. “You can’t wear
the enemy’s uniform and talk their language. But I’m going to do it,
anyhow.”

“Me too!” Joyce exclaimed from the other end of the table, where she
and Bunny had followed the conversation with half-frightened excitement.

“I want to be a spy!” added Bunny.

“Mustn’t have too many spies,” said Alec. “The enemy would suspect
something was up. Send one first, he’ll see what he can find and report
to us.”

It was not clear to Bunny exactly who the enemy were or how the spying
was to be carried out; but if Martin was to do it, it would be well
done, she was certain. Spying, that suggested secrecy, and secrecy----

“Martin has a little roll-top desk with a key!” she shouted. “Daddy
gave it to him for his birthday.”

“Oh, I forgot,” said Phyllis. She ran out into the living room, and
returned with a large parcel. “Many happy returns,” she said, laying
it in front of Martin. If you listen intently, behind the innocent
little phrase you can overhear, like a whispering chorus, the voices of
innumerable parents: “And don’t forget, when you give it to him, to say
_Many happy returns_.”

The others also hurried to get the packages that had been left in the
vestibule. There was a great rattling of paper and untying of string;
an embarrassed reiteration of thankyous by Martin. He felt it awkward
to say the same thing again for each gift.

Hearing the movement in the dining room, the grown-ups had now come in.

“Such a pretty sight.”

“I love children’s parties, their faces are always a picture.”

“Martin, did you say thank you to Alec for that lovely croquet set?”

“This is what _I_ gave him,” said Ben, pushing forward the parcheesi
board.

“The girls are so dainty, like little flowers.”

“Who is the little dark one, over by the window?”

“That’s Joyce.--Why, Joyce dear, what are you crying about?”

The strong maternal voice rang through the room with a terrible
publicity of compassion. The children stared. Bunny ran and threw
her arms round her friend, who had hidden her face in the curtain.
Bunny thought she knew what was wrong. Joyce had forgotten to bring
a present, and was ashamed because all the others had done so. The
miserable little figure tried to efface itself in the curtain; even
the tiny pearl buttons at the back of her pink frock had come undone.
Things that are close to us, how loyal they are, how they follow the
moods of their owners.

“There, there, honey, what’s the trouble? After such a lovely party?”
This was authoritative pity, threateningly musical.

Bunny pressed her warm lips against a wet petal of nostril.

“Martin doesn’t mind,” she whispered. “He _hates_ presents.”

Joyce could feel powerful fingers buttoning the cool gap between her
shoulders. When that was done she would be turned round and asked what
was the matter.

“Perhaps she has a pain,” boomed a masculine vibration. “These parties
always upset them. Worst thing for children.”

Joyce could smell a whiff of cigar and see large feet in white canvas
shoes approaching. Best to face it now before worse happens. She turned
desperately, hampered by Bunny’s embrace, almost throttling her in
an excess of affection. Breaking away she ran across the room, where
Martin and the boys were averting their eyes from the humiliation of
the would-be spy. She thrust into his hand a tiny package, damp now.

“It was so small,” she said.

A moment of appalling silence hung over the trembling pair. Martin
could feel it coming, the words “What do you say, Martin?” seemed
forming and rolling up over his head like opal banks of summer storm.
Yet he could not have said a word. He seized her hand and shook it,
with a grotesque bob of his head.

“Such a little gentleman, how _do_ you train them? I can’t do anything
with Ben, he’s so rough.”

Joyce was blotted out by a merciful hooded raincoat. As she struggled
through its dark rubber-smelling folds she could hear voices coming
down from above.

“Alec, say good-bye to your little cousins--no, we must say your _big_
cousins, mustn’t we?”

“Thank Mrs. Richmond for such a nice party.”

“Thank you, Mrs. Richmond, for such a nice party.”

“Martin, you haven’t opened Joyce’s present.”

“I don’t want to open it,” murmured Martin sullenly. Then he knew he
had said the wrong thing.

“Don’t want to open it? Why of course you want to open it. We don’t
measure presents by their size, do we, Joyce?”

Joyce, almost escaped, was drawn again into the arena.

“Come, Alec, we’ll see what Joyce has given Martin and then you must
go.”

“I can’t untie it, the string’s wet,” muttered Martin.

The watching circle drew closer.

“Wet? Nonsense. Here, give it to me.”

Unfolding of sodden paper. A mouse of soft grey plush, with little
glassy eyes and a long silky tail. And two wheels under his stomach, a
key to wind him by.

“Why, it’s the mouse we saw in the window at the cigar store. Joyce was
crazy about it.”

“You see, Martin, she’s given you a mouse because she wanted it so much
for herself.”

“It isn’t very much, my dear, but there’s so little to choose from,
here in the country.”

“It’s like the mice we had on the nursery wallpaper,” said Bunny,
praising valiantly.

“Wind it up and see it run.”

There are some situations that, once entered, must be carried through
to the end. Martin wound. He could tell by the feel of the key that
something was wrong.

“I’ll play with it later,” he said.

“Don’t be so stubborn, Martin. We’re all waiting to see it.”

Joyce’s gaze was riveted on the mouse. She remembered the ominous
click in its vitals, when she had been giving it an ecstatic trial.
But perhaps Martin, with the magic boys have in these matters, could
make it go again, as it went--so thrillingly, in mouselike darts and
curves--on the cigar-store floor.

Martin put it down, giving it a deft push. It ran a few inches and
stopped.

“It runs fine,” he said hastily. “But it won’t go here on the rug.”

“Let’s see it,” said Ben, whose mechanical sense was not satisfied by
so brief an exhibition.

“It’s mine,” snapped Martin fiercely, and put it in his pocket.

“We really must go,” said someone.

“Would you each like a piece of Martin’s cake to take home?”

“Oh, no, thank you, I think they’ve had plenty.”

“Did you make a wish?”

“No, we forgot,” said Martin.

“Oh, what a pity. When you blow out the candles on a birthday cake you
should always make a wish.”

“Will it come true?”

“If it’s a nice wish.”

“Light them again and do it now,” said one of the parents. The drill
must be finished.

“Yes, do, before the children go.”

“Will it work if you light them again?” asked Martin doubtfully.

“Every bit as well.”

The ten candles were reassembled on the remaining sector of cake, and
Martin, feeling very self-conscious, stood by while they were relit.
His guests were pushed forward.

“All ready? Blow!”

There was a loud puffing. Bunny’s blast, a little too late, blew a
fragrant waver of smoke into his face.

“Did you wish?”

“Yes,” said Martin, “I----”

“You mustn’t tell it! If you tell, it won’t come true.”

But he hadn’t wished, yet. He wanted to wait a moment, to get it just
right. As the children turned away, trooping toward the door, Martin
made one hasty movement that no one saw. With a quick slice of the
sharp cake-knife he cut off the tail of the plush mouse. Now it would
always serve to remind him of the tailless mice in the room that was no
longer a nursery. Then, with the snuff of smoking candles still in his
nose, he wished.




II


“Dear Miss Clyde,” wrote Mrs. Granville, “it will be so nice to meet
you again after all these years. You can imagine my surprise when I
found that the house Mr. Granville has taken for the summer is the old
Richmond place, which I remember so well from long ago. Twenty-one
years, isn’t it? It hasn’t changed a bit, but everything seems so much
smaller, even the ocean somehow. The house has been shut up a long
time, since the summer the Richmonds went away. We want you to join our
Family Picnic, which is always an amusing affair. Mr. Granville admires
your work so much, I did not realize until recently that you must be
the same person I knew as a child. There are other artists here too,
the Island has become quite a summer camp for painters, the woods are
full of them, painting away merrily. I am sorry this is so late, but
just send us a wire saying you can come....”

She paused to reread the letter, and changed “so nice,” in the first
line, to “nice.” She changed “twenty-one” to “nearly twenty.” She
crossed out “painting away merrily.” How do I know whether they’re
merry? she asked herself. Then she noticed that the word “summer” was
used three times. She changed one of them to “year.” No, that made
three “years.” Put “for the vacation” instead of “for the summer.” Now
the letter must be copied again.

Why on earth George wanted her to invite the Clyde creature when things
were complicated enough already ... she had never cared much for her
even as a child ... to have outsiders here for the Picnic when they had
only just got the old house in running order, and Lizzie was overworked
in the kitchen, and expenses terrific anyhow ... George thought Miss
Clyde might be the right person to do the pictures for the booklet he
was writing for the railroad company. Always thinking of his business
first and her convenience afterward. Business was something to be
attended to in offices, not to be mixed up with your home life. Never
try to make social friends of your business acquaintances, how many
times had she told George that?

Damn the Picnic, damn the Picnic, damn the Picnic!

Of course she had only brought down one sheet of paper; now she must
go up again for more. The dining table was the single place in the
house she could write a letter. If she halted in the bedroom, in a
moment Nounou was at the door with endless this that and the other
about the children. If she sat down on the porch, Lizzie could see her
from the pantry window and would come at once with stentorian palaver.
Why couldn’t a cook do what she was told, not argue about it? In the
little sitting room George had spread out his business papers; anyhow,
she couldn’t bear him near her when she wanted to write. And in the
garden it was too hot. A bumblebee was bumping and grumbling against
the pane. If you took a cloth and held him, to put him outdoors, his
deep warm hum would rise to a piercing scream of anger. She felt like
that. If any one touched her....

The bee was fussing up and down the window, the one with red and blue
and orange panes. She remembered that window from childhood visits to
the Richmonds. When you looked through the orange glass, the purest sky
turned a leaden green, dull with menace; the clear northern sunlight
became a poisoned tropic glare. And the blue panes made everything
a crazy cold moonscape, with strange grape-juice colours underneath
the leaves. It reminded her of George’s favourite remark, in moments
of stress, that women’s conduct is entirely physiological. Ponderous
pedantry! Vulgar too. Physiology, a hateful word. Suddenly she felt
an immense pity for all women ... even Miss Clyde. She went up to the
bedroom to get another sheet of paper.

George had actually moved the bureau at last, so that the light fell
justly on the mirror. Yes, the pale green dress was pretty. Like
lettuce and mayonnaise, George had said, admiring the frail yellow
collar. It brought out the clear blue of the eyes, like sluiced
pebbles. She was almost amazed (looking closely) to see how clear they
were, after so many angers, so much--physiology. One can be candid in
solitude. Thirty-four. What was that story she had read, which said
that a woman is at her most irresistible at thirty-five? Mother had
sent it to her, in a magazine, and had written in the margin _True of
my Phyllis_. She laughed. What a merciless comedy life is. Ten years
before, Mother would have marked in the same way any story that said
_twenty_-five. Was there no such thing as truth? Blessed Mother, who
knew that woman must be flattered. A pity that story hadn’t been in a
book instead of a magazine. Books carry more authority.... But books,
pooh! Who had ever written a book that told the innermost truth? Thank
God, in her secret heroic self she was aware of joy and disgust, but
she kept them private. Truth is about other people, not about me. A
woman doesn’t bear and rear three children ... bring them into the
world, a comelier phrase ... and cohabit with a queer fish like George
without knowing what life amounts to. And how enviable she was: young,
pretty, slender, with three such adorable kiddies.

“I don’t care, there won’t be any one at the Picnic prettier. I was
made to be happy and I’m going to be.”

She hummed a little tune. “Jesus lover of my soul, let me to thy bosom
fly.” George was vulgar, but he was amusing. When the beetle buzzed
down inside her blouse at the beach supper, tickling and crawling so
far that she had to go into the bushes to take him out, George said
“That must have been the bosom-fly you’re always singing about.”
Sometimes it seemed as though the world was made for the vulgar people,
there are always so many ridiculous embarrassments lying in wait for
the sensitive. When the wind blew, her skirts always went higher than
any one else’s. She would wear the new pink camisole at the Picnic,
that fitted very snugly ... still, a thing like that bosom-fly would
hardly happen twice. George always wanted to take jam and sardines on a
picnic; sticky stuff that attracts the bees and ants. Fortunately we’re
all wearing knickers nowadays.... Poor old blundering, affectionate,
and maddening George. Still it was something to have married a man with
brains. There were so many, so much more attractive, she could have
had, as Mother (dear loyal Mother) often reminded her. It’s a good
thing people don’t know what mothers and married daughters talk about.
That is the rock that life is founded upon: an alliance against the
rest of the world. Away off in the future, when her own daughters were
married, she would have _them_ to confide in. You must have _someone_
to whom you can say what you think. But which of the three? You can’t
confide in more than one. Three little girls, three darling little
girls, like dolls. Thank goodness there wasn’t a boy to grow up like
George: obstinate, greedy, always wanting to do the wrong thing ...
it was enough to break any woman’s spirit, trying to teach a man to
do things the way nice people do them. If George wanted to lead an
unconventional life, he ought to have been an artist, not gone in for
business.... And such a crazy kind of business, Publicity, now working
for one company, now for another, here there and everywhere, neither
flesh nor fowl nor good red income. A man ought to have a settled job,
with an office in some fixed place, so you always know where he is.
A country club is a good thing for a husband, too, where he can meet
the right sort of men (how handsome they are in those baggy breeches
and golf stockings), lawyers and a banker or two, influential men with
nice manners. You can always ’phone to the clubhouse and leave word;
or drive up in the coupé (it ought to be a coupé) and bring him home
to dinner. She could hear voices, voices of young pretty wives (not
too young, not quite as pretty): “Who is that in the green dress, with
the three little girls all dressed alike, aren’t they _cunning_!--Oh,
that’s Mrs. Granville, Mrs. George Granville, her husband’s in the
advertising business, he adores her.”

Where was the box of notepaper? The children must have been at it, the
top had been jammed on carelessly, split at one corner. Of all annoying
things, the worst is to have people pawing in your bureau; there isn’t
any key, of course. How can a woman be happy if she can’t even have
any privacy in her own bureau drawer? If George ever wants anything
he always comes rummaging here first of all. The other day it was the
little prayer book.--Why, George, what do you want with a prayer book?
I thought you were an atheist.--So I am, but I want to strengthen my
disbelief. I was beginning to weaken.--What a way to talk. George _is_
an atheist, but he believes in religion for other people: because it
makes them more unselfish, I dare say. Yet, in a queer way, George has
a pious streak. Perhaps he’s really more religious than I am.--The
only thing I have against God is that He’s a man ... not a man, but
... well, Masculine. How can He understand about the special troubles
of women? That must be the advantage of being a Catholic, you pray to
the Virgin. She can understand. But can She? After all, a Virgin ... I
_mustn’t_ let my mind run on like this, it’s revolting the things you
find yourself thinking.

From the bay window at the head of the stairs, over the garden and
the sweep of grassy hill, she could see the water. Along the curve of
shore, a thin crisp of foam edging the tawny sand. If she didn’t get
off that letter to Miss Clyde it would be too late for her to come to
the Picnic. The Brooks were coming this afternoon. It was Nounou’s
evening off, too. What perfect weather. This lovely world, this lovely
world. Oh, well, if George wanted the Picnic now, she might as well go
through with it.

As she went down, George was in the hall, lighting his pipe. He looked
very tall and ruddy and cheerful: almost handsome in his blue linen
shirt and flannel trousers. An eddy of smoke rose about his head. She
halted on the stairs.

“George! Don’t puff so much smoke. I want to see the top of your head
... I do believe it’s getting thin.”

“How pretty you look,” he said. “I like the green shift.”

He enjoyed calling things by wrong names, and the word _shift_ always
amused him. He found words entertaining, a habit that often annoyed
her. But this time she did not stop to correct him.

“You ought to wear a rubber cap when you go bathing. The salt water
gets your hair all sticky, and then the comb tears it out. I don’t mind
your being an atheist, but I’d hate you to be bald.”

He blew a spout of tobacco smoke up at her. It was extraordinarily
fragrant. Oh, well, she thought, he’s not a bad old thing. He’s
endurable.

“George.” She intended to say, “I love you.” But of their own accord
the words changed themselves before they escaped into voice.

“George, do you love me?”

He made his usual unsatisfactory reply. “Well, what do you think?” Of
course the proper answer is, “I _adore_ you.” She knew, by now, that he
never would make it; probably because he was aware she craved it.

“I’m writing Miss Clyde to come to the Picnic.”

He looked a little awkward.

“Needn’t do that, I wrote to her yesterday. I said you were busy and
wanted me to ask her.”

“Well, of all things----”

She curbed herself savagely. She _wouldn’t_ lose her temper. Damn,
damn, damn ... his damned impudence.

“When is she coming?”

“I don’t know yet. To-morrow morning, I dare say.”

“Well, then, we’ll have the Picnic to-morrow, get it over with.”

He began to say something, put out his hand, but she brushed fiercely
past him and ran into the dining room. She tore her letter into shreds,
together with the clean sheet she had brought down. The room was full
of a warm irritating buzz.

“George!” she cried angrily, with undeniable command. “Come here and
put out this damned bee!”




III


The kitchen was hot, flies were zigzagging just under the ceiling,
swerving silly triangles of ecstasy in the rising savour of roast and
sizzling gravy.

“Lizzie, you _must_ keep the screen door latched. There was a big bee
in the dining room. That’s how they get in.--Where are the children?”

“It’s that man, he always leaves it open.”

“The ice man? Well, speak to him about it.”

“No, ma’am, the one in the garden. The one Nounou took ’em down to the
beach to get away from. She didn’t think he was quite right.”

What on earth was Lizzie talking about?

“A man in the garden? What’s he doing here?”

“I gave him a piece of cake. He saw it in the pantry window and asked
for some. Then he was in again for a glass of water.”

Another problem. Life is just one perplexity after another. But there
must be some explanation.

“He asked for a piece of cake? Who is he, the gardener?”

Lizzie was flushed with heat and impatience. Her voice rose shrilly.

“He didn’t exactly ask for it, but he was lookin’ in the window at it
and he says, ‘They always give me a piece of cake when I want it.’ No,
he ain’t the gardener. I don’t know who he is. I thought maybe a friend
of yours, one o’ the artists. He was playin’ with the kids.”

She stepped outside, resolutely attempting not to think. Automatically
she adjusted the lid of the garbage can. But the mind insists on
thinking. Was it better for the can to stand there in the sun, or to go
in the cellar entry where it would be cooler? Sunlight is a purifier:
the heat would tend to dry the moist refuse ... but the sun attracts
flies too. She stooped to lift the can, then paused, abandoned the
problem, left it where it was. Just like George to have rented an
old-fashioned barracks like this, not even gas for cooking. No wonder
the place had stood empty for years and years. The idea of cooking
with coal in July. If the oil range didn’t come soon Lizzie would
quit, she could see it in her face. The ice box was too small. If they
took enough ice to last through the day, there was no room for the
ginger-ale bottles. She had known it would be like this.

The garden seemed to sway and tremble in brilliant light. A warm
sweetness of flowers floated lightly, the air was not really hot after
all. Why did Nounou let the children leave their croquet mallets lying
all anyhow about the lawn? Remind George that Nounou’s wages will be
due on the twenty-third. If you don’t remind George of those things
he complains about being taken by surprise. Beyond the hedge of rose
bushes, a blue glimpse of water. It _was_ a heavenly place. There must
be some consolation in a garden like this. If one could breathe it in
deeply and not think, not think, just slack off the everlasting tension
for a few moments. Of course it’s quite useless, but I’m going to pray.
God, please help me not to think.... In France, Catholics say _vous_
to God, and Protestants say _tu_. That’s rather curious.... There, I’m
thinking again. No wonder the artists come here in summer, the Island
is so lovely. Loafers, that’s what they are, idling about enjoying
themselves making pictures while other people plan the details of meals
and housekeeping ... and Picnics. She could imagine Miss Clyde sitting
in the garden sketching, relishing it all, romping with the children,
while _she_ was doing the marketing. Are there enough blankets for the
guest-room bed? And with only one bathroom ... Miss Clyde is probably
the kind of person who takes a terrible long time over her bath.

The strip of beach gravel that led toward the rose-trellis was warm and
crackly underfoot. Among the grey pebbles were small bleached shells.
Once upon a time, she had told the children, those shells belonged to
snails who lived in the sea. When the tide went out, their little rocky
pool got warm and torpid in the glare. Then the sea came back again,
crumbling over the ledges with a fresh hoarse noise: great gushes of
cold salty water pouring in, waving the seaweeds, waking up the crabs.
She could imagine the reviving snails wriggling happily in their spiral
cottages, feeling that coolness prickle along their skins. She would
like to lie down on the gravel and think about this. Would reality,
joy, truth, ever come pouring in on her like that? There was a bench
in the rose-garden, if she could get so far. When things are a bit
too much for one (fine true old phrase: they _are_ just a little too
much for us, adorable torturing _things_) it’s so strangely comforting
to lie flat on sun-warmed earth ... the legend of Antæus ... but not
here, Lizzie could see her from that synoptic pantry window. How large
a proportion of life consists in heroically denying the impulse? But
just round this corner, behind the shrubbery----

Someone was doing it already. Oh, this must be the man Lizzie spoke
of. How very odd: sprawled on the gravel, playing with pebbles. Lizzie
must have been right, one of the artists. Unconventional, to come
into a private garden like that ... asking for a piece of cake. Never
be surprised, though, at artists. Perhaps he’s doing a still-life
painting: something very modern, a slice of cocoanut cake on a
lettuce leaf. Artists (she had a vague idea) enjoyed making pictures
of food. But he’d been playing with the children, Lizzie said. What
sort of person would play with children before being introduced to
their parents? Perhaps he wanted to do a portrait of them. Portraits
of children were better done with the mother, who could keep them
quiet.... I always think there’s no influence like a mother’s, don’t
you?... On the bench in the rose-garden, that would be the place. She
could see the picture, reproduced in _Vanity Fair_ ... Green Muslin:
Study of Mrs. George Granville and Her Daughters. But even if it were
painted at once it couldn’t possibly be printed in a magazine before
next--when? January? George would know about that. But strange the man
didn’t get up, he must hear her coming. He looked like a gentleman.

“How do you do?” she said, a little coldly.

He was studying the pebbles; at the sound of her voice he twisted and
looked up over his shoulder. He seemed faintly shy, yet also entirely
composed.

“Hullo!” he said. “I mean, how do you do.” His voice was very gentle.
(How different from George.) Something extraordinary about his way
of looking at her; what clear hazel eyes. Instead of offering any
explanation he seemed waiting for her to say something. She had
confidently expected a quick scramble to his feet, a courteous apology
for intruding. She felt a little angry at herself for not being able to
speak as reprovingly as he deserved. But there was a crumb on his chin,
somehow this weakened her. A man who would come into people’s gardens
and ask for cake and not even wipe the crumbs off his chin. He must be
someone rather special.

“You’re doing just what I wanted to,” she said.

He looked at her, still with that placid inquiry.

“I mean lying on the ground, in the sun.”

“It’s nice,” he said.

Really, of all embarrassing situations. If he didn’t get up, she
felt that in another minute she _would_ be sprawling there herself.
A very ungraceful pose for the portrait: Mrs. George Granville and
Her Daughters, prone on the gravel. Women ought not to lie like that
anyway, it humps up the sitting-part so obviously. Yet they always do
in bathing suits, most candid of all costumes.... Perhaps for that very
reason. What queer contradictions there are in good manners. This was
too absurd. Thank goodness, he was getting to his feet. The crumb shone
in the sunlight, it adhered to his chin with some of Lizzie’s sticky
white icing.

“Was the cake good?” She meant this to be rather cutting, and was
pleased to see him look a little frightened.

“Awfully good.” Now he looked hopeful, rather like a dog. She could not
altogether understand the queer way he had of studying her: steadily,
yet without any of the annoying or alarming intimations that long gazes
usually suggest. But he made no movement to leave.

“I suppose you’re waiting for another piece.”

“Yes,” he said, smiling.

Now, she felt, she had him trapped. This would destroy him.

“You haven’t finished the first.”

He understood at once, and ran his tongue toward his chin until it
found the crumb. She watched it disappear with the feeling of having
lost an ally. She had counted on that crumb to humiliate him with.

“All gone,” he announced gaily. What could one do with a man like that?

“I suppose you’re an artist.” Not knowing what else to do she had
turned toward the house, and he was walking with her. He was tall and
pleasantly dressed and had rather a nice way of walking: politely
tentative, yet with plenty of assurance.

“I’m Martin.”

Her mind made little rushes one way and another, trying to think if she
had heard of him. He must be very famous, to give his name with such
easy simplicity. Why do I know so little about art? she asked herself.
Well, how can I keep up with things, there’s always so much to do. It’s
George’s fault, expecting me to run a big house. If we’d gone to the
Inn ... what are the names of the famous painters? Sargent was the only
one she could think of. She could see George at the pantry window. In a
moment she would have to introduce them, what should she say? What was
George doing in the pantry?

“George, let that cake alone!” she called. It sounded a pleasant
humorous cry, but George’s well-tuned ear caught the undertone of fury.
That was just like George. Whenever he was angry or upset he went to
the pantry and got himself something to eat.

“I was saving the cake for the Picnic,” she explained.

“A Picnic!” said the stranger. His brown face was bright with interest.
“When?”

If George could invite people to the Picnic, why shouldn’t she? By the
way, I mustn’t forget to order some sardines.

“Where are you staying?” she asked.

Apparently he didn’t understand this, for he replied, “I don’t mind.”
He was looking at the pantry window, where George’s guilty face peered
out from behind the wire screen.

“How funny he looks, like a guinea-pig in a cage,” he said.

That was exactly what George did look like, squinting out into the
sunshine. The end of his nose, pressed against the mesh, was white and
red, like a half-ripe strawberry.

“George, this is Mr. Martin, the famous artist. He’s coming to our
Picnic.”




IV


George was in a fidget, in the little sitting room that opened off the
hall. It was just under the stairs and when any one went up or down he
could hear the feet and couldn’t help pausing to identify them by the
sound. It was astonishing how many footsteps passed along those stairs:
and if they ceased for a while it was no better, for he found himself
subconsciously waiting for the next and wondering whose they would be.
He had laid out his maps and papers and the portable typewriter, all
ready to begin work: the draft of his booklet on Summer Tranquillity
(for the Eastern Railroad) would soon be due.

His mind was too agitated to compose, but he began clattering a
little on the machine, at random, just to give the impression that he
was working. Why should any one invent a ‘noiseless’ typewriter, he
wondered? The charm of a typewriter was that it _did_ make a noise,
a noise that shut out the racket other people were making. What a
senseless idea, to imagine that he could really get some work done
here, buried in the country. He could not concentrate because there
was nothing to concentrate _from_. There was only the huge vacancy of
golden summer, droning pine trees, yawning beaches, the barren pagan
earth under a crypt of air. The world shimmered like a pale jewel with
a flame of uneasiness at its core. The place to write about Summer
Tranquillity would have been that hot secret little office of his in
town, where the one window opened like a furnace door into a white
blaze of sunshine, where perspiration dripped from his nose on the
typewriter keys, but where he had the supreme sensation of intangible
solitude.

What on earth were they walking about for, upstairs? Was she showing
the man the whole house? He looked distractedly across the garden. The
listless beaming of the summer noon lay drowsy upon the lawn, filling
him with an appalling sense of his absurd futility. As Phyllis had so
often said, he was neither business man nor artist. What the devil was
he working for, what goal was there, what fine flamboyant achievement
was possible? He had a feeling of being alone against the world, a poor
human clown wrestling with grotesque obsessions; and no longer really
young.

He leaned toward the glass-paned bookcase, tilting his head anxiously
to see the reflection of the top ... certainly it was receding in a
V above each temple--but that made the forehead seem higher. He had
always believed that, among advertising men, he looked rather more
intellectual ... he turned again to the window, a little ashamed of his
agitations. Beyond the glass veranda he caught the stolid gaze of the
cook at the pantry window. He averted his head quickly: ridiculous that
you can’t do anything without catching someone’s eye. All this was just
insanity. He took up the page he was working on and rolled it into the
typewriter. Page 38 ... like himself, thirty-eight, and forty only two
pages away. I suppose that at forty a man feels just as young as ever,
but ... it’s absurd to feel as young as I do, at thirty-eight.... Well,
I must keep my mind clear (he thought, rather pathetically)--it’s the
only capital we have.

Phyllis’s footsteps were coming downstairs. He was always worried when
he heard them like that: slow and light, pausing every few treads. That
meant she was thinking about something, and in a minute there would be
a new problem for him to consider. When he heard them like that he
usually rushed into the hall, demanding hotly, “Well, what is it _now_?”

“What is what?”

“You know I can’t work when you come downstairs like that.”

“Like _what_?”

“As though you were worrying.”

“Well, why didn’t you take a house where I could slide down the
banisters?”

This time the feet came down so slowly he felt sure she _wanted_ him
to rush out. The rushing out always put him in the wrong. Well, he
just wouldn’t. He would stay where he was, that would show her he
was indignant. He took out page 38, put in a blank sheet and rattled
the keys vigorously. But he felt cheated of a sensation. He always
enjoyed bursting out, through the door at the foot of the stairs, and
catching her transfixed on the landing, with the big windows behind
her--half frightened, half angry. He would not have told her so, but it
was partly because she was so pretty there: the outline of her comely
defiant head against the light, her smooth arm emerging from the dainty
sleeve that caught and held a pearly brightness. How lovely she is, he
thought; it’s gruesome for her to be so pretty and talk such nonsense
... she needs someone to pump her full of indigestible compliments,
that would silence her----

She was at the telephone. He could hear her talking to the grocer. “I’m
sorry, Mr. Cotswold, is it too late to catch the driver? I’ve got some
unexpected guests....”

He hastened into the hall. “Don’t forget the sardines,” he shouted.

She looked at him calmly with the instrument at her mouth. She seemed
surprisingly tranquil.

“Never mind, then, thank you,” she said to Mr. Cotswold, in the
particularly cordial and gracious voice which (George felt) was meant
to emphasize the coolness with which she would now speak to him.

“If you want sardines you’ll have to go down and get them yourself. The
driver’s left.”

She went into the sitting room and automatically pulled the blind
halfway down. He followed her and raised it to the top of the window
again. She sat on the couch, and he was surprised to see a dangerous
merriment in her face.

“I suppose you think you can shut yourself in here and just let the
house run itself,” she said. “Like a sardine.”

“I have to do my work, don’t I?”

She looked at the sheet in the typewriter, on which was written wildly
_Now is the time for all good men to come to the aid of this absurd
family_. But she did not comment on it, and George felt that this was
one of her moments of genius. He wondered, in alarm, what she was going
to do with him next. He felt helpless as only a husband can.

“Well, anyhow, they pack sardines in oil, not in vinegar,” he said
angrily. This sounded so silly it made him angrier still. He closed
the door and cried in a fierce undertone, “What’s the idea, this man
Martin? Who is he? Is he staying for lunch?”

“He’s an artist. I thought you liked artists.”

“Yes, but we don’t have to fill the house with ’em.”

“I’ve put him in the spare room.”

“In the spare room! What about Miss Clyde?”

“I haven’t the faintest idea. He seemed to expect it, somehow. He’s a
very irresistible person.”

“I guess I can resist him. If we’ve got to have him in the house we can
put him in here, on the couch.”

“It’s too late. He’s in the spare room now, washing his hands.--You
needn’t have been so rude when I brought him in.”

“I didn’t like his looks,” George mumbled.

This wasn’t true. George _had_ liked his looks, but he had resented (as
must every man burdened with many perplexities) that gay and careless
air. He looks as if he didn’t have a thing on earth to worry about,
George thought. And he comes floating in here, with casual ease, among
the thousand interlocking tensions of George’s difficulties, to gaze
with untroubled eye on his host’s restless alertness. Or was this some
sort of joke that Phyllis was putting over on him?

“I’m going to put the two older children on the sleeping porch, so Ben
and Ruth can have their room. Miss Clyde will have to go on this couch.”

“How about me?”

“Well, we can sleep together I suppose. It won’t kill us, for a few
nights.”

Not if I know it, George thought. That old walnut bedstead, with the
deep valley in the middle, so that we both keep rolling against one
another. Unless you clutch the post and lie on a slope all night.
Besides, Phyl is so changeable in temperature. When she goes to bed
she’s chilly and wants to kindle her feet against you. Then by and
by she gets warmed up and it’s like sleeping with a hot bottle five
feet long. On a night in July, too. Whenever I get comfortable, she
wants to turn over on the other side; that brings us face to face.
Impossible! How unexpected life is. If any one had told me, twelve
years ago, that it would be so irritating to sleep in the same bed
with a pretty woman, I wouldn’t have believed it. Phyl doesn’t like it
either, yet she was annoyed by that booklet I wrote for the Edwards
Furniture Company on The Joys of the Separate Bed. I’ll sleep on the
window seat in the upstairs hall. No: that won’t do, if Miss Clyde is
in the den she’ll have to be coming upstairs to the bathroom and Phyl
won’t like me spread out there in public. It’s funny: sleeping is the
most harmless thing people ever do, why are they so furtive about it?

But George rather liked the idea of Miss Clyde on his couch. It seemed,
somehow, to add piquancy to a dull situation. To conceal this private
notion, he argued against it.

“Miss Clyde will be a long way from the bathroom,” he said.

“There’s no other place to put her. You’re always talking about
artists, their fine easy ways, I guess she won’t mind if someone sees
her in a wrapper.”

She’d look charming in a wrapper, George thought. The queer little
boyish thing! I can just imagine her. It would be blue, a kind of filmy
blue crêpe. Coming up the stairs the morning sunlight would catch her,
through those big windows: her small curves delicately outlined in a
haze of soft colour, her hair tousled, a flash of white ankle as she
reached the top step. He would sit up on the window seat, as though
just drowsily awakened. Oh ... good-morning! Good-morning. What a
picture you would make. Silhouette Before Breakfast. Life is full of
so many heavenly pictures.... The bay window above the garden would be
calm and airy in the before-breakfast freshness of July; the house just
beginning that dreamy stir that precedes the affairs of day. She would
come across to him ... he had hardly dared admit, even to himself, how
far they had gone in imagination....

“I’m damned if I want strange women careering all over the house in
their wrappers,” he said with well-simulated peevishness.

“Bosh!” exclaimed Phyllis. “There’s nothing you’d like better. Unless
without their wrappers.”

“What’s the use of being vulgar?” he said. He thought: How gorgeous
Phyllis is. You can’t fool her.

Poor old George, thought Phyllis. I believe he imagines that he’s
attractive to women. But I won’t say that to him, he’s in such a stew
already.

“Miss Clyde is one of the most truly refined people I ever met.”

This didn’t quite succeed. Phyllis was always annoyed when George
attempted to bunco her. He was so transparent.

“I believe you imagine you’re attractive to women,” she said.

“Hell,” he said, “I don’t even take time to think about it.”

“If that were true, you’d be much more so.”

If I’d finished this cursed booklet, he thought, I’d take a little time
off and _be_ attractive to women, just to surprise her. Why, damnation,
I could even make Phyl fall in love with me if it was worth taking the
trouble. The way to please women is to show them that you know they’re
not happy. And that their special kind of unhappiness is a particularly
subtle and lonely one, but curable by sympathy. But it’s better not
to think about these things at all. It’s queer to think of all the
people in the world, and how troubled they are when they look each
other straight in the eyes. If I knew why that is, I’d know everything.
The devil of it is, women have begun to think. That’s why everything
is so uneasy. Why even Phyllis has begun to think. I mustn’t let her,
because she’s too fond of being comfortable. It’ll only upset her. She
_must_ be kept amused. That’s the beauty of money, it’s a substitute
for thinking. It can surround you with delightful distractions. It’s
like women, too: it comes to the fellows who know how to entertain it.
I must learn how to be attractive to money.

“Certainly, Phyl, no one can say that _you’re_ attractive to women.
You’re too pretty.” He leaned over and kissed the end of her nose.
There, perhaps that would calm her, he might still be able to do
half an hour’s writing before the children came back from the beach.
That was the only solution. Simplify, simplify life by burying
yourself in some work of imagination--such as the Eastern Railway
booklet. He smiled bitterly. Those were the only happy people, the
artists--immersed in dreams like frogs in a pond, only their eyes
bulging just above the surface. But how are you going to attain that
blissful absorption? Dominate the ragings of biology by writing
railroad folders? The whole universe turns contrary, he thought, to
the one who wants to create. Time is against him, carnal distraction,
the natural indolence of man. Yes, even God is against him: God, Who
invented everything and is jealous of other creators. If Phyllis hadn’t
been there, he would have fallen on his knees by the couch and told God
what he thought of Him.

They heard someone coming downstairs. Phyllis rose.

“Come in, Mr. Martin! See the nice little den where George does his
work.”




V


George is carving the meat. He always feels better at meal times. The
trouble with me, he thinks, is that I take things too seriously. I dare
say I haven’t any sense of humour. Let’s see if we can’t make a sort of
fresh start from this moment.

The three little girls are brown and gay. Phyllis looks tired, but
busily exhibits that staccato sprightliness that comes over her when
there are guests. This Mr. Martin seems a silent fellow. The children
stare at him, and seem to have some joke among themselves; Sylvia and
Rose nudge each other and giggle. I always think it’s a mistake to let
the two younger ones sit side by side. But Mr. Martin seems unaware of
them: his eyes are fixed on Phyllis with a cheerful watchfulness. He’s
a solemn bird, thinks George, but he has the good taste to admire Phyl.
I hope he won’t overdo it, for her sake. She can’t stand much admiring:
it goes to her head right away.

“Well,” Phyllis says, “this is really delightful. A distinguished guest
is just what we needed to make the Picnic a success. Children, don’t
kick the legs of the table.--Mr. Granville is so fond of artists, he
employs such a lot of them in his business. Of course, I dare say your
kind of work is quite different, but there must be a lot of painters
who wouldn’t know what to do if it weren’t for the little advertising
jobs that come along. We’re so happy to be in the country again. Of
course we live very simply, but Mr. Granville can always work so well
when he gets away from the office. I feel so sorry for the men who have
to be in town all summer.”

George feels a violent impulse to contradict her, but masters it. Phyl,
he says, ask Lizzie to bring a spoon for the gravy. She always forgets
it.--Mr. Martin, I’ll tell you the kind of people we are, we never have
a carving knife sharp enough to cut with.

“Well, George, it’s not our own carving knife. You see, Mr. Martin, we
took this house furnished. It’s not like having our own things.”

Our own isn’t any better, George’s voice shouts angrily inside his
head, but he manages to keep it from coming out.

Are we going to the Haunted House for the Picnic? the children ask.

Not unless you take your elbows off the table, Phyllis says sharply.
Mr. Martin, who looks puzzled, takes his elbows off too.

There’s a poor old tumbledown farm, on a sandy cliff, among dark pine
trees, Phyllis explains. Someone has told the children that it’s
haunted. The word means nothing to them, but they can tell--by the way
people say it--that it suggests something interesting.

Yes, if it doesn’t rain, George says. He is too experienced a parent
ever to make positive promises.

This would have been a good day for cold meat and salad, he thinks,
sawing away at the joggling-slippery roast. Phyllis sees him thinking
it. “I’m sorry to have hot meat on such a warm day, but we’ll need it
to-morrow for the sandwiches. There’s some iced tea coming.”

“Hot meat to make your inside hot, iced tea to make it cold,” the
children exclaim. “Do we have to eat the fat?”

They always ask this question. Then Mr. Martin asks it too, which
causes amusement. How delightful Mr. Martin is, Phyllis thinks. He has
a sort of eagerness to be happy, to enjoy things, to move blithely from
one minute to the next. Even George feels it, he looks less cross. But
George, as he takes down a tall glass of iced tea in one draught, is
making calmly desperate resolves. I haven’t the faintest idea what
anything means, he is telling himself, but I’m just going to go on
placidly. I’ll go cracked if I keep on worrying. Maybe after lunch
I can take a snooze in the garden. One of the little girls wriggles
happily on her chair, her pink frock has slipped sideways on her
smooth brown shoulder, showing the frilled strap of her shirt. With
a gentle twitch George pulls her dress straight and pats the child’s
golden nape. She looks at him with innocent affection. That little bare
shoulder makes him think of women and their loveliness, and all the
torments of unease to which these same poor youngsters must grow up. He
concentrates his mind on the blue and white platter, the brown gravy
dimpled with clear circles of fat and turning ruddy as the juice of the
roast trickles down, the amber tea with slices of lemon. Thank Heaven
Time still lies before them all like an ocean. Even he and Phyllis are
young, they don’t need to do anything definite about life, not yet.
Keep your mind on the small beautiful details, the crackling yield of
bread-crust under the knife, the wide hills over the sea, sunset on
open spaces that evaporates all passion, all discontent. He picks up
his napkin from the rug, helps himself to vegetables, and begins to
eat. How delicious life is, even for an abject fool like me, he thinks.
I wonder if any one ever feels old?

“The Picnic is our great annual adventure,” Phyllis was saying. “I
hope you won’t think us too silly, but we _do_ look forward to it
enormously. It’s such fun to forget about things once in a while and
just have a good time.”

“Yes,” said George, “we worry about it for weeks beforehand. And we
always invite more people than the house can properly hold.”

Phyllis flashed a little angry brightness across the table.

“You mustn’t think us too informal if things are a bit crowded, that’s
part of the fun.”

“What is informal?” asked Mr. Martin, quite gravely.

George smiled. Why, the man was kidding her.

“Informal’s what women always say they’re going to be and never are.”

“George loves to lay down the law about women, Mr. Martin. As a matter
of fact he knows nothing about them. I expect you know more than he
does, even if you’re a bachelor.”

“Is there a lot to know?” said Mr. Martin.

The man’s delightful, thought George.

I never felt as queer as this before, thought Phyllis. I feel as
though something astonishing were going to happen. Or worse still, as
though nothing would _ever_ happen. How many sandwiches will we need?
Three children, two of us, Mr. Martin, Ben and Ruth, Miss Clyde--that
makes nine. When this gruesome Picnic is over, perhaps I shall have a
chance to ease up. I feel as though I should like to fall in love with
someone. I wonder if Mr. Martin would do?

“Mr. and Mrs. Brook are coming this evening,” she said gaily. “You’ll
like them, they’re charming.”

“As a matter of fact,” said George (she always knew, when he began with
that phrase, that he was going to contradict her), “they’re the dullest
people on earth; so completely dull that you can’t help envying them.
They’re the perfect mates, too stupid even to disagree with each other.
If every other couple in the world went smash, marriage would still be
justified by Ben and Ruth.”

“How do couples go smash?” asked Janet.

“You finish your beans and don’t talk,” said Phyllis.

She was pleasantly fluttered by the way Mr. Martin looked at her. His
eyes kept returning from his plate: lingering on her face with a gently
inquiring studiousness that was not at all offensive. I believe he
really does want to do a portrait of me, she thought. He’s fixing the
features in his mind. She turned her head toward Sylvia and Rose so
that he would see the half-profile with an appealing madonna softness
upon it. The coloured glass panes behind her, what a vivid background
that would make.--But she felt he was about to ask a question, and
allowed her eyes to come round to meet him, to make it easier for him.
Obviously he was shy.

“Do I have to finish my beans?” he said.

What a difficult question to answer. There must be some joke that she
did not see.

“Beans make bones,” asserted Rose fatuously.

“Why, of course not,” she said hastily. “I was afraid that cocoanut
cake would take away your appetite.” No, that was the wrong thing to
say: she saw George’s face sharpen at the mention of the cake: he was
getting ready to blurt out something and she felt sure it would be
awkward. With the speed of a hunted animal her mind dodged in search of
some remark that would give her time to think.

“I like the English way of serving beans, slicing them lengthwise, you
know; it makes them so tender, without any strings.” There; surely that
would dispose of the absurd topic. “George, what are you going to do
this afternoon? Go for a swim?”

“But these _are_ string beans,” said George. “They’re supposed to have
strings. Perhaps Mr. Martin misses them.”

“If he doesn’t finish his beans, Virginia can have them,” Sylvia
suggested. “She eats vegetables sometimes.”

Virginia was the cat, just now obviously misnamed. Phyllis knew very
well what was coming next, but she could not speak fast enough to avert
it.

“Beans will be good for her,” said Janet with enthusiasm. “She’s going
to have a family very soon, she needs nourishing food.”

“Mother says she mustn’t have a shock, it might be bad for the kittens.”

“That’ll do, never mind about Virginia.”

Lizzie was making grimaces from the kitchen door, holding up a cup
custard and contorting a red face of inquiry. Phyllis nodded. But
perhaps Lizzie means there aren’t enough custards to go round? “Oh,
Lizzie, put on the fruit too.”

George, with his damnable persistence, had not forgotten.

“How about the cake?” he asked.

“George, you know we’ve got to save the cake for the Picnic. I can’t
ask Lizzie to make another one.”

“It’s been cut already,” he said.

I’m _not_ going to be humiliated like this in front of a stranger.
George is just doing it because he sees Mr. Martin admires me. Will
this meal never end? I’m past battling over trifles. Have the cake if
you want it. I don’t care. If Lizzie puts it on, all right. Leave it
to her. I’m not going to order it on. Cooks always take the man’s side
anyhow. I’m afraid Mr. Martin will think we’re lunatics.

“What do you think of a husband that always knows exactly what’s in the
pantry?” she asked him.

A moment later she couldn’t remember what he had said to this. Perhaps
it’s because I’m so absorbed in my own thoughts. The only thing
I really remember his saying was his comical question whether he
need finish his beans. It’s odd, how much he conveys without saying
anything, just by a look.

Lizzie had put on the cake. Phyllis saw at once that there were only
six custards. She could tell, by the way Lizzie planked them down,
there were no more in the kitchen. If they all took one there wouldn’t
be any for Lizzie herself, and that would mean bad temper. She refused
the custard. She wanted a peach, but felt that the effort of peeling it
was too much. Soft fuzzy skin and wet fingers. Then George, with that
occasional insight that always surprised her, passed her one peeled and
sliced.

“Yes,” he said, “we ought to have a bathe, unless there’s a storm.
Relieve the pressure on the bathroom.”

“Then we’ll all be nice and clean for the Picnic,” exclaimed the
children.

“Miss Clyde is coming,” George continued. “She’s an artist too, perhaps
Mr. Martin knows her.”

“Bring the jug of iced tea in the garden, let’s finish it out there,”
said Phyllis. “It’s stifling here.--Children, you go and get your naps.”

The little table was under the pine trees, the other side of the
croquet oval. The grove smelt warm and slippery. Now there are the long
hours of the afternoon to be lived through, somehow. George sprawled
himself on the brown needles, the smoke of his pipe drifted past her in
a blue whiff. Mr. Martin put a chair for her.

“I love these pine trees,” she said. “They’re always whispering.”

“It isn’t polite to whisper.”

She smiled at him. He does say the quaintest things.

“Nature never is polite. On an afternoon like this the whole world
seems to yawn in your face.”

“These trees smell like cough drops.” This was George.

An artist’s mind is always on the beautiful, Phyllis thought. She
pulled her skirt down a little, and tried to decide what was the most
beautiful thing visible, so she could call his attention to it. She
wished she hadn’t said that about yawning, she felt one coming on. The
hot lunch had made her frightfully drowsy. Across the bay thunderheads
were massing and rolling up, deep golden purple. “I wish I could
paint,” she said. “See those wonderful----” But she began the sentence
too late; the yawn overtook her in the middle of it.

“Wonderful what?” asked George, looking up. She was struggling with the
desire to gape; she trembled with the violence of her effort. George
stared.

“Are you ill?”

“Wonderful clouds,” she finished savagely. George watched her, adding
one more tally to his private conviction that women are mostly mad.

“If you poured heavy cream into a glass of grape juice,” he said, “it
would look just like that. Coiling round and clotting.”

Sickening idea, Phyllis thought.

“I know exactly what’s going to happen, just about the time I have to
drive over----”

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.

Then there was the squeak of the screen being lifted in the pantry
window. Lizzie put out her head and called. Phyllis found it
impossible to stir.

“George, you go. Then you can put on some dry socks.”

“Nonsense,” he said, getting up. “I’ll be lots wetter than that if the
storm breaks while I’m driving to the depot.”




VI


Phyllis could feel the whole flat of visible world gently tilting.
Equilibrium, if there had been any, was gone: they had begun to slide.
George, receding across the level grass, seemed to descend a downward
slope. Martin was lying at ease on the ground beside her, with one
knee bent and the other leg cocked across it. Perhaps that’s why he’s
so fond of lying on the ground. It’s easier to keep from sliding. He
seemed to have forgotten she was there and was humming to himself.
She felt he had the advantage that silent people always have over the
talkative. But if she could get him into conversation, she could make
him realize that she was more thoughtful than she seemed.

“I’m glad you didn’t finish your beans,” she began.

He did not seem surprised. “I’m glad you’re glad,” he said presently.

“I don’t like finishing things either.”

To this he said nothing at all, and she realized that her carefully
drilled waggishness, which she kept for callers, would descend upon
her in a minute. She struggled against it. She had a forlorn desire to
feel real for a few moments, to say things she believed. But of its own
accord an archly playful remark popped out.

“Now you mustn’t let us bore you, you must feel free to do whatever you
want. I think it’s dreadful to force guests to be amused.”

“I feel awfully free. Don’t you?”

This was so unexpected that her mind went quite blank. There seemed no
possible reply that was worth making.

“I should like to lie in bed and laugh,” he said calmly.

Phyllis tried to think of something to laugh about. It suddenly struck
her that there are days when one does not laugh at all. Evidently this
was one of them. The world had swinked, and looped its wild orbit for
uncountable ages, all to produce this latest moment of lucid afternoon:
and yet what cause was there for mirth? But she felt that if she
could produce a clear chime of amusement it would be a mannerly and
attractive thing to do. She opened her mouth for it, but only managed a
sort of satiric cackle.

“You mustn’t _try_ to laugh,” he said. “It’s bad for you.”

She wondered whether she ought to pretend offence. Of course I’m not
really offended: there’s something so gently impersonal about his
rudenesses. In this dreadful vortex of life that seems to spin us
round and round, how amazing to find someone so completely nonchalant,
so ... so untouched by anxiety ... as though his mind had never been
_bruised_. (When she found the right word she always liked to think of
it as underlined.)

She had often wondered, hopefully, if she would ever be tempted beyond
her strength. Absurd: this was the sort of thing that simply didn’t
happen to ... to nice people. But there was a warm currency in her
blood, radiant and quivering. She ought to go indoors and lie down
... lie on her bed and laugh ... but feeling her knees tremble she
remembered that the underskirt was very sheer, and in that violent
sunlight, walking across the lawn, he would see an ungraceful bifid
silhouette ... you can’t really shock women, but you have to be so
careful not to startle men ... without seeming to pay special attention
he was evidently terribly observant.... What was it George had said
once? that she was so beautiful his eye always enjoyed imagining the
lines of her ... her.... No, _body_ is a horrid word ... her figure
... under her thin dress. George was so carnal. And worse than that,
apologetic for it. Mr. Martin isn’t carnal ... and if he were, he
wouldn’t deprecate it.

“All the things I like are bad for me.”

She had said this almost unconsciously, for her mind had gone a long
way ahead. She was thinking that if George drove recklessly through a
thunderstorm, and the car skidded, and he ... died ... passed away ...
on the way to the hospital at Dark Harbour (because the most appalling
things do happen sometimes: why, once a flake of burning tobacco blew
from George’s pipe into his eye, as he was turning a corner, and the
car almost went into the ditch) ... what on earth would she do? Wire to
New York for mourning, and would it be proper to keep Mr. Martin in the
house after the funeral? The little churchyard on the dunes would be
such a picturesque place to bury a husband: sandy soil, too (it seems
so much cleaner, somehow) and harebells among the stones. What was that
kind of lettering George was always talking about? Yes, Caslon: he
would like that--

  GEORGE GRANVILLE
  IN THE 39TH YEAR OF HIS AGE

Certainly it would never do to have him there after the interment (Mr.
Martin, that is). It would have to be at two o’clock so he could get
the 3:18 train. Two o’clock makes it rather early, it would interrupt
George’s nap after lunch....

But Mr. Martin was sitting up looking at her with interest.

“Really?” he was asking. “You feel that way too?”

She had forgotten what she had said; and she couldn’t very well say
“_What_ way?” She must have said something rather good, because he was
gazing at her with lively expectancy. His inquisitive eyes, eager brown
face, were utterly charming. How fascinating human beings are, she
thought: their nice fabricky clothes, their queerly carved faces. She
wanted to stretch beside him on the shiny needles, let the sun bake and
cook away this horrible curdling sickness that shook inside her; purify
all her idiocy in the warm clear pleasure of exchanging ideas. Why even
animals can communicate their sensations more cordially than people.
Must this fardel of identity always be borne alone?

“Yes,” she said, with her perfected smile. She wanted to put her hand
on his shoulder, to know if he was actual. When the whole fire and
anger of a woman’s life reaches out for some imagined fulfillment, she
finds no luxury of phrase to say her pang. She is a movement of nature,
a wind that stirs the grass, a moth blundering in the rain. I shall
tell him in a minute, I shall tell him, God help me not to tell him.
Is this being tempted beyond my strength? But this isn’t temptation,
this is just Truth. This was God Himself. Weren’t we told to love God?
Perhaps George would say that biology was just making fun of her.
You’re not supposed to love more than one person at a time--not in the
same way, at least....

“Even Picnics?”

“Don’t speak of the Picnic,” she said. “I hate to think of it. Damn the
Picnic.”

He looked startled.

“George made up a limerick once,” she said. “It began like this: _I
never believed in monogamy, My husband has just made a dog o’ me._ But
he couldn’t find another rhyme.”

“What’s monogamy?”

“Something terrible,” she said, laughing. This was the real laughter
she had hoped for. She seemed lifted, purged, held in a twinkling skein
of mirth. Laughter, like flame, purifies. Certainly he was adorable,
but she couldn’t quite make him out. Why should he, who evidently
enjoyed horrifying others, be so suddenly aghast himself? Plainly he
was making fun of her: but she could see he was the kind of person who
would not try, clumsily, to say the things that ought never to be said.
For every woman knows all these things anyway, and prefers to say them
herself.

There was a clatter on the veranda, three serial slams of the screen
door, quick crunching of gravel, the children. How she loved them, the
gay flutter of their short dresses, the brown slender legs gradually
paling toward their soft fat little hams. They came running across the
lawn, knees lifting and shining in the brilliant light. They surrounded
her in a hot laughing group, breathlessly explaining some plan. Daddy
was going to take them swimming, if there was a storm they could go
into the bath house, it wouldn’t matter anyway if they had their
bathing suits on, Daddy would play Moby Dick the White Whale. The words
came tumbling out of them, they seemed packed with words, bursting with
a vision of green warm water scalloped with foam, Daddy the White Whale
snorting in the surf, the prickling terror of storm darkening the sky.
What vitality, what career of the spirit of life!

“Children, children, don’t forget your manners. Make a nice curtsey to
Mr. Martin.”

At once they became well-regulated little dolls. What a picture, she
thought: The Curtsey ... the three children bobbing, their mother
in the background, supervising as it were: seeing that Life kept
within bounds, did no violence to the harmony of the composition.
Because (heavens!) it was bad enough for _her_ to feel as she did: she
couldn’t endure the thought of Janet and Sylvia and Rose growing up to
such--such disorders. If they were painted like that, curtseying, of
course the pose would be difficult to hold. But all poses are difficult
to hold.

“I don’t know that I like the idea of your bathing with a storm coming
on,” she said. That was George, putting wild schemes in their heads. If
she forbade it now, there would be tears----

“It’s what we’re all doing, all the time,” said George. He had come
quietly across the grass while she was showing the children off to
Martin.

This was so surprisingly subtle, for George, she scanned him in
amazement. He looked like An Anchor to Windward, A Stitch in Time,
Something Put By for a Rainy Day. No one ever looked less like a Leap
in the Dark. In short, he looked like a Husband: large, strong,
reliable, long-suffering, and uninteresting. The best way to look,
probably (she thought), for the interesting people have such a painful
time.

“It was a telegram from Miss Clyde,” he said. “She’s coming this
afternoon. Same train as the Brooks.”

“This afternoon! I thought it was to-morrow.”

There was something guilty about George’s shrug. He must have told her
to come to-day.

“Well, then, George. You’ll have to clean up your den right away. And
the Brooks are going into the children’s room, that bed has got to be
fixed. It’s all right for Janet, but that spring’ll have to be fixed
before Ben and Ruth sleep there.”

The children’s faces were troubled.

“It’s all right, little toads,” said George. “You go and get your swim
anyhow. Mr. Martin can go with you and be the White Whale. I’ll come
down as soon as I’ve fixed the beds.”

“I haven’t any suit,” said Martin.

“All the more like the White Whale,” said George. “But you can take
mine, it’s in the bath house.”

The children, gaily chattering, led Martin off. Phyllis watched them
along the hot pebbly path. Beyond the sundial it curved through
shrubbery to the green wicket gate. Here, up a grassy gully, came the
sharp breath of the sea. In a sort of daze her eyes went with them.
That little valley, between the tall dunes, was like a channel through
which, if the level garden tilted ever so little, all life would sluice
out. When the gate opened it would be like pulling the plug in a
bathtub. Everything would begin to flow. With a horrid gurgling sound,
probably.

George was beneficently silent. Dreamily she found herself following
Martin and the children. If she got as far as that tuft of grass
without George speaking, she would not need to answer. She was almost
there. She was there. She put her foot squarely on it. Then to her
surprise she turned and waited. George was filling his pipe. His
silence could only mean one thing: he was frightened about something.
She felt her advantage come swimming back into her, a thrilling flutter
of strength. Yet she was angry at him for not trying to hold and subdue
her.

“Well, why don’t you say something?”

He blazed with delighted peevishness.

“At least tell me which bed is which?” he shouted.

“Both of them,” she said.

Now the others were hidden behind the shrubbery. In a minute they’d
be through the gate. She drifted swiftly after. There was the place
on the gravel where she had found him lying. The pebbles were still
scuffed about. But even if the gardener raked the path a thousand
times she would never forget that exact spot. They were at the gate.
The children were showing him how fine it is for swinging on. All was
clear in her mind. She would tell the girls to run ahead, and as they
twinkled down the slope she would turn to Martin. Her eyes would tell
him everything.... No, not everything; but enough to begin with.

Then, _I love you_, she would say. Softly. She whispered it to herself
to be sure she had the right intonation. How long was it since she had
said that as it should be said, with amazement and terror? Ten years?
Why, a woman ought to be able to say it like that--well, every other
year anyhow.

“Don’t swing on that gate more than one at a time,” she called. “You’ll
break the hinges.” And added, to justify herself in Martin’s ears,
“Remember, chickens, it’s not _our_ gate.”

They turned, surprised to see her following.

“Children,” she began, “you run ahead, I want----”

The alert, attentive faces of the little girls were too much for her.
They gaped over the palings. They knew (she felt sure) that something
queer was happening. They always know, as calmly detached as nurses in
a hospital who smile faintly at what the patients say under ether.

She hesitated, looking down at her ankles. How trim and orderly they
were; when she put on those white silk stockings this morning she had
had no idea of all this happening.

She heard the gate clash to, but still paused, her face averted. She
wanted her eyes to reach his slowly. For after that it would be too
late to plan things. There was a lonely marching in her blood. Then,
trembling, she looked.

He wasn’t there. He too had run on with the children. All four, far
down the hill, romping to the beach together.




VII


George was fixing the beds, and making an extra-special crashing and
clanging about it for Phyllis’s benefit, so she would realize how
irritating a job it was. I wonder (he was thinking) if any other man
ever had to move furniture about so much? Phyllis has a passion for
shifting beds. These springs don’t fit the frames. The result is
that every time any one turns over there’s a loud bang, the corner
of the spring comes down clank on the iron side-bar. I fixed it--not
perfectly, but well enough--with a pad of newspaper and a length of
clothesline, when we moved in. Good enough for the children. But of
course for Ben and Ruth....

These can’t be the right springs for these beds. It stands to reason
no manufacturer would be fool enough to send out a bed that couldn’t
possibly be put together. There must be some trick of arrangement.
Human reason can figure out anything, if concentrated on the problem.
Now, let’s see. This goes here, and this here. Think of having to
fiddle over these picayune trifles when the whole of life and destiny
is thrilling in the balance. He was lying under the bed now, among
curly grey rolls of dust, holding up the spring with one hand while the
other reached for the hammer.

Phyllis came in, to empty some of the bureau drawers for Ben and
Ruth. She was taking away neat armfuls of the children’s crisp clean
garments. The whole room was full of their innocent little affairs.
There, in the corner, was the collapsible doll house he had made last
Christmas, and which had to go everywhere with them. Sitting against
the door of the doll house was a tiny china puppet with a face of
perpetual simper and that attitude of pelvic dislocation peculiar to
small china dolls. Around the house was a careful pattern of shells,
diligently brought from the beach. Why did all this make his heart
ache? He remembered one evening when he had been working late, he
passed gently by the children’s door about midnight and heard a
quiet little cough. Janet was awake. That small sound had suddenly,
appallingly, reminded him that these poor creatures too were human. She
must be lying there, thinking. What does a child think, alone at night?
He went in, in the darkness, put his arms round the surprised child,
and whispered encouragements to her. Jay, he said, Daddy’s own smallest
duckling frog, Daddy loves you, don’t ever forget Daddy loves you. The
little figure sat up in bed, threw her arms round his neck and gripped
him wildly in furious affection. “I won’t forget, Daddy,” cried her
soft voice in the warm dark room. Though she was only eight years old
her accent was strangely mature: the eternal voice of woman calling man
back from agonies and follies to her savage and pitying breast.

Mother love? Pooh (he thought, in a glow of bitterness), what was
mother love! A form of selfishness, most of the time. Of course they
love their children, having borne them, suffered for them. Children
are their biological passport, their excuse for not having minds. And
if they’re girls, how mothers hurry to drill and denature those bright
dreaming wits. They love them chiefly because they make so pretty a
vignette in the margin of their own self-portrait--like a _remarque_
in an engraving. But for fathers to love their children--the poor
accidental urchins that come between them and the work they love--that
really means something!

He gave the bed frame several resounding bangs with the hammer:
quite uselessly, merely to express his sense of irritation at seeing
Phyllis’s pretty ankles and the hem of her green dress moving so
purposefully about the room. Then, looking out angrily from under the
bed, he saw her picking up the shells. Instead of bending over from
the hips, as a man would, she was crouching on her heels, deliciously
folded down upon her haunches. This annoyed him. And how heartless to
clear away the shells that had been laboriously arranged in a border
round the doll house.

“Why don’t you leave them there?” he shouted. Then he realized how
impossible it would be to explain his feeling about the shells. They
represented innocence, poetry, the hopeful imaginings of childhood.

Phyllis scooped them up relentlessly.

“Don’t be a fool,” she said. “You wanted these people here for the
Picnic, didn’t you? All right, we have to make the room decent.”

He felt that, as usual, he had picked up the argument by the wrong end.
Arguments are like cats: if you take them up by the tail they twist and
scratch you.

“And another thing,” she added. “You simply must mend that broken
railing on the sleeping porch. If the children are going to be out
there it isn’t safe.”

“I can’t fix _both_ these beds,” he growled. “There’s a bolt missing.
Tell me which one Ben will sleep in, I’ll fix that. Ruth’s won’t
matter, she’s a skinny little thing, doesn’t weigh much more than
Janet.”

I wouldn’t mind so much fixing Ruth’s bed, he was thinking; there’d be
a kind of vague satisfaction in that. I rather like to think of her
lying there, she’s rather attractive even if she is such a numbskull.
But Ben, that solid meaty citizen ... he probably snores ... I’ll tell
Ben to take this one; this is the one most likely to come down.

“How do I know which will take which?” she said. “They’ll arrange that
to suit themselves, no matter what we say.”

He had carefully lashed the spring to the frame with a piece of rope
six weeks before. But it had worked loose and now must be done all over
again. The deuce of a job: the spring was precariously balanced at one
end only; he was holding the loose end with one hand, trying to rewind
the cord with the other. The thought of doing all this for Ben was too
silly. No, let Ruth have this one and he would try to make a good job
of it. Perspiration rolled from him. He supported the spring with his
left elbow, so that he could take the end of the cord with his left
hand while tightening it with his right. A fuzz of dust was sticking
to his moist cheek. This was too insanely comic: grunting under a
bed on a hot electrical afternoon. He could see Phyl’s feet standing
motionless by the window. How lovely she was, how he wanted her, wanted
to slough away all these senseless tensions and stupidities.... She was
always right because she merely acted on instinct; he, usually wrong,
because he tried to think things out and act reasonably ... if she
knew how heroic he really was, would she understand? He _must_ get her
to understand before it was too late. For this--this crisis that was
hanging over them, was his deliberately desired trial of strength. And
now, if they weren’t careful, they would fritter away all their stamina
in preliminary scuffle and nonsense; and when the moment came ... soon,
appallingly soon ... there would be no vitality left to meet it.

He was terrified. He had planned all this, grimly; now things were
moving too fast for him. A long soft murmur of thunder jarred across
the sky. Would the storm pass over without breaking? No, by God, it
_must_ break, if they were ever to find peace. He must send up a kite,
like old Ben Franklin (that first of modern advertising men) to bring
down a sample of lightning. He must find out whether lightning was
the kind of thing you can live with. He must tell her why he was
terrified. He must tell her quickly. These were the last moments they
would have together before ... already the colour of the light had
changed. Here, on the side of the house away from the water, there was
a darkening sparkle in the air.

Her feet were ominously still. She must be thinking, and this always
worried him. Suppose she too became aware of this secret insolubility
of life? It was only her divine certainty about little things that kept
him going. What business have biological units thinking about things?
Let them obey their laws and not question.

Shifting the weight of the spring to his shoulder he turned over and
put his head out from under the foot of the bed.

“Phyl,” he said, “why don’t you go and lie down a bit, have a rest
before the folks get here.”

She looked down at him. Even in the warm listless dream that seemed to
have mastered her, she was touched by the foolish appeal in his red,
dust-streaked face. Where the light caught the turn of his jaw shone a
coppery stubble.

“You need a shave,” she said; and then regretted her insistent tidying
instinct. She was holding three large shabby dolls, unconsciously
pressing them against her like an armful of real babies. One flopped
forward over her arm, uttering an absurd bleating squawk. _Maaa-maa!_

“The children,” she exclaimed breathlessly. “The storm’s coming. Hurry
up with those beds; get the children back from the beach.”

“They’re all right,” he said sulkily. “Mr. Martin’ll take care of ’em.”

His large flushed face, mouth open, gazed up from the floor. He looked
pitiably silly, like a frightened dog. He was thinking, all I want to
tell her is that I love her; no matter what happens I love her. But
how can I say it? If she weren’t my wife I suppose it would be so much
easier. Why do we always show our worst side to the people we love?

She was thinking: The absurd idiot, writhing about under that bed like
a roach, telling me to go and lie down when there are a hundred things
to be done, beds to be made, towels and linen got out, silver counted,
instructions to Lizzie.... Certainly she had tried to warn him....

“Damn Mr. Martin!” she cried. “Don’t trust him. You fool, you fool.
Can’t you see he’s crazy? We’re all crazy. Stop sprawling there like a
mud turtle, _do_ something.”

“Listen, Phyl,” he said heavily. “I want to tell you something. Now,
listen, you’ve got to help me.”

With a pang of alarm he knew that now it was too late to go back. He
had begun to speak. Now he must try to explain the pillar of smoke
and fire that had moved so long before the lonely track of his mind.
Greatly as he feared her rigid spirit, he must divide the weight of
this heavy fragile burden, like a crystal globe that might contain
either ecstasy or horror. He could not know which until it lay broken
about him in shining scraps and curves. But oh, why was she so
difficult to tell things to?

“Don’t laugh,” he mumbled. “It’s terribly----”

He wriggled forward earnestly. The other end of the metal spring slid
from its joist, the head and foot of the bed toppled inward. With a
clanking brassy crash the whole thing collapsed about him.

He lay there, covered with bed, in a furious silence which was merely
the final expression of his disgust. For an instant, in the stillness
following that ridiculous clamour, she thought he was hurt. She bent
down, dropping the dolls, and one of these again shrilled its whining
protest. His angry face reassured her, and she burst into a peal of
laughter.

He crawled out from under the wreck. He was thinking savagely, yet
with relief also, how close he had been to telling her. But that was
his fate. Even noble tragedy, if it came near him, would be marred by
titters. He didn’t blame her for laughing. Even in an agony he could
never be more than grotesque.

“I was just thinking,” she said, “how awful if the bed did that when
Ben’s in it.”

“Don’t worry. It probably will.”

Sultry blue air pressed close about the house, air heavy with uncertain
energies. He knew now how frail are carpentered walls and doors, how
brittle a box to guard and fortify weak things he held dear. A poor
cardboard doll house, and his own schemes just a ring of shells about
it. Here, in a home not even his own, among alien furnitures, he must
meet the sorceries of life, treacheries both without and within.
Strong walls, strong walls, defend this rebel heart! he whispered to
himself--startled and shamed to find himself so poetical. Strange, he
thought (hastily reëdifying the bed), that people spend such anguish
on decisions that don’t really matter. But in this house he was at
a disadvantage. He had no memories in it. For Phyllis it had old
associations and meanings. It went back into her childhood, into that
strange time when he had never known her; when she must have been so
cunningly caught unawares and machined into rigidity. So even the house
was against him. In that charged air, one spark surely would sheet all
heaven with flame. It would be queer to split open the world’s old
shingled roofs and rusty-screened windows, scatter the million people
with little pig-eyes of suspicion, explode love and merriment over the
land. God help us, he thought, people can’t even sin without finding
dusty little moral justifications for it. This is what civilization
has brought us to!--But what a way for a man to be thinking, with a
half-written booklet on Summer Tranquillity lying on his desk.

He stepped onto the sleeping porch, where two cots had been put for
Janet and Sylvia, to look at the broken railing. Projecting above
the veranda, it overlooked the garden and the pale sickle of beach,
distinct in glassy light. He could see Martin and the children, tiny
figures frolicking on the sand. The sky was piled steeply with swollen
bales of storm, scrolls of gentian-coloured vapour. But it looked now
as though the gust would pass overhead. Phyllis was busy at the linen
closet by the corner of the passage, getting out clean towels and
napkins. He envied her the sedative trifles that keep wives sane. And
after all, perhaps the well-drilled discipline of human beings would
get them past this eddy. People--and especially guests--know so well
what can be done and what can’t. They know how to “behave.” The world,
brave prudent old world, is so sagely adjusted to avert or ignore any
casual expression of what men really feel: terror and mockery, pity
and desire. Oh, surely, by careful management, they could all shuffle
through a couple of days without committing themselves and then safely
relapse into the customary drugged routine. Ben and Ruth, accomplished
students of petty demeanour, would be a great help. Even Joyce, poor
bewitched rebel with frightened eyes, even Joyce must have some powers
of concealment. But he would not think of Joyce for a little while.

“I think maybe the storm’ll blow over,” he called. He felt he must
speak to Phyllis again, to calm his own nervousness.

There was no answer. Going to the end of the passage he saw her
standing at the big bay window in the spare room. She was looking down
toward the beach, one hand nervously plucking at a strip of wallpaper
that had come loose along the frame of the window. He crossed the room
quietly and kissed the back of her neck, with a vague idea that this
would help to keep her from thinking. It was so enormously important
that she should be calm and humorous just now.

He was prepared for silent indifference, or even an outburst of anger;
but not for what happened. She turned silently and flung her arms madly
about his neck. “Love me, love me, love me,” she cried. “Love me,
before it’s too late.”

He was horrified. “There, there,” he said, embarrassed. “Go and rest a
while, little frog.”




VIII


The beach was a different world. Under the plum-glossed wall of storm
the bay was level, dusky, and still, crumbling in low parallels of
surf. The waves collapsed in short flat crashes. The children flashed
in the warm dull water: they wore three tight little green bathing
suits: their legs so tanned it seemed as though long brown stockings
were snugly drawn above their polished knees. They tumbled with the
soft clumsy grace of young animals and were happy without knowing
it. Janet could swim; Sylvia still used water-wings to buoy her up;
Rose preferred not to go beyond knee-depth and squatted in the curl
of the small breakers. When the backwash scoured the sand from under
her insteps, leaving a hard mound beneath her tickling heels, she
squeaked with ecstatic fright. “The ocean’s pulling me!” she cried, and
squattered to safety. Sylvia, paddling splashily a little farther out,
with a white rubber cap and the bulbous wings behind her shoulders, was
like a lame butterfly that had dropped from the dunes above. She put a
foot down and couldn’t touch bottom. This alarmed her and she hastily
flapped herself shoreward. A wave broke on her nape, shot her sprawling
into the creamy shallows. The wings spilled off, she rolled sideways
and under with legs flying, her nose rubbed along soft ridges of sand.
Her face, emerging, was a comic medallion of anxious surprise. Another
spread of lacy green water slid round her chin. She was relieved to
find herself laughing.

“A wave went right over me and I didn’t mind,” she exclaimed. “I’m a
little laughing girl, and laughing girls are different.”

It was all different. In this width of sky and sea and sand nothing was
reproached. Nounou was off for the afternoon and could not forbid them
to play with the stranger. Farther along the bay were other cottages,
other children; but here they were alone. “Do you see those houses?”
said four-year-old Rose to Martin, pointing to the bungalows that stood
on a bluff, sharp upon naked air. “People live there, with beds and
food.”

Yet they did not even know they were alone. Merely they existed, they
were. They were part of the ocean, which does not think but only
fulfils its laws. Tides curve and bubble in, earth receives them,
earth lets them ebb. Soft shells pulverize, hard shells polish, sand
hills slither, seaweeds dry and blacken: the bay takes the sea in its
great arms and is content: and inland the farmyard dogs, those spotted
moralists, are scandalized by the moon. The moon--chaste herself,
bright persuasion of unchastity in others. For life is all one piece,
of endless pattern. No stitch in the vast fabric can be unravelled
without risking the whole tapestry. It is the garment woven without
seams.

Here was beauty; and they, not knowing it, were part of it unawares.
Here was no thinking, merely the great rhythm of ordered accident,
gulls’ wings white against thunder, the electric circuits of law broken
by the clear crystal of fancy. And the sea, the silly sea, meaningless,
prolific, greatest of lovers, brawling over the cold pumice reefs of
dead volcanoes, groping tenderly up slants of thirsty sand. The sea
that breeds life and the land that breeds thought, destined lovers and
enemies, made to meet and destroy, to mingle and deny, marking earth
with strangeness wherever they embrace. The sea, the bitter sea, that
makes man suspect he is homeless and has no roof but dreams.

Janet, who was big enough to go beyond the low surf and grapple the
White Whale in his own element, liked Mr. Martin because he did not
talk much and understood the game at once. When she harpooned him he
rolled and thrashed in foam, churning with his flukes as a wounded
whale should; and came floating in so they could haul him to land and
cut him up for blubber. This, she explained, is the flensing stage,
marking out a flat area of moist sand. Then they burned the blubber in
a great bonfire, a beacon that glared tawnily in the night, to guide
the relief ship to their perilous coast. Martin found it ticklish to
be flensed, so they lay and made tunnels. The tide was going, the flat
belt of wet beach was like a mirror, reflecting the rich sword-blade
colour of the West.

But Martin was a little puzzled.

“What did you say your names are?” he asked again.

“Janet and Sylvia and Rose,” they said, delighted at his stupidity. For
it is always thrilling to tell people your name: it proves that you too
belong to this important world.

Still, this didn’t account for the other, the fourth one. He had seen
her watching them from the beach, and then she had been playing with
them in the tumbling water. He had thought the children just a little
bit rude not to greet her when she joined them. She was not as brown
as they, so perhaps she was a stranger who had newly arrived. But now,
when that heavy thunder rolled like wagon wheels across a dark bridge
of clouds, and the other three ran off to the bath house to dress, she
was sitting there beside him.

She was older, but he knew her now. Her face was wet; but of course,
for she had been wriggling in the surf like a mermaid. He felt a trifle
angry with her: she had got ahead of him, then. He was opening his
mouth to speak when she asked him exactly the same thing:

“How did _you_ get here?”

He must be careful: if he told her too much she might give him away.
She never could keep a secret.

“I’ve always been here,” he said. “It isn’t fair for you to tag along.
Go home.”

Then he realized it was no use to talk to her like that. Why, she
seemed older than he: she had even begun to get soft and bulgy, like
ladies. But she looked so frightened, he took her hand.

“We can’t both do it,” he said. “They’ll find out. Bunny, you’re not
playing fair.”

“I am, I am!” she cried. “I’m not playing at all. _You_ go away. You’ll
be sorry.”

It was awful to see her look so anxious.

“You used to be a laughing girl,” he said, “and laughing girls are
different. What’s happened to you anyway?”

She gazed at him strangely, with so much love in her face he felt she
must be ill.

“This is no place for you,” he said firmly. “Here among strangers.
You’ll be lonely. _I_ can’t look after you.”

“They aren’t strangers. Oh, please go back before you find out.”

This was all senseless and annoying; yet he was sorry for her too. I
know what’s the matter with her, he thought. He accused her of it.

“No, no!” she said piteously. “No, Martin. Not that. I nearly did, but
not really.”

“I dare say it wasn’t your fault,” he said; and then, remembering a
useful phrase, “You’ll have to excuse me now.” He saw Mr. Granville
approaching down the sandy ravine. “Here’s one of them coming.”

“Tell me,” she said quickly. “Do you like them?”

“Why, yes, they’re nice. They’re a bit queer. They seem to worry about
things.--They like _me_,” he added proudly.

He could see Mr. Granville waving to them to take shelter in the cabin.
The bay was already scarred with the onset of the squall.

“Hurry!” Martin said. “Come on, we’ll wait in the bath house until the
storm’s over.” They ran together, stumbling up the heavy sand, she
lightly, not dragging behind as she usually did. When he reached the
door, pulling it open against the first volley of the rain, it was not
her hand that he held, but a cold smooth shell.




IX


One drawback about Pullmans (Ruth was thinking) is that the separate
chairs make it difficult to talk. And she was getting restless: if she
didn’t say something pretty soon she would begin to feel uncertain of
herself. The long melancholy howl of the engine, the gritty boxed-up
air (still smelling of the vaults under the Grand Central Station), the
hot plushy feel of the cushion prickling under her knees, the roll and
swing of the car, the dark ridges of hills, everything was depressing
and tedious. Ben was still absorbed in the morning paper--already
stale, she thought, for the afternoon sheets were out by now. She had
skimmed the magazines, a little irritated by the pictures of interiors
of wealthy country houses. She wished that such articles would also
include photographs of the number of servants necessary to keep
things so perfect. Of course it was easy enough for people like that
to have a Home in Good Taste: they just call in a decorator and he
fixes everything. But you yourself: how are you going to know what is
really Good Taste? Styles change so. As for the fiction, it sounded
as though it was written by people with adenoids. You could hear the
author biting his nails and snuffling. She had cleaned out her vanity
box, thrown away some old clippings and a dusty peppermint and stubs of
theatre tickets. And still Ben was lurking behind a screen of print.
Certainly he was the most stay-put of men: place him anywhere and there
he would remain until it was time for the next thing to happen.

She began filing briskly at her nails. Presently the newspaper
rustled uneasily. She leaned forward and rasped sharply, her soft
hand moving as capably as a violinist’s. The little sickening buzz
continued, and Ben folded the paper lengthwise and looked round it
like a man at a half-open door. His brown eyes were large and clear
behind tortoise-shell glasses. His eyebrows were delicately poised,
ready to rise, like guests preparing to get up from their chairs. In
his waistcoat pocket were two fountain pens, one black and one with
silver filigree on it. He looked faintly annoyed. Whatever he looked,
he always looked it faintly: dimly, sluggishly, somewhat. He was a
little bit stout, a little bit bald, a little bit tired, a little bit
prosperous. _Littlebit_ had been his nickname when she fell in love
with him and thought him such a passionate fellow. She used to like
the name, but had put it out of her mind when she found it too true.
Everything about him was rather, except only his eyes. They were quite.
In them, sometimes, you saw a far-off defiance. Something that had
always retreated, slipped behind corners, stood warily at half-open
doors, but by caution and prudence, not by timidity. Something that
went while the going was good.

“Ben,” she said. “Did you see that girl sitting at the next table in
the diner? The one in the black hat. She came in just before we left.”

He thought a moment. “No,” he said. “I was looking at the bill.”

“She went through here a while ago. She’s in the day coaches, I guess,
because this is the last of the Pullmans.”

No, thought Ben, this isn’t the last of the Pullmans, there’s another
one ahead of it. I noticed it specially when we got on: it’s called
_Godiva_ and reminded me to ask Ruth if she’d brought her bathing
suit.--But he refrained from correcting her, waiting patiently to hear
what was coming.

“Of course, I’m not sure, it’s so long since I’ve seen her, ages and
ages, but I think it was Joyce Clyde.”

Ben made a polite murmur of interested surprise, allowing his eyebrows
to stretch themselves a little and pursing his lips gently to show
attention. But the name meant nothing to him.

“I shouldn’t wonder if she’s on her way to the Island too. You
remember, she was there one summer when we were all children. I
wouldn’t have known her, but I saw her picture in a magazine not long
ago. She’s some kind of artist, I think. She always was a queer kid.”

Ben’s recollection of old days on the Island was mostly limited to a
strip of yellow shore. He remembered catboats and knife-edged grasses,
a dock with barnacled piles, learning to make a half-hitch in wet
ropes, and the freckled, gap-toothed faces of some other small boys.
He remembered splintery plank walks among masses of poison ivy, the
puckered white feet of a man who had been drowned, the sour stink of
his aquarium of hermit crabs, dead because he forgot to change their
water. He remembered an older boy who taught the small fry obscene
rhymes. The cheerful disgusting hazards of being young were now
safely over, thank goodness. The orderly exacting routine of business
was enough to keep a man amused. Twenty-one years is a long time:
yet turning the focus of memory a little more sharply he caught an
unexpected glimpse of a friendly fat waitress at the old wooden hotel
who used to bring him bowls of clam chowder; and some of the grown-ups
were still visible. But the small girls seemed to have evaporated,
fogged out. Even Ruth herself. He could only recall a distant shrilling
of hide-and-seek played after dusk among the sand hills, the running
flutter of pink cotton dresses. Why don’t little girls wear pink
nowadays, he wondered.

“Did she wear a pink dress?”

“Gracious, I don’t know. She had green eyes and was awfully shy. If
that _was_ her, she’s turned out more attractive than I would have
thought. Funny, she hasn’t bobbed her hair: I thought all artists were
supposed to do that.”

Ben wasn’t greatly interested. His private conviction was that the
party would be a bore anyhow: but he couldn’t very well return to the
newspaper while Ruth was talking. He took off his glasses and polished
them.

“What does her husband do?”

“Her husband? She hasn’t got one. I suppose she’s wedded to her art. I
don’t think she’s the type that’s attractive to men.”

Ruth regretted this when she had said it, because obviously a little
deduction on Ben’s part would have led him to her real thread of
thought. But he showed no sign of animation, patted her knee in a
soothing, proprietory way, and settled his coat round him like a dog
coiling for another nap.

“We’ll soon be there,” he said.

“I hope so. I’d forgotten it was such a long ride. It’ll be strange to
see the Island again. What a queer thing, George getting hold of the
old Richmond place. It’s been empty a long time, the family never went
back to it after the little girl (what was her name?) died.”

As though plunging into a tunnel the train drummed into a squall. Grey
slants of rain thrashed the windows, there were heavy explosions of
sound. Ruth was usually afraid of storms, but this one seemed to make
the long green car comfortable. The smooth hum of the train softened
the jagged edges of thunder. She would have liked a woman there to talk
to about Joyce. She had been cheerful in the certainty that her own hat
was the smartest on the train until Joyce (for certainly it was she)
entered the dining car. That curly black felt, with what an air she
carried it. There was something gipsyish about her: something finely
unconscious in her way of enjoying her lunch while every other woman
was watching her. Women run in a pack and hasten to ally themselves
against any other who seems to have secret funds of certainty. Those
who live from hand to mouth are always indignant at a private income.
Ruth knew Joyce at once as one of the lonely kind. While she had been
sitting there, apparently idle and half asleep, she had turned her
chair to command the aisle and was waiting intently to see her come
back through their car.

The delicious resentment that some women at once rouse in others! By
deep specialized instinct every woman in the car looked up as the girl
went by. Sitting there for several hours they had tacitly constituted
themselves a microcosm of Society, and now with professional shrewdness
took stock of the alien. No sculptor, no practised sensualist, could
have itemized her more fiercely. She was not “pretty,” but in some
strangely dangerous way she was foreign to their comfortable cowardice.
She was still untamed, unbroken. It was not fair, thought the plumper
ladies (though unaware they were thinking it), that a woman of nubile
age should still combine nymphlike grace with the gay insouciance of a
boy. She was carrying her hat in her hand, and the dark twist of her
uncropped hair annoyed them as much as, not long before, it would have
annoyed them to see it short. They marked the flexile straightness
of her figure, the hang and stuff of the skirt, the bend of foot and
ankle; exactly appraised, by the small visible slope of stocking, the
upper curves unseen. They noted the unbroken fall of her dark suit
from armpit to hem as she was swung sideways by a swerve of the train
and threw up one elbow to keep her balance. The ruddy young brakeman,
meeting her just then, steadied her politely with his hand. She smiled
as frankly as a lad. She didn’t even seem humiliated, Ruth thought, at
having to pass through all these Pullmans on her way to the day coaches.

But there was something deeper than that--something she couldn’t
profitably discuss with Ben. With the clairvoyance of woman she saw,
and resented, a creature somehow more detached and more determined
than herself. In a vague way, for which no words were possible, she
recognized a spirit not more happy but more finely unhappy; a spirit
concerned with those impassioned curiosities of life which Ruth knew
existed and yet knew not how to approach. She felt the shamed envy and
anger that some bitter listener in the audience always feels toward
the performer. There was something in that dark childish face and
alert reckless figure that made Ruth feel soft and frilly and powdered
with sugar. The girl was possessed by some essence, had some fatal
current passing through her--something which, if generally admitted,
would demand extensive revision of the comfortable world. That was
it, perhaps: she looked as though she knew that things most women
had agreed to regard as important, didn’t really matter. The Pullman
microcosm resented this, as an anthology of prose would resent a poem
that got into it by mistake. The only satisfaction it could have, and
the explanation of its pitiless appraisal, was the knowledge that this
poor creature too was mocked and fettered with a body, subject also to
the dear horrors of flesh.

With a sense of weariness and self-pity Ruth turned to the window
and saw, far off, the hard blue line of sea. They were emerging
from the storm, the train hummed and rocketed over marshes and
beside reedy lagoons still prickled by the rain. On that horizon lay
the memory of childhood to which she was now returning. The chief
satisfaction of revisiting juvenile surroundings is to feel superior
to that pitiable era: to appear, before one’s old companions, more
prosperous, circumstantial, handsome, and enviable than they might
have expected. But now even her gay little woollen sports hat seemed
to have lost its assurance. What right had a mere illustrator (and
riding in a day coach) with something proud and eager in her face,
to start all these troublesome thoughts? She remembered that even
as a child Joyce never really joined in their games but watched
apart with a shy unwillingness: a shyness which, if rubbed too hard,
could turn into bewildered rebellion. Ruth was always so intensely
conscious of the existence of other people that a merely random
speculation as to what her friends were doing could prevent her all
day long from concentrating on her own affairs. Others were more real
to her than herself. Now she was painfully haunted by that look of
conviction and fulfilment on the girl’s face. Joyce looked unhappy (she
consoled herself a little with that); but it was a thrilling kind of
unhappiness: an unhappiness scarcely to be distinguished from ecstasy.

She pondered about this, wondering if _she_ had ever looked like that?
One of her secret anxieties was that she herself was not passionate.
Was that, she sometimes wondered, why she and Ben had never had
children? In her absorption she practised an expression on her face
... “rapt” was the word that occurred to her to describe it. Ben,
reappearing from behind the paper, was alarmed by her appearance and
offered her a soda-mint tablet from the little bottle in his waistcoat
pocket.

The dense air of the car began to be alive. After the barrens of
pinewood and long upgrades over stony pasture, now the train careered
gloriously in the salty northern air, along beaches crusted with stale
foam. It cried aloud, its savage despairing chord: as though the
fierce engine knew that after all its furious burning labours, the
flashing uproar of its toil, its human employers would descend at their
destinations unfreed, unaltered, facing there as elsewhere the clumsy
comedies of life. Angrily it exulted along the bright dwindle of rails
which spread wide under the great wheels and narrowed again before and
behind. The telegraph poles came racing toward it, leaping up like tall
threatening men; one by one they were struck down and fled away. With
swift elbowing pistons and jets of silver steam the engine roared,
glorious in its task; glorious in its blind fidelity and passion,
caring nothing that all must be retraced in the opposite direction
to-morrow.

       *       *       *       *       *

Joyce was standing in the vestibule of _Godiva_, smoking a cigarette.
She had been there a great part of the journey; fast trains always made
her mind too busy for sitting still. She had pacified the at first
disapproving young brakeman by getting out her sketchbook and making a
quick cartoon of him.

Not for many weeks had she been so unconsideringly happy. She never
thought of trains as hurrying toward something but rather fleeing
wildly _from_. Those great eloquent machines (she hated to have to
board a train without seeing the engine first) crouched ready for
flight like huge beasts breathing panic. They were symbols of the
universal terror; she trembled with excitement to feel the thrill of
escape--escape from anything. Escape, for the moment, from Time and
Space. She wondered how any one could ever sleep or be bored in a
train. You’d think their faces would be transfigured when they got out.
She hummed to herself as she stood alone in the vestibule. Life seemed
to be beginning all over again: her mind was freshly sensitized to the
oddity of human faces, to the colour and vitality of the country, the
strong swelling curves of the hills. I am flying, flying, she chanted;
I am flying from a dream. I am a little mad. My mind is fuller than
it’ll hold: all sorts of thoughts are slopping over the brim, getting
lost because there isn’t room for them. I must let them flow faster so
I can be aware of them all. What happens to the thoughts that get spilt
before you can quite seize them? I must ask George.... I wonder which
George it will be?

Once she had startled him by giving him a book she found in a
second-hand store, _The Four Georges_. For it amused her to insist
that there were four of him: George the Husband, George the Father,
George the Publicity Man, and then George the Fourth--_her_ George, the
troubled and groping dreamer, framed in an open window....

       *       *       *       *       *

Go and see Granville, said the Advertising Agent to her. He’s getting
up a booklet for the L or somebody. He might be able to use some of
these drawings of yours. And because it was urgent he had given her the
address. Her knees were quivery as she turned the bend in the corridor,
looking for his number.

It was a sultry day, the door of the little office was open. There was
a window, high up at the back of the old building, looking over the
Brooklyn Bridge. He was leaning on the sill, the smoke of his pipe
drifted outward into that hot tawny light that hangs over the East
River on summer afternoons. At first he did not seem to hear her tap on
the glass panel; then he turned, glanced at her steadily and without
surprise. As he had no idea she was coming she thought perhaps he had
mistaken her for someone he knew.

“Look here,” he said, “I want to show you something.”

She put down her folder of drawings and crossed to the sill. He leaned
there in his shirt sleeves, pointing with the stem of his pipe, as
easily as though they were old friends.

“See those tall lance-headed openings in the piers of the Bridge? Did
you ever notice they look just like great cathedral windows? And that
pearl-blue light hanging in them, better than any stained glass.”

She was too surprised, too anxious about showing him her drawings, to
do more than murmur assent.

“I can tell you about it,” he said, “because I don’t know you. It isn’t
safe to tell people you know about beautiful things. Those are the
windows of my private cathedral.”

How often she had lived again that first encounter. The ring of feet
along the paved corridors, the blunt slam of elevator gates, the steady
tick of a typewriter in an adjoining office, telephones trilling here
and there in the big building like birds in an aviary, the murmur of
the streets rising up to them through warm heavy air. Always, in that
city, she was a little mad. Where such steep terraces cut stairways
on sky, where every tread falls upon some broken beauty poets are
too hurried to pick up, how can one be quite sane? God pity the man
(George said once) who has none of that madness in his heart.

I have a cathedral too, I have a cathedral too, she was repeating to
herself, but too excited to say it. With bungling fingers she untied
the portfolio, rummaged through the drawings, found the one of an aisle
of trees in Central Park where the wintry branches lace themselves into
an oriel.

He went through all the pictures. He only spoke twice.

“Who did these? You?” and then presently, “Here, this isn’t fair.
You’ve been trespassing in _my_ city.”

Then suddenly he paused, flushed, and became embarrassed. He became--as
she would have said afterward--George the Third. He spoke of the
Elevated Railroad’s limited appropriation for promotion, of the
peculiar problems of transportation publicity, asked what was her usual
price for art work, took her name and address.... Perhaps George the
Fourth would have died then and there, perished of cholera infantum at
the age of half an hour, never been heard of again except on a tablet
in the imaginary cathedral on Brooklyn Bridge ... but as she left the
office she shook so with purely nervous elation she had to stop by the
brass-rimmed letter chute in the hall. She was wishing she had the
courage to go back and ask him how soon the check could come through
(Will he mail it here? she thought. Oh, blessed chute!) ... and then he
came hurrying round the corner after her.

“Look here,” he said, with pink-browed uncertainty, “I can’t let you go
away like this. The family’s off in the country. I’m devilish lonely.
Will you have dinner with me and we can talk about New York?”

She was too amused and exultant to answer promptly. But George the
Fourth, looking anxiously from his bassinette, need not have been so
afraid she was going to refuse. Do artists who have just made their
first real sale decline a square meal?

“We’ll ride uptown in the L, to celebrate,” he pleaded. “There’s a bit
where it turns right into the sunset for a few blocks; if you stand on
the front platform it’s corking. And I know a place where we can get a
bottle of _asti spumante_....”

The lighted candles of the Italian basement where they dined. At first
his shyness had come back upon him: he seemed to feel that taking any
one but Phyllis out to dinner was an incredible truancy. Then, as they
looked anxiously at each other, some element in the blood broke free.
His mind came running to her like a child, like a boy lost in a world
of tall stone buildings and clamouring typewriters. His poor shivered
ideas just fitted into the fractured edges of her own. He had been well
drilled, but there was in him a little platoon that had broken away
from the draft and enlisted in the Foreign Legion.

“You know,” he said, “I never talked like this to any one before. What
is there about you that makes one say what he really thinks? My mind
feels as though someone had stolen its clothes while it was in bathing.
How will it be able to go back to work to-morrow?”

Warm golden candlelight and cold golden wine: the little table in the
corner was a yellow island in a sea of cigarette smoke, a sunny silence
in the comforting hum of other people’s chatter. In her own loneliness
she saw his mind like the naked footprint on Crusoe’s beach.

There must have been another footprint there too: the footprint of a
mischievous godling who runs the beaches of the world as naked as Man
Friday.

“The ideas I folded neatly and hid under a stone” (she could still hear
him saying it, there was something delightfully heavy in his way of
saying _stone_), “the ideas I thought you have to leave behind when you
go bathing in the river of life, I think maybe I shall go back and look
under that stone for them and see if they aren’t the most important of
all. I thought they were just clothes. Maybe they were my bathing suit.”

The figure of speech wasn’t quite limpid. There was perhaps a little
_asti spumante_ in it, and a few gassy bubbles of exaggeration. But she
understood what he meant. Ten, eleven years older than she, how young
he seemed.

He paused a while, getting younger every moment. He waved away a drift
of smoke.

“You must meet Phyllis,” he said.

Then he had found, later, that it wasn’t necessary, for she had known
Phyllis as a child. How small the world is, he said sadly. “Phyllis and
I were small, too,” she replied.

She wondered if there were four Phyllises also?

       *       *       *       *       *

“Ten minutes to Dark Harbour,” said _Godiva’s_ porter, coming into
the vestibule with his whisk brush. She hardly noticed him dusting
her, she was thinking of George the Fourth, the perplexing phantom
she had accidentally startled into life. She felt for him a strange,
almost maternal tenderness; an amusement at some of his scruples, an
admiration at the natural grace of his mind when he allowed himself to
be imaginative. But behind these, a kind of fear: for George the Fourth
had grown gigantic in her dreams; sometimes, in panic, she realized how
much she thought about him. He was so completely hers because he was
hidden in the securest of hiding places--inside a person who belonged
to someone else. So she couldn’t resist the invitation to go down to
the Island, to renew memories of childhood ... and the most interesting
of those ghostly children, she thought, would be George the Fourth,
only twelve months old. She had had to remind herself, sometimes,
that the first three Georges did belong to others ... but if you have
to keep reminding yourself of a thing, perhaps it isn’t so. For the
amazement had been mutual. She had awakened George the Fourth, but he
had awakened someone too.... And frightened by these thoughts (it had
been her lonely pride to stand so securely on her own feet) she was
flying from the dream of George to George himself--and Phyllis.

Over the wide sea meadows the train sounded its deep bluster of
warning: a voice of triumph, a voice of pain, announcing reunions
that cannot unite, separations that cannot divide. And George
Granville--all four of him, at that moment--driving over the long
trestle to the mainland, heard it from afar, and in sheer bravado
echoed the cry with his horn.




X


In the bathtub Phyllis wondered, for the first time in her life,
whether she was “literary.” She sat soaping her knees and revelling in
coolness that came about her waist in a perfection of liquid embrace.
She found herself--perhaps because her eye had fallen on the volume
in the den, while she and George were bickering--thinking about
Shakespeare. Now, in an intimate understanding that many an erudite
scholar has never attained, she perceived what the man with a beard
was driving at. The plays, which she had always politely respected as
well-bred women do respect serious institutions, were something more
than gusts of fantastic tinsel interspersed with foul jokes--jokes she
knew were foul without understanding them. They were parables of the
High Cost of Living--the cost to brain and heart and spirit of this
wildly embarrassing barter called life. The tormented obstreperous
behaviour of his people was genuine, after all: they were creatures
in a dream, like herself; a dream more true than reality. She could
have walked on in any of the plays and taken a part without sense of
incongruity. She felt as if she were a phantom in one of the pieces: a
creature in the mind of some unguessable dramatist who had mysteriously
decided to make a change in the plot. She thought how she and her
friends had sometimes sat through Shakespeare matinées, subconsciously
comforting themselves with the notion that real people don’t behave
that way.

Why, Bill, you poor old devil (she said to him), how you must have
suffered to be able to write like that. It made her feel quite tranquil
by comparison. But of course her own particular absurdities had special
kinks in them that were unique: even He would have been surprised. But
he would have understood.

A soft flow of air had begun to move after the storm. The big maple
tree, just outside the bathroom window, was gold-plated in the dropping
sun. The window was above the bath and the ripple of those gilded
leaves reflected a gentle shimmer into the porcelain tub. Her shiny
knees were glossed with pale green light. Shakespeare would have liked
that. She fished for the soap, which slipped round behind her like a
young thought.

I suppose that as long as I was 99 and 44/100 pure I never could
appreciate him. But I don’t know whether I altogether enjoy people
who understand so well. That’s the trouble about George: he’s
getting weirdly acute, poor soul. Now, Mr. Martin: he looks divinely
sympathetic, but I don’t think he quite.... People wonder why one
always confides in those who don’t understand. But of course! To
confide in people who _do_ is too terrible. Giving yourself away--yes,
exactly: you no longer are keeper of your own gruesome self. That’s why
the Catholic notion is so sound: confession to God is nothing at all,
you know He doesn’t care. But to confess to a priest ... golly, that
must take courage.

She lay down for one last lustral wallow, closing her eyes with a calm
sensation of new dignity and refreshment. The cool water held her in
peaceful lightness, lifting away whatever was agitated and strange. For
a moment body and spirit were harmoniously one, floating in a pure eddy
of Time. I feel like a nun, she thought. She rose, trickling, threw the
big towel round her shoulders, and studied herself in the long mirror.
Really, I’m not much more than a child, she mused happily, admiring the
slender, short-haired figure in the glass. Or perhaps I feel like a
harlot ... a courtesan, nicer-sounding word. Discarding the towel she
struck a humorous parody of the Venus Aphrodite attitude, and then felt
a little shocked. She could feel her cheeks warming. She remembered
George’s coarse remark when they saw the statue. “It’s no use,” he
said. “Two hands can’t do it. Any one as timid as that needs three.”
She sang a little refrain, trying different tunes for it. She couldn’t
remember whether she had heard it, or just made it up:

  _What did Mrs. Shakespeare do
  When William went away?_

The soft flutter of maple leaves outside the window was like a soothing
whisper. From the other side of the house she could hear the click of
croquet mallets and balls. Time for the children to have their supper,
or they won’t be finished before the others get here. Thank goodness it
was cooler, Lizzie wouldn’t be so harassed. Wrapping her silk kimono
round her, she looked out of the window. Lizzie’s flag was still
flying. With a rough delicacy of her own, the cook did not like to run
out her private washing on the family line, so she had strung a cord
from the kitchen door to a branch of the maple tree. There, floating
like a hoist of signal buntings, were Lizzie’s personalia: all the more
conspicuous for her mistaken modesty. They were indeed (it was George
who had said it) like a string of code flags: a blue apron, a yellow
shirt, a pair of appalling red breeches. George always wanted to know
to whom Lizzie might be signalling with these homely pennants. They
_are_ a kind of signal, Phyllis thought. A signal that life goes on,
notifying any other household within eyeshot that here too the humble
routine of kitchen and washtub and ironing board, of roof and meat and
sleep, triumphs in the end over the wildest poet’s dream. Shakespeare
would have relished them, and been pleased to see these bright ensigns
hoisted so frankly in the yellow air.

Dressed in a gauzy drift of white and silver, she paused at the
cushioned bay windows by the head of the stair. Her body enjoyed that
mixed feeling of snug enclosure and airy freedom which is the triumph
of feminine costume. Even her inward self shared something of this
sensation: within the softly sparkling raiment of thought she was
aware of her compact kernel of identity--tranquil for the moment, but
privately apprehensive and alert. On the oval grass plot Martin was
playing croquet with the children. Janet, nicely adjusting two tangent
balls with a bare brown foot, gave them a well-aimed swipe. Phyllis
heard the sharp wooden impact and Martin’s cry of good-humoured dismay
as his globe went spinning across the turf, leaving a darker stripe on
the wet lawn. It bounded over the gravel and into the bushes, right by
the corner where she had first seen him. She watched him chase it, lay
it on the edge of the turf, and drive it back. How graceful he was! He
raised his head with a little unconscious lift of satisfaction as he
watched the ball roll where he wanted it to lie.

A film seemed to have been skimmed from her eyes. Perhaps it was that
level stream of evening light: the figures moved in a godlike element
of lustre: every motion was perfect, expressed the loveliness for
which life was intended, was unconscious and exact as the movements
of animals. They were immersed in their game as though there were no
past, no future: she felt she could watch them for ever. Martin’s face,
gravely intent, bent over his ball. She saw the straight slope of his
back against the screen of shrubs. The mallet clicked, there was a
sharp tinkle as the ball went through the middle hoop, touching the
little bell that hung there. How can any one look so charming and yet
be so hard to talk to?

Through the scooped hollow of the dunes, catching tawny sparks from the
sand, violet dazzles from the sea, the cleansed radiance of sunset
came pouring in. The children’s bare legs splashed in brightness as
though they were paddling; honey-coloured light parted and closed again
about their ankles, the wet shadows dripped and trailed under their
feet. The house, growing dusky, was a dyke stemmed in the onset of that
pure flood. It caught and held as much darkness as it could; the rest
went whirling out. As if in answer to the little croquet bell, the old
clock in the hall whirred and jangled six hoarse clanking strokes. They
eddied a moment and then were whiffed away by the strong, impalpable
current that seemed to be sweeping through. You could tell, by the dull
sound, that the gong was rusty. No wonder, a house by the seashore,
empty so long.

After the cough of the clock silence came up the shaft of the stairway.
Not themselves alone, but the house too, had its part in everything.
She could feel its whole fabric attentive and watchful, and wondered
how she could have been heedless of this before. A house of ugly
pattern, with yellow wainscots and fretsawed mantels and panes of
gaudy glass: but she guessed now, what one can only learn under
strange roofs, how precious houses are. And how wary they have to be,
fortresses against fierce powers, sunshine, darkness, gale. Life has
flowed through them: clocks have chimed, logs crumbled, stairs creaked
under happy feet. These whispers are all they have to treasure: if you
leave them alone too long they get morbid, full of sullen fancies. She
remembered herself, visiting that house as a child, once seated at this
same window, watching others play croquet ... _was_ it memory, or only
the trick of the mind that splits the passing instant and makes one
live it twice?

“Come, children!” she called from the window. “Time for your supper.”

She went slowly down the stairs. Be calm, be calm, she said to herself;
this too will pass; this isn’t Shakespeare but only the children’s
supper time. But the flow of her blood warmed and quickened as water
grows hot while you wait with your hand under the bathroom faucet.
On the landing, where a shot of sunlight came arrowing through from
the sitting-room window, she waited to adjust a slipper. She could
hear them on the gravel outside. If he came in now he would find her
just so, gilded and silvered like a Christmas card. But their voices
remained on the veranda where the children’s meal was laid. She could
not afford to wait long. Now, now, were a few precious moments. This
was a dream: and dreams must be recorded at once or they vanish for
ever.

She heard one of them sneeze. It was Janet: she knew all their sneezes
and coughs by ear. Yes, they probably _have_ caught cold, bathing
in that storm. And they have to sleep outdoors to-night, too: on
the porch, because of this infernal Picnic. It’s much colder; the
thermometer must have dropped twenty degrees. She hurried to get the
sweaters from the cupboard under the stairs.

They were sitting at the veranda table, with milk and bread and jam.
Mr. Martin was in the fourth chair. He looked as though he too was
ready for supper.

“Well, chickabiddies, did you have a good bathe? I hope you didn’t
catch cold. Here, put on your sweaters.”

They looked up at her gaily. Their upper lips were wet and whitish.

“How pretty you look!” exclaimed Janet.

She had meant to toss him a brief, clear, friendly little gaze; an
orderly hostess-to-pleasant-guest regard; but this from Janet startled
her. She could see that he was holding her in his eye, meditating the
accuracy of Janet’s comment. She did not feel ready to face him.

“Thank you,” she said lightly. And added, “Wipe your mouths after
drinking.”

“He says that’s a milk moustache,” cried Rose, gesturing to the
visitor. “It makes you healthy.”

Phyllis made a clucking reproach with her tongue.

“You mustn’t point. It’s not polite to say _he_. Say ‘Mr. Martin.’ Jay
dear, after supper run and put away the mallets. I’ve told you, I don’t
know how often, not to leave them lying on the lawn.... Oh, not _you_,
Mr. Martin. Janet’ll do it after her supper.”

But he was up already and gone to get them. I suppose this perpetual
correcting sounds silly to him, she thought. But how can I help it?
George never disciplines them.

“It makes him hungry to watch us eat,” said Sylvia. “He wants some
supper.”

“He’s joking with you. We’ll have ours by and by.”

She followed him into the garden. As she put her crisp silver slipper
on the tread of the veranda steps she saw how the foot widened slightly
to carry her weight. How terribly I’m noticing things. Something
flickered at the corner of her eye: she suspected it was Lizzie, at the
pantry window, trying to attract her attention. A throng of trifles
jostled at the door of her mind, tapping for admission. Probably the
ice has given out, after such heat. Well, then, they’ll have to do
without cocktails. I can fix the sandwiches to-night when everyone’s in
bed. If it turns chilly there won’t be enough blankets. Nounou won’t be
back until late, I must get the children started to bed before.... I
_won’t_ think of these things.

He had put away the croquet implements.

“Thank you. We’ve just time for a little stroll before the others get
here.--I hope you’ll like Mr. and Mrs. Brook. They’re extremely nice,
really, but a bit heavy.”

“Perhaps they eat too much.” He said it with the air of one courteously
offering a helpful suggestion.

She had wanted, wanted so to be alone with him: she had a desperate
feeling that there were urgent things to be said, and now she could
utter nothing. Her mind ran zigzagging beside her, like a questing dog,
while she tried to steer their talk into some channel of reality. Her
thoughts kept crowding massively under her uneasy words, pushing them
out before they were ready, cutting into her speech like italics in a
page of swarthy Roman type.

“We all eat too much in hot weather, I dare say. _Oh, if I could only
write him a letter I could make him understand. He’s so sophisticated,
I suppose the quaint things he says are his way of making fun of me.
Why did I suggest our walking like this? You can’t see a person’s face
when you’re walking side by side. And if we go round the path again,
Lizzie will get me from the pantry._ Let’s sit down on the bench.”

“It’s wet, it’ll spoil your pretty skirt.”

Skirt!... What a word for this mist of silvery tissue she had put on
specially for him....

“So it is. Well, let’s see what the storm has done to the roses.”

The little walk under the trellis was flaked with wet petals.

“Poor darlings, there’s not much left of them now. _If Shakespeare was
here I should feel the same way. Speechless. Why, he’s like a god:
lovely to think about, impossible to talk to. He doesn’t give anything,
just absorbs you: you feel like a drop of ink on a blotter._ I have a
horrid suspicion that the ice has given out, you mustn’t mind if your
cocktail is warm.”

He kept looking at her in brief glances. Each time she met them it was
like getting a letter in some familiar handwriting but stamped with a
strange postmark.

“Are they better cold?”

_I give up, I give up. It’s no use. I can’t even think. There’s some
sort of veil, mist, between us. He_ is _a kind of god. He’s brightness,
beauty. Every movement he makes is a revelation and a question. How can
I speak to him when all I want is to love him. There’s nothing earthy,
nothing gross about this. It’s lovelier than anything I ever dreamed
of. And if I tried to tell any one it would sound like tawdry farce...._

Dimly she divined what lay between them, what always lies between
men and gods, making them such embarrassed companions--the whole of
life, the actual functions of living; the sense of absurdity (enemy of
all tender beauty); trained necessities for silence, that darken the
intuitions of the soul.

_It’s as impossible as--as the New Testament. I feel like Christmas
Eve: there’s a new Me being born. You can’t have a Nativity without
pangs. And not even any one to bring me frankincense and myrrh...._

She stopped, picked one of the late rosebuds, and put it in his
lapel. She checked a frightened impulse to tell him that she named
the baby Rose because it was her favourite flower and she looked so
like a rosebud when she was born. This was courage, because to say it
would have carried on the doomed conversation one paragraph farther
in safety. To any one else she would have said it. But now she spoke
shakenly, from far within.

“You’re not easy to talk to--Martin.”

His face changed, he looked less anxious. He took her hand. She found
herself not surprised: it seemed entirely natural. She felt his fingers
lace into hers. Just as Janet does, she thought.

“I get frightened when people talk to me,” he said.

She looked at him, worshipping. The bad spell was broken. Instantly
she felt they could communicate. He was frightened too--the precious!
Over his shoulder she caught sight of the little old-fashioned weather
vane on the stable, a gilded galloping horse with flowing tail. Always
racing in blue emptiness and never getting anywhere. Like Time itself;
like this marvellous instant, so agonizingly reached, that could never
come again. No one who knew her in her daily rote would quite have
recognized her then as she looked into his eyes. She was completely
herself, born again in innocence, in the instinctive yearning for what
she knew was good. The unknown ripeness of woman woke for an instant
from its long drug of peevish days, small decisions, goaded nothings.
Humbled, purified, bewildered, she saw the dark face of Love, the god
too errant for heaven and who suffers on earth like a man.

“Martin, I love you.”

“I love you too,” he said politely.

Beyond the stable she heard the sound of the car.




XI


“It was just adorable of you to come.”

Ruth was getting out of the car. They kissed.

“Why, Phyllis! How sweet you look! Gracious: I thought this was a
Picnic, and here you are in a dance frock. For Heaven’s sake lead me to
hot water. Those awful Pullmans; I’m simply speckled with cinders. I
feel gritty all over.”

That, of course, must be Miss Clyde, on the front seat.

“How do you do! After all these years! I don’t suppose we’d have known
each other. But we ought to, George admires your work so much.”

They shook hands. It was a hard, capable little hand, calloused like
a boy’s. Phyllis knew now that she remembered the grey-green eyes:
agates, gold-flecked, with light behind them. Eyes softly shadowed
underneath, as though from too much eagerness to understand; eyes
dipped in darkness. The small shy child of long ago, who stood apart
from games. How many strange moments had both been through since last
they met?

George was getting out the suitcases. He was afraid to watch Phyllis
and Joyce greet. When a finely adjusted balance hovers in equilibrium
you don’t breathe on the scales.

“We were on the same train,” cried Ruth, “and never recognized each
other.”

Ben felt the twinge of anxiety common to the husband who hears his wife
tell an unnecessary fib. Ruth had said this once before already, in the
car, so perhaps it was important. Her allusion to Pullmans, also, was
based (he suspected) on the erroneous notion that Miss Clyde had ridden
in a day coach. But he liked to back Ruth up, if he knew what she was
heading for.

“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.

“I shouldn’t have come here,” she said. “I love it too much. Those
trees. They look so surprised. I have a guilty passion for pine trees.”

Driving the faithful car had strengthened George. Even the paltriest
has an encouraged sense of competence with that steady tattoo
underneath his feet. The artist that lay printed like a fossil in
George’s close-packed heart--the artist that only Joyce had ever
relished--always responded to the drum of the engine. He adored the
car; when he drove alone to the Island (sending the family by train) he
sang to her most of the way. This was _his_ guilty passion. Now it was
the car’s rhyming vitality that came to his rescue. He broke the glass.
He cut himself, but he got through.

“Any kind of love is too much,” he said.

Then he was grieved to find himself uttering such a cheap oracle; but
it comforted Joyce because she saw it was a symptom. It showed that
he was trying to tell the truth. She did not dare look at him: she
was too conscious of the others behind them, who seemed as massively
attentive as an audience in a theatre. Then in a wave of annoyance,
Surely I have a right to look where I want? She did so. She could see
the confidential tilt of his eyebrow so plainly, she knew he was hers
for the taking. Nothing but themselves could stand between them.

“How queer: that’s just what I was thinking,” she told the eyebrow.

“Oh, do you believe in telepathy?” chirped Ruth. “Ben sometimes knows
exactly what I’m thinking without my saying a word.”

It can’t happen often, George thought.

“What were you laughing at?” he found time to ask her, as the others
were descending from the car.

“I was just thinking, there’s not much danger of my meeting God,
because I’m not pure in heart.”

       *       *       *       *       *

“Oh, I shall be perfectly comfortable anywhere,” she said.

The single swathe of sunshine carved the hall, dividing it into two
dusks as the word _Now_ divides one’s mind. All, all unchanged: the
series of hemispherical bronze gongs at the dining-room door, the
wakeful asthma of the tall clock, the wide banistered stairway with its
air of waiting to creak. The soft, gold-sliced shadow trembled with
small sounds, and light voices of children drifted down from above.
If this was still real, then what was her life of to-day? Why pretend
any longer to make the world seem reasonable? It was all a delightful
ironic farce with an audience applauding the wrong moments and the
Author gritting his teeth in the wings. What use was Time if it availed
so little?

The broad stream of sunlight flowed through the house like a steady
ripple of Lethe, washing away the sandy shelves of trivial Now,
dissolving little edges of past and future into its current, drawing
all Time together in one clear onward sluice. What are we waiting for,
she wondered. What is everyone waiting for, always? She was painfully
aware of George standing near her. It was not silence that sundered
them, but their grotesque desire to speak.

“George,” Phyllis was saying, “you give Ben a drink or something while
I take the ladies----”

In the shadow beyond the table there was a clicking sound. Through the
wide opening of the dining-room double doors two figures crawled, on
all fours, with a toy train. Janet was in her pyjamas, ready for bed.
Martin’s hand moved the engine across the floor. They came into the
stripe of sunset.

“Wait a minute!” cried Janet. “Here’s one of the passengers.”

“Put him in,” said Martin. “And then the train goes round a sharp curve
and smashes into a lot of people, bing!”

“Quick, I’ll telephone for a nambulance. You adbretized Perfect Safety
on this railroad. It said so in your booklet.”

“Well, if people will sit down for a Picnic right on the main line----”

“Goodness, what a nasinine thing to do.”

“They were using the hot rails to fry their bacon on.”

“Here’s the doctor. Are there any children hurt?”

“Children all safe,” said Martin, looking carefully through the
wreckage. “A lot of grown-ups badly damaged.”

“Here’s the pistol. Put them out of their misery.”

“Bang-bang-bang!”

“They didn’t suffer much. I’ll go for the wrecking train.”

“Janet!” exclaimed Phyllis. “What are you _doing_, running about the
house in your pyjamas. And you’ve got sniffles already.”

The two players looked up; but they could see nothing outside their
tunnel of brightness. The voice seemed like imagination.

“Of course the railroad company will have to pay money for those
valuable lives,” said Martin regretfully.

“I’ll get the blocks, we can build a norphan asylum for the surveyors.”

“Not surveyors, survivors.”

“Janet! Say good-night to Mr. Martin and run upstairs.”

This time the command was unmistakable. Janet became aware of tall
ominous figures emerging from the surrounding dusk.

“Good-night!” she cried hastily, and ran.

“I’m afraid Janet’s manners are terrible,” Phyllis said. “She ought to
have shaken hands, but I don’t like to call her back now, she’ll catch
more cold.”

Two other forms appeared at the top of the stairs.

“Is to-morrow the Picnic?” they called anxiously.

Martin was still sitting on the floor, musing over the disaster. Janet
halted halfway up and shouted. “He says you said Damn the Picnic.”

Sylvia and Rose burst into snivels. There was a moment of difficult
pause. Martin realized that something was happening and began
collecting the train.

“You _promised_ the Picnic for to-morrow,” he said, looking up from
where he was kneeling.

“Yes, yes, to-morrow, don’t worry,” George shouted to the children.

“Mr. Martin’s been awfully kind at keeping them amused,” said Phyllis.
“Mr. Martin, Mr. and Mrs. Brook, Miss Clyde.--George, turn on the
light, Mr. Martin can’t _see_ us.”

The button clicked, the bulbs jumped to attention, mere loops of pale
wire beside the orange shaft of sun. Martin scrambled suddenly to his
feet.

“How do you do,” he said.

       *       *       *       *       *

“What stunning towels,” Ruth remarked as Phyllis was pointing out
the hot-water tap. The embroidery of Phyllis’s maiden initials was
luxuriously illegible, in some sort of Old High German character.
“Surely those didn’t come with the house?”

“No; they’re mine; all that’s left of my trousseau. What George calls
my pre-war towels.”

But Ruth was too busy in her own thoughts to pursue little jokes.

“Your artist man is rather extraordinary,” she said. “Why should any
one so attractive need to be so bashful?”

“He’s not really bashful.--There, I think you’ll find everything you
need.”

       *       *       *       *       *

The light twinkled on a tray of yellowish glasses on the sideboard.
George unlocked the cupboard, took out a bottle, and split open a new
box of cigarettes with his thumbnail. There’s a consolation in having
these small things to do, he thought. Meanwhile, what am I really
thinking of? I suppose she’s washing her hands. It’s awkward having
her downstairs. She’ll want to change.... I don’t believe she’s got a
mirror in there. We can hardly expect her to use the bookcase panes.

“Excuse me a moment,” he said. “Ben, pour the tonic. It’s good stuff.”
Mr. Martin was still standing by the door uncertainly, holding the toy
engine. Heavens, does the fellow have to be moved round like a chess
man? He’s so difficult to talk to, somehow. George made a cordial
gesture, indicating that Mr. Martin might as well join Ben at the
sideboard. Martin crossed the room obediently.

The anxious host glanced into the sitting room. Yes: Phyllis, with
her usual skill, had turned the desk into a dressing table: there was
a fresh doily on it, a vase of flowers, and the mirror from his own
bureau upstairs. Already, though she hadn’t entered it yet, the room
was no longer his but Joyce’s. It had become private, precious, and
strange. Here, in the very centre of his own muddled affairs, was
suddenly a kernel of unattainable magic. Why in God’s name had Phyllis
put her in his room? It was too savagely ironic. In my heart, in my
mind, in my very bed, and I can’t even speak to her. It’s too farcical.
If I didn’t have to keep it secret we could all laugh about it. Secrecy
is the only poison.

He carried in Joyce’s suitcase and paint box, put them on the couch,
and fled.

“Well, Ben, I saved my last bottle for this party. It’ll help us live
through the Picnic. Mr. Martin, aren’t you drinking?”

“What is it?” asked Martin.

“Try it and see. You don’t need to worry. It’s real.”

Ben held up his glass, prolonging anticipation. The fine vatted aroma
of the rye cheered his nostrils. Here at least was one trifle which
helps assuage the immense tedium of life.

“Funny to see the old place again,” he said. “How well I remember those
coloured panes. Well....”

“Never drink without a sentiment,” said George.

“All right: stained glass windows.”

“Good enough. Stained glass windows.”

“Is this your first visit?” Ben began politely; but the other guest was
still coughing and gagging. His eyes were full of tears.

Not used to good stuff, George thought. You don’t get much of this
genuine rye nowadays. He and Ben waited, rather embarrassed, until the
other had stopped patting his chest. Ben lit a cigarette and blew a
ring.

Martin’s face brightened. He put out his finger and hooked the floating
twirl.

“That’s lovely!” he said. “How do you do it?”

Ben was pleased at this tribute to his only social accomplishment.

“Why, it’s quite easy. Get a big mouthful of smoke, purse your lips in
a circle, like the hole in a doughnut, and raise your tongue suddenly
to push the smoke out.”

“Do it again.”

Ben looked so comic, shaping his mouth, Martin couldn’t help laughing.

“You look like a catfish. Can _you_ do it too?”

“Not so well as Ben. Gosh, didn’t you ever see any one blow smoke rings
before?”

“No. My father doesn’t smoke.”

Ben looked a little perplexed. He had an uneasy feeling that perhaps
the artist was making fun of them in some obscure way.

Phyllis called from the stairs. “George, will you come up and speak to
the children? They want to be reassured about the Picnic.”

“Do I have to finish this medicine?” Martin asked.

George grinned at him, rather tickled by this drollery.

“You must do as you think best. Make yourselves at home, you fellows.
I’ll be back in a minute.”

“Don’t you like it?” said Ben.

“No.”

“Well, I can help you.”

“It was nice of you to blow a smoke ring to amuse me.”

There was silence, which Ben concluded by taking the other glass of
whisky.

“Happy days,” he said.

“To-morrow will be a happy day,” Martin said. “We’re going to be
reassured by a Picnic.”

“Have a cigarette,” was all that Ben could think of.

“Who were the ladies you brought with you?”

“Well, one of them’s my wife.”

“Which, the pretty one?”

Ben poured himself another slug. He felt he needed it. He had a strong
desire to laugh, but there was sincere inquiry in Mr. Martin’s eyes. He
really wanted to know.

“Ask _them_,” he said.

Phyllis came into the room.

“It’ll soon be dinner time. You people all ready?”

Martin held out his arms. It was so nearly the substance of her dream,
she moved forward to enter his embrace. Ben’s face of surprise checked
her in time. She took Martin’s hands.

“Mr. Martin is my guest of honour,” she explained lightly.

“He seems to be,” said Ben, and finished his glass.

They stood a moment. Then Martin said, “You didn’t look at them.”

“At what?”

“My hands. I mean, are they clean enough?”

Janet and Sylvia were already in the two cots on the balcony; but their
eyes were waiting for George, with that look of entreating expectancy
worn by those who look upward from bed. In the lustrous garden air
crickets were beginning to wheedle. The rickety old porch seemed an
alcove of simpleness divided from the absurd tangled emotions of the
house. But even here was passion: the little white trousered figures
sprang up, their strenuous arms clutched him, their eyes were dark with
anxiety. With horror he saw how they appealed to him as omnipotent
all-arranging arbiter. Him, the poor futile bungler! They crushed him
with the impossible burden of their faith.

“Yes, we’ll have the Picnic to-morrow. Now you go to sleep and get a
good rest.”

“Mother forgot to hear our prayers.”

He stood impatient as they lengthily rehearsed, one after the other,
their confident innocent petitions. The clear voices chirruped, but he
shut their words from his mind, as regardless as God. Would they never
finish? To hear these dear meaningless desiderations was too tender a
torment. He tried to think of other things--of anything--of the sea; of
washing his hands and putting on a clean collar; of the striped brown
and silver tie that he intended to wear to-morrow (Joyce had never
seen it); and what on earth are we going to do to amuse these people
after dinner?

“... and Mother and Daddy and all friends kind and dear; and let
to-morrow be a nice day for the Picnic....”

Poor little devils, he thought; they seem as far away from me as if
they were kittens or puppies. People pretend that children are just
human beings of a smaller size, but I think they’re something quite
different. They live in a world with only three dimensions, a physical
world immersed in the moment, a reasonable world, a world without that
awful sorcery of a fourth measurement that makes us ill at ease. What
is it their world lacks? Is it self-consciousness, is it beauty, is it
sex? (Three names for the same thing, perhaps.) Little Sylvia with her
full wet eyes, what torments of desire she would arouse some day in
some deluded stripling.

Strange world of theirs: a world that has no awareness of good and
evil; a world merely pretty, whereas ours is beautiful. A world that
knows what it wants; whereas we are never quite sure....

He looked at them with amazement. Where did they come from, how did
they get there? They were more genuine than himself, they would still
be in this incredible life long after he had been shovelled out of
it. How soon would they begin to see through the furious pettiness of
parents? See that we do everything we punish them for attempting, that
we torture them for our own weakness, set their teeth on edge for the
taste of our own green grapes?

He tucked them in, gave each rounded hill of blanket a consoling pat,
and left them. Joyce was standing in the passage. She had changed her
clothes and was wearing a plain grey linen dress. He wanted to tell her
that she was one of the unbelievably rare women who never have a pink
strap of ribbon running loose across one shoulder. There must be _some_
solution of that problem? A man would have abolished it long ago. But
she’s on her way to the bathroom, I suppose; it’ll be more polite if I
just stand aside and let her pass without saying anything. Besides, we
can’t talk here, right outside Ruth’s door.

But she did not move. Evidently she had been watching his little scene
with the children. In a flicker of the mind he wondered whether his
part in it had looked creditable. He was afraid it had. For now, to her
at any rate, he hankered to be known as the troubled imbecile he really
was.

“And you wonder why I envy you,” she said.

He didn’t answer. He was busy reminding himself that that was what her
eyes were like. It is only a few times that any man has the chance or
the will to search the innermost bravery of other human faces. He had
thought much about her eyes, had imagined the fine glory of telling
them about themselves. Foreigners, he would call them; bright aliens
not quite at home in the daily disasters of earth’s commonplace.
Foreigners, but he was on the pier waiting for them. They seemed to
know that life is a precious thing and that we are always in danger
of marring it. He imagined them as they would be if their shadow of
questioning were skimmed away; if they were flooded with the light
of complete surrender, of reckless trust. But how can these things
be said? There is no code, he thought: so perhaps the wise presently
abandon attempt to communicate. The gulf surrounds us all; only here
and there on the horizon a reversed ensign shows where some stout
spirit founders in silence. Or now and then, in the casual palaver of
the day, slips out some fantastic phrase to show how man rises from
clay to potter, can even applaud the nice malice of his own comedy.

He had got beyond the point where he could talk to her in
trivialities. He must say all or nothing.

“Lucky children,” she said. “I wish _I_ had someone to hear my
prayers.--If I had, I might say some.”

“I _didn’t_ hear them. I wasn’t listening; I couldn’t. Oh, Joyce,
Joyce, there’s so much I want to say, and your eyes keep interrupting
me.”

He thrilled a little at himself, and felt better. For he had his
Moments: unforeseen felicities when he said the humorous and necessary
word: and when his Moments came he could not help gloating over
them. She gloated too, for she relished that innocent glee when he
congratulated his own mind. When himself was his own guest of honour,
and he stood genially at the front door.

So she smiled. What other woman could ever reward a lucky phrase with
such magic of wistful applause?

“I apologize for them. They didn’t mean to be rude.”

She was so young and straight in her plain frock, so blessedly
unconscious of herself. He thought of her fine strong body, the ungiven
body that was so much her own, near him again after all the miracles of
life that divide flesh from flesh and then bring it again within grasp;
her sweet uncommanded beauty, irrelevant perhaps, yet so thrillingly
a symbol of her essence. The noble body, poor blasphemed perfection,
worshipped in the dead husks of statue and painting and yet so feared
in its reality. He had to remind himself that it _was_ irrelevant. How
could any man with a full quota of biology help dream of mastering that
cool, unroused detachment?

Ah, he had already had all of her that was imperishable: her dreams,
her thoughts, her poor secret honesties. She had given him these, and
nothing could spoil them. He had agreed with himself that his love was
merely for her mind. (Distressing thought!) It was only the ridiculous
need of keeping this passion to themselves that darkened and inflamed
it. If it could be announced it would instantly become the purest thing
on earth. It would be robbed of its sting. He imagined an engraved
card:--

  _Mr. and Mrs. George Granville
  have the honour to announce
  the betrothal of Mr. Granville’s mind
  to that of Miss Joyce Clyde
  Nothing Carnal_

  “_Let me not to the marriage of true minds
  Admit impediments._”

But this would satisfy no one. Perhaps not even themselves. And people
don’t like things to be pure: it casts a rebuke on their own secrets.

“Joyce, let’s make our announcement at this party.”

“What announcement?” She looked startled.

“Why, that our minds are engaged.”

Her hand, in his, tightened a little, reproachfully.

“George, before you go down. Who is this Mr. Martin?”

“I don’t really know; some friend of Phyl’s. I never saw him before.
She says he’s going to do a portrait of her. I think he’s kidding her.”

He turned toward the stairs and then called her back.

“Listen,” he said softly. “When I say something, after dinner, about
putting the car away, that’s your cue. Slip away and come with me. I
want to show you something.”




XII


The kitchen, that had been a core of fiery heat all day, was now more
comfortable. Lizzie sat in an easy slouch, elbows on the oilcloth
table cover, enjoying her own supper before attacking the great piles
of dishes. The cleansed air, drifting through the open window, struck
pleasantly on the moist glow of her body. There was a light tread on
the back steps and the squeak of the screen door. The cook felt too
deservedly slack to turn, but removed her mouth from the ear of com
just far enough to speak.

“Back early, ain’t you?”

“Yeah. Brady’s shofer was coming this way in their station wagon. Save
me walking later on.”

“Didn’t expect you so soon, nice night like this.”

“Well, Brady’s bus was coming. Say, that fellow’s got a nerve, all
right.”

Nounou tossed her hat on the shelf; ran her hands through her hair, sat
down wearily in the other chair.

“Kids in bed?”

“Sure, before dinner. I’m glad you’re back. You can give me a hand with
the dishes.”

“Where’s all the folks?”

“On the porch.”

Nounou got up, glanced cautiously through the pantry window, then took
a cigarette from her bag and lit it. Lizzie, a native of Dark Harbour,
reflected sombrely on the ways of metropolitan nursemaids.

“There’s ice cream in the freezer if you want some.”

“No, thanks. Brady’s man blew me in the village. Gee, that boy’s fresh.”

Lizzie was a little annoyed at this repetition. It was a long time
since any one had paid her the compliment of being fresh.

“It’s the weather. Hot days and cool nights always makes trouble.”

A brief silence. The kettle steamed softly on the range, Lizzie gnashed
at her corncob, Nounou blew a gust of smoke and measured the stacks
of dishes with a gloomy eye. Washing up was no part of her job, but
she was somewhat in awe of the older woman; and the cook’s dogged
abstraction as she leaned over her food suggested that she had matter
to impart.

“This place is certainly dead,” Nounou grumbled. “Two miles to walk to
the village, and a movie one night a week. Gosh, what a dump to spend
summer in. Honest, Liz, I’m so tired workin’, if I’d got that insurance
o’ mine paid up I’d quit a spell.”

“Keeps you from thinkin,’ don’t it? If I had your job I wouldn’t kick.
Wear white clothes and lay out in the sun with them kids.”

“You’d ought to get a place in the city. A good cook like you are could
make big money.”

“It ain’t so dead round here as you might think. Say, you know that man
was in the garden ’smorning, the one the children took such a shine to.
Is he an old friend to the family?”

“Who?--the one that asked for a piece of cake? Never saw him before. I
thought he acted kinda crazy.”

“Well, they got him stayin’ in the house. He must be someone they know
pretty well, he calls ’em all to their first names. Say, I wish you’d
seen ’em at supper, honest it was a sketch.”

“Who all is there?”

“Mr. and Mrs. Brook, just usual sort o’ people; and a dame they call
Miss Clyde, dark and a bit serious-lookin’; and this Mr. Martin. Well,
for the lovamike, when I go in to fix the table I see smoke coming
out from behind that screen in the corner, I think something’s afire.
I run over and there’s Mr. Martin setting on the floor smoking on a
cigarette. He looks at me sort of frightened, then he laughs and says
not to tell anybody because he’s learnin’ to make rings. He stands
around talkin’ to me while I’m laying the table, and then Mrs. G. comes
in. He says to her ‘Do I have to go to bed right after dinner?’ The
funny thing is he’s got a cheerful kind of way about him, you don’t
much mind what he does, he does it so natural. Of course she knowed he
was jokin’, she says he can set up as late as he likes. He says it’s
nice to be able to do whatever you want to and he asks me if we’re
going to have anything good for supper. Then he asks if he can ring the
gong. I always like to do that, he says. Mrs. G. and me both busts out
laughing. We laughed and laughed like a couple of fools. I was trying
to remember what we was laughing at. I don’ know, we just screeched.
He smiles too, kinda surprised. There’s something about him puts me
in mind of the way I used to find things comical when I was a kid. I
remember one day I got sent home from school for laughing. It just
struck me funny to see the harbour out there and the sunlight on the
water and people going up and down the street talkin’.”

Nounou tried to imagine what Lizzie looked like as a young girl,
convulsed with mirth.

“They all comes in to eat. By and by, while I’m serving the consommay,
he leans over and whispers to her--he’s settin’ at her right. No one
else can hear, but I got it, I was right in back of ’em. When I’m in
bed, he says, will you come and tuck me in? Well, I wish you could seen
her, as red and rosy; she looks swell to-night anyhow in that silver
layout o’ hers. I never seen any one look prettier; I think that other
dame, Mrs. Brook, was kinda sore at Mrs. G. for wearin’ it.”

Nounou put down her cigarette in amazement.

“You must’ve got them wrong,” she said. “These ain’t that kinda folks,
you’re crazy.”

“You never know what kinda people people is till you live in the house
with ’em. ’Course it don’t mean nothing to me what-all stuff they pull.
But listen what I’m telling you. This Mr. Martin is quiet, he don’t
talk an awful lot, but every once and a while he comes through with
something that knocks ’em cold. Going to bed seems to be on his mind.
Next thing he says, right out loud, ‘It’s nice being in bed, it gives
you a chance to be alone.’

“I couldn’t hear so much, bein’ in an’ out o’ the room; an’ the whole
thing was on my shoulders anyways, because honest to God Mrs. G. was
in some kind of a swound. I declare she didn’t seem to know what-all
was coming off. What with that Mr. Martin talking to me I forgot to put
any bread at the places, and will you believe it she never took notice
on it until Mrs. Brook piped up for some. When I pass Mrs. G. the peas
she takes a ladlefull and holds it over her plate so long I didn’t
know what to do. Oh, of course, they all talk along smart and chirpy,
the way folks does at a dinner party, pretend to kid each other an’
all, but I can see it don’t mean nothing. Mrs. Brook has some line she
thinks a lot of, she springs it on Miss Clyde, I reckon you’re wedded
to your art she says, throwing it at her pretty vicious. It was bad for
Mrs. Brook, I’ll admit, setting between Mr. Martin and Mr. G. Because
Mr. G. don’t make up to her none, he’s talking to the Clyde girl all
the time; and Mr. Martin don’t buzz her none neither. She sings out how
much she does love children and Mr. Martin says But do they love you?
A good piece of the time she has to talk to her husband, across the
table, and you know that makes any woman sore at a party. Once and a
while Mrs. G. comes to life and says something about what a good time
we’ll have to the Picnic; this Martin says Yes, he hankers to see Mr.
Granville climb a tree. Mr. G. wants to know what he’ll be climbing
trees for. ‘Why,’ says Mr. Martin, ‘I heard her say you’d be up a tree
if that check didn’t come in to-day.’ Then Mr. Martin says he likes
the way Mr. G. and Miss Clyde look at each other, as though they had
secrets together. He’s got an attractive way to him, but it seems like
he says whatever comes into his head. What-all way is that to behave?”

Lizzie had looked forward to telling Nounou about the dinner. Now she
felt with a keen disappointment that it was impossible to describe
it adequately. Besides, what she had intended to say would perhaps
sound too silly. Mr. Martin looks like some old lover of Mrs. G’s,
she thought, that’s turned up unexpected. He’s kinda forgotten about
her, put her outa his life. But she’s mad about him, all her heart’s
old passion is revived. Better not say too much about these things to
Nounou anyhow; she might let Brady’s man go too far.

“Come on, kid,” she said, getting up from the table. “Give me a hand
with this stuff. I gotta get this kitchen clean, the madam will be
coming in here afterwhile to cut sandwiches. We get this finished, we
can hit the hay.”

Nounou smiled a little as she took the dish-towel.

“I’ll help you clean up,” she said. “Then I’m going to slip out a while
longer.”




XIII


Now it was dusk: dusk that takes away the sins of the world. Under that
soft cone of shadow, wagged like a dunce cap among the stars, are folly
and glamour and despair; but no sin. The day was going back to the pure
darkness where all things began; to the nothing from which it had come;
to the unconsciousness that had surrounded it. The long, long day had
orbed itself to a whole. Its plot and scheme were perfect; its crises
and suspenses artfully ordered; now darkness framed it and memory gave
it grace. Tented over by upward and downward light, mocked by tinsel
colours and impossible desires, another cunning microcosm was complete.

“I like your orchestra,” said Joyce. They were all sitting on the
veranda steps. From the garden and the dunes beyond came the rattling
tremolo of summer insect choirs.

No one spoke for a moment. Phyllis was enjoying a relaxation after
the effort of the dinner table. It was no longer necessary to think,
every instant, of something to say. Darkness takes the place of
conversation. It replies to everything. Like fluid privacy the shadow
rose and flowed restfully about them; faces were exempt from scrutiny;
eyes, those timid escapers from question, could look abroad at ease.
Reprieved from angers and anxieties, the mind yearned to come home
under the roof of its little safe identity. It had not forgotten the
distractions that make life hard: quarrels, the income tax, unanswered
letters, toothache: but these hung for a moment, merely a pretty
sparkle of fireflies. I feel as though I were really Me, Phyllis
thought. I wish there were someone to hold my hand.

I wonder if I _do_ like it? Joyce thought as soon as she heard her own
voice.

Come home, come home to yourself, cried the incessant voice of
darkness. The soulless musicians of earth fiddled with horrid ironic
gusto. Nothing is true but desire, they wailed and wheedled. Now they
were fierce piccolo and pibroch; now they had the itinerant rhythm of
bawdy limericks.

Special intensity of silence seemed to emanate from Ben and Ruth, who
sat close together on the top step. In the general pause theirs was
like a hard core: it was not true silence but only repressed speech.
The smell of Ben’s cigar floated among the group like an argument.
It had a sensible, civilized, matter-of-fact, downtown fragrance. It
seemed to suggest that someone--even the crickets, perhaps--should put
down a proposition in black and white. Joyce had a feeling that Ben and
Ruth were waiting for any one to say anything; and that when it was
said they would jointly subject it to careful businesslike scrutiny.
Contents noted, and in reply would say----

“Orchestra?” repeated Ben, in a puzzled voice.

“The crickets.” (She tried not to make it sound like an explanation.)
“I’d forgotten that nights on the Island were like this.”

Martin was sitting just below her. He had been playing with the pebbles
on the path, picking them up and dropping them. He turned and looked up
at her.

“Like what?” he asked.

She had the same sensation of disbelief she had felt at the dinner
table. One must be strangely innocent or strangely reckless to ask
questions like that. George’s face shone in the flare of a match: he
looked emptily solemn and pensive as men always do while lighting a
pipe. Joyce felt almost as though there were a kind of conspiracy
against her to make her take the lead in talking.

“They fiddle away as though it was the most important night that ever
happened,” she said, a little nervously. “As though they think it’s a
First Night and the reviewers are here from the newspapers.”

“It _is_ the most important night that ever happened,” said Phyllis
slowly. “It’s _now_.” There was a queer frightened tremble in her voice.

“There’ll be a moon a little later,” said George. He said it rather as
though this would be creditable to him, as host.

“No, George, don’t let there be a moon. Not everything at once, it’s
too much.”

Something in George’s outline showed that he thought Phyllis was merely
chaffing him; but Joyce was more clairvoyant. For the first time she
became aware of some reality in Phyllis: saw that she was more than
just George’s wife. There was in her some buried treasure that no
one had ever taken the trouble to hunt for. Why, she’s lovely, Joyce
thought. In a sudden impulse she wanted to take Phyllis’s hand; her own
fluttered liftingly in her lap; she restrained it, for she felt that
she would want to kiss George before very long and it didn’t seem quite
square to be in love with a man and his wife simultaneously. It would
be extravagant, she supposed sadly.

“We don’t need a moon,” she said, “with Mrs. Granville wearing that
lovely silver dress.”

“It makes me feel as though we ought to do something special,” said
Martin.

“We can have a game of Truth,” suggested George.

No one showed much enthusiasm except Martin, who wanted to know how it
was played.

“Everyone must tell some thought he has had but didn’t say.”

Ben and Ruth felt more certain than ever that the evening was going to
be a failure.

“A thought you’ve had _ever_?” asked Martin.

“No, this evening.”

“You suggested it, George; you can go first,” said Ruth.

“Ruth evidently believes that unspoken thoughts are always terrible.”

“They can’t be much more terrible than some of the things that were
said at dinner,” Ruth retorted.

“In this game you don’t get to the really interesting stuff until after
several rounds, when people get warmed up. I’ll begin with a very small
one. I was thinking that I mustn’t forget to put away the car.--Now
Ruth, what’s yours?”

“That Miss Clyde probably has a very becoming bathing suit.”

“I was thinking I heard one of the children calling,” said Phyllis.
“But it wasn’t, it was only a singing in my nose.”

“What a funny nose,” said Martin.

“Don’t you know how something seems to get caught in your nostril and
makes a kind of singing when you breathe?”

Ben had had time to make a careful choice of the least damning of his
meditations. “I was thinking that the crickets don’t really sound like
an orchestra. They’re more like adding machines.”

“Why, that’s true,” George exclaimed. “They have just that even,
monotonous, cranking sound. Adding up some impossible and monstrous
total. Counting the stars, maybe.”

“I hope you won’t think my thought is rude,” said Joyce. “It struck me
that if it weren’t for Mr. Brook’s cigar I’d be convinced this is all
a dream.--I don’t mean it isn’t a nice cigar, just that it smells so
worldly.”

“Well, our secret thoughts all seem fairly innocent. But we haven’t
heard yours yet, Mr. Martin.”

“I don’t think this is a very interesting game,” said Martin.

George insisted. “Come, the guest of honour can’t escape as easily as
that. Out with it!”

“Do I have to?” Martin appealed to Phyllis. She came out of her
reverie, aware that even darkness is inadequate as a sedative. The
threads of relationship among them all had tightened.

“I know what Mr. Martin’s trouble is,” said Ruth. “He says everything
he thinks, so naturally he has nothing left.”

“Why, that’s just it,” Martin said. “How did you know? What would be
the good of thinking things and not saying them?”

“You’re not playing fair,” George objected. “No one would be crazy
enough to say everything. Besides, there wouldn’t be time.”

Martin was stubbornly silent.

“I agree with Mr. Martin,” Phyllis said. “It’s not a very cheerful
game. If we didn’t say our thoughts we must have had some good reason
for keeping them silent. Besides, I must speak to Lizzie about
breakfast.”

“I’ll take the car to the stable.”

“Can I go with you?” Martin asked.

George had still cherished a forlorn hope that the world was large
enough for him and Joyce to have a few moments alone. For several days
the stable had been sanctified in his anticipation. In the hayloft
above the old disused stalls there was a big doorway that opened toward
the sea. That mustily fragrant place was his favourite retreat when
solitude seemed urgent. There, he had thought, he and Joyce could talk.
He had even put an old steamer rug on the hay so they might sit more
comfortably. There would be moonlight over the water....

“Is it the same stable where we used to play as kids?” cried Ruth. “Oh,
let’s all go. I want to see it again. Why, that old haymow was the
first place Ben ever kissed me.”

“What did he do that for?” said Martin.

“Perhaps he’ll do it again,” said George bitterly. It was just like
Ruth to ruin the stable for him.

“Well, I don’t want to spoil any one else’s plans,” said Ben.

“We could play hide-and-seek in the hay,” Martin suggested.

Now they were all piling into the car, to ride round the house to the
stable. This was of a piece with the absurdity of everything else,
George thought. People were always driving up in crowds to visit his
secrets. Like sight-seeing busses loaded with excursionists. The world
loves to trample over your private ecstasies and leave them littered
with scraps of paper and banana peel. And this fellow Martin, with his
cool mockery, was beginning to get on his nerves.

The engine leapt into life with the same eager alacrity as if they
had been starting off for a long drive. Yes, the human objective
means nothing to the routine of Nature. She looses her lightning
indifferently, whether between the sooty termini of a spark plug or
from charged cloud to earth. She squanders as much energy in a meadow
of hallooing crickets as in a human spirit tormented by conflicting
passions.

They made the circuit of the house. Down the drive from the front door
to the main road, along the side of the house, then up the back lane by
the kitchen and the circular bed of cannas. Only a hundred yards, but
it seemed interminable because it was futile and meaningless. Something
had gone wrong in his time sense. As the car passed the kitchen window
he could see Phyllis talking to Lizzie, holding up a loaf of bread
as she spoke. At the same moment Ruth was saying something about the
moon coming up. His mind went off in a long curve. He felt a gush of
anger at Phyllis because she had been so unaware of his feeling for
Joyce. If she had been spiteful, or jealous, or suspicious, how much
easier it would have been. Her pettiness would have driven him and
Joyce blissfully into each other’s arms, without the faintest sense
of remorse. But this strangely detached Phyllis who seemed to move in
a dream, instead of the familiar Phyllis of tempers and reproaches,
was a different problem. Even sin, he thought furiously, is to be made
as difficult as possible for me. And I had always imagined it would
be so easy. Will God ever forgive me if I don’t commit the sins I was
intended to? God will get no praise from me, He’s packed the house with
a claque of crickets to put the show over. Through the window Phyllis’s
golden head shone in a haze of lamplight. As always, when angry at her
he loved her most. When you love a woman, why make her life miserable
by marrying her? Marriage demands too much....

From this speculation he came back to find Ruth just finishing her
sentence, the car still opposite the window, the loaf of bread still
lifted in Phyllis’s hand. It occurred to him that this evening was
damnably like the slowed motion-pictures in which the stream of life
is retarded into its component gestures. Now he was to have the
embarrassment of witnessing the actual rhythm of living, the sluggish
pattern that underlies gay human ritual, the grave airy dancing of
creation treading softly its dark measure to unheard, undreamed music.
The smallest alteration in the mind’s pace changes everything, as some
trifling misprint turns a commonplace newspaper headline into obscenity.

They drove into the stable.

“I miss the nice old horsey smell,” said Ruth. “Too bad, it’s only a
garage now.”

“Which was it you wanted to revive, the horsey smell or the embraces of
Ben?” said George. “The loft hasn’t changed much, I think.”

He snapped on the light. While the others climbed the narrow little
stair behind the old feed bins he filled the radiator with water and
poured oil into the crank case. Morosely he heard their words overhead.

“Someone’s left a blanket up here.”

“Look, the bay’s all full of moonlight. I didn’t remember it was like
that.”

“We were children then, we didn’t know about the moon. We had to go to
bed too early.”

“The old swing’s gone.” (This was Mr. Martin’s voice.)

“Why ... how did you know? Yes, that’s where it was, that beam....”

I thought that lunatic had been here before, George said to himself.
He seems to know his way about.

He started the motor again. He thought he had noticed a faint roughness
in its turning. He listened attentively, marvelling at the strong,
hurrying fidelity of those airy explosions. I know why this car has
kept her youth, he thought. She hasn’t had any proper care, but she’s
been loved. A soft throbby purring, with a sweet quavering rhythm;
the sound of sliding, of revolving, of vapour evenly expelled. It was
a consoling, normal kind of sound; complete in itself; it shut out
the voices upstairs. A touch on the throttle and it rose to a growl
of unused power, a shout of fierce unquestioning assent, not much
different from defiance. The old barn rang. It was as if an officer
of some colonial regiment called on his legions for a fatal exploit,
and heard in their answering yell a voice of savagery that might turn
against himself.

He switched the key; the sound slid off into a soft conclusive sigh.
There was an almost human breath of frustration in it. He closed the
hood, his mind too vague for thinking, and saw Joyce standing there.

“I thought Mr. and Mrs. Brook would like a moment of privacy,” she
whispered.

He had her in his arms. On her soft lips was all the bittersweet of
their long separation, of their mirth together, of their absurd and
precious passion, denied by men and ratified by crickets. It was the
perfect embrace of those who are no longer children, who can sweeten
the impossible by mocking it a little. The tingling triumph of social
farce, undreamed by poor candid Nature--the first illicit kiss!

“I suppose,” she said tremulously, “that this really is what they call
a Guilty Passion.”

“My dear, my dear. What a queer world, where one has to apologize for
loving people.”

As though down a long avenue of distance he saw her in the perspective
of her life: an exquisite gallant figure going about her brave
concerns: so small and resolute in her single struggle with the world,
and coming to his arms at last. He knew then that poets have not lied;
that fairy tales are true; that life is hunger, and for every emptiness
caters its own just food. Her mind that he had loved was tangled up
with a body. Chastity was probably a much overrated virtue. For her
sake, if she desired it, he was willing to make the heroic effort which
is necessary to yield to temptation.

He held her close, in silence. Austere resolutions slipped away like
sand in an hour glass. For an instant his only thought was a silly
satisfaction that she must reach so far upward to meet his lips. His
mind taunted him for thinking this.

“Dear fool, dear damned fool,” he said. “Yes, you’re just as you should
be: lips cool and eyelids warm. And as soft as I always imagined. Oh,
it’s not fair that any one should be so soft. Joyce, do you know why I
had to have you here? It’s just a year ... you remember?”

“Yes. The day you were looking out of the window. How long it seems.”

“We begin to feel like a nice old unmarried couple.”

She laughed, her rare broken laugh.

“Oh, George, then it _is_ really you. The Fourth you, I mean. I
couldn’t quite believe it.”

Voices came down from the loft. First it was Martin:

... “That’s what I like about her. She looks as if she’s happy inside.”

Then Ruth, with a scornful snicker:

“Happy? I dare say. Did you see the way she looked at George at the
dinner table? That kind of woman’s always happy with someone else’s
husband.”

There was an inaudible murmur, then Ben’s voice:

“It’s a form of nervousness.”

Joyce drew back from his arms. Her eyes were dark with horror.

“Oh ...” she said with a sob. “Why are people so ... so _inadequate_.”

Ruth’s little sneer, falling on them like a crystal spirt of poison,
burned George’s bare heart.

“Joyce, dear Joyce ...” He put his hands on her shoulders. “I must tell
you, I must. I’ve waited so long. Oh, it’s so long since I’ve done
anything I want to, I’ve forgotten how. Joyce, you don’t know how I
needed you. I was hungry, I was a beggar, you fed me with laughter and
taught me how to suffer. You taught me how to love, yes, everything I
love I love a thousand times better because I know you. God help me, I
love even Phyllis better because of you....”

With a gesture of pathos and despair she buried her face in his coat.
They heard the others beginning to descend. To postpone for a few
moments the necessity of speech, he turned wildly to the car and again
started the engine. As Ruth appeared at the foot of the stairs, her
mouth opening to say something, he speeded the motor to a roar.

“Oh, George,” piped Ruth as they were walking back to the house. “I’ve
left my scarf. I must have dropped it in the loft. Ben’ll get it. Have
you locked the barn?”

“No, we don’t lock anything around here.”

“You laugh at locksmiths,” said Joyce.

“I’ll go,” George said. “I can find it easier than Ben. There’s a
flashlight in the car.”

He walked back to the stable. A lemonade-coloured moon was swimming
above the maple tree. He did not bother to get the torch but slipped
up the stair, moving noiselessly on rubber soles. The scarf was lying
just at the top, where the steps emerged into the old harness room. He
was about to glance into the hayloft, to satisfy his sentimental vision
of how it would have looked to him and Joyce, a cavern of country
fragrance, a musk of dead summers still banked there in pourried
mounds. He was halted, with a catch of breath, by murmuring voices. He
peered round the doorpost. A slope of powdery moonlight carved a pale
alley through the heavy shadow. On his rug, spread toward the open
window, sat Nounou and Brady’s man, ardently enlaced.

The whispering pair, engrossed in rudimentary endearment, were
oblivious of all else. It amused him to reflect that they must
have been hiding anxiously somewhere in the loft while the visitors
palavered near them. A single cricket, embalmed in the hay, chirped
sweet airy prosits--solitary lutanist (or prothalamist) of the
occasion. George stood smitten by the vulgar irony. There was cruel
farce and distemper in finding his own dear torment parodied in
these terms of yokel dalliance. The parable was only too plain.
This back-yard amour was as rich in Nature’s eyes as the kingliest
smoke-room story of the Old Testament. Nature, genial procuress, who
impartially honours the breach and the observance.

With the crude humour of the small boy, never quite buried in any
man, he emitted a loud groaning wail of mimic anguish. He thrilled
with malicious mirth to see the horrified swains leap up in panic. He
tiptoed stealthily away, leaving them aghast.

This has got to end, he said to himself.




XIV


If there were only one moonshiny night in each century, men would never
be done talking of it. Old lying books would be consulted; in padded
club chairs grizzled gentry whose grandfathers had witnessed it would
prate of that milky pervasion that once diluted the unmixed absolute of
night. And those who had no vested gossip in the matter would proclaim
it unlikely to recur, or impossible to have happened.

Mr. and Mrs. Brook and Martin had gone on toward the veranda. Joyce
lingered where the edge of the house’s shadow was a black frontier
on the grass. The lawn was a lake of pallor. Under the aquamarine
sky, glazed like the curly inmost of a shell, earth was not white or
glittering, but a soft wash of argentine grey. There was light enough
to see how invisible the world truly is. The pure unpurposeful glamour
poured like dissolving spirit on the dull fogged obscure of ordinary
evening: the cheap veneers of shadow peeled away, true darkness was
perceivable: the dark that threads like marrow in the bones of things:
the dark in which light is only an accidental tremble. Where trees and
shrubs glowed in foamy tissue, hung chinks and tinctures of appeasing
nothing. This was abyss unqualified, darkness neat.

She was drowned at the bottom of this ocean of transparency. She felt
as people look under water, pressed out of shape, refracted, blurred
by the pressure of an enormous depth of love. In such clean light a
thought, a memory, a desire, could put on shape and living, stare down
the cautious masks of habit. The trustiest senses could play traitor
inside this bubble of pearly lustre; the hottest bonfires of mirth
would be only a flicker in this dim stainless peace. Better to go
indoors, join the polite vaudeville of evasion, escape the unbearable
reality of this enchanted....

“Here you are!” said a voice. “Thank goodness. I want to ask you
things. You’re different.”

It was Martin.

“What’s the matter with all these people?” he exclaimed. “Why can’t
they have fun? Why do they keep on telling me they love me? I don’t
want to be loved. You can’t be happy when you’re being loved all the
time. It’s a nuisance. I want to build castles in the sand and play
croquet and draw pictures. I want to go to bed and get a good sleep for
the Picnic; and that lady wants me to kiss her. I did it once; isn’t
that enough?”

Here was a merriment: to expect her, at this particular junction of
here and now, to join his deprecations.

“Quite enough,” she said. “But it depends on the person. She may not
think so.”

“It’s Mrs. Phyllis. I asked her if she was ready for me to go to bed,
and she said I mustn’t say such things. What’s the matter with her? I
think she’s angry. Everybody seems angry. Why is it?”

Her pulses were applauding her private thought: If Phyllis loves _him_,
I can love George.

“And I saw Bunny in the garden. She says you’re the only one who can
help me because you almost understand.”

“Bunny! Bunny who? What do you mean?...”

He must be mad. Yet it seemed an intelligible kind of madness: some
unrecognized but urgent meaning sang inside it like a sweet old tune.
In the misty moonlight she saw the great wheel of Time spinning so fast
that its dazzling spokes seemed to shift and rotate backward. But
her mind still intoned its own jubilee: If Phyllis loves _him_, I can
love George. It’s all right for me to love George. Be ye lift up, ye
everlasting doors!

“Bunny Richmond, of course. She’s playing some kind of hide-and-seek
round here. It’s not fair.”

“It _is_ fair!” cried Bunny passionately. He could hear her calling
to him from somewhere just round the corner of the path. “Oh, Martin,
Martin, can’t you see? I can’t _tell_ you, you’ve got to find out for
yourself.”

Bunny had cried out so eagerly that even Joyce almost heard her. She
turned to look.

“What was that, someone whispering?”

“It’s only Bunny,” he said impatiently. “She’s playing tricks on me.
She wants me to go away.”

Joyce had stepped out of the shadow, and now Martin partly saw.

“Why, I know who you are. Why ... why, of course. They called you Miss
Clyde, that fooled me. You’re not Miss Anybody, you’re Joyce ... the
one who gave me the mouse. _You_ don’t love me too, do you? People only
love you when they want you to do things.”

Bunny kept calling him, but he closed his ears to her.

“No, I don’t love you,” she said slowly. “I love George.”

But she had to look at him again to be sure. He was very beautiful and
perplexed. Perhaps she loved everybody. For an instant she thought he
_was_ George; she could see now that there was a faint resemblance
between them. Then she noticed that George was there too. He had come
along the path from the stable. His face was sharpened with resolve. He
paid no attention to Martin, but spoke directly to her.

“Here’s your scarf,” he said, almost roughly, holding it out. Then he
remembered it was not hers, and thrust it in his pocket. He made an
uncertain step toward her.

“Oh, we can’t go on like this,” he said harshly. “This has got to....”
He made a queer awkward gesture with his arms. She went to them.

“How funny you are,” observed Martin from the shadow. “First you want
to push her away and then you hug her.”

Apparently George did not hear him.

“Why did you wake me?” he was asking her. “Why couldn’t I go on
sleepwalking through life? If I had never known you, how much anguish
I’d have missed. Oh, my poor dear.”

“You mustn’t talk to her like that,” said Martin. “This is Joyce, she
thinks once is enough. She isn’t like Phyllis.”

“Go away, Martin,” called Bunny. “It’s no use now.”

George held her fiercely. His voice trembled on broken words of
tenderness. His bewildered mind craved the ease of words, a little
peace, a little resting time. Must this glory of desire be carried for
ever secret in his heart?

“You’ll hurt her,” said Martin angrily.

This they had stumbled on, George’s heart cried to him. It was none
of their seeking. She belongs to who can understand her, insisted the
sweet sophistries of blood. Joyce leaned up to him, the dear backward
curve of woman yearning to the face of her dream.

“Don’t you know me?” Martin appealed to her. “You gave me the mouse
yesterday.”

He was unheeded. They did not even know he was there.

“You’re doing it too,” he said to her bitterly, and went away.

“George, when did I give you a mouse?”

“A mouse? What are you talking about? You’re going to give me something
much better than a mouse. Do you know what I said to you once in a
dream? I said, the worst of my love for you is that it’s so carnal.”

Her eyes met his, troubled but steady.

“And do you know what you answered?”

“No,” she said pitifully. “Oh, George, George, I don’t know about these
things.”

“You said, ‘Perhaps that’s what I like about it.’”

She clung to him in a kind of terror.

“I don’t know whether I said that. George ... don’t let’s be like other
people. Does it _matter_?”

They stood together and the crickets shouted, rattled tiny feet of
approval on the floor of the dunes like a gallery of young Shelleys.
The whole night was one immense rhythm; up the gully from the beach
came a slow vibration of surf. She was weak with the question in her
blood, her knees felt empty. Perhaps that’s where your morality is
kept, in the knees, she thought. She slipped her arms under his coat,
round the hard strong case of his ribs, to keep from tottering. The
tobacco smell of his lapel was infinitely precious and pathetic.

“How do I know what matters?” he whispered. “We can wait and see. If
it’s important, the time will come. But I want you to know, my love for
you is complete. It wants everything. Can’t you hear the whole world
singing it? Everything, everything, everything.”

“I don’t like the crickets. They’re trying to get us into trouble.”

Everything is so queer this evening, she thought. How did all this
happen? I’m frightened.

“We’ve always been different from other people,” she said. “We’re
absurd and pitiful and impossible. Don’t let’s spoil it, let’s just be
_us_.”

His arms held her more gently. For love is beyond mere desire: it is
utter tenderness and pity. Sing, world, sing: here are your children
caught in the chorus of that old, old music; here are Food and Hunger
that meet only to cancel and expire. Here, cries Nature in her deepest
diapason, here are my bread and wine. Too great to be accused of
blasphemy, she shames not to borrow the words of man’s noblest fancy.
Take, eat, she cries to the famished. This is my body which is given
for you. Do this in remembrance of me. And her children, conscious of
lowly birth, can rise to denials her old easy breast never dreamed.

“George,” said Joyce quickly, “is any one watching ... listening to us?
I’ve had the strangest feeling. As though someone was trying to tell me
something, calling me.”

“A singing in your nose, perhaps.”

“No, but really.”

“I’ve been trying to tell you something.”

“Where did Mr. Martin go? Wasn’t he there?”

“I didn’t see him.”

They turned toward the house. Its dark shadow hung over them, clear,
impalpable, black as charcoal. They felt purified by mutual confession
and charity.

“I think it was the house listening to us,” she said. “Why am I so
happy?”

He knew that he loved her. It was not lust, for though he desired her
and a thousand times had had her in his heart, yet he shrank from
possession, fearing it might satiate this passion that was so dear. So
it was a fool’s love: perhaps a coward’s, since to be taken is every
woman’s need. But who shall say? Life is a foreign language: all men
mispronounce it.

He loved her, for he saw the spirit of life in her. He loved her as a
dream, as something he himself had created, as someone who had helped
to create part of him. He loved her because it was secret, hopeless,
impossible. He had loved her because he could not have her: and now she
was here for his arms. The Dipper and the wind in the pine trees said,
Poor fool, if you want her, take her. The black flap in the sky, where
the starry pinning has fallen out (it opens into the law of gravity)
said, It concerns only yourselves, no one will know. The tide and the
whistling sand dunes said, She’s yours already.

From the sleeping porch over their heads he heard one of the children
cough.

“George,” she whispered, “I’ll do whatever you tell me.”

He turned to her. “I’d like to see _any one_ laugh at locksmiths.”




XV


They were entrenched in a little fortress of light. The tall
silk-shaded lamp made the living hall an orange glow, an argument
against silver chaos veined with brute nothing. The clock, the clock,
the clock, measured itself against the infidel crickets. Phyllis, in a
corner of the big sofa, was in the centre of that protecting glitter.
She was panoplied in light: it poured upon the curve of her nape,
sparkled in the bronze crisp of her hair, brimmed over the soft bend of
her neck and ran deep down into the valley of her bosom. It rippled in
scarps and crumples of her shining dress, struck in through the gauzy
chiffon, lay in flakes on the underskirt, gilded the long slope of her
stockings like the colour of dawn on snow. She could feel it, warm and
defiant, wrapping her close, holding her together. Even her bright
body, in such fragile garb, was hardly dark.

But the reality was still that pale emptiness outside. Where she sat
she could see, beyond the dining room and the high rectangle of French
windows, a pure shimmer of white night. Down the broad open well
of the stair the same tender void came drifting, floating, sinking.
Summer night cannot be shut out: it is heavier than thin lamp-shine,
it spreads along the floor, gathers beneath chairs, crowds up behind
pictures, makes treacherous friendship with the gallant little
red-headed bulbs.

She felt soft and ill. She felt her pliant body settling deeper into
the thick cushion, her hands weighing inert upon her lap. She wished
Ben and Ruth could be restful for a moment. Ruth was flitting about,
looking at the furniture; Ben, though sitting quietly, kept blowing
cigar smoke in a kind of rhythmical indignation. She could see his
mind toiling, so plainly that she would not have been surprised to
read words written in his spouts of smoke, as in the balloon issuing
from the mouth of a comic drawing. If Mr. Martin would only say
something. He had just come in from the garden, without a word, and sat
expectantly at the foot of the stairs. He was outside the circle of
light, she could not see him clearly, but he seemed to be looking at
her with inquiry or reproach. For being such a dull hostess, probably.

But speech was impossible. Now, with eyes widened by terror and
yearning, she was almost aware of the sleepy world that lies beneath
the mind’s restless flit: the slow cruel world, without conscience,
that the artist never quite forgets. In the glare of the lamp the room
burned with subordinate life: the grainy wood of the furniture, the nap
of the rug, the weave of the sofa, were fibred with obstinate essence.
Being was in them as in her, went on and on. It seemed as though one
sudden push, if it could be made, might break through the fog of daily
bickerings and foresights and adjustments, into that radiant untroubled
calm. But conscious life tends to take the level of the lowest present:
with Ruth and Ben and even the house itself steadfast against her,
how could she speak out? The darkness that, outdoors, had been sweet
privacy, was here obverted into secrecy: secrecy lay under the chairs,
behind the doors, between the ticks of the clock. She had settled this
room, only a few hours before, with so much care--dusting, arranging;
everything in its accustomed pose. Now it was too strong for her,
and every pattern in it ran with shouts of taunting laughter.... It
was just like George to linger in the garden, leaving her alone to
“entertain” these guests.

Then she was aware that someone had spoken. She had not caught the
words, but the sound poised in her mind. It was a pleasant sound, it
must have been Mr. Martin. Perhaps she would go through all the rest
of her life without knowing what he had said. Yet it might have been a
cry for help. You never know, she thought, when people may leave off
pretending and lay their heads on your breast. What a silly way to put
it: lay their head--his head--on your breasts; because you have only
one head and two breasts. Perhaps that’s why the insects make such an
uproar, shrilling sour grapes. They’re jealous because they’re not
mammals....

“He went back to the stable to get my scarf.”

“I hope they won’t catch cold,” said Phyllis. “It’s so much cooler
to-night.”

“You oughtn’t to kiss people when you have a cold,” said Martin.

This, Phyllis supposed, was a little reckless aside for her alone.
She felt a bright seed of anger in her; it was sprouting, climbing up
the trellis of her nerves. She had a fine fertility for anger; her
mind was shallow soil as its bottom had never been spaded: such seeds
could not root deeply and slowly, so they shot upward in brilliant
quick-withering flower. The rising warmth medicined her empty sickness.
He was cruel, but she loved him for it and could have prostrated
herself at his feet. What right had he to be so untouched, so happy
and certain and sure? His mind was one, not broken up into competing
yearnings.

“Competition is the life of trade,” she said.

Looking up, she wondered if she had said something accidentally witty.
From the other side of the room Ruth was regarding her strangely.
Beyond Ruth, black against the blanched evening, were George and Joyce
on the veranda steps.... Oh, so that was what Martin had meant?

Ben’s face was so perplexed and bored, she took pity on him.

“What would you people like to do? Play cards? We can’t dance, there
isn’t any music.”

Ruth was quite content not to dance; she suspected she would have had
to take Ben as a partner. “Ben’s favourite game is Twenty Questions,”
she said.

“Gracious, I haven’t played that in ages. It’ll be rather fun. Here
come the others, let’s do it.”

George seemed almost like a stranger, Phyllis thought. She had an
impish desire to ask to be introduced. It amused her to think that any
one should want to kiss him.

“What a gorgeous night.” He spoke loudly, rather as if someone might
contradict. “Here’s your scarf,” he added, almost roughly, holding it
out to Joyce. Then he remembered, and gave it to Ruth.

“How funny you are,” said Martin. “You made the same mistake again.”

“Thank you so much,” Ruth said. “I’m sorry you had such a long hunt for
it.”

Joyce crossed the room in silence. Ruth’s eyes followed her, and it was
in Ruth’s face that Phyllis first saw Joyce was beautiful. She brought
some of the moonlight with her. No man can ever admire a woman’s
loveliness as justly as another woman, for he rarely understands how
her fluctuating charm depends on the hazard of the instant. Something
had happened to make Joyce beautiful, and Phyllis was surprised by an
immense compassion. This creature too was lonely, had her bewildered
tumult in the blood, was defenceless and doomed. Ruth’s watchful eyes,
unseen by Joyce, were asking her whether she had anything to say for
herself, anything that could be used against her. And Ruth (Phyllis
could see) was as outraged by Joyce mute as she would have been at
anything she said.

Joyce was helpless: helpless, because she was happy; helpless, for
she had brought no words with her. She had brought only moonlight and
it was declared contraband. In the instant that the girl hesitated
in the choice of a seat, Phyllis knew that she could have loved her,
they could have come together in a miracle of understanding, but Ruth
had made it impossible. Ruth, the comely fidget, who would never know
the stroke of any grievance greater than her own jealous mischiefs.
What could Ruth know of the great purifying passions, who had always
forestalled them by yielding to the pettiest? The seedling anger in
Phyllis’s heart, sensitively questing an object, swayed outward as a
young vine leans toward sun. She would not think of the Brooks again
as Ben and Ruth. They were Ruth and Ben. She knew now why Ben peeped
so warily from behind a rampart of sedentary filing cabinets. His soul
lurked behind the greatest of hiding places, a huge office building.

With a swift impulse she reached out, beckoning to a place beside
her on the sofa. Joyce’s hand was cold and seemed surprised. The
two hands, like casual acquaintances meeting by accident, lingered
together wondering how to escape politely. Phyllis realized it was not
a success. She leaned forward to speak brightly to George, so that her
fingers might seem to slip free unawares.

“We’re going to play Twenty Questions.”

“Fine!” said George. This, he thought, would prevent general
conversation, the one thing most to be feared.

“Ben, you go out,” Phyllis suggested. Ben deserved some amusement, he
had been rather patient in the middle of this silent turmoil.

“Let Ruth,” said Ben. “She’s clever at guessing things.”

“No, Ben, you,” Ruth said definitely. She was having too good a time
guessing as she was.

From the sofa Joyce could see into the little dark sitting room--_her_
room: her only retreat. It drew her strongly. The frame of the window
opened into moonlight and a queer twist of shadows. If only she could
go in there, get away. Here, under the lamp, everything was too full
of dangerous artifice. The light held everything together tightly, in
a bursting tension. No one could say anything for fear it would have a
double meaning. One meaning at a time was burden enough.

Was there anything queer about that little room? Mr. Martin, sitting at
the bottom of the stairs, was close to the door: he was looking there
too. In the back of her mind she remembered that she had started to
say something to him in the garden; or he to her, she was not certain
which; but something had been left unfinished. George was watching
her, watching her; she could feel it, and needed to escape into
herself. How could she escape? He knew all about her now, she found
him round the remotest corners of her mind. No, no, there were lovely
things about her that he did not guess. If she could be alone for a few
minutes she could find out what they were.... So this was love, this
dreadful weakness. It ought to be so easy; free and easy, that gay old
phrase; and the taut web of human nerves frustrated it. Beside her, in
a glitter of light, Phyllis shone mysteriously. The touch of that warm
hand had shocked Joyce. She knew now that they could never be at peace
together.

“I’ll go,” she said suddenly.

Phyllis, still leaning forward, was listening.

“Was that one of the children?”

As Joyce rose, getting up with difficulty from the deep settee, Martin
closed the sitting-room door with a quick push. Why did he do that? Now
it would seem rude to go in there. George, whose ear was cocked toward
upstairs, looked angrily at him.

“I didn’t hear anything. You’ve got the children on the brain, Phyl.”

“I’ll go on the veranda while you think of something,” Joyce said.

It was amusing to see how eagerly they all turned to the old
almost forgotten pastime. She heard them mumbling together while
they concerted their choice. They were like savages at a campfire,
rehearsing some cheerful ceremonial to dispel sorcery. The bare
mahogany of the dining table was glossed with panels of dim colour.
This led her eyes upward to the red and blue window. It reminded her
distantly of some poem, some perfect enchantment that mocked the poor
futility of her own obsession. That most magic outcry of unreflecting
love, from the most wretched of lovers: the eternal collision between
life as dreamed and life as encountered.

There was a burst of laughter.

“She’ll never guess that,” she heard Ruth saying.

“All ready,” George called.

“There are five of us, you can go round four times. You must ask
questions that can be answered by Yes or No.”

She began in the traditional way.

“Is it animal?”

“No,” said Ruth.

“Is it vegetable?”

“Yes,” said Phyllis.

“Is it in this room?”

“Yes,” said Ben.

The part of her that was asking questions seemed separate from her
racing undertow of feeling. She was the frightened child who was shy
about games because she was always playing and watching simultaneously.
What should she ask? It was vegetable and in the room. She had a
preposterous eagerness to say something wildly absurd, she was weary
of telling lies. If it had been Animal, she might have said “Is it
George’s love for me?” Their faces would have been comic. But it was
Vegetable.... My vegetable love shall grow Vaster than empires and more
slow ... but if I quote that it will have to be explained. Why do poems
insist on coming into the mind at instants of trouble?

“Is it Mr. Brook’s cigar?”

“No,” said George.

“Is it associated with some person in this room?”

“Yes,” said Martin. A little self-consciously, she thought.

“Look here,” George interrupted. “That answer of Phyl’s wasn’t quite
right. Is it fair to say it’s vegetable?”

“It _was_ vegetable, vegetable in origin,” Phyllis protested.

“Yes, but in a way it’s animal too. It’s _becoming_ animal.”

“Is it--any one’s affection for any one else?” Joyce demanded promptly.

“No,” said Ruth, amid general laughter.

“The difficulty with this game,” said Phyllis, “is that there are so
many questions you can’t answer just Yes or No.”

“That’s why it’s a good game,” said George. “It’s like life.”

Joyce tried to recapitulate. It was in this room, associated with a
person, it was vegetable in origin but becoming animal ... but how
absurd.

Perhaps they mean becoming _to_ an animal, she thought.

“Is it Mrs. Granville’s silver dress?”

“No.”

“Is it anything to wear?”

“No.”

“Is it associated with a man or a woman?”

“I can’t answer that Yes or No,” said George.

“Well, with a man?”

“Yes.”

“Is it something I can see now?” she asked, looking directly at him.

“You’re asking him twice,” Martin said. “It’s my turn.”

Why did her mind keep straying away? Standing in the middle of the
circle, she could feel them surrounding her, desiring her to divine
this thing. Perhaps it was something she didn’t want to guess,
something that would mean----

She repeated the question, looking at Martin this time.

“No,” he said, smiling.

Her mind was a blank. She went round the group again, asking almost at
random. The succession of No’s had a curiously numbing effect. But she
knew, without having put the question directly, that it was something
connected with Martin.

She came to Ben, on the last time round. She stared at his white canvas
shoes, trying to think.

“Is it ... is it----”

She turned away from the strong scent of his cigar. The glimmer of
coloured light on the dining-room table caught and held her. It
suggested:

“Something to do with a cake?”

“Yes,” said Ben, amazed.

They were all startled, for her last attempts had been far off the
track.

“Two more tries,” said George, encouraging her.

She had a queer sensation that the back of her dress was open and
reached unconsciously to button it. How silly, of course it’s not
open, it fastens on the shoulder.... A cake, a cake ... there was a
warm whiff of burning candles in the room. She knew now what it must
be; what he had begun to tell her in the garden.... They were all
crowding round her, tall people, voices coming down from above, wanting
her to explain. Two more questions ... _one_ would do! Martin was
standing behind George, he looked eager and yet anxious. She remembered
now: the mouse, the mouse she had brought him; it was such a little
thing; chosen and cherished for her difficult own; and the joy of
giving away what was dearest ... joy embittered by hostile scrutiny....

Everything was all tangled up together. What had she given, a mouse
to Martin or her truth to George? Oh, the pride, the fierce pride of
now telling her pitiable secret. She could see the stripy pattern of
George’s coat, she knew exactly how it smelled. George looked eager and
yet anxious----

No, George, no! her mind was crying miserably. It wasn’t you, it wasn’t
you; I gave it to _him_----

She must not tell them that she had guessed it. George must be spared
this last inconceivable edge of irony; and Martin must go away before
either of them found out.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I can’t get it.”

George caught her arm as she swayed.

“I don’t feel very well. Please forgive me. I think I’ll go to bed.”

       *       *       *       *       *

“I knew she wouldn’t guess it,” said Ruth.

“Of course it wasn’t really fair,” said George. “She couldn’t possibly
know about the slice of cake Mr. Martin had. But it was queer how close
she came.”




XVI


George stood uneasily on the landing, halfway up the stair. The house
seemed over-populated. Upstairs was a regular dormitory, he thought
angrily: all down the long passage he could hear the stealthy movement
of people going to bed: doors opening cautiously, reconnoiterings
to see whether the bathroom trail was clear. And the ground floor
was worse: Joyce in the sitting room filled the whole place with her
presence. He could not stay in the hall, the dining room, or the
porch, without being in sight or hearing of her sanctuary. Against his
will he lingered on the thought of her there, the small ugly chamber
transfigured by her intimacy. Even the dull brown wood of the door
was different now, it thrilled him with unbearable meaning, his mind
pierced through it and saw her loveliness--perhaps tormented like
himself with farcical horrors. It was unbearable to think of her going
away into the dark nothing of these empty hours, uncomforted. Why
couldn’t he go and tuck her in like one of the children? She seemed
to him just that, a frightened child who had somehow crept into his
arms. She was there, divided from him only by that senseless panel.
He imagined her prostrate on the couch in a quiver of silent tears;
she, exquisite, made for delight, whose pitiful reality had shaken his
solid, well-carpentered life into this crazy totter.

My God, he reflected, I thought I had got beyond this sort of thing.

There was a creak at the stair head; he saw her above him, shadowy
against the bay window. In her translucent wrap she was delicately
sketched in cloudy brightness, young and firm of outline. So the door
had been mocking him. With a twinge of self-disgust he shrank, stumbled
down the stairs, tiptoed out and took refuge at the far end of the
garden.

A splinter of light drew him to the table under the pine trees. The jug
and glasses, left there since lunch time; mutely pathetic, as forgotten
things always are. There was still a heeltap of tea in one of the
tumblers, he drank it and found it sirupy with sugar. It’s a mistake,
he thought, to eat sweet things late at night: they turn to sour in the
morning. Night is the time for something bitter.

In the house, yellow squares flashed on and off. Downstairs, he
could see Joyce’s shadow against the blind. At the other end of the
building, in the gable, the spare-room window went dark. Martin had
slipped off to bed rather oddly after their game. In the embarrassment
of Joyce’s momentary dizziness he had simply gone, without a word.
George found himself thinking that much of the evening’s difficulty was
due to this bumpkin stranger. He was probably well-meaning, but either
with his idiotic pleasantries or a silent smirk of censure he had a
gift for blighting things. There was nothing about him that you could
put precise finger on, but he had a way of making one feel guilty. How
queerly, too, he had looked at Joyce.

The evening was changing. The air had shifted toward the northwest;
suddenly, over the comb of the overhanging dune, a silvery spinnaker
of cloud came drifting. It was like a great puff of steam, so close
and silent it frightened him. For an instant, passing under the moon,
this lovely island of softness darkened the night to a foggy grey.
It was something strange, a secret between himself and the weather,
encouraging his silly wits not to be afraid of the desperate magic of
fancy, the fear and tenderness hidden in men’s hearts.

He turned again toward the house, and saw that now Joyce’s window was
black. She was there, at rest; he blessed her being in that little
room. He had thought of it only as opening into the main thoroughfare
of the house; but it was open, too, into the garden and freedom. What
did the door matter! She was there, shining. He could speak to her. He
imagined her voice, her trembling husky whisper, when she heard him at
the sill. Why is kindness always whispered, while anger is so loud? How
delightful if people shouted “I love you!” as though it were an insult.
Glorious, to stand under the window and halloo it at her, watch the
house rouse with scandalized life! Ah, what friends we might have been
if they hadn’t made us whisper. Why did they force us to be lovers?

Then he remembered--the accurate circumstantial memory of the
householder. The window was screened. To speak to her through a wire
mesh--intolerable. Besides, it might only make matters worse. He could
never tell her his own joy, and might merely smirch hers. They might
only struggle dumbly in the grotesque antic of spirits whose moods
cannot mingle. The moment had passed. Life had gone by him, while he
was fretting over paltry trifles, and left him a drudge. There was
nothing to do but go indoors and work on the booklet. How exciting that
brochure would be, what marvellous advertising, if he could really
tell what summer was like at the Island. Why, the company would have
to run special trains. The very aisles would be packed, people sitting
on up-ended suitcases, if they knew that this dangerous coast was the
place where Temptation really broke through ... where the old Demiurge
laid his cards on the table. It would become a Resort--yes, an asylum
for lunatics, people ridiculed by transfusions of the moon. How a poet
might write it, telling the colour of that world. Warm tawny flanks of
sand hills, sprawled like panthers. The sun a coal of topaz, veiled in
white flame that sheeted the whole summit of sky. Light so fierce one
never looked upward. Wherever one turned was a burning and a glitter;
the air was a lens and gathered all its rays into one stream. Always
one’s knuckles were sweet with salty smell. Repressed thunder yawning
in the blue elixir of the afternoon: deep, deep afternoon, penetrated
with lawless beauty. The small sorry whisper of the wind sang it in
the keen scimitar grasses; smooth beams of driftwood, faded by the
sea, felt it; the sandpipers, drunk with it, staggered on twiggy legs.
Bronzed thighs and shoulders, shining in the green shallows marbled
with foam....

The transitive billow of cloud slipped away beyond the roof; again the
strong resinous air was clarified, streamed with gracious light. His
mind almost smiled at his fatuity: the sentiment did not graduate into
an actual smile, but spent itself in a tiny whiff of self-deprecation
through his nostrils. He stretched upward, raising his arms, standing
tiptoed, feeling the calf-tendons tighten and coolness in his fingers
as the blood sank. His hands met a low limb that reached across
his head. He gripped it and chinned himself. There was good animal
satisfaction in feeling the quiver in the biceps, the hanging weight of
his body. Well, we’re not done for yet, he said to himself. No, sir,
not yet. He capered a few dance steps on the silky floor of needles,
and pulled out his pipe....

       *       *       *       *       *

She was coming. He saw her coming, swiftly across the lawn. No, not
swiftly; evenly was the word; unquestioningly; as he had always known
she would come. His mouth was open to warn her of the croquet hoops,
but she passed surely among them. When he saw her face, he knew this
was something not to be spoiled by words. Her face was enough.

In that unreasonable glamour she was pure fable: the marble (Oh, too
cold, too hard a word) come to life. There was no pang, no trouble, no
desire; he knew only that there is some answer to the gorgeous secret:
the secret that the world is in conspiracy to deny---- No, not to
deny; more cunning than that: to admit and pass heedless on. There was
meaning in everything; significance in the shapes of things. The black
plumes and pinnacles of the trees were fashioned exactly so, could
never have been otherwise.

They were away from rooms and roofs. They were on the beach; the tide
was far ebbed, they ran over mirrors of sand, they were in sparkling
black water milder than air. Still there were no words; their white
bodies gleamed in silver, laved in snowy fans of surf. They were just
themselves, chafing impediments were gone; nothing was between them
and they wanted nothing. They ran, breathing warmly, to burrow in
the powdery cliff, where the acid smell of sharp grasses sifted down
from the dunes. They lay in a hollow of sand; she curled against him,
nestled smoothly close, he could feel her thrilling with small quivers
of joy. There was no pang, no trouble, no desire; only peace.

Everything else they had ever known had been only an interruption. This
had always been happening, underneath. It was the unknown music for
which their poem had been written. They were quit of the pinch of Time,
the facetious nudge of Custom. Quietness was in them, satient like
fresh water in a thirsty throat. Here was the fulfilment men plot and
swink for: and how different from crude anticipation. What could there
be now but pity and kindness? Here was triumph: Man, the experimenting
artist, had created fantasy above the grasp of his audience, Nature.
Like any true artist, he must always play a little above his audience’s
head.

“Now I’m going to tell you the truth,” he said happily, and waited a
moment for the luxury of her voice.

She was silent. He turned to look; her face was anxious.

“Why is it,” he said gently, “that when you announce you’re going to
tell the truth, people always expect something disagreeable?”

Then he knew that the sand was chill and gritty. A breeze was blowing,
the light was dim and meagre. This was not the glad forgiving sun but
the cold and glassy moon.

“No, no!” she cried. “You must never tell the truth in a dream. If you
do ... it happens.”

“But this was a lovely truth,” he began. A window snapped into
brightness beside him, just above his head. Phyllis was looking from
the pantry.

“George! What on earth are you muttering about out there? Come in and
help me cut sandwiches.”




XVII


He was startled to find Phyllis at work in her nightgown. Another
hallucination, perhaps, he thought sardonically. Everything seems to
burlesque everything else.

She had thrown aside her blue quilted wrapper and was busy slicing
and spreading. The table was crowded with bread, ham, beef, lettuce,
mustard, jam, and cheese. The Picnic. George had forgotten the menace
of the Picnic. It struck him as pathetic to see her valiantly preparing
the details of this festival which was already doomed and damned.
She was chopping off little brown corners of crust. Wasteful, as
usual; besides, the crust is the best part. He managed not to say so,
remembering that he had made the remark every time he had ever seen her
cut sandwiches. The lace yoke at her neck had two tiny buds of blue
ribbon stitched in it. There was something pitiably nuptial about them.
How soft and young she was in her flimsy robe. Her eyes were smudged
with fatigue. How beautiful she would have looked to any other man.

“My dear child, cutting sandwiches in your best nightgown.”

“I haven’t anything better to do in it, have I?”

“Yes, you have. Go to bed in it.”

He held the wrapper for her.

“Put this on. I’ll open the door. Whew, it’s hot in here. I’ll finish
all this for you.”

The blade of the long carving knife continued, small definite crunches.

“You can have your sardines. I found a box in the pantry. There isn’t
any key for them, you’ll have to use the can opener.”

The warm kitchen air was like a stupor. This was the steady heart of
the house. Ghostly moonlight might wash up to the sill, fragile fancies
pervade other rooms: here strong central life went calmly on. In the
range red coals slept deep, covered and nourished for the long night.
The tall boiler, its silvery paint flaked and dulled, gave off drowsy
heat. Under the table the cat Virginia, who was not to be shocked,
lay solidly upright with her paws tucked in, sated with scraps and
vibrating a strong stupid purr. The high grimed ceiling was speckled
with motionless flies, roosting there after a hard day. Packages of
groceries, series of yellow bowls and platters, were ranged on the
shelves in comfortable order. This was not a modern kitchen, shiny,
white and sterile, like a hospital. It was old, ugly, inconvenient,
strong with the memory of meals arduously prepared; meals of long ago,
for people now vanished.

“The weather’s changing,” he said. “I don’t know if to-morrow will be
fine or not.”

He wondered at himself: able to speak so lightly, as if everything was
usual. His mind was still trudging back, up clogging sand hills, from a
phantom bend of shore.

“If it rains, we’ll have our sandwiches at home. I’ve promised Lizzie
the day off.”

He saw a quick horrible picture of the Picnic spread in the dining
room, rain driving outside, the children peevish, themselves angrily
mute.

“There’s cold chicken in the ice box; please get it out and slice it
for salad sandwiches. I don’t think Mr. Martin cares much for beef, I
noticed at lunch.”

“What does he think he is? Some kind of Messiah? If he doesn’t like our
ways, what did he come butting in for?”

He checked himself. The moment was ripe for quarrel, the gross
mustard-sharpened air seemed to suggest it. He put the carcass of
fowl on the scrubbed drain board by the sink and began to carve.
Standing so, his back was toward her. He made some pretext to turn,
hoping to divine her mood; but her face was averted. There was ominous
restraint in the shape of her back. The anticlimax of all this, the
delicatessen-shop smell, after his ecstasy in the garden, fretted
his nerves. Brutal shouts of wrath clamoured in his mind. It was
infuriating to see her so appealing: can’t one _ever_ get away from
it, must a man love even his wife? He wanted to ask her this, but
feared she would miss the humour of it. He longed to horrify her with
his rage, so that he could get rid of it and then show the tenderness
he secretly felt. Certainly I’m the colossus of sentimentalists, he
thought. I can turn directly from one kind of love to another. Queer,
the way it looks now it’s my feeling for Joyce that is disinterested
and pure, my love for Phyl that’s really carnal. How did this morality
business get so mixed up?

He amused himself by putting the slivers of chicken in two piles: the
dark meat for Martin, the white for Joyce. How white she had been in
the surf.... But that was only a dream. This is real, this is earnest.
This is Now, I’m cutting sandwiches for the Picnic. This is what Time
is doing to me; what is it doing to her? How did our two Times get all
knotted up together? He found himself affectionately stroking a smooth
slice of chicken breast.

There was something in Phyllis’s silence that pricked him. He looked
uneasily over his shoulder. She had sat down in the chair by the table,
her chin leaning on one wrist, watching him. He went to her and touched
her shoulder gently.

“Go to bed, Phyl dear.”

“George, can’t we get away from this house?”

“What on earth do you mean?”

“Get away. Take me away, George; we’ll take the children and go.
To-night. Before anybody wakes up.”

She rose suddenly.

“I’m frightened. Take me away. George, I can’t live through to-morrow,
not if it’s like to-day.”

Just the way I feel, he thought.

“There, there, little frog, you’re all frazzled out. It’ll be all
right, don’t worry. Go and get your sleep.”

“No, I’m not tired. I wish I were. I’m all burning up with _not_ being
tired. George, we could take the babies and just get in the car and
go. Go anywhere, anywhere where there isn’t anybody.--We’ll take Miss
Clyde with us if you like. She’s frightened too.”

“Don’t be absurd.”

“George, it would be such fun; when they all came down to breakfast,
Ben and Ruth and Mr. Martin, we just wouldn’t be here. Never come back,
never see this place again.”

“You’re raving, Phyl. Why, I took this house specially for you.
Besides, you know I can’t go away now, I’ve got this booklet to finish.”

She looked so miserable, so desperate, his anger began to throb.

“You can write a booklet about something else. You know you can,
they’re all crazy to get your stuff. George, you’re so big and clever,
you can do anything. Miss Clyde can illustrate it. I don’t mind your
loving her, I’ll be sensible, just take us away before the Picnic. Go
and wake her now, she can go in her wrapper, you’ll like that.”

“Damnation,” he burst out, “don’t talk such tripe. I believe you’re
crazy. It’s this half-wit Martin who’s got on your nerves. I’ve got a
mind to wake _him_ up, throw him out of the house. What the devil did
you ask him in for?”

“It’s my fault. But he’s changed so, since this morning. We’ve all
changed. We’re not the same people we were.”

She pushed her arms up inside the sleeves of his coat and caught his
elbows. He remembered that cherished way of hers, unconscious appeal to
old tendernesses. He looked down on the top of her head, into the warm
hollow where his head had lain. Her neck’s prettier than Joyce’s, he
thought bitterly.

“It’s queer _you_ should hate him so,” she said.

“What do you mean?” He pulled his arms away.

“Oh, I don’t know what I mean. Perhaps he--perhaps he _is_ what you
said.”

“What, a half-wit?”

“A kind of Messiah. They come to make silly people unhappy, don’t they?”

He looked at her in cold amazement and disgust. Only a few moments ago
he had been afraid of her; but now, by showing her poor thoughts, she
had put herself at his mercy.

“You go to bed,” he said. “I’m sick of this nonsense.” He gripped her
shoulders roughly and pushed her toward the door.

“Please, just let me put away the sandwiches. I want to wrap them in
wet napkins so they’ll keep fresh.”

“Forget the damn sandwiches.”

“Not damn, _ham_ sandwiches.” She couldn’t help laughing. It was so
paltry to have him propelling her like a punishable child.

“Ham, jam, or damn, forget them!” he cried, raging. “You and your
Messiah have ruined this Picnic anyhow. You spoiled it because you knew
I looked forward to it. You’ve plotted against it, sneered at me and at
Joyce because you knew I admired her.”

“Admired her! Oh, is that the word?”

The little sarcasm hummed like a tuning fork in some silent chamber of
his mind.

“You fool,” he said. “Are you trying to push her into my arms?”

“I guess she can find the way without pushing.”

“Well, you _are_ a fool,” he said slowly, in a dull voice that struck
her deeper than any temper could have done. “You throw away love as if
it was breadcrusts.”

With a furious sweep he was about to hurl the neat piles of her
handiwork on the floor. In one last salvage of decency he altered the
course of his hand. He seized a fistful of the little brown strips
of crust and flung them wildly across the room. The carving knife
clattered off the table.

“You’re frightening Virginia,” was all she said.

Anger, the red and yellow clown, burst through the tight paper hoop of
his mind and played grotesque unlaughable capers. Bewildered by his
own ferocity he strode to the corner, swung open the door of the back
stairs, and pointed savagely upward. She went without another word. Her
blue eyes were very large and dark, they faced him with the unwavering
defiance he detested and admired. Good old Phyl, he couldn’t help
thinking. She’s unbeatable. Now, as usual, he had put himself in the
wrong. He crashed the door behind her, and stood listening to her slow
steps.

He soothed the cat with some sardine-tails, finished making the
chicken sandwiches, wrapped them carefully as Phyllis had suggested.
I wonder what we’ll be thinking when we eat them? As he put them away
in the ice box he noticed the cocoanut cake on a shelf. With a sense
of retaliation he cut himself a thick slice. He became aware of the
scrambling tick of the alarm clock on the dresser. A quarter past
eleven. The house was thrillingly still. The serenely dormant kitchen
slowly sobered the buffoon dancing in his brain.

He fetched his precious bottle of Sherwood and poured a minim dose.
The golden drug saluted him gently. In this fluid too the flagrant
miracle lay hidden, the privy atom of truth and fury. The guest of
honour, he thought ironically, feeling his vitals play host to that
courteous warmth. The guest of honour, always expelled. A spark falls
into your soul. Shall you cherish it, shelter it to clear consuming
flame; or shall you hurry to stamp it out? Can a man take fire in
his bosom and his clothes not be burned? The smell of burning cloth
is mighty disagreeable. Vacantly he studied the label on the bottle.
_Manufactured prior to Jan. 17, 1920. These spirits were tax paid
at the non-beverage rate_ FOR MEDICINAL PURPOSES ONLY. _Sale or use
for other purposes will subject the seller or user to very heavy
penalties._ Well, certainly this is a Medicinal Use, he thought.
“If ever a seaman wanted drugs, it’s me.” Where did the phrase come
from?... Yes, old Billy Bones, in _Treasure Island_.

Well, these foolishnesses would have blown over by to-morrow. Do a
little work on the booklet and then turn in. He must get the thing
done, earn some money. The gruesome burden of expenses. How little
Phyllis realizes the load a man’s mind carries. I suppose she carries
one too, poor child. Every mind carries the weight of the whole world.

He was on hands and knees, picking up the scraps of crust that had
fallen under the boiler. In a luxurious self-pity he found himself
humming a hymn tune. Blessed solitude, where a man can sing to himself
and admire the sweet sorrow of his own cadence! An almost forgotten
poem came into his head and fitted pleasantly to the air.

  _The Silver Girl she came to me when spring was dancing green,
  She said, “I’ve come to wait on you and keep your cabin clean;
  To wash your face and hands and feet, and make your forehead cool--
  I’ll get you into Heaven yet, you Damned Old Fool!”_

Something in this appealed nicely to his mood. He allowed himself an
encore. His voice, rising behind the stove, got a good resonance. Then
he heard a footfall, a door opening. Ah, he thought, Phyl has come down
to say she’s sorry for being so crude. Well, I’ll let her speak first.
I’m tired of always being the one to make advances.

He waited, industriously gathering crusts, though he felt that the
posture of Lazarus was not advantageous. There was no word.

“Well,” he said impatiently, “have you had enough of your funny
business?”

He turned, and saw Nounou’s amazed face in the aperture of the back
door. With an incoherent murmur he rose, took his bottle, and stalked
out of the kitchen.




XVIII


“It would be interesting to speculate,” said page 38 of George’s
treatise, “how such a cheery little town obtained the name Dark
Harbour. Perhaps it was due to the scenic background of rugged hills
that overlooks the picturesque old fishing port and reflects its
invigorating pine woods in the water. At any rate, the future of the
place is bright indeed. The Eastern Railroad’s express service now
stops there, and large metropolitan interests have pledged themselves
to the erection of a modern caravansary which will supplement the long
famous ‘folksy’ hospitality of the Bayview Hotel. Separated only by a
lengthy trestle from the mainland, the Island spreads its varied allure
of rolling sand dunes, pine groves, and broad shallow beaches. Shaped
like a crescent, its outward curve is buffeted by the mighty ocean;
on the inner side, sheltered from easterly gales by the unique sand
hills, is the comfortable cottage colony where a number of wise people
have been vacationing for many years. Many artists have discovered
the pictorial charm of the region, and find in the forests or in the
maritime life of the Bay subjects for their water colours and oils.
Canvases that have later become famous in academies and exhibitions
have first felt the brush in those shingled studios clustered about the
old inn, renowned for its savoury chowder. There is a brilliance in the
air, an almost Italian richness of colour, in the Island’s landscape.
It will be many years before so vast a terrain can become crowded,
but many new bungalows have been built lately, and the newcomers pay
tribute to the good taste of those who, a generation agone, divined
Dark Harbour’s magic as a haven of summer tranquillity.”

He felt a rational pride in this composition. It was in the genially
fulsome vein esteemed by railroad companies. Even if people weren’t
tranquil, in a place so competently described, they ought to be. He
thought there was a neatness in that touch about Dark Harbour and its
bright future. Phyllis was probably right when she often said it was
a shame Mr. Granville should spend his talents in mere publicity work
when he might so easily write something famous--fiction, for instance.
These are my fictions, he always replied, pointing to his private shelf
of advertising pamphlets, neatly bound and gilded as his Works.

He had spread out his papers on the dining table, where he could write
without seeing Joyce’s door. But he couldn’t seem to resume the flow of
that slick treacly style, which the experienced brochurist can smoothly
decant, like a tilted molasses barrel. The discomforting irony of the
last word penetrated him. He changed “Italian richness” to “Italian
passion,” but that was as far as inspiration carried him. It was vain
to remind himself that Walter Scott had written novels all night long,
that Napoleon had planned campaigns in the agony of stomach-ache, that
Elbert Hubbard was never at a loss for a Little Journey. In a nervous
fidget he pared his nails, sharpened pencils, rearranged the glasses
on the sideboard, emptied Ben’s cigar débris from the living-room ash
tray. He trod stealthily, in stocking feet, for fear of disturbing
Joyce. Without his usual couch to sleep on, his usual table to work
at, he felt homeless. There was a dull pain at the bottom of his ribs.
He tried to remember whether he had unduly bolted his food at dinner.
Perhaps he was going to have appendicitis.

He had a sort of insane desire to justify his existence, to atone for
a day of such incredible futility by getting some work done. If every
possible extraneous trifle could be attended to perhaps his mind might
be calmed. He crept upstairs to clean his teeth and found that Phyllis
had put his dressing gown and pyjamas and slippers on the window seat.
Was that a softening overture, or a hint that she did not want him
in the bedroom? He tiptoed warily to the balcony to glance at the
children. Even in sleep Sylvia was still the coquette: she lay with
one hand curled against her cheek, the most ravishing pose, her face a
lovely fragile gravity. Janet was restless, muttering something about
bathing.

He undressed, sitting on the window seat. With a vague notion of
postponing the struggle with the pamphlet he went through his routine
with unusual care, watching the details. He noticed for the first time
his ingenious attempt to retain the tip of each sock, by curling his
toes into it as he removed it. The purpose was evidently to turn the
sock completely inside out in the one motion of stripping it off. For
the first time in weeks he decided to fold his trousers neatly instead
of just throwing them on a chair. He gave them a preliminary shake and
found that the sand lodged in the cuffs flew unerringly into his eyes.
He discovered that if he tried to put the left leg into his pyjamas
first, instead of the right, it didn’t feel as though he had them on
at all. The laundress had managed to let the end of the waist-string
vanish inside its little tunnel of hem. It required some very sharp
work to creep it out again. What a good booklet could be written, for
some pyjama and underwear manufacturer, on The Technique of Getting
Undressed. How pleasant that if you lay out your clothes just in the
order of their discarding they are exactly serialized in the correct
sequence for dressing to-morrow.

All this, he felt with subtle horror, was just a postponement of
something inevitable, something he knew was coming but could not
identify. Some great beauty of retribution had him in its onward march.
He was unworthy of the glory of living, he had niggled and haggled and
somewhere in his bunglings he had touched some fatal spring. He had
broken some seal, let the genie out of the bottle. The little whiff of
fragrant vapour had flowed and spread until it darkened the whole sky.
It hung terrible above him and the four tiny Georges cowered beneath
it. And behind and within every other thought was Joyce. He could see
her, perfect, inaccessible, afraid. This dear device of Nature, this
gay, simple ingenuity of dividing life into halves and making them
hanker for one another! Oh, Joyce, Joyce, it _does_ matter. Joyce, I
need you so.

A craven impulse tempted him to turn in at once, on the window seat;
but its curved shape was not comfortable; moreover, how could he
possibly sleep? Downstairs the big couch had a lamp by it; he could
read, and while reading, think. The principal pleasure of reading,
he had always found, is to fix the attention of the coarse outer
mind, allowing the inner faculty to slip free. As he went down the
clock startled him by counting midnight. He timed his step on the
creaky treads so that the chime would cover them. But that settled
it, he thought. One can _continue_ working after twelve, but one
can’t possibly begin work at that hour. Besides, it’s impossible to
be conscientious in dressing gown and slippers. Morals, conscience,
ambition, all the cunning artifice of custom, are laid aside with the
garments of the day. The sophistries of virtue avail you nothing now.
The thing in your heart that you are angriest at and most ashamed of,
that is God. And that’s what gods are invented for: to be despised and
rejected. A god who was honoured and welcomed, how unhappy he would be.

He lay down on the couch with a book, but his mind ran wild behind the
printed lines. The weight and breathing of the silent house pressed
about him. How well he knew that feeling of a house at night. All
the others, broken at last by the day’s long war of attrition, lost
in their silence; himself the sole survivor, gleaning stupidly over
the battlefield. Matching his lonely wit against destiny, aware of a
shuddering compassion for these unruly lives under his charge. What was
it that kept them all going? Only his dreams, his poor busy ideas. For
the moment he could feel the whole fabric transfigured with truth and
tenderness; with love that was furious and clean, with work that was
sane and absorbing. What did he really care whether thousands of people
did or did not spend their summer on the Great Scenic Route of the
Eastern Railroad? Or whether they bedded on the Morrison Mattress, that
Makes Sleep a Career?

He slipped to his knees beside the sofa, but he could not even pray. He
was aware of the door behind him, and of Phyllis in the room overhead.
How terrible if any one should find him on his knees. Praying is only
respectable if done in congregations. He remembered those cold evenings
long ago, when he and Phyllis couldn’t sleep unless she were pressed
close behind him, her arm across his chest. And now he was living among
strangers. I’ll do whatever you tell me, I’ll do whatever you tell me.
But by heaven he had glimpsed it: he had seen beauty within breath
and grasp: too close to mar it by selfishness. No, said his demon, you
shan’t even have the consolation of fine words. You shall have all the
mockery and none of the bliss.

I suppose biology’s pulling my leg, he reflected....

He must have been kneeling there a long time. His forehead was numb
from pressing on the ridged tapestry of the couch. At least you don’t
need the light on when you’re trying to pray. The bills are big enough
as it is. He rose stiffly and snicked off the current.

At the foot of the stair he paused. If Joyce were awake he might hear
her stir. His hand gripped the carved newel, then slid onto the smooth
ascent of the banister rail. He stood a moment, and turned away.

       *       *       *       *       *

The bedroom was dim. The blinds were not all the way down, dregs of
that sparkling moonlight flowed underneath. Phyllis was asleep, he
could see her head against the white linen. She lay as she always
did, at the far side of the bed, turned away from the door, her arms
crossed, one hand perching on her shoulder, the other tucked under the
pillow. He went softly round the foot of the bed, stepping aside to
avoid her slippers. He knew by instinct exactly where they would be.

Crouched at the bedside, he slid one arm under the pillow to find her
hand. His fingers met a small damp handkerchief.

He gathered her into his arms. Out of some far-off vacancy she moved
drowsily and welcomed him home. They knew every curve of their old
embrace. Here was no fear and no doubting. Here was his consolation.
Who was ever more beautiful? The tiny flattened handkerchief, was it
not a pathetic symbol of the bruised mercies of love? Ah, be slow
to mock the plain, simplest things: good-byes, angers, fidelities,
renunciations.

He held her close and more close. Then, with a gruesome pang, he
checked the name that was on his lips. In the poor comedy of his heart
there was room for but one thought: gratitude to Joyce; Joyce who in
the unstained bravery of her spirit had taught him anew the worth and
miracle of love and whose only reward had been suffering. Her name, so
long echoed in his unuttered voice, now filled his mind and terrified
him. Here, with Phyllis in his arms, he was thinking of her; this frail
ghost of passion came between them. In physical sickness his embrace
grew faint. It could not be: the last scruple of his manhood revolted
against this consummate deceit.

Still half in dream, Phyllis divined him laggard. She crept closer.
“Oh, Martin, Martin,” she whispered. “I knew you’d come.”

       *       *       *       *       *

Now he knew where the dark current of the hours had been bearing him.
Nothing else was possible. Quietly, without anger or surprise, in the
relief of one free to face his destiny, he left the room and went down
the stair. His hand was out to turn the knob when he saw that Joyce’s
door was opening toward him.




XIX


Joyce lay in a trance of weariness. A nervous tremolo shivered up and
down from her knees to her stomach; her spirit seemed lost and dragged
under into the strange circling life of the body, stubborn as that of a
tree, that goes on regardless of the mind. I don’t care, she thought,
I’m glad I’m alive. She was too inert to close her hot eyes or turn
over into the pillow to shut out sounds from her sharpened ears. She
heard George’s step on the garden path, Phyllis come downstairs and go
to the kitchen. Beneath everything else was the obbligato of the house
itself; twinges of loose timbers, the gurgle and rush of plumbing,
creak of beds, murmuring voices, soft shut of doors. Tenacious life
reluctantly yielding itself to oblivion. Then into this fading
recessional came the low sough in the pines, the slackening volleys of
the crickets like a besieging army that had withdrawn its troops. And
the far-away cry of a train. She imagined it, trailing panes of golden
light along the shore, or perhaps darkly curtained sleeping cars
partitioned into narrow kennels where mysterious people lay alone: and
the bursting silver plume of its whistle, spirting into the cool night,
tearing a jagged rent in silence, shaking the whole membrane of elastic
air that enveloped them all, a vibration that came undulating over the
glittering bay, over the lonely beaches, trembled beside her and went
throbbing away.... She hadn’t been down to the beach yet, past the
rolling dunes that gave her childhood a first sense of fatal solitude.
She tried to remember how that shore looked: wideness, sharp air, the
exact curved triangle of sails leaning into unseen sweetness of breeze,
steep slides of sand over-tufted above by toppling clumps of grass.
If one could escape down there and go bathing in moonlight; come back
cleansed, triumphant.

       *       *       *       *       *

The whisper at the window sill startled her. She knew Bunny at once.

“You must get him away. Before it’s too late, before he knows.”

Joyce understood perfectly; so perfectly it didn’t seem necessary to
say anything. This was just what she had been telling herself.

She nodded.

“I kept calling him while you were all in the living room. I was here
at this window. He won’t listen. He thinks I’m just teasing him.”

Joyce remembered Martin closing the door.

“Then I called _you_. I was so afraid you wouldn’t hear me. It’s awful
to be helpless.”

“Bunny, you’re not helpless. Tell me what to do.”

“What room is he in?”

“I don’t know. Yes, I do, I think it’s at the end of the passage, next
the bath.”

“The old nursery. Oh, if I could come indoors. I can’t; they’ve
forgotten me.”

“We’ll manage,” Joyce whispered. “I always knew you and I would have to
help each other.”

“He must find something to take him back. You are the one who can help.”

Joyce knew there was some secret here too beautiful to be said. Bunny
could not tell her, it must be guessed.

“Is it something I gave him?”

“Something you’d like to keep.”

“Is it the mouse? Bunny, how can we find it? That was a lifetime ago.”

“Perhaps it’s in the nursery. In the old toy cupboard.”

“I’ll get it in the morning.”

“That may be too late. Now, to-night.”

“Oh Bunny, tell me plainly. Is it the mouse you mean?”

She was tugging fiercely to raise the screen, jammed in its grooves.
Her fingers still tingled from the sharp edges of the shallow metal
sockets. Only the empty garden, the sinking candy-peel moon beyond the
black arc of hill.

The impression was vivid upon her. There was only one thing to do, she
must go through the sleeping house to Martin’s room, rouse him, tell
him at once. She rose from bed and opened the door.

       *       *       *       *       *

He was there, holding out his hand; motionless as though he had been
waiting so all the shining night. She took it mechanically.

“Who is it?” she said.

“Who else could it be?”

But at first she had thought it was Martin, somehow warned by Bunny.
They stood aghast of one another, in silence, awkwardly holding hands.
It was not like a meeting, it was like a good-bye.

The declining moonlight limned her cloudily. But this was no silly
dream. He saw her revealed in all her wistful beauty, meant from the
beginning for him.

“George, we must get Martin out of the house----”

Martin again. Evidently, he thought, the gods intend to wring the last
drop of comedy out of me.

“Damn Martin,” he said softly. “Joyce, I didn’t find you at last to
talk about _him_. Dear, I told you we’d know it if the time came.”

Was this what Bunny meant by giving? I have nothing to give. The Me he
loves has gone somewhere. How can I tell him? Instead of the imagined
joy and communion there’s only horror. And I want so to love him.

He had carried her to the couch and was kneeling beside her. Oh, if I
could lay down the burden of this heavy, heavy love. If I could love
him gladly, not just bitterly. Is this the only way to save him from
knowing? Such a little thing, that I wanted to keep for myself. She
turned from him convulsively and buried her face in the pillow. He
mustn’t see my tears. The cruellest thing is he’ll think I don’t love
him. No man was ever so loved. But I gave myself, long ago, to the
dream of him. I can’t mix it with the reality.

She turned, in a mercy of pure tenderness.

“George, dear George, I meant what I said.”

I’ll do whatever you tell me, I’ll do whatever you tell me. But he
divined her misery. The brave words trembled. She lay before him,
white, inaccessible, afraid. Exquisite, made for delight with every
grace that the brave lust of man has dreamed; and weariness, anxiety,
some strange disease of the spirit, frustrated it. Their love too was a
guest of honour, a god to be turned away. She lay there, her sweet body
the very sign and symbol of their need, and he knew nothing but pity,
as for a wounded child. In that strange moment his poor courage was
worthy of hers. God pity me for a fool, he thought. But I love her best
of all because I shall never have her.

“I’m going to tell you the truth,” he began----

A jarring crash shook the house, followed by a child’s scream. He rose
heavily to his feet, tightened and nauseated with terror. He knew
exactly what must have happened. The railing on the sleeping porch,
which he had forgotten to mend. One of the children had got out of bed,
stumbled against it, the rotten posts had given way. If she had fallen
from that height ... he pictured a broken white figure on the gravel.
This was his punishment for selfishness and folly. Oh, it is always the
innocent who suffer.

With heaviness in his feet he hurried through the dining room and
veranda. All was still: looking up he could see the balcony unaltered.
Then, through the open windows above he heard the unmistakable clang
of metal on a wooden floor. Ben’s bed.

Unable to shake off his conviction of disaster he ran upstairs. Phyllis
was crouching in the passage, comforting Janet. “I had a bad dream,”
the child sobbed, “then there was that awful noise.”

“There, there, darling, you’re all right now. We all have dreams
sometimes. You can come into bed with Mother.”

There was the bleat of one of the talking dolls. “_Maaa-Maa!_” it
cried, and Sylvia appeared, sleepily stolid. “Is it to-morrow?” she
asked.

“I thought the porch had broken down,” said Phyllis hysterically.
“George, did you fix that railing?”

“Nonsense. The porch is all right. Get back to sleep, little toads.”

“What was it, Ben’s bed?”

“Ben’s! No such luck, it’s mine,” said Ruth, opening the door. “Where
does the light turn on? I can’t find the button.” She saw George and
gave a squeak of dismay.

She needn’t be so damned skittish, he thought angrily. Nightgowns don’t
seem to be any novelty in this house. “Phyl, you take Janet into bed,
I’ll put Sylvia on the window seat. Keep them off that porch till I’ve
mended the railing in the morning.”

Ben was grumbling over the wreckage. “George, what’s the secret of this
thing? Lend a hand.”

“I’m frightfully sorry,” said George. “I ought to have warned you.
Here, I can fix it, there’s a bit of clothesline----”

“For Heaven’s sake, don’t start tinkering now,” said Ruth, who had
dived into the other bed. “I’m all right here, and Ben can sleep on the
mattress.”

       *       *       *       *       *

Her door was open, she stood anxiously waiting as he came downstairs at
last. She had put on her wrapper, he noticed with a twinge.

“Ruth’s bed had a blow-out,” he said. “At least I thought _she_ was
safe when she’s between the sheets.” He felt that he ought to want to
laugh, but he had no desire to. I suppose it’s because I’ve got no
sense of humour. “Mr. Martin seems the only one who knows that night
is meant to forget things in. Well, let him sleep. He’ll be on his way
early in the morning.”

She did not answer at once, searching for the words that would help him
most.

“I must go too. George, you must let me. I’d only spoil your Picnic.”

“You’ll miss a lot of nice sandwiches,” he said bitterly. “I made them
myself, white meat.”

With divine perception she saw the nature of his wound, the misery of
his shame and self-abasement. It was not love of her he needed now, but
love of himself, to keep life in him.

“We wouldn’t have any chance to be _us_, we couldn’t talk, we must say
it now.”

He remembered that once they had promised themselves they would never
say it.

“It’s better so, I suppose. Then there won’t be even one sorrow that we
haven’t shared.”

“Sorrow?” she said. “Let’s call it joy. Dear, I shall always worship
you as the bravest and most generous I have ever known. To do without
things one can’t have, what credit is that? But to do without what one
might have had.... George, let me try to get a little rest. I feel so
ill.”

He tucked her in and patted her shoulder.

“Good-night, dear,” he said. “Don’t worry. Everything will be all right
in the morning. God bless you.... Don’t forget any of the things I
haven’t told you.”

She knew that this was as near being one of his Moments as he could
be expected to manage. He had turned the corner, at least three of
the Georges would live. And the Fourth--well, she had that one where
nothing mortal now could blot or stain him. For ever.

       *       *       *       *       *

“In the morning” ... it was morning already. As he lay down on the
couch he could feel, rather than see, the first dim fumes of day. The
brief hush and interim was over, the pink moon had gone. The last
of the crickets flung the password to the birds, treetops began to
warble. A new link in the endless chain picked up the tension of life.
Somewhere over the hillside a cock was crowing his brisk undoubting
cheer.

So this was what they called victory. What was the saying?---- One
more such victory.... Not even those last merciful words of hers could
acquit him of his own damnation. All the irony, none of the bliss.
The world hung about his neck like the Mariner’s dead albatross. The
charnel corpse clung to him, rotting, with bony skull and jellied
festering eye. But even the Mariner was worthier, having killed the
bird; he himself had only maimed it. There would not even be the sharp
numbing surgery of good-bye. Endlessly, through long perspectives
of pain, he could see themselves meeting, smiling and parting, to
encounter once more round the next corner of memory and all the horror
to be lived again. We’re experienced in partings, he had said once.

The gradual summer dawn crept up the slopes of earth, brimmed and
brightened, and tinctures of lavender stained the sweetened air. The
hours when sleep is happiest, ere two and two have waked to find
themselves four, and the birds pour the congested music of night
out of their hearts. And the day drew near: the day when men are so
reasonable, canny, and well-bred; when colour comes back to earth and
beneficent weary necessities resume; the healthful humorous day, the
fantastic day that men do well to take so seriously as it distracts
them from their unappeasable desires. With an unheard buzz of cylinders
the farmer’s flivver twirled up the back lane and brought the morning
milk.




XX


Janet was surprised to find that she had gone abroad during the night.
She was puzzled until she noticed that where she lay she could see
herself reflected in the dressing-table mirror, which was tilted
forward a little. The shoehorn, that held it at the proper angle for
Mother’s hair, had slipped down. So the whole area of the big bed was
visible in the glass, and the mounded hill of white blanket that must
be Mother. Under the snug tent of bedclothes Janet could feel the
radiating warmth coming from behind her. She experimented a little,
edging softly closer to see how near she could get to that large heat
without actually touching it. How warm grown-up people’s bodies are!

The curtains rippled inward in the cool morning air. The light was
very grey, not yellow as it ought to be on the morning of a picnic.
Her clothes were on the floor beside the bed. Clothes look lonely with
nobody in them. She watched herself in the glass, opening her mouth
and holding up her hand to see the reflection do the same thing. Then
the clock downstairs struck seven, and she felt it safe to slip out.
In the glass she saw the blankets open, a pair of legs grope outward.
Cautiously, not to rouse Mother, she picked up her clothes and got to
the door. As she turned the knob one shoe fell with a thump. She looked
anxiously at the rounded hill. It stirred ominously, but said nothing.

Sylvia, with sheets and blankets trailing from her, lay like a bundle
of laundry on the window seat. Janet woke her, they sat dressing and
babbling together, now and then shouting along the passage to Rose, who
slept with Nounou. Rose kept opening the nursery door to ask what they
said, then, while the remark was being repeated, Nounou’s voice would
command her to shut it. Janet, with brown knees hunched under her chin,
picked at shoelace knots. Sylvia, in her deliberate way, was planning
this time to get her shirt on right side forward. She announced several
times her intention of drinking plenty of ginger ale at the Picnic,
because peanut butter sandwiches make you so thirsty. She kept saying
this in the hope of learning, from Janet’s comment, whether milk has to
be drunk at Picnics. Janet did not contradict her, so Sylvia felt that
the ginger ale was a probability.

Ruth, lying in a delicious morning drowse, rather enjoyed their
clatter, as one does enjoy the responsibilities of others. Refreshed by
long slumber, she relished the seven-o’clock-in-the-morning feeling of
a house with children in it. A sharp rumour of bacon and coffee came
tingling up the back stairs. She lazily reckoned the number of people
who would be using the bathroom. It would be a good plan to get ahead
of the traffic. But while she was trying to make the decision she heard
the children hailing George. He said something about not leaning out of
the windows without any clothes on. “We’re trying to see if there are
cobwebs on the lawn, when there’s cobwebs it’s not going to rain.” Then
his steps moved along the corridor. She relapsed into her warm soothing
sprawl. Besides, it’s always a nuisance to get down too early and have
to wait about for breakfast. She liked to arrive just when the coffee
was coming fresh onto the table.

She looked forward to an entertaining day. Nothing is more amusing
than one’s friends in the knot of absurd circumstance. She had been
afraid of Joyce; but certainly last night the girl had made a fool
of herself. And Phyllis, the cool and lovely Phyllis, usually so
sure, she too would be on the defensive. The life of women like Ruth
sometimes appears a vast campaign of stealth. They move like Guy Fawkes
conspirators in the undervaults of society, planting ineffective
petards in one another’s cellars.

She enjoyed herself trying to foresee what Phyllis’s strategy would
be. I think I’ll take pains to be rather nice to Mr. Martin. In spite
of his simplicity there’s something dangerous about him. It would
be fun to allay his suspicions and then, when she got him in clear
profile against the sky, shoot him down without mercy. She felt an
agreeable sensation of being on the strong side; of having underneath
her the solid conventions and technicalities of life--as comfortable
and reassuringly supportive as the warm bed itself. Not a very lucky
analogy, perhaps: she looked over at Ben, who was still asleep on the
floor. He looked pathetic beside the collapsed bed frames, his dejected
feet protruding at the end of the mattress. But that was the satisfying
thing about Ben: he was conquered and beaten. He would never surprise
her with any wild folly. Urbane, docile, enduring, he knew his place.
Properly wedged into his seat in the middle of the row, he would never
trample on people’s toes to reach the aisle between the acts. The great
fife and drum corps might racket all around him, he would scarcely hear
it. There was cotton in his ears. Any resolute woman, she reflected
sagely, even without children to help her, can drill a man into
insensibility.

       *       *       *       *       *

George allowed the bath water to splash noisily while he cleaned his
teeth, but he always turned off the tap while shaving. He shaved by ear
as much as by sight or touch. Unless he could hear the crackling stroke
of the razor blade he was not satisfied that it was cutting properly.

“How soon do you think the Pony will come?” Janet had asked him as
he came upstairs. The children had found some deceptive promotion
scheme advertised in a cheap magazine of Nounou’s. The notice had led
them to believe that if they solved a very transparent puzzle they
would easily win the First Prize, a Shetland pony. They had answered
the puzzle and now were waiting daily to hear the patter of hoofs up
the lane. To George’s dismay he had found that they took this very
seriously. They had swept out an old stall in the stable and ravished
a blanket from Rose’s bed to keep Prince (whose name and photograph
had appeared in the advertisement) from being cold at night. He had
tried, gently, to caution them, explaining that the original puzzle
had only been preliminary lure for some subscription-getting contest.
Undismayed they had badgered Lizzie, the ice man, and a couple of
neighbours into signing up at twenty-five cents each. They paid no
heed to his temperate warnings that it would be impossible to get many
subscriptions for so plebeian a journal. He wondered how he would ever
be able to disillusion them.

The razor paused and he stared at his half-lathered face in the glass
as he realized the nice parallel. Isn’t it exactly what Nature is
always doing to us? Promising us a Pony! The Pony of wealth, fame,
satisfied desire, contentment, if we just sign on the dotted line....
Obey that Impulse. By Heaven, what a Promotion Scheme she has, the
old jade! Had his sorry dreams been any wiser than those of Janet and
Sylvia? His absurd vision of being an artist in living, of knowing the
glamour and passion of some generous fruitful career, of piercing into
the stormy darkness that lies beyond the pebbly shallows of to-day--all
risible! Life is defeat. Hide, hide the things you know to be true.
Fall back into the genial humdrum. Fill yourself with sleep. It’s all a
Promotion Scheme.... And inside these wary counsels something central
and unarguable was crying: It wasn’t just a Pony. It was the horse with
wings.

The great Promotion Scheme, the crude and adorable artifice! How many
infatuated subscribers it has lured in, even persuaded them to renew
after they had found the magazine rather dull reading. In the course
of another million years would it still be the same, man and woman
consoling and thwarting one another in their study of the careless
hints of Law? He could see the full stream of life, two intervolved
and struggling currents endlessly mocking and yearning to one another,
hungry and afraid. Clear and lucent in sunlit reaches, troubled and
swift over stony stairs, coiled together in dreaming eddies, swinging
apart in frills of foam. Sweet immortal current, down and down to the
unknown sea. Who has not thrilled to it, craved it, cursed it, invented
religions out of it, made it fetich or taboo, seen in its pure crystal
the mirror of his own austere or swinish face. Turn from it in horror,
or muddy it with heavy feet, this cruel water is troubled by angels and
mirrors the blind face of God. Blessings on those who never knew it,
children and happy ghosts.

George ran his fingers over his glossy chin. He looked solemn
recognition at the queer fellow in the glass, and mused that it’s only
people who haven’t had something they wanted who take the trouble to
think confused and beautiful thoughts. But he heard a cautious hand
trying the knob. Even thinking about God is no excuse for keeping
others out of the bathroom. He laughed aloud, a peal of perfect
self-mockery, and splashed hastily into the cold water. Martin, waiting
to get in, heard him and wondered. Usually it is only gods or devils
who are merry by themselves. Among human beings it takes two to make a
laugh.

“Why were you laughing?” he asked, opening his door when he heard
George leave the bathroom.

George paid no attention. He was hurrying to tell Phyllis his thoughts
before they escaped. Who but she would have endured his absurdities? If
she had had hallucinations of her own, that only brought them closer
together. Out of these ashes they could rebuild their truth. Love means
nothing until you fall into it all over again.

She was sitting on the edge of the bed, by the window, nervously
picking the nails of one hand with the forefinger of the other. This
habit, which he detested, almost broke his enthusiasm. He had a
grotesque desire to tell her that he would forgive her even that. I
guess I really do love her enormously, he thought, or the little things
she does wouldn’t madden me so. Exasperated with sudden tenderness, he
had somehow expected her to meet him with equal affection. But she
just sat there, looking down at her hands. He took them, to stop the
hated gesture. The bantam over the hill repeated his rollicking sharp
salute, which would have been an epigram if he had uttered it only once.

“I wish you could stop that rooster,” she said. “Over and over again,
the same identical squawk. I wouldn’t mind so much if he wasn’t a
bantam. It makes it seem so silly, somehow. He goes out under those
great tall pine trees and shouts at them.”

He smiled and turned her face toward him. She looked pitiably tired. He
knew how she would look when she was old.

“Perhaps he’s rather like me,” he said.

“There was one here that crowed just like that when we were children.
The same note exactly.”

“It’s heredity. Probably this is his great-great-great-great-grand-egg.”

She reached under the pillow, pulled out the little flattened
handkerchief, and stood up.

“I must hurry. I’d give anything if to-day were over. I suppose life is
like this, just day after day.”

“Give me that,” he said, taking the handkerchief. “I’ve seen it
before.”

“No, you haven’t,” she said, still in the same dull tone. “It’s a new
one.”

“Yes, I have. Last night.”

“Last night?”

“Yes, under your pillow.”

“You?”

She stared, her face quivering. Suddenly the line of her mouth seemed
to collapse and run downward. Something tight had broken, something
proud and fierce had bent. She was crying.

“Oh, Geordie, life is so much queerer than I ever knew. Why didn’t you
tell me? I had such beastly dreams. I wish I could die.”

The old name recalled one of his own for her.

“Leopard, Leopard ... you silly little half-tamed leopard. What do I
care about your dreams? It’ll all be all right in the morning.”

“It _is_ the morning, and it isn’t all right. _You_ take them for the
Picnic, let me stay at home. I _won’t_ see Mr. Martin. Take him away.
He’s so like _you_, Geordie, but with all your beastliness left out.
Your _nice_ beastliness, your _dear_ beastliness, everything that makes
me hate and adore you.”

“Now, listen. I’ve got a great idea. I didn’t half take my bath, I was
so keen to tell it to you. Let’s get married.”

She looked at him in such quaint misery, her face all wrinkled and
slippery with tears, he was almost angry again.

“Damn it, I mean _really_ married. The first time doesn’t count, it’s
only a Promotion Scheme, your genial old prayer book admits it. But the
Bible says it’s better to marry than to burn, doesn’t it?”

“Let’s do both.”

(Why, he thought, she’s got almost as much sense as Joyce.)

“That’s the way to talk,” he said. “Because I’d much rather marry a
woman with a sense of humour. All right, we’ll pretend we’ve been
living in sin, and now I’m going to make an honest woman of you. Wilt
thou, Phyllis, have this man to thy wedded husband----”

“We _have_ been living in sin. It’s sin to be unhappy and hateful.”

“Of course it is. And if either of you know any impediment---- Where’s
that prayer book of yours? I love that marriage--service stuff so much,
it’d be worth while to get spliced every now and then just to hear it.
It’s so gorgeously earthy. Remember that bit where as soon as he’s tied
’em up the parson has misgivings, and sings out in alarm ‘O Lord, save
thy servant and thy handmaid!’”

“No, don’t read me the prayer book now, I can’t stand it. I want to get
my bath.”

“Run along then.” He threw her blue robe around her shoulders. “We’ve
got to go through with the Picnic, for the children’s sake. We’ll make
it the happiest day in the world.”

“You don’t think it’s too late?”

He watched her down the passage, and then stood by the window seat
looking out. The morning was very moist, there was fog over the bay,
the hall had a faint musty odour like damp wallpaper. Certainly it was
going to rain. Never mind, it would be one of those steady drumming
rains that make a house so cosy. He was surprised to see that Joyce
was in the garden already, she had set up her easel near the tea table
and was painting. No, he thought, I shan’t let her go: we _can_ all be
happy together. If Phyl knew how much she owes to Joyce she’d fall at
her feet. How wise women would be if they knew that a man who has only
loved one has never loved any. But better not mention it. Who wants
them to be wise, poor ... half-tamed leopards!

“There’s someone in the bathroom,” Phyllis said, coming back.

“Martin, probably.”

“No, it’s Ruth. I can smell her all down the passage. That mignonette
she uses. Funny how sharp one’s nose is in damp weather.”

“If we ever come here again we’ll have the house repapered.”

She knelt on the seat beside him.

“Don’t let’s come again.”

Her look followed his into the quiet garden. Both were silent. George
guessed well enough why Joyce was there. She was doing a sketch for
him, something to leave him. In that little figure at the easel was all
the honour and disaster of all the world.

Side by side, his arm about her, he and Phyllis looked down into the
cool green refreshment of birdsong and dew. The light was filled with a
sense of mist, too thin to be seen, but sunshine was incapable behind
it. Filmy air globed them in, as the glimmering soap-bubble spheres a
breath of the soap’s perfume. A dream, a fog stained with dim colour,
a bubble of glamour, farce, and despair; all the sane comfortable
words are no more than wind. One gush of violets rebuts them. Life
is too great for those who live it. Purposely they wound and mar it,
to bring it to their own tragic dimension. What was Joyce’s word?...
Inadequate. Yes, not all the beauty of the world can allay the bitter
disproportion. And Time will come to rob us even of this precious
grievance, this pang we carry in our dusty knapsack like the marshal’s
silver baton. And Time will come and take my lust away....

So learn to live on farce. To savour its venom, like the Eastern King,
dose and larger dose, until one can relish and thrive on a diet of acid
that would blast the normal heart. Isn’t it this very disproportion
that makes the glory? There would be no laughter in a perfect world.
Ever after, digesting his secret poison, he would search other faces
too for the sign of that healing bane.

He felt that Phyllis was about to say something. He erased his mind, to
be ready to receive her thought; as one parent holds out arms to take
the baby from the other.

“I think she’s rather wonderful. I think I could....”

Joy and clean gusto, the blessed hilarity of living! Why, it was so
divinely simple, if Phyl would care to understand....

“Dearest, if you ... if you only....”

The half-tamed leopard stirred and showed a yellow spark. George’s
mind, uneasily changing itself, made swift cusping arcs like the tracks
of a turning car. Ruth came rustling from the bathroom. She was amazed
to see them doing a foxtrot together.

“Good-morning!” he said. “Perhaps you didn’t know, this is our wedding
day.”

“Hurry up,” he whispered to Phyllis. “Grab the bath while you can.
I’ll get dressed, I’ll just have time to mend that railing before
breakfast.”




XXI


Joyce had slipped out early. There was something unbearable in the
house’s morning stir, its sense of preparation for living in which she
would have no part.

Under the pine trees she was far enough from the house to consider it
as a whole. She studied its weatherbeaten secrecy. She had the anxious
apprehension of the artist, who needs to _feel_ his subject, purge
it of mere reality, before he can begin work. The long line of the
roof sagged a little, like an animal inured to carry burdens. The two
semicircled bays, flanking the veranda, kept the garden under scrutiny.
Each of all those windows had its own outlook on life. A thread of
smoke stole from the kitchen chimney, sifting into the hazy morning.
Imperceptible greyness was in the nebulous light, filtered through a
gauze of ocean fog. The house was waiting, waiting. That vapoury air
dimmed the bright world like breath on a mirror. Yet, for her mood, it
was somehow right. A morning of fire and blue would have been indecent.

Houses, built for rest and safety, and then filled with the tension
of such trivial sufferings. I wonder if any one has ever done a true
portrait of a house? The opaque pearly light now seemed to her more
sincere than any glamour of sun or moon. But how reluctant it was
to surrender its meaning. She could hear the excited voices of the
children, calling to and fro. Her mind was still pursuing something,
she didn’t know just what. It was like trying to think of a forgotten
word. The house hasn’t yet quite got over being empty so long, she
thought. It’s still a little bit empty. Or it believed that being lived
in again would be such fun, and now it’s disappointed. It had forgotten
that life is like this.

She began to paint. This picture was for George, to remind him of
things he did not know he knew. It must have love in it, and something
more, too. The name of this picture, she said to herself, is A Portrait
of a House Saying Good-bye.

The shading was very odd along the veranda, between the two turreted
bays and beneath the overhang of the sleeping porch. The light came
from no direction, it was latent and diffused, softened in slopes and
patches among many angles. She had already dabbed in the profile of the
building when she realized what it was that she wanted. It was not
the outside of the house but an interior that was forming in her mind.
She left the outline tentative, as it was, and imagined the side of
the house to be transparent. Under the sharp projection of the balcony
her brush struck through the glassed veranda and found itself in the
dining room. The tinted panes gave her a clean spot of colour to focus
on. Below these the room was obscure, but then the brush had discovered
a pool of candlelight to dip in. Shadowy figures were sitting there,
but just as she was about to sketch them they seemed to dissolve from
their chairs and run toward the windows, looking outward furtively.
There was another, too, outside the little sitting room, whispering in
a dapple of black and silver chiaroscuro. Oh, if I could only catch
what this means. If someone could help me. If George were here to help
me. His large patience, his dear considering voice with the wandering
parentheses of thought that she had so often mocked and loved. Voice
so near her now and soon so impossible to hear. No one would help her.
No one can ever help the artist. Others she saves, herself she cannot
save....

She had saved him. She had saved Phyllis’s George, given Phyllis the
greatest gift of all. Given her back those Georges, enriched with
understanding and fear. But could she save her own poor phantom, or
even herself? At any rate she was going back to her own life. She
thought of that adored city waiting for her, its steep geometries
of building, its thousand glimpses that inflame the artist’s eye.
Extraordinary: you’d expect to find a painter exultantly at work on
every street corner; and how rarely you see ’em!--The correct miseries
of polite departure, a few gruesome hours in the train (ripping out the
stitches of her golden fancy) and she would be there. There, where the
whole vast miracle seemed, in moments of ecstasy, to have been planned
for her special amazement and pleasure. The subway, with rows of shrewd
and weary faces; girls with their short skirts and vivid scarves; men
with shaven, sharply modelled mouths ... the endless beauty of people,
and their blessed insensibility to the infernal pang.... Yes, that
was what Phyllis could do for him better than she: dull and deaden
that nerve in his mind: chloroform George the Fourth, the poor little
bastard!

She was going back to her own life. Back to the civilized pains of art:
its nostalgia for lost simplicity, its full and generous tolerance,
its self-studious doubt, its divinely useless mirth, its disregard
of things not worth discussing among the cheerfully disenchanted. Ah,
never try to explain things you know are true. As soon as you begin to
do that, they seem doubtful.

A darkness kept coming into the picture. It was as though the silence
that had been stored up in that house was now draining out of it,
seeping into the absorbent air. The fog was thickening and distorted
perspectives. The house was out of drawing. That tricky shadow under
the balcony was baffling: it made the whole porch seem out of plumb.
Holding up a brush to get a true horizontal, she saw that Martin was
coming across the lawn.

“Why, it’s Bunny!” he said, pointing to the figure she had suggested
with a few hasty strokes. “I know now why she wanted you to help me.”

Joyce did not look up.

“You must go, at once,” she said.

“I was lying in bed, waiting for it to be time to get up. I saw that
some of the wallpaper, by the window, was torn. When I looked at it I
found the mouse pattern underneath. It’s the old nursery.”

“That’s what Bunny meant! Go and look in the cupboard, see if you can
find it, the mouse I gave you. That’s your only chance.”

“I think I understand now.”

“You mean, you know that we’re the same----”

“Yes, that this is what we’re all coming to. Except Bunny ... and--and
you. _You_ haven’t done it, not quite....”

“Martin, I’m worst of all,” she cried. “I’m neither one nor the other.”

“No, I think Ben is the worst,” he said slowly. “It’s too bad; he was
such a nice boy. Of course George is pretty awful, but I didn’t know
him before.”

“Quick, go away. Don’t try to learn too much. You must go for _their_
sake. If they find out who you are----”

She had a sick presentiment that they must hurry. And still he
lingered, and she could feel Time sloping toward some bottomless plunge.

“Perhaps I don’t want to go. There’s something I don’t quite
understand. You all look at each other so queerly: look, and then turn
away. And you and George in the garden. What is it? What’s happened
that hurts you all so?”

How could she answer? How tell him that the world is often too fierce
for its poor creatures, overstrains and soils them in their most
secret nerves; and that with all their horrors they would not have it
otherwise. He had come like the unspoiled essence of living, groping
blindly for what it divines to be happy and real and true; he was
thwarted and damned by the murderous pettiness of his own scarred
brethren. If I had two friends called Food and Hunger, I’d never
introduce them to each other. Must she, who was born to love him, be
the one to tell him this?

“You _must_ go. Don’t you see, it isn’t only us. It’s you too. You and
George.... Oh, I tried not to tell you. George is just you grown up.”

He looked at her, appalled.

“You’re the George that was once. That’s why he hates you so.--You’re
George the Fifth, I suppose,” she said, forgetting he wouldn’t
understand.

“I _won’t_ be like George!” he exclaimed. “But I shan’t go unless
you’ll come with me. It wouldn’t be any fun unless you were there. Help
us to get away, and we’ll never come again.”

She did not tell him that she could never go back; that he must go
alone; that they would always be lonely.

“Are you _sure_?” he asked pitiably. “Have I got to be like _that_?
Like George, I mean?”

“Hurry, hurry,” was all she could say.

He was running toward the house.

       *       *       *       *       *

She tried to follow, but some sluggish seizure was about her limbs. The
house, shadowy in deepening mist, loomed over her. She seemed to hear
its passages patter with racing feet. There was a face at the pantry
window. Perhaps there was a face at every window. There always is. She
dared not look.

There _were_ racing feet. The three children burst onto the porch above
her.

“Time for breakfast!” they called. “And then we’ll be ready for the
Picnic!”

Now she knew. The whole dumb face of the house had been warning her;
George’s premonition last night was the same. She tried wildly to wave
them back, but her voice was sealed. Frolicking with anticipation,
Janet and Sylvia and Rose ran to the railing and leaned over to shout
to her.

“See if there are any cobwebs! If there are, it’s not going to rain.”

Time swayed over her like an impending tree, tremulous, almost cut
through. It seemed so gingerly poised that perhaps the mere fury of
her will could hold it stable for a moment. Where was Martin? Oh, if
he found the mouse in time he would get back before this happened and
perhaps his memory would be wiped clean. She saw George appear at the
door of the porch with tools in his hands, and his face turn ghastly.

“We’re going to have ginger ale at the Picnic,” Sylvia was calling.

She tried to hold Time still with her mind. She was frantically
motioning the children back, crying out and wondering whether her voice
made any sound. The balustrade was going, she saw the old splintery
wood cracking, swaying, sagging. There was a snapping crash of breaking
posts. The children’s faces, flushed with gaiety, their mouths open,
suddenly changed. They leaned forward and still farther forward,
holding out their arms to her as though for an embrace. They were
beginning to fall. After so many little tears and troubles, how could
they know that this was more than one last strange tenderness. And as
the railing shattered and they fell, she saw that Martin was at the
door of the porch. He had found it.




XXII


The candles were still smoking on the cake, the children all trooping
toward the hall.

“Wait, wait!” he cried. “Come back a minute!”

They turned in surprise. The Grown-Ups, very large in the doorway,
looked like gigantic prison guards faced by some sudden unexpected
insurrection. One of them brushed against the bronze gongs hanging at
one side of the door. They jangled softly as if calling them all to
attention.

“Don’t let’s play that game,” he said breathlessly. “It’s too terrible.”

“What game?” asked Mrs. Richmond.

“We made up a game. A game of spies, to----” He realized that he
couldn’t possibly explain with the Parents standing there. He caught
Joyce’s eye. She looked frightened.

“Why, Martin, how silly you are,” chirped Phyllis. “Of course we
weren’t going to play it, not really.”

“He’s not silly!” Joyce shouted fiercely. “_I_ was going to play it.”

“So was I,” Bunny flashed. “Phyllis is telling fibs. We _were_ going to
play it. We were going to spy on Grown-Ups, to find out whether they
have a good time.”

“Bunny, Bunny,” said her mother reprovingly. “Tell Phyllis you’re
sorry. You mustn’t forget she’s a guest.”

“Don’t mention it,” said Phyllis primly. “When I grow up I’m going to
have a lot of children and teach them lovely manners.”

“When _I_ grow up,” Bunny exclaimed, “my children won’t never have to
say Thank you or they’re sorry unless they really mean it.”

“When _I_ grow up,” Ruth said, “I’m going to do without children.
They’re too much of a burden.”

“Perhaps when the time comes,” said one of the guards, “they’ll find
it’s not as easy as it sounds.”

Martin turned hopelessly to the boys. “Ben, don’t _you_ grow up. It
isn’t fun. Ben, I--I _advise_ you not to grow up.”

“Quit your kidding,” Ben retorted. “What’s biting you?”

“_Ben!_” exclaimed an indignant parent. “Where on earth do you pick up
that way of talking. I’m amazed at you.”

Martin saw it was too late. Already something had happened. Just the
invasion of elders into the room had changed them all.

“Mother!” he appealed. “Tell the truth, it’s awfully important, cross
your heart and hope to die. _Do_ you have a good time?”

A chorus of laughter from the adults.

“Why, dear, what an absurd question. Do we look so miserable?”

“They won’t tell us,” he cried bitterly. “They’re all liars!”

There was an appalled silence.

“It’s time to get them home. Parties always upset them. Ben, stop
biting your nails.”

“Joyce, what on earth are you snivelling about? Really, it seems as
though the more you do for them the less they appreciate it.”

The rain had thinned to a drizzle. Martin stood uneasily in the hall
while the others collected umbrellas and rubbers and repeated their
curtsies. The house smelt of raincoats and fresh wallpaper.

“Martin, what _is_ it? Don’t you see I’m busy talking to Mrs. Clyde?
What do you keep twitching my arm for?”

He had only wanted to ask her if they could invite Joyce to stay to
supper. But he couldn’t shout it out before everyone.

“Well, then, if you didn’t want anything special, why are you bothering
me? Go and say good-bye to Joyce. Say it politely, and tell her you
hope she’ll come again. And after that your father wants to speak to
you.”

But Joyce had already gone, and when she looked back, to try to show
him she understood, she did not see him. His father was asking him if
a boy ten years old didn’t know better than to insult his parents like
that.


THE END




TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES:


  Italicized text is surrounded by underscores: _italics_.

  Obvious typographical errors have been corrected.

  Inconsistencies in hyphenation have been standardized.

  Archaic or variant spelling has been retained.

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