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diff --git a/.gitattributes b/.gitattributes new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6833f05 --- /dev/null +++ b/.gitattributes @@ -0,0 +1,3 @@ +* text=auto +*.txt text +*.md text diff --git a/16799-8.txt b/16799-8.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..2cbe7f0 --- /dev/null +++ b/16799-8.txt @@ -0,0 +1,7820 @@ +The Project Gutenberg eBook, Dangerous Ages, by Rose Macaulay + + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + + + + +Title: Dangerous Ages + + +Author: Rose Macaulay + + + +Release Date: October 4, 2005 [eBook #16799] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 + + +***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK DANGEROUS AGES*** + + +E-text prepared by Suzanne Shell, Mary Meehan, and the Project Gutenberg +Online Distributed Proofreading Team (https://www.pgdp.net/) + + + +DANGEROUS AGES + +by + +ROSE MACAULAY + +Author of "Potterism" + +Boni and Liveright +Publishers New York + +1921 + + + + + + + +TO MY MOTHER +DRIVING GAILY THROUGH THE +ADVENTUROUS MIDDLE YEARS + + + + +CONTENTS + +CHAPTER + + I. NEVILLE'S BIRTHDAY + II. MRS. HILARY'S BIRTHDAY + III. FAMILY LIFE + IV. ROOTS + V. SEAWEED + VI. JIM + VII. GERDA +VIII. NAN + IX. THE PACE + X. PRINCIPLES + XI. THAT WHICH REMAINS + XII. THE MOTHER +XIII. THE DAUGHTER + XIV. YOUTH TO YOUTH + XV. THE DREAM + XVI. TIME +XVII. THE KEY + + + +'As to that,' said Mr. Cradock, 'we may say that all ages are dangerous +to all people, in this dangerous life we live.' + +'Reflecting how, at the best, human life on this minute and perishing +planet is a mere episode, and as brief as a dream....' + +_Trivia_: Logan Pearsall Smith. + + + + +CHAPTER I + +NEVILLE'S BIRTHDAY + + +1 + +Neville, at five o'clock (Nature's time, not man's) on the morning of her +birthday, woke from the dream-broken sleep of summer dawns, hot with the +burden of two sheets and a blanket, roused by the multitudinous silver +calling of a world full of birds. They chattered and bickered about the +creepered house, shrill and sweet, like a hundred brooks running together +down steep rocky places after snow. And, not like brooks, and strangely +unlike birds, like, in fact, nothing in the world except a cuckoo clock, +a cuckoo shouted foolishly in the lowest boughs of the great elm across +the silver lawn. + +Neville turned on her face, cupped her small, pale, tanned face in her +sunburnt hands, and looked out with sleepy violet eyes. The sharp joy of +the young day struck into her as she breathed it through the wide window. +She shivered ecstatically as it blew coldly onto her bare throat and +chest, and forgot the restless birthday bitterness of the night; forgot +how she had lain and thought "Another year gone, and nothing done yet. +Soon all the years will be gone, and nothing ever will be done." Done by +her, she, of course, meant, as all who are familiar with birthdays will +know. But what was something and what was nothing, neither she nor others +with birthdays could satisfactorily define. They have lived, they have +eaten, drunk, loved, bathed, suffered, talked, danced in the night and +rejoiced in the dawn, warmed, in fact, both hands before the fire of +life, but still they are not ready to depart. For they are behindhand +with time, obsessed with so many worlds, so much to do, the petty done, +the undone vast. It depressed Milton when he turned twenty-three; it +depresses all those with vain and ambitious temperaments at least once a +year. Some call it remorse for wasted days, and are proud of it; others +call it vanity, discontent or greed, and are ashamed of it. It makes no +difference either way. + +Neville, flinging it off lightly with her bedclothes, sprang out of bed, +thrust her brown feet into sand shoes, her slight, straight, pyjama-clad +body into a big coat, quietly slipped into the passage, where, behind +three shut doors, slept Rodney, Gerda and Kay, and stole down the back +stairs to the kitchen, which was dim and blinded, blue with china and +pale with dawn, and had a gas stove. She made herself some tea. She also +got some bread and marmalade out of the larder, spread two thick chunks, +and munching one of them, slipped out of the sleeping house into the +dissipated and riotous garden. + +Looking up at the honeysuckle-buried window of the bedroom of Gerda, +Neville nearly whistled the call to which Gerda was wont to reply. +Nearly, but not quite. On the whole it was a morning to be out alone in. +Besides, Neville wanted to forget, for the moment, about birthdays, and +Gerda would have reminded her. + +Going round by the yard, she fetched Esau instead, who wouldn't remind +her, and whose hysterical joy she hushed with a warning hand. + +Across the wet and silver lawn she sauntered, between the monstrous +shadows of the elms, her feet in the old sand shoes leaving dark prints +in the dew, her mouth full of bread and marmalade, her black plait +bobbing on her shoulders, and Esau tumbling round her. Across the lawn to +the wood, cool and dim still, but not quiet, for it rang with music and +rustled with life. Through the boughs of beeches and elms and firs the +young day flickered gold, so that the bluebell patches were half lit, +like blue water in the sun, half grey, like water at twilight. Between +two great waves of them a brown path ran steeply down to a deep little +stream. Neville and Esau, scrambling a little way upstream, stopped at +a broad swirling pool it made between rocks. Here Neville removed coat, +shoes and pyjamas and sat poised for a moment on the jutting rock, a +slight and naked body, long in the leg, finely and supplely knit, with +light, flexible muscles--a body built for swiftness, grace and a certain +wiry strength. She sat there while she twisted her black plait round her +head, then she slipped into the cold, clear, swirling pool, which in one +part was just over her depth, and called to Esau to come in too, and +Esau, as usual, didn't, but only barked. + +One swim round is enough, if not too much, as everyone who knows sunrise +bathing will agree. Neville scrambled out, discovered that she had +forgotten the towel, dried herself on her coat, resumed her pyjamas, and +sat down to eat her second slice of bread and marmalade. When she had +finished it she climbed a beech tree, swarming neatly up the smooth trunk +in order to get into the sunshine, and sat on a broad branch astride, +whistling shrilly, trying to catch the tune now from one bird, now from +another. + +These, of course, were the moments when being alive was enough. Swimming, +bread and marmalade, sitting high in a beech tree in the golden eye of +the morning sun--that was life. One flew then, like a gay ship with the +wind in its sails, over the cold black bottomless waters of misgiving. +Many such a June morning Neville remembered in the past.... She wondered +if Gerda and if Kay thus sailed over sorrow, too. Rodney, she knew, did. +But she knew Rodney better, in some ways, than she knew Gerda and Kay. + +To think suddenly of Rodney, of Gerda and of Kay, sleeping in the still +house beyond the singing wood and silver garden, was to founder swiftly +in the cold, dark seas, to be hurt again with the stabbing envy of the +night. Not jealousy, for she loved them all too well for that. But envy +of their chances, of their contacts with life. Having her own contacts, +she wanted all kinds of others too. Not only Rodney's, Gerda's and Kay's, +but those of all her family and friends. Conscious, as one is on +birthdays, of intense life hurrying swiftly to annihilation, she strove +desperately to dam it. It went too fast. She looked at the wet strands of +black hair now spread over her shoulders to dry in the sun, at her +strong, supple, active limbs, and thought of the days to come, when the +black hair should be grey and the supple limbs refuse to carry her up +beech trees, and when, if she bathed in the sunrise, she would get +rheumatism. In those days, what did one do to keep from sinking in the +black seas of regret? One sat by the fire, or in the sunlit garden, old +and grey and full of sleep--yes, one went to sleep, when one could. When +one couldn't, one read. But one's eyes got tired soon--Neville thought of +her grandmother--and one had to be read aloud to, by someone who couldn't +read aloud. That wouldn't be enough to stifle vain regrets; only +rejoicing actively in the body did that. So, before that time came, one +must have slain regret, crushed that serpent's head for good and all. + +But did anyone ever succeed in doing this? Rodney, who had his full, +successful, useful, interesting life; Rodney, who had made his mark and +was making it; Rodney, the envy of many others, and particularly the envy +of Neville, with the jagged ends of her long since broken career stabbing +her; Rodney from time to time burned inwardly with scorching ambitions, +with jealousies of other men, with all the heats, rancours and troubles +of the race that is set before us. He had done, was doing, something, but +it wasn't enough. He had got, was getting, far,--but it wasn't far +enough. He couldn't achieve what he wanted; there were obstacles +everywhere. Fools hindered his work; men less capable than he got jobs he +should have had. Immersed in politics, he would have liked more time for +writing; he would have liked a hundred other careers besides his own, and +could have but the one. (Gerda and Kay, still poised on the threshold of +life, still believed that they could indeed have a hundred.) No, Rodney +was not immune from sorrow, but at least he had more with which to keep +it at bay than Neville. Neville had no personal achievements; she had +only her love for Rodney, Gerda and Kay, her interest in the queer, +enchanting pageant of life, her physical vigours (she could beat any of +the rest of them at swimming, walking, tennis or squash) and her active +but wasted brain. A good brain, too; she had easily and with brilliance +passed her medical examinations long ago--those of them for which she had +had time before she had been interrupted. But now a wasted brain; +squandered, atrophied, gone soft with disuse. Could she begin to use +it now? Or was she forever held captive, in deep woods, between the two +twilights? + + "I am in deep woods, + Between the two twilights. + Over valley and hill + I hear the woodland wave + Like the voice of Time, as slow, + The voice of Life, as grave, + The voice of Death, as still...." + + +2 + +The voices, the young loud clear voices of Gerda and of Kay, shrilled +down from the garden, and Esau yapped in answer. They were calling her. +They had probably been to wake her and had found her gone. + +Neville smiled (when she smiled a dimple came in one pale brown cheek) +and swung herself down from the beech. Kay and Gerda were of enormous +importance; the most important things in life, except Rodney; but not +everything, because nothing is ever everything in this so complex world. + +When she came out of the wood into the garden, now all golden with +morning, they flung themselves upon her and called her a sneak for not +having wakened them to bathe. + +"You'll be late for breakfast," they chanted. "Late on your forty-third +birthday." + +They each had an arm round her; they propelled her towards the house. +They were lithe, supple creatures of twenty and twenty-one. Between them +walked Neville, with her small, pointed, elfish face, that was sensitive +to every breath of thought and emotion like smooth water wind-stirred. +With her great violet eyes brooding in it under thin black brows, and +her wet hair hanging in loose strands, she looked like an ageless +wood-dryad between two slim young saplings. Kay was a little like her in +the face, only his violet eyes were short-sighted and he wore glasses. +Gerda was smaller, fragile and straight as a wand, with a white little +face and wavy hair of pure gold, bobbed round her thin white neck. And +with far-set blue eyes and a delicate cleft chin and thin straight lips. +For all she looked so frail, she could dance all night and return in the +morning cool, composed and exquisite, like a lily bud. There was a look +of immaculate sexless purity about Gerda; she might have stood for the +angel Gabriel, wide-eyed and young and grave. With this wide innocent +look she would talk unabashed of things which Neville felt revolting. And +she, herself, was the product of a fastidious generation and class, and +as nearly sexless as may be in this besexed world, which however is not, +and can never be, saying much. Kay would do the same. They would read and +discuss Freud, whom Neville, unfairly prejudiced, found both an obscene +maniac and a liar. They might laugh with her at Freud when he expanded on +that complex, whichever it is, by which mothers and daughters hate each +other, and fathers and sons--but they both all the same took seriously +things which seemed to Neville merely loathsome imbecilities. Gerda and +Kay didn't, in point of fact, find so many things either funny or +disgusting as Neville did; throwing her mind back twenty years, Neville +tried to remember whether she had found the world as funny and as +frightful when she was a medical student as she did now; on the whole she +thought not. Boys and girls are, for all their high spirits, creatures of +infinite solemnities and pomposities. They laugh; but the twinkling +irony, mocking at itself and everything else, of the thirties and +forties, they have not yet learnt. They cannot be gentle cynics; they +are so full of faith and hope, and when these are hurt they turn savage. +About Kay and Gerda there was a certain splendid earnestness with regard +to life. Admirable creatures, thought Neville, watching them with +whimsical tenderness. They had nothing to do with the pre-war, dilettante +past, the sophisticated gaiety of the young century. Their childhood had +been lived during the great war, and they had emerged from it hot with +elemental things, discussing life, lust, love, politics and social +reform, with cool candour, intelligent thoroughness and Elizabethan +directness. They wouldn't mind having passions and giving them rein; they +wouldn't think it vulgar, or even tedious, to lead loose lives. Probably, +in fact, it wasn't; probably it was Neville, and the people who had grown +up with her, who were overcivilized, too far from the crude stuff of +life, the monotonies and emotionalisms of Nature. And now Nature was +taking her rather startling revenge on the next generation. + + +3 + +Neville ran upstairs, and came down to breakfast dressed in blue cotton, +with her damp hair smoothly taken back from her broad forehead that +jutted broodingly over her short pointed face. She had the look of +a dryad at odds with the world, a whimsical and elfish intellectual. + +Rodney and Kay and Gerda had been putting parcels at her place, and a +pile of letters lay among them. There is, anyhow, that about birthdays, +however old they make you. Kay had given her a splendid great +pocket-knife and a book he wanted to read, Gerda an oak box she had +carved, and Rodney a new bicycle (by the front door) and a Brangwyn +drawing (on the table). If Neville envied Kay and Gerda their future +careers, she envied Rodney his present sphere. Her husband and the +father of Gerda and Kay was a clever and distinguished-looking man of +forty-five, and member, in the Labour interest, for a division of Surrey. +He looked, however, more like a literary man. How to be useful though +married: in Rodney's case the problem was so simple, in hers so +complicated. She had envied Rodney a little twenty years ago; then she +had stopped, because the bringing up of Kay and Gerda had been a work in +itself; now she had begun again. Rodney and she were more like each other +than they were like their children; they had some of the same vanities, +fastidiousnesses, humours and withdrawals, and in some respects the same +outlook on life. Only Rodney's had been solidified and developed by the +contacts and exigencies of his career, and Neville's disembodied, +devitalised and driven inwards by her more dilettante life. She "helped +Rodney with the constituency" of course, but it was Rodney's +constituency, not hers; she entertained his friends and hers when they +were in town, but she knew herself a light woman, not a dealer in +affairs. Yet her nature was stronger than Rodney's, larger and more +mature; it was only his experience she lacked. + +Rodney was and had always been charming; there could be no doubt +about that, whatever else you might come to think about him. Able, too, +but living on his nerves, wincing like a high-strung horse from the +annoyances and disappointments of life, such as Quaker oats because the +grape-nuts had come to an end, and the industrial news of the morning, +which was as bad as usual and four times repeated in four quite different +tones by the four daily papers which lay on the table. They took four +papers not so much that there might be one for each of them as that they +might have the entertainment of seeing how different the same news can be +made to appear. One bond of union this family had which few families +possess; they were (roughly speaking) united politically, so believed the +same news to be good or bad. The chief difference in their political +attitude was that Kay and Gerda joined societies and leagues, being still +young enough to hold that causes were helped in this way. + +"What about to-day?" Rodney asked Neville. "What are you going to do?" + +She answered, "Tennis." (Neville had once been a county player.) "River. +Lying about in the sun." (It should be explained that it was one of those +nine days of the English summer of 1920 when this was a possible +occupation.) "Anything anyone likes.... I've already had a good deal of +day and a bathe.... Oh, Nan's coming down this afternoon." + +She got that out of a letter. Nan was her youngest sister. They all +proceeded to get and impart other things out of letters, in the way of +families who are fairly united, as families go. + +Gerda opened her lips to impart something, but remembered her father's +distastes and refrained. Rodney, civilised, sensitive and progressive, +had no patience with his children's unsophisticated leaning to a +primitive crudeness. He told them they were young savages. So Gerda kept +her news till later, when she and Neville and Kay were lying on rugs on +the lawn after Neville had beaten Kay in a set of singles. + +They lay and smoked and cooled, and Gerda, a cigarette stuck in one side +of her mouth, a buttercup in the other, mumbled "Penelope's baby's come, +by the way. A girl. Another surplus woman." + +Neville's brows lazily went up. + +"Penelope Jessop? What's _she_ doing with a baby? I didn't know she'd got +married." + +"Oh, she hasn't, of course.... Didn't I tell you about Penelope? She +lives with Martin Annesley now." + +"Oh, I see. Marriage in the sight of heaven. That sort of thing." + +Neville was of those who find marriages in the sight of heaven +uncivilised and socially reactionary, a reversion, in fact, to Nature, +which bored her. Gerda and Kay rightly believed such marriages to have +some advantages over those more visible to the human eye (as being more +readily dissoluble when fatiguing) and many advantages over no marriages +at all, which do not increase the population, so depleted by the Great +War. When they spoke in this admirably civic sense, Neville was apt to +say "It doesn't want increasing. I waited twenty minutes before I could +board my bus at Trafalgar Square the other day. It wants more depleting, +I should say--a Great Plague or something," a view which Kay and Gerda +thought truly egotistical. + +"I do hope," said Neville, her thoughts having led her to the statement, +"I do very much hope that neither of you will ever perpetrate that sort +of marriage. It would be so dreadfully common of you." + +"Impossible to say," Kay said, vaguely. + +"Considering," said Gerda, "that there are a million more women than men +in this country, it stands to reason that some system of polygamy must +become the usual thing in the future." + +"It's always been the usual thing, darling. Dreadfully usual. It's so +much more amusing to be unusual in these ways." + +Neville's voice trailed drowsily away. Polygamy. Sex. Free Love. Love in +chains. The children seemed so often to be discussing these. Just as, +twenty years ago, she and her friends had seemed always to be discussing +the Limitations of Personality, the Ethics of Friendship, and the Nature, +if any, of God. This last was to Kay and Gerda too hypothetical to be a +stimulating theme. It would have sent them to sleep, as sex did Neville. + +Neville, led by Free Love to a private vision, brooded cynically over +savages dancing round a wood-pile in primeval forests, engaged in what +missionaries, journalists, and writers of fiction about our coloured +brothers call "nameless orgies" (as if you would expect most orgies to +answer to their names, like the stars) and she saw the steep roads of the +round world running back and back and back--on or back, it made no +difference, since the world was round--to this. Saw, too, a thousand +stuffy homes wherein sat couples linked by a legal formula so rigid, so +lasting, so indelible, that not all their tears could wash out a word of +it, unless they took to themselves other mates, in which case their +second state might be worse than their first. Free love--love in chains. +How absurd it all was, and how tragic too. One might react back to the +remaining choice--no love at all--and that was absurder and more tragic +still, since man was made (among other ends) to love. Looking under her +heavy lashes at her pretty young children, incredibly youthful, absurdly +theoretical, fiercely clean of mind and frank of speech, their clearness +as yet unblurred by the expediencies, compromise and experimental +contacts of life, Neville was stabbed by a sharp pang of fear and hope +for them. Fear lest on some fleeting impulse they might founder into the +sentimental triviality of short-lived contacts, or into the tedium of +bonds which must out-live desire; hope that, by some fortunate chance, +they might each achieve, as she had achieved, some relation which should +be both durable and to be endured. As to the third path--no love at +all--she did not believe that either Kay or Gerda would tread that. They +were emotional, in their cool and youthful way, and also believed that +they ought to increase the population. What a wonderful, noble thing to +believe, at twenty, thought Neville, remembering the levity of her own +irresponsible youth, when her only interest in the population had been +a nightmare fear lest they should at last become so numerous that they +would be driven out of the towns into the country and would be scuttling +over the moors, downs and woods like black beetles in kitchens in the +night. They were better than she had been, these children; more +public-spirited and more in earnest about life. + + +4 + +Across the garden came Nan Hilary, having come down from town to see +Neville on her forty-third birthday. Nan herself was not so incredibly +old as Neville; (for forty-three _is_ incredibly old, from any reasonable +standpoint). Nan was thirty-three and a half. She represented the +thirties; she was, in Neville's mind, a bridge between the remote +twenties and the new, extraordinary forties in which one could hardly +believe. It seems normal to be in the thirties; the right, ordinary age, +that most people are. Nan, who wrote, and lived in rooms in Chelsea, was +rather like a wild animal--a leopard or something. Long and lissome, with +a small, round, sallow face and withdrawn, brooding yellow eyes under +sulky black brows that slanted up to the outer corners. Nan had a good +time socially and intellectually. She was clever and lazy; she would +fritter away days and weeks in idle explorations into the humanities, +or curled up in the sun in the country like a cat. Her worst fault +was a cynical unkindness, against which she did not strive because +investigating the less admirable traits of human beings amused her. She +was infinitely amused by her nephew and her niece, but often spiteful to +them, merely because they were young. To sum up, she was a cynic, a rake, +an excellent literary critic, a sardonic and brilliant novelist, and she +had a passionate, adoring and protecting affection for Neville, who was +the only person who had always been told what she called the darker +secrets of her life. + +She sat down on the grass, her thin brown hands clasped round her ankles, +and said to Neville, "You're looking very sweet, aged one. Forty-three +seems to suit you." + +"And you," Neville returned, "look as if you'd jazzed all night and +written unkind reviews from dawn till breakfast time." + +"That's just about right," Nan owned, and flung herself full length on +her back, shutting her eyes against the sun. "That's why I've come down +here to cool my jaded nerves. And also because Rosalind wanted to lunch +with me." + +"Have you read my poems yet?" enquired Gerda, who never showed the +customary abashed hesitation in dealing with these matters. She and Kay +sent their literary efforts to Nan to criticise, because they believed +(a) in her powers as a critic, (b) in her influence in the literary +world. Nan used in their behalf the former but seldom the latter, +because, in spite of queer spasms of generosity, she was jealous of Gerda +and Kay. Why should they want to write? Why shouldn't they do anything +else in the world but trespass on her preserves? Not that verse was what +she ever wrote or could write herself. And of course everyone wrote now, +and especially the very young; but in a niece and nephew it was a +tiresome trick. They didn't write well, because no one of their age ever +does, but they might some day. They already came out in weekly papers and +anthologies of contemporary verse. Very soon they would come out in +little volumes. They'd much better, thought Nan, marry and get out of the +way. + +"Read them--yes," Nan returned laconically to Gerda's question. + +"What," enquired Gerda, perseveringly, "did you think of them?" + +"I said I'd _read_ them," Nan replied. "I didn't say I'd thought of +them." + +Gerda looked at her with her wide, candid gaze, with the unrancorous +placidity of the young, who are still used to being snubbed. Nan, she +knew, would tease and baffle, withhold and gibe, but would always say +what she thought in the end, and what she thought was always worth +knowing, even though she was middle-aged. + +Nan, turning her lithe body over on the grass, caught the patient child's +look, and laughed. Generous impulses alternated in her with malicious +moods where these absurd, solemn, egotistic, pretty children of Neville's +were concerned. + +"All right, Blue Eyes. I'll write it all down for you and send it to you +with the MS., if you really want it. You won't like it, you know, but I +suppose you're used to that by now." + +Neville listened to them. Regret turned in her, cold and tired and +envious. They all wrote except her. To write: it wasn't much of a thing +to do, unless one did it really well, and it had never attracted her +personally, but it was, nevertheless, something--a little piece of +individual output thrown into the flowing river. She had never written, +even when she was Gerda's age. Twenty years ago writing poetry hadn't +been as it is to-day, a necessary part of youth's accomplishment like +tennis, French or dancing. Besides, Neville could never have enjoyed +writing poetry, because for her the gulf between good verse and bad was +too wide to be bridged by her own achievements. Nor novels, because she +disliked nearly all novels, finding them tedious, vulgar, conventional, +and out of all relation both to life as lived and to the world of +imagination. What she had written in early youth had been queer +imaginative stuff, woven out of her childhood's explorations into +fairyland and of her youth's into those still stranger tropical lands +beyond seas where she had travelled with her father. But she hadn't +written or much wanted to write; scientific studies had always attracted +her more than literary achievements. Then she had married Rodney, and +that was the end of all studies and achievements for her, though not the +end of anything for Rodney, but the beginning. + +Rodney came out of the house, his pipe in his mouth. He still had the +lounging walk, shoulders high and hands in pockets, of the undergraduate; +the walk also of Kay. He sat down among his family. Kay and Gerda looked +at him with approval; though they knew his weakness, he was just the +father they would have chosen, and of how few parents can this be said. +They were proud to take him about with them to political meetings and so +forth, and prouder still to sit under him while he addressed audiences. +Few men of his great age were (on the whole) so right in the head and +sound in the heart, and fewer still so delightful to the eye. When people +talked about the Wicked Old Men, who, being still unfortunately +unrestrained and unmurdered by the Young, make this wicked world what +it is, Kay and Gerda always contended that there were a few exceptions. + +Nan gave Rodney her small, fleeting smile. She had a critical +friendliness for him, but had never believed him really good enough +for Neville. + +Gerda and Kay began to play a single, and Nan said, "I'm in a hole." + +"Broke, darling?" Neville asked her, for that was usually it, though +sometimes it was human entanglements. + +Nan nodded. "If I could have ten pounds.... I'd let you have it in a +fortnight." + +"That's easy," said Rodney, in his kind, offhand way. + +"Of course," Neville said. "You old spendthrift." + +"Thank you, dears. Now I can get a birthday present for mother." + +For Mrs. Hilary's birthday was next week, and to celebrate it her +children habitually assembled at The Gulls, St. Mary's Bay, where she +lived. Nan always gave her a more expensive present than she could +afford, in a spasm of remorse for the irritation her mother roused in +her. + +"Oh, poor mother," Neville exclaimed, suddenly remembering that Mrs. +Hilary would in a week be sixty-three, and that this must be worse by +twenty years than to be forty-three. + +The hurrying stream of life was loud in her ears. How quickly it was +sweeping them all along--the young bodies of Gerda and of Kay leaping on +the tennis court, the clear, analysing minds of Nan and Rodney and +herself musing in the sun, the feverish heart of her mother, loving, +hating, feeding restlessly on itself by the seaside, the age-calmed soul +of her grandmother, who was eighty-four and drove out in a donkey +chair by the same sea. + +The lazy talking of Rodney and Nan, the cryings and strikings of Gerda +and Kay, the noontide chirrupings of birds, the cluckings of distant hens +pretending that they had laid eggs, all merged into the rushing of the +inexorable river, along and along and along. Time, like an ever-rolling +stream, bearing all its sons away. Clatter, chatter, clatter, does it +matter, matter, matter? They fly forgotten, as a dream dies at the +opening day.... No, it probably didn't matter at all what one did, how +much one got into one's life, since there was to be, anyhow, so soon an +end. + +The garden became strange and far and flat, like tapestry, or a dream.... + +The lunch gong boomed. Nan, who had fallen asleep with the suddenness of +a lower animal, her cheek pillowed on her hand, woke and stretched. Gerda +and Kay, not to be distracted from their purpose, finished the set. + +"Thank God," said Nan, "that I am not lunching with Rosalind." + + + + +CHAPTER II + +MRS. HILARY'S BIRTHDAY + + +1 + +They all turned up at The Gulls, St. Mary's Bay, in time for lunch on +Mrs. Hilary's birthday. It was her special wish that all those of her +children who could should do this each year. Jim, whom she preferred, +couldn't come this time; he was a surgeon; it is an uncertain profession. +The others all came; Neville and Pamela and Gilbert and Nan and with +Gilbert his wife Rosalind, who had no right there because she was only an +in-law, but if Rosalind thought it would amuse her to do anything you +could not prevent her. She and Mrs. Hilary disliked one another a good +deal, though Rosalind would say to the others, "Your darling mother! +She's priceless, and I adore her!" She would say that when she had +caught Mrs. Hilary in a mistake. She would draw her on to say she had +read a book she hadn't read (it was a point of honour with Mrs. Hilary +never to admit ignorance of any book mentioned by others) and then she +would say, "I do love you, mother! It's not out yet; I've only seen +Gilbert's review copy," and Mrs. Hilary would say, "In that case I +suppose I am thinking of another book," and Rosalind would say to Neville +or Pamela or Gilbert or Nan, "Your darling mother. I adore her!" and Nan, +contemptuous of her mother for thinking such trivial pretence worth +while, and with Rosalind for thinking malicious exposure worth while, +would shrug her shoulders and turn away. + + +2 + +All but Neville arrived by the same train from town, the one getting in +at 12.11. Neville had come from Surrey the day before and spent the +night, because Mrs. Hilary liked to have her all to herself for a little +time before the others came. After Jim, Neville was the child Mrs. Hilary +preferred. She had always been a mother with marked preferences. There +were various barriers between her and her various children; Gilbert, who +was thirty-eight, had annoyed her long ago by taking up literature as a +profession on leaving Cambridge, instead of doing what she described as +"a man's job," and later on by marrying Rosalind, who was fast, and, in +Mrs. Hilary's opinion, immoral. Pamela, who was thirty-nine and working +in a settlement in Hoxton, annoyed her by her devotion to Frances Carr, +the friend with whom she lived. Mrs. Hilary thought them very silly, +these close friendships between women. They prevented marriage, and led +to foolish fussing about one another's health and happiness. Nan annoyed +her by "getting talked about" with men, by writing books which Mrs. +Hilary found both dull and not very nice, in tone, and by her own +irritated reactions to her mother's personality. Nan, in fact, was often +rude and curt to her. + +But Jim, who was a man and a doctor, a strong, good-humoured person and +her eldest son, annoyed her not at all. Nor did Neville, who was her +eldest daughter and had given her grandchildren and infinite sympathy. + +Neville, knowing all these things and more, always arrived on the +evenings before her mother's birthdays, and they talked all the morning. +Mrs. Hilary was at her best with Neville. She was neither irritable nor +nervous nor showing off. She looked much less than sixty-three. She was +a tall, slight, trailing woman, with the remains of beauty, and her dark, +untidy hair was only streaked with grey. Since her husband had died, ten +years ago, she had lived at St. Mary's Bay with her mother. It had been +her old home; not The Gulls, but the vicarage, in the days when St. +Mary's Bay had been a little fishing village without an esplanade. To +old Mrs. Lennox it was the same fishing village still, and the people, +even the summer visitors, were to her the flock of her late husband, who +had died twenty years ago. + +"A good many changes lately," she would say to them. "Some people think +the place is improving. But I can't say I like the esplanade." + +But the visitors, unless they were very old, didn't know anything about +the changes. To them St. Mary's Bay was not a fishing village but a +seaside resort. To Mrs. Hilary it was her old home, and had healthy air +and plenty of people for her mother to gossip with and was as good a +place as any other for her to parch in like a withered flower now that +the work of her life was done. The work of her life had been making a +home for her husband and children; she had never had either the desire or +the faculties for any other work. Now that work was over, and she was +rather badly left, as she cared neither for cards, knitting, gardening, +nor intellectual pursuits. Once, seven years ago, at Neville's +instigation, she had tried London life for a time, but it had been no +use. The people she met there were too unlike her, too intelligent and up +to date; they went to meetings and concerts and picture exhibitions and +read books and talked about public affairs not emotionally but coolly and +drily; they were mildly surprised at Mrs. Hilary's vehemence of feeling +on all points, and she was strained beyond endurance by their knowledge +of facts and catholicity of interests. So she returned to St. Mary's Bay, +where she passed muster as an intelligent woman, gossiped with her +mother, the servants and their neighbours, read novels, brooded over the +happier past, walked for miles alone along the coast, and slipped every +now and then, as she had slipped even in youth, over the edge of +emotionalism into hysterical passion or grief. Her mother was no use at +such times; she only made her worse, sitting there in the calm of old +age, looking tranquilly at the end, for her so near that nothing +mattered. Only Jim or Neville were of any use then. + +Neville on the eve of this her sixty-third birthday soothed one such +outburst. The tedium of life, with no more to do in it--why couldn't it +end? The lights were out, the flowers were dead--and yet the unhappy +actors had to stay and stay and stay, idling on the empty, darkened +stage. (That was how Mrs. Hilary, with her gift for picturesque language, +put it.) _Must_ it be empty, _must_ it be dark, Neville uselessly asked, +knowing quite well that for one of her mother's temperament it must. Mrs. +Hilary had lived in and by her emotions; nothing else had counted. Life +for her had burnt itself out, and its remnant was like the fag end of a +cigarette, stale and old. + +"Shall I feel like that in twenty years?" Neville speculated aloud. + +"I hope," said Mrs. Hilary, "that you won't have lost Rodney. So long as +you have him...." + +"But if I haven't...." + +Neville looked down the years; saw herself without Rodney, perhaps +looking after her mother, who would then have become (strange, incredible +thought, but who could say?) calm with the calm of age; Kay and Gerda +married or working or both.... What then? Only she was better equipped +than her mother for the fag end of life; she had a serviceable brain and +a sound education. She wouldn't pass empty days at a seaside resort. She +would work at something, and be interested. Interesting work and +interesting friends--her mother, by her very nature, could have neither, +but was just clever enough to feel the want of them. The thing was to +start some definite work _now_, before it was too late. + +"Did Grandmama go through it?" Neville asked her mother. + +"Oh, I expect so. I was selfish; I was wrapped up in home and all of you; +I didn't notice. But I think she had it badly, for a time, when first she +left the vicarage.... She's contented now." + +They both looked at Grandmama, who was playing patience on the sofa and +could not hear their talking for the sound of the sea. Yes, Grandmama was +(apparently) contented now. + +"There's work," mused Neville, thinking of the various links with life, +the rafts, rather, which should carry age over the cold seas of tedious +regret. "And there's natural gaiety. And intellectual interests. And +contacts with other people--permanent contacts and temporary ones. And +beauty. All those things. For some people, too, there's religion." + +"And for all of us food and drink," said Mrs. Hilary, sharply. "Oh, +I suppose you think I've no right to complain, as I've got all those +things, except work." + +But Neville shook her head, knowing that this was a delusion of her +mother's, and that she had, in point of fact, none of them, except the +contacts with people, which mostly either over-strained, irritated or +bored her, and that aspect of religion which made her cry. For she was +a Unitarian, and thought the Gospels infinitely sad and the souls of the +departed most probably so merged in God as to be deprived of all +individuality. + +"It's better to be High Church or Roman Catholic and have services, or +an Evangelical and have the Voice of God," Neville decided. And, indeed, +it is probable that Mrs. Hilary would have been one or other of these +things if it had not been for her late husband, who had disapproved of +superstition and had instructed her in the Higher Thought and the Larger +Hope. + + +3 + +Though heaviness endured for the night, joy came in the morning, as is +apt to happen where there is sea air. Mrs. Hilary on her birthday had +a revulsion to gaiety, owing to a fine day, her unstable temperament, +letters, presents and being made a fuss of. Also Grandmama said, when +she went up to see her after breakfast, "This new dress suits you +particularly, my dear child. It brings out the colour in your eyes," and +everyone likes to hear that when they are sixty-three or any other age. + +So, when the rest of her children arrived, Mrs. Hilary was ready for +them. + +They embraced her in turn; Pamela, capable, humorous and intelligent, +the very type of the professional woman at her best, but all the time +preferring Frances Carr, anxious about her because she was overworking +and run down; Nan, her extravagant present in her hands, on fire to +protect her mother against old age, depression and Rosalind, yet knowing +too how soon she herself would be smouldering with irritation; Gilbert, +spare and cynical, writer of plays and literary editor of the Weekly +Critic, and with him his wife Rosalind, whom Mrs. Hilary had long since +judged as a voluptuous rake who led men on and made up unseemly stories +and her lovely face, but who insisted on coming to The Gulls with Gilbert +to see his adorable mother. Rosalind, who was always taking up +things--art, or religion, or spiritualism, or young men--and dropping +them when they bored her, had lately taken up psycho-analysis. She was +studying what she called her mother-in-law's "case," looking for and +finding complexes in her past which should account for her somewhat +unbalanced present. + +"I've never had complexes," Mrs. Hilary would declare, indignantly, as if +they had been fleas or worse, and indeed when Rosalind handled them they +_were_ worse, much. From Rosalind Mrs. Hilary got the most unpleasant +impression possible (which is to say a good deal) of psycho-analysts. +"They have only one idea, and that is a disgusting one," she would +assert, for she could only rarely and with difficulty see more than one +idea in anything, particularly when it was a disgusting one. Her mind was +of that sort--tenacious, intolerant, and not many-sided. That was where +(partly where) she fell foul of her children, who saw sharply and clearly +all around things and gave to each side its value. They knew Mrs. Hilary +to be a muddled bigot, whose mind was stuffed with concrete instances and +insusceptible of abstract reason. If anyone had asked her what she knew +of psycho-analysis, she would have replied, in effect, that she knew +Rosalind, and that was enough, more than enough, of psycho-analysis for +her. She had also looked into Freud, and rightly had been disgusted. + +"A man who spits deliberately onto his friends' stairs, on purpose to +annoy the servants ... that is enough, the rest follows. The man is +obviously a loathsome and indecent vulgarian. It comes from being a +German, no doubt." Which settled that; and if anyone murmured "An +Austrian," she would say, "It comes to the same thing, in questions of +breeding." Mrs. Hilary, like Grandmama, settled people and things very +quickly and satisfactorily. + +They all sat in the front garden after lunch and looked out over the +wonderful shining sea. Grandmama sat in her wheeled chair, Tchekov's +Letters on her knees. She had made Mrs. Hilary get this book from Mudie's +because she had read favourable reviews of it by Gilbert and Nan. +Grandmama was a cleverish old lady, cleverer than her daughter. + +"Jolly, isn't it," said Gilbert, seeing the book. + +"Very entertaining," said Grandmama, and Mrs. Hilary echoed "Most," at +which Grandmama eyed her with a twinkle, knowing that it bored her, like +all the Russians. Mrs. Hilary cared nothing for style ("Literature!" said +Lady Adela. "Give _me_ something to _read_!"); she liked nice lifelike +books about people as she believed them to be, and though she was quite +prepared to believe that real Russians were like Russians in books, she +felt that she did not care to meet either of them. But Mrs. Hilary had +learnt that intelligent persons seldom liked the books which seemed to +her to be about real, natural people, any more than they admired the +pictures which struck her as being like things as they were. Though she +thought those who differed from her profoundly wrong, she never admitted +ignorance of the books they admired. For she was in a better position to +differ from them about a book if she had nominally read it--and really it +didn't matter if she had actually done so or not, for she knew beforehand +what she would think of it if she had. So well she knew this, indeed, +that the line between the books she had and hadn't read was, even in her +own mind, smudgy and vague, not hard and clear as with most people. Often +when she had seen reviews which quoted extracts she thought she had read +the book, just as some people, when they have seen publishers' +advertisements, think they have seen reviews, and declare roundly in +libraries that a book is out when it lacks a month of publication. + +Mrs. Hilary, having thus asserted her acquaintance with Tchekov's +Letters, left Gilbert, Grandmama and Neville to talk about it together, +and herself began telling the others how disappointed Jim had been that +he could not come for her birthday. + +"He was passionately anxious to come," she said, in her clear, vibrating +voice, that struck a different note when she mentioned each one of +her children, so that you always knew which she meant. "He never +misses to-day if he can possibly help it. But he simply couldn't get +away.... One of these tremendously difficult new operations, that hardly +anyone can do. His work must come first, of course. He wouldn't be Jim if +it didn't." + +"Fancy knifing people in town a day like this," said Rosalind, stretching +her large, lazy limbs in the sun. Rosalind was big and fair, and +sensuously alive. + +Music blared out from the parade. Gilbert, adjusting his glasses, +observed its circumstances, with his air of detached, fastidious +interest. + +"The Army," he remarked. "The Army calling for strayed sheep." + +"Oh," exclaimed Rosalind, raising herself, "wouldn't I love to go out and +be saved! I _was_ saved once, when I was eleven. It was one of my first +thrills. I felt I was blacker in guilt than all creatures before me, and +I came forward and found the Lord. Afraid I had a relapse rather soon, +though." + +"Horrible vulgarians," Mrs. Hilary commented, really meaning Rosalind at +the age of eleven. "They have meetings on the parade every morning now. +The police ought to stop it." + +Grandmama was beating time with her hand on the arm of her chair to the +merry music-hall tune and the ogreish words. + + "Blood! Blood! + Rivers of blood for you, + Oceans of blood for me! +All that the sinner has got to do + Is to plunge into that Red Sea. + Clean! Clean! + Wash and be clean! +Though filthy and black as a sweep you've been, +The waves of that sea shall make you clean...." + +"That," Mrs. Hilary asserted, with disgust, "is a _most_ disagreeable way +of worshipping God." She was addicted to these undeniable statements, +taking nothing for granted. + +"But a very racy tune, my dear," said Grandmama, "though the words are +foolish and unpleasing." + +Gilbert said, "A stimulating performance. If we don't restrain her, +Rosalind will be getting saved again." + +He was proud of Rosalind's vitality, whimsies and exuberances. + +Rosalind, who had a fine rolling voice, began reciting "General Booth +enters into heaven," by Mr. Vachell Lindsay, which Mrs. Hilary found +disgusting. + +"A wonderful man," said Grandmama, who had been reading the General's +life in two large volumes. "Though mistaken about many things. And his +Life would have been more interesting if it had been written by Mr. +Lytton Strachey instead of Mr. Begbie; he has a better touch on our great +religious leaders. Your grandfather," added Grandmama, "always got on +well with the Army people. He encouraged them. The present vicar does +not. He says their methods are deplorable and their goal a delusion." + +Rosalind said "Their methods are entrancing and their goal the Lord. What +more does he want? Clergymen are so narrow. That's why I had to give up +being a churchwoman." + +Rosalind had been a churchwoman (high) for nine months some six years +ago, just after planchette and just before flag days. She had decided, +after this brief trial, that incense and confessions, though immensely +stimulating, did not weigh down the balance against early mass, Lent, and +being thrown with other churchwomen. + + +4 + +"What about a bathe?" Neville suggested to all of them. "Mother?" + +Mrs. Hilary, a keen bather, agreed. They all agreed except Grandmama, who +was going out in her donkey chair instead, as one does at eighty-four. + +They all went down to the beach, where the Army still sang of the Red +Sea, and where the blue high tide clapped white hands on brown sand. + +One by one they emerged from tents and sprang through the white leaping +edge into the rocking blue, as other bathers were doing all round the +bay. When Mrs. Hilary came out of her tent, Neville was waiting for her, +poised like a slim girl, knee-deep in tumbling waves, shaking the water +from her eyes. + +"Come, mother. I'll race you out." + +Mrs. Hilary waded in, a figure not without grace and dignity. Looking +back they saw Rosalind coming down the beach, large-limbed and splendid, +like Juno. Mrs. Hilary shrugged her shoulders. + +"Disgusting," she remarked to Neville. + +So much more, she meant, of Rosalind than of Rosalind's costume. Mrs. +Hilary preferred it to be the other way about, for, though she did not +really like either of them, she disliked the costume less than she +disliked Rosalind. + +"It's quite in the fashion," Neville assured her, and Mrs. Hilary, +remarking that she was sure of that, splashed her head and face and +pushed off, mainly to escape from Rosalind, who always sat in the foam, +not being, like the Hilary family, an active swimmer. + +Already Pamela and Gilbert were far out, swimming steadily against each +other, and Nan was tumbling and turning like an eel close behind them. + +Neville and Mrs. Hilary swam out a little way. + +"I shall now float on my back," said Mrs. Hilary. "You swim on and catch +up with the rest." + +"You'll be all right?" Neville asked, lingering. + +"Why shouldn't I be all right? I bathe nearly every day, you know, even +if I am sixty-three." This was not accurate; she only bathed as a rule +when it was warm, and this seldom occurs on our island coasts. + +Neville, saying, "Don't stop in long, will you," left her and swam out +into the blue with her swift, over-hand stroke. Neville was the best +swimmer in a swimming family. She clove the water like a torpedo +destroyer, swift and untiring between the hot summer sun and the cool +summer sea. She shouted to the others, caught them up, raced them and +won, and then they began to duck each other. When the Hilary brothers +and sisters were swimming or playing together, they were even as they had +been twenty years ago. + +Mrs. Hilary watched them, swimming slowly round, a few feet out of her +depth. They seemed to have forgotten her and her birthday. The only one +who was within speaking distance was Rosalind, wallowing with her big +white limbs in tumbling waves on the shore; Rosalind, whom she disliked; +Rosalind, who was more than her costume, which was not saying much; +Rosalind, before whom she had to keep up an appearance of immense +enjoyment because Rosalind was so malicious. + +"You wonderful woman! I can't think how you _do_ it," Rosalind was crying +to her in her rich, ripe voice out of the splashing waves. "But fancy +their all swimming out and leaving you to yourself. Why, you might get +cramp and sink. _I'm_ no use, you know; I'm hopeless; can't keep up at +all." + +"I shan't trouble you, thank you," Mrs. Hilary called back, and her voice +shook a little because she was getting chilled. + +"Why, you're shivering," Rosalind cried. "Why don't you come out? You +_are_ wonderful, I do admire you.... It's no use waiting for the others, +they'll be ages.... I say, look at Neville; fancy her being forty-three. +I never knew such a family.... Come and sit in the waves with me, it's +lovely and warm." + +"I prefer swimming," said Mrs. Hilary, and she was shivering more now. +She never stayed in so long as this; she usually only plunged in and came +out. + +Grandmama, stopping on the esplanade in her donkey chair, was waving and +beckoning to her. Grandmama knew she had been in too long, and that her +rheumatism would be bad. + +"_Come out, dear_," Grandmama called, in her old thin voice. "_Come out. +You've been in far too long._" + +Mrs. Hilary only waved her hand to Grandmama. She was not going to come +out, like an old woman, before the others did, the others, who had swum +out and left her alone on her birthday bathe. + +They were swimming back now, first all in a row, then one behind the +other; Neville leading, with her arrowy drive, Gilbert and Pamela behind, +so alike, with their pale, finely cut, intellectual faces, and their +sharp chins cutting through the sea, and their quick, short, vigorous +strokes, and Nan, still far out, swimming lazily on her back, the sun +in her eyes. + +Mrs. Hilary's heart stirred to see her swimming brood, so graceful and +strong and swift and young. They possessed, surely, everything that was +in the heaven above or on the earth beneath or in the water over the +earth. And she, who was sixty-three, possessed nothing. She could not +even swim with her children. They might have thought of that, and stayed +with her.... Neville, anyhow. Jim would have, said Mrs. Hilary to +herself, half knowing and half not knowing that she was lying. + +"_Come out, dear!_" called Grandmama from the esplanade. "_You'll be +ill!_" + +Back they came, Neville first. Neville, seeing from afar her mother's +blue face, called "Mother dear, how cold you are! You shouldn't have +stayed in so long!" + +"I was waiting," Mrs. Hilary said, "for you." + +"Oh why, dear?" + +"Don't know. I thought I would.... It's pretty poor fun," Mrs. Hilary +added, having failed after trying not to, "bathing all alone on one's +birthday." + +Neville gave a little sigh, and gently propelled her mother to the shore. +She hadn't felt like this on _her_ birthday, when Kay and Gerda had gone +off to some avocation of their own and left her in the garden. Many +things she had felt on her birthday, but not this. It is an undoubted +truth that people react quite differently to birthdays. + +Rosalind rose out of the foam like Aphrodite, grandly beautiful, though +all the paint was washed off her face and lips. + +"Wonderful people," she apostrophised the shore-coming family. "Anyone +would think you were all nineteen. _I_ was the only comfy one." + +Rosalind was always talking about age, emphasizing it, as if it were very +important. + +They hurried up to the tents, and last of all came Nan, riding in to +shore on a swelling wave and lying full length where it flung her, for +the joy of feeling the wet sand sucking away beneath her. + + +5 + +Grandmama, waiting for them on the esplanade, was angry with Mrs. Hilary. + +"My dear child, didn't you hear me call? You're perfectly blue. You +_know_ you never stay in more than five minutes. Neville, you should have +seen that she didn't. Now you'll get your rheumatism back, child, and +only yourself to thank. It's too silly. People of sixty-three carrying +on as if they were fifty; I've no patience with it." + +"They all swam out," said Mrs. Hilary, who, once having succumbed to the +impulse to adopt this attitude, could not check it. "I waited for them." + +Grandmama, who was cross, said "Very silly of you and very selfish of the +children. Now you'd better go to bed with hot bottles and a posset." + +But Mrs. Hilary, though she felt the red-hot stabbings of an attack of +rheumatism already beginning, stayed up. She was happier now, because the +children were making a fuss of her, suggesting remedies and so on. She +would stay up, and show them she could be plucky and cheerful even with +rheumatism. A definite thing, like illness or pain, always put her on her +mettle; it was so easy to be brave when people knew you had something to +be brave about, and so hard when they didn't. + +They had an early tea, and then Gilbert and Rosalind, who were going out +to dinner, caught the 5.15 back to town. Rosalind's departure made Mrs. +Hilary more cheerful still. She soared into her gayest mood, and told +them amusing stories of the natives, and how much she and Grandmama +shocked some of them. + +"All the same, dear," said Grandmama presently, "you know you often enjoy +a chat with your neighbours very much. You'd be bored to death with no +one to gossip with." + +But Neville's hand, slipping into her mother's, meant "You shall adopt +what pose you like on your birthday, darling. If you like to be too +clever for anyone else in the Bay so that they bore you to tears and you +shock them to fits--well, you shall, and we'll believe you." + +Nan, listening sulkily to what she called to herself "mother's swank," +for a moment almost preferred Rosalind, who was as frank and unposturing +as an animal; Rosalind, with her malicious thrusts and her corrupt mind +and her frank feminine greediness. For Rosalind, anyhow, didn't pretend +to herself, though she did undoubtedly, when for any reason it suited +her, lie to other people. Mrs. Hilary's lying went all through, deep +down; it sprang out of the roots of her being, so that all the time she +was making up, not only for others but for herself, a sham person who did +not exist. That Nan found infinitely oppressive. So did Pamela, but +Pamela was more tolerant and sympathetic and less ill-tempered than Nan, +and observed the ways of others with quiet, ironic humour, saying nothing +unkind. Pamela, when she didn't like a way of talking--when Rosalind, for +instance, was being malicious or indecent or both--would skilfully carry +the talk somewhere else. She could be a rapid and good talker, and could +tell story after story, lightly and coolly, till danger points were past. +Pamela was beautifully bred; she had _savoir-faire_ as well as kindness, +and never lost control of herself. These family gatherings really bored +her a little, because her work and interests lay elsewhere, but she would +never admit or show it. She was kind even to Rosalind, though cool. She +had always been kind and cool to Rosalind, because Gilbert was her +special brother, and when he had married this fast, painted and +unHilaryish young woman, she had seen the necessity for taking firm hold +of an attitude in the matter and retaining it. No one, not even Neville, +not even Frances Carr, had ever seen behind Pamela's guard where Rosalind +was concerned. When Nan abused Rosalind, Pamela would say "Don't be a +spitfire, child. What's the use?" and change the subject. For Rosalind +was, in Pamela's view, one of the things which were a pity but didn't +really matter, so long as she didn't make Gilbert unhappy. And Gilbert, +so far, was absurdly pleased and proud about her, in spite of occasional +disapprovals of her excessive intimacies with others. + +But, whatever they all felt about Rosalind, there was no doubt that the +family party was happier for her departure. The departure of in-laws, +even when they are quite nice in-laws, often has this effect on family +parties. Mrs. Hilary had her three daughters to herself--the girls, as +she still called them. She felt cosy and comforted, though in pain, lying +on the sofa by the bay window in the warm afternoon sunshine, while +Grandmama looked at the London Mercury, which had just come by the post, +and the girls talked. + + +6 + +Their voices rose and fell against the soft splashing of the sea; +Neville's, sweet and light, with pretty cadences, Pamela's, crisp, quick +and decided, Nan's, trailing a little, almost drawling sometimes. The +Hilary voices were all thin, not rich and full-bodied, like Rosalind's. +Mrs. Hilary's was thin, like Grandmama's. + +"Nice voices," thought Mrs. Hilary, languidly listening. "Nice children. +But what nonsense they often talk." + +They were talking now about the Minority Report of some committee, which +had been drafted by Rodney. Rodney and the Minority and Neville and +Pamela and Nan were all interested in what Mrs. Hilary called "This +Labour nonsense which is so fashionable now." Mrs. Hilary herself, being +unfashionable, was anti-Labour, since it was apparent to her that the +working classes had already more power, money and education than was good +for them, sons of Belial, flown with insolence and bonuses. Grandmama, +being so nearly out of it all, was used only to say, in reply to these +sentiments, "It will make no difference in the end. We shall all be the +same in the grave, and in the life beyond. All these movements are very +interesting, but the world goes round just the same." It was all very +well for Grandmama to be philosophical; _she_ wouldn't have to live for +years ruled and triumphed over by her own gardener, which was the way +Mrs. Hilary saw it. + +Mrs. Hilary began to get angry, hearing the girls talking in this silly +way. Of course it was natural that Neville should agree with Rodney; but +Pamela had picked up foolish ideas from working among the poor and living +with Frances Carr, and Nan was, as usual, merely wrong-headed, childish +and perverse. + +Suddenly she broke out, losing her temper, as she often did when she +disagreed with people's politics, for she did not take a calm and +tolerant view of these things. + +"I never heard such stuff in my life. I disagree with every word you've +all said." + +She always disagreed in bulk, like that. It seemed simpler than arguing +separate points, and took less time and knowledge. She saw Neville +wrinkling her broad forehead, doubtfully, as if wondering how the subject +could most easily be changed, and that annoyed her. + +Nan said, "You mean you disagree with the Report. Which clauses of it?" +and there was that soft viciousness in her voice which showed that she +knew Mrs. Hilary had not even read the Minority Report, or the Majority +Report either. Nan was spiteful; always trying to prove that her mother +didn't know what she was talking about; always trying to pin her down on +points of detail. Like the people with whom Mrs. Hilary had failed to get +on during her brief sojourn in London; they too had always shunned +general disputes about opinion and sentiment, such as were carried on +with profit in St. Mary's Bay, and pinned the discussion down to hard +facts, about which the Bay's information was inaccurate and incomplete. +As if you didn't know when you disagreed with a thing's whole drift, +whether you had read it or not.... Mrs. Hilary had never had any head for +facts. + +"It's the whole idea," she said, hotly. "And I detest all these Labour +people. Vile creatures.... Of course I don't mean people like Rodney--the +University men. They're merely amateurs. But these dreadful Trades Union +men, with their walrus moustaches.... Why can't they shave, like other +people, if they want to be taken for gentlemen?" + +Neville told her, chaffingly, that she was a mass of prejudice. + +Grandmama, who had fallen asleep and dropped the London Mercury onto the +floor, diverted the conversation by waking up and remarking that it +seemed a less interesting number than usual on the whole, though some of +the pieces of poetry were pretty, and that Mrs. Hilary ought not to lie +under the open window. + +Mrs. Hilary, who was getting worse, admitted that she had better be in +bed. + +"I hope," said Grandmama, "that it will be a lesson to you, dear, not to +stay in the water so long again, even if you do want to show off before +your daughter-in-law." Grandmama, who disliked Rosalind, usually called +her to Mrs. Hilary "your daughter-in-law," saddling her, so to speak, +with the responsibility for Gilbert's ill-advised marriage. To her +grandchildren she would refer to Rosalind as "your sister-in-law," or +"poor Gilbert's wife." + +"The bathe was worth it," said Mrs. Hilary, swinging up to high spirits +again. "It was a glorious bathe. But I _have_ got rheumatics." + +So Neville stayed on at The Gulls that night, to massage her mother's +joints, and Pamela and Nan went back to Hoxton and Chelsea by the evening +train. Pamela had supper, as usual, with Frances Carr, and Nan with Barry +Briscoe, and they both talked and talked, about all the things you don't +talk of in families but only to friends. + + +7 + +Neville meanwhile was saying to Grandmama in the drawing-room at The +Gulls, after Mrs. Hilary had gone to bed, "I wish mother could get some +regular interest or occupation. She would be much happier. Are there no +jobs for elderly ladies in the Bay?" + +"As many in the Bay," said Grandmama, up in arms for the Bay, "as +anywhere else. Sick-visiting, care committees, boys' and girls' classes, +and so on. I still keep as busy as I am able, as you know." + +Neville did know. "If mother could do the same...." + +"Mother can't. She's never been a rector's wife, as I have, and she +doesn't care for such jobs. Mother never did care for any kind of work +really, even as a girl. She married when she was nineteen and found the +only work she was fitted for and interested in. That's over, and there's +no other she can turn to. It's common enough, child, with women. They +just have to make the best of it, and muddle through somehow till the +end." + +"You were different, Grandmama, weren't you? I mean, you were never at a +loss for things to do." + +Grandmama's thin, delicate face hardened for a moment into grim lines. + +"At a loss--yes, I was what you call at a loss twenty years ago, when +your grandfather died. The meaning was gone out of life, you see. I was +sixty-four. For two years I was cut adrift from everything, and did +nothing but brood and find trivial occupations to pass the time somehow. +I lived on memories and emotions; I was hysterical and peevish and bored. +Then I realised it wouldn't do; that I might have twenty years and more +of life before me, and that I must do something with it. So I took up +again all of my old work that I could. It was the hardest thing I ever +did. I hated it at first. Then I got interested again, and it has kept me +going all these years, though I've had to drop most of it now of course. +But now I'm so near the end that it doesn't matter. You can drop work at +eighty and keep calm and interested in life. You can't at sixty; it's +too young.... Mother knows that too, but there seems no work she can do. +She doesn't care for parish work as I do; she never learnt any art or +craft or handiwork, and doesn't want to; she was never much good at +intellectual work of any kind, and what mind she had as a girl--and her +father and I did try to train her to use it--ran all to seed during her +married life, so it's pretty nearly useless now. She spent herself on +your father and all you children, and now she's bankrupt." + +"Poor darling mother," Neville murmured. + +Grandmama nodded. "Just so. She's left to read novels, gossip with stupid +neighbours, look after me, write to you children, go on walks, and brood +over the past. She would have been quite happy like that forty years ago. +The young have high spirits, and can amuse themselves without work. She +never wanted work when she was eighteen. It's the old who need work. +They've lost their spring and their zest for life, and need something to +hold on to. It's all wrong, the way we arrange it--making the young work +and the old sit idle. It should be the other way about. Girls and boys +don't get bored with perpetual holidays; they live each moment of them +hard; they would welcome the eternal Sabbath; and indeed I trust we shall +all do that, as our youth is to be renewed like eagles. But old age on +this earth is far too sad to do nothing in. Remember that, child, when +your time comes." + +"Why, yes. But when one's married, you know, it's not so easy, keeping up +with a job. I only wish I could.... I don't _like_ being merely a married +woman. Rodney isn't merely a married man, after all.... But anyhow I'll +find something to amuse my old age, even if I can't work. I'll play +patience or croquet or the piano, or all three, and I'll go to theatres +and picture shows and concerts and meetings in the Albert Hall. Mother +doesn't do any of those things. And she _is_ so unhappy so often." + +"Oh very. Very unhappy. Very often.... She should come to church +more. This Unitarianism is depressing. No substance in it. I'd rather +be a Papist and keep God in a box. Or belong to the Army and sing +about rivers of blood. I daresay both are satisfying. All this +sermon-on-the-mount-but-no-miracle business is most saddening. Because +it's about impossibilities. You can receive a sacrament, and you can find +salvation, but you can't live the sermon on the mount. So of course it +makes people discontented." + +Grandmama, who often in the evenings became a fluent though drowsy +talker, might have wandered on like this till her bed-time, had not Mrs. +Hilary here appeared, in her dressing-gown. She sat down, and said, +trying to sound natural and not annoyed and failing. "I heard so much +talk, I thought I would come down and be in it. I thought you were coming +up to me again directly, Neville. I hadn't realised you meant to stay +down and talk to Grandmama instead." + +She hated Neville or any of them, but especially Neville, to talk +intimately to Grandmama; it made her jealous. She tried and tried not to +feel this, but it was never any use her fighting against jealousy, it was +too strong for her. + +Grandmama said placidly, "Neville and I were discussing different forms +of religion." + +"Is Neville thinking of adopting one of them?" Mrs. Hilary enquired, her +jealousy making her sound sarcastic and scornful. + +"No, mother. Not at present.... Come back to bed, and I'll sit with you, +and we'll talk. I don't believe you should be up." + +"Oh, I see I've interrupted. It was the last thing I meant. No, Neville, +I'll go back to my room alone. You go on with your talk with Grandmama. +I hate interrupting like this. I hoped you would have let me join. I +don't get much of you in these days, after all. But stay and talk to +Grandmama." + +That was the point at which Nan would have sworn to herself and gone down +to the beach. Neville did neither. She was gentle and soothing, and +Grandmama was infinitely untroubled, and Mrs. Hilary presently picked up +her spirits and went back to bed, and Neville spent the evening with her. +These little scenes had occurred so often that they left only a slight +impression on those concerned and slightest of all on Mrs. Hilary. + + +8 + +When Mrs. Hilary and Grandmama were both settled for the night (old and +elderly people settle for the night--other people go to bed) Neville went +down to the seashore and lay on the sand, watching the moon rise over the +sea. + +Beauty was there, rather than in elderly people. But in elderly people +was such pathos, such tragedy, such pity, that they lay like a heavy +weight on one's soul. If one could do anything to help.... + +To be aimless: to live on emotions and be by them consumed: that was +pitiful. To have done one's work for life, and to be in return cast aside +by life like a broken tool: that was tragic. + +The thing was to defy life; to fly in the face of the fool nature, break +her absurd rules, and wrest out of the breakage something for oneself by +which to live at the last. + +Neville flung her challenge to the black sea that slowly brightened under +the moon's rising eye. + + + + +CHAPTER III + +FAMILY LIFE + + +1 + +If you have broken off your medical studies at London University at the +age of twenty-one and resume them at forty-three, you will find them (one +is told) a considerably tougher job than you found them twenty-two +years before. Youth is the time to read for examinations; youth is used +to such foolishness, and takes it lightly in its stride. At thirty you +may be and probably are much cleverer than you were at twenty; you will +have more ideas and better ones, and infinitely more power of original +and creative thought; but you will not, probably, find it so easy to grip +and retain knowledge out of books and reproduce it to order. So the world +has ordained that youth shall spend laborious days in doing this, and +that middle age shall, in the main, put away these childish things, and +act and work on in spite of the information thus acquired. + +Neville Bendish, who was not even in the thirties, but so near the brink +of senile decay as the forties, entered her name once more at the London +University School of Medicine, and plunged forthwith into her interrupted +studies. Her aim was to spend this summer in reacquiring such knowledge +as should prepare her for the October session. And it was difficult +beyond her imaginings. It had not been difficult twenty-two years ago; +she had worked then with pleasure and interest, and taken examinations +with easy triumph. As Kay did now at Cambridge, only more so, because she +had been cleverer than Kay. She was a vain creature, and had believed +that cleverness of hers to be unimpaired by life, until she came to try. +She supposed that if she had spent her married life in head work, her +head would never have lost the trick of it. But she hadn't. She had spent +it on Rodney and Gerda and Kay, and the interesting, amusing life led by +the wife of a man in Rodney's position, which had brought her always into +contact with people and ideas. Much more amusing than grinding at +intellectual work of her own, but it apparently caused the brain to +atrophy. And she was, anyhow, tired of doing nothing in particular. After +forty you must have your job, you must be independent of other people's +jobs, of human and social contacts, however amusing and instructive. + +Rodney wasn't altogether pleased, though he understood. He wanted her +constant companionship and interest in his own work. + +"You've had twenty-two years of it, darling," Neville said. "Now I must +Live my own Life, as the Victorians used to put it. I must be a doctor; +quite seriously I must. I want it. It's my job. The only one I could ever +really have been much good at. The sight of human bones or a rabbit's +brain thrills me, as the sight of a platform and a listening audience +thrills you, or as pen and paper (I suppose) thrill the children. You +ought to be glad I don't want to write. Our family seems to run to that +as a rule." + +"But," Rodney said, "you don't mean ever to _practise_, surely? You won't +have time for it, with all the other things you do." + +"It's the other things I shan't have time for, old man. Sorry, but there +it is.... It's all along of mother, you see. She's such an object lesson +in how not to grow old. If she'd been a doctor, now...." + +"She couldn't have been a doctor, possibly. She hasn't the head. On the +other hand, you've got enough head to keep going without the slavery of +a job like this, even when you're old." + +"I'm not so sure. My brain isn't what it was; it may soften altogether +unless I do something with it before it's too late. Then there I shall +be, a burden to myself and everyone else.... After all, Rodney, you've +your job. Can't I have mine? Aren't you a modern, an intellectual and a +feminist?" + +Rodney, who believed with truth that he was all these things, gave in. + +Kay and Gerda, with the large-minded tolerance of their years, thought +mother's scheme was all right and rather sporting, if she really liked +the sort of thing, which they, for their part, didn't. + +So Neville recommenced medical study, finding it difficult beyond belief. +It made her head ache. + + +2 + +She envied Kay and Gerda, as they all three lay and worked in the garden, +with chocolates, cigarettes and Esau grouped comfortably round them. Kay +was reading economics for his Tripos, Gerda was drawing pictures for her +poems; neither, apparently, found any difficulty in concentrating on +their work when they happened to want to. + +What, Neville speculated, her thoughts, as usual, wandering from her +book, would become of Gerda? She was a clever child at her own things, +though with great gaps in her equipment of knowledge, which came from +ignoring at school those of her studies which had not seemed to her of +importance. She had firmly declined a University education; she had +decided that it was not a fruitful start in life, and was also afraid of +getting an academic mind. But at economic and social subjects, at drawing +and at writing, she worked without indolence, taking them earnestly, +still young enough to believe it important that she should attain +proficiency. + +Neville, on the other hand, was indolent. For twenty-two years she had +pleased herself, done what she wanted when she wanted to, played the +flirt with life. And now she had become soft-willed. Now, sitting in +the garden with her books, like Gerda and Kay, she would find that the +volumes had slipped from her knee and that she was listening to the +birds in the elms. Or she would fling them aside and get up and stretch +herself, and stroll into the little wood beyond the garden, or down to +the river, or she would propose tennis, or go up to town for some meeting +or concert or to see someone, though she didn't really want to, having +quite enough of London during that part of the year when they lived +there. She only went up now because otherwise she would be working. At +this rate she would never be ready to resume her medical course in the +autumn. + +"I will attend. I will. I will," she whispered to herself, a hand pressed +to each temple to constrain her mind. And for five minutes she would +attend, and then she would drift away on a sea of pleasant indolence, +and time fluttered away from her like an escaping bird, and she knew +herself for a light woman who would never excel. And Kay's brown head +was bent over his book, and raised sometimes to chaff or talk, and bent +over his books again, the thread of his attention unbroken by his easy +interruptions. And Gerda's golden head lay pillowed in her two clasped +hands, and she stared up at the blue through the green and did nothing +at all, for that was often Gerda's unashamed way. + +Often Rodney sat in the garden too and worked. And his work Neville felt +that she too could have done; it was work needing initiative and creative +thought, work suitable to his forty-five years, not cramming in knowledge +from books. Neville at times thought that she too would stand for +parliament one day. A foolish, childish game it was, and probably really +therefore more in her line than solid work. + + +3 + +Nan came down in July to stay with them. While she was there, Barry +Briscoe, who was helping with a W.E.A. summer school at Haslemere, would +come over on Sundays and spend the day with them. Not even the rains of +July 1920 made Barry weary or depressed. His eyes were bright behind his +glasses; his hands were usually full of papers, committee reports, +agenda, and the other foods he fed on, unsatiated and unabashed. Barry +was splendid. What ardour, what enthusiasm, burning like beacons in a +wrecked world! So wrecked a world that all but the very best and the very +worst had given it up as a bad job; the best because they hoped on, hoped +ever, the worst because of the pickings that fall to such as they out of +the collapsing ruins. But Barry, from the very heart of the ruin, would +cry "Here is what we must do," and his eyes would gleam with faith and +resolution, and he would form a committee and act. And when he saw how +the committee failed, as committees will, and how little good it all was, +he would laugh ruefully and try something else. Barry, as he would tell +you frankly--if you enquired, not otherwise,--believed in God. He was the +son of a famous Quaker philanthropist, and had been brought up to see +good works done and even garden cities built. I am aware that this must +prejudice many people against Barry; and indeed many people were annoyed +by certain aspects of him. But, as he was intellectually brilliant and +personally attractive, these people were as a rule ready to overlook what +they called the Quaker oats. Nan, who overlooked nothing, was frankly at +war with him on some points, and he with her. Nan, cynical, clear-eyed, +selfish and blasé, cared nothing for the salvaging of what remained of +the world out of the wreck, nothing for the I.L.P., less than nothing for +garden cities, philanthropy, the W.E.A., and God. And committees she +detested. Take them all away, and there remained Barry Briscoe, and for +him she did not care nothing. + +It was the oddest friendship, thought Neville, observing how, when Barry +was there, all Nan's perversities and moods fell away, leaving her as +agreeable as he. Her keen and ironic intelligence met his, and they so +understood each other that they finished each other's sentences, and +others present could only with difficulty keep up with them. Neville +believed them to be in love, but did not know whether they had ever +informed one another of the fact. They might still be pretending to +one another that their friendship was merely one of those affectionate +intellectual intimacies of which some of us have so many and which are +so often misunderstood. Or they might not. It was entirely their +business, either way. + +Barry was a chatterbox. He lay on the lawn and rooted up daisies and +made them into ridiculous chains, and talked and talked and talked. +Rodney and Neville and Nan talked too, and Kay would lunge in with the +crude and charming dogmatics of his years. But Gerda, chewing a blade of +grass, lay idle and withdrawn, her fair brows unpuckered by the afternoon +sun (because it was July, 1920), her blue eyes on Barry, who was so +different; or else she would be withdrawn but not idle, for she would be +drawing houses tumbling down, or men on stilts, fantastic and proud, or +goblins, or geese running with outstretched necks round a green. Or she +would be writing something like this: + + "I + Float on the tide, + In the rain. + I am the starfish vomited up by the retching cod. + He thinks + That I am he. + But I know. + That he is I. +For the creature is far greater than its god." + + +(Gerda was of those who think it is rather chic to have one rhyme in your +poem, just to show that you can do it.) + +"That child over there makes one feel so cheap and ridiculous, jabbering +away." + +That was Barry, breaking off to look at Gerda where she lay on her elbows +on a rug, idle and still. "And it's not," he went on, "that she doesn't +know about the subject, either. I've heard her on it." + +He threw the daisy chain he had just made at her, so that it alighted on +her head, hanging askew over one eye. + +"Just like a daisy bud herself, isn't she," he commented, and raced on, +forgetting her. + +Neat in her person and ways, Gerda adjusted the daisy chain so that it +ringed her golden head in an orderly circle. Like a daisy bud herself, +Rodney agreed in his mind, his eyes smiling at her, his affection, +momentarily turned that way, groping for the wild, remote little soul in +her that he only vaguely and paternally knew. The little pretty. And +clever, too, in her own queer, uneven way. But what _was_ she, with it +all? He knew Kay, the long, sweet-tempered boy, better. For Kay +represented highly civilized, passably educated, keen-minded youth. Gerda +wasn't highly civilized, was hardly passably educated, and keen would be +an inapt word for that queer, remote, woodland mind of hers.... Rodney +returned to more soluble problems. + + +4 + +Mrs. Hilary and Grandmama came to Windover. Mrs. Hilary would rather have +come without Grandmama, but Grandmama enjoyed the jaunt, as she called +it. For eighty-four, Grandmama was wonderfully sporting. They arrived on +Saturday afternoon, and rested after the journey, as is usually done by +people of Grandmama's age, and often by people of Mrs. Hilary's. Sunday +was full of such delicate clashings as occur when new people have joined +a party. Grandmama was for morning church, and Neville drove her to it in +the pony carriage. So Mrs. Hilary, not being able to endure that they +should go off alone together, had to go too, though she did not like +church, morning or other. + +She sighed over it at lunch. + +"So stuffy. So long. And the _hymns_...." + +But Grandmama said, "My dear, we had David and Goliath. What more do you +want?" + +During David and Goliath Grandmama's head had nodded approvingly, and her +thin old lips had half smiled at the valiant child with his swaggering +lies about bears and lions, at the gallant child and the giant. + +Mrs. Hilary, herself romantically sensible, as middle-aged ladies are, of +valour and high adventure, granted Grandmama David and Goliath, but still +repined at the hymns and the sermon. + +"Good words, my dear, good words," Grandmama said to that. For Grandmama +had been brought up not to criticise sermons, but had failed to bring up +Mrs. Hilary to the same self-abnegation. The trouble with Mrs. Hilary +was, and had always been, that she expected (even now) too much of life. +Grandmama expected only what she got. And Neville, wisest of all, had not +listened, for she too _expected_ what she would get if she did. She was +really rather like Grandmama, in her cynically patient acquiescence, only +brought up in a different generation, and not to hear sermons. In the +gulf of years between these two, Mrs. Hilary's restless, questing passion +fretted like unquiet waves. + + +5 + +"This Barry Briscoe," said Mrs. Hilary to Neville after lunch, as she +watched Nan and he start off for a walk together. "I suppose he's in love +with her?" + +"I suppose so. Something of the kind, anyhow." + +Mrs. Hilary said, discontentedly, "Another of Nan's married men, no +doubt. She _collects_ them." + +"No, Barry's not married." + +Mrs. Hilary looked more interested. "Not? Oh, then it may come to +something.... I wish Nan _would_ marry. It's quite time." + +"Nan isn't exactly keen to, you know. She's got so much else to do." + +"Fiddlesticks. You don't encourage her in such nonsense, I hope, +Neville." + +"I? It's not for me to encourage Nan in anything. She doesn't need it. +But as to marriage--yes, I think I wish she would do it, sometime, +whenever she's ready. It would give her something she hasn't got; +emotional steadiness, perhaps I mean. She squanders a bit, now. On the +other hand, her writing would rather go to the wall; if she went on with +it it would be against odds all the time." + +"What's writing?" enquired Mrs. Hilary, with a snap of her finger and +thumb. "_Writing!_" + +As this seemed too vague or too large a question for Neville to answer, +she did not try to do so, and Mrs. Hilary replied to it herself. + +"Mere showing off," she explained it. "Throwing your paltry ideas at a +world which doesn't want them. Writing like Nan's I mean. It's not as if +she wrote really good books." + +"Oh well. Who does that, after all? And what is a good book?" Here were +two questions which Mrs. Hilary, in her turn, could not answer. Because +most of the books which seemed good to her did not, as she well knew, +seem good to Neville, or to any of her children, and she wasn't going to +give herself away. She murmured something about Thackeray and Dickens, +which Neville let pass. + +"Writing's just a thing to do, as I see it," Neville went on. "A job, +like another. One must _have_ a job, you know. Not for the money, but for +the job's sake. And Nan enjoys it. But I daresay she'd enjoy marriage +too." + +"Does she love this man?" + +"I don't know. I shouldn't be surprised. She hasn't told me so." + +"Probably she doesn't, as he's single. Nan's so perverse. She will love +the wrong men, always." + +"You shouldn't believe all Rosalind tells you, mother. Rosalind has a too +vivid fancy and a scandalous tongue." + +Mrs. Hilary coloured a little. She did not like Neville to think that she +had been letting Rosalind gossip to her about Nan. + +"You know perfectly well, Neville, that I never trust a word Rosalind +says. I suppose I needn't rely on my daughter-in-law for news about my +own daughter's affairs. I can see things for myself. You can't deny that +Nan _has_ had compromising affairs with married men." + +"Compromising." Neville turned over the word, thoughtfully and +fastidiously. "Funny word, mother. I'm not sure I know what it means. +But I don't think anything ever compromises Nan; she's too free for +that.... Well, let's marry her off to Barry Briscoe. It will be a quaint +ménage, but I daresay they'd pull it off. Barry's delightful. I should +think even Nan could live with him." + +"He writes books about education, doesn't he? Education and democracy." + +"Well, he does. But there's always something, after all, against all +of us. And it might be worse. It might be poetry or fiction or +psycho-analysis." + +Neville said psycho-analysis in order to start another hare and take +her mother's attention off Nan's marriage before the marriage became +crystallised out of all being. But Mrs. Hilary for the first time (for +usually she was reliable) did not rise. She looked thoughtful, even a +shade embarrassed, and said vaguely, "Oh, people must write, of course. +If it isn't one thing it will be another." After a moment she added, +"This psycho-analysis, Neville," saying the word with distaste indeed, +but so much more calmly than usual that Neville looked at her in +surprise. "This psycho-analysis. I suppose it does make wonderful cures, +doesn't it, when all is said?" + +"Cures--oh yes, wonderful cures. Shell-shock, insomnia, nervous +depression, lumbago, suicidal mania, family life--anything." Neville's +attention was straying to Grandmama, who was coming slowly towards +them down the path, leaning on her stick, so she did not see Mrs. +Hilary's curious, lit eagerness. + +"But how _can_ they cure all those things just by talking indecently +about sex?" + +"Oh mother, they don't. You're so crude, darling. You've got hold of +only one tiny part of it--the part practised by Austrian professors on +Viennese degenerates. Many of the doctors are really sane and brilliant. +I know of cases...." + +"Well," said Mrs. Hilary, quickly and rather crossly, "I can't talk about +it before Grandmama." + +Neville got up to meet Grandmama, put a hand under her arm, and conducted +her to her special chair beneath the cedar. You had to help and conduct +someone so old, so frail, so delightful as Grandmama, even if Mrs. Hilary +did wish it were being done by any hand than yours. Mrs. Hilary in fact +made a movement to get to Grandmama first, but sixty-three does not rise +from low deck chairs so swiftly as forty-three. So she had to watch her +daughter leading her mother, and to note once more with a familiar pang +the queer, unmistakable likeness between the smooth, clear oval face and +the old wrinkled one, the heavily lashed deep blue eyes and the old faded +ones, the elfish, close-lipped, dimpling smile and the old, elfish, +thin-lipped, sweet one. Neville, her Neville, flower of her flock, her +loveliest, first and best, her dearest but for Jim, her pride, and nearer +than Jim, because of sex, which set Jim on a platform to be worshipped, +but kept Neville on a level to be loved, to be stormed at when storms +rose, to be clung to when all God's waters went over one's head. Oh +Neville, that you should smile at Grandmama like that, that Grandmama +should, as she always had, steal your confidence that should have been +all your mother's! That you should perhaps even talk over your mother +with Grandmama (as if she were something further from each of you than +each from the other), pushing her out of the close circle of your +intimacy into the region of problems to be solved.... Oh God, how bitter +a thing to bear! + +The garden, the summer border of bright flowers, swam in tears.... Mrs. +Hilary turned away her face, pretending to be pulling up daisies from the +grass. But, unlike the ostrich, she well knew that they always saw. To +the children, as to Grandmama, they were an old story, those hot, facile, +stinging tears of Mrs. Hilary's that made Neville weary with pity, and +Nan cold with scorn, and Rosalind happy with lazy malice, and Pamela +bright and cool and firm, like a woman doctor. Only Grandmama took them +unmoved, for she had always known them. + + +6 + +Grandmama, settled in her special chair, remarked on the unusual (for +July) fineness of the day, and requested Neville to read them the chief +items of news in the Observer, which she had brought out with her. So +Neville read about the unfortunate doings of the Supreme Council at Spa, +and Grandmama said "Poor creatures," tolerantly, as she had said when +they were at Paris, and again at San Remo; and about General Dyer and +the Amritsar debate, and Grandmama said "Poor man. But one mustn't treat +one's fellow creatures as he did, even the poor Indian, who, I quite +believe, is intolerably provoking. I see the Morning Post is getting up +a subscription for him, contributed to by Those Who Remember Cawnpore, +Haters of Trotzky, Montague and Lansbury, Furious Englishwoman, and many +other generous and emotional people. That is kind and right. We should +not let even our more impulsive generals starve." + +Then Neville read about Ireland, which was just then in a disturbed +state, and Grandmama said it certainly seemed restless, and mentioned +with what looked like a gleam of hope that they would never return, that +her friends the Dormers were there. Mrs. Hilary shot out, with still +averted face, that the whole of Ireland ought to be sunk to the bottom +of the sea, it was more bother than it was worth. This was her usual and +only contribution towards a solution of the Irish question. + +Then Mr. Churchill and Russia had their turn (it was the time of the +Golovin trouble) and Grandmama said people seemed always to get so +very sly, as well as so very much annoyed and excited, whenever Russia +was mentioned, and that seemed like a sign that God did not mean us, +in this country, to mention it much, perhaps not even to think of it. +She personally seldom did. Then Neville read a paragraph about the +Anglo-Catholic Congress, and about that Grandmama was for the first time +a little severe, for Grandpapa had not been an Anglo-Catholic, and indeed +in his day there were none of this faith. You were either High Church, +Broad Church or Evangelical. (Unless, of course, you had been led astray +by Huxley and Darwin and were nothing whatever.) Grandpapa had been +Broad, with a dash of Evangelical; or perhaps it was the other way round; +but anyhow Grandpapa had not been High Church, or, as they called it in +his time, Tractarian. So Grandmama enquired, snippily, "Who _are_ these +Anglo-Catholics, my dear? One seems to hear so much of them in these +days. I can't help thinking they are rather _noisy_...." as she might +have spoken of Bolshevists, or the Labour Party, or the National Party, +or Sinn Fein, or any other of the organisations of which Grandpapa had +been innocent. "There are so many of these new things," said Grandmama, +"I daresay modern young people like Gerda and Kay are quite in with it +all." + +"I'm afraid," said Neville, "that Gerda and Kay are secularists at +present." + +"Poor children," Grandmama said gently. Secularism made her think of +the violent and vulgar Mr. Bradlaugh. It was, in her view, a noisier +thing even than Anglo-Catholicism. "Well, they have plenty of time to +get over it and settle down to something quieter." Broad-Evangelical she +meant, or Evangelical-Broad; and Neville smiled at the idea of Gerda, +in particular, being either of these. She believed that if Gerda were to +turn from secularism it would either be to Anglo-Catholicism or to Rome. +Or Gerda might become a Quaker, or a lone mystic contemplating in woods, +but a Broad-Evangelical, no. There was a delicate, reckless extravagance +about Gerda which would prohibit that. If you came to that, what girl or +boy did, in these days, fall into any of the categories which Grandmama +and Grandpapa had known, whether religiously or politically? You might as +well suggest that Gerda and Kay should be Tories or Whigs. + +And by this time they had given Mrs. Hilary so much time to recover her +poise that she could join in, and say that Anglo-Catholics were very +ostentatious people, and only gave all that money which they had, +undoubtedly, given at the recent Congress in order to make a splash +and show off. + +"Tearing off their jewellery in public like that," said Mrs. Hilary, in +disgust, as she might have said tearing off their chemises, "and gold +watches lying in piles on the collection table, still ticking...." She +felt it was indecent that the watches should have still been ticking; it +made the thing an orgy, like a revival meeting, or some cannibal rite at +which victims were offered up still breathing.... + +So much for the Anglo-Catholic Congress. The Church Congress was better, +being more decent and in order, though Mrs. Hilary knew that the whole +established Church was wrong. + +And so they came to literature, to a review of Mr. Conrad's new novel +and a paragraph about a famous annual literary prize. Grandmama thought +it very nice that young writers should be encouraged by cash prizes. +"Not," as she added, "that there seems any danger of any of them being +discouraged, even without that.... But Nan and Kay and Gerda ought to go +in for it. It would be a nice thing for them to work for." + +Then Grandmama, settling down with her pleased old smile to something +which mattered more than the news in the papers, said "And now, dear, +I want to hear all about this friendship of Nan's and this nice young +Mr. Briscoe." + +So Neville again had to answer questions about that. + + +7 + +Mrs. Hilary, abruptly leaving them, trailed away by herself to the house. +Since she mightn't have Neville to herself for the afternoon she wouldn't +stay and share her. But when she reached the house and looked out at them +through the drawing-room windows, their intimacy stabbed her with a pang +so sharp that she wished she had stayed. + +Besides, what was there to do indoors? No novels lay about that looked +readable, only "The Rescue" (and she couldn't read Conrad, he was so +nautical) and a few others which looked deficient in plot and as if they +were trying to be clever. She turned them over restlessly, and put them +down again. She wasn't sleepy, and hated writing letters. She wanted +someone to talk to, and there was no one, unless she rang for the +housemaid. Oh, this dreadful ennui.... Did anyone in the world know it +but her? The others all seemed busy and bright. That was because they +were young. And Grandmama seemed serene and bright. That was because she +was old, close to the edge of life, and sat looking over the gulf into +space, not caring. But for Mrs. Hilary there was ennui, and the dim, +empty room in the cold grey July afternoon. The empty stage; no audience, +no actors. Only a lonely, disillusioned actress trailing about it, hungry +for the past.... A book Gerda had been reading lay on the table. "The +Breath of Life," it was called, which was surely just what Mrs. Hilary +wanted. She picked it up, opened it, turned the pages, then, tucking it +away out of sight under her arm, left the room and went upstairs. + +"Many wonderful cures," Neville had said. And had mentioned depression +as one of the diseases cured. What, after all, if there was something in +this stuff which she had never tried to understand, had always dismissed, +according to her habit, with a single label? "Labels don't help. Labels +get you nowhere." How often the children had told her that, finding her +terse terminology that of a shallow mind, endowed with inadequate +machinery for acquiring and retaining knowledge, as indeed it was. + + +8 + +Gerda, going up to Mrs. Hilary's room to tell her about tea, found her +asleep on the sofa, with "The Breath of Life" fallen open from her hand. +A smile flickered on Gerda's delicate mouth, for she had heard her +grandmother on the subject of psycho-analysis, and here she was, having +taken to herself the book which Gerda was reading for her Freud circle. +Gerda read a paragraph on the open page. + +"It will often be found that what we believe to be unhappiness is really, +in the secret and unconscious self, a joy, which the familiar process of +inversion sends up into our consciousness in the form of grief. If, for +instance, a mother bewails the illness of her child, it is because her +unconscious self is experiencing the pleasure of importance, of being +condoled and sympathised with, as also that of having her child (if it is +a male) entirely for the time dependent on her ministrations. If, on the +other hand, the sick child is her daughter, her grief is in reality a +hope that this, her young rival, may die, and leave her supreme in the +affections of her husband. If, in either of these cases, she can be +brought to face and understand this truth, her grief will invert itself +again and become a conscious joy...." + +"I wonder if Grandmother believes all that," speculated Gerda, who did. + +Then she said aloud, "Grandmother" (that was what Gerda and Kay called +her, distinguishing her thus from Great-Grandmama), "tea's ready." + +Mrs. Hilary woke with a start. "The Breath of Life" fell on the floor +with a bang. Mrs. Hilary looked up and saw Gerda and blushed. + +"I've been asleep.... I took up this ridiculous book of yours to look at. +The most absurd stuff.... How can you children muddle your minds with it? +Besides, it isn't at all a _nice_ book for you, my child. I came on +several very queer things...." + +But the candid innocence of Gerda's wide blue eyes on hers transcended +"nice" and "not nice."... You might as well talk like that to a wood +anemone, or a wild rabbit.... If her grandmother had only known, Gerda at +twenty had discussed things which Mrs. Hilary, in all her sixty-three +years, had never heard mentioned. Gerda knew of things of which Mrs. +Hilary would have indignantly and sincerely denied the existence. Gerda's +young mind was a cess-pool, a clear little dew-pond, according to how you +looked at it. Gerda and Gerda's friends knew no inhibitions of speech or +thought. They believed that the truth would make them free, and the truth +about life is, from some points of view, a squalid and gross thing. But +better look it in the face, thought Gerda and her contemporaries, than +pretend it isn't there, as elderly people do. + +"I don't want you to pretend anything isn't there, darling," Neville, +between the two generations, had said to Gerda once. "Only it seems to me +that some of you children have one particular kind of truth too heavily +on your minds. It seems to block the world for you." + +"You mean sex," Gerda had told her, bluntly. "Well, it runs all through +life, mother. What's the use of hiding from it? The only way to get even +with it is to face it. And _use_ it." + +"Face it and use it by all means. All I meant was, it's a question of +emphasis. There _are_ other things...." + +Of course Gerda knew that. There was drawing, and poetry, and beauty, and +dancing, and swimming, and music, and politics, and economics. Of course +there were other things; no doubt about that. They were like songs, like +colour, like sunrise, like flowers, these other things. But the basis of +life was the desire of the male for the female and of the female for the +male. And this had been warped and smothered and talked down and made a +furtive, shameful thing, and it must be brought out into the day.... + +Neville smiled to hear all this tripping sweetly off Gerda's lips. + +"All right, darling, don't mind me. Go ahead and bring it out into the +day, if you think the subject really needs more airing than it already +gets. I should have thought myself it got lots, and always had." + +And there they were; they talked at cross purposes, these two, across the +gulf of twenty years, and with the best will in the world could not hope +to understand, either of them, what the other was really at. And now here +was Gerda, in Mrs. Hilary's bedroom, looking across a gulf of forty years +and saying nothing at all, for she knew it would be of no manner of use, +since words don't carry as far as that. + +So all she said was "Tea's ready, Grandmother." + +And Mrs. Hilary supposed that Gerda hadn't, probably, noticed or +understood those very queer things she had come upon while reading "The +Breath of Life." + +They went down to tea. + + + + +CHAPTER IV + +ROOTS + + +1 + +It was a Monday evening, late in July. Pamela Hilary, returning from a +Care Committee meeting, fitted her latch-key into the door of the rooms +in Cow Lane which she shared with Frances Carr, and let herself into the +hot dark passage hall. + +A voice from a room on the right called "Come along, my dear. Your pap's +ready." + +Pamela entered the room on the right. A pleasant, Oxfordish room, +with the brown paper and plain green curtains of the college days of +these women, and Dürer engravings, and sweet peas in a bowl, and Frances +Carr stirring bread and milk over a gas ring. Frances Carr was small +and thirty-eight, and had a nice brown face and a merry smile. Pamela +was a year older and tall and straight and pale, and her ash-brown hair +swept smoothly back from a broad white forehead. Her grey eyes regarded +the world shrewdly and pleasantly through pince-nez. Pamela was +distinguished-looking, and so well-bred that you never got through her +guard; she never hurt the feelings of others or betrayed her own. +Competent she was, too, and the best organizer in Hoxton, which is to say +a great deal, Hoxton needing and getting, one way and another, a good +deal of organisation. Some people complained that they couldn't get to +know Pamela, the guard was too complete. But Frances Carr knew her. + +Frances Carr had piled cushions in a deep chair for her. + +"Lie back and be comfy, old thing, and I'll give you your pap." + +She handed Pamela the steaming bowl, and proceeded to take off her +friend's shoes and substitute moccasin slippers. It was thus that she and +Pamela had mothered one another at Somerville eighteen years ago, and +ever since. They had the maternal instinct, like so many women. + +"Well, how went it? How was Mrs. Cox?" + +Mrs. Cox was the chairwoman of the Committee. All committee members know +that the chairman or woman is a ticklish problem, if not a sore burden. + +"Oh well...." Pamela dismissed Mrs. Cox with half a smile. "Might have +been worse.... Oh look here, Frank. About the library fund...." + +The front door-bell tingled through the house. + +Frances Carr said "Oh hang. All right, I'll see to it. If it's Care or +Continuation or Library, I shall send it away. You're not going to do any +more business to-night." + +She went to the door, and there, her lithe, drooping slimness outlined +against the gas-lit street, stood Nan Hilary. + +"Oh, Nan.... But what a late call. Yes, Pamela's just in from a +committee. Tired to death; she's had neuralgia all this week. She mustn't +sit up late, really. But come along in." + + +2 + +Nan came into the room, her dark eyes blinking against the gaslight, her +small round face pale and smutty. She bent to kiss Pamela, then curled +herself up in a wicker chair and yawned. + +"The night is damp and dirty. No, no food, thanks. I've dined. After +dinner I was bored, so I came along to pass the time.... When are you +taking your holidays, both of you? It's time." + +"Pamela's going for hers next week," said Frances Carr, handing Nan a +cigarette. + +"On the contrary," said Pamela, "Frances is going for _hers_ next week. +Mine is to be September this year." + +"Now, we've had all this out before, Pam, you know we have. You +faithfully promised to take August if your neuralgia came on again, and +it has. Tell her she is to, Nan." + +"She wouldn't do it the more if I did," Nan said, lazily. These +competitions in unselfishness between Pamela and Frances Carr always +bored her. There was no end to them. Women are so terrifically +self-abnegatory; they must give, give, give, to someone all the +time. Women, that is, of the mothering type, such as these. They must +be forever cherishing something, sending someone to bed with bread and +milk, guarding someone from fatigue. + +"It ought to be their children," thought Nan, swiftly. "But they pour it +out on one another instead." + +Having put her hand on the clue, she ceased to be interested in the +exhibition. It was, in fact, no more and no less interesting than if it +_had_ been their children. Most sorts of love were rather dull, to the +spectator. Pamela and Frances were all right; decent people, not sloppy, +not gushing, but fine and direct and keen, though rather boring when they +began to talk to each other about some silly old thing that had happened +in their last year at Oxford, or their first year, or on some reading +party. Some people re-live their lives like this; others pass on their +way, leaving the past behind. They were all right, Pamela and Frances. +But all this mothering.... + +Yet how happy they were, these two, in their useful, competent work and +devoted friendship. They had achieved contacts with life, permanent +contacts. Pamela, in spite of her neuralgia, expressed calm and entirely +unbumptious attainment, Nan feverish seeking. For Nan's contacts with +life were not permanent, but suddenly vivid and passing; the links broke +and she flew off at a tangent. Nan had lately been taken with a desperate +fear of becoming like her mother, when she was old and couldn't write any +more, or love any more men. Horrible thought, to be like Mrs. Hilary, +roaming, questing, feverishly devoured by her own impatience of life.... + +In here it was cool and calm, soft and blurred with the smoke of their +cigarettes. Frances Carr left them to talk, telling them not to be late. +When she had gone, Pamela said "I thought you were still down at +Windover, Nan." + +"Left it on Saturday.... Mother and Grandmama had been there a week. +I couldn't stick it any longer. Mother was outrageously jealous, of +course." + +"Neville and Grandmama? Poor mother." + +"Oh yes, poor mother. But it gets on my nerves. Neville's an angel. I +can't think how she sticks it. For that matter, I never know how she puts +up with Rodney's spoilt fractiousness.... And altogether life was a bit +of a strain ... no peace. And I wanted some peace and solitude, to make +up my mind in." + +"Are you making it up now?" Pamela, mildly interested, presumed it was a +man. + +"Trying to. It isn't made yet. That's why I roam about your horrible +slums in the dark. I'm considering; getting things into focus. Seeing +them all round." + +"Well, that sounds all right." + +"Pam." Nan leant forward abruptly, her cigarette between two brown +fingers. "Are you happy? Do you enjoy your life?" + +Pamela withdrew, lightly, inevitably, behind guards. + +"Within reason, yes. When committees aren't too tiresome, and the +accounts balance, and...." + +"Oh, give me a straight answer, Pam. You dependable, practical people are +always frivolous about things that matter. Are you happy? Do you feel +right-side-up with life?" + +"In the main--yes." Pamela was more serious this time. "One's doing one's +job, after all. And human beings are interesting." + +"But I've got that too. My job, and human beings.... Why do I feel all +tossed about, like a boat on a choppy sea? Oh, I know life's furiously +amusing and exciting--of course it is. But I want something solid. You've +got it, somehow." + +Nan broke off and thought "It's Frances Carr she's got. That's permanent. +That goes on. Pamela's anchored. All these people I have--these men and +women--they're not anchors, they're stimulants, and how different that +is!" + +They looked at each other in silence. Pamela said then, "You don't look +well, child." + +"Oh--" Nan threw her cigarette end impatiently into the grate. "I'm all +right. I'm tired, and I've been thinking too much. That never suits +me.... Thanks, Pam. You've helped me to make up my mind. I like you, +Pam," she added dispassionately, "because you're so gentlewomanly. You +don't ask questions, or pry. Most people do." + +"Surely not. Not most decent people." + +"Most people aren't decent. You think they are. You've not lived in my +set--nor in Rosalind's. You're still fresh from Oxford--stuck all over +with Oxford manners and Oxford codes. You don't know the raddled gossip +who fishes for your secrets and then throws them about for fun, like +tennis balls." + +"I know Rosalind, thank you, Nan." + +"Oh, Rosalind's not the only one, though she'll do. Anyhow I've trapped +you into saying an honest and unkind thing about her, for once; that's +something. Wish you weren't such a dear old fraud, Pammie." + +Frances Carr came back, in her dressing gown, looking about twenty-three, +her brown hair in two plaits. + +"Pamela, you _mustn't_ sit up any more. I'm awfully sorry, Nan, but her +head...." + +"Right oh. I'm off. Sorry I've kept you up, Pammie. Good-night. +Good-night, Frances. Yes, I shall get the bus at the corner. Good-night." + +The door closed after Nan, shutting in the friends and their friendship +and their anchored peace. + + +3 + +Off went Nan on the bus at the corner, whistling softly into the night. +Like a bird her heart rose up and sang, at the lit pageant of London +swinging by. Queer, fantastic, most lovely life! Sordid, squalid, +grotesque life, bitter as black tea, sour as stale wine! Gloriously +funny, brilliant as a flower-bed, bright as a Sitwell street in hell-- + + "(Down in Hell's gilded street + Snow dances fleet and sweet, + Bright as a parakeet....)" + +unsteady as a swing-boat, silly as a drunkard's dream, tragic as a poem +by Massfield.... To have one's corner in it, to run here and there about +the city, grinning like a dog--what more did one want? Human adventures, +intellectual adventures, success, even a little fame, men and women, +jokes, laughter and love, dancing and a little drink, and the fields and +mountains and seas beyond--what more did one want? + +Roots. That was the metaphor that had eluded Nan. To be rooted and +grounded in life, like a tree. Someone had written something about that. + + "Let your manhood be + Forgotten, your whole purpose seem + The purpose of a simple tree + Rooted in a quiet dream...." + +Roots. That was what Neville had, what Pamela had; Pamela, with her +sensible wisdom that so often didn't apply because Pamela was so far +removed from Nan's conditions of life and Nan's complicated, unstable +temperament. Roots. Mrs. Hilary's had been torn up out of the ground.... + +"I'm like mother." That was Nan's nightmare thought. Not intellectually, +for Nan's brain was sharp and subtle and strong and fine, Mrs. Hilary's +was an amorphous, undeveloped muddle. But where, if not from Mrs. Hilary, +did Nan get her black fits of melancholy, her erratic irresponsible +gaieties, her passionate angers, her sharp jealousies and egoisms? The +clever young woman saw herself in the stupid elderly one; saw herself +slipping down the years to that. That was why, where Neville and Pamela +and their brothers pitied, Nan, understanding her mother's bad moods +better than they, was vicious with hate and scorn. For she knew these +things through and through. Not the sentimentality; she didn't know that, +being cynical and cool except when stirred to passion. And not the +posing, for Nan was direct and blunt. But the feverish angers and the +black boredom--they were hers. + +Nevertheless Nan's heart sang into the night. For she had made up her +mind, and was at peace. + +She had held life at arm's length, pushed it away, for many months, +hiding from it, running from it because she didn't with the whole of her, +want it. Again and again she had changed a dangerous subject, headed for +safety, raced for cover. The week-end before this last, down at Windover, +it had been like a game of hide and seek.... And then she had come away, +without warning, and he, going down there this last week-end, had not +found her, because she couldn't meet him again till she had decided. And +now she had decided. + +How unsuited a pair they were, in many ways, and what fun they would +have! Unsuited ... what did it matter? His queer, soft, laughing voice +was in her ears, his lean, clever, merry face swam on the rushing tides +of night. His untidy, careless clothes, the pockets bulging with books, +papers and tobacco, his glasses, that left a red mark on either side of +the bridge of his nose, his easily ruffled brown hair--they all merged +for her into the infinitely absurd, infinitely delightful, infinitely +loved Barry, who was going to give her roots. + +She was going away, down into Cornwall, in two days. She would stay in +rooms by herself at Marazion and finish her book and bathe and climb, and +lie in the sun (if only it came out) and sleep and eat and drink. There +was nothing in the world like your own company; you could be purely +animal then. And in a month Gerda and Kay were coming down, and they were +going to bicycle along the coast, and she would ask Barry to come too, +and when Barry came she would let him say what he liked, with no more +fencing, no more cover. Down by the green edge of the Cornish sea they +would have it out--"grip hard, become a root ..." become men as trees +walking, rooted in a quiet dream. Dream? No, reality. This was the dream, +this world of slipping shadows and hurrying gleams of heartbreaking +loveliness, through which one roamed, a child chasing butterflies which +ever escaped, or which, if captured, crumbled to dust in one's clutching +hands. Oh for something strong and firm to hold. Oh Barry, Barry, these +few more weeks of dream, of slipping golden shadows and wavering lights, +and then reality. Shall I write, thought Nan, "Dear Barry, you may ask me +to marry you now." Impossible. Besides, what hurry was there? Better to +have these few more gay and lovely weeks of dream. They would be the +last. + +Has Barry squandered and spilt his love about as I mine? Likely enough. +Likely enough not. Who cares? Perhaps we shall tell one another all these +things sometime; perhaps, again, we shan't. What matter? One loves, and +passes on, and loves again. One's heart cracks and mends; one cracks the +hearts of others, and these mend too. That is--_inter alia_--what life is +for. If one day you want the tale of my life, Barry, you shall have it; +though that's not what life is for, to make a tale about. So thrilling in +the living, so flat and stale in the telling--oh let's get on and live +some more of it, lots and lots more, and let the dead past bury its dead. + +Between a laugh and a sleepy yawn, Nan jumped from the bus at the corner +of Oakley Street. + + + + +CHAPTER V + +SEAWEED + + +1 + +"Complexes," read Mrs. Hilary, "are of all sorts and sizes." And +there was a picture of four of them in a row, looking like netted cherry +trees whose nets have got entangled with each other. So that was what +they were like. Mrs. Hilary had previously thought of them as being more +of the nature of noxious insects, or fibrous growths with infinite +ramifications. Slim young trees. Not so bad, then, after all. + +"A complex is characterised, and its elements are bound together by +a specific emotional tone, experienced as feeling when the complex +is aroused. Apart from the mental processes and corresponding actions +depending on purely rational mental systems, it is through complexes that +the typical mental process (the specific response) works, the particular +complex representing the particular set of mental elements involved in +the process which begins with perception and cognition and ends with the +corresponding conation." + +Mrs. Hilary read it three times, and the third time she understood it, +if possible, less than the first. Complexes seemed very difficult +things, and she had never been clever. Any of her children, or even her +grandchildren, would understand it all in a moment. If you have such +things--and everyone has, she had learnt--you ought to be able to +understand them. Yet why? You didn't understand your bodily internal +growths; you left them to your doctor. There were doctors who explained +your complexes to you.... What a revolting idea! It would surely make +them worse, not better. (Mrs. Hilary still vaguely regarded these growths +as something of the nature of cancer.) + +Sometimes she imagined herself a patient, interviewing one of these odd +doctors. A man doctor, not a woman; she didn't trust woman doctors of any +kind; she had always been thankful that Neville had given it up and +married instead. + +"Insomnia," she would say, in these imaginary interviews, because that +was so easy to start off with. + +"You have something on your mind," said the doctor. "You suffer from +depression." + +"Yes, I know that. I was coming to that. That is what you must cure for +me." + +"You must think back.... What is the earliest thing you can remember? +Perhaps your baptism? Possibly even your first bath? It has been +done...." + +"You may be right. I remember some early baths. One of them may have been +the first of all, who knows? What of it, doctor?" + +But the doctor, in her imaginings, would at this point only make notes in +a big book and keep silence, as if he had thought as much. Perhaps, no +more than she, he did not know what of it. + +Mrs. Hilary could hear herself protesting. + +"I am _not_ unhappy because of my baptism, which, so far as I know, went +off without a hitch. I am _not_ troubled by my first bath, nor by any +later bath. Indeed, indeed you must believe me, it is not that at all." + +"The more they protest," the psycho-analyst would murmur, "the more it is +so." For that was what Dr. Freud and Dr. Jung always said, so that there +was no escape from their aspersions. + +"Why do _you_ think you are so often unhappy?" he would ask her, to +draw her out and she would reply, "Because my life is over. Because I +am an old discarded woman, thrown away onto the dust-heap like a broken +egg-shell. Because my husband is gone and my children are gone, and they +do not love me as I love them. Because I have only my mother to live +with, and she is calm and cares for nothing but only waits for the end. +Because I have nothing to do from morning till night. Because I am +sixty-three, and that is too old and too young. Because life is empty +and disappointing, and I am tired, and drift like seaweed tossed to and +fro by the waves." + +It sounded indeed enough, and tears would fill her eyes as she said it. +The psycho-analyst would listen, passive and sceptical but intelligent. + +"Not one of your reasons is the correct one. But I will find the true +reason for you and expose it, and after that it will trouble you no more. +Now you shall relate to me the whole history of your life." + +What a comfortable moment! Mrs. Hilary, when she came to it in her +imagined interview, would draw a deep breath and settle down and begin. +The story of her life! How absorbing a thing to relate to someone who +really wanted to hear it! How far better than the confessional--for +priests, besides requiring only those portions and parcels of the +dreadful past upon which you had least desire to dwell, had almost +certainly no interest at all in hearing even these, but only did it +because they had to, and you would be boring them. They might even say, +as one had said to Rosalind during the first confession which had +inaugurated her brief ecclesiastical career, and to which she had looked +forward with some interest as a luxurious re-living of a stimulating +past--"No details, please." Rosalind, who had had many details ready, +had come away disappointed, feeling that the Church was not all she +had hoped. But the psycho-analyst doctor would really want to hear +details. Of course he would prefer the kind of detail which Rosalind +would have been able to furnish out of her experience, for that was +what psycho-analysts recognised as true life. Mrs. Hilary's experiences +were pale in comparison; but psycho-analysts could and did make much out +of little, bricks without clay. She would tell him all about the +children--how sweet they were as babies, how Jim had nearly died of +croup, Neville of bronchitis and Nan of convulsions, whereas Pamela had +always been so well, and Gilbert had suffered only from infant debility. +She would relate how early and how unusually they had all given signs of +intelligence; how Jim had always loved her more than anything in the +world, until his marriage, and she him (this was a firm article in Mrs. +Hilary's creed); how Neville had always cherished and cared for her, and +how she loved Neville beyond anything in the world but Jim; how Gilbert +had disappointed her by taking to writing instead of to a man's job, and +then by marrying Rosalind; how Nan had always been tiresome and perverse. +And before the children came--all about Richard, and their courtship, and +their young married life, and how he had loved and cared for her beyond +anything, incredibly tenderly and well, so that all those who saw it had +wondered, and some had said he spoilt her. And back before Richard, to +girlhood and childhood, to parents and nursery, to her brother and +sister, now dead. How she had fought with her sister because they had +both always wanted the same things and got in one another's way! The +jealousies, the bitter, angry tears! + +To pour it all out--what comfort! To feel that someone was interested, +even though it might be only as a case. The trouble about most people was +that they weren't interested. They didn't mostly, even pretend they were. + + +2 + +She tried Barry Briscoe, the week-end he came down and found Nan gone. +Barry Briscoe was by way of being interested in people and things in +general; he had that kind of alert mind and face. + +He came up from the tennis lawn, where he had been playing a single with +Rodney, and sat down by her and Grandmama in the shade of the cedar, hot +and friendly and laughing and out of breath. Now Neville and Rodney were +playing Gerda and Kay. Grandmama's old eyes, pleased behind their +glasses, watched the balls fly and thought everyone clever who got one +over the net. She hadn't played tennis in her youth. Mrs. Hilary's more +eager, excited eyes watched Neville driving, smashing, volleying, +returning, and thought how slim and young a thing she looked, to have all +that power stored in her. She was fleeter than Gerda, she struck harder +than Kay, she was trickier than all of them, the beloved girl. That was +the way Mrs. Hilary watched tennis, thinking of the players, not of the +play. It is the way some people talk, thinking of the talkers, not of +what they are saying. It is the personal touch, and a way some women +have. + +But Barry Briscoe, watching cleverly through his bright glasses, was +thinking of the strokes. He was an unconscious person. He lived in +moments. + +"Well done, Gerda," Grandmama would call, when Gerda, cool and +nonchalant, dropped, a sitter at Rodney's feet, and when Rodney smashed +it back she said, "But father's too much for you." + +"Gerda's a _scandal_," Barry said. "She doesn't care. She can hit all +right when she likes. She thinks about something else half the time." + +His smile followed the small white figure with its bare golden head that +gleamed in the grey afternoon. An absurd, lovable, teasable child, he +found her. + +Grandmama's maid came to wheel her down to the farm. Grandmama had +promised to go and see the farmer's wife and new baby. Grandmama always +saw wives and new babies. They never palled. You would think that by +eighty-four she had seen enough new babies, more than enough, that she +had seen through that strange business and could now take it for granted, +the stream of funny new life cascading into the already so full world. +But Grandmama would always go and see it, handle it, admire it, peer at +it with her smiling eyes that had seen so many lives come and go and that +must know by now that babies are born to trouble as naturally as the +sparks fly upward. + +So off Grandmama rode in her wheeled chair, and Mrs. Hilary and Barry +Briscoe were left alone. Mrs. Hilary and this pleasant, brown, friendly +young man, who cared for Workers' Education and Continuation Schools, and +Penal Reform, and Garden Cities, and Getting Things Done by Acts of +Parliament, about all which things Mrs. Hilary knew and cared nothing. +But vaguely she felt that they sprang out of and must include a care for +human beings as such, and that therefore Barry Briscoe would listen if +she told him things. + +So (it came out of lying on grass, which Barry was doing) she told him +about the pneumonia of Neville as a child, how they had been staying in +Cornwall, miles from a doctor, and without Mr. Hilary, and Mrs. Hilary +had been in despair; how Jim, a little chap of twelve, had ridden off on +his pony in the night to fetch the doctor, across the moors. A long +story; stories about illnesses always are. Mrs. Hilary got worked up and +excited as she told it; it came back to her so vividly, the dreadful +night. + +"He was a Dr. Chalmers, and so kind. When he saw Neville he was +horrified; by that time she was delirious. He said if Jim hadn't gone +straight to him but had waited till the morning, it might have been too +late...." + +"Too late: quite. ..." Barry Briscoe had an understanding, sympathetic +grip of one's last few words. So much of the conversation of others +eludes one, but one should hold fast the last few words. + +"Oh played, Gerda: did you that time, Bendish...." + +Gerda had put on, probably by accident, a sudden, absurd twist that had +made a fool of Rodney. + +That was what Barry Briscoe was really attending to, the silly game. This +alert, seemingly interested, attentive young man had a nice manner, that +led you on, but he didn't really care. He lived in the moment: he cared +for prisoners and workers, and probably for people who were ill _now_, +but not that someone had been ill all those years ago. He only pretended +to care; he was polite. He turned his keen, pleasant face up to her when +he had done shouting about the game, and said "How splendid that he got +to you in time!" but he didn't really care. Mrs. Hilary found that women +were better listeners than men. Women are perhaps better trained; they +think it more ill-mannered not to show interest. They will listen to +stories about servants, or reports of the inane sayings of infants, +they will hear you through, without the flicker of a yawn, but with +ejaculations and noddings, while you tell them about your children's +diseases. They are well-bred; they drive themselves on a tight rein, +and endure. They are the world's martyrs. + +But men, less restrained, will fidget and wander and sigh and yawn, and +change the subject. + +To trap and hold the sympathy of a man--how wonderful! Who wanted a pack +of women? What you really wanted was some man whose trade it was to +listen and to give heed. Some man to whom your daughter's pneumonia, of +however long ago, was not irrelevant, but had its own significance, as +having helped to build you up as you were, you, the problem, with your +wonderful, puzzling temperament, so full of complexes, inconsistencies +and needs. Some man who didn't lose interest in you just because you were +grey-haired and sixty-three. + +"I'm afraid I've been taking your attention from the game," said Mrs. +Hilary to Barry Briscoe. + +Compunction stabbed him. Had he been rude to this elderly lady, who had +been telling him a long tale without a point while he watched the tennis +and made polite, attentive sounds? + +"Not a bit, Mrs. Hilary." He sat up, and looked friendlier than ever. +"I've been thrilled." A charming, easy liar Barry was, when he deemed it +necessary. His Quaker parents would have been shocked. But there was +truth in it, after all. For people were so interested in themselves, that +one was, in a sense, interested in the stories they told one, even +stories about illness. Besides, this was the mother of Nan; Nan, who was +so abruptly and inexplicably not here to-day, whose absence was hurting +him, when he stopped to think, like an aching tooth; for he was not sure, +yet feared, what she meant by it. + +"Tell me," he said, half to please Nan's mother and half on his own +account, "some stories of Nan when she was small. I should think she was +a fearful child...." + +He was interested, thought Mrs. Hilary, in Nan, but not in her. That was +natural, of course. No man would ever again want to hear stories of _her_ +childhood. The familiar bitterness rose and beat in her like a wave. Nan +was thirty-four and she was sixty-three. She could talk only of far-off +things, and theories about conduct and life which sounded all right at +first but were exposed after two minutes as not having behind them the +background of any knowledge or any brain. That hadn't mattered when she +was a girl; men would often rather they hadn't. But at sixty-three you +have nothing.... The bitter emptiness of sixty-three turned her sick with +frustration. Life was over, over, over, for her and she was to tell +stories of Nan, who had everything. + +Then the mother in her rose up, to claim and grasp for her child, even +for the child she loved least. + +"Nan? Nan was always a most dreadfully sensitive child, and +temperamental. She took after me, I'm afraid; the others were more like +their father. I remember when she was quite a little thing...." + +Barry had asked for it. But he hadn't known that, out of the brilliant, +uncertain Nan, exciting as a Punch and Judy show, anything so tedious +could be spun.... + + +3 + +Mrs. Hilary was up in town by herself for a day's shopping. The sales +were on at Barker's and Derry and Tom's. Mrs. Hilary wandered about these +shops, and even Ponting's and bought little bags, and presents for +everyone, remnants, oddments, underwear, some green silk for a frock for +Gerda, a shady hat for herself, a wonderful cushion for Grandmama with a +picture of the sea on it, a silk knitted jumper for Neville, of the same +purplish blue as her eyes. She was happy, going about like a bee from +flower to flower, gathering this honey for them all. She had come up +alone; she hadn't let Neville come with her. She had said she was going +to be an independent old woman. But what she really meant was that she +had proposed herself for tea with Rosalind in Campden Hill Square, and +wanted to be alone for that. + +Rosalind had been surprised, for Mrs. Hilary seldom favoured her with a +visit. She had found the letter on the hall table when she and Gilbert +had come in from a dinner party two evenings ago. + +"Your mother's coming to tea on Thursday, Gilbert. Tea with me. She says +she wants a talk. I feel flattered. She says nothing about wanting to see +you, so you'd better leave us alone, anyhow for a bit." + +Rosalind's beautiful bistre-brown eyes smiled. She enjoyed her talks with +her mother-in-law; they furnished her with excellent material, to be +worked up later by the raconteuse's art into something too delicious +and absurd. She enjoyed, too, telling Mrs. Hilary the latest scandals; +she was so shocked and disgusted; and it was fun dropping little +accidental hints about Nan, and even about Gilbert. Anyhow, what a +treasure of a relic of the Victorian age! And how comic in her jealousy, +her ingenuous, futile boasting, her so readily exposed deceits! And how +she hated Rosalind herself, the painted, corrupt woman who was dragging +Gilbert down! + +"Whatever does she want a talk about?" Rosalind wondered. "It must be +something pretty urgent, to make her put up with an hour of my company." + + +4 + +At four o'clock on Thursday afternoon Rosalind went upstairs and put on +an extra coating of powder and rouge. She also blackened her eyelashes +and put on her lips salve the colour of strawberries rather than of the +human mouth. She wore an afternoon dress with transparent black sleeves +through which her big arms gleamed, pale and smooth. She looked a superb +and altogether improper creature, like Lucrezia Borgia or a Titian +madonna. She came down and lay among great black and gold satin cushions, +and lit a scented cigarette and opened a new French novel. Black and gold +was her new scheme for her drawing-room; she had had it done this spring. +It had a sort of opulent and rakish violence which suited her ripe +magnificence, her splendid flesh tints, her brown eyes and corn-gold +hair. Against it she looked like Messalina, and Gilbert like rather a +decadent and cynical pope. The note of the room was really too pronounced +for Gilbert's fastidious and scholarly eloquence; he lost vitality in it, +and dwindled to the pale thin casket of a brain. + +And Mrs. Hilary, when she entered it, trailing in, tall and thin, in her +sagging grey coat and skirt, her wispy grey hair escaping from under her +floppy black hat, and with the air of having till a moment ago been hung +about with parcels (she had left them in the hall), looked altogether +unsuited to her environment, like a dowdy lady from the provinces, as she +was. + +Rosalind came forward and took her by the hands. + +"Well, mother dear, this is an unusual honour.... _How_ long is it since +we last had you here?" + +Rosalind, enveloping her mother-in-law in extravagant fragrance, kissed +her on each cheek. The kiss of Messalina! Mrs. Hilary glanced at the +great mirror over the fireplace to see whether it had come off on her +cheeks, as it might well have done. + +Rosalind placed her on a swelling, billowy, black and gold chair, piled +cushions behind her shoulders, made her lie back at an obtuse angle, a +grey, lank, elderly figure, strange in that opulent setting, her long +dusty black feet stretched out before her on the golden carpet. + +Desperately uncomfortable and angular Rosalind made you feel, petting +you and purring over you and calling you "mother dear," with that glint +always behind her golden-brown eyes which showed that she was up to no +good, that she knew you hated her and was only leading you on that she +might strike her claws into you the deeper. The great beautiful cat: that +was what Rosalind was. You didn't trust her for a moment. + +She was pouring out tea. + +"Lemon? But how dreadfully stupid of me! I'd forgotten you take +milk ... oh yes, and sugar...." + +She rang, and ordered sugar. Mothers take it; not the mothers of +Rosalind's world, but mothers' meetings, and school treats, and +mothers-in-law up from the seaside. + +"Are you up for shopping? How thrilling! Where have you been?... Oh, High +Street. Did you _find_ anything there?" + +Mrs. Hilary knew that Rosalind would see her off, hung over with dozens +of parcels, and despise them, knowing that if they were so many they must +also be cheap. + +"Oh, there's not much to be got there, of course," she said. "I got a +few little things--chiefly for my mother to give away in the parish. She +likes to have things...." + +"But how noble of you both! I'm afraid I never rise to that. It's all I +can manage to give presents to myself and nearest rellies. And you came +up to town just to get presents for the parish! You're wonderful, +mother!" + +"Oh, I take a day in town now and then. Why not? Everyone does." + +Extraordinary how defiant Rosalind made one feel, prying and questioning +and trying to make one look absurd. + +"Why, of course! It freshens you up, I expect; makes a change.... But +you've come up from Windover, haven't you, not the seaside?" + +Rosalind always called St. Mary's Bay the seaside. To her our island +coasts were all one; the seaside was where you went to bathe, and she +hardly distinguished between north, south, east and west. + +"How are they down at Windover? I heard that Nan was there, with that +young man of hers who performs good works. So unlike Nan herself! I hope +she isn't going to be so silly as to let it come to anything; they'd +both be miserable. But I should think Nan knows better than to marry a +square-toes. I daresay _he_ knows better too, really.... And how's poor +old Neville? I think this doctoring game of hers is simply a scream, the +poor old dear." + +To hear Rosalind discussing Neville.... Messalina coarsely patronising a +wood-nymph ... the cat striking her claws into a singing bird.... And +poor--and old! Neville was, indeed, six years ahead of Rosalind, but she +looked the younger of the two, in her slim activity, and didn't need to +paint her face either. Mrs. Hilary all but said so. + +"It is a great interest to Neville, taking up her medical studies again," +was all she could really say. (What a hampering thing it is to be a +lady!) "She thoroughly enjoys it, and looks younger than ever. She is +playing a lot of tennis, and beats them all." + +How absurdly her voice rang when she spoke of Neville or Jim! It always +made Rosalind's lip curl mockingly. + +"Wonderful creature! I do admire her. When I'm her age I shall be too fat +to take any exercise at all. I think it's splendid of women who keep it +up through the forties.... _She_ won't be bored, even when she's sixty, +will she?" + +That was a direct hit, which Mrs. Hilary could bear better than hits at +Neville. + +"I see no reason," said Mrs. Hilary, "why Neville should ever be bored. +She has a husband and children. Long before she is sixty she will have +Kay's and Gerda's children to be interested in." + +"No, I suppose one can't well be bored if one has grandchildren, can +one," Rosalind said, reflectively. + +There was a silence, during which Mrs. Hilary's eyes, coldly meeting +Rosalind's with their satirical comment, said "I know you are too selfish +a woman ever to bear children, and I thank God for it. Little Hilarys who +should be half yours would be more than I could endure." + +Rosalind, quite understanding, smiled her slow, full-mouthed, curling +smile, and held out to her mother-in-law the gold case with scented +cigarettes. + +"Oh no, you don't, do you. I never can remember that. It's so unusual." + +Her eyes travelled over Mrs. Hilary, from her dusty black shoes to her +pale, lined face. They put her, with deliberation, into the class with +companions, house-keepers, poor relations. Having successfully done that +(she knew it was successful, by Mrs. Hilary's faint flush) she said "You +don't look up to much, mother dear. Not as if Neville had been looking +after you very well." + +Mrs. Hilary, seeing her chance, swallowed her natural feelings and took +it. + +"The fact is, I sleep very badly. Not particularly just now, but +always.... I thought.... That is, someone told me ... that there have +been wonderful cures for insomnia lately ... through that new thing...." + +"Which new thing? Sedobrol? Paraldehyd? Gilbert keeps getting absurd +powders and tablets of all sorts. Thank God, I always sleep like a top." + +"No, not those. The thing _you_ practice. Psycho-analysis, I mean." + +"Oh, psycho. But you wouldn't touch that, surely? I thought it was +anathema." + +"But if it really does cure people...." + +Rosalind's eyes glittered and gleamed. Her strawberry-red mouth curled +joyfully. + +"Of course it has.... Not that insomnia is always a case for psycho, you +know. It's sometimes incipient mania." + +"Not in my case." Mrs. Hilary spoke sharply. + +"Why no, of course not.... Well, I think you'd be awfully wise to get +analysed. Whom do you want to go to?" + +"I thought you could tell me. I know no names.... A _man_," Mrs. Hilary +added quickly. + +"Oh, it must be a man? I was going to say, I've a vacancy myself for a +patient. But women usually want men doctors. They nearly all do. It's +supposed to be part of the complaint.... Well, I could fix you up a +preliminary interview with Dr. Claude Evans. He's very good. He turns you +right inside out and shows you everything about yourself, from your first +infant passion to the thoughts you think you're keeping dark from him as +you sit in the consulting room. He's great." + +Mrs. Hilary was flushed. Hope and shame tingled in her together. + +"I shan't want to keep anything dark. I've no reason." + +Rosalind's mocking eyes said "That's what they all say." Her lips said +"The foreconscious self always has its reasons for hiding up the things +the unconscious self knows and feels." + +"Oh, all that stuff...." Mrs. Hilary was sick of it, having read too much +about it in "The Breath of Life." "I hope this Dr. Evans will talk to me +in plain English, not in that affected jargon." + +"He'll use language suited to you, I suppose," said Rosalind, "as far as +he can. But these things can't always be put so that just anyone can +grasp them. They're too complicated. You should read it up beforehand, +and try if you can understand it a little." + +Rosalind, who had no brains herself, insulting Mrs. Hilary's, was rather +more than Mrs. Hilary could bear. Rosalind she knew for a fool, so far as +intellectual matters went, for Nan had said so. Clever enough at clothes, +and talking scandal, and winning money at games, and skating over thin +ice without going through--but when it came to a book, or an idea, or a +political question, Rosalind was no whit more intelligent than she was, +in fact much less. She was a rotten psycho-analyst, all her in-laws were +sure. + +Mrs. Hilary said, "I've been reading a good deal about it lately. It +doesn't seem to me very difficult, though exceedingly foolish in parts." + +Rosalind was touchy about psycho-analysis; she always got angry if people +said it was foolish in any way. She was like that; she could see no weak +points in anything she took up; it came from being vain, and not having a +brain. She said one of the things angry people say, instead of discussing +the subject rationally. + +"I don't suppose the amount of it you've been able to read _would_ seem +difficult. If you came to anything difficult you'd probably stop, you +see. Anyhow, if it seems to you so foolish why do you want to be +analysed?" + +"Oh, one may as well try things. I've no doubt there's something in it +besides the nonsense." + +Mrs. Hilary spoke jauntily, with hungry, unquiet, seeking eyes that would +not meet Rosalind's. She was afraid that Rosalind would find out that she +wanted to be cured of being miserable, of being jealous, of having +inordinate passions about so little. Rosalind, in some ways a great +stupid cow, was uncannily clever when it came to being spiteful and +knowing about you the things you didn't want known. It must be horrible +to be psycho-analysed by Rosalind, who had no pity and no reticence. The +things about you would not only be known but spread abroad among all +those whom Rosalind met. A vile, dreadful tongue. + +"You wouldn't, I expect, like _me_ to analyse you," said Rosalind. "Not a +course, I mean, but just once, to advise you better whom to go to. It'd +have the advantage, anyhow, that I'd do it free. Anyone else will charge +you three guineas at the least." + +"I don't think," said Mrs. Hilary, "that relations--or connections--ought +to do one another. No, I'd better go to someone I don't know, if you'll +give me the name and address." + +"I thought you'd probably rather," Rosalind said in her slow, soft, cruel +voice, like a cat's purr. "Well, I'll write down the address for you. +It's Dr. Evans: he'll probably pass you on to someone down at the +seaside, if he considers you a suitable case for treatment." + +He would; of course he would. Mrs. Hilary felt no doubt as to that. + +Gilbert came in from the British Museum. He looked thin and nervous and +sallow amid all the splendour. He kissed his mother, thinking how queer +and untidy she looked, a stranger and pilgrim in Rosalind's drawing-room. +He too might look there at times a stranger and pilgrim, but at least, if +not voluptuous, he was neat. He glanced proudly and yet ironically from +his mother to his magnificent wife, taking in and understanding the +supra-normal redundancies of her make-up. + +"Rosalind," said Mrs. Hilary, knowing that it would be less than +useless to ask Rosalind to keep her secret, "has been recommending me a +psycho-analyst doctor. I think it is worth while trying if I can get my +insomnia cured that way." + +"My dear mother! After all your fulminations against the tribe! Well, I +think you're quite right to give it a trial. Why don't you get Rosalind +to take you on?" + +The fond pride in his voice! Yet there was in his eyes, as they rested +for a moment on Rosalind, something other than fond pride; something more +like mockery. + +Mrs. Hilary got up to go, and fired across the rich room the one shot in +her armoury. + +"I believe," she said, "that Rosalind prefers chiefly to take men +patients. She wouldn't want to be bored with an old woman." + +The shot drove straight into Gilbert's light-strung sensitiveness. +Shell-shocked officers; any other officers; anything male, presentable +and passably young; these were Rosalind's patients; he knew it, and +everyone else knew it. For a moment his smile was fixed into the +deliberate grin of pain. Mrs. Hilary saw it, saw Gilbert far back down +the years, a small boy standing up to punishment with just that brave, +nervous grin. Sensitive, defiant, vulnerable, fastidiously proud--so +Gilbert had always been and always would be. + +Remorsefully she clung to him. + +"Come and see me out, dearest boy" (so she called him, though Jim was +really that)--and she ignored Rosalind's slow, unconcerned protest +against her last remark. "Why, mother, you know I _asked_ to do +you" ... but she couldn't prevent Rosalind from seeing her out too, +hanging her about with all the ridiculous parcels, kissing her on both +cheeks. + +Gilbert was cool and dry, pretending she hadn't hurt him. He would +always take hurts like that, with that deadly, steely lightness. By its +deadliness, its steeliness, she knew that it was all true (and much more +besides) that she had heard about Rosalind and her patients. + + +5 + +She walked down to the bus with hot eyes. Rosalind had yawned softly and +largely behind her as she went down the front steps. Wicked, monstrous +creature! Lying about Gilbert's clever, nervous, eager life in great soft +folds, and throttling it. If Gilbert had been a man, a real male man, +instead of a writer and therefore effeminate, decadent, he would have +beaten her into decent behaviour. As it was she would ruin him, and he +would go under, not able to bear it, but cynically grinning still. +Perhaps the sooner the better. Anything was better than the way Rosalind +went on now, disgracing him and getting talked about, and making him hate +his mother for disliking her. He hadn't even come with her to the bus, to +carry her parcels for her.... That wasn't like Gilbert. As a rule he had +excellent manners, though he was not affectionate like Jim. + +Jim, Jim, Jim. Should she go to Harley Street? What was the use? She +would find only Margery there; Jim would be out. Margery had no serious +faults except the one, that she had taken the first place in Jim's +affections. Before Margery, Neville had had this place, but Mrs. Hilary +had been able, with Neville's never failing and skilful help, to disguise +this from herself. You can't disguise a wife's place in her husband's +heart. And Jim's splendid children too, whom she adored--they looked at +her with Margery's brown eyes instead of Jim's grey-blue ones. And they +preferred really (she knew it) their maternal grandmother, the jolly lady +who took them to the theatres. + +Mrs. Hilary passed a church. Religion. Some people found help there. But +it required so much of you, was so exhausting in its demands. Besides, it +seemed infinitely far away--an improbable, sad, remote thing, that gave +you no human comfort. Psycho-analysis was better; that opened gates into +a new life. "Know thyself," Mrs. Hilary murmured, kindling at the +prospect. Most knowledge was dull, but never that. + +"I will ring up from Waterloo and make an appointment," she thought. + + + + +CHAPTER VI + +JIM + + +1 + +The psycho-analyst doctor was little and dark and while he was talking he +looked not at Mrs. Hilary but down at a paper whereon he drew or wrote +something she tried to see and couldn't. She came to the conclusion after +a time that he was merely scribbling for effect. + +"Insomnia," he said. "Yes. You know what _that_ means?" + +She said, foolishly, "That I can't sleep," and he gave her a glance of +contempt and returned to his scribbling. + +"It means," he told her, "that you are afraid of dreaming. Your +unconscious self won't _let_ you sleep.... Do you often recall your +dreams when you wake?" + +"Sometimes." + +"Tell me some of them, please." + +"Oh, the usual things, I suppose. Packing; missing trains; meeting +people; and just nonsense that means nothing. All the usual things, that +everyone dreams about." + +At each thing she said he nodded, and scribbled with his pencil. "Quite," +he said, "quite. They're bad enough in meaning, the dreams you've +mentioned. I don't suppose you'd care at present to hear what they +symbolise.... The dreams you haven't mentioned are doubtless worse. And +those you don't even recall are worst of all. Your unconscious is, very +naturally and properly, frightened of them.... Well, we must end all +that, or you'll never sleep as you should. Psycho-analysis will cure +these dreams; first it will make you remember them, then you'll talk +them out and get rid of them." + +"Dreams," said Mrs. Hilary. "Well, they may be important. But it's my +whole life...." + +"Precisely. I was coming to that. Of course you can't cure sleeplessness +until you have cured the fundamental things that are wrong with your +life. Now, if you please, tell me all you can about yourself." + +Here was the wonderful moment. Mrs. Hilary drew a long breath, and told +him. A horrid (she felt that somehow he was rather horrid) little man +with furtive eyes that wouldn't meet hers--(and he wasn't quite a +gentleman, either, but still, he wanted to hear all about her) he was +listening attentively, drinking it in. Not watching tennis while she +talked, like Barry Briscoe in the garden. Ah, she could go on and on, +never tired; it was like swimming in warm water. + +He would interrupt her with questions. Which had she preferred, her +father or her mother? Well, perhaps on the whole her father. He nodded; +that was the right answer; the other he would have quietly put aside as +one of the deliberate inaccuracies so frequently practised by his +patients. "You can leave out the perhaps. There's no manner of doubt +about it, you know." Lest he should say (instead of only looking it) +that she had been in love with her good father and he with her, Mrs. +Hilary hurried on. She had a chaste mind, and knew what these Freudians +were. It would, she thought (not knowing her doctor and how it would +have come to the same thing, only he would have thought her a more +pronounced case, because of the deception), have been wiser to have said +that she had preferred her mother, but less truthful, and what she was +enjoying now was an orgy of truth-telling. She got on to her marriage, +and how intensely Richard had loved her. He tried for a moment to be +indecent about love and marriage, but in her deep excitement she hardly +noticed him, but swept on to the births of the children, and Jim's croup. + +"I see," he said presently, "that you prefer to avoid discussing certain +aspects of life. You obviously have a sex complex." + +"Of course, of course. Don't you find that in all your patients? Surely +we may take that for granted...." She allowed him his sex complex, +knowing that Freudians without it would be like children deprived of a +precious toy; for her part she was impatient to get back to Jim, her +life's chief passion. The Oedipus complex, of course he would say it +was; what matter, if he would let her talk about it? And Neville. It was +strange to have a jealous passion for one's daughter. But that would, he +said, be an extension of the ego complex--quite simple really. + +She came to the present. + +"I feel that life has used me up and flung me aside like a broken tool. +I have no further relation to life, nor it to me. I have spent myself and +been spent, and now I am bankrupt. Can you make me solvent again?" + +She liked that as she said it. + +He scribbled away, like a mouse scrabbling. + +"Yes. Oh yes. There is no manner of doubt about it. None whatever. If you +are perfectly frank, you can be cured. You can be adjusted to life. Every +age in human life has its own adjustment to make, its own relation to its +environment to establish. All that repressed libido must be released and +diverted.... You have some bad complexes, which must be sublimated...." + +It sounded awful, the firm way he said it, like teeth or appendixes which +must be extracted. But Mrs. Hilary knew it wouldn't be like that really, +but delightful and luxurious, more like a Turkish bath. + +"You must have a course," he told her. "You are an obvious case for a +course of treatment. St. Mary's Bay? Excellent. There is a practising +psycho-analyst there now. You should have an hour's treatment twice +a week, to be really effective.... You would prefer a man, I take it?" + +He shot his eyes at her for a moment, in statement, not in enquiry. Well +he knew how much she would prefer a man. She murmured assent. He rose. +The hour was over. + +"How much will the course be?" she asked. + +"A guinea an hour, Dr. Cradock charges. He is very cheap." + +"Yes, I see. I must think it over. And you?" + +He told her his fee, and she blenched, but paid it. She was not rich, but +it had been worth while. It was a beginning. It had opened the door into +a new and richer life. St. Mary's Bay was illumined in her thoughts, +instead of being drab and empty as before. Sublimated complexes twinkled +over it like stars. Freed libido poured electrically about it. And Dr. +Cradock, she felt, would be more satisfactory as a doctor than this man, +who affected her with a faint nausea when he looked at her, though he +seldom did so. + + +2 + +Windover too was illumined. She could watch almost calmly Neville talking +to Grandmama, wheeling her round the garden to look at the borders, for +Grandmama was a great gardener. + +Then Jim came down for a week-end, and it was as if the sun had risen on +Surrey. He sat with Mrs. Hilary in the arbour. She told him about Dr. +Evans and the other psycho-analyst doctor at St. Mary's Bay. He frowned +over Dr. Evans, who lived in the same street as he did. + +"Rosalind sent you to him; of course; she would. Why didn't you ask me, +mother? He's a desperate Freudian, you know, and they're not nearly so +good as the others. Besides, this particular man is a shoddy scoundrel, +I believe.... Was he offensive?" + +"I wouldn't let him be, Jim. I was prepared for that. I ... I changed the +conversation." + +Jim laughed, and did his favourite trick with her hand, straightening the +thin fingers one by one as they lay across his sensitive palm. How happy +it always made her! + +"Well," he said, "I daresay this man down at the Bay is all right. I'll +find out if he's any good or not.... They talk a lot of tosh, you know, +mother; you'll have to sift the grain from the chaff." + +But he saw that her eyes were interested, her face more alert than usual, +her very poise more alive. She had found a new interest in life, like +keeping a parrot, or learning bridge, or getting religion. It was what +they had always tried to find for her in vain. + +"So long," he said, "as you don't believe more than half what they tell +you.... Let me know how it goes on, won't you, and what this man is like. +If I don't approve I shall come and stop it." + +She loved that from Jim. + +"Of course, dearest. Of course I shall tell you about it. And I know one +must be careful." + +It was something to have become an object for care; it put one more in +the foreground. She would have gone on willingly with the subject, but +Jim changed her abruptly for Neville. + +"Neville's looking done up." + +She felt the little sharp pang which Neville's name on Jim's lips had +always given her. His very pronunciation of it hurt her--"Nivvle," he +said it, as if he had been an Irishman. It brought all the past back; +those two dear ones talking together, studying together, going off +together, bound by a hundred common interests, telling each other things +they never told her. + +"Yes. It's this ridiculous work of hers. It's so absurd: a married woman +of her age making her head ache working for examinations." + +In old days Jim and Neville had worked together. Jim had been proud of +Neville's success; she had been quicker than he. Mrs. Hilary, who had +welcomed Neville's marriage as ending all that, foresaw a renewal of the +hurtful business. + +But Jim looked grave and disapproving over it. + +"It is absurd," he agreed, and her heart rose. "And of course she can't +do it, can't make up all that leeway. Besides, her brain has lost its +grip. She's not kept it sharpened; she's spent her life on people. You +can't have it both ways--a woman can't, I mean. Her work's been +different. She doesn't seem to realise that what she's trying to learn up +again now, in the spare moments of an already full life, demands a whole +lifetime of hard work. She can't get back those twenty years; no one +could. And she can't get back the clear, gripping brain she had before +she had children. She's given some of it to them. That's nature's way, +unfortunately. Hard luck, no doubt, but there it is; you can't get round +it. Nature's a hybrid of fool and devil." + +He was talking really to himself, but was recalled to his mother by the +tears which, he suddenly perceived, were distorting her face. + +"And so," she whispered, her voice choked, "we women get left...." + +He looked away from her, a little exasperated. She cried so easily and so +superfluously, and he knew that these tears were more for herself than +for Neville. And she didn't really come into what he had been saying at +all; he had been talking about brains. + +"It's all right as far as most women are concerned," he said. "Most women +have no brains to be spoilt. Neville had. Most women could do nothing at +all with life if they didn't produce children; it's their only possible +job. _They've_ no call to feel ill-used." + +"Of course," she said, unsteadily, struggling to clear her voice of +tears, "I know you children all think I'm a fool. But there was a time +when I read difficult books with your father ... he, a man with a +first-class mind, cared to read with me and discuss with me...." + +"Oh yes, yes, mother, I know." + +Jim and all of them knew all about those long-ago difficult books. They +knew too about the clever friends who used to drop in and talk.... If +only Mrs. Hilary could have been one of the nice, jolly, refreshing +people who own that they never read and never want to. All this fuss +about reading, and cleverness--how tedious it was! As if being stupid +mattered, as if it was worth bothering about. + +"Of course we don't think you a fool, mother dear; how could we?" + +Jim was kind and affectionate, never ironic, like Gilbert, or impatient, +like Nan. But he felt now the need for fresh air; the arbour was too +small for him and Mrs. Hilary, who was as tiring to others as to herself. + +"I think I shall go and interrupt Neville over her studies," said Jim, +and left the arbour. + +Mrs. Hilary looked after him, painfully loving his square, straight back, +his fine dark head, just flecked with grey, the clean line of his +profile, with the firm jaw clenched over the pipe. To have produced +Jim--wasn't that enough to have lived for? Mrs. Hilary was one of those +mothers who apply the Magnificat to their own cases. She always felt a +bond of human sympathy between herself and that lady called the Virgin +Mary, whom she thought over-estimated. + + +3 + +Neville raised heavy violet eyes, faintly ringed with shadows, to Jim as +he came into the library. She looked at him for a moment absently, then +smiled. He came over to her and looked at the book before her. + +"Working? Where've you got to? Let's see how much you know." + +He took the book from her and glanced at it to see what she had been +reading. + +"Now we'll have an examination; it'll be good practice for you." + +He put a question, and she answered it, frowning a little. + +"H'm. That's not very good, my dear." + +He tried again; this time she could not answer at all. At the third +question she shook her head. + +"It's no use, Jimmy. My head's hopeless this afternoon. Another time." + +He shut the book. + +"Yes. So it seems.... You're overdoing it, Neville. You can't go on like +this." + +She lay back and spread out her hands hopelessly. + +"But I must go on like this if I'm ever going to get through my exams." + +"You're not going to, old thing. You're quite obviously unfitted to. It's +not your job any more. It's absurd to try; really it is." + +Neville shut her eyes. + +"Doctors ... doctors. They have it on the brain,--the limitations of the +feminine organism." + +"Because they know something about it. But I'm not speaking of the +feminine organism just now. I should say the same to Rodney if _he_ +thought of turning doctor now, after twenty years of politics." + +"Rodney never could have been a doctor. He hates messing about with +bodies." + +"Well, you know what I think. I can't stop you, of course. It's only a +question of time, in any case. You'll soon find out for yourself that +it's no use." + +"I think," she answered, in her small, unemotional voice, "that it's +exceedingly probable that I shall." + +She lay inertly in the deep chair, her eyes shut, her hands opened, palms +downwards, as if they had failed to hold something. + +"What then, Jim? If I can't be a doctor what can I be? Besides Rodney's +wife, I mean? I don't say besides the children's mother, because that's +stopped being a job. They're charming to me, the darlings, but they don't +need me any more; they go their own way." + +Jim had noticed that. + +"Well, after all, you do a certain amount of political work--public +speaking, meetings, and so on. Isn't that enough?" + +"That's all second-hand. I shouldn't do it but for Rodney. I'm not +public-spirited enough. If Rodney dies before I do, I shan't go on with +that.... Shall I just be a silly, self-engrossed, moping old woman, no +use to anyone and a plague to myself?" + +The eyes of both of them strayed out to the garden. + +"Who's the silly moping old woman?" asked Mrs. Hilary's voice in the +doorway. And there she stood, leaning a little forward, a strained smile +on her face. + +"Me, mother, when I shall be old," Neville quickly answered her, smiling +in return. "Come in, dear. Jim's telling me how I shall never be a +doctor. He gave me a _viva voce_ exam., and I came a mucker over it." + +Her voice had an edge of bitterness; she hadn't liked coming a mucker, +nor yet being told she couldn't get through exams. She had plenty of +vanity; so far everyone and everything had combined to spoil her. She +was determined, in the face of growing doubt, to prove Jim wrong yet. + +"Well," Mrs. Hilary said, sitting down on the edge of a chair, not +settling herself, but looking poised to go, so as not to seem to intrude +on their conversation, "well, I don't see why you want to be a doctor, +dear. Everyone knows women doctors aren't much good. _I_ wouldn't trust +one." + +"Very stupid of you, mother," Jim said, trying to pretend he wasn't +irritated by being interrupted. "They're every bit as good as men." + +"Fancy being operated on by a woman surgeon. I certainly shouldn't risk +it." + +"_You_ wouldn't risk it ... _you_ wouldn't trust them. You're so +desperately personal, mother. You think that contributes to a discussion. +All it does contribute to is your hearers' knowledge of your limitations. +It's uneducated, the way you discuss." + +He smiled at her pleasantly, taking the sting out of his words, turning +them into a joke, and she smiled too, to show Neville she didn't mind, +didn't take it seriously. Jim might hurt her, but if he did no one should +know but Jim himself. She knew that at times she irritated even his good +temper by being uneducated and so on, so that he scolded her, but he +scolded her kindly, not venomously, as Nan did. + +"Well, I've certainly no right to be uneducated," she said, "and I can't +say I'm ever called so, except by my children.... Do you remember the +discussions father and I used to have, half through the night?" + +Jim and Neville did remember and thought "Poor father," and were silent. + +"I should think," said Mrs. Hilary, "there was very little we didn't +discuss. Politics, books, trades unions, class divisions, moral +questions, votes for women, divorce ... we thrashed everything out. +We both thoroughly enjoyed it." + +Neville said "I remember." Familiar echoes came back to her out of the +agitated past. + +"Those lazy men, all they want is to get a lot of money for doing no +work." + +"I like the poor well enough in their places, but I cannot abide them +when they try to step into ours." + +"Let women mind their proper business and leave men's alone." + +"I'm certainly not going to be on calling terms with my grocer's wife." + +"I hate these affected, posing, would-be clever books. Why can't people +write in good plain English?"... + +Richard Hilary, a scholar and a patient man, blinded by conjugal love, +had met futilities with arguments, expressions of emotional distaste with +facts, trying to lift each absurd wrangle to the level of a discussion; +and at last he died, leaving his wife with the conviction that she had +been the equal mate of an able man. Her children had to face and conquer, +with varying degrees of success, the temptation to undeceive her. + +"But I'm interrupting," said Mrs. Hilary. "I know you two are having a +private talk. I'll leave you alone...." + +"No, no, mother." That was Neville, of course. "Stay and defend me from +Jim's scorn." + +How artificial one had to be in family life! What an absurd thing these +emotions made of it! + +Mrs. Hilary looked happier, and more settled in her chair. + +"Where are Kay and Gerda?" Jim asked. + +Neville told him "In Guildford, helping Barry Briscoe with W.E.A. +meetings. They're spending a lot of time over that just now; they're both +as keen as mustard. Nearly as keen as he is. He sets people on fire. It's +very good for the children. They're bringing him up here to spend Sunday. +I think he hopes every time to find Nan back again from Cornwall, poor +Barry. He was very down in the mouth when she suddenly took herself off." + +"If Nan doesn't mean to have him, she shouldn't have encouraged him," +said Mrs. Hilary. "He was quite obviously in love with her." + +"Nan's always a dark horse," Neville said. "She alone knows what she +means." + +Jim said "She's a flibberty-gibbet. She'd much better get married. She's +not much use in the world at present. Now if _she_ was a doctor ... or +doing something useful, like Pamela...." + +"Don't be prejudiced, Jimmy. Because you don't read modern novels +yourself you think it's no use their being written." + +"I read some modern novels. I read Conrad, in spite of the rather absurd +attitude some people take up about him; and I read good detective +stories, only they're so seldom good. I don't read Nan's kind. People +tell me they're tremendously clever and modern and delightfully written +and get very well reviewed, I daresay. I very seldom agree with +reviewers, in any case. Even about Conrad they seem to me (when I read +them--I don't often) to pick out the wrong points to admire and to miss +the points I should criticise." + +Mrs. Hilary said "Well, I must say I can't read Nan's books myself. +Simply, I don't think them good. I dislike all her people so much, and +her style." + +"You're a pair of old Victorians," Neville told them, pleasing Mrs. +Hilary by coupling them together and leaving Jim, who knew why she did +it, undisturbed. Neville was full of graces and tact, a possession Jim +had always appreciated in her. + +"And there," said Neville, who was standing at the window, "are Barry +Briscoe and the children coming in." + +Jim looked over her shoulder and saw the three wheeling their bicycles up +the drive. + +"Gerda," he remarked, "is a prettier thing every time I see her." + + + + +CHAPTER VII + +GERDA + + +1 + +It rained so hard, so much harder even than usual, that Sunday, that only +Barry and Gerda went to walk. Barry walked in every kind of weather, even +in the July of 1920. + +To-day after lunch Barry said "I'm going to walk over the downs. Anyone +coming?" and Gerda got up silently, as was her habit. Kay stretched +himself and yawned and said "Me for the fireside. I shall have to walk +every day for three weeks after to-day," for he was going to-morrow on a +reading-party. Rodney and Jim were playing a game of chess that had +lasted since breakfast and showed every sign of lasting till bed-time; +Neville and Mrs. Hilary were talking, and Grandmama was upstairs, having +her afternoon nap. + + +2 + +They tramped along, waterproofed and bare-headed, down the sandy road. +The rain swished in Gerda's golden locks, till they clung dank and limp +about her cheeks and neck; it beat on Barry's glasses, so that he took +them off and blinked instead. The trees stormed and whistled in the +southerly wind that blew from across Merrow Downs. Barry tried to whistle +down it, but it caught the sound from his puckered lips and whirled it +away. + +Through Merrow they strode, and up onto the road that led across the +downs, and there the wind caught them full, and it was as if buckets of +water were being flung into their faces. The downs sang and roared; the +purple-grey sky shut down on the hill's shoulder like a tent. + +"Lord, what fun," said Barry, as they gasped for breath. + +Gerda was upright and slim as a wand against the buffeting; her white +little face was stung into shell-pink; her wet hair blew back like yellow +seaweed. + +Barry thought suddenly of Nan, who revelled in storms, and quickly shut +his mind on the thought. He was schooling himself to think away from Nan, +with her wild animal grace and her flashing mind and her cruel, careless +indifference. + +Gerda would have walked like this forever. Her wide blue eyes blinked +away the rain; her face felt stung and lashed, yet happy and cold; her +mouth was stiff and tight. She was part of the storm; as free, as fierce, +as singing; though outwardly she was all held together and silent, only +smiling a little with her shut mouth. + +As they climbed the downs, the wind blew more wildly in their faces. +Gerda swayed against it, and Barry took her by the arm and half pushed +her. + +So they reached Newlands Corner, and all southern Surrey stormed below +them, and beyond Surrey stormed Sussex, and beyond Sussex the angry, +unseen sea. + +They stood looking, and Barry's arm still steadied Gerda against the +gale. + +Gerda thought "It will end. It will be over, and we shall be sitting at +tea. Then Sunday will be over, and on Monday he will go back to town." +The pain of that end of the world turned her cold beneath the glow of the +storm. Then life settled itself, very simply. She must go too, and work +with him. She would tell him so on the way home, when the wind would let +them talk. + +They turned their backs on the storm and ran down the hill towards +Merrow. Gerda, light as a leaf on the wind, could have run all the way +back; Barry, fit and light too, but fifteen years ahead of her, fell +after five minutes into a walk. + +Then they could talk a little. + +"And to-morrow I shall be plugging in town," sighed Barry. + +Gerda always went straight to her point. + +"May I come into your office, please, and learn the work?" + +He smiled down at her. Splendid child! + +"Why, rather. Do you mean it? When do you want to come?" + +"To-morrow?" + +He laughed. "Good. I thought you meant in the autumn. ... To-morrow +by all means, if you will. As a matter of fact we're frightfully +short-handed in the office just now. Our typist has crocked, and we +haven't another yet, so people have to type their own letters." + +"I can do the typing," said Gerda, composedly. "I can type quite well." + +"Oh, but that'll be dull for you. That's not what you want, is it? +Though, if you want to learn about the work, it's not a bad way ... you +get it all passing through your hands.... Would you really take on that +job for a bit?" + +Gerda nodded. + +They were rapid and decided people; they did not beat about the bush. If +they wanted to do a thing and there seemed no reason why not, they did +it. + +"That's first-class," said Barry. "Give it a trial, anyhow.... Of course +you'll be on trial too; we may find it doesn't work. If so, there are +plenty of other jobs to be done in the office. But that's what we most +want at the moment." + +Barry had a way of assuming that people would want, naturally, to do the +thing that most needed doing. + +Gerda's soul sang and whistled down the whistling wind. It wasn't over, +then: it was only beginning. The W.E.A. was splendid; work was splendid; +Barry Briscoe was splendid; life was splendid. She was sorry for Kay at +Cambridge, Kay who was just off on a reading party, not helping in the +world's work but merely getting education. Education was inspiring in +connection with Democracy, but when applied to oneself it was dull. + +The rain was lessening. It fell on their heads more lightly; the wind was +like soft wet kisses on their backs, as they tramped through Merrow, and +up the lane to Windover. + + +3 + +They all sat round the tea-table, and most of them were warm and sleepy +from Sunday afternoon by the fire, but Barry and Gerda were warm and +tingling from walking in the storm. Some people prefer one sensation, +some the other. + +Neville thought "How pretty Gerda looks, pink like that." She was glad +to know that she too looked pretty, in her blue afternoon dress. It +was good, in that charming room, that they should all look agreeable +to the eye. Even Mrs. Hilary, with her nervous, faded grace, marred by +self-consciousness and emotion. And Grandmama, smiling and shrewd, with +her old in-drawn lips; and Rodney, long and lounging and clever; Jim, +square-set, sensible, clean-cut, beautiful to his mother and to his women +patients, good for everyone to look at; Barry, brown and charming, with +his quick smile; the boy Kay, with his pale, rounded, oval face, his +violet eyes like his mother's, only short-sighted, so that he had a trick +of screwing them up and peering, and a mouth that widened into a happy +sweetness when he smiled. + +They were all right: they all fitted in with the room and with each +other. + +Barry said "I've not been idle while walking. I've secured a secretary. +Gerda says she's coming to work at the office for us for a bit. Now, at +once." + +He had not Gerda's knack of silence. Gerda would shut up tight over her +plans and thoughts, like a little oyster. She was no babbler; she did +things and never talked. But Barry's plans brimmed up and over. + +Neville said "You sudden child! And in July and August, too.... But +you'll have only a month before you join Nan in Cornwall, won't you?" + +Gerda nodded, munching a buttered scone. + +Grandmama, like an old war-horse scenting the fray, thought "Is it going +to be an affair? Will they fall in love? And what of Nan?" Then rebuked +herself for forgetting what she really knew quite well, having been +told it often, that men and girls in these days worked together and +did everything together, with no thought of affairs or of falling in +love.... Only these two were very attractive, the young Briscoe and the +pretty child, Gerda. + +Neville, who knew Gerda, and that she was certainly in love again (it +happened so often with Gerda), thought "Shall I stop it? Or shall I let +things take their course? Oh, I'll let them alone. It's only one of +Gerda's childish hero-worships, and he'll be kind without flirting. It'll +do Gerda good to go on with this new work she's so keen on. And she knows +he cares for Nan. I shall let her go." + +Neville very nearly always let Gerda and Kay go their own way now +that they were grown-up. To interfere would have been the part of the +middle-aged old-fashioned mother, and for that part Neville had no +liking. To be her children's friend and good comrade, that was her rôle +in life. + +"It's good of you to have her," she said to Barry. "I hope you won't be +sorry.... She's very stupid sometimes--regular Johnny Head-in-air." + +"I should be a jolly sight more use," Kay remarked. "But I can't come, +unfortunately. She can't spell, you know. And her punctuation is weird." + +"She'll learn," said Barry, cheerfully, and Gerda smiled serenely at them +over her tea-cup. + + +4 + +Barry in the office was quick, alert, cheerful, and business-like, and +very decided, sometimes impatient. Efficient: that was the word. He would +skim the correspondence and dictate answers out of his head, walking +about the room, interrupted all the time by the telephone and by people +coming in to see him. Gerda's hero-worship grew and grew; her soul +swelled with it; she shut it down tight and remained calm and cool. When +he joked, when he smiled his charming smile, her heart turned over within +her. When he had signed the typed letters, she would sometimes put her +hand for a moment where his had rested on the paper. He was stern with +her sometimes, spoke sharply and impatiently, and that, in a queer way, +she liked. She had felt the same pleasure at school, when the head of the +school, whom she had greatly and secretly venerated, had had her up to +the sixth form room and rowed her. Why? That was for psycho-analysts to +discover; Gerda only knew the fact. And Barry, after he had spoken +sharply to her, when he had got over his anger, would smile and be even +kinder than usual, and that was the best of all. + +There were other people in the office, of course; men and women, busy, +efficient, coming in and out, talking, working, organising. They were +kind, pleasant people. Gerda liked them, but they were shadowy. + +And behind them all, and behind Barry, there was the work. The work was +enormously interesting. Gerda, child of her generation and of her +parents, was really a democrat, really public-spirited, outside the +little private cell of her withdrawn reserves. Beauty wasn't enough; +making poetry and pictures wasn't enough; one had to give everyone his +and her chance to have beauty and poetry and pictures too. In spite +of having been brought up in this creed, Gerda and Kay held to it, had +not reacted from it to a selfish aristocracy, as you might think likely. +Their democracy went much further than that of their parents. They +had been used ardently to call themselves Bolshevists until such time as +it was forced upon them that Bolshevism was not, in point of fact, a +democratic system. They and some of their friends still occasionally used +that label, in moments rather of after-dinner enthusiasm than of the +precise thinking that is done in morning light. For, after all, even Mr. +Bertrand Russell, even Mrs. Philip Snowden, might be wrong in their +hurried jottings down of the results of a cursory survey of so intricate +a system. And, anyhow, Bolshevism had the advantage that it had not yet +been tried in this country, and no one, not even the most imaginative and +clear-sighted political theorist, could forecast the precise form into +which the curious British climate might mould it if it should ever adopt +it. So that to believe in it was, anyhow, easier than believing in +anything which _had_ been tried (and, like all things which are tried, +found wanting) such as Liberalism, Toryism, Socialism, and so forth. + +But the W.E.A. was a practical body, which went in for practical +adventure. Dowdy, schoolmarmish, extension-lectureish, it might be +and doubtless was. But a real thing, with guts in it, really doing +something; and after all, you can't be incendiarising the political +and economic constitution all your time. In your times off you can +do something useful, something which shows results, and for which such +an enormous amount of faith and hope is not required. Work for the +Revolution--yes, of course, one did that; one studied the literature of +the Internationals; one talked.... But did one help the Revolution on +much, when all was said? Whereas in the W.E.A. office one really got +things done; one typed a letter and something happened because of it; +more adult classes occurred, more workers got educated. Gerda, too young +and too serious to be cynical, believed that this must be right and good. + + +5 + +A clever, strange, charming child Barry found her, old and young beyond +her twenty years. Her wide-set blue eyes seemed to see horizons, and too +often to be blind to foregrounds. She had a slow, deliberating habit of +work, and of some things was astonishingly ignorant, with the ignorance +of those who, when at school, have worked at what they preferred and +quietly disregarded the rest. If he let her compose a letter, its wording +would be quaint. Her prose was, in fact, worse than her verse, and that +was saying a good deal. But she was thorough, never slipshod. Her brain +ground slowly, but it ground exceeding small; there were no blurred edges +to her apprehension of facts; either she didn't know a thing or she did, +and that sharp and clear distinction is none too common. She would file +and index papers with precision, and find them again, slow and sure, when +they were required. Added to these secretarial gifts, such as they were, +she had vision; she saw always the dream through or in spite of the +business; she was like Barry himself in that. She was a good companion, +too, though she had no wit and not very much humour, and none of Nan's +gifts of keen verbal brilliance, frequent ribaldry and quick response; +she would digest an idea slowly, and did not make jokes; her clear mind +had the quality of a crystal rather than of a flashing diamond. The +rising generation; the woman citizen of to-morrow: what did not rest on +her, and what might she not do and be? Nan, on the other hand, was the +woman citizen of to-day. And Nan did not bother to use her vote because +she found all the parties and all the candidates about equally absurd. +Barry had argued with Nan about that, but made no impression on her +cynical indifference; she had met him with levity. To Gerda there was a +wrong and a right in politics, instead of only a lot of wrongs; touching +young faith, Nan called it, but Barry, who shared it, found it cheering. + +This pretty little white pixyish person, with her yellow hair cut +straight across her forehead and waving round her neck like the curled, +shining petals of a celandine, with her straight-thinking mind and her +queer, secret, mystic thoughts--she was the woman of the future, a +citizen and a mother of citizens. She and the other girls and boys were +out to build the new heaven and the new earth, and their children would +carry it on. This responsibility of Gerda's invested her with a special +interest in the eyes of Barry, who lived and worked for the future, and +who, when he saw an infant mewling and puking in a pram, was apt to think +"The hope for the world," and smile at it encouragingly, overlooking its +present foolishness of aspect and habit. If ever he had children ... if +Nan would marry him ... but Nan would always lightly slide away when he +got near her.... He could see her now, with the cool, amused smile +tilting her lips, always sliding away, eluding him.... Nan, like a wild +animal for grace, brilliant like blown fire, cool like the wind, stabbing +herself and him with her keen wit.... + +Gerda, looking up from her typewriter to say "How do you spell +comparatively?" saw his face in its momentary bitterness as he frowned, +pen in hand, out of the window. He was waiting to sign the letters +before he went out to a committee meeting, and she thought she was +annoying him by her slowness. She spelt comparatively anyhow, and with +the wholehearted wrongness to which she and the typewriter, both bad +spellers, often attained in conjunction, hastily finished and laid +the letters before him. Called back to work and actuality, Barry was +again cheerful and kind, and he smilingly corrected comparatively. + +"You might ask me," he suggested, "instead of experimenting, when I do +happen to be at hand. Otherwise a dictionary, or Miss Pinner in the next +room...?" + +Gerda was happy, now that the shadow was off his face. Raillery and +rebuke she did not mind; only the shadow, which fell coldly on her heart +too. + +He left the office then for the day, as he often did, but it was warm and +alive with his presence, and she was doing his work, and she would see +him again in the morning. + + +6 + +Gerda went home only for week-ends now; it was too slow a journey to make +every morning and evening. She stayed during the week at a hotel called +the Red House, in Magpie Alley, off Bouverie Street. It was a hotel kept +by revolutionary souls exclusively for revolutionary souls. Gerda, who +had every right there, had gained admittance through friends of hers who +lodged there. Every evening at six o'clock she went back through the +rain, as she did this evening, and changed her wet clothes and sat down +to dinner, a meal which all the revolutionary souls ate together so that +it was sacramental, a breaking of common bread in token of a common +faith. + +They were a friendly party. At one end of the table Aunt Phyllis +presided. Aunt Phyllis, who was really the aunt of only one young man, +kept this Red House. She was a fiery little revolutionary in the late +forties, small, and thin and darting, full of faith and fire. She was on +the staff of the British Bolshevist, and for the rest, wrote leaflets, +which showered from her as from trees in autumn gales. So did the Rev. +Anselm Digby. Mr. Digby had also the platform habit, he would go round +the country denouncing and inciting to revolution in the name of Christ +and of the Third International. Though grizzled, he belonged to the +League of Youth, as well as to many other eager fraternities. He was +unbeneficed, having no time for parish work. This ardent clergyman sat +at the other end of Aunt Phyllis's table, as befitted his years. + +The space between the two ends was filled by younger creatures. It was +spring with them; their leaflets were yet green and unfallen; all that +fell from them was poetry, pathetic in its sadness, bitter in its irony, +free of metrical or indeed of any other restraints, and mainly either +about how unpleasant had been the trenches in which they had spent the +years of the great war and those persons over military age who had not +been called upon to enter them, or about freedom; free love, free thought +and a free world. Yes, both these subjects sound a little old-fashioned, +but the Red House was concerned with these elemental changeless things. +And some of them also wrote fiction, quiet, grey, a little tired, about +unhappy persons to whom nothing was very glad or very sad, and certainly +neither right nor wrong, but only rough or smooth of surface, bright or +dark of hue, sweet or bitter of taste or smell. Most of those in the room +belonged to a Freudian circle at their club, and all were anti-Christian, +except an Irish Roman Catholic, who had taken an active part in the +Easter uprising of 1916, since when he had been living in exile; Aunt +Phyllis, who believed in no churches but in the Love of God; and of +course, Mr. Digby. All these people, though they did not always get on +very well together, were linked by a common aim in life, and by common +hatreds. + +But, in spite of hate, the Red House lodgers were a happy set of +revolutionaries. Real revolutionaries; having their leaflets printed by +secret presses; members of societies which exchanged confidential letters +with the more eminent Russians, such as Litvinoff and Trotzky, collected +for future publication secret circulars, private strike-breaking orders, +and other _obiter dicta_ of a rash government, and believed themselves to +be working to establish the Soviet government over Europe. They had been +angry all this summer because the Glasgow conference of the I.L.P. had +broken with the Third International. They spoke with acerbity of Mr. +Ramsay Macdonald and Mr. and Mrs. Philip Snowden. But now, in August, +they had little acerbity to spare for anything but the government's +conduct of Irish affairs. + + +7 + +But, though these were Gerda's own people, the circle in which she felt +at home, she looked forward every night to the morning, when there would +be the office again, and Barry. + +Sometimes Barry took her out to dinner and a theatre. They went to the +"Beggar's Opera," "The Grain of Mustard Seed," "Mary Rose" (which they +found sentimental), and to the "Beggar's Opera" again Gerda had her own +ideas, very definite and critical, about dramatic merit. Barry enjoyed +discussing the plays with her, listening to her clear little silver voice +pronouncing judgment. Gerda might be forever mediocre in any form of +artistic expression, but she was an artist, with the artist's love of +merit and scorn of the second-rate. + +They went to "Mary Rose" with some girl cousins of Barry's, two jolly +girls from Girton. Against their undiscriminating enthusiasm, Gerda and +her fastidious distaste stood out sharp and clear, like some delicate +etching among flamboyant pictures. That fastidiousness she had from both +her parents, with something of her own added. + +Barry went home with her. He wondered how her fastidiousness stood the +grimy house in Magpie Alley and its ramshackle habit of life, after the +distinctions and beauty of Windover, but he thought it was probably very +good for her, part of the experience which should mould the citizen. +Gerda shrank from no experience. At the corner of Bouverie Street they +met a painted girl out for hire, strayed for some reason into this +unpropitious locality. For the moment Gerda had fallen behind and Barry +seemed alone. The girl stopped in his path, looked up in his face +enquiringly, and he pushed his way, not urgently, past her. The next +moment Gerda's hand caught his arm. + +"Stop, Barry, stop." + +"Stop? What for?" + +"The woman. Didn't you see?" + +"My dear child, I can't do anything for her." + +Like the others of her generation, Gerda was interested in persons of +that profession; he knew that already; only they saw them through a +distorting mist. + +"We can find out where she works, what wages she gets, why she's on the +streets. She's probably working for sweated wages somewhere. We _ought_ +to find out." + +"We can't find out about every woman of that kind we meet. The thing is +to attack the general principle behind the thing, not each individual +case.... Besides, it would be so frightfully impertinent of us. How +would you like it if someone stopped you in the street and asked you +where you worked and whether you were sweated or not, and why you were +out so late?" + +"I shouldn't mind, if they wanted to know for a good reason. One _ought_ +to find out how things are, what people's conditions are." + +It was what Barry too believed and practised, but he could only say +"It's the wrong way round. You've got to work from the centre to the +circumference.... And don't fall into the sentimental mistake of thinking +that all prostitution comes from sweated labour. A great deal does, of +course, but a great deal because it seems to some women an easy and +attractive way of earning a living.... Oh, hammer away at sweated +labour for all you're worth, of course, for that reason and every other; +but you won't stop prostitution till you stop the demand for it. That's +the poisonous root of the thing. So long as the demand goes on, you'll +get the supply, whatever economic conditions may be." + +Gerda fell silent, pondering on the strange tastes of those who desired +for some reason the temporary company of these unfortunate females, so +unpleasing to the eye, to the ear, to the mind, to the smell; desired it +so much that they would pay money for it. _Why?_ Against that riddle the +non-comprehension of her sex beat itself, baffled. She might put it the +other way round, try to imagine herself desiring, paying for, the +temporary attentions of some dirty, common, vapid, and patchouli-scented +man--and still she got no nearer. For she never could desire it.... Well, +anyhow, there the thing was. Stop the demand? Stop that desire of men for +women? Stop the ready response of women to it? If that was the only way, +then there was indeed nothing for it but education--and was even +education any use for that? + +"Is it love," she asked of Barry, "that the men feel who want these +women?" + +Barry laughed shortly. "Love? Good Lord, no." + +"What then, Barry?" + +"I don't know that it can be explained, exactly.... It's a passing +taste, I suppose, a desire for the company of another sex from one's +own, just because it _is_ another sex, though it may have no other +attractions.... It's no use trying to analyse it, one doesn't get +anywhere. But it's not love." + +"What's love, then? What's the difference?" + +"Have I to define love, walking down Magpie Alley? You could do it as +well as I could. Love has the imagination in it, and the mind. I suppose +that's the difference. And, too, love wants to give. This is all +platitude. No one can ever say anything new about love, it's all been +said. Got your latch-key?" + +Gerda let herself into the Red House and went up to bed and lay wakeful. +Very certainly she loved Barry, with all her imagination and all her +mind, and she would have given him more than all that was hers. Very +surely and truly she loved him, even if after all he was to be her uncle +by marriage, which would make their family life like that in one of Louis +Couperus's books. But why unhappy like that? Was love unhappy? If she +might see him sometimes, talk to him, if Nan wouldn't want all of him all +the time--and it would be unlike Nan to do that--she could be happy. One +could share, after all. Women must share, for there were a million more +women in England than men. + +But probably Nan didn't mean to marry him at all. Nan never married +people.... + + +8 + +Next morning at the office Barry said he had heard from Nan. She had +asked him to come too and bicycle in Cornwall, with her and Gerda and +Kay. + +"You will, won't you," said Gerda. + +"Rather, of course." + +A vaguely puzzled note sounded in his voice. But he would come. + +Cornwall was illuminated to Gerda. The sharing process would begin there. +But for a week more she had him to herself, and that was better. + + + + +CHAPTER VIII + +NAN + + +1 + +Nan at Marazion bathed, sailed, climbed, walked and finished her book. +She had a room at St. Michael's Café, at the edge of the little town, +just above the beach. Across a space of sea at high tide, and of wet +sand and a paved causeway slimy with seaweed at the ebb, St. Michael's +Mount loomed, dark against a sunset sky, pale and unearthly in the dawn, +an embattled ship riding anchored on full waters, or stranded on drowned +sands. + +Nan stayed at the empty little town to be alone. But she was not alone +all the time, for at Newlyn, five miles away, there was the artist +colony, and some of these artists were her friends. (In point of fact, it +is impossible to be alone in Cornwall; the place to go to for that would +be Hackney, or some other district of outer London, where inner Londoners +do not go for holidays.) Had she liked she could have had friends to play +with all day, and talk and laughter and music all night, as in London. +She did not like. She went out by herself, worked by herself; and all the +time, in company, or alone, talking or working, she knew herself +withdrawn really into a secret cove of her own which was warm and golden +as no actual coves in this chill summer were warm and golden; a cove on +whose good brown sand she lay and made castles and played, while at her +feet the great happy sea danced and beat, the great tumbling sea on which +she would soon put out her boat. + +She would count the days before Barry would be with her. + +"Three weeks now. Twenty days; nineteen, eighteen..." desiring neither to +hurry nor to retard them, but watching them slip behind her in a deep +content. When he came, he and Gerda and Kay, they would spend one night +and one day in this fishing-town, lounging about its beach, and in +Newlyn, with its steep crooked streets between old grey walls hung with +shrubs, and beyond Newlyn, in the tiny fishing hamlets that hung above +the little coves from Penzance to Land's End. They were going to bicycle +all along the south coast. But before that they would have had it out, +she and Barry; probably here, in the little pale climbing fishing-town. +No matter where, and no matter how; Nan cared nothing for scenic +arrangements. All she had to do was to convey to Barry that she would +say yes now to the question she had put off and off, let him ask it, +give her answer, and the thing would be done. + + +2 + +Meanwhile she wrote the last chapters of her book, sitting on the beach +among drying nets and boats, in some fishing cove up the coast. The +Newlyn shore she did not like, because the artist-spoilt children crowded +round her, interrupting. + +"Lady, lady! Will you paint us?" + +"No. I don't paint." + +"Then what _are_ you doing?" + +"Writing. Go away." + +"May we come with you to where you're staying?" + +"No. Go away." + +"Last year a lady took us to her studio and gave us pennies. And when +she'd gone back to London she sent us each a doll." + +Silence. + +"Lady, if we come with you to your studio, will you give us pennies?" + +"No. Why should I?" + +"You might because you wanted to paint us. You might because you liked +us." + +"I don't do either. Go away now." + +They withdrew a little and turned somersaults, supposing her to be +watching. The artistic colony had a lot to answer for, Nan thought; they +were making parasites and prostitutes of the infant populace. Children +could at their worst be detestable in their vanity, their posing, their +affectation, their unashamed greed. + +"Barry's and mine," she thought (I suppose we'll have some), "shall at +least not pose. They may break all the commandments, but if they turn +somersaults to be looked at I shall drop them into a public crèche and +abandon them." + +The prettiest little girl looked sidelong at the unkind lady, and +believed her half-smile to denote admiration. Pretty little girls often +make this error. + +Stephen Lumley came along the beach. It was lunch time, and after lunch +they were going out sailing. Stephen Lumley was the most important artist +just now in Newlyn. He had been in love with Nan for some months, and did +not get on with his wife. Nan liked him; he painted brilliantly, and was +an attractive, clever, sardonic person. Sailing with him was fun. They +understood each other; they had rather the same cynical twist to them. +They understood each other really better than Nan and Barry did. Neither +of them needed to make any effort to comprehend each other's point of +view. And each left the other where he was. Whereas Barry filled Nan, +beneath her cynicism, beneath her levity, with something quite new--a +queer desire, to put it simply, for goodness, for straight living and +generous thinking, even, within reason, for usefulness. More and more he +flooded her inmost being, drowning the old landmarks, like the sea at +high tide. Nan was not a Christian, did not believe in God, but she came +near at this time to believing in Christianity as possibly a fine and +adventurous thing to live. + + +3 + +Echoes of the great little world so far off came to the Cornish coasts, +through the Western Mercury and the stray, belated London papers. Rumours +of a projected coal strike, of fighting in Mesopotamia, of political +prisoners on hunger strike, of massacres in Ireland, and typists murdered +at watering-places; echoes of Fleet Street quarrels, of Bolshevik gold +("Not a bond! Not a franc! Not a rouble!") and, from the religious +world, of fallen man and New Faiths for Old. And on Sundays one bought a +paper which had for its special star comic turn the reminiscences of the +expansive wife of one of our more patient politicians. The world went on +just the same, quarrelling, chattering, lying; sentimental, busy and +richly absurd; its denizens tilting against each other's politics, +murdering each other, trying and always failing to swim across the +channel, and always talking, talking, talking. Marazion and Newlyn, and +every other place were the world in little, doing all the same things in +their own miniature way. Each human soul was the world in little, with +all the same conflicts, hopes, emotions, excitements and intrigues. But +Nan, swimming, sailing, eating, writing, walking and lounging, browning +in salt winds and waters, was happy and remote, like a savage on an +island who meditates exclusively on his own affairs. + + +4 + +Nan met them at Penzance station. The happy three; they would be good to +make holiday with. Already they had holiday faces, though not yet browned +like Nan's. + +Barry's hand gripped Nan's. He was here then, and it had come. Her head +swam; she felt light, like thistledown on the wind. + +They came up from the station into quiet, gay, warm Penzance, and had tea +at a shop. They were going to stay at Marazion that night and the next, +and spend the day bicycling to Land's End and back. They were all four +full of vigour, brimming with life and energy that needed to be spent. +But Gerda looked pale. + +"She's been over-working in a stuffy office," Barry said. "And not, except +when she dined with me, getting proper meals. What do you think she +weighs, Nan?" + +"About as much as that infant there," Nan said, indicating a stout person +of five at the next table. + +"Just about, I daresay. She's only six stone. What are we to do about +it?" + +His eyes caressed Gerda, as they might have caressed a child. He would be +a delightful uncle by marriage, Nan thought. + +They took the road to Marazion. The tide was going out. In front of them +the Mount rose in a shallowing violet sea. + +"My word!" said Barry, and Kay, screwing up his eyes, murmured, "Good old +Mount." Gerda's lips parted in a deep breath; beauty always struck her +dumb. + +Into the pale-washed, straggling old village they rode, stabled their +bicycles, and went down to the shining evening sands, where now the paved +causeway to the Mount was all exposed, running slimy and seaweedy between +rippled wet sands and dark, slippery rocks. Bare-footed they trod it, +Gerda and Kay in front, Barry and Nan behind, and the gulls talking and +wheeling round them. + +Nan stopped, the west in her eyes. "Look." + +Point beyond point they saw stretching westward to Land's End, dim and +dark beyond a rose-flushed sea. + +"Isn't it clear," said Nan. "You can see the cliff villages ever so far +along ... Newlyn, Mousehole, Clement's Island off it--and the point of +Lamorna." + +Barry said "We'll go to Land's End by the coast road to-morrow, shan't +we, not the high road?" + +"Oh, the coast road, yes. It's about twice the distance, with the ups and +downs, and you can't ride all the way. But we'll go by it." + +For a moment they stood side by side, looking westward over the bay. + +Nan said, "Aren't you glad you came?" + +"I should say so!" + +His answer came, quick and emphatic. There was a pause after it. Nan +suddenly turned on him the edge of a smile. + +Barry did not see it. He was not looking at her, nor over the bay, but +in front of him, to where Gerda, a thin little upright form, moved +bare-legged along the shining causeway to the moat. + +Nan's smile flickered out. The sunset tides of rose flamed swiftly over +her cheeks, her neck, her body, and receded as sharply, as if someone had +hit her in the face. Her pause, her smile, had been equivalent, as she +saw them, to a permission, even to an invitation. He had turned away +unnoticing, a queer, absent tenderness in his eyes, as they followed +Gerda ... Gerda ... walking light-footed up the wet causeway.... Well, if +he had got out of the habit of wanting to make love to her, she would not +offer him chances again. When he got the habit back, he must make his own +chances as best he could. + +"Come on," said Nan. "We must hurry." + +She left no more pauses, but talked all the time, about Newlyn, about the +artists, about the horrid children, the fishing, the gulls, the weather. + +"And how's the book?" he asked. + +"Nearly done. I'm waiting for the end to make itself." + +He smiled and looking round at him she saw that he was not smiling at +her or her book, but at Gerda, who had stepped off the causeway and was +wading in a rock pool. + +He must be obsessed with Gerda; he thought of her, apparently, all the +time he was talking about other things. It was irritating for an aunt to +bear. + +They joined Kay and Gerda on the island. Kay was prowling about, looking +for a way by which to enter the forbidden castle. Kay always trespassed +when he could, and was so courteous and gentle when he was caught at it +that he disarmed comment. But this time he could not manage to evade the +polite but firm eye of the fisherman on guard. They crossed over to +Marazion again all together and went to the café for supper. + + +5 + +It was a merry, rowdy meal they had; ham and eggs and coffee in an upper +room, with the soft sea air blowing in on them through open windows. Nan +and Barry chattered, and Kay took his cheerful part; only Gerda sparse of +word, was quiet and dreamy, with her blue eyes opened wide against sleep, +for she had not slept until late last night. + +"High time she had a holiday," Barry said of her. "Four weeks' grind in +August--it's beginning to tell now." + +Fussy Barry was about the child. As bad as Frances Carr with Pamela. +Gerda was as strong as a little pony really, though she looked such a +small, white, brittle thing. + +They got out maps and schemed out roads and routes over their cigarettes. +Then they strolled about the little town, exploring its alleys and narrow +byways that gave on the sea. The moon had risen now, and Marazion was cut +steeply in shadow and silver light, and all the bay lay in shadow and +silver too, to where the lights of Penzance twinkled like a great lit +church. + +Barry thought once, as he had often thought in the past, "How brilliant +Nan is, and how gay. No wonder she never needed me. She needs no one," +and this time it did not hurt him to think it. He loved to listen to her, +to talk and laugh with her, to look at her, but he was free at last; he +demanded nothing of her. Those restless, urging, disappointed hopes and +longings lay dead in him, dead and at peace. He could not have put his +finger on the moment of their death; there had been no moment; like good +soldiers they had never died, but faded away, and till to-night he had +not known that they had gone. He would show Nan now that she need fear +no more pestering from him; she need not keep on talking without pause +whenever they were alone together, which had been her old way of defence, +and which she was beginning again now. They could drop now into +undisturbed friendship. Nan was the most stimulating of friends. It was +refreshing to talk things out with her again, to watch her quick mind +flashing and turning and cutting its way, brilliant, clear, sharp, like +a diamond. + +They went to bed; Barry and Kay to the room they had got above a public +house, Nan and Gerda to Nan's room at the café, where they squeezed into +one bed. + +Gerda slept, lying very straight and still, as was her habit in sleep. +Nan lay wakeful and restless, watching the moonlight steal across the +floor and lie palely on the bed and on Gerda's waxen face and yellow +hair. The pretty, pale child, strange in sleep, like a little mermaiden +lost on earth. Nan, sitting up in bed, one dark plait hanging over each +shoulder, watched her with brooding amber eyes. How young she was, how +very, very young. It was touching to be so young. Yet why, when youth +was, people said, the best time? It wasn't really touching to be young; +it was touching not to be young, because you had less of life left. +Touching to be thirty; more touching to be forty; tragic to be fifty and +heartbreaking to be sixty. As to seventy, as to eighty, one would feel as +one did during the last dance of a ball, tired but fey in the paling +dawn, desperately making the most of each bar of music before one went +home to bed. That was touching; Mrs. Hilary and Grandmama were touching. +Not Gerda and Kay, with their dance just beginning. + +A bore, this sharing one bed. You couldn't sleep, however small and quiet +your companion lay. They must get a bed each, when they could, during +this tour. One must sleep. If one didn't one began to think. Every time +Nan forced herself to the edge of sleep, a picture sprang sharply before +her eyes--the flaming sky and sea, herself and Barry standing together on +the causeway. + +"Aren't you glad you came?" Her own voice, soft, encouraging. + +"I should say so!" The quick, matter-of-fact answer. + +Then a pause and she turning on him the beginnings of a smile. An +allowing, inviting ... seductive ... smile. + +And he, smiling too, but not at her, looking away to where Gerda and Kay +walked bare-legged to the Mount. + +Flame scorched her again. The pause each time she saw it now became +longer, more deliberate, more inviting, more emptily unfilled. Her smile +became more luring, his more rejecting. As she saw it now, in the cruel, +distorting night, he had seen her permission and refused it. By day she +had known that simple Barry had seen nothing; by day she would know it +again. Between days are set nights of white, searing flame, two in a bed +so that one cannot sleep. Damn Gerda, lying there so calm and cool. It +had been a mistake to ask Gerda to come; if it hadn't been for Gerda they +wouldn't have been two in a bed. + +"Barry's a good deal taken up with her just now," said Nan to herself, +putting it into plain, deliberate words, as was her habit with life's +situations. "He does get taken up with pretty girls, I suppose, when he's +thrown with them. All men do, if you come to that. For the moment he's +thinking about her, not about me. That's a bore. It will bore me to death +if it goes on.... I wonder how long it will go on? I wonder how soon +he'll want to make love to me again?" + +Having thus expressed the position in clear words, Nan turned her mind +elsewhere. What do people think of when they are seeking sleep? It is +worse than no use to think of what one is writing; that wakes one up, +goads every brain-cell into unwholesome activity. No use thinking of +people; they are too interesting. Nor of sheep going through gates; they +tumble over one another and make one's head ache. Nor of the coming day; +that is too difficult: nor of the day which is past; that is too near. +Wood paths, quiet seas, running streams--these are better. + + "Any lazy man can swim + Down the current of a stream." + +Or the wind in trees, or owls crying, or waves beating on warm shores. +The waves beat now; ran up whisperingly with the incoming tide, broke, +and sidled back, dragging at the wet sand.... Nan, hearing them, drifted +at last into sleep. + + + + +CHAPTER IX + +THE PACE + + +1 + +The coast road to Land's End is like a switchback. You climb a mountain +and are flung down to sea level like a shooting star, and climb a +mountain again. Sometimes the road becomes a sandy cliff path and you +have to walk. + +But at last, climbing up and being shot down and walking, Nan and Barry +and Gerda and Kay reached Land's End. They went down to Sennan Cove to +bathe, and the high sea was churning breakers on the beach. Nan dived +through them with the arrowy straightness of a fish or a submarine, came +up behind them, and struck out to sea. The others behind her, less +skilful, floundered and were dashed about by the waves. Barry and Kay +struggled through them somehow, bruised and choked; Gerda, giving it +up--she was no great swimmer--tranquilly rolled and paddled in the surf +by herself. + +Kay called to her, mocking. + +"Coward. Sensualist. Come over the top like a man." + +Nan, turning to look at her from the high crest of a wave, thought +"Gerda's afraid in a high sea. She is afraid of things: I remember." + +Nan herself was afraid of very little. She had that kind of buoyant +physical gallantry which would take her into the jaws of danger with +a laugh. When in London during the air raids she had walked about the +streets to see what could be seen; in France with the Fannys she had +driven cars over shelled roads with a cool composure which distinguished +her even among that remarkably cool and composed set of young women; as +a child she had ridden unbroken horses and teased and dodged savage bulls +for the fun of it; she would go sailing in seas that fishermen refused to +go out in; part angry dogs which no other onlooker would touch; sleep out +alone in dark and lonely woods, and even on occasion brave pigs. The kind +of gay courage she had was a physical heritage which can never be +acquired. What can be acquired, with blood and tears, is the courage of +the will, stubborn and unyielding, but always nerve-racked, proudly and +tensely strung up. Nan's form of fearlessness, combined as it was with +the agility of a supple body excellently trained, would carry her lightly +through all physical adventures, much as her arrowy strength and skill +carried her through the breakers without blundering or mishap and let her +now ride buoyantly on each green mountain as it towered. + +Barry, emerging spluttering from one of these, said "All very jolly for +you, Nan. You're a practised hand. We're being drowned. I'm going out of +it," and he dived through another wave for the shore. Kay, a clumsier +swimmer, followed him, and Nan rode her tossing horses, laughing at them, +till she was shot onto the beach and dug her fingers deep into the +sucking sand. + +"A very pretty landing," said Barry, generously, rubbing his bruised +limbs and coughing up water. + +Gerda rose from the foam where she had been playing serenely impervious +to the tauntings of Kay. + +Barry said "Happy child. She's not filled up with salt water and battered +black and blue." + +Nan remarked that neither was she, and they went to their rock +crannies to dress. They dressed and undressed in a publicity, a mixed +shamelessness that was almost appalling. + +They rode back to Marazion after tea along the high road, more soberly +than they had come. + +"Tired, Gerda?" Barry said, at the tenth mile, as they pulled up a hill. +"Hold on to me." + +Gerda refused to do so mean a thing. She had her own sense of honour, and +believed that everyone should carry his or her own burden. But when they +had to get off and walk up the hill she let him help to push her bicycle. + +"Give us a few days, Nan," said Barry, "and we'll all be as fit as you. +At present we're fat and scant of breath from our sedentary and useful +life." + +"Our life"--as if they had only the one between them. + +At Newlyn Nan stopped. She said she was going to supper with someone +there and would come on later. She was, in fact, tired of them. She +dropped into Stephen Lumley's studio, which was, as usual after painting +hours, full of his friends, talking and smoking. That was the only way to +spend the evening, thought Nan, talking and smoking and laughing, never +pausing. Anyhow that was the way she spent it. + +She got back to Marazion at ten o'clock and went to her room at the +little café. Looking from its window, she saw the three on the shore by +the moonlit sea. Kay was standing on the paved causeway, and Barry and +Gerda, some way off, were wading among the rocks, bending over the pools, +as if they were looking for crabs. + +Nan went to bed. When Gerda came in presently, she lay very still and +pretended to be asleep. + +It was dreadful, another night of sharing a bed. Dreadful to lie so +close one to the other; dreadful to touch accidentally; touching people +reminded you how alive they are, with their separate, conscious throbbing +life so close against yours. + + +2 + +Next morning they took the road eastward. They were going to ride along +the coast to Talland Bay, where they were going to spend a week. They +were giving themselves a week to get there, which would allow plenty of +time for bathing by the way. It is no use hurrying in Cornwall, the hills +are too steep and the sea too attractive, and lunch and tea, when ordered +in shops, so long in coming. The first day they only got round the Lizard +to Cadgwith, where they dived from steep rocks into deep blue water. Nan +dived from a high rock with a swoop like a sea bird's, a pretty thing to +watch. Barry was nearly as good; he too was physically proficient. The +Bendishes were less competent; they were so much younger, as Barry said. +But they too reached the water head first, which is, after all, the main +thing in diving. And as often as Nan dived, with her arrowy swoop, Gerda +tumbled in too, from the same rock, and when Nan climbed a yet higher +rock and dived again, Gerda climbed too, and fell in sprawling after her. +Gerda to-day was not to be outdone, anyhow in will to attempt, whatever +her achievement might lack. Nan looked up from the sea with a kind of +mocking admiration at the little figure poised on the high shelf of rock, +slightly unsteady about the knees, slightly blue about the lips, thin +white arms pointing forward for the plunge. + +The child had pluck.... It must have hurt, too, that slap on the nearly +flat body as she struck the sea. She hadn't done it well. She came up +with a dazed look, shaking the water out of her eyes, coughing. + +"You're too ambitious," Barry told her. "That was much too high for you. +You're also blue with cold. Come out." + +Gerda looked up at Nan, who was scrambling nimbly onto the highest ledge +of all, crying "I must have one more." + +Barry said to Gerda "No, you're not going after her. You're coming out. +It's no use thinking you can do all Nan does. None of us can." + +Gerda gave up. The pace was too hard for her. She couldn't face that +highest rock; the one below had made her feel cold and queer and shaky as +she stood on it. Besides, why was she trying, for the first time in her +life, to go Nan's pace, which had always been, and was now more than ever +before, too hot and mettlesome for her? She didn't know why; only that +Nan had been, somehow, all day setting the pace, daring her, as it were, +to make it. It was becoming, oddly, a point of honour between them, and +neither knew how or why. + + +3 + +On the road it was the same. Nan, with only the faintest, if any +application of brakes, would commit herself to lanes which leaped +precipitously downwards like mountain streams, zig-zagging like a +dog's-tooth pattern, shingled with loose stones, whose unseen end might +be a village round some sharp turn, or a cove by the sea, or a field path +running to a farm, or merely the foot of one hill and the beginning of +the steep pull up the next. Coast roads in Cornwall are like that--often +uncertain in their ultimate goal (for map-makers, like bicyclists, are +apt to get tired of them, and, tiring, break them off, so to speak, in +mid-air, leaving them suspended, like snapped ends of string). But +however uncertain their goal may be, their form is not uncertain at +all; it can be relied on to be that of a snake in agony leaping down a +hill or up; or, if one prefers it, that of a corkscrew plunging downwards +into a cork. + +Nan leaped and plunged with them. She was at the bottom while the others +were still jolting, painfully brake-held, albeit rapidly, half-way down. +And sometimes, when the slope was more than usually like the steep roof +of a house, the zig-zags more than usually acute, the end even less than +usually known, the whole situation, in short, more dreadful and perilous, +if possible, than usual, the others surrendered, got off and walked. They +couldn't really rely on their brakes to hold them, supposing something +should swing round on them from behind one of the corners; they couldn't +be sure of turning with the road when it turned at its acutest, and such +failure of harmony with one's road is apt to meet with a dreadful +retribution. Barry was adventurous, and Kay and Gerda were calm, but to +all of them life was sweet and limbs and bicycles precious; none of them +desired an untimely end. + +But Nan laughed at their prognostications of such an end. "It will be +found impossible to ride down these hills," said their road book, and Nan +laughed at that too. You can, as she observed, ride down anything; it is +riding up that is the difficulty. Anyhow, she, who had ridden bucking +horses and mountainous seas, could ride down anything that wore the +semblance of a road. Only fools, Nan believed, met with disasters while +bicycling. And jamming on the brakes was bad for the wheels and tiring to +the hands. So brakeless, she zig-zagged like greased lightning to the +bottom. + +It was on the second day, on the long hill that runs from Manaccan down +to Helford Ferry, that Gerda suddenly took her brakes off and shot after +her. That hill is not a badly spiralling one, but it is long and steep +and usually ridden with brakes. And just above Helford village it has one +very sharp turn to the left. + +Nan, standing waiting for the others on the bridge, looked round and saw +Gerda shooting with unrestrained wheels and composed face round the last +bend. She had nearly swerved over at the turn, but not quite. She got off +at the bridge. + +"Hullo," said Nan. "Quicker than usual, weren't you?" She had a +half-grudging, half-ironic grin of appreciation for a fellow sportsman, +the same grin with which she had looked up at her from the sea at +Cadgwith. Nan liked daring. Though it was in her, and she knew that it +was in her, to hate Gerda with a cold and deadly anger, the sportsman +in her gave its tribute. For what was nothing and a matter of ordinary +routine to her, might be, she suspected, rather alarming to the quiet, +white-faced child. + +Then the demon of mischief leapt in her. If Gerda meant to keep the pace, +she should have a pace worth keeping. They would prove to one another +which was the better woman, as knights in single combat of old proved it, +or fighters in the ring to-day. As to Barry, he should look on at it, +whether he liked it or not. + +Barry and Kay rushed up to them, and they went through the little +thatched rose-sweet hamlet to the edge of the broad blue estuary and +shouted for the ferry. + + +4 + +After that the game began in earnest. Nan, from being casually and +unconsciously reckless, became deliberately dare-devil and always with a +backward, ironic look for Gerda, as if she said "How about it? Will this +beat you?" + +"A bicycling tour with Nan isn't nearly so safe as the front trenches of +my youth used to be," Barry commented. "Those quiet, comfortable old +days!" + +There, indeed, one was likely to be shot, or blown to pieces, or buried, +or gassed, and that was about all. But life now was like the Apostle +Paul's; they were in journeyings often, in weariness often, in perils of +waters, in perils by their own countrymen, in perils on the road, in the +wilderness, in the sea, in hunger and thirst, in cold and nakedness. In +perils too, so Gerda believed, of cattle; for these would stray in +bellowing herds about narrow lanes, and they would all charge straight +through them, missing the lowered horns by some incredible fluke of +fortune. If this seems to make Gerda a coward, it should be remembered +that she showed none of these inward blenchings, but went on her way with +the rest, composed as a little wax figure at Madame Tussaud's. She was, +in fact, of the stuff of which martyrs are made, and would probably have +gone to the stake for a conviction. But stampeding cattle, and high seas, +and brakeless lightning descents, she did not like, however brave a face +she was sustained by grace to meet them with. After all she was only +twenty, an age when some people still look beneath their beds before +retiring. + +Bulls, even, Gerda was called upon to face, in the wake of two unafraid +males and a reckless aunt. What young female of twenty, always excepting +those who have worked on the land, and whose chief reward is familiarity +with its beasts, can with complete equanimity face bulls? One day a path +they were taking down to the sea ran for a while along the top of a +stone hedge, about five feet high and three feet wide. Most people +would have walked along this, leading their bicycles. Nan, naturally, +bicycled, and Barry and Kay, finding it an amusing experiment, bicycled +after her. Gerda, in honour bound, bicycled too. She accepted stoically +the probability that she would very soon bicycle off the hedge into the +field and be hurt. In the fields on either side of them, cows stared at +them in mild surprise and some disdain, coming up close to look. So, if +one bicycled off, it would be into the very jaws, onto the very horns, of +cattle. Female cattle, indeed, but cattle none the less. + +Then Kay chanted "Fat bulls of Basan came round about me on either side," +and it was just like that. One fat bull at least trotted up to the hedge, +waving his tail and snorting, pawing and glaring, evincing, in short, +all the symptoms common to his kind. + +So now if one bicycled off it would be into the very maw of an angry +bull. + +"You look out you don't fall, Gerda," Kay flung back at her over his +shoulder. "It will be to a dreadful death, as you see. Nobody'll save +you; nobody'll dare." + +"Feeling unsteady?" Barry's gentler voice asked her from behind. "Get off +and walk it. I will too." + +But Gerda rode on, her eyes on Nan's swift, sure progress ahead. Barry +should not see her mettle fail; Barry, who had been through the war and +would despise cowards. + +They reached the end of the hedge, and the path ran off it into a field. +And between this field and the last one there was an open gap, through +which the bull of Basan lumbered with fierce eyes and stood waiting for +them to descend. + +"I don't like that creature," Kay said. "I'm afraid of him. Aren't you, +Barry?" + +"Desperately," Barry admitted. "Anyone would be, except Nan, of course." + +Nan was bicycling straight along the field path, and the bull stood +staring at her, his head well down, in readiness, as Gerda saw, to +charge. But he did not charge Nan. Bulls and other ferocious beasts think +it waste of time to charge the fearless; they get no fun out of an +unfrightened victim. He waited instead for Gerda, as she knew he would +do. + +Kay followed Nan, still chanting his psalm. Gerda followed Kay. As she +dropped from the hedge onto the path she turned round once and met +Barry's eyes, her own wide and grave, and she was thinking "I can +bear anything if he is behind me and sees it happen. I couldn't bear +it if I were the last and no one saw." To be gored all alone, none to +care ... who could bear that? + +The next moment Barry was no longer behind her, but close at her side, +bicycling on the grass by the path, between her and the bull. Did he know +she was frightened? She hadn't shown it, surely. + +"The wind," said Gerda, in her clear, small crystalline voice, "has gone +round more to the south. Don't you think so?" And reminded Barry of a +French aristocrat demoiselle going with calm and polite conversation to +the scaffold. + +"I believe it has," he said, and smiled. + +And after all the bull, perhaps not liking the look of the bicycles, +didn't charge at all, but only ran by their sides with snorting noises +until they left him behind at the next gate. + +"Did you," enquired Gerda, casually, "notice that bull? He was an awfully +fine one, wasn't he?" + +"A remarkably noble face, I thought," Kay returned. + +They scrambled down cliffs to the cove and bathed. + + +5 + +Nan, experienced in such things, as one is at the age of thirty-three if +one has led a well-spent life, knew now beyond peradventure what had +happened to Barry and what would never happen again between him and her. +So that was that, as she put it, definite and matter-of-fact to herself +about it. He had stopped wanting her. Well then, she must stop wanting +him, as speedily as might be. It took a little time. You could not shoot +down the hills of the emotions with the lightning rapidity with which you +shot down the roads. Also, the process was excruciatingly painful. You +had to unmake so many plans, unthink so many thoughts.... Oh, but that +was nothing. You had to hear his voice softened to someone else, see the +smile in his eyes caressing someone else, feel his whole mind, his whole +soul, reaching out in protecting, adoring care to someone else's charm +and loveliness ... as once, as so lately, they had reached out to +yours.... That was torture for the bravest, far worse than any bulls or +seas or precipices could be to Gerda. Yet it had to be gone through, as +Gerda had to leap from towering cliffs into wild seas and ride calmly +among fierce cattle.... When Nan woke in the night it was like toothache, +a sharp, gnawing, searing hell of pain. Memory choked her, bitter +self-anger for joy once rejected and then forever lost took her by the +throat, present desolation drowned her soul in hard, slow tears, jealousy +scorched and seared. + +But, now every morning, pride rose, mettlesome and gallant, making her +laugh and talk, so that no one guessed. And with pride, a more reckless +physical daring than usual; a kind of scornful adventurousness, that +courted danger for its own sake, and wordlessly taunted the weaker spirit +with "Follow if you like and can. If you don't like, if you can't, I am +the better woman in that way, though you may be the beloved." And the +more the mettle of the little beloved rose to meet the challenge, the +hotter the pace grew. Perhaps they both felt, without knowing they felt +it, that there was something in Barry which leaped instinctively out to +applaud reckless courage, some element in himself which responded to it +even while he called it foolhardy. You could tell that Barry was of that +type, by the quick glow of his eyes and smile. But the rivalry in daring +was not really for Barry; Barry's choice was made. It was at bottom the +last test of mettle, the ultimate challenge from the loser to the winner, +in the lists chosen by the loser as her own. It was also--for Nan was +something of a bully--the heckling of Gerda. She might have won one game, +and that the most important, but she should be forced to own herself +beaten in another, after being dragged painfully along rough and +dangerous ways. And over and above and beyond all this, beyond rivalry +and beyond Gerda, was the eternal impatience for adventure as such, for +quick, vehement living, which was the essence of Nan. She found things +more fun that way: that summed it. + + +6 + +The long strange days slid by like many-coloured dreams. The steep +tumbling roads tilted behind them, with their pale, old, white and slate +hamlets huddled between fields above a rock-bound sea. Sometimes they +would stop early in the day at some fishing village, find rooms there for +the night, and bathe and sail till evening. When they bathed, Nan would +swim far out to sea, striking through cold, green, heaving waters, +slipping cleverly between currents, numbing thought with bodily action, +drowning emotion in the sea. + +Once they were all caught in a current and a high sea and swept out, and +had to battle for the shore. Even Nan, even Barry, could not get to the +cove from which they had bathed; all they could try for was the jut of +rocks to westward toward which the seas were sweeping, and to reach this +meant a tough fight. + +"Barry!" + +Nan, looking over her shoulder, saw Gerda's bluing face and wide staring +eyes and quickening, flurried strokes. Saw, too, Barry at once at her +side, heard his "All right, I'm here. Catch hold of my shoulder." + +In a dozen strokes Nan reached them, and was at Gerda's other side. + +"Put one hand on each of us and strike for all you're worth with your +legs. That's the way...." + +Numbly Gerda's two hands gripped Barry's right shoulder and Nan's left. +Between them they pulled her, her slight weight dragging at them heavily, +helping the running sea against them. They were being swept westward +towards the rocks, but swept also outwards, beyond them; they struck +northward and northward and were carried always south. It was a close +thing between their swimming and the current, and it looked as though the +current was winning. + +"It'll have to be all we know now," said Nan, as they struggled ten yards +from the point. + +She and Barry both rather thought that probably it would be all they knew +and just the little more they didn't know--they would be swept round the +point well to the south of the outermost rock--and then, hey for open +sea! + +But their swimming proved, in this last fierce minute of the struggle, +stronger than the sea. They were swept towards the jutting point, almost +round it, when Nan, flinging forward to the right, caught a slippery +ledge of rock with her two hands and held on. Barry didn't think she +could hold on for more than a second against the swinging seas, or, if +she did, could consolidate her position. But he did not know the full +power of Nan's trained, acrobatic body. Slipping her shoulder from +Gerda's clutch, she grasped instead Gerda's right hand in her left, and +with her other arm and with all her sinuous, wiry strength, heaved +herself onto the rock and there flung her body flat, reaching out her +free hand to Barry. Barry caught it just in time, as he was being swung +on a wave outwards, and pulled himself within grip of the rock, and in +another moment he lay beside her, and between them they hauled up Gerda. + +Gerda gasped "Kay," and they saw him struggling twenty yards behind. + +"Can you do it?" Barry shouted to him, and Kay grinned back. + +"Let you know presently.... Oh yes, I'm all right. Getting on fine." + +Nan stood up on the rock, watching him, measuring with expert eye the +ratio between distance and pace, the race between Kay's swimming and the +sea. It seemed to her to be anyone's race. + +Barry didn't stand up. The strain of the swim had been rather too much +for him, and in his violent lurch onto the rock he had strained his side. +He lay flat, feeling battered and sick. + +The sea, Nan judged after another minute of watching, was going to beat +Kay in this race. For Kay's face had turned a curious colour, and he was +blue round the lips. Kay's heart was not strong. + +Nan's dive into the tossing waves was as pretty a thing as one would wish +to see. The swoop of it carried her nearly to Kay's side. Coming up she +caught one of his now rather limp hands and put it on her left shoulder, +saying "Hold tight. A few strokes will do it." + +Kay, who was no fool and who had known that he was beaten, held tight, +throwing all his exhausted strength into striking out with his other +three limbs. + +They were carried round the point, beyond reach of it had not Barry's +outstretched hand been ready. Nan touched it, barely grasped it, just and +no more, as they were swung seawards. It was enough. It pulled them to +the rock's side. Again Nan wriggled and scrambled up, and then they +dragged Kay heavily after them as he fainted. + +"Neat," said Barry to Nan, his appreciation of a well-handled job, his +love of spirit and skill, rising as it were to cheer, in spite of his +exhaustion and his concern for Gerda and Kay. "My word, Nan, you're a +sportsman." + +"He does faint sometimes," said Gerda of Kay. "He'll be all right in a +minute." + +Kay came to. + +"Oh Lord," he said, "that was a bit of a grind." And then, becoming +garrulous with the weak and fatuous garrulity of those who have recently +swooned, "Couldn't have done it without you, Nan. I'd given myself up for +lost. All my past life went by me in a flash.... I really did think it +was U.P. with me, you know. And it jolly nearly was, for all of us, +wasn't it?... Whose idea was it bathing just here? Yours, Nan. Of course. +It would be. No wonder you felt our lives on your conscience and had to +rescue us all. Oh Lord, the water I've drunk! I do feel rotten." + +"We all look pretty rotten, I must say," Nan commented, looking from +Kay's limp greenness to Gerda's shivering blueness, from Gerda to Barry, +prostrate, bruised and coughing, from Barry to her own cut and battered +knees and elbows, bleeding with the unaccountable profuseness of limbs +cut by rocks in the sea. "I may die from loss of blood, and the rest of +you from prostration, and all of us from cold. Are we well enough to +scale the rocks now and get to our clothes?" + +"We're not well enough for anything," Barry returned. "But we'd better do +it. We don't want to die here, with the sea washing over us in this damp +way." + +They climbed weakly up to the top of the rock promontory, and along it +till they dropped down into the little cove. They all felt beaten and +limp, as if they had been playing a violent but not heating game of +football. Even Nan's energy was drained. + +Gerda said with chattering teeth, as she and Nan dressed in their rocky +corner, "I suppose, Nan, if it hadn't been for you and Barry, I'd have +drowned." + +"Well, I suppose perhaps you would. If you come to think of it, we'd most +of us be dying suddenly half the time if it weren't for something--some +chance or other." + +Gerda said "Thanks awfully, Nan," in her direct, childlike way, and Nan +turned it off with "You might have thanked me if you _had_ drowned, +seeing it was my fault we bathed there at all. I ought to have known +it wasn't safe for you or Kay." + +Looking at the little fragile figure shivering in its vest, Nan felt in +that moment no malice, no triumph, no rivalry, no jealous anger; nothing +but the protecting care for the smaller and weaker, for Neville's little +pretty, precious child that she had felt when Gerda's hand clutched her +shoulder in the sea. + +"Life-saving seems to soften the heart," she reflected, grimly, conscious +as always of her own reactions. + +"Well," said Kay weakly, as they climbed up the cliff path to the little +village, "I do call that a rotten bathe. Now let's make for the pub and +drink whiskey." + + +7 + +It was three days later. They had spent an afternoon and a night at +Polperro, and the sun shone in the morning on that incredible place as +they rode out of it after breakfast. Polperro shakes the soul and the +æsthetic nerves like a glass of old wine; no one can survey it unmoved, +or leave it as he entered it, any more than you can come out of a fairy +ring as you went in. In the afternoon they had bathed in the rock pools +along the coast. In the evening the moon had magically gleamed on the +little town, and Barry and Gerda had sat together on the beach watching +it, and then in the dawn they had risen (Barry and Gerda again) and rowed +out in a boat to watch the pilchard haul, returning at breakfast time +sleepy, fishy and bright-eyed. + +As they climbed the steep hill path that leads to Talland, the sun danced +on the little harbour with its fishing-boats and its sad, crowding, +crying gulls, and on the huddled white town with its narrow crooked +streets and overhanging houses: Polperro had the eerie beauty of a dream +or of a little foreign port. Such beauty and charm are on the edge of +pain; you cannot disentangle them from it. They intoxicate, and pierce to +tears. The warm morning sun sparkled on a still blue sea, and burned the +gorse and bracken by the steep path's edge to fragrance. So steep the +path was that they had to push their bicycles up it with bent backs and +labouring steps, so narrow that they had to go in single file. It was +never meant for cyclists, only for walkers; the bicycling road ran far +inland. + +They reached the cliff's highest point, and looked down on Talland Bay. +By the side of the path, on a grass plateau, a stone war-cross reared +grey against a blue sky, with its roll of names, and its comment--"True +love by life, true love by death is tried...." + +The path, become narrower, rougher and more winding, plunged sharply, +steeply downwards, running perilously along the cliff's edge. Nan got on +her bicycle. + +Barry called from the rear, "Nan! It can't be done! It's not +rideable.... Don't be absurd." + +Nan, remarking casually "It'll be rideable if I ride it," began to do so. + +"Madwoman," Barry said, and Kay assured him, "Nan'll be all right. No one +else would, but she's got nine lives, you know." + +Gerda came next behind Nan. For a moment she paused, dubiously, watching +Nan's flying, brakeless progress down the wild ribbon of a footpath, +between the hill and the sea. A false swerve, a failure to turn with the +path, and one would fly off the cliff's edge into space, fall down +perhaps to the blue rock pools far below. + +To refuse Nan's lead now would be to fail again in pluck and skill before +Barry. "My word, Nan, you're a sportsman!" Barry had said, coughing +weakly on the rock onto which Nan had dragged them all out of the sea. +That phrase, and the ring in his hoarse voice as he said it, had stayed +with Gerda. + +She got onto her bicycle, and shot off down the precipitous path. + +"My God!" It was Barry's voice again, from the rear. "Stop, Gerda ... oh, +you little fool.... _Stop_...." + +But it was too late for Gerda to stop then if she had tried. She was in +full career, rushing, leaping, jolting over the gorse roots under the +path, past thought and past hope and oddly past fear, past anything but +the knowledge that what Nan did she too must do. + +Strangely, inaptly, the line of verse she had just read sung itself in +her mind as she rushed. + +"True love by life, true love by death is tried...." + +She took the first sharp turn, and the second. The third, a right angle +bending inward from the cliff's very edge, she did not take. She dashed +on instead, straight into space, like a young Phoebus riding a horse of +the morning through the blue air. + + +8 + +Nan, far ahead, nearly on the level, heard the crash and heard voices +crying out. Jamming on her brakes she jumped off; looked back up the +precipitous path; saw nothing but its windings. She left her bicycle at +the path's side and turned and ran up. Rounding a sharp bend, she saw +them at last above her; Barry and Kay scrambling furiously down the side +of the cliff, and below them, on a ledge half-way down to the sea, a +tangled heap that was Gerda and her bicycle. + +The next turn of the path hid them from sight again. But in two minutes +she had reached the place where their two bicycles lay flung across the +path, and was scrambling after them down the cliff. + +When she reached them they had disentangled Gerda and the bicycle, and +Barry held Gerda in his arms. She was unconscious, and a cut in her head +was bleeding, darkening her yellow hair, trickling over her colourless +face. Her right leg and her left arm lay stiff and oddly twisted. + +Barry, his face drawn and tense, said "We must get her up to the path +before she comes to, if possible. It'll hurt like hell if she's +conscious." + +They had all learnt how to help their fellow creatures in distress, and +how you must bind broken limbs to splints before you move their owner so +much as a yard. The only splint available for Gerda's right leg was her +left, and they bound it tightly to this with three handkerchiefs, then +tied her left arm to her side with Nan's stockings, and used the fourth +handkerchief (which was Gerda's, and the cleanest) for her head. She came +to before the arm was finished, roused to pained consciousness by the +splinting process, and lay with clenched teeth and wet forehead, +breathing sharply but making no other sound. + +Then Barry lifted her in his arms and the others supported her on either +side, and they climbed slowly and gently up to the path, not by the sheer +way of their descent but by a diagonal track that joined the path further +down. + +"I'm sorry, darling," Barry said through his teeth when he jolted her. +"I'm frightfully sorry.... Only a little more now." + +They reached the path and Barry laid her down on the grass by its side, +her head supported on Nan's knee. + +"Very bad, isn't it?" said Barry gently, bending over her. + +She smiled up at him, with twisted lips. + +"Not so bad, really." + +"You little sportsman," said Barry, softly and stooping, he kissed her +pale cheek. + +Then he stood up and spoke to Nan. + +"I'm going to fetch a doctor if there's one in Talland. Kay must ride +back and fetch the Polperro doctor, in case there isn't. In any case I +shall bring up help and a stretcher from Talland and have her taken +down." + +He picked up his bicycle and stood for a moment looking down at the face +on Nan's knee. + +"You'll look after her," he said, quickly, and got on the bicycle and +dashed down the path, showing that he too could do that fool's trick if +it served any good purpose. + +Gerda, watching him, caught her breath and forgot pain in fear until, +swerving round the next bend, he was out of sight. + + +9 + +Nan sat very still by the path, staring over the sea, shading Gerda's +head from the sun. There was nothing more to be done than that; there was +no water, even, to bathe the cut with. + +"Nan." + +"Yes?" + +"Am I much hurt? How much hurt, do you think?" + +"I don't know how much. I think the arm is broken. The leg may be only +sprained. Then there's the cut--I daresay that isn't very much--but one +can't tell that." + +"I must have come an awful mucker," Gerda murmured, after a pause. "It +must have looked silly, charging over the edge like that.... You didn't." + +"No. I didn't." + +"It was stupid," Gerda breathed, and shut her eyes. + +"No, not stupid. Anyone might have. It was a risky game to try." + +"You tried it." + +"Oh, I ... I do try things. That's no reason why you should.... You'd +better not talk. Lie quite quiet. It won't be very long now before they +come.... The pain's bad, I know." + +Gerda's head was hot and felt giddy. She moved it restlessly. Urgent +thoughts pestered her; her normal reticences lay like broken fences about +her. + +"Nan." + +"Yes. Shall I raise your head a little?" + +"No, it's all right.... About Barry, Nan." + +Nan grew rigid, strung up to endure. + +"And what about Barry?" + +"Just that I love him. I love him very much; beyond anything in the +world." + +"Yes. You'd better not talk, all the same." + +"Nan, do you love him too?" + +Nan laughed, a queer little curt laugh in her throat. + +"Rather a personal question, don't you think? Suppose, by any chance that +I did? But of course I don't." + +"But doesn't he love you, Nan? He did, didn't he?" + +"My dear, I think you're rather delirious. This isn't the way one +talks.... You'd better ask Barry the state of his affections, since +you're interested in them. I'm not, particularly." + +Gerda drew a long breath, of pain or fatigue or relief. + +"I'm rather glad you don't care for him. I thought we might have shared +him if you had, and if he'd cared for us both. But it might have been +difficult." + +"It might; you never know.... Well, you're welcome to my share, if you +want it." + +Then Gerda lay quiet, with closed eyes and wet forehead, and concentrated +wholly on her right leg, which was hurting badly. + +Nan too sat quiet, and she too was concentrating. + +Irrevocably it was over now; done, finished with. Barry's eyes, Barry's +kiss, had told her that. Gerda, the lovely, the selfish child, had taken +Barry from her, to keep for always. Walked into Barry's office, into +Barry's life, and deliberately stolen him. Thinking, she said, that they +might share him.... The little fool. The little thief. (She waved the +flies away from Gerda's head.) + +And even this other game, this contest of physical prowess, had ended in +a hollow, mocking victory for the winner, since defeat had laid the loser +more utterly in her lover's arms, more unshakably in his heart. Gerda, +defeated and broken, had won everything. Won even that tribute which had +been Nan's own. "You little sportsman," Barry had called her, with a +break of tenderness in his voice. Even that, even the palm for valour, he +had placed in her hands. The little victor. The greedy little grabber of +other people's things.... + +Gerda moaned at last. + +"Only a little longer," said Nan, and laid her hand lightly and coolly on +the hot wet forehead. + +The little winner... damn her.... + +The edge of a smile, half-ironic, wholly bitter, twisted at Nan's lips. + + +10 + +Voices and steps. Barry and a doctor, Barry and a stretcher, Barry and +all kinds of help. Barry's anxious eyes and smile. "Well? How's she +been?" + +He was on his knees beside her. + +"Here's the doctor, darling.... I'm sorry I've been so long." + + + + +CHAPTER X + +PRINCIPLES + + +1 + +Through the late September and October days Gerda would lie on a wicker +couch in the conservatory at Windover, her sprained leg up, her broken +wrist on a splint, her mending head on a soft pillow, and eat pears. +Grapes too, apples, figs, chocolates of course--but particularly pears. +She also wrote verse, and letters to Barry, and drew in pen and ink, and +read Sir Leo Chiozza Money's "Triumph of Nationalisation" and Mrs. +Snowden on Bolshevik Russia, and "Lady Adela," and "Côterie," and +listened while Neville read Mr. W.H. Mallock's "Memoirs" and Disraeli's +"Life." Her grandmother (Rodney's mother) sent her "The Diary of Opal +Whiteley," but so terrible did she find it that it caused a relapse, and +Neville had to remove it. She occasionally struggled in vain with a +modern novel, which she usually renounced in perplexity after three +chapters or so. Her taste did not lie in this direction. + +"I can't understand what they're all about," she said to Neville. +"Poetry _means_ something. It's about something real, something that +really is so. So are books like this--" she indicated "The Triumph of +Nationalisation." "But most novels are so queer. They're about people, +but not people as they are. They're not _interesting_." + +"Not as a rule, certainly. Occasionally one gets an idea out of one +of them, or a laugh, or a thrill. Now and then they express life, or +reality, or beauty, in some terms or other--but not as a rule." + +Gerda was different from Kay, who devoured thrillers, shockers, and +ingenious crime and mystery stories with avidity. She did not believe +that life was really much like that, and Kay's assertion that if it +weren't it ought to be, she rightly regarded as pragmatical. Neither did +she share Kay's more fundamental taste for the Elizabethans, Carolines +and Augustans. She and Kay met (as regards literature) only on economics, +politics, and modern verse. Gerda's mind was artistic rather than +literary, and she felt no wide or acute interest in human beings, their +actions, passions, foibles, and desires. + +So, surrounded by books from the Times library, and by nearly all the +weekly and monthly reviews (the Bendishes, like many others, felt, with +whatever regret, that they had to see all of these), Gerda for the most +part, when alone, lay and dreamed dreams and ate pears. + + +2 + +Barry came down for week-ends. He and Gerda had declared their affections +towards one another even at the Looe infirmary, where Gerda had been +conveyed from the scene of accident. It had been no moment then for +anything more definite than statements of reciprocal emotion, which are +always cheering in sickness. But when Gerda was better, well enough, in +fact, to lie in the Windover conservatory, Barry came down from town and +said, "When shall we get married?" + +Then Gerda, who had had as yet no time or mind-energy to reflect on the +probable, or rather certain, width of the gulf between the sociological +theories of herself and Barry, opened her blue eyes wide and said +"Married?" + +"Well, isn't that the idea? You can't jilt me now, you know; matters have +gone too far." + +"But, Barry, I thought you knew. I don't hold with marriage." + +Barry threw back his head and laughed, because she looked so innocent and +so serious and young as she lay there among the pears and bandages. + +"All right, darling. You've not needed to hold with it up till now. But +now you'd better catch on to it as quickly as you can, and hold it tight, +because it's what's going to happen." + +Gerda moved her bandaged head in denial. + +"Oh, no, Barry. I can't.... I thought you knew. Haven't we ever talked +about marriage before?" + +"Oh, probably. Yes, I think I've heard you and Kay both on the subject. +You don't hold with legal ties in what should be purely a matter of +emotional impulse, I know. But crowds of people talk like that and then +get married. I've no doubt Kay will too, when his time comes." + +"Kay won't. He thinks marriage quite wrong. And so do I." + +Barry, who had stopped laughing, settled himself to talk it out. + +"Why wrong, Gerda? Superfluous, if you like; irrelevant, if you like; but +why wrong?" + +"Because it's a fetter on what shouldn't be fettered. Love might stop. +Then it would be ugly." + +"Oh very. One has to take that risk, like other risks. And love is +really more likely to stop, as I see it, if there's no contract in the +eyes of the world, if the two people know each can walk away from the +other, and is expected to, directly they quarrel or feel a little bored. +The contract, the legalisation--absurd and irrelevant as all legal +things are to anything that matters--the contract, because we're such +tradition-bound creatures, does give a sort of illusion of inevitability, +which is settling, so that it doesn't occur to the people to fly apart at +the first strain. They go through with it instead, and in nine cases out +of ten come out on the other side. In the tenth case they just have +either to make the best of it or to make a break.... Of course people +always _can_ throw up the sponge, even married people, if things are +insupportable. The door isn't locked. But there's no point, I think, in +having it swinging wide open." + +"I think it _should_ be open," Gerda said. "I think people should be +absolutely free.... Take you and me. Suppose you got tired of me, or +liked someone else better, I think you ought to be able to leave me +without any fuss." + +That was characteristic of both of them, that they could take their +own case theoretically without becoming personal, without lovers' +protestations to confuse the general issue. + +"Well," Barry said, "I don't think I ought. I think it should be made as +difficult for me as possible. Because of the children. There are usually +children, of course. If I left you, I should have to leave them too. Then +they'd have no father. Or, if it were you that went, they'd have no +mother. Either way it's a pity, normally. Also, even if we stayed +together always and weren't married, they'd have no legal name. Children +often miss that, later on. Children of the school age are the most +conventional, hide-bound creatures. They'd feel ashamed before their +schoolfellows." + +"I suppose they'd have my name legally, wouldn't they?" + +"I suppose so. But they might prefer mine. The other boys and girls would +have their fathers', you see." + +"Not all of them. I know several people who don't hold with marriage +either; there'd be all their children. And anyhow it's not a question of +what the children would prefer while they were at school. It's what's +best for them. And anything would be better than to see their parents +hating each other and still having to live together." + +"Yes. Anything would be better than that. Except that it would be a +useful and awful warning to them. But the point is, most married people +don't hate each other. They develop a kind of tolerating, companionable +affection, after the first excitement called being in love is past--so +far as it does pass. That's mostly good enough to live on; that and +common interests and so forth. It's the stuff of ordinary life; the +emotional excitement is the hors _d'oeuvre_. It would be greedy to want +to keep passing on from one _hors d'oeuvre_ to another--leaving the +meal directly the joint comes in." + +"I like dessert best," Gerda said, irrelevantly, biting into an apple. + +"Well, you'd never get any at that rate. Nor much of the rest of the meal +either." + +"But people do, Barry. Free unions often last for years and +years--sometimes forever. Only you wouldn't feel tied. You'd be sure +you were only living together because you both liked to, not because +you had to." + +"I should feel I had to, however free it was. So you wouldn't have that +consolation about me. I might be sick of you, and pining for someone +else, but still I should stay." + +"Why, Barry?" + +"Because I believe in permanent unions, as a general principle. They're +more civilised. It's unusual, uncivic, dotting about from one mate to +another, leaving your young and forgetting all about them and having +new ones. Irresponsible, I call it. Living only for a good time. It's +not the way to be good citizens, as I see it, nor to bring up good +citizens.... Oh, I know that the whole question of sex relationships is +horribly complicated, and can't be settled with a phrase or a dogma. It's +been for centuries so wrapped in cant and humbug and expediencies and +camouflage; I don't profess to be able to pierce through all that, or to +so much as begin to think it out clearly. The only thing I can fall back +on as a certainty is the children question. A confused and impermanent +family life _must_ be a bad background for the young. They want all they +can get of both their parents, in the way of education and training and +love." + +"Family life is such a hopeless muddle, anyhow." + +"A muddle, yes. Hopeless, no. Look at your own. Your father and mother +have always been friends with each other and with you. They brought you +up with definite ideas about what they wanted you to become--fairly well +thought-out and consistent ideas, I suppose. I don't say they could do +much--parents never can--but something soaks in." + +"Usually something silly and bad." + +"Often, yes. Anyhow a queer kind of mixed brew. But at least the parents +have their chance. It's what they're there for; they've got to do all +they know, while the children are young, to influence them towards what +they personally believe, however mistakenly, to be the finest points of +view. Of course lots of it is, as you say, silly and bad, because people +_are_ largely silly and bad. But no parent can be absolved from doing his +or her best." + +Barry was walking round the conservatory, eager and full of faith and +hope and fire, talking rapidly, the educational enthusiast, the ardent +citizen, the social being, the institutionalist, all over. He was all +these things; he was rooted and grounded in citizenship, in social +ethics. He stopped by the couch and stood looking down at Gerda among +her fruit, his hands in his pockets, his eyes bright and lit. + +"All the same, darling, I shall never want to fetter you. If you ever +want to leave me, I shan't come after you. The legal tie shan't stand in +your way. And to me it would make no difference; I shouldn't leave you in +any case, married or not. So I don't see how or why you score in doing +without the contract." + +"It's the idea of the thing, partly. I don't want to wear a wedding ring +and be Mrs. Briscoe. I want to be Gerda Bendish, living with Barry +Briscoe because we like to.... I expect, Barry, in my case it _would_ +be for always, because, at present, I can't imagine stopping caring more +for you than for anything else. But that doesn't affect the principle of +the thing. It would be _wrong_ for me to marry you. One oughtn't to give +up one's principles just because it seems all right in a particular case. +It would be cheap and shoddy and cowardly." + +"Exactly," said Barry, "what I feel. I can't give up my principle either, +you know. I've had mine longer than you've had yours." + +"I've had mine since I was about fifteen." + +"Five years. Well, I've had mine for twenty. Ever since I first began to +think anything out, that is." + +"People of your age," said Gerda, "people over thirty, I mean, often +think like that about marriage. I've noticed it. So has Kay." + +"Observant infants. Well, there we stand, then. One of us has got either +to change his principles--her principles, I mean--or to be false to them. +Or else, apparently, there can be nothing doing between you and me. +That's the position, isn't it?" + +Gerda nodded, her mouth full of apple. + +"It's very awkward," Barry continued, "my having fallen in love with you. +I had not taken your probable views on sociology into account. I knew +that, though we differed in spelling and punctuation, we were agreed +(approximately) on politics, economics, and taste in amusements, and I +thought that was enough. I forgot that divergent views on matrimony were +of practical importance. It would have mattered less if I had discovered +that you were a militarist and imperialist and quoted Marx at me." + +"I did tell you, Barry. I really did. I never hid it. And I never +supposed that you'd want to _marry_ me." + +"That was rather stupid of you. I'm so obviously a marrying man.... Now, +darling, will you think the whole thing out from the beginning, after +I've gone? Be first-hand; don't take over theories from other people, and +don't be sentimental about it. Thrash the whole subject out with yourself +and with other people--with your own friends, and with your family too. +They're a modern, broad-minded set, your people, after all; they won't +look at the thing conventionally; they'll talk sense; they won't fob you +off with stock phrases, or talk about the sanctity of the home. They're +not institutionalists. Only be fair about it; weigh all the pros and +cons, and judge honestly, and for heaven's sake don't look at the thing +romantically, or go off on theories because they sound large and +subversive. Think of practical points, as well as of ultimate principles. +Both, to my mind, are on the same side. I'm not asking you to sacrifice +right for expediency, or expediency for right. I don't say 'Be sensible,' +or 'Be idealistic.' We've got to be both." + +"Barry, I've thought and talked about it so often and so long. You don't +know how much we do talk about that sort of thing, at the club and +everywhere and Kay and I. I could never change my mind." + +"What a hopeless admission! We ought to be ready to change our minds at +any moment; they should be as changeable as pound notes." + +"What about yours, then, darling?" + +"I'm always ready to change mine. I shall think the subject out too, and +if I do change I shall tell you at once." + +"Barry." Gerda's face was grave; her forehead was corrugated. "Suppose we +neither of us ever change? Suppose we both go on thinking as we do now +for always? What then?" + +He smoothed the knitted forehead with his fingers. + +"Then one of us will have to be a traitor to his or her principles. A +pity, but sometimes necessary in this complicated world. Or, if we can +neither of us bring ourselves down to that, I suppose eventually we shall +each perpetrate with someone else the kind of union we personally +prefer." + +They parted on that. The thing had not grown serious yet; they could +still joke about it. + + +3 + +Though Gerda said "What's the use of my talking about it to people when +I've made up my mind?" and though she had not the habit of talking for +conversation's sake, she did obediently open the subject with her +parents, in order to assure herself beyond a doubt what they felt about +it. But she knew already that their opinions were what you might expect +of parents, even of broad-minded, advanced parents, who rightly believed +themselves not addicted to an undiscriminating acceptance of the +standards and decisions of a usually mistaken world. But Barry was wrong +in saying they weren't institutionalists; they were. Parents are. + +Rodney was more opinionated than Neville, on this subject as on most +others. He said, crossly, "It's a beastly habit, unlegitimatised union. +When I say beastly, I mean beastly; nothing derogatory, but merely like +the beasts--the other beasts, that is." + +Gerda said "Well, that's not really an argument against it. In that sense +it's beastly when we sleep out instead of in bed, or do lots of other +quite nice things. The way men and women do things isn't necessarily the +best way," and there Rodney had to agree with her. He fell back on "It's +unbusinesslike. Suppose you have children?" and Gerda, who had supposed +all that with Barry, sighed. Rodney said a lot more, but it made little +impression on her, beyond corroborating her views on the matrimonial +theories of middle-aged people. + +Neville made rather more. To Neville Gerda said "How can I go back on +everything I've always said and thought about it, and go and get married? +It would be so _reactionary_." + +Neville, who had a headache and was irritable, said "It's the other thing +that's reactionary. It existed long before the marriage tie did. That's +what I don't understand about all you children who pride yourselves on +being advanced. If you frankly take your stand on going back to nature, +on _being_ reactionary--well, it is, anyhow, a point of view, and has its +own merits. But your minds seem to me to be in a hopeless muddle. You +think you're going forward while you're really going back." + +"Marriage," said Gerda, "is so Victorian. It's like antimacassars." + +"Now, my dear, do you mean _anything_ by either of those statements? +Marriage wasn't invented in Victoria's reign. Nor did it occur more +frequently in that reign than it had before or does now. Why Victorian, +then? And why antimacassars? Think it out. How _can_ a legal contract be +like a doyley on the back of a chair? Where is the resemblance? It sounds +like a riddle, only there's no answer. No, you know you've got no answer. +That kind of remark is sheer sentimentality and muddle-headedness. Why +are people in their twenties so often sentimental? That's another +riddle." + +"That's what Nan says. She told me once that she used to be sentimental +when she was twenty. Was she?" + +"More than she is now, anyhow." + +Neville's voice was a little curt. She was not happy about Nan, who had +just gone to Rome for the winter. + +"Well," Gerda said, "anyhow I'm not sentimental about not meaning to +marry. I've thought about it for years, and I know." + +"Thought about it! Much you know about it." Neville, tired and cross +from over-work, was, unlike herself, playing the traditional conventional +mother. "Have you thought how it will affect your children, for +instance?" + +Those perpetual, tiresome children. Gerda was sick of them. + +"Oh yes, I've thought a lot about that. And I can't see it will hurt +them. Barry and I talked for ever so long about the children. So did +father." + +So did Neville. + +"Of course I know," she said, "that you and Kay would be only too pleased +if father and I had never been married, but you've no right to judge by +yourself the ones you and Barry may have. They may not be nearly so +odd.... And then there's your own personal position. The world's full of +people who think they can insult a man's mistress." + +"I don't meet people like that. The people I know don't insult other +people for not being married. They think it's quite natural, and only the +people's own business." + +"You've moved in a small and rarefied clique so far, my dear. You'll meet +the other kind of people presently; one can't avoid them, the world's so +full of them." + +"Do they matter?" + +"Of course they matter. As mosquitoes matter, and wasps, and cars that +splash mud at you in the road. You'd be constantly annoyed. Your own +scullery maid would turn up her nose at you. The man that brought the +milk will sneer." + +"I don't think," Gerda said, after reflection, "that I'm very easily +annoyed. I don't notice things, very often. I think about other things +rather a lot, you see. That's why I'm slow at answering." + +"Well, Barry would be annoyed, anyhow." + +"Barry does lots of unpopular things. He doesn't mind what people say." + +"He'd mind for you.... But Barry isn't going to do it. Barry won't have +you on your terms. If you won't have him on his, he'll leave you and go +and find some nicer girl." + +"I can't help it, mother. I can't do what I don't approve of for that. +How could I?" + +"No, darling, of course you couldn't; I apologise. But do try and see if +you can't get to approve of it, or anyhow to be indifferent about it. +Such a little thing! It isn't as if Barry wanted you to become a Mormon +or something.... And after all you can't accuse him of being retrograde, +or Victorian, if you like to use that silly word, or lacking in ideals +for social progress--can you? He belongs to nearly all your illegal +political societies, doesn't he? Why, his house gets raided for leaflets +from time to time. I don't think they ever find any, but they look, and +that's something. You can't call Barry hide-bound or conventionally +orthodox." + +"No. Oh no. Not that. Or I shouldn't be caring for him. But he doesn't +understand about this. And you don't, mother, nor father, nor anyone of +your ages. I don't know how it is, but it is so." + +"You might try your Aunt Rosalind," Neville suggested, with malice. + +Gerda shuddered. "Aunt Rosalind ... she wouldn't understand at all...." + +But the dreadful thought was, as Neville had intended, implanted in +her that, of all her elder relatives, it was only Aunt Rosalind who, +though she mightn't understand, might nevertheless agree. Aunt Rosalind +on free unions... that would be terrible to have to hear. For Aunt +Rosalind would hold with them not because she thought them right but +because she enjoyed them--the worst of reasons. Gerda somehow felt +degraded by the introduction into the discussion of Aunt Rosalind, whom +she hated, whom she knew, without having been told so, that her mother +and all of them hated. It dragged it down, made it vulgar. + +Gerda lay back in silence, the springs of argument and talk dried in her. +She wanted Kay. + +It was no use; they couldn't meet. Neville could not get away from her +traditions, nor Gerda from hers. + +Neville, to change the subject (though scarcely for the better), read her +"The Autobiography of Mrs. Asquith" till tea-time. + + +4 + +They all talked about it again, and said the same things, and different +things, and more things, and got no nearer one another with it all. Soon +Barry and Gerda, each comprehending the full measure of the serious +intent of the other, stood helpless before it, the one in half-amused +exasperation, the other in obstinate determination. + +"She means business, then," thought Barry. "He won't come round," thought +Gerda and their love pierced and stabbed them, making Barry hasty of +speech and Gerda sullen. + +"The _waste_ of it," said Barry, on Sunday evening, "when I've only +got one day in the week, to spend it quarrelling about marriage. I've +hundreds of things to talk about and tell you--interesting things, funny +things--but I never get to them, with all this arguing we have to have +first." + +"I don't want to argue, Barry. Let's not. We've said everything now, lots +of times. There can't be any more. Tell me your things instead!" + +He told her, and they were happy talking, and forgot how they thought +differently on marriage. But always the difference lay there in the +background, coiled up like a snake, ready to uncoil and seize them and +make them quarrel and hurt one another. Always one was expecting the +other at any moment to throw up the sponge and cry "Oh, have it your own +way, since you won't have it mine and I love you." But neither did. Their +wills stood as stiff as two rocks over against one another. + +Gerda grew thinner under the strain, and healed more slowly than before. +Her fragile, injured body was a battle-ground between her will and her +love, and suffered in the conflict. Barry saw that it could not go on. +They would, he said, stop talking about it; they would put it in the +background and go on as if it were not there, until such time as they +could agree. So they became friends again, lovers who lived in the +present and looked to no future, and, since better might not be, that had +to do for the time. + + + + +CHAPTER XI + +THAT WHICH REMAINS + + +1 + +Through September Neville had nursed Gerda by day and worked by night. +The middle of October, just when they usually moved into town for the +winter, she collapsed, had what the doctor called a nervous breakdown. + +"You've been overworking," he told her. "You're not strong enough in +these days to stand hard brain-work. You must give it up." + +For a fortnight she lay tired and passive, surrendered and inert, caring +for nothing but to give up and lie still and drink hot milk. Then she +struggled up and mooned about the house and garden, and cried weakly from +time to time, and felt depressed and bored, and as if life were over and +she were at the bottom of the sea. + +"This must be what mother feels," she thought. "Poor mother.... I'm +like her; I've had my life, and I'm too stupid to work, and I can only +cry.... Men must work and women must weep.... I never knew before that +that was true.... I mustn't see mother just now, it would be the last +straw ... like the skeletons people used to look at to warn themselves +what they would come to.... Poor mother ... and poor me.... But mother's +getting better now she's being analysed. That wouldn't help me at all. I +analyse myself too much already.... And I was so happy a few months ago. +What a dreadful end to a good ambition. I shall never work again, I +suppose, in any way that counts. So that's that.... Why do I want to work +and to do something? Other wives and mothers don't.... Or do they, only +they don't know it, because they don't analyse? I believe they do, lots +of them. Or is it only my horrible egotism and vanity, that can't take a +back seat quietly? I was always like that, I know. Nan and I and Gilbert. +Not Jim so much, and not Pamela at all. But Rodney's worse than I am; he +wouldn't want to be counted out, put on the shelf, in the forties; he'd +be frightfully sick if he had to stand by and see other people working +and getting on and in the thick of things when he wasn't. He couldn't +bear it; he'd take to drink, I think.... I hope Rodney won't ever have +a nervous breakdown and feel like this, poor darling, he'd be dreadfully +tiresome.... Not to work after all. Not to be a doctor.... What then? +Just go about among people, grinning like a dog. Winter in town, talking, +dining, being the political wife. Summer in the country, walking, riding, +reading, playing tennis. Fun, of course. But what's it all for? When I've +got Gerda off my hands I shall have done being a mother, in any sense +that matters. Is being a wife enough to live for? Rodney's wife? Oh, I +want to be some use, want to do things, to count.... And Rodney will die +some time--I know he'll die first--and then I shan't even be a wife. And +in twenty years I shan't be able to do things with my body much more, and +what then? What will be left? ... I think I'm getting hysterical, like +poor mother.... How ugly I look, these days." + +She stopped before the looking-glass. Her face looked back at her, white +and thin, almost haggard, traced in the last few weeks for the first time +with definite lines round brow and mouth. Her dark hair was newly +streaked with grey. + +"Middle age," said Neville, and a cold hand was laid round her heart. "It +had to come some time, and this illness has opened the door to it. Or +shall I look young again when I'm quite well? No, never young again." + +She shivered. + +"I look like mother to-day.... I _am_ like mother...." + +So youth and beauty were to leave her, too. She would recover from this +illness and this extinguishing of charm, but not completely, and not for +long. Middle age had begun. She would have off days in future, when she +would look old and worn instead of always, as hitherto, looking charming. +She wouldn't, in future, be sure of herself; people wouldn't be sure to +think "A lovely woman, Mrs. Rodney Bendish." Soon they would be saying +"How old Mrs. Bendish is getting to look," and then "She was a pretty +woman once." + +Well, looks didn't matter much really, after all.... + +"They do, they do," cried Neville to the glass, passionately truthful. +"If you're vain they do--and I am vain. Vain of my mind and of my +body.... Vanity, vanity, all is vanity ... and now the silver cord is +going to be loosed and the golden bowl is going to be broken, and I shall +be hurt." + +Looks did matter. It was no use canting, and minimising them. They +affected the thing that mattered most--one's relations with people. Men, +for instance, cared more to talk to a woman whose looks pleased them. +They liked pretty girls, and pretty women. Interesting men cared to talk +to them: they told them things they would never tell a plain woman. +Rodney did. He liked attractive women. Sometimes he made love to them, +prettily and harmlessly. + +The thought of Rodney stabbed her. If Rodney were to get to care +less ... to stop making love to her ... worse, to stop needing +her.... For he did need her; through all their relationship, +disappointing in some of its aspects, his need had persisted, a simple, +demanding thing. + +Humour suddenly came back. + +"This, I suppose, is what Gerda is anticipating, and why she won't have +Barry tied to her. If Rodney wasn't tied to me he could flee from my +wrinkles...." + +"Oh, what an absurd fuss one makes. What does any of it matter? It's all +in the course of nature, and the sooner 'tis over the sooner to sleep. +Middle age will be very nice and comfortable and entertaining, once one's +fairly in it.... I go babbling about my wasted brain and fading looks as +if I'd been a mixture of Sappho and Helen of Troy.... That's the worst of +being a vain creature.... What will Rosalind do when _her_ time comes? +Oh, paint, of course, and dye--more thickly than she does now, I mean. +She'll be a ghastly sight. A raddled harridan. At least I shall always +look respectable, I hope. I shall go down to Gerda. I want to look at +something young. The young have their troubles, poor darlings, but they +don't know how lucky they are." + + +2 + +In November Neville and Gerda, now both convalescent, joined Rodney in +their town flat. Rodney thought London would buck Neville up. London does +buck you up, even if it is November and there is no gulf stream and not +much coal. For there is always music and always people. Neville had a +critical appreciation of both. Then, for comic relief, there are +politics. You cannot be really bored with a world which contains the +mother of Parliaments, particularly if her news is communicated to you +at first hand by one of her members. Disgusted you may be and are, if +you are a right-minded person, but at least not bored. + +What variety, what excitement, what a moving picture show, is this tragic +and comic planet! Why want to be useful, why indulge such tedious +inanities as ambitions, why dream wistfully of doing one's bit, making +one's work, in a world already as full of bits, bright, coloured, absurd +bits, like a kaleidoscope, as full of marks (mostly black marks) as a +novel from a free library? A dark and bad and bitter world, of course, +full of folly, wickedness and misery, sick with poverty and pain, so that +at times the only thing Neville could bear to do in it was to sit on some +dreadful committee thinking of ameliorations for the lot of the very +poor, or to go and visit Pamela in Hoxton and help her with some job or +other--that kind of direct, immediate, human thing, which was a sop to +uneasiness and pity such as the political work she dabbled in, however +similar its ultimate aim, could never be. + + +3 + +To Pamela Neville said, "Are you afraid of getting old, Pamela?" + +Pamela replied, "Not a bit. Are you?" And she confessed it. + +"Often it's like a cold douche of water down my spine, the thought of it. +I reason and mock at myself, but I _don't_ like it.... You're different; +finer, more real, more unselfish. Besides, you'll have done something +worth doing when you have to give up. I shan't." + +Pamela's brows went up. + +"Kay? Gerda? The pretty dears: I've done nothing so nice as them. You've +done what's called a woman's work in the world--isn't that the phrase?" + +"Done it--just so, but so long ago. What now? I still feel young, Pamela, +even now that I know I'm not. ... Oh Lord, it's a queer thing, being a +woman. A well-off woman of forty-three with everything made comfortable +for her and her brain gone to pot and her work in the world done. I want +something to bite my teeth into--some solid, permanent job--and I get +nothing but sweetmeats, and people point at Kay and Gerda and say 'That's +your work, and it's over. Now you can rest, seeing that it's good, like +God on the seventh day.'" + +"_I_ don't say 'Now you can rest. Except just now, while you're run +down.'" + +"Run down, yes; run down like a disordered clock because I tried to +tackle an honest job of work again. Isn't it sickening, Pamela? Isn't it +ludicrous?" + +"Ludicrous--no. Everyone comes up against his own limitations. You've got +to work within them that's all. After all, there are plenty of jobs you +can do that want doing--simply shouting to be done." + +"Pammie dear, it's worse than I've said. I'm a low creature. I don't only +want to do jobs that want doing: I want to count, to make a name. I'm +damnably ambitious. You'll despise that, of course--and you're quite +right, it is despicable. But there it is. Most men and many women are +tormented by it--they itch for recognition." + +"Of course. One is." + +"You too, Pammie?" + +"I have been. Less now. Life gets to look short, when you're +thirty-nine." + +"Ah, but you have it--recognition, even fame, in the world you work in. +You count for something. If you value it, there it is. I wouldn't grumble +if I'd played your part in the piece. It's a good part--a useful part +and a speaking part." + +"I suppose we all feel we should rather like to play someone else's part +for a change. There's nothing exciting about mine. Most people would far +prefer yours." + +They would, of course; Neville knew it. The happy political wife rather +than the unmarried woman worker; Rodney, Gerda and Kay for company rather +than Frances Carr. There was no question which was the happier lot, the +fuller, the richer, the easier, the more entertaining. + +"Ah well.... You see, Rosalind spent the afternoon with me yesterday, and +I felt suddenly that it wasn't for me to be stuck up about her--what am I +too but the pampered female idler, taking good things without earning +them? It made me shudder. Hence this fit of blues. The pampered, lazy, +brainless animal--it is such a terrific sight when in human form. +Rosalind talked about Nan, Pamela. In her horrible way--you know. Hinting +that she isn't alone in Rome, but with Stephen Lumley." + +Pamela took off her glasses and polished them. + +"Rosalind would, of course. What did you say?" + +"I lost my temper. I let out at her. It's not a thing I often do with +Rosalind--it doesn't seem worth while. But this time I saw red. I told +her what I thought of her eternal gossip and scandal. I said, what if Nan +and Stephen Lumley, or Nan and anyone else, did arrange to be in Rome at +the same time and to see a lot of each other; where was the harm? No use. +You can't pin Rosalind down. She just shrugged her shoulders and smiled, +and said 'My dear, we all know our Nan. We all know too that Stephen +Lumley has been in love with her for a year, and doesn't live with his +wife. Then they go off to Rome at the same moment, and one hears that +they are seen everywhere together. Why shut one's eyes to obvious +deductions? You're so like an ostrich, Neville.' I said I'd rather be +an ostrich than a ferret, eternally digging into other people's +concerns,--and by the time we had got to that I thought it was far +enough, so I had an engagement with my dressmaker." + +"It's no use tackling Rosalind," Pamela agreed. "She'll never change her +spots.... Do you suppose it's true about Nan?" + +"I daresay it is. Yes, I'm afraid I do think it's quite likely +true.... Nan was so queer the few times I saw her after Gerda's accident. +I was unhappy about her. She was so hard, and so more than usually +cynical and unget-at-able. She told me it had been all her fault, +leading Gerda into mischief, doing circus tricks that the child tried to +emulate and couldn't. I couldn't read her, quite. Her tone about Gerda +had a queer edge to it. And she rather elaborately arranged, I thought, +so that she shouldn't meet Barry. Pamela, do you think she had finally +and absolutely turned Barry down before he took up so suddenly with +Gerda, or...." + +Pamela said, "I know nothing. She told me nothing. But I rather thought, +when she came to see me just before she went down to Cornwall, that she +had made up her mind to have him. I may have been wrong." + +Neville leant her forehead on her hands and sighed. + +"Or you may have been right. And if you were right, it's the ghastliest +tragedy--for her.... Oh, I shouldn't have let Gerda go and work with him; +I should have known better.... Nan had rebuffed him, and he flew off at a +tangent, and there was Gerda sitting in his office, as pretty as flowers +and with her funny little silent charm.... And if Nan was all the time +waiting for him, meaning to say yes when he asked her.... Poor darling +Nan, robbed by my horrid little girl, who doesn't even want to +marry.... If that's the truth, it would account for the Stephen Lumley +business. Nan wouldn't stay on in London, to see them together. If Lumley +caught her at that psychological moment, she'd very likely go off with +him, out of mere desperation and bravado. That would be so terribly like +Nan.... What a desperate, wry, cursed business life is.... On the other +hand, she may just be going about with Lumley on her own terms not his. +It's her own affair whichever way it is; what we've got to do is to +contradict the stories Rosalind is spreading whenever we get the chance. +Not that one can scotch scandal once it starts--particularly Rosalind's +scandal." + +"Ignore it. Nan can ignore it when she comes back. It won't hurt her. +Nan's had plenty of things said about her before, true and untrue, and +never cared." + +"You're splendid at the ignoring touch, Pam. I believe there's nothing +you can't and don't ignore." + +"Well, why not? Ignoring's easy." + +"Not for most of us. I believe it is, for you. In a sense you ignore life +itself; anyhow you don't let it hold and bully you. When your time comes +you'll ignore age, and later death." + +"They don't matter much, do they? Does anything? I suppose it's my stolid +temperament, but I can't feel that it does." + +Neville thought, as she had often thought before, that Pamela, like Nan, +only more calmly, less recklessly and disdainfully, had the aristocratic +touch. Pamela, with her delicate detachments and her light, even touch on +things great and small, made her feel fussy and petty and excitable. + +"I suppose you're right, my dear.... 'All is laughter, all is dust, +all is nothingness, for the things that are arise out of the +unreasonable....' I must get back. Give my love to Frances... and when +next you see Gerda do try to persuade her that marriage is one of the +things that don't matter and that she might just as well put up with to +please us all. The child is a little nuisance--as obstinate as a mule." + + +4 + +Neville, walking away from Pamela's grimy street in the November fog, +felt that London was terrible. An ugly clamour of strident noises and +hard, shrill voices, jabbering of vulgar, trivial things. A wry, +desperate, cursed world, as she had called it, a pot seething with +bitterness and all dreadfulness, with its Rosalinds floating on the top +like scum. + +And Nan, her Nan, her little vehement sister, whom she had mothered +of old, had pulled out of countless scrapes--Nan had now taken her +life into her reckless hands and done what with it? Given it, perhaps, +to a man she didn't love, throwing cynical defiance thereby at love, +which had hurt her; escaping from the intolerable to the shoddy. Even +if not, even supposing the best, Nan was hurt and in trouble; Neville +was somehow sure of that. Men were blind fools; men were fickle children. +Neville almost wished now that Barry would give up Gerda and go out to +Rome and fetch Nan back. But, to do that, Barry would have to fall +out of love with Gerda and into love again with Nan; and even Barry, +Neville imagined, was not such a weathercock as that. And Barry would +really be happier with Gerda. With all their differences, they were +both earnest citizens, both keen on social progress. Nan was a cynical +flibberty-gibbet; it might not have been a happy union. Perhaps happy +unions were not for such as Nan. But at the thought of Nan playing that +desperate game with Stephen Lumley in Rome, Neville's face twitched.... + +She would go to Rome. She would see Nan; find out how things were. Nan +always liked to see her, would put up with her even when she wanted no +one else. + +That was, at least, a job one could do. These family jobs--they still go +on, they never cease, even when one is getting middle-aged and one's +brain has gone to pot. They remain, always, the jobs of the affections. + +She would write to Nan to-night, and tell her she was starting for Rome +in a few days, to have a respite from the London fogs. + + +5 + +But she did not start for Rome, or even write to Nan, for when she got +home she went to bed with influenza. + + + + +CHAPTER XII + +THE MOTHER + + +1 + +The happiness Mrs. Hilary now enjoyed was of the religious type--a deep, +warm glow, which did not lack excitement. She felt as those may be +presumed to feel who have just been converted to some church--newly +alive, and sunk in spiritual peace, and in profound harmony with life. +Where were the old rubs, frets, jars and ennuis? Vanished, melted like +yesterday's snows in the sun of this new peace. It was as if she had cast +her burden upon the Lord. That, said her psycho-analyst doctor, was quite +in order; that was what it ought to be like. That was, in effect, what +she had in point of fact done; only the place of the Lord was filled by +himself. To put the matter briefly, transference of burden had been +effected; Mrs. Hilary had laid all her cares, all her perplexities, all +her grief, upon this quiet, acute-looking man, who sat with her twice a +week for an hour, drawing her out, arranging her symptoms for her, +penetrating the hidden places of her soul, looking like a cross between +Sherlock Holmes and Mr. Henry Ainley. Her confidence in him was, he told +her, the expression of the father-image, which surprised Mrs. Hilary a +little, because he was twenty years her junior. + +Mrs. Hilary felt that she was getting to know herself very well indeed. +Seeing herself through Mr. Cradock's mind, she felt that she was indeed a +curious jumble of complexes, of strange, mysterious impulses, desires and +fears. Alarming, even horrible in some ways; so that often she thought +"Can he be right about me? Am I really like that? Do I really hope that +Marjorie (Jim's wife) will die, so that Jim and I may be all in all to +each other again? Am I really so wicked?" But Mr. Cradock said that it +was not at all wicked, perfectly natural and normal--the Unconscious +_was_ like that. And worse than that; how much worse he had to break to +Mrs. Hilary, who was refined and easily shocked, by gentle hints and slow +degrees, lest she should be shocked to death. Her dreams, which she had +to recount to him at every sitting, bore such terrible significance--they +grew worse and worse in proportion, as Mrs. Hilary could stand more. + +"Ah well," Mrs. Hilary sighed uneasily, after an interpretation into +strange terms of a dream she had about bathing, "it's very odd, when I've +never even thought about things like that." + +"Your Unconscious," said Mr. Cradock, firmly, "has thought the more. The +more your Unconscious is obsessed by a thing, the less your conscious +self thinks of it. It is shy of the subject, for that very reason." + +Mrs. Hilary was certainly shy of the subject, for that reason or others. +When she felt too shy of it, Mr. Cradock let her change it. "It may be +true," she would say, "but it's very terrible, and I would rather not +dwell on it." + +So he would let her dwell instead on the early days of her married life, +or on the children's childhood, or on her love for Neville and Jim, or on +her impatience with her mother. + + +2 + +They were happy little times, stimulating, cosy little times. They spoke +straight to the heart, easing it of its weight of tragedy. A splendid +man, Mr. Cradock, with his shrewd, penetrating sympathy, his kind +firmness. He would listen with interest to everything; the sharp words +she had had with Grandmama, troubles with the maids, the little rubs +of daily life (and what a rubbing business life is, to be sure!) as +well as to profounder, more tragic accounts of desolation, jealousy, +weariness and despair. He would say "Your case is a very usual one," +so that she did not feel ashamed of being like that. He reduced it all, +dispassionately and yet not unsympathetically, and with clear scientific +precision, to terms of psychical and physical laws. He trained his +patient to use her mind and her will, as well as to remember her dreams +and to be shocked at nothing that they signified. + +Mrs. Hilary would wake each morning, or during the night, and clutch at +the dream which was flying from her, clutch and secure it, and make it +stand and deliver its outlines to her. She was content with outlines; it +was for Mr. Cradock to supply the interpretation. Sometimes, if Mrs. +Hilary couldn't remember any dreams, he would supply, according to a +classic precedent, the dream as well as the interpretation. But on the +whole, deeply as she revered and admired him, Mrs. Hilary preferred to +remember her own dreams; what they meant was bad enough, but the meaning +of the dreams that Mr. Cradock told her she had dreamt was beyond all +words.... That terrible Unconscious! Mrs. Hilary disliked it excessively; +she felt rather as if it were a sewer, sunk beneath an inadequate +grating. + +But from Mr. Cradock she put up with hearing about it. She would have put +up with anything. He was so steadying and so wonderful. He enabled her to +face life with a new poise, a fresh lease of strength and vitality. She +told Grandmama so. Grandmama said "Yes, my dear, I've observed it in you. +It sounds to me an unpleasing business, but it is obviously doing you +good, so far. I only wish it may last. The danger may be reaction, after +you have finished the course and lost touch with this young man." (Mr. +Cradock was forty-five, but Grandmama, it must be remembered, was +eighty-four.) "You will have to guard against that. In a way it was a +pity you didn't take up church-going instead; religion lasts." + +"And these quackeries do not," Grandmama finished her sentence to +herself, not wishing to be discouraging. + +"Not always," Mrs. Hilary truly replied, meaning that religion did not +always last. + +"No," Grandmama agreed. "Unfortunately not always. Particularly when it +is High Church. There was your uncle Bruce, of course...." + +Mrs. Hilary's uncle Bruce, who had been High Church for a season, and had +even taken Orders in the year 1860, but whose faith had wilted in the +heat and toil of the day, so that by 1870 he was an agnostic barrister, +took Grandmama back through the last century, and she became reminiscent +over the Tractarian movement, and, later, the Ritualists. + +"The Queen never could abide them," said Grandmama. "Nor could Lord +Beaconsfield, nor your father, though he was always kind and tolerant. +I remember when Dr. Jowett came to stay with us, how they talked about +it.... Ah well, they've become very prominent since then, and done a +great deal of good work, and there are many very able, excellent men and +women among them.... But they're not High Church any longer, they tell +me. They're Catholics in these days. I don't know enough of them to judge +them, but I don't think they can have the dignity of the old High Church +party, for if they had I can't imagine that Gilbert's wife, for instance, +would have joined them, even for so short a time as she did.... Well, it +suits some people, and psycho-analysis obviously suits others. Only I do +hope you will try to keep moderate and balanced, my child, and not +believe all this young man tells you. Parts of it do sound so very +strange." + +(But Mrs. Hilary would not have dreamt of repeating to Grandmama the +strangest parts of all.) + +"I feel a new woman," she said, fervently, and Grandmama smiled, well +pleased, thinking that it certainly did seem rather like the old +evangelical conversions of her youth. (Which, of course, did not always +last, any more than the High Church equivalents did.) + +All Grandmama committed herself to, in her elderly caution, which came +however less from age than from having known Mrs. Hilary for sixty-three +years, was "Well, well, we must see." + + +3 + +And then Rosalind's letter came. It came by the afternoon post--the big, +mauve, scented, sprawled sheets, dashingly monographed across one corner. + +"Gilbert's wife," pronounced Grandmama, non-committally from her easy +chair, and, said in that tone, it was quite sufficient comment. "Another +cup of tea, please, Emily." + +Mrs. Hilary gave it to her, then began to read aloud the letter from +Gilbert's wife. Gilbert's wife was one of the topics upon which she and +Grandmama were in perfect accord, only that Mrs. Hilary was irritated +when Grandmama pushed the responsibility for the relationship onto her by +calling Rosalind "your daughter-in-law." + +Mrs. Hilary began to read the letter in the tone used by well-bred women +when they would, if in a slightly lower social stratum, say "Fancy that +now! Did you ever, the brazen hussy!" Grandmama listened, cynically +disapproving, prepared to be disgusted yet entertained. On the whole she +thoroughly enjoyed letters from Gilbert's wife. She settled down +comfortably in her chair with her second cup of tea, while Mrs. Hilary +read two pages of what Grandmama called "foolish chit-chat." Rosalind's +letters were really like the gossipping imbecilities written by Eve of +the Tatler, or the other ladies who enliven our shinier-paper weeklies +with their bright personal babble. She did not often waste one of them on +her mother-in-law; only when she had something to say which might annoy +her. + +"Do you hear from Nan?" the third page of the letter began. "I hear from +the Bramertons, who are wintering in Rome--the Charlie Bramertons, you +know, great friends of mine and Gilbert's (he won a pot of money on the +Derby this year and they've a dinky flat in some palace out there--), and +they meet Nan about, and she's always with Stephen Lumley, the painter +(rotten painter, if you ask me, but he's somehow diddled London into +admiring him, don't expect you've heard of him down at the seaside). +Well, they're quite simply _always_ together, and the Brams say that +everyone out there says it isn't in the least an ambiguous case--no two +ways about it. He doesn't live with his wife, you know. You'll excuse me +passing this on to you, but it does seem you ought to know. I mentioned +it to Neville the other day, just before the poor old dear went down with +the plague, but you know what Neville is, she always sticks up for Nan +and doesn't care _what_ she does, or what people say. People are talking; +beasts, aren't they! But that's the way of this wicked old world, we all +do it. Gilbert's quite upset about it, says Nan ought to manage her +affairs more quietly. But after all and between you and me it's not the +first time Nan's been a Town Topic, is it. + +"How's the psycho going? Isn't Cradock rather a priceless pearl? You're +over head and ears with him by now, of course, we all are. Psycho +wouldn't do you any good if you weren't, that's the truth. Cradock told +me himself once that transference can't be effected without the patient +being a little bit smitten. Personally I should give up a man patient at +once if he didn't rather like me. But isn't it soothing and comforting, +and doesn't it make you feel good all over, like a hot bath when you're +fagged out...." + +But Mrs. Hilary didn't get as far as this. She stopped at "not the first +time Nan's been a Town Topic...." and dropped the thin mauve sheets onto +her lap, and looked at Grandmama, her face queerly tight and flushed, as +if she were about to cry. + +Grandmama had finished her tea, and had been listening quietly. + +Mrs. Hilary said "Oh, my God," and jerked her head back, quivering like +a nervous horse who has had a shock and does not care to conceal it. + +"Your daughter-in-law," said Grandmama, without excitement, "is an +exceedingly vulgar young woman." + +"Vulgar? Rosalind? But of course.... Only that doesn't affect Nan...." + +"Your daughter-in-law," Grandmama added, "is also a very notorious liar." + +"A liar ... oh yes, yes, yes.... But this time it's true. Oh I feel, +I know, it's true. Nan _would_. That Stephen Lumley--he's been hanging +about her for ages. ... Oh yes, it's true what they say. The very +worst...." + +Grandmama glanced at her curiously. The very worst in that direction +had become strangely easier of credence by Mrs. Hilary lately. Grandmama +had observed that. Mr. Cradock's teaching had not been without its +effect. According to Mr. Cradock, people were usually engaged either in +practising the very worst, or in desiring to practise it, or in wishing +and dreaming that they had practised it. It was the nature of mankind, +and not in the least reprehensible, though curable. Thus Mr. Cradock. +Mrs. Hilary had, against her own taste, absorbed part of his teaching, +but nothing could ever persuade her that it was not reprehensible: it +quite obviously was. Also disgusting. Mr. Cradock might say what he +liked. It _was_ disgusting. And when the man had a wife.... + +"It is awful," said Mrs. Hilary. "Awful.... It must be stopped. I shall +go to Rome. At once." + +"That won't stop it, dear, if it is going on. It will only irritate the +young people." + +"Irritate! You can use a word like that! Mother, you don't realise this +ghastly thing." + +"I quite see, my dear, that Nan may be carrying on with this artist. And +very wrong it is, if so. All I say is that your going to Rome won't stop +it. You know that you and Nan don't always get on very smoothly. You rub +each other up.... It would be far better if someone else went. Neville, +say." + +"Neville is ill." Mrs. Hilary shut her lips tightly on that. She was +glad Neville was ill; she had always hated (she could not help it) the +devotion between Neville and Nan. Nan, in her tempestuous childhood, +flaring with rage against her mother, or sullen, spiteful and perverse, +long before she could have put into words the qualities in Mrs. Hilary +which made her like that, had always gone to Neville, nine years older, +to be soothed and restored to good temper. Neville had reprimanded the +little naughty sister, had told her she must be "decent to mother--feel +decent if you can, behave decent in any case," was the way she had put +it. It was Neville who had heard Nan's confidences and helped her out of +scrapes in childhood, schoolgirlhood and ever since. This was very bitter +to Mrs. Hilary. She was jealous of both of them; jealous that so much of +Neville's love should go elsewhere than to her, jealous that Nan, who +gave her nothing except generous and extravagant gifts and occasional, +spasmodic, remorseful efforts at affection and gentleness, should to +Neville give all. + +"Neville is ill," she said. "She certainly won't be fit to travel out +of England this winter. Influenza coming on the top of that miserable +breakdown is a thing to be treated with the greatest care. Even when she +is recovered, post-influenza will keep her weak till the summer. I am +really anxious about her. No; Neville is quite out of the question." + +"Well, what about Pamela?" + +"Pamela is up to her eyes in her work.... Besides, why should Pamela go, +or Neville, rather than I? A girl's mother is obviously the right person. +I may not be of much use to my children in these days, but at least I +hope I can save them from themselves." + +"It takes a clever parent to do that, Emily," said Grandmama, who +doubtless knew. + +"But, mother, what would you _have_ me do? Sit with my hands before me +while my daughter lives in sin? What's _your_ plan?" + +"I'm too old to make plans, dear. I can only look on at the world. I've +looked at the world now for many, many years, and I've learnt that only +great wisdom and great love can change people's decisions as to their way +of life, or turn them from evil courses. Frankly, my child, I doubt if +you have, where Nan is concerned, enough wisdom or enough love. Enough +sympathy, I should rather say, for you have love. But do you feel you +understand the child enough to interfere wisely and successfully?" + +"Oh, you think I'm a fool, mother; of course I know you've always thought +me a fool. Good God, if a mother can't interfere with her own daughter to +save her from wickedness and disaster, who can, I should like to know?" + +"One would indeed like to know that," Grandmama said, sadly. + +"Perhaps you'd like to go yourself," Mrs. Hilary shot at her, quivering +now with anger and feeling. + +"No, my dear. Even if I were able to get to Rome I should know that I was +too old to interfere with the lives of the young. I don't understand them +enough. You believe that you do. Well, I suppose you must go and try. I +can't stop you." + +"You certainly can't. Nothing can stop me.... You're singularly +unsympathetic, mother, about this awful business." + +"I don't feel so, dear. I am very, very sorry for you, and very, very +sorry for Nan (whom, you must remember, we may be slandering). I have +always looked on unlawful love as a very great sin, though there may be +great provocation to it." + +"It is an awful sin." Mr. Cradock could say what he liked on that +subject; he might tell Mrs. Hilary that it was not awful except in so +far as any other yielding to nature's promptings in defiance of the law +of man was awful, but he could not persuade her. Like many other people, +she set that particular sin apart, in a special place by itself; she +would talk of "a bad woman," "an immoral man," a girl who had "lost +her character," and mean merely the one kind of badness, the one +manifestation of immorality, the one element in character. Dishonesty +and cruelty she could forgive, but never that. + +"I shall start in three days," said Mrs. Hilary, becoming tragically +resolute. "I must tell Mr. Cradock to-morrow." + +"That young man? Must he know about Nan's affairs, my dear?" + +"I have to tell him everything, mother. It's part of the course. He is as +secret as the grave." + +Grandmama knew that Emily, less secret than the grave, would have to ease +herself of the sad tale to someone or other in the course of the next +day, and supposed that it had better be to Mr. Cradock, who seemed to be +a kind of hybrid of doctor and clergyman, and so presumably was more +discreet than an ordinary human being. Emily must tell. Emily always +would. That was why she enjoyed this foolish psycho-analysis business so +much. + +At the very thought of it a gleam had brightened Mrs. Hilary's eyes, +and her rigid, tense pose had relaxed. Oh the comfort of telling Mr. +Cradock! Even if he did tell her how it was all in the course of nature, +at least he would sympathise with her trouble about it, and her annoyance +with Grandmama. And he would tell her how best to deal with Nan when +she got to her. Nan's was the sort of case that Mr. Cradock really +did understand. Any situation between the sexes--he was all over it. +Psycho-analysts adored sex; they made an idol of it. They communed with +it, as devotees with their God. They couldn't really enjoy, with their +whole minds, anything else, Mrs. Hilary sometimes vaguely felt. But as, +like the gods of the other devotees, it was to them immanent, everywhere +and in everything; they could be always happy. If they went up into +heaven it was there; if they fled down into hell it was there also. Once, +when Mrs. Hilary had tentatively suggested that Freud, for instance, +over-stated its importance, Mr. Cradock had said firmly "It is impossible +to do that," which settled it once and for all. + +Mrs. Hilary stood up. Her exalted, tragic mood clothed her like a flowing +garment. + +"I shall write to Cook," she said. "Also to Nan, to tell her I am +coming." + +Grandmama, after a moment's silence, seemed to gather herself together +for a final effort. + +"Emily, my child. Is your mind set to do this?" + +"Absolutely, mother. Absolutely and entirely." + +"Shall I tell you what I think? No, you don't want to hear it, but you +drive me to it.... If you go to that foolish, reckless child and attempt +to interfere with her, or even to question her, you will run the risk, if +she is innocent, of driving her into what you are trying to prevent. If +she is already committed to it, you run the risk of shutting the door +against her return. In either case you will alienate her from yourself: +that is the least of the risks you run, though the most certain.... That +is all. I can say no more. But I ask you, my dear.... I beg you, for the +child's sake and your own ... to write neither to Cook nor to Nan." + +Grandmama's breath came rather fast and heavily; her heart was troubling +her; emotion and effort were not good for it. + +Mrs. Hilary stood looking down at the old shrunk figure, shaking a little +as she stood, knowing that she must be patient and calm. + +"You will please allow me to judge. You will please let me take the steps +I think necessary to help my child. I know that you have no confidence in +my judgment or my tact; you've always shown that plainly enough, and done +your best to teach my children the same view of me...." + +Grandmama put up her hand, meaning that she could not stand, neither she +nor her heart could stand, a scene. Mrs. Hilary broke off. For once she +did not want a scene either. In these days she found what vent was +necessary for her emotional system in her interviews with Mr. Cradock. + +"I daresay you mean well, mother. But in this matter I must be the judge. +I am a mother first and foremost. It is the only thing that life has left +for me to be." (Scarcely a daughter, she meant: that was made too +difficult for her; you would almost imagine that the office was not +wanted.) + +She turned to the writing table. + +"First of all I shall write to Rosalind, and tell her what I think of her +and her abominable gossip." + +She began to write. + +Grandmama sat shrunk and old and tired in her chair. + +Mrs. Hilary's pen scratched over the paper, telling Rosalind what she +thought. + +"Dear Rosalind," she wrote, "I was very much surprised at your +letter. I do not know why you should trouble to repeat to me these +ridiculous stories about Nan. You cannot suppose that I am likely to +care either what you or any of your friends are saying about one of my +children...." And so on. One knows the style. It eases the mind of the +writer and does not deceive the reader. When the reader is Rosalind +Hilary it amuses her vastly. + + +4 + +Next day, at three p.m., Mrs. Hilary told Mr. Cradock all about it. Mr. +Cradock was not in the least surprised. Nor had he the slightest, not the +remotest doubt that Nan and Stephen Lumley were doing what Mrs. Hilary +called living in sin, what he preferred to call obeying the natural ego. +(After all, as any theologian would point out, the terms are synonymous +in a fallen world.) + +"I must have your advice," Mrs. Hilary said. "You must tell me what line +to take with her." + +"Shall you," Mr. Cradock enquired, thoughtful and intelligent, "find your +daughter in a state of conflict?" + +Mrs. Hilary spread her hands helplessly before her. + +"I know nothing; nothing." + +"A very great deal," said Mr. Cradock, "depends on that. If she is torn +between the cravings of the primitive ego and the inhibitions put upon +these cravings by the conventions of society--if, in fact, her censor, +her endopsychic censor, is still functioning...." + +"Oh, I doubt if Nan's got an endopsychic censor. She is so lawless +always." + +"Every psyche has a censor." Mr. Cradock was firm. "Regarded, of course, +by the psyche with very varying degrees of respect. Well, what I mean to +say is, if your daughter is in a state of conflict, with forces pulling +her both ways, her case will be very much easier to deal with than if she +has let her primitive ego so take possession of the situation that she +feels in a state of harmony. In the former case, you will only have to +strengthen the forces which are opposing her sexual craving...." + +Mrs. Hilary fidgeted uneasily. "Oh, I don't think Nan feels _that_ +exactly. None of my children...." + +Mr. Cradock gave her an amused glance. It seemed sometimes that he would +never get this foolish lady properly educated. + +"Your children, I presume, are human, Mrs. Hilary. Sexual craving means +a craving for intimacy with a member of another sex." + +"Oh well, I suppose it does. I don't care for the _name_, somehow. But +please go on." + +"I was going to say, if you find, on the other hand, that your daughter's +nature has attained harmony in connection with this course she is +pursuing, your task will be far more difficult. You will then have to +_create_ a discord, instead of merely strengthening it.... May I ask your +daughter's age?" + +"Nan is thirty-three." + +"A dangerous age." + +"All Nan's ages," said Mrs. Hilary, "have been dangerous. Nan is like +that." + +"As to that," said Mr. Cradock, "we may say that all ages are dangerous +to all people, in this dangerous life we live. But the thirties are a +specially dangerous time for women. They have outlived the shynesses +and restraints of girlhood, and not attained to the caution and +discretion of middle age. They are reckless, and consciously or +unconsciously on the lookout for adventure. They see ahead of them +the end of youth, and that quickens their pace.... Has passion always +been a strong element in your daughter's life?" + +"Oh, passion...." (Another word not liked by Mrs. Hilary.) "Not quite +that, I should say. Nan has been reckless; she has got into scrapes, got +herself talked about. She has played about with men a good deal always. +But as to passion...." + +"A common thing enough," Mr. Cradock told her, as it were reassuringly. +"Nothing to fight shy of, or be afraid of. But something to be regulated +of course.... Now, the thing is to oppose to this irregular desire of +your daughter's for this man a new and a stronger set of desires. Fight +one group of complexes with another. You can't, I suppose, persuade her +to be analysed? There are good analysts in Rome." + +"Oh no. Nan laughs at it. She laughs at everything of that sort." + +"A great mistake. A mistake often made by shallow and foolish people. +They might as well laugh at surgery.... Well now, to go into this +question of the battle between the complex-groups...." + +He went into it, patiently and exhaustively. His phrases drifted over +Mrs. Hilary's head. + +"... a deterrent force residing in the ego and preventing us from +stepping outside the bounds of propriety.... Rebellious messages sent +up from the Unconscious, which wishes to live, love and act in archaic +modes ... conflict with the progress of human society ... inhibitory and +repressive power of the censor...." (How wonderful, thought Mrs. Hilary, +to be able to talk so like a book for so long together!) ... "give the +censor all the help we can ... keep the Unconscious in order by turning +its energies into some other channel ... give it a substitute.... The +energy involved in the intense desire for someone of another sex can be +diverted ... employed on some useful work. Libido ... it should all be +used. Find another channel for your daughter's libido.... Her life is +perhaps a rather vacant one?" + +That Mrs. Hilary was able to reply to. + +"Nan's? Vacant? Oh no. She is quite full of energy. Too full. Always +doing a thousand things. And she writes, you know." + +"Ah. That should be an outlet. A great deal of libido is used up by that. +Well, her present strong desire for this man should be sublimated into a +desire for something else. I gather that her root trouble is lawlessness. +That can be cured. You must make her remember her first lawless action." +(Man's first disobedience and the fruit thereof, thought Mrs. Hilary.) + +"O dear me," she said, "I'm afraid that would be impossible. When she was +a month old she used to attempt to dash her bottle onto the floor." + +"People have even remembered their baptisms, when driven back to them by +analysis." + +"Our children were not baptised. My husband was something of a Unitarian. +He said he would not tie them up with a rite against which they might +react in later life. So they were merely registered." + +"Ah. In a way that is a pity. Baptism is an impressive moment in the +sensitive consciousness of the infant. It has sometimes been found +to be a sort of lamp shining through the haze of the early memory. +Registration, owing to the non-participation of the infant, is useless +in that way." + +"Nan might remember how she kicked me when I short-coated her," Mrs. +Hilary mused, hopefully. + +Mr. Cradock flowed on. Mrs. Hilary, listened, assented, was impressed. It +all sounded so simple, so wonderful, even so beautiful. But she thought +once or twice, "He doesn't know Nan." + +"Thank you," she said, rising to go when her hour was over. "You have +made me feel so much stronger, as usual. I can't thank you enough for all +you do for me. I could face none of my troubles and problems but for your +help." + +"That merely means," said Mr. Cradock, who always got the last word, +"that your ego is at present in what is called the state of infantile +dependence or tutelage. A necessary but an impermanent stage in its +struggle towards the adult level of the reality-principle." + +"I suppose so," Mrs. Hilary said. "Good-bye." + +"He is too clever for me," she thought, as she went home. "He is often +above my head." But she was used to that in the people she met. + + + + +CHAPTER XIII + +THE DAUGHTER + + +1 + +Mrs. Hilary hated travelling, which is indeed detestable. The Channel was +choppy and she a bad sailor; the train from Calais to Paris continued the +motion, and she remained a bad sailor (bad sailors often do this). She +lay back and smelled salts, and they were of no avail. At Paris she tried +and failed to dine. She passed a wretched night, being of those who +detest nights in trains without _wagons-lits_, but save money by not +having _wagons-lits_, and wonder dismally all night if it is worth it. +Modane in the chilly morning annoyed her as it annoys us all. The customs +people were rude and the other travellers in the way. Mrs. Hilary, who +was not good in crowds, pushed them, getting excited and red in the face. +Psycho-analysis had made her more patient and calm than she had been +before, but even so, neither patient nor calm when it came to jostling +crowds. + +"I am not strong enough for all this," she thought, in the Mont Cenis +tunnel. + +Rushing out of it into Italy, she thought, "Last time I was here was in +'99, with Richard. If Richard were here now he would help me." He would +face the customs at Modane, find and get the tickets, deal with uncivil +Germans--(Germans were often uncivil to Mrs. Hilary and she to them, and +though she had not met any yet on this journey, owing doubtless to their +state of collapse and depression consequent on the Great Peace, one might +get in at any moment, Germans being naturally buoyant). Richard would +have got hold of pillows, seen that she was comfortable at night, told +her when there was time to get out for coffee and when there wasn't (Mrs. +Hilary was no hand at this; she would try no runs and get run out, or all +but run out). And Richard would have helped to save Nan. Nan and her +father had got on pretty well, for a naughty girl and an elderly parent. +They had appreciated one another's brains, which is not a bad basis. They +had not accepted or even liked one another's ideas on life, but this is +not necessary or indeed usual in families. Mrs. Hilary certainly did not +go so far as to suppose that Nan would have obeyed her father had he +appeared before her in Rome and bidden her change her way of life, but +she might have thought it over. And to make Nan think over anything +which _she_ bade her do would be a phenomenal task. What had Mr. Cradock +said--make her remember her first disobedience, find the cause of it, +talk it out with her, get it into the open--and then she would be cured +of her present lawlessness. Why? That was the connection that always +puzzled Mrs. Hilary a little. Why should remembering that you had done, +and why you had done, the same kind of thing thirty years ago cure you +of doing it now? Similarly, why should remembering that a nurse had +scared you as an infant cure you of your present fear of burglars? In +point of fact, it didn't. Mr. Cradock had tried this particular cure on +Mrs. Hilary. It must be her own fault, of course, but somehow she had not +felt much less nervous about noises in the house at night since Mr. +Cradock had brought up into the light, as he called it, that old fright +in the nursery. After all, why should one? However, hers not to reason +why; and perhaps the workings of Nan's mind might be more orthodox. + +At Turin Germans got in. Of course. They were all over Italy. Italy was +welcoming them with both hands, establishing again the economic entente. +These were a mother and a _backfisch_, and they looked shyly and sullenly +at Mrs. Hilary and the other Englishwoman in the compartment. They were +thin, and Mrs. Hilary noted it with satisfaction. She didn't believe for +one moment in starving Germans, but these certainly did not look so +prosperous and buxom as a pre-war German mother and _backfisch_ would +have looked. They were equally uncivil, though. They pulled both windows +up to the top. The two English ladies promptly pulled them down half-way. +English ladies are the only beings in the world who like open windows in +winter. English lower-class women do not, nor do English gentlemen. If +you want to keep warm while travelling (to frowst, as the open air school +calls it) do not get in with well-bred Englishwomen. + +The German mother broke out in angry remonstrance, indicating that she +had neuralgia and the _backfisch_ a cold in the head. There followed one +of those quarrels which occur on this topic in trains, and are so bitter +and devastating. It had now more than the pre-war bitterness; between the +combatants flowed rivers of blood; behind them ranked male relatives +killed or maimed by the male relatives of their foes on the opposite +seat. The English ladies won. Germany was a conquered race, and knew it. +In revenge, the _backfisch_ coughed and sneezed "all over the carriage," +as Mrs. Hilary put it, "in the disgusting German way," and her mother +made noises as if she could be sick if she tried hard enough. + +So it was a detestable journey. And the second night in the train was +worse than the first. For the Germans, would you believe it, shut both +windows while the English were asleep, and the English, true to their +caste and race, woke with bad headaches. + + +2 + +When they got to Rome in the morning Mrs. Hilary felt thoroughly ill. She +had to strive hard for self-control; it would not do to meet Nan in an +unnerved, collapsed state. All her psychical strength was necessary +to deal with Nan. So when she stood on the platform with her luggage she +looked and felt not only like one who has slept (but not much) in a train +for two nights and fought with Germans about windows but also like an +elderly virgin martyr (spiritually tense and strung-up, and distraught, +and on the line between exultation and hysteria). + +Nan was there. Nan, pale and pinched, and looking plain in the nipping +morning air, though wrapped in a fur coat. (One of the points about Nan +was that, though she sometimes looked plain, she never looked dowdy; +there was always a distinction, a chic, about her.) + +Nan kissed her mother and helped with the luggage and got a cab. Nan was +good at railway stations and such places. Mrs. Hilary was not. + +They drove out into the hideous new streets. Mrs. Hilary shivered. + +"Oh, how ugly!" + +"Rome is ugly, this part." + +"It's worse since '99." + +But she did not really remember clearly how it had looked in '99. The old +desire to pose, to show that she knew something, took her. Yet she felt +that Nan, who knew that she knew next to nothing, would not be deceived. + +"Oh ... the Forum!" + +"The Forum of Trajan," Nan said. "We don't pass the Roman Forum on the +way to our street." + +"The Forum of Trajan, of course, I meant that." + +But she knew that Nan knew she had meant the Forum Romanum. + +"Rome is always Rome," she said, which was safer than identifying +particular buildings, or even Forums, in it. "Nothing like it anywhere." + +"How long can you stay, mother? I've got you a room in the house I'm +lodging in. It's in a little street the other side of the Corso. Rather +a mediæval street, I'm afraid. That is, it smells. But the rooms are +clean." + +"Oh, I'm not staying long.... We'll talk later; talk it all out. A +thorough talk. When we get in. After a cup of tea...." + +Mrs. Hilary remembered that Nan did not yet know why she had come. After +a cup of strong tea.... A cup of tea first.... Coffee wasn't the same. +One needed tea, after those awful Germans. She told Nan about these. Nan +knew that she would have had tiresome travelling companions; she always +did; if it weren't Germans it would be inconsiderate English. She was +unlucky. + +"Go straight to bed and rest when we get in," Nan advised; but she shook +her head. "We must talk first." + +Nan, she thought, looked pinched about the lips, and thin, and her black +brows were at times nervous and sullen. Nan did not look happy. Was it +guilt, or merely the chill morning air? + +They stopped at a shabby old house in a narrow mediæval street in the +Borgo, which had been a palace and was now let in apartments. Here Nan +had two bare, gilded, faded rooms. Mrs. Hilary sat by a charcoal stove in +one of them, and Nan made her some tea. After the tea Mrs. Hilary felt +revived. She wouldn't go to bed; she felt that the time for the talk had +come. She looked round the room for signs of Stephen Lumley, but all the +signs she saw were of Nan; Nan's books, Nan's proofs strewing the table. +Of course that bad man wouldn't come while she was there. He was no doubt +waiting eagerly for her to be gone. Probably they both were.... + + +3 + +"Nan--" They were still sitting by the stove, and Nan was lighting a +cigarette. "Nan--do you guess why I've come?" + +Nan threw away the match. + +"No, mother. How should I?... One does come to Rome, I suppose, if one +gets a chance." + +"Oh, I've not come to see Rome. I know Rome. Long before you were +born.... I've come to see you. And to take you back with me." + +Nan glanced at her quickly, a sidelong glance of suspicion and +comprehension. Her lower lip projected stubbornly. + +"Ah, I see you know what I mean. Yes, I've heard. Rumours reached us--it +was through Rosalind, of course. And I'm afraid ... I'm afraid that for +once she spoke the truth." + +"Oh no, she didn't. I don't know what Rosalind's been saying this time, +but it would be odd if it was the truth." + +"Nan, it's no use denying things. I _know_." + +It was true; she did know. A few months ago she would have doubted and +questioned; but Mr. Cradock had taught her better. She had learnt from +him the simple truth about life; that is, that nearly everyone is nearly +always involved up to the eyes in the closest relationship with someone +of another sex. It is nature's way with mankind. Another thing she had +learnt from him was that the more they denied it the more it was so; +protests of innocence and admissions of guilt were alike proofs of the +latter. So she was accurate when she said that it was no use for Nan to +deny anything. It was no use whatever. + +Nan had become cool and sarcastic--her nastiest, most dangerous manner. + +"Do you think you would care to be a little more explicit, mother? I'm +afraid I don't quite follow. What is it no use my denying? _What_ do you +know?" + +Mrs. Hilary gathered herself together. Her head trembled and jerked with +emotion; wisps of her hair, tousled by the night, escaped over her +collar. She spoke tremulously, tensely, her hands wrung together. + +"That you are going on with a married man. That you are his mistress," +she said, putting it at its crudest, since Nan wanted plain speaking. + +Nan sat quite still, smoking. The silence thrilled with Mrs. Hilary's +passion. + +"I see," Nan said at last. "And it's no use my denying it. In that case +I won't." Her voice was smooth and clear and still, like cold water. "You +know the man's name too, I presume?" + +"Of course. Everyone knows it. I tell you, Nan, everyone's talking of you +and him. A town topic, Rosalind calls it." + +"Rosalind would. Town must be very dull just now, if that's all they have +to talk of." + +"But it's not the scandal I'm thinking of," Mrs. Hilary went on, "though, +God knows, that's bad enough--I'm thankful Father died when he did and +was spared it--but the thing itself. The awful, awful thing itself. Have +you no shame, Nan?" + +"Not much." + +"For all our sakes. Not for mine--I know you don't care a rap for +that--but for Neville, whom you do profess to love...." + +"I should think we might leave Neville out of it. She's shown no signs of +believing any story about me." + +"Well, she does believe it, you may depend upon it. No one could help it. +People write from here saying it's an open fact." + +"People here can't have much to put in their letters." + +"Oh, they'll make room for gossip. People always will. Always. But I'm +not going to dwell on that side of things, because I know you don't care +what anyone says. It's the _wrongness_ of it.... A married man.... Even +if his wife divorces him! It would be in the papers.... And if she +doesn't you can't ever marry him.... Do you care for the man?" + +"What man?" + +"Don't quibble. Stephen Lumley, of course." + +"Stephen Lumley is a friend of mine. I'm fond of him." + +"I don't believe you do love him. I believe it's all recklessness and +perversity. Lawlessness. That's what Mr. Cradock said." + +"Mr. Cradock?" Nan's eyebrows went up. + +Mrs. Hilary flushed a brighter scarlet. The colour kept running over her +face and going back again, all the time she was talking. + +"Your psycho-analyst doctor," said Nan, and her voice was a little harder +and cooler than before. "I suppose you had an interesting conversation +with him about me." + +"I have to tell him everything," Mrs. Hilary stammered. "It's part +of the course. I did consult him about you. I'm not ashamed of it. He +understands about these things. He's not an ordinary man." + +"This is very interesting." Nan lit another cigarette. "It seems that +I've been a boon all round as a town topic--to London, to Rome and to St. +Mary's Bay.... Well, what did he advise about me?" + +Mrs. Hilary remembered vaguely and in part, but did not think it would be +profitable just now to tell Nan. + +"We have to be very wise about this," she said, collecting herself. "Very +wise and firm. Lawlessness.... I wonder if you remember, Nan, throwing +your shoes at my head when you were three?" + +"No. But I can quite believe I did. It was the sort of thing I used to +do." + +"Think back, Nan. What is the first act of naughtiness and disobedience +you remember, and what moved you to it?" + +Nan, who knew a good deal more about psycho-analysis than Mrs. Hilary +did, laughed curtly. + +"No good, mother. That won't work on me. I'm not susceptible to the +treatment. Too hard-headed. What was Mr. Cradock's next brain-wave?" + +"Oh well, if you take it like this, what's the use...." + +"None at all. I advise you not to bother yourself. It will only make your +headache worse.... Now I think after all this excitement you had better +go and lie down, don't you? I'm going out, anyhow." + +Then Stephen Lumley knocked at the door and came in. A tall, slouching +hollow-chested man of forty, who looked unhappy and yet cynically +amused at the world. He had a cough, and unusually bright eyes under +overhanging brows. + +Nan said, "This is Stephen Lumley, mother. My mother, Stephen," and left +them to do the rest, watching, critical and aloof, to see how they would +manage the situation. + +Mrs. Hilary managed it by rising from her chair and standing rigidly in +the middle of the room, breathing hard and staring. Stephen Lumley looked +enquiringly at Nan. + +"How do you do, Mrs. Hilary," he said. "I expect you're pretty well +played out by that beastly journey, aren't you." + +Mrs. Hilary's voice came stifled, choked, between pants. She was working +up; or rather worked up: Nan knew the symptoms. + +"You dare to come into my presence.... I must ask you to leave my +daughter's sitting-room _immediately_. I have come to take her back to +England with me at once. Please go. There is nothing that can possibly be +said between you and me--nothing." + +Stephen Lumley, a cool and quiet person, raised his brows, looked enquiry +once more at Nan, found no answer, said, "Well, then, I'll say good-bye," +and departed. + +Mrs. Hilary wrung her hands together. + +"How dare he! How dare he! Into my very presence! He has no shame...." + +Nan watched her coolly. But a red spot had begun to burn in each cheek at +her mother's opening words to Lumley, and still burned. Mrs. Hilary knew +of old that still-burning, deadly anger of Nan's. + +"Thank you, mother. You've helped me to make up my mind. I'm going to +Capri with Stephen next week. I've refused up till now. He was going +without me. You've made up my mind for me. You can tell Mr. Cradock that +if he asks." + +Nan was fiercely, savagely desirous to hurt. In the same spirit she had +doubtless thrown her shoes at Mrs. Hilary thirty years ago. Rage and +disgust, hot rebellion and sick distaste--what she had felt then she +felt now. During her mother's breathless outbreak at Stephen Lumley, +standing courteous and surprised before her, she had crossed her Rubicon. +And now with flaming words she burned her boats. + +Mrs. Hilary burst into tears. But her tears had never yet quenched Nan's +flames. Nan made her lie down and gave her sal volatile. Sal volatile +eases the head and nervous system and composes the manners, but no more +than tears does it quench flames. + + +4 + +The day that followed was strange, and does not sound likely, but life +often does not. Nan took Mrs. Hilary out to lunch at a trattoria near +the Forum, as it were to change the subject, and they spent the usual +first afternoon of visitors in Rome, who hasten to view the Forum with +a guide to the most recent excavations in their hands. Mrs. Hilary felt +completely uninterested to-day in recent or any other excavations. But, +obsessed even now with the old instinctive desire (the fond hope, rather) +not to seem unintelligent before her children, more especially when she +was not on good terms with them, she accompanied Nan, who firmly and +deftly closed or changed the subjects of unlawful love, Stephen Lumley, +Capri, returning to England, and her infant acts of wilfulness, whenever +her mother opened them, which was frequently, as Mrs. Hilary found these +things easier conversational topics than the buildings in the Forum. Nan +was determined to keep the emotional pressure low for the rest of the +day, and she was fairly competent at this when she tried. As Mrs. Hilary +had equal gifts at keeping it high, it was a well-matched contest. When +she left the Forum for a tea shop, both were tired out. The Forum is +tiring; emotion is tiring; tears are tiring; quarrelling is tiring; +travelling through to Rome is tiring; all five together are annihilating. + +However, they had tea. + +Mrs. Hilary was cold and bitter now, not hysterical. Nan, who was +living a bad life, and was also tiresomely exactly informed about the +differences between the Forum in '99 and the Forum to-day (a subject on +which Mrs. Hilary was hazy) was not fit, until she came to a better mind, +to be spoken to. Mrs. Hilary shut her lips tight and averted her reddened +eyes. She hated Nan just now. She could have loved her had she been +won to repentance, but now--"Nan was never like the rest," she thought. + +Nan persisted in making light, equable conversation, which Mrs. Hilary +thought in bad taste. She talked of England and the family, asked after +Grandmama, Neville and the rest. + +"Neville is extremely ill," Mrs. Hilary said, quite untruly, but +that was, to do her justice, the way in which she always saw illness, +particularly Neville's. "And worried to death about Gerda, who seems to +have gone off her head since that accident in Cornwall. She is still +sticking to that insane, wicked notion about not getting married." + +Nan had heard before of this. + +"She'll give that up," she said, coolly, "when she finds she really can't +have Barry if she doesn't. Gerda gets what she wants." + +"Oh, you all do that, the whole lot of you.... And a nice example +_you're_ setting the child." + +"She'll give it up," Nan repeated, keeping the conversation on Gerda. +"Gerda hasn't the martyr touch. She won't perish for a principle. She +wants Barry and she'll have him, though she may hold out for a time. +Gerda doesn't lose things, in the end." + +"She's a very silly child, and I suppose she's been mixing with dreadful +friends and picked up these ideas. At twenty there's some excuse for +ignorant foolishness." But none at thirty-three, Mrs. Hilary meant. + +"Barry Briscoe," she added, "is being quite firm about it. Though he is +desperately in love with her, Neville tells me; desperately." + +He's soon got over you, even if he did care for you once, and even if you +did send him away, her emphasis implied. + +In Nan, casually flicking the ash off her cigarette, a queer impulse came +and went. For a moment she wanted to cry; to drop hardness and lightness +and pretence, and cry like a child and say "Mother, comfort me. Don't go +on hurting me. I love Barry. Be kind to me, oh be kind to me!" + +If she had done it, Mrs. Hilary would have taken her in her arms and been +all mother, and the wound in their affection would have been temporarily +healed. + +Nan said nonchalantly "I suppose he is. They're sure to be all +right.... Now what next, mother? It's getting dark for seeing things." + +"I am tired to death," said Mrs. Hilary. "I shall go back to those +dreadful rooms and try to rest.... It has been an awful day.... I hate +Rome. In '99 it was so different. Father and I went about together; he +showed me everything. He _knew_ about it all. Besides...." + +Besides, how could I enjoy sight-seeing after that scene this morning, +and with this awful calamity that has happened? + +They went back. Mrs. Hilary was desperately missing her afternoon hour +with Mr. Cradock. She had come to rely on it on a Wednesday. + + +5 + +Nan sat up late, correcting proofs, after Mrs. Hilary had gone to bed. +Galleys lay all round her on the floor by the stove. She let them slip +from her knee and lie there. She hated them.... + +She pressed her hands over her eyes, shutting them out, shutting out +life. She was going off with Stephen Lumley. She had told him so this +morning. Both their lives were broken; hers by Barry, whom she loved, his +by his wife, whom he disliked. He loved her; he wanted her. She could +with him find relief, find life a tolerable thing. They could have a good +time together. They were good companions; their need, though dissimilar, +was mutual. They saw the same beauty, spoke the same tongue, laughed at +the same things. In the very thought of Stephen, with his cynical humour, +his clear, keen mind, his lazy power of brain, Nan had found relief all +that day, reacting desperately from a mind fuddled with sentiment and +emotion as with drink, a soft, ignorant brain, which knew and cared about +nothing except people, a hysterical passion of anger and malice. They had +pushed her sharply and abruptly over the edge of decision, that mind and +brain and passion. Stephen, against whom their fierce anger was +concentrated, was so different.... + +To get away, to get right away from everything and everyone, with +Stephen. Not to have to go back to London alone, to see what she could +not, surely, bear to see--Barry and Gerda, Gerda and Barry, always, +everywhere, radiant and in love. And Neville, Gerda's mother, who saw so +much. And Rosalind, who saw everything, everything, and said so. And Mrs. +Hilary.... + +To saunter round the queer, lovely corners of the earth with Stephen, +light oneself by Stephen's clear, flashing mind, look after Stephen's +weak, neglected body as he never could himself ... that was the only +anodyne. Life would then some time become an adventure again, a gay +stroll through the fair, instead of a desperate sickness and nightmare. + +Barry, oh Barry.... Nan, who had thought she was getting better, found +that she was not. Tears stormed and shook her at last. She crumpled up on +the floor among the galley-slips, her head upon the chair. + +Those damned proofs--who wanted them? What were books? What was anything? + + +6 + +Mrs. Hilary came in, in her dressing-gown, red-eyed. She had heard +strangled sounds, and knew that her child was crying. + +"My darling!" + +Her arms were round Nan's shoulders; she was kneeling among the proofs. + +"My little girl--Nan!" + +"Mother...." + +They held each other close. It was a queer moment, though not an +unprecedented one in the stormy history of their relations together. +A queer, strange, comforting, healing moment, the fleeting shadow of a +great rock in a barren land; a strayed fragment of something which should +have been between them always but was not. Certainly an odd moment. + +"My own baby.... You're unhappy...." + +"Unhappy--yes.... Darling mother, it can't be helped. Nothing can be +helped.... Don't let's talk ... darling." + +Strange words from Nan. Strange for Mrs. Hilary to feel her hand held +against Nan's wet cheek and kissed. + +Strange moment: and it could not last. The crying child wants its mother; +the mother wants to comfort the crying child. A good bridge, but one +inadequate for the strain of daily traffic. The child, having dried +its tears, watches the bridge break again, and thinks it a pity but +inevitable. The mother, less philosophic, may cry in her turn, thinking +perhaps that the bridge may be built this time in that way; but, the +child having the colder heart, it seldom is. + +There remain the moments, impotent but indestructible. + + + + +CHAPTER XIV + +YOUTH TO YOUTH + + +1 + +Kay was home for the Christmas vacation. He was full, not so much of +Cambridge, as of schemes for establishing a co-operative press next year. +He was learning printing and binding, and wanted Gerda to learn too. + +"Because, if you're really not going to marry Barry, and if Barry sticks +to not having you without, you'll be rather at a loose end, won't you, +and you may as well come and help us with the press.... But of course, +you know," Kay added absently, his thoughts still on the press, "I should +advise you to give up on that point." + +"Give up, Kay? Marry, do you mean?" + +"Yes.... It doesn't seem to me to be a point worth making a fuss about. +Of course I agree with you in theory--I always have. But I've come to +think lately that it's not a point of much importance. And perfectly +sensible people are doing it all the time. You know Jimmy Kenrick and +Susan Mallow have done it? They used to say they wouldn't, but they have. +The fact is, people _do_ do it, whatever they say about it beforehand. +And though in theory it's absurd, it seems often to work out pretty well +in actual life. Personally I should make no bones about it, if I wanted +a girl and she wanted marriage. Of course a girl can always go on being +called by her own name if she likes. That has points." + +"Of course one could do that," Gerda pondered. + +"It's a sound plan in some ways. It saves trouble and explanation +to go on with the name you've published your things under before +marriage.... By the way, what about your poems, Gerda? They'll be about +ready by the time we get our press going, won't they? We can afford to +have some slight stuff of that sort if we get hold of a few really good +things to start with, to make our name." + +Gerda's thoughts were not on her poems, nor on Kay's press, but on his +advice about matrimony. For the first time she wavered. If Kay thought +that.... It set the business in a new light. And of course other people +_were_ doing it; sound people, the people who talked the same language +and belonged to the same set as one's self. + +Kay had spoken. It was the careless, authentic voice of youth speaking to +youth. It was a trumpet blast making a breach in the walls against which +the batteries of middle age had thundered in vain. Gerda told herself +that she must look further into this, think it over again, talk it over +with other people of the age to know what was right. If it could be +managed with honour, she would find it a great relief to give up on this +point. For Barry was so firm; he would never give up; and, after all, one +of them must, if it could be done with a clear conscience. + + +2 + +Ten days later Gerda said to Barry, "I've been thinking it over again, +Barry, and I've decided that perhaps it will be all right for us to get +married after all." + +Barry took both her hands and kissed each in turn, to show that he was +not triumphing but adoring. + +"You mean it? You feel you can really do it without violating your +conscience? Sure, darling?" + +"Yes, I think I'm sure. Lots of quite sensible, good people have done it +lately." + +"Oh any number, of course--if _that's_ any reason." + +"Not, not those people. My sort of people, I mean. People who believe +what I do, and wouldn't tie themselves up and lose their liberty for +anything." + +"I agree with Lenin. He says liberty is a bourgeois dream." + +"Barry, I may keep my name, mayn't I? I may still be called Gerda +Bendish, by people in general?" + +"Of course, if you like. Rather silly, isn't it? Because it won't _be_ +your name. But that's your concern." + +"It's the name I've always written and drawn under, you see." + +"Yes. I see your point. Of course you shall be Gerda Bendish anywhere you +like, only not on cheques, if you don't mind." + +"And I don't much want to wear a wedding ring, Barry." + +"That's as you like, too, of course. You might keep it in your purse when +travelling, to produce if censorious hotel keepers look askance at us. +Even the most abandoned ladies do that sometimes, I believe. Or your +marriage lines will do as well.... Gerda, you blessed darling, it's most +frightfully decent and sporting of you to have changed your mind and +owned up. Next time we differ I'll try and be the one to do it, I +honestly will.... I say, let's come out by ourselves and dine and do a +theatre, to celebrate the occasion." + +So they celebrated the triumph of institutionalism. + + +3 + +Their life together, thought Barry, would be a keen, jolly, adventuring +business, an ardent thing, full of gallant dreams and endeavours. It +should never grow tame or stale or placid, never lose its fine edge. +There would be mountain peak beyond mountain peak to scale together. They +would be co-workers, playmates, friends and lovers all at once, and they +would walk in liberty as in a bourgeois dream. + +So planned Barry Briscoe, the romantic, about whose head the vision +splendid always hovered, a realisable, capturable thing. + +Gerda thought, "I'm happy. Poetry and drawing and Barry. I've everything +I want, except a St. Bernard pup, and Kay's giving me that for Christmas. +_I'm happy._" + +It was a tingling, intense, sensuous feeling, like stretching warm before +a good fire, or lying in fragrant thymy woods in June, in the old Junes +when suns were hot. Life was a song and a dream and a summer morning. + +"You're happy, Gerda," Neville said to her once, gladly but half +wistfully, and she nodded, with her small gleaming smile. + +"Go on being happy," Neville told her, and Gerda did not know that she +had nearly added "for it's cost rather a lot, your happiness." Gerda +seldom cared how much things had cost; she did not waste thought on such +matters. She was happy. + + + + +CHAPTER XV + +THE DREAM + + +1 + +Barry and Gerda were married in January in a registry office, and, as all +concerned disliked wedding parties, there was no wedding party. + +After they had gone, Neville, recovered now from the lilies and languors +of illness, plunged into the roses and raptures of social life. One +mightn't, she said to herself, be able to accomplish much in this world, +or imprint one's personality on one's environment by deeds and +achievements, but one could at least enjoy life, be a pleased +participator in its spoils and pleasures, an enchanted spectator of its +never-ending flux and pageant, its richly glowing moving pictures. One +could watch the play out, even if one hadn't much of a part oneself. +Music, art, drama, the company of eminent, pleasant and entertaining +persons, all the various forms of beauty, the carefully cultivated +richness, graces and elegances which go to build up the world of the +fortunate, the cultivated, the prosperous and the well-bred--Neville +walked among these like the soul in the lordly pleasure house built for +her by the poet Tennyson, or like Robert Browning glutting his sense upon +the world--"Miser, there waits the gold for thee!"--or Francis Thompson +swinging the earth a trinket at his wrist. In truth, she was at times +self-consciously afraid that she resembled all these three, whom (in the +moods they thus expressed) she disliked beyond reason, finding them +morbid and hard to please. + +She too knew herself morbid and hard to please. If she had not been +so, to be Rodney's wife would surely have been enough; it would have +satisfied all her nature. Why didn't it? Was it perhaps really because, +though she loved him, it was not with the uncritical devotion of the +early days? She had for so many years now seen clearly, through and +behind his charm, his weakness, his vanities, his scorching ambitions +and jealousies, his petulant angers, his dependence on praise and +admiration. She had no jealousy now of his frequent confidential +intimacies with other attractive women; they were harmless enough, and +he never lost the need of and dependence on her; but they may have helped +to clarify her vision of him. + +Rodney had no failings beyond what are the common need of human nature; +he was certainly good enough for her. Their marriage was all right. It +was only the foolish devil of egotism in her which goaded to unwholesome +activity the other side of her nature, that need for self-expression +which marriage didn't satisfy. + + +2 + +In February she suddenly tired of London and the British climate, and was +moved by a desire to travel. So she went to Italy, and stayed in Capri +with Nan and Stephen Lumley, who were leading on that island lives by +turns gaily indolent and fiercely industrious, finding the company +stimulating and the climate agreeable and soothing to Stephen's defective +lungs. + +From Italy Neville went to Greece. Corinth, Athens, the islands, Tempe, +Delphi, Crete--how good to have money and be able to see all these! Italy +and Greece are Europe's pleasure grounds; there the cultivated and the +prosperous traveller may satisfy his soul and forget carking cares and +stabbing ambitions, and drug himself with loveliness. + +If Neville abruptly tired of it, and set her face homewards in early +April, it was partly because she felt the need of Rodney, and partly +because she saw, fleetingly but day by day more lucidly, that one could +not take one's stand, for satisfaction of desire, on the money which one +happened to have but which the majority bitterly and emptily lacked. Some +common way there had to be, some freedom all might grasp, a liberty not +for the bourgeois only, but for the proletariat--the poor, the sad, the +gay proletariat, who also grew old and lost their dreams, and had not the +wherewithal to drug their souls, unless indeed they drank much liquor, +and that is but a poor artificial way to peace. + +Voyaging homewards through the spring seas, Neville saw life as an +entangling thicket, the Woods of Westermain she had loved in her +childhood, in which the scaly dragon squatted, the craving monster self +that had to be subjugated before one could walk free in the enchanted +woods. + + "Him shall change, transforming late, + Wonderously renovate...." + +Dimly discerning through the thicket the steep path that climbed to +such liberty as she sought, seeing far off the place towards which her +stumbling feet were set, where life should be lived with alert readiness +and response, oblivious of its personal achievements, its personal claims +and spoils, Neville the spoilt, vain, ambitious, disappointed egoist, +strained her eyes into the distance and half smiled. It might be a dream, +that liberty, but it was a dream worth a fight.... + + + + +CHAPTER XVI + +TIME + + +1 + +February at St. Mary's Bay. The small fire flickered and fluttered in +the grate with a sound like the windy beating of wings. The steady rain +sloped against the closed windows of The Gulls, and dropped patteringly +on the asphalt pavements of Marine Crescent outside, and the cold grey +sea tumbled moaning. + +Grandmama sat in her arm-chair by the hearth, reading the Autobiography +of a Cabinet Minister's Wife and listening to the fire, the sea and the +rain, and sleeping a little now and again. + +Mrs. Hilary sat in another arm-chair, surrounded by bad novels, as if she +had been a reviewer. She was regarding them, too, with something of the +reviewer's pained and inimical distaste, dipping now into one, shutting +it with a sharp sigh, trying another; flinging it on the floor with an +ejaculation of anger and fatigue. + +Grandmama woke with a start, and said "What fell? Did something fall?" +and adjusted her glasses and opened the Autobiography again. + +"A sadly vulgar, untruthful and ill-written book. The sort of +autobiography Gilbert's wife will write when she has time. It reminds me +very much of her letters, and is, I am sure, still more like the diary +which she no doubt keeps. Poor Gilbert...." Grandmama seemed to be +confusing Gilbert momentarily with the Cabinet Minister. "I remember," +she went on, "meeting this young woman at Oxford, in the year of the +first Jubilee.... A very bright talker. They can so seldom +write...." She dozed again. + +"Will this intolerable day," Mrs. Hilary enquired of the housemaid +who came in to make up the fire, "never be over? I suppose it will be +bed-time _some time_...." + +"It's just gone a quarter past six, ma'am," said the housemaid, offering +little hope, and withdrew. + +Mrs. Hilary went to the window and drew back the curtains and looked out +at Marine Crescent in the gloomy, rainy twilight. The long evening +stretched in front of her--the long evening which she had never learnt to +use. Psycho-analysis, which had made her so much better while the course +lasted, now that it was over (and it was too expensive to go on with +forever) had left her worse than before. She was like a drunkard deprived +suddenly of stimulants; she had nothing to turn to, no one now who took +an interest in her soul. She missed Mr. Cradock and that bi-weekly hour; +she was like a creeper wrenched loose from its support and flung flat on +the ground. He had given her mental exercises and told her to continue +them; but she had always hated mental exercises; you might as well go in +for the Pelman course and have done. What one needed was a _person_. She +was left once more face to face with time, the enemy; time, which gave +itself to her lavishly with both hands when she had no use for it. There +was nothing she wanted to do with time, except kill it. + +"What, dear?" murmured Grandmama, as she rattled the blind tassel against +the sill. "How about a game of piquet?" + +But Mrs. Hilary hated piquet, and all card games, and halma, and +dominoes, and everything. Grandmama used to have friends in to play with +her, or the little maid. This evening she rang for the little maid, May, +who would rather have been writing to her young man, but liked to oblige +the nice old lady, of whom the kitchen was fond. + +It was all very well for Grandmama, Mrs. Hilary thought, stormily +revolting against that placidity by the hearth. All very well for +Grandmama to sit by the fire contented with books and papers and games +and sleep, unbitten by the murderous hatred of time that consumed +herself. Everyone always thought that about Grandmama, that things were +all very well for her, and perhaps they were. For time could do little +more hurt to Grandmama. She need not worry about killing time; time would +kill her soon enough, if she left it alone. Time, so long to Mrs. Hilary, +was short now to Grandmama, and would soon be gone. As to May, the little +maid, to her time was fleeting, and flew before her face, like a bird she +could never catch.... + +Grandmama and May were playing casino. A bitter game, for you build and +others take, and your labour is but lost that builded; you sow and others +reap. But Grandmama and May were both good-tempered and ladylike. They +played prettily together, age and youth. + +Why did life play one these tricks, Mrs. Hilary cried within herself. +What had she done to life, that it should have deserted her and left her +stranded on the shores of a watering-place, empty-handed and pitiful, +alone with time the enemy, and with Grandmama, for whom it was all very +well? + + +2 + +In the Crescent music blared out--once more the Army, calling for strayed +sheep in the rain. + +"Glory for you, glory for me!" it shouted. And then, presently: + + "Count--your--blessings! Count them one by one! + And it will _surprise_ you what the Lord has done!" + +Grandmama, as usual, was beating time with her hand on the arm of her +chair. + +"Detestable creatures," said Mrs. Hilary, with acrimony, as usual. + +"But a very racy tune, my dear," said Grandmama, placidly, as usual. + +"Blood! Blood!" sang the Army, exultantly, as usual. + +May looked happy, and her attention strayed from the game. The Army was +one of the joys, one of the comic turns, of this watering-place. + +"Six and two are eight," said Grandmama, and picked them up, recalling +May's attention. But she herself still beat time to the merry music-hall +tune and the ogreish words. + +Grandmama could afford to be tolerant, as she sat there, looking over the +edge into eternity, with Time, his fangs drawn, stretched sleepily behind +her back. Time, who flew, bird-like, before May's pursuing feet; time, +who stared balefully into Mrs. Hilary's face, returning hate for hate, +rested behind Grandmama's back like a faithful steed who had carried her +thus far and whose service was nearly over. + +The Army moved on; its music blared away into the distance. The rain +beat steadily on wet asphalt roads; the edge of the cold sea tumbled and +moaned; the noise of the fire flickering was like unsteady breathing, or +the soft fluttering of wings. + +"Time is so long," thought Mrs. Hilary. "I can't bear it." + +"Time gets on that quick," thought May. "I can't keep up with it." + +"Time is dead," thought Grandmama. "What next?" + + + + +CHAPTER XVII + +THE KEY + + +1 + +Not Grandmama's and not Neville's should be, after all, the last word, +but Pamela's. Pamela, who seemed lightly, and as it were casually, to +swing a key to the door against which Neville, among many others, beat; +Pamela, going about her work, keen, debonair and detached, ironic, +cool and quiet, responsive to life and yet a thought disdainful of it, +lightly holding and easily renouncing; the world's lover, yet not its +servant, her foot at times carelessly on its neck to prove her power over +it--Pamela said blandly to Grandmama, when the old lady commented one day +on her admirable composure, "Life's so short, you see. Can anything which +lasts such a little while be worth making a fuss about?" + +"Ah," said Grandmama, "that's been my philosophy for ten years ... only +ten years. You've no business with it at your age, child." + +"Age," returned Pamela, negligent and cool, "has extremely little to do +with anything that matters. The difference between one age and another +is, as a rule, enormously exaggerated. How many years we've lived on this +ridiculous planet--how many more we're going to live on it--what a +trifle! Age is a matter of exceedingly little importance." + +"And so, you would imply, is everything else on the ridiculous planet," +said Grandmama, shrewdly. Pamela smiled, neither affirming nor denying. +Lightly the key seemed to swing from her open hand. + +"I certainly don't see quite what all the fuss is about," said Pamela. + + + +***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK DANGEROUS AGES*** + + +******* This file should be named 16799-8.txt or 16799-8.zip ******* + + +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: +https://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/1/6/7/9/16799 + + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. Special rules, +set forth in the General Terms of Use part of this license, apply to +copying and distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works to +protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm concept and trademark. 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You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at <a href = "https://www.gutenberg.org">www.gutenberg.org</a></pre> +<p>Title: Dangerous Ages</p> +<p>Author: Rose Macaulay</p> +<p>Release Date: October 4, 2005 [eBook #16799]</p> +<p>Language: English</p> +<p>Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1</p> +<p>***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK DANGEROUS AGES***</p> +<p> </p> +<h3>E-text prepared by Suzanne Shell, Mary Meehan,<br /> + and the Project Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team<br /> + (https://www.pgdp.net/)</h3> +<p> </p> +<hr class="full" /> +<p> </p> +<p> </p> +<h1>DANGEROUS AGES</h1> + +<h2>By ROSE MACAULAY</h2> + +<h3>Author of "Potterism"</h3> + +<h3>1921</h3> + + +<h4>BONI <span class="smcap">and</span> LIVERIGHT<br /> +PUBLISHERS NEW YORK</h4> + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> + +<h4>TO MY MOTHER<br /> +DRIVING GAILY THROUGH THE<br /> +ADVENTUROUS MIDDLE YEARS</h4> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="CONTENTS" id="CONTENTS"></a>CONTENTS</h2> + +<!-- Autogenerated TOC. Modify or delete as required. --> +<p> +<a href="#CHAPTER_I">CHAPTER I.--NEVILLE'S BIRTHDAY</a><br /> +<a href="#CHAPTER_II">CHAPTER II.--MRS. HILARY'S BIRTHDAY</a><br /> +<a href="#CHAPTER_III">CHAPTER III.--FAMILY LIFE</a><br /> +<a href="#CHAPTER_IV">CHAPTER IV.--ROOTS</a><br /> +<a href="#CHAPTER_V">CHAPTER V.--SEAWEED</a><br /> +<a href="#CHAPTER_VI">CHAPTER VI.--JIM</a><br /> +<a href="#CHAPTER_VII">CHAPTER VII.--GERDA</a><br /> +<a href="#CHAPTER_VIII">CHAPTER VIII.--NAN</a><br /> +<a href="#CHAPTER_IX">CHAPTER IX.--THE PACE</a><br /> +<a href="#CHAPTER_X">CHAPTER X.--PRINCIPLES</a><br /> +<a href="#CHAPTER_XI">CHAPTER XI.--THAT WHICH REMAINS</a><br /> +<a href="#CHAPTER_XII">CHAPTER XII.--THE MOTHER</a><br /> +<a href="#CHAPTER_XIII">CHAPTER XIII.--THE DAUGHTER</a><br /> +<a href="#CHAPTER_XIV">CHAPTER XIV.--YOUTH TO YOUTH</a><br /> +<a href="#CHAPTER_XV">CHAPTER XV.--THE DREAM</a><br /> +<a href="#CHAPTER_XVI">CHAPTER XVI.--TIME</a><br /> +<a href="#CHAPTER_XVII">CHAPTER XVII.--THE KEY</a><br /> +</p> +<!-- End Autogenerated TOC. --> + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>'As to that,' said Mr. Cradock, 'we may say that all ages are dangerous +to all people, in this dangerous life we live.'</p></div> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>'Reflecting how, at the best, human life on this minute and perishing +planet is a mere episode, and as brief as a dream....'</p> + +<p><i>Trivia</i>: <span class="smcap">Logan Pearsall Smith.</span></p></div> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_I" id="CHAPTER_I"></a>CHAPTER I</h2> + +<h3>NEVILLE'S BIRTHDAY</h3> + + +<h4>1</h4> + +<p>Neville, at five o'clock (Nature's time, not man's) on the morning of her +birthday, woke from the dream-broken sleep of summer dawns, hot with the +burden of two sheets and a blanket, roused by the multitudinous silver +calling of a world full of birds. They chattered and bickered about the +creepered house, shrill and sweet, like a hundred brooks running together +down steep rocky places after snow. And, not like brooks, and strangely +unlike birds, like, in fact, nothing in the world except a cuckoo clock, +a cuckoo shouted foolishly in the lowest boughs of the great elm across +the silver lawn.</p> + +<p>Neville turned on her face, cupped her small, pale, tanned face in her +sunburnt hands, and looked out with sleepy violet eyes. The sharp joy of +the young day struck into her as she breathed it through the wide window. +She shivered ecstatically as it blew coldly onto her bare throat and +chest, and forgot the restless birthday bitterness of the night; forgot +how she had lain and thought "Another year gone, and nothing done yet. +Soon all the years will be gone, and nothing ever will be done." Done by +her, she, of course, meant, as all who are familiar with birthdays will +know. But what was something and what was nothing, neither she nor others +with birthdays could satisfactorily define. They have lived, they have +eaten, drunk, loved, bathed, suffered, talked, danced in the night and +rejoiced in the dawn, warmed, in fact, both hands before the fire of +life, but still they are not ready to depart. For they are behindhand +with time, obsessed with so many worlds, so much to do, the petty done, +the undone vast. It depressed Milton when he turned twenty-three; it +depresses all those with vain and ambitious temperaments at least once a +year. Some call it remorse for wasted days, and are proud of it; others +call it vanity, discontent or greed, and are ashamed of it. It makes no +difference either way.</p> + +<p>Neville, flinging it off lightly with her bedclothes, sprang out of bed, +thrust her brown feet into sand shoes, her slight, straight, pyjama-clad +body into a big coat, quietly slipped into the passage, where, behind +three shut doors, slept Rodney, Gerda and Kay, and stole down the back +stairs to the kitchen, which was dim and blinded, blue with china and +pale with dawn, and had a gas stove. She made herself some tea. She also +got some bread and marmalade out of the larder, spread two thick chunks, +and munching one of them, slipped out of the sleeping house into the +dissipated and riotous garden.</p> + +<p>Looking up at the honeysuckle-buried window of the bedroom of Gerda, +Neville nearly whistled the call to which Gerda was wont to reply. +Nearly, but not quite. On the whole it was a morning to be out alone in. +Besides, Neville wanted to forget, for the moment, about birthdays, and +Gerda would have reminded her.</p> + +<p>Going round by the yard, she fetched Esau instead, who wouldn't remind +her, and whose hysterical joy she hushed with a warning hand.</p> + +<p>Across the wet and silver lawn she sauntered, between the monstrous +shadows of the elms, her feet in the old sand shoes leaving dark prints +in the dew, her mouth full of bread and marmalade, her black plait +bobbing on her shoulders, and Esau tumbling round her. Across the lawn to +the wood, cool and dim still, but not quiet, for it rang with music and +rustled with life. Through the boughs of beeches and elms and firs the +young day flickered gold, so that the bluebell patches were half lit, +like blue water in the sun, half grey, like water at twilight. Between +two great waves of them a brown path ran steeply down to a deep little +stream. Neville and Esau, scrambling a little way upstream, stopped at +a broad swirling pool it made between rocks. Here Neville removed coat, +shoes and pyjamas and sat poised for a moment on the jutting rock, a +slight and naked body, long in the leg, finely and supplely knit, with +light, flexible muscles—a body built for swiftness, grace and a certain +wiry strength. She sat there while she twisted her black plait round her +head, then she slipped into the cold, clear, swirling pool, which in one +part was just over her depth, and called to Esau to come in too, and +Esau, as usual, didn't, but only barked.</p> + +<p>One swim round is enough, if not too much, as everyone who knows sunrise +bathing will agree. Neville scrambled out, discovered that she had +forgotten the towel, dried herself on her coat, resumed her pyjamas, and +sat down to eat her second slice of bread and marmalade. When she had +finished it she climbed a beech tree, swarming neatly up the smooth trunk +in order to get into the sunshine, and sat on a broad branch astride, +whistling shrilly, trying to catch the tune now from one bird, now from +another.</p> + +<p>These, of course, were the moments when being alive was enough. Swimming, +bread and marmalade, sitting high in a beech tree in the golden eye of +the morning sun—that was life. One flew then, like a gay ship with the +wind in its sails, over the cold black bottomless waters of misgiving. +Many such a June morning Neville remembered in the past.... She wondered +if Gerda and if Kay thus sailed over sorrow, too. Rodney, she knew, did. +But she knew Rodney better, in some ways, than she knew Gerda and Kay.</p> + +<p>To think suddenly of Rodney, of Gerda and of Kay, sleeping in the still +house beyond the singing wood and silver garden, was to founder swiftly +in the cold, dark seas, to be hurt again with the stabbing envy of the +night. Not jealousy, for she loved them all too well for that. But envy +of their chances, of their contacts with life. Having her own contacts, +she wanted all kinds of others too. Not only Rodney's, Gerda's and Kay's, +but those of all her family and friends. Conscious, as one is on +birthdays, of intense life hurrying swiftly to annihilation, she strove +desperately to dam it. It went too fast. She looked at the wet strands of +black hair now spread over her shoulders to dry in the sun, at her +strong, supple, active limbs, and thought of the days to come, when the +black hair should be grey and the supple limbs refuse to carry her up +beech trees, and when, if she bathed in the sunrise, she would get +rheumatism. In those days, what did one do to keep from sinking in the +black seas of regret? One sat by the fire, or in the sunlit garden, old +and grey and full of sleep—yes, one went to sleep, when one could. When +one couldn't, one read. But one's eyes got tired soon—Neville thought of +her grandmother—and one had to be read aloud to, by someone who couldn't +read aloud. That wouldn't be enough to stifle vain regrets; only +rejoicing actively in the body did that. So, before that time came, one +must have slain regret, crushed that serpent's head for good and all.</p> + +<p>But did anyone ever succeed in doing this? Rodney, who had his full, +successful, useful, interesting life; Rodney, who had made his mark and +was making it; Rodney, the envy of many others, and particularly the envy +of Neville, with the jagged ends of her long since broken career stabbing +her; Rodney from time to time burned inwardly with scorching ambitions, +with jealousies of other men, with all the heats, rancours and troubles +of the race that is set before us. He had done, was doing, something, but +it wasn't enough. He had got, was getting, far,—but it wasn't far +enough. He couldn't achieve what he wanted; there were obstacles +everywhere. Fools hindered his work; men less capable than he got jobs he +should have had. Immersed in politics, he would have liked more time for +writing; he would have liked a hundred other careers besides his own, and +could have but the one. (Gerda and Kay, still poised on the threshold of +life, still believed that they could indeed have a hundred.) No, Rodney +was not immune from sorrow, but at least he had more with which to keep +it at bay than Neville. Neville had no personal achievements; she had +only her love for Rodney, Gerda and Kay, her interest in the queer, +enchanting pageant of life, her physical vigours (she could beat any of +the rest of them at swimming, walking, tennis or squash) and her active +but wasted brain. A good brain, too; she had easily and with brilliance +passed her medical examinations long ago—those of them for which she had +had time before she had been interrupted. But now a wasted brain; +squandered, atrophied, gone soft with disuse. Could she begin to use +it now? Or was she forever held captive, in deep woods, between the two +twilights?</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"I am in deep woods,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Between the two twilights.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Over valley and hill<br /></span> +<span class="i0">I hear the woodland wave<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Like the voice of Time, as slow,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">The voice of Life, as grave,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">The voice of Death, as still...."<br /></span> +</div></div> + + +<h4>2</h4> + +<p>The voices, the young loud clear voices of Gerda and of Kay, shrilled +down from the garden, and Esau yapped in answer. They were calling her. +They had probably been to wake her and had found her gone.</p> + +<p>Neville smiled (when she smiled a dimple came in one pale brown cheek) +and swung herself down from the beech. Kay and Gerda were of enormous +importance; the most important things in life, except Rodney; but not +everything, because nothing is ever everything in this so complex world.</p> + +<p>When she came out of the wood into the garden, now all golden with +morning, they flung themselves upon her and called her a sneak for not +having wakened them to bathe.</p> + +<p>"You'll be late for breakfast," they chanted. "Late on your forty-third +birthday."</p> + +<p>They each had an arm round her; they propelled her towards the house. +They were lithe, supple creatures of twenty and twenty-one. Between them +walked Neville, with her small, pointed, elfish face, that was sensitive +to every breath of thought and emotion like smooth water wind-stirred. +With her great violet eyes brooding in it under thin black brows, and +her wet hair hanging in loose strands, she looked like an ageless +wood-dryad between two slim young saplings. Kay was a little like her in +the face, only his violet eyes were short-sighted and he wore glasses. +Gerda was smaller, fragile and straight as a wand, with a white little +face and wavy hair of pure gold, bobbed round her thin white neck. And +with far-set blue eyes and a delicate cleft chin and thin straight lips. +For all she looked so frail, she could dance all night and return in the +morning cool, composed and exquisite, like a lily bud. There was a look +of immaculate sexless purity about Gerda; she might have stood for the +angel Gabriel, wide-eyed and young and grave. With this wide innocent +look she would talk unabashed of things which Neville felt revolting. And +she, herself, was the product of a fastidious generation and class, and +as nearly sexless as may be in this besexed world, which however is not, +and can never be, saying much. Kay would do the same. They would read and +discuss Freud, whom Neville, unfairly prejudiced, found both an obscene +maniac and a liar. They might laugh with her at Freud when he expanded on +that complex, whichever it is, by which mothers and daughters hate each +other, and fathers and sons—but they both all the same took seriously +things which seemed to Neville merely loathsome imbecilities. Gerda and +Kay didn't, in point of fact, find so many things either funny or +disgusting as Neville did; throwing her mind back twenty years, Neville +tried to remember whether she had found the world as funny and as +frightful when she was a medical student as she did now; on the whole she +thought not. Boys and girls are, for all their high spirits, creatures of +infinite solemnities and pomposities. They laugh; but the twinkling +irony, mocking at itself and everything else, of the thirties and +forties, they have not yet learnt. They cannot be gentle cynics; they +are so full of faith and hope, and when these are hurt they turn savage. +About Kay and Gerda there was a certain splendid earnestness with regard +to life. Admirable creatures, thought Neville, watching them with +whimsical tenderness. They had nothing to do with the pre-war, dilettante +past, the sophisticated gaiety of the young century. Their childhood had +been lived during the great war, and they had emerged from it hot with +elemental things, discussing life, lust, love, politics and social +reform, with cool candour, intelligent thoroughness and Elizabethan +directness. They wouldn't mind having passions and giving them rein; they +wouldn't think it vulgar, or even tedious, to lead loose lives. Probably, +in fact, it wasn't; probably it was Neville, and the people who had grown +up with her, who were overcivilized, too far from the crude stuff of +life, the monotonies and emotionalisms of Nature. And now Nature was +taking her rather startling revenge on the next generation.</p> + + +<h4>3</h4> + +<p>Neville ran upstairs, and came down to breakfast dressed in blue cotton, +with her damp hair smoothly taken back from her broad forehead that +jutted broodingly over her short pointed face. She had the look of +a dryad at odds with the world, a whimsical and elfish intellectual.</p> + +<p>Rodney and Kay and Gerda had been putting parcels at her place, and a +pile of letters lay among them. There is, anyhow, that about birthdays, +however old they make you. Kay had given her a splendid great +pocket-knife and a book he wanted to read, Gerda an oak box she had +carved, and Rodney a new bicycle (by the front door) and a Brangwyn +drawing (on the table). If Neville envied Kay and Gerda their future +careers, she envied Rodney his present sphere. Her husband and the +father of Gerda and Kay was a clever and distinguished-looking man of +forty-five, and member, in the Labour interest, for a division of Surrey. +He looked, however, more like a literary man. How to be useful though +married: in Rodney's case the problem was so simple, in hers so +complicated. She had envied Rodney a little twenty years ago; then she +had stopped, because the bringing up of Kay and Gerda had been a work in +itself; now she had begun again. Rodney and she were more like each other +than they were like their children; they had some of the same vanities, +fastidiousnesses, humours and withdrawals, and in some respects the same +outlook on life. Only Rodney's had been solidified and developed by the +contacts and exigencies of his career, and Neville's disembodied, +devitalised and driven inwards by her more dilettante life. She "helped +Rodney with the constituency" of course, but it was Rodney's +constituency, not hers; she entertained his friends and hers when they +were in town, but she knew herself a light woman, not a dealer in +affairs. Yet her nature was stronger than Rodney's, larger and more +mature; it was only his experience she lacked.</p> + +<p>Rodney was and had always been charming; there could be no doubt +about that, whatever else you might come to think about him. Able, too, +but living on his nerves, wincing like a high-strung horse from the +annoyances and disappointments of life, such as Quaker oats because the +grape-nuts had come to an end, and the industrial news of the morning, +which was as bad as usual and four times repeated in four quite different +tones by the four daily papers which lay on the table. They took four +papers not so much that there might be one for each of them as that they +might have the entertainment of seeing how different the same news can be +made to appear. One bond of union this family had which few families +possess; they were (roughly speaking) united politically, so believed the +same news to be good or bad. The chief difference in their political +attitude was that Kay and Gerda joined societies and leagues, being still +young enough to hold that causes were helped in this way.</p> + +<p>"What about to-day?" Rodney asked Neville. "What are you going to do?"</p> + +<p>She answered, "Tennis." (Neville had once been a county player.) "River. +Lying about in the sun." (It should be explained that it was one of those +nine days of the English summer of 1920 when this was a possible +occupation.) "Anything anyone likes.... I've already had a good deal of +day and a bathe.... Oh, Nan's coming down this afternoon."</p> + +<p>She got that out of a letter. Nan was her youngest sister. They all +proceeded to get and impart other things out of letters, in the way of +families who are fairly united, as families go.</p> + +<p>Gerda opened her lips to impart something, but remembered her father's +distastes and refrained. Rodney, civilised, sensitive and progressive, +had no patience with his children's unsophisticated leaning to a +primitive crudeness. He told them they were young savages. So Gerda kept +her news till later, when she and Neville and Kay were lying on rugs on +the lawn after Neville had beaten Kay in a set of singles.</p> + +<p>They lay and smoked and cooled, and Gerda, a cigarette stuck in one side +of her mouth, a buttercup in the other, mumbled "Penelope's baby's come, +by the way. A girl. Another surplus woman."</p> + +<p>Neville's brows lazily went up.</p> + +<p>"Penelope Jessop? What's <i>she</i> doing with a baby? I didn't know she'd got +married."</p> + +<p>"Oh, she hasn't, of course.... Didn't I tell you about Penelope? She +lives with Martin Annesley now."</p> + +<p>"Oh, I see. Marriage in the sight of heaven. That sort of thing."</p> + +<p>Neville was of those who find marriages in the sight of heaven +uncivilised and socially reactionary, a reversion, in fact, to Nature, +which bored her. Gerda and Kay rightly believed such marriages to have +some advantages over those more visible to the human eye (as being more +readily dissoluble when fatiguing) and many advantages over no marriages +at all, which do not increase the population, so depleted by the Great +War. When they spoke in this admirably civic sense, Neville was apt to +say "It doesn't want increasing. I waited twenty minutes before I could +board my bus at Trafalgar Square the other day. It wants more depleting, +I should say—a Great Plague or something," a view which Kay and Gerda +thought truly egotistical.</p> + +<p>"I do hope," said Neville, her thoughts having led her to the statement, +"I do very much hope that neither of you will ever perpetrate that sort +of marriage. It would be so dreadfully common of you."</p> + +<p>"Impossible to say," Kay said, vaguely.</p> + +<p>"Considering," said Gerda, "that there are a million more women than men +in this country, it stands to reason that some system of polygamy must +become the usual thing in the future."</p> + +<p>"It's always been the usual thing, darling. Dreadfully usual. It's so +much more amusing to be unusual in these ways."</p> + +<p>Neville's voice trailed drowsily away. Polygamy. Sex. Free Love. Love in +chains. The children seemed so often to be discussing these. Just as, +twenty years ago, she and her friends had seemed always to be discussing +the Limitations of Personality, the Ethics of Friendship, and the Nature, +if any, of God. This last was to Kay and Gerda too hypothetical to be a +stimulating theme. It would have sent them to sleep, as sex did Neville.</p> + +<p>Neville, led by Free Love to a private vision, brooded cynically over +savages dancing round a wood-pile in primeval forests, engaged in what +missionaries, journalists, and writers of fiction about our coloured +brothers call "nameless orgies" (as if you would expect most orgies to +answer to their names, like the stars) and she saw the steep roads of the +round world running back and back and back—on or back, it made no +difference, since the world was round—to this. Saw, too, a thousand +stuffy homes wherein sat couples linked by a legal formula so rigid, so +lasting, so indelible, that not all their tears could wash out a word of +it, unless they took to themselves other mates, in which case their +second state might be worse than their first. Free love—love in chains. +How absurd it all was, and how tragic too. One might react back to the +remaining choice—no love at all—and that was absurder and more tragic +still, since man was made (among other ends) to love. Looking under her +heavy lashes at her pretty young children, incredibly youthful, absurdly +theoretical, fiercely clean of mind and frank of speech, their clearness +as yet unblurred by the expediencies, compromise and experimental +contacts of life, Neville was stabbed by a sharp pang of fear and hope +for them. Fear lest on some fleeting impulse they might founder into the +sentimental triviality of short-lived contacts, or into the tedium of +bonds which must out-live desire; hope that, by some fortunate chance, +they might each achieve, as she had achieved, some relation which should +be both durable and to be endured. As to the third path—no love at +all—she did not believe that either Kay or Gerda would tread that. They +were emotional, in their cool and youthful way, and also believed that +they ought to increase the population. What a wonderful, noble thing to +believe, at twenty, thought Neville, remembering the levity of her own +irresponsible youth, when her only interest in the population had been +a nightmare fear lest they should at last become so numerous that they +would be driven out of the towns into the country and would be scuttling +over the moors, downs and woods like black beetles in kitchens in the +night. They were better than she had been, these children; more +public-spirited and more in earnest about life.</p> + + +<h4>4</h4> + +<p>Across the garden came Nan Hilary, having come down from town to see +Neville on her forty-third birthday. Nan herself was not so incredibly +old as Neville; (for forty-three <i>is</i> incredibly old, from any reasonable +standpoint). Nan was thirty-three and a half. She represented the +thirties; she was, in Neville's mind, a bridge between the remote +twenties and the new, extraordinary forties in which one could hardly +believe. It seems normal to be in the thirties; the right, ordinary age, +that most people are. Nan, who wrote, and lived in rooms in Chelsea, was +rather like a wild animal—a leopard or something. Long and lissome, with +a small, round, sallow face and withdrawn, brooding yellow eyes under +sulky black brows that slanted up to the outer corners. Nan had a good +time socially and intellectually. She was clever and lazy; she would +fritter away days and weeks in idle explorations into the humanities, +or curled up in the sun in the country like a cat. Her worst fault +was a cynical unkindness, against which she did not strive because +investigating the less admirable traits of human beings amused her. She +was infinitely amused by her nephew and her niece, but often spiteful to +them, merely because they were young. To sum up, she was a cynic, a rake, +an excellent literary critic, a sardonic and brilliant novelist, and she +had a passionate, adoring and protecting affection for Neville, who was +the only person who had always been told what she called the darker +secrets of her life.</p> + +<p>She sat down on the grass, her thin brown hands clasped round her ankles, +and said to Neville, "You're looking very sweet, aged one. Forty-three +seems to suit you."</p> + +<p>"And you," Neville returned, "look as if you'd jazzed all night and +written unkind reviews from dawn till breakfast time."</p> + +<p>"That's just about right," Nan owned, and flung herself full length on +her back, shutting her eyes against the sun. "That's why I've come down +here to cool my jaded nerves. And also because Rosalind wanted to lunch +with me."</p> + +<p>"Have you read my poems yet?" enquired Gerda, who never showed the +customary abashed hesitation in dealing with these matters. She and Kay +sent their literary efforts to Nan to criticise, because they believed +(a) in her powers as a critic, (b) in her influence in the literary +world. Nan used in their behalf the former but seldom the latter, +because, in spite of queer spasms of generosity, she was jealous of Gerda +and Kay. Why should they want to write? Why shouldn't they do anything +else in the world but trespass on her preserves? Not that verse was what +she ever wrote or could write herself. And of course everyone wrote now, +and especially the very young; but in a niece and nephew it was a +tiresome trick. They didn't write well, because no one of their age ever +does, but they might some day. They already came out in weekly papers and +anthologies of contemporary verse. Very soon they would come out in +little volumes. They'd much better, thought Nan, marry and get out of the +way.</p> + +<p>"Read them—yes," Nan returned laconically to Gerda's question.</p> + +<p>"What," enquired Gerda, perseveringly, "did you think of them?"</p> + +<p>"I said I'd <i>read</i> them," Nan replied. "I didn't say I'd thought of +them."</p> + +<p>Gerda looked at her with her wide, candid gaze, with the unrancorous +placidity of the young, who are still used to being snubbed. Nan, she +knew, would tease and baffle, withhold and gibe, but would always say +what she thought in the end, and what she thought was always worth +knowing, even though she was middle-aged.</p> + +<p>Nan, turning her lithe body over on the grass, caught the patient child's +look, and laughed. Generous impulses alternated in her with malicious +moods where these absurd, solemn, egotistic, pretty children of Neville's +were concerned.</p> + +<p>"All right, Blue Eyes. I'll write it all down for you and send it to you +with the MS., if you really want it. You won't like it, you know, but I +suppose you're used to that by now."</p> + +<p>Neville listened to them. Regret turned in her, cold and tired and +envious. They all wrote except her. To write: it wasn't much of a thing +to do, unless one did it really well, and it had never attracted her +personally, but it was, nevertheless, something—a little piece of +individual output thrown into the flowing river. She had never written, +even when she was Gerda's age. Twenty years ago writing poetry hadn't +been as it is to-day, a necessary part of youth's accomplishment like +tennis, French or dancing. Besides, Neville could never have enjoyed +writing poetry, because for her the gulf between good verse and bad was +too wide to be bridged by her own achievements. Nor novels, because she +disliked nearly all novels, finding them tedious, vulgar, conventional, +and out of all relation both to life as lived and to the world of +imagination. What she had written in early youth had been queer +imaginative stuff, woven out of her childhood's explorations into +fairyland and of her youth's into those still stranger tropical lands +beyond seas where she had travelled with her father. But she hadn't +written or much wanted to write; scientific studies had always attracted +her more than literary achievements. Then she had married Rodney, and +that was the end of all studies and achievements for her, though not the +end of anything for Rodney, but the beginning.</p> + +<p>Rodney came out of the house, his pipe in his mouth. He still had the +lounging walk, shoulders high and hands in pockets, of the undergraduate; +the walk also of Kay. He sat down among his family. Kay and Gerda looked +at him with approval; though they knew his weakness, he was just the +father they would have chosen, and of how few parents can this be said. +They were proud to take him about with them to political meetings and so +forth, and prouder still to sit under him while he addressed audiences. +Few men of his great age were (on the whole) so right in the head and +sound in the heart, and fewer still so delightful to the eye. When people +talked about the Wicked Old Men, who, being still unfortunately +unrestrained and unmurdered by the Young, make this wicked world what +it is, Kay and Gerda always contended that there were a few exceptions.</p> + +<p>Nan gave Rodney her small, fleeting smile. She had a critical +friendliness for him, but had never believed him really good enough +for Neville.</p> + +<p>Gerda and Kay began to play a single, and Nan said, "I'm in a hole."</p> + +<p>"Broke, darling?" Neville asked her, for that was usually it, though +sometimes it was human entanglements.</p> + +<p>Nan nodded. "If I could have ten pounds.... I'd let you have it in a +fortnight."</p> + +<p>"That's easy," said Rodney, in his kind, offhand way.</p> + +<p>"Of course," Neville said. "You old spendthrift."</p> + +<p>"Thank you, dears. Now I can get a birthday present for mother."</p> + +<p>For Mrs. Hilary's birthday was next week, and to celebrate it her +children habitually assembled at The Gulls, St. Mary's Bay, where she +lived. Nan always gave her a more expensive present than she could +afford, in a spasm of remorse for the irritation her mother roused in +her.</p> + +<p>"Oh, poor mother," Neville exclaimed, suddenly remembering that Mrs. +Hilary would in a week be sixty-three, and that this must be worse by +twenty years than to be forty-three.</p> + +<p>The hurrying stream of life was loud in her ears. How quickly it was +sweeping them all along—the young bodies of Gerda and of Kay leaping on +the tennis court, the clear, analysing minds of Nan and Rodney and +herself musing in the sun, the feverish heart of her mother, loving, +hating, feeding restlessly on itself by the seaside, the age-calmed soul +of her grandmother, who was eighty-four and drove out in a donkey +chair by the same sea.</p> + +<p>The lazy talking of Rodney and Nan, the cryings and strikings of Gerda +and Kay, the noontide chirrupings of birds, the cluckings of distant hens +pretending that they had laid eggs, all merged into the rushing of the +inexorable river, along and along and along. Time, like an ever-rolling +stream, bearing all its sons away. Clatter, chatter, clatter, does it +matter, matter, matter? They fly forgotten, as a dream dies at the +opening day.... No, it probably didn't matter at all what one did, how +much one got into one's life, since there was to be, anyhow, so soon an +end.</p> + +<p>The garden became strange and far and flat, like tapestry, or a dream....</p> + +<p>The lunch gong boomed. Nan, who had fallen asleep with the suddenness of +a lower animal, her cheek pillowed on her hand, woke and stretched. Gerda +and Kay, not to be distracted from their purpose, finished the set.</p> + +<p>"Thank God," said Nan, "that I am not lunching with Rosalind."</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_II" id="CHAPTER_II"></a>CHAPTER II</h2> + +<h3>MRS. HILARY'S BIRTHDAY</h3> + + +<h4>1</h4> + +<p>They all turned up at The Gulls, St. Mary's Bay, in time for lunch on +Mrs. Hilary's birthday. It was her special wish that all those of her +children who could should do this each year. Jim, whom she preferred, +couldn't come this time; he was a surgeon; it is an uncertain profession. +The others all came; Neville and Pamela and Gilbert and Nan and with +Gilbert his wife Rosalind, who had no right there because she was only an +in-law, but if Rosalind thought it would amuse her to do anything you +could not prevent her. She and Mrs. Hilary disliked one another a good +deal, though Rosalind would say to the others, "Your darling mother! +She's priceless, and I adore her!" She would say that when she had +caught Mrs. Hilary in a mistake. She would draw her on to say she had +read a book she hadn't read (it was a point of honour with Mrs. Hilary +never to admit ignorance of any book mentioned by others) and then she +would say, "I do love you, mother! It's not out yet; I've only seen +Gilbert's review copy," and Mrs. Hilary would say, "In that case I +suppose I am thinking of another book," and Rosalind would say to Neville +or Pamela or Gilbert or Nan, "Your darling mother. I adore her!" and Nan, +contemptuous of her mother for thinking such trivial pretence worth +while, and with Rosalind for thinking malicious exposure worth while, +would shrug her shoulders and turn away.</p> + + +<h4>2</h4> + +<p>All but Neville arrived by the same train from town, the one getting in +at 12.11. Neville had come from Surrey the day before and spent the +night, because Mrs. Hilary liked to have her all to herself for a little +time before the others came. After Jim, Neville was the child Mrs. Hilary +preferred. She had always been a mother with marked preferences. There +were various barriers between her and her various children; Gilbert, who +was thirty-eight, had annoyed her long ago by taking up literature as a +profession on leaving Cambridge, instead of doing what she described as +"a man's job," and later on by marrying Rosalind, who was fast, and, in +Mrs. Hilary's opinion, immoral. Pamela, who was thirty-nine and working +in a settlement in Hoxton, annoyed her by her devotion to Frances Carr, +the friend with whom she lived. Mrs. Hilary thought them very silly, +these close friendships between women. They prevented marriage, and led +to foolish fussing about one another's health and happiness. Nan annoyed +her by "getting talked about" with men, by writing books which Mrs. +Hilary found both dull and not very nice, in tone, and by her own +irritated reactions to her mother's personality. Nan, in fact, was often +rude and curt to her.</p> + +<p>But Jim, who was a man and a doctor, a strong, good-humoured person and +her eldest son, annoyed her not at all. Nor did Neville, who was her +eldest daughter and had given her grandchildren and infinite sympathy.</p> + +<p>Neville, knowing all these things and more, always arrived on the +evenings before her mother's birthdays, and they talked all the morning. +Mrs. Hilary was at her best with Neville. She was neither irritable nor +nervous nor showing off. She looked much less than sixty-three. She was +a tall, slight, trailing woman, with the remains of beauty, and her dark, +untidy hair was only streaked with grey. Since her husband had died, ten +years ago, she had lived at St. Mary's Bay with her mother. It had been +her old home; not The Gulls, but the vicarage, in the days when St. +Mary's Bay had been a little fishing village without an esplanade. To +old Mrs. Lennox it was the same fishing village still, and the people, +even the summer visitors, were to her the flock of her late husband, who +had died twenty years ago.</p> + +<p>"A good many changes lately," she would say to them. "Some people think +the place is improving. But I can't say I like the esplanade."</p> + +<p>But the visitors, unless they were very old, didn't know anything about +the changes. To them St. Mary's Bay was not a fishing village but a +seaside resort. To Mrs. Hilary it was her old home, and had healthy air +and plenty of people for her mother to gossip with and was as good a +place as any other for her to parch in like a withered flower now that +the work of her life was done. The work of her life had been making a +home for her husband and children; she had never had either the desire or +the faculties for any other work. Now that work was over, and she was +rather badly left, as she cared neither for cards, knitting, gardening, +nor intellectual pursuits. Once, seven years ago, at Neville's +instigation, she had tried London life for a time, but it had been no +use. The people she met there were too unlike her, too intelligent and up +to date; they went to meetings and concerts and picture exhibitions and +read books and talked about public affairs not emotionally but coolly and +drily; they were mildly surprised at Mrs. Hilary's vehemence of feeling +on all points, and she was strained beyond endurance by their knowledge +of facts and catholicity of interests. So she returned to St. Mary's Bay, +where she passed muster as an intelligent woman, gossiped with her +mother, the servants and their neighbours, read novels, brooded over the +happier past, walked for miles alone along the coast, and slipped every +now and then, as she had slipped even in youth, over the edge of +emotionalism into hysterical passion or grief. Her mother was no use at +such times; she only made her worse, sitting there in the calm of old +age, looking tranquilly at the end, for her so near that nothing +mattered. Only Jim or Neville were of any use then.</p> + +<p>Neville on the eve of this her sixty-third birthday soothed one such +outburst. The tedium of life, with no more to do in it—why couldn't it +end? The lights were out, the flowers were dead—and yet the unhappy +actors had to stay and stay and stay, idling on the empty, darkened +stage. (That was how Mrs. Hilary, with her gift for picturesque language, +put it.) <i>Must</i> it be empty, <i>must</i> it be dark, Neville uselessly asked, +knowing quite well that for one of her mother's temperament it must. Mrs. +Hilary had lived in and by her emotions; nothing else had counted. Life +for her had burnt itself out, and its remnant was like the fag end of a +cigarette, stale and old.</p> + +<p>"Shall I feel like that in twenty years?" Neville speculated aloud.</p> + +<p>"I hope," said Mrs. Hilary, "that you won't have lost Rodney. So long as +you have him...."</p> + +<p>"But if I haven't...."</p> + +<p>Neville looked down the years; saw herself without Rodney, perhaps +looking after her mother, who would then have become (strange, incredible +thought, but who could say?) calm with the calm of age; Kay and Gerda +married or working or both.... What then? Only she was better equipped +than her mother for the fag end of life; she had a serviceable brain and +a sound education. She wouldn't pass empty days at a seaside resort. She +would work at something, and be interested. Interesting work and +interesting friends—her mother, by her very nature, could have neither, +but was just clever enough to feel the want of them. The thing was to +start some definite work <i>now</i>, before it was too late.</p> + +<p>"Did Grandmama go through it?" Neville asked her mother.</p> + +<p>"Oh, I expect so. I was selfish; I was wrapped up in home and all of you; +I didn't notice. But I think she had it badly, for a time, when first she +left the vicarage.... She's contented now."</p> + +<p>They both looked at Grandmama, who was playing patience on the sofa and +could not hear their talking for the sound of the sea. Yes, Grandmama was +(apparently) contented now.</p> + +<p>"There's work," mused Neville, thinking of the various links with life, +the rafts, rather, which should carry age over the cold seas of tedious +regret. "And there's natural gaiety. And intellectual interests. And +contacts with other people—permanent contacts and temporary ones. And +beauty. All those things. For some people, too, there's religion."</p> + +<p>"And for all of us food and drink," said Mrs. Hilary, sharply. "Oh, +I suppose you think I've no right to complain, as I've got all those +things, except work."</p> + +<p>But Neville shook her head, knowing that this was a delusion of her +mother's, and that she had, in point of fact, none of them, except the +contacts with people, which mostly either over-strained, irritated or +bored her, and that aspect of religion which made her cry. For she was +a Unitarian, and thought the Gospels infinitely sad and the souls of the +departed most probably so merged in God as to be deprived of all +individuality.</p> + +<p>"It's better to be High Church or Roman Catholic and have services, or +an Evangelical and have the Voice of God," Neville decided. And, indeed, +it is probable that Mrs. Hilary would have been one or other of these +things if it had not been for her late husband, who had disapproved of +superstition and had instructed her in the Higher Thought and the Larger +Hope.</p> + + +<h4>3</h4> + +<p>Though heaviness endured for the night, joy came in the morning, as is +apt to happen where there is sea air. Mrs. Hilary on her birthday had +a revulsion to gaiety, owing to a fine day, her unstable temperament, +letters, presents and being made a fuss of. Also Grandmama said, when +she went up to see her after breakfast, "This new dress suits you +particularly, my dear child. It brings out the colour in your eyes," and +everyone likes to hear that when they are sixty-three or any other age.</p> + +<p>So, when the rest of her children arrived, Mrs. Hilary was ready for +them.</p> + +<p>They embraced her in turn; Pamela, capable, humorous and intelligent, +the very type of the professional woman at her best, but all the time +preferring Frances Carr, anxious about her because she was overworking +and run down; Nan, her extravagant present in her hands, on fire to +protect her mother against old age, depression and Rosalind, yet knowing +too how soon she herself would be smouldering with irritation; Gilbert, +spare and cynical, writer of plays and literary editor of the Weekly +Critic, and with him his wife Rosalind, whom Mrs. Hilary had long since +judged as a voluptuous rake who led men on and made up unseemly stories +and her lovely face, but who insisted on coming to The Gulls with Gilbert +to see his adorable mother. Rosalind, who was always taking up +things—art, or religion, or spiritualism, or young men—and dropping +them when they bored her, had lately taken up psycho-analysis. She was +studying what she called her mother-in-law's "case," looking for and +finding complexes in her past which should account for her somewhat +unbalanced present.</p> + +<p>"I've never had complexes," Mrs. Hilary would declare, indignantly, as if +they had been fleas or worse, and indeed when Rosalind handled them they +<i>were</i> worse, much. From Rosalind Mrs. Hilary got the most unpleasant +impression possible (which is to say a good deal) of psycho-analysts. +"They have only one idea, and that is a disgusting one," she would +assert, for she could only rarely and with difficulty see more than one +idea in anything, particularly when it was a disgusting one. Her mind was +of that sort—tenacious, intolerant, and not many-sided. That was where +(partly where) she fell foul of her children, who saw sharply and clearly +all around things and gave to each side its value. They knew Mrs. Hilary +to be a muddled bigot, whose mind was stuffed with concrete instances and +insusceptible of abstract reason. If anyone had asked her what she knew +of psycho-analysis, she would have replied, in effect, that she knew +Rosalind, and that was enough, more than enough, of psycho-analysis for +her. She had also looked into Freud, and rightly had been disgusted.</p> + +<p>"A man who spits deliberately onto his friends' stairs, on purpose to +annoy the servants ... that is enough, the rest follows. The man is +obviously a loathsome and indecent vulgarian. It comes from being a +German, no doubt." Which settled that; and if anyone murmured "An +Austrian," she would say, "It comes to the same thing, in questions of +breeding." Mrs. Hilary, like Grandmama, settled people and things very +quickly and satisfactorily.</p> + +<p>They all sat in the front garden after lunch and looked out over the +wonderful shining sea. Grandmama sat in her wheeled chair, Tchekov's +Letters on her knees. She had made Mrs. Hilary get this book from Mudie's +because she had read favourable reviews of it by Gilbert and Nan. +Grandmama was a cleverish old lady, cleverer than her daughter.</p> + +<p>"Jolly, isn't it," said Gilbert, seeing the book.</p> + +<p>"Very entertaining," said Grandmama, and Mrs. Hilary echoed "Most," at +which Grandmama eyed her with a twinkle, knowing that it bored her, like +all the Russians. Mrs. Hilary cared nothing for style ("Literature!" said +Lady Adela. "Give <i>me</i> something to <i>read</i>!"); she liked nice lifelike +books about people as she believed them to be, and though she was quite +prepared to believe that real Russians were like Russians in books, she +felt that she did not care to meet either of them. But Mrs. Hilary had +learnt that intelligent persons seldom liked the books which seemed to +her to be about real, natural people, any more than they admired the +pictures which struck her as being like things as they were. Though she +thought those who differed from her profoundly wrong, she never admitted +ignorance of the books they admired. For she was in a better position to +differ from them about a book if she had nominally read it—and really it +didn't matter if she had actually done so or not, for she knew beforehand +what she would think of it if she had. So well she knew this, indeed, +that the line between the books she had and hadn't read was, even in her +own mind, smudgy and vague, not hard and clear as with most people. Often +when she had seen reviews which quoted extracts she thought she had read +the book, just as some people, when they have seen publishers' +advertisements, think they have seen reviews, and declare roundly in +libraries that a book is out when it lacks a month of publication.</p> + +<p>Mrs. Hilary, having thus asserted her acquaintance with Tchekov's +Letters, left Gilbert, Grandmama and Neville to talk about it together, +and herself began telling the others how disappointed Jim had been that +he could not come for her birthday.</p> + +<p>"He was passionately anxious to come," she said, in her clear, vibrating +voice, that struck a different note when she mentioned each one of +her children, so that you always knew which she meant. "He never +misses to-day if he can possibly help it. But he simply couldn't get +away.... One of these tremendously difficult new operations, that hardly +anyone can do. His work must come first, of course. He wouldn't be Jim if +it didn't."</p> + +<p>"Fancy knifing people in town a day like this," said Rosalind, stretching +her large, lazy limbs in the sun. Rosalind was big and fair, and +sensuously alive.</p> + +<p>Music blared out from the parade. Gilbert, adjusting his glasses, +observed its circumstances, with his air of detached, fastidious +interest.</p> + +<p>"The Army," he remarked. "The Army calling for strayed sheep."</p> + +<p>"Oh," exclaimed Rosalind, raising herself, "wouldn't I love to go out and +be saved! I <i>was</i> saved once, when I was eleven. It was one of my first +thrills. I felt I was blacker in guilt than all creatures before me, and +I came forward and found the Lord. Afraid I had a relapse rather soon, +though."</p> + +<p>"Horrible vulgarians," Mrs. Hilary commented, really meaning Rosalind at +the age of eleven. "They have meetings on the parade every morning now. +The police ought to stop it."</p> + +<p>Grandmama was beating time with her hand on the arm of her chair to the +merry music-hall tune and the ogreish words.</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i4">"Blood! Blood!<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Rivers of blood for you,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Oceans of blood for me!<br /></span> +<span class="i0">All that the sinner has got to do<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Is to plunge into that Red Sea.<br /></span> +<span class="i4">Clean! Clean!<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Wash and be clean!<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Though filthy and black as a sweep you've been,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">The waves of that sea shall make you clean...."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>"That," Mrs. Hilary asserted, with disgust, "is a <i>most</i> disagreeable way +of worshipping God." She was addicted to these undeniable statements, +taking nothing for granted.</p> + +<p>"But a very racy tune, my dear," said Grandmama, "though the words are +foolish and unpleasing."</p> + +<p>Gilbert said, "A stimulating performance. If we don't restrain her, +Rosalind will be getting saved again."</p> + +<p>He was proud of Rosalind's vitality, whimsies and exuberances.</p> + +<p>Rosalind, who had a fine rolling voice, began reciting "General Booth +enters into heaven," by Mr. Vachell Lindsay, which Mrs. Hilary found +disgusting.</p> + +<p>"A wonderful man," said Grandmama, who had been reading the General's +life in two large volumes. "Though mistaken about many things. And his +Life would have been more interesting if it had been written by Mr. +Lytton Strachey instead of Mr. Begbie; he has a better touch on our great +religious leaders. Your grandfather," added Grandmama, "always got on +well with the Army people. He encouraged them. The present vicar does +not. He says their methods are deplorable and their goal a delusion."</p> + +<p>Rosalind said "Their methods are entrancing and their goal the Lord. What +more does he want? Clergymen are so narrow. That's why I had to give up +being a churchwoman."</p> + +<p>Rosalind had been a churchwoman (high) for nine months some six years +ago, just after planchette and just before flag days. She had decided, +after this brief trial, that incense and confessions, though immensely +stimulating, did not weigh down the balance against early mass, Lent, and +being thrown with other churchwomen.</p> + + +<h4>4</h4> + +<p>"What about a bathe?" Neville suggested to all of them. "Mother?"</p> + +<p>Mrs. Hilary, a keen bather, agreed. They all agreed except Grandmama, who +was going out in her donkey chair instead, as one does at eighty-four.</p> + +<p>They all went down to the beach, where the Army still sang of the Red +Sea, and where the blue high tide clapped white hands on brown sand.</p> + +<p>One by one they emerged from tents and sprang through the white leaping +edge into the rocking blue, as other bathers were doing all round the +bay. When Mrs. Hilary came out of her tent, Neville was waiting for her, +poised like a slim girl, knee-deep in tumbling waves, shaking the water +from her eyes.</p> + +<p>"Come, mother. I'll race you out."</p> + +<p>Mrs. Hilary waded in, a figure not without grace and dignity. Looking +back they saw Rosalind coming down the beach, large-limbed and splendid, +like Juno. Mrs. Hilary shrugged her shoulders.</p> + +<p>"Disgusting," she remarked to Neville.</p> + +<p>So much more, she meant, of Rosalind than of Rosalind's costume. Mrs. +Hilary preferred it to be the other way about, for, though she did not +really like either of them, she disliked the costume less than she +disliked Rosalind.</p> + +<p>"It's quite in the fashion," Neville assured her, and Mrs. Hilary, +remarking that she was sure of that, splashed her head and face and +pushed off, mainly to escape from Rosalind, who always sat in the foam, +not being, like the Hilary family, an active swimmer.</p> + +<p>Already Pamela and Gilbert were far out, swimming steadily against each +other, and Nan was tumbling and turning like an eel close behind them.</p> + +<p>Neville and Mrs. Hilary swam out a little way.</p> + +<p>"I shall now float on my back," said Mrs. Hilary. "You swim on and catch +up with the rest."</p> + +<p>"You'll be all right?" Neville asked, lingering.</p> + +<p>"Why shouldn't I be all right? I bathe nearly every day, you know, even +if I am sixty-three." This was not accurate; she only bathed as a rule +when it was warm, and this seldom occurs on our island coasts.</p> + +<p>Neville, saying, "Don't stop in long, will you," left her and swam out +into the blue with her swift, over-hand stroke. Neville was the best +swimmer in a swimming family. She clove the water like a torpedo +destroyer, swift and untiring between the hot summer sun and the cool +summer sea. She shouted to the others, caught them up, raced them and +won, and then they began to duck each other. When the Hilary brothers +and sisters were swimming or playing together, they were even as they had +been twenty years ago.</p> + +<p>Mrs. Hilary watched them, swimming slowly round, a few feet out of her +depth. They seemed to have forgotten her and her birthday. The only one +who was within speaking distance was Rosalind, wallowing with her big +white limbs in tumbling waves on the shore; Rosalind, whom she disliked; +Rosalind, who was more than her costume, which was not saying much; +Rosalind, before whom she had to keep up an appearance of immense +enjoyment because Rosalind was so malicious.</p> + +<p>"You wonderful woman! I can't think how you <i>do</i> it," Rosalind was crying +to her in her rich, ripe voice out of the splashing waves. "But fancy +their all swimming out and leaving you to yourself. Why, you might get +cramp and sink. <i>I'm</i> no use, you know; I'm hopeless; can't keep up at +all."</p> + +<p>"I shan't trouble you, thank you," Mrs. Hilary called back, and her voice +shook a little because she was getting chilled.</p> + +<p>"Why, you're shivering," Rosalind cried. "Why don't you come out? You +<i>are</i> wonderful, I do admire you.... It's no use waiting for the others, +they'll be ages.... I say, look at Neville; fancy her being forty-three. +I never knew such a family.... Come and sit in the waves with me, it's +lovely and warm."</p> + +<p>"I prefer swimming," said Mrs. Hilary, and she was shivering more now. +She never stayed in so long as this; she usually only plunged in and came +out.</p> + +<p>Grandmama, stopping on the esplanade in her donkey chair, was waving and +beckoning to her. Grandmama knew she had been in too long, and that her +rheumatism would be bad.</p> + +<p>"<i>Come out, dear</i>," Grandmama called, in her old thin voice. "<i>Come out. +You've been in far too long.</i>"</p> + +<p>Mrs. Hilary only waved her hand to Grandmama. She was not going to come +out, like an old woman, before the others did, the others, who had swum +out and left her alone on her birthday bathe.</p> + +<p>They were swimming back now, first all in a row, then one behind the +other; Neville leading, with her arrowy drive, Gilbert and Pamela behind, +so alike, with their pale, finely cut, intellectual faces, and their +sharp chins cutting through the sea, and their quick, short, vigorous +strokes, and Nan, still far out, swimming lazily on her back, the sun +in her eyes.</p> + +<p>Mrs. Hilary's heart stirred to see her swimming brood, so graceful and +strong and swift and young. They possessed, surely, everything that was +in the heaven above or on the earth beneath or in the water over the +earth. And she, who was sixty-three, possessed nothing. She could not +even swim with her children. They might have thought of that, and stayed +with her.... Neville, anyhow. Jim would have, said Mrs. Hilary to +herself, half knowing and half not knowing that she was lying.</p> + +<p>"<i>Come out, dear!</i>" called Grandmama from the esplanade. "<i>You'll be +ill!</i>"</p> + +<p>Back they came, Neville first. Neville, seeing from afar her mother's +blue face, called "Mother dear, how cold you are! You shouldn't have +stayed in so long!"</p> + +<p>"I was waiting," Mrs. Hilary said, "for you."</p> + +<p>"Oh why, dear?"</p> + +<p>"Don't know. I thought I would.... It's pretty poor fun," Mrs. Hilary +added, having failed after trying not to, "bathing all alone on one's +birthday."</p> + +<p>Neville gave a little sigh, and gently propelled her mother to the shore. +She hadn't felt like this on <i>her</i> birthday, when Kay and Gerda had gone +off to some avocation of their own and left her in the garden. Many +things she had felt on her birthday, but not this. It is an undoubted +truth that people react quite differently to birthdays.</p> + +<p>Rosalind rose out of the foam like Aphrodite, grandly beautiful, though +all the paint was washed off her face and lips.</p> + +<p>"Wonderful people," she apostrophised the shore-coming family. "Anyone +would think you were all nineteen. <i>I</i> was the only comfy one."</p> + +<p>Rosalind was always talking about age, emphasizing it, as if it were very +important.</p> + +<p>They hurried up to the tents, and last of all came Nan, riding in to +shore on a swelling wave and lying full length where it flung her, for +the joy of feeling the wet sand sucking away beneath her.</p> + + +<h4>5</h4> + +<p>Grandmama, waiting for them on the esplanade, was angry with Mrs. Hilary.</p> + +<p>"My dear child, didn't you hear me call? You're perfectly blue. You +<i>know</i> you never stay in more than five minutes. Neville, you should have +seen that she didn't. Now you'll get your rheumatism back, child, and +only yourself to thank. It's too silly. People of sixty-three carrying +on as if they were fifty; I've no patience with it."</p> + +<p>"They all swam out," said Mrs. Hilary, who, once having succumbed to the +impulse to adopt this attitude, could not check it. "I waited for them."</p> + +<p>Grandmama, who was cross, said "Very silly of you and very selfish of the +children. Now you'd better go to bed with hot bottles and a posset."</p> + +<p>But Mrs. Hilary, though she felt the red-hot stabbings of an attack of +rheumatism already beginning, stayed up. She was happier now, because the +children were making a fuss of her, suggesting remedies and so on. She +would stay up, and show them she could be plucky and cheerful even with +rheumatism. A definite thing, like illness or pain, always put her on her +mettle; it was so easy to be brave when people knew you had something to +be brave about, and so hard when they didn't.</p> + +<p>They had an early tea, and then Gilbert and Rosalind, who were going out +to dinner, caught the 5.15 back to town. Rosalind's departure made Mrs. +Hilary more cheerful still. She soared into her gayest mood, and told +them amusing stories of the natives, and how much she and Grandmama +shocked some of them.</p> + +<p>"All the same, dear," said Grandmama presently, "you know you often enjoy +a chat with your neighbours very much. You'd be bored to death with no +one to gossip with."</p> + +<p>But Neville's hand, slipping into her mother's, meant "You shall adopt +what pose you like on your birthday, darling. If you like to be too +clever for anyone else in the Bay so that they bore you to tears and you +shock them to fits—well, you shall, and we'll believe you."</p> + +<p>Nan, listening sulkily to what she called to herself "mother's swank," +for a moment almost preferred Rosalind, who was as frank and unposturing +as an animal; Rosalind, with her malicious thrusts and her corrupt mind +and her frank feminine greediness. For Rosalind, anyhow, didn't pretend +to herself, though she did undoubtedly, when for any reason it suited +her, lie to other people. Mrs. Hilary's lying went all through, deep +down; it sprang out of the roots of her being, so that all the time she +was making up, not only for others but for herself, a sham person who did +not exist. That Nan found infinitely oppressive. So did Pamela, but +Pamela was more tolerant and sympathetic and less ill-tempered than Nan, +and observed the ways of others with quiet, ironic humour, saying nothing +unkind. Pamela, when she didn't like a way of talking—when Rosalind, for +instance, was being malicious or indecent or both—would skilfully carry +the talk somewhere else. She could be a rapid and good talker, and could +tell story after story, lightly and coolly, till danger points were past. +Pamela was beautifully bred; she had <i>savoir-faire</i> as well as kindness, +and never lost control of herself. These family gatherings really bored +her a little, because her work and interests lay elsewhere, but she would +never admit or show it. She was kind even to Rosalind, though cool. She +had always been kind and cool to Rosalind, because Gilbert was her +special brother, and when he had married this fast, painted and +unHilaryish young woman, she had seen the necessity for taking firm hold +of an attitude in the matter and retaining it. No one, not even Neville, +not even Frances Carr, had ever seen behind Pamela's guard where Rosalind +was concerned. When Nan abused Rosalind, Pamela would say "Don't be a +spitfire, child. What's the use?" and change the subject. For Rosalind +was, in Pamela's view, one of the things which were a pity but didn't +really matter, so long as she didn't make Gilbert unhappy. And Gilbert, +so far, was absurdly pleased and proud about her, in spite of occasional +disapprovals of her excessive intimacies with others.</p> + +<p>But, whatever they all felt about Rosalind, there was no doubt that the +family party was happier for her departure. The departure of in-laws, +even when they are quite nice in-laws, often has this effect on family +parties. Mrs. Hilary had her three daughters to herself—the girls, as +she still called them. She felt cosy and comforted, though in pain, lying +on the sofa by the bay window in the warm afternoon sunshine, while +Grandmama looked at the London Mercury, which had just come by the post, +and the girls talked.</p> + + +<h4>6</h4> + +<p>Their voices rose and fell against the soft splashing of the sea; +Neville's, sweet and light, with pretty cadences, Pamela's, crisp, quick +and decided, Nan's, trailing a little, almost drawling sometimes. The +Hilary voices were all thin, not rich and full-bodied, like Rosalind's. +Mrs. Hilary's was thin, like Grandmama's.</p> + +<p>"Nice voices," thought Mrs. Hilary, languidly listening. "Nice children. +But what nonsense they often talk."</p> + +<p>They were talking now about the Minority Report of some committee, which +had been drafted by Rodney. Rodney and the Minority and Neville and +Pamela and Nan were all interested in what Mrs. Hilary called "This +Labour nonsense which is so fashionable now." Mrs. Hilary herself, being +unfashionable, was anti-Labour, since it was apparent to her that the +working classes had already more power, money and education than was good +for them, sons of Belial, flown with insolence and bonuses. Grandmama, +being so nearly out of it all, was used only to say, in reply to these +sentiments, "It will make no difference in the end. We shall all be the +same in the grave, and in the life beyond. All these movements are very +interesting, but the world goes round just the same." It was all very +well for Grandmama to be philosophical; <i>she</i> wouldn't have to live for +years ruled and triumphed over by her own gardener, which was the way +Mrs. Hilary saw it.</p> + +<p>Mrs. Hilary began to get angry, hearing the girls talking in this silly +way. Of course it was natural that Neville should agree with Rodney; but +Pamela had picked up foolish ideas from working among the poor and living +with Frances Carr, and Nan was, as usual, merely wrong-headed, childish +and perverse.</p> + +<p>Suddenly she broke out, losing her temper, as she often did when she +disagreed with people's politics, for she did not take a calm and +tolerant view of these things.</p> + +<p>"I never heard such stuff in my life. I disagree with every word you've +all said."</p> + +<p>She always disagreed in bulk, like that. It seemed simpler than arguing +separate points, and took less time and knowledge. She saw Neville +wrinkling her broad forehead, doubtfully, as if wondering how the subject +could most easily be changed, and that annoyed her.</p> + +<p>Nan said, "You mean you disagree with the Report. Which clauses of it?" +and there was that soft viciousness in her voice which showed that she +knew Mrs. Hilary had not even read the Minority Report, or the Majority +Report either. Nan was spiteful; always trying to prove that her mother +didn't know what she was talking about; always trying to pin her down on +points of detail. Like the people with whom Mrs. Hilary had failed to get +on during her brief sojourn in London; they too had always shunned +general disputes about opinion and sentiment, such as were carried on +with profit in St. Mary's Bay, and pinned the discussion down to hard +facts, about which the Bay's information was inaccurate and incomplete. +As if you didn't know when you disagreed with a thing's whole drift, +whether you had read it or not.... Mrs. Hilary had never had any head for +facts.</p> + +<p>"It's the whole idea," she said, hotly. "And I detest all these Labour +people. Vile creatures.... Of course I don't mean people like Rodney—the +University men. They're merely amateurs. But these dreadful Trades Union +men, with their walrus moustaches.... Why can't they shave, like other +people, if they want to be taken for gentlemen?"</p> + +<p>Neville told her, chaffingly, that she was a mass of prejudice.</p> + +<p>Grandmama, who had fallen asleep and dropped the London Mercury onto the +floor, diverted the conversation by waking up and remarking that it +seemed a less interesting number than usual on the whole, though some of +the pieces of poetry were pretty, and that Mrs. Hilary ought not to lie +under the open window.</p> + +<p>Mrs. Hilary, who was getting worse, admitted that she had better be in +bed.</p> + +<p>"I hope," said Grandmama, "that it will be a lesson to you, dear, not to +stay in the water so long again, even if you do want to show off before +your daughter-in-law." Grandmama, who disliked Rosalind, usually called +her to Mrs. Hilary "your daughter-in-law," saddling her, so to speak, +with the responsibility for Gilbert's ill-advised marriage. To her +grandchildren she would refer to Rosalind as "your sister-in-law," or +"poor Gilbert's wife."</p> + +<p>"The bathe was worth it," said Mrs. Hilary, swinging up to high spirits +again. "It was a glorious bathe. But I <i>have</i> got rheumatics."</p> + +<p>So Neville stayed on at The Gulls that night, to massage her mother's +joints, and Pamela and Nan went back to Hoxton and Chelsea by the evening +train. Pamela had supper, as usual, with Frances Carr, and Nan with Barry +Briscoe, and they both talked and talked, about all the things you don't +talk of in families but only to friends.</p> + + +<h4>7</h4> + +<p>Neville meanwhile was saying to Grandmama in the drawing-room at The +Gulls, after Mrs. Hilary had gone to bed, "I wish mother could get some +regular interest or occupation. She would be much happier. Are there no +jobs for elderly ladies in the Bay?"</p> + +<p>"As many in the Bay," said Grandmama, up in arms for the Bay, "as +anywhere else. Sick-visiting, care committees, boys' and girls' classes, +and so on. I still keep as busy as I am able, as you know."</p> + +<p>Neville did know. "If mother could do the same...."</p> + +<p>"Mother can't. She's never been a rector's wife, as I have, and she +doesn't care for such jobs. Mother never did care for any kind of work +really, even as a girl. She married when she was nineteen and found the +only work she was fitted for and interested in. That's over, and there's +no other she can turn to. It's common enough, child, with women. They +just have to make the best of it, and muddle through somehow till the +end."</p> + +<p>"You were different, Grandmama, weren't you? I mean, you were never at a +loss for things to do."</p> + +<p>Grandmama's thin, delicate face hardened for a moment into grim lines.</p> + +<p>"At a loss—yes, I was what you call at a loss twenty years ago, when +your grandfather died. The meaning was gone out of life, you see. I was +sixty-four. For two years I was cut adrift from everything, and did +nothing but brood and find trivial occupations to pass the time somehow. +I lived on memories and emotions; I was hysterical and peevish and bored. +Then I realised it wouldn't do; that I might have twenty years and more +of life before me, and that I must do something with it. So I took up +again all of my old work that I could. It was the hardest thing I ever +did. I hated it at first. Then I got interested again, and it has kept me +going all these years, though I've had to drop most of it now of course. +But now I'm so near the end that it doesn't matter. You can drop work at +eighty and keep calm and interested in life. You can't at sixty; it's +too young.... Mother knows that too, but there seems no work she can do. +She doesn't care for parish work as I do; she never learnt any art or +craft or handiwork, and doesn't want to; she was never much good at +intellectual work of any kind, and what mind she had as a girl—and her +father and I did try to train her to use it—ran all to seed during her +married life, so it's pretty nearly useless now. She spent herself on +your father and all you children, and now she's bankrupt."</p> + +<p>"Poor darling mother," Neville murmured.</p> + +<p>Grandmama nodded. "Just so. She's left to read novels, gossip with stupid +neighbours, look after me, write to you children, go on walks, and brood +over the past. She would have been quite happy like that forty years ago. +The young have high spirits, and can amuse themselves without work. She +never wanted work when she was eighteen. It's the old who need work. +They've lost their spring and their zest for life, and need something to +hold on to. It's all wrong, the way we arrange it—making the young work +and the old sit idle. It should be the other way about. Girls and boys +don't get bored with perpetual holidays; they live each moment of them +hard; they would welcome the eternal Sabbath; and indeed I trust we shall +all do that, as our youth is to be renewed like eagles. But old age on +this earth is far too sad to do nothing in. Remember that, child, when +your time comes."</p> + +<p>"Why, yes. But when one's married, you know, it's not so easy, keeping up +with a job. I only wish I could.... I don't <i>like</i> being merely a married +woman. Rodney isn't merely a married man, after all.... But anyhow I'll +find something to amuse my old age, even if I can't work. I'll play +patience or croquet or the piano, or all three, and I'll go to theatres +and picture shows and concerts and meetings in the Albert Hall. Mother +doesn't do any of those things. And she <i>is</i> so unhappy so often."</p> + +<p>"Oh very. Very unhappy. Very often.... She should come to church +more. This Unitarianism is depressing. No substance in it. I'd rather +be a Papist and keep God in a box. Or belong to the Army and sing +about rivers of blood. I daresay both are satisfying. All this +sermon-on-the-mount-but-no-miracle business is most saddening. Because +it's about impossibilities. You can receive a sacrament, and you can find +salvation, but you can't live the sermon on the mount. So of course it +makes people discontented."</p> + +<p>Grandmama, who often in the evenings became a fluent though drowsy +talker, might have wandered on like this till her bed-time, had not Mrs. +Hilary here appeared, in her dressing-gown. She sat down, and said, +trying to sound natural and not annoyed and failing. "I heard so much +talk, I thought I would come down and be in it. I thought you were coming +up to me again directly, Neville. I hadn't realised you meant to stay +down and talk to Grandmama instead."</p> + +<p>She hated Neville or any of them, but especially Neville, to talk +intimately to Grandmama; it made her jealous. She tried and tried not to +feel this, but it was never any use her fighting against jealousy, it was +too strong for her.</p> + +<p>Grandmama said placidly, "Neville and I were discussing different forms +of religion."</p> + +<p>"Is Neville thinking of adopting one of them?" Mrs. Hilary enquired, her +jealousy making her sound sarcastic and scornful.</p> + +<p>"No, mother. Not at present.... Come back to bed, and I'll sit with you, +and we'll talk. I don't believe you should be up."</p> + +<p>"Oh, I see I've interrupted. It was the last thing I meant. No, Neville, +I'll go back to my room alone. You go on with your talk with Grandmama. +I hate interrupting like this. I hoped you would have let me join. I +don't get much of you in these days, after all. But stay and talk to +Grandmama."</p> + +<p>That was the point at which Nan would have sworn to herself and gone down +to the beach. Neville did neither. She was gentle and soothing, and +Grandmama was infinitely untroubled, and Mrs. Hilary presently picked up +her spirits and went back to bed, and Neville spent the evening with her. +These little scenes had occurred so often that they left only a slight +impression on those concerned and slightest of all on Mrs. Hilary.</p> + + +<h4>8</h4> + +<p>When Mrs. Hilary and Grandmama were both settled for the night (old and +elderly people settle for the night—other people go to bed) Neville went +down to the seashore and lay on the sand, watching the moon rise over the +sea.</p> + +<p>Beauty was there, rather than in elderly people. But in elderly people +was such pathos, such tragedy, such pity, that they lay like a heavy +weight on one's soul. If one could do anything to help....</p> + +<p>To be aimless: to live on emotions and be by them consumed: that was +pitiful. To have done one's work for life, and to be in return cast aside +by life like a broken tool: that was tragic.</p> + +<p>The thing was to defy life; to fly in the face of the fool nature, break +her absurd rules, and wrest out of the breakage something for oneself by +which to live at the last.</p> + +<p>Neville flung her challenge to the black sea that slowly brightened under +the moon's rising eye.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_III" id="CHAPTER_III"></a>CHAPTER III</h2> + +<h3>FAMILY LIFE</h3> + + +<h4>1</h4> + +<p>If you have broken off your medical studies at London University at the +age of twenty-one and resume them at forty-three, you will find them (one +is told) a considerably tougher job than you found them twenty-two +years before. Youth is the time to read for examinations; youth is used +to such foolishness, and takes it lightly in its stride. At thirty you +may be and probably are much cleverer than you were at twenty; you will +have more ideas and better ones, and infinitely more power of original +and creative thought; but you will not, probably, find it so easy to grip +and retain knowledge out of books and reproduce it to order. So the world +has ordained that youth shall spend laborious days in doing this, and +that middle age shall, in the main, put away these childish things, and +act and work on in spite of the information thus acquired.</p> + +<p>Neville Bendish, who was not even in the thirties, but so near the brink +of senile decay as the forties, entered her name once more at the London +University School of Medicine, and plunged forthwith into her interrupted +studies. Her aim was to spend this summer in reacquiring such knowledge +as should prepare her for the October session. And it was difficult +beyond her imaginings. It had not been difficult twenty-two years ago; +she had worked then with pleasure and interest, and taken examinations +with easy triumph. As Kay did now at Cambridge, only more so, because she +had been cleverer than Kay. She was a vain creature, and had believed +that cleverness of hers to be unimpaired by life, until she came to try. +She supposed that if she had spent her married life in head work, her +head would never have lost the trick of it. But she hadn't. She had spent +it on Rodney and Gerda and Kay, and the interesting, amusing life led by +the wife of a man in Rodney's position, which had brought her always into +contact with people and ideas. Much more amusing than grinding at +intellectual work of her own, but it apparently caused the brain to +atrophy. And she was, anyhow, tired of doing nothing in particular. After +forty you must have your job, you must be independent of other people's +jobs, of human and social contacts, however amusing and instructive.</p> + +<p>Rodney wasn't altogether pleased, though he understood. He wanted her +constant companionship and interest in his own work.</p> + +<p>"You've had twenty-two years of it, darling," Neville said. "Now I must +Live my own Life, as the Victorians used to put it. I must be a doctor; +quite seriously I must. I want it. It's my job. The only one I could ever +really have been much good at. The sight of human bones or a rabbit's +brain thrills me, as the sight of a platform and a listening audience +thrills you, or as pen and paper (I suppose) thrill the children. You +ought to be glad I don't want to write. Our family seems to run to that +as a rule."</p> + +<p>"But," Rodney said, "you don't mean ever to <i>practise</i>, surely? You won't +have time for it, with all the other things you do."</p> + +<p>"It's the other things I shan't have time for, old man. Sorry, but there +it is.... It's all along of mother, you see. She's such an object lesson +in how not to grow old. If she'd been a doctor, now...."</p> + +<p>"She couldn't have been a doctor, possibly. She hasn't the head. On the +other hand, you've got enough head to keep going without the slavery of +a job like this, even when you're old."</p> + +<p>"I'm not so sure. My brain isn't what it was; it may soften altogether +unless I do something with it before it's too late. Then there I shall +be, a burden to myself and everyone else.... After all, Rodney, you've +your job. Can't I have mine? Aren't you a modern, an intellectual and a +feminist?"</p> + +<p>Rodney, who believed with truth that he was all these things, gave in.</p> + +<p>Kay and Gerda, with the large-minded tolerance of their years, thought +mother's scheme was all right and rather sporting, if she really liked +the sort of thing, which they, for their part, didn't.</p> + +<p>So Neville recommenced medical study, finding it difficult beyond belief. +It made her head ache.</p> + + +<h4>2</h4> + +<p>She envied Kay and Gerda, as they all three lay and worked in the garden, +with chocolates, cigarettes and Esau grouped comfortably round them. Kay +was reading economics for his Tripos, Gerda was drawing pictures for her +poems; neither, apparently, found any difficulty in concentrating on +their work when they happened to want to.</p> + +<p>What, Neville speculated, her thoughts, as usual, wandering from her +book, would become of Gerda? She was a clever child at her own things, +though with great gaps in her equipment of knowledge, which came from +ignoring at school those of her studies which had not seemed to her of +importance. She had firmly declined a University education; she had +decided that it was not a fruitful start in life, and was also afraid of +getting an academic mind. But at economic and social subjects, at drawing +and at writing, she worked without indolence, taking them earnestly, +still young enough to believe it important that she should attain +proficiency.</p> + +<p>Neville, on the other hand, was indolent. For twenty-two years she had +pleased herself, done what she wanted when she wanted to, played the +flirt with life. And now she had become soft-willed. Now, sitting in +the garden with her books, like Gerda and Kay, she would find that the +volumes had slipped from her knee and that she was listening to the +birds in the elms. Or she would fling them aside and get up and stretch +herself, and stroll into the little wood beyond the garden, or down to +the river, or she would propose tennis, or go up to town for some meeting +or concert or to see someone, though she didn't really want to, having +quite enough of London during that part of the year when they lived +there. She only went up now because otherwise she would be working. At +this rate she would never be ready to resume her medical course in the +autumn.</p> + +<p>"I will attend. I will. I will," she whispered to herself, a hand pressed +to each temple to constrain her mind. And for five minutes she would +attend, and then she would drift away on a sea of pleasant indolence, +and time fluttered away from her like an escaping bird, and she knew +herself for a light woman who would never excel. And Kay's brown head +was bent over his book, and raised sometimes to chaff or talk, and bent +over his books again, the thread of his attention unbroken by his easy +interruptions. And Gerda's golden head lay pillowed in her two clasped +hands, and she stared up at the blue through the green and did nothing +at all, for that was often Gerda's unashamed way.</p> + +<p>Often Rodney sat in the garden too and worked. And his work Neville felt +that she too could have done; it was work needing initiative and creative +thought, work suitable to his forty-five years, not cramming in knowledge +from books. Neville at times thought that she too would stand for +parliament one day. A foolish, childish game it was, and probably really +therefore more in her line than solid work.</p> + + +<h4>3</h4> + +<p>Nan came down in July to stay with them. While she was there, Barry +Briscoe, who was helping with a W.E.A. summer school at Haslemere, would +come over on Sundays and spend the day with them. Not even the rains of +July 1920 made Barry weary or depressed. His eyes were bright behind his +glasses; his hands were usually full of papers, committee reports, +agenda, and the other foods he fed on, unsatiated and unabashed. Barry +was splendid. What ardour, what enthusiasm, burning like beacons in a +wrecked world! So wrecked a world that all but the very best and the very +worst had given it up as a bad job; the best because they hoped on, hoped +ever, the worst because of the pickings that fall to such as they out of +the collapsing ruins. But Barry, from the very heart of the ruin, would +cry "Here is what we must do," and his eyes would gleam with faith and +resolution, and he would form a committee and act. And when he saw how +the committee failed, as committees will, and how little good it all was, +he would laugh ruefully and try something else. Barry, as he would tell +you frankly—if you enquired, not otherwise,—believed in God. He was the +son of a famous Quaker philanthropist, and had been brought up to see +good works done and even garden cities built. I am aware that this must +prejudice many people against Barry; and indeed many people were annoyed +by certain aspects of him. But, as he was intellectually brilliant and +personally attractive, these people were as a rule ready to overlook what +they called the Quaker oats. Nan, who overlooked nothing, was frankly at +war with him on some points, and he with her. Nan, cynical, clear-eyed, +selfish and blasé, cared nothing for the salvaging of what remained of +the world out of the wreck, nothing for the I.L.P., less than nothing for +garden cities, philanthropy, the W.E.A., and God. And committees she +detested. Take them all away, and there remained Barry Briscoe, and for +him she did not care nothing.</p> + +<p>It was the oddest friendship, thought Neville, observing how, when Barry +was there, all Nan's perversities and moods fell away, leaving her as +agreeable as he. Her keen and ironic intelligence met his, and they so +understood each other that they finished each other's sentences, and +others present could only with difficulty keep up with them. Neville +believed them to be in love, but did not know whether they had ever +informed one another of the fact. They might still be pretending to +one another that their friendship was merely one of those affectionate +intellectual intimacies of which some of us have so many and which are +so often misunderstood. Or they might not. It was entirely their +business, either way.</p> + +<p>Barry was a chatterbox. He lay on the lawn and rooted up daisies and +made them into ridiculous chains, and talked and talked and talked. +Rodney and Neville and Nan talked too, and Kay would lunge in with the +crude and charming dogmatics of his years. But Gerda, chewing a blade of +grass, lay idle and withdrawn, her fair brows unpuckered by the afternoon +sun (because it was July, 1920), her blue eyes on Barry, who was so +different; or else she would be withdrawn but not idle, for she would be +drawing houses tumbling down, or men on stilts, fantastic and proud, or +goblins, or geese running with outstretched necks round a green. Or she +would be writing something like this:</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i6">"I<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Float on the tide,<br /></span> +<span class="i6">In the rain.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">I am the starfish vomited up by the retching cod.<br /></span> +<span class="i6">He thinks<br /></span> +<span class="i6">That I am he.<br /></span> +<span class="i6">But I know.<br /></span> +<span class="i6">That he is I.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">For the creature is far greater than its god."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>(Gerda was of those who think it is rather chic to have one rhyme in your +poem, just to show that you can do it.)</p> + +<p>"That child over there makes one feel so cheap and ridiculous, jabbering +away."</p> + +<p>That was Barry, breaking off to look at Gerda where she lay on her elbows +on a rug, idle and still. "And it's not," he went on, "that she doesn't +know about the subject, either. I've heard her on it."</p> + +<p>He threw the daisy chain he had just made at her, so that it alighted on +her head, hanging askew over one eye.</p> + +<p>"Just like a daisy bud herself, isn't she," he commented, and raced on, +forgetting her.</p> + +<p>Neat in her person and ways, Gerda adjusted the daisy chain so that it +ringed her golden head in an orderly circle. Like a daisy bud herself, +Rodney agreed in his mind, his eyes smiling at her, his affection, +momentarily turned that way, groping for the wild, remote little soul in +her that he only vaguely and paternally knew. The little pretty. And +clever, too, in her own queer, uneven way. But what <i>was</i> she, with it +all? He knew Kay, the long, sweet-tempered boy, better. For Kay +represented highly civilized, passably educated, keen-minded youth. Gerda +wasn't highly civilized, was hardly passably educated, and keen would be +an inapt word for that queer, remote, woodland mind of hers.... Rodney +returned to more soluble problems.</p> + + +<h4>4</h4> + +<p>Mrs. Hilary and Grandmama came to Windover. Mrs. Hilary would rather have +come without Grandmama, but Grandmama enjoyed the jaunt, as she called +it. For eighty-four, Grandmama was wonderfully sporting. They arrived on +Saturday afternoon, and rested after the journey, as is usually done by +people of Grandmama's age, and often by people of Mrs. Hilary's. Sunday +was full of such delicate clashings as occur when new people have joined +a party. Grandmama was for morning church, and Neville drove her to it in +the pony carriage. So Mrs. Hilary, not being able to endure that they +should go off alone together, had to go too, though she did not like +church, morning or other.</p> + +<p>She sighed over it at lunch.</p> + +<p>"So stuffy. So long. And the <i>hymns</i>...."</p> + +<p>But Grandmama said, "My dear, we had David and Goliath. What more do you +want?"</p> + +<p>During David and Goliath Grandmama's head had nodded approvingly, and her +thin old lips had half smiled at the valiant child with his swaggering +lies about bears and lions, at the gallant child and the giant.</p> + +<p>Mrs. Hilary, herself romantically sensible, as middle-aged ladies are, of +valour and high adventure, granted Grandmama David and Goliath, but still +repined at the hymns and the sermon.</p> + +<p>"Good words, my dear, good words," Grandmama said to that. For Grandmama +had been brought up not to criticise sermons, but had failed to bring up +Mrs. Hilary to the same self-abnegation. The trouble with Mrs. Hilary +was, and had always been, that she expected (even now) too much of life. +Grandmama expected only what she got. And Neville, wisest of all, had not +listened, for she too <i>expected</i> what she would get if she did. She was +really rather like Grandmama, in her cynically patient acquiescence, only +brought up in a different generation, and not to hear sermons. In the +gulf of years between these two, Mrs. Hilary's restless, questing passion +fretted like unquiet waves.</p> + + +<h4>5</h4> + +<p>"This Barry Briscoe," said Mrs. Hilary to Neville after lunch, as she +watched Nan and he start off for a walk together. "I suppose he's in love +with her?"</p> + +<p>"I suppose so. Something of the kind, anyhow."</p> + +<p>Mrs. Hilary said, discontentedly, "Another of Nan's married men, no +doubt. She <i>collects</i> them."</p> + +<p>"No, Barry's not married."</p> + +<p>Mrs. Hilary looked more interested. "Not? Oh, then it may come to +something.... I wish Nan <i>would</i> marry. It's quite time."</p> + +<p>"Nan isn't exactly keen to, you know. She's got so much else to do."</p> + +<p>"Fiddlesticks. You don't encourage her in such nonsense, I hope, +Neville."</p> + +<p>"I? It's not for me to encourage Nan in anything. She doesn't need it. +But as to marriage—yes, I think I wish she would do it, sometime, +whenever she's ready. It would give her something she hasn't got; +emotional steadiness, perhaps I mean. She squanders a bit, now. On the +other hand, her writing would rather go to the wall; if she went on with +it it would be against odds all the time."</p> + +<p>"What's writing?" enquired Mrs. Hilary, with a snap of her finger and +thumb. "<i>Writing!</i>"</p> + +<p>As this seemed too vague or too large a question for Neville to answer, +she did not try to do so, and Mrs. Hilary replied to it herself.</p> + +<p>"Mere showing off," she explained it. "Throwing your paltry ideas at a +world which doesn't want them. Writing like Nan's I mean. It's not as if +she wrote really good books."</p> + +<p>"Oh well. Who does that, after all? And what is a good book?" Here were +two questions which Mrs. Hilary, in her turn, could not answer. Because +most of the books which seemed good to her did not, as she well knew, +seem good to Neville, or to any of her children, and she wasn't going to +give herself away. She murmured something about Thackeray and Dickens, +which Neville let pass.</p> + +<p>"Writing's just a thing to do, as I see it," Neville went on. "A job, +like another. One must <i>have</i> a job, you know. Not for the money, but for +the job's sake. And Nan enjoys it. But I daresay she'd enjoy marriage +too."</p> + +<p>"Does she love this man?"</p> + +<p>"I don't know. I shouldn't be surprised. She hasn't told me so."</p> + +<p>"Probably she doesn't, as he's single. Nan's so perverse. She will love +the wrong men, always."</p> + +<p>"You shouldn't believe all Rosalind tells you, mother. Rosalind has a too +vivid fancy and a scandalous tongue."</p> + +<p>Mrs. Hilary coloured a little. She did not like Neville to think that she +had been letting Rosalind gossip to her about Nan.</p> + +<p>"You know perfectly well, Neville, that I never trust a word Rosalind +says. I suppose I needn't rely on my daughter-in-law for news about my +own daughter's affairs. I can see things for myself. You can't deny that +Nan <i>has</i> had compromising affairs with married men."</p> + +<p>"Compromising." Neville turned over the word, thoughtfully and +fastidiously. "Funny word, mother. I'm not sure I know what it means. +But I don't think anything ever compromises Nan; she's too free for +that.... Well, let's marry her off to Barry Briscoe. It will be a quaint +ménage, but I daresay they'd pull it off. Barry's delightful. I should +think even Nan could live with him."</p> + +<p>"He writes books about education, doesn't he? Education and democracy."</p> + +<p>"Well, he does. But there's always something, after all, against all +of us. And it might be worse. It might be poetry or fiction or +psycho-analysis."</p> + +<p>Neville said psycho-analysis in order to start another hare and take +her mother's attention off Nan's marriage before the marriage became +crystallised out of all being. But Mrs. Hilary for the first time (for +usually she was reliable) did not rise. She looked thoughtful, even a +shade embarrassed, and said vaguely, "Oh, people must write, of course. +If it isn't one thing it will be another." After a moment she added, +"This psycho-analysis, Neville," saying the word with distaste indeed, +but so much more calmly than usual that Neville looked at her in +surprise. "This psycho-analysis. I suppose it does make wonderful cures, +doesn't it, when all is said?"</p> + +<p>"Cures—oh yes, wonderful cures. Shell-shock, insomnia, nervous +depression, lumbago, suicidal mania, family life—anything." Neville's +attention was straying to Grandmama, who was coming slowly towards +them down the path, leaning on her stick, so she did not see Mrs. +Hilary's curious, lit eagerness.</p> + +<p>"But how <i>can</i> they cure all those things just by talking indecently +about sex?"</p> + +<p>"Oh mother, they don't. You're so crude, darling. You've got hold of +only one tiny part of it—the part practised by Austrian professors on +Viennese degenerates. Many of the doctors are really sane and brilliant. +I know of cases...."</p> + +<p>"Well," said Mrs. Hilary, quickly and rather crossly, "I can't talk about +it before Grandmama."</p> + +<p>Neville got up to meet Grandmama, put a hand under her arm, and conducted +her to her special chair beneath the cedar. You had to help and conduct +someone so old, so frail, so delightful as Grandmama, even if Mrs. Hilary +did wish it were being done by any hand than yours. Mrs. Hilary in fact +made a movement to get to Grandmama first, but sixty-three does not rise +from low deck chairs so swiftly as forty-three. So she had to watch her +daughter leading her mother, and to note once more with a familiar pang +the queer, unmistakable likeness between the smooth, clear oval face and +the old wrinkled one, the heavily lashed deep blue eyes and the old faded +ones, the elfish, close-lipped, dimpling smile and the old, elfish, +thin-lipped, sweet one. Neville, her Neville, flower of her flock, her +loveliest, first and best, her dearest but for Jim, her pride, and nearer +than Jim, because of sex, which set Jim on a platform to be worshipped, +but kept Neville on a level to be loved, to be stormed at when storms +rose, to be clung to when all God's waters went over one's head. Oh +Neville, that you should smile at Grandmama like that, that Grandmama +should, as she always had, steal your confidence that should have been +all your mother's! That you should perhaps even talk over your mother +with Grandmama (as if she were something further from each of you than +each from the other), pushing her out of the close circle of your +intimacy into the region of problems to be solved.... Oh God, how bitter +a thing to bear!</p> + +<p>The garden, the summer border of bright flowers, swam in tears.... Mrs. +Hilary turned away her face, pretending to be pulling up daisies from the +grass. But, unlike the ostrich, she well knew that they always saw. To +the children, as to Grandmama, they were an old story, those hot, facile, +stinging tears of Mrs. Hilary's that made Neville weary with pity, and +Nan cold with scorn, and Rosalind happy with lazy malice, and Pamela +bright and cool and firm, like a woman doctor. Only Grandmama took them +unmoved, for she had always known them.</p> + + +<h4>6</h4> + +<p>Grandmama, settled in her special chair, remarked on the unusual (for +July) fineness of the day, and requested Neville to read them the chief +items of news in the Observer, which she had brought out with her. So +Neville read about the unfortunate doings of the Supreme Council at Spa, +and Grandmama said "Poor creatures," tolerantly, as she had said when +they were at Paris, and again at San Remo; and about General Dyer and +the Amritsar debate, and Grandmama said "Poor man. But one mustn't treat +one's fellow creatures as he did, even the poor Indian, who, I quite +believe, is intolerably provoking. I see the Morning Post is getting up +a subscription for him, contributed to by Those Who Remember Cawnpore, +Haters of Trotzky, Montague and Lansbury, Furious Englishwoman, and many +other generous and emotional people. That is kind and right. We should +not let even our more impulsive generals starve."</p> + +<p>Then Neville read about Ireland, which was just then in a disturbed +state, and Grandmama said it certainly seemed restless, and mentioned +with what looked like a gleam of hope that they would never return, that +her friends the Dormers were there. Mrs. Hilary shot out, with still +averted face, that the whole of Ireland ought to be sunk to the bottom +of the sea, it was more bother than it was worth. This was her usual and +only contribution towards a solution of the Irish question.</p> + +<p>Then Mr. Churchill and Russia had their turn (it was the time of the +Golovin trouble) and Grandmama said people seemed always to get so +very sly, as well as so very much annoyed and excited, whenever Russia +was mentioned, and that seemed like a sign that God did not mean us, +in this country, to mention it much, perhaps not even to think of it. +She personally seldom did. Then Neville read a paragraph about the +Anglo-Catholic Congress, and about that Grandmama was for the first time +a little severe, for Grandpapa had not been an Anglo-Catholic, and indeed +in his day there were none of this faith. You were either High Church, +Broad Church or Evangelical. (Unless, of course, you had been led astray +by Huxley and Darwin and were nothing whatever.) Grandpapa had been +Broad, with a dash of Evangelical; or perhaps it was the other way round; +but anyhow Grandpapa had not been High Church, or, as they called it in +his time, Tractarian. So Grandmama enquired, snippily, "Who <i>are</i> these +Anglo-Catholics, my dear? One seems to hear so much of them in these +days. I can't help thinking they are rather <i>noisy</i>...." as she might +have spoken of Bolshevists, or the Labour Party, or the National Party, +or Sinn Fein, or any other of the organisations of which Grandpapa had +been innocent. "There are so many of these new things," said Grandmama, +"I daresay modern young people like Gerda and Kay are quite in with it +all."</p> + +<p>"I'm afraid," said Neville, "that Gerda and Kay are secularists at +present."</p> + +<p>"Poor children," Grandmama said gently. Secularism made her think of +the violent and vulgar Mr. Bradlaugh. It was, in her view, a noisier +thing even than Anglo-Catholicism. "Well, they have plenty of time to +get over it and settle down to something quieter." Broad-Evangelical she +meant, or Evangelical-Broad; and Neville smiled at the idea of Gerda, +in particular, being either of these. She believed that if Gerda were to +turn from secularism it would either be to Anglo-Catholicism or to Rome. +Or Gerda might become a Quaker, or a lone mystic contemplating in woods, +but a Broad-Evangelical, no. There was a delicate, reckless extravagance +about Gerda which would prohibit that. If you came to that, what girl or +boy did, in these days, fall into any of the categories which Grandmama +and Grandpapa had known, whether religiously or politically? You might as +well suggest that Gerda and Kay should be Tories or Whigs.</p> + +<p>And by this time they had given Mrs. Hilary so much time to recover her +poise that she could join in, and say that Anglo-Catholics were very +ostentatious people, and only gave all that money which they had, +undoubtedly, given at the recent Congress in order to make a splash +and show off.</p> + +<p>"Tearing off their jewellery in public like that," said Mrs. Hilary, in +disgust, as she might have said tearing off their chemises, "and gold +watches lying in piles on the collection table, still ticking...." She +felt it was indecent that the watches should have still been ticking; it +made the thing an orgy, like a revival meeting, or some cannibal rite at +which victims were offered up still breathing....</p> + +<p>So much for the Anglo-Catholic Congress. The Church Congress was better, +being more decent and in order, though Mrs. Hilary knew that the whole +established Church was wrong.</p> + +<p>And so they came to literature, to a review of Mr. Conrad's new novel +and a paragraph about a famous annual literary prize. Grandmama thought +it very nice that young writers should be encouraged by cash prizes. +"Not," as she added, "that there seems any danger of any of them being +discouraged, even without that.... But Nan and Kay and Gerda ought to go +in for it. It would be a nice thing for them to work for."</p> + +<p>Then Grandmama, settling down with her pleased old smile to something +which mattered more than the news in the papers, said "And now, dear, +I want to hear all about this friendship of Nan's and this nice young +Mr. Briscoe."</p> + +<p>So Neville again had to answer questions about that.</p> + + +<h4>7</h4> + +<p>Mrs. Hilary, abruptly leaving them, trailed away by herself to the house. +Since she mightn't have Neville to herself for the afternoon she wouldn't +stay and share her. But when she reached the house and looked out at them +through the drawing-room windows, their intimacy stabbed her with a pang +so sharp that she wished she had stayed.</p> + +<p>Besides, what was there to do indoors? No novels lay about that looked +readable, only "The Rescue" (and she couldn't read Conrad, he was so +nautical) and a few others which looked deficient in plot and as if they +were trying to be clever. She turned them over restlessly, and put them +down again. She wasn't sleepy, and hated writing letters. She wanted +someone to talk to, and there was no one, unless she rang for the +housemaid. Oh, this dreadful ennui.... Did anyone in the world know it +but her? The others all seemed busy and bright. That was because they +were young. And Grandmama seemed serene and bright. That was because she +was old, close to the edge of life, and sat looking over the gulf into +space, not caring. But for Mrs. Hilary there was ennui, and the dim, +empty room in the cold grey July afternoon. The empty stage; no audience, +no actors. Only a lonely, disillusioned actress trailing about it, hungry +for the past.... A book Gerda had been reading lay on the table. "The +Breath of Life," it was called, which was surely just what Mrs. Hilary +wanted. She picked it up, opened it, turned the pages, then, tucking it +away out of sight under her arm, left the room and went upstairs.</p> + +<p>"Many wonderful cures," Neville had said. And had mentioned depression +as one of the diseases cured. What, after all, if there was something in +this stuff which she had never tried to understand, had always dismissed, +according to her habit, with a single label? "Labels don't help. Labels +get you nowhere." How often the children had told her that, finding her +terse terminology that of a shallow mind, endowed with inadequate +machinery for acquiring and retaining knowledge, as indeed it was.</p> + + +<h4>8</h4> + +<p>Gerda, going up to Mrs. Hilary's room to tell her about tea, found her +asleep on the sofa, with "The Breath of Life" fallen open from her hand. +A smile flickered on Gerda's delicate mouth, for she had heard her +grandmother on the subject of psycho-analysis, and here she was, having +taken to herself the book which Gerda was reading for her Freud circle. +Gerda read a paragraph on the open page.</p> + +<p>"It will often be found that what we believe to be unhappiness is really, +in the secret and unconscious self, a joy, which the familiar process of +inversion sends up into our consciousness in the form of grief. If, for +instance, a mother bewails the illness of her child, it is because her +unconscious self is experiencing the pleasure of importance, of being +condoled and sympathised with, as also that of having her child (if it is +a male) entirely for the time dependent on her ministrations. If, on the +other hand, the sick child is her daughter, her grief is in reality a +hope that this, her young rival, may die, and leave her supreme in the +affections of her husband. If, in either of these cases, she can be +brought to face and understand this truth, her grief will invert itself +again and become a conscious joy...."</p> + +<p>"I wonder if Grandmother believes all that," speculated Gerda, who did.</p> + +<p>Then she said aloud, "Grandmother" (that was what Gerda and Kay called +her, distinguishing her thus from Great-Grandmama), "tea's ready."</p> + +<p>Mrs. Hilary woke with a start. "The Breath of Life" fell on the floor +with a bang. Mrs. Hilary looked up and saw Gerda and blushed.</p> + +<p>"I've been asleep.... I took up this ridiculous book of yours to look at. +The most absurd stuff.... How can you children muddle your minds with it? +Besides, it isn't at all a <i>nice</i> book for you, my child. I came on +several very queer things...."</p> + +<p>But the candid innocence of Gerda's wide blue eyes on hers transcended +"nice" and "not nice."... You might as well talk like that to a wood +anemone, or a wild rabbit.... If her grandmother had only known, Gerda at +twenty had discussed things which Mrs. Hilary, in all her sixty-three +years, had never heard mentioned. Gerda knew of things of which Mrs. +Hilary would have indignantly and sincerely denied the existence. Gerda's +young mind was a cess-pool, a clear little dew-pond, according to how you +looked at it. Gerda and Gerda's friends knew no inhibitions of speech or +thought. They believed that the truth would make them free, and the truth +about life is, from some points of view, a squalid and gross thing. But +better look it in the face, thought Gerda and her contemporaries, than +pretend it isn't there, as elderly people do.</p> + +<p>"I don't want you to pretend anything isn't there, darling," Neville, +between the two generations, had said to Gerda once. "Only it seems to me +that some of you children have one particular kind of truth too heavily +on your minds. It seems to block the world for you."</p> + +<p>"You mean sex," Gerda had told her, bluntly. "Well, it runs all through +life, mother. What's the use of hiding from it? The only way to get even +with it is to face it. And <i>use</i> it."</p> + +<p>"Face it and use it by all means. All I meant was, it's a question of +emphasis. There <i>are</i> other things...."</p> + +<p>Of course Gerda knew that. There was drawing, and poetry, and beauty, and +dancing, and swimming, and music, and politics, and economics. Of course +there were other things; no doubt about that. They were like songs, like +colour, like sunrise, like flowers, these other things. But the basis of +life was the desire of the male for the female and of the female for the +male. And this had been warped and smothered and talked down and made a +furtive, shameful thing, and it must be brought out into the day....</p> + +<p>Neville smiled to hear all this tripping sweetly off Gerda's lips.</p> + +<p>"All right, darling, don't mind me. Go ahead and bring it out into the +day, if you think the subject really needs more airing than it already +gets. I should have thought myself it got lots, and always had."</p> + +<p>And there they were; they talked at cross purposes, these two, across the +gulf of twenty years, and with the best will in the world could not hope +to understand, either of them, what the other was really at. And now here +was Gerda, in Mrs. Hilary's bedroom, looking across a gulf of forty years +and saying nothing at all, for she knew it would be of no manner of use, +since words don't carry as far as that.</p> + +<p>So all she said was "Tea's ready, Grandmother."</p> + +<p>And Mrs. Hilary supposed that Gerda hadn't, probably, noticed or +understood those very queer things she had come upon while reading "The +Breath of Life."</p> + +<p>They went down to tea.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_IV" id="CHAPTER_IV"></a>CHAPTER IV</h2> + +<h3>ROOTS</h3> + + +<h4>1</h4> + +<p>It was a Monday evening, late in July. Pamela Hilary, returning from a +Care Committee meeting, fitted her latch-key into the door of the rooms +in Cow Lane which she shared with Frances Carr, and let herself into the +hot dark passage hall.</p> + +<p>A voice from a room on the right called "Come along, my dear. Your pap's +ready."</p> + +<p>Pamela entered the room on the right. A pleasant, Oxfordish room, +with the brown paper and plain green curtains of the college days of +these women, and Dürer engravings, and sweet peas in a bowl, and Frances +Carr stirring bread and milk over a gas ring. Frances Carr was small +and thirty-eight, and had a nice brown face and a merry smile. Pamela +was a year older and tall and straight and pale, and her ash-brown hair +swept smoothly back from a broad white forehead. Her grey eyes regarded +the world shrewdly and pleasantly through pince-nez. Pamela was +distinguished-looking, and so well-bred that you never got through her +guard; she never hurt the feelings of others or betrayed her own. +Competent she was, too, and the best organizer in Hoxton, which is to say +a great deal, Hoxton needing and getting, one way and another, a good +deal of organisation. Some people complained that they couldn't get to +know Pamela, the guard was too complete. But Frances Carr knew her.</p> + +<p>Frances Carr had piled cushions in a deep chair for her.</p> + +<p>"Lie back and be comfy, old thing, and I'll give you your pap."</p> + +<p>She handed Pamela the steaming bowl, and proceeded to take off her +friend's shoes and substitute moccasin slippers. It was thus that she and +Pamela had mothered one another at Somerville eighteen years ago, and +ever since. They had the maternal instinct, like so many women.</p> + +<p>"Well, how went it? How was Mrs. Cox?"</p> + +<p>Mrs. Cox was the chairwoman of the Committee. All committee members know +that the chairman or woman is a ticklish problem, if not a sore burden.</p> + +<p>"Oh well...." Pamela dismissed Mrs. Cox with half a smile. "Might have +been worse.... Oh look here, Frank. About the library fund...."</p> + +<p>The front door-bell tingled through the house.</p> + +<p>Frances Carr said "Oh hang. All right, I'll see to it. If it's Care or +Continuation or Library, I shall send it away. You're not going to do any +more business to-night."</p> + +<p>She went to the door, and there, her lithe, drooping slimness outlined +against the gas-lit street, stood Nan Hilary.</p> + +<p>"Oh, Nan.... But what a late call. Yes, Pamela's just in from a +committee. Tired to death; she's had neuralgia all this week. She mustn't +sit up late, really. But come along in."</p> + + +<h4>2</h4> + +<p>Nan came into the room, her dark eyes blinking against the gaslight, her +small round face pale and smutty. She bent to kiss Pamela, then curled +herself up in a wicker chair and yawned.</p> + +<p>"The night is damp and dirty. No, no food, thanks. I've dined. After +dinner I was bored, so I came along to pass the time.... When are you +taking your holidays, both of you? It's time."</p> + +<p>"Pamela's going for hers next week," said Frances Carr, handing Nan a +cigarette.</p> + +<p>"On the contrary," said Pamela, "Frances is going for <i>hers</i> next week. +Mine is to be September this year."</p> + +<p>"Now, we've had all this out before, Pam, you know we have. You +faithfully promised to take August if your neuralgia came on again, and +it has. Tell her she is to, Nan."</p> + +<p>"She wouldn't do it the more if I did," Nan said, lazily. These +competitions in unselfishness between Pamela and Frances Carr always +bored her. There was no end to them. Women are so terrifically +self-abnegatory; they must give, give, give, to someone all the +time. Women, that is, of the mothering type, such as these. They must +be forever cherishing something, sending someone to bed with bread and +milk, guarding someone from fatigue.</p> + +<p>"It ought to be their children," thought Nan, swiftly. "But they pour it +out on one another instead."</p> + +<p>Having put her hand on the clue, she ceased to be interested in the +exhibition. It was, in fact, no more and no less interesting than if it +<i>had</i> been their children. Most sorts of love were rather dull, to the +spectator. Pamela and Frances were all right; decent people, not sloppy, +not gushing, but fine and direct and keen, though rather boring when they +began to talk to each other about some silly old thing that had happened +in their last year at Oxford, or their first year, or on some reading +party. Some people re-live their lives like this; others pass on their +way, leaving the past behind. They were all right, Pamela and Frances. +But all this mothering....</p> + +<p>Yet how happy they were, these two, in their useful, competent work and +devoted friendship. They had achieved contacts with life, permanent +contacts. Pamela, in spite of her neuralgia, expressed calm and entirely +unbumptious attainment, Nan feverish seeking. For Nan's contacts with +life were not permanent, but suddenly vivid and passing; the links broke +and she flew off at a tangent. Nan had lately been taken with a desperate +fear of becoming like her mother, when she was old and couldn't write any +more, or love any more men. Horrible thought, to be like Mrs. Hilary, +roaming, questing, feverishly devoured by her own impatience of life....</p> + +<p>In here it was cool and calm, soft and blurred with the smoke of their +cigarettes. Frances Carr left them to talk, telling them not to be late. +When she had gone, Pamela said "I thought you were still down at +Windover, Nan."</p> + +<p>"Left it on Saturday.... Mother and Grandmama had been there a week. +I couldn't stick it any longer. Mother was outrageously jealous, of +course."</p> + +<p>"Neville and Grandmama? Poor mother."</p> + +<p>"Oh yes, poor mother. But it gets on my nerves. Neville's an angel. I +can't think how she sticks it. For that matter, I never know how she puts +up with Rodney's spoilt fractiousness.... And altogether life was a bit +of a strain ... no peace. And I wanted some peace and solitude, to make +up my mind in."</p> + +<p>"Are you making it up now?" Pamela, mildly interested, presumed it was a +man.</p> + +<p>"Trying to. It isn't made yet. That's why I roam about your horrible +slums in the dark. I'm considering; getting things into focus. Seeing +them all round."</p> + +<p>"Well, that sounds all right."</p> + +<p>"Pam." Nan leant forward abruptly, her cigarette between two brown +fingers. "Are you happy? Do you enjoy your life?"</p> + +<p>Pamela withdrew, lightly, inevitably, behind guards.</p> + +<p>"Within reason, yes. When committees aren't too tiresome, and the +accounts balance, and...."</p> + +<p>"Oh, give me a straight answer, Pam. You dependable, practical people are +always frivolous about things that matter. Are you happy? Do you feel +right-side-up with life?"</p> + +<p>"In the main—yes." Pamela was more serious this time. "One's doing one's +job, after all. And human beings are interesting."</p> + +<p>"But I've got that too. My job, and human beings.... Why do I feel all +tossed about, like a boat on a choppy sea? Oh, I know life's furiously +amusing and exciting—of course it is. But I want something solid. You've +got it, somehow."</p> + +<p>Nan broke off and thought "It's Frances Carr she's got. That's permanent. +That goes on. Pamela's anchored. All these people I have—these men and +women—they're not anchors, they're stimulants, and how different that +is!"</p> + +<p>They looked at each other in silence. Pamela said then, "You don't look +well, child."</p> + +<p>"Oh—" Nan threw her cigarette end impatiently into the grate. "I'm all +right. I'm tired, and I've been thinking too much. That never suits +me.... Thanks, Pam. You've helped me to make up my mind. I like you, +Pam," she added dispassionately, "because you're so gentlewomanly. You +don't ask questions, or pry. Most people do."</p> + +<p>"Surely not. Not most decent people."</p> + +<p>"Most people aren't decent. You think they are. You've not lived in my +set—nor in Rosalind's. You're still fresh from Oxford—stuck all over +with Oxford manners and Oxford codes. You don't know the raddled gossip +who fishes for your secrets and then throws them about for fun, like +tennis balls."</p> + +<p>"I know Rosalind, thank you, Nan."</p> + +<p>"Oh, Rosalind's not the only one, though she'll do. Anyhow I've trapped +you into saying an honest and unkind thing about her, for once; that's +something. Wish you weren't such a dear old fraud, Pammie."</p> + +<p>Frances Carr came back, in her dressing gown, looking about twenty-three, +her brown hair in two plaits.</p> + +<p>"Pamela, you <i>mustn't</i> sit up any more. I'm awfully sorry, Nan, but her +head...."</p> + +<p>"Right oh. I'm off. Sorry I've kept you up, Pammie. Good-night. +Good-night, Frances. Yes, I shall get the bus at the corner. Good-night."</p> + +<p>The door closed after Nan, shutting in the friends and their friendship +and their anchored peace.</p> + + +<h4>3</h4> + +<p>Off went Nan on the bus at the corner, whistling softly into the night. +Like a bird her heart rose up and sang, at the lit pageant of London +swinging by. Queer, fantastic, most lovely life! Sordid, squalid, +grotesque life, bitter as black tea, sour as stale wine! Gloriously +funny, brilliant as a flower-bed, bright as a Sitwell street in hell—</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"(Down in Hell's gilded street<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Snow dances fleet and sweet,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Bright as a parakeet....)"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>unsteady as a swing-boat, silly as a drunkard's dream, tragic as a poem +by Massfield.... To have one's corner in it, to run here and there about +the city, grinning like a dog—what more did one want? Human adventures, +intellectual adventures, success, even a little fame, men and women, +jokes, laughter and love, dancing and a little drink, and the fields and +mountains and seas beyond—what more did one want?</p> + +<p>Roots. That was the metaphor that had eluded Nan. To be rooted and +grounded in life, like a tree. Someone had written something about that.</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Let your manhood be<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Forgotten, your whole purpose seem<br /></span> +<span class="i0">The purpose of a simple tree<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Rooted in a quiet dream...."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>Roots. That was what Neville had, what Pamela had; Pamela, with her +sensible wisdom that so often didn't apply because Pamela was so far +removed from Nan's conditions of life and Nan's complicated, unstable +temperament. Roots. Mrs. Hilary's had been torn up out of the ground....</p> + +<p>"I'm like mother." That was Nan's nightmare thought. Not intellectually, +for Nan's brain was sharp and subtle and strong and fine, Mrs. Hilary's +was an amorphous, undeveloped muddle. But where, if not from Mrs. Hilary, +did Nan get her black fits of melancholy, her erratic irresponsible +gaieties, her passionate angers, her sharp jealousies and egoisms? The +clever young woman saw herself in the stupid elderly one; saw herself +slipping down the years to that. That was why, where Neville and Pamela +and their brothers pitied, Nan, understanding her mother's bad moods +better than they, was vicious with hate and scorn. For she knew these +things through and through. Not the sentimentality; she didn't know that, +being cynical and cool except when stirred to passion. And not the +posing, for Nan was direct and blunt. But the feverish angers and the +black boredom—they were hers.</p> + +<p>Nevertheless Nan's heart sang into the night. For she had made up her +mind, and was at peace.</p> + +<p>She had held life at arm's length, pushed it away, for many months, +hiding from it, running from it because she didn't with the whole of her, +want it. Again and again she had changed a dangerous subject, headed for +safety, raced for cover. The week-end before this last, down at Windover, +it had been like a game of hide and seek.... And then she had come away, +without warning, and he, going down there this last week-end, had not +found her, because she couldn't meet him again till she had decided. And +now she had decided.</p> + +<p>How unsuited a pair they were, in many ways, and what fun they would +have! Unsuited ... what did it matter? His queer, soft, laughing voice +was in her ears, his lean, clever, merry face swam on the rushing tides +of night. His untidy, careless clothes, the pockets bulging with books, +papers and tobacco, his glasses, that left a red mark on either side of +the bridge of his nose, his easily ruffled brown hair—they all merged +for her into the infinitely absurd, infinitely delightful, infinitely +loved Barry, who was going to give her roots.</p> + +<p>She was going away, down into Cornwall, in two days. She would stay in +rooms by herself at Marazion and finish her book and bathe and climb, and +lie in the sun (if only it came out) and sleep and eat and drink. There +was nothing in the world like your own company; you could be purely +animal then. And in a month Gerda and Kay were coming down, and they were +going to bicycle along the coast, and she would ask Barry to come too, +and when Barry came she would let him say what he liked, with no more +fencing, no more cover. Down by the green edge of the Cornish sea they +would have it out—"grip hard, become a root ..." become men as trees +walking, rooted in a quiet dream. Dream? No, reality. This was the dream, +this world of slipping shadows and hurrying gleams of heartbreaking +loveliness, through which one roamed, a child chasing butterflies which +ever escaped, or which, if captured, crumbled to dust in one's clutching +hands. Oh for something strong and firm to hold. Oh Barry, Barry, these +few more weeks of dream, of slipping golden shadows and wavering lights, +and then reality. Shall I write, thought Nan, "Dear Barry, you may ask me +to marry you now." Impossible. Besides, what hurry was there? Better to +have these few more gay and lovely weeks of dream. They would be the +last.</p> + +<p>Has Barry squandered and spilt his love about as I mine? Likely enough. +Likely enough not. Who cares? Perhaps we shall tell one another all these +things sometime; perhaps, again, we shan't. What matter? One loves, and +passes on, and loves again. One's heart cracks and mends; one cracks the +hearts of others, and these mend too. That is—<i>inter alia</i>—what life is +for. If one day you want the tale of my life, Barry, you shall have it; +though that's not what life is for, to make a tale about. So thrilling in +the living, so flat and stale in the telling—oh let's get on and live +some more of it, lots and lots more, and let the dead past bury its dead.</p> + +<p>Between a laugh and a sleepy yawn, Nan jumped from the bus at the corner +of Oakley Street.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_V" id="CHAPTER_V"></a>CHAPTER V</h2> + +<h3>SEAWEED</h3> + + +<h4>1</h4> + +<p>"Complexes," read Mrs. Hilary, "are of all sorts and sizes." And +there was a picture of four of them in a row, looking like netted cherry +trees whose nets have got entangled with each other. So that was what +they were like. Mrs. Hilary had previously thought of them as being more +of the nature of noxious insects, or fibrous growths with infinite +ramifications. Slim young trees. Not so bad, then, after all.</p> + +<p>"A complex is characterised, and its elements are bound together by +a specific emotional tone, experienced as feeling when the complex +is aroused. Apart from the mental processes and corresponding actions +depending on purely rational mental systems, it is through complexes that +the typical mental process (the specific response) works, the particular +complex representing the particular set of mental elements involved in +the process which begins with perception and cognition and ends with the +corresponding conation."</p> + +<p>Mrs. Hilary read it three times, and the third time she understood it, +if possible, less than the first. Complexes seemed very difficult +things, and she had never been clever. Any of her children, or even her +grandchildren, would understand it all in a moment. If you have such +things—and everyone has, she had learnt—you ought to be able to +understand them. Yet why? You didn't understand your bodily internal +growths; you left them to your doctor. There were doctors who explained +your complexes to you.... What a revolting idea! It would surely make +them worse, not better. (Mrs. Hilary still vaguely regarded these growths +as something of the nature of cancer.)</p> + +<p>Sometimes she imagined herself a patient, interviewing one of these odd +doctors. A man doctor, not a woman; she didn't trust woman doctors of any +kind; she had always been thankful that Neville had given it up and +married instead.</p> + +<p>"Insomnia," she would say, in these imaginary interviews, because that +was so easy to start off with.</p> + +<p>"You have something on your mind," said the doctor. "You suffer from +depression."</p> + +<p>"Yes, I know that. I was coming to that. That is what you must cure for +me."</p> + +<p>"You must think back.... What is the earliest thing you can remember? +Perhaps your baptism? Possibly even your first bath? It has been +done...."</p> + +<p>"You may be right. I remember some early baths. One of them may have been +the first of all, who knows? What of it, doctor?"</p> + +<p>But the doctor, in her imaginings, would at this point only make notes in +a big book and keep silence, as if he had thought as much. Perhaps, no +more than she, he did not know what of it.</p> + +<p>Mrs. Hilary could hear herself protesting.</p> + +<p>"I am <i>not</i> unhappy because of my baptism, which, so far as I know, went +off without a hitch. I am <i>not</i> troubled by my first bath, nor by any +later bath. Indeed, indeed you must believe me, it is not that at all."</p> + +<p>"The more they protest," the psycho-analyst would murmur, "the more it is +so." For that was what Dr. Freud and Dr. Jung always said, so that there +was no escape from their aspersions.</p> + +<p>"Why do <i>you</i> think you are so often unhappy?" he would ask her, to +draw her out and she would reply, "Because my life is over. Because I +am an old discarded woman, thrown away onto the dust-heap like a broken +egg-shell. Because my husband is gone and my children are gone, and they +do not love me as I love them. Because I have only my mother to live +with, and she is calm and cares for nothing but only waits for the end. +Because I have nothing to do from morning till night. Because I am +sixty-three, and that is too old and too young. Because life is empty +and disappointing, and I am tired, and drift like seaweed tossed to and +fro by the waves."</p> + +<p>It sounded indeed enough, and tears would fill her eyes as she said it. +The psycho-analyst would listen, passive and sceptical but intelligent.</p> + +<p>"Not one of your reasons is the correct one. But I will find the true +reason for you and expose it, and after that it will trouble you no more. +Now you shall relate to me the whole history of your life."</p> + +<p>What a comfortable moment! Mrs. Hilary, when she came to it in her +imagined interview, would draw a deep breath and settle down and begin. +The story of her life! How absorbing a thing to relate to someone who +really wanted to hear it! How far better than the confessional—for +priests, besides requiring only those portions and parcels of the +dreadful past upon which you had least desire to dwell, had almost +certainly no interest at all in hearing even these, but only did it +because they had to, and you would be boring them. They might even say, +as one had said to Rosalind during the first confession which had +inaugurated her brief ecclesiastical career, and to which she had looked +forward with some interest as a luxurious re-living of a stimulating +past—"No details, please." Rosalind, who had had many details ready, +had come away disappointed, feeling that the Church was not all she +had hoped. But the psycho-analyst doctor would really want to hear +details. Of course he would prefer the kind of detail which Rosalind +would have been able to furnish out of her experience, for that was +what psycho-analysts recognised as true life. Mrs. Hilary's experiences +were pale in comparison; but psycho-analysts could and did make much out +of little, bricks without clay. She would tell him all about the +children—how sweet they were as babies, how Jim had nearly died of +croup, Neville of bronchitis and Nan of convulsions, whereas Pamela had +always been so well, and Gilbert had suffered only from infant debility. +She would relate how early and how unusually they had all given signs of +intelligence; how Jim had always loved her more than anything in the +world, until his marriage, and she him (this was a firm article in Mrs. +Hilary's creed); how Neville had always cherished and cared for her, and +how she loved Neville beyond anything in the world but Jim; how Gilbert +had disappointed her by taking to writing instead of to a man's job, and +then by marrying Rosalind; how Nan had always been tiresome and perverse. +And before the children came—all about Richard, and their courtship, and +their young married life, and how he had loved and cared for her beyond +anything, incredibly tenderly and well, so that all those who saw it had +wondered, and some had said he spoilt her. And back before Richard, to +girlhood and childhood, to parents and nursery, to her brother and +sister, now dead. How she had fought with her sister because they had +both always wanted the same things and got in one another's way! The +jealousies, the bitter, angry tears!</p> + +<p>To pour it all out—what comfort! To feel that someone was interested, +even though it might be only as a case. The trouble about most people was +that they weren't interested. They didn't mostly, even pretend they were.</p> + + +<h4>2</h4> + +<p>She tried Barry Briscoe, the week-end he came down and found Nan gone. +Barry Briscoe was by way of being interested in people and things in +general; he had that kind of alert mind and face.</p> + +<p>He came up from the tennis lawn, where he had been playing a single with +Rodney, and sat down by her and Grandmama in the shade of the cedar, hot +and friendly and laughing and out of breath. Now Neville and Rodney were +playing Gerda and Kay. Grandmama's old eyes, pleased behind their +glasses, watched the balls fly and thought everyone clever who got one +over the net. She hadn't played tennis in her youth. Mrs. Hilary's more +eager, excited eyes watched Neville driving, smashing, volleying, +returning, and thought how slim and young a thing she looked, to have all +that power stored in her. She was fleeter than Gerda, she struck harder +than Kay, she was trickier than all of them, the beloved girl. That was +the way Mrs. Hilary watched tennis, thinking of the players, not of the +play. It is the way some people talk, thinking of the talkers, not of +what they are saying. It is the personal touch, and a way some women +have.</p> + +<p>But Barry Briscoe, watching cleverly through his bright glasses, was +thinking of the strokes. He was an unconscious person. He lived in +moments.</p> + +<p>"Well done, Gerda," Grandmama would call, when Gerda, cool and +nonchalant, dropped, a sitter at Rodney's feet, and when Rodney smashed +it back she said, "But father's too much for you."</p> + +<p>"Gerda's a <i>scandal</i>," Barry said. "She doesn't care. She can hit all +right when she likes. She thinks about something else half the time."</p> + +<p>His smile followed the small white figure with its bare golden head that +gleamed in the grey afternoon. An absurd, lovable, teasable child, he +found her.</p> + +<p>Grandmama's maid came to wheel her down to the farm. Grandmama had +promised to go and see the farmer's wife and new baby. Grandmama always +saw wives and new babies. They never palled. You would think that by +eighty-four she had seen enough new babies, more than enough, that she +had seen through that strange business and could now take it for granted, +the stream of funny new life cascading into the already so full world. +But Grandmama would always go and see it, handle it, admire it, peer at +it with her smiling eyes that had seen so many lives come and go and that +must know by now that babies are born to trouble as naturally as the +sparks fly upward.</p> + +<p>So off Grandmama rode in her wheeled chair, and Mrs. Hilary and Barry +Briscoe were left alone. Mrs. Hilary and this pleasant, brown, friendly +young man, who cared for Workers' Education and Continuation Schools, and +Penal Reform, and Garden Cities, and Getting Things Done by Acts of +Parliament, about all which things Mrs. Hilary knew and cared nothing. +But vaguely she felt that they sprang out of and must include a care for +human beings as such, and that therefore Barry Briscoe would listen if +she told him things.</p> + +<p>So (it came out of lying on grass, which Barry was doing) she told him +about the pneumonia of Neville as a child, how they had been staying in +Cornwall, miles from a doctor, and without Mr. Hilary, and Mrs. Hilary +had been in despair; how Jim, a little chap of twelve, had ridden off on +his pony in the night to fetch the doctor, across the moors. A long +story; stories about illnesses always are. Mrs. Hilary got worked up and +excited as she told it; it came back to her so vividly, the dreadful +night.</p> + +<p>"He was a Dr. Chalmers, and so kind. When he saw Neville he was +horrified; by that time she was delirious. He said if Jim hadn't gone +straight to him but had waited till the morning, it might have been too +late...."</p> + +<p>"Too late: quite. ..." Barry Briscoe had an understanding, sympathetic +grip of one's last few words. So much of the conversation of others +eludes one, but one should hold fast the last few words.</p> + +<p>"Oh played, Gerda: did you that time, Bendish...."</p> + +<p>Gerda had put on, probably by accident, a sudden, absurd twist that had +made a fool of Rodney.</p> + +<p>That was what Barry Briscoe was really attending to, the silly game. This +alert, seemingly interested, attentive young man had a nice manner, that +led you on, but he didn't really care. He lived in the moment: he cared +for prisoners and workers, and probably for people who were ill <i>now</i>, +but not that someone had been ill all those years ago. He only pretended +to care; he was polite. He turned his keen, pleasant face up to her when +he had done shouting about the game, and said "How splendid that he got +to you in time!" but he didn't really care. Mrs. Hilary found that women +were better listeners than men. Women are perhaps better trained; they +think it more ill-mannered not to show interest. They will listen to +stories about servants, or reports of the inane sayings of infants, +they will hear you through, without the flicker of a yawn, but with +ejaculations and noddings, while you tell them about your children's +diseases. They are well-bred; they drive themselves on a tight rein, +and endure. They are the world's martyrs.</p> + +<p>But men, less restrained, will fidget and wander and sigh and yawn, and +change the subject.</p> + +<p>To trap and hold the sympathy of a man—how wonderful! Who wanted a pack +of women? What you really wanted was some man whose trade it was to +listen and to give heed. Some man to whom your daughter's pneumonia, of +however long ago, was not irrelevant, but had its own significance, as +having helped to build you up as you were, you, the problem, with your +wonderful, puzzling temperament, so full of complexes, inconsistencies +and needs. Some man who didn't lose interest in you just because you were +grey-haired and sixty-three.</p> + +<p>"I'm afraid I've been taking your attention from the game," said Mrs. +Hilary to Barry Briscoe.</p> + +<p>Compunction stabbed him. Had he been rude to this elderly lady, who had +been telling him a long tale without a point while he watched the tennis +and made polite, attentive sounds?</p> + +<p>"Not a bit, Mrs. Hilary." He sat up, and looked friendlier than ever. +"I've been thrilled." A charming, easy liar Barry was, when he deemed it +necessary. His Quaker parents would have been shocked. But there was +truth in it, after all. For people were so interested in themselves, that +one was, in a sense, interested in the stories they told one, even +stories about illness. Besides, this was the mother of Nan; Nan, who was +so abruptly and inexplicably not here to-day, whose absence was hurting +him, when he stopped to think, like an aching tooth; for he was not sure, +yet feared, what she meant by it.</p> + +<p>"Tell me," he said, half to please Nan's mother and half on his own +account, "some stories of Nan when she was small. I should think she was +a fearful child...."</p> + +<p>He was interested, thought Mrs. Hilary, in Nan, but not in her. That was +natural, of course. No man would ever again want to hear stories of <i>her</i> +childhood. The familiar bitterness rose and beat in her like a wave. Nan +was thirty-four and she was sixty-three. She could talk only of far-off +things, and theories about conduct and life which sounded all right at +first but were exposed after two minutes as not having behind them the +background of any knowledge or any brain. That hadn't mattered when she +was a girl; men would often rather they hadn't. But at sixty-three you +have nothing.... The bitter emptiness of sixty-three turned her sick with +frustration. Life was over, over, over, for her and she was to tell +stories of Nan, who had everything.</p> + +<p>Then the mother in her rose up, to claim and grasp for her child, even +for the child she loved least.</p> + +<p>"Nan? Nan was always a most dreadfully sensitive child, and +temperamental. She took after me, I'm afraid; the others were more like +their father. I remember when she was quite a little thing...."</p> + +<p>Barry had asked for it. But he hadn't known that, out of the brilliant, +uncertain Nan, exciting as a Punch and Judy show, anything so tedious +could be spun....</p> + + +<h4>3</h4> + +<p>Mrs. Hilary was up in town by herself for a day's shopping. The sales +were on at Barker's and Derry and Tom's. Mrs. Hilary wandered about these +shops, and even Ponting's and bought little bags, and presents for +everyone, remnants, oddments, underwear, some green silk for a frock for +Gerda, a shady hat for herself, a wonderful cushion for Grandmama with a +picture of the sea on it, a silk knitted jumper for Neville, of the same +purplish blue as her eyes. She was happy, going about like a bee from +flower to flower, gathering this honey for them all. She had come up +alone; she hadn't let Neville come with her. She had said she was going +to be an independent old woman. But what she really meant was that she +had proposed herself for tea with Rosalind in Campden Hill Square, and +wanted to be alone for that.</p> + +<p>Rosalind had been surprised, for Mrs. Hilary seldom favoured her with a +visit. She had found the letter on the hall table when she and Gilbert +had come in from a dinner party two evenings ago.</p> + +<p>"Your mother's coming to tea on Thursday, Gilbert. Tea with me. She says +she wants a talk. I feel flattered. She says nothing about wanting to see +you, so you'd better leave us alone, anyhow for a bit."</p> + +<p>Rosalind's beautiful bistre-brown eyes smiled. She enjoyed her talks with +her mother-in-law; they furnished her with excellent material, to be +worked up later by the raconteuse's art into something too delicious +and absurd. She enjoyed, too, telling Mrs. Hilary the latest scandals; +she was so shocked and disgusted; and it was fun dropping little +accidental hints about Nan, and even about Gilbert. Anyhow, what a +treasure of a relic of the Victorian age! And how comic in her jealousy, +her ingenuous, futile boasting, her so readily exposed deceits! And how +she hated Rosalind herself, the painted, corrupt woman who was dragging +Gilbert down!</p> + +<p>"Whatever does she want a talk about?" Rosalind wondered. "It must be +something pretty urgent, to make her put up with an hour of my company."</p> + + +<h4>4</h4> + +<p>At four o'clock on Thursday afternoon Rosalind went upstairs and put on +an extra coating of powder and rouge. She also blackened her eyelashes +and put on her lips salve the colour of strawberries rather than of the +human mouth. She wore an afternoon dress with transparent black sleeves +through which her big arms gleamed, pale and smooth. She looked a superb +and altogether improper creature, like Lucrezia Borgia or a Titian +madonna. She came down and lay among great black and gold satin cushions, +and lit a scented cigarette and opened a new French novel. Black and gold +was her new scheme for her drawing-room; she had had it done this spring. +It had a sort of opulent and rakish violence which suited her ripe +magnificence, her splendid flesh tints, her brown eyes and corn-gold +hair. Against it she looked like Messalina, and Gilbert like rather a +decadent and cynical pope. The note of the room was really too pronounced +for Gilbert's fastidious and scholarly eloquence; he lost vitality in it, +and dwindled to the pale thin casket of a brain.</p> + +<p>And Mrs. Hilary, when she entered it, trailing in, tall and thin, in her +sagging grey coat and skirt, her wispy grey hair escaping from under her +floppy black hat, and with the air of having till a moment ago been hung +about with parcels (she had left them in the hall), looked altogether +unsuited to her environment, like a dowdy lady from the provinces, as she +was.</p> + +<p>Rosalind came forward and took her by the hands.</p> + +<p>"Well, mother dear, this is an unusual honour.... <i>How</i> long is it since +we last had you here?"</p> + +<p>Rosalind, enveloping her mother-in-law in extravagant fragrance, kissed +her on each cheek. The kiss of Messalina! Mrs. Hilary glanced at the +great mirror over the fireplace to see whether it had come off on her +cheeks, as it might well have done.</p> + +<p>Rosalind placed her on a swelling, billowy, black and gold chair, piled +cushions behind her shoulders, made her lie back at an obtuse angle, a +grey, lank, elderly figure, strange in that opulent setting, her long +dusty black feet stretched out before her on the golden carpet.</p> + +<p>Desperately uncomfortable and angular Rosalind made you feel, petting +you and purring over you and calling you "mother dear," with that glint +always behind her golden-brown eyes which showed that she was up to no +good, that she knew you hated her and was only leading you on that she +might strike her claws into you the deeper. The great beautiful cat: that +was what Rosalind was. You didn't trust her for a moment.</p> + +<p>She was pouring out tea.</p> + +<p>"Lemon? But how dreadfully stupid of me! I'd forgotten you take +milk ... oh yes, and sugar...."</p> + +<p>She rang, and ordered sugar. Mothers take it; not the mothers of +Rosalind's world, but mothers' meetings, and school treats, and +mothers-in-law up from the seaside.</p> + +<p>"Are you up for shopping? How thrilling! Where have you been?... Oh, High +Street. Did you <i>find</i> anything there?"</p> + +<p>Mrs. Hilary knew that Rosalind would see her off, hung over with dozens +of parcels, and despise them, knowing that if they were so many they must +also be cheap.</p> + +<p>"Oh, there's not much to be got there, of course," she said. "I got a +few little things—chiefly for my mother to give away in the parish. She +likes to have things...."</p> + +<p>"But how noble of you both! I'm afraid I never rise to that. It's all I +can manage to give presents to myself and nearest rellies. And you came +up to town just to get presents for the parish! You're wonderful, +mother!"</p> + +<p>"Oh, I take a day in town now and then. Why not? Everyone does."</p> + +<p>Extraordinary how defiant Rosalind made one feel, prying and questioning +and trying to make one look absurd.</p> + +<p>"Why, of course! It freshens you up, I expect; makes a change.... But +you've come up from Windover, haven't you, not the seaside?"</p> + +<p>Rosalind always called St. Mary's Bay the seaside. To her our island +coasts were all one; the seaside was where you went to bathe, and she +hardly distinguished between north, south, east and west.</p> + +<p>"How are they down at Windover? I heard that Nan was there, with that +young man of hers who performs good works. So unlike Nan herself! I hope +she isn't going to be so silly as to let it come to anything; they'd +both be miserable. But I should think Nan knows better than to marry a +square-toes. I daresay <i>he</i> knows better too, really.... And how's poor +old Neville? I think this doctoring game of hers is simply a scream, the +poor old dear."</p> + +<p>To hear Rosalind discussing Neville.... Messalina coarsely patronising a +wood-nymph ... the cat striking her claws into a singing bird.... And +poor—and old! Neville was, indeed, six years ahead of Rosalind, but she +looked the younger of the two, in her slim activity, and didn't need to +paint her face either. Mrs. Hilary all but said so.</p> + +<p>"It is a great interest to Neville, taking up her medical studies again," +was all she could really say. (What a hampering thing it is to be a +lady!) "She thoroughly enjoys it, and looks younger than ever. She is +playing a lot of tennis, and beats them all."</p> + +<p>How absurdly her voice rang when she spoke of Neville or Jim! It always +made Rosalind's lip curl mockingly.</p> + +<p>"Wonderful creature! I do admire her. When I'm her age I shall be too fat +to take any exercise at all. I think it's splendid of women who keep it +up through the forties.... <i>She</i> won't be bored, even when she's sixty, +will she?"</p> + +<p>That was a direct hit, which Mrs. Hilary could bear better than hits at +Neville.</p> + +<p>"I see no reason," said Mrs. Hilary, "why Neville should ever be bored. +She has a husband and children. Long before she is sixty she will have +Kay's and Gerda's children to be interested in."</p> + +<p>"No, I suppose one can't well be bored if one has grandchildren, can +one," Rosalind said, reflectively.</p> + +<p>There was a silence, during which Mrs. Hilary's eyes, coldly meeting +Rosalind's with their satirical comment, said "I know you are too selfish +a woman ever to bear children, and I thank God for it. Little Hilarys who +should be half yours would be more than I could endure."</p> + +<p>Rosalind, quite understanding, smiled her slow, full-mouthed, curling +smile, and held out to her mother-in-law the gold case with scented +cigarettes.</p> + +<p>"Oh no, you don't, do you. I never can remember that. It's so unusual."</p> + +<p>Her eyes travelled over Mrs. Hilary, from her dusty black shoes to her +pale, lined face. They put her, with deliberation, into the class with +companions, house-keepers, poor relations. Having successfully done that +(she knew it was successful, by Mrs. Hilary's faint flush) she said "You +don't look up to much, mother dear. Not as if Neville had been looking +after you very well."</p> + +<p>Mrs. Hilary, seeing her chance, swallowed her natural feelings and took +it.</p> + +<p>"The fact is, I sleep very badly. Not particularly just now, but +always.... I thought.... That is, someone told me ... that there have +been wonderful cures for insomnia lately ... through that new thing...."</p> + +<p>"Which new thing? Sedobrol? Paraldehyd? Gilbert keeps getting absurd +powders and tablets of all sorts. Thank God, I always sleep like a top."</p> + +<p>"No, not those. The thing <i>you</i> practice. Psycho-analysis, I mean."</p> + +<p>"Oh, psycho. But you wouldn't touch that, surely? I thought it was +anathema."</p> + +<p>"But if it really does cure people...."</p> + +<p>Rosalind's eyes glittered and gleamed. Her strawberry-red mouth curled +joyfully.</p> + +<p>"Of course it has.... Not that insomnia is always a case for psycho, you +know. It's sometimes incipient mania."</p> + +<p>"Not in my case." Mrs. Hilary spoke sharply.</p> + +<p>"Why no, of course not.... Well, I think you'd be awfully wise to get +analysed. Whom do you want to go to?"</p> + +<p>"I thought you could tell me. I know no names.... A <i>man</i>," Mrs. Hilary +added quickly.</p> + +<p>"Oh, it must be a man? I was going to say, I've a vacancy myself for a +patient. But women usually want men doctors. They nearly all do. It's +supposed to be part of the complaint.... Well, I could fix you up a +preliminary interview with Dr. Claude Evans. He's very good. He turns you +right inside out and shows you everything about yourself, from your first +infant passion to the thoughts you think you're keeping dark from him as +you sit in the consulting room. He's great."</p> + +<p>Mrs. Hilary was flushed. Hope and shame tingled in her together.</p> + +<p>"I shan't want to keep anything dark. I've no reason."</p> + +<p>Rosalind's mocking eyes said "That's what they all say." Her lips said +"The foreconscious self always has its reasons for hiding up the things +the unconscious self knows and feels."</p> + +<p>"Oh, all that stuff...." Mrs. Hilary was sick of it, having read too much +about it in "The Breath of Life." "I hope this Dr. Evans will talk to me +in plain English, not in that affected jargon."</p> + +<p>"He'll use language suited to you, I suppose," said Rosalind, "as far as +he can. But these things can't always be put so that just anyone can +grasp them. They're too complicated. You should read it up beforehand, +and try if you can understand it a little."</p> + +<p>Rosalind, who had no brains herself, insulting Mrs. Hilary's, was rather +more than Mrs. Hilary could bear. Rosalind she knew for a fool, so far as +intellectual matters went, for Nan had said so. Clever enough at clothes, +and talking scandal, and winning money at games, and skating over thin +ice without going through—but when it came to a book, or an idea, or a +political question, Rosalind was no whit more intelligent than she was, +in fact much less. She was a rotten psycho-analyst, all her in-laws were +sure.</p> + +<p>Mrs. Hilary said, "I've been reading a good deal about it lately. It +doesn't seem to me very difficult, though exceedingly foolish in parts."</p> + +<p>Rosalind was touchy about psycho-analysis; she always got angry if people +said it was foolish in any way. She was like that; she could see no weak +points in anything she took up; it came from being vain, and not having a +brain. She said one of the things angry people say, instead of discussing +the subject rationally.</p> + +<p>"I don't suppose the amount of it you've been able to read <i>would</i> seem +difficult. If you came to anything difficult you'd probably stop, you +see. Anyhow, if it seems to you so foolish why do you want to be +analysed?"</p> + +<p>"Oh, one may as well try things. I've no doubt there's something in it +besides the nonsense."</p> + +<p>Mrs. Hilary spoke jauntily, with hungry, unquiet, seeking eyes that would +not meet Rosalind's. She was afraid that Rosalind would find out that she +wanted to be cured of being miserable, of being jealous, of having +inordinate passions about so little. Rosalind, in some ways a great +stupid cow, was uncannily clever when it came to being spiteful and +knowing about you the things you didn't want known. It must be horrible +to be psycho-analysed by Rosalind, who had no pity and no reticence. The +things about you would not only be known but spread abroad among all +those whom Rosalind met. A vile, dreadful tongue.</p> + +<p>"You wouldn't, I expect, like <i>me</i> to analyse you," said Rosalind. "Not a +course, I mean, but just once, to advise you better whom to go to. It'd +have the advantage, anyhow, that I'd do it free. Anyone else will charge +you three guineas at the least."</p> + +<p>"I don't think," said Mrs. Hilary, "that relations—or connections—ought +to do one another. No, I'd better go to someone I don't know, if you'll +give me the name and address."</p> + +<p>"I thought you'd probably rather," Rosalind said in her slow, soft, cruel +voice, like a cat's purr. "Well, I'll write down the address for you. +It's Dr. Evans: he'll probably pass you on to someone down at the +seaside, if he considers you a suitable case for treatment."</p> + +<p>He would; of course he would. Mrs. Hilary felt no doubt as to that.</p> + +<p>Gilbert came in from the British Museum. He looked thin and nervous and +sallow amid all the splendour. He kissed his mother, thinking how queer +and untidy she looked, a stranger and pilgrim in Rosalind's drawing-room. +He too might look there at times a stranger and pilgrim, but at least, if +not voluptuous, he was neat. He glanced proudly and yet ironically from +his mother to his magnificent wife, taking in and understanding the +supra-normal redundancies of her make-up.</p> + +<p>"Rosalind," said Mrs. Hilary, knowing that it would be less than +useless to ask Rosalind to keep her secret, "has been recommending me a +psycho-analyst doctor. I think it is worth while trying if I can get my +insomnia cured that way."</p> + +<p>"My dear mother! After all your fulminations against the tribe! Well, I +think you're quite right to give it a trial. Why don't you get Rosalind +to take you on?"</p> + +<p>The fond pride in his voice! Yet there was in his eyes, as they rested +for a moment on Rosalind, something other than fond pride; something more +like mockery.</p> + +<p>Mrs. Hilary got up to go, and fired across the rich room the one shot in +her armoury.</p> + +<p>"I believe," she said, "that Rosalind prefers chiefly to take men +patients. She wouldn't want to be bored with an old woman."</p> + +<p>The shot drove straight into Gilbert's light-strung sensitiveness. +Shell-shocked officers; any other officers; anything male, presentable +and passably young; these were Rosalind's patients; he knew it, and +everyone else knew it. For a moment his smile was fixed into the +deliberate grin of pain. Mrs. Hilary saw it, saw Gilbert far back down +the years, a small boy standing up to punishment with just that brave, +nervous grin. Sensitive, defiant, vulnerable, fastidiously proud—so +Gilbert had always been and always would be.</p> + +<p>Remorsefully she clung to him.</p> + +<p>"Come and see me out, dearest boy" (so she called him, though Jim was +really that)—and she ignored Rosalind's slow, unconcerned protest +against her last remark. "Why, mother, you know I <i>asked</i> to do +you" ... but she couldn't prevent Rosalind from seeing her out too, +hanging her about with all the ridiculous parcels, kissing her on both +cheeks.</p> + +<p>Gilbert was cool and dry, pretending she hadn't hurt him. He would +always take hurts like that, with that deadly, steely lightness. By its +deadliness, its steeliness, she knew that it was all true (and much more +besides) that she had heard about Rosalind and her patients.</p> + + +<h4>5</h4> + +<p>She walked down to the bus with hot eyes. Rosalind had yawned softly and +largely behind her as she went down the front steps. Wicked, monstrous +creature! Lying about Gilbert's clever, nervous, eager life in great soft +folds, and throttling it. If Gilbert had been a man, a real male man, +instead of a writer and therefore effeminate, decadent, he would have +beaten her into decent behaviour. As it was she would ruin him, and he +would go under, not able to bear it, but cynically grinning still. +Perhaps the sooner the better. Anything was better than the way Rosalind +went on now, disgracing him and getting talked about, and making him hate +his mother for disliking her. He hadn't even come with her to the bus, to +carry her parcels for her.... That wasn't like Gilbert. As a rule he had +excellent manners, though he was not affectionate like Jim.</p> + +<p>Jim, Jim, Jim. Should she go to Harley Street? What was the use? She +would find only Margery there; Jim would be out. Margery had no serious +faults except the one, that she had taken the first place in Jim's +affections. Before Margery, Neville had had this place, but Mrs. Hilary +had been able, with Neville's never failing and skilful help, to disguise +this from herself. You can't disguise a wife's place in her husband's +heart. And Jim's splendid children too, whom she adored—they looked at +her with Margery's brown eyes instead of Jim's grey-blue ones. And they +preferred really (she knew it) their maternal grandmother, the jolly lady +who took them to the theatres.</p> + +<p>Mrs. Hilary passed a church. Religion. Some people found help there. But +it required so much of you, was so exhausting in its demands. Besides, it +seemed infinitely far away—an improbable, sad, remote thing, that gave +you no human comfort. Psycho-analysis was better; that opened gates into +a new life. "Know thyself," Mrs. Hilary murmured, kindling at the +prospect. Most knowledge was dull, but never that.</p> + +<p>"I will ring up from Waterloo and make an appointment," she thought.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_VI" id="CHAPTER_VI"></a>CHAPTER VI</h2> + +<h3>JIM</h3> + + +<h4>1</h4> + +<p>The psycho-analyst doctor was little and dark and while he was talking he +looked not at Mrs. Hilary but down at a paper whereon he drew or wrote +something she tried to see and couldn't. She came to the conclusion after +a time that he was merely scribbling for effect.</p> + +<p>"Insomnia," he said. "Yes. You know what <i>that</i> means?"</p> + +<p>She said, foolishly, "That I can't sleep," and he gave her a glance of +contempt and returned to his scribbling.</p> + +<p>"It means," he told her, "that you are afraid of dreaming. Your +unconscious self won't <i>let</i> you sleep.... Do you often recall your +dreams when you wake?"</p> + +<p>"Sometimes."</p> + +<p>"Tell me some of them, please."</p> + +<p>"Oh, the usual things, I suppose. Packing; missing trains; meeting +people; and just nonsense that means nothing. All the usual things, that +everyone dreams about."</p> + +<p>At each thing she said he nodded, and scribbled with his pencil. "Quite," +he said, "quite. They're bad enough in meaning, the dreams you've +mentioned. I don't suppose you'd care at present to hear what they +symbolise.... The dreams you haven't mentioned are doubtless worse. And +those you don't even recall are worst of all. Your unconscious is, very +naturally and properly, frightened of them.... Well, we must end all +that, or you'll never sleep as you should. Psycho-analysis will cure +these dreams; first it will make you remember them, then you'll talk +them out and get rid of them."</p> + +<p>"Dreams," said Mrs. Hilary. "Well, they may be important. But it's my +whole life...."</p> + +<p>"Precisely. I was coming to that. Of course you can't cure sleeplessness +until you have cured the fundamental things that are wrong with your +life. Now, if you please, tell me all you can about yourself."</p> + +<p>Here was the wonderful moment. Mrs. Hilary drew a long breath, and told +him. A horrid (she felt that somehow he was rather horrid) little man +with furtive eyes that wouldn't meet hers—(and he wasn't quite a +gentleman, either, but still, he wanted to hear all about her) he was +listening attentively, drinking it in. Not watching tennis while she +talked, like Barry Briscoe in the garden. Ah, she could go on and on, +never tired; it was like swimming in warm water.</p> + +<p>He would interrupt her with questions. Which had she preferred, her +father or her mother? Well, perhaps on the whole her father. He nodded; +that was the right answer; the other he would have quietly put aside as +one of the deliberate inaccuracies so frequently practised by his +patients. "You can leave out the perhaps. There's no manner of doubt +about it, you know." Lest he should say (instead of only looking it) +that she had been in love with her good father and he with her, Mrs. +Hilary hurried on. She had a chaste mind, and knew what these Freudians +were. It would, she thought (not knowing her doctor and how it would +have come to the same thing, only he would have thought her a more +pronounced case, because of the deception), have been wiser to have said +that she had preferred her mother, but less truthful, and what she was +enjoying now was an orgy of truth-telling. She got on to her marriage, +and how intensely Richard had loved her. He tried for a moment to be +indecent about love and marriage, but in her deep excitement she hardly +noticed him, but swept on to the births of the children, and Jim's croup.</p> + +<p>"I see," he said presently, "that you prefer to avoid discussing certain +aspects of life. You obviously have a sex complex."</p> + +<p>"Of course, of course. Don't you find that in all your patients? Surely +we may take that for granted...." She allowed him his sex complex, +knowing that Freudians without it would be like children deprived of a +precious toy; for her part she was impatient to get back to Jim, her +life's chief passion. The Œdipus complex, of course he would say it +was; what matter, if he would let her talk about it? And Neville. It was +strange to have a jealous passion for one's daughter. But that would, he +said, be an extension of the ego complex—quite simple really.</p> + +<p>She came to the present.</p> + +<p>"I feel that life has used me up and flung me aside like a broken tool. +I have no further relation to life, nor it to me. I have spent myself and +been spent, and now I am bankrupt. Can you make me solvent again?"</p> + +<p>She liked that as she said it.</p> + +<p>He scribbled away, like a mouse scrabbling.</p> + +<p>"Yes. Oh yes. There is no manner of doubt about it. None whatever. If you +are perfectly frank, you can be cured. You can be adjusted to life. Every +age in human life has its own adjustment to make, its own relation to its +environment to establish. All that repressed libido must be released and +diverted.... You have some bad complexes, which must be sublimated...."</p> + +<p>It sounded awful, the firm way he said it, like teeth or appendixes which +must be extracted. But Mrs. Hilary knew it wouldn't be like that really, +but delightful and luxurious, more like a Turkish bath.</p> + +<p>"You must have a course," he told her. "You are an obvious case for a +course of treatment. St. Mary's Bay? Excellent. There is a practising +psycho-analyst there now. You should have an hour's treatment twice +a week, to be really effective.... You would prefer a man, I take it?"</p> + +<p>He shot his eyes at her for a moment, in statement, not in enquiry. Well +he knew how much she would prefer a man. She murmured assent. He rose. +The hour was over.</p> + +<p>"How much will the course be?" she asked.</p> + +<p>"A guinea an hour, Dr. Cradock charges. He is very cheap."</p> + +<p>"Yes, I see. I must think it over. And you?"</p> + +<p>He told her his fee, and she blenched, but paid it. She was not rich, but +it had been worth while. It was a beginning. It had opened the door into +a new and richer life. St. Mary's Bay was illumined in her thoughts, +instead of being drab and empty as before. Sublimated complexes twinkled +over it like stars. Freed libido poured electrically about it. And Dr. +Cradock, she felt, would be more satisfactory as a doctor than this man, +who affected her with a faint nausea when he looked at her, though he +seldom did so.</p> + + +<h4>2</h4> + +<p>Windover too was illumined. She could watch almost calmly Neville talking +to Grandmama, wheeling her round the garden to look at the borders, for +Grandmama was a great gardener.</p> + +<p>Then Jim came down for a week-end, and it was as if the sun had risen on +Surrey. He sat with Mrs. Hilary in the arbour. She told him about Dr. +Evans and the other psycho-analyst doctor at St. Mary's Bay. He frowned +over Dr. Evans, who lived in the same street as he did.</p> + +<p>"Rosalind sent you to him; of course; she would. Why didn't you ask me, +mother? He's a desperate Freudian, you know, and they're not nearly so +good as the others. Besides, this particular man is a shoddy scoundrel, +I believe.... Was he offensive?"</p> + +<p>"I wouldn't let him be, Jim. I was prepared for that. I ... I changed the +conversation."</p> + +<p>Jim laughed, and did his favourite trick with her hand, straightening the +thin fingers one by one as they lay across his sensitive palm. How happy +it always made her!</p> + +<p>"Well," he said, "I daresay this man down at the Bay is all right. I'll +find out if he's any good or not.... They talk a lot of tosh, you know, +mother; you'll have to sift the grain from the chaff."</p> + +<p>But he saw that her eyes were interested, her face more alert than usual, +her very poise more alive. She had found a new interest in life, like +keeping a parrot, or learning bridge, or getting religion. It was what +they had always tried to find for her in vain.</p> + +<p>"So long," he said, "as you don't believe more than half what they tell +you.... Let me know how it goes on, won't you, and what this man is like. +If I don't approve I shall come and stop it."</p> + +<p>She loved that from Jim.</p> + +<p>"Of course, dearest. Of course I shall tell you about it. And I know one +must be careful."</p> + +<p>It was something to have become an object for care; it put one more in +the foreground. She would have gone on willingly with the subject, but +Jim changed her abruptly for Neville.</p> + +<p>"Neville's looking done up."</p> + +<p>She felt the little sharp pang which Neville's name on Jim's lips had +always given her. His very pronunciation of it hurt her—"Nivvle," he +said it, as if he had been an Irishman. It brought all the past back; +those two dear ones talking together, studying together, going off +together, bound by a hundred common interests, telling each other things +they never told her.</p> + +<p>"Yes. It's this ridiculous work of hers. It's so absurd: a married woman +of her age making her head ache working for examinations."</p> + +<p>In old days Jim and Neville had worked together. Jim had been proud of +Neville's success; she had been quicker than he. Mrs. Hilary, who had +welcomed Neville's marriage as ending all that, foresaw a renewal of the +hurtful business.</p> + +<p>But Jim looked grave and disapproving over it.</p> + +<p>"It is absurd," he agreed, and her heart rose. "And of course she can't +do it, can't make up all that leeway. Besides, her brain has lost its +grip. She's not kept it sharpened; she's spent her life on people. You +can't have it both ways—a woman can't, I mean. Her work's been +different. She doesn't seem to realise that what she's trying to learn up +again now, in the spare moments of an already full life, demands a whole +lifetime of hard work. She can't get back those twenty years; no one +could. And she can't get back the clear, gripping brain she had before +she had children. She's given some of it to them. That's nature's way, +unfortunately. Hard luck, no doubt, but there it is; you can't get round +it. Nature's a hybrid of fool and devil."</p> + +<p>He was talking really to himself, but was recalled to his mother by the +tears which, he suddenly perceived, were distorting her face.</p> + +<p>"And so," she whispered, her voice choked, "we women get left...."</p> + +<p>He looked away from her, a little exasperated. She cried so easily and so +superfluously, and he knew that these tears were more for herself than +for Neville. And she didn't really come into what he had been saying at +all; he had been talking about brains.</p> + +<p>"It's all right as far as most women are concerned," he said. "Most women +have no brains to be spoilt. Neville had. Most women could do nothing at +all with life if they didn't produce children; it's their only possible +job. <i>They've</i> no call to feel ill-used."</p> + +<p>"Of course," she said, unsteadily, struggling to clear her voice of +tears, "I know you children all think I'm a fool. But there was a time +when I read difficult books with your father ... he, a man with a +first-class mind, cared to read with me and discuss with me...."</p> + +<p>"Oh yes, yes, mother, I know."</p> + +<p>Jim and all of them knew all about those long-ago difficult books. They +knew too about the clever friends who used to drop in and talk.... If +only Mrs. Hilary could have been one of the nice, jolly, refreshing +people who own that they never read and never want to. All this fuss +about reading, and cleverness—how tedious it was! As if being stupid +mattered, as if it was worth bothering about.</p> + +<p>"Of course we don't think you a fool, mother dear; how could we?"</p> + +<p>Jim was kind and affectionate, never ironic, like Gilbert, or impatient, +like Nan. But he felt now the need for fresh air; the arbour was too +small for him and Mrs. Hilary, who was as tiring to others as to herself.</p> + +<p>"I think I shall go and interrupt Neville over her studies," said Jim, +and left the arbour.</p> + +<p>Mrs. Hilary looked after him, painfully loving his square, straight back, +his fine dark head, just flecked with grey, the clean line of his +profile, with the firm jaw clenched over the pipe. To have produced +Jim—wasn't that enough to have lived for? Mrs. Hilary was one of those +mothers who apply the Magnificat to their own cases. She always felt a +bond of human sympathy between herself and that lady called the Virgin +Mary, whom she thought over-estimated.</p> + + +<h4>3</h4> + +<p>Neville raised heavy violet eyes, faintly ringed with shadows, to Jim as +he came into the library. She looked at him for a moment absently, then +smiled. He came over to her and looked at the book before her.</p> + +<p>"Working? Where've you got to? Let's see how much you know."</p> + +<p>He took the book from her and glanced at it to see what she had been +reading.</p> + +<p>"Now we'll have an examination; it'll be good practice for you."</p> + +<p>He put a question, and she answered it, frowning a little.</p> + +<p>"H'm. That's not very good, my dear."</p> + +<p>He tried again; this time she could not answer at all. At the third +question she shook her head.</p> + +<p>"It's no use, Jimmy. My head's hopeless this afternoon. Another time."</p> + +<p>He shut the book.</p> + +<p>"Yes. So it seems.... You're overdoing it, Neville. You can't go on like +this."</p> + +<p>She lay back and spread out her hands hopelessly.</p> + +<p>"But I must go on like this if I'm ever going to get through my exams."</p> + +<p>"You're not going to, old thing. You're quite obviously unfitted to. It's +not your job any more. It's absurd to try; really it is."</p> + +<p>Neville shut her eyes.</p> + +<p>"Doctors ... doctors. They have it on the brain,—the limitations of the +feminine organism."</p> + +<p>"Because they know something about it. But I'm not speaking of the +feminine organism just now. I should say the same to Rodney if <i>he</i> +thought of turning doctor now, after twenty years of politics."</p> + +<p>"Rodney never could have been a doctor. He hates messing about with +bodies."</p> + +<p>"Well, you know what I think. I can't stop you, of course. It's only a +question of time, in any case. You'll soon find out for yourself that +it's no use."</p> + +<p>"I think," she answered, in her small, unemotional voice, "that it's +exceedingly probable that I shall."</p> + +<p>She lay inertly in the deep chair, her eyes shut, her hands opened, palms +downwards, as if they had failed to hold something.</p> + +<p>"What then, Jim? If I can't be a doctor what can I be? Besides Rodney's +wife, I mean? I don't say besides the children's mother, because that's +stopped being a job. They're charming to me, the darlings, but they don't +need me any more; they go their own way."</p> + +<p>Jim had noticed that.</p> + +<p>"Well, after all, you do a certain amount of political work—public +speaking, meetings, and so on. Isn't that enough?"</p> + +<p>"That's all second-hand. I shouldn't do it but for Rodney. I'm not +public-spirited enough. If Rodney dies before I do, I shan't go on with +that.... Shall I just be a silly, self-engrossed, moping old woman, no +use to anyone and a plague to myself?"</p> + +<p>The eyes of both of them strayed out to the garden.</p> + +<p>"Who's the silly moping old woman?" asked Mrs. Hilary's voice in the +doorway. And there she stood, leaning a little forward, a strained smile +on her face.</p> + +<p>"Me, mother, when I shall be old," Neville quickly answered her, smiling +in return. "Come in, dear. Jim's telling me how I shall never be a +doctor. He gave me a <i>viva voce</i> exam., and I came a mucker over it."</p> + +<p>Her voice had an edge of bitterness; she hadn't liked coming a mucker, +nor yet being told she couldn't get through exams. She had plenty of +vanity; so far everyone and everything had combined to spoil her. She +was determined, in the face of growing doubt, to prove Jim wrong yet.</p> + +<p>"Well," Mrs. Hilary said, sitting down on the edge of a chair, not +settling herself, but looking poised to go, so as not to seem to intrude +on their conversation, "well, I don't see why you want to be a doctor, +dear. Everyone knows women doctors aren't much good. <i>I</i> wouldn't trust +one."</p> + +<p>"Very stupid of you, mother," Jim said, trying to pretend he wasn't +irritated by being interrupted. "They're every bit as good as men."</p> + +<p>"Fancy being operated on by a woman surgeon. I certainly shouldn't risk +it."</p> + +<p>"<i>You</i> wouldn't risk it ... <i>you</i> wouldn't trust them. You're so +desperately personal, mother. You think that contributes to a discussion. +All it does contribute to is your hearers' knowledge of your limitations. +It's uneducated, the way you discuss."</p> + +<p>He smiled at her pleasantly, taking the sting out of his words, turning +them into a joke, and she smiled too, to show Neville she didn't mind, +didn't take it seriously. Jim might hurt her, but if he did no one should +know but Jim himself. She knew that at times she irritated even his good +temper by being uneducated and so on, so that he scolded her, but he +scolded her kindly, not venomously, as Nan did.</p> + +<p>"Well, I've certainly no right to be uneducated," she said, "and I can't +say I'm ever called so, except by my children.... Do you remember the +discussions father and I used to have, half through the night?"</p> + +<p>Jim and Neville did remember and thought "Poor father," and were silent.</p> + +<p>"I should think," said Mrs. Hilary, "there was very little we didn't +discuss. Politics, books, trades unions, class divisions, moral +questions, votes for women, divorce ... we thrashed everything out. +We both thoroughly enjoyed it."</p> + +<p>Neville said "I remember." Familiar echoes came back to her out of the +agitated past.</p> + +<p>"Those lazy men, all they want is to get a lot of money for doing no +work."</p> + +<p>"I like the poor well enough in their places, but I cannot abide them +when they try to step into ours."</p> + +<p>"Let women mind their proper business and leave men's alone."</p> + +<p>"I'm certainly not going to be on calling terms with my grocer's wife."</p> + +<p>"I hate these affected, posing, would-be clever books. Why can't people +write in good plain English?"...</p> + +<p>Richard Hilary, a scholar and a patient man, blinded by conjugal love, +had met futilities with arguments, expressions of emotional distaste with +facts, trying to lift each absurd wrangle to the level of a discussion; +and at last he died, leaving his wife with the conviction that she had +been the equal mate of an able man. Her children had to face and conquer, +with varying degrees of success, the temptation to undeceive her.</p> + +<p>"But I'm interrupting," said Mrs. Hilary. "I know you two are having a +private talk. I'll leave you alone...."</p> + +<p>"No, no, mother." That was Neville, of course. "Stay and defend me from +Jim's scorn."</p> + +<p>How artificial one had to be in family life! What an absurd thing these +emotions made of it!</p> + +<p>Mrs. Hilary looked happier, and more settled in her chair.</p> + +<p>"Where are Kay and Gerda?" Jim asked.</p> + +<p>Neville told him "In Guildford, helping Barry Briscoe with W.E.A. +meetings. They're spending a lot of time over that just now; they're both +as keen as mustard. Nearly as keen as he is. He sets people on fire. It's +very good for the children. They're bringing him up here to spend Sunday. +I think he hopes every time to find Nan back again from Cornwall, poor +Barry. He was very down in the mouth when she suddenly took herself off."</p> + +<p>"If Nan doesn't mean to have him, she shouldn't have encouraged him," +said Mrs. Hilary. "He was quite obviously in love with her."</p> + +<p>"Nan's always a dark horse," Neville said. "She alone knows what she +means."</p> + +<p>Jim said "She's a flibberty-gibbet. She'd much better get married. She's +not much use in the world at present. Now if <i>she</i> was a doctor ... or +doing something useful, like Pamela...."</p> + +<p>"Don't be prejudiced, Jimmy. Because you don't read modern novels +yourself you think it's no use their being written."</p> + +<p>"I read some modern novels. I read Conrad, in spite of the rather absurd +attitude some people take up about him; and I read good detective +stories, only they're so seldom good. I don't read Nan's kind. People +tell me they're tremendously clever and modern and delightfully written +and get very well reviewed, I daresay. I very seldom agree with +reviewers, in any case. Even about Conrad they seem to me (when I read +them—I don't often) to pick out the wrong points to admire and to miss +the points I should criticise."</p> + +<p>Mrs. Hilary said "Well, I must say I can't read Nan's books myself. +Simply, I don't think them good. I dislike all her people so much, and +her style."</p> + +<p>"You're a pair of old Victorians," Neville told them, pleasing Mrs. +Hilary by coupling them together and leaving Jim, who knew why she did +it, undisturbed. Neville was full of graces and tact, a possession Jim +had always appreciated in her.</p> + +<p>"And there," said Neville, who was standing at the window, "are Barry +Briscoe and the children coming in."</p> + +<p>Jim looked over her shoulder and saw the three wheeling their bicycles up +the drive.</p> + +<p>"Gerda," he remarked, "is a prettier thing every time I see her."</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_VII" id="CHAPTER_VII"></a>CHAPTER VII</h2> + +<h3>GERDA</h3> + + +<h4>1</h4> + +<p>It rained so hard, so much harder even than usual, that Sunday, that only +Barry and Gerda went to walk. Barry walked in every kind of weather, even +in the July of 1920.</p> + +<p>To-day after lunch Barry said "I'm going to walk over the downs. Anyone +coming?" and Gerda got up silently, as was her habit. Kay stretched +himself and yawned and said "Me for the fireside. I shall have to walk +every day for three weeks after to-day," for he was going to-morrow on a +reading-party. Rodney and Jim were playing a game of chess that had +lasted since breakfast and showed every sign of lasting till bed-time; +Neville and Mrs. Hilary were talking, and Grandmama was upstairs, having +her afternoon nap.</p> + + +<h4>2</h4> + +<p>They tramped along, waterproofed and bare-headed, down the sandy road. +The rain swished in Gerda's golden locks, till they clung dank and limp +about her cheeks and neck; it beat on Barry's glasses, so that he took +them off and blinked instead. The trees stormed and whistled in the +southerly wind that blew from across Merrow Downs. Barry tried to whistle +down it, but it caught the sound from his puckered lips and whirled it +away.</p> + +<p>Through Merrow they strode, and up onto the road that led across the +downs, and there the wind caught them full, and it was as if buckets of +water were being flung into their faces. The downs sang and roared; the +purple-grey sky shut down on the hill's shoulder like a tent.</p> + +<p>"Lord, what fun," said Barry, as they gasped for breath.</p> + +<p>Gerda was upright and slim as a wand against the buffeting; her white +little face was stung into shell-pink; her wet hair blew back like yellow +seaweed.</p> + +<p>Barry thought suddenly of Nan, who revelled in storms, and quickly shut +his mind on the thought. He was schooling himself to think away from Nan, +with her wild animal grace and her flashing mind and her cruel, careless +indifference.</p> + +<p>Gerda would have walked like this forever. Her wide blue eyes blinked +away the rain; her face felt stung and lashed, yet happy and cold; her +mouth was stiff and tight. She was part of the storm; as free, as fierce, +as singing; though outwardly she was all held together and silent, only +smiling a little with her shut mouth.</p> + +<p>As they climbed the downs, the wind blew more wildly in their faces. +Gerda swayed against it, and Barry took her by the arm and half pushed +her.</p> + +<p>So they reached Newlands Corner, and all southern Surrey stormed below +them, and beyond Surrey stormed Sussex, and beyond Sussex the angry, +unseen sea.</p> + +<p>They stood looking, and Barry's arm still steadied Gerda against the +gale.</p> + +<p>Gerda thought "It will end. It will be over, and we shall be sitting at +tea. Then Sunday will be over, and on Monday he will go back to town." +The pain of that end of the world turned her cold beneath the glow of the +storm. Then life settled itself, very simply. She must go too, and work +with him. She would tell him so on the way home, when the wind would let +them talk.</p> + +<p>They turned their backs on the storm and ran down the hill towards +Merrow. Gerda, light as a leaf on the wind, could have run all the way +back; Barry, fit and light too, but fifteen years ahead of her, fell +after five minutes into a walk.</p> + +<p>Then they could talk a little.</p> + +<p>"And to-morrow I shall be plugging in town," sighed Barry.</p> + +<p>Gerda always went straight to her point.</p> + +<p>"May I come into your office, please, and learn the work?"</p> + +<p>He smiled down at her. Splendid child!</p> + +<p>"Why, rather. Do you mean it? When do you want to come?"</p> + +<p>"To-morrow?"</p> + +<p>He laughed. "Good. I thought you meant in the autumn. ... To-morrow +by all means, if you will. As a matter of fact we're frightfully +short-handed in the office just now. Our typist has crocked, and we +haven't another yet, so people have to type their own letters."</p> + +<p>"I can do the typing," said Gerda, composedly. "I can type quite well."</p> + +<p>"Oh, but that'll be dull for you. That's not what you want, is it? +Though, if you want to learn about the work, it's not a bad way ... you +get it all passing through your hands.... Would you really take on that +job for a bit?"</p> + +<p>Gerda nodded.</p> + +<p>They were rapid and decided people; they did not beat about the bush. If +they wanted to do a thing and there seemed no reason why not, they did +it.</p> + +<p>"That's first-class," said Barry. "Give it a trial, anyhow.... Of course +you'll be on trial too; we may find it doesn't work. If so, there are +plenty of other jobs to be done in the office. But that's what we most +want at the moment."</p> + +<p>Barry had a way of assuming that people would want, naturally, to do the +thing that most needed doing.</p> + +<p>Gerda's soul sang and whistled down the whistling wind. It wasn't over, +then: it was only beginning. The W.E.A. was splendid; work was splendid; +Barry Briscoe was splendid; life was splendid. She was sorry for Kay at +Cambridge, Kay who was just off on a reading party, not helping in the +world's work but merely getting education. Education was inspiring in +connection with Democracy, but when applied to oneself it was dull.</p> + +<p>The rain was lessening. It fell on their heads more lightly; the wind was +like soft wet kisses on their backs, as they tramped through Merrow, and +up the lane to Windover.</p> + + +<h4>3</h4> + +<p>They all sat round the tea-table, and most of them were warm and sleepy +from Sunday afternoon by the fire, but Barry and Gerda were warm and +tingling from walking in the storm. Some people prefer one sensation, +some the other.</p> + +<p>Neville thought "How pretty Gerda looks, pink like that." She was glad +to know that she too looked pretty, in her blue afternoon dress. It +was good, in that charming room, that they should all look agreeable +to the eye. Even Mrs. Hilary, with her nervous, faded grace, marred by +self-consciousness and emotion. And Grandmama, smiling and shrewd, with +her old in-drawn lips; and Rodney, long and lounging and clever; Jim, +square-set, sensible, clean-cut, beautiful to his mother and to his women +patients, good for everyone to look at; Barry, brown and charming, with +his quick smile; the boy Kay, with his pale, rounded, oval face, his +violet eyes like his mother's, only short-sighted, so that he had a trick +of screwing them up and peering, and a mouth that widened into a happy +sweetness when he smiled.</p> + +<p>They were all right: they all fitted in with the room and with each +other.</p> + +<p>Barry said "I've not been idle while walking. I've secured a secretary. +Gerda says she's coming to work at the office for us for a bit. Now, at +once."</p> + +<p>He had not Gerda's knack of silence. Gerda would shut up tight over her +plans and thoughts, like a little oyster. She was no babbler; she did +things and never talked. But Barry's plans brimmed up and over.</p> + +<p>Neville said "You sudden child! And in July and August, too.... But +you'll have only a month before you join Nan in Cornwall, won't you?"</p> + +<p>Gerda nodded, munching a buttered scone.</p> + +<p>Grandmama, like an old war-horse scenting the fray, thought "Is it going +to be an affair? Will they fall in love? And what of Nan?" Then rebuked +herself for forgetting what she really knew quite well, having been +told it often, that men and girls in these days worked together and +did everything together, with no thought of affairs or of falling in +love.... Only these two were very attractive, the young Briscoe and the +pretty child, Gerda.</p> + +<p>Neville, who knew Gerda, and that she was certainly in love again (it +happened so often with Gerda), thought "Shall I stop it? Or shall I let +things take their course? Oh, I'll let them alone. It's only one of +Gerda's childish hero-worships, and he'll be kind without flirting. It'll +do Gerda good to go on with this new work she's so keen on. And she knows +he cares for Nan. I shall let her go."</p> + +<p>Neville very nearly always let Gerda and Kay go their own way now +that they were grown-up. To interfere would have been the part of the +middle-aged old-fashioned mother, and for that part Neville had no +liking. To be her children's friend and good comrade, that was her rôle +in life.</p> + +<p>"It's good of you to have her," she said to Barry. "I hope you won't be +sorry.... She's very stupid sometimes—regular Johnny Head-in-air."</p> + +<p>"I should be a jolly sight more use," Kay remarked. "But I can't come, +unfortunately. She can't spell, you know. And her punctuation is weird."</p> + +<p>"She'll learn," said Barry, cheerfully, and Gerda smiled serenely at them +over her tea-cup.</p> + + +<h4>4</h4> + +<p>Barry in the office was quick, alert, cheerful, and business-like, and +very decided, sometimes impatient. Efficient: that was the word. He would +skim the correspondence and dictate answers out of his head, walking +about the room, interrupted all the time by the telephone and by people +coming in to see him. Gerda's hero-worship grew and grew; her soul +swelled with it; she shut it down tight and remained calm and cool. When +he joked, when he smiled his charming smile, her heart turned over within +her. When he had signed the typed letters, she would sometimes put her +hand for a moment where his had rested on the paper. He was stern with +her sometimes, spoke sharply and impatiently, and that, in a queer way, +she liked. She had felt the same pleasure at school, when the head of the +school, whom she had greatly and secretly venerated, had had her up to +the sixth form room and rowed her. Why? That was for psycho-analysts to +discover; Gerda only knew the fact. And Barry, after he had spoken +sharply to her, when he had got over his anger, would smile and be even +kinder than usual, and that was the best of all.</p> + +<p>There were other people in the office, of course; men and women, busy, +efficient, coming in and out, talking, working, organising. They were +kind, pleasant people. Gerda liked them, but they were shadowy.</p> + +<p>And behind them all, and behind Barry, there was the work. The work was +enormously interesting. Gerda, child of her generation and of her +parents, was really a democrat, really public-spirited, outside the +little private cell of her withdrawn reserves. Beauty wasn't enough; +making poetry and pictures wasn't enough; one had to give everyone his +and her chance to have beauty and poetry and pictures too. In spite +of having been brought up in this creed, Gerda and Kay held to it, had +not reacted from it to a selfish aristocracy, as you might think likely. +Their democracy went much further than that of their parents. They +had been used ardently to call themselves Bolshevists until such time as +it was forced upon them that Bolshevism was not, in point of fact, a +democratic system. They and some of their friends still occasionally used +that label, in moments rather of after-dinner enthusiasm than of the +precise thinking that is done in morning light. For, after all, even Mr. +Bertrand Russell, even Mrs. Philip Snowden, might be wrong in their +hurried jottings down of the results of a cursory survey of so intricate +a system. And, anyhow, Bolshevism had the advantage that it had not yet +been tried in this country, and no one, not even the most imaginative and +clear-sighted political theorist, could forecast the precise form into +which the curious British climate might mould it if it should ever adopt +it. So that to believe in it was, anyhow, easier than believing in +anything which <i>had</i> been tried (and, like all things which are tried, +found wanting) such as Liberalism, Toryism, Socialism, and so forth.</p> + +<p>But the W.E.A. was a practical body, which went in for practical +adventure. Dowdy, schoolmarmish, extension-lectureish, it might be +and doubtless was. But a real thing, with guts in it, really doing +something; and after all, you can't be incendiarising the political +and economic constitution all your time. In your times off you can +do something useful, something which shows results, and for which such +an enormous amount of faith and hope is not required. Work for the +Revolution—yes, of course, one did that; one studied the literature of +the Internationals; one talked.... But did one help the Revolution on +much, when all was said? Whereas in the W.E.A. office one really got +things done; one typed a letter and something happened because of it; +more adult classes occurred, more workers got educated. Gerda, too young +and too serious to be cynical, believed that this must be right and good.</p> + + +<h4>5</h4> + +<p>A clever, strange, charming child Barry found her, old and young beyond +her twenty years. Her wide-set blue eyes seemed to see horizons, and too +often to be blind to foregrounds. She had a slow, deliberating habit of +work, and of some things was astonishingly ignorant, with the ignorance +of those who, when at school, have worked at what they preferred and +quietly disregarded the rest. If he let her compose a letter, its wording +would be quaint. Her prose was, in fact, worse than her verse, and that +was saying a good deal. But she was thorough, never slipshod. Her brain +ground slowly, but it ground exceeding small; there were no blurred edges +to her apprehension of facts; either she didn't know a thing or she did, +and that sharp and clear distinction is none too common. She would file +and index papers with precision, and find them again, slow and sure, when +they were required. Added to these secretarial gifts, such as they were, +she had vision; she saw always the dream through or in spite of the +business; she was like Barry himself in that. She was a good companion, +too, though she had no wit and not very much humour, and none of Nan's +gifts of keen verbal brilliance, frequent ribaldry and quick response; +she would digest an idea slowly, and did not make jokes; her clear mind +had the quality of a crystal rather than of a flashing diamond. The +rising generation; the woman citizen of to-morrow: what did not rest on +her, and what might she not do and be? Nan, on the other hand, was the +woman citizen of to-day. And Nan did not bother to use her vote because +she found all the parties and all the candidates about equally absurd. +Barry had argued with Nan about that, but made no impression on her +cynical indifference; she had met him with levity. To Gerda there was a +wrong and a right in politics, instead of only a lot of wrongs; touching +young faith, Nan called it, but Barry, who shared it, found it cheering.</p> + +<p>This pretty little white pixyish person, with her yellow hair cut +straight across her forehead and waving round her neck like the curled, +shining petals of a celandine, with her straight-thinking mind and her +queer, secret, mystic thoughts—she was the woman of the future, a +citizen and a mother of citizens. She and the other girls and boys were +out to build the new heaven and the new earth, and their children would +carry it on. This responsibility of Gerda's invested her with a special +interest in the eyes of Barry, who lived and worked for the future, and +who, when he saw an infant mewling and puking in a pram, was apt to think +"The hope for the world," and smile at it encouragingly, overlooking its +present foolishness of aspect and habit. If ever he had children ... if +Nan would marry him ... but Nan would always lightly slide away when he +got near her.... He could see her now, with the cool, amused smile +tilting her lips, always sliding away, eluding him.... Nan, like a wild +animal for grace, brilliant like blown fire, cool like the wind, stabbing +herself and him with her keen wit....</p> + +<p>Gerda, looking up from her typewriter to say "How do you spell +comparatively?" saw his face in its momentary bitterness as he frowned, +pen in hand, out of the window. He was waiting to sign the letters +before he went out to a committee meeting, and she thought she was +annoying him by her slowness. She spelt comparatively anyhow, and with +the wholehearted wrongness to which she and the typewriter, both bad +spellers, often attained in conjunction, hastily finished and laid +the letters before him. Called back to work and actuality, Barry was +again cheerful and kind, and he smilingly corrected comparatively.</p> + +<p>"You might ask me," he suggested, "instead of experimenting, when I do +happen to be at hand. Otherwise a dictionary, or Miss Pinner in the next +room...?"</p> + +<p>Gerda was happy, now that the shadow was off his face. Raillery and +rebuke she did not mind; only the shadow, which fell coldly on her heart +too.</p> + +<p>He left the office then for the day, as he often did, but it was warm and +alive with his presence, and she was doing his work, and she would see +him again in the morning.</p> + + +<h4>6</h4> + +<p>Gerda went home only for week-ends now; it was too slow a journey to make +every morning and evening. She stayed during the week at a hotel called +the Red House, in Magpie Alley, off Bouverie Street. It was a hotel kept +by revolutionary souls exclusively for revolutionary souls. Gerda, who +had every right there, had gained admittance through friends of hers who +lodged there. Every evening at six o'clock she went back through the +rain, as she did this evening, and changed her wet clothes and sat down +to dinner, a meal which all the revolutionary souls ate together so that +it was sacramental, a breaking of common bread in token of a common +faith.</p> + +<p>They were a friendly party. At one end of the table Aunt Phyllis +presided. Aunt Phyllis, who was really the aunt of only one young man, +kept this Red House. She was a fiery little revolutionary in the late +forties, small, and thin and darting, full of faith and fire. She was on +the staff of the British Bolshevist, and for the rest, wrote leaflets, +which showered from her as from trees in autumn gales. So did the Rev. +Anselm Digby. Mr. Digby had also the platform habit, he would go round +the country denouncing and inciting to revolution in the name of Christ +and of the Third International. Though grizzled, he belonged to the +League of Youth, as well as to many other eager fraternities. He was +unbeneficed, having no time for parish work. This ardent clergyman sat +at the other end of Aunt Phyllis's table, as befitted his years.</p> + +<p>The space between the two ends was filled by younger creatures. It was +spring with them; their leaflets were yet green and unfallen; all that +fell from them was poetry, pathetic in its sadness, bitter in its irony, +free of metrical or indeed of any other restraints, and mainly either +about how unpleasant had been the trenches in which they had spent the +years of the great war and those persons over military age who had not +been called upon to enter them, or about freedom; free love, free thought +and a free world. Yes, both these subjects sound a little old-fashioned, +but the Red House was concerned with these elemental changeless things. +And some of them also wrote fiction, quiet, grey, a little tired, about +unhappy persons to whom nothing was very glad or very sad, and certainly +neither right nor wrong, but only rough or smooth of surface, bright or +dark of hue, sweet or bitter of taste or smell. Most of those in the room +belonged to a Freudian circle at their club, and all were anti-Christian, +except an Irish Roman Catholic, who had taken an active part in the +Easter uprising of 1916, since when he had been living in exile; Aunt +Phyllis, who believed in no churches but in the Love of God; and of +course, Mr. Digby. All these people, though they did not always get on +very well together, were linked by a common aim in life, and by common +hatreds.</p> + +<p>But, in spite of hate, the Red House lodgers were a happy set of +revolutionaries. Real revolutionaries; having their leaflets printed by +secret presses; members of societies which exchanged confidential letters +with the more eminent Russians, such as Litvinoff and Trotzky, collected +for future publication secret circulars, private strike-breaking orders, +and other <i>obiter dicta</i> of a rash government, and believed themselves to +be working to establish the Soviet government over Europe. They had been +angry all this summer because the Glasgow conference of the I.L.P. had +broken with the Third International. They spoke with acerbity of Mr. +Ramsay Macdonald and Mr. and Mrs. Philip Snowden. But now, in August, +they had little acerbity to spare for anything but the government's +conduct of Irish affairs.</p> + + +<h4>7</h4> + +<p>But, though these were Gerda's own people, the circle in which she felt +at home, she looked forward every night to the morning, when there would +be the office again, and Barry.</p> + +<p>Sometimes Barry took her out to dinner and a theatre. They went to the +"Beggar's Opera," "The Grain of Mustard Seed," "Mary Rose" (which they +found sentimental), and to the "Beggar's Opera" again Gerda had her own +ideas, very definite and critical, about dramatic merit. Barry enjoyed +discussing the plays with her, listening to her clear little silver voice +pronouncing judgment. Gerda might be forever mediocre in any form of +artistic expression, but she was an artist, with the artist's love of +merit and scorn of the second-rate.</p> + +<p>They went to "Mary Rose" with some girl cousins of Barry's, two jolly +girls from Girton. Against their undiscriminating enthusiasm, Gerda and +her fastidious distaste stood out sharp and clear, like some delicate +etching among flamboyant pictures. That fastidiousness she had from both +her parents, with something of her own added.</p> + +<p>Barry went home with her. He wondered how her fastidiousness stood the +grimy house in Magpie Alley and its ramshackle habit of life, after the +distinctions and beauty of Windover, but he thought it was probably very +good for her, part of the experience which should mould the citizen. +Gerda shrank from no experience. At the corner of Bouverie Street they +met a painted girl out for hire, strayed for some reason into this +unpropitious locality. For the moment Gerda had fallen behind and Barry +seemed alone. The girl stopped in his path, looked up in his face +enquiringly, and he pushed his way, not urgently, past her. The next +moment Gerda's hand caught his arm.</p> + +<p>"Stop, Barry, stop."</p> + +<p>"Stop? What for?"</p> + +<p>"The woman. Didn't you see?"</p> + +<p>"My dear child, I can't do anything for her."</p> + +<p>Like the others of her generation, Gerda was interested in persons of +that profession; he knew that already; only they saw them through a +distorting mist.</p> + +<p>"We can find out where she works, what wages she gets, why she's on the +streets. She's probably working for sweated wages somewhere. We <i>ought</i> +to find out."</p> + +<p>"We can't find out about every woman of that kind we meet. The thing is +to attack the general principle behind the thing, not each individual +case.... Besides, it would be so frightfully impertinent of us. How +would you like it if someone stopped you in the street and asked you +where you worked and whether you were sweated or not, and why you were +out so late?"</p> + +<p>"I shouldn't mind, if they wanted to know for a good reason. One <i>ought</i> +to find out how things are, what people's conditions are."</p> + +<p>It was what Barry too believed and practised, but he could only say +"It's the wrong way round. You've got to work from the centre to the +circumference.... And don't fall into the sentimental mistake of thinking +that all prostitution comes from sweated labour. A great deal does, of +course, but a great deal because it seems to some women an easy and +attractive way of earning a living.... Oh, hammer away at sweated +labour for all you're worth, of course, for that reason and every other; +but you won't stop prostitution till you stop the demand for it. That's +the poisonous root of the thing. So long as the demand goes on, you'll +get the supply, whatever economic conditions may be."</p> + +<p>Gerda fell silent, pondering on the strange tastes of those who desired +for some reason the temporary company of these unfortunate females, so +unpleasing to the eye, to the ear, to the mind, to the smell; desired it +so much that they would pay money for it. <i>Why?</i> Against that riddle the +non-comprehension of her sex beat itself, baffled. She might put it the +other way round, try to imagine herself desiring, paying for, the +temporary attentions of some dirty, common, vapid, and patchouli-scented +man—and still she got no nearer. For she never could desire it.... Well, +anyhow, there the thing was. Stop the demand? Stop that desire of men for +women? Stop the ready response of women to it? If that was the only way, +then there was indeed nothing for it but education—and was even +education any use for that?</p> + +<p>"Is it love," she asked of Barry, "that the men feel who want these +women?"</p> + +<p>Barry laughed shortly. "Love? Good Lord, no."</p> + +<p>"What then, Barry?"</p> + +<p>"I don't know that it can be explained, exactly.... It's a passing +taste, I suppose, a desire for the company of another sex from one's +own, just because it <i>is</i> another sex, though it may have no other +attractions.... It's no use trying to analyse it, one doesn't get +anywhere. But it's not love."</p> + +<p>"What's love, then? What's the difference?"</p> + +<p>"Have I to define love, walking down Magpie Alley? You could do it as +well as I could. Love has the imagination in it, and the mind. I suppose +that's the difference. And, too, love wants to give. This is all +platitude. No one can ever say anything new about love, it's all been +said. Got your latch-key?"</p> + +<p>Gerda let herself into the Red House and went up to bed and lay wakeful. +Very certainly she loved Barry, with all her imagination and all her +mind, and she would have given him more than all that was hers. Very +surely and truly she loved him, even if after all he was to be her uncle +by marriage, which would make their family life like that in one of Louis +Couperus's books. But why unhappy like that? Was love unhappy? If she +might see him sometimes, talk to him, if Nan wouldn't want all of him all +the time—and it would be unlike Nan to do that—she could be happy. One +could share, after all. Women must share, for there were a million more +women in England than men.</p> + +<p>But probably Nan didn't mean to marry him at all. Nan never married +people....</p> + + +<h4>8</h4> + +<p>Next morning at the office Barry said he had heard from Nan. She had +asked him to come too and bicycle in Cornwall, with her and Gerda and +Kay.</p> + +<p>"You will, won't you," said Gerda.</p> + +<p>"Rather, of course."</p> + +<p>A vaguely puzzled note sounded in his voice. But he would come.</p> + +<p>Cornwall was illuminated to Gerda. The sharing process would begin there. +But for a week more she had him to herself, and that was better.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_VIII" id="CHAPTER_VIII"></a>CHAPTER VIII</h2> + +<h3>NAN</h3> + + +<h4>1</h4> + +<p>Nan at Marazion bathed, sailed, climbed, walked and finished her book. +She had a room at St. Michael's Café, at the edge of the little town, +just above the beach. Across a space of sea at high tide, and of wet +sand and a paved causeway slimy with seaweed at the ebb, St. Michael's +Mount loomed, dark against a sunset sky, pale and unearthly in the dawn, +an embattled ship riding anchored on full waters, or stranded on drowned +sands.</p> + +<p>Nan stayed at the empty little town to be alone. But she was not alone +all the time, for at Newlyn, five miles away, there was the artist +colony, and some of these artists were her friends. (In point of fact, it +is impossible to be alone in Cornwall; the place to go to for that would +be Hackney, or some other district of outer London, where inner Londoners +do not go for holidays.) Had she liked she could have had friends to play +with all day, and talk and laughter and music all night, as in London. +She did not like. She went out by herself, worked by herself; and all the +time, in company, or alone, talking or working, she knew herself +withdrawn really into a secret cove of her own which was warm and golden +as no actual coves in this chill summer were warm and golden; a cove on +whose good brown sand she lay and made castles and played, while at her +feet the great happy sea danced and beat, the great tumbling sea on which +she would soon put out her boat.</p> + +<p>She would count the days before Barry would be with her.</p> + +<p>"Three weeks now. Twenty days; nineteen, eighteen..." desiring neither to +hurry nor to retard them, but watching them slip behind her in a deep +content. When he came, he and Gerda and Kay, they would spend one night +and one day in this fishing-town, lounging about its beach, and in +Newlyn, with its steep crooked streets between old grey walls hung with +shrubs, and beyond Newlyn, in the tiny fishing hamlets that hung above +the little coves from Penzance to Land's End. They were going to bicycle +all along the south coast. But before that they would have had it out, +she and Barry; probably here, in the little pale climbing fishing-town. +No matter where, and no matter how; Nan cared nothing for scenic +arrangements. All she had to do was to convey to Barry that she would +say yes now to the question she had put off and off, let him ask it, +give her answer, and the thing would be done.</p> + + +<h4>2</h4> + +<p>Meanwhile she wrote the last chapters of her book, sitting on the beach +among drying nets and boats, in some fishing cove up the coast. The +Newlyn shore she did not like, because the artist-spoilt children crowded +round her, interrupting.</p> + +<p>"Lady, lady! Will you paint us?"</p> + +<p>"No. I don't paint."</p> + +<p>"Then what <i>are</i> you doing?"</p> + +<p>"Writing. Go away."</p> + +<p>"May we come with you to where you're staying?"</p> + +<p>"No. Go away."</p> + +<p>"Last year a lady took us to her studio and gave us pennies. And when +she'd gone back to London she sent us each a doll."</p> + +<p>Silence.</p> + +<p>"Lady, if we come with you to your studio, will you give us pennies?"</p> + +<p>"No. Why should I?"</p> + +<p>"You might because you wanted to paint us. You might because you liked +us."</p> + +<p>"I don't do either. Go away now."</p> + +<p>They withdrew a little and turned somersaults, supposing her to be +watching. The artistic colony had a lot to answer for, Nan thought; they +were making parasites and prostitutes of the infant populace. Children +could at their worst be detestable in their vanity, their posing, their +affectation, their unashamed greed.</p> + +<p>"Barry's and mine," she thought (I suppose we'll have some), "shall at +least not pose. They may break all the commandments, but if they turn +somersaults to be looked at I shall drop them into a public crèche and +abandon them."</p> + +<p>The prettiest little girl looked sidelong at the unkind lady, and +believed her half-smile to denote admiration. Pretty little girls often +make this error.</p> + +<p>Stephen Lumley came along the beach. It was lunch time, and after lunch +they were going out sailing. Stephen Lumley was the most important artist +just now in Newlyn. He had been in love with Nan for some months, and did +not get on with his wife. Nan liked him; he painted brilliantly, and was +an attractive, clever, sardonic person. Sailing with him was fun. They +understood each other; they had rather the same cynical twist to them. +They understood each other really better than Nan and Barry did. Neither +of them needed to make any effort to comprehend each other's point of +view. And each left the other where he was. Whereas Barry filled Nan, +beneath her cynicism, beneath her levity, with something quite new—a +queer desire, to put it simply, for goodness, for straight living and +generous thinking, even, within reason, for usefulness. More and more he +flooded her inmost being, drowning the old landmarks, like the sea at +high tide. Nan was not a Christian, did not believe in God, but she came +near at this time to believing in Christianity as possibly a fine and +adventurous thing to live.</p> + + +<h4>3</h4> + +<p>Echoes of the great little world so far off came to the Cornish coasts, +through the Western Mercury and the stray, belated London papers. Rumours +of a projected coal strike, of fighting in Mesopotamia, of political +prisoners on hunger strike, of massacres in Ireland, and typists murdered +at watering-places; echoes of Fleet Street quarrels, of Bolshevik gold +("Not a bond! Not a franc! Not a rouble!") and, from the religious +world, of fallen man and New Faiths for Old. And on Sundays one bought a +paper which had for its special star comic turn the reminiscences of the +expansive wife of one of our more patient politicians. The world went on +just the same, quarrelling, chattering, lying; sentimental, busy and +richly absurd; its denizens tilting against each other's politics, +murdering each other, trying and always failing to swim across the +channel, and always talking, talking, talking. Marazion and Newlyn, and +every other place were the world in little, doing all the same things in +their own miniature way. Each human soul was the world in little, with +all the same conflicts, hopes, emotions, excitements and intrigues. But +Nan, swimming, sailing, eating, writing, walking and lounging, browning +in salt winds and waters, was happy and remote, like a savage on an +island who meditates exclusively on his own affairs.</p> + + +<h4>4</h4> + +<p>Nan met them at Penzance station. The happy three; they would be good to +make holiday with. Already they had holiday faces, though not yet browned +like Nan's.</p> + +<p>Barry's hand gripped Nan's. He was here then, and it had come. Her head +swam; she felt light, like thistledown on the wind.</p> + +<p>They came up from the station into quiet, gay, warm Penzance, and had tea +at a shop. They were going to stay at Marazion that night and the next, +and spend the day bicycling to Land's End and back. They were all four +full of vigour, brimming with life and energy that needed to be spent. +But Gerda looked pale.</p> + +<p>"She's been over-working in a stuffy office," Barry said. "And not, except +when she dined with me, getting proper meals. What do you think she +weighs, Nan?"</p> + +<p>"About as much as that infant there," Nan said, indicating a stout person +of five at the next table.</p> + +<p>"Just about, I daresay. She's only six stone. What are we to do about +it?"</p> + +<p>His eyes caressed Gerda, as they might have caressed a child. He would be +a delightful uncle by marriage, Nan thought.</p> + +<p>They took the road to Marazion. The tide was going out. In front of them +the Mount rose in a shallowing violet sea.</p> + +<p>"My word!" said Barry, and Kay, screwing up his eyes, murmured, "Good old +Mount." Gerda's lips parted in a deep breath; beauty always struck her +dumb.</p> + +<p>Into the pale-washed, straggling old village they rode, stabled their +bicycles, and went down to the shining evening sands, where now the paved +causeway to the Mount was all exposed, running slimy and seaweedy between +rippled wet sands and dark, slippery rocks. Bare-footed they trod it, +Gerda and Kay in front, Barry and Nan behind, and the gulls talking and +wheeling round them.</p> + +<p>Nan stopped, the west in her eyes. "Look."</p> + +<p>Point beyond point they saw stretching westward to Land's End, dim and +dark beyond a rose-flushed sea.</p> + +<p>"Isn't it clear," said Nan. "You can see the cliff villages ever so far +along ... Newlyn, Mousehole, Clement's Island off it—and the point of +Lamorna."</p> + +<p>Barry said "We'll go to Land's End by the coast road to-morrow, shan't +we, not the high road?"</p> + +<p>"Oh, the coast road, yes. It's about twice the distance, with the ups and +downs, and you can't ride all the way. But we'll go by it."</p> + +<p>For a moment they stood side by side, looking westward over the bay.</p> + +<p>Nan said, "Aren't you glad you came?"</p> + +<p>"I should say so!"</p> + +<p>His answer came, quick and emphatic. There was a pause after it. Nan +suddenly turned on him the edge of a smile.</p> + +<p>Barry did not see it. He was not looking at her, nor over the bay, but +in front of him, to where Gerda, a thin little upright form, moved +bare-legged along the shining causeway to the moat.</p> + +<p>Nan's smile flickered out. The sunset tides of rose flamed swiftly over +her cheeks, her neck, her body, and receded as sharply, as if someone had +hit her in the face. Her pause, her smile, had been equivalent, as she +saw them, to a permission, even to an invitation. He had turned away +unnoticing, a queer, absent tenderness in his eyes, as they followed +Gerda ... Gerda ... walking light-footed up the wet causeway.... Well, if +he had got out of the habit of wanting to make love to her, she would not +offer him chances again. When he got the habit back, he must make his own +chances as best he could.</p> + +<p>"Come on," said Nan. "We must hurry."</p> + +<p>She left no more pauses, but talked all the time, about Newlyn, about the +artists, about the horrid children, the fishing, the gulls, the weather.</p> + +<p>"And how's the book?" he asked.</p> + +<p>"Nearly done. I'm waiting for the end to make itself."</p> + +<p>He smiled and looking round at him she saw that he was not smiling at +her or her book, but at Gerda, who had stepped off the causeway and was +wading in a rock pool.</p> + +<p>He must be obsessed with Gerda; he thought of her, apparently, all the +time he was talking about other things. It was irritating for an aunt to +bear.</p> + +<p>They joined Kay and Gerda on the island. Kay was prowling about, looking +for a way by which to enter the forbidden castle. Kay always trespassed +when he could, and was so courteous and gentle when he was caught at it +that he disarmed comment. But this time he could not manage to evade the +polite but firm eye of the fisherman on guard. They crossed over to +Marazion again all together and went to the café for supper.</p> + + +<h4>5</h4> + +<p>It was a merry, rowdy meal they had; ham and eggs and coffee in an upper +room, with the soft sea air blowing in on them through open windows. Nan +and Barry chattered, and Kay took his cheerful part; only Gerda sparse of +word, was quiet and dreamy, with her blue eyes opened wide against sleep, +for she had not slept until late last night.</p> + +<p>"High time she had a holiday," Barry said of her. "Four weeks' grind in +August—it's beginning to tell now."</p> + +<p>Fussy Barry was about the child. As bad as Frances Carr with Pamela. +Gerda was as strong as a little pony really, though she looked such a +small, white, brittle thing.</p> + +<p>They got out maps and schemed out roads and routes over their cigarettes. +Then they strolled about the little town, exploring its alleys and narrow +byways that gave on the sea. The moon had risen now, and Marazion was cut +steeply in shadow and silver light, and all the bay lay in shadow and +silver too, to where the lights of Penzance twinkled like a great lit +church.</p> + +<p>Barry thought once, as he had often thought in the past, "How brilliant +Nan is, and how gay. No wonder she never needed me. She needs no one," +and this time it did not hurt him to think it. He loved to listen to her, +to talk and laugh with her, to look at her, but he was free at last; he +demanded nothing of her. Those restless, urging, disappointed hopes and +longings lay dead in him, dead and at peace. He could not have put his +finger on the moment of their death; there had been no moment; like good +soldiers they had never died, but faded away, and till to-night he had +not known that they had gone. He would show Nan now that she need fear +no more pestering from him; she need not keep on talking without pause +whenever they were alone together, which had been her old way of defence, +and which she was beginning again now. They could drop now into +undisturbed friendship. Nan was the most stimulating of friends. It was +refreshing to talk things out with her again, to watch her quick mind +flashing and turning and cutting its way, brilliant, clear, sharp, like +a diamond.</p> + +<p>They went to bed; Barry and Kay to the room they had got above a public +house, Nan and Gerda to Nan's room at the café, where they squeezed into +one bed.</p> + +<p>Gerda slept, lying very straight and still, as was her habit in sleep. +Nan lay wakeful and restless, watching the moonlight steal across the +floor and lie palely on the bed and on Gerda's waxen face and yellow +hair. The pretty, pale child, strange in sleep, like a little mermaiden +lost on earth. Nan, sitting up in bed, one dark plait hanging over each +shoulder, watched her with brooding amber eyes. How young she was, how +very, very young. It was touching to be so young. Yet why, when youth +was, people said, the best time? It wasn't really touching to be young; +it was touching not to be young, because you had less of life left. +Touching to be thirty; more touching to be forty; tragic to be fifty and +heartbreaking to be sixty. As to seventy, as to eighty, one would feel as +one did during the last dance of a ball, tired but fey in the paling +dawn, desperately making the most of each bar of music before one went +home to bed. That was touching; Mrs. Hilary and Grandmama were touching. +Not Gerda and Kay, with their dance just beginning.</p> + +<p>A bore, this sharing one bed. You couldn't sleep, however small and quiet +your companion lay. They must get a bed each, when they could, during +this tour. One must sleep. If one didn't one began to think. Every time +Nan forced herself to the edge of sleep, a picture sprang sharply before +her eyes—the flaming sky and sea, herself and Barry standing together on +the causeway.</p> + +<p>"Aren't you glad you came?" Her own voice, soft, encouraging.</p> + +<p>"I should say so!" The quick, matter-of-fact answer.</p> + +<p>Then a pause and she turning on him the beginnings of a smile. An +allowing, inviting ... seductive ... smile.</p> + +<p>And he, smiling too, but not at her, looking away to where Gerda and Kay +walked bare-legged to the Mount.</p> + +<p>Flame scorched her again. The pause each time she saw it now became +longer, more deliberate, more inviting, more emptily unfilled. Her smile +became more luring, his more rejecting. As she saw it now, in the cruel, +distorting night, he had seen her permission and refused it. By day she +had known that simple Barry had seen nothing; by day she would know it +again. Between days are set nights of white, searing flame, two in a bed +so that one cannot sleep. Damn Gerda, lying there so calm and cool. It +had been a mistake to ask Gerda to come; if it hadn't been for Gerda they +wouldn't have been two in a bed.</p> + +<p>"Barry's a good deal taken up with her just now," said Nan to herself, +putting it into plain, deliberate words, as was her habit with life's +situations. "He does get taken up with pretty girls, I suppose, when he's +thrown with them. All men do, if you come to that. For the moment he's +thinking about her, not about me. That's a bore. It will bore me to death +if it goes on.... I wonder how long it will go on? I wonder how soon +he'll want to make love to me again?"</p> + +<p>Having thus expressed the position in clear words, Nan turned her mind +elsewhere. What do people think of when they are seeking sleep? It is +worse than no use to think of what one is writing; that wakes one up, +goads every brain-cell into unwholesome activity. No use thinking of +people; they are too interesting. Nor of sheep going through gates; they +tumble over one another and make one's head ache. Nor of the coming day; +that is too difficult: nor of the day which is past; that is too near. +Wood paths, quiet seas, running streams—these are better.</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Any lazy man can swim<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Down the current of a stream."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>Or the wind in trees, or owls crying, or waves beating on warm shores. +The waves beat now; ran up whisperingly with the incoming tide, broke, +and sidled back, dragging at the wet sand.... Nan, hearing them, drifted +at last into sleep.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_IX" id="CHAPTER_IX"></a>CHAPTER IX</h2> + +<h3>THE PACE</h3> + + +<h4>1</h4> + +<p>The coast road to Land's End is like a switchback. You climb a mountain +and are flung down to sea level like a shooting star, and climb a +mountain again. Sometimes the road becomes a sandy cliff path and you +have to walk.</p> + +<p>But at last, climbing up and being shot down and walking, Nan and Barry +and Gerda and Kay reached Land's End. They went down to Sennan Cove to +bathe, and the high sea was churning breakers on the beach. Nan dived +through them with the arrowy straightness of a fish or a submarine, came +up behind them, and struck out to sea. The others behind her, less +skilful, floundered and were dashed about by the waves. Barry and Kay +struggled through them somehow, bruised and choked; Gerda, giving it +up—she was no great swimmer—tranquilly rolled and paddled in the surf +by herself.</p> + +<p>Kay called to her, mocking.</p> + +<p>"Coward. Sensualist. Come over the top like a man."</p> + +<p>Nan, turning to look at her from the high crest of a wave, thought +"Gerda's afraid in a high sea. She is afraid of things: I remember."</p> + +<p>Nan herself was afraid of very little. She had that kind of buoyant +physical gallantry which would take her into the jaws of danger with +a laugh. When in London during the air raids she had walked about the +streets to see what could be seen; in France with the Fannys she had +driven cars over shelled roads with a cool composure which distinguished +her even among that remarkably cool and composed set of young women; as +a child she had ridden unbroken horses and teased and dodged savage bulls +for the fun of it; she would go sailing in seas that fishermen refused to +go out in; part angry dogs which no other onlooker would touch; sleep out +alone in dark and lonely woods, and even on occasion brave pigs. The kind +of gay courage she had was a physical heritage which can never be +acquired. What can be acquired, with blood and tears, is the courage of +the will, stubborn and unyielding, but always nerve-racked, proudly and +tensely strung up. Nan's form of fearlessness, combined as it was with +the agility of a supple body excellently trained, would carry her lightly +through all physical adventures, much as her arrowy strength and skill +carried her through the breakers without blundering or mishap and let her +now ride buoyantly on each green mountain as it towered.</p> + +<p>Barry, emerging spluttering from one of these, said "All very jolly for +you, Nan. You're a practised hand. We're being drowned. I'm going out of +it," and he dived through another wave for the shore. Kay, a clumsier +swimmer, followed him, and Nan rode her tossing horses, laughing at them, +till she was shot onto the beach and dug her fingers deep into the +sucking sand.</p> + +<p>"A very pretty landing," said Barry, generously, rubbing his bruised +limbs and coughing up water.</p> + +<p>Gerda rose from the foam where she had been playing serenely impervious +to the tauntings of Kay.</p> + +<p>Barry said "Happy child. She's not filled up with salt water and battered +black and blue."</p> + +<p>Nan remarked that neither was she, and they went to their rock +crannies to dress. They dressed and undressed in a publicity, a mixed +shamelessness that was almost appalling.</p> + +<p>They rode back to Marazion after tea along the high road, more soberly +than they had come.</p> + +<p>"Tired, Gerda?" Barry said, at the tenth mile, as they pulled up a hill. +"Hold on to me."</p> + +<p>Gerda refused to do so mean a thing. She had her own sense of honour, and +believed that everyone should carry his or her own burden. But when they +had to get off and walk up the hill she let him help to push her bicycle.</p> + +<p>"Give us a few days, Nan," said Barry, "and we'll all be as fit as you. +At present we're fat and scant of breath from our sedentary and useful +life."</p> + +<p>"Our life"—as if they had only the one between them.</p> + +<p>At Newlyn Nan stopped. She said she was going to supper with someone +there and would come on later. She was, in fact, tired of them. She +dropped into Stephen Lumley's studio, which was, as usual after painting +hours, full of his friends, talking and smoking. That was the only way to +spend the evening, thought Nan, talking and smoking and laughing, never +pausing. Anyhow that was the way she spent it.</p> + +<p>She got back to Marazion at ten o'clock and went to her room at the +little café. Looking from its window, she saw the three on the shore by +the moonlit sea. Kay was standing on the paved causeway, and Barry and +Gerda, some way off, were wading among the rocks, bending over the pools, +as if they were looking for crabs.</p> + +<p>Nan went to bed. When Gerda came in presently, she lay very still and +pretended to be asleep.</p> + +<p>It was dreadful, another night of sharing a bed. Dreadful to lie so +close one to the other; dreadful to touch accidentally; touching people +reminded you how alive they are, with their separate, conscious throbbing +life so close against yours.</p> + + +<h4>2</h4> + +<p>Next morning they took the road eastward. They were going to ride along +the coast to Talland Bay, where they were going to spend a week. They +were giving themselves a week to get there, which would allow plenty of +time for bathing by the way. It is no use hurrying in Cornwall, the hills +are too steep and the sea too attractive, and lunch and tea, when ordered +in shops, so long in coming. The first day they only got round the Lizard +to Cadgwith, where they dived from steep rocks into deep blue water. Nan +dived from a high rock with a swoop like a sea bird's, a pretty thing to +watch. Barry was nearly as good; he too was physically proficient. The +Bendishes were less competent; they were so much younger, as Barry said. +But they too reached the water head first, which is, after all, the main +thing in diving. And as often as Nan dived, with her arrowy swoop, Gerda +tumbled in too, from the same rock, and when Nan climbed a yet higher +rock and dived again, Gerda climbed too, and fell in sprawling after her. +Gerda to-day was not to be outdone, anyhow in will to attempt, whatever +her achievement might lack. Nan looked up from the sea with a kind of +mocking admiration at the little figure poised on the high shelf of rock, +slightly unsteady about the knees, slightly blue about the lips, thin +white arms pointing forward for the plunge.</p> + +<p>The child had pluck.... It must have hurt, too, that slap on the nearly +flat body as she struck the sea. She hadn't done it well. She came up +with a dazed look, shaking the water out of her eyes, coughing.</p> + +<p>"You're too ambitious," Barry told her. "That was much too high for you. +You're also blue with cold. Come out."</p> + +<p>Gerda looked up at Nan, who was scrambling nimbly onto the highest ledge +of all, crying "I must have one more."</p> + +<p>Barry said to Gerda "No, you're not going after her. You're coming out. +It's no use thinking you can do all Nan does. None of us can."</p> + +<p>Gerda gave up. The pace was too hard for her. She couldn't face that +highest rock; the one below had made her feel cold and queer and shaky as +she stood on it. Besides, why was she trying, for the first time in her +life, to go Nan's pace, which had always been, and was now more than ever +before, too hot and mettlesome for her? She didn't know why; only that +Nan had been, somehow, all day setting the pace, daring her, as it were, +to make it. It was becoming, oddly, a point of honour between them, and +neither knew how or why.</p> + + +<h4>3</h4> + +<p>On the road it was the same. Nan, with only the faintest, if any +application of brakes, would commit herself to lanes which leaped +precipitously downwards like mountain streams, zig-zagging like a +dog's-tooth pattern, shingled with loose stones, whose unseen end might +be a village round some sharp turn, or a cove by the sea, or a field path +running to a farm, or merely the foot of one hill and the beginning of +the steep pull up the next. Coast roads in Cornwall are like that—often +uncertain in their ultimate goal (for map-makers, like bicyclists, are +apt to get tired of them, and, tiring, break them off, so to speak, in +mid-air, leaving them suspended, like snapped ends of string). But +however uncertain their goal may be, their form is not uncertain at +all; it can be relied on to be that of a snake in agony leaping down a +hill or up; or, if one prefers it, that of a corkscrew plunging downwards +into a cork.</p> + +<p>Nan leaped and plunged with them. She was at the bottom while the others +were still jolting, painfully brake-held, albeit rapidly, half-way down. +And sometimes, when the slope was more than usually like the steep roof +of a house, the zig-zags more than usually acute, the end even less than +usually known, the whole situation, in short, more dreadful and perilous, +if possible, than usual, the others surrendered, got off and walked. They +couldn't really rely on their brakes to hold them, supposing something +should swing round on them from behind one of the corners; they couldn't +be sure of turning with the road when it turned at its acutest, and such +failure of harmony with one's road is apt to meet with a dreadful +retribution. Barry was adventurous, and Kay and Gerda were calm, but to +all of them life was sweet and limbs and bicycles precious; none of them +desired an untimely end.</p> + +<p>But Nan laughed at their prognostications of such an end. "It will be +found impossible to ride down these hills," said their road book, and Nan +laughed at that too. You can, as she observed, ride down anything; it is +riding up that is the difficulty. Anyhow, she, who had ridden bucking +horses and mountainous seas, could ride down anything that wore the +semblance of a road. Only fools, Nan believed, met with disasters while +bicycling. And jamming on the brakes was bad for the wheels and tiring to +the hands. So brakeless, she zig-zagged like greased lightning to the +bottom.</p> + +<p>It was on the second day, on the long hill that runs from Manaccan down +to Helford Ferry, that Gerda suddenly took her brakes off and shot after +her. That hill is not a badly spiralling one, but it is long and steep +and usually ridden with brakes. And just above Helford village it has one +very sharp turn to the left.</p> + +<p>Nan, standing waiting for the others on the bridge, looked round and saw +Gerda shooting with unrestrained wheels and composed face round the last +bend. She had nearly swerved over at the turn, but not quite. She got off +at the bridge.</p> + +<p>"Hullo," said Nan. "Quicker than usual, weren't you?" She had a +half-grudging, half-ironic grin of appreciation for a fellow sportsman, +the same grin with which she had looked up at her from the sea at +Cadgwith. Nan liked daring. Though it was in her, and she knew that it +was in her, to hate Gerda with a cold and deadly anger, the sportsman +in her gave its tribute. For what was nothing and a matter of ordinary +routine to her, might be, she suspected, rather alarming to the quiet, +white-faced child.</p> + +<p>Then the demon of mischief leapt in her. If Gerda meant to keep the pace, +she should have a pace worth keeping. They would prove to one another +which was the better woman, as knights in single combat of old proved it, +or fighters in the ring to-day. As to Barry, he should look on at it, +whether he liked it or not.</p> + +<p>Barry and Kay rushed up to them, and they went through the little +thatched rose-sweet hamlet to the edge of the broad blue estuary and +shouted for the ferry.</p> + + +<h4>4</h4> + +<p>After that the game began in earnest. Nan, from being casually and +unconsciously reckless, became deliberately dare-devil and always with a +backward, ironic look for Gerda, as if she said "How about it? Will this +beat you?"</p> + +<p>"A bicycling tour with Nan isn't nearly so safe as the front trenches of +my youth used to be," Barry commented. "Those quiet, comfortable old +days!"</p> + +<p>There, indeed, one was likely to be shot, or blown to pieces, or buried, +or gassed, and that was about all. But life now was like the Apostle +Paul's; they were in journeyings often, in weariness often, in perils of +waters, in perils by their own countrymen, in perils on the road, in the +wilderness, in the sea, in hunger and thirst, in cold and nakedness. In +perils too, so Gerda believed, of cattle; for these would stray in +bellowing herds about narrow lanes, and they would all charge straight +through them, missing the lowered horns by some incredible fluke of +fortune. If this seems to make Gerda a coward, it should be remembered +that she showed none of these inward blenchings, but went on her way with +the rest, composed as a little wax figure at Madame Tussaud's. She was, +in fact, of the stuff of which martyrs are made, and would probably have +gone to the stake for a conviction. But stampeding cattle, and high seas, +and brakeless lightning descents, she did not like, however brave a face +she was sustained by grace to meet them with. After all she was only +twenty, an age when some people still look beneath their beds before +retiring.</p> + +<p>Bulls, even, Gerda was called upon to face, in the wake of two unafraid +males and a reckless aunt. What young female of twenty, always excepting +those who have worked on the land, and whose chief reward is familiarity +with its beasts, can with complete equanimity face bulls? One day a path +they were taking down to the sea ran for a while along the top of a +stone hedge, about five feet high and three feet wide. Most people +would have walked along this, leading their bicycles. Nan, naturally, +bicycled, and Barry and Kay, finding it an amusing experiment, bicycled +after her. Gerda, in honour bound, bicycled too. She accepted stoically +the probability that she would very soon bicycle off the hedge into the +field and be hurt. In the fields on either side of them, cows stared at +them in mild surprise and some disdain, coming up close to look. So, if +one bicycled off, it would be into the very jaws, onto the very horns, of +cattle. Female cattle, indeed, but cattle none the less.</p> + +<p>Then Kay chanted "Fat bulls of Basan came round about me on either side," +and it was just like that. One fat bull at least trotted up to the hedge, +waving his tail and snorting, pawing and glaring, evincing, in short, +all the symptoms common to his kind.</p> + +<p>So now if one bicycled off it would be into the very maw of an angry +bull.</p> + +<p>"You look out you don't fall, Gerda," Kay flung back at her over his +shoulder. "It will be to a dreadful death, as you see. Nobody'll save +you; nobody'll dare."</p> + +<p>"Feeling unsteady?" Barry's gentler voice asked her from behind. "Get off +and walk it. I will too."</p> + +<p>But Gerda rode on, her eyes on Nan's swift, sure progress ahead. Barry +should not see her mettle fail; Barry, who had been through the war and +would despise cowards.</p> + +<p>They reached the end of the hedge, and the path ran off it into a field. +And between this field and the last one there was an open gap, through +which the bull of Basan lumbered with fierce eyes and stood waiting for +them to descend.</p> + +<p>"I don't like that creature," Kay said. "I'm afraid of him. Aren't you, +Barry?"</p> + +<p>"Desperately," Barry admitted. "Anyone would be, except Nan, of course."</p> + +<p>Nan was bicycling straight along the field path, and the bull stood +staring at her, his head well down, in readiness, as Gerda saw, to +charge. But he did not charge Nan. Bulls and other ferocious beasts think +it waste of time to charge the fearless; they get no fun out of an +unfrightened victim. He waited instead for Gerda, as she knew he would +do.</p> + +<p>Kay followed Nan, still chanting his psalm. Gerda followed Kay. As she +dropped from the hedge onto the path she turned round once and met +Barry's eyes, her own wide and grave, and she was thinking "I can +bear anything if he is behind me and sees it happen. I couldn't bear +it if I were the last and no one saw." To be gored all alone, none to +care ... who could bear that?</p> + +<p>The next moment Barry was no longer behind her, but close at her side, +bicycling on the grass by the path, between her and the bull. Did he know +she was frightened? She hadn't shown it, surely.</p> + +<p>"The wind," said Gerda, in her clear, small crystalline voice, "has gone +round more to the south. Don't you think so?" And reminded Barry of a +French aristocrat demoiselle going with calm and polite conversation to +the scaffold.</p> + +<p>"I believe it has," he said, and smiled.</p> + +<p>And after all the bull, perhaps not liking the look of the bicycles, +didn't charge at all, but only ran by their sides with snorting noises +until they left him behind at the next gate.</p> + +<p>"Did you," enquired Gerda, casually, "notice that bull? He was an awfully +fine one, wasn't he?"</p> + +<p>"A remarkably noble face, I thought," Kay returned.</p> + +<p>They scrambled down cliffs to the cove and bathed.</p> + + +<h4>5</h4> + +<p>Nan, experienced in such things, as one is at the age of thirty-three if +one has led a well-spent life, knew now beyond peradventure what had +happened to Barry and what would never happen again between him and her. +So that was that, as she put it, definite and matter-of-fact to herself +about it. He had stopped wanting her. Well then, she must stop wanting +him, as speedily as might be. It took a little time. You could not shoot +down the hills of the emotions with the lightning rapidity with which you +shot down the roads. Also, the process was excruciatingly painful. You +had to unmake so many plans, unthink so many thoughts.... Oh, but that +was nothing. You had to hear his voice softened to someone else, see the +smile in his eyes caressing someone else, feel his whole mind, his whole +soul, reaching out in protecting, adoring care to someone else's charm +and loveliness ... as once, as so lately, they had reached out to +yours.... That was torture for the bravest, far worse than any bulls or +seas or precipices could be to Gerda. Yet it had to be gone through, as +Gerda had to leap from towering cliffs into wild seas and ride calmly +among fierce cattle.... When Nan woke in the night it was like toothache, +a sharp, gnawing, searing hell of pain. Memory choked her, bitter +self-anger for joy once rejected and then forever lost took her by the +throat, present desolation drowned her soul in hard, slow tears, jealousy +scorched and seared.</p> + +<p>But, now every morning, pride rose, mettlesome and gallant, making her +laugh and talk, so that no one guessed. And with pride, a more reckless +physical daring than usual; a kind of scornful adventurousness, that +courted danger for its own sake, and wordlessly taunted the weaker spirit +with "Follow if you like and can. If you don't like, if you can't, I am +the better woman in that way, though you may be the beloved." And the +more the mettle of the little beloved rose to meet the challenge, the +hotter the pace grew. Perhaps they both felt, without knowing they felt +it, that there was something in Barry which leaped instinctively out to +applaud reckless courage, some element in himself which responded to it +even while he called it foolhardy. You could tell that Barry was of that +type, by the quick glow of his eyes and smile. But the rivalry in daring +was not really for Barry; Barry's choice was made. It was at bottom the +last test of mettle, the ultimate challenge from the loser to the winner, +in the lists chosen by the loser as her own. It was also—for Nan was +something of a bully—the heckling of Gerda. She might have won one game, +and that the most important, but she should be forced to own herself +beaten in another, after being dragged painfully along rough and +dangerous ways. And over and above and beyond all this, beyond rivalry +and beyond Gerda, was the eternal impatience for adventure as such, for +quick, vehement living, which was the essence of Nan. She found things +more fun that way: that summed it.</p> + + +<h4>6</h4> + +<p>The long strange days slid by like many-coloured dreams. The steep +tumbling roads tilted behind them, with their pale, old, white and slate +hamlets huddled between fields above a rock-bound sea. Sometimes they +would stop early in the day at some fishing village, find rooms there for +the night, and bathe and sail till evening. When they bathed, Nan would +swim far out to sea, striking through cold, green, heaving waters, +slipping cleverly between currents, numbing thought with bodily action, +drowning emotion in the sea.</p> + +<p>Once they were all caught in a current and a high sea and swept out, and +had to battle for the shore. Even Nan, even Barry, could not get to the +cove from which they had bathed; all they could try for was the jut of +rocks to westward toward which the seas were sweeping, and to reach this +meant a tough fight.</p> + +<p>"Barry!"</p> + +<p>Nan, looking over her shoulder, saw Gerda's bluing face and wide staring +eyes and quickening, flurried strokes. Saw, too, Barry at once at her +side, heard his "All right, I'm here. Catch hold of my shoulder."</p> + +<p>In a dozen strokes Nan reached them, and was at Gerda's other side.</p> + +<p>"Put one hand on each of us and strike for all you're worth with your +legs. That's the way...."</p> + +<p>Numbly Gerda's two hands gripped Barry's right shoulder and Nan's left. +Between them they pulled her, her slight weight dragging at them heavily, +helping the running sea against them. They were being swept westward +towards the rocks, but swept also outwards, beyond them; they struck +northward and northward and were carried always south. It was a close +thing between their swimming and the current, and it looked as though the +current was winning.</p> + +<p>"It'll have to be all we know now," said Nan, as they struggled ten yards +from the point.</p> + +<p>She and Barry both rather thought that probably it would be all they knew +and just the little more they didn't know—they would be swept round the +point well to the south of the outermost rock—and then, hey for open +sea!</p> + +<p>But their swimming proved, in this last fierce minute of the struggle, +stronger than the sea. They were swept towards the jutting point, almost +round it, when Nan, flinging forward to the right, caught a slippery +ledge of rock with her two hands and held on. Barry didn't think she +could hold on for more than a second against the swinging seas, or, if +she did, could consolidate her position. But he did not know the full +power of Nan's trained, acrobatic body. Slipping her shoulder from +Gerda's clutch, she grasped instead Gerda's right hand in her left, and +with her other arm and with all her sinuous, wiry strength, heaved +herself onto the rock and there flung her body flat, reaching out her +free hand to Barry. Barry caught it just in time, as he was being swung +on a wave outwards, and pulled himself within grip of the rock, and in +another moment he lay beside her, and between them they hauled up Gerda.</p> + +<p>Gerda gasped "Kay," and they saw him struggling twenty yards behind.</p> + +<p>"Can you do it?" Barry shouted to him, and Kay grinned back.</p> + +<p>"Let you know presently.... Oh yes, I'm all right. Getting on fine."</p> + +<p>Nan stood up on the rock, watching him, measuring with expert eye the +ratio between distance and pace, the race between Kay's swimming and the +sea. It seemed to her to be anyone's race.</p> + +<p>Barry didn't stand up. The strain of the swim had been rather too much +for him, and in his violent lurch onto the rock he had strained his side. +He lay flat, feeling battered and sick.</p> + +<p>The sea, Nan judged after another minute of watching, was going to beat +Kay in this race. For Kay's face had turned a curious colour, and he was +blue round the lips. Kay's heart was not strong.</p> + +<p>Nan's dive into the tossing waves was as pretty a thing as one would wish +to see. The swoop of it carried her nearly to Kay's side. Coming up she +caught one of his now rather limp hands and put it on her left shoulder, +saying "Hold tight. A few strokes will do it."</p> + +<p>Kay, who was no fool and who had known that he was beaten, held tight, +throwing all his exhausted strength into striking out with his other +three limbs.</p> + +<p>They were carried round the point, beyond reach of it had not Barry's +outstretched hand been ready. Nan touched it, barely grasped it, just and +no more, as they were swung seawards. It was enough. It pulled them to +the rock's side. Again Nan wriggled and scrambled up, and then they +dragged Kay heavily after them as he fainted.</p> + +<p>"Neat," said Barry to Nan, his appreciation of a well-handled job, his +love of spirit and skill, rising as it were to cheer, in spite of his +exhaustion and his concern for Gerda and Kay. "My word, Nan, you're a +sportsman."</p> + +<p>"He does faint sometimes," said Gerda of Kay. "He'll be all right in a +minute."</p> + +<p>Kay came to.</p> + +<p>"Oh Lord," he said, "that was a bit of a grind." And then, becoming +garrulous with the weak and fatuous garrulity of those who have recently +swooned, "Couldn't have done it without you, Nan. I'd given myself up for +lost. All my past life went by me in a flash.... I really did think it +was U.P. with me, you know. And it jolly nearly was, for all of us, +wasn't it?... Whose idea was it bathing just here? Yours, Nan. Of course. +It would be. No wonder you felt our lives on your conscience and had to +rescue us all. Oh Lord, the water I've drunk! I do feel rotten."</p> + +<p>"We all look pretty rotten, I must say," Nan commented, looking from +Kay's limp greenness to Gerda's shivering blueness, from Gerda to Barry, +prostrate, bruised and coughing, from Barry to her own cut and battered +knees and elbows, bleeding with the unaccountable profuseness of limbs +cut by rocks in the sea. "I may die from loss of blood, and the rest of +you from prostration, and all of us from cold. Are we well enough to +scale the rocks now and get to our clothes?"</p> + +<p>"We're not well enough for anything," Barry returned. "But we'd better do +it. We don't want to die here, with the sea washing over us in this damp +way."</p> + +<p>They climbed weakly up to the top of the rock promontory, and along it +till they dropped down into the little cove. They all felt beaten and +limp, as if they had been playing a violent but not heating game of +football. Even Nan's energy was drained.</p> + +<p>Gerda said with chattering teeth, as she and Nan dressed in their rocky +corner, "I suppose, Nan, if it hadn't been for you and Barry, I'd have +drowned."</p> + +<p>"Well, I suppose perhaps you would. If you come to think of it, we'd most +of us be dying suddenly half the time if it weren't for something—some +chance or other."</p> + +<p>Gerda said "Thanks awfully, Nan," in her direct, childlike way, and Nan +turned it off with "You might have thanked me if you <i>had</i> drowned, +seeing it was my fault we bathed there at all. I ought to have known +it wasn't safe for you or Kay."</p> + +<p>Looking at the little fragile figure shivering in its vest, Nan felt in +that moment no malice, no triumph, no rivalry, no jealous anger; nothing +but the protecting care for the smaller and weaker, for Neville's little +pretty, precious child that she had felt when Gerda's hand clutched her +shoulder in the sea.</p> + +<p>"Life-saving seems to soften the heart," she reflected, grimly, conscious +as always of her own reactions.</p> + +<p>"Well," said Kay weakly, as they climbed up the cliff path to the little +village, "I do call that a rotten bathe. Now let's make for the pub and +drink whiskey."</p> + + +<h4>7</h4> + +<p>It was three days later. They had spent an afternoon and a night at +Polperro, and the sun shone in the morning on that incredible place as +they rode out of it after breakfast. Polperro shakes the soul and the +æsthetic nerves like a glass of old wine; no one can survey it unmoved, +or leave it as he entered it, any more than you can come out of a fairy +ring as you went in. In the afternoon they had bathed in the rock pools +along the coast. In the evening the moon had magically gleamed on the +little town, and Barry and Gerda had sat together on the beach watching +it, and then in the dawn they had risen (Barry and Gerda again) and rowed +out in a boat to watch the pilchard haul, returning at breakfast time +sleepy, fishy and bright-eyed.</p> + +<p>As they climbed the steep hill path that leads to Talland, the sun danced +on the little harbour with its fishing-boats and its sad, crowding, +crying gulls, and on the huddled white town with its narrow crooked +streets and overhanging houses: Polperro had the eerie beauty of a dream +or of a little foreign port. Such beauty and charm are on the edge of +pain; you cannot disentangle them from it. They intoxicate, and pierce to +tears. The warm morning sun sparkled on a still blue sea, and burned the +gorse and bracken by the steep path's edge to fragrance. So steep the +path was that they had to push their bicycles up it with bent backs and +labouring steps, so narrow that they had to go in single file. It was +never meant for cyclists, only for walkers; the bicycling road ran far +inland.</p> + +<p>They reached the cliff's highest point, and looked down on Talland Bay. +By the side of the path, on a grass plateau, a stone war-cross reared +grey against a blue sky, with its roll of names, and its comment—"True +love by life, true love by death is tried...."</p> + +<p>The path, become narrower, rougher and more winding, plunged sharply, +steeply downwards, running perilously along the cliff's edge. Nan got on +her bicycle.</p> + +<p>Barry called from the rear, "Nan! It can't be done! It's not +rideable.... Don't be absurd."</p> + +<p>Nan, remarking casually "It'll be rideable if I ride it," began to do so.</p> + +<p>"Madwoman," Barry said, and Kay assured him, "Nan'll be all right. No one +else would, but she's got nine lives, you know."</p> + +<p>Gerda came next behind Nan. For a moment she paused, dubiously, watching +Nan's flying, brakeless progress down the wild ribbon of a footpath, +between the hill and the sea. A false swerve, a failure to turn with the +path, and one would fly off the cliff's edge into space, fall down +perhaps to the blue rock pools far below.</p> + +<p>To refuse Nan's lead now would be to fail again in pluck and skill before +Barry. "My word, Nan, you're a sportsman!" Barry had said, coughing +weakly on the rock onto which Nan had dragged them all out of the sea. +That phrase, and the ring in his hoarse voice as he said it, had stayed +with Gerda.</p> + +<p>She got onto her bicycle, and shot off down the precipitous path.</p> + +<p>"My God!" It was Barry's voice again, from the rear. "Stop, Gerda ... oh, +you little fool.... <i>Stop</i>...."</p> + +<p>But it was too late for Gerda to stop then if she had tried. She was in +full career, rushing, leaping, jolting over the gorse roots under the +path, past thought and past hope and oddly past fear, past anything but +the knowledge that what Nan did she too must do.</p> + +<p>Strangely, inaptly, the line of verse she had just read sung itself in +her mind as she rushed.</p> + +<p>"True love by life, true love by death is tried...."</p> + +<p>She took the first sharp turn, and the second. The third, a right angle +bending inward from the cliff's very edge, she did not take. She dashed +on instead, straight into space, like a young Phœbus riding a horse of +the morning through the blue air.</p> + + +<h4>8</h4> + +<p>Nan, far ahead, nearly on the level, heard the crash and heard voices +crying out. Jamming on her brakes she jumped off; looked back up the +precipitous path; saw nothing but its windings. She left her bicycle at +the path's side and turned and ran up. Rounding a sharp bend, she saw +them at last above her; Barry and Kay scrambling furiously down the side +of the cliff, and below them, on a ledge half-way down to the sea, a +tangled heap that was Gerda and her bicycle.</p> + +<p>The next turn of the path hid them from sight again. But in two minutes +she had reached the place where their two bicycles lay flung across the +path, and was scrambling after them down the cliff.</p> + +<p>When she reached them they had disentangled Gerda and the bicycle, and +Barry held Gerda in his arms. She was unconscious, and a cut in her head +was bleeding, darkening her yellow hair, trickling over her colourless +face. Her right leg and her left arm lay stiff and oddly twisted.</p> + +<p>Barry, his face drawn and tense, said "We must get her up to the path +before she comes to, if possible. It'll hurt like hell if she's +conscious."</p> + +<p>They had all learnt how to help their fellow creatures in distress, and +how you must bind broken limbs to splints before you move their owner so +much as a yard. The only splint available for Gerda's right leg was her +left, and they bound it tightly to this with three handkerchiefs, then +tied her left arm to her side with Nan's stockings, and used the fourth +handkerchief (which was Gerda's, and the cleanest) for her head. She came +to before the arm was finished, roused to pained consciousness by the +splinting process, and lay with clenched teeth and wet forehead, +breathing sharply but making no other sound.</p> + +<p>Then Barry lifted her in his arms and the others supported her on either +side, and they climbed slowly and gently up to the path, not by the sheer +way of their descent but by a diagonal track that joined the path further +down.</p> + +<p>"I'm sorry, darling," Barry said through his teeth when he jolted her. +"I'm frightfully sorry.... Only a little more now."</p> + +<p>They reached the path and Barry laid her down on the grass by its side, +her head supported on Nan's knee.</p> + +<p>"Very bad, isn't it?" said Barry gently, bending over her.</p> + +<p>She smiled up at him, with twisted lips.</p> + +<p>"Not so bad, really."</p> + +<p>"You little sportsman," said Barry, softly and stooping, he kissed her +pale cheek.</p> + +<p>Then he stood up and spoke to Nan.</p> + +<p>"I'm going to fetch a doctor if there's one in Talland. Kay must ride +back and fetch the Polperro doctor, in case there isn't. In any case I +shall bring up help and a stretcher from Talland and have her taken +down."</p> + +<p>He picked up his bicycle and stood for a moment looking down at the face +on Nan's knee.</p> + +<p>"You'll look after her," he said, quickly, and got on the bicycle and +dashed down the path, showing that he too could do that fool's trick if +it served any good purpose.</p> + +<p>Gerda, watching him, caught her breath and forgot pain in fear until, +swerving round the next bend, he was out of sight.</p> + + +<h4>9</h4> + +<p>Nan sat very still by the path, staring over the sea, shading Gerda's +head from the sun. There was nothing more to be done than that; there was +no water, even, to bathe the cut with.</p> + +<p>"Nan."</p> + +<p>"Yes?"</p> + +<p>"Am I much hurt? How much hurt, do you think?"</p> + +<p>"I don't know how much. I think the arm is broken. The leg may be only +sprained. Then there's the cut—I daresay that isn't very much—but one +can't tell that."</p> + +<p>"I must have come an awful mucker," Gerda murmured, after a pause. "It +must have looked silly, charging over the edge like that.... You didn't."</p> + +<p>"No. I didn't."</p> + +<p>"It was stupid," Gerda breathed, and shut her eyes.</p> + +<p>"No, not stupid. Anyone might have. It was a risky game to try."</p> + +<p>"You tried it."</p> + +<p>"Oh, I ... I do try things. That's no reason why you should.... You'd +better not talk. Lie quite quiet. It won't be very long now before they +come.... The pain's bad, I know."</p> + +<p>Gerda's head was hot and felt giddy. She moved it restlessly. Urgent +thoughts pestered her; her normal reticences lay like broken fences about +her.</p> + +<p>"Nan."</p> + +<p>"Yes. Shall I raise your head a little?"</p> + +<p>"No, it's all right.... About Barry, Nan."</p> + +<p>Nan grew rigid, strung up to endure.</p> + +<p>"And what about Barry?"</p> + +<p>"Just that I love him. I love him very much; beyond anything in the +world."</p> + +<p>"Yes. You'd better not talk, all the same."</p> + +<p>"Nan, do you love him too?"</p> + +<p>Nan laughed, a queer little curt laugh in her throat.</p> + +<p>"Rather a personal question, don't you think? Suppose, by any chance that +I did? But of course I don't."</p> + +<p>"But doesn't he love you, Nan? He did, didn't he?"</p> + +<p>"My dear, I think you're rather delirious. This isn't the way one +talks.... You'd better ask Barry the state of his affections, since +you're interested in them. I'm not, particularly."</p> + +<p>Gerda drew a long breath, of pain or fatigue or relief.</p> + +<p>"I'm rather glad you don't care for him. I thought we might have shared +him if you had, and if he'd cared for us both. But it might have been +difficult."</p> + +<p>"It might; you never know.... Well, you're welcome to my share, if you +want it."</p> + +<p>Then Gerda lay quiet, with closed eyes and wet forehead, and concentrated +wholly on her right leg, which was hurting badly.</p> + +<p>Nan too sat quiet, and she too was concentrating.</p> + +<p>Irrevocably it was over now; done, finished with. Barry's eyes, Barry's +kiss, had told her that. Gerda, the lovely, the selfish child, had taken +Barry from her, to keep for always. Walked into Barry's office, into +Barry's life, and deliberately stolen him. Thinking, she said, that they +might share him.... The little fool. The little thief. (She waved the +flies away from Gerda's head.)</p> + +<p>And even this other game, this contest of physical prowess, had ended in +a hollow, mocking victory for the winner, since defeat had laid the loser +more utterly in her lover's arms, more unshakably in his heart. Gerda, +defeated and broken, had won everything. Won even that tribute which had +been Nan's own. "You little sportsman," Barry had called her, with a +break of tenderness in his voice. Even that, even the palm for valour, he +had placed in her hands. The little victor. The greedy little grabber of +other people's things....</p> + +<p>Gerda moaned at last.</p> + +<p>"Only a little longer," said Nan, and laid her hand lightly and coolly on +the hot wet forehead.</p> + +<p>The little winner... damn her....</p> + +<p>The edge of a smile, half-ironic, wholly bitter, twisted at Nan's lips.</p> + + +<h4>10</h4> + +<p>Voices and steps. Barry and a doctor, Barry and a stretcher, Barry and +all kinds of help. Barry's anxious eyes and smile. "Well? How's she +been?"</p> + +<p>He was on his knees beside her.</p> + +<p>"Here's the doctor, darling.... I'm sorry I've been so long."</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_X" id="CHAPTER_X"></a>CHAPTER X</h2> + +<h3>PRINCIPLES</h3> + + +<h4>1</h4> + +<p>Through the late September and October days Gerda would lie on a wicker +couch in the conservatory at Windover, her sprained leg up, her broken +wrist on a splint, her mending head on a soft pillow, and eat pears. +Grapes too, apples, figs, chocolates of course—but particularly pears. +She also wrote verse, and letters to Barry, and drew in pen and ink, and +read Sir Leo Chiozza Money's "Triumph of Nationalisation" and Mrs. +Snowden on Bolshevik Russia, and "Lady Adela," and "Côterie," and +listened while Neville read Mr. W.H. Mallock's "Memoirs" and Disraeli's +"Life." Her grandmother (Rodney's mother) sent her "The Diary of Opal +Whiteley," but so terrible did she find it that it caused a relapse, and +Neville had to remove it. She occasionally struggled in vain with a +modern novel, which she usually renounced in perplexity after three +chapters or so. Her taste did not lie in this direction.</p> + +<p>"I can't understand what they're all about," she said to Neville. +"Poetry <i>means</i> something. It's about something real, something that +really is so. So are books like this—" she indicated "The Triumph of +Nationalisation." "But most novels are so queer. They're about people, +but not people as they are. They're not <i>interesting</i>."</p> + +<p>"Not as a rule, certainly. Occasionally one gets an idea out of one +of them, or a laugh, or a thrill. Now and then they express life, or +reality, or beauty, in some terms or other—but not as a rule."</p> + +<p>Gerda was different from Kay, who devoured thrillers, shockers, and +ingenious crime and mystery stories with avidity. She did not believe +that life was really much like that, and Kay's assertion that if it +weren't it ought to be, she rightly regarded as pragmatical. Neither did +she share Kay's more fundamental taste for the Elizabethans, Carolines +and Augustans. She and Kay met (as regards literature) only on economics, +politics, and modern verse. Gerda's mind was artistic rather than +literary, and she felt no wide or acute interest in human beings, their +actions, passions, foibles, and desires.</p> + +<p>So, surrounded by books from the Times library, and by nearly all the +weekly and monthly reviews (the Bendishes, like many others, felt, with +whatever regret, that they had to see all of these), Gerda for the most +part, when alone, lay and dreamed dreams and ate pears.</p> + + +<h4>2</h4> + +<p>Barry came down for week-ends. He and Gerda had declared their affections +towards one another even at the Looe infirmary, where Gerda had been +conveyed from the scene of accident. It had been no moment then for +anything more definite than statements of reciprocal emotion, which are +always cheering in sickness. But when Gerda was better, well enough, in +fact, to lie in the Windover conservatory, Barry came down from town and +said, "When shall we get married?"</p> + +<p>Then Gerda, who had had as yet no time or mind-energy to reflect on the +probable, or rather certain, width of the gulf between the sociological +theories of herself and Barry, opened her blue eyes wide and said +"Married?"</p> + +<p>"Well, isn't that the idea? You can't jilt me now, you know; matters have +gone too far."</p> + +<p>"But, Barry, I thought you knew. I don't hold with marriage."</p> + +<p>Barry threw back his head and laughed, because she looked so innocent and +so serious and young as she lay there among the pears and bandages.</p> + +<p>"All right, darling. You've not needed to hold with it up till now. But +now you'd better catch on to it as quickly as you can, and hold it tight, +because it's what's going to happen."</p> + +<p>Gerda moved her bandaged head in denial.</p> + +<p>"Oh, no, Barry. I can't.... I thought you knew. Haven't we ever talked +about marriage before?"</p> + +<p>"Oh, probably. Yes, I think I've heard you and Kay both on the subject. +You don't hold with legal ties in what should be purely a matter of +emotional impulse, I know. But crowds of people talk like that and then +get married. I've no doubt Kay will too, when his time comes."</p> + +<p>"Kay won't. He thinks marriage quite wrong. And so do I."</p> + +<p>Barry, who had stopped laughing, settled himself to talk it out.</p> + +<p>"Why wrong, Gerda? Superfluous, if you like; irrelevant, if you like; but +why wrong?"</p> + +<p>"Because it's a fetter on what shouldn't be fettered. Love might stop. +Then it would be ugly."</p> + +<p>"Oh very. One has to take that risk, like other risks. And love is +really more likely to stop, as I see it, if there's no contract in the +eyes of the world, if the two people know each can walk away from the +other, and is expected to, directly they quarrel or feel a little bored. +The contract, the legalisation—absurd and irrelevant as all legal +things are to anything that matters—the contract, because we're such +tradition-bound creatures, does give a sort of illusion of inevitability, +which is settling, so that it doesn't occur to the people to fly apart at +the first strain. They go through with it instead, and in nine cases out +of ten come out on the other side. In the tenth case they just have +either to make the best of it or to make a break.... Of course people +always <i>can</i> throw up the sponge, even married people, if things are +insupportable. The door isn't locked. But there's no point, I think, in +having it swinging wide open."</p> + +<p>"I think it <i>should</i> be open," Gerda said. "I think people should be +absolutely free.... Take you and me. Suppose you got tired of me, or +liked someone else better, I think you ought to be able to leave me +without any fuss."</p> + +<p>That was characteristic of both of them, that they could take their +own case theoretically without becoming personal, without lovers' +protestations to confuse the general issue.</p> + +<p>"Well," Barry said, "I don't think I ought. I think it should be made as +difficult for me as possible. Because of the children. There are usually +children, of course. If I left you, I should have to leave them too. Then +they'd have no father. Or, if it were you that went, they'd have no +mother. Either way it's a pity, normally. Also, even if we stayed +together always and weren't married, they'd have no legal name. Children +often miss that, later on. Children of the school age are the most +conventional, hide-bound creatures. They'd feel ashamed before their +schoolfellows."</p> + +<p>"I suppose they'd have my name legally, wouldn't they?"</p> + +<p>"I suppose so. But they might prefer mine. The other boys and girls would +have their fathers', you see."</p> + +<p>"Not all of them. I know several people who don't hold with marriage +either; there'd be all their children. And anyhow it's not a question of +what the children would prefer while they were at school. It's what's +best for them. And anything would be better than to see their parents +hating each other and still having to live together."</p> + +<p>"Yes. Anything would be better than that. Except that it would be a +useful and awful warning to them. But the point is, most married people +don't hate each other. They develop a kind of tolerating, companionable +affection, after the first excitement called being in love is past—so +far as it does pass. That's mostly good enough to live on; that and +common interests and so forth. It's the stuff of ordinary life; the +emotional excitement is the hors <i>d'œuvre</i>. It would be greedy to want +to keep passing on from one <i>hors d'œuvre</i> to another—leaving the +meal directly the joint comes in."</p> + +<p>"I like dessert best," Gerda said, irrelevantly, biting into an apple.</p> + +<p>"Well, you'd never get any at that rate. Nor much of the rest of the meal +either."</p> + +<p>"But people do, Barry. Free unions often last for years and +years—sometimes forever. Only you wouldn't feel tied. You'd be sure +you were only living together because you both liked to, not because +you had to."</p> + +<p>"I should feel I had to, however free it was. So you wouldn't have that +consolation about me. I might be sick of you, and pining for someone +else, but still I should stay."</p> + +<p>"Why, Barry?"</p> + +<p>"Because I believe in permanent unions, as a general principle. They're +more civilised. It's unusual, uncivic, dotting about from one mate to +another, leaving your young and forgetting all about them and having +new ones. Irresponsible, I call it. Living only for a good time. It's +not the way to be good citizens, as I see it, nor to bring up good +citizens.... Oh, I know that the whole question of sex relationships is +horribly complicated, and can't be settled with a phrase or a dogma. It's +been for centuries so wrapped in cant and humbug and expediencies and +camouflage; I don't profess to be able to pierce through all that, or to +so much as begin to think it out clearly. The only thing I can fall back +on as a certainty is the children question. A confused and impermanent +family life <i>must</i> be a bad background for the young. They want all they +can get of both their parents, in the way of education and training and +love."</p> + +<p>"Family life is such a hopeless muddle, anyhow."</p> + +<p>"A muddle, yes. Hopeless, no. Look at your own. Your father and mother +have always been friends with each other and with you. They brought you +up with definite ideas about what they wanted you to become—fairly well +thought-out and consistent ideas, I suppose. I don't say they could do +much—parents never can—but something soaks in."</p> + +<p>"Usually something silly and bad."</p> + +<p>"Often, yes. Anyhow a queer kind of mixed brew. But at least the parents +have their chance. It's what they're there for; they've got to do all +they know, while the children are young, to influence them towards what +they personally believe, however mistakenly, to be the finest points of +view. Of course lots of it is, as you say, silly and bad, because people +<i>are</i> largely silly and bad. But no parent can be absolved from doing his +or her best."</p> + +<p>Barry was walking round the conservatory, eager and full of faith and +hope and fire, talking rapidly, the educational enthusiast, the ardent +citizen, the social being, the institutionalist, all over. He was all +these things; he was rooted and grounded in citizenship, in social +ethics. He stopped by the couch and stood looking down at Gerda among +her fruit, his hands in his pockets, his eyes bright and lit.</p> + +<p>"All the same, darling, I shall never want to fetter you. If you ever +want to leave me, I shan't come after you. The legal tie shan't stand in +your way. And to me it would make no difference; I shouldn't leave you in +any case, married or not. So I don't see how or why you score in doing +without the contract."</p> + +<p>"It's the idea of the thing, partly. I don't want to wear a wedding ring +and be Mrs. Briscoe. I want to be Gerda Bendish, living with Barry +Briscoe because we like to.... I expect, Barry, in my case it <i>would</i> +be for always, because, at present, I can't imagine stopping caring more +for you than for anything else. But that doesn't affect the principle of +the thing. It would be <i>wrong</i> for me to marry you. One oughtn't to give +up one's principles just because it seems all right in a particular case. +It would be cheap and shoddy and cowardly."</p> + +<p>"Exactly," said Barry, "what I feel. I can't give up my principle either, +you know. I've had mine longer than you've had yours."</p> + +<p>"I've had mine since I was about fifteen."</p> + +<p>"Five years. Well, I've had mine for twenty. Ever since I first began to +think anything out, that is."</p> + +<p>"People of your age," said Gerda, "people over thirty, I mean, often +think like that about marriage. I've noticed it. So has Kay."</p> + +<p>"Observant infants. Well, there we stand, then. One of us has got either +to change his principles—her principles, I mean—or to be false to them. +Or else, apparently, there can be nothing doing between you and me. +That's the position, isn't it?"</p> + +<p>Gerda nodded, her mouth full of apple.</p> + +<p>"It's very awkward," Barry continued, "my having fallen in love with you. +I had not taken your probable views on sociology into account. I knew +that, though we differed in spelling and punctuation, we were agreed +(approximately) on politics, economics, and taste in amusements, and I +thought that was enough. I forgot that divergent views on matrimony were +of practical importance. It would have mattered less if I had discovered +that you were a militarist and imperialist and quoted Marx at me."</p> + +<p>"I did tell you, Barry. I really did. I never hid it. And I never +supposed that you'd want to <i>marry</i> me."</p> + +<p>"That was rather stupid of you. I'm so obviously a marrying man.... Now, +darling, will you think the whole thing out from the beginning, after +I've gone? Be first-hand; don't take over theories from other people, and +don't be sentimental about it. Thrash the whole subject out with yourself +and with other people—with your own friends, and with your family too. +They're a modern, broad-minded set, your people, after all; they won't +look at the thing conventionally; they'll talk sense; they won't fob you +off with stock phrases, or talk about the sanctity of the home. They're +not institutionalists. Only be fair about it; weigh all the pros and +cons, and judge honestly, and for heaven's sake don't look at the thing +romantically, or go off on theories because they sound large and +subversive. Think of practical points, as well as of ultimate principles. +Both, to my mind, are on the same side. I'm not asking you to sacrifice +right for expediency, or expediency for right. I don't say 'Be sensible,' +or 'Be idealistic.' We've got to be both."</p> + +<p>"Barry, I've thought and talked about it so often and so long. You don't +know how much we do talk about that sort of thing, at the club and +everywhere and Kay and I. I could never change my mind."</p> + +<p>"What a hopeless admission! We ought to be ready to change our minds at +any moment; they should be as changeable as pound notes."</p> + +<p>"What about yours, then, darling?"</p> + +<p>"I'm always ready to change mine. I shall think the subject out too, and +if I do change I shall tell you at once."</p> + +<p>"Barry." Gerda's face was grave; her forehead was corrugated. "Suppose we +neither of us ever change? Suppose we both go on thinking as we do now +for always? What then?"</p> + +<p>He smoothed the knitted forehead with his fingers.</p> + +<p>"Then one of us will have to be a traitor to his or her principles. A +pity, but sometimes necessary in this complicated world. Or, if we can +neither of us bring ourselves down to that, I suppose eventually we shall +each perpetrate with someone else the kind of union we personally +prefer."</p> + +<p>They parted on that. The thing had not grown serious yet; they could +still joke about it.</p> + + +<h4>3</h4> + +<p>Though Gerda said "What's the use of my talking about it to people when +I've made up my mind?" and though she had not the habit of talking for +conversation's sake, she did obediently open the subject with her +parents, in order to assure herself beyond a doubt what they felt about +it. But she knew already that their opinions were what you might expect +of parents, even of broad-minded, advanced parents, who rightly believed +themselves not addicted to an undiscriminating acceptance of the +standards and decisions of a usually mistaken world. But Barry was wrong +in saying they weren't institutionalists; they were. Parents are.</p> + +<p>Rodney was more opinionated than Neville, on this subject as on most +others. He said, crossly, "It's a beastly habit, unlegitimatised union. +When I say beastly, I mean beastly; nothing derogatory, but merely like +the beasts—the other beasts, that is."</p> + +<p>Gerda said "Well, that's not really an argument against it. In that sense +it's beastly when we sleep out instead of in bed, or do lots of other +quite nice things. The way men and women do things isn't necessarily the +best way," and there Rodney had to agree with her. He fell back on "It's +unbusinesslike. Suppose you have children?" and Gerda, who had supposed +all that with Barry, sighed. Rodney said a lot more, but it made little +impression on her, beyond corroborating her views on the matrimonial +theories of middle-aged people.</p> + +<p>Neville made rather more. To Neville Gerda said "How can I go back on +everything I've always said and thought about it, and go and get married? +It would be so <i>reactionary</i>."</p> + +<p>Neville, who had a headache and was irritable, said "It's the other thing +that's reactionary. It existed long before the marriage tie did. That's +what I don't understand about all you children who pride yourselves on +being advanced. If you frankly take your stand on going back to nature, +on <i>being</i> reactionary—well, it is, anyhow, a point of view, and has its +own merits. But your minds seem to me to be in a hopeless muddle. You +think you're going forward while you're really going back."</p> + +<p>"Marriage," said Gerda, "is so Victorian. It's like antimacassars."</p> + +<p>"Now, my dear, do you mean <i>anything</i> by either of those statements? +Marriage wasn't invented in Victoria's reign. Nor did it occur more +frequently in that reign than it had before or does now. Why Victorian, +then? And why antimacassars? Think it out. How <i>can</i> a legal contract be +like a doyley on the back of a chair? Where is the resemblance? It sounds +like a riddle, only there's no answer. No, you know you've got no answer. +That kind of remark is sheer sentimentality and muddle-headedness. Why +are people in their twenties so often sentimental? That's another +riddle."</p> + +<p>"That's what Nan says. She told me once that she used to be sentimental +when she was twenty. Was she?"</p> + +<p>"More than she is now, anyhow."</p> + +<p>Neville's voice was a little curt. She was not happy about Nan, who had +just gone to Rome for the winter.</p> + +<p>"Well," Gerda said, "anyhow I'm not sentimental about not meaning to +marry. I've thought about it for years, and I know."</p> + +<p>"Thought about it! Much you know about it." Neville, tired and cross +from over-work, was, unlike herself, playing the traditional conventional +mother. "Have you thought how it will affect your children, for +instance?"</p> + +<p>Those perpetual, tiresome children. Gerda was sick of them.</p> + +<p>"Oh yes, I've thought a lot about that. And I can't see it will hurt +them. Barry and I talked for ever so long about the children. So did +father."</p> + +<p>So did Neville.</p> + +<p>"Of course I know," she said, "that you and Kay would be only too pleased +if father and I had never been married, but you've no right to judge by +yourself the ones you and Barry may have. They may not be nearly so +odd.... And then there's your own personal position. The world's full of +people who think they can insult a man's mistress."</p> + +<p>"I don't meet people like that. The people I know don't insult other +people for not being married. They think it's quite natural, and only the +people's own business."</p> + +<p>"You've moved in a small and rarefied clique so far, my dear. You'll meet +the other kind of people presently; one can't avoid them, the world's so +full of them."</p> + +<p>"Do they matter?"</p> + +<p>"Of course they matter. As mosquitoes matter, and wasps, and cars that +splash mud at you in the road. You'd be constantly annoyed. Your own +scullery maid would turn up her nose at you. The man that brought the +milk will sneer."</p> + +<p>"I don't think," Gerda said, after reflection, "that I'm very easily +annoyed. I don't notice things, very often. I think about other things +rather a lot, you see. That's why I'm slow at answering."</p> + +<p>"Well, Barry would be annoyed, anyhow."</p> + +<p>"Barry does lots of unpopular things. He doesn't mind what people say."</p> + +<p>"He'd mind for you.... But Barry isn't going to do it. Barry won't have +you on your terms. If you won't have him on his, he'll leave you and go +and find some nicer girl."</p> + +<p>"I can't help it, mother. I can't do what I don't approve of for that. +How could I?"</p> + +<p>"No, darling, of course you couldn't; I apologise. But do try and see if +you can't get to approve of it, or anyhow to be indifferent about it. +Such a little thing! It isn't as if Barry wanted you to become a Mormon +or something.... And after all you can't accuse him of being retrograde, +or Victorian, if you like to use that silly word, or lacking in ideals +for social progress—can you? He belongs to nearly all your illegal +political societies, doesn't he? Why, his house gets raided for leaflets +from time to time. I don't think they ever find any, but they look, and +that's something. You can't call Barry hide-bound or conventionally +orthodox."</p> + +<p>"No. Oh no. Not that. Or I shouldn't be caring for him. But he doesn't +understand about this. And you don't, mother, nor father, nor anyone of +your ages. I don't know how it is, but it is so."</p> + +<p>"You might try your Aunt Rosalind," Neville suggested, with malice.</p> + +<p>Gerda shuddered. "Aunt Rosalind ... she wouldn't understand at all...."</p> + +<p>But the dreadful thought was, as Neville had intended, implanted in +her that, of all her elder relatives, it was only Aunt Rosalind who, +though she mightn't understand, might nevertheless agree. Aunt Rosalind +on free unions... that would be terrible to have to hear. For Aunt +Rosalind would hold with them not because she thought them right but +because she enjoyed them—the worst of reasons. Gerda somehow felt +degraded by the introduction into the discussion of Aunt Rosalind, whom +she hated, whom she knew, without having been told so, that her mother +and all of them hated. It dragged it down, made it vulgar.</p> + +<p>Gerda lay back in silence, the springs of argument and talk dried in her. +She wanted Kay.</p> + +<p>It was no use; they couldn't meet. Neville could not get away from her +traditions, nor Gerda from hers.</p> + +<p>Neville, to change the subject (though scarcely for the better), read her +"The Autobiography of Mrs. Asquith" till tea-time.</p> + + +<h4>4</h4> + +<p>They all talked about it again, and said the same things, and different +things, and more things, and got no nearer one another with it all. Soon +Barry and Gerda, each comprehending the full measure of the serious +intent of the other, stood helpless before it, the one in half-amused +exasperation, the other in obstinate determination.</p> + +<p>"She means business, then," thought Barry. "He won't come round," thought +Gerda and their love pierced and stabbed them, making Barry hasty of +speech and Gerda sullen.</p> + +<p>"The <i>waste</i> of it," said Barry, on Sunday evening, "when I've only +got one day in the week, to spend it quarrelling about marriage. I've +hundreds of things to talk about and tell you—interesting things, funny +things—but I never get to them, with all this arguing we have to have +first."</p> + +<p>"I don't want to argue, Barry. Let's not. We've said everything now, lots +of times. There can't be any more. Tell me your things instead!"</p> + +<p>He told her, and they were happy talking, and forgot how they thought +differently on marriage. But always the difference lay there in the +background, coiled up like a snake, ready to uncoil and seize them and +make them quarrel and hurt one another. Always one was expecting the +other at any moment to throw up the sponge and cry "Oh, have it your own +way, since you won't have it mine and I love you." But neither did. Their +wills stood as stiff as two rocks over against one another.</p> + +<p>Gerda grew thinner under the strain, and healed more slowly than before. +Her fragile, injured body was a battle-ground between her will and her +love, and suffered in the conflict. Barry saw that it could not go on. +They would, he said, stop talking about it; they would put it in the +background and go on as if it were not there, until such time as they +could agree. So they became friends again, lovers who lived in the +present and looked to no future, and, since better might not be, that had +to do for the time.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XI" id="CHAPTER_XI"></a>CHAPTER XI</h2> + +<h3>THAT WHICH REMAINS</h3> + + +<h4>1</h4> + +<p>Through September Neville had nursed Gerda by day and worked by night. +The middle of October, just when they usually moved into town for the +winter, she collapsed, had what the doctor called a nervous breakdown.</p> + +<p>"You've been overworking," he told her. "You're not strong enough in +these days to stand hard brain-work. You must give it up."</p> + +<p>For a fortnight she lay tired and passive, surrendered and inert, caring +for nothing but to give up and lie still and drink hot milk. Then she +struggled up and mooned about the house and garden, and cried weakly from +time to time, and felt depressed and bored, and as if life were over and +she were at the bottom of the sea.</p> + +<p>"This must be what mother feels," she thought. "Poor mother.... I'm +like her; I've had my life, and I'm too stupid to work, and I can only +cry.... Men must work and women must weep.... I never knew before that +that was true.... I mustn't see mother just now, it would be the last +straw ... like the skeletons people used to look at to warn themselves +what they would come to.... Poor mother ... and poor me.... But mother's +getting better now she's being analysed. That wouldn't help me at all. I +analyse myself too much already.... And I was so happy a few months ago. +What a dreadful end to a good ambition. I shall never work again, I +suppose, in any way that counts. So that's that.... Why do I want to work +and to do something? Other wives and mothers don't.... Or do they, only +they don't know it, because they don't analyse? I believe they do, lots +of them. Or is it only my horrible egotism and vanity, that can't take a +back seat quietly? I was always like that, I know. Nan and I and Gilbert. +Not Jim so much, and not Pamela at all. But Rodney's worse than I am; he +wouldn't want to be counted out, put on the shelf, in the forties; he'd +be frightfully sick if he had to stand by and see other people working +and getting on and in the thick of things when he wasn't. He couldn't +bear it; he'd take to drink, I think.... I hope Rodney won't ever have +a nervous breakdown and feel like this, poor darling, he'd be dreadfully +tiresome.... Not to work after all. Not to be a doctor.... What then? +Just go about among people, grinning like a dog. Winter in town, talking, +dining, being the political wife. Summer in the country, walking, riding, +reading, playing tennis. Fun, of course. But what's it all for? When I've +got Gerda off my hands I shall have done being a mother, in any sense +that matters. Is being a wife enough to live for? Rodney's wife? Oh, I +want to be some use, want to do things, to count.... And Rodney will die +some time—I know he'll die first—and then I shan't even be a wife. And +in twenty years I shan't be able to do things with my body much more, and +what then? What will be left? ... I think I'm getting hysterical, like +poor mother.... How ugly I look, these days."</p> + +<p>She stopped before the looking-glass. Her face looked back at her, white +and thin, almost haggard, traced in the last few weeks for the first time +with definite lines round brow and mouth. Her dark hair was newly +streaked with grey.</p> + +<p>"Middle age," said Neville, and a cold hand was laid round her heart. "It +had to come some time, and this illness has opened the door to it. Or +shall I look young again when I'm quite well? No, never young again."</p> + +<p>She shivered.</p> + +<p>"I look like mother to-day.... I <i>am</i> like mother...."</p> + +<p>So youth and beauty were to leave her, too. She would recover from this +illness and this extinguishing of charm, but not completely, and not for +long. Middle age had begun. She would have off days in future, when she +would look old and worn instead of always, as hitherto, looking charming. +She wouldn't, in future, be sure of herself; people wouldn't be sure to +think "A lovely woman, Mrs. Rodney Bendish." Soon they would be saying +"How old Mrs. Bendish is getting to look," and then "She was a pretty +woman once."</p> + +<p>Well, looks didn't matter much really, after all....</p> + +<p>"They do, they do," cried Neville to the glass, passionately truthful. +"If you're vain they do—and I am vain. Vain of my mind and of my +body.... Vanity, vanity, all is vanity ... and now the silver cord is +going to be loosed and the golden bowl is going to be broken, and I shall +be hurt."</p> + +<p>Looks did matter. It was no use canting, and minimising them. They +affected the thing that mattered most—one's relations with people. Men, +for instance, cared more to talk to a woman whose looks pleased them. +They liked pretty girls, and pretty women. Interesting men cared to talk +to them: they told them things they would never tell a plain woman. +Rodney did. He liked attractive women. Sometimes he made love to them, +prettily and harmlessly.</p> + +<p>The thought of Rodney stabbed her. If Rodney were to get to care +less ... to stop making love to her ... worse, to stop needing +her.... For he did need her; through all their relationship, +disappointing in some of its aspects, his need had persisted, a simple, +demanding thing.</p> + +<p>Humour suddenly came back.</p> + +<p>"This, I suppose, is what Gerda is anticipating, and why she won't have +Barry tied to her. If Rodney wasn't tied to me he could flee from my +wrinkles...."</p> + +<p>"Oh, what an absurd fuss one makes. What does any of it matter? It's all +in the course of nature, and the sooner 'tis over the sooner to sleep. +Middle age will be very nice and comfortable and entertaining, once one's +fairly in it.... I go babbling about my wasted brain and fading looks as +if I'd been a mixture of Sappho and Helen of Troy.... That's the worst of +being a vain creature.... What will Rosalind do when <i>her</i> time comes? +Oh, paint, of course, and dye—more thickly than she does now, I mean. +She'll be a ghastly sight. A raddled harridan. At least I shall always +look respectable, I hope. I shall go down to Gerda. I want to look at +something young. The young have their troubles, poor darlings, but they +don't know how lucky they are."</p> + + +<h4>2</h4> + +<p>In November Neville and Gerda, now both convalescent, joined Rodney in +their town flat. Rodney thought London would buck Neville up. London does +buck you up, even if it is November and there is no gulf stream and not +much coal. For there is always music and always people. Neville had a +critical appreciation of both. Then, for comic relief, there are +politics. You cannot be really bored with a world which contains the +mother of Parliaments, particularly if her news is communicated to you +at first hand by one of her members. Disgusted you may be and are, if +you are a right-minded person, but at least not bored.</p> + +<p>What variety, what excitement, what a moving picture show, is this tragic +and comic planet! Why want to be useful, why indulge such tedious +inanities as ambitions, why dream wistfully of doing one's bit, making +one's work, in a world already as full of bits, bright, coloured, absurd +bits, like a kaleidoscope, as full of marks (mostly black marks) as a +novel from a free library? A dark and bad and bitter world, of course, +full of folly, wickedness and misery, sick with poverty and pain, so that +at times the only thing Neville could bear to do in it was to sit on some +dreadful committee thinking of ameliorations for the lot of the very +poor, or to go and visit Pamela in Hoxton and help her with some job or +other—that kind of direct, immediate, human thing, which was a sop to +uneasiness and pity such as the political work she dabbled in, however +similar its ultimate aim, could never be.</p> + + +<h4>3</h4> + +<p>To Pamela Neville said, "Are you afraid of getting old, Pamela?"</p> + +<p>Pamela replied, "Not a bit. Are you?" And she confessed it.</p> + +<p>"Often it's like a cold douche of water down my spine, the thought of it. +I reason and mock at myself, but I <i>don't</i> like it.... You're different; +finer, more real, more unselfish. Besides, you'll have done something +worth doing when you have to give up. I shan't."</p> + +<p>Pamela's brows went up.</p> + +<p>"Kay? Gerda? The pretty dears: I've done nothing so nice as them. You've +done what's called a woman's work in the world—isn't that the phrase?"</p> + +<p>"Done it—just so, but so long ago. What now? I still feel young, Pamela, +even now that I know I'm not. ... Oh Lord, it's a queer thing, being a +woman. A well-off woman of forty-three with everything made comfortable +for her and her brain gone to pot and her work in the world done. I want +something to bite my teeth into—some solid, permanent job—and I get +nothing but sweetmeats, and people point at Kay and Gerda and say 'That's +your work, and it's over. Now you can rest, seeing that it's good, like +God on the seventh day.'"</p> + +<p>"<i>I</i> don't say 'Now you can rest. Except just now, while you're run +down.'"</p> + +<p>"Run down, yes; run down like a disordered clock because I tried to +tackle an honest job of work again. Isn't it sickening, Pamela? Isn't it +ludicrous?"</p> + +<p>"Ludicrous—no. Everyone comes up against his own limitations. You've got +to work within them that's all. After all, there are plenty of jobs you +can do that want doing—simply shouting to be done."</p> + +<p>"Pammie dear, it's worse than I've said. I'm a low creature. I don't only +want to do jobs that want doing: I want to count, to make a name. I'm +damnably ambitious. You'll despise that, of course—and you're quite +right, it is despicable. But there it is. Most men and many women are +tormented by it—they itch for recognition."</p> + +<p>"Of course. One is."</p> + +<p>"You too, Pammie?"</p> + +<p>"I have been. Less now. Life gets to look short, when you're +thirty-nine."</p> + +<p>"Ah, but you have it—recognition, even fame, in the world you work in. +You count for something. If you value it, there it is. I wouldn't grumble +if I'd played your part in the piece. It's a good part—a useful part +and a speaking part."</p> + +<p>"I suppose we all feel we should rather like to play someone else's part +for a change. There's nothing exciting about mine. Most people would far +prefer yours."</p> + +<p>They would, of course; Neville knew it. The happy political wife rather +than the unmarried woman worker; Rodney, Gerda and Kay for company rather +than Frances Carr. There was no question which was the happier lot, the +fuller, the richer, the easier, the more entertaining.</p> + +<p>"Ah well.... You see, Rosalind spent the afternoon with me yesterday, and +I felt suddenly that it wasn't for me to be stuck up about her—what am I +too but the pampered female idler, taking good things without earning +them? It made me shudder. Hence this fit of blues. The pampered, lazy, +brainless animal—it is such a terrific sight when in human form. +Rosalind talked about Nan, Pamela. In her horrible way—you know. Hinting +that she isn't alone in Rome, but with Stephen Lumley."</p> + +<p>Pamela took off her glasses and polished them.</p> + +<p>"Rosalind would, of course. What did you say?"</p> + +<p>"I lost my temper. I let out at her. It's not a thing I often do with +Rosalind—it doesn't seem worth while. But this time I saw red. I told +her what I thought of her eternal gossip and scandal. I said, what if Nan +and Stephen Lumley, or Nan and anyone else, did arrange to be in Rome at +the same time and to see a lot of each other; where was the harm? No use. +You can't pin Rosalind down. She just shrugged her shoulders and smiled, +and said 'My dear, we all know our Nan. We all know too that Stephen +Lumley has been in love with her for a year, and doesn't live with his +wife. Then they go off to Rome at the same moment, and one hears that +they are seen everywhere together. Why shut one's eyes to obvious +deductions? You're so like an ostrich, Neville.' I said I'd rather be +an ostrich than a ferret, eternally digging into other people's +concerns,—and by the time we had got to that I thought it was far +enough, so I had an engagement with my dressmaker."</p> + +<p>"It's no use tackling Rosalind," Pamela agreed. "She'll never change her +spots.... Do you suppose it's true about Nan?"</p> + +<p>"I daresay it is. Yes, I'm afraid I do think it's quite likely +true.... Nan was so queer the few times I saw her after Gerda's accident. +I was unhappy about her. She was so hard, and so more than usually +cynical and unget-at-able. She told me it had been all her fault, +leading Gerda into mischief, doing circus tricks that the child tried to +emulate and couldn't. I couldn't read her, quite. Her tone about Gerda +had a queer edge to it. And she rather elaborately arranged, I thought, +so that she shouldn't meet Barry. Pamela, do you think she had finally +and absolutely turned Barry down before he took up so suddenly with +Gerda, or...."</p> + +<p>Pamela said, "I know nothing. She told me nothing. But I rather thought, +when she came to see me just before she went down to Cornwall, that she +had made up her mind to have him. I may have been wrong."</p> + +<p>Neville leant her forehead on her hands and sighed.</p> + +<p>"Or you may have been right. And if you were right, it's the ghastliest +tragedy—for her.... Oh, I shouldn't have let Gerda go and work with him; +I should have known better.... Nan had rebuffed him, and he flew off at a +tangent, and there was Gerda sitting in his office, as pretty as flowers +and with her funny little silent charm.... And if Nan was all the time +waiting for him, meaning to say yes when he asked her.... Poor darling +Nan, robbed by my horrid little girl, who doesn't even want to +marry.... If that's the truth, it would account for the Stephen Lumley +business. Nan wouldn't stay on in London, to see them together. If Lumley +caught her at that psychological moment, she'd very likely go off with +him, out of mere desperation and bravado. That would be so terribly like +Nan.... What a desperate, wry, cursed business life is.... On the other +hand, she may just be going about with Lumley on her own terms not his. +It's her own affair whichever way it is; what we've got to do is to +contradict the stories Rosalind is spreading whenever we get the chance. +Not that one can scotch scandal once it starts—particularly Rosalind's +scandal."</p> + +<p>"Ignore it. Nan can ignore it when she comes back. It won't hurt her. +Nan's had plenty of things said about her before, true and untrue, and +never cared."</p> + +<p>"You're splendid at the ignoring touch, Pam. I believe there's nothing +you can't and don't ignore."</p> + +<p>"Well, why not? Ignoring's easy."</p> + +<p>"Not for most of us. I believe it is, for you. In a sense you ignore life +itself; anyhow you don't let it hold and bully you. When your time comes +you'll ignore age, and later death."</p> + +<p>"They don't matter much, do they? Does anything? I suppose it's my stolid +temperament, but I can't feel that it does."</p> + +<p>Neville thought, as she had often thought before, that Pamela, like Nan, +only more calmly, less recklessly and disdainfully, had the aristocratic +touch. Pamela, with her delicate detachments and her light, even touch on +things great and small, made her feel fussy and petty and excitable.</p> + +<p>"I suppose you're right, my dear.... 'All is laughter, all is dust, +all is nothingness, for the things that are arise out of the +unreasonable....' I must get back. Give my love to Frances... and when +next you see Gerda do try to persuade her that marriage is one of the +things that don't matter and that she might just as well put up with to +please us all. The child is a little nuisance—as obstinate as a mule."</p> + + +<h4>4</h4> + +<p>Neville, walking away from Pamela's grimy street in the November fog, +felt that London was terrible. An ugly clamour of strident noises and +hard, shrill voices, jabbering of vulgar, trivial things. A wry, +desperate, cursed world, as she had called it, a pot seething with +bitterness and all dreadfulness, with its Rosalinds floating on the top +like scum.</p> + +<p>And Nan, her Nan, her little vehement sister, whom she had mothered +of old, had pulled out of countless scrapes—Nan had now taken her +life into her reckless hands and done what with it? Given it, perhaps, +to a man she didn't love, throwing cynical defiance thereby at love, +which had hurt her; escaping from the intolerable to the shoddy. Even +if not, even supposing the best, Nan was hurt and in trouble; Neville +was somehow sure of that. Men were blind fools; men were fickle children. +Neville almost wished now that Barry would give up Gerda and go out to +Rome and fetch Nan back. But, to do that, Barry would have to fall +out of love with Gerda and into love again with Nan; and even Barry, +Neville imagined, was not such a weathercock as that. And Barry would +really be happier with Gerda. With all their differences, they were +both earnest citizens, both keen on social progress. Nan was a cynical +flibberty-gibbet; it might not have been a happy union. Perhaps happy +unions were not for such as Nan. But at the thought of Nan playing that +desperate game with Stephen Lumley in Rome, Neville's face twitched....</p> + +<p>She would go to Rome. She would see Nan; find out how things were. Nan +always liked to see her, would put up with her even when she wanted no +one else.</p> + +<p>That was, at least, a job one could do. These family jobs—they still go +on, they never cease, even when one is getting middle-aged and one's +brain has gone to pot. They remain, always, the jobs of the affections.</p> + +<p>She would write to Nan to-night, and tell her she was starting for Rome +in a few days, to have a respite from the London fogs.</p> + + +<h4>5</h4> + +<p>But she did not start for Rome, or even write to Nan, for when she got +home she went to bed with influenza.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XII" id="CHAPTER_XII"></a>CHAPTER XII</h2> + +<h3>THE MOTHER</h3> + + +<h4>1</h4> + +<p>The happiness Mrs. Hilary now enjoyed was of the religious type—a deep, +warm glow, which did not lack excitement. She felt as those may be +presumed to feel who have just been converted to some church—newly +alive, and sunk in spiritual peace, and in profound harmony with life. +Where were the old rubs, frets, jars and ennuis? Vanished, melted like +yesterday's snows in the sun of this new peace. It was as if she had cast +her burden upon the Lord. That, said her psycho-analyst doctor, was quite +in order; that was what it ought to be like. That was, in effect, what +she had in point of fact done; only the place of the Lord was filled by +himself. To put the matter briefly, transference of burden had been +effected; Mrs. Hilary had laid all her cares, all her perplexities, all +her grief, upon this quiet, acute-looking man, who sat with her twice a +week for an hour, drawing her out, arranging her symptoms for her, +penetrating the hidden places of her soul, looking like a cross between +Sherlock Holmes and Mr. Henry Ainley. Her confidence in him was, he told +her, the expression of the father-image, which surprised Mrs. Hilary a +little, because he was twenty years her junior.</p> + +<p>Mrs. Hilary felt that she was getting to know herself very well indeed. +Seeing herself through Mr. Cradock's mind, she felt that she was indeed a +curious jumble of complexes, of strange, mysterious impulses, desires and +fears. Alarming, even horrible in some ways; so that often she thought +"Can he be right about me? Am I really like that? Do I really hope that +Marjorie (Jim's wife) will die, so that Jim and I may be all in all to +each other again? Am I really so wicked?" But Mr. Cradock said that it +was not at all wicked, perfectly natural and normal—the Unconscious +<i>was</i> like that. And worse than that; how much worse he had to break to +Mrs. Hilary, who was refined and easily shocked, by gentle hints and slow +degrees, lest she should be shocked to death. Her dreams, which she had +to recount to him at every sitting, bore such terrible significance—they +grew worse and worse in proportion, as Mrs. Hilary could stand more.</p> + +<p>"Ah well," Mrs. Hilary sighed uneasily, after an interpretation into +strange terms of a dream she had about bathing, "it's very odd, when I've +never even thought about things like that."</p> + +<p>"Your Unconscious," said Mr. Cradock, firmly, "has thought the more. The +more your Unconscious is obsessed by a thing, the less your conscious +self thinks of it. It is shy of the subject, for that very reason."</p> + +<p>Mrs. Hilary was certainly shy of the subject, for that reason or others. +When she felt too shy of it, Mr. Cradock let her change it. "It may be +true," she would say, "but it's very terrible, and I would rather not +dwell on it."</p> + +<p>So he would let her dwell instead on the early days of her married life, +or on the children's childhood, or on her love for Neville and Jim, or on +her impatience with her mother.</p> + + +<h4>2</h4> + +<p>They were happy little times, stimulating, cosy little times. They spoke +straight to the heart, easing it of its weight of tragedy. A splendid +man, Mr. Cradock, with his shrewd, penetrating sympathy, his kind +firmness. He would listen with interest to everything; the sharp words +she had had with Grandmama, troubles with the maids, the little rubs +of daily life (and what a rubbing business life is, to be sure!) as +well as to profounder, more tragic accounts of desolation, jealousy, +weariness and despair. He would say "Your case is a very usual one," +so that she did not feel ashamed of being like that. He reduced it all, +dispassionately and yet not unsympathetically, and with clear scientific +precision, to terms of psychical and physical laws. He trained his +patient to use her mind and her will, as well as to remember her dreams +and to be shocked at nothing that they signified.</p> + +<p>Mrs. Hilary would wake each morning, or during the night, and clutch at +the dream which was flying from her, clutch and secure it, and make it +stand and deliver its outlines to her. She was content with outlines; it +was for Mr. Cradock to supply the interpretation. Sometimes, if Mrs. +Hilary couldn't remember any dreams, he would supply, according to a +classic precedent, the dream as well as the interpretation. But on the +whole, deeply as she revered and admired him, Mrs. Hilary preferred to +remember her own dreams; what they meant was bad enough, but the meaning +of the dreams that Mr. Cradock told her she had dreamt was beyond all +words.... That terrible Unconscious! Mrs. Hilary disliked it excessively; +she felt rather as if it were a sewer, sunk beneath an inadequate +grating.</p> + +<p>But from Mr. Cradock she put up with hearing about it. She would have put +up with anything. He was so steadying and so wonderful. He enabled her to +face life with a new poise, a fresh lease of strength and vitality. She +told Grandmama so. Grandmama said "Yes, my dear, I've observed it in you. +It sounds to me an unpleasing business, but it is obviously doing you +good, so far. I only wish it may last. The danger may be reaction, after +you have finished the course and lost touch with this young man." (Mr. +Cradock was forty-five, but Grandmama, it must be remembered, was +eighty-four.) "You will have to guard against that. In a way it was a +pity you didn't take up church-going instead; religion lasts."</p> + +<p>"And these quackeries do not," Grandmama finished her sentence to +herself, not wishing to be discouraging.</p> + +<p>"Not always," Mrs. Hilary truly replied, meaning that religion did not +always last.</p> + +<p>"No," Grandmama agreed. "Unfortunately not always. Particularly when it +is High Church. There was your uncle Bruce, of course...."</p> + +<p>Mrs. Hilary's uncle Bruce, who had been High Church for a season, and had +even taken Orders in the year 1860, but whose faith had wilted in the +heat and toil of the day, so that by 1870 he was an agnostic barrister, +took Grandmama back through the last century, and she became reminiscent +over the Tractarian movement, and, later, the Ritualists.</p> + +<p>"The Queen never could abide them," said Grandmama. "Nor could Lord +Beaconsfield, nor your father, though he was always kind and tolerant. +I remember when Dr. Jowett came to stay with us, how they talked about +it.... Ah well, they've become very prominent since then, and done a +great deal of good work, and there are many very able, excellent men and +women among them.... But they're not High Church any longer, they tell +me. They're Catholics in these days. I don't know enough of them to judge +them, but I don't think they can have the dignity of the old High Church +party, for if they had I can't imagine that Gilbert's wife, for instance, +would have joined them, even for so short a time as she did.... Well, it +suits some people, and psycho-analysis obviously suits others. Only I do +hope you will try to keep moderate and balanced, my child, and not +believe all this young man tells you. Parts of it do sound so very +strange."</p> + +<p>(But Mrs. Hilary would not have dreamt of repeating to Grandmama the +strangest parts of all.)</p> + +<p>"I feel a new woman," she said, fervently, and Grandmama smiled, well +pleased, thinking that it certainly did seem rather like the old +evangelical conversions of her youth. (Which, of course, did not always +last, any more than the High Church equivalents did.)</p> + +<p>All Grandmama committed herself to, in her elderly caution, which came +however less from age than from having known Mrs. Hilary for sixty-three +years, was "Well, well, we must see."</p> + + +<h4>3</h4> + +<p>And then Rosalind's letter came. It came by the afternoon post—the big, +mauve, scented, sprawled sheets, dashingly monographed across one corner.</p> + +<p>"Gilbert's wife," pronounced Grandmama, non-committally from her easy +chair, and, said in that tone, it was quite sufficient comment. "Another +cup of tea, please, Emily."</p> + +<p>Mrs. Hilary gave it to her, then began to read aloud the letter from +Gilbert's wife. Gilbert's wife was one of the topics upon which she and +Grandmama were in perfect accord, only that Mrs. Hilary was irritated +when Grandmama pushed the responsibility for the relationship onto her by +calling Rosalind "your daughter-in-law."</p> + +<p>Mrs. Hilary began to read the letter in the tone used by well-bred women +when they would, if in a slightly lower social stratum, say "Fancy that +now! Did you ever, the brazen hussy!" Grandmama listened, cynically +disapproving, prepared to be disgusted yet entertained. On the whole she +thoroughly enjoyed letters from Gilbert's wife. She settled down +comfortably in her chair with her second cup of tea, while Mrs. Hilary +read two pages of what Grandmama called "foolish chit-chat." Rosalind's +letters were really like the gossipping imbecilities written by Eve of +the Tatler, or the other ladies who enliven our shinier-paper weeklies +with their bright personal babble. She did not often waste one of them on +her mother-in-law; only when she had something to say which might annoy +her.</p> + +<p>"Do you hear from Nan?" the third page of the letter began. "I hear from +the Bramertons, who are wintering in Rome—the Charlie Bramertons, you +know, great friends of mine and Gilbert's (he won a pot of money on the +Derby this year and they've a dinky flat in some palace out there—), and +they meet Nan about, and she's always with Stephen Lumley, the painter +(rotten painter, if you ask me, but he's somehow diddled London into +admiring him, don't expect you've heard of him down at the seaside). +Well, they're quite simply <i>always</i> together, and the Brams say that +everyone out there says it isn't in the least an ambiguous case—no two +ways about it. He doesn't live with his wife, you know. You'll excuse me +passing this on to you, but it does seem you ought to know. I mentioned +it to Neville the other day, just before the poor old dear went down with +the plague, but you know what Neville is, she always sticks up for Nan +and doesn't care <i>what</i> she does, or what people say. People are talking; +beasts, aren't they! But that's the way of this wicked old world, we all +do it. Gilbert's quite upset about it, says Nan ought to manage her +affairs more quietly. But after all and between you and me it's not the +first time Nan's been a Town Topic, is it.</p> + +<p>"How's the psycho going? Isn't Cradock rather a priceless pearl? You're +over head and ears with him by now, of course, we all are. Psycho +wouldn't do you any good if you weren't, that's the truth. Cradock told +me himself once that transference can't be effected without the patient +being a little bit smitten. Personally I should give up a man patient at +once if he didn't rather like me. But isn't it soothing and comforting, +and doesn't it make you feel good all over, like a hot bath when you're +fagged out...."</p> + +<p>But Mrs. Hilary didn't get as far as this. She stopped at "not the first +time Nan's been a Town Topic...." and dropped the thin mauve sheets onto +her lap, and looked at Grandmama, her face queerly tight and flushed, as +if she were about to cry.</p> + +<p>Grandmama had finished her tea, and had been listening quietly.</p> + +<p>Mrs. Hilary said "Oh, my God," and jerked her head back, quivering like +a nervous horse who has had a shock and does not care to conceal it.</p> + +<p>"Your daughter-in-law," said Grandmama, without excitement, "is an +exceedingly vulgar young woman."</p> + +<p>"Vulgar? Rosalind? But of course.... Only that doesn't affect Nan...."</p> + +<p>"Your daughter-in-law," Grandmama added, "is also a very notorious liar."</p> + +<p>"A liar ... oh yes, yes, yes.... But this time it's true. Oh I feel, +I know, it's true. Nan <i>would</i>. That Stephen Lumley—he's been hanging +about her for ages. ... Oh yes, it's true what they say. The very +worst...."</p> + +<p>Grandmama glanced at her curiously. The very worst in that direction +had become strangely easier of credence by Mrs. Hilary lately. Grandmama +had observed that. Mr. Cradock's teaching had not been without its +effect. According to Mr. Cradock, people were usually engaged either in +practising the very worst, or in desiring to practise it, or in wishing +and dreaming that they had practised it. It was the nature of mankind, +and not in the least reprehensible, though curable. Thus Mr. Cradock. +Mrs. Hilary had, against her own taste, absorbed part of his teaching, +but nothing could ever persuade her that it was not reprehensible: it +quite obviously was. Also disgusting. Mr. Cradock might say what he +liked. It <i>was</i> disgusting. And when the man had a wife....</p> + +<p>"It is awful," said Mrs. Hilary. "Awful.... It must be stopped. I shall +go to Rome. At once."</p> + +<p>"That won't stop it, dear, if it is going on. It will only irritate the +young people."</p> + +<p>"Irritate! You can use a word like that! Mother, you don't realise this +ghastly thing."</p> + +<p>"I quite see, my dear, that Nan may be carrying on with this artist. And +very wrong it is, if so. All I say is that your going to Rome won't stop +it. You know that you and Nan don't always get on very smoothly. You rub +each other up.... It would be far better if someone else went. Neville, +say."</p> + +<p>"Neville is ill." Mrs. Hilary shut her lips tightly on that. She was +glad Neville was ill; she had always hated (she could not help it) the +devotion between Neville and Nan. Nan, in her tempestuous childhood, +flaring with rage against her mother, or sullen, spiteful and perverse, +long before she could have put into words the qualities in Mrs. Hilary +which made her like that, had always gone to Neville, nine years older, +to be soothed and restored to good temper. Neville had reprimanded the +little naughty sister, had told her she must be "decent to mother—feel +decent if you can, behave decent in any case," was the way she had put +it. It was Neville who had heard Nan's confidences and helped her out of +scrapes in childhood, schoolgirlhood and ever since. This was very bitter +to Mrs. Hilary. She was jealous of both of them; jealous that so much of +Neville's love should go elsewhere than to her, jealous that Nan, who +gave her nothing except generous and extravagant gifts and occasional, +spasmodic, remorseful efforts at affection and gentleness, should to +Neville give all.</p> + +<p>"Neville is ill," she said. "She certainly won't be fit to travel out +of England this winter. Influenza coming on the top of that miserable +breakdown is a thing to be treated with the greatest care. Even when she +is recovered, post-influenza will keep her weak till the summer. I am +really anxious about her. No; Neville is quite out of the question."</p> + +<p>"Well, what about Pamela?"</p> + +<p>"Pamela is up to her eyes in her work.... Besides, why should Pamela go, +or Neville, rather than I? A girl's mother is obviously the right person. +I may not be of much use to my children in these days, but at least I +hope I can save them from themselves."</p> + +<p>"It takes a clever parent to do that, Emily," said Grandmama, who +doubtless knew.</p> + +<p>"But, mother, what would you <i>have</i> me do? Sit with my hands before me +while my daughter lives in sin? What's <i>your</i> plan?"</p> + +<p>"I'm too old to make plans, dear. I can only look on at the world. I've +looked at the world now for many, many years, and I've learnt that only +great wisdom and great love can change people's decisions as to their way +of life, or turn them from evil courses. Frankly, my child, I doubt if +you have, where Nan is concerned, enough wisdom or enough love. Enough +sympathy, I should rather say, for you have love. But do you feel you +understand the child enough to interfere wisely and successfully?"</p> + +<p>"Oh, you think I'm a fool, mother; of course I know you've always thought +me a fool. Good God, if a mother can't interfere with her own daughter to +save her from wickedness and disaster, who can, I should like to know?"</p> + +<p>"One would indeed like to know that," Grandmama said, sadly.</p> + +<p>"Perhaps you'd like to go yourself," Mrs. Hilary shot at her, quivering +now with anger and feeling.</p> + +<p>"No, my dear. Even if I were able to get to Rome I should know that I was +too old to interfere with the lives of the young. I don't understand them +enough. You believe that you do. Well, I suppose you must go and try. I +can't stop you."</p> + +<p>"You certainly can't. Nothing can stop me.... You're singularly +unsympathetic, mother, about this awful business."</p> + +<p>"I don't feel so, dear. I am very, very sorry for you, and very, very +sorry for Nan (whom, you must remember, we may be slandering). I have +always looked on unlawful love as a very great sin, though there may be +great provocation to it."</p> + +<p>"It is an awful sin." Mr. Cradock could say what he liked on that +subject; he might tell Mrs. Hilary that it was not awful except in so +far as any other yielding to nature's promptings in defiance of the law +of man was awful, but he could not persuade her. Like many other people, +she set that particular sin apart, in a special place by itself; she +would talk of "a bad woman," "an immoral man," a girl who had "lost +her character," and mean merely the one kind of badness, the one +manifestation of immorality, the one element in character. Dishonesty +and cruelty she could forgive, but never that.</p> + +<p>"I shall start in three days," said Mrs. Hilary, becoming tragically +resolute. "I must tell Mr. Cradock to-morrow."</p> + +<p>"That young man? Must he know about Nan's affairs, my dear?"</p> + +<p>"I have to tell him everything, mother. It's part of the course. He is as +secret as the grave."</p> + +<p>Grandmama knew that Emily, less secret than the grave, would have to ease +herself of the sad tale to someone or other in the course of the next +day, and supposed that it had better be to Mr. Cradock, who seemed to be +a kind of hybrid of doctor and clergyman, and so presumably was more +discreet than an ordinary human being. Emily must tell. Emily always +would. That was why she enjoyed this foolish psycho-analysis business so +much.</p> + +<p>At the very thought of it a gleam had brightened Mrs. Hilary's eyes, +and her rigid, tense pose had relaxed. Oh the comfort of telling Mr. +Cradock! Even if he did tell her how it was all in the course of nature, +at least he would sympathise with her trouble about it, and her annoyance +with Grandmama. And he would tell her how best to deal with Nan when +she got to her. Nan's was the sort of case that Mr. Cradock really +did understand. Any situation between the sexes—he was all over it. +Psycho-analysts adored sex; they made an idol of it. They communed with +it, as devotees with their God. They couldn't really enjoy, with their +whole minds, anything else, Mrs. Hilary sometimes vaguely felt. But as, +like the gods of the other devotees, it was to them immanent, everywhere +and in everything; they could be always happy. If they went up into +heaven it was there; if they fled down into hell it was there also. Once, +when Mrs. Hilary had tentatively suggested that Freud, for instance, +over-stated its importance, Mr. Cradock had said firmly "It is impossible +to do that," which settled it once and for all.</p> + +<p>Mrs. Hilary stood up. Her exalted, tragic mood clothed her like a flowing +garment.</p> + +<p>"I shall write to Cook," she said. "Also to Nan, to tell her I am +coming."</p> + +<p>Grandmama, after a moment's silence, seemed to gather herself together +for a final effort.</p> + +<p>"Emily, my child. Is your mind set to do this?"</p> + +<p>"Absolutely, mother. Absolutely and entirely."</p> + +<p>"Shall I tell you what I think? No, you don't want to hear it, but you +drive me to it.... If you go to that foolish, reckless child and attempt +to interfere with her, or even to question her, you will run the risk, if +she is innocent, of driving her into what you are trying to prevent. If +she is already committed to it, you run the risk of shutting the door +against her return. In either case you will alienate her from yourself: +that is the least of the risks you run, though the most certain.... That +is all. I can say no more. But I ask you, my dear.... I beg you, for the +child's sake and your own ... to write neither to Cook nor to Nan."</p> + +<p>Grandmama's breath came rather fast and heavily; her heart was troubling +her; emotion and effort were not good for it.</p> + +<p>Mrs. Hilary stood looking down at the old shrunk figure, shaking a little +as she stood, knowing that she must be patient and calm.</p> + +<p>"You will please allow me to judge. You will please let me take the steps +I think necessary to help my child. I know that you have no confidence in +my judgment or my tact; you've always shown that plainly enough, and done +your best to teach my children the same view of me...."</p> + +<p>Grandmama put up her hand, meaning that she could not stand, neither she +nor her heart could stand, a scene. Mrs. Hilary broke off. For once she +did not want a scene either. In these days she found what vent was +necessary for her emotional system in her interviews with Mr. Cradock.</p> + +<p>"I daresay you mean well, mother. But in this matter I must be the judge. +I am a mother first and foremost. It is the only thing that life has left +for me to be." (Scarcely a daughter, she meant: that was made too +difficult for her; you would almost imagine that the office was not +wanted.)</p> + +<p>She turned to the writing table.</p> + +<p>"First of all I shall write to Rosalind, and tell her what I think of her +and her abominable gossip."</p> + +<p>She began to write.</p> + +<p>Grandmama sat shrunk and old and tired in her chair.</p> + +<p>Mrs. Hilary's pen scratched over the paper, telling Rosalind what she +thought.</p> + +<p>"Dear Rosalind," she wrote, "I was very much surprised at your +letter. I do not know why you should trouble to repeat to me these +ridiculous stories about Nan. You cannot suppose that I am likely to +care either what you or any of your friends are saying about one of my +children...." And so on. One knows the style. It eases the mind of the +writer and does not deceive the reader. When the reader is Rosalind +Hilary it amuses her vastly.</p> + + +<h4>4</h4> + +<p>Next day, at three p.m., Mrs. Hilary told Mr. Cradock all about it. Mr. +Cradock was not in the least surprised. Nor had he the slightest, not the +remotest doubt that Nan and Stephen Lumley were doing what Mrs. Hilary +called living in sin, what he preferred to call obeying the natural ego. +(After all, as any theologian would point out, the terms are synonymous +in a fallen world.)</p> + +<p>"I must have your advice," Mrs. Hilary said. "You must tell me what line +to take with her."</p> + +<p>"Shall you," Mr. Cradock enquired, thoughtful and intelligent, "find your +daughter in a state of conflict?"</p> + +<p>Mrs. Hilary spread her hands helplessly before her.</p> + +<p>"I know nothing; nothing."</p> + +<p>"A very great deal," said Mr. Cradock, "depends on that. If she is torn +between the cravings of the primitive ego and the inhibitions put upon +these cravings by the conventions of society—if, in fact, her censor, +her endopsychic censor, is still functioning...."</p> + +<p>"Oh, I doubt if Nan's got an endopsychic censor. She is so lawless +always."</p> + +<p>"Every psyche has a censor." Mr. Cradock was firm. "Regarded, of course, +by the psyche with very varying degrees of respect. Well, what I mean to +say is, if your daughter is in a state of conflict, with forces pulling +her both ways, her case will be very much easier to deal with than if she +has let her primitive ego so take possession of the situation that she +feels in a state of harmony. In the former case, you will only have to +strengthen the forces which are opposing her sexual craving...."</p> + +<p>Mrs. Hilary fidgeted uneasily. "Oh, I don't think Nan feels <i>that</i> +exactly. None of my children...."</p> + +<p>Mr. Cradock gave her an amused glance. It seemed sometimes that he would +never get this foolish lady properly educated.</p> + +<p>"Your children, I presume, are human, Mrs. Hilary. Sexual craving means +a craving for intimacy with a member of another sex."</p> + +<p>"Oh well, I suppose it does. I don't care for the <i>name</i>, somehow. But +please go on."</p> + +<p>"I was going to say, if you find, on the other hand, that your daughter's +nature has attained harmony in connection with this course she is +pursuing, your task will be far more difficult. You will then have to +<i>create</i> a discord, instead of merely strengthening it.... May I ask your +daughter's age?"</p> + +<p>"Nan is thirty-three."</p> + +<p>"A dangerous age."</p> + +<p>"All Nan's ages," said Mrs. Hilary, "have been dangerous. Nan is like +that."</p> + +<p>"As to that," said Mr. Cradock, "we may say that all ages are dangerous +to all people, in this dangerous life we live. But the thirties are a +specially dangerous time for women. They have outlived the shynesses +and restraints of girlhood, and not attained to the caution and +discretion of middle age. They are reckless, and consciously or +unconsciously on the lookout for adventure. They see ahead of them +the end of youth, and that quickens their pace.... Has passion always +been a strong element in your daughter's life?"</p> + +<p>"Oh, passion...." (Another word not liked by Mrs. Hilary.) "Not quite +that, I should say. Nan has been reckless; she has got into scrapes, got +herself talked about. She has played about with men a good deal always. +But as to passion...."</p> + +<p>"A common thing enough," Mr. Cradock told her, as it were reassuringly. +"Nothing to fight shy of, or be afraid of. But something to be regulated +of course.... Now, the thing is to oppose to this irregular desire of +your daughter's for this man a new and a stronger set of desires. Fight +one group of complexes with another. You can't, I suppose, persuade her +to be analysed? There are good analysts in Rome."</p> + +<p>"Oh no. Nan laughs at it. She laughs at everything of that sort."</p> + +<p>"A great mistake. A mistake often made by shallow and foolish people. +They might as well laugh at surgery.... Well now, to go into this +question of the battle between the complex-groups...."</p> + +<p>He went into it, patiently and exhaustively. His phrases drifted over +Mrs. Hilary's head.</p> + +<p>"... a deterrent force residing in the ego and preventing us from +stepping outside the bounds of propriety.... Rebellious messages sent +up from the Unconscious, which wishes to live, love and act in archaic +modes ... conflict with the progress of human society ... inhibitory and +repressive power of the censor...." (How wonderful, thought Mrs. Hilary, +to be able to talk so like a book for so long together!) ... "give the +censor all the help we can ... keep the Unconscious in order by turning +its energies into some other channel ... give it a substitute.... The +energy involved in the intense desire for someone of another sex can be +diverted ... employed on some useful work. Libido ... it should all be +used. Find another channel for your daughter's libido.... Her life is +perhaps a rather vacant one?"</p> + +<p>That Mrs. Hilary was able to reply to.</p> + +<p>"Nan's? Vacant? Oh no. She is quite full of energy. Too full. Always +doing a thousand things. And she writes, you know."</p> + +<p>"Ah. That should be an outlet. A great deal of libido is used up by that. +Well, her present strong desire for this man should be sublimated into a +desire for something else. I gather that her root trouble is lawlessness. +That can be cured. You must make her remember her first lawless action." +(Man's first disobedience and the fruit thereof, thought Mrs. Hilary.)</p> + +<p>"O dear me," she said, "I'm afraid that would be impossible. When she was +a month old she used to attempt to dash her bottle onto the floor."</p> + +<p>"People have even remembered their baptisms, when driven back to them by +analysis."</p> + +<p>"Our children were not baptised. My husband was something of a Unitarian. +He said he would not tie them up with a rite against which they might +react in later life. So they were merely registered."</p> + +<p>"Ah. In a way that is a pity. Baptism is an impressive moment in the +sensitive consciousness of the infant. It has sometimes been found +to be a sort of lamp shining through the haze of the early memory. +Registration, owing to the non-participation of the infant, is useless +in that way."</p> + +<p>"Nan might remember how she kicked me when I short-coated her," Mrs. +Hilary mused, hopefully.</p> + +<p>Mr. Cradock flowed on. Mrs. Hilary, listened, assented, was impressed. It +all sounded so simple, so wonderful, even so beautiful. But she thought +once or twice, "He doesn't know Nan."</p> + +<p>"Thank you," she said, rising to go when her hour was over. "You have +made me feel so much stronger, as usual. I can't thank you enough for all +you do for me. I could face none of my troubles and problems but for your +help."</p> + +<p>"That merely means," said Mr. Cradock, who always got the last word, +"that your ego is at present in what is called the state of infantile +dependence or tutelage. A necessary but an impermanent stage in its +struggle towards the adult level of the reality-principle."</p> + +<p>"I suppose so," Mrs. Hilary said. "Good-bye."</p> + +<p>"He is too clever for me," she thought, as she went home. "He is often +above my head." But she was used to that in the people she met.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XIII" id="CHAPTER_XIII"></a>CHAPTER XIII</h2> + +<h3>THE DAUGHTER</h3> + + +<h4>1</h4> + +<p>Mrs. Hilary hated travelling, which is indeed detestable. The Channel was +choppy and she a bad sailor; the train from Calais to Paris continued the +motion, and she remained a bad sailor (bad sailors often do this). She +lay back and smelled salts, and they were of no avail. At Paris she tried +and failed to dine. She passed a wretched night, being of those who +detest nights in trains without <i>wagons-lits</i>, but save money by not +having <i>wagons-lits</i>, and wonder dismally all night if it is worth it. +Modane in the chilly morning annoyed her as it annoys us all. The customs +people were rude and the other travellers in the way. Mrs. Hilary, who +was not good in crowds, pushed them, getting excited and red in the face. +Psycho-analysis had made her more patient and calm than she had been +before, but even so, neither patient nor calm when it came to jostling +crowds.</p> + +<p>"I am not strong enough for all this," she thought, in the Mont Cenis +tunnel.</p> + +<p>Rushing out of it into Italy, she thought, "Last time I was here was in +'99, with Richard. If Richard were here now he would help me." He would +face the customs at Modane, find and get the tickets, deal with uncivil +Germans—(Germans were often uncivil to Mrs. Hilary and she to them, and +though she had not met any yet on this journey, owing doubtless to their +state of collapse and depression consequent on the Great Peace, one might +get in at any moment, Germans being naturally buoyant). Richard would +have got hold of pillows, seen that she was comfortable at night, told +her when there was time to get out for coffee and when there wasn't (Mrs. +Hilary was no hand at this; she would try no runs and get run out, or all +but run out). And Richard would have helped to save Nan. Nan and her +father had got on pretty well, for a naughty girl and an elderly parent. +They had appreciated one another's brains, which is not a bad basis. They +had not accepted or even liked one another's ideas on life, but this is +not necessary or indeed usual in families. Mrs. Hilary certainly did not +go so far as to suppose that Nan would have obeyed her father had he +appeared before her in Rome and bidden her change her way of life, but +she might have thought it over. And to make Nan think over anything +which <i>she</i> bade her do would be a phenomenal task. What had Mr. Cradock +said—make her remember her first disobedience, find the cause of it, +talk it out with her, get it into the open—and then she would be cured +of her present lawlessness. Why? That was the connection that always +puzzled Mrs. Hilary a little. Why should remembering that you had done, +and why you had done, the same kind of thing thirty years ago cure you +of doing it now? Similarly, why should remembering that a nurse had +scared you as an infant cure you of your present fear of burglars? In +point of fact, it didn't. Mr. Cradock had tried this particular cure on +Mrs. Hilary. It must be her own fault, of course, but somehow she had not +felt much less nervous about noises in the house at night since Mr. +Cradock had brought up into the light, as he called it, that old fright +in the nursery. After all, why should one? However, hers not to reason +why; and perhaps the workings of Nan's mind might be more orthodox.</p> + +<p>At Turin Germans got in. Of course. They were all over Italy. Italy was +welcoming them with both hands, establishing again the economic entente. +These were a mother and a <i>backfisch</i>, and they looked shyly and sullenly +at Mrs. Hilary and the other Englishwoman in the compartment. They were +thin, and Mrs. Hilary noted it with satisfaction. She didn't believe for +one moment in starving Germans, but these certainly did not look so +prosperous and buxom as a pre-war German mother and <i>backfisch</i> would +have looked. They were equally uncivil, though. They pulled both windows +up to the top. The two English ladies promptly pulled them down half-way. +English ladies are the only beings in the world who like open windows in +winter. English lower-class women do not, nor do English gentlemen. If +you want to keep warm while travelling (to frowst, as the open air school +calls it) do not get in with well-bred Englishwomen.</p> + +<p>The German mother broke out in angry remonstrance, indicating that she +had neuralgia and the <i>backfisch</i> a cold in the head. There followed one +of those quarrels which occur on this topic in trains, and are so bitter +and devastating. It had now more than the pre-war bitterness; between the +combatants flowed rivers of blood; behind them ranked male relatives +killed or maimed by the male relatives of their foes on the opposite +seat. The English ladies won. Germany was a conquered race, and knew it. +In revenge, the <i>backfisch</i> coughed and sneezed "all over the carriage," +as Mrs. Hilary put it, "in the disgusting German way," and her mother +made noises as if she could be sick if she tried hard enough.</p> + +<p>So it was a detestable journey. And the second night in the train was +worse than the first. For the Germans, would you believe it, shut both +windows while the English were asleep, and the English, true to their +caste and race, woke with bad headaches.</p> + + +<h4>2</h4> + +<p>When they got to Rome in the morning Mrs. Hilary felt thoroughly ill. She +had to strive hard for self-control; it would not do to meet Nan in an +unnerved, collapsed state. All her psychical strength was necessary +to deal with Nan. So when she stood on the platform with her luggage she +looked and felt not only like one who has slept (but not much) in a train +for two nights and fought with Germans about windows but also like an +elderly virgin martyr (spiritually tense and strung-up, and distraught, +and on the line between exultation and hysteria).</p> + +<p>Nan was there. Nan, pale and pinched, and looking plain in the nipping +morning air, though wrapped in a fur coat. (One of the points about Nan +was that, though she sometimes looked plain, she never looked dowdy; +there was always a distinction, a chic, about her.)</p> + +<p>Nan kissed her mother and helped with the luggage and got a cab. Nan was +good at railway stations and such places. Mrs. Hilary was not.</p> + +<p>They drove out into the hideous new streets. Mrs. Hilary shivered.</p> + +<p>"Oh, how ugly!"</p> + +<p>"Rome is ugly, this part."</p> + +<p>"It's worse since '99."</p> + +<p>But she did not really remember clearly how it had looked in '99. The old +desire to pose, to show that she knew something, took her. Yet she felt +that Nan, who knew that she knew next to nothing, would not be deceived.</p> + +<p>"Oh ... the Forum!"</p> + +<p>"The Forum of Trajan," Nan said. "We don't pass the Roman Forum on the +way to our street."</p> + +<p>"The Forum of Trajan, of course, I meant that."</p> + +<p>But she knew that Nan knew she had meant the Forum Romanum.</p> + +<p>"Rome is always Rome," she said, which was safer than identifying +particular buildings, or even Forums, in it. "Nothing like it anywhere."</p> + +<p>"How long can you stay, mother? I've got you a room in the house I'm +lodging in. It's in a little street the other side of the Corso. Rather +a mediæval street, I'm afraid. That is, it smells. But the rooms are +clean."</p> + +<p>"Oh, I'm not staying long.... We'll talk later; talk it all out. A +thorough talk. When we get in. After a cup of tea...."</p> + +<p>Mrs. Hilary remembered that Nan did not yet know why she had come. After +a cup of strong tea.... A cup of tea first.... Coffee wasn't the same. +One needed tea, after those awful Germans. She told Nan about these. Nan +knew that she would have had tiresome travelling companions; she always +did; if it weren't Germans it would be inconsiderate English. She was +unlucky.</p> + +<p>"Go straight to bed and rest when we get in," Nan advised; but she shook +her head. "We must talk first."</p> + +<p>Nan, she thought, looked pinched about the lips, and thin, and her black +brows were at times nervous and sullen. Nan did not look happy. Was it +guilt, or merely the chill morning air?</p> + +<p>They stopped at a shabby old house in a narrow mediæval street in the +Borgo, which had been a palace and was now let in apartments. Here Nan +had two bare, gilded, faded rooms. Mrs. Hilary sat by a charcoal stove in +one of them, and Nan made her some tea. After the tea Mrs. Hilary felt +revived. She wouldn't go to bed; she felt that the time for the talk had +come. She looked round the room for signs of Stephen Lumley, but all the +signs she saw were of Nan; Nan's books, Nan's proofs strewing the table. +Of course that bad man wouldn't come while she was there. He was no doubt +waiting eagerly for her to be gone. Probably they both were....</p> + + +<h4>3</h4> + +<p>"Nan—" They were still sitting by the stove, and Nan was lighting a +cigarette. "Nan—do you guess why I've come?"</p> + +<p>Nan threw away the match.</p> + +<p>"No, mother. How should I?... One does come to Rome, I suppose, if one +gets a chance."</p> + +<p>"Oh, I've not come to see Rome. I know Rome. Long before you were +born.... I've come to see you. And to take you back with me."</p> + +<p>Nan glanced at her quickly, a sidelong glance of suspicion and +comprehension. Her lower lip projected stubbornly.</p> + +<p>"Ah, I see you know what I mean. Yes, I've heard. Rumours reached us—it +was through Rosalind, of course. And I'm afraid ... I'm afraid that for +once she spoke the truth."</p> + +<p>"Oh no, she didn't. I don't know what Rosalind's been saying this time, +but it would be odd if it was the truth."</p> + +<p>"Nan, it's no use denying things. I <i>know</i>."</p> + +<p>It was true; she did know. A few months ago she would have doubted and +questioned; but Mr. Cradock had taught her better. She had learnt from +him the simple truth about life; that is, that nearly everyone is nearly +always involved up to the eyes in the closest relationship with someone +of another sex. It is nature's way with mankind. Another thing she had +learnt from him was that the more they denied it the more it was so; +protests of innocence and admissions of guilt were alike proofs of the +latter. So she was accurate when she said that it was no use for Nan to +deny anything. It was no use whatever.</p> + +<p>Nan had become cool and sarcastic—her nastiest, most dangerous manner.</p> + +<p>"Do you think you would care to be a little more explicit, mother? I'm +afraid I don't quite follow. What is it no use my denying? <i>What</i> do you +know?"</p> + +<p>Mrs. Hilary gathered herself together. Her head trembled and jerked with +emotion; wisps of her hair, tousled by the night, escaped over her +collar. She spoke tremulously, tensely, her hands wrung together.</p> + +<p>"That you are going on with a married man. That you are his mistress," +she said, putting it at its crudest, since Nan wanted plain speaking.</p> + +<p>Nan sat quite still, smoking. The silence thrilled with Mrs. Hilary's +passion.</p> + +<p>"I see," Nan said at last. "And it's no use my denying it. In that case +I won't." Her voice was smooth and clear and still, like cold water. "You +know the man's name too, I presume?"</p> + +<p>"Of course. Everyone knows it. I tell you, Nan, everyone's talking of you +and him. A town topic, Rosalind calls it."</p> + +<p>"Rosalind would. Town must be very dull just now, if that's all they have +to talk of."</p> + +<p>"But it's not the scandal I'm thinking of," Mrs. Hilary went on, "though, +God knows, that's bad enough—I'm thankful Father died when he did and +was spared it—but the thing itself. The awful, awful thing itself. Have +you no shame, Nan?"</p> + +<p>"Not much."</p> + +<p>"For all our sakes. Not for mine—I know you don't care a rap for +that—but for Neville, whom you do profess to love...."</p> + +<p>"I should think we might leave Neville out of it. She's shown no signs of +believing any story about me."</p> + +<p>"Well, she does believe it, you may depend upon it. No one could help it. +People write from here saying it's an open fact."</p> + +<p>"People here can't have much to put in their letters."</p> + +<p>"Oh, they'll make room for gossip. People always will. Always. But I'm +not going to dwell on that side of things, because I know you don't care +what anyone says. It's the <i>wrongness</i> of it.... A married man.... Even +if his wife divorces him! It would be in the papers.... And if she +doesn't you can't ever marry him.... Do you care for the man?"</p> + +<p>"What man?"</p> + +<p>"Don't quibble. Stephen Lumley, of course."</p> + +<p>"Stephen Lumley is a friend of mine. I'm fond of him."</p> + +<p>"I don't believe you do love him. I believe it's all recklessness and +perversity. Lawlessness. That's what Mr. Cradock said."</p> + +<p>"Mr. Cradock?" Nan's eyebrows went up.</p> + +<p>Mrs. Hilary flushed a brighter scarlet. The colour kept running over her +face and going back again, all the time she was talking.</p> + +<p>"Your psycho-analyst doctor," said Nan, and her voice was a little harder +and cooler than before. "I suppose you had an interesting conversation +with him about me."</p> + +<p>"I have to tell him everything," Mrs. Hilary stammered. "It's part +of the course. I did consult him about you. I'm not ashamed of it. He +understands about these things. He's not an ordinary man."</p> + +<p>"This is very interesting." Nan lit another cigarette. "It seems that +I've been a boon all round as a town topic—to London, to Rome and to St. +Mary's Bay.... Well, what did he advise about me?"</p> + +<p>Mrs. Hilary remembered vaguely and in part, but did not think it would be +profitable just now to tell Nan.</p> + +<p>"We have to be very wise about this," she said, collecting herself. "Very +wise and firm. Lawlessness.... I wonder if you remember, Nan, throwing +your shoes at my head when you were three?"</p> + +<p>"No. But I can quite believe I did. It was the sort of thing I used to +do."</p> + +<p>"Think back, Nan. What is the first act of naughtiness and disobedience +you remember, and what moved you to it?"</p> + +<p>Nan, who knew a good deal more about psycho-analysis than Mrs. Hilary +did, laughed curtly.</p> + +<p>"No good, mother. That won't work on me. I'm not susceptible to the +treatment. Too hard-headed. What was Mr. Cradock's next brain-wave?"</p> + +<p>"Oh well, if you take it like this, what's the use...."</p> + +<p>"None at all. I advise you not to bother yourself. It will only make your +headache worse.... Now I think after all this excitement you had better +go and lie down, don't you? I'm going out, anyhow."</p> + +<p>Then Stephen Lumley knocked at the door and came in. A tall, slouching +hollow-chested man of forty, who looked unhappy and yet cynically +amused at the world. He had a cough, and unusually bright eyes under +overhanging brows.</p> + +<p>Nan said, "This is Stephen Lumley, mother. My mother, Stephen," and left +them to do the rest, watching, critical and aloof, to see how they would +manage the situation.</p> + +<p>Mrs. Hilary managed it by rising from her chair and standing rigidly in +the middle of the room, breathing hard and staring. Stephen Lumley looked +enquiringly at Nan.</p> + +<p>"How do you do, Mrs. Hilary," he said. "I expect you're pretty well +played out by that beastly journey, aren't you."</p> + +<p>Mrs. Hilary's voice came stifled, choked, between pants. She was working +up; or rather worked up: Nan knew the symptoms.</p> + +<p>"You dare to come into my presence.... I must ask you to leave my +daughter's sitting-room <i>immediately</i>. I have come to take her back to +England with me at once. Please go. There is nothing that can possibly be +said between you and me—nothing."</p> + +<p>Stephen Lumley, a cool and quiet person, raised his brows, looked enquiry +once more at Nan, found no answer, said, "Well, then, I'll say good-bye," +and departed.</p> + +<p>Mrs. Hilary wrung her hands together.</p> + +<p>"How dare he! How dare he! Into my very presence! He has no shame...."</p> + +<p>Nan watched her coolly. But a red spot had begun to burn in each cheek at +her mother's opening words to Lumley, and still burned. Mrs. Hilary knew +of old that still-burning, deadly anger of Nan's.</p> + +<p>"Thank you, mother. You've helped me to make up my mind. I'm going to +Capri with Stephen next week. I've refused up till now. He was going +without me. You've made up my mind for me. You can tell Mr. Cradock that +if he asks."</p> + +<p>Nan was fiercely, savagely desirous to hurt. In the same spirit she had +doubtless thrown her shoes at Mrs. Hilary thirty years ago. Rage and +disgust, hot rebellion and sick distaste—what she had felt then she +felt now. During her mother's breathless outbreak at Stephen Lumley, +standing courteous and surprised before her, she had crossed her Rubicon. +And now with flaming words she burned her boats.</p> + +<p>Mrs. Hilary burst into tears. But her tears had never yet quenched Nan's +flames. Nan made her lie down and gave her sal volatile. Sal volatile +eases the head and nervous system and composes the manners, but no more +than tears does it quench flames.</p> + + +<h4>4</h4> + +<p>The day that followed was strange, and does not sound likely, but life +often does not. Nan took Mrs. Hilary out to lunch at a trattoria near +the Forum, as it were to change the subject, and they spent the usual +first afternoon of visitors in Rome, who hasten to view the Forum with +a guide to the most recent excavations in their hands. Mrs. Hilary felt +completely uninterested to-day in recent or any other excavations. But, +obsessed even now with the old instinctive desire (the fond hope, rather) +not to seem unintelligent before her children, more especially when she +was not on good terms with them, she accompanied Nan, who firmly and +deftly closed or changed the subjects of unlawful love, Stephen Lumley, +Capri, returning to England, and her infant acts of wilfulness, whenever +her mother opened them, which was frequently, as Mrs. Hilary found these +things easier conversational topics than the buildings in the Forum. Nan +was determined to keep the emotional pressure low for the rest of the +day, and she was fairly competent at this when she tried. As Mrs. Hilary +had equal gifts at keeping it high, it was a well-matched contest. When +she left the Forum for a tea shop, both were tired out. The Forum is +tiring; emotion is tiring; tears are tiring; quarrelling is tiring; +travelling through to Rome is tiring; all five together are annihilating.</p> + +<p>However, they had tea.</p> + +<p>Mrs. Hilary was cold and bitter now, not hysterical. Nan, who was +living a bad life, and was also tiresomely exactly informed about the +differences between the Forum in '99 and the Forum to-day (a subject on +which Mrs. Hilary was hazy) was not fit, until she came to a better mind, +to be spoken to. Mrs. Hilary shut her lips tight and averted her reddened +eyes. She hated Nan just now. She could have loved her had she been +won to repentance, but now—"Nan was never like the rest," she thought.</p> + +<p>Nan persisted in making light, equable conversation, which Mrs. Hilary +thought in bad taste. She talked of England and the family, asked after +Grandmama, Neville and the rest.</p> + +<p>"Neville is extremely ill," Mrs. Hilary said, quite untruly, but +that was, to do her justice, the way in which she always saw illness, +particularly Neville's. "And worried to death about Gerda, who seems to +have gone off her head since that accident in Cornwall. She is still +sticking to that insane, wicked notion about not getting married."</p> + +<p>Nan had heard before of this.</p> + +<p>"She'll give that up," she said, coolly, "when she finds she really can't +have Barry if she doesn't. Gerda gets what she wants."</p> + +<p>"Oh, you all do that, the whole lot of you.... And a nice example +<i>you're</i> setting the child."</p> + +<p>"She'll give it up," Nan repeated, keeping the conversation on Gerda. +"Gerda hasn't the martyr touch. She won't perish for a principle. She +wants Barry and she'll have him, though she may hold out for a time. +Gerda doesn't lose things, in the end."</p> + +<p>"She's a very silly child, and I suppose she's been mixing with dreadful +friends and picked up these ideas. At twenty there's some excuse for +ignorant foolishness." But none at thirty-three, Mrs. Hilary meant.</p> + +<p>"Barry Briscoe," she added, "is being quite firm about it. Though he is +desperately in love with her, Neville tells me; desperately."</p> + +<p>He's soon got over you, even if he did care for you once, and even if you +did send him away, her emphasis implied.</p> + +<p>In Nan, casually flicking the ash off her cigarette, a queer impulse came +and went. For a moment she wanted to cry; to drop hardness and lightness +and pretence, and cry like a child and say "Mother, comfort me. Don't go +on hurting me. I love Barry. Be kind to me, oh be kind to me!"</p> + +<p>If she had done it, Mrs. Hilary would have taken her in her arms and been +all mother, and the wound in their affection would have been temporarily +healed.</p> + +<p>Nan said nonchalantly "I suppose he is. They're sure to be all +right.... Now what next, mother? It's getting dark for seeing things."</p> + +<p>"I am tired to death," said Mrs. Hilary. "I shall go back to those +dreadful rooms and try to rest.... It has been an awful day.... I hate +Rome. In '99 it was so different. Father and I went about together; he +showed me everything. He <i>knew</i> about it all. Besides...."</p> + +<p>Besides, how could I enjoy sight-seeing after that scene this morning, +and with this awful calamity that has happened?</p> + +<p>They went back. Mrs. Hilary was desperately missing her afternoon hour +with Mr. Cradock. She had come to rely on it on a Wednesday.</p> + + +<h4>5</h4> + +<p>Nan sat up late, correcting proofs, after Mrs. Hilary had gone to bed. +Galleys lay all round her on the floor by the stove. She let them slip +from her knee and lie there. She hated them....</p> + +<p>She pressed her hands over her eyes, shutting them out, shutting out +life. She was going off with Stephen Lumley. She had told him so this +morning. Both their lives were broken; hers by Barry, whom she loved, his +by his wife, whom he disliked. He loved her; he wanted her. She could +with him find relief, find life a tolerable thing. They could have a good +time together. They were good companions; their need, though dissimilar, +was mutual. They saw the same beauty, spoke the same tongue, laughed at +the same things. In the very thought of Stephen, with his cynical humour, +his clear, keen mind, his lazy power of brain, Nan had found relief all +that day, reacting desperately from a mind fuddled with sentiment and +emotion as with drink, a soft, ignorant brain, which knew and cared about +nothing except people, a hysterical passion of anger and malice. They had +pushed her sharply and abruptly over the edge of decision, that mind and +brain and passion. Stephen, against whom their fierce anger was +concentrated, was so different....</p> + +<p>To get away, to get right away from everything and everyone, with +Stephen. Not to have to go back to London alone, to see what she could +not, surely, bear to see—Barry and Gerda, Gerda and Barry, always, +everywhere, radiant and in love. And Neville, Gerda's mother, who saw so +much. And Rosalind, who saw everything, everything, and said so. And Mrs. +Hilary....</p> + +<p>To saunter round the queer, lovely corners of the earth with Stephen, +light oneself by Stephen's clear, flashing mind, look after Stephen's +weak, neglected body as he never could himself ... that was the only +anodyne. Life would then some time become an adventure again, a gay +stroll through the fair, instead of a desperate sickness and nightmare.</p> + +<p>Barry, oh Barry.... Nan, who had thought she was getting better, found +that she was not. Tears stormed and shook her at last. She crumpled up on +the floor among the galley-slips, her head upon the chair.</p> + +<p>Those damned proofs—who wanted them? What were books? What was anything?</p> + + +<h4>6</h4> + +<p>Mrs. Hilary came in, in her dressing-gown, red-eyed. She had heard +strangled sounds, and knew that her child was crying.</p> + +<p>"My darling!"</p> + +<p>Her arms were round Nan's shoulders; she was kneeling among the proofs.</p> + +<p>"My little girl—Nan!"</p> + +<p>"Mother...."</p> + +<p>They held each other close. It was a queer moment, though not an +unprecedented one in the stormy history of their relations together. +A queer, strange, comforting, healing moment, the fleeting shadow of a +great rock in a barren land; a strayed fragment of something which should +have been between them always but was not. Certainly an odd moment.</p> + +<p>"My own baby.... You're unhappy...."</p> + +<p>"Unhappy—yes.... Darling mother, it can't be helped. Nothing can be +helped.... Don't let's talk ... darling."</p> + +<p>Strange words from Nan. Strange for Mrs. Hilary to feel her hand held +against Nan's wet cheek and kissed.</p> + +<p>Strange moment: and it could not last. The crying child wants its mother; +the mother wants to comfort the crying child. A good bridge, but one +inadequate for the strain of daily traffic. The child, having dried +its tears, watches the bridge break again, and thinks it a pity but +inevitable. The mother, less philosophic, may cry in her turn, thinking +perhaps that the bridge may be built this time in that way; but, the +child having the colder heart, it seldom is.</p> + +<p>There remain the moments, impotent but indestructible.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XIV" id="CHAPTER_XIV"></a>CHAPTER XIV</h2> + +<h3>YOUTH TO YOUTH</h3> + + +<h4>1</h4> + +<p>Kay was home for the Christmas vacation. He was full, not so much of +Cambridge, as of schemes for establishing a co-operative press next year. +He was learning printing and binding, and wanted Gerda to learn too.</p> + +<p>"Because, if you're really not going to marry Barry, and if Barry sticks +to not having you without, you'll be rather at a loose end, won't you, +and you may as well come and help us with the press.... But of course, +you know," Kay added absently, his thoughts still on the press, "I should +advise you to give up on that point."</p> + +<p>"Give up, Kay? Marry, do you mean?"</p> + +<p>"Yes.... It doesn't seem to me to be a point worth making a fuss about. +Of course I agree with you in theory—I always have. But I've come to +think lately that it's not a point of much importance. And perfectly +sensible people are doing it all the time. You know Jimmy Kenrick and +Susan Mallow have done it? They used to say they wouldn't, but they have. +The fact is, people <i>do</i> do it, whatever they say about it beforehand. +And though in theory it's absurd, it seems often to work out pretty well +in actual life. Personally I should make no bones about it, if I wanted +a girl and she wanted marriage. Of course a girl can always go on being +called by her own name if she likes. That has points."</p> + +<p>"Of course one could do that," Gerda pondered.</p> + +<p>"It's a sound plan in some ways. It saves trouble and explanation +to go on with the name you've published your things under before +marriage.... By the way, what about your poems, Gerda? They'll be about +ready by the time we get our press going, won't they? We can afford to +have some slight stuff of that sort if we get hold of a few really good +things to start with, to make our name."</p> + +<p>Gerda's thoughts were not on her poems, nor on Kay's press, but on his +advice about matrimony. For the first time she wavered. If Kay thought +that.... It set the business in a new light. And of course other people +<i>were</i> doing it; sound people, the people who talked the same language +and belonged to the same set as one's self.</p> + +<p>Kay had spoken. It was the careless, authentic voice of youth speaking to +youth. It was a trumpet blast making a breach in the walls against which +the batteries of middle age had thundered in vain. Gerda told herself +that she must look further into this, think it over again, talk it over +with other people of the age to know what was right. If it could be +managed with honour, she would find it a great relief to give up on this +point. For Barry was so firm; he would never give up; and, after all, one +of them must, if it could be done with a clear conscience.</p> + + +<h4>2</h4> + +<p>Ten days later Gerda said to Barry, "I've been thinking it over again, +Barry, and I've decided that perhaps it will be all right for us to get +married after all."</p> + +<p>Barry took both her hands and kissed each in turn, to show that he was +not triumphing but adoring.</p> + +<p>"You mean it? You feel you can really do it without violating your +conscience? Sure, darling?"</p> + +<p>"Yes, I think I'm sure. Lots of quite sensible, good people have done it +lately."</p> + +<p>"Oh any number, of course—if <i>that's</i> any reason."</p> + +<p>"Not, not those people. My sort of people, I mean. People who believe +what I do, and wouldn't tie themselves up and lose their liberty for +anything."</p> + +<p>"I agree with Lenin. He says liberty is a bourgeois dream."</p> + +<p>"Barry, I may keep my name, mayn't I? I may still be called Gerda +Bendish, by people in general?"</p> + +<p>"Of course, if you like. Rather silly, isn't it? Because it won't <i>be</i> +your name. But that's your concern."</p> + +<p>"It's the name I've always written and drawn under, you see."</p> + +<p>"Yes. I see your point. Of course you shall be Gerda Bendish anywhere you +like, only not on cheques, if you don't mind."</p> + +<p>"And I don't much want to wear a wedding ring, Barry."</p> + +<p>"That's as you like, too, of course. You might keep it in your purse when +travelling, to produce if censorious hotel keepers look askance at us. +Even the most abandoned ladies do that sometimes, I believe. Or your +marriage lines will do as well.... Gerda, you blessed darling, it's most +frightfully decent and sporting of you to have changed your mind and +owned up. Next time we differ I'll try and be the one to do it, I +honestly will.... I say, let's come out by ourselves and dine and do a +theatre, to celebrate the occasion."</p> + +<p>So they celebrated the triumph of institutionalism.</p> + + +<h4>3</h4> + +<p>Their life together, thought Barry, would be a keen, jolly, adventuring +business, an ardent thing, full of gallant dreams and endeavours. It +should never grow tame or stale or placid, never lose its fine edge. +There would be mountain peak beyond mountain peak to scale together. They +would be co-workers, playmates, friends and lovers all at once, and they +would walk in liberty as in a bourgeois dream.</p> + +<p>So planned Barry Briscoe, the romantic, about whose head the vision +splendid always hovered, a realisable, capturable thing.</p> + +<p>Gerda thought, "I'm happy. Poetry and drawing and Barry. I've everything +I want, except a St. Bernard pup, and Kay's giving me that for Christmas. +<i>I'm happy.</i>"</p> + +<p>It was a tingling, intense, sensuous feeling, like stretching warm before +a good fire, or lying in fragrant thymy woods in June, in the old Junes +when suns were hot. Life was a song and a dream and a summer morning.</p> + +<p>"You're happy, Gerda," Neville said to her once, gladly but half +wistfully, and she nodded, with her small gleaming smile.</p> + +<p>"Go on being happy," Neville told her, and Gerda did not know that she +had nearly added "for it's cost rather a lot, your happiness." Gerda +seldom cared how much things had cost; she did not waste thought on such +matters. She was happy.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XV" id="CHAPTER_XV"></a>CHAPTER XV</h2> + +<h3>THE DREAM</h3> + + +<h4>1</h4> + +<p>Barry and Gerda were married in January in a registry office, and, as all +concerned disliked wedding parties, there was no wedding party.</p> + +<p>After they had gone, Neville, recovered now from the lilies and languors +of illness, plunged into the roses and raptures of social life. One +mightn't, she said to herself, be able to accomplish much in this world, +or imprint one's personality on one's environment by deeds and +achievements, but one could at least enjoy life, be a pleased +participator in its spoils and pleasures, an enchanted spectator of its +never-ending flux and pageant, its richly glowing moving pictures. One +could watch the play out, even if one hadn't much of a part oneself. +Music, art, drama, the company of eminent, pleasant and entertaining +persons, all the various forms of beauty, the carefully cultivated +richness, graces and elegances which go to build up the world of the +fortunate, the cultivated, the prosperous and the well-bred—Neville +walked among these like the soul in the lordly pleasure house built for +her by the poet Tennyson, or like Robert Browning glutting his sense upon +the world—"Miser, there waits the gold for thee!"—or Francis Thompson +swinging the earth a trinket at his wrist. In truth, she was at times +self-consciously afraid that she resembled all these three, whom (in the +moods they thus expressed) she disliked beyond reason, finding them +morbid and hard to please.</p> + +<p>She too knew herself morbid and hard to please. If she had not been +so, to be Rodney's wife would surely have been enough; it would have +satisfied all her nature. Why didn't it? Was it perhaps really because, +though she loved him, it was not with the uncritical devotion of the +early days? She had for so many years now seen clearly, through and +behind his charm, his weakness, his vanities, his scorching ambitions +and jealousies, his petulant angers, his dependence on praise and +admiration. She had no jealousy now of his frequent confidential +intimacies with other attractive women; they were harmless enough, and +he never lost the need of and dependence on her; but they may have helped +to clarify her vision of him.</p> + +<p>Rodney had no failings beyond what are the common need of human nature; +he was certainly good enough for her. Their marriage was all right. It +was only the foolish devil of egotism in her which goaded to unwholesome +activity the other side of her nature, that need for self-expression +which marriage didn't satisfy.</p> + + +<h4>2</h4> + +<p>In February she suddenly tired of London and the British climate, and was +moved by a desire to travel. So she went to Italy, and stayed in Capri +with Nan and Stephen Lumley, who were leading on that island lives by +turns gaily indolent and fiercely industrious, finding the company +stimulating and the climate agreeable and soothing to Stephen's defective +lungs.</p> + +<p>From Italy Neville went to Greece. Corinth, Athens, the islands, Tempe, +Delphi, Crete—how good to have money and be able to see all these! Italy +and Greece are Europe's pleasure grounds; there the cultivated and the +prosperous traveller may satisfy his soul and forget carking cares and +stabbing ambitions, and drug himself with loveliness.</p> + +<p>If Neville abruptly tired of it, and set her face homewards in early +April, it was partly because she felt the need of Rodney, and partly +because she saw, fleetingly but day by day more lucidly, that one could +not take one's stand, for satisfaction of desire, on the money which one +happened to have but which the majority bitterly and emptily lacked. Some +common way there had to be, some freedom all might grasp, a liberty not +for the bourgeois only, but for the proletariat—the poor, the sad, the +gay proletariat, who also grew old and lost their dreams, and had not the +wherewithal to drug their souls, unless indeed they drank much liquor, +and that is but a poor artificial way to peace.</p> + +<p>Voyaging homewards through the spring seas, Neville saw life as an +entangling thicket, the Woods of Westermain she had loved in her +childhood, in which the scaly dragon squatted, the craving monster self +that had to be subjugated before one could walk free in the enchanted +woods.</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Him shall change, transforming late,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Wonderously renovate...."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>Dimly discerning through the thicket the steep path that climbed to +such liberty as she sought, seeing far off the place towards which her +stumbling feet were set, where life should be lived with alert readiness +and response, oblivious of its personal achievements, its personal claims +and spoils, Neville the spoilt, vain, ambitious, disappointed egoist, +strained her eyes into the distance and half smiled. It might be a dream, +that liberty, but it was a dream worth a fight....</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XVI" id="CHAPTER_XVI"></a>CHAPTER XVI</h2> + +<h3>TIME</h3> + + +<h4>1</h4> + +<p>February at St. Mary's Bay. The small fire flickered and fluttered in +the grate with a sound like the windy beating of wings. The steady rain +sloped against the closed windows of The Gulls, and dropped patteringly +on the asphalt pavements of Marine Crescent outside, and the cold grey +sea tumbled moaning.</p> + +<p>Grandmama sat in her arm-chair by the hearth, reading the Autobiography +of a Cabinet Minister's Wife and listening to the fire, the sea and the +rain, and sleeping a little now and again.</p> + +<p>Mrs. Hilary sat in another arm-chair, surrounded by bad novels, as if she +had been a reviewer. She was regarding them, too, with something of the +reviewer's pained and inimical distaste, dipping now into one, shutting +it with a sharp sigh, trying another; flinging it on the floor with an +ejaculation of anger and fatigue.</p> + +<p>Grandmama woke with a start, and said "What fell? Did something fall?" +and adjusted her glasses and opened the Autobiography again.</p> + +<p>"A sadly vulgar, untruthful and ill-written book. The sort of +autobiography Gilbert's wife will write when she has time. It reminds me +very much of her letters, and is, I am sure, still more like the diary +which she no doubt keeps. Poor Gilbert...." Grandmama seemed to be +confusing Gilbert momentarily with the Cabinet Minister. "I remember," +she went on, "meeting this young woman at Oxford, in the year of the +first Jubilee.... A very bright talker. They can so seldom +write...." She dozed again.</p> + +<p>"Will this intolerable day," Mrs. Hilary enquired of the housemaid +who came in to make up the fire, "never be over? I suppose it will be +bed-time <i>some time</i>...."</p> + +<p>"It's just gone a quarter past six, ma'am," said the housemaid, offering +little hope, and withdrew.</p> + +<p>Mrs. Hilary went to the window and drew back the curtains and looked out +at Marine Crescent in the gloomy, rainy twilight. The long evening +stretched in front of her—the long evening which she had never learnt to +use. Psycho-analysis, which had made her so much better while the course +lasted, now that it was over (and it was too expensive to go on with +forever) had left her worse than before. She was like a drunkard deprived +suddenly of stimulants; she had nothing to turn to, no one now who took +an interest in her soul. She missed Mr. Cradock and that bi-weekly hour; +she was like a creeper wrenched loose from its support and flung flat on +the ground. He had given her mental exercises and told her to continue +them; but she had always hated mental exercises; you might as well go in +for the Pelman course and have done. What one needed was a <i>person</i>. She +was left once more face to face with time, the enemy; time, which gave +itself to her lavishly with both hands when she had no use for it. There +was nothing she wanted to do with time, except kill it.</p> + +<p>"What, dear?" murmured Grandmama, as she rattled the blind tassel against +the sill. "How about a game of piquet?"</p> + +<p>But Mrs. Hilary hated piquet, and all card games, and halma, and +dominoes, and everything. Grandmama used to have friends in to play with +her, or the little maid. This evening she rang for the little maid, May, +who would rather have been writing to her young man, but liked to oblige +the nice old lady, of whom the kitchen was fond.</p> + +<p>It was all very well for Grandmama, Mrs. Hilary thought, stormily +revolting against that placidity by the hearth. All very well for +Grandmama to sit by the fire contented with books and papers and games +and sleep, unbitten by the murderous hatred of time that consumed +herself. Everyone always thought that about Grandmama, that things were +all very well for her, and perhaps they were. For time could do little +more hurt to Grandmama. She need not worry about killing time; time would +kill her soon enough, if she left it alone. Time, so long to Mrs. Hilary, +was short now to Grandmama, and would soon be gone. As to May, the little +maid, to her time was fleeting, and flew before her face, like a bird she +could never catch....</p> + +<p>Grandmama and May were playing casino. A bitter game, for you build and +others take, and your labour is but lost that builded; you sow and others +reap. But Grandmama and May were both good-tempered and ladylike. They +played prettily together, age and youth.</p> + +<p>Why did life play one these tricks, Mrs. Hilary cried within herself. +What had she done to life, that it should have deserted her and left her +stranded on the shores of a watering-place, empty-handed and pitiful, +alone with time the enemy, and with Grandmama, for whom it was all very +well?</p> + + +<h4>2</h4> + +<p>In the Crescent music blared out—once more the Army, calling for strayed +sheep in the rain.</p> + +<p>"Glory for you, glory for me!" it shouted. And then, presently:</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Count—your—blessings! Count them one by one!<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And it will <i>surprise</i> you what the Lord has done!"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>Grandmama, as usual, was beating time with her hand on the arm of her +chair.</p> + +<p>"Detestable creatures," said Mrs. Hilary, with acrimony, as usual.</p> + +<p>"But a very racy tune, my dear," said Grandmama, placidly, as usual.</p> + +<p>"Blood! Blood!" sang the Army, exultantly, as usual.</p> + +<p>May looked happy, and her attention strayed from the game. The Army was +one of the joys, one of the comic turns, of this watering-place.</p> + +<p>"Six and two are eight," said Grandmama, and picked them up, recalling +May's attention. But she herself still beat time to the merry music-hall +tune and the ogreish words.</p> + +<p>Grandmama could afford to be tolerant, as she sat there, looking over the +edge into eternity, with Time, his fangs drawn, stretched sleepily behind +her back. Time, who flew, bird-like, before May's pursuing feet; time, +who stared balefully into Mrs. Hilary's face, returning hate for hate, +rested behind Grandmama's back like a faithful steed who had carried her +thus far and whose service was nearly over.</p> + +<p>The Army moved on; its music blared away into the distance. The rain +beat steadily on wet asphalt roads; the edge of the cold sea tumbled and +moaned; the noise of the fire flickering was like unsteady breathing, or +the soft fluttering of wings.</p> + +<p>"Time is so long," thought Mrs. Hilary. "I can't bear it."</p> + +<p>"Time gets on that quick," thought May. "I can't keep up with it."</p> + +<p>"Time is dead," thought Grandmama. "What next?"</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XVII" id="CHAPTER_XVII"></a>CHAPTER XVII</h2> + +<h3>THE KEY</h3> + + +<h4>1</h4> + +<p>Not Grandmama's and not Neville's should be, after all, the last word, +but Pamela's. Pamela, who seemed lightly, and as it were casually, to +swing a key to the door against which Neville, among many others, beat; +Pamela, going about her work, keen, debonair and detached, ironic, +cool and quiet, responsive to life and yet a thought disdainful of it, +lightly holding and easily renouncing; the world's lover, yet not its +servant, her foot at times carelessly on its neck to prove her power over +it—Pamela said blandly to Grandmama, when the old lady commented one day +on her admirable composure, "Life's so short, you see. Can anything which +lasts such a little while be worth making a fuss about?"</p> + +<p>"Ah," said Grandmama, "that's been my philosophy for ten years ... only +ten years. You've no business with it at your age, child."</p> + +<p>"Age," returned Pamela, negligent and cool, "has extremely little to do +with anything that matters. The difference between one age and another +is, as a rule, enormously exaggerated. How many years we've lived on this +ridiculous planet—how many more we're going to live on it—what a +trifle! Age is a matter of exceedingly little importance."</p> + +<p>"And so, you would imply, is everything else on the ridiculous planet," +said Grandmama, shrewdly. Pamela smiled, neither affirming nor denying. +Lightly the key seemed to swing from her open hand.</p> + +<p>"I certainly don't see quite what all the fuss is about," said Pamela.</p> + +<p> </p> +<p> </p> +<hr class="full" /> +<p>***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK DANGEROUS AGES***</p> +<p>******* This file should be named 16799-h.txt or 16799-h.zip *******</p> +<p>This and all associated files of various formats will be found in:<br /> +<a href="https://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/1/6/7/9/16799">https://www.gutenberg.org/1/6/7/9/16799</a></p> +<p>Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed.</p> + +<p>Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + + + + +Title: Dangerous Ages + + +Author: Rose Macaulay + + + +Release Date: October 4, 2005 [eBook #16799] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII) + + +***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK DANGEROUS AGES*** + + +E-text prepared by Suzanne Shell, Mary Meehan, and the Project Gutenberg +Online Distributed Proofreading Team (https://www.pgdp.net/) + + + +DANGEROUS AGES + +by + +ROSE MACAULAY + +Author of "Potterism" + +Boni and Liveright +Publishers New York + +1921 + + + + + + + +TO MY MOTHER +DRIVING GAILY THROUGH THE +ADVENTUROUS MIDDLE YEARS + + + + +CONTENTS + +CHAPTER + + I. NEVILLE'S BIRTHDAY + II. MRS. HILARY'S BIRTHDAY + III. FAMILY LIFE + IV. ROOTS + V. SEAWEED + VI. JIM + VII. GERDA +VIII. NAN + IX. THE PACE + X. PRINCIPLES + XI. THAT WHICH REMAINS + XII. THE MOTHER +XIII. THE DAUGHTER + XIV. YOUTH TO YOUTH + XV. THE DREAM + XVI. TIME +XVII. THE KEY + + + +'As to that,' said Mr. Cradock, 'we may say that all ages are dangerous +to all people, in this dangerous life we live.' + +'Reflecting how, at the best, human life on this minute and perishing +planet is a mere episode, and as brief as a dream....' + +_Trivia_: Logan Pearsall Smith. + + + + +CHAPTER I + +NEVILLE'S BIRTHDAY + + +1 + +Neville, at five o'clock (Nature's time, not man's) on the morning of her +birthday, woke from the dream-broken sleep of summer dawns, hot with the +burden of two sheets and a blanket, roused by the multitudinous silver +calling of a world full of birds. They chattered and bickered about the +creepered house, shrill and sweet, like a hundred brooks running together +down steep rocky places after snow. And, not like brooks, and strangely +unlike birds, like, in fact, nothing in the world except a cuckoo clock, +a cuckoo shouted foolishly in the lowest boughs of the great elm across +the silver lawn. + +Neville turned on her face, cupped her small, pale, tanned face in her +sunburnt hands, and looked out with sleepy violet eyes. The sharp joy of +the young day struck into her as she breathed it through the wide window. +She shivered ecstatically as it blew coldly onto her bare throat and +chest, and forgot the restless birthday bitterness of the night; forgot +how she had lain and thought "Another year gone, and nothing done yet. +Soon all the years will be gone, and nothing ever will be done." Done by +her, she, of course, meant, as all who are familiar with birthdays will +know. But what was something and what was nothing, neither she nor others +with birthdays could satisfactorily define. They have lived, they have +eaten, drunk, loved, bathed, suffered, talked, danced in the night and +rejoiced in the dawn, warmed, in fact, both hands before the fire of +life, but still they are not ready to depart. For they are behindhand +with time, obsessed with so many worlds, so much to do, the petty done, +the undone vast. It depressed Milton when he turned twenty-three; it +depresses all those with vain and ambitious temperaments at least once a +year. Some call it remorse for wasted days, and are proud of it; others +call it vanity, discontent or greed, and are ashamed of it. It makes no +difference either way. + +Neville, flinging it off lightly with her bedclothes, sprang out of bed, +thrust her brown feet into sand shoes, her slight, straight, pyjama-clad +body into a big coat, quietly slipped into the passage, where, behind +three shut doors, slept Rodney, Gerda and Kay, and stole down the back +stairs to the kitchen, which was dim and blinded, blue with china and +pale with dawn, and had a gas stove. She made herself some tea. She also +got some bread and marmalade out of the larder, spread two thick chunks, +and munching one of them, slipped out of the sleeping house into the +dissipated and riotous garden. + +Looking up at the honeysuckle-buried window of the bedroom of Gerda, +Neville nearly whistled the call to which Gerda was wont to reply. +Nearly, but not quite. On the whole it was a morning to be out alone in. +Besides, Neville wanted to forget, for the moment, about birthdays, and +Gerda would have reminded her. + +Going round by the yard, she fetched Esau instead, who wouldn't remind +her, and whose hysterical joy she hushed with a warning hand. + +Across the wet and silver lawn she sauntered, between the monstrous +shadows of the elms, her feet in the old sand shoes leaving dark prints +in the dew, her mouth full of bread and marmalade, her black plait +bobbing on her shoulders, and Esau tumbling round her. Across the lawn to +the wood, cool and dim still, but not quiet, for it rang with music and +rustled with life. Through the boughs of beeches and elms and firs the +young day flickered gold, so that the bluebell patches were half lit, +like blue water in the sun, half grey, like water at twilight. Between +two great waves of them a brown path ran steeply down to a deep little +stream. Neville and Esau, scrambling a little way upstream, stopped at +a broad swirling pool it made between rocks. Here Neville removed coat, +shoes and pyjamas and sat poised for a moment on the jutting rock, a +slight and naked body, long in the leg, finely and supplely knit, with +light, flexible muscles--a body built for swiftness, grace and a certain +wiry strength. She sat there while she twisted her black plait round her +head, then she slipped into the cold, clear, swirling pool, which in one +part was just over her depth, and called to Esau to come in too, and +Esau, as usual, didn't, but only barked. + +One swim round is enough, if not too much, as everyone who knows sunrise +bathing will agree. Neville scrambled out, discovered that she had +forgotten the towel, dried herself on her coat, resumed her pyjamas, and +sat down to eat her second slice of bread and marmalade. When she had +finished it she climbed a beech tree, swarming neatly up the smooth trunk +in order to get into the sunshine, and sat on a broad branch astride, +whistling shrilly, trying to catch the tune now from one bird, now from +another. + +These, of course, were the moments when being alive was enough. Swimming, +bread and marmalade, sitting high in a beech tree in the golden eye of +the morning sun--that was life. One flew then, like a gay ship with the +wind in its sails, over the cold black bottomless waters of misgiving. +Many such a June morning Neville remembered in the past.... She wondered +if Gerda and if Kay thus sailed over sorrow, too. Rodney, she knew, did. +But she knew Rodney better, in some ways, than she knew Gerda and Kay. + +To think suddenly of Rodney, of Gerda and of Kay, sleeping in the still +house beyond the singing wood and silver garden, was to founder swiftly +in the cold, dark seas, to be hurt again with the stabbing envy of the +night. Not jealousy, for she loved them all too well for that. But envy +of their chances, of their contacts with life. Having her own contacts, +she wanted all kinds of others too. Not only Rodney's, Gerda's and Kay's, +but those of all her family and friends. Conscious, as one is on +birthdays, of intense life hurrying swiftly to annihilation, she strove +desperately to dam it. It went too fast. She looked at the wet strands of +black hair now spread over her shoulders to dry in the sun, at her +strong, supple, active limbs, and thought of the days to come, when the +black hair should be grey and the supple limbs refuse to carry her up +beech trees, and when, if she bathed in the sunrise, she would get +rheumatism. In those days, what did one do to keep from sinking in the +black seas of regret? One sat by the fire, or in the sunlit garden, old +and grey and full of sleep--yes, one went to sleep, when one could. When +one couldn't, one read. But one's eyes got tired soon--Neville thought of +her grandmother--and one had to be read aloud to, by someone who couldn't +read aloud. That wouldn't be enough to stifle vain regrets; only +rejoicing actively in the body did that. So, before that time came, one +must have slain regret, crushed that serpent's head for good and all. + +But did anyone ever succeed in doing this? Rodney, who had his full, +successful, useful, interesting life; Rodney, who had made his mark and +was making it; Rodney, the envy of many others, and particularly the envy +of Neville, with the jagged ends of her long since broken career stabbing +her; Rodney from time to time burned inwardly with scorching ambitions, +with jealousies of other men, with all the heats, rancours and troubles +of the race that is set before us. He had done, was doing, something, but +it wasn't enough. He had got, was getting, far,--but it wasn't far +enough. He couldn't achieve what he wanted; there were obstacles +everywhere. Fools hindered his work; men less capable than he got jobs he +should have had. Immersed in politics, he would have liked more time for +writing; he would have liked a hundred other careers besides his own, and +could have but the one. (Gerda and Kay, still poised on the threshold of +life, still believed that they could indeed have a hundred.) No, Rodney +was not immune from sorrow, but at least he had more with which to keep +it at bay than Neville. Neville had no personal achievements; she had +only her love for Rodney, Gerda and Kay, her interest in the queer, +enchanting pageant of life, her physical vigours (she could beat any of +the rest of them at swimming, walking, tennis or squash) and her active +but wasted brain. A good brain, too; she had easily and with brilliance +passed her medical examinations long ago--those of them for which she had +had time before she had been interrupted. But now a wasted brain; +squandered, atrophied, gone soft with disuse. Could she begin to use +it now? Or was she forever held captive, in deep woods, between the two +twilights? + + "I am in deep woods, + Between the two twilights. + Over valley and hill + I hear the woodland wave + Like the voice of Time, as slow, + The voice of Life, as grave, + The voice of Death, as still...." + + +2 + +The voices, the young loud clear voices of Gerda and of Kay, shrilled +down from the garden, and Esau yapped in answer. They were calling her. +They had probably been to wake her and had found her gone. + +Neville smiled (when she smiled a dimple came in one pale brown cheek) +and swung herself down from the beech. Kay and Gerda were of enormous +importance; the most important things in life, except Rodney; but not +everything, because nothing is ever everything in this so complex world. + +When she came out of the wood into the garden, now all golden with +morning, they flung themselves upon her and called her a sneak for not +having wakened them to bathe. + +"You'll be late for breakfast," they chanted. "Late on your forty-third +birthday." + +They each had an arm round her; they propelled her towards the house. +They were lithe, supple creatures of twenty and twenty-one. Between them +walked Neville, with her small, pointed, elfish face, that was sensitive +to every breath of thought and emotion like smooth water wind-stirred. +With her great violet eyes brooding in it under thin black brows, and +her wet hair hanging in loose strands, she looked like an ageless +wood-dryad between two slim young saplings. Kay was a little like her in +the face, only his violet eyes were short-sighted and he wore glasses. +Gerda was smaller, fragile and straight as a wand, with a white little +face and wavy hair of pure gold, bobbed round her thin white neck. And +with far-set blue eyes and a delicate cleft chin and thin straight lips. +For all she looked so frail, she could dance all night and return in the +morning cool, composed and exquisite, like a lily bud. There was a look +of immaculate sexless purity about Gerda; she might have stood for the +angel Gabriel, wide-eyed and young and grave. With this wide innocent +look she would talk unabashed of things which Neville felt revolting. And +she, herself, was the product of a fastidious generation and class, and +as nearly sexless as may be in this besexed world, which however is not, +and can never be, saying much. Kay would do the same. They would read and +discuss Freud, whom Neville, unfairly prejudiced, found both an obscene +maniac and a liar. They might laugh with her at Freud when he expanded on +that complex, whichever it is, by which mothers and daughters hate each +other, and fathers and sons--but they both all the same took seriously +things which seemed to Neville merely loathsome imbecilities. Gerda and +Kay didn't, in point of fact, find so many things either funny or +disgusting as Neville did; throwing her mind back twenty years, Neville +tried to remember whether she had found the world as funny and as +frightful when she was a medical student as she did now; on the whole she +thought not. Boys and girls are, for all their high spirits, creatures of +infinite solemnities and pomposities. They laugh; but the twinkling +irony, mocking at itself and everything else, of the thirties and +forties, they have not yet learnt. They cannot be gentle cynics; they +are so full of faith and hope, and when these are hurt they turn savage. +About Kay and Gerda there was a certain splendid earnestness with regard +to life. Admirable creatures, thought Neville, watching them with +whimsical tenderness. They had nothing to do with the pre-war, dilettante +past, the sophisticated gaiety of the young century. Their childhood had +been lived during the great war, and they had emerged from it hot with +elemental things, discussing life, lust, love, politics and social +reform, with cool candour, intelligent thoroughness and Elizabethan +directness. They wouldn't mind having passions and giving them rein; they +wouldn't think it vulgar, or even tedious, to lead loose lives. Probably, +in fact, it wasn't; probably it was Neville, and the people who had grown +up with her, who were overcivilized, too far from the crude stuff of +life, the monotonies and emotionalisms of Nature. And now Nature was +taking her rather startling revenge on the next generation. + + +3 + +Neville ran upstairs, and came down to breakfast dressed in blue cotton, +with her damp hair smoothly taken back from her broad forehead that +jutted broodingly over her short pointed face. She had the look of +a dryad at odds with the world, a whimsical and elfish intellectual. + +Rodney and Kay and Gerda had been putting parcels at her place, and a +pile of letters lay among them. There is, anyhow, that about birthdays, +however old they make you. Kay had given her a splendid great +pocket-knife and a book he wanted to read, Gerda an oak box she had +carved, and Rodney a new bicycle (by the front door) and a Brangwyn +drawing (on the table). If Neville envied Kay and Gerda their future +careers, she envied Rodney his present sphere. Her husband and the +father of Gerda and Kay was a clever and distinguished-looking man of +forty-five, and member, in the Labour interest, for a division of Surrey. +He looked, however, more like a literary man. How to be useful though +married: in Rodney's case the problem was so simple, in hers so +complicated. She had envied Rodney a little twenty years ago; then she +had stopped, because the bringing up of Kay and Gerda had been a work in +itself; now she had begun again. Rodney and she were more like each other +than they were like their children; they had some of the same vanities, +fastidiousnesses, humours and withdrawals, and in some respects the same +outlook on life. Only Rodney's had been solidified and developed by the +contacts and exigencies of his career, and Neville's disembodied, +devitalised and driven inwards by her more dilettante life. She "helped +Rodney with the constituency" of course, but it was Rodney's +constituency, not hers; she entertained his friends and hers when they +were in town, but she knew herself a light woman, not a dealer in +affairs. Yet her nature was stronger than Rodney's, larger and more +mature; it was only his experience she lacked. + +Rodney was and had always been charming; there could be no doubt +about that, whatever else you might come to think about him. Able, too, +but living on his nerves, wincing like a high-strung horse from the +annoyances and disappointments of life, such as Quaker oats because the +grape-nuts had come to an end, and the industrial news of the morning, +which was as bad as usual and four times repeated in four quite different +tones by the four daily papers which lay on the table. They took four +papers not so much that there might be one for each of them as that they +might have the entertainment of seeing how different the same news can be +made to appear. One bond of union this family had which few families +possess; they were (roughly speaking) united politically, so believed the +same news to be good or bad. The chief difference in their political +attitude was that Kay and Gerda joined societies and leagues, being still +young enough to hold that causes were helped in this way. + +"What about to-day?" Rodney asked Neville. "What are you going to do?" + +She answered, "Tennis." (Neville had once been a county player.) "River. +Lying about in the sun." (It should be explained that it was one of those +nine days of the English summer of 1920 when this was a possible +occupation.) "Anything anyone likes.... I've already had a good deal of +day and a bathe.... Oh, Nan's coming down this afternoon." + +She got that out of a letter. Nan was her youngest sister. They all +proceeded to get and impart other things out of letters, in the way of +families who are fairly united, as families go. + +Gerda opened her lips to impart something, but remembered her father's +distastes and refrained. Rodney, civilised, sensitive and progressive, +had no patience with his children's unsophisticated leaning to a +primitive crudeness. He told them they were young savages. So Gerda kept +her news till later, when she and Neville and Kay were lying on rugs on +the lawn after Neville had beaten Kay in a set of singles. + +They lay and smoked and cooled, and Gerda, a cigarette stuck in one side +of her mouth, a buttercup in the other, mumbled "Penelope's baby's come, +by the way. A girl. Another surplus woman." + +Neville's brows lazily went up. + +"Penelope Jessop? What's _she_ doing with a baby? I didn't know she'd got +married." + +"Oh, she hasn't, of course.... Didn't I tell you about Penelope? She +lives with Martin Annesley now." + +"Oh, I see. Marriage in the sight of heaven. That sort of thing." + +Neville was of those who find marriages in the sight of heaven +uncivilised and socially reactionary, a reversion, in fact, to Nature, +which bored her. Gerda and Kay rightly believed such marriages to have +some advantages over those more visible to the human eye (as being more +readily dissoluble when fatiguing) and many advantages over no marriages +at all, which do not increase the population, so depleted by the Great +War. When they spoke in this admirably civic sense, Neville was apt to +say "It doesn't want increasing. I waited twenty minutes before I could +board my bus at Trafalgar Square the other day. It wants more depleting, +I should say--a Great Plague or something," a view which Kay and Gerda +thought truly egotistical. + +"I do hope," said Neville, her thoughts having led her to the statement, +"I do very much hope that neither of you will ever perpetrate that sort +of marriage. It would be so dreadfully common of you." + +"Impossible to say," Kay said, vaguely. + +"Considering," said Gerda, "that there are a million more women than men +in this country, it stands to reason that some system of polygamy must +become the usual thing in the future." + +"It's always been the usual thing, darling. Dreadfully usual. It's so +much more amusing to be unusual in these ways." + +Neville's voice trailed drowsily away. Polygamy. Sex. Free Love. Love in +chains. The children seemed so often to be discussing these. Just as, +twenty years ago, she and her friends had seemed always to be discussing +the Limitations of Personality, the Ethics of Friendship, and the Nature, +if any, of God. This last was to Kay and Gerda too hypothetical to be a +stimulating theme. It would have sent them to sleep, as sex did Neville. + +Neville, led by Free Love to a private vision, brooded cynically over +savages dancing round a wood-pile in primeval forests, engaged in what +missionaries, journalists, and writers of fiction about our coloured +brothers call "nameless orgies" (as if you would expect most orgies to +answer to their names, like the stars) and she saw the steep roads of the +round world running back and back and back--on or back, it made no +difference, since the world was round--to this. Saw, too, a thousand +stuffy homes wherein sat couples linked by a legal formula so rigid, so +lasting, so indelible, that not all their tears could wash out a word of +it, unless they took to themselves other mates, in which case their +second state might be worse than their first. Free love--love in chains. +How absurd it all was, and how tragic too. One might react back to the +remaining choice--no love at all--and that was absurder and more tragic +still, since man was made (among other ends) to love. Looking under her +heavy lashes at her pretty young children, incredibly youthful, absurdly +theoretical, fiercely clean of mind and frank of speech, their clearness +as yet unblurred by the expediencies, compromise and experimental +contacts of life, Neville was stabbed by a sharp pang of fear and hope +for them. Fear lest on some fleeting impulse they might founder into the +sentimental triviality of short-lived contacts, or into the tedium of +bonds which must out-live desire; hope that, by some fortunate chance, +they might each achieve, as she had achieved, some relation which should +be both durable and to be endured. As to the third path--no love at +all--she did not believe that either Kay or Gerda would tread that. They +were emotional, in their cool and youthful way, and also believed that +they ought to increase the population. What a wonderful, noble thing to +believe, at twenty, thought Neville, remembering the levity of her own +irresponsible youth, when her only interest in the population had been +a nightmare fear lest they should at last become so numerous that they +would be driven out of the towns into the country and would be scuttling +over the moors, downs and woods like black beetles in kitchens in the +night. They were better than she had been, these children; more +public-spirited and more in earnest about life. + + +4 + +Across the garden came Nan Hilary, having come down from town to see +Neville on her forty-third birthday. Nan herself was not so incredibly +old as Neville; (for forty-three _is_ incredibly old, from any reasonable +standpoint). Nan was thirty-three and a half. She represented the +thirties; she was, in Neville's mind, a bridge between the remote +twenties and the new, extraordinary forties in which one could hardly +believe. It seems normal to be in the thirties; the right, ordinary age, +that most people are. Nan, who wrote, and lived in rooms in Chelsea, was +rather like a wild animal--a leopard or something. Long and lissome, with +a small, round, sallow face and withdrawn, brooding yellow eyes under +sulky black brows that slanted up to the outer corners. Nan had a good +time socially and intellectually. She was clever and lazy; she would +fritter away days and weeks in idle explorations into the humanities, +or curled up in the sun in the country like a cat. Her worst fault +was a cynical unkindness, against which she did not strive because +investigating the less admirable traits of human beings amused her. She +was infinitely amused by her nephew and her niece, but often spiteful to +them, merely because they were young. To sum up, she was a cynic, a rake, +an excellent literary critic, a sardonic and brilliant novelist, and she +had a passionate, adoring and protecting affection for Neville, who was +the only person who had always been told what she called the darker +secrets of her life. + +She sat down on the grass, her thin brown hands clasped round her ankles, +and said to Neville, "You're looking very sweet, aged one. Forty-three +seems to suit you." + +"And you," Neville returned, "look as if you'd jazzed all night and +written unkind reviews from dawn till breakfast time." + +"That's just about right," Nan owned, and flung herself full length on +her back, shutting her eyes against the sun. "That's why I've come down +here to cool my jaded nerves. And also because Rosalind wanted to lunch +with me." + +"Have you read my poems yet?" enquired Gerda, who never showed the +customary abashed hesitation in dealing with these matters. She and Kay +sent their literary efforts to Nan to criticise, because they believed +(a) in her powers as a critic, (b) in her influence in the literary +world. Nan used in their behalf the former but seldom the latter, +because, in spite of queer spasms of generosity, she was jealous of Gerda +and Kay. Why should they want to write? Why shouldn't they do anything +else in the world but trespass on her preserves? Not that verse was what +she ever wrote or could write herself. And of course everyone wrote now, +and especially the very young; but in a niece and nephew it was a +tiresome trick. They didn't write well, because no one of their age ever +does, but they might some day. They already came out in weekly papers and +anthologies of contemporary verse. Very soon they would come out in +little volumes. They'd much better, thought Nan, marry and get out of the +way. + +"Read them--yes," Nan returned laconically to Gerda's question. + +"What," enquired Gerda, perseveringly, "did you think of them?" + +"I said I'd _read_ them," Nan replied. "I didn't say I'd thought of +them." + +Gerda looked at her with her wide, candid gaze, with the unrancorous +placidity of the young, who are still used to being snubbed. Nan, she +knew, would tease and baffle, withhold and gibe, but would always say +what she thought in the end, and what she thought was always worth +knowing, even though she was middle-aged. + +Nan, turning her lithe body over on the grass, caught the patient child's +look, and laughed. Generous impulses alternated in her with malicious +moods where these absurd, solemn, egotistic, pretty children of Neville's +were concerned. + +"All right, Blue Eyes. I'll write it all down for you and send it to you +with the MS., if you really want it. You won't like it, you know, but I +suppose you're used to that by now." + +Neville listened to them. Regret turned in her, cold and tired and +envious. They all wrote except her. To write: it wasn't much of a thing +to do, unless one did it really well, and it had never attracted her +personally, but it was, nevertheless, something--a little piece of +individual output thrown into the flowing river. She had never written, +even when she was Gerda's age. Twenty years ago writing poetry hadn't +been as it is to-day, a necessary part of youth's accomplishment like +tennis, French or dancing. Besides, Neville could never have enjoyed +writing poetry, because for her the gulf between good verse and bad was +too wide to be bridged by her own achievements. Nor novels, because she +disliked nearly all novels, finding them tedious, vulgar, conventional, +and out of all relation both to life as lived and to the world of +imagination. What she had written in early youth had been queer +imaginative stuff, woven out of her childhood's explorations into +fairyland and of her youth's into those still stranger tropical lands +beyond seas where she had travelled with her father. But she hadn't +written or much wanted to write; scientific studies had always attracted +her more than literary achievements. Then she had married Rodney, and +that was the end of all studies and achievements for her, though not the +end of anything for Rodney, but the beginning. + +Rodney came out of the house, his pipe in his mouth. He still had the +lounging walk, shoulders high and hands in pockets, of the undergraduate; +the walk also of Kay. He sat down among his family. Kay and Gerda looked +at him with approval; though they knew his weakness, he was just the +father they would have chosen, and of how few parents can this be said. +They were proud to take him about with them to political meetings and so +forth, and prouder still to sit under him while he addressed audiences. +Few men of his great age were (on the whole) so right in the head and +sound in the heart, and fewer still so delightful to the eye. When people +talked about the Wicked Old Men, who, being still unfortunately +unrestrained and unmurdered by the Young, make this wicked world what +it is, Kay and Gerda always contended that there were a few exceptions. + +Nan gave Rodney her small, fleeting smile. She had a critical +friendliness for him, but had never believed him really good enough +for Neville. + +Gerda and Kay began to play a single, and Nan said, "I'm in a hole." + +"Broke, darling?" Neville asked her, for that was usually it, though +sometimes it was human entanglements. + +Nan nodded. "If I could have ten pounds.... I'd let you have it in a +fortnight." + +"That's easy," said Rodney, in his kind, offhand way. + +"Of course," Neville said. "You old spendthrift." + +"Thank you, dears. Now I can get a birthday present for mother." + +For Mrs. Hilary's birthday was next week, and to celebrate it her +children habitually assembled at The Gulls, St. Mary's Bay, where she +lived. Nan always gave her a more expensive present than she could +afford, in a spasm of remorse for the irritation her mother roused in +her. + +"Oh, poor mother," Neville exclaimed, suddenly remembering that Mrs. +Hilary would in a week be sixty-three, and that this must be worse by +twenty years than to be forty-three. + +The hurrying stream of life was loud in her ears. How quickly it was +sweeping them all along--the young bodies of Gerda and of Kay leaping on +the tennis court, the clear, analysing minds of Nan and Rodney and +herself musing in the sun, the feverish heart of her mother, loving, +hating, feeding restlessly on itself by the seaside, the age-calmed soul +of her grandmother, who was eighty-four and drove out in a donkey +chair by the same sea. + +The lazy talking of Rodney and Nan, the cryings and strikings of Gerda +and Kay, the noontide chirrupings of birds, the cluckings of distant hens +pretending that they had laid eggs, all merged into the rushing of the +inexorable river, along and along and along. Time, like an ever-rolling +stream, bearing all its sons away. Clatter, chatter, clatter, does it +matter, matter, matter? They fly forgotten, as a dream dies at the +opening day.... No, it probably didn't matter at all what one did, how +much one got into one's life, since there was to be, anyhow, so soon an +end. + +The garden became strange and far and flat, like tapestry, or a dream.... + +The lunch gong boomed. Nan, who had fallen asleep with the suddenness of +a lower animal, her cheek pillowed on her hand, woke and stretched. Gerda +and Kay, not to be distracted from their purpose, finished the set. + +"Thank God," said Nan, "that I am not lunching with Rosalind." + + + + +CHAPTER II + +MRS. HILARY'S BIRTHDAY + + +1 + +They all turned up at The Gulls, St. Mary's Bay, in time for lunch on +Mrs. Hilary's birthday. It was her special wish that all those of her +children who could should do this each year. Jim, whom she preferred, +couldn't come this time; he was a surgeon; it is an uncertain profession. +The others all came; Neville and Pamela and Gilbert and Nan and with +Gilbert his wife Rosalind, who had no right there because she was only an +in-law, but if Rosalind thought it would amuse her to do anything you +could not prevent her. She and Mrs. Hilary disliked one another a good +deal, though Rosalind would say to the others, "Your darling mother! +She's priceless, and I adore her!" She would say that when she had +caught Mrs. Hilary in a mistake. She would draw her on to say she had +read a book she hadn't read (it was a point of honour with Mrs. Hilary +never to admit ignorance of any book mentioned by others) and then she +would say, "I do love you, mother! It's not out yet; I've only seen +Gilbert's review copy," and Mrs. Hilary would say, "In that case I +suppose I am thinking of another book," and Rosalind would say to Neville +or Pamela or Gilbert or Nan, "Your darling mother. I adore her!" and Nan, +contemptuous of her mother for thinking such trivial pretence worth +while, and with Rosalind for thinking malicious exposure worth while, +would shrug her shoulders and turn away. + + +2 + +All but Neville arrived by the same train from town, the one getting in +at 12.11. Neville had come from Surrey the day before and spent the +night, because Mrs. Hilary liked to have her all to herself for a little +time before the others came. After Jim, Neville was the child Mrs. Hilary +preferred. She had always been a mother with marked preferences. There +were various barriers between her and her various children; Gilbert, who +was thirty-eight, had annoyed her long ago by taking up literature as a +profession on leaving Cambridge, instead of doing what she described as +"a man's job," and later on by marrying Rosalind, who was fast, and, in +Mrs. Hilary's opinion, immoral. Pamela, who was thirty-nine and working +in a settlement in Hoxton, annoyed her by her devotion to Frances Carr, +the friend with whom she lived. Mrs. Hilary thought them very silly, +these close friendships between women. They prevented marriage, and led +to foolish fussing about one another's health and happiness. Nan annoyed +her by "getting talked about" with men, by writing books which Mrs. +Hilary found both dull and not very nice, in tone, and by her own +irritated reactions to her mother's personality. Nan, in fact, was often +rude and curt to her. + +But Jim, who was a man and a doctor, a strong, good-humoured person and +her eldest son, annoyed her not at all. Nor did Neville, who was her +eldest daughter and had given her grandchildren and infinite sympathy. + +Neville, knowing all these things and more, always arrived on the +evenings before her mother's birthdays, and they talked all the morning. +Mrs. Hilary was at her best with Neville. She was neither irritable nor +nervous nor showing off. She looked much less than sixty-three. She was +a tall, slight, trailing woman, with the remains of beauty, and her dark, +untidy hair was only streaked with grey. Since her husband had died, ten +years ago, she had lived at St. Mary's Bay with her mother. It had been +her old home; not The Gulls, but the vicarage, in the days when St. +Mary's Bay had been a little fishing village without an esplanade. To +old Mrs. Lennox it was the same fishing village still, and the people, +even the summer visitors, were to her the flock of her late husband, who +had died twenty years ago. + +"A good many changes lately," she would say to them. "Some people think +the place is improving. But I can't say I like the esplanade." + +But the visitors, unless they were very old, didn't know anything about +the changes. To them St. Mary's Bay was not a fishing village but a +seaside resort. To Mrs. Hilary it was her old home, and had healthy air +and plenty of people for her mother to gossip with and was as good a +place as any other for her to parch in like a withered flower now that +the work of her life was done. The work of her life had been making a +home for her husband and children; she had never had either the desire or +the faculties for any other work. Now that work was over, and she was +rather badly left, as she cared neither for cards, knitting, gardening, +nor intellectual pursuits. Once, seven years ago, at Neville's +instigation, she had tried London life for a time, but it had been no +use. The people she met there were too unlike her, too intelligent and up +to date; they went to meetings and concerts and picture exhibitions and +read books and talked about public affairs not emotionally but coolly and +drily; they were mildly surprised at Mrs. Hilary's vehemence of feeling +on all points, and she was strained beyond endurance by their knowledge +of facts and catholicity of interests. So she returned to St. Mary's Bay, +where she passed muster as an intelligent woman, gossiped with her +mother, the servants and their neighbours, read novels, brooded over the +happier past, walked for miles alone along the coast, and slipped every +now and then, as she had slipped even in youth, over the edge of +emotionalism into hysterical passion or grief. Her mother was no use at +such times; she only made her worse, sitting there in the calm of old +age, looking tranquilly at the end, for her so near that nothing +mattered. Only Jim or Neville were of any use then. + +Neville on the eve of this her sixty-third birthday soothed one such +outburst. The tedium of life, with no more to do in it--why couldn't it +end? The lights were out, the flowers were dead--and yet the unhappy +actors had to stay and stay and stay, idling on the empty, darkened +stage. (That was how Mrs. Hilary, with her gift for picturesque language, +put it.) _Must_ it be empty, _must_ it be dark, Neville uselessly asked, +knowing quite well that for one of her mother's temperament it must. Mrs. +Hilary had lived in and by her emotions; nothing else had counted. Life +for her had burnt itself out, and its remnant was like the fag end of a +cigarette, stale and old. + +"Shall I feel like that in twenty years?" Neville speculated aloud. + +"I hope," said Mrs. Hilary, "that you won't have lost Rodney. So long as +you have him...." + +"But if I haven't...." + +Neville looked down the years; saw herself without Rodney, perhaps +looking after her mother, who would then have become (strange, incredible +thought, but who could say?) calm with the calm of age; Kay and Gerda +married or working or both.... What then? Only she was better equipped +than her mother for the fag end of life; she had a serviceable brain and +a sound education. She wouldn't pass empty days at a seaside resort. She +would work at something, and be interested. Interesting work and +interesting friends--her mother, by her very nature, could have neither, +but was just clever enough to feel the want of them. The thing was to +start some definite work _now_, before it was too late. + +"Did Grandmama go through it?" Neville asked her mother. + +"Oh, I expect so. I was selfish; I was wrapped up in home and all of you; +I didn't notice. But I think she had it badly, for a time, when first she +left the vicarage.... She's contented now." + +They both looked at Grandmama, who was playing patience on the sofa and +could not hear their talking for the sound of the sea. Yes, Grandmama was +(apparently) contented now. + +"There's work," mused Neville, thinking of the various links with life, +the rafts, rather, which should carry age over the cold seas of tedious +regret. "And there's natural gaiety. And intellectual interests. And +contacts with other people--permanent contacts and temporary ones. And +beauty. All those things. For some people, too, there's religion." + +"And for all of us food and drink," said Mrs. Hilary, sharply. "Oh, +I suppose you think I've no right to complain, as I've got all those +things, except work." + +But Neville shook her head, knowing that this was a delusion of her +mother's, and that she had, in point of fact, none of them, except the +contacts with people, which mostly either over-strained, irritated or +bored her, and that aspect of religion which made her cry. For she was +a Unitarian, and thought the Gospels infinitely sad and the souls of the +departed most probably so merged in God as to be deprived of all +individuality. + +"It's better to be High Church or Roman Catholic and have services, or +an Evangelical and have the Voice of God," Neville decided. And, indeed, +it is probable that Mrs. Hilary would have been one or other of these +things if it had not been for her late husband, who had disapproved of +superstition and had instructed her in the Higher Thought and the Larger +Hope. + + +3 + +Though heaviness endured for the night, joy came in the morning, as is +apt to happen where there is sea air. Mrs. Hilary on her birthday had +a revulsion to gaiety, owing to a fine day, her unstable temperament, +letters, presents and being made a fuss of. Also Grandmama said, when +she went up to see her after breakfast, "This new dress suits you +particularly, my dear child. It brings out the colour in your eyes," and +everyone likes to hear that when they are sixty-three or any other age. + +So, when the rest of her children arrived, Mrs. Hilary was ready for +them. + +They embraced her in turn; Pamela, capable, humorous and intelligent, +the very type of the professional woman at her best, but all the time +preferring Frances Carr, anxious about her because she was overworking +and run down; Nan, her extravagant present in her hands, on fire to +protect her mother against old age, depression and Rosalind, yet knowing +too how soon she herself would be smouldering with irritation; Gilbert, +spare and cynical, writer of plays and literary editor of the Weekly +Critic, and with him his wife Rosalind, whom Mrs. Hilary had long since +judged as a voluptuous rake who led men on and made up unseemly stories +and her lovely face, but who insisted on coming to The Gulls with Gilbert +to see his adorable mother. Rosalind, who was always taking up +things--art, or religion, or spiritualism, or young men--and dropping +them when they bored her, had lately taken up psycho-analysis. She was +studying what she called her mother-in-law's "case," looking for and +finding complexes in her past which should account for her somewhat +unbalanced present. + +"I've never had complexes," Mrs. Hilary would declare, indignantly, as if +they had been fleas or worse, and indeed when Rosalind handled them they +_were_ worse, much. From Rosalind Mrs. Hilary got the most unpleasant +impression possible (which is to say a good deal) of psycho-analysts. +"They have only one idea, and that is a disgusting one," she would +assert, for she could only rarely and with difficulty see more than one +idea in anything, particularly when it was a disgusting one. Her mind was +of that sort--tenacious, intolerant, and not many-sided. That was where +(partly where) she fell foul of her children, who saw sharply and clearly +all around things and gave to each side its value. They knew Mrs. Hilary +to be a muddled bigot, whose mind was stuffed with concrete instances and +insusceptible of abstract reason. If anyone had asked her what she knew +of psycho-analysis, she would have replied, in effect, that she knew +Rosalind, and that was enough, more than enough, of psycho-analysis for +her. She had also looked into Freud, and rightly had been disgusted. + +"A man who spits deliberately onto his friends' stairs, on purpose to +annoy the servants ... that is enough, the rest follows. The man is +obviously a loathsome and indecent vulgarian. It comes from being a +German, no doubt." Which settled that; and if anyone murmured "An +Austrian," she would say, "It comes to the same thing, in questions of +breeding." Mrs. Hilary, like Grandmama, settled people and things very +quickly and satisfactorily. + +They all sat in the front garden after lunch and looked out over the +wonderful shining sea. Grandmama sat in her wheeled chair, Tchekov's +Letters on her knees. She had made Mrs. Hilary get this book from Mudie's +because she had read favourable reviews of it by Gilbert and Nan. +Grandmama was a cleverish old lady, cleverer than her daughter. + +"Jolly, isn't it," said Gilbert, seeing the book. + +"Very entertaining," said Grandmama, and Mrs. Hilary echoed "Most," at +which Grandmama eyed her with a twinkle, knowing that it bored her, like +all the Russians. Mrs. Hilary cared nothing for style ("Literature!" said +Lady Adela. "Give _me_ something to _read_!"); she liked nice lifelike +books about people as she believed them to be, and though she was quite +prepared to believe that real Russians were like Russians in books, she +felt that she did not care to meet either of them. But Mrs. Hilary had +learnt that intelligent persons seldom liked the books which seemed to +her to be about real, natural people, any more than they admired the +pictures which struck her as being like things as they were. Though she +thought those who differed from her profoundly wrong, she never admitted +ignorance of the books they admired. For she was in a better position to +differ from them about a book if she had nominally read it--and really it +didn't matter if she had actually done so or not, for she knew beforehand +what she would think of it if she had. So well she knew this, indeed, +that the line between the books she had and hadn't read was, even in her +own mind, smudgy and vague, not hard and clear as with most people. Often +when she had seen reviews which quoted extracts she thought she had read +the book, just as some people, when they have seen publishers' +advertisements, think they have seen reviews, and declare roundly in +libraries that a book is out when it lacks a month of publication. + +Mrs. Hilary, having thus asserted her acquaintance with Tchekov's +Letters, left Gilbert, Grandmama and Neville to talk about it together, +and herself began telling the others how disappointed Jim had been that +he could not come for her birthday. + +"He was passionately anxious to come," she said, in her clear, vibrating +voice, that struck a different note when she mentioned each one of +her children, so that you always knew which she meant. "He never +misses to-day if he can possibly help it. But he simply couldn't get +away.... One of these tremendously difficult new operations, that hardly +anyone can do. His work must come first, of course. He wouldn't be Jim if +it didn't." + +"Fancy knifing people in town a day like this," said Rosalind, stretching +her large, lazy limbs in the sun. Rosalind was big and fair, and +sensuously alive. + +Music blared out from the parade. Gilbert, adjusting his glasses, +observed its circumstances, with his air of detached, fastidious +interest. + +"The Army," he remarked. "The Army calling for strayed sheep." + +"Oh," exclaimed Rosalind, raising herself, "wouldn't I love to go out and +be saved! I _was_ saved once, when I was eleven. It was one of my first +thrills. I felt I was blacker in guilt than all creatures before me, and +I came forward and found the Lord. Afraid I had a relapse rather soon, +though." + +"Horrible vulgarians," Mrs. Hilary commented, really meaning Rosalind at +the age of eleven. "They have meetings on the parade every morning now. +The police ought to stop it." + +Grandmama was beating time with her hand on the arm of her chair to the +merry music-hall tune and the ogreish words. + + "Blood! Blood! + Rivers of blood for you, + Oceans of blood for me! +All that the sinner has got to do + Is to plunge into that Red Sea. + Clean! Clean! + Wash and be clean! +Though filthy and black as a sweep you've been, +The waves of that sea shall make you clean...." + +"That," Mrs. Hilary asserted, with disgust, "is a _most_ disagreeable way +of worshipping God." She was addicted to these undeniable statements, +taking nothing for granted. + +"But a very racy tune, my dear," said Grandmama, "though the words are +foolish and unpleasing." + +Gilbert said, "A stimulating performance. If we don't restrain her, +Rosalind will be getting saved again." + +He was proud of Rosalind's vitality, whimsies and exuberances. + +Rosalind, who had a fine rolling voice, began reciting "General Booth +enters into heaven," by Mr. Vachell Lindsay, which Mrs. Hilary found +disgusting. + +"A wonderful man," said Grandmama, who had been reading the General's +life in two large volumes. "Though mistaken about many things. And his +Life would have been more interesting if it had been written by Mr. +Lytton Strachey instead of Mr. Begbie; he has a better touch on our great +religious leaders. Your grandfather," added Grandmama, "always got on +well with the Army people. He encouraged them. The present vicar does +not. He says their methods are deplorable and their goal a delusion." + +Rosalind said "Their methods are entrancing and their goal the Lord. What +more does he want? Clergymen are so narrow. That's why I had to give up +being a churchwoman." + +Rosalind had been a churchwoman (high) for nine months some six years +ago, just after planchette and just before flag days. She had decided, +after this brief trial, that incense and confessions, though immensely +stimulating, did not weigh down the balance against early mass, Lent, and +being thrown with other churchwomen. + + +4 + +"What about a bathe?" Neville suggested to all of them. "Mother?" + +Mrs. Hilary, a keen bather, agreed. They all agreed except Grandmama, who +was going out in her donkey chair instead, as one does at eighty-four. + +They all went down to the beach, where the Army still sang of the Red +Sea, and where the blue high tide clapped white hands on brown sand. + +One by one they emerged from tents and sprang through the white leaping +edge into the rocking blue, as other bathers were doing all round the +bay. When Mrs. Hilary came out of her tent, Neville was waiting for her, +poised like a slim girl, knee-deep in tumbling waves, shaking the water +from her eyes. + +"Come, mother. I'll race you out." + +Mrs. Hilary waded in, a figure not without grace and dignity. Looking +back they saw Rosalind coming down the beach, large-limbed and splendid, +like Juno. Mrs. Hilary shrugged her shoulders. + +"Disgusting," she remarked to Neville. + +So much more, she meant, of Rosalind than of Rosalind's costume. Mrs. +Hilary preferred it to be the other way about, for, though she did not +really like either of them, she disliked the costume less than she +disliked Rosalind. + +"It's quite in the fashion," Neville assured her, and Mrs. Hilary, +remarking that she was sure of that, splashed her head and face and +pushed off, mainly to escape from Rosalind, who always sat in the foam, +not being, like the Hilary family, an active swimmer. + +Already Pamela and Gilbert were far out, swimming steadily against each +other, and Nan was tumbling and turning like an eel close behind them. + +Neville and Mrs. Hilary swam out a little way. + +"I shall now float on my back," said Mrs. Hilary. "You swim on and catch +up with the rest." + +"You'll be all right?" Neville asked, lingering. + +"Why shouldn't I be all right? I bathe nearly every day, you know, even +if I am sixty-three." This was not accurate; she only bathed as a rule +when it was warm, and this seldom occurs on our island coasts. + +Neville, saying, "Don't stop in long, will you," left her and swam out +into the blue with her swift, over-hand stroke. Neville was the best +swimmer in a swimming family. She clove the water like a torpedo +destroyer, swift and untiring between the hot summer sun and the cool +summer sea. She shouted to the others, caught them up, raced them and +won, and then they began to duck each other. When the Hilary brothers +and sisters were swimming or playing together, they were even as they had +been twenty years ago. + +Mrs. Hilary watched them, swimming slowly round, a few feet out of her +depth. They seemed to have forgotten her and her birthday. The only one +who was within speaking distance was Rosalind, wallowing with her big +white limbs in tumbling waves on the shore; Rosalind, whom she disliked; +Rosalind, who was more than her costume, which was not saying much; +Rosalind, before whom she had to keep up an appearance of immense +enjoyment because Rosalind was so malicious. + +"You wonderful woman! I can't think how you _do_ it," Rosalind was crying +to her in her rich, ripe voice out of the splashing waves. "But fancy +their all swimming out and leaving you to yourself. Why, you might get +cramp and sink. _I'm_ no use, you know; I'm hopeless; can't keep up at +all." + +"I shan't trouble you, thank you," Mrs. Hilary called back, and her voice +shook a little because she was getting chilled. + +"Why, you're shivering," Rosalind cried. "Why don't you come out? You +_are_ wonderful, I do admire you.... It's no use waiting for the others, +they'll be ages.... I say, look at Neville; fancy her being forty-three. +I never knew such a family.... Come and sit in the waves with me, it's +lovely and warm." + +"I prefer swimming," said Mrs. Hilary, and she was shivering more now. +She never stayed in so long as this; she usually only plunged in and came +out. + +Grandmama, stopping on the esplanade in her donkey chair, was waving and +beckoning to her. Grandmama knew she had been in too long, and that her +rheumatism would be bad. + +"_Come out, dear_," Grandmama called, in her old thin voice. "_Come out. +You've been in far too long._" + +Mrs. Hilary only waved her hand to Grandmama. She was not going to come +out, like an old woman, before the others did, the others, who had swum +out and left her alone on her birthday bathe. + +They were swimming back now, first all in a row, then one behind the +other; Neville leading, with her arrowy drive, Gilbert and Pamela behind, +so alike, with their pale, finely cut, intellectual faces, and their +sharp chins cutting through the sea, and their quick, short, vigorous +strokes, and Nan, still far out, swimming lazily on her back, the sun +in her eyes. + +Mrs. Hilary's heart stirred to see her swimming brood, so graceful and +strong and swift and young. They possessed, surely, everything that was +in the heaven above or on the earth beneath or in the water over the +earth. And she, who was sixty-three, possessed nothing. She could not +even swim with her children. They might have thought of that, and stayed +with her.... Neville, anyhow. Jim would have, said Mrs. Hilary to +herself, half knowing and half not knowing that she was lying. + +"_Come out, dear!_" called Grandmama from the esplanade. "_You'll be +ill!_" + +Back they came, Neville first. Neville, seeing from afar her mother's +blue face, called "Mother dear, how cold you are! You shouldn't have +stayed in so long!" + +"I was waiting," Mrs. Hilary said, "for you." + +"Oh why, dear?" + +"Don't know. I thought I would.... It's pretty poor fun," Mrs. Hilary +added, having failed after trying not to, "bathing all alone on one's +birthday." + +Neville gave a little sigh, and gently propelled her mother to the shore. +She hadn't felt like this on _her_ birthday, when Kay and Gerda had gone +off to some avocation of their own and left her in the garden. Many +things she had felt on her birthday, but not this. It is an undoubted +truth that people react quite differently to birthdays. + +Rosalind rose out of the foam like Aphrodite, grandly beautiful, though +all the paint was washed off her face and lips. + +"Wonderful people," she apostrophised the shore-coming family. "Anyone +would think you were all nineteen. _I_ was the only comfy one." + +Rosalind was always talking about age, emphasizing it, as if it were very +important. + +They hurried up to the tents, and last of all came Nan, riding in to +shore on a swelling wave and lying full length where it flung her, for +the joy of feeling the wet sand sucking away beneath her. + + +5 + +Grandmama, waiting for them on the esplanade, was angry with Mrs. Hilary. + +"My dear child, didn't you hear me call? You're perfectly blue. You +_know_ you never stay in more than five minutes. Neville, you should have +seen that she didn't. Now you'll get your rheumatism back, child, and +only yourself to thank. It's too silly. People of sixty-three carrying +on as if they were fifty; I've no patience with it." + +"They all swam out," said Mrs. Hilary, who, once having succumbed to the +impulse to adopt this attitude, could not check it. "I waited for them." + +Grandmama, who was cross, said "Very silly of you and very selfish of the +children. Now you'd better go to bed with hot bottles and a posset." + +But Mrs. Hilary, though she felt the red-hot stabbings of an attack of +rheumatism already beginning, stayed up. She was happier now, because the +children were making a fuss of her, suggesting remedies and so on. She +would stay up, and show them she could be plucky and cheerful even with +rheumatism. A definite thing, like illness or pain, always put her on her +mettle; it was so easy to be brave when people knew you had something to +be brave about, and so hard when they didn't. + +They had an early tea, and then Gilbert and Rosalind, who were going out +to dinner, caught the 5.15 back to town. Rosalind's departure made Mrs. +Hilary more cheerful still. She soared into her gayest mood, and told +them amusing stories of the natives, and how much she and Grandmama +shocked some of them. + +"All the same, dear," said Grandmama presently, "you know you often enjoy +a chat with your neighbours very much. You'd be bored to death with no +one to gossip with." + +But Neville's hand, slipping into her mother's, meant "You shall adopt +what pose you like on your birthday, darling. If you like to be too +clever for anyone else in the Bay so that they bore you to tears and you +shock them to fits--well, you shall, and we'll believe you." + +Nan, listening sulkily to what she called to herself "mother's swank," +for a moment almost preferred Rosalind, who was as frank and unposturing +as an animal; Rosalind, with her malicious thrusts and her corrupt mind +and her frank feminine greediness. For Rosalind, anyhow, didn't pretend +to herself, though she did undoubtedly, when for any reason it suited +her, lie to other people. Mrs. Hilary's lying went all through, deep +down; it sprang out of the roots of her being, so that all the time she +was making up, not only for others but for herself, a sham person who did +not exist. That Nan found infinitely oppressive. So did Pamela, but +Pamela was more tolerant and sympathetic and less ill-tempered than Nan, +and observed the ways of others with quiet, ironic humour, saying nothing +unkind. Pamela, when she didn't like a way of talking--when Rosalind, for +instance, was being malicious or indecent or both--would skilfully carry +the talk somewhere else. She could be a rapid and good talker, and could +tell story after story, lightly and coolly, till danger points were past. +Pamela was beautifully bred; she had _savoir-faire_ as well as kindness, +and never lost control of herself. These family gatherings really bored +her a little, because her work and interests lay elsewhere, but she would +never admit or show it. She was kind even to Rosalind, though cool. She +had always been kind and cool to Rosalind, because Gilbert was her +special brother, and when he had married this fast, painted and +unHilaryish young woman, she had seen the necessity for taking firm hold +of an attitude in the matter and retaining it. No one, not even Neville, +not even Frances Carr, had ever seen behind Pamela's guard where Rosalind +was concerned. When Nan abused Rosalind, Pamela would say "Don't be a +spitfire, child. What's the use?" and change the subject. For Rosalind +was, in Pamela's view, one of the things which were a pity but didn't +really matter, so long as she didn't make Gilbert unhappy. And Gilbert, +so far, was absurdly pleased and proud about her, in spite of occasional +disapprovals of her excessive intimacies with others. + +But, whatever they all felt about Rosalind, there was no doubt that the +family party was happier for her departure. The departure of in-laws, +even when they are quite nice in-laws, often has this effect on family +parties. Mrs. Hilary had her three daughters to herself--the girls, as +she still called them. She felt cosy and comforted, though in pain, lying +on the sofa by the bay window in the warm afternoon sunshine, while +Grandmama looked at the London Mercury, which had just come by the post, +and the girls talked. + + +6 + +Their voices rose and fell against the soft splashing of the sea; +Neville's, sweet and light, with pretty cadences, Pamela's, crisp, quick +and decided, Nan's, trailing a little, almost drawling sometimes. The +Hilary voices were all thin, not rich and full-bodied, like Rosalind's. +Mrs. Hilary's was thin, like Grandmama's. + +"Nice voices," thought Mrs. Hilary, languidly listening. "Nice children. +But what nonsense they often talk." + +They were talking now about the Minority Report of some committee, which +had been drafted by Rodney. Rodney and the Minority and Neville and +Pamela and Nan were all interested in what Mrs. Hilary called "This +Labour nonsense which is so fashionable now." Mrs. Hilary herself, being +unfashionable, was anti-Labour, since it was apparent to her that the +working classes had already more power, money and education than was good +for them, sons of Belial, flown with insolence and bonuses. Grandmama, +being so nearly out of it all, was used only to say, in reply to these +sentiments, "It will make no difference in the end. We shall all be the +same in the grave, and in the life beyond. All these movements are very +interesting, but the world goes round just the same." It was all very +well for Grandmama to be philosophical; _she_ wouldn't have to live for +years ruled and triumphed over by her own gardener, which was the way +Mrs. Hilary saw it. + +Mrs. Hilary began to get angry, hearing the girls talking in this silly +way. Of course it was natural that Neville should agree with Rodney; but +Pamela had picked up foolish ideas from working among the poor and living +with Frances Carr, and Nan was, as usual, merely wrong-headed, childish +and perverse. + +Suddenly she broke out, losing her temper, as she often did when she +disagreed with people's politics, for she did not take a calm and +tolerant view of these things. + +"I never heard such stuff in my life. I disagree with every word you've +all said." + +She always disagreed in bulk, like that. It seemed simpler than arguing +separate points, and took less time and knowledge. She saw Neville +wrinkling her broad forehead, doubtfully, as if wondering how the subject +could most easily be changed, and that annoyed her. + +Nan said, "You mean you disagree with the Report. Which clauses of it?" +and there was that soft viciousness in her voice which showed that she +knew Mrs. Hilary had not even read the Minority Report, or the Majority +Report either. Nan was spiteful; always trying to prove that her mother +didn't know what she was talking about; always trying to pin her down on +points of detail. Like the people with whom Mrs. Hilary had failed to get +on during her brief sojourn in London; they too had always shunned +general disputes about opinion and sentiment, such as were carried on +with profit in St. Mary's Bay, and pinned the discussion down to hard +facts, about which the Bay's information was inaccurate and incomplete. +As if you didn't know when you disagreed with a thing's whole drift, +whether you had read it or not.... Mrs. Hilary had never had any head for +facts. + +"It's the whole idea," she said, hotly. "And I detest all these Labour +people. Vile creatures.... Of course I don't mean people like Rodney--the +University men. They're merely amateurs. But these dreadful Trades Union +men, with their walrus moustaches.... Why can't they shave, like other +people, if they want to be taken for gentlemen?" + +Neville told her, chaffingly, that she was a mass of prejudice. + +Grandmama, who had fallen asleep and dropped the London Mercury onto the +floor, diverted the conversation by waking up and remarking that it +seemed a less interesting number than usual on the whole, though some of +the pieces of poetry were pretty, and that Mrs. Hilary ought not to lie +under the open window. + +Mrs. Hilary, who was getting worse, admitted that she had better be in +bed. + +"I hope," said Grandmama, "that it will be a lesson to you, dear, not to +stay in the water so long again, even if you do want to show off before +your daughter-in-law." Grandmama, who disliked Rosalind, usually called +her to Mrs. Hilary "your daughter-in-law," saddling her, so to speak, +with the responsibility for Gilbert's ill-advised marriage. To her +grandchildren she would refer to Rosalind as "your sister-in-law," or +"poor Gilbert's wife." + +"The bathe was worth it," said Mrs. Hilary, swinging up to high spirits +again. "It was a glorious bathe. But I _have_ got rheumatics." + +So Neville stayed on at The Gulls that night, to massage her mother's +joints, and Pamela and Nan went back to Hoxton and Chelsea by the evening +train. Pamela had supper, as usual, with Frances Carr, and Nan with Barry +Briscoe, and they both talked and talked, about all the things you don't +talk of in families but only to friends. + + +7 + +Neville meanwhile was saying to Grandmama in the drawing-room at The +Gulls, after Mrs. Hilary had gone to bed, "I wish mother could get some +regular interest or occupation. She would be much happier. Are there no +jobs for elderly ladies in the Bay?" + +"As many in the Bay," said Grandmama, up in arms for the Bay, "as +anywhere else. Sick-visiting, care committees, boys' and girls' classes, +and so on. I still keep as busy as I am able, as you know." + +Neville did know. "If mother could do the same...." + +"Mother can't. She's never been a rector's wife, as I have, and she +doesn't care for such jobs. Mother never did care for any kind of work +really, even as a girl. She married when she was nineteen and found the +only work she was fitted for and interested in. That's over, and there's +no other she can turn to. It's common enough, child, with women. They +just have to make the best of it, and muddle through somehow till the +end." + +"You were different, Grandmama, weren't you? I mean, you were never at a +loss for things to do." + +Grandmama's thin, delicate face hardened for a moment into grim lines. + +"At a loss--yes, I was what you call at a loss twenty years ago, when +your grandfather died. The meaning was gone out of life, you see. I was +sixty-four. For two years I was cut adrift from everything, and did +nothing but brood and find trivial occupations to pass the time somehow. +I lived on memories and emotions; I was hysterical and peevish and bored. +Then I realised it wouldn't do; that I might have twenty years and more +of life before me, and that I must do something with it. So I took up +again all of my old work that I could. It was the hardest thing I ever +did. I hated it at first. Then I got interested again, and it has kept me +going all these years, though I've had to drop most of it now of course. +But now I'm so near the end that it doesn't matter. You can drop work at +eighty and keep calm and interested in life. You can't at sixty; it's +too young.... Mother knows that too, but there seems no work she can do. +She doesn't care for parish work as I do; she never learnt any art or +craft or handiwork, and doesn't want to; she was never much good at +intellectual work of any kind, and what mind she had as a girl--and her +father and I did try to train her to use it--ran all to seed during her +married life, so it's pretty nearly useless now. She spent herself on +your father and all you children, and now she's bankrupt." + +"Poor darling mother," Neville murmured. + +Grandmama nodded. "Just so. She's left to read novels, gossip with stupid +neighbours, look after me, write to you children, go on walks, and brood +over the past. She would have been quite happy like that forty years ago. +The young have high spirits, and can amuse themselves without work. She +never wanted work when she was eighteen. It's the old who need work. +They've lost their spring and their zest for life, and need something to +hold on to. It's all wrong, the way we arrange it--making the young work +and the old sit idle. It should be the other way about. Girls and boys +don't get bored with perpetual holidays; they live each moment of them +hard; they would welcome the eternal Sabbath; and indeed I trust we shall +all do that, as our youth is to be renewed like eagles. But old age on +this earth is far too sad to do nothing in. Remember that, child, when +your time comes." + +"Why, yes. But when one's married, you know, it's not so easy, keeping up +with a job. I only wish I could.... I don't _like_ being merely a married +woman. Rodney isn't merely a married man, after all.... But anyhow I'll +find something to amuse my old age, even if I can't work. I'll play +patience or croquet or the piano, or all three, and I'll go to theatres +and picture shows and concerts and meetings in the Albert Hall. Mother +doesn't do any of those things. And she _is_ so unhappy so often." + +"Oh very. Very unhappy. Very often.... She should come to church +more. This Unitarianism is depressing. No substance in it. I'd rather +be a Papist and keep God in a box. Or belong to the Army and sing +about rivers of blood. I daresay both are satisfying. All this +sermon-on-the-mount-but-no-miracle business is most saddening. Because +it's about impossibilities. You can receive a sacrament, and you can find +salvation, but you can't live the sermon on the mount. So of course it +makes people discontented." + +Grandmama, who often in the evenings became a fluent though drowsy +talker, might have wandered on like this till her bed-time, had not Mrs. +Hilary here appeared, in her dressing-gown. She sat down, and said, +trying to sound natural and not annoyed and failing. "I heard so much +talk, I thought I would come down and be in it. I thought you were coming +up to me again directly, Neville. I hadn't realised you meant to stay +down and talk to Grandmama instead." + +She hated Neville or any of them, but especially Neville, to talk +intimately to Grandmama; it made her jealous. She tried and tried not to +feel this, but it was never any use her fighting against jealousy, it was +too strong for her. + +Grandmama said placidly, "Neville and I were discussing different forms +of religion." + +"Is Neville thinking of adopting one of them?" Mrs. Hilary enquired, her +jealousy making her sound sarcastic and scornful. + +"No, mother. Not at present.... Come back to bed, and I'll sit with you, +and we'll talk. I don't believe you should be up." + +"Oh, I see I've interrupted. It was the last thing I meant. No, Neville, +I'll go back to my room alone. You go on with your talk with Grandmama. +I hate interrupting like this. I hoped you would have let me join. I +don't get much of you in these days, after all. But stay and talk to +Grandmama." + +That was the point at which Nan would have sworn to herself and gone down +to the beach. Neville did neither. She was gentle and soothing, and +Grandmama was infinitely untroubled, and Mrs. Hilary presently picked up +her spirits and went back to bed, and Neville spent the evening with her. +These little scenes had occurred so often that they left only a slight +impression on those concerned and slightest of all on Mrs. Hilary. + + +8 + +When Mrs. Hilary and Grandmama were both settled for the night (old and +elderly people settle for the night--other people go to bed) Neville went +down to the seashore and lay on the sand, watching the moon rise over the +sea. + +Beauty was there, rather than in elderly people. But in elderly people +was such pathos, such tragedy, such pity, that they lay like a heavy +weight on one's soul. If one could do anything to help.... + +To be aimless: to live on emotions and be by them consumed: that was +pitiful. To have done one's work for life, and to be in return cast aside +by life like a broken tool: that was tragic. + +The thing was to defy life; to fly in the face of the fool nature, break +her absurd rules, and wrest out of the breakage something for oneself by +which to live at the last. + +Neville flung her challenge to the black sea that slowly brightened under +the moon's rising eye. + + + + +CHAPTER III + +FAMILY LIFE + + +1 + +If you have broken off your medical studies at London University at the +age of twenty-one and resume them at forty-three, you will find them (one +is told) a considerably tougher job than you found them twenty-two +years before. Youth is the time to read for examinations; youth is used +to such foolishness, and takes it lightly in its stride. At thirty you +may be and probably are much cleverer than you were at twenty; you will +have more ideas and better ones, and infinitely more power of original +and creative thought; but you will not, probably, find it so easy to grip +and retain knowledge out of books and reproduce it to order. So the world +has ordained that youth shall spend laborious days in doing this, and +that middle age shall, in the main, put away these childish things, and +act and work on in spite of the information thus acquired. + +Neville Bendish, who was not even in the thirties, but so near the brink +of senile decay as the forties, entered her name once more at the London +University School of Medicine, and plunged forthwith into her interrupted +studies. Her aim was to spend this summer in reacquiring such knowledge +as should prepare her for the October session. And it was difficult +beyond her imaginings. It had not been difficult twenty-two years ago; +she had worked then with pleasure and interest, and taken examinations +with easy triumph. As Kay did now at Cambridge, only more so, because she +had been cleverer than Kay. She was a vain creature, and had believed +that cleverness of hers to be unimpaired by life, until she came to try. +She supposed that if she had spent her married life in head work, her +head would never have lost the trick of it. But she hadn't. She had spent +it on Rodney and Gerda and Kay, and the interesting, amusing life led by +the wife of a man in Rodney's position, which had brought her always into +contact with people and ideas. Much more amusing than grinding at +intellectual work of her own, but it apparently caused the brain to +atrophy. And she was, anyhow, tired of doing nothing in particular. After +forty you must have your job, you must be independent of other people's +jobs, of human and social contacts, however amusing and instructive. + +Rodney wasn't altogether pleased, though he understood. He wanted her +constant companionship and interest in his own work. + +"You've had twenty-two years of it, darling," Neville said. "Now I must +Live my own Life, as the Victorians used to put it. I must be a doctor; +quite seriously I must. I want it. It's my job. The only one I could ever +really have been much good at. The sight of human bones or a rabbit's +brain thrills me, as the sight of a platform and a listening audience +thrills you, or as pen and paper (I suppose) thrill the children. You +ought to be glad I don't want to write. Our family seems to run to that +as a rule." + +"But," Rodney said, "you don't mean ever to _practise_, surely? You won't +have time for it, with all the other things you do." + +"It's the other things I shan't have time for, old man. Sorry, but there +it is.... It's all along of mother, you see. She's such an object lesson +in how not to grow old. If she'd been a doctor, now...." + +"She couldn't have been a doctor, possibly. She hasn't the head. On the +other hand, you've got enough head to keep going without the slavery of +a job like this, even when you're old." + +"I'm not so sure. My brain isn't what it was; it may soften altogether +unless I do something with it before it's too late. Then there I shall +be, a burden to myself and everyone else.... After all, Rodney, you've +your job. Can't I have mine? Aren't you a modern, an intellectual and a +feminist?" + +Rodney, who believed with truth that he was all these things, gave in. + +Kay and Gerda, with the large-minded tolerance of their years, thought +mother's scheme was all right and rather sporting, if she really liked +the sort of thing, which they, for their part, didn't. + +So Neville recommenced medical study, finding it difficult beyond belief. +It made her head ache. + + +2 + +She envied Kay and Gerda, as they all three lay and worked in the garden, +with chocolates, cigarettes and Esau grouped comfortably round them. Kay +was reading economics for his Tripos, Gerda was drawing pictures for her +poems; neither, apparently, found any difficulty in concentrating on +their work when they happened to want to. + +What, Neville speculated, her thoughts, as usual, wandering from her +book, would become of Gerda? She was a clever child at her own things, +though with great gaps in her equipment of knowledge, which came from +ignoring at school those of her studies which had not seemed to her of +importance. She had firmly declined a University education; she had +decided that it was not a fruitful start in life, and was also afraid of +getting an academic mind. But at economic and social subjects, at drawing +and at writing, she worked without indolence, taking them earnestly, +still young enough to believe it important that she should attain +proficiency. + +Neville, on the other hand, was indolent. For twenty-two years she had +pleased herself, done what she wanted when she wanted to, played the +flirt with life. And now she had become soft-willed. Now, sitting in +the garden with her books, like Gerda and Kay, she would find that the +volumes had slipped from her knee and that she was listening to the +birds in the elms. Or she would fling them aside and get up and stretch +herself, and stroll into the little wood beyond the garden, or down to +the river, or she would propose tennis, or go up to town for some meeting +or concert or to see someone, though she didn't really want to, having +quite enough of London during that part of the year when they lived +there. She only went up now because otherwise she would be working. At +this rate she would never be ready to resume her medical course in the +autumn. + +"I will attend. I will. I will," she whispered to herself, a hand pressed +to each temple to constrain her mind. And for five minutes she would +attend, and then she would drift away on a sea of pleasant indolence, +and time fluttered away from her like an escaping bird, and she knew +herself for a light woman who would never excel. And Kay's brown head +was bent over his book, and raised sometimes to chaff or talk, and bent +over his books again, the thread of his attention unbroken by his easy +interruptions. And Gerda's golden head lay pillowed in her two clasped +hands, and she stared up at the blue through the green and did nothing +at all, for that was often Gerda's unashamed way. + +Often Rodney sat in the garden too and worked. And his work Neville felt +that she too could have done; it was work needing initiative and creative +thought, work suitable to his forty-five years, not cramming in knowledge +from books. Neville at times thought that she too would stand for +parliament one day. A foolish, childish game it was, and probably really +therefore more in her line than solid work. + + +3 + +Nan came down in July to stay with them. While she was there, Barry +Briscoe, who was helping with a W.E.A. summer school at Haslemere, would +come over on Sundays and spend the day with them. Not even the rains of +July 1920 made Barry weary or depressed. His eyes were bright behind his +glasses; his hands were usually full of papers, committee reports, +agenda, and the other foods he fed on, unsatiated and unabashed. Barry +was splendid. What ardour, what enthusiasm, burning like beacons in a +wrecked world! So wrecked a world that all but the very best and the very +worst had given it up as a bad job; the best because they hoped on, hoped +ever, the worst because of the pickings that fall to such as they out of +the collapsing ruins. But Barry, from the very heart of the ruin, would +cry "Here is what we must do," and his eyes would gleam with faith and +resolution, and he would form a committee and act. And when he saw how +the committee failed, as committees will, and how little good it all was, +he would laugh ruefully and try something else. Barry, as he would tell +you frankly--if you enquired, not otherwise,--believed in God. He was the +son of a famous Quaker philanthropist, and had been brought up to see +good works done and even garden cities built. I am aware that this must +prejudice many people against Barry; and indeed many people were annoyed +by certain aspects of him. But, as he was intellectually brilliant and +personally attractive, these people were as a rule ready to overlook what +they called the Quaker oats. Nan, who overlooked nothing, was frankly at +war with him on some points, and he with her. Nan, cynical, clear-eyed, +selfish and blase, cared nothing for the salvaging of what remained of +the world out of the wreck, nothing for the I.L.P., less than nothing for +garden cities, philanthropy, the W.E.A., and God. And committees she +detested. Take them all away, and there remained Barry Briscoe, and for +him she did not care nothing. + +It was the oddest friendship, thought Neville, observing how, when Barry +was there, all Nan's perversities and moods fell away, leaving her as +agreeable as he. Her keen and ironic intelligence met his, and they so +understood each other that they finished each other's sentences, and +others present could only with difficulty keep up with them. Neville +believed them to be in love, but did not know whether they had ever +informed one another of the fact. They might still be pretending to +one another that their friendship was merely one of those affectionate +intellectual intimacies of which some of us have so many and which are +so often misunderstood. Or they might not. It was entirely their +business, either way. + +Barry was a chatterbox. He lay on the lawn and rooted up daisies and +made them into ridiculous chains, and talked and talked and talked. +Rodney and Neville and Nan talked too, and Kay would lunge in with the +crude and charming dogmatics of his years. But Gerda, chewing a blade of +grass, lay idle and withdrawn, her fair brows unpuckered by the afternoon +sun (because it was July, 1920), her blue eyes on Barry, who was so +different; or else she would be withdrawn but not idle, for she would be +drawing houses tumbling down, or men on stilts, fantastic and proud, or +goblins, or geese running with outstretched necks round a green. Or she +would be writing something like this: + + "I + Float on the tide, + In the rain. + I am the starfish vomited up by the retching cod. + He thinks + That I am he. + But I know. + That he is I. +For the creature is far greater than its god." + + +(Gerda was of those who think it is rather chic to have one rhyme in your +poem, just to show that you can do it.) + +"That child over there makes one feel so cheap and ridiculous, jabbering +away." + +That was Barry, breaking off to look at Gerda where she lay on her elbows +on a rug, idle and still. "And it's not," he went on, "that she doesn't +know about the subject, either. I've heard her on it." + +He threw the daisy chain he had just made at her, so that it alighted on +her head, hanging askew over one eye. + +"Just like a daisy bud herself, isn't she," he commented, and raced on, +forgetting her. + +Neat in her person and ways, Gerda adjusted the daisy chain so that it +ringed her golden head in an orderly circle. Like a daisy bud herself, +Rodney agreed in his mind, his eyes smiling at her, his affection, +momentarily turned that way, groping for the wild, remote little soul in +her that he only vaguely and paternally knew. The little pretty. And +clever, too, in her own queer, uneven way. But what _was_ she, with it +all? He knew Kay, the long, sweet-tempered boy, better. For Kay +represented highly civilized, passably educated, keen-minded youth. Gerda +wasn't highly civilized, was hardly passably educated, and keen would be +an inapt word for that queer, remote, woodland mind of hers.... Rodney +returned to more soluble problems. + + +4 + +Mrs. Hilary and Grandmama came to Windover. Mrs. Hilary would rather have +come without Grandmama, but Grandmama enjoyed the jaunt, as she called +it. For eighty-four, Grandmama was wonderfully sporting. They arrived on +Saturday afternoon, and rested after the journey, as is usually done by +people of Grandmama's age, and often by people of Mrs. Hilary's. Sunday +was full of such delicate clashings as occur when new people have joined +a party. Grandmama was for morning church, and Neville drove her to it in +the pony carriage. So Mrs. Hilary, not being able to endure that they +should go off alone together, had to go too, though she did not like +church, morning or other. + +She sighed over it at lunch. + +"So stuffy. So long. And the _hymns_...." + +But Grandmama said, "My dear, we had David and Goliath. What more do you +want?" + +During David and Goliath Grandmama's head had nodded approvingly, and her +thin old lips had half smiled at the valiant child with his swaggering +lies about bears and lions, at the gallant child and the giant. + +Mrs. Hilary, herself romantically sensible, as middle-aged ladies are, of +valour and high adventure, granted Grandmama David and Goliath, but still +repined at the hymns and the sermon. + +"Good words, my dear, good words," Grandmama said to that. For Grandmama +had been brought up not to criticise sermons, but had failed to bring up +Mrs. Hilary to the same self-abnegation. The trouble with Mrs. Hilary +was, and had always been, that she expected (even now) too much of life. +Grandmama expected only what she got. And Neville, wisest of all, had not +listened, for she too _expected_ what she would get if she did. She was +really rather like Grandmama, in her cynically patient acquiescence, only +brought up in a different generation, and not to hear sermons. In the +gulf of years between these two, Mrs. Hilary's restless, questing passion +fretted like unquiet waves. + + +5 + +"This Barry Briscoe," said Mrs. Hilary to Neville after lunch, as she +watched Nan and he start off for a walk together. "I suppose he's in love +with her?" + +"I suppose so. Something of the kind, anyhow." + +Mrs. Hilary said, discontentedly, "Another of Nan's married men, no +doubt. She _collects_ them." + +"No, Barry's not married." + +Mrs. Hilary looked more interested. "Not? Oh, then it may come to +something.... I wish Nan _would_ marry. It's quite time." + +"Nan isn't exactly keen to, you know. She's got so much else to do." + +"Fiddlesticks. You don't encourage her in such nonsense, I hope, +Neville." + +"I? It's not for me to encourage Nan in anything. She doesn't need it. +But as to marriage--yes, I think I wish she would do it, sometime, +whenever she's ready. It would give her something she hasn't got; +emotional steadiness, perhaps I mean. She squanders a bit, now. On the +other hand, her writing would rather go to the wall; if she went on with +it it would be against odds all the time." + +"What's writing?" enquired Mrs. Hilary, with a snap of her finger and +thumb. "_Writing!_" + +As this seemed too vague or too large a question for Neville to answer, +she did not try to do so, and Mrs. Hilary replied to it herself. + +"Mere showing off," she explained it. "Throwing your paltry ideas at a +world which doesn't want them. Writing like Nan's I mean. It's not as if +she wrote really good books." + +"Oh well. Who does that, after all? And what is a good book?" Here were +two questions which Mrs. Hilary, in her turn, could not answer. Because +most of the books which seemed good to her did not, as she well knew, +seem good to Neville, or to any of her children, and she wasn't going to +give herself away. She murmured something about Thackeray and Dickens, +which Neville let pass. + +"Writing's just a thing to do, as I see it," Neville went on. "A job, +like another. One must _have_ a job, you know. Not for the money, but for +the job's sake. And Nan enjoys it. But I daresay she'd enjoy marriage +too." + +"Does she love this man?" + +"I don't know. I shouldn't be surprised. She hasn't told me so." + +"Probably she doesn't, as he's single. Nan's so perverse. She will love +the wrong men, always." + +"You shouldn't believe all Rosalind tells you, mother. Rosalind has a too +vivid fancy and a scandalous tongue." + +Mrs. Hilary coloured a little. She did not like Neville to think that she +had been letting Rosalind gossip to her about Nan. + +"You know perfectly well, Neville, that I never trust a word Rosalind +says. I suppose I needn't rely on my daughter-in-law for news about my +own daughter's affairs. I can see things for myself. You can't deny that +Nan _has_ had compromising affairs with married men." + +"Compromising." Neville turned over the word, thoughtfully and +fastidiously. "Funny word, mother. I'm not sure I know what it means. +But I don't think anything ever compromises Nan; she's too free for +that.... Well, let's marry her off to Barry Briscoe. It will be a quaint +menage, but I daresay they'd pull it off. Barry's delightful. I should +think even Nan could live with him." + +"He writes books about education, doesn't he? Education and democracy." + +"Well, he does. But there's always something, after all, against all +of us. And it might be worse. It might be poetry or fiction or +psycho-analysis." + +Neville said psycho-analysis in order to start another hare and take +her mother's attention off Nan's marriage before the marriage became +crystallised out of all being. But Mrs. Hilary for the first time (for +usually she was reliable) did not rise. She looked thoughtful, even a +shade embarrassed, and said vaguely, "Oh, people must write, of course. +If it isn't one thing it will be another." After a moment she added, +"This psycho-analysis, Neville," saying the word with distaste indeed, +but so much more calmly than usual that Neville looked at her in +surprise. "This psycho-analysis. I suppose it does make wonderful cures, +doesn't it, when all is said?" + +"Cures--oh yes, wonderful cures. Shell-shock, insomnia, nervous +depression, lumbago, suicidal mania, family life--anything." Neville's +attention was straying to Grandmama, who was coming slowly towards +them down the path, leaning on her stick, so she did not see Mrs. +Hilary's curious, lit eagerness. + +"But how _can_ they cure all those things just by talking indecently +about sex?" + +"Oh mother, they don't. You're so crude, darling. You've got hold of +only one tiny part of it--the part practised by Austrian professors on +Viennese degenerates. Many of the doctors are really sane and brilliant. +I know of cases...." + +"Well," said Mrs. Hilary, quickly and rather crossly, "I can't talk about +it before Grandmama." + +Neville got up to meet Grandmama, put a hand under her arm, and conducted +her to her special chair beneath the cedar. You had to help and conduct +someone so old, so frail, so delightful as Grandmama, even if Mrs. Hilary +did wish it were being done by any hand than yours. Mrs. Hilary in fact +made a movement to get to Grandmama first, but sixty-three does not rise +from low deck chairs so swiftly as forty-three. So she had to watch her +daughter leading her mother, and to note once more with a familiar pang +the queer, unmistakable likeness between the smooth, clear oval face and +the old wrinkled one, the heavily lashed deep blue eyes and the old faded +ones, the elfish, close-lipped, dimpling smile and the old, elfish, +thin-lipped, sweet one. Neville, her Neville, flower of her flock, her +loveliest, first and best, her dearest but for Jim, her pride, and nearer +than Jim, because of sex, which set Jim on a platform to be worshipped, +but kept Neville on a level to be loved, to be stormed at when storms +rose, to be clung to when all God's waters went over one's head. Oh +Neville, that you should smile at Grandmama like that, that Grandmama +should, as she always had, steal your confidence that should have been +all your mother's! That you should perhaps even talk over your mother +with Grandmama (as if she were something further from each of you than +each from the other), pushing her out of the close circle of your +intimacy into the region of problems to be solved.... Oh God, how bitter +a thing to bear! + +The garden, the summer border of bright flowers, swam in tears.... Mrs. +Hilary turned away her face, pretending to be pulling up daisies from the +grass. But, unlike the ostrich, she well knew that they always saw. To +the children, as to Grandmama, they were an old story, those hot, facile, +stinging tears of Mrs. Hilary's that made Neville weary with pity, and +Nan cold with scorn, and Rosalind happy with lazy malice, and Pamela +bright and cool and firm, like a woman doctor. Only Grandmama took them +unmoved, for she had always known them. + + +6 + +Grandmama, settled in her special chair, remarked on the unusual (for +July) fineness of the day, and requested Neville to read them the chief +items of news in the Observer, which she had brought out with her. So +Neville read about the unfortunate doings of the Supreme Council at Spa, +and Grandmama said "Poor creatures," tolerantly, as she had said when +they were at Paris, and again at San Remo; and about General Dyer and +the Amritsar debate, and Grandmama said "Poor man. But one mustn't treat +one's fellow creatures as he did, even the poor Indian, who, I quite +believe, is intolerably provoking. I see the Morning Post is getting up +a subscription for him, contributed to by Those Who Remember Cawnpore, +Haters of Trotzky, Montague and Lansbury, Furious Englishwoman, and many +other generous and emotional people. That is kind and right. We should +not let even our more impulsive generals starve." + +Then Neville read about Ireland, which was just then in a disturbed +state, and Grandmama said it certainly seemed restless, and mentioned +with what looked like a gleam of hope that they would never return, that +her friends the Dormers were there. Mrs. Hilary shot out, with still +averted face, that the whole of Ireland ought to be sunk to the bottom +of the sea, it was more bother than it was worth. This was her usual and +only contribution towards a solution of the Irish question. + +Then Mr. Churchill and Russia had their turn (it was the time of the +Golovin trouble) and Grandmama said people seemed always to get so +very sly, as well as so very much annoyed and excited, whenever Russia +was mentioned, and that seemed like a sign that God did not mean us, +in this country, to mention it much, perhaps not even to think of it. +She personally seldom did. Then Neville read a paragraph about the +Anglo-Catholic Congress, and about that Grandmama was for the first time +a little severe, for Grandpapa had not been an Anglo-Catholic, and indeed +in his day there were none of this faith. You were either High Church, +Broad Church or Evangelical. (Unless, of course, you had been led astray +by Huxley and Darwin and were nothing whatever.) Grandpapa had been +Broad, with a dash of Evangelical; or perhaps it was the other way round; +but anyhow Grandpapa had not been High Church, or, as they called it in +his time, Tractarian. So Grandmama enquired, snippily, "Who _are_ these +Anglo-Catholics, my dear? One seems to hear so much of them in these +days. I can't help thinking they are rather _noisy_...." as she might +have spoken of Bolshevists, or the Labour Party, or the National Party, +or Sinn Fein, or any other of the organisations of which Grandpapa had +been innocent. "There are so many of these new things," said Grandmama, +"I daresay modern young people like Gerda and Kay are quite in with it +all." + +"I'm afraid," said Neville, "that Gerda and Kay are secularists at +present." + +"Poor children," Grandmama said gently. Secularism made her think of +the violent and vulgar Mr. Bradlaugh. It was, in her view, a noisier +thing even than Anglo-Catholicism. "Well, they have plenty of time to +get over it and settle down to something quieter." Broad-Evangelical she +meant, or Evangelical-Broad; and Neville smiled at the idea of Gerda, +in particular, being either of these. She believed that if Gerda were to +turn from secularism it would either be to Anglo-Catholicism or to Rome. +Or Gerda might become a Quaker, or a lone mystic contemplating in woods, +but a Broad-Evangelical, no. There was a delicate, reckless extravagance +about Gerda which would prohibit that. If you came to that, what girl or +boy did, in these days, fall into any of the categories which Grandmama +and Grandpapa had known, whether religiously or politically? You might as +well suggest that Gerda and Kay should be Tories or Whigs. + +And by this time they had given Mrs. Hilary so much time to recover her +poise that she could join in, and say that Anglo-Catholics were very +ostentatious people, and only gave all that money which they had, +undoubtedly, given at the recent Congress in order to make a splash +and show off. + +"Tearing off their jewellery in public like that," said Mrs. Hilary, in +disgust, as she might have said tearing off their chemises, "and gold +watches lying in piles on the collection table, still ticking...." She +felt it was indecent that the watches should have still been ticking; it +made the thing an orgy, like a revival meeting, or some cannibal rite at +which victims were offered up still breathing.... + +So much for the Anglo-Catholic Congress. The Church Congress was better, +being more decent and in order, though Mrs. Hilary knew that the whole +established Church was wrong. + +And so they came to literature, to a review of Mr. Conrad's new novel +and a paragraph about a famous annual literary prize. Grandmama thought +it very nice that young writers should be encouraged by cash prizes. +"Not," as she added, "that there seems any danger of any of them being +discouraged, even without that.... But Nan and Kay and Gerda ought to go +in for it. It would be a nice thing for them to work for." + +Then Grandmama, settling down with her pleased old smile to something +which mattered more than the news in the papers, said "And now, dear, +I want to hear all about this friendship of Nan's and this nice young +Mr. Briscoe." + +So Neville again had to answer questions about that. + + +7 + +Mrs. Hilary, abruptly leaving them, trailed away by herself to the house. +Since she mightn't have Neville to herself for the afternoon she wouldn't +stay and share her. But when she reached the house and looked out at them +through the drawing-room windows, their intimacy stabbed her with a pang +so sharp that she wished she had stayed. + +Besides, what was there to do indoors? No novels lay about that looked +readable, only "The Rescue" (and she couldn't read Conrad, he was so +nautical) and a few others which looked deficient in plot and as if they +were trying to be clever. She turned them over restlessly, and put them +down again. She wasn't sleepy, and hated writing letters. She wanted +someone to talk to, and there was no one, unless she rang for the +housemaid. Oh, this dreadful ennui.... Did anyone in the world know it +but her? The others all seemed busy and bright. That was because they +were young. And Grandmama seemed serene and bright. That was because she +was old, close to the edge of life, and sat looking over the gulf into +space, not caring. But for Mrs. Hilary there was ennui, and the dim, +empty room in the cold grey July afternoon. The empty stage; no audience, +no actors. Only a lonely, disillusioned actress trailing about it, hungry +for the past.... A book Gerda had been reading lay on the table. "The +Breath of Life," it was called, which was surely just what Mrs. Hilary +wanted. She picked it up, opened it, turned the pages, then, tucking it +away out of sight under her arm, left the room and went upstairs. + +"Many wonderful cures," Neville had said. And had mentioned depression +as one of the diseases cured. What, after all, if there was something in +this stuff which she had never tried to understand, had always dismissed, +according to her habit, with a single label? "Labels don't help. Labels +get you nowhere." How often the children had told her that, finding her +terse terminology that of a shallow mind, endowed with inadequate +machinery for acquiring and retaining knowledge, as indeed it was. + + +8 + +Gerda, going up to Mrs. Hilary's room to tell her about tea, found her +asleep on the sofa, with "The Breath of Life" fallen open from her hand. +A smile flickered on Gerda's delicate mouth, for she had heard her +grandmother on the subject of psycho-analysis, and here she was, having +taken to herself the book which Gerda was reading for her Freud circle. +Gerda read a paragraph on the open page. + +"It will often be found that what we believe to be unhappiness is really, +in the secret and unconscious self, a joy, which the familiar process of +inversion sends up into our consciousness in the form of grief. If, for +instance, a mother bewails the illness of her child, it is because her +unconscious self is experiencing the pleasure of importance, of being +condoled and sympathised with, as also that of having her child (if it is +a male) entirely for the time dependent on her ministrations. If, on the +other hand, the sick child is her daughter, her grief is in reality a +hope that this, her young rival, may die, and leave her supreme in the +affections of her husband. If, in either of these cases, she can be +brought to face and understand this truth, her grief will invert itself +again and become a conscious joy...." + +"I wonder if Grandmother believes all that," speculated Gerda, who did. + +Then she said aloud, "Grandmother" (that was what Gerda and Kay called +her, distinguishing her thus from Great-Grandmama), "tea's ready." + +Mrs. Hilary woke with a start. "The Breath of Life" fell on the floor +with a bang. Mrs. Hilary looked up and saw Gerda and blushed. + +"I've been asleep.... I took up this ridiculous book of yours to look at. +The most absurd stuff.... How can you children muddle your minds with it? +Besides, it isn't at all a _nice_ book for you, my child. I came on +several very queer things...." + +But the candid innocence of Gerda's wide blue eyes on hers transcended +"nice" and "not nice."... You might as well talk like that to a wood +anemone, or a wild rabbit.... If her grandmother had only known, Gerda at +twenty had discussed things which Mrs. Hilary, in all her sixty-three +years, had never heard mentioned. Gerda knew of things of which Mrs. +Hilary would have indignantly and sincerely denied the existence. Gerda's +young mind was a cess-pool, a clear little dew-pond, according to how you +looked at it. Gerda and Gerda's friends knew no inhibitions of speech or +thought. They believed that the truth would make them free, and the truth +about life is, from some points of view, a squalid and gross thing. But +better look it in the face, thought Gerda and her contemporaries, than +pretend it isn't there, as elderly people do. + +"I don't want you to pretend anything isn't there, darling," Neville, +between the two generations, had said to Gerda once. "Only it seems to me +that some of you children have one particular kind of truth too heavily +on your minds. It seems to block the world for you." + +"You mean sex," Gerda had told her, bluntly. "Well, it runs all through +life, mother. What's the use of hiding from it? The only way to get even +with it is to face it. And _use_ it." + +"Face it and use it by all means. All I meant was, it's a question of +emphasis. There _are_ other things...." + +Of course Gerda knew that. There was drawing, and poetry, and beauty, and +dancing, and swimming, and music, and politics, and economics. Of course +there were other things; no doubt about that. They were like songs, like +colour, like sunrise, like flowers, these other things. But the basis of +life was the desire of the male for the female and of the female for the +male. And this had been warped and smothered and talked down and made a +furtive, shameful thing, and it must be brought out into the day.... + +Neville smiled to hear all this tripping sweetly off Gerda's lips. + +"All right, darling, don't mind me. Go ahead and bring it out into the +day, if you think the subject really needs more airing than it already +gets. I should have thought myself it got lots, and always had." + +And there they were; they talked at cross purposes, these two, across the +gulf of twenty years, and with the best will in the world could not hope +to understand, either of them, what the other was really at. And now here +was Gerda, in Mrs. Hilary's bedroom, looking across a gulf of forty years +and saying nothing at all, for she knew it would be of no manner of use, +since words don't carry as far as that. + +So all she said was "Tea's ready, Grandmother." + +And Mrs. Hilary supposed that Gerda hadn't, probably, noticed or +understood those very queer things she had come upon while reading "The +Breath of Life." + +They went down to tea. + + + + +CHAPTER IV + +ROOTS + + +1 + +It was a Monday evening, late in July. Pamela Hilary, returning from a +Care Committee meeting, fitted her latch-key into the door of the rooms +in Cow Lane which she shared with Frances Carr, and let herself into the +hot dark passage hall. + +A voice from a room on the right called "Come along, my dear. Your pap's +ready." + +Pamela entered the room on the right. A pleasant, Oxfordish room, +with the brown paper and plain green curtains of the college days of +these women, and Duerer engravings, and sweet peas in a bowl, and Frances +Carr stirring bread and milk over a gas ring. Frances Carr was small +and thirty-eight, and had a nice brown face and a merry smile. Pamela +was a year older and tall and straight and pale, and her ash-brown hair +swept smoothly back from a broad white forehead. Her grey eyes regarded +the world shrewdly and pleasantly through pince-nez. Pamela was +distinguished-looking, and so well-bred that you never got through her +guard; she never hurt the feelings of others or betrayed her own. +Competent she was, too, and the best organizer in Hoxton, which is to say +a great deal, Hoxton needing and getting, one way and another, a good +deal of organisation. Some people complained that they couldn't get to +know Pamela, the guard was too complete. But Frances Carr knew her. + +Frances Carr had piled cushions in a deep chair for her. + +"Lie back and be comfy, old thing, and I'll give you your pap." + +She handed Pamela the steaming bowl, and proceeded to take off her +friend's shoes and substitute moccasin slippers. It was thus that she and +Pamela had mothered one another at Somerville eighteen years ago, and +ever since. They had the maternal instinct, like so many women. + +"Well, how went it? How was Mrs. Cox?" + +Mrs. Cox was the chairwoman of the Committee. All committee members know +that the chairman or woman is a ticklish problem, if not a sore burden. + +"Oh well...." Pamela dismissed Mrs. Cox with half a smile. "Might have +been worse.... Oh look here, Frank. About the library fund...." + +The front door-bell tingled through the house. + +Frances Carr said "Oh hang. All right, I'll see to it. If it's Care or +Continuation or Library, I shall send it away. You're not going to do any +more business to-night." + +She went to the door, and there, her lithe, drooping slimness outlined +against the gas-lit street, stood Nan Hilary. + +"Oh, Nan.... But what a late call. Yes, Pamela's just in from a +committee. Tired to death; she's had neuralgia all this week. She mustn't +sit up late, really. But come along in." + + +2 + +Nan came into the room, her dark eyes blinking against the gaslight, her +small round face pale and smutty. She bent to kiss Pamela, then curled +herself up in a wicker chair and yawned. + +"The night is damp and dirty. No, no food, thanks. I've dined. After +dinner I was bored, so I came along to pass the time.... When are you +taking your holidays, both of you? It's time." + +"Pamela's going for hers next week," said Frances Carr, handing Nan a +cigarette. + +"On the contrary," said Pamela, "Frances is going for _hers_ next week. +Mine is to be September this year." + +"Now, we've had all this out before, Pam, you know we have. You +faithfully promised to take August if your neuralgia came on again, and +it has. Tell her she is to, Nan." + +"She wouldn't do it the more if I did," Nan said, lazily. These +competitions in unselfishness between Pamela and Frances Carr always +bored her. There was no end to them. Women are so terrifically +self-abnegatory; they must give, give, give, to someone all the +time. Women, that is, of the mothering type, such as these. They must +be forever cherishing something, sending someone to bed with bread and +milk, guarding someone from fatigue. + +"It ought to be their children," thought Nan, swiftly. "But they pour it +out on one another instead." + +Having put her hand on the clue, she ceased to be interested in the +exhibition. It was, in fact, no more and no less interesting than if it +_had_ been their children. Most sorts of love were rather dull, to the +spectator. Pamela and Frances were all right; decent people, not sloppy, +not gushing, but fine and direct and keen, though rather boring when they +began to talk to each other about some silly old thing that had happened +in their last year at Oxford, or their first year, or on some reading +party. Some people re-live their lives like this; others pass on their +way, leaving the past behind. They were all right, Pamela and Frances. +But all this mothering.... + +Yet how happy they were, these two, in their useful, competent work and +devoted friendship. They had achieved contacts with life, permanent +contacts. Pamela, in spite of her neuralgia, expressed calm and entirely +unbumptious attainment, Nan feverish seeking. For Nan's contacts with +life were not permanent, but suddenly vivid and passing; the links broke +and she flew off at a tangent. Nan had lately been taken with a desperate +fear of becoming like her mother, when she was old and couldn't write any +more, or love any more men. Horrible thought, to be like Mrs. Hilary, +roaming, questing, feverishly devoured by her own impatience of life.... + +In here it was cool and calm, soft and blurred with the smoke of their +cigarettes. Frances Carr left them to talk, telling them not to be late. +When she had gone, Pamela said "I thought you were still down at +Windover, Nan." + +"Left it on Saturday.... Mother and Grandmama had been there a week. +I couldn't stick it any longer. Mother was outrageously jealous, of +course." + +"Neville and Grandmama? Poor mother." + +"Oh yes, poor mother. But it gets on my nerves. Neville's an angel. I +can't think how she sticks it. For that matter, I never know how she puts +up with Rodney's spoilt fractiousness.... And altogether life was a bit +of a strain ... no peace. And I wanted some peace and solitude, to make +up my mind in." + +"Are you making it up now?" Pamela, mildly interested, presumed it was a +man. + +"Trying to. It isn't made yet. That's why I roam about your horrible +slums in the dark. I'm considering; getting things into focus. Seeing +them all round." + +"Well, that sounds all right." + +"Pam." Nan leant forward abruptly, her cigarette between two brown +fingers. "Are you happy? Do you enjoy your life?" + +Pamela withdrew, lightly, inevitably, behind guards. + +"Within reason, yes. When committees aren't too tiresome, and the +accounts balance, and...." + +"Oh, give me a straight answer, Pam. You dependable, practical people are +always frivolous about things that matter. Are you happy? Do you feel +right-side-up with life?" + +"In the main--yes." Pamela was more serious this time. "One's doing one's +job, after all. And human beings are interesting." + +"But I've got that too. My job, and human beings.... Why do I feel all +tossed about, like a boat on a choppy sea? Oh, I know life's furiously +amusing and exciting--of course it is. But I want something solid. You've +got it, somehow." + +Nan broke off and thought "It's Frances Carr she's got. That's permanent. +That goes on. Pamela's anchored. All these people I have--these men and +women--they're not anchors, they're stimulants, and how different that +is!" + +They looked at each other in silence. Pamela said then, "You don't look +well, child." + +"Oh--" Nan threw her cigarette end impatiently into the grate. "I'm all +right. I'm tired, and I've been thinking too much. That never suits +me.... Thanks, Pam. You've helped me to make up my mind. I like you, +Pam," she added dispassionately, "because you're so gentlewomanly. You +don't ask questions, or pry. Most people do." + +"Surely not. Not most decent people." + +"Most people aren't decent. You think they are. You've not lived in my +set--nor in Rosalind's. You're still fresh from Oxford--stuck all over +with Oxford manners and Oxford codes. You don't know the raddled gossip +who fishes for your secrets and then throws them about for fun, like +tennis balls." + +"I know Rosalind, thank you, Nan." + +"Oh, Rosalind's not the only one, though she'll do. Anyhow I've trapped +you into saying an honest and unkind thing about her, for once; that's +something. Wish you weren't such a dear old fraud, Pammie." + +Frances Carr came back, in her dressing gown, looking about twenty-three, +her brown hair in two plaits. + +"Pamela, you _mustn't_ sit up any more. I'm awfully sorry, Nan, but her +head...." + +"Right oh. I'm off. Sorry I've kept you up, Pammie. Good-night. +Good-night, Frances. Yes, I shall get the bus at the corner. Good-night." + +The door closed after Nan, shutting in the friends and their friendship +and their anchored peace. + + +3 + +Off went Nan on the bus at the corner, whistling softly into the night. +Like a bird her heart rose up and sang, at the lit pageant of London +swinging by. Queer, fantastic, most lovely life! Sordid, squalid, +grotesque life, bitter as black tea, sour as stale wine! Gloriously +funny, brilliant as a flower-bed, bright as a Sitwell street in hell-- + + "(Down in Hell's gilded street + Snow dances fleet and sweet, + Bright as a parakeet....)" + +unsteady as a swing-boat, silly as a drunkard's dream, tragic as a poem +by Massfield.... To have one's corner in it, to run here and there about +the city, grinning like a dog--what more did one want? Human adventures, +intellectual adventures, success, even a little fame, men and women, +jokes, laughter and love, dancing and a little drink, and the fields and +mountains and seas beyond--what more did one want? + +Roots. That was the metaphor that had eluded Nan. To be rooted and +grounded in life, like a tree. Someone had written something about that. + + "Let your manhood be + Forgotten, your whole purpose seem + The purpose of a simple tree + Rooted in a quiet dream...." + +Roots. That was what Neville had, what Pamela had; Pamela, with her +sensible wisdom that so often didn't apply because Pamela was so far +removed from Nan's conditions of life and Nan's complicated, unstable +temperament. Roots. Mrs. Hilary's had been torn up out of the ground.... + +"I'm like mother." That was Nan's nightmare thought. Not intellectually, +for Nan's brain was sharp and subtle and strong and fine, Mrs. Hilary's +was an amorphous, undeveloped muddle. But where, if not from Mrs. Hilary, +did Nan get her black fits of melancholy, her erratic irresponsible +gaieties, her passionate angers, her sharp jealousies and egoisms? The +clever young woman saw herself in the stupid elderly one; saw herself +slipping down the years to that. That was why, where Neville and Pamela +and their brothers pitied, Nan, understanding her mother's bad moods +better than they, was vicious with hate and scorn. For she knew these +things through and through. Not the sentimentality; she didn't know that, +being cynical and cool except when stirred to passion. And not the +posing, for Nan was direct and blunt. But the feverish angers and the +black boredom--they were hers. + +Nevertheless Nan's heart sang into the night. For she had made up her +mind, and was at peace. + +She had held life at arm's length, pushed it away, for many months, +hiding from it, running from it because she didn't with the whole of her, +want it. Again and again she had changed a dangerous subject, headed for +safety, raced for cover. The week-end before this last, down at Windover, +it had been like a game of hide and seek.... And then she had come away, +without warning, and he, going down there this last week-end, had not +found her, because she couldn't meet him again till she had decided. And +now she had decided. + +How unsuited a pair they were, in many ways, and what fun they would +have! Unsuited ... what did it matter? His queer, soft, laughing voice +was in her ears, his lean, clever, merry face swam on the rushing tides +of night. His untidy, careless clothes, the pockets bulging with books, +papers and tobacco, his glasses, that left a red mark on either side of +the bridge of his nose, his easily ruffled brown hair--they all merged +for her into the infinitely absurd, infinitely delightful, infinitely +loved Barry, who was going to give her roots. + +She was going away, down into Cornwall, in two days. She would stay in +rooms by herself at Marazion and finish her book and bathe and climb, and +lie in the sun (if only it came out) and sleep and eat and drink. There +was nothing in the world like your own company; you could be purely +animal then. And in a month Gerda and Kay were coming down, and they were +going to bicycle along the coast, and she would ask Barry to come too, +and when Barry came she would let him say what he liked, with no more +fencing, no more cover. Down by the green edge of the Cornish sea they +would have it out--"grip hard, become a root ..." become men as trees +walking, rooted in a quiet dream. Dream? No, reality. This was the dream, +this world of slipping shadows and hurrying gleams of heartbreaking +loveliness, through which one roamed, a child chasing butterflies which +ever escaped, or which, if captured, crumbled to dust in one's clutching +hands. Oh for something strong and firm to hold. Oh Barry, Barry, these +few more weeks of dream, of slipping golden shadows and wavering lights, +and then reality. Shall I write, thought Nan, "Dear Barry, you may ask me +to marry you now." Impossible. Besides, what hurry was there? Better to +have these few more gay and lovely weeks of dream. They would be the +last. + +Has Barry squandered and spilt his love about as I mine? Likely enough. +Likely enough not. Who cares? Perhaps we shall tell one another all these +things sometime; perhaps, again, we shan't. What matter? One loves, and +passes on, and loves again. One's heart cracks and mends; one cracks the +hearts of others, and these mend too. That is--_inter alia_--what life is +for. If one day you want the tale of my life, Barry, you shall have it; +though that's not what life is for, to make a tale about. So thrilling in +the living, so flat and stale in the telling--oh let's get on and live +some more of it, lots and lots more, and let the dead past bury its dead. + +Between a laugh and a sleepy yawn, Nan jumped from the bus at the corner +of Oakley Street. + + + + +CHAPTER V + +SEAWEED + + +1 + +"Complexes," read Mrs. Hilary, "are of all sorts and sizes." And +there was a picture of four of them in a row, looking like netted cherry +trees whose nets have got entangled with each other. So that was what +they were like. Mrs. Hilary had previously thought of them as being more +of the nature of noxious insects, or fibrous growths with infinite +ramifications. Slim young trees. Not so bad, then, after all. + +"A complex is characterised, and its elements are bound together by +a specific emotional tone, experienced as feeling when the complex +is aroused. Apart from the mental processes and corresponding actions +depending on purely rational mental systems, it is through complexes that +the typical mental process (the specific response) works, the particular +complex representing the particular set of mental elements involved in +the process which begins with perception and cognition and ends with the +corresponding conation." + +Mrs. Hilary read it three times, and the third time she understood it, +if possible, less than the first. Complexes seemed very difficult +things, and she had never been clever. Any of her children, or even her +grandchildren, would understand it all in a moment. If you have such +things--and everyone has, she had learnt--you ought to be able to +understand them. Yet why? You didn't understand your bodily internal +growths; you left them to your doctor. There were doctors who explained +your complexes to you.... What a revolting idea! It would surely make +them worse, not better. (Mrs. Hilary still vaguely regarded these growths +as something of the nature of cancer.) + +Sometimes she imagined herself a patient, interviewing one of these odd +doctors. A man doctor, not a woman; she didn't trust woman doctors of any +kind; she had always been thankful that Neville had given it up and +married instead. + +"Insomnia," she would say, in these imaginary interviews, because that +was so easy to start off with. + +"You have something on your mind," said the doctor. "You suffer from +depression." + +"Yes, I know that. I was coming to that. That is what you must cure for +me." + +"You must think back.... What is the earliest thing you can remember? +Perhaps your baptism? Possibly even your first bath? It has been +done...." + +"You may be right. I remember some early baths. One of them may have been +the first of all, who knows? What of it, doctor?" + +But the doctor, in her imaginings, would at this point only make notes in +a big book and keep silence, as if he had thought as much. Perhaps, no +more than she, he did not know what of it. + +Mrs. Hilary could hear herself protesting. + +"I am _not_ unhappy because of my baptism, which, so far as I know, went +off without a hitch. I am _not_ troubled by my first bath, nor by any +later bath. Indeed, indeed you must believe me, it is not that at all." + +"The more they protest," the psycho-analyst would murmur, "the more it is +so." For that was what Dr. Freud and Dr. Jung always said, so that there +was no escape from their aspersions. + +"Why do _you_ think you are so often unhappy?" he would ask her, to +draw her out and she would reply, "Because my life is over. Because I +am an old discarded woman, thrown away onto the dust-heap like a broken +egg-shell. Because my husband is gone and my children are gone, and they +do not love me as I love them. Because I have only my mother to live +with, and she is calm and cares for nothing but only waits for the end. +Because I have nothing to do from morning till night. Because I am +sixty-three, and that is too old and too young. Because life is empty +and disappointing, and I am tired, and drift like seaweed tossed to and +fro by the waves." + +It sounded indeed enough, and tears would fill her eyes as she said it. +The psycho-analyst would listen, passive and sceptical but intelligent. + +"Not one of your reasons is the correct one. But I will find the true +reason for you and expose it, and after that it will trouble you no more. +Now you shall relate to me the whole history of your life." + +What a comfortable moment! Mrs. Hilary, when she came to it in her +imagined interview, would draw a deep breath and settle down and begin. +The story of her life! How absorbing a thing to relate to someone who +really wanted to hear it! How far better than the confessional--for +priests, besides requiring only those portions and parcels of the +dreadful past upon which you had least desire to dwell, had almost +certainly no interest at all in hearing even these, but only did it +because they had to, and you would be boring them. They might even say, +as one had said to Rosalind during the first confession which had +inaugurated her brief ecclesiastical career, and to which she had looked +forward with some interest as a luxurious re-living of a stimulating +past--"No details, please." Rosalind, who had had many details ready, +had come away disappointed, feeling that the Church was not all she +had hoped. But the psycho-analyst doctor would really want to hear +details. Of course he would prefer the kind of detail which Rosalind +would have been able to furnish out of her experience, for that was +what psycho-analysts recognised as true life. Mrs. Hilary's experiences +were pale in comparison; but psycho-analysts could and did make much out +of little, bricks without clay. She would tell him all about the +children--how sweet they were as babies, how Jim had nearly died of +croup, Neville of bronchitis and Nan of convulsions, whereas Pamela had +always been so well, and Gilbert had suffered only from infant debility. +She would relate how early and how unusually they had all given signs of +intelligence; how Jim had always loved her more than anything in the +world, until his marriage, and she him (this was a firm article in Mrs. +Hilary's creed); how Neville had always cherished and cared for her, and +how she loved Neville beyond anything in the world but Jim; how Gilbert +had disappointed her by taking to writing instead of to a man's job, and +then by marrying Rosalind; how Nan had always been tiresome and perverse. +And before the children came--all about Richard, and their courtship, and +their young married life, and how he had loved and cared for her beyond +anything, incredibly tenderly and well, so that all those who saw it had +wondered, and some had said he spoilt her. And back before Richard, to +girlhood and childhood, to parents and nursery, to her brother and +sister, now dead. How she had fought with her sister because they had +both always wanted the same things and got in one another's way! The +jealousies, the bitter, angry tears! + +To pour it all out--what comfort! To feel that someone was interested, +even though it might be only as a case. The trouble about most people was +that they weren't interested. They didn't mostly, even pretend they were. + + +2 + +She tried Barry Briscoe, the week-end he came down and found Nan gone. +Barry Briscoe was by way of being interested in people and things in +general; he had that kind of alert mind and face. + +He came up from the tennis lawn, where he had been playing a single with +Rodney, and sat down by her and Grandmama in the shade of the cedar, hot +and friendly and laughing and out of breath. Now Neville and Rodney were +playing Gerda and Kay. Grandmama's old eyes, pleased behind their +glasses, watched the balls fly and thought everyone clever who got one +over the net. She hadn't played tennis in her youth. Mrs. Hilary's more +eager, excited eyes watched Neville driving, smashing, volleying, +returning, and thought how slim and young a thing she looked, to have all +that power stored in her. She was fleeter than Gerda, she struck harder +than Kay, she was trickier than all of them, the beloved girl. That was +the way Mrs. Hilary watched tennis, thinking of the players, not of the +play. It is the way some people talk, thinking of the talkers, not of +what they are saying. It is the personal touch, and a way some women +have. + +But Barry Briscoe, watching cleverly through his bright glasses, was +thinking of the strokes. He was an unconscious person. He lived in +moments. + +"Well done, Gerda," Grandmama would call, when Gerda, cool and +nonchalant, dropped, a sitter at Rodney's feet, and when Rodney smashed +it back she said, "But father's too much for you." + +"Gerda's a _scandal_," Barry said. "She doesn't care. She can hit all +right when she likes. She thinks about something else half the time." + +His smile followed the small white figure with its bare golden head that +gleamed in the grey afternoon. An absurd, lovable, teasable child, he +found her. + +Grandmama's maid came to wheel her down to the farm. Grandmama had +promised to go and see the farmer's wife and new baby. Grandmama always +saw wives and new babies. They never palled. You would think that by +eighty-four she had seen enough new babies, more than enough, that she +had seen through that strange business and could now take it for granted, +the stream of funny new life cascading into the already so full world. +But Grandmama would always go and see it, handle it, admire it, peer at +it with her smiling eyes that had seen so many lives come and go and that +must know by now that babies are born to trouble as naturally as the +sparks fly upward. + +So off Grandmama rode in her wheeled chair, and Mrs. Hilary and Barry +Briscoe were left alone. Mrs. Hilary and this pleasant, brown, friendly +young man, who cared for Workers' Education and Continuation Schools, and +Penal Reform, and Garden Cities, and Getting Things Done by Acts of +Parliament, about all which things Mrs. Hilary knew and cared nothing. +But vaguely she felt that they sprang out of and must include a care for +human beings as such, and that therefore Barry Briscoe would listen if +she told him things. + +So (it came out of lying on grass, which Barry was doing) she told him +about the pneumonia of Neville as a child, how they had been staying in +Cornwall, miles from a doctor, and without Mr. Hilary, and Mrs. Hilary +had been in despair; how Jim, a little chap of twelve, had ridden off on +his pony in the night to fetch the doctor, across the moors. A long +story; stories about illnesses always are. Mrs. Hilary got worked up and +excited as she told it; it came back to her so vividly, the dreadful +night. + +"He was a Dr. Chalmers, and so kind. When he saw Neville he was +horrified; by that time she was delirious. He said if Jim hadn't gone +straight to him but had waited till the morning, it might have been too +late...." + +"Too late: quite. ..." Barry Briscoe had an understanding, sympathetic +grip of one's last few words. So much of the conversation of others +eludes one, but one should hold fast the last few words. + +"Oh played, Gerda: did you that time, Bendish...." + +Gerda had put on, probably by accident, a sudden, absurd twist that had +made a fool of Rodney. + +That was what Barry Briscoe was really attending to, the silly game. This +alert, seemingly interested, attentive young man had a nice manner, that +led you on, but he didn't really care. He lived in the moment: he cared +for prisoners and workers, and probably for people who were ill _now_, +but not that someone had been ill all those years ago. He only pretended +to care; he was polite. He turned his keen, pleasant face up to her when +he had done shouting about the game, and said "How splendid that he got +to you in time!" but he didn't really care. Mrs. Hilary found that women +were better listeners than men. Women are perhaps better trained; they +think it more ill-mannered not to show interest. They will listen to +stories about servants, or reports of the inane sayings of infants, +they will hear you through, without the flicker of a yawn, but with +ejaculations and noddings, while you tell them about your children's +diseases. They are well-bred; they drive themselves on a tight rein, +and endure. They are the world's martyrs. + +But men, less restrained, will fidget and wander and sigh and yawn, and +change the subject. + +To trap and hold the sympathy of a man--how wonderful! Who wanted a pack +of women? What you really wanted was some man whose trade it was to +listen and to give heed. Some man to whom your daughter's pneumonia, of +however long ago, was not irrelevant, but had its own significance, as +having helped to build you up as you were, you, the problem, with your +wonderful, puzzling temperament, so full of complexes, inconsistencies +and needs. Some man who didn't lose interest in you just because you were +grey-haired and sixty-three. + +"I'm afraid I've been taking your attention from the game," said Mrs. +Hilary to Barry Briscoe. + +Compunction stabbed him. Had he been rude to this elderly lady, who had +been telling him a long tale without a point while he watched the tennis +and made polite, attentive sounds? + +"Not a bit, Mrs. Hilary." He sat up, and looked friendlier than ever. +"I've been thrilled." A charming, easy liar Barry was, when he deemed it +necessary. His Quaker parents would have been shocked. But there was +truth in it, after all. For people were so interested in themselves, that +one was, in a sense, interested in the stories they told one, even +stories about illness. Besides, this was the mother of Nan; Nan, who was +so abruptly and inexplicably not here to-day, whose absence was hurting +him, when he stopped to think, like an aching tooth; for he was not sure, +yet feared, what she meant by it. + +"Tell me," he said, half to please Nan's mother and half on his own +account, "some stories of Nan when she was small. I should think she was +a fearful child...." + +He was interested, thought Mrs. Hilary, in Nan, but not in her. That was +natural, of course. No man would ever again want to hear stories of _her_ +childhood. The familiar bitterness rose and beat in her like a wave. Nan +was thirty-four and she was sixty-three. She could talk only of far-off +things, and theories about conduct and life which sounded all right at +first but were exposed after two minutes as not having behind them the +background of any knowledge or any brain. That hadn't mattered when she +was a girl; men would often rather they hadn't. But at sixty-three you +have nothing.... The bitter emptiness of sixty-three turned her sick with +frustration. Life was over, over, over, for her and she was to tell +stories of Nan, who had everything. + +Then the mother in her rose up, to claim and grasp for her child, even +for the child she loved least. + +"Nan? Nan was always a most dreadfully sensitive child, and +temperamental. She took after me, I'm afraid; the others were more like +their father. I remember when she was quite a little thing...." + +Barry had asked for it. But he hadn't known that, out of the brilliant, +uncertain Nan, exciting as a Punch and Judy show, anything so tedious +could be spun.... + + +3 + +Mrs. Hilary was up in town by herself for a day's shopping. The sales +were on at Barker's and Derry and Tom's. Mrs. Hilary wandered about these +shops, and even Ponting's and bought little bags, and presents for +everyone, remnants, oddments, underwear, some green silk for a frock for +Gerda, a shady hat for herself, a wonderful cushion for Grandmama with a +picture of the sea on it, a silk knitted jumper for Neville, of the same +purplish blue as her eyes. She was happy, going about like a bee from +flower to flower, gathering this honey for them all. She had come up +alone; she hadn't let Neville come with her. She had said she was going +to be an independent old woman. But what she really meant was that she +had proposed herself for tea with Rosalind in Campden Hill Square, and +wanted to be alone for that. + +Rosalind had been surprised, for Mrs. Hilary seldom favoured her with a +visit. She had found the letter on the hall table when she and Gilbert +had come in from a dinner party two evenings ago. + +"Your mother's coming to tea on Thursday, Gilbert. Tea with me. She says +she wants a talk. I feel flattered. She says nothing about wanting to see +you, so you'd better leave us alone, anyhow for a bit." + +Rosalind's beautiful bistre-brown eyes smiled. She enjoyed her talks with +her mother-in-law; they furnished her with excellent material, to be +worked up later by the raconteuse's art into something too delicious +and absurd. She enjoyed, too, telling Mrs. Hilary the latest scandals; +she was so shocked and disgusted; and it was fun dropping little +accidental hints about Nan, and even about Gilbert. Anyhow, what a +treasure of a relic of the Victorian age! And how comic in her jealousy, +her ingenuous, futile boasting, her so readily exposed deceits! And how +she hated Rosalind herself, the painted, corrupt woman who was dragging +Gilbert down! + +"Whatever does she want a talk about?" Rosalind wondered. "It must be +something pretty urgent, to make her put up with an hour of my company." + + +4 + +At four o'clock on Thursday afternoon Rosalind went upstairs and put on +an extra coating of powder and rouge. She also blackened her eyelashes +and put on her lips salve the colour of strawberries rather than of the +human mouth. She wore an afternoon dress with transparent black sleeves +through which her big arms gleamed, pale and smooth. She looked a superb +and altogether improper creature, like Lucrezia Borgia or a Titian +madonna. She came down and lay among great black and gold satin cushions, +and lit a scented cigarette and opened a new French novel. Black and gold +was her new scheme for her drawing-room; she had had it done this spring. +It had a sort of opulent and rakish violence which suited her ripe +magnificence, her splendid flesh tints, her brown eyes and corn-gold +hair. Against it she looked like Messalina, and Gilbert like rather a +decadent and cynical pope. The note of the room was really too pronounced +for Gilbert's fastidious and scholarly eloquence; he lost vitality in it, +and dwindled to the pale thin casket of a brain. + +And Mrs. Hilary, when she entered it, trailing in, tall and thin, in her +sagging grey coat and skirt, her wispy grey hair escaping from under her +floppy black hat, and with the air of having till a moment ago been hung +about with parcels (she had left them in the hall), looked altogether +unsuited to her environment, like a dowdy lady from the provinces, as she +was. + +Rosalind came forward and took her by the hands. + +"Well, mother dear, this is an unusual honour.... _How_ long is it since +we last had you here?" + +Rosalind, enveloping her mother-in-law in extravagant fragrance, kissed +her on each cheek. The kiss of Messalina! Mrs. Hilary glanced at the +great mirror over the fireplace to see whether it had come off on her +cheeks, as it might well have done. + +Rosalind placed her on a swelling, billowy, black and gold chair, piled +cushions behind her shoulders, made her lie back at an obtuse angle, a +grey, lank, elderly figure, strange in that opulent setting, her long +dusty black feet stretched out before her on the golden carpet. + +Desperately uncomfortable and angular Rosalind made you feel, petting +you and purring over you and calling you "mother dear," with that glint +always behind her golden-brown eyes which showed that she was up to no +good, that she knew you hated her and was only leading you on that she +might strike her claws into you the deeper. The great beautiful cat: that +was what Rosalind was. You didn't trust her for a moment. + +She was pouring out tea. + +"Lemon? But how dreadfully stupid of me! I'd forgotten you take +milk ... oh yes, and sugar...." + +She rang, and ordered sugar. Mothers take it; not the mothers of +Rosalind's world, but mothers' meetings, and school treats, and +mothers-in-law up from the seaside. + +"Are you up for shopping? How thrilling! Where have you been?... Oh, High +Street. Did you _find_ anything there?" + +Mrs. Hilary knew that Rosalind would see her off, hung over with dozens +of parcels, and despise them, knowing that if they were so many they must +also be cheap. + +"Oh, there's not much to be got there, of course," she said. "I got a +few little things--chiefly for my mother to give away in the parish. She +likes to have things...." + +"But how noble of you both! I'm afraid I never rise to that. It's all I +can manage to give presents to myself and nearest rellies. And you came +up to town just to get presents for the parish! You're wonderful, +mother!" + +"Oh, I take a day in town now and then. Why not? Everyone does." + +Extraordinary how defiant Rosalind made one feel, prying and questioning +and trying to make one look absurd. + +"Why, of course! It freshens you up, I expect; makes a change.... But +you've come up from Windover, haven't you, not the seaside?" + +Rosalind always called St. Mary's Bay the seaside. To her our island +coasts were all one; the seaside was where you went to bathe, and she +hardly distinguished between north, south, east and west. + +"How are they down at Windover? I heard that Nan was there, with that +young man of hers who performs good works. So unlike Nan herself! I hope +she isn't going to be so silly as to let it come to anything; they'd +both be miserable. But I should think Nan knows better than to marry a +square-toes. I daresay _he_ knows better too, really.... And how's poor +old Neville? I think this doctoring game of hers is simply a scream, the +poor old dear." + +To hear Rosalind discussing Neville.... Messalina coarsely patronising a +wood-nymph ... the cat striking her claws into a singing bird.... And +poor--and old! Neville was, indeed, six years ahead of Rosalind, but she +looked the younger of the two, in her slim activity, and didn't need to +paint her face either. Mrs. Hilary all but said so. + +"It is a great interest to Neville, taking up her medical studies again," +was all she could really say. (What a hampering thing it is to be a +lady!) "She thoroughly enjoys it, and looks younger than ever. She is +playing a lot of tennis, and beats them all." + +How absurdly her voice rang when she spoke of Neville or Jim! It always +made Rosalind's lip curl mockingly. + +"Wonderful creature! I do admire her. When I'm her age I shall be too fat +to take any exercise at all. I think it's splendid of women who keep it +up through the forties.... _She_ won't be bored, even when she's sixty, +will she?" + +That was a direct hit, which Mrs. Hilary could bear better than hits at +Neville. + +"I see no reason," said Mrs. Hilary, "why Neville should ever be bored. +She has a husband and children. Long before she is sixty she will have +Kay's and Gerda's children to be interested in." + +"No, I suppose one can't well be bored if one has grandchildren, can +one," Rosalind said, reflectively. + +There was a silence, during which Mrs. Hilary's eyes, coldly meeting +Rosalind's with their satirical comment, said "I know you are too selfish +a woman ever to bear children, and I thank God for it. Little Hilarys who +should be half yours would be more than I could endure." + +Rosalind, quite understanding, smiled her slow, full-mouthed, curling +smile, and held out to her mother-in-law the gold case with scented +cigarettes. + +"Oh no, you don't, do you. I never can remember that. It's so unusual." + +Her eyes travelled over Mrs. Hilary, from her dusty black shoes to her +pale, lined face. They put her, with deliberation, into the class with +companions, house-keepers, poor relations. Having successfully done that +(she knew it was successful, by Mrs. Hilary's faint flush) she said "You +don't look up to much, mother dear. Not as if Neville had been looking +after you very well." + +Mrs. Hilary, seeing her chance, swallowed her natural feelings and took +it. + +"The fact is, I sleep very badly. Not particularly just now, but +always.... I thought.... That is, someone told me ... that there have +been wonderful cures for insomnia lately ... through that new thing...." + +"Which new thing? Sedobrol? Paraldehyd? Gilbert keeps getting absurd +powders and tablets of all sorts. Thank God, I always sleep like a top." + +"No, not those. The thing _you_ practice. Psycho-analysis, I mean." + +"Oh, psycho. But you wouldn't touch that, surely? I thought it was +anathema." + +"But if it really does cure people...." + +Rosalind's eyes glittered and gleamed. Her strawberry-red mouth curled +joyfully. + +"Of course it has.... Not that insomnia is always a case for psycho, you +know. It's sometimes incipient mania." + +"Not in my case." Mrs. Hilary spoke sharply. + +"Why no, of course not.... Well, I think you'd be awfully wise to get +analysed. Whom do you want to go to?" + +"I thought you could tell me. I know no names.... A _man_," Mrs. Hilary +added quickly. + +"Oh, it must be a man? I was going to say, I've a vacancy myself for a +patient. But women usually want men doctors. They nearly all do. It's +supposed to be part of the complaint.... Well, I could fix you up a +preliminary interview with Dr. Claude Evans. He's very good. He turns you +right inside out and shows you everything about yourself, from your first +infant passion to the thoughts you think you're keeping dark from him as +you sit in the consulting room. He's great." + +Mrs. Hilary was flushed. Hope and shame tingled in her together. + +"I shan't want to keep anything dark. I've no reason." + +Rosalind's mocking eyes said "That's what they all say." Her lips said +"The foreconscious self always has its reasons for hiding up the things +the unconscious self knows and feels." + +"Oh, all that stuff...." Mrs. Hilary was sick of it, having read too much +about it in "The Breath of Life." "I hope this Dr. Evans will talk to me +in plain English, not in that affected jargon." + +"He'll use language suited to you, I suppose," said Rosalind, "as far as +he can. But these things can't always be put so that just anyone can +grasp them. They're too complicated. You should read it up beforehand, +and try if you can understand it a little." + +Rosalind, who had no brains herself, insulting Mrs. Hilary's, was rather +more than Mrs. Hilary could bear. Rosalind she knew for a fool, so far as +intellectual matters went, for Nan had said so. Clever enough at clothes, +and talking scandal, and winning money at games, and skating over thin +ice without going through--but when it came to a book, or an idea, or a +political question, Rosalind was no whit more intelligent than she was, +in fact much less. She was a rotten psycho-analyst, all her in-laws were +sure. + +Mrs. Hilary said, "I've been reading a good deal about it lately. It +doesn't seem to me very difficult, though exceedingly foolish in parts." + +Rosalind was touchy about psycho-analysis; she always got angry if people +said it was foolish in any way. She was like that; she could see no weak +points in anything she took up; it came from being vain, and not having a +brain. She said one of the things angry people say, instead of discussing +the subject rationally. + +"I don't suppose the amount of it you've been able to read _would_ seem +difficult. If you came to anything difficult you'd probably stop, you +see. Anyhow, if it seems to you so foolish why do you want to be +analysed?" + +"Oh, one may as well try things. I've no doubt there's something in it +besides the nonsense." + +Mrs. Hilary spoke jauntily, with hungry, unquiet, seeking eyes that would +not meet Rosalind's. She was afraid that Rosalind would find out that she +wanted to be cured of being miserable, of being jealous, of having +inordinate passions about so little. Rosalind, in some ways a great +stupid cow, was uncannily clever when it came to being spiteful and +knowing about you the things you didn't want known. It must be horrible +to be psycho-analysed by Rosalind, who had no pity and no reticence. The +things about you would not only be known but spread abroad among all +those whom Rosalind met. A vile, dreadful tongue. + +"You wouldn't, I expect, like _me_ to analyse you," said Rosalind. "Not a +course, I mean, but just once, to advise you better whom to go to. It'd +have the advantage, anyhow, that I'd do it free. Anyone else will charge +you three guineas at the least." + +"I don't think," said Mrs. Hilary, "that relations--or connections--ought +to do one another. No, I'd better go to someone I don't know, if you'll +give me the name and address." + +"I thought you'd probably rather," Rosalind said in her slow, soft, cruel +voice, like a cat's purr. "Well, I'll write down the address for you. +It's Dr. Evans: he'll probably pass you on to someone down at the +seaside, if he considers you a suitable case for treatment." + +He would; of course he would. Mrs. Hilary felt no doubt as to that. + +Gilbert came in from the British Museum. He looked thin and nervous and +sallow amid all the splendour. He kissed his mother, thinking how queer +and untidy she looked, a stranger and pilgrim in Rosalind's drawing-room. +He too might look there at times a stranger and pilgrim, but at least, if +not voluptuous, he was neat. He glanced proudly and yet ironically from +his mother to his magnificent wife, taking in and understanding the +supra-normal redundancies of her make-up. + +"Rosalind," said Mrs. Hilary, knowing that it would be less than +useless to ask Rosalind to keep her secret, "has been recommending me a +psycho-analyst doctor. I think it is worth while trying if I can get my +insomnia cured that way." + +"My dear mother! After all your fulminations against the tribe! Well, I +think you're quite right to give it a trial. Why don't you get Rosalind +to take you on?" + +The fond pride in his voice! Yet there was in his eyes, as they rested +for a moment on Rosalind, something other than fond pride; something more +like mockery. + +Mrs. Hilary got up to go, and fired across the rich room the one shot in +her armoury. + +"I believe," she said, "that Rosalind prefers chiefly to take men +patients. She wouldn't want to be bored with an old woman." + +The shot drove straight into Gilbert's light-strung sensitiveness. +Shell-shocked officers; any other officers; anything male, presentable +and passably young; these were Rosalind's patients; he knew it, and +everyone else knew it. For a moment his smile was fixed into the +deliberate grin of pain. Mrs. Hilary saw it, saw Gilbert far back down +the years, a small boy standing up to punishment with just that brave, +nervous grin. Sensitive, defiant, vulnerable, fastidiously proud--so +Gilbert had always been and always would be. + +Remorsefully she clung to him. + +"Come and see me out, dearest boy" (so she called him, though Jim was +really that)--and she ignored Rosalind's slow, unconcerned protest +against her last remark. "Why, mother, you know I _asked_ to do +you" ... but she couldn't prevent Rosalind from seeing her out too, +hanging her about with all the ridiculous parcels, kissing her on both +cheeks. + +Gilbert was cool and dry, pretending she hadn't hurt him. He would +always take hurts like that, with that deadly, steely lightness. By its +deadliness, its steeliness, she knew that it was all true (and much more +besides) that she had heard about Rosalind and her patients. + + +5 + +She walked down to the bus with hot eyes. Rosalind had yawned softly and +largely behind her as she went down the front steps. Wicked, monstrous +creature! Lying about Gilbert's clever, nervous, eager life in great soft +folds, and throttling it. If Gilbert had been a man, a real male man, +instead of a writer and therefore effeminate, decadent, he would have +beaten her into decent behaviour. As it was she would ruin him, and he +would go under, not able to bear it, but cynically grinning still. +Perhaps the sooner the better. Anything was better than the way Rosalind +went on now, disgracing him and getting talked about, and making him hate +his mother for disliking her. He hadn't even come with her to the bus, to +carry her parcels for her.... That wasn't like Gilbert. As a rule he had +excellent manners, though he was not affectionate like Jim. + +Jim, Jim, Jim. Should she go to Harley Street? What was the use? She +would find only Margery there; Jim would be out. Margery had no serious +faults except the one, that she had taken the first place in Jim's +affections. Before Margery, Neville had had this place, but Mrs. Hilary +had been able, with Neville's never failing and skilful help, to disguise +this from herself. You can't disguise a wife's place in her husband's +heart. And Jim's splendid children too, whom she adored--they looked at +her with Margery's brown eyes instead of Jim's grey-blue ones. And they +preferred really (she knew it) their maternal grandmother, the jolly lady +who took them to the theatres. + +Mrs. Hilary passed a church. Religion. Some people found help there. But +it required so much of you, was so exhausting in its demands. Besides, it +seemed infinitely far away--an improbable, sad, remote thing, that gave +you no human comfort. Psycho-analysis was better; that opened gates into +a new life. "Know thyself," Mrs. Hilary murmured, kindling at the +prospect. Most knowledge was dull, but never that. + +"I will ring up from Waterloo and make an appointment," she thought. + + + + +CHAPTER VI + +JIM + + +1 + +The psycho-analyst doctor was little and dark and while he was talking he +looked not at Mrs. Hilary but down at a paper whereon he drew or wrote +something she tried to see and couldn't. She came to the conclusion after +a time that he was merely scribbling for effect. + +"Insomnia," he said. "Yes. You know what _that_ means?" + +She said, foolishly, "That I can't sleep," and he gave her a glance of +contempt and returned to his scribbling. + +"It means," he told her, "that you are afraid of dreaming. Your +unconscious self won't _let_ you sleep.... Do you often recall your +dreams when you wake?" + +"Sometimes." + +"Tell me some of them, please." + +"Oh, the usual things, I suppose. Packing; missing trains; meeting +people; and just nonsense that means nothing. All the usual things, that +everyone dreams about." + +At each thing she said he nodded, and scribbled with his pencil. "Quite," +he said, "quite. They're bad enough in meaning, the dreams you've +mentioned. I don't suppose you'd care at present to hear what they +symbolise.... The dreams you haven't mentioned are doubtless worse. And +those you don't even recall are worst of all. Your unconscious is, very +naturally and properly, frightened of them.... Well, we must end all +that, or you'll never sleep as you should. Psycho-analysis will cure +these dreams; first it will make you remember them, then you'll talk +them out and get rid of them." + +"Dreams," said Mrs. Hilary. "Well, they may be important. But it's my +whole life...." + +"Precisely. I was coming to that. Of course you can't cure sleeplessness +until you have cured the fundamental things that are wrong with your +life. Now, if you please, tell me all you can about yourself." + +Here was the wonderful moment. Mrs. Hilary drew a long breath, and told +him. A horrid (she felt that somehow he was rather horrid) little man +with furtive eyes that wouldn't meet hers--(and he wasn't quite a +gentleman, either, but still, he wanted to hear all about her) he was +listening attentively, drinking it in. Not watching tennis while she +talked, like Barry Briscoe in the garden. Ah, she could go on and on, +never tired; it was like swimming in warm water. + +He would interrupt her with questions. Which had she preferred, her +father or her mother? Well, perhaps on the whole her father. He nodded; +that was the right answer; the other he would have quietly put aside as +one of the deliberate inaccuracies so frequently practised by his +patients. "You can leave out the perhaps. There's no manner of doubt +about it, you know." Lest he should say (instead of only looking it) +that she had been in love with her good father and he with her, Mrs. +Hilary hurried on. She had a chaste mind, and knew what these Freudians +were. It would, she thought (not knowing her doctor and how it would +have come to the same thing, only he would have thought her a more +pronounced case, because of the deception), have been wiser to have said +that she had preferred her mother, but less truthful, and what she was +enjoying now was an orgy of truth-telling. She got on to her marriage, +and how intensely Richard had loved her. He tried for a moment to be +indecent about love and marriage, but in her deep excitement she hardly +noticed him, but swept on to the births of the children, and Jim's croup. + +"I see," he said presently, "that you prefer to avoid discussing certain +aspects of life. You obviously have a sex complex." + +"Of course, of course. Don't you find that in all your patients? Surely +we may take that for granted...." She allowed him his sex complex, +knowing that Freudians without it would be like children deprived of a +precious toy; for her part she was impatient to get back to Jim, her +life's chief passion. The Oedipus complex, of course he would say it +was; what matter, if he would let her talk about it? And Neville. It was +strange to have a jealous passion for one's daughter. But that would, he +said, be an extension of the ego complex--quite simple really. + +She came to the present. + +"I feel that life has used me up and flung me aside like a broken tool. +I have no further relation to life, nor it to me. I have spent myself and +been spent, and now I am bankrupt. Can you make me solvent again?" + +She liked that as she said it. + +He scribbled away, like a mouse scrabbling. + +"Yes. Oh yes. There is no manner of doubt about it. None whatever. If you +are perfectly frank, you can be cured. You can be adjusted to life. Every +age in human life has its own adjustment to make, its own relation to its +environment to establish. All that repressed libido must be released and +diverted.... You have some bad complexes, which must be sublimated...." + +It sounded awful, the firm way he said it, like teeth or appendixes which +must be extracted. But Mrs. Hilary knew it wouldn't be like that really, +but delightful and luxurious, more like a Turkish bath. + +"You must have a course," he told her. "You are an obvious case for a +course of treatment. St. Mary's Bay? Excellent. There is a practising +psycho-analyst there now. You should have an hour's treatment twice +a week, to be really effective.... You would prefer a man, I take it?" + +He shot his eyes at her for a moment, in statement, not in enquiry. Well +he knew how much she would prefer a man. She murmured assent. He rose. +The hour was over. + +"How much will the course be?" she asked. + +"A guinea an hour, Dr. Cradock charges. He is very cheap." + +"Yes, I see. I must think it over. And you?" + +He told her his fee, and she blenched, but paid it. She was not rich, but +it had been worth while. It was a beginning. It had opened the door into +a new and richer life. St. Mary's Bay was illumined in her thoughts, +instead of being drab and empty as before. Sublimated complexes twinkled +over it like stars. Freed libido poured electrically about it. And Dr. +Cradock, she felt, would be more satisfactory as a doctor than this man, +who affected her with a faint nausea when he looked at her, though he +seldom did so. + + +2 + +Windover too was illumined. She could watch almost calmly Neville talking +to Grandmama, wheeling her round the garden to look at the borders, for +Grandmama was a great gardener. + +Then Jim came down for a week-end, and it was as if the sun had risen on +Surrey. He sat with Mrs. Hilary in the arbour. She told him about Dr. +Evans and the other psycho-analyst doctor at St. Mary's Bay. He frowned +over Dr. Evans, who lived in the same street as he did. + +"Rosalind sent you to him; of course; she would. Why didn't you ask me, +mother? He's a desperate Freudian, you know, and they're not nearly so +good as the others. Besides, this particular man is a shoddy scoundrel, +I believe.... Was he offensive?" + +"I wouldn't let him be, Jim. I was prepared for that. I ... I changed the +conversation." + +Jim laughed, and did his favourite trick with her hand, straightening the +thin fingers one by one as they lay across his sensitive palm. How happy +it always made her! + +"Well," he said, "I daresay this man down at the Bay is all right. I'll +find out if he's any good or not.... They talk a lot of tosh, you know, +mother; you'll have to sift the grain from the chaff." + +But he saw that her eyes were interested, her face more alert than usual, +her very poise more alive. She had found a new interest in life, like +keeping a parrot, or learning bridge, or getting religion. It was what +they had always tried to find for her in vain. + +"So long," he said, "as you don't believe more than half what they tell +you.... Let me know how it goes on, won't you, and what this man is like. +If I don't approve I shall come and stop it." + +She loved that from Jim. + +"Of course, dearest. Of course I shall tell you about it. And I know one +must be careful." + +It was something to have become an object for care; it put one more in +the foreground. She would have gone on willingly with the subject, but +Jim changed her abruptly for Neville. + +"Neville's looking done up." + +She felt the little sharp pang which Neville's name on Jim's lips had +always given her. His very pronunciation of it hurt her--"Nivvle," he +said it, as if he had been an Irishman. It brought all the past back; +those two dear ones talking together, studying together, going off +together, bound by a hundred common interests, telling each other things +they never told her. + +"Yes. It's this ridiculous work of hers. It's so absurd: a married woman +of her age making her head ache working for examinations." + +In old days Jim and Neville had worked together. Jim had been proud of +Neville's success; she had been quicker than he. Mrs. Hilary, who had +welcomed Neville's marriage as ending all that, foresaw a renewal of the +hurtful business. + +But Jim looked grave and disapproving over it. + +"It is absurd," he agreed, and her heart rose. "And of course she can't +do it, can't make up all that leeway. Besides, her brain has lost its +grip. She's not kept it sharpened; she's spent her life on people. You +can't have it both ways--a woman can't, I mean. Her work's been +different. She doesn't seem to realise that what she's trying to learn up +again now, in the spare moments of an already full life, demands a whole +lifetime of hard work. She can't get back those twenty years; no one +could. And she can't get back the clear, gripping brain she had before +she had children. She's given some of it to them. That's nature's way, +unfortunately. Hard luck, no doubt, but there it is; you can't get round +it. Nature's a hybrid of fool and devil." + +He was talking really to himself, but was recalled to his mother by the +tears which, he suddenly perceived, were distorting her face. + +"And so," she whispered, her voice choked, "we women get left...." + +He looked away from her, a little exasperated. She cried so easily and so +superfluously, and he knew that these tears were more for herself than +for Neville. And she didn't really come into what he had been saying at +all; he had been talking about brains. + +"It's all right as far as most women are concerned," he said. "Most women +have no brains to be spoilt. Neville had. Most women could do nothing at +all with life if they didn't produce children; it's their only possible +job. _They've_ no call to feel ill-used." + +"Of course," she said, unsteadily, struggling to clear her voice of +tears, "I know you children all think I'm a fool. But there was a time +when I read difficult books with your father ... he, a man with a +first-class mind, cared to read with me and discuss with me...." + +"Oh yes, yes, mother, I know." + +Jim and all of them knew all about those long-ago difficult books. They +knew too about the clever friends who used to drop in and talk.... If +only Mrs. Hilary could have been one of the nice, jolly, refreshing +people who own that they never read and never want to. All this fuss +about reading, and cleverness--how tedious it was! As if being stupid +mattered, as if it was worth bothering about. + +"Of course we don't think you a fool, mother dear; how could we?" + +Jim was kind and affectionate, never ironic, like Gilbert, or impatient, +like Nan. But he felt now the need for fresh air; the arbour was too +small for him and Mrs. Hilary, who was as tiring to others as to herself. + +"I think I shall go and interrupt Neville over her studies," said Jim, +and left the arbour. + +Mrs. Hilary looked after him, painfully loving his square, straight back, +his fine dark head, just flecked with grey, the clean line of his +profile, with the firm jaw clenched over the pipe. To have produced +Jim--wasn't that enough to have lived for? Mrs. Hilary was one of those +mothers who apply the Magnificat to their own cases. She always felt a +bond of human sympathy between herself and that lady called the Virgin +Mary, whom she thought over-estimated. + + +3 + +Neville raised heavy violet eyes, faintly ringed with shadows, to Jim as +he came into the library. She looked at him for a moment absently, then +smiled. He came over to her and looked at the book before her. + +"Working? Where've you got to? Let's see how much you know." + +He took the book from her and glanced at it to see what she had been +reading. + +"Now we'll have an examination; it'll be good practice for you." + +He put a question, and she answered it, frowning a little. + +"H'm. That's not very good, my dear." + +He tried again; this time she could not answer at all. At the third +question she shook her head. + +"It's no use, Jimmy. My head's hopeless this afternoon. Another time." + +He shut the book. + +"Yes. So it seems.... You're overdoing it, Neville. You can't go on like +this." + +She lay back and spread out her hands hopelessly. + +"But I must go on like this if I'm ever going to get through my exams." + +"You're not going to, old thing. You're quite obviously unfitted to. It's +not your job any more. It's absurd to try; really it is." + +Neville shut her eyes. + +"Doctors ... doctors. They have it on the brain,--the limitations of the +feminine organism." + +"Because they know something about it. But I'm not speaking of the +feminine organism just now. I should say the same to Rodney if _he_ +thought of turning doctor now, after twenty years of politics." + +"Rodney never could have been a doctor. He hates messing about with +bodies." + +"Well, you know what I think. I can't stop you, of course. It's only a +question of time, in any case. You'll soon find out for yourself that +it's no use." + +"I think," she answered, in her small, unemotional voice, "that it's +exceedingly probable that I shall." + +She lay inertly in the deep chair, her eyes shut, her hands opened, palms +downwards, as if they had failed to hold something. + +"What then, Jim? If I can't be a doctor what can I be? Besides Rodney's +wife, I mean? I don't say besides the children's mother, because that's +stopped being a job. They're charming to me, the darlings, but they don't +need me any more; they go their own way." + +Jim had noticed that. + +"Well, after all, you do a certain amount of political work--public +speaking, meetings, and so on. Isn't that enough?" + +"That's all second-hand. I shouldn't do it but for Rodney. I'm not +public-spirited enough. If Rodney dies before I do, I shan't go on with +that.... Shall I just be a silly, self-engrossed, moping old woman, no +use to anyone and a plague to myself?" + +The eyes of both of them strayed out to the garden. + +"Who's the silly moping old woman?" asked Mrs. Hilary's voice in the +doorway. And there she stood, leaning a little forward, a strained smile +on her face. + +"Me, mother, when I shall be old," Neville quickly answered her, smiling +in return. "Come in, dear. Jim's telling me how I shall never be a +doctor. He gave me a _viva voce_ exam., and I came a mucker over it." + +Her voice had an edge of bitterness; she hadn't liked coming a mucker, +nor yet being told she couldn't get through exams. She had plenty of +vanity; so far everyone and everything had combined to spoil her. She +was determined, in the face of growing doubt, to prove Jim wrong yet. + +"Well," Mrs. Hilary said, sitting down on the edge of a chair, not +settling herself, but looking poised to go, so as not to seem to intrude +on their conversation, "well, I don't see why you want to be a doctor, +dear. Everyone knows women doctors aren't much good. _I_ wouldn't trust +one." + +"Very stupid of you, mother," Jim said, trying to pretend he wasn't +irritated by being interrupted. "They're every bit as good as men." + +"Fancy being operated on by a woman surgeon. I certainly shouldn't risk +it." + +"_You_ wouldn't risk it ... _you_ wouldn't trust them. You're so +desperately personal, mother. You think that contributes to a discussion. +All it does contribute to is your hearers' knowledge of your limitations. +It's uneducated, the way you discuss." + +He smiled at her pleasantly, taking the sting out of his words, turning +them into a joke, and she smiled too, to show Neville she didn't mind, +didn't take it seriously. Jim might hurt her, but if he did no one should +know but Jim himself. She knew that at times she irritated even his good +temper by being uneducated and so on, so that he scolded her, but he +scolded her kindly, not venomously, as Nan did. + +"Well, I've certainly no right to be uneducated," she said, "and I can't +say I'm ever called so, except by my children.... Do you remember the +discussions father and I used to have, half through the night?" + +Jim and Neville did remember and thought "Poor father," and were silent. + +"I should think," said Mrs. Hilary, "there was very little we didn't +discuss. Politics, books, trades unions, class divisions, moral +questions, votes for women, divorce ... we thrashed everything out. +We both thoroughly enjoyed it." + +Neville said "I remember." Familiar echoes came back to her out of the +agitated past. + +"Those lazy men, all they want is to get a lot of money for doing no +work." + +"I like the poor well enough in their places, but I cannot abide them +when they try to step into ours." + +"Let women mind their proper business and leave men's alone." + +"I'm certainly not going to be on calling terms with my grocer's wife." + +"I hate these affected, posing, would-be clever books. Why can't people +write in good plain English?"... + +Richard Hilary, a scholar and a patient man, blinded by conjugal love, +had met futilities with arguments, expressions of emotional distaste with +facts, trying to lift each absurd wrangle to the level of a discussion; +and at last he died, leaving his wife with the conviction that she had +been the equal mate of an able man. Her children had to face and conquer, +with varying degrees of success, the temptation to undeceive her. + +"But I'm interrupting," said Mrs. Hilary. "I know you two are having a +private talk. I'll leave you alone...." + +"No, no, mother." That was Neville, of course. "Stay and defend me from +Jim's scorn." + +How artificial one had to be in family life! What an absurd thing these +emotions made of it! + +Mrs. Hilary looked happier, and more settled in her chair. + +"Where are Kay and Gerda?" Jim asked. + +Neville told him "In Guildford, helping Barry Briscoe with W.E.A. +meetings. They're spending a lot of time over that just now; they're both +as keen as mustard. Nearly as keen as he is. He sets people on fire. It's +very good for the children. They're bringing him up here to spend Sunday. +I think he hopes every time to find Nan back again from Cornwall, poor +Barry. He was very down in the mouth when she suddenly took herself off." + +"If Nan doesn't mean to have him, she shouldn't have encouraged him," +said Mrs. Hilary. "He was quite obviously in love with her." + +"Nan's always a dark horse," Neville said. "She alone knows what she +means." + +Jim said "She's a flibberty-gibbet. She'd much better get married. She's +not much use in the world at present. Now if _she_ was a doctor ... or +doing something useful, like Pamela...." + +"Don't be prejudiced, Jimmy. Because you don't read modern novels +yourself you think it's no use their being written." + +"I read some modern novels. I read Conrad, in spite of the rather absurd +attitude some people take up about him; and I read good detective +stories, only they're so seldom good. I don't read Nan's kind. People +tell me they're tremendously clever and modern and delightfully written +and get very well reviewed, I daresay. I very seldom agree with +reviewers, in any case. Even about Conrad they seem to me (when I read +them--I don't often) to pick out the wrong points to admire and to miss +the points I should criticise." + +Mrs. Hilary said "Well, I must say I can't read Nan's books myself. +Simply, I don't think them good. I dislike all her people so much, and +her style." + +"You're a pair of old Victorians," Neville told them, pleasing Mrs. +Hilary by coupling them together and leaving Jim, who knew why she did +it, undisturbed. Neville was full of graces and tact, a possession Jim +had always appreciated in her. + +"And there," said Neville, who was standing at the window, "are Barry +Briscoe and the children coming in." + +Jim looked over her shoulder and saw the three wheeling their bicycles up +the drive. + +"Gerda," he remarked, "is a prettier thing every time I see her." + + + + +CHAPTER VII + +GERDA + + +1 + +It rained so hard, so much harder even than usual, that Sunday, that only +Barry and Gerda went to walk. Barry walked in every kind of weather, even +in the July of 1920. + +To-day after lunch Barry said "I'm going to walk over the downs. Anyone +coming?" and Gerda got up silently, as was her habit. Kay stretched +himself and yawned and said "Me for the fireside. I shall have to walk +every day for three weeks after to-day," for he was going to-morrow on a +reading-party. Rodney and Jim were playing a game of chess that had +lasted since breakfast and showed every sign of lasting till bed-time; +Neville and Mrs. Hilary were talking, and Grandmama was upstairs, having +her afternoon nap. + + +2 + +They tramped along, waterproofed and bare-headed, down the sandy road. +The rain swished in Gerda's golden locks, till they clung dank and limp +about her cheeks and neck; it beat on Barry's glasses, so that he took +them off and blinked instead. The trees stormed and whistled in the +southerly wind that blew from across Merrow Downs. Barry tried to whistle +down it, but it caught the sound from his puckered lips and whirled it +away. + +Through Merrow they strode, and up onto the road that led across the +downs, and there the wind caught them full, and it was as if buckets of +water were being flung into their faces. The downs sang and roared; the +purple-grey sky shut down on the hill's shoulder like a tent. + +"Lord, what fun," said Barry, as they gasped for breath. + +Gerda was upright and slim as a wand against the buffeting; her white +little face was stung into shell-pink; her wet hair blew back like yellow +seaweed. + +Barry thought suddenly of Nan, who revelled in storms, and quickly shut +his mind on the thought. He was schooling himself to think away from Nan, +with her wild animal grace and her flashing mind and her cruel, careless +indifference. + +Gerda would have walked like this forever. Her wide blue eyes blinked +away the rain; her face felt stung and lashed, yet happy and cold; her +mouth was stiff and tight. She was part of the storm; as free, as fierce, +as singing; though outwardly she was all held together and silent, only +smiling a little with her shut mouth. + +As they climbed the downs, the wind blew more wildly in their faces. +Gerda swayed against it, and Barry took her by the arm and half pushed +her. + +So they reached Newlands Corner, and all southern Surrey stormed below +them, and beyond Surrey stormed Sussex, and beyond Sussex the angry, +unseen sea. + +They stood looking, and Barry's arm still steadied Gerda against the +gale. + +Gerda thought "It will end. It will be over, and we shall be sitting at +tea. Then Sunday will be over, and on Monday he will go back to town." +The pain of that end of the world turned her cold beneath the glow of the +storm. Then life settled itself, very simply. She must go too, and work +with him. She would tell him so on the way home, when the wind would let +them talk. + +They turned their backs on the storm and ran down the hill towards +Merrow. Gerda, light as a leaf on the wind, could have run all the way +back; Barry, fit and light too, but fifteen years ahead of her, fell +after five minutes into a walk. + +Then they could talk a little. + +"And to-morrow I shall be plugging in town," sighed Barry. + +Gerda always went straight to her point. + +"May I come into your office, please, and learn the work?" + +He smiled down at her. Splendid child! + +"Why, rather. Do you mean it? When do you want to come?" + +"To-morrow?" + +He laughed. "Good. I thought you meant in the autumn. ... To-morrow +by all means, if you will. As a matter of fact we're frightfully +short-handed in the office just now. Our typist has crocked, and we +haven't another yet, so people have to type their own letters." + +"I can do the typing," said Gerda, composedly. "I can type quite well." + +"Oh, but that'll be dull for you. That's not what you want, is it? +Though, if you want to learn about the work, it's not a bad way ... you +get it all passing through your hands.... Would you really take on that +job for a bit?" + +Gerda nodded. + +They were rapid and decided people; they did not beat about the bush. If +they wanted to do a thing and there seemed no reason why not, they did +it. + +"That's first-class," said Barry. "Give it a trial, anyhow.... Of course +you'll be on trial too; we may find it doesn't work. If so, there are +plenty of other jobs to be done in the office. But that's what we most +want at the moment." + +Barry had a way of assuming that people would want, naturally, to do the +thing that most needed doing. + +Gerda's soul sang and whistled down the whistling wind. It wasn't over, +then: it was only beginning. The W.E.A. was splendid; work was splendid; +Barry Briscoe was splendid; life was splendid. She was sorry for Kay at +Cambridge, Kay who was just off on a reading party, not helping in the +world's work but merely getting education. Education was inspiring in +connection with Democracy, but when applied to oneself it was dull. + +The rain was lessening. It fell on their heads more lightly; the wind was +like soft wet kisses on their backs, as they tramped through Merrow, and +up the lane to Windover. + + +3 + +They all sat round the tea-table, and most of them were warm and sleepy +from Sunday afternoon by the fire, but Barry and Gerda were warm and +tingling from walking in the storm. Some people prefer one sensation, +some the other. + +Neville thought "How pretty Gerda looks, pink like that." She was glad +to know that she too looked pretty, in her blue afternoon dress. It +was good, in that charming room, that they should all look agreeable +to the eye. Even Mrs. Hilary, with her nervous, faded grace, marred by +self-consciousness and emotion. And Grandmama, smiling and shrewd, with +her old in-drawn lips; and Rodney, long and lounging and clever; Jim, +square-set, sensible, clean-cut, beautiful to his mother and to his women +patients, good for everyone to look at; Barry, brown and charming, with +his quick smile; the boy Kay, with his pale, rounded, oval face, his +violet eyes like his mother's, only short-sighted, so that he had a trick +of screwing them up and peering, and a mouth that widened into a happy +sweetness when he smiled. + +They were all right: they all fitted in with the room and with each +other. + +Barry said "I've not been idle while walking. I've secured a secretary. +Gerda says she's coming to work at the office for us for a bit. Now, at +once." + +He had not Gerda's knack of silence. Gerda would shut up tight over her +plans and thoughts, like a little oyster. She was no babbler; she did +things and never talked. But Barry's plans brimmed up and over. + +Neville said "You sudden child! And in July and August, too.... But +you'll have only a month before you join Nan in Cornwall, won't you?" + +Gerda nodded, munching a buttered scone. + +Grandmama, like an old war-horse scenting the fray, thought "Is it going +to be an affair? Will they fall in love? And what of Nan?" Then rebuked +herself for forgetting what she really knew quite well, having been +told it often, that men and girls in these days worked together and +did everything together, with no thought of affairs or of falling in +love.... Only these two were very attractive, the young Briscoe and the +pretty child, Gerda. + +Neville, who knew Gerda, and that she was certainly in love again (it +happened so often with Gerda), thought "Shall I stop it? Or shall I let +things take their course? Oh, I'll let them alone. It's only one of +Gerda's childish hero-worships, and he'll be kind without flirting. It'll +do Gerda good to go on with this new work she's so keen on. And she knows +he cares for Nan. I shall let her go." + +Neville very nearly always let Gerda and Kay go their own way now +that they were grown-up. To interfere would have been the part of the +middle-aged old-fashioned mother, and for that part Neville had no +liking. To be her children's friend and good comrade, that was her role +in life. + +"It's good of you to have her," she said to Barry. "I hope you won't be +sorry.... She's very stupid sometimes--regular Johnny Head-in-air." + +"I should be a jolly sight more use," Kay remarked. "But I can't come, +unfortunately. She can't spell, you know. And her punctuation is weird." + +"She'll learn," said Barry, cheerfully, and Gerda smiled serenely at them +over her tea-cup. + + +4 + +Barry in the office was quick, alert, cheerful, and business-like, and +very decided, sometimes impatient. Efficient: that was the word. He would +skim the correspondence and dictate answers out of his head, walking +about the room, interrupted all the time by the telephone and by people +coming in to see him. Gerda's hero-worship grew and grew; her soul +swelled with it; she shut it down tight and remained calm and cool. When +he joked, when he smiled his charming smile, her heart turned over within +her. When he had signed the typed letters, she would sometimes put her +hand for a moment where his had rested on the paper. He was stern with +her sometimes, spoke sharply and impatiently, and that, in a queer way, +she liked. She had felt the same pleasure at school, when the head of the +school, whom she had greatly and secretly venerated, had had her up to +the sixth form room and rowed her. Why? That was for psycho-analysts to +discover; Gerda only knew the fact. And Barry, after he had spoken +sharply to her, when he had got over his anger, would smile and be even +kinder than usual, and that was the best of all. + +There were other people in the office, of course; men and women, busy, +efficient, coming in and out, talking, working, organising. They were +kind, pleasant people. Gerda liked them, but they were shadowy. + +And behind them all, and behind Barry, there was the work. The work was +enormously interesting. Gerda, child of her generation and of her +parents, was really a democrat, really public-spirited, outside the +little private cell of her withdrawn reserves. Beauty wasn't enough; +making poetry and pictures wasn't enough; one had to give everyone his +and her chance to have beauty and poetry and pictures too. In spite +of having been brought up in this creed, Gerda and Kay held to it, had +not reacted from it to a selfish aristocracy, as you might think likely. +Their democracy went much further than that of their parents. They +had been used ardently to call themselves Bolshevists until such time as +it was forced upon them that Bolshevism was not, in point of fact, a +democratic system. They and some of their friends still occasionally used +that label, in moments rather of after-dinner enthusiasm than of the +precise thinking that is done in morning light. For, after all, even Mr. +Bertrand Russell, even Mrs. Philip Snowden, might be wrong in their +hurried jottings down of the results of a cursory survey of so intricate +a system. And, anyhow, Bolshevism had the advantage that it had not yet +been tried in this country, and no one, not even the most imaginative and +clear-sighted political theorist, could forecast the precise form into +which the curious British climate might mould it if it should ever adopt +it. So that to believe in it was, anyhow, easier than believing in +anything which _had_ been tried (and, like all things which are tried, +found wanting) such as Liberalism, Toryism, Socialism, and so forth. + +But the W.E.A. was a practical body, which went in for practical +adventure. Dowdy, schoolmarmish, extension-lectureish, it might be +and doubtless was. But a real thing, with guts in it, really doing +something; and after all, you can't be incendiarising the political +and economic constitution all your time. In your times off you can +do something useful, something which shows results, and for which such +an enormous amount of faith and hope is not required. Work for the +Revolution--yes, of course, one did that; one studied the literature of +the Internationals; one talked.... But did one help the Revolution on +much, when all was said? Whereas in the W.E.A. office one really got +things done; one typed a letter and something happened because of it; +more adult classes occurred, more workers got educated. Gerda, too young +and too serious to be cynical, believed that this must be right and good. + + +5 + +A clever, strange, charming child Barry found her, old and young beyond +her twenty years. Her wide-set blue eyes seemed to see horizons, and too +often to be blind to foregrounds. She had a slow, deliberating habit of +work, and of some things was astonishingly ignorant, with the ignorance +of those who, when at school, have worked at what they preferred and +quietly disregarded the rest. If he let her compose a letter, its wording +would be quaint. Her prose was, in fact, worse than her verse, and that +was saying a good deal. But she was thorough, never slipshod. Her brain +ground slowly, but it ground exceeding small; there were no blurred edges +to her apprehension of facts; either she didn't know a thing or she did, +and that sharp and clear distinction is none too common. She would file +and index papers with precision, and find them again, slow and sure, when +they were required. Added to these secretarial gifts, such as they were, +she had vision; she saw always the dream through or in spite of the +business; she was like Barry himself in that. She was a good companion, +too, though she had no wit and not very much humour, and none of Nan's +gifts of keen verbal brilliance, frequent ribaldry and quick response; +she would digest an idea slowly, and did not make jokes; her clear mind +had the quality of a crystal rather than of a flashing diamond. The +rising generation; the woman citizen of to-morrow: what did not rest on +her, and what might she not do and be? Nan, on the other hand, was the +woman citizen of to-day. And Nan did not bother to use her vote because +she found all the parties and all the candidates about equally absurd. +Barry had argued with Nan about that, but made no impression on her +cynical indifference; she had met him with levity. To Gerda there was a +wrong and a right in politics, instead of only a lot of wrongs; touching +young faith, Nan called it, but Barry, who shared it, found it cheering. + +This pretty little white pixyish person, with her yellow hair cut +straight across her forehead and waving round her neck like the curled, +shining petals of a celandine, with her straight-thinking mind and her +queer, secret, mystic thoughts--she was the woman of the future, a +citizen and a mother of citizens. She and the other girls and boys were +out to build the new heaven and the new earth, and their children would +carry it on. This responsibility of Gerda's invested her with a special +interest in the eyes of Barry, who lived and worked for the future, and +who, when he saw an infant mewling and puking in a pram, was apt to think +"The hope for the world," and smile at it encouragingly, overlooking its +present foolishness of aspect and habit. If ever he had children ... if +Nan would marry him ... but Nan would always lightly slide away when he +got near her.... He could see her now, with the cool, amused smile +tilting her lips, always sliding away, eluding him.... Nan, like a wild +animal for grace, brilliant like blown fire, cool like the wind, stabbing +herself and him with her keen wit.... + +Gerda, looking up from her typewriter to say "How do you spell +comparatively?" saw his face in its momentary bitterness as he frowned, +pen in hand, out of the window. He was waiting to sign the letters +before he went out to a committee meeting, and she thought she was +annoying him by her slowness. She spelt comparatively anyhow, and with +the wholehearted wrongness to which she and the typewriter, both bad +spellers, often attained in conjunction, hastily finished and laid +the letters before him. Called back to work and actuality, Barry was +again cheerful and kind, and he smilingly corrected comparatively. + +"You might ask me," he suggested, "instead of experimenting, when I do +happen to be at hand. Otherwise a dictionary, or Miss Pinner in the next +room...?" + +Gerda was happy, now that the shadow was off his face. Raillery and +rebuke she did not mind; only the shadow, which fell coldly on her heart +too. + +He left the office then for the day, as he often did, but it was warm and +alive with his presence, and she was doing his work, and she would see +him again in the morning. + + +6 + +Gerda went home only for week-ends now; it was too slow a journey to make +every morning and evening. She stayed during the week at a hotel called +the Red House, in Magpie Alley, off Bouverie Street. It was a hotel kept +by revolutionary souls exclusively for revolutionary souls. Gerda, who +had every right there, had gained admittance through friends of hers who +lodged there. Every evening at six o'clock she went back through the +rain, as she did this evening, and changed her wet clothes and sat down +to dinner, a meal which all the revolutionary souls ate together so that +it was sacramental, a breaking of common bread in token of a common +faith. + +They were a friendly party. At one end of the table Aunt Phyllis +presided. Aunt Phyllis, who was really the aunt of only one young man, +kept this Red House. She was a fiery little revolutionary in the late +forties, small, and thin and darting, full of faith and fire. She was on +the staff of the British Bolshevist, and for the rest, wrote leaflets, +which showered from her as from trees in autumn gales. So did the Rev. +Anselm Digby. Mr. Digby had also the platform habit, he would go round +the country denouncing and inciting to revolution in the name of Christ +and of the Third International. Though grizzled, he belonged to the +League of Youth, as well as to many other eager fraternities. He was +unbeneficed, having no time for parish work. This ardent clergyman sat +at the other end of Aunt Phyllis's table, as befitted his years. + +The space between the two ends was filled by younger creatures. It was +spring with them; their leaflets were yet green and unfallen; all that +fell from them was poetry, pathetic in its sadness, bitter in its irony, +free of metrical or indeed of any other restraints, and mainly either +about how unpleasant had been the trenches in which they had spent the +years of the great war and those persons over military age who had not +been called upon to enter them, or about freedom; free love, free thought +and a free world. Yes, both these subjects sound a little old-fashioned, +but the Red House was concerned with these elemental changeless things. +And some of them also wrote fiction, quiet, grey, a little tired, about +unhappy persons to whom nothing was very glad or very sad, and certainly +neither right nor wrong, but only rough or smooth of surface, bright or +dark of hue, sweet or bitter of taste or smell. Most of those in the room +belonged to a Freudian circle at their club, and all were anti-Christian, +except an Irish Roman Catholic, who had taken an active part in the +Easter uprising of 1916, since when he had been living in exile; Aunt +Phyllis, who believed in no churches but in the Love of God; and of +course, Mr. Digby. All these people, though they did not always get on +very well together, were linked by a common aim in life, and by common +hatreds. + +But, in spite of hate, the Red House lodgers were a happy set of +revolutionaries. Real revolutionaries; having their leaflets printed by +secret presses; members of societies which exchanged confidential letters +with the more eminent Russians, such as Litvinoff and Trotzky, collected +for future publication secret circulars, private strike-breaking orders, +and other _obiter dicta_ of a rash government, and believed themselves to +be working to establish the Soviet government over Europe. They had been +angry all this summer because the Glasgow conference of the I.L.P. had +broken with the Third International. They spoke with acerbity of Mr. +Ramsay Macdonald and Mr. and Mrs. Philip Snowden. But now, in August, +they had little acerbity to spare for anything but the government's +conduct of Irish affairs. + + +7 + +But, though these were Gerda's own people, the circle in which she felt +at home, she looked forward every night to the morning, when there would +be the office again, and Barry. + +Sometimes Barry took her out to dinner and a theatre. They went to the +"Beggar's Opera," "The Grain of Mustard Seed," "Mary Rose" (which they +found sentimental), and to the "Beggar's Opera" again Gerda had her own +ideas, very definite and critical, about dramatic merit. Barry enjoyed +discussing the plays with her, listening to her clear little silver voice +pronouncing judgment. Gerda might be forever mediocre in any form of +artistic expression, but she was an artist, with the artist's love of +merit and scorn of the second-rate. + +They went to "Mary Rose" with some girl cousins of Barry's, two jolly +girls from Girton. Against their undiscriminating enthusiasm, Gerda and +her fastidious distaste stood out sharp and clear, like some delicate +etching among flamboyant pictures. That fastidiousness she had from both +her parents, with something of her own added. + +Barry went home with her. He wondered how her fastidiousness stood the +grimy house in Magpie Alley and its ramshackle habit of life, after the +distinctions and beauty of Windover, but he thought it was probably very +good for her, part of the experience which should mould the citizen. +Gerda shrank from no experience. At the corner of Bouverie Street they +met a painted girl out for hire, strayed for some reason into this +unpropitious locality. For the moment Gerda had fallen behind and Barry +seemed alone. The girl stopped in his path, looked up in his face +enquiringly, and he pushed his way, not urgently, past her. The next +moment Gerda's hand caught his arm. + +"Stop, Barry, stop." + +"Stop? What for?" + +"The woman. Didn't you see?" + +"My dear child, I can't do anything for her." + +Like the others of her generation, Gerda was interested in persons of +that profession; he knew that already; only they saw them through a +distorting mist. + +"We can find out where she works, what wages she gets, why she's on the +streets. She's probably working for sweated wages somewhere. We _ought_ +to find out." + +"We can't find out about every woman of that kind we meet. The thing is +to attack the general principle behind the thing, not each individual +case.... Besides, it would be so frightfully impertinent of us. How +would you like it if someone stopped you in the street and asked you +where you worked and whether you were sweated or not, and why you were +out so late?" + +"I shouldn't mind, if they wanted to know for a good reason. One _ought_ +to find out how things are, what people's conditions are." + +It was what Barry too believed and practised, but he could only say +"It's the wrong way round. You've got to work from the centre to the +circumference.... And don't fall into the sentimental mistake of thinking +that all prostitution comes from sweated labour. A great deal does, of +course, but a great deal because it seems to some women an easy and +attractive way of earning a living.... Oh, hammer away at sweated +labour for all you're worth, of course, for that reason and every other; +but you won't stop prostitution till you stop the demand for it. That's +the poisonous root of the thing. So long as the demand goes on, you'll +get the supply, whatever economic conditions may be." + +Gerda fell silent, pondering on the strange tastes of those who desired +for some reason the temporary company of these unfortunate females, so +unpleasing to the eye, to the ear, to the mind, to the smell; desired it +so much that they would pay money for it. _Why?_ Against that riddle the +non-comprehension of her sex beat itself, baffled. She might put it the +other way round, try to imagine herself desiring, paying for, the +temporary attentions of some dirty, common, vapid, and patchouli-scented +man--and still she got no nearer. For she never could desire it.... Well, +anyhow, there the thing was. Stop the demand? Stop that desire of men for +women? Stop the ready response of women to it? If that was the only way, +then there was indeed nothing for it but education--and was even +education any use for that? + +"Is it love," she asked of Barry, "that the men feel who want these +women?" + +Barry laughed shortly. "Love? Good Lord, no." + +"What then, Barry?" + +"I don't know that it can be explained, exactly.... It's a passing +taste, I suppose, a desire for the company of another sex from one's +own, just because it _is_ another sex, though it may have no other +attractions.... It's no use trying to analyse it, one doesn't get +anywhere. But it's not love." + +"What's love, then? What's the difference?" + +"Have I to define love, walking down Magpie Alley? You could do it as +well as I could. Love has the imagination in it, and the mind. I suppose +that's the difference. And, too, love wants to give. This is all +platitude. No one can ever say anything new about love, it's all been +said. Got your latch-key?" + +Gerda let herself into the Red House and went up to bed and lay wakeful. +Very certainly she loved Barry, with all her imagination and all her +mind, and she would have given him more than all that was hers. Very +surely and truly she loved him, even if after all he was to be her uncle +by marriage, which would make their family life like that in one of Louis +Couperus's books. But why unhappy like that? Was love unhappy? If she +might see him sometimes, talk to him, if Nan wouldn't want all of him all +the time--and it would be unlike Nan to do that--she could be happy. One +could share, after all. Women must share, for there were a million more +women in England than men. + +But probably Nan didn't mean to marry him at all. Nan never married +people.... + + +8 + +Next morning at the office Barry said he had heard from Nan. She had +asked him to come too and bicycle in Cornwall, with her and Gerda and +Kay. + +"You will, won't you," said Gerda. + +"Rather, of course." + +A vaguely puzzled note sounded in his voice. But he would come. + +Cornwall was illuminated to Gerda. The sharing process would begin there. +But for a week more she had him to herself, and that was better. + + + + +CHAPTER VIII + +NAN + + +1 + +Nan at Marazion bathed, sailed, climbed, walked and finished her book. +She had a room at St. Michael's Cafe, at the edge of the little town, +just above the beach. Across a space of sea at high tide, and of wet +sand and a paved causeway slimy with seaweed at the ebb, St. Michael's +Mount loomed, dark against a sunset sky, pale and unearthly in the dawn, +an embattled ship riding anchored on full waters, or stranded on drowned +sands. + +Nan stayed at the empty little town to be alone. But she was not alone +all the time, for at Newlyn, five miles away, there was the artist +colony, and some of these artists were her friends. (In point of fact, it +is impossible to be alone in Cornwall; the place to go to for that would +be Hackney, or some other district of outer London, where inner Londoners +do not go for holidays.) Had she liked she could have had friends to play +with all day, and talk and laughter and music all night, as in London. +She did not like. She went out by herself, worked by herself; and all the +time, in company, or alone, talking or working, she knew herself +withdrawn really into a secret cove of her own which was warm and golden +as no actual coves in this chill summer were warm and golden; a cove on +whose good brown sand she lay and made castles and played, while at her +feet the great happy sea danced and beat, the great tumbling sea on which +she would soon put out her boat. + +She would count the days before Barry would be with her. + +"Three weeks now. Twenty days; nineteen, eighteen..." desiring neither to +hurry nor to retard them, but watching them slip behind her in a deep +content. When he came, he and Gerda and Kay, they would spend one night +and one day in this fishing-town, lounging about its beach, and in +Newlyn, with its steep crooked streets between old grey walls hung with +shrubs, and beyond Newlyn, in the tiny fishing hamlets that hung above +the little coves from Penzance to Land's End. They were going to bicycle +all along the south coast. But before that they would have had it out, +she and Barry; probably here, in the little pale climbing fishing-town. +No matter where, and no matter how; Nan cared nothing for scenic +arrangements. All she had to do was to convey to Barry that she would +say yes now to the question she had put off and off, let him ask it, +give her answer, and the thing would be done. + + +2 + +Meanwhile she wrote the last chapters of her book, sitting on the beach +among drying nets and boats, in some fishing cove up the coast. The +Newlyn shore she did not like, because the artist-spoilt children crowded +round her, interrupting. + +"Lady, lady! Will you paint us?" + +"No. I don't paint." + +"Then what _are_ you doing?" + +"Writing. Go away." + +"May we come with you to where you're staying?" + +"No. Go away." + +"Last year a lady took us to her studio and gave us pennies. And when +she'd gone back to London she sent us each a doll." + +Silence. + +"Lady, if we come with you to your studio, will you give us pennies?" + +"No. Why should I?" + +"You might because you wanted to paint us. You might because you liked +us." + +"I don't do either. Go away now." + +They withdrew a little and turned somersaults, supposing her to be +watching. The artistic colony had a lot to answer for, Nan thought; they +were making parasites and prostitutes of the infant populace. Children +could at their worst be detestable in their vanity, their posing, their +affectation, their unashamed greed. + +"Barry's and mine," she thought (I suppose we'll have some), "shall at +least not pose. They may break all the commandments, but if they turn +somersaults to be looked at I shall drop them into a public creche and +abandon them." + +The prettiest little girl looked sidelong at the unkind lady, and +believed her half-smile to denote admiration. Pretty little girls often +make this error. + +Stephen Lumley came along the beach. It was lunch time, and after lunch +they were going out sailing. Stephen Lumley was the most important artist +just now in Newlyn. He had been in love with Nan for some months, and did +not get on with his wife. Nan liked him; he painted brilliantly, and was +an attractive, clever, sardonic person. Sailing with him was fun. They +understood each other; they had rather the same cynical twist to them. +They understood each other really better than Nan and Barry did. Neither +of them needed to make any effort to comprehend each other's point of +view. And each left the other where he was. Whereas Barry filled Nan, +beneath her cynicism, beneath her levity, with something quite new--a +queer desire, to put it simply, for goodness, for straight living and +generous thinking, even, within reason, for usefulness. More and more he +flooded her inmost being, drowning the old landmarks, like the sea at +high tide. Nan was not a Christian, did not believe in God, but she came +near at this time to believing in Christianity as possibly a fine and +adventurous thing to live. + + +3 + +Echoes of the great little world so far off came to the Cornish coasts, +through the Western Mercury and the stray, belated London papers. Rumours +of a projected coal strike, of fighting in Mesopotamia, of political +prisoners on hunger strike, of massacres in Ireland, and typists murdered +at watering-places; echoes of Fleet Street quarrels, of Bolshevik gold +("Not a bond! Not a franc! Not a rouble!") and, from the religious +world, of fallen man and New Faiths for Old. And on Sundays one bought a +paper which had for its special star comic turn the reminiscences of the +expansive wife of one of our more patient politicians. The world went on +just the same, quarrelling, chattering, lying; sentimental, busy and +richly absurd; its denizens tilting against each other's politics, +murdering each other, trying and always failing to swim across the +channel, and always talking, talking, talking. Marazion and Newlyn, and +every other place were the world in little, doing all the same things in +their own miniature way. Each human soul was the world in little, with +all the same conflicts, hopes, emotions, excitements and intrigues. But +Nan, swimming, sailing, eating, writing, walking and lounging, browning +in salt winds and waters, was happy and remote, like a savage on an +island who meditates exclusively on his own affairs. + + +4 + +Nan met them at Penzance station. The happy three; they would be good to +make holiday with. Already they had holiday faces, though not yet browned +like Nan's. + +Barry's hand gripped Nan's. He was here then, and it had come. Her head +swam; she felt light, like thistledown on the wind. + +They came up from the station into quiet, gay, warm Penzance, and had tea +at a shop. They were going to stay at Marazion that night and the next, +and spend the day bicycling to Land's End and back. They were all four +full of vigour, brimming with life and energy that needed to be spent. +But Gerda looked pale. + +"She's been over-working in a stuffy office," Barry said. "And not, except +when she dined with me, getting proper meals. What do you think she +weighs, Nan?" + +"About as much as that infant there," Nan said, indicating a stout person +of five at the next table. + +"Just about, I daresay. She's only six stone. What are we to do about +it?" + +His eyes caressed Gerda, as they might have caressed a child. He would be +a delightful uncle by marriage, Nan thought. + +They took the road to Marazion. The tide was going out. In front of them +the Mount rose in a shallowing violet sea. + +"My word!" said Barry, and Kay, screwing up his eyes, murmured, "Good old +Mount." Gerda's lips parted in a deep breath; beauty always struck her +dumb. + +Into the pale-washed, straggling old village they rode, stabled their +bicycles, and went down to the shining evening sands, where now the paved +causeway to the Mount was all exposed, running slimy and seaweedy between +rippled wet sands and dark, slippery rocks. Bare-footed they trod it, +Gerda and Kay in front, Barry and Nan behind, and the gulls talking and +wheeling round them. + +Nan stopped, the west in her eyes. "Look." + +Point beyond point they saw stretching westward to Land's End, dim and +dark beyond a rose-flushed sea. + +"Isn't it clear," said Nan. "You can see the cliff villages ever so far +along ... Newlyn, Mousehole, Clement's Island off it--and the point of +Lamorna." + +Barry said "We'll go to Land's End by the coast road to-morrow, shan't +we, not the high road?" + +"Oh, the coast road, yes. It's about twice the distance, with the ups and +downs, and you can't ride all the way. But we'll go by it." + +For a moment they stood side by side, looking westward over the bay. + +Nan said, "Aren't you glad you came?" + +"I should say so!" + +His answer came, quick and emphatic. There was a pause after it. Nan +suddenly turned on him the edge of a smile. + +Barry did not see it. He was not looking at her, nor over the bay, but +in front of him, to where Gerda, a thin little upright form, moved +bare-legged along the shining causeway to the moat. + +Nan's smile flickered out. The sunset tides of rose flamed swiftly over +her cheeks, her neck, her body, and receded as sharply, as if someone had +hit her in the face. Her pause, her smile, had been equivalent, as she +saw them, to a permission, even to an invitation. He had turned away +unnoticing, a queer, absent tenderness in his eyes, as they followed +Gerda ... Gerda ... walking light-footed up the wet causeway.... Well, if +he had got out of the habit of wanting to make love to her, she would not +offer him chances again. When he got the habit back, he must make his own +chances as best he could. + +"Come on," said Nan. "We must hurry." + +She left no more pauses, but talked all the time, about Newlyn, about the +artists, about the horrid children, the fishing, the gulls, the weather. + +"And how's the book?" he asked. + +"Nearly done. I'm waiting for the end to make itself." + +He smiled and looking round at him she saw that he was not smiling at +her or her book, but at Gerda, who had stepped off the causeway and was +wading in a rock pool. + +He must be obsessed with Gerda; he thought of her, apparently, all the +time he was talking about other things. It was irritating for an aunt to +bear. + +They joined Kay and Gerda on the island. Kay was prowling about, looking +for a way by which to enter the forbidden castle. Kay always trespassed +when he could, and was so courteous and gentle when he was caught at it +that he disarmed comment. But this time he could not manage to evade the +polite but firm eye of the fisherman on guard. They crossed over to +Marazion again all together and went to the cafe for supper. + + +5 + +It was a merry, rowdy meal they had; ham and eggs and coffee in an upper +room, with the soft sea air blowing in on them through open windows. Nan +and Barry chattered, and Kay took his cheerful part; only Gerda sparse of +word, was quiet and dreamy, with her blue eyes opened wide against sleep, +for she had not slept until late last night. + +"High time she had a holiday," Barry said of her. "Four weeks' grind in +August--it's beginning to tell now." + +Fussy Barry was about the child. As bad as Frances Carr with Pamela. +Gerda was as strong as a little pony really, though she looked such a +small, white, brittle thing. + +They got out maps and schemed out roads and routes over their cigarettes. +Then they strolled about the little town, exploring its alleys and narrow +byways that gave on the sea. The moon had risen now, and Marazion was cut +steeply in shadow and silver light, and all the bay lay in shadow and +silver too, to where the lights of Penzance twinkled like a great lit +church. + +Barry thought once, as he had often thought in the past, "How brilliant +Nan is, and how gay. No wonder she never needed me. She needs no one," +and this time it did not hurt him to think it. He loved to listen to her, +to talk and laugh with her, to look at her, but he was free at last; he +demanded nothing of her. Those restless, urging, disappointed hopes and +longings lay dead in him, dead and at peace. He could not have put his +finger on the moment of their death; there had been no moment; like good +soldiers they had never died, but faded away, and till to-night he had +not known that they had gone. He would show Nan now that she need fear +no more pestering from him; she need not keep on talking without pause +whenever they were alone together, which had been her old way of defence, +and which she was beginning again now. They could drop now into +undisturbed friendship. Nan was the most stimulating of friends. It was +refreshing to talk things out with her again, to watch her quick mind +flashing and turning and cutting its way, brilliant, clear, sharp, like +a diamond. + +They went to bed; Barry and Kay to the room they had got above a public +house, Nan and Gerda to Nan's room at the cafe, where they squeezed into +one bed. + +Gerda slept, lying very straight and still, as was her habit in sleep. +Nan lay wakeful and restless, watching the moonlight steal across the +floor and lie palely on the bed and on Gerda's waxen face and yellow +hair. The pretty, pale child, strange in sleep, like a little mermaiden +lost on earth. Nan, sitting up in bed, one dark plait hanging over each +shoulder, watched her with brooding amber eyes. How young she was, how +very, very young. It was touching to be so young. Yet why, when youth +was, people said, the best time? It wasn't really touching to be young; +it was touching not to be young, because you had less of life left. +Touching to be thirty; more touching to be forty; tragic to be fifty and +heartbreaking to be sixty. As to seventy, as to eighty, one would feel as +one did during the last dance of a ball, tired but fey in the paling +dawn, desperately making the most of each bar of music before one went +home to bed. That was touching; Mrs. Hilary and Grandmama were touching. +Not Gerda and Kay, with their dance just beginning. + +A bore, this sharing one bed. You couldn't sleep, however small and quiet +your companion lay. They must get a bed each, when they could, during +this tour. One must sleep. If one didn't one began to think. Every time +Nan forced herself to the edge of sleep, a picture sprang sharply before +her eyes--the flaming sky and sea, herself and Barry standing together on +the causeway. + +"Aren't you glad you came?" Her own voice, soft, encouraging. + +"I should say so!" The quick, matter-of-fact answer. + +Then a pause and she turning on him the beginnings of a smile. An +allowing, inviting ... seductive ... smile. + +And he, smiling too, but not at her, looking away to where Gerda and Kay +walked bare-legged to the Mount. + +Flame scorched her again. The pause each time she saw it now became +longer, more deliberate, more inviting, more emptily unfilled. Her smile +became more luring, his more rejecting. As she saw it now, in the cruel, +distorting night, he had seen her permission and refused it. By day she +had known that simple Barry had seen nothing; by day she would know it +again. Between days are set nights of white, searing flame, two in a bed +so that one cannot sleep. Damn Gerda, lying there so calm and cool. It +had been a mistake to ask Gerda to come; if it hadn't been for Gerda they +wouldn't have been two in a bed. + +"Barry's a good deal taken up with her just now," said Nan to herself, +putting it into plain, deliberate words, as was her habit with life's +situations. "He does get taken up with pretty girls, I suppose, when he's +thrown with them. All men do, if you come to that. For the moment he's +thinking about her, not about me. That's a bore. It will bore me to death +if it goes on.... I wonder how long it will go on? I wonder how soon +he'll want to make love to me again?" + +Having thus expressed the position in clear words, Nan turned her mind +elsewhere. What do people think of when they are seeking sleep? It is +worse than no use to think of what one is writing; that wakes one up, +goads every brain-cell into unwholesome activity. No use thinking of +people; they are too interesting. Nor of sheep going through gates; they +tumble over one another and make one's head ache. Nor of the coming day; +that is too difficult: nor of the day which is past; that is too near. +Wood paths, quiet seas, running streams--these are better. + + "Any lazy man can swim + Down the current of a stream." + +Or the wind in trees, or owls crying, or waves beating on warm shores. +The waves beat now; ran up whisperingly with the incoming tide, broke, +and sidled back, dragging at the wet sand.... Nan, hearing them, drifted +at last into sleep. + + + + +CHAPTER IX + +THE PACE + + +1 + +The coast road to Land's End is like a switchback. You climb a mountain +and are flung down to sea level like a shooting star, and climb a +mountain again. Sometimes the road becomes a sandy cliff path and you +have to walk. + +But at last, climbing up and being shot down and walking, Nan and Barry +and Gerda and Kay reached Land's End. They went down to Sennan Cove to +bathe, and the high sea was churning breakers on the beach. Nan dived +through them with the arrowy straightness of a fish or a submarine, came +up behind them, and struck out to sea. The others behind her, less +skilful, floundered and were dashed about by the waves. Barry and Kay +struggled through them somehow, bruised and choked; Gerda, giving it +up--she was no great swimmer--tranquilly rolled and paddled in the surf +by herself. + +Kay called to her, mocking. + +"Coward. Sensualist. Come over the top like a man." + +Nan, turning to look at her from the high crest of a wave, thought +"Gerda's afraid in a high sea. She is afraid of things: I remember." + +Nan herself was afraid of very little. She had that kind of buoyant +physical gallantry which would take her into the jaws of danger with +a laugh. When in London during the air raids she had walked about the +streets to see what could be seen; in France with the Fannys she had +driven cars over shelled roads with a cool composure which distinguished +her even among that remarkably cool and composed set of young women; as +a child she had ridden unbroken horses and teased and dodged savage bulls +for the fun of it; she would go sailing in seas that fishermen refused to +go out in; part angry dogs which no other onlooker would touch; sleep out +alone in dark and lonely woods, and even on occasion brave pigs. The kind +of gay courage she had was a physical heritage which can never be +acquired. What can be acquired, with blood and tears, is the courage of +the will, stubborn and unyielding, but always nerve-racked, proudly and +tensely strung up. Nan's form of fearlessness, combined as it was with +the agility of a supple body excellently trained, would carry her lightly +through all physical adventures, much as her arrowy strength and skill +carried her through the breakers without blundering or mishap and let her +now ride buoyantly on each green mountain as it towered. + +Barry, emerging spluttering from one of these, said "All very jolly for +you, Nan. You're a practised hand. We're being drowned. I'm going out of +it," and he dived through another wave for the shore. Kay, a clumsier +swimmer, followed him, and Nan rode her tossing horses, laughing at them, +till she was shot onto the beach and dug her fingers deep into the +sucking sand. + +"A very pretty landing," said Barry, generously, rubbing his bruised +limbs and coughing up water. + +Gerda rose from the foam where she had been playing serenely impervious +to the tauntings of Kay. + +Barry said "Happy child. She's not filled up with salt water and battered +black and blue." + +Nan remarked that neither was she, and they went to their rock +crannies to dress. They dressed and undressed in a publicity, a mixed +shamelessness that was almost appalling. + +They rode back to Marazion after tea along the high road, more soberly +than they had come. + +"Tired, Gerda?" Barry said, at the tenth mile, as they pulled up a hill. +"Hold on to me." + +Gerda refused to do so mean a thing. She had her own sense of honour, and +believed that everyone should carry his or her own burden. But when they +had to get off and walk up the hill she let him help to push her bicycle. + +"Give us a few days, Nan," said Barry, "and we'll all be as fit as you. +At present we're fat and scant of breath from our sedentary and useful +life." + +"Our life"--as if they had only the one between them. + +At Newlyn Nan stopped. She said she was going to supper with someone +there and would come on later. She was, in fact, tired of them. She +dropped into Stephen Lumley's studio, which was, as usual after painting +hours, full of his friends, talking and smoking. That was the only way to +spend the evening, thought Nan, talking and smoking and laughing, never +pausing. Anyhow that was the way she spent it. + +She got back to Marazion at ten o'clock and went to her room at the +little cafe. Looking from its window, she saw the three on the shore by +the moonlit sea. Kay was standing on the paved causeway, and Barry and +Gerda, some way off, were wading among the rocks, bending over the pools, +as if they were looking for crabs. + +Nan went to bed. When Gerda came in presently, she lay very still and +pretended to be asleep. + +It was dreadful, another night of sharing a bed. Dreadful to lie so +close one to the other; dreadful to touch accidentally; touching people +reminded you how alive they are, with their separate, conscious throbbing +life so close against yours. + + +2 + +Next morning they took the road eastward. They were going to ride along +the coast to Talland Bay, where they were going to spend a week. They +were giving themselves a week to get there, which would allow plenty of +time for bathing by the way. It is no use hurrying in Cornwall, the hills +are too steep and the sea too attractive, and lunch and tea, when ordered +in shops, so long in coming. The first day they only got round the Lizard +to Cadgwith, where they dived from steep rocks into deep blue water. Nan +dived from a high rock with a swoop like a sea bird's, a pretty thing to +watch. Barry was nearly as good; he too was physically proficient. The +Bendishes were less competent; they were so much younger, as Barry said. +But they too reached the water head first, which is, after all, the main +thing in diving. And as often as Nan dived, with her arrowy swoop, Gerda +tumbled in too, from the same rock, and when Nan climbed a yet higher +rock and dived again, Gerda climbed too, and fell in sprawling after her. +Gerda to-day was not to be outdone, anyhow in will to attempt, whatever +her achievement might lack. Nan looked up from the sea with a kind of +mocking admiration at the little figure poised on the high shelf of rock, +slightly unsteady about the knees, slightly blue about the lips, thin +white arms pointing forward for the plunge. + +The child had pluck.... It must have hurt, too, that slap on the nearly +flat body as she struck the sea. She hadn't done it well. She came up +with a dazed look, shaking the water out of her eyes, coughing. + +"You're too ambitious," Barry told her. "That was much too high for you. +You're also blue with cold. Come out." + +Gerda looked up at Nan, who was scrambling nimbly onto the highest ledge +of all, crying "I must have one more." + +Barry said to Gerda "No, you're not going after her. You're coming out. +It's no use thinking you can do all Nan does. None of us can." + +Gerda gave up. The pace was too hard for her. She couldn't face that +highest rock; the one below had made her feel cold and queer and shaky as +she stood on it. Besides, why was she trying, for the first time in her +life, to go Nan's pace, which had always been, and was now more than ever +before, too hot and mettlesome for her? She didn't know why; only that +Nan had been, somehow, all day setting the pace, daring her, as it were, +to make it. It was becoming, oddly, a point of honour between them, and +neither knew how or why. + + +3 + +On the road it was the same. Nan, with only the faintest, if any +application of brakes, would commit herself to lanes which leaped +precipitously downwards like mountain streams, zig-zagging like a +dog's-tooth pattern, shingled with loose stones, whose unseen end might +be a village round some sharp turn, or a cove by the sea, or a field path +running to a farm, or merely the foot of one hill and the beginning of +the steep pull up the next. Coast roads in Cornwall are like that--often +uncertain in their ultimate goal (for map-makers, like bicyclists, are +apt to get tired of them, and, tiring, break them off, so to speak, in +mid-air, leaving them suspended, like snapped ends of string). But +however uncertain their goal may be, their form is not uncertain at +all; it can be relied on to be that of a snake in agony leaping down a +hill or up; or, if one prefers it, that of a corkscrew plunging downwards +into a cork. + +Nan leaped and plunged with them. She was at the bottom while the others +were still jolting, painfully brake-held, albeit rapidly, half-way down. +And sometimes, when the slope was more than usually like the steep roof +of a house, the zig-zags more than usually acute, the end even less than +usually known, the whole situation, in short, more dreadful and perilous, +if possible, than usual, the others surrendered, got off and walked. They +couldn't really rely on their brakes to hold them, supposing something +should swing round on them from behind one of the corners; they couldn't +be sure of turning with the road when it turned at its acutest, and such +failure of harmony with one's road is apt to meet with a dreadful +retribution. Barry was adventurous, and Kay and Gerda were calm, but to +all of them life was sweet and limbs and bicycles precious; none of them +desired an untimely end. + +But Nan laughed at their prognostications of such an end. "It will be +found impossible to ride down these hills," said their road book, and Nan +laughed at that too. You can, as she observed, ride down anything; it is +riding up that is the difficulty. Anyhow, she, who had ridden bucking +horses and mountainous seas, could ride down anything that wore the +semblance of a road. Only fools, Nan believed, met with disasters while +bicycling. And jamming on the brakes was bad for the wheels and tiring to +the hands. So brakeless, she zig-zagged like greased lightning to the +bottom. + +It was on the second day, on the long hill that runs from Manaccan down +to Helford Ferry, that Gerda suddenly took her brakes off and shot after +her. That hill is not a badly spiralling one, but it is long and steep +and usually ridden with brakes. And just above Helford village it has one +very sharp turn to the left. + +Nan, standing waiting for the others on the bridge, looked round and saw +Gerda shooting with unrestrained wheels and composed face round the last +bend. She had nearly swerved over at the turn, but not quite. She got off +at the bridge. + +"Hullo," said Nan. "Quicker than usual, weren't you?" She had a +half-grudging, half-ironic grin of appreciation for a fellow sportsman, +the same grin with which she had looked up at her from the sea at +Cadgwith. Nan liked daring. Though it was in her, and she knew that it +was in her, to hate Gerda with a cold and deadly anger, the sportsman +in her gave its tribute. For what was nothing and a matter of ordinary +routine to her, might be, she suspected, rather alarming to the quiet, +white-faced child. + +Then the demon of mischief leapt in her. If Gerda meant to keep the pace, +she should have a pace worth keeping. They would prove to one another +which was the better woman, as knights in single combat of old proved it, +or fighters in the ring to-day. As to Barry, he should look on at it, +whether he liked it or not. + +Barry and Kay rushed up to them, and they went through the little +thatched rose-sweet hamlet to the edge of the broad blue estuary and +shouted for the ferry. + + +4 + +After that the game began in earnest. Nan, from being casually and +unconsciously reckless, became deliberately dare-devil and always with a +backward, ironic look for Gerda, as if she said "How about it? Will this +beat you?" + +"A bicycling tour with Nan isn't nearly so safe as the front trenches of +my youth used to be," Barry commented. "Those quiet, comfortable old +days!" + +There, indeed, one was likely to be shot, or blown to pieces, or buried, +or gassed, and that was about all. But life now was like the Apostle +Paul's; they were in journeyings often, in weariness often, in perils of +waters, in perils by their own countrymen, in perils on the road, in the +wilderness, in the sea, in hunger and thirst, in cold and nakedness. In +perils too, so Gerda believed, of cattle; for these would stray in +bellowing herds about narrow lanes, and they would all charge straight +through them, missing the lowered horns by some incredible fluke of +fortune. If this seems to make Gerda a coward, it should be remembered +that she showed none of these inward blenchings, but went on her way with +the rest, composed as a little wax figure at Madame Tussaud's. She was, +in fact, of the stuff of which martyrs are made, and would probably have +gone to the stake for a conviction. But stampeding cattle, and high seas, +and brakeless lightning descents, she did not like, however brave a face +she was sustained by grace to meet them with. After all she was only +twenty, an age when some people still look beneath their beds before +retiring. + +Bulls, even, Gerda was called upon to face, in the wake of two unafraid +males and a reckless aunt. What young female of twenty, always excepting +those who have worked on the land, and whose chief reward is familiarity +with its beasts, can with complete equanimity face bulls? One day a path +they were taking down to the sea ran for a while along the top of a +stone hedge, about five feet high and three feet wide. Most people +would have walked along this, leading their bicycles. Nan, naturally, +bicycled, and Barry and Kay, finding it an amusing experiment, bicycled +after her. Gerda, in honour bound, bicycled too. She accepted stoically +the probability that she would very soon bicycle off the hedge into the +field and be hurt. In the fields on either side of them, cows stared at +them in mild surprise and some disdain, coming up close to look. So, if +one bicycled off, it would be into the very jaws, onto the very horns, of +cattle. Female cattle, indeed, but cattle none the less. + +Then Kay chanted "Fat bulls of Basan came round about me on either side," +and it was just like that. One fat bull at least trotted up to the hedge, +waving his tail and snorting, pawing and glaring, evincing, in short, +all the symptoms common to his kind. + +So now if one bicycled off it would be into the very maw of an angry +bull. + +"You look out you don't fall, Gerda," Kay flung back at her over his +shoulder. "It will be to a dreadful death, as you see. Nobody'll save +you; nobody'll dare." + +"Feeling unsteady?" Barry's gentler voice asked her from behind. "Get off +and walk it. I will too." + +But Gerda rode on, her eyes on Nan's swift, sure progress ahead. Barry +should not see her mettle fail; Barry, who had been through the war and +would despise cowards. + +They reached the end of the hedge, and the path ran off it into a field. +And between this field and the last one there was an open gap, through +which the bull of Basan lumbered with fierce eyes and stood waiting for +them to descend. + +"I don't like that creature," Kay said. "I'm afraid of him. Aren't you, +Barry?" + +"Desperately," Barry admitted. "Anyone would be, except Nan, of course." + +Nan was bicycling straight along the field path, and the bull stood +staring at her, his head well down, in readiness, as Gerda saw, to +charge. But he did not charge Nan. Bulls and other ferocious beasts think +it waste of time to charge the fearless; they get no fun out of an +unfrightened victim. He waited instead for Gerda, as she knew he would +do. + +Kay followed Nan, still chanting his psalm. Gerda followed Kay. As she +dropped from the hedge onto the path she turned round once and met +Barry's eyes, her own wide and grave, and she was thinking "I can +bear anything if he is behind me and sees it happen. I couldn't bear +it if I were the last and no one saw." To be gored all alone, none to +care ... who could bear that? + +The next moment Barry was no longer behind her, but close at her side, +bicycling on the grass by the path, between her and the bull. Did he know +she was frightened? She hadn't shown it, surely. + +"The wind," said Gerda, in her clear, small crystalline voice, "has gone +round more to the south. Don't you think so?" And reminded Barry of a +French aristocrat demoiselle going with calm and polite conversation to +the scaffold. + +"I believe it has," he said, and smiled. + +And after all the bull, perhaps not liking the look of the bicycles, +didn't charge at all, but only ran by their sides with snorting noises +until they left him behind at the next gate. + +"Did you," enquired Gerda, casually, "notice that bull? He was an awfully +fine one, wasn't he?" + +"A remarkably noble face, I thought," Kay returned. + +They scrambled down cliffs to the cove and bathed. + + +5 + +Nan, experienced in such things, as one is at the age of thirty-three if +one has led a well-spent life, knew now beyond peradventure what had +happened to Barry and what would never happen again between him and her. +So that was that, as she put it, definite and matter-of-fact to herself +about it. He had stopped wanting her. Well then, she must stop wanting +him, as speedily as might be. It took a little time. You could not shoot +down the hills of the emotions with the lightning rapidity with which you +shot down the roads. Also, the process was excruciatingly painful. You +had to unmake so many plans, unthink so many thoughts.... Oh, but that +was nothing. You had to hear his voice softened to someone else, see the +smile in his eyes caressing someone else, feel his whole mind, his whole +soul, reaching out in protecting, adoring care to someone else's charm +and loveliness ... as once, as so lately, they had reached out to +yours.... That was torture for the bravest, far worse than any bulls or +seas or precipices could be to Gerda. Yet it had to be gone through, as +Gerda had to leap from towering cliffs into wild seas and ride calmly +among fierce cattle.... When Nan woke in the night it was like toothache, +a sharp, gnawing, searing hell of pain. Memory choked her, bitter +self-anger for joy once rejected and then forever lost took her by the +throat, present desolation drowned her soul in hard, slow tears, jealousy +scorched and seared. + +But, now every morning, pride rose, mettlesome and gallant, making her +laugh and talk, so that no one guessed. And with pride, a more reckless +physical daring than usual; a kind of scornful adventurousness, that +courted danger for its own sake, and wordlessly taunted the weaker spirit +with "Follow if you like and can. If you don't like, if you can't, I am +the better woman in that way, though you may be the beloved." And the +more the mettle of the little beloved rose to meet the challenge, the +hotter the pace grew. Perhaps they both felt, without knowing they felt +it, that there was something in Barry which leaped instinctively out to +applaud reckless courage, some element in himself which responded to it +even while he called it foolhardy. You could tell that Barry was of that +type, by the quick glow of his eyes and smile. But the rivalry in daring +was not really for Barry; Barry's choice was made. It was at bottom the +last test of mettle, the ultimate challenge from the loser to the winner, +in the lists chosen by the loser as her own. It was also--for Nan was +something of a bully--the heckling of Gerda. She might have won one game, +and that the most important, but she should be forced to own herself +beaten in another, after being dragged painfully along rough and +dangerous ways. And over and above and beyond all this, beyond rivalry +and beyond Gerda, was the eternal impatience for adventure as such, for +quick, vehement living, which was the essence of Nan. She found things +more fun that way: that summed it. + + +6 + +The long strange days slid by like many-coloured dreams. The steep +tumbling roads tilted behind them, with their pale, old, white and slate +hamlets huddled between fields above a rock-bound sea. Sometimes they +would stop early in the day at some fishing village, find rooms there for +the night, and bathe and sail till evening. When they bathed, Nan would +swim far out to sea, striking through cold, green, heaving waters, +slipping cleverly between currents, numbing thought with bodily action, +drowning emotion in the sea. + +Once they were all caught in a current and a high sea and swept out, and +had to battle for the shore. Even Nan, even Barry, could not get to the +cove from which they had bathed; all they could try for was the jut of +rocks to westward toward which the seas were sweeping, and to reach this +meant a tough fight. + +"Barry!" + +Nan, looking over her shoulder, saw Gerda's bluing face and wide staring +eyes and quickening, flurried strokes. Saw, too, Barry at once at her +side, heard his "All right, I'm here. Catch hold of my shoulder." + +In a dozen strokes Nan reached them, and was at Gerda's other side. + +"Put one hand on each of us and strike for all you're worth with your +legs. That's the way...." + +Numbly Gerda's two hands gripped Barry's right shoulder and Nan's left. +Between them they pulled her, her slight weight dragging at them heavily, +helping the running sea against them. They were being swept westward +towards the rocks, but swept also outwards, beyond them; they struck +northward and northward and were carried always south. It was a close +thing between their swimming and the current, and it looked as though the +current was winning. + +"It'll have to be all we know now," said Nan, as they struggled ten yards +from the point. + +She and Barry both rather thought that probably it would be all they knew +and just the little more they didn't know--they would be swept round the +point well to the south of the outermost rock--and then, hey for open +sea! + +But their swimming proved, in this last fierce minute of the struggle, +stronger than the sea. They were swept towards the jutting point, almost +round it, when Nan, flinging forward to the right, caught a slippery +ledge of rock with her two hands and held on. Barry didn't think she +could hold on for more than a second against the swinging seas, or, if +she did, could consolidate her position. But he did not know the full +power of Nan's trained, acrobatic body. Slipping her shoulder from +Gerda's clutch, she grasped instead Gerda's right hand in her left, and +with her other arm and with all her sinuous, wiry strength, heaved +herself onto the rock and there flung her body flat, reaching out her +free hand to Barry. Barry caught it just in time, as he was being swung +on a wave outwards, and pulled himself within grip of the rock, and in +another moment he lay beside her, and between them they hauled up Gerda. + +Gerda gasped "Kay," and they saw him struggling twenty yards behind. + +"Can you do it?" Barry shouted to him, and Kay grinned back. + +"Let you know presently.... Oh yes, I'm all right. Getting on fine." + +Nan stood up on the rock, watching him, measuring with expert eye the +ratio between distance and pace, the race between Kay's swimming and the +sea. It seemed to her to be anyone's race. + +Barry didn't stand up. The strain of the swim had been rather too much +for him, and in his violent lurch onto the rock he had strained his side. +He lay flat, feeling battered and sick. + +The sea, Nan judged after another minute of watching, was going to beat +Kay in this race. For Kay's face had turned a curious colour, and he was +blue round the lips. Kay's heart was not strong. + +Nan's dive into the tossing waves was as pretty a thing as one would wish +to see. The swoop of it carried her nearly to Kay's side. Coming up she +caught one of his now rather limp hands and put it on her left shoulder, +saying "Hold tight. A few strokes will do it." + +Kay, who was no fool and who had known that he was beaten, held tight, +throwing all his exhausted strength into striking out with his other +three limbs. + +They were carried round the point, beyond reach of it had not Barry's +outstretched hand been ready. Nan touched it, barely grasped it, just and +no more, as they were swung seawards. It was enough. It pulled them to +the rock's side. Again Nan wriggled and scrambled up, and then they +dragged Kay heavily after them as he fainted. + +"Neat," said Barry to Nan, his appreciation of a well-handled job, his +love of spirit and skill, rising as it were to cheer, in spite of his +exhaustion and his concern for Gerda and Kay. "My word, Nan, you're a +sportsman." + +"He does faint sometimes," said Gerda of Kay. "He'll be all right in a +minute." + +Kay came to. + +"Oh Lord," he said, "that was a bit of a grind." And then, becoming +garrulous with the weak and fatuous garrulity of those who have recently +swooned, "Couldn't have done it without you, Nan. I'd given myself up for +lost. All my past life went by me in a flash.... I really did think it +was U.P. with me, you know. And it jolly nearly was, for all of us, +wasn't it?... Whose idea was it bathing just here? Yours, Nan. Of course. +It would be. No wonder you felt our lives on your conscience and had to +rescue us all. Oh Lord, the water I've drunk! I do feel rotten." + +"We all look pretty rotten, I must say," Nan commented, looking from +Kay's limp greenness to Gerda's shivering blueness, from Gerda to Barry, +prostrate, bruised and coughing, from Barry to her own cut and battered +knees and elbows, bleeding with the unaccountable profuseness of limbs +cut by rocks in the sea. "I may die from loss of blood, and the rest of +you from prostration, and all of us from cold. Are we well enough to +scale the rocks now and get to our clothes?" + +"We're not well enough for anything," Barry returned. "But we'd better do +it. We don't want to die here, with the sea washing over us in this damp +way." + +They climbed weakly up to the top of the rock promontory, and along it +till they dropped down into the little cove. They all felt beaten and +limp, as if they had been playing a violent but not heating game of +football. Even Nan's energy was drained. + +Gerda said with chattering teeth, as she and Nan dressed in their rocky +corner, "I suppose, Nan, if it hadn't been for you and Barry, I'd have +drowned." + +"Well, I suppose perhaps you would. If you come to think of it, we'd most +of us be dying suddenly half the time if it weren't for something--some +chance or other." + +Gerda said "Thanks awfully, Nan," in her direct, childlike way, and Nan +turned it off with "You might have thanked me if you _had_ drowned, +seeing it was my fault we bathed there at all. I ought to have known +it wasn't safe for you or Kay." + +Looking at the little fragile figure shivering in its vest, Nan felt in +that moment no malice, no triumph, no rivalry, no jealous anger; nothing +but the protecting care for the smaller and weaker, for Neville's little +pretty, precious child that she had felt when Gerda's hand clutched her +shoulder in the sea. + +"Life-saving seems to soften the heart," she reflected, grimly, conscious +as always of her own reactions. + +"Well," said Kay weakly, as they climbed up the cliff path to the little +village, "I do call that a rotten bathe. Now let's make for the pub and +drink whiskey." + + +7 + +It was three days later. They had spent an afternoon and a night at +Polperro, and the sun shone in the morning on that incredible place as +they rode out of it after breakfast. Polperro shakes the soul and the +aesthetic nerves like a glass of old wine; no one can survey it unmoved, +or leave it as he entered it, any more than you can come out of a fairy +ring as you went in. In the afternoon they had bathed in the rock pools +along the coast. In the evening the moon had magically gleamed on the +little town, and Barry and Gerda had sat together on the beach watching +it, and then in the dawn they had risen (Barry and Gerda again) and rowed +out in a boat to watch the pilchard haul, returning at breakfast time +sleepy, fishy and bright-eyed. + +As they climbed the steep hill path that leads to Talland, the sun danced +on the little harbour with its fishing-boats and its sad, crowding, +crying gulls, and on the huddled white town with its narrow crooked +streets and overhanging houses: Polperro had the eerie beauty of a dream +or of a little foreign port. Such beauty and charm are on the edge of +pain; you cannot disentangle them from it. They intoxicate, and pierce to +tears. The warm morning sun sparkled on a still blue sea, and burned the +gorse and bracken by the steep path's edge to fragrance. So steep the +path was that they had to push their bicycles up it with bent backs and +labouring steps, so narrow that they had to go in single file. It was +never meant for cyclists, only for walkers; the bicycling road ran far +inland. + +They reached the cliff's highest point, and looked down on Talland Bay. +By the side of the path, on a grass plateau, a stone war-cross reared +grey against a blue sky, with its roll of names, and its comment--"True +love by life, true love by death is tried...." + +The path, become narrower, rougher and more winding, plunged sharply, +steeply downwards, running perilously along the cliff's edge. Nan got on +her bicycle. + +Barry called from the rear, "Nan! It can't be done! It's not +rideable.... Don't be absurd." + +Nan, remarking casually "It'll be rideable if I ride it," began to do so. + +"Madwoman," Barry said, and Kay assured him, "Nan'll be all right. No one +else would, but she's got nine lives, you know." + +Gerda came next behind Nan. For a moment she paused, dubiously, watching +Nan's flying, brakeless progress down the wild ribbon of a footpath, +between the hill and the sea. A false swerve, a failure to turn with the +path, and one would fly off the cliff's edge into space, fall down +perhaps to the blue rock pools far below. + +To refuse Nan's lead now would be to fail again in pluck and skill before +Barry. "My word, Nan, you're a sportsman!" Barry had said, coughing +weakly on the rock onto which Nan had dragged them all out of the sea. +That phrase, and the ring in his hoarse voice as he said it, had stayed +with Gerda. + +She got onto her bicycle, and shot off down the precipitous path. + +"My God!" It was Barry's voice again, from the rear. "Stop, Gerda ... oh, +you little fool.... _Stop_...." + +But it was too late for Gerda to stop then if she had tried. She was in +full career, rushing, leaping, jolting over the gorse roots under the +path, past thought and past hope and oddly past fear, past anything but +the knowledge that what Nan did she too must do. + +Strangely, inaptly, the line of verse she had just read sung itself in +her mind as she rushed. + +"True love by life, true love by death is tried...." + +She took the first sharp turn, and the second. The third, a right angle +bending inward from the cliff's very edge, she did not take. She dashed +on instead, straight into space, like a young Phoebus riding a horse of +the morning through the blue air. + + +8 + +Nan, far ahead, nearly on the level, heard the crash and heard voices +crying out. Jamming on her brakes she jumped off; looked back up the +precipitous path; saw nothing but its windings. She left her bicycle at +the path's side and turned and ran up. Rounding a sharp bend, she saw +them at last above her; Barry and Kay scrambling furiously down the side +of the cliff, and below them, on a ledge half-way down to the sea, a +tangled heap that was Gerda and her bicycle. + +The next turn of the path hid them from sight again. But in two minutes +she had reached the place where their two bicycles lay flung across the +path, and was scrambling after them down the cliff. + +When she reached them they had disentangled Gerda and the bicycle, and +Barry held Gerda in his arms. She was unconscious, and a cut in her head +was bleeding, darkening her yellow hair, trickling over her colourless +face. Her right leg and her left arm lay stiff and oddly twisted. + +Barry, his face drawn and tense, said "We must get her up to the path +before she comes to, if possible. It'll hurt like hell if she's +conscious." + +They had all learnt how to help their fellow creatures in distress, and +how you must bind broken limbs to splints before you move their owner so +much as a yard. The only splint available for Gerda's right leg was her +left, and they bound it tightly to this with three handkerchiefs, then +tied her left arm to her side with Nan's stockings, and used the fourth +handkerchief (which was Gerda's, and the cleanest) for her head. She came +to before the arm was finished, roused to pained consciousness by the +splinting process, and lay with clenched teeth and wet forehead, +breathing sharply but making no other sound. + +Then Barry lifted her in his arms and the others supported her on either +side, and they climbed slowly and gently up to the path, not by the sheer +way of their descent but by a diagonal track that joined the path further +down. + +"I'm sorry, darling," Barry said through his teeth when he jolted her. +"I'm frightfully sorry.... Only a little more now." + +They reached the path and Barry laid her down on the grass by its side, +her head supported on Nan's knee. + +"Very bad, isn't it?" said Barry gently, bending over her. + +She smiled up at him, with twisted lips. + +"Not so bad, really." + +"You little sportsman," said Barry, softly and stooping, he kissed her +pale cheek. + +Then he stood up and spoke to Nan. + +"I'm going to fetch a doctor if there's one in Talland. Kay must ride +back and fetch the Polperro doctor, in case there isn't. In any case I +shall bring up help and a stretcher from Talland and have her taken +down." + +He picked up his bicycle and stood for a moment looking down at the face +on Nan's knee. + +"You'll look after her," he said, quickly, and got on the bicycle and +dashed down the path, showing that he too could do that fool's trick if +it served any good purpose. + +Gerda, watching him, caught her breath and forgot pain in fear until, +swerving round the next bend, he was out of sight. + + +9 + +Nan sat very still by the path, staring over the sea, shading Gerda's +head from the sun. There was nothing more to be done than that; there was +no water, even, to bathe the cut with. + +"Nan." + +"Yes?" + +"Am I much hurt? How much hurt, do you think?" + +"I don't know how much. I think the arm is broken. The leg may be only +sprained. Then there's the cut--I daresay that isn't very much--but one +can't tell that." + +"I must have come an awful mucker," Gerda murmured, after a pause. "It +must have looked silly, charging over the edge like that.... You didn't." + +"No. I didn't." + +"It was stupid," Gerda breathed, and shut her eyes. + +"No, not stupid. Anyone might have. It was a risky game to try." + +"You tried it." + +"Oh, I ... I do try things. That's no reason why you should.... You'd +better not talk. Lie quite quiet. It won't be very long now before they +come.... The pain's bad, I know." + +Gerda's head was hot and felt giddy. She moved it restlessly. Urgent +thoughts pestered her; her normal reticences lay like broken fences about +her. + +"Nan." + +"Yes. Shall I raise your head a little?" + +"No, it's all right.... About Barry, Nan." + +Nan grew rigid, strung up to endure. + +"And what about Barry?" + +"Just that I love him. I love him very much; beyond anything in the +world." + +"Yes. You'd better not talk, all the same." + +"Nan, do you love him too?" + +Nan laughed, a queer little curt laugh in her throat. + +"Rather a personal question, don't you think? Suppose, by any chance that +I did? But of course I don't." + +"But doesn't he love you, Nan? He did, didn't he?" + +"My dear, I think you're rather delirious. This isn't the way one +talks.... You'd better ask Barry the state of his affections, since +you're interested in them. I'm not, particularly." + +Gerda drew a long breath, of pain or fatigue or relief. + +"I'm rather glad you don't care for him. I thought we might have shared +him if you had, and if he'd cared for us both. But it might have been +difficult." + +"It might; you never know.... Well, you're welcome to my share, if you +want it." + +Then Gerda lay quiet, with closed eyes and wet forehead, and concentrated +wholly on her right leg, which was hurting badly. + +Nan too sat quiet, and she too was concentrating. + +Irrevocably it was over now; done, finished with. Barry's eyes, Barry's +kiss, had told her that. Gerda, the lovely, the selfish child, had taken +Barry from her, to keep for always. Walked into Barry's office, into +Barry's life, and deliberately stolen him. Thinking, she said, that they +might share him.... The little fool. The little thief. (She waved the +flies away from Gerda's head.) + +And even this other game, this contest of physical prowess, had ended in +a hollow, mocking victory for the winner, since defeat had laid the loser +more utterly in her lover's arms, more unshakably in his heart. Gerda, +defeated and broken, had won everything. Won even that tribute which had +been Nan's own. "You little sportsman," Barry had called her, with a +break of tenderness in his voice. Even that, even the palm for valour, he +had placed in her hands. The little victor. The greedy little grabber of +other people's things.... + +Gerda moaned at last. + +"Only a little longer," said Nan, and laid her hand lightly and coolly on +the hot wet forehead. + +The little winner... damn her.... + +The edge of a smile, half-ironic, wholly bitter, twisted at Nan's lips. + + +10 + +Voices and steps. Barry and a doctor, Barry and a stretcher, Barry and +all kinds of help. Barry's anxious eyes and smile. "Well? How's she +been?" + +He was on his knees beside her. + +"Here's the doctor, darling.... I'm sorry I've been so long." + + + + +CHAPTER X + +PRINCIPLES + + +1 + +Through the late September and October days Gerda would lie on a wicker +couch in the conservatory at Windover, her sprained leg up, her broken +wrist on a splint, her mending head on a soft pillow, and eat pears. +Grapes too, apples, figs, chocolates of course--but particularly pears. +She also wrote verse, and letters to Barry, and drew in pen and ink, and +read Sir Leo Chiozza Money's "Triumph of Nationalisation" and Mrs. +Snowden on Bolshevik Russia, and "Lady Adela," and "Coterie," and +listened while Neville read Mr. W.H. Mallock's "Memoirs" and Disraeli's +"Life." Her grandmother (Rodney's mother) sent her "The Diary of Opal +Whiteley," but so terrible did she find it that it caused a relapse, and +Neville had to remove it. She occasionally struggled in vain with a +modern novel, which she usually renounced in perplexity after three +chapters or so. Her taste did not lie in this direction. + +"I can't understand what they're all about," she said to Neville. +"Poetry _means_ something. It's about something real, something that +really is so. So are books like this--" she indicated "The Triumph of +Nationalisation." "But most novels are so queer. They're about people, +but not people as they are. They're not _interesting_." + +"Not as a rule, certainly. Occasionally one gets an idea out of one +of them, or a laugh, or a thrill. Now and then they express life, or +reality, or beauty, in some terms or other--but not as a rule." + +Gerda was different from Kay, who devoured thrillers, shockers, and +ingenious crime and mystery stories with avidity. She did not believe +that life was really much like that, and Kay's assertion that if it +weren't it ought to be, she rightly regarded as pragmatical. Neither did +she share Kay's more fundamental taste for the Elizabethans, Carolines +and Augustans. She and Kay met (as regards literature) only on economics, +politics, and modern verse. Gerda's mind was artistic rather than +literary, and she felt no wide or acute interest in human beings, their +actions, passions, foibles, and desires. + +So, surrounded by books from the Times library, and by nearly all the +weekly and monthly reviews (the Bendishes, like many others, felt, with +whatever regret, that they had to see all of these), Gerda for the most +part, when alone, lay and dreamed dreams and ate pears. + + +2 + +Barry came down for week-ends. He and Gerda had declared their affections +towards one another even at the Looe infirmary, where Gerda had been +conveyed from the scene of accident. It had been no moment then for +anything more definite than statements of reciprocal emotion, which are +always cheering in sickness. But when Gerda was better, well enough, in +fact, to lie in the Windover conservatory, Barry came down from town and +said, "When shall we get married?" + +Then Gerda, who had had as yet no time or mind-energy to reflect on the +probable, or rather certain, width of the gulf between the sociological +theories of herself and Barry, opened her blue eyes wide and said +"Married?" + +"Well, isn't that the idea? You can't jilt me now, you know; matters have +gone too far." + +"But, Barry, I thought you knew. I don't hold with marriage." + +Barry threw back his head and laughed, because she looked so innocent and +so serious and young as she lay there among the pears and bandages. + +"All right, darling. You've not needed to hold with it up till now. But +now you'd better catch on to it as quickly as you can, and hold it tight, +because it's what's going to happen." + +Gerda moved her bandaged head in denial. + +"Oh, no, Barry. I can't.... I thought you knew. Haven't we ever talked +about marriage before?" + +"Oh, probably. Yes, I think I've heard you and Kay both on the subject. +You don't hold with legal ties in what should be purely a matter of +emotional impulse, I know. But crowds of people talk like that and then +get married. I've no doubt Kay will too, when his time comes." + +"Kay won't. He thinks marriage quite wrong. And so do I." + +Barry, who had stopped laughing, settled himself to talk it out. + +"Why wrong, Gerda? Superfluous, if you like; irrelevant, if you like; but +why wrong?" + +"Because it's a fetter on what shouldn't be fettered. Love might stop. +Then it would be ugly." + +"Oh very. One has to take that risk, like other risks. And love is +really more likely to stop, as I see it, if there's no contract in the +eyes of the world, if the two people know each can walk away from the +other, and is expected to, directly they quarrel or feel a little bored. +The contract, the legalisation--absurd and irrelevant as all legal +things are to anything that matters--the contract, because we're such +tradition-bound creatures, does give a sort of illusion of inevitability, +which is settling, so that it doesn't occur to the people to fly apart at +the first strain. They go through with it instead, and in nine cases out +of ten come out on the other side. In the tenth case they just have +either to make the best of it or to make a break.... Of course people +always _can_ throw up the sponge, even married people, if things are +insupportable. The door isn't locked. But there's no point, I think, in +having it swinging wide open." + +"I think it _should_ be open," Gerda said. "I think people should be +absolutely free.... Take you and me. Suppose you got tired of me, or +liked someone else better, I think you ought to be able to leave me +without any fuss." + +That was characteristic of both of them, that they could take their +own case theoretically without becoming personal, without lovers' +protestations to confuse the general issue. + +"Well," Barry said, "I don't think I ought. I think it should be made as +difficult for me as possible. Because of the children. There are usually +children, of course. If I left you, I should have to leave them too. Then +they'd have no father. Or, if it were you that went, they'd have no +mother. Either way it's a pity, normally. Also, even if we stayed +together always and weren't married, they'd have no legal name. Children +often miss that, later on. Children of the school age are the most +conventional, hide-bound creatures. They'd feel ashamed before their +schoolfellows." + +"I suppose they'd have my name legally, wouldn't they?" + +"I suppose so. But they might prefer mine. The other boys and girls would +have their fathers', you see." + +"Not all of them. I know several people who don't hold with marriage +either; there'd be all their children. And anyhow it's not a question of +what the children would prefer while they were at school. It's what's +best for them. And anything would be better than to see their parents +hating each other and still having to live together." + +"Yes. Anything would be better than that. Except that it would be a +useful and awful warning to them. But the point is, most married people +don't hate each other. They develop a kind of tolerating, companionable +affection, after the first excitement called being in love is past--so +far as it does pass. That's mostly good enough to live on; that and +common interests and so forth. It's the stuff of ordinary life; the +emotional excitement is the hors _d'oeuvre_. It would be greedy to want +to keep passing on from one _hors d'oeuvre_ to another--leaving the +meal directly the joint comes in." + +"I like dessert best," Gerda said, irrelevantly, biting into an apple. + +"Well, you'd never get any at that rate. Nor much of the rest of the meal +either." + +"But people do, Barry. Free unions often last for years and +years--sometimes forever. Only you wouldn't feel tied. You'd be sure +you were only living together because you both liked to, not because +you had to." + +"I should feel I had to, however free it was. So you wouldn't have that +consolation about me. I might be sick of you, and pining for someone +else, but still I should stay." + +"Why, Barry?" + +"Because I believe in permanent unions, as a general principle. They're +more civilised. It's unusual, uncivic, dotting about from one mate to +another, leaving your young and forgetting all about them and having +new ones. Irresponsible, I call it. Living only for a good time. It's +not the way to be good citizens, as I see it, nor to bring up good +citizens.... Oh, I know that the whole question of sex relationships is +horribly complicated, and can't be settled with a phrase or a dogma. It's +been for centuries so wrapped in cant and humbug and expediencies and +camouflage; I don't profess to be able to pierce through all that, or to +so much as begin to think it out clearly. The only thing I can fall back +on as a certainty is the children question. A confused and impermanent +family life _must_ be a bad background for the young. They want all they +can get of both their parents, in the way of education and training and +love." + +"Family life is such a hopeless muddle, anyhow." + +"A muddle, yes. Hopeless, no. Look at your own. Your father and mother +have always been friends with each other and with you. They brought you +up with definite ideas about what they wanted you to become--fairly well +thought-out and consistent ideas, I suppose. I don't say they could do +much--parents never can--but something soaks in." + +"Usually something silly and bad." + +"Often, yes. Anyhow a queer kind of mixed brew. But at least the parents +have their chance. It's what they're there for; they've got to do all +they know, while the children are young, to influence them towards what +they personally believe, however mistakenly, to be the finest points of +view. Of course lots of it is, as you say, silly and bad, because people +_are_ largely silly and bad. But no parent can be absolved from doing his +or her best." + +Barry was walking round the conservatory, eager and full of faith and +hope and fire, talking rapidly, the educational enthusiast, the ardent +citizen, the social being, the institutionalist, all over. He was all +these things; he was rooted and grounded in citizenship, in social +ethics. He stopped by the couch and stood looking down at Gerda among +her fruit, his hands in his pockets, his eyes bright and lit. + +"All the same, darling, I shall never want to fetter you. If you ever +want to leave me, I shan't come after you. The legal tie shan't stand in +your way. And to me it would make no difference; I shouldn't leave you in +any case, married or not. So I don't see how or why you score in doing +without the contract." + +"It's the idea of the thing, partly. I don't want to wear a wedding ring +and be Mrs. Briscoe. I want to be Gerda Bendish, living with Barry +Briscoe because we like to.... I expect, Barry, in my case it _would_ +be for always, because, at present, I can't imagine stopping caring more +for you than for anything else. But that doesn't affect the principle of +the thing. It would be _wrong_ for me to marry you. One oughtn't to give +up one's principles just because it seems all right in a particular case. +It would be cheap and shoddy and cowardly." + +"Exactly," said Barry, "what I feel. I can't give up my principle either, +you know. I've had mine longer than you've had yours." + +"I've had mine since I was about fifteen." + +"Five years. Well, I've had mine for twenty. Ever since I first began to +think anything out, that is." + +"People of your age," said Gerda, "people over thirty, I mean, often +think like that about marriage. I've noticed it. So has Kay." + +"Observant infants. Well, there we stand, then. One of us has got either +to change his principles--her principles, I mean--or to be false to them. +Or else, apparently, there can be nothing doing between you and me. +That's the position, isn't it?" + +Gerda nodded, her mouth full of apple. + +"It's very awkward," Barry continued, "my having fallen in love with you. +I had not taken your probable views on sociology into account. I knew +that, though we differed in spelling and punctuation, we were agreed +(approximately) on politics, economics, and taste in amusements, and I +thought that was enough. I forgot that divergent views on matrimony were +of practical importance. It would have mattered less if I had discovered +that you were a militarist and imperialist and quoted Marx at me." + +"I did tell you, Barry. I really did. I never hid it. And I never +supposed that you'd want to _marry_ me." + +"That was rather stupid of you. I'm so obviously a marrying man.... Now, +darling, will you think the whole thing out from the beginning, after +I've gone? Be first-hand; don't take over theories from other people, and +don't be sentimental about it. Thrash the whole subject out with yourself +and with other people--with your own friends, and with your family too. +They're a modern, broad-minded set, your people, after all; they won't +look at the thing conventionally; they'll talk sense; they won't fob you +off with stock phrases, or talk about the sanctity of the home. They're +not institutionalists. Only be fair about it; weigh all the pros and +cons, and judge honestly, and for heaven's sake don't look at the thing +romantically, or go off on theories because they sound large and +subversive. Think of practical points, as well as of ultimate principles. +Both, to my mind, are on the same side. I'm not asking you to sacrifice +right for expediency, or expediency for right. I don't say 'Be sensible,' +or 'Be idealistic.' We've got to be both." + +"Barry, I've thought and talked about it so often and so long. You don't +know how much we do talk about that sort of thing, at the club and +everywhere and Kay and I. I could never change my mind." + +"What a hopeless admission! We ought to be ready to change our minds at +any moment; they should be as changeable as pound notes." + +"What about yours, then, darling?" + +"I'm always ready to change mine. I shall think the subject out too, and +if I do change I shall tell you at once." + +"Barry." Gerda's face was grave; her forehead was corrugated. "Suppose we +neither of us ever change? Suppose we both go on thinking as we do now +for always? What then?" + +He smoothed the knitted forehead with his fingers. + +"Then one of us will have to be a traitor to his or her principles. A +pity, but sometimes necessary in this complicated world. Or, if we can +neither of us bring ourselves down to that, I suppose eventually we shall +each perpetrate with someone else the kind of union we personally +prefer." + +They parted on that. The thing had not grown serious yet; they could +still joke about it. + + +3 + +Though Gerda said "What's the use of my talking about it to people when +I've made up my mind?" and though she had not the habit of talking for +conversation's sake, she did obediently open the subject with her +parents, in order to assure herself beyond a doubt what they felt about +it. But she knew already that their opinions were what you might expect +of parents, even of broad-minded, advanced parents, who rightly believed +themselves not addicted to an undiscriminating acceptance of the +standards and decisions of a usually mistaken world. But Barry was wrong +in saying they weren't institutionalists; they were. Parents are. + +Rodney was more opinionated than Neville, on this subject as on most +others. He said, crossly, "It's a beastly habit, unlegitimatised union. +When I say beastly, I mean beastly; nothing derogatory, but merely like +the beasts--the other beasts, that is." + +Gerda said "Well, that's not really an argument against it. In that sense +it's beastly when we sleep out instead of in bed, or do lots of other +quite nice things. The way men and women do things isn't necessarily the +best way," and there Rodney had to agree with her. He fell back on "It's +unbusinesslike. Suppose you have children?" and Gerda, who had supposed +all that with Barry, sighed. Rodney said a lot more, but it made little +impression on her, beyond corroborating her views on the matrimonial +theories of middle-aged people. + +Neville made rather more. To Neville Gerda said "How can I go back on +everything I've always said and thought about it, and go and get married? +It would be so _reactionary_." + +Neville, who had a headache and was irritable, said "It's the other thing +that's reactionary. It existed long before the marriage tie did. That's +what I don't understand about all you children who pride yourselves on +being advanced. If you frankly take your stand on going back to nature, +on _being_ reactionary--well, it is, anyhow, a point of view, and has its +own merits. But your minds seem to me to be in a hopeless muddle. You +think you're going forward while you're really going back." + +"Marriage," said Gerda, "is so Victorian. It's like antimacassars." + +"Now, my dear, do you mean _anything_ by either of those statements? +Marriage wasn't invented in Victoria's reign. Nor did it occur more +frequently in that reign than it had before or does now. Why Victorian, +then? And why antimacassars? Think it out. How _can_ a legal contract be +like a doyley on the back of a chair? Where is the resemblance? It sounds +like a riddle, only there's no answer. No, you know you've got no answer. +That kind of remark is sheer sentimentality and muddle-headedness. Why +are people in their twenties so often sentimental? That's another +riddle." + +"That's what Nan says. She told me once that she used to be sentimental +when she was twenty. Was she?" + +"More than she is now, anyhow." + +Neville's voice was a little curt. She was not happy about Nan, who had +just gone to Rome for the winter. + +"Well," Gerda said, "anyhow I'm not sentimental about not meaning to +marry. I've thought about it for years, and I know." + +"Thought about it! Much you know about it." Neville, tired and cross +from over-work, was, unlike herself, playing the traditional conventional +mother. "Have you thought how it will affect your children, for +instance?" + +Those perpetual, tiresome children. Gerda was sick of them. + +"Oh yes, I've thought a lot about that. And I can't see it will hurt +them. Barry and I talked for ever so long about the children. So did +father." + +So did Neville. + +"Of course I know," she said, "that you and Kay would be only too pleased +if father and I had never been married, but you've no right to judge by +yourself the ones you and Barry may have. They may not be nearly so +odd.... And then there's your own personal position. The world's full of +people who think they can insult a man's mistress." + +"I don't meet people like that. The people I know don't insult other +people for not being married. They think it's quite natural, and only the +people's own business." + +"You've moved in a small and rarefied clique so far, my dear. You'll meet +the other kind of people presently; one can't avoid them, the world's so +full of them." + +"Do they matter?" + +"Of course they matter. As mosquitoes matter, and wasps, and cars that +splash mud at you in the road. You'd be constantly annoyed. Your own +scullery maid would turn up her nose at you. The man that brought the +milk will sneer." + +"I don't think," Gerda said, after reflection, "that I'm very easily +annoyed. I don't notice things, very often. I think about other things +rather a lot, you see. That's why I'm slow at answering." + +"Well, Barry would be annoyed, anyhow." + +"Barry does lots of unpopular things. He doesn't mind what people say." + +"He'd mind for you.... But Barry isn't going to do it. Barry won't have +you on your terms. If you won't have him on his, he'll leave you and go +and find some nicer girl." + +"I can't help it, mother. I can't do what I don't approve of for that. +How could I?" + +"No, darling, of course you couldn't; I apologise. But do try and see if +you can't get to approve of it, or anyhow to be indifferent about it. +Such a little thing! It isn't as if Barry wanted you to become a Mormon +or something.... And after all you can't accuse him of being retrograde, +or Victorian, if you like to use that silly word, or lacking in ideals +for social progress--can you? He belongs to nearly all your illegal +political societies, doesn't he? Why, his house gets raided for leaflets +from time to time. I don't think they ever find any, but they look, and +that's something. You can't call Barry hide-bound or conventionally +orthodox." + +"No. Oh no. Not that. Or I shouldn't be caring for him. But he doesn't +understand about this. And you don't, mother, nor father, nor anyone of +your ages. I don't know how it is, but it is so." + +"You might try your Aunt Rosalind," Neville suggested, with malice. + +Gerda shuddered. "Aunt Rosalind ... she wouldn't understand at all...." + +But the dreadful thought was, as Neville had intended, implanted in +her that, of all her elder relatives, it was only Aunt Rosalind who, +though she mightn't understand, might nevertheless agree. Aunt Rosalind +on free unions... that would be terrible to have to hear. For Aunt +Rosalind would hold with them not because she thought them right but +because she enjoyed them--the worst of reasons. Gerda somehow felt +degraded by the introduction into the discussion of Aunt Rosalind, whom +she hated, whom she knew, without having been told so, that her mother +and all of them hated. It dragged it down, made it vulgar. + +Gerda lay back in silence, the springs of argument and talk dried in her. +She wanted Kay. + +It was no use; they couldn't meet. Neville could not get away from her +traditions, nor Gerda from hers. + +Neville, to change the subject (though scarcely for the better), read her +"The Autobiography of Mrs. Asquith" till tea-time. + + +4 + +They all talked about it again, and said the same things, and different +things, and more things, and got no nearer one another with it all. Soon +Barry and Gerda, each comprehending the full measure of the serious +intent of the other, stood helpless before it, the one in half-amused +exasperation, the other in obstinate determination. + +"She means business, then," thought Barry. "He won't come round," thought +Gerda and their love pierced and stabbed them, making Barry hasty of +speech and Gerda sullen. + +"The _waste_ of it," said Barry, on Sunday evening, "when I've only +got one day in the week, to spend it quarrelling about marriage. I've +hundreds of things to talk about and tell you--interesting things, funny +things--but I never get to them, with all this arguing we have to have +first." + +"I don't want to argue, Barry. Let's not. We've said everything now, lots +of times. There can't be any more. Tell me your things instead!" + +He told her, and they were happy talking, and forgot how they thought +differently on marriage. But always the difference lay there in the +background, coiled up like a snake, ready to uncoil and seize them and +make them quarrel and hurt one another. Always one was expecting the +other at any moment to throw up the sponge and cry "Oh, have it your own +way, since you won't have it mine and I love you." But neither did. Their +wills stood as stiff as two rocks over against one another. + +Gerda grew thinner under the strain, and healed more slowly than before. +Her fragile, injured body was a battle-ground between her will and her +love, and suffered in the conflict. Barry saw that it could not go on. +They would, he said, stop talking about it; they would put it in the +background and go on as if it were not there, until such time as they +could agree. So they became friends again, lovers who lived in the +present and looked to no future, and, since better might not be, that had +to do for the time. + + + + +CHAPTER XI + +THAT WHICH REMAINS + + +1 + +Through September Neville had nursed Gerda by day and worked by night. +The middle of October, just when they usually moved into town for the +winter, she collapsed, had what the doctor called a nervous breakdown. + +"You've been overworking," he told her. "You're not strong enough in +these days to stand hard brain-work. You must give it up." + +For a fortnight she lay tired and passive, surrendered and inert, caring +for nothing but to give up and lie still and drink hot milk. Then she +struggled up and mooned about the house and garden, and cried weakly from +time to time, and felt depressed and bored, and as if life were over and +she were at the bottom of the sea. + +"This must be what mother feels," she thought. "Poor mother.... I'm +like her; I've had my life, and I'm too stupid to work, and I can only +cry.... Men must work and women must weep.... I never knew before that +that was true.... I mustn't see mother just now, it would be the last +straw ... like the skeletons people used to look at to warn themselves +what they would come to.... Poor mother ... and poor me.... But mother's +getting better now she's being analysed. That wouldn't help me at all. I +analyse myself too much already.... And I was so happy a few months ago. +What a dreadful end to a good ambition. I shall never work again, I +suppose, in any way that counts. So that's that.... Why do I want to work +and to do something? Other wives and mothers don't.... Or do they, only +they don't know it, because they don't analyse? I believe they do, lots +of them. Or is it only my horrible egotism and vanity, that can't take a +back seat quietly? I was always like that, I know. Nan and I and Gilbert. +Not Jim so much, and not Pamela at all. But Rodney's worse than I am; he +wouldn't want to be counted out, put on the shelf, in the forties; he'd +be frightfully sick if he had to stand by and see other people working +and getting on and in the thick of things when he wasn't. He couldn't +bear it; he'd take to drink, I think.... I hope Rodney won't ever have +a nervous breakdown and feel like this, poor darling, he'd be dreadfully +tiresome.... Not to work after all. Not to be a doctor.... What then? +Just go about among people, grinning like a dog. Winter in town, talking, +dining, being the political wife. Summer in the country, walking, riding, +reading, playing tennis. Fun, of course. But what's it all for? When I've +got Gerda off my hands I shall have done being a mother, in any sense +that matters. Is being a wife enough to live for? Rodney's wife? Oh, I +want to be some use, want to do things, to count.... And Rodney will die +some time--I know he'll die first--and then I shan't even be a wife. And +in twenty years I shan't be able to do things with my body much more, and +what then? What will be left? ... I think I'm getting hysterical, like +poor mother.... How ugly I look, these days." + +She stopped before the looking-glass. Her face looked back at her, white +and thin, almost haggard, traced in the last few weeks for the first time +with definite lines round brow and mouth. Her dark hair was newly +streaked with grey. + +"Middle age," said Neville, and a cold hand was laid round her heart. "It +had to come some time, and this illness has opened the door to it. Or +shall I look young again when I'm quite well? No, never young again." + +She shivered. + +"I look like mother to-day.... I _am_ like mother...." + +So youth and beauty were to leave her, too. She would recover from this +illness and this extinguishing of charm, but not completely, and not for +long. Middle age had begun. She would have off days in future, when she +would look old and worn instead of always, as hitherto, looking charming. +She wouldn't, in future, be sure of herself; people wouldn't be sure to +think "A lovely woman, Mrs. Rodney Bendish." Soon they would be saying +"How old Mrs. Bendish is getting to look," and then "She was a pretty +woman once." + +Well, looks didn't matter much really, after all.... + +"They do, they do," cried Neville to the glass, passionately truthful. +"If you're vain they do--and I am vain. Vain of my mind and of my +body.... Vanity, vanity, all is vanity ... and now the silver cord is +going to be loosed and the golden bowl is going to be broken, and I shall +be hurt." + +Looks did matter. It was no use canting, and minimising them. They +affected the thing that mattered most--one's relations with people. Men, +for instance, cared more to talk to a woman whose looks pleased them. +They liked pretty girls, and pretty women. Interesting men cared to talk +to them: they told them things they would never tell a plain woman. +Rodney did. He liked attractive women. Sometimes he made love to them, +prettily and harmlessly. + +The thought of Rodney stabbed her. If Rodney were to get to care +less ... to stop making love to her ... worse, to stop needing +her.... For he did need her; through all their relationship, +disappointing in some of its aspects, his need had persisted, a simple, +demanding thing. + +Humour suddenly came back. + +"This, I suppose, is what Gerda is anticipating, and why she won't have +Barry tied to her. If Rodney wasn't tied to me he could flee from my +wrinkles...." + +"Oh, what an absurd fuss one makes. What does any of it matter? It's all +in the course of nature, and the sooner 'tis over the sooner to sleep. +Middle age will be very nice and comfortable and entertaining, once one's +fairly in it.... I go babbling about my wasted brain and fading looks as +if I'd been a mixture of Sappho and Helen of Troy.... That's the worst of +being a vain creature.... What will Rosalind do when _her_ time comes? +Oh, paint, of course, and dye--more thickly than she does now, I mean. +She'll be a ghastly sight. A raddled harridan. At least I shall always +look respectable, I hope. I shall go down to Gerda. I want to look at +something young. The young have their troubles, poor darlings, but they +don't know how lucky they are." + + +2 + +In November Neville and Gerda, now both convalescent, joined Rodney in +their town flat. Rodney thought London would buck Neville up. London does +buck you up, even if it is November and there is no gulf stream and not +much coal. For there is always music and always people. Neville had a +critical appreciation of both. Then, for comic relief, there are +politics. You cannot be really bored with a world which contains the +mother of Parliaments, particularly if her news is communicated to you +at first hand by one of her members. Disgusted you may be and are, if +you are a right-minded person, but at least not bored. + +What variety, what excitement, what a moving picture show, is this tragic +and comic planet! Why want to be useful, why indulge such tedious +inanities as ambitions, why dream wistfully of doing one's bit, making +one's work, in a world already as full of bits, bright, coloured, absurd +bits, like a kaleidoscope, as full of marks (mostly black marks) as a +novel from a free library? A dark and bad and bitter world, of course, +full of folly, wickedness and misery, sick with poverty and pain, so that +at times the only thing Neville could bear to do in it was to sit on some +dreadful committee thinking of ameliorations for the lot of the very +poor, or to go and visit Pamela in Hoxton and help her with some job or +other--that kind of direct, immediate, human thing, which was a sop to +uneasiness and pity such as the political work she dabbled in, however +similar its ultimate aim, could never be. + + +3 + +To Pamela Neville said, "Are you afraid of getting old, Pamela?" + +Pamela replied, "Not a bit. Are you?" And she confessed it. + +"Often it's like a cold douche of water down my spine, the thought of it. +I reason and mock at myself, but I _don't_ like it.... You're different; +finer, more real, more unselfish. Besides, you'll have done something +worth doing when you have to give up. I shan't." + +Pamela's brows went up. + +"Kay? Gerda? The pretty dears: I've done nothing so nice as them. You've +done what's called a woman's work in the world--isn't that the phrase?" + +"Done it--just so, but so long ago. What now? I still feel young, Pamela, +even now that I know I'm not. ... Oh Lord, it's a queer thing, being a +woman. A well-off woman of forty-three with everything made comfortable +for her and her brain gone to pot and her work in the world done. I want +something to bite my teeth into--some solid, permanent job--and I get +nothing but sweetmeats, and people point at Kay and Gerda and say 'That's +your work, and it's over. Now you can rest, seeing that it's good, like +God on the seventh day.'" + +"_I_ don't say 'Now you can rest. Except just now, while you're run +down.'" + +"Run down, yes; run down like a disordered clock because I tried to +tackle an honest job of work again. Isn't it sickening, Pamela? Isn't it +ludicrous?" + +"Ludicrous--no. Everyone comes up against his own limitations. You've got +to work within them that's all. After all, there are plenty of jobs you +can do that want doing--simply shouting to be done." + +"Pammie dear, it's worse than I've said. I'm a low creature. I don't only +want to do jobs that want doing: I want to count, to make a name. I'm +damnably ambitious. You'll despise that, of course--and you're quite +right, it is despicable. But there it is. Most men and many women are +tormented by it--they itch for recognition." + +"Of course. One is." + +"You too, Pammie?" + +"I have been. Less now. Life gets to look short, when you're +thirty-nine." + +"Ah, but you have it--recognition, even fame, in the world you work in. +You count for something. If you value it, there it is. I wouldn't grumble +if I'd played your part in the piece. It's a good part--a useful part +and a speaking part." + +"I suppose we all feel we should rather like to play someone else's part +for a change. There's nothing exciting about mine. Most people would far +prefer yours." + +They would, of course; Neville knew it. The happy political wife rather +than the unmarried woman worker; Rodney, Gerda and Kay for company rather +than Frances Carr. There was no question which was the happier lot, the +fuller, the richer, the easier, the more entertaining. + +"Ah well.... You see, Rosalind spent the afternoon with me yesterday, and +I felt suddenly that it wasn't for me to be stuck up about her--what am I +too but the pampered female idler, taking good things without earning +them? It made me shudder. Hence this fit of blues. The pampered, lazy, +brainless animal--it is such a terrific sight when in human form. +Rosalind talked about Nan, Pamela. In her horrible way--you know. Hinting +that she isn't alone in Rome, but with Stephen Lumley." + +Pamela took off her glasses and polished them. + +"Rosalind would, of course. What did you say?" + +"I lost my temper. I let out at her. It's not a thing I often do with +Rosalind--it doesn't seem worth while. But this time I saw red. I told +her what I thought of her eternal gossip and scandal. I said, what if Nan +and Stephen Lumley, or Nan and anyone else, did arrange to be in Rome at +the same time and to see a lot of each other; where was the harm? No use. +You can't pin Rosalind down. She just shrugged her shoulders and smiled, +and said 'My dear, we all know our Nan. We all know too that Stephen +Lumley has been in love with her for a year, and doesn't live with his +wife. Then they go off to Rome at the same moment, and one hears that +they are seen everywhere together. Why shut one's eyes to obvious +deductions? You're so like an ostrich, Neville.' I said I'd rather be +an ostrich than a ferret, eternally digging into other people's +concerns,--and by the time we had got to that I thought it was far +enough, so I had an engagement with my dressmaker." + +"It's no use tackling Rosalind," Pamela agreed. "She'll never change her +spots.... Do you suppose it's true about Nan?" + +"I daresay it is. Yes, I'm afraid I do think it's quite likely +true.... Nan was so queer the few times I saw her after Gerda's accident. +I was unhappy about her. She was so hard, and so more than usually +cynical and unget-at-able. She told me it had been all her fault, +leading Gerda into mischief, doing circus tricks that the child tried to +emulate and couldn't. I couldn't read her, quite. Her tone about Gerda +had a queer edge to it. And she rather elaborately arranged, I thought, +so that she shouldn't meet Barry. Pamela, do you think she had finally +and absolutely turned Barry down before he took up so suddenly with +Gerda, or...." + +Pamela said, "I know nothing. She told me nothing. But I rather thought, +when she came to see me just before she went down to Cornwall, that she +had made up her mind to have him. I may have been wrong." + +Neville leant her forehead on her hands and sighed. + +"Or you may have been right. And if you were right, it's the ghastliest +tragedy--for her.... Oh, I shouldn't have let Gerda go and work with him; +I should have known better.... Nan had rebuffed him, and he flew off at a +tangent, and there was Gerda sitting in his office, as pretty as flowers +and with her funny little silent charm.... And if Nan was all the time +waiting for him, meaning to say yes when he asked her.... Poor darling +Nan, robbed by my horrid little girl, who doesn't even want to +marry.... If that's the truth, it would account for the Stephen Lumley +business. Nan wouldn't stay on in London, to see them together. If Lumley +caught her at that psychological moment, she'd very likely go off with +him, out of mere desperation and bravado. That would be so terribly like +Nan.... What a desperate, wry, cursed business life is.... On the other +hand, she may just be going about with Lumley on her own terms not his. +It's her own affair whichever way it is; what we've got to do is to +contradict the stories Rosalind is spreading whenever we get the chance. +Not that one can scotch scandal once it starts--particularly Rosalind's +scandal." + +"Ignore it. Nan can ignore it when she comes back. It won't hurt her. +Nan's had plenty of things said about her before, true and untrue, and +never cared." + +"You're splendid at the ignoring touch, Pam. I believe there's nothing +you can't and don't ignore." + +"Well, why not? Ignoring's easy." + +"Not for most of us. I believe it is, for you. In a sense you ignore life +itself; anyhow you don't let it hold and bully you. When your time comes +you'll ignore age, and later death." + +"They don't matter much, do they? Does anything? I suppose it's my stolid +temperament, but I can't feel that it does." + +Neville thought, as she had often thought before, that Pamela, like Nan, +only more calmly, less recklessly and disdainfully, had the aristocratic +touch. Pamela, with her delicate detachments and her light, even touch on +things great and small, made her feel fussy and petty and excitable. + +"I suppose you're right, my dear.... 'All is laughter, all is dust, +all is nothingness, for the things that are arise out of the +unreasonable....' I must get back. Give my love to Frances... and when +next you see Gerda do try to persuade her that marriage is one of the +things that don't matter and that she might just as well put up with to +please us all. The child is a little nuisance--as obstinate as a mule." + + +4 + +Neville, walking away from Pamela's grimy street in the November fog, +felt that London was terrible. An ugly clamour of strident noises and +hard, shrill voices, jabbering of vulgar, trivial things. A wry, +desperate, cursed world, as she had called it, a pot seething with +bitterness and all dreadfulness, with its Rosalinds floating on the top +like scum. + +And Nan, her Nan, her little vehement sister, whom she had mothered +of old, had pulled out of countless scrapes--Nan had now taken her +life into her reckless hands and done what with it? Given it, perhaps, +to a man she didn't love, throwing cynical defiance thereby at love, +which had hurt her; escaping from the intolerable to the shoddy. Even +if not, even supposing the best, Nan was hurt and in trouble; Neville +was somehow sure of that. Men were blind fools; men were fickle children. +Neville almost wished now that Barry would give up Gerda and go out to +Rome and fetch Nan back. But, to do that, Barry would have to fall +out of love with Gerda and into love again with Nan; and even Barry, +Neville imagined, was not such a weathercock as that. And Barry would +really be happier with Gerda. With all their differences, they were +both earnest citizens, both keen on social progress. Nan was a cynical +flibberty-gibbet; it might not have been a happy union. Perhaps happy +unions were not for such as Nan. But at the thought of Nan playing that +desperate game with Stephen Lumley in Rome, Neville's face twitched.... + +She would go to Rome. She would see Nan; find out how things were. Nan +always liked to see her, would put up with her even when she wanted no +one else. + +That was, at least, a job one could do. These family jobs--they still go +on, they never cease, even when one is getting middle-aged and one's +brain has gone to pot. They remain, always, the jobs of the affections. + +She would write to Nan to-night, and tell her she was starting for Rome +in a few days, to have a respite from the London fogs. + + +5 + +But she did not start for Rome, or even write to Nan, for when she got +home she went to bed with influenza. + + + + +CHAPTER XII + +THE MOTHER + + +1 + +The happiness Mrs. Hilary now enjoyed was of the religious type--a deep, +warm glow, which did not lack excitement. She felt as those may be +presumed to feel who have just been converted to some church--newly +alive, and sunk in spiritual peace, and in profound harmony with life. +Where were the old rubs, frets, jars and ennuis? Vanished, melted like +yesterday's snows in the sun of this new peace. It was as if she had cast +her burden upon the Lord. That, said her psycho-analyst doctor, was quite +in order; that was what it ought to be like. That was, in effect, what +she had in point of fact done; only the place of the Lord was filled by +himself. To put the matter briefly, transference of burden had been +effected; Mrs. Hilary had laid all her cares, all her perplexities, all +her grief, upon this quiet, acute-looking man, who sat with her twice a +week for an hour, drawing her out, arranging her symptoms for her, +penetrating the hidden places of her soul, looking like a cross between +Sherlock Holmes and Mr. Henry Ainley. Her confidence in him was, he told +her, the expression of the father-image, which surprised Mrs. Hilary a +little, because he was twenty years her junior. + +Mrs. Hilary felt that she was getting to know herself very well indeed. +Seeing herself through Mr. Cradock's mind, she felt that she was indeed a +curious jumble of complexes, of strange, mysterious impulses, desires and +fears. Alarming, even horrible in some ways; so that often she thought +"Can he be right about me? Am I really like that? Do I really hope that +Marjorie (Jim's wife) will die, so that Jim and I may be all in all to +each other again? Am I really so wicked?" But Mr. Cradock said that it +was not at all wicked, perfectly natural and normal--the Unconscious +_was_ like that. And worse than that; how much worse he had to break to +Mrs. Hilary, who was refined and easily shocked, by gentle hints and slow +degrees, lest she should be shocked to death. Her dreams, which she had +to recount to him at every sitting, bore such terrible significance--they +grew worse and worse in proportion, as Mrs. Hilary could stand more. + +"Ah well," Mrs. Hilary sighed uneasily, after an interpretation into +strange terms of a dream she had about bathing, "it's very odd, when I've +never even thought about things like that." + +"Your Unconscious," said Mr. Cradock, firmly, "has thought the more. The +more your Unconscious is obsessed by a thing, the less your conscious +self thinks of it. It is shy of the subject, for that very reason." + +Mrs. Hilary was certainly shy of the subject, for that reason or others. +When she felt too shy of it, Mr. Cradock let her change it. "It may be +true," she would say, "but it's very terrible, and I would rather not +dwell on it." + +So he would let her dwell instead on the early days of her married life, +or on the children's childhood, or on her love for Neville and Jim, or on +her impatience with her mother. + + +2 + +They were happy little times, stimulating, cosy little times. They spoke +straight to the heart, easing it of its weight of tragedy. A splendid +man, Mr. Cradock, with his shrewd, penetrating sympathy, his kind +firmness. He would listen with interest to everything; the sharp words +she had had with Grandmama, troubles with the maids, the little rubs +of daily life (and what a rubbing business life is, to be sure!) as +well as to profounder, more tragic accounts of desolation, jealousy, +weariness and despair. He would say "Your case is a very usual one," +so that she did not feel ashamed of being like that. He reduced it all, +dispassionately and yet not unsympathetically, and with clear scientific +precision, to terms of psychical and physical laws. He trained his +patient to use her mind and her will, as well as to remember her dreams +and to be shocked at nothing that they signified. + +Mrs. Hilary would wake each morning, or during the night, and clutch at +the dream which was flying from her, clutch and secure it, and make it +stand and deliver its outlines to her. She was content with outlines; it +was for Mr. Cradock to supply the interpretation. Sometimes, if Mrs. +Hilary couldn't remember any dreams, he would supply, according to a +classic precedent, the dream as well as the interpretation. But on the +whole, deeply as she revered and admired him, Mrs. Hilary preferred to +remember her own dreams; what they meant was bad enough, but the meaning +of the dreams that Mr. Cradock told her she had dreamt was beyond all +words.... That terrible Unconscious! Mrs. Hilary disliked it excessively; +she felt rather as if it were a sewer, sunk beneath an inadequate +grating. + +But from Mr. Cradock she put up with hearing about it. She would have put +up with anything. He was so steadying and so wonderful. He enabled her to +face life with a new poise, a fresh lease of strength and vitality. She +told Grandmama so. Grandmama said "Yes, my dear, I've observed it in you. +It sounds to me an unpleasing business, but it is obviously doing you +good, so far. I only wish it may last. The danger may be reaction, after +you have finished the course and lost touch with this young man." (Mr. +Cradock was forty-five, but Grandmama, it must be remembered, was +eighty-four.) "You will have to guard against that. In a way it was a +pity you didn't take up church-going instead; religion lasts." + +"And these quackeries do not," Grandmama finished her sentence to +herself, not wishing to be discouraging. + +"Not always," Mrs. Hilary truly replied, meaning that religion did not +always last. + +"No," Grandmama agreed. "Unfortunately not always. Particularly when it +is High Church. There was your uncle Bruce, of course...." + +Mrs. Hilary's uncle Bruce, who had been High Church for a season, and had +even taken Orders in the year 1860, but whose faith had wilted in the +heat and toil of the day, so that by 1870 he was an agnostic barrister, +took Grandmama back through the last century, and she became reminiscent +over the Tractarian movement, and, later, the Ritualists. + +"The Queen never could abide them," said Grandmama. "Nor could Lord +Beaconsfield, nor your father, though he was always kind and tolerant. +I remember when Dr. Jowett came to stay with us, how they talked about +it.... Ah well, they've become very prominent since then, and done a +great deal of good work, and there are many very able, excellent men and +women among them.... But they're not High Church any longer, they tell +me. They're Catholics in these days. I don't know enough of them to judge +them, but I don't think they can have the dignity of the old High Church +party, for if they had I can't imagine that Gilbert's wife, for instance, +would have joined them, even for so short a time as she did.... Well, it +suits some people, and psycho-analysis obviously suits others. Only I do +hope you will try to keep moderate and balanced, my child, and not +believe all this young man tells you. Parts of it do sound so very +strange." + +(But Mrs. Hilary would not have dreamt of repeating to Grandmama the +strangest parts of all.) + +"I feel a new woman," she said, fervently, and Grandmama smiled, well +pleased, thinking that it certainly did seem rather like the old +evangelical conversions of her youth. (Which, of course, did not always +last, any more than the High Church equivalents did.) + +All Grandmama committed herself to, in her elderly caution, which came +however less from age than from having known Mrs. Hilary for sixty-three +years, was "Well, well, we must see." + + +3 + +And then Rosalind's letter came. It came by the afternoon post--the big, +mauve, scented, sprawled sheets, dashingly monographed across one corner. + +"Gilbert's wife," pronounced Grandmama, non-committally from her easy +chair, and, said in that tone, it was quite sufficient comment. "Another +cup of tea, please, Emily." + +Mrs. Hilary gave it to her, then began to read aloud the letter from +Gilbert's wife. Gilbert's wife was one of the topics upon which she and +Grandmama were in perfect accord, only that Mrs. Hilary was irritated +when Grandmama pushed the responsibility for the relationship onto her by +calling Rosalind "your daughter-in-law." + +Mrs. Hilary began to read the letter in the tone used by well-bred women +when they would, if in a slightly lower social stratum, say "Fancy that +now! Did you ever, the brazen hussy!" Grandmama listened, cynically +disapproving, prepared to be disgusted yet entertained. On the whole she +thoroughly enjoyed letters from Gilbert's wife. She settled down +comfortably in her chair with her second cup of tea, while Mrs. Hilary +read two pages of what Grandmama called "foolish chit-chat." Rosalind's +letters were really like the gossipping imbecilities written by Eve of +the Tatler, or the other ladies who enliven our shinier-paper weeklies +with their bright personal babble. She did not often waste one of them on +her mother-in-law; only when she had something to say which might annoy +her. + +"Do you hear from Nan?" the third page of the letter began. "I hear from +the Bramertons, who are wintering in Rome--the Charlie Bramertons, you +know, great friends of mine and Gilbert's (he won a pot of money on the +Derby this year and they've a dinky flat in some palace out there--), and +they meet Nan about, and she's always with Stephen Lumley, the painter +(rotten painter, if you ask me, but he's somehow diddled London into +admiring him, don't expect you've heard of him down at the seaside). +Well, they're quite simply _always_ together, and the Brams say that +everyone out there says it isn't in the least an ambiguous case--no two +ways about it. He doesn't live with his wife, you know. You'll excuse me +passing this on to you, but it does seem you ought to know. I mentioned +it to Neville the other day, just before the poor old dear went down with +the plague, but you know what Neville is, she always sticks up for Nan +and doesn't care _what_ she does, or what people say. People are talking; +beasts, aren't they! But that's the way of this wicked old world, we all +do it. Gilbert's quite upset about it, says Nan ought to manage her +affairs more quietly. But after all and between you and me it's not the +first time Nan's been a Town Topic, is it. + +"How's the psycho going? Isn't Cradock rather a priceless pearl? You're +over head and ears with him by now, of course, we all are. Psycho +wouldn't do you any good if you weren't, that's the truth. Cradock told +me himself once that transference can't be effected without the patient +being a little bit smitten. Personally I should give up a man patient at +once if he didn't rather like me. But isn't it soothing and comforting, +and doesn't it make you feel good all over, like a hot bath when you're +fagged out...." + +But Mrs. Hilary didn't get as far as this. She stopped at "not the first +time Nan's been a Town Topic...." and dropped the thin mauve sheets onto +her lap, and looked at Grandmama, her face queerly tight and flushed, as +if she were about to cry. + +Grandmama had finished her tea, and had been listening quietly. + +Mrs. Hilary said "Oh, my God," and jerked her head back, quivering like +a nervous horse who has had a shock and does not care to conceal it. + +"Your daughter-in-law," said Grandmama, without excitement, "is an +exceedingly vulgar young woman." + +"Vulgar? Rosalind? But of course.... Only that doesn't affect Nan...." + +"Your daughter-in-law," Grandmama added, "is also a very notorious liar." + +"A liar ... oh yes, yes, yes.... But this time it's true. Oh I feel, +I know, it's true. Nan _would_. That Stephen Lumley--he's been hanging +about her for ages. ... Oh yes, it's true what they say. The very +worst...." + +Grandmama glanced at her curiously. The very worst in that direction +had become strangely easier of credence by Mrs. Hilary lately. Grandmama +had observed that. Mr. Cradock's teaching had not been without its +effect. According to Mr. Cradock, people were usually engaged either in +practising the very worst, or in desiring to practise it, or in wishing +and dreaming that they had practised it. It was the nature of mankind, +and not in the least reprehensible, though curable. Thus Mr. Cradock. +Mrs. Hilary had, against her own taste, absorbed part of his teaching, +but nothing could ever persuade her that it was not reprehensible: it +quite obviously was. Also disgusting. Mr. Cradock might say what he +liked. It _was_ disgusting. And when the man had a wife.... + +"It is awful," said Mrs. Hilary. "Awful.... It must be stopped. I shall +go to Rome. At once." + +"That won't stop it, dear, if it is going on. It will only irritate the +young people." + +"Irritate! You can use a word like that! Mother, you don't realise this +ghastly thing." + +"I quite see, my dear, that Nan may be carrying on with this artist. And +very wrong it is, if so. All I say is that your going to Rome won't stop +it. You know that you and Nan don't always get on very smoothly. You rub +each other up.... It would be far better if someone else went. Neville, +say." + +"Neville is ill." Mrs. Hilary shut her lips tightly on that. She was +glad Neville was ill; she had always hated (she could not help it) the +devotion between Neville and Nan. Nan, in her tempestuous childhood, +flaring with rage against her mother, or sullen, spiteful and perverse, +long before she could have put into words the qualities in Mrs. Hilary +which made her like that, had always gone to Neville, nine years older, +to be soothed and restored to good temper. Neville had reprimanded the +little naughty sister, had told her she must be "decent to mother--feel +decent if you can, behave decent in any case," was the way she had put +it. It was Neville who had heard Nan's confidences and helped her out of +scrapes in childhood, schoolgirlhood and ever since. This was very bitter +to Mrs. Hilary. She was jealous of both of them; jealous that so much of +Neville's love should go elsewhere than to her, jealous that Nan, who +gave her nothing except generous and extravagant gifts and occasional, +spasmodic, remorseful efforts at affection and gentleness, should to +Neville give all. + +"Neville is ill," she said. "She certainly won't be fit to travel out +of England this winter. Influenza coming on the top of that miserable +breakdown is a thing to be treated with the greatest care. Even when she +is recovered, post-influenza will keep her weak till the summer. I am +really anxious about her. No; Neville is quite out of the question." + +"Well, what about Pamela?" + +"Pamela is up to her eyes in her work.... Besides, why should Pamela go, +or Neville, rather than I? A girl's mother is obviously the right person. +I may not be of much use to my children in these days, but at least I +hope I can save them from themselves." + +"It takes a clever parent to do that, Emily," said Grandmama, who +doubtless knew. + +"But, mother, what would you _have_ me do? Sit with my hands before me +while my daughter lives in sin? What's _your_ plan?" + +"I'm too old to make plans, dear. I can only look on at the world. I've +looked at the world now for many, many years, and I've learnt that only +great wisdom and great love can change people's decisions as to their way +of life, or turn them from evil courses. Frankly, my child, I doubt if +you have, where Nan is concerned, enough wisdom or enough love. Enough +sympathy, I should rather say, for you have love. But do you feel you +understand the child enough to interfere wisely and successfully?" + +"Oh, you think I'm a fool, mother; of course I know you've always thought +me a fool. Good God, if a mother can't interfere with her own daughter to +save her from wickedness and disaster, who can, I should like to know?" + +"One would indeed like to know that," Grandmama said, sadly. + +"Perhaps you'd like to go yourself," Mrs. Hilary shot at her, quivering +now with anger and feeling. + +"No, my dear. Even if I were able to get to Rome I should know that I was +too old to interfere with the lives of the young. I don't understand them +enough. You believe that you do. Well, I suppose you must go and try. I +can't stop you." + +"You certainly can't. Nothing can stop me.... You're singularly +unsympathetic, mother, about this awful business." + +"I don't feel so, dear. I am very, very sorry for you, and very, very +sorry for Nan (whom, you must remember, we may be slandering). I have +always looked on unlawful love as a very great sin, though there may be +great provocation to it." + +"It is an awful sin." Mr. Cradock could say what he liked on that +subject; he might tell Mrs. Hilary that it was not awful except in so +far as any other yielding to nature's promptings in defiance of the law +of man was awful, but he could not persuade her. Like many other people, +she set that particular sin apart, in a special place by itself; she +would talk of "a bad woman," "an immoral man," a girl who had "lost +her character," and mean merely the one kind of badness, the one +manifestation of immorality, the one element in character. Dishonesty +and cruelty she could forgive, but never that. + +"I shall start in three days," said Mrs. Hilary, becoming tragically +resolute. "I must tell Mr. Cradock to-morrow." + +"That young man? Must he know about Nan's affairs, my dear?" + +"I have to tell him everything, mother. It's part of the course. He is as +secret as the grave." + +Grandmama knew that Emily, less secret than the grave, would have to ease +herself of the sad tale to someone or other in the course of the next +day, and supposed that it had better be to Mr. Cradock, who seemed to be +a kind of hybrid of doctor and clergyman, and so presumably was more +discreet than an ordinary human being. Emily must tell. Emily always +would. That was why she enjoyed this foolish psycho-analysis business so +much. + +At the very thought of it a gleam had brightened Mrs. Hilary's eyes, +and her rigid, tense pose had relaxed. Oh the comfort of telling Mr. +Cradock! Even if he did tell her how it was all in the course of nature, +at least he would sympathise with her trouble about it, and her annoyance +with Grandmama. And he would tell her how best to deal with Nan when +she got to her. Nan's was the sort of case that Mr. Cradock really +did understand. Any situation between the sexes--he was all over it. +Psycho-analysts adored sex; they made an idol of it. They communed with +it, as devotees with their God. They couldn't really enjoy, with their +whole minds, anything else, Mrs. Hilary sometimes vaguely felt. But as, +like the gods of the other devotees, it was to them immanent, everywhere +and in everything; they could be always happy. If they went up into +heaven it was there; if they fled down into hell it was there also. Once, +when Mrs. Hilary had tentatively suggested that Freud, for instance, +over-stated its importance, Mr. Cradock had said firmly "It is impossible +to do that," which settled it once and for all. + +Mrs. Hilary stood up. Her exalted, tragic mood clothed her like a flowing +garment. + +"I shall write to Cook," she said. "Also to Nan, to tell her I am +coming." + +Grandmama, after a moment's silence, seemed to gather herself together +for a final effort. + +"Emily, my child. Is your mind set to do this?" + +"Absolutely, mother. Absolutely and entirely." + +"Shall I tell you what I think? No, you don't want to hear it, but you +drive me to it.... If you go to that foolish, reckless child and attempt +to interfere with her, or even to question her, you will run the risk, if +she is innocent, of driving her into what you are trying to prevent. If +she is already committed to it, you run the risk of shutting the door +against her return. In either case you will alienate her from yourself: +that is the least of the risks you run, though the most certain.... That +is all. I can say no more. But I ask you, my dear.... I beg you, for the +child's sake and your own ... to write neither to Cook nor to Nan." + +Grandmama's breath came rather fast and heavily; her heart was troubling +her; emotion and effort were not good for it. + +Mrs. Hilary stood looking down at the old shrunk figure, shaking a little +as she stood, knowing that she must be patient and calm. + +"You will please allow me to judge. You will please let me take the steps +I think necessary to help my child. I know that you have no confidence in +my judgment or my tact; you've always shown that plainly enough, and done +your best to teach my children the same view of me...." + +Grandmama put up her hand, meaning that she could not stand, neither she +nor her heart could stand, a scene. Mrs. Hilary broke off. For once she +did not want a scene either. In these days she found what vent was +necessary for her emotional system in her interviews with Mr. Cradock. + +"I daresay you mean well, mother. But in this matter I must be the judge. +I am a mother first and foremost. It is the only thing that life has left +for me to be." (Scarcely a daughter, she meant: that was made too +difficult for her; you would almost imagine that the office was not +wanted.) + +She turned to the writing table. + +"First of all I shall write to Rosalind, and tell her what I think of her +and her abominable gossip." + +She began to write. + +Grandmama sat shrunk and old and tired in her chair. + +Mrs. Hilary's pen scratched over the paper, telling Rosalind what she +thought. + +"Dear Rosalind," she wrote, "I was very much surprised at your +letter. I do not know why you should trouble to repeat to me these +ridiculous stories about Nan. You cannot suppose that I am likely to +care either what you or any of your friends are saying about one of my +children...." And so on. One knows the style. It eases the mind of the +writer and does not deceive the reader. When the reader is Rosalind +Hilary it amuses her vastly. + + +4 + +Next day, at three p.m., Mrs. Hilary told Mr. Cradock all about it. Mr. +Cradock was not in the least surprised. Nor had he the slightest, not the +remotest doubt that Nan and Stephen Lumley were doing what Mrs. Hilary +called living in sin, what he preferred to call obeying the natural ego. +(After all, as any theologian would point out, the terms are synonymous +in a fallen world.) + +"I must have your advice," Mrs. Hilary said. "You must tell me what line +to take with her." + +"Shall you," Mr. Cradock enquired, thoughtful and intelligent, "find your +daughter in a state of conflict?" + +Mrs. Hilary spread her hands helplessly before her. + +"I know nothing; nothing." + +"A very great deal," said Mr. Cradock, "depends on that. If she is torn +between the cravings of the primitive ego and the inhibitions put upon +these cravings by the conventions of society--if, in fact, her censor, +her endopsychic censor, is still functioning...." + +"Oh, I doubt if Nan's got an endopsychic censor. She is so lawless +always." + +"Every psyche has a censor." Mr. Cradock was firm. "Regarded, of course, +by the psyche with very varying degrees of respect. Well, what I mean to +say is, if your daughter is in a state of conflict, with forces pulling +her both ways, her case will be very much easier to deal with than if she +has let her primitive ego so take possession of the situation that she +feels in a state of harmony. In the former case, you will only have to +strengthen the forces which are opposing her sexual craving...." + +Mrs. Hilary fidgeted uneasily. "Oh, I don't think Nan feels _that_ +exactly. None of my children...." + +Mr. Cradock gave her an amused glance. It seemed sometimes that he would +never get this foolish lady properly educated. + +"Your children, I presume, are human, Mrs. Hilary. Sexual craving means +a craving for intimacy with a member of another sex." + +"Oh well, I suppose it does. I don't care for the _name_, somehow. But +please go on." + +"I was going to say, if you find, on the other hand, that your daughter's +nature has attained harmony in connection with this course she is +pursuing, your task will be far more difficult. You will then have to +_create_ a discord, instead of merely strengthening it.... May I ask your +daughter's age?" + +"Nan is thirty-three." + +"A dangerous age." + +"All Nan's ages," said Mrs. Hilary, "have been dangerous. Nan is like +that." + +"As to that," said Mr. Cradock, "we may say that all ages are dangerous +to all people, in this dangerous life we live. But the thirties are a +specially dangerous time for women. They have outlived the shynesses +and restraints of girlhood, and not attained to the caution and +discretion of middle age. They are reckless, and consciously or +unconsciously on the lookout for adventure. They see ahead of them +the end of youth, and that quickens their pace.... Has passion always +been a strong element in your daughter's life?" + +"Oh, passion...." (Another word not liked by Mrs. Hilary.) "Not quite +that, I should say. Nan has been reckless; she has got into scrapes, got +herself talked about. She has played about with men a good deal always. +But as to passion...." + +"A common thing enough," Mr. Cradock told her, as it were reassuringly. +"Nothing to fight shy of, or be afraid of. But something to be regulated +of course.... Now, the thing is to oppose to this irregular desire of +your daughter's for this man a new and a stronger set of desires. Fight +one group of complexes with another. You can't, I suppose, persuade her +to be analysed? There are good analysts in Rome." + +"Oh no. Nan laughs at it. She laughs at everything of that sort." + +"A great mistake. A mistake often made by shallow and foolish people. +They might as well laugh at surgery.... Well now, to go into this +question of the battle between the complex-groups...." + +He went into it, patiently and exhaustively. His phrases drifted over +Mrs. Hilary's head. + +"... a deterrent force residing in the ego and preventing us from +stepping outside the bounds of propriety.... Rebellious messages sent +up from the Unconscious, which wishes to live, love and act in archaic +modes ... conflict with the progress of human society ... inhibitory and +repressive power of the censor...." (How wonderful, thought Mrs. Hilary, +to be able to talk so like a book for so long together!) ... "give the +censor all the help we can ... keep the Unconscious in order by turning +its energies into some other channel ... give it a substitute.... The +energy involved in the intense desire for someone of another sex can be +diverted ... employed on some useful work. Libido ... it should all be +used. Find another channel for your daughter's libido.... Her life is +perhaps a rather vacant one?" + +That Mrs. Hilary was able to reply to. + +"Nan's? Vacant? Oh no. She is quite full of energy. Too full. Always +doing a thousand things. And she writes, you know." + +"Ah. That should be an outlet. A great deal of libido is used up by that. +Well, her present strong desire for this man should be sublimated into a +desire for something else. I gather that her root trouble is lawlessness. +That can be cured. You must make her remember her first lawless action." +(Man's first disobedience and the fruit thereof, thought Mrs. Hilary.) + +"O dear me," she said, "I'm afraid that would be impossible. When she was +a month old she used to attempt to dash her bottle onto the floor." + +"People have even remembered their baptisms, when driven back to them by +analysis." + +"Our children were not baptised. My husband was something of a Unitarian. +He said he would not tie them up with a rite against which they might +react in later life. So they were merely registered." + +"Ah. In a way that is a pity. Baptism is an impressive moment in the +sensitive consciousness of the infant. It has sometimes been found +to be a sort of lamp shining through the haze of the early memory. +Registration, owing to the non-participation of the infant, is useless +in that way." + +"Nan might remember how she kicked me when I short-coated her," Mrs. +Hilary mused, hopefully. + +Mr. Cradock flowed on. Mrs. Hilary, listened, assented, was impressed. It +all sounded so simple, so wonderful, even so beautiful. But she thought +once or twice, "He doesn't know Nan." + +"Thank you," she said, rising to go when her hour was over. "You have +made me feel so much stronger, as usual. I can't thank you enough for all +you do for me. I could face none of my troubles and problems but for your +help." + +"That merely means," said Mr. Cradock, who always got the last word, +"that your ego is at present in what is called the state of infantile +dependence or tutelage. A necessary but an impermanent stage in its +struggle towards the adult level of the reality-principle." + +"I suppose so," Mrs. Hilary said. "Good-bye." + +"He is too clever for me," she thought, as she went home. "He is often +above my head." But she was used to that in the people she met. + + + + +CHAPTER XIII + +THE DAUGHTER + + +1 + +Mrs. Hilary hated travelling, which is indeed detestable. The Channel was +choppy and she a bad sailor; the train from Calais to Paris continued the +motion, and she remained a bad sailor (bad sailors often do this). She +lay back and smelled salts, and they were of no avail. At Paris she tried +and failed to dine. She passed a wretched night, being of those who +detest nights in trains without _wagons-lits_, but save money by not +having _wagons-lits_, and wonder dismally all night if it is worth it. +Modane in the chilly morning annoyed her as it annoys us all. The customs +people were rude and the other travellers in the way. Mrs. Hilary, who +was not good in crowds, pushed them, getting excited and red in the face. +Psycho-analysis had made her more patient and calm than she had been +before, but even so, neither patient nor calm when it came to jostling +crowds. + +"I am not strong enough for all this," she thought, in the Mont Cenis +tunnel. + +Rushing out of it into Italy, she thought, "Last time I was here was in +'99, with Richard. If Richard were here now he would help me." He would +face the customs at Modane, find and get the tickets, deal with uncivil +Germans--(Germans were often uncivil to Mrs. Hilary and she to them, and +though she had not met any yet on this journey, owing doubtless to their +state of collapse and depression consequent on the Great Peace, one might +get in at any moment, Germans being naturally buoyant). Richard would +have got hold of pillows, seen that she was comfortable at night, told +her when there was time to get out for coffee and when there wasn't (Mrs. +Hilary was no hand at this; she would try no runs and get run out, or all +but run out). And Richard would have helped to save Nan. Nan and her +father had got on pretty well, for a naughty girl and an elderly parent. +They had appreciated one another's brains, which is not a bad basis. They +had not accepted or even liked one another's ideas on life, but this is +not necessary or indeed usual in families. Mrs. Hilary certainly did not +go so far as to suppose that Nan would have obeyed her father had he +appeared before her in Rome and bidden her change her way of life, but +she might have thought it over. And to make Nan think over anything +which _she_ bade her do would be a phenomenal task. What had Mr. Cradock +said--make her remember her first disobedience, find the cause of it, +talk it out with her, get it into the open--and then she would be cured +of her present lawlessness. Why? That was the connection that always +puzzled Mrs. Hilary a little. Why should remembering that you had done, +and why you had done, the same kind of thing thirty years ago cure you +of doing it now? Similarly, why should remembering that a nurse had +scared you as an infant cure you of your present fear of burglars? In +point of fact, it didn't. Mr. Cradock had tried this particular cure on +Mrs. Hilary. It must be her own fault, of course, but somehow she had not +felt much less nervous about noises in the house at night since Mr. +Cradock had brought up into the light, as he called it, that old fright +in the nursery. After all, why should one? However, hers not to reason +why; and perhaps the workings of Nan's mind might be more orthodox. + +At Turin Germans got in. Of course. They were all over Italy. Italy was +welcoming them with both hands, establishing again the economic entente. +These were a mother and a _backfisch_, and they looked shyly and sullenly +at Mrs. Hilary and the other Englishwoman in the compartment. They were +thin, and Mrs. Hilary noted it with satisfaction. She didn't believe for +one moment in starving Germans, but these certainly did not look so +prosperous and buxom as a pre-war German mother and _backfisch_ would +have looked. They were equally uncivil, though. They pulled both windows +up to the top. The two English ladies promptly pulled them down half-way. +English ladies are the only beings in the world who like open windows in +winter. English lower-class women do not, nor do English gentlemen. If +you want to keep warm while travelling (to frowst, as the open air school +calls it) do not get in with well-bred Englishwomen. + +The German mother broke out in angry remonstrance, indicating that she +had neuralgia and the _backfisch_ a cold in the head. There followed one +of those quarrels which occur on this topic in trains, and are so bitter +and devastating. It had now more than the pre-war bitterness; between the +combatants flowed rivers of blood; behind them ranked male relatives +killed or maimed by the male relatives of their foes on the opposite +seat. The English ladies won. Germany was a conquered race, and knew it. +In revenge, the _backfisch_ coughed and sneezed "all over the carriage," +as Mrs. Hilary put it, "in the disgusting German way," and her mother +made noises as if she could be sick if she tried hard enough. + +So it was a detestable journey. And the second night in the train was +worse than the first. For the Germans, would you believe it, shut both +windows while the English were asleep, and the English, true to their +caste and race, woke with bad headaches. + + +2 + +When they got to Rome in the morning Mrs. Hilary felt thoroughly ill. She +had to strive hard for self-control; it would not do to meet Nan in an +unnerved, collapsed state. All her psychical strength was necessary +to deal with Nan. So when she stood on the platform with her luggage she +looked and felt not only like one who has slept (but not much) in a train +for two nights and fought with Germans about windows but also like an +elderly virgin martyr (spiritually tense and strung-up, and distraught, +and on the line between exultation and hysteria). + +Nan was there. Nan, pale and pinched, and looking plain in the nipping +morning air, though wrapped in a fur coat. (One of the points about Nan +was that, though she sometimes looked plain, she never looked dowdy; +there was always a distinction, a chic, about her.) + +Nan kissed her mother and helped with the luggage and got a cab. Nan was +good at railway stations and such places. Mrs. Hilary was not. + +They drove out into the hideous new streets. Mrs. Hilary shivered. + +"Oh, how ugly!" + +"Rome is ugly, this part." + +"It's worse since '99." + +But she did not really remember clearly how it had looked in '99. The old +desire to pose, to show that she knew something, took her. Yet she felt +that Nan, who knew that she knew next to nothing, would not be deceived. + +"Oh ... the Forum!" + +"The Forum of Trajan," Nan said. "We don't pass the Roman Forum on the +way to our street." + +"The Forum of Trajan, of course, I meant that." + +But she knew that Nan knew she had meant the Forum Romanum. + +"Rome is always Rome," she said, which was safer than identifying +particular buildings, or even Forums, in it. "Nothing like it anywhere." + +"How long can you stay, mother? I've got you a room in the house I'm +lodging in. It's in a little street the other side of the Corso. Rather +a mediaeval street, I'm afraid. That is, it smells. But the rooms are +clean." + +"Oh, I'm not staying long.... We'll talk later; talk it all out. A +thorough talk. When we get in. After a cup of tea...." + +Mrs. Hilary remembered that Nan did not yet know why she had come. After +a cup of strong tea.... A cup of tea first.... Coffee wasn't the same. +One needed tea, after those awful Germans. She told Nan about these. Nan +knew that she would have had tiresome travelling companions; she always +did; if it weren't Germans it would be inconsiderate English. She was +unlucky. + +"Go straight to bed and rest when we get in," Nan advised; but she shook +her head. "We must talk first." + +Nan, she thought, looked pinched about the lips, and thin, and her black +brows were at times nervous and sullen. Nan did not look happy. Was it +guilt, or merely the chill morning air? + +They stopped at a shabby old house in a narrow mediaeval street in the +Borgo, which had been a palace and was now let in apartments. Here Nan +had two bare, gilded, faded rooms. Mrs. Hilary sat by a charcoal stove in +one of them, and Nan made her some tea. After the tea Mrs. Hilary felt +revived. She wouldn't go to bed; she felt that the time for the talk had +come. She looked round the room for signs of Stephen Lumley, but all the +signs she saw were of Nan; Nan's books, Nan's proofs strewing the table. +Of course that bad man wouldn't come while she was there. He was no doubt +waiting eagerly for her to be gone. Probably they both were.... + + +3 + +"Nan--" They were still sitting by the stove, and Nan was lighting a +cigarette. "Nan--do you guess why I've come?" + +Nan threw away the match. + +"No, mother. How should I?... One does come to Rome, I suppose, if one +gets a chance." + +"Oh, I've not come to see Rome. I know Rome. Long before you were +born.... I've come to see you. And to take you back with me." + +Nan glanced at her quickly, a sidelong glance of suspicion and +comprehension. Her lower lip projected stubbornly. + +"Ah, I see you know what I mean. Yes, I've heard. Rumours reached us--it +was through Rosalind, of course. And I'm afraid ... I'm afraid that for +once she spoke the truth." + +"Oh no, she didn't. I don't know what Rosalind's been saying this time, +but it would be odd if it was the truth." + +"Nan, it's no use denying things. I _know_." + +It was true; she did know. A few months ago she would have doubted and +questioned; but Mr. Cradock had taught her better. She had learnt from +him the simple truth about life; that is, that nearly everyone is nearly +always involved up to the eyes in the closest relationship with someone +of another sex. It is nature's way with mankind. Another thing she had +learnt from him was that the more they denied it the more it was so; +protests of innocence and admissions of guilt were alike proofs of the +latter. So she was accurate when she said that it was no use for Nan to +deny anything. It was no use whatever. + +Nan had become cool and sarcastic--her nastiest, most dangerous manner. + +"Do you think you would care to be a little more explicit, mother? I'm +afraid I don't quite follow. What is it no use my denying? _What_ do you +know?" + +Mrs. Hilary gathered herself together. Her head trembled and jerked with +emotion; wisps of her hair, tousled by the night, escaped over her +collar. She spoke tremulously, tensely, her hands wrung together. + +"That you are going on with a married man. That you are his mistress," +she said, putting it at its crudest, since Nan wanted plain speaking. + +Nan sat quite still, smoking. The silence thrilled with Mrs. Hilary's +passion. + +"I see," Nan said at last. "And it's no use my denying it. In that case +I won't." Her voice was smooth and clear and still, like cold water. "You +know the man's name too, I presume?" + +"Of course. Everyone knows it. I tell you, Nan, everyone's talking of you +and him. A town topic, Rosalind calls it." + +"Rosalind would. Town must be very dull just now, if that's all they have +to talk of." + +"But it's not the scandal I'm thinking of," Mrs. Hilary went on, "though, +God knows, that's bad enough--I'm thankful Father died when he did and +was spared it--but the thing itself. The awful, awful thing itself. Have +you no shame, Nan?" + +"Not much." + +"For all our sakes. Not for mine--I know you don't care a rap for +that--but for Neville, whom you do profess to love...." + +"I should think we might leave Neville out of it. She's shown no signs of +believing any story about me." + +"Well, she does believe it, you may depend upon it. No one could help it. +People write from here saying it's an open fact." + +"People here can't have much to put in their letters." + +"Oh, they'll make room for gossip. People always will. Always. But I'm +not going to dwell on that side of things, because I know you don't care +what anyone says. It's the _wrongness_ of it.... A married man.... Even +if his wife divorces him! It would be in the papers.... And if she +doesn't you can't ever marry him.... Do you care for the man?" + +"What man?" + +"Don't quibble. Stephen Lumley, of course." + +"Stephen Lumley is a friend of mine. I'm fond of him." + +"I don't believe you do love him. I believe it's all recklessness and +perversity. Lawlessness. That's what Mr. Cradock said." + +"Mr. Cradock?" Nan's eyebrows went up. + +Mrs. Hilary flushed a brighter scarlet. The colour kept running over her +face and going back again, all the time she was talking. + +"Your psycho-analyst doctor," said Nan, and her voice was a little harder +and cooler than before. "I suppose you had an interesting conversation +with him about me." + +"I have to tell him everything," Mrs. Hilary stammered. "It's part +of the course. I did consult him about you. I'm not ashamed of it. He +understands about these things. He's not an ordinary man." + +"This is very interesting." Nan lit another cigarette. "It seems that +I've been a boon all round as a town topic--to London, to Rome and to St. +Mary's Bay.... Well, what did he advise about me?" + +Mrs. Hilary remembered vaguely and in part, but did not think it would be +profitable just now to tell Nan. + +"We have to be very wise about this," she said, collecting herself. "Very +wise and firm. Lawlessness.... I wonder if you remember, Nan, throwing +your shoes at my head when you were three?" + +"No. But I can quite believe I did. It was the sort of thing I used to +do." + +"Think back, Nan. What is the first act of naughtiness and disobedience +you remember, and what moved you to it?" + +Nan, who knew a good deal more about psycho-analysis than Mrs. Hilary +did, laughed curtly. + +"No good, mother. That won't work on me. I'm not susceptible to the +treatment. Too hard-headed. What was Mr. Cradock's next brain-wave?" + +"Oh well, if you take it like this, what's the use...." + +"None at all. I advise you not to bother yourself. It will only make your +headache worse.... Now I think after all this excitement you had better +go and lie down, don't you? I'm going out, anyhow." + +Then Stephen Lumley knocked at the door and came in. A tall, slouching +hollow-chested man of forty, who looked unhappy and yet cynically +amused at the world. He had a cough, and unusually bright eyes under +overhanging brows. + +Nan said, "This is Stephen Lumley, mother. My mother, Stephen," and left +them to do the rest, watching, critical and aloof, to see how they would +manage the situation. + +Mrs. Hilary managed it by rising from her chair and standing rigidly in +the middle of the room, breathing hard and staring. Stephen Lumley looked +enquiringly at Nan. + +"How do you do, Mrs. Hilary," he said. "I expect you're pretty well +played out by that beastly journey, aren't you." + +Mrs. Hilary's voice came stifled, choked, between pants. She was working +up; or rather worked up: Nan knew the symptoms. + +"You dare to come into my presence.... I must ask you to leave my +daughter's sitting-room _immediately_. I have come to take her back to +England with me at once. Please go. There is nothing that can possibly be +said between you and me--nothing." + +Stephen Lumley, a cool and quiet person, raised his brows, looked enquiry +once more at Nan, found no answer, said, "Well, then, I'll say good-bye," +and departed. + +Mrs. Hilary wrung her hands together. + +"How dare he! How dare he! Into my very presence! He has no shame...." + +Nan watched her coolly. But a red spot had begun to burn in each cheek at +her mother's opening words to Lumley, and still burned. Mrs. Hilary knew +of old that still-burning, deadly anger of Nan's. + +"Thank you, mother. You've helped me to make up my mind. I'm going to +Capri with Stephen next week. I've refused up till now. He was going +without me. You've made up my mind for me. You can tell Mr. Cradock that +if he asks." + +Nan was fiercely, savagely desirous to hurt. In the same spirit she had +doubtless thrown her shoes at Mrs. Hilary thirty years ago. Rage and +disgust, hot rebellion and sick distaste--what she had felt then she +felt now. During her mother's breathless outbreak at Stephen Lumley, +standing courteous and surprised before her, she had crossed her Rubicon. +And now with flaming words she burned her boats. + +Mrs. Hilary burst into tears. But her tears had never yet quenched Nan's +flames. Nan made her lie down and gave her sal volatile. Sal volatile +eases the head and nervous system and composes the manners, but no more +than tears does it quench flames. + + +4 + +The day that followed was strange, and does not sound likely, but life +often does not. Nan took Mrs. Hilary out to lunch at a trattoria near +the Forum, as it were to change the subject, and they spent the usual +first afternoon of visitors in Rome, who hasten to view the Forum with +a guide to the most recent excavations in their hands. Mrs. Hilary felt +completely uninterested to-day in recent or any other excavations. But, +obsessed even now with the old instinctive desire (the fond hope, rather) +not to seem unintelligent before her children, more especially when she +was not on good terms with them, she accompanied Nan, who firmly and +deftly closed or changed the subjects of unlawful love, Stephen Lumley, +Capri, returning to England, and her infant acts of wilfulness, whenever +her mother opened them, which was frequently, as Mrs. Hilary found these +things easier conversational topics than the buildings in the Forum. Nan +was determined to keep the emotional pressure low for the rest of the +day, and she was fairly competent at this when she tried. As Mrs. Hilary +had equal gifts at keeping it high, it was a well-matched contest. When +she left the Forum for a tea shop, both were tired out. The Forum is +tiring; emotion is tiring; tears are tiring; quarrelling is tiring; +travelling through to Rome is tiring; all five together are annihilating. + +However, they had tea. + +Mrs. Hilary was cold and bitter now, not hysterical. Nan, who was +living a bad life, and was also tiresomely exactly informed about the +differences between the Forum in '99 and the Forum to-day (a subject on +which Mrs. Hilary was hazy) was not fit, until she came to a better mind, +to be spoken to. Mrs. Hilary shut her lips tight and averted her reddened +eyes. She hated Nan just now. She could have loved her had she been +won to repentance, but now--"Nan was never like the rest," she thought. + +Nan persisted in making light, equable conversation, which Mrs. Hilary +thought in bad taste. She talked of England and the family, asked after +Grandmama, Neville and the rest. + +"Neville is extremely ill," Mrs. Hilary said, quite untruly, but +that was, to do her justice, the way in which she always saw illness, +particularly Neville's. "And worried to death about Gerda, who seems to +have gone off her head since that accident in Cornwall. She is still +sticking to that insane, wicked notion about not getting married." + +Nan had heard before of this. + +"She'll give that up," she said, coolly, "when she finds she really can't +have Barry if she doesn't. Gerda gets what she wants." + +"Oh, you all do that, the whole lot of you.... And a nice example +_you're_ setting the child." + +"She'll give it up," Nan repeated, keeping the conversation on Gerda. +"Gerda hasn't the martyr touch. She won't perish for a principle. She +wants Barry and she'll have him, though she may hold out for a time. +Gerda doesn't lose things, in the end." + +"She's a very silly child, and I suppose she's been mixing with dreadful +friends and picked up these ideas. At twenty there's some excuse for +ignorant foolishness." But none at thirty-three, Mrs. Hilary meant. + +"Barry Briscoe," she added, "is being quite firm about it. Though he is +desperately in love with her, Neville tells me; desperately." + +He's soon got over you, even if he did care for you once, and even if you +did send him away, her emphasis implied. + +In Nan, casually flicking the ash off her cigarette, a queer impulse came +and went. For a moment she wanted to cry; to drop hardness and lightness +and pretence, and cry like a child and say "Mother, comfort me. Don't go +on hurting me. I love Barry. Be kind to me, oh be kind to me!" + +If she had done it, Mrs. Hilary would have taken her in her arms and been +all mother, and the wound in their affection would have been temporarily +healed. + +Nan said nonchalantly "I suppose he is. They're sure to be all +right.... Now what next, mother? It's getting dark for seeing things." + +"I am tired to death," said Mrs. Hilary. "I shall go back to those +dreadful rooms and try to rest.... It has been an awful day.... I hate +Rome. In '99 it was so different. Father and I went about together; he +showed me everything. He _knew_ about it all. Besides...." + +Besides, how could I enjoy sight-seeing after that scene this morning, +and with this awful calamity that has happened? + +They went back. Mrs. Hilary was desperately missing her afternoon hour +with Mr. Cradock. She had come to rely on it on a Wednesday. + + +5 + +Nan sat up late, correcting proofs, after Mrs. Hilary had gone to bed. +Galleys lay all round her on the floor by the stove. She let them slip +from her knee and lie there. She hated them.... + +She pressed her hands over her eyes, shutting them out, shutting out +life. She was going off with Stephen Lumley. She had told him so this +morning. Both their lives were broken; hers by Barry, whom she loved, his +by his wife, whom he disliked. He loved her; he wanted her. She could +with him find relief, find life a tolerable thing. They could have a good +time together. They were good companions; their need, though dissimilar, +was mutual. They saw the same beauty, spoke the same tongue, laughed at +the same things. In the very thought of Stephen, with his cynical humour, +his clear, keen mind, his lazy power of brain, Nan had found relief all +that day, reacting desperately from a mind fuddled with sentiment and +emotion as with drink, a soft, ignorant brain, which knew and cared about +nothing except people, a hysterical passion of anger and malice. They had +pushed her sharply and abruptly over the edge of decision, that mind and +brain and passion. Stephen, against whom their fierce anger was +concentrated, was so different.... + +To get away, to get right away from everything and everyone, with +Stephen. Not to have to go back to London alone, to see what she could +not, surely, bear to see--Barry and Gerda, Gerda and Barry, always, +everywhere, radiant and in love. And Neville, Gerda's mother, who saw so +much. And Rosalind, who saw everything, everything, and said so. And Mrs. +Hilary.... + +To saunter round the queer, lovely corners of the earth with Stephen, +light oneself by Stephen's clear, flashing mind, look after Stephen's +weak, neglected body as he never could himself ... that was the only +anodyne. Life would then some time become an adventure again, a gay +stroll through the fair, instead of a desperate sickness and nightmare. + +Barry, oh Barry.... Nan, who had thought she was getting better, found +that she was not. Tears stormed and shook her at last. She crumpled up on +the floor among the galley-slips, her head upon the chair. + +Those damned proofs--who wanted them? What were books? What was anything? + + +6 + +Mrs. Hilary came in, in her dressing-gown, red-eyed. She had heard +strangled sounds, and knew that her child was crying. + +"My darling!" + +Her arms were round Nan's shoulders; she was kneeling among the proofs. + +"My little girl--Nan!" + +"Mother...." + +They held each other close. It was a queer moment, though not an +unprecedented one in the stormy history of their relations together. +A queer, strange, comforting, healing moment, the fleeting shadow of a +great rock in a barren land; a strayed fragment of something which should +have been between them always but was not. Certainly an odd moment. + +"My own baby.... You're unhappy...." + +"Unhappy--yes.... Darling mother, it can't be helped. Nothing can be +helped.... Don't let's talk ... darling." + +Strange words from Nan. Strange for Mrs. Hilary to feel her hand held +against Nan's wet cheek and kissed. + +Strange moment: and it could not last. The crying child wants its mother; +the mother wants to comfort the crying child. A good bridge, but one +inadequate for the strain of daily traffic. The child, having dried +its tears, watches the bridge break again, and thinks it a pity but +inevitable. The mother, less philosophic, may cry in her turn, thinking +perhaps that the bridge may be built this time in that way; but, the +child having the colder heart, it seldom is. + +There remain the moments, impotent but indestructible. + + + + +CHAPTER XIV + +YOUTH TO YOUTH + + +1 + +Kay was home for the Christmas vacation. He was full, not so much of +Cambridge, as of schemes for establishing a co-operative press next year. +He was learning printing and binding, and wanted Gerda to learn too. + +"Because, if you're really not going to marry Barry, and if Barry sticks +to not having you without, you'll be rather at a loose end, won't you, +and you may as well come and help us with the press.... But of course, +you know," Kay added absently, his thoughts still on the press, "I should +advise you to give up on that point." + +"Give up, Kay? Marry, do you mean?" + +"Yes.... It doesn't seem to me to be a point worth making a fuss about. +Of course I agree with you in theory--I always have. But I've come to +think lately that it's not a point of much importance. And perfectly +sensible people are doing it all the time. You know Jimmy Kenrick and +Susan Mallow have done it? They used to say they wouldn't, but they have. +The fact is, people _do_ do it, whatever they say about it beforehand. +And though in theory it's absurd, it seems often to work out pretty well +in actual life. Personally I should make no bones about it, if I wanted +a girl and she wanted marriage. Of course a girl can always go on being +called by her own name if she likes. That has points." + +"Of course one could do that," Gerda pondered. + +"It's a sound plan in some ways. It saves trouble and explanation +to go on with the name you've published your things under before +marriage.... By the way, what about your poems, Gerda? They'll be about +ready by the time we get our press going, won't they? We can afford to +have some slight stuff of that sort if we get hold of a few really good +things to start with, to make our name." + +Gerda's thoughts were not on her poems, nor on Kay's press, but on his +advice about matrimony. For the first time she wavered. If Kay thought +that.... It set the business in a new light. And of course other people +_were_ doing it; sound people, the people who talked the same language +and belonged to the same set as one's self. + +Kay had spoken. It was the careless, authentic voice of youth speaking to +youth. It was a trumpet blast making a breach in the walls against which +the batteries of middle age had thundered in vain. Gerda told herself +that she must look further into this, think it over again, talk it over +with other people of the age to know what was right. If it could be +managed with honour, she would find it a great relief to give up on this +point. For Barry was so firm; he would never give up; and, after all, one +of them must, if it could be done with a clear conscience. + + +2 + +Ten days later Gerda said to Barry, "I've been thinking it over again, +Barry, and I've decided that perhaps it will be all right for us to get +married after all." + +Barry took both her hands and kissed each in turn, to show that he was +not triumphing but adoring. + +"You mean it? You feel you can really do it without violating your +conscience? Sure, darling?" + +"Yes, I think I'm sure. Lots of quite sensible, good people have done it +lately." + +"Oh any number, of course--if _that's_ any reason." + +"Not, not those people. My sort of people, I mean. People who believe +what I do, and wouldn't tie themselves up and lose their liberty for +anything." + +"I agree with Lenin. He says liberty is a bourgeois dream." + +"Barry, I may keep my name, mayn't I? I may still be called Gerda +Bendish, by people in general?" + +"Of course, if you like. Rather silly, isn't it? Because it won't _be_ +your name. But that's your concern." + +"It's the name I've always written and drawn under, you see." + +"Yes. I see your point. Of course you shall be Gerda Bendish anywhere you +like, only not on cheques, if you don't mind." + +"And I don't much want to wear a wedding ring, Barry." + +"That's as you like, too, of course. You might keep it in your purse when +travelling, to produce if censorious hotel keepers look askance at us. +Even the most abandoned ladies do that sometimes, I believe. Or your +marriage lines will do as well.... Gerda, you blessed darling, it's most +frightfully decent and sporting of you to have changed your mind and +owned up. Next time we differ I'll try and be the one to do it, I +honestly will.... I say, let's come out by ourselves and dine and do a +theatre, to celebrate the occasion." + +So they celebrated the triumph of institutionalism. + + +3 + +Their life together, thought Barry, would be a keen, jolly, adventuring +business, an ardent thing, full of gallant dreams and endeavours. It +should never grow tame or stale or placid, never lose its fine edge. +There would be mountain peak beyond mountain peak to scale together. They +would be co-workers, playmates, friends and lovers all at once, and they +would walk in liberty as in a bourgeois dream. + +So planned Barry Briscoe, the romantic, about whose head the vision +splendid always hovered, a realisable, capturable thing. + +Gerda thought, "I'm happy. Poetry and drawing and Barry. I've everything +I want, except a St. Bernard pup, and Kay's giving me that for Christmas. +_I'm happy._" + +It was a tingling, intense, sensuous feeling, like stretching warm before +a good fire, or lying in fragrant thymy woods in June, in the old Junes +when suns were hot. Life was a song and a dream and a summer morning. + +"You're happy, Gerda," Neville said to her once, gladly but half +wistfully, and she nodded, with her small gleaming smile. + +"Go on being happy," Neville told her, and Gerda did not know that she +had nearly added "for it's cost rather a lot, your happiness." Gerda +seldom cared how much things had cost; she did not waste thought on such +matters. She was happy. + + + + +CHAPTER XV + +THE DREAM + + +1 + +Barry and Gerda were married in January in a registry office, and, as all +concerned disliked wedding parties, there was no wedding party. + +After they had gone, Neville, recovered now from the lilies and languors +of illness, plunged into the roses and raptures of social life. One +mightn't, she said to herself, be able to accomplish much in this world, +or imprint one's personality on one's environment by deeds and +achievements, but one could at least enjoy life, be a pleased +participator in its spoils and pleasures, an enchanted spectator of its +never-ending flux and pageant, its richly glowing moving pictures. One +could watch the play out, even if one hadn't much of a part oneself. +Music, art, drama, the company of eminent, pleasant and entertaining +persons, all the various forms of beauty, the carefully cultivated +richness, graces and elegances which go to build up the world of the +fortunate, the cultivated, the prosperous and the well-bred--Neville +walked among these like the soul in the lordly pleasure house built for +her by the poet Tennyson, or like Robert Browning glutting his sense upon +the world--"Miser, there waits the gold for thee!"--or Francis Thompson +swinging the earth a trinket at his wrist. In truth, she was at times +self-consciously afraid that she resembled all these three, whom (in the +moods they thus expressed) she disliked beyond reason, finding them +morbid and hard to please. + +She too knew herself morbid and hard to please. If she had not been +so, to be Rodney's wife would surely have been enough; it would have +satisfied all her nature. Why didn't it? Was it perhaps really because, +though she loved him, it was not with the uncritical devotion of the +early days? She had for so many years now seen clearly, through and +behind his charm, his weakness, his vanities, his scorching ambitions +and jealousies, his petulant angers, his dependence on praise and +admiration. She had no jealousy now of his frequent confidential +intimacies with other attractive women; they were harmless enough, and +he never lost the need of and dependence on her; but they may have helped +to clarify her vision of him. + +Rodney had no failings beyond what are the common need of human nature; +he was certainly good enough for her. Their marriage was all right. It +was only the foolish devil of egotism in her which goaded to unwholesome +activity the other side of her nature, that need for self-expression +which marriage didn't satisfy. + + +2 + +In February she suddenly tired of London and the British climate, and was +moved by a desire to travel. So she went to Italy, and stayed in Capri +with Nan and Stephen Lumley, who were leading on that island lives by +turns gaily indolent and fiercely industrious, finding the company +stimulating and the climate agreeable and soothing to Stephen's defective +lungs. + +From Italy Neville went to Greece. Corinth, Athens, the islands, Tempe, +Delphi, Crete--how good to have money and be able to see all these! Italy +and Greece are Europe's pleasure grounds; there the cultivated and the +prosperous traveller may satisfy his soul and forget carking cares and +stabbing ambitions, and drug himself with loveliness. + +If Neville abruptly tired of it, and set her face homewards in early +April, it was partly because she felt the need of Rodney, and partly +because she saw, fleetingly but day by day more lucidly, that one could +not take one's stand, for satisfaction of desire, on the money which one +happened to have but which the majority bitterly and emptily lacked. Some +common way there had to be, some freedom all might grasp, a liberty not +for the bourgeois only, but for the proletariat--the poor, the sad, the +gay proletariat, who also grew old and lost their dreams, and had not the +wherewithal to drug their souls, unless indeed they drank much liquor, +and that is but a poor artificial way to peace. + +Voyaging homewards through the spring seas, Neville saw life as an +entangling thicket, the Woods of Westermain she had loved in her +childhood, in which the scaly dragon squatted, the craving monster self +that had to be subjugated before one could walk free in the enchanted +woods. + + "Him shall change, transforming late, + Wonderously renovate...." + +Dimly discerning through the thicket the steep path that climbed to +such liberty as she sought, seeing far off the place towards which her +stumbling feet were set, where life should be lived with alert readiness +and response, oblivious of its personal achievements, its personal claims +and spoils, Neville the spoilt, vain, ambitious, disappointed egoist, +strained her eyes into the distance and half smiled. It might be a dream, +that liberty, but it was a dream worth a fight.... + + + + +CHAPTER XVI + +TIME + + +1 + +February at St. Mary's Bay. The small fire flickered and fluttered in +the grate with a sound like the windy beating of wings. The steady rain +sloped against the closed windows of The Gulls, and dropped patteringly +on the asphalt pavements of Marine Crescent outside, and the cold grey +sea tumbled moaning. + +Grandmama sat in her arm-chair by the hearth, reading the Autobiography +of a Cabinet Minister's Wife and listening to the fire, the sea and the +rain, and sleeping a little now and again. + +Mrs. Hilary sat in another arm-chair, surrounded by bad novels, as if she +had been a reviewer. She was regarding them, too, with something of the +reviewer's pained and inimical distaste, dipping now into one, shutting +it with a sharp sigh, trying another; flinging it on the floor with an +ejaculation of anger and fatigue. + +Grandmama woke with a start, and said "What fell? Did something fall?" +and adjusted her glasses and opened the Autobiography again. + +"A sadly vulgar, untruthful and ill-written book. The sort of +autobiography Gilbert's wife will write when she has time. It reminds me +very much of her letters, and is, I am sure, still more like the diary +which she no doubt keeps. Poor Gilbert...." Grandmama seemed to be +confusing Gilbert momentarily with the Cabinet Minister. "I remember," +she went on, "meeting this young woman at Oxford, in the year of the +first Jubilee.... A very bright talker. They can so seldom +write...." She dozed again. + +"Will this intolerable day," Mrs. Hilary enquired of the housemaid +who came in to make up the fire, "never be over? I suppose it will be +bed-time _some time_...." + +"It's just gone a quarter past six, ma'am," said the housemaid, offering +little hope, and withdrew. + +Mrs. Hilary went to the window and drew back the curtains and looked out +at Marine Crescent in the gloomy, rainy twilight. The long evening +stretched in front of her--the long evening which she had never learnt to +use. Psycho-analysis, which had made her so much better while the course +lasted, now that it was over (and it was too expensive to go on with +forever) had left her worse than before. She was like a drunkard deprived +suddenly of stimulants; she had nothing to turn to, no one now who took +an interest in her soul. She missed Mr. Cradock and that bi-weekly hour; +she was like a creeper wrenched loose from its support and flung flat on +the ground. He had given her mental exercises and told her to continue +them; but she had always hated mental exercises; you might as well go in +for the Pelman course and have done. What one needed was a _person_. She +was left once more face to face with time, the enemy; time, which gave +itself to her lavishly with both hands when she had no use for it. There +was nothing she wanted to do with time, except kill it. + +"What, dear?" murmured Grandmama, as she rattled the blind tassel against +the sill. "How about a game of piquet?" + +But Mrs. Hilary hated piquet, and all card games, and halma, and +dominoes, and everything. Grandmama used to have friends in to play with +her, or the little maid. This evening she rang for the little maid, May, +who would rather have been writing to her young man, but liked to oblige +the nice old lady, of whom the kitchen was fond. + +It was all very well for Grandmama, Mrs. Hilary thought, stormily +revolting against that placidity by the hearth. All very well for +Grandmama to sit by the fire contented with books and papers and games +and sleep, unbitten by the murderous hatred of time that consumed +herself. Everyone always thought that about Grandmama, that things were +all very well for her, and perhaps they were. For time could do little +more hurt to Grandmama. She need not worry about killing time; time would +kill her soon enough, if she left it alone. Time, so long to Mrs. Hilary, +was short now to Grandmama, and would soon be gone. As to May, the little +maid, to her time was fleeting, and flew before her face, like a bird she +could never catch.... + +Grandmama and May were playing casino. A bitter game, for you build and +others take, and your labour is but lost that builded; you sow and others +reap. But Grandmama and May were both good-tempered and ladylike. They +played prettily together, age and youth. + +Why did life play one these tricks, Mrs. Hilary cried within herself. +What had she done to life, that it should have deserted her and left her +stranded on the shores of a watering-place, empty-handed and pitiful, +alone with time the enemy, and with Grandmama, for whom it was all very +well? + + +2 + +In the Crescent music blared out--once more the Army, calling for strayed +sheep in the rain. + +"Glory for you, glory for me!" it shouted. And then, presently: + + "Count--your--blessings! Count them one by one! + And it will _surprise_ you what the Lord has done!" + +Grandmama, as usual, was beating time with her hand on the arm of her +chair. + +"Detestable creatures," said Mrs. Hilary, with acrimony, as usual. + +"But a very racy tune, my dear," said Grandmama, placidly, as usual. + +"Blood! Blood!" sang the Army, exultantly, as usual. + +May looked happy, and her attention strayed from the game. The Army was +one of the joys, one of the comic turns, of this watering-place. + +"Six and two are eight," said Grandmama, and picked them up, recalling +May's attention. But she herself still beat time to the merry music-hall +tune and the ogreish words. + +Grandmama could afford to be tolerant, as she sat there, looking over the +edge into eternity, with Time, his fangs drawn, stretched sleepily behind +her back. Time, who flew, bird-like, before May's pursuing feet; time, +who stared balefully into Mrs. Hilary's face, returning hate for hate, +rested behind Grandmama's back like a faithful steed who had carried her +thus far and whose service was nearly over. + +The Army moved on; its music blared away into the distance. The rain +beat steadily on wet asphalt roads; the edge of the cold sea tumbled and +moaned; the noise of the fire flickering was like unsteady breathing, or +the soft fluttering of wings. + +"Time is so long," thought Mrs. Hilary. "I can't bear it." + +"Time gets on that quick," thought May. "I can't keep up with it." + +"Time is dead," thought Grandmama. "What next?" + + + + +CHAPTER XVII + +THE KEY + + +1 + +Not Grandmama's and not Neville's should be, after all, the last word, +but Pamela's. Pamela, who seemed lightly, and as it were casually, to +swing a key to the door against which Neville, among many others, beat; +Pamela, going about her work, keen, debonair and detached, ironic, +cool and quiet, responsive to life and yet a thought disdainful of it, +lightly holding and easily renouncing; the world's lover, yet not its +servant, her foot at times carelessly on its neck to prove her power over +it--Pamela said blandly to Grandmama, when the old lady commented one day +on her admirable composure, "Life's so short, you see. Can anything which +lasts such a little while be worth making a fuss about?" + +"Ah," said Grandmama, "that's been my philosophy for ten years ... only +ten years. You've no business with it at your age, child." + +"Age," returned Pamela, negligent and cool, "has extremely little to do +with anything that matters. The difference between one age and another +is, as a rule, enormously exaggerated. How many years we've lived on this +ridiculous planet--how many more we're going to live on it--what a +trifle! Age is a matter of exceedingly little importance." + +"And so, you would imply, is everything else on the ridiculous planet," +said Grandmama, shrewdly. Pamela smiled, neither affirming nor denying. +Lightly the key seemed to swing from her open hand. + +"I certainly don't see quite what all the fuss is about," said Pamela. + + + +***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK DANGEROUS AGES*** + + +******* This file should be named 16799.txt or 16799.zip ******* + + +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: +https://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/1/6/7/9/16799 + + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. Special rules, +set forth in the General Terms of Use part of this license, apply to +copying and distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works to +protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm concept and trademark. 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