CHAPTER I

BLINDNESS

BY

HENRY GREEN

[Illustration: Decorative Image]

NEW YORK

E. P. DUTTON & COMPANY

681 FIFTH AVENUE

Copyright, 1926

By E. P. DUTTON & COMPANY

All Rights Reserved

PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

To my Mother

CONTENTS

PART I--CATERPILLAR

PAGE

LAUGH 8

PART II--CHRYSALIS

CHAPTER

I. NEWS 43

II. HER, HIM, THEM 68

III. PICTURE POSTCARDISM 109

PART III--BUTTERFLY

I. WAITING 167

II. WALKING OUT 185

III. FINISHING 219

IV. BEGINNING AGAIN 267

PART I

CATERPILLAR

BLINDNESS

PART I--CATERPILLAR

LAUGH

Diary of John Haye, Secretary to the Noat Art Society, and in J. W.

P.’s House at the Public School of Noat.

6 July (about).

IT has only just struck me that a kind of informal diary would be

rather fun. No driving as to putting down something every day, just a

sort of pipe to draw off the swamp water. It has rained all the past

week. We went to Henley yesterday and it was wretched: B. G. going off

to Phyllis Court and leaving me with Jonson, an insufferable bore who

means very well and consequently makes things much worse. Seymour went

with Dore who was dressed in what would be bad form at Monte, and at

Henley ... Had a row with Seymour and refused to be seen with Dore.

Wonderful T. Carlyle’s letters are, and his wife’s too. One can always

tell them at a glance. She is the best letter writer there has ever

been, I am told by a modern authority. I should think T. C. runs this

pretty fine, his explosive style going well into letters.

9 July.

Two people in my absence just had a water fight in my room, which

enraged me.

The usual question asked, “Why not in anyone else’s room?” and of

course no answer: however, felt better after calling Brimston an

animated cabbage. His retort was, “Oh, cutting!” ...

Seymour, B. G. and I were seriously discussing the production of a

revue here next term, as they do at the universities, but as Seymour

said, the difficulties were insuperable, too many old men to surmount.

19 July.

Walk with Seymour to-day, who was very charming. Fell in love with a

transparent tortoiseshell cigarette case for three guineas, very cheap

I thought. He keeps his band of satellites in very good order. When he

told them to leave the School Shop they did. They positively worship

him. He is an extraordinary creature, I don’t believe he could get on

without them: keeping them as some people keep a dog, to let off steam

at. A rift between Harington Brown and Seymour, very amusing to watch:

H. B. much the same as Seymour but lacks his charm. Seymour furious

because H. B. has brought out a bad magazine called _The Shop Window._

Seymour thinks it is a challenge to his precious _Noat Lights._ If it

is one it is a failure.

Dicky Maitland, who used to try and teach me science, has been writing

to the Adjer to say that my Volunteer’s uniform is always untidy; the

Adjer says he has had several notes: did you ever hear such cheek? But

then the poor man is a military maniac.

As a matter of fact I ought to look quite well to-morrow on the

occasion of the Yearly Inspection, as my tunic is nothing but oil

stains, and everything else is sketchy and insecure.

J. W. P. told me last night that I was a person who wanted to fail at

Noat and who thought (and only he knew how mistakenly) that he was

going to be a success in after-life. A typically House-masterish thing

to say. But then he was in a bad temper.

_Later._--Have just announced that I go to the dentist to-morrow so

shan’t be able to play in the House match that afternoon: frenzy; “I

call that rather a shame,” etc. Isn’t it funny what a good player one

becomes on a sudden?

The dentist to-morrow will be the third time he has tried to kill a

nerve, and it isn’t nearly dead now, but still fairly active.

Tremendous excitement over Hutchinson’s coming novel, everyone trying

to get a first edition.

Thursday.

Corps Inspection: all went well.

Afterwards I went up to the dentist, and in the train met Mayo, who is

leaving early. Had a long talk mainly about Seymour and Co. As might be

expected he did not like him, but what was more to the point, produced

a most interesting reason and unanswerable to a person who holds views

like his. Firstly, then, he has no use for a person who is no good at

anything. He tolerates the clever scholar, he tolerates the half-wit

athlete, but since he cannot see that any of us are remotely even one

of these, he cannot bear us as a set.

What adds fuel to his fire is a person who glories in his eccentricity,

which of course is true of all of us, in that we glory in ourselves.

And of course the inevitable immorality touched on, which is always

connected with eccentricities.

B. G. of course he merely regards as really and actively evil, and I

don’t blame him as he does not know B. G., whose appearance is well

calculated to sow the seeds of doubt and dislike in any righteous

person. Furthermore, he can’t see what good any of us are going to do

in after-life. He said that he was going into the army, he trumpeted

that, and then because we were alone together he put me out of the

argument by saying that I should be a future financier.

I could not answer him, there was nothing further to say, but in the

course of the running fire that we kept up afterwards just to show that

there was no ill-feeling, he actually said that Seymour went up in his

estimation because he had won his House hundred yards. Extraordinary!

Very interesting, and, of course, a view which is almost incredible to

me, in fact a great eye-opener.

Had to return in a hurry from the dentist who has given up trying to

kill the nerve in my tooth. He prophesied what he called a “sting” in

it to-night: he under-estimated it considerably. It is hurting

damnably.

21 July.

Am reading a very good book on the Second Empire with Napoleon the

Third. It is in the Lytton Strachey style, which after Carlyle’s is, I

think, the most amusing.

The Volunteers’ Camp and all its attendant horrors is getting quite

close now: though I could get off whenever I wanted to with my

hammer-toes, but I want to go just for once.

22 July.

Bell’s, across the way, have bought as many as seven hunting-horns.

Each possessor blows it unceasingly, just when one wants to read. They

don’t do it all together, but take it in turns to keep up one forced

note. Really, it might be Eton. They can only produce the one note

during the whole day.

In addition to this trifling detail, it is “the thing to do” now to

throw stones at me as I sit at my window. However, I have just called

E. N. a “milch cow,” and shall on the first opportunity call D. J. B. a

“bovine goat,” which generally relieves matters. These epithets have

the real authentic Noat Art Society touch, haven’t they?

24 July.

No Art Society this evening. No one turned up except H. B., who was to

have read a paper; he was rather hurt. However, I think it will be all

right, he has about as much admiration for the satellites as I have.

Am too tired to do anything but write this. The House rather alarmed

and faintly contemptuous to hear I keep this; they have given me up, I

think and hope. Rather a funny thing happened while fielding this

afternoon. I had thrown myself down to stop a ball and I saw waving

specks in my eyes for two minutes afterwards. I suppose my blood

pressure was disturbed.

“For those in danger on the sea” is at the moment being sung by Truin’s

at House prayers.

26 July.

J. W. P. came in last night to say that I had bad reports, everyone

saying that I took no trouble, which is not surprising on both sides of

the question: says that next term I shall have to do all my work in his

study with the half-wits, a song which I have heard before, I think,

though it is so encouraging coming at the end of a term’s boredom.

Camp at Tidworth will be delightful in this soaking weather.

27 July.

Have bought the most gorgeous sun hat for a horse in straw for

sixpence, and have painted it in concentric rings. Shall wear it at

Camp, and have fixed it up so that it will bend when worn like a very

old-fashioned bonnet. In the ear-holes I am going to put violently

swearing colours, orange and magenta, in ribbon I got for nothing by

being nice to a shopwoman at Bowlay’s. Our little John is getting on,

isn’t he?

The hat is a masterpiece, and being so has, of course, started a

violent controversy. Those who consider it merely bounderism, and those

who think it amusing, talk very seriously together and stop when I

approach, while the faithful come in occasionally to tell me what the

others have said.

The most beautiful letter ever written is undoubtedly that of Charlotte

Brontë’s on her sister Emily’s death.

28 July.

No more work till the summer holidays. Have been relegated by the House

selection committee to the dud tent at Camp, which amuses me vastly.

Apparently those who manage the affairs of the tent prefer Bulwer and

Maston to myself; more amusing still. Shall I get elected into the

Reading Room next term? Probably not. I think as a matter of fact they

want a mobbing tent which they know I would not join in, anyhow I shall

be much more comfortable as I am: at any rate that reads better, and

sounds so for that matter.

Apparently I shall get attacked if I wear my straw hat, a fact I can

hardly believe. I have had _the_ most heated arguments as to why I

should not wear fancy dress; the fact remains that people are more prim

and hidebound there than here, except that, as far as I can see, all

and sundry combine to be rude to other schools.

29 July.

A sing-song in the Hall to-night, to which everyone but myself has

gone: didn’t go for two reasons; first, because the cinema part of it

was certain to be lamentable; secondly, Fryer irks me when he sings

songs, and the applause he gets, for no other reason than that he is

everything at games, and so is profitable to applaud, maddens me.

What is bad is that this school tends to turn the really clever into

people who pretend for all they are worth to be the mediocrities which

are the personification of the splendid manhood phrase. And in the end

these poor people succeed and lose all the brains they ever had, which

is distressing, particularly for me who could do with a few more.

Sunday.

Sing-song apparently a great success. There is an auction going on now,

everything that has been handed down through the ages is being resold.

I suppose some pictures have seen about forty auctions: the commonest

are Thorburn’s petrified partridges, or worse still, those most weird

and antiquated pictures of horse-racing, the horse’s neck being the

length of its body.

Social ostracism which I am experiencing now for the first time for

many terms is really incredibly funny. It begins with a studied

vagueness when you address anyone, which means that he is frightened at

being seen talking to you: it goes on, in direct ratio to the number of

jaws they have about you, to a studied rudeness, and the lower and

younger you are the more your room is mobbed. And then the whole thing

blows over you on to some other unfortunate.

I suppose I have been rather tiresome lately, but all except T. D. and

possibly E. N. are so distressingly the athletic type, who sink their

whole beings in the school and its affairs, and are blind and almost

ignorant of any world outside their own.

31 July.

The last flourish before Camp.

My room is a sight for the gods, piles and stacks of clothing to be

packed, a bulging pot-bellied kit-bag filled with changes of clothing

for the ten days’ horror, everything upside down, and over all the

frenzied maid as near suicide as she ever gets: her chief job is to

look for lost garments, and as she regards me with the deepest

suspicion over a pair of tennis shoes, I am not left long alone. The

storm in the Chinese tea-service has died down, and once more I am

anchored precariously outside the haven of the barely tolerated.

I hear that the only hotel where one can get a bath in Camp has been

put out of bounds, which is delightful. How furious Mamma will be:

apparently the reason is that people used to drink there.

In Camp: 2 August.

Just a scrawl. It has been raining viciously as if with a purpose. At

the moment I am lying on what is affectionately known as a “palliarse.”

Underneath is deal planking. Underneath that is a torrent as we are on

a hill and the accumulated effects of two days’ rain are flowing

beneath. Above is a bell tent, long since condemned by the army

authorities as unsound, so that the cloudburst which is pouring from

Heaven penetrates freely. There is one spot under which lies Brown, the

world’s greatest grouser, and it is appropriately threadbare. He was

foolish enough to put soap on it; we had told him that if you soaped a

bit of cloth it became waterproof, and now soapsuds drip down on to his

face. We have also told him that his grousing is intolerable, and will

be dealt with unless he suppresses it, so that he lies in a misery too

deep for words, and is the only thing that keeps us happy.

There are, of course, rumours about our going home on account of the

wet, but such a good thing could not possibly happen.

The food and the smell of grease in the eating tent are both very foul.

The smell I was warned against by an old campaigner. Thank God my turn

has not yet come for washing up, but I shall have to do it to-morrow.

They are thinking themselves the most awful devils in the next tent

with a bottle of port; perhaps if I had one I should feel one too.

Holidays: 11 August.

The village fête here yesterday, and after a three forty-five

awakening, _reveille_ or whatever you like to call it, at Tidworth, I

had to run about here when I arrived and be officious to all and

sundry. An awful thing happened. It was towards the end when I was so

tired I could hardly see. Mamma told me to go and find the young lady

who ran the Clock Golf Competition and tell her to send in the names of

the prize-winners. The young ladies who ran things were all

surprisingly alike, disastrously so, and there were many of them. I

went up to a girl I was sure had run the Clock Golf, and I asked her if

she had done so. No answer. Again I asked, and again no answer. Somehow

I felt only more sure from her silence that she had run it, so I asked

her yet again, and more eagerly. There was no answer, but there came a

blush like a banner which rallied all her friends to her, to protect

her from the depredations of this young man. After that I hid myself in

the house. I know what the neighbourhood will make of my reputation

now. Mamma laughed; I have never heard her laugh so much before.

I have got the most vile and horrid “bedabbly” cold--Carlyle again. Had

one or two highbrow talks with Seymour in the small canteen with two

cubic feet air-space for each savage human, which was rather wonderful.

29 August.

I fished to-day and “killed” two tiddlers, one was a minnow, and such a

small one at that that I thought it too infinitesimal even for the

stable cat. That was a record broken, if in the wrong direction.

Mamma to-night on religion. What effect it had, and how far it went, at

Noat? They are effectively stifling mine.

During dinner I saw a man run across the bottom of the garden, so when

it was over I took the dogs, and with an eye to theatrical effect I put

the bulldog on a leash, and led him snorting, pulling, panting and

roaring round the garden. He made just the noise, on a minor scale,

that one is led to believe a dragon made. William waited with Father’s

revolver loaded with blank, awaiting a scream from me if I was

attacked. He looked too ludicrous, with a paternal smile on his face.

2 September.

To my mind there is nothing so thrilling as the rushing, hungry rise

the chub have here; it makes me tingle even now to think of it, and the

more spectators on the bank watching, after you have hooked your fish,

the better.

At the present Mamma is in a great state over someone on the Town

Council of Norbury. After swearing me to secrecy she told me all about

it, and I have forgotten. But the main thing is that she has her

suspicions only and no proof, but that, of course, only makes her more

sure. But she had a splendid speech in the middle about dishonesty on

town councils when she was at her best. But I wish she would not take

these things so seriously. She expects me to too, and when I don’t, she

says, “Ah! you are too young, John dear.”

9 September.

Mamma not sleeping, so Ruffles, the chow, passed the night in my room,

which he disliked intensely, so much so that when he did eventually

doze off distrustfully, he had what is a rare thing with him, a

nightmare of the most alarming and noisy order. I hope this Town

Council business is not really keeping Mamma awake. Probably the

wretched devil is quite innocent. It would be quite like Mamma to go up

to him and accuse him of it. But then she couldn’t.

Caught seven fish yesterday, which wasn’t so bad. They were rising

well.

NOAT, Friday, 29 September.

Back to the old place again, and very depressed in consequence:

however, I am now a full-blown specialist in history, and am allowed to

send small boys on errands as I am one of the illustrious first hundred

in the school. But the football is going to be awful.

I came back on Wednesday. As usual, nothing is changed in the least:

Bell’s opposite have discarded their hunting-horns of accursed memory

for an accordion and a banjo, just as painful.

What with the accordion and the cold and the noise and the discomfort

and Cole, who I am up to in history, this has ceased to be a life and

has become a mere existence. However, the outlook is always black at

the beginning of the term.

_Later._--An excellent meeting of the Art Society: very amusing. There

was a grand encounter between Seymour and Harington Brown and B. G.’s

unrivalled powers of invective were used with great effect. His face,

his voice, everything combines to make him a most formidable opponent

in wordy warfare.

1 October.

Since all my contemporaries spend all their time in the Senior Reading

Room with a newly-acquired gramophone, I am left alone and undisturbed,

which is very pleasant. Am feeling much more cheerful now, which I

attribute to a cup of hot tea.

Am keeping up all the tradition by being the only person in the school

with a greatcoat on. Why is it that when there is the hardest and most

bitter frost no one wears a greatcoat here? I think it is so

absurd, and get rewarded for my pains by catching reproving glances

from the new boys, who, of course, are ultra careful, so much as to

say, “You are making an ass of yourself with that coat on.”

Seymour and B. G. are going to give _the_ most immense and

splendiferous leaving party, which is going to be wild fun.

3 October.

This morning an outrage: I am eating my morning bun, given to me for

that purpose by J. W. P., when my tooth meets a stone, and half of it

is broken off clean. Result, an immense jagged cavity which I shall

have filled, at J. W. P.’s expense, with platinum, and set with

brilliants. I am furious.

Brown, a friend of mine, has hit Billing, who keeps the food shop where

you get rat poison, in the stomach so that he crumpled up behind the

counter: the best thing that has happened for years.

Billing had apparently hit Brown previously, and had sent him to the

Headmaster for being rude, and he, instead of backing Billing up, had

asked Brown why he had not hit him back: so when Billing hit Rockfeller

to-day, Rockfeller being with Brown, Brown was rude to Billing, who

attacked Brown, who laid Billing out. Meanwhile Brown has gone to his

House master to ask that Billing’s shop may be put out of bounds, and

Billing presumably is going to the Headmaster. There will be a fine

flare-up.

6 October.

Rejoice, O land! My director on seeing my first essay, and a bad one at

that, tells me I ought to do well with my writing. What fun it would be

if I could write! I see myself as the English Anatole France, a vista

of glory ... superb!

I have fallen hopelessly in love with the ties in Bartlett’s window. I

shall have to buy them all, even though they are quite outrageous: the

most cunning, subtle and violent checks imaginable.

Sunday, 8 October.

This morning we had a howling dervish of a missioner who comes once a

year. All his ghastly stories were there and his awful metaphors and

his incredible requests. In this morning’s sermon he asked us to give

his mission a vision; last time it was that we should pray for it, and

before that, that we should give up our holidays to work there. To-day

we were told that even cabbages had visions, and God knows what else.

He was upset by our laughing at him and he broke down several times,

Chris crowning himself with glory by going out in the middle of the

man’s discourse clasping a pink handkerchief to his nose which he said

was bleeding. Really the pulpit is no place for self-revelation, but I

am afraid the man has not learnt it yet.

9 October.

Two youths have been insolent to me in the Music Schools. Am I

considered the school idiot? If so I am not surprised; any way I was

most polite to them--next time measures will be taken. The best way

with these people is to ask them their names; it generally shuts them

up. I believe my appearance is too weak; I shall have to grow

mustachios. I am always the person the lost Asiatic asks his way from,

and French come to me as fly to fly-paper, ditto the hysterical matron.

Such is fame.

12 October.

Guy Denver tells me the following: It is extremely cold, and he and

Conway are walking together. Says Conway, “God, I am cold!” Guy: “Then

why don’t you wear an overcoat?” “Oh! then I should be classed with the

John Haye and Ben Gore lot.” That is what the fear of popular opinion

drives the ordinary Public Schoolboy to; that sort of thing is

constantly recurring like the plague.

15 October.

This afternoon a delicious six-mile walk with B. G. The weather was

perfect, a warm sun and everything misty, with “the distances very

distant,” as Kipling puts it. Though we did not rock the world with our

utterances, it was very enjoyable indeed.

20 October.

Greene has ordered several chickens’ heads, lights, etc., to be sent up

to White, which we hope will be a nice surprise. It is rather a good

idea.

Have been painting a portrait of Napoleon, cubist and about three foot

square, with B. G., who has got it as a punishment from a new master.

He will soon lose that most refreshing originality. Moreover he said

that B. G. was not to do anything comic, which showed that he was

already beginning to lose it. It just depends how much the others have

instilled into him to see his manner of receiving our glaring

monstrosity.

New phrase I have invented: “To play Keating’s to someone else’s

beetle.” Used with great success on Seymour who is enraged by it.

21 October.

This morning, so I am told, Seymour and B. G. dragged a toy tin motor

car along the pavement on the end of a string. How I wish I had been

there: it is quite unprecedented, and seems to have outraged the

dignity of the whole school, which is excellent.

Seymour created another sensation by quoting his own poetry for

to-day’s saying lesson, which caused much amusement. Everyone who

matters athletically now thinks it is the thing to do to know Seymour,

which is intensely funny, and into the bargain I feel I get a little

reflected glory when I walk with him down the street. The Captain of

the Rugger smiled at me the other day. I nearly spat in his face (but

of course I really smiled my nicest).

Have written to several artists to ask them to talk to the Society.

When we founded it we put in the rules that we must get men down to

speak to it; it is the only way of keeping the thing alive. And I think

if we can get someone down the Society will recover from its present

rather dicky condition.

25 October.

Have just had a letter from the biggest swell I wrote to, saying that

he will come down to the Society on 14 November. It really is too

splendid: he is the most flaming tip-top swell who has written

thousands of books, as well as his drawings, which are very well known

indeed. All these people are so nice and encouraging about the Society,

which is splendid.

31 October.

I am seventeen now--quite aged.

Last night was the gala invitation night of the Society, and was an

_immense_ success, where I had secretly feared failure.

All those invited came--all the boys, all the masters, and all to-day I

have been hearing nothing but how pleased and interested they were. It

was on Post-Impressionism, a subject which had the merit of being one

which the Society knew more about than anyone else present. B. G. made

the most gorgeous speech of pure invective which enthralled everyone.

The Society is now positively booming, even T. R. C. having thawed into

enthusiasm. I think it is a permanency now.

Fires on alternate nights now, which isn’t so very, very bad, and the

weather is slowly improving. Extraordinary how the weather affects my

spirits. I had a telegram from Mamma who had remembered my birthday,

which is splendid, for somehow I hate its being forgotten. She never

remembers till Nan reminds her. But the football, it is enough to kill

one.

Would you believe it--but J. W. P. gave me a long jaw on the

“hopelessness” of my having a bad circulation, because I habitually

wore a sweater underneath my waistcoat: It’s a filthy habit, I know,

but he drives one on to it with his allowance of fires, and then he

tries to blame one: it is an outrage.

1 November.

It is freezing again, bad luck to it.

B. G. and I in the morning went up to Windsor and got some

electioneering pamphlets from the Committee Rooms, and have posted them

all over Noat, including the Volunteers’ Notice Board and the School

Office and the Library. Later I put them up all over the House notice

boards, which scored a glorious rise out of “those that matter.” These

people are really too terribly stodgy; they have no sense of humour,

though they did faintly appreciate the pamphlet on the maids’ door

which said that Socialism was bent on doing away with marriage.

This afternoon I had to read fifty pages of mediæval history, which has

left my brain reeling and helpless: it is too absurd making one learn

all about these fool Goths and Vandals: they ceased to count in

practical politics some time ago now, so why revive them?

11 November.

Have just conceived the idea of having a gallery of all the people I

loathe most at Noat to be pasted up on the door of my room, which has

been denuded of the rules of the Art Society since I spent a frenzied

afternoon changing the room slightly.

Smith, the master, crosses his cheques with a ruler. One comes across

something amazing every day here.

This is the coldest day I have ever met at Noat, and a very thick fog

thrown in, greatly conducive to misery, but strangely enough I am most

cheerful, having written a tale called _Sonny_, which is by far the

best I have done so far.

15 November.

Quite the most wonderful day of my life. It was polling day, so after

two o’clock (a saying lesson so we got out early), B. G., Seymour and I

went to Strand caparisoned all over with Conservative blue and with

enormous posters.

When we reached Strand, we found all the Socialist

working-men-God-bless-them drawn up in rows on either side of the

street, so we three went down the rows haranguing. We each got into the

centre of groups, and expected to be killed at any moment, for there is

something about me that makes that type see red. However, they

contained themselves very nicely while we talked nonsense at them.

Then we went to the station and got a cab, and with B. G. on the box

and Seymour and I behind we set off, B. G. with posters stuck through

his umbrella, and dead white from excitement. We went by the byways

shouting and screaming till we came to the top of the High Street. We

then turned down this; by this time all of us were worked up and quite

mad, and eventually came to the Cross again, where we passed the

Socialists who were collected in a meeting. They cheered and hooted,

and we went round the same way only shorter, and after going down the

High Street, turned down towards Noat, where we soon picked up six or

so Noatians. With them we returned, some running, with a rattle making

a deafening din. We passed the Labour and Socialist meeting on the

“Out” road of the railway station, and went over the railway bridge,

where we paid off the cab. We then returned in a body past the meeting,

which broke up and followed across the cross-roads, pelting us with

rolled-up rags, etc. Then at the corner of the road to Noat we formed a

meeting. I was terrified at moments, and wildly exhilarated the rest.

The meeting lasted twenty minutes, questions being asked the whole

time. B. G. did most of the speaking; Seymour and I did a little too.

Woodville harangued the women; he was very good with them. They had

their spokesman, an old labourer, very tub-thumpy, and the whole of

this part of the entertainment is a blur. Looking round in the middle

of it I saw that all the Conservative men and women were formed up

behind us, which was touching. All this time messages were coming from

the fellows on the outside that the people there were talking lovingly

of murder (on us), and matters did look very nasty at one time, but it

worked off. The police came at the end with an inspector and marched us

off, I shaking every man’s hand that I could see. So we returned

shouting madly. It was too wonderful; never to be forgotten.

16 November.

I now understand why men were brave in the war; it was because they

were afraid of being cowards, that fear overcoming that of death. The

crowd in Strand and having to go back into it again and have things

thrown at one--it was terrifying at first for so great a coward as

myself, but great fun when one got hotted up. The women were by far the

worst. One old beldame screamed: “You dirty tykes, you dirty tykes!”

continuously.

_Later._--Another wonderful time. I went with Seymour up to the

market-place of the town of Noat, outside the Town Rooms, and there we

had another stormy meeting. I talked a very great deal this time;

Bronsill and I went on the whole time to rather an excited crowd. Then

he and I were dragged off and put on a balcony where the Press

photographed us, and he addressed the crowd and I prompted him and

hear-heared, etc. I would have spoken had there been time, but lunch

arrived and we departed. It was too wonderful; it is tremendous fun

being above a crowd, about 150 this time, and I wasn’t a bit nervous.

Nor was I terrified when the crowd became nasty again as on the

previous day; it is the most exhilarating thing I know--far better than

hunting. Meanwhile, a master saw me and J. W. P. knows. What will

happen?

17 November.

Nothing happened with J. W. P.; he didn’t mind, and was vastly amused.

Have written another story all about blood; not impossibly bad but

sadly mediocre. If only I could write! But I think I improve. Those

terrible, involved sentences of mine are my undoing.

Fox was pleased at my admiring Carlyle.

18 November.

Harington Brown asked me for an MS. for the magazine he is producing:

gave him _Sonny_, but don’t suppose it will be suitable, though I am

sure it has some worth. The thing is only about 1400 words, and when he

refuses it I am going to send it up to some London magazine which will

take very short stories, and at present I don’t know of one.

I rather hope that H. B. won’t accept the thing. The ephemerals are

always putrescent, and nobody with any sense reads them. There have

been about three editions of it so far, one a term.

19 November, after lunch.

Have been accepted by H. B., with mixed feelings on my part. However,

his thing is a cut above the usual ephemeral and is quite sensible, but

there is a sense of degradation attached to appearing in print. But I

hope this means that I can write; it’s not bad work as I’m only just

seventeen. Perhaps it is too good, and I shan’t do anything again.

Carlyle’s flight to Varennes in his _Revolution_ is almost too painful

to read, so exciting is it to me. It is all untrue, of course, they did

not go half as slow as he would make out, nevertheless it is superb.

Thank God there are only a few more weeks of this football.

* * * * *

NOAT, 26 January.

What a long interval, and what a very little has happened! The holidays

were enlivened by two deaths in the village, which much excited Mamma,

and one or two scandals in the neighbourhood, which she followed

carefully without taking up sides.

The bulldog died, which was very sad; he was such a dear old thing.

Mamma was very much upset about that too, in her funny way. She seems

to spend more and more time in the village now, and to see less and

less people. One comes back here looking forward to the fullness of the

place.

We came back yesterday, and I feel absolutely lost without B. G. and

Seymour, who have both left. They do make a gap, for we three

understood each other, and we ladled out sympathy to each other when

life became too black. And now I am alone, in a hornets’ nest of rabid

footballers.

At the moment I am reading Gogol’s _Dead Souls._ His word-pictures are

superb: better than Ruskin’s or Carlyle’s, and his style is so terse

and clean-cut, at least it is in the translation, but it shines through

that. I am an absolute slave. I shall keep this book for ever by me if

I have enough cash to buy it with. He is wonderful.

He is at his best, I think, in description; I have met nothing like it.

Almost he ousts Carlyle; not quite, though. He is a poet through and

through.

29 January.

But surely this is most beautiful:

The trills of a lark fall drop by drop down an unseen aery ladder,

and the calls of the cranes, floating by in a long string, like the

ringing notes of silver bugles, resound in the void of melodiously

vibrating ether.

He is a poet: and his book is in very truth a poem. It is Gogol.

30 January.

Am reading Winston Churchill’s biography of his father, which is very

wonderful.

I hardly remember B. G. as having existed now. That doesn’t mean to say

that I don’t answer his letters, but life goes on much the same.

Did I say that I had become the budding author at home? No, I think

not. I have written in all three things, so that I am hailed as a

Napoleon of literature. Such is fame. I only wish I deserved these

eulogies, and must set seriously to work soon. Mrs. Conder most of all

seems impressed. Talks at tea of nothing but where she can take me to

get “copy”--which means Brighton, I suppose; not that horrid things

don’t happen there, though. But she is the limit. Since Conder died she

has blossomed. At least, when he was alive, one could make allowances

for her, because he was so foul, but now there is nothing to say. She

is so _gay_, so _devilish gay!_ But all this is very untrue, unkind and

ungrateful. In all she has given me £5 in tips, and a cookery book for

Boy Scouts.

17 February.

In a moment of rash exuberance I bought a cigarette-holder about eight

inches long. Have been smoking it all the afternoon. Caused quite a

sensation in the middle-class atmosphere of the tea shop _chez_ Beryl.

Am delivering an oration to the Arts Society on Japanese Art. I am

going to speak it and not read it, which is bravery carried to

foolhardiness. But it is good to get a little practice in speaking.

22 February.

Just been to dinner with the Headmaster. I was put next him and

occupied his ear for twenty minutes. In the course of that time I

managed to ask for a theatre for the school to act in, and for a school

restaurant where one could get a decent British steak with onions, and,

if possible, with beer. I also advanced arguments in favour of this.

The only thing we agreed on was the sinfulness of having a window open.

He listened to it all, which was very good of him.

On Monday I got off my speech on Japanese Art all right, I think, save

for the very beginning, which was shaky to a point of collapse.

To-morrow I go to tea with Harington Brown. Meanwhile at the tea Dore

gave me we arranged that the Art Society should give a marionette show.

The authorities agreed the next day and gave us the Studio. Someone is

busy writing the scenario, about lovers thwarted whose names end in

_io._ Then we shall paint scenery. It will be such fun. Of course the

figures will be stationary.

The only modern Germans who could paint are Lembach and Boechel.

24 February.

Had tea with H. B. I have sent him a story for this term’s _Noat Days._

It won’t be accepted, I suppose. It is an experiment in short

sentences. He read me the libretto of the marionettes as far as he had

got, and it really was remarkably good. He is producing it in his

ephemeral.

10 March.

This morning occurred one of those incidents which render school life

at moments unbearable to such as myself. I was raising a spoonful of

the watered porridge that they see fit to choke us with, when someone

jerked my arm----The puerility of it all, yet the wit which I, for my

years, should enjoy according to nature. Of course there was a foul

mess, as of one who had vomited, mostly over me. However, it only took

an hour or so to regain my equanimity. Incidentally I had a little

ink-throwing exhibition in the fool’s room. I had always wanted to see

the exact effect of throwing a paint brush at the wall to appreciate

Ruskin’s criticism. It was most interesting.

_Later._--What an odious superior fellow I am now! It is my mood

to-night. Sometimes I think it is better to be just what one is, and

not be everlastingly apologising for oneself in so many words. To be

rude when you want to be rude--and how very much nicer it would make

you when you wanted to be nice. I am sure it is all a matter of

relative thought. You think you are working hard by your standards, and

to another man you don’t seem to be working at all. Don’t you work just

as hard as the other really? Because, after all, it is only a mental

question. I shall expound this to J. W. P. I have already done so to

Gale with rather marked success. It is a very good principle at Noat.

11 March.

I wish the world was not so ugly and unhappy. And there is so much

cynicism. And why does Science label and ticket everything so that the

world is like a shop, with their price on all the articles? There are

still a few auction rooms where people bid for what they think most

worth while, but they are getting fewer and fewer. And people love

money so, and I shall too I expect when I have got out of what our

elders tell me is youthful introspection. But why shouldn’t one go

through something which is so alive and beautiful as that. But they

only say, smiling, “Yes; I went through all that once; you will soon

get over that.” I shall fight for money and ruin others. Down with

Science. Romanticism, all spiritual greatness is going. Soon music will

be composed by scientific formulæ; painting has been in France, and

look how photography has put art back. Oh, for a Carlyle now! Some

prophet one could follow.

15 March.

Spent a whole afternoon at work on the marionette stage. I carpentered

while E. V. C. tinkered up the scenes he has painted. Between us we got

through surprisingly little in a surprisingly long time.

My story in the new _Noat Days_ will appear shortly. I read the proofs

of the story at extreme speed and thought I had never read anything

worse or feebler. The paltry humour sickened me, though the end did

seem to have some kick in it.

19 March.

The marionette show becomes more and more hectic. One hardly has time

to breathe. There is a performance on Saturday: the day after the day

after to-morrow. Nothing done, of course, and the Studio a scene of

hysterical budding artists, mad enough in private life, but when under

the influence of so strong and so public an emotion surpass themselves

in do-nothing-with-the-most-possible-noise-and-trouble.

1 April.

The marionette play continues to be an immense pleasure. We give a

children’s performance to-morrow at three. Answers from mothers pour

in: I am afraid it may be too full. How well do little children see?

They are so _very_ low down when they sit. I think the life of a stage

manager must be one of the most trying on this earth.

Good Friday.

_On a Pretty Woman_, “And that infantile fresh air of hers” (from

Browning).

“If you take a photograph of a man digging, in my opinion he is sure to

look as if he were not digging” (Van Gogh). Have been reading Van

Gogh’s letters. They are the hardest things I have ever taken on. He is

so very much in earnest, and so very difficult to understand. I think

I have got a good deal of what he means.

A wonderful postcard from B. G. in Venice:

We are here till Thursday, wondering who has won the Boat Race, the

National, the Junior School Quarter-Mile and the Hammersmith Dancing

Record.

Read a little Carlyle to a few of the House. What else could it be but

incomprehensible to them? “Mad,” they called it. Anything of genius is

“mad” in a Public School. And rightly so, I suppose.

4 April.

One day more to the end of the term. How nice it will be to be back, to

start life again for a day or two. The holidays are disgustingly short,

though, only three weeks and a bit.

We have just given our third and last performance of the marionette

play. It has been a wild success and should, if possible, be repeated.

But the light in the summer would be too strong and everyone leaves at

the end of next summer, so I don’t suppose we shall have enough people

to get one up next winter!

Oh, for to-morrow to go quickly.

Holidays: 10 April.

Back again to peace, even if it is cotton wool and stagnation, but very

pleasant all the same. Am reading George Moore’s _Ave_, with

considerable relish and amusement. He is so very witty.

My reports have come in and are uninteresting; no one very

enthusiastic, which is not to be wondered at.

20 April.

“Polygamy is a matter of opinion, not of morality.” Montague Glass is

undoubtedly the greatest comedian of letters. _Potash and Perlmutter_

is superb.

At dinner to-night Mamma informed me in one of her rare pronouncements

on myself, that I always kept people at arm’s length. It sounds an

awful thing to write, but I seldom meet anyone who interests me more

than myself: my own fault, I suppose.

We have acquired a gramophone, and Strauss’ “Last Waltz” has bewitched

me. It is such a lovely thing.

NOAT, 4 May.

Back to it again: good old Noat, bloody place! Have just seen a book

entitled _Up Against it in the Desert_, which sufficiently describes my

feelings at the moment.

It is so hot as to make writing impossible as my pen and style testify.

I shall play no cricket this term, but will just read. I can get off

the cricket on the score of health, which becomes increasingly bad.

Last holidays we went from doctor to doctor. They look on one as an

animal of a certain species, those people, than which nothing is more

irritating.

5 May.

The weather continues to be quite lovely. I pass the afternoon

watching the cricket, with a book. It is the nicest thing to do I know.

This evening I went on the river. What is it that is so attractive in

the sound of disturbed water? The contrast of sound to appearance,

perhaps. Water looks so like a varnished surface that to see it break

up, move and sound in moving is infinitely pleasing. Also it is

exhilarating to see an unfortunate upset.

I must work hard at writing. There are all sorts of writers I have

never read; Poe, for instance, the master of the suggestive. I think my

general reading is fairly good, but I have such an absurd memory.

2 June.

Two portraits of me in the Noat Art Society Summer Exhibition. Not very

good, but both striking.

* * * * *

29 September.

Many things have come to pass since I last wrote in this. A

distinguished literary gent has been kind enough to pay me a little

praise for my efforts at literature. I am in the Senior too, now, and

in the middle of writing a play that I cannot write. It is sticking

lamentably. One last thing. They have given me a different room, and

have put a new carpet into the new room for luck. And this smells

rather like a tannery. Consequently I am being slowly poisoned. “Ai

vai!”

12 October.

Really, Noat is amazing. Last night the President of the Essay Society,

who is a master, wrote to ask me to join it. I refused; I am sick of

Societies. This evening J. W. P. sends for me, and tells me he has

heard about it and that I must join. Compulsion. Think of it--being

made to join! Of course I can’t go now. I shall join formally and never

look at it. It is extraordinary.

Am reading _Crime and Punishment_ by Dostoievsky. What a book! I do not

understand it yet. It is so weird and so big that it appals me. What an

amazing man he was, with his epileptic fits which were much the same as

visions really.

20 October.

About a week ago I finished _Crime and Punishment._ It is a terrible

book, and has had a profound effect. Technically speaking, it is badly

put together, but it cuts one open, tragedy after tragedy, like a

chariot with knives on the wheels. The whole thing is so ghastly that

one resents D. harrowing one so. And then it ends, in two pages. But

what a _finale!_ Sonia, too, what she suffered. And the scene when she

read the Bible.

I have tried to read _The Idiot_, and have finished _Fathers and Sons_,

by Turgeniev, but it was a dream only. It is a most dreadful, awful,

supremely great book, this Crime and its Punishment. And the death

scene, with her in the flaming scarlet hat, and the parasol that was

not in the least necessary at that time of day. With the faces crowding

through the door, and the laughter behind. What a scene! And the final

episode, in Siberia, by the edge of the river that went to the sea

where there was freedom, reconciliation, love.

What a force books are! This is like dynamite.

END OF PART I

Extract from a letter written by B. G. to Seymour.

Sat., 7 April.

“_Dear Seymour,_

“_An awful thing has happened. John is blinded. Mrs. Haye, his

stepmother, you know, wrote a letter from Barwood which reached me this

morning. The doctors say he hasn’t a chance of seeing again. She has

asked me to write to all his school friends and to you. It is a

terrible story. Apparently he was going home after Noat had ‘gone

down,’ on Thursday, that is. The train was somewhere between Stroud and

Gloucester, and was just going to enter a cutting. A small boy was

sitting on the fence by the line and threw a big stone at the train.

John must have been looking through the window at the time, for the

broken glass caught him full, cut great furrows in his face, and both

his eyes are blind for good. Isn’t it dreadful? Mrs. Haye says that he

suffers terribly. It is a tragedy. Blindness, the most ...” etc._

PART II

CHRYSALIS

PART II--CHRYSALIS

CHAPTER I

NEWS

OUTSIDE it was raining, and through the leaded window panes a grey

light came and was lost in the room. The afternoon was passing wearily,

and the soft sound of the rain, never faster, never slower, tired. A

big bed in one corner of the room, opposite a chest of drawers, and on

it a few books and a pot of false flowers. In the grate a weary fire,

hissing spitefully when a drop of rain found its way down the chimney.

Below the bed a yellow wardrobe over which large grain marks circled

aimlessly, on which there was a full-length glass. Beyond, the door,

green as were the thick embrasures of the two windows green, and the

carpet, and the curtains.

The walls were a neutral yellow that said nothing, and on them were

hung cheap Italian crayon drawings of precocious saints in infancy. The

room was called the Saints’ Room. Behind the glass of each were

hundreds of dead flies, midges, for the room had a strange attraction

for these things in summer, when the white ceiling would be black with

them by sunset. With winter coming on they would creep away under the

glass to pine on attendant angel lips. Perhaps the attraction was

rather the hot-water cistern that was under the roof just above, and

which gave a hint of passion to the virgin whitewash.

He lay in bed, imagining the room. To the left, on the dressing-table

by the bed, would be the looking-glass that would never stay the right

level. It would be propped up with a book, so that it gazed blandly up

at the ceiling, mimicking the chalky white, and waiting for something

else to mimic. On the chair between table and bed was sitting the young

trained nurse, breathing stertorously over a book.

There came quick steps climbing stair carpet, two quick steps at the

top on the linoleum, and the door opened. Emily Haye came in. She was

red, red with forty years’ reckless exposure to the sun. Where neck

joined body, before the swift V turned the attention to the

mud-coloured jumper knitted by herself, there glowed a patch of skin

turned by the sun to a deeper red. She was wearing rough tweeds, and

she was smelling of soap, because it was near tea-time.

He turns his head on the pillow, the nurse rises, and Mrs. Haye walks

firmly up the room.

“Well, how are you?”

“All right, thanks.”

“I’ll sit by him for a bit, nurse, you go and get your tea. It’s

rainin’ like anything outside. I went for a walk, got as far as

Wyleman’s barn, and there I turned and came back. Stepped in and saw

Mrs. Green’s baby. It’s her first, so she’s making a fuss of it;

beautiful baby, though. Have you been comfortable?”

“Yes, thanks.”

“Get any sleep?”

“No.”

“Is it hurting you much now?”

“Just about the same.”

“It’s too wretched for you, this thing comin’ right at the beginning of

the holidays. I should be very angry, but you seem to be takin’ it

calmly; you are always like that, you know, John, always hiding things.

I was talking with the specialist just as he was going--and he says

that you probably will not be able to go back to Noat next term. So you

will miss your last term, which is so important they tell me. It means

so much to you in after-life, or something. I know Ralph always used to

say that it had meant a great deal to him, the responsibility and all

that. But I expect you’re glad.”

“Of course. Father may have had some responsibility, but they would

never have given any to me, however long I stayed there. I was too

incompetent. Can you imagine me enforcing authority?”

“I think that you would be excellent in authority, I do really. But as

Mabel Palmer was saying at tea the other day, you never seemed to have

any of the ambition of ordinary boys--to be captain of football or

cricket and so on. I did so want to be a boy when I was a girl. I

wanted to be good at cricket, and they never let us play in those days.”

“You would have made a fine cricketer, Mamma. But I don’t think you

would have thought much of school life, if you had gone there. You

wouldn’t have been as wretched as I was, but you would have seen

through it, I think. You don’t judge people now by their goodness at

games, do you?”

“You know you weren’t wretched, and--oh, well, we mustn’t argue. John,

what’s it like with that thing in front of your eyes so that you can’t

see anything? What’s it feel like?”

“I don’t know, everything’s black, that’s all.”

What was it in the air? Why were they talking in long sentences,

importantly?

“I should go mad if I were like that, not to be able to see where one

is going. John dear, you are very patient, I shouldn’t be nearly as

good as you.”

“I can quite imagine that. But it won’t be for so very long?”

Why had he ended with a question?

“Well, we must be practical. And the specialist was telling me it would

be quite a long time before--before you would be up and about again.

But doctors always exaggerate, you know. And there’s your poor face to

get well besides.”

“But how long will it be before I shall be able to take this damned

head-dress off in daylight? It was all very well when the old fool took

it off in the darkened room so that I couldn’t see anything, nor he

either. His breath did smell nasty, too.”

“My dear boy, I never notice people’s breath.”

“‘May be the sign of a deep-rooted disorder.’ ‘Even your best friends

won’t tell you.’ ‘Halitosis is an insidious enemy,’ and so on. And an

American firm has got the only thing on God’s earth that will cure you.

He ought to take it, really.”

“John, I do wish you would not swear like that. The servants would be

very shocked if they knew, and it is such a bad example to the village

boys.”

“But, heavens above, they don’t hear me swear.”

“No, but they hear of it, don’t you see.”

--Must talk. “Rather an amusing thing has happened. You know Doris, the

third housemaid. Well, she is little more than a child, and hasn’t got

her hair up. When she came, of course I insisted that she should put it

up, which upset her terribly. Now, when she takes the afternoon off she

puts it into a pigtail again. Silly little thing.”

“What’s that in your voice? You aren’t angry with her, are you? because

I think it’s rather nice. I like pigtails, don’t you? Do you know that

bit of Browning, _Porphyrias’ Lover_? But when shall I be able to see a

pigtail again, that’s the point?”

“What’s that thing, John, a poem, or what?”

“He makes her lover strangle her with her own hair, done in a pigtail.

I don’t know what it means, no one knows, only I am quite sure I should

like to do it. Think--the soft, silken rope, and the warm, white neck,

and ...”

“Now, don’t be silly. I don’t understand.”

“But when shall I be allowed to take this off? It will be fun seeing

again. I suppose he gave some idea of a date?”

“Yes, but he was not very definite, in a way he was rather vague. You

see, it is a long business. Eyes are delicate things.”

Dread.

“How long?--three months? I only thought it would be one, but it can’t

be helped.”

“Longer than that, I am afraid. Much longer, he said.”

“Six months?”

“Dear boy, we must be practical. It may take a--a very long time

indeed.”

“In fact, I shall be blind for life. Why didn’t you tell me at once?

No, no, of course I understand.”

So he was blind.

She looks out of the window into the grey blur outside. Drops are

having small races on the panes. The murmur fills the room with lazy

sound. Now and then a drop falls from an eave to a sill, and sometimes

a little cascade of drips patter down.

His heart is thumping, and there is a tightness in his throat, that’s

all. She had not actually said that he was blind. It wasn’t he. All the

same she hadn’t actually said--but he was blind. Blind. Would it always

be black? No, it couldn’t. Poor Mamma, she must be upset about it all.

What could be done? How dreadful if she started a scene while he was

lying there in bed, helpless. But of course, he wasn’t blind. Besides,

she hadn’t actually said. What had she said? But then she hadn’t

actually said he wasn’t. What was it? He felt hot in bed, lost. He put

out a hand, met hers, and drew it away quickly. He must say something.

What? (Blind? Yes, blind.) But ...

“We must be practical, John darling, we must run this

together.”--Darling? She never used that. What was she saying? “...

bicycles for two, tandems they’re called, aren’t they? Work together,

let me do half the work like on a tandem bicycle. Your father and I

went on a trip on one for our honeymoon, years ago now, when bicycles

were the latest thing. I wish he was here now, he was a wonderful man,

and he would have helped, and--and he would have known what to do.”

“What was he like?” (So he was blind, how funny.)

“Dear boy, he was the finest man to hounds in three counties, and the

most lovely shot. I remember him killing fifty birds in sixty

cartridges with driven grouse at your grandfather’s up in Scotland. A

beautiful shot. He would have helped.”

“It’s all right, I guessed it all along, you see. I knew it really

when the man was looking at me in what he said was darkness. There was

something in his manner. Christ! my eyes hurt, though.”

“Dear boy, don’t swear like that. No, it can’t be your eyes that hurt;

if they did it would be a very good thing. It’s your face that--that is

cut up rather. Not that all hope is gone, of course, there is still a

chance, there always is, the specialist said so. Miracles have happened

before now. But I do hate your swearing like this.”

“I’m sorry.”

Why had she died, who could have helped him so much now? All these

years he had thought so little about her, and now she was back, and she

ought to be sitting by the bed, and she would be helping so much, and

there would be nothing to hide, and it would be so much simpler if

Mummy were here. Her hands would drive away the pain. It would be so

different.

“But I will read to you, all your nice books. And then you will go on

writing just the same; you could dictate to me. I shall always be there

to help, we’ll see it out together.”

Heaven forbid. She would never be able to read Dostoievsky, would never

be able to understand. Besides, poor dear, it would bore her so except

for the first few weeks when she would feel a martyr, and that was

never a feeling to encourage. And how fine it would be to renounce her

help in seeing it through, not as if it ever had an end, but how

unselfish. Why was there no one else?

“Thank you, darling.”

What had he said? He ought never to have said that, it gave the whole

show away. Why did one’s voice go? But what was there to say? He was

blind, finished, on the shelf, that was all. Still, he must carry her

through. She must be dreadfully upset about it all. But what was there

to say?

She was struggling.

“It’s all right, it’s not so bad as it looks, it’s not as if we were

very poor, it could--much worse, much worse.”

How wonderful he was, taking it like this, just like Ralph. She would

like to say so many things, she longed to, but he did so hate

demonstrativeness. She must try to say the right thing, she must not

let it run away with her. And she must talk to keep his mind off.

“You are very brave, dear. I know it would have knocked me up

completely, Ralph too. I don’t know where you take everything from, I

can’t understand you half the time, you’re not a bit like the family,

though Mabel told me the other day that you are getting Ralph’s profile

as you grow older, but I can’t see it. You know God gave you your sight

and He has taken it away, but He has left us each other, you know, and

...”

“Yes, yes.”

There, she had done it. But it was all true, it must be true. She must

not make that mistake again.

It wasn’t fair to say that as he was helpless. And what business was it

of hers?--he wasn’t hers. Why did these things happen? Why did she sit

there? It was so hard. And the pain.

“Yes, Mummy, of course.”

Mummy, he hadn’t used that for so long.

It would not happen again. Her feelings had betrayed her. The great

thing was to keep his mind off. One must just go on talking, and it was

so hard not to harp on it. A silence would be so terrible. There was

always her between them. And it was not right, it was not as if the

woman had ever done anything for him, except, of course, to bring him

into the world. But it was she who had brought him up. He belonged to

her.

“I am afraid I shall never be a good mother to you, John. I don’t

understand anything except out-of-door things, and babies. You were a

lovely baby when you were small, and I could do everything for you

then, and I loved it. But now you’ve outgrown me in a way and left me

behind. As I was saying to Mabel the other day, I don’t understand the

young generation, you’re too free about everything, though in many ways

you yourself are an exception to that, with your secretiveness. I don’t

know how it is, but young people seem to care less about the country

than they did. Now you, John, when you went--go for a walk, you mooch

about, as old Pinch would say. When you come back you don’t eat a

decent meal, but in that nice phrase, you are all mimmocky with your

grub.”

She laughed tremulously, then hurried on. He smiled at the old friend,

though his mouth seemed afraid.

“I believe it all comes from this cigarette smoking, that’s what Ralph

used to say, and I think it’s true. Nasty as his pipe was, at least it

was healthy. You are all either too difficult and unapproachable, or

too talkative. That Bendon girl a few days ago at Mrs. Pender’s told me

all her most private and intimate affairs for a whole hour after having

met me for the first time. In the old days the girl would have been

thought improper. She was the sort of girl your grandfather would have

smiled at. He ...”

“Mamma!” This was better.

“Eh?”

“Nothing.”

“He always smiled at something he could not understand, and what he

could not understand he could not, and of course there was something

wrong in it if he could not. In the old days ...”

She was off again, and how the old days thrilled her generation, how

blind they were not to see the glories of the present and future!

Blind. Perhaps in years to come his memories would be only of the time

when he had seen the colours and life through his own eyes. But he was

becoming sentimental, and surely he had recovered from that phase of

his Noat days. What is she saying? (Blind? Yes, blind.) What?

“... don’t understand.”--The strain of talking to him of other things!

“But why try? Parents will never understand their children. Have you

read Turgeniev’s _Fathers and Sons_? There’s a wonderful picture

there.”

He had not been listening. She had not been able to understand the

bailiff’s policy with the pigs. And here he was on to his books again,

as if books mattered in life. But one must always show interest, so

that he might feel he had someone who took a kindred interest. One had

read all those Russian things in one’s teens. One had loved them then,

but one saw now what nonsense they had been.

“Yes, I read it years ago, when I married. I don’t remember much, but I

don’t think it was a tremendously interesting book, do you, dear?”

There, they are always like that, “Yes, I read it years ago.” Nothing

lives for them but the new, they have forgotten everything else, life

itself even! She has always read a book, any book you care to mention,

and she has always forgotten all about it, save that she has read it.

Irritation! She was dead, withered through not caring; and he was

alive, how alive he was! Alive! Alive? And blind, a tomb of darkness,

with all the carbuncles of life hidden away! Blind? Yes, blind for

ever, always, always blind! No. What is she saying? Nothing, there is

silence save for the silken rustling of the rain outside. She must be

ill at ease.

“Yes,” he says, as one throws a lifebelt at someone drowning.

“Dear, I meant to help, and here I am, swearing away just the same. I’m

not much of a mother to you, I’m afraid....” Was there no way to help

him? When you tried to make him respond to affection he withdrew into

himself at once. She would cry if she stayed here much longer. Why did

these tragedies come like this? And they were like strangers.

“... don’t, of course not. Of course you help, because I can feel that

there is someone there, someone standing by who can really help when I

want it. That’s what you are to me, a real friend.”

The weather had beaten all real sympathy out of her. She was so hard,

so desperately rugged. There was a great deal to be said against going

out in the rain. Hot-house flowers were better than hardy annuals, but

then he would never understand the names of flowers now. Mrs. Fane was

the ideal, so tantalising, so feminine. Mummy would have been like

that. And now he would never see a painting, he would just become a

vegetable like Mamma, a fine cabbage. And he would have had such a

marvellous time with flowers, and with women, who were so close to

flowers. But what was this? One must not slobber, sentimentality was

intolerable. But how nice to slobber sometimes.

What’s that she was saying, a story? Which one? Ah, yes, the new one,

about the waste of pig-wash.

There’s the rain outside, and the chuckling of the gutter pipes. It

will be grey in the room now, or is it dark? Blind, so he didn’t know.

Light, no more light. And if he were to lift the bandages, surely there

was only that between him and light, not a whole lifetime. There is a

click.

“Is that the light on.”

“Yes, dear. Well, I must go to tea. Don’t let it all worry you too

much, dear.” She could not bear it any more.

And she was gone. What did she mean by her “and don’t let it all worry

you too much”? Worry? Worry? He was blind. They did not seem to realise

that he was blind, that he would never see again. Nothing but black.

Why, it was absurd, stifling. He was blind and they did not mind that

he was blind and would never see again. But it was silly to say that

you would never see anything again, that was impossible. You could not

see black for ever, you would have to see something, or you would go

mad. Mad. So he was blind. He had always heard of blind people. But of

course it meant absolutely nothing. It was silly.

There were slow steps up stair carpet, three wavering steps on the

linoleum, and the door opened. Nanny comes in.

“Master John, I have brought you your tea.”

She puts something down that clinks.

“Thanks.”

“Did you have a nice sleep?”

“No.”

“Would you like a nice cup o’ tea, Master John?”

Was everything nice and like her religion, comfortable?

“All right, Nan.”

He was being very good. Tea drinking was a vice in some walks of life,

and in tea there was tannin, a harmful drug. But he was blind, he could

not see. And the pain. So that he was like a blind worm in a fire,

squirming, squirming to get out.

“Nice hot tea. You love your tea, don’t you, Nan?”

“She likes her cup o’ tea, your old Nan does, Master John. I always

have been partial to a cup o’ tea. All through the time when you was in

the nursery it helped me along, for you was a bad boy then. An’ before

that, when you used to lie ’elpless in my arms with yer little red

face. Lor’, you would ’oller too if yer milk was so much as a minute

late. I remember ...”

She was remembering. Why were they all remembering? But perhaps it was

an occasion to do so. They looked back into a past that lived only in

their memories, they did not see the present, the birth of a new life,

of a new art, and his life which had changed so suddenly. But he had

lived his life, as Nan had lived hers, he must now look back. And it

would be so comfortable being sentimental, and talking about memories.

For to look back was the only thing left, to look forward was like

thinking of nothing. Still, it could not all be over, there must be

something in the future, something beyond these black walls! Romantic

again. She too, “... with yer grasp in yer little hand ...” she was

maudlin. Magdalen, he was to have gone there. Oxford. No. Prehensile,

that is all a baby is, and the nurse a ministrant at the knees of

Moloch, the supreme sentimentalist. But her feelings were hurt so

easily, and her tears were terrible. He must be good.

“... a lovely baby ...”

“What is there for tea, Nan?”

“Well, I thought you might like buttered toast and bread and butter,

you always was that fond of at nursery teas, and the Easter cake ...”

“I’ll break the rules and have a bit of that first, Nan, please.”

She cuts a slice and begins to feed him bit by bit, at intervals

putting the teacup into his hands. She loves doing it. For years she

has watched him getting more and more independent, and now she is

feeding him again. It is nice.

Her hand trembles, she has been garrulous and reminiscent, while she

is usually sparing of unnecessary words. She has been told that he is

blind, of course that’s it. So that will mean more sympathy, if not

expressed--which would be intolerable--at any rate only just underneath

the surface. But how could you escape it? There were the people who had

seen him grow up, and who inevitably had a possessive interest in him.

They cared for him through no fault of his own, like dogs, and were

sorry for the pain they felt in themselves at his blindness. They were

busy dramatising it all to him, while he wanted to be alone, alone to

patch up his life. And now he was being theatrical!

“Would you like a sip of tea again, Master John?”

“Thanks, and some buttered toast.”

“I do so love feeding ye, Master John, like I used to with the bottle.

I remember ...”

There would be red around her eyes, there would be a tell-tale weakness

about her lips. He could see her looking at him with the smile he used

to notice on parents’ faces in Chapel at Noat, while they were saying

to themselves, all through the service, that they had been through just

what the boy was going through now, though what it was they didn’t

know. They were saying that they had read the book, years ago. And she

was remembering him when he had hardly been alive, she was gloating

that he was weak and helpless again. He would have to have her near

him day after day, while she bombarded him with her sickening

sentimentality. But what was he doing, eating like this, with this

tragedy of darkness upon him? And the pain, the pain.

“No, no, take it away. I don’t want any more, I couldn’t.”

“Oh, Master John, don’t take on so.”

And the poor old face is falling in, and he hears her beginning to sob.

Then she is groping for the chair, to sit, bowed, in it. This was

terrible, it bordered on a scene, and he was helpless. He shrank and

shrank till he was shrivelled up. The whole creed was strength and not

giving way. He gives her his hand, which she takes in her skinny,

trembling ones, and tears fall on it, one by one, with little sploshes

that he feels rather than hears. Poor Nanny.

But of course she must have been crying in the servants’ hall before

this, banking, minting on the fact that she had known him longer than

anyone else there. The cook and Mamma’s maid had been most attentive

and sympathetic, the kitchen-maid had wept with her. Only the trained

nurse did not listen, she would have sat apart reading, for she knew

what youth was, the others had forgotten it. He could see the scene,

with Nan babbling on through her tears. That fatuous line of

Tennyson’s, “Like summer tempests came her tears.” But there was coming

a serious Tennyson revival.

The trained nurse understood youth from the way her hand caressed his

bandages, they had not trained it out of her yet, nor had life. But

everyone else was like that, everyone except B. G. He wanted B. G., who

would understand, who was the only person who would feel what he was

feeling, and who would sympathise in the right way.

She struggled to her feet, letting go of his hand.

“You mustn’t mind me, Master John, I’m only an old woman.”

And she went out slowly. So she had gone. But he was blind, everyone

would be sorry for him, everyone would try to help him, and everyone

would be at his beck and call; it was very nice, it was comfortable.

And he would take full advantage, after all he deserved it in all

conscience. He would enjoy life: why not? But he was blind. He would

never be able to go out in the morning and recognise the sweep of lawn

and garden again, and to wonder that all should be the same. He would

never again be able to appreciate the miracle that anything could be so

beautiful, never to see a bird again, or a cloud or a tree, or a horse

dragging a cart, or a baby blowing bubbles at his mother! Never to see

a flower softly alive in a field, never to see colour again, never to

watch colour and line together build up little exquisite temples to

beauty. And the time when he had gone down on his knees before a

daffodil with Herrick at the back of his mind, how he had grown drunk

before it. And then the thought of how finely poetic he must be

looking as he knelt before a daffodil in his best flannel trousers.

What a cynic he was! That was another of his besetting sins. What a

pity, also, to be so self-conscious. The pain.

The misery of hating himself as much as he did.

How unlucky he was to have been born like that, so infinitely superior

to the common ruck. The herd did not feel all that he did, all his

private tortures, and he was unfit to die like this, shut up in the

traditional living tomb. A priest ought to have said offices over him

as the glass entered his head and caused the white-hot pains there. And

now the darkness pressed down on him, and he was not ready. He was not

sufficient in himself. He did not know. He had been wandering off on

expeditions in a mental morass before, and now all chance of retreat

was cut off. He must live on himself, on his own reserves of mental

fat, which would be increased a trifle perhaps when Mamma or Nan read

to him, as steam rollers go over roads, levelling all sense, razing all

imagery to the ground with their stupidity. And when he learned Braille

it would be too slow. And it terrifies, the darkness, it chokes. Where

is he? Where? What’s that? Nothing. No, he is lost. Ah, the wall, and

he is still in bed and has hurt his hand in the blow he gave it. The

bell should be here to the left--yes, here it is, how smoothly

everything goes if you keep your head. His hand tastes salt, he must

have skinned it against the wall.

There are steps on stair carpets, four quick steps on the linoleum, and

the nurse enters, prettily out of breath.

“Well, and how are we? Did you ring, Mr. John? I am so sorry, I was

having my tea.”

“Oh, nurse, I was frightened. Look, I have skinned my knuckles, haven’t

I?”

“Silly, whatever did you do that for? That was very naughty of you. Now

I shall have to bind it up.”

She washes it.... She has such a pretty voice that he would like to

squeeze her hand as she is holding his. And he wanted sympathy. But it

would be too terrifying, he had had enough awkward scenes to-day, he

did not feel strong enough for another if she were to object. And a

nice sight he must be with bandages all over him. Besides, being a

professional, she would not be intrigued by bandages as others might.

No, he could do nothing.

And she? Well, he wasn’t a very interesting case, was he? It was not as

if he had eyes left in their sockets, eyes that needed fighting for to

save. There was nothing interesting in his condition. How she loved

difficult cases. She had only just graduated, so she hadn’t had any.

And he was quite healthy, he was really healing very quickly, and he

hadn’t a trace of shock. They had always told her in the profession

that she would soon get out of it once she had had one, but her dream

was a case of _delirium tremens_; to hear the patient describe the blue

mist and the snakes, snakes crawling over everything. But she hadn’t

had one yet. They fought, there had to be two of you, it kept your

hands full. She was sorry for the poor boy, but then he was not really

suffering. Suffering made you a great well of pity, and that of course

was love.

Her hands felt the bandages and then started work. The pain redoubles,

torn face with white-hot bars of pain shooting across it. He was in

agonies. He was like a bird in a white-hot cage, the pain pursuing him

wherever he turned, and he began to squirm, physically now, in bed.

Agony filled his head and his body and everything of him. She was

changing the dressing, it would be over soon, and he must not moan, for

that was not strong or beautiful. Aah. There, he had done it, and the

pain died down again to the old glow. She had finished and he had

moaned just a second before everything had been over. All for nothing,

and it did not seem much now. She was despising him for moaning, he

could sense it. And the athlete would have riddled his lips with his

strong teeth before he uttered a sound, and then only to ask for a

cigarette. Poor woman. And he was blind, was he?

So that he would grow on into a lonely old age. He would know his way

round the house, and there would be his favourite walk in the garden.

As all blind men he would do everything by touch, and he would have

tremendous powers of hearing. He would play music divinely, on the

gramophone. And the tears would course from behind his sightless

eyeballs--but had he any? He had never thought of that. He felt with

his hand, but the bandages were too tight. He remembered that men with

amputated legs could still waggle the toes which by that time were in

the dustbin. He squinted, and was sure that his eyes were there.

“Nurse, have I any eyes?”

“How do you mean? No, I am afraid they were both taken out, they had to

be.”

It had been a dull operation, and they were now in spirits on the

mantelpiece of her room at home in the hospital. When she got back she

was going to put them just where she could see them first thing every

morning, with the toes and the kidney. She had had an awful trouble to

get the eyes.

Oh, so his eyes were gone. Now that was irritating, a personal loss.

Dore had been furious because his appendix had been removed the term

before last, he said it was a blemish on his personal beauty, but eyes

were much more personal. Why hadn’t they taken the eyes of one of the

“muddied oafs”? While he, he was blind. How had it happened? He had

never asked; must have been some accident or something. He would ask.

“Nurse, how did it happen?”

“Do you think you can bear to talk about it?”

“Why not?”

“Well, a small boy threw a stone at the train, and it broke your window

as you were looking out. It was very careless of him. But what I can’t

understand is your being unconscious immediately like that, and not

remembering. But doctor said you could be told, and ...”

A small boy. Damn him.

“And what happened to the small boy?”

“He was whipped by the police yesterday. Won’t you try and get some

sleep now?” and her hands smooth the pillow disinterestedly and tuck

him up. Before, when he remembered it, this had been deliciously

thrilling. So a small boy in a fit of abstraction, or of boredom, had

blinded him, a small boy who could not appreciate what he had done, at

least only for so long as his bottom hurt him. Why, if he had the

child, he would choke him. One’s fingers would go in and in till they

would be enveloped by pink, warm flesh. The little thing would struggle

for a while, and then it would be over, you know, just a tiny momentary

discomfort for an eternity of pleasure, for were not his god-parents

shouldering his sins for him? It would be a kindness to the little

chap, and one would feel so much better for it afterwards. He would be

apprehended for murder, and he would love it. He would make the warder

read the papers to him every morning, he would be sure to have

headlines: BLIND MAN MURDERS CHILD--no, TORTURES CHILD TO DEATH.

And underneath that, if he was lucky, WOMAN JUROR VOMITS, something

really sensational. Mr. Justice Punch, as in all trials of life and

death, would be amazingly witty, and he would be too. He would make

remarks that would earn him some famous title, such as THE AUDACIOUS

SLAUGHTERER. All the children in England would wilt at his name. In the

trial all his old brilliancy would be there. Talking. No more of those

conversations that had been so tremendously important. No more snubs,

no more bitternesses, for the rest of his life he would be surrounded

by dear, good, dull people who would be kind and long-suffering and

good, and who would not really be alive at all. How dull being good for

ever, always being grateful and appreciative for fear of hurting their

feelings. And never to see again, how important transparency was. His

head was beginning to hurt again. Nothing but women all his life.

Better to have died. Why didn’t the pain go away?

What was the time?

CHAPTER II

HER, HIM, THEM

“GOOD morning, mum.”

“Grmn’, J’net.”

And Janet, after putting the can of hot water in the basin behind the

screen, went to the red curtains and pulled them back. The sunlight

leapt, catching fire on her fuzzy hair, and the morning came freely in

by the open windows. Mrs. Haye, in the right half of the double-bed,

had such a lost look in the eyes which were usually so imperious that

Janet shook her head sadly.

She had had a bad night, the first since Portgammon over the fireplace

there had fallen with her jumpin’ timber and had broken his back. She

would get up immediately, it was no use stickin’ here in this ghastly

bed. Pity she did not take her bath in the morning, a bath now would do

her good. But there was more need for it in the evening.

“Janet, I will get up and dress now.”

“Now’m?”

“Yes, now”

Later: “Will you have the brown tweed or the green’m?”

“The heather mixture. Janet, these stockings each have a hole in the

heel. I wish you would not put me out stockings that are unfit to

wear.”

She was in one of her tempers to-day, and no wonder. But as the cook

had said at supper last night, “No one to give notice till a year ’as

passed by.”

She was washing behind the screen, splashing and blowing. Then her

teeth were being attacked. Work and forget, work and forget, till some

plan emerged. She would send for Mabel Palmer and they would talk it

out.

She almost fell asleep while Janet was doing her hair.

Diving upwards through the heather-mixture skirt, she said, “Tell

William to ring up Mrs. Palmer, Norbury 27, you know, to ask her if she

will come to tea to-day.”

“Yes’m.”

She struggled into the brown jumper and before the looking-glass put in

the fox-head pin. There was old Pinch in the herbaceous border doing

nothing already. She had never seen him about so early, it was really

extraordinary. She looked a long time at Ralph in his photograph, but

he was absolutely the same. His smile said nothing, gave her no advice,

but only waited to be told what to do, just as he had been obeying the

photographer then. He would have had more in common with the boy

perhaps, would have been able to talk to him of pig-sticking out in

India in the old 10th days. She could do nothing to distract him. But

then he didn’t hunt, he didn’t shoot, he only fished and that sitting

down, and he couldn’t fish now. Perhaps it was just as well he had

given up huntin’ it would have been terrible had that been taken away

from her suddenly.

How heavy her skirt felt, and she was stiff. She felt old to-day,

really old: this terrible affair coming suddenly like this, just when

the Nursing Association was beginning to go a little better, too. And

she could do nothing for the poor boy, nothing. But something must be

done, there must be some way out. Of course, he would never see again,

it was terrible, she had seen that the first time the doctors saw her

at the hospital, where the appalling woman was head nurse. She had not

had a ward all through the war for nothing, she had seen at once. Some

occupation must be found for him, it was the future one had to think

about, and Mabel Palmer might know of something. Or his friends

might--but then he hadn’t any, or at any rate she had never seen them.

There it was, first Ralph falling down dead of his heart on the stairs,

and now fifteen years after her boy was blinded, worse than being dead.

What could one say to him? What could one do?

She went downstairs. In the Oak Hall she found the dog, who rose slowly

to greet her, looking awkwardly in her direction.

“You, Ruffles? Why have they let you out so early? Poor blind old

thing. Oh, so old.”

She scratched his neck gently. Would it be better to have him

destroyed? He was so old, he could hardly see any more, and it hurt him

to bark. What enjoyment could he get out of life, lying there by the

fire, asleep all day and hardly eating at all? Yet he had been such a

good servant, for ten years he had barked faithfully at friends. And

the only time he had not barked was when the burglars had come that

once, when they had eaten the Christmas cake, and had left the silver.

But it would be kinder to put him out of the way. One must be

practical. But he was blind!

William came in by the dining-room door carrying one of the silver

inkstands as if it had been a chalice. His episcopal face was set in

the same grave lines, his black tail-coat clung reverently to a body as

if wasted by fasting, his eyes, faithfully sad, had the same expression

of respectful aloofness. William, at least, never changed. She

remembered so well old Lady Randolph, who had known him fifty years ago

when he was at Greenham, saying, “I see no change in William.” But of

course her eyesight had not been very grand, nevertheless William had

shown distant pleasure when told. Still he was too aged, he could not

do his share of the work, it must all fall on Robert; the boy was so

lazy, though, that it would be good for him to do a little extra. But

what could one do? He had served her for years, he had been a most

conscientious servant, and it was only the night when the burglars did

come that he had been asleep. However, they had only eaten the

Christmas cake, they had left the silver.

“William, I should like breakfast as soon as possible.”

“Very well, madam.”

And he was gone. Yes, it was convenient to have him about. He was

quiet, he never exceeded himself, and he understood.

Outside, on the little patch of lawn up to the drive, they were mowing

already with the horse-mower. They had made a very early start. The

same George, the same Henry, leading the pony which had carried John

across the open country behind the hounds before he had given up, and

which was still the same. It was only John who had changed.

“George,” she cried, “George.”

The pony halted by himself, the men listened.

“George, see that no stones get in the blades, it ruins them. Henry,

you must pick them up and throw them back on to the drive.”

Both: “Yes’m.”

And they went on mowing.

Of course they were going to keep her waiting for her breakfast now.

But no, William came in and gravely announced it.

As she went in she looked gratefully at him, he was a symbol. He had

come to them directly after the honeymoon, prematurely white and sad.

Ralph used to say that he was a marvellous valet. Thirty years ago.

Then they had gone to India with the 10th. Ten years after they had

come back, and had found William again. It was extraordinary, that, and

Ralph had said then that he tasted comfort for the first time in ten

years. At the funeral William had sent his own wreath, on it written in

his copybook handwriting, “To his master respectfully from his valet.”

It had not been tactful, she had had to thank him. He had exceeded

himself. His only lapse.

Nothing seemed worth while. Yesterday had tired her out utterly. First

the doctors destroying her last bit of hope, and then her breaking it

to him, which had been so terrible. She had gone up again after tea,

and it had been frightful, his face underneath the bandages had been

tortured, his mouth in a half-sneer. She had been frightened of him.

And finally, as nicely as he could, he had asked her to leave him for

the evening. The nurse had met her at the door and had whispered, “He

is in rather a state,” as if she had not known that. The woman was a

fool.

This coffee was undrinkable. The cook had probably been gigglin’ again

with Herbert. That affair! You could not drink it, absolutely

undrinkable. She would make a row. But was it worth while? She felt so

tired to-day. But the house must go on just as usual, there must be no

giving way. She rang the bell. They must find some occupation for the

boy, he could not be left there rankling. Making fancy baskets, or

pen-wipers, all those things blinded soldiers did, something to do.

William coughed.

“William, this coffee is undrinkable. Will you tell the cook to find

some occupation for ... to find some ... The roaster must be out of

order. No, don’t take my cup away. I will drink it for this once.”

Had he seen? At any rate he would not tell. She had not been able to

give a simple order, it was terrible, without giving herself away. She

must make inquiries about Braille books, and find someone to teach it

to him. A knock.

“Come in.”

It was the nurse.

“Good morning, Mrs. Haye. I came down because I wish you would come up

to speak to John. He has refused to eat his breakfast, and there was a

nice bit of bacon this morning. I am afraid he is taking it rather

badly, he did not sleep much last night. But if you would come up and

get him quieter.”

What right had she to call him John? She must be changed. Oh, the

misery of it, and the tortures he must be going through. She could do

nothing, if she spoke to him she would only say the wrong thing.

She rose from the table and looked at the coffee-pot.

“I can do nothing with him, nurse. I think it would be better to leave

him to himself, he always prefers that. He will be quieter this

evening.”

“Very good, Mrs. Haye; I dressed his wounds this morning, they are

getting on nicely.”

His wounds. The scars. And he would wear black spectacles. He had been

so handsome. It would be better not to go up this morning, but let him

quieten down.

She sat down and looked out of the windows in the bay. The big lawn was

before her, they would begin to mow it soon. Dotted over it were

blackbirds and thrushes looking for worms, and in the longer grass at

the bottom she could see the cock pheasant being very cautious. They

were pretty things to look at, but he and his two wives did eat the

bulbs so. She would have to send for Brown to come down and kill them.

And what good was it keepin’ up the shootin’, now that all hope had

gone of his ever holdin’ a gun? But nothing must change. The lower

border was really looking very fine, the daffodils were doing

splendidly. It was just the same, the garden, and how well it looked

now. He hadn’t eaten his breakfast. No. Of course, once in a while a

tree fell down and made a gap that would look awkward for a bit, but

there were others growing and you became used to it. There went a

pigeon, fine birds but a pest, they did more harm to the land than the

rooks. She ought never to have made that birthday promise to John, that

the garden should be a sanctuary for them; but going out to watch them

had made him very happy in the old days, and now? What would he do now?

She got up heavily and left the dining-room. Going through the house

she came to the sitting-room, which looked out on to the small rose

garden surrounded by a high wall. It ought to look well this year, not

that he would see it, though. She had a lot of things to do this

morning, she would not let the thing come up and crush her. His was the

sort of nature which needed to be left alone, so it was no use going up

to see him. Plans must be made for when his new life would begin, and

some idea might emerge out of her work. Being blind he could do work

for the other blind, and so not feel solitary, but get the feeling of a

regiment. Meanwhile there was the Nursing Association. She must write

to his friends, too, they ought to know that he was blind. Would they

really care? But of course anyone who knew John must care. Then their

letters would come in return, shy and halting, with a whole flood of

consolation from the neighbours, half of whom did not care in the

least. She would have to answer them; but no, she couldn’t. Then they

would say that the blow had aged her, she had said that so often

herself. Their letters would be full of their own little griefs, a

child who had a cold, a husband worried by his Indian fever, one who

had been cut publicly by Mrs. So-and-So--but this wasn’t fair. They

would write rather of someone of theirs who died recently or years and

years ago, of the memory of their grief then, of what had helped them

then, of prayer, of a wonderful sleeping draught. Not sleeping, that

was what was so hard. And she would answer suitably, for of course by

now one knew what to say, but it was hateful, people laying little

private bits of themselves bare, and she being expected to do likewise.

She could say everything to Mabel, but not to them. Still, it would be

all over some day. Life would not be the same, it would go on

differently, and yet really be just the same. But did that help? Could

she say to the boy, “You will get used to it in time”? It was

ridiculous. Could she preach religion at him when she was not quite

sure herself? Something must be done.

She took up the Nursing accounts. Five pounds in subscriptions, it was

not bad. That Mrs. Binder. She would have to write her, it was

ridiculous not to subscribe. She was the sort of woman to put spider

webs on a cut. But they did not give their babies cider to drink any

more as a substitute for mother’s milk, she had stopped that. Yet

perhaps Mrs. Moon did, she would do anything, and her house was so

filthy. The annual inspection had gone off so well, too, the Moon child

had been the only one to have nits in her hair. What could one do? The

house was filthy, the husband earned very low wages, you could not

turn them out for being insanitary, they would have nowhere to go. And

the house was losing value every day. John must learn to care about

these things.

And her affairs were none too bright. It was as much as one could do to

keep the house and the garden going, what with the income tax and the

super-tax and everything. The car would have to go, and with it Evans.

Harry could drive her about in the dog-cart, it would be like the old

days again except when one of them passed her. It was terrible to see

the country changing, the big houses being sold, everyone tightening

the belt, with the frightful war to pay for. Now that he was blind

there was no hope of his ever making any money. And the charities had

not stopped. What would happen to John? Even if he hadn’t gone blind it

would have been difficult enough. There were more charities now, if

anything; they came by every post. Her letters, she had forgotten. She

rang the bell. That Mrs. Walters had written for a subscription to a

garden fête in aid of the local hospital. Of course she stole half the

money you sent, but a little of it was fairly certain to be used by the

hospital. The woman never kept accounts for those things, which was

wicked. Then, again, Mrs. Andrew and her Parish Nurse, the effrontery

of it when she did not subscribe to the Barwood one. What a fight it

was. Were there any blind boys in Norbury of his own age, nice boys

whom he could make friends with? They could not afford to go to London

where he might find some. They could, of course, if they sold Barwood.

Sell Barwood!--No, and he would appreciate still having it when he grew

older. To be blind in one of those poky little suburban villas, with a

wireless set, and with aeroplanes going overhead, and motor bikes and

gramophones. No.

William came in.

What had she rung for? Blank.

“It’s all right, William, I have found it now.”

It was terrible, she could not even remember when she rang.

No, everything must go on just the same, the garden would be still the

best in twelve miles, even if all the world went blind. They must find

a companion for the boy, Mabel would be able to help there. Someone who

would spend his time with him, her time, that would be better. It was

so terrible, he would never marry now, she would have no grandchildren.

The place would be sold, the name would die, there was no one. Ralph

had been the last. “Granny.” He would not meet any nice girls now, he

could never marry. A girl would not want to marry a blind man. All her

dreams were gone, of his marrying, of her going up to live in the Dower

House--that was why the Evanses had it on a short lease. She would have

made friends with his wife and would have shown her how to run

everything. His wife would have made changes in the house, of course,

and it would have been sad seeing the place different; but then the

grandchildren, and he would have made such a good father. Why was it

taken away quite suddenly like this? But then they might still find

some girl who had had a story, or who was unhappy at home, who would be

glad, who would not be quite--but who would do. He must marry. All the

bachelors one had known had been so womanish, old grandfathers without

children. John Goe. She could not fill his life, there would have to be

a wife. Mabel might know of someone. Perhaps they would not be happy,

but they would be married. And she ought to be happy here, it was a

wonderful place, so beautiful with the garden and the house. It had

been her real life, this place; before she had married she had not

counted, something had just been training her for this. And she had

improved it, with the rock garden and the flowers. Mary Haye had not

known one flower from another. And she had got the village straight,

there had been no illegitimate children for two years, and they were

all married. It would be a blow going, a bit of her cut off, but the

Dower House was only a mile off, and right in the middle of the

village. And now perhaps she would be able to live here till she died

if he did not marry. But he must, for his happiness, if there was to be

someone to look after him when she died. And she would have

grandchildren after all, it might turn out all right, one never knew in

this world; there had been Berty Askew. If everything failed he could

have a housekeeper. Yes, it was immoral, but he must have love, and

someone to look after him. After Grandmamma died the Grandparent had

had one at Tarnarvaran. Argyll and the heather.... Really, now that

this trouble was upon her, Edward might write. But it was for him to

act first.

She must order dinner. There was comfort in choosing his food, it was

something to do for him. Going out she straightened a picture that was

a little crooked. As she opened the door the sunlight invaded the

passage beyond, and made a square of yellow on the parquet floor.

In front of the swing door into the kitchen she halted. Honestly, one

did not like to enter the kitchen now for fear of findin’ Mrs. Lane

gigglin’ with Herbert. That affair. Well, if they brought things to a

head and married, they would have to leave. She could not bear a

married couple among the servants, they quarrelled so.

Inside it was very clean, the deal tables were like butter, the

grey-tiled floor, worn in places, shone almost. Along one wall was hung

a museum of cooking utensils, every size of saucepan known to science,

and sinister shapes. Mrs. Lane was waiting. Where was her smile? Oh, of

course it was. How nice they all were. Mrs. Lane began talking at once.

“I am sorry to say’m that Muriel has had some kittens in the night. We

none of us suspected’m. In the potato box’m.”

What again!

“Tell Harry to drown ’em immediately.”

One must be practical.

“If I could find a home for them’m?”

“Very well, Mrs. Lane, only I cannot have them here. What with the

stable cat and the laundry cat there are too many of ’em about. What is

there this morning?”

“Very good’m. I’ve got a bit of cod for upstairs”--it was no use

mentioning no name--“an’ would you like one of the rabbits Brown

brought in yesterday, and the pigeon pie’m, with cherry tart for

upstairs?”

“That will do nicely.”

“An’ for dinner I ...” etc.

As she was going out into the kitchen yard so as to gain the stables,

Mrs. Lane ran after her to stop her. She spoke low and fast.

“Madam, the nurse asked me this morning that she could ’ave ’er meals

seprit. Didn’t like to take them in the servants’ ’all’m.”

“If she wants to eat alone, Mrs. Lane, we had better humour her. Have

them sent up to her room.”

“Very good’m.”

An’ who was to take ’em up to ’er, stuck-up thing?

There, now there was going to be trouble about the nurse. Cook had been

angry, although she had tried not to show it. Really they might leave

her alone and not bother her with their little quarrels. Somebody would

be giving notice in a week. Still, Mrs. Lane would not go while Herbert

was here.

“Harry, Harry!”

A sound of hissing came suddenly through an open window on the other

side of the little yard. A head wobbled anxiously behind a steamy

window further down. A hoof clanked.

There was the stable cat. “Shoo!”

“Harry!”

“Yess’m.”

She inspected the horses and went out.

No, she would not go to the laundry this morning. The damp heat would

be rather exhausting. Curry had been riding a nice bay last season

which had looked up to her weight. She was getting rather tired of

Jolly. She stopped, that had reminded her.

“Harry, you can take them both out to exercise to-morrow, I shall not

go out, of course.”

“Very good’m.”

He would never ride now, all her hopes of getting him back to the love

of it were broken, and he could not even go on a lead, for that was so

dangerous. What would he do?

She went through the door in the wall into the kitchen garden. She

called:

“Weston, Weston!”

There was Herbert pickin’ lettuces just for the chance of going to Mrs.

Lane in the kitchen with them. He raised his bent body and touched his

cap. She nodded.

Again she cried:

“Weston!”

A cry came from the other end, from the middle of the artichokes, the

tops of which you could hardly see--it was a big kitchen garden. Weston

appeared walking quickly. He took his cap off.

“How are the peaches getting on?”

Peaches were good for convalescents.

“Very nicely’m. Going to be a good crop, and the apples too. Was among

the artichokes’m. Fine crop this year. Never seen ’em so high.”

“What beautiful cabbages, Weston.”

He would eat them, as he could not see flowers.

“Yes’m. Going to be a good crop.”

“Yes; well, good morning, Weston.”

“Good morning’m.”

Into the garden. Pinch was still at the same spot on the border as he

had been when she had looked out of her bedroom window. He was too old,

but he was a faithful servant.

Yes, his wife was going on as well as was to be hoped. Yes, it was bad

weather for the farmers.

Pinch was the same, so why had _he_ changed? What was the matter with

Pinch’s wife? Just age perhaps, any way they would be the next for the

almshouses. When Mrs. Biggs died they could go in, and that should not

be long now. This would leave vacant their cottage in Ploughman’s

Lane, which that nice man from Huntly could have. How nice the trees

were with their fresh green; whatever happened the seasons went round.

If this warm weather went on he could get out to be on the lawn, but

then you could never tell with the English spring. She would have to go

in to write those letters, while it was so lovely out here. There was

the moorhen starting her nest in the same place in the moat. Mrs.

Trench’s baby would be due about now, her sixth, while that Jim Pender,

earning excellent wages, only had his one girl, and she was five years

old. It was ridiculous, she would have to speak to him about it, a

great strong fellow like him with such a pretty wife. She must have

some jelly and things sent up to Mrs. Trench. He must take an interest

in the village now that he had nothing to do. He could start a club for

the men and teach them something, he would do it very well, talking

about art or books, or one of those things he was so interested in.

That would do something to occupy his time. There was a daffodil out

already, it had planted itself there, it looked so pretty against the

bole of the tree. How good a garden was for one! She felt quieter after

the ghastly night she had had. The only way out of trouble like this

was to work for others till you forgot, when a plan would emerge quite

suddenly, that was what life taught one, and Mabel was the same.

Annie was weeding the gravel of the Yew Walk. In summer she weeded, in

winter she swept leaves, and she picked up dead branches all the year

round.

“Good morning, Annie.”

“Good morning’m.”

She was not quite all there, poor thing, but there was nothing to be

done for her, she would always be like that.

The attendances at church were disgraceful again now, just as bad as

when the Shame had had it. That had been the only time the village had

been right and she wrong. No one had been able to persuade her till she

had seen for herself. It was all part of this modern spirit, she had

seen terrible dangers there for him, but now, poor boy, that he was

blind she could at least keep him to herself away from those things

that led nowhere. She ought to go back now to write those dreadful

letters, but it was so lovely out here, with the sunlight. And it

didn’t look as if it would last, there were clouds about. She had been

right to put on thick clothes. How pretty the little stone Cupid was,

king of his little garden of wallflowers walled in by yews, it would be

a blaze of colour. Now that the flagstones were down you could see what

a difference it made.

She opened the door into Ralph’s old study. It would be his now, as she

had always meant it to be. It got all the sun in the morning, and there

were no awkward corners. He would have a hard time at first in getting

about, but she would lead him and teach him where the furniture was and

all that, it was one of the things she could do for him.

In the Oak Hall there was a note for her. The parson’s wife again. Oh,

this time she wanted fifty cups and saucers for the Mothers’ Union tea.

Well, she could have them. What, again? No, no, not another. Yes, in

the P.S., “I am going to have another darling baby.” That was too much.

Would they never stop? And they could not afford it with the covey they

had already. All it meant was that Mrs. Crayshaw would not be able to

do any visiting in the village for quite two months. Now there was

another letter to write, of congratulation this time, and it was going

to be hard to word. What did they call it, a quiver full? To-morrow and

there would be another letter from her, she would have heard about him

by then, it would be full of earnest stuff. And she did not want

sympathy, she wanted practical advice.

It was all so difficult. She had betrayed him this morning, she had not

thought nearly enough about it all. She was beginning not to care

already. This morning she had frittered away, excusing herself by

saying that Mabel would think of something, while everyone knew that it

was always she who talked while Mabel listened. Still, it was necessary

to talk. But last night had been so dreadful, when she had lain in bed

turning the thing over and over in her mind, and she had prayed too.

She had thought of many ways to occupy his time, but they had all gone

out of her head now. Those red curtains were getting faded, but

Skeam’s man had been insolent when last he came. That was what we were

comin’ to, a decorator’s tout giving himself airs. Before all this she

had meant to put John into a decorator’s business, he was so artistic

that he would have done wonders, perhaps even made a little money. But

there, it was no use thinkin’ of might-have-beens. He must marry, it

was the only thing he could do. He must be a man, and not be left

unfinished. They would have the marriage in the church, and a dinner

for the tenants in the Great Hall. But he was so young. And she would

spend the evenin’ of her days in the Dower House.

She passed through the Great Hall. She buried her head violently into a

pot of dead roses. In her room Ruffles was sleeping fitfully in his

basket. She picked up a paper, glanced at the headlines, then put it

aside. She sat in her armchair and looked vacantly at Greylock over the

fireplace. Along the mantel-board were ranged a few cards to charities,

to funerals, and to weddings. She picked up the paper again and looked

through the Society column, and then the deaths and marriages, and then

threw it onto the floor. She blew her nose and put the handkerchief

away in the pocket of her skirt. She rubbed her face slowly in her

hands, when she stopped it was redder still. Then she sat for some time

looking at nothing at all, thinking of nothing at all. The specks kept

on rising in the sunlight.

She got up. She rang the bell. She went to the writing-table and sat

down. She opened the inkstand hoof, Choirboy’s hoof, and she looked at

her pens. She dipped one into the ink, and she drew a bit of paper

towards her. Then she looked out of the window on to the rose garden

for some time.

William came in.

“William, Mrs. Crayshaw has written to say that she will want fifty

cups and saucers.... No, on second thought ... It is all right,

William, I will go and tell cook myself. And--oh, William, the letters,

please.”

“Yes, madam.”

William held the door open for her. Mrs. Lane might not like it from

the butler. She would go up to see him after this. But you could not be

too careful with servants nowadays, and ...

* * * * *

How did one pass the time when one was blind? Six days had gone by

since she had told him, days filled with the echo of people round

occupying themselves on his account. Mamma had had three long

conferences with Mrs. Palmer, conferences which had reached him through

vague references as to what he was going to do, with not a word as to

what he was going to do now. Nan was struggling with an emotion already

waning. Her long silences, in which she sent out waves of

sentimentality, told that she was trying to freeze what was left into

permanency. The nurse helped him grudgingly back to health, the new

life was forming, and it was even more boring than the former. They

read to him in turn for hours on end, Mamma talked of finding a

professional reader. It was now so ordinary to be blind.

He was in the long chair, under the cedar on the lawn. He felt the sky

low and his bandages tight. The air nosed furtively through the

branches and made the leaves whisper while it tickled his face. Pigeons

were cooing, catching each other up, repeating, answering, as if all

the world depended on their little loves. It was the sound he liked

best about the garden; he yawned and began to doze.

He was alone for the moment. Nan had left him to take a cup of tea. The

nurse was taking the daily walk that was necessary to her trade union

health, and Mrs. Haye had gone up to the village to console Mrs.

Trench, whose week-old baby was dying. Herbert, leaning on the sill of

the kitchen window, was making noises at Mrs. Lane while she toyed with

a chopper, just out of his reach. Weston was lost in wonder, love and

praise before the artichokes, he had a camera in his pocket and had

taken a record of their splendour. Twenty years on and he would be

showing it to his grandchildren, to prove how things did grow in the

old days. Twenty years ago Pinch had seen better. Harry was hissing

over a sporting paper; Doris in an attic was letting down her hair, she

was about to plait the two soft pigtails. Jenny, the laundry cat, was

very near the sparrow now, by the bramble in the left-hand corner of

the drying ground.

He roused himself--if he went to sleep it would only mean that he would

lie awake all night. He fingered the letter that Nan had read to him

from J. W. P., full of regret that he was not coming back next term,

saying that he would get his leaving-book from the Headmaster for him.

No more going back now, which was one good thing, and no more

irritations with J. W. P. He had done a great deal of work, though,

that last year; he had really worked quite hard at writing, and he

would go on now, there was time when one was blind. J. W. P. had

disapproved, of course, and had said that no one should write before he

was twenty-one, but about that time he had come under the influence of

the small master with spectacles, whose theory was that no boy should

have any ideas before he had left school. Perhaps they were right, it

was certainly easier to give oneself up to a physical existence.

Healthy sanity. And here was weakness, in saying that they ever could

be right. But he was in such an appalling desolation that anything

might be right. Why had he taken that train?

He felt himself sinking into a pit of darkness. At the top of the pit

were figures, like dolls and like his friends, striking attitudes at a

sun they had made for themselves, till sinking he lost sight of them,

to find himself in the presence of other dolls in the light of a sun

that others had made for them. Then it did not work, and he was back in

the darkness, on the lawn again. Nothing seemed real.

He said “tree” out loud and it was a word. He saw branches with vague

substance blocked round them, he saw lawn, all green, and he built up a

picture of lawn and tree, but there were gaps, and his brain reeled

from the effort of filling them.

He felt desperately at the deck-chair in which he was sitting. He felt

the rough edges of the wood, which would be a buff colour, and he ran a

splinter into his finger. He put his hand on the canvas, he knew that

it was canvas, dirty white with two red stripes at each side. It felt

rough and warm where his body had touched it. He felt for the red, it

should have blared like a bugle. It did not; that would come later,

perhaps.

He felt the grass, but it was not the same as the grass he had seen.

He lay back, his head hurting him. How much longer would he be there?

The letter crinkled in his hands reminding him of its presence. He ran

his fingers over the pages, but he could feel no trace of ink. He came

upon the embossed address. It might have been anything. A fly buzzed

suddenly. Even a fly could see.

He was shut out, into himself, in the cold.

So much of life had been made up of seeing things. The country he had

always looked to for something. He had seen so much in line, so much

in colour, so much in everything he had seen. And he had noticed more

than anyone else, of course he had.

But when he had seen, how much it had meant. Everything was abstract

now, personality had gone. Flashes came back of things seen and

remembered, but they were not clear-cut. Little bits in a wood, a pool

in a hedge with red flowers everywhere, a red-coated man in the

distance on a white horse galloping, the sea with violet patches over

grey where the seaweed stained it, silver where the sun rays met it. A

gull coming up from beneath a cliff. There was a certain comfort in

remembering.

This would have been a good fishing day. There was no sun, yet enough

heat to draw the chub up to the surface. The boat would glide silently

on the stream, the withies would droop quietly to dabble in the water.

Where the two met the chub lay, waiting for something to eat. And he

would prepare his rod and he would throw the bright speckled fly to

alight gently on the water, and to swim on the current past mysterious

doors in the bathing green. The boat floated gently too, a bird sang

and then was silent, and he would watch the jaunty fly, watch for the

white, greedy mouth that would come up, for the swirl when he would

flick lightly, and the fight, with another panting, gleaming fish to be

mired in struggles on the muddy floor of the boat.

He would go down the river, catching fish. The day would draw away as

if sucked down in the east, where a little rose made as if to play with

pearl and grey and blue. There were chub he had missed, four or five he

would have caught, and more further on. A kingfisher might shoot out to

dart down the river, a guilty thing in colours. More rarely a grey

heron would raise himself painfully to flap awkwardly away. He would go

on, casting his fly, placing it here or there, watching it always, and

now and then, with little touches, steering it from floating leaves.

And it would become more difficult to see, and the only sound would be

the plops the fish made as they sent out rings in eating flies on the

water. One last chub in the boat and he would turn to row back through

the haze that was rising from the river. The water chattered at the

prow, he would notice suddenly that the crows were no longer cawing in

the trees on the hill, but had gone to sleep. He would yawn and begin

to think of dinner. It was a long way back.

He would come to the ferry, where the boats were tied up, where they

huddled darkly together. There would be the rattle of the chain, and

the feeling that something else was finished. Voices would come from

behind the lighted blinds of the inn; a dog would bark, a laugh

perhaps, while the other bank was thick with shadows. He would carry

the oars and rowlocks to put them as always in the shed, and he would

climb the gate, the rod tiresome, the creel heavy. A quick walk home

across the fields, for there was nothing to see in the dark. An owl

perhaps and a bat or two.

Or again, the river in the heat of an afternoon, stalking from the bank

the chub that lay by the withies, and being careful with his shadow. He

would wade slowly through the long grass with here and there a flower

at random, or more often a bed of nettles. He would peer through the

leaves that drooped in green plumes to where a chub cruised

phantom-like in the cloudy onyx of the water. The sun made other

smaller suns that would pierce his eyes and dazzling dance there.

Bending low he would draw out as much line as he could. Stooping he

would pitch his fly cunningly. The line might fall over the fin, and

the fish would be gone.

The chub were hard to catch from the bank, and often it was so hot that

the only thing to do was to lie in the shade. There was an alder tree

under which lived a rat. He would watch for it sometimes: if one kept

still it would come out to play, or to teach a baby what to eat, or to

wash in the water. The cattle, bored, might bestir themselves to come

and look at him, blowing curiously. The flies would always be tiresome.

The water slipped by.

Why was it all over? But it wasn’t, he would cultivate his sense of

hearing, he would listen to the water, and feel the alder, and the

wind, and the flowers. Besides, there had only been about ten fishing

days every summer, what with the prevailing wind, which was against the

current, raising waves, and the rain in the hills which made mud of the

water. There would be no more railing against the bad weather now,

which had been half the joy of fishing.

Sometimes, when he was rowing back in the dark after fishing over the

sunset below, he had stopped by a withy that he could hardly see, to

cast a white fly blindly into the pool of darkness beneath. He would

strike by the ripple of light, he had caught two or three fish that

way, and it was so mysterious in the twilight. Colours had been

wonderful. But these were words only.

What sense of beauty had others? Mamma never said any more than that a

thing was pretty or jolly, and yet she loved this garden. She spent

hours in weeding and in cutting off the heads of dead roses, and there

were long talks with Weston when long names would come out of their

mouths--why had some flowers nothing but an ugly Latin name? But you

could not say that she had no sense of beauty.

Harry looked upon the country from the hunting standpoint, whether

there were many stiff fences and fox coverts. The Arts of Use. And

there was Herbert, during the war, at Salonica. The only thing of

interest he had remembered afterwards was that a certain flower, that

they had here and that was incessantly nursed by Weston in the

hot-house, grew wild and in profusion on the hills above the port.

Egbert, the underkeeper, at Salonica also, had seen a colossal covey of

partridges. That was all they remembered.

In the country one lost all sense of proportion. Mamma used to become

hysterical over some ridiculously small matter. Last Christmas it had

been ludicrous, she had been so angry, and it had led to one of her

outbursts about his not caring for the life here, he, who was to carry

on the house and the traditions, and so on. It had been about the

Church Parochial Council. She had asked that at matins on Christmas Day

there might be music. Crayshaw had answered that there would be music

at Holy Communion which took place before, but that as no one ever came

to matins on Christmas Day--(And whose fault was that, my dear?) it was

not worth while having music again. There had been a violent

discussion, one would have given anything to be there, during which

Mamma had said that if she was a child her Christmas would have been

ruined with no music on Christmas Day. Crayshaw had replied that the

children could come at six in the evening when everyone else came, and

when there was music. Mamma had said that it was the morning that

mattered. Crayshaw had parried by saying that the children could come

to Holy Communion. Mamma had not liked that, “it was bothering

children’s heads with mysticism.” Finally they had voted, and Mamma had

been defeated because she had closed the public pathway at the bottom

of the garden, a path which no one had used for nine years, and the

gates were ugly and in the way. It had spoilt the drive, that wretched

path. “The first time, John, that the village has not followed my lead.

It is so discouraging.” Oh, it had been tragic.

Behind the house a hen was taken with asthma over her newly-laid.

A bee droned by to the accompaniment of flies. He glided down the hill

of consciousness to the bottom, where he was aware only of wings

buzzing, and of the sun, that poured down a beam to warm him, and of a

wind that curled round. Only one pigeon cooed now, and he was tireless,

emptying his sentiment into a void of unresponding laziness. He was

singing everyone to sleep. How dreadful if a cuckoo were to come. The

sky would have cleared, it would be a white-blue. It was hot.

A woodpecker mocked.

He leant down and his fingers hurried over the grass, here and there,

looking for the cigarette-box. He found and opened it, taking out a

cigarette. Again they set out to find the matches, which they found. He

felt for the end that lit, he struck and heard the burst of flame.

Fingers of the left hand groped down the cigarette in his mouth to the

end, and he brought the match there. He puffed, he might have puffed

anything then. He felt with a forefinger to see whether it was alight

and he burned the tip. The match blew out with a shudder, and he threw

it away.

How intolerable not to be able to smoke, but people said that you came

to appreciate it in time, and it was degrading to chew gum. Was it

still alight? Again he burned his finger. He threw the cigarette away.

Now it would be starting a fire; still he had thrown it out on the

lawn. What was that? A tiny sound miles away, no one but a blind man

could possibly have caught it. He sniffed, he could smell the fire,

very small yet, but starting, just one flame, invisible in the

sunlight, eating a pine-needle. What was to be done? To leave it was

madness, but how to find it to put it out? Await developments, there

was nothing probably. Stevenson’s last match.

All the same the cigarette was not burning anything, it was an

invention typical of the country. He was getting into the country state

of mind already, with no sense of proportion, and always looking for

trouble. And he would become more and more like that, when one was

blind there was no escape. It was a wretched business. The life of the

century was in the towns, he had meant to go there to write books, and

now he was imprisoned in a rudimentary part of life. And the nurse was

busy nursing him back to a state of health sufficient for him to be

left to their all-enfolding embrace of fatuity. So that all he could do

to keep his brain a little his own was to write short stories. Perhaps

one on the nurse, with her love of white wards and of stiff flowers,

they were sure to be stiff if she had any, and of a ghastly antiseptic

sanity. With her love of pain and horrors, and of interesting cases,

with her devastating knowledge of human anatomy. But that was rather

cheap, for she wasn’t like that. She was merely dull, with a desire for

something concrete and defined to hold on to. But she was dull.

He would write a story, all about tulips. That time when Mamma had

taken him one Easter holidays to Holland, when the tulips had been out

all along the railway line. And the cows with blankets on in case it

rained. But no, it would have to be in England, the tourist effect in

stories was dreadful. It would be a Dutchman with a strange passion for

tulips--that was rather beautiful, that idea. Yes, and he would have

passed all his life in sending tulips over to England, till he had come

to think that England must have been a carpet of them in spring--he

would have to be uneducated and think that England was only a very tiny

island. He would be just a little bit queer with lovely haunting ideas

that drifted through his brain, and he would love his tulips! So that

Holland in springtime would not have enough tulips for him, and he

would sell the little he had so as to buy a passage, that he might feed

his soul on his tulips in England. His place in the bulb farm would be

to address the wrappers, and there would be an address in Cumberland

that he was told to write to very often. Then there would be those

hills to work into the story, and he would go on a bicycle, which he

had bought with his last penny, and each hill would seem to hide his

tulips, they might be there, just beyond, behind the next hill. Till he

would fall down, dead, his heart broken! But perhaps that was a little

flat. It must simmer over in his brain. He would be very queer, with

little fragments of insanity here and there. It would work.

The laziness of this afternoon.

Mrs. Haye crushed grass on the way to Mrs. Trench. Herbert stretched

out a hand and made clucking noises, while Mrs. Lane giggled. Weston

shifted his feet slightly, and put his cap further back on his head,

before the artichokes. Harry began hissing his way down another

paragraph, and Doris was fondly tying a bow on the end of one pigtail.

Jenny, the laundry cat, was two inches nearer the sparrow.

Nan put down her cup with a sigh and folded her hands on her lap, while

her eyes fixed on the fly-paper over the table.

* * * * *

They were all standing round him on the lawn.

“Seven days old. I said what I could to Mrs. Trench. A terrible affair.

What can one do?”

“Poor little mite.”

“What was it, Mrs. Haye?”

“Gastric pneumonia, I think, nurse. I am sure that Brodwell muddled the

case.”

“To think of it!”

“Of course, Mrs. Haye, gastric pneumonia with a seven days’ child is

very grave.”

“Was it a boy or a little girl’m?”

“A girl. How is he to-day, nurse?”

“Oh, I’m all right.”

“I think we are getting on very nicely, aren’t we?”

“He has more colour to him to-day.”

“Oh, Master John, you do look a heap better.”

“Thanks, Nan, I’m sure I do.”

“Yes, Mrs. Haye, he really has. In one or two days we shall be up and

about again, shan’t we?”

“I suppose so.”

“Of course you will, dear.”

“It did give me a fright.”

“Well, there’s another fright over anyway, Nan.”

“Dr. Mulligan is not coming again, is he, nurse?”

“Only to-morrow, Mrs. Haye, for a final inspection. And I had perhaps

be better getting ready to go back to town in a week or two, he is

going on so quickly.”

--Thank God, the woman was talkin’ about goin’.

--Time she went, too, airified body.

“Well, nurse, I think in about ten days’ time it will be safe for me to

take over the dressings, and then there would be nothing left for you

to do except teaching him how to get about and so on, and we can do

that, can’t we, Jennings?”

“We can do that’m.”

Yes, they could do that. The nurse was intolerable, but at least she

was alive, and now they were sending her away.

“Then, Mrs. Haye, I can write up to town to tell them that I shall be

free in, say, twelve days’ time? That will make the 24th, won’t it?”

“Yes, shall we say the 24th? Why, it’s you, Ruffles. Oh, so old.”

“Poor dog.”

“How old is he, Mrs. Haye?”

“Twelve years old. He ought to be destroyed. One must be practical.”

“That’s right. Kill him.”

“But, my dear, it is cruel to let him live.”

“He is too old to be healthy, Mrs. Haye. They are germ traps.”

Ruffles made confiding noises, wagging a patchy tail. An effluvia of

decay arose.

“Perhaps it would be best.”

It was a pity to shoot him, after he had been so good. How sentimental

dogs were. Nan would be having one of her waves of silent grief. Their

breathing descended in a chorus to where he lay, hoarse, sibilant, and

tired. Were they thinking of Ruffles? Did they all snore at night?

The evening was falling away and the breeze had dropped. A midge bit

him on the ankle and a drop of sweat tickled him by the bandages. The

pigeons were all cooing together, there seemed to be no question and

answer, they were in such a hurry to say everything that there wasn’t

time. Birds twittered happily and senselessly all round. Through it and

over it all there was the evening calm, the wet air heavy everywhere.

The sky would be in great form, being crude and vulgar.

They were silent because it was the evening, though they could not keep

it up for long.

“A pretty sunset.”

“It’s that beautiful.”

“I do love a sunset, Mrs. Haye, I think ...”

“A sunset, John”--the woman was intolerable.

“Ah.”

“Is it not becoming a little fresh for him out here, Mrs. Haye? We

mustn’t catch a chill.”

“Perhaps. Jennin’s, could you just go and tell William and Robert to

come here to help Master John back.”

“But I can walk by myself if one of you will give me their arm.”

“I don’t think we are quite strong enough yet, Mrs. Haye.”

She would write to-morrow to get her changed. It was too bad of them to

send her this thing.

God blast the woman, why was he always treated as a baby? Oh, how they

loved it, now that he was helpless.

“What time is it?”

“Eight o’clock, dear. Time for dinner. Ah, here are William and

Robert.”

Ruffles licked his hand. My only friend. Oh, he was sick and tired of

it all.

“Now, dear, put your arm round William’s shoulder, and the other round

Robert ...”

“Would it not be better, Mrs. Haye, if between them they carried the

chair and him on it?”

“Stairs--narrow. Now lift him. That’s right. You can get along like

that with them on each side, can’t you, John?”

The woman was insufferable.

“Yes, I’m all right. Good-night, Ruffles.”

“I’ll come up and see you after dinner, dear.”

William breathed discreetly but heavily, Robert full of energy.

William’s shoulders were thin.

“Mind, Master John, here’s the step into the library.”

The nurse walked quickly behind. Mrs. Haye was a fool, and with no

medical training, even if she were an honourable. Of course it was bad

for the patient to walk upstairs. If she had had her way, they would

never have put him in a room two storeys up, even if he had been in it

since childhood. These ex-V.A.D.’s who gave themselves such airs.

Nan was drowned in a wave of silent grief.

To see him supported between Mr. William and Robert with white bandages

over his head and him so weak and feeble and who would never see again,

and the nurse who was not fit to look after a sick boy she was that

cantankerous.

She trailed away to a cup o’ tea in the kitchen.

Mrs. Haye went round to her sitting-room through the door in the wall

of the rose garden. No solution yet, nothing found, nothing arranged.

Only one or two letters of condolence left to answer. And the nurse was

terrible. Terrible. The idea of carrying him up those narrow stairs.

There might have been a nasty accident if the woman had had her way.

And he was in such a difficult state of mind. You could not say a word

to him without his taking it wrong. Really, the only thing to do was to

watch him and await developments. And in two or three years’ time they

would marry him to some nice girl, they would look out for one. There

was--well, perhaps.

She went upstairs to dress for dinner.

He sat on a chair while the nurse got the bed ready. His head hurt him,

the stairs must have done that. Poor Ruffles, it was too bad that he

was finished. His head was throbbing; how he hated pain, and in the

head it was unbearable. And this atmosphere of women. There was no male

friend who would come to stay, he had always been too unpleasant, or

had always tried to be clever, or in the movement. And now there was no

escape, none. A long way away there might be a country of rest, made of

ice, green in the depths, and ice that was not cold, a country to rest

in. He would lie in the grotto where it was cool and where his head

would be clear and light, and where there was nothing in the future,

and nothing in the past. He would lie on the grass that was soft, and

that had no ants and no bugs, and there would be no flies in the air

and no sun above his head, but only a grey clearness in the sky, that

stretched to mountains blue against the distance, through the door of

his ice-house. There would be pine trees in clumps or suddenly alone,

and strange little mounds, one after the other, that grew and grew in

height till they met the mountains that cut off the sky. A country of

opera-bouffe. And little men in scarlet and orange would come to fight

up and down the little hills, some carrying flags, others water

pistols. There would be no wounded and no dead, but they would be very

serious.

Why couldn’t there be something really romantic and laughable in life?

With sentimentality and tuppenny realism. Something to wake one out of

an existence like this, where day would follow day with nothing to

break the monotony, where meal followed meal and where people sat still

between meals letting troubles fall into their lap. Nothing stirred.

“There, it is ready now. Take off your dressing-gown and lean on my

shoulder. There we are. Would you prefer to have your dressings renewed

now, or after dinner?”

“Oh, now, to get it over.”

He hated pain. He only half saw how pain fitted in with the scheme of

things, and it made him afraid.

She was clinking bowls, and already the clean smell, far worse than any

dung-heap, was all over the room.

Fingers began to unpin and to remove his bandages. It was hurting less

to-day. No, it wasn’t. Oh ...

CHAPTER III

PICTURE POSTCARDISM

IN the green lane between Barwood and Huntly there was a stile in the

tall hedge. Behind were laurels, and brambles, and box trees, and yews,

all growing wild. At the end of a mossy path from the stile lay the

house, built in yellow brick with mauve patterns, across a lawn of rank

grass. It had been raised in 1840 by a Welshman, the date was over the

door. But this was hardly visible, it was early morning and a heavy

white mist smudged the outline. Birds were beginning to chatter, dawn

was not far. There were no curtains to the house, and no blinds but

one, torn, hanging askew across a dark window swinging loosely open on

the ground floor. A few panes of glass were broken, and brown paper was

stuck over the holes. There was a porch at the near end with most of

the tiles off; they had been used to patch the roof, which was a dark

blue-grey. At the far end was what had once been a hot-house, its glass

broken.

The garden was dishevelled, no attempt had been made to clean it for

many years, and the only sign of labour was the cabbages that Father,

in a burst of energy, had planted in a former flower-bed. There was one

huge beech tree most beautifully tidy, and the only respectable member

of the garden. The others merely went round the edge, keeping the

chaotic growth from the neat meadows. The whole garden gave the effect

of being unhappy because it had too much freedom. It was sad. And the

house was sadder still with its wistful mauve patterns, looking so

deserted and forlorn although it was lived in. Nobody loved it, and,

though by nature so very feminine, it had to remain neuter and

wretched. No one cared two farthings, and it felt that deeply. No one

minded. The birds were chirruping heartlessly. From over the river the

church struck a silver five.

At the back was a yard, in the middle a hen coop made out of an old

army hut. A cock was crowing within, had been doing so for some time.

There is a stable, with a rickety door off its lower hinge hanging

ajar. A rat plays inside. There are holes in the red roof of the

outhouse, gaping at the pink sky. Broken flagstones lie about, and

weeds have grown through the cracks. The back door has lost its paint.

The four windows stare vacantly with emptiness behind their leaded

panes. The mist hangs sluggishly about, and the air is chill as the

cock crows in his raucous tenor.

Then the sun lights up the top of the beech tree into golden fire, and

there is a movement in the paleness. It begins to go, while the sky

fades back into every-day life. The fire creeps down the beech till

the tops of the overgrown laurels are alight, the mist has drawn off to

the river just below there. Everything brightens and stretches out of

sleep, the sky is blue almost. A butterfly aimlessly flutters over the

cabbages, the flycatcher swoops down and she is swallowed; he was on

guard already. A pigeon drives by, a bright streak of silver painted on

him by the sun. The birds chirp in earnest as the sun climbs higher and

begins to make shadows, while anywhere that a drop of dew catches the

light he breaks into a gem. A gossamer web will dart suddenly across

something, like a rainbow thread.

The chickens begin to make a great noise, scolding and crooning in

their wooden prison, sounding very greedy. They want to be let out, for

a late worm, who has come up to see the new day, may yet be left by the

gobbling blackbirds and thrushes. The last mists are drawing out, a

breeze is stirring, and the morning is crystal. The dew has made a

spangled dress for everyone, and the weeds and straggling bushes are

all under a canopy of brilliant drops of light.

A starling sits upon the chimney pot preening himself. A crow flies

over the garden, glancing to right and left. The three yews are

renewing their green in the sun, the laurels are shiny and clean. A

rabbit hops out, looks round, and begins to nibble at the fresh grass,

his last meal before he goes to bed.

The air is new.

All are one community, but it will not be for long. When the sun sucks

up the dew and the moistness of the gossamer, everyone will be for

himself again. Each bird will sing his own song, and not the song of

the garden. “Me, me, me,” he will say, “I am the best.” And the nettles

will whisper to each other, “You are me, you are me,” laurels, yews,

box trees and brambles too. Even the beech tree who has won to his

great height and who has no rival in fifteen miles, he, too, will be

straining, straining higher to the sun. It is all the sun, who has not

climbed high enough yet.

The back door opened and she came out, pausing a moment before shutting

the door behind her. She was tall and dressed in red slippers, a dirty

blue serge skirt, and a thin, stale mauve bodice. She was so graceful!

Her skin was unhealthy-looking, dark and puffed, her mouth small, the

lips red. Her hair, black and in disorder, tangled down to her

eyebrows. Across one cheek a red scar curved. Her eyes, a dark brown

and very large, had a light that burned.

She felt alive, and she could see that the yard was dead--yes, she was

like that this morning.

She stepped out into the yard, slammed the door behind her, and swept

through the weeds that sprinkled her with dew. One big bramble twined

so amorously round her skirt that her legs could not tear themselves

free, and she had to bend to tear him off superbly. All over at the

contact of her hands he trembled, and trembled there for some time. She

went to the pump which stood near the outhouse, and the rat fled down

his hole. She worked the pump handle till it chugged up water for her

which she splashed over her face, wetting her dress as well. She went

to the hen coop, opened the door, and stood waiting. The cock walked

sedately out the first and she hurried him up with her carpet slipper,

laughing to see him flustered. Her voice was deep, and, of course, had

a coarse note in it. And then she went back into the house, all wet,

banging the back door behind her.

Snores, deep and thick, came down from an open window above into the

yard.

The cock was angry and he watched his hens for a moment with a sense of

humiliation, one claw stopped in mid-air. He did not know but he felt

out of sorts. Not in actual ill-health but liverish. All the same, if

there was anyone to look at him they would see a fine sheen to his

feathers to-day. He cried out to attract attention, and Natacha, who

was by his side, said duteously that his ruff was stupefying in its

beauty, rivaling the sun with its brightness. After it was all over,

leaving Natacha squawking, he fluttered up on to the top of the coop.

He was feeling ambitious, in revolt, the world was all wrong somehow,

too soft, not enough dust for a dust-bath. There was not even a

dung-heap in this wretched yard. Everything was too soft--the sun, and

the dew, and the gentle weeds. He wanted heat, heat. Between intervals

of killing things on himself he stretched out his neck and told this to

the world, and that he was king of this castle.

Joan upstairs is putting on her stockings. What a lot of holes there

are in them, but no matter. Sunday to-day. How will Father take the

church bells? Last Sunday he had not minded very much. It is going to

be beautifully hot, and Father will hate that too, poor old thing.

George hated the heat, only she loved it. The wonderful sun!

How red her hands are getting, and rough. That was the house-work,

while nice, young, rich ladies kept theirs folded with gloves on, and

they had coloured umbrellas to keep the sun off. To be frightened of

the sun! Nice young ladies had never done a day’s work in their lives.

Why should she work and they be idle? Oh, if she were like one of them!

She would have light blue undies. Wouldn’t she look a dream in the

glass! And stays? No, no stays. But perhaps, they must fortify you so.

But what was the good of dreaming?--dreaming never did anyone any good.

There was George, he might be working in the meadow to-morrow, and then

she would lean over the stile--climb over the stile?--and talk to him

and get a few shy answers back, perhaps. George was wonderful, George

was so exciting. With his fair hair, with his honey-coloured eyes, with

his brick-red face so passionate, with his strength, with his smell.

The one that drove the milk factory’s lorry and that was always smoking

a cigarette on his upper lip and that had that look in his eyes like a

snake looking for his prey, she could not understand how she had seen

anything in him. But George, with his honey-coloured ones, slow, but

with it at the back of them, and with his shortness, and with his

force, oh, it would, it must be something this time after such years of

waiting. To find out all about it. “Yes, George, go on, go on.”

What nice toes she had, except that the nails were rather dirty. But

what was the good of keeping clean now? They weren’t in the Vicarage

any more, and there was no one to tell her how dirty or how pretty they

were, except Father when he was drunk, but that, of course, did not

count. George would say all that. She would teach him, if he didn’t

know.

She moves to a looking-glass and wrestles with her hair. In the glass

was the brown-papered wall behind, the paper hanging in strips, showing

the yellow plaster beneath. Those holes in the roof. And there was the

rash that broke out in the top right-hand corner of the glass where the

paint had come off the back. She was so miserable. The only chair has

no back, and the front leg is rickety, so that you have to lean over to

the right when you sit down. The bare boards of the floor are not

clean, the bed-clothes are frowsy, the pillow greasy. Everything is

going to go wrong to-day. It is close in here. She goes across the room

and flings the window open. By the window there was a small table, on

it a looking-glass. She never used this one because you had to sit down

to it, and that was tiresome. Draped round the oval frame and tied in

wide, drooping bows to the two uprights was a broad white ribbon. Tied

to the handles of the two drawers beneath were white bows also. On the

low table were hair-brushes, a comb with three teeth out, a saucer full

of pins and hairpins and safety pins and a medicine bottle, empty, with

a bow round the neck made out of what had been left of the white

ribbon. Violets, in a little bunch, lay by the bottle, dead.

She goes through the door into the next room, which is his. He is lying

noisily asleep, with the bed-clothes half off his chest, and his red

beard is spread greasily over the lead-white of his skin. One arm hangs

down to the floor, the other, trying to follow it, is flung across his

chest. His face has a nose, flat, hair red and skin blotchy. There is

the usual homely smell of gin. The window was wide open to let out the

snores.

And this was Father, Daddy, Daddums. Oh, he was pretty in bed. She

couldn’t remember him very well as he was at the Vicarage such ages

ago, without his beard. It had been wonderful then: they had had a

servant, which you could order about. And Mrs. Haye, she used to

terrify her, now she did not care two snaps of the finger although

she had run away from her when she had seen her coming down the lane

the other day; and Mrs. Haye had called him Mr. Entwhistle, the

ordinary people, Passon, and Colonel Waterpower, whom they had met

occasionally, had called him Padre. Silly all those people were with

their silly ways, but they were so well dressed and the ladies too,

those stuffs, so ... And it was his fault that they were like this. You

could see what people thought by their faces as they passed, they

always went a little quicker when they caught sight of you coming. And

they might still have been in the Vicarage.

Poor Father, perhaps it was not all his fault. And after all she was

the only person left now to look after him. And the life wasn’t too

bad, he left her alone except when he was drunk and wanted someone to

talk to. And he told her the most wonderful things. He was really a

wonderful man, a genius. All it was, was that he was misunderstood. He

saw visions and things. And really, in the end, it was all Mother’s

fault for being such a fool, though of course Father had been fond of

gin before that. Mother, when she lay dying, with Father and her at the

bedside, instead of whispering something she ought to have, had cried

out quite loud _“John”_ as if she was calling, right in front of the

doctor and the village nurse and that. Then she was dead, and they were

her last words. John was still the postman. She had been a fool, and

Father had drunk much more gin ever afterwards. After Mother died

Father had been unfrocked, that was soon after the beginning of the

war, partly for the gin, and partly for the talk about Mother. Mr.

Davies died in time, and with most of the money that Uncle Jim had left

them when he was killed they had bought this house here, only two miles

away. It would have been nicer to go somewhere new, but as Father said,

“he was not going to run away from those that had hounded him from the

parish.”

What was she doing standing still? She had to wake him and then get

breakfast and then clear up. “Here, wake up. Wake up,” and she picks up

the clothes, flung anyhow on the floor, and smooths them, putting them

at the foot of the bed. Roses on wallpaper, roses hung down in strips

from the damp wall pointing. “Get up, get up.” He was shamming, that he

might give her more work to do. Yes, that was it. “Do you hear? Get

up.” She lifts his white shoulders and shakes him till the blue watery

eyes open. She lets him flop back on to the pillow, the red

finger-marks on his skin fading away again.

His eyes open painfully. He scratches, gazing vacantly at the ceiling.

“Another day?”

“Yes.”

“Oh.”

“I’ll go and get you some water, if you’ll get up.”

“Well, go and get it then.”

She goes to the pump, and he drags himself out of bed. He is short and

thick-set, with bulging flesh. He has been sleeping in an old pair of

flannel trousers. He sits on a box by the window. He looks out beyond

the garden, over the meadow and the quiet river, to where the trees

cover a hill on the other side. Their green dresses are blurred by the

delicate blue mist that swims softly round them, the deep shade yawns

the sleep away. In the meadows some cows lie in the open, it is not hot

enough yet to drive them under the hedges. Below, a hen chuckles with

satisfaction. How quiet it all was, nothing wrong in the best of all

possible worlds. They thought that, all the rest of them, they did not

care. And he was forgotten. Nature insulted him. What right had the

country to look like this, basking in the sunshine while he lived in

the middle of it? He with his great thoughts, his great sufferings. Why

didn’t the State support him, instead of letting him live in squalor?

He deserved as much of the money from the bloated capitalist as anyone

else. It was their class that had brought him to this, they had never

paid him enough, for one thing. It was their fault. Where was the

water?

To-day was going to go badly, it was going to be terribly hot. Sunday

too, so that the church bells would ring and then he would remember

Barwood church, the little altar, the roses--his roses--growing

outside. He felt so ill to-day, not at all strong. He would weep when

the bells rang, weep because so many things were over, the Colonel

calling him Padre, the deference of the churchwarden. How great his

tears would be. All that was so far and yet so close. Every day he

thought it over. But there was no need to regret it, he was working out

his salvation here, if he had stayed on in that Vicarage he would have

been dead alive. He was so vital here, and then somehow the grasp of it

would leave him.

He was ill to-day all the same, he felt it inside, something seriously

the matter. Was it the cancer? There, turning over and over. Yes, there

it was. Here; no, there; no, no, there. Yes. Cancer, that he had been

awaiting so long.

“Here’s the water.”

He winced. The noise the girl made. Was he not ill?

“I am ill.”

“Again?”

“It’s the cancer at last.”

There was a certain satisfaction now that it had come.

“Again. The doctor will cost you a bottle just for telling you it’s

imagination. I know them and you.”

“Go away, go away.”

She was essentially small in character, like that mistaken woman her

mother. Oh, he couldn’t any more. Cancer coming on top of it all. What

a fine tragedy his was. And it would cut short his great work, before

even it had been begun.

She opened the door downstairs and went into the kitchen. He was much

the same to-day, a little stronger perhaps, but that would go till he

stoked up in the evening. Poor, weak creature.

Through a small window in a small bay looking out on to the garden the

sunlight comes in and washes the dirt off the worn, red tiles. There is

a sour smell of old food, and underneath the two windows on the right

lie some empty sardine tins which have missed the gaps in the glass

when thrown away. She goes to the cupboard, which is on the left. On it

is an almanack from the ironmonger in Norbury, ten years old, with a

picture in the middle of a destroyer cutting rigid water shavings in

the sea, with smoke hurrying frozenly out of its funnels, and with a

torpedo caught into eternity while leaping playfully at its side, out

of the water and into the air. She jerks the cupboard open. Inside

are plates, knives and forks, cups, and a teapot, all in some way

chipped or broken. There are tinned foods of every kind, most of all

sardines, and three loaves. At the bottom are two pails and a mangy

scrubbing-brush and some empty gin bottles. On the top shelf some

unopened bottles and a few cakes of soap are jumbled up with vaguely

folded sheets and towels. She takes out a sardine tin and a loaf of

bread and pitches them with two knives on to the table in the middle

of the room. A chunk of butter on half a plate she puts down, as well

as two cups without handles, and the milk-holding teapot. He has an

injured spout, poor thing.

She goes over to the bay window and flings it open. She rolls up the

torn blind. Father liked going round at night occasionally, “shutting

up” as if he lived in a castle, but as he could never see straight

enough by then to find the window latches it was not much good, but he

always pulled down the blind. The range was disused and rusty, it had

not been lighted since April. Before it was a tub of greasy water in

which she did the washing up. The sun did not get far into the room.

The paper here also was beginning to peel from the walls. An early

bluebottle buzzed somewhere.

There was a movement in the sunlight, a scamper, and Minnie was arching

his back against her leg, while his tail waved carefully at the end.

Minnie, so fresh, so clean, the darling. Cat’s eyes looked up at her,

yellow and black. “Minnie, have you killed anything?” In a rush he was

out of the window--how like darling Minnie--his tail a pennant. Then he

is back, the clever darling, and in his mouth a dead robin redbreast.

How he understood. “Oh, Minnie, the little sweet. Look at his crimson

waistcoat and his crimson blood. Why, he is still warm. Shall we give

him to Father for his breakfast. What a clever Minnie,” and Minnie

purrs half attention. He paddles a paw in a speck of blood. She bends

down, taking him in her arms. “Oh, Minnie, what a clever Minnie.” But

with a light jump he was out of her arms and was going to the window,

and then was out of it. Joan follows, looks out, and Minnie is standing

there, quite still, detached. Then he was off, slipping by everything,

while the dew caught at his coat. How lovely cats were, she adored her

Minnie.

A slow step came down the stairs, with a careful pause at the hole on

the ninth step from the ground, and he comes in shakily. His face is

baggy and fallen in, his black clothes have stains. He is wearing a

dirty drainpipe collar, for it is the Sabbath, while round it a khaki

shirt flaunts, without the black dicky. He stands in the doorway, his

beard waggling.

“Sardines? Again? I tell you I can’t eat them.”

“We ought to be glad to eat what is given to us.”

“Don’t throw up quotations like that at me just to annoy me. Do you

hear? Given, who said it was given? I paid for it, didn’t I? You hate

me, and everyone hates me.”

But that was as it should be, he ought to take a pride in the hatred of

the world. It was ever so with the great. But sardines, he paid for

them. There had been a time when he had thanked God for sardines,

because he had always hated them so that he saw in them his cross. But

what was the good? He paid for them, and ate them because it was better

than eating dry bread. After all he had paid for them, and if he had

not paid he would not have got them, so where did thanks come in? He

ought only to thank that oil-well in Southern Texas where Hoyner the

cinema-man came from. There had been a time when he had thanked God for

oil-wells, wars and apples, while these were nothing but unfortunate

mistakes, he having lost half his money in Mexican oil, and apples

being bad for his digestion. Why did he keep that money in oil?--it

would go like the other half had. But it was so awkward changing. It

was all so difficult. But then if no one ate fish the industry would

die and with it the fishermen. No, thank God, he could see nothing

divine in anything now, whereas in the old days he had eaten even a

sardine with considerable emotion. Yet how could one be sure? His

reason, how it tortured him, how it pursued round and round, coldly, in

his brain. He had a fine intellect, too. Edward had told him that

thirty years ago at Oxford. And it had been growing, growing ever since

in his hermit existence, even Joan did not deny it.... He was even more

of a genius because he was recognised in his home, a very rare thing

surely. And his reward would come, it must come. Yes, he would start

work this very morning. But he felt so ill, weak.

“I feel so ill this morning, child. I have such a headache. And I am so

weak”--physically only, of course; no, not mentally.

“Have a drop of gin in your milk. That will make it all right.”

“Yes, I think you are right”--but no more than one, really.

He was always like that before the morning one. Poor Father.

That is better, more comfortable. But still there may be something

wrong with him. He swallows another gin-and-milk.

“It’s the cancer, Joan, that’s what I am so terrified about. I can feel

it glowing hot. We can’t afford an operation or morphia. I shall die.”

It would be nice to die; but no, it wouldn’t be, and that was very

unreasonable. But no, it wasn’t, there was his book.

He was so clever that he had always been bottom at school--all great

men had been bottom at school. Then he had lost his way in the world.

No, that wasn’t true, he had found it--this, this gin was his triumph.

It was the only thing that did his health any good, and one had to be

in good spirits if he was to think out the book, the great book that

was to link everything into a circle and that would bring him

recognition at last, perhaps even a letter from the Bishop. It would

justify his taking something now and again as he did. But one doubted,

there were days when one could not see it at all. How ill he felt. Some

deep-seated disorder. How dreadful a disease, cancer. Why could not the

doctors do something about it? Oh, for a pulpit to say it from.

Terrible, terrible.

“Father, where did you put the tin-opener for these sardines?”

“I don’t know. My pain. Never had it.”

“But it must be somewhere. It isn’t in the cupboard here.”

“Can’t you open it with a fork? It’s all laziness. Why bother me? Oh,

here it is in my pocket. How funny.”

“You are drinking all the gin. No, look here, you mustn’t have any

more. There will be none for this evening at this rate.”

“But I’m not going to drink any more, I tell you. Leave me alone.”

“Oh, yes. Here, give me that bottle.”

“I shan’t; I want it, I tell you. My health.”

“Give it me.”

You could be firm with him in the morning. She locks up the bottle in

the cupboard, slips the key inside her dress, and begins to open the

sardines. He is almost in tears, “insulted, by a girl, my daughter.

When it was for the good of my health, as I was ill.” But he wasn’t

such a fool, oh no. He had a dozen beneath the floor of the study. He

had wanted to drink more lately, and the girl always regulated his

bottle a day carefully.

“Damn, I’ve cut myself with the tin-opener.”

There is a gash in her thumb, and she bleeds into the oil which floats

over the sardines. Serve her right, now she would get blood-poisoning,

her hand would swell and go purple, and it would hurt. They would die

in agony together. Think of the headlines in the evening papers, the

world would hear of him at last: “AMAZING DISCOVERY IN LONELY COTTAGE,”

then lower down, “UNFROCKED GENIUS AND HIS BEAUTIFUL DAUGHTER FOUND

DEAD.” Beautiful. Was she? Yes, of course she was, as good as anyone’s

daughter anyway, except for the scar. The scar, it was like a bad

dream, he had a hazy memory of her taunting him, of his throwing the

bottle and missing, and of throwing one of the broken bits, and of

catching her with it on the cheek. It was horrible. Still it was what a

genius would have done. He was so weak this morning. What was he

thinking about? Yes, suicide, and the headlines in the papers. But in

any case it would be over in three days. What was the use of it all?

And what was he eating, blood-stained sardine? He did feel sick. Cancer.

She had bound up her finger in a handkerchief, and was eating sardines

on slabs of bread-and-butter, heads and tails, while he unconsciously

cut these off. She eats with quick hunger, her chin is greasy with the

oil coming from the corners of her mouth. She says thickly:

“I love sardines, and the oil is the best thing about them.”

No answer.

Poor Father, he was in for a bad day, for it was going to be very hot,

and he must have had a bad night, he was a little worse than usual. And

he did hate sardines so, but there was nothing else to eat, except the

kipper in tomato sauce, and they were going to have a tin of that for

lunch. Father was really not very well, perhaps this talk of cancer

wasn’t all nonsense. But it must only be the drink. He was such a nasty

sight, with his finicky tastes and his jumpy ways. Think if George were

there across the table, eating with a strong appetite, with his strong,

dirty nails, the skin half grown over them, instead of Father’s white

ones, the last thing about himself that he spent any trouble over. They

were one of his ways of passing the time, while she slaved. There would

be something behind his honey-coloured eyes, a strong hard light,

instead of blue wandering, weak ones. His face would be brick-red with

the sun, his flesh inside the open shirt collar--there would be no

starch about him--would be gold with a blue vein here and there; he

would be so strong, it would be wonderful to be so frightened of him.

Gold. While that weak creature over there, why even his beard was

bedraggled and had lost its colour. Yet there were times when his body

filled out and his voice grew, and when his beard flamed. Her fingers

crept to the scar on her cheek, it had been wonderful that night. You

felt a slave, a beaten slave.

But it was the scar that frightened George. His eyes would stray to the

scar and look at it distrustfully; at first he had looked at her dress

with horror, but she had not made that mistake again. Still he never

spoke, which was so annoying, but lately there had been more confidence

and shrewdness in his eyes. But the others did use to say something,

all except Jim, he had been worse than George. Of course, no one ever

saw her with him, it would scare him if the village began to talk. But

it was very exciting. It was incredible to think how the days had

passed without him.

There were now two bluebottles busy round the head of a sardine about

three days old. The head lay there, jagged at the neck where Father had

pulled off the body, a dull glaze over the silver scales, the eyes were

metallic. There was blue on the two bluebottles who never seemed

content, they buzzed up and down again so. Minnie had come in by the

little bay window, and the bluebottles seethed with anger at being

disturbed by someone besides themselves.

She rises sideways without stirring her chair, whispering hoarsely:

“Minnie, Minnie, come here.”

But he slips by her hands. The key slipped down her leg to tinkle on

the floor.

“That cat. Ah you, go away, go away,” and he gets up, his chair

screeching along the red tiles. He throws his knife feebly, it misses

Minnie and makes a clatter. He is out of the window in a flash, and

Father sits down again. She puts the key under the bread.

“I do hate cats, they frighten me so. There is something so dreadful

about a cat, the way she seems to be looking at nothing. They don’t see

flesh and blood, they see an abstract of everything. It’s horrible,

horrible. Joan, you might keep her away from me, you know how I hate

her. I can’t bear any cat. And in my condition. I think you might, yes,

I do think you might.”

“All right, but I don’t see what you mean. Minnie is such a darling, I

don’t know why you hate her.”

“Of course you don’t know cats as they really are. He is a devil, that

cat.”

Poor Father.

Outside, on the right, a hen stalks reflectively, her head just over

the weeds. Her eye is fixed, its stare is irritating, and the way she

has of tilting her head to look for food is particularly precious. She

goes forward slowly, often dipping out of sight to peck at something.

All that can be seen of her is a dusty-brown colour, dull beside the

fresh green round her, encouraged by the sun into a show of newness. He

watches her one visible eye with irritation.

“A chicken, at six in the morning, and loose in the garden. That

shouldn’t be. A pen. I will build a pen for them some time. I will

start to-day, but then there is no rabbit wire, and we can’t afford

wire.” Yet hens in one’s garden. Degrading. Yet why not? They had to

live, it was only fair to them that he should let them get food even if

they were in his way, because they gave him food, and he did not

deserve it. All the same, he did. And they were God’s creatures, even

if they did come out of an egg, and even more because they did so. But

was that true? No. Yes. He couldn’t see at all to-day. Scientists

understood the egg, all except the life that entered it--and that was

God; there, there you are. But an _egg._ He didn’t know. There was

something. He did not know. No, not in an egg.

He gets up and moves towards the door by the cupboard.

“You’ll never build that pen, and you know it. Here, what are you going

to the Gin Room for?”

“Don’t use that tone to me. Can’t your Father go where he likes? Can’t

he retire to his study for a little peace? You seem to have no--no

feeling for your Father.”

And he was gone. That meant he had some gin in there, but you couldn’t

help it, there was nothing to be done, and he was better when he had

drunk a little, he was more of a Man. And what was the use of worrying?

and anyway it pulled him together. Blast this finger, why had she been

such a fool as to jab it open? It hurt too, though not very much, still

it would have been nice to have had someone to be sorry about it and to

help her tie it up. If George had been here she would have been able

to make such a lot of it. Those bluebottles, there were three of them

round that sardine now, and three more over there, all in the sun. That

was the one sensible thing about them; how she loved the sun. She put

the key into the table drawer.

* * * * *

The clock in the village church across the fields struck twelve in a

thin copper tenor that came flatly through the simmering heat. No bird

sang, no breath of air stirred, nothing moved under the sun who was

drawing the life out of everything except Joan. She got up slowly, damp

with sweat, from the window-sill where she had been stewing in the

white light. The wood of it was unbearably hot, and what few traces of

paint that were left, blistered. She fanned herself with the old straw

hat she had been wearing, and tried to make up her mind to go out and

find the eggs for dinner. She loved the sun, he took hold of you and

drew you out of yourself so that you couldn’t think, you just gave

yourself up. She loved being with him all round her till she couldn’t

bear it any more. You forgot everything except him, yet you could not

look up at him, he was so bright. He was so strong that you had to

guard your head lest he should get in there as well. He was cruel, like

George. And he was stronger than George, but then George was a Man.

The air, heavy with the wet heat, hung lifeless save when her straw

hat churned it lazily into dull movement. Three bluebottles, fanning

themselves angrily with their wings at the windows, by their buzzing

kept the room alive. She was lost in a sea of nothingness, and all the

room too. From inside Father’s room came low moans at intervals, the

heat had invaded and had conquered Father. Oh, it is hot, she is

pouring with sweat all over, and her hands feel big and clumsy and

heavy with blood, there is nowhere to put them. How cool the iron range

is, its fireplace gazing emptily up the chimney at the clean blue of

the sky. Her hand on the oven door leaves a moist mark which vanishes

slowly.

She must look for eggs, though how the poor hens can lay in this

weather she didn’t know. Think of having feathers, dusty feathers on

you for clothes on a day like this. And laying eggs. Minnie would be

hot too, in an impersonal sort of way. But the poor hens. Why they

would die of it, poor darlings, and the old cock, the old Turk in his

harem, what would happen to him, how would he keep his dignity? She

would have to go and look, besides she was sticky all over, and it

would be cooler moving about.

She leaves the kitchen and goes round to the back under the arch in the

brick wall that went to the outhouse, and up which a tortured pear tree

sprawled, dead, and so into the yard. The stench is violent, and with

the sun beating down she drifts across to the pump, limp as if she has

forgotten how alive she had thought she was. She works the handle of

the pump slowly till the water gushes reluctantly out. Then she

splashes it over her face as it falls into the stone trough, and she

plunges in her heavy hands--how nice water was, so cool, so slim, and

she would like to be slim, like you saw in fashion plates in the

papers, ladies intimately wrapped in long coats that clung to their

slimness, they drank tea and she milk; Father said the water was

unsafe, although it was so clear and pure and cool. It was hot.

The cock was lost in immobility in the shade of the stable, and she had

forgotten about him.

She went round the side of the house, past the window of Father’s room

till at the corner she came to the conservatory, the winter garden,

inside which the crazy hen sometimes laid. She was crazy because she

would cry aloud for hours on end and Joan never knew why, though

perhaps it was for a chick that a fox had carried off once. The broken

glass about caught the sun and seemed to be alight, and inside it was a

furnace. Standing quite still in a corner was the hen, but no egg. She

was black, and quite, quite still.

In front the beech tree kept a cave of dark light, behind and on each

side the tangled bushes did the same, each kept his own, and the giant

uneven hedge. They were all trying to sleep through it. She ploughs

through the grass and looks vaguely here and there, into the usual

nests and the most likely places. Under an old laurel tree with leaves

like oilcloth, into an arching tuft of grass. A bramble lies in wait,

but she brushes him aside. Two or three flies come after her, busy

doing nothing. She passes by clouds of dancing grey gnats in the shade.

Still no eggs.

Nothing of course under the yew, so old that he empoisoned and

frightened young things. Drops of sweat fell down. Here was the box

tree who kept such a deep shade. There were two eggs. She turns, and

crossing a path of sunlight, enters the shade of the beech and sits

down, her back against his trunk. If he were George.

She thinks of nothing.

Then she finds that the house is ugly, the yellow and mauve answer back

so coldly to the sun. And it was so small and tumble-down. The life was

so full, so bitter. If she could change it. There would be the long

drive through the great big park with the high wall round it and the

great big entrance gates, made of hundreds of crowns in polished

copper. After that you would come suddenly through a wood of tall

poplars upon a house that was the most beautiful in the world, made of

a lot of grey stone. Standing on the steps to greet her as she steps

out of her luxurious car would be the many footmen dressed in scarlet,

and all young and good-looking. Inside would be the huge staircase, and

the great big rooms furnished richly. On a sofa, smoking a cigar, would

be the husband, so beautiful. He would have lovely red lips and great

big black eyes. Like a sort of fairy story. It would be just like that.

But there was the other dream. A small house with a cross somewhere to

show it was a vicarage, and a young clergyman, her husband, and lots

and lots of children. She would be in the middle, so happy, her big

dark eyes shining like stars, and they would be stretching out chubby

fingers to her. But what was the good of dreaming?--dreaming never did

anyone any good.

It was nicer to live as you were, and George might be somewhere near.

There were the eggs to do.

She wriggles round and looks out, through the gap with the little gate,

over the river sunk in her banks and invisible, to the trees on the

hills that were soaked in blue, with sunshades of bright sun green on

top. A pigeon moves, winking grey, through them; no sound breaks the

quiet. It is a sleepy blue, and how the ground was bubbling, air

bubbles rising that you could see. She would have to go and boil the

eggs, and bubbles would come then. The oil lamp would make such a heavy

smell. She liked them raw, but Father would have them boiled. It had to

be done. Father was a great baby, and he had to be fed.

She gets up and moves slowly into the house without bothering to put on

her straw hat again. From the cupboard underneath the stairs she takes

out the lamp with a saucepan fixed above it and carries it into the

kitchen. She fills the saucepan by dipping it into the washing-up

water, and puts the two eggs in, then lights the lamp from the box on

the shelf over the range. Bubbles very soon appear mysteriously from

nowhere in the water, and these grow more and more, till the eggs move

uneasily at the number of them. Eggs, why do chickens come out of eggs?

It was like a conjuring trick, darling little yellow wooly, fluffy

things who were always hurrying into trouble! But she knew just how the

hen felt with them, it would be wonderful. How long had they been in?

Oh dear, the heat and the smell! Poor eggs, it was rather hard on them.

This must be about right, and she turns the flame off. Now for the

bread and the kippers in tomato sauce and plates and spoons and cups

and--the milk, she had forgotten the milk. And she could not go to Mrs.

Donner’s, it was too hot. Father would have to drink gin, he wouldn’t

mind, but she would, she hated it. She went to the door of his room and

beat upon it with the palm of her hand, leaving damp marks wherever she

touched it. “Father, dinner is ready.” His voice answered, “All right.”

It was weary, but with a stronger note.

He shambles into the room dejectedly.

“Oh, it is hot, it is hot.”

“Yes. Father, here’s an egg.”

“Thank you. Oh, dear.”

They begin to eat, he carefully, and she roughly. He takes up his cup

to drink.

“Milk.”

“There isn’t any left.”

“No milk? Why is there no milk? We always drink milk at lunch, don’t

we? And Mrs. Donner always has milk, doesn’t she? Why is there no

milk?”

“You know we can’t afford it.”

“I don’t suppose we can, but can’t I have a little luxury occasionally,

with my bad health?”

“I don’t know.”

“You don’t know, and what’s more, you don’t care, you don’t mind that

you make your poor old Father uncomfortable. Where would you have been

without me?... Don’t smile, shut that smile or I’ll knock it inside

out.” He is streaming with sweat, it falls in blobs on to the table.

She just didn’t care, didn’t care. He’d make her care soon enough. But

what was it all for?

“Any gin left for me?”

“Don’t taunt me, don’t taunt me, don’t taunt me ... don’t ...” and his

voice rises, and his face crinkles into funny lines. She was taunting

him, taunting him. Just when he felt so ill, too. He did feel ill. And

these rows were so thin. Ill.

He gets up and goes to the door of his room, dragging his feet.

“Where are you going? More gin?”

“Yes, more gin. Why shouldn’t I? Just one more.”

“But aren’t you going to finish your egg?--and then there’s the nice

kipper and tomato sauce.”

“I tell you I can’t eat, I’m ill,” and he pulls to the door of his

room.

Silly old Father, he was ridiculous, and yet it must be horrid to be as

unhappy as all that. Anyway, it would mean all the more for her. She

finishes his egg and then opens and begins to eat the fish. She does

not eat prettily. He is having no lunch. Is he really ill? No, it was

the gin. Still, it was her job to look after him, if she didn’t who

would? And if he was ill and died she would feel just like the hen who

trod to death a chick--yes, just like that. For he was hers, he was an

awful child, and he had to be looked after, and he had to be petted

when he cried. He had to be told how wonderful he was, and if you told

him he was a genius he would at once cheer up and begin talking about

birds and trees, and the sky and the stars. There was something queer

about stars, they were mysterious, like Minnie’s eyes, only nice and

small; and she liked nice small things, when she saw them. They were

cool too. There were heaps of things she did like, but then she didn’t

have the time, she was so busy. What was a genius exactly? How hot it

was, and she wanted a drink.

* * * * *

Everything was old and sleepy. The sun, who was getting very red,

played at painting long shadows in the grass. The air was tired and

dust had risen from nowhere to dry up the trees. Sometimes a gentle

little breath of wind would come up moving everything softly, and a

bird would sing to it perhaps. All was quiet. Gnats jigged. From over

the river the clock struck a mellow golden eight. The sun began

throwing splashes of gold on to the trees, even the house caught some

and was proud to be under the same spell.

The air began to get rid of the heaviness, and so became fresher as the

dew soaked the grass. A blackbird thought aloud of bed, and was

followed by another and then another. The sun was flooding the sky in

waves of colour while he grew redder and redder in the west, the trees

were a red gold too where he caught them. The sky was enjoying herself

after the boredom of being blue all day. She was putting on and

rejecting yellow for gold, gold for red, then red for deeper reds,

while the blue that lay overhead was green.

A cloud of starlings flew by to roost with a quick rush of wings, and

sleepy rooks cawed. Far away a man whistled on his way home.

Joan came from the porch as the light failed and moved peacefully to

the gate. She went through and crossed the meadow, the heavy grass

dragging at her feet. Some cows ate busily nearby and hardly bothered

to look up. Then the river flowing mysteriously along with the sky

mirrored in the varnished surface. Trailing willows made light smiles

at the sides where the water was liquid ebony. An oily rise showed a

fish having an evening meal. He was killing black flies. Joan sat on

the bank.

Opposite, between sky and water, a fisherman is bent motionless over

his float. He never moves except to jerk violently at times. Then, a

short unseen struggle, a bending rod, and another fish to die. Joan

thinks he must be a clever fisherman to catch so many fish, but it is

silly to trouble about him while there is George to think of. Why, he

has caught another, it is a big one too, it is taking quite a time to

land. The reel screams suddenly like someone in pain, he must be a big

fish. The little bent figure gets up and begins to dance excitedly

about. A plunge with the landing-net, a tiny tenor laugh of pleasure,

and then peace again as he leans over the net, doing things.

George, what if George were here now? He would say nothing but would

merely sit, his great idle form. And then ... yes.

The blackbirds had stopped. Blue shadows had given way to black. The

little man was taking down his rod, and soon had gone off into the dusk

on a bicycle, dying fish in his creel. There was the moon, reserved and

pale but almost full. How funny to go up the sky, then down again. Aah.

She was sleepy, yawning like that. And it was getting cold sitting out

here. The river was ebony, and away in the west was a bar of dying

purple across the sky. The trees had vast, unformed bulks. The moon

shed a sickly light round her on a few clouds that had come up all at

once. It was cold. She jumped up and began to walk back to the house.

But she would not go to bed yet.

Yes there was the light in his room, a candle flame, still. She closed

the door carefully behind her and crept upstairs in the dark. The hole

on the third step and the creaking board on the ninth, she passed both

without making a noise. Then through his room into hers and she was

safe. She jammed her door with the chest of drawers, a heavy thing

which she moved easily, it had the four castors intact for some reason.

Funny how some of the furniture kept up appearances. Old days almost.

Below it was quiet. She sat on a box in the window, and the cool night

air breathed gently in, softly, like a thief.

Barwood ... no, why think of that place? Everything had been so

cultured there and so nice, and now it had all been beaten out of her,

so that it hurt to go back into it. If there hadn’t been any milk left

for lunch you had sent for it and it came, you didn’t have to pay for

it on the nail as you did now. And she had been so clean and pretty, it

was filthy here, but that had gone, and there was only the memory of it

to go back to. Not that they hadn’t always let her run wild, though.

But things had changed since then, Mother wouldn’t know her again if

she could see her now.... Barwood Vicarage had been one of those houses

that have white under the roof. An old wall went round. Little trees

grew out of the wall, and their roots made cracks in it. One thick arm

of ivy worked its way through just before the gate and made a bulge in

the top. There was an old lawn and a gardener who looked much older,

but then he can’t have been. It was a deep green, and he mowed it

lovingly twice a week with a scythe, he was so proud of his mowing, and

it used to be such fun going up to him and saying how well he did it,

to watch new wrinkles come out with his smile. His face always looked

as if there could be no more wrinkles, and yet there were new ones.

Swallows used to build under the roof and then used to show off, they

flew so fast and so close. For hours she had watched them rush in a

swoop to the door of the nest. They never missed.

The only party at Barwood, the huge lawn and the immense house, the

footman in livery, the people, it was another world. There had been

ladies on the lawn dressed in marvellous stuffs with brightly-coloured

hats--like birds they were. They shook hands very nicely and kindly,

then they rushed away to play before the men. Mother had sat talking

to Mrs. Haye, with her on the other side, and Mother had laid a

restraining hand on her all the time as she half bent over Mrs. Haye.

The unhappiness of that afternoon. Who were these people who lived such

beautifully easy lives, and what right had they to make you so

uncomfortable? The men were such willing idols. A little boy, Hugh, his

name had been, had sat next her for a time, sent by his mother. He was

at school then. He had asked her if she had been to the Pringles’

dance, and she had blushed--silly little fool--when she had said no.

Then he had said something was “awfully ripping,” how at ease he had

seemed, and then his glancing blue eyes had fixed and he had gone off

and soon was laughing happily with an orange hat. Yes, he had left her

for that thing, but you couldn’t blame him. How cool they all were,

even when hot after tennis; Mother’s hand had been hot, lying in the

lap of her new muslin which Mother had made for her. It might have been

yesterday. That hand had seemed to be between her and the rest. Tennis

was a pretty game to watch, and the men had laughed so nicely at it,

with their open collars. One had had a stud-mark on his skin

where the stud had pressed. Then there had been cool drinks on a

sideboard--everything was new. Sometimes one of the ladies would say

something to her with a quarter of her attention, the rest of her

watching the men, and she herself had been too shy to answer.... She

had had a little ear under a kiss-curl, that lady. Mother still talked

to Mrs. Haye. People would sometimes look at the three of them seated

on the bench, and then they would look away again and laugh. Oh, she

hated them, it was their sort that had brought them to this. Sitting on

the bench there she had begun to long for the tiny lawn and the poor

old broken dolly. A dream, those beautifully-dressed people who had

been so cool, and whom mother had been so frightened at. Then they had

gone, and she had had to say good-bye to Mrs. Haye--“What a fine

upstandin’ girl, Mrs. Entwhistle”--and they had begun to walk the mile

home. What a little fool she must have made of herself that afternoon.

Mother had been so funny, she remembered her so well saying eagerly,

“Did you see the green dress that girl with the auburn hair was

wearing? And the white one of the girl with the thick ankles?” That had

been the first time they had talked dresses as if it was not Mother who

bought hers without asking her opinion. That night she had dreamed of a

wonderful party with Hugh and his blue eyes and fat cheeks, when he had

been terribly nice to her, and when they had had the sideboard to

themselves. But behind it all lay the memory of the preparation, her

hair being brushed endlessly, her longing to be off and her longing to

stay behind, the interminable delays and the too short walk. “Behave

nicely, and for heaven’s sake don’t bite your nails.”

And the dolly. Thomas, the old gardener, used to say, “Bean’t she a

beauty!” as he leant on his spade as Dolly was shown to him every day.

He never said more than that, it was enough. Then there had been the

time when she had dropped her, and one arm had come off, just as any

grown-up’s might. Fool, fool. She had cried for ages, and had given

up all interest in her for a time because she had cried so much. But

she went back to her, and Father glued on the arm so that it came off

again; still they made it up and between them settled that she should

have only one arm.

Then there had been Father’s roses. They bordered the path from the

drawing-room French window to the door in the wall. Just over it

climbing roses scrambled up and hung down in clusters. And little rose

trees stood out on each side of the path, and red and white roses

peeped out from the green leaves that hid the thorns. Father was so

proud of them, ever since she could remember he used to talk about them

at tea. He planted more and more, till the vegetable garden was invaded

and in the end was a jungle of roses. His duties had to wait while they

were being sprayed, or pruned, or manured. Thomas, of course, was never

allowed to touch, it was his grief, he longed to help look after them.

She remembered him saying wistfully, “Them be lovely roses, Miss Joan.”

Roses, roses, all the way. Ro--o--ses.

There had been another side to the roses. She could remember the

quarrels Mother used to have with him over them as if it was yesterday.

The manure--best fish manure--cost money, and she would tell Father, in

that funny high voice of hers that she used when she was angry, that

one or the other would have to go, and then the rest was always

whispered, sometimes less, sometimes more, but it must have been the

gin or the roses. Father had not minded, nor had Mother after a time.

John, the postman, must have begun about then. It was a pretty uniform.

So it had gone on.

Mrs. Haye complained that Father never visited until they were dead. Of

course he had visited. And the Parochial Church Council had asked for

more services, though, of course, no one ever came to church, only Mrs.

Haye, and she merely as an example to the village. The almshouse people

came, but only because they were so nearly dead. The almshouses were

built in dark blue brick, always in half-mourning, among the

tombstones. Father had told her about these complaints over the rose

trees. He had talked a great deal to her then. Poor Father. So he had

planted roses to climb up the church, and they had given him a new

interest there till Mrs. Haye had made him pull them down. He had been

running away.

There had been a queer light at the back of Mother’s eyes about

then--how she understood that light now! At the same time Mother had

stopped taking any notice and would only smile tiredly at the things

that had made her angry before. She took to painting her lips, and

sometimes she would put one of the roses in her hair. Father never said

anything about it to _her_, only, lying in bed with the owls hooting,

she used to hear quarrels going on, quite often. Bed meant owls then,

there were none here. He spent more and more time on the roses about

the house. And in the summer he would dream himself away among them,

sitting there by the hour while she played on the lawn, putting Dolly

to bed in rose petals. Would it do if she painted her lips for George?

No, it would frighten him. To-morrow was Monday, he might be about.

They had been all right, too, when they had blossomed, great bunches of

them, red and white, all over the place. Just like those beautiful

picture postcards Mrs. Donner had in the window sometimes. They had

been lovely, those days.

Joined on the Vicarage behind there had been a small house with a

farmyard and a few buildings. It was the lower farm of Mr. Walker’s.

Henry had lived in the house, Henry who was her first love. They had

kissed underneath the big thistle in the orchard hedge, only he had

been rather dirty. She had seen him driving a cart two weeks ago, only

he had looked the other way. Didn’t like to own her now. Before he had

always lifted his cap with a knowing smile. Or had he been sorry for

her? How funny that first kiss was. She had only been fourteen. All

wet. But he remembered. Mrs. Baxter, his mother, with her nice face and

her chickens. Mrs. Baxter used to come in sometimes to help Mother with

the housework. She always used to say, “God is good to us, Mr.

Entwhistle,” when Father was about. And Father used to look serious and

say, “Yes, Mrs. Baxter. He is indeed.” He was, then. She used to call

her “Miss.”

Then the Wesleyan, “the heretic,” had started a rival Sunday school. He

gave a treat once a year and Father never did, so all the children went

to him and left Father. He had been angry: “Bribery and corruption; I

won’t bribe the children to come to God.” Then they could not afford to

give tea at the Mothers’ Meetings, and Mother had lost her temper with

Mrs. Walker, who had insinuated that they were lazy. But the real

reason why no one came any more must have been the gossip about Father

which began about then. But they had become indifferent; they hadn’t

cared.

Mrs. Haye had called and had stayed to tea. She, Joan, was allowed

butter with her bread and jam. That was only on great occasions. After

that the Mothers’ Union started. Mrs. Haye must have stamped on the

gossip, for all the women began coming again, every month. Mrs. Haye

attended herself the first time. Mother put some cut flowers in a pot

just by her. It was a special occasion, so Father’s objection to

cutting flowers was forgotten. “Do you want the best rose tree to be

the rubbish heap?” Later, there was a woman who tried to teach them how

to make baskets, but she forgot how to make them herself in the middle,

and nobody minded, they had gone on whispering just the same. They were

great times, those.

A fat drop of rain plunked on to the window-sill. Rain. Then another,

and another. The air became full of messages, a branch just underneath

moved uneasily. There was a rumble miles away that trundled along the

sky till it roared by overhead and burst in the distance. Thunder. Rain

fell quicker. A broad flame of lightning--waiting, waiting for the

crash. Ah. The storm was some way off. The rain walked up the scales of

sound, swishing like a scythe swishes. Quick light from another flash

lit up the yard, and a bird was flying as if pursued, across the

snouted pump. Darkness. The thunder. Nearer.

The air was cool, unloaded. Joan drew back from the window, for she was

being splashed by the spray as the drops smashed. The rain fell faster,

faster. A terrific sheet of light and all the sky seemed to be tumbling

down, moving celestial furniture. Father’s bass came up singing

confidently, “There is a green land far away.” Daylight, the sky

fought. Darkness and rain. Sheet lightning never hurt anything, but how

wonderful to be as afraid as this. Father was rising on the tide of

knowledge. “I know, I know,” he cried, and heaven saluted it with her

trumpets. He sang a line of the “Red Flag,” but switched off. Swish,

swish, said the rain, settling down to steadiness. Father was singing

something and taking all the parts. The chickens in the hut made

plaintive noises, the cock was being so tiresome. “What a bore the old

man is,” they were saying, “but we are so frightened of him.” How

wonderful, terror. Joan quaked on the box. Swish, said the rain.

Joan draws her blouse round her and hunches her shoulders. How much

fresher it is now. The storm thunders away behind, it has passed over.

Mumbles come from below. Laughter. All of her listens. His voice, “Ring

out, wild bells.” Always the church bells that he could not escape.

Hunted by bells. Crash--the empty bottle. Then he is singing again.

Mother had used to play. He is coming upstairs, toiling up, and Joan

shivers. Into his room. Silence. Quietly he goes to bed and is asleep.

The light in him had gone out. He had forgotten.

She feels cheated. He had been so mad underneath. Why hadn’t he

battered at the door? What a shame. All that trembling for nothing. He

had forgotten her. She shuts the window, and lighting a candle

undresses and lets down her hair. She gets into bed. Sleep.

Eyes closed.

Sleep. Now she would go to sleep.

Turns over.

Sleep.

The lawn. The roses.

It can’t have been sheet lightning because there was thunder. Then it

had been dangerous.

A stands for ant. B stands for bee. C stands for cat. Sitting on

Mother’s knee tracing the tummy of a, her hand guiding. Later on

Mother tried to teach her other things. It used to be a great game to

get as many “I don’t know myself, dear’s,” out of her as possible in

the morning.

There was the Vicarage pew every Sunday, Mrs. Haye to the left, crazy

Kate just behind, then the churchwarden, sniffling, sniffling, and two

or three almshouse people. Father always preached out of the green book

on the second shelf in the old study, though sometimes he talked about

politics. Mrs. Haye would stir violently when she disagreed, which

would make Father stutter and Mother angry. Sometimes, though not very

often, her son John would come too, he who was blind now. She used to

watch him all through the service when he was there. He was so aloof,

and there was nothing, no one else to look at. Nothing happened, no one

did anything except the organist when she forgot. The service would go

slowly on. Weston, the head gardener at Barwood, the only person in the

choir, would sing as if he did not care. Father’s voice toiled through

the service. Mrs. Haye argued the responses. The organist was paid to

come, Weston only came that Mrs. Haye might see that he came. Outside,

through the little plain glass window at the side of their pew, the top

of an apple tree waved. In summer there were apples on it which she

used to pick in her imagination, and any time a bird might fly across,

free. The service would go on and finish quite suddenly with a hymn,

and then the run home with the blue hills in the distance, with the

glimpse, just before the second gate, of the tower of the Abbey church,

the greeting of Mrs. Green who was always at her door at the beginning

of the last field--no, the last but one, there was the orchard; dinner.

It had all gone. Why, since she loved it so? The summers were so

wonderful, the winter nights so comfortable. Gone. To-day had ended

wrong and had started wrong. Forget in sleep.

The bed was too hot, the sheets clung, one leg was hot against the

other. Her hair laid hot fingers about her face. She pulled aside the

bed-clothes and lay on top of them on her back, a white smudge in the

dark. Outside tepid rain poured. This was cooler.

There was the clock that used to strike bed-time, half-past six. Had

she heard the one stroke? Had she forgotten? But no.

“Bed-time, Joan.”

“No, I don’t want to.”

“Now be a good girl.”

To gain time--“Where’s Daddy?”

“Now, Joan, you know your Daddy works all the evenings. Now go to bed,

dearie. I’ll come up and see you.”

Starting in on the gin more likely. Oh, everything was very proper

then. Where had he put the empties, though? Of course he can’t have

been bad as far back as that, it was only much later. Just before the

Mothers’ Meeting she had found Mrs. Baxter sniffling round Father’s

room. She herself had smelt the smell too. She had called Mother, who

had not noticed anything, of course. After that Father had said that he

would dust the room himself, as he could not have his papers being

fidgeted with.

“Fidget, fidget, that’s all a woman is when cleaning. Tidying up means

hiding. There is an order in my disorder. Yesterday I spent half an

hour looking for the church accounts which I found eventually, tidied

away into the private correspondence. I can’t bear it. You do

understand, don’t you, Mrs. Baxter? Of course I am not blaming you in

the least, but ...”

“Very well, Mr. Entwhistle. I understand, sir.” Sniff!

Something like that, but it was the sniff. It was the first sign of a

mystery that had been so exciting till she had known.

His private correspondence. That can’t have been anything. Only letters

to Mrs. Haye--oh, yes, and to the Bishop. He had scored off the Bishop

one day. A great thing. Butter with her bread and jam that day.

But times had been hard. Really they were better off there. The food

had dwindled, she had felt hungry a good deal.

“A wage less than a labourer.”

“Oh, yes.”

“What’s that? Well, isn’t it?”

“It wouldn’t be.”

“Well then, approximately. And then there are your clothes to buy and

the child’s.”

“And your personal expenses. What you waste.”

“What? I suppose I can’t spend a penny on myself?”

“Run along, Joan, and play.”

“Yes, Mummy.”

Then Uncle Jim, whose death they had waited for so long, died in

France. Of fever or something. He had no child and had left all his

money to “the poor fellow he’s a parson.” Lord, that joke. Father had

seen it in the _Evangelical Supplement_ and had used it for ever when

he talked. However, things had become a bit easier then, and probably

the spirit merchant had begun to give tick again.

Only one villager had been killed.

“And I said to them, I put it to them point-blank, ‘I won’t sign the

minutes when no member of the Parochial Council comes to church,’ I

said.”

What was there to get for to-morrow? Milk, more sardines, and some more

candles. Perhaps that book Mrs. Donner had in her window for

thruppence. She could put the thruppence down to the bread. The title

was so thrilling, _The Red Love of White Hope, Scioux, Matt._

She had not read many books in the old days. There was the _Water

Babies_, and one or two others, but she had forgotten. And _Robinson

Crusoe._ After that she hadn’t read at all. She didn’t really know what

she had done. She had sat on the wall a good deal, asking why and how

the world was here, and watching people go by. Silly to trouble about

why the world was--it was, that was all. On Saturdays in summer dusty

motor cars would clatter by on the way to the riverside pub. Birmingham

people they were. There were other people sometimes. And four times a

day the milk lorry came by with him driving it. Fascinating he was, he

looked so wicked.

Was Scioux the name of a town, or did it mean that White Hope was a Red

Indian? Mrs. Donner might let her have a look inside. If it was only a

town she would not buy it, but with a Red Indian it should be meaty.

Then, again, she used to go up to watch the village blacksmith shoe the

horses or repair a plough, and he would let her work the handle of the

bellows and make the sparks spray out. The corners of his forge had

been wonderful, all sorts of odds and ends of rusty iron, and always

the chance, as he said, of finding something very valuable among them.

Little innocent. But above all there was the blacksmith himself. He was

very stupid but the strongest man that ever lived. It was wonderful,

his strength. She had tried to lift the big hammer one day, and she had

let it drop on her big toe, it was so heavy. Wouldn’t be able to lift

it now, even. He had had to carry her back to the Vicarage. Mother had

been very angry. But then the days were gone when she kissed to make it

well. Poor right big toe.

Occasionally they had gone into Norbury. There used to be the old horse

bus along the main road to take you in, and then you were in the middle

of the hum and bustle of it, hundreds of people hurrying along in town

clothes. Norbury was wonderful with its three thousand inhabitants. And

there was Green the draper’s, Mother fingering the stuffs for her new

dress--would it wash, would it wear? it did not look to her like very

good quality. And the boot shop, Dapp’s, with the smell of leather and

hundreds and hundreds of shoes hung about, and the shop assistant’s

hair--like a cascade of glue, Father said once outside, but it wasn’t,

it smelt lovely--and his way of trying the shoe on, that little finger.

Fool. He would be married now, and she, whoever she was, would have

someone to wait for in the evenings, to kiss or to have rows with, and

wear his ring. She would have his children and they would watch them

together. And the farmers, fat and thin, in their pony carts, getting

down at the Naiad’s Calf to have a drink. Father had hated the farmers;

“they are making a lot of money,” was what he said. And as evening came

on they went sometimes to tea at the Deanery, and she would doze by the

fire, sitting very correctly in her chair, hearing the boom of the

Dean’s voice to Father, and Mother’s shrill complaint to the Dean’s

wife, dozing after the huge tea that she had eaten when they weren’t

looking. They would have a fit if she went there now.

She hadn’t been in Norbury for ages. There was Mrs. Donner who sold

everything. She was a one, that woman. Three and six for a bit of stuff

which she wouldn’t like to put on a horse’s back to keep the cold off!

It had been hard work following Mother about. She had hurried so from

shop to shop. She must have been hungry for town life again. Those that

are town-bred hate the country. They used always to eat lunch in the

Cathedral Tea Rooms. Mrs. Oliver, big and fat, who looked after the

customers, always came up and said, “Ah, Mr. Entwhistle, so you’ve come

to see us townsfolk again, sir.” Mother would bring out the sandwiches.

After they had eaten Mother and she would go off to the shops again,

while Father went back to the Library. Mother used to call Mrs. Oliver

“a designing woman”--sour grapes. And the chemist, mysterious behind

his spectacles, in his shop made of shelves and bottles, and

cunningly-piled cardboard boxes. The jolting ride home in the dark,

with the walk at the end.

Then there was Nancy. All the last years at the Vicarage had been

Nancy. What had become of her now? Married with children, most likely,

but not to the baker’s son she had been so gone on. Nancy with her

fairest hair and skinny legs, she was not nearly as good-looking as

her. Her snub nose, and the small watery pink eyes.

They had met in a lane, had smiled, and had made friends. That is, they

had never really made friends, she had been far too stupid. But Nancy

used to giggle at her jokes, and she liked that. Dolly had been

forgotten then.

They talked a great deal about men, with long silences, and Nancy’s

giggle and “Oh you’s.” They walked arm in arm, or more often with their

arms round each other’s waists, their heads bent, whispering. Lord,

what fools they must have looked. Of course Mother was only too glad

that she was out of the way, Father too.

They used to walk most in the lane, just outside the house here. She

had been in love, oh, how passionate, with Jim who never spoke, and who

worked for Mr. Curry. He had been worse than George. But he used

sometimes to come home by the lane in the evening, and they would pass

him arm in arm. She would give him the sidelong look she had practised

in the mirror, but he never did more than touch his cap. She had

dropped her handkerchief once, as Nancy had told her they did in the

world. They had talked and giggled for days before she had plucked up

courage to do it. But of course he did nothing.

Nancy wore a ring round her neck on a bit of cotton. She said at first

that Alfred had given it her, but that time under the honeysuckle when

she had shown Nancy her birthmark on her leg, she had confessed that

she had only got it out of a cracker at Christmas. Nancy used to think

her awfully daring.

Then their walks when evening was coming on, when they wandered down

the sunken lane. Thick sunlight and thicker shade, when they twined

closer together, and walked slower, and were silent. There was the

heavy smell of honeysuckle, sweet, which a little fresh air coming down

between the banks would begin to blow away. The birds flew quietly from

side to side, there were flowers whose names she did not know, and long

tufts of grass full of dew. The flowers made dots of colour in the

shade, the ground they walked on buried the sound of their feet....

Soon they would come to the gate, and they would sit clinging to each

other and balancing, watching the horses scrunch up the grass and the

cows lie chewing, idly content. The sky was always different, and the

end of a hot day was sleepy. The flies buzzed round, the midges bit. On

a piece of fresh manure there would be hundreds of brown flies, and a

bee would hurry by. She used to watch the trees most often. There were

so many of them, one behind the other, hiding, showing, huddled, alone.

Far away a car would blow a horn, or a train would whistle, but it used

to feel as if there was everything between them and it. Birds up in the

sky that was paling would fly silently with a purpose. They were going

to bed, and soon she would go back, have supper, and go to bed.

Partridges talked to each other anxiously, as they gathered together,

against the dangers of the night. The horses looked round calmly. A dog

barked miles away.

Then, as it was getting dark, they would part to go home. Nancy up to

the village, and she herself across the fields to the Vicarage. The

cows would not rise, and the horses would give her barely a glance.

Only a rabbit perhaps would sit up, drum the ground, and flee to his

burrow. And he would not bother to go down it, for as soon as she had

passed he would be back again nibbling. In spring there would be lambs,

absurd and delicious on their long weak legs.

She would climb a warm gate and feel the wet of the dew soaking through

her stockings. In front was the Vicarage, all the windows open,

waiting, and her glass of milk and biscuits. She would climb the last

gate and cross the dusty road, lift the latch of the door in the wall,

and the roses, the white ones and the red ones, would greet her. Father

might be sitting in the deck-chair on the lawn, smoking his pipe, the

blue smoke going lazily up to the other blue of the sky. Mother might

be sewing just inside the French window. The milk was cool.

And then she would go up the stairs into her room, the little white

bed, the texts round the walls, the open window letting in the dim

light and the roses. And she would go to sleep and--was she going to

cry?

All gone, the lawn, the roses, the quiet, the protection, her little

room, the glass of milk, Jack, the horses, the cows, the walks, for

they were not the same, Nancy, those evenings. Fool. The peace, the

untroubledness, the old wall, the ... All ...

She went to sleep.

END OF PART II

“----COLLEGE, OXFORD.

“_My dear B. G._

“_I saw you last night in the club, but you cut me dead. Come to lunch

Friday to be forgiven. I wanted to talk about poor John. I am so sorry

about it. Poor dear, amusing John. I must write to him, though what

there is to say I don’t know. Really, these letters of condolence are

very difficult._

“_But why did you cut me like that? I saw David Plimmer the other night

and he spoke of you with enthusiasm. Don’t forget about lunch Friday,

if you cut that I shall know the worst._

“_Yrs.------_

“_Seymour._”

PART III

BUTTERFLY

PART III--BUTTERFLY

CHAPTER I

WAITING

HE was in the summer-house. Light rain crackled as it fell on the

wooden roof, and winds swept up, one after the other, to rustle the

trees. A pigeon hurried rather through his phrase that was no longer

now a call. Cries of rooks came down to him from where they would be

floating, whirling in the air like dead leaves, over the lawn. The

winds kept coming back, growing out of each other, and when a stronger

one had gone by there would be left cool eddies slipping by his cheek,

while a tree further on would thunder softly. Every wind was different,

and as he listened to their coming and to their going there was rhythm

in their play. In the fields, beyond where the trees would be, a man

cracked his whip, and a cow lowed. The long grass copied the trees with

a tiny dry rustling.

But there was something new to-day; he had met her; he would meet her

again, and the wind was lighter for it, the branches danced almost. He

had been shy when they had met, and so had she, and he had laughed at

himself for being shy, though that was all part of the game. For now

at last he could play as the trees were doing now, advance, retreat,

and it was a holiday, and she would be wild, so wild. Mamma was

horrified at her life, she must have had a queer time, so that she

would be interesting. And her voice had been afraid, she had been

frightened at his lack of eyes. She would be fascinated later, as he

lay by her side--oh, deviltry--to listen to her hoarse voice, to weave

question and answer.

There had been doubt in Mamma’s voice when speaking about her, and it

had only been through pity that she had brought her to the house. He

was old enough to know now, she had said, that the girl lived a most

extraordinary life with her drunken father, that she was not quite

proper. As if he had not always known, as if he had not told at once

from her voice. But she, Mamma, had met her in the lane, looking so

ill, with her hand all swollen and the thumb tied up in a rag, a

rag-an’-bone man’s rag, and she, Mamma, had said to herself that after

all the girl was a parishioner, and she had positively insisted on her

coming back to the house at once, that the thumb might be properly done

up. And at first the girl had been sulky and silent, and then the poor

girl had become quite servile in her thanks. That dreadful man, her

father.

So they had met. But Mamma’s voice had been uneasy all through her

account of it; she had been frightened. She had told him that artists

married barmaids continually and were unhappy ever after. And he had

said that unhappiness was necessary to artists, and she had called that

stuff and nonsense. But they had met. For Mamma had feared before he

had gone blind that he would marry beneath him--well, not quite that,

but someone unsuitable; and just lately she had been talking a great

deal about marriage, how he must marry, how he must make a home for

himself here. Her voice had been full of plans.

Voices had become his great interest, voices that surrounded him, that

came and went, that slipped from tone to tone, that hid to give away in

hiding. There had been wonder in hers when he had groped into the room

upon them both; she had said, “Look.” But before she had opened her

mouth he had known that there was someone new in the room.

Voices had been thickly round him for the past month, all kinds of

them. Mamma extracted them from the neighbourhood, and all had sent out

the first note of horror, and some had continued horrified and

frightened, while others had grown sympathetic, and these were for the

most part the fat voices of mothers, and some had been disgusted. She

had been the first to be almost immediately at her ease, when she spoke

it was with an eager note, and there were so few eager people.

To-morrow June (her name was June) would come to have her poor hand

attended to. She had cut it, and it was poisoned a little, poor little

hand. “Like white mice,” her fingers. They would not be white though,

but hard and a little dirty with work. To-morrow.

To-day Mamma had gone into Norbury in one of her fits of righteous

anger. On the road and in front of the town rubbish heap, just where

you had the best view of the Abbey, the Town Council had allowed a

local man to build a garage, in tin, painted red. Of course, she had

said, there was jobbery in it, and there probably was. So she had gone

to the Dean, and she would be talking to him now. The Dean would boom

sympathy, and he would be tired, poor man, but he would write to the

Town Council. They would do nothing. Poor Ruskin!

Still it was a pity, for the garage spoilt that view. But they had not

tampered with the inside of the church. It was quiet in there as the

country round, and all was simple, and the round pillars were so kind,

and the echoes that blurred everything and so made the words more

grand. The church music went round and round the walls, and then rolled

along the ceiling till the shifting notes built walls about you till

you were yourself very high up, so that you could see.

But Mamma always made one go to Barwood Church, where the service was

out of tune and where there was not even simplicity, for Crayshaw lit

candles and wore vestments. And outside always there were quiet fields

and colour to show you how absurd it was to worship indoors. Crayshaw

had just had another baby, a son, and he had so many. But Mamma said

that they must go to Barwood Church that they might be an example to

the village. So they went, and the few others they met there went to

show that they went and everyone realised that, and so on.

Last Sunday, the first time he had been after going blind, there had

been voices singing in the county accent. Such nice, strong, genuine

voices. But then Crayshaw had spoilt it all by preaching about

blindness in the East, ophthalmia in the Bible, spittle and sight, with

a final outburst against pagans. During the sermon he had fingered his

prayer-book; it was longer and thinner than any of the rest. It had

been presented for his first service in church. And he should have been

sentimental over it; he should have thought how good he had been so

long ago in the nursery, of how he had wanted to be a bishop, and of

how Mabel Palmer had said how nice it would be for the neighbourhood to

own a bishop.

Things were different now. The nursery was gone and the days at Noat,

so full of people, were gone. There were other things instead. There

was so much to find out, and, in a sense, so much to discover for

others, for when one was blind one understood differently. A whole set

of new values had arisen. And being blind did not hurt so long as one

did not try to see in terms of sight what one touched or heard.

The wind was higher and the summer-house groaned now and then in it.

The trees roared, when suddenly there would be lulls, strangely quiet,

waiting for another wind to come up. Everything would be stopped short.

The branches were still, and would be looking vacantly at each other,

like children come to the end of a game. Then a wind comes up and

covers the emptiness that had followed; a dead branch snapped and fell

to the ground. It was getting colder; the sun had not been out all day,

and one always knew when the sun was out. A blackbird warned as he fled

down wind. The air round was stealthy.

It was all so full of little hints; the air carried up little noises

and then hurried them away again. The silence had been so full. The

rain had stopped falling now, and he was straining to catch the

slightest secrets that were in the winds, and before he had never known

that. In a way one gained by being blind, of course one did; besides he

was happy to-day, for was not she coming to-morrow?

So that they would go for walks together, and he would get her to lead

him to the top of Swan’s Wood to look upon the view there and listen to

her eager voice. What a pity never to see that view again--the river,

the meadows, the town, the rubbish heap, the Abbey and the hills

behind. And the one hill, a mound, that came before the line of hills

in the distance, and that had things dotted about on it, and through

them a road, a quiet yellow line, which had clung to it and had shown

off the hollows.

When they were there they would talk of everything, and he would find

out her life, why her hand was like that, and why she trembled the air

in a room. He would teach her the view, and she would be so bored with

it as she would so want to go on talking about that. A wind would come

down to wreathe rings about them--how lyrical! But June would be so

charming; she must be, and she had such strong hands. Besides, her

voice was lovely; there was something wild in it and something asleep

there as well, as if she too had lived alone and had many things to

tell. For she would be interesting at least; she must have suffered

living in the cottage that was falling down now, and she would be able

to tell of it, and she would have had some contact with horrible things

so that she would not be vapid. So many of the young ladies he met were

like Dresden china. And she would be ... well, no; there was no word

for it. But they would go on walking out together like any boy and his

slut, and he would explore in her for the things that her voice told

him were there, and that had never been let out. For no one saw her or

would speak to her.

It was so necessary to talk; you had to, and with someone who could

understand or sympathise with your ideas. How they would talk, June and

he, for she must and would understand how he needed someone young. When

you were blind and beginning to make discoveries, you had to tell them

to somebody; besides, talking was the only thing you could do as well

as anyone else. And surely she would not dance, for who was there to

dance with her, unless there was another man? Perhaps there was, and

then the whole dull round of country conversation would go round again,

and when one had gone through it so often before. Let them talk about

things, not people. And then, of course, they could talk about

themselves.

Why had he never learnt to play the piano? It would be so nice to be

able to sit down and make the lazy notes ripple through this echoing

house, up the stairs and through doors and windows to be lost in the

wetness of the garden. She had known how. She had played music

wandering out to the gossamer, and so quiet; as raindrops gather on a

twig and then slip off, so had her notes fallen in such a silver,

liquid sound. But then the sun came out. It was changed now. The hut,

the trees and each leaf suddenly had a spirit of their own. And the

wind bore them down to you that they might whisper in your ear, and be

companions as you sat in the dark. So that you were not really lonely;

there were only the deaf who were really cut off. How dreadful to be

deaf, not to hear this wind choosing out the leaves and carrying them

down gently that they might rustle on the ground.

Would June be like this? So that she could sit still and listen. Surely

she would not want to break out into a great screaming laugh to

announce that someone had been hurt, or something broken? She also

might have dreams and be able to understand his, perhaps. And yet she

would not be sickly, but rather like a sunflower, absorbing from the

sun, and so proud, so still. Women were like flowers; it was silly, but

they were. The sudden flutter of wings of a bird who was going

elsewhere to drink more in and pour it out again to the sun brought the

grass and trees together, and the earth that kept them both. Women

understood like that. Their intuitions exalted them to the simple

understanding of the trees, for trees were so simple; there was no

remoteness in them as of mountains and their false sublimity. But he

had not met any women who were women. Still, June felt like that, and

her loneliness would have taught her silence, for she could not have

met many people.

As long as she was not like Miss Blandair--but then how could she be?

Miss Blandair, whom Mamma had had to stay, who played tennis so very

well, who danced, and was so very suitable. She had been so bright as

she cackled on, and Mamma had approved; her voice had been rotund with

approval. She had made him very weary; hers was such wasted energy.

What energy one had should be put away secretly for the thing in hand,

not thrown to the wind in handfuls of confetti. For then one saw it

in retrospect only, lying rather tarnished on the ground.

All June would be stored up.

But it was an anxious time for Mamma, waiting to see him settled. And

it was the end, to settle down. He could not; one did not care to. It

was not fair to Mamma, but what could one do? She was not his mother;

she had only made herself into one, though that was just the same. But

he must go out with June; there was so much to talk about, so much

sympathy to be sought after. For they were all so old, one could not

talk to them; they did not understand, in spite of their always saying

they did. Nurse had been young but too full of her trade.

And Nanny had not been so well lately. She had been more hesitating on

the walks and her shoes had creaked more slowly. Mamma had said

something about it, how Nanny must take care of herself, and she had

given her some medicine. Nanny was talking more and more as time went

on, that afternoon when he had been told she had talked far more than

she would have done in the old days. She had a cough now that was

becoming more and more frequent, a juicy cough, that seemed to tear

her, and that was horrible to hear. Poor Nanny! For she was a link with

so much that was gone; she had seen the house before he had come to it,

or rather just after he had arrived. She had known those who lived in

it, and she had known him so long that they were used to each other, so

that they had a few worn jokes at which they laughed together, and that

was all; there was really no conversation left, nor was it necessary.

She had been so jealous of the nurse. The hours he had spent making it

all right again!

She had known his mother, Mummy. She had a very few stories about her,

such nice stories, and he would make her tell them again and again,

when perhaps a new story would come out. Mummy must have been so

charming, they had all loved her so.

She was like a dream, something so far away that came back sometimes.

And now that he was blind he had come to treasure little personal

things of her own, a prayer-book of hers, though that, of course, was

mistaken; a pair of kid gloves, so soft to touch, and they had a faint

suggestion of her about them, so faint, that gently surrounded them and

made them still more soft. And she had died because of him.

There was so little that he knew about her, only what Nanny could tell.

He never saw anyone who had known her, and Mamma was always trying,

ever since she had told him by letter how he was not her son, to put

herself in Mummy’s place. How silly to go on calling her by that name,

she had been dead nearly nineteen years now; it was so sentimental. But

the word was fresh, it clung about the gloves. They had been cold so

long, those gloves.

From what Nanny said she had been so happy in the house, going about

lightly from place to place. One really did not know anything about

her; Nanny had only seen her once and her stories were only what the

other servants had told her. They would have been seated round in the

kitchen waiting for the funeral, and they would have talked and talked,

weeping in turns, and Nanny had learnt what she knew in that way. There

were none of them left; he had never known them, for Mamma had sent

them all away when she had married Father and gone to India. But

apparently she had whistled most beautifully; Nanny’s descriptions

never went beyond “beautiful,” and he could hear her going about

whistling gently till the house was full of shadows. She must have

linked everything up with it. And then apparently she had played the

piano quite beautifully.

Such ages ago he had been at Noat, only a few months, but still--the

misery of those days, their dreariness, and with their strange

exaltations now and then. So much depended on whether people were nice

to you or not. And the Art Society with the marionette shows. There had

been no one at J. W. P.’s to mind about such things. It was getting

cold out here. Heat drew one out, one was with a companion. Just as

their glow against each other would draw them out--June and he.

Mummy would have helped, then and now. She would have had such a gentle

understanding, so that when he came back from Noat for the holidays

they would have sat by the fire and talked it out. What evenings, and

what quiet grey days with the colours in the fields washed into

luminous clarity, and the calm in the trees. She would have understood

all that with her tender whistling, and they would have walked,

perhaps, silently happy together to the top of Swan’s Wood. Or down to

the river with its surprises and the quietly-flowing water.

For she would have seen things by the light of intuitions, often wrong,

but no less enchanting, and by discovering things in other people she

would have shown herself. How silly people were to think a grey day

sad; it was really so full of happiness, while the sun only made things

reflect the sun, and so not be themselves. Dew came in the morning with

the light sky above and sent pearl colours over the fields, and so made

him think of her, who was so like that herself.

There were so many things to do, all the senses to develop, old

acquaintances of childhood to make friends with again. To sit still and

be stifled by the blackness was wrong; he had done that long enough.

The temptation was so great, the darkness pressed so close, and what

sounds one heard could only at first be converted into terms of sight

and not of sound. When a blackbird fled screaming he had only been able

to see it as a smudge darting along, and he had tried in vain to

visualise it exactly. Now he was beginning to see it as a signal to the

other birds that something was not right; it was the feeling that one

has in the dark when something moves, and when one jumps to turn on the

light, and the light leaps out through the night. Why translate into

terms of seeing, for perhaps he would never see again, even in his

dreams? They might be of sounds or of touch now. The deaf might dream

of a soundless world, and how cold that would be. There was the story

of the deaf old man who had forgotten that the breaking waves of the

sea on the beach made sound. He must not go deaf; one clung so to what

senses were left. But sight was not really necessary; the values of

everything changed, that was all. There was so much in the wind, in the

feel of the air, in the sounds that Nature lent one for a little, only

to take away again. Or was there nothing in all these? Why did everyone

and everything have to live on illusion, that Mummy was really near,

and as the meaning of everything? But one could not let that go.

June was an illusion--a lovely one. He had never felt anyone so alive.

Coming into that room had been like a shower of sparks, or was it

merely the mood he had been in? There were days when everything

bristled with life, the mahogany table in the front hall almost purred

when you stroked it, it was so warm and clinging. Great feline table.

And the flowers poked their soft heads so confidingly into your palm,

tickling. They must get another dog now that Ruffles was dead that he

might have his hands licked. Stroking June, her skin would be so alive.

There were days when everything was a toy, and when even the big

flowers with heavy scents condescended, except the wooden lilies, and

they stank of pollution. Violets were silly; they were not bold enough;

they nestled simpering and were too frightened. But the others would

play with you if you would only let them, gay exquisite things.

He would write about these things, for life was only beginning again,

and there were many things to say. Besides, one couldn’t for ever be

sitting in a chair like this, and be for the rest of one’s life someone

to be sorry for. And perhaps the way he saw everything was the right

way, though there could be no right way but one’s own. Art was what

created in the looker-on, and he would have to try and create in

others. He would write slowly, slowly, and his story would drift as the

country drifted, and it would be about trivial things. The man who

chased tulips on a bicycle was silly as well as being an idiot, but the

piano-tuner might make a story. He was of the type that had to feel

over your face before he became confidential. Why hadn’t he done that

to Miss Blandair? Of all practices it was the most revolting, and far

more for yourself. Faces were so deformed, your fingers strayed into

hair suddenly, though shut eyelids were incredibly alive. Not that the

piano-tuner ever became confidential. He was very unhappy and very

secretive. He had been blinded in the war, and the injustice of it made

his hands burn when he talked about it. He gave himself away so

painfully when he played after the tuning was over. But he had a few

interesting things to say, how you would find when you were blind a

little longer that you could tell by a feeling in your face when a wall

or a chair of even something so low as a footstool was coming. So that

you could walk about alone and unaided as he did. It would be wonderful

this new sense, he looked forward to it so, and was often imagining

objects in the way when there were none. It would give a new feeling of

companionship with the world. The darkness would be more intimate.

But it would all be so different with her about. So that they would all

go for walks together, all of them. There would be Mummy to take up to

the top of Swan’s Wood, and of course June to take there, too, and

Nanny to go round the garden on his arm, and Mamma to accompany

visiting in the village. What talks they would have, telling Mummy what

June was like, Nanny how inferior June was, and Mamma how sorry he was

for June, though she would see through that. So that this, perhaps, was

a beginning with June and the birds and the trees. They were much

nearer, and Mummy was, too. The days would have change in them now.

It was charming to think of Mummy being so close, but she wasn’t. And

June was so much more tangible. It was also charming to think of the

trees as being in conspiracy with the birds to make life more

endurable, but of course they weren’t. One lived, that was all, and at

times one lived more than at other times. But they were charming

illusions, and they became real if you believed them. Oh! why did he

think of these things?

Those gloves and things of hers, why did they have so much of her about

them? And why did the trees and the birds conspire together so openly?

And why when he was alone did some presence--some companion of days

that were dead now, because he could not remember them--why did she

come and walk with him and sit by his side and make him understand

dimly through his blindness? Mamma would come upon them when they were

alone together sometimes, and she would say that he must not become

morbid. And she would talk and talk until the longing went away.

Was that what it was--a longing? Would he come upon it suddenly?

There was no pain in his memory of her; if there had been it would have

driven her away. That was why it was so lucky he had never known her,

another illusion would have gone. Why did he go on thinking these

things? Then it was lucky perhaps that he could not see any more, that

the little boy had taken his sight away. For she was nearer than she

had ever been before, now that he was blind.

Evening was coming and with it the soft, harping rain, rustling,

rustling. A bird was muttering liquidly, gently somewhere, and it was

very like the night--kind, strange. And she was here with the feel of

the air, and June was to-morrow, tangible as the sunlight. He shivered,

and getting up he went into the house.