But at that moment in the street below a barrel-organ struck up.
Josephine and Constantia sprang to their feet together.
“Run, Con,” said Josephine. “Run quickly. There’s sixpence on the—”
Then they remembered. It didn’t matter. They would never have to stop
the organ-grinder again. Never again would she and Constantia be told
to make that monkey take his noise somewhere else. Never would sound
that loud, strange bellow when father thought they were not hurrying
enough. The organ-grinder might play there all day and the stick would
not thump.
It never will thump again,
It never will thump again,
played the barrel-organ.
What was Constantia thinking? She had such a strange smile; she looked
different. She couldn’t be going to cry.
“Jug, Jug,” said Constantia softly, pressing her hands together. “Do
you know what day it is? It’s Saturday. It’s a week to-day, a whole
week.”
A week since father died,
A week since father died,
cried the barrel-organ. And Josephine, too, forgot to be practical and
sensible; she smiled faintly, strangely. On the Indian carpet there
fell a square of sunlight, pale red; it came and went and came—and
stayed, deepened—until it shone almost golden.
“The sun’s out,” said Josephine, as though it really mattered.
A perfect fountain of bubbling notes shook from the barrel-organ,
round, bright notes, carelessly scattered.
Constantia lifted her big, cold hands as if to catch them, and then her
hands fell again. She walked over to the mantelpiece to her favourite
Buddha. And the stone and gilt image, whose smile always gave her such
a queer feeling, almost a pain and yet a pleasant pain, seemed to-day
to be more than smiling. He knew something; he had a secret. “I know
something that you don’t know,” said her Buddha. Oh, what was it, what
could it be? And yet she had always felt there was... something.
The sunlight pressed through the windows, thieved its way in, flashed
its light over the furniture and the photographs. Josephine watched it.
When it came to mother’s photograph, the enlargement over the piano, it
lingered as though puzzled to find so little remained of mother, except
the earrings shaped like tiny pagodas and a black feather boa. Why did
the photographs of dead people always fade so? wondered Josephine. As
soon as a person was dead their photograph died too. But, of course,
this one of mother was very old. It was thirty-five years old.
Josephine remembered standing on a chair and pointing out that feather
boa to Constantia and telling her that it was a snake that had killed
their mother in Ceylon.... Would everything have been different if
mother hadn’t died? She didn’t see why. Aunt Florence had lived with
them until they had left school, and they had moved three times and had
their yearly holiday and... and there’d been changes of servants, of
course.
Some little sparrows, young sparrows they sounded, chirped on the
window-ledge. _Yeep—eyeep—yeep._ But Josephine felt they were not
sparrows, not on the window-ledge. It was inside her, that queer little
crying noise. _Yeep—eyeep—yeep._ Ah, what was it crying, so weak and
forlorn?
If mother had lived, might they have married? But there had been nobody
for them to marry. There had been father’s Anglo-Indian friends before
he quarrelled with them. But after that she and Constantia never met a
single man except clergymen. How did one meet men? Or even if they’d
met them, how could they have got to know men well enough to be more
than strangers? One read of people having adventures, being followed,
and so on. But nobody had ever followed Constantia and her. Oh yes,
there had been one year at Eastbourne a mysterious man at their
boarding-house who had put a note on the jug of hot water outside their
bedroom door! But by the time Connie had found it the steam had made
the writing too faint to read; they couldn’t even make out to which of
them it was addressed. And he had left next day. And that was all. The
rest had been looking after father, and at the same time keeping out of
father’s way. But now? But now? The thieving sun touched Josephine
gently. She lifted her face. She was drawn over to the window by gentle
beams....
Until the barrel-organ stopped playing Constantia stayed before the
Buddha, wondering, but not as usual, not vaguely. This time her wonder
was like longing. She remembered the times she had come in here, crept
out of bed in her nightgown when the moon was full, and lain on the
floor with her arms outstretched, as though she was crucified. Why? The
big, pale moon had made her do it. The horrible dancing figures on the
carved screen had leered at her and she hadn’t minded. She remembered
too how, whenever they were at the seaside, she had gone off by herself
and got as close to the sea as she could, and sung something, something
she had made up, while she gazed all over that restless water. There
had been this other life, running out, bringing things home in bags,
getting things on approval, discussing them with Jug, and taking them
back to get more things on approval, and arranging father’s trays and
trying not to annoy father. But it all seemed to have happened in a
kind of tunnel. It wasn’t real. It was only when she came out of the
tunnel into the moonlight or by the sea or into a thunderstorm that she
really felt herself. What did it mean? What was it she was always
wanting? What did it all lead to? Now? Now?
She turned away from the Buddha with one of her vague gestures. She
went over to where Josephine was standing. She wanted to say something
to Josephine, something frightfully important, about—about the future
and what....
“Don’t you think perhaps—” she began.
But Josephine interrupted her. “I was wondering if now—” she murmured.
They stopped; they waited for each other.
“Go on, Con,” said Josephine.
“No, no, Jug; after you,” said Constantia.
“No, say what you were going to say. You began,” said Josephine.
“I... I’d rather hear what you were going to say first,” said
Constantia.
“Don’t be absurd, Con.”
“Really, Jug.”
“Connie!”
“Oh, _Jug_!”
A pause. Then Constantia said faintly, “I can’t say what I was going to
say, Jug, because I’ve forgotten what it was... that I was going to
say.”
Josephine was silent for a moment. She stared at a big cloud where the
sun had been. Then she replied shortly, “I’ve forgotten too.”