For the first day at Wenton Philip was almost drunk with the abrupt
change from Doomington to the fresh air and the hills. The atmosphere
in Wenton House, to be sure, was a little chilly. The relentless
cleanliness of each conceivable detail was disturbing. The flaky
boiled potatoes served up for midday dinner, Philip's first meal in the
House, compared a little disagreeably with the potatoes baked in
abundant fat as prepared by Mrs. Massel and only less ably by Dorah.
There occurred also a slight contretemps with the implements for
pudding. It seemed that most of the boys who sat at Philip's table had
paid earlier visits to Wenton House: for Mrs. Kraft, as she stood at
the door to receive her junior guests, was able, though the scheduled
fortnight was only just beginning, to inquire from one youth, "Well,
Abey, and did you get that job in the shipping office?" and from
another, "Tell me, Hyman, is the other sister married yet?" and to warn
a third, "I hope you will not throw stones, Jackie, at the Christian
boys in the village! _I_ get blamed for it, and it won't do, it won't
do!" To Philip she said, a smile emerging from the grimace of matronal
hospitality, "What did you say your name was? Philip Massel? And how
old? Oh, of course, Mr. Furness told me, getting on for sixteen!
Well, we're glad to see you, Philip! See you have a good time!"
Far chillier than Mrs. Kraft were the boiled potatoes, and chillier the
pictures on the walls. Wenton House was not wholly self-supporting;
only the charity of several benevolent individuals in Doomington
rendered a country fortnight possible to the boys on the easy terms of
their acceptance. Hence perhaps the legends below the pictures, "How
ready is the arm of Charity!" "Charity, the Handmaiden of God!"
Yet, despite the slight constriction in the atmosphere engendered by
these details, the sight of Winckley Pike beyond the wide window of the
dining-room, and the quick cry of swallows and the smell of clover
atoned for the hygienic potatoes, and made of the pictured legends mere
ingenuous statements of fact. The country was not so overwhelming a
revolution in the mind of Philip as might have been expected. Poetry
had long ago made real enough the unseen hills and the unsmelled
blossoms. Bluebell Bank had given concreteness as well as subjective
reality to his dreams, and such excursions into the country for a whole
day as he had experienced several times, with Dorah once, with Harry
and Alec once, and twice with a master at school, had continued the
process of revelation. They had once climbed Bracken Hill to see far
off the triangular mass of Winckley Pike, and beyond, the more desolate
moors and the jagged hills.
It was at tea-time that he first thoroughly became aware of the dark
eyes of a lady, a young lady, a lady who was chiefly dark eyes. He had
had a dim feeling during dinner that some inexplicable thing was
causing a disturbance in his blood. He had given it no name. It may
have been nervousness merely due to the new surroundings. But at
tea-time he ascertained quite clearly that among the ladies of
appallingly mature age seated round the table between his own table and
the windows, a young lady not fearfully much older than himself, was
lifting lettuce to her virginal lips. She was sixteen, perhaps
seventeen, certainly not eighteen! They were nice lips for eating
lettuce with, but they were nothing to compare with her eyes. Dark
eyes, a bit languishing and long, with long lashes. He wondered what
she was doing there amid her staider companions. He wondered what the
colour of her dark eyes really was. Would you call it brown, or a sort
of deep shade of grey? He became aware of her awareness of him. She
was conscious of his scrutiny and the dark eyes stared scorn. A chit
of a boy like him! He realized he had held his cup of tea for long
seconds arrested on its journey to his lips. He blushed and drained
the chilled cup to its last drop. The lady was chattering vivaciously,
her eyes quick and lovely, her lettuce-receiving lips making rich, full
curves as she spoke.
"Make a good tea, you boys!" came the vigilant injunction of Mrs. Kraft.
"Yes, Mrs. Kraft!" was the fervent and almost unanimous reply.
"Yes, Mrs. Kraft!" hurried Philip, startled, belated. He observed
quite distinctly the lips of the dark-eyed lady shape in mockery "Yes,
Mrs. Kraft!" His veins burned resentment against the insolent mystery.
The sun shouldered from behind a cloud and thrust his fingers into her
thick hair. It sparkled and was alive with lights like a tray of gems
in a jeweller's window. The flash and wealth of the girl's hair turned
him swiftly veering towards Doomington, the thinning hair of his mother.
"Poor old mother!" he mused, deliberately switching his mind away from
the lady of long lashes. "I wonder if the cough's eased down a bit? I
wonder how many days it'll be before she's up and about again.... What
a funny little nose she's got, a weird little cleft at the tip! What
can she be doing in that lot? ... O blow the girl, what's she got to do
with it anyhow? Why on earth shouldn't mother get away here, as soon
as she's properly all right? Everything's _kosher_ and all that sort
of thing. He'll have to find the money somewhere, that's all! They
could sell all those _bechers_ and the plush table-cloth. And we never
use the samovar nowadays! Oh what a rotten cough it was, like
something tearing! Poor old..."
"You won't leave that piece of bread and butter on the plate
unfinished, Philip Massel, please!" broke in the voice of Mrs. Kraft.
"I'm so sorry!" he said, a quiver in his voice, the cough still
jangling and echoing in his brain, "I didn't notice it!"
He again caught the eyes of the dark lady. It seemed that mysteriously
she had caught the infection of his sadness. Her eyes were rounder
than they had been, though not less dark. Her speech was more subdued.
Or perhaps it was an illusion. Perhaps? Of course it was an illusion!
A laughter fell from her throat like a shower of pebbles. Surely she
couldn't have meant that almost imperceptible wink for him? An elder
person was muttering uncomfortably, "Not so much jam, Mamie!"
Mamie!
An ever so much nicer name, when you came to think of it, than "Edie."
"Edie" began with a screech and its one consonant was a miserable
dental. Strange how totally Edie and her nymphs had slipped from his
thoughts of late months! He remembered the thoroughly nasty row at
school after the Walton Street period had brought him so abysmally low
down in form. They had been giddy months.... He had learned a lot....
Then the Chaucer came, then the school exams. Then she fell ill and
got worse as the weeks went on.... There had been no room for Edie.
She was a sly, deceiving creature, not really to be trusted, though
beautiful in a sort of way of course. Now Mamie ... extraordinary
name, Mamie....
The boys had begun to file out of the room, and Philip turned his eyes
once more towards Mamie, absurdly daring to hope she was looking in his
direction, or, if not actually looking towards him, at least showing
the black jewels of her eyes. But her head was turned away; he could
make out the leaf of lettuce that was delicately approaching the hidden
mouth.
Duly the next day a letter came from Channah. Mother was getting on as
well as might be expected, and be sure and get that glass of milk every
day, and if ever you walk into streams, go back at once and change into
your other boots. Below the girl's writing the wavering Yiddish
letters of his mother's signature scrawled sacredly. With a
sentimentalism he did not repress, despite a consciousness of Alec's
probable attitude towards such behaviour, he placed the letter under
his shirt until its successor of next day should displace it. He was
walking alone, along a quiet lane behind the ambling shanks of cows.
He had made efforts to develop friendly relations with some of the
other boys at Wenton House. But most of them seemed to have got
acquainted with each other in Doomington or on previous holidays and
were already splitting up into exclusive groups of twos and threes. He
could not help but feel that they looked upon him with some distrust.
Many of them had already left their schools and were installed in
warehouses and factories. Philip was obviously one of those stuck-up
people who pronounced their "u's" almost as if they were "a's," which
was absurd, and some of them their "a's" as if they were "ar's," which
was intolerable. There was something too, he observed, of subtle
contempt in their attitude. They had all paid a certain sum of
shillings for their respective fortnights, but the rumour had gone
abroad that an unknown capitalist was financing Philip's holiday. No,
they decided, he was not their class; a little above, a little below,
but not of them! So that, not entirely to his displeasure, he was left
rather pointedly alone. Upon the second afternoon, then, he was
sauntering slowly along at a little distance behind a herd of cows,
when he saw far up the lane a female figure clothed in light blue turn
round a bend with some speed, advance a little, and then apparently
catching sight of the approaching cows, stop suddenly and flatten
against a laneside tree. Then pursuing her round the bend lurched a
red cow, followed by another and a third. The blue-clad figure sped
onward again until the foremost of the advancing cows was not far from
her, then she sank once more into the dry ditch. Philip had recognised
the black hair. He had almost made out the brightness of the eyes. It
was Mamie, the enchantress of the tea-table!
"Frightened of cows!" he thought a little contemptuously. "All right,
I'll lend the poor girl a hand!" He came quickly forward and placed
himself between the girl and the roadway.
"Excuse me, won't you!" he said, "I personally am not afraid of
cows...."
The bent head was lifted with quick anger, the black hair tossing.
"Who said I was?" asked the girl.
"Oh, I beg your pardon!" said Philip crestfallen. "I didn't understand
why----" and he proceeded to move away, a flush of flame lining his
ears.
"Don't go away!" the girl shrieked. "I am frightened! Horribly!"
He came back. "Right-ho!" he said, and folded his arms. The cows were
filing past in the two directions. Mamie looked round from the side of
Philip's legs. "They're nearly all gone!" he assured her.
"I hate cows!" she vowed.
He ventured a remark not strictly _à propos_. "And I hate moths! Of
course, not to mention beetles!"
"I don't like beetles--or moths!" she added speculatively. "But
principally mice and cows. But then what would you expect from a
sensintive girl like me?"
His mind went floundering after the meaning of "sensintive." Oh, of
course, she meant what people usually called "sensitive." What a
quaint old-world sort of word it was on Mamie's lips! "Exactly!
Exactly!" he agreed politely.
"If I may say so, it isn't exactly _delincate_ to know which are bulls
and which are cows. Only vulgar girls know _that_ sort of thing!"
What a fascinating little trick she had of putting "n's" into
unexpected places. _Delincate_! It gave the very word a delicacy of
its own.
"Oh, yes!" he said with conviction.
"I'd best be getting up!" she remarked after a slight silence. "It was
very _sweet_ of you to give me your protection. Thank you!" her lips
shaped lusciously. "Thank you! So sweet of you! Quite chivalrous!"
she completed, with a delightfully displaced accent.
"Not at all, not at all!" murmured Philip. Really girls did make an
awful fool of him! It was about time he said something a little more
elaborate than "Exactly!" or "Not at all!" He had said more before a
crowd of working men in ten seconds than he seemed capable of in ten
hours in the presence of this quite extraordinary young lady.
"You might," came her voice, a little waspishly, "help a lady to her
feet when she gives you an invintation! That you might!" She was
rising from the ditch. He bent over towards her, stung and foolish,
and lifted her to her feet. The pout left her lips at once. "Oh,
thank you so much!" she trilled. "Quite grown-up you are, somehow!
How long are you staying in this dirty hole!"
"As long as you are!" he said recklessly, in a spurt of shy gallantry.
"Go hon, now!" she mocked, and flicked the tip of his nose with
outstretched fingers. "That you aren't! I'll have to run away from
you if you talk like that!" She broke into song--"Saucy and so young!"
she quavered. Her voice sent little waves of pleasure coursing up and
down his spine. "I'm older than you are, I'll bet!" he ventured
maturely.
"How old, Percival?" she asked, signifying her pleasure with a smile of
arch gratitude.
"About seventeen!" he lied.
"Well, I'm only just a bit older, nearly eighteen!" she said glibly.
Her hand patted and smoothed her hair. "Nearly eighteen!" she
repeated, as if the sound of the words gave her real pleasure.
"So we're sort of practically the same age!" suggested Philip.
"_Are_ we now? Well, you are taller than me and only a month or so
younger, so we'll call it _quits_, as we say on the stage!"
"On the _stage_?" Philip asked breathlessly.
"On the concert-platform, I _do_ mean! Not low-down music-halls and
musical comedies! I'm a singer!"
"By Jove!" Philip whispered, "I didn't know you were one of those!"
"One of those what?" she asked sharply.
"Singers!" he replied innocently. "Why, what?"
"Oh, it's all right, what's-your-name!" she said. "Oh, by the way,
what _is_ your name?"
"Philip, my name is! Philip Massel!"
"Quite nice!" she approved. "Mine's Ursula!"
"But I heard a lady say 'Mamie!'"
She frowned. "Oh, that's only my Jewish name--Mamie Jacobovitch. Of
course you'll have heard my professional name, 'Ursula Daventry.' But
I don't mind being called Mamie on holidays! But how long," she asked,
changing the subject, "did you say you were staying? A fortnight, I
suppose? I'm staying three weeks!"
"I thought girls weren't supposed to stay at Mrs. Kraft's, are they?"
"Oh, it's my precious mother's doing! She's gone off to Chester to
help Auntie Bessie have a baby, although what good _she'll_ do ... but
I oughtn't to talk to you like this, you're only a kid after all!"
"You just said, you know, we're really the same age to all intents and
purposes, didn't you?"
"Of course I did! Of course we are! Where was I! Oh, yes! Well, and
mother's a cousin of Mrs. Hannetstein and Mrs. Hannetstein's a big
friend of Mrs. Kraft and there you are. _I'm_ just shunted out of the
way! Not wanted in Chester! Not trusted on my own in Doomington!
It's filthy! And to be locked up with a lot of old women!"
"I hope it won't be so rotten for you after all! If the weather keeps
fine----"
"Don't be so _hinty_, Philip! But all right, in any case there isn't
any real reason why we shouldn't go out together sometimes, is
there?--so long as we keep it dark. I suppose Mrs. Kraft would pack me
off straight away, the _woman_, if she sniffed that I was carrying on!"
"But talking isn't carrying on?"
"You have no idea what filthy minds they've got, all of them! But look
here, Mr. Philip, we're out on the main road now and those are the back
windows of Wenton House. They might be spying out even now, some of
them! You can't tell with these females! I'll tell you what, just
slip back into the lane and follow on in five minutes, don't you think?
Good-bye, Percival, see you to-morrow? _Such_ thanks for rescuing me
from the bulls! Good-bye!"
Philip slipped back into the lane, his head whirling. Bewildering,
audacious, inexplicable girl! So beautifully friendly and candid, and
so intelligent, and so much a woman of the world--a concert-singer!
And she took one as one's equal, not as a nice school-boy who was only
just putting his nose into the world. Philip was flattered and
excited. He sat down against the hedge, and his hand wandered for his
handkerchief towards the pocket sewn on his shirt. As he extracted the
handkerchief, something crackled. The letter, Channah's letter, with
his mother's signature! He had forgotten all about her! Oh, what a
hog he was! Probably coughing her chest out on the sofa that very
moment! A tiny feeling of revolt against the compelling Mamie entered
his heart. Almost forgotten his mother! That would never do! But
what eyes she had, smiling and dark and secret, even if she was so
charmingly frank on the outside! There was tragedy in those eyes!
Yes, he was sure there must be tragedy in her life somewhere. Poor
girl! he murmured protectively. By the time he reached Wenton House he
had constructed for her a sombre Greek background against which her
proud bright spirit shone unyielding. Poor girl! he repeated. But
what eyes! he mused finally, what eyes!
Next morning no letter arrived. He was furious, chiefly with Channah.
"What does she mean by promising me and then letting me down like this!
Another of her rotten old actor-heroes; absolutely sloppy about them,
she is! I wonder how mother can be! They ought to know how anxious
they'd make me not writing after they'd promised! Absolutely filthy,
taking the bloom off a chap's holiday, the only holiday I've ever had!"
He spilt his coffee with bad temper. Mrs. Kraft stared sourly from her
post at the "ladies'" table. Philip rushed out after breakfast to
compose a letter of fierce invective. It then occurred to him that if
his mother was worse, his letter wouldn't help. He tried to convince
himself that she was better and that Channah had therefore not thought
the letter worth bothering about. He tore up the letter, but his bad
temper increased. The morning passed very dully and he was too sullen
to be interested in the munificent substitution of fried for boiled
potatoes at dinner. But as the afternoon shadows deepened, his feet
took him disconsolately towards the lane where the cow-and-Mamie
episode had taken place. In that direction lay, he felt, the only
oasis in the ennui of Wenton. An absurdity suddenly struck him. Here
was the romantic, the poet, who had once rhapsodized over a blade of
grass and shouted for glory at a bird's song, here was he, with strange
sweet singers on every branch of unnamed trees, with wild flowers
dappling the meadows, scented weeds filling the streamside air, here
was he dull and sulky and stupid! What was coming over him? Had the
year ended in too feverish a bout of work? But of course it was
Channah and that letter! Hang the girl, why hadn't she written? Yet
that wasn't all, there was something else making him unquiet, setting
up cross currents in these free Wenton days which until recently had
seemed a dream not for a dreary time capable of realization. What else
beside Channah? Oh, yes, here was the lane where he had seen the
huddling mass of blue. Mamie! Undoubtedly, it was that weird girl
with the dark eyes putting things out of tune! He didn't like her!
There was too much assurance about her.... By Heaven, here she was,
sitting demure and watchful on the further side of a sycamore!
"Good afternoon, Philip!"
"Good afternoon, Miss--er, Miss Daventry!"
"Well, if you won't call me Mamie, I can't say I really mind, you know!
But I don't think it's at all friendly of you! That I don't!
Particularly after----"
"I'm fearfully sorry, Mamie! I didn't think you'd really like to,
after only meeting yesterday!"
"After all, what does that matter with girls and boys like me and you!
Won't you just sit down here, or are you going on...?"
"Oh, if you'll let me----"
"Yes, do! Now what is it is bringing that nasty frown on Philip's
forehead! Out with it, he mustn't look so worried or Mamie will think
all sorts of things!"
"It's about, well, it's about a letter!"
"Oh, oh!" said the girl teasingly. "Oh, oh! Tell us all about her!
And you do look so young to be carrying on! I said to myself when I
first saw you, I said, 'Now there's a young man an innocent girl like
me's got to be careful of! I can see it in his eyes, I can'!" She
hummed the words of a song. She momentarily forgot her friend as she
pursued a phrase along a trilling tremolo. And then, "Oh, yes, where
are we! A letter from his little sweetheart! Oh, oh, Philip!"
"It isn't!" Philip declared. He explained haltingly the nature of the
letter.
"Oh, don't worry about that sort of thing on holiday!" enjoined Mamie
airily. "_I_ never would, not if my mother were dying of the croup!
And if your sister doesn't keep her promises, she's a cat and it's her
own look-out! Oh no, no, no, don't let a little thing like that worry
you!"
"Really, don't talk of her like that! She's a sport! She's not a cat!"
"Did I say your sister was a cat? Oh, I didn't mean that, you didn't
get me proper. You see it's like this.... Oh, hell! It's not worth
bothering about! What was I going to say? Let me see--yes! Don't be
afraid of me, Philip, why don't you move up a bit, there's room enough?
That's right! Now let's talk about something interesting, not letters
and stuff!"
A flame of resentment was smouldering in Philip. He was searching
round for something to say which would re-establish his self-respect.
Peculiar girl! There was no making her out! What was she doing? She
was holding his hand! What soft fingers she had! She stroked his
wrist, then his forearm. Quaint waves of pleasure went tingling along
his backbone. She was leaning her head on his shoulder. Her lovely
hair was blowing against his cheek, her bosom was pressing warmly
against him.
"Philip!" she said. He made no reply. "Philip!" she repeated. What
was there to say? He liked the feel of her against him, he liked the
eyelashes curling from her eyes. "Say something, Philip!"
"Mamie," he said lamely, "it's awfully nice of you to be so--to be----"
"Hush, Philip, do be quiet!"
They sat thus for some time, Philip's mind drowsing in an unfamiliar
content. They rose at last and separated at the corner of the lane.
When he thought, half an hour later, of the letter which had not been
sent, he murmured, "Oh, it's all right, I'll hear to-morrow! Nothing's
the matter, nothing!" He could feel still the softness of her hair on
his cheek.
Channah's note next day was shorter than the last. She did not mention
her oversight of the previous day. Once more the signature of his
mother lay crooked and inexpressibly precious at the foot of the page.
"I told you so!" said Mamie triumphantly that evening. "_Absolutely_
no need to worry! Hold my arm a wee bit tighter!"
When no letter arrived the following day, it required no great effort
to allay the pangs of unease. "To-morrow!" he said. "It'll be all
right to-morrow! I wish Channah weren't so lazy. Now mother's getting
better there really isn't any excuse...."
Channah's note of the next day was almost curt. "Mother getting on
just the same. Looking forward to your coming back."
But surely there was a change in mother's signature! Oh, surely! He
took his wallet from his pocket and removed the two letters he had
already received. A numbing anxiety gripped him. It was quite
impossible to doubt that the Yiddish letters of the latest signature
were sprawling about weakly, the vertical strokes ending in impotent
scratches. "God!" he exclaimed in sudden fright. "Nothing can be
wrong!" He tried to reassure himself. "She was very tired, that's
what it is! Oh, _she's_ all right! But what if anything were to
happen to her while I'm away! That's absurd! Can't a person make a
few scratches in signing a letter without giving rise to silly
nightmare ideas? I don't know what on earth's wrong with me these last
few days! I wish I hadn't met Mamie! She always seems to be
quarrelling with mother inside me! What on earth is wrong with me!
What have I got to drag Mamie in for! Quarrelling with mother! Isn't
that a stupid thing to say about the poor girl! Poor Mamie! Oh, damn
Mamie!"
They had made an appointment for that evening in a quiet angle between
a barn and a hayrick. "I'll be damned if I'll go and see her!" But at
tea that day she looked towards him with such careful languor and
winked her large fine eye so solemnly that his resolve weakened.
"After all _she's_ done nothing! I wish I weren't so anxious about
mother, things would be so splendid ... Would you pass the bread and
butter, please! Thank you!"
She kept him waiting for twenty minutes. He fumed, his temper was
thoroughly chafed. "Curse it! I'll go back home to-morrow, I can't
bear this filthy suspense! What does she mean by keeping me hanging
about like this!" A corncrake creaked from an adjacent field. "Oh,
the idiot!" he swore. "I'll wring its dirty neck! I'll go away if she
doesn't turn up in three minutes! Can anything really be wrong at
home! After all, the doctor said she was coming round--oh, blast that
bird!" His foot knocked angrily. "Hello!" he whistled. "What's
that?" From quite close at hand a low singing travelled towards him.
It was a cold voice, but peculiarly sweet. It was a mere tune, without
meaning or words, but it soothed him like a cool hand on the forehead.
Its pitch was low, like a tiny bird's. Probably the voice could not be
heard at all a few yards away. The singing was for himself, a message!
Then he saw a slight foot and a blue skirt emerge beyond the corner of
the hayrick and black hair floated into view. The warbling became
clearer, though not less soft, the dark eyes of Mamie were beaming upon
him and her rich red lips were ravishing their music upon the little
space between the barn and the hayrick. Philip lay back, soothed and
drowsed, the melody played about him like a fountain.
She was by his side, having said not a word; her singing was reduced to
the very verge of sound. Then she was silent, her two arms round
Philip's waist. The corncrake croaked unheard. He put his two hands
on her cheeks and looked into her eyes. There was a glint of mockery
lurking among their shadows.
"Can I----?" he asked whispering, yearning, afraid.
"You little fool!" she said. And saying this, she seemed old as the
line of high hills which swung against the southward horizon. From a
gloom of generations she spoke, a desiring animal voice sounding from a
depth of many histories.
"You little fool! Haven't I been waiting for it! Oh, you slowcoach!"
His lips darted hungrily to hers. His body was aflame. He pressed her
hard against his breast. His lips relaxed, but hers were still
passionate, remorseless, unslacking. Then at last their lips fell
apart.
"Oh!" she said, and there was a hint of a squeak in her voice. "Oh,
now wasn't that really nice!"
Even now he had room to be shocked at her unfortunate choice of an
adjective. "Sweetheart!" he said, "It was more! It was full and
golden like the harvest moon! It was like a flooded river, foaming
gold in the sunset! It was, it was--Oh, for God's sake don't let me
make a speech! Kiss me!"
"Oh, but I like you to! Say it again, Philip! Take one hand away, put
it on your heart, like so! Now fire away!"
"Mamie, how can you tease a chap, now--_now_! At a time when----"
"Now you're going to be sloppy! I can beat you at that game! Bend
closer!" she enjoined, playing her fingers about in his hair. "How do
you like this one?"
The lines of her bosom were soft and only half-secret as he held her,
looking dazedly into her eyes. He was kissing her eyelids and the
hollows under the eyes. "Philip!" she murmured, "How delincate of you!"
The word impinged, now as he kissed the slender fringe of those dark
eyes, unpleasantly against his skin. But she lifted her eyelids once
more and once more he was drowning in sensuous waters, flickering
weakly down dim lights and warm opaque shadows.
They said little. It was all a playing with their faces and hands and
lips. He seemed to be growing deeper and deeper into her. She was
leaning against him, pale, a little tired, it seemed. Once more his
head was stooping to her lips. Without warning, he found her rising to
her feet and standing over him.
"Mamie!"
"We'd best stop! That'll do, Philip Massel! Leave some till next
time...."
"Mamie, but what..."
"Good-night!"
He saw her pass swiftly from view as she flickered round the angle of
the barn.
"Mamie!" he shouted. "What's the matter? What on earth have I done?"
No reply came back to him. He rose a little dizzily and came out into
the evening. He saw the trees kissing each other in a little wind.
The strange sweet smell of her kisses was on his lips. He saw two
horses in a field rubbing their heads together. Clouds overhead kissed
and mingled. Leaves fluttering kissed each other and darted aloof,
only once more to bring their lips together. He heard a stream along
the field where he was standing so crazed and tired, lipping and
kissing the pebbles.
"Mamie!" he whispered. "She loves me!" Overhead the cry of rooks
came, raucously, ironically. "Don't believe it! Don't believe it!
Don't-you-believe it!" Who was being ironical? Was it he, was it the
rooks? "Don't believe it!" they cawed. "To hell with you all!" he
shouted into the black vortex. He lifted his hand to his mouth as if
to retain there the impress of her lips.
"I needn't be a fool about it!" he muttered through his teeth.
He fell asleep that night with a sense of the closeness of her face.
Dimly and dazed he remembered that her lips had seemed to drink him up.
Engulfed in her, he lay sleeping at length. And yet was he truly
asleep? From what world came this enamel can with the rusted edges,
from the real world, from the world of unintelligible dreams? Oh, yes,
of course; he recognized it! It was the can that hung on a nail over
the scullery sink. They were filling the can with water, unseen and
pale hands holding it to the guttering tap. "Don't think of them!" the
girl said, "think of my lips! Aren't they juicy, aren't they sweet?"
But processionally, as though that cheap can were a flagon of holy
wines, they were bearing it away, along the lobby, and towards the
front door. The cat was crying eerily from a shut room.
Tick--tick--tick! moaned the clock. Candles fluttering! ... Good girl,
Mamie! Here she was, with flushed cheeks and tossing hair! Wouldn't
let them have it all their own way, she wouldn't! The can of water
stood--why, why? stood at the pavement's edge. She lifted the can and
threw the water away, but the can dropped from her fingers, and here
once more was the can at the pavement's edge, full once more with dark,
mournful waters. "Never mind them!" she whispered. She bent towards
him, her eyes desirous. Yet ever quenchless, like a vase of tears, the
can stood at the pavement's edge. And here was Mrs. Levine, sodden
flour on her apron, and long, torn wools fluttering from her shawl.
She was wringing her hands. She bent towards the can of water. "Look
away!" said the girl fiercely. A rumbling of wheels...
A cock was crowing. The leaves of a full tree were swishing against
the window. Philip opened to the dawn red and apprehensive eyes.
But his first remembrance as he stared towards the oblong of eight
lights was not the girl, not all the grape-dark kissing; it was a
sudden stab of contrition--"The letter! My mother's signature! By
God, what a swine I was! I forgot!"
Mrs. Kraft read the names of the recipients of letters during
breakfast. Nothing? Nothing for Philip Massel! He stared savagely
towards Mrs. Kraft. She might have read out his name alongside of the
fools she had mentioned; he needed his letter a thousand times more
than they! He turned resentful eyes towards Mamie. Mamie was
chattering sweetly with Mrs. Hannetstein. He stumbled into the garden
and sat disconsolately against a trunk. The self-satisfied buzzing of
a bee over its tremendously exaggerated labours annoyed him acutely.
Minutes passed. His despondency and irritation became more and more
unbearably stupid. He had allowed himself to forget her, he had
allowed those hungry quiet eyes to slip from his heaven, he had
allowed--oh, what a maddeningly fierce scarlet was the geranium in
those precise window-boxes! What an insane monotony of triplicate
phrases that shallow fat bird sang yonder, the bird with the mottled
breast! What a gawky youth was this passing through the front gate
with a bumpkin leer and corkscrew feet, a foolish little ochre envelope
held stiffly before him! He leaned back against the tree and closed
his eyes tiredly. How long would it take before she would really be
about? Of course it had been a boast, a joke, that she'd have a
monstrous _kuggel_ to greet his return! His head was buzzing foolishly.
"Philip Massel! A telegram for you!" Of course that had nothing to do
with him! Who the hell was Philip Massel, anyhow? He heard the
metallic tinkling of a grasshopper, and saw against his shut eyelids
huge yellow spheres like brandy-balls and blue rings and spectral
vapours.
"Philip Massel! Didn't you hear? A telegram, I said!"
The bumpkin was grinning towards him. At the front door Mrs. Kraft
stood, arm outstretched. Philip turned a frightened face from youth to
woman, from woman to youth. He came forward and opened the envelope.
"Mother dangerous return immediately.
CHANNAH,"
he read.
A blare of terror sounded in his brain like trumpets.
"Mrs. Kraft!" he choked. "My mother's dying! Oh, quick, I've got to
go home!"
From very far away her voice came. "You must have some hot coffee
before you go! The next train's the eleven-twenty!"
"You don't know what she's like!" said Philip, burning with a sudden
tremendous desire to make this woman understand over whose beloved,
intolerably beloved head, lay hideous shadow.
"I know!" the woman was saying. "I've been through it all!" She had
taken Philip's arm. "Come in now, you can't go off at once! Poor lad,
I'm sorry! But then, perhaps, all will turn out well. Jane!" she
shouted, "bring some strong coffee in at once!"
"I don't want anything!" he said. But he found the coffee scorching
his palate and coursing hotly down his throat. He found Mrs. Kraft by
his side, as he started to fold things into his bag with hands which,
uselessly suspended at the wrists, seemed to be lumps of lead. A shirt
fell from his fingers to the floor as though it were woven of metal
threads. Mrs. Kraft bent quietly to the shirt, folded it and tucked it
away; the boy for one moment swung round to look at her, through a gap
in the clouds which had gathered about his head. "What's been wrong
with me all this time?" he speculated. "I've never seen this woman
before, I've never been in the same room!" She had passed repeatedly
from his vision like a cart going by on a crowded road--bearing no
lineaments of her own, being merely a thing of which his senses had
been half-conscious. Was she stern, forbidding? He did not know. Was
she, as she seemed now, a grave-eyed woman, quiet, full of pity? How
could he argue it out now, while the straps were fumbling from his
ineffectual fingers, and like a vigilant automaton, her hands had
usurped his own?
"Harry Levi!" he heard her shout into the garden. "Go with Philip
Massel to the station and carry his bag for him!"
She mumbled a difficult word of sympathy and the blank door lay between
him and Mrs. Kraft. Three and four and five times Harry Levi asked,
"Is she chucking you out, Massel, or wot is it, eh?" He had no quarrel
with Harry Levi. There was no reason why he should not be civil to
Harry Levi; but his lips would not move, and the roof of his mouth was
like burnt crust. Harry Levi relapsed into an injured and simmering
silence.
There were minutes of waiting at the station, minutes blank and ugly
and high like the wall of a factory. The train came hurtling in from
among the hills, uttering as it approached the station a lugubrious and
prolonged howl. The howl reverberated through all the corners of
Philip's heart, rocking, shuddering, dismally dying away.
He was in the train at last. "I must face the fact, I must face the
fact!" Chu--chu--chu! the train went, chu--chu--chu! "Face the fact!
Face the fact!" As he lay in the corner of the carriage, huddled like
a discarded coat, he realized that the fool's paradise in which he had
lived lay about him futile and desolate. A puff of wind and the walls
had tottered, there was a groaning of uprooted beams, a smell of hot
dust, overhead the intolerable eye of the sun looking sourly down!
Fool he had been! Had he not seen her dying before his eyes, year by
year, day by day!
A little specious voice whispered, "But Channah says she's only ill.
She doesn't say--not that! Perhaps it won't ... really, Philip, you
can't tell ... perhaps...!"
"Dangerously ill!" Philip countered, "Dangerously ill!"
"Quite, I see! But not--not the other thing.... Other people have
been dangerously ill and yet, you know...."
It was only the somnolent fat man opposite to him, whose belly curved
below a heavy gilt chain and whose huge red cheeks cushioned curved
long eyelashes, who prevented Philip from leaping to his feet and
shrieking wildly. "Enough of your lies! I've allowed myself to be
taken in long enough! Oh, for God's sake be quiet now, be quiet, or
I'll go mad!"
The puerility, the futility of it all! And had he assured himself that
though all other women soever in the tremendous history of the world
had died, she alone would be exonerate, for his sake, forsooth--she who
now perhaps was lying dead...? No, that at least could not be! She
would wait for him. By God, God would pay for it if she was not
allowed to wait for him!
Oh, speed on, speed on, reluctant and sombre train! Devour the
separating miles, throw the hills behind you, plunge forward to the
cities, speed on or she shall be dead! Oh, carry me swiftly to her
waiting eyes! Her eyelids are heavy! Keep them not waiting so long
that they shall droop, droop! Oh, swifter, swifter!
What mercy could he expect from the train? Had he not known all along
and kept the knowledge safely hidden in his furthest recesses? Of
course she had insisted on his going away from her! She had known that
this was coming! She had determined to keep him immune from the shadow
whose fringes she knew to be even then hanging over the house in Angel
Street! But it had been for him to stand fast, to say--"No, mother,
I'm not going! Whatever you say, I must, I will be with you!" She
would have understood with that wisdom of hers which lay far from her
mere lips, was glimpsed but fitfully in the cloudy hollows of her eyes.
Of course he had known! What else had he meant by that insistence on
her signature! It must have been patent to them all how he had dared
to go in the teeth of so imperious a premonition that he demanded her
handwriting from day to day. That girl....! The memory of her pecked
at the flesh between his ribs like some insatiable bird! Kissing,
fooling round with her hair, her lips, while she lay weakening, dying.
A sound crawled through his teeth. In his own ears it was cavernous,
heavy, loud. Suddenly self-conscious, he looked nervously up to the
fat man, but the heavy chin still hung placidly relaxed and the
shoulders were lifting a little to the incipient snores.
The window beside him was shut. His shirt and collar seemed to have
fastened tight round his throat, choking him. He dropped the window
with a crash and the cool air came surging in. It was not enough, and
he set his face out against the jaws of the wind and felt its chilly
comfort washing the roots of his hair.
Swifter, swifter, train, absorb the miles! That white house below the
chimney stack on the horizon there, shall we never outstrip it?
Grinning there in its unapproachable immobility! Ah, now, the horizon
swivels round on a pivot, and swift for your callous face, oh, white,
grinning house! Wind, wind, what message do you bring from her? Is
she waiting? No, no, I shall not come too late!
Who's speaking? "That'll do, young feller-me-lad!" The draught has
awakened the dozing fat man.
His lips vibrate with growing indignation. "Shoot that winder oop and
sit tha down! Awake sin' fower o'th'clock and tha wilt go playin'
tricks with winders, wilt'a... ?"
The window is replaced along the full length of its groove, and with a
rumbling from the gills, a slight outraged crest-heavy swinging, the
fat man once more slides away into somnolence.
What shall he do as the slow miles dawdle by? Poetry! How long he has
deserted poetry! What strange affinity had there been between poetry
and beetles! Rarely, rarely since those old days of crackling
wall-paper and whisperful spent cinders where the beetles crawled, had
a pencil, busy a moment ago on the annotation of vacuous texts, found
itself scrawling rhymes and dreams. He had felt that poetry would not
come his way again, but now ... as the train beat like a living pulse,
now that his own heart seemed to be moving forward and backward again,
a great shining piston ... He hunted in his pockets for a pencil, took
out a blunt stump, and lifted an envelope from the same pocket. With a
quick dart of anguish he realized it was the last letter he had
received from Channah, where already the signature of his mother
sprawled with the impotence of death. He flung the pencil away as if
the impulse which had produced it from his pocket had been treason. He
remembered with bitter mirth an anticipatory consolation he had once
frequently imbibed. At the same time as he had persistently assured
himself of his mother's immortality, he had whispered, smirking, "Yes,
but when she does die, won't I start writing wonderful poetry!
Marvellous elegies that'll make Gray sound like a threepenny
kettledrum! I'll make 'em sit up! And I'll have a little book bound
in soft red leather..." The tortured lad winced as he brought to mind
the old fatuity. He would make capital out of her death, would he,
little books bound in soft red leather! How well he knew now he would
be like a fallen leaf on a road trodden by a thousand feet!
Oh, swifter, train! Never train moved so slowly! He moved from
against the fat man and pushed the opposite seat ludicrously with his
feet to bring the train sooner to Doomington.
He was holding the envelope in his hand. And he had allowed the girl
called Mamie to persuade him to take no alarm in the weakening of the
signature. He had suppressed the instinct from swimming into clear
consciousness, the instinct to return at once before the hand weakened
into the last torpor. Now at length the contest and the protagonists
of which his mind had been the arena stood starkly before him, and he
knew, with what shame, what despair, who had prevailed. Mamie and a
tickling of the lips, shafts of shy pleasure about the loins--and his
mother, waiting. With abrupt clarity, the enamelled can which last
night had prevailed over the disorder of his dreams, returned. Now
clearly he realized the heart-breaking symbolism of the enamel can; not
merely symbolism! Soon the can should be not merely a symbol, but a
fact; soon, perhaps now!
In all his forethought of death, not in especial relation with his
mother, but with anybody he loved or knew, one element in the Jewish
custom had brought him most distress. Frequent observation had
instructed him that when a dead body lay beyond the doors of a Jewish
house, a vessel of water and a bucket to replenish it were placed at
the edge of the pavement. As the living passed by the place of death,
the vessel was lifted to sluice from each hand alternately of the
passer-by the contamination issuing from the melancholy doors. It was
a sign of death which had sometimes come upon him so suddenly but with
such incontrovertible assertion that it had long filled the crevices of
his mind with horror.
The actual enamel tin of his dreams he also recognized. It had been
condemned a long time ago to the scullery at Angel Street, because the
enamel had been chipped by old service from its edges, and it now hung,
he well remembered, on a rusted nail by the sink. It had been used by
his father and himself for the hand-washing which preceded every meal.
There could be no vestige of doubt that when the time came for this
desperate and bitter use, the enamel can would be lifted from the nail
and would contain cold water for cleansing at the pavement's edge.
Ah, how he realized now what Mamie was endeavouring to do when she had
lifted the enamel can in his dreams and thrown away the water, and the
can had fallen from her fingers. Once more she sought to delude him
into believing that all was well, that the deadly need did not exist
for the cleansing of hands at the enamel can. Even as she had sought
to assure him that all was well with the writing in Channah's letter!
Too late! There at the pavement's edge, despite her duplicity, the
enamel can lay once more, its little lake of grey water reflecting the
grey sky. Here came a woman, swaying in her sorrow, her shawl slipping
from her head! She stooped. Over the knuckles of the left hand washed
the water, over the knuckles of the right.
Philip shivered suddenly. What if he actually found the enamel can
outside the doorsteps? Could he bear to go into the house? No, that
at least he had not deserved! Not that! She would wait, he knew she
would wait.
But see! the streets were now set thick along the path of the railway,
dingy parallels, skulking streets at right angles. The fields had long
been engulfed in red brick, grey brick. The town once more was
gathering about his lungs. And there, pretentious, ugly, forbidding,
like the policemen for whom it was their focal centre, reared the
chimney of the prison on Doomington Road. The fat man blinked with
alarm as the train jarred and jolted into the station.
"Doomington!" Philip murmured, "Be kind, God!"