"It's a pity we can't go to his lecture," said Miss Kendal.
The train was moving out of Reyburn station. It was awful to think how
nearly they had missed it. If Dr. Charles had stayed another minute at
the harness-maker's.
Miss Kendal sat on the edge of the seat, very upright in her black silk
mantle with the accordion-pleated chiffon frills. She had sat like that
since the train began to pull, ready to get out the instant it stopped at
Durlingham.
"I feel sure it's going to be all right," she said.
The white marabou feather nodded.
Her gentle mauve and sallow face was growing old, with soft curdlings and
puckerings of the skin; but she still carried her head high, nodding at
you with her air of gaiety, of ineffable intrigue.
"I wouldn't bring you, Mary, if I didn't feel sure."
If she had not felt sure she wouldn't have put on the grey kid gloves,
the mantle and the bonnet with the white marabou feather. You don't dress
like that to go shopping in Durlingham.
"You mean," Mary said, "that we shall see him."
Her heart beat calmly, stilled by the sheer incredibility of the
adventure.
"Of course we shall see him. Mrs. Smythe-Caulfield will manage that. It
might have been a little difficult if the Professor had been staying
anywhere else. But I know Mrs. Smythe-Caulfield very well. No doubt she's
arranged for you to have a long talk with him."
"Does she know what I want to see him about?"
"Well--yes--I thought it best, my dear, to tell her just what you told
me, so that she might see how important it is.... There's no knowing what
may come of it.... Did you bring them with you?"
"No, I didn't. If he won't look at them I should feel such an awful
fool."
"Perhaps," said Miss Kendal, "it is wiser not to assume beforehand.
Nothing may come of it. Still, I can't help feeling something will....
When you're famous, Mary, I shall think of how we went into Durlingham
together."
"Whatever comes of it I shall think of _you_."
The marabou feather quivered slightly.
"How long have we known each other?"
"Seventeen years."
"Is it so long?... I shall never forget the first day you came with your
mother. I can see you now, Mary, sitting beside my poor father with your
hand on his chair.... And that evening when you played to us, and dear
Mr. Roddy was there...."
She thought: "Why can't I be kind--always? Kindness matters more than
anything. Some day she'll die and she'll never have said or thought one
unkind thing in all her poor, dreadful little life.... Why didn't I go to
tea with her on Wednesday?"
On Wednesday her mind had revolted against its destiny of hunger. She had
hated Morfe. She had felt angry with her mother for making her live in
it, for expecting her to be content, for thinking that Dorsy and Miss
Louisa and Miss Kendal were enough. She had been angry with Aunt Lavvy
for talking about her to Miss Kendal.
Yet if it weren't for Miss Kendal she wouldn't be going into Durlingham
to see Professor Lee Ramsden.
Inconceivable that she should be taken by Miss Kendal to see Professor
Lee Ramsden. Yet this inconceivable thing appeared to be happening.
She tried to remember what she knew about him. He was Professor of
English literature at the University of London. He had edited Anthologies
and written Introductions. He had written a _History of English
Literature_ from Chaucer to Tennyson and a monograph on Shelley.
She thought of his mind as a luminous, fiery crystal, shining.
Posters on the platform at Durlingham announced in red letters that
Professor Lee Ramsden, M.A., F.R.S.L., would lecture in the Town Hall at
8 P.M. She heard Miss Kendal saying, "If it had been at three instead of
eight we could have gone." She had a supreme sense of something about to
happen.
Heavenly the long, steep-curved glass roof of the station, the iron
arches and girders, the fanlights. Foreign and beautiful the black canal
between the purplish rose-red walls, the white swans swaying on the black
water, the red shaft of the clock-tower. It shot up high out of the
Market-place, topped with the fantastically large, round, white eye of
its clock.
She kept on looking up to the clock-tower. At four she would see him.
They walked about the town. They lunched and shopped. They sat in the
Park. They kept on looking at the clock-tower.
At the bookseller's in the Market-place she bought a second-hand copy of
Walt Whitman's _Leaves of Grass_....
A black-grey drive between bushes of smutty laurel and arbutus. A
black-grey house of big cut stones that stuck out. Gables and bow windows
with sharp freestone facings that stuck out. You waited in a drawing-room
stuffed with fragile mahogany and sea-green plush. Immense sea-green
acanthus leaves, shaded in myrtle green, curled out from the walls. A
suggestion of pictures heaved up from their places by this vigorous,
thrusting growth.
Curtains, cream-coloured net, sea-green plush, veiled the black-grey
walks and smutty lawns of the garden.
While she contemplated these things the long hand of the white marble
tombstone clock moved from the hour to the quarter.
She was reading the inscription, in black letters, on the golden plinth:
"Presented to Thomas Smythe-Caulfield, Esqr., M.P., by the Council and
Teachers of St. Paul's Schools, Durlingham"--"Presented"--when Mrs.
Smythe-Caulfield came in.
A foolish, overblown, conceited face. Grey hair arranged with art and
science, curl on curl. Three-cornered eyelids, hutches for small,
malevolently watching eyes. A sharp, insolent nose. Fish's mouth peering
out above the backward slope of cascading chins.
Mrs. Smythe-Caulfield shook hands at a sidelong arm's-length, not looking
at you, holding Miss Kendal in her sharp pointed stare. They were Kate
and Eleanor: Eleanor and Kate.
"You're going to the lecture?"
"If it had been at three instead of eight--"
"The hour was fixed for the townspeople's convenience."
In five minutes you had gathered that you would not be allowed to see
Professor Lee Ramsden; that Professor Lee Ramsden did not desire to see
or talk to anybody except Mrs. Smythe-Caulfield; that he kept his best
things for her; that _all sorts of people_ were trying to get at him, and
that he trusted her to protect him from invasion; that you had been
admitted in order that Mrs. Smythe-Caulfield might have the pleasure of
telling you these things.
Mary saw that the moment was atrocious; but it didn't matter. A curious
tranquillity possessed her: she felt something there, close to her, like
a person in the room, giving her a sudden security. The moment that was
mattering so abominably to her poor, kind friend belonged to a time that
was not her time.
She heard the tinkle of tea cups outside the hall; then a male voice,
male footsteps. Mrs. Smythe-Caulfield made a large encircling movement
towards the door. Something interceptive took place there.
As they went back down the black-grey drive between the laurel and
arbutus Miss Kendal carried her head higher than ever.
"That is the first time in my life, Mary, that I've asked a favour."
"You did it for me." ("She hated it, but she did it for me.")
"Never mind. We aren't going to mind, are we? We'll do without them....
That's right, my dear. Laugh. I'm glad you can. I dare say I shall laugh
myself to-morrow."
"I don't _want_ to laugh," Mary said. She could have cried when she
looked at the grey gloves and the frilled mantle, and the sad, insulted
face in the bonnet with the white marabou feather. (And that horrible
woman hadn't even given her tea.)
The enormous eye of the town clock pursued them to the station.
As they settled into their seats in the Reyburn train Miss Kendal said,
"It's a pity we couldn't go to the lecture."
She leaned back, tired, in her corner. She closed her eyes.
Mary opened Walt Whitman's _Leaves of Grass_.
The beginning had begun.