MOLLY.
Eddy next Sunday collected a party to row up to Kew. They were Jane
Dawn, Bridget Hogan, Billy Raymond, Arnold Denison, Molly and himself,
and they embarked in a boat at Crabtree Lane at two o’clock, and all
took turns of rowing except Bridget, who, as has been observed before,
was a lily of the field, and insisted on remaining so. She, Molly, and
Eddy may be called the respectable-looking members of the party; Jane,
Arnold, and Billy were sublimely untidy, which Eddy knew was a pity,
because of Molly, who was always a daintily arrayed, fastidiously neat
child. But it did not really matter. They were all very happy. The
others made a pet and plaything of Molly, whose infectious,
whole-hearted chuckle and naïve high spirits pleased them. She and Eddy
decided to live in a river-side house, and made selections as they rowed
by.
“You’d be better off in Soho,” said Arnold.
“Eddy would be nearer his business, and nearer the shop we’re going to
start presently. Besides, it’s more select. You can’t avoid the
respectable resident, up the river.”
“The cheery non-resident, too, which is worse,” added Miss Hogan. “Like
us. The river on a holiday is unthinkable. We were on it all Good Friday
last year, which seems silly, but I suppose we must have had some wise
purpose. Why was it, Billy? Do you remember? You came, didn’t you? And
you, Jane. And Eileen and Cecil, I think. Anyhow never again. Oh yes,
and we took some poor starved poet of Billy’s--a most unfortunate
creature, who proved, didn’t he, to be unable even to write poetry. Or,
indeed, to sit still in a boat. One or two very narrow shaves we had I
remember. He’s gone into Peter Robinson’s since, I believe, as walker.
So much nicer for him in every way. I saw him there last Tuesday. I gave
him a friendly smile and asked how he was, but I think he had forgotten
his past life, or else he had understood me to be asking the way to the
stocking department, for he only replied, “Hose, madam?” Then I
remembered that that was partly why he had failed to be a poet, because
he would call stockings hose, and use similar unhealthy synonyms. So I
concluded with pleasure that he had really found his vocation, the one
career where such synonyms are suitable, and, in fact, necessary.”
“He’s a very nice person, Nichols,” Billy said; “he still writes a
little, but I don’t think he’ll ever get anything taken. He can’t get
rid of the idea that he’s got to be elegant. It’s a pity, because he’s
really got a little to say.”
“Yes; quite a little, isn’t it. Poor dear.”
Eddy asked hopefully, “Would he do us an article for _Unity_ from the
shop walker’s point of view, about shop life, and the relations between
customers and shop people?”
Billy shook his head. “I’m sure he wouldn’t. He’d want to write you a
poem about something quite different instead. He hates the shop, and he
won’t write prose; he finds it too homely. And if he did, it would be
horrible stuff, full of commencing, and hose, and words like that.”
“And corsets, and the next pleasure, and kindly walk this way. It might
be rather delightful really. I should try to get him to, Eddy.”
“I think I will. We rather want the shopman’s point of view, and it’s
not easy to get.”
They were passing Chiswick Mall. Molly saw there the house she
preferred.
“Look, Eddy. That one with wistaria over it, and the balcony. What’s it
called? The Osiers. What a nice name. Do let’s stop and find out if we
can have it.”
“Well, someone obviously lives there; in fact, I see someone on the
balcony. He might think it odd of us, do you think?”
“But perhaps he’s leaving. Or perhaps he’d as soon live somewhere else,
if we found a nice place for him. I wonder who it is?”
“I don’t know. We might find out who his doctor is, and get him to tell
him it’s damp and unhealthy. It looks fairly old.”
“And they say those osier beds are most unwholesome,” Bridget added.
“It’s heavenly. And look, there’s a heron.... Can’t we land on the
island?”
“No. Bridget says it’s unwholesome.”
So they didn’t, but went on to Kew. There they landed and went to look
for the badger in the gardens. They did not find him. One never does.
But they had tea. Then they rowed down again to Crabtree Lane, and their
ways diverged.
Eddy went home with Molly. She said, “It’s been lovely, Eddy,” and he
said “Hasn’t it.” He was pleased, because Molly and the others had got
on so well and made such a happy party. He said, “When we’re at the
Osiers we’ll often do that.”
She said “Yes,” thoughtfully, and he saw that something was on her mind.
“And when Daffy and Nevill have stopped quarrelling,” added Eddy, “we’ll
have them established somewhere near by, and they shall come on the
river too. We must fix that up somehow.”
Molly said “Yes,” again, and he asked, “And what’s the matter now?” and
touched a little pucker on her forehead with his finger. She smiled.
“I was only thinking, Eddy.... It was something Miss Hogan said, about
spending Good Friday on the river. Do you think they really did?”
He laughed a little at her wide, questioning eyes and serious face.
“I suppose so. But Bridget said ‘Never again’--didn’t you hear?”
“Oh yes. But that was only because of the crowd.... Of course it may be
all right--but I just wished she hadn’t said it, rather. It sounded as
if they didn’t care much, somehow. I’m sure they do, but....”
“I’m sure they don’t,” Eddy said. “Bridget isn’t what you would call a
Churchwoman, you see. Nor are Jane, or Arnold, or Billy. They see things
differently, that’s all.”
“But--they’re not dissenters, are they?”
Eddy laughed. “No. That’s the last thing any of them are.”
Molly’s wide gaze became startled.
“Do you mean--they’re heathens? Oh, how dreadfully sad, Eddy. Can’t you
... can’t you help them somehow? Couldn’t you ask some clergyman you
know to meet them?”
Eddy chuckled again. “I’m glad I’m engaged to you, Molly. You please me.
But I’m afraid the clergyman would be no more likely to convert them
than they him.”
Molly remembered something Daphne had once told her about Miss Dawn and
Mrs. Le Moine and the prayer book. “It’s so dreadfully sad,” she
repeated. There was a little silence. The revelation was working in
Molly’s mind. She turned it over and over.
“Eddy.”
“Molly?”
“Don’t you find it matters? In being friends, I mean?”
“What? Oh, that. No, not a bit. How should it matter, that I happen to
believe certain things they don’t? How could it?”
“It would to me.” Molly spoke with conviction. “I might try, but I know
I couldn’t really be friends--not close friends--with an unbeliever.”
“Oh yes, you could. You’d get over all that, once you knew them. It
doesn’t stick out of them, what they don’t believe; it very seldom turns
up. Besides theirs is such an ordinary, and such a comprehensible and
natural point of view. Have you always believed what you do now about
such things?”
“Why, of course. Haven’t you?”
“Oh dear no. For quite a long time I didn’t. After all, it’s pretty
difficult.... And particularly at my home I think it was a little
difficult--for me, anyhow. I suppose I wanted more of the Catholic
Church standpoint. I didn’t come across that much till Cambridge; then
suddenly I caught on to the point of view, and saw how fine it was.”
“It’s more than fine,” said Molly. “It’s true.”
“Rather, of course it is. So are all fine things. If once all these
people who don’t believe saw the fineness of it, they’d see it must be
true. Meanwhile, I don’t see that the fact that one believes one’s
friends to be missing something they might have is any sort of reason
for not being friends. Is it now? Billy might as well say he couldn’t be
friends with you because you said you didn’t care about Masefield. You
miss something he’s got; that’s all the difference it makes, in either
case.”
“Masefield isn’t so important as----” Molly left a shy hiatus.
“No; of course; but, it’s the same principle.... Well, anyhow you like
them, don’t you?” said Eddy shifting his ground.
“Oh, yes, I do. But I expect they think me a duffer. I don’t know
anything about their things, you see. They’re awfully nice to me.”
“That seems odd, certainly. And they may come and visit us at the
Osiers, mayn’t they?”
“Of course. And we’ll all have tea on the balcony there. Oh, do let’s
begin turning out the people that live there at once.”
Meanwhile Jane and Arnold and Billy, walking along the embankment, when
they had discussed the colour of the water, the prospects of the
weather, the number of cats on the wall, and other interesting subjects,
commented on Molly. Jane said, “She’s a little sweetmeat. I love her
yellow eyes and her rough curly hair. She’s like a spaniel puppy we’ve
got at home.”
Billy said, “She’s quite nice to talk to, too. I like her laugh.”
Arnold said, maliciously, “She’ll never read your poetry, Billy. She
probably only reads Tennyson’s and Scott’s and the _Anthology of
Nineteenth Century Verse_.”
“Well,” said Billy, placidly, “I’m in that. If she knows that, she
knows all the best twentieth century poets. You seem to be rather
acrimonious about her. Hadn’t she read your ‘Latter Day Leavings,’ or
what?”
“I’m sure I trust not. She’d hate them.... It’s all very well, and I’ve
no doubt she’s a very nice little girl--but what does Eddy want with
marrying her? Or, indeed, anyone else? He’s not old enough to settle
down. And marrying that spaniel-child will mean settling down in a
sense.”
“Oh, I don’t know. She’s got plenty of fun, and can play all right.”
Arnold shook his head over her. “All the same, she’s on the side of
darkness and the conventions. She mayn’t know it yet, being still half a
child, and in the playing puppy stage, but give her ten years and you’ll
see. She’ll become proper. Even now, she’s not sure we’re quite nice or
very good. I spotted that.... Don’t you remember, Jane, what I said to
you at Welchester about it? With my never-failing perspicacity, I
foresaw the turn events would take, and I foresaw also exactly how she
would affect Eddy. You will no doubt recollect what I said (I hope you
always do); therefore I won’t repeat it now, even for Billy’s sake. But
I may tell you, Billy, that I prophesied the worst. I still prophesy
it.”
“You’re too frightfully particular to live, Arnold,” Billy told him.
“She’s a very good sort and a very pleasant person. Rather like a brook
in sunlight, I thought her; her eyes are that colour, and her hair and
dress are the shadowed parts, and her laugh is like the water chuckling
over a stone. I like her.”
“Oh, heavens,” Arnold groaned. “Of course you do. You and Jane are
hopeless. You may _like_ brooks in sunlight or puppies or anything else
in the universe--but you don’t want to go and _marry_ them because of
that.”
“I don’t,” Billy admitted, peacefully. “But many people do. Eddy
obviously is one of them. And I should say it’s quite a good thing for
him to do.”
“Of course it is,” said Jane, who was more interested at the moment in
the effect of the evening mist on the river.
“Perhaps they’ll think better of it and break it off before the
wedding-day,” Arnold gloomily suggested. “There’s always that hope.... I
see no place for this thing called love in a reasonable life. It will
smash up Eddy, as it’s smashed up Eileen. I hate the thing.”
“Eileen’s a little better lately,” said Jane presently. “She’s going to
play at Lovinski’s concert next week.”
“She’s rather worse really,” said Billy, a singularly clear-sighted
person; and they left it at that.
Billy was very likely right. At that moment Eileen was lying on the
floor of her room, her head on her flung-out arms, tearless and still,
muttering a name over and over, through clenched teeth. The passage of
time took her further from him, slow hour by slow hour; took her out
into cold, lonely seas of pain, to drown uncomforted. She was not rather
better.
She would spend long mornings or evenings in the fields and lanes by the
Lea, walking or sitting, silent and alone. She never went to the
disorganised, lifeless remnant of Datcherd’s settlement; only she would
travel by the tram up Shoreditch and Mare Street to the north east, and
walk along the narrow path by the Lea-side wharf cottages, little and
old and jumbled, and so over the river on to Leyton Marsh, where sheep
crop the grass. Here she and Datcherd had often walked, after an evening
at the Club, and here she now wandered alone. These regions have a
queer, perhaps morbid, peace; they brood, as it were, on the fringe of
the huge world of London; they divide it, too, from that other stranger,
sadder world beyond the Lea, Walthamstow and its endless drab slums.
Here, in the November twilight on Leyton Marsh, Eddy found her once. He
himself was bicycling back from Walthamstow, where he had been to see
one of his Club friends (he had made many) who lived there. Eileen was
leaning on a stile at the end of one of the footpaths that thread this
strange borderland. They met face to face; and she looked at him as if
she did not see him, as if she was expecting someone not him. He got off
his bicycle, and said “Eileen.”
She looked at him dully, and said, “I’m waiting for Hugh.”
He gently took her hand. “You’re cold. Come home with me.”
Her dazed eyes upon his face slowly took perception and meaning, and
with them pain rushed in. She shuddered horribly, and caught away her
hand.
“Oh ... I was waiting ... but it’s no use ... I suppose I’m going
mad....”
“No. You’re only tired and unstrung. Come home now, won’t you. Indeed
you mustn’t stay.”
The mists were white and chilly about them; it was a strange phantom
world, set between the million-eyed monster to the west, and the
smaller, sprawling, infinitely sad monster to the east.
She flung out her arms to the red-eyed city, and moaned, “Hugh, Hugh,
Hugh,” till she choked and cried.
Eddy bit his own lips to steady them. “Eileen--dear Eileen--come home.
He’d want you to.”
She returned, through sobs that rent her. “He wants nothing any more. He
always wanted things, and never got them; and now he’s dead, the way he
can’t even want. But I want him; I want him; I want him--oh, Hugh!”
So seldom she cried, so strung up and tense had she long been, even to
the verge of mental delusion, that now that a breaking-point had come,
she broke utterly, and cried and cried, and could not stop.
He stood by her, saying nothing, waiting till he could be of use. At
last from very weariness she quieted, and stood very still, her head
bowed on her arms that were flung across the stile.
He said then, “Dear, you will come now, won’t you,” and apathetically
she lifted her head, and her dim, wet, distorted face was strange in the
mist-swathed moonlight.
Together they took the little path back over the grass-grown marsh,
where phantom sheep coughed in the fog, and so across the foot-bridge to
the London side of the Lea, and the little wharfside cottages, and up on
to the Lea Bridge Road, and into Mare Street, and there, by unusual good
fortune there strayed a taxi, a rare phenomenon north of Shoreditch, and
Eddy put Eileen and himself and his bicycle in it and on it, and so they
came back out of the wilds of the east, by Liverpool Street and the
city, across London to Campden Hill Road in the further west. And all
the way Eileen leant back exhausted and very still, only shuddering from
time to time, as one does after a fit of crying or of sickness. But by
the end of the journey she was a little restored. Listlessly she touched
Eddy’s hand with her cold one.
“Eddy, you are a dear. You’ve been good to me, and I such a great fool.
I’m sorry. It isn’t often I am.... But I think if you hadn’t come
to-night I would have gone mad, no less. I was on the way there, I
believe. Thank you for saving me. And now you’ll come in and have
something, won’t you.”
He would not come in. He should before this have been at Mrs. Crawford’s
for dinner. He waited to see her in, then hurried back to Soho to
dress. His last sight of her was as she turned to him in the doorway,
the light on her pale, tear-marred face, trying to smile to cheer him.
That was a good sign, he believed, that she could think even momentarily
of anyone but herself and the other who filled her being.
Heavy-hearted for pity and regret, he drove back to his rooms and
hurriedly dressed, and arrived in Hyde Park Terrace desperately late, a
thing Mrs. Crawford found it hard to forgive. In fact, she did not try
to forgive it. She said, “Oh, we had quite given up hope. Hardwick, some
soup for Mr. Oliver.”
Eddy said he would rather begin where they had got to. But he was not
allowed thus to evade his position, and had to hurry through four
courses before he caught them up. They were a small party, and he
apologised across the table to his hostess as he ate.
“I’m frightfully sorry; simply abject. The fact is, I met a friend on
Leyton Marsh.”
“On _what_?”
“Leyton Marsh. Up in the north east, by the Lea, you know.”
“I certainly don’t know. Is that where you usually take your evening
walks when dining in Kensington?”
“Well, sometimes. It’s the way to Walthamstow, you see. I know some
people there.”
“Really. You do, as the rationalist bishop told you, touch a very
extensive circle, certainly. And so you met one of them on this marsh,
and the pleasure of their society was such----”
“She wasn’t well, and I took her back to where she lived. She lives in
Kensington, so it took ages; then I had to get back to Compton Street to
dress. Really, I’m awfully sorry.”
Mrs. Crawford’s eyebrows conveyed attention to the sex of the friend;
then she resumed conversation with the barrister on her right.
Molly said consolingly, “Don’t you mind, Eddy. She doesn’t really. She
only pretends to, for fun. She knows it wasn’t your fault. Of course you
had to take your friend home if she wasn’t well.”
“I couldn’t have left her, as a matter of fact. She was frightfully
unhappy and unhinged.... It was Mrs. Le Moine.” He conquered a vague
reluctance and added this. He was not going to have the vestige of a
secret from Molly.
She flushed quickly and said nothing, and he knew that he had hurt her.
Yet it was an unthinkable alternative to conceal the truth from her;
equally unthinkable not to do these things that hurt her. What then,
would be the solution? Simply he did not know. A change of attitude on
her part seemed to him the only possible one, and he had waited now long
for that in vain. To avert her sombreness and his, he began to talk
cheerfully to her about all manner of things, and she responded, but not
quite spontaneously. A shadow lay between them.
So obvious was it that after dinner he told her so, in those words.
She tried to smile. “Does it? How silly you are.”
“You’d better tell me the worst, you know. You think it was ill-bred of
me to be late for dinner.”
“What rubbish; I don’t. As if you could help it.”
But he knew she thought he could have helped it. So they left it at
that, and the shadow remained.
Eddy, it may have been mentioned, had the gift of sympathy largely
developed--the quality of his defect of impressionability. He had it
more than is customary. People found that he said and felt the most
consoling thing, and left unsaid the less. It was because he found
realisation easy. So people in trouble often came to him. Eileen Le
Moine, reaching out in her desperate need on the mist-bound marshes,
had, as it were, met the saving grasp of his hand. Half-consciously she
had let it draw her out of the deep waters where she was sinking, on to
the shores of sanity. She reached out to him again. He had cared for
Hugh; he cared for her; he understood how nothing in heaven and earth
now mattered; he did not try to give her interests; he simply gave her
his sorrow and understanding and his admiration of Hugh. So she claimed
it, as a drowning man clutches instinctively at the thing which will
best support him. And as she claimed he gave. He gave of his best. He
tried to make Molly give too, but she would not.
There came a day when Bridget Hogan wrote and said that she had to go
out of town for Sunday, and didn’t want to leave Eileen alone in the
flat all day, and would Eddy come and see her there--come to lunch,
perhaps, and stay for the afternoon.
“You are good for her; better than anyone else, I think,” Bridget wrote.
“She feels she can talk about Hugh to you, though to hardly anyone--not
even to me much. I am anxious about her just now. Please do come if you
can.”
Eddy, who had been going to lunch and spend the afternoon at the
Crawfords’, made no question about it. He went to Molly and told her how
it was. She listened silently. The room was strange with fog and blurred
lights, and her small grave face was strange and pale too.
Eddy said, “Molly, I wish you would come too, just this once. She would
love it; she would indeed.... Just this once, Molly, because she’s in
such trouble. Will you?”
Molly shook her head, and he somehow knew it was because she did not
trust her voice.
“Well, never mind, then, darling. I’ll go alone.”
Still she did not speak. After a moment he rose to go. He took her cold
hands in his, and would have kissed her, but she pushed him back, still
wordless. So for a moment they stood, silent and strange and perplexed
in the blurred fog-bound room, hands locked in hands.
Then Molly spoke, steady-voiced at last.
“I want to say something, Eddy. I must, please.”
“Do, sweetheart.”
She looked at him, as if puzzled by herself and him and the world,
frowning a little, childishly.
“We can’t go on, Eddy. I ... I can’t go on.”
Cold stillness fell over him like a pall. The fog-shadows huddled up
closer round them.
“What do you mean, Molly?”
“Just that. I can’t do it.... We mustn’t be engaged any more.”
“Oh, yes, we must. I must, you must. Molly, don’t talk such ghastly
nonsense. I won’t have it. Those aren’t things to be said between you
and me, even in fun.”
“It’s not in fun. We mustn’t be engaged any more, because we don’t fit.
Because we make each other unhappy. Because, if we married, it would be
worse. No--listen now; it’s only this once and for all, and I must get
it all out; don’t make it more difficult than it need be, Eddy. It’s
because you have friends I can’t ever have; you care for people I must
always think bad; I shall never fit into your set.... The very fact of
your caring for them and not minding what they’ve done, proves we’re
miles apart really.”
“We’re not miles apart.” Eddy’s hands on her shoulders drew her to him.
“We’re close together--like this. And all the rest of the world can go
and drown itself. Haven’t we each other, and isn’t it enough?”
She pulled away, her two hands against his breast.
“No, it isn’t enough. Not enough for either of us. Not for me, because I
can’t not mind that you think differently from me about things. And not
for you, because you want--you need to have--all the rest of the world
too. You don’t mean that about its drowning itself. If you did, you
wouldn’t be going to spend Sunday with----”
“No, I suppose I shouldn’t. You’re right. The rest of the world mustn’t
drown itself, then; but it must stand well away from us and not get in
our way.”
“And you don’t mean that, either,” said Molly, strangely clear-eyed.
“You’re not made to care only for one person--you need lots. And if we
were married, you’d either have them, or you’d be cramped and unhappy.
And you’d want the people I can’t understand or like. And you’d want me
to like them, and I couldn’t. And we should both be miserable.”
“Oh, Molly, Molly, are we so silly as all that? Just trust life--just
live it--don’t let’s brood over it and map out all its difficulties
beforehand. Just trust it--and trust love--isn’t love good enough for a
pilot?--and we’ll take the plunge together.”
She still held him away with her pressing hands, and whispered, “No,
love isn’t good enough. Not--not your love for me, Eddy.”
“_Not?_”
“No.” Quite suddenly she weakened and collapsed, and her hands fell
from him, and she hid her face in them and the tears came.
“No--don’t touch me, or I can’t say it. I know you care ... but there
are so many ways of caring. There’s the way you care for me ... and the
way ... the way you’ve always cared for ... her....”
Eddy stood and looked down at her as she crouched huddled in a chair,
and spoke gently.
“There _are_ many ways of caring. Perhaps one cares for each of one’s
friends rather differently--I don’t know. But love is different from
them all. And I love you, Molly. I have loved no one else, ever, in that
sense.... I’m not going to pretend I don’t understand you. By ‘her’ I
believe you mean Eileen Le Moine. Now can you look me in the face and
say you think I care for Eileen Le Moine in--in that way? No, of course
you can’t. You know I don’t; what’s more, you know I never did. I have
always admired her, liked her, been fond of her, attracted to her. If
you asked why I have never fallen in love with her, I suppose I should
answer that it was, in the first instance, because she never gave me the
chance. She has always, since I knew her, been so manifestly given over,
heart and soul, to someone else. To fall in love with her would have
been absurd. Love needs just the element of potential reciprocity; at
least, for me it does. There was never that element with Eileen. So I
never--quite--fell in love with her. That perhaps was my reason before I
found I cared for you. After that, no reason was needed. I had found
the real thing.... And now you talk of taking it away from me. Molly,
say you don’t mean it; say so at once, please.” She had stopped crying,
and sat huddled in the big chair, with downbent, averted face.
“But I do mean it, Eddy.” Her voice came small and uncertain through the
fog-choked air. “Truly I do. You see, the things I hate and can’t get
over are just nothing at all to you. We don’t feel the same about right
and wrong.... There’s religion, now. You want me, and you’d want me more
if we were married, to be friends with people who haven’t any, in the
sense I mean, and don’t want any. Well, I can’t. I’ve often told you. I
suppose I’m made that way. So there it is; it wouldn’t be happy a bit,
for either of us.... And then there are the wrong things people do, and
which you don’t mind. Perhaps I’m a prig, but anyhow we’re different,
and I do mind. I shall always mind. And I shouldn’t like to feel I was
getting in the way of your having the friends you liked, and we should
have to go separate ways, and though you could be friends with all my
friends--because you can with everyone--I couldn’t with all yours, and
we should hate it. You want so many more kinds of things and people than
I do; I suppose that’s it.” (Arnold Denison, who had once said, “Her
share of the world is homogeneous; his is heterogeneous,” would perhaps
have been surprised at her discernment, confirming his.)
Eddy said, “I want you. Whatever else I want, I want you. If you want
me--if you did want me, as I thought you did--it would be enough. If you
don’t.... But you do, you must, you do.”
And it was no argument. And she had reason and logic on her side, and he
nothing but the unreasoning reason of love. And so through the dim
afternoon they fought it out, and he came up against a will firmer than
his own, holding both their loves in check, a vision clearer than his
own, seeing life steadily and seeing it whole, till at last the vision
was drowned in tears, and she sobbed to him to go, because she would
talk no more. He went, vanquished and angry, out into the black, muffled
city, and groped his way to Soho, like a man who has been robbed of his
all and is full of bitterness but unbeaten, and means to get it back by
artifice or force.
He went back next day, and the day after that, hammering desperately on
the shut door of her resolve. The third day she left London and went
home. He only saw Mrs. Crawford, who looked at him speculatively and
with an odd touch of pity, and said, “So it’s all over. Molly seems to
know her own mind. I dislike broken engagements exceedingly; they are so
noticeable, and give so much trouble. One would have thought that in all
the years you have known each other one of you might have discovered
your incompatibility before entering into rash compacts. But dear Molly
only sees a little at a time, and that extremely clearly. She tells me
you wouldn’t suit each other. Well, she may be right, and anyhow I
suppose she must be allowed to judge. But I am sorry.”
She was kind; she hoped he would still come and see them; she talked,
and her voice was far away and irrelevant. He left her. He was like a
man who has been robbed of his all and knows he will never get it back,
by any artifice or any force.
On Sunday he went to Eileen. It seemed about a month ago that he had
heard from Bridget asking him to do so. He found her listless and
heavy-eyed, and yawning from lack of sleep. Gently he led her to talk,
till Hugh Datcherd seemed to stand alive in the room, caressed by their
allusions. He told her of people who missed him; quoted what working-men
of the Settlement had said of him; discussed his work. She woke from
apathy. It was as if, among a world that, meaning kindness, bade her
forget, this one voice bade her remember, and remembered with her; as
if, among many voices that softened over his name as with pity for
sadness and failure, this one voice rang glorying in his success. Sheer
intuition had told Eddy that that was what she wanted, what she was sick
for--some recognition, some triumph for him whose gifts had seemed to be
broken and wasted, whose life had set in the greyness of unsuccess. As
far as one man could give her what she wanted, he gave it, with both
hands, and so she clung to him out of all the kind, uncomprehending
world.
They talked far into the grey afternoon. And she grew better. She grew
so much better that she said to him suddenly, “You look tired to death,
do you know. What have you been doing to yourself?”
With the question and her concerned eyes, the need came to him in his
turn for sympathy.
“I’ve been doing nothing. Molly has. She has broken off our engagement.”
“Do you say so?” She was startled, sorry, pitiful. She forgot her own
grief. “My dear--and I bothering you with my own things and never seeing
how it was with you! How good you’ve been to me, Eddy. I wonder is there
anyone else in the world would be so patient and so kind. Oh, but I’m
sorry.”
She asked no questions, and he did not tell her much. But to talk of it
was good for both of them. She tried to give him back some of the
sympathy she had had of him; she was only partly successful, being still
half numbed and bound by her own sorrow; but the effort a little
loosened the bands. And part of him watched their loosening with
interest, as a doctor watches a patient’s first motions of returning
health, while the other part found relief in talking to her. It was a
strange, half selfish, half unselfish afternoon they both had, and a
little light crept in through the fogs that brooded about both of them.
Eileen said as he went, “It’s been dear of you to come like this.... I’m
going to spend next Sunday at Holmbury St. Mary. If you’re doing nothing
else, I wish you’d come there too, and we’ll spend the day tramping.”
Her thought was to comfort both of them, and he accepted it gladly. The
thought came to him that there was no one now to mind how he spent his
Sundays. Molly would have minded. She would have thought it odd, not
proper, hardly right. Having lost her partly on this very account, he
threw himself with the more fervour into this mission of help and
healing to another and himself. His loss did not thus seem such utter
waste, the emptiness of the long days not so blank.