At first, most of my time at meals was spent in reassuring her that
things hadn't been got specially on her and Dolly's account, and as the
only other account they could have been got on was mine, my assurances
had the effect of making me seem very greedy. I thought I lived frugally
up here, but Mrs. Barnes must have lived so much more frugally that
almost everything is suspected by her to be a luxury provided by my
hospitality.
She was, for instance, so deeply persuaded that the apricots were got,
as she says, specially, that at last to calm her I had to tell Mrs.
Antoine to buy no more. And we all liked apricots. And there was a
perfect riot of them down in the valley. After that we had red currants
because they, Mrs. Barnes knew, came out of the garden; but we didn't
eat them because we didn't like them.
Then there was a jug of lemonade sent in every day for lunch that
worried her. During this period her talk was entirely of lemons and
sugar, of all the lemons and sugar that wouldn't be being used if she
and Dolly were again, in order to calm her, and rather than that she
should be made unhappy, I told Mrs. Antoine to send in only water.
Cakes disappeared from tea a week ago. Eggs have survived at breakfast,
and so has honey, because Mrs. Barnes can hear the chickens and has seen
the bees and knows they are not things got specially. She will eat
potatoes and cabbages and anything else that the garden produces with
serenity, but grows restive over meat; and a leg of mutton made her
miserable yesterday, for nothing would make her believe that if I had
been here alone it wouldn't have been a cutlet.
'Let there be no more legs of mutton,' I said to Mrs. Antoine
afterwards. 'Let there instead be three cutlets.'
I'm afraid Mrs. Antoine is scandalised at the inhospitable rigours she
supposes me to be applying to my guests. My order to Antoine this
morning not to light the fire will have increased her growing suspicion
that I am developing into a cheese-paring Madame. She must have
expressed her fears to Antoine; for the other day, when I told her to
leave the sugar and lemons out of the lemonade and send in only the
water, she looked at him, and as I went away I heard her saying to him
in a low voice--he no doubt having told her I usedn't to be like this,
and she being unable to think of any other explanation--'_C'est la
guerre_.'
About eleven, having done little good by my presence in the hall whose
cheerlessness wrung from me a thoughtless exclamation that I wished I
smoked a pipe, upon which Dolly instantly said, 'Wouldn't it be a
comfort,' and Mrs. Barnes said, 'Dolly,' I went away to the kitchen,
pretending I wanted to ask what there was for dinner but really so as to
be for a few moments where there was a fire.
Mrs. Antoine watched me warming myself with respectful disapproval.
'_Madame devrait faire faire un peu de feu dans la halle_,' she said.
'_Ces dames auront bien froid_.'
'_Ces dames_ won't let me,' I tried to explain in the most passionate
French I could think of. '_Ces dames_ implore me not to have a fire.
_Ces dames_ reject a fire. _Ces dames_ defend themselves against a fire.
I perish because of the resolve of _ces dames_ not to have a fire.'
But Mrs. Antoine plainly didn't believe me. She thought, I could see,
that I was practising a repulsive parsimony on defenceless guests. It
was the sorrows of the war, she concluded, that had changed Madame's
nature. This was the kindest, the only possible, explanation.
_Evening._
There was a knock at my door just then. I thought it must be Mrs.
Antoine come to ask me some domestic question, and said _Entrez,_ and
it was Mrs. Barnes.
She has not before this penetrated into my bedroom. I hope I didn't look
too much surprised. I think there could hardly have been a gap of more
than a second between my surprise and my recovered hospitality.
'Oh--_do_ come in,' I said. 'How nice of you.'
Thus do the civilised clothe their real sensations in splendid robes of
courtesy.
'Dolly and I haven't driven you away from the hall, I hope?' began Mrs.
Barnes in a worried voice.
'I only came up here for a minute,' I explained, 'and was coming down
again directly.'
'Oh, that relieves me. I was afraid perhaps--'
'I wish you wouldn't so often be afraid you're driving me away,' I said
pleasantly. 'Do I look driven?'
But Mrs. Barnes took no notice of my pleasantness. She had something on
her mind. She looked like somebody who is reluctant and yet impelled.
'I think,' she said solemnly, 'that if you have a moment to spare it
might be a good opportunity for a little talk. I would like to talk
with you a little.'
And she stood regarding me, her eyes full of reluctant but unconquerable
conscientiousness.
'Do,' I said, with polite enthusiasm. 'Do.'
This was the backwash, I thought, of Dolly's German outbreak the other
day, and Siegfried was going at last to be explained to me.
'Won't you sit down in this chair?' I said, pushing a comfortable one
forward, and then sitting down myself on the edge of the sofa.
'Thank you. What I wish to say is--'
She hesitated. I supposed her to be finding it difficult to proceed with
Siegfried, and started off impulsively to her rescue.
'You know, I don't mind a bit about--' I began.
'What I wish to say is,' she went on again, before I had got out the
fatal word, 'what I wish to point out to you--is that the weather has
considerably cooled.'
This was so remote from Siegfried that I looked at her a moment in
silence. Then I guessed what was coming, and tried to put it off.
'Ah,' I said--for I dreaded, the grateful things she would be sure to
say about having been here so long--'you do want a fire in the hall
after all, then.'
'No, no. We are quite warm enough, I assure you. A fire would distress
us. What I wish to say is--' Again she hesitated, then went on more
firmly, 'Well, I wish to say that the weather having broken and the
great heat having come to an end, the reasons which made you extend your
kind, your delightful hospitality to us, have come to an end also. I
need hardly tell you that we never, never shall be able to express to
you--'
'Oh, but you're not going to give me notice?' I interrupted, trying to
be sprightly and to clamber over her rock-like persistence in gratitude
with the gaiety of a bright autumnal creeper. This was because I was
nervous. I grow terribly sprightly when I am nervous.
But indeed I shrink from Mrs. Barnes's gratitude. It abases me to the
dust. It leaves me mourning in much the same way that Simon Lee's
gratitude left Wordsworth mourning. I can't bear it. What a world it is,
I want to cry out,--what a miserable, shameful, battering, crushing
world, when so dreadfully little makes people so dreadfully glad!
Then it suddenly struck me that the expression giving notice might not
be taken by Mrs. Barnes, she being solemn, in the spirit in which it was
offered by me, I being sprightly; and, desperately afraid of having
possibly offended her, I seized on the first thing I could think of as
most likely to soothe her, which was an extension, glowing and almost
indefinite, of my invitation. 'Because, you know,' I said, swept along
by this wish to prevent a wound, 'I won't accept the notice. I'm not
going to let you go. That is, of course,' I added, 'if you and Dolly
don't mind the quiet up here and the monotony. Won't you stay on here
till I go away myself?'
Mrs. Barnes opened her mouth to speak, but I got up quickly and crossed
over to her and kissed her. Instinct made me go and kiss her, so as to
gain a little time, so as to put off the moment of having to hear
whatever it was she was going to say; for whether she accepted the
invitation or refused it, I knew there would be an equally immense,
unbearable number of grateful speeches.
But when I went over and kissed her Mrs. Barnes put her arm round my
neck and held me tight; and there was something in this sudden movement
on the part of one so chary of outward signs of affection that made my
heart give a little leap of response, and I found myself murmuring into
her ear--amazing that I should be murmuring into Mrs. Barnes's
ear--'Please don't go away and leave me--please don't--please stay--'
And as she didn't say anything I kissed her again, and again murmured,
'Please--'
And as she still didn't say anything I murmured, 'Won't you? Say you
will--'
And then I discovered to my horror that why she didn't say anything was
because she was crying.
I have been slow and unimaginative about Mrs. Barnes. Having guessed
that Dolly was a German widow I might so easily have guessed the rest:
the poverty arising out of such a situation, the vexations and
humiliations of the attitude of people in the pensions she has dragged
about in during and since the war,--places in which Dolly's name must
needs be registered and her nationality known; the fatigue and
loneliness of such a life, with no home anywhere at all, forced to
wander and wander, her little set at Dulwich probably repudiating her
because of Dolly; or scolding her, in rare letters, for the folly of
her sacrifice; with nothing to go back, to and nothing to look forward
to, and the memory stabbing her always of the lost glories of that
ordered life at home in her well-found house, with the church bells
ringing on Sundays, and everybody polite, and a respectful
crossing-sweeper at the end of the road.
All her life Mrs. Barnes has been luminously respectable. Her
respectability has been, I gather from things she has said, her one
great treasure. To stand clear and plain before her friends, without a
corner in her actions that needed defending or even explaining, was what
the word happiness meant to her. And now here she is, wandering about in
a kind of hiding. With Dolly. With the beloved, the difficult, the
unexplainable Dolly. Unwelcomed, unwanted, and I daresay quite often
asked by the many pension proprietors who are angrily anti-German to go
somewhere else.
I have been thick-skinned about Mrs. Barnes. I am ashamed. And whether I
have guessed right or wrong she shall keep her secrets. I shall not try
again, however good my silly intentions may seem to me, however much I
may think it would ease our daily intercourse, to blunder in among
things about which she wishes to be silent. When she cried like that
this morning, after a moment of looking at her bewildered and aghast, I
suddenly understood. I knew what I have just been writing as if she had
told me. And I stroked her hand, and tried to pretend I didn't notice
anything, because it was so dreadful to see how she, for her part, was
trying so very hard to pretend she wasn't crying. And I kept on
saying--for indeed I didn't know what to say--'Then you'll stay--how
glad I am--then that's settled--'
And actually I heard myself expressing pleasure at the certainty of my
now hearing Merivale to a finish!
How the interview ended was by my conceiving the brilliant idea of going
away on the pretext of giving an order, and leaving Mrs. Barnes alone in
my room till she should have recovered sufficiently to appear
downstairs.
'I must go and tell Mrs. Antoine something,' I suddenly
said,--'something I've forgotten.' And I hurried away.
For once I had been tactful. Wonderful. I couldn't help feeling pleased
at having been able to think of this solution to the situation. Mrs.
Barnes wouldn't want Dolly to see she had been crying. She would stay up
quietly in my room till her eyes had left off being red, and would then
come down as calm and as ready to set a good example as ever.
Continuing to be tactful, I avoided going into the hall, because in it
was Dolly all by herself, offering me my very first opportunity for the
talk alone with her that I have so long been wanting; but of course I
wouldn't do anything now that might make Mrs. Barnes uneasy; I hope I
never may again.
To avoid the hall, however, meant finding myself in the servants'
quarters. I couldn't take shelter in the kitchen and once more warm
myself, because it was their dinner hour. There remained the back door,
the last refuge of a hostess. It was open; and outside was the yard, the
rain, and Mou-Mou's kennel looming through the mist.
I went and stood in the door, contemplating what I saw, waiting till I
thought Mrs. Barnes would have had time to be able to come out of my
bedroom. I knew she would stay there till her eyes were ready to face
the world again, so I knew I must have patience. Therefore I stood in
the door and contemplated what I saw from it, while I sought patience
and ensued it. But it is astonishing how cold and penetrating these wet
mountain mists are. They seem to get right through one's body into
one's very spirit, and make it cold too, and doubtful of the future.
_September 4th._
Dolly looked worried, I thought, yesterday when Mrs. Barnes, as rocky
and apparently arid as ever--but I knew better--told her at tea-time in
my presence that I had invited them to stay on as long as I did.
There were fortunately few expressions of gratitude this time decorating
Mrs. Barnes's announcement. I think she still wasn't quite sure enough
of herself to be anything but brief. Dolly looked quickly at me, without
her usual smile. I said what a great pleasure it was to know they
weren't going away. 'You do like staying, don't you, Dolly?' I asked,
breaking off suddenly in my speech, for her serious eyes were not the
eyes of the particularly pleased.
She said she did; of course she did; and added the proper politenesses.
But she went on looking thoughtful, and I believe she wants to tell me,
or have me told by Mrs. Barnes, about Siegfried. I think she thinks I
ought to know what sort of guest I've got before deciding whether I
really want her here any longer or not.
I wish I could somehow convey to Dolly, without upsetting Mrs. Barnes,
that I do know and don't mind. I tried to smile reassuringly at her, but
the more I smiled the more serious she grew.
As for Mrs. Barnes, there is now between her and me the shyness, the
affection, of a secret understanding. She may look as arid and stiff as
she likes, but we have kissed each other with real affection and I have
felt her arm tighten round my neck. How much more enlightening, how much
more efficacious than any words, than any explanations, is that very
simple thing, a kiss. I believe if we all talked less and kissed more we
should arrive far quicker at comprehension. I give this opinion with
diffidence. It is rather a conjecture than an opinion. I have not found
it shared in literature--in conversation I would omit it--except once,
and then by a German. He wrote a poem whose first line was:
_O schwöre nicht und küsse nur_
And I thought it sensible advice.
_September 5th._
The weather after all hasn't broken. We have had the thunderstorm and
the one bad day, and then it cleared up. It didn't clear up back to heat
again--this year there will be no more heat--but to a kind of cool,
pure gold. All day yesterday it was clearing up, and towards evening
there came a great wind and swept the sky clear during the night of
everything but stars; and when I woke this morning there was the
familiar golden patch on the wall again, and I knew the day was to be
beautiful.
And so it has been, with the snow come much lower down the mountains,
and the still air very fresh. Things sparkle; and one feels like some
bright bubble of light oneself. Actually even Mrs. Barnes has almost
been like that,--has been, for her, astonishingly, awe-inspiringly gay.
'Ah,' she said, standing on the terrace after breakfast, drawing in deep
draughts of air, 'now I understand the expression so frequently used in
descriptions of scenery. This air indeed is like champagne.'
'It does make one feel very healthy,' I said.
There were several things I wanted to say instead of this, things
suggested by her remark, but I refrained. I mean to be careful now to
let my communications with Mrs. Barnes be Yea, yea and Nay, nay--that
is, straightforward and brief, with nothing whatever in them that might
directly or indirectly lead to the encouragement of Dolly. Dolly has
been trying to catch me alone. She has tried twice since Mrs. Barnes
yesterday at tea told her I had asked them to stay on, but I have
avoided her.
'Healthy?' repeated Mrs. Barnes. 'It makes one feel more than healthy.
It goes to one's head. I can imagine it turning me quite dizzy--quite
turning my head.'
And then she actually asked me a riddle--Mrs. Barnes asked a riddle, at
ten o'clock in the morning, asked me, a person long since callous to
riddles and at no time since six years old particularly appreciative of
them.
Of course I answered wrong. Disconcerted, I impetuously hazarded Brandy
as the answer, when it should have been Whisky; but really I think it
was wonderful to have got even so near the right answer as Brandy. I
won't record the riddle. It was old in Mrs. Barnes's youth, for she told
me she had it from her father, who, she said, could enjoy a joke as
heartily as she can herself.
But what was so surprising was that the effect of the crisp, sunlit air
on Mrs. Barnes should be to engender riddles. It didn't do this to my
pre-war guests. They grew young, but not younger than twenty. Mrs.
Barnes to-day descended to the age of bibs. I never could have believed
it of her. I never could have believed she would come so near what I can
only call an awful friskiness. And it wasn't just this morning, in the
first intoxication of the splendid new air; it has gone on like it all
day. On the mountain slopes, slippery now and difficult to walk on
because of the heavy rain of the thunderstorm, might have been seen this
afternoon three figures, two black ones and a white one, proceeding for
a space in a rather wobbly single file, then pausing in an animated
group, then once more proceeding. When they paused it was because Mrs.
Barnes had thought of another riddle. Dolly was very quick at the
answers,--so quick that I suspected her of having been brought up on
these very ones, as she no doubt was, but I cut a lamentable figure. I
tried to make up for my natural incapacity by great goodwill. Mrs.
Barnes's spirits were too rare and precious, I felt, not to be welcomed;
and having failed in answers I desperately ransacked my memory in search
of questions, so that I could ask riddles too.
But by a strange perversion of recollection I could remember several
answers and not their questions. In my brain, on inquiry, were fixed
quite firmly things like this,--obviously answers to what once had been
riddles.
_Because his tail comes out of his head._
_So did the other donkey._
_He took a fly and went home._
_Orleans._
Having nothing else to offer Mrs. Barnes I offered her these, and
suggested she should supply the questions.
She thought this way of dealing with riddles subversive and difficult.
Dolly began to laugh. Mrs. Barnes, filled with the invigorating air,
actually laughed too. It was the first time I have heard her laugh. I
listened with awe. Evidently she laughs very rarely, for Dolly looked so
extraordinarily pleased; evidently her doing it made to-day memorable,
for Dolly's face, turned to her sister in a delighted surprise, had the
expression on it that a mother's has when her offspring suddenly behaves
in a way unhoped for and gratifying.
So there we stood, gesticulating gaily on the slippery slope.
This is a strange place. Its effects are incalculable. I suppose it is
because it is five thousand feet up, and has so great a proportion of
sunshine.
_September 6th._
There were letters this morning from England that wiped out all the
gaiety of yesterday; letters that _reminded_ me. It was as if the cold
mist had come back again, and blotted out the light after I had hoped it
had gone for good. It was as if a weight had dropped down again on my
heart, suffocating it, making it difficult to breathe, after I had hoped
it was lifted off for ever. I feel sick. Sick with the return of the
familiar pain, sick with fear that I am going to fall back hopelessly
into it. I wonder if I am. Oh, I had such _hope_ that I was better!
Shall I ever get quite well again? Won't it at best, after every effort,
every perseverance in struggle, be just a more or less skilful mending,
a more or less successful putting together of broken bits? I thought I
had been growing whole. I thought I wouldn't any longer wince. And now
these letters....
Ridiculous, hateful and ridiculous, to be so little master of one's own
body that one has to look on helplessly at one's hands shaking.
I want to forget. I don't want to be reminded. It is my one chance of
safety, my one hope of escape. To forget--forget till I have got my soul
safe back again, really my own again, no longer a half destroyed thing.
I call it my soul. I don't know what it is. I am very miserable.
It is details that I find so difficult to bear. As long as in my mind
everything is one great, unhappy blur, there is a chance of quietness,
of gradual creeping back to peace. But details remind me too acutely,
flash back old anguish too sharply focussed. I oughtn't to have opened
the letters till I was by myself. But it pleased me so much to get them.
I love getting letters. They were in the handwriting of friends. How
could I guess, when I saw them on the breakfast-table, that they would
innocently be so full of hurt? And when I had read them, and I picked up
my cup and tried to look as if nothing had happened and I were drinking
coffee like anybody else, my silly hand shook so much that Dolly noticed
it.
Our eyes met.
I couldn't get that wretched cup back on to its saucer again without
spilling the coffee. If that is how I still behave, what has been the
good of being here? What has the time been but wasted? What has the cure
been but a failure?
I have come up to my room. I can't stay downstairs. It would be
unbearable this morning to sit and be read to. But I must try to think
of an excuse, quickly. Mrs. Barnes may be up any minute to ask--oh, I am
hunted!
It is a comfort to write this. To write does make one in some strange
way less lonely. Yet--having to go and look at oneself in the glass for
companionship,--isn't that to have reached the very bottom level of
loneliness?
_Evening._
The direct result of those letters has been to bring Dolly and me at
last together.
She came down to the kitchen-garden after me, where I went this morning
when I had succeeded in straightening myself out a little. On the way I
told Mrs. Barnes, with as tranquil a face as I could manage, that I had
arrangements to discuss with Antoine, and so, I was afraid, would for
once miss the reading.
Antoine I knew was working in the kitchen-garden, a plot of ground
hidden from the house at the foot of a steep descent, and I went to him
and asked to be allowed to help. I said I would do anything,--dig, weed,
collect slugs, anything at all, but he must let me work. Work with my
hands out of doors was the only thing I felt I could bear to-day. It
wasn't the first time, I reflected, that peace has been found among
cabbages.
Antoine demurred, of course, but did at last consent to let me pick red
currants. That was an easy task, and useful as well, for it would save
Lisette the assistant's time, who would otherwise presently have to pick
them. So I chose the bushes nearest to where he was digging, because I
wanted to be near some one who neither talked nor noticed, some one
alive, some one kind and good who wouldn't look at me, and I began to
pick these strange belated fruits, finished and forgotten two months ago
in the valley.
Then I saw Dolly coming down the steps cut in the turf. She was holding
up her long black skirt. She had nothing on her head, and the sun shone
in her eyes and made her screw them up as she stood still for a moment
on the bottom step searching for me. I saw all this, though I was
stooping over the bushes.
Then she came and stood beside me.
'You oughtn't to be here,' I said, going on picking and not looking at
her.
'I know,' said Dolly.
'Then hadn't you better go back?'
'Yes. But I'm not going to.'