ROOTS
1
It was a Monday evening, late in July. Pamela Hilary, returning from a
Care Committee meeting, fitted her latch-key into the door of the rooms
in Cow Lane which she shared with Frances Carr, and let herself into the
hot dark passage hall.
A voice from a room on the right called "Come along, my dear. Your pap's
ready."
Pamela entered the room on the right. A pleasant, Oxfordish room,
with the brown paper and plain green curtains of the college days of
these women, and Dürer engravings, and sweet peas in a bowl, and Frances
Carr stirring bread and milk over a gas ring. Frances Carr was small
and thirty-eight, and had a nice brown face and a merry smile. Pamela
was a year older and tall and straight and pale, and her ash-brown hair
swept smoothly back from a broad white forehead. Her grey eyes regarded
the world shrewdly and pleasantly through pince-nez. Pamela was
distinguished-looking, and so well-bred that you never got through her
guard; she never hurt the feelings of others or betrayed her own.
Competent she was, too, and the best organizer in Hoxton, which is to say
a great deal, Hoxton needing and getting, one way and another, a good
deal of organisation. Some people complained that they couldn't get to
know Pamela, the guard was too complete. But Frances Carr knew her.
Frances Carr had piled cushions in a deep chair for her.
"Lie back and be comfy, old thing, and I'll give you your pap."
She handed Pamela the steaming bowl, and proceeded to take off her
friend's shoes and substitute moccasin slippers. It was thus that she and
Pamela had mothered one another at Somerville eighteen years ago, and
ever since. They had the maternal instinct, like so many women.
"Well, how went it? How was Mrs. Cox?"
Mrs. Cox was the chairwoman of the Committee. All committee members know
that the chairman or woman is a ticklish problem, if not a sore burden.
"Oh well...." Pamela dismissed Mrs. Cox with half a smile. "Might have
been worse.... Oh look here, Frank. About the library fund...."
The front door-bell tingled through the house.
Frances Carr said "Oh hang. All right, I'll see to it. If it's Care or
Continuation or Library, I shall send it away. You're not going to do any
more business to-night."
She went to the door, and there, her lithe, drooping slimness outlined
against the gas-lit street, stood Nan Hilary.
"Oh, Nan.... But what a late call. Yes, Pamela's just in from a
committee. Tired to death; she's had neuralgia all this week. She mustn't
sit up late, really. But come along in."
2
Nan came into the room, her dark eyes blinking against the gaslight, her
small round face pale and smutty. She bent to kiss Pamela, then curled
herself up in a wicker chair and yawned.
"The night is damp and dirty. No, no food, thanks. I've dined. After
dinner I was bored, so I came along to pass the time.... When are you
taking your holidays, both of you? It's time."
"Pamela's going for hers next week," said Frances Carr, handing Nan a
cigarette.
"On the contrary," said Pamela, "Frances is going for _hers_ next week.
Mine is to be September this year."
"Now, we've had all this out before, Pam, you know we have. You
faithfully promised to take August if your neuralgia came on again, and
it has. Tell her she is to, Nan."
"She wouldn't do it the more if I did," Nan said, lazily. These
competitions in unselfishness between Pamela and Frances Carr always
bored her. There was no end to them. Women are so terrifically
self-abnegatory; they must give, give, give, to someone all the
time. Women, that is, of the mothering type, such as these. They must
be forever cherishing something, sending someone to bed with bread and
milk, guarding someone from fatigue.
"It ought to be their children," thought Nan, swiftly. "But they pour it
out on one another instead."
Having put her hand on the clue, she ceased to be interested in the
exhibition. It was, in fact, no more and no less interesting than if it
_had_ been their children. Most sorts of love were rather dull, to the
spectator. Pamela and Frances were all right; decent people, not sloppy,
not gushing, but fine and direct and keen, though rather boring when they
began to talk to each other about some silly old thing that had happened
in their last year at Oxford, or their first year, or on some reading
party. Some people re-live their lives like this; others pass on their
way, leaving the past behind. They were all right, Pamela and Frances.
But all this mothering....
Yet how happy they were, these two, in their useful, competent work and
devoted friendship. They had achieved contacts with life, permanent
contacts. Pamela, in spite of her neuralgia, expressed calm and entirely
unbumptious attainment, Nan feverish seeking. For Nan's contacts with
life were not permanent, but suddenly vivid and passing; the links broke
and she flew off at a tangent. Nan had lately been taken with a desperate
fear of becoming like her mother, when she was old and couldn't write any
more, or love any more men. Horrible thought, to be like Mrs. Hilary,
roaming, questing, feverishly devoured by her own impatience of life....
In here it was cool and calm, soft and blurred with the smoke of their
cigarettes. Frances Carr left them to talk, telling them not to be late.
When she had gone, Pamela said "I thought you were still down at
Windover, Nan."
"Left it on Saturday.... Mother and Grandmama had been there a week.
I couldn't stick it any longer. Mother was outrageously jealous, of
course."
"Neville and Grandmama? Poor mother."
"Oh yes, poor mother. But it gets on my nerves. Neville's an angel. I
can't think how she sticks it. For that matter, I never know how she puts
up with Rodney's spoilt fractiousness.... And altogether life was a bit
of a strain ... no peace. And I wanted some peace and solitude, to make
up my mind in."
"Are you making it up now?" Pamela, mildly interested, presumed it was a
man.
"Trying to. It isn't made yet. That's why I roam about your horrible
slums in the dark. I'm considering; getting things into focus. Seeing
them all round."
"Well, that sounds all right."
"Pam." Nan leant forward abruptly, her cigarette between two brown
fingers. "Are you happy? Do you enjoy your life?"
Pamela withdrew, lightly, inevitably, behind guards.
"Within reason, yes. When committees aren't too tiresome, and the
accounts balance, and...."
"Oh, give me a straight answer, Pam. You dependable, practical people are
always frivolous about things that matter. Are you happy? Do you feel
right-side-up with life?"
"In the main--yes." Pamela was more serious this time. "One's doing one's
job, after all. And human beings are interesting."
"But I've got that too. My job, and human beings.... Why do I feel all
tossed about, like a boat on a choppy sea? Oh, I know life's furiously
amusing and exciting--of course it is. But I want something solid. You've
got it, somehow."
Nan broke off and thought "It's Frances Carr she's got. That's permanent.
That goes on. Pamela's anchored. All these people I have--these men and
women--they're not anchors, they're stimulants, and how different that
is!"
They looked at each other in silence. Pamela said then, "You don't look
well, child."
"Oh--" Nan threw her cigarette end impatiently into the grate. "I'm all
right. I'm tired, and I've been thinking too much. That never suits
me.... Thanks, Pam. You've helped me to make up my mind. I like you,
Pam," she added dispassionately, "because you're so gentlewomanly. You
don't ask questions, or pry. Most people do."
"Surely not. Not most decent people."
"Most people aren't decent. You think they are. You've not lived in my
set--nor in Rosalind's. You're still fresh from Oxford--stuck all over
with Oxford manners and Oxford codes. You don't know the raddled gossip
who fishes for your secrets and then throws them about for fun, like
tennis balls."
"I know Rosalind, thank you, Nan."
"Oh, Rosalind's not the only one, though she'll do. Anyhow I've trapped
you into saying an honest and unkind thing about her, for once; that's
something. Wish you weren't such a dear old fraud, Pammie."
Frances Carr came back, in her dressing gown, looking about twenty-three,
her brown hair in two plaits.
"Pamela, you _mustn't_ sit up any more. I'm awfully sorry, Nan, but her
head...."
"Right oh. I'm off. Sorry I've kept you up, Pammie. Good-night.
Good-night, Frances. Yes, I shall get the bus at the corner. Good-night."
The door closed after Nan, shutting in the friends and their friendship
and their anchored peace.
3
Off went Nan on the bus at the corner, whistling softly into the night.
Like a bird her heart rose up and sang, at the lit pageant of London
swinging by. Queer, fantastic, most lovely life! Sordid, squalid,
grotesque life, bitter as black tea, sour as stale wine! Gloriously
funny, brilliant as a flower-bed, bright as a Sitwell street in hell--
"(Down in Hell's gilded street
Snow dances fleet and sweet,
Bright as a parakeet....)"
unsteady as a swing-boat, silly as a drunkard's dream, tragic as a poem
by Massfield.... To have one's corner in it, to run here and there about
the city, grinning like a dog--what more did one want? Human adventures,
intellectual adventures, success, even a little fame, men and women,
jokes, laughter and love, dancing and a little drink, and the fields and
mountains and seas beyond--what more did one want?
Roots. That was the metaphor that had eluded Nan. To be rooted and
grounded in life, like a tree. Someone had written something about that.
"Let your manhood be
Forgotten, your whole purpose seem
The purpose of a simple tree
Rooted in a quiet dream...."
Roots. That was what Neville had, what Pamela had; Pamela, with her
sensible wisdom that so often didn't apply because Pamela was so far
removed from Nan's conditions of life and Nan's complicated, unstable
temperament. Roots. Mrs. Hilary's had been torn up out of the ground....
"I'm like mother." That was Nan's nightmare thought. Not intellectually,
for Nan's brain was sharp and subtle and strong and fine, Mrs. Hilary's
was an amorphous, undeveloped muddle. But where, if not from Mrs. Hilary,
did Nan get her black fits of melancholy, her erratic irresponsible
gaieties, her passionate angers, her sharp jealousies and egoisms? The
clever young woman saw herself in the stupid elderly one; saw herself
slipping down the years to that. That was why, where Neville and Pamela
and their brothers pitied, Nan, understanding her mother's bad moods
better than they, was vicious with hate and scorn. For she knew these
things through and through. Not the sentimentality; she didn't know that,
being cynical and cool except when stirred to passion. And not the
posing, for Nan was direct and blunt. But the feverish angers and the
black boredom--they were hers.
Nevertheless Nan's heart sang into the night. For she had made up her
mind, and was at peace.
She had held life at arm's length, pushed it away, for many months,
hiding from it, running from it because she didn't with the whole of her,
want it. Again and again she had changed a dangerous subject, headed for
safety, raced for cover. The week-end before this last, down at Windover,
it had been like a game of hide and seek.... And then she had come away,
without warning, and he, going down there this last week-end, had not
found her, because she couldn't meet him again till she had decided. And
now she had decided.
How unsuited a pair they were, in many ways, and what fun they would
have! Unsuited ... what did it matter? His queer, soft, laughing voice
was in her ears, his lean, clever, merry face swam on the rushing tides
of night. His untidy, careless clothes, the pockets bulging with books,
papers and tobacco, his glasses, that left a red mark on either side of
the bridge of his nose, his easily ruffled brown hair--they all merged
for her into the infinitely absurd, infinitely delightful, infinitely
loved Barry, who was going to give her roots.
She was going away, down into Cornwall, in two days. She would stay in
rooms by herself at Marazion and finish her book and bathe and climb, and
lie in the sun (if only it came out) and sleep and eat and drink. There
was nothing in the world like your own company; you could be purely
animal then. And in a month Gerda and Kay were coming down, and they were
going to bicycle along the coast, and she would ask Barry to come too,
and when Barry came she would let him say what he liked, with no more
fencing, no more cover. Down by the green edge of the Cornish sea they
would have it out--"grip hard, become a root ..." become men as trees
walking, rooted in a quiet dream. Dream? No, reality. This was the dream,
this world of slipping shadows and hurrying gleams of heartbreaking
loveliness, through which one roamed, a child chasing butterflies which
ever escaped, or which, if captured, crumbled to dust in one's clutching
hands. Oh for something strong and firm to hold. Oh Barry, Barry, these
few more weeks of dream, of slipping golden shadows and wavering lights,
and then reality. Shall I write, thought Nan, "Dear Barry, you may ask me
to marry you now." Impossible. Besides, what hurry was there? Better to
have these few more gay and lovely weeks of dream. They would be the
last.
Has Barry squandered and spilt his love about as I mine? Likely enough.
Likely enough not. Who cares? Perhaps we shall tell one another all these
things sometime; perhaps, again, we shan't. What matter? One loves, and
passes on, and loves again. One's heart cracks and mends; one cracks the
hearts of others, and these mend too. That is--_inter alia_--what life is
for. If one day you want the tale of my life, Barry, you shall have it;
though that's not what life is for, to make a tale about. So thrilling in
the living, so flat and stale in the telling--oh let's get on and live
some more of it, lots and lots more, and let the dead past bury its dead.
Between a laugh and a sleepy yawn, Nan jumped from the bus at the corner
of Oakley Street.