TIME
1
February at St. Mary's Bay. The small fire flickered and fluttered in
the grate with a sound like the windy beating of wings. The steady rain
sloped against the closed windows of The Gulls, and dropped patteringly
on the asphalt pavements of Marine Crescent outside, and the cold grey
sea tumbled moaning.
Grandmama sat in her arm-chair by the hearth, reading the Autobiography
of a Cabinet Minister's Wife and listening to the fire, the sea and the
rain, and sleeping a little now and again.
Mrs. Hilary sat in another arm-chair, surrounded by bad novels, as if she
had been a reviewer. She was regarding them, too, with something of the
reviewer's pained and inimical distaste, dipping now into one, shutting
it with a sharp sigh, trying another; flinging it on the floor with an
ejaculation of anger and fatigue.
Grandmama woke with a start, and said "What fell? Did something fall?"
and adjusted her glasses and opened the Autobiography again.
"A sadly vulgar, untruthful and ill-written book. The sort of
autobiography Gilbert's wife will write when she has time. It reminds me
very much of her letters, and is, I am sure, still more like the diary
which she no doubt keeps. Poor Gilbert...." Grandmama seemed to be
confusing Gilbert momentarily with the Cabinet Minister. "I remember,"
she went on, "meeting this young woman at Oxford, in the year of the
first Jubilee.... A very bright talker. They can so seldom
write...." She dozed again.
"Will this intolerable day," Mrs. Hilary enquired of the housemaid
who came in to make up the fire, "never be over? I suppose it will be
bed-time _some time_...."
"It's just gone a quarter past six, ma'am," said the housemaid, offering
little hope, and withdrew.
Mrs. Hilary went to the window and drew back the curtains and looked out
at Marine Crescent in the gloomy, rainy twilight. The long evening
stretched in front of her--the long evening which she had never learnt to
use. Psycho-analysis, which had made her so much better while the course
lasted, now that it was over (and it was too expensive to go on with
forever) had left her worse than before. She was like a drunkard deprived
suddenly of stimulants; she had nothing to turn to, no one now who took
an interest in her soul. She missed Mr. Cradock and that bi-weekly hour;
she was like a creeper wrenched loose from its support and flung flat on
the ground. He had given her mental exercises and told her to continue
them; but she had always hated mental exercises; you might as well go in
for the Pelman course and have done. What one needed was a _person_. She
was left once more face to face with time, the enemy; time, which gave
itself to her lavishly with both hands when she had no use for it. There
was nothing she wanted to do with time, except kill it.
"What, dear?" murmured Grandmama, as she rattled the blind tassel against
the sill. "How about a game of piquet?"
But Mrs. Hilary hated piquet, and all card games, and halma, and
dominoes, and everything. Grandmama used to have friends in to play with
her, or the little maid. This evening she rang for the little maid, May,
who would rather have been writing to her young man, but liked to oblige
the nice old lady, of whom the kitchen was fond.
It was all very well for Grandmama, Mrs. Hilary thought, stormily
revolting against that placidity by the hearth. All very well for
Grandmama to sit by the fire contented with books and papers and games
and sleep, unbitten by the murderous hatred of time that consumed
herself. Everyone always thought that about Grandmama, that things were
all very well for her, and perhaps they were. For time could do little
more hurt to Grandmama. She need not worry about killing time; time would
kill her soon enough, if she left it alone. Time, so long to Mrs. Hilary,
was short now to Grandmama, and would soon be gone. As to May, the little
maid, to her time was fleeting, and flew before her face, like a bird she
could never catch....
Grandmama and May were playing casino. A bitter game, for you build and
others take, and your labour is but lost that builded; you sow and others
reap. But Grandmama and May were both good-tempered and ladylike. They
played prettily together, age and youth.
Why did life play one these tricks, Mrs. Hilary cried within herself.
What had she done to life, that it should have deserted her and left her
stranded on the shores of a watering-place, empty-handed and pitiful,
alone with time the enemy, and with Grandmama, for whom it was all very
well?
2
In the Crescent music blared out--once more the Army, calling for strayed
sheep in the rain.
"Glory for you, glory for me!" it shouted. And then, presently:
"Count--your--blessings! Count them one by one!
And it will _surprise_ you what the Lord has done!"
Grandmama, as usual, was beating time with her hand on the arm of her
chair.
"Detestable creatures," said Mrs. Hilary, with acrimony, as usual.
"But a very racy tune, my dear," said Grandmama, placidly, as usual.
"Blood! Blood!" sang the Army, exultantly, as usual.
May looked happy, and her attention strayed from the game. The Army was
one of the joys, one of the comic turns, of this watering-place.
"Six and two are eight," said Grandmama, and picked them up, recalling
May's attention. But she herself still beat time to the merry music-hall
tune and the ogreish words.
Grandmama could afford to be tolerant, as she sat there, looking over the
edge into eternity, with Time, his fangs drawn, stretched sleepily behind
her back. Time, who flew, bird-like, before May's pursuing feet; time,
who stared balefully into Mrs. Hilary's face, returning hate for hate,
rested behind Grandmama's back like a faithful steed who had carried her
thus far and whose service was nearly over.
The Army moved on; its music blared away into the distance. The rain
beat steadily on wet asphalt roads; the edge of the cold sea tumbled and
moaned; the noise of the fire flickering was like unsteady breathing, or
the soft fluttering of wings.
"Time is so long," thought Mrs. Hilary. "I can't bear it."
"Time gets on that quick," thought May. "I can't keep up with it."
"Time is dead," thought Grandmama. "What next?"