There remained no reason now for me to breakfast at eleven, instead of
eight o’clock. I gave up my noon-to-seven o’clock job, and found one
from nine to five, at a better salary.
Before beginning at the new place, I went to Bermuda for a fortnight.
Bermuda—because a letter from Bill came along, while I was trying to
think of somewhere that I wanted to go.
The letter read:
“MY DEAR PATRICIA,
“Over brandy flips in the morning and champagne cup at night, I
wish you were here. The climate and the scenery and the absence
of automobiles make me able to believe that the last twenty
years haven’t happened. Except when I look at the women’s
clothes.
“Can’t you take a vacation? If you turn up, I’ll take you to the
damn fool race-track that reminds me of county fairs in Maryland
when I was young. All your generation should go to the tropics
for ten years anyway, and watch roses blooming under palm trees.
You’d all come back languid enough to be ladylike.
“I don’t suppose you’ll leave your silly job, but if you would
I’d take you driving in a carriage, and you could pretend you
were one of your own aunts, exhibiting gentle alarm at my
recklessness if I went around a corner at a gallop.”
I thought it might be pleasant to contemplate Bill’s contented old age
for a couple of weeks, so I cabled him and sailed. But I stayed at a
hotel about a mile from Bill’s, lest contemplation of contented old age
through all my waking hours, should grow monotonous.
In the mornings I swam before breakfast, and dressed and had breakfast,
and sat about languidly on the hotel terrace, looking at the palm trees
and thinking about nothing, until Bill’s wide sturdy figure rose over
the brow of the hill.
“Well, well, let’s do a bit of pub-crawling before luncheon. Cheer you
up. You look as if you needed a bit of cheering up. . . . God knows why
. . . you’re young.” Something like that was his invariable greeting.
Then we walked down to the landing and took a launch for Hamilton, while
Bill told me I wore white, or blue, or yellow, or whatever I was
wearing, well.
In the Bermudiana bar, Bill sat with a brandy flip in front of him, his
wide red kind face beaming, explaining that all I needed was a husband,
and considering, in his strong loud voice, those of his contemporaries
who might qualify.
“We’re all too damn old for you, Pat, though. Wish I knew some younger
men; wish I’d had sons.” And he sighed briefly for the sons whose
non-existence was the only apparent regret of his life.
Then he trotted me about Hamilton, every day, muttering, “Women like
trinkets; always cheers a woman up to buy her trinkets.” At intervals he
vanished, briefly, into some little shop, to reappear with coral
necklaces or earrings or brooches, that were not suitable for wear with
anything I owned, but that I wore, with everything.
In the afternoons he played golf with men of his age.
I went alone and sat on unbelievably pink sands, and watched incredibly
blue and white waves come curling in to shore, and read “The World of
William Clissold.”
Through long afternoons, while the shadows of the palm trees lengthened
across the sands, and a small breeze fragrant of sea and palms and
roses, blew gaily along the shore, I read and re-read that section of
the second volume where Mr. Wells considers the relationship of men and
women.
I found therein solace for my resentment against the stupid jest I had
long called secretly this damn freedom for women. There were sentences
by Mr. Wells:
“We live sexually in a world of mixed and broken codes, and irregular
and extravagant experiments and defiances. . . . Our ways of living are
more provisional now than our governments. . . .
“One finds the companion-mate as a dream in the hearts of a few people
here and there, as an experiment, an almost hopeless experiment, like a
match lit in a high wind, or a swimmer borne away by a stream.”
I read that, and looked at the shadows of the palm trees on the sand,
and thought: “Noel, Noel . . . a dream made real, an experiment
achieved—and a dream lost, an experiment ended for ever. But it did not
end in shabbiness and recriminations—so there remains, something. . . .
Something . . . perhaps very much . . . a fire to warm my hands at all
the days of my life.”
And I was able even to make a jest to myself, about Noel and me. It was
not a very gay jest. It was, “Well, we both were destined to see palm
trees, but not in the same country.”
I went back from these solitary afternoons to dine and drink champagne
cup with Bill, and to listen to Bill’s stories of the early nineteen
hundreds, feeling as serene as I used to feel, on coming home from
afternoons of sailing in a breeze that was strong and exciting, when I
was a very young girl.
And if sometimes, I waked at night, and listened to the warm steady wind
sweeping through the palm trees outside, and ached, rather horribly, for
Noel whom I would not ever see again—still, I knew that ache would
pass, and was quite sure, this time, that remembrance of lovely things
we had shared, would long outlast the ache that they were ended.