Gareth did not start his book that night. Kathleen was still up on his
return to Pacific Villa; and, lamely, he had to explain the taxi. In
their financial condition--his yearly salary amounted to two hundred
and seventy pounds--taxicabs were extravagances to be contemplated
only when matters of extreme importance were at stake. Gareth did not
happen to be a liar by nature, to assert that he had felt ill; nor was
he a diplomat, to have resorted to the expedient of stopping the car at
the corner of the road. He said simply "I just thought I would like a
drive, Kath," and waited for the storm.
She made cold reply: "It's your money, of course. I've written to
Ilfracombe. Shall we go to bed now? It's late."
His money, of course. But their room--their bed--their house. It would
have been good, that night of nights, to come home to some place of
emptiness where unquestioned he could have written far into the night.
Kathleen, as she fumbled for matches to light the gas, reflected how
good it would have been also to have motored that hot night; driven
away from these poky quarters for a space of time, and hear Gareth say
recklessly, "Hang the money! I just thought you'd like a drive, Kath."
"Gareth, the mantle is smashed again."
"Is it?"
"See if you can find another, will you?"
He did not start his book that night.
The inspiration came and went fitfully during the ensuing fortnight.
But there was no place where it might take concrete form. Not at the
office, certainly. And at home in the evenings, when the dining-room
table was cleared away, and Watts' "Love and Life" presided over the
stained walls and worn red furniture--how could he recapture his
exaltation there, anticipating Kathleen's natural questions directly he
brought forth pencil and paper-pad. If he returned an evasive reply,
she would not ask again, that he knew. But he would all the while be
conscious of her shut-out condition, of her mind torturing itself
with reasons and wherefores, of her laborious care in seeming to take
no notice. Once, after some condemnatory self-searchings, she had
started to take an interest in his office-work, convinced that here
lay a remedy for their failure to find oneness. She read quicker than
he, was quicker also to condemn, and after her tongue had scorched a
romance, his greater tolerance and insight found the task of gathering
the ashes too difficult. He had to ask her to desist from reading. This
she brooded over long: was it petty jealousy on his part? Had she made
a fool of herself in asking to help? No outlet for her energies then,
save the domestic hearth. So the legendary cricket was ousted by a
veritable hurricane, resulting from the uncompromising fierceness she
threw into her mild offices. She changed her tradesmen continually; and
no servant stopped long at Pacific Villa.
Gareth recognized that he must make a start on the book, before his
natural sloth wrapped itself in blanket-warm layers around inspiration.
He tried, the following Sunday; but the machinery of midday dinner
creaked loudly in the kitchen next door. Also, there were many
barrel-organs in Hammersmith, and many children, and many church-bells;
combination of blisses which rendered consistent thought impossible.
The afternoon smelt heavy and headachy. Gareth decided not to start
his book till he was in Ilfracombe. They were to go next Friday. Mrs.
Worley, Lulu's sister-in-law, had written most cordially in reply to
Kathleen's letter, hailing the Temples as: "a welcome addition to our
little house-party" hinting at "acres of room" in Rapparee House if
Mr. Temple cared to bring along Mr. Graham Carr, the famous author of
"Piccadilly"--"Lulu tells me he and Mr. Temple are quite inseparable!"
Finally, in a casual postscript: "By the way----" and mention of
the inconspicuous weekly payment which would more than cover all
expenses--"since you insist----"
"Too much," said Kathleen very decisively. And tore the letter in two.
"That ends it."
Gareth assented. "It's more than we can afford, but----"
"If it's more than we can afford, it's too much."
"I suppose so...." London was like a grill ... and Ilfracombe, he
knew, lay among hills aslant from the Atlantic.... He discovered he
wanted to go to Rapparee House very much indeed. And wished Kathleen
would not at once, and in manner suggestive of the snap of a handbag,
close up all pleasant discussion of improbabilities.
"Shall I write to Mrs. Curtis, and ask if we can have our usual rooms
at St. Leonards?"
"I hate St. Leonards; it was drawn with a ruler. There would be rocks
and pools and valleys ... at Ilfracombe."
"I've heard it's frightfully hot."
"You only run it down now, because we can't go."
"You only crack it up for the same reason."
The dispute took place in the parlour of Pacific Villa. Gareth jerked
his head away from the window--beyond which he had vistaed green water
shot through and through with light ... cool damp places to sit
in ... jerked his head away--to contemplation of his own photograph
upon the mantelpiece--another one pinned to the wall--and yet
another ... they were all over the house. Gareth had an inexplicable
fondness for being photographed; threw away money upon it; hailed any
opportunity of being snapshotted by amateurs. Inexplicable--but not
to Kathleen. Kathleen understood this trait in his character: it gave
him a feeling of support to be everywhere confronted by the square
indomitable lines of his own physiognomy; it was an objective proof
of his being and existence which queerly reassured him in those moods
when he could not find himself; when grip of his will and expression
of his purpose seemed alike slippery and unsubstantial. Gareth, limned
on his photographs, was very like the man he thought himself....
Kathleen knew! Sometimes, when he was poring over a newly acquired
likeness, he would be aware of her gaze upon him, faintly mocking, all
too comprehensive ... despairingly, he wished she had not such a keen
perception; wished he could think she attributed his weakness to mere
vanity ... but she knew--and knew that he knew it. They moved and lived
among these unspoken knowledges.
This particular morning, however, something in the firm lines of his
jaw (as portrayed by Messrs. Hankin of Kilburn) moved him to a spurt of
self-emulation.
"We go to Ilfracombe," he said; and his jaw set into firm lines. "It
shall be managed--somehow."
He expected a sarcastic comment--but Kathleen yielded for once without
arguing. She entertained no illusions that Gareth's present stern
resolve to "manage it somehow" concealed any power of coping strongly
with future difficulties. But sufficient unto the struggle ... she was
depleted ... sick of being opposition party. She too wanted the rocks
and the pools and the valleys....
She wrote to Mrs. Worley to expect them.
* * * * *
After a steeply downhill drive from the station to the town, and then
again steeply uphill to a sturdy red-brick mansion blocking out sight
of the sea, they were told that Mrs. Worley and the others were dining
at the far end of the garden. There was resentment in the servant's
tone which, it was discovered later, arose from an eccentric preference
of the Worleys for carting about their meals in all weathers to any
sort of inconvenient spot, provided it be not their own dining-room.
... A confused impression of a group squatting on the grass under
the wall: Jim Collins, gnome-like, head sunk between his high humped
shoulders, grinning them a welcome; echoed shrilly by Lulu, in a sort
of draggled fancy-costume representing "Summer." An ugly nimble little
man with bronze skin and slanting yellow eyes: beside him, a placid
graceful woman, tall and beautifully dressed; prone on the turf, a
good-looking schoolboy in flannels, munching in a bored condescending
fashion; two oldish ladies disputing over the salad: finally, Trixie
Worley, stout and mysterious, tiny features dotted in vast tracts
of bursting mauve complexion; and her husband Fred, who was in the
eleventh instalment of one of his serial anecdotes, which lasted, with
full data, and allowing for interruptions, all day, and sometimes
reached the point by evening.
Mrs. Worley came forward at sight of the new-comers, and beckoned them
aside:
"_May_ I speak to you----?" her accents were sepulchral to an extreme,
contrasting comically with her wee round mouth, and nose that was a
mere pimple of disproportion. Gareth and Kathleen moved aside with her,
wondering what portentous announcement was in store....
"_Mrs._ Temple"--pause--"_have_ you brought"--another pause--"your
_own_ soap?"
In view of the my-God-we-are-observed manner of enquiry, her hearers
were conscious of an anti-climax.
"No," said Kathleen. She thought soap might reasonably be included in
the price they were paying.
Mrs. Worley breathed hard ... one could almost listen to the weight
being rolled off her mind. "_Good_.... I've _put_ some ... in your
_room_!"
Kathleen asked if they might be shown to their room to unpack.
They were told, to their immense amazement, that Mrs. Worley had lured
them to Rapparee House on false pretences; that not one double bedroom
remained vacant; and that she had arranged for Kathleen to occupy a
single room in the left wing; and Gareth, an attic.
"My dear," in an enigmatic aside to Kathleen--"it _does_ a man
_good_ ... for a few weeks ... I _know_ ..." as they stood for a
moment in the doorway of the little white-and-pansy room, down its
separate flight of four steep stairs. The space was small but cosy;
oak-pannelled; and containing a narrow bed, a grandfather clock, a
chintz window-seat, and a quantity of framed texts. The combined
dressing-wash-table was behind a pansy chintz curtain, permitting the
single occupant of the room to be as reserved as she pleased even with
herself for spectator of her toilet. The leaded-window looked down on
to a small paved courtyard surrounded by murmurous trees. It was a
room for a very young girl ... on the little bookshelf which hung on
the wall, the former owner had left "Little Women and Good Wives,"
"The Lamplighter," "Carrots," and--souvenirs of a more adolescent
stage--"Jane Eyre," "Poems of Passion," and the inevitable "Omar
Khayyam," and "Pleasant Thoughts Birthday Book."
They left Kathleen there; and went on to inspect Gareth's quarters.
"_Mr._ Temple.... You're a _poet_ ... poets _revel_ in studios ...
my brother was an actor, and--I _know_...." It was Gareth's turn to
receive the enigmatic aside.
The attic was also isolated from the rest of the house; and reached
only by a twisting rickety ladder from the second floor landing. It was
a fantastic sensation to enter one's future sleeping apartment head
first, via a hole in the floor. Gareth's imagination leapt ... looking
around him, he forgot Mrs. Worley, confidential from the foot of the
ladder.
Beams, everywhere beams, blackened by age, sloping from roof to floor,
from wall to cranny, so that to walk around the room partook of the
nature of an obstacle race. Windows set carelessly in various angles
overhead, patching the dark raftered ceiling with blue sky and drifting
cloud. Outjutting corners and burrowing nooks. A stove rooted firmly
in the boarded floor. An insecure table that stood solitary by the one
window facing seawards. On the whole, more like a rugged bit of coast
scenery than a decent sleeping apartment. But Gareth knew that here
his book could be written. Here--where he was to be alone. "Grant the
path be clear before you...." Fate had cleared it!
He was terrified that Mrs. Worley should of a sudden recollect that
after all she had a double bedroom lying about empty.
When she left him, he picked his way carefully over and among and
beneath the beams, to the only window which was not a skylight. The sun
had set: and beneath him, in the warm purplish dusk, the tiny harbour
lay pricked out in an irregular parallelogram of lights. The tide was
low; black clumsy boat-shapes sprawled forlornly on the dead sand.
Beyond the entrance channel, one sail, a dark triangle pressed against
the citron fading from the west, waited patiently for the lifting
wave.... Gareth stood motionless.... Presently little separate sounds
uncurled themselves from the indistinguishable murmur, and crept up
to him ... slap of water round the props of the wooden pier ... two
children whispering in a strange rough dialect ... clank of an uneasy
chain ... rattle of the red window-curtains drawn across, in the snug
eating-house opposite. By-and-by these sounds and sights would become
familiar ... already he longed for familiarity ... longed to move
confidently in this dream-world which overhung a harbour under the
hill....
"Gareth!"
Enchantment was smashed. It was Kathleen urgently calling him from
below. He slid aside the trap-door ... hating her. She was standing at
the foot of the ladder, a pile of his belongings in her arms.
"As you didn't think of coming for your things, I've brought them to
you."
He made no move to relieve her of the load.
"My--things?" in a dazed fashion.
... Then he grasped it: they shared a trunk. And Kathleen had been
unpacking while he dreamt. How just like Kathleen....
"Well----" impatiently; "do you expect me to trudge up the ladder with
them?"
(And she wondered if he guessed how she had revelled in the sorting-out
of their more or less joint property into two separate heaps--his and
hers, his and hers now--for a little while.)
He came down a few steps, indecisively--then stopped. It was as though
he were afraid to leave his stronghold, afraid to touch his possessions
lest by their associations they should re-forge that snapped link with
everyday.
"This business is an awful nuisance," he remarked; "she ought to have
let us know."
"Of course she ought. That woman's a humbug. It would serve her right
if we refused to stop----"
"You've unpacked already," hastily. Then, to cover the betrayal:
"You're always in such a hurry----"
"I had to get the trunk out of that poky hole: one can't budge in it,
as it is."
"Better than being stowed away in a draughty garret...."
"I'd change with you; it's airier----"
"_Is_ it?--under the roof!"
Both continued to pretend and to grumble, refusing, in their present
fierce grab at the isolation vouchsafed them, to mingle even their
thanks.
"You _would_ come!"--a thrust at his one masterful fit, when he had
overruled her.
"Well, once you had written ..." and his pause tacitly reminded her of
his lukewarmness when Lulu had first propounded the idea.
But their reproachful resentment over the outward inconveniences was
genuine. And as for the secret fount of joy----"Anyhow, it's not due
to him!" "It's not due to her!" The exact knowledge of it shrined and
guarded in Gareth's mind and Kathleen's, was a wound to the vanity of
Kathleen and Gareth.
He bent, and took his pile of clothing, brushes, etc.--dropped one or
two ... Kathleen restored them to him. Their eyes did not meet--from
a sort of shame at the grudging spirit manifested in their short
parley----"It's only with _him_ that I'm like that," Kathleen informed
herself. And Gareth reflected defensively: "It's only with _her_...."
He wasn't such a--a beast, really. Not up there in the attic--alone.
He turned and stumbled up. She followed him. He stopped dead, and faced
round, blocking the entrance....
"I just wanted to make sure you were comfortable."
"I'm not;" he clung to his grievance. "But you can't do anything."
"I might speak to Mrs. Worley; get her to fix up something
different...." She was so positive by now that his satisfaction was too
great to let him acquiesce in any such suggestion, that she could risk
tormenting him ... _make_ him confess his paradise ... it was futile of
him to try and deceive her, of all people!
He stood at bay. If once she came in ... it would destroy everything;
destroy the peace which had lulled the tired man as though cool fingers
were being laid upon the heat and jar of his life hitherto. He realized
that she was only prodding him out of harsh amusement; nothing to fear
in her threat: she was too glad to be rid of his presence to chance a
restoration of it.
"You can't do anything," he repeated.
She shrugged her shoulders ... and without further speech, re-descended
the ladder, and went swiftly back to her room.
_Her room!_
On an impulse of dread she slammed the door, shot the bolt, and then,
breathlessly, back against the panels, looked round at what was to her
almost tangible solitude. Queer, how all these years she and Gareth
had dragged on in that hateful--that indecent intimacy of every inch
of space shared, because neither had dared shatter aloud the forced
assumption that these conditions were as both wished them. And now,
by the merest accident--Trixie Worley as a bungling ludicrous fairy
god-mother--they were given their holiday. Their first holiday since
Alpenruh. Then, chance had divinely thrown them together; now, chance
as divinely held them apart. Her maidenhood was restored to her....
The sensation that at any moment another had the right to walk in,
touch her possessions, watch her actions--how had she borne the sixteen
years' torment? There burnt within her nature a fierce white-hot
virginity, an utter incapacity to share, which all her married life
had been powerless to wear away. From the hour when convention and
the cramped limits of Pacific Villa had obliged her to watch Gareth
struggle with his shirt, love had slipped from her; gave place to an
irritation from which there was to be no respite. She had heard him
breathing at night----
Oh, the wonder of the holiday nights to come, when she would lie
alone....
Luxuriously savouring each unwitnessed movement, she began to undress.
She was feeling rather vividly well. Summer heat had always a
stimulating effect upon her; the ghost of her Red Indian grandmother
saw to that. A warm colour flushed her haggard face. She crossed to the
window, treading lightly as her moccasined ancestors might have done.
The air smelt hot and ripe; a faint odour of musk was astir. This was
August--she need not begin to think of winter yet. The underlying dread
crouched, biding its time. She was forty-three--she need not begin to
think of middle-age yet ... not for a moment yet. She was now very much
in the same mood as had sent the girl of twenty-seven with Gareth to
Alpenruh. That had been the first panic. This--the last?
Squatting on the window-seat, lank strands of hair clinging to
shoulders and waist, eyes straining towards the dark land-whipped pines
surrounding the courtyard, she sent forth an imperious summons to youth
and romance. Kathleen called it romance. She told herself that because
she shrank from contact with Gareth, so all her longings must naturally
be spiritual. She told herself that her imagination was starved....
Kathleen was forty-three; and the summer heat fevered her blood and
flushed her thin face, as with naked breasts she leant from the window
of her virginal bedroom.
* * * * *
In the shadowy attic, candle-lit, Gareth wrote the first chapter of
"The Round Adventure."