“Yet I do think it would be nice of you to go with him as far as Genoa,”
Mrs. Kerr said to Ronald, three evenings afterwards. At an end of her
gentle insistence she could do no more; she left the appeal in the air
to dissolve or solidify, sighed, turned away from her son and took up
her letters. The appeal stretched out and closed upon Ronald’s
unwillingness tentacle after shadowy tentacle; he got up and walked
round Mrs. Kerr’s room uneasily moving his shoulders, writhing mentally
like the Laocoön and feeling himself constricted at every point.
“Well I am blowed,” he said petulantly. “I really am blowed!” But Mrs.
Kerr was reading a letter.
Ronald could not understand why two people who had come to this place
unaware of each other, in perfect integrity and without the intention of
seeking a mate, should not be allowed to remain here untroubled now that
a transitory notion of marrying one another had been abandoned. Or if
they were due to depart, why had they to depart processionally in a long
train of Spirits Pitiful; regrets, remorses, condolences, noisy emotions
given the licence of carnival? Mrs. Bellamy was “taking away” Sydney
(who now had to be bundled about like a lay-figure and spoken of like
the unillustrious dead) to a place on the French Riviera and later to
England. Milton was to move on to Florence, even to Assisi; there seemed
a vagueness as to whether he might not be trusted in proper abandon to
walk over the very edge of Italy into the sea. He had timed his
departure, unwittingly, for the same date, the same train as Ronald’s.
Ronald, appalled by the thought of a journey with one for whom the web
of a fatal attachment would be with every moment attenuating and
snapping off strand by strand, had announced to his mother that travel
with Milton he would not; it could not be done. He proposed to remain
with her several days more.
“We’d see each other on the platform,” Ronald said, “we should be bound
to see each other on the platform and we should feel such asses looking
all round each other and then getting into different carriages.”
“Well, don’t get into different carriages; talk to each other.”
“I really don’t know how to. You see, he would be bound to think I was
embarrassed. I think he is the sort of man who would rather expect one
to be.”
Many people were embarrassed by Milton, avoided meeting him in the
corridors, moved away when he came into the lounge and when they caught
his eye did not know whether to look and hurried away to complain of
him. He had expected and hoped that nothing would “come out” until he
and Sydney had managed to slip away quietly; but in this he had counted
without her directness—he had written a note on the matter to send to
her room but on reading it through had destroyed it (it seemed to reek
with the meanest solicitudes) and had sat with his head in his hands
unable to write her another. Sydney had “told” Tessa; Tessa, through
confidantes fatally chosen and an air for the world of reserved
desolation, let everyone know. He was offered during the tête-à-têtes
which circumstances or the conscientiousness of a few friends forced on
him all kinds of silences and found them poor enough meat in his hunger,
his sudden ache for companionship; silences applied tenderly like a swab
to a wound, silences held up like a shield, square and blank, silences
poked across at him gingerly; the silences of Miss Pym, of Colonel
Duperrier, of Eileen Lawrence. Sensitive to so abashing his world he
began to feel like a leper. His perturbation as to whether he ought to
be here, the increasingly sharp little stings with which consciousness
less of suffering than of being a too-evidently suffering man was
brought home again and again to him, kept up such a din in his mind that
thought was impossible. He could not think of Sydney or of what they had
lost or gained. Now and then he would brace himself and with cold
exultation look ahead to an ordeal in Florence.
Veronica spoke to him; she gave him all her distracted sympathy then
took it all back again, in a breath; “There are worse things,” she said,
“than not being engaged to be married. I would rather do anything on
earth than meet Victor just now—will you walk down with me and look for
a court?” That had been early one morning; they had stolen down to the
courts together and played singles till other people began to assemble.
He gave her minus-fifteen and she won their three sets. “You know, you
mustn’t let yourself go to pieces,” she said, shaking her head at him as
they walked back together. “You used to be good.” “But I’m _melting
away_ in all this!” exclaimed Milton explosively. Later, as they turned
in at the Hotel gate she had an idea. “I say, you do marry people, don’t
you—I mean, professionally? It would be rather a joke if you were to
marry us. Rather a _grim_ joke, I daresay,” she added with bent brows,
tighting her racquet-press. But that evening, as with a feverish sense
of exclusion from everywhere he walked up and down on the gravel, she
melted ahead of him into the darkness, trailing the wraith of a shawl
from her shoulders, going down to the sea with her Victor to look at the
moonlight. She came into the lounge again shining-eyed, mysterious from
having been kissed, and Milton felt that at least she was not unhappy.
He was haunted by Ronald. Ronald, whenever they met, paused momentarily,
opened and shut his mouth, seemed always just on the verge of an
utterance which was to clarify everything and banish confusion. An
oblique glance, penetrating, but addressed to one another’s features
rather than eye to eye, would pass between them. Then, smiling
regretfully as though he had been urgently called away, Ronald would
shake back the piece of hair from his forehead and dart off. Milton had
the feeling each time of having been weighed and found wanting. There
must have been something about him that brought Ronald up dead. He told
himself this did not matter, he would not see Ronald again, then the
thought of not seeing Ronald again would itself inexpressibly sadden
him. The thought of Ronald and Sydney going away in different
directions, and of the unlikelihood of _their_ ever meeting came to be
even more painful, the injury was personal, as though one or the other
or both of them had been part of himself. Every time he met Ronald there
was the embarrassment, not just of that one moment of failure sharp as
the slam of a door but of a dozen remembered others mounting up behind
it.
“I _will_ speak,” Milton said to himself at last and Ronald must have
come to the same decision, for the next time they met they both began to
talk at once, irrelevantly and loudly. It was this, chiefly, which had
made Ronald so unwilling that they should travel together to Genoa.
Walking about the room he was trying with great difficulty to explain
this to his mother.
Mrs. Kerr, still with an eye on her letters but with attention dutifully
withdrawn from her own affairs, raised herself among the cushions and
turned a little round on the sofa to consider her son’s difficulty.
“I don’t want to sacrifice you, my darling,” she said, “but if you would
do this you would really oblige me. You see, Ronald, the poor man does
like you. I thought if you would try and be nice to him—make it all
easier—just for an hour or two in the train.”
“It’s an Italian train,” said Ronald gloomily.
“I know, I know,” said Mrs. Kerr and nodded in helpless contrition. “I’m
afraid,” she went on irrelevantly, “he feels sore about this—He feels——”
“_Sore?_” echoed Ronald. “Ridiculous! Sore?”
“I think so, a little ... with me,” said Mrs. Kerr and adjusted the
shade of the reading-lamp. Her face by that movement emerged from red
dusk and was shown to her son like a picture, lit up; a face lying
rather wearily back among the cushions, full of lucidity and gentleness;
less beautiful at the moment than burning in on his consciousness its
essential quality, mental or spiritual, that he could not define. Ronald
wondered again if this was what he would learn to call love, or whether
he would ever experience any other: this feeling of being burnt in upon
that left no room for desire. “I half think,” Mrs. Kerr went on
reluctantly, as though she were reading aloud from the confused blotted
chart of poor Milton’s mind, “that _he_ half thinks I’ve meddled. Of
course I have a kind of influence over Sydney, but I should never have
used it to interfere in her love-affairs. I have always wanted her to
marry and seen that she wanted to marry and though I was surprised just
at first that she should be able to think about _him_ in that way, they
both seemed so pleasant with each other that I would have done a great
deal to help them on.”
It was a strange and sudden relief to Ronald—he could not have said
why—to hear his mother say all this in a matter-of-fact voice.
“Poor old Milton,” he said once and could not help laughing. Mrs. Kerr
also smiled, less and less ruefully as his laughter began to infect her.
“Poor old chap,” said Ronald again, noisily. He waited for what was to
come next, but his mother seemed to have done speaking. “Of course,” he
went on, at the same pitch of jocularity, “if it’s a case of the family
honour ... anything _I_ can do....”
It did sound ridiculous, the way he put it, and Mrs. Kerr smiled again.
“I should feel happier,” she confessed, “if the poor dear went off more
or less happily. You see, he does like you.”
“Oh yes, I daresay he does. I daresay he thinks I have a beautiful
expression and wishes I would come and sing in his choir.”
“Something like that, I daresay. But people are not put in choirs for
their beautiful expressions—Seriously, Ronald, I’m doing this because I
want to do anything I can for him. It means a lot to send you away from
me sooner than you have to go. You see, I’ll be lonely,” said Mrs. Kerr,
and glanced away from the statement when it was made as though she saw
it as ugly and trivial.
“Oh Mother....”
He caught at her hand but she drew it away again. “I don’t want you to
stay and be kind to me. I hope I shall be dead a long time before people
are kind to me.” She shivered—not, he thought, at death.
“You’re lonely?”
Her eyes took him in, very tiny, and round him the room and the world
with its tiny people drawn by their hundreds of tides. She nodded and
her thought passed ahead. “You see,” she said, “I who am what is called
an attractive person am going to be lonelier than other people, the
beautiful or the devoted. I shan’t be able to crowd myself round for
consolation and company with hundreds of little photographs of loving or
having been loved.”
“A large number of people seem to have loved you,” said Ronald. Though
shaken, he spoke definitely, very dispassionately. It seemed important,
so important that his mouth went dry, that his mother should not be
allowed to go on looking through him and thinking beyond him with that
peculiar expression. “A large number ...” he repeated.
“No, no one, I think,” said Mrs. Kerr, after a pause in which she tried
to remember. While she spoke she began glancing through her letters
abstractedly and with an air of indifference. Then she smiled. “At any
rate,” she went on, having extracted an envelope that had already been
opened, “I don’t begin to be lonely just yet—here’s such a charming
letter, an invitation, from those Emmerys in Paris.”
“Oh, _Margot_ Emmery?”
“Yes, Margot. I am so fond of her. So you, my dear, can run away to
Sicily.” She tugged gently at a fold of her tea-gown on which he
happened to be sitting and swept him away from her with a gesture as
though he were a little boy again and she were sending him off to bed.
“Well, at any rate,” said Ronald nodding, sitting tight on the tea-gown
and leaning forward to show her he had scored a point, “Sydney is fond
of you.”
“I suppose she is,” Mrs. Kerr said reflectively.
“Then _why_ ...” began Ronald. “Why on earth....” He stopped again and
blinked his eyes, as though he had suddenly seen everything as so
complicated that he could only believe in some defect in his vision.
Mrs. Kerr gently stirred on the sofa, the loud ticking of the travelling
clock at her elbow became suddenly audible. Ronald looking round the
room caught sight of his own photograph—“Ronald”—and thought how odd it
was that Mrs. Kerr sitting on the sofa beside him should have a son and
how much odder it was that Ronald should have a mother. He found himself
arguing very loudly, wisely, and dogmatically and was reminded of the
only two occasions when he had been drunk. “You’re not fair to
yourself,” he kept repeating. “You’re not, Mother, you’re not really.
You _ought_ to be fair....”
She looked up at him once or twice from over Margot Emmery’s letter and
said presently, “Well, my dear Ronald, I leave that to you—Hush!...
Listen! Come in!... Ronald, I’m sure I heard somebody. Do go and see who
it is.”
“It’s Miss Warren,” said Ronald, having opened the door grudgingly, and
Sydney came in.
She came in doubtfully, carrying a pile of books, with a pair of long
white leather gloves dangling over her arm. She and Ronald stared at
each other vaguely and steadily over the reading-lamp, the only light in
the room. In the red dusk over the shade their faces were blank to each
other; their features were scarcely visible and their expressions, if
they had expressions, not visible at all. As it was a spring night the
window stood open out on to the balcony and now and then the curtains
were sucked in and swelled out again by a breath of mild air.
“I’ll be getting along,” said Ronald to Sydney.
“Oh no, don’t go,” But the room seemed too small for three people.
Ronald, seeking for and failing to catch his mother’s eye, looked round
him rather confusedly and finally stepped out between the curtains on to
the balcony where he lighted a cigarette and doubling his elbows under
him leaned forward to stare at the sea. The exit was not a happy one, in
the room behind he remained present yet not present. Sydney put her pile
of books carefully down on the table and counted them over, then held
out the pair of gloves to Mrs. Kerr. “I think these are all of your
books that I had,” said she. “And I think these are your gloves; I must
have brought them upstairs with me after a walk. I found them among my
things.”
“So they are!” said Mrs. Kerr and looked at the gloves in pleased
surprise. “How nice to have them back—but I never missed them. But I do
wish, my dear, you hadn’t brought all those books back. Wouldn’t you
keep them? I shall never have room for them all in my trunk.”
“I shouldn’t have room in my trunk either.”
“Not if I wrote your name in them all?”
“I’m afraid I still shouldn’t have room in my trunk,” Sydney said and
smiled conventionally.
“Then I shall have to give them away to someone else,” said Mrs. Kerr
with a sigh. “Don’t just hover, Sydney—must you go yet? Stay and sit
down.”
“I’m afraid I can’t. I’m going through my things to-night and beginning
to pack—I’d no idea I’d so many. We go, you see, the day after
to-morrow, and to-morrow night I shall be going out with the Lawrences.”
“Oh, the Lawrences?... Well, I expect it will be very nice for you all
to spend your last evening together. Are you really going the day after
to-morrow?”
“Yes. So’s Ronald, isn’t he?”
“He is indeed,” sighed Ronald’s mother. “How time does seem to have
slipped away from us all.... Mr. Milton and Ronald you know, are hoping
to travel together.... _Poor_ Mr. Milton...!”
“Yes,” said Sydney, “I suppose he is a good deal laughed at.”
Mrs. Kerr glanced at her with raised eyebrows a moment and bit her lips
as though she had winced for a moment inwardly. There seemed to be
depths of crudeness here that she dared not fathom. “Not as far as I
know, my dear,” she said gently. “Unless, of course, you feel able to
laugh at him?”
“I’m not much amused really. Do I seem to be much amused?”
Mrs. Kerr looked at her gently and critically. “No, I don’t think you
do. You do look older, my dear, yes, you certainly have developed. I
suppose there is nothing like buying experience that somebody else pays
for.”
“You’re very sensitive to all this,” said Sydney, raising her eyes for
the first time. “What’s most beautiful about you is your sensitiveness.
If there’s one thing one might hope to learn from you it would be to be
sickened and turned cold by cruelty and unfairness. I hope that’s what
other people have learnt from you. I hope that’s what someone where
you’re going next will be able to learn too.” Finding that her voice was
still steady and clear and that she was able to go on she concluded, “I
am very grateful to you; you have done a great deal for me.”
After a moment’s pause Mrs. Kerr said, with a glance through the
curtains, “You do remember, don’t you, that Ronald’s on the balcony?”
“No, I haven’t forgotten Ronald.... Good-night, Mrs. Kerr. Good-night,
Ronald!”
She turned and went back to the door, not quite directly, steering her
way through the furniture as though she were carefully following back a
chalk line drawn for her on the floor. While her hand was still on the
door Mrs. Kerr exclaimed, “Sydney!” incredulously, then later, “Well,
Sydney—what have I done?” Sydney did pause on the threshold and look
back uncertainly, Mrs. Kerr held out a hand, then she turned again and
went out, shutting the door behind her so quietly that Mrs. Kerr and
Ronald only heard the latch click. Mrs. Kerr catching her breath at the
sound of the latch, began repeating her name again in such a tone of
desolation and loneliness that Ronald, driven out against something
intolerable, rushed through the curtains.
“Why, _Mother_!”
“Make her come back. Go after her, Ronald, and make her come back—I have
something to say to her.”
“I don’t see that I very well can.”
She stared up, arrested. “Why not?”
“Well, I don’t think she wants to.”
“Ronald....”
“I’m awfully sorry.” But his mother had turned away from him in
contempt; her eyes were fixed on the door as though under their long,
strange, relentless compulsion it must open again to deliver up Sydney.
When he came forward she warded him off with a hand. He did not like to
look at her and did not know where else to look, so he stumbled back on
to the balcony where he found still alight a cigarette that he had taken
out of his mouth an age ago and balanced aslant on the rail. He rolled
it round between his fingers, considering it, took two or three puffs
and threw it into the darkness, then remained standing still there,
waiting to be called back. After waiting for some time his tension began
to relax again, but looking round at the sky, the sea, the tops of the
trees he still saw everywhere his mother’s head in the circle of light
from the reading-lamp imprinted on the darkness.