“_The solemn greybeard lecturer drones on_;”
and after a few more lines of subtly satirical description some dots and
a fresh start:
“_Sudden a blackbird calls.... Ah sweet! Who heeds?_”
No one heeds. Attention to greybeards has made everyone insensible to
blackbirds. The conclusion would develop neatly along those lines.
A year or two ago, how fervently you would have written, how
complacently desired to publish that sort of thing! No regret could be
quite so sickly as that with which one wished out of existence the
published record of last year’s errors of taste.
‘My dear, he’s the sort of person who’d _make arrangements_ to have his
juvenilia published after his death.’
That was the sort of condemnatory label Tony and his friends would
attach, spreading their hands, leaving it at that.
‘Oh, Roddy, where are you? Why do you never come?’
He flashed into mind,--leaning idly against the mantelpiece, listening
with an obscure smile to Tony’s conversation.
It was the sort of evening on which anything might happen. Excitement
took her suddenly by the throat and made her feeble and tingling to her
finger-tips.
The last of the light fell lingeringly on the grey stone window-frame.
If the gold bloom lasted till you counted fifty, it would be a good
omen. One, two, three, four and so on to twenty, thirty, forty ...
crushing the temptation to count faster than her own heartbeats ...
forty-five ... fifty.
It was still there, vanishing softly, but with a margin of at least
another twenty to spare.
The ecstasy grew, making her stomach feel drained and helpless and
beating in odd pulses all over her.
She bent over the desk, pretending to write, and making shaky pencil
marks.
Somebody got up and switched on the light; and all at once darkness had
fallen outside, and the window-pane was a purple-blue blank.
Roddy was in Tony’s room, leaning against the mantelpiece, quite near.
She would pass Tony’s staircase on her way out: it was the one in the
corner, facing the Chapel. She had seen his name every time she went by.
Once she had met him coming out of the doorway, and he had looked
through her; and once as she passed, someone in the court had shouted
‘Tony’! and he had leaned from his high window to reply.
Oh, this intolerable lecture!
Suddenly it was over. She came out and saw the bulk of King’s Chapel in
the deep twilight with its row of buttresses rising up pale, like giant
ghosts.
‘Oh, I’ve left my essay behind in the lecture room. I must go back.
Don’t wait for me.’
She went back a few steps until the gloom had swallowed them, and waited
alone in the dark court. There was a light in Tony’s window. Lingeringly
she crept towards it and paused beneath it, stroking the wall. She
lifted her head and cried speechlessly: ‘Oh come! Come!’
Nobody came and looked out through the uncurtained pane. Nobody came
running down the stairs.
And if she did not go on quickly the bus would start without her.
Let it start and then walk up and knock on Tony’s door and say quite
simply:
“I’ve missed my bus, so I’ve come to see Roddy.” Roddy would spring
forward to greet her. All would be made right with Tony.
For a moment that seemed the clear, delightful inevitable solution.
But what would their faces hide from her or betray? What unbearable
amusement, suspicion, astonishment, contempt?
And what was there to do on such a night save to say to Roddy: “I love
you,” and then go away again? To dare everything, run to him and cry:
_I am Lazarus come from the dead,
Come back to tell you all, I will tell you all._
But what if he should answer with that disastrous answer:
_That is not what I meant at all,
That is not it, at all._
If he were to stare and coldly reply, with real speech:
‘Are you mad?’
Oh, but it should be risked!...
She stood still, hesitating, her hand pressing the wall, power and
intoxication dying out of her. She felt the night cold and damp, and
heard approaching footsteps, a torn fragment of laughter, a male voice
raised for a moment in the distance.
She looked up once more at Tony’s window and saw that the curtains had
been drawn; and she sprang away from the wall and ran towards the street
in urgent flight from her wound, from the deliberate-seeming insult, the
cruelty of drawn curtains.
The college bus was packed with girls. Heads were craning out in search
of her.
‘Oh, Judy! There you are! We’ve been keeping the bus and keeping it.
What on earth happened to you?’
‘I couldn’t get in. The room was locked. And then--Oh dear, I’ve run so!
Is there room for me?’
‘Yes, here. Come on, Judy. Here. Come and sit down. You’re all out of
breath. Come in.’
They welcomed her. Their little voices and gestures seemed to stroke and
pat. They were so glad she had come in time, so considerate and kindly,
so safe.
The bus rolled through the streets, past where the solemn lamps and the
buildings ended, out on to the road where was only the enveloping night
wind. The bus swayed and the rows of bodies swayed and the faces smiled
faintly across at each other, amused at their own shaking and jerking;
but all half-dreaming, half-hypnotized by the noise and the motion; all
warm, languid, silent.
The noise and the motion and the swaying faces seemed eternal. Nothing
else had ever been, would ever be. Of course Roddy had not been there:
he had never been there at all.
5
Martin was a great athlete. He was always rowing, always training; but
once or twice he borrowed a motor-bicycle and came out to tea, when
Judith and Jennifer gave combined tea-parties to young men. On these
occasions his face was very red and he looked too big for the room. He
was quite silent and stared with concentration at Judith and Jennifer
alternately; and seemed not to take to his fellow guests. He was
undoubtedly a heavy young man to have at a tea-party--a bad mixer.
Jennifer’s jokes, oaths and sallies brought no gleam to his countenance,
and Jennifer was bored with him. Impossible to convince her that Martin
was not a dull young man.
Martin dull?...
God-like in form he dived from the raft and swam over the river,
swiftly, with laughter, water and sun upon his face. He sat among them
all and smoked his pipe, looking kindly and comforting. You could depend
on his eyes solicitously watching, his smile inviting you to come in,
when all the others, neither kindly nor comforting, had shut the door
and gone away. He was the one to whom Mariella chattered at her ease and
made little childish jokes, calling him ‘darlin’,’ looking at him with
candour and affection, sometimes even with a glint of mischief, as if
she were a girl like any other girl; as if that something never fell
across her clear face and obscured it. He shared a bedroom with Roddy;
had a little screen at home, so he said, which Roddy had decorated, and
given to him; he came walking up garden-paths with Roddy laughing and
talking at his side.
In the darkness under the cherry-tree he bent his head and tried to
speak, twisting his scrap of cherry, trembling with enchantment. He had
been a thing to fly from, surprised, with beating heart.
But when Jennifer said he was a dull young man, it was very difficult to
argue with her; for it seemed almost as if, transplanted alone to this
new world, he were indeed quite dull, rather ordinary.
He came to tea three times. The last time Judith went with him down the
stairs--his deliberate, assured masculine tread sounding significant,
almost alarming in that house of flustered uneven foolish-sounding
steps--and said good-night to him at the front door.
Fumbling with the lamps of his motor-bicycle he said:
‘Why can’t one ever see you alone?’
‘It’s not allowed, Martin. I can’t ask you to tea alone. And I can’t
come to your rooms without a chaperon.’
‘Oh, damn the chaperon. I shan’t ask you to tea at all. Can’t you break
a footling rule for anybody you know as well as me?’
She said deprecatingly that it was impossible.
‘You mean you won’t.’
That was what she meant. It was not worth while to break rules for dull
Martin.
‘Who’s that Jennifer person you’re always with?’
‘A person I’m very fond of----’ She flared at his tone.
‘Never see you anywhere without her,’ he muttered.
‘Well you needn’t come to tea with me.’
‘Oh, I shan’t come again.’
‘I shan’t ask you.’
Silence fell. She looked up at the dark and starless sky; then at him
still adjusting lamps, his head averted.
What were they about, parting in anger? How far indeed they were from
the other world to mistrust and misunderstand so obstinately they had to
quarrel!
Her heart misgave her suddenly at sight of the great building looming
above her: there was no security in it, no kindness. Supposing when she
went back Jennifer’s room were empty, and Jennifer, utterly weary of
her, had taken the chance to escape, and were even now knocking at
strangers’ doors, sure of her welcome?... How quickly without that form,
that voice, all would crumble and dissolve and be but a lightless
confusion! She should never have left the places where Martin stood by
her side, listening, watching, waiting everywhere to wrap her in safety.
She said softly:
‘Martin, when’s Roddy coming to see you?’
‘He was here,’ said Martin, ‘a week or two ago. Staying with Tony
Baring,’ he added. And then again: ‘Only for a night or two.’
Then finally trying in great embarrassment to soothe the pain which,
even to his ears, cried out terribly in the silence and could not find
words to cover it:
‘I scarcely saw him myself. He was very busy--so many people to see.
He’ll be up again soon, I expect and then we must have a party.’
‘Oh yes, Martin.... You know, it’s very naughty of him. He said he’d
come and see me.’
Her voice was thin and cheerful.
‘He’s very forgetful,’ said Martin helplessly.
‘I suppose,’ she suggested lightly, ‘he forgot even to ask after me.’
‘Oh no, he asked after you. I’m sure he did.’
She laughed.
‘Well I must go in.... Tell him when you write to him.... No, don’t tell
him anything. But, Martin, you must come and see me sometimes, please,
_please_,--in this hateful place. I feel I shall lose you all again.
You know mother’s going to live abroad for a year or two? So I shan’t be
there in the summer, next door. It’s awful. She let the house without
telling me. What shall I do without it? Please come and see me. Or
listen, I tell you what: it doesn’t seem to work somehow, your coming
here. I can’t talk to you and I feel I don’t know you; but when the days
get longer we’ll go for a long walk together, miles and miles. Shall we?
Remember!’
‘Rather!’
He was happy again.
She called after him:
‘And, Martin, I’m sorry I was cross.’
‘My fault,’ came his ringing cheerful voice; and his engine started and
he departed with a roar and a rush.
Alone in the dark she stood still and contemplated the appalling image
of Roddy risen up again, mockingly asserting that only he was real; that
his power to give himself or withhold himself was as the power of life
and death.
It was urgent, now, to find Jennifer quickly. She was in her room, lying
on the floor, staring at the flicker of firelight over her yellow velvet
frock.
‘Oh, Jennifer!’
Judith sank down beside her, burying her face in her lap.
‘Darling.’
‘I’m not very happy to-night. It’s a mood. I think I don’t feel very
well. And the night seems so sad and uneasy, with this wind. Don’t you
feel it?’
Jennifer put out her hands and clasped them round Judith’s face, gazing
at her sombrely.
‘What has he said to you?’ she whispered.
‘Who?’
‘That Martin.’
‘Nothing. It’s nothing to do with him.’
‘You love somebody, I think. Who is it you love?’
‘I love nobody.’
Jennifer must never never know, suspect, dream for a moment....
‘You mustn’t love anybody,’ said Jennifer. ‘I should want to kill him. I
should be jealous.’ Her brooding eyes fell heavily on Judith’s lifted
face. ‘I love you.’
And at those words, that look, Roddy faded again harmlessly: Jennifer
blinded and enfolded her senses once more, and only Jennifer had power.
* * * * *
When the longer days came and Martin wrote to ask her to come for a walk
one Sunday, she had another engagement and regretfully refused; and
after that he wrote to tell her to bring a friend to a river picnic with
him and another young man. She brought Jennifer; and Jennifer flirted
broadly with the other young man; and the picnic was not a success.
After that the year closed without sight or sign of him; and she forgot
to care.
6
Gradually Judith and Jennifer drew around them an outer circle of about
half a dozen; and these gathered for conversation in Jennifer’s room
every evening. That untidy luxuriant room, flickering with firelight,
smelling of oranges and chrysanthemums, was always tacitly chosen as a
meeting-place; for something of the magnetism of its owner seemed to be
diffused in it, spreading a glow, drawing tired heads and bodies there
to be refreshed.
Late into the night they sat about or lay on the floor, smoked, drank
cocoa, ate buns, discussed--earnestly, muddle-headedly--sex, philosophy,
religion, sociology, people and politics; then people and sex again.
Judith sat in a corner and watched the firelight caress and beautify
their peaceful serious faces; talked a great deal suddenly now and then,
and then was silent again, dreaming and wondering.
Even the most placid and commonplace faces looked tragic, staring into
the fire, lit by its light alone. They were all unconscious; and she
herself could never be unconscious. Around her were these faces, far
away and lost from themselves, brooding on nothing; and there was she,
as usual, spectator and commentator, watching them over-curiously, ready
to pounce on a passing light, a flitting shade of expression, to ponder
and compare and surmise; whispering to herself: ‘Here am I watching,
listening. Here are faces, forms, rooms with their own life, noise of
wind and footsteps, light and shadow. What is this mystery?...’ And even
in her futile thoughts never quite stepping over the edge and staring
mindlessly and being wholly unaware.
They broke up at last with sighs and yawns, lingered, drifted away
little by little. Judith was left alone with Jennifer.
‘One more cigarette,’ she suggested.
‘Well, just one.’
Jennifer let down her hair and brushed it out, holding it along her arm,
watching it shimmer in the fire-light with an engrossed stare, as if she
never could believe it was part of her.
* * * * *
Always Jennifer. It was impossible to drink up enough of her; and a day
without her was a day with the light gone.
Jennifer coming into a room and pausing on the threshold, head up, eyes
wide open, darting round, dissatisfied until they found you. That was an
ever fresh spring of secret happiness. Jennifer lifting you in her arms
and carrying you upstairs, because she said you looked tired and were
such a baby and too lovely anyway to walk upstairs like other people.
Jennifer basking in popularity, drawing them all to her with a smile and
a turn of the head, doing no work, breaking every rule, threatened with
disgrace, plunged in despair; emerging the next moment new-bathed in
radiance, oblivious of storm and stress.
Jennifer dispensing her hospitality with prodigal and careless ease,
recklessly generous in public and in secret, flashing the glow of her
magnetism suddenly into unlit and neglected lives, allowing them to get
warm for a little, and then light-heartedly forgetting them. But never
forgetting Judith--or not for long; and coming back always to sit with
her alone, and drop all masks and love her silently, watchfully with her
eyes.
Jennifer singing Neapolitan folk-songs to a be-ribboned guitar. Where
she had picked up the airs, the language, the grace and fascination of
her manner, no one knew. But when she sat by the window with bright
streamers falling over her lap, singing low to her soft accompaniment,
then, each time, everyone fell madly in love with her.
Jennifer chattering most when she was tired, or depressed, her words
tripping over each other, her absurd wit sparkling, her laugh frequent
and excited: so silent, so still when she was happy that she seemed
hypnotized, her whole consciousness suspended to allow the happiness to
flow in.
Jennifer looking shattered, tortured after a few hours spent by mistake
over coachings and time-papers in stuffy rooms; starting up in the end
with a muttered: “O God, this place!...” wrenching open the door and
rushing downstairs, oblivious of all but the urgency of her mood. From
the window you could see her in the grounds, running, running. Soon the
trees hid her. She was tramping over the ploughed fields, her cheeks
glowing, her hair like a light against the dark hedges. She was going,
alone, tensely, over the long fields. What was she thinking of? She had
her evasions. No good to ask her: her eyes would fly off, hiding from
you. She would not let herself be known entirely.
By Judith’s shadowy side ran the hurrying flame of Jennifer; and from
all that might give her pause, or cloud her for a moment Jennifer fled
as if she were afraid.
The lonely midnight clouded her. Jennifer was afraid of the dark.
Was it that people had the day and the night in them, mixed in varying
quantities? Jennifer had the strength of day, and you the strength of
night. By day, your little glow was merged in her radiance; but the
night was stronger, and overcame her. You were stronger than Jennifer in
spite of the burning life in her. The light hid the things for which you
searched, but the darkness and the silence revealed them. All your
significant experiences had been of the night. And there, it was
suddenly clear, was the secret of the bond with Roddy. He too had more
shadow in him than sun. “_Chevalier de la lune_” that was he--“_Que la
lumiere importune_”--ah! yes! “_Qui cherche le coin noir_”--yes,
yes--“_Qui cherche le coin noir._” Some time--it did not matter when,
for it was bound to happen--he would say in the dark “I love you.”
Meanwhile there was Jennifer to be loved with a bitter maternal love,
because she was afraid. And because, some day, she might be gone. For
Jennifer said “I love you” and fled away. You cried “Come back!” and she
heard and returned in anguish, clasping you close but dreading your
dependence. One day when you most needed her, she might run away out of
earshot, and never come back.
But there was value in impermanence, in insecurity; it meant an ache and
quickening, a perpetual birth; it meant you could never drift into
complacence and acceptance and grow old.
* * * * *
There was Mabel, drifting into Judith’s life when conscience pricked and
being joyfully dismissed again when the exigencies of duty seemed
satisfied. There were little notes from Mabel found, with a sinking
feeling, among her letters.
Dear J.,
Would you care to come to church with me on Sunday? I shall be
ready at 10.15. I do hope you will come this week.
Yrs.
M.F.
Dear Judith,
I thought you did not look quite yourself at lunch to-day. If there
is anything worrying you, perhaps I might help you? Or if you are
tired, come and rest in my armchair. I shall be working and will
not disturb you.
Yours Mabel.
P.S. It’s all _this rushing_ about that _wears you out_ and makes
you _unfit_ for work.