Mabel wrote her advice now, more often than she dared speak it.
Mabel, always pathetic, so that you could never entirely disregard her;
always grotesque and untouched by charm so that it was impossible to
think of her or look at her without revulsion; so that the whole thing
was a tedious and barren self-discipline.
Mabel little by little relinquishing the effort to draw Judith into her
life and desperately endeavoring to fit herself into Judith’s:
chattering to other girls, trying to be amused by their jokes, to share
their enthusiasms and illusions; pretending to have a gay home-life,
full of interesting friends and fun; pretending to laugh at the thought
of work and to treat lightly that nightmare of the Tripos which crushed
her to the earth.
Once or twice Judith tried to draw her into the evening circle,
explaining her loneliness, appealing beforehand for her pathos.... But
it was no good. She was of another order of beings,--dreary and
unadaptable. And Jennifer, with a wicked light in her eye, spoke loudly
and with malicious irreverence of dons, the clergy and the Bible; and
mentioned the body with light-hearted frankness; and Judith felt ashamed
of herself for thinking Jennifer funny.
Mabel striving doggedly to believe that Jennifer was in the nature of an
illness from which Judith would recover by careful treatment, then
striving to ignore the importance of the relationship--staking out an
exclusive claim in Judith by references suggestive of a protective
intimacy.
‘Now, now! Pale cheeks! What will your mother say, I’d like to know, if
I let you go home looking like this? I shall have to come and put you to
bed myself.’
And there followed the flush and the hungry gleam while awkwardly she
touched Judith’s cheek.
Mabel at long last voluntarily dropping out of all the places into which
she had tried to force herself, going back without a word to her
solitary room and her doughnuts. There were no more little notes rearing
unwelcome heads in the letter-box. She asked nothing.
From the window late at night Judith could see her lamp staring with a
tense wan hopeless eye across the court. In the midst of talk and
laughter with Jennifer, she saw it suddenly and knew that Mabel was
sitting alone, hunched over note-books and dictionaries, breathing
stertorously through her nose hour after hour, dimly hoping that her
uncurtained window might attract Judith’s attention, persuade her to
look in and say good-night.
‘Oh, Jennifer, I won’t be five minutes. I must just go and see Mabel.
It’s awful. You don’t know. She expects me; and she’ll sit up all night
working if I don’t go.’
‘Tell her about the young lady of Bute with my love and a kiss,’ said
Jennifer in the loud voice edged with brutality which she reserved for
Mabel. ‘And say the mistress is very disappointed in her because she’s
discovered she doesn’t wear corsets. She’s going to speak about it
publicly to-morrow night because it’s very immoral. And ask her what
_will_ her mother say if you let her go home with all those spots on her
face.’
Judith escaped, laughing, ran down the dark stairs to Mabel’s room and
tapped.
‘Come in.’
It was clear from her voice she had been alert at the sound of the known
footsteps. She raised a pallid face that tried for a moment to begrudge
its gladness and preserve a stiffness.
‘Now, Mabel, I’m come to put you to bed. I like all your talk of looking
after _me_. It’s you who need it. What do you suppose you’ll feel like
to-morrow if you work any more? Come on now.’
That was the way she loved to be talked to. Judith filled her hot-water
bottle and made cocoa, while with laborious modesty she donned her
flannel nightdress with its feather-stitched collar; and pouted coyly
and happily, like any other girl, because Judith was such a dragon.
Then she leaned back in her chair with the work-lines in her face
smoothing out, and yawned contentedly and talked of little intimate
things, giving them to Judith without reserve, as Judith gave hers to
Jennifer--suddenly, pitifully like any other girl.
These were her happy compensating moments: they made her think for a
while that the friendship was rare and firm.
How easy it was, thought Judith, to permit her to enjoy your incongruous
presence; to step right into her world and close the gates on your own
so fast that no chill air from it might breathe against her security!
Alone with her like this, no lapse of taste on her part ruffled the
nerves. You accepted her and let her reveal herself; and she was, after
all, interesting, human, gentle, and simple. There was nothing--this
time you must remember--nothing grotesque or ridiculous to report to
Jennifer afterwards, hatefully betraying and mocking....
She spoke of her life in the narrow church-bound village home; her
future: she would teach, and so have her own little independent place in
the world. She didn’t think she was the marrying sort; but you never
knew. Independence was what she craved: to support herself and be
beholden to no one. Only she must pass well: (and her eyes would wander
haggardly to the books)--It all depended on her health--she’d never
enjoyed very good health. She always thought if she felt better she
wouldn’t forget so. It made work very hard. Freda had always been the
strong one. Everything came easy to Freda. Everyone admired and petted
her: she was getting so spoilt, and extravagant too. She wouldn’t go so
far as to say she and Freda had much in common, but you couldn’t help
but love her in spite of all her naughtiness. And the quick way she had
of answering back! She recited some of Freda’s quick answers, giggling
like any other girl.
There was a curate who had coached her in Greek and Latin. He was a
wonderful man, a real saint: not like any one else at all, young, a
beautiful face and such eyes. Once he had come to tea with her, and they
had had a wonderful talk, just the two of them. Freda had been out. It
really seemed as if he looked on her as a friend. She hoped so.... He
had helped her.
Judith listened, asked questions, sympathized, cheered her with offers
of notes and essays; tucked her into bed with an effort at motherliness;
and flew with a light heart back to Jennifer.
The curate ... at all costs, she must _not_ tell Jennifer about the
curate.
7
The long days of May stretched out before Judith and Jennifer. Each day
was a fresh adventure in the open air, and work an unimportant and
neglected nuisance. For weeks the weather remained flawless. Life
narrowed to a wandering in a green canoe up small river-channels far
from the town, with Jennifer paddling in wild bursts between long
periods of inaction. To all Judith’s offers of help she answered firmly
that a woman should never depart from her type.
They landed finally and made ready to bathe.
‘Off, off, you lendings!’ cried Jennifer. ‘Do you know, darling, that
comes home to me more than anything else in all Shakespeare? I swear,
Judith, it seems much more natural to me to wear no clothes.’
She stood up, stretching white arms above her head. Her cloud of hair
was vivid in the blue air. Her back was slender and strong and
faultlessly moulded.
‘Glorious, glorious Pagan that I adore!’ whispered the voice in Judith
that could never speak out.
Beside Jennifer she felt herself too slim, too flexible, almost
attenuated.
‘You are so utterly lovely,’ Jennifer said, watching her.
They swam in cool water in a deep circular pool swept round with
willows, and dried themselves in the sun.
They spent the afternoon in the shade of a blossoming may bush. All
round them the new green of the fields was matted over with a rich and
solid layer of buttercup yellow. Jennifer lay flat on her back with the
utter relaxed immobility of an animal, replenishing her vitality through
every nerve.
Slowly they opened books, dreamed through a page, forgot it at once,
laid books aside; turned to smile at each other, to talk as if there
could never be enough of talking; with excitement, with anxiety, as if
to-morrow might part them and leave them for ever burdened with the
weight of all they had had to tell each other.
Judith crept closer, warming every sense at her, silent and utterly
peaceful. She was the part of you which you never had been able to untie
and set free, the part that wanted to dance and run and sing, taking
strong draughts of wind and sunlight; and was, instead, done up in
intricate knots and overcast with shadows; the part that longed to look
outward and laugh, accepting life as an easy exciting thing; and yet was
checked by a voice that said doubtfully that there were dark ideas
behind it all, tangling the web; and turned you inward to grope among
the roots of thought and feeling for the threads.
You could not do without Jennifer now.
The sun sank, and the level light flooded the fields and the river. Now
the landscape lost its bright pure definitions of outline, its look as
of a picture embroidered in brilliant silks, and veiled its colours with
a uniform pearl-like glow. A chill fell and the scent of May grew
troubling in the stillness. They turned the canoe towards home.
Nearer the town, boats became more frequent. Gramophones clamoured from
the bowels of most of them; and they were heavily charged with
grey-flannelled youth. Jennifer, observing them with frank interest,
pointed out the good-looking ones in a loud whisper; and all of them
stared, stared as they passed.
Above the quiet secretly-stirring town, roofs, towers and spires floated
in a pale gold wash of light. What was the mystery of Cambridge in the
evening? Footfalls struck with a pang on the heart, faces startled with
strange beauty, and every far appearing or disappearing form seemed
significant.
And when they got back to College, even that solid red-brick barrack was
touched with mystery. The corridors were long patterns of unreal light
and shadow. Girls’ voices sounded remote as in a dream, with a murmuring
rise and fall and light laughter behind closed doors. The thrilling
smell of cowslips and wall-flowers was everywhere, like a cloud of
enchantment.
In Jennifer’s room, someone had let down the sun-blind, and all was in
throbbing shadow. Her great copper bowl was piled, as usual, with fruit,
and they ate of it idly, without hunger.
‘Now a little work,’ said Judith firmly. ‘Think! only three weeks till
Mays....’
But it was impossible to feel moved.
Jennifer, looking childish and despondent, sat down silently by the
window with a book.
Judith wrote on a sheet of paper:
_Tall oaks branch-charmèd by the earnest stars_; and studied it. That
_was_ a starry night: the sound of the syllables made stars prick out in
dark treetops.
Under it she wrote:
... _the foam
Of perilous seas in faëry lands forlorn_.
What a lot there were for the sea and the seashore!... The page became
fuller.
_Upon the desolate verge of light
Yearned loud the iron-bosomed sea._
_The unplumbed salt estranging sea._
_From the lone sheiling of the misty island
Mountains divide us and a world of seas:
But still the blood is strong, the heart is Highland;
And we in dreams behold the Hebrides._
Ah, that said it all....
The lines came flocking at random.
_But the majestic river floated on,
Out of the mist and hum of that low land
Into the frosty starlight, and there flowed
Rejoicing through the hushed Chorasmian waste
Under the solitary moon...._
_Ah sunflower weary of time
That countest the steps of the sun...._
_Ah sunflower!_... Where were they--the old gardens of the sun where my
sunflower wished to go? They half unfolded themselves at the words ...
_Nous n’irons plux aux bois
Les lauriers sont coupés._
_O mors quam amara est memoria tua homini pacem habenti in substantiis
suis...._
How with one tongue those both cried alas!
And then in the end, sleep and a timeless peace.
_Nox est perpetua una dormienda._
There were so many tumbling and leaping about in your head you could go
on for ever....
Now to study them. What did it all mean? Was there any thread running
through them with which to make a theory? Anybody could write down
strings of quotations,--but a student of English literature was expected
to deal in theories. It was something to do with the sound ... the way
sound made images, shell within shell of them softly unclosing ... the
way words became colours and scents ... and the surprise when it
happened, the ache of desire, the surge of excitement, the sense of
fulfilment, the momentary perception of something unknowable.... Some
sort of truth, some answer to the question: What is poetry?... No it was
no good. But it had been very enjoyable, writing things down like that
and repeating them to yourself.
Jennifer was half asleep with her head upon the window-sill. The bowl of
fruit burned in the dimness. How like Jennifer was her room! Yellow
painted chairs, a red and blue rug on the hearth, cowslips in coloured
bowls and jars, one branch of white lilac in a tall blue vase; the
guitar with its many ribbons lying on the table; a silken Italian shawl,
embroidered with great rose and blue and yellow flowers flung over the
screen: wherever you looked colour leapt up at you; she threw colour
about in profuse disorder and left it. Her hat of pale green straw with
its little wreath of clover lay on the floor. Nobody else had attractive
childish hats like hers. A wide green straw would remind you of Jennifer
to the end of your life; and beneath it you would see the full delicious
curve of her cheek and chin, her deep-shadowed eyes, her lips that
seemed to hold all life in their ardent lines.
She turned her head and smiled sleepily.
‘Hullo!’ said Judith. ‘Haven’t we been quiet? I’ve done such a lot of
work.’
‘I’ve done none. I couldn’t remember the difference between ethics and
æsthetics. What rot it all is!... Now listen and we’ll hear a
nightingale. He’s tuning up.’
They leaned out of the window.
The icy aching flute in the cedar called and called on two or three
notes, uncertain, dissatisfied; then all at once found itself and
bubbled over in rich and complicated rapture.
Jennifer was listening, tranced in her strange immobility, as if every
other sense were suspended to allow her to hear aright.
She roused herself at last as Judith bent to kiss her good night.
‘Good night my--darling--darling--’ she said.
They stared at each other with tragic faces. It was too much, this
happiness and beauty.
The end of the first year.
8
The next moment so it seemed, the soft and coloured Autumn days were
there again; the corridors, the echoing steps, the vast female yell of
voices in Hall, the sense of teeming life in all the little rooms,
behind the little closed doors--all these started again to weave their
strange timeless dream; and the second year had begun.
Midway through the term came Martin’s letter.
Dear Judith,
Roddy is in Cambridge for two nights, staying with Tony. He wants
to see you. Will you come to tea with me to-morrow at 4.30? I am to
tell you he will never forgive you (a) if you don’t come (b) if you
come with a chaperon. He says that chance alone prevented him from
being your bachelor Uncle; and that I myself was a maiden aunt from
the cradle. So please come.
Martin.
Dear Martin,
Bachelor uncles are notorious; and curious things are apt to happen
to strictly maiden aunts as all we enlightened moderns know. But an
aunt and uncle bound by holy matrimony are considered safe (as
safety goes in this world) and I have notified the authorities of
their brief presence in the university and am cordially permitted
to wait on them at tea to-morrow at 4.30.
Judith.
Judith looked around Martin’s room. It was untidy and rather dirty, with
something forlorn and pathetic and faintly animal about it, like all
masculine rooms. It made you want to look after him. Men were helpless
children; it was quite true. You might have known Martin’s room would
give you a ridiculous pull at the heart.
‘I’m afraid things are in a bit of a mess,’ said Martin, blowing
cigarette ash off the mantelpiece into the fire.
He was smoking an enormous pipe. His face was red. His great form looked
lumbering and shapeless in an ancient tweed coat and a pair of
voluminous grey flannel trousers.
‘How are you, Judith?’ His brown eye fixed itself on her. He was very
shy.
‘I’ve been ill, Martin.’
‘Oh!...’ He looked troubled and embarrassed. ‘Did you--did you have a
decent doctor?’
‘Oh yes. It was almost pneumonia, but not quite.’
‘I didn’t know you’d been ill....’
‘You haven’t been to see me for ages, Martin.’
‘I know. I’ve been so busy.’ Violently he blew the ash about. What a
shame to pretend to reproach him. He was obviously overcome.... ‘And I
didn’t think you wanted.... I suppose you’re all right again now?’
Footsteps sounded outside on the stair. Judith collected herself and sat
rigid. The door opened and Roddy, smiling, eager, debonair, came into
the room.
‘Hullo, Judy! Marvellous to see you.’
‘Roddy!’
He stood before her and looked down into her face.
‘I thought I was never going to see you again, Judy. You’re looking
marvellous.’
He was going to be irresistible. Already something in her was starting
to leap up in response to him; and watching his face, she saw with a
terrible pang that it was true, unarguable, proved over again more
clearly than ever, that he had some quality which separated him from
everybody else in the whole world, startled the imagination and made him
of appalling significance to her.
‘I’m cold. Thank God for a good fire. It’s starting to snow.’ He flung
himself down on the hearth-rug. ‘Trust Martin to make a good thick
atmosphere with no beastly fresh air about it. Tea! Tea! Tea! Let me
make you some toast, Judy. I make it so well.’
While he toasted great hunks of bread, Martin buttered scones and cut
the cake, and Judith poured out tea.
They chattered, joked, teased each other. They played absurd drawing and
rhyming games. Judith made them laugh with malicious stories of dons and
students. Roddy threw back his head, his whole face wrinkled and
flattened with silent laughter, his eyes gleaming with amusement under
their lids. Martin stared, laughed, Ha! Ha!--stared again. They
encouraged her, listened to her, were delighted with her; and the old
sense of abnormal self-assurance grew within her taut mind.
At last she made herself look at the clock. So late! There would barely
be time to get back before Hall.
‘I’ve got a car outside,’ said Roddy carelessly. ‘I can run you out in
no time.’
He added, interrupting her thanks:
‘It isn’t mine, it’s got no hood, it always breaks down and it’s
hellishly uncomfortable, so I don’t advise it really.’
It sounded as if he were suddenly regretting his offer, trying to
withdraw it. She looked at him, all her confidence collapsing in a
moment. His face had become a mask.
She said swiftly:
‘If you would take me I should be very grateful.’ Her voice sounded to
herself strained, beseeching, horrible.
He bowed.
It took ten minutes to get the car started, with Martin and Roddy madly
swinging her by turns.
‘Good night, Martin. Thank you for my lovely tea party. I’ll see you
again soon, won’t I?’
He nodded, looking gravely down at her in the lamp-light.
‘Don’t catch cold,’ he said. There was something dejected about his
attitude, a flatness in his voice.... Things had gone wrong for him....
Ever since that panic-stricken voice had broken in on the laughter and
talk, the game for three, with its vibrating cry: “If you would take me
home ...” from that moment all had been faintly blown upon by a ruffle
of uneasy wind. They were no longer three persons, but two men and one
woman.
She knew it and loathed herself because Martin knew it too.
‘I’m due to dine with Tony in twenty minutes,’ said Roddy.... ‘You’d
better come along too. I’ll call for you on my way back. I shan’t be
long.’
Roddy’s voice had forced a note of carelessness ... as if he were trying
to pretend to Martin that nothing had happened; that the female had not
suddenly singled him out and stretched an inviting hand to him as he
stood beside his friend.
Even Roddy was aware of it.
‘No,’ said Martin, ‘I won’t dine with Tony. I’ll see you to-morrow
perhaps.’
He waved his hand and turned away. The car started. She was alone with a
strange man.
The night was dark, with a piercing wind and a faint flurry of snow in
the air. Roddy drove at a great pace, and she sat beside him in silence,
her shoulder touching his.
‘Cold?’ he said suddenly.
‘No, I don’t feel--anything.’
All of life was concentrated in her dark beating mind: her body was
insensible to the weather. She saw the gates of College fly past. Its
lights gleamed and were gone; and she could not speak. On they went, the
long straight empty road flung before them in small lengths by the
headlights and rolled up into nothingness behind them, cast away for
ever.
He stopped the car suddenly.
‘Where’s this place?’
‘I think we’ve passed it long ago.’
The wind took her small voice away from him. He leaned towards her.
‘What?’
She turned to him.
‘I think we’ve passed it long ago.’
‘I think we have.’
Silence. The great wind blowing through illimitable deeps of night
lifted and whirled her beyond time and space. She saw his hand lying on
the wheel--a pale blur; and her own crept out and lay beside it; and she
stared at them both. He watched her hand fall beside his and did not
move a hair’s breadth nearer to touch it. He and she were alone
together. No need for speech or movement. Their hands would lie
motionless, side by side, for ever and ever.
She heard him laugh softly; and as he laughed her hand came quickly to
her lap.
‘Well, what d’you want to do?’ he said very low.
‘I don’t want to go back.’
‘Do you want to go on?’
‘Yes.’
The car went forward again. Once she leaned towards him and said in his
ear:
‘Roddy!’
‘Yes?’
‘_You_ didn’t want to go back, did you?’
‘No.’
She lay back again, mindlessly at peace in the midst of the roaring of
the wind, and the road’s monotonous unfolding.
Once he burst out laughing, patted her knee and cried:
‘_Aren’t we mad?_’
His voice rang boyishly, happily.
Now came the snow, thinly at first, but soon in wild drifting clouds,
blotting out the road, settling thick and fast over all, sifting and
piling on the wind-screen.
‘Oh Lord, we must turn,’ said Roddy. ‘This is frightful.’
He turned the car and then stopped her to light a cigarette. She saw his
face, lit by the flare of the match, glow suddenly, warmly out of the
darkness with unknown curves and strange planes of light and shadow, and
narrowed eyes, eyes not human, never-to-be-forgotten.
He waved the dwindling flame in her face.
‘Solemn face! What are you staring at? Smile--quick, quick, before the
match goes out!’
The match went out.
‘I am smiling, Roddy.’
‘That’s right. Poor Judy covered with snow! There you sit, so modest and
unassuming. Shall I get you home alive?’
‘I don’t care.’
She slipped her arm through his, and he gave it a quick friendly
pressure and drove on.
Now they were before the gates of College. After all they had not driven
very far. Time started again with a reluctant painful beat as the car
crept in under the archway; and she realized that it was little more
than an hour since they had left Martin. It seemed so short now--less
than a moment; a pause between a breath and another breath.
They sat side by side in the car without moving.
‘I suppose I must go in now,’ she said at last. ‘They’ll still be at
Hall.’
He shivered and beat his hands together. She took one and felt it, and
it was icy.
‘Your hands. Oh, Roddy! Will you come in and get warm by my fire?’
He seemed to be considering and then said in a stilted way:
‘If I may--just for a minute--I’ve got rather chilled driving without
gloves.’
She could find nothing to say. A cold shy politeness had descended on
them both. She led the way into the hall and up the stairs. At every
step snow fell off them: their shoulders and arms were covered in it.
The corridors were silent and deserted, echoing only her light
footsteps, and his heavier ones. She heard her tread, and his following
after it, marching, marching towards her far-off door. Judith was
bringing Roddy, Judith was in sober truth bringing Roddy to her room. If
anyone saw her there would be trouble.
Somebody--Jennifer perhaps--must have drawn the curtains and heaped the
fire in the little room. The warmth drew out the smell of the
chrysanthemums; and their heavy golden heads, massed in a blue jar, held
mysterious intensity of life in the firelight. She switched on the
reading lamp, and all the colours in the room leapt up dimly, secretly:
purple, blue and rose-colour glowed around them, half-lit, half
obscured.
‘This is rather seductive,’ he said. He sank on his knees by the fire
and held out his hands to the blaze, looking about him with a faint
smile. She came and knelt beside him; and his eyes fastened narrowly on
her face.
‘It’s like you: seductive,’ he said softly.
‘Oh, Roddy! Seductive. That’s all it is. I see it now. I hate it. Am _I_
nothing more than that?’
‘You.... I don’t know what you are. I can’t make you out. You _never_
behave as I think you probably will.’
‘I’m glad of that.’
‘Why are you glad?’
‘Because I believe you ascribe to me the worst motives,--the most
ambiguous. You suspect me--you guard yourself against me.’
‘I don’t, Judy.’
‘Ah, you do. But you needn’t. I won’t do you any harm. Unless
being--very fond of you can do you harm. But I don’t think I’m a _femme
fatale_.’
‘I don’t know what you are. You disturb me very much. You seem to me
completely incalculable. Your eyes watch me and watch me. Such
marvellous eyes.’
She lifted them to his in a long steady look and remained silent.
‘You’re very nice,’ he said. ‘Rather a dear. I believe you’re quite
without guile really. Why do you trust people so? It’s very foolish of
you.’
‘Is it foolish of me to trust you?’
‘Incredibly foolish.’ He added, raising his voice and speaking slowly:
‘It’s no good trying to make me--adequate.’
‘Ah, you like to destroy yourself to me.’
‘But don’t you see? I go through the days in a sort of apathy; blind and
deaf; blinder and deafer every day. I never think, I never care. I’d
much better be dead only,--I’m too lazy to shoot myself.’
‘Oh, Roddy, don’t.’
She covered her ears with her hands. He had never spoken at such length,
or with such obvious intent to convince.
‘I’m only trying to warn you,’ he said, rather defiantly, ‘I’m not worth
saving. Nobody must _ever_ take me seriously. I’m not worth wasting a
moment over. Nobody can do anything with me.’
His mood was verging towards laughter. His face broke up teasingly as he
finished speaking and turned to look at her. But she averted her face,
drearily pondering.
Why had he spoken like that? A self-contempt so settled, so hopeless....
He had seemed to be warning her to keep away from him for her own sake.
‘It’s no good,’ she said suddenly, involuntarily.
‘What’s no good?’
‘You’re what I choose to think you are. There’s no point in heaping
yourself with abuse. You can’t make me dislike you; you can only make
me sad. But I suppose that gives you pleasure.’
He was silent. She went on tremulously,
‘And when you--when people say they don’t feel or care--that they’re no
good--it only makes me think--I could show them how to feel and care. I
could make them happy. I could look after them. I dare say you know
that’s--the effect it has on me. That’s why you say it.’
He was still silent. She leaned her head forward against the wall and
felt tears smart under her lids.
He seemed to be musing, his eyes fixed on the fire, his hands held out
to it.
‘Are your hands still cold?’ she said wearily. ‘Get them warm before you
go.’
Suddenly he held them out to her.
It was a gesture so impulsive, so uncharacteristic it seemed of
startling significance; and she could not answer it.
‘Yes, they are cold,’ he said. ‘Let me feel yours. Yours are cold too.
What funny hands--so thin and narrow, such delicate bones. Rather
lovely.’ He clasped them hard in his own. ‘When I do that they seem to
go to nothing.’
She smiled at him dimly, half-tranced, feeling her eyelids droop over
her eyes, giving him, with her helpless hands, all of herself; as if,
through her finger-tips, he drew her in to himself in a dark stemlessly
flowing tide. He stroked her palms, her whole hand, over and over with a
lingering careful touch, as if learning the outline by heart.
‘They feel so kind,’ he said musingly. ‘They are, aren’t they, Judy?
Dear little kind things--like the rest of you. Are you always kind,
Judy?’
‘Always to you, Roddy, I shouldn’t wonder.’
He relinquished his clasp suddenly, saying with a shake of the head:
‘You shouldn’t be.... However, I’ve warned you.’
‘Yes, you’ve warned me.’
She smiled at him sadly.
In a minute she must tell him to go. They would be coming out of the
Hall, bursting into the room to discover the cause of her absence.
‘Are you tired?’ he said.
She nodded, realizing suddenly the collapsed forward droop of her body,
the whole pose of deadly fatigue.
‘I’ve been very ill, you know.’
‘Oh, Judy! You never told me. You let me take you for that bloody cold
drive. You’ll be ill again.’
‘It’s all right. I shan’t be ill again.’
‘You _are_ naughty,’ he said, looking at her anxiously.
He never could bear people to be ill or in pain.
‘Come and lie down at once on the sofa,’ he said.
She obeyed him, and let him arrange the cushions beneath her shoulders,
with a delicious sense of dependence.
‘The drive won’t have hurt me,’ she said, ‘because I enjoyed it so
much.’
He stood looking down at her.
‘Did you enjoy it?’ he said softly.
‘Yes, didn’t you?’
‘Yes.’
‘Wasn’t it a queer unreal drive?’
‘Quite unreal, I suppose.’
‘I wish it had never stopped.’
He made no answer to this but still stood watching her.
‘You’ll have to go, Roddy. They mustn’t find you. Besides you’ll be
missing your dinner.’
‘I’ve missed that long ago, I should think.’
‘Oh, Roddy, how awful! I’ve made you miss your dinner.’
‘I know. It’s monstrous of you. And I’m so hungry.’
‘I’ve missed mine too but I’m not hungry.... Roddy, what will Tony say
to you?’
‘He’ll be very much annoyed.’
‘Shall you say you were with me? He wouldn’t like that, would he?’
‘No.’
‘Tony is jealous of me. Once he looked at me with pure hatred. I’ve
never forgotten it. Does he love you?’
‘I think he does.’
‘I think he does too. Do you love him? You needn’t answer. I know I
mustn’t ask you that.’
‘You can ask me anything you like.’
But he did not answer.
‘It is so terrible to be hated. Tell him I won’t do you any harm.’
But perhaps that was not true. Perhaps she meant endless mischief.
Supposing she were to take Roddy from Tony, from all his friends and
lovers, from all his idle Parisian and English life, and attach him to
herself, tie him and possess him: that would mean giving him cares,
responsibilities: it might mean changing him from his free and secret
self into something ordinary, domesticated, resentful. Perhaps his
lovers and friends would be well advised to gather round him jealously
and guard him from the female. She saw herself for one moment as a
creature of evil design, dangerous to him, and took her hand away from
his that held it lightly.
‘I’ll tell him you won’t do me any harm,’ he repeated absently. He was
staring into her face.
‘You’re going away now,’ she said, ‘and I don’t know when I shall see
you again.’
‘I don’t know either,’ he said smiling.
‘To-morrow you’ll have forgotten. But I shan’t forget this evening.’
‘Nor shall I. I don’t forget you, Judy. I sometimes wish I could. I’m a
little afraid of you.’
‘Afraid of me?’
‘Afraid of you--and me.’
Later on when he was gone she must make herself think of that. It might
have power to hurt: she could not tell now, with his unmasked, disturbed
face watching her. Now there was nothing but depth under depth of
welling happiness.
‘You know, Roddy,’ she said after a silence, ‘the awful thing about you
is that I can never pick up again where we left off. To-night you’ve
talked to me as I’ve always longed for you to talk to me, as if we could
trust each other, as if we were two creatures of the same sort alone
together. Don’t you feel we know each other better after to-night,
Roddy?’
He was silent for a moment, his eyes twinkling; then he said:
‘I feel you’ve made me say a great many indiscreet things.’
‘Poor Roddy! You’d better go, before I wring something out of you you’ll
regret to your life’s end,’ she said bitterly. ‘You know I shan’t rest
until I’ve forced you to tell me all your secrets. And when you have,
I’ll go and tell them to everybody else.’
She shut her eyes and turned her face from him. There was a long
silence.
‘Don’t be cross with me,’ he said in the end.
‘I’m not.’
‘Didn’t I tell you I was inadequate?’
‘Yes, you told me.’
‘Well now you believe it don’t you?’
‘No. No. No.’
‘Ah--you’re incorrigible.... Good-bye, Judy.’
She turned towards him again, took his hand in both hers and clung to
it.
‘Roddy, you _have_--quite liked--being with me ... haven’t you?’
His face softened.
‘I’ve adored it,’ he said gently.
‘And when shall I see you again?’
He shook his head.
‘Oh, Roddy, when?’
He stooped swiftly until his face almost touched hers, and murmured,
watching her:
‘Whenever you like.’
His lips closed on hers very lightly. She put her arms round his neck
and kissed his cheek and forehead. When after a moment or two he raised
himself she thought he was smiling again.
She lay perfectly still, watching him while he lit a cigarette, smoothed
his hair, put on his coat and went to open the door. Then he turned,
still smiling, and nodding as if encouraging her to smile back. But she
continued to lie and stare up at him as if from the bottom of a well; as
if all of her were dead except the eyes which just moved, following him.
The door closed after him. Soon the sound of his footsteps faded along
the corridor.
She raised her hand slowly and with difficulty, as if a weight were
holding it to her side, and pulled the lamp’s green shade down; and the
whole room sank softly into semi-obscurity.
Some trick of green light brought suddenly to mind the look of early
spring woods at twilight: fresh buds and little leaves dashed with rain,
an air like dark clear water lighting the branches with a wan glimmer.
She looked at her body lying long, slender and still on the couch; she
saw her breast rise and fall faintly with her breathing; and she had a
sense of watching herself return from a long swoon, bathed in
crystalline new life, transformed and beautified.
The trivial femininities of the room had made, she thought, an inept
background for his elegance. But now there seemed something graceful,
foreign, curious in the lights and shades, in the forms of flowers,
books, furniture; as if he had left his impress upon them.
She heard the footsteps of Jennifer coming swiftly towards her door....
Not a word, not a whisper to Jennifer. She and he could never meet, even
in mind. The profoundest instinct forbade it.
Jennifer came gaily in.
‘Tired, darling?’ she said. ‘You were quite right not to come to Hall.
It was bloodier than ever. Come, darling, let me put you to bed--you’re
so tired. I’ll look after you. I’ll make you some scrambled eggs after
you’re in bed.’
Then Jennifer suspected nothing. She did not see that all was changed.
She was deep in the mood of tender solicitude which came upon her now
and then since the illness, when she remembered to think Judith fragile.
She lifted her in her arms, and carried her into the bedroom....
Nothing has changed after all. There was Jennifer laughing, talking,
letting the eggs get burnt while she did her hair; bending down finally
to kiss you a tender good-night. Judith tried to think of Roddy. A
little while ago he had been stooping over her as Jennifer stooped now,
with eyes that were different and yet the same. But he had disappeared;
she could not now remember what he looked like.
Nothing was altered then, no order was reversed or even shaken. There
were these moments; but all around and about the extravagant incongruous
brilliances, the divine crudities, the breath-taking magnificences of
their pattern, life went on weaving uninterruptedly: weaving uncoloured
trivial things into secure fabric.
9
Then, almost it seemed, while she still told herself these things; while
the memory of Roddy’s brief presence still surged up bewilderingly to
drown her a hundred times a day, and then slipped away again, lost in
the mysterious and doubtful darkness cast by his ensuing silence; while
Jennifer remained the unquenched spring of all gaiety and reassurance,
all delight: while the whole ordered dream went on as if it could never
break; even then, with the third year, the shadow of change began to
fall.
It was a look, a turn of the head, a new trick of speech, a nothing in
Jennifer which struck at her heart in a moment; and then all had started
to fall to pieces. Jennifer was no longer the same. Somewhere she had
turned aside without a word, and set her face to a new road. She did not
want to be followed. She had given Judith the slip, in the dark; and
now, when she still pretended to be there, her voice had the false
shrillness of a voice coming from far away.
She remembered Jennifer saying once, suddenly: “There’s one thing
certain in my life: that is, that I shall always love you.” And
afterwards her eyes had shone as if with tears and laughter. She
remembered the surprise and joy, the flooding confidence of that moment;
for it had been said so quietly, as if the realization of that “always”
held for something sorrowful, a sobering sense of fate. Her manner had
had a simplicity far removed from the usual effervescence and
extravagance: she had seemed to state a fact to be believed in forever,
without question. In her life where all else was uncertain, fluid and
undirected, where all turned in mazes of heat and sound, that only was
the deep unshaken foundation, the changeless thing.... She had seemed to
mean that, sitting back in her chair, her arms laid along her lap, her
hands folded together, everything about her quiet and tender, her eyes
resting on Judith as they never had before or since, long and full, with
a depth of untroubled love.
That had been on a day in late April, at the beginning of the last
Summer term. The happiness of reunion had never before seemed so
complete. She had been in Scotland, Judith in Paris with Mamma, living
resentfully in a reflection of Mamma’s alien existence. And then they
were together again, and the summer term had opened with its unfailing
week or so of exquisite weather.
They had taken the green canoe one morning and wandered up the river to
Grandchester. There was no one at all in the Orchard when they reached
it.
“Thank God I see no grey flannels,” said Jennifer. “I suppose the grass
is still too wet for undergraduates to sit out.”
A light breeze was blowing through the orchard, ruffling long grass,
dandelions, buttercups, and daisies. Under the trees, the little white
tables, set in the green silken brilliance, were dappled with running
light and shadow, and the apple branches, clotted with full blossom,
gleamed against the sky in a tender childish contrast of simple
colours,--pale pink upon pale blue. The air was dazed with a
bewilderment of bird-song.
A rough brown terrier with golden eyes came prancing out on them, making
known their presence with barkings half-ferocious, half-friendly. The
dark waitress came lazily from the house, reluctant to serve them.
‘Is the Orchard open?’
‘Oh yes, it’s open.’
‘Can you let us have lunch?’
‘Oh I dare say.’
‘What can you let us have?’
‘You can have a cheese omelette and some fruit-salad.’
‘Divine,’ said Jennifer, and leapt for joy.
‘You better have it in the shelter. The grass is wet.’
She wandered away, smoothing her black untidy hair. She would not smile.
There was something arresting and romantic in the thin sallow
dark-browed young woman, preserving her ugliness, her faint unrelaxing
bitterness among all the laughing renewals of her surroundings.
‘I’d like to pick her up and shake her into life. Make her smile and be
young. Make her cheeks pink and her eyes bright,’ said Jennifer. ‘If I
were a man I’d fall bang in love with her. What is her name do you
think? Jessica? Anne? Rosa?’
‘Miriam.’
‘Yes, Miriam.’
How the remembered insignificant words brought flooding back the
irrecoverable quality of that day!
Tits and robins, perching all around them, and the golden-eyed dog, had
helped them to finish their meal.
Then they had lain back in their chairs, staring and saying nothing. And
then it was that Jennifer had turned and broken the silence with her
quiet, inevitable-seeming declaration; and after it Judith had reached
out to touch her hand for a moment; and continued to sit beside her and
dream.
Later in the afternoon they had seen grey-flannelled legs approaching
and risen to go.
They met the dark girl walking down the gravel path towards the orchard,
carrying a trayful of crockery.
‘We’ve come to pay you,’ said Jennifer radiantly smiling.
She gave the price without a flicker.
‘Judith, have you that much on you, darling?’ said Jennifer, and added,
turning again to the girl: ‘We _have_ so enjoyed ourselves.’
There was no response save a quick suspicious glance.
Currant bushes, wallflowers, narcissi, pansies, yellow daisies and
tulips blossomed richly on each side of the path.
‘What a delicious garden!’ said Jennifer. ‘It’s at its very best, isn’t
it?’
‘It’s looking nice,’ she admitted.
Jennifer pointed to a clump of stiff, serious purple-black tulips.
‘Those tulips are like you,’ she said, her eyes and mouth, all her
glowing face, coaxing and appealing.
And suddenly the girl gave a little laugh, looking with soft eyes first
at Jennifer, then away, shyly and deprecatingly, as who should say: ‘The
idea! Me like a tulip! Well, you _are_ a one--Daft ...’ but gratified
and amused all the same.
‘I shall always think of you when I see tulips like that,’ said
Jennifer. ‘Good-bye!’
‘Good-bye, Miss....’ She smiled, almost mischievously this time, and
hurried on with her tray.
‘She was quite human,’ said Jennifer. ‘I wonder if she’s got a lover or
if she’s longing for one, or if she’s been jilted, or what.... What
makes her all shadowy and tight inside herself?’
She stood looking after the girl, as if meditating going back to ask
her.
How Jennifer struck sparks from ordinary people! She knew how to live.
To be with her was to meet adventure; to see, round every corner, the
bush become the burning bush.
In a little while she would have forgotten the girl whose problem was
now so urgent and exciting; but you yourself would always
remember,--seeing it all dramatically, seeing it as a quiet story,
hearing it as an unknown tune: making of it a water colour painting in
gay foolish colours, or an intricate pencil pattern of light and shadow.
They left the Orchard.
‘I think,’ said Jennifer, ‘we will never come here again.’
They had not come again. That time had remained unblurred by any
subsequent return in a different mood, with more companions, in another
weather or season.
But Judith had thought, while she nodded agreement: ‘Some day, when I’m
much older, I’ll come back alone and think of her; and then perhaps
write and say: do you remember? Or perhaps not, in case she has
forgotten.’
And now, it seemed, far sooner even than Judith had feared, Jennifer was
forgetting everything. They had meant to go away together during the
summer vacation; go to Brittany, and bathe and walk and read: but in the
end Jennifer’s don had said cold things regarding Jennifer’s progress,
and requested her to attend college during the Long. Judith had gone on
a reading party with three of the circle, and written Jennifer long
letters which were answered briefly and at rare intervals. But that was
not surprising. Jennifer’s letters had always been spasmodic, if
passionately affectionate. Then the letters had ceased altogether.
Judith had written asking if they could not spend September together,
and Jennifer had answered in five lines, excusing herself. She was going
to shoot in Scotland in September.
And then the third year had started, with everything as it had always
been, or seeming so, for a few moments; and then in one more moment
shivered to pieces.
She would not stay behind alone, after the others had gone, to say
good-night. She ceased to talk with abandonment and excitement, her eyes
shining to see you listening, to feel you understanding. There seemed
nothing to say now. In particular, she would not speak of the Long.
It was, of course, Mabel who was the first to hint of ill-tidings.
Eating doughnuts out of a bag, late one night, during one of Judith’s
charity visits, she said:
‘Has that Miss Manners been up lately?’
‘Who’s Miss Manners?’
‘Why--that Miss Manners, Jennifer’s friend, who stayed with her so much
during the Long.’
‘Oh yes----’
‘I was sure you must have heard about her, because they seemed such very
great friends. They were always about together and always up to some
lark.’ She gave a snigger. ‘We used to wonder, we really did, how long
it would be before Jennifer got sent down, the way they used to go on,
coming in so late and all. But somehow Jennifer never gets found out,
does she?’ Another snigger. ‘What a striking-looking girl she is.’
‘Who?’
‘Miss Manners.’
‘Oh yes.... I’ve never seen her. Only photographs.’
‘Everybody said what a striking pair they made.... I expect she’ll be up
soon again, don’t you?’
‘I don’t know at all,’ said Judith. ‘I expect so.’ Mabel looked solemn.
‘The wrestling matches they used to have out there on the lawn! I used
to watch them from my window. I wonder they didn’t.... I really wonder
... any of the don.... It looked so ... throwing each other about like
that.... It’s not the sort of thing you expect--quite, is it? I
mean....’
‘Oh, wrestling’s glorious,’ said Judith. ‘I love it. Jennifer’s tried to
teach me. But I’m not strong enough for her; the--the--Manners girl is
much more of a match for her.’
Mabel pursed up her mouth and was silent.
It was necessary to leave her quickly for fear of striking her; because
her deliberate intent was obvious; because she knew quite well now that
you had never before heard of Miss Manners; because you were seeing
that girl plainly, tall, dark and splendid, striding on the lawn with
Jennifer, grasping her in strong arms, a match for her in all
magnificent unfeminine physical ways, as you had never been. Her image
was all at once there, ineffaceably presenting itself as the embodiment
of all hitherto unco-ordinated and formless fears, the symbol for
change, and dark alarms and confusions. And the unbearable image of
Mabel was there too, watching by herself, gloating down from the window
with glistening eyes that said:
‘At last!’
She stopped short in the corridor, and moaned aloud, aghast at the
crowding panic of her thoughts.
* * * * *
Judith, returning from her bath, heard voices and laughter late at night
behind Jennifer’s door. Should she stop? All the circle must be there as
usual, laughing and talking as if nothing were amiss. She alone had
excluded herself, sitting with a pile of books in her room, pretending
to have important work. It was her own fault. She had said she was busy,
and they had believed her and not invited her to join their gathering.
She would go in, and sit among them and smoke, and tell them
things,--tell them something to make them laugh; and all would be as
before. They would drift away in the end and leave her behind; she would
turn and look at Jennifer in the firelight, put out a hand and say:
‘Jennifer....’
She opened the door and looked in.
The voices stopped, cut off sharply.
In the strange, charged, ensuing silence, she saw that the curtains were
flung back. Purple-black night pressed up against the windows, and one
pane framed the blank white globe of the full moon. They were all lying
on the floor. Dark forms, pallid, moon-touched faces and hands were
dimly distinguishable; a few cigarette points burned in the faint
hanging cloud of smoke across the room. The fire was almost out. Where
was Jennifer?
‘Hullo, there’s Judith,’ said one.
‘Is there room for me?’ said Judith in a small voice. She came in softly
among them all, and went directly over to the window and sat on the
floor, with the moon behind her head. She was conscious of her own
unnatural precision and economy of movement; of her long slender body
wrapped in its kimono crossing the room in three light steps, sinking
noiselessly down in its place and at once remaining motionless,
expectant.
Where was Jennifer?
‘All in the dark,’ she said, in the same soft voice. And then: ‘What a
moon! Don’t you know it’s very dangerous to let it shine on you like
this? It will make you mad.’
One or two of them laughed. She could now recognize the three faces in
front of her. Jennifer must be somewhere by the fireplace. There was
constraint in the room. She thought with awful jealousy: ‘Ah, they hate
my coming. They thought they were getting rid of me at last. They come
here secretly without me, to insinuate themselves. They all want her.
They have all hated me always.’ She said:
‘Give me a cigarette, someone.’
Jennifer’s voice broke in suddenly with a sort of harsh clangour. From
her voice, Judith knew how wild her eyes must be.
‘Here, here’s a cigarette, Judith.... Have something to eat. Or some
cocoa. Oh--there was a bottle of cherry-brandy, but I believe we’ve
finished it.’
Horrible confusion in her voice, a stumbling hurry of noise....
‘I have just licked up the last dregs,’ said a deep voice.
‘Who’s that who spoke then?’ said Judith softly and sweetly.
‘Oh ...’ cried Jennifer shrilly, ‘Geraldine, you haven’t met Judith
yet.’
What was she saying? Geraldine Manners was staying the week-end, no, was
wrestling on the lawn with her; had just arrived, no, had been in the
room for months, since the summer, for they were such very great
friends....
‘How do you do? I’m guessing what you are like from the way you speak,’
said Judith softly, laughingly.
‘Oh, I’m no good at that.’
How bored, how careless a voice!
‘Shall I switch on the light?’ said someone.
‘No!’ said Judith loudly.
She lifted up her arm against the window. The kimono sleeve fell back
from it, and it gleamed cold and frail in the moonlight, like a snake.
She spread out her long fingers and stared at them.
‘I would like to be blind,’ she said. ‘I really wish I were blind. Then
I might learn to see with my fingers. I might learn to hear properly
too.’
And learn to be indifferent to Jennifer; never to be enslaved again by
the lines and colours of her physical appearance, the ever new surprise
and delight of them; learn, in calm perpetual darkness, how the eyes’
tyrannical compulsions had obscured and distorted all true values. To be
struck blind now this moment, so that the dreadful face of the voice by
the fireplace remained for ever unknown!... Soon the light would go on,
and painfully, hungrily, with awful haste and reluctance, the eyes would
begin their work again, fly to their target.
‘Don’t be absurd, Judith,’ said someone. ‘You don’t know what you’re
talking about’; and went on to talk of work among the blind, of blinded
soldiers, of St. Dunstan’s.
The conversation became general and followed the usual lines: it was
better to be deaf than blind, blind than deaf. Jennifer and Geraldine
were silent.
‘Oh, it’s time we went to bed,’ said someone. ‘Jennifer, I must go to
bed. I’m almost asleep. What’s the time?’
Now the light would go on.
It went on. The room suddenly revealed its confusion of girls, cushions,
chairs, cups, plates and cigarette-ends. Everybody was getting up,
standing about and talking.
Jennifer was on her feet, voluble, calling loud good-nights. They made a
group round her and round somebody still sitting on the floor beside
her. Judith caught a glimpse of a dark head leaning motionless against
the mantelpiece. Now they were all going away. Judith followed them
slowly to the door and there paused, looking over her shoulder towards
the fireplace.
‘Stay,’ said Jennifer shrilly. She was standing and staring at Judith
with wild eyes; pale, with a deep patch of colour in each cheek, and
lips parted.
‘No, I must go. I’ve got some work,’ said Judith, smiling over her
shoulder. She let her eyes drop from Jennifer’s face to the other one.
At last it confronted her, the silent-looking face, watching behind its
narrowed eyes. The hair was black, short, brushed straight back from the
forehead, leaving small beautiful ears exposed. The heavy eyebrows came
low and level on the low broad brow; the eyes were long slits,
dark-circled, the cheeks were pale, the jaw heavy and masculine. All the
meaning of the face was concentrated in the mouth, the strange wide lips
laid rather flat on the face, sulky, passionate, weary, eager. She was
not a young girl. It was the face of a woman of thirty or more; but in
years she might have been younger. She was tall, deep-breasted, with
long, heavy but shapely limbs. She wore a black frock and a pearl
necklace, and large pearl earrings.
Judith said politely:
‘Is this the first time you have been here?’
‘No.’ She laughed. Her voice was an insolent voice.
‘I’m tired,’ said Jennifer suddenly, like a child.
‘You look it,’ said Judith. ‘Go to bed.’
‘I’ll get undressed.’ Jennifer passed a hand across her forehead and
sighed.
The woman by the fireplace fitted a cigarette into an amber holder
slowly, and lit it.
‘I’m not sleepy yet,’ she said. ‘I’ll wait till you’re in bed and come
and tuck you up.’
‘This room feels----’ cried Jennifer staring around her in horror. She
dashed to the window and flung it wide open; then disappeared into her
bedroom; and there was not another sound from her.
The woman started singing to herself very low, as if forgetful of
Judith’s presence; then broke off to say:
‘I like your kimono.’
Judith wrapped the long red and blue silk garment more closely round her
hips.
‘Yes. It was brought me from Japan. I gave Jennifer one. A purple one.’
‘Oh, that one. She’s lent it to me. I forgot to bring a dressing-gown.’
She turned her head away, as if to intimate that so far as she was
concerned conversation was neither interesting nor necessary.
Judith bit back the ‘Good-night, Jennifer’ which she was about to call;
for she was never going to care any more what happened to Jennifer;
never again soothe her when she was weary and excited, comfort her when
she was unhappy. She would look at Jennifer coldly, observe her vagaries
and entanglements with a shrug, comment upon them with detached and
cynical amusement: hurt her, if possible, oh, hurt her, hurt her.
Now she would leave her with Geraldine and not trouble to ask herself
once what profound and secret intimacies would be restored by her
withdrawal.
She smiled over her shoulder and left the room.
10
A week later, Geraldine was still there. She and Judith had not met
again; when she and Jennifer, arm in arm, were seen approaching, Judith
avoided them; and changing her place at Hall--her place which had been
beside Jennifer for two years--went and sat where she could not see the
sleek dark head next to the fair one, turning and nodding in response.
All day they were invisible. Geraldine had a car, and they must go miles
and miles into the country in the soft late autumn weather.
It seemed to Judith that life had ceased to bear her along upon its
tide. It flowed past her, away from her; and she must stay behind,
passive and of no account, while the current of Jennifer met and gaily
mingled with a fresh current and fled on. It seemed as if even the
opportunity for the gesture of relinquishment was to be denied her. And
then, wearily returning from lectures one morning she found upon her
table a torn scrap of paper scrawled over violently in an unknown hand.
‘_Please be in your room at six o’clock this evening. I want to see
you._
‘_Geraldine Manners._’
It was an insolent note. She would ignore such a command. She would put
a notice up on her door: _Engaged_--and turn the key; and when the woman
came she would just have to go away again.
But at six o’clock Geraldine knocked loudly and she cried: ‘Come in.’
They stood facing each other.
‘Sit down,’ said Judith. But neither of them made any movement.
‘I wanted to see you.’ Her voice was low and emotional--angry perhaps;
and Judith had a moment’s fainting sense of impotence. The woman was so
magnificent, so mature and well-dressed; if there was to be a fight,
what chance was there for a thin young student in a woollen jumper?
She leaned against the mantelpiece and, staring at Judith, flung at her:
‘What’s all this about?’
Judith sat down again, without a word, and waited, steadily holding the
green eyes with her own. She heard the blood beat deafeningly in her
ears.
Geraldine went on:
‘I think it’s the damnedest bit of impertinence I ever heard.
Schoolgirls! My God!’ She flung her head back theatrically.
Judith thought, with a shudder of excitement and anguish: ‘Wait, wait.
It is because you are unused to it that it seems like physical blows.
Soon you will be able to collect yourself. This is anger and you are the
cause. You are being insulted and called to account for the first time
in your life. Carry it off. Carry it off.’
And her blood went on repeating ‘Jennifer’ in her ears.
Geraldine took a gold cigarette case and the amber holder from a gold
chain bag with a sapphire clasp.
‘It’s pretty awful, isn’t it, to be so mean and petty? I’m sorry for
you, I must say.’
‘Please don’t be sorry for me.’ She noted her own voice, icy and polite.
Geraldine had inserted a thin, yellow cigarette in the holder and was
searching for a match.
‘Here,’ said Judith. She got up, took the matchbox from the mantelpiece
and struck a light. Geraldine stooped her head down over the little
flare. White lids, black curling lashes, broad cheek-bones, Egyptian
lips--the heaviness, the thick waxen texture of the whole face: Judith
saw them all with an aching and terrible intensity, her eyes clinging to
the head bowed above her hand. She should have smelt like a gardenia.
‘Thank you,’ said Geraldine. She lifted her head, narrowed her eyes and
puffed out smoke, moving and stretching her mouth faintly round the
amber. She smoked like a man.
Judith sat down again.
Geraldine seemed now very much at her ease. She leaned against the
mantelpiece, dominating the room: and she seemed of gigantic height and
significance.
‘Are you a friend of Jennifer’s?’ she said.
‘Jennifer--is a person I know well.’
She looked at Judith as if in surprise at her tone and manner.
‘I had no idea of that. She never mentioned you.’
For a moment that dealt a blinding blow, with its instantaneous
implications of dishonesty and indifference. But she repeated:
‘I’ve known her well for two years. You can ask her. She _might_ admit
it.’ And as she spoke the last words she thought with sudden excitement:
‘Just as I never mentioned Roddy....’
‘Oh, I can’t get anything out of her,’ said Geraldine and added
truculently: ‘You might as well tell me what it’s all about.’
‘I have nothing whatever to tell you. I don’t know why you’ve come. I’d
like _you_ to tell me what it’s all about--or else go away, please.’ She
was conscious all at once of a terrible inward trembling, and got up
again. The other watched her in silence, and she added: ‘I haven’t been
near her--since that night in her room. I’ve kept away--you know that
night....’
‘What night?’
Judith broke into a sort of laugh; and then checked herself with a vast
effort: for the suppressed hysteria of weeks was climbing upwards within
her and if it broke loose, it might never, never cease.
‘Well--one night,’ she said, ‘I thought perhaps you remembered.’
There was not a flicker on Geraldine’s face. She must be very stupid or
very cruel.
‘What beats me,’ said Geraldine, ‘is why this dead set against
me?--against her and me. What do you want to interfere with us for? It’s
not your business, any of you. I thought I’d come and tell you so.’
There was a curious coarseness about her: almost a vulgarity. It was
difficult to combat.
Judith lifted her eyes and looked at her in silence.
‘So you’ve all sent Jennifer to Coventry.’ She laughed. ‘It’s
marvellous. A female institution is really marvellous. At least it would
be if it weren’t so nauseating.’ Still Judith was silent, and she added
contemptuously:
‘I should have thought a bit better of you if you’d come yourself. Do
you generally get other people to do your dirty work for you?’
Judith got up and went towards the door.
‘Where are you going?’ said Geraldine sharply.
‘To Jennifer, to ask her to explain.’
‘You can’t do that.’ The change in her voice and manner was noticeable.
‘Jennifer’s lying down. I left her trying to sleep. She mustn’t be
disturbed.’
‘I can go to Jennifer whenever I like. I can always go to Jennifer. I
don’t ask you whether I am to or not.’
At last this was anger, anger! At last she was able to want to wound, to
cry: ‘I! I! I!’ brutally, aggressively, triumphantly in the face of her
enemy. Pure anger for the first time in life.
‘_Please!_ Listen,’ Geraldine took a few steps towards her. ‘Please,
don’t go now. She’s very much upset. I left her crying.’
Crying--crying? Oh, that was a good thing. It was splendid that Jennifer
should have been made to cry.... And yet ... if this woman had made her
cry--poor Jennifer, darling Jennifer--you would----
The situation seemed suddenly to have become reversed. Judith felt
herself momentarily strong in self-assurance; and Geraldine was
hesitating, as if doubtful what to say.
‘What’s she crying about? It takes a good deal to make Jennifer cry.’
Geraldine shot her a glance and said venomously:
‘Yes. As far as I can make out, one of your charming friends must have
taken a good deal of trouble to make her cry this morning. Anyway she
seemed to have got it into her head that she’s treated somebody, or one
of you, very badly--and that somebody was hurt--_you_ were hurt--because
she’d been neglecting you for me.’
‘How do you know she meant me?’
She was silent, and then said:
‘She was crying a good deal and thoroughly upset and I heard her say
your name. So I went and asked someone where your room was and came
straight. But you were out.’
‘Did she tell you to come?’
‘She didn’t tell me not to.’
‘Then she told you where my room was. She knows you’re here.’
‘I didn’t ask her where your room was. I--found out.’
‘And does she know you’re here?’
‘No.’ She added after a silence. ‘I didn’t come here to be
cross-questioned.’
‘What did you come here for?’
‘Just to tell you we care _that_’--she snapped her fingers--‘for your
mean little jealousies.’
‘Oh, it seems scarcely worth coming, just for that. It wasn’t worth
losing your temper over, was it? Little jealousies are so common--in a
female institution. I do think you over-estimate their importance. It
isn’t as if you cared what we said, because you’ve just told me you
don’t--either of you.’
‘And,’ she said, raising her voice angrily; ‘_and_ to tell you I
consider you owe me an apology--me and Jennifer.’
‘Oh!’ Judith buried her face in her hands and laughed. ‘Oh! that’s very
funny.’
She looked up at Geraldine with a sudden fantastic hope that she would
see her laughing too; but the face presented to her was hostile and
heavy. At sight of it she felt the laughter begin to shake her
terrifyingly; and checked it with a gasp.
Geraldine said:
‘I suppose you will deny having anything to do with this?’
‘Oh, deny it--of course I do,’ said Judith with weary contempt.
‘Deny having insinuated--suggested----’ she began loudly.
‘I have never bothered to mention your name to anyone. Why should I?
It’s nothing to do with me.’
‘No,’ she said, her face and voice rousing a little from their heavy
deliberate monotony. ‘It’s nothing to do with you.’ She thought a moment
and added slowly: ‘Then there’s some misunderstanding.’
‘Yes, some misunderstanding. Why go on treating it as if it were
important?’
After a silence she said:
‘Anything, however slight, that comes between me and Jennifer is
important.’
Judith felt herself start to tremble again. Those slow words rang a doom
for her; and her spurious advantage was at an end.
‘I’m sorry,’ she said uncertainly, ‘if I have come between you and
Jennifer.’
‘Not _you_,’ she said. (Yes, she was a stupid or a cruel woman.) ‘But I
know what people’s mischievous tongues can do, and I wanted to get to
the bottom of it before I go away. Just to assure myself that I’m not
leaving her to face anything--unpleasant or distressing.’
‘Ah, so you realize how easily she’s influenced.’
That was it then: the woman was afraid. She had given herself away at
last: she knew the terrible insecurity of loving Jennifer. Judith felt a
quiver of new emotion dart through her: it seemed like a faint pity.
‘I don’t want her bothered,’ said Geraldine aggressively. ‘I loathe this
interfering.’
‘You don’t quite understand,’ said Judith in a voice of calm
explanation, ‘how much Jennifer means to some people--a lot of people
here. They love her. Naturally they resent it a little when somebody
else comes in and claims all her attention. They miss her. Isn’t it
natural? And then you see, since you’ve been here I believe she’s been
getting into awful trouble for neglecting her work. I heard one of them
say so a day or two ago--and another one said it was time someone spoke
to her or she’d be sent down. So I daresay that’s what happened:
somebody tried to give her a sort of warning. Of course it was silly:
but then, as you say, girls are silly. It was meant kindly.’ She paused,
feeling a kind of faintness, took a deep sighing breath and continued:
‘If my name was brought into it, it was because I have had--I think--a
certain amount of influence with Jennifer. She and I were a good deal
together at one time. But lately I have been working very hard. They
have no business at all....’
She felt her voice dwindling and stopped, trembling now uncontrollably.
Geraldine lit another cigarette and leaned back against the mantelpiece.
Oh, she was going to lean there for ever! If only she would allow you to
soften her into some emotion of pity and understanding so that you might
fling yourself down and weep, crying: “Now you must understand. Now I
have told you all. Leave me.” But there was no hope of that. Her
hostility was hardening. She was more alert now; and she seemed to be
taking note for the first time since her sweeping entrance of Judith’s
person. Her eyes went attentively over face, hands, feet, hair, clothes,
and over the whole room. Something alive was rearing itself from the
stony envelope. She was silent for a long time, and then said
uncertainly:
‘I hope you won’t--mention all this to her.’ Judith laughed.
‘I can’t quite promise that,’ she said. ‘You see, we’ve been used to
telling each other most things. There’s no reason to make a mystery of
it. Is there?’
She was silent again; and then said:
‘I think it would be best not to say anything to her. I don’t want her
to think there’s been any fuss. I don’t think she’ll care to hear any
more about it. She was very unwilling to--to dwell----’
That brought home Jennifer’s attitude with painful clarity. She was, of
course, flying to escape. Why should she go free always, always? This
time it would be easy to make her uncomfortable, if not to hurt her. And
yet, it could not be done. Once more she felt the faintest stir of
sympathy with Geraldine. She said with a shrug:
‘Very well, I won’t refer to it.’
‘We’ll agree,’ said Geraldine, ‘to keep it to ourselves.’
Judith nodded.
Geraldine threw away her cigarette, smoothed her sleek hair, stood
upright as if preparing to go and said with brisk indifference:
‘Well, I’m sorry if I’ve been a nuisance.’
‘Oh, you haven’t been a nuisance.’
Judith crushed her cold hands into her lap. Now it was almost over: soon
she could let herself collapse. But Geraldine still lingered, looking
about her.
‘You’ve got nice things,’ she said. ‘Most of the rooms I’ve seen are too
frightful.’
‘I’m luckier than most girls here. I have more money.’
‘Do you like being here?’
‘I have liked it--and disliked it.’
‘Hmm. Jennifer hates it. I don’t wonder. I think I’ve persuaded her to
leave and come abroad with me.’
Defeat at last. She had no answer to that, not one weapon left. She
stared before her, paralyzed.
‘I can’t think,’ added Geraldine, ‘how she’s stuck it so long.’
Judith heard herself say slowly, softly:
‘As I told you, there are a great many people here who love her. That
makes a difference, doesn’t it? People have to love Jennifer.’ She
buried her face in her hands, and thought aloud, in a sort of whisper:
‘People have to love her and then she seems cruel. But she doesn’t mean
to be. There’s something about her--people don’t seem to be able to love
her clearly and serenely: they have to love her too much. Everything
gets dark and confused and aching, and they want to--touch her and be
the only one near her; they want to look after her and give her
everything she wants. It’s tiring. And then when they’re tired she gives
them back life. She pours life into them from herself.’
She stopped short, seeing in a flash how it had always been between
herself and Jennifer. Tired, you had come again and again to her,
pressing close to be replenished from her vitality. But Jennifer had not
drunk life from you in return: quietness and tenderness and
understanding, but not life. And the quietness had passed
into sadness--yes, you knew now you had seen it happening
sometimes,--sadness, flatness: the virtue had gone out of her in the
incessant giving of herself, the incessant taking on of an alien
quietness. You had wanted too much, you had worn her out. Perhaps after
all you had been unlucky to Jennifer, committed that crime of trying to
possess her separateness,--craved more than even she could give without
destroying herself. So in the end she had gone to someone more wholesome
for her nature. Perhaps after all the balance had been sorely
ill-adjusted: she your creator, you her destroyer. Perhaps she should be
surrendered to Geraldine now, ungrudgingly. She said, looking up at
Geraldine:
‘I daresay you make her very happy.’
Geraldine said, answering Judith’s gaze unwaveringly:
‘Yes, we are very happy together. Absolutely happy.’
‘She is a good companion, isn’t she?’
‘Oh yes,’ she said, her heavy lips lifting in a faint curious smile.
What was in her voice?--insolence?--triumph?--malice?--an obscure
challenge? She seemed to be implying that she knew things about Jennifer
of which you had no knowledge. She was a terrible woman.
Judith could find no words, and the other continued:
‘She’s starting to find herself. It’s very interesting. Of course
nobody’s understood her here.’
‘And you think you do?’
‘I do, yes.’
‘Oh, but I’d never dare say that about a person I loved! You might seem
to touch everywhere and all the time be strangers.’ Judith clasped her
hands and spoke urgently:
‘Oh, don’t you feel how you might long to say to someone you love: I
give you all myself, all myself--and all the time be sad because with
all your efforts and longing you _know_ you never could--that the core
can’t ever be stirred at all? It seems such dreadful arrogance to say--’
she stopped short, pressing her hand to her lips, shutting her eyes.
After a pause she added quickly: ‘But I don’t doubt you love her ...’
she sighed. ‘Thank God this term is nearly over. This is a terrible
place for getting overwrought.’
Geraldine seemed to be thinking deeply. Her face was awake and
preoccupied behind its heavy mask.
‘It’s very odd,’ said Judith, ‘how she doesn’t value her brains in the
very least--isn’t interested in them--can’t be bothered. I suppose you
know she’s the most brilliant history student of her year. Easily. Of
course she’s never worked, but she could have done anything she liked.
In spite of all her idleness and irresponsibility they were still
excited about her--they thought she’d do something in the end. And I was
going to make her pull it off. I could have--in one term. I mean I could
have once. Not now of course.’
Her voice ceased drearily. As if it would matter to Geraldine how much
Jennifer wasted brains, or academic opportunities ... as if it would
move her!
The bell started to ring for Hall.
‘There!’ said Judith, ‘I must brush my hair I suppose, and go down. Are
you coming to Hall?’
‘No. I’m going to dine in Cambridge.’
Judith rose and stood before her, looking full at her for the last
time. She thought suddenly: ‘But she’s not beautiful! She’s hideously
ugly, repulsive.’
That broad heavy face and thick neck, those coarse and masculine
features, that hothouse skin: What taste Jennifer must have to find her
attractive!...
Oh no, it was no good saying that. In spite of all, she was beautiful:
her person held an appalling fascination. She was beautiful, beautiful.
You would never be able to forget her face, her form. You would see it
and dream of it with painful desire: as if she could satisfy something,
some hunger, if she would. But she was not for you. The secret of her
magnetism, her rareness must be for ever beyond reach; but not beyond
imagination.
Judith cried out inwardly: ‘Tell me all your life!’ All about herself,
where she had come from, why she was alone and mysterious, why she wore
such clothes, such pearls, how she and Jennifer had met, what knowledge
her expression half-hid, half-revealed. Time had swept her down one
moment out of space, portentously, and now was sweeping her away again,
unknown. And now, in the end, you wanted to implore her to stay, to let
herself be known, to let you love her. Yes, to let you love her. It was
not true that you must hate your enemies. What was all this hatred and
jealousy? Something so terrifyingly near to love, you dared not
contemplate it. You could love her in a moment, passionately,
for her voice, her eyes, her beautiful white hands, for loving
Jennifer--anything.
The bell stopped ringing.
‘Good-bye,’ said Judith. ‘I’m late.’ She held out her hand.
Geraldine took it. Her hand was cool, smooth and firm.
‘Good-bye.’
‘Are you--staying much longer?’
‘I’m going away to-morrow.’
‘I’d like to have known you better,’ said Judith, very low, and she
lifted her eyes to the long, hidden eyes of Geraldine. ‘I hope you and
she will be happy when you go abroad.’ She opened the door politely,
and then said, smiling: ‘We won’t forget each other, will we?’
‘No,’ said Geraldine, still watching her. But she did not smile.
They went their different ways along the corridor.
Now to go down to the dull food and clamour, to sit among them all and
torture herself with fancying intercepted glances which might have pity
in them; to hear perhaps, her name and Jennifer’s in a whispered aside;
to try with anguish to guess which of them it was who had dared to drag
her pain from its hiding-place and proclaim it aloud.
11
Jennifer lay in bed; and on her door was pinned a notice signed by the
matron: _No visitors allowed_.
Her friends were disconsolate, and the evening gatherings were leaden
spirited. It was certain there had not been so much evening work done
before in the whole two years. There was nothing better to do now: no
excitement, no laughter or colour. They went on tiptoe past the shut
door and the notice: for Jennifer, so it was said, was threatened with
nervous collapse, and her only chance lay in sleep and quiet. But in all
the rumours, discussions and communications which went on over
Jennifer’s case, Judith took no part.
Once indeed when they were all at Hall and the corridor was empty of
echoes, Judith had crept up to the door, lingered hesitating, then
noiselessly turned the handle and looked in.
The electric lamp shone beside the bed and Jennifer lay with her face
turned to the wall. All that was visible was her hair, tossed in a rough
mass over the pillow and palely burning where the dim light struck it.
Her death-like unconsciousness was intolerable pain. She should have
stirred at least, feeling a presence through all the seals of sleep....
But she did not move; and night after night the sight of that
unstirring hair upon the pillow returned, mocking her longing to reach
to Jennifer with a picture that seemed the symbol for all that was
eternally uncommunicating and imperturbable.
They said she was to be sent home before the end of term; then that her
mother had arrived, was to take her away on the morrow.
That night the message came: Jennifer wanted to say good-bye to Judith.
* * * * *
Jennifer’s boxes stood packed and strapped in a corner. Her personality
had already, terrifyingly, been drained from her two rooms. There was
now only a melancholy whisper of that which, during the two years of her
tenancy, had filled the little space between her walls with a warm
mystery. She had become identified with the quickening of imagination,
the lyrical impulse. Oh, how ridiculous, how sad, to have made one
person into all poetry! To-morrow it would all be finished.
Judith went softly from the sitting-room into the bedroom: and there was
Jennifer lying back on her pillow and waiting.
‘Hullo, darling,’ she said. Her voice was low and mournful.
‘Jennifer!’
She put out her hand and Judith took it, clung to it, while Jennifer
drew her down beside her on the bed.
‘Jennifer, darling, how are you?’
‘I’m better, I’ve slept. I was so tired. But I’m going away.’
‘I know.’
‘Don’t tell anyone, Judith, but I’m not coming back.’
‘Oh, Jennifer, what shall I do without you?’
‘Darling, I _can’t_ come back,’ she said in an urgent, painful whisper.
‘I know. I know. And I must come back, I suppose. I’m like that: I can’t
uproot. You’re wise, you never grow roots. So you can go away when you
want to without making a wound in yourself. It’s no good my pretending I
could do the same. I must wait; though goodness knows for what: the
examinations I suppose. This place without you.... Oh!’
She pressed her forehead against the hand that still held hers,
abandoning, with her last words, the effort to speak lightly.
‘Darling,’ said Jennifer. ‘It is making a wound--you ought to know.
You’re making a wound.’
‘Then why do you go away from me?’
‘Oh, Judith, I’ve got to go!’ She sighed wearily. ‘What I really wanted
to say to you was: please forgive me for everything.’
‘Forgive.... Oh, Jennifer....’
‘Don’t say there’s nothing to forgive. Say I forgive you.’
‘I forgive you then.’
‘Because I have hurt you, haven’t I?’
‘It wasn’t your fault. Nothing’s been your fault.’
‘I’ve been unhappy too. I thought I was going off my head a little while
ago.’ She sighed again. ‘It’s all such a muddle. I do get into such
muddles. I’m so used to flying to you to be got out of them, I can’t
think how I shall manage without you.’
Judith was silent, her throat aching with tears. Never to hear
Jennifer’s step hurrying along the corridor, never again to see her
burst flushed and desperate into the room crying: ‘Oh, darling, I’m in
such a muddle....’ That had been such a thing to look forward to: it had
been such pleasure to comfort, advise, explain, even though the muddles
had generally been found to be laughable trifles.
‘I wanted to say some more things, but it’s so difficult,’ Jennifer went
on. ‘Now you’re here I can’t say anything.’
‘Don’t try, darling. I’m quite happy.’
Her face had got thinner, thought Judith, her expression had little if
anything of the child left in it, and her lips which had always been
slightly parted in repose were now folded together in an unnatural line.
‘Mother’s come to fetch me.’ She laughed. ‘She is being extremely
dutiful and chilling and grieved at me. I hope you haven’t come across
her. She’s not a bit nice. I’m going to Scotland. Oh, the moors! I’ll
soon get better there. Then I’ll go abroad or something.’ She laughed
again. ‘I suppose Mother’ll try to send me back here next term. I shall
have some glorious wrangling. Perhaps they’ll wash their hands of me for
ever. If only they would! Oh, if I could be on my own!--no ties!’
Her eyes sparkled at the thought of breaking her fetters. Already, in
spite of her sorrow, she was thinking with excitement: _What next?_ She
was ready to contemplate a fresh start. Soon her indomitable vitality
would light upon and kindle fresh objects; and all around her would
live, as once you had lived, in her glow. She would have no time, no
room, to remember what had once absorbed her. Judith turned her head
away, tasting despair; for it seemed that the zest for life they had
both shared burned in Jennifer undiminished now that the time of sharing
was over; while for her it had gone out, like a snuffed candle.
Jennifer fastened her great eyes upon her, whispering: ‘You don’t know
how I shall miss you.’
Ah, she saw she had wounded,--was trying, too late, to make amends.
Judith answered, making her voice harsh and scornful:
‘Oh no, you won’t. You’ll find heaps of new thrilling people and you’ll
soon forget me.’
‘Oh----’ was all Jennifer said, beneath her breath. She shut her eyes,
and Judith saw her mouth alter and quiver. ‘You don’t understand,’ she
whispered after a long time. ‘No, you don’t understand. God, I’m in such
a muddle.’
It was no use trying to find comfort from hurting Jennifer. There was
nothing but pain to be had from the spectacle of that beloved face
shrinking and helpless. Whatever it cost all must be made easy for her.
‘I’m sorry, Jennifer, I’m sorry, my darling. There! don’t worry. I
understand. Don’t cry. Listen: it’s like this, isn’t it? You’re not
happy here any more. You’re restless. And you’ve been--been living too
hard and you’re worn out. So you want to get away from all the people
you’ve been with--all the ones you associate with feeling ill and
awful--you want to start afresh, somewhere quite new. Isn’t that it?’
‘Partly,’ whispered Jennifer.
‘Things have all gone wrong lately. And I’m involved, aren’t I? It’s
really about me that things have gone wrong. I don’t know why--but I
know it is so. So you really can’t bear to see me any more.’
‘Oh, Judith!’ She hid her face. ‘It sounds so terrible when you say it
like that: “Can’t bear to see me any more”.... Oh!’
‘But I’m right, aren’t I, Jennifer?’
‘Oh, it sounds as if it were your fault, as if you thought it was
something you’d done----’
‘Then it’s not--something I’ve done?’
‘God, no!’
The relief of that fierce denial brought a momentary illusion of
happiness, for she had painfully persisted in trying to fasten the chief
blame on herself.
‘I’m glad.... But it is true, isn’t it, that I’m involved in all that’s
gone wrong; and that you must get away from me?’
‘Oh yes, oh yes, because I can’t bear myself--because I must
forget--because the thought of you is such a reproach ... the way I’ve
treated you----’ her voice was almost inaudible.
‘Don’t, Jennifer, don’t. You’ve nothing to blame yourself for. It’s just
the way things happen. That’s how I look at it. As long as it’s not
anything I’ve done, as long as you tell me I haven’t--disappointed you
somehow, I don’t mind--much not understanding----’
‘Oh, you’re so good to me, you’re so kind. And there’s nothing I can do
except hurt you. I’ve never done anything for you.’
‘Oh, Jennifer, you’ve been all my happiness for two years.’
‘It was very silly of you to be made happy by a person like me. You
might have known I’d let you down in the end.’
‘You haven’t let me down.’
‘Yes. I’ve made you unhappy.’
It was not much use denying that.
Geraldine seemed to be in the room, watching and listening. Judith felt
her head droop as if beneath a tangible weight, and a most dreary sense
of impotence fastened upon her. What was the use of talking, when all
the time Geraldine, absent and untalked-of, controlled their secret
decisions? To ignore her made a mockery of all attempted solutions and
consolations, and yet to speak of her seemed impossible.
‘Well, you’ve been unhappy too.’
‘Yes. Oh yes. Oh, Judith! There’s something I must ask you.’
She put her face against Judith’s arm, and the desperate pressure of her
eyes, nose, lips upon the bare flesh was strange and breath-taking. Her
lips searched blindly over wrist and forearm into the hollow of the
elbow where they paused and parted; and Judith felt the faint and
thrilling touch of her teeth....
But then Jennifer flung her arm away and said in a dry and careful
voice.
‘I wanted to know: did you cry in your room night after night because
I--because of the way I was behaving?’
‘I’ve never cried, Jennifer.’
That was true enough. There were no tears to soften such arid and
infecund griefs.
‘Ah!’ she said. ‘You say that as if----’
‘Why did you think I’d cried?’
‘Oh, it was just an idea I got. Something somebody said put it into my
head and I couldn’t get rid of it. But now--I don’t know. The way you
spoke makes me almost wish you had cried: because you seemed to mean you
hadn’t been able to.’
She shut her eyes and lay still.
‘Jennifer, don’t. Don’t let’s go on. What’s the use? You know we’re not
putting anything right or doing each other any good. It’s getting
late--so I’d better go. You’ll be so tired to-morrow and it’ll be my
fault. I ought never to have come.’
‘Oh, don’t go yet!’ she besought. ‘Look. We won’t talk any more. There’s
some things I must say, but perhaps I’ll be able to say them later.’ She
sat up in bed. ‘I’ve been feeling so gloomy! Let’s try to be cheerful
for a change. Really, my gloom has been beyond a joke. I’ve wanted to
hide in a dark hole. Imagine! I think my hair must look awful. Fetch me
my brush, darling. I simply haven’t had the heart to give it a good
brushing for ages.’
Her spirits were rising: the tone of her voice had changed, and the
peculiar individuality of her manner of speech had returned with
surprising suddenness.
‘Would you like me to brush it?’ asked Judith.
‘Oh yes, darling. You’ve a lovely hand with the hair brush. Geraldine
would brush my hair for me every night, and my God, the agony!’
The brush wavered and stopped for a moment in Judith’s hand. But
Jennifer seemed unaware of any cause for embarrassment. It was as if she
had cast from her the self whose lips were sealed upon that name. It was
of no more account to her in her present mood to announce that Geraldine
had brushed her hair than to declare, as she did in the next breath,
that her hair needed washing. Geraldine no longer existed for her as a
person of dark significance. She had become dissolved like all other
grave perplexities into a uniform light ebullience and froth; and her
name had been thrown off unconcernedly and forgotten on the instant.
Amazing, terrifying, admirable creature--thought Judith--who, when life
pressed too heavily upon her, could resolve life into airy
meaninglessness; could pause, as it were deliberately, and re-charge
herself with vitality.
Judith brushed out the strange, springy electric stuff, and then buried
her face in it a moment. Surely Jennifer’s secret lay in her hair:
perhaps, if it were cut off the virtue would go out of her.
‘I’m hungry,’ said Jennifer. ‘Darling, there’s some cake in the
cupboard. Mother brought it. She does know how to minister to the flesh
I will say. She’s that sort of woman you know: holds you with hot-water
bottles and pudding and destroys you spiritually. And would you like to
make some chocolate, darling? Let’s feel bilious together for the last
time.’ She laughed cheerfully.
They ate and drank, and then Judith came and lay on the bed beside her,
and she slipped her arm beneath Judith’s thin shoulder, patting it as
she talked.
‘I forgive all my enemies,’ said Jennifer. ‘Tell Mabel I forgive her and
I hope God will cure her spots in time. She has been an enemy, hasn’t
she? She’d like to knife me. Give all my chemistry and biology books to
Dorothy. She can’t afford to buy any. I shan’t ever look at them again,
thank God. If I have to earn my living I shall direct my talents towards
something more flashy. Where shall I be, I wonder, by the summer? When
you’re all sweating over your exams I shall laugh to think of you.
‘Darling, I’ve left you my copper bowl. You always said it had nice
lights in it. If I go to Italy I’ll send you a crate of oranges for it.
It looks its best with oranges. It’s the nicest thing I’ve ever had, so
of course it’s for you. Take it and don’t forget me.’ She lay back
looking white and tired.
‘Oh, Jennifer----’ Judith clutched her hand and was speechless. After
a while she added: ‘I shall feel I haven’t quite lost you. Your lovely
bowl. It’s always seemed such a part of you.’
‘It’s all of me,’ whispered Jennifer. ‘I leave it to you.’
The momentary lightness was now past, vanishing as swiftly as it had
come. There was now such a sense of approaching desolation as had never
been before in life. This was the end.
‘Then I must say good-bye,’ said Judith.
‘Draw back the curtain.’
Judith obeyed. As she went to the window she felt Jennifer’s eyes upon
her.
The night was frosty, dark and still, and the midnight stars glittered
in trembling cold multitudes over the arch of the sky. Below the window
the unmoving trees made a blot of yet profounder darkness. Across the
court, the opposite wing of the building was just distinguishable, a
mass impenetrably deep; but there were no lights in the windows: not
even in Mabel’s. Everybody in College was asleep.
‘Oh!’ sighed Jennifer. ‘The smell of the limes, and the nightingales!
I’d like to have had them once again.’
Judith let the curtain drop and came quickly and sank on her knees by
the bed.
‘Then come back, Jennifer, and have them with me. Why not, why not?
You’ll be well by next term. Everything will be forgotten. Our last term
... Jennifer!’
‘No!’ she covered her face with her hands. ‘No, Judith, I could never
come back here. Everything’s gone all wrong. Everything’s as if--as if
it had been poisoned. I must go away and get it straight. Listen.’ She
put both arms around Judith’s neck and held her in a hard painful
embrace. ‘The things I meant to say,--I don’t think I can say them. I
thought I could before I saw you, but now you’re here it doesn’t seem
clear any more. I don’t really know what I think--what I mean, and if I
tried to explain you might--might not understand. Oh, Judith!’
She began to cry, and stopped herself. ‘There are things in life you’ve
no idea about. I can’t explain. You’re such a baby really, aren’t you? I
always think of you as the most innocent thing in the world.’
‘Jennifer, you know you can tell me anything.’
Yet she knew, while she pleaded, that she shrank from knowing.
‘Oh yes, it’s true, you understand everything.’ Jennifer tightened her
arms desperately and seemed to be hesitating, then said at last: ‘No,
I’m in a muddle. I’m afraid. I should explain all wrong, as I always do.
But I’ll write to you, darling. I may not write to you for some time: or
it may be to-morrow. But I swear I’ll write. And then I’ll explain
everything.’
‘And we’ll see each other again, Jennifer? We’ll meet often?’
‘Perhaps. I don’t know. It depends,’ she whispered. Her face was still
hidden, her arms firm in their strangling grip.
‘Oh yes, yes, Jennifer! Oh please! Why these mysteries? Jennifer--if--if
there’s somebody else you’re fond of I don’t mind. Why should it make
any difference to you and me? I’m not jealous.’
‘I’ll write to you,’ repeated Jennifer, very wearily whispering.
‘Soon then, soon, Jennifer. Tell me how you are, what you’re going to
do. Tell me if you go abroad, who--who you go with. Tell me everything.
Because I shall wonder and wonder. I shall imagine all sorts of
things.... Jennifer....’
‘Hush, darling. I’ll be all right, I swear. And I swear that _directly_
everything gets clear I’ll write to you. And then we’ll see. You do
trust me, don’t you?’
‘Yes.’
‘And you must promise me to answer.’
‘Yes.’
‘But don’t write before I write to you.’
‘No.’
‘Good-bye, my darling.’ She let her arms fall to her sides.
At the door Judith turned, forcing her mouth into a smile, but Jennifer
was not looking at her. Once again, only the tangle of her hair was
visible, burning in the lamplight.
* * * * *
The end of the term.
There had been no word from Jennifer. She had vanished. But she was to
be trusted: you had only to wait and she would write. Or was she not to
be trusted?
Her copper bowl stood on the table, and there seemed no other rumour of
her left in the whole place, save on the tongues of people; and even
they were sparing of her name, spoke it with doubt and hesitation.
On the last day of term, Judith, peering a moment into the aching
emptiness of Jennifer’s room, saw the cord of her old manly Jaeger
dressing-gown lying in the grate.
12
Then, for months, there was nothing in life save work: a careful
planning out of day and night in order that sleeping and eating and
exercise might encroach as little as possible on the working hours.
Soon, Midsummer term was back with unprecedented profusion of blossom on
the fruit trees, buttercups in the meadows, nightingale choruses in the
cedars and limes. But now it seemed neither exciting nor delightful to
be kept awake till dawn by nightingales; for sleepless nights lowered
your examination value. By day the two thrilling and unearthly
pipe-notes of the cuckoo seemed a mechanical instrument of torture: you
found yourself desperately counting the calls, waiting between each,
with a shrinking of all the nerves, for the next to strike. Almost you
resented the flowery orchards and meadows with their pagan-like riot of
renewal. You noted them with a dull eye from behind the stiff ponderous
academic entrenchment of your mind. But sometimes in the night, in
dreams, the orchards would not be denied: they descended upon you and
shook out fragrance like a blessing; they shone in pale drifts, in
clouds, in seas,--all the orchards of England came before you, luminous
and stirring beneath the moon.
From early morning till late at night the desperate meek untidy heads of
girls were bowed over tables in the library, their faces when they
lifted them were feverish and blurred with work.
Pages rustled; pencils whispered; squeaking shoes tiptoed in and out.
Somebody tapped out a dreary tune on her teeth; somebody had a running
cold; somebody giggled beneath her breath; somebody sighed and sighed.
Outside, in the sunshine, tennis racquets struck vibrantly. Long ago,
you also had played tennis in May.
Mabel had a fortification of dictionaries around her corner; whenever
you looked up she caught your eye and smiled weakly from a hollow and
twisted face. Mabel had wished evil to Jennifer. But that was so long
ago it had ceased to matter.
‘Mabel, you’ve worked four hours on end. Come to lunch now.’
‘No, thank you, Judith. I feel I don’t want any lunch. I’d rather go
straight on and perhaps have a cup of tea later.’
‘Mabel, you’re to come with me.’
She came. But as often as not she laid down her fork after one mouthful
and sat and stared in front of her; then crept back to the library.
The copper bowl was filled this term with golden tulips or with dark
brown wallflowers.
Where was Jennifer?
* * * * *
Examination week. The sky was fiercely blue all day; the air breathless,
heavy. To walk into the town was to walk into a steam bath, where
footsteps moved ever more languidly, and the dogs lay panting on the
pavement, and the clocks seemed to collect themselves with a vast effort
for their chiming.
This week there was nothing in your mind save the machine which obeyed
you smoothly, turning out dates and biographies, contrasting,
discussing, theorizing.
Judith walked in a dream among the pale examination faces that flowed to
their doom. Already at nine o’clock the heat struck up from the streets,
rolled downwards from the roofs. By midday it would be extremely
unpleasant in Cambridge.
This was the great examination hall. Girls were filing in, each carrying
a glass of water, and searching in a sort of panic for her place. Here
was a white ticket labelled Earle, J. So Judith Earle really was
expected, an integral part of this grotesque organized unreality. No
hope now.
The bench was hard. Beside her sat a kind broad cow-like creature with
sandy hair and lashes. Her ruminative and prominent eyes shed pity and
encouragement. She was a good omen.
All over the room girls’ heads turned, nodding and winking at friends,
whispering, giggling and grimacing with desperate bravery. One simulated
suicide by leaning her bosom on her fountain pen.
Just behind sat Mabel. Her face was glistening and ghastly, and she
sniffed at a bottle of smelling salts.
‘Mabel, are you going to faint?’
‘No, I don’t think so. I generally feel faintlike first thing in the
morning. I’ll get better later.’
‘Mabel, you’re not fit--you mustn’t----’
‘Sh! I’m all right. Only it makes my head feel stupid.’ She stared
aghast. ‘I don’t seem to be able to remember a thing.’
‘Don’t worry, Mabel. It’ll all come back when you settle down to it.
I’ll look around now and then and see if you’re all right.’
‘Thanks, Judith.’
‘Poor Mabel! Good luck. Wait for me afterwards and I’ll take you to have
a cup of coffee. That’ll do you good.’
‘I shall enjoy that. Good luck, Judith.’
She summoned a smile, even flushed faintly with pleasure.
Then panic descended suddenly upon Judith. Her head was like a floating
bubble; there was nothing in it at all. She caught at threads of
knowledge and they broke, withered and dissolved like cobwebs in the
hand. She struggled to throw off a crowding confusion of half-remembered
words.
_Unarm Eros, the long day’s task is done. And we must sleep.... Peace!
Peace! Dost thou not see my baby at my breast That sucks the nurse
asleep?..._ Who said that? Who could have said such a thing? _I am
Duchess of Malfi still.... Cover her face. Mine eyes dazzle. She died
young._ Beatrice died young too. _Here Mother ... bind up this hair in
any simple knot ... ay that does well.... Prithee undo this button....
Thank you, Sir.... Cordelia! Cordelia!_ So many of them died young.
There were those two, you had forgotten their names now, and Cordelia,
and Desdemona too. _O, thou weed!..._ It might be useful to remember
them.... But they had already slipped away. _This was the parting that
they had Beside the haystack in the floods._ William Morris. _Speak but
one word to me over the corn. Over the tender bowed locks of the corn._
Gold cornfield like Jennifer. _A bracelet of bright hair about the
bone._ That had always been Jennifer’s bright hair. _Only a woman’s
hair.... Calm hair, meandering in pellucid gold._ But Jennifer’s hair
had never been calm.... _Speak but one word to me._ Roddy, one whisper
from you!
It was Tennyson who said: _The wrinkled sea beneath him crawls_.... And
Browning who said: _The old June weather Blue above lane and wall._
Keats, Coleridge, Wordsworth, and Shelley.... What had they said? and
Blake:
_Bring me my bow of burning gold; Bring me my arrows of desire_....
Once you had composed a tune for that. _Bring me my bow of burning
gold_.... Oh, stop saying that now. Think about the origins of drama,
the rise of the universities, the development of the guilds, the order
of Shakespeare’s plays.... O God! A headful of useless scraps rattling
about in emptiness--
The clock struck nine.
‘You can begin now,’ said a thin voice from the däis.
There was an enormous sigh, a rustling of paper, then silence.
The questions had, nearly all, at first glance a familiar reassuring
look. It was all right. Panic vanished, the mind assembled its energies,
cooly, precisely, the pen flew.
After an hour the first pause to cool her forehead with a stick of
frozen Eau de Cologne and to sip some water. Behind, poor Mabel’s dry
little cough and sniff went on. The head bowed low over her writing
looked as if it could never raise itself again.
Girls were wriggling and biting their pens. Somewhere the tooth-tapper
was playing her dreary tune. The Cow looked up, shed a peaceful smile
around her and continued to write, with deliberation, a little impeded
by her bosom.
Another hour fled. The trouble was having too much to say, rather than
too little. The room was rigid, dark with concentration now. There came
an appalling confusion of haste and noise, and a girl rose and ran from
the room, supported by the invigilator. The handkerchief she held to her
nose was stained sickeningly with scarlet. She returned in a little
while, pallid and tearful, resumed her seat, bowed herself once more
over the paper.
Three hours. It was over. You could not remember what you had written;
but you had never felt more firm and sure of mind. Three hours nearer to
life.
Into the street once more, beneath the noon sun’s merciless
down-beating. But now its rays seemed feeble: their warmth scarcely
penetrated chilled hands and feet, or shivering, aching back.
A troop of undergraduates passed on the way from their examination room.
They looked amused and exhilarated. They stuffed their papers into their
pockets, lit pipes, straightened their shoulders and went cheerfully to
lunch.
The girls crept out in twos and threes, earnestly talking, comparing the
white slips they carried.
‘Did you do this one?’
‘What did you put for that?’
‘Oh, I say! Will they take off marks do you think?’
‘It was a beast.’
‘Oh, it might have been worse.’
Girls really should be trained to be less obviously female students. It
only needed a little discipline.
There was Mabel to be looked after. She was grateful, passive: she drank
much coffee but refused food. She broke the heavy silence once to say
with a quiet smile: ‘Of course I see now I shan’t pass--It seems a pity,
after all that work--My memory is practically gone----’
Back to the vault now for another three hours.
Suddenly round the corner came a slender, dark, sallow boy. He walked
with an idle grace, leaning slightly forward. His faint likeness to
Roddy made the heart leap; and his expression was dejected and
obstinate, just as Roddy’s would be if he were forced to spend an
afternoon scribbling infernal rubbish.
Judith paused at the entrance of the vault and looked back. His eyes
were eagerly fixed on her: and she smiled at him.
He was delighted. His funny boy face lost its heaviness and broke up
with intimate twinklings; and flashed a shyly daring inquiry at her
before he vanished round the corner.
It was like a message from Roddy, sent forward to meet her from the new
life, to say: ‘Remember I am coming.’
That day passed smoothly; and the next. The days sinking to evenings
drenched with the smell of honeysuckle and draining to phantasmal and
translucent twilights of blossom and tree-tops and starry skies, flowed
imperceptibly to their end.
Suddenly there were no answers to be written from nine till twelve, from
two till five--no lectures, no coachings, no notes, no fixed working
hours. Instead, a great idleness under whose burden you felt lost and
oppressed. The academic years were gone for ever.
13
The evening before the end of term.
Judith walked with the rest of the circle arm in arm across the grass,
down the wooded path, past the honeysuckle for the last time.
The garden spread out all her beauties that were hers alone,
overburdening the watchers, insisting:
‘See what you are leaving. Look at what you will never have again.’
The whole shrine lay wide open for the last time, baring its mysteries
of cedar and limes and nightingales, of lawns and mown hay, of
blossoming shrubs and wild flowers growing beneath them, of copper
beeches and all the high enclosing tree-tops, serenely swimming like
clouds in the last of the light.
They chose careers for each other, light-heartedly discussing the
future, and making plans for regular reunions.
‘But what’s the good?’ said one. ‘We shall all be scattered really. We
can’t come back year after year as if things would all be the same.
There’s nothing more awful than those gatherings of elderly people
trying to be girls together again. The ghastliness of pretending to get
back to where one was! If we meet again, let it be in the big world. I
shall never come back here.’
‘Oh, but I shan’t have the strength to resist it,’ said another. ‘You
see I more or less know I shall never be so happy again. I’ve got to
teach brats algebra. I shall be _pulled_ back to indulge in vain
regrets.’
‘Does it mean so much to you?’ murmured Judith. ‘You talk as if your
life was over.’
‘Something that matters--terribly to me is over,’ she said, almost
fiercely.
‘Oh!’ Judith sighed.
‘Doesn’t it mean anything to you then?’
Judith was silent, thinking how it had all meant the single tremendous
calamitous significance of Jennifer; how since her going it had been
like the muddy bed of a lake whose waters have been sapped day after day
in a long drought; like a tasteless meal to be swallowed without
appetite; like a grey drizzling unwholesome weather. Nothing had brought
even a momentary illusion of restored contentment: nothing save her
copper bowl glowing for her sake with flowers or fruit. Not one of those
to whom she had turned had been able to sooth the gnawing perpetual
sore, or bury for a single day that one face. And they knew it. The
three years’ absorption in Jennifer had separated her irrevocably from
them, and, though they had kindly welcomed her, it had been with the
tacit assumption that she was not of them.
They were so charming, so gentle, so sensitive and intelligent:
fascinating creatures: how fascinating she had never troubled to realize
and would never know now. To all, save Jennifer, that had offered
itself, she had turned an unheeding ear, a blind eye. And so much that
might have been of enduring value had offered itself: so many possible
interests and opportunities had been neglected.
There had been that girl the first year who, from the pinnacle of her
third-year eminence, had stooped, blushing and timid, with her
invitation to an evening alone. Frail temples, narrow exquisite bone of
cheek and jaw, clear little face with lips whose composure seemed the
result of a vast nervous effort, so still were they, so nearly
quivering, so vulnerable; eyes with a sad liquid brilliance in their
steadfast gaze; small head with smooth brown hair parted in the middle;
narrow hands folded in her lap; she had sat, the most important scholar
in the College, like a shadow, a moth, a bird, listening, questioning,
listening again.
She was a poet. She never showed her verses, but to you she promised to
show them. She had a mind of such immaculate clarity that you feared to
touch it: yet she was offering it to you, all that evening.
It had come to nothing after all. She had retired very soon, shrinking
from Jennifer as if she were afraid.
There had been the girl with the torturing love affair that had gone
wrong. One night she had suddenly spoken of it, telling you all. You had
lingered by her with a little tenderness and pity and then passed on.
She had said, “You won’t tell Jennifer, will you?”
There had been the girl who drew portraits and who had wanted you for a
model. There had been the silent girl who read “The Book of the Dead”
night after night in her room, who was studying, so it was whispered, to
raise the devil and who looked at you with a secret smile, half malice,
half something else; there had been that most beautiful young girl in
the first year, with her cold angelic face and shining silver-fair hair;
all those and countless others had offered themselves. There had been
Martin ignored and neglected because he disliked Jennifer. And there had
been books, far more books in far more libraries: and new poetry, new
music, new plays,--a hundred intellectual diversions which you had but
brushed against or missed altogether by secluding yourself within the
limits of an unprofitable dream.
She said at last:
‘Oh yes. It means something. I don’t know yet how much. I’m afraid now
I’ve missed a lot.’
They were all silent, and she thought with nervous dread that they were
all thinking of Jennifer.
‘Isn’t it extraordinary,’ said another, ‘how time seems to have stood
still in this place? Nothing’s moved since we’ve been here. Even though
I suppose it’s all been advancing towards the Tripos, I don’t _feel_ as
if there’d been any step forward. Everything--what’s the word?--static.
Or else just making circles. I feel I’ve been sitting in a quiet safe
pool for three years.’
‘And now we’re going to be emptied out.’
And swept into new life, thought Judith longingly. Yet her heart misgave
her. The building, caressed with sunset, looked motherly and benign,
spreading its sheltering breast for the last time above its midgets. New
life might find nothing so secure and tranquil as its dispassionate
protection.
The clock struck the hour pensively.
‘Well, I think it’s beastly,’ said one. ‘I’m going in to finish
packing.’
Where, on this calm lime-scented last evening, was Jennifer?
14
In the end there was no time to say good-bye to anyone. Girls were
scattering, flying about with labels and suitcases, or with flat-irons
to press the frocks they were to wear in May Week.
May Week had been fun last year: five nights’ dancing on end, with
Jennifer and a young cousin of hers at Trinity, and a boy in the Navy.
This year it had not seemed worth while to accept invitations.
While Judith was engaged in strapping her boxes and throwing the
accumulated rubbish of three years out of drawers and cupboards into a
heap on the floor, a maid came smiling and said a gentleman was waiting
downstairs.
It was Martin.
‘Martin! Oh, my dear!’
‘I came on the chance, Judith. I motored up to see a man who’s going
abroad. Are you--are you staying up for May Week?’
‘No, Martin. I’m catching a train in about two hours and going straight
home.’
‘_Really_ home, do you mean? Next door to us?’
‘Yes. Thank Heaven. It’s not let any more. Mother and I will be there
part of the summer anyway. Will you--will any of you be there?’
‘Mariella’s down there now, with the boy. And Roddy and I are going for
a bit. In fact I’m going to-day--motoring. That’s what I came for--to
see if you’d care to motor back with me.’
‘Drive home? Oh, how marvellous! You are an angel, Martin, to think of
me.’
He was as shy as ever, bending his head as he talked to her. Observing
him she thought that she herself had grown up. The loss of Jennifer had
given her a kind of self-assurance and maturity of manner, a staidness.
For the first time she was seeing Martin from an entirely detached and
unromantic angle, and she thought: “Then this is how I shall see Roddy.
He won’t confuse and entangle me any more. All that sort of thing is
over for me.”
‘It’s very nice to see you again, Judith. It’s ages since.... You look a
bit thin, don’t you?’
‘It’s those miserable exams, Martin. I did work so hard.... I don’t know
why.’
‘Oh! You shouldn’t have.’
He seemed quite overcome.
Dear Martin!... In some corner of her heart a weight was lifting....
Jennifer was suddenly remote.
‘Wait for me, Martin.... I’ll be ready in a quarter of an hour.’
She had not said good-bye to Mabel. She had been dreading that last
duty.... No time now, thank heaven, for anything prolonged.... Simplest
to write a little note and tell someone to stick it in her door.
She wrote:
‘Dear Mabel,
‘I have been called for unexpectedly in a car. I have only ten
minutes to finish packing and do all the last things. I knocked on
your door a little while ago but got no answer.’
She hesitated. Was it too gross? It was; but it must stand now; it
could not be crossed out.
‘And now I’m afraid I haven’t a minute to try and find you. I’m
_dreadfully_ sorry not to see you to say good-bye, Mabel. Won’t it
be sad when next October comes to think we shan’t all be meeting
again? You must write and tell me what happens to you, and I will
write to you. I dare say we shall see each other again. You must
let me know if you ever come my way----’ That must stand too....
What else?... Results would be out to-morrow--Better not to refer
to them; for Mabel had certainly failed. She had not been able to
remember anything in the end. The last three days she had given in
one of two sheets of paper blank save for a few uncertain lines.
She finished:
‘I do hope you are going to get a good long rest. You do need it.
You worked so marvellously. Nobody ever could have worked harder.
We’ve all been so sorry for you feeling so ill during tripos week.
It was terribly hard luck.
‘Good-bye and love from
‘Judith.’
Nothing could be added--There was nothing more to be said. Mabel’s face
this last week came before her, blank, haggard, still watching her from
moribund eyes, and she dismissed it. She had thought she would have to
kiss Mabel good-bye: and now she would not have to.
She must be quick now, for Martin.
The car turned out of the drive and took the dusty road.
Almost she forgot to look back to see the last of those red walls.
‘I’m saying good-bye to it, Martin. Ugh! I hate it. I love it.’
The poplars seemed to grow all in a moment and hide it. It was gone.
‘Well, Martin, how are you? What’s been happening to everybody? How are
they all?’
She was slipping back, she was slipping back.
They left Cambridge behind them, and she tried to recall it, to make it
come before her eyes, and could not. The dream of wake, the dream of
sleep--which had it been?
She wondered if she would ever remember it again.
Yesterday Martin had been standing with her under the cherry tree.
Now he was telling her about his home in Hampshire. He acted as estate
agent for his mother now that his father was dead. She must really come
and stay with them and meet his mother. He was perfectly happy farming
his own land: he never wanted to do anything else. He was improving the
fishing and shooting: they had just bought a bit of land they had been
after for two years: half a mile more river and a biggish wood. Forestry
was the most fascinating subject: he was going to take it up more
seriously. Martin’s life seemed very happy, very ordered, very clear and
useful. He knew what he wanted.
The cousins had all been scattered this last year or so. Mariella had
been working with a woman vet. in London. She had spent most of last
summer at his home because she had been hard up and obliged to let the
house on the river. Peter had been there too. He seemed a nice enough
little chap, but nervy. He had a nursery governess now, and Mariella
seemed to think more about her dogs than him. At least that was the
impression she gave. Mariella, so Martin said, had not changed at all.
Julian he had scarcely seen. He thought he wrote about music for one or
two weeklies, but he didn’t know which. Also he had heard that he was
writing a ballet, or an opera or something; but he did not suppose it
was serious. He had developed asthma since the war, poor chap, and he
spent all the winter abroad and sometimes the summer too.
And Roddy. Oh, Roddy seemed to be messing about in Paris or in London
nearly always, doing a bit of drawing and modelling. Nobody could get
him to do any work: though last year he had done some sort of theatrical
work in Paris--designing some scenery or something--which had been very
successful. He was saying now that he would like to go on the stage.
Martin laughingly said he was afraid Roddy was a bit of a waster. Anyway
he was coming for a week or so, and Judith would see him for herself.
At six o’clock in the evening they stopped before the front door of her
home. There, waiting to enfold her again, was the garden. The air was
sweet with the smell of roses and syringa, the sun-flooded lawn
stretched away towards the river, and the herbaceous border was burning
miraculously with blue delphinium spires, white and yellow lilies, and
great poppies.
‘Good-bye, Martin. It’s been lovely. We’ll meet soon, won’t we? Come and
fetch me.’
She went into the cool and shadowed hall. There was the old butler
hastening forward to receive her; and her mother’s voice came from the
drawing-room saying softly:
‘Is that my girl?’