He was still standing at the window. The street lamp, level with the
sill, was quenched to a yellow gloom. It lit up the wet striped branches
and dead bobbins of the plane-tree beside it, and the sickly undersides
of its shrivelled last leaves. I never thought a tree could look so
ghastly. Against that unnatural glitter and the luminous thick air the
man and the half-drawn curtain stood out in solid, unfamiliar bulk of
black.
I came and stood just behind him. He was so big that I only reached his
shoulder. He may have heard me: I think he did; but he did not turn. I
was not frightened of him. That was so queer, because as a rule I can’t
talk to strangers. I get nervous and red, and foolish-tongued,
especially with men. Of course I knew all the usual men, the doctor at
home, and the church people, and husbands that came back by the
five-thirty, and now all Anita’s friends, and Mr. Flood; but I never had
anything to say to them or they to me. But with Kent Rehan, somehow, it
was different. He was different. I never thought—‘This is a strange
man.’ I never thought—‘He doesn’t know me: it’s impertinent to break in
upon him: what will he think?’ I never thought of all that. I never
thought about myself at all. I was just passionately desiring to help
him and I didn’t know how to do it.
I think I stood there for four or five minutes, trying to find words,
opening my lips, and then catching back the phrase before a sound came,
because it seemed so poor and meaningless. And all the while the Baxter
girl’s words were running in my head—‘They say he was in love with her.’
With her—with Madala Grey. She was the key. I had the strangest pang of
interest in this unknown woman. Who was she? What was she? What had she
been? What had she done so to centre herself in so many, in such alien
lives? What had she in common for them all? Books, books, books—_I’d_
never heard of her books! And she was married. Yet the loss of her,
unpossessed, could bring such a look (as he turned restlessly from the
window at last) such a look to Kent Rehan’s face. I was filled with a
sort of anger against that dead woman, and I envied her. I never saw a
man look so—as if his very soul had been bruised. It was not, it was
never, a weak face, and it was not a young one; yet in that instant I
saw in it, and clearly, its own forgotten childhood, bewildered by its
first encounter with pain. It was that fleeting look that touched me so
and gave me courage, so that I found myself saying to him, very low and
quickly, and with a queer authority—
“It won’t always hurt so much. It will get easier. I promise you it
will. It does. Truly it does. In six months—I _do_ know.”
He looked down at me strangely.
I went on because I had to, but it was difficult. It was desperately
difficult. I could hear myself blundering and stammering, and using
hateful slangy phrases that I never used as a rule.
“I had to tell you. It isn’t cheek. I know—it hurts like fun. It’ll be
worst out of doors. You see them coming, you see them just ahead of you,
and then it isn’t them. But it won’t always hurt so horribly. I promise
you. One manages. One gets used to living with it. I know.”
He looked at my black dress.
“Your husband?”
“No. Mother.”
He said no more. But he did not go away from me. We stood side by side
at the window.
The voices in the other room insisted themselves into my mind again,
against my will, like the ticking of a clock in the night. I was
thinking about him, not them. But Anita called to me to put coal on the
fire and, once among them, I did not like to go back to him again.
They had re-grouped themselves at the hearth. Miss Howe was in the chair
with the chintz cover that was as pink and white and blue-ribboned as
she herself. The Baxter girl crouched on the pouf and the fire-light
danced over her by fits and starts till, what with her violet dress and
her black boy’s head with the green band in it and that orange glow upon
her, she looked like one of the posters in the Tube. The blonde lady had
pushed back her chair to the edge of the lamp-light, so that her face
was a blur and her white dress yellow-grey. Her knees made a back for
Mr. Flood sitting cross-legged at her feet, and watching the Baxter girl
as if he admired her. Once the blonde lady put her hand on his shoulder,
and he caught it and played with the rings on it while he listened to
her, and yet still watched the Baxter girl. She went on whispering, her
hand in his, till at last he put back his head and caught her eye and
laughed. Then she leaned back again as if she were satisfied. But I
thought—‘How I should hate to have that dank hair rubbing against my
skirt.’ Beside Mr. Flood lay the MS. he had brought, but I think Anita
had forgotten it. She, sitting at the table in her high-backed chair
(she never lolled), was still talking, indeed they were all talking
about this Madala Grey. Anita’s voice was as pinched as her face.
“Oh, I knew from the first what it would be! She could never do anything
by halves. She had no moderation. The writing, the work, all that made
her what she was, tossed aside, for a whim, for a madness, for a man. I
can’t help it—it makes me bitter.”
“Do you grudge it her so?” The Baxter girl looked at her wonderingly. “I
kicked at it too, of course. We all did, didn’t we? But now, I like to
think how happy she looked the last time she came here. Do you remember?
I liked that blue frock. And the scarf with the roses—I gave her that.
Liberty. She was thin though. She always worked too hard. Poor Madala!
Heigh-ho, the gods are jealous gods.”
Anita stared in front of her.
“Just gods. She served two masters. She was bound to pay.”
“You are hard,” said the Baxter girl in a low voice.
Miss Howe rocked herself.
“But don’t you know how she feels? I do. It’s the helplessness——”
Anita’s pale eye met and held her glance as if she resented that
sympathy. Then, as if indeed she were suddenly grown weak, she
acquiesced.
“I suppose so. Yes, it’s the helplessness. ‘If this didn’t happen’—‘If
that weren’t so’—Little things, little things—and they govern one. A
broken doll—a cowslip ball—stronger than all my strength. And she
needn’t have met Carey. It was just a chance. If I’d known—that day! I
used to ask her questions, just to make her talk. I remember asking her
about her old home—more to set her off than anything. I said I’d like to
see it some day. It was true. I was interested. But it was only to make
her talk. But she—oh, you know how she foamed up about a thing. ‘My old
home! Would you, Anita? Would you like to come? Wouldn’t it bore you,
Anita? It’s all spoiled, you know. But I go down now and then. Nobody
remembers me. It’s like being a ghost. Oh, I _feel_ for ghosts. Would
you really like to come? Shall we go soon? Shall we go today?’ And then,
of course, down we go. And then we meet Carey. And then the play
begins.”
Miss Howe shook her head.
“Ends.”
Anita accepted it.
“Ends. Then the play ends.” And then, frowning—“If I’d known that day—if
I’d known! I was warned, too. That’s strange. I’ve never thought of it
from that day to this. If I were an old wife now——” She shivered.
“What happened?” said the Baxter girl curiously.
“Oh, well, off we went! We had a carriage to ourselves. I was glad. I
thought she might talk.”
“And you always tried to make her talk,” said Miss Howe softly.
Anita went on without answering her.
“She grew quite excited as we travelled down, talking about her ‘youth.’
She always spoke as if she were a hundred.”
“She put something into that youth of hers, I shouldn’t wonder,” said
Miss Howe.
“She did. The things she told me that day. I knew she had been in
America, but I never dreamed——She landed there, if you please, without a
penny in her pocket, without a friend in the world.”
“I never understood why she went to America,” said Miss Howe. “I asked
her once.”
“What did she say?” said Anita curiously.
“To make her fortune. But I never got any details out of her.”
“Didn’t you know?” said Anita. “Her people emigrated. The father failed.
It happened when Madala was eighteen, and she and her mother persuaded
him, expecting him, literally, to make their fortunes. The mother seems
to have been an erratic person. Irish, I believe. Beautiful.
Extravagant. I have always imagined that it was her extravagance—but
Madala and the husband seem to have adored her. I remember Madala saying
once that her father had been born unlucky, ‘except when he married
Mother!’ I suspect, myself, that that was the beginning of his ill-luck.
Anyhow, when the crash came, they gathered together what they had and
started off on some romantic notion of the mother’s to make their
fortune farming. America. Steerage. The _Sylvania_.”
“_Sylvania?_ That’s familiar. What was it? A collision, wasn’t it?”
“No, that was the _Empress of Peru_. The _Sylvania_ caught fire in
mid-ocean—a ghastly business. There were only about fifty survivors.
Both her people were drowned.”
“Oh, that’s what she meant,” began Miss Howe, “that time at the Academy.
We were looking at a storm-scape, and she said—‘People don’t know. It’s
not like that. They wouldn’t try to paint it if they knew.’ She was
quite white. Of course I never dreamed——Poor old Madala! Well, what
happened?”
“Oh, she reached America in what she stood up in. There was a survivors’
fund, of course, but money melts in a city when you’re strange to it.”
“Couldn’t she have come back to England?”
“I believe she had relations over here, but her mother had quarrelled
with them all in turn. They didn’t appreciate her mother and that was
the unforgivable sin for Madala. She’d have starved sooner than ask them
to help her. I shouldn’t wonder if she did, too!—half starve anyway. I
shouldn’t wonder if those first bare months haven’t revenged themselves
at last.”
“Oh, if one had known!” began the Baxter girl. “How is it that no one
ever knows—or cares?”
“You? You were a schoolgirl. Who had heard of her in those days? But she
made friends. There was a girl, a journalist, who had been sent to
interview the survivors. She seems to have helped her in the beginning.
She found her a lodging—oh, can’t you see how she uses that lodging in
_Eden Walls_?—and gave her occasional hack jobs, typing, and now and
then proof-reading. Then she got some work taken, advertisement work,
little articles on soaps and scents and face-creams that she used to
illustrate herself. She was comically proud of them. She kept them all.”
“I suppose in her spare time she was already working at _Eden Walls_?”
“No. I asked her. And she said—‘Oh, no, I was too miserable. Oh, Anita,
I _was_ miserable.’ And then she began again telling funny stories about
her experiences. No, she was back in England before she began _Eden
Walls_. However, she seems to have made quite a little income at last,
even to have saved. And then, just when she began to see her way before
her to a sort of security, then she threw it all up and came home.”
“Just like Madala! But why?”
“Heaven knows! Homesick, she said.”
“But she hadn’t got a home!”
“It was England—the English country—the south country—the Westering Hill
country. She used to talk about it like—like a lover.”
“Isn’t that more probable?” said Mr. Flood.
“What?”
“A lover.”
“Carey?”
“Not necessarily Carey.”
Anita looked at him with a certain approval.
“Ah—so you’ve thought of that, too? Now what exactly do you base it on?”
He shrugged and smiled.
“Delightfullest—my thoughts are thistle-down.”
“But you have your theory?” She pinned him down. “I see that you too
have your theory.”
“Our theory.” He bowed.
“You’ve got wits, Jasper.”
“What are you two driving at?” Miss Howe fidgeted.
“We’re evolving a theory—a theory of Madala Grey. Who lived in the south
country, Anita?”
“Carey, for that matter.”
“Matters not. She didn’t come home for Carey. You can’t make books
without copy. Not her sort of book. Any more than you can make bricks
without straw. But she didn’t make her bricks from his straw, that I’ll
swear.”
“No, she didn’t come home for Carey,” said Anita. “I tell you, that was
the day she met him. It’s barely a year ago. She had made her name twice
over by then. She was already casting about for her third plot. I think
it was that that made her so restless. She’d grown very restless. But
she certainly didn’t come home for Carey.”
“Then why?”
“Homesick.”
“That’s absurd.”
“I’m telling you what she said. She insisted on it. She used a queer
phrase. She said—‘I longed for home till my lips ached.’”
The lady with Mr. Flood stirred in her shadows.
“She didn’t imagine that. That happens. That is how one longs——” She
broke off.
“For home?” he said, with that smile of his that ended at his mouth and
left his eyes like chips of quartz.