Part 11

I got him to the sofa while the rest of them crowded and clamoured, and then I found myself taking command. I made them keep off. I sent Anita for water and a towel and I bathed his forehead where he had cut it on the moulding of the door. Mr. Flood wanted to send for a doctor, but I wouldn’t have it. I knew how he would hate it. Then someone—the Baxter girl, I think—giggled hysterically and said something about a black eye tomorrow, and then—“How did it happen?” “Did you see, Miss Summer?” And at that they all began to clamour again like an orchestra after a solo, repeating in all their voices—“Yes, what happened? What on earth was it? Did you see him? Some sort of a seizure? I told you twice to shut that door. The draught——Are you better now, old man? Kent—what happened?”

They were crowding round him again. He pointed a shaking finger.

“She saw,” he said. “She knows——”

“Jenny?” Anita turned on me sharply, an employer addressing a servant at fault. “Oh, of course—you were in here too. What happened then?”

I had a helpless moment.

“Well?” she demanded.

I stared at her. It was incredible, but there was actually jealousy in her voice. It said, pitifully plainly—‘Again I have missed the centre of a situation!’

“Well?” she repeated. And then—“If you saw something——” She altered the phrase—“Tell us what you saw.”

But I had not missed the quick fear that had shown, for a moment, in Kent’s eyes—fear of betrayal even while his tongue was betraying him.

I laughed. I thought to myself as I answered, ‘Oh, I am doing this beautifully!’ And I was. My voice sounded perfectly natural, not a bit high. I had plenty of words. I said, most jauntily—

“Oh, Cousin Nita, I could hardly see my own nose. The fog had been simply pouring in. My fault—I didn’t latch the door properly, I suppose. And then you called, and Mr. Rehan went to shut it for me, and he slithered on the mat, and——”

“I see!”

“Of course! Parquet——” The Baxter girl took a step or two and pirouetted back to us. “Perfect! You ought to give a dance, Miss Serle.”

Anita made no answer, but taking the can and the towel she opened the door of dispute, and, stooping an instant on the threshold to lift some small object from the floor, went out of the room. We heard her set down her load on the landing, and the rattle of the sash as she threw up the window, paused, and shut it again. She came back. A fresh inflow of acrid vapour preceded her and set us coughing. It was the stooping, I suppose, that had reddened her cheeks, for she was flushed when she came back to us. It was the only time that I ever saw my cousin with a colour. She spoke to us, a little gaspingly, as if the fog had caught her too by the throat—

“Jenny’s quite right. One can’t see an inch in front of one. No—not a cab in hearing. You’ll have to resign yourselves to staying on indefinitely. What? oh, what nonsense, Kent! As if I’d let you go in that state! Besides, there’s Jasper’s poem. Are you going away without hearing it?” The soft monologue continued as she shepherded them to the fire. “That’s always the way—one talks—one gets no work done. Get under the light, Jasper! Beryl, help me to move the table. Oh yes, Jasper, I forgot to tell you, I met Roy Huth the other day and he had just read——”

I heard a movement behind me. I turned. Kent had half risen. He spoke—

“Sit down. Sit down here.” He touched the cushion beside him.

I shook my head.

“Not yet. My cousin——”

“Ah——”

We were silent.

I watched Anita. She stood a few moments in unsmiling superintendence, while the women settled themselves and Mr. Flood sorted his papers and cleared his throat. Then, as I had known she would do, she returned soft-footed to her purpose. At the same moment I left Kent Rehan’s side. When she reached the archway between the two rooms, I was there.

“And now——” she confronted me—“what happened?”

“I told you.”

She smiled.

“Did you? I have forgotten. Tell me again.”

“Anita—he slipped. He fell. He was shutting the door.”

“Did he replace this?” She opened her little hand. The wedge of paper that I had twisted lay on her palm. “It was shut in the door when I opened it just now.” She waited a moment. Then, with a certain triumph—“Well?”

I said nothing. What was there to say?

She tossed it from her.

“Don’t be silly, Jenny! What was it? _Who_ was it?” Her eyes were horribly intelligent.

“He slipped. He fell. He was shutting the door.” I felt I could go on saying that for ever and ever.

The red patches in her cheeks deepened. She spoke past me, rudely, furiously—

“I intend to know. I’ve a perfect right——Kent, I intend to know.”

I put out my arms carelessly, though my heart was thudding, and rested them against the doorposts.

“He’s shaken—a heavy man like that. Better leave him alone.”

“I intend to know,” she insisted. And then—“Jenny! _Jenny!_ Let me pass.”

“No!” I said.

For a second we stood opposed, and in that second I realized literally for the first time (so dominating had her personality been) that she was shorter than I. She was dwindling before my eyes. I found myself looking down at her with almost brutal composure. That I had ever been afraid of her was the marvel! For I was young, and she was elderly. I was strong, and she was weak. Her bare arms were like sticks, but mine were round and supple, and I could feel the blood tingle in them as my grip tightened on the woodwork. She was only Anita Serle, the well-known writer; but I was Jenny Summer, and Kent was needing me.

“Jenny—you will be sorry!” Her eyes and her voice were one threat. Such eyes! Eyes whose pupils had dilated till the irids were mere threads that encircled jealousy itself—jealousy black and bitter—jealousy that had stolen upon us as the fog had done, obscuring, soiling, stifling friend and enemy alike—jealousy of a gift and a great name, of a dead woman and a living man and their year of happiness—jealousy beyond reason, beyond pity—jealousy insatiable, already seeking out fresh food, turning deliberately, vengefully, upon Kent and upon me.

I felt sick. I had never dreamed that there could be such feelings in the world. And now she was going to Kent, to probe and lacerate and poison—

“No!” I said.

Actually she believed that she could pass me!

I still held fast by the door-posts, and she did not use her hands. We were silent and decorous, but for an instant our bodies fought. She was pressed against me, panting—

“_No!_” I said.

Then she fell away, and without another word turned and went back into the other room.

I saw Miss Howe whisper some question. There was an instant’s silence. Then her answer came—

“Much better leave him alone. Yes—rather shaken—a heavy man like that.”

It was defeat. She was using my very words, because, for all her fluency, she had none with which to cover it.

I was sorry. I felt a brute. But what else could I have done? I stood a moment watching her recover herself. Then I went back to Kent.

He did not look up, but he moved a little to give me room. I sat down beside him. We were shut away between the wall and the window, in the shadow, out of sight of the others. It was very peaceful. Now and then I looked at Kent, but he was staring before him. He had forgotten all about me again, I knew. But I was content. It made me happy to be sitting by him. My thoughts hopped about like birds after crumbs. I remember wondering what I should do on the morrow—where I should go? That Anita would have me in the house another twenty-four hours was not likely. I had ten pounds. I did not care. I knew that I ought to be anxious, but I could not realize the need. I could not think of anything but him; yet I was afraid to speak to him. He sat so still. His face was set in schooled and heavy lines. There came a stir and a clash of voices from the other room, but he did not seem to hear it. It was only the end of a poem. In a little it had settled down again into the same monotonous hum, but for a moment I had thought that it was the break-up, and after that I had no peace. It had scared me. It made me realize that I had only a few minutes—half an hour at most—and that then he would be going away—and when should I see him again? Never—maybe never! He had his life all arranged. He didn’t even know my name. I felt desperate. I couldn’t let him go. I didn’t know what to do. I only knew that—that I couldn’t bear it if he went away from me.

It was then that he moved and straightened himself in his chair with a sigh, that heavy, long-drawn sigh that men give when they make an end. ‘Work or play, joy or grief, it’s done with. And now——?’ Such a sigh as you never hear from women. But then we are not wise at ending things.

I thought that he was getting up, that he was going then and there, and instinctively I hurried into speech, daring anything—everything—his own thoughts of me—rather than let him go.

“Yes—that’s over!” I translated softly.

He turned with such a stare that I could have smiled.

“I meant that. How did you know?”

“Why shouldn’t I know?” I did smile then. It made him smile back at me, but doubtfully, unwillingly.

“Can you read thoughts—too?” The last word seemed to come out in spite of himself.

“Not always. Yours I can.” My face was burning. But I could have spared myself the shame that made it burn, for he did not understand. My voice said nothing to him. My face showed him nothing. He was thinking about himself. But he leant forward in that way he has—a dear way—of liking to talk to you.

“Can you? I never can. Only when I paint. I can put them into paint, of course. But not words. _She_ said——” and all through the subsequent talk he avoided the name—“she said it was laziness, a lazy mind. But I always told her that that was her fault. I—we—her people—were just wool: she knitted us into our patterns. She was a wonder. You know, she—she was good for one. She was like bread—bread and wine——” His voice strained and flagged.

I nodded.

“Yes. I felt that too.”

He glanced sideways at me.

“Ah, then you knew her?” His voice (or I imagined it) had chilled. It began to say, that faint chill, that if I too were of ‘the set,’ he could not be at ease. But I would not give him time to think awry.

“No, no! Only tonight. But I do know her.”

“Tonight?”

“Tonight,” I said and looked at him.

“Then——” his hand tightened on the chair, “you saw? I was right? You _did_ see?”

“I saw—something,” I admitted.

“Some one?”

I nodded.

His face lighted up. He pulled in his chair to me.

“Her hands—did you notice her hands? I have a drawing of them somewhere. I’ll show it to you——” He stopped short: Then—“What is your name?” he asked me.

“Jenny. Jenny Summer.”

He considered that fact for a moment and put it aside again.

“I’d like you to see it. Anita will want it for that damned scrap-book of hers. She’ll be worrying at me—they all will.”

“You won’t let it go?” I said quickly.

He shook his head.

“No. But they can’t understand why. They can’t understand anything. They thought I was mad just now. So I was, for that matter. To see her again, you know—to see her again——”

“I know,” I said.

He laughed nervously.

“Hallucination, of course. Thought transference. What you please. They’d say so. Do you think so? And I’d been thinking of my picture of her. Oh, I admit it. So we must look at the matter in the light of common-sense.”

“But I saw her too.”

His eyes softened, and his voice.

“Yes. You were there. That’s comfort. You saw her too—standing there with her dear hands full of cowslips——”

“A torch,” I said.

“Cowslips——” he checked on the word. “_What?_”

“She was carrying a candle,” I insisted. “It had just been lighted. She was holding it so carefully.”

We stared at each other.

“You’re sure?”

“Sure.”

He fell back wearily in his chair.

“What’s the good of talking? She’s dead. That’s the end of it. I was dreaming. Of course. But when you said that you saw, for a moment I believed——What does it matter? What does it matter anyway? But her hands were full of cowslips.”

I turned to him eagerly. I knew what to say. It was as if the words were being whispered to me.

“That was your Madala Grey. But mine—how could she be the same? Oh, can’t you see? We’ve never seen the real Madala Grey. She gave—she became—to each of us—what we wanted most. She wrote down our dreams. She _was_ our dreams. Can’t you see what she meant to my cousin? Anita toils and slaves for her little bit of greatness. But _she_ was born royal. That’s why Anita hates her so—hates her and worships her. Why, she’s been a sort of star to you all—a symbol—a legend—

“But the real Madala Grey—she wasn’t like that. She was just a girl. She was hungry all the time. She was wanting her human life. And he, the man they laugh at, ‘the thing she married,’ he did love that real Madala Grey. Why, he didn’t even know of the legend. Don’t you see that that was what she wanted? She could take from him as well as give. Life—the bread and wine—they shared it. Oh, and it’s him I pity now, not you. Not you,” I said again, while my heart ached over him. “You—can’t you see what she showed you? Not herself——”

“What then?” he said harshly.

I made the supreme effort.

“But what—a woman—one day—would be to you.”

I thought the silence would never break.

The strange courage that had been in me was suddenly gone. I felt weak and friendless. I wanted to cry. I waited and waited till I could bear it no longer. Then I lifted my eyes desperately, with little hope, to read in his face what the end should be.

I found him looking at me fixedly—_at_ me, you understand, not through me to a subject that absorbed him, but at me myself. It was as if he were seeing me for the first time. No—as if he recognized me at last.

Then the doubts went, and the shame and the loneliness. It made me so utterly happy, that look on his face. I felt my heart beating fast.

He said then, slowly—I can remember the words, the tone and pitch of his voice, the very shaping of his mouth as he said it—

“Do you know—it’s strange—you remind me of her. You are very like her. You are very like Madala Grey.”

The hunger in his voice hurt me. I wanted to put my arms round him and comfort him. I might have done it, for I knew I was still but half real to him. But I sat still—only, with such a sense in my heart of a trust laid upon me, of an inheritance, of a widening and golden future, I said to him—

“Yes. I know.”

PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

● Transcriber’s Notes:

○ Missing or obscured punctuation was silently corrected.

○ Typographical errors were silently corrected.

○ Inconsistent spelling and hyphenation were made consistent only when a predominant form was found in this book.

○ The cover image was created by the transcriber and is placed in the public domain.