Part 12
He held her close and more close. Then, with a gruesome pang, he checked the name that was on his lips. In the poor comedy of his heart there was room for but one thought: gratitude to Joyce; Joyce who in the unstained bravery of her spirit had taught him anew the worth and miracle of love and whose only reward had been suffering. Her name, so long echoed in his unuttered voice, now filled his mind and terrified him. Here, with Phyllis in his arms, he was thinking of her; this frail ghost of passion came between them. In physical sickness his embrace grew faint. It could not be: the last scruple of his manhood revolted against this consummate deceit.
Still half in dream, Phyllis divined him laggard. She crept closer. “Oh, Martin, Martin,” she whispered. “I knew you’d come.”
* * * * *
Now he knew where the dark current of the hours had been bearing him. Nothing else was possible. Quietly, without anger or surprise, in the relief of one free to face his destiny, he left the room and went down the stair. His hand was out to turn the knob when he saw that Joyce’s door was opening toward him.
XIX
Joyce lay in a trance of weariness. A nervous tremolo shivered up and down from her knees to her stomach; her spirit seemed lost and dragged under into the strange circling life of the body, stubborn as that of a tree, that goes on regardless of the mind. I don’t care, she thought, I’m glad I’m alive. She was too inert to close her hot eyes or turn over into the pillow to shut out sounds from her sharpened ears. She heard George’s step on the garden path, Phyllis come downstairs and go to the kitchen. Beneath everything else was the obbligato of the house itself; twinges of loose timbers, the gurgle and rush of plumbing, creak of beds, murmuring voices, soft shut of doors. Tenacious life reluctantly yielding itself to oblivion. Then into this fading recessional came the low sough in the pines, the slackening volleys of the crickets like a besieging army that had withdrawn its troops. And the far-away cry of a train. She imagined it, trailing panes of golden light along the shore, or perhaps darkly curtained sleeping cars partitioned into narrow kennels where mysterious people lay alone: and the bursting silver plume of its whistle, spirting into the cool night, tearing a jagged rent in silence, shaking the whole membrane of elastic air that enveloped them all, a vibration that came undulating over the glittering bay, over the lonely beaches, trembled beside her and went throbbing away.... She hadn’t been down to the beach yet, past the rolling dunes that gave her childhood a first sense of fatal solitude. She tried to remember how that shore looked: wideness, sharp air, the exact curved triangle of sails leaning into unseen sweetness of breeze, steep slides of sand over-tufted above by toppling clumps of grass. If one could escape down there and go bathing in moonlight; come back cleansed, triumphant.
* * * * *
The whisper at the window sill startled her. She knew Bunny at once.
“You must get him away. Before it’s too late, before he knows.”
Joyce understood perfectly; so perfectly it didn’t seem necessary to say anything. This was just what she had been telling herself.
She nodded.
“I kept calling him while you were all in the living room. I was here at this window. He won’t listen. He thinks I’m just teasing him.”
Joyce remembered Martin closing the door.
“Then I called _you_. I was so afraid you wouldn’t hear me. It’s awful to be helpless.”
“Bunny, you’re not helpless. Tell me what to do.”
“What room is he in?”
“I don’t know. Yes, I do, I think it’s at the end of the passage, next the bath.”
“The old nursery. Oh, if I could come indoors. I can’t; they’ve forgotten me.”
“We’ll manage,” Joyce whispered. “I always knew you and I would have to help each other.”
“He must find something to take him back. You are the one who can help.”
Joyce knew there was some secret here too beautiful to be said. Bunny could not tell her, it must be guessed.
“Is it something I gave him?”
“Something you’d like to keep.”
“Is it the mouse? Bunny, how can we find it? That was a lifetime ago.”
“Perhaps it’s in the nursery. In the old toy cupboard.”
“I’ll get it in the morning.”
“That may be too late. Now, to-night.”
“Oh Bunny, tell me plainly. Is it the mouse you mean?”
She was tugging fiercely to raise the screen, jammed in its grooves. Her fingers still tingled from the sharp edges of the shallow metal sockets. Only the empty garden, the sinking candy-peel moon beyond the black arc of hill.
The impression was vivid upon her. There was only one thing to do, she must go through the sleeping house to Martin’s room, rouse him, tell him at once. She rose from bed and opened the door.
* * * * *
He was there, holding out his hand; motionless as though he had been waiting so all the shining night. She took it mechanically.
“Who is it?” she said.
“Who else could it be?”
But at first she had thought it was Martin, somehow warned by Bunny. They stood aghast of one another, in silence, awkwardly holding hands. It was not like a meeting, it was like a good-bye.
The declining moonlight limned her cloudily. But this was no silly dream. He saw her revealed in all her wistful beauty, meant from the beginning for him.
“George, we must get Martin out of the house----”
Martin again. Evidently, he thought, the gods intend to wring the last drop of comedy out of me.
“Damn Martin,” he said softly. “Joyce, I didn’t find you at last to talk about _him_. Dear, I told you we’d know it if the time came.”
Was this what Bunny meant by giving? I have nothing to give. The Me he loves has gone somewhere. How can I tell him? Instead of the imagined joy and communion there’s only horror. And I want so to love him.
He had carried her to the couch and was kneeling beside her. Oh, if I could lay down the burden of this heavy, heavy love. If I could love him gladly, not just bitterly. Is this the only way to save him from knowing? Such a little thing, that I wanted to keep for myself. She turned from him convulsively and buried her face in the pillow. He mustn’t see my tears. The cruellest thing is he’ll think I don’t love him. No man was ever so loved. But I gave myself, long ago, to the dream of him. I can’t mix it with the reality.
She turned, in a mercy of pure tenderness.
“George, dear George, I meant what I said.”
I’ll do whatever you tell me, I’ll do whatever you tell me. But he divined her misery. The brave words trembled. She lay before him, white, inaccessible, afraid. Exquisite, made for delight with every grace that the brave lust of man has dreamed; and weariness, anxiety, some strange disease of the spirit, frustrated it. Their love too was a guest of honour, a god to be turned away. She lay there, her sweet body the very sign and symbol of their need, and he knew nothing but pity, as for a wounded child. In that strange moment his poor courage was worthy of hers. God pity me for a fool, he thought. But I love her best of all because I shall never have her.
“I’m going to tell you the truth,” he began----
A jarring crash shook the house, followed by a child’s scream. He rose heavily to his feet, tightened and nauseated with terror. He knew exactly what must have happened. The railing on the sleeping porch, which he had forgotten to mend. One of the children had got out of bed, stumbled against it, the rotten posts had given way. If she had fallen from that height ... he pictured a broken white figure on the gravel. This was his punishment for selfishness and folly. Oh, it is always the innocent who suffer.
With heaviness in his feet he hurried through the dining room and veranda. All was still: looking up he could see the balcony unaltered. Then, through the open windows above he heard the unmistakable clang of metal on a wooden floor. Ben’s bed.
Unable to shake off his conviction of disaster he ran upstairs. Phyllis was crouching in the passage, comforting Janet. “I had a bad dream,” the child sobbed, “then there was that awful noise.”
“There, there, darling, you’re all right now. We all have dreams sometimes. You can come into bed with Mother.”
There was the bleat of one of the talking dolls. “_Maaa-Maa!_” it cried, and Sylvia appeared, sleepily stolid. “Is it to-morrow?” she asked.
“I thought the porch had broken down,” said Phyllis hysterically. “George, did you fix that railing?”
“Nonsense. The porch is all right. Get back to sleep, little toads.”
“What was it, Ben’s bed?”
“Ben’s! No such luck, it’s mine,” said Ruth, opening the door. “Where does the light turn on? I can’t find the button.” She saw George and gave a squeak of dismay.
She needn’t be so damned skittish, he thought angrily. Nightgowns don’t seem to be any novelty in this house. “Phyl, you take Janet into bed, I’ll put Sylvia on the window seat. Keep them off that porch till I’ve mended the railing in the morning.”
Ben was grumbling over the wreckage. “George, what’s the secret of this thing? Lend a hand.”
“I’m frightfully sorry,” said George. “I ought to have warned you. Here, I can fix it, there’s a bit of clothesline----”
“For Heaven’s sake, don’t start tinkering now,” said Ruth, who had dived into the other bed. “I’m all right here, and Ben can sleep on the mattress.”
* * * * *
Her door was open, she stood anxiously waiting as he came downstairs at last. She had put on her wrapper, he noticed with a twinge.
“Ruth’s bed had a blow-out,” he said. “At least I thought _she_ was safe when she’s between the sheets.” He felt that he ought to want to laugh, but he had no desire to. I suppose it’s because I’ve got no sense of humour. “Mr. Martin seems the only one who knows that night is meant to forget things in. Well, let him sleep. He’ll be on his way early in the morning.”
She did not answer at once, searching for the words that would help him most.
“I must go too. George, you must let me. I’d only spoil your Picnic.”
“You’ll miss a lot of nice sandwiches,” he said bitterly. “I made them myself, white meat.”
With divine perception she saw the nature of his wound, the misery of his shame and self-abasement. It was not love of her he needed now, but love of himself, to keep life in him.
“We wouldn’t have any chance to be _us_, we couldn’t talk, we must say it now.”
He remembered that once they had promised themselves they would never say it.
“It’s better so, I suppose. Then there won’t be even one sorrow that we haven’t shared.”
“Sorrow?” she said. “Let’s call it joy. Dear, I shall always worship you as the bravest and most generous I have ever known. To do without things one can’t have, what credit is that? But to do without what one might have had.... George, let me try to get a little rest. I feel so ill.”
He tucked her in and patted her shoulder.
“Good-night, dear,” he said. “Don’t worry. Everything will be all right in the morning. God bless you.... Don’t forget any of the things I haven’t told you.”
She knew that this was as near being one of his Moments as he could be expected to manage. He had turned the corner, at least three of the Georges would live. And the Fourth--well, she had that one where nothing mortal now could blot or stain him. For ever.
* * * * *
“In the morning” ... it was morning already. As he lay down on the couch he could feel, rather than see, the first dim fumes of day. The brief hush and interim was over, the pink moon had gone. The last of the crickets flung the password to the birds, treetops began to warble. A new link in the endless chain picked up the tension of life. Somewhere over the hillside a cock was crowing his brisk undoubting cheer.
So this was what they called victory. What was the saying?---- One more such victory.... Not even those last merciful words of hers could acquit him of his own damnation. All the irony, none of the bliss. The world hung about his neck like the Mariner’s dead albatross. The charnel corpse clung to him, rotting, with bony skull and jellied festering eye. But even the Mariner was worthier, having killed the bird; he himself had only maimed it. There would not even be the sharp numbing surgery of good-bye. Endlessly, through long perspectives of pain, he could see themselves meeting, smiling and parting, to encounter once more round the next corner of memory and all the horror to be lived again. We’re experienced in partings, he had said once.
The gradual summer dawn crept up the slopes of earth, brimmed and brightened, and tinctures of lavender stained the sweetened air. The hours when sleep is happiest, ere two and two have waked to find themselves four, and the birds pour the congested music of night out of their hearts. And the day drew near: the day when men are so reasonable, canny, and well-bred; when colour comes back to earth and beneficent weary necessities resume; the healthful humorous day, the fantastic day that men do well to take so seriously as it distracts them from their unappeasable desires. With an unheard buzz of cylinders the farmer’s flivver twirled up the back lane and brought the morning milk.
XX
Janet was surprised to find that she had gone abroad during the night. She was puzzled until she noticed that where she lay she could see herself reflected in the dressing-table mirror, which was tilted forward a little. The shoehorn, that held it at the proper angle for Mother’s hair, had slipped down. So the whole area of the big bed was visible in the glass, and the mounded hill of white blanket that must be Mother. Under the snug tent of bedclothes Janet could feel the radiating warmth coming from behind her. She experimented a little, edging softly closer to see how near she could get to that large heat without actually touching it. How warm grown-up people’s bodies are!
The curtains rippled inward in the cool morning air. The light was very grey, not yellow as it ought to be on the morning of a picnic. Her clothes were on the floor beside the bed. Clothes look lonely with nobody in them. She watched herself in the glass, opening her mouth and holding up her hand to see the reflection do the same thing. Then the clock downstairs struck seven, and she felt it safe to slip out. In the glass she saw the blankets open, a pair of legs grope outward. Cautiously, not to rouse Mother, she picked up her clothes and got to the door. As she turned the knob one shoe fell with a thump. She looked anxiously at the rounded hill. It stirred ominously, but said nothing.
Sylvia, with sheets and blankets trailing from her, lay like a bundle of laundry on the window seat. Janet woke her, they sat dressing and babbling together, now and then shouting along the passage to Rose, who slept with Nounou. Rose kept opening the nursery door to ask what they said, then, while the remark was being repeated, Nounou’s voice would command her to shut it. Janet, with brown knees hunched under her chin, picked at shoelace knots. Sylvia, in her deliberate way, was planning this time to get her shirt on right side forward. She announced several times her intention of drinking plenty of ginger ale at the Picnic, because peanut butter sandwiches make you so thirsty. She kept saying this in the hope of learning, from Janet’s comment, whether milk has to be drunk at Picnics. Janet did not contradict her, so Sylvia felt that the ginger ale was a probability.
Ruth, lying in a delicious morning drowse, rather enjoyed their clatter, as one does enjoy the responsibilities of others. Refreshed by long slumber, she relished the seven-o’clock-in-the-morning feeling of a house with children in it. A sharp rumour of bacon and coffee came tingling up the back stairs. She lazily reckoned the number of people who would be using the bathroom. It would be a good plan to get ahead of the traffic. But while she was trying to make the decision she heard the children hailing George. He said something about not leaning out of the windows without any clothes on. “We’re trying to see if there are cobwebs on the lawn, when there’s cobwebs it’s not going to rain.” Then his steps moved along the corridor. She relapsed into her warm soothing sprawl. Besides, it’s always a nuisance to get down too early and have to wait about for breakfast. She liked to arrive just when the coffee was coming fresh onto the table.
She looked forward to an entertaining day. Nothing is more amusing than one’s friends in the knot of absurd circumstance. She had been afraid of Joyce; but certainly last night the girl had made a fool of herself. And Phyllis, the cool and lovely Phyllis, usually so sure, she too would be on the defensive. The life of women like Ruth sometimes appears a vast campaign of stealth. They move like Guy Fawkes conspirators in the undervaults of society, planting ineffective petards in one another’s cellars.
She enjoyed herself trying to foresee what Phyllis’s strategy would be. I think I’ll take pains to be rather nice to Mr. Martin. In spite of his simplicity there’s something dangerous about him. It would be fun to allay his suspicions and then, when she got him in clear profile against the sky, shoot him down without mercy. She felt an agreeable sensation of being on the strong side; of having underneath her the solid conventions and technicalities of life--as comfortable and reassuringly supportive as the warm bed itself. Not a very lucky analogy, perhaps: she looked over at Ben, who was still asleep on the floor. He looked pathetic beside the collapsed bed frames, his dejected feet protruding at the end of the mattress. But that was the satisfying thing about Ben: he was conquered and beaten. He would never surprise her with any wild folly. Urbane, docile, enduring, he knew his place. Properly wedged into his seat in the middle of the row, he would never trample on people’s toes to reach the aisle between the acts. The great fife and drum corps might racket all around him, he would scarcely hear it. There was cotton in his ears. Any resolute woman, she reflected sagely, even without children to help her, can drill a man into insensibility.
* * * * *
George allowed the bath water to splash noisily while he cleaned his teeth, but he always turned off the tap while shaving. He shaved by ear as much as by sight or touch. Unless he could hear the crackling stroke of the razor blade he was not satisfied that it was cutting properly.
“How soon do you think the Pony will come?” Janet had asked him as he came upstairs. The children had found some deceptive promotion scheme advertised in a cheap magazine of Nounou’s. The notice had led them to believe that if they solved a very transparent puzzle they would easily win the First Prize, a Shetland pony. They had answered the puzzle and now were waiting daily to hear the patter of hoofs up the lane. To George’s dismay he had found that they took this very seriously. They had swept out an old stall in the stable and ravished a blanket from Rose’s bed to keep Prince (whose name and photograph had appeared in the advertisement) from being cold at night. He had tried, gently, to caution them, explaining that the original puzzle had only been preliminary lure for some subscription-getting contest. Undismayed they had badgered Lizzie, the ice man, and a couple of neighbours into signing up at twenty-five cents each. They paid no heed to his temperate warnings that it would be impossible to get many subscriptions for so plebeian a journal. He wondered how he would ever be able to disillusion them.
The razor paused and he stared at his half-lathered face in the glass as he realized the nice parallel. Isn’t it exactly what Nature is always doing to us? Promising us a Pony! The Pony of wealth, fame, satisfied desire, contentment, if we just sign on the dotted line.... Obey that Impulse. By Heaven, what a Promotion Scheme she has, the old jade! Had his sorry dreams been any wiser than those of Janet and Sylvia? His absurd vision of being an artist in living, of knowing the glamour and passion of some generous fruitful career, of piercing into the stormy darkness that lies beyond the pebbly shallows of to-day--all risible! Life is defeat. Hide, hide the things you know to be true. Fall back into the genial humdrum. Fill yourself with sleep. It’s all a Promotion Scheme.... And inside these wary counsels something central and unarguable was crying: It wasn’t just a Pony. It was the horse with wings.
The great Promotion Scheme, the crude and adorable artifice! How many infatuated subscribers it has lured in, even persuaded them to renew after they had found the magazine rather dull reading. In the course of another million years would it still be the same, man and woman consoling and thwarting one another in their study of the careless hints of Law? He could see the full stream of life, two intervolved and struggling currents endlessly mocking and yearning to one another, hungry and afraid. Clear and lucent in sunlit reaches, troubled and swift over stony stairs, coiled together in dreaming eddies, swinging apart in frills of foam. Sweet immortal current, down and down to the unknown sea. Who has not thrilled to it, craved it, cursed it, invented religions out of it, made it fetich or taboo, seen in its pure crystal the mirror of his own austere or swinish face. Turn from it in horror, or muddy it with heavy feet, this cruel water is troubled by angels and mirrors the blind face of God. Blessings on those who never knew it, children and happy ghosts.
George ran his fingers over his glossy chin. He looked solemn recognition at the queer fellow in the glass, and mused that it’s only people who haven’t had something they wanted who take the trouble to think confused and beautiful thoughts. But he heard a cautious hand trying the knob. Even thinking about God is no excuse for keeping others out of the bathroom. He laughed aloud, a peal of perfect self-mockery, and splashed hastily into the cold water. Martin, waiting to get in, heard him and wondered. Usually it is only gods or devils who are merry by themselves. Among human beings it takes two to make a laugh.
“Why were you laughing?” he asked, opening his door when he heard George leave the bathroom.
George paid no attention. He was hurrying to tell Phyllis his thoughts before they escaped. Who but she would have endured his absurdities? If she had had hallucinations of her own, that only brought them closer together. Out of these ashes they could rebuild their truth. Love means nothing until you fall into it all over again.
She was sitting on the edge of the bed, by the window, nervously picking the nails of one hand with the forefinger of the other. This habit, which he detested, almost broke his enthusiasm. He had a grotesque desire to tell her that he would forgive her even that. I guess I really do love her enormously, he thought, or the little things she does wouldn’t madden me so. Exasperated with sudden tenderness, he had somehow expected her to meet him with equal affection. But she just sat there, looking down at her hands. He took them, to stop the hated gesture. The bantam over the hill repeated his rollicking sharp salute, which would have been an epigram if he had uttered it only once.
“I wish you could stop that rooster,” she said. “Over and over again, the same identical squawk. I wouldn’t mind so much if he wasn’t a bantam. It makes it seem so silly, somehow. He goes out under those great tall pine trees and shouts at them.”
He smiled and turned her face toward him. She looked pitiably tired. He knew how she would look when she was old.
“Perhaps he’s rather like me,” he said.
“There was one here that crowed just like that when we were children. The same note exactly.”
“It’s heredity. Probably this is his great-great-great-great-grand-egg.”