Part 3

Phyllis’s footsteps were coming downstairs. He was always worried when he heard them like that: slow and light, pausing every few treads. That meant she was thinking about something, and in a minute there would be a new problem for him to consider. When he heard them like that he usually rushed into the hall, demanding hotly, “Well, what is it _now_?”

“What is what?”

“You know I can’t work when you come downstairs like that.”

“Like _what_?”

“As though you were worrying.”

“Well, why didn’t you take a house where I could slide down the banisters?”

This time the feet came down so slowly he felt sure she _wanted_ him to rush out. The rushing out always put him in the wrong. Well, he just wouldn’t. He would stay where he was, that would show her he was indignant. He took out page 38, put in a blank sheet and rattled the keys vigorously. But he felt cheated of a sensation. He always enjoyed bursting out, through the door at the foot of the stairs, and catching her transfixed on the landing, with the big windows behind her--half frightened, half angry. He would not have told her so, but it was partly because she was so pretty there: the outline of her comely defiant head against the light, her smooth arm emerging from the dainty sleeve that caught and held a pearly brightness. How lovely she is, he thought; it’s gruesome for her to be so pretty and talk such nonsense ... she needs someone to pump her full of indigestible compliments, that would silence her----

She was at the telephone. He could hear her talking to the grocer. “I’m sorry, Mr. Cotswold, is it too late to catch the driver? I’ve got some unexpected guests....”

He hastened into the hall. “Don’t forget the sardines,” he shouted.

She looked at him calmly with the instrument at her mouth. She seemed surprisingly tranquil.

“Never mind, then, thank you,” she said to Mr. Cotswold, in the particularly cordial and gracious voice which (George felt) was meant to emphasize the coolness with which she would now speak to him.

“If you want sardines you’ll have to go down and get them yourself. The driver’s left.”

She went into the sitting room and automatically pulled the blind halfway down. He followed her and raised it to the top of the window again. She sat on the couch, and he was surprised to see a dangerous merriment in her face.

“I suppose you think you can shut yourself in here and just let the house run itself,” she said. “Like a sardine.”

“I have to do my work, don’t I?”

She looked at the sheet in the typewriter, on which was written wildly _Now is the time for all good men to come to the aid of this absurd family_. But she did not comment on it, and George felt that this was one of her moments of genius. He wondered, in alarm, what she was going to do with him next. He felt helpless as only a husband can.

“Well, anyhow, they pack sardines in oil, not in vinegar,” he said angrily. This sounded so silly it made him angrier still. He closed the door and cried in a fierce undertone, “What’s the idea, this man Martin? Who is he? Is he staying for lunch?”

“He’s an artist. I thought you liked artists.”

“Yes, but we don’t have to fill the house with ’em.”

“I’ve put him in the spare room.”

“In the spare room! What about Miss Clyde?”

“I haven’t the faintest idea. He seemed to expect it, somehow. He’s a very irresistible person.”

“I guess I can resist him. If we’ve got to have him in the house we can put him in here, on the couch.”

“It’s too late. He’s in the spare room now, washing his hands.--You needn’t have been so rude when I brought him in.”

“I didn’t like his looks,” George mumbled.

This wasn’t true. George _had_ liked his looks, but he had resented (as must every man burdened with many perplexities) that gay and careless air. He looks as if he didn’t have a thing on earth to worry about, George thought. And he comes floating in here, with casual ease, among the thousand interlocking tensions of George’s difficulties, to gaze with untroubled eye on his host’s restless alertness. Or was this some sort of joke that Phyllis was putting over on him?

“I’m going to put the two older children on the sleeping porch, so Ben and Ruth can have their room. Miss Clyde will have to go on this couch.”

“How about me?”

“Well, we can sleep together I suppose. It won’t kill us, for a few nights.”

Not if I know it, George thought. That old walnut bedstead, with the deep valley in the middle, so that we both keep rolling against one another. Unless you clutch the post and lie on a slope all night. Besides, Phyl is so changeable in temperature. When she goes to bed she’s chilly and wants to kindle her feet against you. Then by and by she gets warmed up and it’s like sleeping with a hot bottle five feet long. On a night in July, too. Whenever I get comfortable, she wants to turn over on the other side; that brings us face to face. Impossible! How unexpected life is. If any one had told me, twelve years ago, that it would be so irritating to sleep in the same bed with a pretty woman, I wouldn’t have believed it. Phyl doesn’t like it either, yet she was annoyed by that booklet I wrote for the Edwards Furniture Company on The Joys of the Separate Bed. I’ll sleep on the window seat in the upstairs hall. No: that won’t do, if Miss Clyde is in the den she’ll have to be coming upstairs to the bathroom and Phyl won’t like me spread out there in public. It’s funny: sleeping is the most harmless thing people ever do, why are they so furtive about it?

But George rather liked the idea of Miss Clyde on his couch. It seemed, somehow, to add piquancy to a dull situation. To conceal this private notion, he argued against it.

“Miss Clyde will be a long way from the bathroom,” he said.

“There’s no other place to put her. You’re always talking about artists, their fine easy ways, I guess she won’t mind if someone sees her in a wrapper.”

She’d look charming in a wrapper, George thought. The queer little boyish thing! I can just imagine her. It would be blue, a kind of filmy blue crêpe. Coming up the stairs the morning sunlight would catch her, through those big windows: her small curves delicately outlined in a haze of soft colour, her hair tousled, a flash of white ankle as she reached the top step. He would sit up on the window seat, as though just drowsily awakened. Oh ... good-morning! Good-morning. What a picture you would make. Silhouette Before Breakfast. Life is full of so many heavenly pictures.... The bay window above the garden would be calm and airy in the before-breakfast freshness of July; the house just beginning that dreamy stir that precedes the affairs of day. She would come across to him ... he had hardly dared admit, even to himself, how far they had gone in imagination....

“I’m damned if I want strange women careering all over the house in their wrappers,” he said with well-simulated peevishness.

“Bosh!” exclaimed Phyllis. “There’s nothing you’d like better. Unless without their wrappers.”

“What’s the use of being vulgar?” he said. He thought: How gorgeous Phyllis is. You can’t fool her.

Poor old George, thought Phyllis. I believe he imagines that he’s attractive to women. But I won’t say that to him, he’s in such a stew already.

“Miss Clyde is one of the most truly refined people I ever met.”

This didn’t quite succeed. Phyllis was always annoyed when George attempted to bunco her. He was so transparent.

“I believe you imagine you’re attractive to women,” she said.

“Hell,” he said, “I don’t even take time to think about it.”

“If that were true, you’d be much more so.”

If I’d finished this cursed booklet, he thought, I’d take a little time off and _be_ attractive to women, just to surprise her. Why, damnation, I could even make Phyl fall in love with me if it was worth taking the trouble. The way to please women is to show them that you know they’re not happy. And that their special kind of unhappiness is a particularly subtle and lonely one, but curable by sympathy. But it’s better not to think about these things at all. It’s queer to think of all the people in the world, and how troubled they are when they look each other straight in the eyes. If I knew why that is, I’d know everything. The devil of it is, women have begun to think. That’s why everything is so uneasy. Why even Phyllis has begun to think. I mustn’t let her, because she’s too fond of being comfortable. It’ll only upset her. She _must_ be kept amused. That’s the beauty of money, it’s a substitute for thinking. It can surround you with delightful distractions. It’s like women, too: it comes to the fellows who know how to entertain it. I must learn how to be attractive to money.

“Certainly, Phyl, no one can say that _you’re_ attractive to women. You’re too pretty.” He leaned over and kissed the end of her nose. There, perhaps that would calm her, he might still be able to do half an hour’s writing before the children came back from the beach. That was the only solution. Simplify, simplify life by burying yourself in some work of imagination--such as the Eastern Railway booklet. He smiled bitterly. Those were the only happy people, the artists--immersed in dreams like frogs in a pond, only their eyes bulging just above the surface. But how are you going to attain that blissful absorption? Dominate the ragings of biology by writing railroad folders? The whole universe turns contrary, he thought, to the one who wants to create. Time is against him, carnal distraction, the natural indolence of man. Yes, even God is against him: God, Who invented everything and is jealous of other creators. If Phyllis hadn’t been there, he would have fallen on his knees by the couch and told God what he thought of Him.

They heard someone coming downstairs. Phyllis rose.

“Come in, Mr. Martin! See the nice little den where George does his work.”

V

George is carving the meat. He always feels better at meal times. The trouble with me, he thinks, is that I take things too seriously. I dare say I haven’t any sense of humour. Let’s see if we can’t make a sort of fresh start from this moment.

The three little girls are brown and gay. Phyllis looks tired, but busily exhibits that staccato sprightliness that comes over her when there are guests. This Mr. Martin seems a silent fellow. The children stare at him, and seem to have some joke among themselves; Sylvia and Rose nudge each other and giggle. I always think it’s a mistake to let the two younger ones sit side by side. But Mr. Martin seems unaware of them: his eyes are fixed on Phyllis with a cheerful watchfulness. He’s a solemn bird, thinks George, but he has the good taste to admire Phyl. I hope he won’t overdo it, for her sake. She can’t stand much admiring: it goes to her head right away.

“Well,” Phyllis says, “this is really delightful. A distinguished guest is just what we needed to make the Picnic a success. Children, don’t kick the legs of the table.--Mr. Granville is so fond of artists, he employs such a lot of them in his business. Of course, I dare say your kind of work is quite different, but there must be a lot of painters who wouldn’t know what to do if it weren’t for the little advertising jobs that come along. We’re so happy to be in the country again. Of course we live very simply, but Mr. Granville can always work so well when he gets away from the office. I feel so sorry for the men who have to be in town all summer.”

George feels a violent impulse to contradict her, but masters it. Phyl, he says, ask Lizzie to bring a spoon for the gravy. She always forgets it.--Mr. Martin, I’ll tell you the kind of people we are, we never have a carving knife sharp enough to cut with.

“Well, George, it’s not our own carving knife. You see, Mr. Martin, we took this house furnished. It’s not like having our own things.”

Our own isn’t any better, George’s voice shouts angrily inside his head, but he manages to keep it from coming out.

Are we going to the Haunted House for the Picnic? the children ask.

Not unless you take your elbows off the table, Phyllis says sharply. Mr. Martin, who looks puzzled, takes his elbows off too.

There’s a poor old tumbledown farm, on a sandy cliff, among dark pine trees, Phyllis explains. Someone has told the children that it’s haunted. The word means nothing to them, but they can tell--by the way people say it--that it suggests something interesting.

Yes, if it doesn’t rain, George says. He is too experienced a parent ever to make positive promises.

This would have been a good day for cold meat and salad, he thinks, sawing away at the joggling-slippery roast. Phyllis sees him thinking it. “I’m sorry to have hot meat on such a warm day, but we’ll need it to-morrow for the sandwiches. There’s some iced tea coming.”

“Hot meat to make your inside hot, iced tea to make it cold,” the children exclaim. “Do we have to eat the fat?”

They always ask this question. Then Mr. Martin asks it too, which causes amusement. How delightful Mr. Martin is, Phyllis thinks. He has a sort of eagerness to be happy, to enjoy things, to move blithely from one minute to the next. Even George feels it, he looks less cross. But George, as he takes down a tall glass of iced tea in one draught, is making calmly desperate resolves. I haven’t the faintest idea what anything means, he is telling himself, but I’m just going to go on placidly. I’ll go cracked if I keep on worrying. Maybe after lunch I can take a snooze in the garden. One of the little girls wriggles happily on her chair, her pink frock has slipped sideways on her smooth brown shoulder, showing the frilled strap of her shirt. With a gentle twitch George pulls her dress straight and pats the child’s golden nape. She looks at him with innocent affection. That little bare shoulder makes him think of women and their loveliness, and all the torments of unease to which these same poor youngsters must grow up. He concentrates his mind on the blue and white platter, the brown gravy dimpled with clear circles of fat and turning ruddy as the juice of the roast trickles down, the amber tea with slices of lemon. Thank Heaven Time still lies before them all like an ocean. Even he and Phyllis are young, they don’t need to do anything definite about life, not yet. Keep your mind on the small beautiful details, the crackling yield of bread-crust under the knife, the wide hills over the sea, sunset on open spaces that evaporates all passion, all discontent. He picks up his napkin from the rug, helps himself to vegetables, and begins to eat. How delicious life is, even for an abject fool like me, he thinks. I wonder if any one ever feels old?

“The Picnic is our great annual adventure,” Phyllis was saying. “I hope you won’t think us too silly, but we _do_ look forward to it enormously. It’s such fun to forget about things once in a while and just have a good time.”

“Yes,” said George, “we worry about it for weeks beforehand. And we always invite more people than the house can properly hold.”

Phyllis flashed a little angry brightness across the table.

“You mustn’t think us too informal if things are a bit crowded, that’s part of the fun.”

“What is informal?” asked Mr. Martin, quite gravely.

George smiled. Why, the man was kidding her.

“Informal’s what women always say they’re going to be and never are.”

“George loves to lay down the law about women, Mr. Martin. As a matter of fact he knows nothing about them. I expect you know more than he does, even if you’re a bachelor.”

“Is there a lot to know?” said Mr. Martin.

The man’s delightful, thought George.

I never felt as queer as this before, thought Phyllis. I feel as though something astonishing were going to happen. Or worse still, as though nothing would _ever_ happen. How many sandwiches will we need? Three children, two of us, Mr. Martin, Ben and Ruth, Miss Clyde--that makes nine. When this gruesome Picnic is over, perhaps I shall have a chance to ease up. I feel as though I should like to fall in love with someone. I wonder if Mr. Martin would do?

“Mr. and Mrs. Brook are coming this evening,” she said gaily. “You’ll like them, they’re charming.”

“As a matter of fact,” said George (she always knew, when he began with that phrase, that he was going to contradict her), “they’re the dullest people on earth; so completely dull that you can’t help envying them. They’re the perfect mates, too stupid even to disagree with each other. If every other couple in the world went smash, marriage would still be justified by Ben and Ruth.”

“How do couples go smash?” asked Janet.

“You finish your beans and don’t talk,” said Phyllis.

She was pleasantly fluttered by the way Mr. Martin looked at her. His eyes kept returning from his plate: lingering on her face with a gently inquiring studiousness that was not at all offensive. I believe he really does want to do a portrait of me, she thought. He’s fixing the features in his mind. She turned her head toward Sylvia and Rose so that he would see the half-profile with an appealing madonna softness upon it. The coloured glass panes behind her, what a vivid background that would make.--But she felt he was about to ask a question, and allowed her eyes to come round to meet him, to make it easier for him. Obviously he was shy.

“Do I have to finish my beans?” he said.

What a difficult question to answer. There must be some joke that she did not see.

“Beans make bones,” asserted Rose fatuously.

“Why, of course not,” she said hastily. “I was afraid that cocoanut cake would take away your appetite.” No, that was the wrong thing to say: she saw George’s face sharpen at the mention of the cake: he was getting ready to blurt out something and she felt sure it would be awkward. With the speed of a hunted animal her mind dodged in search of some remark that would give her time to think.

“I like the English way of serving beans, slicing them lengthwise, you know; it makes them so tender, without any strings.” There; surely that would dispose of the absurd topic. “George, what are you going to do this afternoon? Go for a swim?”

“But these _are_ string beans,” said George. “They’re supposed to have strings. Perhaps Mr. Martin misses them.”

“If he doesn’t finish his beans, Virginia can have them,” Sylvia suggested. “She eats vegetables sometimes.”

Virginia was the cat, just now obviously misnamed. Phyllis knew very well what was coming next, but she could not speak fast enough to avert it.

“Beans will be good for her,” said Janet with enthusiasm. “She’s going to have a family very soon, she needs nourishing food.”

“Mother says she mustn’t have a shock, it might be bad for the kittens.”

“That’ll do, never mind about Virginia.”

Lizzie was making grimaces from the kitchen door, holding up a cup custard and contorting a red face of inquiry. Phyllis nodded. But perhaps Lizzie means there aren’t enough custards to go round? “Oh, Lizzie, put on the fruit too.”

George, with his damnable persistence, had not forgotten.

“How about the cake?” he asked.

“George, you know we’ve got to save the cake for the Picnic. I can’t ask Lizzie to make another one.”

“It’s been cut already,” he said.

I’m _not_ going to be humiliated like this in front of a stranger. George is just doing it because he sees Mr. Martin admires me. Will this meal never end? I’m past battling over trifles. Have the cake if you want it. I don’t care. If Lizzie puts it on, all right. Leave it to her. I’m not going to order it on. Cooks always take the man’s side anyhow. I’m afraid Mr. Martin will think we’re lunatics.

“What do you think of a husband that always knows exactly what’s in the pantry?” she asked him.

A moment later she couldn’t remember what he had said to this. Perhaps it’s because I’m so absorbed in my own thoughts. The only thing I really remember his saying was his comical question whether he need finish his beans. It’s odd, how much he conveys without saying anything, just by a look.

Lizzie had put on the cake. Phyllis saw at once that there were only six custards. She could tell, by the way Lizzie planked them down, there were no more in the kitchen. If they all took one there wouldn’t be any for Lizzie herself, and that would mean bad temper. She refused the custard. She wanted a peach, but felt that the effort of peeling it was too much. Soft fuzzy skin and wet fingers. Then George, with that occasional insight that always surprised her, passed her one peeled and sliced.

“Yes,” he said, “we ought to have a bathe, unless there’s a storm. Relieve the pressure on the bathroom.”

“Then we’ll all be nice and clean for the Picnic,” exclaimed the children.

“Miss Clyde is coming,” George continued. “She’s an artist too, perhaps Mr. Martin knows her.”

“Bring the jug of iced tea in the garden, let’s finish it out there,” said Phyllis. “It’s stifling here.--Children, you go and get your naps.”

The little table was under the pine trees, the other side of the croquet oval. The grove smelt warm and slippery. Now there are the long hours of the afternoon to be lived through, somehow. George sprawled himself on the brown needles, the smoke of his pipe drifted past her in a blue whiff. Mr. Martin put a chair for her.

“I love these pine trees,” she said. “They’re always whispering.”

“It isn’t polite to whisper.”

She smiled at him. He does say the quaintest things.

“Nature never is polite. On an afternoon like this the whole world seems to yawn in your face.”

“These trees smell like cough drops.” This was George.

An artist’s mind is always on the beautiful, Phyllis thought. She pulled her skirt down a little, and tried to decide what was the most beautiful thing visible, so she could call his attention to it. She wished she hadn’t said that about yawning, she felt one coming on. The hot lunch had made her frightfully drowsy. Across the bay thunderheads were massing and rolling up, deep golden purple. “I wish I could paint,” she said. “See those wonderful----” But she began the sentence too late; the yawn overtook her in the middle of it.

“Wonderful what?” asked George, looking up. She was struggling with the desire to gape; she trembled with the violence of her effort. George stared.

“Are you ill?”

“Wonderful clouds,” she finished savagely. George watched her, adding one more tally to his private conviction that women are mostly mad.

“If you poured heavy cream into a glass of grape juice,” he said, “it would look just like that. Coiling round and clotting.”

Sickening idea, Phyllis thought.

“I know exactly what’s going to happen, just about the time I have to drive over----”

He was going to say it, she felt it coming. He was going to say _depot_ instead of _station_. George always said _depot_ when they were in the country, and she couldn’t bear it. It was coming, it was coming; everything was predestined; all her life she had known this scene was on the way, sitting under the hot croup-kettle smell of the pine trees, blue thunder piling up on the skyline, poor adorable George mumbling away, and Mr. Martin watching them with his air of faint surprise. It was like the beginning of some terrible poem. Everything in life was a symbol of everything else. The slices of lemon lying at the bottom of the iced-tea jug, on a soft cloud of undissolved sugar, even they were a symbol of something....

“George!” she interrupted desperately. “I had the most terrible premonition. I felt that you were going to say _depot_.”

“Why, yes, I was going to say, just about the time I’m ready to drive over----”

For his own sake, for her sake, for Mr. Martin’s sake, George must be prevented. If he used that word, she would know that all this was foreordained, beyond help and hope. With a quick movement she pushed her glass of tea off the table; it cascaded onto George’s ankle. He paused in surprise.

“I’m _so_ sorry. How careless of me, your nice white socks, look out, that little piece of ice is going down inside your shoe.”