A Shower of Summer Days

by May Sarton

  They were climbing, past small stone houses with sills and doors painted green, past a man alone in a field mowing, the long slow sweep of the scythe laying the tall grass low, one step following another, one sweep following another in unbroken rhythm, and behind him nothing but meadows and hedges rolling off into sky.

  “It looks easy, you know,” Charles nodded in the man’s direction, “but have you ever handled a scythe?”

  “Of course Ian’s never handled a scythe,” Sally said scornfully. “He only handles a make-up stick.”

  Ian, put on his mettle, began to drum in time to the scythe on the dashboard, his feet syncopating the slow rhythm. Then he hummed softly a little tune he was making up as he went along. “I can do it, though,” he said after a few moments, “in my own way.”

  “Oh you’re pretty wonderful,” Sally granted. Just then the road dipped down, circled the bump of a hill and climped steeply. They were suddenly on a great height. The river looked now like a blue ribbon laced round the fields and the whole landscape a pattern which they could read. Charles slowed down and then stopped.

  “A breath of air?” he asked. “A look round? Worth seeing,” he said, already stuffing tobacco into his pipe. “You can see three counties from this height. In the old days in the carriage it took half a day, didn’t it, Violet? It was a journey up here.”

  Violet was standing, blinking in the full sun, feeling deliciously relaxed and even a little drunk.

  “Where’s Dene’s Court?” Sally asked. For what did all this landscape mean, and all the little farms and cut-up meager fields without that grandeur and space, and the tall stone house?

  Charles took her arm and walked her a few yards up the road. “It’s only trees from here,” he said. “The house is entirely hidden. But look—see that grove there, the patches of darkness—just back of them, that should be the house.” He was looking at her as she peered down, rather nervously as if she was afraid it might get lost if she didn’t find it with her eyes.

  “How’s my favorite niece?” he asked, slipping an arm through hers and puffing comfortably at his pipe, held in the other hand.

  “The patient is resting comfortably,” she said and then, “Oh, Uncle Charles. I think it’s all over. I think it never was.”

  Charles, who had imagined that all was well, was so startled that he could do nothing but make a little distressed noise that sounded like “tut.”

  “Nonsense, you must be dreaming,” he said gruffly when he had recovered. His own relief was so great he found, that he could not trust it. “We’ve got quite fond of him, you know. I’m sorry to hear it,” he said, feeling embarrassed and wondering if they were being watched, wondering if Violet knew. “But it’s not fatal,” he added, giving her a rather penetrating look, for indeed she seemed very much intact.

  “That’s just what Ian said. What is it, Uncle Charles, that you all know that I don’t know, that you all have that I don’t have? I feel so queer, like an orphan—or a leper—why does nobody tell me what’s wrong?”

  “Nothing’s wrong,” Charles said emphatically, and he gave her arm a squeeze.

  So much feeling had been dammed up in Sally for so long that this warm, loving pressure made her shiver, and quickly withdraw her arm. She did not really like the feeling she had, but now she found herself watching Charles’s hands; he was pointing out the smoke of the town in the distance, a steeple, and very far-off just a thin line of blue, some mountains with a tremendously long peculiar name. She hardly listened. She looked at him. After dealing with Ian who slid about like a fish, whose element might be air or water but was surely not earth, there was peace in contemplating Charles, his firm dense head, with its close-cropped hair, his air of physical mastery as he stood surveying the landscape, above all his hands, tense hands which never made a tentative gesture.

  Meanwhile Violet and Ian had walked off a little way down the road to look at another county. Violet was voluble, for once. She wanted to avoid confessions and pleas for mercy and attention. Also, coming up here so swiftly, the landscape given them like a sudden present had brought back her childhood as if in a dream. It was like a dream to come up here so very quickly, the journey which had taken half a day, which really should take half a day.

  “We used to come up here about twice a year, when we were children, always in the late spring and then again in the autumn. In summer it was apt to be too hot, and also there were so many other things to do. Once after we got up here, the weather changed and it snowed. We were nearly frozen, but oh how lovely it was—like a Chinese landscape, the black hedges and the green fields frosted over. Only the horses didn’t like it much and we were at the age when animals matter much more than people, so it ended by being agonizing, slippery, you know. And then Father got into an awful temper because Flaherty, the coachman, blamed him for starting out in the first place. We were so cold and Barbie was furious, I remember, because I cried.”

  “You don’t seem like sisters at all,” Ian said. “It’s most improbable—”

  “I haven’t seen her for years, you know. I wonder if she’s changed…” Here on the height where childhood melted into the present moment, it seemed amazing, cruel, that she had not seen her sister for over twenty years. “She should have come back,” Violet said quite severely. “It’s not right.”

  “Why doesn’t she? Is there a mystery about it?” Ian said. And Violet was irritated that he could pay so much more attention to her than to the great glory of the country, this high point to which one made a yearly pilgrimage.

  “No mystery—she was unhappy here. We never got on.” The tone was forbidding. Ian lit a cigarette, after offering her one, which she refused, saying “Let’s go back. Charles will be impatient.”

  “Only one more day,” Ian said, as if the idea were tragic.

  “I doubt if Sally could bear more than that,” Violet answered. At that moment they looked up and saw Sally and Charles laughing. It was disconcerting. It did not fit in with what had happened that morning. She looked, Violet thought, more attractive than ever, eager, a little wild as if there were no care in the world—as if, Violet saw suddenly, there were no one in the world but Charles who was clearly basking, who felt like a lord of creation, clearly.

  “She seems rather cheerful.”

  “You’re a fool,” Violet said crossly.

  “I don’t know why you’re so cruel,” Ian was smiling as if she had paid him a compliment. Perhaps he felt he had scored. “I was just stating a fact, on the evidence—”

  “Why am I so mean to you?” Violet looked at him for the first time since they had wandered off. “Do you really want to know?” And now she smiled at him, a mischievous, and yet not a personal smile. “I think it’s because I know you too well. I see in you my every weakness, my every vice.”

  This for the moment silenced Ian. Apparently it was not what he had expected at all.

  “You are the most amazing person, Violet,” he murmured. And then “Don’t run away. They’re perfectly happy. There’s so much I want to ask you—and there’s so little time…” he pleaded. He saw her hesitate and quickly pinned her down by going on, forcing her to pay attention to him in spite of herself by speaking rapidly in a low voice, a trick he used unconsciously, but it worked. Violet was looking at him instead of at the landscape at last.

  “You said I wasn’t honest. It’s quite true. What made me come was you—you see, Sally kept writing about you,” he went on without seeming to notice Violet’s gesture of denial, the narrowing of her eyes. “Her letters were full of you and the house. I simply had to come,” he said, with the complete unconsciousness of the person who sees only what he wants, and sees it with great intensity.

  “But I don’t understand.” Violet really was too surprised to be less than honest. Then it came over her that it was disturbing to have those letters written, those letters all about her, this invasion of her house, her privacy, her marriage. “Whatever did Sally say?” The minute she had asked
the question, she regretted it. She was giving him an inch, and now she looked away.

  But Ian was alight with his victory. “Oh,” he said airily, “that you were superficial, that you were a great beauty, that you were much too good for Charles—”

  “She had no business to write such letters,” Violet was suddenly angry. It was just too much, these intolerably young selfish children prying into her life, making something of it. It was none of their business.

  “Well, of course she was obviously mad about you,” Ian went on, apparently enjoying himself thoroughly. “That’s what I read between the lines. So, it was only natural, wasn’t it, that I come and see for myself—after all…” It was clear that all this was intoxicating to him; Violet could almost see the flames of curiosity licking around him as if he were a salamander and loved the fire. He had come, she sensed, because he was drawn to any situation which had complications, because he could not resist theater, even in life.

  “And what did you think would happen?” Violet asked. “Did it occur to you that Sally might not guess your reasons for coming? That you were behaving like an utter cad?”

  “Oh, Violet,” he said half-laughing, “it’s so easy to throw words like that around.”

  “It’s easy if they don’t mean anything.” Far off down the road, she saw Charles and Sally walking, their heads bent, a little apart, yet apparently so absorbed in what they were saying that they had forgotten the view, the place, had forgotten, so it seemed, herself and Ian. And she had the illusion that she and Ian were in another world, hell or purgatory perhaps, and they were far off in another circle, one of the heavenly circles where the innocent may walk. For once more she was being forced to bear the guilt her beauty created for her, and she created for herself, for hadn’t she after all wanted to charm Sally, to charm Ian? Hadn’t this been her intention? But was it her fault if they ran away with casual presents and made them into secret treasures, magnified them and the giver, they who knew nothing of love? “If you came all this way out of curiosity, I hope you found whatever you were looking for,” she said acidly.

  “I found you, but I don’t understand you,” Ian said quietly. “At one moment you seem to understand everything and tease me about our being alike, fellow sinners so to speak, and the next you’re standing off like some aloof goddess, feeling infinitely superior apparently. It’s rather disconcerting.”

  “Yes,” Violet said drily, “no doubt it’s meant to be.”

  “Besides I haven’t broken Sally’s heart,” he said almost crossly.

  “I don’t think we’ll any of us know that, she less than anyone else, until you’ve gone.” Then Violet walked away down the hill, and left Ian standing there. She had decided that she had had enough. She wanted, she needed to be with Charles who did not make her feel like a criminal.

  “We’ll be dreadfully late for lunch, Charles,” she called impatiently. “We’ll have to put off going to town till this afternoon.”

  “Oh well,” Charles said, as they settled in again, two by two, as the doors slammed, as they took a last look at the still landscape before it would begin to move, “that doesn’t matter. This was the great thing, to get the view, wasn’t it, Sally?”

  “Oh yes,” Sally answered with a vague smile, “the view.”

  No one talked much on the way home. The climb up had matched a climbing mood of elation, and now they were going down, the mood ebbed. Ian smoked one cigarette after another. Sally had withdrawn into her corner. Violet wondered how on earth she would get through the next twenty-four hours without a tête-à-tête with Ian. If he were only leaving now, she thought, tonight.

  The car ground to a stop on the gravel and once more Ian sprang out to open and close the gate as they passed through. It’s like a spell, Sally was thinking, that closing of the gate. All the dimensions change. The land becomes intimate and so much smaller than outside, and the house becomes enormous. She had forgotten Ian. When he climbed back in he seemed like an intruder.

  Perhaps he felt this for as the house appeared round the curve, narrow, high, seen from the side, he giggled and said nervously, “I see why you thought it looked like a prison, Sally.”

  “Did I?” She was astonished at his meanness. “I don’t remember.” For surely he had meant it, to make her feel that she did not belong. Yet as she got out of the car and looked up at the high windows, at the green light of the leaves reflected in them, she felt terribly lonely. It is not a prison, she thought, but it is not home either. It’s too disturbing. It asks too much. Or our lives are too small to fill it.

  She ran up the terrace steps, through the dining hall, past all the portraits which she felt but did not stop to look at; she ran up the great staircase to the landing, round the corner and up the narrow dark stairs to the empty sun-flooded ballroom. Here she stopped, wondering what she had been running away from, what she had been running towards. The surf of tears was rising again. But I’ve cried too much here, Sally thought sternly, altogether too much. It’s indecent to cry so much, to well over like a leaky teapot. I’m never going to cry again, she said, walking up and down clasping her hands together as if to stop the rising flood. They were not tears for herself or for Ian or Violet, but for something much bigger than any of them, and she was afraid if she once began that she would never be able to stop at all. Once let these tears in and she would not be able to see; all would become muddy and obscure, dragging her down. But what she demanded now of herself was a cold clear light, clarification by the intellect.

  She looked at the unfinished ceiling, walked the full length of the ballroom once more and then stood at the low windows and looked down at the sheep nibbling the rough grass. The breathless seizure by anguish that had driven her up here was past. We can’t be heroes, she thought. Even the house never stood for heroics; that’s why Sarah St. Leger doesn’t fit in quite. We have to find the way to be human without disintegrating into messy little feelings. We have to be human on a grand scale like Annie, maybe. It was Sally’s good-bye to Ian, because she knew now he was everything except quite human, a little golden idol she had worshipped like a pagan. But the true faith she saw, meant the breaking of idols—even Aunt Violet, even perhaps the house which if it was anything, was a living organism—breathing the open and stopped diapason of human lives, sounding its music through them, just as they were supported by it. The house provided a form for the chaotic hours, the changes of time and feeling; but without these changes it would die.

  Standing at the window, Sally came as near perhaps as anyone does to a vision of life. By mastering feeling, she had come to understand the meaning of discipline and its reward: freedom and power.

  The next morning she climbed the hill with Ian, for he would not go of course without making the classic walk to the classic view of Dene’s Court. They stumbled on tussocks of thick grass, watching the sheep O’Neil had finally brought over stare at them and then dash off in groups, never able to make up their minds singly, driven together if at all.

  “Such stupid animals,” Sally said as if it were their fault and they might at least try to be more intelligent.

  “I should never have come.” Ian walked with his head down, seeing nothing. “I’ve ruined everything.”

  “Aunt Violet doesn’t like you very much, if that’s what you mean,” Sally said drily. She had not meant to be cruel, but found she could not help it.

  “Of course that’s not what I mean.”

  “I wonder if you know what you mean,” Sally became gentle. “You’ve got to want one thing more than anything else, to know.”

  “I want to be a good actor,” Ian said vehemently. “I want to know everything about people,” and then he turned and faced her, “Why did you say that about your aunt?”

  Sally laughed a funny dry laugh which it hurt to do. “Because it’s true. Now that I’ve been able to separate you from myself I see that you’re like a chameleon. Ever since you’ve come, Ian, you haven’t been real for a moment. I’m clumsy
, I bungle, and fall down. I don’t fit in, but at least I’m real,” Sally said with a kind of triumph. She turned away to go on climbing the hill, doggedly. Ian followed a few steps behind. Kicking a tussock, he nearly stumbled.

  When she looked back she saw him against the unyielding stone face of the house. He was standing there, small and frail, obviously undecided whether to be angry or not, and as she watched he looked up and met her gaze for a second before he looked away, frowning. Even two days before she would have been drawn as if by a magnet to touch this face where so many things were written so quickly, so intensely, and then erased. But now what she saw was the house behind him and she knew that what she wanted above all was to marry and to have children and to bring her children here. And this wish had nothing now to do with Ian who was some extreme private enterprise in which nothing for a time had existed or could exist except her feeling for him, a feeling all in the present, having no future before it. But if he had kissed me, she thought with terror, would I have known all this?

  Just then Violet and Charles came out on the terrace and waved. Sally watched them, and watched Ian wave back excitedly, and it reminded her of the time long ago when she had come here with Charles. Then the house and she had seemed pitted against each other and the house was her enemy.

  “There,” she said as Ian stood beside her, panting from the climb, “there it is.”

  “But look at Violet and Charles,” Ian was excited. “Don’t they look lovely standing there?”

  “Yes” Sally was impatient, “but the point is the house. Do really look at it, Ian, please do,” she entreated him as if it was suddenly important that he know, that he see.

  “It looks awfully grim to me,” he shivered, and then looked at her curiously, possessed as she was by some strange elation, as if she held power in her hands and this power was in some way communicated by the house. “I thought anyway it was Violet you loved, not the house.”