“A motor car!” He looked at her triumphantly.
“Oh, Tom! Not really?”
“Potter knows of a second-hand Singer, going very cheap. It seems an opportunity. I thought I’d go and have a look at it.”
“How thrilling!”
“I dare say I might manage to beat them down, too.” He meditated, planning a little sharp practice. … “Of course, we’d have to go slow on petrol, et cetera—not take her out too often. But what price jaunts on Sundays—eh? You’d get into the country regularly!”
She averted her imagination from the prospect of jaunts with Tom on Sundays. He was so happy—doing his best for her. She must be grateful, eager.
“I don’t see why you shouldn’t learn to drive yourself—in time.” He had the air of one who adds the last drop to the brimming cup.
“I’d love to try.”
Yes—she must try. Driving would be a remedy … if only one could take it. But there before her was the hopelessness of her character, exposed with deadly clarity. There was the country within reasonable reach at last: her life’s longing dependent for its fulfilment simply upon a little effort of competence and the price of petrol. But were petrol ten times cheaper, were she ten times more anxious to escape from the town and Tom, she knew that never would she be seen setting out for the country alone in a second-hand Singer. Never would she be able to want to learn to drive.
He leaned back in great contentment, puffing at his pipe.
“I don’t mind telling you,” he said suddenly, with a confidential inflection, “I’ve had a stroke of luck over that little legacy of Mother’s I invested.”
“Oh, good.”
There seemed no end to the benefits he was conferring. This was a supreme mark of his favour—almost embarrassing. As a rule he was financially secretive, and kept her short, alluding to rainy days, and looking with pardonable distrust upon her household economy.
“Not so long now till I’m thinking of retiring. Then for that little house somewhere with a garden—eh?”
“When shall you retire?”
“Oh, when I’m sixty, I dare say. It all depends,” he added, nudging her jovially. “If you’re a good girl and don’t go blowing all the pennies as fast as I make ’em.”
“I wish I managed better.” She sighed. “I don’t know what it goes on. It must be Annie. … Or buying hats and jumpers I can never bear to wear.”
“Cheer up,” he said. “You look all right to me.”
And he thought to himself she’d had her share of looks. She’d been a sweet-looking girl, not strictly pretty, but unusual. A sweet-looking girl.
They sat on, side by side, in silence.
She thought of Tom at sixty, redder, coarser in the pores, settling down in a little house somewhere (with a garden: but she and Tom would never make a garden grow), with herself for a companion—herself, a woman of fifty, dowdy, dismal, drained of personality, bound with that pertinacious ivy-growth. … Or would even that much life—such parasitic vitality—have perished by then from the remains? … the perpetual want gnaw at her heart no longer? … leaving what was left of her to nurse Tom patiently, perhaps, through his last illness—a stroke, most likely—years of lingering senility and helplessness? …
He put his hat on again.
“It’s getting chilly.”
She pleaded:
“Just a little longer. The sun’s so lovely. Probably it’s the last we’ll get this year. Wait till it goes right off us.”
“If you swear you’re warm enough—”
“As warm as toast. I feel so much better, Tom, for my fresh air.”
“Do you honestly?”
He was immensely cheered. She had never been one to complain; but she was sleeping and eating so poorly he often felt quite worried.
“I suppose,” he ventured dubiously, “you wouldn’t let the doctor overhaul you thoroughly?”
“No. There’s no need. I’m quite all right.”
An alarming, an intoxicating thought recurred to him. Could it be … could it possibly be—another baby … and she was keeping it from him, or wasn’t sure herself yet? There were so many symptoms: the distaste for food, the tiredness, the banishing him to his dressing-room. …
He said, very gently:
“I’m afraid, my dear, you’ve never been quite as strong again since the—since the child—”
That would give her a lead. He waited, looking in front of him.
“Perhaps not quite, Tom,” she said shakily.
It was odd, she thought, how any explicit reference to the child seemed to cause a somersault in some inmost part of her; for it was not as if she really minded, or longed for another child. It must be sheer sentimentality.
“Shouldn’t you think—” he said, “if only—if you were to have another, it might be an excellent thing—for your health, I mean?”
“I don’t know,” she said. “I never shall have another.”
He nodded.
Well, there it was. …
Presently he got up and helped her to her feet.
“Still, there’s Annie,” she said, looking up at him with an expression, he thought, that begged him to smile too.
He did so.
“Yes, by Jove!” he said. “A ready-made heir. She would, wouldn’t she?”
She put her arm through his. Slowly, they started to walk home.
She looked far across the common into the misty distance. The reconciling sunset light was everywhere, transfiguring earth and sky.
“A touch of frost to-night,” he said. “I shouldn’t be surprised. Doesn’t the sun look rum?—like an orange. Christmas will soon be here.”
“So it will.” Her heart sank. And then soon the January snows, and then the hyacinths on the barrows, and then …
After a while she said:
“How are things going in the office?”
“Oh, pretty well. Things look a bit brighter now, but it’s been a shocking year. The old man got the wind up. Ah, he’s failing a bit. It makes him crotchety. You can see it’s hard, at the end of your life, to fall on bad times like this. … It was a blow to him, you know, that young relative of his chucking it up.”
“I suppose it was.”
“Oh, yes. He had great hopes of that young chap. It’s more than we had.” Tom chuckled. “He was a regular demoralizing influence among the clerks. He was able, I grant you—very able when he applied himself—but he hadn’t the temperament. I always said it.” He wagged a finger. “The first week he was here I said to Jones: ‘Mark my words! That young fellow will never make a business man.’” He chuckled again. “But he was a great lad! You couldn’t help but take to him.”
“Yes, he was very attractive.”
Arm in arm, they passed through the public gardens, where beyond the asphalt and the railings the empty borders were raked, the grass made trim for winter; and turned their feet towards the lamp-lit terrace.
He fell asleep, after supper, in his armchair. She watched his loose lips puff out and in, his head fall forward, jerk up, collapse again. He looked old, sensual, and forlorn. He snored.
He is betrayed by sleep, she thought. He was too vulnerable thus to be exposed. It was wrong to look on while sleep made cruel sport of him—held up to mockery the brave pretences of his waking self; his self-respect and anxious dignity; his simple faith in his immortal soul.
She thought of Hugh asleep; saw him as she would never see him, lying in calm beauty, like a sleeping child.
He woke up with a start, yawned, stretched himself.
“I’m beat,” he said.
The week’s work told on him. Saturdays and Sundays he fell asleep off and on all day. The habit was growing on him rapidly. She had noticed it with coldness and distaste. Unjust, she told herself. He was no longer a healthy man. He worked too hard
. He needed rest.
“I’ll turn in.” He yawned again, cleared his throat loudly. “Coming?”
“Soon.”
She heard his ponderous tread mounting the stairs.
Afterwards Annie, rustling and creaking, going slowly with her burden to her attic room.
She sat on alone, listening to the breath of the gas, hearing the tram, the wounded one, come limping and groaning past.
Now for another night, restless, sleepless, thronging with fantasies.
She turned out the lamp and the fire, and went to bolt the door.
Hugh had decided to come back after all—was waiting on the other side—about to ring the bell. If she were to open the door she would find him there, smiling, holding his hands out, saying: “I’ve come back to you. …”
A tremor of bliss possessed her for a moment. Her hand crept out to the door-knob.
No. Folly. Lock up. Lock up this house, this cage, this nothing, and stay within it. Shut doors and windows. Thieves might break in; or rain, or wind. Draw the curtains close against dawn, against peering eyes, against waking up too soon. Fasten chain, draw bolts. He would never, never, never come to the door again.
She went to her cold room, undressed, got into bed, clutched her hot-water bottle. What months, she thought, of wintry sheets stretched out before her!
Not a sound from the dressing-room. He must be asleep already. Had he minded, she wondered, her request that they should sleep apart? She remembered his face when she had suggested it—pleading insomnia—after the summer holiday. Searching frantically still for independence, for some way in which she might dedicate herself—she, a married woman beneath her husband’s roof—more fittingly in spirit to another, she had asked him: might she sleep alone? Yes, he had minded, while he acquiesced and pitied; no doubt was waiting dumbly to be told he might come back.
Presently she got up, opened the dressing-room door and called in the darkness, “Tom!”
“Yes?”
She heard him stir alertly. He had not been asleep.
“I’m so cold, I’ll never get to sleep.”
“Want me to come?”
“Yes, please.”
“Right you are!” he said happily, jumping up.
He came and lay beside her and put an arm over her (the habit of years).
“Soon warm up!” he said. “Poor old iceberg! What a cheap circulation!”
And soon, drowsily:
“Drop off to sleep now, there’s a good girl.”
He slept.
She whispered to herself, over and over again:
“Peace. Peace. Peace.”
Let me stop thinking, dwell on little things.
To-morrow I get up, eat breakfast, read the paper, tell Annie to order stewing steak for lunch. … Annie who, caught in the trap of creation, swept, dusted, cooked the dinner for Mr. and Mrs. Fairfax; knew there was no way now to cheat nature, or escape from Time. Time was dragging her without respite to the day when she must bring forth a living being.
No, that was the wrong kind of thought again. …
To-morrow I take my winter coat to the dressmaker to be turned; to-morrow I pay the plumber’s bill long overdue. To-morrow I’ll have chocolate shape for supper. To-morrow …
But what were they—these activities? These were not life. If one could but think cosmically, keep one’s mind strained to it even for one minute without collapsing—then one would be brushed by a fleeting intimation of what life was.
All that one took for granted was a mystery, all experience meaningless delusion. Truth, could one but remember it, wrote naught with everlasting impersonality on all that seemed important. Even love—love that is God—was nothing; would vanish with the beings it had beguiled. For life is scientific—chemical, mathematical, exact.
The world is … is gases blown off the sun and cooling, clotting into systems; and life is infinite millions of atoms and electrons, collecting themselves into millions of shapes of living objects. Life was in all things. Dead stone, dead wood was all one mass of vital energy.
First rocks and mountains; then the green, the forests springing over them; then beasts, birds.
And man came out of the sea. … Man came out of the sea and stood upright; and thought.
And what was man, standing and thinking? Who were these infinitesimal specks, accumulating knowledge and possessions, assuming the lordship of understanding over earth and sea; who dropped too far, too swiftly, and earth broke them; who sank too deep, too long beneath water, and water choked them? Who were they, precariously balanced in immensity, whose eyes beheld the little sparks that were the planets; whose minds could plunge through space to observe and measure them with instruments; whose lips could name them, record their scientific attributes; or else record them with another tongue and eye: worship the sun, fear or love moonlight, praise the stars. Who were they, these self-conscious organisms reproducing their kind at will, but perishing inevitably after brief agitation; and wishing never to perish? But laws impersonal, biological, governed their coming and their going. They did not live through joy, that seems to give life, nor die of grief, that seems to kill.
Yes, and who am I … I? What is I? What is knowing? And what is dying? … Christina Grace … daughter of … wife of … born … died. … That is I.
Yes, but that’s not it. What happens to me? How can that cease?
That bouncing rhapsody of childhood recitations:
You are more than the world though you are such a dot;
You can love and think and the earth cannot.
Well, was that it? Was there anything in that? Was it going anywhere, this anxious, ignorant, inquiring I? … (To future life, whispered old childish habit—to the reunion with all we love and lose. …) To Hugh.
No, no, how foolish! … No more than a handful of dust blown away by the wind; than a midge, born one moment, crushed the next by a careless hand. … All gone, leaving not a trace—Grace Fairfax; Hugh Miller (wandering over the world all his life long and causing women to love him); Norah (the good wife, the loving mother, watching her offspring pass through man’s stages one by one towards death); people asleep in bed now; wakeful in passion, in child-birth, in sorrow or excitement; people dancing, drinking; family groups, and friends, and lovers sitting by the fire now, laughing, talking, whispering to each other; people sitting alone in empty rooms; people destroyed in swift disasters by land or sea or air; or, inch after inch, of cancers, in hospitals; all gone—the strong, the weak; the fortunate and the unfortunate; the loved, the hated … all, all gone.
Oh, Hugh! … Is this all? Must you too come to dust?
Run, kneel at his death-bed. My darling, I will save you … clasp him, breathe life into his lips, till the heart beats again, the lids unclose. …
No, he would die in his own time; some one would wash him, fold his hands, arrange the funeral. Hugh would have a funeral, a burial service, wreaths. … In his coffin, his body would fall into corruption … and some one would be busy in his room, sorting his clothes, putting away his pipes, his books, reading and burning his old letters. …
And that was all.
Tom moved in his sleep, turned over. His chest was pressed against her hand; she felt his heart.
This was life—this steady beat, beat—she was touching the mystery with her finger-tips.
Go back to the beginning—to the seed, the embryo, the heart’s first beat, the blood’s first flow. But that was not far enough to reach him. Go back beyond the beginning, through his progenitors, back through the generations. Behind the living pulse another living pulse. … Where was the beginning of life? Where would it end?
No, it was not clear yet, not analysed, dissected, labelled—the nature of this heart-beat. The vital spark was still enshrouded: but only to be captured in the end, and harnessed? The germ that was life st
ill wrought in the darkness secretly: but only to be separated, sealed at last in a tube? At the rending of the last veil, one day, would all be demonstrable, visible for ever under an inextinguishable Arch-Laboratory light? Would there be no more silly old birds then to catch by their jaunty tails with a pinch of salt? No faiths, no superstitions? Would doubt be banished, fear routed? … hope routed too?
Or would the veil disclose,—in everlasting silence, infinite voids?
No, it was not clear yet.
Tom was unfathomable mystery.
The street lamp underneath the window made a faint glimmer in the room. She turned and looked at him. She saw the outline of a head upon the pillow—a man’s dark head beside her, perfectly still. … It might be Tom. It might be Hugh. It might be a stranger.
She lay down softly, drew closer to him, shut her eyes; felt thought’s harsh fever fade gradually out, a slow tide start to drown her.
From a square of cottage window she looked out for a moment upon stars and haystacks and a row of poplars. The smell of mist came in sharply; the smell of earth and leaves. …
The poplars started to shake, to make a dizzy whispering. …
Tom moved in his sleep, gave a little groan, half woke.
“Can’t you sleep?” he muttered in dim dismay.
“Sh! Yes!” she murmured. “In a minute.”
They slept.
The first night out. Quiet starry weather, no moon, calm sea.
Hugh wandered into the bows after dinner, and stood alone, leaning over the rail, staring at the water.
He listened to the throb of the engine, the unmistakable dull wooden thud of feet tramping round the covered deck. The walkers had started to walk, with brisk and regular tread, in their burberries, their leather coats and veils, round and round, morning, noon, and night, till they reached land again.
The ship rolled ever so slightly. Laughter came out from the smoking-room. He must join them soon, look around, scrape acquaintance with his fellow-travellers before turning in.
Well—there was always a time of loneliness, depression, after the first excitement of the start, the bustle of departure. Hours now since Clare had vanished, standing waving on the quay. Ripping of her to come and see him off—looking her best, in a marvellous black coat and skirt, and a queer little cap with turned-back ear-flaps, like a Mercury’s helmet—queer, but just right. Her face had sparkled and glowed out of dark furs. She’d been in such good form. Every one had looked at her. Lovely Clare—dear Clare. How long till he saw her again? He hoped to goodness nothing boring would happen to her: that she’d have no bothers with any rotten sort of chap.
A Note in Music Page 22
