by Ursula Bloom
And then, Peter would never have died, but the great grey ship would come ploughing back again, with a paying-off pennant streaming from her mast and her crew lined up in orderly array. Peter, young and lithe and splendid; he would call her ‘little heart’ again, and ‘darling one’. She would cry on his shoulder. She wanted to cry after all this. But it would be the end of all suffering and the beginning of all happiness.
Or she would go far back, and strum her childish tune again on the tinkling piano … tum-tiddley-um-tum … tum-tiddley-um-tum. The tune drowned by the march of feet. Men marching like pulses throbbing; and peering through the window she would see them again, transferred from the Wilhelm Strasse here to the little town; their helmets clipping their heads, their stiff straight bodies in long straight tunics, their jerking legs and arms …
Or were they sailors?
Yes, of course they were sailors, with their nice pink necks above their flapping jeans, and their white-topped caps (for in these dreams it was always summer), and their trousers flopping against their feet.
And he was with them.
‘Come,’ he called as he marched, ‘come. It isn’t so very far into the land of dreams. Come, little passionate heart.’
And she would wipe her eyes and find that it was only a game. Here were but the sedgy grasses waving in the wind, and the sound of the surf grown nearer, for the tide was rising. But life was a dream really. One need not worry. There is always something beautiful just ahead. She had but to wait a little while. A very little while.
V
Johnny came to stay. That summer they were reduced to taking a lodger. Johnny came as their lodger for one week, and he was the least satisfactory one they had that season. Johnny had been a very temporary gentleman, and had dropped the gentlemanliness with his uniform; he was now a common little tippler, and, although he came down to Dornsands with the altogether good intention of doing nothing that would upset or disgrace his sister, he very soon forgot about his resolutions. He behaved beautifully on the first evening, but when Jasmine had been taken out to tea by Hubert, who had been formally introduced, and the two left alone were sitting in the little parlour, Johnny began:
‘I say, where did she pick up that awful young fellow?’
‘Who? Hubert?’
‘Yes; why, he is appalling.’
‘She would get engaged to him.’
‘But didn’t old George put his foot down?’
‘He came at once, but he didn’t seem to worry; he talked a lot about love.’
Johnny pulled hard at a pipe. ‘Yes, old George would. Didn’t he do anything else about it? I mean, Jasmine is a fine girl, it is a pity to let her waste her chances.’
Mary laughed, and there was something a little hard in the laughter. ‘What chances have we here, Johnny? We’ve sunk! It’s no use pretending about it, for it has happened. Nobody’s fault, of course.’
‘Nobody’s fault! I like that. I always told you old George was a beast, and I’ve never had cause to change my opinion. Of all the swine … And if we could see him now, what would he be doing?’
‘I don’t like to think.’
‘Well, I do. He’d be sitting with some old fool of a woman, and a forget-me-not, and talking the most utter drivel. I know George. And here you two are … in a nice mess.’
Through the open window came the voices of people having a late bathe; the echo was always particularly clear at this time in the evening; it rippled lightly and laughingly on the balmy air.
‘What do you think I could do, Johnny?’ she asked.
‘That’s just it. There is nothing to do,’ said Johnny fiercely. ‘Damn George, and damn that horrid young fellow with the lovelock and the “pleased-to-meet-you” business. I’d hoof him out, by jingo I would.’
‘If I do, Jasmine will go too.’
‘Well, let her go. If she’s so bent on making a fool of herself, let her get on with it.’
‘She’s all I’ve got.’
Johnny puffed harder than ever, with his flabby face behind the pipe, and his eyes squinting with annoyance. ‘Why the devil didn’t you run away with that other fellow?’ he asked at last.
So this was life. She was tired of explaining; she had expected that they would all reproach her if she had gone with Peter. Her own Victorianism had been shocked, and had repudiated the bare suggestion; now she was almost more shocked that they should reproach her for staying. How paradoxical was life! It was almost amusing, the way it changed. A handful of years, a terrible war, and here they all were with opinions metamorphosed and Victorianism interred for ever. Why had she not run away with Peter? Was it because she had been afraid of public opinion or because she had been afraid of God? It was difficult to analyse oneself.
She thought it over lying in bed that night, with Jasmine beside her calmly sleeping. Always when Mary got to bed there came this resistless sea engulfing her. She could be calm and dignified and old during the day, but at night, alone, she was dreadfully young and helpless. She was only a child really, groping her way in the darkness. Staring into herself, she was horrified at her own youth, at her yearnings, her petty fears, her forlorness.
It was all part of the passionate heart! One could not escape from it. Night was eternally introspective.
Hubert’s people asked them to tea next day, as it was early closing, and they went. They could not well refuse. She and Johnny, he protesting all the way, and Jasmine very blushing and rather prettily disturbed. Hubert opened the door to them, and ushered them in with his general awkward manner. They went through the shop, shrouded in brownish dust-sheets; they went through a door nailed with advertisements for ink, and into a passage beyond, and were escorted up rickety stairs to the front room. Here Mr. Simonds met them, dressed in his best suit, and wearing his boots, which he never wore usually indoors. He was minding his manners most carefully. He minded them so much that he called Mary ‘ma’am’ and Johnny ‘sir’.
A beautiless room, with its brussels carpet and its chiffonier, its whatnot, and its Goss china. It had been carefully dusted and it smelt of furniture polish. They all arranged themselves on decrepit occasional chairs, Johnny sitting on a diminutive square affair with cotton-reel arms. Johnny had brought it forth out of a corner, where it had been placed because it had lost a leg. Sitting himself in it, he immediately overbalanced and turned a complete somersault backwards, landing in the whatnot, with feet upraised in mid-air.
‘Damn!’ said Johnny, picking himself up, red and annoyed. ‘Damn!’
‘I am sorry, sir, that I am,’ said Mr. Simonds. ‘That chair should have been mended long before this. I telled my wife, but she always said it would be all right. Now when we’ve got company ‒’
‘Oh, don’t mind me,’ said Johnny, rubbing an injured elbow hard. ‘I don’t care a couple of hoots. Bestow your sympathy on the whatnot, and the knick-knacks. They need it!’
Jasmine and Hubert were picking them up in the background, and from the stairs came wheezings and groanings which indicated that Mrs. Simonds was bringing up the tea. She appeared, a little woman with a face russet like an apple, and dusty hair pinned into a neat bun. She bore a large japanned tray, and on it a brown teapot and the tea-things, cups set one in the other, and spoons scattered in a heap.
‘There, to be sure,’ she said, ‘I thought the kettle never would boil, but it’s always like that when you’ve got company, isn’t it?’ To Jasmine: ‘Come and kiss me, dearie,’ and then suddenly, seeing the breakages: ‘Whatever is all that mess there?’
‘Uncle fell into the whatnot,’ explained Jasmine, casting a coldly accusing eye at Johnny.
‘Oh dear, oh dear, just as I did hope everythink would go off nice ‒’ she looked at them helplessly, and then added, as she caught her son’s warning eye, ‘ly.’ She craned forward. ‘Don’t tell me that Goss china cat with the Bournemouth arms on it is broke! I’ll never be able to get another.’
Johnny, determined to be aggravating, addressed Hu
bert. ‘Is the Goss china cat from Bournemouth broke?’ he demanded, with an accent on the verb.
‘Its tail ‒’ began Hubert.
‘Oh dear, oh dear, and I did set such store by that there cat. Never mind, no use crying over spilt milk. Father, will you fetch up the other tray? I’ve made a good plum cake, and there are lettuces out of the garden …’ She went to her corner and started laying the round mahogany table with a clatter. It was Mary who went to her.
‘Can’t I help?’
‘Oh no, it’s all right, thank you kindly. Father’ll bring up the rest; there isn’t nothing to do really. Just sit down and make yourselves at home, do.’
‘I prefer to stand,’ said Johnny from the window, with its madras curtains and gaudy loops. ‘I’ve sat down once too often.’
Mrs. Simonds heard. ‘I’ll have another chair fetched for you, sir,’ she explained. ‘Hubert, go into your room and bring that there wicker chair what was your Aunt Jessica’s.’
It was Jasmine who tried to propitiate Johnny. ‘Uncle, do be nice to them,’ she said in a low tone, while her betrothed obediently fetched the chair; ‘what did you come for if you meant to be so horrid?’
‘I came because I wanted to see what a complete little fool you were making of yourself,’ he answered in the same low tone.
‘You’re beastly! Mother told you to say that.’
‘She didn’t, then. I said it off my own bat. I’ve got eyes in my head, and ears too. I am sure I once thought you had a brain, but since I’ve met your beloved I am assured you’re a congenital idiot.’
She turned from him savagely and went across and helped the old woman with the tea. Later, sitting by Hubert, she slipped her hand into his; it closed masterfully upon hers. ‘I’ve got him,’ she told herself.
Johnny made an excuse to leave early. He said that he had a longing to walk by the sad sea waves, and, when Mrs. Simonds suggested that he should go for a nice paddle he glared so fiercely that she was thoroughly frightened, and did not dare to try and stay him. Mary left soon after, for it had been arranged that Jasmine was to stay on to supper with Hubert’s people.
‘It’s only a snack, you know,’ explained Mrs. Simonds, ‘but she’s a dear girl, and she don’t mind us being humble. I’m mighty fond of your daughter, Mrs. Carew; we all love Jessamine.’
Mary went out with it ringing in her ears. Jessamine! It was horrible. She went into the marine gardens on the sea-front and leaned on the rail looking out across the water. She must go home soon, for there was work to be done. The endless housework with its toil! Now, feeling sick and sorry, how she longed for the old days when she had had servants to wait upon her. It was all over now. It is not much good repining.
She thought of Johnny’s picture of George with a lady and a forget-me-not. It was ludicrously true! It was a mercy that she could see something amusing in George’s philanderings, but, really, a fat man should not toy with forget-me-nots!
The evening closing in was pretty and dim; the gulls had gone to rest, the sea was tipped with pearl. The evening star rose, like a single white eye staring out upon this old world’s pain. Behind her was the wide road of the esplanade and the pavement, with the plastered walls of the Royal beyond, and merry voices coming from the open window of the bar. She listened; she heard a voice singing, and there was something familiar about it. She listened on, and the words, clearly enunciated, came across to her, throbbing through the beauty of the still night:
When I was in service
Down on Salisbury Plain
My master was so good to me
My mistress was the same;
Then up came a sailor,
A sailor bold and free,
And he was the cause
Of all my misery.
Bell-bottomed trousers
And a suit of navy blue …
It was, of course, Johnny!
VI
One had never been able to do much with Johnny, and after he had discovered the cheery little bar at the Royal one could do less. The rest of his stay in Dornsands was distressing, and the most appalling moment of it was when Hubert, always an annoyingly self-righteous young man, objected. It was in the middle of the morning, when he should have been attending to the teeth of the populace. He had, however, come past the Royal, and had observed Johnny sitting on the cash register, and conducting with an empty beer bottle a glee-party consisting of all the sots of the place. Hubert stumbled into the cottage to find Mary in the diminutive kitchen making a pudding. Mary hated to be discovered at these tasks, and was not pleased to see her future son-in-law for that reason. She wiped the flour off her hands and came into the dining-room with the cheap peeling paper and the blistering paint. She sat down by the grate.
‘I came down about a very nasty business,’ said Hubert, fingering his hat awkwardly by the table; ‘that brother of yours is disgracing me and my family.’
It was humiliating that Hubert should complain, and especially humiliating seeing that his family was quite what it was. She felt herself grow very still and erect. Hubert went on:
‘He is in the Royal bar now, singing and carrying on. I’ve got me future to think of. Folks all know as how I’m engaged to Jessamine. It’ll do me a power of harm.’
She said coldly: ‘It isn’t my fault.’
‘No, I’m not saying as how it is, but I do think as how he ought to be kept at home. I’ve got me future to think of, and it don’t do for a professional man to have these little upsets.’
‘Why don’t you speak to him yourself?’
‘How can I, when he is, begging your pardon … when he won’t understand like?’
She answered: ‘I will tell him what you say.’
Hubert fidgeted uncomfortably. ‘I don’t think as how you’d better do that … he mightn’t take it well. If you could drop him a hint on the strict Q.T.?’
‘I shall tell him what you say,’ she repeated.
She was ashamed that Hubert’s reddening cheeks gave her a feeling of comfort. She detested Hubert, and any discomfort on his part gave her a petty glow of satisfaction. It was, of course, all wrong, but one could not help it.
She told Johnny after lunch, with the greasy plates piled in that disgusting little sink waiting for her poor hands to toil with them. She was standing by the empty fire, and Johnny was lighting his pipe in the window.
‘Hubert has been here,’ she said; ‘he says you are disgracing his family. I wish you wouldn’t, Johnny.’
Johnny looked up. ‘What did you say he said?’
‘That you are disgracing him and his family.’
‘Well, upon my Sam! What does the little fool mean? I’ll go and tick him off.’
‘But, Johnny, you haven’t right on your side. You do drink.’
‘So would Hubert if he had a chance. I’d like to kick his‒’
She interrupted him in time. ‘Hubert is T.T.’
‘He would be. In ten years’ time Miss Jasmine will be bringing him home in a wheelbarrow, mark my words, and serve her damn well right, sir. Disgrace his family, indeed! I’ll just tell him what I’ve wanted to tell him ever since I saw his ugly face.’
Unfortunately at this moment Jasmine appeared in a new white frock which Mary had made for her, and fingering the wretched ring which Hubert had given her. Johnny hailed his niece.
‘What’s this tale that moth-eaten young man of yours has been putting up about me?’
‘Well, Uncle, he doesn’t like the way you go on.’
‘Oh, doesn’t he? And I don’t like the way he goes on, with his “ingines” and “me mother” and “pleased-ter-meet-yer”. And it’s a pity he got himself christened with a name beginning with an H; he’s a careless fellow, and, if I were you, Jasmine, I’d warn him to pick up some of those H’s. Hubert hasn’t got a silent H like ’addock. You tell him that.’
‘You shall not say these things,’ she flashed.
‘Oh, shan’t I? You’re only ratty because you know it�
��s true. And the nasty bit of work says I drink.’
‘Well, that’s true.’
‘I’d rather drink than be dreadful, which is what he is; and you, you little fool, can’t see it.’
The girl turned to Mary with stinging eyes. ‘Mummy, don’t let him say these things, don’t. I can’t bear it.’
‘Johnny,’ she begged.
But Johnny once wound up could not stop; there was a great deal of Mamma in his veins, and he fought like Mamma. He told Jasmine crudely and cruelly exactly what he thought of Hubert and of her for liking Hubert. Then, when he had said everything that he could lay tongue to, he went out, and slammed the door behind him. He went forth in search of Hubert, to say it all over again, suitably adapted to be applicable to the male species. If the truth must be told, Johnny was thoroughly enjoying himself.
Across the tiny room Jasmine faced Mary. Behind her the sink, and the plates with fat congealing on them, and a kettle steaming in a volley from the gas stove.
‘Mummy, Mummy, did you hear the things he said? You won’t let him come back, will you? I couldn’t ever face him again. I couldn’t, really I couldn’t. Mummy, you won’t let him come back?’
‘Hush, my darling.’
‘Hubert’s not like that. He doesn’t speak badly, really he doesn’t.’ She noticed her mother’s grim silence, and then she asked: ‘Does he, Mother?’
‘Well, darling ‒’
‘You’re all against him.’
‘We want you to be happy.’
‘How can I be happy with you all nagging at me? It’s just as Father said.’
‘We are so worried.’
‘Well, either Uncle goes, or I go.’
‘Jasmine, you’re mad.’
‘No, I’m not. I won’t stay here and be bullied. I’ll go to his people.’
‘Jasmine, I do beg of you ‒’
‘Yes, you don’t care for me really, not truly. Now, is Uncle going?’
‘He will leave on Saturday.’
‘He’ll leave to-day, or I do.’
‘Don’t be silly. I’m going to wash up. I won’t listen to such absurd arguments. Of course your uncle isn’t going.’
