White Sand and Grey Sand

by Stella Gibbons

  But it had never come so strongly before, never like this. He felt quite at peace beneath it, disarmed, content. He wanted nothing but to continue looking at Ydette. And while he looked, a line came into a head which had never been in the habit of quoting verse: Beauty, helpless as a flower. And then—Beauty and the Beast.

  So that’s it, he thought without emotion; she is perfectly beautiful, and that’s what I want. I’ve always wanted it and only just found out what it is. But I don’t want Ydette. This has nothing to do with that. It’s much more difficult to satisfy—if it ever can be satisfied. Perhaps it can’t. And I’m the Beast, I suppose. All right. I don’t mind being the Beast, if this will only come to me sometimes, and if I can do something for it.

  Rarely, rarely comest thou, spirit of Delight. I’m in a mood for English poetry this afternoon, it seems. That’s Shelley—I ought to remember him, after all those tedious English Literature classes with old Ruddlin at Port Meredith. And with the recollection he tried to ‘pull himself together’. But the exquisite peace, ignoring him, persisted.

  If I can serve it in some way. That was an odd thing to think. Nevertheless, he did feel a desire to serve; it was even faintly painful, and as the feelings which had been storing themselves within him since his rebellious and insolent childhood gradually welled away under the soft calling of the Spirit of Delight, he began to know that he could never insult Ydette again or pretend to have for her that hatred which had actually been his strong resentment at being charmed. And now, he supposed, he must begin by doing what he could for her.

  He stirred, sighing faintly. When there were twenty-seven years of arrogance, self-will and malice behind you, it was not simple to start ‘helping’ anyone. However, you could always do the easiest thing, and that was to spend some money.

  “I’ll take you home,” he said shortly, breaking a silence the length of which neither of them had realized; “that’s what you’d like best, isn’t it?”

  Her expression became sedately radiant. “Oh yes; thank you, mijnheer.”

  “You don’t seem very surprised.” He was; he had rather expected protestations about ingratitude to Mr Christopher and so on.

  “No, mijnheer.” Her smile broadened.

  “Why not, Ydette? Weren’t you very surprised to see me this afternoon?” He could not resist the impulse to find out, if possible, just a little about what was going on in that head.

  “Oh yes, Mijnheer Adriaan. But——”

  “But what? Come on, tell me; we’ve known each other a very long time, you know.” He kept his voice light; rather mocking.

  “I … thought … perhaps Madame had asked if you would come, to see if all was right with me,” Ydette said.

  “My mother? No, she didn’t ask me to come. She knew I was coming, because I told her, but I didn’t know myself that you’d come to England until I came home on Friday, and then I was in such a state”—he checked himself, then went on, “I was rather worried about you. I thought you might come to some harm. So I came over to make sure that the Ruddlins weren’t doing awful things to you.”

  He laughed uneasily: even his coolness found the changeover from contemptuous mockery to brotherly protectiveness a difficult one, and his embarrassment was increased by the recollection of his mother’s surprise and concern when she saw his agitation, and heard his final decision to go after Ydette. She thinks I’m in love with her, he thought, and so does papa. Well, I’m not. But that’ll be a bore too: explaining.

  Ydette had not laughed. She said seriously, “Do you think that they will be cross, Monsieur Chris and his sister, if I go home with you?”

  “I expect so, but a bit more won’t matter,” he said with the impudence which was his form of cheerfulness. “Chris is pretty fed-up with you anyway, I expect, and you say these awful women—Nora’s friends—are too, so ‘in for a penny, in for a pound’, as the English say. At any rate, they won’t be worried about you.”

  “No, they will know that I am with you,” Ydette softly said.

  “Oh, is that such a guarantee?” sneeringly. “I haven’t such a good reputation as all that, you know. They may think I’m going to make love to you. But I don’t suppose you’d like me to, would you?”

  The words were no sooner out than he was mentally rapping the claws of the Beast for uttering them. (The fact was, the Beast had rather bad taste.) It wasn’t a question, quite, of ‘profaning’ his new feeling for Ydette (if indeed it was actually felt for the girl herself at all) as of a kind of irrelevance in saying such things; they didn’t seem even to touch the edge of the Spirit of Delight’s robe: they belonged to another—a by no means to be despised but an utterly different—world. He experienced a disagreeable sensation, which unfamiliarity prevented him from identifying as shame.

  “Good lord, mijnheer!” Ydette had gone a deep pink, and she gave an embarrassed laugh, “good lord …” she let it go at that. Her sensations were rather as if one of the demons in a sacred painting in the City Art Gallery at home had made the remark—a demon whom she feared, but who was at the same time dear to her because of his homely associations. In a moment she had dealt with the situation by taking it for granted that she had misunderstood what he had said.

  “We’ll fly,” he said, beginning to bustle with the telephone directory, and ignoring her murmurs about return tickets; “you go and get me some coffee, like a good girl, and I’ll fix things up …” He was looking forward to leaving a note that would properly rattle that ass Chris, and Nora and her snooty friends as well. You did not get out of the habit of malice in three-quarters of an hour. Nevertheless, he had changed, and he knew it. Faint excitement fluttered in him, as if it were the promise of something later on to be explored and delighted in—he suddenly thought, while awaiting a reply from the Airport, that he would buy himself a fierce tachiste picture for the walls of his flat in Brussels. …

  By great good fortune, there were two seats on the evening flight, a series of recent crashes having resulted, among other things, in a series of cancellations, and there was just time to drink one cup of coffee and scatter a few crumbs of cake, like some sacrilegious manna, on the lustrous surface of the mejuffrouws’ carpet, before setting out.

  While they were drinking it, in a silence on both sides of almost complete content, it seriously occurred to Adriaan that he might marry her. She was docile, and well disposed to him in spite of his years of rudeness to her (and how damned rude I was, he thought remorsefully, glancing at the placid face poised above the Georgian coffee-pot), and her very lack of relations and background was in many ways an advantage. And he would possess for ever the face and body that could call up for him the Spirit of Delight.

  Then he dismissed the idea. Her lack of even rudimentary intellect would soon drive him crazy, there would be endless scenes and tedious explanations with his family, frightful junketings and parties with hers, and probably a crack on the head one night from that tough footballer, young Gheldeere—who was, Adriaan supposed, more likely to marry her than anyone else.

  That she might refuse to marry someone from the big house never once occurred to him.

  Ydette, apart from some misgivings about their hasty departure, was entirely reassured and content. It seemed quite natural to her that the big house should extend its protective care over her even as far as England and in the shape of Mijnheer Adriaan—and he was being so much more polite and kind than she ever remembered! But then, hadn’t she always known that he was ‘like that’ really? As if anyone from the big house could truly be cross and unkind! And, too, she had successfully made coffee with that uncanny electric saucepan.

  “Feeling better?” he asked, glancing at the clock as he felt for a cigarette, when the cups were put aside.

  “Yes, thank you, mijnheer.”

  “We can get a car from Brussels; mine’s at home this weekend.”

  “Yes, mijnheer.”

  “You don’t think the old ladies will be frightened by your coming home er—
rather unexpectedly?”

  “Oh no, mijnheer. I sent them a postcard of the Tower of London on Saturday. They know I am alive and well.”

  “I see … I hope that reassured them. Coming home with me, I meant. Won’t they mind that?”

  “Oh no,” eagerly, “of course not, mijnheer.”

  “Oh come off it, Ydette.” The Beast raised a tentative paw. “You must know I’ve got quite a name at home—girls and so on.”

  “People always say bad things,” she answered in a low tone, “but my aunts will not mind.”

  “Oh indeed? Why is that?” He was jeering now.

  “You are from the big house, mijnheer.”

  The tone, the expression, kept him absolutely quiet for a moment. Then he said:

  “It means a lot to you, doesn’t it?”

  She looked enquiring.

  “Our house—the big house—you … well, it means a lot, doesn’t it?”

  “Oh yes,” with the confident look of a child, “yes, Mijnheer Adriaan.” Then, as if feeling that more should be added, but as always, unable to say what she felt, “It has … ever since I was a little girl, it has been there. And Madame, so kind, so good to me.”

  “Yes …” he said, thinking angrily of that goodness, and how he had thrust aside, almost ever since he could remember, his own knowledge of it and his love for it, “I expect, in one way, you feel you kind of belong to us, don’t you?” he casually continued.

  What followed literally astounded him. A kind of joyful blaze illuminated her, her face sprang into smiling life and confusion and joy. Then he saw her eyes brighten with tears. Drawing in a quivering breath, she whispered:

  “Yes, yes. Oh yes. That is it. I belong to all of you at the big house,” and made no other movement than a knotting and an intertwining of her long hands. She looked down, and he saw the tears—the first of joy that he had ever seen—fall from her eyes.

  He was extremely dismayed. Great God, he thought, she believes she’s related to us in some way. That’s why she’s always looked at me like that. That’s why she’s taken it for granted I should come over and rescue her. What a fool I’ve been. It’s the inevitable thing. We’re the only gentry she knows, and she’s a foundling and so obviously a cut above the Maes, and my mother’s always been so kind to her … it’s all happened perfectly naturally: she probably thinks I’m her half-brother—except that I’ll swear she’s never worked it all out anything like so clearly. It’s all mixed up inside that marvellous little head with the bioscoop and the stories of the Saints.

  But it oughtn’t to go on. It isn’t fair to her or to us. And if ever any kind of a story did get around (with a touch of pride) it would dishonour the name.

  Thinking his way as he went, with the greatest caution, for what he was about to do was as if he should awaken a sleepwalker in full, dream-burdened stride, he easily began:

  “And you do belong to us in a way, because my mother has always been … fond of you, Ydette; she thinks you are a very good girl. And you know that my father thinks well of your work.” (Yes and giving her a job in the factory, too; that must have seemed so significant to her.) “As for me,” and here he really did pause.

  Must the Beast apologize to Beauty? Well, not perhaps to Beauty, but to the spirit that lived within her. “I’m a bad lot,” he ended impudently, “but I know I’ve always been damned rude to you, ever since we were children. I’m sorry. It was just because I liked so much to look at you, and I didn’t want to show it.”

  He held out his hand (he almost thought of it as a paw, in contrast to the one which she slowly put into it), and so they sat for a moment. He felt nothing but the agreeable softness and the coolness of her skin. His eyes were fixed on her face.

  “So I expect you do feel like a kind of ‘daughter of the house’,” he went on, and then, with a sudden lightning intuitive leap into the heart of the illusion, “my mother did have a daughter once, you know, but she died.”

  “She … died? I thought … Sophie Bouckaerts said … that you lost her, that she was lost.”

  “That’s what Sophie meant. She meant that we lost her through death. Yes, that was my sister Suzanne,” hurrying on, no longer looking at her face, “she’s buried in the family grave out at Les Fleurettes. I can just remember her—a little thing with very fair hair, almost silver. She would be in her late twenties now, about nine years older than you.” He paused: he had been speaking slowly and rather deliberately, yet without any unusual emphasis, because he wanted what he was saying to sink in, but did not want to give the impression that he was out to shatter the illusion of a life-time. And still he did not care to glance at her face.

  In a moment Ydette said:

  “There is her grave, out there at Les Fleurettes?”

  “Yes. It’s in a small churchyard, attached to the church there. Next summer, if—if you’d care to see it—it’s a pretty little place—I’ll drive you out.”

  “Thank you, mijnheer,” she answered after a pause. “It—it is kind of you.” And she added, in a tone and with an expression that just for an instant made her appear like an older woman, “Poor little girl.”

  He did not answer, but laid a light kiss—perhaps a little hot and bristly, but what could you expect from a Beast?—on the hand he held. More than poor little Suzanne, he thought, would from now on be buried out at Les Fleurettes. Then Ydette said suddenly, as if driven by some very strong feeling:

  “Mijnheer Adriaan …”

  “Yes? What is it? Tell me, Ydette—I came over here to rescue you, you know.” He was so full of remorse, in spite of his relief at having done the necessary smashing, that he could not speak warmly enough.

  “Well …” she made an effort that paled her face … “it is … do you remember the old man who died? Old Klaas?”

  “Of course; very well. He died four years ago, in the plaats, on that evening when the Ruddlins dined with us and we saw Christopher’s film. What about him?”

  “He said … while he was dying he said … something.”

  “Oh? People often say queer things when they’re ill. What did he say? Something frightening?”

  “Not really frightening, but … I … I minded so much.” He leant nearer, for he could scarcely hear what she was saying. “I … was beside him, and he looked up at me and he said that I was just like my mother, and then something about ‘not good enough for her’, and ‘ladyfied’.”

  “Oh, he was wandering,” Adriaan said firmly. “I don’t expect he knew what he meant himself. He probably didn’t recognize you, he got you all muddled up with someone he’d known years ago.”

  “Yes …” she breathed, her face beginning to show hope, “but it was so queer … and he always used to look at me so queerly too, as if … he didn’t like me … and was making fun of me.”

  “Old types like that always hate the young,” said he; “it’s only envy … I shouldn’t give it another thought—why didn’t you tell your aunts, if it worried you?”

  “I don’t know, mijnheer. I minded so much … I could not, no, I could not.” She was desolate again. Not even to Mijnheer Adriaan, who by now appeared to her as a kind of father confessor with whom she felt perfectly at ease, could she relate that she had feared some outburst from Aunt Jakoba about her own relations with Klaas in the past, that Ydette would so much rather not hear. And not even to him could she confess the horrible suspicion which had weighed her own spirits down for four years, existing side by side with the other day-dream about the big house, and now, since he himself had just destroyed that vaguer and happier hope, most miserably reinforced.

  But he seemed to possess the power of reading her mind.

  “Look here,” he suddenly said, giving a sharp and admonitory wag to the hand he held, “don’t you go getting any absurd ideas into your head about that shocking old type being your father. It’s utterly ridiculous. We probably won’t ever know who your parents were (it’s my belief they were both killed in the very first day
s of the war, while they were on their way with you to the coast), but one thing I am quite certain of—and it’s that that terrible old man wasn’t anything at all to do with you. Be your age, Ydette. Can you imagine him producing someone like you? Besides, people would have been sure to hear about it; you know how they gossip.”

  “It is true,” she said after a pause; the reassurance was as welcome as it was sweet. “And I did not truly think … only sometimes I remembered …”

  “Well, don’t remember any more.” He moved her hand again. “And now we really must go, or we shall miss the ‘plane. (Never flown before, have you? You just hold on to me, I’m not nervous.) Now go and collect your things and I’ll write a note to the Ruddlins and then ’phone for a taxi.”

  Humming to himself, he hunted out some elegant paper from the girls’ desk. Always at the back of his mind there lingered the taste, stronger than mere memory, of the visiting Spirit of Delight and his half-formulated wish to serve it. And he no more suspected how much that spirit was to transform him than did the Prince in the story, when first he fitted over his ugly face the mask which was to mould and change it at last into its own lines of purest beauty.

  The note he finally left was a masterpiece of alarming vagueness, signed with so intricate a monogram (Adriaan had rather a taste for, and skill in, the minor art of lettering) that it took the girls, aghast and guilty at the empty flat and the meekly washed-up cups in the kitchen, nearly ten minutes to puzzle it out. “A.V.R.” Who on earth——? The man on the telephone, of course; but who? It was Nora, at last, picking up the note with the slightly brusque and indifferent air which she had worn since the discovery that her guest had flown, who identified Ydette’s rescuer.