All went well. It went more than well, for that is but a comparative term. The three were translated, breaking through the law of inertia, into another measurement, or a life outside measurement. The hard run beneath the sleigh became a pulsing organism, with its veins swelling and receding. The hum of the runners, the flurry of snowdust, the occasional batting sound as the sleigh rose and slapped down again; the rush of things all out of focus to right and left; objects coming up the slope, magnifying as they approached, flashing past to be annihilated instantly; all these mad nudgings of her consciousness were felt by Joan as she flew, clinging to Adrian, whose body she could feel as the one substantial thing in a dissolving universe. So acute was her concern for the boy that John was practically invisible to her, although his bulk loomed up in front, stolid and secure. His shoulders rose and fell with the undulation of the sleigh. The air rushed over his shoulders and over her head, whistling like sword-blades. At one stage, as they rounded a bend, she heard herself cry out, but the sound was snatched from her mouth and meant nothing. She could feel that Adrian had shrunk into himself, his breath held, and then being released in quick gasps of ecstasy. But all this awareness was instantaneous, for time was annihilated. And suddenly, just as she relaxed into enjoyment with the other two, she realised what had happened. Adrian had lost his gloves, or perhaps had left them behind.
The sleigh did not stop for Joan to consider fully. Fear darkened everything.
Light went out of the sky and the white world. She had the sensation of rushing into greyness, and increasing confusion of threats, menaces, disasters. She tried to cry out to John, expostulating, accusing him of his irresponsible folly. But it was useless. Her voice was overpowered by the death-cold slip-stream, snatched away and flung off behind, just as the wisdom and caution of normal-pacing life were discarded during this mad descent. And even if she were able to warn John, he might not regard her; he might not appreciate the consequences of anything happening to this child’s hands.
She had to do something instantly. Leaning forward, she closed her arms round Adrian, forcing his hands together and clasping them between her gloved hands, trying to cover them completely. He turned his eyes up to hers, as though to enquire what she meant. She might have been able to whisper to him, but the movement made by her effort caused the sleigh to swerve on another bend. A moment later, they were over the seven-foot bank, skidding on one runner, and finally plunged into thick snow and overturned. A yell of wild laughter followed. It was John, who sat up, exultant in physical danger, triumphing over it, testing his manhood against it.
“O.K. you two?” he shouted, staggering up and shaking the snow from his head.
Joan lay buried, with the child somewhere beneath her. She felt John approach, for she could not see, because she was face downward in the snow. She felt the snow darken round it. It was the coming of John’s shadow as he bent over, seized her round the waist, and lugged her roughly out of the pit which her body and Adrian’s had dug.
Joan opened her eyes after rubbing them clear of snow. She saw Adrian still half-covered, and a faint stain of crimson, hardened and let into the surface of the snow. She dared not look. Heart-sick, she stooped and gently, very gently lifted the boy in her arms, stumbling as she did so. She did not look again at her husband. She could not, and when he spoke his voice made her flinch.
“Cheer up, old girl; it’s only a spill. No bones broken!”
He was right. The blood on the snow was her own, not Adrian’s. She had scratched her forehead, perhaps on a buckle on Adrian’s garment. John wanted to wipe the scratch with his handkerchief, but she motioned him away angrily.
“It’s his hands,” she gasped. “No gloves. No gloves! Frostbite!”
The boy, meanwhile, was standing blinking solemnly, dazed by the suddenness of the spill. Then he began to laugh, and gradually the joy of this physical excitement, and a sharing of John’s triumph in riding so buoyantly over the element of danger, took possession of him. He rocked with laughter, ignoring Joan’s attempts to seize his hands and cover them with her own gloves. He waved his arms in the air, slapping at John who stood close behind Joan, slapping round her bulky figure and attempting to bring John into the conspiracy of mirth.
“No, Adrian! No, you must not. You must keep your hands covered! Your hands, Adrian!” She was losing control, and her anger broke out. “You fool! You idiot!” she cried, turning upon her husband, her voice breaking. “Look at his hands. Cover them up!”
But John had already done so. He drew a spare pair of woollen gloves from the pocket of his windjacket, and pulled them up Adrian’s arms to the elbow, saying, “Gently now, gently, old lady. No need to get into a flap. The boy’s right enough. Enjoying himself, aren’t you, Adrian? It’s you who need first aid, Joan. Let me tie my hankie round your forehead. Though it’s not bleeding now. This cold air will cure any wound in five minutes. Come on, we’ll get down the rest of the way on foot, and call it a day.”
Chapter Twenty-One
This Cowardly Flesh
One calm night, during a lull in the procession of winter gales that had been sweeping over Paris and dishevelling its beauty, Mary Winterbourne woke in the small hours, disturbed by the distant ringing of a telephone. At first she thought it was in the room, deceived by the magnifying power of half-consciousness. She turned in her lover’s arms, and raised herself on one elbow, listening.
Beams from the street-lamp in the boulevard, filling the room with horizontal slats of light and shadow, reminded her that before getting into bed, Tom had opened the Venetian blind, saying that he wanted to be able to see her beauty through all the sweet processes of love. She had replied that he was most un-English, and that she did not know whether she approved. They had laughed together, and he had his way, in this and in what followed.
“I want to make the most of you,” said Tom, just before they fell asleep. “I’m the sort who dreads the bill coming in, Mary. I don’t seem to have the means of footing it.”
“Oh, you’re ridiculous, my darling,” she murmured, her lips touching his face in her eagerness to clasp him close to her, to bring him some reassurance, some new access of hope for the future. “You’ve not been fairly treated. You must not lose heart. I am with you now. I love you, Tom. I could not have given myself to you like this if I did not love you. We shall prove it together. Why feel guilty? I feel nothing but pride and gratitude. I am willing to face whatever comes, so long as I have you for myself.” She coiled herself round him under the bedclothes, to illustrate her tenacity. But he was not easily reassured.
“I know, Mary. This is something I had not dared to dream of. But what about my getting free? She will never relent. I know her. She isn’t likely to want freedom for herself, and being a convert, she will have all the fanaticism without the charity of Catholicism.”
“You are being superstitious, Tom. Let us wait. Time will be our friend. It must be. I don’t believe people can love as we do without finding a way out of the difficulties. No, I’m more worried about Joan than I am about us.”
“Why? It looks as though they are likely to patch things up again. After all, they are fond of each other. It’s written all over them. They would not be so irritable if they were indifferent.”
Their whispered conversation dwindled away into sleep; the sleep of satisfaction and mutual joy. But this waking in the night, to the sound of a bell, when the nerves are reduced and courage has ebbed from the blood, made Mary shrink with a sudden tremor of fear. ‘Joan,’ she thought, ‘something has happened!’ The reaction was so violent that she began to weep.
Tom stirred, murmuring something she could not distinguish. She fumbled under the pillow for her handkerchief, and this woke him. He drew her to him, prepared to fall asleep again, assured of her in his arms, when he realised that she was in distress. He put his lips to her cheeks, and found them wet. His compassion made him struggle back into full consciousness.
“What is it, Mary? Tell me, what
are you worrying about?” The tenderness in his voice, and in the touch of his hands as he caressed her body, roused her to a physical gratitude that made her long to abandon herself again and again to him, to drown the distant admonition of that telephone bell.
“It’s coming from my room, Tom. I am sure it is. It’s directly beneath us.”
They both listened, their raptures suspended.
“Nonsense, my dear. It might be anywhere in the building. These modern places made of girders and concrete carry sounds as widely as a hollow tooth carries pain.”
But Mary was convinced the summons came from her room on the floor below. So acutely did it touch her nerves, that she fancied she could feel the vibration as well as the sound, rattling in the empty room, rousing the whole hotel to broadcast the fact that she was not there, but lying in the arms of the English colonel.
“What can we do?” she whispered. “Tom, what can we do? I must go down. It may be from St. Moritz. Something has happened. They’ve had an accident. Joan has been hurt.”
“Look, my love; you’re teasing yourself into hysteria. There’s no purpose in that.” He would not be denied, and though she had turned away, and was lying beside him on her back, her head half-raised the better to listen, he drew her to him again, and fell asleep. So too did the telephone, and the early-hour silences that are more clamant than sound, resumed control over the night.
Once uneasiness was roused, however, sleep did not return to Mary. The warmth of her lover, whose close embrace she hesitated to unlock for fear of waking him again, and the increasing tension of her mind, made her over-hot. She lay imprisoned, instead of protected. She longed to move; but it was only her thoughts that moved, and they flew to and fro like birds in a trap, beating their wings against the walls. She saw Joan clearly, and pictured her in trouble. How could she be otherwise, with the insoluble problem of her unfulfilled marriage in her life? Mary compared the situation with her present one, and a sense of shame at her own latter-day greediness flushed through her flesh. She put her hand down, as though to touch her thigh in reproof, but found Tom’s hand already there; so peaceful and so possessive, that she was unconscious it had been there.
For a long while she lay, empty-minded. She was still listening for that bell to ring again. But nothing happened; nothing from outside. But within, the turmoil grew. She saw Joan clearly, the loved figure to whom she had devoted herself since her husband’s death, making her the symbol of a faithfulness to the past, and of a dedication of herself to some form of passion that the desires and hopes of this world could not distort or destroy. Robbed of the joys of love, she had turned to the duties, and had fulfilled them. But was she now wasting all that credit? This question stung her, and she sighed, tried to shrink herself out of the grasp of the sleeping man beside her. But he held too firmly. Nor was she quite whole-hearted in her effort. What else had she left but his embrace?
This again told her that Joan must be aware of what was happening. Why, otherwise, did the girl suddenly want to leave her alone in Paris, and go off with the husband from whom she had recently separated for good? Mary writhed again upon the rack.
“I can’t go on, Tom,” she said. But Tom did not wake, he merely sank his head between her breasts and snuggled there like a child. She tried to look down at him, but a beam of shadow from the blind cut across the top of his head, and the rest of it was hidden by the bedclothes. But she could feel him there, in the posture of innocence. He must surely love her, though time had not yet proved it.
The query reminded her of his embarrassment in having to borrow money from her. That had been the start. He had borrowed more, and nothing had been said about this difficult situation. How was he to repay, for his own sake? She must help him out of that humiliation by taking part in the promotion of his nephew’s musical career. That stupid, puritanical father must be persuaded to give way. To-morrow she would have a talk with Mr. Sturm, who had invited them both to lunch with him. It did not occur to her that this joint invitation was an acceptance of the relationship between her and Tom. The more important thing now was for Tom to be able to stand equally with her, and not to be dependent upon her. It was a dreadful handicap, and might poison their love.
As though to point this threat, the distant telephone began to ring again, its rhythm more sinister than before. She was convinced now that the sound came from her own room. Something must be done to answer it, for it was the very voice of conscience. But she was in love’s grasp, and could not extricate herself without inflicting her burden on the dear person beside her. And very dear he had become, as she now realised, in the aftermath of passion. Had the attraction been nothing but desire, this satiety would have been dreadful. But it was not, in spite of the circumstances; the ties that bound him, the time of life that made the emotional indulgence somewhat ridiculous; the implied denial of the code on which she had brought up her daughter, and controlled her own life of widowhood.
She tried again to wriggle out of Tom’s embrace, but before she could succeed, the telephone stopped. She looked round her, and the bars of light and shadow changed to steel, fastened down over the bed.
“I can’t Tom, I can’t!” she murmured, but too feebly to rouse him. She was losing control of herself, for she had not intended to speak. This frightened her. The responsibility was growing too heavy. I must wake him, she thought; he must share it with me. But something maternal forbade this selfish action. He slept so innocently and she knew that it was innocence, all the equivocal element in his nature that had, perhaps, prevented him from making a success of his life, as his brother had done. Perhaps they were both alike, unworldly men, only in Tom this spiritual streak had not been given full assurance, or related to his professional affairs. The doctor was fortunate in his work. Tom was not. She must alter that. They would discuss it to-morrow.
But what would his wife do? Mary’s scruples were not religious. She had regulated her life by an ethical rather than a religious code since the shock of her husband’s death. She had not dared to let herself plunge again into the depths. It was safer to be merely reasonable, cool. The violence of religion was too much like the ecstasies which she had known in her marriage, when she had given herself too lavishly and blindly. Ever since, she had been paying for that. And now she had broken down again, let herself be plunged into the mid-ocean of passion. It was unaccountable, she told herself. What was she sacrificing? First of all, Joan’s respect. That she was convinced of. The look Joan had given her that day, that first day, outside Tom’s room! And another piece of evidence suddenly dawned upon her. The overcoat. Joan had refused to wear that coat again. Mary remembered the recoil as John had tried to put it round his wife’s shoulders. Unclean! That was what the gesture meant.
Mary turned again in torment. Oh, Joan, you don’t understand, she cried to the image of her daughter in her heart. You ought to understand; you are seeking the same thing yourself. Your own unhappiness is for lack of it.
Her misery increased the confusion of thoughts and emotions. Here, so deep below the surface of life where she had moved in comparative ease and dignity for twelve years, everything was obscured, tangled. An awareness of some living force returned, whom she must call God, and appeal to as God, with supersition or faith, call it what she would. There it was, a comeback out of the past, the dual aspect of love, with instinctive torment of the flesh and release of the spirit; bondage and freedom together; the perpetual conflict of desire and conscience, unknown to the reasonable life, from which all extremes had been banished as being survivals of savagery, the immolations, the rites of spring, the symbols of fecundity, the crucifixions. She had believed such disturbances were put away for ever, out of her nicely ordered social scheme of things; her good works, her parenthood alone; her sublimation of mourning.
But now she knew that she was no longer mourning; that the past was burned out, consumed, in this fire that had broken out in her bones, her flesh, her brain. Her brain! She put up her hand to her forehea
d, and found herself sweating. Again she groped for her handkerchief, and Tom half-woke, murmuring an endearment and drawing her closer, crushing her breasts against his head.
This tiny climax subsided, and both relaxed into comfort. But not for long. Mary began afresh, counting the accusations piling up against her. She saw the austere woman clerk in the desk below, prepared to ask why the telephone had not been answered during the night, to avoid disturbing the other guests: prepared to ask, while the answer flashed from those cynical French eyes. And if that attitude was typical, what must the doctor and his wife be thinking? They no doubt were more charitable, but even so, they would regard it as a foolish escapade at the best, unworthy of a matron of fifty who ought, all passion spent, to be mistress of her environment and any emergency that the evening of life might bring.
Why could not Tom wake and share with her? Was he totally incapable of taking any responsibility? Did this account for his failure hitherto?
Dawn began to weaken the strength of the bars of light that held her down, the artifices of the night. Sounds invaded the boulevard; first a lorry or two, then the commotion of a municipal machine flushing out the gutters. The light broadened in the room, and Tom stirred, moved round, and at last released her from his jealous embrace.
“Why, Mary, we’ve slept soundly,” he said, “what a happy night, after all. I wonder who that telephone was ringing for?” He looked at his watch. “Time we roused ourselves, my darling, before the folk here start moving. But I hate losing you. We must put that right, eh? As soon as possible.”
“Oh, Tom!” she said; and she sighed with misery. There was nothing more to add. Quietly she slipped out of bed, put on her nightdress and dressing-gown, opened the door, peered along the corridor, and fled.
Chapter Twenty-Two
The Dangerous Years Page 19