The appetite may sicken and so die—
That strain again;—it had a dying fall;
O, it came o’er my ear like the sweet south,
That breathes upon a bank of violets,
Stealing and giving odour. . . .
There were small wild violets among the grass, wild pansies, and strawberry flowers. From the south came a light, warm breeze. Marcus read on slowly, pausing every now and then to look up at the sky and think of love. He had never been in love, not really. He remembered two sisters, twins, whom he had met at a party one Christmas holidays, when he was sixteen. He had thought he was in love with both of them all through the following term. He had spent considerable periods imagining situations in which he found himself alone with one or other of them among the most beautiful surroundings: but when he had seen them again in the Easter holidays they had looked different and he had lost interest in them. From time to time he had felt attracted to other girls, girls he had seen in shops or in church, or in a tram or a bus. He had thought of them for a day or two, tried to remember exactly what they looked like. Often he could only remember one detail of a girl’s appearance—her expression, when she smiled; or the soft curves of her neck; or her legs, shapely and alluring in silk stockings.
Since he had come to live with Mr. Burnaby he had met very few girls. Peasant girls whom he passed on the road and the maids at The Garrison never attracted him in the slightest degree. There were two or three houses in the village which took in visitors in the summer and among these visitors he occasionally saw girls who looked interesting. However Mr. Burnaby always avoided the summer visitors and Marcus never had a chance to get to know any of them. He sometimes thought that Mr. Burnaby was deliberately keeping him out of temptation.
This idea came back to him and he felt angry with Mr. Burnaby. It was all very well doing special work, but you could only be young once and it wasn’t fair for him to be prevented from leading a normal life. Youth glittered before him as something lovely, and brief, and exciting, something at which he could only peer through the iron bars of a hermit’s cell. If only he could go to sleep and wake up on the sea coast of Shakespeare’s Illyria. With a discontented jerk he rolled over on his face and immediately caught sight of two girls who were approaching along the rocks from the direction of the village. He plucked a stalk of grass and sticking it between his teeth, propped his chin on his hands, and settled down to watch them.
At first they were too far away for anything to be distinguishable about them except that they were girls, but very soon he noticed that one was able to get over the rocks much more easily than the other. She would advance ten or twenty yards at a time, slim, upright and fearless, stepping from rock to rock confidently, and without hesitation. Then she would pause to wait for her companion, who clambered along slowly using her hands almost as much as her feet. Marcus had plenty of time to study them as they approached. He knew he was hidden from them by the bracken; it was almost as if he were at the pictures and they were part of the film. But he was excited. Through his clothes he was conscious of the earth below him, and of the sun beating down on his back. The second girl was short and uncomfortably fat. She seemed to be almost bursting out of her clothes, and her round, patient face was red with exertion and shining with perspiration. But it was the slim girl’s face that Marcus wanted to see. As she came nearer he grew more and more curious. If she would only look in his direction for a moment! But her face was always towards the sea; or else she had her back to him as she turned towards the fat girl and waited for her to catch up. She never even seemed to look where she was going: she floated along as if her feet had eyes of their own. Both girls were wearing print frocks: the fat girl had black shoes; the slim girl an old pair of tennis shoes. They had bare legs, the fat girl’s white and flabby-looking, the slim girl’s straight and smooth and brown and beautiful. Marcus examined her from head to foot. She had fair hair, or would you call it golden brown? Marcus wasn’t sure. It was short and caught back in some way so that her left ear was visible to Marcus. It was the most beautiful ear he had ever seen. He had no idea that an ear could be so beautiful. Her skin was tanned and the one cheek he could see was tinged with a soft pink. Her dress seemed to be part of her—like the petals on a flower, he thought.
More than ever he wished she would look in his direction. A faint cynical residue in him reminded him that girls, who from the back were most promising, often turned out to be simply ghastly when seen from in front. He wanted to see this girl’s eyes, her nose, her mouth. . . . The slim girl, however, appeared to be more interested in the sea than ever. “What about here?” she enquired unexpectedly. “I think this would do: it looks all right, and you could get out quite easily over there.”
“I don’t care,” the fat girl panted back, “so long as we don’t have to go any further.”
“It doesn’t matter where we undress,” the slim girl went on. “There’s no one about.”
“Anywhere’ll do me,” the fat girl responded. “I’m wringing wet already.”
Marcus stood up reluctantly. He would have liked to have gone on watching, but he would have felt mean—and how awful if they had discovered him afterwards. There was nothing for it, but to go away. “I’m afraid I’m here,” he announced apologetically, “but I can read somewhere else.” He brandished Twelfth Night to indicate that up till this instant he had been buried in his book.
The two girls gazed at him for a moment without speaking. The fat girl’s astonishment was ludicrous: she remained on all fours, peering at him sideways, like some startled animal. Then the slim girl smiled, and suddenly Marcus couldn’t see her in detail any more. He was conscious of her as a sort of radiance in the air. Out of this radiance came a voice. “Oh no. You were here first. We’ll find somewhere else.”
Marcus turned his eyes away. He wanted to stare and stare, but he knew he mustn’t—the slim girl wouldn’t like him to stare at her. He shifted his eyes first to the fat girl, who glared at him as if he had actually tried to watch them undressing, and then to the ground. What did he mean by it, the fat girl seemed to be thinking. Was there no other spot in the whole of Donegal where he could read his beastly book?
Yet it was not to save the fat girl from toiling reluctantly on round the rocks that Marcus replied: “Oh no. There’s nowhere else as good. It’s easy to get out here, and there are lots of places to dive from, and there’s always plenty of water—and it’s warm too. I think it gets the Gulf Stream.”
“It sounds perfect,” the slim girl responded.
The fat girl’s expression relaxed a little. “I don’t see why any of us should go away,” she remarked. “We can undress behind that rock there, and there’s nothing to prevent him from looking the other way.”
“Will you promise to look the other way?” the slim girl appealed.
“I can look when you’re bathing, can’t I?” Marcus begged, feeling that he was being slightly daring and at the same time paying a compliment.
Neither of the girls seemed offended. The fat girl suppressed a giggle: the slim girl directed at her the faintest ghost of a frown. Then she turned to Marcus half grave, half smiling. “All right,” she agreed, “if you promise not to look till we tell you you can.”
Marcus was dazzled again. His tongue seemed to have grown big and clumsy. “I promise,” he brought out at last. He felt the utmost difficulty in speaking at all.
The slim girl was called Hazel, the fat girl Joanna. Marcus picked up their names as they were getting into the water. Hazel dived in cleanly, swam a little with a stylish over-arm action, and scrambled out. She sat on a flat rock with her hands clasped round her knees and glanced across at Marcus. “It’s not so hot as all that,” she remarked. “I think your old Gulf Stream must have strayed or something.”
Joanna backed her up. “It’s not hot at all,” she de
clared. “It’s icy.” She was lowering herself into the water by inches with every appearance of disgust and disapproval.
Marcus didn’t answer. He couldn’t. He was gazing at Hazel, and if he had spoken he could only have said out loud what he was repeating again and again in to himself: “I think you look lovely, lovely, lovely. . . .”
The glistening black bathing-suit clung tightly to her body: her ears and hair were hidden under a black bathing cap. Her legs and arms gleamed wetly in the sunshine. It was as if he were having a fresh vision of her: she was different and yet the same. She looked up again and smiled at him. “It’s an awfully nice place to bathe,” she remarked. “I’m glad we didn’t go away.”
“So am I,” Marcus blurted out. He felt that she realized why he had been unable to speak before, and that she liked him. He thought she had the kindest smile he had ever seen.
Joanna grunted and slipped into the water with a splash. Hazel stood up. “I suppose it doesn’t matter how deep you dive,” she said. “It looks awfully deep.”
“There’s thirty feet of water,” Marcus told her. “It’s forty feet to the bottom from the high rock there. That’s where I dive from,” he added. “We measured it once with a stone on the end of a fishing line—Mr. Burnaby and I—and a big crab came up on the end, holding on to the stone. We had it for supper, but we never got any more.”
“Crabs!” The fat girl sounded concerned. “I didn’t know there were crabs.”
“It’s all right,” Marcus reassured her. “They can’t swim, you know—they’re only on the bottom. Besides there was only one.”
“A hermit crab,” Hazel suggested.
“No an eating one,” Marcus informed her. “Hermit crabs are wee small things and this was. . . .” He broke off. They were both smiling at him. He smiled back vaguely and suddenly understood. “Oh yes, I see. It was a hermit, I suppose.”
Hazel dived. Marcus hoped she didn’t think him dull and stupid. He wished he could be bright and witty. He watched her swimming down and down. After a quarter of a minute she came to the surface again, clutching a handful of sand. “I went to the bottom,” she announced. “It’s frightfully cold down there.” She climbed out and stretched herself on the rock. “I’m going to do a bit of sun-bathing to get warmed up.”
“It’s getting out all the time makes you cold,” Joanna said. “You should stay in like me. I never get cold.” She was swimming round slowly in circles, obviously enjoying herself. She completed another circle and then, as her explanation had been received with rather obvious silence, went on, “I suppose you think it’s blubber, but it’s not only that.”
Marcus thought she was, after all, very pleasant too, in a plain, matter of fact sort of way. “Thin people can never stay in so long,” he responded tactfully.
“You think Hazel’s too thin,” Joanna took him up unexpectedly. “I always tell her she should try and put on a little more weight—for my sake. She’d try if she had a really nice nature.”
“Oh no. I don’t think she’s thin at all,” Marcus declared. “I think she’s. . . .” He pulled himself up abruptly, with the word ‘Perfect’ trembling on his lips. “I think she’s. . . . I mean I think she’s all right the way she is.”
Hazel dived in again and began to swim out from the rocks. Marcus watched her. He wished he could swim like that, so easily and cleanly. He knew that his own style, though it got him along fast enough, was horribly clumsy. Suddenly he felt concerned. He stood up. “Don’t go too far,” he shouted. “There are sometimes sharks.”
Hazel turned. “What’s that?” she enquired.
“Sharks,” Marcus yelled. “There are sometimes sharks.”
Hazel swam back slowly. “I’ll stay near Joanna,” she said. “They’d always take her first.”
“Miaow,” Joanna retorted. “Puss.”
“Well you said I was too thin.”
“Miaow all the same.”
Hazel got out. “You’ll have to turn your back again,” she warned Marcus. “I’m going to dress—or you can glue your eyes on Joanna.”
Marcus hesitated. He would have been quite happy to turn his back, but he felt it might be rude to Joanna. “I’ll, I’ll glue my eyes.” He had been going to finish “on Joanna,” but remembered that they hadn’t really been introduced. She might resent such familiarity.
While Hazel dressed Joanna continued to swim round in the same lazy, contented fashion. “How about the octopi?” she asked presently. “Have they been much trouble this year?”
Marcus didn’t quite know how to deal with this. If he had been bathing himself he would have been very tempted to duck her. He said so.
“She doesn’t duck,” Hazel told him, coming out dressed from behind the rock. “I’ve tried. You just rise out of the water. It’s like trying to duck a buoy—the kind that floats in harbours I mean.” She was rubbing her hair with a towel. “That beastly cap leaks. I never seem able to get a cap that doesn’t.”
Marcus liked seeing her hair ruffled, with her face half hidden every other moment, and then peeping out again from the towel. He tried to decide the exact colour of her eyes—a sort of greenish blue, he thought, varying with the light. “Does it matter?” he enquired. “Do you mind getting it wet?”
“It makes it all sticky,” she complained. “The salt makes it sticky. It makes it so hard to do.”
She sat down beside him and they both watched Joanna. Joanna stayed in a full half hour; and when at last she came out and began to dress, Hazel and Marcus walked away a little, along the edge of the rocks, together. “I know who you are now,” Hazel said.
Marcus was pleased. It made him feel that he was somebody. “Who?” he demanded.
“Marcus Brownlow. I remember Margaret at school,” she added. “She was always a form ahead of me all the way up.”
“But how did you know about me?” Marcus said.
“Oh, we’ve known about you for a long time,” she answered. “You see we come here every summer—we’ve been coming for years—and this was always a sort of mystery place. We used to call it The Hermitage and Mr. Burnaby was The Abbot—and then one year we heard about you. Sometimes we saw you in the distance. We used to call you The Novice.”
“And now I suppose you’ll go home and tell the others you’ve met The Novice.” The nick-name offended him a little. It emphasised the element in his situation which he most disliked. He imagined her as one of a gay little community—girls and youths on holiday, carefree and happy, with a background of comfortably-off, providing parents. He envied the imaginary boys and young men who would have her company every day. They would look on him as an oddity, a prig. He imagined the jokes with which the story would be received on her return. “He’ll get into a row for speaking to you.”—“He’ll be put on bread and water for a fortnight.”—“He’ll be confined to his cell for a month.”—“Hazel’s got off with The Monk.” He envied even Joanna.
“I might have said that,” she admitted after thinking it over, “but I won’t now. I’ll just say ‘I met Marcus Brownlow.’”
Marcus felt grateful: he was touched. “Thank you very much,” he mumbled awkwardly.
There was a hail from Joanna. “Hi, you two. Hi, Hazel. We’ll have to get back: it’s nearly time for tea.”
They turned, and Joanna came to meet them. “You should come and bathe here again,” Marcus ventured. “It’s far the best place. I’ll be bathing tomorrow morning.”
“What about the . . . ? What about Mr. Burnaby?”
“The Abbot’s away,” he answered abruptly. “The Abbot’s in England.”
There was a certain deliberate and vicious brutality in this, and after she had gone he was ashamed. He wandered about for a long time, conscious of guilt and treachery. But if he was unhappy he di
d not reach the stage of repentance.
CHAPTER XXV
WHETHER to expect her or not Marcus didn’t really know, but he hoped and hoped that she would come. During the evening and through the night he repeated her name over and over again to himself. He had never yet addressed her by it, but he determined that he would do so tomorrow. If she didn’t come to the bathing place, he would seek her out: somehow he would manage to meet her.
He didn’t sleep—not a wink. He didn’t try to sleep; he didn’t want to. He was quite happy to lie and think of her—Hazel, Hazel, Hazel. . . . It seemed to him a lovely name, suggesting glades in the woods, and sunlit vistas opening on the sea.
Towards five o’clock he began to feel restless. He knew that she wasn’t likely to appear before eleven—people on holiday always began the day late. Still, he felt that the time of their meeting, if they were to meet, was approaching. In six hours he might be talking to her. He got up and dressed, without washing or shaving.
He still kept his bedroom locked at night as a sort of guard against the big, grey emptiness of the house. In his room there had been a glimmer of light, but the passages were dark, and on the stairs he had to feel his way cautiously, keeping close to the outer wall. He was reminded a little of his first arrival at The Garrison. The possibility occurred to him that even now Mr. Burnaby might be in the tower room; or worse, invisibly following him, or invisibly coming to meet him through the empty hall.
As soon as he got outside that tension relaxed. If Mr. Burnaby were near, Marcus didn’t expect to see him any more—or to be seen by him. It was brighter too than it had been in the house. Everything close at hand looked quite clear. There was a kind of stillness in the half-light: it depended not on an absence of sound or movement, for there were rabbits feeding, and he could hear a corn-crake, and the restless, ceaseless sea: it was rather that in the secrecy of the night the sky had come closer to the earth, and wrapped itself about it. Now it was reluctantly rising, uncovering the sandhills and the shore, and drawing white wrappings of cloud up the mountain-sides.
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