In half an hour’s time they were at Grace’s door. He tumbled out to open the door of the car for them, looking, in his bright coat, against the fading greyish-brown of street and houses, startlingly tall and vivid.
Grace said, blushing:
“Won’t you come in?”
A timid desire for him to accept struggled with a desperate hope that he would refuse; and she anticipated already the way he would quickly say “Thanks awfully, I must get along,” and smile and escape from them.
“I never introduced you,” said Norah. “Mrs. Fairfax, Mr. Miller.”
“How d’ you do,” he said, looked at her firmly for a moment, then looked away again; and they all stood nervously waiting.
“Well, won’t you?” said Grace; and this time she felt amused; it was ridiculous that three human beings should stand together on a doorstep and cause each other such a waste of anxiety and embarrassment. She lifted her eyebrows faintly, and the corner of her mouth twisted.
His quick and grateful response to an amusement he did not quite understand twinkled in his eyes. Now he would come cheerfully in, she knew, to have tea with her.
“Come on, Norah,” said Grace with authority, opening her front door.
“Well, just for a few minutes,” said Norah, impulsively abandoning her family to unsuperintended bread and butter. “I’m perished and famished.”
The trio disappeared, the door was shut; from its frame of brown paint and ornamental glass, a number engraved in bland white china stared out once more upon the darkening street; announced that here, securely enclosed in a brick case, flanked on each side by a row of similar cases, family 37, of the human race, concealed themselves to eat, to take off their clothes and lie down to rest; to speak to each other those words, memorable or trivial, that are withheld from strangers’ ears; to observe each other, safe from the world’s observation, with unhooded glance or gaze … or, without speech or look, to turn apart, each in his equipment of the common body of the species, each to his one imperturbable faith and foundation; to the abiding solitude and secrecy, the perpetual assurance, of his separate and individual spirit.
Grace drew the curtains, poked the fire to a bright blaze, lit a red-shaded standard lamp. The room came to life in the glow: the dead-leaf colour of the walls gave back a feeble reflection, the faded brownish-orange pattern of the chintz melted into dim warmth.
“Lovely,” said the young man, and he sat down at once on the fender-stool and spread his hands to the blaze. “Please excuse the mud on me. I took a toss. … Nothing.”
Annie came in with the tea-table, opened eyes of astonishment and delight, and remarked gently:
“Would the gentleman care for a boiled egg?”
She had been with a hunting family once, and she knew what pink coats meant at tea-time. Mrs. Fairfax, poor soul, would never have thought of it.
“If—if you’ve got one,” said he, flippant or awkward—it was hard to know which. He added, turning to Norah: “One does get an incredible hunger.”
“I know,” she said. She lay back in her chair, watching him for the intermittent likeness to his sister. He reminded her of Clare Miller; and vaguely of something else: of a host of other things youthful and forgotten.
She questioned him about his hunting. A friend of his uncle, he said, an old Colonel James, had mounted him. It was frightfully nice of him: didn’t she think so? Norah knew Colonel James. He must have approved highly of his riding, she said, or he would never have trusted him with one of his precious horses.
Oh, well, of course, he admitted, he had ridden all his life.
“I remember Clare riding,” said Norah. “Does she still?”
“No, not for years,” he said, “not since her marriage”: and a pause succeeded the last word, for Norah knew that the marriage had not been successful, and that Clare lived apart now from her husband.
Then, remembering the loneliness of his figure walking in the dark lane with no companion, she asked him if he had met people yet, if he had joined the racquets club, whether he had friends to go to for week-ends.
“Oh, yes,” he said swiftly. “Every one’s terribly hospitable and nice—don’t you think so? There’s my great-uncle, you see—I can always go to him for weekends,—if I want to. And then somebody’s asked me to a dance. … I don’t know who. I got the invitation this morning.”
He felt in his pocket and pulled out a crumpled and muddy card. “Must have fallen on it,” he said, and read out “Lady Forbes.”
“Oh,” said Norah. “Already? … She’s got a lot of unmarried daughters.”
He smiled and stuffed the card back in his pocket.
“Perhaps I’ll go,” he remarked. “Anything for a change from the office.”
Annie brought in a heaped tray and set it down.
“Coffee or tea?” said Grace. These were the first words she had spoken.
“Oh, coffee! How marvellous,” he said with enthusiasm.
“I always have it at tea-time,” said Grace. “I have far too much.”
“We all have too much something and flourish on it,” said Norah. “Mine’s tea. Very vulgar.”
“Mine’s … neither of those,” he said; and they all laughed.
A spark of memory flashed on Norah. She heard Jimmy say, rather defiantly, in answer to some protest of hers: “I like wine—almost any kind. I never refuse it. As for champagne, everybody knows it’s the best tonic in the world.”
He cracked his egg, and remarking “I must do this,” dipped bread-and-butter fingers into it and ate with relish.
How he seemed to fill the room, thought Grace. He gave out a sense of clear colour, even apart from his clothes; and his head, modelled with a strong outward curve above the nape and covered with heavy straight yellow hair, was finely proportioned and arresting. But his features, she decided, were plain. More like an artist, Tom had said. What characteristic nonsense to apply a label simply because he did not shave his head and oil the stubble, and generally take precautions against a certain appearance of individuality.
“Do you mind a pipe?” he said, looking at her; and his shyness came back like a recurring motif in the theme of his behaviour.
“Goodness no,” she said. “Tom—my husband—always smokes a pipe.”
A realization came suddenly into his eyes. … The red-faced chap in the office whom the clerks called Uncle Tom. …
“Is your husband the Mr. Fairfax who’s—who’s in my great-uncle’s company?”
“Yes.” She blushed. “He’s been with them for years.”
Now, she thought, he had placed her: the wife of one of the company’s most typical underlings: his servant probably in a few years’ time, supposing he inherited the business and Tom’s time-worn machinery continued dependable.
But all he said, in his quiet voice, staring into the fire, was:
“He was frightfully nice to me when I first arrived. Frightfully helpful.”
“I’m glad,” murmured Grace.
He lit his pipe and got up to go.
“Oooh!” he said, stretching cautiously and laughing. “Terribly stiff. To-morrow it’ll be agony.”
“Did you know you’d torn your coat?” asked Norah. “Under the arm.”
“What a bore.” He twisted his head to examine it. “I thought I heard a noise there. Lord, the whole thing’s gone. … It looks rather serious, doesn’t it?”
Norah chuckled.
“Don’t despair,” she said. “It’s only the seam—easily mended. Is your landlady obliging?”
“Not frightfully.”
He remembered with distaste the surprising occurrence of last week-end. He had been away, and had returned unexpectedly on Sunday night to find a strong smell of spirits pervading his bedroom, his bed tumbled, and a pair of fierce, ancient, and insanitary corsets mysterious
ly reposing between the sheets. Since then he had suspected that he was not comfortable in his lodgings; and that his landlady was something more definite than an old trout. He wondered for a moment whether to mention these odd but boring facts. But no. They might offer to find him another place, or make some sort of fuss.
Grace had a prophetic vision of him, sitting in his horse-hair armchair with set jaw and huge borrowed needle and thread, stitching his coat together an hour before the next meet. …
“I’ll mend it for you,” she said. “It won’t take a minute.”
“No, no. Please don’t.” He withdrew into himself embarrassed, surprised. “I can easily get it done, or do it myself. I sew beautifully. I often sew on buttons and things.”
But Grace had already got up and said at the door, over her shoulder:
“I’ll get Annie’s work-basket. There’s only one needle in mine.”
When she came back he had flung his coat on the sofa, and was sitting in his shirt-sleeves talking gaily with Norah. He looked up with a beaming smile and said:
“It’s frightfully nice of you. I took it off. I thought it would be easier for you.”
“You know you can’t sew a stitch,” mocked Norah.
She got up and pulled her hat on again over her short rough curls. The young man noticed her hair with approval: the silver streaks in its darkness were attractive.
“I must go,” she said. “I strongly feel I’m needed at home. Good-bye, Grace. Do you know how to thread a needle?”
“Go away,” said Grace. “I shan’t start till you’ve gone.”
The young man shook hands, murmuring, stilted and polite again:
“Thanks so much for the lift.”
“Come and see us again some time. Gerry and I so enjoyed the other night.”
“So did I. It was such fun,” he murmured.
“You must come to dinner or something.” Her voice and smile invited him cordially, but she sighed involuntarily, thinking what a horrid meal Florrie would cook, and how she had nothing amusing to offer to this boy, Clare’s brother.
The rain had begun to fall heavily before she got home. The garage door stuck, and she struggled with it while wind and wet drove unkindly against her in the dark.
The boys had thrown down their coats on the floor in the hall. Florrie had as usual left the kitchen door open, and the smell of onions came forth undaunted. She picked up the coats and then stood clasping them to her for a moment; and the jangling of her nerves subsided, replaced by the sudden tender feeling that her little boys’ garments gave her. What did it matter, after all, if they flung their coats down when they came into their home—gay and careless, running upstairs? Must they not be free as much as possible from the irksome checks and constraints which the mere fact of urban existence, besides education and, worst of all, Gerry’s caprice, imposed? It was her duty to see that they were allowed their high spirits. And anyway, she thought, hanging up the coats and going to shut the kitchen door, tidiness was not a noble quality—one might almost say unmasculine; in their hearts, women did not value it in men, despite its convenience.
She went into the sitting-room. Gerry was in his armchair by the fire, reading from a large volume and making notes on a sheet of paper. He glanced up with a preoccupied expression which she guessed to be deliberate, and resumed his work.
She pulled off her hat and sank into a chair opposite him.
“Hullo, darling,” she said. “Busy still?”
He did not reply at once; and then said grudgingly:
“I’ve been busy since tea-time. I had to send the boys upstairs.”
“Poor chaps,” she said. “I must go to them. I’m sorry I didn’t get back to tea.”
He shrugged his shoulders slightly. Though his eyes were lowered on the page, she divined their expression from the slant of the lids, the way they swept up to narrowed corners beneath the prominent oblique ledge of the temples. He was in his knotted mood because … probably because she had stayed out longer than he expected; because he knew he would not give as good a lecture as he wished to; because the boys had had buttery fingers at tea … something of that sort. Now he was asking her to come and untie him—and defying her to try. Why should this vampire family so prey on her and pin her down that even one afternoon’s freedom became a matter of importance, to be regretted afterwards? Why should she let him for ever drain her to sustain himself?
But she thought swiftly: No, no! That was not how it was. It was no virtue in her, but a law of nature. To grudge him what she had within her to give him was as if one born with the power of healing by the laying-on of hands should refuse the sick a life-giving touch.
Electricity, vitality, spirit—call it what you would—the supply was not to be exhausted by one demand, however ravenous and perennial. No, rather, perhaps, it was dependent on this for its replenishment. Only, to-night she hated the active life, wanted to have rest from this perpetual crumbling of the edges, this shredding out of one’s personality upon minute obligations and responsibilities. She wanted, even for a few moments, to feel her own identity peacefully floating apart from them all, confined and dissolved within a shell upon which other people’s sensibilities made no impression. But this was not possible, never for a second, in one’s own home.
What it is, she thought, ceasing with a jerk to indulge in self-pitying reflections, to be an ordinary domesticated female!
She started to hum a little tune, checked herself at a convulsive movement of Gerald’s shoulders, and said:
“Aunt Ethel’s making a record recovery, I’m afraid, darling. It was so dark and drear on the moors. We met that boy you liked on the way back. He’d been hunting. I gave him a lift.”
He lifted his eyebrows and inquired, rather disagreeably:
“What boy I like?”
“Hugh Miller. You know you thought he was nice when he came last week.”
“I fail to remember his making any particular impression on me,” he said, turning over pages. “But then I don’t boast your unerring intuitions … or your spontaneous enthusiasms. However, if you say so …”
“Well, anyway—” She could not help laughing a little, he was being so characteristically impossible. (How he loved to make her feel a fool!) … “The boy I liked…Grace threw all her complexes to the winds and invited him to tea. By the time I left she’d offered to do plain sewing for him, and he was sitting beside her in his shirt-sleeves.” She looked hopefully for a gleam; but observing rather the reverse, finished lamely: “He’d torn his coat.”
What a blunder indeed! She felt his mind working busily on some tortuous underground track, snatching food for suspicion from her idle words. “So that’s it,” she could hear his tense silence shout at her. “You neglect me in order to enjoy the company of a strange young man.” Heaven knows what scenes of gaiety and licence her innocent account was suggesting to him; for in his imagination she indulged in orgies of unbridled conviviality, once safely away from the restraint of his presence. “Probably,” she decided, “he sees me dancing on the table, and all of us taking off everything.”
Alas, she thought, he nourished against her a constant jealous reproach, whose essence was roughly: “You enjoy yourself in a world that I hold to be joyless.” It was true. His dark could not permanently influence her light. Natural cheerfulness would reassert itself again and again; and unfailingly she found herself responding to the mild pleasures which life offered.
But these were not for him. The most one could hope for, youth once gone, he said, was that age might gradually blunt one’s perception of the miseries of existence. And in the better times he whispered to himself, looking with a faint hope to the years ahead: Calm of mind, all passion spent. But in the worse he knew that he would make a desert around him and call it peace.
She left him and went upstairs to her boys. They were very quiet in their litt
le room, once the night nursery, now their inadequate play-room. Her heart gave a twinge to see them sitting so still in their chairs, one at each end of the red-clothed table, heads propped on hands, each absorbed in his occupation. She should have come back and played the piano to them. She saw them suddenly grown up and independent of her. … Were they quieter than other children? Were they at all crushed? She remembered with relief the coats in the hall and the basketful of their woollen stockings to repair.
How their darling ears stuck out. …
Robin, who was nine, was poring over a glass of water in which dangled a thin bit of string.
“Hullo, mum!” he said. He had a piping little voice which annoyed his father by sounding perky.
She bent over him and looked at the water.
“There’s alum in this water,” he said. “I bought it myself at the chemist. It’s a thing I found in my experiment book. This string’s going to get all covered with crystals. But I’m afraid not before morning.”
“Thrilling,” she said.
He wriggled round and threw himself against her, putting grubby paws on her, rumpling his scrubby crest of hair against her shoulder. He was an affectionate child: apt lately to follow her about in a dogged, silent way, to stay awake until she came to bed, and to lavish abrupt demonstrations on her: unlike David, she thought, looking across at her second-born. David at seven had impenetrable reserve. He looked out from his own world with calm but intent gaze, and loved only his brother.
“What’s David doing?” she said.
He was laboriously doing something with a pencil in a black copy-book. When she spoke he quickly shut it and covered it with his arms, faintly and suspiciously smiling at her.
“He’s doing a drawing of some horses for me,” whispered Robin.
She nodded and said:
“Your supper will be here in a minute, my fellows. Don’t come down and say good-night: Father’s busy. Undress, and I’ll come up and look you over while you wash.”
A Note in Music Page 4