In the residential quarter Norah’s acquaintances inquired of each other “Have you seen Mrs. MacKay’s striking-looking friend?” Speculation was rife. It was not customary to keep one’s importations to oneself. If one’s means did not permit of dinner-parties, one entertained at tea; one telephoned round to one’s circle, saying (if not in so many words) “Come and have a look”; and one expected immediate return invitations—a full social programme. Indeed, a kind of civic welcome was prepared: an almost civic responsibility felt for the degree of hospitality enjoyed.
But Mrs. MacKay was ignoring all customary usage. It was the first time, so they believed, that she had ever had a friend to stay; and the appearance of her guest confirmed the rumours they had heard of Mrs. MacKay’s dashing Society life in London in the days of her youth. She herself never referred to pre-marital times; but one had a suspicion in conversation with her on any subject that she was not … not local, not identifiable with the community in spite of her willing and capable association with the kind of activities which had their expression in bazaars and committee-meetings. She was a well-bred woman; one distinguished her indubitable County blood; her detachment was intangible and unspoken: unlike that of Mrs. Fairfax, that disagreeable woman, snobbish and exclusive without any justification whatever, save (presumably) what appeared to be some sort of friendship with Mrs. MacKay. It was no good ringing her up to get information: she would only affect non-comprehension; and one would feel in her voice the peculiar quality of her smile at the other end of the telephone. Yet, if any one were to be considered worthy (they thought sarcastically) of an introduction, it would probably be she. But so far nobody had been seen to enter or leave the front door except that young Mr. Miller—a brother, so it seemed; and there was a suspicion among Norah’s acquaintances that it was young Mr. Miller (who had more than once, when expected to dine, dance or play bridge, sent feebly-manufactured last-minute excuses, and had, besides, recently declined to join the tennis club) who was responsible for the concealment of what looked like an interesting novelty.
But they wronged him. It was Clare herself, who, pausing here for a few days on her way to pay a Scottish visit, had refused all entertainment, saying (with perhaps the faintest overtone in her voice) “I only came to see you, Norah—and Hugh”; and it was impossible even for one so little prone to morbid reactions as her hostess not to feel a kind of anxious and apologetic desire to thank her for the favour conferred by her presence; not to fear that, as a luxury she was incongruous, as a decoration, wasted; not to know that Clare was realizing the circumstances of provincial life not so much with sympathy, as with increasing disapproval. All she said was, “My dear, I never could have stuck it”; but, in the midst of the odd assortments of her mental processes—thoughts suggesting a preoccupation with self, but stated with dry detachment, fitted with an impersonal application—she would drop a comment or a question which produced in Norah mingled feelings of inferiority, yearning and defensiveness. For, after all these years, Clare still dined out and danced in London, bought Paris models, went abroad, and gave the illusion that these delightful things, these nothings, were real; tacitly assumed that the essence of life was, and should be still, as it had been in their youth.
No, it was a mistake, of course, this eagerly-awaited visit; they were too far parted now; and there was no flavour after all in the long-anticipated Do you remember?
It does not ease the burden of the past to share its recollections; for with each plunge into it, each withdrawal, something is left behind that weighs more heavily than the memory; something that can never be shared or imparted—a sense of accumulating unease, surprise and contrast, of going alone, in unsuspected isolation, on one’s way; and worse, a comfortless suggestion that the way—life, in fact—is without continuity. Is it possible to look back from the present as if one watched the reel of a moving picture wound smoothly the reverse way from its close: to say, that time and that hour brought one inevitably, with only apparent deviation, to this hour, this place? No, as one rushes headlong, flying with Time, portions of life split off and float away, one little world after another; and looking back, one sees them behind one as stars and constellations. Old burning pieces of experience shine now from their fixed places with unimpassioned ray; perhaps that fragment torn apart with cruellest wrench and most shattering concussion now hangs there, close indeed, but cold, all fires extinct, like that dead star the moon. And between these little lights lies trackless darkness: chaos and old night close up on one’s heels, swallow the path for ever.
Yet, though one never can recapture, turn in one’s course and revisit, there come now and then—at a sound, a scent, a word—intimations from the past; live threads waver out, throwing feelers after hints of affinity. Misgiving comes, bewilderment, hope, surmise—a host of witnesses, striving to shape the spiritual shape of what has been; till it seems in a moment all will be linked, gathered up into unity and purpose. And the moment does not come, or comes too briefly, too dubiously to seize; and at length the whirling pace is slackened, the fires grow feebler; they flicker and pause, diminutive in the void: they have vanished.
But if memory had lost its savour, thought Norah, it had also lost its sting. It was through Clare that she had first met Jimmy: they could both recall the time when he had been the chief part of her daily life; and, trying his name aloud in the ears of another for the first time in a decade, she had felt the easing of a secret strain. It was easier than she had feared. Somehow, because Clare knew he had once been so violently an individual, so fiercely a factor in reality, it was less hard, in her company, to think of him from a great distance, almost as a symbol now for first love, first grief.
It is true that we grow older, as Clare said; we can mark the very day when we cease to suffer vain longing to torment us; and then the thorny companionship of youth is at an end. It might be, thought Norah, that with the return of Clare, this process, long deferred, of shedding the last vestiges of girlhood was going to take place. Clare despised her youth and all its storms. The better times were all ahead, said she. One goes by oneself, one is free, one enjoys oneself without fear of other people’s opinions; one sees to it that no relationship shall sweep one beyond the balancing point where possession of oneself ceases and suffering begins. Yes, said Clare, she could be happy now.
No, she declared, she would never worry again. She dropped a hint of past wretchedness, seemed to have been unhappy in her marriage, to have been under a cloud for years; said vaguely that of course it was ridiculous not to change one’s life if one was dissatisfied with it: one must persevere until one’s true individual focus and centre was established. One must never let one’s past actions bind one with remorse or regret, she said: but pass on at once and shape the future.
It sounded wise, thought Norah: but easier to adopt as one’s philosophy when one has abandoned not only minor ties but the more solid results of past actions (such as husband and home), than when one’s whole endeavour is to lie, till death, as gracefully as may be, in the bed one has made.
But it was as difficult now as it had always been, Norah told herself, to see Clare except under a haze, in a glamour. She lay now stretched upon the sofa, dressed in a short black pleated frock and a little coat embroidered in many colours; and a strange air stealing in the room, stirring live colour in the blue curtains, touching the bowl of daffodils to a luminous transparence, washed over her too, made her head rare and remote, her quiet hands delicate as polished stone.
She had grown slenderer, sharper with the years. Her reddish silken hair was cropped short to show a pair of ears like white coral, small and flat; but over her forehead it waved back in loose soft waves. No wonder her young brother was proud of her, thought Norah: she had something that was not common: not dignity, neither grace nor charm exactly. … There was no physical type to which she approximated. She gave the impression of being a unique experiment in material, line and colour.
; And the quality of her mind was a constant source of perplexity. She was not well educated. She could be banal enough; and yet even Gerald came back from the lecture-rooms with expectant eyes, washed his hands before dinner, and talked to her during that meal—stranger still, listened while (now, as in old days) she threw off sparks, was for a moment witty, illuminating; seemed to have read, to be familiar with music and pictures. But were these fragments proof of a knowledge and understanding which she kept to herself?—or, as it were, the reflections, the shallow lights and shade in the polished surfaces of alabaster, jade, cornelian, and such ornamental stones (cool, hard, yet in a way rich and yielding) whose texture her appearance suggested? It was hard to tell. She had perfected her art, if art it were; and continued triumphantly to present to the world the uncertain nature of her reality, to keep as her secret the degree of her honesty.
Hugh came into the room, accompanied by a large black spaniel with frilled ears and paws, of magnificent proportions.
He greeted his sister with a kiss, grinned at Norah and subsided in a sprawl on the window-seat, where the sun fell full on him and shone with an iridescent glitter on his yellow hair. He had dropped in in this way on each of the evenings since Clare’s arrival. He was quite at his ease.
“Clare, come out,” he said. “I’m going to take Grock in the Park.”
The seven years between brother and sister was not noticeable. They looked roughly of an age, and that age belonged somehow datelessly and with a suggestion of permanency between youth and maturity. There was all the unlikeness in the world between the easy smiling play of his features, his look of one with an external habit of mind, good-humoured yet obstinate, and her still, veiled face, at once watchful and uncommunicative. But when she spoke, her eyes broke up her impassivity with a lively light; and then the kinship was plain. They resembled each other too, thought Norah, in a certain lordly and careless demeanour, as if they were accustomed to some sort of natural privilege from life.
Carefully, in front of the mirror, she put on a little black hat, and wrapped herself in a black coat trimmed with light, silvery fur. Hugh gave her an approving glance. He always noticed her clothes; her good taste flattered him.
Gerald came in by the door which they had opened to go out.
“Hullo, Gerald,” said Clare.
She was very nice to him, took trouble to draw him out. She told Norah that he had an interesting mind: that he was very amusing.
“Going out?” he said in his swift, sharp, whispering voice. He stood against the door in a characteristic attitude, defensive, shrinking, as if he had suddenly got lost. His eyes flickered from one to another; he thought he detected a kind of unease in them, as if his entry had checked them in their natural talk and laughter … as if his presence, he told himself, dried up the springs of normal humanity.
“Darling, you are back early,” said Norah tactlessly.
At these words, a wave of pure hatred for her closed over him. It was she who made it impossible for him to be unlike himself; to respond and expand as he wished in the society of this young couple. But for Norah, he could have made friends. There she was, as usual, anxiously guarding now him, now them; subconsciously persuading them to conspire against his inclusion.
This young woman was both friendly and beautiful. Left to themselves, they would get on splendidly, he felt sure. She treated him in a sort of mysterious, teasing, attentive way, so that he felt himself an unusually entertaining host. … And the boy—he was nothing, of course, a young fool. Yet he had something … a quality one envied him and wished to seize for oneself. It was a compound of his gay and active nature, the way he had travelled, roughed it all over the world; and chiefly his youth, his youth! … like a quickening fountain of water running over one’s own aridity.
“Excuse me,” he whispered rapidly. “I merely came in for some books. I have to work.”
He made a dart for a pile of books and vanished, shoulders hunched, without another look. They heard the door of the dark little box which was his study shut with a bang.
“Oh … and I haven’t dusted in there to-day,” murmured Norah.
Clare and Hugh went out. She lightly took his arm, said something silly and suitable to Grock, and they walked briskly down the street together.
Over the slopes of the great town park the wind blew fresh and strong from the sea. Sunlight poured out of the west in a full flood. The sparse crooked-jointed trees were in new leaf, the brown grass wore a faint veil of green, and, in the green, a sprinkling of daisies. Through the noise of the wind and the far-away clamour of the traffic came the sound of children’s voices raised in their play, of women’s laughter, of barking dogs. Men walked in quiet groups from their work, raced their whippets, lay on their backs in the sun; or wandered singly, hands thrust in their threadbare pockets, the unmistakable stamp of the degradation of unemployment in their faces, their shoulders, their gait. Shop-girls stepped two by two with a swing, eyes alert beneath the brims of their new spring hats. Children and dogs chased each other, quarrelled, ran after balls, tumbled in the grass. In the distance kites were flying.
Movement flowed in all directions, without pause; till it seemed to Grace that the bench she sat on was the only fixed object in the ferment of the circling world.
It must be the weakness of convalescence that made one so quiveringly sensitive. Forms struck one’s eyes as if for the first time, sound pierced too keenly, colour and light were too living, too exquisite. The greys and browns had vanished, swept away before a torrent of blue and golden light, submerged beneath a spate of green.
She sat wrapped in her old grey coat in the shelter by the pond. It was her first day out after an attack of influenza. Huddled on a bench, she felt her own breath mysteriously come and go. She heard herself cough: it was the cough of a real person. She looked down and saw herself moored to the seat as firmly as the stout old lady sitting opposite her; yet she felt the wind lift her, whirl her like a straw, a feather, in its wake.
But it is hard enough, even in health, she thought, to remember one’s own solidity: it is at any time a shock when some chance brings home to one the fact of possessing, like everybody else, a face and body visible to others, a voice that makes an audible noise. …
She watched the ruffled pond in its dismal cement basin; the children on the brink, kneeling to sail their model yachts.
Along the asphalt path which girdled the water, accompanied by a spaniel swinging jaunty flanks, came Hugh Miller and a young woman. How confidently she held his arm, with what full measure of life they held on their way! The people on the benches stirred as they passed, turned their heads to look after them: they gazed—a row of drab watchers, shadow-like—the ill-clad, the unmemorable, the human mass whom none would ever pause at in passing and distinguish face from face.
She saw them a long way off. She wanted to get up and go away, but she could not. They would not notice her, she thought. She watched them.
The spaniel jumped suddenly, in a great flutter, into the pond, and started to swim after one of the yachts. A child screamed, the dog seized the boat, the two stopped. Grace heard Hugh call imperatively, then laugh: she saw the young woman finger her hair, examine her shoe. …
Sun and wind seemed to leap up with wild spring vigour to envelop them; they were rapt away where they stood, dreamlike images in the midst of light, echo, movement. …
The dog swam back; Hugh bent down and pulled him out of the water, by the scruff. Grace heard him say “Shake yourself!” and then “Look out!” as his command was obeyed with more goodwill than discretion.
Now they were going to pass her. Hugh was looking straight at her, and she could not drop her eyes when she saw his expression alter and fix slightly as if with an effort at recognition. She would not greet him, she told herself—she would give him every opportunity not to acknowledge her; but the colour swept up into her face. He ten
tatively raised his hand to his hat, and then, seeing her faintly smile, smiled charmingly in response: hesitated, murmured a word to his companion, and came lounging up to her and said in his quiet, half-diffident, half-confident voice:
“I haven’t seen you for ages.”
She moved as if to get up, but instead only looked up at him, giving him all her face, and said:
“No—not since the winter. It’s really spring now, isn’t it?”
She felt suddenly weak, and controlled with an effort the first onslaught of a nervous shuddering.
“Can I introduce my sister?” he said, rushing awkwardly over the formal words: and then smiling again and swiftly touching Clare’s arm.
Lovely she was, thought Grace, lovely. … She tried to look at her clearly but her eyes seemed blurred, and she grasped but an impression of looks vivid yet delicate in colour, tenderness of contour, clarity of finish. She turned again to Hugh, and said, faintly twinkling at him:
“Not gone yet?”
“Not yet.”
“How are you getting on?”
She could not take her eyes off him. He had a look of gaiety and good fortune about him that amused and delighted her.
“Getting on pretty well.” He gave her a quick glance, as if he were beginning to recall the sort of footing they had reached last time—those moments of a vague, rather humorous private understanding.
“How are the cinemas?” he said, suddenly remembering.
“I’ve missed some. I’ve been ill, this last fortnight.”
“You don’t look well,” said Clare. Her voice sounded solicitous, and Grace blushed.
“I’ve had influenza. I seem to get it every year, and it’s always rather awful. I don’t think this is a good place to get well in.”
A Note in Music Page 6