STILL SHE WISHED FOR COMPANY
Margaret Irwin
Contents
Prologue
Chapter I
Chapter II
Chapter III
Chapter IV
Chapter V
Chapter VI
Chapter VII
Chapter VIII
Chapter IX
Chapter X
Chapter XI
Chapter XII
Chapter XIII
Chapter XIV
Chapter XV
Chapter XVI
Chapter XVII
Chapter XVIII
Chapter XIX
Chapter XX
Chapter XXI
Chapter XXII
Epilogue
Time Is
Prologue
Through the early summer dusk in Hyde Park, three children ran shouting down the hill and by the waterfall garden. There they stopped a moment, suddenly silent, to peer through the railings at the miniature lake just beyond their reach. Pale yellow flags and rushes stood deep in the dark water, stirring very slightly now and then.
The smallest child stretched out her grubby hands through the bars to the rabbits that were feeding so tamely on the slope of the farther lawn, their white tails clear in the twilight. The biggest child suddenly emitted a piercing yell— “Look at the bunnies, Ada, just look at the bunnies!” Not a rabbit moved nor pricked up its ears.
The children joined hands and ran on again, until their light-coloured frocks became lost in the moving darkness of the crowd that passed slowly, persistently, up and down the Row.
The drone of traffic in the streets beyond sounded clearly in the still air.
Two soldiers came down the path. They stopped to lean their elbows on the railings and watch a moorhen scud jerkily across the tiny lake.
A chain of girls, linked arm in arm, swung jauntily along in step to the scraps of music that floated down from the band. They also loitered a moment, their frocks and hats making shapeless splashes of orange and pink and scarlet in the dusk. A shrieking titter went up from first one and then another, the soldiers became quickly and noisily enlisted in their company and all passed on. But the moorhen, paying no attention to their voices, darted in and out of the rushes close to the railings.
Workmen came by with heavy, slow steps, a man and woman with a perambulator, both silent and tired, a tall man with books under his arm, shuffling clumsily along as though he were a tree walking, a woman whose sunken eyes seemed to burn in the shadow of her hat, a thin, weary clergyman, two Indian students talking in staccato voices.
Nearly all stopped as they went by, some for an instant, some for longer, to glance at the garden behind the railings, where creatures, usually shy and wild, went about their business, indifferent and unperturbed by the noisy crowd of humans so close to them. They were secure and isolated, as if in an impenetrable solitude.
It seemed to Jan Ghallard, who had been there for the last ten minutes, that she was looking into a garden removed from her, not by a row of iron railings, but by an immeasurable distance. She wished that she were there.
Jan’s father, in a flight of fancy consequent on the reading of ballads, had had his second daughter christened Rose Janet, and called her this in full. The rest of the family, who were in more of a hurry, called her Rose, but a succession of housemaids, all god-daughters to that flower or the violet or lily, gradually rendered this unbearable, and the first syllable of her second name was adopted instead, greatly to the relief of its owner.
Beside Jan and a little behind her stood Donald Graeme who was silent because she was.
He looked at the top of her hat, and wondered if Jan had “gone away” again. It was a phrase he used only to himself about her, for he had not let her know that he was aware of her occasional absence of mind.
Usually he thought her full of life and laughter, all on the spot, however fagged out she might be by the daily grind at the office. He hated her to be at that office. He was sure it was too much for her, that she hated it too, in spite of the fun she made of it. But if she were fagged, he wished it would not take the form of this sudden silence and forgetfulness of his presence, when it was the last evening they would have together for weeks. Nor was it for the first time that evening.
They had met after work and dined at one of the cheaper Soho restaurants. His work at the architect’s atelier had kept him too late to get a table by the window, and they sat by the fireplace in a crowded room on the first floor.
He had pointed out that the high chimney-piece of painted wood had a carved scroll-work running up the side which was probably of Adam’s date, perhaps even Adam’s own work. It should have been a beautiful design of grapes and vine-leaves with a ram’s head at each side, but it had been defaced in some parts and almost obliterated. Jan ran her fingers over it and pulled off a long piece of dirty yellowish paint that had cracked and was peeling off. Underneath it, the wood was seared and blackened. The carving had clearly been defaced by burning, and seemed to have been done deliberately with some red-hot instrument that had made deep scars in the wood.
They had examined it, joking over their guesses as to how it had been done and why, until they were interrupted by the next course. Then they had talked nearly all the time of the extra long holiday Jan was to have after one more day at the office. To-morrow, the 1st of May, she was to go to Helen, her married sister, who had taken a cottage for the summer at the village of Barton in Berkshire. It was to be a real rest for her; she was to prowl about country lanes and do practically nothing for five long weeks, perhaps even longer. He was sure she would find it dull.
“Yes, Helen says there’s nobody to see, except perhaps the Vicar. There’s a big house and park near which takes up so much room that there are hardly any other houses round, and the Harrises, its owners, are deadly, bought it some years ago and don’t know what to do with it, just keep it as a secret storehouse for their lost h’s. They’ve grown too grand for their own friends, poor dears, and are shy of anyone else, but they are leaving quite soon I think.
“Bored? Don dear, I long to be bored. There’s nothing so dull as a perpetual rush. I’d like to sit in a lovely garden and a lovely frock and be beautifully bored for ever.”
“Couldn’t I be there to help bore you?”
“But are you quite sure you would, Don?”
It was just after this promising question that her eyes wandered back to the burnt scar under the peeling paint of the chimney-piece, and she never noticed his answer which he flattered himself was really rather apt, nor the devouring gaze that accompanied it, but became abstracted and forgetful, answering him at random or not at all.
At last he recalled her attention sharply and asked if she were again wondering about the burnt carving, but she said no, she had been thinking about something quite different and quite unimportant, she didn’t know why, and it wasn’t worth telling.
He did not want her to tell it, he wished to discuss their engagement and plans for the future. Apparently he did not regard Jan’s refusal to consider herself engaged to him as much to the point.
This evening she did not put forward this objection, but listened to him with docile attention tinged with both admiration and mockery.
But Donald Graeme noticed neither. His mind was concentrated on his subject, and he had leisure only to observe how brilliant Jan’s eyes were when she smiled, but that when the smile passed they looked tired and heavy. Poor lass, it was high time she got that extra long holiday.
Now, as he stood with her by the railings of the waterfall garden, he said it again to himself, but with a touch of annoyance.
He began to speak, and Jan turned s
uddenly, looking at him in surprise. It was, he thought, as though she had expected to find someone else beside her, not him. The fancy, or rather conviction, struck him most unpleasantly, but he did not let his mind dwell upon it at the moment.
Jan had not noticed what he had begun to say, for she remarked hurriedly that if they waited till the band stopped, the buses would be crammed for getting home.
“Wait a bit,” said Donald slowly, still conscious of that slight shock he had just received. “What was it you were thinking about at dinner?”
“Good heavens, Donald, how should I know now?”
That was just like Donald to wait a couple of hours to refer to something that he had never appeared to notice.
“But you do know,” he replied.
Jan at once capitulated, knowing it was the quickest thing to do.
“You mean when I was staring at the chimney-piece and the burnt bit. I was thinking of the face of a man in a picture, an eighteenth-century portrait, that’s all. I suppose it was because you’d said the chimney-piece was of that time, and we’d been wondering if it was some young rip of the period who’d burnt it when he was drunk. You know how one wanders on. I’d suddenly remembered some words, ’Tell me where all times past are,’ but I didn’t know I’d ever heard them before. Do you know where they come from?”
“It’s in a poem of Donne’s. But you’ve got it wrong. It’s * Tell me where all past years are.’”
“No. I know it’s ‘times past.’”
“I tell you, I remember—”
“And I tell you, I didn’t remember. I thought of it for the first time as though someone had just said it to me, and it came like that.”
“The edition I had at Saint Andrews,” pursued the dogged Scot, “ was the latest and most correct and it had ’ years.’”
“I don’t care. It’s times, times, times. Time is, time was, time will be. And I believe I actually do know who said that— Francis Bacon, unless it was Shakespeare wrote Bacon. Brrr! Why am I shivering?”
“Jan, you’re cold. That thin frock——”
“No, it was only someone walking on my grave. What on earth, or off it, are we talking about? Do let’s get back to something comfortable.”
“What is the picture you were thinking of?”
“Oh, a portrait called a ’ Gentleman Unknown.’ It had been reproduced in the ’ Connoisseur ’ and I stole it in my first term at school—the only theft I ever committed, and I never had a twinge of conscience. I believe I liked it all the better for having stolen it. We were allowed to look at the improving magazines with pictures in Miss Bisley’s drawing-room for a few minutes after tea on half-holidays, and I used to go back to that face because it looked at me as though it knew me, and none of the faces at school did that. You know what a blank it is— the first term at a boarding school.
“Then one day I noticed that the page was quite loose, and I pulled it out and popped it into my large hymn-book with tunes and looked at it all through the service, and ever afterwards I kept it very carefully in my desk or pigeon-hole, whichever was safest from inspection at the moment, and used to look at it in secret, and the face looked back at me, very watchful and amused as though he shared my secret and enjoyed it.”
“And have you kept it ever since?”
“Rather. It’s pinned up in my room under the gas bracket, getting a bit torn at the edges. I might have run to a frame and glass by now. But then he’s not as good company as he was, of course.”
“What do you mean?”
“Oh, well, at school there isn’t so much else to amuse one as now. I used to peep at him under the lid of the desk and pretend that if only I were quick enough I should just catch him winking at me. And, of course, I made up stories about him in lessons, and it gradually became a habit to read anything about his time that I could find in the school library. But does all this interest you?”
“It concerns me,” corrected Donald, “since what concerns you, concerns me. It does anyway,” he added sharply, “whether you marry me or not.”
She looked quickly at him and saw an obstinate line about his mouth.
“Don,” she said, “ you are not jealous, are you, of a Gentleman Unknown?”
He wished he could think of something to say that would be sarcastic and yet admiring, and easy and charming and witty all in one breath. But his expression only grew a shade more sullen and he mumbled, ”Jealous? What rot!”
He knew, however, that he was jealous, in a fashion that was never effected by Jan’s casual flirtations, which she generally imparted to him with much ridicule and laughter.
But when he was unable to hold her attention, or, most of all, when he sometimes caught in her a look of delighted expectancy, a look that was surprisingly radiant, sparkling and intimate to herself; then he felt jealous of her thoughts, whatever they might be, that could withdraw her so securely from him. She was genuinely fond of him, she was occasionally in love with him, but he was not the chief thing in her life, not even for the present moment.
He wondered for a little what was this chief thing, since it was not himself, nor anyone she liked better (he knew she had always played straight with him as she did with everyone), nor her people, though she was very fond of them. But she was different from them, anyone could see it, and see that they felt it so, though you could not tell if Jan felt it herself.
He would not ask his question. She should tell him of her own accord or not at all, and he stalked stiffly beside her down the path so that her high heels had to patter very fast to keep up with him.
“Oh, Don, I’ll believe your legs are as long as stilts without your striding on like that. If you keep ahead of me, you may look round to find I’m gone.”
“Gone where?” He slackened his pace.
“How should I know until I’m gone? Why are you cross with me? But crossness becomes you. Oh dear, now you are really angry. Don, I like you better than anyone I know. Isn’t that enough?”
“It doesn’t seem to be,” he replied after a pause, “since its not enough to make you promise you’ll marry me.”
“No. I would rather wait until I like you better than anyone I don’t know. It would be a pity to marry you and meet my ideal just after.”
“I thought only sentimental schoolgirls talked about their ideals,” he replied, uneasily conscious, but just too late, of the extreme surliness of his tones.
“Then I’m a superannuated sentimental schoolgirl. It’s a destitute situation.”
They had turned into the Row and become part of the slowly moving crowd that jostled them, stared at them, or walked intertwined in oblivion of them and everyone else. Perversely, Donald now wished to make all the more pleasant remarks that he might have made to greater advantage in the comparative quiet by the waterfall garden.
He inwardly cursed the crowd, his recent sullenness and Jan’s flippant detachment. If they could only have more time together, and space, they would get to understand each other. But she had so many distractions beside her job—her friends and dances and theatre parties and week-ends in the country where she was asked down “for a rest”; and on his side, he had the work to which he must give every possible moment if he succeeded as he meant to do. He squared his shoulders as he thought of it, and was exasperated to find himself remembering Barrie’s words, quoted in Jan’s softly laughing tones—“Mon, it’s a grrrand sight to see a Scotchman on the make.”
“There isn’t room to move—or breathe,” said Jan below him. “For that matter there’s no room in this world to live, and barely room to love.”
It was what he had been thinking, but he was annoyed that she should say it. She should not let herself be influenced by trivial circumstances, she had not enough strength of purpose, not enough vitality, she did not know what she wanted, she undertook a job that was too hard for her, flirtations which quickly became distasteful to her; she was too daring yet too fastidious, too fanciful, too fragile for work or pleasure, or, he doub
ted, for a marriage that was bound to be poverty-ridden at first; she was a frivolous, uncertain creature that he could pull to pieces in his mind as easily as a butterfly in his hands.
But as he did it, he noticed the point of her chin beneath her hat, the delicate curve of her neck where it set into her thin shoulders, and wished painfully that he could protect her from the laughing disillusionment that pursued her own escapades— yes, and from her responsibilities and her necessity to work, whether now or later when married to him. This was inconsistent in Donald, who considered responsibility and work two of the chief motives of existence.
There was already a small crowd waiting for the bus at Hyde Park Corner. Jan and Donald caught it running, but their superior strategy was only half rewarded.
“One on top only,” roared the conductor. “Full up now, full up, full up!” He had ruthlessly separated Jan from her attendant swain, who had to spring off. She mounted on top to find that even “One on top only” was incorrect. There was no seat for her. She stood at the back, looking up at a clear pale sky where ragged strips of cloud were racing fast.
“’Ere, you can’t stand up ’ere,” snapped the conductor, appearing as suddenly as a jack-in-the-box.
“You said there was a seat,” said Jan, clinging weakly to what she knew to be a desperate position. At the same time she clutched the rail, for the bus was lurching furiously.
“Can’t ’elp that. Thought there was, but there ain’t. Sorry, miss, but you’ll ’ave to get orf.”
“All right. But I’ll be getting off at the top of Park Lane. Couldn’t I”
He banged the bell relentlessly.
“Can’t be done, miss. I might get into trouble. If yer lives in Park Lane why don’t yer go ’ome in yer broo-um?”
He grinned good-humouredly, and Jan, with the greater good humour of the vanquished, grinned back.
A final lurch of the bus pitched her forward on to his chest as she was beginning to go down the stairs.
There was no use attempting another bus from here. She would walk up to Oxford Street and get the Bayswater bus. And as she was going up Park Lane she might as well branch off into the quiet side streets, and strike Oxford Street a little higher up. It was only three steps longer and so much nicer. How stupid she had been not to walk with Donald, across the Park at any rate. And she had had to leave him without saying good night or anything pleasant, after he had been so cross, poor dear. It irritated her to feel pity for him. He was so much steadier and more sensible than herself, and yet she often felt that he was helpless in her hands. She did not want her midge bites to hurt him, but what were people for, if not to laugh and give cause for laughter? Oh dear, how tired her feet had got in these thin shoes, and what heaven it would be if she actually could jump into a taxi!
Still She Wished for Company Page 1