“Don’t be so idiotic, Hilary!” said Lucilla with irritation. “I am ninety-one and you are seventy-two, and we should be thought ridiculous if some of the remarks you make at times were overheard by others.”
“They never are,” said Hilary. “It’s that hat. It’s a new one.”
Lucilla gazed at him in astonishment, for it was. “I won’t say again, dear, that you don’t notice things,” she said. “I believe you do, only you won’t own to it.”
“I always think that perhaps I’ve noticed wrong,” said Hilary.
“I never think that,” said Lucilla. “I’m always quite sure I’ve noticed right. But, then, I’m afraid I’m not even now, at ninety-one, after all my struggling, what you’d call a really humble woman. What should you say you’d noticed today?”
“A look of resolution about Ben, as though he’d decided to stand on his own feet. A look of emergence about Sebastian Weber. A something about Tommy that has made me like him better than I did. A look about David, as though he were beginning to see what an ass he is.”
“Hilary, how dare you!” flashed Lucilla.
Hilary laughed. “And, oh yes, I think you’ll soon have to persuade Nadine that Ben’s marriage to that sensible girl Zelle will be of the very greatest assistance to his artistic career.”
“Now, Hilary, there you are being quite silly,” said Lucilla. “I’ve never known Ben take the slightest interest in girls.”
“A man must begin sometime,” said Hilary.
“You never did,” said Lucilla.
“You ruined me for other women,” said Hilary, and put his free arm along the back of her seat.
“Have it your own way, then, dear,” said Lucilla. “I’m only glad there’s no one here to see.”
— 6 —
“Glad to see ’em come,” said George, once more in the bosom of his immediate family only. “And glad to see ’em go.”
“Now, then, Jerry, you come along indoors,” said Tommy.
Nadine and José went hastily round the corner of the house together, to absorb themselves in picking flowers. Ben went to mess about with a boat. George and Caroline found themselves alone on the steps, looking across to Knyghtwood. The sunlight lay level now, and there seemed to be a thousand candles lighted in the wood. George looked at it, and then absorbed himself in lighting his pipe. He blew out the match and looked at Caroline.
“Shall we take a stroll, Elf?”
That had been his name for her when she was small. He only used it now when they were alone together. She laughed and tucked her hand into his arm. He thought how slim and strong her fingers were. They strolled across the lane together and went into the wood. The rest of the family thought they had no special place, but as a matter of fact they had.
CHAPTER
14
When it was Meg’s bedtime, and no one had come home yet, Mrs. Wilkes took off her apron, set her great bulk patiently in motion and went out to the secret garden, where Sally was sitting with her knitting.
“Don’t worry, ducks,” she advised. “I will say for Mr. Eliot ’e drives careful with the children. ’E ’as ’is faults—all men ’as—but I will say for ’im ’e’s a good father. All ain’t.”
“Sit down, Mrs. Wilkes,” said Sally, indicating the basket-chair that had been put ready beside her, waiting for David when he should come back again.
Mrs. Wilkes sat. It was an undertaking. When she was at last down in the chair, with her hands resting on her knees, a sigh escaped her, a sigh so small that it might have been breathed by Meg as she dropped off to sleep, so weary and yet so satisfied that it might have been that of a released soul escaping into paradise. It shocked Sally, and she dropped a stitch. Did Mrs. Wilkes never sit down? To eat, of course, but that was no rest to a woman whose mind during the first course was with the pudding in the oven, and during the second course was already shrinking from the thought of washing up. Never like this, in a hidden garden with sun and shade playing about her, in a stillness with no sound to break it but the distant murmur of a quiet sea.
Though Mrs. Wilkes was not what most people would have called a beautiful woman, she did not look out of place in David’s chair in the lovely garden. She had her own beauty, of endurance and rock-like patience, and it suited the old garden that had been so patient through so many winters. Looking up at the leaf-heavy branches over her head, moving now as peacefully as the sea, Sally remembered them stark and bare, bending and lashing in a gale. The wind might seem cruel, but, twisting and bending them, it kept them elastic and supple for the spring. Static though she looked just now, there was somehow an astonishing suggestion of suppleness about Mrs. Wilkes. David’s graceful length, flung back possessively in his own chair in his own garden, would have looked as though flung there for life until his restlessness up-ended him again. Mrs. Wilkes, never restless, nevertheless sat upright, staking no claim even on rest, in complete readiness to do something else at any moment should it be required of her.
“What’s for supper, ducks?” she asked.
“Nothing that needs cooking,” said Sally firmly. “The tinned chicken soup that Mr. Eliot brought from America. That tinned stew that Mr. Eliot brought from America. The tinned fruit salad that Mr. Eliot brought from America.”
“ ’E’s a good ’usband,” said Mrs. Wilkes in a sudden rush of gratitude. “So far as we knows,” she added, for she did not believe in having too rash a confidence in the goodness of human nature, especially masculine human nature.
“A perfect husband,” said Sally softly, and dropped another stitch.
“Now, that you can’t say, ducks,” said Mrs. Wilkes. “And didn’t ought to say. Indeed, to my mind it’s tempting providence for a woman to boast about ’er man until she’s buried ’im. For getting on in life don’t make ’em settle down to be’ave theirselves, like it do a woman. There’s Wilkes, now, turned sixty and making eyes at that hussy at the Rising Sun over to Radford. ‘Wilkes,’ I says to ’im, ‘if you was to take a look at yourself in the glass now and again you wouldn’t act so silly.’ ’And me that knitting, ducks. That’s two stitches dropped.”
Sally handed over the knitting and leaned back in her chair, pushing her heavy hair back from her forehead with both hands. Under it Mrs. Wilkes’s observant eye could see the beads of sweat on her forehead. She had lost her pretty color.
“Not much longer now, ducks,” she said bracingly.
“I wish I could have Christopher at home,” said Sally.
“ ’Ave ’im at ’ome,” said Mrs. Wilkes.
“My babies are so difficult,” said Sally. “Dr. Barnes says that he wants me always to have them in hospital.”
“Easier for ’im,” said Mrs. Wilkes dryly. “Just across the road from ’is place.”
“And Mr. Eliot doesn’t worry about me so much if I’m in hospital,” said Sally.
“That’s natural,” said Mrs. Wilkes. “ ’E don’t know it’s ’appening till it’s ’appened. But worry don’t kill a man. Does most on ’em a power o’ good.”
“I think I mightn’t be so frightened if I had them at home,” murmured Sally. “Somehow one is never so afraid of things in one’s own home.” She was leaning back in her chair with her eyes shut, relaxed in that happy sense of security that Mrs. Wilkes’s presence (when Mrs. Wilkes was not annoyed) always gave her. She scarcely realized that she had spoken until Mrs. Wilkes said in astonishment, “Frightened, ducks?”
“Weren’t you ever frightened, Mrs. Wilkes?” asked Sally.
“No,” said Mrs. Wilkes. “ ’Tis nature.”
“So are thunderstorms,” said Sally. “And dying.”
“I’d ’ave given you credit for more sense than to be afeared of a thunderstorm,” said Mrs. Wilkes. “And as for dying, what’s to be is to be, and I ’aven’t seen one yet that wasn’t glad of it when the time came.” Then she looked at Sally and s
aid slowly, voicing at last a thought that had long lain unexpressed in her mind, “Seemingly folks must always be in trouble or they ain’t easy in their minds. The poor, they’ve their worries ready made for ’em, an’ don’t ’ave to go worryin’ around to find somethink to worry over, but folks like you and Mr. Eliot, you ’ave to find somethink. What ’e’s worryin’ over I couldn’t say, I’m sure, but ’e’s lost weight considerable. And as for you, ducks, if you didn’t ’ave the little dears, well, that would be somethink to worry about an’ no mistake. It ain’t easy to ’old a man without children. A man don’t like to die without ’e leaves a living son be’ind ’im. ’E ain’t beaten then. Think a lot of theirselves, men do.”
“So do women,” said Sally. “I think, as a general rule, that men have more humility than women.”
Mrs. Wilkes snorted slightly. She did not belong to the school of thought that believes in allowing points to the enemy. Gladly though she cared for the comfort of the men dependent on her for it, yet they were still to her, obscurely, the enemy. Whenever, painfully spelling out the difficult words in the Wilkes family Bible, she came upon the command, “Love your enemies,” she thought immediately, and with deep tenderness, of Wilkes. She did not analyze the paradox of her love and her enmity; though she could never read how God made Eve from Adam’s rib without having to smother a feeling that the Lord should have known better. Asking for trouble, it was, for it almost gave the fellow the right to knock her about. Yet she got her own back, for his son, without whom he did not want to die, came from her body. Getting your own back made you feel very tender-like. Poor old Wilkes!
“I’m ashamed of being afraid, Mrs. Wilkes,” said Sally.
“And I’m surprised at it,” agreed Mrs. Wilkes.
“But not so ashamed of that as of something else,” said Sally, and she sat up and the color flowed over her blanched face.
Mrs. Wilkes stopped knitting in an ecstasy of curiosity. “What, ducks?”
“Of being the sort of person who has to find something to worry about—when you are not.”
Sally lay back in her chair, and exquisite relief came to her. She had got it out. Her life-long sorrow for profound good fortune was expressed at last, on behalf of all women who had much to all women who had little. Mrs. Wilkes, mastering her disappointment, thought out Sally’s statement. It took her a long time, but she did it, and, having done it, her native shrewdness carried her farther. “The Lord has let you make amends, ducks,” she said.
This time it was Sally who did not understand. “How?” she asked.
“With the fear,” said Mrs. Wilkes. “Thunderstorms even. Well, I never!”
A flash of insight gave Sally the understanding of herself that she had been feeling for on the day that David had come home. Her shame had been so deep it had been prayer, and pain and the fear of it had been the answer. For a moment of complete acceptance she suddenly and most deeply rejoiced in them. Such rejoicing could not last, or they would not last, but the acceptance could.
“I’ll have Christopher at home,” she said. “Not to escape being afraid, for perhaps I’ll be just as afraid, but so that I can be with you, Mrs. Wilkes.”
She wanted to feel closer to Mrs. Wilkes. Going through this together, they would reach down to the common experience of all women everywhere. There was a queer sort of wonder in the thought.
Mrs. Wilkes glowed. She mistrusted that hospital at Radford more than words could say. Proper death-trap it was. “I’ve lost count of the babies I’ve brought into this world, ducks,” she said. “And never lost one.”
“We’ll have to have the district nurse, too,” said Sally. “It’s not allowed now without.”
“She’s a good girl,” said Mrs. Wilkes. “Does what I tell ’er. Dr. Barnes, too, ’e knows me. But with any luck they’ll both arrive too late.”
“Mr. Eliot won’t like it,” said Sally.
“It’s not ’im what’s ’avin’ the baby,” said Mrs. Wilkes.
“No, but I like to do what he likes me to do,” said Sally.
“That’s where you make your mistake, ducks,” said Mrs. Wilkes. “Plain selfishness, that is. No argument, that’s what you like. But a bit ’o plain speakin’ now and again can ’old a man. Once let a man think ’e can do no wrong and ’e’ll do it.”
“And so will a woman,” Sally reminded her.
Mrs. Wilkes snorted again. In war, self-criticism by the weaker side is no aid to victory.
Sally was silent, her thoughts drifting back to where they had been before Mrs. Wilkes came out to her, to that place in Knyghtwood where the stream ran over the bright stones among the bog-myrtle bushes. She would never forget the day when, walking alone through the wood, she had found David there, and, deceived by the dazzling light, had seen him not as himself, but as a huntsman on a white horse, seeing what she could not see, intent upon some search that she could not understand. Alone here she had remembered it so vividly that it had been like re-living the experience again. And now, remembering the remembering, she thought that “deceived” was the wrong word. Perhaps the light had not deceived her, but shown her something beyond the outward facts of place and person that was truer than either. Knyghtwood and David, the leaves and branches and water of a wood and the flesh of a man, were not eternal, but the huntsman and his habitation were. How dear was this earth, its beauty the rumor of a habitation that could not be seen, and how dear the body of the man whose touch and look and word could tell her so little of what he really was. Yet it was the rumor that mattered. It was the so little that mattered. It was the moments of light that mattered; though afterwards one might wonder if one had only imagined them.
Had it happened that the so little that she knew of David had been with her in the garden before Mrs. Wilkes came? They had seemed to be here together, enclosed in a moment of quietness. It had been like that when they stood before Hilary to be married. She had been shaking so much when her father, grimly determined, marched her up the aisle, that he had whispered savagely into his red beard, “Pull yourself together, girl, can’t you?”—And then David, standing beside her, had touched her hand lightly, and she had stopped shaking and stood with him in a quietness that had put everyone else at a vast distance. That to her had seemed the moment of their marriage. When later he had made his vows, they had seemed a rather wordy reiteration of something he had already said. She had felt that touch again, and yet it had not been on her body that she had felt it. All imagination, perhaps, and yet she had never felt so close to him, or so willing to know so little about him. What mattered between them was not her knowledge of him, but their quietness. Mrs. Wilkes was wrong about plain speaking. It might hold Wilkes, but it wouldn’t hold David. You couldn’t lay down laws about marriage, because no one marriage was like any other, any more than one person was like another. Each was a world in itself, folded about its particular treasure. That horrible anonymous letter, telling her of David’s love for a woman in America, had caused her almost unbelievable misery. But she had told no one, burnt it promptly and accepted the fact that successful people had many such letters from those who had been embittered by misfortune. And she had accepted, too, the fact that she could never know if the accusation was true or false. For she would never ask David. To let questions and arguments break in upon their marriage would be to destroy their particular treasure of quietness.
“There’s the car, ducks,” said Mrs. Wilkes, heaving herself to her feet. “I’ll get Mr. Weber a cupper tea and see ’e ’as a nice lay down.”
“I don’t believe he really likes tea, Mrs. Wilkes,” suggested Sally. “I think he likes coffee better.”
“Too ’eavy on the stomach,” said Mrs. Wilkes firmly. “And ’e likes what I give ’im . . . ’E’d better,” she added darkly as she set herself patiently in motion.
Sally smiled. Watching her exit from the garden, she could guess what peace Sebastian fo
und in complete subservience to Mrs. Wilkes. When you were too tired to know which end of yourself you were standing on, it was heaven to be told just exactly what you had to do next.
David, Zelle and the children came into the garden, and there was pandemonium for a while, and then Zelle took the children to bed. David dropped into Mrs. Wilkes’s chair and lay there smoking as though he never meant to move again. Sally’s heart beat hard with her longing to ask him if while he had been in Knyghtwood he had made a vow. But she did not ask him. One did not try to prove the reality of the moments of light. That, in its lesser degree, would be like tempting God. They sat together, and talked a little of trivial things, and listened to the breathing of the sea for longer than they knew, until the supper-bell rang.
“Damn,” said David.
But Sally was immediately on her feet, remembering the red-haired hussy over at Radford. “Mrs. Wilkes must get back to Mr. Wilkes,” she said firmly. “Get up, David.”
He got up and stood beside her and gently touched her hand. She did not know she was crying until she tasted the salt on her lips. They both immediately forgot the supper-bell. David patiently threw away his cigarette and put his hand in her arm.
“Unstuck again,” he said. “Just Christopher?”
“No,” she said. “It was just that I was thinking that between us it always seems to be little things that matter most. It means more to me when you touch me like that than when you kiss me. When we were first married, when you used to make love to me, it did not always seem very real.”
David was silent. She was quite right. He had tried very hard, in the early days, to give his young wife the sort of love to which he thought she had the right, but it had not always been very real. What was real? His passion for Anne had seemed very real at the time, but now it had vanished like mist drawn up by the sun. The only real thing about it now was the shame it had left behind. He remembered he had said to Lucilla that he felt he possessed of Sally and Meg only the part of them that belonged to this world. That was no one’s fault but his own. All his life he had let himself be caught and battered by the whirlwind and the storm, and the stillness of eternity was not in either.