“It’s just amazing,” said Shirley (or it might have been Bill; it was always quite difficult to remember, when answering, which of them had spoken), “how many people are guided to come in just at some big moment, when they have to face up to things or smash. Bill and I were, weren’t we, Bill?”
“Sure thing,” Bill agreed with his sociable grin. “Our marriage was just about on the rocks.”
Janet looked vaguely pleasant. As if one of them had had an accident with a set of false teeth, she tried to pretend that nothing out of the ordinary was taking place.
“Shirley was the first to get Changed.” Bill looked at her proudly; Shirley reproduced the look with the fidelity of a mirror. “Then she got right down to changing me. I can tell you, I put up a fight.”
“I’ll say you did,” cried Shirley, with hearty fondness.
“But when we really got down to Absolute Honesty, we found …” Cheerfully, Bill explained what he and Shirley had found. He had lowered his voice slightly, but not enough to make any impression on Janet, who felt each word reverberating through the hall. If they had fallen dead on either side of her, her first sensations would have been of grateful relief. When Bill stopped, she gathered her whole store of outrage into an icy “How interesting!” She had used it, exactly like this, on the first and last occasion when Kit had tried to tell her an improper joke. Its effect had lasted the rest of the day. Fortified by the recollection, she looked at Bill, waiting for him to crumble. He turned to Shirley; their eyes met in a comradely, understanding glance, the look of kindly people making allowances.
Shirley put a plump, pink hand on Janet’s arm.
“I expect it seems pretty funny to you, talking it all out like this. But that’s only because you’ve got all tied up in yourself. All those knots will come out when you’ve Shared a bit. You see, Peggy’s told us all about the tough time you’ve been having, and we just want you to know we understand and we’re right in it all with you.”
Janet looked from one to the other. Her stomach felt inverted. The games-mistresses were smiling at one another, and the committee ladies made notes in a little morocco book. Her bag was lying open on her lap, with the contents sliding out of it. She did not know when she had unsnapped the catch. She collected the things, put them back, and looked about; at first, vaguely, for escape, then for Peggy to tell her she was going. But Peggy had, as it happened, crossed the hall immediately after the introductions; Shirley was occupying her seat.
Janet said, “I think, really, I—” and felt for her gloves. Only one of them was there; the other must be somewhere on the floor. She reached after it, swimmingly. The lanky young man, Timmie, dived for it too, bumped against her, apologized, and pulled it out from under Bill’s feet. He handed it over, and she noticed him for the first time. There had not been a chair for him, so he had been sitting perched on the back of the empty seat in front. She saw that he was much younger than the others, probably not more than nineteen.
“I say,” he said suddenly in a gruff boy’s voice, “you don’t look awfully well. I was just thinking myself it was pretty hot in here. Wouldn’t you like to go out for a minute and get a bit of air?”
He looked down at her, slithering awkwardly on the chair-back. He had ginger hair, a wide, serious, uncertain mouth, and a light band of freckles over the bridge of his nose. His limbs looked clumsy and not very well fitting, as if the bones had not finished knitting up. He looked very pink, perhaps from stooping. Up till now he had said nothing at all.
“Yes,” said Janet. “Thank you, I think I should.”
She got up. Bill and Shirley bounded to their feet round her. What rotten luck, they cried; why ever hadn’t she said she was feeling cheap; they had got all warmed up, yarning away, and hadn’t noticed. They would all take her out, get her a glass of water, or a drink or something. They closed her in, boiling with helpfulness.
“No, please. I shall be quite all right in a moment. Please don’t move.” She shrank back a little against Timmie, who was being squeezed on one side. He slipped between, put a self-conscious, heavy hand under her elbow, and bundled her away in front of him. Indistinct with shyness, he muttered, “Better not all of us. Crowd isn’t a good thing, makes you feel worse sometimes.” Janet said, “Yes, I shall be all right, thank you,” and groped her way past the committee ladies, who clutched the papers on their knees in irritation. She looked round; incredibly, Bill and Shirley were no longer there.
Outside the hall was a little open space, made into a sort of perfunctory public garden, with thin grass, a privet hedge, and a forlorn iron seat. Timmie led her over to it, gripping her elbow with tense nervousness which put her teeth on edge. She was glad when he let go of her to extricate a crumpled handkerchief from his pocket and dust the seat. She sat down, and he stood over her, swinging his weight from foot to foot and looking at her anxiously.
“Thank you so much,” she said, “but I feel much better now. Don’t let me keep you from the meeting. I shall just rest here for a minute, and then go home.”
“That’s all right. They don’t get going all at once. I think I’d better stay for a bit; that is, if you don’t mind.” He leaned a big raw hand on the back of the seat, which creaked under its uncertain pressure. Janet looked at the grubby privet hedge, longing to be alone and to reassemble herself. She had a vague expectation of finding her hat out of place and her clothes crumpled, as if she had been rescued from a street accident. In evident terror of a gap in the conversation, he went on jerkily, “As a matter of fact, I’ve got a sister who quite often passes out in hot theatres and places like that. She always says she feels better if she puts her head between her knees. I don’t know if you’ve ever tried doing that.” He stopped, obviously fearing that he had suggested something undignified, which might offend her.
“Really,” she said, “I feel perfectly well now. It’s so nice of you to have looked after me.” She meant this for a dismissal; but he looked encouraged and sat down beside her, with his long legs straggling out in a semidetached way in front. Dissatisfied, it seemed, with the look of them, he drew them in quickly and tucked them under the seat.
“I know what it’s like, passing out, because I did once, when I got a kick on the head playing left wing. I’d been tackled, you see, and a chap behind was coming on rather fast and couldn’t stop. The coming round’s the worst part, really. But I expect this sort feels different.” Janet cast about in her mind for something efficacious that would stop just short of the obvious; her gratitude had not quite evaporated. He screwed himself round towards her, gripped one knee with both hands, and said, very quickly, “I’ve only known Bill and Shirley about three days. I expect, seeing us all roll up together like that, you thought we were all great friends.”
“Aren’t you?”
“Well—of course in the way every one is in the Group; it’s pretty good that way. At least it’s pretty good for me, because usually I’m rather on my own. I’m cramming for Oxford, you know, at home. This is my second shot; as a matter of fact, it’s the Latin principally. … Well, talking about Bill and Shirley, I don’t mean that I don’t think a lot of them. They’ve got a terrific way of tackling things that’s all right for them because they’re pretty tough. I mean, obviously there have to be tough people in the world to do the tough jobs. The only thing is about being tough like that, they don’t always quite cotton on to it that every one else isn’t.”
The seat creaked as he shifted himself round to a more acutely uncomfortable angle. Janet looked at him, and suddenly her nervous irritability faded. He was watching the effect of his words with strained anxiety; he had the look of one who has had committed to him, as an awful privilege, the care of some delicate and priceless apparatus which is ordinarily entrusted only to technicians of the highest skill. To Janet it was like food to the starving. Kit had looked like that, only a little less nakedly, in the first weeks they had known one another. She had never allowed herself to become aware that it was for th
is she had married him; that she had wanted and expected it to be the note of their relationship; that the first demands of his passion had been a hideous disappointment for which she had never forgiven him, and, in the end, probably never would. Less than ever did she admit it to herself now. What she believed herself to be thinking was that here was a charming, idealistic boy whom it would be cruel, after all, to snub, who needed some one to bring him out and preserve his illusions.
“Have you belonged to the Group long?” she asked.
“No. I only got Changed”—he shot out the word after a hard swallow—“quite a few weeks ago. You know, I do absolutely understand you not being so keen about it at first, because of course you don’t need something like that in the way I did. They’ll try awfully hard to get you in, though, because of course you’d be such a help in it.” He removed his eyes from her face, locked his hands in a complicated way under one knee and over the other, and swallowed again. “I was at a school in Canada, the last few years, because my people had to be there.” (This explained a few incongruous intonations of voice which had been puzzling her.) “I don’t know what the others were like, but at the one I was at, it was the done thing to be pretty hard-boiled. When I say hard-boiled, I mean the real thing, you know.”
She gave an understanding nod. Encouraged, but going pink at the ears, he went on. “By that I mean a lot of the seniors, anyway, had done pretty well everything.”
She nodded again.
“If you hadn’t, you talked as if you had, and told stories and all that.”
She smiled at him; in his face she saw a reflection of herself inclining very slightly from a very high altar. “I can’t imagine you,” she said, “telling any story that you couldn’t repeat, for instance, to me.”
“Well, as a matter of fact, I know about a dozen that I’d rather die than let you hear, and some songs too.” Both of them were happily unaware of a substratum of modest pride beneath this claim. “Sometimes”—he coloured more deeply than before—“I used to keep thinking about those things when I didn’t want to. Of course we all thought religion was siss—pretty soft.”
“What made you change your mind?”
“Well, I met a rather marvellous chap who quite obviously wasn’t soft. He’s an International, as a matter of fact. So I thought if it was good enough for him, why shouldn’t it be for me? He’s speaking this afternoon. It’s too bad you’re not well, I think you’d have felt different about it all if you could have heard him.”
“But I’m keeping you from hearing him. Do please go in; it would be such a shame for you to miss it.”
She waited for his answer. The delicious sense of power, that essential vitamin whose deficiency she had, lately, begun so terrifyingly to feel, once again lit and warmed her.
“Oh, that’s all right, he’s sure to be speaking again at another meeting. You know, really, I do think somebody ought to see you home. It would be pretty grim if you suddenly felt wonky in the street somewhere. I’d love to, if I might.”
“That’s very unselfish of you.” She smiled, gracious and indulgent, while he protested incoherently. “Really, you know, it isn’t necessary.”
They rose. Without exactly planning it, she got to her feet a little hesitantly, with the least suggestion of difficulty and limpness. He leaned over her, his freckled face quite drawn with solicitude. A noise of hear-hearing and laughter drifted out from the hall. Janet heard it in a sudden access of kindly toleration.
When she got home she brushed out her hair, and combed it down a little lower and smoother over her cheeks. It made her look frailer, and accented her pallor a little. She turned away from the glass, satisfied, and convinced that the alteration had been an accident.
The silver was not looking quite as it should. The maid used too much plate-polish, and Janet was sure she did not wash the polishing cloth regularly. She gave her a little talk about it, pleasantly aware of her own patience set in relief by Elsie’s stupidity. While she was in the kitchen the front door closed; it was Kit coming in. She ordered some fresh tea for him—he was late again—and went to her room. She intended to be lying down when Peggy came in; genuinely, she had a slight headache. But after she had rested a little while with eau de cologne and a cachet faivre, she felt restless, and tidying herself, went into the sitting room.
Kit had finished his tea, and was reading a new book he had bought about diseases of the heart; a forbidding looking thing, so heavy that he had to hold it flat on his knees. He looked up as she came in, smiled, said abstractedly, “’Lo, Janie, meeting go off well?” and went on reading.
On the table was the novel he had changed for her at the library. She picked it up and sat down with it, then looked at him again. With an uncomfortable jar she perceived that he was quite oblivious of her. She had grown used to his pretending not to pay much attention when she came into a room, but it had never deceived her. She had always felt the shift of his concentration from what he had been doing, his expectation silently surrounding her. It had given a sense of importance and drama to all her small movements, to the first trivial remark she made. Often she had thought how irritating it was to be focussed on like this; but the absence of it was quite surprisingly disagreeable. She opened her book, read the title page without taking it in, and looked at him again.
Suddenly she saw him as one sees people after an absence: imperceptible day-to-day changes accumulated themselves in a single impression. She remembered how Timmie’s face had made her think of his. Everything of which it had reminded her was gone. How long had it been happening? He was not an anxious boy, but a man whose curiously fair hair only emphasized by contrast the decision of his face. There had been, in repose, a loose gawkiness about his wrists and ankles that disappeared when he moved. Now she wondered what had made her imagine it. He was chewing on the stem of an empty pipe, absorbed in a page of diagrams. Presently he got out a pencil and made a note, or some small addition, to one of them. He might as well have been alone in the room.
She turned to the middle of the novel, tasting it here and there. It was a pretty, sentimental tale, pleasant enough but, she knew, a thing he would never dream of reading himself. She had often reproved him for bringing her back books which had excited him but which she thought heavy. Yet to realize that he must have chosen this one without interest, as the kind of thing she would be likely to like, made her feel neglected.
Turning back to the first chapter, she tried to read. It was, in fact, a book she might very well have chosen in default of something better for herself; but, perhaps for this very reason, it irritated her. There was a tickle in her throat, and she coughed, rather more loudly than its relief demanded. He did not notice. To impress him that the cough had happened she coughed again.
He looked up, half his mind transparently still in the book. “Not caught a cold, have you?” he asked.
“Not a really bad one.” She took out the cologne handkerchief unobtrusively and patted her nose. “I think it must have been when I got wet yesterday. It’s only on my chest a little.”
“If it’s on your chest you must look after it.” He put his book aside, fishing an envelope out of his pocket to mark the place. (Once, she thought, he would not have waited to do that.) In a detached businesslike way he got out a thermometer, uncased it, shook it down, and slipped it into her mouth. “No, under your tongue.” His hand closed firmly and easily on her wrist. She remembered from earlier times the careful tension of his touch. “Cheer up,” he said. “You’re not going to be ill.” He held her wrist lightly, waiting for her pulse to settle.
Her temperature was normal. She had been certain that at least it would be ninety-nine. “But of course I’m all right,” she said pluckily. “I told you it was nothing.”
“I’ll just go over your chest to make sure.” He ran down to the consulting room, came back with a stethoscope, and held the metal end carefully to warm at the fire.
Her dress was a dark ninon that fastened to the throat wi
th a little row of silver buttons. Slowly and thoughtfully she fingered the top one, and began to undo it.
Kit straightened, testing the end of the stethoscope against his palm. “Oh, don’t bother with that,” he said cheerfully. Evidently he had noticed what she was wearing for the first time. “I can listen through that all right. It’s only thin.”
Janet fastened the silver button again and took her hand away from it as quickly as if it had burned her.
She stood up while he moved the instrument here and there, with silent precision, over the stuff; his face intent, his mind, she saw, a mile away from her, concentrated in his ears. She might, she thought with bewildered resentment, have been a patient. He moved round to her back, out of sight. “Just cough once or twice, will you?” She coughed; a thin and, it seemed to her, a pathetic little sound. He took the stethoscope away.
“That’s all right. Nothing there. You’ve a spot of tracheal irritation, I expect. Wait a minute, I had a sample of lozenges to-day. You can try them out for me, will you? The formula looks all right.” He got them out of a coat pocket, opened and sniffed them, said, “Not more than one an hour, I should say; they’re strongish,” handed them over, and settled himself back again with his book.
Janet took a lozenge. It was bright pink, contained formalin, and had a sweetish-sharp flavour. She had expected something more medicine-like, menthol, or eucalyptus. She was being kept quiet with a sweet, she thought, like a fractious child. The lozenge stung her throat a little. She was certain now that it really was sore, and remembered her headache, which she had allowed temporarily to lapse. It occurred to her that she had meant to be lying down when Peggy (who was taking tea at Shirley’s) got back. It was nearly six; she might arrive at any moment. Janet thought, with inward shrinking, of her own confidences of a night or two ago. They had seemed possible then. She had got a little generous glow out of making excuses for Kit, explaining that, in spite of his insensitiveness and egotism, he loved her, she was sure, as deeply as he was capable of loving any one; that she always tried, for that reason, to spare his feelings by hiding her own. Now, as she remembered it and watched him—so contained in himself, so suddenly an unknown quantity—she had a sickening sensation of the words appearing in his presence, twisting themselves, looking quite different from the convincing and touching picture they had made at the time. Presently Peggy would be coming in, fresh from talking to Shirley about it.