Meg gave a small sigh, for she could not understand, and then the sigh was lost in a cry of welcome, and light broke over her face. Looking round, Lucilla was not surprised to see Hilary standing beside them. They had not heard him come. They never did hear anything when their own world enclosed them. Yet it was not until he, too, entered their world and made himself at home there that they felt the unity of it to be complete. The man, the woman and the child. Whatever the actual relationship between them, there was no more satisfactory combination. Hilary sat down, lit his pipe and smoked placidly while Lucilla and Meg put the spillikins back in their cedarwood box. The walls of their special world continued about them for a moment or two, as though Hilary deliberately held them there, and then they had gone. For a brief moment Lucilla thought she heard the distant thunder of waves on the shore, as she heard it on stormy nights, and then she dismissed the idea as nonsense. It was a windless day.
“Have you seen the man about the beetle?” she asked Hilary.
“He’s in the church now,” said Hilary. “Looking at the roof by himself. He’ll ring up later and tell me what he thinks. He’s not staying now, for I have Nadine with me. She’s what she calls ‘doing her face’ in the bathroom, and then she’ll come over.”
Lucilla took a deep breath. “Meg, darling,” she said, “go and find Aunt Margaret and Robin. I expect they are in the kitchen with Zelle.” Meg ran off obediently and she turned to Hilary. “What is it, Hilary? George?”
“It’s just that the old boy has appendicitis,” said Hilary, still placidly smoking. “He’s not felt the thing for some time, it seems, but did not start to take himself seriously until six o’clock this morning. He’s in Radford Hospital, and they’ll operate this evening. Nadine had just come from the hospital. She couldn’t bring herself to telephone. There’s nothing to worry about, but she thought she’d come and tell us herself.”
“There’s everything to worry about,” said Lucilla steadily. “Appendicitis can be nothing, or very bad indeed. And I don’t doubt there’s something else wrong with him, too, that you’re not telling me about, as you didn’t tell me about the beetle until you had to. It must all be very serious if Nadine had to do her face after telling you.”
“I’ve never known her cry before,” said Hilary, “didn’t know she could cry.”
A terrible coldness stiffened Lucilla. “Oh yes. She cries when she is seriously thwarted, or when her own carelessness as wife or mother is brought home to her. She cultivates serenity for the sake of her looks, and does not notice when they are not well.”
“Well, you and I did not notice anything wrong with old George either,” said Hilary, equably.
“I have thought for a long time that he was not well,” said Lucilla. “I have never disliked any woman as I dislike Nadine Eliot.”
“Mother!” said Hilary sharply, for the ice in her tone seemed to him to have lowered the temperature of the room by several degrees. It was that terrible coldness of the absence of all love. Though he had noticed Sebastian’s dislike of David, it had not disturbed him at all, for he had felt it to be, in some way that he did not understand, impersonal, and something that would pass when Sebastian himself understood it. That was often the way with the hot hatreds of men. But the cold hatreds of women were much worse, for they had their roots so often in the anguish of despoiled motherhood. But to find hatred in Lucilla was to him as dreadful as it was unexpected. He had been deeply grieved for his brother, grieved because of the anxiety for Lucilla and Nadine and the children, but he had felt no such sharp pang as he felt now. “Mother!” he said again, and got up and stood in front of her. “You are talking nonsense. At the beginning you disliked her, and you had reason, but not now. Not for many years. You have loved her as the good daughter that she is for many years.”
“So I said, and so I believed,” said Lucilla. “Extraordinary, isn’t it, how utterly one can deceive oneself?”
He looked at her and saw her eyes like blue ice in her white face. She sat as though she were a block of stone, and her hands when he bent to touch them were cold.
“Don’t let her come in here,” said Lucilla.
“Of course she must come in here,” said Hilary sternly. “She is crossing the road now. Mother, this is worse than George’s danger, worse than his death, if that should come. Mother, I do not recognize you.”
“Possibly not,” said Lucilla harshly. “I thought myself a very sweet old lady. So did you. We were both quite mistaken.” She looked up and saw her daughter-in-law’s tall figure swaying gracefully across the lawn. “I won’t have Nadine in here, Hilary.”
“You will,” said Hilary.
“I can’t do it,” said Lucilla.
“You can,” said Hilary. “You’ve been acting for most of your life. Supposedly sweet women always do. Put on one more act, Mother, and play it for all you are worth. Win this, and you’ve won.”
The rocklike coldness went out of Lucilla and her mind, that had seemed to be ice and lead together, began to work again, so that her body shook with the stress of the thoughts that were tumbling through it. George, my son. George. I hate Nadine for all the misery she caused him. I’ve never forgiven her. I never will. Hilary does not really like women at all. So he knows how I used to act and act and act. Until just lately. Women must. He doesn’t understand that. Or does he? Just once more. What did he mean by win this, and you’ve won? She’s here. How I hate her!
“Nadine, my darling!” she said, and looked up at her daughter-in-law with every appearance of tremulous affection. Hilary could have laughed if he had not been so miserable. But Nadine stood like a tall and graceful boy before Lucilla, and made no attempt to kiss her. She had repaired the damage done by her burst of tears extremely well and she looked very lacquered, very beautiful and very hard. But her usually serene eyes were so wild that Lucilla’s heart missed a beat with alarm.
“I’m sorry, Mother,” said Nadine. “I deserve this, but you don’t.”
“My dear, I’m not interested in your deserts, or mine,” said Lucilla disgustedly. “I’m only interested in George. Sit down, for heaven’s sake, and tell me the truth about him.”
The sudden normality of her tone reassured Hilary. The dangerous corner was turned. He slipped thankfully out of the room and went to the kitchen.
“I am wondering how Mrs. Eliot will manage,” he said to Zelle when he had told her and Margaret the news, and Margaret was crying a little in a perfectly ordinary manner and trying to find her pocket handkerchief. Thank heaven there were never any dangerous or unexpected corners with Margaret. If in years to come he had to have her to live with him, he would at least always know where he was. “There’s a new lot of guests just arrived, Jill is on her holiday and Caroline has ’flu. Ben’s there, of course, but I don’t imagine he’s at all domesticated.”
“I am,” said Zelle, and looked at Hilary. In spite of his anxiety there was a gleam of amusement in his eyes. She suddenly dimpled and her whole face was alight in so entrancing a manner that his heart lifted. For a moment the joy in her eyes seemed to counterbalance the anguish he had seen in Nadine’s, and a sense of equation steadied him. Even though his heart sank again almost at once, his mind recognized that it was so. Human beings are not divided, and the joy of one woman was in very truth the justification of another’s sorrow.
“But what about Meg and Robin?” he asked. “Could Margaret look after them here? Could you, Margaret, if Zelle goes to help Nadine? Do you think you could manage?”
Margaret blew her nose and put away her handkerchief. “Can I manage?” she asked indignantly and delightedly. “The children I’ve managed in my day! Zelle, you’d better go straight back with Mrs. Eliot, now at once. Mrs. Wilkes can come along with what I need for the children. I’ll ring up David. Zelle, do they still have rusks for supper?”
Hilary went out and closed the kitchen door on the spate o
f it all. He could never make up his mind if women like Margaret actually enjoyed the welter of arrangements that always accompany disaster, or whether they formed lifebelts around themselves with it. For himself, arrangements were part of his Thing. He limped down the passage, ungainly and awkward, conscious of an intolerable heaviness of which he was ashamed. He had gathered from Nadine that George was in great danger. Well, of what? Danger was a ridiculous word to use in this connection. In danger of everlasting life. Of everlasting life. Of life. The phrases repeated themselves in his mind, and would have brought him great comfort had George been another man’s brother, or even had he been less attached to him. He went out into the garden and smoked his pipe until Nadine joined him.
“Grandmother’s wonderful,” said Nadine. “So calm, and so loving to me. How can she love me? I’d hate a woman who treated Ben or Tommy as I treated George when I was young. I’d murder her, I think. Hilary, will you come down to the hospital later on?”
“Wouldn’t you rather just have Ben with you while you’re waiting?” asked Hilary.
“No, I wouldn’t,” said Nadine. “When I’m pleased with myself, Hilary, there’s something about you which makes me feel slightly uncomfortable, and I wonder if I really like you, but when it’s the other way on I find you comfortable and I like you immensely. Now you’d better go back to Grandmother. What’s Zelle doing sitting in my car?”
“Whether you want her or not, take her along,” commended Hilary, and detached himself with thankfulness. Women like Nadine, unlike women like Margaret, buoyed themselves up not with arrangements but with the reactions of their own emotions. Of the two, he preferred women like Margaret. But it was himself whom he disliked as he went indoors to Lucilla. Never could he set himself to the priestly task of assisting and comforting afflicted women (other than Lucilla and Meg) without thinking what a pity it was that the good God ever made them.
— 2 —
Zelle was sitting at the wheel. “I am coming ’ome with you, Madame. I will explain as I drive,” she said. She always called Nadine “Madame,” and Nadine liked the crisp deference of her tone when she did so.
“You can drive?” Nadine asked in surprise.
“Your car is the same make as Mr. Eliot’s, and I can drive that,” said Zelle.
“I haven’t much time,” said Nadine. “I must get home and arrange about things there, and then get back to the hospital with Ben.”
“I can drive fast,” said Zelle.
She drove fast and skillfully, and at first in silence. Nadine shut her eyes and had some respite. Nothing to think of now for twenty minutes. Zelle was in charge for twenty minutes. The speed of the car soothed her, and the burden of her anxiety for George, and of the remembrance of all the failures of her married life, pressed less intolerably. They were nearly at the Hard before Zelle began to explain her presence.
“Madame, I will stay at The ’Erb of Grace until your anxiety is over,” she said. “Meg and Robin will be at Lavender Cottage. They are always good there, with the strange old toys they love. They will comfort Lady Eliot, and it will be quieter, too, for their mother if they are there. You need ’ave no distress for your ’ome or your guests. Auntie Rose and I, we like each other. Caroline and I also. I will look after ’er while she is ill. I know ’ow she loves ’er father. I will do all as you would wish.”
Her quiet, confident tones were without arrogance. She knew that her hard experience had made her an extremely competent young woman, and she was unselfishly glad of the fact. She had her own axe to grind, of course, and acknowledged it. This was her chance to make Nadine, who, thanks to David, liked her already, do more than like her, and she meant to take it. But she wanted to help, too. She wanted to be with Ben. She was very fond of George and she sympathized with Nadine with an intensity which she had the selflessness to keep to herself. It could be a relief to oneself to express one’s feelings, but that was no reason for unloading them upon someone who had enough of their own already.
Nadine was not accustomed to being managed, for she was herself a managing woman, but for once in her life she found herself glad to be taken in hand. “The guests are a Mr. and Mrs. Withers,” she said. “Elderly. She has her breakfast in bed. There’s a delicate son with a diet, and Auntie Rose has a boil and is a bit difficult about diets just now.”
“If it’s sieving, I’ll do it,” said Zelle.
“Yes, it is,” said Nadine. “Even the chicken’s sieved. And there’s a Colonel Armstrong who is one of those strict vegetarians. Caroline was 101 last night, and she’ll probably be more this evening from being in such a state over her father. The kitchen sink has stopped up, and Mary went rabbiting and caught her foot in a trap. If there is a big disaster in a house there always seem to be little ones, too.”
“I’ll see to the little ones,” said Zelle, and brought the car to a standstill outside the green gate.
Nadine had not realized they were home already. Usually she savored to the full the loveliness of the way to the Herb of Grace, passing from one familiar beauty to another and coming gradually to the warm old stronghold and the river full of light. But now she was suddenly there, blinking stupidly at the stout buttressed walls and the flower-filled garden, at the small ripples washing the moon-shaped beach and the cat sunning itself on the wall. It was all so familiar, yet none of it seemed to have substance. The front door opened and Ben came out, but he did not seem alive. Apart from George, her home had for her no reality at all. She had not known it before. If she lost him would she live till the end of her days alone in a world of painted cardboard where even her children would seem puppets on strings? Fear such as she had never known took hold of her, a completely selfish fear for herself alone, a fear that was akin to the fear of death. She turned quickly to the girl beside her, not knowing what she was doing, and found herself looking into the face of a woman whom she did not immediately recognize, a woman much older than she was, with a knowledge of life and death profoundly deeper than her own, and yet not scorning her fear but entirely compassionate and understanding.
“I do not know your name,” she said.
“Heloise,” said Zelle, managing to sound the H with the utmost difficulty.
Nadine smiled, aware once more that Zelle was young in years. But she would never forget the maturity of her compassion. Then Ben was opening the door of the car and he was flesh and blood again. She touched his cheek and went quickly indoors to see Caroline, upstairs with Auntie Rose. When she came down again Ben was making coffee and Zelle was unstopping the sink.
“It’s the wrong way round,” said Ben to his mother, “but I’m simply no good with sinks.”
“You must learn ’ow,” said Zelle gently but firmly. “Get me the spanner from the car.”
Ben got it, and he and Nadine drank their coffee standing, and watched Zelle with the spanner. Her efficiency was so reassuring that Nadine sat down to finish her cup.
“You, too, Ben,” advised Zelle. “I know one feels more useful if one is uncomfortable, but it is not really so.”
Ben smiled at her and sat. When they had been alone together Zelle had neither kissed him nor condoled with him. She had given him one quick appraising look and tackled the sink. But under her crisp matter-of-fact talk, her quick movements, he was aware of the warm current of her love and of her pride in him. For one glance had told her that he was managing this all right, that he had managed the whole difficult day well and competently, though he was not naturally competent. How odd it must seem to her, he thought, that he should have come to maturity and known no real testing. And even this bit of anxiety, what was it compared to her testing times? She had no idea, really, what he was made of. How courageous was love, he thought, that could give itself so unreservedly to it knew not what.
He smiled at her quickly again and turned to his mother, wondering about her and his father, as he had been wondering at odd moments all thro
ugh the day. What did they feel about each other, after all these years of marriage, all these children and all these ups and downs? One lived with one’s parents and yet one did not really know much about them. Their life together was something from which even their children were shut out. “Look after your mother,” George had said to his eldest son that morning, and had had nothing else to say. Even Caroline had seemed to vanish from his mind. His mother, Ben thought, beneath all the complications of her whole complicated nature, had achieved now at rock bottom the same simplicity of feeling. Perhaps as love deepened it became progressively more simple. He and Heloise were only at the beginning, and love seemed a mystery that in its exploration would not be simple. Hard, perhaps, and difficult, but not simple. Yet for survival there must be this root of simplicity, and they must find it as his father and mother had done.
“We must go, Ben,” said Nadine. “I’ll just fetch my coat.”
He found himself out in the garden, waiting for his mother at the green gate, with Heloise beside him. The sun was low and had lighted candles in the wood. They stood shoulder to shoulder and he had taken her hand and was holding it firmly while they watched the sunset. But neither of them was thinking now of the other, or of the sunset, but strongly, and with pure intention, of George, and without knowing it they had achieved a union with each other deeper than any that had come to pass before.
It was so that Nadine found them as she came out of the front door, and preoccupied as she was, she could not do other than see them with an almost desperate clarity. A man and woman clearly outlined against the sunset, so close to each other that they looked one figure carved out of strong dark stone, immovable and not to be divided. They looked to the distance, not at each other, and it was the confidence of that forward look as much as their seemingly indivisibility that for a moment tore at her heart, so that she put up her hand against the jamb of the door to steady herself. Poor children, she thought, poor confident children! What a way they will have to travel before it’s that way with them, if it ever is! And even then their bodies can be parted and the body that lives will ache forever.