Lights were beginning to spring up, here and there, on the opposite bank, with the soft gay promise of an early summer evening. Helen let her mind blow clear of thought; she began to slip, almost unconsciously, into the mood she would need for the young man she was meeting, who had shown, last time, the first almost imperceptible signs of becoming difficult.
“Want a cigarette?” said Leo, sitting up.
“No. And neither do you. What a restless thing you are. Come back here and be quiet.”
“Quiet?” She laughed, and went over to the box on the table. Peter, from the couch, watched her movements with interested attention. She lit her cigarette at the electric fire, and settled beside him again.
“You can finish it now,” he told her. “I don’t make love to any woman while she’s smoking.”
“Thanks, I will.” She sat upright, blowing shadowy rings into the glow of the fire. Its red light, shining on her red dress, made it luminous like a signal at night. “I’m sorry, I’m afraid I’m often very bad form. You think I’m the sort of person who’d bring out a packet of crisps in the middle of Beethoven’s Fifth, don’t you?”
“No,” said Peter, “I think you’re nervous, if you want to know.”
“Nonsense. Why should I be? Seeing this room is for all practical purposes the front hall and anyone might come in at any moment, that would be too ridiculous, wouldn’t it?”
“You know perfectly well there’s nobody in the place but ourselves. Put that thing out and relax.”
“Elsie will be in before long. And Helen isn’t away for the night either.”
“I wish they both were,” said Peter softly, “don’t you?”
“I think it’s probably all for the best myself.”
“Isn’t that another way of saying yes?”
“I’m sure it must be, if you say so.”
“Why are you so defensive,” he murmured. “You weren’t a few minutes ago.” She was silent—tensely silent, he thought. When he craned round to see her face, he discovered that she was laughing.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “But I suddenly thought of the Victorian villain who twirls his moustache and says, ‘Why do you fear me, little one?’ I wonder if the things we say will sound just as funny, fifty years from now.”
“Well,” said Peter unexpectedly, “why do you, if it comes to that?”
“As a matter of fact, I don’t believe I do, much. I can’t think why.” She had discovered with other men that there was almost no limit to the amount of truth with which she could get away in the guise of irony; she was becoming reckless about it.
“Let me tell you that your sense of security is very ill-founded.” It had only been a random thrust, after all. Her bluff had succeeded again; its success was necessary but monotonous, like the success of a card-trick one did for a living. Why did we begin talking, she thought wearily; oh, yes, I remember why. Her cigarette was smoked three-quarters down; she put it out.
“About time, too,” said Peter, slipping his arm under her shoulders.
Helen’s right, thought Leo, he’s really very sweet. I wonder how they got on this afternoon. He’s probably nicer with Helen; everyone is. She can afford to be honest and kind. Her reserves are just decencies; there’s nothing behind them she daren’t have found. He’s better in himself than ever he’ll have the chance to be with me. I can know that and not mind, because we didn’t start as friends; thank God, I haven’t broken anything this time.
“That’s better,” said Peter, taking breath. “Why were you so jumpy before?”
“I don’t behave like this at home. I never have, till this evening.” It’s a relief to be able to say something to him that’s true, as far as it goes. He’s so generous. He asks nothing better than that I should tell him how to do me good. Or more probably, by now, he thinks he knows. Here he is, so near, and here am I quite safe with myself. Thought’s secrecy must be one of the most wonderful of the works of God. Everything else is explorable, or violable, or reacts to chemistry, or can be laid open with a knife. But thought can only be given. That’s the ultimate dignity of man.
“You’re not happy,” said Peter. “Are you?”
“If I were, I should consider it a smack at Providence to say so.” He only wants to know how to be kind to me. Why not; why do I feel I’d sooner have my throat cut? Properly considered, it seems very unreasonable. I think I see why. It’s because he knows it’s more blessed to give than to receive. Perhaps the blessing is one of those things that goes if you think about it—like Joe’s Arizona drawl. …
“What’s the matter?” asked Peter.
“Matter? Nothing, why?”
“You started away then like an overbred horse.”
“I thought I heard someone at the gate, but it wasn’t.”
“I think I know,” said Peter gently, “what’s in your mind.”
“Do you?” said Leo. Her eyes had narrowed, dangerously.
“You’re afraid of upsetting Helen, aren’t you?”
There was a pause; filled for Peter, as it lengthened, with an established conviction of truth.
Leo loosened her shoulders comfortably in his arm. “Yes,” she said, smiling at him with renewed confidence; “Helen would put powdered glass in my food if she saw us. Or drown herself, perhaps. Didn’t she strike you like that?”
“Of course not.” He spoke with indulgent reproof. “But you have a guilt-complex towards her. Isn’t that true?”
“I expect you’re absolutely right. I ought to try and get rid of it, oughtn’t I? What do you think would be the best way?”
Peter spoke to her about it, seriously, and with scrupulous fairness to all concerned. Helen herself, he assured her, would be the first, if she understood, to agree with him.
“It’s very nice of you,” said Leo, “to take all this trouble with me when I behave so badly. Thank you. I feel much better now.”
She leaned back her head, and dropped her lashes. Peter concluded his theory with a short demonstration. It was quite satisfactory.
A chain of barges came down the river, long shadows in the surface mist on the water. The leader of the string had a matting fender across the bow, like a grinning mouth, under two staring hawser-holes, giving it a face like a dolphin’s. Its siren bellowed, and one could fancy the thick lips curled backward to let out the sound.
“Elsie will be coming in,” said Leo. “It’s nearly ten.” She pushed Peter away, and sat up. “Do something about your tie, for heaven’s sake, before you forget.”
“If you’re not careful,” said Peter, “you’ll be repeating the mistakes of your parents over that child. She isn’t too young at seventeen to know what people look like who’ve been kissing. She ought to be starting herself in another year.”
Leo sat back and looked at him, her hand, which had been pushing the hair back from her eyes, arrested in the midst of its movement. It isn’t credible, she thought. But it is, of course, there was the other day. He’ll do it again, or something worse, if I say nothing now. And I shall feel an accessory. I must make myself tell him somehow, it seems the least I can do for her. She sat silent, confronting the image not of Elsie but of her own pride. Her will was paralysed as if it were murder that had been demanded of her; it seemed, by her own rule of living, scarcely less. The still-unspoken words in her head gave her the horror she would have felt at being herself betrayed. She could not utter them.
“I see I’ve upset you,” said Peter, looking at her with kindly penetration, “by that rather abrupt reference to your parents. I’m sorry; I do understand. But you know, it’s much better, really, to let the air in on these things.”
Mechanically, Leo finished her interrupted gesture and let fall her hand. She looked at it for a moment, then smiled at him. “You’re always so sensible. I think you’d better go, though, now. Do you mind?”
“Of course not, my dear,” he said sympathetically. She was emotionally disturbed, he thought, and didn’t want her sister to see
it; women were like that.
A cool eddy of breeze, fresh with green scents and water, drifted in through the glass doors. It struck pleasantly on Leo’s forehead; she realized that the room was hot, and full of cigarette smoke.
“I’ll come to the gate with you,” she said.
Night was already taking away the colours of things; but every bush and tree had its faint shadow, and the light a strangeness, for the moon was up already and its white patterns were beginning just to be visible through the pallor of dusk. Dew had fallen, and was cool about their ankles. Across the bridge, the empty towpath was visible on either side. They stopped at the gate.
“Good night, Peter.”
“Well, Leo.” He enfolded and considered her, pleased with the evening. “This is where I say ‘Thank you for having me,’ isn’t it? But I shall save that, I think, till another time. Just in case.”
Leo laughed. “That’s really rather good,” she said. “I must remember it. You have some very nice lines, Peter.”
There was an interlude. Leo thought idly, This must look most picturesque, if there were anyone to see. Moonlight and roses, and young love.
“The only drawback,” Peter remarked presently, “to this charming spot, is that when it isn’t overrun with people it’s always just about to be. But when you come up to town to see me, all that’s going to be different. You are coming, aren’t you?”
“I might,” said Leo. “I think perhaps I will.”
“I’m glad about that.” He submitted her face to a last searching tender scrutiny and a kiss, and left.
He went down the towpath at an easy swinging pace, pleased with himself, with the air which the contrast with London was still fresh enough to sweeten, with the lights which came out from moment to moment at intervals along the bank, like irregular beads on a loose string. Elsie too, as she walked homewards from the cinema, with the sound of steel guitars and Hawaiian ululations in her ears, loitered happily, repeating to herself what she could remember of the “In such a night” speeches from The Merchant of Venice.
When the sweet wind did gently kiss the trees,
And they did make no noise—in such a night
Troilus methinks mounted the Troyan walls …
When she got in, she thought, she would go up on the roof for a little while, and think about Peter.
In such a night
Stood Dido with a willow in her hand Upon the wild sea-banks …
She had almost collided with him before she saw him.
Her feet, the breath in her throat, the blood in her body, seemed all to stop together. It was too much. She could not even speak to him.
“Hullo, Elsie. Are you going to cut me dead?” The general affection he was feeling for the universe reflected itself in his voice.
“No,” said Elsie with a little gasp. “I didn’t see you. I—I was just coming back from the pictures.” All day she had been wondering whether Peter would look in. (Helen, when she came home for the sandwiches, had not said where she was going, which was nothing unusual.) Now he had come, and she had missed him.
“See a good film?” he asked absently.
“Yes. Awfully good. It was called Flower of the Lagoon.”
“Oh, you ought to have gone to the French one at that little flea-pit round the corner. They seem to get quite good stuff there; old, of course. Taking a walk?”
“Well, sort of.” Could it be possible that he meant to come with her? “It seemed too nice to hurry in.”
He said, with paternal kindness, “Leo’s expecting you, I think.”
“Oh, is she?” There was a note in his voice which she perceived, but did not, or perhaps would not, understand. “Have you been over there?” She said to herself, trying to believe it, that he had gone looking for her.
“Yes. I’ve been there all the evening. Leo and I have been having a little talk.” A kind of warm expansivness, of mixed origin, made itself felt in him: the urge to instruct, to receive well-earned appreciation, to distribute around him a little of his general sense of well-being. “I expect you’ve noticed for yourself,” he said, “that this sister of yours is a—a rather unreconciled and lonely person. I felt that as soon as I saw her. But I think she and I are going to understand each other much better now.”
Elsie heard. The words themselves by-passed her intelligence altogether; she scarcely knew what they had been. But somewhere, under veil after folded veil of illusion, a woman recognized the unmistakable overtone of male possessiveness and self-congratulation. It was, for the first second, knowledge and nothing else, just as a deep bullet-wound may feel at the impact only like a jolt or a dull external blow.
“Are you?” she said; and was not even surprised to find that she had spoken exactly as if he had said that Leo would take tea with him to-morrow afternoon.
“I think we are. I shouldn’t say anything when you go in; people as reserved as she is don’t always like to be noticed, you know. … Well, as you say, it seems too good an evening to stop indoors. I’ll walk along with you part of the way.”
“I’ll have to hurry,” said Elsie. She spoke quite naturally, almost briskly. “I’m rather late as it is. Please don’t bother. I’ll have to run.” He stood looking after her, his eyebrows raised in a faint incurious surprise, while the sound of her footsteps, the irregular thudding sound of an overgrown child, faded along the gravel at the water’s edge. She ran on and on, looking ahead of her into the gathering dark, passing, without a glance, the garden hedge and the gate. Her throat and chest began to hurt her, but she still ran, feeling the long beams of reality wheeling and steadying, converging on the line of her course, like a fugitive pilot who knows that in a moment the searchlights will meet in a single, inevitable point of light.
Left alone by the click of the closing gate, Leo threw up her head, like someone receiving a challenge. The shadows were growing stronger; in the deepening moonlight the leaves of the roses shone like fine dark metal, and near her the flowers had a pale cold scent. All the clearness was like bright cutting edges, searching the mind. The night breeze was rising; it lifted back her hair, and was cold in the neck of her dress. Something was unfastened, which was not astonishing. She set about fixing it, humming softly and defiantly to herself a swift little running tune.
A stranger steps up and he says, “I suppose
You’re a bronc-ridin’ man by the looks of your clothes?”
Says I “Guess you’re right, there’s none I cain’t tame,
Ridin’ tough ponies is my middle name.”
At this point, something seemed to amuse her a little.
There was a faint movement on the far side of the garden, towards the river. But the night was full of slight stirrings and of sounds. Most of her attention was on a tiny, elusive little hook, just under her collar.
… They say there’s a cayuse that’s never been rode,
And the guy that gets on him is bound to get throwed, …
The little hook slid into its eye. She turned to go in, took a single step, and stopped in her tracks, as motionless, for a moment, as the path of the moonlight. A shock like a cold wave broke over her heart. She stood still: the wave grew hot, drenching her body. There was no time to consider it. There was no time for anything, but to smile and to step forward; to say to herself, in the instant that was left, that everything would be well, as it had always been.
CHAPTER XXIII
JOE TIED HIS PUNT to a stump in the garden, and strolled leisurely round towards the bridge, enjoying the evening, and the scent of the tobacco-flowers which, in the deepening dusk, were spreading their moth-like whiteness for the creatures of the night. He had settled down to work before he missed his pipe or remembered where he had left it; and had found, as usual, that cigarettes were not the same. Scarcely detaching his mind from that of the character on whom he was working, he had pushed off in the punt to get it, thinking as he went, and comfortable in the certainty that Leo would do nothing to interrupt or detain him;
she took other people’s work more seriously, if anything, than her own. He wandered absently over the grass, in no hurry, preserving by instinct the quiet that suited his mood, his feet falling softly in their rope-soled shoes. It was a pity, he thought, that a light was necessary to write by; his imagination was always more fertile in the dark. He might, in his preoccupation, have collided with the two standing shadowed under the climbing roses by the gate, if Leo had not laughed. At the sound he stopped, backing sharply against the stump of the apple-tree, and stood there for a moment to collect his thoughts. Three parts of his brain had been turned inwards, and what he saw seemed at first less real than its images. Almost at once he gathered himself together, prepared to move silently away: but it seemed now that any movement he made must produce some revealing noise. He hesitated, conscious at first only of an acute embarrassment, while the seconds lengthened. When he did move, a leaf rustled under his feet, and he hesitated again. His eyes were accommodating themselves to the darkness, or the moon was brightening; he recognized for the first time the man who had been at first glance only a formless encircling blur.
Well, he thought, I can’t stop here: I must get away somehow, and quickly too. But he found it suddenly difficult to move. A person of some discernment about human emotion, he was not slow to recognize the nature of his own; he thought it, not particularly shocking or surprising, but a pity, and a thing to be got over, by oneself, as soon as possible. He prepared again to depart; but Leo had seemed for a moment about to turn his way, and again he lingered. Perhaps, he thought, he might have mistaken the man; and he looked in the hope of finding, after all, a stranger whom he had never seen and, with luck, would never see again. The sky lightened more as a cloud thinned; yes, it was Peter sure enough. In any case, it was no concern of his.
So he had been wrong after all, it seemed, that afternoon in the punt. It was merely that Peter would do, but he would not. This thought was followed by a brief and shadowy perception of some fragment of the truth, which anger swept almost immediately away.
I’ll get out of this, he thought, go back to work and get shut of it. Her amusements are her own affair. He remembered the concentration of mind which had been so sharply broken; of all things to be avoided were emotional tie-ups in the place where one was working. His choice of the island had been a kind of extreme expression of this. And the sooner I get back there the better. He tried to remember what he had come for in the first place, and failed.