To the North (26 page)

“Alas, yes. In fact, if you won’t think me rude I ought really to start before tea is over. I am due back for dinner at half-past eight.”

“We must not complain,” she said, with an air of distinct pathos. “It has been most enterprising of you to come at all. Such a long drive, both ways. I can only hope,” she said, regarding him thoughtfully, “you have felt it was worth while.”

Pauline came, panting back.

“It is too bad,” said Lady Waters, crossing the hall that night with her little file of visitors on their way upstairs to bed, “that Julian Tower had to go back so soon.”

“Indeed, yes,” said Pauline politely.

Cecilia said nothing: winding a wrap round her shoulders she stepped out into the porch. Above, the dark sky changed a little; something stirring behind the clouds shed a faint line of silver about the lime-tree. Cecilia looked up: while not a drop fell in the heavy darkness the clouds were in conflict, disturbed; light ran between like a messenger. Somewhere, the moon was rising. Somewhere, clear of earth’s shadow, the radiant full moon received the whole smile of the sun. Clouds hid from the earth at this bridal moment her lovely neighbour, while to the clouds alone was communicated her ecstasy… . Clouds closed in; the moon did not appear; darkness spread over the skies again; only the lime and a wet path silver for less than a moment had known of the moon’s rising. The tree and path faded; cloudbound while that tide of light swept the heavens earth less than suspected the moon’s perfection and ardour.

Cecilia sighed. “It’s horribly dark,” said Marcelle, throwing a match away into the darkness.

“That was nearly the moon,” cried Pauline.

“Yes, it’s there,” said Cecilia, putting a hand out as though she expected the moon to fall into it.

Gathering up her furs, Lady Waters remarked: “It’s a pity: we should have had a full moon.”

Calling them all in, she shut the hall-door firmly.

“Perhaps,” said Cecilia, “there is a moon in Paris.”

COMING DOWN INTO CLOUDS, Emmeline found with surprise cold showery weather in London. Evenings were shortened by rain, a chill like February’s hung over squares and gardens. She had forgotten all this: her life, to which these last three days had given a new, perhaps its first conscious form, seemed bound up in a perpetuity of hot sunshine. She had had, however, little time for surprise: Woburn Place was humming, Tripp having been supplanted—for only some weeks they said and at great expense—by a Miss Armitage. Efficient as Nemesis and as unrelenting, Miss Armitage hustled the startled partners along; they worked at high pressure, as though they were organising a coronation. A good deal of business had—or perhaps since their new employee’s zealous research in the files merely seemed to have—mounted up. Groaning beneath this oppression, Peter was glad to have Emmeline home, and was plaintive with her for her absence of one more day.

Emmeline told Cecilia about the Serbs; Cecilia told Emmeline about Farraways and how Sir Robert had made her feel guilty by praising her shabby old evening frock. Monday evening at Oudenarde Road, when they dined together, was a cheerful vignette of intimacy; both talked more because they were conscious of some reserve. As though Emmeline had come back from a longer journey, Cecilia was full of little attentions. Drawing the curtains to shut out the rainy evening she asked at last, over her shoulder: “And how was Markie?”

“Quite well; he sent you his love.”

“Summer’s quite gone while you’ve been away,” said Cecilia, sighing.

Something made Emmeline smile; she said: “Gerda’ll be glad.”

“That little goose—why?”

“Fine weather makes her unhappy.”

While Cecilia remarked it was nice to think someone was pleased, Emmeline thought of the sundial at Farraways, of something about that bright Sunday morning that she had never recaptured, or even hoped to recapture. Cecilia, now looking at her less closely and anxiously, felt more at ease: Emmeline, though naturally tired, gave no sign of not being completely herself.

“So I have quite decided to go to America.”

“Indeed?” said Emmeline calmly. “For how long?”

“That would depend. I thought you could have Connie Pleach here, or someone, to stay in the house with you. Of course I’ll still keep up my half of it: I could well afford to, you see, as I’ll be staying with mother.”

“You couldn’t stay more than six months, though, because of the quota.”

Cecilia, who had not thought of this, was annoyed; the idea of America lost a good deal of its charm and vigour. “It seems hard,” she said, “that one should not be allowed to stay with one’s own mother.”

“But, darling, you’ve never wanted to.”

“I do think it’s annoying … I could pull strings, I daresay.”

“Or marry someone out there.”

“How heartless you are! Don’t you want me back?”

“I can’t imagine myself without you,” said Emmeline. So they shelved America. It did strike Cecilia a moment that the idea of Emmeline’s imagining herself in any way, even to seeing her own shadow, was quite a new one. For she spoke of herself so little, as though she did not exist. Rather vague alarm returned; so that when the telephone rang Cecilia suddenly wondered: “Can this be Markie?”

It was not, of course, Markie. Emmeline had made him promise not to ring up; they must go on as before, but more calmly, and meet when ever they could. She did not want life here disturbed by a voice that was too beloved, or ever alarmed by silences. The little white house pale with dusk, with rain streaming down its windows, was friendly tonight; here day-to-day life presented itself in mild outline and, after Paris, in delicate low-relief. She longed to inhabit with Markie the heart of the country, inaccessible, green and quiet, where telephones were not and lovers’ meetings meant journeys. If they were to be little together they must be calmly apart.

Emmeline went to bed early; Cecilia read for a little and looked through her letters, staying to watch the fire die down. Restless, she crept up at midnight, tapped softly, and opened Emmeline’s door an inch. She heard rain on the window, the clock ticking, an unstirring silence about the bed… . Sitting up by her shaded lamp Cecilia wrote, later, to Julian:

“Emmeline’s home tonight; she is tired and doesn’t say much but seems quite happy: I regret, rather, anything that I said. Forget what I said; I don’t think I was anxious really. She says it was hot in Paris—think of heat while we were at Farraways! —She had a nice weekend and quite liked her Serbs. So what a pair of old women we were!

“Which is not propitious for marriage. I don’t think, really, Julian, that that would do. Of course there is always something, but we should wear that out. I wish you would not spoil me; it fearfully clouds the issue. What do we both want? Either nothing, or something quite different. But I thank you very much, all the same.

“Emmeline says they would only keep me in America six months because of the quota. I suppose you knew that: I didn’t. How is one to be world-minded? Still, I may go, I daresay.

“What was Georgina saying to you in the garden? I could see it was heartfelt. Still, I agree, the place isn’t a morgue, only like a quite nice Italian cemetery with photographs on the graves. And Georgina’s unbalanced but kind. When old men like Sir Robert are dead, our civilisation will go—don’t you think?

“This morning, Pauline and I went out riding; she fell off but seemed to enjoy herself. She seems anxious to be affectionate, but can find no one she really likes. Though I always feel …” She wandered on, concluding: “I may not post this,” and she did not. Her desk was full of such letters addressed to such friends, even stamped. Wondering if they would be posted if she were dead, she did not destroy them.

For weeks, wet weather trailed sadness over the newspapers. Wet lace was reported and sopping chiffons, debutantes were photographed shivering; ever so many functions were quashed by the rain. However assiduous the umbrella or kind the unrolled carpet, thousands of pairs of pale slippers must have been spoilt that summer. At Lord’s the bats were silent; Wimbledon was suspended. Cecilia’s social life registered this depression; Emmeline went to meet Markie with mackintosh buttoned up to the chin. No wonder Cecilia felt that life was escaping her, and Emmeline clung with intensity to one bright prevailing idea. Stripping off some distracting, sensuous, day-to-day pleasure the weather left nerves bare: one expected that even the gilded eighteen-year-old shivered, stepping into the ball-room. Across the mind’s surface—on which a world’s apprehension, strain at home and in Europe, were gravely written—the sense of a spoilt summer, so much prettiness wasted, darkly spread like spilt ink. Streets were to be navigated and parks desolate, pleasure-boats under tarpaulin and bands silent: the whole city became a mesh of unwilling hurry where nobody smiled or lingered. Unknown, the moon diminished; wasting itself upon vapours the sun smiled on.

The English went on putting up in so many unconscious prayers their request for happiness. As the holiday season approached glittering peaks and hot coasts, an idea of vineyards and lakes began to possess the imagination. Peter and Emmeline, still rather dazed by Miss Armitage, exploited the situation: bleached by rain on the palings their posters attracted more and more clients. Emmeline gave them the best she could of her now divided attention; when she went out to meet Markie she was quite often late.

The Summer Rush meant little to Markie, who rushed nowhere in summer: when she was late he was not patient. The more he possessed of Emmeline, the more he became exacting. The question of marriage, however, was not reopened between them.

At the door of his flat, one evening about eight o’clock, he helped Emmeline out of her dripping mackintosh. She did not like driving her car in such heavy rain. “But why not,” he said, “take a taxi?”

“The nineteen ’bus was so near.”

“So you dripped in that ‘bus for an hour—you’re very late.”

“You mustn’t be cross,” said Emmeline, who having gained in these weeks a new smiling power did not let Markie fuss her nearly so much. He said her hands were cold, chafed them; they went in to the fire. He said with authority that she was tired and had far better give all this up. Her look for a moment was serious and appalled; she thought he meant give up Markie. When he added: “That business of yours,” she laughed and said that was quite impossible: so much of her money was in it, apart from everything else.

“I meant, sell out, naturally. This would be your best time to, while things are going so well.”

“But I don’t want to. What should I do all day?”

“I don’t know: why do anything special?”

“I don’t know: why do you?”

Ignoring this silly question he picked up to examine with some disapproval her right hand, whose forefinger showed a faint stain of ink. They had fallen into a habit of overruling, quite calmly, each other’s opinions. Emmeline had to admit that this whole affair of careers for women did sound rather funny, the way Markie saw it, not unlike a ladies’ race at regimental sports. Remarking: “I’m not an houri,” she sat down on the floor by the fire, her shoulder against Markie’s knee as he sat in the big chair, to comb out the wet strands of her hair that, separating in the warmth, resumed their own natural softness.

“I knew a girl once who had a shop, but she came to no good,” he said darkly.

“What did she sell?” said Emmeline, interested.

“Oh, paraphernalia—lampshades, book-ends that fell over, ashtrays that always caught fire, paper weights, those sticky Balkan toys—oh, yes, and flowers made out of oyster shells.”

“So what became of the shop?”

“As far as I know, it’s still there.”

“Then what became of the girl?”

“Oh, Daisy—she quite went to bits.”

“Oh, dear: how?”

“She just went to pieces. She was a nice girl, too.”

“And gave up the shop?”

“Not as far as I know.”

“Then I don’t see any moral,” said Emmeline, putting away her comb.

“There was one,” said Markie, one hand on the back of her neck to make her sit quiet. For she was inclined to get up and stroll round the room, as elusive in mind as in person. Emmeline did not ask what the moral might be; not from perversity, simply because she was hungry. “There are too many shops,” she said. “I can’t think how they all pay. Especially gift shops.”

“What’s that?”

“Daisy’s kind, where you buy things to give other people you might not want for yourself— Do you think you could whistle for dinner? I feel quite hollow.”

Going across to whistle, he added: “She doesn’t think much of me.”

“Who, Daisy? Well, never mind, Markie; it can’t be helped.”

Two or three of these disillusioned friends of his had cropped up now and again in their talk; Daisy’s name, though not in this context, was now familiar. Emmeline, with whom fastidious incuriosity reached a fine point, repeatedly shied away from them. She did not like to feel that they were unhappy; according to Markie they had been largely indignant; one way and another they seemed to have made a good deal of fuss. She could not account for their place in his own idea of his life, or reconcile the apparendy rather pointless dalliance that had occurred with his derisive impatience of sentiment and exclusively narrow ambition. She could only conclude that he felt time wasted at all had better be wasted thoroughly, and to this end put a pretty high value upon fatuity. If Daisy were all in bits—Emmeline had to perceive, as the lift came up and Markie took out the grilled chicken—Markie no doubt felt this was his fault: her fluttering shadow among her own lampshades remained important.

On small points, Markie quite liked being in the wrong, and Daisy had certainly put him there. Her constant acute sense of having departed from virtue—for some time before Markie appeared, as a matter of fact, her behaviour had been open to criticism, but the more they saw of each other and the less he minced matters the more Daisy became the clergyman’s daughter—lent charm to a frequentation that there was little else to support. Her bridling reproaches, her rather attractive blushes, her determination to keep things perfectly nice, her tears to be shut off at any time by his simply walking out of the shop, had been a source to Markie of endless satirical pleasure. In many ways, Daisy had suited him well, and he sometimes regretted her. She had brought up from some province an indestructible bloom of propriety. Bumping cheerfully round her back-shop, upsetting the book-ends, charring the ashtrays and tilting the lampshades crooked, he had spent evenings as natural and fresh and as nearly Arcadian as those tinkling sprays of shell blossom branching across the lamplight. The salt of a little mild wit, some smoky pretensions to laugh at— for she attended concerts, visited galleries and would have liked to be liked for her mind—just enough resistance to please and enough repentance to gratify, in a woman saw Markie a long way. In fact, he liked women lowish.