Short Stories 1927-1956 (19 page)

‘That’s just it, that’s just it,’ cried the young man as if in the depths of despair. ‘I care enormously. I loathe them. Isn’t there
any
where we could go to be quiet for a moment? I only just want to say, however absurd it may sound, that I
do
know you – I didn’t know I could ever know anybody so well, and that it was utterly mean of me not to give you back your glove at once. And to keep you like this being stared at! Oh, if you only knew how I detest these horrible legs scissoring round us, you would at least realize I didn’t mean to do
that.
’

A curious, crooked expression – expectation, incredulity, longing, dismay – hung over the face he couldn’t see.

‘Look here,’ she said, ‘I didn’t mean to be a pig about it. I don’t
suppose
—’ she flung back her head a little, ‘I don’t suppose you have ever so much as guessed that you are not the only young fellow loafing about on the “Parade”. It is hateful to talk here, and I’d like to explain a little, too. What’s more, by God’s help, it happens to be early-closing day. I’m in a linen-draper’s shop, you know – serve out the gloves I can’t afford to buy. There is the river. Shall we go there? But I mustn’t be very long.’

At least a dozen considerations came cluttering into Cecil’s mind. To become the busiest of conspirators needs very little practice in conspiring. There was Grummumma, there was luncheon. There were the private gardens. There were the grounds of the rectory at the corner where you turn in by the bridge to the tow-path. To put anything off might be absolute
disaster
. Above everything in this world he wanted not to be remembered as one of the young fellows on the Parade. That vista appalled him – though he hardly knew why. Skunks, musk-rats, and boa-constrictors couldn’t have a nastier flavour. Could he possibly get to the river without being seen? Could he possibly take
any
thing
of a look round? And supposing … And then, in an instant, nothing seemed to matter. He was at peace and at ease.

‘I can walk quite fairly fast,’ he replied cheerfully, ‘if you would just let me keep what I can see of you in the corner of my eye while we are
crossing
the road. May it be the river?’

It must be confessed there was no extravagant oddity in the outward
appearance of the two of them, as, busily talking, they steered their way across from Messrs Ewart & Sons, the ironmongers, to the corner a little beyond the post office, and then on down Unicorn Street round by the
sawmills
. Furtively skirting the Bagshot orchard, they presently found
themselves
breathing the cool but stagnant sweetness of the air by the river. Its meadows on the farther side were fringed with drifts of fool’s parsley; and on this side were tented with round, leafy, verdant lime trees; while nearer the water, glassing themselves in its flowing dark, hung the whispering green-grey of pollard willows.

Why this young stranger hurried quickly past a seat with a sloping back to it no more than a pace or two from the water and under an Eden-like bower which the authorities had somehow refrained from polling, and why she chose instead a low, hard one of oak full in the thinning glare of the sun, Cecil did not even attempt to guess. His only hope was to postpone for an hour or so the thunderstorm which was obviously completing its
preparations
; to say all that he wanted to say; and to hear as much as possible of what he longed to hear before it was too desperately near the stroke of one.

Here, then, these two seated themselves. And she herself, her bare hands, on either side of her, clasped on the edge of the hot wood, her narrow face now averted, now swiftly glancing at him, at once began talking so fast that he could scarcely find breath enough to follow her up.

‘I don’t really want to know who you are,’ she said once more. ‘I don’t see that it matters, at least not to me. Not a bit. I
believe
you about the glove. I don’t believe you have told me anything that is not the truth. So if you
do
make anything up – just taradiddles, you know – you may as well realize that I shall probably believe you. Then it will be
my
responsibility. And yet – well, I don’t think somehow you will do that either; though I shouldn’t blame you if you did.
I
never knew any that didn’t, anyhow. If you’d like to keep the glove, why, keep it. There’s not very much in this world that seems to
me
much worth troubling about. They don’t even
want
to mean what they say. But if
anyone had told me two or three days ago that I should be sitting here with you this morning, when I had promised to – to go out with a cousin of mine, well —’ the dark eyes continued to brood over the now strangely shadowed meadows on the farther bank of the river, ‘well, what I say is, that’s
my
business. I’m free to do what I like, I suppose, whatever they may say. Still, you
are
rather – rather out of the usual, you know.’

And yet, though she had all but implored Cecil not to tell her who he was, ‘or anything like that’, he was presently pouring out very little else. As usual, his mind began to hunt about in what she had been saying like a terrier suddenly let loose in a rabbit warren. Where next, and where next?
Perhaps it was the echo in his mind of the word ‘cousin’ that at last made an end to these confessions. His lips closed a little tighter.

‘This is a horribly personal question,’ he faltered, ‘and you need not answer it, of course, if you feel you don’t want to; but would you perhaps mind telling me —’ he pointed a forefinger to within an inch of the
turquoises
that showed bluer, it seemed, because of the bleached grey of the wood that surrounded the finger which they encircled, ‘would you mind telling me if you are engaged to be married?’

His companion positively gasped. A crimson flush mounted up into her cheeks. She buried her hands in her lap. ‘And so you
think
,’
she cried,
stooping
forward over them, her head twisted awry almost under the very rim of his unsightly eye-shade, ‘you
think
I should be sitting here with you if the man I was engaged to was waiting to – to go out with me? My God! It just shows what horrible mistakes one can make. I don’t say a girl shouldn’t do as she pleases,’ she went on even more rapidly, and stooping closer over her lap, her eyes fixed straight in front of her on the worn green grass at their feet. ‘I
am
free to do just what I like. But if you think – after what you have said – that I would do a thing like that – when I positively kept my promise to the very minute to be fool enough, after all I’ve gone through, to come and wait
there
for you in the street – well, all I can say is, I understand exactly the
kind
of old lady the one you say you live with
is.
’

Apart from anything else this impassioned speech might imply, it shot a bleaker shaft of light on Grummumma than Cecil even in his most
discontented
moments had so much as conceived possible. Grummumma! – somehow to get rid of her, to put her exactly in her right place, seemed to be his only way of escape, or at any rate the only possible way of keeping this explosive, enigmatic stranger sitting here beside him in this paradise amid the encircling gloom for just a few minutes longer.

‘I assure you, I swear to you,’ he said, ‘that she is not so bad as that. She has been immensely kind to me. How would
you
like to have to take charge, or whatever you like to call it, of a person who, who – well, like
me
!
I realize, of course, you must hate the thought of being
seen
with me. You needn’t suppose I don’t know what they have done for me in making me like this. But I swear, I
swear
I always supposed a ring on the third finger of anybody’s left hand
meant
an engagement.’ He groped round as if his mind were absorbed in an inextricable mathematical problem. ‘And after all it
is
on your left hand!’

A dead silence fell between them. The hands in the worn blue-serge lap tightly clasped themselves together; that was all. The young woman never stirred.

‘Wasn’t that funny of me?’ an almost unrecognizable voice a minute or so afterwards questioned him. ‘Goodness! if I
was
engaged to my cousin –
though this particular he happens to be a she – why, pray,
shouldn’t
I be
sitting
here putting things right with you and keep him waiting a bit? I have precious little time to myself. I’ve had my fill of what they really want. And he wouldn’t keep me long engaged if he made a fuss about that,
I
can tell you. I just – if you must know the truth – I wear this ring
now
because I prefer to be alone. I’m sick of the way they – well,
that
’
s
why. And now, please don’t think I am asking this for any – for any horrible motives; but if you
did
see this thing on my finger yesterday, why didn’t you give me back my glove?’

In the comparatively few years of his secluded existence, Cecil had
become
thoroughly accustomed to being catechized. But not exactly like this. And now, unlike most such little experiences in the past, his one aim and desire at this moment was to share with his inquisitor every single little bit of truth that was in him. He succeeded in this so admirably at length that the two of them had soon abandoned all misgivings and reserve and were chasing together every least little thought and experience that happened to poke up its happy head into the wilderness of their minds.

It was a wilderness that had begun to blossom like the rose. They had
discovered
the solitude only two can share. By now, indeed, not a single human soul was to be seen near at hand. And for obvious reasons.

But though Cecil was capable of leaping blindly to conclusions on what for most people would be the most inadequate grounds, though but one glance at the sullen surface of the water, one moment’s attention to the torpid hush that was now hanging its ever-thickening veils around them, would instantly have warned him of what was coming, he was far too
intent
on other things to heed. And his companion didn’t care. Never, never could either of them have guessed what an immense reservoir of living water had lain treasured up and concealed in memory. One twist of the fingers that now lay unfolded in the stranger’s lap beneath his very eyes – why, even that empty glove – had suddenly turned on the tap. It seemed the flood would never cease.

As for herself, a courageous, if not dare-devil heedlessness of the future was her unrealized philosophy. She knew well enough what they were in for. It was there before her eyes, in her blood, in her brain, in every nerve. She was its centre, its very eye. And the sudden dartings of her dark glances to and fro drank in the complete menace of the scene with avidity.

As she herself had repeatedly hinted, ‘young fellows’ of the utmost
assurance
and aplomb were to be found in full display morning and night,
parading
the pavements of the High Street. And yet this young man who now shared the river seat with her, with whom she was actually talking indeed as if they had shared the same nursery, had somehow managed to stay clean outside that dashing category. He was different in appearance, in talk, in
manners, in the complete, odd effect he had on her mind, as a coral island is from darkest Africa.

She knew ‘a thing or two’ as well as any thing or two
can
be known. And the knowledge had sufficed for most little crises in what had been a fairly lively but what could hardly have been described as a lavish existence. She had even confessed to Cecil only a moment or so ago that though the cousin already mentioned had had nothing to do with it, except as a confidante, she had herself already been, as she supposed, more than once in love. Just to say it all quite easily like that seemed somehow to prove how
irremediably
out
of love she was now. The confession seemed to be its own
absolution
. And yet, with another sudden flaming of colour in her cheek, she had easily managed to refrain from expressing her sentiments concerning the young man who had been responsible for the last experiment.

She could at least play fair even on behalf of a creature who hadn’t the least notion of what the phrase meant. And she had twisted what had first sprung to her lips into: ‘I didn’t see as how I
could
go on caring for him. There isn’t much in me, but I do believe in trying to be – if you understand what I mean – all of oneself there is. It was no fault of his, not at least that he’d know of, but –’ once more the deep, dark, and tragic eyes stole over the louring meadows that lay beyond the water, ‘well, there, you may think me a beast, if you like, but I came at last to hate him. Oh, how I hated him! It’s gone now; it’s over; and yet it has dyed me through and through. At least so I thought until – I didn’t see
what
could come of it, I mean, but just a sort of suffocation if …’

Cecil had waited patiently for the end of the sentence.

‘Well, if we had got married,’ she added, as if the word meant
hanged-drawn-and-quartered
. ‘Not that I suppose we ever should have been. It sounds awful, I know, as my friend said at the time; but I don’t care even if it does. I am
glad
it …’ Again she broke off, as if in sudden dread of her own impetuosity. ‘There! that’s all, that’s all! I can’t go back. No one could ask me to.’ And the fixed wide eyes which the rejected young man had never really seen, and Cecil couldn’t, were the very straightest of witnesses to the honesty of her tongue.

When at least half a dozen thoughts are entangled together in one’s mind, it is difficult to express any. And Cecil had been utterly unable to make any comment on this statement before the young woman had swiftly dropped the clue. She could not imagine why her cheeks hadn’t the sense to keep their natural pallor this morning; it wasn’t a habit of theirs to go on in this silly fashion. Yet why on earth should it matter
what
they did, when that funny green shade prevented anybody worth looking at them from seeing them?