Short Stories 1927-1956 (24 page)

‘Good evening,’ she said close to him. ‘Here’s a bad penny, you see.’

His whole body turned round in her direction. He thrust out his hands as if to ward off an unexpected enemy. But she made no move to reassure him.

‘I didn’t know you were there,’ he said. ‘Is there anybody else near?’

She laughed softly. ‘So you have discovered at last, then, that I am not the kind of person to be seen with.’

He rose to his feet and stood perfectly still, his hands trembling a little in spite of himself.

‘I could say things like that too,’ he replied, ‘but I should hate myself for doing so.’

‘Which might be,’ she retorted, ‘the beginning of a perfectly horrid quarrel. But I didn’t mean anything at all. I just said it. One must say
something
. I learned that the other day.’

‘This is all so horribly open,’ said the young man, sweeping his cane round with an incredibly magnificent gesture as if in proof of it. He might be Satan himself, surveying from his mountain-top the outstretched
Kingdoms
of the World. ‘Could we go on a little farther, do you think?’

‘Farther!’ she answered. ‘To Land’s End, if you like – if we could. But I’ve got to be out of the streets by ten, or say eleven, or I shall be on them for good on Monday.’

‘I never knew anyone,’ said Cecil, ‘who had such a dreadful way of
telling
the truth. You must be very young for that.’

An inexhaustible serenity seemed to have descended upon him. It seemed that he hadn’t an enemy in the world, that before them lay an infinity of space fenced in only by an infinity of time. ‘If you only knew what I feel at being with you again,’ he muttered. ‘I have been waiting for you for ages. But had – had given you up. I have been kept in again, you see – idiot that I am.’

‘Well,’ she said in a curiously flattened voice, which yet seemed to
conceal
an intensity of music, ‘never mind that! Here I am. I don’t mind, I don’t mind even if you have been at death’s door, as long as you too are with
me
again. You see, I am always more or less contented when I haven’t any
decisions
to make. I am sick of them, but there are none left now.’

She smiled to herself as fondly as a beauty at the image in her glass. ‘I didn’t suppose I should see you again, and yet even impossibilities come true sometimes.’ She turned her head away and went on with an effort: ‘You see, I couldn’t pretend I’m sorry to see you. I ought to. But nothing now, nobody in the world – or out of it either – could make me say that.’ Once more she twisted about. ‘Is
that
a common and horrible way of telling the truth? Like losing a whole boxful of gloves, I suppose.’

‘You never say anything,’ he replied gently, conscious, it seemed, while they loitered slowly on, of every saw-edged, exquisite blade of grass
stooping
green under the evening sky and here and there laden with a drop, a crystal universe, of rain-water – ‘you never say anything without saying something different immediately after. I don’t see, I mean, why you should always give a sting to everything. Mayn’t we be – just friends, for now? You see,’ he hastened on, ‘I want to speak to you very badly indeed. I have got to make plans. And I am wondering if you would help me.’

‘Where did you leave Mrs le Mercier,’ she inquired, ‘and – and that other young lady? I enjoyed that tea-party. But I had, of course,
heard
of Canon Bagshot before – often. He’s a little like a vulture, isn’t he?’

‘I have left them at home,’ he answered amiably, ‘or rather, Grummumma will be at home by now.’

‘Will they be sending a rescue party, do you think – from the street girl?’

‘Oh,’ he said helplessly, ‘you will just break me in pieces if you go on
talking
like that. You don’t know what I have been through these last few days – knowing what you must have thought of me. I deserve it all.’

For the moment Miss Simcox made no reply. Her inward glance had vaguely returned with a wry little grimace to scan the vista of her own last few days; but she was not going to say anything about that. Instead, and as usual for no clear reason, a flush of colour slowly spread over her pale face. She could feel the heat of it as she blurted out: ‘Then you’ve missed me?
Missed
me – missed
me
?’
With a wrench she regained her self-control. ‘Well, then, all I can say is, that I’ve missed you too. I mean, if you are kind enough to talk to me, I
like
talking to you. In the whole of my life I have never talked to anyone like you. I mean that
I
have never really talked
before
to
any
one,
and that I have never talked to anyone like
you.
Do you see
now
what I mean?’

‘I hear what you say,’ said Cecil in despair. It was odd that anything so substantial as the ground upon which they were walking should seem to be at least as precarious yet as buoyant as the water of which it was the
restraining
buttress. ‘I can’t think what you can find in me?’ he added lamely.

‘And me?’

‘I don’t find anything, I
am
you. You are
here.
’
As if even the sweet, pure air of a summer evening might be a little suffocating in certain conditions,
his companion had lightly touched her throat with outspread fingers. ‘Do you,’ he went on hastily, ‘do you understand what I mean?’

He came to a standstill, gesticulating with his hand as if over a
mathematical
problem. ‘The moment you come, my mind is like another place. I have never seen anything of this before – this green, this loveliness, that water. I don’t even know what they are; they have gone back to their own secrets, as, do you remember – when you were a child …?’

Her only answer to that was a vigorous, tragic little nod he couldn’t see. ‘Don’t let us say any more about that,’ she went on with a shudder. ‘There are worse things than
not
seeing … I wonder if, do you think, just for this once I might take your arm? I assure you there is not a soul in sight now. There was a blackbird calling on the other side of the river a moment ago, and just now I saw a bat in the air. Up there is the first star. Do you
understand
what
I
am saying? All it means is that I have gone to heaven – before I die!’

She had slipped her ungloved fingers through his arm, and the pair of them paced on towards – though they did not know it – towards the sea, and not towards the source of the river. They looked just like what they were – two commonplace sweethearts aimlessly wandering on together. And a sentimental passer-by might have thought how pleasant it was that a young man so severely handicapped should yet have been able to find a future helpmate.

But then this kind of foolish self-sacrifice is expected of the gentler sex, though as a matter of fact there was an odd suggestion of the masculine in the way in which this silk-shaded young man’s companion walked along beside him. There was a hint almost of the athletic in her every movement this evening, which is only to say, after all, that even in the indifferently nourished bodies which civilization is so freely responsible for, some spring of the wild animal may still remain.

The two young people went on in an eternity that was a moment until they had reached a point where a few silver birches and hazels thinly screened them from the world they had for that moment left behind them. There the young woman came suddenly to a standstill.

‘I must go back in a minute,’ she said. ‘And if you don’t mind, I would prefer to go back alone. Meanwhile we are here, and even a little time is a long time when there’s not much left.’ She laughed softly.

Irked by the obstacle of the rooty bank at this bend, the water gurgled as if in echo of a never-ending lullaby. At least to some ears it might sound so, though for Cecil it resembled the monologue of a hopeless voice babbling of everlasting darkness. ‘You have only just come,’ he said, ‘and now you talk about saying good-bye.’

‘I didn’t wish to. I must.’

‘Well, then,’ he said, ‘all I am going to say to you is this; and would you please listen as patiently as you can? Without interrupting me, I mean. It’s – it’s nothing much.’ He waved his fingers in the air, took a deep breath, and plunged on. ‘What I mean is this: I haven’t very much money now, but I have some. A little income, you know, only four or five hundred a year – but certain. It’s horribly little to go on with, but even Grummumma can’t keep me out of a good deal more than
that
in a few years’ time. Can’t. Apart from that, and I don’t mind saying it a bit, she can’t live for ever. I don’t want her even to live as long as that. Honestly I don’t. I wouldn’t so much mind if
she had driven me – just harassed me, you know. It would have done me good. But she’s held so tight to the bit, that my mouth’s all covered with blood. I know now what’s gone on all along. It’s her way, her self, her domination.
That’s
what Scarlet Women are made of. I see it now even though they – well, that’s what I
mean.
And I simply can’t stand it any longer. Possibly I should have stood it – at least for some little time – if
you
hadn’t come. If
you
hadn’t come, I believe I should have gone mouldering on like a suet pudding in a damp pantry. Oh, yes, I know what I am talking about all right! I saw a slice of that once – mildewed – on my own plate, when my nurse didn’t think my eyes could see under the bandage.’

Cecil
breathed again. He paused. Then: ‘What I am saying is this,’ he went on tranquilly, ‘would you mind telling me how we can get married? I mean what do they do? I don’t mean the Canon Bagshot way. I know that’s impossible. But isn’t there some place where you can get married just for the time being, without, I mean, going to a church? And especially, if you are a Roman Catholic. Couldn’t we go to a church later on, don’t you think, when we have got safely away? I want to get married to you
at
once
if we can – if I may. And yet I don’t think I have even told you I love you. I don’t think there was any reason to say that. You must have thought me even a more unutterable idiot
than you must think me if
you think that. I don’t want to be impatient. I mean, I don’t want to vex you into saying, no – that is, if you
won’t
marry me. You see, I am so dreadfully ignorant of all these things. But you said just now that if you weren’t back in your home by eleven it would be the streets on Monday. What did you mean by that, please?’

It was ludicrous what a muddle the young man was in; and yet how easy his listener was finding it to sort him all out and to see exactly not only where the commas and semicolons ought to have come in this remarkable piece of oratory, but also the full stop, the ‘period’, as she had been taught to call it when she was (for a year or two) at school. That was before the drapery business set
in. That was before her father went off
with the other woman. That was before even the none-too-particular but good-humoured
woman next door began to take care of her for a time and to learn her in certain ways how it is possible when the worst comes to the worst, to take care of oneself. But all this was quite a long, long, long time before she had met this young man with the green shade over his eyes.

There was the look almost of a half-witted creature on her face as she now stood staring at the water. And yet, like a singularly intelligent canary or like a singularly instinctive black-cap or mocking-bird, she was trying over – as rapidly as a Paganini might a phrase in Mozart – she was
trying
over half a dozen tunes in which to reply. She chose the hardest.

‘When I was engaged – and never mind who,’ she said, ‘we found out about getting married without a parson. He knew all about all that. You go to what is called a Registry Office. We thought – we might have to. Do you see? It would, of course, have been everlasting damnation to me, if we had; or at any rate a good many centuries of Purgatory. And to you – why! Oh, don’t I
know
it! – it would be the dismalest and most horrible thing you ever conceived of doing in the whole of your life. No, no, I can’t marry you. I don’t wish to. Oh, no. Don’t let us waste this little time in
talking
of foolish things like that. I couldn’t marry you. I couldn’t. I don’t wish to. Not go down like that, after all you have been, and said. I don’t even mind confessing now – as you see! – that I thought all this out even after the first time we met on the Parade. It was vile of me, I know, but it’s my character. I always see ahead. From the very first instant. When you are in my – well, some girls wait for marriage, just for the chance. They even … But never mind; that’s all over now. Until you came I never had a friend – not a
friend.
Did you really think I would ever risk – when you knew
everything
– losing… Oh, you don’t seem to realize’ – she suddenly turned on him – ‘how hopelessly, blindly unpractical and unworldly you are. You say you are a fool: well, you
are.
A fool in all that
I’m
not.
I have been soaked in the other thing ever since I was born. If you asked me to go to the devil with you, I’d go – gladly. But you wouldn’t. And knowing that, I’d rather go alone. And yet, before God, I love you. I say, I love you. It breaks my heart to say it. I didn’t know it was possible. I didn’t know what it meant. And yet, though you won’t, though you can’t understand about the rest of me … But don’t listen to that. What’s the use if I never could and never, never would say, yes. Just listen only to what I am saying now. I love you. It’s spelt l-o-v-e.’ She gazed at the half-hidden face with an agonized smile. ‘And simply because of that, it must be – we must leave each other here. It’s almost night now. Don’t let us talk any more. But you
must
be able to see I couldn’t go back with you now. My legs wouldn’t bear me. And honestly I don’t think I could manage to
say
good-bye. So would you’ – a fantastic, almost jocular note had edged into her curious voice – a voice like that of a delicate instrument whose sound-box has somehow or other become
cracked, muting the clearer timbre of the thing, ‘so would you please kiss me, and I’ll be gone.’