The Hollow (2 page)

“Does her ladyship often do this sort of thing?” asked Simmons.

Gudgeon sighed.

“Her ladyship,” he said, “is at once kindhearted and very forgetful, if you know what I mean. But in this house,” he continued, “I see to it that everything possible is done to spare her ladyship annoyance or worry.”

H
enrietta Savernake rolled up a little strip of clay and patted it into place. She was building up the clay head of a girl with swift practised skill.

In her ears, but penetrating only to the edge of her understanding, was the thin whine of a slightly common voice:

“And I do think, Miss Savernake, that I was quite right! ‘Really,' I said, ‘if
that's
the line you're going to take!' Because I do think, Miss Savernake, that a girl owes it to herself to make a stand about these sort of things—if you know what I mean. ‘I'm not accustomed,' I said, ‘to having things like that said to me, and I can only say that you must have a very nasty imagination!' One does hate unpleasantness, but I do think I was right to make a stand, don't you, Miss Savernake?”

“Oh, absolutely,” said Henrietta with a fervour in her voice which might have led someone who knew her well to suspect that she had not been listening very closely.

“‘And if your wife says things of that kind,' I said, ‘well, I'm sure
I
can't help it!' I don't know how it is, Miss Savernake, but it seems to be trouble wherever I go, and I'm sure it's not
my
fault. I mean, men are so susceptible, aren't they?” The model gave a coquettish little giggle.

“Frightfully,” said Henrietta, her eyes half-closed.

“Lovely,” she was thinking. “Lovely that plane just below the eyelid—and the other plane coming up to meet it. That angle by the jaw's wrong…I must scrape off there and build up again. It's tricky.”

Aloud she said in her warm, sympathetic voice:

“It must have been
most
difficult for you.”

“I do think jealousy's so unfair, Miss Savernake, and so
narrow,
if you know what I mean. It's just envy, if I may say so, because someone's better-looking and younger than they are.”

Henrietta, working on the jaw, said absently: “Yes, of course.”

She had learned the trick, years ago, of shutting her mind into watertight compartments. She could play a game of bridge, conduct an intelligent conversation, write a clearly constructed letter, all without giving more than a fraction of her essential mind to the task. She was now completely intent on seeing the head of Nausicaa build itself up under her fingers, and the thin, spiteful stream of chatter issuing from those very lovely childish lips penetrated not at all into the deeper recesses of her mind. She kept the conversation going without effort. She was used to models who wanted to talk. Not so much the professional ones—it was the amateurs who, uneasy at their forced inactivity of limb, made up for it by bursting into garrulous self-revelation. So an inconspicuous part of Henrietta listened and replied, and, very far and remote, the real
Henrietta commented, “Common mean spiteful little piece—but what eyes…Lovely lovely lovely eyes….”

Whilst she was busy on the eyes, let the girl talk. She would ask her to keep silent when she got to the mouth. Funny when you came to think of it, that that thin stream of spite should come out through those perfect curves.

“Oh, damn,” thought Henrietta with sudden frenzy, “I'm ruining that eyebrow arch! What the hell's the matter with it? I've overemphasized the bone—it's sharp, not thick….”

She stood back again frowning from the clay to the flesh and blood sitting on the platform.

Doris Saunders went on:

“‘Well,' I said, ‘I really don't see why your husband shouldn't give me a present if he likes, and I don't think,' I said, ‘you ought to make insinuations of that kind.' It was ever such a nice bracelet, Miss Savernake, reely quite lovely—and of course I daresay the poor fellow couldn't reely afford it, but I do think it was nice of him, and I certainly wasn't going to give it back!”

“No, no,” murmured Henrietta.

“And it's not as though there was anything between us—anything
nasty,
I mean—there was nothing of
that
kind.”

“No,” said Henrietta, “I'm sure there wouldn't be….”

Her brow cleared. For the next half hour she worked in a kind of fury. Clay smeared itself on her forehead, clung to her hair, as she pushed an impatient hand through it. Her eyes had a blind intense ferocity. It was coming…She was getting it….

Now, in a few hours, she would be out of her agony—the agony that had been growing upon her for the last ten days.

Nausicaa—she had been Nausicaa, she had got up with Nausi
caa and had breakfast with Nausicaa and gone out with Nausicaa. She had tramped the streets in a nervous excitable restlessness, unable to fix her mind on anything but a beautiful blind face somewhere just beyond her mind's eye—hovering there just not able to be clearly seen. She had interviewed models, hesitated over Greek types, felt profoundly dissatisfied….

She wanted something—something to give her the start—something that would bring her own already partially realized vision alive. She had walked long distances, getting physically tired out and welcoming the fact. And driving her, harrying her, was that urgent incessant longing—to
see
—

There was a blind look in her own eyes as she walked. She saw nothing of what was around her. She was straining—straining the whole time to make that face come nearer…She felt sick, ill, miserable….

And then, suddenly, her vision had cleared and with normal human eyes she had seen opposite her in the bus which she had boarded absentmindedly and with no interest in its destination—she had seen—yes,
Nausicaa!
A foreshortened childish face, half-parted lips and eyes—lovely vacant, blind eyes.

The girl rang the bell and got out. Henrietta followed her.

She was now quite calm and businesslike. She had got what she wanted—the agony of baffled search was over.

“Excuse me speaking to you. I'm a professional sculptor and to put it frankly, your head is just what I have been looking for.”

She was friendly, charming and compelling as she knew how to be when she wanted something.

Doris Saunders had been doubtful, alarmed, flattered.

“Well, I don't know, I'm sure. If it's just the
head.
Of course, I've never
done
that sort of thing!”

Suitable hesitations, delicate financial inquiry.

“Of course I should insist on your accepting the proper professional fee.”

And so here was Nausicaa, sitting on the platform, enjoying the idea of her attractions, being immortalized (though not liking very much the examples of Henrietta's work which she could see in the studio!) and enjoying also the revelation of her personality to a listener whose sympathy and attention seemed to be so complete.

On the table beside the model were her spectacles…the spectacles that she put on as seldom as possible owing to vanity, preferring to feel her way almost blindly sometimes, since she admitted to Henrietta that without them she was so shortsighted that she could hardly see a yard in front of her.

Henrietta had nodded comprehendingly. She understood now the physical reason for that blank and lovely stare.

Time went on. Henrietta suddenly laid down her modelling tools and stretched her arms widely.

“All right,” she said, “I've finished. I hope you're not too tired?”

“Oh, no, thank you, Miss Savernake. It's been very interesting, I'm sure. Do you mean, it's really done—so soon?”

Henrietta laughed.

“Oh, no, it's not actually finished. I shall have to work on it quite a bit. But it's finished as far as you're concerned. I've got what I wanted—built up the planes.”

The girl came down slowly from the platform. She put on her spectacles and at once the blind innocence and vague confiding
charm of the face vanished. There remained now an easy, cheap prettiness.

She came to stand by Henrietta and looked at the clay model.

“Oh,” she said doubtfully, disappointment in her voice. “It's not very like me, is it?”

Henrietta smiled.

“Oh, no, it's not a portrait.”

There was, indeed, hardly a likeness at all. It was the setting of the eyes—the line of the cheekbones—that Henrietta had seen as the essential keynote of her conception of Nausicaa. This was not Doris Saunders, it was a blind girl about whom a poem could be made. The lips were parted as Doris's were parted, but they were not Doris's lips. They were lips that would speak another language and would utter thoughts that were not Doris's thoughts—

None of the features were clearly defined. It was Nausicaa remembered, not seen….

“Well,” said Miss Saunders doubtfully, “I suppose it'll look better when you've got on with it a bit…And you really don't want me anymore?”

“No, thank you,” said Henrietta (“And thank God I don't!” said her inner mind). “You've been simply splendid. I'm very grateful.”

She got rid of Doris expertly and returned to make herself some black coffee. She was tired—she was horribly tired. But happy—happy and at peace.

“Thank goodness,” she thought, “now I can be a human being again.”

And at once her thoughts went to John.

“John,” she thought. Warmth crept into her cheeks, a sudden quick lifting of the heart made her spirits soar.

“Tomorrow,” she thought, “I'm going to The Hollow…I shall see John….”

She sat quite still, sprawled back on the divan, drinking down the hot, strong liquid. She drank three cups of it. She felt vitality surging back.

It was nice, she thought, to be a human being again…and not that other thing. Nice to have stopped feeling restless and miserable and driven. Nice to be able to stop walking about the streets unhappily, looking for something, and feeling irritable and impatient because, really, you didn't know what you were looking for! Now, thank goodness, there would be only hard work—and who minded hard work?

She put down the empty cup and got up and strolled back to Nausicaa. She looked at it for some time, and slowly a little frown crept between her brows.

It wasn't—it wasn't quite—

What was it that was wrong?…

Blind eyes.

Blind eyes that were more beautiful than any eyes that could see…Blind eyes that tore at your heart because they were blind…Had she got that or hadn't she?

She'd got it, yes—but she'd got something else as well. Something that she hadn't meant or thought about…The structure was all right—yes, surely. But where did it come from—that faint, insidious suggestion?….

The suggestion, somewhere, of a common spiteful mind.

She hadn't been listening, not really listening. Yet somehow, in through her ears and out at her fingers, it had worked its way into the clay.

And she wouldn't, she knew she wouldn't, be able to get it out again….

Henrietta turned away sharply. Perhaps it was fancy. Yes, surely it was fancy. She would feel quite differently about it in the morning. She thought with dismay:

“How vulnerable one is….”

She walked, frowning, up to the end of the studio. She stopped in front of her figure of The Worshipper.

That
was all right—a lovely bit of pearwood, graining just right. She'd saved it up for ages, hoarding it.

She looked at it critically. Yes, it was good. No doubt about that. The best thing she had done for a long time—it was for the International Group. Yes, quite a worthy exhibit.

She'd
got
it all right: the humility, the strength in the neck muscles, the bowed shoulders, the slightly upraised face—a featureless face, since worship drives out personality.

Yes, submission, adoration—and that final devotion that is beyond, not this side, idolatry….

Henrietta sighed. If only, she thought, John had not been so angry.

It had startled her, that anger. It had told her something about him that he did not, she thought, know himself.

He had said flatly: “You can't exhibit that!”

And she had said, as flatly: “I shall.”

She went slowly back to Nausicaa. There was nothing there, she thought, that she couldn't put right. She sprayed it and wrapped it up in the damp cloths. It would have to stand over until Monday or Tuesday. There was no hurry now. The urgency had gone—all the essential planes were there. It only needed patience.

Ahead of her were three happy days with Lucy and Henry and Midge—and John!

She yawned, stretched herself like a cat stretches itself with relish and abandon, pulling out each muscle to its fullest extent. She knew suddenly how very tired she was.

She had a hot bath and went to bed. She lay on her back staring at a star or two through the skylight. Then from there her eyes went to the one light always left on, the small bulb that illuminated the glass mask that had been one of her earliest bits of work. Rather an obvious piece, she thought now. Conventional in its suggestion.

Lucky, thought Henrietta, that one outgrew oneself….

And now, sleep! The strong black coffee that she had drunk did not bring wakefulness in its train unless she wished it to do so. Long ago she had taught herself the essential rhythm that could bring oblivion at call.

You took thoughts, choosing them out of your store, and then, not dwelling on them, you let them slip through the fingers of your mind, never clutching at them, never dwelling on them, no concentration…just letting them drift gently past.

Outside in the Mews a car was being revved up—somewhere there was hoarse shouting and laughing. She took the sounds into the stream of her semiconsciousness.

The car, she thought, was a tiger roaring…yellow and black…striped like the striped leaves—leaves and shadows—a hot jungle…and then down the river—a wide tropical river…to the sea and the liner starting…and hoarse voices calling good-bye—and John beside her on the deck…she and John starting—blue sea and down into the dining saloon—smiling at him across the
table—like dinner at the Maison Dorée—poor John, so angry!…out into the night air—and the car, the feeling of sliding in the gears—effortless, smooth, racing out of London…up over Shovel Down…the trees…tree worship…The Hollow…Lucy…John…John…Ridgeway's Disease…dear John….