The Young Desire It (32 page)

Charles saw Margaret suddenly, among the great crowd that seethed and swam like an ocean about the edge of the wide green Oval. He had been thinking of her since he arrived there, before the luncheon interval; standing in the sun with a few others, their faces all shadowed sharply by the hard edges of hat-brims, he had thought continually of her, consciously and with a deliberate attempt at reason; he had been aware of her face, the only face there known to him, long before she was there in person; and it was without surprise that he now saw her in a group of girls and boys clinging to the warm shade of one of the pavilions; she was staring straight ahead as though just now she did not hear her companions laughing and chaffing among themselves in the noisy interval between two races.

He at once moved across to the shade, to be near her. Nothing need have prevented them meeting now, he thought; nothing in the world need keep them apart, even had not all the Schools mingled together, boys and girls and their parents, with teachers, men and women, bereft now of authority's meaningless personality, looking like anyone else there. Into this sweep of grassy land, spread out like a fan from the length of the Oval's westward curve, they seemed to have been tipped like tumbling, various-coloured seeds. Nothing need have prevented these two meeting here and speaking for a moment. In the flushed stillness of her face he looked as well as he might from where he stood. She was inconspicuous, leaning there against the weathered stone foundations of the pavilion; no one would have singled her out among so many full-breasted, neatly dressed girls, unless she might have seemed strange in not laughing and talking excitedly as the rest laughed and talked, and for having no least light of expectancy in her face.

But to Charles she seemed to stand there alone, as though all that had been between them and all that would yet be, all she had said, all she had heard him say when they were alone together, was now making only her alive to his eyes. At this final memory of her he felt suddenly weak and tired; he wanted to sit down, or even to go away where he could not see her standing there, so that he might not remember, with this quick and terrible conviction, all their intimacy. He felt afraid, as once before, coming secretly upon her in the sun, he had felt afraid.

He wanted to go away, but found that he could not. Minutes must have passed; the tumult of noise resolved itself and concentrated into a high burst, an explosion of cheering. The teams were taking the field again. Over the cobbled mass of heads stretching to either side he saw them run out smartly, ones and twos; his own School's colours forced a recognition from his mind as he watched.

The cheering rose again, died down, became a shrill murmur of talk. The runners were going to their positions. He turned away from the brilliant green with its white figures and marks, and saw Margaret looking steadily at him. A silence fell at that moment, so unexpectedly that their meeting glances might have closed a door on the day; but it lasted only until the thin crack of the starter's pistol broke it into a sigh that became a terrific shout, a roar, a scream of multiplied and varying exhortation. The Schools were urging on their own, their chosen ones.

With a glance back to the young people she had been with, who were in a dancing frenzy now, she came across the trampled turf towards Charles. He could hardly bear to watch her coming; he frowned in an effort to stop himself from turning away. She was beside him, looking towards the field. The race was a long one; in his ears their tumult swelled incredibly.

‘Look,' she said, with her lips so close that he could feel the touch of the word on his cheek. ‘Look, there's something I must tell you. Can you hear?'

He nodded. ‘Yes. But can't we go away from here? Behind the stand…'

They walked quickly round the end of the pavilion into the full glare of the sun.

‘There's something I must tell you,' she said again. Her voice was troubled, but in that light her lips and eyes were calm when he looked at them. Only in the hard clasp of her gloved fingers together was there a hint of tense purpose.

‘I knew I should see you,' he said quickly. ‘I couldn't wait. You weren't here this morning.'

‘No. The first afternoon race. But…'

‘Wait a minute,' he said. ‘Is it something terrible? Because if it is I can't bear it. You know what it's like. This feeling's gone on too long. I've worked too hard; anyone will tell you that. I feel I can't bear anything. If we were at home, if only. But…I can't bear it. I feel as if I'm going mad—something; I wonder do you know. Something's going to happen. That's what I feel. Not only you—not that; but a thing hanging over me, something terrible. Ever since the last day of the examinations. I caught an insect and—no, no, not that. It hangs over me, I mean, and yet I feel empty, and I wanted to see you, Margaret…'

The words rushed from his lips, tumbling over one another as he stammered them out. She looked into his white, twisted face as once he had looked into hers, when they stood in the rain and she spoke with just such wretchedness and passion.

‘Don't,' she said. ‘Don't feel like that—for heaven's sake, Charles! I shall see you soon. I'm coming down. Don't let yourself go like this, Charles, for your own sake. We shall be together down there.'

Her eyes were dark with frightened compassion. She took his hand in her gloved fingers, and pressed it against her. He felt his body relax at her touch.

‘Is that what you were going to tell me?' he said. ‘No. There's something else.'

‘It doesn't matter,' she said. ‘It can wait.' She leaned against him, her shoulder and arm touching him for a moment.

‘You'd better tell me,' he said at last. ‘We haven't much time. I'm sorry I let myself go; but you know—I—I've not been able to feel happy since you went away that last time. And all this term's work, and Mr. Penworth… And Mother writing strangely. I felt as though there were nothing left, not even you left. And now when I see you I see it's—it's you that's made me like this. I can't forget you. I can't. It's so easy to talk, Margaret, to say the words; so useless.'

She turned her face away so that it was hidden to the lips from him, but he could see her lips trembling before she put up her hand to cover her mouth, as though holding back a cry.

‘I can't talk to you here,' she said. ‘But I must tell you. I feel like you do, and nothing makes any difference, never at any time. Nobody knows—even if they see they don't know. But here I can't talk. But I must. Listen, Charles.'

And, while they stood together in the sun, behind the backs of the crowd sloping away below them, she told him that her sister and brother-in-law were taking her to England with them at the end of January, and that she was to be sent to a school in Switzerland, a place whose name sounded like Neufchatel when he thought of it afterwards.

‘I don't understand,' he said. ‘How long? How soon will you come back?'

He now saw by her face that it was this she had had to tell him; he saw that she did not know of any return.

After a time he asked her, ‘How long have you known?'

‘About a week.'

‘What did you say?'

‘What could I say?' He saw the remembrance of her passion in her eyes. ‘I said I didn't want to go. I begged them to let me stay, got down on my knees. What was the good? They said I didn't know—it would be all right once I was gone. Elsa said I'd love it after a while, and that she knew how I felt.'

She looked at him again, as though beseeching him to let her cease.

‘She was surprised, I could see. Elsa is like that—it's what she always wanted, herself, to finish at some school in Europe—to learn French and…and she's being kind, she thinks. And I suppose she is really. Oh Charles. How can I, oh, how can I?'

‘Is there no hope; no possible chance?'

She shook her head.

‘I tried. I tried everything. You can guess. But Elsa wants me near her. You see, she—she can't have any babies, and she's always had me, and so she thinks of me like… like that; because she's much older than I am. So she won't let me go.'

He looked at her hard, trying to think; but nothing seemed to be happening, as though his mind were asleep while with open eyes he regarded her face, where grief for herself and grief for him stood whitely, and her expression was frozen in her eyes.

‘Nothing seems to have any meaning now,' he said slowly. ‘We don't understand older people, I suppose.'

She said passionately, ‘We! They don't understand us. What do they care? We belong—they can do what they like. We don't matter. Oh, I've thought it all out now. Bessie—my Aunt—she said that day I did as I pleased. Do you remember? Well, I don't, and I never have. I couldn't then. I wanted to run out and get away; and I wanted to take you away too. And instead I just walked out with you, not thinking I'd say a word, till something, being with you, so close, knowing it was you, really there—that made me. I could have touched you. You're the only person I've ever been able to talk to, and I don't suppose there'll ever be another.'

‘How could I forget?' he said. ‘I shall never.'

‘Perhaps,' she said, ‘we shall both forget.'

‘It's not true,' he mumbled between stiff lips holding back all real outcry. ‘What? How could we? But it's not true—all this.'

‘Can you wait?' she said at last. ‘Till I come down, Charles?'

Her soft voice broke at that; she put up her hands, with a woman's gesture of hopeless self-defence, to hide her face from him, and a dry, gasping sound shook her whole body, harsh and choking. The sunlight beat furiously on them. Charles stood waiting, incapable of feeling anything, either of pity or of self-pity. Here were all his memories, his flimsy dreams, the experiences of the whole year—come to this: a standing together in the heat of the sun, with hearts and lips and eyes dry, tearless, robbed even of the assoiling weakness of emotion, barren and without shame or pity. He could look at her and feel nothing. Her grief, colourless, speechless, was unlike the day with its hot cloth of gold pouring over them.

‘Wait,' she said brokenly. ‘Don't go for a minute. Charles. I want to tell you, Charles—I—Oh, wait till I come down. The week after the Schools break up. Wait till then. You'll see. I want to show you, please Charles. Now go—it doesn't matter if you do or not, though. You can have me to take with you.'

She began to laugh, wildly and quietly, behind the clumsy protection of her gloved fingers.

He walked away, and, going down towards the Oval's edge, lost himself, as he thought, among his own sort there; but her voice followed him, as though she were talking on and on, brokenly and unsteadily and unheard.

That night there was great argument in Hall about the day's sport. When the team came in, judiciously late, a charitable yell of cheering, like a stale, self-conscious echo of the afternoon, rose and gripped the roof and shook it. They stamped and howled, carried away not by triumph but by the deep, angry excitement of sharp disappointment; this was a last chance to give fierce expression to their feelings, and they took it, and there was a sound of hysterical applause pressing upon their own ears, intoxicating them.

Up on the dais the Masters frowned and smiled at once, deprecating and pardoning such a devil's row, because it was in the order of the day. Mr. Jolly stood up, tall and stooped; his eyes glanced slyly from side to side, and that lock of hair gave him the mildly dissolute look of a weary reveller. Brushing it aside without hope, he cleared his throat and growled until they were silent.

‘The team did well,' he said hoarsely, ‘and I know you're all as proud of them as I am. If we didn't win the shield this year, it's not because our men weren't all triers, who put up a splendid performance that deserves the highest praise. Next year we're going to see to it that we do win. This year—to-night—we can be proud of the best efforts of our best men, who have played fair and deserved our sincerest congratulations.'

As he sat down, there was another tumult of cheering; everyone felt better, and so they could give themselves up again to that interminable discussion and argument which characterized their age and spirit, as though the strenuous, savage emotions of the day had left them untouched and as fresh as they had been at breakfast.

‘Good old Maxie…'

‘By Christ, did you see that finish, when…'

‘If that chap Hall hadn't beat the gun, we'd have won the open…'

‘They're a dirty lot of bastards, all that mob are. When…'

They shouted across at one another, in a madness of excitement relived, of races won and points scored. The older voices were riddled by the squeals of the small fry, who, a year before, would not have dared to open their mouths in laying down the law of it all, as now they dared. The School was theirs; it belonged to them all, a possession, a boast, an idea; it was no tyranny of stale and accursed textbooks, but a window-display of muscle and bone and sinew and the achievements of these. The desire to conquer and to destroy, translated into countless curious channels, gave a dangerous edge to their words, and shone in their lively eyes like a knife, in this hour. The incipient moral conscience of adolescence made many offer the gesture of fairness to the others, to the victor whom they hated, and to the other vanquished, for whom their contempt knew no measure; but still they raged in a frenzy they could not have understood. It was no shield they had fought for, nor an ideal; they had longed after the right which victory would give them—the right to destroy, if they wished, what they had vanquished.

Penworth, glancing every now and then down the Hall when conversation became too difficult at the long table, marvelled at them and thought of his own youth at school, trying to remember whether there had ever been a scene such as this, realizing that there had not. It could not have been so. There was not this fury and violence. What could this be? He might call them ‘little savages', ironically, in the Common Room, and pass over it with a laugh but there was more in it than that. They had not the supreme innocence of savages. This was no mob-hypnotism; even in their massed excitement they kept their individuality clear and separate, turning upon one another just as readily as they turned with one another. Three times now since he had been at the School he had seen this performance on this night, towards the end of November, as though it were some unconscious ritual. Summer's iron hand was closing over this mysterious country, and they seemed to feel it, though not with his weariness, and to need just such an opportunity to fling themselves together wildly. He could see the flushed, untidy faces of boys facing him at the nearest tables; each one seemed, like a drunkard, to have forgotten all but himself, the raging, struggling core of his own world.