Second Sight (14 page)
Authors: Neil M. Gunn
“But I thought Alick could not be found this morning?” Joyce went on.
“He left earlier, by himself,” Harry said.
“Butâdo you meanâhe went away in that fogâand found him?”
“Apparently,” said Harry.
“You mean in that utter darkness that George and Iââ”
Harry nodded.
“No, I don't believe it,” said Joyce. “I just don't believe it. It couldn't humanly be done.”
“Where did he find him?” Helen asked calmly.
“We got to the top of Benbeg, before the mist lifted. When it did lift, we saw them coming, between us and Benuain.”
“As far as that?” murmured Lady Marway. “Of course they do know the ground marvellously. Just as we could get about this house in complete darkness, if we had to.”
“Where's George?” Joyce asked.
“I sent Donald away to whistle them back. They shouldn't be long now.”
“Is Geoffrey's leg really bad?” Marjory asked.
“Not really. The flesh is discoloured, but the bones are absolutely all right.”
“No need, of course, to get a doctor?” Lady Marway looked at him.
“No, no!” said Harry quickly. “For heaven's sake, no!”
“Well, for anyone who hates a fussâto have to come riding in like thatâI meanââ” Marjory shrugged in understanding.
Quite! They all agreed.
Sir John came in. “I'll say a word of thanks to the men,” and he passed out through the gun-room. Lady Marway set off to see about lunch at the earliest moment, and Marjory immediately followed her, asking Ina in a quiet aside if she had actually put the hot bottle in Mr. Smith's bed.
Joyce went out to look for George's party.
“Suppose you all had an anxious morning,” Harry said to Helen casually, as he poured himself a small drop of whisky and plenty of soda.
“Naturally,” said Helen.
“Uhm,” said Harry, and drank off the lot. “A fine day now, isn't it?”
“Very excellent day indeed.”
“I hope it keeps up,” said Harry. “It's nice when a good thing keeps up,” and he dropped into an arm-chair.
Helen walked over to the window.
“Though not so nice,” said Harry vaguely, “when it doesn't keep up.”
“Are you trying to be smart or what?”
“Not smart. I wouldn't say smart exactly.”
“No?”
“No.”
“Oh.”
“Uhm.”
Helen could not very well now leave the room, so she walked to the bookcase.
“Been reading a lot lately?” Harry inquired.
“Quite a bit.”
“Any more dreams?”
She shut the book with a snap and swung round on him.
“I had a dream about you,” he said, without looking at her. Suddenly remembering the dream, he did look at her. Heaven knows why he had mixed her up with the Rossetti typeâshe was so uniquely, so vividly, so angrilyâshe was, oh lord, he didn't know what she was, with the whirl and disturbance going on inside him. He strove to keep casual, rubbed his jaw, and smiled towards the cannibal trout.
She simply stopped looking at him and walked out.
His head fell back, his eyes closed, he breathed like one exhausted. I am really pretty tired! he thought, and gripped the arms of the chair, and in a moment was on his feet. But not to do anything. Just to stand. While he was still standing, Helen came back. It was clear that she had thought out the proper thing to say and was now in the mood to say it. She met his face, and saw that it was quite naked. This knocked the beginning of the words out of her head and she stared back at him as she might in a dream or a half-nightmare. Sir John's footsteps came into the gun-room. She looked sideways, towards the window with a strange glancing expression, then turned and left the room for the second time.
“He left earlier, by himself,” Harry said.
“Butâdo you meanâhe went away in that fogâand found him?”
“Apparently,” said Harry.
“You mean in that utter darkness that George and Iââ”
Harry nodded.
“No, I don't believe it,” said Joyce. “I just don't believe it. It couldn't humanly be done.”
“Where did he find him?” Helen asked calmly.
“We got to the top of Benbeg, before the mist lifted. When it did lift, we saw them coming, between us and Benuain.”
“As far as that?” murmured Lady Marway. “Of course they do know the ground marvellously. Just as we could get about this house in complete darkness, if we had to.”
“Where's George?” Joyce asked.
“I sent Donald away to whistle them back. They shouldn't be long now.”
“Is Geoffrey's leg really bad?” Marjory asked.
“Not really. The flesh is discoloured, but the bones are absolutely all right.”
“No need, of course, to get a doctor?” Lady Marway looked at him.
“No, no!” said Harry quickly. “For heaven's sake, no!”
“Well, for anyone who hates a fussâto have to come riding in like thatâI meanââ” Marjory shrugged in understanding.
Quite! They all agreed.
Sir John came in. “I'll say a word of thanks to the men,” and he passed out through the gun-room. Lady Marway set off to see about lunch at the earliest moment, and Marjory immediately followed her, asking Ina in a quiet aside if she had actually put the hot bottle in Mr. Smith's bed.
Joyce went out to look for George's party.
“Suppose you all had an anxious morning,” Harry said to Helen casually, as he poured himself a small drop of whisky and plenty of soda.
“Naturally,” said Helen.
“Uhm,” said Harry, and drank off the lot. “A fine day now, isn't it?”
“Very excellent day indeed.”
“I hope it keeps up,” said Harry. “It's nice when a good thing keeps up,” and he dropped into an arm-chair.
Helen walked over to the window.
“Though not so nice,” said Harry vaguely, “when it doesn't keep up.”
“Are you trying to be smart or what?”
“Not smart. I wouldn't say smart exactly.”
“No?”
“No.”
“Oh.”
“Uhm.”
Helen could not very well now leave the room, so she walked to the bookcase.
“Been reading a lot lately?” Harry inquired.
“Quite a bit.”
“Any more dreams?”
She shut the book with a snap and swung round on him.
“I had a dream about you,” he said, without looking at her. Suddenly remembering the dream, he did look at her. Heaven knows why he had mixed her up with the Rossetti typeâshe was so uniquely, so vividly, so angrilyâshe was, oh lord, he didn't know what she was, with the whirl and disturbance going on inside him. He strove to keep casual, rubbed his jaw, and smiled towards the cannibal trout.
She simply stopped looking at him and walked out.
His head fell back, his eyes closed, he breathed like one exhausted. I am really pretty tired! he thought, and gripped the arms of the chair, and in a moment was on his feet. But not to do anything. Just to stand. While he was still standing, Helen came back. It was clear that she had thought out the proper thing to say and was now in the mood to say it. She met his face, and saw that it was quite naked. This knocked the beginning of the words out of her head and she stared back at him as she might in a dream or a half-nightmare. Sir John's footsteps came into the gun-room. She looked sideways, towards the window with a strange glancing expression, then turned and left the room for the second time.
Chapter Seven
T
hat afternoon, after tea, Helen walked down the winding path towards the river. No one even suggested going with her, for the Lodge itself lay heavy and inert after the night's adventures.
She did not mind this. She was indeed glad of it. Every now and then, after longer or shorter intervals, hours or weeks, she had this impulse to slip away into some place where she had herself for company.
And she was in for it now! She knew it whenever she sniffed the birches. The thrill of the scent went right through her body, quickened her sleeping heart, and so up to her head, where it brightened her eyes, enriched the skin, and lightened the grey matter so notably that the heels had an urge to rise above the toes.
The brown note in her dark hair seemed more pronounced; her lips looked soft and warm. Her skirt, all neat and simple, hung to just below her knees, so that her ankles and sufficient of her legs could be seen to enhance the suggestion of upflowing curves, suave and taut, and really there seemed no reason why she shouldn't stretch out her arms and take off down the waves of hazel leaves!
Yet nothing would come quite right. She would be on the point of becoming her old simple self, when she didn't know what happened but she had to move on; move on, not merely in her mind but in her physical body, getting up to take it from one spot to another.
Something had invaded her secret place. It was not a person. She could talk to persons, hold long, eye-bright conversations with them. As she had done, for example, many a time with Harryâparticularly when she had been at the age to make Harry her husband. She had worked out house, furnishings, and social affairs for Harry and herself more than once. And she hadn't to go back an endless period for the last time!
But that had been a pure game, with Harry the necessary pawn or king. At the back of things, she knew it might very easily not be Harry, almost certainly would not be Harryâif the
mysterious something
happened to her. At which apprehension of the ecstatic unknown, a hush came upon her heart and a gulp into her throat. Once or twice she had got up and run away.
But this present feeling could clearly have nothing to do with all that. For it was not a person but a form of malaise that had invaded her, so that she couldn't get the old harmony, the bright fun of being totally herself. She was not afraid, not in a panic: she wasâoh she didn't know what she was. And, the most extraordinary thing of all, she had never, never apprehended the scent of the birches, the beauty of the glen, as she did now.
Ah, it was this beauty that was getting the better of her, the sheer loveliness of the birches, the splashes of autumn colour, golden flotsam on the billows of green, the bracken, the bronzes, the rowan tree, the blood-red berries, the blackbird with the brilliant orange beak, harebellsâ“the Scottish bluebells”âand scabious, the taste of wild raspberries, the lines and the depthâand the scent of it all, with that pervasive under-scent of the earth itself, that quickening and terrifying scent.
Blowing into her stone circle, about its ultimate altar stone, on the wind's breath.
That was what her growth had been towards, as the growth of the compact bud to the blown rose.
She was being invaded, her own beauty by the strange beauty in the world. Not of the world. In the world. In the world.
She wanted to shut it out, and she didn't want to shut it out, and so she wandered on in her strange sweet misery, sometimes on the path, sometimes on a stone by the bouldered riverâuntil the sound of the water, the meandering infinite rhythm, caught a cry in the heart of it, and she had to get up and go. From the wooded path to the bank, and from the bankâ
And follows on a woman through the fire
.
Follows on
â¦
Fra bank to bank
,
fra wood to wood
â¦
Till her feeble fantasy quite overcame her, and she suddenly sat down beneath the birches, and drooped her head, and burst into tears, pressing her hands up against her face, hiding it in shame and in sorrow.
Shame at her own weakness, this vague woman weakness, arising out of nothingâoh, out of nothing.
Loving her weakness, seduced by it, giving in to itâbut aware, behind the forgetfulness of her tears, of the peril and the panic, of the noiseless beat beat, of feetâ¦
Like a beat out of the heart of the earth. The noiseless beat of feetâcomingââ
Her heart leapt within her, and past the near tree trunks came a man's legs and feet. Alick!
He saw her, but never paused, as if he had not seen her.
“Alick!” she said, getting up, half-turned away from him, drying her tears, then turning to him with a confused smile.
From looking at the ground near his feet, he looked past her, with no expression on his face, waiting.
“Where are you going?” she asked.
“To see about the morning.”
“Are you in a hurry?”
“No, ma'm.”
“Wellâwait a bit,” she said slowly, awkwardly. “I don't know what came over me. Must be the strain.” Her smile was friendly, softly confused.
He waited, his eyes touching her for a moment.
“I suppose I must look a bit of a sight. ButâI don't know. It's rather lovely here.” She racked her brains for something to say. “I should like, sometime, when you are not on the hill, to have another day's fishing. Do you think that would be possible?”
“Oh yes,” he said in his quiet voice. “Though the only place at the moment is Loch-an-eilean.”
“The loch with the little island! That would be lovely.”
“It's getting a bit late in the year. But there are good trout in it.”
“Wellâthe next time you are free?”
“Very good, ma'm.”
“Ahâas you knowâwe have had an anxious time. It was marvellous of you finding Mr. Smith. Weâtell me, how did you manage it?”
“Oh well, it just happened.”
“I wonder! Tell me how. Or do you mind?”
“There's nothing to mind,” he said simply. “I just thought he might go the way he wentâand found him there.”
“Butââ”
He waited.
She looked at him directly. He was looking past her, politely. It was difficult to be friendly with this manâunless the relationship was the impersonal, normal one of a fishing expedition. Then he would talk and tell you things and even smile. At the moment he might be anythingâinimical, wary of intrusion, suspicious, or bored. There was some queer force in his body, a pent-up force, that would stand at ease like this for an indefinite time. She always felt it, it always excited her, and she slightly feared it, except when it was impersonally friendly, and then it was altogether pleasant and lovable, communicated the sense of freedom, the feeling that it was good to be alive in the open air.
She gave a small shrug. “I shan't question you,” she said, with a touch of humour, smiling to him.
The slight characteristic smile came to his face.
“The first day, then, that you are free?” she said.
“Very good. This hill weather won't keep up for ever,” he volunteered.
“Let us hope not! Thank you, Alick. Good-bye.”
“Good-bye, ma'm.”
My tears are safe with him! she thought. But within a few paces she wondered, and within another few was uncertain, with spasms of painful doubt.
For what did she know about him really?
That force within him; it was strong; it might be brutalâgiven the occasion. He would never mention anything about her tears to her own people. But to hisââ?
Perhaps make a joke about it, an innuendo.
Hateful to think about. The implication that she had been making advancesâconveyed by the mouth in a fleshy twist of sarcasm.
Forâsuch things did happenâwere happening more and more. And she remembered Mrs. Matheson's story to her mother. The Mathesons had a forest over towards the seaboard. And Mrs. Matheson told of a neighbouring estate where the daughter of the shooting tenant, in her early twenties, selected each year a different gillie for her amorous needs. Quite openly. Everyone knew about it. The best-looking, most virile type, don't you know.
And the story about the local danceâtold by an English chauffeur who had been present, to a gillie when he came back, who told it to the keeper, who told it to the cook, who told it to the lady's maid, who told it to her lady. The poor chauffeur had suffered from an
embarras de richesses
amongst some of the local beauties that could not be experienced, he reckoned, outside certain places in Paris. And so on.
That suggestion of the beginning of demoralisation, perhaps quite localised, perhaps spreading, but in the air. The possibility of that rotten section of London society finding here for a short while a keener air, a more complete irresponsibility. Odd stories even from the Isles, not so much of intromissions with the native stock, as of promiscuities and perversions amongst themselves.
And not all rumours. Quite definite facts. Known facts. That sort of thingâthat she knew of in London, that accompanied its social life, like a miasma about decay. What socialists called the canker at the decaying root of capitalist civilisation. And the feeling that haunted her more and more that the socialists were right.
You had to be modern and emancipated and talk about those things in London, of course.â¦
Alick was bound to know about that!
She found herself walking quite quickly.
Sex accompanied a young woman's life, sometimes in a rosy cloud, sometimes as a fire, but sometimes shameful and hateful like
that
. It is her fate! Helen supposed, a flick of angry colour in her cheeks.
Why so annoyed, why so angry?
Her own young body was virgin enough. So virgin that it might be glass. Was that it? A consciousness that she was inexperienced, adolescent? Like that recent quoting of poetry and tears! To-day! Like a Victorian girl with the vapours!
Poetry, old poetry; love, that follows on a woman through the fire! How certain girls she knew would laughâso sure of themselves, so experienced, so expert in the realities!
A school miss, smiling through her tears at her father's gillie! These girls with their knowing eyes, their conspiracies, their intimacies, their fingers of bright gossip tap-tapping against her breastâwith an odd one drawling out a wearied oath or two. Little regard for the men except as puppets in the game, necessary to the game, and therefore to be intrigued about or quarrelled over. And the menâ¦
If the men were real men the women wouldn'tâ¦
Stop it! she cried inwardly to herself. Oh, stop it!
For she knew the nature of this attack. She had had it before. It was not that she minded about morality and virtue, she believed. It is not that one should be correct and proper, she passionately alleged to herself. For the appalling thing was that the cry came out of her the more wildly the more it was smothered: I want poetry, love, fire!
She had been in a mood when she could investigate an attack of this kind, turn over its mess with the fingers of her mind, pry into it, and even know a doubtful fascination. Then move out of it, alert a little, but whole and stronger.
Now, however, she felt dispirited, unclean, and could not become her normal self. The inner cry was quite silent.
As she climbed from the river path to a track on the brow of the declivity, she began to feel tired, too, in her bodyâreaction from the tiredness in her mind. She went in over the grassy bank and lay down, for she had sometimes found that by lying on her back and looking up between leafy branches at the sky her troubles would lift away in forgetfulness. She went, however, reluctantly, for she did not want her misery to be lifted. Her misery was the truth of living, the reality.
The truth is, said a voice far within her, your pride is hurt! She squirmed, under the leaves, shutting her eyes to the sun, to the airy communion of leaves and sunâ¦and heard again the beat, beat in the earth. She peered through the fringe of grass and bracken. Angus was coming along the path, with every sense alert, stealthily. At the bend in the path, opposite to her, he paused, to see round it, then with a quick backward glance went on. She saw that what he was trying to hide was a rifle.
On hands and knees, she crawled a yard or two to the right. He was making for the Lodge.
She found her heart beating painfully, her tiredness gone. Before she knew what she was doing she was following through the trees as swiftly and quietly as she could, until she had to stop or emerge into the open. While she hesitated, Alick came round the larder towards the garage. The two men met, spoke for a few moments, then looked around them with elaborate carelessness, andâthere was no one aboutâwent up the stone stairs to the loft, closing the red door behind them.
T
hat afternoon, after tea, Helen walked down the winding path towards the river. No one even suggested going with her, for the Lodge itself lay heavy and inert after the night's adventures.
She did not mind this. She was indeed glad of it. Every now and then, after longer or shorter intervals, hours or weeks, she had this impulse to slip away into some place where she had herself for company.
And she was in for it now! She knew it whenever she sniffed the birches. The thrill of the scent went right through her body, quickened her sleeping heart, and so up to her head, where it brightened her eyes, enriched the skin, and lightened the grey matter so notably that the heels had an urge to rise above the toes.
The brown note in her dark hair seemed more pronounced; her lips looked soft and warm. Her skirt, all neat and simple, hung to just below her knees, so that her ankles and sufficient of her legs could be seen to enhance the suggestion of upflowing curves, suave and taut, and really there seemed no reason why she shouldn't stretch out her arms and take off down the waves of hazel leaves!
Yet nothing would come quite right. She would be on the point of becoming her old simple self, when she didn't know what happened but she had to move on; move on, not merely in her mind but in her physical body, getting up to take it from one spot to another.
Something had invaded her secret place. It was not a person. She could talk to persons, hold long, eye-bright conversations with them. As she had done, for example, many a time with Harryâparticularly when she had been at the age to make Harry her husband. She had worked out house, furnishings, and social affairs for Harry and herself more than once. And she hadn't to go back an endless period for the last time!
But that had been a pure game, with Harry the necessary pawn or king. At the back of things, she knew it might very easily not be Harry, almost certainly would not be Harryâif the
mysterious something
happened to her. At which apprehension of the ecstatic unknown, a hush came upon her heart and a gulp into her throat. Once or twice she had got up and run away.
But this present feeling could clearly have nothing to do with all that. For it was not a person but a form of malaise that had invaded her, so that she couldn't get the old harmony, the bright fun of being totally herself. She was not afraid, not in a panic: she wasâoh she didn't know what she was. And, the most extraordinary thing of all, she had never, never apprehended the scent of the birches, the beauty of the glen, as she did now.
Ah, it was this beauty that was getting the better of her, the sheer loveliness of the birches, the splashes of autumn colour, golden flotsam on the billows of green, the bracken, the bronzes, the rowan tree, the blood-red berries, the blackbird with the brilliant orange beak, harebellsâ“the Scottish bluebells”âand scabious, the taste of wild raspberries, the lines and the depthâand the scent of it all, with that pervasive under-scent of the earth itself, that quickening and terrifying scent.
Blowing into her stone circle, about its ultimate altar stone, on the wind's breath.
That was what her growth had been towards, as the growth of the compact bud to the blown rose.
She was being invaded, her own beauty by the strange beauty in the world. Not of the world. In the world. In the world.
She wanted to shut it out, and she didn't want to shut it out, and so she wandered on in her strange sweet misery, sometimes on the path, sometimes on a stone by the bouldered riverâuntil the sound of the water, the meandering infinite rhythm, caught a cry in the heart of it, and she had to get up and go. From the wooded path to the bank, and from the bankâ
Fra bank to bank, fra wood to wood I rinâ¦The words came into her mind like a cry, from that haunting old Scots sonnet, repeated to her so often by her schoolgirl friend, Maisie, and surely the most beautiful ever written:
Fra bank to bank, fra wood to wood I rin
Ourhailit with my feeble fantasie
Like til a leaf that fallis from the tree
Or til a reed ourblawin with the wind,
Two gods guides me, the ane of them is blin,
Yea, and a bairn brocht up in vanitie,
The next a wife ingenrit of the sea
And lichter nor a dauphin with her fin.
Unhappy is the man for evermair
That tills the sand and sawis in the air,
But twice unhappier is he, I lairn,The lightness, the dolphin ease, the finâmoulded like her own body, her breast, her arms.
That feidis in his heart a mad desire
And follows on a woman throw the fire
Led by a blind and teachit by a bairn.
And follows on a woman through the fire
.
Follows on
â¦
Fra bank to bank
,
fra wood to wood
â¦
Till her feeble fantasy quite overcame her, and she suddenly sat down beneath the birches, and drooped her head, and burst into tears, pressing her hands up against her face, hiding it in shame and in sorrow.
Shame at her own weakness, this vague woman weakness, arising out of nothingâoh, out of nothing.
Loving her weakness, seduced by it, giving in to itâbut aware, behind the forgetfulness of her tears, of the peril and the panic, of the noiseless beat beat, of feetâ¦
Like a beat out of the heart of the earth. The noiseless beat of feetâcomingââ
Her heart leapt within her, and past the near tree trunks came a man's legs and feet. Alick!
He saw her, but never paused, as if he had not seen her.
“Alick!” she said, getting up, half-turned away from him, drying her tears, then turning to him with a confused smile.
From looking at the ground near his feet, he looked past her, with no expression on his face, waiting.
“Where are you going?” she asked.
“To see about the morning.”
“Are you in a hurry?”
“No, ma'm.”
“Wellâwait a bit,” she said slowly, awkwardly. “I don't know what came over me. Must be the strain.” Her smile was friendly, softly confused.
He waited, his eyes touching her for a moment.
“I suppose I must look a bit of a sight. ButâI don't know. It's rather lovely here.” She racked her brains for something to say. “I should like, sometime, when you are not on the hill, to have another day's fishing. Do you think that would be possible?”
“Oh yes,” he said in his quiet voice. “Though the only place at the moment is Loch-an-eilean.”
“The loch with the little island! That would be lovely.”
“It's getting a bit late in the year. But there are good trout in it.”
“Wellâthe next time you are free?”
“Very good, ma'm.”
“Ahâas you knowâwe have had an anxious time. It was marvellous of you finding Mr. Smith. Weâtell me, how did you manage it?”
“Oh well, it just happened.”
“I wonder! Tell me how. Or do you mind?”
“There's nothing to mind,” he said simply. “I just thought he might go the way he wentâand found him there.”
“Butââ”
He waited.
She looked at him directly. He was looking past her, politely. It was difficult to be friendly with this manâunless the relationship was the impersonal, normal one of a fishing expedition. Then he would talk and tell you things and even smile. At the moment he might be anythingâinimical, wary of intrusion, suspicious, or bored. There was some queer force in his body, a pent-up force, that would stand at ease like this for an indefinite time. She always felt it, it always excited her, and she slightly feared it, except when it was impersonally friendly, and then it was altogether pleasant and lovable, communicated the sense of freedom, the feeling that it was good to be alive in the open air.
She gave a small shrug. “I shan't question you,” she said, with a touch of humour, smiling to him.
The slight characteristic smile came to his face.
“The first day, then, that you are free?” she said.
“Very good. This hill weather won't keep up for ever,” he volunteered.
“Let us hope not! Thank you, Alick. Good-bye.”
“Good-bye, ma'm.”
My tears are safe with him! she thought. But within a few paces she wondered, and within another few was uncertain, with spasms of painful doubt.
For what did she know about him really?
That force within him; it was strong; it might be brutalâgiven the occasion. He would never mention anything about her tears to her own people. But to hisââ?
Perhaps make a joke about it, an innuendo.
Hateful to think about. The implication that she had been making advancesâconveyed by the mouth in a fleshy twist of sarcasm.
Forâsuch things did happenâwere happening more and more. And she remembered Mrs. Matheson's story to her mother. The Mathesons had a forest over towards the seaboard. And Mrs. Matheson told of a neighbouring estate where the daughter of the shooting tenant, in her early twenties, selected each year a different gillie for her amorous needs. Quite openly. Everyone knew about it. The best-looking, most virile type, don't you know.
And the story about the local danceâtold by an English chauffeur who had been present, to a gillie when he came back, who told it to the keeper, who told it to the cook, who told it to the lady's maid, who told it to her lady. The poor chauffeur had suffered from an
embarras de richesses
amongst some of the local beauties that could not be experienced, he reckoned, outside certain places in Paris. And so on.
That suggestion of the beginning of demoralisation, perhaps quite localised, perhaps spreading, but in the air. The possibility of that rotten section of London society finding here for a short while a keener air, a more complete irresponsibility. Odd stories even from the Isles, not so much of intromissions with the native stock, as of promiscuities and perversions amongst themselves.
And not all rumours. Quite definite facts. Known facts. That sort of thingâthat she knew of in London, that accompanied its social life, like a miasma about decay. What socialists called the canker at the decaying root of capitalist civilisation. And the feeling that haunted her more and more that the socialists were right.
You had to be modern and emancipated and talk about those things in London, of course.â¦
Alick was bound to know about that!
She found herself walking quite quickly.
Sex accompanied a young woman's life, sometimes in a rosy cloud, sometimes as a fire, but sometimes shameful and hateful like
that
. It is her fate! Helen supposed, a flick of angry colour in her cheeks.
Why so annoyed, why so angry?
Her own young body was virgin enough. So virgin that it might be glass. Was that it? A consciousness that she was inexperienced, adolescent? Like that recent quoting of poetry and tears! To-day! Like a Victorian girl with the vapours!
Poetry, old poetry; love, that follows on a woman through the fire! How certain girls she knew would laughâso sure of themselves, so experienced, so expert in the realities!
A school miss, smiling through her tears at her father's gillie! These girls with their knowing eyes, their conspiracies, their intimacies, their fingers of bright gossip tap-tapping against her breastâwith an odd one drawling out a wearied oath or two. Little regard for the men except as puppets in the game, necessary to the game, and therefore to be intrigued about or quarrelled over. And the menâ¦
If the men were real men the women wouldn'tâ¦
Stop it! she cried inwardly to herself. Oh, stop it!
For she knew the nature of this attack. She had had it before. It was not that she minded about morality and virtue, she believed. It is not that one should be correct and proper, she passionately alleged to herself. For the appalling thing was that the cry came out of her the more wildly the more it was smothered: I want poetry, love, fire!
She had been in a mood when she could investigate an attack of this kind, turn over its mess with the fingers of her mind, pry into it, and even know a doubtful fascination. Then move out of it, alert a little, but whole and stronger.
Now, however, she felt dispirited, unclean, and could not become her normal self. The inner cry was quite silent.
As she climbed from the river path to a track on the brow of the declivity, she began to feel tired, too, in her bodyâreaction from the tiredness in her mind. She went in over the grassy bank and lay down, for she had sometimes found that by lying on her back and looking up between leafy branches at the sky her troubles would lift away in forgetfulness. She went, however, reluctantly, for she did not want her misery to be lifted. Her misery was the truth of living, the reality.
The truth is, said a voice far within her, your pride is hurt! She squirmed, under the leaves, shutting her eyes to the sun, to the airy communion of leaves and sunâ¦and heard again the beat, beat in the earth. She peered through the fringe of grass and bracken. Angus was coming along the path, with every sense alert, stealthily. At the bend in the path, opposite to her, he paused, to see round it, then with a quick backward glance went on. She saw that what he was trying to hide was a rifle.
On hands and knees, she crawled a yard or two to the right. He was making for the Lodge.
She found her heart beating painfully, her tiredness gone. Before she knew what she was doing she was following through the trees as swiftly and quietly as she could, until she had to stop or emerge into the open. While she hesitated, Alick came round the larder towards the garage. The two men met, spoke for a few moments, then looked around them with elaborate carelessness, andâthere was no one aboutâwent up the stone stairs to the loft, closing the red door behind them.
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